[glQjilfpjiIl iinlfrugfrugfrmlpi^ THE LIBRARIES COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY I 1 1 1 1 I — 1 I 1 I 11 EiiTnJ[ f ug pg[fm]friJil[rmlfr^i3nuT^ i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Given by Ilr. & 1-irs. Schreitniller II I S U ii mni i«r^^. Illii^nfJ' ,;v 3 ."■'■* iU ¥ .,1 I L ll A \ ■ A PORTRAIT GALLERY OF EMINENT MEN AKD WOMEN OF EUROPE AND AMERICA. EMBRACING HISTORY, STATESMANSHIP, NAVAL AND MILITARY LIFE, PHILOSOPHY, THE DRAMA, SCIENCE, LITERATURE* AND ART. WITH BTOGEAPHIES. BY EVERT A. DUYCKINCK, AUTHOR Off ** PORTRAIT GALLERY OP EMINENT AMERICANS," " CYCLOPEDIA OP AMERICAN LITERATURE," " HISTORT OF THE WAB FOR THE DNION," ETC., ETC. ILLUSTRATED WITH HIGHLY FINISHED STEEL ENGRAVINGS FROM ORIGINAl, PORTRAITS BY THE MOST CELEBRATED ARTISTS. In Two Volumes. — Vol, I. NEW YORK: JOHNSON, WILSON AND COMPANY, 27 BEEKMAN STREET. i^' I f//f/> iJntercd according to Act of Congress, in the year T873. hy JOHNSON, WILSON AND COMPANY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Wasliinifton, D. C. PREFACE. BIOGRAPHY," says Archbishop Whately, " is allowed on all hands to be one of the most attractive and profitable kinds of reading." The reason of this is obvious. It has, when properly treated, the ease and variety of the most agreeable forms of literature, and its subject-matter most nearly concerns the reader. In its very nature it is bound to a certain interest of progress and development, such as we look for in the Drama. Reaching back fre- quently into the story of an ancient lineage, the infant human life is introduced with a species of historic interest in the concerns and opportunities of the family. The formative years of childhood succeed, with the influences of education which, if they do not create the character, go far to shape its manifes- tation to the world. How infinitely varied are these forms of development, how peculiar the action of the individual mind ! Then comes the great struggle for success as the years roll on, till the man, with noble endeavor, obtains the mastery, and whether in art, science, literature or public affairs, places himself on a pinnacle where he will be surveyed through all coming time. The end which crowns the work of the personal career is yet to be reached ; and as we have watched the rising of the hero with hope and anxiety, we look upon his age and departure with sympathy and admiration. To observe and chronicle the achieve- ments and vicissitudes of every year of busy life is the province of the biographer, and there are no resources of literature which may not on occasion be serviceable to the work. Hence, books of biography are more and more, in the hands of consummate masters of the art, claiming the highest rank in our libraries. They are no longer scant and meagre records of a few personal details, but, in the case of men of eminence, require for their perfection a vast deal of the resources of history and philosophy. In the hands of Macaulay and Carlyle, biography, in its most attractive-exhibition, is made to do the work of history, and nobly it accom- plishes the design. Nor is this simply a daring achievement of men of genius. The greater part of the knowledge which we have of history, it may safely be said, is at this day conveyed through the lives of distinguished personages. Looking at the work before us — the exhibition of the Lives or Eminent Men and Women of Europe and America, from the period of the Revolution to the present day — we find, when we have made up the list, a singularly general representaton of the nationalities of the present century as well as of (3) 4 PREFACE. the various modes of illustrious achievement. All the great nations of Europe supply their men of thought and action, their great sovereigns, their founders of governments, their distinguished military chieftains, their statesmen, their philanthropists, their scientific discoverers, their poets and artists. The new birth of Italy is exhibited in the record of Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emanuel, and the early rule of Pope Pius ; France has her Marie Antoinette, her Charlotte Corday, her Napoleons, her Thiers ; Russia, her Alexander, with his grand work of national reform ; Germany emerges from the old revolution with her Goethe, Schiller, Humboldt, to enter upon the empire with King William, Bismarck and Von Moltke ; England is illustrated from the days of Johnson to those of Dickens and Tennyson in literature ; she has her statesmen in Bright, Cobden and Gladstone ; her warriors on sea and land in Nelson and Wellington ; her philanthropists of both sexes from Wilberforce to Florence Nightingale; her race of female novelists from Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte ; her inventors in such examples as Stephenson and Faraday ; Scotland has her Burns, Scott and Livingstone; Ireland her Burke, Goldsmith, Edge- worth, CuiTan, Grattan, and O'Connell ; while in the United States, all of the classes we have alluded to are represented in Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Webster, Fulton, Morse, Peabody, Bryant and others of either sex, and so we might enumerate the whole of the hundred and more subjects of these biographies. In no work of the kind, thus far published, has the same attention been given to Female Biography and Portraiture. One-third of the portraits will be of illustrious women, eminent in history, literature, art or philanthropy. It has been the object to present these " lives " of persons of eminence suffi- ciently in detail to interest the reader in their personal histoiy ; to exhibit, to the young particularly, the foundation of their success in early self-denial and resolu- tion ; to include all that can be gathered within the necessary limits to display the strong, essential elements of character. The artistical department of the work is greatly indebted to the ability of our native painter, Mr. Alonzo Chappel, In many instances the portraits have been re-drawn by him, while the selection of originals has been made from the most eminent painters, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Paul de la Roche, and others. They are here presented in a novel style, with characteristic accessories. Unusual pains have been taken in this country and in Europe, to obtain the most reliable authori- ties ; while the engraving of the whole has been entrusted to experienced artists of the highest reputation in London and New York, at a great outlay of cost. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PAGE. < SAMUEL JOHNSON 5 », OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 28 . HANNAH MORE, 43 . FREDERICK IL, . 60 . EDWARD GIBBON, 75'^ > MARIE ANTOINETTE, 87 . DAVID GARRICK, . . . 106 . GEORGE WASHINGTON, 123 . MADAME D'ARBLAT, 139 ^ EDMUND BURKE, 159 » SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, 169 i MARTHA WASHINGTON, 182 > BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 192 » ROBERT BURNS, 204 » CHARLOTTE CORDAY, 218 . JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE, 226 . JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE 240 . ABIGAIL ADAMS, 255 - GILBERT-MOTIER DE LAFAYETTE, 263A- . THOMAS JEFFERSON, 279 • MARIA EDGEWORTH, 293 ^ . FRIEDRICH SCHILLER, 310 • HENRY GRATTAN, 323 « SARAH VAN BRUGH JAY, 334 . NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 344 • ROBERT FULTON, 360^ - MADAME DE STAEL, 368 . HORATIO NELSON, 378 » JOHN PHILPOT CDRRAN, 396 ^ JANE AUSTEN, 409 • WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, 416 . GEORGE STEPHENSON 433 »" (iiil iv CONTENTS. > SARAH SIDDONS, 446 , ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, 4C6 ^ V WALTER SCOTT, 476 >^ . DOROTHY PAYNE MADISON, 488 , LORD BROUGHAM, 494 . LORD BYRON, . . . . . . . . . . . . 507 Z' . ELIZABETH FRY 529 > ROBERT PEEL, ............ 539 V WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 544 . FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS, .566 ■ DUKE OF WELLINGTON, 577 , THOMAS MOORE, ........... 593 , LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY,. 605 ' ANDREW JACKSON 615 a cu^% Li^i \/i^. SAMUEL JOHNSON IN all English biography it is ad- mitted that the Life of Samuel Johnson, as exhilsited by Boswell and his associates in the work, stands forth the fullest in detail and least likely to be exhausted in interest, one generation succeeding another since it was wi'itten and the latest still perusing it with eager curiosity. Never before or since, has so minute and faithful a record been given to the world of the personal career of a man of letters, probably of any man in any station of life. The nearest approach to the nar- I'ative in English literature is one in- spired by it, the life of Sir Walter Scott, by Lockhart, but that is com- paratively a simjile production when placed by the side of the performance of his elder countryman. Of Burns, also, we know a great deal, as we do of the personality of Scott. The names of these men bring before us at once their noble traits of character, and we may conceive on the instant how they would think and act under any cir- cumstances. So too of others of whom less has been written. We may know the men ; but we do not know so much of them as we may gather in a few hours from oui' book-shelves of the life of Johnson. Between what he wrote of himself and what was written of him by others, of whom his great bi- ographer was only the chief, what with the revelations of his diaries, the can- dor of his correspondence and the vigorous impression of himself upon his moral writings, we may be inti- mately acquainted with him in his in- ner as well as his outer life through the entire seventy-five years of his ex- istence. For the story begins with his cradle. He was anecdotical even in his infancy. JVon sine diis animosus infariH. His friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, turning his pencil in later years fi-om that scarred and seamed countenance, im- mortal on his canvas, in a fanciful pic- ture portrayed the child as he may then have appeared, a companion to his infant Hercules : " The baby figure of the giant mass, Of things to come at large." The portrait is that of a vigorous, healthy child, and in that respect it was but imaginary, for the real John- son was, in his early years, sickly and diseased, so miserable an object one of his aunts afterwards told him that (5) SAMUEL JOHNSON. ''she would not liave picked such a poor creatui'e up in the street," But RejTiolds, always a poet painter, was intent upon a glorification of his subject. This seemingly unhap- py child came into the world in the city of Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, on the 18th of Septembei-, 1 709. The house in which he was born is still standing in 1872 a familiar object to many pilgrims at the corner of a street opening named St. Mary's Square, " a tall and thin house of three stories with a square front and a roof rising steep and high," as it is de- scribed by Nathaniel Hawthorne who visited it, and as it may be seen repre- sented in many familiar engravings. Here at the time of the birth of his son Samuel, Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, was settled in a humble way as a book- seller and stationer. When he was more than fifty he was married to Sarah Ford, of a peasant family in Warwickshire. She was then at the age of fo]-ty. Two sons were born to them — Samuel, three years after the union, and three years later, Nathaniel, who died at the age of twenty-five. In the year of his son's birth, Michael Johnson was sheriff of the county ; he owned the house in which he resided and generally bore a respectable posi- tion in the place. His business as a bookseller was extended by his excur- sions into the neighboring towns where he opened a shop on market days, held auctions and offered for sale works of various kinds, — law, history, mathe- matics and a good stock of divinity for the serious and, "to please the ladies," as one of his circulars informs us, a " store of fine pictures and paper-hang ings " which were to be sold precisely at noon " that they may be viewed by daylight;" for Michael Johnson was a conscientious man and would practicf! no deception even in the sale of pic- tures. He was of a strong and robust fi'ame, but of a melancholy tempera- ment, arising it may be from a scrofu- lous taint which his son inherited with his disposition. The mother of John- son is described by Boswell as "a woman of distinguished understand- ing ;" but from the account we have of her from her son she was quite il- literate, so that she could not sympa- thize at all with her husband's love of books ; nor was she able to assist him in his business as it became less pros- perous and the family encountered the hardships of poverty. Her uneducated piety was sometimes troublesome to her son in his boyhood when she kept him home on Sundays to read the dull and sombre homilies of " The Whole Duty of Man ;" but she was kind to him with a mother's fondness enhanced by his sufferings from ill-health, and he always entertained a grateful re- collection of her. The first authentic anecdote of John- son, as a child, belongs to his third year, when being thirty months old, at the advice of Sir John Floyer, a notable physician at Lichfield, he was taken by his mother to London to be relieved of his scrofulous disease, the Kinc's Evil, as it was called, by the magical touch of Queen Anne, who, followinfr the royal precedents from the days of Edward the Confessor, as may be read in Shakspeare, was supposed to be gifted with power to relieve that com- SAMUEL JOKNSON. plaint. Jolinson must have been among the last on whom that cere- mony was i^erformed for which in the old editions of the Books of Common Prayer there was an especial religious service. Queen Anne was the last to practice this mode of cure. The iden- tical gold coin or " touch piece " which, according to custom the child Johnson received on the occasion may now be seen preserved as a curiosity in the British Museum. The Johnson family were inveterate tories and were in- clined to believe to the end in the effi- cacy of kings. Johnson professed to retain a recollection of this introduction to royalty, remembering a boy crying at the palace when he went to be touched and the appearance though shadowy of Queen Anne. He had, he told Mrs. Thrale, "a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood." Another incident of about the same time, savoring also of toryism, is of a decidedly apocryphal character, though circumstantially related to Bos- well by a lady of Lichfield whose grandfather witnessed the scene and which is also represented on a bas-re- lief of the monument to Johnson in front of his bii-th-place. In this he is pictured as a child of three years old held on his father's shoulders listenins: to the preaching of the famous high- church Doctor Sacheverell. It was impossible, the tale runs, to keep the boy at home, for " young as he was he believed he had caught the public spirit and zeal for Sacheverell and would have staid for ever in the church, satisfied with beholding him." Boswell gave the story in his book, for he thought it "curiously charac- teristic," but his editor, Croker, set the idle tale at rest by reminding the reader that at the time assigned the tory preacher was interdicted from preach- ing, and though he had visited Lich- field in his triumphal progress through the counties, it was when Johnson was but nine months old. There is also a stupid story of his having recited to his mother at the same tender age of thi'ee, four bad lines of his composi- tion, an epitajjh on a duckling which he had trod upon and killed. Passing beyond these mythical in- ventions to the sober facts of biogra- phy we come upon a Dame Oliver, a schoolmistress, such as Shenstone has described, who taught the young Samuel to read English, a dame so wonderfully gifted that she could peruse black letter, calling upon her pupil to bori'ow from his father's stock a Bible for her in that character. Then came a preceptor, Tom Brown, who published a spelling-book which he dedicated to the universe ; and after him Hawkins, the usher of the Lichfield school, with whom Johnson learned much, passing to the upper form, literally into the hands of Sir. Hunter; for this head master "whipt me very well," as his great pupil af- terwards stated with pride, being prone as a moralist to defend this method of implanting learning in the youthful mind. He thought it much better than the emulation system which, he would say, created jealousy among friends, while the flogging set- tled the matter at once and the knowl- edge was secured. Johnson, however, was an apt scholar and, not withstand SAMUEL JOHjS^SON. ine his admii-ation of tlie birch, was probably very little indebted to it for his education. He early showed great powers of memory, an indication of a strong and fertile mind, that faculty implying both sunshine and replenish- ing of the soil. He would help his fellow pupils in their studies, and was BO popular with them that they would call for him at his home and carry him to school in a sort of triumphal pro- cession, one stooping to bear him upon his back while two others supported him on either side. His eyesight, which was defective fi-om his birth, kept him fi-om the usual boyish sports, but he contrived wonderfully well, as he afterwards said, " to be idle without them." Though capable of great ex- ertions, with a mind always actively employed, he was constitutionally en- courao-ed to fits of indolence which sometimes got the better of him, as he was often in the habit of confessing and lamenting. As a boy he liked to wander idly in the fields, talking to himself and had an immoderate fond- ness for losing himself in old romances such as the vicar ejected from Don Quixote's library. At the atje of fifteen he was sent to the Grammar School of Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, where he passed about twelve months, returning home to spend a couple of years "loitering," says his biographer, " in a state very unworthy his uncommon abilities." He was, however, all the Avhile an om- nivorous reader, browsing on the mis- cellaneous stock of his father's books, one day lighting upon the Latin works of Petrarch, which he devoured with avidity — certainly not the proof of an idle employment of his time. He had, moreover, already in his school exer- cises proved his alnlity in various po- etical translations of Virgil and Horace, so that, when in his nineteenth year he was, with the promised assistance of a gentleman of Shropshire, entered a commoner of Pembroke College, Ox- ford, he carried with him a stock of attainments which at once gave him a creditable position at that University. On the nioht of his arrival he was in- troduced with his father, "who had anxiously accompanied him," to his in- tended tutor, Mr. Jorden, when, spite of his ungainly appearance, for he even then appears to have had something of that uncouthness of person and man- ner afterwards so much commented upon, he impressed the comj^any favor- ably by his ready citation of a passage fi'om Macrobius, an out-of-the-way au- thor for a novice to be acquainted with. But Johnson was no novice in learned reading ; and though he showed some waywardness in attendance upon rou- tine duties, he soon gained the respect of the authorities by his talent, and es- pecially attracted their attention by an easily executed brilliant translation into Latin verse of the Messiah of Pope, who is said to have remarked, on being shown the production by a son of Dr Ai'buthnot, then a student at Oxford " The writer of this poem will leave it a question for posterity, whether his or mine be the original." Johnson passed about three years at the University, his course being great- ly impeded by his poverty, for the assistance which had been promised failed to be given, and the waning for- tunes of his father enabled him to eke SAMUEL JOimSON. out for his son but a scanty support, whicli finally failed altogether and com- pelled him to leave without a degree. So extreme was his want of resources that he could hardly maintain the or- dinary decencies of the place, going about, or rather, shrinking from view, with worn-out shoes, through which his feet were painfully visible, and when some triendly hand placed a new pair at his door, throwing them away with indignation as an insult to his poverty. Such was the pride of John- son, an honest jjride often shown in his career through life, which preserved his independence and kejat him free from the baseness with which he mio^ht, from the associations into which he was inevitably thrown, have otherwise been entangled. His association with Oxford was doubtless one of the import- ant influences of his life, though it bore no immediate fruit in academic honors. He acquired there no inconsiderable knowledge of Greek, must have added largely to his stores of reading and, lover of learning as he ever was, been pro- portionately impressed with the genius of the place. He had some reputation while there as " a gay and frolicsome fellow," it is said, and was disjjosed to be satirical and censorious. This he long afterwards characteristically ex- plained : " Ah, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my liter- ature and my wit ; so I disregarded all power and all authority." In truth there was seriousness enoug-h in his life at this time. During his first va- cation, passed at his home at Lich- field, he became the prey of so oppres- 2 sive a melancholy that existence was almost insupportable to him under the anticipation of impending insanity. It was but little relief to the evil at the time that the burden was imagin- ary, and that he showed the absurd- ity of his fears by engrossing them to the admiration of his physician with remarkable ability in most excellent Latin. The hypochondria, like the ter- rors of a dream, produced much suffer- ing ; but it was of a kind over which he learned to gain control, though its shadows accompanied him through life. It was also while at Oxford that he be- came the subject of those deep reli- gious convictions which, with a dash of suj)erstition, never departed from him. The seeds of piety were early implanted in him by his mother's teachings; but, as we have seen, the method was not always well judged, and in his youth he was disposed to some laxity of opinion which was re- strained by the habits of Oxford and extinguished by a famous book of evangelical piety which he met with there — " Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life." He took it up, he tells us, " ex- pecting to find it a dull book, as such books generally are, and perhajis to laugh at it, but I found Law quite an even match for me ; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in ear- nest of religion, after I became capa- ble of rational enquiry." Religion thenceforth became intimately associ- ated with his thoughts and actions. A few months after Johnson left Oxford his father died at Lichfield, at the age of seventy-six, leaving scant property to his family ; for out of his effects the portion which came to his son Samuel, excludino; tliat AvLicli lie miglit ultimately derive fi-om Lis moth- er, was but twenty pounds. WitLi this he was to begin the world at the age of twenty-t\vo. But the regard in which his father had been held was something of an inheritance to him, and the knowledge which, according to the old proverb, survives houses and lands, was to prove its excellence. He looked to his scholarship as his first means of su]3port. The prospect of advantage from it was for a lona; time not a cheering one. He began by ac- cepting the humblest jjosition as a teacher, that of usher or under-master in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershii'e, to which he proceeded on foot. The situation was necessarily irksome to one of his temperament, who ahvays grasped at knowledge with impatience, seldom during his life read- ing a book through, but, with an in- stinctive sagacity, hastily "plucking jut the heart of its mystery." He was in his capacity of usher con- demned to the painful iteration of the rules of grammar, the inflections of nouns and the moods of verbs, with boys to whom to-day's lesson was a re- flection of that of yesterday, and identi- cal with that of the morrow — a melan- choly drudgery for the quick-minded Johnson ; it was doubtless also aggra- vated according to the mannex of boys by half concealed ridicule of his pecu- liarities, and, when the whole was sup- plemented by what he considered " in- toleraljle harshness " on the part of the titled patron of the school, he threw up the employment in disgust. A few months were sufiicient for this un- happy experiment. Leavino: Market-Bosworth with no other engagement in view, Johnson accepted an invitation from Mr. Hec- tor his school-fellow at Lichfield, to visit him at Bii'mingham. Johnson passed some time in this city, and there wrote his first book, a transla- tion from the French of a Voyage to Abyssinia by father Lobo, a Jesuit missionary, for which he received from the bookseller Warren with whom he lodged the payment of five guineas. With praiseworthy indus- try and sagacity, Boswell, with the assistance of Burke examined this book to ascertain if it bore any marks of that peculiarly rich and effective style which became known to the world as the jjeculiar manner of Johnson. So far as the translation itself was concerned they found only traces of the idiom of the original; but when they came to the j^reface their search was I'ewarded. In the words of Boswell "the Johnsonian style begins to appear." Imbedded like rich nuggets in the flowing stream were some brilliant specimens of genuine Johnsonese, a foretaste of that inimitable generalization sup- ported by pictvu'esque detail and ani- mating suggestions, enlivened by epi- gram and antithesi, a pomp of words in stately music supporting a burthen of thought — the comprehen- sion of the poet, the wit and philoso- pher. After a residence of about a year at Birmingham, he returned to Lich- field, where he made an ineffectual at- tempt at literary occupation by issu ing proposals for publishing by sub scription the Latin poems of Politian SAMUEL JOH^'SOX. 11 with a life of the author, an under- talcing which found few to encourage ■'t though the price was small; so, nothing came of it. Two years now passed without any distinct employ- ment to further his prospects in life, when in July, 1736, he was married to a Mrs. Porter, the widow of a mer- cer at Birmingham with whom he had become acquainted in his former stay in that city during the life-time of her first husband. There was a great disparity in the age of the pair, Johnson, at the time of the marriage, being in his twenty-seventh year and the bride in her forty-eighth. Nor was she remarkable for her per- sonal charms, or any refinement in her appearance, if we may credit the account of Garrick in his description of her to Boswell. But the mar- riage, notwithstanding all inequalities, proved a happy one. However the lady might appear to the youthful Garrick and the world, she w^as an angel of light to her husband, whose poverty she alleviated and consoled, and whose mental ability she had suf- ficient understanding to appreciate. This alliance brought with it eight hundred pounds, the widow's fortune, and, encouraged by this new resource, Johnson, who had failed in an en- deavor to procure the mastership of a grammar school in Warwickshire, re- solved to set up a species of academy of his own. He accordingly hired an imposing looking house, at Edial, in the vicinity of Lichfield, and invited the attendance of pupils to board with him and be taught the Latin and Greek languages. Only three came, two of whom were David Garrick, of illustrious memory, and his brother George, sons of a gentle- man, a half-pay captain, at Lichfield. With such scant encouragement it is a marvel that Johnson's patience held out for a year and a half ; but it last- ed probably as long as his means ; and while these continued, spite of the drudgery of teaching, the home must have been to him a comfortable one, fascinated, as the young lover wag — for Johnson was really a chivalric lover — with the perfections of his " Tetty," as he fondly called his wife Elizabeth. Johnson, who had employed some of his leisure at Edial Hall, as his house is called, in the construction of a portion of his tragedy " L-ene," now by the advice of his fi'iend Gilbert Walmsley, a gentleman of Lichfield, Register of its Ecclesiastical Court, a man of reading and influence, resolv- ed to pursue the work with a view to its introduction on the stage. This directed his thoughts to London, the certain refuge of provincial literary as- pirants of all times. There if anywhere in England he might turn his literary talents, his sole capital, to account. His pupil, Garrick, about being sent to a school at Rochester to finish his education, Johnson's friend, Walmsley, gave them a joint letter to the head master, the Rev. Mr. Colson, a man of eminence as a mathematician. Com- mending to him the youthful Garrick, he wrote, " He and another neighbor of mine, one Mr. Samuel Johnson, set out this morning (March 2, 1737), for London, together; Davy Garrick to be with you early the next week, and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a 12 SAMUEL JOHNSON. tragedy, and to see to get himself em- ployed in some translation, either from the Latin or the French. Johnson is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes will turn out a fine tragedy-wi'iter." Nothing j^articular appears to have come, so far as John- son was concerned, of Colson's letter. He was out of the way at Rochester in a quiet seclusion, and Johnson was to fight for his life against severe odds in the rough training-school of Lon- don. The booksellers were his first resort. Apjilying to one of the craft, with the intimation that he expected to get his living as an author, the dealer in books, surveying his robust frame with a significant look, remark- ed, " You had better buy a porter's knot ;" and the man who uttered this rude speech Johnson got to reckon amonc: his best friends. Occasional literature offers the most available re- source to a young writer in search of employment, and Johnson was natur- ally attracted to it in one of its better forms. Edward Cave, the son of a provincial shoemaker, with some edu- cation at Rugby school, had found his way into literature in London through his employment as a printer, and in the face of the usual auguries of failure, had successfully established the "Gentle- man's Magazine," the most famous pro- duction of its class and still surviving, though chanojed with the wants of the times, approaching its hundred and fiftieth year — a longevity utterly be- yond any of its short-lived race. When Johnson came to London it had been five or six years in existence, and its fame had reached him at Lichfield. He had written a letter to its founder two or three years before, offering to contribute jioems and criticisms, and he now addressed him again, propos- ing a new translation ft"om-the Italian of Father Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent. It was not, however, till about a year later that he became a contributor to the Magazine, his first a^ipearance being as the author of a complimentary Horatian ode in Latin, addressed to Sylvanus LTrban, as the editor designated himself on the title- page of his work. After this he was engaged as a regular contributor, and for several years derived his chief sup- port from this source. There were no parliamentary re^^orters in those days, the publication of debates being inter- dicted; and to meet the public curi- osity without violating the law, it was the custom of Cave to publish a dis- guised account of the proceedings un der the name of " Reports of the De- bates of the Senate of Lilliput," in which the leading speakers figured under absurd disguised names, in a clumsy slang language invented for the occasion. The mask was awkwardly worn, and not intended to conceal the features. In this contrivance Johnson was employed in the " Gentleman's Magazine" to wvite out the debates, often from the scantiest of material, he ing left to his own resources to supply thought and words. This he did with much effect, bestowing his best elo- quence it is said on the side of the to- ries, of Avhom from his childhood he was among the most resolute if not the most bigoted. Services like these might have se- cured a scanty compensation barely suflicient to keep soul and body toge SAMUEL JOHNSON. 13 tlier, with little comfort for either ; but Johnson, happily, mindful of his poet- ical faculty, employed it in these early months in the metropolis on a task which raised him at once to a higher level, gave him assurance of a posi- tion in the world of letters, and which doubtless had the most favorable effect upon his character in sustaining him through the dark days, aye, years of trial and hardships yet before him. Pope was at this time at the height of his reputation, in the maturity of his powers, having produced his best works, and among the latest his ex- quisite adaptation, to modern English society, of the satires and epistles of Horace. This was a species of liter- ature eminently adapted to gain the admiration of Johnson, whose own reading was always subservient to a better appreciation of the daily life around him. Few scholars, so inti- mate with the past, have lived so heartily in the present as Johnson. No author has more closely identified the life of all ages in his writings, or so demonstrated its essential moral unity. It was an easy labor for him, therefore, to su2:)ply Avith modern ex- amples the scheme of an ancient poet who had made Rome in the fulness of its development the subject of his song. In the sagacity and moral force of Juvenal he had an author to his liking, and in his descriptions of city life a strong ground for his sympathy. It is quite worthy of being noticed that the first important production which John- son gave to the world is stamped with the name of London. Choosing the third satire of Juvenal for his subject, that quaint picture of Home, sketched by the departing Umbritius as he shakes off the dust of the town from his feet, he transferred its spirit to the world of England of his own times, and he accomplished this so gracefully, with so much of taste, feeling and power, that it secured him at once a distinguished place among the poets of England. It is interesting to trace the modest manner in which this work was brought forward. We first hear of it in a very supplicating letter to Cave, the j^rinter, a letter which no- thing but extreme poverty could have extracted from a man like Johnson on such an occasion. He submits the poem to his consideration, thinly dis- guised as the production of another a person, he writes, who " lies at pre- sent under very disadvantageous cir- cumstances of fortune," and, a conces- sion which is the strongest proof of his necessity, offers to alter any stroke of satire which the printer may dis- like. Cave, upon this, sends the author a " i^resent " for his immediate relief, ac- cepts the work, and suggests the name of Dodsley the publisher for the ti- tle page. Dodsley proves quite willing to have a share in it, thinking it, as he said, " a creditable thing to be con- cerned in ;" and so, one morning in May, 1738, the very same on which appeared Pope's " Epilogue to the Sa- tires," a sequel to the "Imitations of Horace," Johnson's " London " was given to the world. It was the first introduction of the name of Samuel Johnson to the polite society of Eng- land, and it Avas a suflScient one. The literati of London hailed in the new poet a rival or successor to Poj^e ; ths scholars of Oxford were delighted, and ,14 SAMUEL JOHNSON. Pope himself approved the work. Be- ing told that the author Avas an obscure man named Johnson, for his name did not appear on the title page, he re- marked that he would soon be brought to light. So favorable generally was the reception of the 2">oem that a sec- ond edition of it was called for in a week. Comparing this work with the simul- taneous production of Pope, the satii-e of the man of twenty-nine with that of tlie man of fifty, the preference must be given to youth over experience. It is quite fair to test Pope by the quo- tations from his wi'itings — for no Eng- lish writer has been quoted to such an extent — but there are more remember- ed familiar lines in Johnson's " Lon- don," than in Pope's " 1738," as the satire was called on its first appear- ance. While the poem thus gained its author reputation, its success did lit- tle to mend his fortunes. It produced him only ten guineas, half the sum or less, that was given at the time for a hack political pamphlet ; and Johnson was left a living illustration of one of the finest lines in the poem itself: " Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed." That poverty was so pressing that Johnson in his despair would again have assumed the office of a teacher, the mastership of a school in Leicester- shire being offered to him and willing- ly accepted, if he could have complied with the condition. To hold the situ- ation, it was necessary that he should have the desjree of Master of Arts. Oxford was thought of and set aside, the request being considered too bold ft one for that high quarter ; but Earl Gower, a patron of the school, thought it worth while to solicit through a friend the intervention of Dean Swift to secure the coveted honor ft-om the University of Dublin. The English nobleman plead hard for "the poor man" whom he wished to serve, de- scribing him in his letter " starved to death in translating for booksellers, which has been his only subsistence for some time past." But fortunately nothing came of it ; else Johnson might have been lost to Loudon and the world, and served only as a notable head-master or a curiosity among ped- agogues in the local annals of a county history. The law seems then to haA^e been thought of, and Johnson had many requisites in subtilty and force of mind for the profession ; but here again a degree was Avanted, and the project, if seriously entertained, was abandoned. So he was left to the booksellers. ReviAang the plan of a translation of Father Paul Sarpi, a prospectus Avas is- sued, some subscriptions obtained and several sheets of the workprinted,when it was found, a strange coincidence, that it had been already undertaken by an- other Samuel Johnson in London ; and in the discussion which ensued between the two, the execution of it Avas given up by both. At the conclusion of one of his letters to CaA^e, relating to the translation, Johnson signs himself Im- pranstis. He had not dined that day, a statement Avhich might mean some thing or nothing; but in Johnson's case it has been generally taken to mean something — for Johnson, in com- mon with his needy literary brethren of the day, may very likely have been in want of a dinner — and the absence SAMUEL JOHNSOJ^". 15 of a dinner to Johnson was no slight orivation. So the years wore on while Johnson who was now living with his wife in loda-ins-s in London or its vici- nity, eked out a scanty subsistence by minor literary labors, chiefly essays, biographies and translations for the " Gentleman's Magazine." In 1744, on the death of the poet Savage, he pub- lished anonymously a life of that ex- traordinary adventurer, whom he had known intimately in his parti-colored career in the metropolis, whose as- sumptions and gleams of dashing prosperity he wondered at, whose poverty he had shared and whose fate he j)itied. The book in which Johnson narrated his adventures is unique in biography. We know not where to find anything so natural, candid and spontaneous, so feeling and at the same time amusino; a sketch of a vao'abond existence. It is essentially the history of a bastard with an instinct for high life in his composition triumphant over all the mortifications and disasters of debt and poverty; a sketch Avonder- f ully real and as ideal as any fancifully eml)ellished portrait drawn by the pencil of Lamb. Indeed, it somehow recalls to us in its spirit Elia's account of the " triumphant progress " of that splendid borrower, Ralph Bigod, Esq., in his exquisite Essay on " The Two Races of Men." The shifts and expe- dients of a poor devil author, the grandeur of his mind supplying any deficiencies of his jiocket, have never been more graphically related than in this charming biography by Johnson. It is pervaded throughout by the finest sense of humor, and is the highest proof which can be afforded of John- son's superiority to the casual, improv- ident career of the careless company into which he was often thrown in the early period of his life in London. On every page there is the revelation of some absurd folly or pretension, or of darker profligacy, yet the picture upon the whole is a genial one ; for Johnson, though he knew its minutest peculi- arities, was so far above the scene in moral elevation as to look calmly upon it with the eye of a philosopher, as a curious study of human nature. It is a delightful mingling of details and generalities ; the actual losing its gross- ness in the ideal. In other hands. Sav- age would most likely have appeared as an indiiferent poet and jjrofligate spendthrift, cruelly treated by his ti- tled, disreputable mother, if his story was credited; but, in himself, an im- practicable vagabond whom no kind- ness could serve or generosity, how- ever large, relieve, and who, for those times, met an appropriate fate in an early departure from life within the walls of a debtor's prison. But the 23en of Johnson could never be em- ployed in unfeeling censure of the un- fortunate, nor 'even of the criminal. The scamp is never disguised in his narrative, though he sometimes ap- pears to be playing with the subject ; while the moral that ends the story, "that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued, will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible," loses none of its force by the fairness, indulgent sympa- thy and good humor of the narrative on which it is built. The rapidity with which the book 16 SAJIUEL JOHNSOX. was written has heeu commented upon as something remarkable, forty-eight of its printed octavo pages being writ- ten at a sitting which lasted through the night — a noticeable thing, certain- ly, when it is considered that it is not altogether a simple, straightforward, flowing narrative ; but, that it is con- stantly interrupted by pi'egnant reflec- tions, its sentences pointed with wit and tied up in knots of philosophy. But Johnson was full of his theme, and what he wrote he had doubtless often muttered to himself in his ha- bitual reflections on the adventures of his hero as they passed before him, A book composed in such a manner could not fail of attention, especially as the subject of it was already a per- son of notorious pul)lic interest, whose career had been invested with the un- failing attraction of jjicpiant scandal in high life. Boswell tells us how Sir Joshua Reynolds, " on his return from Italy, met with it in Devonshire, know- ing nothing of its author, and began to read it while he was standing with his arm leaning against a chimney-piece. It seized his attention so strongly, that, not being able to lay down the book till he had finished it, when he at- tempted to move, he found his arm totally benuml)ed." The year following the production of the biography of Savage, Johnson published a pamphlet of " 01)servations on the tragedy of Macbeth," with pro- posals for a new edition of Shake- speare, which gained him the commen- dation of "Warburton, who was then engaged on a similar undertaking. Johnson began his studies for the work, but it was for a time laid aside for another of more pressing impor- tance, his " Dictionary of the English Language," the plan of which was is- sued in 1747. The work was a Joint enterprise of the trade, seven London booksellers, at the head of M'hom Avas Dodsley, contracting for its composi- tion at the price of fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds. The prospectus was dedicated to the Earl of Chester- field, the fashionable patron of letters of the time, who sent the author the accustomed gratuity of ten guineas for the compliment. The labor involved in such an undertaking would have been far more formidable to most other authors than it proved to John- son, who, confident of his own abilities, in a resolute way resolved the task into one of great simplicity, exjiending his strength mainly on the definitions and illustrations from classic authors. Em- ploying no less than six assistants as amanuenses, he handed over to them for transcription passages or sentences from the best English authors which he had selected for the purj^ose, with the word which he intended to illus- trate, undei'lined. The word was writ- ten on a slip of paper with the accom- panying citation, and thus the Diction- ary was in a great part formed as an index of classic authors. When thus arranged in alphabetical order, defi- nitions were added, with etymologies, derived from the best authorities. Of cotu-se, he was under great obligations to his predecessors ; but the work was distinctly marked by his mental habits, and consequently, notwithstanding the increased value of later philological acquirements in his successors, is re- produced to this day for our lil^raries SAMUEL JOHNSON. 17 as emphatically Johnson's Dictionary. Opening the single caj^acious volume now in use, no unmeet representative of the burly form of Johnson, as Au- gustus compared Horace to the fat lit- tle roll of his poems, we may light at random on pages illuminated by his philosophical acumen, rich with the stores of his various reading from the Bible and Shakespeare, through the best English authorship to Pope and Swift, while, intersjDersed with the sound, manly definitions, are several toiiches of satire and humor, inter- posed, not more, perhaps, by prejudice, than as a relief to the weary labor of the work. In one of these he defines the word oats, "a grain, which, in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland, supports the people ;" and in another, "pension," as "an al- lowance made to any one without an equivalent, in England, being generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his coun- try," and " pensioner — a slave of state, hired by a stipend to obey his master," definitions which were rather incon- venient to him, when he came himself to occupy that relation to his country. To the word " Lich," which enters into the composition of Lichfield, his native town, he adds an interpretation of the latter word, " the field of the dead, a city in Staffordshire, so named from martyi-ed Christians," with the invoca- tion. Salve magna parens ! The Dictionary was seven years in pi'Ogress. On the eve of its appear- ance, in 1755, Lord Chestei'field sought to revive the good feeling of the author towards him exhibited at the start, by some handsome notices of the book in 3 advance in the periodical essays enti- tled, " The World ;" but, Johnson, who had been provoked by neglect in a visit or two which he had paid to the no- bleman's drawing-room, or knocking in vain at his door, was in no humor to dedicate to him the finished work. On the contrary, he spurned the flat- tering overtures, and in a spirit of in- dependence, the echo of which rings in noble halls to this day, addressed a remarkable letter to the Earl, which has done more to keep the writer in popular remembrance than the best pages of his " Rambler." To grace the title-page of his Diction ary, Oxford conferred upon Johnson the degree of M. A. in 1755 ; LL.D. came twenty years later from that University, and, in the meantime, the same degree had also been given by Dublin. It was only in the latter part of his life that he was known by the title so familiar to us, of Dr. Johnson. In the interval, while Johnson was engaged upon the Dictionary, he had published in 1749 a companion to his "Loudon," in a version of the tenth satire of Juvenal, which he entitled, " The Vanity of Human Wishes." In this, as in his previous version, he had to contend in the literal part of his work with the muse of Dryden, who translated both poems; but Johnson had the advantage of a wider interpre- tation in his introduction of modern instances and manners ; while his be- nevolent disposition led him to soften the asperities of the original. In the fierce picture of a vicious old age, for instance, which darkens the brilliancy of the Latin poem, Johnson has intro- duced, — an idea entirely of his own 18 SAMUEL JOHNSON. conception, — a sketcli of the decline of life, animated by purity and virtue : ' But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime ; An age that melts with unperoeiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away ; ■\Vhose peaceful day benevolence endears, Whose night congratulating conscience cheers ; The gen'ral fav'rite as the gen'ral friend ; Such age there is, and who shall wish its end ?" The sketch of the life of the man of letters is also his own, sadly inspired by his observation and exjjerience : — " Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, "Vor melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade; let hope not life from griei or danger free, Nor think the doom of man revers'd for thee ; Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awhile from letters, to be wise ; There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail." In one noble historic passage he has fairly rivalled the genius of Juvenal, that in which the career of Charles XII. is substituted for that of Hanni- bal. In fertility of incident, ease and rapidity of movement, the union of personal emotion with historic gran- deur, it stands unrivalled. Every school-boy knows it, and the story as told in these verses is "familiar as household words," of the hero who "left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral or adorn a tale. " For this poem Johnson received but fifteen guineas from Dodsley — a small advance on the previous poem. The year 1749 saw also the produc- tion on the stage of Drury Lane of Johnson's tragedy of " Irene," which had been for some time finished. It was brought forward by Garrick, who gave it his best sujiport, including himself, Barry and King in the cast, with Mrs. Gibber and Mrs. Pritchard , but it was by no means well adapted for the stage, being deficient in dra- matic interest and variety of incident — • a didactic poem in fact, in the form of dialogue. It was carried through nine nights ; the profits of which to the au thor, with the sum paid by the pub- lisher, amounted to nearly three hun- dred pounds. On the first night the play was in danger, at an unfortunate passage, of being damned. Johnson, on being asked how he felt as to the failure of his tragedy, stoically replied, " Like the Monument ! " He knew his powers too well to tempt the dramatic line again. The " Vanity of Human Wishes " and " Irene" were succeeded in the spring of the following year by the " Rambler," a series of moral essays, somewhat after the plan of the " Spectator," the first number being published on the 20th of March, and others following in suc- cession on the Saturday and Tuesday of each week till its conclusion with the two hundred and eighth number, on the 14th of March, 1752. The work, as a whole, is distinguished from its predecessors in this lighter school of literature by its prevailing serious- ness. The " Rambler " is for the most part a collection of lay sermons or moralities not unworthy of the pulpit ; for Johnson was quite capable of this part of the office of a clergyman, and many a sermon was preached in Eng land which he had furnished to the cloth at a guinea a piece. Among his private prayers and meditations which escaped destruction at his hands, is a solemn invocation of divine support at SAMUEL JOHNSON. 19 his entrance on this work ; and the as- piration to do something for the glory of God and the good of man was never lost sight of by him in its progress. With the exception of two numbers by his learned friend Mrs. Carter, and some three or four triflinc; communi- cations, it Avas entirely written by him. The numbers were published at two- pence, and Johnson received two gui- neas for each. Though compared with the " Spectator," there is a certain heavi- ness in the style, and the thoughts are often of a sombre cast; yet to an in- telligent and sympathizing reader, who has seen enough of life to value it at its true worth, these essays may still be read with much of that admiration which they awakened in their author's own period. Their object is essentially self-knowledge, and it is imparted from the author's experience with the wis- dom of a philosopher and the familiar kindness of an Intimate. Like Chau- cer's " Clerk of Oxenforde," " Sounding in moral virtue was his speech, And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach." The "Eambler" is not a book to be opened in a careless moment, for the style is out of fashion ; but it requires a reader of little sagacity to penetrate to its profound stores of thought and feeling ; and as he pursues his way through ajiologues and allegories, he will be rewarded by many delightful sketches of character, enlivened by Jest and humor. The same week in which the " Eam- bler" was brou2;ht to an end, Johnson was called upon to mourn the loss of his wife, his beloved " Tetty," who had been with him, his consoler and friend, through nearly sixteen years of priva- tion and struggle. She lived to see the establishment of his reputation as one of the foremost poets and prose writers of his time. He had greatly relied on her approval of the early numbers of the "Rambler." " I thought very well of you before," said she, "but I did not imagine you could have written anything equal to this ;" and Johnson treasured the observation with the warmth of a lover. When he resumed his work after her death, he chose a particular room in the garret to write it, because he had never seen her in that place, and the rest of the house was in- supportable to him. To the end of his days he kept the anniversary of her death with devout religious exercises. Though he had closed the "Ram- bler," sick at heart with the burden of his private sorrows, the essay was a form of literature too well suited to his mental habits to be long abandoned. Accordingly, we find him in the spring of 1753, while he was still la- boring on the Dictionary, engaging in fiu'nishing various papers to the " Ad- venturer," a new periodical of the old " Spectator" fashion, conducted by his friend Dr. Hawkesworth. In this and the following year he wrote twenty- nine numbers of that work, which is chiefly remembered by his participa- tion in it. The topics upon which he mainly relied were those of literature and philosophy in its application to every-day life, for he constantly held, with Milton's " Adam," in his discourse with the angel Raphael : " That not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle, but to know That which before us lies in daily life Is the prime wisdom." 20 SAMUEL JOHNSON. Following the production of the Dictionary, after an interval, in which he was engaged iij^on the "Literary Magazine," for which he wrote chiefly reviews of hooks, he again resumed, in April, 1758, the now classic style of the Essayists, in "The Idler," con- ducted wholly by himself, in a weekly series continued for two years. These papers were not published on a sepa- rate sheet like the "Rambler," but originally appeared in a weekly news- paper called "The Universal Chroni- cle." Twelve of the hundred and three were contributed by Johnson's fi'iends; the rest were from his own pen. Their general character ranks them with their j)redecessors in the " Rambler " and " Adventurer ; " but they are of a lighter cast, with more of variety in the treatment than the former. The style, too, is more easy and idiomatic; for Johnson, as he mingled with the world, threw more of the charm of his familiar conver- sation into his writings. While the " Idler " was in progress, Johnson, in the spring of 1759, pub- lished his romance "The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," the locality doubtless a reminiscence of the travels of Father Lobo, which he had translated. Like others of his best writino\s it was written with great rapidity, being composed in the even- ings of a single week, the motive of this exertion being to procure a sum sufficient to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral and some small debts left by her. She had continued to reside at Lichfield, and had reached the Venerable age of ninety. Johnson had constantly contributed to her sup- port, and her last days were cheered by his heartfelt correspondence. Ras selas is a collection of philosophic re- flections on the aspii'ations and disap- pointments set in a slender framework of narrative and description. The ideas suggested by the scenery and characters, however, cover any defects or inconsistencies of detail. The con- ception of a happy valley is pleasing to the imagination, and the dialogue is supported, not by any dramatic in- terest, but by a certain melancholy grace in the sentiment. The adven- tures in the world are of a general character, and used only for the pur- pose of introducing the reflections. The moral of the whole, the vanity of all things human, is indicated in the opening sentence of the book, a kind of musical incantation to which the rest responds : " Ye, who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the jihantoms of hope ; who expect that age will per- form the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day wall be supplied by the morrow ; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Aljyssinia." It is the old moral, since the days of Solomon ; but it is gently touched, and its tone of disajipoint- ment never runs into the language of despair; and as we close the book we feel that the shadows cast over the scene are from the mountain heights of a higher existence beyond. The last thoughts of the volume are given to the charms of knowledge and the solace of immortality. For this woi'k Johnson received from his publishers a hundred pounds, to which they added twenty five on its reaching a second edition. SAMUEL JOimSON. 21 The next incident of importance in Johnson's life, which affected his whole future career, was his acceptance of a pension from George III. in 1762, shortly after his coming to the throne. The amount was three hundred pounds, sufficient with Johnson's moderate wants to provide for his comfort and support his independence, for which the resources of his writings had not always proved adequate. A few years before he had been arrested for a debt of less than six pounds, and had escajjed a temporary lodgement in a debtor's prison by the friendly aid of Richard- son the novelist. Some surprise might have been caused by Johnson receiving a pension at all ; for, with his Jacobite tendencies, he had shown but little con- sideration for the house of Hanover ; but the new reign offered an oppor- tunity for the fusion of parties. Bute, the prime minister, was a Tory, and the recognition of Johnson's services to literature and morality was sure to be approved by the persons in the na- tion whose good opinion was best woi-th having. The annuity was thus conferred without pledges or condi- tions, simj^ly as an honor paid to lite- rature and personal worth. In this spirit it was received by Johnson, who could afford to smile while his detract- ors quoted his definitions of pension and pensioner in the Dictionary. " The event," as Macaulay has observed, " produced a change in Johnson's whole way of life. For the first time since his boyhood, he no longer felt the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and di'udgery, to in- dulge his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the morning without fearing either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer." From that moment, indeed, he ap- peared almost exclusively before the world as a man of leisure and society. He was at the age of fifty-three, a time of life when men of toil long for some enjoyment of the fruits of their labors, and Johnson's had been emphatically a life of care and anxiety. " How hast thoii purchased this experience ? " says the fantastical Spaniard in Shakespeare to his knowing attendant. Moth. " By my penny of observation." If such gifts could be estimated in coin, John- son had expended a fortune in the ac- quisition. He had been brought by his poverty, in a hard struggle for ex- istence, into close contact with the realities, where dangers were at every step to be avoided, and where character was in constant risk of suffering ship- wi'eck. A high sense of duty and a morbid conscientiousness had pre- served his integrity, while he was de- licately sensitive to every shade of good or evil. A quarter of a century had passed since he first went up to London with Garrick, — years filled with thought and painful effort, the study of men and of books in depart- ments of life and learning where both were at their highest intensity; and he had been almost daily called to turn the lessons to account in some en- during form of literary composition — essays, filled with knowledge of the world and animated by philosophy like those of the " Rambler ;" imagi- native tales like "Rasselas;" biogra- phies like that of Savage, and poetry, still leaning upon actual life and his- tory, as in "The Vanity of Human Wishes." If, like liis prototype, Ben Jonson, he had been gifted with the power to wi'ite dramas, the circle of his experience and attainments would have been complete ; and still a vast deal of what Ben put into his plays or its equivalent may be found in the Essays of Johnson. With this fullness and ripeness of acquisition and development, having proved his powers before the world in writings, the great merit of which was universally acknowledged, Johnson now enters upon a new stage of exist- ence, in which he supports a peculiar character unique in English social his- tory. This was the part, above all others, of the great talker of his time. It is not so much, after this, what Johnson wi'ites as what he says, that engages the attention of his readers. For the remaining twenty years of his life, he is to be known chiefly by his conversational talent, and for our ap- preciation of this, we are indebted to a person as singular as himself. Of the eight volumes which compose the standard edition of " Boswell's John- son," six are taken up with the reports of these conversations. It would be vain to attempt within our present limits to describe them. They exhibit various shades of opinion on almost every subject, moral, social, literary, po- litical, which entered into the thoughts of the age ; for they were held with its representative men, its divines, its statesmen, authors, men of fashion, and a herd of others less distinguished, who sought to light their tapers at that abundant flame. Sometimes, indeed, Johnson talked for effect, or rathei risked the appearance of it to draw out all that could be said on a question ; he was occasionally rude and repul- sive ; now and then, jirejudiced ; but in general, he appeared the great mas- ter of common sense, genial, indulgent, tolerant ; dogmatic it is true, but with the dogmatism of a man who had re- flected much, and, on topics of moral interest, was not to be lightly shaken in his argument ; terse and pointed in his expressions, going directly to the heart of the matter in the language of everyday life. For a result like this, Johnson, had he foreseen it, might have sacrificed much of his time and inclinations. But Boswell was of great use to John- son in many ways, and spite of the great diversity in their characters and tempers, was not merely tolerated but grew to be loved by him. Much has laeen said of the relation between them, and some wonder has been expressed that an intimacy should exist between a man of such mental grandeur and so weak a follower. Perhaps the best solution of the apparent inconsist- ency may be found in the remark that Johnson was not in all respects so strong, or Boswell so weak as each has been represented. A character so lofty may possibly be conceived admitting of no associates but those of equal height in genius, virtue and attain ments. But as such an individual sel dom, if ever, exists, the personages to compose his court must be proportion- ally rare. It is not in the course of ordinary human nature to meet with such select associations. It is a motley world we live in, where the great and SAMUEL JOHNSON. 23 the little in every rank and quality are freely mingled together. Men of vir- tue and men of intellect are every day supporting various relations vpith oth- ers of less integrity and inferior in- telligence. Nothing is more common in the w^orld than to find what are called great men surrounded by com- paratively little men. It may be, as Pope says, that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" or that the crafty and designing seek to ally them- selves to the powerful from motives of self-interest ; or that weakness seeks strength to support itself, while inde- pendent greatness stands aloof from its fellows. Jealousy is easily pro- voked among equals, so that like does not always affect like in the practical conduct of life. Greatness needs the presence of littleness to show its ele- vation. A vast deal of the machinery of greatness, too, must be worked by inferiors. Now, Boswell stood in va- rious necessary relations to Johnson. In the matter of temperament — of a sound physical constitution, eager for enjoyment, pursuing with zest the good, and alas some of the evil things of life — his animal spirits were a cor- rective of the habitual melancholy of Johnson. He came at intervals of his busy existence to cheer the lonely sage with gossip of the world, not only of London, where he was admitted to the best society, but of his northern home, and of the continent where he had visited Voltaire, and become intimate with the popular hero of the day in his island fastness — the patriotic Paoli. There was no better reporter of the humors of men than Boswell, aiid no one, so easily as Johnson, could sift the grain of wheat from his absur- dities. When Johnson was in com pauy, who so useful as Boswell to divert the stream of conversation into the proper channel to float the great Leviathan of the deep? He was as necessary to the chief talker of the evening as the inferior clown to the master joker in the ring, the provoker and victim of his wit. He was wil- ling to suffer anything in the way of rebuke and mortification, that his ad- mired luminary might shine with the greater lustre. We may not always respect the voluntary slave, but we must often be thankful to him for what he accomplished, when his im- pertinent nonsense elicited the wisdom of his master. How was the fully charged electrical machine to display its vigor unless an obsequious hand was extended to receive the shock ? What Sancho Panza was to Don Quix- ote, his page to Falstaff, his squire to Hudibras, Boswell was to Johnson, But no man had more illustrious friends than Johnson; and Boswell, had he been suddenly carried off after that first unpromising interview in Davies' back parlor, would have been a greater loss to posterity than to him ; for had he not his Club— "The Club " — with Garrick and Goldsmith, Rey- nolds and Burke, and a host of asso- ciates worthy of their society for members ; and for long years another home of his own in the hospitable mansion of his friend Thrale, a man of wealth, sympathizing with men of letters, where also he found a still more attractive species of Boswell, spiced with the piquant humors of her sex, in the fair Mrs. Thrale, bet- 24 SAMUEL JOHNSON. ter known by her later matrimonial designation, Hester Lynoli Piozzi. As in the case of Boswell, she was suffi- ciently distinguished by her intellec- tual attainments to qualify her for a partial appreciation of the greater mind of Johnson. We must now pass rapidly over the remaining incidents in the life now hastening to its close. The long-pro- mised edition of Shaksj)eare was pub- lished in 1765. It was not a great achievement in critical or learned illus- tration of the text ; but it is memo- rable in English literature for its noble preface, in which Johnson, forgetting the limitations of his OAvn poor dra- matic talent in " Irene," interprets as no one ever more knowingly and feel- ingly interpreted, the transcendent ge- nius of the author whom he had so eloquently pictiired in verse : — " Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Eiliausted worlds, and then imagin'd new; Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign. And panting Time toU'd after him in vain." After an interval of ten years he published "A Journey to the West- ern Islands of Scotland," an account of a tour which he had made with Boswell in the autumn of 1773. He was in his sixty-fourth year, in the height of his London fame, and the ex- cursion for him or any other man was then considered quite an extraordi- nary undertaking. The expedition had been talked of for years. In 1764, when he was visiting at Ferney, Bos- well had mentioned the design to Vol- taire. " He looked at me," says he, "as if I had talked of scoinj; to the North Pole, and said, ' You do not in- sist on my accompanying vou ? ' ' No, sir.' 'Then I am very willing you should go.'" At the present day a great deal of the amusement of John son's book exists in the air of impor tance given to a journey which is gone through with every season by hun- dreds of cockney tourists, and which, even in Johnson's time, had no more inconvenience than a triflino- excur- sion to the Adirondacks, or other par- tially settled mountain district has now in our own country. The travel- ers started together in August from Edinburgh, where Johnson joined Boswell, pursued their way along the eastern coast of Scotland by St. Andrews, Dundee, Aberdeen, and the region bordering the JMurray Fi'ith to Inverness, the last place which then, says Johnson, " had a regular commu- nication by high roads with the south- ern counties." There they bade adieu to post-chaises and "mounted their steeds," traversing the rock-hewn road by the side of Lough Ness to its southern extremity, whence they cross- ed the Highland region, a simple two days' journey, to the western coast, coming out at Glenelg, opposite the Isle of Sky. This and the adjacent Island of Eaasay were pretty tho- roughly explored, while Johnson was nobly entertained by the Macleods, the hereditary clansmen. In Sky his Jacobite predilections were gratified by an introduction to Flora Macdon- ald, the good angel of the Pretender after the rebellion of '45, and he had the sublime satisfaction of sleeping in the very bed which Charles Edward had passed a night in, when, in the disguise of her female attendant, he had been conducted by his fair guar- SAMUEL JOHNSON. 25 dian to the spot. " I would have given a good deal," said Johnson the next morning at breakfast, "rather than not have lain in that Led." So Bos- well tells us in his fuller account of the tour, which admirably supple- ments the more staid narrative of Johnson. Both accounts are admi- rable in their way. Jolinson gives a philosopher's account of the High- landers ; but if any one desires to see what the journey really was, and bow the great Leviathan conducted him- self under the novel circumstances, he must read the report of it by Bos- well. Without crossino- to the more remote of the Hebrides, "far amid the melancholy main," the travellers took a southerly course from Sky, visited Mull and lona, — -at the men- tion of which Johnson's style expands in an expression of the loftiest patriot- ism — and at the end of October were ascain on the mainland in retreat to London. The same year that Johnson pub- lished his account of this journey, the rising war with the Colonies being then the topic of the day, he wrote a pam- phlet, of some interest historically to American readers, entitled "Taxation no Tyi'anny." Though well constructed in point of style, it is generally ad- mitted to have done the author little credit by its constitutional principles, his main consideration being that the colonists should be content with their position, as they enjoyed a similar "virtual representation" to that of the greater part of Englishmen, whom he admitted, without any desire or suspicion of reform, were not directly represented at all. He was old and conservative, and planted himself firm- ly on the established order of things, as if commercial tyi'anny and parlia- mentary restraint could go on for ever. When he speaks of the suppression of the revolt, it is in the terms of one conscious of superior force, who had but to will to execute. It would be humanity, he thought, to put a suffi- cient army in the field to " take away not only the power but the hope of resistance, and by conquering without a battle, save many from the sword." Bancroft, contrasting the suffering, in early privations, which Johnson had escaped, with that Avhich he would in- flict, charges him with " echoins; to the crowd the haughty rancor, Avhich pass- ed down from the king and his court to his council, to the ministers, to the aristocracy, their parasites and follow- ers, with nothing remarkable in his party zeal, but the intensity of its bitterness; or in his manner, but its unjiaralleled insolence ; or in his argu- ment, but its grotesque extravagance." Another literary work yet remained to Johnson, one worthy of his pen and in which he gathered the ripest fruits of his critical studies and his jiersonal association with men of letters. Tow- ards the close of 1777, an association of the London booksellers resolved upon the publication of an extensive collection of the English poets, with brief preliminary biographies, to be obtained, if possible, from the pen of Johnson. He readily entered into the plan, naming two hundred guineas for his work, which was acceded to. At the outset his purjiose was to give only a few dates, with a short general charac- ter of each poet ; but as he warmed 26 SAMUEL JOHNSON. in the execution, the design was ex- panded, especially in the more im- portant subjects, into the full bio- grajihies and elaborate critical and philosophical discussions which ren- der the series in the estimate of Bos- well, generally admitted by the read- ing world, " the richest, most beautiful, and, indeed, most perfect production of Johnson's pen." Exceptions may be taken to particular opinions, to the political prejudices in the case of Mil- ton, and his singular want of appre- ciation of the poetical powers of Gray, some of whose finest verses he treats with the levity and ignorance of a pert school-boy ; but upon the whole, especially where the topics fall within the range of common life, where oppor- tunity is afforded for sympathy with humanity, the great test of biographic excellence, the " Lives" may be read with admiration and delight. In the style Johnson is at his best. As he grew older, his mind seems to have worked itself clear of its early incum- brances. We no longer meet with the artificial mannered tone of the " Ram- bler." He was full of his subject, and enters upon the narration with the ease of conversation. There is no other book in the English language equally great, it has been observed, produced between the age of sixty-eight and seventy-two. It was the last harvest of the author's genius ; and the work is marked on many a page with the most touching expressions of feeling. In writing the lives of others he was portraying his own. The career was soon to be brought to a close. Some of the most illus- trious of his friends were preceding him to the grave. Goldsmith died in 1774, Garrick in 1779, and Thrale was called away, the greatest afiliction of the kind which could have befallen him, for it deprived him of a home, in 1781. In the j^ear following, his own household was invaded, in the death of Robert Levett, a humble physician of the lower classes, to whom, with the blind Miss Williams, another unhappy victim of poverty, Mrs. Demoulins, and yet other nondescripts, agreeing in nothing but their common misery, he had charitably given a home. The inmates were constantly annoying him with their qviarrels ; but even this dis- turbance had become a kind of relief to his loneliness. In a copy of verses of singular feeling, he paid a tril:)ute to the lowly worth of Levett, which will outlive many compliments to the o-reat who in their life-time would have looked down with contempt upon their subject. Comj^are the treatment of the noble Chestei-field with that of the insig- nificant Levett, and you may take the measure of Johnson's pride and hu- mility, honest virtues both, one sup- porting the other. There was some- thing heroic in the magnanimity of Johnson towards the poor and suffer- ing. The incident will, while his name last*, never be forgotten, of his l^earing liorne Avith him on his back, through Fleet street, a poor victim of disease and ignominy, which Hazlitt, in one of his lectures to a London audience, jironounced " an act worthy of the good Samaritan." In the summer before he died, in August, 1774, Dr. Johnson paid his last visit to his old home at Lichfield. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 27 While there, he narrated to a young clergyman attached to the cathedral, an incident of his life, one of the most touching and pathetic in all biography. He recalled how in the closing years of his father's life, more than fifty years before, he had been guilty of a single act of disobedience, refusing on a par- ticular occasion through pride to at- tend him at one of his petty sales of his stock at Uttoxeter market. His father went alone, but long after he was dead, Johnson often accompanied him there in imagination. At last, a few years before his death, desiring to atone for his fault, he resolved upon an extraordinary act of humiliation. He went to the very spot where his father had been accustomed to keep his stand in the market-place at Ut- toxeter, and stood there a considerable time bare-headed in the rain. "In contrition," he said, "I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory." After this, there remains for us but to state the departure of this pious penitent. His health was gradually failing him. In the summer of 1784, having previously suffered from an at- tack of jiaralysis from which he had recovered, he felt his feebleness in- creasing, and had some thought of es- caping the severities of the coming win- ter by a visit to Italy, which was aban- doned for lack of means. His mental strength remained, meanwhile, unim- paired. While in the country, in Oc- tober, he translated an ode of Horace^ in which the poet moralizes on the lessons of mortality in the changing seasons : " Who knows if Jove, who counts our score, Will toss us ia a morning more ?" But few were now left. Returning to London in the middle of Novem- ber he became more seriously ill, his thoughts reverting to his departed friends and solaced with the comforts of religion, while the cheerful activity of his mind was shown during his sleepless nights in translating the Greek epigrams of the Anthologia into Latin verse. When the last hour came lie met it with thorough equa- nimity, fully conscious of the event, counting the thin falling sands of life. His last words to the daughter of a friend who came to visit him were, " God bless you, my dear." And so in his old home in Bolt Court, within the sound of his beloved Fleet Street, on the thirteenth of December, 1784, Johnson expired. On the twentieth his remains were laid in Westminster Abbey by the side of his friend Gar- rick. Their pilgrimage to London ^^aa ended. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. THE family of Goldsmith, of Eng- lish origin and on the Protestant «ide, had lieen long settled in Ireland and furnished various clergymen in dif- ferent offices to its estaldished chtirch, when Oliver, the sulgect of this notice, was born at Pallas, in the County of Longford, on the 10th of November, 1728. His father, the Eev. Charles Goldsmith, was rector of the jjarish, married to the daughter of the head- master of the diocesan school at El- phin, which he had attended, and at the time of Oliver's birth was the par- ent of three children, struggling to maintain a decent position in the world on an income, all told, of forty pounds a year — an average sum in the remu- neration of poor curates which has passed from the poet's verse into a species of proverb. The picture of the clergyman drawn by Goldsmith in the " Deserted Village " has been generally supposed to refer to his father, and it exhibits in enduring colors the simple virtues of the man and the home into which the poet was born. Many traits of Charles Goldsmith's. amiable dispo- sition are again reflected in the " Vicar " of Wakefield, and his portrait was also (28) drawTi by his son in the sketch of the thither of the " Man in "Black," in the Citizen of the "World. Oliver's first instructor, the village schoolmistress, dameDelap,Avho taught him his letters, reported him the dull- est of boys and " impenetrably stupid ;" and when, at the age of six, he fell into the hands of a male precejjtor, Thomas Bp-ne, a somewhat vagrant character, he acquired more of his unsettled hu- mors and fondness for music than of any book learning he may have pos- sessed. It is said that at this time his mind became well stored with the ballad lore and superstitious of the peasantry — incentives to his imagina- tion and lessons in story-telling. The family were now at Lissoy, not far fi-om Pallas, in considerably improved cir cumstances, the poor pastor having succeeded to a better living at that place. While at school there, Oliver was visited by a severe attack of small- l^ox, which left its marks permanently on his countenance, adding to the em- barrassment of a somewhat heavily built, ungainly figure. From the aca- demy at Lissoy he was sent to a su- perior school kept by the Eev. Mr (K^^ ^^.^^-^ OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 29 Griffin, at Elpliiu, where one of his uncles resided. There, amidst the jeers of his companions at his clumsi- ness and stupidity, he made some ac- quaintance with Ovid and Horace, and was thxLS led into that pathway of the muses, which, spite of all prognostica- tions, no one of his generation was to pursue to greater advantage. There was time enough before him yet, for he was now only in his ninth year, and there were soon indications that he was to be something more than the butt of his ill-mannered associates. One day at his uncle's at Elphin there was a little dance, when Oliver, in the gay- ety of his spirits ventured a pas seul on the floor. " Ah ! " says the fiddler, " MmT^ !" upon which the boy, stopping in his hornpipe, turned the laugh upon his assailant in his first recorded coup- let: " Heralds ! proclaim aloud ! aU saying, See ^sop dancing, and his monkey playing. " Thus, this first trifling display of his poetic talent recalls the last brilliant effort of his muse published after his death, "Retaliation." From the cra- dle to the grave, it was the fortune of the good-humored Goldsmith to be constantly thrown upon the defensive. After a year or two with Mr. Griffin, Goldsmith passed to the hands of an- other clerical instructor, Mr. Campbell, at Athlone ; thence, in his thirteenth year, to another reverend gentleman, Mr. Hughes, at Edgeworthstown, with whom, at the age of sixteen, he con- cluded his school studies. On leaving home at the close of his last holiday, he met with an adventure of an amus- inff character. A month in the life of Goldsmith, it may be remarked, would have been nothing without its adven- ture ; and of all places in the world for an adventure, Ireland, with its rol- licking ways of life, was. in his days, the readiest to furnish one. Setting out from Ballymahon, where his friends had provided him with a horse and a guinea, on his way to Edgeworthstown, he found himself at night half-way on his journey, in the town of Ardagh. Falling in with a notorious wag, one Kelly, and conscious of the unaccus- tomed presence of the guinea in his pocket, with something of an air of importance, we may suppose, enquiring for an inn, he was directed to the house of a gentleman of the place, named Featherstoue. Mistaken by the ser- vants for an expected guest, his horse was taken care of according to his di- rection by the servants, and, entering the mansion, he stoutly called upon the proprietor for a liberal supper, order- ing wine and magnanimously inviting the wife and daughter of his landlord to join him. Mr. Featherstone saw the mistake and humored it, enjoying the style of the young student with whose father he had been acquainted at college. Parting with his guest at bed-time he received an order for a hot cake in the morning, and it was not till breakfast was over that Goldsmith was allowed to appreciate the jest which had been played upon him. In this case, however, he had been no loser; nor has the world been since, for the joke furnished him with the main incident in his comedy, "She Stoops to Conquer," over which to this day many thousands of persons are every season enjoying their hearty laugh. 30 OLIYEE GOLDSlSnTH. The time had now come for Oliver to be sent to college, Trinity College, Dublin, where his elder brother Henry had preceded him, entering as a pen- sioner. Owing to an exercise of false generosity in sacrificing his income to portion a daughter married to a gen- tleman's son. Goldsmith's father was unable to support him at the univer- sity in the same comfortable though in- ferior rank, Oliver was consequently thrown upon one still lower, the low- est grade of all, that of sizer or servitor, which gave him board and instruction free of expense, with a small charge for his room, while he was to perform various minor duties in return, of which sweeping the courts in the morning, carrying the dishes from the kitchen to the table of the Fellows and waiting in the hall until they had dined, after which he might dine there himself, were amons; the number. He also was entitled or compelled to wear in token of his servitude, a black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves with a distinctive red cap. For such j^rivileges a higher degree of scholarship was expected on entering than from the nobler fellow commoners who paid their way and were dressed in more gentlemanly at- tire. The sizers were generally mature in age and better qualified in learning than the other students. Goldsmith, however, was still young, at the age of seventeen. In the account of the de- linquencies of his youth which occupy so unseemly a proportion of his biog- raphies, it must be set down to his credit that he passed his rigorous ex- amination successfully. He was, how- ever, not much of a student at college. His sensitive nature felt all " the slings and arrows" daily cast upon him by the " outrao-eous fortune ' which con- demned him to ignominious servitude and suffering, in a seat of the Muses, where all should have been cheerful sunshine ; and he was, moreover, con- stantly insulted by a brutal tutor, a Mr. Theaker Wilder, a cold-blooded mathematician, who confounded all moral and intellectual qualities, " think- ing he was witty when he was simply malicious," an ugly fellow T\'ith his spite and ignorance to handle poor Goldsmith at an examination. For, with whatever learning he may have possessed, he was profoundly ignorant of Goldsmith's nature. Long after- wards, when his pupil was at the height of his fame, this unhappy man came to a violent end, being found dead one morning on the floor of his room with some bruises on his person, a disaster attributed to his disreputable mode of living. While Goldsmith was bearing these inflictions he was cast more deeply into poverty by the death of his father, in his second year at the College, when the scanty remittances from home ceased, and he was thrown iipon casual loans fi'om his friends to supply his narrow ne- cessities — not, however, without some assistance from his own genius. He composed street ballads, for which he found a ready sale, receiving five shil- lings for each from a bookseller in the city ; and, what was more agreeable to his nature, his instinctive pride in au- thorship was gratified by listening to them at night as they were sung ny the criers in the streets — a consolatory suggestion, we may hope, to him in i the midst of his humiliations of tho \ OLIVEE, GOLDSMITH. 31 "xill hail hereafter!" There were other incidents, too, of a rougher cha- racter, of this college life. Feuds be- tween gownsmen and the town people were not uncommon in Dublin in the last century. A riot occurred, in which a bailiff who had arrested a student was assailed, the peace of the city was disturbed, and several lives lost in the tumult. Goldsmith was not a ring- leader in this affair, but he had been out with the rioters, and was publicly admonished for favoring the tumult. To redeem his character, he tried the next month for a scholarship, and fail- ing in this, succeeded in gaining a trifling "Exhibition," worth about thirty shillings. Characteristically enough, he celebrated this little tri- umjih by a dancing party, of more frolic than expense, in his upper rooms, and in the .midst of the hilarity was confronted by his savage tutor for his infrino-ement of the rules. The tutor from words proceeded to vio- lence, and Goldsmith was so roughly and ignominiously handled. Wilder, with his mathematical attainments, being a redoubted pugilist, that Goldsmith, stung by the disgrace, de- termined to escape from the College. Selling his books, he improvidently loitered in Dulilin till his stock was reduced to a shilling, with which he set out for Cork, with a vague inten- tion of going to America. The shil- ling supported him for three days, and when the proceeds of such clothes as he had to sell were exhausted, he began to feel the sufferings of hunger. Late in life he told Keynolds how, after fasting at this time for twenty-four hours, a handful of gray peas, given him by a girl at a wake, was the most delicious meal he had ever tasted. Utterly desti- tute, he turned homeward, was met on his way by his brother Henry, who re- lieved his Avants and accompanied him back to College. There he remained to the end of his four years' course, taking his deerree of Bachelor of Arts in 1749. "The popular picture of him in these Dublin University days," writes his biographer, Forster, " is little more than of a slow, hesitating, some- Avhat hollow voice, heard seldom, and always to great disadvantage in the class-rooms ; and of a low-sized, thick, robust, ungainly figure, lounging about the Colleo-e courts in the wait for misery and ill-luck." Something, doubt- less, is to be added to this notion of Goldsmith on the score of reading and scholarship. Though, as he afterwards told Malone in London, " I made no great figure at the University in mathe- matics, which was a study much in re- pute there, I could turn an ode of Ho- race into English better than any of them." But of all who were students at the University during his service there, certainly he appeared the least likely to be enthroned at its gate in a monumental statue. Yet there he now stands, in the exquisite workmanship of the sculptor Foley, clad in his habit as he lived, his right hand, falling at ease, holding a pen, his left support- ing an open book, his countenance re- flectinc: at once his humor and intelli- gence — the oppressed servitor of 1745 — the most interesting tradition of the University a century afterwards. From Colle2:e Goldsmith returned home, and uncertain as to his pros- pects, with no settled resolution, passed 32 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. tLree years in a desultory mode of living, occasionally visiting lus brother Henry, tlie clergyman, in the village school at Lissoy ; and what Avas more to his inclination, freely partaking in the junketings and frolics of the care- less company of the place. As the clerical life seemed to be the natural resource of the family, his mother, his brother-in-law, Hodson, for whom the 'ilder Goldsmith had made the sacrifice m the matter of his daughter's dowry, and his uncle, the Rev. Mr. Contarine, who was often visited by Goldsmith at his parsonage in Eoscommon, all united in urging Oliver to take holy orders. The advice was not much in accordance with his habits or inclina- tions, but he accepted it, and after the necessary interval, presented himself to the Bishop of Eljjhin for ordina- tion. Various explanations are given of his rejection — one, that he was too young ; another, that his doubtful re- cord at College had j^receded him; another, which is quite probable, that he had neglected the preliminary stu- dies ; and yet a fourth, that his dress stood in the way, j^articiilarly a most imclerical pair of scarlet breeches, which he wore on the occasion. The next resource for Goldsmith was provided by his uncle Contarine, the only one of the family who seems to have had much faith in him, or done much for him. He obtained him the situation of tutor or companion in the fiimily of a gentleman of his county named Flinn, which lasted for a year, when it was broken up by Goldsmith charffins one of the household with unfair play at the card-table. So it must have been upon the whole a rather free-and-easy sort of life under the roof of Mr. Flinn. He parted with it somehow with money in his pocket, thirty pounds, it is said, and rode away with a good horse to Cork, where, a second time, according to a letter written to his mother, he enter tained the idea of going to America. He actually, he says, paid his passage in a ship bound for that country, but being off with a festive party in the country when the wind proved favor- able, " the captain never inquired after me, but set sail with as much indiffer- ence as if I had been on board." The generous steed with which he set out had been sold, the money the animal brought had l^een sjjent, and the thirty guineas had been reduced to two, the greater part of which was expended upon a broken down, raw-boned horse, to which "generous beast" as he styles it, he gave the name of Fiddleback. Leav- ing Cork for home on the back of this Rozinante, with five shillings in hand, expecting to recruit his finances from an old college friend on the road, who had often expatiated to him on his hos- pitality, he parted with half a ci'own to a beggar on the way, and in this impov- erished condition reached the dwelling where he looked for relief His account of his reception, an admirable speci- men of his early literary talent, recalls the incidents and humor of the pictu- resque Sj^anish novels. Indeed, Laza- rillo de Tormes himself might have been the hero of his adventure. Another attempt was now to be made in one of tlie professions, and the law was thought of, — kind-hearted Uncle Contarine, whose benevolence was worthy of his early intimacy with OLIVER GOLDSMITH. tlie good Bishop Berkeley, furnisbiug out of Lis slender clerical revenue "fifty pounds to set liim on tlie track. He was to proceed to London to keep the usual terms; but got no further than Dublin, Avhere he was stripped of all his money at the gambling table by one of his Irish acquaintances. This sent him back to his home. Uncle Con- tarine receiving him with kindness. A few months after, at the suggestion of another relative, the chief clerical dig- nitary of the family. Dean Goldsmith, of Cloyne, the third and last of the professions, that of medicine was re- solved upon and Uncle Contarine again stepped forward to furnish the pecu- niary outfit for Edinburgh, Avhere the study was to be prosecuted at the Uni- versity. Here Goldsmith remained a year and a half, becoming a member of its Medical Society and attending the lectures, particularly admiring the scope and ability of Munro, the pro- fessor of anatomy. He found pleasure in his studies, in a letter to his imcle, speaking of the science as " the most jileasing in nature, so that my labors are but a relaxation, and, I may truly say, the only thing here that gives me pleasure." There is a hint of his em- ployment, probably as a tutor, in the family of the Duke of Ilamilton, to eke out his resources ; but the remittances of the generous Contarine, though lim- ited, were sufficient to support some indulofence in dress, as the tailor's bills yet extant indicate in their items of sky-blue satin, rich Genoa velvet and high claret-colored cloth ; while there was something left to undertake a visit to the Continent to perfect his medical studies at one of its universities. Paris 5 was resolved u^^on for this purj)ose, and in the spring of 1754, Oliver em- barked on his round-about way thither in a ship to Bordeaux. But, as luck would have it, the vessel was driven by a storm into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where the passengers were seized, on the charge of being recruits for the French service, and Goldsmith with difficulty procured his liberation after a fortnight's imprisonment. It was some consolation afterwards to reflect that had he been allowed to proceed with the vessel he would j^robably have been drowned with the crew — shipwrecked at the mouth of the Garonne. Finding another ship ready for Holland, he took his passage for Rotterdam, arri- ved there safely, proceeded to Leyden, and presently reported in a very agree- able letter to his Uncle Contarine, the state of medical learning at its Univer- sity, at which he was for some time a student. He now gained some sup- port as a teacher of his native language, in which we may suppose he turned his knowledtje of French to account. Habitual cheerfulness, with a jihysical constitution of great endurance, en- abled him to su^^port a life of make- shifts, which to a less courageous tem- perament would have been unendu- rable. Encouraged by the example of the Baron Holberg, then recently deceased, who, following his own in- clinations in a career of adventure had risen by his exertions from a youth of poverty to the highest rank in the lite- rature of Denmark, he determined to pursue the somewhat vagrant course which, in the career of that eminent man had preceded his acquisition of fame and fortune. As Holberg's story 34 OLIVEE GOLDSMITH. was afterwards told by Goldsmith himself, " without money, recommend- ations or friends, he undertook to set out upon his travels, and make the tour of Europe on foot. A good voice and a trifling skill in music were the only finances he had to support an un- dertaking so extensive ; so he travelled by day, and at night sang at the doors of peasant's houses to get himself a lodging."* The exact counterpart of this is the story of Goldsmith's life for the year 1755. Setting out in Febru- ary, he made some stay at Louvain, in Flanders, at whose University, it is said, he obtained his degree of Bachelor of Medicine. He is to be traced at Brus- sels and AntAverp, and signally at Paris where he attended the chemical lectures of Rouelle, admired Mademoi- selle Clairon, then the delight of the stage, and, as we may gather from what he subsequently wrote, was no unenlightened spectator of the down- ward tendencies of the French mon- archy. Travelling through Switzerland, Goldsmith appears to have made the acquaintance of Voltaire at Geneva, and, crossing the Aljis, to have pene- trated Italy as far at least as the chief cities of Lombardy and Florence. In the beginning of 1756, he was again in England. On his landing at Dover, at the age of twenty-eight, begins with him the real struggle for life. He is too old for dependence upon the scant re- sources of home any longer ; the ani- mal spirits of youth in their first ef- fervescence have subsided, and he can * Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning. no longer hide his mortifications in a foreign laud, or divert them by its novelties and amusements. The hard realities of English life are before him ; hard enough they had recently proved to the indomitable moral energy and strength of Johnson ; how will Gold- smith with his susceptibilities and weaknesses encounter them? With suffering and humiliation enough, as we shall see, but with a glorious tri- umph in the end. Hajjpily, the stmg- gle was relieved by the cheerfulness of his disposition, and " a knack of hoping," as he called it, in which he had great advantages over Johnson, while his imagination and sense of humor invited him to a certain superi- ority over the lowest parts he was called upon to perform. We may con- stantly observe him in his writings turning his discomfitures to profit, and even as he had fluted his way through poverty on the Continent, making with the magic of his pen, his petty miseries " discourse most excellent music." It was not an easy thing at the very en- trance upon this new period of his ca- reer, for this starving man to get even from Dover to London. He accom- plished it, it is said, by a turn at low comedy with some strolling players in a barn, and had offered his services on the way as a hii-eling in an apothecary's shop. The latter became one of his earliest resources in London in em- ployment with one Jacob, on Fish Street Hill, for whom he pounded drugs, and by whose assistance he was promoted to a humble physician for the poor of the class of Johnson's friend Levett. It is of this period of his life that the story is told of his perseve- OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 35 ranee in keeping possession of liis tat, of AvLicli a respectful patient pertina- ciously sought to relieve him. He held it firmly to his breast to conceal the patch in the dilapidated second-hand velvet coat in which he was support- ing his jirofessional reputation. A poor patient, a printer's workman in- ti'oduces him to his master, Eichard- son, the author of Clarissa, who gives him some employment as proof- reader. One of his fellow Edinburgh students falling in with him at this time was constrained to listen to two or three acts of an aljortive tragedy, and to a still more chimerical project of proceeding to the Holy Land to de- cipher the inscriptions on the " writ- ten mountains." From this wildness of the imagination, he is recalled by the daily drudgery of usher to a clas- sical school kept at Peckham, in the neighborhood of London, to which he was introduced by another of his Ed- inburgh companions, the son of its proprietor, Dr. Milner. There would seem to have been some obscm'e ser- vice of this kind in another situation not long before, not so easily traced as that at Peckham, the memory of which survives in various anecdotes related by the family, exhibiting a fondness for practical jokes in the servants' hall — proof of the ignominy of the posi- tion as well as of the incumbent's in- nate love of fun and frolic. Like his contemporary, Johnson, who had en- dured the same infliction, he had no reason to remember it with equanimity. Both were at a disadvantage in ap- pearance and personal peculiarities. The usher or under-teacher of his time comes uj) in Goldsmith's writings with a feeling of anything but ad miration. He had not been, hc^wever, many mouths with Dr. Milner, in the school at Peckham, when he made the ac- quaintance, at his table, of Griffiths, the bookseller, of Paternoster Eoav, who was engaged in the publication of the " Monthly Fveview." The " Critical Review," the literary character of which was maintained by Smollett, Avas then pressing him hard, and Grif- fiths Avas on the look-out for contribu- tors. Struck by some remarks of Gold- smith, the publisher, thinking he might serve his purpose, procured from him some specimens of his powers as a critic. Their merits were perceived by the shrewd eye of Griffiths, and Gold- smith was secured, body and mind, for a year, to be boarded and lodged with his employer, be paid a small salary, and Avrite articles as called upon for the Review. Griffiths, Avho was much of a screAV, held him to a strict account in the em2:)loyment of his time, and Avhen his daily task Avas done, it was at the mercy not only of the publislier himself but of his Avife, who tampered with the articles. This arrangement with Griffiths lasted five months of the year, when it was broken off. It was a long time for Pegasus to be kept in harness. Goldsmith resented his treat- ment, Griffiths also had his complaint, and the contract was closed. In dis- gust at the poor reward of literary ex- ertion, the author, who as yet hardly A'entured to call himself such, returned to the school at Peckham. Dr. Milner, who had shoAvn himself in the affair with Griffiths desifous to promote the welfare of Goldsmith, noAv undertook, 36 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. tLrouo;li the influence of an East India director, to procure him a medical ap- pointment at a foreign station; and while this affair was in progress, he devoted himself assiduously to the pre- paration of an independent work which should give his friends and the public some assurance of his talents. The subject which he chose was an Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learn- ing in Europe, as the book was en- titled on its publication. While Goldsmith was engaged on the composition of this work, he was assured of the success of his friend Milner's apjilication for his employ- ment in the East. He was in fact ap- pointed physician to one of the fac- tories of the East India Company on the Coromandel coast. His spii'its were raised in consequence, and he iipplied himself more heartily to the Essay, looking to its success to supply the means for his outfit, and endeavoring with honest pride and confidence to enlist his friends in Ireland in pro- curing subscriptions for the book. The letters which he wrote for this pur- pose are in his best vein, full of kindly feelings towards his correspondents, with that genial humor which was never more fiilly awakened than when he thought of the home associations of his youth. In one of these epistles to Byanton, at Ballymahon, he let his pen wander on in a fine strain of rhap- sody, picturing to himself, what he evidently considered the greatest ab- surdity, the future fame of Goldsmith ! Could he but have tasted then the reality of this posthumous applause ! For he was entering upon his darkest houi-s of disappointment. From some unexplained cause the Coromandel ap pointment was taken from him and given to another ; and when, in des- pair, he offered himself at Surgeons' Hall for examination as a hospital mate, with an eye perhaps to the ex- ample of Smollett and service in the navy, he was rejected as incompetent. This was his last attempt at jjrofes- sional life. Fortunately, the doors of a Avider temple were oj^ening before him. But they Avere to be entered through much sorrow. Goldsmith, after his separation from Griffiths, was still called upon for occasional essays for the Review, to which he had re- cently contribiited four articles to pro pitiate the publisher to become secu rity for him with his tailor in pro- viding- a new suit of clothes for the Surgeon's examination. Before the debt was paid, the keeper of poor Goldsmith's quarters, in his humble retreat in Green Ai'bor Court, was ar- rested, and his wife came in tears, suj?- plicating her lodger for relief. Gold- smith being himself in arrears to the couple, there was a double claim upon him as a man and a debtor. The first Avas with him ahvays sufficient. To provide means on the emergency, the new suit Avent to the pawnbroker's, Avhile Griffiths' four books for rcA'ieAV Avere deposited as security for a loan with a fi-iend. Immediately upou this, the publisher demanded payment for the clothes or their instant return to him, calling also for the books. In vain Goldsmith asked for delay, while Griffiths had no Avords for him but those of insult and imputations of fraud. The letter Avhich Goldsmith AATote in reply has been j)reserved — a OLiVEK GOLDSMITH. 37 most toucliing memorial of his suffer- ings. Manfully rebuking Griffiths for his aspersions, he deprecates his inter- pretation of his character, and, the one ray of light in this dark epistle, trusts that on the appearance of his book from Mr. Dodsley's press, the " bright side of his mind " may be revealed to his reviler. But Griffiths, setting aside his avarice, could have needed no in- struction on this point. He laiew Goldsmith's merits, and was ready to negotiate with him for a Life of Vol- taire, out of the allowance for which the debt to the tailor was paid. The publication of the Essay on Polite Learning followed, and gave the au- thor at once a respectable standing in the world of letters. He had written an independent book, in which he liad manfully and tenderly protested against the assumptions Avhich stood in the Avay of men of genius, and it could hardly be perused by a candid, intelligent reader without ranking its author among their number. His course from the date of the publica- tion of this work was onward. The Essay on Polite Learning, though relieved by much happy illustration, was, upon the whole, a purely didactic work, where the free- dom of movement of the writer's mind was fettered by the conditions of the subject. Nor had he a fair opportu- nity as yet to exhibit his peculiar vein in the magazines, in which his writings had been confined mainly to reviews. He was now to appear in his individ- ual character, sul)ject to no law but that of his humor, as the genial essay- ist, to which department of literature, after all that had been accomplished in the Tatlers, Spectators, and Guar- dians, he was to impart an ease and gracefulness entirely his own. At the solicitation of Wilkie, a bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard, he undertook the preparation of a collection of mis- cellaneous papers to be pu1>lished weekly in a distinct pamphlet form, to which he gave the title, " The Bee." The first number appeared at the be- ginning of October, 1759, and was fol- lowed by seven others, the contents of which were all furnished by himiself. Somehow, as a whole, the publica- tion, though it contained a number of very pleasing papers, was not success- ful. It was too much of a miscellany to fasten the attention of the town. At least we may infer this fi'om the better reception of the vsTiter's next venture in this line, when he had the advantage of greater apparent unity in one continuous thread upon which to hans: his observations. This was but a couple of months later, Avhen he commenced in the new daily paper started by Newbery, the " Public Led- ger," the series of letters in the char- acter of a Chinese Philosopher visiting England, sul )sequently collected under the title of " The Citizen of the World." Under this thin disguise he had the privilege of satirizing with greater freedom than he might otherwise have assumed, the vices and follies of the day ; while a certain piquancy in the invention of his observer, Lien Chi Altangi, the curiosities of whose " flow- ery land" were then coming into fash- ionable vogue, gave an interest to re- flections on matters of government and j^olitics, which had become dull and wearisome in the ordinary forms of dis 38 OLIVEE GOLDSIHTH. cussion. Goldsmith, too, by this time, from liis practice in magazines and reviews, had become a thorough adept in the arts of composition in this lighter walk of literature, and success had s'iven him coura2:e to trust to his own genius. The volumes of the " Citi- zen of the World" contain some of his most charming writings. The style, in his uuapproachal)le idiomatic felic- ity, invests the most familiar topics with interest, while it is frequently the medium of new ideas, on the most im- portant. He is more than once in ad- vance of his age as a reformer on ques- tions of national and domestic policy, ventilates various sound notions of so- cial as well as political economy, and is always on the side of virtue and humanity. His satire on occasion is sufficiently pungent ; but it has no bit- terness, and is always sheathed in the most exquisite humor. As the paj)ers grew in number from week to week, his wit, so far from flagging, acquired new powers by exertion ; his -touch was at once lighter and more assured ; and in his introduction of the " Man in Black," disguising his benevolence under an assumption of cynicism, and in " Beau Tibbs," who sought to con- ceal the poverty of his poor vain life by the pretences of the imagination, he added two new and delightful char- acters, worthy of association with Eoger de Coverley and his friends in the " Spectator," to the gallery of Eng- lish fiction. The enterprise of Newbery in his various literary undertakings now gave Goldsmith constant employment, with a paymaster ready to assist him in his occasional extra pecuniary necessities, the result usually of his generosity and hospitality. The squalid lodging in Green Arbor Court was deserted for res2')ectable rooms in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, where, in the spring of 1761, we hear of Johnson as a visitor, and a year or so later, also under the wing of Newbery, our author is in j^leasant rural quarters at Islington, daily entertaining his fi-iends in the intervals of his preparation of a series of letters on the History of England, which, with an eye to popular favor, were set forth on their puldication as addressed by a nobleman to his son. The device was successful enough, the knowing ones of the day variously at- tri])utinir the l)Ook to Lords Chester- field, Orrery and Lyttelton ; so true in that time were the lines of Pope : " Let but a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit briglitens and the sense refines. " The year 1764 is memorable in the life of Goldsmith, for in that he wrote the " Vicar of Wakefield," and com- pleted his poem of the "Traveller." The first knowledge which we have of the former is in a striking scene in which Johnson appears as an actor The story as related by Johnson him self with great exactness is thus given by Boswell. " I received," said John- son, " one morning, a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. 1 sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 39 eiolent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to Mm of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a work ready for the press, which he produced to ma I looked into it, and saw its merit ; told the landlady I should soon return ; and having gone to a booksel- ler, sold it for sixty j^ounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he dis- charged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill," The bookseller to whom Johnson sold the work was Francis Newbery, nephew to the pub- lisher of the " Citizen of the World," by whom it was kept more than a year before it was issued from the press. Meanwhile, the elder Newbery had issued " The Traveller ; or, a Pros- pect of Society, a Poem by Oliver Gold- smith, M. B.," the first of his publica- tions to which he had put his name on the title-page. He felt, doubtless, that it was a distinct personal revelation of himself, something which he might emphatically call his own, and leave to the world as a representation of his peculiar powers. To point out the beauties of this poem, would be to commenit upon every passage ; and, indeed, it may be safely left to the admiration of its myi-iad readers. Though praised by Johnson and successful at the start, passing in a few months throuo:h f oru* editions, it grew, by degrees, like all works of ge- nius, in popular estimation. The best test of its merit is that now, after the extraordinary production of a neAv race of poets of the highest powers in the nineteenth century, it is as secure of ad- miration as ever. And the same may be said of the ever enduring "Vicar," which was less appreciated on its first appearance than the poem. " The first pure example in English literature," says Forster "of the simple domestic novel," and in spite of all attempts since, still the purest and brightest. Every one knows and loves its exqui- site grace and humor, its idyllic scenes, its characters daily repeated in real life, and ever new to lis in the book ; the jests which never tire, the moralities which never grow stale, the tender hu- manity which lurks in every sentence, its cheerful gayeties and the darkening shadows over the gentle picture, which bring still stronger into relief, the ami- ability and charity of the whole. "Whatever Goldsmith touched with his pen he seemed to turn into an en- during monument of himself. By two brief productions he had now secured lasting fame as poet and novelist ; his next attempt was in the humorous drama, and there, too, though his con- temporaries failed fully to perceive the fact, he again Avrote his name high on the lists of the genius of his country men. Of his two comedies, "The Good Natured Man," first produced in 1768, and " She Stoops to Conquer," five years afterwards, the last has proved the most successful. In their own day they met with considerable opposition, for they came to supplant a school of sentimental comedy, if comedy so tearful a business can be properly called, which then held pos- session of the stage. "During some 10 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. years," Macaulay tells us, " more tears were shed at oomedies tlian at trage- dies; and a pleasantry whicli roused the audience to anything more than a g]"ave smile was reprobated as low. It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the ' Good Natured Man,' that in which Miss Kichland finds her lover attended by the l)ailiff and the bailiff's follower in full court dresses, should haA'e been mercilessly hissed, and should have been omitted after the first night." It seems to have been a hard struggle with the audi- ence, but the humor of Goldsmith, se- conded by the irresistible powers of Ned Shuter, the original Croaker, car- ried the day. Johnson, who, whatever liberties he may have taken with Gold- smith in conversation, was always strong in his favor on critical occa- sions, stood firmly by his side at the production of both his plays. He furnished the Prologue to the " Good Natured Man," and worthily received the dedication of " She Stoops to Con- quer." " It may do me some honour," writes Goldsmith, " to inform the pub- lic that I have lived many years in in- timacy with you. It may serve the interest of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impair- ing the most unaffected piety." In the later play, produced, like its prede- cessor, at Covent Garden Theatre, un- der the manaijement of the elder Col- man, Shuter was the Hardcastle and Quick the Tony Lumpkin of the ori- ginal cast. Mrs. Bulkley re2:)reseuted the young lady heroine in both pieces, Miss Richland in the one and Miss Hardcastle in the other. Garrick, who had unluckily rejected the " Good Na- tured Man," when offered to him for performance at Drury Lane, disinterest- edly furnished the jjrologue spoken by Woodward to "She Stoops to Con- quer." Intermediate between the two plays, in 1770, aj^peared Goldsmith's second poem, a comjianion j^iece to " The Tra- veller," "The Deserted Village." It was dedicated to Sir Joshua Eeynolds. As its name imports, its design is to contrast a picture of rural felicity, with its loss in the abandonment of home under the j^ressure of wealthy oppression. In this respect, as Macau- lay has remarked, " it is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its hapjiy days is a true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish vil- lage. The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has brou2;ht close tosrethcr belong to two different countries, and to two different stages in the prospect of society. He had assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content and tranquility, as his Auburn. He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a paradise tmrned out of their homes in one day and forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster; but by joining the two, he has produced some- thins which never was and never Avill be seen in any part of the world." But, notwithstanding all its errors of situation and political economy, the poem Avill be read for its felicitous scenes and imagery. " Sweet Auburn " remains, and will still continue to be OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 41 the " loveliest village of the plain ;" and though, as a fact, men do not decay where "wealth accumulates," the se- quel of the passage has a sterling ring whenever and wherever it can be ap- plied : ' Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ; A breath can make thorn, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied." No one knew better than Goldsmith the truth in social economy, thatlux- uiy, far from being the enemy, is the friend of civilization, l)y creating new wants and calling forth for their sup- ply the higher arts of man. He had advocated this idea in his Chinese Letters in the " Public Ledger." " Ex- amine," says he there, " the history of any country remarkable for patience and wisdom, you will find they would never have been wise had they not been first luxurious ; you will find poets, jjhilosophers, and even patriots, march- ing in luxury's train." But the ex- igencies of his poem led him appa- rently to take another view of the matter. However, few readers think of the philosophy of the poem, or Judge it by the rules of Adam Smith, while thousands admire its descrip- tions of the Village Preacher, the homely " splendors," a cabinet Dutch picture, of the ale-house, and the sweet rural scenery which surrounds it. The works which we have described, by which Goldsmith survives, the po- ems, the novel, the plays, were written for fame. There were a host of others, of which Plistories of Kome, England, Greece, and a LListory of Animated Nature, written by contract for the 6 booksellers, were to supply his imme- diate necessities. They gave him a re- venue which he freely expended upon his friends, but any vanity of dress or hospitality which they may have led him to assume, cost him dear in the constant drudgery to which they sub- jected him. And yet with all his ef- forts he was constantly in pecuniary embarrassment. It is painful to sur- vey his life in the details of his petty miseries as they have l)een disclosed to view by his minute biographers. It is still more painful to think what fine powers were lost to the world by his sudden death in the midst of his embar- rassments, when the ink was hardly diy on his splendid fragment " Retali- ation," a poem, one of the happiest of its kind, a series of living portraits, literary companions to those of Pey- nolds, of his eminent fellow-members of the Club — Burke, Garrick, Cumber- land and Reynolds among the num- ber. What a sketch might he have written with equal candor, good na- ture, and still more of feeling, of John- son. But it was not so to be. There is something very melancholy in the history of this last exertion of Gold- smith's poetical faculty. It was writ- ten to meet a studied provocation by the members of the old social Club. In his absence it was proposed to wi'ite an epitaph upon him, Garrick ever ready upon such occasions, and the in- veterate punster, Caleb Whitefoord, appearing as the leading instigators. Garrick's has been preserved, and is often quoted: " Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness call'd Noll, Wlio -wrote like an angel, but talk'd like poor PoU." i2 OLIVEE GOLDSMITH. The verses, whatever were written, reached Goldsmith, who was called up- on to "retaliate." And in how just and kindly a manner, in a general way, he set about the task, pointing his sen- tences the most severe with wit with- out malice, and tempering censure with the most considerate of praise. Before he had finished the poem, leaving a line on Reynolds half ended, he was taken ill of the fever, Avhich after a few days' illness carried him off on the 4th of April, 1774. He had only re- cently completed his forty-fifth year. He was buried in a grave in the churchyard of the Temple, near his residence. No stone was placed there at the time to mark the spot, and the exact place where the poet was inter- red cannot at the present day he de- termined. A public funeral had been proposed, but a private ceremony was thought more in accordance with the circumstances of his death. But on the stairs which led to his chambers, in Brick Court, was gathered, beside the few family mourners, a number of the homeless poor women whom he had befriended. A monument, sug- gested by Reynolds and sculptured by Nollekens, was not long after erected in Westminster Abbey, to which John son furnished the Latin inscription, weighty with words of admiration for his friend and his writings, which the love of posterity daily confirms. A portion of the lines are intelligi- ble enough, even to persons unfamiliar with the language, so often have they been cited and admired. We allude to the opening : Olivaeii Goldsmitu, Poctse, I'liysici, Historici, qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit. The whole has been literally and elegantly rendered by Mr. Forster. We give it entire, omitting the records of the poet's birth and death at the close : Of Oliver Goldsmith — Poet, Naturalist, Historian, who left scarcely any kind of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn : Whether smiles were to be stirred or tears, commanding our emotions, yet a gentle master In genius lofty, lively, versatile, in style, weighty, clear, engaging — The memory in this monument is cherishnd by the love of Companions, the faithfulness of Friends, the reverence of Beaders. ^5ZL<^ *" ^" Publisliers,New"fiirk. HANNAH MORE HANNAH MOEE was born m 1745, at tlie village of Stapleton, Gloucestershire, England, where her father, Jacob More, a man of a learned education, was then in charge of a char- ity school. He was of a respectable family and had been intended for the church, but was led by want of means to the inferior occupation of a country schoolmaster. He was a tory and high-churchman, though other mem- bers of the family were Presbyterians. He married a farmer's daughter, like himself a person of sound intellect. There were five daughers the issue of this marriage, of whom Hannah was the youngest but one. She exhibited in her earliest childhood a remarkable quickness of apprehension, learning to read between her third and fourth year, and before she had reached the latter, recited her catechism in church to the admiration of the village rector. Her nurse, who is described as a pious old woman, had a distant flavor of lit- erature about her, having lived in the family of the poet Dryden, and thus early the name and fame of " glorious John," became familiar to her infant charge. "The inquisitive mind of the little Hannah," says her biographer. Roberts, " was continually prompting her to ask for stories about the poet Dryden." At the age of eight, the child had developed an eager thirst for learning, which her father was abun- dantly able to gratify out of the stock of his professional acquisitions. His stock of books was scanty, the greater part of them having been lost in his re- moval from his birth-place in Norfolk- shire to Stapleton ; but he supi)lied the deficiency from his memory, taking his daughter upon his knee and narrating to her stories of the Greeks and Ro- mans, " reciting to her the speeches of his favorite heroes, first in their origi- nal language to gratify her ear with the sound, and afterwards translating them into English ; particularly dwel- ling on the parallels and wise sayings of Plutarch; and these recollections made her often afterward remark, that the conversation of an enlightened pa- rent or preceptor, constituted one of the best parts of education." In this, and in other particulars of the mental growth and literary pro- gress of Hannah More, we are remind- ed of the similar intellectual develop- ment of Maria Edgeworth. She also was mainly taught in her childhood (43) 44 HANNAH MOEE. by her father, and constantly incul- cates in her admirable writings for the young, the advantage of this family oral instruction. Indeed, with impor- tant differences, there is a certain pa- rallelism in the career of the two per- sonages. Both entered the literary field early, were welcomed by the jiub- lic at the start and continued to study and wi'ite under favorable circum- stances, through an unusually prolong- ed term of life. Miss Edgeworth, in- deed, was born twenty-two years later, but the two were on the earth together for sixty-six years, and, during the most stirring events of that period circling aT)Out the era of the French Revolu- tion, were in their prime. Both were favorites of society, and saw much of the most cultivated people of their times. The oljject of both, as authors, was the improvement of their readers, and there was a great resemblance in the method of their labors in their plain, practical instructions on educa- tional tojjics, though one drew more from every-day experience and illus- trated the lesson with gaiety and hu- mor, while the other, as we shall see, appealed constantly to the sanctions of religion and Christianity. In this respect, one, in fact, supplements the other. Add Hannah More to Maria Edgeworth, and you have a perfect whole. Hannah More gained from her father an early knowledge of Latin, which she afterwards improved and constantly maintained. She also gradually ac- quired an intimate acquaintance with French in reading and speaking. It was her parents' design that the chil- di-en should be qualified to conduct a lady's boarding school; and for this purpose the eldest sister was sent to a French school at Bristol. Beturning at the end of each week to pass the Sunday at home, she communicated what she had learned to Hannah, who proved an apt pupil. This scheme of education succeeded so well, that about the year 1757, the eldest sisters opened the projected boarding school at Bristol, and prosecuted it from the beginning with success. Hannah, then at the age of twelve, was taken with them and continued her studies with the double incentive of the love of knowledge, and a maintenance for life involved in its immediate acquisition. Addison's "Spectator," the constant companion of the generation in which she was born, which has lit the way to so many youthful minds in the pur suit of letters and cheerful observation of the world, Avas the first book, we are told, which at this time engrossed her attention. The arrival of the elder Sheridan, the father of Richard Brins- ley, who came to deliver his famous lectures on oratory at Bristol, j^roved an interesting point in Miss More's life. Sheridan had been on the boards at Drury Lane, a species of rival to Garrick, and had for years been con- nected with the theatre at Dublin. When he left the stage, he devoted himself to the cause of education. His lectures, we may suppose, retained the best part of his theatrical declamation. They made a great impression on the mind of Miss More, then in her six- teenth year. She addressed some verses to Sheridan, which led to hia making her acquaintance. In all this, her mind was doubtless directed or as- HANNAH MOKE. 45 fisted in a tendency to dramatic com- position wliicli soon manifested itself, and, in no long time, resulted in Ler sharing the glories of the British She was also benefited at this early ])eriod of her life by her acquaintance with Ferguson the astronomer, who delivered a course of popular lectures at Bristol ; and still more by the in- structions of a Mr. Peach, a linen-dra- -per of the town, a man of cultivation in English literature, who had been the friend of Hume, and claimed the credit of removing from his History of Eno^land, more than two hundred Scotticisms. Encoui'aged by such as- sociations as these, and inspired by the work of education in her sisters' school, with which she was connected, she, now in her seventeenth year, executed her first important literary work. It grew out of the recitations in the school, which she observed were often drawn from plays, the moral character of which would not bear too close an inspection. In a minor way, as Racine wi"ote his sacred dramas of " Esther " and " Athalie," at the request of Ma- dame de Maintenon in her religious days, for performance before her young ladies at St. Cyr, so Miss Hannah More prepared her pastoral drama, "The Search After Happiness." It is in a number of scenes in ten syllable rh;yTn- ed verse, interrupted by occasional lyric effusions. In accordance with its moral intent, we have in the drama four ladies sev- erally discontented with the world meeting in a grove in search of the ha2:»piness which they had not found in fashion, a vain pursuit of science, the seductions of imagination or the lan2;uors of indifference, for in each of these varieties have Euphelia, Cleora, Pastorella and Laurinda, been in turn engrossed. Florella, a young, virtuous, contented shepherdess, does the honors of the grove ; and Urania, an antique maiden of greater authority, reviews the passions of them all, shows their inefficiency for beings of immortal growth, and points the way to the better life, bidding them : " On holy faith's aspiring pinions rise, Assert your birthriglit, and assume the skies." The moral is a good one, the pictures of life in a certain general way, accord- ing to the fashion of the literature of the time, are piquant and animated; but we question whether young ladies of the present era are often employed in recitations from this elegant poem. Neither, on the other hand, do they declaim passages from the wicked plays it was intended to supersede. The argument of Miss More, as it is given in her prologue, is insufficient. It begs the whole question of dramatic power and interest. People do not necessarily become vicious by even the ardent impersonation of such passions as she would supersede by the utter- ance of simjile, moral and religious re- flections, or Mrs. Siddons, who bore a most estimable character, would have become from her performance of Lady Macbeth, one of the most wicked per- sons of her sex. Miss More, in truth, concedes this by her lively pictures of the world in this very innocent pasto- ral drama, and when she herself came to write for the stage, she invoked the passions she here laments. From a very early period of her liia^ iG HANNAH MOEE. Miss More attaclied herself to persons of eminence and distinction in the so- ciety hj which she was surrounded. As she could have gained little from the position in which she was placed, one of a group of several maiden la- dies earning their living by school- teaching, the attentions which she re- ceived must have been wholly owing to her happy disposition and literary acquirements. Besides Latin and French, she cultivated the Spanish and Italian tongues. From the latter she translated and adapted some of the dramatic works of Metastasio. Most of these were destroyed. One of them, based on the Opera of Regulus, she afterwards extended Into a tragedy in live acts, entitled "The Inflexible Captain." It was about the time we are writing of, when she was at the age of twenty- two, that a Mr. Turner, a gentleman of wealth, living on a fine estate, and nearly double her own age, fascinated by her agreeable qualities, proposed to her in marriage and was accepted. The thing got so far that she quitted the school, and made some expensive pre- parations for her new mode of life. Mr. Turner, however, hesitated, and the marriage was broken off. He, however, settled an annuity upon her, to enalde her to devote herself to her literary ^^ursuits, and on his death left her a thousand pounds. We now reach a memorable point in Miss More's life, the year of her first introduction to London society. In the year 1774, when she was approach- ing the age of thirty, she visited the metropolis with two of her sisters, and WHS introduced to David Garrick, who had been, enlisted in her favor by see- ing a letter, shown to him by a com- mon friend, in Avhich she described her emotions on witnessing his perform- ance of Lear. The great actor was a very sociable and friendly man, highly ajipreciative of literary excellence, and doubtless thought not the less of it when it was displayed by an agreeable young lady in admiration of himself. The acquaintance soon ripened into an intimacy, which remained unbroken during his life. The theatre was then in the ascendant, and Miss More, spite of her recommendations of the simple moral drama in her pastoral play at Bristol, entered heartily into its de- lights. She was present at the perform- ance of Sheridan's first di'amatic pro- duction, the " Rivals," of which she says : — " On the whole I was tolerably entertained." She also witnesses a re- presentation of General Burgoyne's " Maid of the Oaks." Garrick Avas for the time unable from ill health to ap- pear upon the stage. " If he does not get Avell enough to act soon," writes the enthusiastic Hannah, "I shall break my heart." Miss More had a very useful friend in London in Miss Reynolds, the sister of Sir Joshua, by whom also she was much admired. Garrick and Reynolds opened to her an entrance to the fore- most literary society. The former in- troduced her to Mrs. Montagu, then in the ascendant with all her charms of Avit and clcA'crness, the presiding deity of those Montagu House assem- blies, Avhich gave a ncAV and lasting name to the female cultivators of litera- ture, the " Blue Stockings." It ori- ginated with Admiral BoscaAven, whose HANNAH MORE. 47 wife was one of the most brilliant of the set. Looking one evening at Dr. Stillingfleet's gray stockings, which were quite out of keeping with the fashionable requirements of the time, he christened the free-and-easy com- pany the " Blue Stocking Society." It was a palpable hit. A name was wanted for a new thing under the sun in England, a cultivated lady courting society and challenging attention for her literary attainments. In those gos- sij)ing days, so brightly reflected in the letters of Walpole, the term was caught u]) with avidity, and from that day to this literary ladies have had to endure this nonsensical appellation because slo- venly Parson Stillingfleet appeared one nisrht at Mrs. Montas-u's in blue wors- ted stockings. A letter addressed by Miss More to one of her sisters, to be found in her published correspondence, gves us an interesting view of this learn- ed society. It would ap2:)ear from a sub- sequent letter of Miss More, that this party at Mrs. Montagu's was on a Sunday evening, a fact of which she was reminded by a letter from home containing a clerical admonition from Dr. Stonehouse. She received it in good part, and acknowledged the de- linquency. " Conscience," she writes, " had done its office before ; nay, was busy at the time ; and if it did not dash the cup of pleasure to the ground, infused at least a tincture of worm- wood into it." The thought recurs to her again at a Sunday's dinner at Mrs. Boscawen's ; but as she reflects she finds there is preaching and solemnity in life everywhere, even in its gayest moments — a truth worth remembering by a certain class of moralists — very touching in its expression by Miss More. After her return at night from this Sunday dinner, she writes, " One need go no further than the company I have just left, to be convinced that 'pain is for man,' and that fortune, talents, and science are no exemption from the universal lot. Mrs. Montagu, eminently distinguished for wit and virtue, the wisest where all are wise, is hastening to insensible decay by a slow but sure hectic. Mrs. Chapman has experienced the severest reverses of fortime, and Mrs. Boscawens' life has been a continued series of afllic- tions, that may almost bear a parallel with those of the righteous man of Uz." Hannah More's acquaintance with Dr. Johnson deserves a separate para- graph. She came up to London with a desire of all things to see the great Doctor, for whom she had always a sincere admiration and respect. His moral writings in the " Rambler," greatly influenced her thought and style. The attentions paid to John- son strike readers of the present day with surprise. A first interview with him was looked forward to with the greatest anxiety, and, when accom- plished, was frequently recorded as a prominent event in life. The honors paid to literature and art in the high social importance and esti- mation of Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick and Burke and their fellows, are cer- tainly to the credit of English life in that much aliased eighteenth century. The world has since grown more de- mocratic, and literature, perhaps, through the press, more powerful, but the republic of letters would then ap- 18 HANNAH MORE. pear to have been more fully recog- nized as a social institution tlian at present. Miss More first met Johnson at tlie house of Sir Joshua Eeynolds. It was frequently a matter of uncer- tainty whether a new comer would be received by the learned Doctor with a growl or a smile. It depended very much upon his physical condition, and that often influenced his mind, when he became moody and sjilenetic. On handing Miss More ui^-stairs to the drawing-room where Johnson had al- ready arrived, Eeynolds advised Miss More of the risk she was running. The more jileasant was consequently her surprise when the dreaded Leviathan came forward to meet her, as described 1)y her biographer, " with good humor in his countenance, and a macaw of Sir Joshua's in his hand, and still more, at his accosting her with a verse from a Morning H}Tun which she had writ- ten at the desire of Sir James Stone- house." They were soon on a most excellent footing. Miss More was pre- sently taken by Miss Reynolds to Johnson's house. " Can you picture to yourselves," wi'ites one of Hannah's sisters who was with her, to the family at home, "the palpitation of our hearts as we approached his mansion ?" They talked with the Doctor about his "Tour to the Heljrides," which was just coming out, and were introduced to the Doctor's protege, Mrs. Williams, the blind poet, whose conversation they found lively and entertaining. The Doctor was told how Miss Hannah on coming in, before he made his appear- ance, had seated herself in his great chair Avith the hope of catching a little ray of his genius, which he, of course, laughed at, saying that he never sat in that chair, and tliat it reminded him of an adventure of Boswell and him- self in the Highlands ; how, whciu they were stopping a night at an inn at the place where they imagined the weird sisters had appeared to Macljeth, they were quite deprived of rest at the idea, and how, the next morning, they were informed that all this happened in quite another part of the country. Miss Reynolds also told the Doctor of the raptures the ladies were in as they rode along in the carriage at the pros- pect of visiting him, when he shook his head at Hannah, and said " she was a silly thing ! " At tea, one evening at Sir Joshua's, she was placed next to Johnson and had him entirely to herself. "They were both," writes her sister Sarah, " in remarkably high spirits ; it was certainly her lucky night ! I never heard her say so many good things. The old genius was extremely jocular, and the young one very pleasant. You would have imagined we had been at some comedy, had you heard our peals of laughter. They, indeed, tried which could 'pepper the highest,' and it is not clear to me that the lexicograj^her was really the highest seasoner." The record of another visit to John- son is of interest, for its reference to the personal history of the Mores. It occurs in a letter of one of the sisters in 1776. "If a wedding," she writes from London to the family at Bristol, " should take place before our return, don't be surprised, — between the mo- ther of Sir Eldred and the father of my much-loved Irene ; nay, Mrs. Mon- tagu says, if tender words are the pre- HANNAH MORE. 49 cursors of connubial engagements, we may expect great things ; for it is no- thing but 'child,' 'little fool, 'love,' and ' dearest.' After much critical dis- course, he turns round to me, and with one of his most amiable looks, which must be seen to form the least idea of it, he says : ' I have heard that you are en2;a2:ed in the useful and honorable employment of teaching young ladies,' upon which, with all the same ease, familiarity and confidence we should have done had only our own dear Dr. Stonehouse been present, we entered uj)on the history of our birth, parent- age and education ; showing how we were born with more desires than gui- neas ; and how, as years increased our appetites, the cupboard at home began to grow too small to gratify them ; and hoAV, with a bottle of water, a bed, and a blanket, we set out to seek our for- tunes; and how we found a great house, with nothing in it ; and how it was likely to remain so, till looking into our knowledge-boxes, we happen- ed to find a little laming, a good thing when land is gone, or rather none : and so at last, by giving a little of this laming to those who had less we got a good store of gold in return ; but how, alas ! we wanted the wit to keep it. ' I love you both,' said the inamorato — -'I love you all five — I never was at Bristol — I will come on purpose to see you — what ! five wo- men live hapj)ily together ! — I will come and see you — I have spent a hap- py evening — I am glad I came — -God for ever bless you, you live to shame duchesses.' He took his leave with so much warmth and tenderness, we were quite afEected at his manners." r The " Sir Eldred " alluded to at the beginning of the letter, was the hero of a legendary tale, entitled, " Sir El- dred of the Bower," which Hannah More had shortly before puljlished in London — a ballad of the modern school of Goldsmith's Edwin and Angelina, in the same easy, gentle measure. A faultless hero marries the blameless dau2;hter of a neisfhborino- knight, all in the prettiest rural scenery and sur- roundings, when the lady's long lost brother returns from the wars to clasp her in his arms. Sir Eldred, who is passionate, finds them in this attitude and slays the stranger on the spot, the wife dies on the instant in sympathy with her brother, and Eldred lives a little longer in too wretched a condi- tion for the muse to describe. The poem was accepted as a certificate of the talents of the author by the lite- rary world of the day. Johnson ad- mired it, recited its best passages from memory, and contributed a stanza of his own to the jjoem, and Garrick, at a little party at her house, gave the finest pathetic expression to its tender melancholy. "I think," writes Han- nah, " I never was so ashamed in my life; but he read it so superlatively, that I cried like a child. Only think what a scandalous thing, to cry at the reading of one's own poetry ! I could have beaten myself ; for it looked as if I thought it very moving, which, I can truly say, is far from being the case. But the beauty of the jest lies in this : Mrs. Garrick twinkled as well as I, and made as many apologies for crying at her husband's reading, as I did for crying at my own verses. Sho got out of the scrape by j)retending 50 HANNAH MOEE. she was touched at the story, and /, by saying the same thing of the read- ing. It furnished us with a great laugh at the catastrojihe, when it would really have been decent to have been a little sorrowful." Garrick, who was a mas- ter of courtly compliment, in occasional society verses, wrote a few stanzas on "Sir Eldred," signed, "Roscius," in which he celebrates the triumjih of a female genius over the wits of the other sex. Miss More was not behind the versatile David in these poetical atten- tions. She addressed a tame sonnet to the river Thames, on Mr. and Mrs. Garrick's birthday, and wrote a rather clever ode to Dragon, his housedog, at Hampton, in which she introduces some pretty compliments to Eoscius on his retirement from the stage. No inamorato was ever more devoted to a lover than Miss More to Garrick, iu attendance upon his last perform- ances at Drury Lane. Her devotion was j)aid not less to his kindly qualities as a man, than to his genius as an actor. He was one of the first to give her a helping hand on her arrival in London. He welcomed her to his seat on the Thames at Hamjiton, where she passed many days and weeks, domesticated as a member of the family while he read to her, she tells us, " all the whimsical correspondence, in prose and verse, which for many years, he had carried on with the first geniuses of the ag-e " — the very letters, we jiresume, which are now gathered in the two ample quartos of the " Garrick Correspondence," to Avhich the epistles of Hannah herself contributed not the least delightful pages. We may follow her in her charming letters, through her visits to Drury Lane during Garrick's last sea- sons on the stage. "Let the Muses shed tears," she writes in 1776, " for Garrick has this day sold the patent of Drury Lane Theatre, and will never act after this winter. Sic transit gloria miindi ? He retires with all his blushing honors thick about him, his laurels as green as in their early spring. Who shall supjily his loss to the stage ? Who shall now hold the master-key of the human heart ? Who direct the passions with more than magic power ? Who purify the stage ? and who, in short, direct and nurse my dramatic muse ? " Of the last anon. On the very day that Garrick took his leave of the stage, after he had intro- duced the whole series of his j^erform- ances in London, Miss More wrote from Bristol to the departing Eoscius — " I think by the time this reaches yo i I may congratulate you on the end of your labors and the completion of your fame — a fame which has had no parallel, and will have no end. Surely, to have supi^ressed your talents in the moment of your highest capacity for exerting them, does as much honour to your heart as the exertion itself did to your dramatic character ; but I cannot trust myself on this sulg'ect, because, as Sterne says, ' I am writing to the man himself;' yet I ought to be in- dulged, for, is not the recollection of my i^leasures all that is left to me of them ? Have I not seen in one season that man act seven and twenty times, and rise each time in excellence, and shall I be silent ? Have I not sjient three months under the roof of that man and his dear, charming lady, and received from them favors that would take me another three months to tell HANNAH MORE. 5J over, and shall I be silent ? " In the distribution of souvenirs of the last performance of Garrick, JNIiss More re- ceived from him the shoe buckles which he wore in Don Felix, upon which Mrs. Barbauld wrote a doggrel epigram ; — " Thy buckles, O Garrick, thy friend may now use, But no mortal hereafter shall tread in thy shoes." Miss More's intimacy with Garrick was continued after his retirement from the stage, Avhen, though he played no more, he still, like Pope's departed lady of fashion, " o'erlooked the cards." She sends him from time to time various little items of theatrical gossip from the provincial stage at Bungay, where she is on a visit, and where the Nor- wich tragedians play several of his pieces — •" Cymon," " Bon-Ton," and " The Clandestine Marriage," which he wrote with Colman. " A certain Mrs. Il)bott plays Mrs. Heidleburg more than tolerably, and a pretty-look- ing Mrs. Simpson was very pleasing in Fanny ;" and at Bristol, how Eeddish was there with an extempore Mrs. Reddish, which excited much scandal and opposition, " this being the second or third wife he had jjroduced at Bris- tol : in a short time we have had a whole bundle of Reddishes, and all re- markably impungent ;" and how Red- dish was pelted at his benefit, "but didn't mind that, for he had a great house." But the most important topic of the correspondence, at least for the gentle Hannah, was the preparation of a certain tragedy of " Percy," which she had under way with an eye to the stage. The first two acts were got off in August, 1777, to Garrick, who ac- knoAvl edges their receipt, addi'essing Miss More as "My dear Nine"— -all the Muses rolled into one. He talks of a visit to Bath and Bristol. " Mrs. Garrick," he says, "is studying your two acts. We shall bring them with us, and she will criticise you to the bone. A German commentator (Mon- taigne says) will suck an author dry- She is resolved to dry you up to a slender shape, and has all her wits at work upon you." Presently she sends the third and fourth acts. "I shall leave the fifth unfinished till I am so happy as to be indulged with your in- structions. I am at a loss how to man- age it. As to madness, it is a rock on which even good poets split ; — what, then, will become of me ? It is so difficult and so dangerous, I am afraid of it." Meantime Garrick is stimu- lating her anxieties. " I hope you will consider your dramatic matter with all your wit and feeling. Let your fifth act be worthy of jo\i, and tear the heart to pieces, or avo betide you ! I shall not pass over any scenes or parts of scenes that are merely written to make up a certain number of lines. Such doings. Madam Nine, will neither do for you nor for me." At last the play, dry- nursed by Garrick, was, through his agency, accepted by Harris, the man- ager of Covent Garden, and brought ujion the stage. Garrick wrote both prologue and epilogue, in the former wittily stirring up that anomalous per- sonao-e the Chevalier D'Eon. Hannah pronounced both excellent, and had an amusing altercation, which she de- scribes, over the price with the author, who, of course, would receive nothing. " Dryden," he said, " used to have five 52 HANIS'AH MOKE. guineas apiece, but as lie was a richer man lie would be content if I would treat Lim witli a handsome sujiper and a bottle of claret. We haggled sadly about the price, I insisting that I could only afford to give him a beef- steak and a pot of porter; and at about twelve we sat down to some toast and honey, with which the tem- perate bard contented himself." The play under Garrick's ausjiices proved a decided success. Both Mr. and Mrs. Garrick were present with her at its first performance, when it was brought out in December. It had a run of seventeen nights, and that, too, while the School for Scandal was in its first season. It was published with a dedi- cation to Earl Percy, for Avhich she re- ceived the thanks of that noble house, communicated to her by Dr. Percy. Home, the author of Douglas, was then in London to witness the produc- tion of his new play of Alfred, which proved a failure. This did not, how- evei', prevent his complimenting his rival on her success. Mrs. Montagu and her blue stocking friends were, of course, on hand with their applause. We get in the author's letters a glimpse or two of the acting. " One tear is worth a thousand hands," she writes ; " and I had the satisfaction to see even the men shed them in abun- dance." " Mrs. Barry is so very fine in the mad scene, in the last act," writes Miss More, " that though it is my own nonsense, I always see that scene with pleasure." Leaving Sir Joshua's one evening after dinner, when the com- pany had sat down to cards, to witness that particular act, she is shocked at entering the theatre to see " a very in- different house. I looked (she adds) on the stage and saw the scene was the inside of a prison, and that the hero- ine, who was then speaking, had on a linen gown. I was quite stuijned, and really thought I had lost my senses, when a smart man, in regimentals, be- gan to sing, ' How happy could I be with either.' " Lewis had been taken ill, and the " Beggar's Opera " substi- tuted for " Percy." The pecuniary re- sults were very gratifying, the author's nights, sale of the copy, etc., amount- ing to near six hundred pounds, which Garrick invested for her on the best security 'at five per cent. A first im- pression of the play of four thousand copies Avas sold at once, and a second went off raj^idly. Some forty years after this first success, " Percy " was re- vived at the same theatre, with Miss O'Neil for the heroine. About a year after the production of " Percy," Miss More was summoned to London by the death of Garrick. She joined Mrs. Garrick at her express desire, was with her while prepara- tions were being made for the public funeral in Westminster Abbey, and witnessed the ceremony from a gallery overlooking the grave. Her descrij)- tion of the scene is full of feeling. "We were no sooner recovered from the fresh burst of grief on taking our places, than I east my eyes the first thing on Handel's monument, and read the scroll in his hand — 'I know that my Redeemer liveth.' Just at three, the great doors burst open, with a noise that shook the roof; the organ struck up, and the whole choir, in strains only less solemn than the ' arch- angel's trump,' began Handel's fine HANNAH MORE. 53 autliem. The whole choir advanced to the grave, in hoods and surplices, singing all the way ; then Sheridan, as chief mourner ; then the body, (alas ! whose body !) with ten noblemen and gentlemen, pall-bearers ; then the rest of the friends and mourners ; hardly a dry eye — the very players, bred to the trade of counterfeiting, shed genuine tears." The friendship formed with Mrs. Garrick in the life-time of her husband I'emained unbroken during their long subsequent career. Miss More was for several years her con- stant guest. She was with her in her first season of bereavement, and, in her correspondence, gives several touching anecdotes of her conduct during the early period of her affliction. At the time of Garrick's death, Miss More had a second play Avhich had partly undergone his revision, ready for the stage. It was entitled "The Fatal Falsehood," and was brought out the same year with some success, though inferior to that which had at- tended " Percy." Miss Young played in it with much effect. The prologue was written by the author ; the epilo- gue, by Sheridan, a fine piece of wit in an amusing picture of lady authorship, delivered in the character of an envi- ous poetaster. The remainder of the year 1779 was mostly passed by Miss More with Mrs. Garrick at Hampton in close retire- ment, but, she writes, " I am never dull, because I am not reduced to the fatigue of entertaining dunces, or of beino; oblio-ed to listen to them. "VYe dress like a couple of scaramouches, disjiute like a couple of Jesuits, eat like a couple of aldermen, walk like a couple of porters, and read as much as any two doctors of either university." One day came " the gentlemen of the Museum to fetch poor Mr, Garrick's legacy of the old plays and curious black-letter books, though they were not tilings to he read, and are only valuable to anti- quaries for their age and scarcity ; yet I could not see them carried off' with- out a pang." The words which we have marked in italics are noticeable, show- ing the neglect into which the early English literature about the time of Shakespeare had fallen. These are the very plays from which Charles Lamb gathered his choice volume of Drama- tic Specimens. Had Miss More fully entered into their spirit, her own tra- gedies might have been improved by the acquaintance, with a better chance than they are having of being read by her posterity. The old intercourse was still and for several years after kept uj) with the literary society of London which met at Sir Joshua's, Mrs.Vesey's, Mrs. Boscawen's, aged Mrs. Delany's and the rest ; but we hear less and less of fashionable gaieties at the theatre or elsewhere. A growing: seriousness was at Avork in the mind of the fair author, which was leading her to new schemes of moral improvement. In the mean time, she summed up her observations rather than experiences of the worldly life of the day in two sprightly poems, first printed together in 1780, and pub- lished Avith additions in 1786. In one of these, entitled "The Bas Bleu; or. Conversation," she celebrated the in- tellectual social intercourse Avhich ani- mated the parties of Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Vesey, and sighed for the de- parted days Avhen the Avinged Avords 54 HANNAH MORE. of Garrielv, Jolinson and Burke gave flight to tlie friendly hours. " And Lyttleton's accomplished name, And witty l^ulteney shared the fame ; The men, not bound by pedant rules, Nor ladies jyrecieuses ridicules : For polished AValj^ole t;ho\ved the way, How wits may be both learned and gay ; And Carter taught the female train, The deeply wise are never vain. ***** Here rigid Cato, awful sage ! Bold censor of a thoughtless age. Once dealt his pointed moral round. And not unheeded fell the sound ; The muse his honored memory weeps, For Cato now with Roscius sleeps 1 " "Cato," Miss Seward thought was an odd " whig-title " for the tory John- son. " I could fancy him," she wi'ites to her friend, Court Dewes, " saying to the fair author, ' You had better have called me the first Whig, Madam, the father of the tribe, who got kicked out of Heaven for his reptiblican prin- ciples.' " " Florio ; a Tale for Fine Gentlemen and Ladies," was appropriately dedi- cated to Horace Walpole, not, we can hardly imagine, without a tinge of co- vert satire, though the terms in which she propitiates the wit are highly flat- tering. The story is well told in octo- syllabic verse, bearing a general resem- blance in its moral to Dryden's " Cy- mon and l2:)higeneia," though the cir- cumstances are quite different, — in the one case a youth being rescued from clownishness and neglect, in the other from fo^jpery and licentiousness. In both, the motive power is a charming woman. Florio, the spoilt child of fortune ; passing his life in fashionable frivolities, a smatterer in literature, a free-thinker, or rather uo-thiuker in re- ligion, is brought to a loiowledge of himself by the simple attractions of a country Celia, for whom at first he has a great contempt ; but he carries back with him to London a spark of love and nature's fire in his breast, and liy the light which this kindles, all the meritricious attractions of the metrop- olis which had formerly fascinated him grow pale and worthless. He hurries back to the country and the poem con- cludes with the triumph of virtue in a marriage with the pious Celia. The sketch of Florio in his days of worldli- ness is much the best of the poem. Miss More's acquaintance with Ho- race Walpole began in the literary soirees at Mrs. Vesey's and was per- petuated in visits to Strawberry Hill, and a correspondence which was con- tinued through the life of its noble owner. There is a great deal of com- pliment in the letters on both sides , Waljiole was always fond of ladies' society, and gratefully reciprocated the attentions of a lady who might have been his satirist. Miss More, on the other hand, was attracted to him by his kind attentions to Mrs. Vesey in her failing health, "my dear, infirm, lu-oken-spirited, Mrs. Vesey," as she calls her in one of her letters. The home life of the five sisters at Bristol was, in the meanwhile under- going a change. Hannah, enriched by her llteraiy pursuits, bought a small country residence near Bristol, which had acquired the name of " Cowslip Green," and sjjent more of her time in rural occupations. In 1789 her sisters having acquired sufiicient property by their labors retired from the charge of the school to pass their time between a town residence which, with the aid of HANNAH MORE. 55 Hauuali, tliey Lad erected for them- Belves at Bath aud the retreat at Cow- slip Green. They now Legan to em- ploy themselves in what became the serious occupation of their lives, the establishment of schools for the educa- tion of the neglected poor in their neighborhood. The first of these was started at Chedder, in the vicinity of Bristol. In setting this on foot, Miss More had to encounter a redoubtable giant of the old tory breed, in a person whom she describes as " the chief des- pot of the village, very rich and very brutal ; " but she was not to be deter- red by any such lions in the way, " so," says she, " I ventured to the den of this monster, in a country as savage as him- self, near Bridgewater." She was met by an argument which was very com- mon in those days in England, and which she had often practically to re- fute, that " religion was the worst thing for the poor, for it made them lazy and useless." It was in vain that she rep- resented to these country landowners that men would become more industri- ous as they were better princijiled, and that she had no selfish ends in her un- dertakings. It w^s, however, by ap- pealing to their selfish interests that she was at last permitted to proceed. " I made," says she, " eleven of these agreeable visits ; and as I improved in the art of canvassing, had better suc- cess. Miss Wilberforce would have been shocked, had she seen the petty tyi-ants whose insolence I stroked and tamed, the ugly children I praised, the pointers and spaniels I caressed, the cider I commended, and the wine I swallowed. After these irresistible flatteries, I inquired of each if he could recommend me to a house ; and saiu that I had a little plan which I hoped would secure their orchards from being robbed, their rabbits from being shot, their game from being stolen, and Avhich might lower the poor-rates." The squirearchy upon this relented and soon the benevolent Miss More had nearly three hundred children in the school learning the elements of a reli- gious education. While this work was going on in the country. Miss More was appealing to the world in her writings, which were now assuming a direct reformatory tone with an earnest inculcation of religious principle as the governing motive of life. Her first as- sault was directed against fashionable follies and vices which she had hitherto tickled in verse. She now resumed the argument in prose with a heavier em- phasis. Her " Thoughts on the Impor- tance of the Manners of the Great to General Society," first printed anony- mously in 1798, as a sequel or aid to a royal proclamation which had just been issued against irreligion and im- morality, was a bombshell thrown into the ranks, not of the grossly wicked, but of those who were considered good sort of people, whom she desired to bring to a higher standard of justice and morality. It was a vigorous pro- test against luxury and extravagance, pointing out the selfishness and conse- quent hard-heartedness of indulgence, with a special effort to correct the evils arising from the ill observance of Sunday, and the prevalent passion for play. In the course of her remarks, the author speaks of a singular custom which then prevailed, " the petty mis- chief of what is called card money ^'' in 56 HANNAH MOEE. the exaction of a part of tlieir wages from servants to pay for the playing cards furnished to the guests ! She denounces this as " a worm which is feedino; on the vitals of domestic \'ir- tue." She argues too the old social question of " the daily and hourly lie of Not at Home^'' for which she would provide some suitable phrase for the necessary denial to a visitor, in prefer- ence to the education of the servant in the art of lying. She makes an appeal also for " hair-dressers," as a jieculiarly oiijiressed class of Sunday laborers. Not long after, in 1791, this pro- duction was followed by an elaborate prose composition of a similar charac- ter, " An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable "World," in Avhich the general neglect of Christianity by leading men of the time was compared with its open avowal by the Sidneys, Hales and Clarendons of a former age ; the benevolence of the day was tested in its motives ; Christian education shown to be neglected, and a revival of its vital spirit declared to be a ne- cessity of the period. A copy of the work reached Horace Wal2:)ole, who speaks of it in a letter to Miss Berry : "Good Hannah More is laboring to amend our religion, and has just pub- lished a book called ' An Estimate of the Eelio-ion of the Fashionable World.' It is prettily written, but her enthu- siasm increases ; and when she comes to town, I shall tell her that if she preaches to people of fashion,- she will be a bishop in partibus infideUumr In pursuing her labors in the instruc- tion and amelioration of the condition of the poor. Miss More began the issue of a series of popular tracts, written in a plain attractive style, suited to the comprehension of the peasant class for which they were intended. They were written with such marked ability that they soon took a wider range and were largely circulated throughout Great Britain and America. It is sufficient to allude to such narratives among them as "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," and such allegories as " Parley the Porter," to remind the reader of their scope and spirit. The fonner has passages Avorthy of De Foe ; the latter might have been written by Bunyan. The theory of the author's religious teaching of the jjoor, was in general very simple. In one of her letters published in the "Whalley Corres- pondence," referring more particularly to the conduct of her charity schools, she says, "My grand principle is, to infuse into the minds of the young people as much Scriptural knowledge as possible. Setting them to get by heart such portions of the Bible as shall take in the general scheme of doctrine and practice, then bringing that knowledge out, by easy, simple and intelligi1)le conversation, and then grafting it into theii' minds as a prin ciple of action, and making all they learn practical and of personal apjjli- cation, seems the best method. I am extremely limited in my ideas of in- structing the poor. I would confine it entirely to the Bible, Liturgy and Ca- techism, which, indeed, includes the whole of my notion of instruction. To teach them to read, without giving them principles, seems dangerous ; and I do not teach them to write, even in my Aveekly schools. Almost all I do is done by conversation, by a simple HAKtfAH MOEE. 57 exposition of texts, wliicli I endeavor to make as lively and interesting as I can, often Dlustrating wLat is difficult by instances drawn from common life. To those who attend four Sundays without intermission, I give a penny, provided they are at school by prayer- time; this promotes regularity of at- tendance more than anything. Tarts and gingerbread occasionally are a pleasant reward. Clothing I cannot afford to such multitudes as my differ- ent schools consist of, but at Whitsun- tide, I give them all some one article of dress. K there is a large family of boys, for instance, I give to one a jacket, to another a shirt, to a third shoes, to a fourth a hat, according to their re- spective Avants; to the girls, a white calico apron, and muslin cap and tip- pet, of which I will send you one for a pattern if you wish it." Strange that in the carrying out such simple works of benevolence as this. Miss More should have been thwarted and even persecuted. Though as con- servative as any person in the kingdom, she was charged with undermining the British constitution and encouraging French revohitionary propagandism with her nefarious proceedings; with unsettling the established order of British society ; with assisting " Me- thodism," as if that were an unpardon- able sin. The curate of Blaydon who presided over her district was especially unfriendly, and at one time succeeded in closing the school which was for a time re-opened. The controversy on the subject became fierce and lasting. Various meetings were held, numerous pamphlets were written. No less than thirty-four distinguished persons, most 8 of them of the clerical order, took part in the discussion. Miss More was fairly distracted by the agitation, and fell sick in consequence. Meanwhile, she was continuing the series of her didactic writings, by the publication in 1799 of one of the largest and most elaborate of her works, entitled " Strictures on the Modern System of Female Educa- tion." The book abounds with sound practical suggestions on subjects of every-day life. Though earnest in the ultimate reference of all to the sanc- tions of Christian precept, it is marked by a general moderation of thought. About the year 1802, Miss More left her residence at Cowslip Green for one more convenient in the vicinity, which proved so attractive, that the town house at Bath was also relinquished for it. This new situation, known by the name of Barley Wood, became thenceforward identified with the fam- ily, continuing their home till Miss Han- nah More became the sole survivor, and finally quitted it for another residence after a sojourn of fully a quarter of a century. From this spot her frequent correspondence with Wilberforce was dated, and thence went forth several of her most important books to the world. In 1805, she published the work entitled " Hints Towards Form- ins; the Character of a Youns; Princess," written at the earnest request of Bishop Porteus, who, it is said, favored the design of placing the education of the young Princess Charlotte, for whom it was intended, under her care. The next important publication by Miss More is that, with the exception perhaps of her more poj^ular tracts, by which she is best known at present, 58 HAlSnsrAH MOEE. — tlie nc^el, if it may be so called, en- titled " Ccelebs in Search of a Wife." Immediately popular at tlie time when it was first issued — it ran through eleven editions within nine months — it is still the most read of its author's productions. A simple test is at hand. The seven volumes of the American edition of her complete works belong- ing -to a large city circulating liln-ary are before us. Six are clean and un- injured by use ; the remaining one con- taining " Ccelebs " is worn with hand- ling, and ready to fall in pieces. The poems and the moral essays, the in- struction for peasants and princesses, the lay sermons, worthy of Dr. Blair, and with something of his style, are forgotten : the novel, lightly as it touches the heart and life, is remem- bered and read. It is hardly fair, how- ever, to regard it simjily as a novel. It is in reality, as its second title imports, a series of observations on domestic habits and manners, religion and mo- rals. " Love itself," as the author re- marks in the preface, " appears in these pages, not as an ungovernable impulse, but as a sentiment arising out of qual- ities calciilated to inspire attachment of pei'sons under the dominion of reason and religion, brought together by the ordinary course of occurrences in a private family party." With this un- derstanding the work may be read without disaj^pointment ; otherwise, it mijjht be thought to lack invention and interest in the plot, which is of the sim- plest. It certainly, with all its sermon- izing, has many entertaining sketches of society and lively exhibitions of char- acter. There is nothing very extrava- gant or any way impossible in the model young lady of the writer's imagination, who is brought forward to engage the affection of the scrutinizing and ex- acting yoimg bachelor. The key-note of the book is struck in the first chap- ter, which is devoted to the perfections of Mother Eve, as exhil:)ited by John Milton, in his immortal epic. Lucilla, the irresistible heroine of the book, is the daughter of most exemplary par- ents, a pious, practical and literary father, a graceful and elegant hostess her mother. She herself has all the domestic and a proj^er share of the philanthrojiic virtues. "Fresh as a rose and gay as a lark," she rises at six in the morning in summer, gives two hours to reading in her closet, has an interview with the housekeeper on the state of the larder, and enters the break- fast room, a charming spectacle of health, cheerfulness and culinary ac- com2:»lishments. " Her conversation, like her countenance, is compounded of liveliness, sensibility and delicacy." She teaches her little sisters, is modest and engaging, visits the poor and reads Latin with her father every day. Cce- lebs, with credit to himself, is smitten through and througli by the archer god at the first sight of her in the four- teenth chapter. Twenty-five more are occupied before the wedding comes on, in playing her off through a series of important discussions on social and ed- ucational topics by persons of the most decisive ways of thinking. The con- versations are always sensible and in- structive, sometimes amusing. The book is the gathering up on the part of the author — it was published when she was sixty-four — of a cheerful lifetime of thought and experience. HANNAH MORE. 59 We have still to record several other of her books ; " Practical Piety," published in 1811; and the collection of essays entitled " Christian Morals," put forth the next year ; " An Essay on the Character and Practical Writ- ings of Saint Paul," in 1815; and ' Moral Sketches of Prevailing Opin- ions and Manners, Foreign and Domes- tic," in 1819. A month after the pub- lication of this last work, Miss More's sole surviving sister Martha died ; the others had been called away within a few preceding years. In 1822 she no- tices in one of her letters from Barley Wood, the death of " my ancient and valued friend, Mrs. Garrick. I spent above twenty winters under her roof, and gratefully remember not only their I^ersonal kindness, but my first intro- duction through them into a society re- markable for rank, literature and tal- ents. Whatever was most distinguished in either was to be found at their table." It was a backward 2;lance throuijh near- ly fifty years by a venerable lady at seventy-seven. Though visited by fre- quent and severe illness, she was to survive ten years longer. In 1828, she finally left her home at Barley Wood, a name endeared to the Christian world, for a new residence at Clifton, where on the 7th of September, 1833, she placidly closed a life which must ever be regarded with admiration and affec- tion. A letter from one of the wor- thiest of her friends, Sir Eobert Inglis, to the Eev. Dr. McVickar, in New York, records her Christian departure. " Though her mind has been eclipsed by her advancing years,— for she was in the eighty-ninth year of her life,— and though there was no longer any continuous flow of wisdom and of pie- ty from her lips, yet the devotional habit of her days of health, gave even to the weakness of decay a sacred char- acter, and her affections remained strong to the last. On Thursday (two days before she expired) she became more evidently dying, her eyes closed, she made an effort to stretch forth her hands, and exclaimed to her favorite sister, now for many years departed, 'Patty — joy.' And when she could no longer articulate, her hands remained clasped as in prayer." The five sisters lie interred within a plain enclosure in Wrington church- yard, a large stone slab recording their names, the dates of their birth and of their deaths. The portrait of Hannah More was painted in her early days hj Sir Joshua Reynolds. As described by a recent English writer, " it represents her small and slender figure gracefully at- tired; the hands and arms delicately fine, the eyes, large, dark and lus- trous ; the eyebrows well marked and softly arched ; the countenance beam- ing with benevolence and intelligence." Mr. S. C. Hall, who visited her at Bar ley Wood about 1825, thus decribes her appearance : — " Her form was small and slight, her features wrin- kled with age ; but the burden of eighty years had not impaired her gracious smile, nor lessened the fire of her dark eyes, the clearest, the brightest and the most searching I have evei seen." FREDERIC II, THE celebrated King of Pinissia was in no respect indebted for liis personal greatness to the virtues or ex- amj)le of bis immediate progenitors. His grandfather Frederic I., the first of the House of Brandenburg who as- sumed the title of king, was a weak and empty prince, whose character was taken by his own wife to exemplify the idea of infinite littleness. His father, Frederic William, was a man of a violent and brutal disposition, ec- centric and intemperate, whose princi- pal, and almost sole pleasure and pur- suit, was the training and daily super- intendence of an army disproportion- ately greater than the extent of his do- minions seemed to warrant. It is how- ever to the credit of Frederic William as a ruler, that, notwitstanding this expensive taste, his finances on the whole were well and economically ad- ministered ; so that on his death he left a quiet and happy, though not wealthy country, a treasure of nine millions of crowns, amounting to more than a year's revenue, and a well-disciplin- ed army of 76,000 men. Thus on his accession, Frederic II. (or as, in consequence of the ambiguity of his father's name, he is sometimes call- (60) ed, Frederic IH.) found, ready prepai ed, men and money, the instruments of war; and for this alone was he in- debted to his father. He was born January 24th, 1712. From Frederic William, parental tenderness was not to be expected. His treatment of his whole family, wife and children, was brutal: but he showed a particular antipathy to his eldest son, from the age of fourteen upwards, for which no reason can be assigned, except that the young prince manifested a taste for lit- erature, and preferred books and music to the routine of military exercises. From this age, his life was embittered by continual contradiction, insult, and even personal violence. In 1730, he endeavored to escape by flight from his father's control ; but this intention being revealed, he was arrested, tried as a deserter, and condemned to death by an obedient court-martial ; and the sentence, to all apj^earance, would have been carried into effect, had it not been for the interference of the Emperor of Germany, Charles VI. of Austria. The king yielded to his urgent entreaties, but with much reluctance, saying, "Austria will some day perceive what a serpent she warms in her bosom." FREDEEIC II. 61 lu 1732, Frederic procured a remission of this ill treatment by contracting, nauch against Lis will, a marriage with Elizaljeth Christina, a princess of the house of Brunswick. Domestic hap- piness he neither sought nor found; for it appears that he never lived with his wife. Her endowments, mental and personal, were not such as to win the affections of so fastidious a man, but her moral qualities and conduct are highly commended ; and, except in the resolute avoidance of her society, her husband throue;h life treated her with high respect. From the time of his marriage to his succession, Frederic resided at Rheinsberg, a village some leagues north-east of Berlin. In 1734, he made his first campaign with Prince Eugene, but without displaying, or finding opportunity to display, the military talents by which he was dis- tinguished in after-life. From 1732, however, to 1740, his time was princi- pally devoted to literary amusements and society. Several of his published works were written during this period, and among them the " Anti-Machiavel," and " Considerations on the Character of Charles XII. ;" he also devoted some portion of his time to the study of tactics. His favorite companions were chiefly Frenchmen: and for French manners, language, cookery and philo- sophy, he displayed through life a very decided preference. The early part of Frederic's life gave little promise of his future energy as a soldier and statesman. The flute, em- broidered clothes, and the composition of indifi^erent French verses, seemed to occupy the attention of the young di- lettante. His accession to the throne, May 31, 1740, called his dormant ener- gies at once into action. He assumed the entire direction of government, charging himself with those minute and daily duties which princes gene- rally commit to their ministers. To discharge the multiplicity of business which thus devolved on him, he laid down strict rules for the regulation of his time and employments, to which, except when on active service, he scru- pulously adhered. Until an advanced pei'iod of life he always rose at four o'clock in the morning; and he be- stowed but a few minutes on his dress, in respect of which he was careless, even to slovenliness. But peaceful employments did not satisfy his active mind. His father, content with the possession of a powerful army, had never used it as an instrument of con- quest : Frederic, in the first year of his reia:n, undertook to wrest from Aus- tria the province of Silesia. On that country, which, from its adjoining sit- uation, was a most desirable acquisi- tion to the Prussian dominions, it ap- pears that he had some hereditary claims, to the assertion of which the time was favorable. At the death of Charles VI., in October, 1740, the here- ditary dominions of Austria devolved on a young female, the afterwards cele- brated Maria Theresa. Trusting to her weakness, Frederic at once, marched an army into Silesia. The people, being chiefly Protestants, were ill affected to their Austrian rulers, and the greater part of the country, except the for- tresses, fell without a battle into the King of Prussia's possession. In the following campaign, April 10th, 1741, was fought the battle of Molwitz wliifli requires mention, because in this engagement, tlie first in which he com- manded, Frederic displayed neither the skill nor the courage which the whole of his subsequent life proved him really to 2:)OSsess. It was said tliat he took shelter in a windmill, and this gave rise to the sarcasm, that at Molwitz the King of Prussia had covered him- self with glory and Avith flour. The Prussians hoAvever remained masters of the field. In the autumn of the same year they advanced within two days' march of Vienna ; and it was in this extremity of disti'ess, that Maria Theresa made her celebrated and af- fecting appeal to the Diet of Hungary. A train of reverses, summed up l)y the decisiA^e liattle of CzaslaAv, fought May 17th, 1742, in Avhich Frederic display- id both courage and conduct, induced Austria to consent to the treaty of BreslaAV, concluded in the same sum- mer, by which Silesia, Avith the excep- tion of a small district, Avas ceded to Prussia, of Avhich kino;dom it has ever since continued to form a i)art. But though Prussia for a time en- joyed peace, the state of European politics was far from settled, and Frederic's time was much occupied by foreign diplomacy, as well as by the internal improvements which always were the favorite objects of his solici- tude. The rapid rise of Prussia was not regarded vnih indifterence by other poAvers. The Austrian govern- ment Avas inveterately hostile, from offended pride, as Avell as from a sense of injury ; Saxony took part Avitli Austria ; Kussia, if not an open en- emy, was always a suspicious and un- friendly neighbor ; and George 11. of England, the King of Prussia's uncle, both feared and disliked his nephcAV. Under these circumstances, upon the formation of the triple alliance be- tween Austria, England, and Sardinia, Frederic concluded a treaty with France and the Elector of Bavaria, who had succeeded Charles VI. as Emperor of Germany ; and antici- pated the designs of Austria upon Silesia, by marching into Bohemia in August, 1744. During two campaigns the war Avas continued to the advan- tage of the Prussians, who, under the command of Frederic in person, gained two signal victories Avith inferior num- bers, at liohenfriedberg and Soor. At the end of December, 1745, he found himself in possession of Dres- den, the capital of Saxony, and in a condition to dictate terms of peace to Austria and Saxony, by which Silesia Avas again recognized as part of the Prussian dominions. Five years Avere thus spent in ac- quiring and maintaining possession of this important proA'ince. The next ten years of Frederic II.'s life passed in profound peace. Duriug this period he applied himself diligently and suc- cessfully to recruit his army, and reno- vate the drained resources of Prussia. His habits of life were singularly uniform. He resided chiefly at Pots- dam, apportioning his time and his employments Avith methodical exact- ness ; and, by this strict attention to method, he was enabled to exercise a minute superintendence over every l:)ranch of goA'ernment, without es tranging himself from social jileasures, or abandoning his literary pursuits. After the peace of Dresden he com FKEDEEIC II. 63 meucecl his " Histoire de inon Temps," vvliicli, in addition to the history of his own wars in Silesia, contains a general account of European politics. About the same period he wrote his " Memoirs of the House of Branden- burg," the best of his historical works. He maintained an active correspond- ence with Voltaire, and other of the most distinguished men of Europe. He established, or rather restored, the Academy of Sciences of Berlin, and was eager to enrol eminent foreigners among its members, and to induce them to resort to his capital ; and the names of Voltaire, Euler, Mauj)ertuis, La Grange, and others of less note, testify his success. But his avowed contempt for the German, and admira- tion of the French literature and lan- guage, in which all the transactions of the Society were carried on, gave an exotic character to the institution, and crippled the national benefits which might have been expected to arise from it. The story of Frederic's association with Voltaire, as narrated in his usual vivid manner l)y Macaulay, is worthy of being given in detail, for its illus- tration of the characters of both these extraordinary personages. It may fairly be prefaced with the same writ- er's account of the king's entertain- ment of his literary friends at Potsdam. " It was the just boast of Schiller, that in his country no Augustus, no Ijorenzo, had watched over the infancy of art. The rich and energetic lan- guage of Luther, driven by the Latin from the schools of pedants, and by the French from the palaces of kings, had taken refuge among the people. Of the powers of that language, Fre- deric had no notion. He generally spoke of it, and of those who used it, with the contempt of ignorance. His library consisted of French books ; at his table nothing was heard but French conversation. The associates of his hours of relaxation were, for the most part, foreigners. Britain fur- nished to the royal circle two distin guished men, born in the highest rank, and driven by civil dissensions from the land to which, under happier circumstances, their talents and virtues might have been a source of strength and glory. George Keith, Earl Mar- ischal of Scotland, had taken anns for the house of Stuart in 1715, and his younger brother James, then only sev- enteen years old, had fought gallantly by his side. When all was lost they retired together to the Continent, roved from country to country, served under many standards, and so bore themselves as to win the respect and good-will of many who had no love for the Jacobite cause. Their long wanderings termin- ated at Potsdam ; nor had Frederic any associates who deserved or obtained so large a share of his esteem. They were not only accomplished men, but nobles and warriors, capable of serving him in war and diplomacy, as well as of amusing him at sujDper. Alone of all his companions they appear never to have had reason to complain of his demeanor towards them. Some of those who knew the palace best pro- nounced that the Lord Marischal was the only human being whom Frederic ever really loved. " Italy sent to the parties at Pots- dam the ingenious and amiable Alga- 64 FREDERIC II. rotti, and Bastiani, the most crafty, cautious, and servile of Abbes. But the greater j^art of the society which Frederic had assembled round him, was di-awn from France. Maupertuis had acquired some celebrity by the journey which he made to Lapland, for the purpose of ascertaining, by actual measiu-ement, the shape of our planet. He was placed in the chair of the Academy of Berlin, a humble imitation of the renowned Academy of Paris. Baculard D'Arnaud, a young poet, who was thought to have given promise of great things, had been in- duced to quit his country, and to reside at the Prussian Court. The Marquess D'Argens was among the king's favor- ite companions, on account, as it should seem, of the strong opposition between their characters. The parts of D'Ar- gens were good, and his manners those of a finished French gentleman ; but his whole soul was dissolved in sloth, timidity, and self-indulgence. His was one of that abject class of minds Avhich are superstitious without being reli- gious. Hating Christianity with a rancor which made him incapable of rational inquiry : unable to see in the harmony and beauty of the universe the traces of divine power and wisdom, he was the slave of dreams and omens ; ■ — would not sit down to taljle with thirteen in company ; turned pale if the salt fell towards him ; begged his guests not to cross their knives and forks on their plates ; and would not for the world commence a journey on Friday. His health was a subject of constant anxiety to him. Whenever his head ached, or his pulse beat quick, his dastardly fears and effeminate j)re- cautions were the Jest of all Berlin. All this suited the king's purpose ad- mirably. He wanted somebody by whom he might be amused, and whom he might despise. When he wished to pass half-an-hour in easy polished con- versation, D'Argens was an excellent companion ; when he wanted to vent his spleen and contempt, D'Argens was an excellent butt. " With these associates, and others of the same class, Frederic loved to spend the time which he could steal from public cares. He wished his sup- per-parties to be gay and easy ; and invited his guests to lay aside all re- straint, and to forget that he was at the head of a hundi'ed and sixty thou- sand soldiers, and was absolute master of the life and liberty of all who sat at meat with him. There was, therefore, at these meetings the outward show of ease. The Avit and learning of the con)i-)any were ostentatiously displayed. The discussions on history and litera- ture were often highly interesting. But the absurdity of all the religions known among men was the chief topic of conversation ; and the audacity with which doctrines and names venerated throughout Christendom were treated on these occasions, startled even per- sons accustomed to the society of French and English fi'ee - thinkers. But real liberty, or real affection, was in this brilliant society not to be found. Absolute kinccs seldom have friends : and Frederic's faults were such as, even where perfect equality exists, make fi'iendship exceedingly precarious. He had indeed many qualities, which, on a first acquaintance, were captivating. His conversation was lively ; his man FREDERIC II. 65 ners to those wliom lie desired to please were e\'eu caressing. No mau could flatter witli more delicacy. No mau succeeded more completely in inspiring those who approached him with vague hopes of some great advantage from his kindness. But under this fair ex- terior he was a tyrant — suspicious, disdainful, and malevolent. " Potsdam was, in truth, what it was called l)y one of its most illustrious inmates, the Palace of Alcina. At the first glance it seemed to be a delightful spot, where every intellectual and phy- sical enjoyment awaited the happy adventurer. Every neAV comer was received with eager hospitality, intoxi- cated with flattery, encouraged to ex- pect prosperity and greatness. It was in vain that a long succession of favor- ites who had entered that abode with delight and hope, and who, after a short term of delusive hapjiiness, had been doomed to expiate their folly by years of wretchedness and degradation, raised their voices to warn the aspirant who approached the charmed threshold. Some had wisdom enough to discover the truth early, and spirit enough to fly without looking back ; others lin- gered on to a cheerless and unhonored old age. We have no hesitation in saying that the poorest author of that time in London, sleeping on a bulk, dining in a cellar, with a cravat of paper, and a skewer for a shirt-pin, was a happier man than any of the literary inmates of Fredei'ic's court. " But of all who entered the en- chanted garden in the inebriation of delight, and quitted it in agonies of rage and shame, the most remarkable was Voltaire. To Berlin he was in- 9 vited by a series of letters, couched in terms of the most entliusiastic friend- ship and admiration. For once the rigid parsimony of Frederic seemed to have relaxed. Orders, honoraljle of- fices, a liberal pension, a well-served table, stately apartments under a royal roof, were offered in return for the pleasure and honor which were expect- ed from the society of the first wit of the ao;e. A thousand louis were re- mitted for the charges of the Journey. No ambassador settina; out from Berlin for a court of the fii'st rank, had ever been more amply supplied; But Vol- taire was not satisfied. At a later period, when he possessed an ample for- tune, he was one of the most lilteral of men ; but till his means had become equal to his wishes, his greediness for lucre was unrestrained either by jus- tice or by shame. He had the effron- tery to ask for a thousand louis more, in order to enable him to bring his niece, Madame Denis, the ugliest of co- quettes, in his company. The indeli- cate rapacity of the poet produced its i?atural effect on the severe and frusjal king. The ansAver was a dry I'efusal. ' I did not,' said his majesty, ' solicit the honor of a lady's society.' On this, Voltaire went off into a paroxysm of childish rage. ' Was there ever such avarice? He has hundreds of tubs full of dollars in his vaults^ and hag- gles with me about a poor thousand louis.' It seemed that the negotiation would be broken ofi"; but Frederic, with great dexterity, affected indifter- ence, and seemed inclined to transfer his idolatry to Baculard d'Arnaud. His majesty even wrote some bad verses, of which the sense was, that 66 FREDERIC II. Voltaire was a setting suu, and that Amaiid was risin" Good-natured friends soon carried the lines to Vol- taire. He was in his bed. He jumped out in his shirt, danced about the room with rage, and sent for his passport and his post-horses. It was not diffi- cult to foresee the end of a connection which had such a beginning. "It was in the year 1750 that Vol- taire left the great capital, which he was not to see again till, after the lapse of nearly thirty years, he returned, bow- ed down by extreme old age, to die in the midst of a splendid and ghastly triumph. His reception in Prussia was such as might well have elated a less vain and excitable mind. He wrote to his friends at Paris, that the kindness and the attention with which he had been welcomed surpassed description ■ — that the king was the most amiable of men — that Potsdam was the para- dise of philosophers. He was created chamberlain, and received, together with his gold key, the cross of an order, and a patent ensuring to him a pen- sion of eight hundred pounds sterling a-year for life. A hundred and sixty pounds a-year were promised to his niece if she survived him. The royal cooks and coachmen were put at his disjDosal. He was lodged in the same apartments in which Saxe had lived, when, at the height of power and glory, he visited Prussia. Frederic, indeed, stooped for a time even to use the lan- guage of adulation. He pressed to his lips the meagre hand of the little grin- ning skeleton, whom he regarded as the disjDenser of immortal renown. He would add, he said, to the titles which he owed to his ancestors and his sword, another title, derived from his last and proudest acquisition. His style should run thus :— Frederic, King of Prussia, Margrave of Brandenburg, Sovereign Duke of Silesia, Possessor of Voltaire. But even amidst the delights of the honey -moon, Voltaire's sensitive vanity began to take alarm. A few days after his arrival, he could not help telling his niece, that the amiable king had a trick of giving a sly scratch with one hand while patting and stroking with the other. Soon came hints not the less alarming because mysterious. ' The supper parties are delicious. The king is the life of the company. But^ — ^I have operas and comedies, reviews and concerts, my studies and books. But — but — Berlin is fine, the princess charm- ing, the maids of honor handsome. But, ' " This eccentric friendship was fast cooling. Never had there met two per- sons .so exquisitely fitted to plague each other. Each of them had exactly the fault of which the other Avas most im- patient; and they were, in different ways, the most impatient of mankind. Frederic was frugal, almost niggai'dly. When he had secured his plaything, he began to think that he had bou2;ht it too dear. Voltaire, on the other hand, was greedy, even to the extent of im- pudence and knavery; and conceived that the favorite of a monarch who had barrels full of gold and silver laid up in cellars, ought to make a fortune, which a receiver-general might envy. They soon discovered each other's feel, ings. Both were angry, and a war be- gan, in which Frederic stooped to the part of Ilarpagon, and Voltaire to that of Scapin. It is humiliating to relate, FREDEEIC II. 67 that tlie great warrior and statesman gave orders tliat bis guest's allowance of sugar and chocolate should be cur- tailed. It is, if possible, a still more humiliating fact, that Voltaire indem- nified himself by pocketing the wax- candles in the royal ante-chamber. Disputes about money, however, were not the most serious disputes of these extraordinary associates. The sarcasms of the king soon galled the sensitive temj)er of the poet. D'Arnaud and D'Argens, Guichard and La Metrie, might, for the sake of a morsel of bread, be willing to bear the insolence of a master; but Voltaire was of another order. He knew that he was a poten- tate as well as Frederic ; that his Eu- ropean reputation, and his incompara- ble power of covering whatever he hated with ridicule, made him an ob- ject of dread even to the leaders of armies and the rulers of nations. In truth, of all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the most terrilile was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants who had never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name. Principles unassailable l)y rea- son, princi2:)les which had withstood the fiercest attacks of power, the most valuable truths, the most generous sen- timents, the noblest and most graceful images, the purest reputations, the most august institutions, began to look mean and loathsome as soon as that withering smile Vv^as turned upon them. To every opponent, how- ever strong in his cause and his tal- ents, in his station and his character, who ventured to encounter the great Bcoffer, miijht be addressed the caution which was given of old to the Arch ano-el : ' I forewarn thoe, shun His deadly arrow ; neither vainly hope To be invulnerable in those bright arms, Though temper'd heavenly; for that fatal dint, Save Him who reigns above, none can resist.' " We cannot pause to recount how often that rare talent was exercised against rivals worthy of esteem — how often it was used to crush and torture enemies worthy only of silent disdain — how often it was perverted to the more noxious j^urpose of destroying the last solace of earthly misery, and the last restraint on earthly power. Neither can we pause to tell how often it was used to vindicate justice, hu- manity,, and toleration— the principles of sound philosophy, the principles of free government. Causes of quarrel multiplied fast. Voltaire, who, partly fi-om love of money, and partly from love of excitement, was always fond of stock-jobbing, became implicated in transactions of at least a dubious char- acter. The king was delightedat hav- ing such an oj)portunity to humble his guest; and bitter reproaches and complaints were exchanged. Voltaire, too, was soon at war with the other men of letters who surrounded the king ; and this irritated Frederic, who, however, had himself chiefly to blame : for, from that love of tormentinc; which was in him a ruling passion, he per- petually lavished extravagant praises on small men and liad books, merely in order that he might enjoy the mor- tification and rage which on such oc- casions Voltaire took no pains to con- ceal. His majesty, however, soon had reason to regret the pains which he 63 FREDERIC II. had taken to kindle jealousy among tlie members of his household. The whole palace "was in a ferment Avith literary intrigues and cabals. It was to no purpose that the imperial voice, which kept a hundred and sixty thou- sand soldiers in order, was raised to quiet the contention of the exasperated wits. It was far easier to stir up such a storm than to lull it. Nor was Fred- eric, in his capacity of wit, by any means without his own share of vexations. He had sent a large quantity of verses to Voltaire, and requested that they might be returned, with remarks and correction. ' See,' exclaimed Voltaire, ' what a quantity of his dirty linen the king has sent me to wash ! ' Talebear- ers were not wanting to carry the sar- casm to the royal ear; and Frederic was as much incensed as a Grub Street writer who had found his name in the ' Dunciad.' "This could not last. A circumstance which, when the mutual regard of the friends was in its first glow, woidd merely -have been matter for laughter, produced a violent explosion. Mau- pertuis enjoyed as much of Frederic's good-will as any man of letters. He was president of the Academy of Ber- lin; and stood second to Voltaire, though at an immense distance, in the literary society which had been assem- bled at the Prussian court. Frederic had, by playing for his own amusement on the feelings of the two jealous and vainglorious Frenchmen, succeeded in producing a bitter enmity between them. Voltaire resolved to set his mark, a mark never to be effaced, on the forehead of Maupertuis ; and wrote the exquisitely ludicrous diatribe of "Doctor Akakia," He showed this little piece to Frederick, who liad toe much taste and too much malice not to relish such delicious pleasantry. In trutk, even at this time of day, it is not easy for any j)erson who has tke least perception of the ridiculous to read the jokes on the Latin city, the Patagonians, and the hole to the centre of the earth, without laughinof till he cries. But though Frederic was di verted by this charming pasquinade, he was unAvilling that it should get abroad. His selfdove was interested. He had selected Maupertuis to fill the chair of his Academy. If all Europe were taught to laugh at Maupertuis, Avould not the rejDutation of the Aca- demy, would not even the dignity of its royal patron, be in some degree compromised ? The king, therefore, begged Voltaire to suppress his per- formance. Voltaire promised to do so, and broke his word. The diatribe was published, and received with shouts of merriment and applause by all who could read the French lanojuao-e. The king stormed. Voltaire, with his usual disregard of truth, protested his innocence, and made up some lie about a printer or an amanuensis. The king was not to be so imposed upon. He ordered the pamphlet to be burned by the common hangman, and insisted ujyon having an apology from Voltaire, couched in the most al)ject terms. Voltaire sent back to the kinof his cross, his key, and the patent of his pension. After this burst of rage, the strange pair began to be ashamed of their violence, and went through the forms of reconciliation. But the breach was irreparable ; and Voltaire I'UEDEPJC 11. 09 took Lis leave of Frederic for ever. They parted witli cold civility ; but tlieir hearts were big with resentment. Voltaire had in his keeping a volume of the king's poetry, and forgot to re- turn it. This was, we believe, merely one of the oversights which men set- ting out upon a Journey often commit. That Voltaire could have meditated plagiarism is quite incredible. He would not, we are confident, for the half of Frederic's kingdom, have con- sented to father Frederic's verses. The king, however, who rated his own wi'itings much above their value, and who was inclined to see all Voltaire's actions in the ^vorst light, was enraged to think that his favorite compositions were in the hands of an enemy, as thievish as a daw and as mischievous as a monkey. In the anger excited by this thought, he lost sight of reason and decency, and determined on com- mitting an outrage at once odious and ridiculous. "Voltaire had reached Frankfort. His niece, Madam Denis, came thither to meet him. He conceived himself secure from the power of his late master, when he was arrested by order of the Prussian resident. The pre- cious volume was delivered up. But the Prussian agents had, no doubt, been instructed not to let Voltaire escape without some gross indignity. He was confined twelve days in a wretched hovel. Sentinels with fixed bayonets kept guard over him. His niece was dragged through the mire by the soldiers. Sixteen hundred dol- lars were extorted from him by his insolent Jailers. It is absurd to say that this outrage is not to be attri- buted to the king. Was anybody punished for it ? Was anybody called in question for it ? Was it not consist- ent with Frederic's character ? Was it not of a piece with his conduct on other similar occasions ? Is it not no- torious that he repeatedly gave private directions to his officers to pillage and demolish the houses of persons against whom he had a grudge — charging them at the same time to take their meas- ures in such a way that his name might not be compromised ? He acted thus towards Count Buhl in the Seven Years' War. "Why should we believe that he would have been more scru- pulous with regard to Voltaire ? " Turnino- fi-om this exhibition of dis- creditable royal vanity and meanness, we may Avith more satisfaction look upon the service of Frederic to the state in its civil as well as military development, and study the real great- ness of this extraordinary man. In the cause of education he was active, both by favoring the universities, to which he sought to secure the services of the best professors, and by the es- tablishment of schools wherever the circumstances of the neii^hborhood rendered it desirable. It is said that he sometimes founded as many as sixty schools in a single year. This period of his reign is also marked by the commencement of that revision of the Prussian law (a con- fused and corrupt mixture of Roman and Saxon Jurisju-udence) Avliich led to the substitution of an entirely new code. In this important business the Chancellor Cocceii took the lead ; but the system established by him xmder- went considerable alterations from 70 FREDERIC II. time to time, and at last was remodel- led iu 17S1. For the particular merits or imperfections of the code, the law- yers who drew it up are answerable, rather than the monarch ; but the lat- ter 2>ossesses the high honor of having proved himself, in this and other in- stances, sincerely desirous to assure to his subjects a pure and ready adminis- tration of justice. Sometimes this de- sire joined to a certain love and habit of personal inquiry into all things, led the kins: to a meddling and mischiev- ous interference with the course of jus- tice ; but in all cases his intention seems to have been pure, and his conduct proves him sincere in the injunction to his judges : — " If a suit arises between me and one of my subjects, and the case is a doubtful one, you should al- ways decide against me." If, as in the celebrated imprisonment of Baron Trenck, he chose to perform an arbi- trary action, he did it openly, not by tampering with courts of justice: but these despotic measures were not fre- quent, and few countries have ever enjoyed a fuller practical license of speech and printing, than Prussia un- der a simply desjiotic form of govern- ment, administered by a prince natu- rally of impetuous passions and stern and unforgiving temper. That temper, however, was kept admirably within bounds, and seldom suffered to appear in civil affairs. His code is remark- able for the abolition of torture, and the toleration granted to all religions. The latter enactment, however, re- quired no great share of liberality from Frederic, who avowed his indif- ference to all religions alike. In crim- inal cases he was opposed to severe punishments, and was always strongly averse to shedding blood. To his sub- jects, both iu person and by letter, he was always accessible, and to the peas- antry in i^articular he displayed pater- nal kindness, patience, and condescen- sion. But, on the other hand, his mili- tary system was frightfully severe, both in its usual discipline and in its punishments. Numbers of soldiers de- serted, or put an end to their lives, or committed crimes that they might be given up to justice. Yet his kindness and familiarity in the field, and his fearless exposure of his own person, endeared him exceedingly to his sol- diers, and many pleasing anecdotes, honorable to both parties, are pre- served, especially during the cam- paigns of the Seven Years' War. During this peace Austria had re cruited her strength, and with it her inveterate hostility to Prussia ; and it became known to Frederic that a se- cret agreement for the conquest and partition of his territories existed be- tween Austria, Russia, and Saxony. The circumstances of the times were such that, though neither France nor England were cordially disposed to- Avards him, it was yet open to him to negotiate an alliance with either, Frederic chose that of England ; and France, forgetting ancient enmities, and her obvious political interest, im- mediately took part witli Austria. The odds of force apparently were overwhelming; but, having made up his mind, the King of Prussia dis- played his usual promptitude. He demanded an explanation of the views of the com-t of Vienna, and, on receiv- ing an unsatisfactory answer, signified FREDEEIC 11. 71 that lie considered it a declaration of war. Knowing that the court of Saxony, contrary to existing treaties, was secretly engaged in the league against him, he marched an army into tlie electorate in August, 1756, and, almost unopposed, took military pos- session of it. He thus turned the enemy's resoiirces against himself, and di'ew from that unfortunate countiy continual supplies of men and money, without which he could scarcely have supported the protracted struggle which ensued, and which is celebrated under the title of the Seven Years' War. The events of this war, how- ever interesting to a military student, are singularly unfit for concise narra- tion, and that from the very circum- stances which displayed the King of Prussia's talents to most advantage. Attacked on every side, compelled to hasten from the pursuit of a beaten, to make head in some other quarter against a threatening enemy, the ac- tivity, vigilance, and indomitable reso- lution of Frederic must strike all those who read these campaigns at length, and with the necessary help of maps and plans, though his profound tactical skill and readiness in emergen- cies may be fully appreciable only by the learned. But when these compli- cated events are reduced to a bare list of marches and countermarches, vic- tories and defeats, the spirit vanishes, and a mere caput miortuum remains. The war being necessarily defensive, Frederic could seldom carry the seat of action into an enemy's country. The Prussian dominions were subject to continual ravage, and that country, as well as Saxony, paid a heavy price that the possession of Silesia might ba decided between two rival sovereigns. Upon the whole, the first campaigns were favorable to Prussia; but the confessed sujieriority of that power in respect of generals (for the king was admirably supported by Prince Fer- dinand of Brunswick, Prince Henry of Prussia, Schwerin, Keith, and others) could not always countervail the great superiority of force with which it had to contend. The celebrated victory won by the Prussians at Prague, May 6th, 1757, was balanced by a severe de- feat at Kolin, the result, as Frederic confesses, of his own rashness ; but, at the end of autumn, he retrieved the reverses of the summer, by the l^ril- liant victories of Rosbach, and Leu- then or Lissa. In 1758, Frederic's contempt of his enemy lulled him into a false security, in consequence of which he was surprised and defeated at Hochkirchen. But the campaigns of 1759 and 1760 were a succession of disasters by which Prussia was reduced to the verge of ruin ; and it appears, from Frederic's corresjjondence, that, in the autumn of the latter year, his reverses led him to contemplate sui- cide, in preference to consenting to what he thought dishonorable terms of peace. The next campaign was bloody and indecisive ; and in the fol- lowing year the secession of Russia and France induced Austria, then much exhausted, to consent to a peace, by which Silesia and the other posses- sions of Frederic were secured to him as he possessed them before the war. So that this enormous expense of blood and treasure produced no result what- ever, except that of establishing the 73 FREDERIC il. King of Prussia's reputation as tLe first living general of Europe. Peace was signed at the castle of Huberts- burg, near Dresden, Feb. lotL, 1763. The brilliant military reputation ^Yhich Frederic had acquired in this arduous contest did not tempt him to pursue the career of a conqueror. He had risked eveiything to maintain pos- session of Silesia; but if his writings speak the real feelings of his mind, he was deeply sensible to the sufferings and evils which attend upon war. "The state of Prussia," he himself says, in the " Histoire de mon Temps," "can only l)e comj)ared to that of a man riddled with wounds, weakened by loss of blood, and ready to sink under the Aveitrht of his misfortunes. The nobility was exhausted, the com- mons ruined, numbers of villages were burnt, of towns ruined. Civil order was lost in a total anarchy : in a word, the desolation was universal." To cure these evils Frederic applied his earn- est attention ; and by grants of money to those toAvns which had suffered most ; by the commencement and con- tinuation of various s^reat works of public utility ; by attention to agricul- ture ; by di-ainiug marshes, and settling colonists in the barren, or rained por- tions of his country; by cherishing manufactures (though not always with a useful or judicious zeal), he succeed- ed in repairing the exhausted popula- tion and resources of Prussia with a rapidity the more wonderful, because his military establishment was at the same time recruited and maintained at the enormous number, considering the size and wealth of the kingdom, of 200,000 men. One of his measures deserves especial notice, the emancipa- tion of the peasants from hereditary servitude. This great undertaking he commenced at an early jieriod of his reign, by giving up his own seignioral rights over the serfs on the crown do- mains : he completed it in the year 17GG, by an edict abolishing servitude throughout his dominions. In 1765. he commenced a gradual alteration in the fiscal system of Prussia, suggested in part by the celebrated Helvetius In the dej^artment of finance, though all his experiments did not succeed, he was very successful. He is said, in the course of his reign, to have raised the annual revenue to nearly double what it had been in his father's time, and that without increasing the pressiu'e of the people. In such cares and in his literary pi;rsuits, among which we may espe- cially mention his "History of the Seven Years' "War," passed the time of Frederic for ten years. In 1772, he engaged in the nefarious project for the first partition of Poland. It does not seem, however, that the scheme originated, as has been said, with Frederic: on the contrary, it appears to have been conceived by Catherine IL, and matured in conversations with Prince Henry, the King of Prussia's brother, during a visit to St. Peters- burg. By the treaty of partition, which was not finally arranged till 1777, Prussia gained a territory of no great extent, but of imjiortance from its connecting Prussia Proper with the electoral dominions of Brandenburg and Silesia, and giving a compactness to the kingdom, of which it stood greatly in need. Frederic made some FKEDEEIC II. 73 amends for liis conduct in this matter, by the diligence with which he Labored to improve his acquisition. In this, as in most circumstances of internal administration, he was very successful ; and the country, ruined by war, mis- government, and the brutal sloth of its inhabitants, soon assumed the as- pect of cheerful industry. The King of Prussia once more led an army into the field, when, on the death of the Elector of Bavaria, child- less, in 1778, Joseph II. of Austria conceived the j^lan of re-annexing to his own crown, under the plea of vari- ous antiquated feudal rights, the great- er part of the Bavarian territories. Stimulated quite as much by jealousy of Austria, as by a sense of the injus- tice of this act, Frederic stood out as the assertor of the liberties of Ger- many, and proceeding with the utmost politeness from explanation to expla- nation, he marched an army into Bo- hemia in July, 1778. The war, how- ever, which was terminated in the fol- lowing spring by the peace of Teschen, was one of manoeuvres, and partial en- gagements; in which Frederic's skiU in strategy shone with its usual lustre, and success, on the whole, rested with the Prussians. By the terms of the treaty, the Bavarian dominions were secured, nearly entire, to the rightful collateral heirs, whose several claims were settled, while certain minor stip- ulations were made in favor of Prussia. A few years later, in 1785, Frederic again found occasion to oppose Aus- tria, in defence of the integrity of the Germanic constitution. The Emperor Joseph, in prosecution of his designs on Bavaria, had formed a contract 10 with the reigning elector, to exchange the Austrian provinces in the Nether- lands for the Electorate. Dissenting ft'om this arrangement, the heir to the succession entrusted the advocacy of his rights to Frederic, who lost no time in negotiating a confederation among the chief powers of Germany, (known by the name of the Germanic League,) to support the constitution of the empire, and the rights of its several princes. By this timely step Austria was compelled to forego the desired acquisition. At this time Frederic's constitution had tegun to decay. He had long been a sufferer from gout, the natural consequence of indulgence in good eat- ing and rich cookery, to which through- out his life he was addicted. Towards the end of the year he began to experi- ence great difficulty of breathing. His complaints, aggravated by total neglect of medical advice, and an extravagant appetite, which he gratified by eating to excess of the most highly seasoned and unwholesome food, terminated in a confirmed dropsy. During the lat- ter months of his life he suffered griev- ously from this comjilication of disor- ders ; and through this period he dis- displayed remark."^ le patience, and consideration for the feelings of those around him. No expression of suffer- ing was allowed to pass his lips ; and up to the last day of his life he con- tinued to discharge with punctuality those political duties which he had im- posed upon himself in youth and strength. Strange to say, while he ex- hibited this extraordinaiy self-control in some respects, he would not abstain from the most extravac;ant excesses in 74 FREDERIC II. diet, tliougli they were almost always followed by a severe aggravation of bis sufferings. Up to August loth, 1780, he continued, as usual, to receive and answer all communications, and to des- patch the usual routine of civil and military business. On the following day he fell into a lethargy, fi*om Avhich he only partially recovered. He died in the course of the night of August 16. The jjublished works of the King of Prussia were collected in twenty-three volumes, 8vo. Amsterdam, 1790. We shall here mention, as comj^leting the body of his historical works, the " Me- moires depuis la Paix de Huberts- bourg," and "Memoires de la Guerre de 1778." Among his poems, the most remarkal)le is the " Art de la Guerre ; " but these, as happens in most cases, where the writer has thought fit to em- ploy a foreign language, have been lit- tle known or esteemed, since their au- thor ceased to rivet the attention of the world by the brilliance of his ac- tions, and the singularity of his char- acter. Of the personal appearance of the king, Old Fritz, as he was familiarly called by the people, we have this grajihic sketch by his latest biographer, Carlyle : " A king every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king. Presents himself in a Spartan simplicity of vesture ; no crown but an old mili- tary cocked-hat; no sceptre but one like Agamemnon's, a walking-stick out of the woods, which serves also as a riding-stick; and for royal robes, a mere soldier's blue coat with red fa- oings, coat likely to be old, and sure to have a great deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in color or out, end- ing in high, over-knee, military boots, which may be brushed, but are not permitted to be Idackened or varnish- ed. The man is not of godlike phy- siognomy, any more than of imposing stature or costume : close shut mouth with thin lips, prominent jaws and nose, receding brow, by no means of Olympian height; head, however, is of long form and has superlative gray eyes in it. Not what is called a beau- tiful man, nor yet, by all appearance what is called a happy one. On the contrary, the face bears evidence of many sorrows, as they are termed, of much hard lal)or done in this world ; and seems to anticipate nothing biit more still coming. Quiet stoicism, ca- pable enough of what joy there Avere, but not expecting any worth mention ; great unconscious and some conscious pride, well temjjered with a cheery mockery of humor, — are Avritten on that old face ; which carries its chin well forward, in spite of the slight stoop about the neck ; snuffy nose ra- ther flung into the air, under its old cocked-hat, — like an old snuffy lion on the watch ; and such a pair of eyes as no man or lion or lynx of that cen- tury bore elsewhere, according to all the testimony we have."* * The main portion of this narrative is from the "Gallery of Portraits and Memoirs," pub- lished under the superintendence of the "So- ciety for the Diffusion of Useful I^owledge." The episode on the intimacy of the sovereign with Voltaire is from Macaulay's article on Frederic in the Edinbw'gh Review. ED\VARD GIBBON. r^ IBBON lias so well told tlie story VJ7~ of tis life in liis memorable Auto- liiograpLy, that sul)sequent writers iu tlieir account of the man, including his editor, the persevering Milman, have had no other course to pursue than to follow closely the details of his nari'a- tive. The Autobiography is indeed an extraordinary production among the works of its class. Its style is charm- ing, Avith just enough of that elevation which gives such peculiar emphasis to the author's great work to im'part to or- dinary incidents a certain indescribable animation which we can find nowhere more agreeably displayed. Written evi- dently with the consciousness of the value of his " History " to the world, it unfolds to us the processes of acci- dent or study by which he gradually reached that great work. It was not till he felt that he had some claims iipon the attention of the world by the completion cf the History that he un- dertook the preparation of his personal memoir ; and he proceeded in it with so much care that he left for his friend and literary executor. Lord Sheffield, no less than six different sketches of the work, all in his own handwriting. From all of these, the " Memoirs," as they now stand, were constructed. Their motive is expressed in a few opening sentences, revealing at the start a certain pride of authorship and sense of the importance of the task ; egotistical, of course, for to be success- ful in literary compositions one must be in love Avith his subject, so that a man who undertakes to write his au- tobiography should be first assured that he is in love with himself If this were the only qualification, how- ever, it must be admitted there would be few failures in productions of this class. " In the fifty-second year of my age," Gibbon commences, " after the completion of an arduous and suc- cessful work, I now projiose to employ some moments of my leisure in review- ing the simple transactions of a private and literary life. Truth, naked, un- bbishing truth, the first virtue of more serious history, must be the sole re- commendation of this personal narra. five. The style shall be simple and familiar: but style is the image of character; and the habits of correct wi'iting may jjroduce, without labor or design, the appearance of art and study. My own amusement is my motive, and will be my reward : and if these sheets (75) 76 EDWAED GIBBON. are communicated to some discreet and indulgent friends, tliey will be secreted from the public eye till tlie author shall be removed beyond the reach of criti- cism or ridicule." Following then this best authority, the historian himself, we ascend with him in the records of his ancestry to the eleventh century, when the Gib- bons of Kent flourished in that old English county. One of the family \vas architect or castle-builder of King Edward III. ; another, was captain of the English militia in the reign of Eli- zabeth. An alliance by marriage con- nected the historian, in the eleventh degree, Avith a Lord High Treasurer of England of the days of Henry VI., the historic Baron Say and Scale who was beheaded by the insurgents in the Kentish Rebellion, and who, in Shalse- speare's play is reproached by Jack Cade with erecting a grammar school, setting printers at work, building a paper mill, and having men about him " who usually talk with a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear." " Our dramatic poet," writes the his- torian of the Roman Empire " is gene- rally more attentive to character than to history ; and I much fear that the art of printing was not introduced into England till several years after Lord Say's death : but of some of these me- ritorious crimes I should hope to find my ancestors guilty; and a man of letters may be proud of his descent ft'om a patron and martyr of learning." At the beginning of the seventeenth century a branch of the family settled in London in mercantile life and pros- pered, Edward, the grandfather of the historian, acquii-ing wealth as a drapei and rising to a government appoint- ment as one of the commissioners of the customs. Unhappily he became a director of the South Sea Company, and his previous fortune of sixty thou- sand pounds was lost in the wreck of that extraordinary speculation. Es- caping from his creditors with a small allowance, he was however enabled by his energy to repair his losses and be- come again a man of consideration for his property. His son Edward was educated at Westminster School and at Cambridge, enjoyed the advantages of foreign travel, and on his return represented the tory interest in parlia- ment as a borough member. He mar- ried the daughter of James Porten, a London merchant, and of this union, the first child, Edward, the subject of this notice, was born at the family es- tate at Putney, in the County of Surry, on the 27th of April, old style, 1737. So weak appeared the constitution of the child, that his father, to preserve the family designation, thought fit to call each of his five brothers who suc- ceeded him by the name of Edward ; yet they all died in their infancy, leav- ing the first-born to maintain the hou ors of the title. The care of Edward in his feeble childhood fell to his aunt Mrs. Catharine Porten, who watched over him with the greatest assiduity and to whose kind care he attributed the preservation of his life. At the age of seven he was provided with a domestic tutor named Kirkby, a man of some ingenuity as an author and grammarian, from whose hands, at the end of eighteen months, he was sent to a school at Kingston, where, as he tr lis EDWAKD GIBBON. 77 us, " by the common metliods of disci- pline, at tlie expense of many tears and some blood, I purchased the knowledge of the Latin syntax." The authors which he studied at this time, or, as he expresses it, "jjainfully construed and darkly understood," were the lives of Cornelius Nepos and the fables of Phaedrus. The one gave him his first glimpses of the history of Greece and Rome ; the other taught him in an at- tractive form " the truths of morality and prudence." After two years' study at the school, frequently interrujited by sickness, he was recalled by his mother's death, which brought him again within the attentions of his aunt, a lady of cultivated understanding, who encouraged his mental develop- ment and inspired him with an ar- dent pursuit of knowledge. " To her kind lessons," he says, " I ascribe my early and invincible love of reading, wliich I would not exchange for the treasures of India." Owing to her fa- ther's losses in business, Mrs. Porten, in a sjiirit of independence, in keeping with her high character, opened a boarding-house for the scholars of Westminster School. Her nephew, Edward, now at the age of twelve, joined her in this new residence and was immediately entered at the school, Avhich, as we have seen, his father had attended before him. The boy still needed the care of his devoted aunt ; his studies were still broken in upon by his maladies, while " in the space of two years, interrupted by danger and debility," as he informs us, he " pain- fully climbed into the third form." All this while his lessons were of the elementary character, leaving him to " acquire in a rij^er age the beauties of the Latin and the rudiments of the Greek tongue." Unable to mingle in the sports of the school, his leisure with his aunt was doubtless largely given to reading. He was already familiar with Pope's Homer, Dryden's Virgil, Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and had " turn ed over many English pages of poetry and romance, of history and travels," in his maternal grandfather's library. A severe nervous affection now led to his withdrawal from Westminster to seek relief from the mineral waters at Bath, and some time was passed at vari- ous residences, his education being car- ried on in the most desultory manner, till at about sixteen his constitution unexpectedly developing new powers and throwing off his former complaints, after an unprofitable attempt to pursue his studies with Francis, the translator of Horace, who proved too careless for the duty which he assumed, the young Gibbon, without further preparation, before he had accomplished his fifteenth year, was entered by his father as a student at Magdalen College, Oxford. Imj)erfectly trained in the regular academic studies in consequence of his frequent attacks of illness, the youth carried with him to the University an extraordinary stock of miscellaneous reading, which had already been con- centrated upon history, especially in reference to Greece and Rome. He had eagerly perused all that he could lay his hands upon relating to these subjects in translations of the ancient authors, and had penetrated beyond the classic period into the later Byzan- tine period and the outlying history 78 EDWAED GIBBOK of the East. " Before I was sixteen," says he, " I had exhausted all that could be learned in Eno-lish of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Turks ; and the same ardor urged me to guess at\ the French of D'Herbelot, and to con- strue the barbarous Latin of Pocock's Albufaragius." Nor was this merely the gratification of an idle curiosity. The historic passion was already de- veloped within him, as is shown by his careful study of geograpliy and chro- nology. He sought order and accuracy in the confusion of the early dates, and perjilexed himself with the systems of rival authorities. His sleep was dis- turbed by the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew com- putation. With such acquirements, " I arrived at Oxford," says he, " with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ig- norance, of which a school-boy would have been ashamed." The transition to the University was well calculated to make a mark- ed impression on a youth whose intel- lectual faculties were thus alive for wonder and admii-ation. Entering with all the privileges of wealth, " I felt myself suddenly raised from a boy to a man ; the persons, whom I respect- ed as my superiors in age and acade- mical rank, entertained me with every mark of attention and civility; and my vanity was flattered by the velvet cap and silk gown which distinguished a gentleman-commoner from a plebeian student. A decent allowance, more money than a school-boy had ever seen, was at my own disposal; and I might command, among the tradesmen at Oxford, an indefinite and dangerous latitude of credit. A key was deliv ered into my hands, which gave me the free use of a numerous and learn- ed library: my apartment consisted of three elegant and well furnished rooms in the new building, a stately pile, of Magdalen College; and the adjacent walks, had they been fi"e- quented by Plato's disciples, might have been compared to the Attic shade on the banks of the Ilissus." With such advanta2;es shieldina: the student so effectually in his defects of special preparation, one would have thought the course of an ingenuous youth would have been steadily onward without in- teiTuption. Every opportunity was in his way to amend his deficiencies, Avith a large liberty for the prosecution of his favorite studies. But too much appears to have been left to his choice ; his tutors were compliant and indifter- ent, and he took advantage of their neglect, giving himself freely to the amusements and dissipations of the place. He needed restraint and pre- scribed duties, and from both he was exempt in the privileged ease of the college. But though he was acquiring little in exact learning or mental disci- pline, his mind was not inactive. In his first Ions' vacation he was intent upon writing a book which involved much learned reading, on "The Age of Sesostris," and actually accomjilish- ed a portion of it. On his return to the University, he engaged in a course of religious reading, excited by the pe- rusal of Dr. Middletou's " Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers j)ossessed by the Church in the Early Ages," a work so consonant with Gibbon's later habits of thought, that it is surjjrisiug EDWAED GIBBON. 79 that he did not then accept its skepti- cism in relation to the pretensions up- on which the Romanists relied. But ais jjrejudices were then enlisted on the side of what he considered author- ity, and with the wholesale ardor of youth, accepting as an inference from the miraculous claims of the Church of Rome, its whole series of doctrines, having finished his conversion by him- self chiefly from the writings of Bos- suet, he got access to a Jesuit priest in London, and " at his feet solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of heresy." As the act of a youth of sixteen, in the situation of life in which Gibbon was placed, it exhibits a cer- tain courageous enthusiasm of charac- ter, not less than the vanity or indis- cretion to which it might be readily assigned. Looking back upon it in af- ter life, he writes, "To my present feelings, it seems incredible that I should ever believe that I believed in transubstantiation." This boyish freak cost the convert his luxurious abode in Magdalen and trans- ferred him accordins; to an arrangement made by his father to the care of Mr. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister at Lausanne, in Switzerland, who was now charged with the continuance of his studies with the view of disengag- ing his mind fi'om his new ecclesiasti- cal opinions. A better choice of a preceptor could hardly have been made than this calm, clear-headed, mode- rate, benevolent M. Pavilliard, a man of learning and information, who speedily acquired an influence over his pupil, and in no long time, " the various articles of the Romish creed disappearing like a dream," brought him into full communion with the Protestant Church of Lausanne. " It was here," writes the mature Gibbon, "that I susjjended my religious in- quiries, acquiescing with implicit be- lief in the tenets and mysteries, Avhich are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants." But it was not only in his amended religious creed that Gibbon profited by the instructions of his new teacher. The whole current of his life was changed by this transfer to Switzer- land. Li place of the luxurious quar- ters of the fellow commoner at Magda- len, he was now, with a tightened purse, submitting to the small econo- mies of a meao-re residence in a dull street of an unhandsome town, with his studies to begin anew in the ele- ments of a foreign language. It was much to his credit that he accepted the new conditions with equanimity. Here, indeed, at Lausanne, his educa- tion as a source of power and strength may fairly be said to have begun. He not only became thoroughly acquaint- ed with French and accustomed to write and speak it, but he thought in it and incorporated its finer spirit with his mental processes. His Eng- lish prejudices disappeared under this foreign culture, and the sphere of his criticism on history and its methods were greatly enlarged. He made himself also a master of the Latin and acquired a knowledge of the Greek, which he afterwards perfected. Choos- ing some classic Latin or French au- thor, he would translate from one tongue into the other, and when the phrases had passed from his memory, would re-translate his work into the 80 EDWAED GIBBON. otlier language and compare the result witli the original from which he had started. In tliis way he became ac- complished in two foreign tongues. An intimate knowledge of Cicero led the way to his acquaintance with the whole series of the Latin classics, of which he made abstracts in French. A close study of logic gave dexterity to his critical faculties, which were set in motion and sharjjeued by the delight with which he perused the Provincial Letters of Pascal, from which he learn- ed the art of which he so often availed himself in his " History," of " manag- ing the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of ecclesiasti- ca solemnity." The confidence and ac- tivity of his mind were sho^^Ti in his ojiening a correspondence on points of learned inquiry with various distin- guished professors of Europe, in Avliich he sustained his part with credit. Al- together, the five years of his novitiate at Lausanne, were well spent, and when, at the end of this time, he was recalled hj his father to England, the foundation of his future literary great- ness may be said to have been already laid. An episode of his career as a student at Lausanne should not be forgotten. While there he fell in love with a learned and accomplished young lady. Mademoiselle Curchod, the daugh- ter of a Swiss rural pastor, and would, if liis father had not forliidden the un- ion, have made her his wife. " I sigh- ed," says he, with a philosophical equi- librium Avhich had now become his characteristic, " as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my woimd was insensibly healed l)y time, absence and the hab- its of a new life." The lady was after- wards married to a native of Geneva, a rich banker of Paris, M. Necker, who as the minister of finance of the dying French monarchy, acquii'ed an historic fame. Nor are the pair less known as the parents of that remarka- ble phenomenon in female intellect, the celebrated Madame De Stael. On his return to England Gibbon was greeted with all the warmth of her former affection by the kind aunt to whom he owed so much ; while his father, who had parted with him with an air of severity, was conciliated by the evident good effects of the pujjilage to which he had consigned him at Lausanne. In his mother-in- law, whom he had not before seen, he found a lady of understanding and es2}rit who appreciated his various ac- complishments. Under these auspices he Avas fi'ee to pursue with every ad- vantage of fortune, his own tastes and inclinations. The first emplojTnent which was thought of for him was that of secretary to a foreign embassy, if such a place could be found; and it was partly to advance his pretensions to an appointment of the kind that he set about the completion of his first pub- lication, an " Essay on the Study of Literature," written in the French language, in which it was now easier for him to compose than in his own tongue. After a deal of preparation and revision it was issued in London in 1761, when its author was at the age of twenty-four. In the autobio graphy will be found a retrospective criticism of the work, the candor of which, in its administration of praise and censure, is not without a certain kind of humor. While condemning' its EDWARD GIBBON. 81 confusion and occasional obscurity lie looks back upon it with pride as the creditable j^roduction of a young writer of two-and-twenty, "who had read with taste, who thinks with free- dom, and who wi-ites in a foreign lan- guage Avith sj)irit and elegance." The " Essay" also appeared in English, but the author speaks slightingly of the translation. The work, as might have been expected, was better received on the continent than in England. It at- tracted the attention of the savans of France, Holland and Switzerland, and paved the way for the writer's early admission into their ranks. While this work was in progress. Gibbon had been pursuing his studies with a diligence and zeal which had already become habitual to him and which not even the dissipations of a London season could effectually im- pair. On the receipt of the first quar- terly payment of a liberal allowance from his father, a large share of it was appropriated to his literary wants. " I cannot forget," says he, " the joy with which I exchanged a bank-note of twenty pounds for the twenty volumes of the Memoirs of the Academy of In- scriptions; nor would it have been easy, by any other expenditure of the same sum, to have procured so large and lasting a fund of rational amuse- ment." The choice indicates the scholar and the future historian. His reading of the classic authors and their com- mentators was continued, and by a judicious method he fully incorporated what he read with his own reflections. " After glancing my eye," he tells us, " over the design and order of a new book, I suspended the perusal till I 11 had finished the task of self-examina- tion, till I had revolved, in a solitary walk, all that I knew or believed, or had thought on the subject of the whole work, or of some particular chaj)ter: I was then qualified to dis- cern how much the author added to my original stock ; and if I was some- times satisfied by the agreement, I was sometimes armed by the opposition of our ideas." His studies were however broken in upon by what to a person of his tastes was a novel sort of life. It was the period of the Seven Years' "War, in which England particij^ated, and the old chronic alarm of an invasion of the country had stirred up the enlist- ment of a local militia. The patriot- ism of the Gibbons was ai'oused in their residence in Hampshire, and in the battalion which was raised in the county the father was commissioned as major, and the son as captain.. The work once undertaken, there was no easy or honorable mode of abandoning it, so that our embryo historian for two years and a-half was actively en gaged in furthering and superintend- ing the various encampments of his restless regiment through the southern counties from Winchester to South- amjjton. During these movements, in which his time was much engrossed by the bustling importance of the camp, there was, of course, little time for systematic reading, though that was not wholly resigned, while, as he fondly narrates, " on every march, in every journey, Horace was always in my pocket and often in my hand." Meanwhile, as his diary shows, he was planning futilre historical undertak- 82 EDWAED GIBBON. ings, meditating first the expedition of Charles VIII. of France into Italy; then topics of English history, as the crusade of Kichard I., the Barons' wars against John and Heniy III., the His- tory of Edward the Black Prince, and settling do\\Ti for a time, after a glance at Sir Philip Sidney, ujjon a kindred subject of mixed biography and his- tory, the life of Sir Walter Ealeigh. After extensive reading regarding this hero, finding, among other difficulties, " his fame confined to the narrow lim- its of our language and our island," he looked abroad for a wider subject in the History of the Liberty of the Swiss and the Republic of Florence under the Medici. All these show his passion for history, to which he was turning even his military occupation to account. "The discipline and evo- lutions of a modern battalion," he writes, " gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion ; and the captain of the Hampshii-e grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire." When the war was ended by the treaty of Paris, in 1763, the militia was disbanded and Gibbon was once more free to pursue his own inclina- tions. A month had hardly passed "when he Avas again on the continent en2;aged in the round of foreisju travel which was thought essential to com- plete the education of an English gen- tleman. Thi-ee or four months were passed in Paris in the study of its antiquities and literary resources, and in friendly communication with its men of letters, when the journey was piirsued to Switzerland and his now beloved Lausanne, where he was wel- comed with enthusiasm by his tutor Pavilliard, and lingered eleven months before he advanced into Italy. His classical studies had prepared him for the full appreciation of the latter country. He followed up its antiqui- ties with his usual energy, was im- pressed by all its wonders with some- thing of a poetical imagination, and when he reached Rome, the literary dreams of his life were ready to be concentrated upon one enduring vision, the realization of which in a perma- nent work was to give employment to the best years of his life. " It was at Rome," says he, "on the 15th of Oc- tober, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare- footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of wi'iting the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than of the empire ; and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work." Returning to England in the sum- mer of 1765, he resumed for a time his eusjacrements in the militia service with the rank of major and lieutenant colo- nel commandant ; and being joined by his fi'iend M. Deyverdun, an accom- plished gentleman with whom he had become intimate in Switzerland, he en- gaged with him in 1767, in the publi- cation of a species of review or critical joiu'ual entitled, "Memoires Litteraires de la Grand Bretagne," which reached EDWAED GIBBON. 83 a second volume tlie following year. To this miscellany Gibbon contributed among other papers a trenchant review of Lord Littelton's History of Henry II. The work, composed in French^ was not likely to meet with a large circulation; but it gained reputation for the writers and introduced them to the acquaintance of David Hiune, who was much admired as an historian by Gibbon, and who lived to enjoy with great unction the perusal of the first volume of his friend's Roman history. In his next publication, issued anony- mously in 1770, Gibbon entered the field in opposition to Warburton, in an attack upon that prelate's hypothesis, in his " Divine Legation of Moses," of a revelation of the Eleusinian Mysteries by Virgil, in the sixth book of the ^neid. This Essay was our author's first publication in English. After this his studies were steadily directed to the work of preparation for his great work on the history of Rome. By the death of his father he came into pos- session of a moderate fortune, and was fi'ee to pursue his own plans in life. His time was divided between city and country. At the residence of his inti- mate friend and constant correspond- ent Mr. Holroyd, afterwards Lord Sheffield, in Sussex, he found a home where he was always appreciated. In town he mingled freely in the fashion- able society of the metropolis, and in the literary clubs formed the acquaintance of the eminent wits of the time, John- son, Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith and the rest. Gathering his books about him in his house in London, he set seriously to work at the composition of the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Much of the learning re- quisite for his purpose he had already accumulated ; but a style was yet to be formed. "Many experiments," he tells us, " were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation : three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect." "Style," BufEon says, "is the man," and that of Gibbon truly represents his character — a com- posite union of his French and Eng- lish education, self-conscious, animat- ed and important. Language grew in his hands to be the most apt and forcible means for the adequate presentation of his subject, cover- ing the events of many centuries in the records of divers nations in every degree of culture fi-om the most refined civilization to the rudest bar- barism, and producing a living picture of the whole, which moves and breathes in every page. There is indeed a cer- tain mannerism in the language ; but this is common to the style of great authors and marks its individuality. It is certainly not a model for imita- tion on ordinary subjects ; but in the privileged hands of Gibbon it is an instrument of great power, capable of conveying the finest meanings, distin- guished by its philosojjhical acumen, which has frequently the force of wit, and, above all, to be admired for its march to "the Dorian sound of flutes and, soft recorders," in the imposing progress of a grand historic narrative. Its condensation is wonderful. The most interesting details feed the curi- osity of the reader while they are 84 EDWAED GIBBON. never suffered to fati2:ue his attention. The work in its thousands of pages glitters with perpetual novelty. Fact and jihilosojahy are blended in happy union. It is one musical incantation from beginning to end. The industry of the author never flags ; his literary genius is never at faidt. In our author's previous studies we have seen something; of his half con- scious preparation for this Avork. As he approached his task more closely he applied himself with greater devo- tion to its special requirements. Geo- graphy, chronology, the study of medals and antiquities no less than the ordi- nary historic authorities were his con- stant care. His reading was indefati- gible ; so that when he began to write, his mind being fully charged with the subject, the most costly materials Avere on every side at hand for the construc- tion of his edifice. Two things are particularly noticeable in his language : one, the constant presentation of the object in the foreground of his sen- tences ; the other, the choice of motives which he steadily jaresents to the reader in his balancing of opinions. While engaged in the composition of the early portions of the history. Gibbon by family influence was re- turned to i^arliament for a borough. He sat in the House of Commons for several years, supporting steadily by his vote through the progress of the American question, the tory adminis- tration of Lord North, for whose per- sonal qualities he had the highest admiration. As usual, he was turning his experience to account for the great work of his life. " The eight sessions," Bays he, " that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian.'* A more immediately practical result was his appointment at the instance of Lord Loughborough as one of the Lords of Trade, which brought an addition to his income of between seven and eight hundred pounds per annum. This was continued for three years, when it was brought to an end by the fall of Lord North's administration, which closed Gibbon's parliamentary career. The reception of his histoiy was, however, now making him amends for his losses. The first volume, pul:)- lished in 1776, was succeeded by the second and third in 1781, bringing the work to the fall of the Western Em- pire. Its success was immediate. " I am at a loss to describe it," writes Gibbon, " without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression (of the first volume) was exhausted in a few days ; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand ; and the bookseller's property was twice invaded by the j)irates of Dub- lin. My book was on every table, and almost on every toilette ; the historian Avas croAvned by the taste or fashion of the day ; nor was the general voice disturbed by the barking of any pro- fane critic." The word " profane " is marked by the author's italics and re- fers to the storm of censure Avith Avhich the chapters on the Early Progress of Christianity were greeted by the critics of a more sacred order, at the head of AA^hom may be ranked Bishop Watson, whose reply was entitled " An Apology for Christianity." While alloAving Gibbon every latitude for his ciiticism of the historical conditions of his theme. ED W ART) GIBBON. S.T exceptions may certainly be taken to tlie contemptuous spirit witli wliicli he often approached the subject ; his lack of sympathy with its higher elements, and his departure in this instance from the usual course of his philosophical fairness. Nor less is to be censured a certain pruriency in his treatment of the relations of the sexes, which occa- sionally mars his work. Setting aside these defects, his general accuracy has been admitted by the most learned in- vestigators of his theme, and in the library of every scholar his Avork will be found by the side of the great classic historians of the world. Gibbon remained in England till 1783, when he removed to Lausanne, his old retreat, with the intention of making the place his permanent re- sidence. The motives which led to this change were varied. Much was to be gained on the score of leisure and independence ; he would be free from the political and other distrac- tions of London, and at liberty to de- vote his best powers to the completion of his literary task ; while, on the score of economy, the income, which was hardly sufficient for the claims of so- ciety in England, more than met every liberal requisition in Switzerland. The comj)anioushlp of his friend Mr. Dey- verdun, who had invited him to share his habitation in Lausanne, offered to him the comforts and resources of a home. Gibbon undertook to support the expenses of the house, which Avas situated in one of the finest parts of the toAvn, overlooking the Lake of Geneva and the mountains beyond. Kere he brought his books and added to their number ; a picked collection of some six or seven thousand volumes. It was a full twelvemonth, however, as he informs us. before he " could re sume the thread of regular and daily industry." Then, with all his re- sources at command, his Avork proceed- ed apace. The morning hours Avere regularly given to it, and he seldom allowed it to exceed the day, only at the last, Avhen he Avas anxious for its ■completion, permitting it to trespass upon the evening. At the end of three years, the great labor was accom- plished. " I have presumed," says he in his Memoir, in allusion to a passage already cited, " to mark the moment of conception : I shall now commem- orate the hour of my final deliver- ance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, be- tAveen the hours of eleA'en and tweh^e, that I Avrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took scA^eral turns in a her'ceaii or covered walk of acacias, which commands a jjrospect of the country, the lake and the mountains. The air was tempe- rate, the sky was serene, the sih-er orlj of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I Avill not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and, a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatso- ever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." Thus was brought to a close this 86 EDWAED GIBBON. noble work, embracing a period of tliii*teen centuries, and connecting the great eras of ancient and modern civili- zation. It begins with a review of the prosperity of the Eoman Empire in the age of the Antonines, and ends with a picture of the renewed glories of the imperial city in its present as- pect, when its " footsteps of heroes, the relics, not of superstition, but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new race of pilgrims from the remote and once savage countries of the north. Of these pilgrims," he says in conclu- sion in a retrospective glance at the entire work, " the attention will be excited by a history of the decline and fall of the Roman Emjjii-e ; the great- est, perhaps, and most awful scene, in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are con- nected with many of the events most interesting in human annals : the art- ful policy of the Caesars, who long maintained the name and imacre of a free repul)lic ; the disorders of military despotism ; the rise, establishment and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of the monarchy ; the invasion and settle- ments of the barbarians of Germany and Scythia ; the institutions of the civil law ; the character and religion of Mahomet ; the temporal sovereignty of the Popes ; the restoration and de- cay of the Western Empire of Charle- magne ; the crusades of the Latins in the East ; the conquest of the Saracens and Turks ; the ruin of the Greek Empire ; the state and revolutions of Eome in the middle age." Having finished his work. Gibbon proceeded to England to superintend its issue from the press. The new por- tion, equal in extent to the old, formed three quarto volumes. It was given to the public on the fifty-first anniver- sary of the author's birthday, the fes- tival being celebrated l)y a literary dinner at the publisher's, Mr. Cadell's, at which a poem by Hayley was read, in which the historian was vaguely complimented by association with Newton and Shakespeare. A better tribute to his fame is the silent and enduring admiration of successive generations of readers- and the zeal of able translators and editors like Guizot and Milman, in assisting their compre- hension of his work. Returning to Lausanne, Gibbon re- mained there till 1793, when he again visited his fi-iend Lord Sheffield in England. He was now afflicted with a troublesome dropsical affection, which he had long neglected, and which he was at length compelled to submit to medical treatment. The surgeons gave him some relief, but were unable to cure the malady, under the effects of which he sunk rapidly at last, closing his days at his temporary lodgings in London on the 16th of January, 1794. ^iiarcc anfonuftL MARIE ANTOINETTE. MARIE ANTOINETTE was born at Vienna, November 2d, 1753, the daughter of Francis of Lorraine, Emperor of Germany, and of Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and Empress of Germany. Persons whose curiosity or credulity may incline them to regard what, after the event, are brought up as ominous coincidences, may be struck with the circumstance noticed by her biographers, that the birth of the ill-fated Queen of France occurred on the same day with that which is darkly marked in the calen- dar as that of the destruction of Lis- bon by the earthquake, an event which Ion a: excited a fearful interest in the European community. It was indeed a troubled world into which Marie Antoinette was born. After unprece- dented queenly eftbrts which have gained her a distinguished name among the royal heroines of the world, Maria Theresa, having vigorously defended her Austrian dominions and maintain- ed a resolute struggle with Frederic the Great, had seen her husband raised to the rank of Emperor, and the long European contest in which she had been engaged terminated by the treaty of Aix La Chapelle recognizing her succession and leaving her with the ex- ception of Silesia in enjoyment of her coveted territories. After a brief in- terval, the Seven Years' War, in which Austria was associated with France and Russia against Prussia, had fol- lowed, closing in 1763, and two years later, by the death of her husband Francis I., her son Joseph succeeding him as Emperor, she was left during the life-time of the latter ii'ee to repair the injuries of war by devoting herself to the peaceful welfare of her legiti- mate subjects, a task, with the bold work of reform which it required, hardly less hazardous as to its results than the contests of the battle-field. If Austria had gained nothing by the wars just concluded, France had lost much in the cession to England of Canada and her other North American colonies. To regain the lost prestige of France her minister for foreign af- fairs, the Duke de Choiseul, clung all the closer to his favorite policy, the alliance with Austria, and to advance the interests of the nation in this direc- tion, early projected a marriage be- tween Louis, the grandson of Louis XV., and heir to the French throne, (87) 88 MARIE AKTOIWETTE. and Marie Antoinette, the dauglatei" of Maria Theresa. Wlien tliis affair was brought about by negotiation, Louis was a youth of fifteen, and his intend- ed bride a year younger, and the mar- riage had been contemplated for some time Ijefore, as we learn from a letter wi-itten by the Empress Queen to her 3'oung son-in-law just before the nuj)' tials, in which she says, " I have brought her uj) with this design ; for I have, long foreseen that she would share your destiny." What that education had been we may gather fi'om the revelations in the Memoirs of the Queen by her intimate friend Madame Campan. According to her account it had been much necr- lected. She tells of the pretences put forth in the Austrian court of the princesses answering addresses in Latin, Avhen in reality they did not understand a single word of the lan- guage, and of a dramng being shown as the work of Marie Antoinette to the French Ambassador sent to draw up the articles for her marriage con- tract, when she had not put a pencil to it. She had acquired in her youth, however — no mean attainment — a good knowledge of Italian, having been taught by no less a person than the Abbe Metastasio, many of whose great works were produced during his prolonged residence at Vienna. Of music, that necessary accom2")lishment of a court, she appears before her arrival in France to have learnt little. French, she spoke fluently without writing it correctly, though some ex- traordinary means had been taken to secure this branch of her education. Her mother, the Empress Queen, had provided for her two French actors as teachers, one for pronunciation, the other for taste in singing ; but as ob- jection was made in France to the lat- ter on account of his bad character, an ecclesiastic, the Abbe de Vermond, was chosen, whose influence over his pupil is described as unfavorable in suljsequently leading her to treat with contempt the requirements of the French court. The preliminary arrangements of betrothal, involving a great deal of state ceremony having been duly gone through with, the time came to con- duct the archduchess to Paris to accom- plish the marriage. The journey took place early in May, 1770. Leaving Vi- enna in an imposing procession, with loud expressions of regret on the part of the pojiulace, she was received on ' the frontier of France near Kehl, in a splendid pavilion erected for the occa sion, on a small island in the Rhine. The building consisted of a large saloon with two inner rooms, one of which was assigned to the princess and her com2:»anions from Vienna, the other to the titled personages who were to compose her court attendants in Paris, the Comitcss de Noailles, her lady of honor ; the Duchess de Cosse , . her tire woman ; four ladies of the bed- chamber; a gentleman usher, and among others, the Bishop of Chartres, her chief ahnoner. Here a peculiar cere- mony was observed. The princess, ac- cording to prescribed etiquette was dis- robed of all that she had worn on the journey, that on entering the new kingdom she might retain nothing be- longing to a foreign court. When par- tially undressed she came forward and MAEIE ANTOINETTE. 89 threw herself into the arms of the Coxintess do Noailles, soliciting in the most affectionate manner her guidance and support. She was then invested in the brilliant paraphernalia becom- ing her position at the French coiu't. Among the witnesses of these festivi- ties on the Rhine was one obser'S'er, whose record of the scene, from the part he was afterwards to play in the world, is one of the memorable inci- dents of history. This was the poet Goethe, then a youth of twenty who had recently come to pursue his uni- versity studies at Strasburg. Sensi- tive then as ever to the claims and as- sociations of art, he tells us how he was shocked to see in the costly deco- rations of the pavilion, the cartoons of Raphael, worked in tapestry, thrust into the side chambers while the main saloon was hung with tapestries worked after pictures of modei'n French artists. Nor was this all. The subjects of the latter struck him as sin- gularly incongruous. " These pictures were the history of Jason, Medea and Creusa — consequently a story of a most wi'etched marriage. To the left of the throne was seen the bride struggling against a horril^le death, surrounded by persons full of sympa- thetic grief; to the right stood the father, horror-struck at the murdered babes at his feet ; whilst the fury in her dragon car, drove through the air. ' What ! ' I exclaimed, regardless of bystanders ; ' can they so thoughtlessly place before the eyes of a young queen, on her first setting foot in her domin- ions, the representation of the most horrible marriage perhaps that ever was consummated ! Is there among the 12 architects and decorators no one man who understands that pictures rqpre- sent somethincj — that they work upon the mind and feelings — that they pro- duce impressions and excite forebod- ings? It is as if they had sent a ghastly spectre to meet this lovely, and as we hear most joyous, lady at the very frontiers ! ' "* At that time there was in the gayety of the scene and the French court little encouragment for foreboding, and if any attention was paid to the remonstrances of Goethe, it was probably only to smile at the eagerness of the youthful dilettante art student. He was a thinker, how- ever, accustomed to penetrate beneath the surface and not be imposed upon by the shows of things. He yielded willingly everything of admiration which could be demanded for the in- teresting sight of the young princess whose "beauteous and lofty mien, as charming as it was dignified," he after wards recalled, but he could not fail to brand in his satiric verse the artifice by which a show of prosperity was kept up in the removing far from sight of the gay company, the halt, the lame and the blind, who might have thronged the way. In some lines writ- ten in French he contTasted the advent of our Saviour, who came relieving the sick and deformed, with that of the princess at which the unfortunate suft'erers were made to disappear. Journeying towards the capital the princess was met at Compiegne by the reigning monarch with his grandson, the dauphin to whom she was betroth- ed, and by whom she was conducted to Versailles, where the marriage took *Life of Goethe, by Lewes, Am. Ed., Vol. I., p. 97. 90 MAEIE ANTOINETTE. place on tlie 16th of May, amidst the most imposing festivities. An ill- omened accident however maiTed the rejoicings in Paris. A brilliant display of fii-eworks was to be exhibited on the Place Louis Quinze, in the centre of the city, and a huge scaffold had been erected for the purpose. On the night of the expected disj)lay the vast crowd of the great city were thronged round the spot to witness the brilliant show, when suddenly the platform was discovered to be on fire, and the flames spread with rapidity, setting off the fireworks in all directions, scattering death and teiTor through the masses. The injury directly inflicted by the fly- ing bolts was terrific, and the masses were trampled down in vain efforts to escape. More than fifty were kill ed, and over tkree hundred severely wounded in this disaster. The newly mamed dauphiness was at this moment ap- proaching the scene to share in the en- joyments of the people. She showed her feeling for the calamity by joining with her husband in sending their whole income for the year to the fami- lies of the sufferers. Moved to tears by the disaster, one of the ladies her attendants, to relieve her thoughts by substituting another emotion than that of pity, remarked that among the dead there had been found a number of thieves with their pockets filled with watches and other valuables which they had stolen in the crowd, adding that they had been well punished. " Ah, no ! " was the reply of the dau- phiness, " they died l>y the side of honest people." The impression made upon the court and people by the dauphiness was highly favorable. She carried herself, even at this early period, with an aii of grace and nobility. Louis XV. , who had miserably spent his life in devotion to beauty was enchanted with her. " All his conversation," we are told by Madame Campan, " was about her graces, her vivacity, and the apt- ness of her repartees. She was yet more successful with the royal family when they beheld her shorn of the splendor of the diamonds with which she had been adorned during the ear- liest days of her marriage. When clothed in a light dress of gauze or taffety, she was compared to the Ve- nus de Medici and the Atalanta of the Marly gardens. Poets sang her charms, 2;)ainters attemjjted to copy her features. An ingenious idea of one of the latter was rewarded by Louis XV. The pain- ter's fancy had led him to jjlace the portrait of Marie Antoinette in the heart of a full-blown rose. This ad- miration naturally excited the jealousy of the profligate court favorite, Madame du Barry, whose political influence with the king was still powerful. She was opposed to the minister, the Duke of Choiseul, and with his fall a few months after the wedding of the dauphiness, the latter lost a much needed friendly supporter and guide to her inexperi- ence. Her chief adviser was now the Abbe de Vermond, who, having been her tutor before marriage, became her private secretary and confidant after. "Intoxicated," ^v^'ites Madame Cam- pan, " with the reception he had met with at the Court of Vienna, and hav- ing till then seen nothing of grandeur, the Abbe de Vermond admired and valued no other customs than those of MARIE AJS^TOINETTE. 91 the imperial family ; lie ridiculed tlie etiquette of the house of Bourbon in- cessantly; the young dauphiness was constantly invited by his sarcasms to get rid of it, and it was he who first induced her to suppress an infinity of practices of which he could discern neither the prudence nor the political aim." The court was ruled by eti- quette, and that of the most tedious and oppressive character. Nothing was to be done except in a prescribed way with the most rigid formalities. The dauphiness, gay and imjjulsive, and natural in her actions, was per- petually rebuked by the chief lady of her attendants, or rather the leading person appointed to guard her move- ments, the virtuous and ever punctili- ous Countess de Noailles, a duenna worthy of the old court of Spain, where these personal restrictions were carried to their utmost possible excess. The lively daujihiness gave this lady the title of Madame V Etiquette, and whenever opportunity presented, sought relief from her oppressive cere- monial. Her life was really an im- prisonment governed by oppressive court usages, which all, in a certain Avay, the king and his mistresses in- cluded, submitted to, while they were avowedly violating every law of pro- priety and morality on which the cus- toms were founded. It is pleasing to read, as we often may, in the accounts of the early life of Marie Antoinette, how her generous nature at times found vent for itself in extraordinary acts of kindness and charity. Once, when she was hunting in the forest of Fontaine- bleau, an old peasant was wounded by the stag. On the instant, jumping from her open can'iage, she placed the injured man in it with his wife and children and had the family taken back to their cot- tage. Some little time after she was found in her room with this old man, in the humblest manner staunching the blood which issued from a wound in his hand with her handkerchief, which she had torn up for the purpose. He had received some hurt in moving a heavy piece of furniture at her request. On another later occasion, a little country boy, four or five years old, of a pleas- ing appearance, with large blue eyes and fine light hair, narrowly escaped being tramj)ed upon by getting under the feet of her horses, as she was driven out for an airing. The child was saved, and its grandmother came out of her cottage by the roadside to receive it; when the queen — for the incident occurred after she had come to the throne — stood up in the carriage and claimed the boy as her own, put in her way by Providence. Finding his mother was not alive, she under- took to provide for him herself, and bore him home on her knees, the boy violently kicking and screaming the whole time. A few days afterwards he was to be seen in the palace, his woollen cap and wooden shoes ex- changed for the court finery of a frock trimmed with lace, a rose-colored sash with silver fringe, and a hat decorated with feathers. He was looked aftei till he grew up and disj^layed some character, joining the rejjuljlican anuy to obviate any prejudice which might exist against him as the queen's favor ite, and meeting his death at the bat- tle of Jemappes. Acts like these show the impulses of 92 MAEIE ANTOINETTE. the AYoman. Though in her early years, while she was simply the dauphiness, she had for companions the two brothers of her husband with their princesses, they were comjjelled to maintain the utmost secrecy in so simple a matter as engaging in the amusements of a theatrical entertainment among them- selves, in which they acted the chief parts, the daujihin being the only spec- tator. The performance had at least one good effect, if, as is stated, it awak- ened the dauphin to a proper appre- ciation of the charming qualities of his bride, to which he appeared for some time after their marrias-e to have been insensible. Now came the event which was to mark an era in the breaking up of the old system. Louis XV., in his long j'eign of fifty years, commencing with the honorable administration of Fleury, had as he advanced plunged the nation deeper and deeper in financial embar- rassments, while in his surrender to his discreditable court favorites and mis- tresses, the Marchioness de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, and other intrigues of the vilest character, he had set the nation the example of the grossest licentiousness. The vices, hand- ed down in a long succession of royal immoralities, tolerated in history by a certain outward brilliancy, had culmi- nated in the utter degradation of the court. The country was on the verge of bankruptcy, the opj^ression of the privileged classes had reached its height; the whole system of govern- ment was rotten ; and if the nation was to be preserved, it could only be by the casting off of the old, and the infu- sion of new life into every de2:)artment of the administration. At this crisiS; at the age of twenty, Louis XVL, a j)edantic youth, with little capacity of insight to supply the lack of experi- ence, came to the throne. His op- portunity consisted solely in his free- dom from the vices of his grandfather. For an old worn-out debauchee the nation was to receive as its head an uncorrupted well-meaning youth ; who also brought to the throne in exchange for the evil influences of an unj^rinei- pled courtesan, who had been elevated from the dregs of society, the hopes and prestige of the daughter of a noble house in a queen, whose beauty and brilliant bearing might well have warm- ed the heart of the most gallant country in Europe. Li other times they might have passed through this exalted life with credit to themselves and glory to the nation. In the age in which their lot was cast, two things were Avanting to them, a thorough comj^rehensiou of the needs of the period, with ability to direct its issues. Failing in these, their course was uncertain, shifting, insin- cere, and though not Avithout a pro- found pathetic interest, inevitably leading to the most ignominious disas- ter. " Beautiful Highborn," chants the prose lyrist of our modern histori- cal literature, Thomas Carlyle, when writing of Marie Antoinette, " that wert so foully hui'led low. TIty fault in the French Revolution, was that thou wert the symbol of the sin and misery of a thousand years ; that with Saint Bartholomews and Jacqueries, with Gabelles and Dragonades and Parcs-aux-cerfs, the heart of mankind was filled full, — and foamed over into all-involving madness. To no Napo- MAPJE ANTOINETTE. 93 leou, to no Cromwell wert thou wed- ded : such sit not in the highest rank of themselves ; are raised on high by the shaking and confounding of all ranks ! As poor peasants, how happy, worthy had ye two been ! But by evil desti- ny ye were made a King and Queen of; and so are become an astonish- ment and a by-word to all times." The same vivid pen has pictured in words of fire the horrors of the death- bed of the departing king, and the greedy haste of the courtiers in usher- ing in his successor. " Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out ; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extin- guish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality; sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void immensity; tmie is done and all the scaffolding of time falls wrecked with hideous clan- gor round thy soul : the pale kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is ajjpointed thee ! Uuhajipy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on this bed of weariness, what a thought is thine ! Purgatory and Ilell-fire, now all too possible, in the prosj^ect ; in the retrospect,- — alas, what thing dids't thou do that were not better undone ; what mortal didst thou generously help ; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on ? Do the ' five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields, from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram, — crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters ? Miser- able man ! thou ' hast done e\ il as thou couldst : ' thy whole existence seems one hideoiis abortion and mis- take of nature, the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Grifian devouring the works of men ; daily dragging virgins to thy cave ; — clad also in scales that no spear would pierce ; no spear but Death's ? A griffin not fabulous but real ! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for thee. * * * It is now the 10th of May, 1774. He will soon have done now. This tenth May-day falls into the loathsome sick-bed ; but dull, un- noticed there : for they that look out of the windows are quite darkened ; the cistern-wheel moves discordant on its axis ; Life, like a spent steed, is panting towards the goal. In their remote apartments Dauphin and Dau- phiness stand road-ready ; all grooms and equerries booted and spurred : waiting for some signal to escape the house of pestilence. And hark ! across the CEil-de-Beuf, what sound is that ; sound 'terribly, and absolutely like thunder V It is the rush of the whole court, rushing as in wager, to salute the new Sovereigns. Hail to your Majesties ! The Dauphin and Dau- phiness are King and Queen ! Over- powered with many emotions, they two fall on their knees together, and, Avitli streaming tears, exclaim : ' O God, guide us, protect us, we are too young to reign.' " * So Marie Antoinette became the Queen of France. The new reign was * The French Revolution, Book I., Ch. iv. 9t MAEIE ANTOINETTE. hailed with acclamations by the people. The king was at least free from the gross vices of his predecessor, and the miserable influence of such creatures as Du Barry was at an end. The government, however, could not as easily throw off the encumbrance of the vast debt which the preceding pro- fligacy and corruption had heajjed upon it. Monopoly and restriction every- where prevailed ; the demands upon the people in one form or another of taxation were every day becoming greater, while the means of paying them were less. Every department of the administration was encumbered with privileged abuses. With all his insensibility, the new sovereign could not fail to perceive these evils, and in the ap23ointment of the experienced and philosophic Turgot, an economist in advance of the times, to the high office of comptroller general of finance, he gave a pledge to the people that their interests would not be disregard- ed. The difficulties and embarrass- ments, ending in his overthrow, which the minister experienced in cariying out his work of reform, which con- sisted simply in abolishing odious re- strictions fettering the industry of the country, and reducing the expenditure, to avoid bankruptcy, disclosed the evils under which the nation was suf- fering from the oppression of the privileged classes, and the little hope there was of effecting any improve- ment with their concurrence. They were unwilling to yield anything. The court also was embarrassed by its old traditions and cumbrous machinery of ceremonial, which, outliving its ases, became an encouragement of the very evils it was originally contrived to prevent. If its various social con- trivances had one object to secure more than another, it was the protection of the character of those within their sphere ; but the whole system had now degenerated according to its necessary tendencies into a vexatious, burden- some formalism, inviting suspicion, detraction and slander. In the open life of most court circles of the jjresent day the character of Marie Antoinette would be understood and aj)preciated, her vivacity or folly would be taken at their proper value, and her harmless fi'eedoms, though they might subject her to the charge of levity and thoughtlessness unbecoming the re- sponsibility of her station, could not, however misrepresented, long be mis- taken for vice and criminality. It is singular, showing the hold the court traditions had upon the mind of the French peojile, that, while they were sighing for freedom and entertaining the wildest dreams of natural liberty, they were holding the queen to the strictest requirements of an artificial court, and condemning her for the most innocent actions. On one occasion, early in her reign, she expressed a de- sire to see the sun rise, a phenomenon which she had never before witnessed, and a party was arranged for the purjiose, in Avhich she took the precau- tion to include the ladies attending on her person to accomjiany her, at three o'clock in the morning to the heights of the gardens of Marly — a simple enough proceeding, which was travestied in a wicked and licentious ballad, attri- buting to her the worst motives. This was circulated by her enemies MARIE AlSTOESfETTE. 95 vvlio never lost an opportunity of ca- inmniatins; lier. Instances of this kind might be multiplied fi'om her Memoirs. The motive of such hostilities appears to have been supplied in the jealousies of various ladies about the court whom she had taken little pains to conciliate, in the general dislike to the Austrian alliance, and, when the question of political liberty was fully before the people, her natural and irrepressible leaning to the cause of the aristocracy and monarchy. It is curious to note the etiquette which was practised at the French court in the days immediately preced- ing: the Revolution. One of the cus- toms which Marie Antoinette abolish- ed in coming to the throne was that of dining every day in public, when, ac- cording to ancient usage, the queen was waited upon only by persons of her own sex, titled ladies, who pre- sented the plates kneeling — a spectacle highly attractive to country people, who had thronged to see the dau- phiness undergoing this ceremony. There were others of a more private nature which she could not so well escajie. Madam Campan gives an amusing account of the absurd pro- ceedings attending the queen's toilette, "It was a master-piece of etiquette; eveiy thing done on the occasion was in a prescribed form. Both the lady of honor and the tire-woman usually at- tended and officiated, assisted by the first femme de chamhre and two in- ferior attendants. The tire- woman put on the petticoat, and handed the gown to the queen. The lady of honor poured out the water for her hands, and put on her body linen. When a princess of the royal family happened to be present while the queen was dressing, the lady of honor yielded to her the latter act of office, but still did not yield it directly to the princess of the blood ; in such a case, the lady of honor was accustomed to present the linen to the chief lady in waiting, who, in her turn, handed it to the princess of the blood. Each of these ladies observed these rules scrupulously, as affecting her rights. One winter's day it happened that the queen, who was entirely undressed, was Just going to put on her body linen ; I held it ready unfolded for her ; the lady of honor came in, slipped off her gloves, and took it. A rustling was heard at the door ; it was opened : and in came the Duchess d'Orleans ; she took her gloves off, and came forward to take the gar- ment ; but as it would have been wi-ong in the lady of honor to hand it to her, she gave it to me, and I handed it to the princess : a further noLse — it was the Countess de Provence ; the Duchess d'Orleans handed her the linen. All this while the queen kept her arms crossed upon her bosom, and appeared to feel cold : Madame observed her uncom- fortable situation, and merely laying down her handkerchief, without taking off her gloves, she put on the linen, and in doing so knocked the queen's cap off. The queen laughed to conceal hei impatience, but not until she had mut- tered several times : ' How disagree- able ! how tiresome ! ' " It is not surprising that the queen uttered this exclamation, for the pecu- liar incident just related was but one of a series of similar annoyances, which in one relation or another might hap- 96 MARIE ANTOINETTE. pen any hour of the day. From morn- ing till night, before she arose and after she was installed in her royal bed, eti- quette was continually at her elbow. The manoeuvres of the toilet were more circumstantial than the rites of an an- cient Roman sacrifice, and quite as sa- cred and obligatory. This matter of dress was an affair of the highest mo- ment, a sort of public transaction taking place at high noon, a state performance to be witnessed in due order and se- quence by princes of the blood, cajv tains of the guards and other great officers. The king's brothers, the Count de Provence and the Count d' Artois, we read, came very generally to pay their respects while the queen's hair was di-essing, and if these princes had any sense of humor, it must have l)een something amazing to them to witness the erection on the human head of that proud edifice, puffed up by hidden contrivances and decorated by such su- perb millinery and flower and feather- work beyond the art of any painted savage. The queen, it must be ac- knowledged, took kindly to this sj^ecies of manufacture. Early in her reign, by the kind intervention of the Duchess de Chartres, contrary to all precedent, a famous milliner fi-om the outer world of the great city, Mademoiselle Bertin, was introduced into the royal house- hold, with whom the queen planned an infinity of new dresses, — a new fashion every day, to the equal delight and distraction of the fashionable society •of Paris. " Every one," we are told, " wished to have the same dress as the queen, and to wear the feathers and flowers to Avhich her beauty, then in its brilliancy, lent an indescribable charm. The expenditure of young women was necessarily much increased ; mothers and husbands murmured at it ; some giddy women contracted debts , imjileasant domestic scenes occurred; in many families quarrels arose; in others, affection was extinguished ; and the general report was, that the queen Avould be the ruin of all the French ladies." Connected with this extravaijance of dress there arose a great scandal, much to the detriment of the queen, though, in reality'', she was not at all responsible for it. This was the com- l^licated aftair, famous in law and his- tory, of The Diamond Necklace, a curi- ous embroglio of roguery, implicating various notable jiersonages, and for a time apparently the queen, while she suffered not for any act of her own but for being involved in an evil system of things which rendered so stupen- dous a fraud a possible achievement. The story at every turn of its many involutions, throws a wondrous light upon the state of society in France at the period. We can but indicate its general outline, referring the reader for the entire plot to the energetic dra- matic dithyrambic narrative of Car- Ijde. Tlie main agent in the jilot, though not the prime mover, was that strange personage, of the dying mon- archy. Prince Louis de Rohan, a profli- gate nobleman who had by family in- fluence and intrigue gathered to him- self a great many extraordinary honors and distinctions with splendid emolu- ments, Ai'chbishop ofStrasbourg,Grand Almoner of France, Commander of the Holy Ghost, Cardinal, Commendatorof St. Wast d' Arras, "one of the fattest MARIE ANTOINETTE. 97 benefices," says Cailyle, " here below." In the early part of his career he had been remarkable for his dissipation; as he advanced in life, he played the courtier and became ambitious. At the age of thirty-six he had the honor on behalf of the nation of receiving Marie Antoinette on her first arrival in France, and subsequently, while she remained the dauphiness, was sent am- bassador to Vienna, where he main- tained an amazing style of pomp and display, till his extravagance brought him dee23ly in debt. He was no favor- ite with the emjDress queen, who de- spised his profligacy, so unbecoming his sacred character, and would have had him recalled. He moreover of- fended the dauphiness by a witticism in one of his dispatches reflecting on her mother in relation to one of the least defensible acts of her reign, de- scribing Maria Theresa standing with the handkerchief in one hand weeping for the woes of Poland, and with the sword in the other ready to divide the land and take her share. This was sent to the last minister of Louis XV., D' Aiguillon, who communicated it to the king and he to Du Barry, when it became the jest of the day among the courtiers. Marie Antoinette, it is said, never forgave this. She may very well, too, have had a natural dislike to the perpetrator of the sarcasm. However this may be, when she became queen, De Rohan, greatly to his chagrin, was refused admittance at court. To be compelled to remain outside of that charmed circle was a perpetual tonnent to a man of his tastes and dispositions. His rapid preferments and rise to the dignity of Lord Cardinal would seem 13 to have made him little amends for the exclusion. We are now to be introduced to an other personage, more remarkable in her way than the cardinal in his, a bold adventuress, one of the boldest who ever displayed the arts and capa- city of unsexed womanhood. This was the Countess Lamotte, as she was call- ed, with royal blood in her veins, in an illegitimate way, a descendant of one of the numerous mistresses of Henry H. of France. Her ancestor, Saint Remi, had been enriclied and the family had kept up its state for several genera- tions till it had fallen into utter worth- lessness and bankruptcy, and its latest representative, Jeanne, a little girl, is one day picked up, a beggar on the highway, by the Countess Boulainvil- liers, and under her patronage becomes, to quote the nomenclature of Carlyle, " a nondescript of mantua-maker, sou- brette, court beggar, fine lady, abigail, and scion-of-royalty," — a person, in fine, with natural and acquired tastes, pas- sions and propensities, needing of all things money for their support. As a compliment to her royal ancestry, the court, grown economical or indifferent, after so many generations, grants her a poor thirty pounds a-year. Looking round for ways and means, her first thought is to visit the jjlace of the alienated possessions of her family, in hoj^es to discover possible flaws in the title, which comes to nothing. All that she gains there is a husband, a private in the army, and thus she becom&s Madame Lamotte, or, as she styles her- self, dignifying her plebeian help-mate, the Countess Lamotte. A few years pass, Lamotte is no longer a soldier, 98 MARIE ANTOINETTE. Ms wife's patroness, the Countess, is dead, and witli her pension about dou- bled, all insufficient for her wants, Ma- dame, or the Countess Lamotte is living in humble quarters on the edge of the court in the town of Versailles. Still, with an eye to her family deserts or pretensions, she one day goes to his eminence, the Cardinal Rohan, a proper person as she thinks, in his capacity of Grand Almoner to gain her some more adequate allowance from the royal treasury. Tlie cardinal, affected doubt- less by her piquant address, — for, with- out being beautiful, she had a coun- tenance which her intellect or artful manners could make attractive, — ^was moved to reply, not by an advance of money, of which, ^vith all his revenues, he appears never to have had any sur- plus, but with the advice to appeal to the queen. In recommending this re- source, he esjiressed his great disap- pointment that he had not access to her presence to assist in the application. Lamotte, whose natural keenness ad- versity had sharjiened, saw thoroughly into the character of the cardinal, and gigantic as the game was, quite unap- proachable to a meaner intellect, resolv- ed in the consciousness of her strength to make him her dupe. Her knowledge of the court and her means of access to several of its inferior servants, with the occurrence at this time of an extra- ordinary opportunity, were the means, to her, all things considered, of one of the boldest and most successful at- tempts ever made on human credulity. The opportunity was the chance in some dexterous way of getting posses- sion of a necklace of diamonds, quite capable of being converted into the handsome sum of about four hundred thousand dollars in gold, for such a thing is not to be profared by estima- ting it in a paper currency. Allowing for the difference of values, it might probably be estimated in this year, 1872, at about half a million. The preparation of this magnificent work had been the one idea, to surpass all others of his princely constructions of this sort, of tlie court jeweler, M. Boch- mer. He had held that position in the days of Louis XV., and the necklace was his clief d'euvre^ not too expensive for the enormous waste of that era, or for the revenues lavished upon the court mistress Du Barry, for whose or- namentation it had been intended. As pictured in an ordinary rejjresentation before us in common printers' ink from a wood-cut, it quite glorifies the page with its sparkling drops of light. It must have been indeed a brilliant ob- ject to look upon. Here is Carlyle's description of it from the engraving. " A row of seventeen glorious dia-' monds, as large almost as fillierts, en- circle, not too tightly, the neck, a first time. Looser, gracefully fastened thrice to these, a three-wreathed festoon, and pendants enough (sim2ile pear-sliaped, multifile star-shaped, or clustering am- orphous) encircle it, enwreath it, a sec- ond time. Loosest of all, softly flowing round from behind, in priceless cate- nary, rush down two broad threefold rows ; seem to knot themselves round a very queen of diamonds on the bo som ; then rush on, again separated, as if there were length in jilenty ; the very tassels of them were a fortune for some men. And now lastly, two other in- expressible threefold rows, also with MAEIE ANTOINETTE. 99 tlieir tassels, will, when the necklace is on and clasped, unite themselves l)e- hind into a douLly inexpressible six- fold row ; and so stream down, together or asunder, over the hind-neck, — we may fancy, like lambent Zodiacal or Aurora-Borealis fii'e." A work like this, in tradesman's phrase, was locking up a great deal of money, and its owner, a tradesman, must needs be anxious for its sale. It was naturally offered at the new court — something worthy the attire of the youthful brilliant Austrian queen, but though there were vanity and expense enough left, retrenchment was the order of the day, and, in comparison with previous reigns, royalty was poor and j)arsimonious. Earlier ministers of finance might have managed it, but the budgets of Turgot and Necker had no place for such an item, and the peoiile were on the track of these ex- travagances with a fearful vengeance in store. To the credit of Marie An- toinette, she gave no countenance to its acceptance, remarking, on the pro- ject being brought before her, that " we have more need of seventy-fours than of necklaces." She advised its being broken up ; but this was to sac- rifice the idea of its constructor. He was not yet ready to abandon the greatest achievement of his career. He would not, or could not, solve the pro- blem for himself. There was one, how- ever, at hand ready enough to do it — the Countess Lamotte, both able and willing. A necessary preliminary, the cardinal, was already in her toils. Ke- turning to De Rohan a few days after the interview inv/hich he had advised her to have recourse to the queen, she informs him that she had obtained ad- mittance to her, been favorably re- ceived, and taken the opportunity to speak of the grief of the cardinal in his exclusion from the royal favor, and obtain permission to present his vindi- cation. The cardinal accordingly made her the medium of his apology, and received in return a note, appa- rently in the queen's writing, ex2:)res- sing her satisfaction at learning that he was innocent, and promising at some indefinite future time the audience he solicited, in the mean time enjoining him to be discreet. The bait was swallowed, and hence- forth the cardinal, who of all men on earth should have had the best eye for trickery, was but a puppet in the hands of this intriguing woman. The correspondence was continued ad libi- tum^ the artful messenger, from her ready resources, having a supply of sufiiciently sjoecious answers ready on demand. Presently, in judicious se- quence, the money card is played and wins. The queen commissions the Grand Almoner to borrow for her sixty thousand francs for a charitable object, and the sum is paid, as requested, into the hands of Lamotte. A second ap- plication for a like sum succeeds equally well — payments for the time being made in royal letters of thanks. The Lamottes, thus handsomely pro- vided with the means, set up an es- tablishment at Versailles, and, that the cardinal might not observe it, and thus have his suspicious aroused, he is saga- ciously advised by a letter from the queen to visit his diocese in Alsace, which he does. Successful negotiations like these ino MAEIE AKTOIISTETTE. encouraged a move to get possession of the necklace, a fascinating object sufficient to call fortli the hest powers of the most consummate roguery. Her show of living at Versailles l^eihg attributed to favors received from the queen, Lamotte, through an emissary, began to approach the jeweler Boch- mer on the subject of the diamonds, and gets him to think she might assist in the negotiation at court. Presently she announces to him that an eminent personage has been commissioned to purchase on behalf of the crown. The cardinal is sent for, and on his arrival in Paris is told that the queen wishes him, as a special mark of her favor, to buy the necklace for her without the knowledge of her husband, and that she will pay for it out of her income. He receives an authorization from her, pledges himself for the whole amount, promises quarterly payments, and the jewelers seeing the queen's authority, and understanding that he is acting confidentially for her, place the neck- lace in his hands. Arrangements are now made for the delivery of the jewel. This Lamotte contrives shall take place at her house at Versailles, to be there given by her to a messenger of the queen, the cardinal being present to witness the transaction. He arrives at dusk with a valet bearing the casket containing the necklace ; it is placed in her hands, and the confidential valet of the queen arriving, receives it and bears it away — the cardinal looking through the glazed window of an al- cove in the apartment, satisfying him- self of the identity of the receiver. It is high time for some recognition from the queen. This is prettily prepared by Lamotte in evasive approaches tc an interview. On a pi'evious occasion the cardinal had accompanied her in a midnight visit to the gardens of Ver- sailles — there beinu; much talk and idle scandal of the queen's summer walks and musical parties there at that hour, and as he appeared to be near the royal person in the obscurity, she hurries away seemingly frightened at the approach of some members of the court, dropping, however a rose for his eminence, with the cheering words : " You know what that means." This, thoiigh evasive as the pursuit of the unapproachable in dreams, feeds his hopes for the time. When the neck- lace has been delivered, Lamotte in- vites the cardinal to take his place among the courtiers in the gallery of the CEil-de-Boeuf, where she has ob served the queen has a customary motion of the head as she passes through the throng on her way to the chapel. This of course is to be inter preted as a special mark of regard for the cardinal. He perceives it, and accepts it as such. Another royal mandate again sends him out of the way to Alsace, while Lamotte de- spatches the necklace to her husband in London, where it is broken uj) and sold for the benefit of the conspirators. The day of payment now arrives, and the jeweler looks to the cardinal ; out of the proceeds of the jewels Lamotte produces a sum of money as interest, and the principal . is not forthcoming Meanwhile the jewelers have made their acknowledgments for the trans- action at court, where nothing of course is known about it, and the whole bur- den is thrown upon the cardinal. At MARIE ANTOINETTE. 101 Jengtli, in August, 1785, a year and a half after the lieginning of those trans- actions with Lamotte — so long had he been the victim of pretences and for- geries — the cardinal is summoned to the presence of the king and queen, and confronted by the dej^ositions of the jewelers and the financier from whom he had boiTOwed money for the queen. He pleads the royal authority for his act, and the writing on which he relies is pronounced a forgery. He is arrested and sent to the Bastille, whither shortly the Countess Lamotte is sent after him. Not long af tei', Vil- lette, who personated the queen's valet, and Mademoiselle Leguet, who repre- sented the queen herself in the gardens of Versailles, the deceivers of the car- dinal, are also arrested. The plot now becomes clearer, and, when the whole case is before the court, the prince car- dinal is acquitted of fraud, though sent into exile by the king for his mischievous absurdities, while Lamotte expiates her wickedness with flogging, branding on both shoulders, and a sentence of imprisonment for life, which is not fully executed, for after a while she escapes to England, and one day, from some unseemly cause, is found precipitated from a high win- dow to the street pavement, which ends her remarkable career. Anecdotes might be multiplied of the gay life of the court during the first ten or fifteen years of the new reign, of the festive entertainments at Versailles, of the queen's innocent pastoral amusements in her little re- treat of the Petit Trianon, where she sought to realize that rustic simplicity which had been the dream of the poets of the age — a court simplicity, howev- er, with music from the opera, in the background, laces and ribbons un- known to the genuine Arcadia, and the graces and affectations of the fash- ionable world ; but we must refer the reader for these things to the gossijiing pages of Madame Campan. In her Me- moirs, much may be read of the petty jealousies of the court, great often in their results; of the gradual ascendan- cy gained by the queen over her hus- band, who at first neglected her ; of ber intimacy with the members of her household, the Princess de Lamballe and the Countess de Polignac ; of her mortification in the early years of her reign when she was childless, and of the delight of the nation, when after the birth of a princess in 1778, in 1781 an heir was born to the throne. On the latter occasion, the artificers and traders of Paris went to Versailles in a body, carrying the various insignia of their callings, with some humorous accessories. Even the chimney sweep- ers, we are told, turned out, " quite as well dressed as those that appear upon the stage, carrying an ornamented chimney, at the top of which was perch- ed one of the smallest of their fra- ternity. Th e chairmen carried a sedan, highly gilt, in which were to be seen a handsome nurse and a little dauphin. The smiths hammered away upon an anvil, the shoemakers finished off a little pair of boots for the dauphin, and the tailors a little suit of the uni- form of his regiment. The king en- joyed the sight for a long time from the balcony. So general was the en- thusiasm that (the police not having carefully examined the procession) the 102 MAEIE ANTOINETTE. grave-diggers had the impudence to send their deputation also, with the emble- matic devices of their ill-omened occu- pation " — ill omened surely, if read by the light of the dire revolutionary pro- ceedings of the few succeeding years. The market women were received — a dejiutation from them — into the queen's bed-room, one of them read- ing to her an address written by La Harpe, piqiiantly engraved on the in- side of a fan, which she handed to her without any embarrassment. This was peculiarly French. Fancy an English market - woman approaching Queen Victoria on such an occasion in that style ! The fish - women, the ])ois- sardes, spoke their addresses and sang their sonsfs in honor of the event, with abundant good humor and gayety. Fol- lowing upon these rejoicings came the bustle and stir of the American war, which the queen is said to have made popular at court, favoring the negotia- tor Beaumarchais, and humoring the extraordinary attentions paid to Frank- lin. The time came when she looked back upon this enthusiasm as a source of evil to the dynasty in the encouragement of the democracy which Avas sweeping away old institutions; but meantime the danger was unsus- pected, and France was avenged on the American continent for her loss of Canada to England. The personal appearance of the queen at this time has been described by La- martine : " On her arrival in France, her beauty had dazzled the whole kingdom, a beauty then in all its sj)lendor. The two children whom she had given to the throne, far from impairing her good looks, added to the attractions of her person, that character of mater- nal majesty which so well becomes the mother of a nation. The presentiment of misfortunes, the recollection of the tragic scenes of Versailles, the uneasi- ness of each day somewhat diminished her youthful freshness. She was tall, slim and graceful, — a real daughter of Tyrol. Her naturally majestic car- riage in no Avay impaired the grace of her movements: her neck rising ele- gantly and distinctly from her shoul- ders gave expression to every attitude. The woman was perceptible beneath the C[ueen, the tenderness of heart was not lost in the elevation of her destiny. Her liojht brown hair was long and silky, her forehead, high and rather projecting, was united to her teraj^les by those fine curves which give so much delicacy and expression to that seat of thought or the soul in women ; her ej^es of that clear blue which recall the skies of the North or the waters of the Danube; an aquiline nose, with nostrils open and slightly projecting where emotions palpitate and courage is evidenced ; a large mouth, bril- liant teeth, Austrian lips, that is, pro- jecting and well defined ; an oval countenance, animated, varying, im jiassioned, and the ensemlAe of these features replete with that exj^ression, impossible to describe, which emanates from the look, the shades, the reflec- tions of the face, which encompasses with an iris, like that of the wai-m and tinted vapor which bathes objects in full sunlight — the extreme loveliness which the ideal conveys, and which by giving it life increases its attrac- tion. With all these charms, a soul yearning to attach itself a heart easi- MAEIE ANTOINETTE. 103 ly moved, but yet earnest in desire to itself; a pensive and intelligent smile, with nothing of vacuity in it, nothing of preference or mere acquaintanceship in it, because it felt itself worthy of friendships. Such was Marie Antoinette as a woman." In the political events which suc- ceeded so rapidly, ending in the over- throw of the monarchy, the queen, in common with the kinof, was charsred with duplicity in her professions of adherence to the will of the nation. Though of a generous kindly nature, her inclinations, when the issue came to be made, were naturally with the aristocratic party. It would be expect- ing perhajis too much of any sovereign at that day to yield gracefully to such sweeping reforms as were then insti- tuted in France. The deeds of violence and lawlessness which were daily com- mitted by the people, might well seem to justify the conviction that the only safety for the state was in power and repression, and that this force belonged of right to the ancient monarchy. The misfortune of the kini; was the emi- gration of members of the court and the formation of a hostile party outside of the country, to whose assistance he was looking for redress. " In forming a judgment on the temble events of the French Revolution," says a recent writer, " it must never be forgotten that this disposition of the court to rely on foreign aid and to subdue the revolution by foreign influence, was the inexpiable crime of the king and queen. It was ridiculous to talk of Louis as a tyrant. It was an outrage to ascribe to the queen, as a woman, any single action which would not have become the noblest of her sex. Whatever may have been the short- comings of her Austrian education and the frivolity of her early habits, mis- fortune and danger awakened in her a force of will, a clearness of intelligence, a power of language, and a strength of soul, which speak with imperishable eloquence in every line of the letters written by her after the commence- ment of the revolution. But, although these qualities of the queen do her the highest honor, and in this respect the publication of her most private corres- pondence can only exalt her reputation, yet these papers render still more appa- rent the fact that she had but little po litical judgment, and that neither she nor the king ever conceived the possi- bility of dealing honestly with the rev- olution. At each successive stage in that protracted tragedy, there was a secret policy always at work in the oj)posite sense, and that policy, relying mainly on external suj^jport was their destruc- tion."* It was more, however, by sufferance than action that the queen was to be distinguished in those days of trial. Events moved rapidly. There was hardly more than a single step from the freedom of the court to the re- straint of the prison, and the part borne by Marie Antoinette, at any time, could scarcely be anything more than that of a simple adviser of the king, in a feeble, capricious sort of way. She had no senate to influence, no army to command, no royal will to execute. The policy of the nation was shaped by its necessities. Bankruptcy * Art. Correspondence of Marie Antoinette, Ediuburyh litoitw, AprU, 18U6. 104 MAEIE ANTOINETTE. and starvation were the imperial ru- lers, and were inexorable in their de- mands for reform. All that could be done to palliate or defer had been done in previous reigns. The waters had been dammed up beyond the power of human engineery to control them fur- ther, and the deluge was inevitable. The only escape for royalty was timely abdication, if the reformers had been willing to spare it as an agent of their work. The king was made both an instrument and a sacrifice. His forced acquiescence in the constitution, which he had no real intention to respect, gave a sanction to the revolutionary proceedings, and henceforth, after a few shiftless efforts at intrigue, and one weak attemjjt to escaj^e, there was nothing left but submission. The story of the last years of the royal family in this constantly dark- ening revolutionary period is one of the saddest narratives in all histoiy. In their powerless, helpless condition, the insincerity forced upon them by their position, might surely have been forgiven. To bring them to death was an unnecessary crime ; to accompany that death with the brutalities which attended it, was the act of fiends. The first scene in this a;reat drama in which Marie Antoinette prominently figures, is in its first act in that incursion of the mob at Versailles, in the night of the 5th of October, 1789, when driven from her bed-chamber, she appeared in early morning in a balcony of the pa- lace with her children, confronting the infuriated crowd in the court-yard be- low. When they ordered the children away, as if to shut out from their view that appeal to tenderness and j^ity, the queen ajipeared alone before them, her hands and eyes raised to heaven, appa- rently expecting instant death — an act of heroism which must have tamed for the moment the ferocity of her perse- cutors, whose wanton, libellous detrac- tion, assailing her fair fame, was even more cruel than their personal vio- lence. The ignominious escort to Paris follows uj^on this, and the prolonged virtual imprisonment in the palace of the Tuilleries, the king, shorn of his prerogatives, a puppet in the hands of the Assembly. Wearied at length of this anomalous position, in concert with the emigrant nobles, encouraged by the decision of the queen, in June, 1791, he endeavors to make his es- cape from the kingdom. The q^^een had been for some time busy in pre- paration for the departure. Madame Campan, who was still with her, was employed in getting together and for- warding to Brussels a complete ward- robe for the family. On the 20th, the king, with the queen, their children and his sister Elizabeth, leave the Tuil- leries clandestinely in flight for the frontier. The journey has been gene- rally well arranged, but failing in some of its details, chiefly through a slight loss of time on the route, the actual cause of disaster it is said being the king's persistence in stopi:)ing to gratify his appetite by eating a meal at a friend's house, is fatally checked, late in the evening of the 21st at Va- rennes. The king, showing himself from a window, has been recognized, and a band of young 2)atriots effect his capture. The party is brought back in triumph to the Tuilleries and guarded there more rigorously than before. MARIE ANTOINETTE. 105 Though untried, tliey are already vir- tually condemned, and their lives, in the rapid deterioration of political par- ties, are at the mercy of a mob. In vain has the king swoi'n to obey the Constitution, completed at last by the National Assembly. The Legislative Assembly, their successors, are more intolerant, and a mob, in the interest of the Republicans, on the 20th June, 1792, finds its way into the inner court of the Tuilleries, demanding conces- sions of the king, crowning his majesty with the red revolutionary cap, while the queen with difiiculty escajies wear- ing just such another, getting off by placing a tri -colored cockade in her head-dress. This is but child's play, however, to the events at the Tuille- ries of the 10th of August, one of the dark days of history, when the insur- rectionary factions, commencing the reign of terror, drove the royal family as their only escape from immediate massacre to take refuge in the National Assembly, while the faithful Swiss sruard laid down their lives in defence of the palace. The queen would have remained to risk their fate and there met death in defence of the crown ; but she was moved by an appeal for her children and submitted. The As- sembly decreed that the royal family should be lodged in the Temple, an ancient fortress or castle in the heart of the city. Here for a time, under strict confinement, making the best of their situation, the royal party, though suffering greatly, solaced their misfor- tunes by mutual acts of affection and kindness, till the king was separated from them. In December, he was car- ried forth to his trial by the Conven- tion which had succeeded to the As- sembly, and on the 21st suffered death at the hands of the public executioner, having previously been permitted the grace, or rather the final torture, of a parting interview with his family. Four months after the death of the king, the dauphin was separated from his mother in the Temple, and the queen was left with the king's sister, Madame Elizabeth, to endure the aggra- vated sorrows and humiliations heap- ed upon her. In August, 1793, she was removetl to the still more cruel prison of the Conciergerie, in the vaults of the Palace of Justice, and in Octoljer was led to the court above to undergo the mockery of a trial aggravated by the fiercest and most revolting indigni- ties. She endured all with a heroism worthy the daughter of Maria Theresa. The only charity she ex|)erienced, was in her speedy execution on the 1(3 th, when she was conducted amidst the jeers of the populace to the spot, the Place Louis Quinze, where, nine months befoi'e, the king had met his fate, and there, her last glance toward the Tem- ple, and her last thoughts on her chil- dren, she too suffered death by the guillotine. 1-i DAVID GARRICK. DAVID GAEmCK was born at the Angel Inn, Hereford, on the 19th February, 1716.* He was French by descent. His paternal grandfather, David Garric, or Garrique, a French Protestant of good family, had escaped to England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, reaching London on the 5th of October, 1685. There he was joined in the following December by his wife, who had taken a month to make the passage from Bordeaux in a wretched bark of fourteen tons, " with strong tempests, and at great peril of being lost." Such was the inveteracy of their persecutors, that, in effecting their own escape, these poor people had to leave behind them their only child, a boy called Peter, who was oiit at nurse at Bastide, near Bordeaux. It was not until May, 1687, that little Peter was restored to them by his nurse, Mary Mougnier, who came over to London with him. By this time a daughter had been born, and other sons and daughters followed ; but of a numerous family three alone surviv- ed — Peter, Jane, and David. David * This narrative is abridged from an admirar ble presentation of the career of Garrick in the Quarterly Review. (106) settled at Lisbon as a vnne mei chant, and Peter entered the army in 1706, His regiment was quartered at Lich- field ; and, some eighteen months after he received his commission, he married Arabella, the daughter of the Rev. Mr, Clough, vicar choral of the cathedral there. There was no fortune on either side, but much aifection. The usual result followed. Ten children were born in raj^id succession, of whom sev- en survived. Of these the third was David, who made his appearance some- what inopportunely, while his father, then a lieutenant of dragoons, was at Hereford on recruiting service. Lichfield was the home of the fami- ly. There was good blood on both sides of it, and they were admitted in- to the best society of the place, and held in deserved respect. David was a clever, bright boy ; of quick observa- tion, apt at mimicry, and of an enga ging temper. Such learning as the grammar - school of the town could give he obtained ; and his training here, and at Edial some years after- wards under his townsman Samuel Johnson, produced more of the fruits of a liberal education than commonly results even fi'om schooling of a more DAVID GAEEICK. 107 elaborate and costly kind. The occa- sional visits of a strolling troop of play- ers gave the future Roscius his first taste of the fascinations of the drama. To see was to resolve to emulate, and before he was eleven years old he dis- tinguished himself in the part of Ser- jeant Kite in a performance of Far- quhar's " Recruiting Ofiicer," organiz- ed for the amusement of their friends by his companions and himself. Meanwhile the cares of a numerous family were growing upon his parents. To meet its expenses, his father ex- changed from the dragoons, into a marching regiment, and went upon half-pay. Peter, the eldest boy, had gone into the Navy ; and ujjon the in- vitation of the uncle, whose name he bore, young David, then only eleven, was sent to Lisbon, apparently with the expectation that a provision for life would be made for him in his un- cle's business. But either his uncle had no such intention, or the boy found the occupation distasteful, for his stay in Portugal did not extend over many months. Short as it was, he succeeded in making himself popular there by his vivacity and talents. After dinner he would be set upon the table to recite to the guests passages from the plays they were familiar with at home. A very pleasant inmate he must have been in the house of his well-to-do bachelor uncle. No doubt he was sent home with something handsome in his pock- et ; and when a few years afterwards the uncle came back to England to die, he left his nephew 1000/., — twice as much as he gave to any others of the family. Garrick's father, who had for some years been making an ineffectual strug gle to keep his head above water iipon his half-pay, found he could do so no longer, and in 1731 he joined his regi' ment, which had been sent out to gar rison Gibraltar, leaving behind him his wife, broken in health, to face sin gle-handed the debts and duns, the worries and anxieties, of a large fami- ly. In her son David she found the best support. His heart and head were ever at work to soften her trials, and his gay spirit doubtless brighten- ed with many a smile the sad wistful- ness of her anxious face. The fare in her home was meagre, and the dresses of its inmates scaiity and well worn ; still there were loving hearts in it, which were di'awn closer together hj their very privations. But the poor lady's heart was away with the father. " I must tell my dear life and soul," she writes to him in a letter, which reads like a bit of Thackeray or Sterne, " that I am not able to live any longer -without him ; for I grow very jealous. But in the midst of all this I do not blame my dear. I have very sad dreams for you but I have the pleas- ure when I am up, to think, were I with you, how tender my dear would be to me ; nay was, -when I was with you last. O ! that I had you in my arms. I would tell my dear life how much I am his — A. G." Her husband had then been only two years gone. Three more weary years were to pass before she was to see him again. This was in 1736, and he returned, shattered in health and spirits, to die within little more than a year. One year more, and she, too, the sad faithful mother, whose " dear 108 DAVID GAREICK. life " was restored to her arms only to be taken from them T)y a sterner part- ing, was herself at rest. During his father's absence Garrick had not been idle. His busy brain and restless fancy had been laying up stores of observation for future use. He was a general favorite in the Lich- field circle — amusing the old, and head- ing the sports of the young — winning the hearts of all. Gilbert "Walmsley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court, a good and wise friend, who had known and loved him from childhood, took him under his - special care. On his suggestion, possibly by his help, Dav- id and his brother George were sent as pupils to Johnson's academy at Edial, to complete their studies in Latin and French. Garrick and Johnson had been friends before, and there was in- deed but seven years' difference in their ages. But Johnson even then impress- ed his pupil with a sense of superiority, which never afterwards left him ; while Garrick established an equally lasting hold upon the somewhat caj^ricious heart of his ungainly master. From time to time he was taken by friends to London, where, in the theatres that were to be the scenes of his future triumphs, he had opportunities of studying some of the leading perform- ers, whom he was afterwards to eclipse. Even in these early days the dream of coping with these favorites of the town had taken possession of him. But he kept it to himself, well knowing the shock he would have inflicted on the kind hearts at home, had he suggested to them the possibility of such a career for himself. By the time his father returned from Gibraltar Garrick was nineteen. A pro- fession must be chosen, and the law ap- j^ears to have been thought the fittest for a youth of so much readiness and address, and with an obviously unusu- al faculty of speech. Some fu^'thei' preliminary studies Avere, howevei, in- dispensable. He could not afford to go to either university, and in this strait his friend V^almsley bethought him of a " dear old friend " at Rochester, the Rev. Mr. Colson, afterward Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, a man ol em- inence in science, as a person most like- ly to give young Garrick the instruc- tion in " mathematics, philosoj^hy, and humane learning " which was deemed requisite to complete his education. To him, therefore, a letter was de- spatched, asking him to undertake the charge, from which we get an authen- tic and agreeable picture of the young fellow's character. " He is a very sensible fellow, and a good scholar, nineteen, of sober and good dispositions, and is as ingenious and promising a young man as ever I knew in my life. Few instructions on your side will do, and in the intervals of study he will he an agreeable com- panion for you. This young gentleman has been much with me, ever since he was a child, and I have taken much pleasure in instructing him, and have a great affection and esteem for him." Mr. Colson accepted the proposal ; but by the time the terms had been arrang- ed, another young native of Lichileld, in whom Walmsley felt no slight inter- est, had determined to move southward to try his fortunes, and was also to be brought under Mr. Colson's notice. This was Samuel Johnson, whose DAVID GAREICK. 109 Edial Academy liad by this time been starved out, but for whom London, the last hope of ambitious scholars, was still open. He had written his trage- dy of "Irene," and it had found pro- vincial admirers, Walmsley among the number, who thought a tragedy in verse the open sesame to fame and for- tune. For London, therefore, Johnson and Garrick started toijether — John- son, as he used afterwards to say, with two-pence-half-penny in his pocket, and Garrick with three halfpence in his ; a mocking exaggeration, not very wide, however, of the truth. For some reason not now known Garrick did not go to Mr. Colson in a week. On reaching town he lost no time in getting himself admitted to the Honorable Society of Lincoln's Inn (19th March, 1737) by payment of the admission fee, the only act of member- ship which he aj^pears ever to have performed. He stayed in London with Johnson for some time, and their fi- nances fell so low that they had to bor- row five pounds on their joint note from one Wilcox, a bookseller and acquaintance of Garrick's, who after- wards proved one of Johnson's best friends. Most probably Garrick's plans of study under Mr. Colson were disconcerted by the illness of his father, who died within a month after Garrick 'lad started from Lichfield. Nor was it antil the death soon afterwards of the Lisbon uncle, and the opening to Gar- /•ick of his £1000 legacy, that he found himself in a condition to incur that ex- pense. Late in 1737 he went to Roches- ter, and remained with Mr. Colson for some months, but with what advantage can be only matter of conjecture. Early in 1738 Garrick returned to Lichfield. By this time his brother Peter had left the navy, and returned home. There were five brothers and sisters to be provided for, so Peter and he clubljed their little fortunes, and set up in business as wine merchants in Lichfield and London. David, by this time tolerably familiar with the ways of town, and not unknown at the coffee-houses where his wines might be in demand, took charge of the London business. Vaults were taken in Dur- ham Yard, between the Strand and the river, where the Adelphi Terrace now stands,, and here Foote, in his usual vein of grotesque exaggeration, used to say, he had known the great actor " with three quarts of vinegar in the cellar, calling himself a wine mer- chant." Of Garrick at this period we get a vivid glimpse from Macklin, an estab- lished actor, who was then Garrick's inseparable friend, but was afterwards to prove a constant thorn in his side through life, and his most malignant detractor after death. Garrick " was then," as Macklin told his own bio- grapher Cooke, "a very sprightly young man, neatly made, of an express- ive countenance, and most agreeable manners." Mr. Cooke adds, uj^on the same authority : — " The stage possessed him wholly ; he could talk or think of nothing but the theatre ; and as they often dined together in select parties, Garrick rendered himself the idol of the meeting by his mimicry, anecdotes, etc. With other funds of information, he possessed a number of good travel ling stories " (with which his youthful voyage to Lisbon had apparently sup- 110 DAVID gaerice:. plied him), " whicli lie narrated, sir " (added the veteran), " in such a vein of pleasantry and rich humor, as I have seldom seen equalled." There could be only one conclusion to such a state of things. The wine business languished ; that it was not wholly ruined, and Garrick with it, shows that with all his love of society he was able to exercise great prudence and self-restraint. " Though on jilea- sure bent, he had a frugal mind." Early habits of self-denial, and the thoughts of the young brothers and sisters at Lichfield, were enough to check everything like extravagance, though they could not control the pas- sion which was hourly feeding itself upon the study of plays and inter- course with players, and bearing him onwards to the inevitable goal. Their society, and that of the wits and critics about town, were the natural element for talents such as his. He could even then turn an epigram or copy of verses, for which his friend Johnson would secure a place in the " Gentleman's Magazine." Paragrajihs of dramatic criticism frequently exercised his pen. He had a farce, " Lethe," accepted at Drury Lane, and another, " The Lying Valet," ready for the stage. Actors and managers were among his inti- mates. He had the entree behind the scenes at the two great houses, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and his his- trionic powers were so well recognized, that one evening, in 1740, when "Wood- ward was too ill to go on as harlequin, at the little theatre in Goodman's Fields, Garrick was allowed to take his place for the early scenes, and got jhrough them so well that the sub- stitution was not surmised by the audience. Nor had his been a mere lounger's delight in the pleasures of the theatre. The axiom that the stage is nought, which does not " hold the mirror up to nature," had taken deep hold upon his mind. But from the actual stage he found that nature, especially in the poetical drama, had all but vanished, and in its place had come a purely conventional and monotonous style of declamation, with a stereotyped system of action no less formal and unreal. There was a noble opening for any one who should have the courage and the gifts to return to nature and to truth, and Garrick felt that it was " in him " to effect the desired revolution. Nor was that reform far distant. The very next summer was to decide Garrick's career. His broodiugs were now to take actual shape. But before hazard- ing an appearance in London he wisely resolved to test his powers in the coun- try ; and with this view he went down to Ipswich with the company of Gif- fard, the manager of the Goodman's Fields Theatre, and made his appear- ance under the name of Lyddal as Aboan in Southern's tragedy of " Oroonoko." This he followed up by several other characters, both tragic and comic, none of them of first im- portance, but sufficient to give him ease on the stage, and at the same time enable him to ascertain wherein his strength lay. His success was unques- tionable, and decided him on ajipealing to a London audience. The quality in which Garrick then and throughout his career surpassed all his contemporaiies was the power DAYID GAERICK. Ill of kindling with tlie exigencies of the scene. He lost himself in his part. It spoke through him ; and the greater tlie play it demanded of emotion and passion, the more diversified the ex- pression and action for which it gave scope, the more brilliantly did his e-enius assert itself. His face answer- ed to his feelings, and its workings gave warning of his words before he uttered them ; his voice, melodious and full of tone, though far from strong, had the penetrating quality hard to define, but which is never wanting either in the great orator or the great actor ; and his figure, light, graceful, and well balanced, though under the average size, was equal to every de- mand which his impulsive nature made upon it. We can see all this in the portraits of him even at this early period. Only in those of a later date do we get some idea of the command- ing j)ower of his eyes, which not only held his audience like a spell, but con- trolled, with a power almost beyond endurance, his fellow performers in the scene. But fi'om the first the power must have been there. He had noted well all that was good in the professors of the art he was destined to revolutionize ; and he had learned, as men of ability do learn, even from their very defects, in what direction true excellence was to be sought for. Long afterwards he used to say that his own chief successes in " Richard the Third " were due to what he had learn- ed through watching Eyan, a very in- different actor, in the same part. Richard was the character he chose for his first London trial ; a choice made with a wise estimate of his own pow- ers, for the display of which it was eminently fitted. At this time the part was in the possession of Quin, whose "manner of heaving up his words, and labored action," as de- scribed by Davies, were the best of foils to the fiery energy and subtle varieties of expression with which Gar- rick was soon to make the public familiar. He appeared, by the usual venial fiction on similar occasions, as a " gentleman who never appeared on any stage." The house was not a great one ; still the audience was nu- merous enough to make the actor feel his triumph, and to spread the report of it widely. They were taken by sur- prise at first by a style at once so new and so consonant to nature. "To the just modulation of the words," says Davies, " and concurring expression of the features, from the genuine workings of nature, they had been strangers, at least for some time. But, after Mr. Garrick had gone through a variety of scenes, in which he gave evident proof of consummate art, and perfect knowledge of charac- ter, their doubts were turned into sur- prise and astonishment, from which they relieved themselves in loud and reiterated applause." A power like this was sure of rapid recognition in those days, when theatres formed a sort of fourth estate. Gar- rick's first appearance was on the 19th of October, 1741. He repeated the character the two following nights, then changed it for " Aboan," his first part of the Ipswich Series. The audi- ences were still moderate, and his sal- ary, a guinea a night, moderate in proportion. But fame had carried the 112 DAVID GARRICK. report of the new wonder from the obscure corner of the city, near the Minories, in which his friend Giffard's theatre was situated, to the wits and fashionable people in the "West-end. Richard Avas restored to the bills. " Goodman's Fields," says Davies, " was full of the splendors of St. James's and Grosvenor Square; the coaches of the nobility filled up the space from Temple Bar to White Chapel." What Garrick valued more than all this concourse of fashionables, men of high character and undoubted taste flocked to hear him ; and on the 2nd of November, Pope, ill and failing, who had come out early in the year to see Macklin's " Shyloek," and had re- cognized its excellence, was again tempted from his easy chair at Twick- enham by the rumor of a worthy suc- cessor having arisen to the Betterton and Booth of his early admiration. " I saw," said Garrick, describing the event long afterwards to the somewhat mag- niloquent Percival Stockdale, " our lit- tle poetical hero, dressed in black, seated in a side-box near the stage, and viewing me with a serious and earnest attention. His look shot and thrilled like lightning through my frame, and I had some hesitation in proceeding from anxiety and from joy. As Bich- ard gradually blazed forth, the house was in a roar of applause, and the con- spiring hand of Pope showered me with laurels." Pope returned to see him twice; and his verdict, which reached Garrick through Lord Orrery, shows how deeply he was impressed by Garrick's fi-esh and forcible style, and the genuine inspiration which animated his performance. " That young man never had his equal as an actor, and he will never have a rival.'' Pojie di'eaded that success would spoil him ; but Garrick's genius was not of the ungenuine kind, which is sjioiled by success. He knew only too well how far his best achievements fell short of what his imagination con- ceived. Others mischt think his de- lineations could not be improved. Not so he; for act as long as he might, there was no great part, in Shakespeare especially, which would not constantly present new details to elaborate, or suggest shades of significance or con- trast which had previously escaped him. The praise of old Mi-s. Porter, herself the greatest tragedian of her time, who had come up to town to see him fi'om her retirement in the col^ntry, must have spoken more eloquently to him than even Pope's broad eulogium, and in it, too, there was the prophecy of the " All hail, hereafter." " He is born an actor, and does more at his first appearance than ever anybody did with twenty years' practice ; and, good God, what will he be in time ! " The Duke of Argyle and Lord Cobham, great authorities in stage matters, pro- nounced him superior to Betterton. The very conflicts of opinion to which such high commendations gave rise were the best of fame for the young ar tist. They drew crowds to the theatre ; and even before the end of 1741, it was often far too small to accommodate the numbers that flocked for admittance. The humble salary of a guinea a night Avas clearly no adequate return for such merits. Gifi^ard offered him a share in the management upon equal terms; and Avithin the next feAv months the DAVID GAERICK. il3 foundation of the actor's ultimate great fortune was laid. Sucli success could not fail to pro- voke the jealousy of those performers who had hitherto occupied the fore- most ranks. It was a virtual condem- nation of all they had trained them- selves to think true acting. " If this young fellow is right, then we have all been wrong," said one, as if in that statement were included a final verdict against him. "This," remarked the sententious Quin, " is the wonder of a day ; Garrick is a new religion ; the people follow him as another White- field ; but they Avill soon return to church again." Return, however, they did not. A new era had begun ; and Garrick, whose ready pen did not al- ways do him such good service, was able to retort the sarcasm in a smart epigram, of which these two lines have kept their place in literature : " When doctrines meet with general approba- tion, It is not heresy but Reformation." While people were still in admira- tion at the tragic force of his Richard, he surprised them by the display of comic powers, scarcely less remarkable, in Clodio in the " Fop's Fortune," Fondlewife in Congreve's " Old Bache- lor," and other characters ; thus early demonstrating his own doctrine that " there must be comedy in the perfect actor of tragedy," of which he was af- terwards to furnish so brilliant an example. His lively farce of " The Lying Valet " (produced in December, 1741), established his reputation as a writer, at the same time that it gave him in Sharp a field for the airy viva- city, the ever-bubbling gayety of tone, 15 the talent of making witty things doubly witty by the way of saying them, for which he was afterwards so famous. Some of his friends (his townsman Newton, the future Bishop, then tutor to Lord Carpenter's son, among the number) thought his ap- pearance in such i^arts a mistake. "You, who are equal to the greatest parts, strangely demean yourself in acting anything that is low or little," he wrote, 18th January, 1742. "There are abundance of people who hit oft' low humor and succeed in the cox- comb and the bufl^oon very well ; but there is scarce one in an age who is capable of acting the hero in tragedy and the fine gentleman in comedy. Though you perform these parts never so well, yet there is not half the merit in excelling in them as in the others." Sound enough advice in the main and to actors of limited scope, and most jjolitic as a warning, by which Garrick profited, not to let himself down by playing merely farce parts. But there is no good reason why an actor of the requisite genius should not play Touch- stone as well as Othello, Sir Toby Belch as well as Coriolanus, with no more loss of caste than Shakespeare for hav. ing written them. But then there must be the requisite genius to justify the attempt. This Garrick had, as was soon afterwards proved, when he pass- ed from King Lear to Abel Drugger, in "The Alchemist," from Hamlet to Bayes in " The Rehearsal," and left his severest critics in doubt in which he was most to be admired. Indeed it was just this wide range of power, this Shakesperian multiformity of concep- tion, which was the secret of Garrick's 114 DAVID GAEEICK. greatness, and, after his death, made even the cynical Waljjole confess that lie was " the greatest actor that ever lived, both in comedy and tragedy." Newton himself was struck by this a few months later. He had just seen Garrick's Lear, and after giving him the opinion of certain friends that he far exceeded Booth in that character, and even equalled Betterton, he goes on to say : — "The thing that strikes me above all others is that variety in your act- ing, and your being so totally a differ- ent man in Lear from what you are in Richard. There is a sameness in every other actor. Gibber is something of a coxcoml) in everything : and Wolsey, Syphax, and lago, all smell strong of the essence of Lord Foppington. Booth was a philosopher in Cato, and was a philosopher in everything else ! His passion in Hotspur I hear was much of the same nature, whereas yours was an old man's passion, and an old man's voice and action ; and, in the four parts wherein I have seen you, Richard, Cha- mont, Bayes, and Lear, I never saw four actors more different from one another, than you are from yourself." His Lear, like his Richard, seems fi'om the first to have been superl). Cooke, indeed, in his " Memoir of Mack- liu" says the first and second perfor- mances of the part disappointed that severe critic. It did not sufficiently in- dicate the infirmities of the man " four- score and ujjwards " — the curse did not break down, as it should have done, in the impotence of rage — there was a lack of dignity in the prison scene, and so forth. Garrick took notes of JNIack- lin's critidsms on all these points, withdrew the play for six weeks, and restudied the character in the interval. Of the result on his next appearance Macklin always spoke with rapture. The curse in particular exceeded all he could have imagined; it seemed to electrify the audience with horror. The words " kill— kill— kill," echoed all the revenge of a frantic king, " whilst his pathos on discovering his daughter Cordelia drew tears of com- miseration fi'om the whole house. In short, sir, the little dog made it a, chej doiuvre, and a chef d'ceuvre it contin- ued to the end of his life." While the town was ringing with his triumphs, and his brain was still on fire with the fulfilment of his cher- ished dreams, Garrick did not forget his sober partner in business nor the other good folks at Lichfield, to Avhose genteel notions his becoming a stage- player, he knew, would be a terrible shock. The Ipswich performances had escaped their notice; and brother Peter, when in town soon afterwards, found him out of health and spirits. It was the miserable interim " between the acting of a dreadful thing, and the first motion" of it. Garrick, though he had quite made up his mind to go on the stage, was afi'aid to break the news to his family. But he did so the day after his dehut at Goodman's Fields while the plaudits of his audience were yet sounding in his ears, in a let- ter to his brother and partner, depre- cating his censure with an unassuming earnestness which speaks volumes for the modesty of the artist, and the simple and loving nature of the man : — ■ " My mind, " he writes, " (as you must know) has been always inclined DAVID GARRICK. 115 to the stage, nay, so strongly so that all my illness and lowuess of siiirits was owing to my want of resolution to tell you my thoughts when . here. Finding at last both my inclination and interest required some new way of life, I have chose the most a2;reeable to myself, and though I know you will be much displeased at me, yet I hope wheu you shall find that I may have the genius of an actor, without the vices, you will think the less severely of me, and not be ashamed to own me for a brother. . . Last night I played Richard the Third to the sur- prise of everybody, and as I shall make very near £300 per annum by it, and as it is really what I doat uj)on, I am resolved to pursue it." The wine business at Durham Yard, he explained, had not prospered — £400 of Garrick's small capital had been lost — and he saw no prospect of re- trieving it. He was prepared to make every reasonable arrangement with his brother about their partnership, and in his new career better fortune awaited him, of which his family should share the fruits. But the news spread dismay in the old home at Lich- field; their respectability was com- promised by one of their blood becom- ing a "harletry player," and getting mixed up with the loose morals and shifty ways of the theatrical fraternity. Before Peter's reply reached him, Gar- rick must have known that his fame was secure. But the tone of his re- joinder is still modest, though firm. "Writing again on the 27th, he assures his brother that even his friends, " who were at first surprised at my intent, by eeeing me on the stage, are now well convinced it was impossible to keep me off." As to company, " the best in town " were desirous of his, and he had received more civilities since he came on the stage than he ever did in all his life before. Leonidas Glover has been to see him every night, and goes about saying he had not seen acting for ten years before. " In short, were I to tell you what they say about me, 'twould be too vain, though I am now writing to a brother . . . I am sorry my sisters are under such uneasinesses, and, as I really love both them and you, will ever make it my study to appear your affectionate brother, D. Garrick." A less modest or more selfish man would have thrown off with some im- patience the weak scruples of his fam- ily about loss of caste. When they found their brother making his way in the highest quarters, and becoming well to do at the same time, the views of his family underwent a change. It was not, however, till the 2nd of De- cember, 1741, that Garrick threw off the mask and performed under his own name. By this time even they must have begun to doubt whether honor was not more likely to accrue to them than discredit fi-om the step which he had taken. But it must have been no small pain to him to have the vulgar estimate of his jDrofession thrown so remorselessly in his teeth by his own kindred. Garrick paid the actor's accustomed penalty for success by being overwork- ed. Between his first appearance in Oc- tober, 1741, and the following May, when the Goodman's Fields Theatre closed, he played no less than one hun 11(5 DAVID GAREICK. dred and tliirty-eiglit times, and for the most i^art in characters of the greatest weight and imjiortance in Loth tragedy and comedy. Among the former were Richard, Lear, Pierre ; among the lat- tei', Lord Foppington, in Gibber's " Careless Husband," Fondlewife and Bayes. The range of character and 2:)assion A\diich these parts covered was immense. To have played them at all, new as he was to the stage, was no common feat of industry, but only ge- nius of the most remarkable kind could have carried him through them, not only without injury, but with positive increase, to the high reputation his first performances had created. In Bayes he was nearly as popular as in Richard and Lear ; and he made the j)art sub- servient to his purpose of exposing the false and unnatural style into which actors had fallen, by making Bayes speak his turgid heroics in imitation of some of the leading performers. But when he found how the men whose faults he burlesqued — good, worthy men in their way — were liiade wretch- ed by seeing themselves, and what they did in all serioiisness, held uj) to derision, his naturally kind heart and good taste made him drop these imi- tations, Garrick's true vocation was to teach his brethren a purer style by his o\vTi example, not to dishearten them by ridicule. Mimicry, besides, as he well knew, is the lowest form of the actor's ai-t, and no mere mimic can be a great actor, for sincei-ity, not simulation, is at the root of all great- ness on the stage. The success of Garrick at Goodman's Fields emptied the patent houses at Co vent Garden and Drury Lane, and the patentees had recourse to the law to compel Giffard to close his theatre Garrick was secured for the next sea son at Drury Lane. But as that house did not open till September, and the peojjle of Dublin were impatient to see him, he started off for that city early in June, and remained there play- ing a round of his leading parts till the middle of Axigust. An epidemic which raged during the greater part of this time, caused by distress among the poor, and by the great heat, got the name of the Garrick Fever. But the epidemic which he really caused was not among the poor, but among the Avits and fine ladies of that then fashionaljle and lively city, who Avere not likely to be behind his English admirers in enthusiasm. He was be- rhymed and feted on all hands, and from them he got the title of Roscius, which to this hour is coiipled with his name. During this engagement he added Hamlet to his list of characters. Like his Richard and his Lear it was treated in a manner quite his own, and like them it was from the first a success, but was, of course, much .elaborated and modified in futui-e years. At Drury Lane Garrick found him- self associated with his old friend Macklin, who was deputy manager and with that " dallying and danger ous" beauty, Peg Woflington, under whose spell he appears to have fallen as early as 1740. As an actress she was admiralile for the life, the nature, and the grace which she threw into all she did, set off by a fine person, and a face, which, as her portraits show, though habitually pensive in its ex- pression, was capable of kindling into DAVID GAEEICK. in passion, or beaming with the sudden 'and fitful lights of feeling and fancy. She had been literally picked out of the streets of Dublin as a child crying " halfpenny salads," and trained by a rope-dancer, Madame Violaute, as one of a Lilliputian company, in which she figured in such parts as Captain Mac- heath. Like Rachel and many other celebrated women, she contrived, it is hard to say how, to educate herself, so that she could hold her OAvn in conver- sation in any society; and such Avas her natural ;ht. The march had continued from sunrise till about two o'clock in the afternoon, when, as the advanced column was ascending a rising ground covered with trees, a fire Avas opened upon it from two concealed ravines on either side. Then was felt the want of American experience in fighting with the Indian. Braddock in vain sent forward his men. They would not, or could not, fight against a hidden foe, while they themselves were presented in open view to the marksmen. Washington recommended the Virginia example of seeking pro- tection from the trees, but the general would not even then abandon his En- ropean tactics. The regulars stood in squads shooting their own companions before them. The result was an over- whelming defeat, astounding when the relative forces and eqiiipment of the two parties is considered. Braddock, who, amidst all his faults, did not lack courage, dii-ected his men while five horses were killed under him. Wash- ington was also in the thickest of the danger, losing two horses, while his clothes were pierced by four bullets. Many years afterwards, when he visited the region on a peaceful mission, an old Indian came to see him as a won- der. He had, he said, levelled his rifle 128 GEOEGE WASHrNGTOjS". so often at hun without effect, that he became persuaded he was under the sj)ecial protection of the Great Spirit, and gave up the attempt. Braddock at lene-th fell in the centre of the field fatally wounded. Nothing now re- mained l)ut flight. But four officers out of eighty-six were left alive and unwounded. Washington's first care was for the wounded general; his next employment, to ride to the reserve camp of Dunbar, forty miles, for aid and supplies. Returning Avith the re- quisite assistance, he met the wounded Braddock on the retreat. Painfully borne along the road, he survived the engagement several days, and reached the Great Meadows to die and be l)uried there by the broken remnant of his army. "Washington read the fune- ral service, the chaplain being disalded by a wound. Writing to his brother, he attributed his own protection, " be- yond all human probability or exjject- ation," to the " all-powerful dispensa- tions of Providence." The natural and pious sentiment was echoed, shortly after, from the pulj^it of the excellent Samuel Davies, in Hanover County, Virginia. " I may point," said he, in illustration of his patriotic purjDose of encouraging new recruits for the ser- vice, in words since that time often pronounced prophetic, " to that heroic youth. Colonel Washington, Avhom I cannot but hope Providence has hither- to preserved in so signal a manner for Bome important service to his country." The public attention of the province was now turned to Washington, as the best defender of the soil. His volun- tary service had expired, but he was Btill engaged as adjutant, in directing the levies from his residence at Mount Vernon, whence the Legislature soon called him to the chief command of the Virginia forces. He stipulated for thorough activity and discipline in the whole service, and accepted the office. The defence of the country, exposed to the fierce severities of savage warfare, was in his hands. He set the posts in order, organized forces, rallied recruits, and aj)pealed earnestly to the Assem- bly for vigorous means of relief. It was again a lesson for his after life Avhen a greater foe was to be pressing our more extended frontiers under his care, and the reluctance or weakness of the Virginia Legislature Avas to be reproduced, in an exaggerated form, in the imbecility of Congress. We shall thus behold Washington, eA'eryvA'here the patient child of experience, uuAvea- riedly conning his lesson, learning, from actual life, the statesman's knoAvl- edge of man and affairs. He Avas sent into this school of the Avorld early, for he Avas yet but tAventy-three, Avhen this guardianship of the State was placed upon his shoulders. We find him again jealous of autho- rity in the interests of the serA-ice. A certain Cajitain Dagworthy, in a small command at Fort Cumberland, refused obedience to orders, asserting his priA^- lege as a royal officer of the late cam- paign, and the question Avas ultimately referred to General Shirley, the com- mander-in-chief at Boston. Thither Washington himself carried his appeal, making his journey on horseback in the midst of Avinter, and had his vieAV of his superior authority confirmed. Returning immediately to Virginia, Colonel Washington continued his GEOEGE WASHINGTON. 129 employment in active military duties, struggling not less with the inefficient Assembly at home, whom he tried to arouse, than with the enemy abroad. It was a trying service, in which the commander, spite of every hardship, which he freely encountered, was sure to meet the rejOToach of the suffering public. The disinterested conduct of Washington proved no exception to the rule. He even experienced the in- gratitude of harsh newspaper com- ments, and thought for the moment of resignation ; but his ffiends, the noblest spirits in the colony, reassured him of theii" confidence, and he steadily went on. The arrival of Lord Loudoun, as commander-in-chief of his majesty's forces, seemed to offer some opjjortu- nity for more active operations, and Washiogton drew up a memorial of the affairs he had in charge for his in- struction, and met him in conference at Philadelphia. Little, however, re- sulted from these negotiations for the relief of Virgijiia, and AVashing- ton, exhausted Ijy his labors, was com- pelled to seek retirement at Mount Vernon, where he lay for some time prostrated by an attack of fever. In the next spring, of 1758, he was enabled to resume his command. The Virginia troojjs took the field, joined to the forces of the British general, Forbes, and the year, after various dis- astrous movements, which might have been better directed had the counsels of Washington prevailed, was signal- ized by the capture of Fort Du Quesne. Washington, with his Vii'ginians, tra- versed the ground whitened with the bones of his former comrades in Brad- dock's expedition, and with his entry 17 of the fort closed the French dominion on the Ohio. The war had taken another direction, on the Canadian frontier in New York, and Virginia was left in repose. Shortly after this event, in January, 1759, Washington was married to Mrs, Martha Custis, of the White House, county of New Kent. This lady, born in the same year with himself, and conse- quently in the full bloom of youthful womanhood, at twenty-seven, was the widow of a wealthy landed proprietor whose death had occurred three years before. Her maiden name was Dan dridge, and she was of Welsh descent. The prudence and gravity of her dis- position eminently fitted her to be the wife of Washington. She was her husband's sole executrix, and managed the complicated affairs of the estates which he had left, involving the raising of crops and sale of them in Europe, with ability. Her personal charms, too, in these days of her widowhood, are highly spoken of. The honeymoon was the inauguration of a new and pacific era of Washington's hitherto troubled military life. Yet even this repose proved the introduction to new public duties. With a sense of the obligations befitting a Vii'ginia gentle- man, Washington had offered himself to the suffrages of his fellow country men at Winchester, and been elected a member of the House of Burgesses. About the time of his man-iage, he took his seat, when an incident occur- red which has been often narrated. The Speaker, by a vote of the House, having been directed to return thanks to him for his eminent military ser- vices, at once performed the duty with 130 GEOEGE WASHmGTOK warmtli and eloquence. Wasliington rose to express his thanks, but, never voluble before the public, became too embarrassed to utter a syllable. " Sit down, Ml". Washington," was the courteous relief of the gentleman who had addressed him, "your modesty equals your valor, and that surjjasses the power of any language I possess." He continued a member of the House, diligently attending to its business till he was called to the work of the Revolution, in this way adding to his experiences in war, familiarity with the practical duties of a legislator and statesman. Fifteen years had been quietly passed at Mount Vernon, when the peace of provincial life began to be ruffled by a new agitation. France had formerly furnished the stirring theme of opposition and resistance when America poured out her best blood at the call of British statesmen, and helped to restore the falling great- ness of England. That same parlia- ment which had been so wonderfully revived when America seconded the call of Chatham, was now to inflict an insupportable wound upon her defend- ers. The seeds of the Revolution must be looked for in the previous war with France. There and then America be- came acquainted with her own powers, and the strength and weakness of British soldiers and placemen. To no one had the lesson been better taught than to Washington. By no one was it studied with more impartiality. There was no faction in his opposition. The traditions of his family, his friends, the provinces, were all in favor of allegi- ance to the British government. He had nothing in his composition of the disorganizing mind of a mere political agitator, a breeder of discontent. The interests of his large landed estates, and a revenue dependent upon exports, bound him to the British nation. But there was one principle in his nature stronger in its influence than all these material ties — the love of Justice ; and when Patrick Henry rose in the House of Burgesses, with his eloquent asser- tion of the rights of the colony in the matter of taxation, Washington was there in his seat to respond to the sentiment. To this memorable occasion, on the 29th May, 1765, has been referred the bii'th of that patriotic fervor in the mind of Washington, welcoming as it was developed a new order of things, which never rested till the liberties of the country were established on the firmest foundations of independence and civil order. He took part in the local Virginia resolutions, and on the meeting of the first Congress, in Phila- delphia went up to that honored body with Patrick Henry and Edmund Pen- dleton. He was at this time a finn, unyielding maintainer of the rights in controversy, and fully j^repared for any issue which might grow out of them ; but he was no revolutionist — for it Avas not in the nature of his mind to consider a demand for Justice a provo- cative to war. Again, in Vii'ginia after the adjotu-nment of Congress, in the important Convention at Rich- mond, he listens to the impetuous elo- quence of Patrick Henry. It was this body which set on foot a popular mili- tary organization in the colony, and Washington, who had previously given GEOEGE WASHINGTON. 131 his aid to the independent companies, was a member of the committee to re- port the plan. A few days later, he writes to his brother, John Augustine, wlio was employed in training a com- pany, that he would " very cheerfully accept the honor of commanding it, if occasion require it to be drawn out." The second Continental Congress, of which Washington was also a member, met at Philadelphia in May, 1775, its members gathering to the deliberations with throbbing hearts, the musketry of Lexington ringing in their ears. The overtures of war by the British troops in Massachusetts had gathered a little provincial army about Boston ; a national organization was a measure no longer of choice, but of necessity. A commander-in-chief was to be ap- pointed, and though the selection was not altogether free fi'om local jealousies, the superior merit of Washington was seconded by the superior patriotism of the Congress, and on the 15th of June he was unanimously elected by ballot to the high position. His modesty in accepting the office was as noticeable as his fitness for it. He was not the man to flinch from any duty, because it was hazardous; but it is worth knowing, that we may form a due esti- mate of his character, that he felt to the quick the full force of the sacrifices of ease and happiness that he was making, and the new difficulties he was inevitably to encounter. He was so impressed with the probabilities of failm'e, and so little disposed to vaunt his own powers, that he begged gen- tlemen in the House to remember, " lest some unlucky event should happen un- favorable to his reputation," that he thought himself, " with the utmost sin- cerity, unequal to the command he was honored with." With a manly spirit of patriotic independence, worthy the highest eulogy, he declared his inten- tion to keep an exact account of his public expenses, and accept nothing more for his services — a resolution which was faithfully kept to the let- ter. With these disinterested prelim- inaries, he proceeded to Cambridge, and took command of the army on the 3d of July. Bunker Hill had been fought, establishing the valor of the native militia, and the leaguer of Bos- ton was already formed, though with inadequate forces. There was excel- lent individual material in the men, but everything was to be done for their organization and equipment. Above all, there was an absolute want of powder. It was impossible to make any serious attempt upon the British in Boston, but the utmost heroism was shown in cutting off their resources and hemming them in. Humble as were these inefficient means in the present, the prospect of the future was darkened by the short enlistments of the army, which were made only for the year, Congress expecting in that time a favorable answer to their second petition to the king. The new recruits came in slowly, and means were feebly supplied, but Washington, bent on ac- tion, determined upon an attack. For this pui'pose, he took possession of and fortified Dorchester Heights, and pre- pared to assail the town. The British were making an attempt to dislodge him, which was deferred by a storm; and General Howe, having already re> solved to evacuate the city, a few days 132 GEOEGE WASnmGTON. after, on the l7tli of March, iuglori- ously sailed away with his troops to Halifax. The next day, Washington entered the to^vn in triumph. Thus ended the first epoch of his revolution- ary campaigns. There had l)een little opportunity for brilliant action, but great difficulties had been overcome with a more honorable persistence, and a substantial benefit had been gained. The full extent of the services of Wash- ington became known only to his pos- terity, since it was absolutely neces- sary at the time to conceal the difficul- ties under which he labored ; but the country saw and felt enough to extol his fame and award him an honest meed of gratitude. A special vote of Congress gave expression to the senti- ment, and a gold medal, tearing the head of Washington, and on the re- verse the legend Host i bus j^rimo fit- gatis, was ordered by that body to commemorate the event. We must now follow the commander rapidly to another scene of ojierations, remembering that any detailed notice, however brief, of Washington's mili- tary operations during the war, would expand this biographical sketch into a historical volume. New York was evi- dently to be the next object of attack, and thither Washington gathei-ed his forces, and made every available means of defence on land. By the beginning of July, when the Declaration of Inde- jieudence was received in camp. Gene- ral Howe had made his apjjearance in the lower bay from Halifax, where he was speedily joined by his brother, Lord Howe, the admiral, who came bearing ineffectual propositions for re- concilation. Additional reinforcements to the royal troops on Staten Island arrived from England ; a landino- wag CD ^ O made by the well-equipped army on Long Island, and a battle was immi- nent. Washington, who had his head,- cjuarters in New York, made vigilant preparations around the city, and at the works on Long Island, which had been planned and fortified by General Greene. This ofiicer, unfortunately falling ill, the command fell to General Putnam, who was particularly charged by Washington with instructions for the defence of the passes by which the enemy might approach. These were neglected, an attack was made from opposite sides, and in spite of much valiant fighting on the part of the va- rious defenders, who contended with fearful odds, the day was most disas- trous to the Americans. The slauofliter was great on this 27th of August, and many prisoners, including General Sul- livan and Lord Stirling, were taken. Still the main works at Brooklyn, occu- pied by the American troops, remained, though, exposed as they were to the enemy's fleet, they were no longer ten- able. Washington, whose duties kept him in the city to be ready for its de- fence, as soon as he heard of the en gagement, hastened to the sjjot, l)ut it was too late to turn the fortunes of the day. He was comj^elled to witness the disaster, tradition tells us, not with- out the deepest emotion. But it was the glory of Washington to save the remnant of the army by a retreat more memorable than the vic- tory of General Clinton. The day after the battle, and the next were passed without any decisive movements on" the part of the British, who were ^ GEOEGE WASHHSTGTOl^T. 133 about bringing up tlieir ships, and wlio, doubtless, as they had good reason, considered their prey secure. On the twenty - ninth, Washington took his measures for the retreat, and so per- fectly were they arranged, that the whole force of nine thousand, with ar- tillery, horses, and the entii'e equipage of war, were borne off that night, under cover of the fog, to the opposite shore in triumph. It was a most masterly operation, j^lanned and superintended by Washington fi'om the beginning. He did not sleep or rest after the bat- tle till it was executed, and was among the last to cross. After the battle of Long Island, there had been little but weariness and disaster, in the movements of Wash- ington, to the end of the year, when, as the forces of Howe were apparently closing in upon him to open the route to Philadelphia, he turned in very despair, and by the Ijrilliant affair at Trenton retarded the motions of the enemy and checked the growing de- spondency of his countrymen. It was well planned and courageously under- taken. Christmas night, of a most inclement, wintry season, when the river was blocked with ice, was chosen to cross the Delaware, and attack the British and Hessians on the ojiposite side at Trenton. The expedition was led by Washington in person, who anxiously watched the slow process of the transportation on the river, which lasted from sunset till near the dawn — ■ too long for the contemplated surprise by night. A storm of hail and snow now set in, as the general advanced with his men, reaching the outposts about eight o'clock. A gallant onset was made, in which Lieut. Monroe, afterwards the President, was wounded ; Sullivan and the other ofScers, accord- ing to a previously arranged plan, seconded the movement from another part of the town ; the Hessians were disconcerted, and their general, Rahl, slain, when a surrender was made, nearly a thousand prisoners laying down their arms. Genei'al Howe, astonished at the event, sent out Corn- wallis in pursuit, and he had his game seemingly secure, when Washington, in front of him at Trenton, on the same side of the Delaware, made a bold diversion in an attack on the forces left behind at Princeton. It was, like the previous one, conducted by night, and, like the other, was at- tended with success, though it cost the life of the gallant Mercer. After these brilliant actions the little anny took up its quarters at Morristown for the winter. In the spring. General Howe made some serious attempts at breaking up the line of Washington in New Jersey, but he was foiled, and eomj^elled to seek another method of reaching Phila- delphia. The withdrawal of the Brit- ish troops would thus have left a simj^le course to be pursued on the Delaware, had not the attention of Washington been called in another direction by the advance of Burgoyne from Canada. It was natural to sujjpose that Howe would act in concert with that officer on the Hudson, nor was Washington relieved from the dilemma till intelli- gence reached him that the British general had embarked his forces, and was actually at the Capes of the Dela- ware. He then took up a position at 134 GEOEGE WASHINGTON". Germantown for the defence of Phila- delphia. Howe, meanwhile, the summer hav- ing passed away in these uncertainties, was slowly making his way up the Chesapeake to the Head of Elk, to gain access to Philadelphia from Mary- land, and the American amiy was ad- vanced to meet him. The British troops numbered about eighteen thousand ; the Americans, j)erhaps two-thirds of that number. A stand was made by the latter at Chad's Ford, on the east side of the Brandy wine, to which Kny- phausen was ojjposed on the opposite bank, while Cornwallis, with a large division, took the upper course of the river, and turned the flank of the po- sition. General Sullivan was intrusted with this portion of the defence ; but time was lost, in the uncertainty of information, in meeting the movement, and when the parties met, Cornwallis had greatly the advantage. A rout ensued, which was saved from utter defeat by the resistance of General Greene, who was placed at an ad- vantageous point. Lafayette was severely wounded in the leg in the course of the conflict. "Washington was not dismayed by the disaster ; on the contrary, he kept the field, mar- shalling and mancjeuvring through a hostile country, one thousand of his troops, as he informed Congress, actu- ally barefoot. He would have offered battle, but he was without the means to resist effectually the occupation of Philadelj)hia. A part of the enemy's forces were stationed at Germantown, a few miles from the city. Washing- ton, considering them in an exposed Bituation, planned a surprise. It was well arranged, and at the outset was successful ; but, owing to the confusion in the heavy fog of the October morn- ing, and loss of strength and time in attacking a strongly defended man- sion at the entrance of the village, what should have been a brilliant vic- tory was changed into a partial defeat. The encampment at Valley Forge succeeded the scenes we have describ- ed. Half clad, wanting fi-equently the simplest clothing, without shoes or blankets, the army was hutted in the snows and ice of that inclement win- ter. Yet they had Washington with them urging every means for their welfare, while his " lady," as his wife was always called in the army, came fi-om Mount Vernon, as was her custom during these Avinter encampments, to lighten the prevailing despondency. Washington, meanwhile, was busy Avith a Committee of Congress in put- ting the army on a better foundation. With the return of summer came the evacuation of Philadelphia by the Brit- ish, Avho were pursuing their route across Ncav Jersey to embark on the waters of Ncav York. Washington Avith his forces was Avatchinir their movements from above. Shall he at- tack them on their march ? There was a division of opinion among his officers. The equivocal Charles Lee, then unsus- jiected, was opposed to the step ; but Washington, Avith his best advisers, Greene, Lafayette, and Wayne, was in favor of it. He accordingly sent La- fayette forward, Avhen Lee interposed, and claimed the command of the ad- vance. Washington himself moved on Avith the reserve toAvards the enemy's j)osition near Monmouth Court House GEOEGE WASHINGTOK 135 to take part in the fortunes of the day, the 28th of June. As he was proceed- ing, he was met by the intelligence that Lee was in full retreat, without notice or apparent cause, endangering the or- der of the rear, and threatening the utmost confusion. Presently he came upon Lee himself, and demanded from him with an emphasis roused by the fiercest indignation — and the anger of Washington when excited was terrific — the cause of the disorder. Lee re- plied angrily, and gave such explana- tion as he could of a superior force, when Washington, doubtless mindful of his previous conduct, answered him with dissatisfaction, and it is said, on the authority of Lafayette, ended by calling the retreating general "a damned poltroon."* It was a great day for the genius of Washington. He made his arrangements on the spot to retrieve the fortunes of the hour, and so admirable were the dispositions, and so well was he seconded by the bravery of officers and men, even Lee redeem- ing his character by his valor, that at the close of that hot and weary day, the Americans having added greatly to the glory of their arms, remained at least equal masters of the field. The next morning it was found that Sir Henry Clinton had withdrawn towards Sandy Hook. The remainder of the season was passed by Washington on the eastern borders of the Hudson, in readiness to co-operate with the French, who had now arrived under D'Estaing, and in watching the British in New York. In December he took up his winter quarters at Middlebrook, in New * Dawson's "Battles of the United States." I. 408. Jersey. The event of the next year in the little army of Washington, was Wayne's gallant storming of Stony Point, on the Hudson, one of the de- fences of the Highlands, which had been recently captured and manned by Sir Henry Clinton. The attack on the night of the 15th July was planned by Washington, and his directions in his instructions to Wayne, models of careful military precision, were faithfully car- ried out. Henry Lee's spirited attack on Paulus Hook, within sight of New York, followed, to cheer the encamp- ment of Washington, who now busied himself in fortifying West Point. Win- ter again finds the army in quarters in New Jersey, this time at Morristown, when the hardships and severities of Valley Forge were even exceeded in the distressed condition of the troops in that rigorous season. The main inci- dents of the war are henceforth at the South. The most prominent event in the personal career of Washington, of the year 1780, is certainly the defection of Arnold, with its attendant execution of Major Andre. This unhappy trea- son was every way calculated to enlist his feelings, but he suffered neither hate nor sympathy to divert him from the considerate path of duty. We may not pause over the subsequent events of the war, the renewed exertions of Congress, the severe contests in the South, the meditated movement upon New York the following year, but must hasten to the sequel at Yorktown. The movement of the army of Washington to Virginia was determined by the ex- pected arrival of the French fleet in that quarter from the West Indies. 136 GEOEGE WASHINGTON. Lafayette was already on tlie spot, where he had beeu eurao-ed in the de- fence of the country from the inroads of Arnold and Phillijjs. Cornwallis had arrived from the South, and un- susjiicious of any serious oi^jjositiou was entrenchino; himself on York Elver. It was all that could be desired, and Washington, who had heen planning an attaclv upon New York with Ro- chamljeau, now suddenly and secretly directed his forces by a raj^id march southward. Extraordinary exertions were made to expedite the troops. The timely arrival of Colonel John Lawrens, from France, with an instal- ment of the French loan in specie, came to the aid of the liberal efforts of the financier of the revolution, Rob- ert Morris. Lafayette, with the Vir- ginians, was hedging in the fated Corn- Avallis. Washington had just left Phi- ladelphia, when he heard the joyous news of the arrival of De Grasse in the Chesapeake. Lie hastened on to the scene of action in advance of the troops, with De Rochambeau, gaining time to pause at Mount Vernon, which he had not seen since the opening of the war, and enjoy a day's hurried hospitality with his French ofiicers at the welcome mansion. Arrived at Williamsburg, Washington urged on the militaiy movements with the en- ergy of anticipated victory. "Hurry on, then, my dear sir," he wrote to General Lincoln, " with your troops on the wings of speed." To make the last arrangements with the French admii'al, he visited him in his ship, at the mouth of James' River. Everything was to be done before succor could arrive from the British fieet and troops at New York. The combined French and American forces closed in upon Yorktown, which was fortified by re- doubts and batteries, and on the 1st of October, the place was comjjletely invested. The first jiarallel was opened on the 6th. Washino;ton lio-hted the first gun on the 9th. The stormins: of two annoying redoubts by French and American parties were set down for the night of the 14th. Hamilton, at the head of the latter, gallantly car- ried one of the works at the point of the bayonet without firing a shot. Washington watched the proceeding at imminent hazard. The redoubts gain- ed were fortified and turned against the town. The second parallel was ready to open its fire. Cornwallis vainly attempted to escaj^e with his forces across the river. He received no relief from Sir Henry Clinton, at New York, and on the l7th he pro- posed a surrender. On the 19th, the terms having been dictated by Wash- ington, the whole British force laid down their arms. It was the virtual termination of the war, the crowning act of a vast series of military opera- tions planned and perfected by the genius of Washington. In the beginning of November, 1783, when the last arrangements of peace had been perfected, he took leave of the army in an address from head- quarters, with his accustomed warmth and emotion, and on the 25th, entered New York at the head of a military and civic procession as the British evacuated the city. On the 4th of December, he was escorted to the har- bor on his way to Congress, at An- napolis, to resign his command, after GEOEGE WASHINGTON. 137 a touching scene of farewell with his officers at Fraunces' Tavern, when the great chieftain did not disdain the sensibility of a tear and the kiss of his friends. Arrived at Annapolis, having on the way delivered to the proper officer at Philadelphia his ac- counts of his expenses during the war, neatly written out by his own hand, on the 23d of the month he restored his commission to Congress, with a few remarks of great felicity, in which he commended " the interests of our dear- est country to the protection of Al- mighty God ; and those who have the superintendence of them to His holy keeping." At the treaty of peace Washington was fifty-one, and had gloriously dis- charged the duties of two memora])le eras — the war with France and the war with Great Britain ; a third ser- vice to his country remained, her di- rection in the art of government in the formation of the Constitution. Many ministered to that noble end, but who more anxiously, more perse- veringly, than Washington 1 His au- thority carried the heart and intelli- gence of the country with it, and most appropriately was he placed at the head of the Convention, in 1787, which gave a government to the scattered States and made America a nation. Once more he was called to listen to the highest demands of his country in his unanimous election to the presi- dency. With what emotions, with what humble resimation to the voice of duty, with how little fluttering of vainglory let the modest entry, in his diary, of the 16th of April, 1789, tell: " About ten o'clock," he wi'ites, " I bade 18 adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life and to domestic felicity ; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express, set out for New York with the best disposition to render service to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of answering its expectations." His inauguration took place in that city on the 30th of April. Parties were soon at work in the gov- ernment — the conservative and the progressive, such as will always arise in human institutions — represented in the administration by the rival states- men, Hamilton and Jefferson ; but Washington honestly recognized no guide but the welfare of his country, and the rising waves of faction beat harmlessly beneath his presidential chair. As the close of his second ad- ministration, to which he had been chosen with no dissentient voice, ap- proached, he turned his thoughts eager- ly to Mount Vernon for a few short years of repose ; and well had he earn- ed them by his long series of services to his country. He would have been welcomed for a third term, but office had no temptation to divert him fi'om his settled resolution. Yet he parted fondly with the nation, and like a pa- rent, desired to leave some legacy of council to his country. Accordingly, he published in September, 1796, in the Daily Adver'tiset', in Philadelphia, the paper known as his Farewell Address to the People of the United States. It had long engaged his attention ; he had planned it himself, and, careful of what he felt might be a landmark for ages, had consulted Jay, Madison and Ham- ilton in its composition. The spirit 138 GEOKGE WASHINGTON and sentiment, the political wisdom and patriotic fervor were every whit Ms own. Then, once again. Mount Vernon re- ceived her son, destined never long to repose unsolicited by his country. France, pursuing her downward course, adojjted an aggressive policy towards the nation, which the most conciliating deference could no longer support. A state of quasi war existed, and actual war was imminent. The President looked to "Washington to organize the army and take the command, should it be brought into action, and he accord- ingly busied himself in the necessary preparations. It was best, he thought, to be prepared for the worst while looking for the best. New negotia- tions were then opened, but he did not live to witness their pacific results. He was at his home at Mount Vernon, in- tent on public affairs, and making his rounds in his usual farm occupations, with a vigor and hardihood which had abated little for his years, when, on the 12th of December, he suffered some considerable exposure from a storm of snow and rain which came on while he was out, and in which he continued his ride. It proved, the next day, that he had taken cold, but he made light of it, and passed his usual evening cheerfully with the family circle. He became worse during the night with inflammation of the throat. He was seriously ill. Having sent for his old army surgeon, Dr. Craik, he was bled by his overseer, and again on the arrival of the phy- sician. All was of no avail, and he calmly prepared to die. "I am not afraid," said he, "to go," while with ever thoughtful courtesy he thanked his fi'iends and attendants for their little attentions. Thus the day wore away, till ten in the night, when his end was fast approaching. He noticed the failing moments, his last act being to place his hand upon his pulse, and calmly expired. It was the 14th of December, 1799. His remains were interred in the grave on the bank at Mount Vernon, in front of his resi- dence, and there, in no long time, ac- cording to her prediction at the mo- ment of his death, his wife, Martha, whose miuiatui'e he always wore on his breast, was laid beside him. ^J^^^^ 140 MADAME D'AEBLAT. the place of organist at Lynn, and set- tled at that town with a young lady who had recently become hi? wife. At Lynn, in June, 1752, Frances Barney was born. Nothing in her childhood indicated that she would, while still a young Avoman, have se- cured for herself an honorable place among English writers. She was shy and silent. Her brothers and sisters called her a dunce, and not altogether without some show of reason ; for at eight years old she did not know her letters. In 17 GO, Mr. Burney quitted Lynn for London, and took a house in Poland street ; a situation which had been fashionable in the reign of Queeji Anne, but which, since that time, had been deserted by most of its wealthy and noble inhabitants. He at once obtained as many pupils of the most respectable description as he had time to attend, and was thus enabled to support his family, modestly indeed, and frugally, but in comfort and independence. His professional merit obtained for him the degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Oxford ; and his works on subjects connected with his art gained for him a place, respectable, though certainly not eminent, among men of letters. The progress of the mind of Frances Biirney, from her ninth to her twenty- fifth year, well deserves to be recorded. When her education had proceeded no further than the horn-book, she lost her mother, and thenceforward she educa- ted herself. Her father appears to have been as bad a father as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet-tem- pered man can well be. He loved his daughter dearly ; but it never seems to have occurred to him thai a parent has other duties to perform to children than that of fondliuir them. It would indeed have been impossible for him to superintend their education himself. His professional engagements occupied him all day. At seven in the morning he began to attend his pupils, and, when London was full, was some- times employed in teaching till eleven at night. He was often forced to carry in his jjocket a tin box of sandwiches, and a bottle of wine and water, on which he dined in a hackney-coach while hurrying from one scholar to anoth- er. Two of his daughters he sent to a seminary at Paris; but he imagined that Frances would run some risk of being perverted from the Protestant faith if she were educated in a Catho- lic country, and he therefore kept her at home. No governess, no teacher of any art or of any laugiiage, was pro- vided for her. But one of her sisters showed her how to write ; and, before she was fourteen, she began to find pleasure in reading. It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was formed. Indeed, when her best novels were produced, her knowledge of books was very small. When at the height of her fame, she was unacquainted with the most cele- brated works of Voltaire and Moliere ; and, what seems still more extraordi- nary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill, who, when she was a girl, was the most popular of living poets. It is particularly deserving of observa- tion, that she appears to have been by no means a novel reader. Her father's library was large ; and he had admit- ted into it so many books which rigid MADAME D'AEBLAT. 141 moralists generally exclude, that be felt uueasy, as he afterwards owned, when Johnson began to examine the shelves. But in the whole collection there was only a single novel, Fielding's Amelia. An education, however, which to most girls would have been useless, but which suited Fannj^'s mind better than elab- oi'ate culture, was in constant progress during her passage from childhood to womanhood. The great book of hu- man nature was turned over before her. Her father's social position was very peculiar. He belonged in for- tune and station to the middle class. His daughters seem to have been suf- fered to mix freely with those whom butlers and waiting-maids call vulgar. We are told that they were in the habit of playing with the children of a wig-maker who lived in the adjoining house. Yet few nobles could assemble in the most stately mansions of Gros- venor Square or St. James's Square, a society so various and so brilliant as was sometimes to be found in Dr. Burney's cabin. With the literary and fashionable society which occasionally met under her father's roof, Frances can scarcely be said to have mingled. She was not a musician, and could therefore bear no part in the concerts. She was shy almost to awkwardness, and scarcely ever joined in the conversation. The slightest remark from a stranger dis- concerted her; and even the old friends of her father who tried to draw her out could seldom extract more than a Yes or a No. Her figure was small, her face not distinguished by beauty. She was therefore suffered to withdraw quietly to the background, and, unob- served herself, to observe all that pass- ed. Her nearest relations were aware that she had good sense, but seem not to have suspected, that under her de- mure and bashful deportment were concealed a fertile invention and a keen sense of the ridiculous. She had not, it is true, an eye for the fine shades of character. But every marked pecu- liarity instantly caught her notice and remained ens-raven on her imas;ination. Thus, while still a girl, she had laid up such a store of materials for fiction as few of those who mix much in the world are able to accumulate during a long life. She had watched and listened in her father's dwelling to people of every class, from princes and great officers of state down to artists living in garrets, and poets familiar with subterranean cook shops. Hundreds of remarkable persons had passed in review before her, English, French, German, Italian, lords and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers of theatres, travelers leading about newly caught savages, and singing women escorted by deputy-husbands. So strong was the impression made on the mind of Frances by the society which she was in the habit of seeing and hearing that she began to write little fictitious narratives as soon as she could use her pen with ease, which, as we have said, was not very early. Her sisters were amused by her stories. But Dr. Burney knew nothing of their existence ; and in another quarter her literary propensities met with serious discouragement. When she was fifteen her father took a second wife. The new Mrs. Bumey soon found out that her step-daughter was fond of scribbling, 142 MADAME D'AEBLAY. and delivered several good-natured lec- tures on tlie subject. The advice no doubt was well-meant, and might have been given by the most judicious friend ; for, at that time, nothing it would ap- pear could be more disadvantageous to a young lady than to be known as a novel-^n'iter. Frances ^pith amiable resignation jaelded, relinquished her favorite jjursuit, and made a bonfire of all her manuscripts. She now hemmed and stitched fi'om breakfast to dinner with scrupulous regularity. But the dinners of that time were early ; and the afternoon was her own. Thou2;h she had given uj) novel-wi'iting, she was still fond of using her pen. She began to keep a diary, and she corresponded largely with a person who seems to have had the chief share in the formation of her mind. This was Samuel Crisp, an old friend of her father. Long before Frances Bumey was born, Mr. Crisp had made his entrance into the world, with every advantage. He was well connected and well educated. His face and figure were conspicuously handsome ; his manners were polished ; his fortune was easy ; his character was without stain ; he lived in the best so- ciety; he had read much; he talked well; his taste in literature, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, was held in high esteem. As an adviser he was inestimable. Nay, he might pro- bably have held a respectable rank as a writer, if he would have confined himself to some department of litera- ture in which nothing more than sense, taste, and reading was required. Un- hajipily, he set his heart on being a great poet, wrote a tragedy in five acts on the death of Virginia, and offered it to Garrick, who was his personal friend. Gan'ick read, shook his head, and expressed a doubt whether it would be wise in Mr. Crisp to stake a reputation which stood high on the success of such a piece. But the au- thor, blinded by self-love, set in mo- tion a machinery such as none could long resist. His intercessors were the most eloquent man and the most lovely woman of that generation. Pitt was induced to read Virginia, and to pro nounce it excellent. Lady Coventry, with finders which mio-ht have fur- nished a model to sculptors, forced the manuscript into the reluctant hand of the manager; and in the year 1754, the play was brought forward. Noth- ing that skill or friendship could do was omitted. Garrick T\Tote both pro- logue and epilogue. The zealous friends of the author filled every box ; and, by their strenuous exertions, the life of the play was prolonged during ten nights. But, though there was no clamorous reprobation, it was univer- sally felt that the attempt had failed. Crisp lost his temper and spirits, and became a cyuic and a hater of mankind. From Loudon he retired to Hampton, and from Hampton to a soli- tary and long-deserted mansion, built on a common in one of the wildest tracts of Surrey. No road, not even a sheep-walk, connected his lonely dwel- ling with the abodes of men. The place of his retreat was strictly con- cealed from his old associates. In the spring he sometimes emerged, and was seen at exhil)itions and concerts in London. But he soon disappeared and hid himself, with no society but MADAME D'AEBLAY. 143 his books, in his dreary hennitage. He survived his failure about thirty years. Crisp was an old and very intimate Mend of the Burneys. To them alone was confided the name of the desolate old hall in which he hid himself like a wild beast in a den. For them were reserved such remains of his humanity as had survived the failure of his play. Frances Burney he regarded as his daughter. He called her his Fannikin, and she in return called him her dear Daddy. In truth, he seems to have done much more than her real father for the development of her intellect ; for though he was a bad poet, he was a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent counsellor. He was practically fond of Dr. Burney's concerts. They had, indeed, been commenced at his sugges- tion, and when he visited London he constantly attended them. But when he grew old, and when gout, brought on partly by mental irritation, confined him to his retreat, he was desirous of having a glimpse of that gay and bril- liant world from which he was exiled, and he pressed Fannikin to send him full accounts of her father's evening parties. A few of her letters to him have been published ; and it is impos- sible to read them without discernins' in them all the powers which after- wards produced Evelina and Cecilia, the quickness in catching every odd peculiarity of character and manner, the skill in grouping, the humor, often richly comic, sometimes even farcical. Fanny's propensity to novel-writing had for a time been kept down. It now rose up stronger than ever. The heroes and heroines of the tales which had perished in the flames, were still present to the eye of her mind. One favorite story, in particular, haxmted her imagination. It was about a cer- tain Caroline Evelyn, a beautiful dam sel who made an unfortunate love- match, and died, leaving an infant daughter. Frances began to image to herself the various scenes, tragic and comic, through which the jioor mother- less girl, highly connected on one side, meanly connected on the other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal be- ings, good and bad, grave and ludi- crous, surrounded the pretty, timid, young orphan ; a coarse sea-captain ; an ugly insolent fop, blazing in a superb coiirt-dress ; another fop, as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow-Hill, and tricked out in second- hand finery for the Hampstead ball ; an old woman, all wi'inkled and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a Miss of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vulgar French and vulgar English ; a poet, lean and ragged, with a Inroad Scotch accent. By degrees these shadows acquii'ed stronger and stronger consistence : the impulse which urged Frances to write became irresistible ; and the result was the history of Evelina. Then came, naturally enough, a wish, mingled with many fears, to appear before the public ; for, timid as Fran- ces was, and bashful, and altogether unaccustomed to hear her own praises, it is clear that she wanted neither a strong passion for distinction, nor a just confidence in her own powers. Her scheme was to become, if possible, a candidate for fame without running any risk of disgrace. She had not 144 MAD ATVTR D'AEBLAY. money to l:)ear the expense of printing. It was therefore necessary that some bookseller should he induced to take the risk ; and such a bookseller was not readily found. Dodsley refused even to look at the manuscript unless he were trusted with the name of the author. A publisher in Fleet Street, named Lowndes, was more complaisant. Some correspondence took j)lace be- tween this person and Miss Burney, who took the name of Grafton, and desii'ed that the letters addressed to her might be left at the Orange CofEee- House. But, before the bargain was finally struck, Fanny thought it her duty to obtain her father's consent. She told him that she had written a book, that she wished to have his per- mission to publish it anonymously, but that she hoped that he would not in- sist upon seeing it. What followed may serve to illustrate what we meant when we said that Dr. Burney was as bad a father as so good-hearted a man could possibly be. It never seems to have crossed his mind that Fanny was about to take a step on which the whole happiness of her life might de- pend — a step which might raise her to an honorable eminence, or cover her with ridicule and contemjjt. Several people had already been trusted, and strict concealment was therefore not to be expected. On so grave an occasion, it was surely his duty to give his best counsel to his daughter, to win her confidence, to prevent her from expos- ing herself if her book were a bad one, and, if it were a good one, to see that the terms which she made with the puTilisher were likely to l)e beneficial to her. Instead of this, he only stared, burst out a laughing, kissed her, gave her leave to do as she liked, and never even asked the name of her work. The contract with Lowndes was speed- ily concluded. Twenty pounds were given for the cojiyright, and were ac- cepted by Fanny with delight. Her father's inexcusable neglect of his duty, happily caused her no worse evil than the loss of twelve or fifteen hun- dred pounds. After many delays Evelina appeared in January, 1778. Poor Fanny was sick with terror, and durst hardly stir out of doors. Some days passed be- fore anything Avas heard of the book. It had, indeed, nothing but its own merits to push it into public favor. Its author was unknown. The house by which it was published, was not, we believe, held in high estimation. No body of partizans had been engaged to applaud. The better class of read- ers expected little from a novel about a young lady's entrance into the world. There was, indeed, at that time a dis- position among the most respectable people to condemn novels generally : nor was this disposition by any means without excuse ; for works of that sort were then almost always silly, and very fi-equently wicked. Soon, however, the first faint accents of praise began to be heard. The keepers of the cir- culating libraries rejDorted that every- body was asking for Evelina, and that some person had guessed Anstey to be the author. Then came a favorable notice in the " London Review ; " then another still more favorable in the " Monthly." And now the book fot:nd its way to tables which had seldom been polluted by marble-covered vol- MADAME D'AEBLAT. 145 umes. Scholars and statesmen, who contemptuously abandoned the crowd of romances to Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to own that they could not tear themselves away from Evelina. Fine carriages and rich liveries, not often seen east of Temple Bar, were attracted to the publisher's shop in Fleet Street. Lowndes was daily questioned about the author ; but was himself as much in the dark as any of the questioners. The mystery, how- ever, could not remain a mystery long. It was known to brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins : and they were far too proud and too happy to be dis- creet. Dr. Burney wept over the book in rapture. Daddy Crisp shook his fist at his Fannikin in affectionate an- ger at not having been admitted to her confidence. The truth was whispered to Mrs. Thrale ; and then it began to spread fast. The book had been admired while it was ascribed to men of letters long conversant with the world, and accus- tomed to composition. But when it was known that a reserved, silent young woman had j^roduced the best work of fiction that had appeared since the death of Smollett, the acclamations were redoubled. What she had done was, indeed, extraordinary. But, as usual, various reports improved the story till it became miraculous. Eve- lina, it was said, was the Avork of a girl of seventeen. Incredible as this tale was, it continued to be repeated down to our own time. Frances was too honest to confirm it. Probably she was too much a woman to contra- dict it ; and it was long before any of 19 her detractors thought of this mode of annoyance. But we must return to our story. The triumph was complete. The timid and obscure giii found herself on the high- est pinnacle of fame. Great men, on whom she had gazed at a distance with humble reverence, addressed her with admiration, tempered by the ten- derness due to her sex and age. Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, were among her most ardent eulogists. Cumberland acknowledged her merit, after his fashion, by biting his lips and wriggling in his chair whenever her name was mentioned. But it was at Streatham that she tasted, in the highest perfection, the sweets of flattery, mingled with the sweets of friendship. Mrs. Thrale, then at the height of prosperity and popularity — with gay spirits, quick wit, showy though superficial acquire- ments, pleasing though not refined manners, a singularly amiable temper, and a loving heart — felt towards Fanny as towards a younger sister. With the Thrales Johnson was domesticated. He was an old friend of Dr. Burney ; but he had probably taken little notice of Dr. Burney's daughters, and Fanny, we imagine, had never in her life dared to sj^eak to him, unless to ask whether he wanted a nineteenth or twentieth cup of tea. He was charmed by her tale, and preferred it to the novels of Fielding, to whom, indeed, he had al- ways been grossly unjust. He did not, indeed, carry his partiality so far as to place Evelina by the side of Cla- rissa and Sir Charles Grandison ; yet he said that his little favorite had done enough to have made even Richardson 146 MADAME D'AKBLAY. feel uneasy. With Johnson's cordial approbation of the book was mingled a fondness, half gallant, half paternal, for the writer ; and this fondness his age and character entitled him to show without restraint. He began by put- ting her hand to his lips. But soon he clasped her in his huge arms, and implored her to be a good girl. She was his pet, his dear love, his dear lit- tle Burney, his little character-monger. At one time, he broke forth in jjraise of the good taste of her caps. At another time, he insisted on teaching lier Latin. That, with all his coarse- ness and irritability, he was a man of sterling benevolence, has long been ac- kuowledged. But how gentle and en- dearing his deportment could be, was not known till the Recollections of Madame D'Arblay were jjublished. It would not have been surprising if such success had turned even a strong head, and corrupted even a generous and aflEectionate nature. But, in the Diary, we can find no trace of any feel- ing inconsistent with a truly modest and amiable disposition. There is, indeed, abundant proof that Frances enjoyed, with an intense, though a troubled joy, the honors which her genius had won ; but it is equally clear that her happiness sprang from the happiness of her father, her sister, and her dear Daddy Crisp. While flattered by the great, the opulent, and the learned, while followed along the Steyne at Brighton and the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells by the gaze of ad- miring crowds, her heart seems to have l;)een still with the little domestic circle in St. Martin's Street. If she recorded with minute diligence all the compli- ments, delicate and coarse, which she heard wherever she turned, she record ed them for the eyes of two or three persons who had loved her from her infancy, who had loved her in obscu- rity, and to whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite delight. Nothing can be more unjust than to confound these outpourings of a kind heart, sure of jjerfect sympathy, with the egotism of a blue-stocking, who prates to all who come near her about her own novel or her own volume of sonnets. It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney's first venture should tempt her to try a second. Evelina, thoiigh it had raised her fame, had added nothing to her fortune. Some of her friends urged her to write for the stage. Johnson promised to give her his advice as to the composi- tion. Murphy, who was supposed to understand the temper of the pit as well as any man of his time, undertook to instruct her as to stage effect. Sheridan declared that he would ao cept a play from her without even reading it. Thus encouraged she wrote a comedy named The Witlings. For- tunately it was never acted or printed. We can, we think, easily perceive from the little which is said on the subject in the Diary, that The Witlings would have been damned, and that Murphy and Sheridan thought so, though they were too polite to say so. Happily Frances had a friend who was not afraid to give her pain. Crisp, wiser for her than he had been for himself, read the manuscript in his lonely retreat, and manfully told her that she had failed, that to remove MADAME D'ARBLAY. 147 blemishes here aud there would be useless, that the piece had abundance of "wit but no interest, that it was bad as a whole, that it would remind every reader of the Femmes Savantes, which, strange to say, she had never read, and that she could not sustain so close a comparison with Moliere. This opin- ion, in which Dr. Burney concurred, was sent to Frances in what she called " a hissing, groaning, cat-calling epis- tle." But she had too much sense not to know that it was l)etter to be hissed and cat-called by her Daddy, than by a whole sea of heads in the pit of Dru- ry-Lane Theatre ; and she had too good a heart not to be grateful for so rare an act of friendship. She returned an answer which shows how well she deserved to have a judicious, faithful, and affectionate adviser. " I intend," she wrote, " to console myself for your censure, by this greatest proof I hare ever I'eceived of the sincerity, candor, and, let me add, esteem, of my dear daddy. And as I happen to love my- self rather more than my play, this consolation is not a very trifling one. This, however, seriously I do believe, that when my two daddies put their heads together to concert that hissins:, groaning, cat-calling epistle they sent me, they felt as sorry for poor little Miss Bayes as she could possibly do for herself. Yon see I do not attempt to repay your frankness with the air of pretended carelessness. But, though somewhat disconcerted just now, I will promise not to let my vexation live out another day. Adieu, my dear daddy! I won't be mortified, and I won't be downed; but I will be proud to find I have, out of my own family, as well as in it, a fi'iend who loves me well enough to speak plain truth to me." Finances now turned fi-om her dra- matic schemes to an undertaking far better suited to her talents. She de- termined to write a new tale, on a plan excellently contrived for the display of the powers in which her superiority to other winters lay. It was in truth a grand and various picture-gallery, which presented to the eye a long se- ries of men and women, each marked by some strong peculiar feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of blood and the pride of money, mor- bid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, suj^ercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh at everything, and a Heraclitus to lament over every- thing. The work proceeded fast, and in twelve months was completed. It wanted something of the simplicity which had been amons-st the most at- tractive charms of Evelina ; but it fur- nished ample proof that the four years which had elapsed since Evelina ap- peared, had not been unprofitably spent. Those who saw Cecilia in manuscrijit pronounced it the best novel of the age. Mrs. Thrale laughed and wept over it> Crisp was even vehement in applause, and offered to insure the rapid and complete success of the book for half a crown. What Miss Burney received for the cojDyright is not mentioned in the Diary ; but we have observed seve- ral expressions from which we infer that the sum was considerable. That the sale would be great nobody could doubt ; and Frances now had shrewd and experienced advisers, Avho would not suffer her to wrong herself. "We 148 MADAME D'ARBLAT. have heen told tliat the publishers gave her two thousand pouuds, and we have no doubt that they might have given a still larger sum without being losers. Cecilia was published in the summer of 17S2. The curiosity of the town was intense. We have been informed by persons who remember those days, that no romance of Sir Walter Scott was more impatiently awaited, or more eagerly snatched from the counters of the booksellers. High as public ex- pectation was, it was amply satisfied ; and Cecilia was placed, 1)y general ac- clamation, among the classical novels of England. Miss Burney was now thirty. Her youth had been singularly prosperous ; but clouds soon began to gather over that clear and radiant dawn. Events deejily painful to a heart so kind as that of Frances, followed each other in rapid succession. She was first called upon to attend the death-bed of her best friend, Samuel Crisp. When she returned to St. Martin's Street, after performing this melancholy duty, she \v'as appalled by hearing that Johnson had been struck with paralysis ; and, not many months later, she parted from him for the last time Avith solemn ten- derness. He wished to look on her once more ; and on the day before his death she long remained in tears on the stairs leading to his bed-room, in the hope that she might be called in to receive his blessincr. But he was then sinking fast, and, though he sent her an affectionate message, was unable to see her. But this was not the worst. There are separations far more cruel than those which are made by death. Frances might weep with j^roud affec- tion for Crisp and Johnson. She had to blush as well as to weep for Mrs. Thrale. Life, however, still smiled upon her. Domestic happiness, friend ship, independence, leisure, letters, all these things were hers ; and she flung them all away. Among the distinguished persons to whom Miss Biu'ney had been intro- duced, none appears to have stood higher in her regard than Mrs. Delany. This lady was an interesting and ven- erable relic of a j)ast age. She was the niece of George Granville Lord Lansdowne, who, in his youth, ex- changed verses and compliments Avith Edmund Waller, and Avho was among the first to applaud the opening talents of Pope. She had married Dr. Delany, a man known to his contemporaries as a profound scholar and an eloquent preacher, but remembered in our time chiefly as one of the small circle in which the fierce spirit of Swift, tor tured by disappointed ambition, by remorse, and by the approaches of mad ness, sought for amusement and repose. Doctor Delany had long been dead. His widow, nobly descended, eminent- ly accomplished and retaining, in spite of the infirmities of advanced age, the vigor of her faculties and the serenity of her temper, enjoyed and deserved the favor of the royal family. She had a pension of three hundred a-year ; and a house at Windsor, belonging to the crown, had been fitted up for her ac- commodation. At this house the king and queen sometimes called, and found a very natural pleasure in thus catch- ing an occasional glimpse of the pri vate life of English families. In December, 1785, Miss Burney was MADAME D'AEBLAY. 149 on a visit to Mrs. Delany at Windsor. The dinner was over. The old lady was taking a nap. Her grand-niece, a little girl of seven, was playing at some Christmas game with the visitors, when the door opened, and a stont gentle- man entered unannounced, with a star on his Ijreast, and " What ? what 1 what ? " in his mouth. A cry of " The king " was set uj). A general scam- jjering followed. Miss Burney owns that she could not have been more ter- rified if she had seen a ghost. But Mrs. Delany came forward to pay her duty to her royal friend, and the disturhance was quieted. Frances was then pre- sented, and underwent a long examina- tion and cross-examination about all that she had Avritteu and all that she meant to write. The queen soon made her appearance, and his majesty repeat- ed, for the benefit of his consort, the in- formation which he had extracted from Miss Burney. The good-nature of the royal pair could not but be delightful to a young lady who had been brought up a tory. In a few days the visit was repeated. Miss Burney was more at ease than before. His majesty, instead of seeking for information, condescend- ed to impart it, and passed sentence on many great writers, English and for- Voltaire he pronounced a mon- Kousseau he likedr ather better. " But was there ever," he cried, " such stuft' as great part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so. But what think you? What? Is there not sad stuff? What? What?" The truth is, that Frances was fasci- nated by the condescending kindness of the two great personages to whom she had been presented. Her father eign. ster. was even more infatuated than herself. A German lady of the name of Hagger- dorn, one of the keepers of the queen's robes, retired about this time ; and her majesty offered the vacant jjost to Miss Burney. When we consider that Miss Burney was decidedly the most popu- lar writer of fictitious narrative then living, that competence, if not opu- lence, was within her reach, and that she was more than usually happy in her domestic circle, and when we com- pare the sacrifice which she was invited to make with the remuneration which was held out to her, we are divided be- tween laughter and indignation. What was demanded of her was, that she should consent to be almost as com- pletely separated from her family and friends as if she had gone to Calcxitta, and almost as close a prisoner as if she had been sent to jail for a libel ; that with talents which had instructed and delighted the highest living minds, she should now be emjjloyed only in mix- ing snuff and sticking jjins; that she should be summoned by a waiting-wo- man's bell to a waiting- woman's duties ; that she should pass her whole life un- der the restraints of a paltry etiquette, should sometimes fast till she was ready to swoon with hunger, should some- times stand till her knees gave way with fatigue ; that she should not dare to sjieak or move without considering how her mistress might like her words and o;estures. Instead of those distin- guished men and women, the flower of all political 2:»arties, with whom she had been in the ha1)it of mixing on terms of equal friendship, she was to have for her perpetual companion the chief keeper of the robes, an old hag from 150 MADAME D'AKBLAY. Germany, of mean uuderstancliug, of insolent manners, and of temper wliicL, naturally savage, Lad now been exas- perated by disease. Now and then, indeed, poor Frances might console her- self for the loss of Burke's and "Wind- ham's society, by joining in the " ce- lestial colloquy sublime" of his ma- jesty's equerries. And what was the consideration for which she was to sell herself into sla- very ? A peerage in her own right ? A pension of two thousand a-year for life? A seventy-four for her brother in the navy ? A deanery for her brother in the church ? Not so. The price at which she was valued was her board, her lodging, the attendance of a man- servant, and two hundred pounds a- year. The man who, even when hard pressed by hunger, sells his birthright for a mess of jjottage, is unwise. But what shall we say of him who parts with his birthright, and does not get even the pottage in return ? It is not necessary to inquii'e whether opulence be an adequate compensation for the sacrifice of bodily and mental freedom; for Frances Burney paid for leave to be a prisoner and menial. It was evi- dently understood as one of the terms of her engagement, that, while she was a member of the royal household, she was not to appear before the public as an author: and, even had there been no such understanding, her avocations were such as left her no leisure for any considerable intellectual effort. It is not strange indeed that an in- vitation to court should have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperi- enced woman. But it was the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show her that on the one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other liberty, peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, hon- orable distinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the part of Frances. Dr. Burney was transported out of himself with delight. Not such are the raptures of a Circassian father who has sold his pretty daiighter well to a Turkish slave-merchant. Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable man, a man of good al)ilities, a man who had seen much of the world. But he seems to have thought that going to court was like going to heaven: that to see princes and princesses was a kind of beatific vision ; that the exquisite fe- licity enjoyed by royal persons was not confined to themselves, but was communicated by some mysterious ef- flux or reflection to all Avho were suf- fered to stand at their toilettes, or to bear their trains. He overruled all his daughter's ol)jections, and himself escorted her to her prison. The do.or closed. The key was turned. She, looking back with tender regret on all that she had left, and forward with anxiety and terror to the new life on which she was entering, was unable to speak or stand ; and he went on his way homeward rejoicing in her marvel- ous prosperity. And now began a slavery of five years, of five years taken from the best part of life, and wasted in menial drudgery or in recreations duller than even menial druggery, under galling restraints and amidst unfriendly or un- interesting companions. The history of an ordinary day was this : Miss Bur ney had to rise and dress herself eai'ly, MADAME D'AEBLAT. 151 that slie mig'Lt he ready to answer the royal beU,wLicli rang at lialf-af ter seven. Till about eiglit she attended in the queen's dressing-room, and had the honor of lacing her august mistress's stays, and of piitting on the hoop, gown, and neck-handkerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in rumma- ging drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. Then the queen was to be powdered and dressed for the day. Twice a week her majesty's hair was curled and craped ; and this operation appears to have added a full hour to the business of the toilette. It was generally three before Miss Bur- ney was at liberty. Then she had two hours at her own disposal. To these hours we owe great part of her diary. At five she had to attend her colleague, Madame Schwellenberg, a hateful old toad-eater, as illiterate as a chamber- maid, as proud as a whole German Chapter, rude, peevish, unable to bear solitude, unable to conduct herself with common decency in society. With this delightful associate Frances Burney had to dine, and pass the evening. The pair generally remained together from five to eleven ; and often had no other company the whole time, except during the hour from eight to nine, when the equerries came to tea. If poor Frances attemped to escape to her own apart- ment, and to forget her wretchedness over a book, the execrable old woman railed and stormed, and complained that she was neglected. Yet, when Frances stayed, she was constantly as- sailed with insolent reproaches. Lite- rary fame was, in the eyes of the Ger- man crone, a blemish, a proof that the person who enjoyed it was meanly born. and out of the pale of good society. All her scanty stock of broken English was employed to express the contempt with which she regarded the author of Evelina and Cecilia. Frances detested cards, and indeed knew nothing about them; but she soon found that the least miserable way of passing an even- ing with Madame Schwellenberg. was at the card-table, and consented, with patient sadness, to give hours, which might have called forth the laughter and the tears of many generations, to the king of clubs and the knave of spades. Between eleven and twelve the bell rang again. Miss Burney had to pass twenty minutes or half an hour in undressing the queen, and was then at liberty to retire, and dream that she was chatting with her brother by the quiet hearth in St. Martin's Street, that she was the centre of an admiring assembly at Mrs. Crewe's, that Burke was calling her the first woman of the age, or that Dilly was giving her a check for two thousand guineas. Now and then, indeed, events oc- curred which disturbed the wretched monotony of Frances Burney's life. The court moved from Kew to Wind- sor and fi'om Windsor back to Kew. One dull colonel went out of waiting and another dull colonel came into waiting. An impertinent servant made a blunder about tea, and caused a mis- understanding between the gentlemen and the ladies. A half-witted French Protestant minister talked oddly about conjugal fidelity. An unlucky mem- ber of the household mentioned a pas- sage in the "Morning Herald" reflecting on the queen, and forthwith Madame Schwellenberg began to storm in bad 152 MADAME D'ARBLAY. EnsHsli, and told liim that he made her " what you call perspire." A more importance occurrence was the royal visit to Oxford. Miss Bar- ney went in the queen's train to Nune- ham, was utterly neglected there in the crowd, and could with difficulty find a servant to show the way to her bed- room, or a hair-di'esser to arrange her curls. She had the honor of entering Oxford in the last of a long string of carriages which formed the royal pro- cession, of walking after the queen all day through refectories and chapels, and of standing, half-dead with fatigue and hunger, while her august mistress was seated at an excellent cold colla- tion. At Magdalene College, Frances was left for a moment in a parlor, where she sank down on a chair. A good-natur- ed equerry saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots and liread, which he had wisely put into his pockets. At that moment the door opened; the queen entered; the wearied attendants sprang up ; the bread and fruit were hastily conceal- ed. "I found," says poor Miss Bur- ney, " that our appetites vv'ere to be supposed annihilated, at the same moment that our strength was to be invincible." Yet Oxford, seen even under such disadvantages, " revived in her," to use her OAvn words, "a consciousness to pleasure which had long lain nearly dormant." She foi-got, during one mo- ment, that she was a waiting maid, and felt as a woman of true genius might be expected to feel amidst venerable remains of antiquity, beautiful works of art, vast repositories of knowledge, and memorials of the illustrious dead. Had she still been what she was be fore her father induced her take the most fatal step of her life, we can eas- ily imagine what pleasure she would have derived from a visit to the no- blest of English cities. She might, in- deed, have been forced to travel back in a hack-chaise, and might not have worn so fine a gown of Chambery gauze as that in which she tottered after the royal party; but with Avliat delight would she have then paced the clois- ters of Magdalene, compared the an- tique gloom of Merton with the splen- dor of Christ Church, and looked down from the dome of the Kadcliffe library on the magnificent sea of turrets and battlements below ! How gladly would learned men have laid aside for a few hours Pindar's Odes and Aristotle's Ethics, to escort the author of Cecilia from college to college ? What neat little banquets wovdd she have found set out in their monastic cells ? With what eagerness would pictures, med als, and illuminated missals have been Ijrought forth from the most myste- rious cabinets for her amusement ? How much she would have had to hear and to tell about Johnson as she walked over Pembroke, and about Reynolds in the ante chapel of New College ? But these induliji^ences were not for one who had sold herself into bond- age. The account which she has given of the king's illness contains much ex- cellent narrative and description, and will, we think, be more valued by the historians of a future age than any equal portion of Pepys' or Eve- lyn's Diaries. That account shows, al- so, how affectionate and compassionate IVIADAME DARBLAY. 153 her uatui-e was. But it shows also, we must say, that her way of life was rapidly impairing lier powers of rea- soning, and her sense of justice. During more than two years after tlie king's recovery, Frances dragged on a miserable existence at the palace. The consolations Avhich had for a time mitigated the wretchedness of servi- tude, were one by one withdrawn. Mrs. Delany, whose society had been a great resource when the court was at Wind- sor, was now dead. One of the gen- tlemen of the royal establishment. Col- onel Digby, appears to have been a man of sense, of taste, of some reading, and of prepossessing manners. Agreeable associates were scarce in the prison- house, and he and Miss Burney were therefore naturally attached to each other. She owns that she valued him as a friend; and it would not have been strange if his attentions had led her to entertain for him a sentiment warmer than friendship. He c^uitted the court, and married in a way which astonished Miss Burney greatly, and which evidently wounded her feelings, and lowered him in her esteem. The palace grew duller and duller; Mad- ame Schwellenberc: became more and more savage and insolent. And now the health of poor Frances began to give way; and all who saw her pale face, her emaciated figure, and her fee- ble walk, predicted that her sufferings would soon be over. Frances uniformly speaks of ber roy- al mistress, and of the princesses, with respect and affection. The princesses seem to have well deserved all the praise which is bestowed on tbeni in the Diary. They were, we doubt not, 20 most amiable women. But " the sweet queen," as she is constantly called in these volumes, is not by any means an object of admiration to us. She had undoubtedly sense enough to know what kind of deportment suited her high station, and self-command enough to maintain that deportment invaria- bly. She was, in her intercourse with Miss Burney, generally gracious and affable, sometimes, when displeased, cold and reserved, but never, under any circumstances, rude, peevish or violent. She knew how to dispense, gracefully and skilfully, those little civilities which, when paid by a sover- eign, are prized at many times their intrinsic value ; how to pay a compli- ment; how to lend a book; how to ask after a relation. But she seems to have been utterly regardless of the comfort, the health, the life of her at- tendants, when her o'svn convenience was concerned. Weak, feverish, hard- ly able to stand, Frances had still to rise before seven, in order to dress the sweet queen, and to sit up till mid- night in order to undress the sweet queen. The indisposition of the nand- maid could not, and did not, escape the notice of her royal mistress. But the established doctrine of the court was, that all sickness was to be considered as a pretence until it proved fatal. The only way in which the invalid could clear herself from the suspicion of ma- lingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on lacing and unlacing, till she dropped down dead at the royal feet. " This," Miss Burney wrote, when she was suffering cruelly from sickness, watching, and labor, " is by no means from hardness of heart ; far otherwise. 154 MADAME D'AEBLAY. There is no hardness of heart in any- one of them ; hut it is prejudice, and want of personal experience." Many strangers symi^athized with the bodily and mental sufferings of this distinguished woman. All who saw her, saw that her frame was sink- ing, that her heart was breaking. The last, it should seem, to observe the change was her father. At length, in spite of himself, his eyes Avere opened. In May, 1790, his daughter had an in- terview of three hours with him, the only long interview which they had had since he took her to Windsor in 1786. She told him that she was miserable, that she was worn with at- tendance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life, nothing to love, nothing to hope, that her family and friends were to her as though they were not, and were rememljered by her as men remember the dead. From day- break to midnight the same killing labor, the same recreations, more hate- ful than labor itself, followed each other without variety, without any in- terval of liberty and repose. The Doctor was greatly dejected by this news ; but Avas too good-natured a man not to say that, if she wished to resign, his house and arms were open to her. Still, hoAvever, he could not bear to remoA^e her from the court. His veneration for royalty amounted in truth to idolatry. It can be compared only to the grovelling suj^erstition of those Syrian devotees, who made their children pass through the fire to Mo- loch. When he induced his daughter to accept the place of keeper of the robes, he entertained, as she tells us, a hope that some worldly advantage or other, not set down in the contract of service, would be the result of her connection Avith the court. What ad- vantage he expected we do not knoAv, nor did he probably know himself. But, whatever he expected, he certain- ly got nothing. Miss Burney had been hired for board, lodging, and two hun- dred a-year. Board, lodging, and two hundred a-year, she had only received. We have looked carefully through the diary, in the hope of finding some trace of those extraordinary benefac- tions on Avhich the Doctor reckoned. But we can discover only a promise, never performed, of a goAvn; and for this promise Miss Burney was expected to return thanks, such as might have suited the beggar Avith Avhom St. Mar- tin, in the legend, divided his cloak. The experience of four years was, how- ever, insufficient to dispel the illusion which had taken possession of the Doc- tor's mind; and, between the dear father and the sweet queen, there seemed to be little doubt that some day or other Frances Avould drop doAvn a corpse. Six months had elapsed since the interview betAveen the parent and the daughter. The resignation was not sent in. The sufferer grew worse and worse. She took bark ; but it soon ceased to j^roduce a l)eneficial effect. She was stimulated with Avine ; she was soothed with opium; but in vain. Her breath began to fail. The whisper that she was in a decline spread through the court. The pains in her side became so severe that she was forced to crawl from the card-table of the old fury to whom she was teth- tred, three or four times in an evening, for the purj^ose of taking hartshorn. MADAME D'AEBLAY. 155 Had sLe been a negro slave, a tumane planter would liave excused ter from work. But her majesty showed no mercy. Thrice a day the accursed bell still rang ; the queen was still to be dressed for the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at noon, and to be undressed at eleven at night. But there had arisen, in literary and fashionable society, a general feeling of compassion for Miss Burney, and of indignation against both her father and the queen. " Is it possible," said a great French lady to the Doctor, " that your daughter is in a situation where she is never allowed a holiday ? " Horace Walpole wrote to Frances to express his sympathy. Boswell, boil- ing over with good-natured rage, al- most forced an entrance into the palace to see her. " My dear ma'am, why do you stay ? It won't do, ma'am ; you must resign. We can put up with it no longer. Some very violent measures, I assure you, will be taken. We shall addi'ess Dr. Burney in a body." Burke and Keynolds, though less noisy, were zealous in the same cause. Windham spoke to Dr. Burney ; but found him still irresolute. " I will set the Lite- rary Club upon him," cried Windham ; " Miss Burney has some very true ad- mirers there, and I am sure they will eagerly assist." Indeed the Burney family seem to have been aj)prehensive that some public affront, such as the Doctor's unpardonable folly, to use the mildest term, had richly deserved, would be put upon him. The medical men spoke out, and plainly told him that his daughter must resign or die. At last, paternal affection, medical authority, and the voice of all London crying shame, triumphed over Dr. Bar- ney's love of courts. He determined that Frances should write a letter of resignation. It was with difficulty that, though her life was at stake, she mustered spirit to put the paper into the queen's hands. " I could not," so runs the diary, " summon courage to present my memorial — my heart always failed me from seeing the queen's en- tire freedom from such an expectation. For, though I was frequently so ill in her presence that I could hardly stand, I saw she concluded me, while life re- mained, inevitably hers." At last, with a trembling hand the paper was delivered. Then came the storm. Juno, as in the -^neid, dele- gated the work of vengeance to Alecto. The queen was calm and gentle; but Madame Schwellenberg raved like a maniac in the incurable ward of Bed- lam. Such insolence ! Such ingrati- tude ! Such folly! Would Miss Bur- ney bring utter destruction on herself and her family? Would she throw away the inestimable advantage of royal jirotection? Would she part with the privileges which, once relin- quished, could never be regained ? It was idle to talk of health and life. If people could not live in the j)alace, the best thing that could befall them was to die in it. The resignation was not accepted. The language of the medi- cal men became stronger and , stronger. Doctor Burney's parental fears were fully roused ; and he explicitly de- clared, in a letter meant to be shown to the queen, that his daughter must retire. The Schwellenberg raved like a wild-cat. " A scene almost horrible ensued," says Miss Burney. "She was 156 MADAME D'AEBLAY. too mucli enraged for disguise, and ut- tered tlie most furious expressions of indignant contempt at our proceedings. I am sure slie would gladly have con- fined us toth in tlie Bastile, liad Eng- land such a misery, as a fit place to bring us to ourselves, from a daring so oiitrageous against imperial wishes." This passage deserves notice, as being the only one in the diary, as far as we have observed, which shows Miss Bur- ney to have been aware that she was a native of a free country, that she could not be pressed for a waiting-maid against her will, and that she had just as good a right to live, if she chose, in St. Martin's Street, as Queen Charlotte had to live at St. James'. The queen promised that, after the next birth-day. Miss Burney should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept ; and her majesty showed displeasure at being reminded of it. At lenarth Frances was informed that in a fortnight her attendance should cease. " I heard this, " she says, " with a fearful presentiment I should surely never go through another fort- night, in so weak and languishing and painful a state of health. . . As the time approached, the queen's cor. diality rather diminished, and traces of internal displeasm-e appeared some- times, arising from an opinion I ought rather to have struggled on, live or die, than to quit her. Yet I am sure she saw how poor was my own chance except by a change in the mode of life, and at least ceased to wonder, though she could not apjDrove." Sweet queen ! What noble candor, to ad- mit that the undutifulness of people svho did not think the honor of ad- justing her tuckers worth the sacrifice of their own lives, was, thoiigh highly criminal, not altogether unnatural ! We perfectly understand her ma- jesty's contempt for the lives of others where her own pleasure was concerned. But what pleasure she can have found in having Miss Burney about her, it is not so easy to comprehend. That Miss Burney was an eminently skilful keeper of the robes is not very prob able. Few women, indeed, had paid less attention to dress. Now and then in the course of five years, she had been asked to read aloud or to "s^Tite a copy of verses. But better readers might easily have been found; and her verses were worse than even the Poet-Laureate's Bii-th-day Odes. Per- haps that economy which w^s among her majesty's most conspicuous virtues, had something to do with her conduct on this occasion. Miss Burney had never hinted that she expected a re- tiring pension; and indeed would gladly have given the little that she had for freedom. But her majesty knew what the public thought, and what became her dignity. She could not for very shame suffer a woman of distinguished genius, who had quitted a lucrative career to wait on her, who had served her faithfully for a pit- tance during five years, and whose constitution had been impaii'ed by la- bor and watching, to leave the court without some mark of royal liberality. George the Third, who, on all occa- sions where Miss Burney was concern- ed, seems to have behaved like an honest good-natured gentleman, felt this, and said plainly that she was en- titled to a provision. At length, in re- MADAME D'AEBLAY. 15Y turn for all tlie misery which she had undero-one, aud for the health which she had sacrificed, an annuity of one hundred pounds was granted to her, dependent on the queen's pleasure. Then the prison was opened, and Frances was free once more. Johnson, as Burke observed, might have added a striking page to his poem on the Vanity of Human Wishes, if he had lived to see his little Burney as she went into the palace and as she came out of it. The pleasures, so long untasted, of liberty, of friendship, of domestic af- fection, were almost too acute for her shattered frame. But happy days and tranquil nights soon restored the health which the queen's toilette and Madame Schwellenberg's card-table had impaired. Kind and anxious faces surrounded the invalid. Conversation the most polished and brilliant revived her spirits. Traveling was recom- mended to her ; and she rambled by easy journeys from cathedral to cathe- dral, and from watering-place to wa- tering-place. She crossed the New Forest, and visited Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme, and the beautiful valley of Sidmouth. Thence she journeyed by Powderham Castle, and by the ruins of Glastonbury Ab- bey, to Bath, and from Bath, when the winter was approaching, returned well and cheerful to London. There she visited her old dungeon, and found her successor alreadj^ far on the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever. At this time England swarmed with French exiles driven from their coun- try by the revolution. A colony of these refugees settled at Juniper Hall, in SuiTey, not far from Norbury Park, where, Mr. Lock, an intimate friend of the Burney family, resided. Frances visited Norbury, and was introduced to the strangers. She had strong pre- judices against them; for her toryism was far beyond, we do not say that of Mr. Pitt, but that of Mr. Beeves ; and the inmates of Juniper Hall were all attached to the constitution of 1791, and were therefore more detested by the royalists of the first emigration than Petion or Marat. But such a wo- man as Miss Burney could not long re- sist the fascination of that remarkable society. She had lived with Johnson and Windham, with Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Thrale. Yet she was forced to own that she had never heard conver- sation before. The most animated elo- quence, the keenest observation, the most sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were united to charm her. For Madame de Stael was there, aud M. de Talleyrand. There too was M. de Nar- bonne, a noble representative of French aristocracy ; and with M. de Narbonne was his friend and follower General D'Arl:)lay, an honorable and amiable man, with a handsome person, fi-ank, soldier-like manners, and some taste for letters. The prejudices which Frances had conceived against the constitutional royalists of France rapidly vanished. She listened with raptiire to Talley rand and Madame de Stael, joined with M. D'Arblay in execrating the Jaco- bins, and in weeping for the unhappy Bourbons, took French lessons fi'om him, fell in love with him, and mar- 158 MADAME D'AEBLAT. ried hira on no tetter provision than a precarious annuity of one hundred pounds. M. D'ArlDlay's fortune had perished in the general wreck of the French Revolution ; and in a foreign country his talents, whatever they may have been, could scarcely make him rich. The task of providing for the fam- ily devolved on his ^v\te. In the year 1796, she published by subscrip- tion her third novel, Camilla. It was impatiently expected by the public; and the sum which she obtained by it was, we believe, greater than had at that time been received for a novel. Camilla, however, never attained pop- ularity like that which Evelina and Cecilia had enjoyed ; and it must be allowed that there was a perceptible falling off, not indeed in humor, or in power of portraying character, but in grace and in purity of style. During the short time which follow- ed the treaty of Amiens, M. D'Arljlay visited France. Lauriston and Lafay- ette represented his claims to the French government, and obtained a promise that he should be reinstated in his military rank. M. D'Arblay, however, insisted that he should never be required to serve against the coun- trymen of his Avife. The first consul, of course, could not hear of such a condi- tion; and ordered the general's com- mission to be instantly revoked. Madame D'Arblay joined her hus- band at Paris a short time before the war of 1803 broke out; and remained in France ten years, cut off fi'om almost all intercourse with the land of her birth. At length, when Napoleon was on his march to Moscow, she with great difiiculty obtained from his ministers permission to visit her own country, in company with her son, who was a native of England. She returned in time to receive the last blessina: of her father, who died in his eighty-seventh year. In 1814 she published her last novel, the Wanderer, a book which no judicious friend to her memory will at- tempt to draw from the oblivion into which it has justly fallen. In the same year her sou Alexander was sent to Cambridge. He obtained an honorable place among the wi-anglei-s of his year, and was elected a fellow of Christ's College. But his reputation at the University was higher than might be inferred from his success in academical contests. His French education had not fitted him for the examinations of the Senate-House ; but in -pure mathe- matics, we have been assured l:)y some of his competitors that he had very few equals. He went into the church, and it was thought likely that he would attain high eminence as a preacher; but he died before his mother. All that we have heard of him leads us to believe, that he was such a son as such a mother deserved to have. In 1832, Madame D'Arblay published the " Memoirs of her Fa- ther ; " and, on the 6th of January, 1840, she died in her eighty-eighth year. IGO EDMUKD BUEKE. sono" "Tlie greatest of writers," is his remark, " has said that a di\'iiiity maj" ever be seen directing each indi- vidual human life to its purposed end. Who cannot discern it here? Read amid the scenes in which it was writ- ten, the Faery Queen could never be forgotten ; and many a splendid sen- tence and poetical allusion, which give such a peculiar fascination to the driest subject when treated by Burke, may easily be traced to the bard of Kilcol- mau, whose mind was filled with such noble visions of all that is beautiful in humanity; Avho was, as his View of the State of Ireland amply testifies, not only a great poet, but also a true jjolit- ical philosopher, and who sufi'ered so cruelly for his attachment to the coun- try of his adojjtiou." Of course, the boy, if he read Spenser at all, could not read as the man afterwards learned to read ; but the exercise of the imag- ination, natural to youth, must always have had a peculiar fascination for Burke, and who better than Spenser, whose verse has insj)ired many poets, to eusrasre the attention, and to teach the lesson to the infant mind of all beauty, grace, tendej-ness in that fas- cination of knightly adventure ? It was an advantage to Burke that so much of his boyhood was passed in the country in the society of his kind relatives. He was treated with indul- gence and consideration, lived happily, and always looked back upon this pe- riod of his life Avith pleasure. His mother had taught him to read and he now attended the village school ; but he was not pressed in his studies ; nature and the simple enjoyable life about him were his best instructors. and the improvement of health his most desirable achievement. Return- ing to Dublin at the age of twelve, if we accept the earliest date of his birth, he passed a year at home, after which he was placed with his brothers Garret and Richard at a boarding- school at Ballitore, a pretty village about thirty miles south of the capi- tal, in the county Kildare, estal)lished by ihe members of the Society of Friends who had settled at that place. It was fortunate in the possession of its first schoolmaster, Al^raham Shack- leton, a man of worth and learning, ever held in great regard by Burke, who once sounded his praises in the House of Commons, declaring that he had been educated as a Protestant of the Chui'ch of England by a dissenter Avho was an honor to his sect, though that sect was consideied one of the purest. Under his eye he had read the Bible, morning, noon and night, and had eA^er since been the happier and better man for such reading. The boy Edmund took kindly to the good Quaker's in- structions and studied diligently, read much and profited greatly l)y the inti- macy which he formed Avith his pre- ceptor's son Richard, AA^ho Avas his correspondent in after years, and with whom he cherished the most friendly relations during a life Avhich ended a few years only before his own. It was a school of liberal, generous ideas, that academy at Ballitore, which was kej)t up by the Shackleton family, in three generations, father, son and grandson. There is a story related by Prior of Burke in these school-days which shoAVs " the child, the father of the man." " Seeing a poor man pulling doAvn his EDMUND BUEKE. 161 own hut near the village, and hearing that it was done by order of a great gentleman in a gold-laced hat (the parish conservator of the roads), upon the plea of being too near the high- way, the young philanthropist, his bosom swelling with indignation, ex- claimed, that were he a man and pos- sessed of authority, the poor should not thus be oppressed." After nearly two years at Ballitore, Bui'ke left the school to become a student of Trinity College, Dublin. He carried with him a fair training in the classics and some skill in verse-making, encourag- ed by rivalry with his friend, Richard Shackleton, with whom about this time he competed in the translation of the Idyll of Theocritus on the death of Adonis. He had also spent much time in perusing with delight the old romances, Palmerin of England, and Don Belianis of Greece. His college career, though not dis- tinguished by any extraordinary aca- demical honors or achievements in scholarship, was characterized by reg- ularity and a fair application of his powers. He probably was no profi- cient in Greek, but he must have made a good general acquaintance with some of the leading authors of that tongue, while he gave his admiration to the Latin poets Virgil, Ovid and Horace, and especially to the dramatic and philosophical historian, Sallust. Meta- physics he valued always rather for their power of enriching the mind by adding to its faculties of apprehen- sion, than for the science itself. He in turn applied himself with zeal to natural philosophy, logic and history, and ended with poetry. Milton seems 21 to have attracted his attention more than Shakespeare, and he would seem to have entered more heartily into the enjopnent of the ^Eneid than of Ho- mer. While at college he translated in rhyme the panegyric of country life at the close of the second Georgic of Vii'gil, if not with jjeculiar poetic felicity, certainlj^ with a creditable ap- preciation of the original and of his English model in Dryden. On one occasion, in a Dublin literary society of which he was a member, he was applauded for his recitation of the speech of Moloch in Paradise Lost. He also attended the meetings of the Historical Society, where politics were discussed, and wrote two satirical arti- cles, from the government or conserva- tive point of view, directed against what he considered the overwrought patriotic sentiments and doctrines of the day. In 1748 he took his Bache- lor's Degree at Trinity College, and not long after proceeded to London to enroll himself as a student of the law at the Middle Temple. The law by no means engrossed the whole of Burke's time during his early years in London, which he was expected by his father to devote to the profession. He seems never to have taken very kindly to it. His mind was too much imbued with lit- erature and philosophy to relish very greatly its technical subtleties. He knew shorter paths to learning, which he esteemed of greater account. He was too essentially moral and practi- cal to get entangled in its obscure and thorny intricacies. Hence while he regarded it in its political and social relations as " one of the fii'st and no- 162 EDMUXD BURKE. blest of human sciences, doing more to quicken and invigorate tlie under- standing than all the other kinds of learning put together," he thought it " not apt, except in persons very hap- pily born, to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same propor- tion." IndifEerent health also came in the way of any great exertions in the stiidy of the j)rofession. We hear of visits to different parts of England, to Bristol and elsewhere ; while in Lon- don, through his acquaintance with Arthur Murphy, he is becoming famil- iar with literary and dramatic life.* An agreeable chapter could be writ- ten regarding Burke's female acquaint- ances, their vii-tues, their failings, and their celebrity. There is Peg Wof- iington, the unfortunate actress, the daughter of a poor grocer's widow on Ormond Quay, Dublin, who fascinated everybody who came within her reach, and with whom young Edmund ex- changed glances in the green-room of Drury Lane. There is Mrs. Montague, one of the most brilliant and accom- plished women of her time, of great wealth and of great kindness, whose house was always open to men of let- ters, and who, in 1759, took a real pleasure in introducing the young au- thor of the " Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful" to her great friends. There was Burke's good-natured country- * For the remainder of this notice wo are in- debted to an appreciative article in the " Noi-th British Review " based on Thomas Mackniglit'a eloquent "History of the Life and Times of Edmund Burke," to which as well as to "Ed- mund Biirke, a Historical Study,'! by John Morley (18G9), the reader may be referred for the fullest presentation of the man and his character in history. woman, Mrs. Vesey, of Bolton Row the friend and rival of Mrs. Montague, who made all her guests at their ease, and who was as full of Irish frolic and of L'ish bulls, as if she still flourished on the banks of the Liffey. There were the two model women of French society in those days, Madame du Def- fand and Mademoiselle de L'Espinasse, of whose class Sidney Smith once said that they " outraged every law of civilized society, and gave veiy pleas- ant little suppers." Burke attended those supjiers when in Paris in 1773, and listened to the wit and the athe- ism that circled so freely round their tables. Finance and philosojjhy, the drama and the Contnit ^Social, D'Al- embert and Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau, Helvetius and " le bon David," — all wei'e discussed, all were made the subject of some jeu (Tesprit. Burke was disgusted with what he saw of French society, and in his " French Revolution " has held it up as a terri- ble spectacle to all coming time. But the young writer has gone to his garret with health, hope, and genius on his side, and it will go hard with him if he cannot wring from letters what will supply his humble board. As an ingenious decoy to the English public, Burke l^rought out a pamphlet entitled A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), which he dexterously ascribed to a late " noble writer." Every one pronounced the brochure Bolingbroke's. It was full of his in- genious arguments, it was full of his bold assumptions, and it was his style all over. But so high authorities as Lord Chesterfield and Mr. Pitt had pronounced Lord Bolingbroke's style EDMUND BTJEKE. 163 " inimitable ;" and here the most ac- comjjlislied man of fashion, and the most brilliant orator of the age, were both at fault, for it actually turned out to be the work of a poor law stu- dent of the Inner Temple. Hencefor- ward Burke had no need to enter the lists with his visor down. This philo- sophical satire placed his claims to lit- erary recognition beyond all doubt, and he was only following the dictates of prudence or of policy when he ventured before the public hereafter anonymously. A few months after- wards there appeared A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. His theory, that everything was beautiful that possessed the power of relaxing the nerves and fibres, and thus induc- ing a certain degree of bodily languor and sinking, is almost too grotesque to be calmly commented on ; yet the book is full of the most ingenious observations on mental phenomena; and, while comparatively cold and un- impassioned in its style, it possesses, nevertheless, many specimens of rare illustration and most apt allusion, charming the reader even when the oddity of his postulate affronts the reason, and does violence to the feel- ings. Towards the end of 1756, or early in the succeeding year, Burke married Miss Nugent, a countrywoman of his own, the daughter of Dr. Nugent, a physician in Bath. As this lady was brought up a Roman Catholic, it was probably this circumstance that gave rise to some whispers respecting Burke's alleged oscillation between his own faith and hers. After her marriage she joined the Church of England, made to him one of the best of wives, and survived him some four- teen years. His father-in-law came up shortly afterwards to London, and for many years Burke found a home in Wimpole Street with this excellent physician. In 1759 he became con- nected with Dodsley the publisher, with whom he engaged to write the historical section of the Annual Eesr- ister for £100 a-year. For the next fifteen years or so, his lucid mind can be traced in its pages, giving order and arrangement to its reports, and in- fusing genius into its details. It was dui'ing the same year that he was in- troduced by Lord Charlemont to " Sin- gle-speech " Hamilton, a selfish, crafty Scot, of much more ability than he generally gets credit for, who had a seat at the Board of Trade and a resi- dence at Hampton Court. Whatever was the nature of Burke's connection with this man — for it has not been clearly defined — we are safe in assert- ing that it was in the manufacture of ideas that the young writer was em- ployed. He lived with Hamilton for the next six years, and, after an irre- concilable quarrel, the £300 of Irish pension which the wilj Hamilton had procured for him, was thrown ujj, and Burke turned his back on " Single- speech" forever. Shortly after the Annual Register was started, Burke met Johnson, for the first time, at Garrick's table. Johnson was close on fifty, and we find the editor of the Register in 1759 re- proaching the nation with having done nothing for the author of Easselas. Gruff old Samuel seems to have ts»ken 164 EDMUND BUEKE. immensely to Bui'ke, and the violence of his political views did not deter him from recognizing and giving pub- licity to his admiration of the Lish- man's worth and genius. The cele- brated Club in Gerrard Street, of vvhich Burke was one of the select aine, was founded in 1764. On the 17th of July, 1765, Burke somehow got introduced to Lord Rockingham, and became his private secretary by the obliging services of his friends William Bui'ke and Wil- liam Fitzherbert. This William Burke was simply a kinsman of Edmund's, though the latter ffequently calls him " cousin " in his coiTespondence. Wil- liam likewise gained for him the ac- quaintance of Lord Verney, from whom, a few mouths afterwards, he received the position of Member of Parliament for the borough of Wendover, near the foot of the Chiltern Hills. This borough was a close one, under Lord Vemey's influence ; and in those days, when as much as £9,000 was the price paid for such a post, and j£ 70,000 for a county, Edmund Burke required to thank those powers who had put it into Verney's heart to be so liberal. On the 26th of December, 1765, Burke became member for Wendover ; on the 14th of the following month he entered Parliament ; and on the 27th he made his maiden speech. The Rockingham Whigs had, the previous year, replaced the incompe- tent ministry of Grenville ; and al- though Lord Rockiugham was an excellent man, of sound integrity, of great courage, an inflexible patriot, and a disinterested politician, the House of Commons was, nevertheless, in no humor to listen to calm debate or to impassioned harangue. Tlie Ameri can colonies came before the British Parliament in a federal capacity ; and it was on a question touching the com- jietency of the House of Commons to receive such a petition, that Burke first spoke. Pitt was understood to favor the petition, and the Adminis- tration considered the admission of it an ojien question. The new member argued, in a speech of much force and beauty, that the presentation of such a petition was of itself an acknowl- edgement of the House's jurisdiction. If Lord Rockingham had any fears for the discretion and tact of his new secretary, this maiden appearance of his set such suspicions at rest forever. The great Pitt was the first to rise and bestow a warm encomium on the new member. Unlike the young aristocratic po- litician of a former age, and, per chance, also of this one, Burke did not content himself with merely glancing over the newspajaers at his club of a morning, before marching to duty : he set himself vigorously to work, as only he knew how, in analyzing the whole work of government, and the complica- ted interests of the British Empii'e. In his successive appearances, he seems, by universal testimony, to have taken the House entirely by storm. Old men and young men, able men and men less able, trading politicians and soldiers of fortune, — all spoke of his orations with enthusiasm. The Rockingham Whigs, after a very short term of office, had to re- sign, and Pitt, who had recently been raised to the peerage as Earl of Chat- EDMUND BUKKE. 165 ham, again took the reins. But he did not hold them long ; the Duke of Graf- ton came into office in 1766, and was succeeded hy Lord North in 1770, whose premiership lasted through the American war down to 1782. On the 19th of April, 1774, on Mr. Rose Fuller's motion that the House would take into consideration the tax of threepence per pound on tea import- ed into the American colonies, Burke gave one of his noblest speeches on American taxation. During the deliv- ery of this masterly oration, idle poli- ticians, drawn thither by common re- port, filled the lobbies and staircases of the House. Loud cries of " Go on ! — go on !" greeted the speaker, on his pausing to ask if he tired gentlemen. Members of all shades of political opinion declared, enthusiastically, that here was the most wonderful man they had ever listened to, and the American agents were with difficulty restrained fi'om hui'raing their admiration in the gallery. So entirely and emphatically had he got men's prejudices under for the time by the force of his persuasive voice, that the king and his crotchet of taxing America were temporarily for- gotten, and, even at the risk of being regarded as personal enemies to his majesty, adherents of the ministry were known to joiu in the general and irresistible bui'st of applause. Perhaps the most perfect specimen of Burke's oratory is to be found in his great speech on administrative re- form, delivered on the 11th of Febru- ary, 1780. At the height of his pow- ers, and in the full blaze of his fame, he was likewise of more gentle temper than he afterwards became. All Eng- land sang his praises. While difficul- ty is good for man, as Burke himself declared, there are occasions on which sunshine is one of the most joyous things on earth. He opened his ad- dress by laying down the principles on which a wise reform should be founded, neither too liberal nor too conservative, and then proceeded to apply those principles. The sound political wisdom which held the reins while the bold imagina- tion went forward on the work of re- form; the alluring charms of poetical illustration which clothed the past with life, and the future with radiance ; the brilliant flashes of wit which played up like electric coruscations over the House; the condensed rea- soning, the burning emotion, and the fervid appeals to the most noble pas- sions, rendered this speech the most remarkable one in a small compass that the orator ever delivered. For three hours the audience was spell-bound. Ministerialists, courtiers, sycophants, amid tumiiltuo\is cheers, bore testimo- mony to the greatness of the success. The historian. Gibbon, though a king's friend, praised it ; and even Lord North condescended to say of it that it had excelled all he had ever heard in the House. Burke's prodigious labors in the prosecution of Warren Hastings, for his alleged cruelty to the Rohillas and the Begums of Oude, formally began in 1784, and the actual trial commenced in Westminster Hall in February, 1788. The impeachment lasted nine days in all, four of which were occupied with the oratory of Burke. He opened his charge in the presence of the most au- 1G6 EDMUND BURKE. gust assemblage of rank and intellect that i^erliaps ever met in Westminster Hall to listen to any single speaker. Ou tke third day of the trial, which was perhaps, rhetorically considered, the most important, the speaker, with the documents in his raised hands as a testimony to heaven of the guilt of the j^erson charged, with streaming eyes and witli suifused countenance, related how slow fires were made to inflict un- mentionable tortui'es on tender wom- en, how death met life at the very gates and strangled it. His audience could endure the agony no longer, and bui'st out many of them into tears. Mrs. Siddons confessed that all the ter- rors and pity which she had ever wit- nessed on the stage, sank into insignifi- cance before the scene she had just be- held. Mrs. Sheridan fainted; and the ?itern Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who always in the most headstrong way had insisted on Hastings' innocence, was observed for once in his life to shed a tear. "This peroration," said Wind- ham, himself an orator of great accom- plishments, as Burke closed his address, " was the noblest ever uttered by man." It may astonish not a few to be told that this sj^eech was not written, that the sjieaker trusted to his never-failing •supply of appropriate language in which to clothe his ideas as they crowded upon his brain. So thoroughly had Burke mastered the art of government, and so complete- ly new were his political speculations, that this very thoroughness and novelty stood in the way of the reception of his ideas by the British public, and even by the British Parliament. It has taken the greater portion of a century to place the majority of the House of Commons abreast of what he spoke long years before. There are few of the great measures of the pres- ent day which his far-seeing wisdom did not anticipate, and which his feelings did not valiantly defend. He advoca- ted free trade many years before it be- came a watchword of party, and sup- ported the claims of Catholics when Fox was a boy in small clothes. Cath- olic emancipation was granted many years after his death, but only as a means of preserving the loyalty of the L'ish nation. He supported the peti- tion of the Dissenters to be relieved from the restrictions which the Church of England in its own behoof had im- posed upon them. He opposed the cruel laws against insolvents, and at- temjited in vain to mitigate the penal code. He strove to abolish the old plan of enlistment ; and he attacked the slave trade, which the king wished to preserve as part of the British con stitution. His labors in law reform are well known, and he is almost uni- versally recognized as the first financial reformer whom the British nation pro- duced. By means of various bills, he carried through parliament a system of oflacial reorganization which, in the single ofiice of paymaster-general, saved the country £25,000 a year. In March, 1768, he purchased a small estate in the county of Buckingham, twenty-three miles out of London, for some £23,000. This agreeable resi- dence was named Gregories; and is situated near Beaconsfield, where Burke now lies buried. He sat for Bristol fi'om 1774 till 1780; then for Malton, in Yorkshire, till the close of his political EDMTmD BUHKE. 107 career. On Ms retirement from public af- fairs in 1794, the representation of Mal- ton was delegated to his son, a young man of good promise, who had pre- viously filled the post of dejDuty-pay- master to his father, at £500 a year. But this only son, the joy and pride of his heart, was cut off in a few months by a rapid consumption, in his thirty- sixth year. The grief of the father at this great catastrophe is said, by Dr. La^vTence, to have been "truly terri- ble." Bursting frequently from all control, he would rush into the room where his dead son lay, and "throw himself headlong, as it happened, on the body, the bed, or the floor." Thenceforward Burke's life was im- measurably desolate. His afi'ections, which had always been fervid, now became almost ungovernable. His feel- ings occasionally mastered his reason ; and the strong oak of the forest sensi- bly swayed. " I live," says this broken- hearted old man, "in an inverted or- der. They who ought to have succeed- ed me have gone before me. They who should have been to me as posterity are in the place of ancestors. The stoi-m has gone over me, and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honors; I am torn up by the roots." His increased irritability is observa- ble, likewise, in the writings which he gave to the world after this date. His Observations on a late Publication, inti- tuled the Present State of the Nation, which appeared in 1769, was admitted by highly competent judges to outstrip the publications of Halifax, of Swift, of Addison, and of Bolingbroke. His Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents (1770), while it called down the dignified wrath of Chatham, the cynical sneers of Horace Walpole, and the screeches of Mrs. Catherine Macauley, sister to Sawbridge, Lord Mayor of London, is now admitted on all hands to be the most perfect expo- sition of Whiggism which has ever been made. It was in 1790 that his work on the French Revolution made its appearance. It was read every where, and talked about by every body. No political work on the current events of the day ever equalled it in interest, and in the sudden reputation which it acquired. Nothing else was asked for or thought of. Edition followed edition quicker almost than the printers could throw them off. Thirty thousand copies were soon in the hands of the public. In no place was its effect greater than in the court of George IH., where for long years the name of the author had not been mentioned without a shudder. His majesty himself read the book, and would have every one read it near him. " It will do you good — do you good," said he; "it is a book every gentleman should read." Meanwhile Fox was consigned to perdition by the creatures of the court : Burke was a great man, and a good man. Even clever Miss Burney (Madame D'Ar- blay), the intelligent keeper of the robes, felt her interest in Burke revive on this royal criticism. The book was talked over with much admiration by Pitt and Wilberforce, and other minis- terialists, at a public dinner at Wim- bledon. The fame of it reached the banks of the Isis and the shores of the 168 EDMUND BUEKE. Liifey ; and grave academicals in Ox- ford transmitted tlieir thanks to the author, and in Duljlin they made him an LL.D. ! All the crowned heads of Europe, the French nobility and princes in exile, Kiug Stanislaus of Poland, the princes and sovereigns of Germany, and Catherine of the icy North, sent their special congratulations to the author of the Reflections. This was flattering to poor Burke, who had battled so long and so earnestly iinder neglect and de- preciation. Yet Fox could not bear the book ; Sheridan could not bear it ; and young Mackintosh, at the age of twenty-six, wrote a reply to it. Many of the English people liked it, yet many of them disliked it. Some fifty rej^lies were penned against it ; but the only one that is still read is the production of a political staymaker, the " infidel " Tom Paine. Some two years before Burke's death, the king saw good to bestow upon him two considerable pensions, which amounted in all, dur- ing his life, to something over £10,- 000. Except £4000 per annum, which he received as paymaster under Shel- burne's ministery, this was all that he ever obtained either from kincj or courtier. From the time of his son's death, Burke never dined from home. His house, formerly like a hotel, was now the picture of desolation. He studious- ly avoided visitors, and wrapt himseK up in the cold folds of his own great sorrow. His head declined, and hia body bent together ; and the peasants in the neighboring fields, accustomed to a kind word as he passed, now shrunk off, awe-stricken at the spectacle of so great a grief. Yet still his mind was fresh, and his faculties vigorous. He spent a considerable portion of the days which preceded his death in the perusal of a good book sent him by a good man — "Practical Christianity," by his friend Wilberforce. On the 9th of July, 1797, Edmund Burke expired at Greg- cries, v,'ithout a groan, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. His disease was a scii'- rhous affection of the stomach. " His end," wrote Dr. Lawrence, on the morn- ing of his death, over his lifeless re- mains, " was suited to the simple great- ness of his mind, which he displayed through life — every way unaftected, without levity, without ostentation, full of natural grace and dignity.'' By his own express injunctions, he was to be interred in the family bury- ing-ground at Beaconsfield, beside his brother Richard, and yet a dearer friend to the old man's heart. On the 15th of the month, at eight o'clock, on a beautiful July evening, while the sinking sun sent its last rays through the casements of the little church, he was slowly lowered into the grave, and laid besides the ashes of his son. Burke's widow, who survived him for fifteen years, was removed to the same resting-place in 1812. •g> SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. rpiHE Rev. Samuel Reynolds, tlie -L father of Sir Joshua, in 1715, at the age of thirty-four, became master of the grammar-school at Plympton, in Devonshire, and there Joshua was born, July 16th, 1723. He was the third son, and seventh child in a fam- ily of eleven. Samuel Reynolds was more remarkable for the range than for the depth of his attainments. His want of profundity might have been no disadvantage in the elementary in- struction of youth, but he was also re- markable for good temper, guileless- ness, and absence of mind, and these were qualities which would be likely to render him the dupe of his boys. Whatever was the cause he was un- successful in his office, and in spite of his various knowledge and virtiies, he was at last left with only a single pu- pil. Joshua was intended for a gen- eral practitioner in medicine. Before he was seventeen he had already "spent a great deal of time and pains " on the study of medicine, un- der the dii'ection of his father, who was, in his own opinion, a proficient Abridged from two elaborate papers on Rey- nolds and his -works in the Quarterly Review for 1866. 22 in the science. He thought of appren ticing his son to the Plympton apoth ecary, and said he should make no ac count of the qualification of the nomi nal master, since he himself should be the actual instructor. The salary of the worthy schoolmaster was only j£120 a year and a house, and as, Avith his large family and small income, he could not afford to send his boys to the University, he had evidently re- solved to educate them with reference to their special callings, instead of de- voting their entire youth to obtaining a critical acquaintance with the learn ed languages. Joshua had been accustomed from childhood to make little sketches, and copy the poor engravings in Dryden's " Plutarch," and Jacob Cats' " Book of Emblems." He does not appear to have displayed at the outset any ex- traordinary skill. His most memor- able feat was that he went through the Jesuits' " Perspective " of his own accord at the age of eight. " It hap- pened," he told Malone, " to lie on the window-seat of his father's parlor, and he made himself so completely master of it, that he never afterwards had oc casion to study any other treatise or (169) 170 SIE JOSHUA EEYNOLDS. ttat subject." He lost no time in re- ducing tlie system to practice, and drew by it tlie Plympton school-house, which was open below, and rested ujjon columns at one side, and one end. " Now this," said Samuel Reynolds of his son's j^erformance, " exemplifies what the author of the ' Perspective ' asserts in his preface, that by observ- ing the rules laid down in bis book, a man may do wonders ; for this is won- derful." The commendation sunk into the child's mind, and in the zenith of his fame Reynolds repeated the re- mark to Boswell. Joshua next tried his hand in taking likenesses, but with only " tolerable success." Year after year he continued to amuse his leisure hours with his pencil, and when the choice of his profession was under dis- cussion "his very great genius for drawing" raised a question whether medicine should not give way to art. Joshua had been "very much pleased" with a print he had seen, from a pic- ture by Hudson, who was the most popular portrait painter of the day. He was a native of Devonshire, and was shortly expected to pay a visit to Bideford, were Samuel Reynolds had an intimate friend in Mi*. Cutcliife, an attorney. The schoolmaster requested him to show some of Joshua's draw- ings to Hudson, and ascertain if he would receive the lad for a pupil. The fond father, with a prophetic faith in the result, pronounced it to be " one of the most important affairs in his life, and that which he looked upon to be his main interest some way or oth- er to bring about." The difficulties proved less formidable than he antici- pated. "Everything," he said, " jump- ed out in a strange, unexpected man- ner to a miracle." The arrangement was concluded throiagh the mediation of Mr. Cutcliffe; and Joshua was to be boarded, lodged, and instructed du- ring four years for £120. Half of the money was to be raised by Samuel Reynolds in the course of the four years, and the other half was advanc- ed by one of his married daughters, Mrs. Palmer, as a loan to her brother. Young Reynolds was received into Hudson's house in November, 1740, and found his' highest expectations fulfilled. " He is very sensible of his happiness," his father wrote to Mr. Cutcliffe in December, " in being un- der such a master, in such a family, in such a city, and in such an employ- ment." When Joshua arrived in London, painting had sunk to be an ordinary manufacture. " The art," he said, " was at the lowest ebb : it could not indeed be lower." The painters were incapable of appreciating fine works as Avell as of executing them ; for from being trained in a false, conven- tional taste, they had come to prefer defects to beauties. Reynolds told Northcote that they would have laughed any one to scorn who had ventured to place the masterpieces of Vandyke in competition with the frigid mannei'ism of Kneller. Hudson was the last of this school who acquired a reputation. There are portraits by him Avhich would not be thouErht con- temptible if they were from the pen cil of an artist without pretensions ; but his choicest works are poor per- formances for the most celebrated pain- ter of a generation. Horace Walpole SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 171 epeaks of his " honest similitudes," vvhich is a coiTcct description of his pictui'es. They are formal, common- place, matter-of-fact representations ; and this degreee of skill, we know from Sir Joshua, could be acquired as readily as a mechanic trade. The young apprentice, in his ignorance, shared the contemporary opinion of Hudson's capabilities. Faith and do- cility were serviceable qualities in a youth who had nearly everything to learn ; and a considerable amount of rudimentary practice could be acquired in the studio of a man who had at least the faculty of producing " hon- est similitudes." " As for Joshua," his father reports, in August, 1742, "nobody, by his letters to me, was ever better pleased in his employment, in his master, in everything. ' While I am doing this, I am the happiest crea- ture alive,* is his expression." He had then been a pupil little more than a year and a half, and by his talents and enthusiasm he was rapidly eclipsing his instructor. At the end of two years he had painted the portrait of an elderly female servant, which is said by its superiority to have roused the jealousy of his master. Acting under the irritation of envy at per- ceiving himself outdone by his scholar, he is allesced to have dismissed him not long afterwards on a very frivolous pretence. He had sei'ved an appren- ticeship of two years and nine months. The Hudsons of the day could teach him nothing further, and relying on his local connections he set up at Ply- mouth Dock, where before January, 1744, he had painted twenty portraits, and had commissions for ten more. In December of that year he was again in London. His time, in the in- terval, had not been well spent. He told Malone that " about the age of nineteen or twenty he became very careless about his profession, and lived for near three years at Plymouth, in a great deal of dissipation." The age of twenty exactly corresponds with the period when he parted with Hud- son, and became his own master. His fii'st taste of fi-eedom from all control, conjoined with his love of sociality, naturally drew him from his easel to indulge in the pleasures of companion- ship. He said " he saw his error in time, and sat down seriously to his art about the year 1743, or 1744." This reduces the season of idleness to rather less than eighteen months. Hudson's ill-will, if it had ever exist- ed, was of short duration. When his discarded pupil reappeared in London, and opened a studio at the close of 1744, he got him elected into a club, " composed of the most famous men in their profession," which was a recogni- tion of his right to take immediate rank with them. Samuel Reynolds calls the conduct " exceeding gener- ous," and a letter to Mr. Cutcliffe, on May 24, 1745, furnishes further proof of the cordial confidence which had survived the brief misunderstanding, " Joshua's master is very kind to him. He comes to visit him pretty often, and freely tells him where his pictures are faulty, which is a great advantage, and when he has finished anything of his own, he is pleased to ask Joshua's judgment, which is a great honor." There are no more records of his son's progress from the kind, simple, elatea 172 Sm JOSHUA EEYlSrOLDS. old man. He died on Cliristmas day, 1746, and Joshua once more witlidrew from London and took a house, with his two unmarried sisters, at Plymouth Dock. It is said by Malone that Eeynolds " always considered the disagreement which induced him to leave Mr. Hud- son as a very fortunate circumstance, since by this means he was led to de- viate from the tameness and insipidity of his master, and to form a manner of his own." The change was not imme- diate. His works for some time were of the Hudson school, and he is not known to have produced anything in a better style imtil he painted the portraits of Captain Hamilton, and the l3oy engaged in reading, in 1747. Whatever may have been the exact period of the change in Reynolds's style, Northcote and Leslie agree that the hints which kindled his genius were derived from the works of "Wil- liam Gandy, an itinerant artist, who rov- ed through Devonshire and Cornwall, and died about the time when Joshua was born. Lazy, gluttonous, improv- ident, and irascible, he dashed off likenesses at a couple of guineas a piece, with no other care than to ob- tain with as little trouble as possible the money which would purchase him a luxurious meal. "His portraits," says Northcote, " are slight and sketchy, and show more of genius than of labor ; they, indeed, demon- strate facility, feeling, and nice obser- vation, as far as concerns the head ; but he was so idle, and so unambitious that the remainder of the picture, ex- cept sometimes the hand, was com- monly copied from some print after Sir Godfrey Kneller." One of the precepts of Gandy was that " a picture ought to have a richness in its texture, as if the colors had been composed of cream or cheese, and the reverse to a hard and husky, or dry manner." The re- mark was repeated to Reynolds, and how largely he profited liy it is appa- rent from the circumstance that it would be difficult to describe more ac- curately the usual surface of his own paintings. The germ of his distinctive qualities may be clearly discerned in particular sj^ecimens of Gaudy's works, but these merely furnished the spark which lighted up the latent powers of a far greater man. When once the mind of Reynolds Avas released fi'om the trammels of Hudson's authority, he looked at nature for himself, and began to transfer to his canvas effects and incidents caught fresh from life, and portrayed with tlie individuality of his charming genius. In April, 1749, Commodore Keppel put into Plymouth on his way to take the command in the Mediterranean, and paid a Ansit to Lord Edgcumbe, who was one of the local patrons of RejTiolds. The young painter yearn- ed to study the masterpieces of the world. The " height of his wishes " was to visit Rome, and at the request of Lord Edo-cumbe the Commodore offered him a passage to Italy. They sailed in the Centurion on May 11th, and after seeing Lisbon, Cadiz, Gibral- tar, and Algiers, they landed at Port Mahon on August 23d. Reynolds won his way wherever he went by his ad- mirable qualities. From the guest he became the friend of Keppel, and at Minorca General Blakeney, the gov- SIR JOSHUA EEYN^OLDS. 173 era or, provided him with quarters free of expense, and invited him to live at his table. During his stay on the island he met with a serious accident. His horse fell with him over a preci- pice, his face was much bruised, and his upper lip was injured to such an extent that it became necessary to cut a portion of it away. Nearly all the officers on the station availed them- selves of his presence to get their por- traits painted, and he remained two or three months among them, " greatly to the improvement," says Northcote, " of his skill and fortune." In December, 1749, Reynolds sailed from Port Mahon to Leghorn, and pro- ceeded by way of Florence to Eome. He was at last in the presence of the finest productions of Raphael, and to his extreme mortification he was un- able to relish them. Surprise has of- ten been expressed that with the skill he had already attained he should have failed to appreciate the extraordinary qualities of the frescoes at the Vati- can. A remark he made to North- cote explains the mystery. " Every painter," said Reynolds, " has some favorite branch of the art which he looks for in a picture ; and, in propor- tion as that part is well or ill executed, he pronounces his opinion upon the whole. One artist looks for coloring, another for drawing, another for hand- ling; an independent spectator looks for expression." He himself looked for coloring, or, in his own words, " for superficial and alluring beauties," and the pictorial effect of nature, dig- nity and grace seemed tame and in- sipid when it was not conjoined with the captivating hues of the Titans and Correggios. " I felt my ignorance," he says, " and stood abashed. All the indigested notions which I had brought with me from England were to be to- tally done away with and eradicated from my mind. Notwithstanding my disapjiointment I proceeded to copy some of those excellent works. I viewed them again and again ; I even affected to feel their merits, and to ad- mire them more than I really did. In a short time a new taste and new per- ceptions began to dawn upon me, and I was convinced that I had originally formed a false opinion of the perfec- tion of art, and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he holds in the estimation of the world." Thus the first lesson which Reynolds learnt in Italy proved the supreme importance of his journey. He had greatly enlarged his concep- tions, and to his j^revious aims he ad- ded a fuller insight into the noblest class of effects. His delight in color, and light and shade, remained undi- minished, but he had acquired a keen- er eye for those severer beauties of form and expression, which character- ized what has often been fitly called the epic of art. He was inspired above all by the sublime creations of Michael Angelo. " I was let," he says, in one of his Roman note-books, " into the Capella Sistina in the morning, and remained there the whole day, a great part of which I spent walking up and down it with great self-import- ance. He paid one severe penalty for the knowledge he had gained. While painting in the Vatican he caught a cold which left him deaf for life, and 174 SIR JOSHUA EEYNOLDS. obliged him in company to use a trum- pet. In conversation with an indi- vidual, as with a sitter, where the talk was exclusively addi-essed to himself, and there were no contending voices to interfere with the sound, he heard readily without artificial aid. He remained at Eome for two years and four months. He departed on May 3d, 1752, and proceeded to Flor- ence. Here he was in doubt whether to remain a little longer in Italy or re- turn at once to England. The motives for prolonging his sojourn prevailed. Reynolds stayed at Florence till July 4, and after visiting Bologna and Mo- dena he arrived at Venice on July 24. He again set out on August 16, having spent but three weeks in the head- quarters of that school of color, which he copied and rivalled. His craving to return to England was increased by a circumstance which occurred one night at the opera-house at Venice. The manager, out of comjiliment to the English part of the audience, or- dered the band to play a jjopular air which was heard in every street in London at the time when Reynolds and his companions left home. The recollections the simple strain conjured up brought the tears into their eyes. Re}'nolds did not again halt above a day or two on his homeward jom-ney till he got to Paris, where he remained a month, and painted a beautiful por- trait of Mrs. Chambers, the wife of the architect. Between Turin and the Alps he fell in with Hudson, who, for the sake of appearances, had determined to visit Rome. He only stayed a couple of days. He was back at Paris before Reynolds had gone away, and they retm-ned together to Eng land. Reynolds reached London October 16th, 1752. His health was impaired, and he went to Plymouth for a three months' holiday. He had no sooner recovered than he set oif for London, and hired a studio in St. Martin's Lane. He had brought with him from Rome an Italian boy named Marchi, and he exhibited a head of this lad in a Turkish turban, "richly painted," says Northcote, "something in the style of Rembrandt." Ellis, a fash- ionable manufacturer of portraits, ex- claimed, when he saw it, " Ah ! Rey- nold, this will never answer : why, you don't j^aint in the least degree in the manner of Kueller." Reynolds denied that Kneller was the standard of per- fection; and Ellis, astonished and en- raged at the heresy, rushed fi'om the room, calling out as he went, " Shake- speare in poetry, and Kneller in paint- ing, damme!" "It is well known," says Mason, the poet, "that when young Reynolds returned fi-om his studies in Italy, Lord Edgcumbe persuaded many of the first nobility to sit to him for their- pictures, and he very judiciously applied to such of them as had the strongest features, and whose likeness, therefore, it was the easiest to hit. Amongst those personages were the old Dukes of Devonshire and Grafton, and of these the young artist made portraits, not only expressive of their countenances, but of their figures, and this in a manner so novel, simple, and natural, yet withal so dignified, as pro- cured him general aj^plause, and set him in a moment above his old master Hudson," A full-length portrait of SIE JOSHUA EEYNOLDS. 175 his friend Keppel speedily followed, and greatly increased his reputation. His sister Frances, who was six years yoimger than himself, and who died unmarried in 1807, removed with him to London, and kept his house for sev- eral years. She excelled in painting miuiatui'es, and appears at one time to have practiced the art professionally, for Johnson, wi'iting of her to Langton, in January, 1759, says, "Miss is much employed in miniatures." She some- times attempted large pictures in oil, which were so exceedingly bad that her brother remarked jestingly, " that they made other people laugh, and him cry." Before the close of 1753, the increas- ing reputation of Reynolds enabled him to raise his price to the sum charged by Hudson, and to exchange his quarters in St. Martin's Lane for a house in Great Newport Street. He had lived with strict economy abroad, for he once said that he knew from expe- rience that £50 a-year was enough for a student at Rome. A part of the money was furnished by his married sisters, Mrs. Palmer and Mi's. Johnson, and he must have been indebted to re- lations or friends for the capital wliich started him in London. His immedi- ate success placed him at once above pecuniary care. His tei'ms for a head were three guineas before he went to Italy, five when he set up in St. Mar- tin's Lane, and twelve when he re- moved to Newport Street. A half- length was double the price of a head, and a full-length double the price of a half-length. He welcomed comments ti-om every quarter, and scouted the notion that none but painters could judge of pictures. "The only opin- ions," he said, " of which no use can be made are those of half -learned connois- seurs, who have quitted natiu-e and have not acquired art." Likeness of feature was the least achievement of Reynolds. His master faculty was the power of painting the qualities of the sitter — the power which, along with the lineaments of Thurlow, could depict his sapience and temper. " Sir Joshua dived," says Malone, "into the minds and habits, and manners of those who sat to him, and accordingly the majority of his portraits are so appropriate and characteristic, that the many il- lustrious persons whom he has deline- ated will be almost as well known to posterity as if they had seen and con- versed with them." Northcote, who has stamped this passage with his ap- proval, adds his own opinion that in character the portraits of Reynolds surpassed those of every painter in the world. His range was unlimited. He was great in rendering the traits of all ages, temperaments, and callings — men and women, boys and girls, soldiers and men of letters, the gay and the thoughtful, the vicious and the good. Whatever may be the look it has the air of being native and spontaneous. Amid the vast variety of expression in his female heads, the most frequent is some form of pensive tenderness, which was doubtless the quality that usually preponderated in the originals His finest works of this kind are an absolute impersonation of all that is gentlest and purest in womankind. He appears too in his glory in his rep- resentations of children. In sjiite of 176 SIR JOSHUA EETNOLDS. the host of affections which gather round the young, the distinctiveness of their ways, and the attractiveness of nature fresh and unsophisticated, this singularly winning and pictures- que stage of life had been almost over- looked by preceding masters. The painters of religious subjects repre- sented children as seraphic beings, and the painters of portraits represented them with the formal air which they wore when they sat for their pictures. The happy idea occurred to Reynolds of representing them as they are seen \n their daily doings, when animated by the emotions which typify their lives to us. The fondest parent could not observe them more closely, or take a keener deliti'ht in their dawuina; traits and engaging simplicity. He said, "that all their gestures were graceful, and that the reign of distor- tion and unnatural attitudes com- menced with the dancino; master." He has recorded on canvas the whole round of boyish and girlish existence. He presents them to us in their games, their pursuits, their glee, and their gravity. Their archness and their art- lessness, their spirit and their shy- ness, the seriousness with which they engage in their little occuj)atious, and the sweet and holy innocence which is common to the majority of the young, are all embodied with unrivalled felic- ity. No class of his works abounds equally with examples of that tran- sient expression which, he said, " lasts less than a moment, and must be painted in as little time." He called it " shooting flying," and considered that the power of fixing these passing emotions was "the greatest eilbrt of the art." Nor did his hand lose its cimning in passing from the softest graces of women and children to the attributes of men. His male heads redound with masculine vigor, and are discriminated by the strongest traits of individuality. "Sir Joshua's por- traits," said Northcote to Hazlitt, " have always that determined air and character, that you know what to think of them, as if you had seen them en- gaged in the most decided action." A memorable event in the life of Reynolds occurred during his residence in Great Newport Street. The Miss Cotterells, who lived opposite to him, were acquainted with Johnson. Rey- nolds met him at their house in 1753 or 175-4, and a lasting friendship en- sued. The intimacy imparted a new impulse to the active intellect of the painter. " Whatever merit," he wrote towards the close of his career, " my Discourses have, must be imputed, in a great measure, to the education which I may be said to have had un- der Dr. Johnson. I do not mean to say, though it certainly would be to their credit if I could say it with truth, that he contributed even a single sen- timent to them, but he qualified mj^ mind to think justly. No man had, like him, the faculty of teaching infe- rior minds the art of thinking. The observations which he made on poetry, on life, and on everything about us, I applied to our art." " Nothing," said Burke, " showed more the greatness of Sir Joshua's parts than his taking ad- vantage of the writings and conversa- tion of Johnson, and making some ap- plication of them to his j^rofession, when Johnson neither understood, nor SIE JOSHUA EEYNOLDS. 177 desired to miderstand, anything of painting." In 1758, Reynolds raised liis prices to twenty, forty, and eighty guineas for a head, half-length, and whole- length. From the unusual number of the works he threw off, Northcote says that his profession was more lucrative at this period than when his charges became higher. The celerity with which he turned out a picture was ex- traordinary. Mr. Taylor finds from his pocket-books that in 1758 he had one hundred and fifty-nine sitters, which is at the rate of rather more than a portrait to every two days. His facility was not even then at its height. " He took," said Fuseli, " in- finite pains at first to finish his work, but afterwards, when he had acquired a greater readiness of hand he dashed on with his brush." The freedom and boldness of his execution increased for many years to come. Here and there we are informed of the time he be- stowed upon particular productions. In 1762 he painted in a week the cele- brated picture of Garrick between Tra- gedy and Comedy, and in 1773 he com- pleted the head of Beattie and sketched the rest of the figure, in a single sit- tins: of five hours. He did not con- sider it a disadvantage to be hui'ried, but held that the concentration of ef- fort made amends for more leisurely workmanship. The rapid succession with which his portraits followed each other renders more surprising the va- riety of his designs, which would be supposed to have demanded deliberate thought. In the formal parts he could call in the help of assistants. He had several drapery men in his employ, and - 23 such was the advantage of their me- chanic aid, that Northcote had heard him observe that no one ever acquii'ed a fortune by his own hands alone. In 1762 he was making, as Johnson wrote word to Baretti, six thousand a year, and once, when lamenting the inter- ruptions from idle visitors, he dropped the remark, " Those people do not con- sider that my time is worth five gui- neas an hour." The influx of riches did not relax his exertions, for his art was his passion. Till he laid aside his pencil for ever he was constant to his painting-room from ten to four, and he himself says that he went on " laboring as hard as a me- chanic working for his bread." Ho was sometimes enticed into paying a visit to a countiy seat, and he alwaj's returned from the relaxation and lux- uries with the feeling that "he had been kept fr'om his natural food." His speedy attainment to wealth and fame had no efi^ect in corrupting his sim- plicity. "There goes a man," said Johnson, " not to be spoiled by pros- perity ; " and Burke records that " his native humility, modesty, and candor never forsook him." Reynolds changed his qtiarters in 1760, having purchased a forty-seven years' lease of a house in Leicester- square for £1650. He exj^ended £1500 more in building a picture gallery " for the exhibition of his works," and j^aint ing-rooms for himself, his pupils, and his assistants. The outlay absorbed the greater part of his savings. His enlarged establishment included a cha- riot with carving and gilding on the wheels, and allegorical figures of the seasons on the panels. His sister ob 178 SIE JOSHUA REYNOLDS. Jected tliat it was too showy, and lier brother rejjlied, " "WTiat ! woidd you Lave one like an apothecary's car- riage?" He had little occasion for a carriase himself, and much to the annoyance of Miss Eejiiolds, who was exceedingly shy and shi-unk from the notice which the equijiage attracted, lie insisted that she should use it. He gave a ball on taking possession of his house. He was not much addicted to mere gaiety, hut no man had a keener zest for mental intercourse. " He was as fond of London," says Malone, " as Dr. Johnson, alwavs maintaiuinsf that it was the only place in England where a pleasant society might be found." He later erected a %Tlla on Richmond Hill, and often spent a summer evening there ■^vith his fi'iends ; but notwithstanding his fine sense of the beauties of nature, he rarely remained a night. He used to say " that the human face was his landscape," and he would not sacrifice the stir of London for mral scenes and fresh air. He belonged to various so- cial clubs, he was a frequent diner out, and every week he gave one or more dinners himself. An important measure, which is said by Barry to have originated with Rey- nolds, was adopted in 1760. The paint- ers commenced an annual exhibition, out of which after several years of ex- periment, grew the incorporated Royal Academy, of which, by common con- sent, Reynolds was appointed presi- dent. To confer dignity on his office he Avas knighted, which occasioned much rejoicing among his friends. Burke de- clared that there was a natiu'al fitness in his name for the title, and Johnson, after ten } ears' abstinence fi'om wine, drank a glass to his health on the oc- casion, Reynolds delivered a discourse at the opening of the Academy in Janu- ary, 1769. This was followed by a second in December, when he dis- tributed the prizes. The plan of the academy comprised a school for train- ing artists, and a gold medal was an- nually to be conferred upon the student who produced the best attempt at an historical picture. The president felt that formal compliments would become flat by repetition, and he detennined to seize the opportunity to put beginners in possession of the lessons he had learned by years of observation, reflec- tion, and practice. Talent was of slow- er growth than had been anticijjated, and after 1772 the gold medal was re- served for alternate years, when the discourses of the president became bi- ennial also. From the long iutei-vals between them he could not enter upon a systematic course of instruction ; but more methodical lecturers have not had equal success in placing the student up- on the vantage ground occupied by the master. He expatiated ujion the quali- ! ties which go to form a fine picture — he described the various schools of painting, with the merits and defects of each — he specified the characteris- tics of the several masters, showing what was to be imitated and what to be avoided — and he detailed to learn- ers the modes of proceeding which would best enable them to appropriate the beauties of their forerunners. His style was clear and chaste, and had the elements of an elegance which proved that if he had not been a celebrated painter he had it in his power to become SIR JOSHUA EETNOLDS. 179 a celebrated author. The excellence of the composition gave rise to a report that the Discourses were the work of Johnson or Burke. Malone and North- cote have refuted a charge which must appear ridiculous to any one who has the least acquaintanee with the style of the pretended authors. No refuta- tion was required. An accusation which is unsupported by a tittle of trustworthy evidence is simply slander. He exhibited a large historical pic- ture in 1779. This was the Nativity, which he painted as a design for the chapel window at New College. The original was burnt at Belvoir Castle, and was a master-piece of color. Sir Joshua borrowed from Correggio the idea of making the Saviour the source of a supernatural light, " but his exe- cution," says Northcote, " both in man- ner and circumstance gave it the effect of novelty." The University of Oxford offered its tribute to the illustrious president by conferring on him, in 1773, the degree of D.C.L. He frequently painted him- self afterwards in his academical dress, partly, perhaps, for its pictorial effect, and partly because he prized honorary titles. " Distinction," he said, " is what we all seek after ; and the world does set a value on them, and I go with the great stream of life." When Ferguson, the self-educated astronomer, was elec- ted a fellow of the Eoyal Society, he exclaimed, " Ah ! I do not want honor ; I want bread." Reynolds replied that, " to obtain honors was the means to ob- tain bread :" which is commonly true when the badge is held in estimation by the public, and he who receives it has proportionate merit. A compli- ment which Sir Joshua rated higher than his degree was paid him the same year. He was chosen Mayor of Plymp- ton. He told the king, who met him walking in Richmond Gardens, that it gave him more pleasure than any other honor he had ever received. As he ut- tered the words he remembered his knighthood, and added, " except that which your majesty was pleased to be- stow upon me." On his accession to the mayoralty, Reynolds presented his portrait to the corporation, and request- ed that it might be hung in a good sit- uation. He was informed in reply that it had been put between two old pic- tures, which acted as a foil, and set it off to great advantage. The two old pictures were portraits of naval officers which he himself had painted before he went to Italy. Wilkie, who saw them in 1809, said that " for composition they were as fine as anything he ever did afterwards." From July 24th to September 16th, l781,Reynolds was absent from London on a tour through Holland and the Neth- erlands. His admirable criticisms on the Dutch and Flemish painters were mostly wi'itten during this journey. He was fascinated by the gorgeous hues of Rubens, and on his return he thought the coloring of his own pio- tures deficient in force. He made an- other excursion into the Low Countries in 1783, when the works of Rubens ap- peared less brilliant than before. In 1784 Reynolds exhibited his Mrs. Sid- dons as the Tragic Muse, which was said by Barry to be " both for the ideal and execution the finest picture, per- haps, of the kind in the world," and which Lawi'ence pronounced to be in- 180 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. dubitably the finest female portrait every painted. The days of Eeynolds continued to flow on with a prosperity which seem- ed almost exempt from the common casualties of life. With the exception of his slight j^aralytic attack, in 1782, he had been hardly acquainted with illness. He was congratulated at the age of sixty-six on his healthy and yoiithful apj)earance, and he replied that he felt as he looked. Just at this time the scene suddenly chang- ed. In July, 1789, his left eye became affected by gutta serena, and in a few weeks his sight had perished. There was reason to believe that the right eye was ready to give way, and the hazard of exerting it compelled Rey- nolds to abandon his profession. Artists had usually painted sitting till Rey- nolds introduced the custom of paint- ing standing. His object in the change was that he might be able to see the effect of his work by stepjjiug back- wards. Malone supposed that the habit had answered the additional end of protecting Reynolds fi"om the evils of a sedentary calling. His sedentary life, however, was probably the cause of his malady, which was subsequently found to be associated with derange- ment of tlie liver. He was neither a tijipler nor a glutton, but he ate and drank freely, while he took little exer- cise beyond what the practice of his art afforded. His excellent consti- tution had been slowly gathering the seeds of disease, and when the crisis arrived the mischief had proceeded too far to be checked. " In the fifteen years," says Malone, * during which I had the pleasure of living with Sir Joshua on terms of great intimacy, he appeared to me the happiest man I had ever known." Boswell shared the impression, and Johnson quoted him as an instance of a thinking person who was never troubled with melancholy, but was the same all the year round. He was now deprived of his life-long occupa- tion in a moment. He had early adop- ted the maxim that " the great princi- ple of being hapjjy was not to be af- fected by small things." He showed in his closing days that he could ap- ply the principle under grievous afilic- tion. He made the most of the re- soui'ces which remained to him. He looked with the old enthusiasm at the master-pieces in his gallery, he occa- sionally cleaned and touched a dam aged picture, and he found some occu- pation in the business of the academy. Mr. Leslie remarks that his fondness for birds appeared by the manner in which he introduced them into his pictures, and he solaced part of his weary leisure with a little bird he had tamed. His favorite flew away, and he wandered for hours round Leices- ter Square in the fruitless hope of re- claiming it. He was fortunate in his domestic circiimstances. When his sis- ter left his house he had two Miss Pal- mers, his nieces, for inmates. One had since become Mrs. Gwatkin ; the other, afterwards Marchioness of Thomond, remained to tend upon him with as- siduous affection. His ftiends gather- ed round him, and strove to beguile the tedium of his existence. He had all the amusement which could be de- rived from dinners, conversation, whist, and country visits. To some his social SIE JOSHTA REYNOLDS. 181 ease might seem an enviable lot, but a perpetual holiday was a heavy burthen to a man whose profession had been his pleasure for fifty years. He delivered his final Discourse on Dec. 10th, 1790, when he informed his auditors that " his age, and his infirmi- ties still more than his age," would probably never permit him to address them again. His lecture was chiefly devoted to the mighty master from whom he had derived in his youth his highest inspiration, and he wound up with saying, that the last words he wished to pronounce from the chair of the academy was the name of Michael Angelo. His disorders made rapid progress. Miss Bui-ney saw him in July, 1791, when he was greatly dejected by the apprehension that the failing sight of the right eye would soon consign him to total darkness. The enormous en- largement of his liver, which was over- looked by his physicians, was the secret cause of a deeper melancholy. His wonted cheerfulness forsook him, and his friends could no longer dissipate his abiding despondency. In Decem- ber he was aware that death was ap- proaching. A friend tried to comfort him with the hope of returning health, and he answered, "I know that all things on earth must have an end, and I have come to mine." His composiire returned when he became sensible that his departure was at hand. " Nothing," wrote Burke on Jan. 26th, 1792, "can equal the trancpiility with which he views his end. He conojratulates him- seK on it as a happy conclusion to a happy life." Enthusiasm for his art had enticed him in his prosperity into a partial neglect of his religious duties. His sister, Mrs. Johnson, had earnestly remonstrated with him for painting on Sundays ; and the last request of his dying friend. Dr. Johnson, was that he would give up his Sunday painting and read his Bible. But though he sometimes relaxed his strictness, his reverence remained, " All this excel- lence," he said, in his notice of Moser, the keeper of the Royal Academy, " had a firm foundation. He was a man of sincere and ardent piety, and has left an illustrious example of the exactness with which the subordinate duties may be expected to be discharged by him whose first care is to please God." Such was the creed of Reynolds in 1783 ; and, with his simple mind and sweet disposition, we might be sure that he had never relinquished the faith in which he had been trained by his father. " He had fi'om the be- ginning of his malady," said Burke, "a distinct view of his dissolution," and the peaceful hope with which he looked forward to the consumma- tion continued with him to the last. He died on the evening of Feb, 23d, 1792. He had requested that he might be buried, without expense, in St. Paul's cathedral. Burke and the other exec- utors were of opinion that the brilliant era he had created in art demanded a public funeral. His body was remov- ed to the academy at Somerset House, and on Saturday, March 3d, a long pro- cession of men of eminence and rank followed the remains of the great and good academy president to the tomb. MARTHA WASHINGTON THE name of Washington rarely suggests to an American aught but the patriot hero, or the grave and dignified statesman and father of his conntry. "Washington seems to be es- sentially a part and parcel of the his- tory of our native land. We think of him usually as displaying those noble, manly qualities of head and heart for which he was distinguished ; and we are apt to regard him so constantly as the great leader in the Revolution, as the presiding officer of that band of patriots and statesmen who framed the Constitution of the United States, as the first president under the Constitu- tion in its most critical of all periods, and as the venerable sage and coun- sellor after his retirement from public life, that he hardly appears to have been at any time young, or in any wise a partaker of the ordinary feelings, hopes and aspirations of our youthful common humanity. It is quite a mistake, however, to look upon our pater patrice in this light alone. Washington, it is well to remember, was once a boy like other boys, full of feeling which belongs to that age, a boy of excellent common sense, and not withoiit high and worthy (182) aims in life. And more than this, ag Ave may here appropriately state, Wash- ington during his boyhood was so sore- ly smitten with the charms of a " low- land beauty," that he went throiigh all the heats and colds, the elevations of hope and the sinkings of despair, pe- culiar to yoiithful love, both before and since his time. Who would think it ? The grave, reserved, almost stern warrior and sage, whose self-control was nearly perfect, was, underneath, all alive with quick impulses, and peculiarly sen- sible to female beauty and attractive ness. Hardly had he entered upon his career as a man, and begun to be a lover of Mai's and the sterner du- ties of the field, when he was smitten again with the tender passion, and his beating heart palpitated under the be- Avitohing influence of a beautiful maid- en of New York. This was Miss Mary Philipse, sister of Mrs. Beverley Robin- son, who was living at the time in the city of New York. Washington was at the impressible age of twenty-three, and it is reported that he formally asked the lady's hand and was refused. But the report may reasonably be doubted. Washington, though a hero Fmm die on^malpcimtm. A^=^ ■'f the publishers. Jnhni: ■ •JieorHceor'Ot^Ltbfar:':.' MAKTHA WASHINGTON. 183 in the fight, was by nature very diffi- dent and bashful in the presence of ladies, and as his stay in the city was but brief, and troubles on the frontier speedily summoned him to Virginia, it is more than likely that he did not tell his love or urge his suit. In due time, however, to speak after the manner of story-tellers, he met his fate, and the accomplished lady who foi-ms the subject of these pages smiled upon him and became his wife. His first meeting with her was quite ro- mantic in its character. It appears that, in 1758, while Washington was hurrying forward to Williamsburg, Virginia, he chanced to cross the Pa- munkey, and was seized upon by Mr. Chamberlayne with old fashioned Vir- ginia hospitality, which would hear of no denial. As an additional induce- ment to spend the day at his house, Mr. Chamberlayne promised to intro- duce his guest to a blooming widow who was at thie time an inmate of his mansion. Washington reluctantly yielded, with the firm resolve however to push forward that same evening. But when he met the beautiful Mrs. Custis, and came within the sphere of her many attractions, his resolve faded away, and he spent not only that day, but nearly all the next in company •with the charming widow. So soon, too, as he could, after dispatching his business at Williamsburg, he continued his attentions to the lady who had evi- dently captivated him, and was in turn captivated herself by the brave and manly George Washington. Her resi- dence at the Wbite House, New Kent County, was readily accessible, and Washington urged his suit with so much ardor that they mutually pledged their faith, and it was an-anged that the marriage should take place at the close of the campaign against Fort Du Quesne. Martha Dandridge, who was de- scended from an old family that had early migrated to Virginia, was born in the county of New Kent, in May, 1732. She received such education as was ac- cessible in those days, and was quite distinguished among the young ladies of that region for mental excellence, amiability, beauty and fascinating manners. She was only seventeen when she was married to Colonel Daniel Parke Custis, also a native of New Kent County, and a wealthy and suc- cessful planter. Two children were the fruit of this marriage ; but Colonel Custis died within five or six years, leaving his widow with the cares and responsibilities of a large fortune upon her hands, and the training of her chil- dren in the path of vii'tue and good- ness. In this state of afi^airs, she man- ifested those qualities of prudence, dis- cretion and good sense which pertained to her through life, and rendered her a helpmate indeed to the father of his country. Washington, as above stated, having been successful in his suit, the marriage took place on the 6th of January, 1759, at the White House, the residence of the bride. It was attended by large numbers of relatives and friends, and was marked by the overflowing and bounteous hospitality of Virginia in colonial times, and seemed to promise as much hajjpiness as is ever voucli- safed to mortals in this world of trou ble and uncertainty. 184 MARTHA WASHINGTON A few montlis later, Washington took up his residence at Mount Ver- non, his favorite place of abode and where he spent many of the pleasantest years of his life. His marriage was unblessed with childi'en, which was a source of deep regret to him as well as his estimable spouse, although it may be questioned whether, if there had been a child or children, the lofty eminence attained by Washington in later years, would have been duly sus- tained by his descendants. Under the circumstances, Washington assumed the guardianship of his wife's two children, and in this, as in everything, exhibited the most scrupulous care and exactitude in the discharge of his trust. His deep interest in the educa- tion and training of these young peo- ple could hardly have been exceeded had they been his own childi'en, and it is pleasing to know that they rev- erenced and loved him with all the fervor and devotion of their nature. Miss Custis, we may here mention, died at the early age of seventeen ; her brother, John Parke Custis, mar- ried very early, and from his son we have on record many very curious and valuable recollections of Washington's life and career. It was Mrs. Washington's habit, as well as sincere pleasure, to enter heart- ily into all those enjojanents of home life which were peculiarly acceptable to her husband. Ha^^ncr added her a own fortune to that of Washington she was enabled to practice the free- handed hospitality to which we have before alluded, and her mansion was almost constantly furnished with guests, who came and went as inclina- tion urged, charmed with the graceful courtesy and dignity of their accom- plished hostess. As befitting her rank and wealth, Washington provided for his wife and her lady visitors a chariot and four, with black postillions in livery; he himself always preferred to appear on horseback. Early hours were observed; industry, order, neat- ness and the like, were everywhere en- forced ; and vast as was the household, with its numerous dependencies and varied occujjauts, there was plainly visible the firm but gentle hand of both mistress and master throughout the daily routine. Washington was also a vestryman of two parishes, Fair- fax and Truro, and the Ej)iscopal church at Pohick, about seven miles distant from Mount Vernon, was rebuilt in great measure at his expense. Every Sunday, he and his family attended church, if the weather and roads al- lowed, and it was noted that his de- meanor was always devout and be- coming in the house of God. Both Mrs. Washington and himself were communicants, and in the varied trials and hardships of subsequent years, were enabled to find grace and strength to bear with them as becomes every true Christian. Years passed in this wise ; but they were not unaccompanied with fore- shadowint^s of the trouble and distress about to be visited upon the country. The Eevolution was at hand, and Wash- ington, though ardently attached to his home life and its enjoyments, was no un interested spectator of passing events. By correspondence as well as personal intercourse with prominent men of the day, he kept himself well acquainted MAETHA WASHINGTON. 185 •witli the progress of affairs, and re- solved, long before the actual struggle of arms commenced, to devote his life and fortune to the support of the liberties of his native country. In this sacrifice to his sense of duty, Martha Washington was his counsel- lor and helper. No merely womanly feeling stood in the way, although the result must be separation from him ; her home virtually broken up ; her mind and heart kept constantly in a state of uncertainty and excitement, and her per- sonal comfort and enjoyment sacrificed to the exigencies of the time. We do not find that she ever interposed any obstacles. So far from this, it is plain that she not only acquiesced cheerfully and pleasantly in what was perhaps inevitable, but she also helped to encourage and nerve and sustain her husband in that which was plainly the path of duty. The appeal to arms had come be- yond all possibility of further evasion. Blood had been shed at Lexington ; the whole country was roused ; the battle of Bunker's Hill took place in June, 1774; and only a few days after, and before the news had reached Phil- adelphia, the Continental Congress had appointed Washington to the high and responsible post of Commander-in-chief. In accepting this position Washington was by no means insensible to the ef- fect which it must produce upon his beloved wife. In a letter to her at this date he writes, in a tender and manly tone, worthy, we think, of them both, " You may believe me, when I assure you, in the most solemn man- ner, that, so far from seeking this ap- pointment, I have used every endeav^or 24 in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a concious- ness of its being a trust too great for my capacity ; and I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home, than I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times seven years. But as it has been a kind of destiny that has thro^vn me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed to answer some good pur- pose I shall rely con- fidently on that Providence which has heretofore preserved and been bounti- ful to me, not doubting biit that I shall retui'n safe to you in the fall. 1 shall feel no toil or danger of the cam- paign ; my unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness I know you will feel from being left alone. I therefore beg that you will summon your whole for- titude, and pass your time as agreeably as possible. Nothing will give me so much sincere satisfaction as to hear this, and to hear it from your own pen." In writinoj also to his brother John Augus- tine, whom he seemed specially to have loved, Washington referring to his wife, says : — " I shall hope that my friends will visit and endeavor to keep up the spirits of my wife as much as they can, for my departure vnll, I know, be a cutting stroke upon her; and on this account alone I have many disagreeable sensations." Intense and wearing as were the care and anxiety of the Commander- in-Chief, after he had entered upon his duties near Boston, his thoughts fre- quently reverted to home affairs at Mount Vernon. Through his agent 186 MAETHA WASHINGTON. he kept himself advised of all that was going ou, on the banks of the Po- tomac ; and finding that he should not be aide to return to Virginia in the au- tumn, as he anticipated, he wrote to Mrs. Washington l)y express in Novem- ber and invited her to join him at the camp. The invitation was readily ac- cepted, and taking her own carriage and horses, and accompanied by her son and his wife, she proceeded, by easy stages, on her Joui-ney to the north. Everywhere she was the recipient of guards of honor and escorts, and eve- rything was done to manifest the peo- ple's regard for one to whom, by a sort of sjiontaneous homage, was given the title, " Lady Washington." On reaching Caml^ridge, she was gladly welcomed by all, and her chariot and four, with black postillions in scarlet and white liveries, excited much admi- ration. IVirs. Washington's presence not only gladdened her husband, but was espe- cially valuable in all those matters where a woman's tact and ability are requisite to meet and smooth over social and other difficulties. She j^re- sided at head-quarters with dignity and ease, and gave a refining and improv- ing character greatly to be desired in military life. She also took a lively interest in every movement calculated to enliven the dullness of camp, and prevailed on Washington to celebrate twelfth night in due style as the anni- versary of their wedding. After the evacuation of Boston, in March, 1776, Mrs. Washington accom- panied the general to New York, from ivhich city at the close of May, she proceeded to Philadelphia, and thence home to Mount Vernon. It became her custom thenceforward to pass the winters with her husband, and Wash- ington regularly, at the close of each campaign, sent an aide-de-camp to es- cort her to head-quarters. She was al- ways welcomed with much satisfaction, and as her example was followed by the wives of other general officers, much was done to mitigate the hard and stern severities of the revolution- ary struggle, and to exercise a cheering, genial influence in seasons of unusual disaster and depression. It was in February, 1788, during the winter of unutterable sufi^ering at Valley Forge, that Mrs. Washington was again at head-quarters. " The general's apartment," she wrote to Mrs. Warren, " is very small ; he has had a log cabin built to dine in, which has made our quarters much more tol erable than they were at first." We have it on good authority, that her cheerful submission to the exceeding privation and hardship of that bitter winter helped much to strengthen the fortitude of the half-starved and half- frozen troops, and to give them hope and confidence in the ultimate results of their struggles in behalf of inde- pendence. . She was conspicuous in endeavoring to soften the distresses of the sick and destitute, and minister- ing relief to the full extent of her power. Lady Stirling, Mrs. Knox, Avife of Gen. Knox, and other ladies who were in camp, joined Avith Mrs. Washington in these acts and offices of love and devotion to the cause in which each was perilling his all. The alliance with France, which took place this same year, was cele- MARTHA WASHINGTON. ISl brated with great joy tlirougliout the country, and an entertainment was given in camp in the pleasant month of May, at Avhich Mrs. Washington and a number of di.stinguished women were present. Ladies and gentlemen also from the vicinity were largely in at- tendance, and it was altogether a grand affair under the circumstances. Beside the military display and the roar of cannon, there was dancing in the eve- ning and brilliant fireworks. Wash- ington himself opened the ball, and though the preparations and material of every kind were home-made, yet the enjoyment of the company was none the less hearty and satisfactory. The surrender of Cornwallis, at York- town, in Oct., 1781, virtually brought the Revolution to a close. Mrs. Wash- ington's son died shortly after, leaving to her care her son's widow and four grandchildren. Washington had tak- en such lively interest in the young man, and had done so much towards fitting him for the useful and honora- ble station which he filled, that the death of Mr. Custis was keenly felt by him, and he spent several days with his bereaved wife and family in order to comfort them in their affliction. Pub- lic duties, however, were imperative, and the great and good man who had been the means of accompli'shing so much, could not now become derelict when his country's interests were at stake. In January, 1783, a treaty of peace with Great Britain was signed at Par- is, and by the close of March, the news reached the United States. In Novem- ber, New York was evacuated ; Wash- ington parted with his beloved compan- ions in arms; was everywhere hailed with acclamations of love and grati- tude ; met Congress at Annajjolis in De- cember; resigned his commission into their hands; and the very next day hastened to his house at Mount Ver- non, arriving there on Christmas eve, under feelings and emotions too deep for utterance. " The scene is at last clos- ed," he said, wi'iting to Governor Clin- ton : " I feel myself eased of a load of public care. I hope to spend the re- mainder of my days in cultivating the aft'ections of good men, and "with prac- tice of the domestic viii;ues." Once more at home, and released from the heavy cares so recently press- ing upon him, Washington gave him- self up to the enjoyments which agri- cultural life always afforded him; and IVIi's. Washington, who was in her ele- ment at home, presided with grace and dignity at the simple board at Mount Vernon. She was noted as a house- keeper in every department, and pos- sessing as she did excellent good sense and cheerfulness of spirit, she was al- ways an agreeable companion, a boun- teous hostess, and an admirable mana- ger ; much of her time also was spent in the care and trainins: of her m-and- children recently deprived of their father. For a brief period only was Wash- ington permitted to remain at Mount Vernon, in the occupation which he loved and which he had resolved never again to abandon. The perilous con- dition of the country subsequent to the war and before a national government was organized weighed heavily on his mind ; and it was felt in eveiy part of the country that his further services 188 MAETHA WASKDSTGTON. could not be dispensed with in any wise. Constant correspondence, and the urgent solicitations of the noble band of patriots, who with him were anxiously watching the course of events, brought him to the conviction that he must be present at the Federal Conven- tion. Accordingly he set out from Mount Vernon early in May, 1786, and reached Philadelphia about the middle of the month. Here he presid- ed with dignity and judgment, until that great work, the Constitution of the United States, was completed and reported by him to Congress in Sep- ♦■,ember. Meanwhile, Washington returned to the bosom of his family, quietly wait- ing the action of the several States in respect to the ratification of the Con- stitution, and looking forward with in- tense earnestness to mtness its actual operation. Of course, as we all know, there was but one sentiment through- out the country ; Washington was unanimously elected president, and, though -with great reluctance, he ac- cepted the position. Although Mrs. Washington was not present at the inaiiguration, April 30th, and at the festivities immediately con- nected therewith, she took an early day to leave Mount Vernon and go to take her rightful place at the head of the president's family. She was now well advanced in years, being ^vithin a few months of the same age with Washing- ton, viz., fifty-seven ; but she did not shrink from the arduous task before her, a task all the more arduous be- cause perfectly new and untried ; nei- ther did she refuse or make any difii- culty about assuming the position which duty laid upon her, although as she well knew, both herself and hei husband would be subjected to search ing scrutiny, and very probably ill natured, unhandsome criticism. On the 17th of May, accompanied by her grandchildren, she set out for the seat of government at New York. Everywhere, throughout her journey, she was received with marked atten- tion and respect, and having met the president at Elizabethtowu, N. J., she proceeded with him by water in a splen- did barge, manned by thirteen master pilots, and landed at Peck Slip, near the president's house, amid the enthu- siastic cheers of a vast multitude. On the Friday following, Mrs. Wash- ington had a general recejjtion, which was attended hj the first society in the city and by men of high oflicial rank and position. This same evening became thenceforward the rec^ular one for receptions at her house, to which all persons of respectability had ac- cess, without special invitation, and at which Washington was always pres- ent. The hours were from eio-ht to ten o'clock. These levees, thought not justly chargeable with ostentation or aping of foreign courtly manners and cere- monies, were nevertheless always dig- nified and marked by less of that dem- ocratic freedom which has since pre- vailed. Mrs. Washington, estimable and excellent a lady as she was, was essentially aristocratic in her tastes and appreciations ; and the reader need not be surprised that, in certain quarters, her receptions were found fault with, and were cavilled at as " com-t-like levees," and " queenly di'awing-rooms." MAETHA WASHINGTON. 189 The fault-finding, towever, was as un- generous as it was unjust, for the wife of the president was beloved by all who knew her, and though occupying so elevated a station was as earnest in her desire as her husband to retii'e from it at the earliest moment practi- cable and resume her duties at home in her own house. Writing to an intimate friend, at this date, Mrs. Washington says : " It is ow- ing to the kindness of our numerous friends in all quarters that my new and xmwished for situation is not indeed a burden to me. When I was much young- er, I shoidd probably have enjoyed the innocent gaieties of life as much as most persons of my age; but I had long since placed all the prospects of my future worldly happiness in the still enjoyments of the fireside at Mount Vernon. I little thought, when the war was finished, that any circum- stances could possibly happen, which would call the general again into pub- lic life. I had anticipated that from that moment we should be suffered to grow old too;ether in solitude and tran- quility. That was the first and dearest wish of my heart." During the entire period of Wash- ington's presidency, his wife gave her- self to the duties and responsibilities of her station with a devotion and carefulness worthy of all praise. It is true, that, as she afterwards expressed herself, she looked upon the years of pul)lic life spent in New York and Philadelphia, as in some sense among the " lost days " of her life ; but she did not on that account neglect the re- quirements of her position, and she knew well to what an extent her hon- ored husband relied upon her for co- operation and support. When the time came that Washington completed the second term of his presidency, it need^^ no vivid imagination to picture to one- self the delightful eagerness with which the venerable pair, whom all united in loving and admiring, hastened to the haven of rest at Mount Vernon. " The remainder of my life, which in the course of nature cannot be long," Washington remarks, in a letter to an old compan- ion in arms, " will be occupied in rural amusements ; and though I shall se- clude myself as much as possible from the noisy and bustling world, none would more than myself be regaled by the company of those I esteem, at Mount Vernon ; more than twenty miles from which, after I arrive there, it is not likely that I shall ever be. . . . To-morrow, at dinner, I shall, as a ser- vant of the public, take my leave of the president elect, of the foreign char- acters, the heads of departments, etc., and the day following, with pleasure, I shall witness the inauguration of my successor in the chair of government." Age had now begun to tell upon the great and good man who found his highest happiness in resigning power and pre-eminence, usually so attractive to man. He accordingly invited his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, to take up his residence at Mount Vernon, and relieve both him and Mrs. Washington from some of the numerous calls upon their time and attention which needful hospitality and the visits of strangers had rendered burdensome. Mr. Lewis accepted the kindly expressed in- vitation of his uncle; and therefi'om certain consequences sprang, which 190 MAETHA WASHINGTOK were of no little concern to "Lady Washiugtou." At tliis time, her grandchildren were at home ; and Miss Nelly Custis, who was a sprightly young lady, a great fa- vorite with the general and well cal- culated to stir up a young man's Mood, fell at once across the path of Lewis. The old, old story was repeated again ; the young people followed the exam- ple of their elders ; an engagement took place in due time ; and, much to Washington's satisfaction, the nuptials were celebrated at Mount Vernon, on his birth-day, February 2 2d, 1799. It is suj^posed that Mrs. Washington fa- vored another suitor, in preference to Mr. Lewis ; but if so, she in no wise interfered with the course of true love, and welcomed the husband of her grand- daughter to his place in the family, with all the heartiness and sincerity of her nature. Although Washington had left pub- lic life, as he thought and purposed, forever, still he could not escape from the call which was again made upon him. It will be remembered that the French government at this date, saw fit to take ground of such a nature, and to behave generally, in its inter- course with the United States, in such wise as rendered it impossible to en- dure its arroo-ance and insolence. Pres- ident Adams, in the discharge of his duty, felt called upon to urge prepar- ations for war, if war must needs be, and Washington was immediately looked to for advice, counsel and action in the emergency. He was again ask- ed to be commander-in-chief, and to take upon him the oversight of all the steps necessary to put the country in a state of defence. The venerable chief did not refuse to listen to the call ; but, notwithstanding he was compelled to be away fi'om home, and to cause new anxieties to Mrs. Washington, he zeal- ously performed his work. Happily, the French government returned to its senses, and all difficulties were dis- posed of, without resorting to the last arbitrament of arms, greatly to the re- lief of Washington and his beloved wife. The winter of 1799 had now fully set in. Washington, actively occupied in va- rious improvements and changes in his favorite estate, was constantly in mo- tion, riding about in every direction, overseeing, planning, arranging matters for the future, and, among other things, ordering a new family vault. This, he said, with a sort of melancholy present- iment, as it seemed, must be made first of all ; " for," he continued, " I may require it before the rest." On the 1 2th of December, he was on horseback as usual ; ]>ut the day turned out to be cold, raw, and snowy, mixed with hail. He became chilled through ; was seized with a violent sore throat ; in a day or two he grew worse and seemed to be conscious that this was his last sick- ness. Despite all the efibrts of the physicians, his disease, acute laryngitis, made rapid jirogress, and the end speed- ily came. Mr. Lear, his secretary and devoted friend, has furnished an interesting nar- rative of the last days of Washington. " While we were fixed in silent grief," he says, in speaking of the moment of departure, "Mrs. Washington, who was seated at the foot of the bed, ask- ed, with a firm and collected voice, 'Is MAETHA WASIimGTOK 191 he gone ?' I could not speak, but held up my hand as a signal that he was no more. ' 'Tis well,' she said, in the same voice. ' All is now over ; I shall soon follow him ; I have no more trials to pass through.' " Thus, on the night of Saturday, December. 14th, between the hours of ten and eleven, the great and good man sank to his rest in the fullness of his well-spent life, in the en- joyment of his mental faculties, sur- rounded by his family, and sustained by the faith and hope of the Christian, who lies down in the grave in the con- fidence of a joyful resurrection at the last day. It needs not that we dwell here upon the last sad offices for the dead. The funeral services were conducted with simplicity, dignity and manifest pro- priety, and Washington's mortal re- mains were buried at Mount Vernon, the place which he loved above all others in the world. Mrs. Wash- ington received visits of condolence from President Adams and many others ; and from every quarter, not only in the United States but in foreign lands, tributes of sympathy and sorrow came to soothe, as far as possible, the heai't of the bereaved widow. With the same earnest devotion to duty that had ever marked her course of life, the venerable lady at Mount Vernon continued faithfully to per- form her manifold obligations ; she re- ceived visitors as usual at her home ; and gave attention to domestic cares and responsibilities, and to the carry- ing out the wishes of the illustrious deceased. But it was not for a long period that she was called upon thus to act and bear her lot alone. Some two years later, she was at- tacked by a dangerous fever, and was unable to rally. When conscious that the last hour was near at hand, she summoned her grandchildren to her bedside ; she uttered words of mingled comfort and warning; she pointed them to that hope which was hers, as well as his who had not long before gone to his rest ; and she quietly and peacefully passed away, on the 2 2d of May, 1802, and in the seventy-first year of her age. All that was mortal of Martha Washington was inten-ed in the same vault where her husband's body was laid at Mount Vernon. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. WHEN Benjamin Franklin, in the autumn of life sat down, sur- rounded by tlie pleasant family circle of the good Bishop of St. Asaph, Dr. Shipley, at Twyford, to relate to his son the events of a career which seemed to him to offer some cheer and guidance to the world, he commenced that delight- ful Autobiography with a far back- ward glance to the ancestors upon whose native soil he was then tread- ing. "I have ever had a pleasure," he says, "in obtaining any little an- ecdotes of my ancestors." Indeed, he once made a special pilgrimage for the purpose, when he succeeded in tracing his family of the Franklins, through a " long pedigree of toil," in the little village of Ecton, in Northamp- tonshire, to the middle of the six- teenth century. For generation after generation, down to Franklin's day, they were the blacksmiths of the town, holding their own on a few acres, and living in an old stone house, which was still called by their name, though it had passed out of the family some years before the visit of its illustrious member in 1758. "We may see him on that visit, so faithfully recorded in a letter to Mrs. (102) Franklin, in America, standing with the wife of the parish clergyman among the thick graves of the centuries, as the old tombstones were scoured that his son might copy the family in- scriptions. The last Franklin who lived in the lady's recollections was Thomas, his father's brother. The nephew expresses himself " highly en- tertained and diverted " with what he heard of him ; for he recognized much in common between this uncle's genius and his own. "He set on foot" — Franklin himself is the narrator — " a subscription for erecting chimes in their steeple and completed it, and we heard them play. He found out an easy method of saving their village meadows from being drowned, as they used to be sometimes by the river, which method is still in being; but when first proposed, nobody could con- ceive how it could be ; ' but, however,' they said, ' if Franklin says he knows how to do it, it will be done.' His advice and opinion were sought for on all occasions, by all sorts of people, and he was looked upon, she said, by some, as something of a conjurer." There was another uncle, Benjamin, the poetaster, who came to Boston, BENJAMIN FEANKLIN. 193 was a collector of historical pamphlets, a patient digester of Puritan discourses, stood godfather to his namesake, wrote poetical directions for his conduct in an acrostic, and died at a- good old age. Josiah Franklin, the father, emigrated to New England under the non-con- formity impulse about 1685, bringing with him his wife and children. Ben- jamin came into the world at a house in Milk street, Boston, January 17, 1706, the fruit of a second marriage in America, the fifteenth child of his father's family of seventeen. His mother was the daughter of the old Nantucket poet, Peter Folger, who rhymed, in his " Looking-Glass for the Times," of the Fathers and their back- sliding descendants. There is less told than we should like to know of Frank- lin's parents. The cares of a large family doubtless absorbed their atten- tion, and the greater part of life was spent in little duties without much claim upon the notice of the world. The father's calling, that of a soap- boiler and tallow-chandler, is not sug- gestive of very various accomplish- ments ; but we are told " he could draw prettily, and was skilled a little in music," that his understanding was sound, and that he was much consulted by his neighbors. Of the mother we are told less : but that little is enough for goodness, if not for fame. " He was a pious and prudent man, she a discreet and virtuous woman," says the inscription written by their son on the tomb at Boston which covers the remains of Josiah Franklin and Abiah his wife. At eight Benjamin was sent to the 25 public grammar school, where the vene- rable Cheever having, in the apt lan- guage of Mr. Everett, " feruled his last boy," had lately departed, obedient to the wand of a more imperious usher, and Nathaniel Williams birched in his stead. Benjamin remained there a year, making his way upward with the good purposes of a boy destined for college and the pulpit, with the pro- mise of his uncle's short-hand abridg- ments of the Puritan sermons he had listened to, as stock in trade when he should learn to dechipher them, and be set up in the vocation. The pressure of Josiah Franklin's large family, and " the little encouragement that line of life afforded to those educated for it, " induced him to forego these liberal intentions, and a little plain writing and arithmetic, inculcated by Mr. George Brovmwell, was substituted for the sweet sister Muses. Perhaps in contrast to that thorny pathway to Helicon, the grammar school, the pupil records of his new teacher that he employed the mildest and most en- couraging methods. The young Ben- jamin learnt to write a good hand — his manuscripts are always neat and ele- gant — but he tells us he failed entirely in arithmetic. The boy, however, had not much discipline of this kind to undergo, for, at ten, he was taken into the paternal tallow chandlery, when the longs and shorts to which his at- tention was directed had reference, not to Homer and Virgil, but to dips and moulds. The flavor was not to the boy's taste, and he cast his eyes to the ocSan. His father took a not irrational mode of ascertaining his tastes, by leading him about on a survey of the 194 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN. trades of tlae town ; but the exper- iment did not succeed, if it was due to this proceeding that lie hit upon the business of a cutler. The arrival from London of his cousin, who was in that calling, probably had more to do with the choice ; fortunately he was exact- ing in his apprentice fee, and the thing fell through. If Josiah Franklin wished to ascer- tain his son's disposition, it was not necessary for him to perambulate the town and review all its handicrafts : the books which the boy so constantly had in his hand might have guided him, as, indeed, this taste for reading did when his father determined to make him a printer. His brother James, having brought printing materials from England, Benjamin was apprenticed to him in his twelfth year. The boy will now court the Muses for himself, with- out the interposition of any of Master Cheever's successors. He takes to books as his native element. " About this time I met with an odd volume of the * Spectator,' " reads the Autobio- graphy. By how many men who have risen to fame, since the gentle Addison closed his lucubrations, might not this sentence have been gratefully written. Franklin hit upon an excellent plan to learn the art of writing. He stud- ied one of the charming essays Just alluded to, made brief notes, and, when the words had passed from his memory, attempted to reproduce the whole in language of his own, which he compared with the original. Find- mg himself at a loss for words, he be- thoiight himself of the necessities -of rhymers, and enlarged and strength- ened his vocabulary by turning a " Spectator " into verse. He appears to have had some talent for rhyming, or he may simjily have shared the uni- versal weakness of the old Piiritans of the place, who, as old Fuller says of some kindred excellence, "oftener snorted than slei3t on Parnassus." We hear of his writing street ballads for his brother ; " The Light-house Trage- dy," and a sailor's song on the capture of Black Beard — " wretched stuff," he candidly tells us, but the first, he adds, " sold prodigiously." He became at this time, too, something of a dispu- tant, chojiping logic on religious topics, the old Puritan machinery getting a little out of gear, as he caught enough of the method of Socrates to puzzle ig- norant people Avith the matter of in- fidel Shaftesbury and Collins. His tastes in books, however, led him to others which were more to his advan- tage. Cotton Mather's " Essay to do Good," and De Foe's " Essay on Pro- jects," he mentions particularly as giv- ing him " a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of his life." Two or three years after the com- mencement of the apprenticeshij), his brother set up the fourth newspaper published in America, the " New Eng- land Courant." The press naturally took root in America. From the first, it has called forth the best talent of the country, and in Franklin's day was pretty much the only avenue open for miscellaneous literature. The young Franklin caught the mania of writing from the consequence it gave the con- tributors to the paper, and, knowing that a prophet has no honor in the guise of a printer's devil, slipped hia BENJAMIN FEANKLIN. 195 anonymous offerings by night under the door and awaited the result. He had the satisfaction of hearing them read with becoming admiration, and probably the luxury of setting them in type himself. The " Courant " was what would be called in modern slang a " spicy " paper — trenchant and sa- tirical. It took some liberties with the powers that were — the church, state, and the " college " of those times — freedoms which would probably pass for civilities as such things go now-a-days. The Assembly, in con- sequence, tyranically ousted James Franklin. This led to cancelling his brother's indentures, that the paper might aj^pear with Benjamin's name. The relations of master and appren- tice in the good old times allowed greater indulgence to the temper of the employer than we hope is permis- sible at present. Quarrels arose be- tween the brothers ; one perhaps was saucy, the other passionate, and blows sometimes followed. Benjamin, taking advantage of the broken indentures, resolved to leave ; obstacles were then interposed ; he managed to evade them, raised money by the sale of his books, and embarking in a sloop, fled to New York. Finding no opj^ortunity in that city, he pursued his way, with various adventures of considerable interest, as related in the Autobiography, to Phil- adelphia, making his first entrance into the place, in which he was after- wards to play so important a part, from a boat which he had assisted in rowing down the Delaware, one mem- orable Sunday morning, in October, 1723, at the age of seventeen. He was clad in his working dress, soiled by ex- posures on the way ; fatigued, hungry, and almost penniless. The incidents of that first day are as familiar as any- thing in Robinson Crusoe. Every boy has seen the young Benjamin Franklin walking along Market Street, Avith the " three great puffy rolls," passing the door of his future wife, noticed not very favorably by that lady, making the circuit of the town, sharing those never-to-be-forgotten loaves with a mother and her child, till he finds shelter in sleep, in a silent meeting of the Quakers. He immediately sought employment in the printing oflSces of the city, going first to Andrew Bradford, by the advice of whose father, the printer, William Bradford, of New York, he had left that place for Philadelphia. The old gentleman introduced him to Samuel Keimer, an original, a compound of the knave and the enthusiast, whom he found literally composing an elegy, stick in hand, at the case, upon Aquila Rose, a young printer of the city, re- cently deceased. Keimer was one of a host of odd people, with whom Franklin, in the course of his life, came in contact, of whom there are amusing traces in his letters and Au- tobiography. He always delighted to study human nature in her varieties, and no man ever had a better opportu- nity, or pursued it more profitably. He had soon the means of making the acquaintance of two royal governors; for there seems to have been some in- fluence in Franklin's star which threw him out of the society of vagabonds among titled jDersonages, One of these was Sir William Keith, the Governor of Pennsylvania, who was attracted to 196 BEl^JAMIlSr FRANKLm. the youth by a letter that had acci- dentally come to his knowledge, in which the apprentice stated his rea- sons for leaving Boston. He made the most flattering overtures to Frank- lin, recommending him to open a print- ing oiBce in the province, and gave him a letter to smooth the way for the project, with his father. The epistle assisted the youth's consequence on his visit to Boston, produced some surjOTse and good wishes for the fu- ture, hut no money. On his way back to Philadeljjhia, the young printer had the honor of an interview with Gover- nor Burnet, a son of the bishop, then in office at New York. It is evidence of the size and character of the present metropolis at that time that the gover- nor heard from the captain who had brought him to the place, of a passen- ger, Avith a number of books on board, and that he invited him in consequence to see his library. Governor Keith was as enthusias- tic as ever on the scheme for a good printer in the province, and directed Franklin to make out a list of what would be wanting, and proceed by the packet to England, with a letter of credit for the necessary funds, with which he would provide him. There are men in the world whose imagina- tions give them the faculty of seeing a thing in the strong-est light at a dis- tance, who have no capacity to grapple with it close at hand. Keith appears to have been one of these ; a man of words and not of deeds. Franklin was ready ; not so the letter of credit ; it was deferred with promises to be sent to one place and another, and finally on ship board. The result was that Franklin found himself in London, in 1724, on a fool's errand. Some fifty years afterwards, in the Autobiogra- phy, he summed up the character of his eminent friend philosophically enough — " He wished to please every- body; and, having little to give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenious, sensible man, a pretty good writer, and a good governor for the people." Thus Franklin was thrown upon the great metropolis. Fortunately, within the limits of the civilized world, a printer, wherever cast, Avill always alight upon his feet. Franklin soon found employment, and supported him- self at his trade during his eighteen months' residence in London. His industry at this time was great as ever, but, unhappily, the principles in which he had been indoctrinated at home had been gradually relaxed. He had a shabby comjianion in Ralph, who came with him from Philadel})hia, and sub- sequently grew into a voluminous po- litical writer, under the patronage of Bubb Doddington. The two cronies lived together in Little Britain; we are sorry to say their principles were not of the best; theoretical infidelity appears to have been their amusement, and both were faithless to their obli- gations to the fair they had left in America. Franklin forgot the lady Miss Read, whom he had courted in Philadelphia, and Ralph rather prided himself on his abandonment of his wife and child. The conclusion of the inti- macy between the chums was Ralph's borrowing Franklin's money, and Franklin making love to his friend's mistress in his absence. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 197 Franldiu also publislied, at this time, " A Dissertation on Liberty and Neces- sity, Pleasure and Pain," inscribed to his friend ; another erratum, of his life, he frankly admits. It led, however, to his introduction to Dr. Mandeville, and a club which he maintained. A casual introduction to Sir Hans Sloaue, who called upon him to j)urchase a purse of asbestos, may be mentioned as a sug- gestive fact in the history of the future man of science. It is remarkable, again, how men of eminence are attracted to this printer's boy, Franklin. Sir William Wynd- ham, afterwards Earl of Egremont, hearing of his excellent qualifications as a swimmer, was desirous of secur- ing his services as the instructor of his sons. Franklin had now, however, made up his mind to return home, led by the inducements held out to him in a trading scheme by a Mr. Denham, whose acquaintance he had made on the outer voyage. On his return to Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1726, he turned over a new leaf, with fewer errata than the blotted London pages. It is much to be regretted that the plan for regu- lating the future conduct of his life, which he drew uj) on the voyage, al- luded to in the Autobiography, is miss- ing from the very interesting journal of occurrences at sea to which we are referred. He was now twenty, with confirmed habits of industry, a mind trained to observation, an extraordi- nary acquaintance with the world for one of his years, and, for his time and country, a rare felicity in composition, to state in print what he might think or desire to accomplish. Plis style was already formed in sentences, clear, dis- tinctly separated, terse and pointed, an index of his mind and character, and an admirable vehicle for his peculiar sagacity and humor. We may see the young man on the deck of the Berk- shire, in mid Atlantic, calmly weigh- ing his past career, rebuking its graver offences, commending the diligence which had been his preserver, scruti- nizing carefully those minor morals, as they have been called, of temper and the proprieties, which may be cultivated to promote the great successes of life. At Philadelphia he found his offi- cious iiiend. Governor Keith, walking the streets a private citigen, and his neglected Ariadne, Miss Read, the wife of "one Rogers, a. potter." His en- gagement with Denham in store-keep- ing prospered for a time, but was speedily internipted hy the death of that fi'iend, and Benjamin, Avho thought he had bid farewell to stick and case forever, resumed his old employment with Keimer, who had prospered in the world. One of his first steps in this new residence at Philadelphia, was the for- mation of his friends into a social and literary club, to which he gave the name The Junto. This society, founded for mutual improvement by a few in- telligent clerks and mechanics, lasted for forty years, and became the basis of the American Philosophical Society. Out of this Junto came the OTeat Phil- adelphia Library, "the mother of all the North American subscription li- braries." It was suggested by the lit- tle joint-stock collection of books of Franklin's knot of scriveners, joiners, and shoemakers. 198 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. While tliese things were going on, and Franklin was drawing up all sorts of plans for knowledge and improve- ment, he did not neglect the jiractical part of life. His business as a printer ■ — he was now in partnership Avith his friend Meredith, master of his own office — was not neglected ; on the con- trary, it throve wonderfully with his ingenuity and application. One of his early projects was the establishing of a newspajier, for which there was then an opening. He unhappily communi- cated the plan, before he was quite ready for its accomplishment, to one of his acquaintances in the profession, who carried jt to his rival, Keimer, by whom he was anticipated. To counter- act the influence of the new Journal, he threw the weight of his talents into Andrew Bradford's gazette, "The Weekly Mercury," to which he con- tributed some half dozen capital es- says of a series entitled "The Busy Body." Keimer's feeble attemjit fell through before the end of a year, when the "Pennsylvania Gazette" became the property of Franklin and Mere- dith. The two friends commenced the publication of the Gazette, September 25th, 1729. It was long continued under the editorship of Franklin. The year 1730 brought about Frank- lin's match with Deborah Read, the lady to whom we have seen him en- gaged before his visit to Europe, and who was married in his absence. Her husband proved to be a " worthless fel- low," got into debt, and ran away to the West Indies. He was, moreover, laboring under the suspicion of having another wife living in England. Frank- lin took the risk of his coming back, which fortunately never happened, and secured " a good and faithful help- mate," the honored 'companion for for- ty-four years of his long life, sharing his rising efforts, living to witness his brilliant successes in philosophy, and rapidly growing importance in the State. In 1732 Franklin began the publi- cation of his famous " Poor Richard's Almanac," which apj^eared annually for a quarter of a century. It was a great favorite with our forefathers, as it well might be in those days with its stock of useful information, and the cheerful facetiousness and shrewd worldly-wise maxims, of temperance, health, and good fortune, by its editor, Richard Saunders, Philomath, as he called himself — for Franklin ajjpeared on its title-page only as printer and publisher. The maxims at the close of the work in 1758 were collected into a famous tract, " The Way to Wealth," which, printed on broad sheets, and translated into various languages, has been long since incorporated into the proverbial wisdom of the world. By some persons its lessons have been thought to give a rather avaricious tiu'n to the industry of the country ; but there was nothing really in Frank- lin or his philosophy to encourage par- simony. Benevolence and true kind- ness were laws of his nature, and if he taught men to be prudent and economical, it was that they might be just and beneficent. We have not only such spurs to activity as " Dili- gence is the mother of good luck," and " One to-day is worth two to-mor- rows," but a charitable word for the iinfortunate, and those who fall io BENJAMIN FEANKLTN. 199 the race. " It is liard," he says, " for an empty sack to stand upright." Public duties now began to flow in upon Franklin apace. In 173G he was chosen clerk of the General Assembly, which gave him some incidental ad- vantages in securing the printing of the laws, and the following year was appointed Deputy Postmaster in Phil- adelphia. His hand is in everything useful which is taking its rise in Phil- adelphia. He is the Man of Ross in the place, setting on foot a building for Whitefield to preach in, instituting fire companies, editing and publishing his newspaper, printing books, issuing, in 1741, the "General Magazine and Historical Chronicle," inventing his Franklin stove in 1742, drawing up a proposal for the establishment of an Academy in 1743, out of which grew the University of Pennsylvania ; the next year projecting and establishing the American Philosophical Society ; afterwards assisting in founding the Pennsylvania Hospital. The public business of the country is now to raise Franklin to a wider field of exertion than the city limits of Philadelphia. In 1753 he is appoint- ed by the department in London, Post- master-General for the Colonies. The following year he is sent by the Penn- sylvania House of Assembly a» a member to the Congress of Commis- sioners, meeting at Albany, to confer with the Chief of the Six Nations, on common means of defence. On his way he draws up a plan for a general system of Union of the Colonies, for purposes of defence and the like, which is the first time the word Union is distinctly sounded among the States. The Home Government saw too much independence in the scheme, and sent over General Braddock and his army to fight the battles of the provincials for them. Fl'anklin waited upon the consequential Englishman on his arri- val, at Fredericktown, in Maryland, assisted him greatly in his equipment by means of his influence over the re- sources of Pennsylvania, and proffered some good advice as to Indian ambus- cades, which the general was too fool- hardy to listen to. Franklin shook his head over the grand march through the wilderness. He was called upon at Philadelphia for a subscription to the fire-works for the expected victory. Upon his hesitating, one of the appli- cants said with emphasis, " Why, you surely don't suppose that the fort will not be taken !" " I don't know," he replied, " that it will not be taken ; but I know that the events of war are subject to great uncertainty." There was one man at least in the land who was not taken by surprise at the news of Braddock's defeat. After this, Franklin is himself employed by his State in superintending its western defences against the French and In- dians; but when Governor Moms talks of his making a military expedi- tion against Fort Du Quesne, he shows no disposition to follow in the foot- prints of Braddock. The philosophical studies of Frank- lin were now taking form in numerous experiments and inventions. His at- tention appears to have been first call- ed to the subject on a visit to Boston, in 1746, when he witnessed the experi- ments of Dr. Spence, who had lately come from Scotland. The amval of a 200 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. glass tube in Pliiladel23liia, sent by tlie ingenious Peter Collinson, of London, with directions for its use, also stimu- lated inquiry, wbicli Franklin carried on to advantage with tie imj^ortant assistance of his friend, Ebenezer Kin- nersley. His first observations, in- cluding his discovery of positive and negative electricity, were communicat- ed in a letter to Collinson, dated July 11th, 1747. In 1749, he suggests the use of pointed rods — the invention of the lightning-rod— to draw electricity harm- lessly to the ground or water. His celebrated kite experiment, identify- ing lightning and electricity, was made at Philadelphia in the summer of 1752. As his researches went on, the results were communicated, through his cor- respondent Collinson, to the Royal So- ciety, but their publication at first fell into the hands of Cave, the celebrated publisher of the " Gentleman's Maga- zine," by whom they were issued in quarto. Of the style and philosophi- cal merit of these communications, which have a place in every histoiy of the science, we may cite the generous testimony of Sir Hum^^hrey Davy. " A singular felicity of induction," he says, " guided all Franklin's researches, and by very small means he establish- ed very grand truths. The style and manner of his publication on elec- tricity are almost as worthy of admi- ration as the doctrine it contains." The honor conferred upon Franklin for these communications and discov- eries, by the Royal Society, in making him a fellow, in 1756, was, contrary to the regulations of that body, be- stowed unsolicited when he was in America. One period of the life of Franklin has now closed ; the printer and edi- tor is henceforth to be lost in the pub- licist and statesman. He had been continued in the Legislature, counsel- ling and assisting in the affairs of the Province, studying thoroughly the vices and defects of its mongrel gov- ernment, occasionally casting his eye upon the map of the whole country, when he was one day chosen by the Assembly Agent of Pennsylvania to represent its interests with the proprie- taries and the government in England. He arrived in London, the second time, July 27th, 1757. The immediate business which car- ried Franldin to London, was the refu- sal of the Proprietaries, the sons of William Penn, the jiossessors of large territory, and entitled to important political control, to submit their lands to a tax for the general welfare, which the Assembly had imposed upon the whole State. Reasonable as the pro- position appears, it was so hedged in by prescriptive rights and legal difii- culties, consultations with the Projjrie- taries, arguments before the Board of Trade, and impinged so greatly upon the royal prerogative, that it was three years before the vexed discussion was brought to a close in favor of the Pro- vince. Y7hile this political litigation was pending, a memorable publication, the " Historical Review of Pennsyl- vania," appeared in London. It was a pungent account of the Provincial management, was written with ability, and was generally attributed to Frank- lin ; but he appears only to have as- sisted in its preparation. He, however, published another BENJAMIN FEANKLIN. 201 pamphlet of wider scope, wliicli ren- dered a signal service to Lis country. This was his tract entitled " The Inter- est of Great Britain Considered," a re- view of the motives for retaining Canada in the approaching peace with France. In this year of the publica- tion of the Canada pamphlet, Frank- lin was elected a member of the Coun- cil of the Royal Society ; and we find him subsequently placed on its com- mittees in reference to the introduc- tion and use of lightning I'ods. Franklin — the University of Oxford had now made him Doctor of Laws — returned to America in 1762, honored as a philosopher abroad, Avith many noble fi'iendships with good and active minded men ; to be greeted at home with enthusiasm for the discharge of his agency, and assigned new employ- ment in the provincial service. Two years later, the turn of events brings him again in London, as the agent of his State, which, in common with the other colonies, listened with alarm to rumors of Stamp Acts and other ag- gressions of the mother country. No more astute counsellor could be for- warded to cope with the diplomacy of the old world. It is feoon perceived through the length and breadth of America. Georgia, at one extremity, adds him to her delegation, and Massa- chusetts at another. He is also agent for New Jersey. Called before par- liament in 1766, without special pre- paration, he answers fully and shrewd- ly all questions proposed. There is enough wisdom in his responses to save an empire, if the British repre- sentatives had ears to hear. Shrewdly again, six years later — so long a time 26 is given the British nation for reflec- tion before this fatal drama is hurried to its catastrophe — does he manage that affair of the intercepted Hutchin- son Letters, which removed the last veil from the insincerity of British placemen in America, opening the eyes, not only of Massachusetts, but of a continent, to the necessity before it. Events were now rapidly approach- ing a crisis. The old Continental Con- gress met in Philadelphia, and for- warded its eloquent, weighty remon- strances to king, parliament and peo- ple. Franklin incorporated their sug- gestions with wisdom of his own in pleas and remonstrances; Lord Chat- ham heard him gladly and strength- ened his own convictions by his warn- ings ; there was talk of rconciliation and adjustments within parliament and without — all circling about Frank- lin, and all came to nothing. The phi- losopher kept his finger on the pulse of the nation ; he saw the madness fixed, and, having no relish for an idle residence in the Tower on bread and Avater, opportunely departed for Amer ica, after ten years of fruitless moni tions to England. Landing in America the 5th of May, 1775, he heard of the battle of Lexing- ton. It was fought while he was on the Atlantic, perhaps while the philo- sopher Avas meditating those experi- ments on its waters which resulted in the discovery of the temperature of the Gulf stream. He was now to study the fever heats of his countrymen, and distinguish between lukeAvarmness and resolution among men. He was elected immediately to the second Continental 202 BENJAMIN FEANKLIK Congress, counselling with tlie wisest of his land while he assisted in the military defence of his State as a mem- l)er of its Committee of Safety. In Congress he di'afted articles of Con- federation, was appointed Postmaster- General, visited the camp of Wash- ington at Cambridge — think of the runaway apprentice of half a centuiy before taking this glance at his native town — is sent to Canada to negotiate insurrection, and on that memoral^le day of July, at the age of seventy, puts his neat, flomng signature to the Declaration of Independence. "We must be unanimous," said Hancock, on this occasion ; " there must be no pulling different ways; we must all hanor together." "Yes," answered Franklin, " we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." This Ulysses of many counsels is next at the head of a Convention at Philadelphia, framing a State Consti- tution, in which, with less wisdom than usual, he advocated a single leg- islative assembly; anon we find him travelling to Staten Island, sleeping in the same bed with John Adams, and philosophically arguing that statesman to repose with a curtain dissertation on opening the window for ventila- tion,* as the commissioners pursued their way to a fruitless interview with Lord Howe. A month later and he is on his way to Paris, accompanied by his grandsons, William Temple Frank- lin and Benjamin Franklin Bache, a commissioner to negotiate a treaty and * This incident, related by John Adams in his Autobiograpliy (Works, III., 75), is too characteristic to be omitted. alliance with the French monarch. His residence at the capital, apart from the toilsome business of his American ne- gotiations, which taxed all his re- sources and equanimity, has an air of genteel comedy and stage triumph He is courted and flattered by ladies of distinction ; there is a very pretty mot complimentary to the philosopher, of Madame de Chaumont, when the young and beautiful Mademoiselle de Passy is married to the Marquis de Tonnere, " Helas ! tous les conduc- teurs de Monsieur Franklin n'ont pas empeche le tonnerre de tomber sur Mademoiselle de Passy ; " writes out for Madame Brillon and the rest his pretty, wise fables in most delightful prose ; the venerable sage trifles as gallantly as a youth of twenty ; his portraits and bust are everj^where. Turgot writes his splendid ejiigraph — " Eripuit cffllo fuhnen, sceptrumque tyran nis " — • the statesman and philosopher is in troduced to the kins' and court at Ver- sailles, and thus the man diligent in business comes to realize the proverb and stand before kings, not before mean men. It is his own application somewhere in his Autobiography of the saying of Solomon. We may not here pause over the negotiations at Paris, which belong as well to others and altogether to the general page of history, but must hasten to the final settlement. Suflice it that in the most intricate perj^lex- ities, civil, naval and military, of em- barrassed finance and threatened polit- ical actions, perplexed by Arthur Lee, supporting Jay at Madi'id and Paul Jones on the ocean, smoothing, aiding, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 203 contriving and assisting by word and by pen, always sagacious, always to the point, whether commissioner or plenipotentiary, he steers the bark of his country to the desired haven. He signs with Jay the preliminary Treaty of Peace with Great Britain and its final ratification, September 3d, 1783, Continuing his duties for awhile, he finally, burdened with infirmities, left Paris in July, 1785, passed a few days in England, and reached Philadelphia in September. A grateful nation, from the highest to the lowest, honored his return. America, too, had yet other duties in store for her rep- resentative son. He held for three years the Presidency of Pennsylvania under its old Constitution, and when, at the instigation of Hamilton and Madison, the chiefs of the nation assembled, under the Presidency of Washington, to fomi the Constitu- tion of the United States, Franklin was there, counselling and suggesting as ever, and pouring oil on the trou- bled waters of controversy. The venerable Nestor of three gene- rations ; born in the old Puritan time, with the shades of the past hanging about his home ; traversing the mili- tary period of two wars, from Wolfe to Washington, from Quebec to York- town; privileged to partake of the new era of laws and lesjislation — the old sage, full of years and honors, has now at length finished his work. He has inaugurated a new period in phi- losophy; he has heralded new princi- ples in politics; he has shown his countrymen how to think and write ; he has embalmed the wisdom of his life in immortal compositions ; he has blessed two great cities with associa- tions of pleasure and profit clustering about his name; he has become the pro23erty of the nation and the world : there is nothing further but retirement and death. His daughter, Mrs. Bache, and his family of grandchildren were with him in his home in Market Street, Philadelphia, as the inevitable day came on. He suffered much from his disorder, the stone, but was seldom without his mental emjiloyments and consolations. His homely wisdom and love of anecdote, it is pleasing to learn, kept him company to the last. He died about eleven o'clock at night, April 17th, 1790. Is it necessary to describe the person or draw the character of Franklin? His effigy is at every turn ; that figure of average height, full — a little pleth oric, perhaps — the broad countenance beaming benevolence from the specta- cled grey eye — the whole appeai'ance indicating calmness and confidence. Such in age, as we all choose to look upon him, was the man Fi-auklin. Within, who shall paint, save himself, in the small library of his writings, the mingling of sense and humor, of self-denial and benevolence, the whim- sical, sagacious, benevolent mind of Franklin, ever bent upon utility, ever conducting to something agreeable and advantageous ; the great inventor, the profound scientific inquirer, the far- seeing statesman ; masking his worth by his modesty; falling short, perhaps, of the loftiest heights of philosophy, but firmly treading the path of com- mon life, sheltering its nakedness, and ministering iu a thousand ways to its comforts and pleasures. ROBERT BURNS. I ROBERT BURNS belonged by I' bii'tli to the peasant or small far- mer class of Scotland, his father, "Wil- liam Burness, as he wrote the name, the son of a farmer in Kincardineshire, having been driven by family misfor- tunes in his youth, on the breaking up of his home, to seek employment as a gardener in the neighborhood of Ed- inburgh, whence he travelled to Ayr- shire, and after some employment in gardening took a lease of seven acres of land hard by the town of Ayr, with the intention of carrying on the busi- ness of a nurseryman. He married in December, 1757, Agnes Brown, the daughter of a Carrick farmer, whom he brought to reside in a humble clay cottage which he had built with his own hand on his land. On that spot, within a short distance of two famous objects celebrated in his writings, the bridge of Doon and Kii-k AUoway, the poet, Robert Burns, was born, on the 25th of January, 1759. The cot- tage, which now presents a pretty sta- ble appearance to the observation of literary pilgrims, at the time of Rob- ert's birth was but a crude attempt at architecture, for a few nights after that event, the gable was driven out in a (304) severe storm, and the building so shat tered that the mother was compelled to flee with her son through the in clemency of the weather and take re fu2;e in a neis-hbor's house. The father of the poet was a man of integrity and strength of character, and had that trait of the best Scot- tish peasantry, which has done so much to raise them in the estimation of the world, a high regard for the value of education to his children. He is de- scribed by his son as possessed, from his many wanderings and sojournings, of " a pretty large quantity of obser- vation and experience." He had met with few, he says, " who understood men, their manners and their ways equal to him," and that he was in- debted to him " for most of his little pretensions to wisdom." The world know something of the man and of his earnest religious feelings from that genial picture of a Scottish peasant's household, " The Cotter's Saturday Night," in which — Kneeling down to heaven's eternal King, The saint, the father and the husband prays. The poem was inspired by the author's vivid impressions of the simple ser- PkPoo^ (f]mnd i-jmai pai- \ EOBEET BUENS. 205 vices daily before him at home. It is customary to refer the abilities of men of genius to qualities derived from their mothers, perhaps ^dthout sufficient ex- amination of the claims of theii" fathers : but Burns certainly owed much to Ms father; while he was no doubt also greatly indebted to his mother, the worthy, patient, affectionate wife who relieved the hours of wearisome toil by chaunting the old ballads of Scot- land, one of which in particular as it came from her lips, " The Life and Age of Man," made a great impression upon Robert, and is said to have left its traces in his well-known lyric, " Man was made to Mourn." At the time of the birth of the poet, his father, not having succeeded in establishing the nursery which he proposed, engaged as gardener and overseer to a gentleman who had a small estate in the neighborhood He continued in this position for six or seven years and acquitted himself so well in it that at the expiration of that time Mr, Ferguson, his employer, leas- ed him a farm of about seventy acres called Mount Oliphant, assisting him with a loan for stocking it, and the next twelve years of his life were pass- ed in laborious and unprofitaljle efforts in its cultivation. The land was of the poorest quality, involving the fa- ther with his increasing family in a hard fight for existence — a contest which he maintained with heroic reso- lution that he might assist his children at home. In 1 777 this barren farm was left for another named Lochlea, with a l)etter soil, some ten miles distant ; but difficulties arose respecting the lease, the ^der Burns was harassed by a law- suit growing out of them, and in this state of perplexity and despair, ruined in fortune, died a broken-hearted man in 1784. The period of these strug- gles, twenty-five years, passed in hard ship and privation, fully developed the character of Robert Burns, one of Scotland's greatest poets. It is a mis- take to rank him at any time of his life with rude, uneducated peasant poets. He had humble fortunes, want, peniiry, involving coarse and hard labor, to contend with ; it was a wonderful thing for him to arise to the height of literary excellence which he attained, requiring that species of inspiration which is called genius ; but from his earliest years he was never without some good influences of education and even of literatui"e and learning. In his sixth year he was sent to a school in the vicinity of his birth-place at Al- loway Miln, kept by a teacher named Campbell, and when this person left to take charge of the workhouse at Ayr, William Burns, Robert's father, with several of his neighbors, engaged a new instructor to take his place. This was John Murdoch, a man wor- thy of honorable mention in the biog- rajihy of Burns. He was of an ami- able disposition, skilled in grammatical studies, with an excellent knowledge of French, indeed a proficient in that lan- guage, having taught it in France and beins' the author of one or two books on its pronunciation and orthography. After two or three years Murdoch left Ayrshire for another part of the coun- try. In the absence of the teacher the father supplied his place. When the labors of the day were over, he instruc- 206 ROBEET BITRlSrS. ted his children in the evening in arith- metic. He taught them something of history and geography from Salmon's Geographical Grammar, and of astrono- my and natural history from Derham's Physics and Astro-Theology and Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, all of which works he borrowed for the occa- sion. Robert, we are told, read all these books with avidity and industry, and any others which fell in his way as he grew up. The collection was not a large one, but it was sufficiently mis- cellaneous, including Stackhouse's His- tory of the Bible, from which he gath- ered a knowledge of ancient history ; a collection of English letters by the most eminent writers, which set him upon epistolary composition, in which he af- terwards became a great proficient ; and, within a few years, Richardson's Pame- la, which was the first novel he read ; Smollett's Peregrine Pickle and Count Fathom, some plays of Shakespeare, The Spectator, Pope's translation of Homer, Locke on the Human Under- standing, Hervey's Meditations, with several others, the most important of which were the works of Allan Ram- say, and a collection of English songs, entitled the Lark. These, with that accompaniment to all Scottish homes, however humble, the Holy Bible, cer- tainly afforded no mean mental nour- ishment to a youth of genius. Nor was this all the dii'ect education the future poet received. His father, still careful for his instruction, after the withdrawal of Murdock, sent him to a school at Dalrymple, two or three miles away, to gain improvement in his hand- Wi'iting, and when Murdock some time after was settled as master of the Eng- lish school in the town of Ap-, Robert passed three weeks with him, which were employed in revising his gram- matical studies, and gaining some knowledge of French, a study which he pursued with such zeal, that he was in a short time able to read any ordi- nary prose in the language. To Latin he took less kindly, making very tii- fling progress in that tongue. All this was much, very much, for a youth who was constantly engaged from sheer necessity in toiling in the farm labor to assist his overworked parent in gaining the daily bread of the family. He worked faithfully and industriously, assisted his parents with his best efforts, and found his solace in the gratification of his tender humane disposition — for we read that he was kind above measure to the young reap- ers in the field, and that the very cat- tle were affectionately treated hj him — • and he had moreover the old Scottish songs to cheer him, and his growing ac- quaintance with the wealth of English literature. But above all, there was early developed in him, with a fervor of passion inconceivable by a duller nature, a romantic and engrossing love of woman. This was the great solace of his life, and this was the first and most constant inspiration of his muse. The poet's course after this time, as the boy Avas developed into the man, was upward and onward. The rugged farm life was somewhat mitigated under his father's lease of the new land at Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. The lease was continued for seven years and ended, as we have seen, in failure and banlcruptcy, Avith the death of the elder Burns. This period em- KOBEET BURNS. 207 braced the life of Robert from liis nineteentb to bis twenty-sixth year. It furnishes a number of incidents of much interest in his history, relating to his opening acquaintance with the world, his observations of life and the development of his poetic faculty. It has been thought worth recording by his biographers that at the age of eighteen he was taught dancing, a fact perhaps of some importance in reference to his subsequent free par- ticipation in country revels and junk- etings, in which he picked up many a subject for his muse. A circumstance of at least equal consequence was his being sent at nineteen by his parents to learn mensuration and surveying from a noted mathematician who kept a school at Kirkoswald, on the Carrick coast, overlooking the Fii'th of Clyde. It was his mother's parish, and Robert was sent to stay with an uncle residing there. The place was famous for smuggling, and Burns added consider- ably to his knowledge of what is called " life," by the acquaintance which he made with the wild revellers who car- ried on the contraband trade. " Scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissi- pation," says he, " were till this time new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I learnt to fill my glass, and to mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand in my geometry, till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom, when a charming ^,Ilette, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigo- nometiy and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and co-sines for a few days more ; but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel, ' Like Proserpine, gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower.' / ^ It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I stayed, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my stay in the country had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless." The rustic damsel who produced this extraordinary effect upon the youthful enthusiast was named Peggy Thompson. But the time of Burns was not all given to love and mathematics. He had an acquaintance in a fellow schol- ar with whom he walked apart and discussed various questions of manners and morals, such as form the staple of the exercises in youthful debating so cieties. The master heard of this, and undertook to rebuke what he consid- ered their nonsensical disputations. The topic of the day upon which he fell foul of them, hajipened to be, " Whether a great general or a respec- table merchant was the most valuable member of society." He laughed at this as incomjDarably silly, when Burns proposed to him that if he would take either side of the question, he would maintain the other before the school. The mathematical pedagogue in an evil moment assented, and took up the de- fence of the military hero, when Burns bore down upon him so triumphantly with his eloquent assertion of the pre- 208 ROBEET BURNS. tensions of the merchant, that the dis- comfited master was compelled to break up the house in confusion. Under or- dinary circumstances, the anecdote would not be worth much, for no wise school-master would risk a contest be- fore an audience of his own scholars — but it exhibits in Bui-ns an unusual de- velopment of the logical and conversa- tional powers which greatly distin- guished him in after life. At Kirkos- wald, also, Burns studied various hu- mors of men, particularly of a certain Douglas Graham, somewhat addicted to smuggling, and his superstitious wife, Helen McTaggart, living on their farm of Shanter — who subsequently furnish- ed the poet with the leading characters of his immortal " Tam O' Shanter," The poet likewise at this time added to his store of reading the works of Thomson and Shenstone, both fruitful in his lit- erary growth ; while on leaving the place he engaged several of his school- fellows to keep up a correspondence with him. " This," he says, " improv- ed me in composition. I had met with a collection of letters by the wits of Queen Anne's reign (already alluded to), and I pored over them most de- voutly ; I kept copies of any of my OAvn letters that pleased me ; and a compar- ison between them and the comjDosition of most of my correspondents flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far, that though I had not three farthings' worth of business in the woi'ld, yet al- most every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plod- ding son of day-book and ledger." On his settlino- down a2:ain at the paternal farm. Burns, faithful to his labors in ploughing and tilling, yet found time for social amusements and mental improvement, which, with his cordial disposition, he pursued with his friends. In the year 1780, we find him engaged in planning and conduct- ing a " Bachelors' Club " at Tarbolton, with his brother and some half dozen other associates, young men of the place, who met to discuss familiar topics of every-day life, among which love and matrimony seem to have held an espe- cial place. One of the members of this " Bache- lors' Club," was David Sillar, a young man with something of the poetic fac- ulty, who is numbered among the po- ets of Scotland, having published a volume of verses at Kilmarnock, some years after the date of the events we are recording, in 1789. He was an in- telligent associate of Burns, was on intimate terms at his father's house, and accompanied the poet on his walks, discussing topics of high import, till one of the fair sex came in sight, when, farewell to discourse and companion- ship. Bm-ns was by the side of t]ie charmer in a moment, talking with her with an ease and freedom of conversa- tion which Sillar confesses that he ad- mired and envied. With this social development, came now and then a new book or two, and all of the right sort, fit aliment for the poet's mental and moral growth. Foremost among these he mentions as his " bos- om favorites," the works of Sterne and Mackenzie, " Tristram Shandy " and " The Man of Feeling," the latter, he says about this time, on another occa- sion, " I prize next to the Bible ;" while of the writings of Sterne, he es- pecially singles out for admii-atiou KOBERT BIJENS. 209 that most exquisite of all novelettes, " The Sentimental Journey." l^ew loves were in the meantime in- spiring new poems. " Poesy," he writes, "was still a darling walk for my mind, but it was only indulged in according to the humor of the hour. I had usually half-a-dozen or more pieces on hand ; I took up one or the other, as it suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as it bordered on fatigue. My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme ; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet." Meanwhile, in his twenty-third year, he attempted a diversion from the rug- ged home agricultural life, with a view of bettering his fortunes and with the honorable motive of j^lacing himself in a situation to marry. He had, with his brother Gilbert, for several years, cultivated a portion of the farm in raising flax on their own account. He thought he could add to his profits by engaging in the business of flax-dress- ing. He accordingly joined himself to a flax-dresser in the neighboring town of Irvine, and wrought for six months at the new occupation, which he found in accordance -with neither his health nor inclination. " It was an unlucky affair," he says, in his autobiography, and had a characteristic ending. " To finish the whole, as we were giving a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop took fire and burnt to ashes, and I was left, like a true poet, not worth a sixpence." While at Irvine, he became a freemason, and was consequently in- ti'oduced to a more convivial life than 27 that to which he had been accustomed, and made the acquaintance of some reckless persons who led him something astray from the simplicity of his fath- er's household. A more noticeable ac- quaintance, however, than any other which he made at Lochlea, was that of that thoroughly Scottish poet, Robert Ferguson, who taught him how to em- ploy his muse upon the characters of familiar every-day life. He preceded Burns in authorship some fifteen years, and in the words of Chambers, " may be considered his poetical progenitor." What Ferguson had done for the town humors of Edinburgh, his successor was soon to accomjilish, with greater unction, for the provincial life of Ayr shire. Returning to Lochlea, he wit- nessed in sorrow, almost in desj^air, the hardships and misfortunes of the last few years of his venerated father's life. Immediately after the death of this parent, in the spring time of 1784, Robert and his brother Gilbert entered upon the cultivation of a farm in the neighboring parish of Mauchline,which they had engaged in anticipation of the bankruptcy i:)roceedings of the land- lord at Lochlea. This was Mossgiel, a spot memorable in the poet's history, for there, during his two years' resi- dence, he produced some of his most felicitous poems, and there too formed his acquaintance with Jean Armour, whom he celebrated in verse as fore- most among the belles of Mauchline ; with whom he encas-ed in an in-es-ular attachment, and to whom, after much embarrassment from their illicit inter course, he was finally married. " It ii3 a remarkable circumstance," writes 210 ROBERT BURN'S. Robert Chambers in bis exhaustive memoir of Burns, "that the mass of the poetry which has given this extra- ordinary man his princi23al fame, burst from him in a comparatively short space of time — certainly not exceeding fifteen months. It began to flow of a sudden, and it ran on in one impetuous brilliant stream, till it seemed to have become, comparatively speaking ex- hausted." The period thus denoted was between the poet's twenty-sixth and twenty-eighth years. Somehow, about this time, the poet got athwart the clergy, and satirized the old Calviuistic spirit as it ran counter to the latitudinarian tenden- cies of the New Lights, as the members of the moderate party, which about that time arose in the Scottish church, were called. The poet had been senti- mental and playful in his earlier eSn- sions ; but in such compositions as " Holy Willie's Prayer " he showed the power and severity of his muse. There was a fiery element in the soul of this high-sj)irited plowman, keen and sub- tle as that of Dante, on occasion. Con- trasting with the bitter but humorous satire of the poems to which we allude, are such productions as that happy rustic idyll "Halloween," and the heartfelt home beauty of religion in her best attire in " The Cotter's Satur- day Night." Take one other poem of the series whei'e all are excellent, " The Jolly Beggars," upon the whole, per- haps, in its peculiar kind, the finest exhibition of the author's powers, in which character, manners, a novelist's description of real life humorous to the highest degree, with a high gusto of poetical expression, are penetrated throughout by a glowing imagination. It is a Teniers picture of low life of the richest warmth and coloring. Singularly enough, this poem, now one of the most valued of the author's works, was for a long time denied a place in the collection. It does not appear in the Kilmarnock or Edin- burgh editions of the poet's lifetime, or in that prepared by Dr. Currie after his death. The subject and its hand- ling are peculiarly adapted for artistic illustration. The poem fortunately at- tracted the attention of George Cruik- shank, when at the height of his powers. His series of etchings in illustration of the operetta, for such it is, admirably supplements its rare humors. Every one must regret that, in consequence of the early neglect to produce the poem in print, tAvo of its songs, connected by a few verses of recitative matter ex- hibiting the character of a chimney- sweep and a sailor, omitted by the au- thor after the first copy, have been ir- recoverably lost. The exercise of his faculties in po- etry must have been to Burns during these months of 1784 and 1785 his best consolation, for his fermiug operations, in spite of his eff'orts and the prudence of his brother, were proving a failure, and he had entangled himself in the most unhappy manner in his love affair with Jean Armour. She was about to become a mother. Her father was in- exorable, refusing to accept a written acknowledgment of her as his wife given by Burns, a document which, according to the law of Scotland, was sufficient to constitute a valid though irregular marriage. He had no ex- pectation of good fortune from a thrift- ROBERT BURNS. 211 less poet, and induced his daughter to forsake a man who mio-lit now have been considered as her husband. The unhappiness growing out of these cir- cumstances cast Burns into the deepest misery, of which we have the most touching expi'ession in his poem enti- tled " The Lament, occasioned by the unfortunate issue of a friend's amour." "In this perplexity he turned his thoughts to exile in the new world, resolving to go to the West Indies, where many of his countiymen were employed on the plantations as over. seers. He made his preparations and actually engaged himself as book- keeper to a Mr. Douglas, on his estate in Jamaica. To raise money for his passage, it was suggested to him that he should publish his poems by sub- scription. There was naturally much that was pleasing to him in the pro- posal. "I was pretty confident," he writes, " my poems would meet with some applause ; but, at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect." This was in the spring of 1736. Sub- scription papers for an edition of his poems were printed and cu"culated among the author's friends, who nov,^ numbered most of the cultivated gen- tlemen, professional and others, of Ayr- shire. While the projjosals were being distributed the author penned several new poems, reflecting with much deli- cacy and feeling the melancholy which now oppressed him. One of these is among the best known and most high- ly appi-eciated of his compositions, the verses, ' To a Mountain Daisy, on turn- ing one down with the plow in April, 1786." By the side of the beautiful picture in the poem of the lark spring- ing blithely upward " to greet the pur- pling east, " and the lowly beauty of the tender flower crushed in the fur- row, we read in the poet's broken af- fections the secret of this sympathy with nature. This poem we are told by the poet's brother Gilbert was com- posed on the occasion and while the author was holding the plow, "hold- ing the plow being a favorite situation with Robert for poetic compositions, and some of his best verses produced while he was at that exercise." There is, indeed, a fi-ee open-air flavor about them all. The titles of other poems, " Despond- ency," " To Ruin," are equally suggest- ive of sorrow and suffering. An "Epistle to a young friend," the son of his patron Robert Aiken, also bears witness to the poet's generous natui'e, magnanimous alike in its penitence and manly aspii'ations. There are other poems in the au- thor's first collection tinged with the melancholy of this period of the au- thor's life, as that dirge of humanity, " Man was Made to Mourn." We are not to suppose, however, that Burns, overpowering as seemed to be his afflictions, was wholly given up to melancholy. The same force of imagination which aggravated his sense of disaj^pointment and stimu- lated those feelings of remorse which only a generous nature can feel in their intensity, hurried him at other mo- ments into a vivid enjoyment of tlie fleeting pleasures of the hour. He was easily moved as ever by the channa 212 EGBERT BTJENS. of love and friendship. If he was for tne time deserted by his " bonny Jean," his friends, who warmly appreciated nis poetical productions and had the warmest affection for the man, were faithful. Nor was the elegiac poet without I'esources in his distress with that sex which was associated with so much of his misery. A new passion on the instant took possession of his heart. Rejected by the Armours, he turned his thoughts to a young girl of his acquaintance, Mary Campbell, " a sweet, sprightly, blue-eyed creature," of decent Highland parentage, whose early and unhappy death awakened all the poet's sympathies and is commem- orated in one of the finest of his lyrics. In a short time the subscription to tlie poems was sufficient to secure an arrangement for their publication with John Wilson, a bookseller at Kilmar- nock. Six hundred copies were print- ed, of which three hundred and fifty were subscribed for before the work was issued, about the beginning of August, 1786. The remainder were rapidly disposed of, twenty pounds falling to the author after all exjjenses were paid. A part of the proceeds was appropri- ated to a steerage passage in a vessel which was to sail from Greenock to Jamaica in September. Happily the sailing of the ship was delayed and in the interim the rapid success of the volume of Poems inspired the author with new hopes and led to the aban- donment of the voyage altogether. The merits of the thirty-six poems which composed the volume, com- mencing with that exquisitely humor- ous and truthful picture of high and low life, " The Twa Dogs," and includ- ing such striking exhibitions of genius and originality as "Poor Maillie," " Halloween," " The Holy Fair," with the various songs and epistles, were not to be mistaken. The variety was extraordinary in the forms of com- position and the spirit which animated them " from grave to gay, from lively to severe." There was rare descrip- tive talent, invention in incident, char- acter and grouping, ^philosophical re- flection, sentiment and satire in song and story. The subtlest humor, the lively current of the blood, ran through the whole. The subjects were famil- iar, personal, domestic and patriotic. There was not a bright intellect or a feeling heart in all Scotland which could be insensible to their treatment. It was a book for all classes, which could be appreciated by the educated and uneducated, for it united the rarest simplicity with the purest art. Among the persons in the poet's neigh borhood who appreciated the volume was a clergyman of the moderate party, the Rev. George Lawrie, who Avas in intimate communication with a num- ber of the distinguished literati of Edinburgh. He sent a copy of the poems to one of these personages who was held in great esteem as a critic, the Rev. Dr. Blacklock — a character of some note in the metropolis, for though blind from his infancy, he had attained celebrity as a poet and cler gyman, and was universally esteemed for his amiability. He received the gift with a genuine expression of ap- plause. " There is," he said in the let- ter which he sent in return, " a pathoa and delicacy in the serious poems, a vein of wit and humor in those of a ROBERT BURNS. 213 more festive turn, wliicli cannot be too much admired, nor too -warmly ap- proved; and I tliink I shall never open the book without feeling my as- tonishment renewed and increased." The effect of this letter upon the poet in awakening his aml>ition may be imagined, coming as it did with other flattering evidences of the hold he had taken upon influential persons of emi- nence. He is presently entertained by Professor Dugald Stewart at his villa near Mossgiel, where he is intro- duced to a lord, a sou of the Earl of Selkirk, a circumstance which he thought of importance enough to be celebrated in verse. The critical Dr. Blair also admired, pronouncing " The Holy Fair," a work " of a very fine genius," and the- poet gained from the " Cotter's Saturday Night," the friendship of a lady, Mrs. Dunlop, of Dunlop, a lineal de- scendant of the hero Wallace, which was perpetuated in an uninterrupted correspondence through his life. En- couraged by these and the like atten- tions, Burns resolved upon the publi- cation of a new edition of his poems under his own supervision at Edin- burgh. He set out for the capital, some sixty miles distant from his home in Ayrshire, in the latter end of November, riding on a pony borowed for the occasion from his friend and neighbor at Ayt", Mr. Dalrymple. On his way he received what in the news- paper language of the present day is called an ovation. By previous ar- rangement he was to rest at the close of his first day's travel at the house, of one of the admirers of his poetry, a Mr. Prentice, in a villas-e of Lanark- shire. A late dinner was provided, at which the farmers of the parish were assembled and kept up the festivity in honor of their guest into the early hours of the mornina;. "Scotch drink" we may be sure flowed pretty freely on the occasion. The host was no half- way aj^preciator of the poet. A strict- ly moral and religious man himself, he said on one occasion when somebody was talking of an apologist for Burns — " What ! do tliej/ apologize for him ! One-half of his good, and all his bad, divided among a score o' them, would make them a' the better men ! " On his arrival at Edinburgh he took refuge in the humble hospitality of a former acquaintance in Ayrshire who had been a clerk to his friend Hamilton, but who was now a writer's apprentice in the city. The two now occupied a common room aiid l)ed. Burns seems to have passed his first days in wanderings about the town and surveying the wonders of the scene from Arthur's Seat to the castle. He hunted up the unmarked grave of Ferguson in the church-yard of the Canongate and kneeling down kissed the sod which covered his remains. Before he left the city he took care that a stone should be erected on the spot for which he wrote a poetical in- scription. He owed many a hint in the composition of his poems to Ferguson, and there is something very pleasing in this prompt payment of the debt of gratitude. He also sought out the house which had been occupied by Allan Eamsay and took oft' his hat on entering it. Not many days passed before the poet was brought into no- tice. His masonic brotherhood here, 214 EOBEET BUENS. as on other occasions, served him. He was introduced by his friend Dalrym- ple, who appears to have been as much at home in Edinburgh as at Ayr, at a lodge meeting, to the Hon. Henry Erskine, Dean of the Faculty of Ad- vocates, a great favorite in the metrop- olis, who proved a powerful supj^orter of the poet. Of still more value to him was the fi-iendship of the Earl of Glencairn, who having previously in- troduced the Kilmarnock volume to the notice of his friends, now made the author at home in his family and assisted him greatly in the publication of tlie new edition of his poems. He not only found a publisher for the work in the bookseller Creech, but in- duced the members of the Caledonian Club to take each a copy at a guinea, foiir times the ordinary subscription price. For Lord Glencairn, Burns al- ways entertained the greatest admira- tion. No one of his readers can forget the noble " Lament " which he wrote on the occasion of his early death four years later. Writing to his Mend Hamilton on the 7th of December, a week after his ar- rival in Edinburgh, Burns says ; " For my own affairs, I am in a fair way of be- coming as eminent as Thomas k Kempis or John Bunyan ; and you may expect henceforth to see my birth-day inserted among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin's and Aberdeen Almanacs, along with the Black Monday and the battle of Bothwell-Bridge. By all proba- bility, I shall soon be the tenth worthy and the eighth wise man of the world." Among the notables who were the first to welcome him, was Henry Macken- zie, the author of the " Man of Feel- ing," who had become acquainted with his poems through Professor Stewart. The notice of no one could have been more acceptable to Burns ; from his ear- liest school days he had been an admirer of that author's works, and they had no unimportant influence in forming his tastes and directing his sensibili- ties. To be, thus early in his literary career, cherished and applauded by one to whom he had looked up with a feeling little short of reverence, must have moved in no ordinary degree the gratitude of a man who was always sensitive to the slightest manifestation of kindness ; and still more must this attention have been felt when the whole reading world of the day was invited to share in it. Mackenzie, ripe in fame and the affections of all Scot- land, was then engaged in publishing his classic series of periodical essays in the style of the Spectator, entitled The Lounger. In the number of the work for the 9th of December, he introduced a critique of Burns' Kilmarnock volume. A better service could not have been rendered to the poet, than by this thoughtful, sympathetic article. It sep- arated the poet at once from the humble class of writers springing up in lowly stations, whose chief claims to be notic- ed arose from the feeling of surj^rise that, under such circumstances, they should possess any merit whatever. Brush- ing this suggestion aside, he placed the author at once on the highest level of the literature of his country. He fully recognized the genius of this " heaven- taught i^loughman," as he described him, in dei^icting the manners of men and ex- hibiting their passions in action, in a style which recalled to him the power EOBEET BUENS. 215 and method of the greatest of drama- tists — "that intuitive glance with which a writer like Shakespeare discerns the characters of men, with which he catches the many - changing hues of life, forming a sort of problem in the science of mind, of which it is easier to see the truth than to assign the cause." These are the very elements of genius ; and he who would thoroughly under- stand that much abused term, may find it illustrated in a very remarkable man- ner, in a study of the life and writ- ings of Robert Burns. Within a few weeks the poet, " the lion of the season," was at home in the best society of the metropolis, passing from his humble quarters in the room which he still shared with his compan- ion, the poor apprentice, to the fashion- able drawing-rooms where he met such persons as Dr. Robertson, Dr. Blair, Dr. Gregory, Dr. Adam Ferguson, and other magnates of the University. Lord JMonboddo often had him at his house and tal>le, where he fell into an exces- sive admiration of the lovely daughter of that eccentric scholar. Miss Eliza Burnet, whom he has immortalized in that noble " Address to Edinburgh," in which he more than repaid all the attentions and honors which were lav- ished upon him. On retui'ning from a first visit to Lord Monboddo's house, he was asked by a friend, " Well, and did you admire the young lady ?" " I admired God Almighty more than ever !" was the reply ; " Miss Burnet is the most heavenly of all his works." This sentiment is incorporated in the poem " To Edinburgh," in which the lady is introduced in the midst of a glowing representation of the wealth, the architecture, the business, the pride and importance of the historic monu- ments of the city. The new edition of the poems was published in April with a dedication to its liberal patrons, "the noblemen and gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt," a dedication very unlike the old venal, flattering addresses which are prefixed to too many volumes of the earlier Brit- ish poets, his predecessors. Conscious • of his powers, the poet unhesitatingly takes his position before the world, in his own words, as a Scottish bard, proud of the name, and whose highest ambition is to sing in his country's ser- vice. " The poetic genius of my country (he adds) found me, as the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha, at the plough, and threw her inspiring mantle over me. She bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleas- ures of my native soil, in my native tongue. I tuned my wild artless notes as she inspired." Two thousand eight hundred copies of the work were sub- scribed for by fifteen hundred sub- scribers, an extraordinary proof of the interest excited by the poet in the wealthy and influential classes. The piofit of the author on a settlement with his bookseller, was about six hundi'ed pounds. With the means now at his disposal, after a residence in Edinburgh of about six months, Burns left with a young friend, Mr, Ainslie, whose acquaintance he had made in the city, for a tour through the south-eastern part of the country, following the line of the Tweed, cross- ins: into Northumberland to Aln- o wick and Newcastle, and returning in- to Scotland from Carlisle. On his 216 EOBEET BUENS. way lie \'isited several persons of ce- lebrity, including tlie traveller Bry- done, and at Jedburg was presented with tlie freedom of the town. July saw him with his family, at the farm at Mossgiel, which he left a few days af- ter his arrival for Edinbm-gh, and a toui' by Stirling and Inverary, on his way round to his home again. In the autumn, he joui-neyed along the eastern region by Inverness and Aberdeen, and the next year passed much of his time in Edinburgh, where he was for awhile un- der the care of a surgeon, in consequence of an injury to his knee fi'om the over- tui'ning of a hackney coach. This gave him opportunity for reflection ; he saw his prospects clouded and fell into the most gloomy forebodings. His half•^vife, as she might be termed, Jean Armour, was again to become a mother, which provoked fresh unkinduess on the ^jart of her father, and brought about the for- mal ceremony of a marriage between her and the poet. Though he had become a regular contributor to the collection of Scottish songs published by James Johnson, in the plan of which, with its revival of the old national airs with appropriate adaptations of the old words or with new comj)ositions, he took much interest, he does not seem to have looked to literature as a pro- fession. Indeed, he contributed his po- ems to that work out of j)ure affection for the cause, without fee or reward. His thoughts were still tiirned to his former farming occupations as a means of livelihood. Concluding a negotia- tion which had been for some time in progress, in the spring of 1788, he en- tered upon the possession of the new farm of Elliesland, in Dumfrieshire where he was for many months em ployed in constructing a simple cot- tage, barely meeting the necessities of his mode of life. In December, he was joined by his wife and children, and early in the following year, occupied his new house. His success as a farm- er, notwithstanding his earnest eftbrts, was not very encouraging. That re- quired closer calculation and more methodical industry than were to be expected from the temperament and intellectual habits of the poet. He consequently was soon compelled to seek some additional means of living. While at Edinburgh, he had secured a commission in the excise department, which had given him some employ- ment in the Ayr district ; he was now appointed excise oflicer in the district in which he resided. "While discharging these two-fold duties of farmer and ex- ciseman, he was contributing songs to Johnson's collection and j)roducing va- rious minor occasional poems. An ac- cidental visit to the region of the Eng- glish antiquary, Captain Grose, led to the composition of one of the most ad- mired and perhaps the best known of his works, the tale of Tam O'Shanter. Grose with his comical obese figure was a humorist of the first water, abounding in anecdote and merry stories. Burns met him at a fi'iend's house, was de- lighted with his social qualities, and took a pleasant view of the object of his journey, which was to sketch and describe the antiquities of the country. With some quizzing, there is a deal of kindly feeling in the poem which he wi'ote on this redoubtable knight er- rant's "peregrinations through Scot- land." ROBERT BURNS. 217 Seeing these predilectious, Burns betiiouglit himself of the old kii'k at Alloway, the familiar scene of his childhood and the burial place of his father, and suggested the old ruin as a suitable illustration for Grose's book, recommendinsj it as the scene of various ghostly legends. The antiquarian promised to insert a sketch of the place if Burns would furnish a witch story to accompany it. This he undertook to do and Tarn o' Shanter was the re- sult, composed in one day Avhile the poet was " crooning to himself" by the banks of the Nith, which ran by his abode. The poem, gathering up the humors of a life-time, the quintessence of many a study of provincial life, thus made its first appearance in Grose's Antiquities of Scotland. No one can think of the biirly antiquarian without an emotion of gratitude for his having been the occasion of that poem ; nor of the engraver, Johnson's, and its sequel George Thomson's enter- prize, without recollecting what we in- cidentally owe to them for calling forth that wondrous series of Songs, fam- iliarized in every Scottish and English household in the world, which should cover with a redeeming mantle of char- ity any errors of the poet's life. What a splendid galaxy in the literary heaven they form — the songs of Burns sacred to love and friendship, to pa- triotism and humanity, to history and common life, breathing the warmest 28 affections, inspired by the noblest sen- timents. "Were it only for "Bruce'a Address to his Army at Bannock- burn," Scotland could never forget him ; were it only for " John Anderson my Joe," the universal heart of home would take him to its embrace. The ode commemorative of Bannock- burn was written while the poet re- sided at Dumfries, his last place of abode, whither, having given uj? his farm of Elliesland as unprofitable, he had gone in 1791 to be engaged exclu- sively in the discharge of his duties as exciseman with an income which reached about seventy pounds a year. He passed his time here actively em- ployed in his office, which did not pre- vent his partaking freely in such some- what reckless convivialities as the so- ciety of the place afi^orded, doubtless to the prejudice of his health ; and in engaging, not a little to the injury of any prospect of advancement in office he might have had, in the political fervors of the day in behalf of demo- cratic liberty engendered by the en- thusiasm of the French Revolution. In the autumn of 1795 he exhibited symji- toms of failing health, which increased at intervals during the ensuing months not without provocation from repeated indulgences, till, on the 21st of July, 1796, he breathed his last at his home in Dumfries. So fell at the aa:e of thirty-seven the greatest of Scotland's poets. CHARLOTTE COR DAY. THE fair assassin heroine of the French Revolution, Charlotte Corday, was Ijorn in the village of Ligneres, near d'Argentan, in Nor- mandy, in 1768. She was of noble family, — Marie Anne Charlotte Cor- day D' Armans, as she was called be- fore the revolution had extinguished such titles, and she was the grand- daughter of the great French dramatic writer, Corneille. Her father, Franc^ois de Corday d' Armans, was one of those small landed proprietors of the old system, whose privileges secured them respect, while they were on the verge of poverty. In the midst of his agri- cultural labors, with a family growing uj) about him, he felt the pressure of want, and sharing the growing dis- content of the times, enlisted himself on the side of the reform movement in progress. Imbued with the new social philosophy, he wrote pamphlets against despotism and the law of primogeni- ture. His daughter was thus indoc- trinated in her infancy in the princi- ples of the coming era in France. Her mother dying while her family of five children were quite young, Char- lotte was left with her two sisters, as she is described by Lamartine, to live (318) on for some years at Ligneres " almost running wild, clothed in coarse cloth, like the yoimg girls of Normandy, and, like them, working in the garden, making haj^, gleaning and gathering the apples on the small estate of their father." At the age of thirteen she became an inmate of an ancient and well-appointed monastery at Caen, where, with the enthusiasm of her nature and her pious disposition, she would probably under ordinary circumstances have heartily submitted to the genius of the place ; but the newborn philosophy of the times had found its way in the popular Avi-itings of the day into its retirement, and Charlotte became deeply imbued with its broad humanitarian spirit. The convents, moreover, were being suppressed, and she had to seek an- other home. Thus, with new views, but with old conservative traditions hanging about her, at nineteen she was driven into the world. Her fa- ther had now become still poorer. Her two brothers in the king's service had emigrated ; one of her sisters was dead, the other managed her father's home at Argentan. Charlotte was adopted bv an old aunt, Madame Bretteville. CHAELOTTE COEDAY. 219 and went to live witli lier in lier old home at Caen. There, while assisting in the domestic duties of the place, she had abundant leisure to indulge in her favorite reading of romances and the ^vritings of the philosophers then in vogue. She became familiar with the works of Rousseau and Eay- nal, and entered heartily into the re- vived study of Plutarch, by whose lives of the heroes of antiquity France was then fashioning herself. She had soon the motive and incentive to ex- press her visionary ideas in action. It was early in 1793, and the Giron- dists, who had failed in their aspira- tions to place liberty on a rational foundation, were on the eve of their final overthrow. Overpowered by the fury of the Jacobins, flying from their impending fate in Paris, numbers of them had taken refuge in the depart- ments and were endeavoring to rally the nation to sustain them against the ultra revolutionary party, of which the vulgar, blood-thirsty, remorseless Marat had become the most obnoxious leader. This fiend in human shape, by the use of his pen in constant ap- peals to the people in arousing theii* prejudices, and by his authority in the convention, was the unflinching oppo- nent of the Girondins, and would be satisfied with nothing less than their extermination. His character, odious at the best, was not likely to be look- ed upon with other feelings than those of the most intense hatred and dismay by the political refugees from his fury, gathered at Caen. Among the leaders of the Girondins assembled there, were Buzot, Salles, Petion, Barbaroux, Lou- vet, who sedulously employed them- selves in arousing opposition to the new proscriptive party and in the en- listment of volunteers for an army to march upon Paris for its overthrow. Charlotte listened eagerly to the ac- cusations of the Girondins, and the portentous shape of Marat assumed gigantic proportions in her mind, as the one great enemy of the liberty of France. The utmost ardor of her na- tui'e was excited by the spectacle of the volunteers, whose departure she witnessed from a balcony at Caen. A youth who warndy admired her, and to whom she had given her portrait, was among the number. But patriot- ism in her soul burnt with a keener flame than the passion of love. As she saw the battalion depart, Petion, who passed at the moment beneath the balcony, noticed her in tears. " Would you then be happy," said he to her, " if they did not depart ?" She an- swered nothing, blushed and withdrew. Her resolve was taken, at all hazards, herself, alone, to free France fi'om the human monster that appeared to her. The prudence and secrecy with which she went about the fatal work proved the strengtli of her character. It was necessary that she should pre- pare herself by information from the Girondin leaders, and she sought their presence ■without affording them the least intimation of her intentions. After various interviews she obtained from Barbaroux a letter to Duperret at Paris, one of the party who still held his seat in the Convention. There was nothing to comj)romise him in it. It was simply a letter of introduction. A greater seriousness was noticed in her conversation and demeanor at this 230 CHAELOTTE CORDAY. time. Questioned by her aunt, she said, " I weep over the misfortunes of my country, over those of my relatives, and over yours. Whilst Marat lives no one can be sure of a day's existence." Her aunt also afterwards called to mind going into her room to awaken her in the morning, and finding on her bed an open Bible at a passage of the book of Judith, of which she had marked a verse with a pencil, describ- ing the going forth of the daughter of Israel in her beauty to deliver the laud from the hand of Holofernes. The entire, vivid narrative " beyond all Greek, all Roman fame," may well have been her inspiration. Armed Avith this resolve, on the 7th of July of this memorable year, 1793, when the revolution developed its pro- foundest horrors, Charlotte visited Argentan to take a final leave of her father and sister, under the pretence of joining the refugee emigrants in Eng- land. Returning to her aunt she told her the same story in expectation of her departure on the morrow, which she had privately arranged, by the Paris diligence. Very touching are the in- cidents of her last hours at Caen as re- lated by Lamartine. They were " filled with gratitude, attention and tender- ness towards that aunt, to whom she owed such long and kind hospitality, and she provided, through one of her friends, for the old servant who had taken care of her in her youth. She ordered and paid in advance, at the tradespeople's shops in Caen, for some little presents of dresses and embroidery destined to be Avorn after her departure by some youthful companions of her early days. She distributed her favorite books amongst the young persons of hei acquaintance, and reserved none for her- self but a volume of Plutarch, as if she did not desire to separate herself, in the crisis of her life, from the society of those great men Avith whom she had lived and wished to die. Finally, on the 9th of July, very early in the morning, she took under her arm a small bundle of the most requisite ar- ticles of apparel, embraced her aunt, and told her she was going to sketch the haymakers in the neighboring mea- dows. With a sheet of di'aAving pa- per in her hand, she went out to return no more. At the foot of the stair- case she met the child of a poor labor- er, named Robert, Avho lodged in the house, in the street. The child Avas accustomed to play in the court. She sometimes gave him little toys. ' Here ! Robert,' said she to him, giving him the draAving paper, Avhich she no lon- ger required to keep her in counte- nance, ' that is for you ; be a good boy and kiss me ; you Avill never see me again.' And she embraced the child, leaving a tear upon his cheek. That was the last tear on the thresh hold of the house of her youth. She had nothing left to give but her blood." During the journey in the diligence to Paris, there was nothing to excite in her fellow-travellers any suspicion of a disturbed or disordered mind. She was perfectly mistress of herself throughout. During th& first day she ajjpeared to be simply entertaining a little girl Avhom chance had thrown by her side. The loud professions of attachment on the part of the passen- gers to the cause of the Mountain and its grim hero Marat, did not induce her CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 221 by any unguarded word or look to be- tray lier own sentiments. Her beauty attracted attention, and she was ques- tioned as to her name and the object of her journey to Paris ; she answered eva- sively in few words, sometimes feign- ing sleep, while her modesty proved to her a sufBcieut guardian fi'om further impertinence. A young man of the party with a respectful freedom ex- pressed his affection for her and talked of marriasre. She rallied him on this sudden outburst of emotion and prom- ised to let him hear from her at some later time. In this way, winning the regard of all around her, she entered Paris on the lltli of July, at noon, making her residence at the Hotel de la Providence, which had been recom- mended to her by her friends at Caen. She retired early and slept soundly till the next day, when, attiring herself in a simple dress, she presented herself at the lodgings of Duperret with the letter of introduction fi-om Barbaroux. The deputy was not at home and would be away all day, as she learnt from his daughters. She then returned to her hotel and passed the time in solitude till evening, when she found Diaperret, and requested him to jiresent her to Garat, the minister of the interior; her object being on some pretext of lousiness to gain information, by con- versation with the leading Girondists, which might assist her in her purpose to serve their cause. On parting with Duperret for the night, she advised him for his safety to quit Paris and join his brothers of the party in Caen. He replied that his post was at Paris and he would not leave it. " You are in error," said she ; " fly, fly, before to- morrow night." On the morrow, Du- perret called on her at her lodging to conduct her to Garat ; they found the minister too much engaged to see her before evening. Duperret then led her to her residence, where he left her at the entrance. Leaving the hotel immedi- ately, she made her way, inquiring from street to street, to the Palais Koyal, where, without Toeing diverted from her purpose by the frivolity and gaiety of the scene, she found under the galleries the shop of a cutler, where she purchased a large knife which might serve for a dagger, and conceal- ed it under her dress. The weapon was intended for Marat. She had at first thought of reaching him when he should make his appearance at the ap- proaching ceremony of the federation, in commemoration of the triumph of liberty, to he held in the Champ-de- Mars; but this heing postponed, she had then proj)osed to herself to strike her victim in his seat at the convention at the head of his party. Learning from Duperret that he would not ap- pear there, she was compelled to seek him by stratagem at his private lodg- ings. Continuing the story in the words of Lamartine who has devoted a " Book" of his " History of the Girondists " to the career of this heroic woman, " she returned to her chamber and wrote to Marat a billet, which she sent to the door of ' the friend of the people.' ' I have just arrived from Caen,' she wrote. ' Your love of country makes me pre- sume that you will have pleasure in hearing of the unfortunate events of that portion of the repuhlic. I shall present myself at your abode about a22 CHAELOTTE COED AY. one o'clock ; have the goodness to re- ceive me, and grant me a moment's conversation. I will put you in a po- sition to be of ofreat service to France.' Charlotte, relying on the effect of this note, went at the appointed hour to Marat's door, but could not obtain ac- cess to him. She then left with the portress a second note, more pressing and insidious than the former. ' I wi'ote to you this morning, Marat,' she said ; ' did you have my letter ? I cannot believe it, as they refuse me admit- tance to you. I hope that to-morrow you will grant me the interview I re- quest. I repeat that I am just arrived from Caen, and have secrets to disclose to yoii most important for the safety of the republic. Besides, I am perse- cuted for the cause of liberty; I am iinhappy, and that I am so should give me a claim on your. patriotism.' With- out awaitiug his i"eply, Charlotte left her chamber at seven o'clock in the evening, clad with more than usual care, in order, by a more studied ap- pearance, to attract the j^ersons about Marat. Her white gown was covered over the shoulders by a silk scarf, which, falling over her bosom, fastened behind. Her haii" was confined by a Normandy caj), the long lace of which played against her cheeks. A wide green silk riljand was bound round her brows, and fastened her cap. Her hair fell loose down her back. No paleness of complexion, no wildness of gaze, no tremulousness of voice, re- vealed her deadly purpose. With this attractive aspect she knocked at Ma- rat's door. " Marat inhabited the first floor of a dilapidated house in the Rue des Cor- deliers, now Rue de 1' Ecole de Mode- cine. His apartment consisted of an ante-chamber and a writing-room, look- ing out on a narrow courtyard, a small room containing his bath, a sleejiiug- room and dining-room looking on the street. It was very meanly furnished. Numerous publications of Marat's were piled on the floor, — the newspapers of the day, still damp from the press, were scattered about on the chairs and. tables, printers' lads coming in and going out incessantly, women emi:)loy- ed in folding and addi'essing pamph- lets and journals, the worn steps of the staircase, the ill-swejit passages, — all attested the movement and disorder which surround a man much occupied, and the perpetual crowd of persons in the house of a journalist and leader of the people. This misery, though a dis- play, was yet real. Marat's domestic arrangements were those of an huml)le artisan. A female, who controlled his house affairs, was originally named Catherine Evrard, but was called Al- bertine Marat from the time when the friend of the people had given her his name, taking her for his wife one day in fine weather, in the face of open sun- sli ine, after the example of Jean Jacques Rousseau. One servant aided this woman in her household duties. A messenger, named Laurent Basse, did the out-door work. The incessant activity of the waiter had not relaxed in consequence of the lingering disease which was consuming him. The in- flammatory action of his blood seemed to light up his mind. Now in his bed, now in his bath, he was perpetually writing, apostrophizing, inveighing against his enemies, whilst excitintj CHAELOTTE COEDAY. 223 the Convention and the Cordeliers. Offended at the silence of the Assembly on the rece^ition of his messages, he had recently addressed to it another letter, in which he threatened the Con- vention that he would be carried in his dying condition to the tribune, that he might shame the representatives with their cowardice, and dictate to them fi-esh murders. He left no repose either to himself or to others. Full of the pre- sentiment of death, he only seemed to fear that his last hour, coming on too suddenly, would not leave him time to immolate sufficient criminals. More anxious to kill than to live, he hastened to send before him as many victims as possible, as so many hostages given by the knife to the completed revolution, which he desired to leave fi"ee from all enemies after his death. The terror which issued from Marat's house re- turned thither under another form — the unending dread of assassination. His companion and his intimate asso- ciates believed that they saw as many daggers raised against him, as he raised over the heads of three hundi'ed thou- sand citizens. Access to his residence was forbidden, as it would be to the palace of tyranny. None were admit- ted to his presence but assured fiiends or denouncers strongly recommended, and who had submitted to interroga- tories and severe examinations. " Charlotte was not aware of these obstacles, although she apprehended them. She alighted fi'om the coach on the opposite side of the street, in front of Marat's residence. The day was on the wane, particularly in the quarter darkened by lofty houses and narrow streets. The portress at first refused to allow the young unknown to penetrate into the courtyard. She insisted, however, and ascended several stairs, regardless of the voice of the concierge. At these sounds Marat's mistress half-opened the door, and re- fused to allow a female whom she did not know to enter. The confused sound of the altercation between these women, one of whom entreated that she might be allowed to speak to the friend of the jpeople^ whilst the other endeavored to close the door in her face, reached Marat's ears, who com- prehended, by the few indistinct words that reached him, that the visitor was the stranger from whom he had re- ceived two notes during the day. In a loud and imperative voice he ordered that she should be admitted. Alber- tine, either from jealousy or distrust, obeyed with much ill-will and grum- bling. She showed the young girl into the small closet where Marat was, and left, as she quitted her, the door half- open, that she might hear the lowest whisper or the smallest movement of the sick man. The room was faintly lighted. Marat was in his bath, yet in this forced repose of his body he allowed his mind no leisure. A plank, roughly planed, laid across the bath, was covered with papers, open letters, and half-wi'itten articles for his pub- lication. He held in his right hand the pen which the arrival of the un- known female had suspended on its page. This was a letter to the Con- vention, to demand of it the judgment and proscription of the last Bourbons tolerated in France. Beside the bath, on a large block of oak, was a leaden inkstand, of the meanest fabric — the 224 CHAELOTTE COEDAY. foul source whence, for three years, had flowed so many delirious outpour- ings, so many denunciations, so much blood. Marat, covered in his bath with a cloth filthy with dirt and spot- ted with ink, had only his head, should- ers, the upper part of his chest, and his risrht arm out of the water. There was uothiuo: in the features of this man to affect a woman's eye with tenderness, or give pause to a meditated blow. His matted hair, wrapped in a dirty handkerchief, with receding forehead, protruding eyes, prominent cheek- bones, vast and sneering mouth, hairy chest, shrivelled limbs, and livid skin — such was Marat. Charlotte took care not to look him in the face, for fear her countenance might betray the horror she felt at his sio-ht. With downcast eyes, and her arms hanging motionless by her side, she stood close to the bath, awaiting until Marat should inquire as to the state of Nor- mandy. She replied with brevity, giving to her replies the sense and tone likely to pacify the demagogue's wishes. He then asked the names of the deputies who had taken refuge at Caen. She gave them to him, and he wrote them down, and when he had concluded, said in the voice of a man sure of his vengeance, ' Well, before they are a week older, they shall have the guillotine ! ' At these words, as if Charlotte's mind had awaited a last offence before it could resolve on strik- ing the blow, she drew the knife from her bosom, and, with sujierhumau force, plunged it to the hilt in Marat's heart. She then drew the bloody weajjon from the body of the victim, and let it fall at her feet, ' Help, my dear — help ! ' cried Marat, and then expired." The cry brought Albertine and the maid servant and Laurent into the room, where Charlotte was standing, without effort at escape. Laurent struck her to the ground with a blow on the head from a chair, and Albertine tram- pled upon her. The aroused popu- lace of the neighborhood demanded that the assassin should be cast out to them for speedy revenge. A body of soldiers then entered, the hands of Charlotte were confined by cords, and in this position, amidst the imj^reca- tions of the household of her victim, and the crowd who were present, re- plied to the usual j)reliminary interro- gations of the oflicer of justice, calmly confessing her deed. This proceeding being ended, she was conducted in the hackney coach which had brought her to the house, to the Abbaye, the near- est prison. An excited mob filled the street, and she was with difiicultj^ pro- tected from their outra2;es. On a second examination at the prison, she was questioned minutely as to her motives, proceedings, and accomplices. To this she had a very simple reply to make. She had come from Caen with the de- cided resolution of assassinating Marat, and had communicated her intention to no one. A folded paper was notic- ed fastened in her dress. It proved to be an address which she had prepared " to Frenchmen friendly to the laws and j^eace." In this, the death of Marat was spoken of as already accomplished, and her countrymen were called upon to leave their unhap2")y divisions and arise for the redemj^tion of France. Charlotte was presently removed to CHAKLOTTE COKDAT. 225 tlie prison of the Conciergerie. Slie was allowed writino- materials iu lier prison, and addressed a long letter, re- counting the circumstances of her jour- ney, and avowing her detestation of Marat, to Barbaroux. The epistle ex- jjresses her strong enthusiasm and a readiness to meet the fate she had invi- ted in behalf of her country. Its hap- piness, she said, was hers. "A vivid imagination and a sensitive heart," she adds with a philosophic self-conscious- ness, " promised but a stormy life ; and I pray those who regret me, to consid- er this, and rejoice at it." Writing to her father, she asked his pardon for the course she had taken, while she gloried in her deed. " I pray of you to rejoice at my fate — the cause is noble. I embrace my sister, whom I love with all my heart. Do not forget this verse of Corneille, — Le crime fait la honte et non pas I'echafaud."* The next morning, the 17th, was that appointed for her trial. The hall of the revolutionary tribunal was above the prison. On being conveyed thith- er iu the opening scenes, as she had done before, she frankly avowed her act, and gloried in its motive and suc- cess. Beino; asked how lonsr she had entertained her design, she said, " since the last day of May, when the de- puties of the people were arrested. / have hilled one man to save a htmdred thousand. I was a republican long he- fore the Revolution^ The counsel who * The crime and not tlie scaffold causes sliame. 29 had been assigned her could urge only iu her behalf the excitement of politi- cal fanaticism. She was not displeased with his plea, for it did not lessen her dignity or detract from the attitude in ^v■hicll she wished to appear before the world. While in prison she had re- quested permission to sit for her por- trait, that her memory might be better perpetuated. Observing an artist, M. Hauer, in court, sketching her likeness, she turned smilingly toward him, to as- sist him in his purpose. The painter, at her request, was allowed to follow her to the prison to finish his work. Before it was accomplished, the execu- tioner knocked at the door, and the painter, his work, interruj^ted, watched the final preparations for the scaffold. Charlotte, taking the scissors from the executioner, cut ofi:' a lock of her long hair, and gave it to the painter, who was so struck by her appearance in the red chemise, in which she was in- vested for her death, that he subse- quently painted her in that costume. To a priest sent to offer the last ser- vices of his order, she said, " I thank those who have had the attention to send you, but I need not your ministry. The blood I have spilt, and my own, which I am about to shed, are the only sacrifices I can offer the Eter- nal." So at eve of the day of her trial, she was borne to the guillotine. As she ascended the fatal cart, a vio- lent storm broke over the city, which gave way to the rays of the setting sun in the last scene upon the scaffold. JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE THE known ancestry of Goetlie on the paternal side ascends to one Hans Christian Goetlie, a farrier in the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury, in the little German town of Ar- teru, in Thuringia. His son Frederick was apprenticed to a tailor, and in the course of his travels fi-om place to place, according to the custom of the country, reached Frankfort-on-the- Maine, where he pursued his calling, was admitted to citizenship, and " be- ing a ladies' man," married the daugh- ter of the master tailor. A second marriage with the widow, keeper and wealthy proprietor of a hotel changed his vocation to that of the landlord. By .this union he had two sons, the younger of whom, Johann Caspar, was well educated, travelled into Italy, and became an imperial councillor in Frankfort. At the age of thirty-eiglit he was married to Kathrina Eliza- beth, a young lady of seventeen, the daughter of Johann Wolfgang Textor, of a distinguished family and the chief magistrate of the city. A year after this marriage, on the 28th of August, 1749, their son, the poet, Jo- hann Wolfgang Goethe, was born at Frankfort. (236) Both parents were persons of notice- able character. The father is describ- ed by Goethe's latest and best biogra- pher, Lewes, as " a cold, stern, formal, somewhat pedantic, but truth-loving, upright-minded man. He hungered for knowledge, and although in gen- eral of a laconic turn, freely imparted all he learned. In his domestic circle his word was law. Not only imperious, but in some respects capricious, he was nevertheless greatly respected, if little loved, by wife, children and friends." From him the poet inherited the well- built frame, the erect carriage and meas- ured movement of his later life, with the orderliness and stoicism which charac- terized him through life. The mother was of an excellent disposition and genius, " her simple, hearty, joyous and affectionate nature endearing her to all, — the delight of children, the fa- vorite of poets and princes." Being but eighteen when her son was bom, she was the companion of his youth. " I and my Wolfgang," she said, " have always held fast to each other, because we were both young together." She was well read in German and Italian literature, of great vivacity of intel- lect, inventing imaginative stories for JOIIANN WOLFGAITG GOETHE. 227 her cliildren, in whicli she became as much interested as themselves ; a cheer- ful and happy woman, avoiding as far as possible all that was unpleasant in life and bearing its inevitable sorrows with equanimity. It was from his mother, says his biographer, that Goethe " derived those leading princi- ples which determined the movement and orbit of his artistic nature ; the Joyous, healthy temperament, humor, vivid fancy, susceptibility, and the marvellous insight which gathered up the scattered and vanishing elements of experience into new and living com- binations." The home in which the poet was born exercised its influence upon his impressible nature. The pic- turesque old city of Frankfort, with its ancient associations, was of itself a school for an imaginative child ; while within the house in which he was born the walls were hung with pictures of the antiquities of Italy which his fa- ther had brought with him from his travels. Under these and other influ- ences of education there were numer- ous precocious developments of the boy's intellect. Taught mostly at home at this early period, everything which he learned seems to have had an individual flavor. He was not one of a class getting lessons by rote, but at once absorbed and put in practice what he acquired. The anecdotes of his attainments and of his reflective powers are something marvellous. At six his mind was stirred by thoughts of Providence, excited by the over- whelming disaster of the great earth- quake at Lisbon, and in his next year we are told that after listening to a great deal of theological discussion in the family he resolved to set up an altar of his own. " For this purpose he selected some tj-'pes, such as ores and other natural productions, and ar- ranged them in symbolical order on the elevations of a music stand ; on the apex was to be a flame typical of the soul's aspiration, and for this a pastille did duty. Sunrise was await- ed with impatience. The glittering of the housetops gave signal ; he apjjlied a burning-glass to the pastille, and thus was the worship consummated by a priest of seven years old, alone in his bedroom." He very early acquir- ed some knowledge of language, at eight, writing exercises in German, French, Italian, Latin and Greek, and not long after attacking English and even Hebrew. These were sometimes in the form of dialogue, exhibiting a playful turn for humor. Among other circumstances of his early life, of which he has given an account in his autobiography, he learnt much from the breaking up of the usual routine of home by the occujiation of Frank- fort by the French in the Seven Years' War. The troops were billeted upon the inhabitants, an ofiicer " of taste and munificence " falling to the lot of the Goethe house; while the usual life of the town was greatly en- hanced by military movements and the opening of a cafe and theatre. Though the boy was too young to understand or appreciate the quickness of French comedy he admired the display and bustle, and if he did not learn much before the scenes doubtless gathered up more behind them, for we fin d him, by the aid of a braggart companion, acquainted with the actors, '• a fre- 228 JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE. quenter of tlie green-room, and admit- ted into tlie dressing-room, where the actors and actresses dressed and un- dressed witli philosophic disregard to aj)j)earances, which from repeated vis- its he learned to regard as qnite natural." This was about the age of ten ; before he was fifteen he was in love with a certain Gretchen, the sister of one of his vagrant associates at this time, who appears to have given him but moderate encouragement and from Avhose society he was withdrawn by the mishap of some of her companions getting involved in fraudulent prac- tices, bringing them under the super- vision of the law. Gretchen, the fa- miliar desio-nation of Margaret, long haunted his imasfination and furnished O the name for the heroine of Faust. He was at first much hurt by this dis- appointment of his youthful passion, especially when he found that it had awakened no very ardent emotion in the subject of it, but he had too much vivacity to suffer long from such a catastrophe, and he soon turned his mind to his favorite studies. With much multifarious knowledge in his head, and with some practice in writ- ing, at the age of sixteen he entered as a student the University of Leip- «ic. It was his father's design that he should devote himself to the study of jurisprudence, and he accordingly on his first arrival set himself vigorously to work at the science under the guid- ance of the learned professor Bohme. But he was of too volatile a nature to confine himself long to one pursuit. Versatility was always the character- istic of his attainments. He might, particularly in his early years, have said with Horace : Nullius addiotus jurare in verba magistii Quo me cunque rapit tempestas defeior hospes. Diverted from the lectures on law by his intimacy with certain medical stu- dents who talked of nothing but medi- cine and botany, he occupied himself with these new studies, while, with his usual ardoiu' he entered eagerly into society and soon accumulated a stock of experience which, in one form and another, he rendered into verse and thus became an author. He had come to Leipsic with some provincial oddities about him ; ^vith a peculiar accent and a stock of colloquial expressions interspersed withj^roverbs and biblical allusions, which sounded strange in the politer society into which he was thrown. His dress, moreover, grotesquely made by one of his father's servants, gave him an absurd appear- ance. But he soon cast off these in cumbrances of mind and body, and under the guidance of the accomplished Frau Bohme, appeared to advantage in the social circles of the town. It was not his disposition, however, to be contented with the usual amusements and intercourse of what is called good company. He demanded intense men- tal activity and passionate emotion, which he found in a literary circle which gathered at the talile d' hote of one Schiinkopf, a. peculiar German com- bination of the gentleman, wine mer- chant, and tavern keeper. He discussed poetry with the guests, got up private theatricals with the family, and played lovers' parts with the daughter, co- quetting with her affection, and, in JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE. 229 the end, something to his mortification, losins: it. At this he is said to have been in despair, but it was a melan- choly which soon found relief in the composition of a few lyrics and a pas- toral play in which he introduced his lovers' quarrels — a solace to which he often afterwards resorted in similar circumstances, and which never failed him. He is also said about this time to have had some exj^erience of a less reputable kind of life, not at all of the conventional order, where human na- ture was to be seen in undress. The re- sult of this kind of observation was a dramatic piece which is published in his works entitled " The Fellow Sin- ners," in which there is a striking com- bination in wickedness on the part of all the characters. The theatre and the drama now oc- cuf)ied much of his attention, with a new enthusiasm excited by his introduc- tion to the spirit of Shakespeare, with whom he first became acquainted in the " Beauties," selected by the famous Dr. Dodd. He was vividly impressed by the bold, romantic character of the great English dramatist, and his fear- less reliance upon nature as distin- guished from the artificial French school — a powerful influence in the formation and encouragement of his literary convictions at this period. He also acquired some knowledge of art, taking lessons in drawing from Oeser, an eminent connoiseur, who had been the friend and instructor of AVinckel- mann. Fallino- in at the same time with the " Laocoon " of Lessing, he eagerly imbibed the admirable philo- sophical distinctions laid down in that work respecting the bounds and capac- ities of poetry, painting and sculpture To enlarge his knowledge of the sub- ject he hurried off secretly to Dresden to inspect its gallery of the old mas- ters, where he was more impressed with the jjictures of everyday life of the Dutch school than with the ideal of the Italian. He made efforts in draw- ing, dabbled in engraving, and would have been an artist had nature second- ed his aspirations ; but he never at- tained any remarkable success in this walk. After about three years spent at Leipsic, he returned to Frankfort, seri- ously affected in health, which his bi- ographer attributes to " dissipation, bad diet (especially the beer and cof- fee) and absurd endeavors to carry out Rousseau's preaching about returning to a state of nature." He had suffered from a violent hemorrhage, now fol- lowed on his recovery by a painful tumor on his neck. After this had yielded to surgical treatmentj^ he was afilicted with a troublesome stomach disorder, for the relief of which the family physician, who would ajijpear to have been something of a quack, brought out as a final remedy a cer- tain mysterious salt of which he had come to the knowledge in his pursuit of alchemy. The patient consented to take the prescription and recovered ; when, as usual, profiting by chance currents in the sea of learning, he threw himself vigorously upon the wi'itings of Paracelsus, Van Helmont and their associates in the vain search after the philosopher's stone — a stu- dent's experience reproduced in Faust. His health being now restored, another effort was to be made in the study of 230 JOHANN WOLFGAITG GOETHE. jurisprudence, and with tte design of gaining a doctor's degree, lie was sent to Strasboui'g. " He was now," says his biographer, "turned twenty, and a more magnifi- cent youth, never perhaps entered the Strasbourg gates. Long before he was celebrated, he was likened to an Apollo ; when he entered a restaurant, the peo- ple laid down their knives and forks to stare at him. Pictures and busts give a very feeble indication of that which was most striking in his appear- ance ; they only give the cut of fea- ture, not the play of feature ; nor are they very accurate even in mere form. The features were large and liberally cut, as in the fine SAveeping lines of Greek art. The brow, lofty and mas- sive, from beneath which shone large lustrous brown eyes of marvelous beauty, their pujails being of almost unexampled size ; the slightly aquiline nose was large and firmly cut; the mouth full, with a short arched lip, very expressive, the chin and jaw boldly proportioned, and the head resting on a fine muscular neck : — de- tails which are, after all, but the in- ventory of his appearance, and give no clear image of it. In stature, he was rather above the middle size ; but, al- though not really tall, he had the as- pect of a tall man, and is usually so described, because his presence was very imposing. His frame was strong, muscular, yet sensitive. Excelling in all active sports, he was almost a ba- rometer in sensitiveness to atmospheric influences." With personal advantages !ike these, and the varied education he had al- ready acquu'ed, Strasbourg readily be- came a new theatre of mental acquisi tions and of social conquests. Love and learning, as at Leipsic, divided the young poet's attention. Law, as be- fore, was by no means his exclusive mistress. We find him heartily en- gaged also in the study of anatomy and chemistry, paying particular at- tention to the new wonders of elec- tricity disclosed by Franklin. Mys- tical philosophic writings occupied his time, with a special devotion to that martyr of science, the pantheistic Bruno ; while he gained a deeper spi- ritual insight from an intimacy which he formed with the religious enthu- siast, Jung Stilling, who ever after- wards remained his friend — an associ- ation of signal honor to Goethe in the estimation of his character. " In- stinctively, he sought on all sides to penetrate the mysteries of humanity, and, by probing every man's exj)eri- ence to make it his own. Here was a poor charcoal-burner, who, from tailor- ing had passed to keeping a school; that failing, he had resumed his needle ; and having joined a religious sect, had, in silent communion with his own soul, gained for himself a sort of culture which raised him above the ordinaiy height of men : — what was there in his life or opinions to captivate the riot- ous, sceptical, prosperous student ? There was earnestness, there was genu- ineness. Sympathizing with Stilling', listening to him, and dexterously^ avoid- ing any interference Avith his religious faith, he was not only enabled to be his friend, but also to learn quietly and surely the inner nature of such men." Goethe formed another lastius: ac- quaintance at Strasboiu'g with Herder, JOHANX WOLFGANG GOETHE. 231 who was five years liis senior — an im- portant difference at that period of life— who taught him a philosophical admiration of the Hebrew and other national poetry to its latest and then fashionable exhibition in Ossian. We read at this time of a certain nervous irritability, in overcoming which he exhibited an extraordinary resolution and self-control. " Loud sounds were disagreeable to him ; dis- eased objects aroused loathing and horror, and he was especially troubled with giddiness, which came over him whenever he looked down from a heia;ht. All these infirmities he re- solved to conquer, and that somewhat violently In the evening when they beat the tattoo, he went close to the drums, though the powerful rolling and beating of so many seemed enough to make his heart burst in his bosom. Alone he ascended the highest pinna- cle of the cathedral, and sat in what is called the neck, under the crown, for a quarter of an hour before ventur- ing to step out again into the open air. Standing on a platform, scarcely an ell square, he saw before him a boundless prospect, the church and everything upon which he stood being concealed by the ornaments. He felt exactly as if carried up in a balloon. These pain- ful sensations he repeated until they became quite indifferent ; he subse- quently derived great advantage from this conquest, in mountainous excur- sions and geological studies. Anatomy was also of double value, as it taught him to tolerate the most repulsive sights while satisfying his thirst for knowledge. He succeeded so well that no hideous sight could disturb his self-possession. He also sought tc steel himself against the terrois of imagination. The awful and shudder- ing impressions of darkness in church- yards, solitary places, churches and chapels by night, he contrived to render indifferent — so much so, that when a desire came over him to recall in such scenes the pleasing shudder of youth, he could scarcely succeed even by tb^". strangest and most terrific images." The Strasbourg Cathedral, which was tlius turned to account in fortifying his nerves was a perpetual school of art to him while residing in the city. It was the inspiration and centre of a group of ideas, the repre- sentative to him of the entire world of Gothic art. Valuable, however, as may have been his studies at Strasbourg, there were other lessons than those of books and architecture which he was learning. His devotion to anatomy and physiolo- gy was extended to the intellect and affections in their living representa- tions. It would doubtless be unfair to charge him with deliberately engag- ing the affections of the young ladies, with whom he was thrown in contact, for the purpose of a scientific experi- ment, a vivisection of the tenderest emotions of the heart. It is more na- tural to supi:)ose that he fell in love with the really lovable from the force of sympathy, passion and admiration ; but we must still be impressed with the fi'equency of these attachments, and the cool superiority which he maintain- ed in conducting and abandoning them, taking care to preserve, for available literary purposes, the memory of all their incidents and entanglements. The 5J32 JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE. progress of tliese early love affairs, par- ticularly at Strasbourg, occupies an un- usually large proportionate space in his biography. There is the dramatic story of his adventure with the two daughters of his dancing master, with one of whom he was in love, while the other was in love with him, a game of cross proposes ending in breaking off the connection with the family in a highly dramatic style. Another intima- cy seemed at one time likely to lead to more important results — the acquaint- ance with a certain Frederika, the daughter of the clergyman of a village in the vicinity of Strasbourg. It origi- nated in a kind of masquerading frolic in a visit to the family, which formed it- self in the mind of Goethe, as the coun- terpart of that described by Goldsmith in the Vicar of Wakefield — a simple- minded pastor, two daughters and even the T)oy Moses. The intercoui'se which ensued exhibited some very jiretty am- atory scenes, charming in themselves, delightful in a painting or a romance, furnishing most fascinating pages for future books ; but by no means to be developed in the sober graces of matri- mony. For a time these entanglements of the affections had a strong hold up- on him, if we may judge by the declar- ations of his correspondence and the symjaathizing utterances of his friends. But it must be remembered that these things were occurring in a singularly demonstrative period, when it appears to have been the habit of the educated people of the country to indulge in the greatest freedom and openness in the exj)ression of every feeling and senti- ment of the heart, whether relating to love or friendship. Such revelations were characteristic of the time and in fected its literature. Thej^ prevailed to a great extent in France and Ger- many, but they have always been alien to the English mind and character. The tendency which always exists where there is much talking about a thing was to excess and exaggeration. "Words soon outrun realities. Sentiment rap- idly grew into sentimentality. It is not, perhaps, after all, that these loves of Goethe are so very much moi'e re- markable than the common flirtations of other ardent young philosophers, as that they have an exceptional inter- est in his case from the freedom Avith which he laid them bare to his friends and to the public in the thin disguise of his writings. As it is, we may study the man in his works and his works in the man. The analytic process is that of the critic ; the synthetic is that of the biographer. After a residence in Strasbourg of something more than a year, Goethe returned home with the degree of Doc- tor of Laws, not, however, to settle down to the practice of jurisprudence, l5ut to throw himself with greater fervor upon literary composition. His study of Shakespeare had impressed him with the capabilities of the drama in the re- vival of ancient historical incidents, while the spirit of the past had been brought vixadly to his mind by his in- timate sympathy with the medieval as- sociations of the old cathedral city in which he had been living. A third element of interest was combined with these in the subject which he chose for the first imj)ortant exercise of his pow- ers. This was the rough daring spirit of independence, fascinating his youth- ful energy and enthusiasm, wLicli lie found in the career of Gottfried von ■ Berlicliingen, of the Iron Hand, as he was called, a lawless feudal German baron of the Robin Hood or Rob Roy order, of the sixteenth century. The story of the exploits of this warrior chieftain Goethe found written in an old chronicle which he had dramatized somewhat after the fashion of Shakes- peare's historical plays, adding several striking characters of his own of a pure- ly romantic or melodramatic interest. He made it not a great tragedy, but a grand picturesque bustling narrative, bringing past events with startling effect before the mind of the modern spectator. It was original in its con- ception as it was vivid in expression, and with all its imperfections, it be- came the acknowledged precursor of two great divisions of our recent liter- ature, the modern historical drama, and the historical novel. " Gotz von Ber- lichiugen" was first published in 1773. Six years later it aj^jieared in an Eng- lish translation from the pen of Walter Scott, and waS no unimportant means of fastening his attention upon the themes and treatment of his subsequent historical poems and novels. The next memorable work of Goethe, for he was all the while enoraged in mi- nor literary compositions, in occasional writings and contributions to the aes- thetic journals of the day, was also to create quite as extraordinary an impres- sion on the times. This was the famous " Sorrows of "Werther." After he had written " Gotz," and previously to its publication, Goethe, with the ostensi- ble pirrpose of pursuing the practice of the law, resided for a short time at 30 Wetzlar, where, as usual, he gave him- self up unreservedly to literature, so- ciety and friendshiji. Though, from his own account, he had hardly di- gested his inconsequential passion for Frederika, he was readily disposed, perhaps the more on that account — to fill up the gap in his affections — to fall into a new attachment. The attractive object was, at this time, no other than the original of the heroine, in his tear- ful, sentimental romance, — a certain Charlotte Buff, a joyous maiden of sixteen, interesting rather than beau- tiful, of rare modesty and worth, and, happily, of a high degree of self-pos- session, for she was already betrothed to Kestner, a friend of Goethe, and, notwithstanding the excessive admira- tion and exquisite attentions of the latter, honorably maintained fidelity to her engagement. Nor did this per- severing gallantry interfere with the friendship between the husband elect and the ardent lover. On the contrary, he generously looked upon him, not with the jealousy of a rival, but with the sympathy of a philosopher, griev- ing that he should be distressed in so hopeless a way. This was the very magnanimity of friendship, and proof of a noble nature; it shows too that Goethe's conduct, allowing him the limits of a Platonic attachment, was not dishonorable. Goethe left Wetzlar, Charlotte was in due time married to Kestnei*, and the first fi'uit of the union, in compliment to the distinguished inamorato, was named Wolfgang. So far, the story of Werther, like that of his fondness for Frederika, could have furnished to the poet only a few idyllic scenes, an- 234 JOHAJSTN WOLFGANG GOETHE. other sketch for his books of graceful female tenderness. But Wetzlar was to furnish another incident, a tragic catastrophe to be inwoven with the plot. There was in the town, at the same time with Goethe, a certain youth with whom he became acquainted, named Jerusalem. He was attached to the Brunswick legation, Avas well educated, of a philosophic turn of in- tellect, and of a melancholy tempera- ment. He, too, formed a passionate attachment to the wife of a finend, was mortified by being refused admis- sion to the house, and being already in a diseased state of mind, committed suicide. Combining the two circiun- stances, with Jerusalem for the unhap- py hero and Charlotte for the subject of his passion, Goethe, blending with the two a certain poetic and passionate melancholy of his own at this period, produced the " Sorrows of Werther." The book in which all this was writ- ten — a long melancholy wail of pro- found, yet sickly sentimentality, re- lieved by pictures of nature and idyl- lic scenes of the natural affections, of simple, human everyday life — seemed to strike at once the heart of the world in giving expression to the deep discontent which was beginning to prevail in Europe, and which found its cure at last in the blood-letting at- tending the French Revolution and the subsequent wars of Napoleon, when there was something more practical on hand than dyspeptic sighing and la- mentation. For the time, however, its effect was transcendent. The book ran the circuit of the reading world ; its progeny in one shape or other would fill a library. It was something for a young man of twenty-three thus, in the production of " Gotz Von Berli- chingen" and the "Sorrows of Wer- ther," to have founded two great schools of jjojjular literature. There were several other literary ef- forts of Goethe about this time savor- ing of honest thought and experience — a projected drama on Mahomet, a striking conception fully planned, Ijut of which only one song was written out ; a satii'e on Wieland for his mod- ern misrej^resentation of the heathen gods, and " Clavigo," a dramatic version of an adventure of Beaumarehais, Avrit- ten at the playful command of another of the author's Platonic lady loves, the fascinating Anjia Sybilla Miinch. Still another flame, Anna Elizabeth Schciue- mann, celebrated in his poetry as "Lili," an arrant coquette, furnished him soon after with emotional experi- ence sufficient for an opera, "Erwin and Elmira," in which he took his revenge in verse. The affaii", however, was resumed, and a marriage seems at one time to have been determined on, which came to nothing without much difficulty. There was another play turning on the passion of love, " Stella,'' of the melodramatic order, the English translation of which suggested to Can- ning and Frere their famous parody, " The Rovers ; or, the Double Arrange- ment," in the Anti-Jacobin. His mental activity, with the force of his genius, which impressed itself upon whatever he undertook, had now gained him the respect and friendship of most of the eminent literati of Germany. He num- bered among his friends and corres- pondents, Klopstock, Herder, Lavater, Jacobi, and others of distinction, and a JOHAKN WOLFGANG GOETHE. 235 greater and more intimate than all, Scliiller, was soon to be added to the number. His talents, moreover, had gained him the marked attention of Karl August, the Duke of Saxe Wei- mar, who now invited him to pass some time at his court. He went, towards the close of 1775, and the capital of the lit- tle duchy became his home for life. Weimar was then a very plain little town, as yet without its beautiful park, its city walls inclosing under six or seven hundred roofs, a population of about seven thousand. The manners of the court were formal and provin- cial. An aristocratic system of exclu- siveness prevailed. But there appears to have been, judging from the free rollicking career Goethe led there, a great deal of sportive life in the place. The Dowager Duchess Amalia, a niece of Frederick the Great, was of a happy temjjerament, fond of pleasure, well in- structed in various accomplishments, a patron of Wieland, who taught her to read Aristophanes, and fond of having men of letters in her company. The Duchess Luise was a woman of deci- ded character, and her husband, the duke, was worthy by his talents and disposition to be the friend and com- panion of Goethe. They were both in those early days at Weimar young to- gether, sympathized heartily with each other in a passion for nature and ad- venture, had a common love of litera- ture, with a permitted freedom of in- tercourse which took away all pretence of patronage on the one side, or risk of servility on the other. It was truly " a merry, laughing, quaffing and unthink- ing time " which Goethe passed at that period with this versatile Prince Hal, in frolics, private theatricals and social amusements, not unmixed with graver duties of the petty state when he was appointed, contrary to all precedent, to the distinguished post at the court, of Geheime Legations Rath, with a seat in the privy council and a salary of twelve hundred thalers. The duke also soon presented him with an at- tractive little " garden house" for a residence, within the precincts of the present park, where the poet could enjoy a most delightful rural seclusion in the immediate vicinity of the town. Here he studied, wrote and indulged in sentimental reveries over a new passion, this time a lady of three and thirty, the mother of seven children, the accomplished woman of the world, who knew well how to take care of herself even with so charming an ad- mirer, — the Fran von Stein of the court, wife of the Master of the Horse. A gallant mutual admiration and exchange of sensibilities was kept up between them for ten years. The age of thirty is marked by Goethe's biographer, Mr. Lewes, as a turning point in his career, the period at which he began seriously to think of life as something to be rigidly control- led and regulated for the most perfect application of his faculties and acquire- ments. The previous time had been a period of turbulence and unrest, of fluctuations of feeling and passion, of experiment in the trial of his powers ; for the future he would realize the ideal, in the full and mature use of all his powers. The fruits of his candid in- trospection and noble resolve are to be seen throughout his subsequent life and writings. His demeanor becomes more 236 JOHAISW WOLFGANG GOETHE. reserved ; his particijjation in tlie fro- licsome vanities of the day is gradually abandoned ; we no longer hear of him as engaged in such careless j^ersonal exhibitions of himself as that recorded by his liiographer, when he was seen " standing in the market-place with the duke by the hour together, smack- ing huge sledge whips for a wager." On the contrary, his influence is employ- ed in restrainins' the wild follies of that reckless and dissipated noble personage, and in guiding to a greater degree his literary and philosophical pursuits. If Goethe had sometimes heretofore i^lay- ed the part of Falstaff to Prince Hal, the cast was now reversed and Fal- staff appeared, as he doubtless always had been in reality, the leader in so- briety and judgment. But it is in the finish and completeness of his lite- rary works that the effect of this pro- founder consciousness and more dili- gent ap2:)lication is to be seen. The artist henceforth predominates, sub- duing and concentrating in classic forms the irregularities of passion and emotion. "The Iphigenia in Tauris," produced in 1779, a modern transfu- sion of an ancient dramatic story, is a masterpiece of art, profound and orig- inal in conception. The drama of " Ijihigenia " was fol- lowed at intervals by "Egmont," in which we are introduced to some of the most striking scenes in the war waged l)y the Netherlands against the tyranny of Spain, and " Torquato Tas- so," a dramatic version of the poet's life-history in its inner consciousness. These works were produced in a period of about ten years, from 1778 to 1788. "Within that time the poet had been elevated to the nobility, pur sued various scientific studies in bota- ny, natural philosophy, anatomy, seek- ing not the mere knowledge of facts, but the discovery of principles and the hidden laws of organization, and had performed a memorable tour in Italy. That he might j^ursue his jour- ney with the greater freedom and in- dependence, he laid aside his nobility for the tour and travelled incognito with the assumed name of Herr Moller. Venice, Rome, Sicily, engaged most of his attention. He followed up his lit- erary and philosophical studies by the way, and made some laborious efforts to accomplish himself as a painter, sufficient to satisfy him that he was not born for the art. The influence of the toui", which lasted a year and a half, Avas felt in his subsequent tastes and cultMre. An experience of a cam- paign or two in France a year or two after was less in accordance with his disposition, when he accompanied his f riend,the duke, in the expedition across the frontier of the Duke of Brunswick, in the vain attempt of the allies to stay by force the onward movement of the Revolution. We hear of nothing more remarkable occurring to him during this adventure than the exjje- rience which he sought of the sensa- tions of a soldier under fire of the ene- mj, an experiment to ascertain what sort of a thing the " cannon fever," as it Avas called, might be, and of Avhich he wrote a vivid description. On his return from Italy, Goethe had been absolved by the duke from the discharge of his active duties about the court as President of the Chamber and Dii-ector of the War Department, JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE. 237 while he still retained the privilege of a seat in the council and the superin- tendence of all scientific and artistic institutions, including the theatre. As his salary had been increased and he was in receipt of a handsome addi- tional income after the death of his father, which occurred in 1781, to say nothing of the proceeds of his writ- ings, his pecuniary circumstances were in the most favorable condition. In fact, he was in a perfectly independent position to pursue, with the greatest advantages, the system of intellectual culture upon which he had set his heart. The small rustic "garden- house," in which he had for some time resided, had been succeeded by a resi- dence in the town, granted him by the duke, which was rebuilt for him during his absence in the French campaign. This house became thoroughly identi- fied with the man, being gradually furnished and adapted according to his tastes and inclinations. He lived in it for the remainder of his life, and after his death, like the Abbotsford of Sir Walter Scott, it was regarded as a kind of living monument to the man. To complete the picture of the poet's home, it is necessary to refer to an important member of his family, the lady whom he had taken to his house as his acknowledged mistress, who became the mother of his children, and, after eighteen years passed in this irregular relation, was made his wife by marriage. This was Christiane Vulpius, with whom he became ac- quainted in a noticeable manner. As he was walking, one day, in the au- tumn of 1788, in the park at Weimar, a petition was presented to him by Christiane, " a fi'esh, young, bright- looking girl," asking his influence in procuring a post for her brother, the author of the celebrated romance, "Kinaldo Rinaldini." This was fol- lowed by the attachment which re- sulted, a year after, on her bearing him a son, in her formal introduction to his house, to the scandal, as may be supposed, of good society at Weimar, There is but little to l)e said by the greatest admirers of Goethe in apology for this flagrant violation of morality. His biographei', Mr. Lewes, speaks of his "abstract dread of marriage," which, in the discussion of such a question, sounds very much like a jest, and of the disparity in social station, which can hardly be considered of much greater consequence with a man so accustomed and privileged to act independently. There are two pic- tures presented to us, of her youth, when Goethe wrote poems in celebra- tion of her charms, and of her woman- hood when her beauty was spoiled by intemperance. Of the first it is wi-it- ten, " her golden-brown locks, laughing eyes, ruddy cheeks, kiss-provoking lips, small and gracefully rounded figure, gave her 'the appearance of a young Dionysos ! ' Her naivete^ g^-yety and enjoying temperament completely fascinated Goethe, who recognized in her one of those free, healthy speci mens of nature which education had not distorted with artifice. She was like a child of the sensuous Italy he had just quitted with so much regret ; and there are few poems in any lan- guage which approach the passionate gratitude of those in which he recalls the happiness she gave him." In the 238 JOIIAlSra' WOLFGANG GOETHE. account of her some fifteen years later we read, " Years and self-indulgence have now made havoc with her charms. The evil tendency, which youth and animal spirits kej^t within excess, has asserted itself with a distinctness V'hich her bifth and circumstances may explain, if not excuse, Ijut which can only be contemplated in sadness. Her father, we know, ruined himself hj intemperance ; her brother impair- ed fine talents by similar excess ; and Christiane, who inherited the fatal disposition, was not saved from it by the checks v.'hich refined society im- poses, for she was shut out from socie- ty by her relation to Goethe. Fond of gayety, and especially of dancing, she was often seen at the students' balls at Jena; and she accustomed herself to an indulgence in wine, which rap- idly destroyed her beauty, and which was sometimes the cause of serious domestic troubles." It was in this later period, at an odd time, five days after the battle of Jena, when all Wei- mar was in confusion and the French with Napoleon were in possession of the town, that the marriage took place. The union, ten years after, in 1S16, was terminated by the death of the wife. Succeeding Goethe's more important dramatic productions, came his art novel, gathering up many years of thought and experience, " Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels." The motive of this work, which grew out of the author's active engagement in the superintendence of the court theatre at Weimar, was a representa- tion of the di'amatic life, in its trials and capabilities ; as it was continued it assumed a symbolical cast and ^ras less an exhibition of the actual world. Having been translated by Carlyle, it is one of the best known to English readers of the author's works. In " Herrmann and Dorothea," which appeared in 1797, Goethe gave to the world one of the most perfect and thoroughly satisfactory of all his works. It is a series of idyllic pictures, a tale of love and affection, set in the frame- work of German village life, enriched by humor and sentiment, with the back-ojrouud of the French revolution. The poem, tripping lightly on with the ease and strength of the hexame- ter in the hands of a master, is at once simple, quaint, picturesque and pro- found in feeling, and truthful in ex- pression. Ai't and nature were never united in a happier composition. The first part of the tragedy of " Faust," the consummate fruit of the genius of the author in his various at- tainments, was given to the world in 1806. It was the patient growth of thirty years of intellectual labor and passionate experience. Traces of all his previous life-history appeared in it. The history of its composition is thus given by his biograj^her. " The Faust fable was familiar to Goethe as a chUd. In Strasbourg, during 1770-71, he con- ceived the idea of fusing his personal experience into the mould of the old legend ; but he wrote nothing of the work until 1774-75, when the ballad of the King of Thule, the first mono- logue and the first scene with Wagner, were wi'itten ; and during his love affair with Lili, he sketched Gretchen's catastrophe, the scene in the street, the scene in Gretchen's bed-room, the JOKAJm WOLFGANG GOETHE. 239 scenes "between Faust and Mephisto- plieles during the walk, and in the street, and the garden scene. In his Swiss journey, he sketched the first interview with Mephistopheles and the compact ; also the scene before the city gates, the plan of Helena, the scene between the student and Mephis- topheles, and Auerbach's cellar. When in Italy, he read over the old manu- script, and wrote the scenes of the witches' kitchen and the cathedral ; also the monologue in the foi'est. In 1797, the whole was remodelled. Then were added the two prologues, the Walpurgis night,and the dedication. In 1801 he completed it as it now stands, retouching it, perhaps, when it was published." A second part of Faust, symbolical, mystical and ob- scure, was the latest literary work of the author's closing years. Both por- tions, but more particularly the latter, have furnished inexhaustible materials for critics and commentators. The main work is sufficiently simple in its general design, setting forth with all the force of poetry and imagination the failure of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge to satisfy the demands of the soul, and the triumph of sensuality over the distracted powers of life. The whole work has recently ap- peared in English in a justly admired translation ft'om the pen of Bayard Taylor. In 1825, the fiftieth anniversary of Goethe's arrival at the court was cele- brated at Weimar with imposing cere- monial and the most fervent personal attentions. Less than three years af- ter, his old friend, the duke, was taken away, to be followed shortly by his wife, the grand duchess. Goethe bore himself through these trials with equa- nimity, according to his habit, and though suffering from the effects of age, was still employed in his literary labors. His last work was the com- pletion of Faust, ali'eady mentioned, in his eighty-second year. In the spring of 1832 he was taken ill mth a cold, bringing on a nervous fever which, within a week, on the 22d ol March, resulted in his death. His last audible words were " More light." JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE. THE records of tlie Kemble family are the most brilliant in the an- nals of the British sta2;e. There was a shadowy claim or tradition among them of a member of the race, a Kem- ble, who, in the great civil war, fought on the royal side at Worcester ; and of another, a Eoman Catholic j)riest, who innocently suffered death at Hereford, a martyr to the fears of England in the panic consequent on that dar- ing imposition on religious credulity, known as the Titus Gates plot. Before he went to the scaffold, it is said, he called for a pipe of tobacco, and smoked it, which was commemo- rated in the region where he suffered, by a last pipe being called " Kemble's pipe." Henry Siddons claimed that the name Kemble and Campbell were originally the same, which ojiened an early and distinguished Scottish ances- try ; but as this was in a conversation with the author of " The Pleasures of Hope," it may only have been thrown out in a spirit of mutual compliment. The known dramatic ancestry in the long lineage of players of the tribe, carries us back in the early days of the eighteenth century to a person named (340) Ward, an actor of some reputation, a contemporary of Betterton, who, in 1723, took a leading part on the London boards in the production of the amia- ble poet Fenton's "Mariamne." He subsequently became a strolling man- ager, his daughter, Sarah, acting with him before the country audiences. In the course of this random life, she fell in love with, and married — it was a run- away match, without the consent of her parents — Roger Kemble, a subor- dinate member of the company, a man of some education, with a gentle dispo- sition, of fine personal aj^pearance, an- swering to her own beauty, of the iis- ual poverty of his profession, and a Roman Catholic. Her father was re- luctantly reconciled to the marriage, humorously expressing his forgiveness in a jest, at the expense of the bride- groom — " Sarah, you have not disobey- ed me. I told you never to marry an actor, and you have married a man who neither is, nor ever can be an ac- tor." Notwithstanding this facetious anathema, Roger Kemble seems in his way to have played well his part, and when, at the age of seventy, brought into notice by his illustrious children, V/f^^^ vl\> lie in the engravings after a picture painted by his friend. Sir Thomas Lawrence. In these, as in all his Ijest performances, like his sister, Mrs. Sid- dons, he was terriljly in earnest. He was slow, deliberate and painstaking in study and preparation, but in the moment of action he impressed all his powers upon his work. He could not otherwise have been a great actor. Some of his peculiarities, however, continued to afford food for the critics and wits, who wrote ej)igrams at his expense. Many were the Jests popularly current, levelled at the slowness of his utterance, tragic solemnity and occasional somewhat pedantic refine- ments in delivery. Talking over with Sheridan some proposed piece for the stage, that arch wit is said to have ad- vised him to introduce music between the pauses. Kelly, the privileged Irish actor, once disturbed his silent gravity in company with an ajjpeal from Ham- let, " Come, Kemble, ' ope thy ponder- ous and marble jaws ' and give us an opinion !" George Colman said of his performance of Don Felix in the " "Wonder," that it had too much of the Don and too little of the Felix. But the greatest efforts of the wits were directed at his pronunciation of " aches " in a line in the " Tempest " — Fill all thy bones with, aches, make thee roar. Following the requirement of the me- tre he made this a word of two sylla- bles, pronouncing it aitclies. The pit 250 JOHjST PHILIP KEMBLE. demurred, but Kemble persisted, and tvlien, in the absence of the manager in consequence of an attack of rheumatism, George Frederick Cooke was called upon to i^lay the part, he got over the difficulty by omitting the passage alto- gether. Like numerous actors and many persons of eminence off the stage, Kemble was attracted to attempt the very opjiosite of that which was suited to his genius, and in which he was most successful. We Have noticed his performance of Charles Surface, with the sport of the wits on that oc- casion. He had his eye for a while steadily on Falstaif, whom he proposed to relieve of his iisual grossness on the boards and introduce in his intel- lectual and gentlemanly capacity as " Sir John to all Euroj)e." He even got so far as to make choice of a beard for the character ; but lie never brought it on the stage. Sir Walter Scott tells a story of his imperturbable self-com- mand while engrossed with this favor- ite idea. They were siting together at the annual entertainment given by the artists at the 2:)rivate opening of the Koyal Academy Exhibition. Kemble was in the midst of a dissertation em- bodying his views of Falstaff, when the huge chandelier aljove the table descended, crushing glass and china, and threatening the illustrious com- pany with destruction. All was panic and confusion save in the mind and speech of Kemble, and Scott, as he confesses, meditating retreat, was firm- ly hi'ld to the lofty analysis of the humorous old knight. At the close of the season in the summer of 1802, Kemble finally with- drew from the management of Drury Lane, with a view of becoming one of the proprietors of Covent Garden. Be- fore entering upon this new field, he employed an interval of leisure in a trip on the continent : on his way to Paris, he visited Douay, the scene of his early studies, and found it suffer- ing sadly from the disorders of the country, in a state of ruin, poverty and desolation not to be described. " I had not the heart," he writes in a let- ter to his brother Charles, " to go up to my old room." Paris he paints in few words : — " such a scene of mag- niflcence, filth, pleasure, poverty, gai- ety, distress, virtue and vice, as consti- tutes a greater miracle than was ever chronicled in history." Here he moved in the best English society, of which Lord and Lady Holland wei"e the lead- ers, and became acquainted with many of the French actors, particularly with Talma, Avho expressed a desire to adapt Pizarro to the French stage. Passing thence to Spain, he spent some time at Madrid, perfecting himself in the Sj)anish language. At this place he was informed of the death of his father, the venerable Eoger Kemble, Avho passed away at the age of eighty- two. Writing to Charles, who had communicated the event to him, he expressed the most tender feelings of sympathy with his mother, and says of his father with a kindly touch of nature : "How in vain have I delighted myself in thousands of inconvenient oc- currences on this journey, with the thought of contemplating my father's cautious incredulity while I related them to him. Millions of things un- interesting, it may be, to any body else, I had treasured iip for his surprise and JOHN" PHILIP KEMBLE. 251 scrutiny. It is God's pleasure that be is goue from us ; once more, tlie peace of the just be with him." Having perfected the Covent Garden arrangement by the purchase of a share of one-sixth of the property for twenty- three thousand pounds from the vet- eran comedian, Lewis, the stage man- ager, Kemble became his successor, making his first ajjpearauce at the theatre in September, 1803, in his favorite character of Hamlet. Mrs. Siddons was again with him, and no less a personage than George Frederick Cooke, who for two or three years had been established at Covent Garden as somet'iinar of a rival of Kemble. This did not prevent the manager from giv- ing him every opportunity for the ex- ercise of his extraordinary powers. Kemble acted Richmond to Cooke's Richard, one of his great parts; old Norval to Cooke's Gleiialvon, Mrs. Sid- dons acting Lady Randolph ; and An- tonio to Cooke's Shylock. Here was a brilliant opportunity, but Cooke's irregularities were in the way of any advantage to his reputation. In the midst of the efforts of the new man- ager for the reputation of the stage, in the winter of 1804, came the Master Betty flurry, when that juvenile prod- igy came heralded from the provinces to create an unj)recedented excitement among the playgoers of Covent Garden and Drury Lane, for he acted at both theatres. The representative for the time on the London stage of Douglas, Romeo and Hamlet, in the presence of Kemble, was a boy of thirteen. After this was over, there was a return to more legitimate performances, and Kemble and Siddons were again su- preme in the Shakespearian drama. The great Roman plays, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, with which must be included Addison's Cato, became now, in these later years of his career, more than ever the stronghold of his genius. His powers were admirably suited to them ; they afforded, in their calm com- posure and bursts of passion, fine scope for his stately dignity of mien, his graceful attitude and studied declam- ation ; he was greatly admired in them by the best judges, and in them he has had no successor. An actor's life is exposed to many vicissitudes. The destruction of Co- vent Garden Theatre by fire in Sep- tember, 1808, fairly tested the philoso- phy of our stoic performer. He had now to put the principles in action he had so often feigned upon the stage. At first he appears to have been somewhat overcome, if we may so in- terpret the peculiar stage language in which he expressed his feelings. Boa- den visited the family in Great Rus- sel street the morning after the fire. Mrs. Kemble was in tears at the pros- pect of beginning life over again in the repairs of their shattered fortunes ; Charles Kemble sat in silence ; King John seemed totally absorbed in the contemplation of affairs, but was feed- ing his imagination with the melan- choly details. At last he broke out with this pattern declamation, — " Yes, it has perished, that magnificent the- atre, which for all the purposes of ex- hibition or comfort was the first in Europe. It is gone, with all its treas- ures, that library which contained all those immortal jDroductions of our countrymen, prepared for the purposes 052 JOUX PHILIP KEMBLE. of representation ! That vast collec- tion of mnsic, comj^osed by tlie greatest geniuses in that science — by Handel, Arne and others ; — most of it manu- script in the original score ! That wardrobe, stored with the costume of all ages and nations, accumulated by unwearied research, and at an incred- ible expense. Scenery, the triumph of the art, unrivalled for its accuracy, and so exquisitely finished that it might be the ornament of your draw- ing-rooms, were they only large enough to contain it. Of all this vast treasm-e nothinof now remains but the arms of England over the entrance of the theatre, and the Eoman eagle standing solitary in the market place." The Roman eagle lie no doubt felt to be typical of himself. A noble friend came to the rescue. Lord Percy, who assisted him with the company of soldiers for his stage per- formance at Alnwick at his setting out in the world, was now the Duke of Korthuml:)erland, and felt under some obligation to Kemble for instructing his son, another Lord Percy, in elocu- tion. The duke, ever an admirer of Kemble's ability, with prompt sym- pathy for his misfortune, placed the sum of ten thousand pounds at his dis- posal. Kemble accepted it as a loan, upon Avhich interest was to be paid. The corner-stone of the new theatre was, in due time, laid by the Prince of Wales, with brilliant ceremonials, and at the dinner which followed, his grace of Northumberland crowned the fes- tivities by sending the cancelled bond, as he expressed it, to light the bonfire on the joyful occasion. It was a mu- nificent gift, and felt to Ije no less? a tribute to the actor's genius, than to his necessity. When the theatre was finished, as if to offset the felicity of the occasion, on the very opening night arose that imprecedented commotion, famous in English theatrical history as the O. P. riots. The improvements and decoration of the new theatre having involved a vast expense, to secure some adequate remuneration an additional portion of the house was set apart for private boxes, and the tickets of admis- sion were raised, a shilling for the boxes, and sixpence for the pit. The house opened on the 18th of September, 1809, with Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth, but the performance was in- terrupted from the beginning by hide- ous noises. The actors went through their parts, but not a sentence was suf- fered to be heard. There was an ef- fort to put an end to the disturbance by the police, and it proved insufii- cient. The next nis^ht the disorder was renewed. The mob, paying for their tickets, demanded the abolition of the boxes, which, interfered with the gallery privileges of the people, and set up the cry O. P. or Old Prices. The theatre, for no fewer than sixty- six nights, was turned into a scene, a very pandemonium, of the wildest rev- elry and riot. The proprietors intro- duced prize-fighters into the arena to quell the ruffians. This only exaspe- rated them the more. It became a nightly entertainment for the worst of all mobs, a British mob. A respect- able lawyer, named Clifford, who ima- gined he was serving the cause of Eng- lish liberty, led and fomented the agi- tation, and when he was arrested by the box-keeper, one Brandon, was dis JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE. 253 charged by the court, and instituted an action for false imprisonment, in which he was successful. The O. P. riots in the theatre, with the O. P. Bongs and dances, became the mania and fashion of the day, as brutality in large cities is apt to become. It was for the time a kind of Tom and Jerry life, acted in the pit instead of upon the stage — a rare opportunity for the fancy shop boys and disrej^utable row- dies of the metropolis, who managed with great adroitness, spite of every precaution, to introduce into the house various cumbrous instruments of of- fence, — watchman's rattles, dustman's bells, postboy's horns, trombones, blud- geons and gigantic placards. Kemble was jeered and insulted by every form of caricature and annoyance, and at length, to the disgrace of the muni- cipal law and police of the city, was compelled to yield. The private boxes were reduced to their old number and the pit admission to its old rate ; the ex- tra shilling for the boxes was permitted to stand ; but the spirited door-keeper, Brandon, was meanly required to be dismissed, and offensive personal apol- ogies were exacted from Kemble. The next year, when a few private boxes were again added, the riot broke out anew, and Kemble, with his brother proprietors, were again obliged to suc- cumb to the portentous outcry, O. P. Kemble continued, with an interval of absence from Loudon, several years lono;er on the stas^e, illustratins: the period, though it was a season of failing fortunes with the theatre, by his mag- nificent performance of his great Ro- mau plays. In King John, Penruddock, Hamlet, Wolsey and Macbeth he held his own to the last. As the time which he had determined upon for his retirement aj)proached, he visited Ed- inburgh and gave a series of perfor- mances, closing with Macbeth, when he recited an epilogue Avritten for the occasion by one of his noblest appre- ciators, Sir Walter Scott. His fare- well j^erformance on leaving the stage took place at Covent Garden on the 23d of June, 1817, when he acted Cor- iolanus before one of the most distin- guished audiences ever gathered in the metropolis. A dinner given in his honor by his friends and brother ac- tors followed, memorable for the array of genius which was present. Lord Holland presided, sui5j)orted by the Duke of Bedford. The French actor. Talma, was among the guests. Re- marks were made by West, the Pres- ident of the Royal Academy; Young, the inheritor on the stage of the depart- ing actor's honors ; Charles Mathews ; and others of hardly less renown. Flax- man, the sculptor, was present and had contributed the design for the silver vase presented to Kemble on the occa- sion. But the most enduring memorial of the evening is the noble ode written by the poet Campbell and recited to the company by Young. " Pride of the British Stage A long and last adieu. ***** Time may again ro^-ive, But ne'er efface the charm, Wlien Cato spolic in him alive, Or Hotspur kindled warm. Wliat soul was not resign'd entire To the deep sorrows of the Moor ? Wliat English heart was not on fire, With him at Agincourt ? " Kemble, worn in health, suiferintr from an asthmatic affection, which is 254 JOHN PHILIP KEMBlE. said to have imparted that peculiar hoarse and sepulchral tone which at times marked his delivery, turned a