The Age of Pope

It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully opposed one of the ablest controversialists of the age. In The Absolute Unlawfulness of Stage Entertainments fully demonstrated, William Law attacked dramatic representations, not on account of the evils at that time associated with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.' 'To suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing innocent lust, sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and throughout the pamphlet this strain of fierce hostility is maintained.

'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with some of the very ablest men of his day, with men like Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal and Wesley; and it may safely be said that he never came forth from the contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is perfectly true that what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was done by John Dennis… "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry, he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian dramatic poet, and on others Aratus and Epimenides. He was educated in all the learning of the Grecians, and could not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so far from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them for the instruction and conversion of mankind."'

Dennis's pamphlet, The Stage defended from Scripture, Reason, Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years, was published in 1726. In his latter days he suffered from two grievous calamities, poverty and blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, The Provoked Husband, was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous than the kindness. There is a story, to which allusion is made in the Dunciad, that Dennis had invented some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being once present at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his art had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is my thunder.' The critic was also known to have an intense hatred of the French and of the Pope, and these peculiarities are not forgotten in the prologue.

After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and weakness, his doubtful friend adds:

'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,And shook the stage with thunders all his own!Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;If there's a critic of distinguished rage;If there's a senior who contemns this age;Let him to-night his just assistance lend,And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'

Dennis got £100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer remembered,

'The rising ages shall redeem his name,And nations read him into lasting fame.'

It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him from 'glorious John' alone.

Colley Cibber (1671-1757).

Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the mercurial 'King Colley' was not.

Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, Love's Last Shift (1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play, The Careless Husband (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he was also successful, and played for £50 a night, the highest sum ever given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in 1741, 'and all the world will be there.'

It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write poetry, that Cibber displayed his inferiority. The honour was conferred in 1730, two years after Gay had produced the Beggar's Opera, when Pope was in the height of his fame, when Thomson had published his Seasons and Young The Universal Passion. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was out of the running, but there were poets living who would have saved the office from the disgrace brought upon it by Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope, 'if I had any inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's gift; but who makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.' The sole result of the appointment that deserves to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as just as it is severe:

'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'

Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works; there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment of The Careless Husband,54 which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his infidelities:

'Sir Charles. Come, I will not shock your softness by any untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come. Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot, shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered heart.

'Lady Easy. Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward of long-desiring love – thus, thus to have you mine is something more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding joy…

'Sir Charles. Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me; but remember, I insist upon it – let thy woman be discharged this minute.'

It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid moralist. Moreover his comedy, like that of the dramatists of the Restoration, is of a wholly artificial type. Human nature has comparatively little place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the fops and fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a world which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.

His one work which is still read by all students of the drama, and by many who are not students, is the Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740), which Dr. Johnson, who sneered at actors, allowed to be very entertaining. It is that, and something more, for it contains much just and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter of about thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not spare Shakespeare.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).

Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied epistle, written with a view to publication, may have its value, but it cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to write badly, and to make a display of knowledge is to reveal an ignorance of the art.

For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale, and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and Cowper.

In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in interest. To this Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister, Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be as good as Madame de Sévigné's forty years hence;' and they are, perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of their value, which Madame de Sévigné's were not. Lady Mary, who may be said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty, but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty she translated the Encheiridion of Epictetus. She was a great reader and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her Life and Letters. She is a prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is perhaps the best known.

Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her future husband, whom she requests to settle an annuity upon her in order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father] whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'

This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they lived apart.

Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been more successfully reproduced in prose.'55

'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill-consequences… The active scenes are over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'

Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.

Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).

Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and during his brief administration did all that man could do for the benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.

On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue, practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had been with all the princes in Europe.'

As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in the World (1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary reputation is based upon the Letters (1774)56 to his illegitimate son written for the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The Letters, which Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours, abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said of them from a moral point of view is that they show the extremely low standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting his son and advancing his interest in life, and so far as morality will do this it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the elegant pleasure of a rational being.'

Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is told that the art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession than perhaps in any other. 'Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions to such men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion and in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of them behind their backs, in companies who you have reason to believe will tell them again.'

The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined by his father was not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So effectually did he conceal his marriage that the Earl was not aware of it until after his son's death.

George Lyttelton (1708-1773).

George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place among the poets in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Some of his best verses were written when a school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever school-boy. The Monody on his wife's death has the merit of sincere feeling, expressed in one or two passages poetically. In 1747 he published his Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul, 'a treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself conspicuous in parliament as an opponent of Walpole, and after the fall of that minister was appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published his Dialogues of the Dead, a volume for which he owes much to Fénelon. This was followed a few years later by a History of Henry II. in three volumes, upon which great labour was expended. He is said to have had the whole history printed twice over, and many sheets four or five times, an amusement which cost him £1,000. The work is praised by Mr. J. R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the time.'

Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley, Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his friends.

Joseph Spence (1698-1768).

Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope in the poet's later life, had the happy peculiarity of keeping free from the party animosities of the time. His course throughout was that of a gentleman, and to him we owe the little volume of Anecdotes which every student of Pope has learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity and hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character in his pages, nor any trace of the dramatic skill which makes Boswell's narrative so delightful. At the same time there is every indication that he strove to give the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own words. Johnson and Warton saw the Anecdotes in manuscript, but strange to say, the collection was not published until 1820, when two separate editions appeared simultaneously. The publication by Spence in 1727 of An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey led to an acquaintance which soon became intimate between the poet and his critic. Apart from literature, they had more than one point of interest in common. Like Pope, Spence was devoted to his mother, and like Pope he had a passion for landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging disposition are said to be portrayed in the Tales of the Genii, under the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves. In 1747 he published his Polymetis, an Enquiry into the agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists. Under the nom de plume of Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of Moralities or Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations (1753), and in the following year an account of the blind poet Blacklock. For a learned tailor, Thomas Hill by name, he also performed a similarly kind office, comparing him in A Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch with the famous linguist Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1728, and held the post for ten years. His end was a sad one. He was accidentally drowned in a canal in the garden which he had loved so well.

CHAPTER VII.

FRANCIS ATTERBURY – LORD SHAFTESBURY – BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE – LORD BOLINGBROKE – BISHOP BERKELEY – WILLIAM LAW – BISHOP BUTLER – BISHOP WARBURTON

Francis Atterbury (1662-1732).

During the first half of the eighteenth century the position held by Bishop Atterbury was one of high eminence. Addison ranked him with the most illustrious geniuses of his age; Pope said he was one of the greatest men in polite learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge called him the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for style his sermons are among the best.

Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory, lack the merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous for eloquence than for weightiness of matter, although extremely popular at the time, have long ceased to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne wits, – and he was admired by them all, – is a sufficient reason for saying a few words about him in these pages.

He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster under the famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a good reputation. He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C. Boyle, a young man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity to enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship. For this rash deed Atterbury must be held responsible. Sir William Temple had published a foolish but eloquently written essay in defence of the ancient writers in comparison with the modern. In this essay he praises warmly the Letters of Phalaris. Of these letters Boyle, with the help of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church, published a new edition to satisfy the demand caused by Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply by a remark of Boyle in his preface, proved that the Letters were not only spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury replied to Bentley's Dissertations, and to the discussion, as the reader will remember, Swift added wit if not argument.