knitted his brows if he observed at his levee or near his dinner-table
any gentleman who neglected the duties enjoined by the church, and
rewarded piety with blue ribands, invitations to Marli, governments,
pensions, and regiments. Forthwith Versailles became, in everything
but dress, a convent. The pulpits and confessionals were surrounded by
swords and embroidery. The Marshals of France were much in prayer; and
there was hardly one among the Dukes and Peers who did not carry good
little books in his pocket, fast during Lent, and communicate at Easter.
Madame de Main-tenon, who had a great share in the blessed work, boasted
that devotion had become quite the fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and
like a fashion it passed away. No sooner had the old king been carried
to St. Denis than the whole court unmasked. Every man hastened to
indemnify himself, by the excess of licentiousness and impudence, for
years of mortification. The same persons who, a few months before, with
meek voices and demure looks, had consulted divines about the state
of their souls, now surrounded the midnight table where, amidst the
bounding of champagne corks, a drunken prince, enthroned between Dubois
and Madame de Parabère, hiccoughed out atheistical arguments and obscene
jests. The early part of the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth had been
a time of license; but the most dissolute men of that generation
{365}would have blushed at the orgies of the Regency.

It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil War. We
are by no means unmindful of the great debt which mankind owes to the
Puritans of that time, the deliverers of England, the founders of
the American Commonwealths. But in the day of their power, those men
committed one great fault, which left deep and lasting traces in the
national character and manners. They mistook the end and overrated the
force of government. They determined, not merely to protect religion
and public morals from insult, an object for which the civil sword, in
discreet hands, may be beneficially employed, but to make the people
committed to their rule truly devout. Yet, if they had only reflected
on events which they had themselves witnessed and in which they had
themselves borne a great part, they would have seen what was likely to
be the result of their enterprise. They had lived under a government
which, during a long course of years, did all that could be done, by
lavish bounty and by rigorous punishment, to enforce conformity to the
doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. No person suspected of
hostility to that church had the smallest chance of obtaining favour
at the court of Charles; dissent was punished by imprisonment, by
ignominious exposure, by cruel mutilations, and by ruinous fines. And
the event had been that the Church had fallen, and had, in its fall,
dragged down with it a monarchy which had stood six hundred years.
The Puritan might have learned, if from nothing else, yet from his own
recent victory, that governments which attempt things beyond their reach
are likely not merely to fail, but to produce an {366}effect directly
the opposite of that which they contemplate as desirable.

All this was overlooked. The saints were to inherit the earth. The
theatres were closed. The fine arts were placed under absurd restraints.
Vices which had never before been even misdemeanors were made capital
felonies. It was solemnly resolved by Parliament “that no person
shall be employed but such as the House shall be satisfied of his
real godliness.” The pious assembly had a Bible lying on the table for
reference.

If they had consulted it they might have learned that the wheat and the
tares grow together inseparably, and must either be spared together,
or rooted up together. To know whether a man was really godly was
impossible. But it was easy to know whether he had a plain dress, lank
hair, no starch in his linen, no gay furniture in his house; whether he
talked through his nose, and showed the whites of his eyes; whether he
named his children Assurance, Tribulation, and Maher-shalal-hash-baz;
whether he avoided Spring Garden when in town, and abstained from
hunting and hawking when in the country; whether he expounded hard
scriptures to his troops of dragoons, and talked in a committee of ways
and means about seeking the Lord. These were tests which could easily be
applied. The misfortune was that they were tests which proved nothing.
Such as they were, they were employed by the dominant party. And the
consequence was that a crowd of impostors, in every walk of life, began
to mimic and to caricature what were then regarded as the outward signs
of sanctity. The nation was not duped. The restraints of that gloomy
time were such as would have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men
who were universally believed to be saints. {367}Those restraints became
altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the
profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the royal family
had never returned, even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Cromwell had
been at the head of the administration, there would have been a great
relaxation of manners. Before the Restoration many signs indicated that
a period of license was at hand. The Restoration crushed for a time the
Puritan party, and placed supreme power in the hands of a libertine. The
political counter-revolution assisted the moral counter-revolution, and
was in turn assisted by it. A period of wild and desperate dissoluteness
followed. Even in remote manor-houses and hamlets the change was in some
degree felt; but in Loudon the outbreak of debauchery was appalling; and
in London the places most deeply infected were the Palace, the quarters
inhabited by the aristocracy, and the Inns of Court. It was on the
support of these parts of the town that the playhouses depended. The
character of the drama became conformed to the character of its patrons.
The comic poet was the mouthpiece of the most deeply corrupted part of
a corrupted society. And in the plays before us we find, distilled and
condensed, the essential spirit of the fashionable world during the
Anti-puritan reaction.

The Puritan had affected formality; the comic poet laughed at decorum.
The Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet took
under his patronage the most flagitious excesses. The Puritan had
canted; the comic poet blasphemed. The Puritan had made an affair of
gallantry, felony without benefit of clergy; the comic poet represented
it as an honourable distinction. The Puritan spoke with disdain of
{368}the low standard of popular morality; his life was regulated by a
far more rigid code; his virtue was sustained by motives unknown to
men of the world. Unhappily it had been amply proved in many cases, and
might well be suspected in many more, that these high pretensions were
unfounded. Accordingly, the fashionable circles, and the comic poets
who were the spokesmen of those circles, took up the notion that all
professions of piety and integrity were to be construed by the rule of
contrary; that it might well be doubted whether there was such a thing
as virtue in the world; but that, at all events, a person who affected
to be better than his neighbours was sure to be a knave.

In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever
compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained
in the volume before us will see how much the profligacy which follows
a period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy which
precedes such a period. The nation resembled the demoniac in the New
Testament. The Puritans boasted that the unclean spirit was cast out.
The house was empty, swept, and garnished; and for a time the expelled
tenant wandered through dry places seeking rest and finding none. But
the force of the exorcism was spent. The fiend returned to his abode;
and returned not alone. He took to him seven other, spirits more wicked
than himself. They entered in, and dwelt together: and the second
possession was worse than the first.

We will now, as far as our limits will permit, pass in review the
writers to whom Mr. Leigh Hunt has introduced us. Of the four, Wycherley
stands, we think, last in literary merit, but first in order of time,
and first, beyond all doubt, in immorality.

WILLIAM WYCHERLEY {369}was born in 1640. He was the son of a Shropshire
gentleman of old family, and of what was then accounted a good estate.
The property was estimated at six hundred a year, a fortune which,
among the fortunes at that time, probably ranked as a fortune of two
thousand a year would rank in our days.

William was an infant when the civil war broke ont; and, while he
was still in his rudiments, a Presbyterian hierarchy and a republican
government were established on the ruins of the ancient church and
throne. Old Mr. Wycherley was attached to the royal cause, and was not
disposed to intrust the education of his heir to the solemn Puritans
who now ruled the universities and public schools. Accordingly the young
gentleman was sent at fifteen to France. He resided some time in the
neighbourhood of the Duke of Montausier, chief of one of the noblest
families of Touraine. The Duke’s wife, a daughter of the house
of Rambouillet, was a finished specimen of those talents and
accomplishments for which her race was celebrated. The young foreigner
was introduced to the splendid circle which surrounded the duchess, and
there he appears to have learned some good and some evil. In a few
years he returned to his country a fine gentleman and a Papist. His
conversion, it may safely be affirmed, was the effect, not of any strong
impression on his understanding or feelings, but partly of intercourse
with an agreeable society in which the Church of Rome was the fashion,
and partly of that aversion to Calvinistic austerities which was then
almost universal among young Englishmen of parts and spirit, and which,
at one time, seemed likely to make one half of them Catholics, and the
other half Atheists. {370}But the Restoration came. The universities
were again in loyal hands; and there was reason to hope that there
would be again a national church fit for a gentleman. Wycherley became a
member of Queen’s College, Oxford, and abjured the errors of the Church
of Rome. The somewhat equivocal glory of turning, for a short time, a
good-for-nothing Papist into a good-for-nothing Protestant is ascribed
to Bishop Barlow.

Wycherley left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered at the
Temple, where he lived gaily for some years, observing the humours of
the town, enjoying its pleasures, and picking up just as much law as
was necessary to make the character of a pettifogging attorney or of a
litigious client entertaining in a comedy.

From an early age he had been in the habit of amusing himself by
writing. Some wretched lines of his on the Restoration are still extant.
Had he devoted himself to the making of verses, he would have been
nearly as far below Tate and Blackmore as Tate and Black-more are below
Dryden. His only chance for renown would have been that he might have
occupied a niche in a satire, between Flecknoe and Settle. There
was, however, another kind of composition in which his talents and
acquirements qualified him to succeed; and to that he judiciously betook
himself.

In his old age he used to say that he wrote Love in a Wood at nineteen,
the Gentleman Dancing-Master at twenty-one, the Plain Dealer at
twenty-five, and the Country Wife at one or two and thirty. We are
incredulous, we own, as to the truth of this story. Nothing that we know
of Wycherley leads us to think him incapable of sacrificing truth
to vanity. And his memory in the decline of his life played him such
strange tricks that we might question the correctness of {371}his
assertion without throwing any imputation on his veracity. It is certain
that none of his plays was acted till 1672, when he gave Love in a
Wood to the public. It seems improbable that he should resolve, on so
important an occasion as that of a first appearance before the world,
to ran his chance with a feeble piece, written before his talents were
ripe, before his style was formed, before he had looked abroad into the
world; and this when he had actually in his desk two highly finished,
plays, the fruit of his matured powers. When we look minutely at the
pieces themselves, we find in every part of them reason to suspect the
accuracy of Wycherley’s statement. In the first scene of Love in a Wood,
to go no further, we find many passages which he could not have written
when he was nineteen. There is an allusion to gentlemen’s periwigs,
which first came into fashion in 1663; an allusion to guineas, which
were first struck in 1683; an allusion to the vests which Charles
ordered to be worn at court in 1666; an allusion to the fire of 1666;
and several political allusions which must be assigned to times later
than the year of the Restoration, to times when the government and the
city were opposed to each other, and when the Presbyterian ministers
had been driven from the parish churches to the conventicles. But it is
needless to dwell on particular expressions. The whole air and spirit of
the piece belong to a period subsequent to that mentioned by Wycherley.
As to the Plain Dealer, which is said to have been written when he was
twenty-five, it contains one scene unquestionably written after 1675,
several which are later than 1668, and scarcely a line which can have
been composed before the end of 1666.

Whatever may have been the age at which Wycherley {372}composed his
plays, it is certain that he did not bring them before the public till
he was upwards of thirty. In 1672, Love in a Wood was acted with more
success than it deserved, and this event produced a great change in the
fortunes of the author. The Duchess of Cleveland cast her eyes upon him,
and was pleased with his appearance. This abandoned woman, not content
with her complaisant husband and her royal keeper, lavished her fondness
on a crowd of paramours of all ranks, from dukes to rope-dancers. In
the time of the commonwealth she commenced her career of gallantry, and
terminated it under Anne, by marrying, when a great-grandmother, that
worthless fop, Beau Fielding. It is not strange that she should
have regarded Wycherley with favour. His figure was commanding, his
countenance strikingly handsome, his look and deportment full of grace
and dignity. He had, as Pope said long after, “the true nobleman
look,” the look which seems to indicate superior, and a not unbecoming
consciousness of superiority. His hair indeed, as he says in one of his
poems, was prematurely grey. But in that age of periwigs this misfortune
was of little importance. The Duchess admired him, and proceeded to make
love to him, after the fashion of the coarse-minded and shameless circle
to which she belonged. In the Ring, when the crowd of beauties and fine
gentlemen was thickest, she put her head out of her coach-window, and
bawled to him, “Sir, you are a rascal; you are a villain;” and, if
she is not belied, she added another phrase of abuse which we will
not quote, but of which we may say that it might most justly have been
applied to her own children. Wycherley called on her Grace the next day,
and with great humility begged to know in what way {373}he had been so
unfortunate as to disoblige her. Thus began an intimacy from which the
poet probably expected wealth and honours. Nor were such expectations
unreasonable. A handsome young fellow about the court, known by the name
of Jack Churchill, was, about the same time, so lucky as to become the
object of a short-lived fancy of the Duchess. She had presented him with
four thousand five hundred pounds, the price, in all probability, of
some title or pardon. The prudent youth had lent the money on high
interest, and on landed security; and this judicious investment was the
beginning of the most splendid private fortune in Europe. Wycherley was
not so lucky. The partiality with which the great lady regarded him was
indeed the talk of the whole town; and sixty years later old men who
remembered those days told Voltaire that she often stole from the court
to her lover’s chambers in the Temple, disguised like a country girl,
with a straw-hat on her head, pattens on her feet, and a basket in
her hand. The poet was indeed too happy and proud to be discreet. He
dedicated to the Duchess the play which had led to their acquaintance,
and in the dedication expressed himself in terms which could not but
confirm the reports which had gone abroad. But at Whitehall such an
affair was regarded in no serious light. The lady was not afraid to
bring Wycherley to court, and to introduce him to a splendid society
with which, as far as appears, he had never before mixed. The easy
king, who allowed to his mistresses the same liberty which he claimed
for himself, was pleased with the conversation and manners of his new
rival. So high did Wycherley stand in the royal favour that once, when
he was confined by a fever to his lodgings in Bow Street, Charles, who,
with all his {374}faults, was certainly a man of social and affable
disposition, called on him, sat by his bed, advised him to try change
of air, and gave him a handsome sum of money to defray the expense of a
journey. Buckingham, then Master of the Horse, and one of that infamous
ministry known by the name of the Cabal, had been one of the Duchess’s
innumerable paramours. He at first showed some symptoms of jealousy;
but he soon, after his fashion, veered round from anger to fondness, and
gave Wycherley a commission in his own regiment and a place in the royal
household.

It would be unjust to Wycherley’s memory not to mention here the only
good action, as far as we know, of his whole life. He is said to have
made great exertions to obtain the patronage of Buckingham for the
illustrious author of Hudribas, who was now sinking into an obscure
grave, neglected by a nation proud of his genius, and by a court which
he had served too well. His Grace consented to see poor Butler; and
an appointment was made. But unhappily two pretty women passed by; the
volatile Duke ran after them; the opportunity was lost, and could never
be regained.

The second Dutch war, the most disgraceful war in the whole history of
England, was now raging. It was not in that age considered as by any
means necessary that a naval officer should receive a professional
education. Young men of rank, who were hardly able to keep their feet
in a breeze, served on board of the King’s ships, sometimes with
commissions, and sometimes as volunteers. Mulgrave, Dorset, Rochester,
and many others, left the playhouses and the Mall for hammocks and salt
pork, and, ignorant as they were of the rudiments of naval service,
showed, at least, on the day of battle, the courage which is seldom
wanting in {375}an English gentleman. All good judges of maritime
affairs complained that, under this system, the ships were grossly
mismanaged, and that the tarpaulins contracted the vices, without
acquiring the graces, of the court. But on this subject, as on every
other where the interests or whims of favourites were concerned, the
government of Charles was deaf to all remonstrances. Wycherley did not
choose to be out of the fashion. He embarked, was present at a battle,
and celebrated it, on his return, in a copy of verses too had for the
bellman. (1)

About the same time, he brought on the stage his second piece, the
Gentleman Dancing-Master. The biographers say nothing, as far as we
remember, about the fate of this play. There is, however, reason to
believe that, though certainly far superior to Love in a Wood, it was
not equally successful. It was first tried at the west end of the
town, and, as the poet confessed, “would scarce do there.” It was then
performed in Salisbury Court, but, as it should seem, with no better
event. For, in the prologue to the Country Wife,

     (1) Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes that the battle at which
     Wycherley was present was that which the Duke of York gained
     over Opdam, in 1665. We believe that it was one of the
     battles between Rupert and De Ruyter, in 1673.

     The point is of no importance; and there cannot be said to
     be much evidence either way. We offer, however, to Mr. Leigh
     Hunt’s consideration three arguments, of no great weight
     certainly, yet such as ought, we think, to prevail in the
     absence of better. First, it is not very likely that a young
     Templar, quite unknown in the world,--and Wycherley was
     such in 1665,--should have quitted his chambers to go to
     sea. On the other hand, it would be in the regular course of
     things, that, when a courtier and an equerry, he should
     offer his services. Secondly, his verses appear to have been
     written after a drawn battle, like those of 1673, and not
     after a complete victory, like that of 1675. Thirdly, in the
     epilogue to the Gentleman Dancing-Master, written in 1673,
     he says that “all gentlemen must pack to sea an expression
     which makes it probable that he did not himself mean to stay
     behind.

Wycherley {376}described himself as “the late so baffled scribbler.”

In 1675, the Country Wife was performed with brilliant success, which,
in a literary point of view, was not wholly unmerited. For, though one
of the most profligate and heartless of human compositions, it is
the elaborate production of a mind, not indeed rich, original, or
imaginative, but ingenious, observant, quick to seize hints, and patient
of the toil of polishing.

The Plain Dealer, equally immoral and equally well written, appeared in
1677. At first this piece pleased the people less than the critics; but
after a time its unquestionable merits and the zealous support of
Lord Dorset, whose influence in literary and fashionable society was
unbounded, established it in the public favour.

The fortune of Wycherley was now in the zenith, and began to decline.’
A long life was still before him. But it was destined to be filled
with nothing but shame and wretchedness, domestic dissensions, literary
failures, and pecuniary embarrassments.

The King, who was looking about for an accomplished man to conduct the
education of his natural son, the young Duke of Richmond, at length
fixed on Wycherley. The poet, exulting in his good luck, went down to
amuse himself at Tunbridge Wells, looked into a bookseller’s shop on the
Pantiles, and, to his great delight, heard a handsome woman ask for the
Plain Dealer which had just been published. He made acquaintance with
the lady, who proved to be the Countess of Drogheda, a gay young widow,
with an ample jointure. She was charmed with his person and his wit,
and, after a short flirtation, agreed to become his wife. Wycherley
seems to have been apprehensive {377}that this connection might not
suit well with the King’s plans respecting the Duke of Richmond. He
accordingly prevailed on the lady to consent to a private marriage. All
came out. Charles thought the conduct of Wycherley both disrespectful
and disingenuous. Other causes probably assisted to alienate the
sovereign from the subject who had lately been so highly favoured.
Buckingham was now in opposition, and had been committed to the Tower;
not, as Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes, on a charge of treason, but by an order
of the House of Lords for some expressions which he had used in debate.
Wycherley wrote some bad lines in praise of his imprisoned patron,
which, if they came to the knowledge of the King, would certainly have
made his majesty very angry. The favour of the court was completely
withdrawn from the poet. An amiable woman with a large fortune might
indeed have been an ample compensation for the loss. But Lady Drogheda
was ill-tempered, imperious, and extravagantly jealous. She had herself
been a maid of honour at Whitehall. She well knew in what estimation
conjugal fidelity was held among the fine gentlemen there, and watched
her town husband as assiduously as Mr. Pinchwife watched his country
wife. The unfortunate wit was, indeed, allowed to meet his friends at a
tavern opposite to his own house. But on such occasions the windows were
always open, in order that her Ladyship, who was posted on the other
side of the street, might be satisfied that no woman was of the party.

The death of Lady Drogheda released the poet from this distress; but
a series of disasters, in rapid succession, broke down his health, his
spirits, and his fortune. His wife meant to leave him a good property,
{378}and left him only a lawsuit. His father could not or would
not assist him. Wycherley was at length thrown into the Fleet, and
languished there during seven years utterly forgotten, as it should
seem, by the gay and lively circle of which he had been a distinguished
ornament. In the extremity of his distress he implored the publisher who
had been enriched by the sale of his works to lend him twenty pounds,
and was refused. His comedies, however, still kept possession of the
stage, and drew great audiences which troubled themselves little about
the situation of the author. At length James the Second, who had now
succeeded to the throne, happened to go to the theatre on an evening
when the Plain Dealer was acted. He was pleased by the performance, and
touched by the fate of the writer, whom he probably remembered as one
of the gayest and handsomest of his brother’s courtiers. The King
determined to pay Wycherley’s debts, and to settle on the unfortunate
poet a pension of two hundred pounds a year. This munificence on the
part of a prince who was little in the habit of rewarding literary
merit, and whose whole soul was devoted to the interests of his church,
raises in us a surmise which Mr. Leigh Hunt will, we fear, pronounce
very uncharitable. We cannot help suspecting that it was at this time
that Wycherley returned to the communion of the Church of Rome. That he
did return to the communion of the Church of Rome is certain. The date
of his reconversion, as far as we know, has never been mentioned by
any biographer. We believe that, if we place it at this time, we do no
injustice to the character either of Wycherley or James.

Not long after, old Mr. Wycherley died; and his son, {379}now past the
middle of life, came to the family estate. Still, however, he was not at
his ease. His embarrassments were great: his property was strictly tied
up; and he was on very had terms with the heir-at-law. He appears to
have led, during a long course of years, that most wretched life, the
life of a vicious old boy about town. Expensive tastes with little
money, and licentious appetites with declining vigour, were the just
penance for his early irregularities. A severe illness had produced a
singular effect on his intellect. His memory played him pranks stranger
than almost any that are to be found in the history of that strange
faculty. It seemed to be at once preternaturally strong, and
preternaturally weak. If a book was read to him before he went to bed,
he would wake the next morning with his mind full of the thoughts and
expressions which he had heard over night; and he would write them
down, without in the least suspecting that they were not his own. In his
verses the same ideas, and even the same words, came over and over again
several times in a short composition. His fine person bore the marks of
age, sickness, and sorrow; and he mourned for his departed beauty with
an effeminate regret. He could not look without a sigh at the portrait
which Lely had painted of him when he was only twenty-eight, and often
murmured, _Quantum mutatus ab illo_. He was still nervously anxious
about his literary reputation, and, not content with the fame which
he still possessed as a dramatist, was determined to be renowned as
a satirist and an amatory poet. In 1704, after twenty-seven years of
silence, he again appeared as an author. He put forth a large folio of
miscellaneous verses, which, we believe, has never been reprinted.
Some of these pieces had probably circulated through {380}the town
in manuscript. For, before the volume appeared, the critics at the
coffee-houses very confidently predicted that it would be utterly
worthless, and were in consequence bitterly reviled by the poet in an
ill-written, foolish, and egotistical preface. The book amply vindicated
the most unfavourable prophecies that had been hazarded. The style and
versification are beneath criticism; the morals are those of Rochester.
For Rochester, indeed, there was some excuse. When his offences against
decorum were committed, he was a very young man, misled by a prevailing
fashion. Wycherley was sixty-four. He had long outlived the times when
libertinism was regarded as essential to the character of a wit and
a gentleman. Most of the rising poets, Addison, for example, John
Phillips, and Rowe, were studious of decency. We can hardly conceive any
thing more miserable than the figure which the ribald old man makes in
the midst of so many sober and well-conducted youths.

In the very year in which this bulky volume of obscene doggerel was
published, Wycherley formed an acquaintance of a very singular kind.
A little, pale, crooked, sickly, bright-eyed urchin, just turned of
sixteen, had written some copies of verses in which discerning judges
could detect the promise of future eminence. There was, indeed, as yet
nothing very striking or original in the conceptions of the young poet.
But he was already skilled in the art of metrical composition. His
diction and his music were not those of the great old masters; but that
which his ablest contemporaries were labouring to do, he already did
best. His style was not richly poetical; but it was’ always neat,
compact, and pointed. His verse wanted variety of pause, of swell, and
of cadence, but never grated {381}harshly on the ear, or disappointed
it by a feeble close. The youth was already free of the company of wits,
and was greatly elated at being introduced to the author of the Plain
Dealer and the Country Wife.

It is curious to trace the history of the intercourse which took place
between Wycherley and Pope, between the representative of the age that
was going out, and the representative of the age that was coming in,
between the friend of Rochester and Buckingham, and the friend of
Lyttelton and Mansfield. At first the boy was enchanted by the kindness
and condescension of so eminent a writer, haunted his door, and followed
him about like a spaniel from coffee-house to coffeehouse. Letters full
of affection, humility, and fulsome flattery were interchanged between
the friends. But the first ardour of affection could not last. Pope,
though at no time scrupulously delicate in his writings or fastidious as
to the morals of his associates, was shocked by the indecency of a
rake who, at seventy, was still the representative of the monstrous
profligacy of the Restoration. As the youth grew older, as his mind
expanded and his fame rose, he appreciated both himself and Wycherley
more correctly. He felt a just contempt for the old gentleman’s verses,
and was at no great pains to conceal his opinion. Wycherley, on the
other hand, though blinded by self-love to the imperfections of what
he called his poetry, could not but see that there was an immense
difference between his young companion’s rhymes and his own. He was
divided between two feelings. He wished to have the assistance of
so skilful a hand to polish his lines; and yet he shrank from the
humiliation of being beholden for literary assistance to a lad who
might have been his grandson. Pope was willing to give assistance, but
{382}was by no means disposed to give assistance and flattery too. He
took the trouble to retouch whole reams of feeble stumbling verses,
and inserted many vigorous lines which the least skilful reader will
distinguish in an instant. But he thought that by these services he
acquired a right to express himself in terms which would not, under
ordinary circumstances, become one who was addressing a man of four
times his age. In one letter he tells Wycherley that “the worst pieces
are such as, to render them very good, would require almost the entire
new writing of them.” In another, he gives the following account of his
corrections: “Though the whole be as short again as at first, there is
not one thought omitted but what is a repetition of something in your
first volume, or in this very paper; and the versification throughout
is, I believe, such as nobody can be shocked at. The repeated permission
you give me of dealing freely with you, will, I hope, excuse what I have
done; for, if I have not spared you when I thought severity would do you
a kindness, I have not mangled you where there was no absolute
need of amputation.” Wycherley continued to return thanks for all this
hacking and hewing, which was, indeed, of inestimable service to
his compositions. But at last his thanks began to sound very like
reproaches. In private, he is said to have described Pope as a person
who could not cut out a suit, but who had some skill in turning
old coats. In his letters to Pope, while he acknowledged that the
versification of the poems had been greatly improved, he spoke of
the whole art of versification with scorn, and sneered at those who
preferred sound to sense. Pope revenged himself for this outbreak of
spleen by return of post. He had in his hands a volume of Wycherley’s
rhymes, {383}and he wrote to say that this volume was so full of faults
that he could not correct it without completely defacing the manuscript.
“I am,” he said, “equally afraid of sparing you, and of offending you
by too impudent a correction.” This was more than flesh and blood could
bear. Wycherley reclaimed his papers, in a letter in which resentment
shows itself plainly through the thin disguise of civility. Pope, glad
to be rid of a troublesome and inglorious task, sent back the deposit,
and, by way of a parting courtesy, advised the old man to turn his
poetry into prose, and assured him that the public would like thoughts
much better without his versification. Thus ended this memorable
correspondence.

Wycherley lived some years after the termination of the strange
friendship which we have described. The last scene of his life
was, perhaps, the most scandalous. Ten days before his death, at
seventy-five, he married a young girl, merely in order to injure his
nephew, an act which proves that neither years, nor adversity, nor what
he called his philosophy, nor either of the religions which he had at
different times professed, had taught him the rudiments of morality. He
died in December, 1715, and lies in the vault under the church of St.
Paul in Convent-Garden.

His bride soon after married a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became
possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a
bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no
printer could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a
professed critic; and Theobald, the editor of Shakspeare, and the hero
of the first Dunciad, was employed to ascertain the true reading. In
this way a volume of miscellanies in verse and prose was {384}got up
for the market. The collection derives all its value from the traces of
Pope’s hand, which are everywhere discernible.

Of the moral character of Wycherley it can hardly be necessary for us to
say more. His fame as a writer rests wholly on his comedies, and chiefly
on the last two. Even as a comic writer, he was neither of the best
school, nor highest in his school. He was in truth a worse Congreve. His
chief merit, like Congreve’s, lies in the style of his dialogue. But the
wit which lights up the Plain Dealer and the Country Wife is pale and
flickering, when compared with the gorgeous blaze which dazzles us
almost to blindness in Love for Love and the Way of the World. Like
Congreve, and, indeed, even more than Congreve, Wycherley is ready to
sacrifice dramatic propriety to the liveliness of his dialogue. The poet
speaks out of the mouths of all his dunces and coxcombs, and makes them
describe themselves with a good sense and acuteness which puts them on
a level with the wits and heroes. We will give two instances, the first
which occur to us, from the Country Wife. There are in the world fools
who find the society of old friends insipid, and who are always running
after new companions. Such a character is a fair subject for comedy. But
nothing can be more absurd than to introduce a man of this sort saying
to his comrade, “I can deny you nothing: for though I have known thee
a great while, never go if I do not love thee as well as a new
acquaintance.” That town-wits, again, have always been rather a
heartless class, is true. But none of them, we will answer for it, ever
said to a young lady to whom he was making love, “We wits rail and make
love often, but to show our parts: as we have no affections, so we have
no malice.” {385}Wycherley’s plays are said to have been the produce of
long and patient labour. The epithet of “slow” was early given to him by
Rochester, and was frequently repeated. In truth his mind, unless we are
greatly mistaken, was naturally a very meagre soil, and was forced only
by great labour and outlay to hear fruit which, after all, was not of
the highest flavour. He has scarcely more claim to originality than
Terence. It is not too much to say that there is hardly any thing of the
least value in his plays of which the hint is not to be found elsewhere.
The best scenes in the Gentleman Dancing Master were suggested by
Calderon’s _Maestro de Danzar_, not by any means one of the happiest
comedies of the great Castilian poet. The Country Wife is borrowed from
the _E’cole des Maris_ and the _E’cole des Femmes_. The groundwork of
the Plain Dealer is taken from the _Misanthrope_ of Molière. One whole
scene is almost translated from the _Critique de l’E’cole des Femmes_.
Fidelia is Shakspeare’s Viola stolen, and marred in the stealing; and
the Widow Blackacre, beyond comparison Wycherley’s best comic character,
is the Countess in Racine’s _Plaideurs_, talking the jargon of English
instead of that of French chicane.

The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could
furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It
is curious to observe how every thing that he touched, however pure
and noble, took in an instant the colour of his own mind. Compare the
_E’cole des Femmes_ with the Country Wife. Agnes is a simple and amiable
girl, whose heart is indeed full of love, but of love sanctioned by
honour, morality, and religion. Her natural talents are great. They have
been hidden, and, as it {386}might appear, destroyed by an education
elaborately bad. But they are called forth into full energy by a
virtuous passion. Her lover, while he adores her beauty, is too honest
a man to abuse the confiding tenderness of a creature so charming and
inexperienced. Wycherley takes this plot into his hands; and forthwith
this sweet and graceful courtship becomes a licentious intrigue of the
lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and
the idiot wife of a country squire. We will not go into details. In
truth, Wycherley’s indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk
is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy
to handle, and too noisome even to approach.

It is the same with the Plain Dealer. How careful has Shakspeare been
in Twelfth Night to preserve the dignity and delicacy of Viola under
her disguise! Even when wearing a page’s doublet and hose, she is never
mixed up with any transaction which the most fastidious mind could
regard as leaving a stain on her. She is employed by the Duke on an
embassy of love to Olivia, but on an embassy of the most honourable
kind. Wycherley borrows Viola; and Viola forthwith becomes a pandar of
the basest sort. But the character of Manly is the best illustration of
our meaning. Moliere exhibited in his misanthrope a pure and noble mind,
which had been sorely vexed by the sight of perfidy and malevolence,
disguised under the forms of politeness. As every extreme naturally
generates its contrary, Alceste adopts a standard of good and evil
directly opposed to that of the society which surrounds him. Courtesy
seems to him a vice; and those stem virtues which are neglected by the
fops and coquettes of Paris become too exclusively the objects of his
veneration. {387}He is often to blame; he is often ridiculous; but he
is always a good man; and the feeling which he inspires is regret that a
person so estimable should be so unamiable. Wycherley borrowed Alceste,
and turned him,--we quote the words of so lenient a critic as Mr. Leigh
Hunt,--into “a ferocious sensualist, who believed himself as great a
rascal as he thought everybody else.” The surliness of Moliere’s hero is
copied and caricatured. But the most nauseous libertinism and the most
dastardly fraud are substituted for the purity and integrity of the
original. And, to make the whole complete, Wycherley does not seem to
have been aware that he was not drawing the portrait of an eminently
honest man. So depraved was his moral taste that, while he firmly
believed that he was producing a picture of virtue too exalted for the
commerce of this world, he was really delineating the greatest rascal
that is to be found, even in his own writings.

We pass a very severe censure on Wycherley, when we say that it is a
relief to turn from him to Congreve. Congreve’s writings, indeed, are
by no means pure; nor was he, as far as we are able to judge, a
warm-hearted or high-minded man. Yet, in coming to him, we feel that the
worst is over, that we are one remove further from the Restoration, that
we are past the Nadir of national taste and morality.

WILLIAM CONGREVE was born in 1670, at Bardsey, in the neighbourhood of
Leeds. His father, a younger son of a very ancient Staffordshire family,
had distinguished himself among the cavaliers in the civil war, was
set down after the Restoration for the Order of the Royal Oak, and
subsequently settled in Ireland, under the patronage of the Earl of
Burlington.

Congreve passed his childhood and youth in Ireland. {388}He was sent
to school at Kilkenny, and thence went to the University of Dublin.
His learning does great honour to his instructors. From his writings it
appears, not only that he was well acquainted with Latin literature, but
that his knowledge of the Greek poets was such as was not, in his time,
common even in a college.

When he, had, completed his academical studies, he was sent to London
to study the law, and was entered of the Middle Temple. He troubled
himself, however, very little about pleading or conveyancing, and gave
himself up to literature and society. Two kinds of ambition early took
possession of his mind, and often pulled it in opposite directions.
He was conscious of great fertility of thought and power of ingenious
combination. His lively conversation, his polished manners, and his
highly respectable connections, had obtained for him ready access to the
best company. He longed to be a great writer. He longed to be a man of
fashion. Either object was within his reach. But could he secure both?
Was there not something vulgar in letters, something inconsistent with
the easy apathetic graces of a man of the mode? Was it aristocratical to
be confounded with creatures who lived in the cocklofts of Grub Street,
to bargain with publishers, to hurry printers’ devils and be hurried
by them, to squabble with managers, to be applauded or hissed by pit,
boxes, and galleries? Could he forego the renown of being the first wit
of his age? Could he attain that renown without sullying what he valued
quite as much, his character for gentility? The history of his life is
the history of a conflict between these two impulses. In his youth the
desire of literary fame had the mastery; but soon the meaner ambition
overpowered the higher, and obtained supreme dominion over his mind.
{389}His first work, a novel of no great value, he published under the
assumed name of Cleophil. His second was the Old Bachelor, acted in
1693, a play inferior indeed to his other comedies, but, in its own
line, inferior to them alone. The plot is equally destitute of interest
and of probability. The characters are either not distinguishable, or
are distinguished only by peculiarities of the most glaring kind. But
the dialogue is resplendent with wit and eloquence, which indeed are so
abundant that the fool comes in for an ample share, and yet preserves a
certain colloquial air, a certain indescribable ease, of which Wycherley
had given no example, and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate.
The author, divided between pride and shame, pride at having written a
good play, and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing, pretended
that he had merely scribbled a few scenes for his own amusement, and
affected to yield unwillingly to the importunities of those who pressed
him to try his fortune on the stage. The Old Bachelor was seen in
manuscript by Dryden, one of whose best qualities was a hearty and
generous admiration for the talents of others. He declared that he had
never read such a first play, and lent his services to bring it into a
form fit for representation. Nothing was wanted to the success of the
piece. It was so cast as to bring into play all the comic talent, and
to exhibit on the boards in one view all the beauty, which Drury Lane
Theatre, then the only theatre in London, could assemble. The result
was a complete triumph; and the author was gratified with rewards more
substantial than the applauses of the pit. Montagu, then a lord of the
treasury, immediately gave him a place, and, in a short time, added the
reversion of another place of much {390}greater value, which, however,
did not become vacant till many years had elapsed.

In 1694, Congreve brought out the Double Dealer, a comedy in which
all the powers which had produced the Old Bachelor showed themselves,
matured by time and improved by exercise. But the audience was shocked
by the characters of Maskwell and Lady Touchwood. And, indeed, there is
something strangely revolting in the way in which a group that seems to
belong to the house of Laius or of Pelops is introduced into the midst
of the Brisks, Froths, Carlesses, and Plyants. The play was unfavourably
received. Yet, if the praise of distinguished men could compensate an
author for the disapprobation of the multitude, Congreve had no reason
to repine. Dryden, in one of the most ingenious, magnificent, and
pathetic pieces that he ever wrote, extolled the author of the Double
Dealer in terms which now appear extravagantly hyperbolical. Till
Congreve came forth,--so ran this exquisite flattery,--the superiority
of the poets who preceded the civil wars was acknowledged.

                   “Theirs was the giant race before the flood.”

Since the return of the Royal house, much art and ability had been
exerted, but the old masters had been still unrivalled.

               “Our builders were with want of genius curst,

               The second temple was not like the first.”

At length a writer had arisen who, just emerging from boyhood, had
surpassed the authors of the Knight of the Burning Pestle and of the
Silent Woman, and who had only one rival left to contend with.

               “Heaven that but once was prodigal before,

               To Shakspeare gave as much, she could not give him more.”  {391}Some
lines near the end of the poem are singularly grave and touching, and
sank deep into the heart of Congreve.

                   “Already am I worn with cares and age,

                   And just abandoning the ungrateful stage;

                   But you, whom every muse and grace adorn

                   Whom I foresee to better fortune bom,

                   Be kind to my remains; and, oh, defend

                   Against your judgment your departed friend.

                   Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,

                   But guard those laurels which descend to you.”

The crowd, as usual, gradually came over to the opinion of the men
of note; and the Double Dealer was before long quite as much admired,
though perhaps never so much liked, as the Old Bachelor.

In 1695 appeared Love for Love, superior both in wit and in scenic
effect to either of the preceding plays. It was performed at a new
theatre which Betterton and some other actors, disgusted by the
treatment which they had received in Drury-Lane, had just opened in a
tennis-court near Lincoln’s Inn. Scarcely any comedy within the memory
of the oldest man had been equally successful. The actors were so elated
that they gave Congreve a share in their theatre; and he promised in
return to furnish them with a play every year, if his health would
permit. Two years passed, however, before he produced the “Mourning
Bride,” a play which, paltry as it is when compared, we do not say, with
Lear or Macbeth, but with the best dramas of Massinger and Ford, stands
very high among the tragedies of the age in which it was written. To
find any thing so good we must go twelve years back to Venice Preserved,
or six years forward to the Fair Penitent. The noble passage which
Johnson, both in writing and in conversation, extolled above any other
in the English drama, has suffered greatly in the public {392}estimation
from the extravagance of his praise. Had he contented himself with
saying that it was finer than any thing in the tragedies of Dryden,
Otway, Lee, Rowe, Southern, Hughes, and Addison than any thing, in
short, that had been written for the stage since the days of Charles the
First, he would not have been in the wrong.

The success of the Mourning Bride was even greater than that of Love
for Love. Congreve was now allowed to be the first tragic as well as
the first comic dramatist of his time; and all this at twenty-seven.
We believe that no English writer except Lord Byron has, at so early an
age, stood so high in the estimation of his contemporaries.

At this time took place an event which deserves, in our opinion, a very
different sort of notice from that which has been bestowed on it by Mr.
Leigh Hunt. The nation had now nearly recovered from the demoralising
effect of the Puritan austerity. The gloomy follies of the reign of the
Saints were but faintly remembered. The evils produced by profaneness
and debauchery were recent and glaring. The Court, since the Revolution,
had ceased to patronise licentiousness. Mary was strictly pious; and the
vices of the cold, stern, and silent William, were not obtruded on the
public eye. Discountenanced by the government, and falling in the favour
of the people, the profligacy of the Restoration still maintained its
ground in some parts of society. Its strongholds were the places where
men of wit and fashion congregated, and above all, the theatres. At this
conjuncture arose a great reformer whom, widely as we differ from him in
many important points, we can never mention without respect.

JEREMY COLLIER {393}was a clergyman of the Church of England, bred
at Cambridge. His talents and attainments were such as might have been
expected to raise him to the highest honours of his profession. He had
an extensive knowledge of books; yet he had mingled much with polite
society, and is said not to have wanted either grace or vivacity in
conversation. There were few branches of literature to which he had
not paid some attention. But ecclesiastical antiquity was his favourite
study. In religious opinions he belonged to that section of the Church
of England which lies furtherest from Geneva and nearest to Rome. His
notions touching Episcopal government, holy orders, the efficacy of
the sacraments, the authority of the Fathers, the guilt of schism, the
importance of vestments, ceremonies, and solemn days, differed little
from those which are now held by Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman. Towards the
close of Fis life indeed, Collier took some steps which brought him
still nearer to Popery, mixed water with the wine in the Eucharist, made
the sign of the cross in confirmation, employed oil in the visitation
of the sick, and offered up prayers for the dead. His politics were of
a piece with his divinity. He was a Tory of the highest sort, such as
in the cant of his age was called a Tantivy. Not even the persecution
of the bishops and the spoliation of the universities could shake
his steady loyalty. While the Convention was sitting, he wrote with
vehemence in defence of the fugitive king, and was in consequence
arrested. But his dauntless spirit was not to be so tamed. He refused to
take the oaths, renounced all his preferments, and, in a succession of
pamphlets written with much violence and with some ability, attempted
to excite the nation against {394}its new masters. In 1692 he was again
arrested on suspicion of having been concerned in a treasonable plot. So
unbending were his principles that his friends could hardly persuade him
to let them hail him; and he afterwards expressed his remorse for having
been induced thus to acknowledge, by implication, the authority of an
usurping government. He was soon in trouble again. Sir John Friend
and Sir William Parkins were tried and convicted of high treason for
planning the murder of King William. Collier administered spiritual
consolation to them, attended them to Tyburn, and, just before they were
turned off, laid his hands on their heads, and by the authority which
he derived from Christ, solemnly absolved them. This scene gave
indescribable scandal. Tories joined with Whigs in blaming the conduct
of the daring priest. Some acts, it was said, which fall under the
definition of treason are such that a good man may, in troubled times,
be led into them even by his virtues. It may be necessary for the
protection of society to punish such a man. But even in punishing him
we consider him as legally rather than morally guilty, and hope that his
honest error, though it cannot be pardoned here, will not be counted to
him for sin hereafter. But such was not the case of Collier’s penitents.
They were concerned in a plot for waylaying and butchering, in an hour
of security, one who, whether he were or were not their king, was at
all events their fellow-creature. Whether the Jacobite theory about the
rights of governments and the duties of subjects were or were not well
founded, assassination must always be considered as a great crime. It is
condemned even by the maxims of worldly honour and morality. Much more
must it be an object of abhorrence to the pure Spouse of Christ.
The Church {395}cannot surely, without the saddest and most mournful
forebodings, see one of her children who has been guilty of this great
wickedness pass into eternity without any sign of repentance. That these
traitors had given any sign of repentance was not alleged. It might
be that they had privately declared their contrition; and, if so, the
minister of religion might be justified in privately assuring them
of the Divine forgiveness. But a public remission ought to have been
preceded by a public atonement. The regret of these men, if expressed at
all, had been expressed in secret. The hands of Collier had been laid on
them in the presence of thousands. The inference which his enemies drew
from his conduct was that he did not consider the conspiracy against the
life of William as sinful. But this inference he very vehemently, and,
we doubt not, very sincerely denied.

The storm raged. The bishops put forth a solemn censure of the
absolution. The Attorney-General brought the matter before the Court of
King’s Bench. Collier had now made up his mind not to give bail for
his appearance before any court which derived its authority from the
usurper. He accordingly absconded and was outlawed. He survived these
events about thirty years. The prosecution was not pressed; and he
was soon suffered to resume his literary pursuits in quiet. At a later
period, many attempts were made to shake his perverse integrity by
offers of wealth and dignity, but in vain. When he died, towards the
end of the reign of George the First, he was still under the ban of the
law.

We shall not be suspected of regarding either the politics or the
theology of Collier with partiality; but we believe him to have been as
honest and courageous {396}a man as ever lived. We will go further, and
say that, though passionate and often wrongheaded, he was a singularly
fair controversialist, candid, generous, too high-spirited to take mean
advantages even in the most exciting disputes, and pure from all taint
of personal malevolence. It must also be admitted that his opinions on
ecclesiastical and political affairs, though in themselves absurd and
pernicious, eminently qualified him to be the reformer of our lighter
literature. The libertinism of the press and of the stage was, as we
have said, the effect of a reaction against the Puritan strictness.
Profligacy was, like the oak leaf on the twenty-ninth of May, the
badge of a cavalier and a high churchman: Decency was associated with
conventicles and calves’ heads. Grave prelates were too much disposed
to wink at the excesses of a body of zealous and able allies who covered
Roundheads and Presbyterians with ridicule. If a Whig raised his voice
against the impiety and licentiousness of the fashionable writers, his
mouth was instantly stopped by the retort; You are one of those who
groan at a light quotation from Scripture, and raise estates out of the
plunder of the Church, who shudder at a _double entendre_, and chop off
the heads of kings. A Baxter, a Burnet, even a Tillotson, would have
done little to purify our literature. But when a man fanatical in the
cause of episcopacy and actually under outlawry for his attachment to
hereditary right, came forward as the champion of decency, the battle
was already half won.

In 1698, Collier published his Short View of the Profaneness and
Immorality of the English Stage, a book which threw the whole literary
world into commotion, but which is now much less read than it deserves.
The faults of the work, indeed, are neither few {397}nor small. The
dissertations on the Greek and Latin drama do not at all help the
argument, and, whatever may have been thought of them by the generation
which fancied that Christ Church had refuted Bentley, are such as, in
the present day, a scholar of very humble pretensions may venture to
pronounce boyish, or rather babyish. The censures are not sufficiently
discriminating. The authors whom Collier accused had been guilty of such
gross sins against decency, that he was certain to weaken instead of
strengthening his case, by introducing into his charge against them any
matter about which there could be the smallest dispute. He was, however,
so injudicious as to place among the outrageous offences which he justly
arraigned, some things which are really quite innocent, and some slight
instances of levity which, though not perhaps strictly correct, could
easily be paralleled from the works of writers who had rendered great
services to morality and religion. Thus he blames Congreve, the number
and gravity of whose real transgressions made it quite unnecessary to
tax him with any that were not real, for using the words “martyr” and
“inspiration” in a light sense; as if an archbishop might not say that
a speech was inspired by claret, or that an alderman was a martyr to
the gout. Sometimes, again, Collier does not sufficiently distinguish
between the dramatist and the persons of the drama. Thus he blames
Vanbrugh for putting into Lord Foppington’s mouth some contemptuous
expressions respecting the Church service; though it is obvious
that Vanbrugh could not better express reverence than by making Lord
Foppington express contempt. There is also throughout the Short View too
strong a display of professional feeling. Collier is not content with
claiming for his order an {398}immunity from indiscriminate scurrility;
he will not allow that, in any case, any word or act of a divine can
be a proper subject for ridicule. Nor does he confine this benefit
of clergy to the ministers of the established Church. He extends the
privilege to Catholic priests, and, what in him is more surprising, to
Dissenting preachers. This, however, is a mere trifle. Imaums, Brahmins,
priests of Jupiter, priests of Baal, are all to be held sacred. Dryden
is blamed for making the Mufti in Don Sebastian talk nonsense. Lee is
called to a severe account for his incivility to Tiresias. But the
most curious passage is that in which Collier resents some uncivil
reflections thrown by Cassandra, in Dryden’s Cleomenes, on the calf Apis
and his hierophants. The words “grass-eating, foddered god,” words which
really are much in the style of several passages in the Old Testament,
give as much offence to this Christian divine as they could have given
to the priests of Memphis.

But, when all deductions have been made, great merit must be allowed to
this work. There is hardly any book of that time from which it would be
possible to select specimens of writing so excellent and so various. To
compare Collier with Pascal would indeed be absurd. Yet we hardly
know where, except in the Provincial Letters, we can find mirth so
harmoniously and becomingly blended with solemnity as in the Short View.
In truth, all the modes of ridicule, from broad fun to polished and
antithetical sarcasm, were at Collier’s command. On the other hand, he
was complete master of the rhetoric of honest indignation. We scarcely
know any volume which contains so many bursts of that peculiar eloquence
which comes from the heart and goes to the heart. {399}Indeed the spirit
of the book is truly heroic. In order to fairly appreciate it, we must
remember the situation in which the writer stood. He was under the frown
of power. His name was already a mark for the invectives of one half of
the writers of the age, when, in the cause of good taste, good sense,
and good morals, he gave battle to the other half. Strong as his
political prejudices were, he seems on this occasion to have entirely
laid them aside. He has forgotten that he is a Jacobite, and remembers
only that he is a citizen and a Christian. Some of his sharpest censures
are directed against poetry which had been hailed with delight by
the Tory party, and had inflicted a deep wound on the Whigs. It is
inspiriting to see how gallantly the solitary outlaw advances to
attack enemies, formidable separately, and, it might have been thought,
irresistible when combined, distributes his swashing blows right and
left among Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, treads the wretched
D’Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet, and strikes with all his
strength full at the towering crest of Dryden.

The effect produced by the Short View was immense. The nation was on
the side of Collier. But it could not be doubted that, in the great host
which he had defied, some champion would be found to lift the gauntlet.
The general belief was that Dryden would take the field; and all the
wits anticipated a sharp contest between two well-paired combatants. The
great poet had been singled out in the most marked manner. It was
well known that he was deeply hurt, that much smaller provocations
had formerly roused him to violent resentment, and that there was no
literary weapon, offensive or defensive, of which he was not master.
But his conscience smote him; he {400}stood abashed, like the fallen
archangel at the rebuke of Zephon,--

                   “And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

                   Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw and pined

                   His loss.”

At a later period he mentioned the Short View in the preface to his
Fables. He complained, with some asperity, of the harshness with which
he had been treated, and urged some matters in mitigation. But, on the
whole, he frankly acknowledged that he had been justly reproved. “If,”
 said he, “Mr. Collier be my enemy, let him triumph. If he be my friend,
as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be
glad of my repentance.”

It would have been wise in Congreve to follow his master’s example.
He was precisely in that situation in which it is madness to attempt a
vindication; for his guilt was so clear, that no address or eloquence
could obtain an acquittal. On the other hand, there were in his case
many extenuating circumstances which, if he had acknowledged his error
and promised amendment, would have procured his pardon. The most rigid
censor could not but make great allowances for the faults into which
so young a man had been seduced by evil example, by the luxuriance of a
vigorous fancy, and by the inebriating effect of popular applause. The
esteem, as well as the admiration, of the public was still within his
reach. He might easily have effaced all memory of his transgressions,
and have shared with Addison the glory of showing that the most
brilliant wit may be the ally of virtue. But, in any case, prudence
should have restrained him from encountering Collier. The nonjuror was
a man thoroughly fitted by nature, education, and habit, for polemical
dispute. {401}Congreve’s mind, though a mind of no common fertility and
vigour, was of a different class. No man understood so well the art
of polishing epigrams and repartees into the clearest effulgence, and
setting them neatly in easy and familiar dialogue. In this sort of
jewellery he attained to a mastery unprecedented and inimitable. But
he was altogether rude in the art of controversy; and he had a cause to
defend which scarcely any art could have rendered victorious.

The event was such as might have been foreseen. Congreve’s answer was a
complete failure. He was angry, obscure, and dull. Even the Green Room
and Will’s Coffee-House were compelled to acknowledge that in wit, as
well as in argument, the parson had a decided advantage over the poet.
Not only was Congreve unable to make any show of a case where he was in
the wrong; but he succeeded in putting himself completely in the wrong
where he was in the right. Collier had taxed him with profaneness for
calling a clergyman Mr. Prig, and for introducing a coachman named Jehu,
in allusion to the King of Israel, who was known at a distance by his
furious driving. Had there been nothing worse in the Old Bachelor
and Double Dealer, Congreve might pass for as pure a writer as Cowper
himself, who, in poems revised by so austere a censor as John Newton,
calls a fox-hunting squire Nimrod, and gives to a chaplain the
disrespectful name of Smug. Congreve might with good effect have
appealed to the public whether it might not be fairly presumed that,
when such frivolous charges were made, there were no very serious
charges to make. Instead of doing this, he pretended that he meant no
allusion to the Bible by the name of Jehu, and no reflection by the
name of Prig. Strange, that a man of {402}such parts should, in order
to defend himself against imputations which nobody could regard as
important, tell untruths which it was certain that nobody would believe!

One of the pleas which Congreve set up for himself and his brethren was
that, though they might be guilty of a little levity here and there,
they were careful to inculcate a moral, packed close into two or three
lines, at the end of every play. Had the fact been as he stated it, the
defence would be worth very little. For no man acquainted with human
nature could think that a sententious couplet would undo all the
mischief that five profligate acts had done. But it would have been wise
in Congreve to have looked again at his own comedies before he used this
argument. Collier did so; and found that the moral of the Old
Bachelor, the grave apophthegm which is to be a set-off against all the
libertinism of the piece is contained in the following triplet:

               “What rugged ways attend the noon of life!

               Our sun declines, and with what anxious strife,

               What pain, we tug that galling load--a wife.”

“Love for Love,” says Collier, “may have a somewhat better farewell,
but it would do a man little service should he remember it to his dying
day:”

                   “The miracle to-day is, that we find

                   A lover true, not that a woman’s kind.”

Collier’s reply was severe and triumphant. One of his repartees we will
quote, not as a favourable specimen of his manner, but because it was
called forth by Congreve’s characteristic affectation. The poet spoke
of the Old Bachelor as a trifle to which he attached no value, and which
had become public by a sort of accident. “I wrote it,” he said, “to
amuse myself in a {403}slow recovery from a fit of sickness.”

“What his disease was,” replied Collier, “I am not to inquire: but it
must be a very ill one to be worse than the remedy.”

All that Congreve gained by coming forward on this occasion was that he
completely deprived himself of the excuse which he might with justice
have pleaded for his early offences. “Why,” asked Collier, “should the
man laugh at the mischief of the boy, and make the disorders of his
nonage his own, by an after approbation?”

Congreve was not Collier’s only opponent. Vanbrugh, Dennis, and Settle
took the field. And, from a passage in a contemporary satire, we are
inclined to think that among the answers to the Short View was one
written, or supposed to be written, by Wycherley. The victory remained
with Collier. A great and rapid reform in almost all the departments of
our lighter literature was the effect of his labours. A new race of wits
and poets arose, who generally treated with reverence the great ties
which bind society together, and whose very indecencies were decent when
compared with those of the school which flourished during the last forty
years of the seventeenth century.

This controversy probably prevented Congreve from fulfilling the
engagements into which he had entered with the actors. It was not till
1700 that he produced the Way of the World, the most deeply meditated
and the most brilliantly written of all his works. It wants, perhaps,
the constant movement, the effervescence of animal spirits, which we
find in Love for Love. But the hysterical rants of Lady Wishfort, the
meeting of Witwould, and his brother, the country knight’s courtship
and his subsequent revel, and, above all, the chase and surrender of
Millamant, are superior to any thing {404}that is to be found in the
whole range of English comedy from the civil war downwards. It is quite
inexplicable to us that this play should have failed on the stage. Yet
so it was; and the author, already sore with the wounds which Collier
had inflicted, was galled past endurance by this new stroke. He resolved
never again to expose himself to the rudeness of a tasteless audience,
and took leave of the theatre forever.

He lived twenty-eight years longer, without adding to the high literary
reputation which he had attained. He read much while he retained his
eyesight, and now and then wrote a short essay, or put an idle tale into
verse; but he appears never to have planned any considerable work. The
miscellaneous pieces which he published in 1710 are of little value, and
have long been forgotten.

The stock of fame which he had acquired by his comedies was sufficient,
assisted by the graces of his manner and conversation, to secure for him
a high place in the estimation of the world. During the winter, he lived
among the most distinguished and agreeable people in London. His summers
were passed at the splendid country-seats of ministers and peers.
Literary envy and political faction, which in that age respected nothing
else, respected his repose. He professed to be one of the party of which
his patron Montagu, now Lord Halifax, was the head. But he had civil
words and small good offices for men of every shade of opinion. And men
of every shade of opinion spoke well of him in return.

His means were for a long time scanty. The place which he had in
possession barely enabled him to live with comfort. And, when the Tories
came into power, some thought that he would lose even this moderate
{405}provision. But Harley, who was by no means disposed to adopt the
exterminating policy of the October club, and who, with all his faults
of understanding and temper, bad a sincere kindness for men of genius,
reassured the anxious poet by quoting very gracefully and happily the
lines of Virgil,

               “Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni,

               Nec tam aversus equos Tyria Sol jungit ab urbe.”

The indulgence with which Congreve was treated by the Tories was not
purchased by any concession on his part which could justly offend the
Whigs. It was his rare good fortune to share the triumph of his friends
without having shared their proscription. When the House of Hanover came
to the throne, he partook largely of the prosperity of those with whom
he was connected. The reversion to which he had been nominated twenty
years before fell in. He was made secretary to the island of Jamaica;
and his whole income amounted to twelve hundred a year, a fortune
which, for a single man, was in that age not only easy but splendid. He
continued, however, to practise the frugality which he had learned when
he could scarce spare, as Swift tells us, a shilling to pay the chairmen
who carried him to Lord Halifax’s. Though he had nobody to save for, he
laid up at least as much as he spent.

The infirmities of age came early upon him. His habits had been
intemperate; he suffered much from gout; and, when confined to his
chamber, he had no longer the solace of literature. Blindness, the most
cruel misfortune that can befall the lonely student, made his books
useless to him. He was thrown on society for all his amusement; and in
society his good breeding and vivacity made him always welcome. {406}By
the rising men of letters he was considered not as a rival, but as a
classic. He had left their arena; he never measured his strength with
them; and he was always loud in applause of their exertions. They
could, therefore, entertain no jealousy of him, and thought no more of
detracting from his fame than of carping at the great men who had been
lying a hundred years in Poets’ Corner. Even the inmates of Grub Street,
even the heroes of the Dunciad, were for once just to living merit.
There can be no stronger illustration of the estimation in which
Congreve was held than the fact that the English Iliad, a work which
appeared with more splendid auspices than any other in our language, was
dedicated to him. There was not a duke in the kingdom who would not have
been proud of such a compliment. Dr. Johnson expresses great admiration
for the independence of spirit which Pope showed on this occasion. “He
passed over peers and statesmen to inscribe his Iliad to Congreve, with
a magnanimity of which the praise had been complete, had his friend’s
virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so great an honour,
it is not now possible to know.” It is certainly impossible to know; yet
we think it is possible to guess. The translation of the Iliad had been
zealously befriended by men of all political opinions. The poet, who, at
an early age, should be raised to affluence by the emulous liberality of
Whigs and Tories, could not with propriety inscribe to a chief of either
party a work which had been munificently patronised by both. It was
necessary to find some person who was at once eminent and neutral. It
was therefore necessary to pass over peers and statesmen. Congreve had
a high name in letters. He had a high name in aristocratic circles. He
lived on terms of civility {407}with men of all parties. By a courtesy
paid to him, neither the ministers nor the leaders of the opposition
could be offended.

The singular affectation which had from the first been characteristic of
Congreve grew stronger and stronger as he advanced in life. At last it
became disagreeable to him to hear his own comedies praised. Voltaire,
whose soul was burned up by the raging desire for literary renown, was
half puzzled and half disgusted by what he saw, during his visit to
England, of this extraordinary whim. Congreve disclaimed the character
of a poet, declared that his plays were trifles produced in an idle
hour, and begged that Voltaire would consider him merely as a gentleman.
“If you had been merely a gentleman,” said Voltaire, “I should not have
come to see you.”

Congreve was not a man of warm affections. Domestic ties he had none;
and in the temporary connections which he formed with a succession of
beauties from the green-room his heart does not appear to have been
interested. Of all his attachments that to Mrs. Bracegirdle lasted the
longest and was the most celebrated. This charming actress, who was,
during many years, the idol of all London, whose face caused the fatal
broil in which Mountfort fell, and for which Lord Mohun was tried by
the Peers, and to whom the Earl of Scarsdale was said to have
made honourable addresses, had conducted herself, in very trying
circumstances, with extraordinary discretion. Congreve at length became
her confidential friend. They constantly rode out together and dined
together. Some people said that she was his mistress, and others that
she would soon be his wife. He was at last drawn away from her by the
influence of a wealthier and {408}haughtier beauty. Henrietta, daughter
of the great Marlborough, and Countess of Godolphin, had, on her
father’s death, succeeded to his dukedom, and to the greater part of
his immense property. Her husband was an insignificant man, of whom Lord
Chesterfield said that he came to the House of Peers only to sleep, and
that he might as well sleep on the right as on the left of the woolsack.
Between the Duchess and Congreve sprang up a most eccentric friendship.
He had a seat every day at her table, and assisted in the direction of
her concerts. That malignant old beldame, the Dowager Duchess Sarah, who
had quarrelled with her daughter as she had quarrelled with everybody
else, affected to suspect that there was something wrong. But the world
in general appears to have thought that a great lady might, without any
imputation on her character, pay marked attention to a man of eminent
genius who was near sixty years old, who was still older in appearance
and in constitution, who was confined to his chair by gout, and who was
unable to read from blindness.

In the summer of 1728, Congreve was ordered to try the Bath waters.
During his excursion he was overturned in his chariot, and received some
severe internal injury from which he never recovered. He came back to
London in a dangerous state, complained constantly of a pain in his
side, and continued to sink, till in the following January he expired.

He left ten thousand pounds, saved out of the emoluments of his
lucrative places. Johnson says that this money ought to have gone to the
Congreve family, which was then in great distress. Doctor Young and Mr.
Leigh Hunt, two gentlemen who seldom agree with each other, but with
whom, on this occasion, we are {409}happy to agree, think that it ought
to have gone to Mrs. Bracegirdle. Congreve bequeathed two hundred pounds
to Mrs. Bracegirdle, and an equal sum to a certain Mrs. Jellat; but the
bulk of his accumulations went to the Duchess of Marlborough, in whose
immense wealth such a legacy was as a drop in the bucket. It might have
raised the fallen fortunes of a Staffordshire squire; it might have
enabled a retired actress to enjoy every comfort, and, in her sense,
every luxury: but it was hardly sufficient to defray the Duchess’s
establishment for three months.

The great lady buried her friend with a pomp seldom seen at the
funerals of poets. The corpse lay in state under the ancient roof of the
Jerusalem Chamber, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. The pall was
borne by the Duke of Bridgewater, Lord Cobham, the Earl of Wilmington,
who had been speaker, and was afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, and
other men of high consideration. Her Grace laid out her friend’s bequest
in a superb diamond necklace, which she wore in honour of him, and,
if report is to be believed, showed her regard in ways much more
extraordinary. It is said that a statue of him in ivory, which moved by
clockwork, was placed daily at her table, that she had a wax doll
made in imitation of him, and that the feet of the doll were regularly
blistered and anointed by the doctors, as poor Congreve’s feet had been
when he suffered from the gout. A monument was erected to the poet in
Westminster Abbey, with an inscription written by the Duchess; and Lord
Cobham honoured him with a cenotaph, which seems to us, though that is
a bold word, the ugliest and most absurd of the buildings at Stowe.
{410}We have said that Wycherley was a worse Congreve. There was,
indeed, a remarkable analogy between the writings and lives of these two
men. Both were gentlemen liberally educated. Both led town lives, and
knew human nature only as it appears between Hyde Park and the Tower.
Both were men of wit. Neither had much imagination. Both at an early
age produced lively and profligate comedies. Both retired from the field
while still in early manhood, and owed to their youthful achievements
in literature whatever consideration they enjoyed in later life. Both,
after they had ceased to write for the stage, published volumes of
miscellanies which did little credit either to their talents or to their
morals. Both, during their declining years, hung loose upon society;
and both in their last moments, made eccentric and unjustifiable
dispositions of their estates.

But in every point Congreve maintained his superiority to Wycherley.
Wycherley had wit; but the wit of Congreve far outshines that of every
comic writer, except Sheridan, who has arisen within the last two
centuries. Congreve had not, in a large measure, the poetical faculty;
but compared with Wycherley he might be called a great poet. Wycherley
had some knowledge of books; but Congreve was a man of real learning.
Congreve’s offences against decorum, though highly culpable, were not so
gross as those of Wycherley; nor did Congreve, like Wycherley, exhibit
to the world the deplorable spectacle of a licentious dotage. Congreve
died in the enjoyment of high consideration; Wycherley forgotten or
despised. Congreve’s will was absurd and capricious; but Wycherley’s
last actions appear to have been prompted by obdurate malignity.
{411}Here, at least for the present, we must stop. Vanbrugh and Farquhar
are not men to be hastily dismissed, and we have not left ourselves
space to do them justice.

LORD HOLLAND. (1)

(_Edinburgh Review_, July, 1841.)

Many {412}reasons make it impossible for us to lay before our readers,
at the present moment, a complete view of the character and public
career of the late Lord Holland. But we feel that we have already
deferred too long the duty of paying some tribute to his memory. We feel
that it is more becoming to bring without further delay an offering,
though intrinsically of little value, than to leave his tomb longer
without some token of our reverence and love.

We shall say very little of the book which lies on our table. And yet
it is a book which, even if it had been the work of a less distinguished
man, or had appeared under circumstances less interesting, would have
well repaid an attentive perusal. It is valuable, both as a record of
principles and as a model of composition.

We find in it all the great maxims which, during more than forty years,
guided Lord Holland’s public conduct, and the chief reasons on which
those maxims rest, condensed into the smallest possible space, and
set forth with admirable perspicuity, dignity, and precision. To his
opinions on Foreign Policy we for the most part cordially assent; but,
now and then we are inclined to

     (1) _The Opinions of Lord Holland, as recorded in the
     Journals of the House of Lords, from 1797 to 1841. Collected
     and edited by D. C. Moylan_, of Lincoln’s-Inn, Barrister-
     at-Law. 8vo. London: 1841.

{413}think them imprudently generous. We could not have signed the
protest against the detention of Napoleon. The protest respecting
the course which England pursued at the Congress of Verona, though it
contains much that is excellent, contains also positions which, we are
inclined to think, Lord Holland would, at a later period, have admitted
to be unsound. But to all his doctrines on constitutional questions,
we give our hearty approbation; and we firmly believe that no British
government has ever deviated from that line of internal policy which he
has traced, without detriment to the public.

We will give, as a specimen of this little volume, a single passage, in
which a chief article of the political creed of the Whigs is stated and
explained, with singular clearness, force, and brevity. Our readers
will remember that, in 1825, the Catholic Association raised the cry of
emancipation with most formidable effect. The Tories acted after their
kind. Instead of removing the grievance they tried to put down the
agitation, and brought in a law, apparently sharp and stringent, but
in truth utterly impotent, for restraining the right of petition. Lord
Holland’s Protest on that occasion is excellent.

“_We are,” says he, “well aware that the privileges of the people, the
rights of free discussion, and the spirit and letter of our popular
institutions, must render,--and they are intended to render,--the
continuance of an extensive grievance, and of the dissatisfaction
consequent thereupon, dangerous to the tranquillity of the country,
and ultimately subversive of the authority of the state. Experience and
theory alike forbid us to deny that effect of a free constitution; a
sense of justice and a love of liberty equally deter us from lamenting
it. But we have always been taught to look for the remedy of such
disorders in the redress of the grievances which justify them, and
in the removal of the dissatisfaction from which they flow--not in
restraints on ancient privileges, {414}not in inroads on the right
of public discussion, nor in violations of the principles of a free
government. If, therefore, the legal method of seeking redress, which
has been resorted to by persons labouring under grievous disabilities,
be fraught with immediate or remote danger to the state, we draw
from that circumstance a conclusion long since foretold by great
authority--namely, that the British constitution, and large exclusions,
cannot subsist together; that the constitution must destroy them, or
they will destroy the constitution._”

It was not, however, of this little book, valuable and interesting as it
is, but of the author, that we meant to speak; and we will try to do so
with calmness and impartiality.

In order to fully appreciate the character of Lord Holland, it is
necessary to go far back into the history of his family; for he had
inherited something more than a coronet and an estate. To the House of
which he was the head belongs one distinction which we believe to be
without a parallel in our annals. During more than a century, there has
never been a time at which a Fox has not stood in a prominent station
among public men. Scarcely had the chequered career of the first
Lord Holland closed, when his son, Charles, rose to the head of the
Opposition, and to the first rank among English debaters. And before
Charles was borne to Westminster Abbey a third Fox had already become
one of the most conspicuous politicians in the kingdom.

It is impossible not to be struck by the strong family likeness which,
in spite of diversities arising from education and position, appears in
these three distinguished persons. In their faces and figures there was
a resemblance, such as is common enough in novels, where one picture is
good for ten generations, but such as in real life is seldom found.
The ample person, the massy {415}and thoughtful forehead, the large
eyebrows, the full cheek and lip, the expression, so singularly
compounded of sense, humour, courage, openness, a strong will and a
sweet temper, were common to all. But the features of the founder of the
House, as the pencil of Reynolds and the chisel of Nollekens have
handed them down to us, were disagreeably harsh and exaggerated. In
his descendants, the aspect was preserved, but it was softened till it
became, in the late lord, the most gracious and interesting countenance
that was ever lighted up by the mingled lustre of intelligence and
benevolence.

As it was with the faces of the men of this noble family, so was it also
with their minds. Nature had done much for them all. She had moulded
them all of that clay of which she is most sparing. To all she had
given strong reason and sharp wit, a quick relish for every physical and
intellectual enjoyment, constitutional intrepidity, and that frankness
by which constitutional intrepidity is generally accompanied, spirits
which nothing could depress, tempers easy, generous, and placable,
and that genial courtesy which has its seat in the heart, and of
which artificial politeness is only a faint and cold imitation. Such
a disposition is the richest inheritance that ever was entailed on any
family.

But training and situation greatly modified the fine qualities which
nature lavished with such profusion on three generations of the house of
Fox. The first Lord Holland was a needy political adventurer. He entered
public life at a time when the standard of integrity among statesmen was
low. He started as the adherent of a minister who had indeed many
titles to respect, who possessed eminent talents both for administration
{416}and for debate, who understood the public interest well, and
who meant fairly by the country, but who had seen so much perfidy and
meanness that he had become sceptical as to the existence of probity.
Weary of the cant of patriotism, Walpole had learned to talk a cant of a
different kind. Disgusted by that sort of hypocrisy which is at least
a homage to virtue, he was too much in the habit of practising the less
respectable hypocrisy which ostentatiously displays, and sometimes
even simulates vice. To Walpole Fox attached himself, politically and
personally, with the ardour which belonged to his temperament. And it
is not to be denied that in the school of Walpole he contracted faults
which destroyed the value of his many great endowments. He raised
himself, indeed, to the first consideration in the House of Commons; he
became a consummate master of the art of debate; he attained honours and
immense wealth; but the public esteem and confidence were withheld from
him. His private friends, indeed, justly extolled his generosity and
good nature. They maintained that in those parts of his conduct which
they could least defend there was nothing sordid, and that, if he was
misled, he was misled by amiable feelings, by a desire to serve his
friends, and by anxious tenderness for his children. But by the nation
he was regarded as a man of insatiable rapacity and desperate ambition;
as a man ready to adopt, without scruple, the most immoral and the most
unconstitutional manners; as a man perfectly fitted, by all his opinions
and feelings, for the work of managing the Parliament by means of
secret-service-money, and of keeping down the people with the bayonet.
Many of his contemporaries had a morality quite as lax as his: but very
few among them had his talents, and none had his hardihood and energy.
{417}He could not, like Sandys and Doddington, find safety in contempt.
He therefore became an object of such general aversion as no statesman
since the fall of Strafford has incurred, of such general aversion
as was probably never in any country incurred by a man of so kind and
cordial a disposition. A weak mind would have sunk under such a load
of unpopularity. But that resolute spirit seemed to derive new firmness
from the public hatred. The only effect which reproaches appeared to
produce on him, was to sour, in some degree, his naturally sweet temper.
The last acts of his public life were marked, not only by that audacity
which he had derived from nature, not only by that immorality which he
had learned in the school of Walpole, but by a harshness which almost
amounted to cruelty, and which had never been supposed to belong to his
character. His severity increased the unpopularity from which it had
sprung. The well-known lampoon of Gray may serve as a specimen of
the feeling of the country. All the images are taken from shipwrecks,
quicksands, and cormorants. Lord Holland is represented as complaining,
that the cowardice of his accomplices had prevented him from putting
down the free spirit of the city of London by sword and fire, and
as pining for the time when birds of prey should make their nests in
Westminster Abbey, and unclean beasts burrow in St. Paul’s.

Within a few months after the death of this remarkable man, his second
son Charles appeared at the head of the party opposed to the American
War. Charles had inherited the bodily and mental constitution of his
father, and had been much, far too much, under his father’s influence.
It was indeed impossible that a son of so affectionate and noble
a nature should not have {418}been warmly attached to a parent who
possessed many fine qualities, and who carried his indulgence and
liberality towards his children even to a culpable extent. Charles saw
that the person to whom he was bound by the strongest ties was, in the
highest degree, odious to the nation; and the effect was what might have
been expected from the strong passions and constitutional boldness of
so high-spirited a youth. He cast in his lot with his father, and took,
while still a boy, a deep part in the most unjustifiable and unpopular
measures that had been adopted since the reign of James the Second. In
the debates on the Middlesex Election, he distinguished himself, not
only by his precocious powers of eloquence, but by the vehement and
scornful manner in which he bade defiance to public opinion. He was at
that time regarded as a man likely to be the most formidable champion
of arbitrary government that had appeared since the Revolution, to be
a Bute with far greater powers, a Mansfield with far greater courage.
Happily his father’s death liberated him early from the pernicious
influence by which he had been misled. His mind expanded. His range of
observation became wider. His genius broke through early prejudices. His
natural benevolence and magnanimity had fail play. In a very short time
he appeared in a situation worthy of his understanding and of his heart.
From a family whose name was associated in the public mind with tyranny
and corruption, from a party of which the theory and the practice
were equally servile, from the midst of the Luttrells, the Dysons, the
Barringtons, came forth the greatest parliamentary defender of civil and
religious liberty.

The late Lord Holland succeeded to the talents and to the fine natural
dispositions of his House. But his {419}situation was very different
from that of the two eminent men of whom we have spoken. In some
important respects it was better, and in some it was worse than theirs.
He had one great advantage over them. He received a good political
education. The first lord was educated by Sir Robert Walpole. Mr. Fox
was educated by his father. The late lord was educated by Mr. Fox. The
pernicious maxims early imbibed by the first Lord Holland, made his
great talents useless, and worse than useless, to the state. The
pernicious maxims early imbibed by Mr. Fox led him, at the commencement
of his public life, into great faults which, though afterwards nobly
expiated, were never forgotten. To the very end of his career, small
men, when they had nothing else to say in defence of their own tyranny,
bigotry, and imbecility, could always raise a cheer by some paltry taunt
about the election of Colonel Luttrell, the imprisonment of the lord
mayor, and other measures in which the great Whig leader had borne a
part at the age of one or two and twenty. On Lord Holland no such
slur could be thrown. Those who most dissent from his opinions must
acknowledge that a public life more consistent is not to be found in our
annals. Every part of it is in perfect harmony with every other part;
and the whole is in perfect harmony with the great principles of
toleration and civil freedom. This rare felicity is in a great measure
to be attributed to the influence of Mr. Fox. Lord Holland, as was
natural in a person of his talents and expectations, began at a very
early age to take the keenest interest in politics; and Mr. Fox found
the greatest pleasure in forming the mind of so hopeful a pupil. They
corresponded largely on political subjects when the young lord was only
sixteen; and their {420}friendship and mutual confidence continued to
the day of that mournful separation at Chiswick. Under such training
such a man as Lord Holland was in no danger of falling into those faults
which threw a dark shade over the whole career of his grandfather, and
from which the youth of his uncle was not wholly free.

On the other hand, the late Lord Holland, as compared with his
grandfather and his uncle, laboured under one great disadvantage. They
were members of the House of Commons. He became a Peer while still an
infant. When he entered public life, the House of Lords was a very small
and a very decorous assembly. The minority to which he belonged was
scarcely able to muster five or six votes on the most important nights,
when eighty or ninety lords were present. Debate had accordingly become
a mere form, as it was in the Irish House of Peers before the Union.
This was a great misfortune to a man like Lord Holland. It was not
by occasionally addressing fifteen or twenty solemn and unfriendly
auditors, that his grandfather and his uncle attained their unrivalled
parliamentary skill. The former had learned his art in “the great
Walpolean battles,” on nights when Onslow was in the chair seventeen
hours without intermission, when the thick ranks on both sides kept
unbroken order till long after the winter sun had risen upon them, when
the blind were led out by the hand into the lobby and the paralytic
laid down in their bed-clothes on the benches. The powers of Charles
Fox were, from the first, exercised in conflicts not less exciting. The
great talents of the late Lord Holland had no such advantage. This was
the more unfortunate, because the peculiar species of eloquence which
{421}belonged to him in common with his family required much practice
to develope it. With strong sense, and the greatest readiness of wit, a
certain tendency to hesitation was hereditary in the line of Fox. This
hesitation arose, not from the poverty, but from the wealth of their
vocabulary. They paused, not from the difficulty of finding one
expression, but from the difficulty of choosing between several. It was
only by slow degrees and constant exercise that the first Lord Holland
and his son overcame the defect. Indeed neither of them overcame it
completely.

In statement, the late Lord Holland was not successful; his chief
excellence lay in reply. He had the quick eye of his house for the
unsound parts of an argument, and a great felicity in exposing them. He
was decidedly more distinguished in debate than any peer of his time
who had not sat in the House of Commons. Nay, to find his equal among
persons similarly situated, we must go back eighty years to Earl
Granville. For Mansfield, Thurlow, Loughborough, Grey, Grenville,
Brougham, Plunkett, and other eminent men, living and dead, whom we will
not stop to enumerate, carried to the Upper House an eloquence formed
and matured in the Lower. The opinion of the most discerning judges
was that Lord Holland’s oratorical performances, though sometimes most
successful, afforded no fair measure of his oratorical powers, and that,
in an assembly of which the debates were frequent and animated, he
would have attained a very high order of excellence. It was, indeed,
impossible to listen to his conversation without seeing that he was
bom a debater. To him, as to his uncle, the exercise of the mind in
discussion was a positive pleasure. With the greatest good nature and
{422}good breeding, he was the very opposite to an assenter. The word
“disputatious” is generally used as a word of reproach; but we
can express our meaning only by saying that Lord Holland was most
courteously and pleasantly disputatious. In truth, his quickness in
discovering and apprehending distinctions and analogies was such as a
veteran judge might envy. The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster were
astonished to find in an unprofessional man so strong a relish for the
esoteric parts of their science, and complained that as soon as they
had split a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to split the filaments into
filaments still finer. In a mind less happily constituted, there might
have been a risk that this turn for subtilty would have produced serious
evil. But in the heart and understanding of Lord Holland there was ample
security against all such danger. He was not a man to be the dupe of
his own ingenuity. He put his logic to its proper use; and in him the
dialectician was always subordinate to the statesman.

His political life is written in the chronicles of his country. Perhaps,
as we have already intimated, his opinions on two or three great
questions of foreign policy were open to just objection. Yet even his
errors, if he erred, were amiable and respectable. We are not sure
that we do not love and admire him the more because he was now and
then seduced from what we regard as a wise policy by sympathy with
the oppressed, by generosity towards the fallen, by a philanthropy so
enlarged that it took in all nations, by love of peace, a love which
in him was second only to the love of freedom, and by the magnanimous
credulity of a mind which was as incapable of suspecting as of devising
mischief. {423}To his views on questions of domestic policy the voice of
his countrymen does ample justice. They revere the memory of the man who
was, during forty years, the constant protector of all oppressed races
and persecuted sects, of the man whom neither the prejudices nor the
interests belonging to his station could seduce from the path of
right, of the noble, who in every great crisis cast in his lot with the
commons, of the planter, who made manful war on the slave trade, of the
landowner, whose whole heart was in the struggle against the corn-laws.

We have hitherto touched almost exclusively on those parts of Lord
Holland’s character which were open to the observation of millions.
How shall we express the feelings with which his memory is cherished by
those who were honoured with his friendship? Or in what language shall
we speak of that house, once celebrated for its rare attractions to the
furthest ends of the civilised world, and now silent and desolate as the
grave? To that house, a hundred and twenty years ago, a poet addressed
those tender and graceful lines, which have now acquired a new meaning
not less sad than that which they originally bore.

               “Thou hill, whose brow the antique structures grace,

               Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick’s noble race,

               Why, once so loved, whene’er thy bower appears,

               O’er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears?

               How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair,

               Thy sloping walks and unpolluted air!

               How sweet the glooms beneath thine aged trees,

               Thy noon-tide shadow and thine evening breeze!

               His image thy forsaken bowers restore;

               Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more;

               No more the summer in thy glooms allayed,

               Thine evening breezes, and thy noon-day shade.”

Yet a few years, and the shades and structures may {424}follow their
illustrious masters. The wonderful city which, ancient and gigantic as
it is, still continues to grow as fast as a young town of logwood by a
water-privilege in Michigan, may soon displace those turrets and gardens
which are associated with so much that is interesting and noble, with
the courtly magnificence of Rich, with the loves of Ormond, with the
counsels of Cromwell, with the death of Addison. The time is coming
when, perhaps, a few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will
in vain seek, amidst new streets and squares, and railway stations, for
the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favourite resort
of wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars, philosophers,
and statesmen. They will then remember, with strange tenderness, many
objects once familiar to them, the avenue and the terrace, the busts and
the paintings, the carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical
mottoes. With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable chamber,
in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly
blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish
a drawing-room. They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves
loaded with the varied learning of many lands and many ages, and those
portraits in which were preserved the features of the best and wisest
Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how many men who have
guided the politics of Europe, who have moved great assemblies by reason
and eloquence, who have put life into bronze and canvas, or who have
left to posterity things so written that it shall not willingly let
them die, were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in
the society of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the
peculiar character which belonged to that circle, in {425}which every
talent and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They
will remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner, and
the last comedy of Scribe in another; while Wilkie gazed with modest
admiration on Sir Joshua’s Baretti; while Mackintosh turned over
Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while Talleyrand related his
conversations with Barras at the Luxembourg, or his ride with Lannes
over the field of Austerlitz. They will remember, above all, the grace,
and the kindness, far more admirable than grace, with which the princely
hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed. They will remember
the venerable and benignant countenance and the cordial voice of him who
bade them welcome. They will remember that temper which years of pain,
of sickness, of lameness, of confinement, served only to make sweeter
and sweeter, and that frank politeness, which at once relieved all the
embarrassment of the youngest and most timid writer or artist, who
found himself for the first time among Ambassadors and Earls. They will
remember that constant flow of conversation, so natural, so animated,
so various, so rich with observation and anecdote; that wit which
never gave a wound; that exquisite mimicry which ennobled, instead
of degrading; that goodness of heart which appeared in every look and
accent, and gave additional value to every talent and acquirement. They
will remember, too, that he whose name they hold in reverence was
not less distinguished by the inflexible uprightness of his political
conduct than by his loving disposition and his winning manners. They
will remember that, in the last lines which he traced, he expressed
his joy that he had done nothing unworthy of the friend of Fox and
{426}Grey; and they will have reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking
back on many troubled years, they cannot accuse themselves of having
done any thing unworthy of men who were distinguished by the friendship
of Lord Holland.

END OF VOL. IV.