 Chapter 16 of Gossip in a Library. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eugene Smith. Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss. Chapter 16. Poppy the Little. The history of Poppy the Little, or the life and adventures of a lap dog. London. Printed for M. Cooper at the Globe in Peter Noster Rowe, 1751. In February 1751, a town which had been suffering from rather a dreary spell since the acceptable publication of Tom Jones was refreshed and enlivened by the simultaneous issue of two delightfully scandalous productions eminently well adapted to occupy the polite conversation of ladies at drums and at the card table. Of these one was the memoirs of a lady of quality, so oddly foisted by Smollett into the third volume of his peregrine pickle. This was recognized at once as being the work of the frail and adventurous Lady Vane, about whom so many strange stories were already current in society. The other puzzled the Gossips much longer, and it seems to have been the poet Gray who first discovered the authorship of Poppy the Little. Gray wrote to tell Horace Walpole, who had written the anonymous book that everybody was talking about, adding that he had discovered the secret through the author's own carelessness, three of the characters being taken from a comedy shown him by a young clergyman at Magland College, Cambridge. This was the Reverend Francis Coventry, then some 25 years of age. The discovery of the authorship made Coventry a nine days hero, while his book went into a multitude of additions. It was one of the most successful Le Jure d'esprit of the 18th century. The copy of the first edition of Poppy the Little, which lies before me, contains an excellent impression of the frontispiece by Louis Boitard, a fashionable engraver designer whose print of the ran-laid motunda was much sought after by amateurs. It represents a curtain drawn aside to reveal a velvet cushion on which sits a graceful little Italian lap dog with pendant silky ears and sleek sides spotted like the pard. This is Poppy the Little, whose life and adventures the book proceeds to recount. Quote, Poppy, the son of Julio and Phyllis, born AD 1735 at Bologna in Italy, a place famous for lap dogs and sausages. End quote. At an early age he was carried away from the boudoir of his Italian mistress by Hilario, an English gentleman illustrious for his gallantries who brought him to London. The rest of the history is really a chain of social episodes each closed by the incident when Poppy becomes the property of some fresh person. And in this way we find ourselves in a dozen successive scenes each strongly contrasted with the others. It is the art of the author that he knows exactly how much to tell us without wearying our attention and is able to make the transition to the next scene a plausible one. There is low life as well as high life in Poppy the Little, Mr. Hogarth, no less than studies a la Watteau. But the high life is by far the better described. Francis Coventry was the cousin of the Earl of that name, he who married the beautiful and silly Maria Gunning. When he painted the ladies of quality at their routs and drums, masquerades and hurly-burlys, he knew what he was talking about. For this was the life he himself led when he was not at college. Even at Cambridge he was under the dazzling influence of his famous and fashionable cousin, Henry Coventry, fellow of the same college of Magdalene, author of the polite Filamonto Hydaspis, dialogues, and the latest person who dressed well in the university. The embroidered coats of Henry Coventry, stiff with gold lace, his, quote, most prominent Roman nose, end quote, an heir of being much a gentleman, lost on the younger member of the family, who seems to paint him slyly in his portrait of Mr. Williams. The great charm of poppy the little to contemporaries was, of course, the fact that it was supposed to be a roman au clay. The countess of Butte hastened to send out a copy of it to her mother in Italy, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague did not hesitate to discover the likenesses of various dear friends of hers. She found it impossible to go to bed until she had finished it. She was charmed, and she tells Lady Butte what the curious may now read with great satisfaction, that it was, quote, a real and exact representation of life as it is now acted in London, end quote. What is odd is that Lady Mary identified with absolute complacency the portrait of herself as Mrs. Qualmsich, that hysterical lady with whom, quote, was not unusual for her to fancy herself a glass bottle, a teapot, a hay-rick, or a field of turnips, end quote. Instead of being angry, Lady Mary screamed with laughter at the satire of her own whimsies, of how, quote, red was too glaring for her eyes, green put her in mind of willows, and made her melancholic. Blue remembered her of her dear sister, who had died ten years before in a blue bed, end quote. In fact, all this fun seems, for the moment at least, to have cured the original Mrs. Qualmsich of her whimsies, and her remarks on Poppy the Little are so good-natured that we may well forgive her for the pleasure with which she recognized Lady Townsend in Lady Tempest, and the Countess of Orford in the pedantic and deistical Lady Solfister, who rates the physicians for their theology to not be bled by any man who accepts the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Coventry's romance does not deserve the entire neglect into which it has fallen. It is sprightly and graceful from the first page to the last. Not written indeed by a man of genius, it is yet the work of a very refined observer who had been modern enough to catch the tone of the new school of novelists. Coventry, who yet does not escape without a flap from one of Pompey's sookin' ears, Coventry's manner may be best exemplified by one of his own bright passages of satire. This notion of a man of quality that no place can be full that is not crowded with people of fashion is not new, but it is deliciously expressed. Aurora has come back from Bath that assures the Count that she has had a pleasant season there. You amazed me, cries the Count. Impossible, madam! How can it be, ladies? I had letters from Lord Monkeeman and Lady Betty scorned for assuring me that, except yourselves, there were not three human creatures in the place. Let me see. I have Lady Betty's letter in my pocket, I believe, at this moment. Oh, no! Upon recollection I put it this morning into my cabinet where I preserve all my letters of quality. Aurora, smothering a laugh as well as she could, said she was extremely obliged to Lord Monkeeman and Lady Betty for vouchsafing to rank her and her sister in the catalogue of human beings. But surely, added she, they must have been asleep, both of them, when they wrote their letters, for the Bath was extremely full. Full, cries the Count, interrupting her. No one in the company, that is none of us, nobody that one knows, for as to all the Tremontanes that come by the cross-post, we never reckon them as anything but monsters in human shape that serve to fill up the stage of life, like ciphers in a play. For instance, you often see an awkward girl who has sewed her tail to a gown and pinned two lapettes to a nightcap come running headlong into the rooms with a wild frosty face as if she was just come from feeding poultry in her father's chicken-yard. Or you see a booby squire with a head resembling a stone ball over a gate-post. Now, it would be the most ridiculous thing in life to call such people company. It is the want of titles, and not the want of faces, that makes a place empty. There are indications, which I think have escaped the notice of Goldsmith's editors, that the part of the citizen of the world condescended to take some of his ideas from Pompey the Little. In Count Tag, the impoverished little fob who fancies himself a man of quality and who begs pardon of people who accost him in the park, quote, but really, Lady Betty or Lady Mary is just entering them all, end quote. We have the direct prototype of Beau Tibbs. Mr. Reimer, the starving poet whose furniture consists of, quote, the first act of a comedy, a pair of yellow stays, two political pamphlets, a plate of bread and butter, three dirty nightcaps, and a volume of miscellany poems, end quote. Is a figure wonderfully like that of Goldsmith himself, as Dr. Percy found him eight years later in that, quote, wretched dirty room, end quote, at the top of breakneck steps, of the River Court. The whole conception of that dickens-like scene in which it is described how Lady Frippery had a drum, in spite of all local difficulties, is much more in the humor of Goldsmith than in that of any of Coventry's immediate contemporaries. Strangely enough, in spite of the great success of his one book, the author of Pompey the Little never tried to repeat it. He became perpetual curate of Edgware who died in the neighboring village of Stanmore Parva a few years after the publication of his solitary book. I have, however, searched the registers of that parish in vain for any record of the fact. Francis Coventry had gifts of wit and picturesqueness which deserved a better fate than to abuse a few dissipated women over their citron waters and then to be forgotten. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 of Gossip in a Library This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Eugene Smith Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss Chapter 17 The Life of John Bunkle The Life of John Bunkle Esquire containing various observations and reflections made in several parts of the world and many extraordinary relations. London printed for J. Newd at the White Heart in Cheapside near the poultry, 1756 Volume 2 London printed for J. Johnson and B. Davenport at the Globe in Peter D'Oster Row, 1766 In the year 1756 there resided in the Barbican where the great John Milton had lived before him a funny elderly personage called Mr. Thomas Amory of whom not nearly so much is recorded as the lovers of literary anecdote would like to possess. He was 65 years of age he was an Irish gentleman of means and he was an ardent Unitarian. Some unkind people have suggested that he was out of his mind and he had made certain many peculiarities. One was that he never left his house or ventured into the streets save quote like a butt in the dusk of the evening end quote. He was in short what is called a crank and he gloried in his eccentricity. He desired that it might be written on his tombstone here lies an odd man. For 60 years he had no effort to attract popular attention but in 1755 he had published a sort of romance called Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain and now he succeeded it by the truly extraordinary work the name of which stands at the head of this article. Ten years later there would appear another volume of John Buckel and then Amory disappeared again. All we know is he was born in 1998 at the very respectable age of 97 so little is known about him so successfully did he hide quote like a butt end quote through the dusk of nearly a century that we may be glad to eke out the scanty information given above by a passage of autobiography from the preface of the book before us. I was born in London and carried an infant to Ireland where I learned the Irish language and became intimately acquainted with its original inhabitants. I was not only a lover of books from the time I could spell them to this hour but read with an extraordinary pleasure before I was 20 the works of several of the fathers and all the old romances which tinged my ideas with a certain piety and extravagance that rendered my virtues as well as my imperfections particularly mine. The formal and the visionary the hard honest man and the poor liver are a people I have had no connection with but have always kept company with the polite the generous the lively the rational and the brightest free thinkers of this age besides all this I was in the days of my youth one of the most active men in the world at every exercise and to a degree of rashness often vegersome running any hazards in Diabas Ilis I have descended head foremost from a high cliff into the ocean to swim when I could and ought to have gone off a rock not a yard from the surface of the deep I have swam near a mile and a half out in the sea to a ship that lay off gone on board, got clothes from the mate of the vessel and proceeded with them to the next port while my companion I left on the beach put it me drowned and related my sad fate in the town I have taken a cool thrust over a model without the least animosity on either side but both of us depending on our skill in the small sword for preservation from mischief such things as these I now call wrong if this is not a person of whom we would like to know more I know not what the romance of biography is Thomas Amery's life must have been a streak of crimson on the grey surface of the 18th century it is really a misfortune that the red is almost all washed off no odder book that John Bunkle was published in England throughout the long life of Amery romances there were like Gulliver's Travels and Peter Wilkins in which the incidents were much more incredible but there was no supposition that these would be treated as real history the curious feature of John Bunkle is that the story is told with the strictest attention to realism and detail and yet is embroidered all over with the impossible there can be no doubt that Amery who belonged to an older school was affected by the form of the new novels which were in the fashion in 1756 he wished to be as particular as Mr. Richardson as manly as Captain Fielding as breezy and vigorous as Dr. Smollett the three new writers who were all the talk of the town but there was a twist in his brain which made his pictures of real life appear like scenes looked at through flawed glass the memoirs of John Bunkle take the form of an autobiography and there has been much discussion as to how much is and how much is not the personal history of Amery I confess I cannot see why we should not suppose all of it to be invented certainly is odd to relate anecdotes and impressions of Dr. Swift apropos of nothing at all unless they form part of the author's experience for one thing the hero is represented as being born about 13 years later than Amery was if indeed we possess the true date of our worthy's birth Bunkle goes to college and becomes an earnest unitarian the incidents of his life are all intellectual until one, quote 1st of August, end quote when he sallies forth from college with his gun and dog and after four hours walk discovers that he has lost his way he is in the midst of splendid mountain scenery which leads us to wonder at which English university he was studying and descends through woody ravines and cliffs that overhang torrents till he suddenly comes in sight of a quote little harmonic building that had every charm architecture could give it end quote finding one of the garden doors open and being very hungry the adventurous Bunkle strolls in and finds himself in, quote a grotto or shell house in which a politeness of fantasy had produced and blended the greatest beauties of nature and decoration end quote there are more grottos in the pages of Amery than exist in the whole of the British islands this shell house opened into a library and in the library a beautyous object was sitting and reading she was studying a Hebrew Bible and making philological notes on a small desk she raised her eyes and approached the stranger quote to know who I wanted end quote for Bunkle style though picturesque is not always grammatically irreproachable before he could answer a venerable gentleman who was at his side to whom the young sportsman confessed that he was dying of hunger and had lost his way Mr. Noel a patriarchal widower of vast wealth was inhabiting this mansion in the sole company of his only daughter a lovely being just referred to Mr. Bunkle was immediately quote stiffened by enchantment end quote at the beauty of Miss Harriet Noel Mr. Lee when he had eaten his breakfast this difficulty was removed by the old gentleman asking him to stay to dinner until the time of which meal Miss Noel should entertain him at about 10 a.m. Mr. Bunkle offers his hand to the astonishness Noel who with great propriety bids him recollect that he is an entire stranger to her then they have a long conversation about the Chaldeans and the quote primevity of the Hebrew language and the extraordinary longevity of the antediluvians at the close of which circa 11.15 a.m. Mr. Bunkle proposes again quote you forced me to smile the illustrious Miss Noel replied and obliged me to call you an odd compound of a man end quote and to distract his thoughts she takes him round her famous grotto and the conversation all repeated at length turns on concollogy and on the philosophy of Epictetus until it is time for dinner when Mr. Noel and young Bunkle drink a bottle of old Allighead and discuss the gallery of there and the poetry of Catullus left alone at last Bunkle still does not go away but at 5 p.m. proposes for the third time quote over a pot of tea Mr. Noel says that the conversation will have to take some other turn or she must leave the room they therefore immediately quote consider the miracle at Babel end quote and the argument of Hutchinson on the Hebrew word Shefa until while Miss Noel is in the very act of explaining that quote the Aromites was the customary language of the line of Shem end quote young Bunkle circa 7.30 did not help snatching this beauty to my arms and without thinking what I did impressed on her balmy mouth half a dozen kisses this was wrong and gave offense end quote but then papa returning the trio sat down peacefully to cribbage and a little music of course Miss Noel is ultimately one and this is a very fair specimen of the conduct of the book a fortnight before the marriage however quote the smallpox steps in and in seven days time reduced the finest human frame in the universe to the most hideous and offensive block end quote and Miss Harriet Noel dies if this dismal occurrence is rather abruptly introduced it is because Bunkle has to be betrothed in succession to six other lively and delicious young females all of them beautiful all of them learned and all of them earnestly convinced by their experience if they did not rapidly die off how could they be seven Bunkle mourns the decease of each and then hastily forms an equally violent attachment to another it must be admitted that he is a sad wife oyster Azora is one of the most delightful of these deciduous loves she quote had an amazing collection of the most rational philosophical ideas and she delivered the most pleasing dress end quote she resided in a grotto within a romantic Dale in Yorkshire in a quote little female Republic end quote of 100 souls all of them quote straight clean handsome girls end quote in this Glenn there is only one man and he a fossil Miss Melmoth who would discuss the Paolo post-futurum of a great verb of the utmost care and politeness and had studied quote the Minerva of Sanctius and Hicks northern thesaurus end quote was another nice young lady though rather free in her manner with gentlemen but they all die sacrifice to the insatiable fate of Bunkle here the reader may like to enjoy a sample of Bunkle as a philosopher it is a characteristic passage quote was the soliloquy I spoke as I gazed on the skeleton of John Orton and just as I had ended the boys brought in the wild turkey which they had very ingeniously roasted and with some of Mrs. Burkott's fine ale and bread I had an excellent supper the bones of the penitent Orton I removed to a hole I had ordered my lad to dig for them the skull accepted which I kept and still keep on my table for more and that I may never forget the good lesson which the recipient who once resided in it had given it is often the subject of my meditation when I am alone of an evening in my closet which is often my case I have the skull of John Orton before me and as I smoke a philosophic pipe with my eyes fastened on it I learned more from the solemn object than I could from the most philosophical and labored lessons what a wild and hot head once how cold and still now poor skull I say and what was the end of all thy daring frolics and gambles by licentiousness and impiety a severe and bitter repentance impiety and goodness John Orton found at last that happiness the world could not give him end quote haslet has said that quote the soul of rabble I passed into John Amory then quote his name was Thomas not John and there's very little that is rabbalasian in his spirit one sees what haslet meant the valuable and diffuse learning the desultory thread of narration the mixture of religion and animalism but the resemblance is very superficial and the parallel to complimentary to complimentary it is difficult to think of the soul of rabbala in connection with a pedantic and eucsorian Unitarian to lovers of odd books John Bunkle will always have a genuine attraction its learning would have dazzled Dr. Primrose and is put on in glittering spars and shells like the ornaments of the many grottoes that it describes it is diversified by descriptions of natural scenery which are implicit as an original and it is quickened by the human warmth and flush of the love passages which with all their quaintness are extremely human it is essentially a healthy book as Charles Lamb with such a startling result assured the Scotchman Amory was a fervent admirer of womankind and he favored a rare type a learned lady who bears her learning lightly and can discuss quote variations of curvilinear spaces end quote without ceasing to be quote a bouncing dear delightful girl end quote and a droid in the preparation of toast and chocolate the style of the book is very careless and irregular but rises in its best pages to an admirable picturesqueness end of chapter 17 chapter 18 of gossip in a library this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Eugene Smith gossip in a library by Edmund Goss chapter 18 Beau Nash the life of Richard Nash Esquire late master of the ceremonies at Bath extracted principally from his original papers the second edition London J. Newberry 1762 there are cases not known to every collector of books where it is not the first which is the really desirable edition of a work but the second one of these rare examples of the exception which proves the rule is the second edition of Goldsmith's Life of Beau Nash disappointment awaits him who possesses only the first it is in the second it originally appeared the story is rather to be divine than told as history but we can see pretty plainly how the lines of it must have run in the early part of 1762 Oliver Goldsmith at that time still undistinguished but in the very act of blossoming into fame received a commission of 14 guineas to write for Newberry a life of a strange old Beau Mr. Nash who had died in 1761 on the same day which was March 5th he gave a receipt to the publisher for three other publications written or to be written so that very probably it was not expected that he should immediately supply all the matters sold in the summer he seems to have gone down to Bath on a short visit and to have made friends with the Beau's executor Mr. George Scott has even been said that he cultivated the mayor and alderman of Bath with such success that they presented him with yet another 15 guineas but of this in itself highly improbable instance of municipal benefaction the archives of the city yield no proof at least Mr. Scott gave him access to Nash's papers and with these he seems to have taken himself back to London it is a heart-rending delusion that you will snare to be paid for your work before you accomplish it as soon as once your work is finished you ought to be promptly paid but to receive your looker one minute before it is due is to tempt Providence to make a macabre of you Goldsmith of course without any temptation being needed was the very ideal macabre of letters and the result of paying him beforehand he was whipped into the mill by force and the copy ground out of him it is evident that in the case of the first edition of the Life of Monash the grinding process was too mercifully applied and the book when it appeared was short measure it has no dedication no, quote, advertisement end quote and very few notes the revised bibliophile therefore will estue it and will try to get the second edition issued a few weeks later in the same year which Newbury evidently insisted that Goldsmith should send out to the public in proper order Goldsmith treats Nash with very much the same sort of indulgent and apologetic sympathy with which the late Mr. Barbie Dorevilley treats Brummel he does not affect to think of such a fantastic hero but he seems to claim leave to execute a statuette in Terracotta for a cabinet of curiosities from that point of view as a queer object of thereto as a specimen of the Brickabrack of manners both the one and the other the King of Bow and the Emperor of Dandies are welcome to amateurs of the odd and the entertaining at the head of Goldsmith's book engraved by Anthony Walker one of the best and rarest of early English line engravers after an oil picture by William Whore presently to be one of the foundation members of the Royal Academy and now and throughout his long life the principal representative of the fine arts at Bath Nash is here represented in his famous white hat Gallero Albo as his epitaph has it the ensign of his rule at Bath the more than coronet of his social sway the breast of his handsome coat is copiously trimmed with rich lace and his old old eyes with their wrinkles and their crow's feet looked murally out from under an incredible wig an umbrageous deep colored ramelly of early youth it is a wonderfully hard featured serious fatuous face and it lives for us under the delicate strokes of Anthony Walker's graver the great bow looks as he must have looked when the Duchess of Queensbury dared to appear at the assembly house on a ball night with a white apron on it is a pleasant story and only told properly in our second edition King Nash had issued an edict forbidding the wearing of aprons the Duchess dared to disobey Nash walked up to her and deathly snatched her apron from her throwing it on to the back benches where the ladies women sat what a splendid moment imagine the excitement of all that fashionable company the drawn battle between the majesty of etiquette and the majesty of beauty the bow remarked with sublime calm that quote, none but Abigail's appeared in white aprons end quote the Duchess hesitated felt that her ground had slipped from under her gave way with the most admirable end quote, with great good sense and humor begged his majesty's pardon end quote aprons were not the only red rags to the bull of ceremony he was quite as unflinching an enemy to top boots he had already banished swords from the assembly room because their clash frightened the ladies and their scabbards tore people's dresses but boots were not so easily banished the country squires like to ride into the city and leaving their horses at a stable walked straight into the dignity of the minuet Nash, who had a genius for propriety saw how hateful this was and determined to put a stop to it he slew top boots and aprons at the same time and with the shaft of Apollo he indicted a poem on the occasion and a very good example of satire by irony it is it is short enough to quote entire quote, fontanella's invitation to the assembly come one and all to hoidon hall for there's the assembly tonight none but prude fools mind matters and rules we hoidons do decently slight come trollops and slatterns cocked hats and white aprons this best are modesty suits for why should not we in dress be as free squires in boots end quote why indeed but the hoxnorton squires as is there won't were not so easily pierced to the heart as the noble slatterns Nash turned Aristophanes and depicted on a little stage a play in which Mr. Punch under very disgraceful circumstances excused himself for wearing boots by quoting the practice of the pump room bow seems to have gone to the conscience of hoxnorton at last but what really gave the death blow to top boots as a part of evening dress was the incident of Nash's going up to a gentleman who had made his appearance in the ballroom in this unpardonable costume and remarking quote bowing in an arch manner that he appeared to have forgotten his horse end quote it had not been without labour which had risen to this position of unquestioned authority at Bath his majestic rule was the result of more than half a century of painstaking he had been born far back in the 17th century so far back that incredible as it sounds a love adventure of his early youth had supplied Van Brew in 1695 with an episode for his comedy of Esop but after trying many forms of life affluence he came to Bath just at the moment when the fortunes of that ancient centre of social pleasure were at their lowest ebb Queen Anne had been obliged to divert herself in 1703 with a fiddle an oak boy and with country dances on the bowling green the lodgings were dingy and expensive the pump house had no director the nobility had heartily withdrawn from such vulgar entertainments as the city now alone offered the famous and choleric physician Dr. Radcliffe in revenge for some slight he had endured had threatened to throw a toad into King Bauddard's well by riding a pamphlet against the medicinal efficacy of the waters the moment was critical the greatness of Bath which had been slowly declining since the days of Elizabeth was threatened with extinction to it wealthy idle patient with a genius for organization and in half a century he made it what he left it when he died in his 89th year the most elegant and attractive of the smaller social resorts of Europe such a man let us be certain was not wholly ridiculous there must have been something more in him than in a mere idle of the dandies like Brummel or a mere irresistible buck and lady killer like Lausanne in these latter men the force is wholly destructive they are animated by a feline vanity a tiger's spirit of egotism against the story of Nash and the Duchess of Queensbury so wholesome and humane we put that frightful anecdote that San Simone tells of Lausanne's getting the hand of another Duchess under his high heel and pirouetting on it the heel dig deeper into the flesh in all the repertory of Nash's extravagances there is not one story of this kind not one that reveals a wicked force he was fatuous but beneficent silly but neither cruel nor corrupt Goldsmith in this second edition at least has taken more pains with his life of Nash than he ever took again in a biography Nell, his bowling broke his Voltaire are not worthy of his name and fame not all the industry of annotators can ever make them more than they were at first pot boilers turned out with no care or enthusiasm and unconsciously prepared but this subtle figure of a master of ceremonial this queer old presentment of a pump room king crowned with a white hat dressed at the bow window of the Smyrna coffee house to get a bow from that other and alas met our accredited royalty the Prince of Wales this picture of an old bow with his toy shop of gold snuff boxes his agate rings his senseless obelisk his rattle of fated jokes and blooded stories all this had something very attractive to Goldsmith both in its humor and its pathos and he has left us in his life of Nash a study which is far too little known but which deserves to rank among the best red productions of that infinitely sympathetic pen which has bequeathed to posterity Mr. Tibbs, and Moses Primrose and Tony Lumpkin and of Chapter 18 Chapter 19 of Gossip in a Library this Slibervox recording is in the public domain recording by Eugene Smith Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss Chapter 19 The Natural History of Selborne The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne in the County of Southampton with engravings and an appendix London printed by T. Benzley for B. White and Son by Horace's head, Fleet Street 1789 it is not always the most confidently conducted books or those best preceded by blasts on the public trumpet which are eventually received with highest honors into the Palace of Literature no more curious incident of this fact is to be found that is presented by the personal history of that enchanting classic White's Selborne if ever an author hesitated and reflected dipped his toe into the bath of publicity and hastily withdrew it again loitered on the brink and could not be induced to plunge it was the reverend Gilbert White this man of singular genius was not to be persuaded that the town would tolerate his luck abrasions he was ready to make a present of them to anyone who would father them without his life to slip by until his seventieth year was reached before he would print them and when they appeared he could not find the courage to put his name on the title page not one of his own titlocks or seds warblers could be more shy of public observation even the fact that his own brother was a publisher gave him no real confidence in Printer's Ink Gilbert White was already a middle aged man when he was drawn into correspondence by Thomas Pennant a naturalist younger than himself who had undertaken to produce in four volumes folio a work on British zoology for the production of which he was radically unfitted it has been severely but justly pointed out that wherever Pennant rises superior either in style or information to his own dead level of pompous in exactitude is almost certainly quoting from a letter of Gilbert White's yet no acknowledgement of the Selborn parse in his vouch saved quote even in the account of the harvest mouse says Professor Bell there is no mention of its discoverer end quote nevertheless so rudimentary was scientific knowledge 130 years ago that Pennant's pretentious book was received with acclamation a patient man at Selborn sat and smiled even courteously joining with mild congratulations in the rounds of applause fortunately Pennant did not remain his only correspondent the honorable Danes Barrington was a man of another stamp not profound indeed but enthusiastic a genuine lover of research and a gentleman at heart he quoted Gilbert White in his writings but never without full acknowledgement other friends followed and the recluse of Selborn became the correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks of Dr. Chandler and of many other great ones of that day now decently forgotten meanwhile he was growing old any sharp winter might have cut him off as he trudged along through the deep lanes of his rustic parish early in 1770 Danes Barrington tired of seeing his friend the mere valet to so many other pompous intellects had proposed to him to draw up an account of the animals of Selborn Gilbert White put the fascinating notion from him it is no small undertaking he replied for a man unsupported and alone to begin a natural history from his own autopsia Pennant seems to have joined in the suggestion of Barrington for White says in a letter dated July 19th 1771 which did not see the light for more than a century after it was written quote as to any publication in this way of my own I look upon it with great defiance finding that I ought to have begun at 20 years ago but if I was to attempt anything it should be something of a natural history of my native parish Danos Historico Naturalis comprising a journal of one whole year and illustrated with large notes and observations such a beginning might induce more able naturalists to write the history of various districts and might in time occasion the production of a work so much to be wished for a full and complete natural history of these kingdoms end quote three years later thinking of doing something but putting off the hour of action in 1776 he was suddenly spurred to decide by the circumstance that Barrington had written to propose a joint work on natural history quote if I publish it all said Gilbert White to his nephew I shall come forth by myself end quote in 1780 he is still unready quote were it not for a good at menuances I think I should make more progress end quote he was now 60 years of age eight years later he was preparing the index and at last in the autumn of 1789 the volume positively made its appearance in the maiden author's 70th year few indeed if any among English writers of high distinction have been content to delay so long before testing the popular estimate of their work his book was warmly welcomed but the delightful author survived its publication less than four years dying in the parish which he was to make so famous Gilbert White was in a very peculiar sense a man of one book countless as have been the reprints of the natural history of cell-born its original form is no longer perhaps familiar to many readers the first edition which is now before me is a very handsome core tone Benjamin White the publisher who was the younger brother of Gilbert issued most of the standard works on natural history which appeared in London during the second half of the century and his experience enabled him to do adequate justice to the history of cell-born the frontispiece is a large folding plate of the village from short life an ambitious summer landscape representing the church its own house and a few cottages against the broad sweep of the hangar on a terrace in the foreground are portrait figures of three gentlemen standing and a lady seated of the former one is a clergyman and it has often been stated that this is Gilbert White himself erroneously since no portrait of him was ever executed begin footnote that discovered in 1913 has yet to prove that it represents Gilbert White in any way footnote the figure is that of Reverend Robert Yalden vicar of Newton Valance the frontispiece is unsigned and I find no record of the artist's name it is not to be doubted however that the original was painted by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm a Swiss watercolor draftsman who sketched so many topographical views in the south of England the remaining illustrations to this first edition are an oval landscape vignette on the title page engraved by Daniel Le Penierre a full-page plate of some fossil shells an extra-sized plate of the emantopus that was shot at French Impond straddling with an immense excess of shank and foreign gravings now of remarkable interest displaying the village as it then stood from various points of view they are engraved by Peter Masel after drawings of Grimm's and give what is evidently a most accurate impression of what Selborn was a century ago in these days of reproductions it is rather strange that no publisher has issued facsimiles of these beautiful illustrations to the original edition of what has become one of the most popular English works of recent book collectors I may go on to say that anyone who has offered a copy of the edition of the history of Selborn of 1789 should be careful to see that not merely the plates I have mentioned are in their places but that the engraved subtitle with a print of the seal of Selborn Priory occurs opposite the blank leaf which answers to page 306 it is impossible for a bibliographer to resist the pleasure of mentioning the name of his best editor and biographer it was unfortunate that Thomas Bell who was born eight months before the death of Gilbert White and who quite early in life began to entertain an enthusiastic reverence for that writer did not find an opportunity of studying Selborn on the spot until the memories of White were becoming very vague and scattered there I think it was not until about 1865 that retiring from a professional career he made Selborn at the wakes the very house of Gilbert White his residence here he lived however for 15 years and here it was his delight to follow up every vestige of the great naturalist soldier in the parish White became the passion of Professor Bell's existence and I well recollect him at the age of 55 or 86 years of age and no longer strong enough in body to quit his room with ease sitting in his arm chair at the bedroom window and directing my attention to points of whitish interest as I stood in the garden below it was as difficult for Mr. Bell to conceive that his annotations of White were complete as it had been for White himself to pluck up courage to publish and it was not until 1877 that there was 85 years of age that his great and final addition in two thick volumes was issued he lived however to be nearly 90 and died in the wakes at last in the very room and if I may snake not a very spot in the room where his idol had passed away in 1793 as long as Professor Bell was alive the house preserved in all essentials the identical character which it had maintained under its famous tenant overgrown with creepers to the very chimneys divided by the greenest and most velvety of lawns from the many colored furnace of flower beds scarcely parted by lush paddocks from the intense green wall of the coppest hill the wakes has always retained from my memory an impression of rural fecundity that summer glow absolutely unequaled the garden seemed to burn like a green sun with crimson stars and orange meteors to relieve it all I believe has since then been altered cell-born they tell me has ceased to bear any resemblance to that rich nest in which Thomas Bell so piously guarded the idea of Gilbert White if it be so we must live content with quote the memory of what has been that nevermore may be end of chapter 19 chapter 20 of gossip in a library this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Eugene Smith gossip in a library by Edmund Goss chapter 20 of a lover of literature extracts from the diary of a lover of literature Ipswich printed and sold by John Raw sold also by Longman Hearst, Rees and Orm Peter Noster Rowe London 1810 it may be that saved by a few elderly people and certain lovers of old gentlemen's magazines the broad anonymous quarto known as the Diary of a Lover of Literature is no longer much admired or even recollected but it deserves to be recalled to memory if only in that it was in some respects the first and in others a last of a long series of publications it was the first of those diaries a personal record of the intellectual life which had become more and more the fashion and have culminated at length in the ultra-refinement of Amiel and the conscious self-analysis of Marie Bashkirtsev it was less definitely perhaps the last or one of the last expressions of the 18th century sentiment undiluted by any tincture of romance any suspicion that fine literature existed before Dryden or could take any form unknown to Burke it was under a strict incognito that the diary of a lover of literature appeared and it was attributed by conjecture to various famous people the real author however was not a celebrated man his name was Thomas Green and he was the grandson of a wealthy Suffolk soap boiler who had made a fortune during the reign of Queen Ed the diarists father had been an agreeable amateur in letters a pamphleteer and a champion of English against dissent Thomas Green who was born in 1769 found himself at 25 in possession of the ample family estates, a library of good books a vast amount of leisure and a hereditary faculty for reading his health was not very solid and he was debarred by it from sharing the pleasures of his neighbor squires he determined to make books and music and in 1796 on his 27th birthday he began to record in a diary his impressions of what he read he went on very quietly and luxuriously living among his books in his house at Ipswich and occasionally rolling in his post-shows to valetudinary inbaths and quote spas when he had kept his diary for 14 years it seemed to a pardonable vanity so amusing that he persuaded himself to give part of it to the world the experiment no doubt was a very dubious one after much hesitation and in an evil hour perhaps he wrote quote I am induced to submit to the indulgence of the public the idlest work probably that ever was composed but I could wish to hope for the most unentertaining or unprofitable the welcome his volume received must speedily have reassured him but he had pledged himself to print no more and he kept his promise though he went on writing his diary until he died in 1825 his manuscripts passed into the hands of John Mitford who amused the readers of the gentleman's magazine with fragments of them for several years Green has had many admirers in the past amongst whom Edward Fitzgerald was not the least distinguished but he was always something of a local worthy author of one anonymous book and of late he has been little mentioned outside the confines of Suffolk it would be difficult to find an example more striking than the diary of a lover of literature of exclusive absorption in the world of books it opens in a gloomy year for British politics but there is found no illusion to current events there is a victory off Cape St. Vincent in February 1797 but Green is attacking Bentley's annotations on Horace Bonaparte and his army are buried in the sands of Egypt our diarist takes occasion to be buried in Shaftesbury's inquiry concerning virtue Europe rings with Hoennlinden but the news does not reach Mr. Thomas Green nor disturb him in his perusal of Solm Jenin's view of Christianity the fragment of the diary here preserved runs from September 1796 to June 1800 no one would guess from any word between cover and cover that these were not Halcyon years an epoch of complete European tranquility war upon war might wake the echoes but the river ran softly by the Ipswich garden of this gentle enthusiast and not a murmur reached him through his lilacs and labyrinems I have said that this book is one of the latest expressions of unadulterated 18th century sentiment for a form's sake the diarist mentions now and again very superficially Shakespeare, Bacon and Milton but in reality the garden of his study is bounded by a thick hedge behind the statue of Dryden the classics of Greece and Rome and the limpid reasonable writers of England from the restoration downwards these are enough for him writing in 1800 he has no suspicion of a new age preparing we read these stately pages and we rub our eyes can it be that when all this was written Wordsworth and Coleridge had issued lyrical ballads and Keats in itself was in the world almost the only touch which shows consciousness of a suspicion that romantic literature existed is a reference to the rival translations of Burgers Lenore in 1797 Sir Walter Scott, as we know was one of the anonymous translators it was however in all probability, not his but Taylor's with special approbation in 100 years a mighty change has come over the tastes and fashions of literary life when the diary of a lover of literature was written Dr. Hurd a pompous and dictatorial bishop of Worcester was a dreaded martinette of letters carrying on the tradition of his yet more formidable master Warburden as people nowadays discuss Verlaine and Ibsen who argued in those days about Godwin and Horn took and shuddered over each fresh incarnation of Mrs. Radcliffe Som Jenins was dead indeed in the flesh but his influence stalked at nights under the lamps and where disputants were gathered together in country rectories Dr. Parr affected the Olympian nod and crowned or checkmated reputations a flattering message from Dr. P and quote sends our diarist into ecstasy so excessive that a reaction sets in and the quote predominant and final effect upon my mind has been depression rather than elevation and quote we think of quote the yarns Jack Hall invented in the songs Jim Roper some and where are now Jim Roper and Jack Hall quote who cares now for Parr's praise or some Jen in the censure yet in our diarist pages these take equal rank with names that time is spared with Robertson and Gibbon, Burke and Reynolds Thomas Green was more ready for experiment and art than in literature he was quote particularly struck and quote at the Royal Academy of 1797 with a sea view by a painter called Turner quote fishing vessels coming in with a heavy swell an apprehension of a tempest gathering in the distance and casting as it advances a night of shade while a parting glow is spread with fine effect upon the shore the whole composition mold and design and masterly in execution I am entirely unacquainted with the artist but if he proceeds as he has begun cannot fail to become the first in his department end quote a remarkable prophecy and one of the earliest notices we possess of the effect which the youthful Turner then but 22 years of age made on his contemporaries as a rule except when he is traveling our diarist almost entirely occupies himself with a discussion of the books he happens to be reading his opinions are not always in concert with the current judgment of today he admires war burden much more than we do and feeling much less but he never fails to be amusing because so independent within the restricted bounds of his intellectual domain he is shut up in his 18th century like a prisoner but inside its wall his liberty of action is complete sometimes his judgments are sensibly in advance of his age it was the fashion in 1798 to denounce the letters of Lord Chesterfield as frivolous and immoral Greene takes a wider view and in a thoughtful analysis points out their judicious merits and their genuine parental acidity when Greene can for a moment lift his eyes from his books he shows a sensitive quality of observation which might have been cultivated to general advantage here's a reflection which seems to be novel as it is happy quote looked afterwards into the Roman Catholic chapel in Duke Street the thrilling tinkle of the little bell at the elevation of the host is perhaps the finest example that can be given of the sublime by association nothing so poor and trivial in itself nothing so transcendently awful as indicating the sudden change in the consecrated elements and the instant presence of the redeemer end quote much of the latter part of the diary as we hold it is occupied with the description of a tour in England and Wales here Greene is lucid, graceful and refined producing one after another little vignettes and prose which remind us of the simple drawings of the watercolour masters of the age of Girton or Causins or Glover which opened with some remarks on Sir William Temple closes with a disquisition on Wharton's criticism of the poets the curtain rises for three years on a smooth stream of intellectual reflection unruffled by outward incident and then falls again before we are weary of the monotonous flow of undiluted criticism the diary of a lover of literature is at once the pleasing record of a cultivated mind and a monument to a species of existence that is as obsolete as Nankine Bridges or Taiwe Isaac Disraeli said that Greene had humbled all modern authors to the dust and that he earnestly wished for a dozen volumes of the diary at Greene's death material for at least so many supplements were placed in the hands of John Knitford who did not venture to produce them from January 1834 to May 1843 however Knitford was incessantly contributing to the gentleman's magazine unpublished extracts from this larger diary these have never been collected but my friend Mr. W. Aldous Wright possesses a very interesting volume into which the whole mass of them has been carefully and consecutively pasted with copious illustrative matter by the hand of Edward Fitzgerald whose interest in and curiosity about Thomas Greene were unflaggy End of Chapter 20 Chapter 21 of Gossip in a Library This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Eugene Smith Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss Chapter 21 Peter Bell and His Tormentors Peter Bell A Tale and Verse by William Wordsworth London Printed by Strahan and Spotterswood Printers Street For Longman, Hearst Rhys, Orm, and Brown Peter Noster Rowe 1819 None of Wordsworth's productions are better known by name than Peter Bell and yet few probably are less familiar even to convinced Wordsworthians. The poet's biographers and critics have commonly shirked the responsibility of discussing this poem and when the primrose stanza has been quoted and the parlor stanza smiled at, there is usually no more said about Peter Bell. A puzzling obscurity hangs about its history. We have no positive knowledge why its publication was so long delayed, nor having been delayed, why it was at length determined upon. Yet a knowledge of this poem is not merely an important but to a thoughtful critic an essential element in the comprehension of Wordsworth's poetry. No one who examines that body of literature with sympathetic attention should be content to overlook the piece in which Wordsworth's theories are pushed to their furthest extremity. When Peter Bell was published in April 1819, the author remarked that it had quote, nearly survived its minority, for it saw the light in the summer of 1798, end quote. It was therefore composed at Al Foxton, that plain stone house in West Somerset Chire, which Dorothy and William Wordsworth rented for the summit 23 pounds for one year, the rent covering the use of quote, a large park with 70 head of deer, end quote. Thanks partly to its remoteness from a railway and partly also to the peculiarities of its family history, Al Foxton remains singularly unaltered. A lover of Wordsworth who follows its deep, umbrageous drive to the point where the house, the park around it, and the Quantox above them, suddenly break upon the view, sees today very much what Wordsworth's visitors saw when they trudged up from Stowe to commune with him in 1797. The barrier of ancient beach trees running up into the moor, killed, twinkling below, a stretch of fields and woods descending Northwood to the expanse of the Yellow Severn Channel, the plain white facade of Al Foxton itself with its easy right of way across the fantastic garden, the tumultuous pathway down to the home, the poet's favorite parlor at the end of the house. All this presents an impression which is probably less transformed, remains more absolutely intact than any other which can be identified with the early or even the middle life of the poet. That William and Dorothy in their poverty should have rented so noble a country property seems at first sight inexplicable in the contrast between Al Foxton and Coleridge's squalid Pothouse in Nether Stowe can never cease to be astonishing. But the sole object of the trustees in admitting words worth to Al Foxton was, as Mrs. Sanford has discovered, to keep the house inhabited during the minority of the owner it was let to the poet on the 14th of July 1797. It was in this delicious place under the control of, quote, smooth Quantock's airy ridge, that Wordsworth's genius came of age. It was during the 12 months spent here that Wordsworth lost the final traces of the old traditional accent of poetry. It was here that the best of the lyrical ballads were written and from this house, the first volume of that epoch-making collection was forwarded to the press. Among the poems written at Al Foxton, Peter Bell was prominent, but we hear little of it except from Haslett, who, taken over to the Woodsworths by Coleridge from Nether Stowe, was on a first visit permitted to read, quote, the Sibylene leaves, end quote, and on a second had the rare pleasure of hearing Wordsworth himself chant Peter Bell in his, quote, equable, sustained and internal, end quote, manner of recitation under the ash trees of Al Foxton Park. I do not know whether it has been noted that the landscape of Peter Bell, although localized in Yorkshire by the banks of the River Swale, is yet pure Somerset in character. The poem was composed without a doubt as the poet tramped the grassy heights of the Quantock Hills, or descended at headlong pace, mouthing and murmuring as he went into one silven comb after another. To give it its proper place among the writings of the school, we must remember that it belongs to the same group as Tinter and Abbey in the Ancient Mariner. Why then was it not issued to the world with these? Why was it locked up in the poet's desk for twenty-one years and shown during that time as we gather from its author's language to Sothe, too few, even of his close friends? Do these questions we find no reply about safe, but perhaps it is not difficult to discover one? Every revolutionist in literature or art produces some composition in which he goes further than in any other in his defiance of recognized rules and conventions. It was Wordsworth's central theory that no subject can be too simple and no treatment too naked for poetic purposes. His poems written at Al-Foxdon are precisely those in which he is most audacious in carrying out his principle and nothing, even of his, is quite so simple or quite so naked as Peter Bell. Hazlett, a very young man strongly prejudiced in favor of the new ideas, has given us a notion of the amazement with which he listened to these pieces of Wordsworth although he was, quote, not critically nor skeptically inclined, end quote. Others we know were deeply scandalized. I have little doubt that Wordsworth himself considered that in 1798 his own admirers were scarcely right for the publication of Peter Bell while even so late as June 1812 when Crabb Robinson borrowed the manuscript and lent it to Charles Lamb, the latter, quote, found nothing good in it, end quote. Robinson seems to have been the one admirer of Peter Bell at that time and he was irritated at Lamb's indifference. Yet his own opinion became modified when the poem was published and, in parentheses, May 3rd, 1819 he calls it, quote, this unfortunate book, end quote. Begin footnote. The word unfortunate is omitted by the editor, Thomas Sadler, perhaps in deference to the feelings of Wordsworth's descendants, end footnote. In another place, parentheses, June 12th, 1820, Crabb Robinson says that he implored Wordsworth before the book was printed to omit, quote, the party in a parlor, end quote, and also the banging of the ass's bones, but, of course, in vain. In 1819 much was changed. The poet was now in his 50th year. The epoch of his true productiveness was closed, all his best works, except the prelude, were before the public, and although Wordsworth was by no means widely or generally recognized yet as a great poet, there was a considerable audience ready to receive with respect whatever so interesting a person should put forward. Moreover, a new generation had come to the front. Scott's series of verse romances was closed. Byron was in mid-career. There were young men of extraordinary and somewhat disquieting talent, Shelley, Keats, and Lee Hunt, all of whom were supposed to be, although characters of a very reprehensible and even alarming class, yet distinctly respectful in their attitude toward Mr. Wordsworth. It seemed safe to publish Peter Bell. Accordingly, the thin octavo described at the head of this chapter duly appeared in April 1819. It was so tiny that it had to be eeked out with the son that's written to W. Westall's views, and it was adorned by an engraving of Bromley's after a drawing specially made by Serge George Beaumont a letter to Beaumont, unfortunately without a date in which this frontispiece is discussed, seems to suggest that the engraving was a gift from the artist to the poet. Wordsworth, in sorrow for the sickly taste of the public inverse, opining that he cannot afford the expense of such a frontispiece as Serge George Beaumont suggests. In accordance with these fears, no doubt, in addition only 500 was published, but it achieved a success which Wordsworth had neither anticipated nor desired. There was a general guffaw of laughter, and all the copies were immediately sold. Within a month, a ribbled public received a third edition only to discover with disappointment that the funniest lines were omitted. No one admired Peter Bell. The inner circle was silent. Baron Field wrote on the title page of his copy, which now belongs to Mr. J. Dykes Campbell, and his carcass was cast in the way and the ass stood by it. Sir Walter Scott openly lamented that Wordsworth should exhibit himself crawling on all fours when God has given him so noble accountants to lift to heaven. Byron mocked aloud, and worse than all, the young man from whom so much had been expected, Les Jeunes Ferroces, leaped on the poor, uncomplaining ass, like so many hunting leopards. The air was darkened by hurtling parodies, the arrangement of which is still standing cruel to the bibliographers. It was Keats' friend, John Hamilton Reynolds, who opened the attack. His parody, Peter Bell, a lyrical ballad, London, Taylor & Hesse, 1819, was positively in the field before the original. It was said, at the time, that Wordsworth feverishly waiting a specimen copy of his own Peter Bell from town seized a packet which the mail brought him, only to find that it was the spurious poem which had anticipated Simon Pure. The Times protested that the two poems must be from the same pen. Reynolds had probably glanced at proofs of the genuine poem, his preface is a close invitation of Wordsworth's introduction, and the stanzaic form in which the two pieces are written is identical. On the other hand, the main parody is made up of allusions to previous poems by Wordsworth and shows no acquaintance with the story of Peter Bell. Reynolds' whole pamphlet, preface, text, and notes is excessively clever and touches up the bard at a score of tender points. It catches the sententious tone of Wordsworth deliciously and it closes with this charming stanza. He quits that moonlight yard of skulls, and still he feels right glad and smiles with moral joy at the old tomb. Peter's cheek recalls its bloom and as he creepeth by the tiles he mutters ever, quote, www, never more will trouble you, trouble you, end quote. Peter Bell II, as it is convenient, though not strictly accurate, to call Reynolds, quote, antinatal Peter, end quote, was more popular than the original. By May a third edition had been called and this contained fresh stanzas and additional notes. Another parody, which ridiculed the affection for donkeys, displayed both by Wordsworth and Coleridge, was called The Dead Asses, A Lyrical Ballad and an elaborate production, the author of which I have not been able to discover, was published later on in the year, Benjamin the Wagoner, Baldwin, Craddock and Joy, 1819, which, although the title suggests The Wagoner of Wordsworth is entirely taken up with making fun of Peter Bell. This parody, and it is certainly neither pointless nor unskillful, chiefly deals with the poet's fantastic prologue. Then, no less a person than Shelley, writing to Lee Hunt from Florence in November of the same year and closed a Peter Bell III, which he desired should be printed. Yet in such a form, as to conceal the name of the author, perhaps Hunt thought it indiscreet to publish this not very amusing skit, and it did not see the light till long after Shelley's death. Finally, as though the very spirit of parody danced in the company of this strange poem, Wordsworth himself chronicled its ill fate in a sonnet imitated from Milton's defense of Tetra Corden, singing how, on the appearance of Peter Bell, a harpy brood unbarred and hero clamorously fell. Of the poem which enjoyed so singular a fate, Lord Houghton has quietly remarked that it could not have been written by a man with a strong sense of humor. This is true of every part of it, of the stiff and self-sufficient preface and of the grotesque prologue, which in all probability belong to 1819, no less than of the story itself, in its three cantos or parts which bear the stamp of Al-Foxton in 1798. A tale is not less improbable than uninteresting. In the first part a very wicked potter or itinerant cellar of pots, Peter Bell, being lost in the woodland, comes to the borders of a river, and thinks to steal an ass, which he finds pensively hanging its head over the water. Peter Bell presently discovers that the dead body of the master of the ass is floating in the river just below. The poet, as he has naively recorded, read this incident in a newspaper. In the second part, Peter drags the dead man to land and starts on the ass's back to find the survivors. In the third part, a vague spiritual chastisement falls on Peter Bell for his previous wickedness. Plot there is no more than this, and if proof or wanted of the inherent innocence of Wordsworth's mind, it is afforded by the artless struggles which he makes to paint a very wicked man. Peter Bell has had 12 wives, he is indifferent to prim-roses upon a river's brim, and he beats asses when they refuse to stir. This is really all the evidence brought against one who has described vaguely, as combining all vices that, quote, the cruel city breeds, end quote. That which close students of the genius of Wordsworth will always turn to seek in Peter Bell is the sincere sentiment of nature and the studied simplicity of language which inspire its best stanzas. The narrative is clumsy in the extreme attempts at wit and sarcasm, ludicrous. Yet Peter Bell contains exquisite things. The prim-rose stanza is known to everyone. This is not so familiar, quote, the dragon's wing, the magic ring, I shall not covet for my dower, if I, along that lowly way, with sympathetic heart may stray, and with a soul of power, end quote. Nor this, with its excruciating simplicity its descriptive accent of 1798, quote, I see a blooming wood boy there, and if I had the power to say how sorrowful a wanderer is, your heart would be as sad as his till you had kissed his tears away. Holding a Hawthorne branch in hand, all bright with berries, ripe and red, into the cavern's mouth he peeps, thence back into the moonlight creeps. What seeks the boy? The silent dead, end quote. It is when he wishes to describe how Peter Bell became aware of the dead body floating under the nose of the patient ass that Wordsworth eluses himself in uncouthed similes. Peter thinks it is the moon, then the reflection of a cloud, then a gallows, a coffin, a shroud, a stone idol, a ring of fairies, a fiend. Last of all, the poet makes the Potter, who is gazing at the corpse, exclaim, quote, is it a party in a parlor? Crammed just as they on earth were crammed, some sipping punch, some sipping tea, but as you by their faces see, all silent and all damned, end quote. So deplorable is the waggishness of a person however gifted who has no sense of humor. This simile was too much for the gravity, even of intimate friends like Sothe and Lam, and after the second edition it disappeared. End of Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of Gossip in a Library This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eugene Smith Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss Chapter 22 The Fancy, a selection from the poetical remains of the late Peter Corcoran of Grey's Inn, student at law with a brief memoir of his life. London, printed for Taylor and Hesse, Fleet Street, in 1820. The themes of the poets run in a very narrow channel. Since the old heroic times when the homers and the gun lougs sang a battle with the sleet of lances hurtling round them, a great calm has settled down upon Parnassus. Generation after generation pipes the same tune of love and nature of the liberal arts and the illiberal philosophies, the same imagery, the same meters, meander within the same polite margins of conventional subject. Ever in a non, someone attempts to break out of the groove. In the 18th century they made a valiant effort to sing of the art of preserving health and of the fleece and of the sugarcane. But the innovators lie stranded like cumbress whales on the shore of the ocean of poetry. Flaubert's friend, Louis D. A., made an inartful attempt to tune the stubborn lyre to music of the birthday of the world to battles of the achaeosaurus and the plesiosaurus to loves of the mammoth and the mastodon. But the public would have none of it, though inspired in faultless verso, and the poets fled back to their flames and darts and into the primrose at the river's brim. There is, however, an aesthetic and something that pleasantly reminds us of the elasticity of the human intellect in these failures. And the book before us is an amusing example of such eccentric efforts to enlarge the sphere of the poetic activity. This little volume is called the fancy, and it does not appear to me, certain, that the virtuous American conscience knows what that means. If the young ladies from inquire ingenuously, quote, tell us where is fancy bread? We should have to reply with a jingle, in the fists not in the head. The poet himself, in a fit of unusual candor, says, quote, fancy is a term for every black artism, end quote, though this is much too severe. But rats, and they who catch them, badgers, and they who bait them, cocks, and they who fight them, and above all, men with fists who professionally box with them, come under the category of the fancy. This, then, is the theme which the poet before us, living under the genial sway of the first gentleman of Europe, undertook to place beneath the special patronage of Apollo. The attractions, however, of the learned ring set all other pleasures in the shade, and the name, Peter Corcoran, which is a pseudonym, is, I suppose, chosen merely because the initials are those of the then famous pugilistic club. The poet is, in short, a laureate of the PC, and his book stands in the same relation to Boxiana that Campbell's lyrics do to Nelson's dispatches. To understand the poet's position, we ought to be dressed as he was. We ought, quote, to wear a tough drab coat with large pearl buttons all afloat upon the waves of plush, to tie a kerchief of the king cup die white-spotted with a small bird's eye around the neck, and from the nape let fall an easy fan-like cape, end, quote, and, in fact, to belong to that incredible company of Corinthian Tom and Jerry Hawthorne, over whom Thackeray let fall so delightfully the elegiac tear. Anthologies are not edited in a truly Catholic spirit, or they would contain this very remarkable sonnet. On the non-pariah, introductory, quote, none but himself can be his paramount, quote, with marble-colored shoulders and keen eyes, protected by a forehead broad and white, and hair cut close lest it impede the sight, and clenched hands firm and of punishing size, steadily held, or motioned wary-wise, to hit or stop, and kerchief, too, drawn tight or the unyielding loins to keep from flight the inconstant wind that all too often flies. It stands. Fame, whose bright eyes run o'er with joy to see a chicken of their own, dips her rich pen in claret, and writes down under the letter R, first on the score, quote, Randall, John, Irish parents, age not known, good with both hands, and only ten stone for, end quote, be not too hard on this piece reader. Virtue is well-revenged by the inevitable question, quote, who was John Randall, end quote. In 1820 it was said, quote, of all the great men in this age, in poetry, philosophy, or pugilism, there is no one of such transcendent talent as Randall. No one who combines end quote. Now, if his memory be revived for a moment, this master of science who doubled up an opponent as if he were plucking a flower and whose presence turned mousley-hurst into an Olympia is in danger of being confounded with the last couple of drunken Irish women who have torn out each other's hair and handfuls in some white chapel courtyard. The mighty have fallen, the stakes and ring are gone forever, and Virtue is avenged. The days of George IV are so long, long gone past that a paradoxical creature may be forgiven for a sigh over the ashes of the glory of John Randall. It is strange how much genuine poetry lingers in this odd collection of verses and praise of prize-fighting. There are lines and phrases that recall Keats himself, though truly the tone of the book is robust enough to satisfy the most impassioned of Tory editors. As it happens, it was written by Keats' dearest friend by John Hamilton Reynolds, whom the great poet mentioned so affectionately in the least of all his letters. Reynolds has been treated with scant consideration by the critics. His verses, I protest, are no wit less graceful or sparkling than those of his more eminent companions, Lee Hunt and Barry Cornwall. His Garden of Florence is worthy of the friend of Keats. We have seen how his Peter Bell, which was Peter Bell I, took the wind out of Shelly's satiric sails and flooded the dove-coats of the Lakers. He was as smart as he could be, too clever to live, in fact, to light a weight for a brave age. In The Fancy, which Keats seems to refer to in a letter to January 13th, 1820, Reynolds appears to have been inspired by Tom Moore's Tom Hrib. But if so, he vastly improves on that rather vulgar original. He takes as his motto with adroit impertinence some lines of words worth and persuades us, quote, nor need we blame the license joys, though false to nature's quiet equipoise. Frank are the sports, the stains are fugitive, end quote. We can fancy the countenance of the Cumbrian Sage at seeing his words thus nimbly adapted to be an apology for prize-fighting. The poems are feigned to be the remains of one Peter Corcoran, student-at-law. A simple and pathetic memoir, which deserved to be as successful as that most felicitous of all such hoaxes, the life of the supposed Italian poet Lorenzo Stachetti, introduces us to the unfortunate young Irishman, who was innocently engaged to a charming lady when, on a certain August afternoon, he strayed by chance into the fives court, witnessed a, quote, sparring exhibition, by two celebrated pugilists, and was thenceforth a lost character. From that moment, nothing interested him except a favorite or a scientific parry, and his only topic of conversation became the noble art of self-defense. To his disgusted lady-love, he took to writing eulogies of the chicken and the non-parile. On one occasion he appeared before her with two black eyes, for he could not resist the temptation of taking part in the boxing, end quote, it is known that he has parried the difficult and ravaging hand of Randall himself, end quote. The attachment of the young lady had long been declining, and she took this opportunity of forbidding him her presence for the future. He felt this abandonment bitterly, but could not surrender the all-absorbing passion which was destroying him. He fell into a decline and at last died, quote, without a struggle, just after writing a sonnet to West Country Dick, end quote. The poem so ingeniously introduced consists of a kind of sporting opera called King Tim's The First, which is the tragedy of an emigrant butcher, an epic fragment in Otava Rima called The Fields of Tothill, in which the author rambles on in the bironic manner and ceases, fatigued with his task, before he has begun to get his story under way, and miscellaneous pieces. Some of these latter are simply lyrical exercises and must have been written in Peter Corcoran's earlier days. The most characteristic and the best deal, however, was the science of fisticuffs. Here are the lines sent by the poet to his mistress on the painful occasion which we have described above, quote, after a casual turn up, end quote. Quote, forgive me and never owe never again I'll cultivate light blue or brown inebriity. Begin footnote, quote, heavy brown with a dash of blue in it, end quote, was the fancy phrase for stout mixed with gin, end footnote. I'll give up all chance of a fracture or sprain and part worst of all with Pierce Egan's Society. Pierce Egan, the author of Boxiana and Life in London, end footnote. Forgive me, and mufflers I'll carefully pull or my knuckles hereafter to make them well bred, to mollify digs in the kidneys with wool and temper with leather a punch of the head. And Kate, if you'll fib from your forehead that frown and spar with a lighter look if the swelling should ever go down in these eyes look again upon you, love, alone, end quote. It must be confessed that a less quote fancy end quote vocabulary would here have shown a juster sense of Peter's position. Sometimes there is no burlesque intention apparent, but in their curious way the verses seem to express a genuine enthusiasm. It is neither to be expected nor to be feared that anyone nowadays will seriously attempt to advocate the most barbersome pastimes, and therefore without conscientious scruples we may venture to admit that these are very fine and very thrilling verses in their own unexampled class quote. Oh, it is life to see a proud and dauntless man's step full of hopes up to the PC steaks and ropes, throw in his hat and with a spring get gallantly within the ring. I, the wide crowd and walk awhile taking all cheerings with a smile to see him strip his well-trained form, white glowing muscular and warm all beautiful in conscious power, relaxed and quiet till the hour his glossy and transparent frame in radiant plight to strive for fame. To look upon the clean shaped limb and silk and flannel clothed trim while round the waist the kerchief tied makes the flesh grow in richer pride. It is more than life to watch him hold his hand forth tremulous yet bold over his seconds and to clasp his rivals in a quiet grasp. To watch the noble attitude the crowd in breathless mood and then to see when Adam and start the muscles set and the great heart hurl a courageous splendid light into the eye and then the fight end quote. This is like a lithograph out of one of Pierce Egan's books only much more spirited in picturesque and displaying a far higher and more Hellenic sense of the beauty of athletics. Reynolds' little volume, however, enjoyed no success. The genuine amateurs of the prize ring did not appreciate being celebrated in good verses and the fancy has come to be one of the rarest of literary curiosities. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of Gossip in a Library This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eugene Smith. Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss Chapter 23 Ultra Crepedarius Ultra Crepedarius a satire on William Gifford by Lee Hunt London 1823 Printed for John Hunt 22 Old Bond Street and 38 Tabistock Street Covent Garden If the collector of first editions requires an instance from which to justify the faith which is in him against those who cry out that bibliography is not Lee Hunt is a good example to his hand. This active and often admirable writer, during a busy professional life, issued a long series of works in prose and verse which are of every variety of commonness and scarcity but which have never been and probably never will be reprinted as a whole. Yet not to possess the works of Lee Hunt is to be ill-equipped for the minute study of literary history at the beginning of the century. The original 1816 edition of Remini, for instance, is of a desperate rarity yet not to be able to refer to it in the grotesqueness of this, its earliest form is to miss a most curious proof of the crude taste of the young school out of which Shelley and Keats were to arise. The scarcest of all Lee Hunt's poetical pamphlets, but by no means the least interesting is that whose title stands at the head of this chapter of Ultra-Correpidarius which was, quote, printed for John Hunt, end quote, in 1823 it is believed that not a half a dozen copies are in existence and it has never been reprinted. It is a rarity, then, to which the most austere despisers of first editions may allow a special interest. From internal evidence we find that Ultra-Correpidarius, a satire on William Gifford, was sent to press in the summer of 1823 from Mayano, soon after the breakup of Hunt's household in Genoa, and Byron's departure for Greece. The poem is the, quote, stick, end quote, which had been recently mentioned in the third number of the liberal. Quote, Have I these five years spared the dog a stick cut for his special use and reasonably thick? End quote. It had been written in 1818 in consequence of the famous review in the quarterly of Keats and Dimion, a fact which the biographers of Keats do not seem to have observed. Why did Hunt not immediately print it? Perhaps because to have done so would have been worse than useless in the then condition of public taste and temper. What led Hunt to break through his intention of suppressing the poem, it might be difficult to discover. At all events, in the summer of 1823, he suddenly set it home for publication. Whether it was actually published, is doubtful. It was probably only circulated in private to a handful of sympathetic Tory-hating friends. Ultra-crepidarius is written in the same anapestic measure as the Feast of the Poets but is somewhat longer. As a satire on William Gifford, it possessed the disadvantage of coming too late in the day to be of any service to anybody. At the close of 1823, Gifford, in failing health, was resigning the editorial chair of the Quarterly, which he had made so formidable and was retiring into private life to die in 1826. The poem probably explains, however, what has always seemed a little difficult to comprehend, the extreme personal bitterness with which Gifford, at the close of his career, regarded Hunt since the slayer of the Delacruscans was not the man to tolerate being treated as though he were a Delacruscan himself. However narrow the circulation of Ultra-crepidarius may have been, Care was no doubt taken that the editor of the Quarterly Review should receive one copy at his private address and Lee Hunt returned from Italy in time for that odd incident to take place at the Roxburgh sale, when Barron Field called his attention to the fact that, quote, a little man with a warped frame and a countenance between the quarrelous and the angry was gazing at me with all his might, end quote. Hunt tells this story in the autobiography from which, however, he admits all illusion to his satire. The latter opens with the statement that, quote, it is now about 50 or 60 years since the date of a charming old boy of a woman. End quote. Mercury was in a state of rare fidget from the discovery that he had lost one of his precious winged shoes and had in consequence dawdled away a whole week in company with Venus not having dreamed that it was that crafty goddess herself who, wishing for a pair of them, had sent one of Mercury's shoes down to Ashburton for a pattern. Venus confesses her peccadillo and offers a descent to the Devonshire borough with her lover and see what can have become of the ethereal shoe. As they reach the ground they meet with an ill-favored boot of leather which acknowledges that it has ill-treated the delicate slipper of Mercury. This boot, of course, is Gifford who had been a shoemaker's apprentice in Ashburton. Mercury curses this unsightly object and part of his malediction may hear be, quote, I hear someone say, quote, Marene take him the ape, end quote, and so Marene shall, in a bookseller's shape, an evil-eyed elf in a down-looking flurry who would feign be a cockscomb and calls himself Murray. Adorn thou his door like the sign of the shoe for court-understrapers to congregate to, for so they to come in his dearth of invention and eat his own words for mock praise and a pension, for Croker to lurk with his spider-like limb in and stock his lean bag with way-laying the women. And Jove only knows for what creatures beside to shelter their envy in dust-liking pride and feed on corruption like bats who at nights, in the dark, take their shuffles, which they call, then, flights. Be these the court critics and vamp a review. And by a poor figure, and therefore a true, for it suits with eye-nature both shoelike and slaughterly, be its Hugh Leathern and title the Quarterly, much misconduct, and see that the others misdeem and misconstrue like miscreant brothers, misquote and misplace and mislead and misstate, misapply, misinterpret, misrecon, misedate, misrecon, misdate, misinform, misconjecture, misargue. In short, miss all that is good, that ye miss not the court. And finally, thou, O my old soul of the tritical, noting, translating, high-slavish, hot-critical, Quarterly scutching, great air to each dunce, be tibbled, cook, arnell, and Dennis at once. End quote. At the end, Mercury dunes the ugly boot to take the semblance of a man, and the satire closes with its painful metamorphosis into Gifford. The poem is not without cleverness, but it is chiefly remarkable for a savage tone, which is not, we think, repeated elsewhere throughout the writings of Hunt. The allusions to Gifford's relations nearly have a century earlier to that Earl Rovner who first rescued him from poverty, the well-deserved scorn of his intolerable sneers at Perdita Robinson's crutches, quote, hate woman, thou block in the path of fair feet, if fate want a hand to distress them, thine be it. When the great, in their flourishing vices are mentioned, say people, quote, impute, end quote, hm, and show thou art pension. But meet with a Prince's old mistress discarded, and then let the world see how vice is rewarded, end quote. The indications to the satirist's acquaintance with the private life of his victim, all these must have stung the editor of the Quarterly to the quick, and are very little in Hunt's usual manner, though he had examples for them in Peter Pindar and others. There is a very early allusion to, quote, Mr. Keats Mr. Shelley, end quote, where, quote, calm, up above thee, they soar, and they shine, end quote. This was written immediately after the review of Endymion in the Quarterly. At the close is printed an extremely vigorous onslaught of hazlets upon Gifford, which is better known than the poem which it illustrates. In itself, in its preface and in its notes, alike, this very rare pamphlet presents us with a genuine curiosity of literature. End of chapter 23