 Chapter 8 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 8, A Sensor of Poets. The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets, or The Honor of Parnassus. In a brief essay of the works and writings of above 200 of them, from the time of King William the Conqueror, to the reign of his present majesty, King James II. Written by William Winstanley. Licensed June 16th, 1686. London. Printed by H. Clark for Samuel Manship at the sign of the Black Bull in Cornhill. 1687. A maxim which it would be well for ambitious critics to chalk up on the walls of their workshops is this. Never mind whom you praise, but be very careful whom you blame. Most critical reputations have struck on the reef of some poet or novelist, whom the Great Sensor, in his proud old age, has thought he might disdain with impunity. Who recollects the admirable treatises of John Dennis, acute, learned, sympathetic? To us, he is merely the sore old bear who was too stupid to perceive the genius of Pope. The grace and discrimination lavished by Francis Geoffrey over a thousand pages, way like a feather, beside one sentence about Wordsworth's excursion in one tasteless sneer at Charles Lamb. Even the mighty figure of Sonberg totters at the whisper of the name Balzac. Even Matthew Arnold would have been wiser to have taken counsel with himself before he laughed at Shelley. And the very unimportant but sincere and interesting writer whose book occupies us today is in some respects the crowning instance of the rule. His literary existence has been sacrificed by a single outburst of petulant criticism which was not even literary, but purely political. The only passage of Winstanley's lives of the English poets, which is ever quoted, is the paragraph which refers to Milton, who, when it appeared, had been dead 13 years. It runs thus, quote, John Milton was one whose natural parts might deservedly give him a place amongst the principle of our English poets, having written two heroic poems and a tragedy, namely Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonista. But his fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff and his memory will always stink, which might have ever lived an honorable repute had not he been a notorious traitor and most impiously and villainously belied that blessed martyr King Charles I, end quote. Mr. Winstanley does not leave us in any doubt of his own political bias and his mode is simply infamous. It is the roughest and most unpardonable expression, now extant, of the prejudice generally felt against Milton in London after the restoration, a prejudice which even Dryden, who in his heart knew better, could not wholly resist. This one sentence is all that most readers of 17th century literature know about Winstanley and it is not surprising that it has created an objection to him. I forget who it was among the critics of the beginning of this century who was accustomed to buy copies of the lives of the English poets wherever he could pick them up and burn them in piety to the angry spirit of Milton. This was certainly more sensible conduct than that of the Italian nobleman who used to build manuscripts of Marshall into little pires and consume them with spices to express his admiration of Catullus. But no one can wonder that the world has not forgiven Winstanley for that atrocious phrase about Milton's fame having, quote, gone out like a candle in a snuff so that his memory will always stink, end quote. No, Mr. William Winstanley, it is your own name that smells so very unpleasantly. Yet I am paradoxical enough to believe that poor Winstanley never wrote these sentences which have destroyed his fame. To support my theory it is needful to recount the knowledge we possess of his life. He is said to have been a barber and to have risen by his exertions with the razor, but against that legend is to be posed the fact that on the titles of his earliest books dedicated to public men who must have known, he styles himself Jett. The dates of his birth and death are, I believe, a matter of conjecture, but the lives of the English poets are the latest of his books and the earliest was published in 1660. This is his England's Worthies, a group of what we should call today biographical studies. The longest and the most interesting of these is one on Oliver Cromwell, a tone of which is almost grossly laudatory, although published at the very moment of restoration. Now it is a curious and at first sight a very disgraceful fact that in 1684 when the book of England's Worthies was reissued, all the praise of Republicans was cancelled and abuse substituted for it. And then, in 1687, came the lives of the English poets with its horrible attack on Milton. The character of Wyn Stanley seems to be as base as any on literary record. I have come to the conclusion, however, that Wyn Stanley was guilty neither of retracting what he said about Cromwell nor of slandering Milton. A black woman excused her husband for not answering the bell, "'Cause he's dead!' and the excuse was considered valid. I hope that when these interpolations were made, poor Wyn Stanley was dead. Anyone who reads the lives of the English poets carefully will be impressed with two facts. First, that the author had an acquaintance with the early versifiers of Great Britain, which was quite extraordinary and which can hardly be found at fault by our modern knowledge. Well, secondly, that he shows a sudden and unaccountable ignorance of his immediate contemporaries at the younger school. Except Campion, who was a discovery of our own day, not a single Elizabethan or Jacobean Rhymester of the second or third rank escapes his notice. Among the writers of a still later generation, I miss no names save those of Vaughan, who was very obscure in his own lifetime, and Marvell, who would be excluded by the same prejudice which mocked at Milton. But among poets of the Restoration, men and women who were in their full fame in 1687, the omissions are quite startling. Not a word is here about Otway, Lee, or Crown. Butler is not mentioned, nor the matchless Orinda, nor Ross Common, nor Sir Charles Sedley. A careful examination of the dates of works which Wynne Stanley refers to produces a curious result. There is not mentioned, so far as I can trace, a single poem or play which is published later than 1675, although the date on the title page of the Lives of the English Poets is 1687. Rather an elaborate list of Dryden's publications is given, but it stops at Amboyna, 1673. On this I think it is not too bold to build a theory, which may last until Wynne Stanley's entry of burial is discovered in some country church, after 1675. If this were the case, the recantations in his English wordies of 1684 would be so many posthumous outrages committed on his blameless tomb, and the infamous sentence about Milton may well have been foisted into a posthumous volume by the same wicked hand. If we could think that Samuel Manship, at the sign of the Black Bull, was the obsequious rogue who did it, it would be one more sin to be numbered against the sad race of publishers. In studying old books about the poets, it sometimes occurs to us to wonder whether the readers of 200 years ago appreciated the same qualities in good verse which are now admired. Did the ringing and romantic cadences of Shakespeare affect their senses as they do ours? We know that they praised Shakespeare, but was it ''Ask me no more where June bestows?'' and ''Hast thou seen the down in the air?'' which gave them pleasure. It would sometimes seem from the phrases they use and the passages they quote that if poetry was the same two centuries ago, its readers had very different ears from ours. Of Herrick, when Stanley says that he was, quote, ''one of the scholars of Apollo of the middle form, yet something above George Withers in a pretty flowery and pastoral gale of fancy, in a vernal prospect of some hill, cave, rock, or fountain, which but for the interruption of other trivial passages might have made up none of the worst poetic landscapes.'' And then he quotes, as a sample of Herrick, a tiresome, quote, ''epigram'' end quote, in the poet's worst style. This is not delicate or acute criticism, as we judge nowadays, but I would give a good deal to meet Winston Lee at a coffee house and go through the Hesperides with him over a dish of chocolate. It would be wonderfully interesting to discover which passages in Herrick really struck the witch as trivial, but this is just what all 17th century criticism even Dryden's omits to explain to us. The personal note in poetical criticism, the appeal to definite taste to the experience of eye and ear, is not met with even in suggestion, until we reach the pamphlets of John Dennis. The particular copy of Winston Lee, which lies before me, is a novel one. I owe it to the generosity of a friend in Chicago who hoards rare books and yet has the greatness of soul sometimes to part with them. It is interleaved, and the blank pages are rather densely inscribed with notes in the handwriting of Dr. Thomas Percy, the poetical bishop of Dromor. From his hands it passed into those of John Bowyer Nichols, the antiquary. Percy's notes are little more references to other authorities, memoranda for one of his own useful compilations, yet it is pleasant to have even a slight personal relic of so admirable a man. Mr. Riviere has bound the volume for me, and I suppose that poor rejected Winston Lee exists nowhere else in so elegant a shape. End of chapter 8. Chapter 9 of the dictionary. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eugene Smith. Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss. Chapter 9. The Romance of a Dictionary. Histoire de l'Académie Françoise avec nos Brèges de Vie du Coordinal de Richelieu, Vrogelat, Cornet, Ablancourt, Maiserai, Wattour, Patrou, La Frontaine, Boileau, Racine, et autres illustres académiciennes qui l'accomposant. à la haie 1688. It is not often in these days when the pastime of bibliography is reduced to a science that one is rewarded as one so often was a quarter of a century ago by picking up an unregarded treasure on the bookstalls. But the other day I really had a pleasant little find. And it was the reward of virtue. It came of having a tender heart. My eye caught what Mr. Austin Dobson would call, quote, a dear and dumpy twelve, end quote, lying open upon other books faced downward in the most agnominious posture. I saw at a glance from the tooling on its faded and half broken back that it was French and of the 17th century and that somebody had prized it once. I could read the lettering Académie Francoise and I gave the pence which were wanted for it. It proved a most rewarding little volume. It was published at the Hague in 1688 in the edition of the Histoire de l'Académie Française. A preface says that, quote, for the honor of our nation, end quote, the French presumably not the Dutch, the publisher has thought it proper to issue an edition, quote, more correct and more elegant, end quote, than has hitherto been seen brought down to date with many new and curious pieces. Among other things, the publisher thinks that, quote, the English will not be displeased to see the panegyric, end quote, of King Louis XIV, quote, admirably rendered in their language by a person of their nation, end quote. But what immediately caught my attention and filled me with delight was an absolutely contemporary account written specially for this 1688 edition of the great quarrel between the French Academy Abbe Fouretier, of this I propose to speak today. We live in an age of dictionaries and encyclopedias which we look upon as universal panaceas for culture. There was a similar rage for dictionaries in France 250 years ago. We may very rapidly remind ourselves that the French Academy was constituted in 1634 with 35 members of a stationary and immortal 40 in 1639. One of its original functions was the preparation of a great dictionary of the French language under the special care of the eminent grammarian Voguella who had through his lifetime made collections, quote, various beautiful and curious observations, end quote, as Pelicin calls them, towards a reasoned philological study of French. The poet Chapellein was appointed a sort of general editor of the projected dictionary which was solemnly started earlier in 1638. For the next four years the academicians were very active spurred on by Richelieu but when in 1642 the Cardinal died their zeal relented and when in 1650 Voguella's presence ceased to urge them forward and just flagged all together. Voguella died bankrupt and his creditors seized his writing desks, the drawers of which contained a great part of the manuscript collections for the dictionary. It was only after a lawsuit that the Academy recovered those papers and Mésoré was then set to continue the editing of the work. Still twice a week the Academy met to consult about the dictionary but so languidly and with so little fire that Guadeloupe said that not the youngest of the 40 could hope to live to print the letter G. As a matter of fact not one of those who started the dictionary lived to see it published. In this slow fashion with long, ripped then winkle slumbers and occasional faint awakenings the French Academy faltered on with fitful persistence toward the completion of its famous dictionary. But as I have said it was a period of great enthusiasm about all such summaries of knowledge and Paris was thirsting for grammars, lexicons inventories of language and the like. The Academy insisted that the world must wait for the approach of their vast and lumbering machine. But meanwhile public curiosity was impatient and all sorts of brief and imperfect dictionaries were issued to satisfy it. The publication of these spurious guides to knowledge infuriated the Academy until in 1674 the dog permanently occupied the manger by inducing the king to issue a degree forbidding all printers and publishers to print any new dictionary of the French language under any title whatsoever until the publication of that of the French Academy or until 20 years have expired since the proclamation of the present decree. This cut the ground from under the feet of all rivals and the Academy could meet twice a week as before and mumble its definitions with serene assurance. From this false security it was aroused by the incidents which my dumpy 12 recounts. It was from the very heart of their own body that the great attack upon their privileges unexpectedly fell upon the academicians. In 1662 they had elected in the place of Duboisa a very obscure original member, the abbey of Chalevoy, Antoine Fouretier. This man, born in Paris of poor parents in 1619 had raised himself to eminence as an orientalist and grammarian and was welcomed among the forties likely to be particularly helpful to them in their dictionary work. He was probably one of those men whose true character does not come out until they attain success. But no sooner was Fouretier an immortal that he began to distinguish himself in unanticipated ways. He proved himself an adept in parody and satire and so long as he contented himself with laughing at people like Charles Sorel the author of François who had no friends the academicians were calm and amused but Fouretier was not merely the author of that extremely amusing medley Le Romain Bourgeois 1666 which still holds its place in French literature as a minor classic but he was also a real student of philology and one of those who most ardently desired to see the settlement of the canon of French language it incensed him beyond words that his colleagues dawdled so endlessly over their committees and their definitions he began to make collections of his own no doubt at first with the perfectly loyal intention of adding them to the common store meanwhile he lashed the rest of the academy with his tongue other academicians did this also such men as Patroux and Bois d'Aubert but they had not Fouretier's nasty way of putting things one perceives that about the year 1680 the sarcasms of Fouretier had really become something more than the rest of the immortals could put up with he delivered himself into their hands and here my little volume takes up the tale on the 3rd of January 1685 the French Academy met to mourn the death of its most illustrious member the great Pierre Cornet and to elect his younger brother to take his place while the members were chatting together their librarian handed about among them copies of a privilege which had just been obtained by the Abbey Fouretier to publish a universal dictionary containing generally all French words old as well as modern and the terms employed in all arts and sciences so declares my little book but it would seem that the officers of the academy at least a week earlier had their attention drawn to what Fouretier was doing perhaps it was not until the election of Thomas Cornet that an opportunity occurred of making the members generally aware of it one wonders whether Fouretier himself was present on the 3rd of January if so what puddings of periwigs together there must have been in corners and what taps of gold headed canes on lace-filled cuffs it was felt as my little volume puts it that quote it is surprising in the face of the monopoly which that body had secured that Fouretier was able to obtain a privilege for his own dictionary but in all probability as he was one of the 40 a censor supposed that he was acting in concert with his colleagues then began a hearing of the Abbey Fouretier who had been a member of the Abbey Fouretier then began a hue and cry with which the learned world of Paris rang for months never was such a scandal never such a rain of pamphlets and lampoons on one side and the other one has only to glance at the contemporary portraits of Fouretier to see that he was not the man to yield a point his wrinkled face looks the very mirror of sarcastic obstinacy and ill nature the academy in solemn session appointed Rainier de Marais the secretary to wait on the chancellor to demand the canceling of Fouretier's privilege but the Abbey had powerful friends also and by their help the chancellor's action was delayed while Fouretier hurried out a specimen of his work he says in the preface that no author ever had a more pressing need for the protection of a prince than he has who sees the labour of years about to be sacrificed to the envy of others he goes on to explain that he has never dreamed of interfering with the work of the academy for which he has the greatest possible respect but that he only hopes to render service to the public by supplementing its labours the academy in fact had expressly declined to include in its dictionary the technical terms of art and science with ease that Fouretier has occupied his answer to those who accuse him of stealing from the unpublished cahier of the academy is the uniformity of his work from A to Z whereas if he had stolen from his colleagues he must have stopped at OP which was the point they had reached in 1684 the academy was not pacified and began to take counsel how they could turn Fouretier out of their body there was no precedent for such a degradation but a parallel was sought for in the fact that the Sorbonne had successfully ejected one of its most famous doctors Arnaud meanwhile the suit went on the 39 versus the 1 Fouretier is said to have bowed for a moment beneath the storm offering to blend his work in the general dictionary the academy or to remove from it words not admitted to deal technically with art and science but passion had gone too far and on the 22nd of January 1685 at a general meeting 20 academicians being present Fouretier was expelled from the body by a majority of 19 to 1 it is believed that the one who voted for mercy was the most illustrious of all Racine Fouretier also defended the abbey and when the matter came at last so serious that the king himself was obliged to take cognizance of it it was understood that his sympathies also were with Fouretier my little volume written I think in 1687 does not know anything about the expulsion which was therefore probably secret it says quote as to Monsieur Fouretier he no longer puts in an appearance at the meetings of the academy but it is not known whether any other ackham addition is to be elected in his place as a matter of fact the society hesitated to go so far as this and the seat was left vacant not for long however the unanimous rancor of so many men of influence and rank had successfully ruined the fortune and broken the spirit of the old piratical lexicographer before retiring into private life however he poured out in his couche de l'académie a torrent of poison which was distilled through the presses of Amsterdam in 1687 one of his earlier colleagues at the academy supplied the bankrupt man with the necessaries of life until on the 14th of May 1688 probably just as the dump B12 was passing through the press he died in Paris like a rat in a hole his dictionary being suppressed in France was edited after his death in 1690 at the Hague in Rotterdam and enjoyed a great success we learned from a letter of Racine to Boileau that in 1694 the publisher ventured to offer a copy of a new addition of it to the king of France which he graciously received if the poor old man could have struggled on a little longer he might have lived to see himself become fashionable and successful again with all his misfortunes he managed to beat the academy for that body in spite of its superhuman efforts did not contrive to publish its dictionary till four years after the appearance of Fouretiers the latter is a great curiosity of lexicography a vast storehouse of peculiar and rare information it is always consulted by scholars but never without a recollection of the extraordinary struggle which its authors sustained single-handed against the world and in which he fell overpowered by numbers only to triumph after all in the ashes of his fame End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 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 10 Lady Winchelsea's Poems Miscellany Poems with two plays by Ardelia I never list presumed to Parnass Hill but piping low in shade of lowly grove I play to please myself albeit ill Spencer Shepherd Cal June Manuscript in Folio Circa 1696 There is no other book in my library to which I feel that I possess so clear a presumptive right as to this manuscript Other rare volumes would more fitly adorn the collections of bibliophiles more learned more genius more elegant than I But if there is any person in the two hemispheres who has so fair a clean upon the ghost of Ardelia let that man stand forth Ardelia was uncultivated and unsung when I constituted myself years ago her champion With the exception of noble fragment of laudation from Wordsworth her praise from any modern critic had stirred the ashes of her name I made it my business to insist in many places on the talent of Ardelia I gave her for the first time a chance of challenging public taste by presenting to readers of Mr. Ward's English Poets many pages of extracts from her writings and I hope it is not indiscreet to say that when the third volume of that compilation appeared Mr. Matthew Arnold told me that its greatest revelation to himself had been the singular merit of this lady Such being my claim on the consideration of Ardelia, no one will I think grudge me the possession of this unknown volume of her works in manuscript It came into my hands by a strange coincidence In his brief life of Anne Finch Countess of Winchelsea for that was Ardelia's real name Theophilus Gibber says a great number of our author's poems still continue unpublished in the hands of the Reverend Mr. Creek In 1884 I saw advertised in an obscure book list a folial volume of old manuscript poetry Something excited my curiosity and I sent for it It proved to be a vast collection of the poems of my beloved Anne Finch I immediately communicated with the bookseller and asked him whence it came He replied that it had been sold with furniture, pictures, and books at the dispersing of the effects of a family of the name of Creek Thank you divine Ardelia It was well done It was worthy of you Anne Finch Countess of Winchelsea is not a commanding figure in history, but she isn't isolated in a well-defined one She is what one of the precursors of Shakespeare calls a diminutive excelsitude She was entirely out of sympathy with her age and her talent was hampered and suppressed by her conditions She was the solitary writer of actively developed romantic tastes between marble and gray and she was not strong enough to create an atmosphere for herself within the vacuum in which she languished The facts of her life are extremely scanty, although they may now be considerably augmented by the help of my portfolio She was born about 1660, the daughter of a Hampshire baronet She was made of honor to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York and at court she met Henniege Finch, who was gentleman of the bedchamber to the Duke They married in 1685 probably on the occasion of the enthronement of their master and mistress and when the crash came in 1688 they fled together to the retirement of Eastwell Park They inhabited this mansion for the rest of their lives although it was not until the death of his nephew in 1712 that Henniege Finch became 4th Earl of Winchelsey In 1713 Anne was at last persuaded to publish the selection of her poems and in 1720 she died as a well-survivor until 1746 My manuscript was written I think in or about the year 1696 that is to say when Mrs. Finch was in retirement from the court she has adopted the habit of writing be trade by solitude to try amusements which the prosperous fly But her exile from the world in this quietude it seems almost an answer to her prayer Years before when she was at the center of fashion in the court of James II she had written in an epistle to the countess of Fanny quote give me oh indulgent fate give me yet before I die a sweet but absolute retreat monk's path so lost and trees so high that the world may nare shade my unshaken liberty end quote this was a sentiment rarely expressed and still more rarely felt by English ladies at the close of the 17th century what their real opinion usually was is clothed in crude and ready language by the heroines of witcherly in Shadwell like Lucia in the comedy of Epsom Wells to live out of London was to live in a wilderness of wolves as one's companions alone in that age Anne Finch truly loved the country for its own sake and had an eye to observe its features she had one trouble constitutional low spirits she was a terrible sufferer from what was then known as the spleen she wrote a long pindaric ode on the spleen which was printed in miscellany and was her first introduction to the public she talks much about her melancholy in her verses but with singular good sense she recognized that it was physical and she tried various nostrums either tea or coffee or ratatthya did her the least service quote in vain to chase the every art I try in vain all remedies apply in vain the Indian leaf infused or the parched eastern berry bruise or pass in vain those bounds and nobler lickers use end quote her neurasthenia threw a cloud over her waking hours and took sleep from her eyelids at night quote how shall I woo thee gentle rest to a sad mind with cares oppressed by what soft means powers into my soul tonight yet gentle sleep if thou wilt come such darkness shall prepare the room as thy own palace overspreads thy palace stored with peaceful beds and silence too shall on thee wait deep as in the Turkish state whilst still as death I will be found my arms by one another bound so closed shall be as if already sealed by thee end quote she tried a course of the waters at Tunbridge Wells but without a veil when the abhorred fit came on the world was darkened to her only two things could relieve her the soothing influence of solitude with nature and the muses or the sympathetic presence of her husband she disdained her old feminine arts of her age quote nor will in fading silks compose faintly the inimitable rose fill up an ill drawn bird or paint on glass the sovereign's blurred and indistinguished face the threatening angel and the speaking ass end quote but she will wander at sundown through the exquisite woods at eastwell and will watch the outlets in their downy nest where the nightingale silhouetted against the fading sky then her constitutional depression passes and she is able once more to be happy quote our sighs are then but vernal air but apel drops our tears end quote as she says in delicious numbers that might be words worths own in these delightful moments released from the burden of her tyrant malady her eyes seem to have been touched with the herb euphraezy and she has the gift denied to the rest of her generation of seeing nature and describing what she sees in these moods this contemporary of dryden and congrief gives us such accurate transcripts of country life as the following quote when the loosed horse now as his pasture leads comes slowly grazing through the adjoining means whose stealing face and length and shade we fear till torn up forage in his teeth we hear when nibbling sheep at large pursue their food an unmolested kind re-chew the cud when curlers cry beneath the village walls and to her straggling brew the partridge calls end quote in eastwell park there was a hill called Parnassas to which she was particularly partial and to this she commonly turned her footsteps melancholy as she was however and devoted to reverie she could be gay enough upon occasion and her sprightly poems have a genuine sparkle here is an acreontic written quote for my brother Leslie Finch end quote which has never before been printed quote from the park and the play and white hall come away to the punchbowl by far more inviting than the bow leave those dull empty shows and see here what is truly delighting the half-globed is in figure and would it were bigger yet here's the whole universe floating here's titles and places rich lands and fairer faces and all that is worthy are doting to as a world like to this the hot grecian did miss of whom histories keep such a bother to the bottom he sunk and when he had drunk and wept for another end quote at another point and Finch bore very little likeness to her noisy sisterhood of fashion in an age when it was the height of ill-breeding for a wife to admit a partiality for her husband Ardelia was not ashamed to confess that daftness for so she styled the excellent any age Finch absorbed her for a mind that was not occupied by the muses it is a real pleasure to transcribe for the first time since they were written on the 2nd of April 1685 these honest couplets quote this to the crown and blessing of my life the much loved husband of a happy wife to him whose constant passion found the art to win a stubborn and ungrateful heart and to the world by tenderest proof discovers they err who say that husbands can't be lovers with such return of passion as is due daftness I love daftness my thoughts pursue daftness my hopes my joys are bound at all in you end quote nearly 30 years later the same accent is audible to end a little by advancing years viewed from passion to tenderness yet as genuine as at first when at length the Earl began to suffer from the gout his faithful family songster recorded that also in your amiable verse and prayed that quote the bad disease may you but brief unfrequent visits find to prove you patient your ardelia kind end quote no one can read her sensitive verses and not be sure that she was the sweetest and most soothing of bedside visitants it was a quiet life which daftness and ardelia spent in the recesses of Eastwell Park they saw a little company and paid few visits it was a stately excursion now and then to the hospitable Tynes at Longleet and Anne Finch seldom omitted to leave behind her a metrical tribute to the beauties of that mansion they seem to have kept up little connection with the court or with London there was no trace of literary society in this volume Nicholas Rowe twice set down for their perusal translations which he had made and from another source we learned that Lady Winchelsie had a brisk passage of compliments with Pope but these were rare incidents we have rather to think of the long years spent in this occlusion of Eastwell by these gentle impoverished people of quality the husband occupied with his mathematical studies his painting the care of his garden the wife studying further afield in her romantic reverie watching the birds in the wild corners of her park carrying her tasso hidden in a fold of redress to a dell so remote that she forgets the way back and has to be carried home in a water-cart driven by one of the underkeepers in his green coat with a hazel bow for a whip end quote is a little oasis of delicate and pensive refinement in that hot close of the 17th century when so many unseenly monsters were bellowing in the social wilderness end of chapter 10 chapter 11 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 11 Amazia Amazia or the works of the muses a collection of poems in three volumes by Mr. John Hopkins London printed by Thomas Warren for Bennett Banbury at the Blue Anchor in the lower walk of the new exchange 1700 it has often been remarked that if the author of the poorest collection of minor verse would accurately relate in his quavering numbers what his personal observations and adventures have been his book would not be entirely without value but 99 times out of 100 this is precisely what he cannot do his rhymes carry him whether he would not and he is lost in a fog of imitated phrases and spurious sensations a very odd and very rare set of three little volumes which now come before us offer a curious exception to this rule the author of Amazia was no poet but he possessed the faculty of writing with exactitude about himself he prattled on in heroic couplets from hour to hour recording the tiny incidents of his life at first sight his voluble miscellany seems a mere wilderness of tame verses but when we examine it closely a story gradually evolves we come to know John Hopkins and live in the intimacy of his circle his poems contain a novel in solution so far as I can discover nothing whatever is known of him say what he reveals of himself and no one I think has ever searched his three uninviting volumes in the following paragraphs I have put together his story as it is to be found in the pages of Amazia by a single illusion to the epistolary poems of Charles Hopkins quote very well performed by my brother in 1694 we are able to identify the author of Amazia with certainty he was the second son of the right reverend Ezekiel Hopkins Lord Bishop of Derry the elder brother whom we have mentioned Charles was considerably his senior for six years the latter occupied a tolerably prominent place in London literary society was the intimate friend of Dryden and Congreve published three or four plays not without success and possessed a name which is pretty frequently met with in books of the time but to John Hopkins I have discovered scarcely an illusion he does not seem to have moved in his brother's circle and his society was probably more courtly than literary if we may trust his own account the author of Amazia was born doubtless at London Derry on the first of January 1675 he was therefore only 25 when his poems were published and the exquisitely affected portrait which adorns the first volume must represent him as younger still since it was executed by the Dutch engraver F.H. van Hove who was found murdered in October 1698 pause a moment dear reader and observe Mr. John Hopkins alias Sylveus set out with all the artillery of ornament to storm the heart of Amazia notice his embroidered silken coat his splendid lace cravat a languishment of his large foolish eyes the indubitable touch of Spanish red on those smooth cheeks but above all contemplate the wonders of his vast perook he has a name be sure for every portion of that killing structure those sausage shaped curls close to the ears are confidant those that dangle around the temples father eat the sparkling lock that descends alone over the right eyebrow is the Passeger and above all the gorgeous knot that unites the curls and descends on the left breast his aptly name the Murtrière if he would but turn his head we should see his crevque the two delicate curled locks at the nape of his neck the escutcheon below his portrait bears very suitably three loaded muskets rampant such was soulless conquering but alas not to conquer the youth of John Hopkins was passed in the best Irish society his father the bishop married apparently in second ventures for John speaks not of her as a man speaks of his mother the daughter of the girl of Radner Lady Araminta Hopkins seems to have been a friend of Isabella Duchess of Grafton the exquisite girl who at the age of five had married a bride room of nine and at 23 was left a widow to be the first toast in English society the poems of John Hopkins are dedicated to this Dowager Duchess who when they were published had already for two years been the wife of Sir Thomas Hanmer at the age of 12 and probably in Dublin Hopkins met the mysterious lady who animates these volumes under the name of Amazia who was Amazia that alas even the volubility of her lover does not reveal but she was Irish the daughter of a wealthy and perhaps titled personage and the intimate companion for many years of the beautiful Duchess of Grafton love did not begin at first sight Sylveus played with Amazia when they both were children and neither thought of love later on in early youth the poet was devoted only to a male friend one Martin to him ecstatic verses are inscribed quote oh Martin, Martin let the grateful sound reach to that heaven which has our friendship crowned and like our endless friendship meet no bound quote but alas one day Martin came back after a long absence and although he still quote with generous kind continued friendship burned he found Sylveus entirely absorbed by Amazia Martin knew better than to show temper he accepted the situation and quote the loved Amazia's health flew round Amazia's health golden goblets crowned end quote now began the first and happiest portion of the story Amazia had no suspicion of the feelings of the poet and he was only too happy to be permitted to watch her movements he records in successive copies of verses the various things she did he seems to have been on terms of delightful intimacy with the lady and he calls all sorts of people of the highest position to witness how he suffered to Lady Sandwich our dedicated poems on quote Amazia drawing her own picture end quote on quote Amazia playing with a clouded fan end quote on quote Amazia singing and sticking pins in a red silk pin cushion end quote we are told how Amazia quote looked at me through a multiplying glass end quote how she was troubled with a redness in her eyes how she danced before a looking glass how her flowered muslin nightgown or night rail as he calls it took fire and how though she promised to sing yet she never performed we have a poem on the circumstance that Amazia quote having picked me with a pin accidentally scratched herself with it end quote and another on her asking me if I slept well after so tempestuous a night end quote but perhaps the most intimate of all is a poem quote to Amazia tickling a gentleman end quote it was no perfunctory tickling that Amazia administered quote while round his sides your nimble fingers played with pleasing softness did they swiftly rove while at each touch they made his heartstrings move as round his breast his ravished breasts they crowd we hear their music when he laughs aloud end quote this is probably the only instance in literature in which a gentleman has complacently celebrated in verse the fact that his lady love has tickled some other gentlemen but this generous simplicity was not long to last in 1690 Hopkins father the bishop had died we may conjecture that Lady Araminta took charge of the boy and that his home in vacation time was with her in Dublin or London he writes like a youth who has always been petted the fru fru of fine ladies petticoats is heard in all his verses but he had no fortune and no prospects he was utterly he confesses without ambition the stern papa of Amazia had no notion of bestowing her on the penniless Sylveus and when the latter began to court her in earnest she rebuffed him she tore up his love letters she teased him by sending her black page to the window when he was ogling for her in the street below she told him he was too young for her and although she had no objection to pressing verses to her she gave him no serious encouragement she was to be married to someone of her own right some rich quote country booby at last early in 1698 in company with the Duchess of Grafton and possibly on the occasion of the second marriage of the latter Amazia was taken off to France and Hopkins never saw her again a year later he received news of her death and his little romance was over he became ill and Dr. Gibbons a great fashionable physician of the day was called in to attend him the third volume closes by his summoning the faithful and un-upgrading Martin back to his heart quote love lives in sunshine or that storm despair a gentle friendship a moderate air end quote and so Sylveas with all his galaxy of lovely Irish ladies his fashionable muses and his trite and tortured fantasy disappears into thin air the only literary man whom he mentions as a friend is George Farquhar himself a native of London Mary and about the same age as Hopkins this playwright seems to be sometimes alluded to as daftness sometimes under his own name before the performance of love and a bottle Hopkins prophesied for the author a place where quote the great triumvirate of comic wit end quote and later on he thought that even Collier himself ought to commend the constant couple or trip to the jubilee at the first performance of this play at the close of 1699 Hopkins was greatly perturbed by the presence of a lady who reminded him of Amazia and when he visited the theater next he was less pleased with the play he had a vague and implicit scheme for turning paradise lost into rhyme these are the only traces of literary bias in other respects Hopkins is interested in nothing more serious than a lock of Amazia's hair a china cup she had quote round the sides of which were painted trees and at the bottom a naked woman weeping her box of patches in which she finds a silver penny or the needlework embroidered on her gown when Amazia died there was no reason why Sylvia should continue to exist that he phase out of our vision like a ghost of chapter 11 chapter 12 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 12 love and business love and business in a collection of occasional reverse and epistolary prose published by Mr. George Farquhar London printed for B. Lintott at the post house in the middle temple gate fleet street 1702 there are some books like some people of whom we form an indulgent opinion without finding it easy to justify our liking the young man went to the life insurance office and reported that his father had died of no particular disease but just a plain death would sympathize with the feeling I mentioned sometimes we like a book not for any special merit but just because it is what it is the rare and yet not celebrated miscellaneous of which I'm about to write has this character it is not instructive or very high toned but if it were a man all people that are not prigs would say that it was a very good sort of fellow if it be as it certainly is a literary advantage for a nondescript collection of trifles to reproduce minutely the personality of its writer then love and business has one definite merit wherever we dip into its pages we may use it as a telephone young Englishman of the year 1700 talking to himself and to his friends in the most unaffected accents Captain George Farquhar in 1702 was 4 and 20 years of age he was a smart soldier like Irishman of quote a splenetic and amorous complexion end quote half an actor a quarter a poet and all together a very honest and gallant gentleman taken to the stage kindly enough and at 21 had written love and a bottle since then two other plays the constant couple and Sir Harry Wildair had proved that he had wit and fancy and knew how to knit them together into a rattling comedy but he was poor always in pursuit of that timid wild fowl the occasional guinea and with no sort of disposition to settle down into a heavy citizen in order to bring down a few brace of golden game he shovels into Lintott's hands his stray verses of all kinds a bundle of letters he wrote from Holland a dignified essay or discourse upon comedy and with questionable taste perhaps a set of copies of the love letters he had addressed to the lady who became his wife all this is not very praise worthy and as a contribution to literature it is slight indeed but then how genuine and sincere how guileless and picturesque is the self-revelation of it there is no attempt to make things better than they are nor any pandering to a cynical taste by making them worse why should he conceal or falsify the town knows what sort of a fellow George Parkour is here are some letters and some verses the bow at whites may read them if they will throw them away as we turn the desultory pages the figure of the author rises before us, woodnatured easygoing, high colored not bad looking with an air of a gentleman in spite of his misfortunes we do not know the exact details of his military honors we may think of him as swaggering in scarlet regimentals but we have his own word for it that he was often in mufti his mind is generally dressed he says, like his body in black for though he is so brisk a spark in company he suffers sadly from the spleen when he is alone we can follow him pretty closely through his day he is a queer mixture of profanity and piety of coarseness and loyalty of cleverness and density we do not breathe this kind of bow nowadays and yet we might do worse where this specimen is a man he dresses carefully in the morning in his uniform or else in his black suit when he wants to be specially smart as for instance when he designs a conquest at a birthday party he has to ferret out among the pawn brokers for scraps of finery or secure on loan a fair full bottom wig but he is not so impoverished that he cannot on these occasions give his valet and his barber plenty of work to do preparing his face with razors perfumes and washes he would like to be surfopling flutter if he could afford it and gazes a little enviously at that noble creature in his French clothes as he lounges luxuriously past him in his coats with six before and six behind poor captain Farquhar begins to expect that he himself will never be quote a first rate bow end quote so uncommon mornings a little splenetic he wanders down to the coffee houses and reads the pamphlets those which find King William Glorious and those that rail at the watery Dutch he will even be a little Jacobite-ish for a pure faupery and have a fling at the church but in his heart he is with the ministry he meets a friend at Whites and they adjourn presently to the fleece tavern where the drawer brings them a bottle of new French and a neat stone over which they discuss the doctrine of predestination so hotly that two mackerel vendors burst in mistaking their lifted voices for a cry for fish his friend has business in the city and so our poet strolls off to the park and takes a turn in the mall with his hat in his hand prepared for an adventure or chat with a friend then comes the play the inevitable early play still even in 1700 apt to be so ranked-lipped that respectable ladies could only appear at it in masks it was a transition period and poor comedy who was saying goodbye to literature was just about to console herself with modesty however a domino may slip aside and Mr. George Farquhar notices a little lady in a deep morning mantua whose eyes are not to be forgotten she goes however it is useless to pursue her but the music raises his soul to such a pitch of passion that he is almost melancholy he strolls out into spring garden but there with envious eyes I saw every man pick up his mate whilst I alone walked like solitary Adam before the creation of his eve but the place was no paradise to me nothing I found entertaining but the nightingale end quote so that in those sweet summer evenings of 1700 over the laced and brocaded couples promenading in spring garden as over good Sir Roger 12 years later the indulgent nightingale still poured her notes today you cannot hear the very bells of St. Martins for the roar of the traffic so lonely and too easily enamored George has to be taken himself to the tavern at a passable burgundy there's no idealism about him he's very fit for repentance next morning quote the searching wine has sprung the rheumatism in my right hand my headaches, my stomach pukes end quote our poor good humored bow has no constitution for this mode of life and we know though happily he dreams not of it before he reaches 30 this picture of Farquhar's life is nowhere given in the form just related but not one touch in the portrait but is to be found somewhere in the frank and easy pages of love and business the poems are of their age and kind there is a pindaric of course it was so easy to write one and so reputable there are compliments in verse to one of the female wits who were writing then for the stage mrs. Trotter author of the fatal friendship there are amateury explanations of all kinds when he fails to keep an appointment with a lady on account of the rain where there were no umbrellas in those days he likens himself to liander, wistful on the Sestian shore he's not always very discreet Damon's thoughts when quote night's black curtain over the world was spread end quote were very innocent but such as we have decided nowadays to say nothing about it was the fashion of the time to be outspoken there is no value however in the verse except that it is graphic now and then letters are much more interesting those sent from Holland in the autumn of 1700 are very good reading I make bold to quote one passage from the first describing the storm he encountered in crossing it depicts our hero to the life with all his inconsistencies he says quote by a kind of poetical philosophy I bore up pretty well under my apprehensions though never worse prepared for death I must confess for I think I never had so much money about me at a time we had some ladies aboard that were so extremely sick that they often wished for death but were damningly afraid of being drowned but as the scripture says quote sorrow may last for a night but joy come within the morning end quote and so on the poor fellow means no harm by all this as Hodgson once said of certain remarks of Byron's the love letters are very curious it is believed that the sequel of them was a very unhappy marriage Captain Farquhar was of a loving disposition and as inflammable as a hay-rick he cannot have been much more than 21 when he described what he desired in a wife quote oh could I find he said oh could I find in great heaven that once I may a nymph, fair, kind poetical and gay whose love should blaze unsullied and divine lighted at first by the bright lamp of mine free as a mistress faithful as a wife and one that loved to fiddle as her life free from all sordid ends from interest free for my own sake affecting only me what a blessed union should our souls combine I hers alone and she be only mine end quote very exacting ideal but the poor poet missed it whether Mrs. Farquhar loved to fiddle as her life is not recorded but she certainly was not free from all sordid ends and unworthy tricks a little lady in the morning Mantua soon fell in love with our gallant spark and when he made court to her she represented herself as very wealthy the deed accomplished Mrs. Farquhar turned out to be penniless like a gentleman as he was never reproached her but sat down surefully to a double poverty in love and business the story does not proceed so far he receives Miss Penelope V's timid advances describes himself to her is soon as much in love with his little lady as she with him and is making broad demands and rich-blooded confidences in fine style like in where no harm is meant in one of the letters to Penelope we get a very interesting glance at a famous and as it happens rather obscure event the funeral of the great Dryden in May 1700 Farquhar says quote I come now from Mr. Dryden's funeral where we had an ode and chorus sung instead of David's Psalms once you may find that we don't think a poet worth Christian burial the pomp of the ceremony was a kind of rhapsody and fitter I think because the cavalcade was mostly burlesque but he was an extraordinary man and buried after an extraordinary fashion for I believe there was never such another burial scene the aurasian indeed was great and ingenious worthy the subject and like the author whose prescriptions can restore the living and his pen and bomb the dead and so much for Mr. Dryden whose burial was the same with his life a variety and not of a piece the quality and mob farce and heroics the sublime and ridicule mixed in a piece great Cleopatra in a hackney coach End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 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 13 What Anne Lang read Who was Anne Lang? Alas, I am not sure but she flourished 160 years ago under his glorious majesty George I that I have become the happy possessor of a portion of her library it consists of a number of cheap novels all published in 1723 and 1724 when Anne Lang probably bought them and each carries written on the back of the title quote Anne Lang book not 1727 end quote which is doubtless the date of her lending them to some younger female friend the letters of this inscription are round and laboriously shaped while the form is always the same and never Anne Lang her book which is what one would expect it is not the hand of a person of quality I venture to conclude that she who wrote it was a milliner's apprentice or a servant girl there are five novels in this little collection and a play and a pamphlet of poems and a little of love letters all signed upon their title pages by the Iuita of the period the great Eliza Haywood no one who has not dabbled among old books knows how rare have become the strictly popular publications of a non-literary kind which a generation of the lower middle class has read and thrown away Eliza Haywood lives in the minds of men solely through one very course and cruel allusion to her made by Pope in the Dunsead she was never recognized among people of intellectual quality she ardently desired to belong to literature but her wish was never seriously gratified even by her friend Aaron Hill yet she probably numbered more readers for a year or two than any other person in the British realm she poured forth what she called little performances with a tolerably respectable press and the wonder is that in these days her abundant writings are so seldom to be met with the secret doubtless is that her large public consisted almost wholly of people like Anne Lang Eliza was read by servants in the kitchen by seamstresses by basket women by apprentices of all sorts male and female for girls of this sort there was no other reading of a light kind in 1724 it was Eliza Haywood or nothing the men of the same class read Defoe but he with his cynical severity his absence of all pity for a melting mood his savagery towards women was not likely to be preferred by quote straggling nymphs the footmen might read Roxanna and the Hackney writers sit up after his toil over mall flanders there was much in these romances to interest men but what had Anne Lang to do with stories so cold and harsh she read Eliza Haywood but most of her sisters of Eliza's great clientele did not know how to treat a book they read it to tatters and they threw it away it may be news to some readers that these early novels were very cheap Anne Lang bought Love in Excess which is quite a thick volume for two shillings and the first volume of Idalia for Eliza was Uidesk even in her titles only cost her 18 pence she seems to have been a clean girl she did not drop warm lard on the leaves she did not title up her milk scores on the bastard title on the table in the margin Emanuella is a foul wench she did not dogs hear her little library or stain it or tear it I owe it to that rare and fortunate circumstance of her neatness that her beloved books have come into my possession after the passage of so many generations it must be recollected that Eliza Haywood lived in the very twilight of English fiction 16 years were still to pass in 1724 before the British novel properly began to dawn in Pamela 25 years before it broke in the full splendor of Tom Jones Eliza Haywood simply followed where two generations earlier a redoubtable Mrs. Afra Bain had led she preserved the old romantic manner a kind of corruption of the splendid Scooterie and Calprenade folly of the middle of the 17th century all that distinguished her was her vehement exuberance and the emptiness of the field and Lang was young and instinctively attracted to the study of the passion of love she must read something and there was nothing but Eliza Haywood for her to read the heroines of these old stories were all palpitating with sensibility although that name had not yet been invented to describe their condition she received a letter beginning to the Divine La Silia or to the incomparable Donna Emanuella they were thrown into the most violent disorder a thousand different passions succeeded one another in their turns and as a rule it was all too sudden to admit disguise when a lady in Eliza Haywood's novels receives a note from a gentleman quote all her limbs forget her function and she seeks fainting on the bank in much the same posture she was before she raised herself a little to take the letter end quote I am positive that Anne Lang practiced this series of attitudes in the solitude of her Garrett there is no respite for the emotions from Eliza's first page to her last unapplicable do-more for such was her singular name quote continued for some time in a condition little different from madness but one reason had a little recovered its usual sway a deadly melancholy succeeded passion end quote when Bavilia tried to explain to her cousin that Emilius was no fit suitor for her hand the young lady swooned twice before she seized Bavilia's meaning end quote silent the stormy passions rolled in her tortured bosom distaining the mean ease of raging or complaining it was a considerable time before she uttered the least syllable and when she did she seemed to start as from some dreadful dream and cried it is enough in knowing one I know the whole deceiving sex end quote and she began to address an imaginary women's rights meeting plot was not a matter about which Eliza Hayward greatly troubled herself a contemporary admirer remarked with justice quote tis love Eliza's soft affections fires Eliza writes but love alone inspires tis love that gives Delmo his madly charms his amena from her father's arms end quote these last named persons are the hero and heroine of love in excess or the fatal inquiry which seems to have been the most popular of the whole series this novel might be called love through a window for it almost entirely consists of a relation of how the gentleman prowled by moonlight in a garden while the lady in an agitated disorder peeped out of her lattice in quote a most charming disabea alas it was a lock to the door of a garden staircase and while the lady was paying a compliment to the recluse he was dexterous enough to slip the key out of the door and proceed end quote and lying a sudden cry of murder and the noise of clashing swords end quote come none too soon to save those blushes which we hope you had in readiness for the turning of the page Eliza Hayward assures us in Adalia that her object in writing is that quote the warmth and vigor of youth may be tempered by a due consideration end quote yet the moralist must complain that she goes a strange way about it and herself was quote a lovely inconsiderate end quote of Venice who escaped in a gandula up quote the river Brent end quote and set all Vicenza by the ears through her quote stock of haughtiness which nothing could surmount end quote at last after adventures which can scarcely have edified and lying Adalia abruptly quote remembered to have heard of a fairy in Verona end quote and left Vicenza at break of day taking her quote unguarded languagements end quote out of that city and out of the novel it is true that Anne Lang for two shillings bought a continuation of the career of Adalia but we need not follow her the perusal of so many throbbing and melting romances must necessarily have awakened in the breast a desire to see the creator of these tender scenes I am happy to inform my readers that there is every reason to believe that Anne Lang gratified this innocent wish at all events there exists among her volumes a little book of the play sold at the doors of Drew Relaine theater when in the summer of 1724 Eliza Haywood's new comedy of a wife to be let was acted there with the author performing in the part of Mrs. Grassball the play itself is wretched and tradition says that it owed what little success it enjoyed to the eager desire which the novelist's readers felt to gaze upon her features she was about 30 years of age at the time but no one says she was handsome and she was undoubtedly a bad actress I think the disappointment that evening at the theater royal opened the eyes of Anne Lang perhaps it was the appearance of Eliza in the flesh which prevented her old admirer from buying the secret history of Cleomina supposed dead which I miss from the collection if Anne Lang lived on until the publication of Pamela especially if during the interval she had battered her social condition with what ardor must she have hailed the advent of what with all its shortcomings the book worth gold perhaps she went to Vosal with it in her mouth and shook it triumphantly at some middle-aged lady of her acquaintance perhaps she lived long enough to see one great novel after another break forth to lighten the darkness of life she must have looked back on the pompous and lascivious pages of Eliza Haywood with their long drawn palpitating intrigues with positive disgust the English novel began in 1740 and after that date there was always something wholesome for Anne Lang and her sisters to read End of Chapter 13 Gossip in a Library Chapter 14 this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Eugene Smith Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss Chapter 14 Cats Les Chas Arrote d'Homme Chez Jean-Daniel Bémond 1728 or 1727 an accomplished lady of my acquaintance tells me that she is preparing an anthology of the cat this announcement has reminded me of one of the oddest and most entertaining volumes in my library people who collect prints of the 18th century know and engraving which represents a tomcat rampant holding up an oval portrait of a gentleman and standing in order to do so on a volume the volume is Les Chas the book before us and the portrait is that of the author the amiable and amusing Augustin Paradis de Mongrif he was the son of English or more probably of Scotch parents who settled in Paris where he was born in 1687 all we know of his earlier years is to be found in a single sparkling page of D'Alembert who makes Mongrif float out of the obscurity like the most elegant of iridescent bubbles he was handsome and seductive turned a copy of verses with the best of gentlemen but was particularly distinguished by the art with which he pervade little dramas than so much in fashion and France somebody said of him when he was famous as the Laureate of the Cats that he had risen in life by never scratching by always having velvet paws and by never putting up his back even when he was startled Voltaire called him by very dear self and he was the ideal of all that was noiseless graceful, good-humored and well-bred he slipped unobtrusively into the French Academy and lived to be 83 dying at last like an acreon in the midst of music and dances and fair nymphs of the opera affecting to be a sad old rogue to the very last this book on Cats the only one by which he is now remembered was the sole production of his lifetime which cost him any annoyance he was 40 years of age when it appeared and the subject was considered a little frivolous even for such a petit quarture as Monclet people continued to tease him about it and the only rough thing he ever did was the result of one such tweeting the poet Roy made an epigram about cats and rats inexorable taste, no doubt this stung our self to such an excess that he waited outside the Palais Royale and beat Roy with a stick when he came out the poet was, perhaps, not much hurt at all events he had the presence of mind to retort quote pat de velour minomine end quote it was six years after this that Monclet was elected into the French Academy and then the shower of epigrams broke out again he wished to be made historiographer quote and they invited him on nights when the Academy met to climb onto the roof and meow from the chimney pots he had the weakness to apologize for his charming book and to withdraw it from circulation his pastoral tales and heroic ballets his Zellindoor and Zellouid and Eversine which to us seem utterly vapid and frivolous never gave him a moment's uneasiness his Crumpled Roselief was the book by which his name lives in literature the Book of Cats is written in the form of 11 letters to Madame La Marquise de B the anonymous author represents himself as too much excited to sleep after an evening spent in a fashionable house where the company was abusing cats he was unsupported where was the Marquise who would have brought a thousand arguments to his assistants founded on her own experience of virtuous pussies instead of going to bed he will sit up and indict the panagiric of the feline race he is still sore at the prejudice and injustice of the people he has just left it culminated in the conduct of a lady who declared that cats were poison and who quote when pussy appeared in the room he had a sense of mind to faint end quote these people had rallied him on the absurdity of his enthusiasm but as he says the Marquise well knows how many women have a passion for cats and how many men are women in this respect end quote so he starts away on his dissertation with all its elegant pedantry its paradoxical wit its genuine touches of observation and its constant sparkle of anecdote he is troubled to account for the existence of the cat an Ottoman legend relates that when the animals were in the ark Noah gave the lion a great box on the ear which made him sneeze and produce a cat out of his nose but the author questions this origin and is more inclined to agree with the Turkish minister of religion sometime ambassador to France that the ape quote which is the story of a sedentary life end quote paid his attention to a very agreeable young lioness whose infidelities resulted in the birth of a tom cat and a puss cat and that these combining the qualities of their parents spread through the ark which lasted during the whole of the soldier in there Monkreef has no difficulty in showing that the east has always been devoted to cats the story of Muhammad who being consulted one day on a point of piety preferred to cut off his sleeve on which his favorite pussy was asleep rather than wake her violently by rising from the French poets Monkreef collects a good many curious tributes to the quote harmless necessary cat end quote I am seized with an ambition to put some fragments of these into English verse most of them are highly complimentary it is true that Rolsa was one of those who could not appreciate a matu he sang or said quote there is no man now living anywhere who hates cats with a deeper hate than I I hate their eyes their heads the way they stare and when I see one come I turn and fly end quote the ideas of the 17th century there was much more appreciation madam de Hullier wrote a whole series of songs and couplets about her cat grizzet in a letter to her husband referring to the attention she herself receives from admirers she adds quote de Hullier cares not for the smart her bright eyes cause disdainful hussy but like a mouse her idle heart by a pussy end quote much better than these is the sonnet on the cat of the Duchess of Lady Guille with its admirable line quote chat pour tout le monde et pour les chats tigresses end quote a fugitive epistle via scarol delightfully turned is too long to be quoted here nor can I pause to cite the rondeau which the Duchess of Maine addressed her favorite but she supplemented it as follows quote my pretty puss, my solace and delight to celebrate thy loveliness aright I ought to call to life the bard whose song of lesbias sparrow with so sweet a tongue but disinvane to summon here to me so famous a dead personage as he and you must take contentedly today this poor rondeau that Cupid wafts your way when this cat died the Duchess was too much affected to write its epitaph herself and accordingly it was done for her in the following style by Le Monde Lavaye the author of the Diologue quote puss pass her by within this simple tomb lies one whose life fell atropos hath shred the happiest cat on earth hath heard her doom sleeps forever in a marble bed alas what long delicious days I've seen old cats of Egypt my illustrious sires you who on altars bound with garlands green have melted hearts and kindled fond desires hymns in your praise were paid offerings too but I'm not jealous of those rites divine since Ludovica loved me rather게ush thanlus mimeros and tru your ancient glory was less proud than mine to live a simple pussy by her side was nobler far than to be deified end quote to these and other tributes au crif adds idols and romances of his own while regretting that it never occurred to theocratist to write a beyerie desha he tells stories of blameless pussies beloved by Fuantanel in praise of, quote, the green-eyed Venus, end quote. But he tears himself away at last from all these historical reminiscences, and in his eleventh letter he deals with cats as they are. We hasten as lightly as possible over a story of the disinterestedness of a feline Eloise, which is too pathetic for a nineteenth century year, but we may repeat a touching anecdote of Baile's friend Mademoiselle Dupuis. This lady excelled to a surprising degree in playing the harp, and she attributed her excellence in this accomplishment to her cat, whose critical taste was only equaled by his close attention to Mademoiselle Dupuis's performance. She felt that she owed so much to this cat, under whose care her reputation for skill on the harp had become universal, that when she died she left him, in her will, one agreeable house in town and another in the country. To this bequest she added a revenue sufficient to supply all the requirements of a well-bred Tomcat, and at the same time she left pensions to certain persons whose duty it should be to wait upon him. Her ignoble family contested the will, and there was a long suit. Moncrief gives a handsome double-plate illustration of this incident. Mademoiselle Dupuis, sadly wasted by illness, is seen in bed, with her cat in her arms, dictating her will to the family lawyer in a periwig. Her physician is also present. This leads me to speak of the illustrations to Le Chat, which greatly add to its value. They were engraved by Aten from original drawings by Coypel. In another edition the same drawings are engraved by Count Kylis. Some of them are of charming absurdity. One, a double-plate, represents a tragedy acted by cats on the roof of a fashionable house. The actors are tricked out in the most magnificent feathers and frilly bows, and the audience consists of common cats. Cupid sits above, with his bow and fluttering wings. Another plate shows the mausoleum of the Duchess of Lady Guillaume's cat, with a marble pussy of heroic size, upon a marble pillow in a grove of poplars. Another is a medal to, quote, Chant Noir-Premier, naeul 1725, end quote, with the proud inscription, quote, knowing to whom I belong, I am aware of my value, end quote. The profile within is that of us, Haudyatoum has ever shook out his whiskers in a lady's boudoir, end of Chapter 14. Chapter 15 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 15. Smarts Poems. Poems on several occasions by Christopher Smart, A. M., Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. London, printed for the author by W. Strayhand, and sold by J. Newberry, at the Bible and Son, in St. Paul's cheer chart, 1752. The third section of Robert Browning's parliings with certain people of importance in their day drew attention to a Cambridge poet of whom little had hitherto been known, Christopher Smart, once fellow of Pembroke College. It may be interesting, therefore, to supply some sketch of the events of his life, and of the particular poem which Browning has aptly compared to a gorgeous chapel lying perdu in a dull old commonplace mansion. No one can afford to be entirely indifferent to the author of verses which one of the greatest modern writers has declared to be unequaled of their kind between Milton and Keats. What has hitherto been known of the facts of Smart's life has been founded on the anonymous biography prefixed to the two-volume reading edition of his works published in 1791. The copy of this edition in Trinity Library belonged to Dr. Farmer and contains these words in his handwriting. Quote, From the editor, Francis Newberry, Esquire, A Life by Mr. Hunter. End quote. As this Newberry was the son of Smart's half-brother-in-law and literary employer, it may be taken for granted that the information given in these volumes is authoritative. We may therefore believe it to be correct that Smart was born, as he himself tells us in The Hop Garden, at Shipborne in Kent on the 11th of April 1722, that his father was steward to the nobleman who afterwards became Earl of Darlington and that he was, quote, discerned and patronized, end quote, by the Duchess of Cleveland. This great lady, we are left in doubt for what reason, carried her complacence so far as to allow the future poet forty pounds a year until her death. In a painfully fulsome ode to another member of the rabie castle family, Smart records the generosity of the dead in order to stimulate that of the living. An oddly remarks that, quote, dignity itself restrains by condescensions, silk and reins, while you, the lowly muse, upraise, end quote. Smart passed, already, quote, an infant bard, end quote, from what he calls, quote, the splendor in retreat, end quote, of rabie castle to Durham School, and in his eighteenth year was admitted of Penbro call, October thirtieth, seventeen thirty-nine. His biographer expressly states that his allowance from home was scanty and that his chief dependence, until he derived an income from his college, was on the bounty of the Duchess of Cleveland. From this point I am able to supply a certain amount of information with regard to the poet's college life, which is entirely new, and which is not, I think, without interest. My friend Mr. R. A. Neal has been so kind as to admit me to the treasury at Penbroke, and in his company I have had the advantage of searching the contemporary records of the college. What we were lucky enough to discover may here be briefly summarized. The earliest mention of Smart is dated seventeen forty, and refers to the rooms assigned to him as an undergraduate. In January seventeen forty-three, we find him taking his B.A., and in July of the same year he has elected scholar. As is correctly stated in his life, he became a fellow of Penbroke on the third of July, seventeen forty-five. That he showed no indication as yet of that disturbance of brain and instability of character, which so painfully distinguished him a little later on, is proved by the fact that on the tenth of October, seventeen forty-five, Smart was chosen to be pre-lector in philosophy, and keeper of the common chest. In seventeen forty-six, he was re-elected to those offices, and also made pre-lector in rhetoric. In seventeen forty-seven, he was not chosen to hold any such college situations, no doubt from the growing extravagance of his conduct. In November seventeen forty-seven, Smart was in parlous case. Gray complains of his, quote, lies, impertence, and ingratitude, end quote, and describes him as confined to his room, lest his creditors should snap him up. He gives a melancholy impression of Smart's moral and physical state, but hastens to add, quote, not that I, nor any other mortal, pity him, end quote. The records of the Treasury of Penbroke supply evidence that the members of the college now made a great effort to restore one of whose talents it is certain they were proud. In seventeen forty-eight, we find Smart proposed for Catechist, a proof that he had, at all events for the moment, turned over a new leaf. Probably, but for fresh relapses, he would now have taken orders. His illusions to college life are singularly ungracious. He calls Penbroke, quote, this servile cell where discipline and dullness dwell, end quote, and commiserates a captive ego as being doomed in the college courts to watch, quote, scholastic pride take his precise pedantic stride, end quote, words which painfully remind us of Gray's reported matter of enjoying a constitutional. It is certain that there was considerable fiction between these two men of genius, and Gray roundly prophesied that Smart would find his way to jail or to Bedlam. Both alternatives of this prediction were fulfilled. And in October, 1751, Gray curtly remarks, quote, Smart sets out for Bedlam, end quote. Of this event, we find curious evidence in the Treasury, quote, October 12, 1751, ordered that Mr. Smart, being obliged to be absent, there will be allowed him in lieu of Commons for the year ended Michaelmas, 1751, the sum of 10 pounds, end quote. There can be little question that smarts conduct and condition became more and more unsatisfactory. This particular visit to a madhouse was probably brief, but it was possibly not the first and was soon repeated. For in 1749 and 1752, there are similar entries recording the fact that, quote, Mr. Smart being obliged to be absent, end quote, certain allowances were paid by the college, quote, in consideration of his circumstances, end quote. The most curious discovery, however, which we have been able to make is recorded in the following entry, quote, November 27, 1753, ordered that the dividend assigned to Mr. Smart be deposited in the Treasury till a society be satisfied that he has a right to the same. It being credibly reported that he has been married for some time, and that notice be sent to Mr. Smart of his dividend being detained, end quote. As a matter of fact, Smart was by this time married to a relative of Newberry, the publisher for whom he was doing hack work in London. He had, however, formed the habit of writing the Setonian Prize poem, which he had already gained four times in 1750, 1751, 1752, and 1753. He seems to have clutched at the distinction which he brought on his college by these poems, as the last straw by which to keep his fellowship, and singular to say, he must have succeeded. For on the 16th of January, 1754, this order was recorded, quote, that Mr. Smart have leave to keep his name in the college books without any expense, so long as he continues to write for the premium left by Mr. Seton, end quote. How long this inexpensive indulgence lasted does not seem to be known. Smart gained the Setonian Prize in 1755, having apparently failed in 1754, and then appears no more in Pembroke records. The circumstance of his having made Cambridge too hot to hold him seems to have pulled Smart's loose faculties together. The next five years were probably the sanest and the busiest in his life. He had collected his scattered odes and ballads, and published them with his ambitious Georgic, the Hopgarden, in the handsome quarto before us. Among the 700 subscribers to this venture, we find, quote, Mr. Voltaire, historiographer of France, end quote, and Monsieur Rubiak, the great statuary, besides such English celebrities as Gray, Collins, Richardson, Savage, Charles Davison, Garrick, and Mason. The kind reception of this work awakened in the poet an inordinate vanity, which found expression in 1753, in that extraordinary fusion, the Hiliad, an attempt to preserve Dr. John Hill in such amber as Pope held at the command of his satiric passion. But these efforts, and an annual Setonian, were ill adapted to support a poet who had recently appended a wife and family, to a phenomenal appetite for strong waters, and who, moreover, had just been deprived of his stipend as a fellow. Smart descended into Grubb Street, and bound himself over, hand and foot, to be the surf of such men as the publisher Newberry, who was none the milder master for being his relative. It was not long after, doubtless, that Smart fell lower still, and let himself out on a lease for 99 years, to toil for a set pittance in the garrets of Gardner's shop. And it was about this time, 1754, that the Reverend T. Tyres was introduced to Smart by a friend who had more sympathy with his frailties than Gray had, namely Dr. Samuel Johnson. After a world of vicissitudes, which are very uncomfortable reading, about 1761, Smart became violently insane once more, and was shut up again in Bedlam. Dr. Johnson, commenting on this period of the poet's life, told Dr. Burney that Smart grew fat when he was in the madhouse, where he dug in the garden. And Johnson added, quote, I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him. And I'd as least pray with kid Smart as with anyone else. Another charge was that he did not love clean linen. And I have no passion for it, end quote. When Boswell paid Johnson his memorable first visit in 1763, Smart had recently been released from Bedlam, and Johnson naturally spoke of him. He said, quote, My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind by falling upon his knees and seeing his prayers in the street or in any other unusual place, end quote. Murray, about the same time, reports that Money is being collected to help, quote, poor Smart, end quote, not for the first time. Since in January 1759, Murray had written, quote, Poor Smart is not dead, as was said. And Meropay is acted for his benefit this week, end quote, with the Guardian of Fars, which Garrick had kindly composed for that occasion. He was in 1763, immediately after Smart's release, that the now famous Song to David was published. A long and interesting letter in the correspondence of Hawksworth, dated October 1764, gives a pleasant idea of Smart restored to cheerfulness and placed, quote, with very decent people in a house most delightfully situated with a terrace that overlooked St. James's Park, end quote. But this relief was only temporary. Smart fell back presently into drunkenness and death and was happily relieved by death in 1770 in his 48th year at the close of a career as melancholy as any recorded in the Chronicles of Literature. Save for one single lyric that glows with all the flush and bloom of Eden, Smart would take but a poor place on the English Parnassus. His odes and ballads, his psalms and satires, his masks and his georgics, are not bad, but they are mediocre. Here and there the very careful reader may come across lines and phrases that display the concealed author of the Song to David, such as the following, from an excessively tiresome ode to Dr. Webster, quote, when Israel's host, with all their stores, passed through the ruby tinctured crystal shores, wilderness of waters and of land, end quote. But these are rare. His odes are founded upon those of gray, and the best that can be said of them is that if they do not quite rise to the frozen elegance of Acheenside, they seldom sink to the flaccidity of Mason. Never, for one consecutive stanza or stroke, do they approach columns or gray indelicacy or power. But the Song to David, the lyric in 516 lines, which Smart is so absurdly fabled to have scratched with a key on the whitewashed walls of his cell, this was a portent of beauty and originality. Strange to say, it was utterly neglected when it appeared, and the editor of the 1791 edition of Smart's Works expressly omitted to print it on the ground that it bore too many quote, melancholy proofs of the estrangement of Smart's mind, end quote, to be fit for republication. It became rare to the very verge of extinction, and is now scarcely to be found in its entirety, save in a pretty reprint of 1819, itself now rare due to the piety of a reverend R. Harvey. It is obvious that Smart's contemporaries and immediate successors looked upon the Song to David as the work of a hopelessly deranged person. In 1763, poetry had to be very sane indeed to be attended to. The year preceding had welcomed the shipwreck of Falconer. The year to follow would welcome Goldsmith's Traveler and Granger's Sugarcane, works of various merit, but all eminently sane. In 1763, Shenstone was dying, and Rogers was being born. The tidy, spruce, and discrete poetry of the 18th century was passing into its final and most pronounced stage. The Song to David, with its bold mention of unfamiliar things, its warm and highly colored phraseology, its daring adjectives and unexampled adverbs, was an outrage upon taste, and one which was best accounted for by a tap of the forefinger on the forehead. No doubt the poem presented, and still may present, legitimate difficulties. Here, for instance, is a stanza in which it is not for those who run to read, quote, increasing days their rain exalt, nor in the pink and mottled vault the opposing spirits tilt, and by the coasting readers spied, the Silverlings and Cruisans glide for adoration guilt, end quote. This is charming, but if it were in one of the tongues of the heathen, we should get Dr. Moral to explain it away. Poor Mr. Harvey, the editor of 1819, being hopelessly puzzled by, quote, Silverlings, end quote, the only dictionary meaning of which is Shekels explained Cruisans to be some other kind of money from Greek, Crucis. But Cruisans are golden carp, and when I was a child the Devonshire fishermen used to call the long white fish with urgent stripes, whose proper name I think is the Launce, a Silverling. The coasting reader is the courteous reader when walking along the coast, and what he sees are Silverfish and Goldfish, adoring the Lord by the beauty of their scales. The song to David is cryptic to a very high degree, but I think there are no lines in it which patient reflection will not solve. On every page are stanzas, the verbal splendor of which no lover of poetry will question, and lines which will always, to me at least, retain an echo of that gusto with which I have heard Mr. Browning's strong voice recite them, quote, the wealthy crops of whitening rice, muck's thyme, woods, and groves of spice, for adoration grow, and marshaled in the fenced land, the peaches and pomegranates stand where wild carnations blow. The laurels with the winter strife, the crocus burnishes alive upon the snow-clad earth, for adoration ripening canes and cocoa's purest milk detains the westering pilgrim's staff, where rain in, clasping boughs and clothes, and vines with oranges disposed, and bower the social laugh. For adoration, beyond match, the scholar bullfinch aims to catch the soft flutes ivory touch, and, careless on the hazel spray, the daring red breast keeps at bay the damsels greedy clutch, end quote. To quote at further length from so fascinating, so divine a poem, would be, quote, purpling too much my mere gray argument, end quote. Browning's praise ought to send everyone to the original, but here is one more stanza that I cannot resist copying, because it seems so pathetically applicable to smart himself as a man, and to the one exquisite poem, which was, quote, the more than abishag of his age, end quote. Quote, his muse, bright angel of his verse, gives balm for all the thorns that pierce, for all the pangs that rage, blessed light, still gaining on the gloom, the more than Michael of his bloom, the abishag of his age, end quote. End of chapter 15.