The Bibliographer,
Book-Lore,
and The Bookworm
by
Arthur Sherbo
The subtitles and vital statistics of the periodicals of my title are, in
order: A Journal of Book-Lore, 6 vols., 1881-84; A
Magazine Devoted to Old Time Literature, 6 vols., Dec. 1884-Nov.
1887; An Illustrated Treasury of Old Time Literature, 7
vols.,
1888-94.[1] One is struck by the
repetitions in titles and subtitles and by the chronology, one periodical
taking up where the previous one left off. All were published by Elliott
Stock of London. Henry Benjamin Wheatley was editor of The
Bibliographer and W. E. A. Axon of Book-Lore. I
should
add here that none of the three periodicals is so much as listed in the two
editions of the CBEL, Wheatley's editorship of The
Bibliographer also being ignored, as, indeed, it is in the British
Museum catalogue of printed books. Contributors to these periodicals
include F. J. Furnivall, T. J. Wise, Henry Bradshaw, J. O.
Halliwell-Phillipps, L. Toulmin Smith, William
Blades, H. R. Plomer, William Roberts, F. Madan, Nicholas Pocock, G.
L. Gomme, Leonard A. Wheatley, C. A. Ward, T. N. Postlethwaite, W.
P. Courtney, W. Carew Hazlitt, as well as contributors from Canada, New
York, Brisbane, among other places. Most of the signed contributions occur
in The Bibliographer, relatively few in The
Bookworm. Some of the
contributions to these periodicals were later published separately, as for
example Wheatley's account of John Payne Collier in
The
Bibliographer. Some of the contributions formed the basis for later
work, notably with F. Madan's bibliography of writings by and on Henry
Sacheverell, contributed to
The Bibliographer, which was
later
expanded by his son, F. F. Madan.
[2]
All in all, for the above reasons and others to follow, these periodicals
deserve to be known and further studied.
In what follows I proceed chronologically through the three
periodicals, recording what I have gleaned of the hitherto unremarked
without reference to order of magnitude. Relatively little emerged from
The Bibliographer, a letter of Thomas Bewick's with
proposals
for his History of Quadrupeds being first printed there (I
[December 1881], 20-21) and now available in Sydney Roscoe's
bibliographie raisonné of some of Bewick's works issued in his
lifetime
(1953), pp. 7-9. William Beckford, author of Vathek, was,
it
is well known, an avid collector of books. What is more, he had a penchant
for writing comments or copying passages from his books on their flyleafs
or in their margins. Many of the books with his marginalia have been
identified[3] but not among them those
described by an anonymous contributor to the second volume of The
Bibliographer in an account of the "Beckford Library" (July 1882,
pp. 25-27). Here is the
pertinent part of the account:
He did much for display, but he collected books because he loved
them. These books he read, he knew them well, and he annotated them.
The number of lots in which his notes will be found are numerous, and to
some of these we propose first to draw our readers' attention. We learn
from the catalogue that Beckford has filled five pages of fly-leaves to his
namesake Peter Beckford's Familiar Letters from Italy (2
vols.,
Salisbury, 1805), and these notes he concludes thus: "This book has at least
some merit—the language is simple; an ill-natured person might
add—and the thoughts not less so." His opinion of Miss Benger's
Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots is summed up in this very
uncomplimentary criticism: "I wish, dear Miss Benger, that your style was
a little less ornate, and your information a little
less
inaccurate." Another lady author fares even worse at his hands; for of Miss
Aikin's Memoirs of the Court of James I. he writes: "I wish
Lucy
would take to the needle instead of the pen, and darn stockings instead of
history. She would then be more harmlessly employed than in leading
unhappy readers with open appetites into the purchase of literary aliment
already reduced to a caput mortuum by repeated stewings."
Beckford criticizes Brasbridge's Fruits of Experience, 1824,
in
this strong language: "They who like hog-wash—and there are
amateurs
for everything—will not turn away disappointed or disgusted with
this
book, but relish the stale trashy anecdotes it contains and gobble them with
avidity." These are merely a sample of the annotations which will be found
in a large number of the books: for instance, a fine set of the
European Magazine, 80 vols., bound in russia extra by
Kalthoeber, contains MS. notes in every volume. Lot 735 consists of seven
folio volumes of Transcriptions from the autograph notes written by
Beckford on the fly-leaves of the various works in his library.
I should very much like to see the eighty volumes of the
European
Magazine and, equally, lot 735.
Volume five (December 1883, p. 19) yielded a paragraph from a
letter of a friend of Byron's who described the delight the poet expressed
in Sir Walter Scott's Quentin Durward. Byron and Scott were
friends, and Byron more than once praised Scott's novels, but I have found
no reference to this letter. I quote the whole item:
In a letter written by a friend of Byron and recently printed for the
first time appears this paragraph, says the New York
Tribune,
concerning the poet's delight in Scott's work: "He was very fond of Scott's
novels—you will have observed they were always scattered about his
rooms at Metaxata. The day before he left the island I happened to receive
a copy of Quentin Durward, which I put into his hand,
knowing
that he had not seen it and that he wished to obtain the perusal of it. He
immediately shut himself in his room, and in his eagerness to indulge in it
refused to dine with the officers of the 8th Regiment at their mess, or even
to join us at the table, but merely came out once or twice to say how much
he was entertained, returning to his chamber with a plate of figs in his
hand. He was exceedingly delighted with Quentin Durward,
and
said it was excellent, especially the first volume and part of the second, but
that it fell off toward the conclusion, like
all the more recent of these novels; it might be, he added, owing to the
extreme rapidity with which they were written—admirably conceived
and
as well executed at the outset, but hastily finished off."
Only one more item of interest, Mark Twain's answer to the question as to
what he thought of an international copyright law, emerged from volume
five (March 1884, p. 115):
"I am forty-seven years old, and therefore shall not live long enough
too see international copyright established, neither will my children live
long enough: yet, for the sake of my (possible) remote descendants, I feel
a languid interest in the subject. Yes—to answer your question
squarely,—I am in favour of an international copyright law. So was
my
great grandfather,—it was in 1847 that he made his struggle in his
great
work—and it is my hope and prayer that as long as my stock shall
last
the transmitted voice of that old man will still go ringing down the
centuries, stirring the international heart in the interest of the eternal cause
for which he struggled and died. I favour the treaty which was proposed
four or five years ago, and is still being considered by our State
department. I also favour engraving it on brass. It is on paper now. There
is no lasting quality about paper."
Book-Lore proved slightly more rewarding, although
none
of the gleanings will generate much excitement. In volume one there were
three items of interest to students of the life and works of Samuel Johnson,
none of which is listed in the Clifford/Greene bibliography (1970). The first
is titled "Johnson Bibliography" (December 1884, p. 26) and in it R. H.
suggests, "I think that we may add [to Boswell's list] the preface to
A
New Compendious Grammar of the Greek Tongue, by W. Bell, A.
B. London, 1775. This reads Johnsonian:—'That the knowledge of
the
Greek language is a valuable and necessary accomplishment for all who
desire to be useful to the literary world, none will deny' etc." Furthermore
he was of opinion that "The preface to [William] Guthrie's General
History of the World, 1764, was probably by Johnson." Neither of
these is mentioned in Allen Hazen's Samuel Johnson's Prefaces and
Dedications (1937), the definitive work. The second item is
entitled "Johnsoniana" (January 1885, pp. 39-40) and in it reference is
made to
an article in the November 1884
Harper's Magazine dealing
with Columbia College, "which contains an interesting reference to Dr.
Johnson," one which should have wider circulation. Dr. Johnson wrote one
letter to William Samuel Johnson, first president of Columbia College. "A
family tradition," the
Harper's Magazine account is quoted,
"says that when he [William Samuel Johnson] introduced himself as an
American, the gruff old doctor retorted: 'The Americans! What do they
know, and what do they read?' 'They read, sir,
The
Rambler,'
was the polite and apt reply, which so won the doctor that before his
namesake left London he presented him with 'an elegantly bound copy of
his large folio dictionary, and an engraving of himself from a painting by
Sir Joshua Reynolds, which he considered his best likeness.' The two
became life-long correspondents, and
some of the letters are still
preserved at the Stratford homestead." So much from
Harper's, but the
unknown contributor of this "Johnsoniana" added, "We have italicised a
passage which should excite some American admirer of Dr. Johnson to
obtain the requisite permission to examine these letters." To date I doubt
any one has sought permission, surely because both accounts have been
overlooked by Johnsonians.
[4] R. H.,
in his "Johnsonian Bibliography" (I [December 1884], 26) had written that
"
A Miscellany of Poems, by J. Husbands, Oxford, 1731," in
which Johnson had a part, had escaped his "closest searching." F. Madan
(I [January 1885], 59) was able to enlighten R. H. by reference to, and
bibliographical description of, a copy of the work in the Bodleian Library.
Of similar interest is a thirteen-page article by John Davies entitled "The
'Adamo' of Giovanni Soranzo" (IV. 57-69) in which the author tries to
demonstrate Milton's knowledge of
I duoi primi libri dell Adamo di
Giovanni Soranzo by a comparison of various passages. Harris
Fletcher noted briefly of it, "Comparison with
Paradise Lost.
Good." in 1931,
[5] and it has since
been ignored, not even meriting a mention in the
Milton
Encyclopedia of 1978.
The richest harvest came in The Bookworm, beginning with an
anonymous contribution to volume two entitled "Pope and Hughes" (1889,
pp. 104-105) in which "Under date January 20, 1832 the late Mr. J.
Payne Collier has given the following interesting facts in relation to
Pope and Hughes," i.e. that he bought "a nice clean copy of Hughes' 'Calypso
and Telemachus,' 8 vo., 1712" and found two fly-leaves covered with
writing in a hand he "recognized in an instant." I allow him to continue.
It was Pope's! and it was headed by him—
"'To Mr. Hughes,
On His Opera';
it consisted of thirty-eight couplets. This is the second piece of
original composition by Pope
in his own autograph that has
devolved into my hands quite accidentally,
and I am duly grateful. I transcribe the whole of it here, exactly as it
stands in the original, lest by any chance that original should be lost.
To whom the book had belonged first, I know not: probably to Hughes
himself, who pasted in the fly-leaves, but the name of a former owner,
whoever he was, has been cut away; possibly it was Pope's own book and
he may have deposited in it his tribute to Hughes. It has no great
originality, and one of the rhymes, 'sons' and 'mourns,' is unlike Pope
in his later day. In 1712, when 'Calypso and Telemachus' was acted and
published, he was in his twenty-fourth year.
"'To Mr. Hughes, on his Opera.
"'When, dearest Hughes, you strike the tunefull strings,
And, taught by you, our British Opera sings,
Th' Italian Muse is forc'd to quit the stage,
Whilst charms superior captivate the age:
Music and Verse no longer disagree,
Nor's Sense thought useless now to Harmony.
In your Telemachus both parts unite,
And charming sounds are joyn'd with solid wit.
These Nature studied, and those powerfull arts
Which strike the secret springs that guide our hearts.
Sooth'd with your verse, fierce factions peace proclaim,
Rough Whiggs grow mild, and hottest Torys tame:
At your command their conquer'd passions move,
With you they rage, they pity, hate and love.
Then such instructions flow from Mentor's tongue,
Minerva only could inspire the song:
Whilst each description shines so clear and bright,
We fancy every thing before our sight.
How gayly drest the first bright scene appears,
What wanton beautys all the island wears!
Methinks I hear the murmuring waters flow,
And echoing rocks repeat Calypso's woe.
Now the fond Goddess lost Ulysses mourns,
But quickly for the younger hero burns:
What art doth she not try? what charms put on?
To make the beateous haughty youth her own.
Then, what fierce furys in her bosom rise,
To find the prince her proffered love despise.
See in Telemachus the best of sons,
With what true filial piety he mourns;
Whence Eucharis coquet, gay, young and fair,
Finds means to trap him in th' enchanted snare:
With greedy looks he draws his ruin on,
Sucks in the charm, and hastes to be undone.
Here Mentor for a while withdraws his face;
And let's him feel the danger of the place,
But as he seems just sinking in the waves,
Exerts the goddess, and the hero saves.'"
Needless to say, there is no mention of this poem, whether it be Pope's or
not, in the Twickenham edition. Pope's letters to Hughes begin in 1714,
two years after the opera, and hence are of no evidential value.
Volume three contains a letter from Thomas Moore to a Mrs. Wyke
which is not included in the collected Letters, edited by
Wilfred
S. Dowden, 2 vols. (1964). Mr. C. M. Collins of Brisbane sent the copy
of the letter in his possession, noting that "the letter is addressed on the
outside leaf to 'Mrs. Wyke, 20, Above Bar, Southampton,' and bears the
Devizes postmark" (III [1890], 79). I quote the letter in full.
Stoperton Cottage Devises
March 4th 1819
I am most sincerely sorry to think I should have given one moment's
pain to a heart which, I fear, is destined to pay the usual tax of genius, and
feels everything in this life much more deeply than it ought. But the truth
is that on first reading the letter which inclosed your daughter's beautiful
lines on my little boy, I thought you expressed an intention of going to
Brighton immediately, and as no address there was
mentioned,
I looked upon an answer from me as out of the question. Some time after
however, (though too late), I perceived, upon re-perusing your letter, that
some weeks were to elapse before your departure for Brighton, during all
which time my answer must, of course, have been expected.—Pray
explain all this to Miss Wyke and tell her I am the last person in the world
to be guilty of neglect to a young poetess, [non sic in
original]
such as I fancy her to be. I am, however the less sorry for
this
accident as it has been the means of producing
such lines as I have just received from her, which I prefer to any she has
done me the honour of sending me yet, as they possess more feeling and
less attempt at brilliancy, (a fault into which, I rather fear, my example
may have seduced her), than most of the others.
Yours, my dear Madam, very faithfully
Thomas Moore.
Mr. Collins further noted that "in 1830, 'Bertha, a Tale of the Waldenses,
and Other Poems,' by Anne Wyke, was printed and published at
Shrewsbury by Charles Hulbert, and sold in London by Longman, Rees,
Orme, Brown, and Green, and this may have been the 'young poetess' to
whom Moore refers." There is no entry under "Wyke" in the index to the
Letters nor in that to the 1977 biography by Terence de Vere
White. Miss Wyke, incidentally, wrote no more. In the same volume there
is a short letter of Algernon Charles Swinburne's (1890, pp. 171-172) that
is not in The Swinburne Letters, edited by Cecil Y. Lang
(1959-62). It was one of a collection of autographs sold by Sotheby,
Wilkinson, and Hodge on May 21, 1890. The letter, dated December 20,
1871, is to an unidentified magazine editor; he was, however James Rice,
owner and editor of Once a Week, 1868-72.[6] Here is the letter.
I have received your note, in answer to my reply of the 1st, asking
for 'not more than sixteen lines' I fear I can hardly undertake to supply
verse to order in point of length or otherwise; in any case I should certainly
not think it worth while to let a magazine have the fruits of anything of
mine for less than £10.
But Swinburne's "Sestina," no sixteen lines it, was published in Rice's
magazine on January 6, 1872 (
Letters, II. 171, n.1). And
although there is a two-volume collection of the letters of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning to Robert Hengist Horne and editions of her letters to various
other correspondents,
the following charming letter to Horne, dated March 10, 1841, when she
was still unmarried, has been overlooked. It, like the Swinburne letter, is
one in a collection of "Some Letters of Literary Celebrities" (1890, pp.
169-172).
"I have a little spaniel called Flush, the descendant of Miss Mitford's
spaniel, Flush the Famous, which she sent me for company, & beside
to
remind me of her. He is spoilt of course—it couldn't be helped under
the
circumstances—for, in addition to the association, he gave me most
ready
affection, notwithstanding all my dulness as a playmate—& it
was only
natural that I should murmur when my maid told me she had been obliged
to whip him for a misdemeanor. His sin, at its first aspect, looked a heavy
one. He had torn up into fragments, like a critic, a volume of Lamartine's
poems—into fragments an inch square. 'Oh, but,' I said, 'how could
he
know any better?' There's an apology for the critics! 'He should be taught,'
she replied, 'or he'll tear up all the books in the house. He'll tear them all
to pieces if he's not whipped.' Think of that! Did the critics do you much
harm formerly, dear Mr. Horne, when you went for sympathy to Echo? or
was it a mere pestilent silence?
But you may whip them for ever without making them
better—I lose my moral so."
What may possibly be more important than any other bit gleaned
from The Bookworm is a series of three communications by
a
James Hayes on "Sir Robert Walpole as a Collector of Pamphlets" (IV
[1891], 81-84, 149-151, 217-220). While this is not my line of country, I
find no mention of these pamphlets and of Sir Robert's marginalia in some
of them in J. H. Plumb's two-volume biography (1956) nor in subsequent
literature on Sir Robert. I quote the first paragraph of the first
communication.
IN a quarto volume of rare Black-letter pamphlets (seventeen in
number) lying before me, I find many things which may, perhaps, interest
the readers of The Bookworm. Most of these 17th century pamphlets are
noted and the volume is indexed in the handwriting of the famous Whig
Minister. He writes at the head of index—"No. 1 is taken out for the
book on Public Revenues. This absent pamphlet is styled in index, "Offices
of Places of Trust not to be bought or sold,"—a most suggestive
title,
indeed, for the period. Three things at once become evident on an
examination of the book. First that Sir Robert was a close student of
Machiavelli; secondly, that only the political pamphlets had the advantage
of his notes and comments; and thirdly, that the universities, church rule,
commerce, navigation, and war engrossed much of his attention.
While students of the politics of the period will wish to read the three
letters in their entirety, I shall only quote or comment upon a few
passages.
Hayes writes that Sir Robert's comment on pamphlet number seven
"is well worth remembering, and as he places it before title, I shall follow
his example. It is 'When au't is not encoridged then it goes to decay.'
'Proposals for printing a Book entituled Longitude found out by the
accurate goeing of a new invented AUTOMATON by John Carte, English
Watchmaker at the Corner of the Ness over against the Kaysers Hoff in
Hamburgh.' The above consists of 12 pp. 4to, without date or imprint" (IV.
82). Hayes notes that it is number fifteen of the series to which Sir Robert
pays most attention and then goes on,
He fondles it as if it were his own; but we must remember that he
was only a stripling of twenty-two when the pamphlet was written. We do
not know the date of his
comments. If he did not write it, he did not know who did, as in every
other case he notes the author either in index, title or margin. It is called
"A Short History of Standing Armies in England" (London, printed in the
year 1698, 54 pp). He copies on verso of title the following extracts from
preface:—"A Government is a mere piece of Clockwork; and having
such
Springs and Wheels, must move after a certain manner: and therefore the
Art is to constitute it so that it must move to the Public Advantage. It is
certain that every Man will act for his own Interest; and all wise
Governments are founded upon this Principle: so that the whole Mystery is
only to make the Interest of the Governors and the Governed the same."
Again, "Some will servilely comply with ye Court to Keep their Places,
others will oppose as unreasonably to get them." After another quotation he
writes, "It is as hard a matter for a man to be perfectly bad as perfectly
good: Machiavell."
Hayes states, in his second installment, of the nine remaining
pamphlets not commented upon, that "space will not admit of more than a
cursory glance of each" (IV. 149), and that is about all he allots them. Of
number twelve, "England must pay the Piper. Being a seasonable discourse
about Raising of money this Session," he writes, "This ably written tract
is by 'Sir R(obert) W(alpole)'. There is, for prudent reasons, no imprint,
12 pp." Sir Robert's youngest son, Horace, included his father in his
Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, With Lists
of
their Works, prefacing the list of twelve items with the statement
that
"About the end of Queen Anne's reign, and the beginning of George the
First, he wrote the following pamphlets." "England must pay the Piper" is
not in that list. However, the only pamphlet of that name, England
must pay the Piper, tout court, is dated 1691 in the
Short Title Catalogue, and Robert Walpole was born in 1676.
In the third installment Hayes tells of "a companion octavo volume of
pamphlets to that described in the February and April numbers of the
BOOKWORM," several of which he believed would "command attention"
(IV. 217). The first of these pamphlets is mistakenly attributed to Sir
Robert. It is Two Letters to the Right Hon. Lord. Visc.
Townshend . . . (1714), by R. W. who, according to the British
Museum catalogue of printed books, is Robert Watts, not Robert Walpole.
On what is insufficient evidence, then, James Hayes was of the opinion that
"So far as the writings of Sir Robert noticed in these articles are concerned,
I find self-assertion not to be his forte; but he does not
conceal
the fact that he has been the stayer and capable weight-carrier
of his party, and the chief moulder and propagandist of the Policy of the
Whigs from the Start" (IV. 219).
A brief note in volume six (1893) entitled "Letters of Mrs.
Browning" (pp. 100-101) begins, "An exceedingly interesting and important
series of letters of Miss Elizabeth Barrett, who subsequently became wife
of Robert Browning, came under the hammer at Messrs. Puttick Simpson's
sale recently. They are all written between 1842 and 1845, to Mr.
Cornelius Mathews of New York." The fourteen letters in the lot fetched
a total of £61 4s. The anonymous contributor of the note gives some
details of, and quotes from, but seven of the fourteen.
The first is a charming epistle, dated November 3, 1842, in which the
writer says: "It is delightful and encouraging to me to think that there,
among the cataracts and
mountains which I never shall see, there in 'dreamland,' sound the voices
of friends, and it shall be a constant effort with me to deserve presents in
some better measure, the kindness for which I never can be more grateful
than now." The second, written on the 25th of the same month, mentions
Miss Metford, Charles Dickens, and others, and concludes, "It is better,
however, to want criticism than to want poetry, and poetry is rising with
us, be sure. And I would solicit your reverence for our Tennyson and our
Browning (who though he speaks obscured yet delivers oracles), and also
dramatic sketches and tragedies of Mr. Horne. Mr. Tennyson is a great
poet, notwithstanding that very scornful word which I was very sorry to see
in the
North American Review." The next letter was written
in
February of the following year, and deals chiefly with critics and criticism,
and in the course of which she says, "I admire 'Boz' with everybody who
can read, think, and feel, and I do not doubt
that he was, as you say, 'honest'—
i.e.,
true-hearted—in
those Notes for General Circulation. Still he knows mankind in the mass
too well to be quite justified, I fancy, in passing such a set of judgments,
authorised by such a set of evidences, formed upon such a set of
opportunities upon the special humanity of a nation, and even the nascent
Pecksniffs and Pinches have not quite restored my good humour to him."
In the next letter, March 14, 1843, she asks, "Why do not men remember
that every mind must be original if it delivers frankly its individual
impressions?" and in a letter of the 28th of the following month she has an
exceedingly curious reference to "Mr. Browning's 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,'
which would make one poet furious, the 'infelix Talfourd,' and another a
little melancholy, namely, Mr. Browning himself." In a letter, dated
October 1, 1844, she expresses annoyance at being called a follower of
Tennyson, her "habit of using compound words, noun substantives,
which I used to do before I knew a page of Tennyson. The custom is so far
from being peculiar to Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and Leigh Hunt
are all redolent of it." One of the longest, and certainly the most
interesting, is the last of the series, and is dated December 5, 1845: "You
amuse me when you say that Mr. Poe has dedicated a book to me and
abused me in the preface.
That I should not think human
justice—if it were not American. . . . I understand Mr. Browning
has just
published another volume of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' in which his great
original faculty throws out new colours and expands in new combinations.
A great poet he is—a greater poet he will be—for to work and
to live
are one with him. . . . Walter Savage Landor has lately addressed the
following verses to him:—
"'TO ROBERT BROWNING.
"'There is delight in singing though none hear
Beside the singer, and there is delight
In praising, though the praiser sit alone
And see the praised far off him, far above.'"
&c., &c.
The letter concludes—
"Mr. Tennyson has a pension, you see, but for the rest, is said rather
to smoke than to make poems. . . . Dickens is about to cast himself
headlong into the doubtful undertaking of the new daily paper The
Daily News."
The fourteen letters realised a total of £61 4s.
Only the letters of April 28, 1843, and October 1, 1884, are included in F.
G. Kenyon's edition of Mrs. Browning's Letters (2 vols.
1897);
that for November 3, 1842 was printed in Thomas Powell's Pictures
of the Living Authors of Britain (New York 1849; London, 1851)
and then reprinted in Notes and Queries for November 18,
1944. Some Browning scholar should take it upon himself to trace the
descent of these letters. One of the unidentified seven letters may be that to
Mathews of date Nov. 14, 1844 (Letters, I. 213-215).
Edmund Gosse was Clark lecturer of Trinity College, Cambridge
from 1885-90, but his association with Cambridge did not end in that latter
year. Evan Charteris writes that after Gosse's tenure as Clark lecturer a
"series of uneventful years followed. He had much leeway to make up;
patience and assiduity were needed. He turned with redoubled eagerness to
his friends, courting, and not in vain, encouragement and support. For the
rest, he continued his literary activities and his lectures."[7] There is no mention of a lecture
on "the
Literary Movement in England during the last hundred years" which he
gave at "the summer meeting of the University Extension Society, at
Cambridge, in August [1893]." His lecture, there given the title "The
Literature of the Century," appeared in the sixth volume of The
Bookworm (1893, pp. 357-360), submitted by an anonymous
contributor who may have been at the lecture. If the lecture exists in print
in toto I
have been unable to find any reference to it. I quote the whole.
On occasion of the summer meeting of the University Extension
Society, at Cambridge, in August, Mr. Edmund Gosse lectured on the
Literary Movement in England during the last hundred years. The lecturer
expanded the view that since the revolt of the romantic system against the
classic, in the beginning of the hundred years, no radical change had taken
place in English literature up to the present time. He
remarked:—"The
first thing we need to obtain, if we are trying to analyse the literary
movement of the century, is a clear sane impression, proportionate in all its
parts, of what that movement has been. If Clough was part of
it—why,
so is Mr. Kipling; if the German philosophers influenced one end of it, it
is quite equally certain that Ibsen and Norwegian drama influences the other
end. It is very hard to do, but we should at least try to see
the
second just as plainly as the first. What we cannot, of course, attain, but
what we should endeavour to climb towards, is a
sort of Pisgah-height from which we can look at the hundred years of
nineteenth-century literature winding like a river at our feet—one
part as
near, as distinct, as unclouded as another. As I say, we cannot quite
manage to do this; but that is the attitude of mind desirable.
"Well, if in measure, and so far our prejudiced and imperfect optics
will permit, we do look down upon the literary history of England from
1793 to 1893 in this way, what do we see? I think I shall perhaps startle
you a little if I confess that what I seem to see is a vast cascade, a sort of
Niagara, at one end, and a remarkably calm and unruffled tide proceeding
from the fall of this cascade to our very feet. To my vision, the first thing
that strikes the attention is precisely this short and violent crisis or
cataclysm, followed by a long stretch of almost unmodified calm.
"You will immediately ask me if I am so blind as to see no
individuals of genius breaking through the surface of the literary movement
during, let us say, the last seventy years? Am I one of those, for instance,
who declare that English poetry stopped with Crabbe, and that Sir Walter
Scott was the last genuine novel-writer? Most certainly that is not my
foible. I am no praiser of bygone days at the expense of our own, and I
think that the middle of the nineteenth century was unusually full of great
original names in literature. But this is not the point in question. We are
speaking of the tendency of literary movement, and that is often curiously
independent of personal genius. I will remind you of a very striking
instance of this. If there is in English poetry a name which appears to every
one of us synonymous with originality, with individuality, with genius in
all its forms, it is that of Milton. But Milton is positively a negligible
quantity, if we are considering the literary
movement
of the seventeenth century. He stood aloof from it, he exercised no
influence over it, it dashed around him and left him behind it like a colossal
rock—left him protesting against it by every line he wrote; whereas
Waller and Cowley, poets of the third class, are more interesting to us
(from this peculiar point of view) than the pure and majestic author of
'Paradise Lost.'
"But I must now ask you what is to be the limit of our one hundred
years—are we going to be very exact, and begin with 1793, or are
we to
take 1800 for our starting-point? The detail is an important one; for,
according to my telescope, looking backwards from our Pisgah, the great
crisis of movement took place during those seven years. Will you think me
very paradoxical if I say that it seems to me that there was a more complete
change made in English literature between 1793 and 1800 than between
1800 and 1893?
"Let us now think for an instant what that change was. In 1793 the
eighteenth century in literature, the old régime, was still alive; it
showed no sign of change, no threatening of decay. Down through those
seven years there continued to be whole bodies of intelligent and attentive
persons who remained positively untouched by a single new idea. There is
a very curious, and in its way a very charming, book which used to be a
great favourite with our grandfathers—'The Diary of a Lover of
Literature.' That journal was begun in 1796, and carried on for many years,
by a young man called Thomas Green. The chief interest to us now in that
book is that it belongs entirely to the old world, the world of Addison and
Pope and Johnson, and that not a single sign exists in it to show that the
very clever and erudite author had an idea that the standards of literary taste
would ever be undermined. And yet, as we look back to those years in
which he wrote, they seem to us not merely
undermined but crashing about his ears. The blind forces of Romance took
the pillars of the eighteenth century in their hands, and swayed to and fro,
until the whole edifice crumbled in atoms."
After a rapid survey of the condition of English literature at various
moments in the course of the century, Mr. Gosse closed his discourse as
follows:—
"Let no one persuade us, inspired by antiquarianism on the one hand
or by a cheap cynicism on the other, to underrate the richness, the variety,
the splendid fulness and accomplishment of these hundred years. To have
lived through our share of this magnificent time is, if our ears and eyes
have been open, to have lived broadly and loftily. Nowhere else in the
history of the world—not under Pericles or Augustus, not under
Elizabeth
or Louis XIV.—was so delicate and so various a literary banquet
spread
before the hunger of readers. In several solitary instances, without
doubt—so far, at least, as we are able to trust our present
impressions—a greater altitude has been reached by writers of
bygone
times. But nowhere in past history do we find so high a general level,
nowhere such a persistency, for generation after generation, in moving with
strenuous variety along the same great line of literary tendency.
"To us all, however, the practical service of such a train of reflection
as we have sought to follow to-night must be measured by the degree in
which it adds pleasure and profit to our private reading. I am in hopes that
a perception of the continuity in nineteenth-century authorship, which I have
attempted to dwell upon, may add an enjoyment to your course of more
extended study. To take a book and to read it as an isolated production, to
absorb what entertainment and instruction it offers without regard to its
relation to other books, may be a very delighful thing. But that delight is
immensely increased, is made part of an organised system or a vertebrate
structure, when we take the book in connection with what preceded and
what followed it, as a link, in fact, in the long and beautiful chain of
'sweetness and light.'
"I cannot help hoping that a consideration of the unity of purpose
which marks all the most vital literature of the nineteenth century, its
deliberate and persistent pursuit of what is genuine, natural, and vigorous,
and its rejection of mere rhetoric and superficiality, will add to your
pleasure in reading Coleridge and Browning, Thackeray and Stevenson,
Charles Lamb and Carlyle. You will enjoy the characteristic
variations of all these authors the more, because you see that, essentially,
and wherever they are truly successful, they are moving along the same line
of literary influence. And the interest to us must surely be the more vivid,
because we know not at what moment a complete reorganisation of society
may produce another crisis in literary history as unexpected, as complete,
as that of 1793."
Students of nineteenth-century English literature will make of this
what they
will. Extracts from Thomas Green's Diary were published in
1810 in Ipswich, his native city, and were continued in the
Gentleman's Magazine from January 1834 to June
1843.
William Roberts, described in the British Museum catalogue of
printed books as "Writer on English Bookselling," was a fairly frequent
contributor to at least the last two of the three periodicals under discussion.
Of especial interest is a contribution to the last volume of The
Bookworm (VII [1894], 81-82). It is entitled "A New Letter of
Montaigne" and tells of a letter from Montaigne to Henri III of France in
the Bibliothéque Nationale. The date of the letter is July 7, 1583,
which
places it before that of August 31, 1583, also to Henri III, described by
Donald M. Frame as "Letter of Remembrance from the Mayor [Montaigne,
of course] and Jurats of Bordeaux."[8]
I quote the letter and Roberts's comments.
The letter quoted below is dated July 7, 1583, and was written at that
period of his life when his compatriots, recognising the value of his past
services, elected him, for the second time, Mayor of Bordeaux. It was
evidently in this year that Montaigne made a journey to the court to obtain
from the king, in the interest of his city, an absolute suppression of the
"traite foraine"—that is to say, the custom-house duty imposed on
the
imports into and exports from Bordeaux; and the desired order seems to
have taken effect in July, 1583. Neither M. Alphonse Grün, "Vie
Publique de Montaigne," nor M. Payen, in his "Recherches," makes any
reference to Montaigne's Itinerary during the year 1583. The date and
subject of the letter therefore furnish future biographers of the great essayist
with the groundwork of some fresh materials.
The letter is as follows:—
Sire par ladvertissement que Jay eu en ce lieu de Moncornet Il semble
que la fortune soffre a vous descharger de la promesse que vre bonte et
liberalite ma faicte depuis peu de jours car Jay trouve entre les mains de
mons' pinart une lre cy Incluse par laquelle on mande que le priore de
Provins est vacquant par le trespas de Me Maurice de
Commarcis et
peut valoir de mil a douze cens livres ainsi que dit celuy qui en escrit. Il est
au pays de Loudounois et a la nomination de vre majte qui
nen fera pas
seulement un prieur si elle le me donne dautant que ce sera pour moy un
duche ou conté qui sera tousiours garny de gros et bons chapons
quand
vous les aymerez autant que les cailles. Je no pretens en cecy rompre la
deliberation que vre majte a faite quand au departement de
ses bienfaitz
car celuy qui a atendu tantost vintcinq ans ses maitresses atendra bien deux
mois encores que ce soient ans pour petites gens et afin que ma lre ne soit
plus longere que moy mesme et que
elle ne vous soit Importune Je finiray en supliant tres humblement vre
majte rejecter ceste hardiesse et presumtion de vous escrire
sur la
necessite qui menasse aussi bien gens de basse taille que les plus grans. Je
suplie dieu de tout mon cueur quil luy plaise prospérer.
Vre majeste autant et plus quil soit jamais Roy de France.
De Moncornet le VIIme Juliet 1583.
Vre tres humble serviteur et suject
Montaigne.
The foregoing letter presents several questions not easily answered.
There are (or were), for example, three Moncornets—one in the
Aisne,
a second in the Ardennes, and a third on the Oise.
M. le Baron de Ruble, in his "Mémoires de la Huguerye"
(1877-80), makes an interesting reference to the "pinart" of Montaigne's
letter. Claude Pinard, Baron de Cremailles and secretary of the
Maréchal Saint-André and of the king, was a favourite with
Catherine de Medicis, and became Secretary of State in 1570. He was in
great favour with Henri III., and often employed in diplomatic matters. He
died on September 14, 1605. Maurice de Commartin, to whom Montaigne
refers as Maurice de Commercis, was a prior.
In regard to the word "prospérer" which occurs in
Montaigne's
letter, Littre, in his "Dictionnaire," only cites one example of its use in the
sense here employed by Montaigne, namely, from the "Mémoires
de
Villeroy." The above letter therefore furnishes a second instance of the
employment of this word in the sense of the Latin "prosperare."
W. Roberts.
Since Professor Frame did not know of the existence of this letter he could
not address himself in his biography of Montaigne (1965) to the problems
raised by it. I have made no effort to ascertain if there was post-1965
knowledge of the letter, my primary purpose being to redirect attention to
these and other periodicals.
Finally, in volume seven, in Part II of W. Carew Hazlitt's "English
and Scottish Book Collectors" (1894, pp. 97-106), there is this notice under
the name of Alexander Pope (p. 104):
We have a very imperfect knowledge of the contents and extent of the
poet's library. Books with his autograph sometimes occur. He is supposed
to have had in his possession the unique copy of the old "Taming of a
Shrew." 4to, 1594, now in the Devonshire Collection. Comp.
Bibliographer for Oct.-Nov., 1884.
Boissard (J. J.). Romanæ Urbis Topographia. Folio, Frankfort,
1597-8. On flyleaf: "Ex Libris Alex. Pope."
These two titles may be added to Professor Maynard Mack's essay on
Pope's books in English Literature in the Age of Disquise
(1977), pp. 209-303, and in the revised list in his Collected in
Himself (1982).[9]
Notes
