 | A sketch of old England |  |
LETTER XXII.
Kings would, at all times, I believe, if left to their choice,
rather govern by opinion than by force, by love than by fear.
An army of pensioned writers, when it will suffice to support
the king's popularity, will, in most cases, be preferred to an
army of soldiers to maintain his authority, for at least two
special reasons. The former method is by far the cheaper;
since a few pensions, a paltry title, a ring, a picture, or a letter
written by his majesty's own hand, will very generally neutralize,
if not correct, the most stubborn literary patriot, and so
completely alter his perception of things, that a country, which
to-morrow the happiest in the world. For instance, Thomas
Campbell, whose noble and affecting strains on the subject of
Polish freedom and Irish oppression are remembered by every
American reader, has dwindled into the nominal editor of a
tory magazine, and gone over from the oppressed to the
oppressor. I do not say this change was wrought by a pension,
of two or three hundred pounds a year; but when a man
changes his sentiments very suddenly, and receives a pension
immediately afterwards, it is difficult to resist the conviction
that there is some connexion between the two.
The laureat, Southey, was seduced from the arms of Wat
Tyler, by the irresistible attractions of sack and sugar. A
hundred a year, and a butt of sack, did his business. They
so wrought upon his conscience, that from a downright patriot,
he became first a flatterer of kings, and next a fanatical advocate
of every species of pious fraud and kingly pretension.
I verily believe the poor man is sincere now; for hypocrisy is
too wary and worldly-minded to give in to such fantastic
fooleries as the laureat has lately committed. It is often the
case, that men are inducted into a great devotion for principles,
to which they were at first but little attached, by the aid of a
sound drubbing or two, which operates like persecution upon
new modes of faith, making what was before perhaps little
better than hypocrisy, a confirmed and obstinate conviction.
Few persons have been more persecuted in this way than the
unfortunate laureat. When he was a patriot, he was terribly
persecuted by the Anti-jacobin, which parodied his Sapphics,
and, what every body thought impossible, made them even
more ridiculous than they were originally. After he was converted
to loyalty by sack and sugar, and a hundred a year,
his old friends, whom he had abandoned, attacked him with
every weapon of ridicule and severity; while his new allies,
feeling rather ashamed of their new convert, left him to the
poor consolation of praising himself, which he does now at
every convenient opportunity. As he was drubbed into a
perfect conviction of the truth of his newly adopted principles,
so in like manner has he been convinced of his own great merit
and talents by the ridicule and incredulity of the world. In
attempting to make head against these, he was so often obliged
to bear testimony in favour of himself, that he at length became
a sincere convert to his own absurdities, and grew to
believe in himself, as a man comes to believe in a story of his
own invention, by dint of eternal repetition. What the laureat
does with his butt of sack is a profound secret in the republic
of letters. He cannot drink it, certainly, or else Jack Falstaff
affirms, “a good sherris sack hath a two-fold operation”—if
“it ascends me to the brain, and there dries the vapours,” the
laureat had better set about drinking it, for “by'r Lady,”
brother, another birth-day poem will finish honest Bob Southey,
unless he disperse the aforesaid vapours. He begins to reverse
all the rules of composition of late; for it may lawfully be
said of him, that he writes prose like a madman, and poetry
like a fool. I am sorry for him; for, notwithstanding his
overbearing self-sufficiency; his desertion of the cause of freedom;
his virulent invectives against his opponents; his rampant
conceit, and his utter want of all literary courtesy; I
am assured that his character in private life is amiable and
exemplary.
An army of authors is a much cheaper support of royalty
than an army of soldiers, and has this special recommendation
besides, that it not only can uphold the king's authority while
living, but give him a good name after death.
But the trade of a king is not near so good as it used to be.
At this time, when there seems to be a general rebellion of the
human understanding against the abuses and exactions of antiquated
tyranny, it has become indispensable for royalty to turn
its attentions more particularly to the people. For this purpose,
it is considered equally essential to laud the characters and manners
of kings; to maintain the superiority of that system of
government of which they are the heads; and to denounce, on
all occasions, those principles of freedom, which are as much,
and as surely, the product of intellectual advancement, as the
blossom is of the sun.
The whole tide of corruption has consequently turned into
these channels; and in order to render the means of depressing
mankind more effectual, it has become more than ever necessary,
that the press should be either corrupted or enslaved.
You perhaps have not remarked it, but it is becoming every
day more and more evident, that republicanism and republicans
must be either rendered odious and detestable in the
eyes of nations, by reiterated falsehoods and misrepresentations,
or there will be shortly little security for many thrones of
Europe. One or other, the old or the new world, must change
its governments. A plan has therefore been devised, and is
now in most promising progress, in Europe, for controuling the
freedom of the press, on the one hand by fines, prosecutions, and
censorships; and on the other to render it subservient to the
purposes of antiquated oppressions, ignorance, and superstition,
by means of pensions, patronage, sinecures, and paltry titles,
that sink the man of genius into a mere courtier.
In the progress of this deep laid plot against the human understanding,
we have seen, that only those republican writers
whose efforts were not the most dangerous, either from want of
talents or of a popular mode of addressing the multitude, are
tolerated. The moment a popular writer becomes dangerous
by his power of addressing the public feelings, himself and his
writings are singled out for the lash of the law or the church.
Under some pretence of blasphemy, if they can find no other,
the author is prosecuted, fined, and ruined; and his book, if not
entirely suppressed, becomes an object for all the hirelings to
bark at, from the Quarterly Review to Blackwood's Magazine.
But in a government in which the whole wealth of the state
can be employed almost at will in the wages of corruption, the
means of influencing and controuling the press are not confined
to mere oppression and punishment. If, for instance, a writer
possess too much courage to be frightened, or too much honesty
to be bribed into a sacrifice of his principles, they set the
Quarterly Review upon him. That excellent, conscientious,
and disinterested publication, begins by charging him with
radicalism and infidelity. The Literary Gazette repeats the
tale to the New Monthly and the John Bull; the New Monthly
to the Beacon and Blackwood's Magazine; and thus the cry is
sounded from the London Monument to Edinburgh Cross.
This never fails to alarm the rich and privileged orders; in
fact, all those whose opinions have great influence in society,
and to whom an author looks up, not only for reputation, but
patronage, at least so far as to the purchase of his book. Few
men, however great may be their civil courage, can resist a
combined and successful attack upon their purse and character
at the same time. It therefore happens, in a vast many instances,
that, unless the Edinburgh Review and its followers
take up cudgels, on the other side, the poor man recants in
his next publication, accommodates himself to the views of our
ministerial critic, and sacrifices his principles to save the remnant
of his good name, and find purchasers for his book.
Others, however, who, like Mr. Southey and Mr. Gifford,
are naturally inclined to become pensioners and parasites, have
their virgin purity assailed and speedily overcome by the seductive
applications of certain agreeable sinecures, that are
generally found to be quite irresistible. One of these, it is well
known, caused Mr. Southey to abjure his Joan of Arc and
Wat Tyler, and fairly converted him from Dom Daniels, jacobin
epics, and republican sapphics, into a loving coadjutor of
Messrs. Gifford and Canning, who, erewhile, had set the whole
universe laughing at him and his sapphics in the Anti-jacobin.
That arch enemy of our country, Mr. William Gifford, is clerk
a good salary, nothing to do, and twelve hundred buttons to
his coronation coat. This is as it should be. There is a fitness
of things in a pensioned writer being clerk to a band of pensioners.
Thomas Campbell, alack for genius! is also a pensioner of
the king, and has been placed at the head of the New Monthly
Magazine, with the well known object of putting down, or
superseding the Monthly; for you must know it is common
here, not only with tavern-keepers, who let out their houses to
the public, but also with authors, who let out their consciences
to the best paymaster, to juggle each other out of his custom,
by putting up a similar sign; that is to say, christening their
new bantling by the name of some well known and popular
establishment. There is something exceedingly contemptible
in this; but really, the arts of literature, as practised here now,
graze very closely upon the skirts of the noble art of swindling.
This setting up a spurious magazine, with the same title which
is borne by one already popular and well known, to my mind,
is very little better than getting into society, and borrowing
money, under the name and on the credit of some respectable
person. The mere tagging of the epithet “New” to it, is nothing,
since the generality of people will suppose it nothing
more than a new series of the same work.
The New Monthly is, in every respect, a complete contrast
to the Monthly Magazine—every way inferior in talent, in
principle, instruction, and amusement. The Monthly Magazine,
has, for many years past been conducted with much
ability; and is, at this moment, in my opinion, the best publication
in Great Britain of the kind. The New Monthly, on
the contrary, is a mere collection of frivolous articles, principally
composed of notices of second hand German literature;
letters from Grimus Short; abortive attempts at the pathetic,
and still more abortive attempts at wit and satire.
The Monthly Magazine has always displayed a most liberal
disposition towards our country, and dealt with us in the
spirit of friendly intercourse. It has, on all occasions, been
the advocate of rational freedom, and maintained, with equal
zeal and ability, those sober doctrines of political right, which
are as free from the license of anarchy, as they are from the
chains of despotism. It has always spoken with a just discrimination
of our character, manners, and literature; neither
elevating us above the scale of human excellence, nor debasing
us to the level of profligate boors. In short, if we are to
depend upon foreign periodical literature, the Monthly Magazine
first selection, since it neither pampers our vanity, nor outrages
our just feelings of pride and patriotism.
Besides Messrs. Gifford, Southey, Campbell, and others,
there are hundreds of inferior note, at least that are not so well
known on our side of the water, who are in the enjoyment of
places, pensions, and patronage, of some sort or other. I will
not trouble you with any more of these. It is sufficient for me
to assure you, that very little independence is to be looked for,
either in the reviews or Magazines, with few exceptions. Almost
every one of these was either originally established for
certain religious or political objects, or has been seduced by
bribery and patronage to become a hot partisan. The government
having the heaviest purse, and the most extensive patronage,
is, of course, the best paymaster, and consequently retains
by far the greater proportion of authors, either as apologists of
itself, or calumniators of others. Hence it is, that we see
them industriously employing all their learning and talents in
propping up old abuses, and recommending new ones; mingling
the praises of religion with the grossest flattery of those
whose whole conduct belies its precepts; covering the indulgence
of the bitterest, most malignant passions, with the thin
pretext of orthodox piety; making a parade of their faith in
ribald farce and impious tragedies; spicing the keenest conflicts
of interest and ambition with an ample sprinkling of pure ministerial
orthodoxy; and joining their voices to the full chorus
of cant, which, under the auspices of the Holy Alliance, now
echoes through half the world. It is in this way they either
repay the bounty of the ministry, or insinuate themselves into
the lap of new rewards, by means of new services.
When a writer once consents to receive a benefit, be it what
it may, the tenure of which is, that he shall not write any thing
not palatable to the patron, he sells his birth-right for a mess
of pottage; the wings of his genius are clipped by the sword
of power, and his intellectual faculties become cramped in
their exercise. When old Faustus, according to the story,
sold himself to Satan, he gained by his bargain, at least, an
enlargement of his powers, both of mind and body; his genius
expanded, and he was enabled to comprehend what was before
beyond the reach of his mind. But when Messrs.
Southey and Campbell sold themselves, they seem to have
lost the talent they before possessed; and, like the traitor Arnold,
carried with them nothing but their disgrace. The indifferent
poetry of the patriot Southey, has become ten times
more so since he became a pensioner; and the genius of
entered within the magic circle of ministerial patronage.
In an age of ignorance and superstition, it may be, that
literature will find it necessary to appeal to an enlightened
monarch, or his minister, for that support which the indifference
of the public denies him; or for that protection which the
bigotry of ecclesiastical power renders necessary. But at this
time, when the taste and liberality of the people are amply
sufficient to remunerate the highest efforts of genius, it is not
necessary that it should grovel at the foot of power for protection,
nor prostitute its independence for bread. It is now but
seldom that talent appeals in vain to the patronage of nations,
when it comes recommended by independent principles and
honest patriotism. A people that wish to be free, must take
the exclusive controul of literature out of the hands of their governments.
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