 | The retort courteous |  |
THE RETORT COURTEOUS.
Announced its Author as a Cambrian sage:
But keen Edina, jealous of her claim,
In earnest whispers told the truth to Fame:
Fame, ever willing to detect a cheat,
Her voice sent forth from Arthur's stately seat,
And bade attentive Caledonia learn,
That Peter's Letters were “a home concern,”
Of Wilson, Lockhart, Diffidence, and Co.
Surveys her elder sister with disdain,
There in her paragon and Prince of Streets,
Once dwelt a vender of confected sweets.
The man of pastry dwelleth there no more;
But puffs are made where puffs were made before.
There Blackwood now displays his Hall of Taste,
And puffs of paper follow puffs of paste;
In all the savour of inflated reams;
There Manuscripts of Chaldee scent the room,
And food for scandal sheds divine perfume;
There wholesome flummery the palate woos,
With Poets' Essays on Themselves and Muse;
Young wits who know their alphabet to Z,
Apprenticed there, ply hard the hand and head;
There broken Dandies, with industrious thumbs
And loosen'd stays, make little sugar-plums,
Whip luscious cream for trifle's airy froth,
Or Hogg's ambrosia mix with barley broth;
While Lockhart plasters gingerbread with gold,
Or sadly eyes the puffs that have not sold.
Presiding lord of patty, cake, and puff,
Blackwood, the self-dubb'd Murray of the North;
The master-cook of fudge; surpassing wise;
With eye-brows grey, and Catalani eyes;
And rich broad brogue, combining all the notes
Of ancient Reekie's soft Italian throats.
The work called Peter's fills his veins with glee.
The real artists of that dotterel-pie
Oft he regards with glances quick and sly;
While Wilson answers with a knowing smirk,
And conscious Lockhart chuckles at his work.
Tho' Gall and Spurzheim might contend for shares;
Such seasoning rich of craniologic lore
Those cooks have borrowed from the German store;
Their's be the glory, and be mine the care,
To chaunt the praises of the skilful pair,
His mood's malicious, when 'tis only gay;
What tumult he may raise about his ears.
Let foes come on! he scorns the angry throng,
In self-esteem invulnerably strong.
The crowd mistakes him; for the crowd's a fool
That measures character without a rule.
He to be fairly valued must be known
Not by the world's opinion but his own;
And this he gives us, thanks to generous youth,
With all the green simplicity of truth.
When Lockhart's merits Lockhart's eyes discuss
They view the admirable Crichton thus:—
The rare substructure of his classic mind
For satire's coarse delight is too refined:
But playful spirits dance about his chin,
And tickle him to laughter's venial sin.
Takes special note of all that comes and goes.
The regions of his head are all alive
In every nook, an intellectual hive.
Some sluggish sense may guide the veriest dunce;
He has a thousand feelings all at once,
And qualities unnumber'd; so, you see,
He tries and judges all the things that be.
What chance has man or woman, fib or fact,
Thus tried and judged by their united tact?
You meet, 'tis true, with persons every day—
Who speak more clearly what they mean to say:
But that's because he takes but little pains
To make his tongue acquainted with his brains.
Though skill'd in every language, not alone
Now heard, but ever heard or ever known;
Perplexing all, and disappointing each,
Words jostle words, like ducklings in a gutter:
In short, excess of learning makes him stutter.
Too high attainments thus themselves disable,
And wisdom's head becomes a Tower of Babel.
It's lines are regular and quite defined.
The manly brow juts forward, full and well;
And observation gives a stately swell.
And, after all, this bold commanding face
Is soften'd by a melancholy grace,
An air ineffable of bland concern,
That proves a sentimental pensive turn.
Much to revere what Aristotle thought,
And follows Plato in Philosophy!
So, ever fed, with appetite extreme,
On Plato's honey drown'd in German cream,
He learns to give sarcastic fancies play,
Quite in an easy, harmless, lambent way:
His sparkling jests have no malignant drift;
He is an Addison, and not a Swift!
Of young John Gibson by himself pourtrayed.
Thus the coy peacock will his charms unveil,
And shew the wondering sun his dappled tail.
To Wilson, pictured by himself or friend;
No matter which; for Peter's works, you know,
Are the joint stock of Diffidence and Co.
And whether Wilson, placed before his glass,
Or burnish'd mirror of as useful brass,
By the mere virtue of his own right hand
Produced this portrait to enchant the land;
Or whether, fearful to omit a grace,
He got his Friend the pleasing lines to trace;—
Like dame Pentweazle calling up a smile—
How much may be of moral difference there,
Let Wilson teach us from his Moral Chair.
Beware of Wilson, if he cross your track;
His look is something 'twixt a smile and frown,
As if he knew that he could knock you down.
England may boast of boxers; but not one
Could vie with Scotland's terrible strong John.
No genuine Goth was ever half so fair,
Nor rude Sygambrian waved such yellow hair:
His eyes are of the lightest azure hue,
Yet of the clearest, most cerulean blue:
Blood in his cheeks with laughing fierceness glows,
Just as of yore in Rome's Teutonic foes.
A fine expanse, though somewhat odd in shape:
Pure Fancy's regions there are spread to view,
And, strange to tell, pure wit's developed too.
To sum up all, no visage ever gave
Such brightly beautiful, such grandly grave,
Such deeply desperate, such blithely bland,
Such wonderful expression,—at command.
And then his voice! ”tis Music's charming riddle;
A solemn organ now, and now a fiddle.
As for the rest, the Graces, though you stare,
Would vainly strive to mend his finish'd air.
Of Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Wickliffe, Knox:
Else had some luckless pastor lack'd a fold.
Ye deans and chapters bid your bells rejoice,
And shake the steeples with their brazen voice.
To Britain's loss, your stars were most benign,
That Poet Wilson did not turn Divine.
Else had he surely soar'd beyond you all:
Just flapp'd his wings in some prebendal stall;
Just left some notes of eloquence behind,
To shame all preachers of impassion'd kind;
Then for a bolder flight his pinions spread,
Nor stopp'd till Becket's mitre graced his head.
How had he then astounded all the church,
With Canterbury's crosier for his perch!
Wilson, the Prince of Poets, is her son!
Yes, let her triumph in her peerless bard,
Though vapid fashion gives a cold regard.
By modern taste is Midas-like decreed.
Let any Pan, let Byron sing, or Moore,
To him the bays shall be adjudged be sure:
Let Wilson warble in his sweetest strain,
Glasgow's Apollo sings, alas, in vain!
Consult his verse, unnumber'd beauties start
Fresh from each glowing page, and seize the heart:
Whatever Fancy can invent to charm,
To freeze or melt, enrapture or alarm;
Whatever tenderest feeling e'er conceived,
Or god-like genius gloriously achieved;
All this, and more, hath injured Wilson done;
Let Glasgow shout, though Fame neglect her son!
Celestial cherubs have not cheeks so fair:
On Afric's shores the Joliba to find,
Nor friends nor kindred could his will restrain,
Nor floods of tears by ladies shed in vain:
But when they urged how southern suns and toil,
The dazzling radiance of those cheeks would spoil,
The young Adventurer rein'd his fancy in,
And staid at home, and spared his lily skin.
Yet hath he since o'er many a mountain's sod,
And many a vale's, heroically trod:
The Sister Isles have not a glen or height
To him unknown, in his complexion's spite:
They've not a stream whose trout he hath not scared.
And not a bumpkin by his prowess spared.
All Britain's fairs and wakes have seen his feats:
Proclaim it, Glasgow, through thy gaping streets.
The glittering fruit of reputation touch;
And win its object where a thousand fail.
Witness Grimalkin and the accomplished Fox;
And witness Wilson, who can fence, and box,
And read, and write, and rhyme, and run, and row,
Jump in a sack, and shoot a sitting crow;
With every village ring in wrestling cope,
And catch a pig, although his tail they soap.—
All this can Wilson do, and yet, oh stain
To sacred Justice! all is done in vain.
Pudding and praise by meaner hands are won;
Let Glasgow rise and vindicate her son!
Know you why Fame withholds your just reward?
Learn, Wilson, learn, and Lockhart see the cause:—
You sound no trumpets in your own applause!
Self-praise the echo of the world procures;
The bane of too much modesty is your's.
You let not half your excellence appear.
To tell your charms I choose the words you chose,
Obtruding only prosody for prose.
Fain would I sing such laudatory strain
As suits your merits, but 'twould give you pain:
Grieved I forbear, reluctant to annoy
The wakeful blushes of a pair so coy.
Or damn'd it with faint praise, that direst curse;
And oft in sad soliloquy have I
Stood doubtful to submit or to reply;
From the meek law of patience to revolt,
Or stand recorded for a drivelling dolt.
Prudence prevail'd; and Patience held her rule,
Though sometimes sorely tried by knave or fool.
I waged no quarrel for an idle rhyme:
The worms of earth defile the flowers with slime;
But dews from heaven descend, and kindly rain,
And wash the vernal leaves and flowers from stain.
And so, thought I, some blossoms ev'n of mine
May yet be cherish'd; why should I repine?
Faint grew that hope, and fainter still it grew;
No dew descended but oblivion's dew:
I ceased at last the sickening hope to nurse,
And sadly smiled at vanity and verse.
And aid, so long deferr'd, was scarce desired,
The fostering dew came softly rolling forth
In rich redundancc from the tender North.
Blackwood's kind critics eulogized my song,
And breathed new life through what was dead so long;
The germs of verse sprung out in beauty, kist
By that reviving hyperborean mist:
While old Dunluce beheld with grim amaze
His Irish ivy twined with Scottish bays.
With joy was warm'd, with gratitude was thrill'd:
What if my bosom panted to repay
Those gentlest critics in the fondest way!
But high emotions suddenly decline.
Distance and indolence my zeal o'er-rul'd,
And fresh pursuits my grateful fervour cool'd.
But when, with Chance, the soldier's guide, I past
To Scotia's hills, my zeal return'd at last.
Procrastination's blame was mine; but not
The guilt of letting kindness be forgot.
Whether I view'd red Bothwell's broken towers,
Or by Craignethan's walls beguil'd the hours;
Sought truth with Owen by the Falls of Clyde,
Or gather'd pebbles on Loch-Lomond's side;
Serious or gay, no pleasure seem'd complete;
Some inward Mentor urged me from retreat.
“Go, graceless Idler, leave the birken banks,
“To Blackwood's critics bear your tardy thanks.
“Go, idler, go,” it said, or seem'd to say,
“Short is the space, and easy now the way.”
Oppress my spirit with a growing weight.
Wrongs I endured, but favours such as those
Of Blackwood's critics troubled my repose.
In satire's thorny mazes might have stray'd;
But that is past,—not genial Jacob now
Could make me break my charitable vow.
I shrink from strife with such a morbid sense,
Scarce would I scotch a snake in self-defence.
Peace, then to Aristarch's fastidious tribes,
Though verse of mine be withered by their gibes.
Peace to reviewers, whosoe'er they be,
That bend their lordly frown on humble me.
I yield, submissive, to their awful rage,
And own the sins unnumbered of my page.
Far other feelings Blackwood's critics raise,
My soul expands, encouraged by their praise;
My arms would hug them with as fond a care
As friendly Bruin hugs his brother Bear:
The baffled stretch of my presumptuous love,
They see and smile at Gratitude's excess,
And so may deign to be content with less.
Go, then, pure incense, from an ardent soul,
Around their heads in fumes respectful roll!
Go, waft my thanks where all my thanks should fly,
Though most unworthy to ascend so high;
Go, bear my love, ye clouds of incense, go,
To Wilson, Lockhart, Diffidence, and Co.
“Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, by Peter Morris, M. D. of Pensharpe Hall, Aberystwith: Printed for William Blackwood.” This publication was intended to give immortality to every distinguished living character in Scotland, and to some characters whose ambition was to be distinguished; among the latter, to its authors, Mr Lockhart and Mr Wilson, as will be presently seen.
There are others in the concern whose names do not appear. Whatever comes from this company is of superior quality; and “to counteract the many attempts that might be made to impose on the unwary a spurious composition,” (as Messrs Day and Martin of Holborn express it,) every article is stamped with the broad seal of the third-named partner.
“The only great lounging book-shop in the New Town of Edinburgh is Mr Blackwood's. He took possession of a large and airy suite of rooms in Princes Street, which had formerly been occupied by a notable confectioner, and whose threshold was, therefore, familiar to all the frequenters of that superb promenade. There it was that this enterprising bibliopole hoisted his standard, and prepared at once for action. Stimulated by the example and success of John Murray, whose agent he is, he determined to make, if possible, Princes Street to the High Street, what the other had made Albemarle Street to the Row. The length of vista presented to one on entering the shop has a very imposing effect; for it is carried back, room after room, through various gradations of light and shadow, till the eye cannot trace distinctly the outline of any object in the farthest distance. First, there is, as usual, a spacious place set apart for retail business, and a numerous detachment of young clerks and apprentices, to whose management that important department of the concern is entrusted. Then you have an elegant oval saloon, lighted from the roof, where various groups of loungers and literary dilletanti are engaged in looking at or criticising among themselves the publications,” &c. &c. Peter's Letters, Second Edition, Vol. II. pages 186, 187.
“Mr Blackwood is a nimble active-looking man of middle age, and moves about from one corner to another with great alacrity, and, apparently, under the influence of high animal spirits. His complexion is very sanguineous, but nothing can be more intelligent, keen, and sagacious than the expression of the whole physiognomy; above all, the grey eyes and eye-brows, as full of loco-motion as those of Catalani,” &c. &c. Vol. II. page 188.
“In such critical colloquies the voice of the bookseller himself may ever and anon be heard mingling the broad and unadulterated notes of its Auld Reikie music.” Vol. II. p. 188.
Extracts from Mr Lockhart's Description of himself. Peter's Letters, Vol. III. pages 134, 135, 136, and 137. “I had an opportunity of seeing and conversing with Mr Lockhart, who, as well as Mr Wilson, is supposed to be one of the principal supporters of the Magazine, and so of judging for myself concerning an individual who seems to have cared very little how many enemies he raised up among those who were not personally acquainted with him. Owing to the satirical vein of some of the writings ascribed to his pen, most persons whom I have heard speak of him seemed to have been impressed with the notion that the bias of his character inclined towards an unrelenting subversion of the pretensions of others. But I soon perceived that here was another instance of the incompetency of the crowd to form any rational opinion about persons of whom they see only partial glimpses, and hear only distorted representations.”
“I was not long in his company ere I was convinced that those elements which form the basis of his mind, could never find their satisfaction in mere satire,” &c. &c.
“At the same time, a strong and ever wakeful perception of the ludicrous is certainly a prominent feature in his composition, and his flow of animal spirits enables him to enjoy it keenly and invent it with success.”
“I have seen, however, very few persons whose minds are so much alive and awake throughout every corner, and who are so much in the habit of judging and trying every thing by the united tact of so many qualities and feelings all at once.”
“But one meets with abundance of individuals every day who shew in conversation a greater facility of expression.”
“I never found Mr Lockhart very much engrossed with the desire of finding language to convey any relation of ideas that had occurred to him,” &c.
“In regard to facility of expression, I do not know whether the study of languages, which is a favourite one with him, (indeed, I am told he understands a good deal of almost all the modern languages, and is well skilled in the ancient ones, ) I know not whether this study has any tendency to increase such facility.”
“His features are regular and quite definite in their outlines; his forehead is well-advanced, and largest, I think, in the region of observation and perception; But the general expression is rather pensive than otherwise.”
“Although an Oxonian, and early imbued with an admiration for the works of the Stagyrite, he seems rather to incline in philosophy to the high Platonic side of the question, and to lay a great deal of stress on the investigation and cultivation of the impersonal sentiments of the human mind; ideas which his acquaintance with German literature and philosophy has probably much contributed to strengthen.”
“Under the influence of that mode of thinking, a turn for pleasantry rather inclines to exercise itself in a light and good humoured play of fancy, &c., than to gratify a sardonic bitterness, &c., or to nourish a sour and atrabilious spirit, &c. with a cherished and pampered feeling of delighted disapprobation like that of Swift. —But Mr Lockhart is a very young person.”
“Mr Wilson. A very robust athletic man,—broad across the back,—firm set upon his limbs.” Peter's Letters, Vol. 1. page 126.
“Having altogether very much that sort of air which is inseparable from the consciousness of great bodily energies.” Ibid.
“The blood glows in his cheeks with as firm a fervour as it did, according to Jornandes, in those of the “bello gaudentes prælio ridentes Teutones” of Attila.” Ibid.
“His forehead is finely but strangely shaped; the regions of pure fancy and of pure wit, being both developed in a very striking manner, which is but seldom the case in any one individual,—and the organ of observation having projected the sinus frontalis to a degree that is altogether uncommon.” Ibid, page 127.
“I had never suspected before I saw him, that such extreme fairness and freshness of complexion could be compatible with so much variety and tenderness; but, above all, with so much depth of expression. I have never seen a physiognomy which could pass with so much rapidity from the serious to the most ludicrous of effects,” &c. Ibid, pages 126 and 127.
“The flashing brightness, and, now and then, the still more expressive dimness of his eye, and the tremulous music of a voice that is equally at home in the highest and the lowest of notes,—and the attitude bent forward with an earnestness to which the Graces could make no valuable addition.” Ibid, page 128.
“With such gifts as these, and with the noblest of themes to excite and adorn them, I have no doubt that Mr Wilson, had he been in the church, would have left all the impassioned preachers I have ever heard many thousand leagues behind him.” Ibid, page 128.
“The author of the Isle of Palms and the City of the Plague (whose exquisite lines, &c.) is a native of this place, Glasgow.” Ibid, Vol. III. page 255.
“The truth is, that I do not think justice is at all done in general to his genius, &c. The meed of poetical popularity has been bestowed in our time, in a way that cannot be considered in any other light but that of extreme partiality,” &c. &c. &c. Ibid, page 256.
“Beautiful and various,” Ibid, page 256. “Richness and fervor of poetic invention, and, at the same time, a clear pathetic mastery of all the softer strings of the human heart,—such as, in a wiser or less capricious age, would have long since procured for the poem very extensive popularity, and for the poet himself a much more copious reward of serious admiration than seems as yet to have been bestowed by the general voice upon Mr Wilson.” Ibid, page 257.
This has been said before. See note 19. But the repetition occurs more than once in my text-book. For instance, “I have heard that in his early youth, he proposed to go out to Africa, in quest of the Joliba, and was dissuaded only by the representations made to him on the subject of his remarkably fair and florid complexion.” Vol. II. page 340.
“But I believe he has since walked over every hill and valley in the three kingdoms, having angling and versifying, no doubt, for his principal occupations; but finding room every now and then for astonishing the fair and wakes all over these islands, by his miraculous feats in leaping, wrestling, and singlestick.” Ibid, pages 340 and 341.
“Early attainment of great fame is by no means in the power of those who possess the greatest variety of capacities and attainments.” Vol. III. p. 258.
A man who has only one talent, and who is so fortunate as to be led early to exercise it in a judicious direction, may soon be expected to sound the depth of his power, and to strengthen himself with those appliances which are most proper to ensure his success. But he whose mind is rich in a thousand quarters,” &c. &c. For the rest of those fine passages about Mr Wilson and his too multifarious powers, see pages 258, 259, 260, and 261 of Vol. III.
Some of these acquirements have been already noticed. See note 31. Mr Wilson's superiority in “leaping, wrestling, boxing, and speaking,” is likewise celebrated in Vol. I. page 126.
Dunluce Castle, a poem, of which one hundred copies were printed at a private press early in 1814, was the performance on which such liberal patronage was unexpectedly bestowed by these gentlemen many years after it had been printed, and when I thought it was long forgotten by the few persons who might have seen it. I intreat any individual, who may think that I shew my gratitude too much, to refer to the criticism which has occasioned this expression of it. It will then be owned, that the compliments paid to me, and to the profession to which I have the honour to belong, were such as could not be well forgotten, however dilatory I might be in acknowledging them, from remoteness of situation and other causes. I think it but just to the party who treated me so handsomely, to warn any reader who makes this reference, not to be startled by some peculiar elegancies of diction to be found in the criticism referred to, nor by some slight mistakes into which the learned critics have fallen, such as mistaking an heraldic symbol of an ancient baronial family for a pocket-handkerchief.
The ruins of Bothwell Castle, near Hamilton, where the writer of these couplets is at present quartered.
The ruins of Craignethan Castle, between Hamilton and Lanark, supposed to be the Tillietudlem of Lady Margaret Bellenden in Old Mortality.
“Genial Jacob.” Tonson, the old bookseller. My Jacob, however, though literary, is not a bookseller, but a Mr Jacob Fletcher, an eminent Jacob of Liverpool, who some time since took great pains, in a long letter to a reverend Friend of mine in Worcestershire, to explain how it was impossible for me to succeed in grave poetry, in as much as certain words not orthodox, such as “labyrinthine,” “marcid,” &c. were to be found in the attempts I had already made. He advised, that if I wrote at all, I should “write satire.” This was very obliging, but unfortunately his advice had not been asked; and my friend was so impolite as to receive his communication with a very indifferent grace. This note is intended to shew him that I appreciated his civility with due decorum.
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