1. CHAPTER I.
An essay to prove that an author will write the better for having
some knowledge of the subject on which he writes
As several gentlemen in these times, by the wonderful force of
genius only, without the least assistance of learning, perhaps without
being well able to read, have made a considerable figure in the
republic of letters; the modern critics, I am told, have lately
begun to assert, that all kind of learning is entirely useless to a
writer; and, indeed, no other than a kind of fetters on the natural
sprightliness and activity of the imagination, which is thus weighed
down, and prevented from soaring to those high flights which otherwise
it would be able to reach.
This doctrine, I am afraid, is at present carried much too far:
for why should writing differ so much from all other arts? The
nimbleness of a dancing-master is not at all prejudiced by being
taught to move; nor doth any mechanic, I believe, exercise his tools
the worse by having learnt to use them. For my own part, I cannot
conceive that Homer or Virgil would have writ with more fire, if,
instead of being masters of all the learning their times, they had
been as ignorant as most of the authors of the present age. Nor do I
believe that all the imagination, fire, and judgment of Pitt, could
have produced those orations that have made the senate of England,
in these our times, a rival in eloquence to Greece and Rome, if he had
not been so well read in the writings of Demosthenes and Cicero, as to
have transferred their whole spirit into his speeches, and, with their
spirit, their knowledge too.
I would not here be understood to insist on the same fund of
learning in any of my brethren, as Cicero persuades us is necessary to
the composition of an orator. On the contrary, very little reading is,
I conceive, necessary to the poet, less to the critic, and the least
of all to the politician. For the first, perhaps, Bysshe's Art of
Poetry, and a few of our modern poets, may suffice; for the second,
a moderate heap of plays; and, for the last, an indifferent collection
of political journals.
To say the truth, I require no more than that a man should have some
little knowledge of the subject on which he treats, according to the
old maxim of law, Quam quisque norit artem in ea se
exerceat. With
this alone a writer may sometimes do tolerably well; and, indeed,
without this, all the other learning in the world will stand him in
little stead.
For instance, let us suppose that Homer and Virgil, Aristotle and
Cicero, Thucydides and Livy, could have met all together, and have
clubbed their several talents to have composed a treatise on the art
of dancing: I believe it will be readily agreed they could not have
equalled the excellent treatise which Mr. Essex hath given us on
that subject, entitled, The Rudiments of Genteel Education. And,
indeed, should the excellent Mr. Broughton be prevailed on to set fist
to paper, and to complete the above-said rudiments, by delivering down
the true principles of athletics, I question whether the world will
have any cause to lament, that none of the great writers, either
antient or modern, have ever treated about that noble and useful art.
To avoid a multiplicity of examples in so plain a case, and to
come at once to my point, I am apt to conceive, that one reason why
many English writers have totally failed in describing the manners
of upper life, may possibly be, that in reality they know nothing of
it.
This is a knowledge unhappily not in the power of many authors to
arrive at. Books will give us a very imperfect idea of it; nor will
the stage a much better: the fine gentleman formed upon reading the
former will almost always turn out a pedant, and he who forms
himself upon the latter, a coxcomb.
Nor are the characters drawn from these models better supported.
Vanbrugh and Congreve copied nature; but they who copy them draw as
unlike the present age as Hogarth would do if he was to paint a
rout, or a drum, in the dresses of Titian and of Vandyke. In short,
imitation here will not do the business. The picture must be after
Nature herself. A true knowledge of the world is gained only by
conversation, and the manners of every rank must be seen in order to
be known.
Now it happens that this higher order of mortals is not to be
seen, like all the rest of the human species, for nothing, in the
streets, shops, and coffee-house; nor are they shown, like the upper
rank of animals, for so much a-piece. In short, this is a sight to
which no persons are admitted without one or other of these
qualifications, viz., either birth or fortune, or, what is
equivalent to both, the honourable profession of a gamester. And, very
unluckily for the world, persons so qualified very seldom care
to take upon themselves the bad trade of writing; which is generally
entered upon by the lower and poorer sort, as it is a trade which many
think requires no kind of stock to set up with.
Hence those strange monsters in lace and embroidery, in silks and
brocades, with vast wigs and hoops; which, under the name of lords and
ladies, strut the stage, to the great delight of attorneys and their
clerks in the pit, and of the citizens and their apprentices in the
galleries; and which are no more to be found in real life, than the
centaur, the chimera, or any other creature of mere fiction. But to
let my reader into a secret, this knowledge of upper life, though very
necessary for preventing mistakes, is no very great resource to a
writer whose province is comedy, or that kind of novels, which, like
this I am writing, is of the comic class.
What Mr. Pope says of women is very applicable to most in this
station, who are, indeed, so entirely made up of form and affectation,
that they have no character at all, at least, none which appears. I
will venture to say the highest life is much the dullest, and
affords very little humour or entertainment. The various callings in
lower spheres produce the great variety of humorous characters;
whereas here, except among the few who are engaged in the pursuit of
ambition, and the fewer still who have a relish for pleasure, all is
vanity and servile imitation. Dressing and cards, eating and drinking,
bowing and courtesying, make up the business of their lives.
Some there are, however, of this rank, upon whom passion exercises
its tryanny, and hurries them far beyond the bounds which decorum
prescribes; of these, the ladies are as much distinguished by their
noble intrepidity, and a certain superior contempt of reputation, from
the frail ones of meaner degree, as a virtuous woman of quality is
by the elegance and delicacy of her sentiments from the honest wife of
a yeoman or shopkeeper. Lady Bellaston was of this intrepid character;
but let not my country readers conclude from her, that this is the
general conduct of women of fashion, or that we mean to represent them
as such. They might as well suppose that every clergyman was
represented by Thwackum, or every soldier by ensign Northerton.
There is not, indeed, a greater error than that which universally
prevails among the vulgar, who, borrowing their opinion from some
ignorant satirists, have affixed the character of lewdness to these
times. On the contrary, I am convinced there never was less of love
intrigue carried on among persons of condition, than now. Our
present women have been taught by their mothers to fix their
thoughts only on ambition and vanity, and to despise the pleasures
of love as unworthy their regard; and being afterwards, by the care of
such mothers, married without having husbands, they seem pretty well
confirmed in the justness of those sentiments; whence they content
themselves, for the dull remainder of life, with the pursuit of more
innocent, but I am afraid more childish amusements, the bare mention
of which would ill suit with the dignity of this history. In my humble
opinion, the true characteristic of the present beau monde is rather
folly than vice, and the only epithet which it deserves is that of
frivolous.