THE COLLECTOR.

ESSAYS ON

BOOKS, NEWSPAPERS, PICTURES, INNS, AUTHORS, DOCTORS, HOLIDAYS, ACTORS, PREACHERS.

BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DR. DORAN, Author of “Table Traits,” “Monarchs Retired from Business,” “History of Court Fools,” “Their Majesties’ Servants,” &c. &c.

LONDON: JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY. (All Rights Reserved.)

CONTENTS.

[Pg 1]

INTRODUCTION.

t was one of the conclusions arrived at by Adelung, that the same language would not maintain itself beyond the limit of a hundred and fifty thousand square miles; but by means of books the limits of the world alone are the limits within which language and the enjoyment of it can be confined. Letters waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole, and printed volumes carry thoughts that breathe and words that burn over the great oceans from one quarter of the world to another.

Such a volume is the one now in the hand of the reader. It is freighted with a dozen pleasant papers or essays, the subjects of which are not confined to America exclusively. They furnish us with text, and afford opportunity for illustrative comment.

Profiting by this opportunity, let me commence by observing, in reference to the opening essay, that the inns and taverns of London underwent a great change after the death of James the First. The rights of honest topers were suppressed by his son King Charles, who, for the poor[Pg 2] fee of an annual three pounds sterling, granted licences to tavern-keepers to sell wines at what prices they pleased, in spite of all statutes to the contrary! You may fancy how flushed the face of a thirsty Cockney might become, who, on putting down his eightpence for a quart of claret, was told by Francis, the drawer, that the price was a full quarter noble, or ‘one-and-eightpence’!

Lord Goring, who issued these licences, pocketed a respectable amount of fees in return. By statute, London had authority only for the establishment of forty taverns. But what did roystering George Goring care for statute, since the king gave him licence to ride over it? Taverns multiplied accordingly, not only in the city but in those ‘suburbs,’ as they were once called, fragrant Drury Lane and refined ‘Convent Garden.’ With competition came lower prices, however, and the throats of the Londoners were refreshed, while their purses were not so speedily lightened.

Jolly places they became again; but when they not only increased all over the town, but took to ‘victualling,’ as it was termed, as well as ‘liquoring,’ the authorities began to inquire into the matter. With the claret that was drunk, a corresponding amount of venison was eaten. At the same time the king’s bucks began to disappear, and suspicion arose that gentlemen in taverns dined off his sacred majesty’s deer! A watch was set to prevent such felonious fare being carried into London from any of the royal parks, chases, or forests. Still haunches smoked on the boards of those naughty victualling taverns, and haughty Cockneys, ‘greatly daring, dined’! The stolen bucks were smuggled in over Bow Bridge; and not till that passage was occupied by representatives of legal[Pg 3] authority did the venison intended for the court cease to find its way into the city.

The drama at this time lingered about Blackfriars and the Bankside. Bacchus emigrated westward, before Thespis. In 1633, in ‘Convent Garden’ and the ‘little lane’ adjacent, which had then just begun to be called Russell Street, there were not less than eight taverns and twenty alehouses. This was thought to be so much beyond the requirements of the public thirst, that an order was issued to reduce the number of taverns to two and the alehouses to four. The suburban public cried out against the drinking privileges of the city, where claret was tapped in taverns and ale ran from the spigot from before breakfast till after supper-time. The Council directed the attention of the Lord Mayor thereto, and in 1633 inquiry was made as to how many taverns had been newly opened since the year 1612. The reply was, ‘sixty and one.’ In the return it is pleasant to read of the ‘Boar’s Head,’ as ‘an ancient tavern.’ Teetotallers will, perhaps, entertain due regard for ‘Bagsishaw Ward,’ as being the only one

in the city described as having ‘never a tavern within that ward.’ But, then, Basing Hall, or Bagsishaw Ward, was of such small extent as to be rather contemptuously spoken of by Stowe himself, who calls it ‘a small thing consisting of one street.’

An inhabitant of this ward had, therefore, only to step into the next street if he wanted a stoup of Bordeaux or a flagon of ale. If he swore over his liquor he was liable to the penalty of a shilling; and if he went on his way home noisily, with more claret under his belt than he well knew how to carry, he might be mulcted of a crown. These fines were distributed among the poor, so that the more[Pg 4] drinking and profanity abounded, the better for those poor. To be blasphemous was to be on one of the blessed paths of charity. City chronicles tell of one Richard Dixon, who, having more of an eccentric compassion for the distressed than regard for propriety, swallowed his claret, swore a score of oaths, and deposited twenty shillings with the town clerk for London paupers.

Sober people in the city, however, complained of the increasing number of inns and taverns. Orders were issued accordingly, and a Boniface here and there took down his bush at the beginning of the week, but hung it up again before Saturday. The temperance party furnished a list of 211 taverns, new and old, in the city, in October, 1633. At that time Shakspeare’s and Washington Irving’s ‘Boar’s Head,’ in Eastcheap, was kept by one William Leedes, ‘not by any licence from the king’s majesty,’ but ‘as a freeman.’ Will Leedes may well have seen Shakspeare, who had not then been dead a score of years; and we may fancy mine host’s guests discussing the second edition of the Folio, which had then been out of the press not much above twelve months.

In spite of the law for the suppression of certain taverns, these remained open, and new inns were built. The fashion and delicacy of Drury Lane were deeply affected by the threatened building of a tavern in that refined locality, in addition to eleven already existing there. The master of his majesty’s tents, one Thomas Jones, resided in Drury Lane, and he petitioned the Council to prohibit the above building, as being to the great prejudice of the royal tent-master ‘and other neighbours, being men of eminent quality.’

The greatest blow at the old taverns was the prohibition[Pg 5] of ‘victualling.’ Tavern-keepers beset the king for licences to cook and retail meat, ‘it being,’ says one petition, ‘a thing much desired by noblemen and gentlemen of the best rank, and others (for the which, if they please, they may also contract beforehand, as the custom is in other countries), there being no other place fit for them to eat in the city.’ This was in Cheapside; but there was also Will Mead’s house in Bread Street. It had ever been resorted to by citizens and foreigners, on account of its famous fish dinners. The company had always been ‘well-affected,’ of the very best quality, too; gentlefolk, who conformed themselves to the laws made for eating fish upon days appointed. If Will Mead be not permitted to vend his Lenten fare, then he is ‘deprived of his best way of subsistence, having applied himself and bred up many servants only for the dressing of fish.’ As licence had been given to two vintners to ‘dress and vent flesh,’ Will prays for similar licence to dress and

vend fish also. Will was landlord of that very ‘Mermaid’ of which Mr. Tuckerman speaks in his first essay—the ‘Mermaid’ of Ben Jonson, who had then just closed his dramatic career with Love’s Welcome—the ‘Mermaid’ which, some thirty years earlier, had been kept by the poet’s namesake, Johnson, and which had been a ‘Mermaid,’ where men of quality took their wine, as early at least as the time when the Houses of York and Lancaster were at bloody strife for the crown of ‘this our England.’

But, occasionally, men of quality died as well as drank in a London inn. I am not sure that it was not in this very ‘Mermaid’ that Richard de Grey, the sixth Lord Grey of Ruthyn, died, in 1523, an utterly penniless gambler. His son Henry, from poverty, never assumed any title of[Pg 6] honour; and it was not until the time of his great-grandson, Reginald, that the honour and fortune were restored of a family of which the present Baroness Grey de Ruthyn is the representative.

Those old inns had their tragic as well as their gayer aspects. A man was as likely to die poisoned as ruined by gaming in some of them. For example, in 1635 eighteen pipes of white wine, belonging to Peter van Paine, a foreigner, were seized, and Lord Mayor Parkhurst wrote to the Council that ‘in eight of them were found eight bundles of weeds, in four some quantities of sulphur, in another a whole piece of match, besides in every cask a kind of gravel mixture, by which mixtures the wines are conceived to be very unwholesome, and of the like nature with those which were formerly destroyed.’ Peter van Paine must have dealt in a compound of the quality of modern Hamburg sherry, a compound that would have been deeply declined by the poorest of those authors who form the subject of the second essay.

oor Authors! Against no class of men have the acutely-pointed shafts of satire been more frequently darted. Congreve, who had so little cause to be ashamed of the name, yet persistently rejected the honour of being supposed to be one of the brotherhood. When Voltaire visited him, the French writer expressly stated that the compliment was addressed to the author, and not to merely Mr. Congreve. The latter remarked that he was a ‘gentleman,’ and not an author. Whereupon the polite Frenchman rejoined that if Congreve[Pg 7] had been only a gentleman, he, the French author, would never have thought of calling upon him at all.

A wicked wit, some hundred and odd years ago, made the early pages of Sylvanus Urban lively by inventing a census of surviving English authors. These he set down in round numbers at three thousand, who had produced in the preceding year, of abortive works, 7,000; born dead, 3,000; and not one that survived the year itself. Three hundred and twenty perished by sudden death, and a few thousands went to line trunks, make sky-rocket cases, hold pies, or were consumed by worms. One thousand of these literary gentlemen are said to have died of lunacy, a rather greater number were ‘starved,’ seventeen were hanged, fifteen committed suicide, five pastoral poets died of fistula, others in various ways; while a difference was suggested as to the diet, lives, and deaths of aldermen and authors in a zero, indicating the number of writers who died of ‘surfeit.’

Perhaps one of the most singular reasons for founding a periodical, and undertaking much of the authorship and editorship, presents itself in the case of the celebrated French physician, Théophraste Renaudet. He had a number of nervous, anxious, restless patients, who required little more than to have their minds drawn from the unprofitable occupation of dwelling upon the condition of the body. The great doctor did not wish that the thoughts of his patients should be allowed to dwell very much upon anything. Books of science, politics, or polemical theology, were not at all what he required. The romances of the day were stilted, pompous things, quite as difficult for invalids to read as any of the inflated treatises on scientific, political, and theological subjects. Renaudet[Pg 8] may be said to have been a pupil of the philosophical school of Hippias. That self-reliant teacher of Elis maintained that a portion at least of manly virtue consisted in being able to dispense with the assistance of other men. Hippias never allowed any man to help him in any matter wherein

he could help himself. He was accordingly his own tailor, shoemaker, hairdresser, laundress, and cook! How the philosopher looked when he went abroad, or how he fared when he dined at home, it is at once awful and amusing to think of! Renaudet did not go quite so far as the Elian; but in case of his patients failing to find help in others, he took the matter into his own hands, and founded the Gazette de France. It was better, if not for himself, at least for his patients, than if he had discovered a new remedy for prevalent diseases. Those pleasant little paragraphs of news were as so many pleasant fillips to the lazy intelligences of the nervous. Those fresh supplies of little scandals were as fresh pinches of rappee to the arid nostril all athirst for dust. Those brief hints and innuendoes were as gentle titillations, not strong enough to exhaust, but just sufficient to exhilarate, refresh, and strengthen. Nervous patients recovered, many who might otherwise have become so did not fall ill, and every one was delighted with Renaudet’s attempt at authorship except his

fellow-practitioners, the most of whom then lived upon the nerves of the fashionable public.

Renaudet’s authorship had a benevolent and unselfish motive. As an example of audacity in the same line, I know nothing that can compare with a circumstance which occurred in the middle of the last century. There was at that time in Oxford an honest watchmaker, named Greene. He was a great reader and a great admirer of Milton; but,[Pg 9] like the artist who had just finished a painting on a signboard, and contemplated his performance with a commiserating thought of Titian, and the complacent cry of ‘Poor little Tit!’ so the Oxford watchmaker tapped his forehead, like poor André Chenier before execution, and thought he had ‘something there’ beyond any possession that could be boasted of by mortal sons of song. Accordingly, Greene published a specimen of a new version of Paradise Lost, in blank verse of the watchmaker’s own adaptation, ‘by which,’ he modestly remarked, ‘that amazing work is brought somewhat nearer the summit of perfection.’ Poor Greene’s ‘summit of perfection’ might lead one

to believe that his ideas of improvement were not directed towards Milton only, but that he wished to give a new version to the old joke, the point of which lay in ‘the height of acme’!

It is a singular fact that one of the best literal renderings of Milton into a foreign language is one into French by Jean de Diur. It is lineal, metaphrastic, and literal; consequently you have, as it were, the words of the song, but only faint, or rather no echoes of the music. Nevertheless, the patience and conscientiousness of the translator are to be seen in the fidelity with which he has interpreted the significance of the terms.

Another original phase of authorship may be here recorded, since it is in connection with Milton. While the Oxford watchmaker was carrying Paradise Lost to the summit of perfection by his improvements, Landor was carrying through the press his Essay on Milton’s Use and Imitation of the Moderns. The author described the attempt as one hitherto never made in prose or rhyme. The method by which he sought to prove his case against[Pg 10] Milton was by naming certain authors whom he supposed the poet to have consulted, and then giving quotations from them to expose Milton’s plagiarisms. The case startled the world only for a while. Competent defenders of Milton’s authorship arose, and they proved that Milton had not plagiarised from the sources named by Landor, but that the latter had forged his quotations in order to traduce Milton! The discovery made every one eager to avoid Landor as a rogue, and to possess his book as a curiosity.

A French author flung his poisoned dart also at Milton. Voltaire accused him of taking his epic from an old Italian mystery, the Adamo, by Andréivi. But Milton has had gallant champions in French authors, too. Their judgment is, that if Milton created his great epic out of the chaos of the old mystery, he, in a certain sense, resembled the Creator, who, out of brute clay, created man in the image of the Creator himself.

Cædmon, in Anglo-Saxon, and St. Avitus, in Latin, likewise treated of the Creation and the Fall, long before Milton. But, as another French author, M. Guizot, has remarked, ‘It is of little importance to Milton’s glory whether he was acquainted with them or not. He was one of those who imitate when they please, for they invent when they choose, and they invent even while imitating.’ True authorship could not be more happily defined than under those words; and they may be applied in reference to another attempt to question Milton’s originality, in the statement that he founded his epic on the old drama Adamo Caduto, by Salandra. Moreover, there is nothing more in common between Milton and his predecessors than that he selected a subject which they had sung before[Pg 11] him. Their tune is on an oaten reed; but Milton sits down to the organ, and billows of sound roll forth to awe and enchant the world.

In our own country Milton made but ‘slow way,’ not merely with the general but with the educated public. Dryden supposed he wrote Paradise Lost in blank verse because he was unable to do it in rhyme! Johnson depreciated him by asserting that if he could cut a colossus out of the rock he could not carve heads upon cherry-stones; as if Milton’s briefer poems and sonnets were unworthy of the author of the great epic! Hannah More united with Johnson, not only in thinking these briefer poems bad, but in critically examining why they were so! But there is no end to the vagaries of authors when judging of other writers. Dryden, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, makes Shakspeare the Homer and Johnson the Virgil of dramatic composition; but, in his Defence of the Epilogue to the Conquest of Granada, he informs us that Shakspeare abounds in solecisms and nonsense, in lameness of plot, meanness of writing, in comedy that cannot raise mirth, and tragedy that cannot excite sympathy; and, most wonderful of all, placing Shakspeare on a level with Fletcher, he says: ‘Had they

lived now they would doubtless have written more correctly’! If you would know to what correct level Dryden thought Shakspeare might have been brought, had he had the good luck to live later, the knowledge is vouchsafed in the assertion that ‘the well placing of words for the sweetness of pronunciation was not known till Mr. Waller introduced it.’ This is quite as bad as the criticism of Addison, who bracketed Lee and Shakspeare together, accused them of a spurious sublimity, and gave it as his opinion that ‘in[Pg 12] those authors the affectation of greatness often hurts the perspicuity of style’!

These great literary artists understood Shakspeare so indifferently, that they were unable to picture him truly to themselves or to represent him naturally to others. Milton called sweetest Shakspeare ‘Fancy’s child.’ Dryden says his Fancy limped; and Addison hints that his sublimity rendered him obscure!