Page images
PDF
EPUB

sent to pass by instances which are almost | official rank, the same may be said of Addidecisive of the argument. If Addison con- son, who sate for many years in the House fessedly produced no effect on Fielding, of Commons and became Secretary of State Smollett, and Richardson, it is difficult to in 1717. Lord Stanhope himself is intimbelieve that we are indebted to him for Miss ately acquainted with authors and journalists Austen or Miss Burney-for the author of who would be somewhat surprised to learn Waverley' or the author of Eugene that their familiar intercourse with political Aram'-for 'Pickwick,' Vanity Fair,' leaders is dashed by the smallest conscious'Jane Eyre,' or 'Adam Bede.' The tone ness of social superiority on the one side or of the novel of manners depends on the social inferiority on the other. degree of refinement prevalent at the time; the grossness in 'Roderic Random' and 'Tom Jones' was faithfully imitated from contemporary conversation; country squires talked like Squire Western; and what Lord Stanhope attributes to the 'Spectator' is really owing to the general amelioration of society. The conclusive answer to his ingenious theory is the fact that people went on talking and writing grossly and tediously for nearly a hundred years after Addison's model fictions were before the world; and it might be quite as plausibly argued that the comparative propriety of the modern stage is owing to papers in the Spectator,' or to the chastisement inflicted on Dryden and Congreve by Jeremy Collier in 1698.

Laying aside or forgetting for the moment his own hereditary honours

'Avos et proavos et quæ non fecimus ipsi Vix ea nostra voco

Lord Stanhope pauses with honourable pride to note how frequent was the intercourse and how familiar the friendship in those days between the leaders of political parties and the men in the front rank of intellectual eminence. Since Queen Anne there has not been found in England the same amount of intimacy between them, or anything like the same amount. A little reflection may induce him to qualify this remark. The mass of journalists and authors in Queen Anne's time had no more intimacy with the leaders of political parties than the corresponding class has now. The founders of the Edinburgh Review,' when merely known as writers, were received on a perfect footing of equality at Holland House, Devonshire House, and Lansdowne House. Sydney Smith was as familiar with Lord Grey, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Russell, as Swift with Harley and St. John. Who could be more intimate with party leaders than Scott? Should it be objected, when we instance Lord Macaulay, that his social status was owing to his parliamentary or essayists, but as the forerunner of the great English novelists.' This questionable conclusion is based not on the scattered stories, but on the character of the essays as a whole, 'and a whole which has the interest of a novel.'

Nor

Lord Macaulay (in his Essay on Addison) accounts for the position of literary men under Queen Anne-especially for the rise of Addison, after his utter failure as a speaker, to be successively Chief Secretary for Ireland and Secretary of State-by the circumstance that, prior to the publication of the parliamentary debates, it was only by means of the press that the public without doors could be influenced. 'A speech made in the House of Commons at four in the morning is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech made on Monday is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and Aberdeenshire. The orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, has 'to a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of Queen Anne.' was it so in the reigns of George I. and George II., nor in the first decade of the reign of George III.; but although, whilst this state of things lasted, political writers may have been proportionally more influential and important, they were far from being received on the same footing as Swift and Addison by their contemporaries. There were full three generations of literary men subsequently to Queen Anne, whose standing in society proves Lord Macaulay's solution of the problem to be incomplete. Pulteney, when leader of the Opposition, and possessed of thirty thousand a year, edited the "Craftsman." Walpole, though not a man of literary habits, was the author of at least ten pamphlets, and retouched and corrected many more. These facts sufficiently show of how great importance literary assistance then was to the contending parties.' Granted; but what was the position of the literary men employed on either side? Which of them held high office? Which of them was the constant guest and companion of the great?*

regret in not being able to add that he was the *To the virtues of Sir Robert Walpole I feel patron of letters and the friend of science. But he unquestionably does not deserve that honourable appellation, and in this instance his rank in the Temple of Fame is far inferior to that of Halifax, Oxford, and Bolingbroke. . . Nor can it be denied that his neglect of men of letters was highly disadvantageous to his administration, and exposed him to great obloquy.'-'oxe.

For a man of large experience and wide | cessor's, and that the vice of her times did range of thought, wonderfully free from not run in the direction of matrimonial infiprejudice and illiberality, Lord Stanhope is delity, without admitting their positive purity unaccountably prone to depreciate the pre- or morality. Public opinion must have been sent and elevate the past. 'Tis distance in a somewhat lax state when it could tolelends enchantment to the view. He fixes rate in leading statesmen such an open unhis gaze on the sunlit summit of a moun- blushing defiance of propriety as was distain, and makes no account of the cracks on played by Bolingbroke in his commerce with the surface or the tangled brakes and mo- loose women, or such a habit of drinking as rasses at the base. He insists that the age was indulged by him and Oxford, who every of Anne was not only the brilliant age-the evening of his life might be seen flustered literary age, the age of arts and arms-but with claret.' This habit, indeed, was univerthe moral age, the contented age, the happy sal, and was accompanied, as it commonly is, or true golden age, when the tenth Com- by gaming, street-riots, and debauchery. mandment was equally respected with the The question of comparative happiness comes seventh-when no man coveted another next :man's wife or envied another man's position -when every man was content to dwell under his vine and his fig-tree, or, in default of a vine and fig-tree, under his own oak or apple-tree. Lord Chesterfield is the chief, indeed the sole, authority for the limited and chastened intercourse between the sexes in high life:

Manu

'There can scarcely be named any point in knowledge and science, or in their practical application, which has not received great improvement since the reign of Queen Anne. factures and trades, the Fine Arts, public teaching in all its branches, the repeal of barbarous penalties, the order and rule of prisons, the speed and security of travelling, the comforts and appliances of daily life-all these have immensely advanced; and there are new discoveries which in former days even the wildest flights of fancy could never have surmised. But perhaps the same amount of research which serves to bring forward these results in full detail may convince the mind of the inquirer, as it has my own, that the people of Queen Anne enjoyed much the larger measure of happiness.'

Queen Anne had always been devout, chaste, and formal; in short, a prude. She discouraged, as much as she could, the usual and even the most pardonable vices of Courts. Her Drawing Rooms were more respectable than agreeable, and had more the air of solemn places of worship than the gaiety of a Court. Public and crowded assemblies, where every man was sure of meeting every woman, were not known in those days. But every woman of fashion kept what was called "a Day," which was a formal circle of her acquaintances of both sexes, unbroken by any card-tables, tea-tables, or other amusements. There the fine women and fine men met perhaps for an hour; and if they had anything particular to say to one another it could be only conveyed by the language of the eyes. The other public diversion was merely for the eyes, for it was going round and round the ring in Hyde Park, and bowing to one another slightly, respectfully, or tenderly, as occasion required. No woman of fashion could receive any man at her morning toilet without alarming the husband and his friends. If a fine man and fine woman were well enough disposed to wish for a private meeting, the execution of their good intentions was difficult and danger-rested and immured in a prison with common

ous.'

[blocks in formation]

With all due deference to Lord Stanhope,
this sounds
very like a paradox. It implies
that discomfort, bodily suffering, bodily fear,
poverty, oppression, bad laws, constitute no
deduction from individual or national happi-
ness; that good laws, improvements in all
the arts of life, with ample securities for
life, limb, and character, add nothing to it.
A man of moderate means who undertook
a journey was obliged to travel (like Roder-
ick Random and Strap) in a waggon, subject
to the imminent risk of being robbed, beaten,
and stripped by highwaymen, and flung
naked (like Joseph Andrews) into a ditch.
Any one who chose to swear the smallest
debt against another might have him ar-

felons, when the chances were that he caught
the gaol fever before he was bailed out.
Lord Stanhope will hardly deny that the
happiness of authors was more or less af-
fected by the law of libel. No satirical or
ironical writer was safe. For his 'Shortest
Way with the Dissenters,' on a charge that
he meant seriously what he obviously pro-
posed humorously, Defoe was fined, pillo-
ried, and sent to Newgate in 1703.
two equally harmless productions he was
fined £800 and sent to Newgate in 1713.

For

'Miserable is the fate of writers,' exclaims | the present age, unless I much mistake it,

Lady Mary Wortley Montague, at this halcyon period; if they are agreeable they are offensive, and if dull they starve:"

'Witness ye Hills, ye Johnsons, Scotts, Shebbeares,

Hark to my call, for some of you have ears.

*

*

[ocr errors]

**

Earless on high stands unabashed Defoe.'

would be rather to contend by ingenious arguments that the vine and fig are not the best of all possible fruit-trees-that we ought immediately to root them up and to plant in their stead some saplings of another kind. It may not be wholly prejudice that views this disposition with regret. Is there any real happiness *in such constant yearning and striving for something other than exists? Is it good to live in an age when everything is being improved away off the face of the earth?'

It is not recorded that Defoe did actually lose his ears, but he must have been under constant dread of being deprived of those appendages. After describing Sir Roger de Coverley's wish to go to the theatre, with his fear of the Mohocks and Captain Sentry's coming to accompany him after putting on the sword which he drew at Steinkirk, the 'Spectator' proceeds:

'Sir Roger's servants, and among the rest my old friend the butler, had, I found, provided themselves with good oaken plants to attend their master on this occasion. When we had placed him in his coach, with myself at the left hand, the captain before him, and his butler at the head of the footmen in the rear, we conveyed him in safety to the playhouse.'

Was the liability to encounter the Mohocks and other ruffians similarly banded, no deduction from happiness? Was it nothing for a decent citizen who ventured into the streets after nightfall to be pinked' and 'sweated,' or for a decent woman to be brutally insulted?

'Prepare for death if here at night you roam, And sign your will before you step from home, Some fiery fop with new commission vain, Who sleeps on brambles till he kills his man, Some frolick drunkard, reeling from a feast, Provokes a broil, and stabs you for a jest.'

But Lord Stanhope hopes that 'the same amount of research which serves to bring for ward these results in full detail may convince the mind of the inquirer as it has my own,' and he proceeds to bring forward these re

sults:

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Surely this is very much like begging the question or arguing in a circle. We ask for proofs of the alleged happiness, and we are told that the people were content; in other words, happy. How do we know this? How do we know that they were better satisfied with their bad laws, or how does it appear that the Church was more cheerfully maintained? The truth is, the nation was too much agitated by political and religious dissensions to think of social and material improvements or reforms.

A man in a fever

forgets all minor maladies. The tacit endurance of real evils is no indication of soundness at the core, and one of the best signs of national well-being is the tendency to cry out at small. A single robbery or act of violence will now compel the notice of parliament and the press. During the whole of Queen Anne's reign a hundred robberies or acts of violence might have been committed without exciting a sensation; which proves, according to Lord Stanhope, that the people were content. We must do him the justice to say that he does give one instance of the things that have been improved off the face of the earth:

'But let us view the question in more detail. If we look to the country districts we shall judge perhaps that in Queen Anne's time the harsh features of the feudal system had passed away, while some of the milder ones remained. In other words, there was no trace of serfdom or compulsory service, but there lingered the feeling of protection due by the lord of the soil to his retainers in sickness or old age. Labour was then no mere contract of work done for value received. Service was still in some degree requited even when it ceased to be performed. As between landlord and tenant also a more cordial spirit, a more intimate relation, appears to have prevailed. There was wholly absent that main cause of alienation whenever at present alienation does occur-the excessive preserving of game. We find it laid down in the Spectator as an admitted truth, that "the sport is the more agreeable where the game is harder to come at." In those days and in days much later, the return of the shooting season was hailed with pleasure not by the landlord only but by the farmer also. The young squire would cheerily step into the homestead for his midday meal; and

sit down with a well-earned appetite to a dish of eggs and bacon, with a glass-or it might be two of the honest home-brewed, instead of the luxurious luncheon-baskets which, according to the present fashion, would be spread before him.'

[ocr errors]

We entirely agree with Lord Stanhope in his condemnation of the battue; but that the game was ever otherwise than a cause of alienation between the occupier and the landowner, or a temptation to crime amongst the labouring class, we deny; and his young squire sitting down to eggs and bacon with a glass, or it might be two, of the honest home-brewed, is not to our minds a worthy object of regret. He recalls Squire Richard, or Tony Lumpkin, or Squire Western in his youth, and is advantageously replaced by the polished gentleman educated at a public school and a university, despite of the luncheon-basket and the battue.

Lord Stanhope forgets that his young squire had to administer justice at petty and quarter sessions, or rather justiceship, for (as Fielding suggests) it was commonly a syllable more than justice. Passing to the towns, Lord Stanhope quietly assumes that there was much less wealth, but much less also of abject poverty,' and that conflicts between labour and capital were unknown :—

'It would seem, so far as negative evidence can show it, as if under Queen Anne the handi-craftsman and the labourer had no difficulty in obtaining employment without dispute as to the hours of work or the rate of wages. Most grievous is the change in that respect which has since ensued.'

[ocr errors]

Ample evidence is accumulated by Lord Macaulay to prove that the poor bore a greater proportion to the rich in the olden times than they bear now, and that the capitalist or employer was equally an object of envy and complaint. The more carefully (he adds) we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and the humanity which remedies them.'

*One of the most oppressive of the repealed Game Laws was the 4 Anne, c. 15. The Spectator," No. 131 (from which Lord Stanhope quotes his admitted truth'), begins: It is usual for a man who loves country sports to preserve the game in his own grounds, and divert himself upon those that belong to his neighbours.'

History of England,' chap. iii. Lord Macaulay quotes a popular ballad of the time of Charles II. as the bitter cry of labour against

[ocr errors][merged small]

I can

'I make no difficulty to promise on a short summons to produce above a thousand families in England, within my particular knowledge, who go in rags, and their children wanting bread, whose fathers can earn their 158. to 258. a week, but will not work. give an incredible number of examples in my 'I once paid six own knowledge.' or seven men together on a Saturday night, the least 108. and some 308. for work, and have seen them go with it directly to the alehouse, lie there till Monday, spend it every penny, and run in debt to boot, and not give a farthing of it to their families, though all of them had wives and children. From hence

6

comes poverty, parish charges and beggars.'

The National Debt was thought to depend on the Protestant succession, and the Pretender was allegorically represented in the Spectator' as a young man, whom a citizen suspects of carrying a sponge in his left hand. Was the serene contentment of the monied and mercantile classes in nowise ruffled by this insecurity?

'As regards the liberal professions and the deemed, from the absence at least of any indiemployments in the Civil Service it may be cations to the contrary, that under Queen Anne there was more of equality between the supply and the demand. The number of men of good character and good education who desired to enter any career was not disproportioned to the number of openings which that career presented. It followed that any person endowed with fair aptitude and common application, and engaging in any recognized walk of life, was in due time certain or nearly certain of a livelihood. Riches and distinction were of course, as in every state of society, the portion of the few, but there was competence for the many. How greatly the times have changed!'

*

*

[ocr errors]

*

*

such as we do not trace under Queen Anne or 'It is certainly a great practical hardship, under the first Georges, that a young man entering life with a good character and careful education should see every profession overcrowded, every avenue of advancement hemmed in, that he should be unable in so many cases to earn his bread, and be cast back for subsistence on his family. There is something not his wilful but his compulsory idleness.' very grievous both to himself and others in this

The population principle is steady and invariable in its operation. Nothing can prevent a superfluity of hands and brains at any period but prudence, foresight, and self

capital.' It is strange to find two writers, who might be expected to work in harmony, diamet rically opposed on the vitally important and allpervading question of the influence of improved civilisation on the happiness of mankind. Lord Stanhope betrays no consciousness of the fact,

When Lord Stanhope states that the finitely augmented, he forgets that the numnumber of claimants or expectants has indeber of callings which a gentleman's son may fill without losing caste has indefinitely augventional restraint left on honest industry. mented too. In fact, there is hardly a conA peer's son may be not merely a civil engineer, or the keeper of a sheep-walk in Ausor a stock-broker. tralia, but a wine merchant, a coal merchant, As to the clerkships in multiplied and so monopolised by young some of the public offices, they have been so tute a new description of aristocracy. men of family and connection as to consti

denial; and there is no reason to suppose | filled with multitudes of ingenious gentlemen that any given class in Queen Anne's reign that starve one another.' were less prone than now to have more sons and daughters than they could provide for or establish in their own walk of life. Lord Stanhope has no right to call upon us to prove a negative; but in point of fact there is no want or absence of what he calls indications to the contrary. The shifts to which educated men were put to get a livelihood are notorious. Look at the position of Swift in the household of Sir William Temple; or that of Addison when (to quote the very words of Johnson) he returned to England (in 1702) with a meanness of appearance, which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced; or that of Johnson when he came to London after vainly endeavouring to earn a living as a schoolmaster:

'Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awhile from Letters to be wise, Then mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol.' Patron was substituted for the original word 'garret.' The only literary men who did not starve were those who lived by pa tronage; and without money or interest it was idle to expect preferment in the army, the navy, or the church. The higher grades were reserved for the sons of the landed gentry and nobility; the lower were not unfrequently bestowed on their domestics and hangers-on. The boy-colonel and the sexagenarian half-pay lieutenant of the novel and the drama were drawn from life; as was Captain Weasel, Roderick Random's travelling companion in the waggon, an exvalet who had obtained a commission by marrying the cast-off mistress of his master. Mrs. Seagrim, the wife of Black George, the gamekeeper, and Mrs. Honour the waitingmaid (in Tom Jones'), boast of their descent from clergymen, who must have flourished about the reign of Queen Anne, and (we fear) experienced the same difficulty in bringing up their families which Lord Stanhope thinks peculiar to the reign of Queen Victoria. If the Church was cheerfully maintained, it must be owned that her ministers were scurvily treated and indifferently provided for. Here again Lord Stanhope and Lord Macaulay pull different ways instead of pulling together.

The first sentence of a paper in the 'Spectator' by Addison (No. 21), on the redundancy of the three professions, runs thus:

'I am sometimes very much troubled when I reflect upon the three great professions of Divinity, Law, and Physic; how they are each of them overburdened with practitioners, and

life of the first half of the eighteenth century which alone might have disenchanted Lord Stanhope; namely, the institution of the led-captain, the never failing dependent on the lord or squire in the shape of a poor relation or chaplain, and the menial offices performed by them without murmur or complaint; as when Squire Western sends Partobacco-box. We cannot believe that men son Supple from London to Bagshot for a

There is one marked feature in the social

mitted to such degradation if honourable employment was to be had for the asking.* In the Spectator' (No. 108), Addison describes his meeting with Will Wimble at Sir Roger de Coverley's :

well born or well educated would have sub

and fifty; but, being bred to no business and 'He (Will Wimble) is now between forty born to no estate, he generally lives with his brother (a baronet) as superintendent of his game... Will Wimble's is the case of many a younger brother of a great family who had rather see their children starve like gentlebeneath their quality. This humour fills sevemen than thrive in a trade or profession that is ral parts of Europe with pride and beggary.'

It is unlucky and disagreeable to be obliged to differ so often from a writer whom we respect and admire, who so ardently desires truth if he misses it; who writes so eloquently, and with such laudable elevation of tone, when he is wrong. But the occasions in which we are the least justified in shrinking from the discharge of our critical duties are when what we think error is plau

The fashion for hangers-on is caricatured by Fielding in his description of the suite of a travelled man of fortune in Joseph Andrews' :

The gentlemen of cur-like disposition who were with him from London, were an old half-pay now at his house, and whom he had brought officer, a player, a dull poet, a quack doctor, a scraping fiddler, and a lame German dancingmaster."

« PreviousContinue »