CHURCHILL'S "ROSCIAD." 153 axe that beauty on which he once I got married, I was married as reposed with delight, neither the the author of the Pleasures of misfortune of greatness, nor the eloquence of genius, should have been able to make the least impression on the heart of the savage Henry? Hope; and when I became a father, my son was the son of the author of the Pleasures of Hope. A kind of grim smile, ill subdued, we are afraid, stole over our features, when, standing beside the Sir Robert Peel was a contem-poet's grave, we read the inscripporary of Byron, and a scholar at tion on his coffin: PEEL AND BYRON. "The poet's dislike occurred to our memory-there was no getting the better of the thought." CHURCHILL'S "ROSCIAD." the same university. It is related "Thomas Campbell, LL.D., authat when a great fellow of a boy-thor of the Pleasures of Hope, died, tyrant, who claimed little Peel as June 15, 1844, aged 67.' a fag, was giving him a castigation, Byron happened to come by. While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor Peel was writhing under them, Byron saw and felt for the misery of his When Churchill finished his friend; and although he was not Rosciad, he waited on an eminent strong enough to fight the tyrant bookseller with the copy; but he with any hope of success, and it had suffered so severely by the was dangerous even to approach publication of poetry, that he was him, he advanced to the scene of determined to have nothing more action, and with a blush of rage, tears in his eyes, and in a voice trembling with terror and indignation, asked very humbly if he would be pleased to tell him "how many stripes he meant to inflict.” Why," replied the executioner, "you little rascal, what is that to you?" 66 'Because, if you please," said Byron, "I would take half." That Byron was thus originally of a noble nature, is proved beyond all contradiction by this little anecdote. CAMPBELL. to do with any of the rhyming sons of Apollo, unless he was indemnified from sustaining any loss, This condition Churchill could not comply with. The bookseller, however, recommended a worthy young man to him, who had just ventured his little fortune in the uncertain sea of ink, and who would probably run the risk of publication. Churchill waited on him, and found everything to his wish. The poem was printed, advertised, and at the end of five days ten copies were sold. Churchill was thunderstruck, and the bookseller was little less chagrined. At the end of four days more he found that six more copies were sold. The poet was almost frantic, and hurried away to a friend to acquaint him with his hard fate. "It is well known," says Frazer, "that Campbell's own favourite poem was his Gertrude. I once heard him say, 'I never like to see my name before the Pleasures of Hope; why, I cannot tell you, un- His friend, who was intimate less it was that, when young, I was with Garrick, posted to him the always greeted among my friends next morning, and informed him as 'Mr. Campbell, author of the what a beautiful picture of his Pleasures of Hope.' 'Good morn- astonishing abilities had just aping to you, Mr. Campbell, author peared in the Rosciad. Garrick of the Pleasures of Hope.' When swallowed the gilded pill, instantly sent for the poem, read it, and sounded its praises wherever he went. The next evening the publisher had not a single copy left, and in a few weeks so many editions went off, that Churchill found himself richer than any poet whose estate lay at that time on Parnassus. BLACKLOCK AND DAVID HUME. Blacklock, the poet, certainly much better known for his blindness than for his genius, happened to call upon Hume, the historian, one day, and began a long dissertation on his misery, bewailing his loss of sight, his large family of children, and his utter incapacity to provide for them, or even to supply them, at that moment, with the necessaries of life. Hume himself was, at that period, so little a favourite of fortune, from the smallness of his paternal estate, and the scantiness of his collegiate stipend, being then a member of the university, that he had solicited, and just then received, through the strenuous interest of a friend, a university appointment worth about forty pounds per annum. The heart of the philosopher, however, was softened by the complaint of his friend; and being destitute of the pecuniary means of immediate assistance, he ran to his desk, took out the newly-received grant, and presented it to the unhappy poet, with a promise, which he faithfully performed, of using his best interest to have the name of Hume changed for that of Blacklock. In this generous attempt he was finally successful, and, by his noble philanthropy, had the pleasure of saving his friend and family from starvation. duced to the circle of his acquaintance. But gratitude, and a respect to the laws of hospitality, seemed not to govern the conduct of Voltaire. One day, when he knew Pope was from home, he called on his ancient mother, who lived with him, and told her that he should be very sorry to do anything to displease her, but really it was very hard living in London; that he had a poem, a severe lampoon upon her, which he was going to publish, but which he would recommend her to give him a sum of money to suppress. The fear of the poor old woman at length prevailed over her indignation, and she bribed him not to publish, which he agreed to, on one condition-that she would never mention the subject. She promised, and she kept her word. Having so well succeeded once, he made a second attempt on the yielding prey. The indignation of the injured lady was at its height, when Pope entered the room, and, perceiving her agitation, insisted on knowing the cause. She informed him, in half-stifled accents. Voltaire had neither time to run off nor to make up an excuse, when the enraged poet, who was never deficient in filial respect, flew with resentment on the unfeeling Frenchman, striking him vehemently. Voltaire, in the attempt to retreat precipitately, fell over a chair. CAMOENS. When Camoens published his poem of the Lusiad, King Sebastian was so pleased with it that he gave the author a pension of four thousand reals, on condition that he should reside at court; but this salary was withdrawn by Cardinal Henry, who succeeded to the throne Voltaire. when in London, was of Portugal, which Sebastian had very intimate with Pope: he was lost at the battle of Alcazar. The familiar at his table, and intro-bard of the Tagus was utterly ne VOLTAIRE AND POPE. SHOOTING A BOOKSELLER. 155 glected by Henry, under whose pher, and another pension as a man inglorious reign it was that he pe- of letters. rished in poverty. Camoens had a black servant who was grown old with him, and who had long experienced his master's humanity. This grateful Indian, who was a native of Java, is said by some writers to have saved the life of his master in that unhappy shipwreck by which he lost all his property, except his poems, which he preserved. When Camoens became so reduced as no longer to maintain his servant, this faithful creature begged in the streets of Lisbon for the only man in Portugal on whom God had bestowed those talents which have a tendency to erect the spirit of a sinking age. BOILEAU AND RACINE. Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the booksellers. Boileau particularly, though fond of money, was so delicate on this point, that he gave all his works away. It was this that made him so bold in railing at those authors qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages d'un libraire, and he declared that he had inserted only these verses, "Je sois qu'un noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime BUTLER'S PRIDE. LITERARY CAUTIOUSNESS. had been a year or two before him, Pope published nothing until it and even then the printer's proofs were very full of alterations; and, on one occasion, Dodsley, his publisher, thought it better to have the whole recomposed than make the necessary corrections. Goldsmith considered four lines a-day good work, and was seven years in beating out the pure gold of the Deserted Village. SHOOTING A BOOKSELLER. Tirer de son travail un tribut légitime," to console Racine, who had received some profits from the printing of his tragedies. These profits, were, however, inconsiderable: the truth is, the king remunerated the poets. Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed by Colbert for six hundred livres, to give him the Campbell produced the Pleameans of continuing his studies for sures of Hope at Edinburgh, being the belles-lettres. He received, by an then but twenty-one years of age. account found among his papers, This fine performance at once gave above forty thousand livres from him fame, and for twenty years the cassette of the king, by the hand afterward brought to the publishers of the first valet-de-chambre. Besides between two and three hundred these gifts, Racine had a pension of pounds annually. They had orifour thousand livres, as historiogra-ginally given him ten pounds for sulted some military friends who declared that his person ought to protect him from any such redundance of valour as was thus formally required; however, one of them accepted the challenge for him, and gave Bentley the option of fighting or apologizing, who, on this occasion, proved what is usual-that the easiest of the two is the quickest performed. the poem. Afterwards he received such critical moments. Pope consome further remuneration, and was allowed the profit accruing from a quarto edition of his works. Many a true word is spoken in jest," the proverb teaches; and an anecdote told of Campbell may be thought to indicate a feeling within not very favourable to those who had given his poem to the world. Being in a festive party at a period when the actions of Bonaparte were most severely condemned, on being called upon for a toast, Campbell gave, "The health of Napoleon.' This caused great surprise to all the company, and an explanation was called for. "The only reason I have for proposing to honour Bonaparte," said he, “is, that he had the virtue to shoot a bookseller." Palm, a bookseller, had recently been executed in Germany, by order of the French chief. MILTON'S SONNETS. REWARDS. Goldsmith was astonished when the bookseller gave him five shillings a couplet for his delightful poem of the Deserted Village, when each line was fairly worth as many pounds; but an instance of liberality has occurred in Russia, which really deserves recording. Alexander Paselikin, a young poet, has recently produced a work, which does not contain above six hundred lines, and for which he has received three thousand rubles, nearly one POPE'S EARLY POPULARITY. A lady having expressed her won-pound sterling per line. der to Dr. Johnson, that "Milton, who had written so sublime a poem as the Paradise Lost, should have been so inferior to himself in the composition of the Sonnets," he replied, "Is it a matter of surprise, madam, that the hand which was able to scoop a colossus, of the most perfect symmetry, from a rock, should fail in an attempt to form the head of Venus out of a cherry-stone?" POPE'S ENEMIES. According to the scandalous chronicle of the day, Pope, shortly after the publication of the Dunciad, had a tall Irishman to attend him. Colonel Duckett threatened to cane him for a licentious stroke aimed at him, which Pope recanted. Thomas Bentley, nephew to the doctor, for the treatment his uncle had received, sent Pope a challenge. The modern like the ancient Horace was of a nature liable to panic at "A remarkable fact," says Professor Wilson, "is the early acknowledgment of Pope by his contemporaries. At sixteen he is a poet for the world by his Pastorals, and at that age he has a literary adviser in Walsh, and a literary patron in Trumbull. He does not seem to court. He is courted. He is the intimate friend, we do not know how soon, of scholars and polite writers, of men and women high in birth, in education, in__station. Scarce twenty, by his Essay on Criticism, he assumes a chair in the school of the Muses. At five-andtwenty, he is an acknowledged dictator of polite letters. “So early, rapid, untroubled an ascension to fame it would require some research to find a parallel to. Our literature has it not. And this acknowledgment, gratulation, tri ADDISON AND THE POETASTER. umph, which friends and circles, and the confined literary world of that day in this country, could furnish, a whole age, and a whole country, and a whole world, the extended republic of letters, confirm. 157 not sympathize with the poet of six-and-thirty, and Longfellow returned to America, having lost his heart as well as his wife. "The young lady, also an American, returned home shortly afterwards. Their residences, it turned "At the age of thirty-seven, out, were contiguous, and the poet Pope declares that henceforward availed himself of the opportunity he will write from, as well as to, his of prosecuting his addresses, which own mind. The Essay on Man he did for a considerable time with follows. It expresses that graver no better success than at first. study of the universal subject, MAN, Thus foiled, he set himself resowhich appeared to Pope, now self-lutely down, and instead, like known, to be, for the time of poeti- Petrarch, of laying siege to the cal literature to which he came, heart of his mistress through the the most practicable- for his own medium of sonnets, he resolved to ability the aptest; and it embodies write a whole book; a book which that part of anthropology which would achieve the double object of doubtless was the most congenial gaining her affections, and of estabto his own inclination-the philo-lishing his own fame. Hyperion sophical contemplation of man's was the result. nature, estate, destiny. "The success of this enterprise was astonishing. Be the philosophy what and whose it may, the poem revived to the latest age of poetry the phenomenon of the first, when precept and maxim were modulated into verse, that they might write themselves in every brain, and live upon every tongue." HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. We know of nothing which, in few words, gives more information concerning this distinguished American poet than the following anecdote. "About the year, 1837, Longfellow," says a Dublin paper, "being engaged in making the tour of Europe, selected Heidelberg for a permanent winter residence. There his wife was attacked with an illness which ultimately proved fatal. "His labour and his constancy were not thrown away: they met their due reward. The lady gave him her hand as well as her heart; and they now reside together at Cambridge, in the same house which Washington made his headquarters when he was first appointed to the command of the American armies. These interesting facts were communicated to us by a very intelligent American gentleman, whom we had the pleasure of meeting in the same place which was the scene of the poet's early disappointment and sorrow." ADDISON AND THE POETASTER. Addison, the sublime moralist, elegant critic, and humorous describer of men and manners, whose works furnish instruction to youth, amusement to age, and delight to all who peruse them, was remark"It so happened, however, that able for his taciturnity. Conscious some time afterward there came to of his talents as a writer, he acthe same romantic place a young knowledged his deficiency in conlady of considerable personal at-versation. "I can draw," said he, tractions. The poet's heart was "a bill for a thousand pounds, altouched he became attached to though I have not a guinea in my her; but the beauty of sixteen did pocket." |