SWIFT'S RUDENESS.

enough to convict him. He acknowledged that he had been composing in the garden, and made his peace by repeating the ballad.

JAMES MONTGOMERY, THE POET. Professor Durbin, an American tourist, in his letters from England, writes, "The day I left Sheffield, at five o'clock, P.M., for Manchester, Dr. Newton, and Mr. Jones, his host, were so good as to afford several of us the great pleasure of spending an hour or two in the company of Mr. Montgomery, the poet. It was at the dinner-table at Mr. Jones'.

"Conference business required that the company should sit down to dinner early, and it chanced to be before Mr. Montgomery arrived. As soon as he was seen through the window approaching the door, Mr. Jones rose and went out to meet him, and led him into the room. All rose, and stood while he passed round the table, shaking each one by the hand, and then took his seat with Mr. Newton, between him and myself.

"The conversation was interrupted but a moment; and the intelligence, vivacity, and piety of the poet instantly diffused a glow and elevation of thought and feeling which true consecrated genius only can inspire. The topics were various grave, gay, amusing, sometimes witty, but always marked with great propriety, and often with deep piety.

"He is now quite advanced in years, and nervous, his health not being good; yet in company he is very cheerful. He is exceedingly easy and agreeable in manner, and his whole bearing very gentlemanly.

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of the principal missionary meetings of the Wesleyans in Sheffield. He is a truly religious man; the son of a Moravian missionary, who died in the West Indies.

"Some time ago there was a proposition to re-establish the mission on the same island; and, out of respect to Mr. Montgomery, all classes contributed, and the funds were immediately raised. He has a small income from his works, and a small pension from the government; and thus passes his days in sweet retirement, coming forth only to countenance the cause of religion and benevolence, or to shine upon his friends. I was obliged to take my leave of him and the entire company around him ere the dinnerparty broke up."

SWIFT'S MENTAL MALADY.

Sometimes, during his mental affliction, he continued walking about the house for many consecutive hours; sometimes he remained in a kind of torpor. At times, he would seem to struggle to bring into distinct consciousness and shape into expression, the intellect that lay smothering under gloomy obstruction in him. A pier-glass falling by accident, nearly fell on him. He said he wished it had! He once repeated, slowly, several times, "I am what I am." The last thing he wrote was an epigram on the building of a magazine for arms and stores, which was pointed out to him as he went abroad during his mental disease:—

"Behold a proof of Irish sense;
Here Irish wit is seen;
When nothing's left that's worth de-
fence,

They build a magazine!"

SWIFT'S RUDENESS.

An anecdote which, though only

"No man in any community was ever more respected; and he enters told by Mrs. Pilkington, is well atinto all the great benevolent move-tested, bears, that the last time he ments in his vicinity, and generally was in London he went to dine presides, at least once a-year, at one with the Earl of Burlington, who

ed out to him, "Mr. Dean, the trade of Ireland!" He answered quick, "Sir, I drink no memories!"

Happening to be in company with a petulant young man who prided himself on saying pert things. . and who cried out "You must know, Mr. Dean, that I set up a wit !" "Do you so," says the Dean, "take my advice, and sit down again!"

for

At another time, being in com

was but newly married. The Earl, it is supposed, being willing to have a little diversion, did not introduce him to his lady, nor mention his name. After dinner, said the Dean, "Lady Burlington, I hear you can sing; sing me a song." The lady looked on this unceremonious manner of asking a favour with distaste, and positively refused. He said, "She should sing, or he would make her. Why, madam, I suppose you take me for one of your poor Eng-pany, when a lady whisking her lish hedge-parsons; sing when I long train [long trains were then in bid you." As the Earl did nothing fashion] swept down a fine fiddle, but laugh at this freedom, the lady and broke it; Swift cried outwas so vexed that she burst into tears, and retired. His first compliment to her when he saw her again was, "Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you last?" To which she answered, with great goodhumour, "No, Mr. Dean, I'll sing for you if you please." From which time he conceived a great esteem for her. (Scott's Life of Swift.)

SWIFT'S RELIGION.

"Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina
Cremona !"
-(Dr. Delany.)

ADDISON'S DIFFIDENCE.
Mr. Addison wrote very fluently;
but he was sometimes very slow and
scrupulous in correcting. He would
show his verses to several friends;
and would alter almost everything
that any of them hinted at as wrong.
He seemed to be too diffident of
himself; and too much concerned
about his character as a poet; or
(as he worded it) too solicitous for
that kind of praise, which, God
knows, is but a very little matter
after all !-(Pope.)

ADDISON'S GRAVITY AND TACI-
TURNITY.

I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift's religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the bench. Gay, the author of the Beggar's Opera-Gay, the wildest of the wits about town-it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take Addison was perfect good comorders to invest in a cassock and pany with intimates, and had somebands just as he advised him to thing more charming in his converhusband his shillings and put his sation than I ever knew in any other thousand pounds out at interest. man; but with any mixture of The Queen, and the bishops, and strangers, and sometimes only with the world, were right in mistrust-one, he seemed to preserve his diging the religion of that man.— nity much, with a stiff sort of si(Thackeray.) lence.-(Pope.)

SWIFT'S CONVERSATION. The style of his conversation was very much of a piece with that of his writings, concise, and clear, and strong. Being one day at a Sheriff's feast, who among other toasts call

The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his company, declared that he was "a parson in a tyewig," can detract little from his character. He was always reserved to strangers, and was not incited to uncommon

GAY'S WEALTH AND IMPROVIDENCE.

185

freedom by a character like that of Mat! Prior rose to be full ambassaMandeville.-(Johnson.) dor at Paris, where he somehow was cheated out of his ambassadorial plate; and in a heroic poem, addressed by him to her late lamented majesty Queen Anne, Mat makes some magnificent allusions to these dishes and spoons, of which Fate had deprived him. All that he wants, he says, is her Majesty's picture; without that he can't be happy :—

Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison: he had a quarrel with him, and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to say of him-"One day or other you'll see that man a bishop-I'm sure he looks that way; and, indeed, I ever thought him a priest in his heart." -(Pope.)

It was my fate to be much with the wits; my father was acquainted with all of them. Addison was the best company in the world. I never knew anybody that had so much wit as Congreve.-(Lady Wortley Montagu.)

PRIOR-SINGING AND DANCING

DIPLOMATISTS.

"Thee, gracious Anne, the present I
adore;

Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and
Fate have power

Higher to raise the glories of thy
reign,

In words sublimer and a nobler strain. May future bards the mighty theme rehearse.

Here, Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of Verse,

The votive tablet I suspend." With that word the poem stops abruptly. The votive tablet is suspended for ever, like Mahomet's coffin. News came that the Queen was dead. Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, were left there, hovering to this day over the votive tablet. The picture was never got any more than the spoons and dishes-the inspiration ceased-the verses were not wanted-the ambassador was not wanted. Poor Mat fered disgrace along with his pawas recalled from his embassy, suftrons, lived under a sort of cloud ever after, and disappeared in Essex. When deprived of all his penand generous Oxford pensioned him. sions and emoluments, the hearty They played for gallant stakes—the men of those days-and lived gave splendidly. (Thackeray's English Humourists.)

Matthew Prior was made Secretary of Embassy at the Hague! I believe it is dancing, rather than singing, which distinguishes the young English diplomatists of the present day; and have seen them in various parts perform that part of their duty very finely. In Prior's time it appears a different accomplishment led to preferment. Could you write a copy of Alcaics? that was the question. Could you turn out a neat epigram or two? Could you compose The Town and Country Mouse? It is manifest that, by the possession of this faculty, the most difficult treaties, the laws of foreign nations, and the interests of our own, are easily understood. Prior rose in the diplomatic service, and said good things that proved his sense and his spirit. When the apartments at Versailles were shown to him, with the victories of Louis XIV. painted on the walls, and Prior was asked whether the palace GAY'S WEALTH AND IMPROVIDENCE. of the king of England had any such Gay, says Pope, was quite a decorations, "The monuments of natural man- wholly without art my master's actions," Mat said, of or design, and spoke just what he William, whom he cordially rever-thought, and as he thought it. He ed, "are to be seen everywhere, ex-dangled for twenty years about a cept in his own house." Bravo, court, and at last was offered to be

bold

and

made usher to the young princess.cim on the Poems of Gray. It Secretary Craggs made Gay a pre- was written by Professor Young, of sent of stock in the South Sea year: Glasgow, who has imitated, with sinand he was once worth £20,000, but ular felicity, the style and construc lost it all again. He got about tion of the fabric of which it was to £500 by the first Beggar's Opera form a part. Dr. Johnson says, and £1100 or £1200 by the second." Of the imitation of my style in a He was negligent, and a bad man-criticism on Gray's Churchyard, I ager. Latterly, the Duke of Queens-forgot to make mention. The auberry took his money into his keep ing, and let him only have what was necessary out of it. and, as he lived with them, he could not have occasion for much. He died worth upwards of £3000.-(Pope.)

GAY'S PORTRAIT.

In the portraits of the literary worthies of the early part of the last century, Gay's face is the pleasantest perhaps of all. It appears adorned with neither periwig nor night-cap (the full dress and negligee of learning, without which the painters of those days scarcely ever pourtrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder with an honest boyish glee - an artless sweet humour. It was so kind, so gentle, so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally woe-begone at others, such a natural good creature, that the giants loved him. (Thackeray.)

GAY'S APPETITE AT TABLE. Thackeray says that the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry over-fed the poetical Gay, who "was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken, and his saucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, and so ended." Congreve testified that Gay was a great eater. "As the French philosopher used to prove his existence by cogito, ergo sum, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is edit, ergo est."

CRITICISM ON GRAY'S "ELEGY."

This work was published anonymously, and was designed to form a continuation of Dr. Johnson's Criti

thor is, I believe, utterly unknown, for Mr. Stevens cannot hunt him out. I know little of it; for though it was sent me I never cut the leaves open. I had a letter with it representing it to me as my own work. In such an account to the public there may be humour, but to me it was neither serious nor comical. I suspect the writer to be wrong-headed. As to the noise which it makes I have never heard it, and am inclined to believe that few attacks, either of ridicule or invective, make much noise, but by the help of those that they provoke."-(Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale.)

EXTEMPORE POETS OF ITALY.

The improvvisatori, or extempore poets in Italy, are actually what they are called. They do it with great emulation and warmth, generally in octaves, in which the answerer is obliged to form his octave to the concluding line of the challenger, so that all the octaves after the first must be extempore, unless they act in concert together. “The first time I heard them,” says Spence, "I thought it impossible for them to go on so readily as they did, without having arranged things beforehand.

"It was at Florence, at our resident's, Mr. Colman. When Mr. C. asked me what I thought of it, I told him that I could not conceive how they could go on so readily and so evenly, without some collusion between them. He said that it amazed everybody at first; that he had no doubt of its being all fair, and desired me, to

PONDEROUS ERUDITION.

be satisfied of it, to give them some subject myself, as much out of the way as I could think of. As he insisted upon my doing so, I offered a subject which must be new to them, and on which they could not well be prepared. It was but a day or two before that a band of musicians and actors set out from Florence, to introduce_operas for the first time in the Empress of Russia's court. This advance of music, and that sort of dramatic poetry which the Italians at present look upon as the most capital parts of what they call virtu, so much farther north than ever they had been under the auspices of the then great duke, was the subject I offered for them. They shook their heads a little, and said it was a very difficult one. However, in two or three minutes' time, one of them began with his octave upon it; another answered him immediately, and they went on for five or six stanzas, alternately, without any pause, except that

187

very short one which is allowed them by the giving off of the tune on the guitar, at the end of each stanza. They always improvise to music-at least all that I ever heard—and the tune is somewhat slow; but when they are thoroughly warmed, they will sometimes call out for quicker time. If two of these guitar-players meet in the summer nights in the very streets of Florence, they will challenge one another, and improvise sometimes as rapidly as those in set companies. Their most common subject is the commendation of their several mistresses, or two shepherds contending for the same, or a debate which is the best poet. They often put one in mind of Virgil's third, fifth, and seventh eclogues, or what he calls the contention of his shepherds, in alternate verse; and, by the way, Virgil's shepherds seem sometimes to be tied down by the thought in the preceding stanza, as these extempore poets are by the preceding rhyme."

PONDEROUS ERUDITION.

Dr. Walter Anderson, who was serio-burlesque notice in the second afflicted with an incurable cacoethes number of the first Edinburgh Rescribendi, was for half a century view, conducted by Hume, Smith, minister of Chirnside. Complain- Carlyle, and others. Undeterred ing to David Hume that the suc- by the failure of his first attempt, cessful authors had pre-occupied all he produced in succession five quarto the popular subjects, the historian volumes of history, which nobody jocularly suggested the Life of Cro-read or bought. As he published sus, king of Lydia, as a suitable subject for a book. Anderson seized the idea, and wrote the life, containing also "Observations on the ancient notion of Destiny, or Dreams, on the origin and credit of the Oracles," &c. The work received a

at his own risk, it is related that the cost of print and paper was defrayed by the sale, one by one, as each successive ponderous 4to appeared, of some houses which he possessed in the town of Dunse, till all had become the property of another.