Part 3 (1/2)
As he proceeded in forming these volumes, I suspect, either that his mind became a little disordered, or that he discovered that mere literature found but penurious patrons in ”the Few;” for, attempting to gain over all cla.s.ses of society, he varied his investigations, and courted attention, by writing on law, physic, divinity, as well as literary topics. By his account--
”The avarice of booksellers, and the stinginess of hard-hearted patrons, had driven him into a cursed company of door-keeping herds, to meet the irrational brutality of those uneducated mischievous animals called footmen, house-porters, poetasters, mumpers, apothecaries, attorneys, and such like beasts of prey,” who were, like himself, sometimes barred up for hours in the menagerie of a great man's antechamber. In his addresses to Drs. Mead and Freind, he declares--”My misfortunes drive me to publish my writings for a poor livelihood; and nothing but the utmost necessity could make any man in his senses to endeavour at it, in a method so burthensome to the modesty and education of a scholar.”
In French he dedicates to George I.; and in the Harleian MSS. I discovered a long letter to the Earl of Oxford, by our author, in French, with a Latin ode. Never was more innocent bribery proffered to a minister! He composed what he calls _Stricturae Pindaricae_ on the ”Mughouses,” then political clubs;[26] celebrates English authors in the same odes, and inserts a political Latin drama, called ”Pallas Anglicana.” Maevius and Bavius were never more indefatigable! The author's intellect gradually discovers its confusion amidst the loud cries of penury and despair.
To paint the distresses of an author soliciting alms for a book which he presents--and which, whatever may be its value, comes at least as an evidence that the suppliant is a learned man--is a case so uncommon, that the invention of the novelist seems necessary to fill up the picture. But Myles Davies is an artist in his own simple narrative.
Our author has given the names of several of his unwilling customers:--
”Those squeeze-farthing and h.o.a.rd-penny ignoramus doctors, with several great personages who formed excuses for not accepting my books; or they would receive them, but give nothing for them; or else deny they had them, or remembered anything of them; and so gave me nothing for my last present of books, though they kept them _gratis et ingratiis_.
”But his Grace of the Dutch extraction in Holland (said to be akin to Mynheer Vander B--nck) had a peculiar grace in receiving my present of books and odes, which, being bundled up together with a letter and ode upon his Graces.h.i.+p, and carried in by his porter, I was bid to call for an answer five years hence. I asked the porter what he meant by that? I suppose, said he, four or five days hence; but it proved five or six months after, before I could get any answer, though I had writ five or six letters in French with fresh odes upon his Graces.h.i.+p, and an account where I lived, and what n.o.blemen had accepted of my present. I attended about the door three or four times a week all that time constantly from twelve to four or five o'clock in the evening; and walking under the fore windows of the parlours, once that time his and her Grace came after dinner to stare at me, with open windows and shut mouths, but filled with fair water, which they spouted with so much dexterity that they twisted the water through their teeth and mouth-skrew, to flash near my face, and yet just to miss me, though my nose could not well miss the natural flavour of the orange-water showering so very near me. Her Grace began the water-work, but not very gracefully, especially for an English lady of her description, airs, and qualities, to make a stranger her spitting-post, who had been guilty of no other offence than to offer her husband some writings.--His Grace followed, yet first stood looking so wistfully towards me, that I verily thought he had a mind to throw me a guinea or two for all these indignities, and two or three months' then sleeveless waiting upon him--and accordingly I advanced to address his Grace to remember the poor author; but, instead of an answer, he immediately undams his mouth, out fly whole showers of lymphatic rockets, which had like to have put out my mortal eyes.”
Still he was not disheartened, and still applied for his bundle of books, which were returned to him at length unopened, with ”half a guinea upon top of the cargo,” and ”with a desire to receive no more.
I plucked up courage, murmuring within myself--
'Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.'”
He sarcastically observes,
”As I was still jogging on homewards, I thought that a great many were called _their Graces_, not for any grace or favour they had truly deserved with G.o.d or man, but for the same reason of contraries, that the _Parcae_ or Destinies, were so called, because they spared none, or were not truly the _Parcae, quia non parcebant_.”
Our indigent and indignant author, by the faithfulness of his representations, mingles with his anger some ludicrous scenes of literary mendicity.
”I can't choose (now I am upon the fatal subject) but make one observation or two more upon the various rencontres and adventures I met withall, in presenting my books to those who were likely to accept of them for their own information, or for that of helping a poor scholar, or for their own vanity or ostentation.
”Some parsons would hollow to raise the whole house and posse of the domestics to raise a poor _crown_; at last all that flutter ends in sending Jack or Tom out to change a guinea, and then 'tis reckoned over half-a-dozen times before the fatal crown can be picked out, which must be taken as it is given, with all the parade of almsgiving, and so to be received with all the active and pa.s.sive ceremonial of mendication and alms-receiving--as if the books, printing and paper, were worth nothing at all, and as if it were the greatest charity for them to touch them or let them be in the house; 'For I shall never read them,' says one of the five-s.h.i.+lling-piece chaps; 'I have no time to look in them,' says another; ''Tis so much money lost,' says a grave dean; 'My eyes being so bad,' said a bishop, 'that I can scarce read at all.' 'What do you want with me?' said another; 'Sir, I presented you the other day with my _Athenae Britannicae_, being the last part published.' 'I don't want books, take them again; I don't understand what they mean.' 'The t.i.tle is very plain,' said I, 'and they are writ mostly in English.' 'I'll give you a crown for both the volumes.' 'They stand me, sir, in more than that, and 'tis for a bare subsistence I present or sell them; how shall I live?' 'I care not a farthing for that; live or die, 'tis all one to me.' 'd.a.m.n my master!'
said Jack, ''twas but last night he was commending your books and your learning to the skies; and now he would not care if you were starving before his eyes; nay, he often makes game at your clothes, though he thinks you the greatest scholar in England.'”
Such was the life of a learned mendicant author! The scenes which are here exhibited appear to have disordered an intellect which had never been firm; in vain our author attempted to adapt his talents to all orders of men, still ”To the crazy s.h.i.+p all winds are contrary.”
FOOTNOTES:
[20] This author, now little known but to the student of our rarer early poets, was a native of Shrewsbury, and had served in the army. He wrote a large number of poetical pieces, all now of the greatest rarity; their names have been preserved by that industrious antiquary Joseph Ritson, in his _Bibliographia Poetica_. The princ.i.p.al one was termed ”The Worthiness of Wales,” and is written in laudation of the Princ.i.p.ality. He was frequently employed to supply verses for Court Masques and Pageantry. He composed ”all the devises, pastimes, and plays at Norwich” when Queen Elizabeth was entertained there; as well as gratulatory verses to her at Woodstock. He speaks of his mind as ”never free from studie,” and his body ”seldom void of toyle”--”and yet both of them neither brought greate benefits to the life, nor blessing to the soule” he adds, in the words of a man whose hope deferred has made his heart sick!--ED.
[21] _Villanellas_, or rather ”_Villanescas_, are properly country rustic songs, but commonly taken for ingenious ones made in imitation of them.”--PINEDA.
[22] This practice of dedications had indeed flourished before; for authors had even prefixed numerous dedications to the same work, or dedicated to different patrons the separate divisions. Fuller's ”Church History” is disgraced by the introduction of twelve t.i.tle-pages, besides the general one; with as many particular dedications, and no less than fifty or sixty inscriptions, addressed to benefactors; for which he is severely censured by Heylin. It was an expedient to procure dedication fees; for publis.h.i.+ng books by _subscription_ was an art not then discovered.
[23] The price of the dedication of a play was even fixed, from five to ten guineas, from the Revolution to the time of George I., when it rose to twenty--but sometimes a bargain was to be struck--when the author and the play were alike indifferent.
Even on these terms could vanity be gratified with the coa.r.s.e luxury of panegyric, of which every one knew the price.
[24] This circ.u.mstance was so notorious at the time, that it occasioned a poetical satire in a dialogue between Motteux and his patron Henningham--preserved in that vast flower-bed or dunghill, for it is both, of ”Poems on Affairs of State,” vol.
ii. 251. The patron, in his zeal to omit no possible distinction that could attach to him, had given one circ.u.mstance which no one but himself could have known, and which he thus regrets:
”PATRON.