“I make no doubt,” says he, “that upon the perusal of the critical part of these letters, the old accusation will be brought against me, and there will be a fresh outcry among thoughtless people that I am an ill-natured man.”
He entertained exalted opinions of his own powers, and he deeply felt their public neglect.
“While others,” he says in his tracts, “have been too much 58 encouraged, I have been too much neglected”—his favourite system, that religion gives principally to great poetry its spirit and enthusiasm, was an important point, which, he says, “has been left to be treated by a person who has the honour of being your lordship’s countryman—your lordship knows that persons so much and so long oppressed as I have been have been always allowed to say things concerning themselves which in others might be offensive.”
His vanity, we see, was equal to his vexation, and as he grew old he became more enraged; and, writing too often without Aristotle or Locke by his side, he gave the town pure Dennis, and almost ceased to be read. “The oppression” of which he complains might not be less imaginary than his alarm, while a treaty was pending with France, that he should be delivered up to the Grand Monarque for having written a tragedy, which no one could read, against his majesty.
It is melancholy, but it is useful, to record the mortifications of such authors. Dennis had, no doubt, laboured with zeal which could never meet a reward; and, perhaps, amid his critical labours, he turned often with an aching heart from their barren contemplation to that of the tranquillity he might have derived from an humbler avocation.
It was not literature, then, that made the mind coarse, brutalising the habits and inflaming the style of Dennis. He had thrown himself among the walks of genius, and aspired to fix himself on a throne to which Nature had refused him a legitimate claim. What a lasting source of vexation and rage, even for a long-lived patriarch of criticism!
Accustomed to suspend the scourge over the heads of the first authors of the age, he could not sit at a table or enter a coffee-house without exerting the despotism of a literary dictator. How could the mind that had devoted itself to the contemplation of masterpieces, only to reward its industry by detailing to the public their human frailties, experience one hour of amenity, one idea of grace, one generous impulse of sensibility?
But the poor critic himself at length fell, really more the victim of his criticisms than the genius he had insulted. Having incurred the public neglect, the blind and helpless Cacus in his den sunk fast into contempt, dragged on a life of misery, and in his last days, scarcely vomiting his fire and smoke, became the most pitiable creature, receiving the alms he craved from triumphant genius.
59
DISAPPOINTED GENIUS
TAKES A FATAL DIRECTION BY ITS ABUSE.
How the moral and literary character are reciprocally influenced, may be traced in the character of a personage peculiarly apposite to these inquiries. This worthy of literature is Orator Henley, who is rather known traditionally than historically.[43] He is so overwhelmed with the echoed satire of Pope, and his own extravagant conduct for many years, that I should not care to extricate him, had I not discovered a feature in the character of Henley not yet drawn, and constituting no inferior calamity among authors.
Henley stands in his “gilt tub” in the Dunciad; and a portrait of him hangs in the picture-gallery of the Commentary. Pope’s verse and Warburton’s notes are the pickle and the bandages for any Egyptian mummy of dulness, who will last as long as the pyramid that encloses him. I shall transcribe, for the reader’s convenience, the lines of Pope:—
| Embrown’d with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands; How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson, preach in vain. Oh! great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once, and Zany of thy age![44] |
It will surprise when I declare that this buffoon was an indefatigable student, a proficient in all the learned languages, an elegant poet, and, withal, a wit of no inferior class. It remains to discover why “the Preacher” became “the Zany.”
Henley was of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and was distinguished for the ardour and pertinacity of his studies; he gave evident marks of genius. There is a letter of his to the 60 “Spectator,” signed Peter de Quir, which abounds with local wit and quaint humour.[45] He had not attained his twenty-second year when he published a poem, entitled “Esther, Queen of Persia,”[46] written amid graver studies; for three years after, Henley, being M.A., published his “Complete Linguist,” consisting of grammars of ten languages.
The poem itself must not be passed by in silent notice. It is preceded by a learned preface, in which the poet discovers his intimate knowledge of oriental studies, with some etymologies from the Persic, the Hebrew, and the Greek, concerning the name and person of Ahasuerus, whom he makes to be Xerxes. The close of this preface gives another unexpected feature in the character of him who, the poet tells us, was “embrowned with native bronze”—an unaffected modesty! Henley, alluding to a Greek paraphrase of Barnes, censures his faults with acrimony, and even apologises for them, by thus gracefully closing the preface: “These can only be alleviated by one plea, the youth of the author, which is a circumstance I hope the candid will consider in favour of the present writer!”
The poem is not destitute of imagination and harmony.
The pomp of the feast of Ahasuerus has all the luxuriance of Asiatic splendour; and the circumstances are selected with some fancy.
| The higher guests approach a room of state, Where tissued couches all around were set Labour’d with art; o’er ivory tables thrown, Embroider’d carpets fell in folds adown. The bowers and gardens of the court were near, And open lights indulged the breathing air. Pillars of marble bore a silken sky, While cords of purple and fine linen tie In silver rings, the azure canopy. Distinct with diamond stars the blue was seen, And earth and seas were feign’d in emerald green; A globe of gold, ray’d with a pointed crown, Form’d in the midst almost a real sun. |
Nor is Henley less skilful in the elegance of his sentiments, 61 and in his development of the human character. When Esther is raised to the throne, the poet says—
| And Esther, though in robes, is Esther still. |
And then sublimely exclaims—
| The heroic soul, amidst its bliss or woe, Is never swell’d too high, nor sunk too low; Stands, like its origin above the skies, Ever the same great self, sedately wise; Collected and prepared in every stage To scorn a courting world, or bear its rage. |
But wit which the “Spectator” has sent down to posterity, and poetry which gave the promise of excellence, did not bound the noble ambition of Henley; ardent in more important labours, he was perfecting himself in the learned languages, and carrying on a correspondence with eminent scholars.
He officiated as the master of the free-school at his native town in Leicestershire, then in a declining state; but he introduced many original improvements. He established a class for public elocution, recitations of the classics, orations, &c.; and arranged a method of enabling every scholar to give an account of his studies without the necessity of consulting others, or of being examined by particular questions. These miracles are indeed a little apocryphal; for they are drawn from that pseudo-gospel of his life, of which I am inclined to think he himself was the evangelist. His grammar of ten languages was now finished; and