BY W. H. OLDING, LL.B. Alike in the annals of forgery—State forgery of “real” evidence—and in the annals of the British drama, “The Golden Rump” has a history very well known. It was a farce, the representation of which was made the excuse for the passing of the Act whereunder the licensing of theatrical performances was established. At the same time it was a farce which those in power had directly induced its author to compose. That there was no one to imagine or tolerate a play sufficiently rampant to justify the proposal to fetter, which Party Government imagined it well to execute—that this was believed, becomes a testimony to the potency of customary self-regulation. Now conversely, and carrying the analogy to all branches of literature, it may be asserted that the suppression of books by authors themselves is likely to be comparatively frequent just in those countries in which the State does not much concern itself with suppression by its authority. If this analogy have force it must, to Englishmen, be peculiarly gratifying—though the elements of restraint have prevailed in our history to an extent far beyond general belief—at a time when Dr. Reusch’s excellent Index of books prohibited by the authority of Pope, Archbishop, or Continental University is extracting from the competent critics of all countries the homage which untiring assiduity, monumental learning, and rich moderation compel. However, into the measurement of this comparative frequency, causes essentially enter. These, in England, as in other realms, have abounded. Now, of all the motives which have led authors to consign their compositions to the flames, one of the most frequent, if one of the least seductive, has been the ridicule and elaborate discouragement with which parents have received the knowledge of their offspring’s first essays. The feeling which prompts this is not one to be altogether blamed: it has its partial justification even in the distaste with which the recipient children lay open their treasure-house to those who in days of feebleness have guarded them. For there is, as Tom Tulliver felt, a “family repulsion which spoils the most sacred relations of our lives,” and which is only broken down by some community of art levelling with the sense of a universality wherein all distinction of discipleship is lost, or else by dire circumstance shattering into shapelessness beyond disguise. This, perhaps, rather than quicker sensitiveness, is why it is that young Mozart met response, but the little Burney girl did not. Only to Susanna, her sister, would Fanny breathe her secret, and anxious was she because her mother gained sufficient inkling to induce her periodically to tell the evils of a scribbling turn of mind. But, as with Petrarch centuries before, some time in her fifteenth year the promptings of obedience gained the day. “She resolved,” says Charlotte, her niece and editor, “to make an auto da fÉ of all her manuscripts, and, if possible, to throw away her pen. Seizing, therefore, an opportunity when Dr. and Mrs. Burney were from home, she made over to a bonfire in a paved play-court the whole stock of her compositions, while faithful Susanna stood by, weeping at the conflagration. Among the works thus immolated was one tale of considerable length, the ‘History of Caroline Evelyn,’ the mother of ‘Evelina.’” As if further to justify the halting or rebuking posture which at first is apt to prove provocative of indignation, remarkable diffidence in maturer life has pushed its way into sight where early publications have Gymnasiarch as well as poet, it was natural that Pehr Henrik Ling, the Swede, should do whatever he did with energy. Still, the burning of eleven volumes by the time the age of twenty-one was reached must be allowed to show as much vigor and striving after excellence in the language of the gods as in what has been humorously termed “the language of nudges.” Indeed, the author of the epic “Asar” does not seem to have thrown any work into general circulation until he arrived at thirty, and then only on the pressure offered by some friends, without his knowledge, having got up a subscription for the publication of one of his poems, when, says he, “I could not honorably refuse.” Yet there must have been much of interest in these now perished volumes, for not only had their author, early as school-days, experienced something of the bitterness of life—of a political life, which was shared by the people—in being driven from Wexio because he would not betray innocent youngsters who had been comrades, but in the wandering outcast career which for some years following he had strange and drear experience, which, acting on a nature poetic and passionate, can hardly but have expressed itself now in soothing verse, now in melancholy, but ever in rich and true. It could at least be wished, if but for the purpose of forwarding that life-resulting interchange of matter which men of science assure us ceaselessly proceeds, that some of those who compose under feeble inspiration, or under inspiration which has lost its fire with lapse of time and change of circumstance, and which, though a spiritless yeast, tempts to use as a ferment, would be as little sparing in their sacrifices, so that it should not be held up as a thing for boast, as we perceive it of late to have been in the case of the Rev. Dr. Tiffany, that some five hundred pages of sermons have been delivered to the irrevocable pyre. There is the semblance of a common motive inducing men to destroy their early work, and give over the labor of their hands to consumption on approach of death. But in the latter case there is usually more concentration and intensity of purpose. The purpose unquestionably may have this added intensity merely in meanness; but there is also scope for more valorous self-judgment. The argument is clearly seized by Dugald Stewart thus:— It is but seldom that a philosopher who has been occupied from his youth with moral or political inquiries succeeds completely to his wish in stating to others the grounds upon which his own opinions are founded; and hence it is that the known principles of an individual who has approved to the public his candor, his liberality, and his judgment, are entitled to a weight and an authority independent of the evidence which he is able, upon any particular occasion, to produce in their support. A secret consciousness of this circumstance, and an apprehension that by not doing justice to an important argument the progress of truth may be rather retarded than advanced, have probably induced many authors to withhold from the world the unfinished results of their most valuable labors, and to content themselves with giving the general sanction of their suffrages to truths which they regarded as peculiarly interesting to the human race. This anxiety of Smith’s, who had justly confidence in his executors, has frequently been entertained very reasonably indeed with regard to reminiscences, the spicy character of which often requires the publication to be long posthumous, but tempts the graceless to make it not so. Rochefoucauld’s “MÉmoires,” which have, however, more of the chronicle and less of the journal than is generally relished, were certainly delayed, as the event turned out, long enough after his death, in appearing in any tolerable form. But it had been like not to be so. While he was still living he found that at the shop of Widow Barthelin, relict of a printer of Rouen, his work had been secretly put to press by the orders of the Comte de Brienne. The Count had furtively made a copy from the manuscript borrowed from Arnaud d’Andilly, to whom Rochefoucauld had submitted it for the purposes of correction—“ParticuliÈrement pour la puretÉ de la langue.” Measures as furtive were necessary to recover it. The Duke accordingly pounced on the printer, gave Widow Barthelin twenty-five pistoles, carried off the whole of the edition, and stored it in a garret of the HÔtel de Liancourt at Paris. We doubt if it is generally known that this edition, wherein the widow had shown few signs of care, was entitled, “Relation des guerres civiles de France, depuis aoÛt 1649 jusqu’À la fin de 1652.” In curious contrast is the fact that sometimes a relative destroys what the author has shown no vigilant scrupulousness in suppressing. It was perhaps esteemed by the “very devout lady of the family of St. John,” who was mother to the notable Rochester, on whose death Bishop Burnet has so improvingly written, that the final scenes of her son made it unsuitable that any of his papers should be kept—especially the history of the intrigues of the court of Charles II. reported by Bolingbroke to have been written by him in a series of letters to his friend Henry Saville. Nor let it be supposed that this would have been so adverse to the desires of Rochester himself. The late James Thompson, author of the “City of Dreadful Night,” destroyed before his death all that he had written previous to 1857, though he has been very virulent against a sample king who of malice prepense with gross ingratitude thus treated the donor of a priceless if imaginary gift:— A writer brought him truth; And first he imprisoned the youth; And then he bestowed a free pyre That the works might have plenty of fire, And also to cure the pain Of the headache called thought in the brain. Pierius Valerianus tells us that Antonius Marosticus, when held in high esteem and loved of all men, enjoying the dainties of life at the court of some Cardinal, and dallying with existence which he had rooted hopes It was fit that the pathetic in death should spring from a cause so troublous in life. Again and again was Shelley wounded by the forced suppression of his work. Doubtless merit is not extreme in the two-act tragedy of “Œdipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant.” But its fate was as subtle and sure as that of Œdipus himself. Written abroad, it was transmitted to England, printed and published anonymously, and stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the “Society for the Suppression of Vice,” who threatened a prosecution upon it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the pains of bringing it out did not deem it worth the cost, to pocket and nerve, of a contest, and it was laid aside—only to be revived in Mrs. Shelley’s second edition. It is said, indeed, that but seven copies are extant, one of which Mr. Buxton Forman, the industrious and intelligent editor to whom the best students of Shelley feel themselves the most beholden, secured, by search through the vast stores of Mr. Lacy, the dramatic publisher of the Strand—one of the very last plays in the very last boxes—a mere paper pamphlet, devoid of a wrapper, carried away at the cost of a six-pence, proving to be the treasure. And far was the Œdipus from being the sole cause of trouble in respect of the works of its author. Posthumous Poems of Shelley were suppressed on the application of Sir Timothy, his father. The Posthumous Letters, which excellent forgers had contrived to manufacture from articles written after the decease of the poet, exercising an amount of ingenuity described as “most extraordinary,” and receiving the reward of the labor of their hands from Sir Percy Shelley, or from Mr. Moxon, were called in on the discovery of the fraud. “Laon and Cythna” was cancelled to make way for the “Revolt of Islam.” “Queen Mab,” which had been written when Shelley was eighteen, though completed only when in his twenty-first year, was surreptitiously published while its author was in Italy—copies having been distributed among his friends—and though adjudged by the Court of Chancery, from which an injunction was sought for restraint of this irregular edition, to be disentitled to privilege on the futile score of an immorality shocking to the British constitution, it and its notes were, so late as 1840, the subject of prosecutions and convictions to all who openly, being men of fair fame, ventured to publish it, as Mr. Moxon experienced. The poets, indeed, of Shelley’s time were peculiarly unfortunate. It is a sound enough deduction of law that what is evil—is filthy, or blasphemous, or scandalous—cannot be for the benefit of the public to learn of, nor therefore an object of the law, which is built on the needs of society, to extend its protection to—a protection which has in view the advantages of private individuals only as members of society. But in this refusal of the active bestowment of privilege the guardian of public morals in an individual man, in no sense a representative of his country—a judge of the old Court of Chancery. Now in active suppression, in punishment for enticing the public to things contaminating and none the less subtle because presented in intellectual form, there is indeed the benefit of the presence of a judge, but the issue is with a jury. And the unfortunate interval, or breach, through which public morals are so roughly assailable is measured (usually at least) by the sum of the differences Now, a highly curious result of the working of these doctrines was seen in cases in which—not as with Shelley, nor as with Byron, who vainly sought in February 1822 to suppress the edition of “Cain” which the pirate, Benbow, had printed, and who in the same year saw his “Vision” first refused by the publishers of the Row, then given to John Hunt, then placed by John and his brother in the first number of the Liberal, and then made the subject of a true bill returned by a Middlesex grand jury on an indictment preferred by the “Constitutional Association”—in cases in which, I say, the authors, from change of opinion, were opposed to any publication of their earlier works. The most prominent instance of this occurs, of course, in the “Wat Tyler” of Laureate Southey. In the height of his pantisocratic schemes, and full of Socialist feelings, Southey had written this dramatic poem, and placed the manuscript in the hands of his brother-in-law, Robert Lovell; he took it to Mr. Ridgway, the London publisher. When Southey visited the Metropolis shortly afterwards, the year was 1794, Mr. Ridgway was in Newgate. Thither Southey went, and either found incarcerated in the same apartment with his publisher, or took with him, the Rev. Mr. Winterbottom, a dissenting minister. It was agreed that “Wat Tyler” should be published anonymously. The piece, however, appears to have been forgotten, and wholly to have escaped the memory of both publisher and Southey. But it had crept—so Cottle, Hone, and Browne may best be reconciled—into the hands of Mr. Winterbottom, who taking it with him, when years had passed, while on a visit to friends at Worcester, beguiled some dull hour by reading the piece for the amusement of the company, who were well pleased to pamper their dislike to Southey by chuckling at his ratting in political opinions. But generosity clearly demanded that this pleasant spirit of carping should have a sphere extended far beyond a Worcestershire company. So thought two of the guests, who, obtaining the manuscript, with great devotion sacrificed the long hours of night by transcribing it, being careful the while to preserve the privacy which attends the most highly charitable actions. Through their hands the transcription reached the publisher, and no sooner had his edition appeared than Southey became naturally anxious to lay the ghost of his former beliefs. For that purpose, with the advice of his friends, he applied for an injunction. Lord Eldon refused to grant it, on the plea that “a person cannot recover damages upon a work which in its nature is calculated to do injury to the public.” The decision of the Court encouraged the vendors to redouble their efforts, and not fewer than 60,000 copies are said to have been sold during the excitement the case created. As for poor Southey, he defended himself as best he could in the Courier, and underwent the further suspense of seeing a prosecution urged against him by turbulent spirits in the legislature—Lord Brougham first, and Mr. William Smith after. The ridicule was all the more increased by the fact that Southey had recently published in the Quarterly Review an article in most striking contrast. And it is noticeable that in his American Quarterly Review Dr. Orestes A. Brownson printed opinions Certainly few authors have had better justification for a change of opinion than Adrian Beverland. In a work quite unfit for general reading, which purported to be issued “Eleutheropoli, in Horto Hesperidum, typis Adami, EvÆ, TerrÆ filii, 1678,” he had maintained with nasty nicety that view of original sin which Henri Corneille Agrippa in his “Declamatio de originali Peccato” had nearly as undisguisedly maintained before him. For this performance he was cast into prison at Leyden, and would have fared badly enough had he not found means of escape. His work, however, was sufficiently thought of to provoke from Leonard Ryssenius a “justa detestatio libelli sceleratissimi,” just as a previous work had called from Allard Uchtman a “Vox clamantis in deserto, ad sacrorum ministros, adversus Beverlandum.” Passing these by, Beverland himself was contented to write stinging libels against the Leyden magistrates and professors, and then to flee to London, where he engaged himself principally in collecting odious pictures. But after a time came a measure of repentance, and though no excessive purity can be claimed for an “Admonition” published by Bateman, of London, in 1697, yet the preface or “advertisement” does certainly contain a strong condemnation of his “Peccatum originale.” Fifteen years after, he died in a state of deep poverty, a madman—impressed with the horrible idea that he was pursued by two hundred men allied by oath to slay him. A state more interesting that either stanch advocacy or loud condemnation of a position once relied on is that of hesitation. It is one peculiarly unlikely to express itself, because the tendency of hesitation is to refrain; or if expressing itself to arrest attention, because subtile or feeble qualifications refer their interest to the themes they hedge and do not centre in themselves. But when a mind throws itself with force into a posture of racked doubt, and bids us be aware that the struggle, not the issue, is of utter worth, or when with yet greater fervor of expectancy a revelation, we know not whence, we know not whither, is awaited with every nerve full-strained, the world more surely than by either other mood becomes a gallery rocked with hearkening spectators. I think there is something of this earnest hesitation in a career it is not difficult, at this distance of time, to futilize—Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s. There is a very human weakness in his self-debate upon the publication of the “De Veritate,” but there is a very human need—and, moreover, a need made personal (as are all needs), though founded in philanthropy. Truly the more sacred experience is—unless it can reach to that intensity and presentness which thrills all who stand enclosed in the thin line of its horizon—the more clearly it is desecrated by the common tread, and seems a thing to mock at. So is it with the scene which Herbert himself describes. Being thus doubtful in my chamber, one fair day in the summer, my casement being open towards the sun, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I took my work, “De Veritate,” in my hand, and kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words: “O Thou eternal God, Author of the light which now shines upon me, and Giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech Thee, give me some sign from heaven; if not, I shall suppress it.” I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud, though yet gentle noise, came from heaven (for it was like nothing on earth), which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded; whereupon also I resolved to print my book. An aspect of mind combining both resolution and diffidence, which has lead to the obliteration of literary work, is reliance on a friend’s counsel. An amusing example of this is related in the ecclesiastical history of Nicephorus Callistus concerning Marsilius Ficinus. This gentleman had translated Plato into Latin, and came to his learned friend Musurus Candiotus to know his opinion of it. Candiotus, after perusing some few leaves, perceived that it would not satisfy the expectation of the learned, and was even of opinion that it was so It would appear from Scaliger that even had not Ficinus commenced his out-sponged work afresh, literature would not have lamentably lost. Far, indeed, would this have been from true, had the influence of a friend prevailed to wipe from among the works of Gray “The Progress of Poetry,” and “The Bard.” I will not deny of its setting the sentence in which Walpole communicates the likelihood of such a fate. One quality I may safely arrogate to myself: I am not afraid to praise. Many are such timid judges of composition, that they hesitate to wait for the public opinion. Show them a manuscript, though they highly approve it in their hearts, they are afraid to commit themselves by speaking out. Several excellent works have perished from this cause; a writer of real talents being often a mere sensitive plant with regard to his own productions. Some cavils of Mason (how inferior a poet and judge!) had almost induced Gray to destroy his two beautiful and sublime odes. We should not only praise, but hasten to praise. In modern days the function of Mason is more generally filled by adverse public critics. The case of the late Edward Fitzgerald, who by an unfavorable review was induced to withdraw from circulation his “Six Dramas of Calderon,” and probably altogether to withhold from the public his rendering of “La Vida es SueÑo,” and “El MÁgico Prodigioso,” is until the present unhappily in point. More melancholy still are those episodes of literary history which present the wearied author consigning with forced smile and show of acquiescence—“coactus volo”—the products of his craft to an untimely end. English history does not lack its instances of these heroic souls in motley, these Herculeses with their distaffs. There is John Selden, and there is Reginald Pecock: let us bare the mishaps of these representatives. In the time of James I., the clergy were pleased to advance to the utmost the doctrine of the divine right of tithes—a divinity entailed in a pedigree of patriarchal ages, Jewish priesthood, and Christian priesthood. Upon so venerable a claim so cogently revived, lawyers yet looked with jealousy. For they saw in every claim by divine right, where royal and sub-royal patrons were unconcerned, a limitation of human rights, with their correlative human duties very apt to be regulated by positive law. Selden, partaking of the legal spirit—coincident this once with the historic—produced his “History of Tithes,” a plain narrative, margented with copious authorities, which established abundantly the duty of paying tenths—but established on the distasteful ground of human authority. James, who patronised divinity partly to show the ardor with which he in his one turn could venerate, partly for the reflected strength wherewith it encircled himself, partly from conceit and cowardice, and partly from better motives, summoned the author to appear before him in December 1618, at his palace at Theobalds. Introduced by Ben Jonson and Edward Hayward, Selden maintained the test of two conferences at Theobalds, and one at Whitehall with the monarch in person; but this in nowise prevented his being called, on January 28, 1618, before seven members of the High Commission Court in whose presence he was induced to make and sign this declaration. My good Lords, I most humbly acknowledge the error which I have committed in publishing “The History of Tithes,” and especially in that I have at all, by showing any interpretation of Holy Scriptures, by meddling with councils, fathers, or canons, or by what else soever occurs in it, offered any occasion of argument against any right of maintenance, jure divino, of the minister of the Gospel; beseeching your Lordships to receive this ingenuous and humble acknowledgment, together with the unfeigned protestation of my grief, for that through it I have so incurred both his Majesty’s and your Lordships’ displeasure conceived against me in behalf of the Church of England. The fall of Pecock was more abject, and less relieved. About 1449 he had written—not printed, of course—“The Repressor.” He had in design to defend the clergy from the aspersions, as he conceived them, of the “Bible-man” or Lollards. With this view he vindicated the use of images, the going on pilgrimages, and the retention of the various ranks of the hierarchy in their full directive authority. In 1450 he remained in sufficient esteem—though indeed his treatise was not much circulated for four or five years—to be transferred to the see of Chichester. From that time, however, his good fortune deserted him. The Duke of York conceived it well to cover his strides towards the crown, with the redress of grievances; and the disgrace of Pecock’s patrons, the Duke of Suffolk and the Bishop of Norwich, together with the personal dislike the king contracted towards him, made Chichester a safe object of attack. While all things were thus working for the good man’s evil, the council met at Westminster in the autumn of 1457, whence by general acclamation Pecock was expelled. He was cited to appear before Archbishop Bourchier on November 11, and the character of his offence became more definitised. He had held cheap the authority of the old doctors, he had denied that the Apostles’ Creed was made by the Apostles, and at the same time he had magnified the office of reason—rather than singly of the Scriptures, or rather than singly of the Church—as an ultimate test. Accordingly, to this citation he appeared, armed with nine of his books, into which it must be confessed were introduced some newly conceived passages and some erasures. A committee of Bishops, to whom the matter was then referred, reported adversely; and after further disputation the archbishop offered Pecock his choice of making a public abjuration of his errors, or of being first degraded, and then delivered over to the secular arm “as the food of fire, and fuel for the burning.” He chose the abjuration: a preliminary confession was forthwith made, a written confession was added at Lambeth on the 3rd of December, and on the next day, Sunday, arrayed in his episcopal habit, in the presence of 20,000 persons, he knelt at the feet of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London, Rochester, Durham, and of his “own pure and free will, and without any man’s coercion or dread,” made his recantation. In this he had declared that he presumed of his own natural wit to prefer the judgment of reason before the Testaments and the authority of the Church; had published many perilous doctrines and books containing enumerated heresies; and now considered himself grievously to have sinned and wickedly to have deceived the people of God, but returned to the unity of the mother Holy Church and renounced both the rehearsed heresies and all other “spices,” or kinds of heresy, and exhorted all men not to trust in his books, neither to keep or read them in any wise, but to bring them in haste to the Primate or his agents; in that he publicly assented that his books should be deputed unto the fire, and openly be burnt as an example and terror to all others. The recantation ended, a fire was kindled at the Cross. With his own hands Pecock delivered three folios and eleven quartos of his own composition to the executioner, who took and threw them in the flames, while the Bishop exclaimed aloud “My pride and presumption have brought upon me these troubles and these reproaches.” Little could he then think that in some future day England would, at public cost, republish the chief of the books his own lips had condemned. But the punishment of Pecock did not end here. It was perhaps not much to him that the University of Oxford (which has consistently shown a It is recorded of St. Briccius, that when a boy he saw the devil behind the altar, noting the misdemeanors of people on a piece of parchment. This seems to have stirred in him a desire for parchment that he in turn might write; but so firmly did the devil by his teeth stick to the stolen goods, that on the achievement of mastery by his juvenile but saintly competitor, the horny, wicked head was knocked against the wall, at which painful juncture St. Martin, ever valorous, so conjured the devil that he caused him willy nilly to blot out what he had written. What then, one wonders, was the devil’s code of which the people’s acts were breaches. What his diabolic, though discarded standard? The prescience of St. Briccius or St. Martin would doubtless be required to tell. But it is plain he too is fabled as possessed with desire to bend the will of men in obedience to some crystallized tradition, some extraneous rule. And yet, what is this principle of tradition, this authority-binding, which in this form and that defeats equally Fanny Burney or Gray, Shelley, Southey, or Selden? It is something which, no matter what its ineptness to the circumstances of the present, cannot yield; which is made up of the circumstances of the past, and has in its whole as much as in every shred the inevitability of the past, which pushes by informed private judgment and reason—perhaps on the wiser plea that, ourselves a product of the past, the accumulated and sifted wisdom of that past, the residue of eclecticism on eclecticism, must be most appropriate to guide; or else perhaps on the more foolish, that makes a creed osseous in one infinitely remote exercise of one man’s inspired thoughts. As if, in the latter alternative, the very strength was not the very weakness of the argument which reduces after all everything to single and perhaps sullied private judgment; and as if in the former the very strength was not again the very weakness of the argument which cuts off arbitrarily as the last point of systematized knowledge (more often not at the last) its own method of history. For does it not result that if it be truly said, there is nothing new under the sun, there must in all cases be selection, and if selection be thus the real principle of action, why is some portion of accessible knowledge, some portion even of received knowledge, to be cast without the bounds of usable materials, as though to prohibit us too perchance, from strengthening that uniformity or preponderance in independent selections to which tradition owes its strength? Thirlwall may act as Pecock, and Beddoes as Fitzgerald—but both the virtue of action and the virtue of restraint are lost. Herodotus, if we may believe Blakesley and Professor Sayce, though the “Father of History,” by no means illustrates tradition at its best. Different, however, would it be, could we make up our minds, backed by the later authority of Canon Rawlinson to side in this perennial With consequences more radical, but with either far more boldness or far less wit, Camille Desmoulins upwards of two centuries after courted the suppression, not indeed of a book, but of life. It was full four years since he had learnt that the parliament of Toulouse had hurried to the flames his “La Libre France,” when entering the Jacobin Club, just two days after the publication of the fifth number of his Vieux Cordelier, he heard the question being for the third time put, whether he should be expelled. His presence quelling in no measure the rising anger, Robespierre, desirous to stay the wrath of the Jacobins by sacrificing the work to save the author, spoke. “Camille,” said he with dryness, and that air of patronage which the simulation of a tempered passion carries, “is a spoilt child; he had a good disposition; bad company has led him astray.” “We must,” urged he, concluding, “deal vigorously with these numbers, which even Brissot would not have dared to acknowledge, but we must keep Desmoulins among us. I demand, for example’s sake, that these numbers be burnt before this society.” But with what surprise did the echo of this speech, proceeding clearly, and accompanied with indignant flash of eye, greet him—“Bravo, Robespierre; but I will answer with Rousseau, To burn is not to answer.” Strange retort! Had pride so dulled perception, or surprise with one stroke slain confidence in all? No wonder that not less the change of time than the terms, the very measuredness of the answering words bidding Camille learn that he was treated with indulgence, and disclosing that his mode of justification would be held to show that the worst import of his writings was designed, left in him a sense that his present non-expulsion, even the restoration of the title of “Cordelier,” had no security. The lull was false, Desmoulins was lost. Concession to honest criticism was received with not more tact by Richelieu than by Desmoulins. It is true that in the Cardinal’s case The Cardinal, to whom it was brought back in this condition, was so enraged, that he tore it on the spot, and threw it in pieces into the hearth. This was in summer, and fortunately there was no fire in the hearth. The Cardinal went to bed; but he felt the tenderness of a father for his dear Europe; he regretted having used it so cruelly; and calling up his secretary, he ordered him to collect with care the papers from the chimney, and to go and look whether he could find any paste in the house—adding that in all probability he would find some starch with the women who took charge of his linen. The secretary went to their apartment; and having found what he wanted, he spent the greater part of the night with the Cardinal in trying to paste together the dismembered comedy. Next morning he had it recopied in his presence, and changed almost every one of the corrections of the Academy, affecting, at the same time, to retain a few of the least important. He sent it back to them the same day by Boisrobert, and told them they would perceive how much he had profited by their criticisms; but as all men were liable to err, he had not thought it necessary to follow them implicitly. The Academy, who had learned the vexation of the Cardinal, took care not to retouch the piece, and returned it to him with their unanimous approbation. It seems a pity that after so much care and tenderness the play should have been produced along with “The Cid,” and that the audience, less manageable than the Academy, on the announcement that “Europe” would be repeated the next day, murmured their wish for Corneille’s piece. But the influence he sought to throw upon the fortunes of the Cid there can be no need to recount to Englishmen. Only it is clear that Richelieu was more like Cicero than Virgil, the former of whom indeed affected to be desirous of burning some productions, but was easily diverted by pleasant flattery; but the latter of whom, after having bestowed the labor of twelve years on his immortal poem, was genuinely conscious of imperfections which so few beside himself could have perceived, that in his last moments he ordered it to be committed to the flames, a fate evaded only by disregard of his solemn testamentary injunction. It is equally clear that Richelieu had not the plea of neglect and undeserved disfavor felt in its extreme by William Collins. For his odes, first published in 1747, crept slowly into notice, were spoken of indifferently by his acquaintance Dr. Johnson, and met with feeble praise from Gray. The while the author was sensible of their beauty, and so deeply felt the coldness with which they were received, that he obtained from his publisher the unsold copies and burnt them with his own hand. “If then his highly finished productions brought back but disappointment,” hypothesises Mr. Thomas Miller, “how thankful he must have felt that he had not committed himself further by sending into the world such works as his own fine taste condemned! We believe that when he had completed his ”Ode on the Passions,” he knew he had produced a poem which ought to live forever, for we cannot conceive that the mind which erected so imperishable a fabric could have a doubt of its durability.” Alas! an immortality which sees no origin in prÆsenti—how burdensome it is to bear. At this point I conclude. I perceive indeed that there remains scattered through literature unused material of interest, and even that motives to self-suppression of several entire classes have been here unexemplified. But of this we might feel confident, that the more and more this subject were opened up, personal as it appears to the authors themselves, the more and more would one be struck with the duty of the State, and no less than of the State of professed critics and of friends of the hearth, not only not to discourage the expressions of genius if even somewhat errant, but where there is the true appeal—then, as Walpole says, to hasten to praise.—Gentleman’s Magazine. |