Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

It is easy to see why the conventional worlds of Fenelon and Mr. Southey are unobjectionable. In the first place, they are utterly unlike the real world in which we live. The state of society, the laws even of the physical world, are so different from those with which we are familiar, that we cannot be shocked at finding the morality also very different. But in truth, the morality of these conventional worlds differs from the morality of the real world, only in points where there is no danger that the real worlds will ever go wrong. The generosity and docility of Telemachus, the fortitude, the modesty, the filial tenderness of Kailyal, are virtues of all ages and nations. And there was very little danger that the Dauphin would worship Minerva, or that an English damsel would dance with a bucket on her head before the statue of Mariataly.

phemy-to drink wine is a crime-to perform | derided, associated with every thing mean and ablutions, and to pay honour to the holy cities, hateful; the unsound morality to be set off to are works of merit. In the Curse of Kehama, every advantage, and inculcated by all meKailyal is commended for her devotion to the thods direct and indirect. It is not the fact, statue of Mariataly, the goddess of the poor. that none of the inhabitants of this convenBut certainly no person will accuse Mr. Southey | tional world feel reverence for sacred instituof having promoted or intended to promote tions, and family ties. Fondlewife, Pinchwife, either Islamism or Brahminism. every person in short of narrow understanding and disgusting manners, expresses that reverence strongly. The heroes and heroines too, have a moral code of their own, an exceedingly bad one; but not, as Mr. Charles Lamb seems to think, a code existing only in the imagination of dramatists. It is, on the contrary, a code actually received, and obeyed by great numbers of people. We need not go to Utopia or Fairiland to find them. They are near at hand. Every night some of them play at the "hells" in the Quadrant, and others pace the piazza in Covent-garden. Without flying to Nephelococcygia, or to the Court of Queen Mab, we can meet with sharpers, bullies, hardhearted impudent debauchees, and women worthy of such paramours. The morality of the "Country Wife" and the "Old Bachelor," is the morality, not, as Mr. Charles Lamb maintains, of an unreal world, but of a world which is a great deal too real. It is the morality, not of a chaotic people, but of low town-rakes, and of those ladies whom the newspapers call "dashing Cyprians." And the question is simply, whether a man of genius, who constantly and systematically endeavours to make this sort of character attrac tive, by uniting it with beauty, grace, dignity, spirit, a high social position, popularity, literature, wit, taste, knowledge of the world, brilliant success in every undertaking, does or does not make an ill use of his powers. We own that we are unable to understand how this question can be answered in any way but one.

The case is widely different with what Mr. Charles Lamb calls the conventional world of Wycherley and Congreve. Here the costume, and manners, the topics of conversation, are those of the real town, and of the passing day. The hero is in all superficial accomplishments exactly the fine gentleman, whom every youth in the pit would gladly resemble. The heroine is the fine lady, whom every youth in the pit would gladly marry. The scene is laid in some place which is as well known to the audience as their own houses, in St. James's Park, or Hyde Park, or Westminster Hall. The lawyer bustles about with his bag, between the Common Pleas and the Exchequer. The Peer calls for his carriage to go to the House of Lords on a private bill. A hundred little touches are employed to make the fictitious world appear like the actual world. And the immorality is of a sort which never can be out of date, and which all the force of religion, law, and public opinion united can but imperfectly restrain.

[ocr errors]

It must, indeed, be acknowledged, in justice to the writers of whom we have spoken thus severely, that they were, to a great extent, the creatures of their age. And if it be asked why that age encouraged immorality which no other age would have tolerated, we have no hesitation in answering that this great depravation of the national taste was the effect of the prevalence of Puritanism under the Cemmonwealth.

In the name of art, as well as in the name of virtue, we protest against the principle that the world of pure comedy is one into which no To punish public outrages on morals and moral enters. If comedy be an imitation, un-religion is unquestionably within the compe der whatever conventions, of real life, how is tence of rulers. But when a government, not it possible that it can have no reference to the content with requiring decency, requires sancgreat rule which directs life, and to feelings tity, it oversteps the bounds which mark its which are called forth by every incident of functions. And it may be laid down as a unilife! If what Mr. Charles Lamb says were versal rule, that a government which attempts correct, the inference would be, that these dra- more than it ought will perform less. A lawmatists did not in the least understand the very giver who, in order to protect distressed borfirst principles of their craft. Pure landscape rowers, limits the rate of interest, either makes painting into which no light or shade enters, it impossible for the objects of his care to borpure portrait fainting into which no expres- row at all, or places them at the mercy of the sion enters, are phrases less at variance with worst class of usurers. A lawgiver who, sound criticism than pure comedy into which from tenderness for labouring men, fixes the no moral enters. hours of their work and the amount of their wages, is certain to make them far more wretched than he found them. And so a go vernment which, not content with repressing scandalous excesses, demands from its subjects fervent and austere piety, will soon dis

But it is not the fact, that the world of these dramatists is a world into which no moral enters. Morality constantly enters into that world, a sound morality, and an unsound morality; the sound morality to be insulted, VOL. IV.-5€

rever that, while attempting to render an impossible service to the cause of virtue, it has in truth only promoted vice.

same persons who, a few months before, with meek voices and demure looks, had consulted divines about the state of their souls, now surrounded the midnight table, where, amidst the bounding of champagne corks, a drunken prince, enthroned between Dubois and Madame de Parabère, hiccoughed out atheistical arguments and obscene jests. The early part of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth had been a time of license; but the most dissolute men of that generation would have blushed at the orgies of the Regency.

It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil War. We are by no means unmindful of the great debt which mankind owes to the Puritans of that time, the deliverers of England, the founders of the great American Commonwealths. But in the day of their power they committed one great fault, which left deep and lasting traces in the national character and manners. They mistook the end and overrated the force of government. They determined not merely to protect religion and public morals from insult--an object for which the civil sword, in discreet hands, may be beneficially employed--but to make the people committed to their rule truly devout. Yet if they had only reflected on events which they had themselves witnessed, and in which they

For what are the means by which a government can effect its ends? Two only, rewards and punishments;-powerful means, indeed, for influencing the exterior act, but altogether impotent for the purpose of touching the heart. A public functionary who is told that he will be advanced if he is a devout Catholic, and turned out of his place if he is not, will probably go to mass every morning, exclude meat from his table on Fridays, shrive himself regularly, and perhaps let his superiors know that he wears a hair shirt next to his skin. Under a Puritan government, a person who is apprized that piety is essential to thriving in the world, will be strict in the observance of the Sunday, or, as he will call it, Sabbath, and will avoid a theatre as if it were plague-stricken. Such a show of religion as this, the hope of gain and the fear of loss will produce, at a week's notice, in any abundance which a government may require. But under this show, sensuality, ambition, avarice, and hatred retain unimpaired power; and the seeming convert has only added to the vices of a man of the world all the still darker vices which are engendered by the constant practice of dissimulation. The truth cannot be long concealed. The public dis-had themselves borne a great part, they would covers that the grave persons who are proposed to it as patterns, are more utterly destitute of moral principle and of moral sensibility than avowed libertines. It sees that these Pharisees are further removed from real goodness than publicans and harlots. And, as usual, it rushes to the extreme opposite to that which it quits. It considers a high religious profession as a sure mark of meanness and depravity. On the very first day on which the restraints of fear is taken away, and on which men can venture to say what they feel, a frightful peal of blasphemy and ribaldry proclaims that the short-sighted policy which aims at making a nation of saints has made a nation of scoffers. It was thus in France about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Louis the Fourteenth in his old age became religious, and determined that his subjects should be religious too-shrugged his shoulders and knitted his brows if he observed at his levee or near his dinner-table any gentleman who neglected the All this was overlooked. The saints were duties enjoined by the Church--and rewarded to inherit the earth. The theatres were closed. piety with blue ribands, invitations to Marli, The fine arts were placed under absurd regovernments, pensions, and regiments. Forth-straints. Vices which had never before been with Versailles became, in every thing but even misdemeanours were made capital felodress, a convent. The pulpits and confession-nies. And it was solemnly resolved by Parlia als were surrounded by swords and embroidery. ment, "that no person should be employed but The marshals of France were much in prayer; and there was hardly one among the dukes and peers who did not carry good little books in his pocket, fast during Lent, and communicate at Easter. Madame de Maintenon, who had a great share in the blessed work, boasted that devotion had become quite the fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and like a fashion it passed away. No sooner had the old king been carried to St. Denis, than the whole court unmasked. Every man hastened to indemnify fumself, by the excess of licentiousness and impudence, for years of mortification. The

have seen what was likely to be the result of their enterprise. They had lived under a government which, during a long course of years, did all that could be done, by lavish bounty and rigorous punishment, to enforce conformity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. No person suspected of hostility to that church had the smallest chance of obtaining favour at the court of Charles. Avowed dissent was punished by imprison. ment, by ignominious exposure, by cruel mutilations, and by ruinous fines. And the event had been, that the Church had fallen, and had, in its fall, dragged down with it a monarchy which had stood six hundred years. The Puritan might have learned, if from nothing else, yet from his own recent victory, that governments which attempt things beyond their reach are likely not merely to fail, but to produce an effect directly the opposite of that which they contemplate as desirable.

such as the House shall be satisfied of his real godliness." The pious assembly had a Bible lying on the table for reference. If they had consulted it they might have learned that the wheat and the tares grow together inseparably, and must either be spared together, or rooted up together. To know whether a man was really godly was impossible. But it was easy to know whether he had a plain dress, iank hair, no starch in his linen, no gay furniture in his house; whether he talked through his nose, and showed the whites of his eyes; whether he named his children, Assurance, Tribulation o☛

Maher-shalal-hash-baz-whether he avoided | events, a person who affected to be better than

his neighbours was sure to be a knave.

In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained in the volume before us, will see how much the profligacy which follows a period of overstrained austerity, goes beyond the profligacy which precedes such a period. The nation resembled the demoniac in the New Testament. The Puritans boasted that the unclean spirit was cast out. The house was empty, swept, and garnished, and for a time the expelled tenant wandered through dry places seeking rest and finding none. But the force of the exorcism was spent. The fiend returned to his abode; and returned not alone. He took to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. They entered in, and dwelt together: and the second possession was worse than the first.

Spring Garden when in town, and abstained from hunting and hawking when in the country-whether he expounded hard scriptures to his troop of dragoons, and talked in a committee of ways and means about seeking the Lord. These were tests which could easily be applied. The misfortune was, that they were tests which proved nothing. Such as they were, they were employed by the dominant party. And the consequence was, that a crowd of impostors, in every walk of life, began to mimic and to caricature what were then regarded as the outward signs of sanctity. The nation was not duped. The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be saints. Those restraints became altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the Royal Family had never returned We will now, as far as our limits will per-even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Crom-mit, pass in review the writers to whom Mr. well had been at the head of the administration | Leigh Hunt has introduced us. Of the four, -there would have been a great relaxation of Wycherley stands, we think, last in literary manners. Before the Revolution many signs merit, but first in order of time, and first, beindicated that a period of license was at hand. yond all doubt, in immorality. The Restoration crushed for a time the Puritan party, and placed supreme power in the hands of a libertine. The political counter-revolution assisted the moral counter-revolution, and was in turn assisted by it. A period of wild and desperate dissoluteness followed. Even in remote manor-houses and hamlets the change was in some degree felt; but in London the outbreak of debauchery was appalling. And in London the places most deeply infected were the palace, the quarters inhabited by the aristocracy, and the Inns of Court. It was on the support of these parts of the town that the playhouses depended. The character of the drama became conformed to the character of its patrons. The comic poet was the mouthpiece of the most deeply corrupted part of a corrupted society. And in the plays before us, we find distilled and condensed, the essential spirit of the fashionable world during the Anti-puritan reaction.

The Puritan had affected formality; the comic poet laughed at decorum. The Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet took under his patronage the most flagitious excesses. The Puritan had canted; the comic poet blasphemed. The Puritan had made an affair of gallantry felony, without benefit of clergy; the comic poet represented it as an honourable distinction. The Puritan spoke with disdain of the low standard of popular morality; his life was regulated by a far more rigid code; his virtue was sustained by motives unknown to men of the world. Unhappily it had been amply proved in many cases, and might well be suspected in many more, that these high pretensions were unfounded. Accordingly, the fashionable circles, and the comic poets who were the spokesmen of those circles, took up the notion that all professions of piety and integrity were to be construed by the rule of contrary; that it might well be doubted whether there was such a thing as virtue in the world; but that, at all

WILLIAM WYCHERLEY was born in 1640. He was the son of a Shropshire gentleman of old family, and of what was then accounted a good estate. The property was estimated at 600l. a year, a fortune which, among the fortunes of that time, probably ranked as a fortune of 2000l. a year would rank in our days.

William was an infant when the civil war broke out; and, while he was still in his rudiments, a Presbyterian hierarchy and a republican government were established on the ruins of the ancient church and throne. Old Mr. Wycherley was attached to the royal cause, and was not disposed to intrust the education of his heir to the solemn Puritans who now ruled the universities and public schools. Accordingly, the young gentleman was sent at fifteen to France. He resided some time in the neighbourhood of the Duke of Montausier, chief of one of the noblest races of Tourame. The duke's wife, a daughter of the house of Rambouillet, was a finished specimen of those talents and accomplishments for which her house was celebrated. The young foreigner was introduced to the splendid circle which surrounded the duchess, and there he appears to have learned some good and some evil. In a few years he returned to this country a fine gentleman and a Papist. His conversion, it may safely be affirmed, was the effect, not of any strong impression on his understanding or feelings, but partly of intercourse with an agreeable society in which the Church of Rome was the fashion; and partly of that aversion to Calvinistic austerities, which was then almost universal among young Englishmen of parts and spirit, and which, at one time, seemed likely to make one half of them Catholics, and the other half Atheists.

But the Restoration came. The universities were again in loyal hands; and there was rea son to hope that there would be again a na tional church fit for a gentleman. Wycherley became a member of Queen's College, Oxford.

and abjured the errors of the Church of Rome. The somewhat equivocal glory of turning, for a short time, a very good-for-nothing Papist into a very good-for-nothing Protestant is ascribed to Bishop Barlow.

Wycherley left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered at the Temple, where he lived gayly for some years, observing the humours of the town, enjoying its pleasures, and picking up just as much law as was necessary to make the character of a pettifogging attorney or a litigious client entertaining in a comedy.

"Plain Dealer," which is said to have been written when he was twenty-five, it contains one scene unquestionably written after 1675, several which are later than 1668, and scarcely a line which can have been composed before the end of 1666.

Whatever may have been the age at which Wycherley composed his plays, it is certain that he did not bring them before the public till he was upwards of thirty. In 1672, "Love in a Wood" was acted with more success than it deserved, and this event produced a great change in the fortunes of the author. The From an early age he had been in the habit Duchess of Cleveland cast her eyes upon him, of amusing himself by writing. Some wretch- and was pleased with his appearance. This ed lines of his on the Restoration are still ex- abandoned woman, not content with her comtant. Had he devoted himself to the making placent husband and her royal keeper, lavished of verses, he would have been nearly as far her fondness on a crowd of paramours of all below Tate and Blackmore as Tate and Black-ranks, from dukes to rope-dancers. In the more are below Dryden. His only chance for time of the commonwealth she commenced her renown would have been, that he might have career of gallantry, and terminated it under occupied a niche, in a satire, between Fleck-Anne, by marrying, when a great-grandmother, noe and Settle. There was, however, another kind of composition in which his talents and acquirements qualified him to succeed; and to that he judiciously betook himself.

that worthless fop, Beau Fielding. It is not strange that she should have regarded Wy. cherley with favour. His figure was commanding, his countenance strikingly handsome, his look and deportment full of grace and dig

In his old age he used to say, that he wrote "Love in a Wood" at nineteen, the "Gen-nity. He had, as Pope said long after, "the tleman Dancing-Master" at twenty-one, the true nobleman look," the look which seems to "Plain Dealer" at twenty-five, and the "Coun- indicate superiority, and a not unbecoming try Wife" at one or two-and-thirty. We are consciousness of superiority. His hair, inincredulous, we own, as to the truth of this deed, as he says in one of his poems, was prestory. Nothing that we know of Wycherley maturely gray. But in that age of periwigs leads us to think him incapable of sacrificing this misfortune was of little importance. The truth to vanity. And his memory in the de- duchess admired him, and proceeded to make cline of his life played him such strange tricks, love to him after the fashion of the coarsethat we might question the correctness of his minded and shameless circle to which she beassertion, without throwing any imputation on longed. In the Ring, when the crowd of beau his veracity. It is certain that none of his ties and fine gentlemen was thickest, she put plays were acted till 1672, when he gave "Love her head out of her coach-window, and bawled in a Wood" to the public. It seems improba- to him-"Sir, you are a rascal; you are a vilble that he should resolve on so important an lain;" and, if she be not belied, added another occasion as that of a first appearance before phrase of abuse which we will not quote, but the world, to run his chance with a feeble of which we may say that it might most justly piece, written before his talents were ripe, be- have been applied to her own children. Wy. fore his style was formed, before he had looked cherley called on her grace the next day, and abroad into the world; and this when he had with great humility begged to know in what actually in his desk two highly-finished plays, way he had been so unfortunate as to disoblige the fruit of his matured powers. When we her. Thus began an intimacy from which the look minutely at the pieces themselves, we poet probably expected wealth and honours. find in every part of them reason to suspect Nor were such expectations unreasonable. A the accuracy of Wycherley's statement. In handsome young fellow about the court, known the first scene of "Love in a Wood," to go no by the name of Jack Churchill, was about the further, we find many passages which he same time so lucky as to become the object of a could not have written when he was nineteen. short-lived fancy of the duchess. She had preThere is an allusion to gentlemen's periwigs, sented him with 4500l., the price, in all probawhich first came into fashion in 1663; an allu- bility, of some title or some pardon. The prusion to guineas, which were first struck in dent youth had lent the money on high interest 1663; an allusion to the vests which Charles and on landed security, and this judicious inordered to be worn at court in 1666; an allu- vestment was the beginning of the most splension to the fire of 1666; several allusions to did private fortune in Europe. Wycherley was political and ecclesiastical affairs which must not so lucky. The partiality with which the be assigned to times later than the year of the great lady regarded him was, indeed, the talk Restoration to times when the government of the whole town; and, sixty years later, old and the city were opposed to each other, and men who remembered those days told Voltaire when the Presbyterian ministers had been that she often stole from the court to her lover's driven from the parish churches to the con- chambers in the Temple, disguised like a counventicles. But it is needless to dwell on particular expressions. The whole air and spirit of the piece belong to a period subsequent to hat mentioned by Wycherley. As to the

try girl, with a straw hat on her head, pattens on her feet, and a basket in her hand. The poet was indeed too happy and proud to be discreet. He dedicated to the duchess the play

which had led to their acquaintance, and in the dedication expressed himself in terms which could not but confirm the reports which had gone abroad. But at Whitehall such an affair was regarded in no serious light. The lady was not afraid to bring Wycherley to court, and to introduce him to a splendid society, with which, as far as appears, he had never before mixed. The easy king, who allowed to his mistresses the same liberty which he claimed for himself, was pleased with the conversation and manners of his new rival.

So high did Wycherley stand in the royal favour, that once, when he was confined by a fever to his lodgings in Bow-street, Charles, who, with all his faults, was certainly a man of a social and affable disposition, called on him, sat by his bed, advised him to try change of air, and gave him a handsome sum of money to defray the expense of the journey. Buckingham, then master of the horse, and one of that infamous ministry known by the name of the Cabal, had been one of the duchess's innumerable paramours. He at first showed some symptoms of jealousy, but soon, after his fashion, veered round from anger to fondness, and gave Wycherley a commission in his own regiment, and a place in the royal household.

It would be unjust to Wycherley's memory not to mention here the only good action, as far as we know, of his whole life. He is said to have made great exertions to obtain the patronage of Buckingham for the illustrious author of "Hudibras," who was now sinking into an obscure grave, neglected by a nation proud of his genius, and by a court which he had served too well. His grace consented to see poor Butler, and an appointment was made. But unhappily two pretty women passed by; the volatile duke ran after them; the opportunity was lost, and could never be regained.

The second Dutch war, the most disgraceful war in the whole history of England, was now raging. It was not in that age considered as by any means necessary that a naval officer should receive a professional education. Young men of rank, who were hardly able to keep their feet in a breeze, served on board of the king's ships, sometimes with commissions and sometimes as volunteers. Mulgrave, Dorset, Rochester, and many others, left the playhouses and the Mall for hammocks and salt pork; and, ignorant as they were of the rudiments of naval science, showed, at least on the day of battle, the courage which is seldom wanting in an English gentleman. All good judges of maritime affairs complained that under this system the ships were grossly mismanaged, and that the tarpaulins contracted the vices, without acquiring the graces, of the court. But on this subject, as on every other, the government of Charles was deaf to all remonstrances where the interests or whims of favourites were concerned. Wycherley did not choose to be out of the fashion. He embarked, was present at a battle, and celebrated it on his return in a copy of verses too bad for the bellman."

Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes that the battle at which Wycherley was present was that which the Duke of York gained over Opdam, in 1665. We believe that it

About the same time he brought on the stage his second piece, the "Gentleman Dancing Master." The biographer says nothing, as far as we remember, about the fate of this play. There is, however, reason to believe, that, though certainly far superior to "Love in a Wood," it was not equally successful. It was first tried at the west end of the town, and, as the poet confessed, "would scarce do there." It was then performed in Salisbury Court, but, as it should seem, with no better event. For, in the prologue to the "Country Wife," Wycherley described himself as "the late so baffled scribbler."

In 1675, the "Country Wife" was performed with brilliant success, which, in a literary point of view, was not wholly unmerited. For, though one of the most profligate and heartless of human compositions, it is the elaborate production of a mind, not indeed rich, original, or imaginative, but ingenious, observant, quick to seize hints, and patient of the toil of polishing.

The "Plain Dealer," equally immoral and equally well written, appeared in 1677. At first this piece pleased the people less than the critics; but after a time its unquestionable merits, and the zealous support of Lord Dorset, whose influence in literary and fashionable society was unbounded, established it in the public favour.

The fortune of Wycherley was now in the zenith, and began to decline. A long life was still before him. But it was destined to be filled with nothing but shame and wretchedness, domestic dissensions, literary failures, and pecuniary embarrassments:

The king, who was looking about for an accomplished man to conduct the education of his natural son, the young Duke of Richmond, at length fixed on Wycherley. The poet, exulting in his good luck, went down to amuse himself at Tunbridge; looked into a bookseller's shop on the Pantiles, and to his great delight, heard a handsome woman ask for the "Plain Dealer," which had just been published. He made acquaintance with the lady, who proved to be the Countess of Drogheda, a gay young widow, with an ample jointure. She was charmed with his person and his wit; and, after a short flirtation, agreed to become his wife. Wycherley seems to have been appre hensive that this connexion might not suit well with the king's plan respecting the Duke of Richmond. He accordingly prevailed on the lady to consent to a private marriage. All came out. Charles thought the conduct of was one of the battles between Rupert and De Ruyter,

in 1673.

The point is of no importance; and there can scarcely he said to be any evidence either way. We offer, however, to Mr. Leigh Hunt's consideration three arguments-of no great weight certainly-yet such as ought, we think, to prevail in the absence of better First, it is not very likely that a young Templar, quite unknown have quitted his chambers to go to sea. On the other in the world-and Wycherley was such in 1665-should hand, it would have been in the regular course of things that, when a courtier and an equerry, he should offer written after a drawn battle, like those of 1673, and not his services. Secondly, his verses appear to have been after a complete victory like that of 1665. Thirdly, in the epilogue to the "Gentleman Dancing-Master," written in 1673, he says that "all gentlemen must pack to sea;" an expression which makes it probable that he did not himself mean to stay behind.

« AnteriorContinuar »