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Subscriptions, when an author levied contributions were the unlucky hawkers of their own works; of before his work appeared; a mode which inun- which I shall give a remarkable instance in dated our literature with a great portion of its MYLES DAVIES, a learned man maddened by worthless volumes of these the most remarkable want and indignation. are the splendid publications of Richard Blome; they may be called fictitious works; for they are only mutilated transcripts from Camden and Speed, but richly ornamented, and pompously printed, which this literary adventurer, said to have been a gentleman, loaded the world with, by the aid of his subscribers. Another age was that of Dedications*, when the author was to lift his tiny patron to the skies, in an inverse ratio as he lowered himself, in this public exhibition. Sometimes the party haggled about the price†; or the statue, while stepping into his niche, would turn round on the author to assist his invention. A patron of Peter Motteux, dissatisfied with Peter's colder temperament, composed the superlative dedication to himself, and completed the misery of the author by subscribing it with Mot-tors. teux's name! Worse fared it when authors

* This practice of dedications had indeed flourished before; for authors had even prefixed numerous dedica

tions to the same work, or dedicated to different patrons,

the separate divisions. Fuller's "Church History" is

disgraced by the introduction of twelve title-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 publishing books by subscription was an art not then discovered. †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 coarse luxury of panegyric, of which every one knew the price.

+ This circumstance 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 circumstance which no one but himself could have known, and which he thus regrets:

"PATRON.

I must confess I was to blame

That one particular to name;

The rest could never have been known,
I made the style so like thy own.

POET.

I beg your pardon, Sir, for that!

PATRON.

Why de what would you be at?
I writ below myself, you sot!
Avoiding figures, tropes, what not;
For fear I should my fancy raise
Above the level of thy plays!"

The subject before us exhibits one of the most singular spectacles in these volumes; that of a scholar of extensive erudition, whose life seems to have passed in the study of languages and the sciences, while his faculties appear to have been disordered from the simplicity of his nature, and driven to madness by indigence and insult. He formed the wild resolution of becoming a mendicant author, the hawker of his own works; and by this mode endured all the aggravated sufferings, the great and the petty insults of all ranks of society, and even sometimes from men of learning themselves, who denied a mendicant author the sympathy of a brother.

MYLES DAVIES and his works are imperfectly known to the most curious of our literary collecHis name has scarcely reached a few; the author and his works are equally extraordinary, and claim a right to be preserved in this treatise on the Calamities of Authors.

Our author commenced printing a work, difficult, from its miscellaneous character, to describe; of which the volumes appeared at different periods. The early and the most valuable volumes were the first and second; they are a kind of bibliographical, biographical, and critical work, on English Authors. They all bear a general title of "Athenæ Britannica §."

Collectors have sometimes met with a very curious volume, entitled " Icon Libellorum," and sometimes the same book, under another title,

§ "Athena Britannica, or a Critical History of the Oxford and Cambridge Writers and Writings, with those of the Dissenters and Romanists as well as other Authors and Worthies, both Domestic and Foreign, both Ancient and Modern. Together with an occasional freedom of thought, in criticising and comparing the parallel qualifications of the most eminent authors and their performances, both in MS. and print, both at home and abroad. By M. D. London, 1716." On the first volume of this series Dr. Farmer, a bloodhound of unfailing scent in curious and obscure English books, has written on the leaf "This is the only copy I have met with." Even the great bibliographer, Baker, of Cambridge, never met but with three volumes (the edition at the British Museum is in seven) sent him as a great curiosity by the Earl of Oxford, and now deposited in his collection at St. John's College. Baker has written this memorandum in the first volume: "Few copies were printed, so the work is become scarce, and for that reason will be valued. The book in the greatest part is borrowed from modern historians, but yet contains some things more uncommon, and not easily to be met with." How superlatively rare must be the English volumes which the eyes of Farmer and Baker never lighted on!

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.

"A Critical History of Pamphlets." This rare the same odes, and inserts a political Latin drama, book forms the first volume of the "Athenæ called "Pallas Anglicana." Mævius and Bavius Britannica." The author was Myles Davies, were never more indefatigable! The author's whose biography is quite unknown: he may now intellect gradually discovers its confusion amidst be his own biographer. He was a Welsh clergy- the loud cries of penury and despair. man, a vehement foe to Popery, Arianism, and Socinianism, of the most fervent loyalty to George I. and the Hanoverian succession; a scholar, skilled in Greek and Latin, and in all the modern languages. Quitting his native spot with political disgust, he changed his character in the metropolis, for he subscribes himself "Counsellor-at-Law." In an evil hour he commenced author, not only surrounded by his books, but with the more urgent companions of a wife and family; and with that childlike simplicity which sometimes marks the mind of a retired scholar, we perceive him imagining that his immense reading would prove a source, not easily exhausted, for their subsistence.

From the first volumes of his series much curious literary history may be extracted, amidst the loose and wandering elements of this literary chaos. In his dedication to the Prince he professes "to represent writers and writings in a catoptrick view.”

The preface to the second volume opens his plan; and nothing as yet indicates those rambling humours which his subsequent labours exhibit.

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 classes of society, he varied his investigations, and courted attention, by writing on law, physic, divinity, as well as literary topics. By his account

Our author has given the names of several of his unwilling customers :

"Those squeeze-farthing and hoard-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 graceship, 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 graceship, and an account where I lived, and what noblemen 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 In French he dedicates to George I.; and in stranger her spitting-post, who had been guilty of the Harleian MSS. I discovered a long letter to no other offence than to offer her husband some the Earl of Oxford, by our author, in French, with writings.-His grace followed, yet first stood a Latin ode. Never was more innocent bribery looking so wistfully towards me, that I verily proffered to a minister ! He composed what he thought he had a mind to throw me a guinea or calls Stricture Pindarica on the "Mughouses," two for all these indignities, and two or three then political clubs; celebrates English authors in months' then sleeveless waiting upon him-and

"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 suchlike 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."

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 God or man, but for the same reason of contraries, that the Parca or Destinies, were so called, because they spared none, or were not truly the Parcæ, 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 passive 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-shilling-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 Athena Britannica, being the last part published.'_' I don't want books, take them again; I don't understand what they mean.' 'The title 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

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Damn 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 ship, all winds are contrary."

COWLEY.

OF HIS MELANCHOLY.

THE mind of COWLEY was beautiful, but a querulous tenderness in his nature breathes not only through his works, but influenced his habits and his views of human affairs. His temper and his genius would have opened to us, had not the strange decision of Sprat and Clifford withdrawn that full correspondence of his heart which he had carried on many years. These letters were suppressed because, as Bishop Sprat acknowledges, "in this kind of prose Mr. Cowley was excellent! They had a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of familiarity." And then the florid writer runs off, that, "in letters, where the souls of men should appear undressed, in that negligent habit they may be fit to be seen by one or two in a chamber, but not to go abroad into the streets." A false criticism: which not only has proved to be so since their time by Mason's "Memoirs of Gray," but which these friends of Cowley might have themselves perceived, if they had recollected that the Letters of Cicero to Atticus form the most delightful chronicles of the heart-and the most authentic memorials of the man. Peck obtained one letter of Cowley's, preserved by Johnson, and it exhibits a remarkable picture of the miseries of his poetical solitude. It is, perhaps, not too late to inquire, whether this correspondence was destroyed as well as suppressed? Would Sprat and Clifford have burned what they have told us they so much admired* ?

My researches could never obtain more than one letter

of Cowley's-it is but an elegant trifle-returning thanks

"The

Garden" of Evelyn is immortalised in a delightful Ode of to his friend Evelyn, for some seeds and plants.

Cowley's, as well as by Evelyn himself. Even in this small note, we may discover the touch of Cowley. The original is in Astle's collection.

MR. ABRAHAM COWLEY TO JOHN EVELYN, ESQ. "SIR, Barn Elms, March 23, 1663. "There is nothing more pleasant than to see kindness

farthing for that, live or die, 'tis all one to me.' in a person, for whom we have great esteem and respect:

Fortunately for our literary sympathy, the employment of the highest confidence, that of fatal error of these fastidious critics has been in deciphering the royal correspondence; he transsome degree repaired by the admirable genius acted their business, and, almost divorcing himhimself whom they have injured. When Cowley self from his neglected muse, he yielded up for retreated from society, he determined to draw up them the tranquillity so necessary to the existence an apology for his conduct, and to have dedicated of a poet. From his earliest days he tells us how it to his patron, Lord St. Albans. His death the poetic affections had stamped themselves on interrupted the entire design; but his Essays, his heart, "like letters cut into the bark of a which Pope so finely calls "the language of his young tree, which, with the tree, will grow proheart," are evidently parts of these precious Con-portionably." fessions. All of Cowley's tenderest and undisguised feelings have therefore not perished. These Essays now form a species of composition in our language, a mixture of prose and verse-the man with the poet-the self-painter has sat to himself, and, with the utmost simplicity, has copied out the image of his soul.

Why has this poet twice called himself the melancholy Cowley? He employed no poetical cheville* for the metre of a verse which his own feelings inspired.

He describes his feelings at the court:

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I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life the nearer I came to it-that beauty which I did not fall in love with when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw it was adulterate. I met with several great persons whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired. I was in a crowd of good company, in business of great and honourable trust; I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best con

Cowley, at the beginning of the civil war, joined | veniences that ought to be desired by a man of my the royalists at Oxford; followed the queen to Paris; yielded his days and his nights to an

no, not the sight of your garden in May, or even the having such an one; which makes me more obliged to return you my most humble thanks for the testimonies I have lately received of you, both by your letter and your presents. I have already sowed such of your seeds as I thought most proper, upon a hot-bed; but cannot find in all my books a catalogue of these plants which require that culture, nor of such as must be set in pots; which defects, and all others, I hope shortly to see supplied, as I hope shortly to see your work of Horticulture finished and published; and long to be in all things your disciple, as I am in all things now,

Sir, Your most humble,

and most obedient Servant,

A. COWLEY."

Such were the ordinary letters which passed between two men whom it would be difficult to parallel, for their elegant tastes and gentle dispositions. Evelyn's beautiful retreat at Sayes Court at Deptford is described by a contemporary as" a garden exquisite and most boscaresque, and, as it were, an exemplar of his book of Forest-trees." It was the entertainment and wonder of the greatest men of those times, and inspired the following lines of Cowley, to Evelyn and his Lady, who excelled in the arts her husband loved; for she designed the frontispiece to his version of Lucretius

"In books and gardens thou hast placed aright (Things well which thou dost understand,

And both dost make with thy laborious hand)

Thy noble innocent delight;

And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet

Both pleasures more refined and sweet;

The fairest garden in her looks,

And in her mind the wisest books."

condition; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old school-boy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect :

"Well then! I now do plainly see,

This busie world and I shall ne'er agree!"

After several years' absence from his native country, at a most critical period, he was sent over to mix with that trusty band of loyalists, who, in secrecy and in silence, were devoting themselves to the royal cause. Cowley was seized on by the ruling powers. At this moment he published a preface to his works, which some of his party interpreted as a relaxation of his loyalty. He has been fully defended. Cowley, with all his delicacy of temper, wished sincerely to retire from all parties; and saw enough among the fiery zealots of his own, to grow disgusted even with royalists.

His wish for retirement has been half censured as cowardice, by Johnson; but there was a tenderness of feeling which had ill formed Cowley for the cunning of party intriguers, and the company of little villains. About this time he might have truly distinguished himself as "The melancholy Cowley."

I am only tracing his literary history for the purpose of this work: but I cannot pass without noticing the fact, that this abused man, whom his enemies were calumniating, was at this moment, under the disguise of a doctor of physic, occupied by the novel studies of botany and medicine; and as all science in the mind of the poet naturally becomes poetry, he composed his books on plants

* A term the French apply to those botches which bad in Latin verse. poets use to make out their metre.

At length came the Restoration, which the

poet zealously celebrated in his "Ode" on that clearly demonstrating the agony of his literary occasion. Both Charles the First and Second had feelings. The cynical Wood tells us, that, "not promised to reward his fidelity with the master- finding that preferment he expected, while others ship of the Savoy; but, Wood says, "he lost it for their money carried away most places, he by certain persons enemies of the muses." Wood retired discontented into Surrey." And his has said no more; and none of Cowley's biogra- panegyrist, Sprat, describes him as "weary of the phers have thrown any light on the circumstance: vexations and formalities of an active condition— perhaps we may discover this literary calamity. he had been perplexed with a long compliance That Cowley caught no warmth from that pro- with foreign manners. He was satiated with the mised sunshine which the new monarch was to arts of a court, which sort of life, though his scatter in prodigal gaiety, has been distinctly told virtue made it innocent to him, yet nothing could by the poet himself; his muse, in "The Com- make it quiet. These were the reasons that moved plaint," having reproached him thus :him to follow the violent inclination of his own mind," &c. I doubt if either the sarcastic antiquary or the rhetorical panegyrist have developed

"Thou young prodigal, who didst so loosely waste Of all thy youthful years, the good estate

Thou changeling then, bewitch'd with noise and show, the simple truth of Cowley's "violent inclina

Wouldst into courts and cities from me go

Go, renegado, cast up thy account

Behold the public storm is spent at last;

The sovereign is toss'd at sea no more,
And thou, with all the noble company,
Art got at last to shore-

But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see,

All march'd up to possess the promised land;
Thou still alone (alas !) dost gaping stand
Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand."

tion of his own mind." He does it himself more openly in that beautiful picture of an injured poet, in "The Complaint," an ode warm with individual feeling, but which Johnson coldly passes over, by telling us that "it met the usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than pity."

Thus the biographers of Cowley have told us nothing, and the poet himself has probably not told us all. To these calumnies respecting CowBut neglect was not all Cowley had to endure; ley's comedy, raised up by those whom Wood the royal party seemed disposed to calumniate designates as "enemies of the muses," it would him. When Cowley was young he had hastily appear that others were added of a deeper dye, composed the comedy of "The Guardian;" a piece and in malignant whispers distilled into the ear of which served the cause of loyalty. After the royalty. Cowley, in an ode, had commemorated Restoration, he rewrote it under the title of the genius of Brutus, with all the enthusiasm of a "Cutter of Coleman Street;" a comedy which votary of liberty. After the king's return, when may still-be read with equal curiosity and interest: Cowley solicited some reward for his sufferings a spirited picture of the peculiar characters which and services in the royal cause, the chancellor is appeared at the Revolution. It was not only ill said to have turned on him with a severe countereceived by a faction, but by those vermin of a nance, saying, "Mr. Cowley, your pardon is your new court, who, without merit themselves, put in reward!" It seems that ode was then considered their claims, by crying down those who, with to be of a dangerous ́tendency among half the great merit, are not in favour. All these to a nation; Brutus would be the model of enthusiasts, man accused the author of having written a satire who were sullenly bending their neck under the against the king's party. And this wretched party yoke of royalty. Charles II. feared the attempt prevailed, too long for the author's repose, but of desperate men; and he might have forgiven not for his fame. Many years afterwards this Rochester a loose pasquinade, but not Cowley a comedy became popular. Dryden, who was pre-solemn invocation. This fact then is said to have sent at the representation, tells us, that Cowley "received the news of his ill success not with so much firmness as might have been expected from so great a man." Cowley was in truth a great man, and a greatly injured man. His sensibility and delicacy of temper were of another texture than Dryden's. What at that moment did Cowley experience, when he beheld himself neglected, calumniated, and, in his last appeal to public favour, found himself still a victim to a vile faction; who, to court their common master, were trampling on their honest brother?

been the true cause of the despondence so prevalent in the latter poetry of "the melancholy Cowley." And hence the indiscretion of the muse, in a single flight, condemned her to a painful, rather than a voluntary solitude; and made the poet complain of "barren praise" and "neglected verse*."

While this anecdote harmonises with better

*The anecdote, probably little known, may be found in "The judgment of Dr. Prideaux in condemning the murder of Julius Cæsar by the conspirators as a most

We shall find an unbroken chain of evidence, villanous act, maintained, 1721," p. 41.

F

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