Never did any young man more perfectly display the boastful temper of a raw soldier, new to conflict and victory, than this Highland warrior. He said he had that morning been armour-bearer to the Duke of Perth, whose valour was as conspicuous as his clemency; that now there was no doubt of their final success, as the Almighty had blessed them with this almost bloodless victory on their part; that He had made the sun to shine upon them uninterruptedly since their first setting out; that no brawling woman had cursed, nor even a dog had barked at them; that not a cloud had interposed between them and the blessings of Heaven, and that this happy morning- Here he was interrupted in his harangue by observing in the street a couple of grooms leading four fine blood-horses. He drew a pistol from his belt, and darted at the foremost in a moment. 'Who are you, sir? and where are you going? and whom are you seeking?' It was answered with an uncovered head and a dastardly tone, 'I am Sir John Cope's coachman, and I am seeking my master.' 'You'll not find him here, sir, but you and your man and your horses are my prisoners. Go directly to the Collector's house, and put up your horses in the stable, and wait till I return from a piece of public service. Do this directly, as you regard your lives.' They instantly obeyed. A few paces further on he met an officer's servant with two handsome geldings and a large and full clothes-bag. Similar questions and answers were made, and we found them all in the place to which they were ordered, on our return. It was not long before we arrived at Cockenzie, where, under the protection of my guard, I had an opportunity of seeing this victorious army. In general they were of low stature and dirty, and of a contemptible appearance. The officers with whom I mixed were gentleman-like, and very civil to me, as I was on an errand of humanity. I was conducted to Locheil, who was polished and gentle, and who ordered a soldier to make all the inquiry he could about the medicine-chests of the dragoons. After an hour's search, we returned without finding any of them, nor were they ever afterwards recovered. This view I had of the rebel army confirmed me in the prepossession that nothing but the weakest and most unaccountable bad conduct on our part could have possibly given them the victory. God forbid that Britain should ever again be in danger of being overrun by such a despicable enemy, for, at the best, the Highlanders were at that time but a raw militia, who were not cowards. On our return from looking for the medicine-chests, we saw walking on the sea-shore, at the east end of Prestonpans, all the officers who were taken prisoners. I then saw human nature in its most abject form, for almost every aspect bore in it shame, and dejection, and despair. They were deeply mortified with what had happened, and timidly anxious about the future, for they were doubtful whether they were to be treated as prisoners of war or as rebels. I ventured to speak to one of them who was nearest me, a Major Severn; for Major Bowles, my acquaintance, was much wounded, and at the Collector's. He answered some questions I put to him with civility, and I told him what errand I had been on, and with what humanity I had seen the wounded officers treated, and ventured to assert that the prisoners would be well used. The confidence with which I spoke seemed to raise his spirits, which I com pleted by saying that nothing could have been expecte but what had happened, when the foot were so shame fully deserted by the dragoons. Garrick and Golf. Garrick was so friendly to John Home that he gav a dinner to his friends and companions at his house a Hampton, which he did but seldom. He had told a to bring golf clubs and balls that we might play at tha game on Molesly Hurst. We accordingly set out good time, six of us in a landau. As we passed throug Kensington, the Coldstream regiment were changin guard, and, on seeing our clubs, they gave us thre cheers in honour of a diversion peculiar to Scotland; s much does the remembrance of one's native countr dilate the heart, when one has been some time absent The same sentiment made us open our purses, and giv our countrymen wherewithal to drink the Land o Cakes.' Garrick met us by the way, so impatient h seemed to be for his company. There were John Home and Robertson, and Wedderburn, and Robert and Jame Adam, and Colonel David Wedderburn, who was kille when commander of the army in Bombay, in the year [1773]. He was held by his companions to be in every respect as clever and able a man as his elder brother the Chancellor, with a much more gay, popular, and social temper. Immediately after we arrived, we crossed the river to the golfing-ground, which was very good. None of the company could play but John Home and myself, and Parson Black from Aberdeen, who, being chaplain to a regiment during some of the Duke of Cumberland's campaigns, had been pointed out to his Royal Highness as a proper person to teach him the game of chess: the Duke was such an apt scholar that he never lost a game after the first day; and he recompensed Black for having beat him so cruelly, by procuring for him the living of Hampton, which is a good one. We returned and dined sumptuously. Mrs Garrick, the only lady, now grown fat, though still very lively, being a woman of uncommon good sense, and now mistress of English, was in all respects most agreeable company. all to recognise me, which was no wonder, at the end of twelve years, having thrown away my bag-wig and sword, and appearing in my own grisly hairs, and in parson's clothes; nor was I likely to remind her of her former state. She did not seem at Garrick had built a handsome temple, with a statue of Shakespeare in it, in his lower garden, on the banks of the Thames, which was separated from the upper one by a high-road, under which there was an archway which united the two gardens. Garrick, in compliment to Home, had ordered the wine to be carried to this temple, where we were to drink it under the shade of the copy of that statue to which Home had addressed his pathetic verses on the rejection of his play. The poet and the actor were equally gay, and well pleased with each other, on this occasion, with much respect on the one hand, and a total oblivion of animosity on the other; for vanity is a passion that is easy to be entreated, and unites freely with all the best affections. Having observed a green mount in the garden, opposite the archway, I said to our landlord, that while the servants were preparing the collation in the temple I would surprise him with a stroke at the golf, as I should drive a ball through his archway into the Thames once in three strokes. I had measured the distance with my eye in walking about the garden, and accordingly, at the second stroke, made the ball alight in the mouth of the gateway, and roll down the green slope into the river. This was SO dexterous that he was quite surprised, and begged the club of me by which such a feat had been performed. We passed a very agreeable afternoon; and it is hard to say which were happier, the landlord and landlady, or the guests. The visit to London was paid in 1758. Returning from Leyden in 1746, Carlyle had seen on the packet-boat, disguised in boy's clothes, the Viennese dancing-girl whom Garrick married in 1749. Sarah Fielding (1710–68), a sister of the great Henry Fielding (see page 339), also attained eminence in her generation as a novelist. Her best-known work was her first-David Simple, published in 1744, of which, in a preface to the second edition, Henry Fielding said that 'some of her touches might have done honour to the pencil of the immortal Shakespeare;' and Richardson quoted to her the opinion of a judge who gave her credit for a more perfect knowledge of the human heart than her great brother—an opinion that was probably unusual even then, and is now without a supporter. Other novels of Miss Fielding were The Governess and The Countess of Dellwyn. She also translated from the Greek. Mrs Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), the daughter of a Kentish clergyman, published in 1758 All the Works of Epictetus now Extant, translated from the Greek, and the work was received with high favour by the critics of the time. This learned lady, familiar to the readers of Boswell's Johnson, had previously (1739) translated, anonymously, Crousaz's Examination of Pope's Essay on Man, and Algarotti's Newton's Philosophy Explained. She had also published a small collection of poems written by herself before her twentieth year, and was a frequent correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine. Hence her early acquaintance with Johnson, who commemorated her talents and virtues in pithy sayings as well as in a Greek and a Latin epigram. Her Poems on Several Occasions (1762) contained only two from the former volume. She knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Arabic; studied astronomy, ancient geography and history; played on the spinet and the German flute, sewed beautifully, and made admirable puddings. Her attainments were by no means superficial: Johnson said of a distinguished scholar, by way of compliment, that he understood Greek better than any one he had ever known except Elizabeth Carter. Her Memoirs (by her nephew, 1808) and several collections of her letters to Mrs Montagu and others maintained her repute for learning and The friend of Burke, Reynolds, Richardson, Horace Walpole, Bishop Butler, Beattie, and Hannah More, she lived to read and admire Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. Of her poems, the best known is an Ode to Wisdom, enshrined by sense. Charlotte Lennox (1720-1804) was the daughter of Colonel Ramsay, Lieutenant-Governor of New York, came to England in 1735, and after the death of her father failed as an actress, married, and took to literature. Her novel The Female Quixote (1752) has for heroine a young lady who has half-crazed herself by reading the romances of Scudéry, and it was praised by Fielding as well as by Johnson. Mrs Lennox also published a feeble critical work, Shakspear Illustrated, and translated from the French Brumoy's Greek Theatre, The Life of Sully, The Memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, and some other works. Her first novel, Harriot Stuart (1751), was celebrated by Johnson and a party of ladies and gentlemen in the Devil Tavern, where a sumptuous supper, including a prodigious applepie, was provided, and Johnson invested the authoress with a crown of laurel. Her novel Henrietta was dramatised by her as The Sister, plagiarised from by Burgoyne, and translated both into German and French. She wrote other novels, poems, a 'dramatic pastoral,' and a comedy based on Chapman's Eastward Hoe (see Vol. I. p. 378). The following is a conversation in the Female Quixote: You had the boldness, said she, to talk to me of love; and you well know that persons of my sex and quality are not permitted to listen to such discourses; and if for that offence I banished you my presence, I did no more than decency required of me, and which I would yet do, were I mistress of my own actions. But is it possible, cousin, said Glanville, that you can be angry with any one for loving you? Is that a crime of so high a nature as to merit an eternal banishment from your presence? Without telling you, said Arabella, blushing, whether I am angry at being loved, it is sufficient, you know, that I will not pardon the man who shall have the presumption to tell me he loves me. But, madam, interrupted Glanville, if the person who tells you he loves you, be of a rank not beneath you, I conceive you are not at all injured by the favourable sentiments he feels for you; and though you are not disposed to make any returns to his passion, yet you are certainly obliged to him for his good opinion. Since love is not voluntary, replied Arabella, I am not obliged to any person for loving me; for, questionless, if he could help it, he would. If it is not a voluntary favour, interrupted Glanville, it is not a voluntary offence; and if you do not think yourself obliged by one, neither are you at liberty to be offended with the other. The question, said Arabella, is not whether I ought to be offended at being loved, but whether it is not an offence to be told I am so. If there is nothing criminal in the passion itself, madam, resumed Glanville, certainly there can be no crime in declaring it. However specious your arguments may appear, interrupted Arabella, I am persuaded it is an unpardonable crime to tell a lady you love her; and though I had nothing else to plead, yet the authority of custom is sufficient to prove it. Custom, Lady Bella, said Glanville, smiling, is wholly on my side; for the ladies are so far from being displeased at the addresses of their lovers, that their chiefest care is to gain them, and their greatest triumph to hear them talk of their passion: so, madam, I hope you will allow that argument has no force. I do not know, answered Arabella, what sort of ladies they are who allow such unbecoming liberties; but I am certain that Statira, Parisatis, Clelia, Mandane, and all the illustrious heroines of antiquity, whom it is a glory to resemble, would never admit of such discourses. Ah! for Heaven's sake, cousin, interrupted Glanville, endeavouring to stifle a laugh, do not suffer yourself to be governed by such antiquated maxims! The world is quite different to what it was in those days; and the ladies in this age would as soon follow the fashions of the Greek and Roman ladies, as mimic their manners; and, I believe, they would become one as well as the other. I am sure, replied Arabella, the world is not more virtuous now than it was in their days: and there is good reason to believe it is not much wiser: and I do not see why the manners of this age are to be preferred to those of former ones, unless they are wiser and better: however, I cannot be persuaded that things are as you say; but that when I am a little better acquainted with the world, I shall find as many persons who resemble Oroondates, Artaxerxes, and the illustrious lover of Clelia, as those who are like Teribases, Artaxes, and the presuming and insolent Glanville. By the epithets you give me, madam, said Glanville, I find you have placed me in very bad company: but pray, madam, if the illustrious lover of Clelia had never discovered his passion, how would the world have come to the knowledge of it? He did not discover his passion, sir, resumed Arabella, till by the services he did the noble Clelius and his incomparable daughter, he could plead some title to their esteem: he several times preserved the life of that renowned Roman; delivered the beautiful Clelia when she was a captive; and, in fine, conferred so many obligations upon them, and all their friends, that he might well expect to be pardoned by the divine Clelia for daring to love her. Nevertheless, she used him very harshly when he first declared his passion, and banished him also from her presence; and it was a long time before she could prevail upon herself to compassionate his sufferings. The marquis, coming in, interrupted Arabella; upon which she took occasion to retire, leaving Glanville more captivated with her than ever. He found her usage of him was grounded upon examples she thought it her duty to follow; and, strange as her notions of life appeared, yet they were supported with so much wit and delicacy, that he could not help admiring her, while he foresaw the oddity of her humour would throw innumerable difficulties in his way before he should be able to obtain her. However, as he was really passionately in love with her, he resolved to accommodate himself, as much as possible, to her taste, and endeavour to gain her heart by a behaviour most agreeable to her: he therefore assumed an air of great distance and respect; never mentioned his affections, nor the intentions of her father in his favour; and the marquis observing his daughter conversed with him with less reluctance than usual, leaving to time, and the merit of his nephew, to dispose her to comply with his desires, resolved not to interpose his authority in an affair upon which her own happiness so much depended. Elizabeth Montagu (1720-1800) held a prominent place in the literary society of the period. The daughter of a wealthy Yorkshire squire, Mr Robinson, she married the wealthy grandson of the Earl of Sandwich; and both before and after her husband's death made her house the chief resort of persons of both sexes distinguished for rank, taste, and talent. Numerous references to this circle will be found in Boswell's Johnson, in the Life of Beattie, and in the works of Hannah More. Mrs Montagu became the Mme du Deffand of London ;' and it was to her reunions and those of friends who imitated her in substituting conversation for the usual pastime of cardplaying that Mr Benjamin Stillingfleet came with his famous blue worsted stockings, instead of the black silks of the card-playing assemblies—whence the application of the term to learned ladies. The 'blue-stocking' circle included Mrs Thrale, Mrs Chapone, Hannah More, and Fanny Burney, and a long series of famous men, from Dr Johnson to William Wilberforce. Mrs Montagu was authoress of a famous Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakspear, compared with the Greek and French Dramatic Poets, with some Remarks upon the Misrepresentations of M. de Voltaire (1769). This essay had great success at home and abroad; was praised by Reynolds, Lyttelton, and Cowper: condemned by Johnson and Boswell; and is now interesting as showing the low state of poetical and Shakespearean criticism at the time it was written. A memoir, with letters, of Mrs Montagu was published in 1873 by Dr Doran, under the title of A Lady of the Last Century. Hester Chapone (1727-1801), daughter of Thomas Mulso, a Northamptonshire squire, wrote a romance before she was ten; studied French, Italian, Latin, and music; contributed to Johnson's Rambler; and became the intimate friend of Richardson the novelist. Her married life lasted only a few months, her husband, an attorney, dying in 1761. In 1772 she wrote her best-known book, or rather a collection of essays, called Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, and in 1775 her Miscellanies. An edition of her works, with a Life, appeared in 1807, and extended to six volumes. The following from the Improvement is rather characteristic : When I speak of the best company, I do not mean in the common acceptation of the word-persons of high rank and fortune-but rather the most worthy and sensible. It is however very important to a young woman to be introduced into life on a respectable footing, and to converse with those whose manners and style of life may polish her behaviour, refine her sentiments, and give her consequence in the eye of the world. Your equals in rank are most proper for intimacy, but to be sometimes amongst your superiors is every way desirable and advantageous, unless it should inspire you with pride, or with the foolish desire of emulating their grandeur and expense. Above all things avoid intimacy with those of low birth and education! nor think it a mark of humility to delight in such society; for it much oftener proceeds from the meanest kind of pride, that of being the head of the company, and seeing your companions subservient to you. The servile flattery and submission which usually recommend such people and make amends for their ignorance and want of conversation, will infallibly corrupt your heart and make all company insipid from whom you cannot expect the same homage. Your manners and faculties, instead of improving, must be continually lowered to suit you to your companions; and, believe me, you will find it no easy matter to raise them again to a level with those of polite and well-informed people. The greatest kindness and civility to inferiors is perfectly consistent with proper caution on this head. Treat them always with affability, and talk to them of their own affairs, with an affectionate interest; but never make them familiar, nor admit them as associates in your diversions: but, above all, never trust them with your secrets, which is putting yourself entirely in their power, and subjecting yourself to the most shameful slavery. Catherine Macaulay (1731-91) was an ardent politician of outspokenly republican sentiments the hen-brood of faction,' according to Walpole. The daughter of John Sanbridge, a Kentish proprietor, she married a Scotch doctor Macaulay in 1760, and in 1778, after twelve years of widowhood, a brother of the famous quack doctor Graham, also a Scotsman. Her chief work was a History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Elevation of the House of Hanover (8 vols. 1763-83). Though a work of no authority, it has well-written passages, and was highly thought of by Mirabeau and Madame Roland. Lecky calls Mrs Macaulay 'the ablest writer of the new Radical school,' and Horace Walpole and Gray even put her History above Hume's. To ridicule Mrs Macaulay's republicanism, Johnson one day proposed that her footman, 'a very sensible, civil, well-behaved fellow-citizen,' should be allowed to sit down to dinner with the party; and in a still less complimentary vein, said it was better she should redden her own cheeks than blacken other people's characters. Before her death she had visited George Washington in America, written against Burke's denunciation of the French Revolution, criticised Hobbes, and produced a treatise on morals and letters on education. What Mrs Macaulay had in common with her illustrious namesake, and what she had not, will be gathered from the following paragraphs from her account of the Revolution, on The Bishops committed to the Tower. There cannot be a stronger mark of that deep-rooted prejudice which the doctrines of passive obedience had fixed in the minds of James and his party, and the entire dependence they had in the sincerity of its professors, than the boldness of a step which must naturally excite the resentment of a people who had shewn such ample testimonies of a blind devotion to the interests and power of the church. Jeffries, who had hitherto been the foremost in all the violent councils of this and the preceding reign, remonstrated against the measure as impolitic and dangerous, and the anxiety and attention with which the public waited the issue of this business struck a terror in the minds of the most determined of the king's servants. Directions were given that the reverend fathers should be carried by water, in order to prevent the emotions which a sight of their humiliations in a passage through the city might occasion; but this caution was needless, for the inflamed populace rushed in innumerable crowds to the river to wait for their arrival: the banks were covered on both sides, and the rooms, and even the roofs of all the adjoining houses, were filled with eager spectators: a shout of acclamation, which resounded from one end of the town to the other, was set up by the multitude when the bishops were discovered at a distance. This was immediately followed by a deluge of tears; fervent prayers were offered up to heaven for their deliverance; as they approached the ground was strewed with the protestant bodies of pious devotees; whilst others, yet more inflamed with zeal, ran up to the chin into the water to receive their blessing. The contagion caught even the soldiers, who threw themselves on their knees to their prisoners, nor could Daniel in the lion's den excite more terror and compassion in the breasts of the devout Jews, than a lodgment in the Tower for a few weeks excited in the minds of a people who had beheld often with the eye of indifference those cruel executions which sully the page of history during the last reign and in the beginning of the present; and who but a few months before had beheld without any extraordinary emotion the rigorous scourg ing of Samuel Johnson, an honest but zealous divine of the church of England, who had been given up by his brethren to the resentment of the court, which had been drawn on him for a publication entitled 'An humble and hearty address to all the English protestants in the army, in which they are intreated not to make themselves the tools of the papists, to enslave their country and subvert their religion.' Such are the effects of imagination over the human heart, that rancour and sympathy, indifference and passion, take their alternate rise from the mere phantoms of the brain, without being in any measure rationally regulated by the nature of circumstances or the complexion of facts. The behaviour of the bishops was equally calculated to correspond with their public professions, and at the same time to enflame the sympathy of the multitude. They distributed to all around them their blessings without reserve; they augmented the general favour by the most lowly submissive deportment; they exhorted the people to fear God, honour the king, and to maintain their loyalty; and no sooner had they entered the precincts of the Tower, than they hurried to chapel, in order to return thanks for those afflictions which heaven in defence of its holy cause had thought them worthy to endure. The triumph of the church over prerogative, the idol to which they had taught the multitude to bow, was yet more splendid on the day of their trial, than in their passage to the Tower. Twenty-nine peers, the far greater number of which were of the high Tory faction, and had been highly instrumental in exalting the power of the crown and fixing James on the throne, with a great number of commoners and divines of inferior rank, attended the bishops to Westminster-hall; and the populace who assembled in expectation of the event was more numerous than had ever been seen on any occasion. Clara Reeve (1729-1807), born at Ipswich, the daughter of the rector of Freston, translated Barclay's Argenis (1772), and wrote The Champion of Virtue, a Gothic Story (1777), renamed The Old English Baron, which was avowedly an imitation of Walpole's Castle of Otranto. The Old English Baron used constantly to be printed along with the Castle of Otranto, and in virtue of her chef d'œuvre, Miss Reeve has an assured place in the history of the romantic movement in our literature; she was Mrs Radcliffe's literary godmother. It may even be said that in the management of the supernatural machinery so as to produce mystery and weird effect, she surpassed her prototype; but she had neither Walpole's pointed style nor his grace. Scott thought her weak in imagination, and criticised her style as sometimes tame and tiresome. But the book has gone through more than a dozen editions, and was three times reprinted between 1883 and 1888. Miss Reeve wrote four other novels, all forgotten, and The Progress of Romance (1785), a sort of history of fiction. David Lewis (1683?–1760), a Welshman born, seems to have been an usher in Westminster School. He wrote a blank-verse tragedy on Philip of Macedon (1727), but is best known for a collection of Miscellaneous Poems by Several Hands (1726), which contained Dyer's 'Grongar Hill,' Pope's 'Vital Spark,' and a number of songs and poems, some of the best of which are attributed to himself, such as the following, reprinted in Percy's Reliques : Away! let nought to love displeasing, What though no grants of royal donors, With pompous titles grace our blood; We'll shine in more substantial honours And, to be noble, we'll be good. Our name while virtue thus we tender, Will sweetly sound where'er 'tis spoke ; And all the great ones, they shall wonder How they respect such little folk. What though from fortune's lavish bounty And that's the only life to live. James Merrick (1720–69) was a distinguished classical scholar. Born at Reading, and educated there and at Trinity College, Oxford, he gained a fellowship, and took holy orders, but was unable to do duty from delicate health. Merrick wrote some hymns, and, with no great success, attempted a version of the Psalms. Better known is The Chameleon. Two travellers of such a cast, 'Hold there,' the other quick replies; Stretched at its ease, the beast I viewed, And saw it eat the air for food.' |