GARRICK - SOAME JENYNS.

411

person in company who had received his reprieve at the gallows, and the very judge who had passed sentence of death upon him: But this did not in the least disturb the harmony of the society, nor embarrass any human creature present."—pp. 174, 175.

At this period of his story he introduces several sketches and characters of his literary friends; which are executed, for the most part, with great force and vivacity. Of Garrick he says.

"Nature had done so much for him, that he could not help being an actor; she gave him a frame of so manageable a proportion, and from its flexibility so perfectly under command, that, by its aptitude and elasticity, he could draw it out to fit any sizes of character that tragedy could offer to him, and contract it to any scale of ridiculous diminution, that his Abel Drugger, Scrubb, or Fribble, could require of him to sink it to. His eye, in the meantime, was so penetrating, so speaking; his brow so moveable, and all his features so plastic, and so accommodating, that wherever his mind impelled them, they would go; and before his tongue could give the text, his countenance would express the spirit and the passion of the part he was encharged with."- pp. 245, 246.

The following picture of Soame Jenyns is excellent.

"He was the man who bore his part in all societies with the most even temper and undisturbed hilarity of all the good companions whom I ever knew. He came into your house at the very moment you had put upon your card; he dressed himself to do your party honour in all the colours of the jay; his lace indeed had long since lost its lustre, but his coat had faithfully retained its cut since the days when gentlemen embroidered figured velvets with short sleeves, boot cuffs, and buckram shirts. As nature had cast him in the exact mould of an ill made pair of stiff stays, he followed her so close in the fashion of his coat, that it was doubted if he did not wear them. Because he had a protuberant wen just under his poll, he wore a wig that did not cover above half his head. His eyes were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who wears them at the end of his feelers, and yet there was room between one of these and his nose for another wen, that added nothing to his beauty; yet I heard this good man very innocently remark, when Gibbon published his history, that he wondered any body so ugly could write a book.

"Such was the exterior of a man, who was the charm of the circle, and gave a zest to every company he came into: His pleasantry was of a sort peculiar to himself; it harmonised with everything; it was like the bread to your dinner; you did not perhaps make it the whole, or principal part of your meal, but it was an admirable and wholesome auxiliary to your other viands. Soame Jenyns told you no long stories, engrossed not much of your attention, and was not angry with those that did. His thoughts were original, and were apt to have a very whimsical affinity to paradox in them: He wrote verses upon

412

CUMBERLAND

ANECDOTES OF GOLDSMITH.

dancing, and prose upon the origin of evil; yet he was a very indifferent metaphysician, and a worse dancer: ill-nature and personality. with the single exception of his lines upon Johnson, I never heard fall from his lips: Those lines I have forgotten, though I believe I was the first person to whom he recited them; they were very bad, but he had been told that Johnson ridiculed his metaphysics, and some of us had just then been making extemporary epitaphs upon each other. Though his wit was harmless, yet the general cast of it was ironical; there was a terseness in his repartees, that had a play of words as well as of thought; as, when speaking of the difference between laying out money upon land, or purchasing into the funds, he said 'One was principal without interest, and the other interest without principal.' Certain it is he had a brevity of expression, that never hung upon the ear, and you felt the point in the very moment that he made the push.” pp. 247-249.

Of Goldsmith he says,

"That he was fantastically and whimsically vain, all the world knows; but there was no malice in his heart. He was tenacious to a ridiculous extreme of certain pretensions that did not, and by nature could not, belong to him, and at the same time he was inexcusably careless of the fame which he had powers to command. What foibles he had he took no pains to conceal; and the good qualities of his heart were too frequently obscured by the carelessness of his conduct, and the frivolity of his manners. Sir Joshua Reynolds was very good to him, and would have drilled him into better trim and order for society, if he would have been amenable; for Reynolds was a perfect gentleman, had good sense, great propriety, with all the social attributes, and all the graces of hospitality, equal to any man.

"Distress drove Goldsmith upon undertakings neither congenial with his studies nor worthy of his talents. I remember him, when in his chambers in the Temple, he shewed me the beginning of his Animated Nature; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws, when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's showman would have done as well. Poor fellow, he hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table."— pp. 257 -259.

"I have heard Dr. Johnson relate with infinite humour the circumstance of his rescuing Goldsmith from a ridiculous dilemma, by the purchase-money of his Vicar of Wakefield, which he sold on his behalf to Dodsley, and, as I think, for the sum of ten pounds only. He had run up a debt with his landlady, for board and lodging, of some few pounds, and was at his wits end how to wipe off the score, and keep a roof over his head, except by closing with a very staggering proposal on her part, and taking his creditor to wife, whose charms were very far from alluring, whilst her demands were extremely urgent. In this crisis of his fate he was found by Johnson, in the act of meditating on the melancholy alternative before him. He shewed Johnson his manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield, but seemed to be without

DEFECTS OF THE MEMOIRS.

413

any plan, or even hope, of raising money upon the disposal of it; when Johnson cast his eye upon it, he discovered something that gave him hope, and immediately took it to Dodsley, who paid down the price above-mentioned in ready money, and added an eventual condition upon its future sale. Johnson described the precautions he took in concealing the amount of the sum he had in hand, which he prudently administered to him by a guinea at a time. In the event he paid off the landlady's score, and redeemed the person of his friend from her embraces." — p. 273.

We will pronounce no general judgment on the literary merits of Mr. Cumberland; but our opinion of them cer tainly has not been raised by the perusal of these memoirs. There is no depth of thought, nor dignity of sentiment about him; he is too frisky for an old man, and too gossipping for an historian. His style is too negligent even for the most familiar composition; and though he has proved himself, upon other occasions, to be a great master of good English, he has admitted a number of phrases into this work, which, we are inclined to think, would scarcely pass current even in conversation. "I declare to truth"-" with the greatest pleasure in life" "she would lead off in her best manner," &c. are expressions which we should not expect to hear in the society to which Mr. Cumberland belongs ;—" laid," for lay, is still more insufferable from the antagonist of Lowth and the descendant of Bentley;-'querulential" strikes our ear as exotic;-"locate, location, and locality," for situation simply, seem also to be bad; and "intuition" for observation sounds very pedantic, to say the least of it. Upon the whole, however, this volume is not the work of an ordinary writer; and we should probably have been more indulgent to its faults, if the excellence of some of the author's former productions had not sent us to its perusal with expectations perhaps somewhat extravagant.

414

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

(JULY, 1803.)

The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Including her Correspondence, Poems, and Essays. Published by permission, from her Original Papers. 5 vols. 8vo. London: 1803.

THESE Volumes are so very entertaining that we ran them all through immediately upon their coming into our possession; and at the same time contain so little that is either difficult or profound, that we may venture to give some account of them to our readers without farther deliberation.

The only thing that disappointed us was the memoir of the writer's life, prefixed by the editor to her correspondence. In point of composition it is very tame and inelegant; and rather excites than gratifies the curiosity of the reader, by the imperfect manner in which the facts are narrated. As the letters themselves, however, are arranged in a chronological order, and commonly contain very distinct notices of the writer's situation at their dates, we shall be enabled, by our extracts from them, to give a pretty clear idea of her Ladyship's life and adventures, with very little assistance from the meagre narrative of Mr. Dallaway.

Lady Mary Pierrepoint, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kingston, was born in 1690; and gave, in her early youth, such indications of a studious disposition, that she was initiated into the rudiments of the learned languages along with her brother. Her first years appear to have been spent in retirement; and yet the very first series of letters with which we are presented, indicates a great deal of that talent for ridicule, and power of observation, by which she afterwards became so famous, and so formidable. These letters (about a dozen in number) are addressed to Mrs. Wortley, the mother of her future husband; and, along with a good

upon

HER EARLY LETTERS.

415

deal of girlish flattery and affectation, display such a degree of easy humour and sound penetration, as is not often to be met with in a damsel of nineteen, even in this age of precocity. The following letter, in 1709, is written the misbehaviour of one of her female favourites. "My night errantry is at an end; and I believe I shall henceforward think freeing of galley-slaves and knocking down windmills, more laudable undertakings than the defence of any woman's reputation whatever. To say truth, I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex; and my only consolation for being of that gender, has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them! But I own, at present, I am so much out of humour with the actions of Lady H***, that I never was so heartily ashamed of my petticoats before. My only refuge is, the sincere hope that she is out of her senses; and taking herself for the Queen of Sheba, and Mr. Mildmay for King Solomon, I do not think it quite so ridiculous: But the men, you may well imagine, are not so charitable ; and they agree in the kind reflection, that nothing hinders women from playing the fool, but not having it in their power." Vol. i. pp. 180, 181.

In the course of this correspondence with the mother, Lady Mary appears to have conceived a very favourable opinion of the son; and the next series of letters contains her antenuptial correspondence with that gentleman, from 1710 to 1712. Though this correspondence has interested and entertained us as much at least as any thing in the book, we are afraid that it will afford but little gratification to the common admirers of love letters. Her Ladyship, though endowed with a very lively imagination, seems not to have been very susceptible of violent or tender emotions, and to have imbibed a very decided contempt for sentimental and romantic nonsense, at an age which is commonly more indulgent. There are no raptures nor ecstasies, therefore, in these letters; no flights of fondness, nor vows of constancy, nor upbraidings of capricious affection. To say the truth, her Ladyship acts a part in the correspondence that is not often allotted to a female performer. Mr. Wortley, though captivated by her beauty and her vivacity, seems evidently to have been a little alarmed at her love of distinction, her propensity to satire, and the apparent inconstancy of her attachments. Such a woman, he