silence and utter night closed over him. An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have other great names to mentionnone I think, however, so great or so gloomy. с LECTURE THE SECOND. CONGREVE AND ADDISON. A GREAT number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the "Union," and I remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the Opposition and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman's nominee. So Jones of John's, or Thomson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping themselves in their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at priests and kings with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman's emissary was listening to the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young Cambridge-men, orators of the Union, were actually caught up thence, and carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the parliamentary chariot. Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of peers and members of Parliament in Anne's and George's time? Were they all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the watch? How was it that the young gentlemen from the University got such a prodigious number of places? A lad composed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king assailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene complimented, or the reverse; and the party in power was presently to provide for the young poet; and a commissionership, or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an embassy, or a clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A wonderful fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby's. What have men of letters got in our time? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time an empire-but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many others who got public employment, and pretty little pickings out of the public purse.' The wits of whose 1 The following is a conspectus of them : ADDISON.-Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper of the Records in Ireland; Lord of Trade; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively. STEELE.-Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians; Commissioner of "Forfeited Estates in Scotland." PRIOR.-Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King William; Secretary to the Embassy in France; Under Secretary of State; Ambassador to France. TICKELL.-Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland. GAY.-Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover). les lettres sont plus en honneur qu'ici.”—VOLTAIRE, "En Angleterre . . Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 20. names we shall treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the King's coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter-day coming round for them. They all began at school or college in the regular way, producing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public events, battles, sieges, court marriages and deaths, in which the gods of Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invocations, according to the fashion of the time in France and in England. Aid us Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. "Accourez, chastes nymphes de Permesse," says Boileau, celebrating the Grand Monarch. "Des sons que ma lyre enfante, marquez en bien la cadence, "et vous, vents, faites silence! je vais parler de Louis!" School-boys' themes and foundation-exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians remain quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country newspaper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman? In the past century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves at these queer compositions; and some got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses. William Congreve's' Pindaric Odes are still to be found in "Johnson's Poets," that now unfrequented poet's corner 1 He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Con greve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire-a very ancient family. in which so many forgotten big-wigs have a niche-but though he was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve's wit and humour which first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded, that his first play, the "Old Bachelor," brought our author to the notice of that great patron of the English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax, who being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity, instantly made him one of the commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe-office, and likewise a post in the Custom-house of the value of 6001. A commissionership of hackney-coaches-a post in the Custom-house-a place in the Pipe-office, and all for writing a comedy! Does not it sound like a fable, that place in the Pipe-office? Ah, l'heureux temps que celui de ces fables! Men of letters there still be: but I doubt whether any pipe-offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago. Words, like men, pass current for a while with the pub 1- "PIPE.-Pipe, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the great roll. "PIPE-Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out leases of crown lands, by warrant, from the Lord-Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer. "Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c."-REES. Cyclopæd. Art. PIPE. "PIPE-Office.-Spelman thinks so called because the papers were kept in a large pipe or cask." ..... "These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe. because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills."-BACON. The Office of Alienations. [We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But a modern man-of-letters can know little on these points, by-experience.] |