Complete Works of Samuel Johnson, page 471
Gay, in that disastrous year, had a present from young Craggs of some south-sea stock, and once supposed himself to be master of twenty thousand pounds. His friends persuaded him to sell his share; but he dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own fortune. He was then importuned to sell as much as would purchase a hundred a year for life, “which,” says Fenton, “will make you sure of a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day.” This counsel was rejected: the profit and principal were lost, and Gay sunk under the calamity so low that his life became in danger.
By the care of his friends, among whom Pope appears to have shown particular tenderness, his health was restored; and, returning to his studies, he wrote a tragedy, called the Captives, which he was invited to read before the princess of Wales. When the hour came, he saw the princess and her ladies all in expectation, and advancing with reverence, too great for any other attention, stumbled at a stool, and falling forward threw down a weighty japan screen. The princess started, the ladies screamed, and poor Gay, after all the disturbance, was still to read his play.
The fate of the Captives, which was acted at Drury-lane in 1723-4, I know not; but he now thought himself in favour, and undertook, 1726, to write a volume of fables for the improvement of the young duke of Cumberland. For this he is said to have been promised a reward, which he had, doubtless, magnified with all the wild expectations of indigence and vanity.
Next year the prince and princess became king and queen, and Gay was to be great and happy; but, upon the settlement of the household, he found himself appointed gentleman usher to the princess Louisa. By this offer he thought himself insulted, and sent a message to the queen, that he was too old for the place. There seem to have been many machinations employed afterwards in his favour; and diligent court was paid to Mrs. Howard, afterwards countess of Suffolk, who was much beloved by the king and queen, to engage her interest for his promotion; but solicitations, verses, and flatteries, were thrown away; the lady heard them, and did nothing.
All the pain which he suffered from the neglect, or, as he, perhaps, termed it, the ingratitude of the court, may be supposed to have been driven away by the unexampled success of the Beggars’ Opera. This play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury-lane, and rejected; it being then carried to Rich, had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay rich, and Rich gay.
Of this lucky piece, as the reader cannot but wish to know the original and progress, I have inserted the relation which Spence has given in Pope’s words.
“Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort of a thing a Newgate pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a thing, for some time; but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the Beggars’ Opera. He began on it; and when first he mentioned it to Swift, the doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us, and we now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of advice; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve; who, after reading it over, said, it would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly. We were all, at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event; till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, ‘It will do — it must do! I see it in the eyes of them.’ This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon; for that duke, besides his own good taste, has a particular knack, as any one now living, in discovering the taste of the publick. He was quite right in this, as usual; the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause.”
Its reception is thus recorded in the notes to the Dunciad.
“This piece was received with greater applause than was ever known. Besides being acted in London sixty-three days, without interruption, and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread into all the great towns of England; was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol fifty, &c. It made its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed twenty-four days successively. The ladies carried about with them the favourite songs of it in fans, and houses were furnished with it in screens. The fame of it was not confined to the author only. The person who acted Polly, till then obscure, became, all at once, the favourite of the town; her pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers; her life written, books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England, for that season, the Italian opera, which had carried all before it for ten years.”
Of this performance, when it was printed, the reception was different, according to the different opinion of its readers. Swift commended it for the excellence of its morality, as a piece that “placed all kinds of vice in the strongest and most odious light;” but others, and among them Dr. Herring, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, censured it, as giving encouragement not only to vice, but to crimes, by making a highwayman the hero, and dismissing him, at last, unpunished. It has been even said, that, after the exhibition of the Beggars’ Opera, the gangs of robbers were evidently multiplied.
Both these decisions are surely exaggerated. The play, like many others, was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is, therefore, not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.
This objection, however, or some other, rather political than moral, obtained such prevalence, that when Gay produced a second part, under the name of Polly, it was prohibited by the lord chamberlain; and he was forced to recompense his repulse by a subscription, which is said to have been so liberally bestowed, that what he called oppression ended in profit. The publication was so much favoured, that though the first part gained him four hundred pounds, near thrice as much was the profit of the second.
He received yet another recompense for this supposed hardship in the affectionate attention of the duke and dutchess of Queensberry, into whose house he was taken, and with whom he passed the remaining part of his life. The duke, considering his want of economy, undertook the management of his money, and gave it to him as he wanted it. But it is supposed that the discountenance of the court sunk deep into his heart, and gave him more discontent than the applauses or tenderness of his friends could overpower. He soon fell into his old distemper, an habitual colick, and languished, though with many intervals of ease and cheerfulness, till a violent fit, at last, seized him, and hurried him to the grave, as Arbuthnot reported, with more precipitance than he had ever known. He died on the fourth of December, 1732, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The letter, which brought an account of his death to Swift, was laid by, for some days, unopened, because, when he received it, he was impressed with the preconception of some misfortune.
After his death, was published a second volume of fables, more political than the former. His opera of Achilles was acted, and the profits were given to two widow sisters, who inherited what he left, as his lawful heirs; for he died without a will, though he had gathered three thousand pounds. There have appeared, likewise, under his name, a comedy, called the Distrest Wife, and the Rehearsal at Gotham, a piece of humour.
The character given him by Pope is this, that “he was a natural man, without design, who spoke what he thought, and just as he thought it;” and that “he was of a timid temper, and fearful of giving offence to the great;” “which caution, however,” says Pope, “was of no avail.”
As a poet, he cannot be rated very high. He was, as I once heard a female critick remark, “of a lower order.” He had not in any great degree the “mens divinior,” the dignity of genius. Much, however, must be allowed to the author of a new species of composition, though it be not of the highest kind. We owe to Gay the ballad opera; a mode of comedy which, at first, was supposed to delight only by its novelty, but has now, by the experience of half a century, been found so well accommodated to the disposition of a popular audience, that it is likely to keep long possession of the stage. Whether this new drama was the product of judgment or of luck, the praise of it must be given to the inventor; and there are many writers read with more reverence, to whom such merit of originality cannot be attributed.
His first performance, the Rural Sports, is such as was easily planned and executed; it is never contemptible, nor ever excellent. The Fan is one of those mythological fictions which antiquity delivers ready to the hand, but which, like other things that lie open to every one’s use, are of little value. The attention naturally retires from a new tale of Venus, Diana, and Minerva.
His fables seem to have been a favourite work; for, having published one volume, he left another behind him. Of this kind of fables, the authors do not appear to have formed any distinct or settled notion. Phædrus evidently confounds them with tales; and Gay, both with tales and allegorical prosopopoeias. A fable, or apologue, such as is now under consideration, seems to be, in its genuine state, a narrative in which beings irrational, and, sometimes, inanimate, “arbores loquuntur, non tantum feræ,” are, for the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act and speak with human interests and passions. To this description the compositions of Gay do not always conform. For a fable, he gives, now and then, a tale, or an abstracted allegory; and, from some, by whatever name they may be called, it will be difficult to extract any moral principle. They are, however, told with liveliness; the versification is smooth; and the diction, though, now and then, a little constrained by the measure or the rhyme, is generally happy.
To Trivia may be allowed all that it claims; it is sprightly, various, and pleasant. The subject is of that kind which Gay was, by nature, qualified to adorn; yet some of his decorations may be justly wished away. An honest blacksmith might have done for Patty what is performed by Vulcan. The appearance of Cloacina is nauseous and superfluous; a shoe boy could have been produced by the casual cohabitation of mere mortals. Horace’s rule is broken in both cases; there is no “dignus vindice nodus,” no difficulty that required any supernatural interposition. A patten may be made by the hammer of a mortal; and a bastard may be dropped by a human strumpet. On great occasions, and on small, the mind is repelled by useless and apparent falsehood.
Of his little poems the publick judgment seems to be right; they are neither much esteemed, nor totally despised. The story of the Apparition is borrowed from one of the tales of Poggio. Those that please least are the pieces to which Gulliver gave occasion; for who can much delight in the echo of an unnatural fiction?
Dione is a counterpart to Aminta, and Pastor Fido, and other trifles of the same kind, easily imitated, and unworthy of imitation. What the Italians call comedies, from a happy conclusion, Gay calls a tragedy, from a mournful event; but the style of the Italians and of Gay is equally tragical. There is something in the poetical Arcadia so remote from known reality and speculative possibility, that we can never support its representation through a long work. A pastoral of a hundred lines may be endured; but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers, and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life; but will be, for the most part, thrown away, as men grow wise, and nations grow learned.
GRANVILLE.
Of George Granville, or, as others write, Greenville, or Grenville, afterwards lord Lansdowne, of Bideford, in the county of Devon, less is known than his name and high rank might give reason to expect. He was born about 1667, the son of Bernard Greenville, who was entrusted, by Monk, with the most private transactions of the restoration, and the grandson of sir Bevil Greenville, who died, in the king’s cause, at the battle of Lansdowne.
His early education was superintended by sir William Ellis; and his progress was such, that, before the age of twelve, he was sent to Cambridge, where he pronounced a copy of his own verses to the princess Mary d’Este, of Modena, then dutchess of York, when she visited the university.
At the accession of king James, being now at eighteen, he again exerted his poetical powers, and addressed the new monarch in three short pieces, of which the first is profane, and the two others such as a boy might be expected to produce; but he was commended by old Waller, who, perhaps, was pleased to find himself imitated, in six lines, which though they begin with nonsense and end with dulness, excited in the young author a rapture of acknowledgment.
In numbers such as Waller’s self might use.
It was probably about this time that he wrote the poem to the earl of Peterborough, upon his accomplishment of the duke of York’s marriage with the princess of Modena, whose charms appear to have gained a strong prevalence over his imagination, and upon whom nothing ever has been charged but imprudent piety, an intemperate and misguided zeal for the propagation of popery.
However faithful Granville might have been to the king, or however enamoured of the queen, he has left no reason for supposing that he approved either the artifices or the violence with which the king’s religion was insinuated or obtruded. He endeavoured to be true, at once, to the king and to the church.
Of this regulated loyalty he has transmitted to posterity a sufficient proof, in the letter which he wrote to his father, about a month before the prince of Orange landed.
“Mar, near Doncaster, Oct. 6, 1688.
“To the honourable Mr. Barnard Granville,
at the earl of Bathe’s, St. James’s.
“Sir,
“Your having no prospect of obtaining a commission for me, can no way alter or cool my desire at this important juncture to venture my life, in some manner or other, for my king and my country.
“I cannot bear living under the reproach of lying obscure and idle in a country retirement, when every man who has the least sense of honour should be preparing for the field.
“You may remember, sir, with what reluctance I submitted to your commands upon Monmouth’s rebellion, when no importunity could prevail with you to permit me to leave the academy: I was too young to be hazarded; but, give me leave to say, it is glorious at any age to die for one’s country; and the sooner, the nobler the sacrifice.
“I am now older by three years. My uncle Bathe was not so old when he was left among the slain at the battle of Newbury; nor you yourself, sir, when you made your escape from your tutors, to join your brother at the defence of Scilly.
“The same cause is now come round about again. The king has been misled; let those who have misled him be answerable for it. Nobody can deny but he is sacred in his own person; and it is every honest man’s duty to defend it.
“You are pleased to say, it is yet doubtful if the Hollanders are rash enough to make such an attempt; but, be that as it will, I beg leave to insist upon it, that I may be presented to his majesty, as one whose utmost ambition it is to devote his life to his service, and my country’s, after the example of all my ancestors.
“The gentry assembled at York, to agree upon the choice of representatives for the county, have prepared an address, to assure his majesty they are ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes for him upon this and all other occasions; but, at the same time, they humbly beseech him to give them such magistrates as may be agreeable to the laws of the land; for, at present, there is no authority to which they can legally submit.
“They have been beating up for volunteers at York, and the towns adjacent, to supply the regiments at Hull; but nobody will list.
“By what I can hear, every body wishes well to the king; but they would be glad his ministers were hanged.
“The winds continue so contrary, that no landing can be so soon as was apprehended; therefore I may hope, with your leave and assistance, to be in readiness before any action can begin. I beseech you, sir, most humbly and most earnestly, to add this one act of indulgence more to so many other testimonies which I have constantly received of your goodness; and be pleased to believe me always, with the utmost duty and submission, sir,
“Your most dutiful son,
“and most obedient servant,
“Geo. Granville.”
Through the whole reign of king William he is supposed to have lived in literary retirement, and indeed had, for some time, few other pleasures but those, of study in his power. He was, as the biographers observe, the younger son of a younger brother; a denomination by which our ancestors proverbially expressed the lowest state of penury and dependence. He is said, however, to have preserved himself at this time from disgrace and difficulties by economy, which he forgot or neglected in life more advanced, and in better fortune.
About this time he became enamoured of the countess of Newburgh, whom he has celebrated with so much ardour by the name of Mira. He wrote verses to her, before he was three-and-twenty, and may be forgiven if he regarded the face more than the mind. Poets are sometimes in too much haste to praise.
In the time of his retirement it is probable that he composed his dramatick pieces, the She-Gallants, acted 1696, which he revised, and called Once a Lover and always a Lover; the Jew of Venice, altered from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, 1698; Heroick Love, a tragedy, 1701; the British Enchanters, 1706, a dramatick poem; and Peleus and Thetis, a mask, written to accompany the Jew of Venice.
