and affirmed that:
He was not for an age, but for all Time,
he did not hesitate to express the wish, in answer to one who boasted that Shakespeare had never blotted a line, would to Heaven he had blotted a thousand. Ben Jonson saw the spots on the glorious face of the sun of Shakespeares genius, and was not accused of desecrating his memory because he did so; but because I quoted that very saying and approved of it, I have been accused of an act of treason against the majesty of the great poet. Surely my offence was no greater than that of Ben Jonson! If there were treason in the thought, it was treason that I shared with him who had said he loved Shakespeare with as much love as was possible to feel on this side of idolatry.
I think, remarked Dr. Milman, that such apparently malevolent repetitions of a persons remarks are the results of careless ignorance or easy-going stupidity, rather than of positive ill-nature or a wilful perversion of the truth.
It is very curious, said Mr. Dyce, how very few people can repeat correctly what they hear, and that nine people out of ten cannot repeat a joke without missing the point or the spirit of it.
And what a widely prevalent tendency there is to exaggerate, especially in numbers. If some people see a hundred of anything, they commonly represent the hundred as a thousand and the thousand as ten thousand.
Not alone in numbers, interposed Mr. Rogers, but in anything. If I quoted Ben Jonsons remark in relation to Shakespeare once only, the rumor spreads that I quoted it frequently; and so the gossip passes from mouth to mouth with continual accretion. Perhaps I shall go down to posterity as an habitual reviler and depreciator of Shakespeare.
Perhaps you wont go down to posterity at all, said Mr. Dyce, good-naturedly.
Perhaps not, replied Mr. Rogers, but if my name should happen to reach that uncertain destination I trust I may be remembered, as Ben Jonson is, as a true lover of Shakespeare. But great as Shakespeare is, I dont think that our admiration should ever be allowed to degenerate into slavish adoration. We ought neither to make a god of him nor a fetish. And I ask you, Mr. Dyce, as a diligent student of his works and an industrious commentator upon them, whether you do not think that very many passages in them are unworthy of his genius. If Homer nods, why not Shakespeare?
I grant all that, replied Mr. Dyce, nay more! I assert that many of the plays attributed to him were not written by him at all. And more even than that. Several of his plays were published surreptitiously, and without his consent, and never received his final corrections or any revision whatever. The faults and obscurities that are discoverable even in the masterpieces of his genius, were not due to him at all, but to ignorant and piratical booksellers, who gave them to the world without his authority, and traded upon his name. Some also must be attributed to the shorthand writers who took down the dialogue as repeated by the actors on the stage. It is curious to reflect how indifferent Shakespeare was to his dramatic fame. He never seems to have cared for his plays at all, and to have looked at them, to use the slang of the artists of our days, as mere pot-boilers, compositions that brought him in money, and enabled him to pay his way, but in which he took no personal pride whatever.
His heart was in his two early poems Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, said Dr. Milman, the only compositions, it should be observed, that were ever published by his authority, and to which he appended his name. His sonnets, which some people admire so much an admiration in which I do not share were published surreptitiously, without his consent, and probably more than one-half of them were not written by him. Some of them are undoubtedly by Marlowe, and some by authors of far inferior ability. Shakespeares name was popular at the time; there was no law of copyright, and booksellers did almost what they pleased with the names and works of celebrated men; and what seems extraordinary in our day, the celebrated men made no complaint most probably because there was no redress to be obtained for them if they had done so. The real law of copyright only dates from the eighth year of the reign of Queen Anne, 1710, or nearly a century after Shakespeares death.
But authors in those early days, even in the absence of a well-defined law of copyright, said Mr. Miller, received payment for their works; witness the receipt of John Milton for five pounds on account of Paradise Lost now in the possession of our host and which we have all seen.
But that was long after the death of Shakespeare, said Mr. Dyce, and it does not appear that Shakespeare ever received a shilling for the copyright of any of his works. Perhaps he received gratuities from the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke, and the other rich young men about town, for whom it is supposed that he wrote many of his sonnets. That he also must have received considerable sums for his representation of his plays at the Globe Theatre is evident from the well-ascertained fact that he retired from theatrical business with a competent fortune and lived the life for some years of a prosperous country gentleman.
As it has been asserted in my presence by an eminent literary man, within a month of the present writing, that Samuel Rogers systematically depreciated Shakespeare, and that he was above all things a cynic, I think it right, in justice to his memory, to repeat the conversation above recorded. Though it took place nearly forty years ago, I wrote down the heads of it in my notebook on the very day when it occurred; and by reperusal of it I have refreshed my memory so as to be certain of its accuracy. Mr. Rogers doubtless said very pungent and apparently ill-natured things in his time; no professed wit, such as he was, can always, or indeed very often, refrain from shooting a barbed dart either to raise a laugh and to strengthen an argument, or to dispense with one; but there was no malevolence in the heart, though there might appear to be some on the tongue, of Samuel Rogers. To love literature, and to excel in poetical composition, were unfailing passports to his regard, his esteem, and if necessary, his purse. One of the guests of the morning on which these conversations took place, and who bore his part in them, was a grateful recipient and witness of his beneficence. Thomas Miller, who began life as a journeyman basket-maker, working for small daily wages in the fens of Lincolnshire, excited the notice of his neighbors by his poetical genius, or it may have been only talent, and by their praises of his compositions, filled his mind with the desire to try his literary fortune in the larger sphere of London. He listened to the promptings of his ambition, came to the metropolis, launched his little skiff on the wide ocean of literary life, and by dint of hard work, indomitable perseverance, unfailing hope, and incessant struggles, managed to earn a modest subsistence. He speedily found that poetry failed to put money in his purse, and prudently resorted to prose. When prose in the shape of original work principally fiction just enabled him to live from day to day, he took refuge in the daily drudgery of reviewing in the Literary Gazette, then edited by Mr. Jerdan, a very bad paymaster. He had not been long in London before he made the acquaintance or Mr. Rogers, and after a period of more or less intimacy, received from that gentleman the good, though old, and as it often happens, the unwelcome advice that he should cease to rely wholly upon literature for his daily bread. As poor Miller could not return to basket-making except as an employer of other basket-makers, for which he had not sufficient, or indeed any, capital and as, moreover, he had no love for any pursuits but those of literature, he resolved, if he could manage it, to establish himself as a bookseller and publisher. Mr. Rogers, to whom he confided his wish, approved of it, and generously aided him to accomplish it, by the advance without security of the money required for the purpose. The basket-maker carried on the business for a few years with but slight success, and once informed me that he had made more money by the sale of note paper, of sealing-wax, of ink, and of red-tape, than he had made by the sale of his own works, or those of anybody else.
Mr. Rogers established another poet in the bookselling and publishing business, but with far greater success than attended his efforts in the case of the basket-maker. Mr. Edward Moxon, a clerk or shopman in the employ of Messrs. Longman, who wrote in his early manhood a little book of sonnets that attracted the notice of Mr. Rogers, to whom they had been sent by the author with a modest letter, became by the pecuniary aid and constant patronage of the Bard of Memory, one of the most eminent publishers of the time. He was known to fame as the Poets publisher, and issued the works not only of Mr. Rogers himself, but of Campbell, Wordsworth, Southey, Savage, Landor, Coleridge, and many other poetical celebrities. He also published the works of Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, Peele, and other noted dramatists of the Elizabethan era.
The friendly assistance, delicately and liberally administered in the hour of need, by Samuel Rogers to the illustrious Richard Brinsley Sheridan is fully recorded in the life of the latter by Thomas Moore; that which was administered, though under less pressing circumstances, to Thomas Campbell, has found a sympathetic historian in Dr. William Beattie. Rogers, in spite of the baseless libel concerning Shakespeare, had not a particle of literary envy in his composition. His dislike to Lord Byron was not literary but personal, and is adequately explained and almost justified by the gross and unprovoked attacks which Byron directed against him. Gentlemans Magazine.
AN ACTOR IN THE REBELLION OF 1798
BY LETITIA McCLINTOCKIn a tiny hovel on the mountain-side just above the romantic glens of Banagher, in the wildest part of the country Londonderry, lives Paddy OHeany, aged a hundred and three years. Paddy is an intelligent old man who must have enjoyed his existence thoroughly, and taken a vivid interest in the stirring scenes of his early life. No clod of the valley is he even now, not like many old people who cannot be aroused to any enthusiasm about either past or present events. Being in quest of an actor in the terrible scenes of 98, and having tried several very old people without result, we hoped to find in Paddy a story-teller.
Paddy, said our friend Mrs. S , is the oldest inhabitant in the parish; he was a youth of nineteen at the time of the Rebellion, and can relate graphic tales of adventures in which he took part. One of them, the history of Jack McSparron, will make your blood run cold; but there, Ill say no more; you shall judge for yourself. Paddy was one of the United Irishmen; has been, it is said, a Ribbonman and a Fenian since then, and is now, in all probability, a Land Leaguer. At any rate, his sympathies are with the Land League, so that you must be careful what you say if you want him to talk; but I need not give you any hints, you will know how to draw him out.
Looking down from Paddys cottage door upon the richly wooded glens of Banagher, the traveller is struck by the extent and beauty of the view. Below lies a ruined church, a little to its right the glens four dark lines of wood branching off from a common meetingpoint, and running up the mountain in different directions, and to the left the quaint country town of Dungiven. Above the town rises the majestic mountain range of Benbraddagh; while yet farther to the left, and like pale, smoke-tinted phantoms, are the hills of Magilligan, and the shadowy coast-line. This was the view we saw from Paddys low doorway, and with a little reluctance we turned away from contemplating it, to enter the smoky cabin.
Paddy was a fine old man with thick, grizzled hair, a better-formed profile than many of his class, and a hale, hearty voice. He was totally blind, but his keen face was so full of intelligence that it was easy to forget that he could not see. His daughter, herself a very old woman, moved his arm-chair near the door, and we sat beside him facing the scene above described. The turf smoke, of which the kitchen was full, blew past us to find its outlet at the door. A turf stack was built against the end of the dresser just behind Paddys chair. A calf was walled off by a little rampart of boards from the rest of the room, and the cock and hens had already flown to their roost directly above our heads. The atmosphere and neighborhood might have been objected to by squeamish people, but in the pursuit of knowledge what will not one dare?
The old woman stood behind her fathers chair ready to jog his memory if necessary. A present of tobacco, tea, and sugar touched the patriarchs heart; he was quite willing to take the desired journey into the regions of the past.
Do I mind the time o the Uniting? Is that what the lady wants to know? Ay, bravely I mind it. I mind it far better nor things that happened yesterday. I was ane o the United Men mysel, an I was sent wi a big wheen o the boys to keep the pass on the White Mountain when the army was expected from Derry to destroy us. I had my pike, an the maist part o the boys had guns.
Were you not afraid to meet the soldiers?
Feared? Was I feared? Troth an faix I was, sorely feared; but it wad ha been as much as your life was worth to let on that you were feared. I mind us leaning against the heather, an the big rocks an mountains rising up all roun us, an the cold night an the darkness comin on, an feen a word was spoke amang us, for we be to keep the pass.
Well?
Weel, at long an at last, Jack McSparron came running back (he was put to watch); an, says he, the armys comin now; theres the tramp o the horses, says he. Wi that we to the listening, an we all heered the tramp o the cavalry; an the company o the United Men just melted away like snow off a ditch. Jack an one or two others tried to keep us thegether, but it couldna be done; the boys was too feared. I ran wi the rest, an I never stopped till I was in my fathers house sittin into the chimney-corner aback o my mother. After that there was soldiers passing weer door nearly every day, an they said they were marching to burn Maghera to the ground.
Why was Maghera to be burned to the ground?
I dinna rightly know, but I think the United Men was strong in it. But counter-orders came that it was na to be destroyed, an then the army came back to Dungiven.
Were you acquainted with Jack McSparron?
Is it Jack McSparron that was flogged in Dungiven Street? Ay, I mind that weel.
His withered hands clutched the arms of his chair as he bent forward, with his sightless eyes fixed, and the fire of eagerness in his keen face. He was gone upon a journey into the distant past, and a scene of horror passed before his mental vision.
Those times were worse nor these, he said; there were murders, too, in parts o the country, but there was another way o working then. I told you that the army came over frae England, an they took up the men that was for the Uniting, an there was short work wi them. Ay, ay, I mind the day Jack was flogged in Dungiven Street because he wouldna tell the names o the men that was banded wi him. One o them was a meeting minister, it was said; an there was farmers an laboring men, too. For the whole country about Dungiven was strong for the United Irishmen as they called them. I was wi them mysel, but I was never took.
There were some Presbyterians among them?
Eh? and his hand went up to his ear.
The ladys axin if there wasnt Presbyterians wi the United Men, father, said his daughter.