Томас Бабингтон Маколей
Critical and Historical Essays. Volume 2
“Rolls his vacant eye
To greet the glowing fancies of the sky.”
What are the glowing fancies of the sky? And what is the meaning of the two lines which almost immediately follow?
“A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods,
He loves to commune with the fields and floods.”
How can a soulless thing be a spirit? Then comes a panegyric on the Sunday. A baptism follows; after that a marriage: and we then proceed, in due course, to the visitation of the sick, and the burial of the dead.
Often as Death has been personified, Mr. Montgomery has found something new to say about him:
“O Death! thou dreadless vanquisher of earth,
The Elements shrank blasted at thy birth!
Careering round the world like tempest wind,
Martyrs before, and victims strew’d behind
Ages on ages cannot grapple thee,
Dragging the world into eternity!”
If there be any one line in this passage about which we are more in the dark than about the rest, it is the fourth. What the difference may be between the victims and the martyrs, and why the martyrs are to lie before Death, and the victims behind him, are to us great mysteries.
We now come to the third part, of which we may say with honest Cassio, “Why, this is a more excellent song than the other.” Mr. Robert Montgomery is very severe on the infidels, and undertakes to prove, that, as he elegantly expresses it,
“One great Enchanter helm’d the harmonious whole.”
What an enchanter has to do with helming, or what a helm has to do with harmony, he does not explain. He proceeds with his argument thus:
“And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed
All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named
The spacious world, and all its wonders, born
Designless, self-created, and forlorn;
Like to the flashing bubbles on a stream,
Fire from the cloud, or phantom in a dream?”
We should be sorry to stake our faith in a higher Power on Mr. Robert Montgomery’s logic. He informs us that lightning is designless and self-created. If he can believe this, we cannot conceive why he may not believe that the whole universe is designless and self-created. A few lines before, he tells us that it is the Deity who bids “thunder rattle from the skiey deep.” His theory is therefore this, that God made the thunder, but that the lightning made itself.
But Mr. Robert Montgomery’s metaphysics are not at present our game. He proceeds to set forth the fearful effects of Atheism
“Then, blood-stain’d Murder, bare thy hideous arm
And thou, Rebellion, welter in thy storm:
Awake, ye spirits of avenging crime;
Burst from your bonds, and battle with the time!”
Mr. Robert Montgomery is fond of personification, and belongs, we need not say, to that school of poets who hold that nothing more is necessary to a personification in poetry than to begin a word with a capital letter. Murder may, without impropriety, bare her arm, as she did long ago, in Mr. Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope. But what possible motive Rebellion can have for weltering in her storm, what avenging crime may be, who its spirits may be, why they should be burst from their bonds, what their bonds may be, why they should battle with the time, what the time may be, and what a battle between the time and the spirits of avenging crime would resemble, we must confess ourselves quite unable to understand.
“And here let Memory turn her tearful glance
On the dark horrors of tumultuous France,
When blood and blasphemy defiled her land,
And fierce Rebellion shook her savage hand.”
Whether Rebellion shakes her own hand, shakes the hand of Memory, or shakes the hand of France, or what any one of these three metaphors would mean, we, know no more than we know what is the sense of the following passage
“Let the foul orgies of infuriate crime
Picture the raging havoc of that time,
When leagued Rebellion march’d to kindle man,
Fright in her rear, and Murder in her van.
And thou, sweet flower of Austria, slaughter’d Queen,
Who dropp’d no tear upon the dreadful scene,
When gush’d the life-blood from thine angel form,
And martyr’d beauty perish’d in the storm,
Once worshipp’d paragon of all who saw,
Thy look obedience, and thy smile a law.”
What is the distinction between the foul orgies and the raging havoc which the foul orgies are to picture? Why does Fright go behind Rebellion, and Murder before? Why should not Murder fall behind Fright? Or why should not all the three walk abreast? We have read of a hero who had
“Amazement in his van, with flight combined,
And Sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind.”
Gray, we suspect, could have given a reason for disposing the allegorical attendants of Edward thus. But to proceed, “Flower of Austria” is stolen from Byron. “Dropp’d” is false English. “Perish’d in the storm” means nothing at all; and “thy look obedience” means the very reverse of what Mr. Robert Montgomery intends to say.
Our poet then proceeds to demonstrate the immortality of the soul:
“And shall the soul, the fount of reason, die,
When dust and darkness round its temple lie?
Did God breathe in it no ethereal fire.
Dimless and quenchless, though the breath expire?”
The soul is a fountain; and therefore it is not to die, though dust and darkness lie round its temple, because an ethereal fire has been breathed into it, which cannot be quenched though its breath expire. Is it the fountain, or the temple, that breathes, and has fire breathed into it?
Mr. Montgomery apostrophises the
“Immortal beacons,—spirits of the just,”—
and describes their employments in another world, which are to be, it seems, bathing in light, hearing fiery streams flow, and riding on living cars of lightning. The deathbed of the sceptic is described with what we suppose is meant for energy. We then have the deathbed of a Christian made as ridiculous as false imagery and false English can make it. But this is not enough. The Day of Judgment is to be described, and a roaring cataract of nonsense is poured forth upon this tremendous subject. Earth, we are told, is dashed into Eternity. Furnace blazes wheel round the horizon, and burst into bright wizard phantoms. Racing hurricanes unroll and whirl quivering fire-clouds. The white waves gallop. Shadowy worlds career around. The red and raging eye of Imagination is then forbidden to pry further. But further Mr. Robert Montgomery persists in prying. The stars bound through the airy roar. The unbosomed deep yawns on the ruin. The billows of Eternity then begin to advance. The world glares in fiery slumber. A car comes forward driven by living thunder,
“Creation shudders with sublime dismay,
And in a blazing tempest whirls away.”
And this is fine poetry! This is what ranks its writer with the master-spirits of the age! This is what has been described, over and over again, in terms which would require some qualification if used respecting Paradise Lost! It is too much that this patchwork, made by stitching together old odds and ends of what, when new, was but tawdry frippery, is to be picked off the dunghill on which it ought to rot, and to be held up to admiration as an inestimable specimen of art. And what must we think of a system by means of which verses like those which we have quoted, verses fit only for the poet’s corner of the Morning Post, can produce emolument and fame? The circulation of this writer’s poetry has been greater than that of Southey’s Roderick, and beyond all comparison greater than that of Cary’s Dante or of the best works of Coleridge. Thus encouraged, Mr. Robert Montgomery has favoured the public with volume after volume. We have given so much space to the examination of his first and most popular performance that we have none to spare for his Universal Prayer, and his smaller poems, which, as the puffing journals tell us, would alone constitute a sufficient title to literary immortality. We shall pass at once to his last publication, entitled Satan.
This poem was ushered into the world with the usual roar of acclamation. But the thing was now past a joke. Pretensions so unfounded, so impudent, and so successful, had aroused a spirit of resistance. In several magazines and reviews, accordingly, Satan has been handled somewhat roughly, and the arts of the puffers have been exposed with good sense and spirit. We shall, therefore, be very concise.
Of the two poems we rather prefer that on the Omnipresence of the Deity, for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas More to rank one bad book above another. “Marry, this is somewhat. This is rhyme. But the other is neither rhyme nor reason.” Satan is a long soliloquy, which the Devil pronounces in five or six thousand lines of bad blank verse, concerning geography, politics, newspapers, fashionable society, theatrical amusements, Sir Walter Scott’s novels, Lord Byron’s poetry, and Mr. Martin’s pictures. The new designs for Milton have, as was natural, particularly attracted the attention of a personage who occupies so conspicuous a place in them. Mr. Martin must be pleased to learn that, whatever may be thought of those performances on earth, they give full satisfaction in Pandaemonium, and that he is there thought to have hit off the likenesses of the various Thrones and Dominations very happily.
The motto to the poem of Satan is taken from the Book of Job: “Whence comest thou? From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.” And certainly Mr. Robert Montgomery has not failed to make his hero go to and fro, and walk up and down. With the exception, however, of this propensity to locomotion, Satan has not one Satanic quality. Mad Tom had told us that “the prince of darkness is a gentleman”; but we had yet to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose principal fault is that he is something of a twaddle and far too liberal of his good advice. That happy change in his character which Origen anticipated, and of which Tillotson did not despair, seems to be rapidly taking place. Bad habits are not eradicated in a moment. It is not strange, therefore, that so old an offender should now and then relapse for a short time into wrong dispositions. But to give him his due, as the proverb recommends, we must say that he always returns, after two or three lines of impiety, to his preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr. Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of Gabriel. The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good than from a bad angel.
We can afford room only for a single quotation. We give one taken at random, neither worse nor better, as far as we can perceive, than any other equal number of lines in the book. The Devil goes to the play, and moralises thereon as follows:
“Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed
Around me: beauties in their cloud-like robes
Shine forth,—a scenic paradise, it glares
Intoxication through the reeling sense
Of flush’d enjoyment. In the motley host
Three prime gradations may be rank’d: the first,
To mount upon the wings of Shakspeare’s mind,
And win a flash of his Promethean thought,
To smile and weep, to shudder, and achieve
A round of passionate omnipotence,
Attend: the second, are a sensual tribe,
Convened to hear romantic harlots sing,
On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze,
While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes
Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire
The last, a throng most pitiful! who seem,
With their corroded figures, rayless glance,
And death-like struggle of decaying age,
Like painted skeletons in charnel pomp
Set forth to satirise the human kind!
How fine a prospect for demoniac view!
‘Creatures whose souls outbalance worlds awake!’
Methinks I hear a pitying angel cry.”
Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert Montgomery, we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain to individuals, literature must be purified from this taint. And, to show that we are not actuated by any feeling of personal enmity towards him, we hereby give notice that, as soon as any book shall, by means of puffing, reach a second edition, our intention is to do unto the writer of it as we have done unto Mr. Robert Montgomery.
INDEX AND GLOSSARY OF ALLUSIONS
ABSOLUTE, Sir Anthony, a leading character in Sheridan’s play of The Rivals
A darker and fiercer spirit, Jonathan Swift, the great Tory writer (1667-1745)
Agbarus or Abgarus, the alleged author of a spurious letter to Jesus Christ. Edessa is in Mesopotamia
Alboin, King of the Lombards, 561-573, he invaded Italy as far as the Tiber
Alcina, the personification of carnal pleasure in the Orlando Furioso
Aldus, the famous Venetian printer (1447-1515), who issued the Aldine editions of the classics and invented italic type
Alfieri, Italian dramatist, and one of the pioneers of the revolt against eighteenth-century literary and society models (1749-1803)
Algarotti, Francesco, a litterateur, friend of Voltaire. Frederic made him a count (1764)
Alnaschar, see “The History of the Barber’s Fifth Brother,” in the Arabian Nights
Alva, Duke of, the infamous governor of the Netherlands (1508-82)
Amadeus, Victor, “the faithless ruler of Savoy,” who for a bribe deserted Austria, whose troops he was commander-in chief of for France, in 1692
Arbuthnot, Dr., author of the History of John Bull, friend of Swift and Pope (1679-1735)
Arminius, a German who, as a hostage, entered the Roman army, but afterwards revolted and led his countrymen against Rome (d. 23 A.D.)
Armorica, France between the Seine and the Loire, Brittany
Artevelde, Von., Jacob v. A. and Philip, his son, led the people of Flanders in their revolt against Count Louis and his French supporters (fourteenth century)
Ascham, Roger, and Aylmer, John, tutors of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey respectively
Athalie, Saul, Cinna, dramas by Racine Alfieri, and Corneille respectively
Atticus, Sporus, i.e. Addison and Lord John Hervey, satirized in Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
Attila, King of the Huns, the “Scourge of God” who overran the Roman Empire but was finally beaten by the allied Goths and Romans (d. 453)
Aubrey, John, an eminent antiquary who lost a number of inherited estates by lawsuits and bad management (1624-97)
BADAJOZ and St. Sebastian, towns in Spain captured from the French during the Peninsular War
Bastiani, was at first one of the big Potsdam grenadiers; Frederic made him Abbot of Silesia
Bayes, Miss, with reference to the name used in The Rehearsal, by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to satirize Dryden, the poet-laureate
Bayle, Pierre, author of the famous Dictionnaire Historique et Critique; professor of philosophy at Padua and at Rotterdam (1647-1706)
Beauclerk, Topham, Johnson’s friend, “the chivalrous T. B., with his sharp wit and gallant, courtly ways” (Carlyle), (1739-80)
Beaumarchais, see Carlyle’s French Revolution. As a comic dramatist he ranks second only to Moliere. He supported the Revolution with his money and his versatile powers of speech and writing. He edited an edition de luxe of Voltaire’s works (1732-99)
Behn, Afra, the licentious novelist and mistress of Charles II. (1640-89), who, as a spy in Holland, discovered the Dutch plans for burning the Thames shipping
Belle-Isle, French marshal; fought in the Austrian campaign of 1740 and repelled the Austrian invasion of 1744 (d. 1761)
Beloe William, a miscellaneous writer, whose version of Herodotus, so far from being flat, is, while “infinitely below the modern standard in point of accuracy, much above modern performance in point of readableness” (Dr. Garnett), (1756-1817)
Bender, 80 miles N.W. from Odessa, in S. Russia
Bentley, Richard, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and an eminent philologist (1662-1742)
Bettesworth, an Irishman, lampooned in Swift’s Miscellanies
Betty Careless, one of Macaulay’s inventions which sufficiently explains itself
Betty, Master, a boy-actor, known as the Infant Roscius. Having acquired a fortune he lived in retirement (1791-1874)
Black Frank, Johnson’s negro servant, Frank Barber
Blackmore, Sir Richard, a wordy poetaster (d. 1729), who was the butt of all contemporary wits
Blair, Dr. Hugh, Scotch divine an critic, encouraged Macpherson to publish the Ossian poetry (1718-1800)
Blatant cast, the, does not really die. See the end of Faery Queen vi.
Bobadil and Beseus, Pistol and Parolles, braggart characters in Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour, Beaumont and Fletcher’s King and no King, Shakespeare’s Henry V., and All’s Well that Ends Well, respectively
Boileau, Nicholas, the great French critic, whose Art of Poetry long constituted the canons of French and English literary art (1636-1711)
Bolt Court, on the N. side of Fleet Street. Johnson lived at No. 8 from 1777 till his death in 1784
Borodino, 70 miles west from Moscow, where the Russians made a stand against Napoleon, 1812
Boscan, a Spanish imitator of Petrarch Alva’s tutor; served in Italy (1485-1533)
Bourne, Vincent, an usher at Westminster School, mentioned early in the “Essay on Warren Hastings,”
Boyle, Hon. Charles, edited the Letters of Phalaris which gave rise to the famous controversy with Bentley, for which, see the essay on Sir William Temple (vol. iii. of this edition)
Bradamante, in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, a Christian lady who loves the Saracen knight, Ruggiero
Brothers, Richard, a fanatic who held that the English were the lost ten tribes of Israel (1757-1824)
Brownrigg, Mrs., executed at Tyburn (1767) for abusing and murdering her apprentices
Bruhl, Count, the favourite of Augustus III. of Saxony who enriched himself at the risk of ruining his master and his country.
Bucer, Martin, a German reformer who mediated between Luther and Zwingli, and became Professor of Divinity at Cambridge (1491-1551)
Buchanan, George, Scottish scholar and humanist; tutor to Mary Queen of Scots and James VI. (1506-82)
Burn, Richard, an English vicar compiled several law digests among them the Justice of the Peace, (1709-85)
Burnet, Gilbert, bishop of Salisbury, supported the claims of William of Orange to the English throne, and wrote the History of my Own Times (1643-1715)
Button’s, on the south side of Russell Street, Covert Garden succeeded Will’s as the wits’ resort
Butts, Dr. physician-in-ordinary to Henry VIII. (d. 1545) and one of the characters in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII.
CACUS, the mythological giant who stole the oxen of Hercules
Camaldoli, Order of, founded by St. Romauld, a Benedictine (eleventh century) in the Vale of Camaldoli among the Tuscan Apennines
Cambray, Confederates of, the pope, the emperor. France and Spain who by the League of Cambray combined to attack Venice
Campbell, Dr. John, a miscellaneous political and historical writer (1708~75)
Capreae, or Capri, a small island nineteen miles south from Naples, the favourite residence of Augustus and Tiberius, and the scene of the latter’s licentious orgies
Capuchins, a branch of the monastic order of the Franciscans
Carlile, Richard, a disciple of Tom Paine’s who was repeatedly imprisoned for his radicalism. He worked especially for the freedom of the Press (1790-1843)
Carter, Mrs., a distinguished linguist and translator of Epictetus
Casaubon, Isaac, Professor of Greek at Geneva Curator of the Royal Library at Paris, Prebendary of Canterbury: a famous sixteenth-century scholar (1559-1614),
Catinat, French marshal in charge of the 1701 Italian campaign against Marlborough’s ally, Prince Eugene of Savoy
Cave, Edward, printer, editor, publisher, and proprietor of the Gentleman’s Magazine (1691-1754)
Chatelet, Madame du, Voltaire’s mistress, c 1733-47 (d. 1749)
Chaulieu, Guillaume, a witty but negligent poetaster (1639-1720)
Chaumette, Pierre, a violent extremist in the French Revolution who provoked even Robespierre’s disgust; guillotined, 1794
Childs, the clergy coffee-house in St. Paul’s. St. James’s (ib.) in the street of that name, was the resort of beaux and statesmen and a notorious gambling house
Chillingworth, William, an able English controversial divine; suffered at the hands of the Puritans as an adherent of Charles I. (1602-43)
Churchill, Charles, a clergyman and satirical Poet who attacked Johnson in The Ghost (1731-64)
Clootz, a French Revolutionary and one of the founders of the “Worship of Reason:” guillotined 1794
Colburn, (Zerah), b. at Vermont, U.S.A., in 1804, and noted in youth for his extraordinary powers of calculation (d. 1840)
Coligni, Gaspard de, French admiral and leader of the Huguenots; massacred on St. Bartholomew’s Eve, 1572
Colle, Charles, dramatist and song-writer (d. 1777); young Crebillon (d. 1777) wrote fiction
Condorcet, a French Marquis (1743-94) of moderate Revolutionary tendencies, who fell a victim to the Extremists He wrote extensively and clearly, but without genius
Constituent Assembly, the National Assembly of France from 1789 to 1792
Corderius, a famous sixteenth-century teacher—Calvin was a pupil of his—in France and Switzerland (d. 1564) who published several school-books
Cortes, conqueror of Mexico (1485-1547); the Spanish Parliament
Cotta, Caius, a famous Roman orator, partly contemporary with Cicero, who mentions him with honour
Courland, a province on the Baltic once belonging to Poland since 1795 to Russia
Coventry, Solicitor-General of England in 1616, Attorney-General in 1620 and Lord Keeper in 1625
Cradock, Joseph, a versatile writer and actor whose rambling Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs contain several anecdotes of Johnson and his circle (1742-1826)
Curll and Osborne, two notorious booksellers who owe their immortality to Pope’s Dunciad
Curtius, the noble Roman youth who leaped into the chasm in the Forum and so closed it by the sacrifice of Rome’s most precious possession—a good citizen
DACIER, Andrew, a French scholar who edited the “Delphin” edition of the classics for the Dauphin, and translated many of them (1651-1722)
Dangerfield, Thomas, Popish plot discoverer and false witness (1650?-1685)
Davies, Tom, the actor-bookseller who wrote the Memoirs of David Garrick, and was one of Johnson’s circle (1712-85). “The famous dogma of the old physiologists” is “corruptio unius generatio est alterius” (Notes and Queries, Ser. 8, vol. ix., p. 56)
Davila, a famous French soldier and historian who served under Henry of Navarre; wrote the famous History of the Civil War in France (1576-1631)
Della Crusca, the signature of Robert Merry (1755-98), the leader of a mutual-admiration band of poetasters, who had their head-quarters at Florence, and hence called themselves the Della Cruscans. Gifford (q.v.) pulverised them in his Baviad and Merviad
Dentatus, the old-type Roman who, after many victories and taking immense booty, retired to a small farm which he himself tilled
Desfontaines, a Jesuit who put out a pirated edition of Voltaire’s La Ligue
Dessaix, a distinguished, upright, and chivalrous French general under Napoleon, who fell at Marengo (1800)
Diafoirus, the name of two pedantic characters in Moliere’s Malade Imaginaire
Diatessaron, a harmony of the gospels, the earliest example being that compiled by Tatian c.170 A.D.
Digby, Lord, one of the Royalist leaders and a typical Cavalier
Diodorus author of a universal history of which fifteen books still remain (50 B.C.-13 A.D.)
Distressed Mother, by Ambrose Phillipps, modelled on Racine’s Andromaque
Domdaniel, a hall under the roots of the ocean, where gnomes magicians, and evil spirits hold council (see Southey’s Thalaba)
Domenichino, a celebrated Italian painter of sacred subjects; persecuted and possibly poisoned by his rivals (1581-1641)
Douw, Gerard, distinguished Dutch painter, one of Rembrandt’s pupils; his works are famed for their perfect finish and delicacy (1613-75)
Dubois, Guillaume, cardinal and prime minister of France, noted for his ability and his debauchery (1656-1723)
D’Urfey, Tom, a facetious comedian and song-writer, favoured by Charles II. Known for his collection of sonnets, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1628-1703)
ECLIPSE, a famous chestnut race-horse who between 3rd May, 1769 and 4th October, 1770, had a most successful record
Encyclopaedia, the famous work which, edited by D’Alembert and Diderot, and contributed to by the most eminent savants of France, was issued 1751-77, and contributed not a little to fan the flame of Revolution. The Philosophical Dictionary was a similar production
Essex, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite courtier who took Cadiz in 1596
Euphelia and Rhodoclea…Comelia…Tranquilla, signatures to letters in the Rambler (Nos. 42, 46; 62; 51; 10,119)
Exons, i. e. “Exempts of the Guards,” “officers who commanded when the lieutenant or ensign was absent, and who had charge of the night watch,”
Eylau, 20 miles south from Konigsberg victory of Napoleon, 1807
FAIRFAX, Edward, one of the “improvers” of English versification. Translated Tasso in the same stanzas as the original, and wrote on Demonology (d. c. 1632)
Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma, Governor of the Netherlands under Philip II. and the first commander of his age
Faunus, grandson of Saturn and god of fields and shepherds, later identified with the Greek Pan
Faustina, Empress, (i) wife of Antoninus Pius; (ii) daughter of (i) and wife of Marcus Aurelius. Both were equally licentious
Favorinus, a rhetorician and sophist, who flourished in Gaul, c. 125 A.D.
Felton, John, who assassinated the Duke of Buckingham in 1628
Ferguson, Sir Adam, M.P. for Ayrshire, 1774-80
Filmer, Sir Robert, advocated the doctrine of absolute regal power in his Patriarcha, 1680,
Flecknoe and Settle, synonyms for vileness in poetry (cp. Moevius and Bairus among the Romans). Flecknoe was an Irish priest who printed a host of worthless matter. Settle was a playwright, who degenerated into a “city-poet and a puppet-show” keeper; both were satirized by Dryden
Fleury, French cardinal and statesman, tutor and adviser of Louis XV. (1653-1743)
Florimel. (see Spenser’s Faery Queen, books iii. and iv.)
Fox, George, and Naylor, James, contemporaries of Bunyan, and early leaders of the Society of Friends or “Quakers,”
Fracastorius, Italian philosopher, mathematician, and poet ranked by Scaliger as next to Virgil
Fraguier, Pere, an eminent man of letters, sometime a Jesuit. An elegant Latin versifier, especially on philosophical themes (1666-1728)
Franc de Pompignan, Advocate-General of France, an Academician and an opponent of Encyclopaedists, in consequence of which Voltaire lampooned him (1709-84)
Franche Comte, that part of France which lies south of Lorraine and west of Switzerland
Freron, took sides with the Church against the attacks of Voltaire; had some reputation as a critic (d. 1776)
GALLIENUS and Honorius, late Roman emperors who suffered from barbaric invasions
Galt, John Scotch custom-house officer and novelist, wrote The Ayrshire Legatees, The Provost, Sir Andrew Wylie, etc.
Galway, Lord (Macaulay is not quite so severe on him in his History of England)
Ganganelli, who as Clement XIV. held the papacy, 1769-74, and suppressed the Jesuits
George of Trebizond, a celebrated humanist (1396-1486), professor of Greek at Venice in 1428 and papal secretary at Rome, C. 1450
Gibby, Sir, Sir Gilbert Heathcote
Gifford, editor of the Anti-Jacobin and afterwards of the Quarterly Review, in which he attacked Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. His satires, the Baviad and the Maviad, had some reputation in their day (1757-1826)
Gilpin, Rev. Joshua G., rector of Wrockwardine, whose new and corrected edition of the Pilgrim’s Progress appeared in 1811
Godfrey of Bouillon, a leader of the First Crusade; he took Jerusalem in 1099
Goldoni, “the founder of Italian Comedy” (1707-93), whose pieces supplanted the older Italian farces and burlesques
Gondomar, Count of, the Spanish ambassador at the court of James I. who ruined Raleigh, and negotiated the proposed marriage of Charles I. with the Infanta
Gonsalvo de Cordova, the great captain who took Granada from the Moors, Zante from the Turks, and Naples from the French (1443-1515)
Grecian, the, the resort of the learned in Devereux Street Strand
Grotius, a celebrated Dutch scholar, equally famed for his knowledge of theology, history, and law (d. 1645)
Gwynn, Nell, an orange girl who became mistress of Charles II. and the ancestress of the Dukes of St. Albans
HAILES, Lord, David Dalrymple, author of the Annals of Scotland (1726-92)
Hale, Sir Matthew, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench under Charles II, and author of several religious and moral works
Halford, Sir Henry, one of the leading physicians in Macaulay’s day (1766-1844)
Hamilton, Gerard, M.P. for Petersfield, and of a somewhat despicable character. The nickname was “Single-speech Hamilton,”
Harpagon, the miser in Moliere’s L’Avare
Hawkins, Sir John. a club companion of Johnson’s (d. 1780), whose Life and Works of Johnson (II vols., 1787-89) was a careless piece of work, soon superseded by Boswell’s
Hayley, William, Cowper’s friend and biographer (1745-1820). Byron ridiculed his Triumphs of Temper and Triumphs of Music, and Southey said everything was good about him except his poetry
Henriade, Voltaire’s La Ligue, ou Henri le Grand
Hierocles, a neo-Platonic philosopher (c. 450 A.D.), who after long labour collected a book of twenty-eight jests, a translation of which (Gentleman’s Magazine, 1741) has been attributed to Johnson
Hill, Aaron, playwright, stage-manager, and projector of bubble schemes (1685-1750). See Pope’s Dunciad, ii. 295 ff.
Hippocrene, “the fountain of the Muses, formed by the hoof of Pegasus”
Holbach, Baron, a French “philosophe” who entertained at his hospitable board in Paris all the Encyclopaedia (q.v.) writers; a materialist, but a philanthropist (1723-89)
Holofernes, the pedantic school-master in Love’s Labour ‘s Last
Home, John, a minister of the Scottish Church (1724-1808), whose tragedy of Douglas was produced in Edinburgh in 1756
Hoole, John, a clerk in the India House, who worked at translations, e.g. of Tasso and Ariosto, and original literature in his spare hours
Hotel of Rambouillet, the intellectual salon which centred round the Italian Marquise de R.(1588-1665), and degenerated into the pedantry which Moliere satirized in Les Preceiuses Ridicules
