Gossip in a Library

Chapter 10

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_Fancy"s a term for every blackguardism_,

though this is much too severe. But rats, and they who catch them, badgers, and they who bait them, c.o.c.ks, and they who fight them, and, above all, men with fists, who professionally box with them, come under the category of the _Fancy_. This, then, is the theme which the poet before us, living under the genial sway of the First Gentleman of Europe, undertook to place beneath the special patronage of Apollo.

The attractions, however, of _The Learned Ring_, set all other pleasures in the shade, and the name, Peter Corcoran, which is a pseudonym, is, I suppose, chosen merely because the initials are those of the then famous Pugilistic Club. The poet is, in short, the laureate of the P.C., and his book stands in the same relation to _Boxiana_ that Campbell"s lyrics do to Nelson"s despatches. To understand the poet"s position, we ought to be dressed as he was; we ought

_to wear a tough drab coat With large pearl b.u.t.tons all afloat Upon the waves of plush; to tie A kerchief of the king-cup die (White-spotted with a small bird"s eye) Around the neck,--and from the nape Let fall an easy> fan-like cape_,

and, in fact, to belong to that incredible company of Corinthian Tom and Jerry Hawthorn over whom Thackeray let fall so delightfully the elegiac tear.

Anthologies are not edited in a truly catholic spirit, or they would contain this very remarkable sonnet:

ON THE NONPAREIL.

"_None but himself can be his parallel."

With marble-coloured shoulders,--and keen eyes, Protected by a forehead broad and white-- And hair cut close lest it impede the sight, And clenched hands, firm, and of punishing size,-- Steadily held, or motion"d wary-wise To hit or stop,--and kerchief too drawn tight O"er the unyielding loins, to keep from flight The inconstant wind, that all too often flies,-- The Nonpareil stands! Fame, whose bright eyes run o"er With joy to see a Chicken of her own.

Dips her rich pen in_ claret_,

Be not too hard on this piece of barbarism, virtuous reader! Virtue is well revenged by the inevitable question! "Who was John Randall?"

In 1820 it was said: "Of all the great men in this age, in poetry, philosophy, or pugilism, there is no one of such transcendent talent as Randall, no one who combines the finest natural powers with the most elegant and finished acquired ones." Now, if his memory be revived for a moment, this master of science, who doubled up an opponent as if he were plucking a flower, and whose presence turned Moulsey Hurst into an Olympia, is in danger of being confounded with the last couple of drunken Irishwomen who have torn out each other"s hair in handfuls in some Whitechapel courtyard. The mighty have fallen, the stakes and ring are gone forever, and Virtue is avenged.

The days of George IV. are so long, long gone past that a paradoxical creature may be forgiven for a sigh over the ashes of the glory of John Randall.

It is strange how much genuine poetry lingers in this odd collection of verses in praise of prizefighting. There are lines and phrases that recall Keats himself, though truly the tone of the book is robust enough to satisfy the most impa.s.sioned of Tory editors. As it happens, it was written by Keats"s dearest friend, by John Hamilton Reynolds, whom the great poet mentions so affectionately in the latest of all his letters. Reynolds has been treated with scant consideration by the critics. His verses, I protest, are no whit less graceful or sparkling than those of his more eminent companions, Leigh Hunt and Barry Cornwall. His _Garden of Florence_ is worthy of the friend of Keats.

We have seen how his _Peter Bell_, which was Peter Bell the First, took the wind out of Sh.e.l.ley"s satiric sails and fluttered the dove-cotes of the Lakeists. He was as smart as he could be, too clever to live, in fact, too light a weight for a grave age. In _The Fancy_, which Keats seems to refer to in a letter dated January 13th, 1820, Reynolds appears to have been inspired by Tom Moore"s _Tom Crib_, but if so, he vastly improves on that rather vulgar original. He takes as his motto, with adroit impertinence, some lines of Wordsworth, and persuades us

_nor need we blame the licensed joys, Though false to Nature"s quiet equipoise: Frank are the sports, the stains are fugitive_.

We can fancy the countenance of the c.u.mbrian sage at seeing his words thus nimbly adapted to be an apology for prize-fighting.

The poems are feigned to be the remains of one Peter Corcoran, student at law. A simple and pathetic memoir--which deserved to be as successful as that most felicitous of all such hoaxes, the life of the supposed Italian poet, Lorenzo Stecchetti--introduces us to the unfortunate young Irishman, who was innocently engaged to a charming lady, when, on a certain August afternoon, he strayed by chance into the Fives Court, witnessed a "sparring-exhibition" by two celebrated pugilists, and was thenceforth a lost character. From that moment nothing interested him except a favourite hit or a scientific parry, and his only topic of conversation became the n.o.ble art of self-defence. To his disgusted lady-love he took to writing eulogies of the Chicken and the Nonpareil. On one occasion he appeared before her with two black eyes, for he could not resist the temptation of taking part in the boxing, and "it is known that he has parried the difficult and ravaging hand of Randall himself." The attachment of the young lady had long been declining, and she took this opportunity of forbidding him her presence for the future. He felt this abandonment bitterly, but could not surrender the all-absorbing pa.s.sion which was destroying him. He fell into a decline, and at last died "without a struggle, just after writing a sonnet to _West-Country d.i.c.k_."

The poems so ingeniously introduced consist of a kind of sporting opera called _King Tims the First_, which is the tragedy of an emigrant butcher; an epic fragment in _ottava rima_, called _The Fields of Tothill_, in which the author rambles on in the Byronic manner, and ceases, fatigued with his task, before he has begun to get his story under weigh; and miscellaneous pieces. Some of these latter are simply lyrical exercises, and must have been written in Peter Corcoran"s earlier days. The most characteristic and the best deal, however, with the science of fisticuffs. Here are the lines sent by the poet to his mistress on the painful occasion which we have described above, "after a casual turn up":

_Forgive me,--and never, oh, never again, I"ll cultivate light blue or brown inebriety;[1]

I"ll give up all chance of a fracture or sprain, And part, worst of all, with Pierce Egan"s[2] society.

Forgive me,--and m.u.f.flers I"ll carefully pull O"er my knuckles hereafter, to make them, well-bred; To mollify digs in the kidneys with wool, And temper with leather a punch of the head_.

_And, Kate!--if you"ll fib from your forehead that frown, And spar with a lighter and prettier tone;-- I"ll look,--if the swelling should ever go down, And these eyes look again,--upon you, love, alone!_

[Footnote 1: "Heavy _brown_ with a dash of _blue_ in it" was the fancy phrase for stout mixed with gin.]

[Footnote 2: The author of _Boxiana_ and _Life in London_.]

It must be confessed that a less "fancy" vocabulary would here have shown a juster sense of Peter"s position. Sometimes there is no burlesque intention apparent, but, in their curious way, the verses seem to express a genuine enthusiasm. It is neither to be expected nor to be feared that any one nowadays will seriously attempt to advocate the most barbarous of pastimes, and therefore, without conscientious scruples, we may venture to admit that these are very fine and very thrilling verses in their own unexampled cla.s.s:

_Oh, it is life! to see a proud And dauntless man step, full of hopes, Up to the P.C. stakes and ropes, Throw in his hat, and with a spring Get gallantly within the ring; Eye the wide crowd, and walk awhile Taking all cheerings with a smile; To see him strip,--his well-trained form, White, glowing, muscular, and warm, All beautiful in conscious power, Relaxed and quiet, till the hour; His glossy and transparent frame, In radiant plight to strive for fame!

To look upon the clean-shap"d limb In silk and flannel clothed trim;-- While round the waist the kerchief tied Makes the flesh glow in richer pride.

"Tis more than life, to watch him hold His hand forth, tremulous yet bold, Over his second"s, and to clasp His rival"s in a quiet grasp; To watch the n.o.ble att.i.tude He takes,--the crowd in breathless mood,-- And then to see, with adamant start, The muscles set,--and the great heart Hurl a courageous, splendid light Into the eye,--and then--the_ FIGHT.

This is like a lithograph out of one of Pierce Egan"s books, only much more spirited and picturesque, and displaying a far higher and more h.e.l.lenic sense of the beauty of athletics. Reynolds" little volume, however, enjoyed no success. The genuine amateurs of the prize-ring did not appreciate being celebrated in good verses, and _The Fancy_ has come to be one of the rarest of literary curiosities.

ULTRA-CREPIDARIUS

ULTRA-CREPIDARIUS; _a Satire on William Gifford. By Leigh Hunt.

London, 1823: printed for John Hunt, 22, Old Bond Street, and 38, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden_.

If the collector of first editions requires an instance from which to justify the faith which is in him against those who cry out that bibliography is naught, Leigh Hunt is a good example to his hand. This active and often admirable writer, during a busy professional life, issued a long series of works in prose and verse which are of every variety of commonness and scarcity, but which have never been, and probably never will be, reprinted as a whole. Yet not to possess the works of Leigh Hunt is to be ill-equipped for the minute study of literary history at the beginning of the century. The original 1816 edition of _Rimini_, for instance, is of a desperate rarity, yet not to be able to refer to it in the grotesqueness of this its earliest form is to miss a most curious proof of the crude taste of the young school out of which Sh.e.l.ley and Keats were to arise. The scarcest of all Leigh Hunt"s poetical pamphlets, but by no means the least interesting, is that whose t.i.tle stands at the head of this chapter.

Of _Ultra-crepidarius_, which was "printed for John Hunt" in 1823, it is believed that not half a dozen copies are in existence, and it has never been reprinted. It is a rarity, then, to which the most austere despisers of first editions may allow a special interest.

From internal evidence we find that _Ultra-crepidarius; a Satire on William Gifford_, was sent to press in the summer of 1823, from Maiano, soon after the break-up of Hunt"s household in Genoa, and Byron"s departure for Greece. The poem is the "stick" which had been recently mentioned in the third number of the _Liberal_:

_Have I, these five years, spared the dog a stick, Cut for his special use, and reasonably thick?_

It had been written in 1818, in consequence of the famous review in the _Quarterly_ of Keats"s _Endymion_, a fact which the biographers of Keats do not seem to have observed. Why did Hunt not immediately print it? Perhaps because to have done so would have been worse than useless in the then condition of public taste and temper. What led Hunt to break through his intention of suppressing the poem it might be difficult to discover. At all events, in the summer of 1823 he suddenly sent it home for publication; whether it was actually published is doubtful, it was probably only circulated in private to a handful of sympathetic Tory-hating friends.

_Ultra-crepidarius_ is written in the same anapaestic measure as _The Feast of the Poets_, but is somewhat longer. As a satire on William Gifford it possessed the disadvantage of coming too late in the day to be of any service to anybody. At the close of 1823 Gifford, in failing health, was resigning the editorial chair of the _Quarterly_, which he had made so formidable, and was retiring into private life, to die in 1826. The poem probably explains, however, what has always seemed a little difficult to comprehend, the extreme personal bitterness with which Gifford, at the close of his career, regarded Hunt, since the slayer of the Della Cruscans was not the man to tolerate being treated as though he were a Della Cruscan himself. However narrow the circulation of _Ultra-crepidarius_ may have been, care was no doubt taken that the editor of the _Quarterly Review_ should receive one copy at his private address, and Leigh Hunt returned from Italy in time for that odd incident to take place at the Roxburgh sale, when Barron Field called his attention to the fact that "a little man, with a warped frame, and a countenance between the querulous and the angry, was gazing at me with all his might." Hunt tells this story in the _Autobiography_, from which, however, he omits all allusion to his satire.

The latter opens with the statement that:

"_Tis now about fifty or sixty years since (The date of a charming old boy of a Prince)--_

Mercury was in a state of rare fidget from the discovery that he had lost one of his precious winged shoes, and had in consequence dawdled away a whole week in company with Venus, not having dreamed that it was that crafty G.o.ddess herself, who, wishing for a pair of them, had sent one of Mercury"s shoes down to Ashburton for a pattern. Venus confesses her peccadillo, and offers to descend to the Devonshire borough with her lover, and see what can have become of the ethereal shoe. As they reach the ground, they meet with an ill-favoured boot of leather, which acknowledges that it has ill-treated the delicate slipper of Mercury. This boot, of course, is Gifford, who had been a shoemaker"s apprentice in Ashburton. Mercury curses this unsightly object, and part of his malediction may here be quoted.

_I hear some one say "Murrain take him, the ape!"

And so Murrain shall, in a bookseller"s shape; An evil-eyed elf, in a down-looking flurry, Who"d fain be a c.o.xcomb, and calls himself_ Murray.

_Adorn thou his door, like the sign of the Shoe, For court-understrappers to congregate to; For_ Southey _to come, in his dearth of invention, And eat his own words for mock-praise and a pension; For_ Croker _to lurk with his spider-like limb in, And stock his lean bag with waylaying the women; And Jove only knows for what creatures beside To shelter their envy and dust-liking pride, And feed on corruption, like bats, who at nights, In the dark take their shuffles, which they call then flights; Be these the court-critics and vamp a Review.

And by a poor figure, and therefore a true, For it suits with thy nature, both shoe-like and slaughterly Be its hue leathern, and t.i.tle the_ Quarterly, _Much misconduct, and see that the others Misdeem, and misconstrue, like miscreant brothers; Misquote, and misplace, and mislead, and misstate, Misapply, misinterpret, misreckon, misdate, Misinform, misconjecture, misargue; in short, Miss all that is good, that ye miss not the Court_.

_And finally, thou, my old soul of the tritical, Noting, translating, high slavish, hot critical, Quarterly-scutcheon"d, great heir to each dunce, Be Tibbald, Cook, Arnall, and Dennis at once_

At the end, Mercury dooms the ugly boot to take the semblance of a man, and the satire closes with its painful metamorphosis into Gifford. The poem is not without cleverness, but it is chiefly remarkable for a savage tone which is not, we think, repeated elsewhere throughout the writings of Hunt. The allusions to Gifford"s relations, nearly half a century earlier, to that Earl Grosvenor who first rescued him from poverty, the well-deserved scorn of his intolerable sneers at Perdita Robinson"s crutches:

_Hate Woman, thou block in the path of fair feet; If Fate want a hand to distress them, thine be it; When the Great, and their flourishing vices, are mention"d Say people "impute" "em, and show thou art pension"d; But meet with a Prince"s old mistress_ discarded, _And_ then _let the world see how vice is rewarded_--

the indications of the satirist"s acquaintance with the private life of his victim, all these must have stung the editor of the _Quarterly_ to the quick, and are very little in Hunt"s usual manner, though he had examples for them in Peter Pindar and others. There is a very early allusion to "Mr. Keats and Mr. Sh.e.l.ley," where, "calm, up above thee, they soar and they shine." This was written immediately after the review of _Endymion_ in the _Quarterly_.

At the close is printed an extremely vigorous onslaught of Hazlitt"s upon Gifford, which is better known than the poem which it ill.u.s.trates. In itself, in its preface, and in its notes alike this very rare pamphlet presents us with a genuine curiosity of literature.

THE DUKE OF RUTLAND"S POEMS

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