Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 102.djvu/358

342 nature may be another man's art. And too obviously so, if the other man has not, and possibly would reject, the ars celare artem.

But our cynical philosophy must be based on induction. So, to quote again.

Speaking of Dryden's marriage with the Lady Elizabeth Howard, the lecturer observes: "If we could look into that house in Gerrard-street, Soho (five doors from Newport-street, on the left hand,—I have peered at it with interest many a time), as it existed when John was there, and the back of it looked out on the gardens of Lord Leicester's house, we should see some odd squabbles, perhaps. I fancy that the brothers 'in trade' did not present themselves there when her ladyship was in one of her moods, and particularly when she was on good terms with her family, and Sir Robert or the Honourable Edward was coming."

In the next we have thorough Thackeray to the letter, though aught but Thackeray in the spirit: "Poor woman!" exclaims Mr. Hannay, Swift's Vanessa being on the carpet—"she flew like the moth to the lamp,—it is not the lamp's fault. But we are to pity her and love her, if we like; and pity and admire Stella too; only let us keep ourselves in a state of moderation about the poor lonely Dean, whom they would love in spite of his destiny; and go and behave well to our own Stellas and Vanessas, if we are happy enough to get them." Surely this is almost exactly how Mr. Thackeray would, and what he would not, have written on the same vexed question.

Here, again, is a second-hand picture, lively and graphic enough to indicate first-hand skill:—it is a description of the social anomalies of our "Augustan" age: "Your Harleys, and your St. Johns (not to mention a crew whose names live only in epigrams and in peerages), parcel out everything amongst themselves. It is like a Saturnalian feast, where the slaves have the good things, and their masters wait upon them. That is the effect of looking at the Queen Anne period to me. Davus takes the chair; Leno is opposite him; Gulosus is beside them: and at these orgies of power and plunder, who are the waiters? Jonathan Swift advises the direction of the whole; Mat Prior comes tumbling in with the wine; Joseph Addison says grace, and helps the carving, with his sleeves turned up; Mr. Pope sings. A scandalous spectacle, and absurd feast, indeed! And how shall we understand what makes Swift ferocious and gloomy, if we don't remember the nature of it?".

One is driven to the somewhat musty similitude, Cæsar and Pompey bery much like: 'specially Pompey. Coleridge said that Chantrey's bust of Wordsworth was more like than Wordsworth himself. Mr. Hannay has a kindred gift of hyperbolic verisimilitude. One example more. When Swift came into the world of politics, "the evil of his position was instantaneously felt. The 'Irish parson,' the ex-dependent of Temple,—they treated him in every way but in a genuine and manly one. They flattered him, they feared him; but they looked on him as an Aladdin, about whom the best thing was his wonderful lamp. They liked Aladdin to come to dinner, and bring his lamp along with him, you know! He tells you himself, that the Lord-Treasurer affected to be