THE PAPERS OF A CRITIC.*
SIR CHARLES DILKE has done well to reprint the papers of his grandfather in a form which fits them for the library. Hitherto the student of Pope and "Junius" has had to search back numbers of the Athenteum for much of the information he required, and it seemed a pity that the really valuable work achieved by Mr. Dilke should have been half buried in a periodical. The biographical sketch is written with good taste, and relates almost wholly to Mr. Dilke's position as a man of letters. His name appears in several biographies published within the last quarter of a century, and many were the young poets and literary aspirants who looked to Mr. Dilke for friendly intercourse and counsel. Of these the most notable were Thomas Hood and John Keats, and letters from these poets hitherto unpublished add to the interest of the sketch :— "Mr. Dilke's grandson has still in his possession a groat number of Keats's letters, his Ovid, his Shakespeare, and his Milton, with marginal notes ; the pocket-book given him by Leigh Hunt with the first drafts of many of the sonnets in it ; the locks of hair mentioned in the Life; his medical note-books ; and Keats's own copy of Endymion, with all the sonnets and many of the other poems copied in on note-paper pages at the end, in Keats's writing."
There is not much in the hitherto unpublished letters of Keats of any particular value, excepting, that they are the words of a poet whose fame has been steadily growing ever since his death. " Keats died," says the editor, "admired only by his personal friends and by Shelley, and even ten years after his death, when the first memoir was proposed, the woman he had loved had so little belief in his poetic reputation that she wrote to Mr. Dilke, ' The kindest act would be to let him rest for ever in the obscurity to which circumstances have condemned him." Mr. Dilke was accustomed
• The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the Writings of the late Charles Wentworth Mike, with a Biographical Sketch, by his Grandson. Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Bart., M.P. 2 sole. London: John Murray. 1876. from an early period of life to write for the periodical Press. In 1830, he obtained the sole control of the Athenfoum, and under- took the editorship for many years. He gathered round him a number of eminent contributors, among them Barry Cornwall, Leigh Hunt, and the two great humourists, Lamb and Hood. The former, writing for books, asks for " any light stuff, no natural history or useful learning, such as pyramids, catacombs, giraffes, adventrues in Southern Africa, &o. ;" and Hood, recording in evident glee, the conclusion of Miss Kilmansegg, writes :—" As she liked pomp, there will be twelve pages at the funeral. She is now screwing-in at Beaufort House, and being a happy release for all parties—you will conclude it is a relief for me, especially as I come in for all she is worth." Hood, who had been ordered by the doctors not to speak, writes in another letter:— "I am a little Job in afflictions, but without his patience The silent system did not answer at all. Jane and I made but a sorry game of our double-dumby, for the more signs I made the more she didn't understand them. For instance, when I telegraphed for my nightcap she thought I meant my head was swimming; and as for Mary, she knew no more of my signals than Admiral Villeneuve of Lord Nelson's. At last I did burst out, fortissimo, but there is nothing so Lard as to swear in a whisper•. The truth is, I was bathing my feet, and wanted more hot water, but as the spout poured rather slowly, Mary, whipping off the lid of the kettle, was preparing to squash down a whole cataract of scalding. I was hasty, I must confess; but perhaps Job himself would not have been patient if his boils had come out of
a kettle."
Another day, complaining bitterly of the cold, he writes :—
" I wish that, in settling other Eastern questions, they had deposed this wind. I confess for two nights past I have wished for a little warm milk, but the only bottle I am allowed is at my feet, and even then only warm water—without. My stomach is like a house when the washing is done at home,—all slop, hot water, and tea. So I stop. I am so cold and washy, I am only flt to correspond with a frog. Give my love to all, but you had better mull it."
Other choice bits and witticisms are inserted which give a flavour to the biographical sketch. A man is known in large measure by his friends and the letters of his friends, and the passages pub- lished in the " Memoir " prove that Mr. Dilke must himself have been a kindly, genial, and even laughter-loving man. Several particulars are given with regard to the rise and progress of the Atheneum, and the long list of contributors may satisfy the curi- osity of some future explorer of periodical literature. The Daily News, in its early and unprosperous days, owed much also to the services of Mr. Dilke, whose judgment in all matters relating to newspaper management appears to have been sound and far- seeing. The later years of Mr. Dilke's life were passed, as his grandson remarks, in "perfect scholarly happiness." He had his heavy griefs, like other people, but he had also warm friends, and was entirely free from the perplexity which arises from the res angusta domi. His library of 12,000 volumes proved at all times a solace and a joy, and no one knew better than Mr. Dilke how to turn are books he possessed to practical account. " A library," he once said, "is nothing, unless the owner be a living catalogue to it." "I do not mean," he adds—the letter is written to his son—" that you ought not to buy what you cannot immediately read, or read through ; some books are to be skimmed, others are for reference, others are to be bought because the opportunity offers, and are to be read, though not at that time."
Mr. Dilke's services as a critic are thoroughly appreciated by all writers and readers who have followed the same line of literary research. His soundness of judgment, his inexhaustible energy, his thorough truthfulness, his hearty enjoyment of his work, and the leisure and means he possessed for pursuing it, were advan- tages which fitted him admirably for the special pursuit to which he devoted many of the best years of his life. Nothing apparently was too minute or too seemingly insignificant for this indefatigable antiquary and critic. He was at the labour, as Mr: Elwin has observed, of fixing dates which sometimes appeared to defy con- jecture ; he explained obscure allusions, he made himself a master of genealogies, he spoilt brilliant theories by a plain array of facts, and was willing to expend extraordinarylabour upon subjects which promised but a slight reward. But Mr. Dilke's researches never lead him far in any direction without some definite return for his toil ; his gains might be small, but they were always appreciable, and so cautious and careful was he in the pursuit of evidence, that his statements may be generally accepted without further investigation. Mr. Dilke's judgment, as we have observed, was sound, his knowledge accurate, but his tastes were rather those of the painstaking antiquary than of the literary critic. Much as he has written about Pope, he never attempts to form an estimate of Pope as a poet, nor of the literature of his age ; his vast acquaintance with the "Junius " controversy never carries him beyond the discussion of the authorship of the celebrated letters ; the articles on Lady Mary WortleSr Montagu refer mainly to a point or two of discussion with regard to that lively wit ; the paper on Swift is confined entirely to a discussion as to the authorship of a political pamphlet ; and the comments upon Burke relate to the state of his fortune and other personal matters which, though of consider- able service to the biographer, possess little general interest. We do not complain that Mr. Dilke, knowing where his strength lay, threw all his literary energy into one direction; it is well, however, to point out the character of his writings, for the benefit of readers who might imagine from the table of contents that these essays upon Pope, Lady Mary, Swift, "Junius," Wilkes, Grenville, and Burke will afford the same kind of entertainment as is derived from such great literary essayists as Macaulay or St. Beuve, Sir Henry Taylor or Mr. Forster. Mr. Dilke's work is of a moat valuable kind, but it is work which the brilliant man of letters would be likely to regard as drudgery.
It is not too much to say that Mr. Dilke's laborious researches into the personal history of Pope have brought to light so large a number of facts about the poet, and corrected so many errors, that all future biographers or commentators will be forced to work on the foundation which he has laid. The late Professor Coning- ton observed that there is probably no English author whose life can be compared with Pope's as a succession of petty secrets and third-rate problems. This is perfectly true, and it is equally true that many of these problems—insignificant, perhaps, separately, but of considerable value when regarded in the bulk—have been solved by Mr. Dilke. Dr. Johnson observed that one of the pass- ages in Pope's life which best deserved inquiry was the publi- cation of the letters, and this inquiry, painful enough in its results, has been pursued with the most eager, we had almost said relentless, ardour by Mr. Dilke, who, however, let us add, while bringing to light much that is injurious to the memory of the poet, never forgets to credit him with a noble action. To Mr. Dilke, too, the biographer owes the discovery that Pope re- moved from Windsor to Chiswick, and that his father died there, instead of at Twickenham, as stated by Johnson, Roscoe, and others ; he has proved all the biographers at fault with regard to the Unfortunate Lady ; he has placed on a clear and just footing Pope's relations with Teresa and Martha Blount, and in doing so has given the poet Bowles the castigation he deserved ; he , has, we think, annihilated the story, so dishonourable to Pope, and so out of accordance with his character, that the poet accepted £1,000 from the Duchess of Marlborough to suppress the picture he had drawn of Atossa, and indeed makes out on pretty convincing evidence that that portrait was not intended for the famous fury ; he has thrown fresh light upon the quarrel between Pope and Addison ; upon Pope's ancestry, and upon so many other matters relating to the poet that Mr. Carruthers was quite correct in saying, nearly twenty years ago, that the Athenzum, in which all Mr. Dilke's most important articles were published, " has proved a perfect mine of unprinted materials for illustrating the biography of Pope." . How much the latest and most competent editor of Pope owes to " the generous and invaluable aid " he received from Mr. Dilke is known to everyreader of Mr. Elwin's edition, still, alas I so far from com- plete. "The truths," says Mr. Elwin, "which Mr. Dilke estab- lished and the errors he dissipated were not more important than the change he gave to the former superficial investigations. His rigid scrutiny became the standard for every subsequent inquirer. He loved his studies for their own sake, and never did a man of letters work less for personal ends."
What a happy man would Mr. Dilke have been, had he been able to solve the still inscrutable problem as to the authorship of Junius ! However, he has done the next best thing with regard to this profound mystery, and has proved, by arguments which many readers will accept, that whoever may have written the letters, they were not written by Francis, by Chatham, by Lord Temple, or by any one of the persons whose name has been brought forward in the controversy. To this subject the larger portion of the second volume is devoted, and in the elucidation of it much curious knowledge is displayed.
Previous page
