Chapter i.
An essay to prove that an author will write the better for having someknowledge of the subject on which he writes.
As several gentlemen in these times, by the wonderful force of geniusonly, without the least assistance of learning, perhaps, without beingwell able to read, have made a considerable figure in the republic ofletters; the modern critics, I am told, have lately begun to assert,that all kind of learning is entirely useless to a writer; and,indeed, no other than a kind of fetters on the natural sprightlinessand activity of the imagination, which is thus weighed down, andprevented from soaring to those high flights which otherwise it wouldbe able to reach.
This doctrine, I am afraid, is at present carried much too far: forwhy should writing differ so much from all other arts? The nimblenessof a dancing-master is not at all prejudiced by being taught to move;nor doth any mechanic, I believe, exercise his tools the worse byhaving learnt to use them. For my own part, I cannot conceive thatHomer or Virgil would have writ with more fire, if instead of beingmasters of all the learning of their times, they had been as ignorantas most of the authors of the present age. Nor do I believe that allthe imagination, fire, and judgment of Pitt, could have produced thoseorations that have made the senate of England, in these our times, arival in eloquence to Greece and Rome, if he had not been so well readin the writings of Demosthenes and Cicero, as to have transferredtheir whole spirit into his speeches, and, with their spirit, theirknowledge too.
I would not here be understood to insist on the same fund of learningin any of my brethren, as Cicero persuades us is necessary to thecomposition of an orator. On the contrary, very little reading is, Iconceive, necessary to the poet, less to the critic, and the least ofall to the politician. For the first, perhaps, Byshe's Art of Poetry,and a few of our modern poets, may suffice; for the second, a moderateheap of plays; and, for the last, an indifferent collection ofpolitical journals.
To say the truth, I require no more than that a man should have somelittle knowledge of the subject on which he treats, according to theold maxim of law, _Quam quisque norit artem in ea se exerceat_. Withthis alone a writer may sometimes do tolerably well; and, indeed,without this, all the other learning in the world will stand him inlittle stead.
For instance, let us suppose that Homer and Virgil, Aristotle andCicero, Thucydides and Livy, could have met all together, and haveclubbed their several talents to have composed a treatise on the artof dancing: I believe it will be readily agreed they could not haveequalled the excellent treatise which Mr Essex hath given us on thatsubject, entitled, The Rudiments of Genteel Education. And, indeed,should the excellent Mr Broughton be prevailed on to set fist topaper, and to complete the above-said rudiments, by delivering downthe true principles of athletics, I question whether the world willhave any cause to lament, that none of the great writers, eitherantient or modern, have ever treated about that noble and useful art.
To avoid a multiplicity of examples in so plain a case, and to come atonce to my point, I am apt to conceive, that one reason why manyEnglish writers have totally failed in describing the manners of upperlife, may possibly be, that in reality they know nothing of it.
This is a knowledge unhappily not in the power of many authors toarrive at. Books will give us a very imperfect idea of it; nor willthe stage a much better: the fine gentleman formed upon reading theformer will almost always turn out a pedant, and he who forms himselfupon the latter, a coxcomb.
Nor are the characters drawn from these models better supported.Vanbrugh and Congreve copied nature; but they who copy them draw asunlike the present age as Hogarth would do if he was to paint a routor a drum in the dresses of Titian and of Vandyke. In short, imitationhere will not do the business. The picture must be after Natureherself. A true knowledge of the world is gained only by conversation,and the manners of every rank must be seen in order to be known.
Now it happens that this higher order of mortals is not to be seen,like all the rest of the human species, for nothing, in the streets,shops, and coffee-houses; nor are they shown, like the upper rank ofanimals, for so much a-piece. In short, this is a sight to which nopersons are admitted without one or other of these qualifications,viz., either birth or fortune, or, what is equivalent to both, thehonourable profession of a gamester. And, very unluckily for theworld, persons so qualified very seldom care to take upon themselvesthe bad trade of writing; which is generally entered upon by the lowerand poorer sort, as it is a trade which many think requires no kind ofstock to set up with.
Hence those strange monsters in lace and embroidery, in silks andbrocades, with vast wigs and hoops; which, under the name of lords andladies, strut the stage, to the great delight of attorneys and theirclerks in the pit, and of the citizens and their apprentices in thegalleries; and which are no more to be found in real life than thecentaur, the chimera, or any other creature of mere fiction. But tolet my reader into a secret, this knowledge of upper life, though verynecessary for preventing mistakes, is no very great resource to awriter whose province is comedy, or that kind of novels which, likethis I am writing, is of the comic class.
What Mr Pope says of women is very applicable to most in this station,who are, indeed, so entirely made up of form and affectation, thatthey have no character at all, at least none which appears. I willventure to say the highest life is much the dullest, and affords verylittle humour or entertainment. The various callings in lower spheresproduce the great variety of humorous characters; whereas here, exceptamong the few who are engaged in the pursuit of ambition, and thefewer still who have a relish for pleasure, all is vanity and servileimitation. Dressing and cards, eating and drinking, bowing andcourtesying, make up the business of their lives.
Some there are, however, of this rank upon whom passion exercises itstyranny, and hurries them far beyond the bounds which decorumprescribes; of these the ladies are as much distinguished by theirnoble intrepidity, and a certain superior contempt of reputation, fromthe frail ones of meaner degree, as a virtuous woman of quality is bythe elegance and delicacy of her sentiments from the honest wife of ayeoman and shopkeeper. Lady Bellaston was of this intrepid character;but let not my country readers conclude from her, that this is thegeneral conduct of women of fashion, or that we mean to represent themas such. They might as well suppose that every clergyman wasrepresented by Thwackum, or every soldier by ensign Northerton.
There is not, indeed, a greater error than that which universallyprevails among the vulgar, who, borrowing their opinion from someignorant satirists, have affixed the character of lewdness to thesetimes. On the contrary, I am convinced there never was less of loveintrigue carried on among persons of condition than now. Our presentwomen have been taught by their mothers to fix their thoughts only onambition and vanity, and to despise the pleasures of love as unworthytheir regard; and being afterwards, by the care of such mothers,married without having husbands, they seem pretty well confirmed inthe justness of those sentiments; whence they content themselves, forthe dull remainder of life, with the pursuit of more innocent, but Iam afraid more childish amusements, the bare mention of which wouldill suit with the dignity of this history. In my humble opinion, thetrue characteristic of the present beau monde is rather folly thanvice, and the only epithet which it deserves is that of frivolous.