since been relegated to the museum of literary curiosities, though it ought not to be forgotten that Scott, in his preface to the Fortunes of Nigel, acknowledges his indebtedness to it for the description of the disreputable sanctuary of Whitefriars. In 1689 there appeared Bury Fair, founded partly on Molière's Les Précieuses Ridicules, and partly on the Duke of Newcastle's Triumphant Widow. It was quickly followed by The Amorous Bigot (1690), and The Scourers (1691). None of these comedies added to his reputation, though the last presented a vivid picture of contemporary manners, an aspect of Shadwell's work which Macaulay in his History singles out for special mention. His last play, The Volunteers, or the Stock Jobbers, was dedicated to Queen Mary, but was not acted until the year following his death. In Dr. Ward's opinion, the author here comes as near to comedy of character as in any of his plays. 1 Perhaps the most interesting feature of the play for the present-day reader is the epilogue which, spoken by an actor clad in deep mourning, takes the form of a panegyric of Shadwell's dramatic powers. Shadwell, the great support o' the comic stage, Born to expose the follies of the age. To whip prevailing vices, and unite Mirth with Instruction, Profit with Delight. First of our times, and second but to Ben. Shadwell, who all his lines from Nature drew, Who ne'er was bribed, by title or estate, But always lashed the villain and the ass. Shadwell died with startling suddenness, in 1692, at the comparatively early age of fifty. A rumour was 1 English Dramatic Literature, iii, 459-60. circulated that he had fallen by his own hand after reading an unusually virulent attack on himself. The story was denied by Dr. Nicholas Brady, who preached the Laureate's funeral sermon in Chelsea Church; but the disclaimer of the eminent divine was hardly necessary, for Shadwell was by no means a sensitive man. That he died from the effects of an accidental overdose of opium is much more probable. He was buried at Chelsea. His eldest son (afterwards Sir John Shadwell) placed a small white marble tablet, surmounted by a bust, in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. For this monument Sir John wrote a Latin epitaph setting forth "the good design and intention" of his father's works; but "after it was engraved upon the stone, it was altered by the desire of the late Bishop of Rochester, upon an exception which he said some of the clergy had made to it, as being too great an encomium upon plays, to be set up in a church." 1 Dr. Nicholas Brady, in his funeral oration, said Shadwell's "natural and acquired abilities made him very amiable to all who conversed with him, a very few being equal in the becoming qualities which adorn and set off a complete gentleman." Brady had the inestimable advantage of knowing the Laureate personally; but if Shadwell was his ideal of a "complete gentleman,' one trembles to think of those whom the worthy divine would have classified as the reverse. That Shadwell had a ready wit and made some mark as a writer of comedy; that he could talk well; that patriotism glowed in his breast; and that he was tolerably free from servility and cowardice cannot be denied; but to adopt the language of filial affection, and credit him with "a strict sense of honour and morality," and true religious feeling, is impossible. 1 Memoir prefixed to Shadwell's Works (4 vols., 1720). Shadwell was a true son of the Restoration-coarse, dissipated, vituperative. The bust of him in Westminster Abbey exhibits a fat, sensual face suggestive of the injunction: "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." But he appears to have been a good husband and an affectionate father. His "diligent, careful, and provident" wife, to whom he left his interest in the Dorset Garden Theatre, had herself a connection with the stage, having acted in Otway's Don Carlos in 1676, and in her husband's version of Timon of Athens in 1678. To his son, John, who brought out, in 1720, a collected edition of his dramatic works, in four volumes, with a dedication to George I, he left £5 for mourning, together with his books. These included Hobbes's works, against whose "ill opinions" concerning government he thought fit to warn his son. In that warning against the political heresies of the author of the Leviathan, the true Shadwell stands revealed-the man who possessed the unimaginative, if practical, mind of a politician rather than the soul of a poet, the man who was more concerned about the triumph of the Whigs than about votive offerings to the Muses. CHAPTER VI NAHUM TATE SOUTHEY assuredly was not speaking ex cathedrd when he declared that Shadwell was poetically the worst of the Laureates, and that Nahum Tate just missed sharing the distinction with him. Where, one may ask, does the absurd Eusden and the intolerable Pye come in? Shadwell's career has already been dealt with, and he may perhaps be allowed to take care of himself, but something must be said in defence of the hapless Nahum. His poetical record is, admittedly, very bad. Some one has characterised Tate, not extravagantly, as "the author of the worst alteration of Shakespeare, the worst version of the Psalms of David, and the worst continuation of a great poem." Yet he was not so bad as Eusden and Pye. Tate had so many indignities to suffer in the flesh, that his memory might have been spared this one. Scott was at once more charitable and more discriminating when he likened him to "one of those second-rate bards, who, by dint of pleonasm and expletive, can find smooth lines if any one will supply them with ideas." 1 This was Tate's whole case in a nutshell. Tate was a mediocrity, and he had the good fortune to know it, and the good sense to act on the assumption. His mind was commonplace and uncritical, his poetical faculty slender, his learning a negligible quantity. But his ingenuity was great, his industry untiring. If a 1 Dryden: Works, ed. Saintsbury, i, 223. 7-(2341) secure position in the world of letters could be gained simply by plodding, then Tate would easily have won. He wrote with an ominous facility, and left behind him multifarious writings unillumined by a single flash of inspiration. He was Poet Laureate, and a good deal more. He wrote dull, verbose dramas; he indited poems on all sorts of subjects, from the virtues of tea to ballooning; he mangled Shakespeare; he toiled laboriously as a bookseller's hack; he compiled (with Nicholas Brady) a popular metrical version of the Psalms; he translated Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, and Virgil; he supported Jeremy Collier's agitation for the reformation of the stage; he edited a journal for the promotion of religion and virtue; and, with distressing celerity, he penned verses about anybody or anything when sufficiently recompensed. His versatility notwithstanding, Tate was a modest man. He never assumed the grand manner, never tried to be oracular. Oldys describes him as a "free, goodnatured, fuddling companion"; while Gildon says that he was shy, taciturn, and possessed a genius for doing things in the wrong way, which retarded his advancement in life. He was also thriftless. Frequently, his chronic impecuniosity led to his being lodged in a debtor's prison, and within the precincts of one he died. A poetaster, a starveling, and a sycophant, without understanding, without wit, and without enthusiasm, Tate repels far more than he attracts. To be frank, he was rather a poor creature. And yet one must conjecture the presence of stamina and a certain elevation of spirit in Tate who, in an age when the unbridled licence of the Restoration was far from becoming a tradition, made a bold stand with Jeremy Collier on behalf of purer morals on the stage. Moreover, if Pope |