Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

stone of this bridge, on the 31st of October, 1760: "That there might remain to posterity a monument of this City's affection to the Man who, by the strength of his genius, the steadiness of his mind, and a certain kind of happy contagion of his probity and spirit (under the Divine favour and fortunate auspices of George II.), recovered, augmented and secured the British Empire in Asia, Africa and America, and restored the ancient reputation and influence of this country amongst the nations of Europe, the citizens of London have unanimously voted this bridge to be inscribed with the name of WILLIAM PITT."

In a contemporary account of a royal visit to the city, in the year of the coronation, we have the following description of the reception given to Pitt by the crowd in the streets: "What was most remarkable," the writer says (An. Reg. 1761, Chron. 237), "were the prodigious accla mations and tokens of affection shown by the populace to Mr. Pitt, who came in his chariot, accompanied by Earl Temple. At every stop, the mob clung about every part of the vehicle, hung upon the wheels, hugged his footmen, and even kissed his horses. There was a universal huzza; and the gentlemen at the windows and in the balconies waved their hats, and the ladies their handkerchiefs. The same, I am informed, was done all the way he passed along."

From the contribution of R. Heber, M.A., of Brase-nose College, father of the well-known Bishop of Calcutta, and of the famous helluo librorum, Richard Heber, two lines were selected, on account of the familiar sound of one of them

"The brightest jewel in the British crown."

With us, I believe, this phrase is chiefly held to describe a colony of Great Britain, and Canada par excellence; but in the text where it is found, its application is to something quite different. It there appears as an apposition to an honorable prerogative enjoyed by the Sovereigns of England:

"To reign in freeborn hearts is true renown,

The brightest jewel in the British crown."

One more brief extract and we have done. There is again no reference by name to Canada or this continent therein, but it helps to illustrate the general contents of the volume which has been engaging our attention; and is a specimen of a kind of production insipid enough, as it seems to us, but which was once in high repute not only in the

University of Oxford, but throughout England. The exercise of "the Right Hon. Lord Charles Grenville Montagu, second son of his Grace the Duke of Manchester, of Christ Church" (so runs the signature at its close), is a Pastoral, after the manner of one of the eclogues of Virgil. There is in the composition a curious mixture of the ancient and partially modern; of the classic and the English of the time of Chaucer. Two shepherds discourse: one of them dismally laments the recent death of him that was, as he speaks, "hight of shepherds all, the King." This old shepherd King is styled Tityrus. The successor to the pastoral monarch is then alluded to. One Damotas, Colin, the speaker, says, has pointed him out to him-a youth, as he describes him, of peerless praise

[ocr errors]

And modest mein, that ever generous mind betrays."

Damotas himself, the shepherd observes, is one "deeply skilled in wise foresight, and much of all admired for learned fame." The lines to which I confine myself are the address of Damotas to Colin, on showing him the King:

"Colin, quoth he, thilk lovely Lad goes yon,

Master is now of all this forest wide,

(Si' that great Tityrus his life hath done)

And well shall keep: ne hence with sturdy stride

Shall derring wolf our nightly folds annoy,

Ne subtle fox, what time the lambs for dam 'gin cry."

Possibly this piece, with its antique, homely English, may have been relished as much as any in the volume by the young King, who in after years was popularly known as "Farmer George." "Thilk lovely lad goes yon" recalls the copper-plate frontispiece of the London Magazine for the year 1760, which represents the following scene, as explained to the reader in the periodical itself: "Britannia mourning over an urn, on which is the profile of his late Majesty. Justice and Religion are consoling her, by showing the person of our present most gracious Sovereign, accompanied by Liberty and Concord: PROVIDENCE is placing the British diadem on his head; Mercury, the god of Commerce, with the Cornucopia at his feet, denoting the present flourishing state of our Trade. The obelisk in the back-ground may serve to commemorate the death of his late Majesty." All these symbolical objects are depicted with great spirit and grace: the young King is represented as a smiling stripling.

George III. does not appear to have possessed the poetic sense very strongly. He expressed his regret that Milton had not written Paradise Lost in prose. In the spirit of complaisance, a "gentleman of Oxford" accordingly provided a version of the work in the form suggested by the royal taste. Occasionally a volume is to be met with in the old booksellers' stalls, bearing the following title, "Milton's Paradise Lost, State of Innocence and Fall of Man; rendered into Prose; with historical, philosophical and explanatory Notes, from the French of Raymond de St. Maur, by a Gentleman of Oxford." This is the work. It is in octavo shape, and was printed at Aberdeen, in 1770.

A poem on the death of George II., by R. Warton, the Professor of Poetry, and the respectable author of the History of English Poetry, is preserved in the "Elegant Extracts." From its contents, it appears to have been one of a number of contributions from Oxford. I am not sure that it was not the opening piece in the Bodleian folio. Warton indulges in the customary adulation of Pitt, and prays him to accept the volume as an appropriate offering from Oxford. "Lo! this her genuine love!" he says; and, writing from Trinity College, of which Society he was a fellow, he intimates that the gift will probably be all the more agreeable, as that was his college also-the college likewise, he takes occasion to say, where the great Lord Somers, the famous Chancellor and statesman of King William's day, had studied; and where Harrington wrote his Oceana, a work, like the New Atlantis of Plato and the Utopia of More, descriptive of a transcendental human community. Thus he concludes, expressing the opinion that now, by the aid of Pitt, and under the auspices of the new King, the speculations of Harrington, on the subject of a perfect Commonwealth, are realized :

"Lo! this her genuine love !-Nor thou refuse.
This humble present of no partial muse,

From that calm bower which nurs'd thy youth
In the pure precepts of Athenian truth:
Where first the form of British Liberty
Beam'd in full radiance on thy musing eye;
That form, whose mien sublime, with equal awe,
In the same shade unblemish'd Somers saw:
Where once (for well she lov'd the friendly grove
Where every classic Grace had learn'd to rove)
Her whispers wak'd sage Harrington to feign
The blessings of her visionary reign;

That reign which now, no more an empty theme,
Adorns Philosophy's ideal dream,

But crowns at last, beneath a George's smile,

In full reality this favour'd Isle."

Here my notes from the Bodleian folio end. We can gather from what has been presented, that which we gather also from the contemporary literature of the day, of every description, that in 1759, '60, '61-'64, Canada was occupying a very large space in the public mind of England. The public imagination pictured to itself, after its own fashion, a conquest of immense importance to the empire, and of immense extent; failing to master, nevertheless, after all, as events have proved, and still continue to prove, the true character and actual magnitude of the prize which had been won. Should England at a future time be stirred to put forth her strength for the retention, by force of arms, of this great region, it will be the tradition of the exultation of her people over the acquisition in 1759 that will move her to do so, more than the desire to hold possession of a domain unproductive of national advantage to herself directly-entailing, on the contrary, on herself several embarrassments. Let the national pride be touched by a reawakening of the memories of the close of the second George's reign, and the decision of England would be promptly expressed in the memorable language of good William the Fourth, when the Maine boundary question was in agitation," Canada must neither be lost nor given away!"

We may be sure that Cambridge was not behind Oxford in its formal expressions of academic grief and joy on the demise of the crown in 1760. Cambridge was always held to be, in an especial degree, Hanoverian and Whiggish. Sir William Browne's famous epigram will be remembered, on the Donation of Books by George I. to Cambridge, at the moment when, as it happened, a regiment of cavalry was being despatched to Oxford, in 1751:

"The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse,
For Tories own no argument but force;
With equal care to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument."

This, it will be remembered, was in reply to Dr. Trapp's witticism on the same occasion, in the Oxford interest, which ran very irritatingly as follows:

The King observing with judicious eyes,

The state of both his Universities,

To one he sent a regiment; for why?
That learned body wanted loyalty.

To th' other he sent books, as well discerning

How much that loyal body wanted learning."

At the time of my last visit to the Public Library at Cambridge, my attention had not been turned to the point dwelt on in this paper. During the few hours that I was enabled to spend in that vast labyrinth of books, unsurpassed by the Bodleian itself in its air of venerableness and in the richness of its treasures, I was engaged in obtaining momentary glimpses of a Cicero de Officiis, printed by Faust in 1466; a manuscript of the Bible, in English, of the year 1430; the Catholicon, printed in 1460, by Guttenberg; a copy of Coverdale's Bible, and at multitude of Caxtons. Otherwise, a volume of contemporary academic. exercises of the date of 1760, fellow to that accidentally stumbled on at Oxford, might readily have been found. The shapes, style and flavour of the pieces would, without doubt, have resembled those of the samples that have been supplied to the reader with sufficient abundance from the "Pietas Oxoniensis." I find evidence of the existence of the Cambridge volume, in an epigram to be read among those in the "Elegant Extracts." For the sake of a piquant antithesis, an epigrammatist will, as all the world knows, say almost anything. The assertion of this writer, therefore, that the Cambridge productions on this occasion were inferior to the Oxford ones, both being bad, has not much weight. It is entitled "The Friendly Contest," and reads thus:

"While Cam and Isis their sad tribute bring

Of rival grief, to weep their pious King,
The bards of Isis half had been forgot,

Had not the sons of Cam in pity wrote;

From their learned brothers they took off the curse,
And proved their verse not bad by writing worse."

It is certain that Cambridge erected a magnificent statue of George the Second, of life size, in marble. It stands to this day on a pedestal in the Senate-house, on the left side as the visitor passes up to the Chancellor's chair. The sculptor's name was Wilton. I have spoken of this statue before, on more than one public occasion. It represents the King, according to the taste of the age, in the dress or undress of a Roman imperator. He leans on a truncated column, round which obliquely passes a series of medals commemorative of military successes; and he encircles with his right arm a globe duly marked with meridian

« VorigeDoorgaan »