Calamities and Quarrels of Authors. Disraeli Isaac
Mæcenas will bind him by his bounty, he will do him “as much honour as any poet of my beardless years in England—but,” he adds, “if he be sent away with a flea in his ear, let him look that I will rail on him soundly; not for an hour or a day, while the injury is fresh in my memory, but in some elaborate polished poem, which I will leave to the world when I am dead, to be a living image to times to come of his beggarly parsimony.” Poets might imagine that Chatterton had written all this, about the time he struck a balance of his profit and loss by the death of Beckford the Lord Mayor, in which he concludes with “I am glad he is dead by 3l. 13s. 6d.”[19]
A MENDICANT AUTHOR,
AND THE PATRONS OF FORMER TIMES.
It must be confessed, that before “Authors by Profession” had fallen into the hands of the booksellers, they endured peculiar grievances. They were pitiable retainers of some 26 great family. The miseries of such an author, and the insolence and penuriousness of his patrons, who would not return the poetry they liked and would not pay for, may be traced in the eventful life of Thomas Churchyard, a poet of the age of Elizabeth, one of those unfortunate men who have written poetry all their days, and lived a long life to complete the misfortune. His muse was so fertile, that his works pass all enumeration. He courted numerous patrons, who valued the poetry, while they left the poet to his own miserable contemplations. In a long catalogue of his works, which this poet has himself given, he adds a few memoranda, as he proceeds, a little ludicrous, but very melancholy. He wrote a book which he could never afterwards recover from one of his patrons, and adds, “all which book was in as good verse as ever I made; an honourable knight dwelling in the Black Friers can witness the same, because I read it unto him.” Another accorded him the same remuneration—on which he adds, “An infinite number of other songs and sonnets given where they cannot be recovered, nor purchase any favour when they are craved.” Still, however, he announces “Twelve long Tales for Christmas, dedicated to twelve honourable lords.” Well might Churchyard write his own sad life, under the title of “The Tragicall Discourse of the Haplesse Man’s Life.”[20]
It will not be easy to parallel this pathetic description of the wretched age of a poor neglected poet mourning over a youth vainly spent.
| High time it is to haste my carcase hence: Youth stole away and felt no kind of joy, And age he left in travail ever since; The wanton days that made me nice and coy Were but a dream, a shadow, and a toy— 27 I look in glass, and find my cheeks so lean That every hour I do but wish me dead; Now back bends down, and forwards falls the head, And hollow eyes in wrinkled brow doth shroud As though two stars were creeping under cloud. The lips wax cold, and look both pale and thin, The teeth fall out as nutts forsook the shell, The bare bald head but shows where hair hath been, The lively joints wax weary, stiff, and still, The ready tongue now falters in his tale; The courage quails as strength decays and goes. … The thatcher hath a cottage poor you see: The shepherd knows where he shall sleep at night; The daily drudge from cares can quiet be: Thus fortune sends some rest to every wight; And I was born to house and land by right. … Well, ere my breath my body do forsake My spirit I bequeath to God above; My books, my scrawls, and songs that I did make, I leave with friends that freely did me love. … Now, friends, shake hands, I must be gone, my boys! Our mirth takes end, our triumph all is done; Our tickling talk, our sports and merry toys Do glide away like shadow of the sun. Another comes when I my race have run, Shall pass the time with you in better plight, And find good cause of greater things to write. |
Yet Churchyard was no contemptible bard; he composed a national poem, “The Worthiness of Wales,” which has been reprinted, and will be still dear to his “Fatherland,” as the Hollanders expressively denote their natal spot. He wrote in the “Mirrour of Magistrates,” the Life of Wolsey, which has parts of great dignity; and the Life of Jane Shore, which was much noticed in his day, for a severe critic of the times writes:
| Hath not Shore’s wife, although a light-skirt she, Given him a chaste, long, lasting memorie? |
Churchyard, and the miseries of his poetical life, are alluded to by Spenser. He is old Palemon in “Colin Clout’s come Home again.” Spenser is supposed to describe this laborious writer for half a century, whose melancholy pipe, in his old age, may make the reader “rew:”
| Yet he himself may rewed be more right, That sung so long untill quite hoarse he grew. |
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His epitaph, preserved by Camden, is extremely instructive to all poets, could epitaphs instruct them:—
| Poverty and poetry his tomb doth inclose; Wherefore, good neighbours, be merry in prose. |
It appears also by a confession of Tom Nash, that an author would then, pressed by the res angusta domi, when “the bottom of his purse was turned upward,” submit to compose pieces for gentlemen who aspired to authorship. He tells us on some occasion, that he was then in the country composing poetry for some country squire;—and says, “I am faine to let my plow stand still in the midst of a furrow, to follow these Senior Fantasticos, to whose amorous villanellas[21] I prostitute my pen,” and this, too, “twice or thrice in a month;” and he complains that it is “poverty which alone maketh me so unconstant to my determined studies, trudging from place to place to and fro, and prosecuting the means to keep me from idlenesse.” An author was then much like a vagrant.
Even at a later period, in the reign of the literary James, great authors were reduced to a state of mendicity, and lived on alms, although their lives and their fortunes had been consumed in forming national labours. The antiquary Stowe exhibits a striking example of the rewards conferred on such valued authors. Stowe had devoted his life, and exhausted his patrimony, in the study of English antiquities; he had travelled on foot throughout the kingdom, inspecting all monuments of antiquity, and rescuing what he could from the dispersed libraries of the monasteries. His stupendous collections, in his own handwriting, still exist, to provoke the feeble industry of literary loiterers. He felt through life the enthusiasm of study; and seated in his monkish library, living with the dead more than with the living, he was still a student of taste: for Spenser the poet visited the library of Stowe; and the first good edition of Chaucer was made so chiefly by the labours of our author. Late in life, worn-out with study and the cares of poverty, neglected by that proud metropolis of which he had been the historian, his good-humour did not desert him; for being afflicted with sharp pains in his aged feet, he observed that “his affliction lay in that part which formerly he had made so much use of.” 29 Many a mile had he wandered and much had he expended, for those treasures of antiquities which had exhausted his fortune, and with which he had formed works of great public utility. It was in his eightieth year that Stowe at length received a public acknowledgment of his services, which will appear to us of a very extraordinary nature. He was so reduced in his circumstances that he petitioned James I. for a licence to collect alms for himself! “as a recompense for his labours and travel of forty-five years, in setting forth the Chronicles of England, and eight years taken up in the Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, towards his relief now in his old age; having left his former means of living, and only employing himself for the service and good of his country.” Letters-patent under the great seal were granted. After no penurious commendations of Stowe’s labours, he is permitted “to gather the benevolence of well-disposed people within this realm of England; to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects.” These letters-patent were to be published by the clergy from their pulpits; they produced so little, that they were renewed for another twelvemonth: one entire parish in the city contributed seven shillings and sixpence! Such, then, was the patronage received by Stowe, to be a licensed beggar throughout the kingdom for one twelvemonth! Such was the public remuneration of a man who had been useful to his nation, but not to himself!
Such was