The Scribleriad and The Difference Between Verbal and Practical Virtue Part 1

The Scribleriad and The Difference Between Verbal and Practical Virtue.

by Anonymous and Lord Hervey.

INTRODUCTION

Though they are never particularly edifying, literary quarrels may at times be educative. Always savage, attacks on Pope reached their lowest depths of scurrility in 1742, when, in addition to the usual prose and doggerel verse pamphlets, engravings were being circulated portraying Pope in a brothel--this on the basis of the story told in the notorious _Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope_, dated 7 July 1742.[1] The Augustan Reprint Society has already reissued three of the anonymous Grub Street attacks made upon Pope in this busy year,[2] but the present volume is intended to complete the picture of the battle-lines by reprinting a verse attack launched from the court--by Hervey presenting himself as Cibber's ally--and a verse defence that comes, in point of artistry, clearly from or near Grub Street itself.

Lord Hervey's verses, _The Difference between Verbal and Practical Virtue_, were published between 21 and 24 August 1742, less than a week after the same author's prose pamphlet (_A Letter to Mr. C--b--r, On his Letter to Mr. P----._) which had compared the art of Pope and Cibber to Cibber's advantage, and had roundly concluded that Pope was "_a second-rate Poet_, a _bad Companion_, a _dangerous Acquaintance_, an _inveterate, implacable Enemy_, _n.o.body's Friend_, a _noxious Member of Society_, and _a thorough bad Man_." In the course of the prose pamphlet Hervey had suggested that there was a certain incongruity between Pope's true character and his a.s.sumed _persona_ of the "virtuous man," and this incongruity forms the main subject of his verse attack. Here Hervey finds examples of "the difference between verbal and practical virtue" in the lives of Horace, Seneca, and Sall.u.s.t, before turning to lampoon Pope crossly and ineptly. The attack on Horace is well conceived for Hervey's purpose and calculated to damage Pope who was in so many eyes, including his own, the modern heir of that ancient poet, but the straight abuse directed against Pope's person is sad stuff. Such lines as those on the "yelping Mungril" (p. 6) serve only to show how squarely the "well-bred Spaniels" taunt in the _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_ had hit its target.

Hervey's poem carried a prefatory letter headed "Mr. C--b--er to Mr. P.,"

making out that Cibber had a hand in writing the poem itself. Coming so soon after Hervey's _Letter to Cibber_, which had carried the markedly intimate subscription "With the greatest Grat.i.tude and Truth, most affectionately yours," this prefatory letter to the poem further emphasized Hervey's firm and deliberate alliance with Cibber.

Evidently it was the strangeness of this alliance between the two opponents of Pope that struck the fancy of that unidentified "Scriblerus"

whose "Epistle to the Dunces," _The Scribleriad_, was published between 30 September and 2 October 1742. When Hervey was "affectionately yours" to Cibber, the two stood shoulder to shoulder so temptingly open to a single volley that the author of _The Scribleriad_ could fairly claim, as Pope had claimed in the appendix to _The Dunciad Variorum_ of 1729, that "the _Poem was not made for these Authors, but these Authors for the Poem_."

Hervey appears as "Narcissus," the nickname Pope had used for him in _The New Dunciad_. A "late Vice-Chamberlain" (because he had been dismissed from that post in July 1742) still gorged with the fulsome dedication of Conyers Middleton's _Life of Cicero_ (1741), he is shown (pp. 11-13) rousing Cibber. Cibber's situation, reclining on the lap of Dulness where he is found by Hervey, is taken from _The New Dunciad_, while his general Satanic role parallels Theobald's in _The Dunciad Variorum_. This may reflect common knowledge that Pope was at work on revisions that would raise Cibber to the Dunces' throne, but the belief that Cibber was King of the Dunces had been widespread from the date of his appointment as Poet Laureate.[3] _The Scribleriad_ follows the general run of satires against Cibber--attacking his senile infatuation for Peg Woffington, his violently demagogic and chauvinistic _Nonjuror_ (first acted in 1717 but still drawing an audience in 1741), his laureate odes and his frank commercialization of art.

Although the writer of _The Scribleriad_ was obviously prompted by the example of _The Dunciad_ and borrows many details from Pope, his poem has very little of that mock-epic quality its t.i.tle might lead a reader to expect. There are slight traces of parody of Virgil when, on page 16, Cibber appears as Aeneas (the character he was soon to a.s.sume in _The Dunciad in Four Books_) and the epicene Hervey is portrayed as a rejuvenated Sybil guiding the hero through a h.e.l.l of duncery. There are hints of _Paradise Lost_ too, when Cibber, Satan-like, undertakes his mission (p. 17) and the dunces, Belial-like, agree "they're better in a cursed State,/Than to be totally annihilate" (p. 5). But "Scriblerus'" use of Virgil and Milton, unlike Pope's, does not import some graver meaning into his poem; it provides him with neither a framework of moral symbols nor a continuous narrative thread.

The action is slight and its setting vague. Sometimes we are in a brothel, crowded with bullies, punks, lords, draymen and linkboys, and managed by Cibber (pp. 11-12) or by Dulness (p. 10). This setting, together with the claim that Cibber's own muse is a prost.i.tute (p. 8), serves as a retort to the Tom-t.i.t in the brothel story in Cibber's _Letter to Pope_ and to emphasize the element of literary prost.i.tution in the activities of Cibber and his like. At other times the setting is a regular dunces' club (pp. 9, 16) of the type chronicled in the pages of _The Grub Street Journal_.

Towards the end of the poem it is an a.s.sembly Room (p. 19) presided over by the G.o.ddess of Puffs (a happy development of that more commonplace mythical figure "Fame," Dulness' handmaiden in _The New Dunciad_) who sets a test for the dunces and judges their performance. Only in this concluding episode can this rather shapeless poem (which certainly is neither the mock epic nor the epistle that its t.i.tle-page promises) be a.s.signed to any regular literary "kind." This "kind" is that favorite of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the "Sessions Poem."[4]

"Scriblerus'" account of the sessions of the dunces is more allusive and particularized than the rest of the poem and consequently calls for somewhat more detailed comment. The chief cases at the sessions embrace the pamphlet battle of summer 1742 and theatrical rivalry in the 1741-42 London season. Cibber's contribution to the paper-war, the _Letter to Pope_ (written according to Cibber "At the Desire of several Persons of Quality"), is introduced at page 17 and consigned on page 19 to William Lewis its printer. Hervey stalks in "under VIRTUE's Name" in a "borrow'd Shape" (p. 24), an allusion to the suggestion in the prefatory epistle to _The Difference between Verbal and Practical Virtue_ that the poem was Cibber's work. (The "horse him" on 25 of _The Scribleriad_ refers to Cibber's adaptation of Shakespeare's _Richard III._) Other pamphlets issued in August 1742 are mentioned on page 24--_Sawney and Colley_,[5]

which "Scriblerus" calls "CLODDY's Dialogue," and _A Blast upon Bays_.[6]

Turning to the theatre, "Scriblerus" attacks all three major companies of the 1741-42 London season. He first introduces the two patented theatres, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, as rivals only in that debased dramatic form the pantomime. "The angry _Quack_" (p. 25) is John Weaver, dancing master at Drury Lane and author of _Anatomical and Mechanical Lectures upon Dancing_ (1721), who claimed for himself[7] the credit of having originated pantomime upon the English stage. Weaver's _Orpheus and Eurydice_ at Drury Lane (1718) was hardly noticed, whereas John Rich had more recently bestowed "an ORPHEUS on the Town" (p. 25) to very different effect. Rich's _Orpheus and Eurydice: With the Metamorphoses of Harlequin_ had opened on 12 February 1740 at Covent Garden, where he was manager.

With Rich himself as Harlequin, it was a wild success that season--remaining a regular and highly popular afterpiece through the 1741-42 season and later.

What _The Scribleriad_ tells us of "_Ambivius Turpio_, the Stage 'Squire"

(p. 26) suggests that he is to be identified with Charles Fleetwood, Esq.,[8] the wealthy, inexperienced amateur who managed Drury Lane (this even though the original Ambivius Turpio was an actor, while Fleetwood, apparently, was not). All managers were frequently involved in disputes over actors' pay, but Fleetwood's were the most notorious. It was the Drury Lane company that included "the contending POLLYS" (p. 27)--Mrs.

Cibber and Mrs. Clive who had bitterly quarrelled in 1736 over who should play that role in _The Beggar's Opera_. Fleetwood, like Rich, gave a play for the benefit of Shakespeare's monument in Westminster Abbey.[9] What little that Fleetwood knew of management he might well have learned from his one-time under-manager Theophilus Cibber, the "young PTOLOMY" (p. 27) who, of course, had derived his knowledge from his "great Sire alone."

The third theatre attacked in _The Scribleriad_ is Goodman's Fields. Its manager, Henry Giffard, had no patent, but contrived to evade the Licensing Act by the subterfuge of charging admission to a concert in two parts and then offering, "gratis" in the interval, a regular full-length play and afterpiece. The "City Wrath" (p. 26) arose from the fact that the theatre was inside the City boundaries and was thought to encourage vice; indeed, Sir John Barnard and his fellow aldermen managed to prevent it opening for the 1742-43 season and thereafter. Allusions in the poem are to the theatre's highly successful 1741-42 season when Garrick sprang to fame as Cibber's Richard III and also played Tate's King Lear. On page 26 "Scriblerus" sneers at Garrick's small stature,[10] and refers to the impropriety of including the figure of Cato in the decor at Goodman's Fields.

Targets outside the three theatrical companies are chosen from among the obvious ones already attacked by Pope. Mrs. Haywood, who in 1742 had turned publisher under the sign of "Fame," is shown (p. 21) appropriately enough as the first dunce to recognize the G.o.ddess of Puffs. "The Chief of the translating Bards" (p. 23) is the aged and industrious Ozell, and his fellows include Theobald and Thomas Cooke (p. 24).[11] The satire extends to touch the Administration and the City, with references to Britain's. .h.i.therto inactive part in the War of the Austrian Succession (p. 9) and to the manner in which stock-jobbers used false war news to aid their financial speculations (p. 4). It alludes to the "grand Debate" (p. 8) of the committee set up in March 1742 to consider charges of corruption against the deposed Walpole (created Lord Orford in February), which by the end of the summer had fizzled out, doubtless because so many members of the new government, including the numerous "Peers new-made" (p. 9), had shared Walpole's peculations and wished to cover their tracks. When it hits at the King for his patronage of Cibber (p. 13), at the Queen for her ridiculous Merlin's Cave and waxworks in Richmond Gardens (p. 16),[12] and at the _Daily Gazeteer_ which, until Walpole's fall, had been expensively subsidized from the government secret service fund and had numbered among its journalists such highly placed statesmen as Walpole's brother Horatio--then, _The Scribleriad_ suggests, there is a general conspiracy between high ranks and low to encourage Dulness. The Hervey-Cibber alliance is merely the most recent manifestation of this conspiracy.

Although it so obviously arises immediately out of the pamphlet battle of summer 1742, _The Scribleriad_ manages to range more widely in its satire than the anti-Pope lampoons it replies to. Further, it contrives to bring in Pope himself without degrading him to the level of his antagonists.

This is done by mounting him on Pegasus and likening the dunces to curs (pp. 13-14), or comparing him to the sun whose warmth hatches out maggots (pp. 6, 29):

How many, who have Reams of Paper spoil'd, Have often sleepless Nights obscurely toil'd, And buried in their Eggs, like Silkworms, lay 'Till his warm Satire shew'd them Life and Day?

Here then, my Sons, is all your living Hope, To be immortal Scriblers, rail at POPE.

The image, the att.i.tude and the phrasing alike are borrowed from Pope, for _The Scribleriad_ is highly derivative throughout. Only two or three times does "Scriblerus" improve at all upon the many hints he steals from Pope.

I have already mentioned the G.o.ddess Puffs, but other happy touches are to be found in a spirited travesty (pp. 16-17) of the opening lines from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, Book XIII:[13]

The Chiefs were sate, the Scriblers waited round

When he, the Master of the Seven-fold Face, Rose gleaming thro' his own _Corinthian_ Bra.s.s.

Pope had written in _The Dunciad Variorum_, "The heroes sit; the vulgar form a ring" (II, 352), but one of the most memorable phrases in _The Dunciad in Four Books_ of 1743--the ingeniously insolent "sev'nfold Face"

(I, 244)--may well have been borrowed from _The Scribleriad_. "Corinthian Bra.s.s" is good also, economically combining as it does a hit against Cibber's effrontery and a hint of his s.e.xual irregularities. Such strokes of wit are rare; _The Scribleriad_ is the work of a writer who in skill is far closer to Grub Street than to Pope, but it may serve as "a voice from the crowd" to remind us that Pope had his humbler literary supporters.

The University Southampton

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

1. The engravings are numbered 2571-2573 in F. G. Stephens, _Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Division 1--Satires_ (London, 1877), Vol. III, Part I. For lists of pamphlets attacking, and in some cases defending, Pope in 1742, see R. W. Rogers, _The Major Satires of Alexander Pope_ (Urbana, 1955), pp. 150, 151 and C. D. Peavy, "The Pope-Cibber Controversy: A Bibliography," in _Restoration and Eighteenth Century Theatre Research_, III (1964), 53, 54. For accounts of the Pope-Cibber quarrel see R. H. Barker, _Mr. Cibber of Drury Lane_ (New York, 1939), pp. 204-220, and N. Ault, _New Light on Pope_ (London, 1949), pp. 298-324.

2. _Sawney and Colley_ and _Blast upon Blast_ in Number 83 (1960), and _The Blatant Beast_ in Number 114 (1965).

3. E.g., in _The New Session of the Poets_ (_The Universal Spectator_, 6 Feb. 1731) the G.o.ddess Dulness calls a session and awards the crown to Cibber.

4. See Hugh Macdonald, "Introduction," _A Journal from Parna.s.sus_ (London, 1937) and A. L. Williams, "Literary Backgrounds to Book Four of the _Dunciad_," _PMLA_, LXVIII (1953), 806-813.

5. See note 2 above.

6. An anti-Cibber work in prose. It is doubtful that "Scriblerus," who thought this work did more harm than good to Pope's cause, would have endorsed the British Museum catalogue's attribution of it to Pope himself.

7. In _The History of the Mimes and Pantomimes_ (1728).

8. Some account of Fleetwood may be found in R. W. Buss, _Charles Fleetwood, Holder of the Drury Lane Theatre Patent_ (privately printed, 1915). There are hostile contemporary accounts of Fleetwood in Henry Carey's epistle _Of Stage Tyrants_ [(1735) reprinted in _The Poems of Henry Carey_, ed. F. T. Wood (1930)], in Charlotte Charke's _The Art of Management_ (1735), and in _A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, Youngest Daughter of Colley Cibber, Written by Herself_ (1735).

9. _Julius Caesar_, on 28 April 1738. Rich offered _Hamlet_ on 10 April 1739.

10. A lady once asked Foote, "Pray, Sir, are your puppets to be as large as life?" "Oh dear, Madam, no: not much above the size of Garrick." See William Cooke, _Memoirs of Samuel Foote_ (1805), II, 58.

11. Theobald never published his long promised translation of Aeschylus; but, by bracketing it with Cooke's musical farce from Terence, _The Eunuch_, which _was_ performed (Drury Lane, 17 May 1737), "Scriblerus"

seems to imply that he did complete it.

12. The immediate target of this shaft was the waxwork show kept by Mrs.

Salmon near St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, but the original "Merlin's Cave" built for Queen Caroline in 1735 remained a standing jest into the 1740's.

13. "Consedere duces et vulgi stante corona surgit ad hos clipei dominus septemplicis" (_Met._, XIII, 1-2). Dryden translates:

The Chiefs were set; the Soldiers crown'd the Field: To these the Master of the seven-fold s.h.i.+eld Upstarted fierce.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE