but why should lordlings all our praise engross?
rise, honest man, and sing the man of ross.
pope
having, in the tale of the heart of mid-lothian, succeeded in some degree in awakening an interest in behalf of one devoid of those accomplishments which belong to a heroine almost by right, i was next tempted to choose a hero upon the same unpromising plan; and as worth of character, goodness of heart, and rectitude of principle, were necessary to one who laid no claim to high birth, romantic sensibility, or any of the usual accomplishments of those who strut through the pages of this sort of composition, i made free with the name of a person who has left the most magnificent proofs of his benevolence and charity that the capital of scotland has to display.
to the scottish reader little more need be said than that the man alluded to is george heriot. but for those south of the tweed, it may be necessary to add, that the person so named was a wealthy citizen of edinburgh, and the king's goldsmith, who followed james to the english capital, and was so successful in his profession, as to die, in 1624, extremely wealthy for that period. he had no children; and after making a full provision for such relations as might have claims upon him, he left the residue of his fortune to establish an hospital, in which the sons of edinburgh freemen are gratuitously brought up and educated for the station to which their talents may recommend them, and are finally enabled to enter life under respectable auspices. the hospital in which this charity is maintained is a noble quadrangle of the gothic order, and as ornamental to the city as a building, as the manner in which the youths are provided for and educated, renders it useful to the community as an institution. to the honour of those who have the management, (the magistrates and clergy of edinburgh), the funds of the hospital have increased so much under their care, that it now supports and educates one hundred and thirty youths annually, many of whom have done honour to their country in different situations.
the founder of such a charity as this may be reasonably supposed to have walked through life with a steady pace, and an observant eye, neglecting no opportunity of assisting those who were not possessed of the experience necessary for their own guidance. in supposing his efforts directed to the benefit of a young nobleman, misguided by the aristocratic haughtiness of his own time, and the prevailing tone of selfish luxury which seems more peculiar to ours, as well as the seductions of pleasure which are predominant in all, some amusement, or even some advantage, might, i thought, be derived from the manner in which i might bring the exertions of this civic mentor to bear in his pupil's behalf. i am, i own, no great believer in the moral utility to be derived from fictitious compositions; yet, if in any case a word spoken in season may be of advantage to a young person, it must surely be when it calls upon him to attend to the voice of principle and self-denial, instead of that of precipitate passion. i could not, indeed, hope or expect to represent my prudent and benevolent citizen in a point of view so interesting as that of the peasant girl, who nobly sacrificed her family affections to the integrity of her moral character. still however, something i hoped might be done not altogether unworthy the fame which george heriot has secured by the lasting benefits he has bestowed on his country.
it appeared likely, that out of this simple plot i might weave something attractive; because the reign of james i., in which george heriot flourished, gave unbounded scope to invention in the fable, while at the same time it afforded greater variety and discrimination of character than could, with historical consistency, have been introduced, if the scene had been laid a century earlier. lady mary wortley montague has said, with equal truth and taste, that the most romantic region of every country is that where the mountains unite themselves with the plains or lowlands. for similiar reasons, it may be in like manner said, that the most picturesque period of history is that when the ancient rough and wild manners of a barbarous age are just becoming innovated upon, and contrasted, by the illumination of increased or revived learning, and the instructions of renewed or reformed religion. the strong contrast produced by the opposition of ancient manners to those which are gradually subduing them, affords the lights and shadows necessary to give effect to a fictitious narrative; and while such a period entitles the author to introduce incidents of a marvellous and improbable character, as arising out of the turbulent independence and ferocity, belonging to old habits of violence, still influencing the manners of a people who had been so lately in a barbarous state; yet, on the other hand, the characters and sentiments of many of the actors may, with the utmost probability, be described with great variety of shading and delineation, which belongs to the newer and more improved period, of which the world has but lately received the light.
the reign of james i. of england possessed this advantage in a peculiar degree. some beams of chivalry, although its planet had been for some time set, continued to animate and gild the horizon, and although probably no one acted precisely on its quixotic dictates, men and women still talked the chivalrous language of sir philip sydney's arcadia; and the ceremonial of the tilt-yard was yet exhibited, though it now only flourished as a place de carrousel. here and there a high-spirited knight of the bath, witness the too scrupulous lord herbert of cherbury, was found devoted enough to the vows he had taken, to imagine himself obliged to compel, by the sword's-point, a fellow-knight or squire to restore the top-knot of ribbon which he had stolen from a fair damsel;[footnote: see lord herbert of cherbury's memoirs.] but yet, while men were taking each other's lives on such punctilios of honour, the hour was already arrived when bacon was about to teach the world that they were no longer to reason from authority to fact, but to establish truth by advancing from fact to fact, till they fixed an indisputable authority, not from hypothesis, but from experiment.
the state of society in the reign of james i. was also strangely disturbed, and the license of a part of the community was perpetually giving rise to acts of blood and violence. the bravo of the queen's day, of whom shakspeare has given us so many varieties, as bardolph, nym, pistol, peto, and the other companions of falstaff, men who had their humours, or their particular turn of extravaganza, had, since the commencement of the low country wars, given way to a race of sworders, who used the rapier and dagger, instead of the far less dangerous sword and buckler; so that a historian says on this subject, “that private quarrels were nourished, but especially between the scots and english; and duels in every street maintained; divers sects and peculiar titles passed unpunished and unregarded, as the sect of the roaring boys, bonaventors, bravadors, quarterors, and such like, being persons prodigal, and of great expense, who, having run themselves into debt, were constrained to run next into factions, to defend themselves from danger of the law. these received countenance from divers of the nobility; and the citizens, through lasciviousness consuming their estates, it was like that the number [of these desperadoes] would rather increase than diminish; and under these pretences they entered into many desperate enterprizes, and scarce any durst walk in the street after nine at night."[footnote: history of the first fourteen years of king james's reign. see somers's tracts, edited by scott, vol. ii. p.266.]
the same authority assures us farther, that “ancient gentlemen, who had left their inheritance whole and well furnished with goods and chattels (having thereupon kept good houses) unto their sons, lived to see part consumed in riot and excess, and the rest in possibility to be utterly lost; the holy state of matrimony made but a may-game, by which divers families had been subverted; brothel houses much frequented, and even great persons, prostituting their bodies to the intent to satisfy their lusts, consumed their substance in lascivious appetites. and of all sorts, such knights and gentlemen, as either through pride or prodigality—had consumed their substance, repairing to the city, and to the intent to consume their virtue also, lived dissolute lives; many of their ladies and daughters, to the intent to maintain themselves according to their dignity, prostituting their bodies in shameful manner. ale-houses, dicing-houses, taverns, and places of iniquity, beyond manner abounding in most places.”
nor is it only in the pages of a puritanical, perhaps a satirical writer, that we find so shocking and disgusting a picture of the coarseness of the beginning of the seventeenth century. on the contrary, in all the comedies of the age, the principal character for gaiety and wit is a young heir, who has totally altered the establishment of the father to whom he has succeeded, and, to use the old simile, who resembles a fountain, which plays off in idleness and extravagance the wealth which its careful parents painfully had assembled in hidden reservoirs.
and yet, while that spirit of general extravagance seemed at work over a whole kingdom, another and very different sort of men were gradually forming the staid and resolved characters, which afterwards displayed themselves during the civil wars, and powerfully regulated and affected the character of the whole english nation, until, rushing from one extreme to another, they sunk in a gloomy fanaticism the splendid traces of the reviving fine arts.
from the quotations which i have produced, the selfish and disgusting conduct of lord dalgarno will not perhaps appear overstrained; nor will the scenes in whitefriars and places of similar resort seem too highly coloured. this indeed is far from being the case. it was in james i.'s reign that vice first appeared affecting the better classes in its gross and undisguised depravity. the entertainments and amusements of elizabeth's time had an air of that decent restraint which became the court of a maiden sovereign; and, in that earlier period, to use the words of burke, vice lost half its evil by being deprived of all its grossness. in james's reign, on the contrary, the coarsest pleasures were publicly and unlimitedly indulged, since, according to sir john harrington, the men wallowed in beastly delights; and even ladies abandoned their delicacy and rolled about in intoxication. after a ludicrous account of a mask, in which the actors had got drunk, and behaved themselves accordingly, he adds, “i have much marvelled at these strange pageantries, and they do bring to my recollection what passed of this sort in our queen's days, in which i was sometimes an assistant and partaker: but never did i see such lack of good order and sobriety as i have now done. the gunpowder fright is got out of all our heads, and we are going on hereabout as if the devil was contriving every man should blow up himself by wild riot, excess, and devastation of time and temperance. the great ladies do go well masqued; and indeed, it be the only show of their modesty to conceal their countenance, but alack, they meet with such countenance to uphold their strange doings, that i marvel not at aught that happens."[footnote: harrington's nugae antique, vol. ii. p. 352. for the gross debauchery of the period, too much encouraged by the example of the monarch, who was, in other respects, neither without talent nor a good-natured disposition, see winwood's memorials, howell's letters, and other memorials of the time; but particularly, consult the private letters and correspondence of steenie, alias buckingham, with his reverend dad and gossip, king james, which abound with the grossest as well as the most childish language. the learned mr. d'israeli, in an attempt to vindicate the character of james, has only succeeded in obtaining for himself the character of a skilful and ingenious advocate, without much advantage to his royal client]
such being the state of the court, coarse sensuality brought along with it its ordinary companion, a brutal degree of undisguised selfishness, destructive alike of philanthropy and good breeding; both of which, in their several spheres, depend upon the regard paid by each individual to the interest as well as the feelings of others. it is in such a time that the heartless and shameless man of wealth and power may, like the supposed lord dalgarno, brazen out the shame of his villainies, and affect to triumph in their consequences, so long as they were personally advantageous to his own pleasures or profit.
alsatia is elsewhere explained as a cant name for whitefriars, which, possessing certain privileges of sanctuary, became for that reason a nest of those mischievous characters who were generally obnoxious to the law. these privileges were derived from its having been an establishment of the carmelites, or white friars, founded says stow, in his survey of london, by sir patrick grey, in 1241. edward i. gave them a plot of ground in fleet street, to build their church upon. the edifice then erected was rebuilt by courtney, earl of devonshire, in the reign of edward. in the time of the reformation the place retained its immunities as a sanctuary, and james i. confirmed and added to them by a charter in 1608. shadwell was the first author who made some literary use of whitefriars, in his play of the squire of alsatia, which turns upon the plot of the adelphi of terence.
in this old play, two men of fortune, brothers, educate two young men, (sons to the one and nephews to the other,) each under his own separate system of rigour and indulgence. the elder of the subjects of this experiment, who has been very rigidly brought up, falls at once into all the vices of the town, is debauched by the cheats and bullies of whitefriars, and, in a word, becomes the squire of alsatia. the poet gives, as the natural and congenial inhabitants of the place, such characters as the reader will find in the note. [footnote: “cheatly, a rascal, who by reason of debts dares not stir out of whitefriars, but there inveigles young heirs of entail, and helps them to goods and money upon great disadvantages, is bound for them, and shares with them till he undoes them. a lewd, impudent, debauched fellow, very expert in the cant about town.
“shamwell, cousin to the belfords, who, being ruined by cheatly, is made a decoy-duck for others, not daring to stir out of alsatia, where he lives. is bound with cheatly for heirs, and lives upon them a dissolute debauched life.
“captain hackum, a blockheaded bully of alsatia, a cowardly, impudent, blustering fellow, formerly a sergeant in flanders, who has run from his colours, and retreated into whitefriars for a very small debt, where by the alsatians he is dubb'd a captain, marries one that lets lodgings, sells cherry-brandy, and is a bawd.
“scrapeall a hypocritical, repeating, praying, psalm-singing, precise fellow, pretending to great piety; a godly knave, who joins with cheatly, and supplies young heirs with goods, and money.”—dramatis personae to the squire of alsatia, shadwell's works, vol. iv.] the play, as we learn from the dedication to the earl of dorset and middlesex, was successful above the author's expectations, “no comedy these many years having filled the theatre so long together. and i had the great honour,” continues shadwell, “to find so many friends, that the house was never so full since it was built as upon the third day of this play, and vast numbers went away that could not be admitted.” [footnote: dedication to the squire of alsatia, shadwell's works, vol. iv.] from the squire of alsatia the author derived some few hints, and learned the footing on which the bullies and thieves of the sanctuary stood with their neighbours, the fiery young students of the temple, of which some intimation is given in the dramatic piece.
such are the materials to which the author stands indebted for the composition of the fortunes of nigel, a novel, which may be perhaps one of those that are more amusing on a second perusal, than when read a first time for the sake of the story, the incidents of which are few and meagre.
the introductory epistle is written, in lucio's phrase, “according to the trick,” and would never have appeared had the writer meditated making his avowal of the work. as it is the privilege of a masque or incognito to speak in a feigned voice and assumed character, the author attempted, while in disguise, some liberties of the same sort; and while he continues to plead upon the various excuses which the introduction contains, the present acknowledgment must serve as an apology for a species of “hoity toity, whisky frisky” pertness of manner, which, in his avowed character, the author should have considered as a departure from the rules of civility and good taste.
abbotsford.
1st july, 1831.
