Books

Dead small beer

Peter Quennell

The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse Chosen and edited by Roger Lonsdale (Oxford £15)

In histories of English verse, the great Augustan Age and its splendid Palladian background form an agreeably harmonious pattern. Its protagonists were usually close friends, and often met and collaborated on literary or aesthetic projects. Thus, at Chiswick, Burlington and Kent planted a huge garden according to the rules of taste that Pope had already laid down; while, at nearby Marble Hill, where the poet had himself turned gardener, and helped the King's mistress to instal a grotto and a parterre, he frequently talked with his old confederate Swift. Both men, moreover, were warmly attached to John Gay, whom Swift had urged to write The Beggar's Opera, and whose early death they bitterly lamented.

Modern anthologists, in their selections of Augustan poetry, are apt to follow much the same lines; they produce a general impression of dignity and amity, chequered now and then, it is true, by savage disputes and bursts of furious invective. The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse, however, is a remarkable exception. Great poets occupy their proper place; but a host of newcomers have joined them, some eloquent or entertaining, others energetic hacks. Roger Lonsdale's collection, together with its learned notes and indices, runs to 870 pages; and 'about a quarter' of his material, he tells us, is comparatively obscure; 'little or none of it' appears to 'have been printed, or perhaps even read', after the year 1800. But he has attempted, he adds, to avoid selecting verse 'merely because its style or content might seem to confound familiar generalisations . . . or has a purely documentary interest'; and he hopes that, should some of his choices strike the 20th-century reader as 'artless, unsubtle and inelegant, qualities of indi- viduality and freshness will compensate'. Such works, he believes, may have 'a kind of immediacy' that conventional criticism either refuses to recognise, or has so far never troubled to discuss.

Well, although, at their best, the 'sub- merged' writers Roger Lonsdale has resur- rected have some of the qualities he attributes to them — besides being 'vigor- ous, humorous, idiosyncratic', they may provide us with 'earthy and . . . graphic depictions of humble life' that illustrate the rougher and squalider aspects of the con- temporary social scene — at their worst, they are apt to be 'artless' indeed; while three of them, whom Pope happens to have pilloried in The Dunciad, John Brown, Jacob Hildebrand and Leonard Welsted, certainly deserved their fate.

On the whole, it was when they became satirists, and depicted the horrors of Grub Street, and their battles against landladies and duns, that these gallant scribblers proved most effective; and George Farewell's 'Adieu to my Landlady', written about 1733, was unquestionably worth reprinting:

Mayst thou die desp'rate in some dirty pool, Catching, conceited, choleric old fool! Thus prays thy lodger with his heart and pen; And all who know thee sure will say — Amen. Patience, ye gods, to write my bill of fare! Stale bread of bran ill-baked, and dead small beer . . .

Hereof complaint is made in manner meek, When lo! her pig's-eyes glare, her tawny cheek Unshrivelling bloateth bluff; then pert and proud Of nasty craft, short off does Granny scud. . .

Vigorous, too, on the subject of their own misdeeds, usually associated with whoring and drinking, are some of the unknown satirists from whom Roger Lons- dale quotes at length. Here, for instance, is Charles Woodward's account, also written during the early 1730s, of a desperate 'Midnight Ramble': Paul's clock struck twelve, 'twas time to go to bed;

The club broke up, each from the table fled. Claret had topsy-turvy turned my brain;

From Brown's like mad I staggered to Bow Lane.

With many a stumble reeling to my door, Upon the steps [trod upon a whore . . .

I roused the boozy cat with point of sword; She gaped and stared but could not speak a word.

Quoth I. 'A coach, good honest watchman, call:

This poor unlucky bitch has got a fall.

I think she must be stunned; pray lend a hand,

Let's see if this poor toad can make a stand . .

Meanwhile, the idea of 'polite litera- ture', as distinct from the more popular forms that Roger Lonsdale admires, was gradually coming into fashion; and some of his early protégés had already begun to show romantic or sentimental leanings. They applauded the beauties of Nature, the joys of family life and innocent rustic pursuits (such as a new game that they called 'The Goff') or paid loving tributes to their favourite animals. Among these sen- timentalists and part-time moralists was John Dyer, author of `Grongar Hill' and then a fairly well-known landscape poet who, in 'My Ox Duke', describes the benevolent creature's conduct, when, anx- ious to reach the shelter of a barn, Duke discovers 'a soft ridge of little snow-white pigs' lying fast asleep across the threshold:

What should he do? What sweet forebear- ance held, His heavy foot from trampling on the weak . . .

It is a problem he cannot solve, until he gently shoves them with his nose, and breathes upon their 'tender sides', thus finally arousing them; at which 'the merry little young, their tails upcurled', run gam- bolling away to let him pass.

The New Oxford Book is full of odd and interesting discoveries. I doubt, on the other hand, if Roger Lonsdale has either enlarged or considerably changed our pre- vious picture of the age. No forgotten man of genius emerges from his patient excava- tions. The first half of the century is still dominated by Pope — for whom, I remem- ber, Wystan Auden had a particularly deep respect; the second, despite T.S. Eliot's unusually foolish assertion that poetic liter- ature, after Pope's death; fell into the claws of 'retired country clergymen and schoolmasters', by Johnson, Cowper, Gray and, latterly, George Crabbe. But although the editor's strenuous efforts to awake the literary dead, and to show that 'the world of eighteenth-century poetry is at once less predictable and more familiar' than orthodox critics have assured us, do not always quite succeed, he has produced an extremely seviceable and often enter- taining book. It has clearly been a labour of love, and demanded many years re- search, which I feel sure he has much enjoyed. Roger Lonsdale, I learn, is a Fellow and Tutor of Balliol; and I like to think of him, preferably over a glass of Founder's Port, reading aloud his latest discoveries to the other sympathetic occu- pants of the Senior Common Room.