A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTITRY.*

THIS is a slight book, and possibly too thin in matter to satisfy the curiosity of the general reader. It is not likely to be sought after with eagerness by the subscribers to Mudie's, or the Grosvenor ; but the interest of the volume is, we think, amply sufficient to justify publication. The editor, Mr. Richard Twining, who dates from the well-known house in the Strand, states that his great-uncle is known to scholars by his translation of Aristotle's Poetics, and that the compilation which now appears in print for the first time was commenced in 1817 by his grand- father, the half-brother of Thomas Twining, and brought to a conclusion by the Rev. Daniel Twining, who died in 1853. " Shortly before his decease," the editor writes, " he made over the charge of all the letters and papers to myself. Thus it has fallen to my lot, in such intervals of leisure as a busy life has afforded, to complete a work for which others had made so much thoughtful preparation." The necessity for such laborious and prolonged preparation is not apparent. It may, however, have prevented errors, and if there are mistakes in the volume, we have been unable to detect them.

A few facts from the brief memoir written in the early years of this' century may be worth stating, before striking into the heart of the volume. Thomas, eldest son of Daniel Twining, tea-dealer, of London, was born in 1735. He was placed in his father's business, but his love of literature and his aversion to

• Recreations and Studies of a Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century. Seine Selections from the Correspondence of the Rev. Thomas Twining, M.A. London: John Murray. .1882.

trade were so strong, that after some private tuition he was sent to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where, it seems, he was elected a Fellow, upon taking his B.A. degree. At the age of twenty-nine he married, and, having taken Holy Orders, settled at Fordham, near Colchester, where he lived for nearly thirty years, spending most of his time in his study devoted to books and music. We are told also that,—" In the constant habits of his life, and in the performance of all the duties of a clergyman, particularly of the most important duties of the minister of a parish, he was exemplary ;" but his correspondence contains no intimations of his clerical position. A letter of condolence to a nephew on his sister's death, the sole page in the volume in which the mystery of life, and death is alluded to, might have been written word for word by a thoughtful heathen. It should be added, however, that Twining published three sermons. In the latter years of his life he left Fordham, for the living of St. Mary's, Colchester. When he died, in 1804, Dr. Parr, who considered him " one of the best men that ever lived," placed a Latin epitaph to his memory on the walls of that church. Parr's admiration for him was extreme, and the feeling was mutual. Between Twining and Dr. Burney, also, there was a strong friendship, due, doubtless, to the similarity of their tastes. When Burney projected a history of music, Twining, who had in contemplation a work of a similar kind, promised him all the help in his power, and gave it without stint. The letters that passed between the two men are not confined to one subject, and will be found among the most entertaining in the volume.

In 1767 the piano was used for the first time in England, and seven years later Twining thanks his friend for sending him the instrument. " It is delightful," he writes, " and I play upon it con amore, and with the pleasure I expected. If it has defects which a good harpsichord has not, it has beauties and delicacies which amply compensate, and which make the harp wonder- fully flashy and insipid when played after it." At times, when the ear asks only for harmony and a pleasant jingle, he turns to the harpsichord, but " as soon," he adds, " as ever my spirit wakes, as soon as my heart-strings catch the gentlest vibration, I swivel me round incontinently to the pianoforte." Books were as much his passion as music ; like Southey, he received a parcel of them with almost boyish delight. " I have been reading like a dragon," he writes, " I wish I could leave off this silly trick. I have sometimes a great mind to admin- ister an oath to myself that I will read nothing for one whole year, by way of experiment. I wonder what would be the effect P Some- times, I think I should find myself very much improved at the year's end ; sometimes, I think I should hang myself par ennui." Twining's talk about books is always interesting. He delights in Chaucer and the old ballads, and finds the Rowley poems full of genius, making up his mind that they are partly forged and partly not; and though he does not appear to give mach credit to Chatterton, when writing seven years after the tragedy of his death, he confesses that he can scarce bear any poetry after taking up his. Of Swift, Twining's admiration was great. He will not admit that he was a misanthrope, or that his writings "have any one bad tendency." He was simply a great humourist, and the world,.from the lack of humour, has taken all he said of himself for truth. " What connection is there," he continues in a letter to his brother, " between indignation at the vices of mankind and hatred of mankind P But, bastes! pray, now, agree with me about all this. Your hand, your hand, I will have your hand ! You do love Swift, now, don't you P Ay, ay, I knew it ! And yet can you possibly love an ill-natured man ? No. Ergo, Swift was not an ill-natured man."

When Johnson's Lives of the Poets appeared, the " Country Clergyman" read them with eagerness, and criticised them frankly. His comments on the Great Cham of Letters show an independent judgment, and might have been written in the early years of this century, when a reaction against Johnson's judgments was one of the signs of a great poetical revolution. Twining's opinions contain a goodly portion of truth, but they are not the whole truth, for although Johnson had no ear for the divine music of Lyeidas, or for the majesty and harmony of Milton's blank verse, although he sneered at some of the grandest sonnets in the language, abused Gray, and failed to appreciate the rare art of his friend Collins, he was not without the vivida vie animi which goes towards the making of a poet, and wrote " after his kind" with a power surpassed only by Pope. Yet it is impossible not to sympathise with Twining when he writes that, in matters of poetry, he finds his palate continually at variance with Dr. Johnson's, and observes that

what he esteems poetry is only good sense pat into good metre.

When Boswell's Life appeared, Twining was " prodigiously entertained and gratified." " I have met with those," he writes, "who call this book tiresome ; I never read a book that was less so,"—a judgment with which every reader will agree who

appreciates good literature. If Twining overestimates in some degree the charm of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, the mistake must. be set down to his friendship for her father. Why the book should have made that age cry, as by all accounts it did, is a perplexity to ours. Mrs. Chapone, we know, lost her sleep for a week after reading it, and the Duchess of Portland and Mrs.

Delany "thrice wept their way through the five volumes.' Thomas Twining has a similar story to tell :—

" I know," he says, "two amiable sisters at Colchester, sensible and accomplished women, who were found blubbering at such a rate one morning ! The tale had drawn them on till near the hour of an• engagement to dinner, which they were actually obliged to put off, because there was not time to recover their red eyes and swelled noses. The person who caught them in this pathetic pickle was alarmed at their appearance, and thought of nothing less than of some domestic calamity. As to myself, Cecilia has done just what she pleased with me. I laughed and cried (for I am one of the blabberers) when she bade mo."

How strangely this reads ! But probably half a century hence the pathos of some modern writers who can now do what they like with us will have lost its moving power. It is only genius of the highest order that is untouched by time, and outlives all the chances and changes of this mortal life.

To one feature of this volume we have not yet referred, and now we must content ourselves with alluding to it. Like Gray,. whom he estimated at his full worth, Twining had a genuine love of scenery, and describes 'his home travel—we believe he never crossed the Channel—with the intelligence of a man of culture. Every one knows Lamb's delightful essay, " Grace before Meat," in which he asks why " the received ritual has

prescribed this form to the solitary ceremony of manducation." " I own," he says, " that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the coarse of the day beside my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for- a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem._ Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts,—a grace- before Milton, a grace before Shakespeare, a devotional exer- cise proper to be said before reading the Paery Queens ?" The same idea had, it appears, occurred to Twining long years before.. The sight of a fine view upon the banks of the Calder makes- him exclaim :—" I never felt anything so fine. I shall re- member it, and thank God for it, as long as I live. I am sorry I did not think to say grace after it. Are we to be grateful for nothing but beef and pudding ?—to thank God for life, and not for happiness ?" Curiously enough, another remark of Lamb's, in which he writes of the statue of Garrick in Westminster Abbey, is also in the same strain as one in Twining's letters, and in this case the similarity has been noted by the editor. Of course, there could be no plagiarism on Lamb's part in either- instance, but these passages serve as examples of the way in which minds running in the same groove think the same-

thoughts.

We had marked several passages for quotation and comment, but the space already given to the volume will suffice to illus- trate its character. The lover of literature may spend an hour or two delightfully over these pages, and will not be able to- imagine that his time has been wasted.