BOOKS.
MORE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VIGNETTES.*
Ma. AUSTIN DonsoN's work in the eighteenth century is a kind of mosaic background on which the conspicuous figures of the time move all the more clearly for being realised down to their smallest every-day surroundings. The effectiveness of this kind of work is increased when it is not so much the great and the well-known who are themselves treated in this minute, microscopic way, but when quite uncelebrated people, yet perhaps not without some small private distinc- tions of their own, are set before us in every detail of their daily circumstances. When we have a quantity of this fine work together, as in these eighteenth- century studies, we find ourselves with quite a new and familiar knowledge of the outside world of those days; and we come not only to know the great names and their works, but to understand what the streets and houses and libraries and shops were really like, in and out of which they went, what kind of people they met in their walks, or dined with, or dealt with every day. Looked at in this way, there is something of scientific criticism in Mr. Austin Dobson's method of studying his favourite century. He takes a piece of Dr. Johnson's world, divides it into a thousand scraps, examines them one by one, puts them together to make his picture. Then, if Dr. Johnson or any other magnate is set in the foreground, we understand him even better • Eiyhteenth-Century Vignettes. Third Series. By Austin Dobson. London Chat:, and Windus. than we did before. This is the effect, whether the artist meant to produce it or not. The analysis may have attracted him most; probably it did. He may have delighted in his special mosaic work, without much thought of the century at large, or of its greater figures, who have been so well studied for their own sake. But the synthesis follows naturally on the analysis, and as by the work of every true artist in every art, our minds are cultivated, instructed, delighted, without effort on their own part or conscious and evident intention on his.
Now that we have arrived at a third series of the Vignettes, it seems natural that their subjects should be a little less personally interesting; but this does not make them less valuable as studies of the time, and there is even some- thing refreshing in reading of people one has never heard of before. Among these is Mr. Thomas Gent, printer, the worthy subject of one of the best of these studies. Mr. Gent had a good chance of being as thoroughly forgotten as most of the other struggling tradesmen of his time. Indeed, many of the citizens whose tombstones now lean awry and illegible in old crowded churchyards may have been even more interesting and worthy of remembrance than this enterprising and unsuccessful printer. But he wrote his own life, wrote poetry and histories of towns, "poor and prolix ;" he played the flute and the fiddle. His autobiography, indeed, must be a very curious document; it was written in 1746, but remained in manuscript till 1832, when it was discovered and printed by Thomas Thorpe, of Covent Garden. Mr. Austin Dobson compares it with the memoir of Bewick, but there must have been a good deal of difference in the genius of the two men. Gent's early years were full of variety and adven- ture; his later life, though he married his first love, seems to have been very melancholy, and he died in great poverty at last. As told by Mr. Austin Dobson, the story of Gent's life makes a typical study of the printer, publisher, and small author of the eighteenth century. He was certainly an original person, yet hardly so original as to leave any special mark upon his time. He is, therefore, a most fitting person to take his place in this study of background. That there may have been many like him, who passed out of sight with- out leaving portraits or autobiographies, seems to be the chief reason for remembering him.
Another attractive study in this series is that of Dr. Mead and his library. Miss Thackeray writes consolingly some- where of "the vagueness characteristic of well-informed people." This is the fashion in which a good many of us know the name of Dr. Mead, if we know it at all,—a vague idea that there was once a well-known physician of that name. Mr. Austin Dobson at once puts the great doctor in his right place in our minds,—long, we hope, to remain there. For Dr. Mead, George II.'s First Physician in Ordinary, successor to Dr. Radcliffe's gold-headed cane—now to be seen in the library of the College of Physicians—was one of those many-sided men who abounded in the eighteenth century. He had delightful tastes outside his profession. He was a great collector of books, and, to judge by the extracts here given us from the catalogue of his library, his taste in choosing them was supremely good. And—which is very rare—his generosity was equal to his literary knowledge; he allowed the public to consult his books, and even to take them away; and he was equally liberal with his splendid gallery of pictures, minia- tures, statues, and antiques. Another interesting fact about Dr. Mead is that he lived for years at 49 Great Ormond Street, in the very house which became, when this century was half through, the Hospital for Sick Children. We are reminded that it was to this old house, not then pulled down, that Dickens carried little Johnny in Our Mutual Friend. Dr. Mead's portrait by Allan Ramsay is now to be seen in the National Portrait Gallery.
After an original tradesman and a literary physician, we have the figure, quite as characteristic, of a clever and ex- cellent fine lady. The name of "the beautiful Molly Lepel" is familiar to every student, however superficial, of the eighteenth century ; but it is pleasant to read again of Lady Hervey's charm, as well as of her goodness and talent, and to realise the kind of life and character, the relations with her singular husband and her excellent father-in-law, which belonged to a person so highly esteemed in her own day. Here, again, we feel that we have a fair type of the society of that time. This picture of Lady Hervey, so delicately touched,
with all her accomplishments, her hidden learning, her love of gardening and building, suggests that there were many women like her, though perhaps by lack of beauty and position unknown to fame, and interferes at once with any stereotyped notion of the frivolousness of our great-great- grandmothers.
We have found most charm in the three studies mentioned here, but not one of the fourteen is without an interest and attractiveness of its own. The book, like its predecessors, is fall of curious knowledge ; and we need hardly add that it is delightfully written. All intelligent readers will hope that Mr. Austin Dobson's eighteenth-century mine is not yet worked out.
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