Volume Iii Part 21 (1/2)
[140] My greatly-lamented friend, the late Mr. Douce, has poured forth the most curious knowledge on this singular subject, of ”The Dance of Death.” This learned investigator has reduced _Macaber_ to a nonent.i.ty, but not ”The Macaber Dance,” which has been frequently painted. Mr. Douce's edition is accompanied by a set of woodcuts, which have not unsuccessfully copied the exquisite originals of the Lyons wood-cutter.
[141] Goujet, ”Bib. Francoise,” vol. x. 185.
[142] _Tablature d'un luth_, Cotgrave says, is the belly of a lute, meaning ”all in nature must dance to my music!”
THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN.
Peter Heylin was one of the popular writers of his times, like Fuller and Howell, who, devoting their amusing pens to subjects which deeply interested their own busy age, will not be slighted by the curious.[143]
We have nearly outlived their divinity, but not their politics.
Metaphysical absurdities are luxuriant weeds which must be cut down by the scythe of Time; but the great pa.s.sions branching from the tree of life are still ”growing with our growth.”
There are two biographies of our Heylin, which led to a literary quarrel of an extraordinary nature; and, in the progress of its secret history, all the feelings of rival authors.h.i.+p were called out.
Heylin died in 1662. Dr. Barnard, his son-in-law, and a scholar, communicated a sketch of the author's life to be prefixed to a posthumous folio, of which Heylin's son was the editor. This Life was given by the son, but anonymously, which may not have gratified the author, the son-in-law.[144]
Twenty years had elapsed when, in 1682, appeared ”The Life of Dr. Peter Heylin, by George Vernon.” The writer, alluding to the prior Life prefixed to the posthumous folio, a.s.serts that, in borrowing something from Barnard, Barnard had also ”Excerpted pa.s.sages out of _my papers_, the very words as well as matter, when he had them in his custody, as any reader may discern who will be at the pains of comparing the Life now published with what is extant before the _Keimalea Ecclesiastica_;”
the quaint, pedantic t.i.tle, after the fas.h.i.+on of the day, of the posthumous folio.
This strong accusation seemed countenanced by a dedication to the son and the nephew of Heylin. Roused now into action, the indignant Barnard soon produced a more complete Life, to which he prefixed ”A necessary Vindication.” This is an unsparing castigation of Vernon, the literary pet whom the Heylins had fondled in preference to their learned relative.[145] The long-smothered family grudge, the suppressed mortifications of literary pride, after the subterraneous grumblings of twenty years, now burst out, and the volcanic particles flew about in caustic pleasantries and sharp invectives; all the lava of an author's vengeance, mortified by the choice of an inferior rival.
It appears that Vernon had been selected by the son of Heylin, in preference to his brother-in-law, Dr. Barnard, from some family disagreement. Barnard tells us, in describing Vernon, that ”No man, except himself, who was totally ignorant of the doctor, and all the circ.u.mstances of his life, would have engaged in such a work, which was never primarily laid out for him, but by reason of some unhappy differences, as usually fall out in families; and he, who loves to put his oar in troubled waters, instead of closing them up, hath made them wider.”
Barnard tells his story plainly. Heylin the son, intending to have a more elaborate Life of his father prefixed to his works, Dr. Barnard, from the high reverence in which he held the memory of his father-in-law, offered to contribute it. Many conferences were held, and the son entrusted him with several papers. But suddenly his caprice, more than his judgment, fancied that George Vernon was worth John Barnard. The doctor affects to describe his rejection with the most stoical indifference. He tells us--”I was satisfied, and did patiently expect the coming forth of the work, not only term after term, but year after year--a very considerable time for such a tract. But at last, instead of the Life, came a letter to me from a bookseller in London, who lived at the sign of the Black Boy, in Fleet-street.”[146]
Now, it seems that he who lived at the Black Boy had combined with another who lived at the Fleur de Luce, and that the Fleur de Luce had a.s.sured the Black Boy that Dr. Barnard was concerned in writing the Life of Heylin--this was a strong recommendation. But lo! it appeared that ”one Mr. Vernon, of Gloucester,” was to be the man! a gentle, thin-skinned authorling, who bleated like a lamb, and was so fearful to trip out of its shelter, that it allows the Black Boy and the Fleur de Luce to communicate its papers to any one they choose, and erase or add at their pleasure.[147]
It occurred to the Black Boy, on this proposed arithmetical criticism, that the work required addition, subtraction, and division; that the fittest critic, on whose name, indeed, he had originally engaged in the work, was our Dr. Barnard; and he sent the package to the doctor, who resided near Lincoln.
The doctor, it appears, had no appet.i.te for a dish dressed by another, while he himself was in the very act of the cookery; and it was suffered to lie cold for three weeks at the carrier's.
But entreated and overcome, the good doctor at length sent to the carrier's for the life of his father-in-law. ”I found it, according to the bookseller's description, most lame and imperfect; ill begun, worse carried on, and abruptly concluded.” The learned doctor exercised that plenitude of power with which the Black Boy had invested him--he very obligingly showed the author in what a confused state his materials lay together, and how to put them in order--
Nec facundia deseret hunc, nec lucidus ordo.
If his rejections were copious, to show his good-will as well as his severity, his additions were generous, though he used the precaution of carefully distinguis.h.i.+ng by ”distinct paragraphs” his own insertions amidst Vernon's ma.s.s, with a gentle hint that ”He knew more of Heylin than any man now living, and ought therefore to have been the biographer.” He returned the MS. to the gentleman with great civility, but none he received back! When Vernon pretended to ask for improvements, he did not imagine that the work was to be improved by being nearly destroyed; and when he asked for correction, he probably expected all might end in a compliment.
The narrative may now proceed in Dr. Barnard's details of his doleful mortifications, in being ”altered and mangled” by Mr. Vernon.
”Instead of thanks from him (Vernon), and the return of common civility, he disfigured my papers, that no sooner came into his hands, but he fell upon them as a lion rampant, or the cat upon the poor c.o.c.k in the fable, saying, _Tu hodie mihi discerperis_--so my papers came home miserably clawed, blotted, and blurred; whole sentences dismembered, and pages scratched out; several leaves omitted which ought to be printed,--shamefully he used my copy; so that before it was carried to the press, he swooped away the second part of the Life wholly from it--in the room of which he shuffled in a preposterous conclusion at the last page, which he printed in a different character, yet could not keep himself honest, as the poet saith,
_Dicitque tua pagina, fur es._ MARTIAL.
For he took out of my copy Dr. Heylin's dream, his sickness, his last words before his death, and left out the burning of his surplice. He so mangled and metamorphosed the whole Life I composed, that I may say as Sosia did, _Egomet mihi non credo, ille alter Sosia me malis mulcavit modis_--PLAUT.”
Dr. Barnard would have ”patiently endured these wrongs;” but the accusation Vernon ventured on, that Barnard was the plagiary, required the doctor ”to return the poisoned chalice to his own lips,” that ”himself was the plagiary both of words and matter.” The fact is, that this reciprocal accusation was owing to Barnard having had a prior perusal of Heylin's papers, which afterwards came into the hands of Vernon: they both drew their water from the same source. These papers Heylin himself had left for ”a rule to guide the writer of his life.”
Barnard keenly retorts on Vernon for his surrept.i.tious use of whole pages from Heylin's works, which he has appropriated to himself without any marks of quotation. ”I am no such excerptor (as he calls me); he is of the humour of the man who took all the s.h.i.+ps in the Attic haven for his own, and yet was himself not master of any one vessel.”