Reminiscences of a Literary Life
CHAP. VIII
JAMES MATHIAS
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JAMES MATHIAS |
[CHAP. VIII |
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JAMES MATHIAS
For a good number of years I was rather intimate with the author of
“The Pursuits of
Literature”—that is, about as intimate as a volatile young man like me, at
that period, could possibly be with a sedate, phlegmatic old man like Mathias. I think that it was in the summer of 1817 or 1818
that I first met him. I cannot be quite sure of the date, but I can never forget the place.
It was that lovely village-dotted plain, between the mountains and the sea, Il piano di Sorrento, in that quiet, shady nook,
embosomed in groves of orange and citron trees, called “La
Cocumella.” He was staying there in the same rambling, quaint old
lodging-house which I believe had once been a nunnery, with Mariana Starke, authoress of the well-known guide-book for English
travellers on the Continent, which after a long run, and a very extensive sale, has been
superseded by Mr. Murray’s excellent
handbooks. We sat for an hour or two on a rustic seat at the edge of an orange-grove which
overhung the sea and commanded a full view of the bay, Mount Vesuvius, with the lofty
ridges of the Apennines in its rear, the whole of the city of Naples, with the castles and
monasteries, behind it and above it, the enchanting promontory of Posilipo, the Cape of
Misenum, the coast of Baiae, the low, bright, glittering island of Procida, and the lofty,
volcanic island of Ischia—a view which I shall always maintain, and religiously believe, to
be the finest in the beautiful globe which God has allotted to us for a habitation. We
talked a good deal about living or recent English poets, and I well remember that he gently
reproved my too warm admiration for Lord Byron, an error
which has long since been corrected by time, experience, knowledge of the world, and
careful study of our truly classical writers. He stood up stoutly in ![]()
| CHAP. VIII] | RESEMBLANCE TO GRAY | 85 |
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defence of Gray both as
a man and as a poet, and was quite indignant with old Samuel
Johnson for having written what he had about poor Gray.
I should think that in person, as well as in most of his tastes and habits,
Mathias must have very much resembled the author of the
“Elegy in a Country
Churchyard.” He was a fragile-looking, spare old man; his head was almost
entirely bald, and the little hair he had was very grey and fast turning into white. Yet he
was active and capable of enduring a good deal of fatigue, and thus he continued to be
eight or nine years after this meeting. He walked about a good deal; indeed, I hardly ever
saw him ride in a hackney-carriage or vehicle of any kind. I soon met him again at Naples,
at a dinner party given by my old friend James Ramsay, then a
prosperous and very hospitable merchant, and fond of literature and men of letters. A
considerable time after this I met him one morning in the house of Sir William Drummond, the diplomatist and author of
“Academical
Questions,” “Origines,” etc., and I heard him manfully maintain the cause of
Christianity and the English Church, to neither of which Sir William
was thought to be much attached. We met again at old General
Grant’s—he of Jamaica—and between the end of the year 1820 and the
spring of 1827 we were very frequently encountering each other. Indeed, for nearly two
years out of that time, we lived under the same roof, in a big palazzo upon the
Pizzofalcone, which had in its rear a fantastic old-fashioned garden, with wooden statues
of shepherds and shepherdesses, river divinities, and nymphs of the fountain, all painted
over in the brightest colours. As his apartment, and also mine, opened upon the garden by a
French window, we often met, and walked and talked there. I thought it rather strange that
he should admire the place and its decorations. It was like a suburban tea-garden—very like
what our Bagnigge Wells used to be when I was a little ![]()
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boy. But in
sundry other matters I thought that the tastes of the author of the “Pursuits of Literature” were rather artificial.
He had been writing and publishing various original Italian poems, and he
was now turning the first two cantos
of the “Faery Queene” into
Italian ottava rima.
He did this kind of work very slowly. I have heard him say that he
considered eight verses to be a very good day’s work. He had but a scanty library,
and in it only one book of a fine edition. This was an edition of Gray’s works, the quarto printed at Glasgow by
Foulis, and alluded to in the poet’s
letters. Mathias had illustrated it with a variety
of engravings—English, French, Italian, and German; for in nearly every country in Europe
the Elegy had lent inspiration to artists
as well as to poets. He could be very thankful for any contribution to this quarto. At the
time I had not many books myself, but I had admirable facilities for borrowing from the
Prince of Colonna Stigliano, the Duke of Atri, the Prince of San Giorgio, and about a dozen
more Neapolitan friends, who had inherited libraries and were annually increasing them.
Then the admirable public library in the Bourbon Museum, with its 400,000 volumes, was
always open to me, with the indulgence of a private room all to myself. I now and then
borrowed for Mathias, and would have done so much oftener if he had
wished it, but he appeared to me to read very little. What he liked, was to con over his
Italian rhymes,* take a peep at his classics, and to muse and meditate in the garden, or in
his room, or while walking, at a brisk pace, in the streets and suburbs of Naples. We
should have been together much more frequently
* I have a copy of Mathias’ “Poesie Liriche,” 2 vols., octavo,
Naples, 1825, inscribed in the author’s handwriting, “Alla
cultissima Signora, La Signora S. Canning, Da T.
J. Mathias, Napoli, Marzo, 1829.”—Ed. |
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| CHAP. VIII] | AS LIBRARIAN | 87 |
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than we were, but for one little circumstance: he
rarely went into Italian society, and I as rarely went into English. Now and then we would
meet at dinner at an excellent restaurant, nearly opposite the Royal Palace, near the
corner of the Strada di Chiaja, but this did not happen often, for I
was a great diner-out, and the old gentleman, who was very fond of a good dinner, was a bit
of a Monsieur Pique-assiette, and liked it best when it cost him nothing, and there were
always plenty of English families too happy to have his company and to be his Amphitryons. I could not conscientiously say that I found he
had much heart, or that his temper was very good. When I first knew him, he was rather in
straitened circumstances, having, I believe, little beyond a mediocre pension from our
Court, for having once acted as Librarian and Secretary to Her Majesty old Queen Charlotte; but in 1821 he began to receive an
additional £100 per annum from the Royal Society of Literature, founded by George IV. This, in a country like Naples, set him quite at
his ease. But, in his very old age, in 1830, on the death of George
IV., and on the accession of William
IV., or so soon after those events as the Whigs scrambled into office, the royal
grant was withheld, and Mathias, like poor Coleridge and eight others, was deprived of that valuable supply. A hard
case! but quite in accordance with the spirit and genius of Whiggery. He lived on for some
years after this blow.
Once at that restaurant I saw him greatly ruffled and excited. A young
Austrian officer, who had been taking rather too much champagne, fell into a passion and
broke an empty bottle over the head of a waiter—a real Roman, if you please! We were seated
at a table just opposite, and a fragment of the bottle fell among our plates and dishes,
and nearly struck the old bard, who turned very pale, and then fell into a passion himself.
He was for ![]()
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going at once to the officer’s Colonel; nay, he would
go at once to General Frimont, the Commander-in-Chief, he would have
satisfaction for the outrage; he certainly cared a great deal more for his own risk and the
disrespect offered to him, than for the Roman’s head, which, indeed, was very little
hurt, for the fellow had on a cloth cap. I remonstrated, and tried to soothe him. If he had
laid his complaint, the officer would have been severely dealt with, and the young man, a
very handsome fellow, a native of Transylvania, who met his death about a year after this
by falling backwards over the first landing-place at the Theatre of San Carlo, had been for
some time my intimate associate, if not friend. The Roman had been exceedingly insolent to
him, and I had overheard the words which had so provoked him. I went and brought him across
the room to apologize to the old gentleman, which he did in a proper style, and in very
good French; but unfortunately the poet was not accustomed to speak French, and not very
quick in understanding it when spoken. His brow continued to be clouded, and it was not
brightened by the waiter bringing in the conto. However, in the end I succeeded in my
object, and Mathias, instead of going to the Colonel
or to the General, went on with me, just across the way, to the Opera House. He was a great
frequenter of that house, one of the most constant of its habitués,
being exceedingly fond of Italian music and ballets
d’action. He hired one of the numbered reserved seats in the
pit, by the year, and all the other pit habitués treated the old man
with great respect and kindness. Having many friends who had their boxes, to which there
was free access without any payment, and without any ceremony after you had been once
invited, I was an habitué of the boxes, and night after night, week
after week, year after year, on looking down into the pit, I was sure to see the spare
form, and lustrous, shining bald pate ![]()
| CHAP. VIII] | “PURSUITS OF LITERATURE” | 89 |
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of the author of the “Pursuits of Literature,” not
unfrequently indicating by its oscillations and noddings that the poet, soothed and lulled
by the music, was indulging in a nap.
Ischitella’s daughter, who knew him through
me, and who often watched him in the pit, used to call his bald pate il lampione, or the great lamp, and when San Carlo was
fully illuminated on Court Festival nights, it really shone almost as brightly as a lamp.
His seat was just under Ischitella’s* box. I see it and its
occupant still; I shall never lose the vision of old Mathias’s pate. He would never acknowledge the fact, perfectly well
known to all literary people, that he was the sole author of the “Pursuits of Literature,” and he could never,
with anything like patience, hear that book spoken of or alluded to. One day, in our snug
and trim garden, before I knew of this peculiarity, I asked him if he had a copy of that
book, as I had not seen it for many years, and wished to improve my acquaintance with it.
“No, sir!” said he, very sharply and almost angrily. “No,
sir! I have no such book, nor do I know anybody that has, nor do I care to know
anything about it!” I uttered an apology, and retreated to my own rooms. That
evening, at an English party, he told my friend Mrs. I. that he
thought me rather an impertinent young fellow.
However, I soon got over this. I wrote a short review of his version of Spenser, and of some other of his pieces,
which was published, if I remember right, in the old London Magazine. A friend showed him this, and it had the good fortune to
please the tetchy, very fastidious old poet. But we had our little tiffs afterwards. I
could go almost entirely along with him in his worship of Gray. I could fully agree with him that in everything
Gray had an
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exquisite taste, and that his letters are our best; but I could not be
led along by him into an enthusiastic admiration of Mason’s “Elfrida” and “Caractacus.”
It will be inferred, from what I have said, that old Mathias had neither “chick nor child.”
He had never been married, and I can scarcely believe in the possibility of his ever having
been in love. Like every old bachelor I have known, with the single and glorious exception
of Mountstuart Elphinstone, he was amazingly
attentive to his own comforts, great or small, and eminently selfish. An accomplished
scholar he certainly was, but I should hesitate to call him a man of genius. His English
poem, the “Pursuits of
Literature,” is but a tame, colourless production, and but for its
foot-notes, which make ten times the quantity of the verses, it would never be looked at.
In these notes, in addition to a large amount of classical and other learning, there is a
considerable quantity of fun and quiet sarcasm. The hit at poor Poet-Laureate Pye will not be forgotten. “Mr.
Pye, the present Poet-Laureate, with the best intentions at this
momentous period, if not with the very best poetry, translated the verses of Tyrtaeus the Spartan. They were designed to produce
animation throughout the kingdom, and among the militia in particular.
“Several of the Reviewing Generals—I do not mean the monthly or critical—were much impressed with their weight and
importance, and, at a Board of General Officers, an experiment was agreed upon, which
unfortunately failed. They were read aloud at Warley Common and at Barham Downs by the
adjutants, at the head of five different regiments at each camp, and much was expected.
But before they were half finished, all the front ranks, and as many others as were
within hearing or verse-shot, dropped their arms suddenly, and were all found fast
asleep! Marquis Townshend, who never ap-![]()
| CHAP. VIII] | HIS ITALIAN POEMS | 91 |
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proved of the scheme, said, with his usual
pleasantry, that the first of all poets observed ‘that Sleep is the brother of
Death,’ 1796.”
I left Mathias at Naples, in May,
1827, when I was going to Sicily, Malta, Greece, and Turkey.* He was living up on the Pizzofalcone, in the same quiet, retired apartment which opened upon
the queer little garden and its gods and goddesses, and there he continued to live for some
years longer, reading very little, scarcely anything English, and conning his Italian
rhymes. I was vexed and grieved when I heard that the stopping of his £100 a year made him
feel the res angusta domi, and deprived him of
many of the little pleasures which had become habits of his life. He never spoke Italian
very fluently. I suppose that in England, shut out from the Continent by the wars of the
French Republic and then of Bonaparte, he had few
opportunities of speaking it until he was advanced in years; but he could write it with
great correctness and propriety, and in a manner to astonish the natives when they
considered that he was a foreigner, and one who had never set his foot on their soil until
he was an old man. Yet Italian critics would say that his “Rime” were little
more than a work in mosaic, being made up of an expression of Dante here, of Petrarca there, of a bit of Ariosto in this line, a bit of Tasso
in that, and so on through the “Testi di
Lingua” or Italian classics, and though very cleverly and
gracefully put together, the pieces and component parts of this mosaic, of so many
different ages and of so many and varied styles, produced a rather incongruous and
unpleasant effect. At the time, when I was reading a great deal more of Italian poetry than
of any other, I fancied I could myself detect the incongruity and the artificiality. I may
say that, at the very least, I could see that Mathias’s
“Rime,”
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“ne coulaient pas de
source.” He was “Pastore
Arcado,” an Arcadian shepherd, with the crook of the Roman
Academy, a sort of Florentine Della Crusca. I wish I could see again his bald, shining pate
in the pit at San Carlo. But he has been lying for years in the English cemetery just
outside the city of Naples.
Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533)
Italian poet, author of the epic romance
Orlando Furioso
(1532).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Sir William Drummond (1770 c.-1828)
Scottish classical scholar and Tory MP; succeeded Lord Elgin as ambassador to the Ottoman
Porte (1803); his
Oedipus judaicus, in which he interpreted the Old
Testament as an astrological allegory, was privately printed in 1811.
Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859)
After education in the Edinburgh High School he was in the Bengal civil service (1796);
he was ambassador at Kabul (1808) and governor of Bombay (1819-27).
Robert Foulis (1707-1776)
Educated at Glasgow University, with his brother Andrew he was a bookseller and printer
to Glasgow University who specialized in classical texts.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
English poet, author of “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” “Elegy written in a
Country Churchyard,” and “The Bard”; he was professor of history at Cambridge
(1768).
Francesco Pinto, principe d' Ischitella (1788-1875)
Italian aide-de-camp to King Joachim Murat; he was Minister of War in the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies (1848-55). He published
Mémoires et souvenirs de ma vie
(1864).
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English man of letters, among many other works he edited
A Dictionary
of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote
Lives of the Poets (1779-81).
Charles Macfarlane (1799-1858)
A traveler, historian, and miscellaneous writer who knew Shelley in Italy; he active in
the Royal Asiatic Society and worked for the publisher Charles Knight and the Society for
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. His
Reminiscences was published
in 1917.
William Mason (1725-1797)
English poet, the friend and biographer of Thomas Gray; author of
Odes (1756),
Elfrida (1752), and
The
English Garden (4 books, 1772-81).
Thomas James Mathias (1755-1835)
English satirist, the anonymous author of
Pursuits of Literature
(1794-98) and editor of
The Works of Thomas Gray, 2 vols (1814).
From 1817 he lived in Italy, where he translated classic English poets into Italian.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
Henry James Pye (1745-1813)
Succeeded William Whitehead as Poet Laureate in 1790; Pye first attracted attention with
Elegies on Different Occasions (1768); author of
The Progress of Refinement: a Poem (1783).
Mariana Starke (1762-1838)
English dramatist and travel writer; her
Travels on the Continent
(1820) became the basis for John Murray's series of guides.
Torquato Tasso (1554-1595)
Italian poet, author of
Aminta (1573), a pastoral drama, and
Jerusalem Delivered (1580).
George Townshend, first marquess Townshend (1724-1807)
Military officer who fought at Culloden and in the Quebec campaign; he was lord
lieutenant of Ireland (1767-72) where he acquired a reputation for corruption.
Tyrtaeus (600 BC fl.)
Spartan poet famous for his war-songs; his poetry survives only in fragments.
Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867)
American essayist who wrote for the
American Monthly Magazine
(1829-31); he published
Pencillings by the Way (1835).
The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature. (1756-1817). Originally conducted by Tobias Smollett, the
Critical Review began
as a rival to the
Monthly Review, begun in 1749. It survived for 144
volumes before falling prey to the more fashionable quarterlies of the nineteenth
century.
The London Magazine. (1820-1829). Founded by John Scott as a monthly rival to
Blackwood's, the
London Magazine included among its contributors Charles Lamb, John Clare, Allan Cunningham,
Thomas De Quincey, and Thomas Hood.
The Monthly Review. (1749-1844). The original editor was Ralph Griffiths; he was succeeded by his son George Edward who
edited the journal from 1803 to 1825, who was succeeded by Michael Joseph Quin
(1825–32).
