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The Adventures of Hugh Trevor

T >> Thomas Holcroft >> The Adventures of Hugh Trevor




So copious was my elocution that in less than four hours I had filled
eight pages of paper; two of which at least were Greek and Latin
quotations, from Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Cicero. I meant to
astonish mankind with my erudition! All shall acknowledge, said I,
that a writer of wit, energy, and genius is at last sprung up; one
who is profoundly skilled too in classical learning. My whole soul
was bent on saying strong things, fine things, learned things, pretty
things, good things, wise things, and severe things. Never was there
more florid railing. My argument was a kind of pitiful Jonas, and my
words were the whale in which it was swallowed up.

I was quite enamoured of my performance, and was impatient for twelve
o'clock the next day, that his lordship might admire it! In the mean
time, to allay my insatiable thirst of praise, I took it to upright
Enoch. When the reverend little man heard that I was employed by his
lordship to write on affairs of government, he declared it as a thing
decided that my fortune was made: but he dropped his under lip when
told that I had attacked the minister--Was prodigiously sorry!--That
was the wrong side--Ministers paid well for being praised; but they
gave nothing, except fine, imprisonment, and pillory, for blame.

I heard him with contempt, but was too eager in my thirst of
approbation to make any reply, except by urging him to read. He put on
his spectacles and began, but blundered so wretchedly that I was soon
out of patience; and taking the paper from him began to read myself.

No one will doubt but that he was the first to be tired. However, he
said it was fine; and was quite surprised to hear me read Greek with
such sonorous volubility. For his part it was long since he had read
such authors: to which I sarcastically yielded my ready assent. He had
partly forgotten them, he said. Indeed! answered I. My tone signified
he never knew them--'but you think the composition good do you
not?'--'Oh, it is fine! Prodigiously fine!'

Fine was the word, and with fine I was obliged to be satisfied. As for
prodigious, it sometimes had meaning and sometimes none: it depended
on emphasis and action. I knew indeed that he was no great orator;
otherwise I should have expected an eulogium that might have rivaled
the French academy, the odes of Boileau, or even my own composition.

I was still hungry: my vanity wanted more food, much more, though I
knew not where to seek it. To write down a minister was such a task,
and I had begun it in so sublime a style, that rest I could not:
though it was with great difficulty, having done with Enoch, that I
could escape from Miss and her mamma.

They were dressed to go to a party, and they insisted that I should
go with them. It would give their friends such _monstrous_ pleasure,
and they should all be so _immense_ happy, that go I must. But their
rhetoric was vain. I was upon thorns; there were no hopes that the
party would listen to my manuscript; and as I could not read it to
others, I must go home and read it to myself.

As I was going, Miss followed me to the door, called up one of her
significant traverse glances, and told me she was sure I was a
prodigious rake! But no wonder! All the fine men were rakes!

I returned to my chamber, read again and again, added new flowers,
remembered new quotations, and inserted new satire. Enoch had told me
it was fine, yet I never could think it was fine enough.

Night came, but with it little inclination in me to sleep: and in the
morning I was up and at work, reading, correcting and embellishing my
letter before I could well distinguish a word. About nine o'clock,
while I was rehearsing aloud in the very heat of oratory, two chairmen
knocked at my door and interrupted my revery: they were come to take
away the trunk of Turl. The thought struck me and I immediately
inquired--'Is the gentleman himself here?' I was answered in the
affirmative, and I requested one of the men to go and inform him that
an old acquaintance was above, who would be very glad to speak a word
with him.

Mr. Turl came, was surprised to see me, and as I received him
kindly answered me in the same tone. At college he had acquired the
reputation of a scholar, a good critic, and a man of strong powers of
mind. The discovery of a diamond mine would not have given me so much
pleasure, as the meeting him at this lucky moment! He was the very
person I wanted. He was a judge, and I should have praise as much as I
could demand! The beauties of my composition would all be as visible
to him as they were to myself. They were too numerous, too strong,
too striking to escape his notice; they would flash upon him at every
line, would create astonishment, inspire rapture, and hold him in one
continual state of acclamation and extacy!

I requested him to sit down, apologized, told him I had a favour to
ask, took up my manuscript, smiled, put it in his hand, stroked my
chin, and begged him to read and tell me its faults. I had a perfect
dependence on his good taste, and nobody could be more desirous of
hearing the truth and correcting their errors than I was! Nobody!

I was surprised to observe that he felt some reluctance, and attempted
to excuse himself: but I was too importunate, and the devil of vanity
was too strong in me, to be resisted. I pleaded, with great eloquence
and much more truth than I myself suspected, how necessary it was
in order to attain excellence that men should communicate with each
other, should boldly declare their opinions, and patiently listen to
reproof.

Thus urged by arguments which he knew to be excellent, and hoping from
my zeal that I knew the same, he complied, took out his pencil, and
began his task.

He went patiently through it, without any apparent emotion or delay,
except frequently to make crosses with his pencil. Never was mortal
more amazed than I was at his incomprehensible coldness! 'Has he no
feeling?' said I. 'Is he dead? No token of admiration! no laughter! no
single pause of rapture!' It was astonishing beyond all belief!

Having ended, he put down the manuscript, and said not a word!

This was a mortification not to be supported. Speak he must. I endured
his silence perhaps half a minute, perhaps a whole one, but it was an
age! 'I am afraid, Mr. Turl,' said I, 'you are not very well pleased
with what you have read?'

The tone of my voice, the paleness of my lips, and the struggling
confusion of my eyes sufficiently declared my state of mind, and he
made no answer. My irritability increased. 'What, Sir,' said I, 'is it
so contemptible a composition as to be wholly unworthy your notice?'

I communicated much of the torture which I felt, but collecting
himself he looked at me with some compassion and much stedfastness,
and answered--'I most sincerely wish, Mr. Trevor, that what I have
to say, since you require me to speak, were exactly that which you
expected I should say. I confess, it gives me some pain to perceive
that you mistook your own motives, when you desired me to read
and mark what I might think to be faults. You imagined there were
no faults! forgetting that no human effort is without them. The
longer you write the less you will be liable to the error of that
supposition.'--'Perhaps, Sir, you discover nothing but faults?'--'Far
the contrary: I have discovered the first great quality of genius.'

This was a drop of reviving cordial, and I eagerly asked--'What is
that?'--'Energy. But, like the courage of Don Quixote, it is ill
directed; it runs a tilt at sheep and calls them giants.' 'Go on,
Sir,' said I: 'continue your allegory.'--'Its beauties are courtezans,
its enchanted castles pitiful hovels, and its Mambrino's helmet is no
better than a barber's bason.' 'But pray, Sir, be candid, and point
out all its defects!--All!'--'I am sorry to observe, Mr. Trevor,
that my candour has already been offensive to your feelings. If we
would improve our faculties, we must not seek unmerited praise, but
resolutely listen to truth.'--'Why, Sir, should you suppose I seek
unmerited praise.'

He made no reply, and I repeated my requisition, that he should point
out all the defects of my manuscript: once more, all, all! 'The
defects, Mr. Trevor,' said he, 'are many of them such as are common
to young writers; but some of them are peculiar to writers whose
imagination is strong, and whose judgment is unformed. Paradoxical as
it may seem, it is a disadvantage to your composition that you have
the right side of the question. Diffuse and unconnected arguments, a
style loaded with epithets and laborious attempts in the writer to
display himself, are blemishes that give less offence when employed
to defend error than when accumulated in the cause of truth, which is
forgotten and lost under a profusion of ornaments. The difficulties of
composition resemble those of geometry: they are the recollection of
things so simple and convincing that we imagine we never can forget
them; yet they are frequently forgotten at every step, and in every
sentence. There is one best and clearest way of stating a proposition,
and that alone ought to be chosen: yet how often do we find the same
argument repeated and repeated and repeated, with no variety except in
the phraseology? In developing any thought, we ought not to encumber
it by trivial circumstances: we ought to say all that is necessary,
and not a word more. We ought likewise to say one thing at once; and
that concluded to begin another. We certainly write to be understood,
and should therefore never write in a language that is unknown to a
majority of our readers. The rule will apply as well to the living
languages as to the dead, and its infringement is but in general
a display of the author's vanity. Epithets, unless they increase
the strength of thought or elucidate the argument, ought not to be
admitted. Of similes, metaphors, and figures of every kind the same
may be affirmed: whatever does not enlighten confuses. There are two
extremes, against which we ought equally to guard: not to give a dry
skeleton, bones without flesh; nor an imbecile embryo, flesh without
bones.'

'I understand you, Sir. What you have read is an imbecile
embryo?'--'Your importunity, Mr. Trevor, and my desire to do you
service have extorted an opinion from me. I must not shrink from the
truth: in confirmation of what I have already said, I must add, that
your composition is strong in language, but weak in argument.'--'Ha!
Much declamation, little thought?'

He was once more silent for a few seconds, and then assuming a less
serious tone, endeavoured to turn the conversation by inquiring if I
were come to reside in London, and to live with his lordship? I took
care to inform him that I considered myself as a visitor in the house;
and that I meant to take my degrees, be ordained, and devote myself to
the church.

I then attempted to bring him back to the manuscript; but
ineffectually: he seemed determined to say no more. This silence was
painful to both of us, and after I had inquired where he lived, and
made some professions, which formal civility wrung from me, that I
should be glad to see him again, we parted. We were neither of us
entirely satisfied with the other; and I certainly much the least.

The lesson however did me infinite service. The film was in part
removed from my eyes, in my own despite. I read again, but with a very
different spirit: his marks in the margin painfully met my eye, with
endless repetition. The rules he had been delivering were strong in my
memory, and I frequently discovered their application. After the clear
statement he had given of them, I could but seldom bring myself to
doubt of their justice.

The result was, I immediately went to work; and, disgusted with my
first performance, began another. In truth, my too much confidence and
haste had made me guilty of many mistakes; which I knew to be such,
the moment my vanity had been a little sobered into common sense. I
had often written before, and perhaps never so ill.

I now arranged my thoughts, omitted my quotations, discarded many of
my metaphors, shortened my periods, simplified my style, reduced the
letter to one fourth of its former length, and finished the whole by
one o'clock. His lordship was not so fastidious a critic as I thought
Turl had been; he was delighted with my performance. It is true he
made some corrections and additions, in places where I had not been
so personal and acrimonious, against the minister, as his feelings
required; but, as he accompanied them with praise, I readily
submitted; and, thus improved, my first political essay was committed
to the press.




CHAPTER VI


_Further efforts of critical improvement: Doubts of a serious kind
suggested: More politics and new acquaintance: A dissertation on
rakes_


The critical precepts of Turl were still tingling in my ears; and as
I meant to shew the bishop some of the sermons that I had written, or
in other words as many as he should be willing to read, they underwent
an immediate revisal. Though in general they were less faulty than my
post-haste political effort, yet I found quite enough to correct; and
was so far reconciled to the benefit I had derived from Turl as to
wish to meet him again.

In two or three days therefore, after having expunged, interlined,
and polished one of my best performances till I was tolerably well
satisfied with it, I visited him at his lodgings. I then owned to him,
that I had not received the castigation he gave me quite so patiently
as I ought to have done: but I had nevertheless profited by it, and
was come to request more favours of the same kind; though I could not
but acknowledge I had hopes that my present performance was not quite
so defective as the former.

He received me kindly, but took the manuscript I offered him with what
I again thought great coldness. He read two or three pages, without as
before drawing his pencil upon me, and then paused. 'You have enjoined
me a task,' said he, 'Mr. Trevor, which I do not know how to execute
to my own satisfaction. You are not aware of the truth, and if I
tell it you I shall offend.'--'Nay, Sir; I beg you will not spare
me. Speak!'--'You have not explicitly defined to yourself your own
motives: you think you are come in search of improvement; in reality,
you are come in search of praise.'--'Not unless praise be my
due.'--'Which you are convinced it is.'--'You see deeply into the
human heart, Mr. Turl.'--'If I do not, I am ill qualified to criticise
literary compositions.'--'And you think my divinity no better than my
politics?'--'You do not state the question as I could wish. Divinity
I must acknowledge is not a favourite subject with me.'--'I have
heard as much.'--'I am too sincere a friend to morality to encourage
dissention, quarrels, and enmity, concerning things which whoever
may pretend to believe no one can prove that he understands. As a
composition, from the little I have read, I believe your sermon to be
very superior to your letter; but from the exposition of your subject,
I perceive it treats on points of faith, asserts church authority, and
stigmatises dissent with reprobation. You tell me you are recommended
to a bishop: with him it will do you service! to me it is
unintelligible.'

His inclination to heresy, or, which is the same thing, his difference
with me in opinion, piqued me on this occasion even more than the
unsparing sincerity of his remarks. I answered, I was sorry he did not
agree with me, on subjects which I was convinced were so momentous;
and owned it was for that reason that, while he remained at the
university, I had avoided his society.

He replied, he doubted if it were right to avoid the vicious: and the
precaution which he himself thought necessary, on all such occasions,
was to inquire whether, in accusing another of vice, he were not
himself guilty of error. He considered his own opinions as eternally
open to revision; and if any man were to tell him that two and two did
not make four, he should have no objection to re-examine the facts,
with his opponent, on which his own previous conviction had been
founded. We ought to be ardent in the defence of truth; but we ought
likewise to be patient and benevolent.

I made some attempts to convince him of the impiety of his scepticism;
while he remained cool, but unshaken; and I left him with mingled
emotions of pity, for his adherence to doctrines so damnable; and
of admiration, at the amenity and philanthropy with which they were
delivered.

Thus catechised in criticism and theology, the ardour of my pursuits
would perhaps have found some temporary abatement, had it not been
rouzed anew. My letter had appeared, signed Themistocles, his
lordship's known political cognomen. It was the first in which he had
declared openly against the minister. His sentiments in consequence of
this letter were become public, and many of the minority, desirous of
fixing in their interest one whom they had before considered rather
as their opponent than their friend, came to visit and pay him their
compliments.

The resolute manner in which I had purposely and uniformly shewn him
that I must be treated as his equal had produced its intended effect:
I was dismissed with no haughty nod, but came and went as I pleased,
and frequently bore a part in their conversation. I had still an open
ear for vanity, which was not a little tickled by the frequent terms
of applause and admiration with which Themistocles was quoted. His
lordship did me the justice to inform his visitors that the letter
was written by me. We had indeed conversed together; they were his
thoughts, his principles, and it was true he had made such additions
and corrections as were necessary. Then, proceeding to invectives
against the minister, he there dropped me, and my share of merit.

The mortification of this was the greater because truth and falsehood
were so mingled that, however inclined I might be, I knew not which
way to do myself justice. But the praise, which they bestowed wholly
on his lordship and which his lordship was willing to receive, I very
unequivocally took to myself. It gave me animation; the pen was seldom
out of my hand, and the exercise was sanative.

Mean while Enoch and his agreeable family, who knew so well when
things were as they should be, were not neglected. I was careful to
inform them of my rising fame; and my new friends, for so I accounted
all those who paid their court to his lordship and his lordship's
favourite, were individually named, characterised, and celebrated.

The family heard me with avidity, each desirous of having a share in
a lord, and the friends of a lord. Enoch told me I was in high luck,
mamma affirmed I was a fine writer, and Miss was sure I must be a
_monstrous favourite_! I was a favourite with every body; and, for her
part, she did not wonder at it. 'Not but it is a great pity,' added
she, aside, 'that you are such a rake, Mr. Trevor.'

This repeated charge very justly alarmed my morality, and I very
seriously began a refutation. But in vain. I might say what I would;
she could see very plainly I was a prodigious rake, and nothing could
convince her to the contrary. Though she had heard that your greatest
rakes make the best husbands. Perhaps it might be true, but she did
not think she could be persuaded to make the venture. She did not know
what might happen, to be sure; though she really did not think she
could. She could not conceive how it was, but some how or another she
always found something agreeable about rakes. It was a great pity they
should be rakes, but she verily believed the women loved them, and
encouraged them in their seducing arts. For her part, she would keep
her fingers out of the fire as long as she could: but, if it were her
destiny to love a rake, what could she do? Nobody could help being in
love, and it would be very hard indeed to call what one cannot help a
crime.

In this key would she continue, without let or delay, whenever she
had me to herself, till some accident came to my relief: for the
philosophy of Miss Eliza, on the subjects of love and rakishness, was
exhaustless; and though it could not always convince, it could puzzle.
I often knew not how to behave, such a warfare did she sometimes
kindle between inclination and morality. My resource was in silence;
hers in talking. Notwithstanding her very great prudence, I suspect
there might have been danger, had I not been guarded by the three fold
shield of an unfashionable sense of moral right, strong aspirings
after clerical purity, and the unfaded remembrance of the lovely
chaste Olivia.




CHAPTER VII


_Enoch made acquainted with more of my perfections, which by his
advice are brought to market: A bishop's parlour: The bishop
himself, or a true pillar of the church: Heretical times and arduous
undertakings_


New honours awaited me. My lord the bishop was come to town, of which
Enoch had providently taken care to have instant notice. Among the
other good things I had related of myself, I had not forgotten to tell
Enoch of the several sermons I had written; nor to shew him that which
I had corrected and taken to Turl.

I had another attainment, of which too I did not neglect to inform
him; for it was one of which I was not a little proud. Much of my
time, during my residence at Oxford, had been devoted to the study
of polemical divinity, or the art of abuse, extracted from the
scriptures, the fathers, and the different doctors of different
faiths. The points that had most attracted my attention were the
disputes concerning the Athanasian creed, and the thirty-nine
articles. On both these subjects I had made many extracts, many
remarks, and collected many authorities; for I had subscribed the
thirty-nine articles, and consequently the Athanasian creed, and what
I had done it became me to defend. This is the maxim of all people,
who think it more worthy their dignity to be consistent in error than
to forget self, revere truth, and retract.

I had beside been well educated for this kind of pertinacity. The
rector, when living, was so sternly orthodox as to hold the slightest
deviation from church authority in abhorrence. What he meant by church
authority, or what any rational man can mean, it might be difficult to
define: except that church authority and orthodox opinions are, with
each individual, those precise points which that individual makes a
part of his creed. But as, unfortunately for church authority, no two
individuals ever had or ever can have the same creed, church authority
is like a body in motion, no man can tell where it resides. At that
time I thought otherwise, and then as now did not refrain from
speaking what I thought.

In addition to the other arts of pleasing, which the industrious Enoch
had acquired, that of maintaining orthodox doctrines in the presence
of orthodox people was one. He was glad to find me so deep a
proficient; for to what market could we so profitably carry such ware
as to the levee of a bishop?

The little man, scrupulously attentive to whatever might advance me
or him in the good graces of the right reverend, advised me to put my
corrected sermon in my pocket; which, with or without his advice, I
suspect I should have done. 'These particulars,' said the provident
Enoch, 'must every one of them be told. But be you under no concern;
leave all that to me. Merit you know is always modest.'

Though I had not on this occasion the courage to contradict him, I
doubted the truth of his apothegm. The good qualities I could discover
in myself I wished to have noticed; and if nobody else would notice
them I must. Like other people, I have too frequently been desirous to
make my principles bend to my practice.

Though the door was the door of a bishop and we had the text in
our favour, 'Knock and it shall be opened,' yet Enoch, no doubt
remembering his own good breeding, was too cautious to ask if his
lordship were at home. He bade the servant say that a clergyman of the
church of England and a young gentleman from Oxford, bringing letters
from the president of ---- college and other dignitaries of the
university, requested an audience.

The message was delivered, and we were ushered into a parlour,
the walls of which were decorated with the heads of the English
archbishops, surrounding Hogarth's modern midnight conversation. There
was not a book in the room; but there were six or eight newspapers.
With these we amused ourselves for some time, till the approach of the
bishop was announced by the creaking of his shoes, the rustling of his
silk apron, and the repeated hems with which he collected his dignity.

The moment I saw him, his presence reminded me of my old acquaintance,
the high-fed brawny doctors of Oxford. His legs were the pillars of
Hercules, his body a brewer's butt, his face the sun rising in a red
mist. We have been told that magnitude is a powerful cause of the
sublime; and if this be true, the dimensions of his lordship certainly
had a copious and indisputable claim to sublimity. He seemed born
to bear the whole hierarchy. His mighty belly heaved and his cheeks
swelled with the spiritual inflations of church power. He fixed his
open eyes upon me and surveyed me from top to toe. I too made my
remarks. 'He is a true son of the church,' said I.--The libertine
sarcasm was instantly repelled, and my train of ideas was purified
from such irreverend heresy--'He is an orthodox divine! A pillar of
truth! A Christian Bishop!' Thought is swift, and man assents and
recants before his eye can twinkle.

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