CHAPTER XI.

ROBERT BAGE.

CHARLES Lamb remarked that literature was a very good staff, but would not do for a crutch; and Mr. Douglas Jerrold, putting the stamp of his genius upon an old pun, has said, "let no man be bred only to literature, for literature will not be bread to him." These epigrammatic observations contain a truth which has been acknowledged and acted upon by authors for many a generation. Even of the most famous and successful and industrious writers, only a few have been altogether supported by literature. Either they have been endowed with private fortunes, or they have applied themselves to some more certain vocation than authorship for the means of existence.

Defoe was a merchant and a place-holder; Fielding was a stipendiary magistrate; Smollett and Goldsmith both tried to get fees by the practice of medicine, and at times succeeded; Swift was a beneficed clergyman, then a dean; Richardson and Godwin were booksellers; Sterne had church preferment; Sir Walter Scott was a lawyer with private fortune, supposed worth £300 per annum, and a monied wife, long ere he earned £1000 from publishers. Wordsworth had a lucrative place, as well as comfortable private means; Charles Lamb stuck to his clerkship; and in our times several of the best and most popular writers get the greater portion of their incomes from Westminster, or the dark offices of the city. In the days of Pope, a penniless aspirant for literary honours, either was made wealthy in a trice by getting a government sinecure, or died slowly of

nor,

starvation and hunger in Grub Street, unknown-or known only to be visited with vulgar ridicule. In this generation he neither hopes for £1200 per annum from Downing Street, if he be a wise man, thinks there are many chances of his earning secure opulence by his pen, but decently attending to the humble duties of beaverism, either as a barrister or attorney, a schoolmaster or doctor, a clerk or shopkeeper, a tutor or a public lecturer, writes not for money but from love of art, and patiently bides his time, till men shall say, "You are a true poet; and we will have you for our teacher."

Robert Bage was a popular writer, and also an industrious tradesman. He was born on the 29th of February, 1728, at Darley, a village on the Derwent, near Derby, where his father was a paper maker, and, like Fielding's father, had four wives in proper succession. Robert was the offspring of the first union, and after receiving a poor education at a school at Derby, was instructed in the mystery of his father's occupation.

Bred up in the austere simplicity of Quakerism, it was perhaps natural that Robert Bage should, in manhood, have so little respect for persons, and established pomps, as to deride kings, and be to his dying day as thorough-going a republican as Holcroft or Payne. But remarkable it i certainly is that a man, reared a Quaker amongst Quakers, and to the last entertaining a warm affection for that decorous and respectable sect, should have been a freethinker, and have entertained the world with a series of as immoral and flagrantly indecent novels, as the taste of the less refined of his time would bear. To add, in the minds of many, to the contradictory nature of this loose writer and infidel offspring of a Quaker, we may here remark that he was conspicuous for gentleness of manner to all of all degrees, was respected everywhere as a man of the most delicate honour, throughout life was an ever-present help to

the troubled, and in his own house was a gentle and loverlike husband, a singularly considerate master, and a most affectionate and tender father.

When he was only twenty-three years old, Robert Bage made a prudent and good match, the girl he was so happy as to win being amiable, well-looking, and endowed with good sense, and a handsome sum of money. On becoming a married man he settled at Ilford, four miles from Tamworth, where he carried on the paper factory which was conducted by him to the end of his days. As soon as he was fairly fixed in this position, he looked round for some means of intellectual amusement, and applied himself energetically to the study of the French language, and soon he was able to read with facility not only the romances and plays, but the political treatises also, which were then pouring from Paris into every part of Europe. But he did not present himself to the public as an author till long after his wedding.

In 1765, Bage and three other men (of whom Dr. Darwin was one) took, in partnership, an iron factory. The result of this enterprise was that, at the end of fourteen years, when the partners dissolved their union, Bage found himself a poorer man by as much as £1,500.

It was after this commercial reverse, that he, either to console himself, or with a desire to earn money, commenced a work of fiction. His first novel, "Mount Kenneth," was sold to Lowndes for £30, and was published in 1781. In 1784 was published "Barham Downs;" in 1787 appeared "The Fair Syrian ;" next came "James Wallace," which was followed in 1792 by "Man as he is," and in 1796, by Hermsprong, or, Man as he is not."

These novels were well received, and created almost as much sensation in Germany as in England. But there is little to be said for them. They are just such productions as might be expected from a sagacious, clear-witted trades

man, who had no mean insight into human nature, and who aimed at disseminating the ultra-liberalism of his political, and the scepticism of his religious philosophy, in fictitious narratives, after the models supplied by Fielding and Richardson. They contain nothing new to serve as a hint to the artist, and their pages are so disfigured with obscenities, that it is a just subject for wonder how Sir Walter Scott admitted some of them into an edition of " Novelists," intended for the use of families.

The close of Robert Bage's life, of simple habits and impure influence, was blessed with honour and serenity. His many amiable qualities, his spotless probity, his unobtrusive benevolence, and his gentle demeanour, secured him the love of a numerous circle of friends, and even in those days of political and religious rancour caused his neighbours to regard with feelings of compassion, rather than detestation, “his unfortunate and horrible opinions."

He died on the 1st of September, 1801, at Tamworth, where he resided for the last eight years of his life. He left behind him a reputation that is already well-nigh dead, a widow, and two sons. Charles, the eldest, who was a cotton manufacturer at Shrewsbury, and Edward, who was a surgeon at Tamworth.

CHAPTER XII.

SOPHIA AND HARRIET LEE.

In the last century John Lee, the actor, and in some sort dramatic author, did anything but flourish. A man of mean abilities, unbounded self-esteem, many sorrows, and an utterly abominable temper; he succeeded in making himself at one time pitied, and at another despised, by always having a grievance with which to bore the theatrical world in villanously written pamphlets.

The only good thing that is related of him, is that when he was manager of the Edinburgh theatre, he constructed some improved stage thunder in a remarkable manner. He procured a parcel of nine-pound shot, and put them in a wheel-barrow, to which was affixed a nine-pound wheel. He then had ridges fixed at the back of the stage; and when dramatic emergencies required the deep rumblings of Jove, a carpenter trundled the artillery waggon backwards and forwards, over the ridges. The play was Lear; and for a time this original apparatus answered well enough, but just as the unfortunate king was in the midst of braving the enraged elements, the carpenter's foot slipped, down he came, and awful was the crash that followed; even yet more awful to the manager was the consequent uproar of the house. The stage being on a declivity, the balls swept down into the orchestra with a velocity as if they had been shot from cannon, and to escape them the venerable king leaped about with astonishing grace and agility. To add to the absurdity of the scene, the prostrate carpenter, unable