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STUART, (DR) GILBERT,
an eminent historical essayist, was born at Edinburgh in 1742. His father
was Mr George Stuart, professor of humanity (Latin) and Roman antiquities,
in the university of Edinbuigh. Gilbert received an accomplished education
in his native city, under the superintendence of his father. His education
was directed towards qualifying him for the bar; but it is questionable
whether his magnificent opinion of his own abilities permitted him ever
seriously to think of becoming an ordinary practising advocate. Before he
was twenty-two years of age, he made what was considered a splendid entrance
on the career of authorship, by publishing an "Historical Dissertation
concerning the English Constitution;" the circumstance, that four editions
of a work on a subject requiring so much information and power of thought,
yet which almost every man possessed knowledge enough to criticise, were
speedily issued, is of itself sufficient evidence that the young author
possessed a very powerful intellect. [Kerr (Life of Smellie) and others say
he was then only twenty-two years old; yet there is no edition of this work
older than 1768, when, according to the same authorities, he must have been
twenty-six years old.] When we consider the reputation of his father, it
cannot perhaps be argued as a very strong additional evidence of the esteem
in which the work was held, that the university of Edinburgh conferred on
the author the degree of Doctor of Laws. His next literary labour was the
editing of the second edition of Sullivan’s Lectures on the English
Constitution, in 1772, to which he prefixed a "Discourse on the Government
and Laws of England." Dr Stuart endeavoured to obtain one of the law chairs
in the university of Edinburgh, whether that of Scottish or of civil law,
the writers who have incidentally noticed the circumstances of his life, do
not mention; nor are they particular as to the period, which would appear
from his conduct to his opponents, in the Edinburgh Magazine of 1773, to
have been some time before that year. [According to the list of Professors
in Bower’s History of the University of Edinburgh, the only law chair
succeeded to for many years at this period of Stuart’s life, is that of the
law of nature and nations, presented to Mr James Balfour, in 1764. If we can
suppose this person to have been Mr Stuart’s successful opponent, we would
find him disappointed by the same fortunate person who snatched the moral
philosophy chair from Hume. The list seems, however, to be imperfect. No
notice, for instance, is taken of any one entering on the Scots law chair in
1765, when it was resigned by Erskine.] Whether he possessed a
knowledge of his subject sufficiently minute for the task of teaching it to
others, may have been a matter of doubt; his talents and general learning
were certainly sufficiently high, but his well-earned character for
dissipation, the effect of which was not softened by the supercilious
arrogance of his manners, was, to Dr Robertson and others, sufficient reason
for opposing him, without farther inquiry. To the influence of the worthy
principal, it has generally been considered that his rejection was owing;
and as he was of a temperament never to forgive, he turned the course of his
studies, and the future labour of his life, to the depreciation of the
literary performances of his adversary; turning aside only from his grand
pursuit, when some other object incidentally attracted his virulence, and
making even his inordinate thirst of fame secondary to his desire of
vengeance. After his disappointment, Stuart proceeded to London, where he
was for some time employed as a writer in the Monthly Review. His particular
contributions to this periodical have not been specified; but to one at all
curious about the matter, it might not be difficult to detect every sentence
of his magniloquent pen, from the polished order of the sentences, their
aspect of grave reflection, and the want of distinctness of idea, when they
are critically examined. By the establishment of the Edinburgh Magazine and
Review, in 1773, Stuart had more unlimited opportunities of performing the
great duty of his life. As manager of that periodical, he was associated
with Mr Smellie, a man of very different habits and temperament; and
Blacklock, Richardson, Gillies, and other men of considerable eminence, were
among the contributors. This periodical, which extended to five volumes, was
creditable to the authors as a literary production, and exhibited spirit and
originality, unknown to that class of literature in Scotland at the period,
and seldom equalled in England. But in regard to literature, Edinburgh was
then, what it has ceased to be, a merely provincial town. The connexions of
the booksellers, and the literature expected to proceed from it, did not
enable it to support a periodical for the whole country. It was the fate of
that under consideration, while it aimed at talent which would make it
interesting elsewhere, to concentrate it, in many instances, in virulence
which was uninteresting to the world in general, and which finally disgusted
those persons more personally acquainted with the parties attacked, whose
curiosity and interest it at first roused. Mr D’Israeli has discovered, and
printed in his Calamities of Authors, a part of the correspondence of Stuart
at this period, curiously characteristic of his exulting hopes of conquest.
"The proposals," he says, "are issued: the subscriptions in the
booksellers’ shops astonish: correspondents flock in; and, what will
surprise you, the timid proprietors of the Scots Magazine, have come to the
resolution of dropping their work. You stare at all this; and so do I too."
"Thus," observes Mr D’Israeli, " he flatters himself he is to
annihilate his rival, without even striking the first blow; the appearance
of his first number is to be the moment when their last is to come forth."
Authors, like the discoverers of mines, are the most sanguine creatures in
the world. Gilbert Stuart afterwards flattered himself that Dr Henry was
lying at the point of death, from the scalping of his tomahawk pen. But of
this anon. On the publication of the first number, in November, 1773, all is
exultation; and an account is facetiously expected, that "a thousand copies
had emigrated from the Row and Fleet Street." There is a serious composure
in his letter of December, which seems to be occasioned by the tempered
answer of his London correspondent. The work was more suited to the meridian
of Edinburgh, and from causes sufficiently obvious, its personality and
causticity. Stuart, however, assures his friend, that "the second number you
will find better than the first, and the third better than the second." The
next letter is dated March 4th, 1774, in which I find our author still in
good spirits. "The magazine rises and promises much in this quarter. Our
artillery has silenced all opposition. The rogues of the ‘uplifted hands’
decline the combat." These rogues are the clergy: and some others, who had
"uplifted hands," from the vituperative nature of their adversary: for he
tells us, that "now the clergy are silent; the town council have had
the presumption to oppose us, and have threatened Creech (the publisher in
Edinburgh) with the terror of making him a constable for his insolence. A
pamphlet on the abuses of Heriot’s hospital, including a direct proof of
perjury in the provost, was the punishment inflicted in turn.
And new papers are forging to chastise them, in regard to the poor’s
rate, which is again started; the improper choice of professors; and violent
stretches of the impost. The liberty of the press, in its fullest
extent, is to be employed against them." [Calamities of Authors, i. 54-7.]
The natural conclusion from
the tone of these letters, from circumstances in the conduct of Stuart,
which we have already recorded, and from some we may hereafter mention,
might perhaps be, that he was a man possessed with a general malignity
against the human race; yet it has been said that he was warm in his
friendships, and that his indignation against vice and meanness, frequently
exhibited, came from his heart. It will appear perhaps to be the truest
conclusion as to his character, that he was simply one of those men who are
termed persons of violent passions, and who may be made Falconbridges,
squire Westerns, or Gilbert Stuarts, from circumstances. The circumstances
which swerved his feelings into their particular course, appear to have done
so, by feeding his mind with arrogance, and making him look upon himself as
a being of superior mould to that of his fellows. Such a man, independently
of the want of restraint, which he must feel from the opinions of people
whom he thinks beneath him, invariably finds the world not so complimentary
to his genius as he is himself; and he consequently feels surrounded by
enemies,--by people who rob him of his just right. His father, long a
respectable professor, is said to have possessed the same fiery temperament;
but his mind was regulated by a routine of studies and duties. He probably
entered the world with lower expectations than those of his son, and had
less opportunity of nursing his arrogance, and his passions effervesced in
common irritability, and enthusiasm for particular branches of literature.
The mind of such a man as Stuart deserves a little study, beyond the extent
to which his merely literary importance would entitle him; and perhaps a few
extracts from his letters to Mr Smellie—a man certainly his equal in talent,
and his superior in useful information--may form not uninteresting specimens
of his arrogance. As Stuart was above troubling himself with dates, the
extracts are picked miscellaneously.
"Inclosed is Murray’s letter,
which you will consider attentively, and send me the result, that I may
write to him. That was to have been done by Creech and you, but has not yet
been thought of by either. The business we are about to engage in, is too
serious to be trifled with.
"It appears to me perfectly
obvious, that without a partner in London, we cannot possibly be supplied
with books; and on our speedy supply of them, the whole success of the work
must depend. Murray seems fully apprized of the pains and attention that are
necessary,--has literary connexions, and is fond of the employment,—let him,
therefore, be the London proprietor.
"If I receive your letters
to-morrow, they may be sent off the day after. Shut yourself up for two
hours after supper. Be explicit and full; and in the mean time, let me know
what books are sent off besides Harwood and the Child of Nature; which, by
the by, might have been sent off three full weeks ago, as they have been so
long in your possession.
"As to the introductory
paragraph about an extract from Kames, I wrote you fully about it ten days
ago; and it is a pain to me to write fifty times on the same subject. It is
odd that you will rather give one incessant trouble, than keep a book of
transactions, or lay aside the letters you receive with copy inclosed. The
extract from Kames is laid aside, to make way for extracts from Pennant,
which are more popular. Explain to---, who is by this time in town, the
ridiculousness of his behaviour. It would seem that his servants are perfect
idiots, and that he trusts to them. If I were in his place, and a servant
once neglected to do what I had ordered him, he should never receive from me
a second order.
"I beg that Creech and you
may have some communing about the fate of magazine; as I am no longer to
have any concern with it. I do not mean to write anything for it, after the
present volume is finished; and I fancy the next is the last number of the
third volume. I have another view of disposing of my time, and I
fancy it will almost wholly be taken up; the sooner, therefore, that I am
informed of your resolutions, the better." [Kerr’s Life of Smellie, v. i.]
Poor Mr Smellie seems to have
laboured with patient, but ineffectual perseverance, to check the ardour of
his restless colleague. An attack by Stuart on the Elements of Criticism by
lord Kames, he managed, by the transmutation of a few words, adroitly to
convert into a panegyric. "On the day of publication," says the memorialist
of Smellie, "Dr Stuart came to inquire at the printing office, ‘if the ----
was damned;’" using a gross term which he usually indulged in, when he was
censuring an author. Mr Smellie told him what he had done, and put a copy of
the altered review into his hands. After reading the two or three
introductory sentences, he fell down on the floor, apparently in a fit: but,
on coming to himself again, he good naturedly said, "William, after all, I
believe you have done right." [Kerr’s Smellie, i. 409.] Smellie
was not, however, so fortunate on other occasions. The eccentricities of the
classical Burnet of Monboddo, afforded an opportunity which Stuart did not
wish to omit. He proposed to adorn the first number of the Magazine with "a
print of my lord Monboddo, in his quadruped form. I must, therefore," he
continues, "most earnestly beg that you will purchase for me a copy of it in
some of the macaroni-print shops. It is not to be procured at Edinburgh.
They are afraid to vend it here. We are to take it on the footing of a
figure of an animal, not yet described; and are to give a grave, yet
satirical account of it, in the manner of Buffon. It would not be proper to
allude to his lordship, but in a very distant manner." [Calamities of
Authors, i. 53.] Although this laborious joke was not attempted,
Stuart’s criticism on the Origin and Progress of Language, notwithstanding
the mollifications of Smellie, had a sensible effect on the sale of the
magazine. "I am sorry," says Mr Murray, in a letter to Smellie, "for the
defeat you have met with. Had you praised lord Monboddo, instead of damning
him, it would not have happened." It is to be feared the influence against
the periodical was produced, not so much by its having unduly attacked the
work of a philosopher, as from its having censured a lord of session.
During his labours for this
magazine, Stuart did not neglect his pleasures. He is said one night to have
called at the house of his friend Smellie, in a state of such complete
jollity, that it was necessary he should be put to bed. Awakening, and
mistaking the description of place in which he was lodged, he brought his
friend in his night-gown to his bed-side, by his repeated cries of "house!
house!" and, in a tone of sympathy, said to him, "Smellie! I never
expected to see you in such a house. Get on your clothes, and return
immediately to your wife and family: and be assured I shall never mention
this affair to any one." The biographer of Smellie, who has recorded the
above, gives the following similar anecdote of Stuart and his friends. "On
another ramble of dissipation, Dr Stuart is said to have taken several days
to travel on foot between the cross of Edinburgh and Musselburgh, a distance
of only six miles; stopping at every public-house by the way, in which good
ale could be found. In this strange expedition he was accompanied part of
the way by several boon companions, who were fascinated beyond their
ordinary excesses, by his great powers of wit and hilarity in conversation;
but who gradually fell off at various stages of the slow progression. The
last of these companions began his return towards Edinburgh from the
Magdalen bridge, within a mile of Musselburgh; but, oppressed by the fumes
of the ale, which he had too long and too liberally indulged in, he
staggered, in the middle of the night, into the ash-pit of a great steam
engine, which then stood by the road side, and fell into a profound sleep.
On awakening before day, he beheld the mouth of an immense fiery furnace
open, several figures, all grim with soot and ashes, were stirring the fire,
ranging the bars of the enormous grate, and throwing on more fuel; while the
terrible clanking of the chains and beams of the machinery above, impressed
his still confused imagination with an idea that he was in hell.
Horror-struck at the frightful idea, he is said to have exclaimed, ‘Good
God! is it come to this at last?’ [Kerr’s Smellie, i. 504.]
The persecution of Henry, the
author of the History of Great Britain, commenced by Stuart in the Edinburgh
Magazine and Review, has been recorded in the memoir of that individual.
Before quitting this subject, let us give the parting curse of the editor
for his literary disappointments in Scotland. "It is an infinite
disappointment to me that the Magazine does not grow in London. I thought
the soil had been richer. But it is my constant fate to be disappointed in
everything I attempt; I do not think I ever had a wish that was gratified;
and never dreaded an event that did not come. With this felicity of fate, I
wonder how the devil I could turn projector. I am now sorry that I left
London; and the moment I have money enough to carry me back to it, I shall
set off. I mortally detest and abhor this place, and every body in it.
Never was there a city where there was so much pretension to knowledge,
and that had so little of it. The solemn foppery, and the gross stupidity of
the Scottish literati are perfectly insupportable. I shall drop my idea of a
Scots newspaper. Nothing will do in this country that has common sense in
it; only cant, hypocrisy, and superstition, will flourish here. A curse
on the country, and on all the men, women, and children of it."
[Calamities of Authors, ii. 60.] Accordingly, Stuart did
return to England, and along with Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, a
man of very different literary habits, but somewhat similar in temper, for
some time supported the English Review. In 1778, he published his well known
"View of Society in Europe in its progress from rudeness to refinement; or,
Inquiries concerning the History of Law, Government, and Manners." This, the
most popular of his works, and for a long time a standard book on the
subject, is certainly the most carefully and considerately prepared of all
his writings. Its adoption almost to caricature, of that practice of the
great Montesquieu, which was all of him that some writers could imitate, of
drawing reflections whether there were, or were not facts to support them,
was fashionable, and did not perhaps disparage the work; while the easy flow
of the sentences fascinated many readers. It cannot be said that in this
book he made any discovery, or established any fact of importance. He
contented himself with vague speculations on the description of the manners
of the Germans by Tacitus, and new reflections upon such circumstances as
had been repeatedly noticed before. To have made a book of permanent
interest and utility from facts which every one knew, required a higher
philosophical genius than that of Stuart, and since the more accurate
researches of Hallam and Meyer, the book has fallen into disuse. In 1779, he
published "Observations concerning the Public Law, and the Constitutional
History of Scotland, with occasional remarks concerning English Antiquity."
To a diligent man, who would have taken the trouble of investigating facts,
there would here have been a very tolerable opportunity of attacking
Robertson, at least on the score of omissions, for his constitutional views
are very imperfect; Stuart, however, had no more facts than those which his
adversary provided him with, and he contented himself with deducing opposite
opinions. As there was a real want of matter sufficient to supply anything
like a treatise on the subject—a want scarcely yet filled up—this work was
still moe vague and sententious, than that on the general history of Europe.
A sentence towards the commencement is very characteristic of the author’s
habits of thought. "An idea has prevailed, that one nation of Europe adopted
the feudal institutions from another, and the similarity of fiefs in all the
states where they were established, has given an air of plausibility to this
opinion. It is contradicted, however, by the principles of natural reason,
and by the nature of the feudal usages: and, if I am not mistaken, it
receives no real sanction from records or history." Thus, his own opinions
on "the principles of natural reason," and on "the nature of the feudal
usages," were to him of more importance than "records or history." In 1780,
he published his "History of the establishment of the Reformation of
Religion in Scotland," commencing in 1517, and ending in 1561; and in 1782,
"The History of Scotland, from the Establishment of the Reformation till the
death of queen Mary." Both these works are said by those who have perused
them, to be written with the view of controverting the opinions of Dr
Robertson. In 1785, Stuart was at the head of "The Political Herald and
Review, or a survey of Domestic and Foreign Politics, and a critical account
of Political and Historical Publications." In this work we frequently meet
the flowing sentences of Stuart, especiallyin papers relating to Scotland,
of which there are several. It is a curious circumstance that, especially in
letters of animadversion addressed to individuals, he has evidently
endeavoured to ingraft the pointed sarcasm of Junius on his own slashing
weapon. One of these, "An Address to Henry Dundas, Esq., treasurer of the
Navy, on the Perth Peerage," is with some servility signed "Brutus." This
work extended, we believe, to only two volumes, which are now rather rare.
In London, Stuart seems to
have suffered most of the miseries of unsuccessful authorship, and to have
paid dearly for talents misapplied.
In the life of Dr William
Thomson, in the Annual Obituary for 1822, there is the following highly
characteristic notice of his life and habits at this period. "Although the
son of a professor, and himself a candidate for the same office, after a
regular education at the university of Edinburgh: yet we have heard his
friend assert, and appeal to their common acquaintance, Dr Grant, for the
truth of the position, that, although he excelled in composition, and
possessed a variety of other knowledge, yet he was actually unacquainted
with the common divisions of science arid philosophy. Under this gentleman,
as has been already observed, he (Dr Thomson) composed several papers for
the Political Herald, for which the former, as the ostensible editor, was
handsomely paid; the latter received but a scanty remuneration. But it was
as a boon companion that he was intimately acquainted with this gentleman,
who was greatly addicted to conviviality, and that too in a manner, and to
an excess which can scarcely be credited by one who is acquainted with the
elegant effusions of his polished mind. The ‘Peacock,’ in Grays-Inn lane,
was the scene their festivities, and it was there that these learned
Doctors, in rivulets of Burton ale, not unfrequently quaffed libations to
their favourite deity, until the clock informed them of the approaching
day."
His constitution at length
broke down, and he took a sea-voyage to the place of his nativity for the
recovery of his health, but died of dropsy, at his father’s house, near
Musselburgh, August 13, 1786, aged forty-four. |
