"His temper," says his
friendly biographer Mackenzie, "was of that warm susceptible kind, which
is caught by the heroic and the tender, and which is more fitted to
delight in the world of sentiment than to succeed in the bustle of
ordinary life. His own favourite model of a character, and that on which
his own was formed, was the ideal being Young Norval in his own
play of Douglas, one endowed with chivalrous valour and romantic
generosity, eager for glory beyond any other object, and, in the
contemplation of future fame, entirely regardless of the present objects
of interest and ambition. The same glowing complexion of mind, which
gave birth to this creature of fancy, coloured the sentiments and
descriptions of his ordinary discourse; he had a very retentive memory,
and was fond of recalling the incidents of past times, and of
dramatizing his stories by introducing the names and characters of the
persons concerned in them. The same turn of mind threw a certain degree
of elevation into his language, and heightened the narrative in which
that language was employed; he spoke of himself with a frankness which a
man of that disposition is apt to indulge, but with which he sometimes
forgot that his audience was not always inclined to sympathize, and
thence he was accused of more vanity than in truth belonged to his
character. The same warm colouring was employed in the delineation of
his friends, to whom he assigned a rank which others would not always
allow. So far did he carry this propensity, that, as Dr Robertson used
jokingly to say, he invested them with a sort of supernatural privilege
above the ordinary humiliating circumstances of mortality. ‘He never,’
said the Doctor, ‘could allow that a friend was sick till he heard of
his death.’ To the same source were to be traced the warm eulogies which
he was accustomed to bestow upon them. ‘He delighted in bestowing as
well as in receiving flattery,’ said another of his intimates; ‘but with
him it had all the openness and warmth of truth. He flattered all of us,
from whom his flattery could gain no favour, fully as much, or, indeed,
more willingly, than he did those men of the first consequence and rank,
with whom the circumstances of his future life associated him; and he
received any praise from us with the same genuine feelings of friendship
and attachment.’ There was no false coinage in this currency which he
used in his friendly intercourse; whether given or received, it had with
him the stamp of perfect candour and sincerity."
Such was the enthusiastic
young man who was destined for the strange glory of producing, in
Scotland, a tragedy upon a Scottish story. In 1746, he was presented by
Sir David Kinloch of Gilmerton, to the church and parish of
Athelstaneford in East Lothian, then vacant by the death of the Rev.
Robert Blair, the author of the Grave. Previous to this period, his
passionate fondness for Plutarch, had led him to commence a tragedy upon
one of his heroes—Agis--which he finished soon after he was settled in
Athelstaneford. In 1749, he went to London, and offered his work to
Garrick, for representation at Drury Lane, of which that great actor had
recently become manager. But the English Roscius did not think it well
adapted to the stage, and declined bringing it on, much to the
mortification of the author, who, with the feeling natural to such a
situation, wrote the following verses on the tomb of Shakspeare, in
Westminster Abbey:
Image of Shakspeare! to this place
I come,
To ease my bursting bosom at thy tomb;
For neither Greek nor Roman poet fired
My fancy first—thee chiefly I admired;
And, day and night revolving still thy page,
I hoped, like thee, to shake the British stage;
But cold neglect is now my only need,
And heavy falls it on so proud a head.
If powers above now listen to my lyre,
Charm them to grant, indulgent, my desire;
Let petrifaction stop this falling tear,
And fix my form for ever marble here.
After this unsuccessful
journey to London, he turned his mind to the composition of the tragedy
of Douglas, which was founded upon the beautiful old ballad of Gil
Morris. Having finished this in the intervals of his professional
labours, he set out upon another expedition to the metropolis, February,
1755, with the favourable hopes of a circle of most intelligent friends,
to whom he had intrusted it for perusal. It was, however, as ill
received as Agis: Mr Garrick returned it with the declaration that it
was totally unfit for the stage. With this opinion, which many excellent
English critics still maintain, neither the poet nor his friends were at
all satisfied. Those friends, looking upon it with the eyes of Scotsmen,
beheld in it something quite superior to the ordinary run of English
tragedies; and accordingly they recommended that it should be presented
upon the Edinburgh stage, which was then conducted by a gentleman named
Digges, whom Mr Mackenzie describes as possessed of great powers,
(though with many defects,) and of great popularity in Scotland. The
recommendation was carried into effect; and all Edinburgh was presently
in a state of wild excitement, from the circumstance of a play being in
preparation by a minister of the established church. [If we are to
believe an authority good in theatrical matters—the Edinburgh Weekly
Chronicle newspaper, while under the management of Mr Edward Hislop,—Dr
Carlyle, and others of his brethren, not only attended the rehearsals of
Douglas, but themselves performed in the first of them: "It may
not be generally known," says the authority just referred to "that the
first rehearsal took place in the lodgings in the Canongate occupied by
Mrs Sarah Warde, one of Digges’s company; and that it was rehearsed by,
and in presence of, the most distinguished literary characters Scotland
ever could boast of. The following was the cast of the piece on the
occasion:—
Dramatis
Personae.
Lord Randolph, . . Dr Robertson,
principal, Edinburgh.
Glenalvon, . . . David Hume, historian.
Old Norval, . . . Dr Carlyle, minister of Musselburgh.
Douglas, . . . John Home, the author.
Lady Randolph, . . Dr Ferguson, professor.
Anna (the Maid), . Dr Blair, minister, High Church.
The audience that day,
besides Mr Digges and Mrs Warde, were the right honourable Patrick lord
Elibank, lord Milton, lord Kames, lord Monboddo, (the two last were then
only lawyers,) the Rev. John Steele and William Home, ministers. The
company, all but Mrs Warde, dined afterwards at the Griskin Club, in the
Abbey. The above is a signal proof of the strong passion for the drama
which then obtained among the literati of this capital
since then, unfortunately, much abated. The rehearsal must have been
conducted with very great secrecy; for what would the kirk, which took
such deep offence at the composition of the piece by one of its
ministers, have said to the fact of no fewer than four of these being
engaged in rehearsing it, and two others attending the exhibition? The
circumstance of the gentle Anna having been personated by ‘Dr Blair,
minister of the High Church,’ is a very droll one."—Edinburgh Weekly
Chronicle, January 21, 1829.
This statement may not be
accurate—it is only a quotation from a newspaper; but assuming that it
has some truth in it, we hesitate not to say that it is far from being
either "droll" or creditable to the eminent persons to whom it refers:
"Sir," said Dr Johnson, upon one occasion, "this merriment of parsons is
very offensive."
As to Dr Robertson’s
share in these transactions, it is only fair to quote what is said by
his biographer. Mr Stewart’s words are as follows: "The extraordinary
merits of Mr Home’s performance, which is now become to Scotsmen a
subject of national pride, were not sufficient to atone for so bold a
departure from the austerity expected in a presbyterian divine; and the
offence was not a little exasperated by the conduct of some of Mr Home’s
brethren who, partly from curiosity, and partly from a friendly wish to
share in the censure bestowed on the author, were led to witness the
first representation of the piece on the Edinburgh stage. In the whole
course of the ecclesiastical proceedings connected with these incidents,
Dr Robertson distinguished himself by the ablest and most animated
exertions in defence of his friends; and contributed greatly, by his
persuasive eloquence, to the mildness of that sentence in which the
prosecution at last terminated. His arguments, on this occasion, had, it
may be presumed, the greater weight, that he had never himself entered
within the walls of a playhouse; a remarkable proof, among numberless
others which the history of his life affords, of that scrupulous
circumspection in his private conduct, which, while it added so much to
his usefulness as a clergyman, was essential to his influence as the
leader of a party; and which so often enabled him to recommend
successfully to others the same candid and indulgent spirit that was
congenial to his own mind."—Account of the Life and Writings of Dr
Robertson, by Dugald Stewart, Esq., p. 12.
In this passage Mr
Stewart discountenances, in general terms, the belief that the Principal
gave the tragedy of Douglas any active patronage, by attending
the representations or otherwise; but the statement that Dr Robertson
"had never himself entered within the walls of a playhouse," cannot be
considered as an absolute contradiction of his having been present at
the rehearsal "in the lodgings in the Canongate occupied by Mrs Sarah
Warde."]
The actors at the
Edinburgh theatre happened to be, in general, men of some ability in
their profession, and the play was thus cast: Digges, Young
Norval; Hayman, Old Norval; Love, Glenalvon, Mrs Warde,
Lady Randolph. But the name Barnet was at this time used for
Randolph, and Norval was called Norman. The first representation, which
took place December 14, 1756, was honoured by the presence of a large
audience, comprising many friends of the author, clerical as well as
otherwise. It was received with enthusiastic applause, and, in the
conclusion, drew forth many tears, which were, perhaps, a more
unequivocal testimony to its merits. The town was in an uproar of
exultation, that a Scotsman should write a tragedy of the first rate,
and that its merits were first submitted to them.
But the most remarkable
circumstance attending its representation was the clerical contest which
it excited, and the proceedings of the church of Scotland regarding it.
Owing to certain circumstances,—among which was reckoned the publication
of lord Kames’s " Essays on Natural and Revealed Religion," which were
suspected of a tendency to infidelity, besides the issue of a work in
England, entitled "England’s Alarm," in which Scotland was accused of
cherishing great corruptions in religion,—there obtained in the church a
more zealous disposition than usual to lop off heresies, and chastise
peccant brethren. Hence the prosecution raised against Mr Home, which at
any rate must have taken place, was characterized by an appearance of
rancour which has often since been the subject of ridicule.
The presbytery of
Edinburgh commenced the proceedings by publishing a solemn admonition;
in which they expressed deep regret at the growing irreligion of the
times, and warned all persons within their bounds, especially the young,
against the danger of frequenting stage-plays. This document only
provoked the mirth of the public; it was replied to by a perfect torrent
of jeux d’esprit. The church, however, though unable to inflict
any punishment upon the people at large for their admiration of the
play, had the author and all his clerical abettors completely in their
power. Mr Home only escaped degradation by abdicating his pulpit, which
he did in June, 1757. His friends who had been present at the
representation, were censured or punished according to the degree of
their supposed misconduct. Mr White, the minister of Libberton, was
suspended for a month, a mitigated sentence in consideration of his
apology, which was—that he had attended the representation only once,
when he endeavoured to conceal himself in a corner, to avoid giving
offence.
The misfortune of the
Scottish church, on this occasion, consisted only in a little want of
discrimination. They certainly did not err in characterizing the stage
as immoral; for the stage, both then and since, and in almost all
periods of its existence, has condescended to represent scenes, and give
currency to language, which, in the general society of the period, could
not be tolerated. But though the stage seems thus to claim a privilege
of lagging behind the moral standard of every age, and in general
calculates itself for the gratification of only a secondary order of
tastes, there was surely something to be said in favour of a man who,
having devoted his leisure to the cultivation of an elegant branch of
the belles lettres, had produced a work not calculated to encourage the
immoral system complained of, but to correct it by introducing a purer
taste, or which could at least not be played, without for that night
preventing the representation of something more fatal to good manners.
There were many, no doubt, who were rather rejoiced than saddened, at
finding a stream of purer feeling disposed to turn itself into the
Augean stable of the theatre; because they calculated that since men
cannot be withheld from that place of amusement, the next best course is
to make the entertainment as innocent as possible.
Mr Home had been
introduced some years before, by Sir David Kinloch, the patron of his
parish, to lord justice clerk Milton, who then acted as Sous Ministre
for Scotland, under Archibald duke of Argyle. Being introduced by
lord Milton to the duke, his grace said that, being now too old to be of
any material service in improving his prospects, he would commit him to
his nephew, the earl of Bute, who was succeeding to that nameless
situation of trust and patronage which had been so long held by himself.
Accordingly, on Mr Home’s going to London in 1757, he was kindly
received by lord Bute, who, having that influence with Garrick which had
been found wanting in the merit of the play itself, soon caused it to be
brought out at Drury Lane. Notwithstanding Garrick’s unchanged opinion
of its merit, it met with distinguished success.
Lord Bute, besides
procuring Mr Home this highest gratification which he was capable of
receiving, provided for his personal wants by obtaining for him the
sinecure situation of conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere. Thus
secure as to the means of subsistence, the poet reposed with
tranquillity upon his prospects of dramatic fame. His tragedy of Agis,
which had been written before Douglas, but rejected, was brought
forward, and met with success, Garrick and Mrs Cibber playing the
principal characters. The Siege of Aquileia was represented in 1750,
but, owing to a want of interest in the action, did not secure the
favour of the audience. In 1760, he printed his three tragedies in one
volume, and dedicated them to the prince of Wales, whose society he had
enjoyed through the favour of the earl of Bute, preceptor to the prince.
When this royal personage became king, he signified his favour for Mr
Home by granting him a pension of £300 a-year from his privy
purse--which, in addition to an equal sum from his office of
conservator, rendered him what in Scotland might be considered affluent.
About this period, he spent the greater part of his time in London, but
occasionally came to Scotland, to attend his duties as an elder in the
General Assembly, being appointed to that trust by the ecclesiastical
establishment at Campvere, which then enjoyed a representation in the
great clerical council of the nation. In 1767, he forsook almost
entirely the company of the earl of Bute and his other distinguished
friends at London, and planted himself down in a villa, which he built
near his former residence in East Lothian, and where he continued to
reside for the next twelve years. To increase the felicity of a settled
home, he married a lady of his own name in 1770, by whom he never had
any children.
Three tragedies, the
Fatal Discovery, Alonzo, and Alfred, successively appeared in 1769,
1773, and 1778; but, though received at first with considerable
applause, they took no permanent hold of the stage; and thus seemed to
confirm the opinion which many English critics had avowed in regard to
the success of Douglas—that it was owing to no peculiar powers of
dramatic composition in the author, but simply to the national character
of the piece, with a slight aid from its exhibition of two very popular
passions, maternal and filial tenderness. ["As we sat over our tea,"
says Boswell on this subject, "Mr Home’s tragedy of Douglas was
mentioned. I put Dr Johnson in mind that once, in a Coffee-house
at Oxford, he called to old Mr Sheridan, ‘How came you, sir, to give
Home a gold medal * for writing that foolish play?’ and defied Mr
Sheridan to show ten good lines in it. He did not insist that
they should be together; but that there were not ten good lines in the
whole play. He now persisted in this. I endeavoured to defend that
pathetic and beautiful tragedy, and repeated the following passage:
Sincerity,
Thou first of virtues, let no mortal leave
Thy onward path, altho’ the earth should gape,
And from the gulph of hell destruction cry,
To take dissimulation’s winding way.
Johnson.
‘That will not do, sir. Nothing is good but what is
consistent with truth or probability, which this is not. Juvenal indeed
gives us a noble picture of inflexible virtue:
Esto bonus miles, tutor bonus,
arbiter idem
Integer: ambiguae si quando citabere testis
Incertaeque rei, Phalaris licet imperet, ut sis
Falsus, et admoto dictet perjuria tauro,
Summum crede nefas, animam praeferre pudori,
Et, propter vitam, vitae perdere causas.
He repeated the lines with great
force and dignity; then added, ‘And after this comes Johnny Home, with
his earth gaping and his destruction crying !—Pooh !’"—Boswell’s
Journal of a
Tour
to the Hebrides.
It must be acknowledged
Boswell was not fortunate in the specimen he produced, and that the
passage quoted by Johnson from Juvenal is infinitely superior. The
circumstances attending the representation of Douglas were not
such as to dispose an English critic to allow its merit. In the first
place, the national taste was in some degree committed in the
judgment passed upon the play by the favourite actor and manager;
and it was not only galling to himself, but to all who relied upon his
taste, that he should have been mistaken. In the next place, the Scots
did not use their triumph with discretion; they talked of the merits of
Douglas in a strain quite preposterous, and of which no unfair specimen
is to be found in the anecdote of a Caledonian who, being present in the
pit of Drury Lane one night of its performance, is said to have
exclaimed, in the insolence of his exultation "Whar’s your Wully
Shakspeare nou?" Such ridiculous pretensions are now forgotten;
but they were advanced at the time, and, from their extreme arrogance
and absurdity, could not fail to exasperate a mind so ready to
repel insult as Johnson’s, and so keenly alive as his was to the honour
of the national literature of England. The natural consequence followed:
he decried Douglas perhaps as much as it was overvalued by
its admirers; and his acquaintance with far superior compositions, must
have enabled him, as in the instance above quoted, to pour
derision upon it with an effect which the more judicious part of
its admirers could not contend with, the more especially as the noise of
undiscriminating applause with which it was hailed, had induced
them to assume higher ground than their sober judgment would have led
them to fix upon. And indeed it may be a question whether the same cause
that contributed to the first popularity of Douglas does not
still continue to operate, preserving to our only tragedy a higher rank
than it really is entitled to occupy: it is rare that the parents
of an only child do not love and admire him for virtues which all the
world else fails to discover that he is possessed of.
*"The elder Sheridan,
then manager of the theatre at Dublin, sent Mr Home a gold medal in
testimony of his admiration of Douglas; and his wife, a woman not
less respectable for her virtues than for genius and accomplishments,
drew the idea of her admired novel of Sydnea Biddulph, as her
introduction bears, from the genuine moral effect of that excellent
tragedy."—Mackenzie’s Life of Home, p. 47.] The reception of the
last mentioned play was so cool, that he ceased from that time to write
for the stage.
Mr Home, as already
mentioned, lived in terms of the greatest intimacy with all the literary
men of his time: he seems, however, to have cherished no friendship with
so much ardour as that which he entertained for his philosophical
namesake David Hume. During the course of a lengthened period of
friendly intercourse with this individual, only two trifling differences
had ever risen between them. One referred to the orthography of their
name, which the dramatic poet spelt after the old and constant fashion
of his family, while the philosopher had early in life assumed the
spelling indicated by the pronunciation. David Hume, at one time,
jocularly proposed that they should determine this controversy by
casting lots; but the poet answered, "Nay, that is a most extraordinary
proposal, indeed, Mr Philosopher, for, if you lose, you take your own
name, whereas, if I lose, I take another man’s name."
The other controversy
referred merely to their taste in wine. Mr John Home had the old
Scottish prepossession in favour of claret, and utterly detested port.
When the former drink was expelled from the market by high duties, he
wrote the following epigram, as it has been called, though we confess we
are at a loss to observe anything in it but a narrative of supposed
facts:--
Firm and erect the Caledonian
stood,
Old was his mutton, and his claret good;
‘Let him drink port,’ an English statesman cried—
He drank the poison, and his spirit died."
David Hume, who to his
latest breath continued the same playful being he had ever been, made
the following allusion to the two controversies, in a codicil to his
will, dated only eighteen days before his death. "I leave to my friend
Mr John Home of Kilduff, ten dozen of my old claret at his choice; and
one other bottle of that other liquor called port. I also leave him six
dozen of port, provided that he attests, under his hand, signed John
Hume, that he has himself alone finished that bottle at two
sittings. By this concession he will at once terminate the only two
differences that ever arose between us concerning temporal matters."
When this eccentric
philosopher was recommended for his health to pay a visit to Bath, his
faithful friend Home accompanied him, and was of great service, by his
lively conversation and kind attentions, in supporting him against the
attacks of a virulent disease. The journey took place in April, 1776,
and Mr Mackenzie has preserved a curious diary by Mr Home, detailing the
principal matters which passed between him and his fellow traveller in
conversation. Many of the anecdotes told by the philosopher are
exceedingly valuable as snatches of what is styled secret history.
Mr Home spent the latter
moiety of his long life in a state little removed from indolence. He
removed to Edinburgh in 1779, and thenceforward lived in the enjoyment
of that high literary society which the character of his mind fitted him
to enjoy, and in which his income fortunately permitted him to indulge.
Careless of money in the highest degree, he delighted in entertaining
large companies of friends, and often had his house filled to a degree
which would now be considered intolerable, with permanent guests.
The only production of
his later years was a History of the Rebellion of 1745; a transaction of
which he was entitled to say, pars fui. He had projected
something of the kind soon after the event, but did not proceed with it
till after he had given up dramatic writing. If there was any literary
man of the day from whom, rather than from any other a good work upon
this subject might have been confidently expected, it was Mr Home who
had not only taken a strong personal interest in the affair, but
possessed that generous and chivalrous colour of mind which was most apt
to do it justice in narration. Unfortunately, before setting about this
work, he had met with an accident by a fall from his horse, in
consequence of which his intellect was permanently affected. As a
pensioner of king George III., he was also prevented from giving that
full expression to his sentiments which was so necessary in the
historian of such an event. This work, therefore, when it appeared in
1802, was found to be a miserable sketchy outline of the transaction,
rather than a complete narrative—here and there, indeed, as copious as
was to be wished, and also showing occasional glimpses of the poetical
genius of the author, but in general "stale, flat, and unprofitable."
The imperfections of the work have been partly accounted for, without
contradiction, by the circumstance of its having been submitted to the
inspection of the reigning family, with the understanding that they were
at liberty to erase such passages as they did not wish to be made
public.
Mr Home died on the 5th
of September, 1808, when he was just on the point of completing his
eighty-sixth year. As a man, he was gentle and amiable, a very warm
friend, and incapable of an ungenerous feeling. As a poet, he deserves
the credit of having written with more fervid feeling, and less of
stiffness and artificiality, than the other poets of his time; his
genius in this respect approaching to that of his friend Collins. The
present age, however, has, by its growing indifference to even his sole
successful play, pronounced that his reputation on account of that
exertion, was in a great measure the result of temporary and local
circumstances, and that, being ill based, it cannot last.