Chapter III

In the years 1781 and 1782, Mr Holcroft published a poem called the Sceptic, and the Family Picture,[5] a collection of tales, partly compiled, and partly original. Neither of these works seems to have held a very high place in his estimation. Of the former he says, in a letter to a friend, that it was written in haste; that he believes it ought to have been treated according to Horace’s maxim, ‘Prematur nonum in annum’; and that though he was pleased with some parts in the writing, he is afraid he should not be so in the reading of them. Of the _Tales_ he says, that he did not expect to increase his reputation by them, though he hoped he should not lessen it.

About this time an offer was made him by Mr Greville to reside in his house, which he had the good sense respectfully to decline. He observed, that it was difficult for people with the best tempers and intentions, and who are upon a perfect equality, to live together, without harbouring little disgusts, or fancying supposed neglects; and that with respect to himself, he was conscious of whims and peculiarities which it was his duty to keep behind the curtain as much as possible. His sole reason, therefore, for declining Mr Greville’s offer, he declared, was the fear of declining in his good opinion by accepting it.

His mind now teemed with dramatic projects, plots, characters, and incidents. His ambition was to write elegant comedy; and he was sensible of the disadvantages under which he laboured in this respect, both from education, and the sphere of life in which he had hitherto chiefly moved. He wished to get a nearer and more intimate view of the manners of high life, that he might be able to describe its refinements, or ridicule its absurdities, with more effect. He also wished, for the same reason, to acquaint himself, by actual observation, with foreign manners. Both these ends would be answered by obtaining admission into the Ambassador’s suite, which was then (1783) setting off for Paris; and he made application to several persons of consequence for this purpose, but without obtaining his immediate object. He however so far succeeded as to obtain some respectable introductions abroad.

Lord Carmarthen was at first talked of as Ambassador; and Mr Holcroft, by the interest of Mrs. Harcourt and Mrs. Greville, had an interview with his lordship; in which he was informed, that another person had been fixed upon to go to Paris. This was the Duke of Manchester; and he now applied to the Duchess of Devonshire, I believe through Mrs. Siddons, for a recommendation to the Duke to go out with him as under-secretary, or in any other situation, in which he might be of service as a literary man. He stated that a salary was not his object, and that his only motive was to gain some little knowledge of the manners of a court, and of foreign countries. The only advantage he reaped from this application was, that he obtained the honour of some commissions to execute for her Grace at Paris, and the notice of one or two persons of consequence while he was there.[6]

Mr Holcroft being still determined on a visit to the continent, procured an engagement with the editor of a newspaper, the Morning Herald, to send over paragraphs, relating to the events of the day, public amusements, fashions, etc. for which he was to have a guinea and a half a week; and a similar engagement with a printer, Mr John Rivington, to furnish him with notices of new works, translations, etc. It was so arranged, that his salary from the newspaper office should be received by Mrs. Holcroft in his absence, for the immediate use of the family, and Rivington was to supply him with money for his expenses at Paris.

Mr Holcroft’s family consisted, at this time, of his wife and four children, only one of whom, Fanny, was by his present wife. Ann, the eldest, was by his first wife, and Sophy and William were by his second wife, whom he lost just before he left the country.

The two children, after her death, were for some time under the care of their uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs. Tipler, at Nottingham. When Mr Holcroft became settled in Southampton Buildings, they were sent for up to town. The boy William was his greatest favourite: he was now (1783) between nine and ten years old; he was a very forward and intelligent child, could speak French with tolerable fluency, and his father, in order to perfect him in the language, determined to take him with him, and afterwards to leave him at a boarding-school in France.

Matters being thus arranged, Mr Holcroft set out for Paris in the beginning of April, 1783, which place he reached a few days after. The first appearance of this capital does not seem to have answered his expectations. He complained of the narrowness and dirtiness of the streets, of the meanness of the shops, and of the unfinished state of the principal public buildings. His chief attention, however, was directed to the discovery of new publications, of several of which he proposed translations to Rivington, most of which he afterwards executed for another bookseller. Among these were the Tales of the Castle, by Madam Genlis, Caroline of Litchfield, The Amours of Peter the Long, Memoirs of De Tott, Savary’s Travels in Egypt, An Account of the Manners and Treatment of Animals, by D’Obsonville, etc. This last publication he recommends as a curious work in a letter to Mr Greville; and observes, that from the account there given, it is evident that the Newmarket jockeys had learned the first principles of their art from the Arabs. His translation of the Tales of the Castle went through several editions, and introduced Mr Holcroft to a correspondence, and afterwards to a personal acquaintance with the authoress. Most, if not all of these translations, were done for the Robinsons.

Mr Holcroft made several friends at Paris, the chief of whom were Mercier, and a Mr Bonneville, (the translator of the Theatre Allemand) of whom he had a high opinion; but Bonneville afterwards came to England, and they quarrelled. Of Mercier, the celebrated author of the Dramas, and _The Year 2500_, there will be occasion to speak hereafter. Either through these friends, or through the letters he brought with him, he was introduced to several persons of rank and literary pretension. Among them were the Duke and Duchess of Chartres, the Count de Catuelan, the Chevalier Macdonald, the Marquis de Dampiere, and others. He was desired by the Duke and Duchess of Chartres to read some scenes of Shakspeare to themselves and friends, with which he says they seemed more than satisfied. He appears afterwards to have entered into some discussion with the Count de Catuelan with respect to the comparative merits of Shakspeare and the French poets; for on the 24th of June, he addressed a short note to the Count, with a poem enclosed, on this subject. I shall here insert both, as well to shew the zeal with which Mr Holcroft defended his great countryman while abroad, as for the sake of the manner in which it is done.

‘SIR, The conversation we had on Sunday morning concerning Rousseau, Voltaire, Shakspeare, etc. started an idea as I was returning home, which I immediately put into the form you see. I would not have you suppose, Sir, I mean to depreciate the talents of Voltaire; that is far from my intention; I would only vindicate the poet who of all others within my sphere of knowledge, and as far as my judgment extends, is infinitely the greatest. I should have sent you the verses before, because I know your reverence for my favourite bard,[7] but that I kept them to see if after sleeping two or three nights I still thought them fit to be read. I am yet in doubt; for any thing middling on such a subject is contemptible. However, I have not yet shewn them to any person, except you, Sir, and Mr Bonneville, at whose lodgings they were written.

‘Clad in the wealthy robes his genius wrought,
In happy dreams was gentle Shakspeare laid;
His pleas’d soul wand’ring through the realms of thought,
While all his elves and fairies round him play’d.

‘Voltaire approach’d—strait fled the quaint-eyed band,
For Envy’s breath such sprites may not endure:
He pilfer’d many a gem with trembling hand;
Then stabb’d the bard to make the theft secure.

‘Ungrateful man! Vain was thy black design:
Th’ attempt and not the deed thy hand defiled.
Preserv’d by his own charms and spells divine,
Safely the gentle Shakspeare slept and smiled.’

The conception of this little allegorical fiction, is certainly a very happy one, and the execution is no less spirited and elegant. With respect however to the enthusiasm with which Englishmen generally endeavour to persuade foreigners of the superlative excellence of our great dramatist, unless where it is taken up in self-defence, it is undoubtedly a species of quixotism, and of the most hopeless kind.

The remittances which Mr Holcroft was to receive from his employer, were not so regular as he had expected. Indeed there seems to have been some unaccountable neglect on the part of Rivington,[8] and Mr Holcroft would have been reduced to very great distress, had it not been for the generous assistance afforded him by his friend Bonneville, who was himself in no very affluent circumstances. He was at last wearied out with the state of suspense and dependence in which he was kept, and in October he took the resolution of again returning to England. He however left his son behind him at a school, in or near Paris.

Before Mr Holcroft went from England, he had left an opera, called the Noble Peasant, in the hands of Mr Colman, then manager of the Haymarket theatre. This had been accepted; and such was Mr Colman’s opinion of it, that on his return, he advanced Mr Holcroft a hundred pounds, in the expectation of its future success. This piece was acted the ensuing season, (in 1784). The evening it was acted, Mr Holcroft had placed himself behind the scenes, as authors generally do, to watch the progress of the piece, or be of occasional assistance. At the end however of the first act, the effect produced on the audience seemed so discouraging, and disapprobation began to manifest itself so strongly, that Mr Holcroft could no longer stand it. He left the theatre, quite hopeless of success, and went and walked for an hour in St. James’s Park. He had by this time so far mastered the agitation of his spirits, that he returned to the Haymarket, tolerably resigned to his fate. He got in just at the conclusion of the third act, and was most agreeably surprised, when he heard the house resounding with applause, and saw himself surrounded by the actors and others, who came to congratulate him on the complete success of the piece.—It however only ran eleven nights. It was then stopped by Mr Colman, in consequence of a disagreement with the author, whom he had without reason suspected of writing some paragraphs in the Morning Herald against The Connoisseurs. Mr Holcroft soon after vindicated himself so fully from this charge, that Mr Colman was satisfied.[9]

The success of this opera was not certainly equal to its merits, which are considerable. It seems to have given rise to a succession of plays of the same kind, the scene of which is laid in the ages of chivalry, and which represent the costume, characters, and manners of remote times. Such particularly have been the Battle of Hexham, The Mountaineers, The Venetian Outlaw, etc. This opera is in fact a romance dramatised.—A young peasant joins some outlaws, who are no other than the famous archers, Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and Will Cloudesley; and soon after, has an opportunity together with them, to defeat a band of Danes, who were proceeding to attack the castle of Earl Walter, which lies in the neighbourhood of Sherwood. The cause of this quarrel is, that Anlaff the Dane had demanded Edwitha, the daughter of Earl Walter, in marriage, and had been refused. On this he determines to enforce his claim, and in the battle which ensues, Earl Walter’s men under his son Harold are nearly vanquished, when they are unexpectedly joined by the outlaws and Leonard, the noble peasant, who slays Alric, the brother of the Danish chief. This youth who in addition to his warlike achievements, is represented with all the grace and amiableness of an Arcadian swain, is the first who by chance communicates the news of the victory to Edwitha, and her cousin Adela, who had wandered to a little distance from the castle. Edwitha is immediately smitten with the manly appearance, and modest demeanour of Leonard, the peasant, and is rallied a good deal on the subject, by her witty and merciless cousin, who puts the reader somewhat in mind of the character of Beatrice. Adam Bell, and his renowned compeers, in consequence of their service in the battle, conceive a plan for being reconciled to Earl Walter; and for this purpose, Adam Bell goes to the castle in the disguise of a Friar, to watch for some favourable opportunity of obtaining a pardon. Harold and his followers return, and one of these, Earl Egbert, a ridiculous, cowardly braggart, pretends to have slain Anlaff, whose sword and armour he has carried in a pompous manner before him by his Dwarf. This story is contradicted by the pretended friar, who says that he had shrieved a young peasant an hour before, who confessed that he had slain the Danish warrior. However, on the strength of the boasted service he had done, Earl Egbert lays claim to Earl Walter’s daughter; and his pretensions are admitted by the father, in opposition to the most earnest remonstrances of the young lady. The valiant Earl accordingly remains at the castle, to court his froward mistress, while Harold, with his chosen friends, sets out to hunt for a few days on Cheviot Hills. The Danes hearing of his absence, and in revenge for the death of Alric, once more attack the castle, through which the greatest terror prevails, and particularly in the breast of Egbert; when Adam Bell takes the opportunity to discover himself to Earl Walter, and on obtaining promise of pardon, winds his bugle-horn, and is immediately joined by his friends who had watched without the castle, and among the rest by Leonard. A challenge is now sent from Anlaff, to the conqueror of his brother, to meet him in single combat, on the conditions, that if defeated, his followers are immediately to withdraw from the castle, but that if victorious, he is to bear off Edwitha as his prize. This message startles Earl Egbert, and he is going to disclaim his share in the death of Alric; when Leonard persuades him to accept the challenge, by offering to exchange armour privately with him, and meet the haughty Dane in his stead. They fight, and victory declares in favor of Leonard. Just before the battle, a letter conveyed by an arrow, had fallen at the feet of Edwitha, conjuring her to pray for the success of Leonard the peasant, which had occasioned some surprise. The riddle is now explained, and Leonard, the conqueror of Anlaff and Alric, and the preserver of her house, lays claim to the hand of Edwitha, as his reward. To this there are insuperable obstacles in the meanness of his origin; but this difficulty is soon removed by a discovery, that though disguised as a peasant, he is the son of a noble warrior. Harold returns, the marriage is celebrated, the outlaws are pardoned, and nothing but happiness reigns through the castle of Earl Walter.

The story of this little piece is interesting, and natural, as far as a romantic story can be so. The dialogue is well supported throughout, particularly in the comic parts; and though there are frequent imitations of Shakespeare, both in the incidents, characters, and speeches, yet they are very happily executed, with much wit and fancy; which shew that the author had imbibed the spirit of the poet, in whose steps he treads. The songs, both the serious and humorous ones, have great merit; and were most of them set by Shield, to whom Mr Holcroft, in his preface to the opera, pays a very high and deserved compliment. I should add here, for the sake of those who take an interest in dramatic retrospections, that Parsons played Earl Egbert, and that the part of the Fool was performed by Edwin.

Mr Holcroft’s next piece came out at Covent Garden, and was called The Choleric Fathers. This opera is inferior to the last. The scene is supposed to be in Spain, and the business of the play turns upon the testy disposition of two fathers, who suddenly break off a match between their children, just as they are going to sign the marriage-settlement. The merit of the piece consists chiefly in the easy impudence and vivacity of a valet, who forms a number of schemes, and acts different characters, to out-wit the old gentlemen, and bring about a reconciliation. The plot is formed after the manner of the Spanish school, full of intrigue and difficulties: these are at last overcome with a good deal of ingenuity; and the denouement is both natural and unexpected.

Mr Holcroft had for some time been concerned in the Wit’s Magazine, for which he wrote a number of amusing articles: but he now declined his share in it, seeming determined to bend his mind wholly to works of greater moment.