tains are commonly friendly to virtue and social happiness. Its impurities I have already stigmatised and Cumberland himself does not disdain to acknowledge his transgressions in his Memoirs, where he says, "if, in my zeal to exhibit virtue triumphant over the most tempting allurements, I have painted those allurements in too vivid colours, I am sorry, and ask pardon of all those who thought the moral did not heal the mischief." Let me anticipate the progress of my narrative here, and close this chapter with some brief observations upon the last novel that Cumberland wrote, his John De Lancaster, in three volumes, and published in 1809. This work he announced with some degree of pomp in his Memoirs, bat when it appeared the public received it with coolness. It was not only inferior to both his preceding productions, but inferior also, to many similar compositions of inferior writers. *It deserves, indeed, to be distinguished from the common herd of novels, for it has more learning than an ordinary novelist can display; and Cumberland seems to have relied upon that learning, and upon his name, for its success. The plot is very simple, and not very interesting. Events are too easily anticipated. There is no art, no dexterity, in the developement of the *Some of the opinions here delivered upon John de Lancaster, are copied from an account which I had occasion to give of it, in a periodical publication, when it first appeared. I have added a few others upon a recent perusal. catastrophe, or in the texture of the incidents. Not is this radical deficiency of fable compensated by any elegance of diction, by any elevation of sentiment, or by any accuracy in the delineation of the characters. None of them are consistently drawn, though several are well sketched. Philip de Lancaster is, perhaps, the best. Robert de Lancaster is learned, vapid, and digressive, in the first volume; in the second and third he loses some of these qualities, and becomes more natural and more interesting. I am sorry to find Cumberland, at a much later period of his life, again violating decorum in some of his descriptions. He does not, indeed, offend so much, as in Henry, but he offends more than can be justified. There is something peculiarly disgusting in the indelicacy of an old man. The exhausted pruriency of imagination, which it betrays, is highly offensive. I will not specify the instances that are in my memory, but will dismiss the subject with observing, that the entire account of the hero's birth is narrated with a studied coarseness of delineation. This work exhibits evident tokens of mental decay. In Arundel, and in Henry, the love scenes were described with an ardent and impressive glow of composition; but here they are coldly and affectedly wrought up. Cumberland knew it. "I am ill at these descriptions," says he; "I confess it. Seventy years and seven, with clouds that hang upon my setting sun, will chill the brain, that should devise scenes and descriptions warm with youthful love." This is true; and Cumberland, doubtless, believed the following no less so. "Still, the chaste maiden," he continues," and the prudent wife, shall turn these leaves over with no revolting hand, nor blush for having read them." To this I answer, that she who can read these volumes through, and not blush, or feel cause for blushing, has lost all true modesty. Let me not be thought fastidiously nice. It is only when a man tells me he is immaculate that I am provoked to point out the spot which I would else have shut my eyes upon; and I willingly confess that, compared to some passages in Henry, John de Lancaster is purity itself. Yet, there are certain allusions in it which no really modest female would venture to read aloud in the presence of a man, and that is the true test. In the phlegmatic character of Philip de Lancaster, Cumberland seems only to have expanded the sketch which he gave, in the Observer, of Ned Drowsy. There is an affecting appeal in the third volume to the feelings of the reader. He speaks of the death of his grandson, a midshipman, and who, he thought, had been the victim of ill-usage. The question was referred to some of our tribunals as I remember, but their decision did not corroborate the opinion of Cumberland. From this subject he makes a transition to his "beloved daughter," to whom he dedicated his Memoirs, and to whom he also dedicates this work; "for these repeated testimonies of my love," he pathetically adds, "are all the inheritance I can bequeath her, all my hard fortune hath not wrested from me." His diction was not much improved when he wrote John de Lancaster. It is often vulgar, sometimes ungrammatical, and sometimes obscure. His attempts at wit or humour are as unsuccessful as in his happiest days of mental vigour. I will adduce one instance: "We may literally say, that it (a morning visit) was made upon the spur of the occasion, and this we hope will be an apology for our introducing the baronet in boots." It is amusing to see with what unwearied assiduity Cumberland sought to propitiate the critics. In the outset of his career he dared them with a proud defiance; but he soon discovered who suffered most in the contest, and then he strove to soothe them by blandishments and courtesy. In John de Lancaster he openly solicits them to befriend his book and to promote its sale. "As I know some of them," he says, "to be fair and honourable gentlemen, I hope they will recollect how often I have been useful to them, in the sale of their publications, and assist me now with their good word in the circulation of De Lancaster." I am afraid this request was not very cordially attended to, or that Cumberland believed them to possess a power they do not. His book languished to a second edition, and there, I imagine, it will remain. It is, in many parts, too erudite for the unlearned without being deep enough for the learned, and its familiar scenes which might please the common reader, want spriteliness and animation. The lethargic influence of age seems to have impeded his faculties while he wrote; and if he wrote from necessity, who but must deplore the embarrassments that obscured the closing hours of a life so assiduously employed in the labours of literature? Necessitas, cujus cursus transversi impetum |
