CHAPTER I YOUNG'S "CONJECTURES" IN ENGLAND In the year 1759 there was published in London an anonymous literary epistle entitled Conjectures on Original Composition in a Letter to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison. It was written by Edward Young (1683-1765), who is best known as the author of the Night Thoughts. It sought the attention of the public by virtue of appearing in the form of an open letter to Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), well known in his day as a London printer and still better known, both then and today, as the great novelist. In its first printed form it comprised a book in rather large type and, consequently, of one hundred and eleven pages. Near the end of this pamphlet the reader will find a reprint of the earliest edition of Young's Conjectures, as the treatise hereafter will be called for short, and at the bottom of the pages he will find the changes with which the treatise soon appeared in a second edition. We shall approach a detailed study of the Conjectures by way of several preliminaries necessary for a right understanding of the treatise. We shall give our attention first to the author. Leaving a detailed study of his literary career until later, we shall observe now only in general who the writer of the Conjectures was. Edward Young (1683-1765) was the son of the rector of Upham, England. Concerning his career as a student his biographers say that he rose very slowly and that his good standing rested more on the reputation of his father than on any merit of his own. They report, on the other hand, that he became a brilliant talker and that he proved able to cope in argument with the noted deist Tindal. He was graduated as B. C. L. at the age of thirty-one, and as D. C. L. at the age of thirty-six. Then he set out on a literary career in London, being admitted to Addison's circle. His earliest products were epistles and poems dedicated with "fulsome flattery" to various persons of influence with the purpose of finding a Maecenas or obtaining a good political or ecclesiastical post for the author. Consequently all biographical accounts of him bristle with unpleasant epithets of himself and his writings, such as prefermenthunter, flatterer, mixture of bombast and platitude, too rhetorical, too much antithesis, insincere, absurd. In knack for satire and epigram he was, however, the closest rival of Pope. His series of seven satires, which he collected finally under the title Love of Fame, the Universal Passion, met with such approval and reward on the part of the various persons to whom they were dedicated that the author reaped a fortune from them. Young figured also as a dramatist. The first of three tragedies which he produced was played only nine evenings and was then ridiculed, among other recent plays, by Fielding, in his Tom Thumb. Another drama of Young's, however, enjoyed a long popularity. His fame as an author is, nevertheless, not founded on the works so far mentioned; it rests on his Night Thoughts (1742-45). The last, although obviously imitative of Paradise Lost, The Seasons, and the Essay on Man, has been translated into seven foreign languages. Its success is said to have been enormous, and it can still be read with interest. Prior to the production of the Night Thoughts, when near the age of fifty, Young took holy orders. After being chaplain to the King for some time thereafter, he was given the rectory of Welwyn, near London, in the service of which he passed the remainder of his life. When in his seventy-sixth year, and as the last of his more ambitious literary endeavors, he gave to the world his Conjectures on Original Composition. Concerning their publication we find, in the first place, that two editions of them were printed in the year 1759. The first edition, which is generally said to have appeared in May, was announced and quoted in the May number of the Gentleman's Magazine and in the same words in the May issue of Scot's Magazine. These advertisements seem, though, to have preceded the printed edition and must have been based on the manuscript. According to a letter from the publisher to the author on May 29th, the first edition was not yet off the press on this date.1 In this letter the printer speaks not only of having "written urgently" so as not to "baulk the sale," but he also requests the author to shorten what he has said about Addison's death and to put it at the end of the treatise. From this letter we learn also that the Conjectures were probably altered between May 29 and their publication to this effect. With these data, on one side, and with the assertions of various historians on the other, all upholding the opinion that the Conjectures were written this early, it follows that their first edition appeared sometime in June. And the second edition with certain changes, which are given in footnotes in the present reprint, followed after a few months, in 1759. We want to know also just when the Conjectures were composed. The letter from Richardson to Young which has just been quoted dis closes furthermore that Dr. Johnson was somehow concerned with them. From this fact Professor Brandl concludes that they may have been evoked by Dr. Johnson's Rasselas, which had been published about two months earlier and which in the tenth chapter likewise speaks of literary originality versus imitation. If that were the case, they would have been written sometime during April or May, in 1759. The following passage from a letter by Richardson to Mrs. Delany on September 11, 1758, shows, however, that the Conjectures date farther back, either in manuscript or at least in plan: "Dr. Young . . . will one day oblige the world with a small piece on original writing and writers."3 By way of further preliminary we may consider also the intricate problem as to what evoked the Conjectures. The earliest answer is Warton's assertion that they were written in reply to Pope's declaration that nothing remains to the moderns but to recommend their productions by the imitation of the ancients. Later factors, and therefore more probable causes of the Conjectures, are Jospeh Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (1756), which was dedicated to Young and seems to have been used by him, and a certain anonymous Letter to Mr. Mason on the Marks of Imitation, which appeared in 1757.5 That Dr. Johnson's Rasselas was the principal incentive to the writing of the Conjectures, as Professor Brandl concludes, seems improbable in view of the letter to which I have already referred. This letter written September 11, 1758, or six months before Rasselas appeared, shows that the Conjectures were at least already planned, if not already written, at that time. Young himself tells us that he wrote his Conjectures in reply to an inquiry by a friend of his. In the introduction to them he says. to Richardson, "You remember that your worthy patron and our common friend put some questions on the serious drama at the same time when he desired our sentiments on original composition," and adds that he will now "hazard some conjectures" on these subjects. This statement, which does not show who the "worthy patron and common friend" was, permits of various interpretations. According to Professor Brandl it refers to Colley Cibber (1671-1751). The latter enjoyed the company and intimate friendship of Young, particularly in 1745, on account 2 Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol. XXXIX, p. 12. of their "relation in their dramatic capacity." 998 In a letter written to Richardson in 1754 Young speaks, moreover, of a Mr. Cibber and the stage. At about this time Richardson and Colley Cibber were also writing to each other,10 all of which are reasons for thinking that Colley Cibber might have been the "worthy patron and common friend" in question. We have equally good reasons, on the other hand, for inquiring whether the person in question was not Theophilus Cibber (1703-1758), a successful London actor, playwright, and author, a son of the former Cibber. Between 1745 and 1758 be acted for several years at Covent Garden, then for some time at the Haymarket, and later again at Covent Garden. In 1753 he published a history of actors and actresses and his Lives of the Poets, and in 1756 his Dissertations on Theatrical Subjects.12 These works, besides being forerunners of the Conjectures as to time, were forerunners in some respects also as to content. Their author discusses subjects similar to those treated in the Conjectures. He writes against neglecting the heart and says that emotions must come from it. He speaks of men of genius, and of immortal Shakespeare as the great example. He discusses Shakespeare's strong and lively imagination, his spirit and fire, emphasizes the imagination as the poet's principal working faculty, speaking of creations of the poet's imagination, and declares, "Nothing evinces want of genius, invention, or taste, more than an awkward imitation." In view of such similarity as to thought between these two men, not to mention the strong probability that they were intimate associates, it seems probable that Theophilus Cibber may have been the person of whom Young speaks as having given him occasion to write the Conjectures. It seems possible also that Aaron Hill (1685-1750) may have been that person. He wrote many letters to actors concerning their art, addressed literary disquisitions to Pope and Bolingbroke, and he is the author of a treatise entitled Critical Reflexions on Propriety in Writing. Since he had such an interest in literary criticism and since he and Young belonged to the same literary circle, Hill may have been the person Doran, Works of Young, Vol. I, p. XIV. Richardson, Correspondence, Vol. II, p. 32. 10 Same, Vol. II, p. 177. "Theophilus Cibber, The Lives and Characters of the Most Eminent Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and Ireland. 12 Dissertations on Theatrical Subjects as they have several times been delivered to the Public, by Theophilus Cibber. who evoked the Conjectures. It may be noted also that Walter Thomas declares, without, however, verifying his statement, that it was "without doubt" Arthur Onslow.13 In view of these conflicting statements and in view also of similar instances in Young's works, which will be pointed out later, it seems even possible that the statement in question was made merely as a polite pretext for writing the Conjectures. We shall now survey the literary career of Young before and during the time he wrote the Conjectures. It will be a necessary preparation for a detailed consideration of them. In many instances the Conjectures cannot be understood as they were meant, if interpreted without reference to their author. By referring in ambiguous cases to his point of view and his way of thinking and expressing himself as revealed in his other writings and in the history of his life, we may be able to find the original meaning and the only correct interpretation of any passage in question. Young commenced his long literary career preceding the Conjectures with half a dozen epistles of literary, political, and personal contents, addressed to various prospective patrons. Besides being a conventional type of literature of the time, they concern rather traditional subjects and are executed in the conventional manner. They are written in polished heroic couplets and abound in witty turns, clever analogies, antitheses, paradoxes, and bombastic exaggerations. They are, in other words, products of the time and school of Pope. Two of them, the Epistles to Mr. Pope Concerning the Authors of the Age (1730), are particularly remarkable as such. In these Young expounds, praises, and embraces the neo-classical creed and lauds Pope and Addison for establishing it. In the first he speaks as a fellow-combatant in the pseudo-classical ranks, opposing the extravagances of the Marini, or so-called "Metaphysical," school and demanding conformity to the currents of French influence which were constituting essentially the neo-classical movement. He insists particularly on rational and clearly expressed contents and polished verse form. In the second epistle, particularly, he interprets in detail and indorses with praise what are altogether Pope's "precepts how to write and how to live." A further product of Young's neo-classical period are his satires, collected later under the title "Love of Fame, the Universal Passion. In them he proved himself a worthy rival of his master Pope. Here belongs also his Centaur not Fabulous, in Six Letters to a Friend on the 13 Le Poète Edward Xoung, pp. 469 f. |