PATRONAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20288, 22 June 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

PATRONAGE.

THE DEPENDENT MIND,

BY DAVID BLACK.,

" One honest virtue to which few poets can protend I trust I shall ever claim as mine—to no man, whatsoever his station in life or his power to servo me. have I ever paid a compliment at tho expense of truth." So wrote Burns in his own hand in a copy of his " Poems: Chiefly in tho Scottish Dialect," which he presented to one John W. Mudro, Esquire. Recently the cables told us that this volume had been sold to a great American bookcollector for more than four thousand pounds. Thus tho twentieth century has appraised a cry of independence raised out of the subservient eighteenth; for Burns' words of himself were as true as they were proud; his reproach against others was as well-merited as it was severe. Perhaps it may be of some small interest to glance a mpment at this system of patronage that bound European writers from the dawn of antique letters, at the absurd oblations poured forth by genius on the altars of power, and finally at the breaking of the spell and the loosening of the fetters and at the liberators who dared the powers of enchantment and captivity. It was tho literature of ancient Rome, then in the hands of every schoolboy and on the lips of every man of culture, that familiarised our ancestors with the idea of the dependent writer. The flower of Roman letters saw the system of patronage at its best. Virgil and Horace, names that will last for all time, were not ashamed to ply their sovereign with honours rightly due only to divinity. Yet there was always a reserve. Servile dependence was neither offered nor exacted.

Roman literature declined with the decline of its Maecenases and its Messallas; but it bequeathed to the rejuvenated West the legend of Augustan patronage. The courts of France and England were the nurseries of the arts. The splendours of tho Morning Star of English Song were husbanded and enhanced by the venerable Plantagenet, John of £rannt. Elizabeth gathered under her ample wing a very " nest of singing birds." At the court of Charles 11. a licentious titerature o"t of touch with tho feelings of tho nation was fostered by dilettante lordlings. This " mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease " had at its heels many who could pretend to belong to no aristocracy but that of wit; but the patrons that allowed Dryden to feel the pincn of poverty and Butler to feel the pangs of starvation can not be said to have done their duty well. " Fed With Soft Dedications." The standard of patronage was low indeed. The patron loved dedications, loved courtly compliment, loved abject flattery still more. All these he got, but ft'as not prepared to do his part. Pope's ruth less pen caught the type well. His com plaint is that the patron. Fed with soft dedications all day long. forgets that his flatterers need more substantial sustenance. Much they extolled his pictures, much his seat; And flattered every day. and some days eat; Till, grown more frugal in his riper dayß, He paid some bards with port, and some with praise But still the great have kindness in reserve: Ho helped to bury whom he helped to starve. Whatever wero the shortcomings of the patrons in their contributions to the system, the poets of that age caimot be accused of half doing their part. One may take as an example the treatment accorded by the authors of that age to their sovereigns. Those sovereigns were by no means paragons of. wisdom and virtue. Several of them were rigues. Some of them were fools. One of them it least had tho unenviable distinction of being at once a rogue and a fool. James 1. was an obstinate and pedantic poltroon. Charles I. was a liar. Charles 11. was an indolent and treacherous frivol. Tames 11. was both a bigot and a reprobate, Anne was vulgar and ignorant. Against the character of William we can say nothing; yet William was gloomy f-nd taciturn, disiiked by his subjects and understanding them but little. Yet on these sovereigns was showered a profusion of adulation that wo can scarcely imagine to proceed from men of a like race to ourselves. Shameless Sychophancy. There aro few who in these days do not believe that the sacred martyr, Charles, was ai liar and a trickster, and • that his execution was far more a blunder than a crime. Yet the profane poets of tho Restoration can scarcely mention his death without comparing him to Jesus, often to tho disadvantage of our Lord. Charles 11. was tho most unprincipled sovereign England has ever had. Yet Halifax calls him

The best good man that ever filled a throne.

Anno was red-faced and ugly. She was inclined to corpulence. She had had thirteen children. S'ho had the mind of a charwoman—and the obstinacy—and occasionally the manners. Yet Pope proclaims she is another Diana haunting the verdant groves of Windsor. Lastly William and Mary. They, indeed, deserve high praises of the nation; and no ono who reads these lives of Prior can say they did not get them.

Yet let us not think that the whole of tho world of lotters was delivered over to sycophancy. ' Milton had lived and died despising for his undying fire the shelter of those leprous hands that kept alive the discoloured flame of English letters.

On avil days though fallen and evil tongues. In darknesi, and with dangers compassed. And solitude,

ho dwelt on celestial heights in star-like loneliness. Others, too, had lived qpart; for only by doing so could a poet retain his self-respect.

A Brave Protest. And presently there arose a man in England who was to vanquish this evil genius of letters —the bold and stalwart figure of Samuel Johnson. , Of him we may be justly proud—proud of the poor Oxford student throwing away the boots a benofactor had left at his door—proud of the penniless young literary adventurer walking with a friend all night in St. James' Square when their combined resources could not pay for a lodging, and declaiming against Walpole imbued with tho high resolve that they at least would stand by their country—proud of the Grand Cham of literature, and , never prouder of him than'when in his old age he stood in the market-place cf Uttoxeter in tho rain, suffering the insults of the ' ribald, doing penance for his refusal to keep his father's stall on that very spot fifty years before. Johnson recognisod how great an obstacle this patronage was to tho man of letters. Toil, jealousy, poverty, desperation itself the poet might surmount. The lurking danger was that dilletantish coquette would dally with genius for a whilo and then cast it off. The great poet whoso noble words I have written at tho top of this article navigated successfully the troubled waters of privation, but came to shipwreck in the smooth sea of success. Prosperity was the enemy—or seeming prosperity, rather. So it was Johnson administered his knock-down blow to patronage in that famous letter to the last but not the least of tho patrons. Lord Chesterfield:

Fs not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water and when he has reached land encumbers him with heln ? The not lc n which you havo been pleased to fnke of my labours had it been early had been fciml. but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enioy it; till I am known and do not want it.

That was the last word: the Grand Cham had spoken. The tumult and shoutr ing have died now: we take tho victory for granted and wo hfiye forgotten the war. . - ■