Sketches from Life

Front matter

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

Part I. ^'■^\ Lbnoi And

»i^ir\- For vi>vfl(>!T§

^ L

MEMOIB

LAMAN BLANCHARD.

To most of those who have mixed generally with the men who, in our day, have chosen literature as their profession, the name of Laman Blanchard brings recollections of peculiar tenderness and regret. Amidst a career which the keenness of anxious rivalry renders a sharp probation to the temper and the affections, often yet more embittered by that strife of party, of which, in a Representative Constitution, few men of letters escape the eager passions and the angry prejudice — ^they recal the memory of a competitor, without envy ; a partisan, without gall ; firm, as the firmest, in the maintenance of his own opinions ; but gentle as the gentlest in the judgment he passed on others.

Who, among our London brotherhood of letters, does not miss that simple cheerfulness — that inborn and exquisite urbanity — ^that child-like readiness to be pleased with all — that happy tendency to panegyrise every merit and to be lenient to every fault? Who does not recal that acute and delicate sensibility — so easily wounded, and therefore 80 careful not to wound — which seemed to infuse a certain intellectual fine breeding, of forbearance and sympathy, into every society where it insinuated its gentle way ? Who, in convivial meetings, does not miss, and willwol twi^^fet ever, the sweetness of those unpretending taX^uX^ai — -^Jw^ ^"^- nestness of that honesty which seemed unconscious, it was worn so lightly — the mild influence of that exuberant kindness, which softened the acrimony of young disputants, and reconciled the secret animosities of jealous rivals? Yet few men had experienced more to sour them than Laman Blanchard, or had gone more resolutely through the author's hardening ordeal, of narrow circumstance, of daily labor, and of that disappointment in the higher aims of ambition, which must almost inevitably befal those who retain ideal standards of excellence, to be reached but by time and leisure, and who are yet condemned to draw hourly upon unmatured resources for the practical wants of life. To have been engaged from boyhood in such struggles, and to have preserved, undiminished, generous admiration for those more fortunate, and untiring love for his own noble yet thankless calling ; and this with a constitution singularly finely strung, and with all the nervous irritability which usually accompanies the indulgence of the imagination : is a proof of the rarest kind of strength, depending less upon a power purely intellectual, than upon the higher and more beautiful heroism which woman, and such men alone as have the best feelings of a woman's nature, take from instinctive enthusiasm for what is great, and uncalculating faith in what is good.

It is regarded thus, that the character of Laman Blanchard assumes an interest of a very elevated order. He was a choice and worthy example of the professional English men of letters of our day. He is not to be considered in the light of the man of daring and turbulent genius, living on the false excitement of vehement calumny and uproarious praise. His was a career not indeed obscure, but sufficiently quiet and unnoticed to be solaced with little of the pleasure with which, in aspirants of a noisier fame, gratified and not ignoble vanity rewards the labor and stimulates the hope. For more than twenty years he toiled on through the most fatiguing paths of literary composition, mostly in

LAMAN BLANCHARD. " vii

periodicals, often anonymously; pleasing and lightly instructing thousands, but gaining none of the prizes, whether of weighty reputation or popular renown, which more fortunate chances, or more pretending modes of investing talent, have given in our day to men of half his merits.

In his life are apparent many of the sores and evils peculiar to literary men in a country in which mind is regarded but as a common ware of merchandise ; its products to be bought but by the taste and fashion of the public ; with no resource in those provisions which elsewhere (and in Germany more especially) the state aflfords to such as quit the Agora for the Schools. The institution of professional chairs in Germany has not only saved many a scholar from famine, many a genius from despair, but, by ofiering subsistence and dignity to that valuable class of writers whose learning and capacities unlfit them, by reason of their very depth, for wide popularity, it has given worthy and profitable inducements to grave study, and, more than all else, has maintained the German fame for patient erudition, and profound philosophy. And this has been efiected without the evils which free traders in literature have supposed the concomitants of the system ; it has not lessened the boldness and originality of such authors as a Public alone can reward and appreciate ; nor has it crushed, by the patronage of a State, the spirit of free inquiry and enlarged discussion. In England, the author who would live on his works can live only by the Public ; in other words, by the desultory readers of light literature ; and hence the inevitable tendency of our literary youth is towards the composition of works without learning and forethought. Leisure is impossible, to him who must meet the exigences of the day ; much information of a refining and original kind is not for the multitude. The more imaginative rush to novels, and the more reflective fritter away their lives in articles for periodicals. Under such influences the author of these volumes Jived and died.

Samuel Laman Blanchard was born of respectable parents in the middle class, at Great Yarmouth, on the 15th of May, 1803. His mother's maiden name was Mary Laman. She married first Mr. Cowell, at St. John's Church, Bermondsey, about the year 1796 ; he died in the following year. In 1799 she was married again ; to Samuel Blanchard ; by whom she had seven children, but only one son, the third child, christened Samuel Laman.

In 1805, Mr. Blanchard (the father) appears to have removed to the metropolis, and to have settled in Southwark as a painter and glazier. He was enabled to give his boy a good education — an education, indeed, of that kind which could not but unfit young Laman for the calling of his father ; for it developed the abilities and bestowed the learning, which may be said to lift a youth morally out of trade, and to refine him at once into a gentleman. At six years old he was entered a scholar of St. Olave's school, then under the direction of the Reverend Dr. Blenkorm. He became the head Latin scholar, and gauaed the chief prize in each of the last three years he remained at the academy. When he left, it was the wish of the master and trustees that he should be sent to college ; one boy being annually selected from the pupils, to be maintained at the University, for the freshman's year, free of expense ; for the charges of the two remaining years the parents were to provide. So strong, however, were the hopes of the master for his promising pupil, that the trustees of the school consented to depart from their ordinary practice, and offered to defray the collegiate expenses for two years. Unfortunately, the offer was not accepted. No wonder that Poor Laman regretted in after life the loss of this golden opportunity. The advantages of an University career to a young man in his position, with talents arid application, but without interest, birth, and fortune, are incalculable. The pecuniary dence afiforded by the scholarship and the fellowitself no despicable prospect ; but the benefits

LAMAN BLANCHARD.

which distinctioDy fairly won at those noble and unrivalled institutionsy confers, are the greatest where least obvious : they tend usually to bind the vagueness of youthful ambition to the secure reliance on some professional career, in which they smoothe the difficulties and abridge the novitiate. Even in literature a college education not only tends to refine the taste, but to propitiate the public. And in all the many walks of practical and public life, the honors gained at the University never fail to find well-wishers amongst powerful contemporaries, and to create generous interest in the fortunes of the aspirant

But my poor friend was not destined to have one obstacle smoothed away from his weary path.* With the natural refinement of his dispesition, and the fatal cultivation of his intellectual susceptibilities, he was placed at once in a situation which it was impossible that he could fill with steadiness and zeal. Fresh from classical studies, and his emulation warmed by early praise and school-boy triumph, he was transferred to the drudgery of a desk in the office of Mr. Charles Pearson, a proctor in Doctors' Commons. The result was inevitable ; his mind, by a natural re-action, betook itself to the pursuits most hostile to such a career. Before this, even from the age of thirteen, he had trifled with the Muses ; he now conceived in good earnest the more perilous passion for the stage.

Barry Comwairs Dramatic Scenes were published about this time, — they exercised considerable influence over the taste and aspirations of young Blanchard — and many dramatic sketches of brilliant promise, bearing his initials, S. L. B., appeared in a periodical work existing at that period,

* The elder Blanchard is not to be blamed for voluntarily depriving his son of the advantages proffered by the liberal Trustees of St. Olave's ; it appears from a communication by Mr. Eeymer (brother-in-law to Laman Blanchard)— that the circumstances of the family at that time, were not such as to meet the necessary expenses of a Student— cycn lot ^^ \a*\'^V''* of his remdence at the Univerdty, 2* called The Drama. In them, though the conception and general treatment are borrowed from Barry Cornwall, the style and rhythm are rather modelled on the peculiarities of Byron. Their promise is not the less for the imitation they betray. The very characteristic of genius is to be imitative — first of authors, then of nature. Books lead us to fancy feelings that are not yet genuine. Experience is necessary to record those which color our own existence : and the style only becomes original in proportion as the sentiment it expresses is sincere. More touching, therefore, than these Dramatic Sketches, was a lyrical effusion on the death of Sidney Ireland, a young friend to whom he was warmly attached, and over whose memory, for years afterwards, he often shed tears. He named his eldest son after that early friend. At this period, Mr. Douglas Jerrold had written three volumes of Moral Philosophy, and Mr. Buckstone, the celebrated comedian, volunteered to copy the work for the juvenile moralist. On arriving at any passage that struck his fancy, Mr. Buckstone communicated his delight to his friend Blanchard, and the emulation thus excited tended more and more to sharpen the poet's distaste to all avocations incompatible with literature. Anxious, in the first instance, to escape from dependence on his father (who was now urgent that he should leave the proctor's desk for the still more ungenial mechanism of the paternal trade), he meditated the best of all preparatives to dramatic excellence ; viz., a practical acquaintance with the stage itself; he resolved to become an actor. Few indeed are they in this country who have ever succeeded eminently in the literature of the stage, who have not either trod its boards, or lived habitually in its atmosphere. Blanchard obtained an interview with Mr. Henry Johnston, the actor, and recited, in his presence, passages from Glover's Leonidas, He read admirably — his elocution was faultless — his feeling exquisite ; Mr. Johnston was delighted with his powers, but he had experience and wisdom to cool

LAMAN BLANCHARD.

his professional enthusiasm, and he earnestly advised the aspirant not to think of the stage. He drew such a picture of the hazards of success — the obstacles to a position — the precariousness even of a subsistence, that the poor boy's heart sunk within him. He was about to resign himself to obscurity and trade, when he suddenly fell in with the manager of the Margate theatre — this gentleman proposed to enroll him in his own troop, and the proposal was eagerly accepted, in spite of the warnings of Mr. Henry Johnston. ** A week," says Mr. Buckstone (to whom I am indebted for these particulars, and whose words I now quote), " was sufficient to disgust him with the beggary and drudgery of the country player's life ; and as there were no * Harlequins ' steaming it from Margate to London Bridge at that day, he performed his journey back on foot, having, on reaching Rochester, but his last shilling, the poet's veritable last shilling, in his pocket.

" At that time a circumstance occurred, which my poor friend's fate has naturally brought to my recollection. He came to me late one evening, in a state of great excitement ; informed me that his father had turned him out of doors ; that he was utterly hopeless and wretched, and was resolved to destroy himself. I used my best endeavors to console him, to lead his thoughts to the future, and hope in what chance and perseverance might effect for him. Our discourse took a livelier turn ; and after making up a bed on a sofa in my own room, I retired to rest. I soon slept soundly, but was awakened by hearing a footstep descending the stairs. I looked towards the sofa, and discovered he had left it ; I heard the street door close ; I instantly hurried on my clothes, and followed him ; I called to him, but received no answer ; I ran till I saw him in the distance also running ; I again called his name ; I implored him to stop, but he would not answer me. Still continuing his pace, I became alarmed, and doubled my speed. I came up with him near to Westminster Bridge-, Vv<& N<i^^ \vaxx^vc^% to the steps leading to the river ; I seized him ; he threatened to strike me if I did not release him ; I called for the watch ; I entreated him to return ; he became more pacified, but still seemed anxious to escape from me. By entreaties ; by every means of persuasion I could think of; by threats to call for help ; I succeeded in taking him back. The next day he was more composed, but I believe rarely resided with his father after that time. Necessity compelled him to do something for a livelihood, and in time he became a reader in the office of the Messrs. Bayliss, in Fleet-street. By that employ, joined to frequent contributions to the Monthly Magazine^ at that time published by them, he obtained a tolerable competence.

" Blanchard and Jerrold had serious thoughts of joining Lord Byron in Greece ; they were to become warriors, and assist the poet in the liberation of the classic land. Many a nightly wandering found them discussing their project. In the midst of one of these discussions they were caught in a shower of rain, and sought shelter under a gateway. The rain continued ; when their patience becoming ex* hausted, Blanchard, buttoning up his coat, exclaimed, ' Come on, Jerrold ; what use shall we be to the Greeks if we stand up for a shower of rain V So they walked home and were heroically wet through."

To this account by Mr. Buckstone, of the circumstances which impelled Mr. Blanchard to the vocation which was to last to his grave — ^literature as a livelihood — his brother-in-law, Mr. Keymer, adds, that at the time he was hesitating on the brink of his decision, he wrote for advice to Mr. Vigors, afterwards M. P. for Carlow (to whom he was nearly connected), enclosing a dramatic sketch as a specimen of his power. The answer was as follows :

" Chelsea, Saturday, June 28th.

" Dear Sir,

" I have to apologise for not answering your letter sooner,

LAMAN BLANCHARD.

but I have been so much occupied since I received it, as to have had little time until within this day or two, to take more than a mere cursory glance of the sketch which you were so obliging as to send me. I have now to thank you for the very great pleasure you have afforded me in the perusal of it, and to express my hopes that you will continue to cultivate the art in which, I do not hesitate to say, that the specimen before me affords a very high promise of your gaining success and distinction. I well know the disadvantages under which you have labored, your want of leisure, your few opportunities of informing or improving your mind to any suitable extent ; and nothing, I am convinced, could have enabled you to break through so many restraints, and succeed so well, but a native spirit of poetry, which, again I repeat my hopes, will not be neglected.

" At the present time there is every encouragement given to the art, both in the way of emolument and reputation. And could you find leisure to devote your mind to it, you would jfind it I think as profitable, and sure I am as pleasurable, a pursuit, as any in which you could engage. Were I to offer my advice, I should certainly recommend a young writer at the present day, to choose any other line of poetry than the dramatic. In writing for the stage, as it is now constituted, everything must be sacrificed to effect ; the poet must look to the actor ; he must consult the very accompaniments, the very decorations of the scene ; he must accommodate himself not to nature but to his audience ; and to all probability he will be forced to abandon the calm and chastened tenor of the higher poetry, in the attempt to produce something striking. But you are the best judge of what will suit your own genius and inclinations, and what will be most likely to obtain that patronage which it is necessary for you to look after. Should you, however, prefer adhering to the drama, I would have you turn your thoughts as much as possible from the style of the later tragedians, even of those who have been most successful, and devote as much of your time as you can spare to the study of our earlier school* I need not of course mention Shakspeare. Besides him there are a host of his fellow and contemporary laborers — Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, and Massinger, with others who cannot be too often or too intensely consulted, and in whose elevated sentiments and nervous diction, you cannot fail to find infinite instruction and delight.

" I shall be happy to give you any assistance in my power, either by my advice or criticisms, if you should think them of any value : and be assured I shall feel very sincere pleasure in witnessing your success in life.

" I am, dear Sir, Very truly yours,

** N. A. Vigors."

«* Mr, Samuel L, Blanehardr

Little perhaps was required to encourage young Blanchard in the pursuit to which his heart was already devoted ; but in later life he often referred to the letter of Mr. Vigors, as one that had more than influenced — had determined — his career and his fate.

So far, then, had he entered upon the destiny of mature manhood — reliance on his own resources — the independent wrestle with the world — while yet a boy ! Actor — author — adventurer ; with strong hope and patient brain ; the fi-ee lance of modem times, — when the pen supplies the place of the sword, and the ready wit succeeds to the stout arm. And now, at the age of twenty, he added to his cares and responsibilities, by a marriage of love with Miss Ann Gates.

* I venture very respectfully to doubt the soundness of this plausible advice. It is, I cannot but believe, to the too great study and imitation of our elder dramatists, that writers who might otherwise have enriched the practical literature of the stage, owe those faults of loose plot, and affected because obsolete diction, which, if pardoned by the critic, condemA them with the public* The dramatist who would ensure wide and permanent success, must study the passions and the humors at work in the world around him, not as described in the books on his shelf — ^inust embody the characters formed by his own age, and give them the language spoken in his own dajr.

LAMAN BLANCHARD. xr

It does not appear upon what resources he lived for the next three years : no doubt chiefly on contributions to the press. But in 1826 he was appointed by Mr. Vigors to the post of assistant-secretary to the Zoological Society, which advantageously assisted the small income that sufficed to his simple wants* and scholarly habits. He held this post only for three years, but those sufiiced to establish him in his profession of a man of letters. He became sub-editor of the Monthly Magazine^ then under the direction of Dr. Croly, and editor of the Belle Assemblee. His active mind and warmth of temperament soon engaged him in the politics of the day ; from merely literary avocations, he passed on to the daily strife and turmoil of the partisan press, and became associated in the editorship of the True Sun, the Constitutional, &c. He afterwards directed the Court Journal; to AinswortKs Magazine he was also, at the same time, an habitual contributor ; and during the latter years of his life he was employed on the Examiner, that journal which may be fairly called an honor to the English press — from the greatness of the intellect it has long commanded — from the acknowledged subtlety and depth of its literary (criticisms — and from the exquisite reasoning and the terse wit with which it enlivens the hackneyed commonplaces of party warfare.

The amiability of his disposition, and the thorough respectability of his character, no less than his ready talents and his growing repute, obtained for Laman Blanchard not only the society but the afiection of many of the most eminent writers of his time. He was of a nature to enjoy peculiarly the advantages of such an intercourse. For his taste was formed in no exclusive schools, and he could admire whatever was good, no matter the rules or the contempt of rules by which it was produced. He was as free from envy and jealousy as a man can be; and few writers

• In the earlier part of his life he abstained vf\io\lj itotiiwtoaJLlvA, younger than himself wiH fail to remember the generous encouragement and seasonable notice which his connection with the press enabled his kindly temper to bestow. Among his later and more intimate friendships with men of letters, may be named Serjeant Talfourd, Mr. Procter, Mr. Dickens, Mr. Fonblanque, Mr. Leigh Hunt, Mr. Forster (the distinguished critic and biographer), Mr. Ainsworth, Mr. Jerrold — whose talents, developing themselves more and more with every year, in their own natural bent towards wit at once prodigal and humane, leave us less to regret in the loss of his boyish work on Moral Philosophy, — Mr. Fox, the eloquent lecturer, Mr. Robert Bell, and others of the same refined and accomplished class. He had been on terms of intimacy with the brilliant and ill-fated L. E. L., and by a melancholy coincidence, to his hands was committed the task of narrating a life that closed as darkly as his own.

The man of letters then was living on his calling ; his brain ever active^ — his time wholly occupied. But was he contented, and was it for this that his boyish ambition had been trained, that his imagination had been cultivated, and his mind been stored ? Was he fulfilling the promise of his youth, or realizing the dreams for which he had deserted the proctor's desk ? Editing Monthlies and Belh Assemblies — at stern task- work on True Suns and Constitutionals — was he nearer to or further from the goal, the hopes of which had Ifirst incited him to the race ? We may venture upon the answer. His mind was less contented with its lot than resigned to its necessities. In 1828, when he was but twenty-five years old, Laman Blanchard had published a small volume of poems, called Lyric Offerings. In the year 1832, the writer of this slight Memoir became personally acquainted with the poet, and received from him a copy of these effusions. I was then conducting the New Monthly Magazine, and I was so delighted with the promise of these poems, that I reviewed them in terms of praise, which maturer reflection does not induce me to

LAMAN BLANCHARD. xvii

qualify. The following extract from my criticism may perhaps be pardoned, for the sake of the gems that shine in a worthless setting :

" The principal poem in point of length is called * A Poet's Bride ;' but it is the lowest in point of merit, being full of the affectations of a youthful taste, and strong in the two capital errors of any long poem in these days— obscurity and the absence of human interest. Yet everywhere breathe the freshness and odor of a true and luxuriant Genius, and the very weeds are but a proof of the fertility of the soil. I shall, however, pass in silence over this and all the longer poems in the volume, and come at once to some sonnets which I think are entitled to rank among the finest, the most expressive, and the most original in the language.

"TO-DAY.

** A liberal worldling, gay philosopher,

Art thou that lifVst thy young and yellow head

0*er the dim burial of the scarce-cold dead —

Building above thy brother's sepulchre

A home of love, that sense might almost err.

Deeming thine end therein to woo and wed

The flower-haired Earth for ever. Yet the red

In yonder west may well such dreams deter !

Yes, thou, all-hailed To-Day ! whose outstretched hand

Scatters loose riches on a bankrupt land.

Even thou art but a leaf from off the tree

Of yellowing Time : a grain of glistening sand

Dashed from the waters of that unsailed sea.

Where thou to-night shalt sink, and I as soon may be.'*

" The next sonnet is still more beautiful. There is a rich and mellow softness of thought glowing over it that is literally as —

" The syllables that breathe of the sweet south."

"MORNING.

" Wake from your misty nests — instinctive wake, Ye&ne, and numberleaa, and sleeping t)iui^a\

.XTui MEMOIR OF

The Infant Saviour of all blossomings

From heayen's bine womb hath passed ; and for the sake

Of Earth, and her green family, doth make

In air redemption and soft gloryings.

The world, as though inspired, erectly flings

Its shadowy coronals away, to slake

A holy thir$t for light : and, one by one.

The enamored hills— with many a startled dell.

Fountain and forest — ^blush before the Sun !

Voices and wings are up, and waters swell :

And flowers i like clustered shepherds y have begun

To ope their fragrant mouths ^ and heavenly tidings tell,"

" In another sonnet on Noon occur the following exquisite lines : —

This is sweety

To see the heavens all open, and the hood

Of crystal JVoon flung back ! the earth meanwhile

Filling her veins with sunshine—yital blood

Of all that now from her full breast doth smile

(Casting no shadow) on that pleasant flood

Of light, where every mote is some small minstreFs isle.**

" The next sonnet is on

« EVENING.

" Already hath the Day grown grey with age ; And in the west, like to a conqueror crov^ued, Is faint with too much glory. On the ground He flings his dazzling arms ; and, as a sage. Prepares him for a cloud-hung hermitage.

Where Meditation meets him at the door ; And all around — on wall, and roof, and floor. Some pensive star unfolds its silver page Of truth, which God's own hand hath testified. Sweet Eve ! whom poets sing to as a bride. Queen of the quiet — Eden of Time's bright map — Thy look allures me from my hushed fire-side. And sharp leaves rustling at my casement tap. And beckon forth my mind to dream upon thy lap !"

*' In a sonnet on Midnight there is one most solemn and even sublime verse : —