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HARPER'S

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

VOL. CVII

JUNE, 1903

No. DCXXXVII

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The Patron in the Eighteenth
Century

BY EDMUND GOSSE

O much ridicule has been thrown on the practice of patronage in the eighteenth century that it may seem a paradox to affirm that in its most consistent form it was a kindly, wholesome, and beneficial mode of protecting what would without it have been helpless. It is time that some one took up the cause of the much-despised, much miscomprehended patron.

The practice of dedicating books to wealthy and powerful noblemen, and of accepting from them protection and money, had been thoroughly familiar to the seventeenth century. It received a sudden expansion in the reign of Queen Anne, when Lord Halifax made the customary twenty guineas almost mechanical. We are told by Tickell and others that no one who dedicated a poem to Halifax came empty away; and in several cases, most notably in that of Congreve, he used his great position as Chancellor of the Exchequer and afterwards First Lord of the Treasury to find for meritorious poets lucrative sinecures in the public service.

For about twelve years Halifax was in the position of a general Mæcenas; yet, it appears, not in the true eighteenth-century sense. He marks the transition between the old dedicatee and the new patron. Swift helps us to form

this distinction when he says that Halifax For poets open table kept,

But ne'er considered where they slept; in other words, that he gave them money, invited them to dinner, and sometimes found offices for them at the expense of the nation, but that he did not trouble himself to offer them a lodging. What particularly distinguished the true eighteenth-century patron was that he lifted the whole burden of life off the shoulders of his protégé and gave him the comforts of a home.

No change in manners comes suddenly, and something of this practice had been known towards the end of the preceding century. Locke lived many years in the houses of the earls of Shaftesbury, and Hobbes for the greater part of his long life was the guest of successive earls of Devonshire at Hardwicke. But in these instances a definite return was expected. Locke was, first, physician and then factotum to the Ashley Cooper family; while, if it is less easy to say what Hobbes did for his hosts, his epitaph puts it plainly. that he was "in the service of" (servavit) his noble employers. It was proper that the responsibilities of a patron should be duly recognized, and after the reign of Queen Anne it was hardly possible that poets should be treated as Nat

Copyright. 1903. by Harper and Brothers. All rights reserved.

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Lee had been by the Duke of Buckingham, and Oldham by Lord Kingstonthat is to say, brought up out of the country, petted, indulged, and then incontinently dropped. Public feeling, in the eighteenth century, expected the patron to do more and to expect less.

What seems to have encouraged a wise and liberal patronage more than anything else was the development in the reign of Queen Anne of the habit of making what was called the Grand Tour. Every noble youth, before starting on public life, was bound to see the world and make useful foreign relations. Young Englishmen had an ambition to be "polite," and their parents wished them to make a good appearance abroad. It was not enough that they should be

attended by a courier and several footmen; they required an intellectual companion. Lady Oxford expressed the general opinion when she said, "The chief aim of any young nobleman on his travels should be to make a man of sense his friend." Here, then, in an age when poetry and graceful scholarship were the fashion, was the chance for a young man of talents and gentlemanly address, who had nothing but his wits to live upon, to start a career. It was hard if he could not find some scion of a great house who would be charmed to secure his company for the Grand Tour.

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The advantages to the protégé were numerous and obvious. He was taken in luxury across the Continent. In Paris he accompanied his patron, who was also his comrade, to the opera, to the comedy, to the collections fine art. It was his business to be preinformed on these matters, to act as something (but not too much) of a cicerone. He was introduced into the best foreign society; he took part in delightful excursions to Marly and Versailles. He had a responsibility to the young man's

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parents. If any

THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679) From the Painting by John Mitchell Wright

thing went

wrong, if he felt that his charge was in danger from bad company, it was his duty, with the utmost privacy and discretion, to inform his Lordship at home of the peril. They rush on to the

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starving in an Oxford garret, -pure enchantment. Behold him plucking a leaf of laurel from Virgil's grave at Naples! Behold him in what he calls his "gundula" floating on the canals of Venice! Behold him, flushed with enthusiasm, listening to Pergolesi in Florence, and losing himself in the labyrinths of the ruins of Rome!

And for all this, what was he expected to give in return?

CHARLES MONTAGU, EARL OF HALIFAX (1661-1715)
From a Portrait by Sir Godfrey, Kneller

As we have seen, he was pre-eminently there as a discreet, sympathetic, and unobtruding representative of parental authority. But more obviously he was there to make an agreeable companion for the young nobleman. One great development at this time was in the status of the protégé. He was no longer in danger of being confounded with the servants. Indeed, he ordered them about; he was independent of any one but the patron, and, without question, he was often the mouthpiece of the latter. That the social status of the protégé had risen is to be observed in the rather disgraceful story of how the poet Savage, when he was residing with Lord Tyrconnel, would invite friends to the house and imperiously order the butler to bring up

his Lordship's best wines from the cellar for them. for them. The poetical protégé, alas! was more certain to be a man of good parts than of good breeding.

So much for the Grand Tour; but what when the agreeable party returned to England from abroad? Then, if the protégé possessed a notable degree of talent, and had ingratiated himself with the patron, a life of singular amenity and ease began for him. If he was in holy orders, two or three sinecure livings were allotted to him, and he was presented at court in the hope of further preferment,- as George Berkeley, the philosopher, and the poet Parnell were introduced, as may be read in Swift's Journal to Stella. A prebend was the least that such a presentation could lead

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