the poet's death. In December, 1699, Dryden had finished the work, with a preface written in his usual pure and vigorous prose. He was paid by Tonson two hundred and fifty guineas, with an engagement to make up that amount to three hundred pounds when a second impression should be demanded. It was thirteen years before such second edition was published.

In May, 1700, the bookseller's first great patron died. The time, I think, has arrived when a different interpretation of "patronage," as between author and publisher, must be adopted, in preference to the conventional use of the term which long prevailed. During the better half of the past century," writes the worthy John Nicholls, "Jacob Tonson and Andrew Millar were the best patrons of literature," a fact rendered unquestionable by the valuable works produced under their fostering and genial hands. Again: "That eminent bookseller, Andrew Millar, the steady patron of Thomson and Fielding, and many other eminent authors." In 1773, Johnson said, "Now learning itself is a trade. A man goes to a bookseller, and gets what he can. We have done with patronage."

It was a

pleasant delusion of Paternoster Row that patronage of authors had only changed from the Mæcenas of the Cabinet to the Mecenas of the Counting-house.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Tonson purchased a small house and grounds at Barn Elms, a village between Putney and Mortlake. Its majestic elms are said to have been the subject of many a pastoral poet. There was a mansion here in which Count Heidegger, the founder of Italian operas, resided. George II. was here entertained with displays of fireworks and illuminated lamps; but the "boets and bainters," who were not in good odour with the Hanoverian dynasty, conferred a lustre upon Barn Elms

which did not go out quite so quickly as Heidegger's fireworks. Jacob's villa, originally little more than a cottage, was a pleasanter summer place of meeting for the Kit-Cat Club than Shire Lane or the Fountain. Like other clubable men, its members were fond of country excursions. They had occasional meetings at the Upper Flask on Hampstead Heath, but to Barn Elms they could come in the painted vessel or the swift wherry, not quite so free from care, perhaps, as the swan-hopping citizens, who, in their August voyages, were accustomed to land at Barn Elms, and, with collations and dances on the green, while away a summer afternoon.

The origin and early history of the Kit-Cat Club are shrouded in the "darkness visible" of the past. Fable and tradition assert their claims to be interpreters, as in the greater subject of the beginning of nations. Elkanah Settle, whose name has been preserved, like a fly in amber, by Dryden's bitter description of him under the name of Doeg, addressed, in 1699, a manuscript poem "To the most renowned the President and the rest of the Knights of the most noble Order of the Toast." In these verses the City poet asserted the dignity of this illustrious society. Malone supposes the president to have been Lord Dorset or Mr. Montague, and the Order of the Toast to have been identical with the Kit-Cat Club. The toasting glasses of this association had verses engraven upon them which might have perished with their fragile vehicle had they not been preserved in Tonson's fifth Miscellany, as verses by Halifax, Congreve, Granville, Addison, Garth, and others of the rhyming and witty companionship, whose toasts, as was irrevently writ ten, were in honour of old cats and young kits. This ingenious derivation is ascribed to Arbuthnot. There was a writer of a far lower

grade the scurrilous Ned Wardwho, in his "Secret History of Clubs," gives a circumstantial account of the origin of the Kit-Cat in connection with Jacob Tonson. It was founded, he said, "by an amphibious mortal, chief merchant to the Muses." According to Ward's narrative, we see the shadow of Jacob Tonson, as drawn by a party caricaturest, waiting hopefully in his shop for the arrival of some one or more of "his new profitable chaps, who, having more wit than experience, put but a slender value as yet upon their maiden performances. The exact locality, made illustrious by Christopher Katt and his mutton-pies, is held by Ned Ward to have been Gray's Inn Lane; by other and better authorities Shire Lane, and subsequently the Fountain Tavern in the Strand. Mr. Tonson, then, in accordance with the custom of the times, was always ready to propose a whet" to his authors, but he now added a pastry entertainment. At length, according to the satirist, Jacob proposed a weekly meeting, where he would continue the like feast, provided his friends would give him the refusal of all their juvenile productions. This "generous proposal" was very readily agreed to by the whole poetic class, and the cook's name being Christopher, for brevity called Kit, and his sign being the Cat and Fiddle, they very merrily derived a quaint denomination from puss and her master, and from thence called themselves the Kit-Cat Club." Ward goes on on to say that the club, having usurped the bays from all the town, "many of the quality grew fond of showing the everlasting honour that was likely to crown the poetical society."

There probably never existed a club whose members have had such a happy chance of their memories being preserved for the admiration or indifference of posterity as those

of the Kit-Cat. Many of them are important figures in the state history of their country and in the history of its literature. of its literature. Others have passed. on to the obscurity of mere Lord Chamberlains and Grooms of the Stole; whilst some of the versifiers and wits of their day have written. their names upon the sands of the ebbing tide which the next flood obliterates. But they each of them were painted by Kneller. The pictures are still in the possession of the representative of the Tonson family, in Hertfordshire, having been, some of them, from time to time publicly exhibited, as was the case in the last International Exhibition. All the portraits, engraved by Faber, were published the year before the death of Jacob Tonson. They were re-engraved in 1821, accompanied by "Memoirs of the celebrated persons composing the Kit-Cat Club." These memoirs are, with some justice, described by the Quarterly Review of 1822 as one of the most blundering pieces of patchwork that the scissors of a hackney editor ever produced." It certainly is one of the dullest books, manufactured out of the commonest materials. The portraits, it is also said by this unsparing critic, are "deficient in characteristic resemblance." That sort of family likeness here prevails which is to be found in all Kneller's faces-a quality described also as "a monotony in the countenances, and a want of spirit in the figures." This volume, by which I may trace my course as by a catalogue in calling up some of the Shadows associated in this club with Jacob Tonson, brings them before me, nearly all in the full-bottomed peruke of the Court; the men of letters, however, affected their not ungraceful head decoration. Farquhar in 1698 makes "the full wig as infallible a token of wit as the laurel." Some of the grandees show with ribbons. and stars and white staffs; many of

them are in the négligé costume which the painter often adoptedmore artistic, perhaps, than the lace cravat and the embroidered coat. Only a very few are in the cap in which Tonson himself is depicted, but some of these are lords.

First, let me call up the great Sir Godfrey himself, state painter to five sovereigns. He was equally favoured by Charles II., James II., William III,, Anne, and George I. The German artist must have been exceedingly discreet in his politics and his religion to have begun life with Toryism and Popery; to have gone on happily with those who accomplished the Revolution; and to have ended his days amongst some of the staunchest adherents of the Protestant cause, the boon companions of his Kit-Cat family at Barn Elms. He must have been an amusing associate when his inordinate vanity was unlocked by good cheer. He would there scarcely venture to relate that famous vision of his which he described to Pope. He dreamt that he was dead, when encountering St. Peter, the apostle very civilly asked his name. "I said it was Kneller. I had no sooner said so, than St. Luke, who was standing close by, turned towards me, and said, with a great deal of sweetness, 'What the famous Sir Godfrey Kneller from England?' 'The very same, sir,' said I; 'at your service.'" It is related upon the authority of Pope that Tonson got a good many fine portraits, and two of himself, by flattering Kneller's vanity. I may picture the bookseller whispering into his ear at the Kit-Cat dinners that he was the greatest master that ever was. That might be sufficient when the flattery was accompanied by the feast; but there were sometimes dull intervals when the KitCat room no longer echoed the

1

I pass on to another personage who is characterised by an essentially different ruling passion from that of Sir Godfrey. The "proud" Duke of Somerset was the first of the members of the Kit-Cat who sat for his portrait, for the purpose of presenting it to Mr. Tonson, the secretary of the club. I hesitate in giving implicit credence to the stories that are related of this Whig partisan by the Tory writers, such as, that he would never suffer his children to sit in his presence, and that, not deigning to speak to servants, he gave his orders by signs. It seems scarcely consistent that this inordinately haughty peer should write to a tradesman who kept an open book-shop in a public thoroughfare, "our club is dissolved till you revive it again, which we are impatient of." This was in June, 1703, when Tonson had made a trip to Holland to purchase paper for his noble edition of Cæsar. At that exact period Vanbrugh, who seems to have been his constant friend and correspondent, writes to him at Amsterdam, "In short, the Kit-Cat wants you much more than you ever can do them. Those who remain in town are in great desire of waiting on you at Barn Elms; not that they have finished their pictures neither; though to excuse them as well as myself, Sir Godfrey has been most in fault. The fool has got a country house near Hampton Court, and is so busy in fitting it up (to receive nobody) that there is no getting him to work." Vanbrugh had

recollections of Tonson's villa which were not associated with its ceremonial banquets. Writing to Tonson in 1725, he says, "From Woodstock we went to Lord Cobham's, seeing Middleton-Stony by the way, and eating a cheerful cold loaf at a very humble ale-house: I think the best meal I ever ate, except the first supper in the kitchen at Barnes."

Richard Tonson, the descendant of the old bookseller, who resided at Water-Oakley on the banks of the Thames, added a room to the villa which he inherited, on whose spacious walls the portraits were hung, not so completely in the style of a master of the ceremonies as in the memoir-writer series of engravings. This latter Tonson, one of the representatives for Windsor, was a partner with his brother, the third Jacob, in the old bookselling business in the Strand, and may therefore be excused for having, with his trade notion of great names, placed together in close companionship Dryden, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Addison, Garth, and Steele. In my discursive fashion, I shall venture to depart from both the arrangements. Peers, without any intermixture of plebeian blood, are not considered to be the liveliest of companions. I think I may also take the liberty of saying that a knot of six authors of our own time-though not exactly possessing the qualities attributed to

the tribe

So very clever, anxious, fine, and jealous, would not come up to the ordinary expectation that nothing but pearls would drop from their mouths.

In the Water-Oakley arrangement, the door of the room cuts off Tonson from Dryden, who is not given in the engraved series. It may be doubted whether Dryden takes his place here as a member of the KitCat Club, or was introduced by

Jacob's descendant out of respect to the great name by whom the son of the barber-surgeon of Fleet Street was first brought into notice. If so, it was a very just tribute.1 As I have intimated, there was no cause of discord between the poet and the bookseller, when the translator of Virgil might expect, like Dante, to be conducted through the unknown regions by his great original. Dryden had no doubt forgiven the offence which Jacob had committed a few years before. Although the poet had refused his request to dedicate his translation to King William, the publisher nevertheless "prepared the book for it; for, in every figure of Æneas, he has caused him to be drawn, like King William, with a hooked nose.2 The device of the bookseller is recorded in an epigram of the period :

Old Jacob, by deep judgment swayed,

To please the wise beholders, Has placed old Nassau's hook-nosed head On young Æneas' shoulders. To make the parallel hold tack, One took his father pick-a-back, Methinks there's little hacking:And t'other sent him packing."

The history of the Kit-Cat Club would be far more intelligible could I trace the dates of the admission of members. Club records are perishable commodities, and there are none remaining of the Kit Cat Club. Ned Ward tells us that the banter upon Dryden's "Hind and Panther," called "The City Mouse and Country Mouse," stole into the world out of the witty society of the KitCat. This joint production of Prior and Charles Montague was published in 1687, much to the annoyance of Dryden, who thought it hard that two young fellows, to whom he had been civil, should set the town laughing at him. Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, was painted by Kneller amongst the Kit-Cat por

2 Dryden's letter to his son Charles.

traits.

Prior does not appear in this collection. Between 1687 and 1703, when the club had a settled locality at Barn Elms, Montague had well pushed his fortunes-to adopt Johnson's words-as "an artful and active statesman, employed in balancing parties, contriving expedients, and combating opposition." His qualities as a writer have ceased to interest; but, as a patron of letters, at the period before reliance was placed upon that greater patron the public, who is not to be flattered into complacency by dedications and odes, his memory has survived. "From the moment," says Macaulay, at which he began to distinguish himself in public life, he ceased to be a versifier. . . He wisely determined to derive from the poetry of others a glory which he never could have derived from his own. As a patron of genius and learning he ranks with his two illustrious friends, Dorset and Somers." Both the eminent men thus referred to were members of the Kit-Cat, and are amongst the foremost of those who justify the eulogy of Horace Walpole: "The Kit - Cat Club, though generally mentioned as a set of wits, were, in fact, the patriots that saved Britain."

Amongst the nobles and statesmen of the period that have been made so familiar to us by the eloquent narrative of Macaulay, and who are represented in Kneller's Kit-Cat portraits, we find that of one who has been "damned to ever lasting fame," not only by the great historian, but by the great novelist. If we would study the character of one of the most wicked nobles of that day, we may turn to Macaulay's History, and Thackeray's "Esmond." How Charles Lord Mohun could have become a member of any decent society after his participation in the murder of Mountford, the actor, in 1692, it would be difficult to conjecture. There were few peers, I may believe, of the Kit-Cat Club

who, whatever might have been their motive for the verdict of "Not Guilty" upon Mohun's trial before the Lord High Steward, would have applauded the saying of one great nobleman-"After all the fellow was but a player; and players are rogues." Spence has preserved a satisfactory anecdote of our friend the bookseller, as told him by Pope, which evidently refers to the early days of the club. "The master of the house where the club met was Christopher Katt, Tonson was secretary. The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berkley were entered of it, Jacob said he saw they were just When Lord going to be ruined. Mohun broke down the gilded emblem on the top of his chair, Jacob complained to his friends, and said

6

that a man who would do that, would cut a man's throat.' So that he had the good and the forms of the society much at heart."

Thirty years after the Kit-Cat Club had taken its station at Barn Elms, Pope, in his first satire, published in 1733, celebrated a distinguished epicure of that period:Each mortal has his pleasure; none deny; Scarsdale his bottle, Darty his ham-pie.

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Darty was Charles Dartiquenave, or Dartineuf. The famous lover of ham-pie" might have been one of the early members of the Kit-Cat who rejoiced in Christopher Katt's "mutton-pies." Swift describes him to Stella as "the man who knows everything and that everybody knows, and where a knot of rabble are going on a holiday, and where they were last." He wrote a paper in the Tatler on the use of wine, in which Addison is supposed to be pointed at. "I have the good fortune to be intimate with a gentleman who has an inexhaustible source of wit to entertain the curious, the grave, the humorous, and the frolic. He can transform himself into different shapes, and adapt himself to every company; yet, in a coffeehouse, or in the ordinary course of