PART V
88
“Character of Rapin, Hume, and Littleton’s Histories,” in “Poetical Essays, for July, 1784,” The Boston Magazine, containing, a collection of instructive and entertaining essays, in the various branches of useful, and polite literature, vol. 1 (July 1784), pp. 392–3.
William Hayley
The Boston Magazine, a short-lived monthly publication, survived long enough to produce only three volumes between October 1783 and December 1786. The magazine’s editors were John Eliot (1754–1813), James Freeman (1759–1835), and George R. Minot (1758–1802). Sadly, little is known about all three of them; none have entries in the ANB, and the older DAB has only an entry for Minot. The Boston Magazine’s contents were miscellaneous and, along with “poetical essays,” like the one reprinted here, included prose fiction and biographical essays. “Mr. Hayley,” was the British author and poet William Hayley (1745–1820) whose An Essay on History (London, 1780), from which the following extract was taken, was widely reprinted in eighteenth-century Britain and America. Here, the poem was a part of the Boston Magazine’s “Poetical Essays, for July, 1784.” On The Boston Magazine, see Lyon N. Richardson, A History of Early American Magazines, 1741–1789 (New York, 1931), pp. 211–25. On Hayley, see John Johnson, ed., Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Hayley (London, 1823) and, more recently, Vivienne W. Painting’s entry on him in the DNB.
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Character of Rapin, Hume, and Littleton’s Histories.
By Mr. Hayley.
THOU shall not want, RAPIN!
Thy well earn’d praise;
The sage Polibius, thou of modern days!
Thy sword, thy pen, have both thy name endear’d
This join’d our arms, and that our story clear’d:
Thy foreign hand discharg’d th’ his- torian’s craft,
Unsway’d by party, and to freedom just.
To letter’d fame we own thy fair pre- tence,
From patient labour, and from candid sense.
Yet public favour, ever hard to fix,
Flew from thy page, as heavy and pro- lix.
For soon, emerging from the sophist’s school,
With spirit eager, yet with judgment cool,
With subtle skill to steal upon applause
And give false vigour to the weaker cause;
To paint a specious scene with nicest art,
Re-touch the whole, and varnish eve- ry part;
Graceful in stile, in argument acute;
Master of every trick in keen dispute!
With these strong powers to form a winning tale,
And hide deceit in moderation’s vale,
High on the pinnacle of fashion plac’d,
HUME shone the idol of historic taste.
Already pierc’d by freedom’s search- ing rays,
The waxen fabric of his fame decays.
Think not, keen spirit! that these hands presume
To tear each leaf of laurel from thy tomb!
These hands, which, of a heart of hu- man frame,
Could stoop to harbor that ungene- rous aim,
Would shield thy grave, and give, with guardian care,
Each type of eloquence to flourish there!
But public love commands the pain- ful task,
From the pretended sage to strip the mask,
When his false tongue, averse to free- dom’s cause,
Profanes the spirit of her ancient laws.
As Asia’s soothing, opiate drugs, by stealth,
Shake every slackened nerve, and sap the health;
Thy writings thus, with noxious charms refin’d,
Seeming to sooth its ills, unnerve the mind.
While the keen cunning of thy hand pretends
To strike alone at party’s abject ends,
Our hearts, more free from faction’s weeds, we feel,
But they have lost the flower of pa- triot zeal.
Wild as thy feeble, metaphysic page,
Thy hist’ry rambles into sceptic rage;
Whose giddy, and fantastic dreams, abuse
A HAMDEN’S virtue, and a SHAKE- SPEAR’S muse.
With purer spirit, free from par- ty strife,
To sooth his ev’ning hour of ho- nour’d life,
See candid LITTLETON at length un- fold
The deeds of liberty in days of old!
Fond of the theme, and narrative with age,
He winds the lengthen’d tale through many a page;
But there the beams of patriot virtue shine;
There truth and virtue sanctify the line,
And laurels, due to civil wisdom, shield
This noble Nestor of th’ historic field.