The Poetical Works of Elijah Fenton/The Life of the Author
THE LIFE OF
ELIJAH FENTON.
This worthy gentleman was born at Shelton, near Newcastle-under-Line, in Staffordshire. In this county though there are several families of the name of Fenton, yet they are all branches from one stock, which is a very ancient and opulent family, our Author's mother being immediately descended from one Mare, an officer in William the Conqueror's army.
Our Poet was the youngest of twelve children, and was intended by his parents for the ministry: he was sent to the university of Cambridge, where he embraced principles very opposite to government, by which he became disqualified for entering into holy orders. We find him soon after his quitting the university Secretary to the Earl of Orrery; but how long he remained in that station we cannot ascertain. After he quitted the service of this noble peer it was his custom to perform a visit annually to his eldest brother's house in the country, who possessed an estate of 1000l. per annum. He was caressed in the country by all his relations, to whom he endeared himself by his affable and genteel behaviour. Mr. Fenton was a man of the most tender humanity, and discovered it upon every proper occasion. A gentleman resident in that county, who has transmitted to us some account of Mr. Fenton, has given us the following instance of his humane disposition.
He had a great number of sisters, some of whom were less happy in their marriages than others; one in particular was exposed to many misfortunes by the indiscretion and extravagance of her husband. It is the custom of some people to make very great distinctions between their rich and poor relations: Mr. Fenton's brother was of this stamp, and it seems treated his unfortunate sister with less ceremony than the rest. One day, while Mr. Fenton was at his brother's house, he observed the family going to dinner without this sister, who was in town, and had as good a right to an invitation as any of the rest, who dined there as a compliment to him. He could not help discovering his displeasure at so unnatural a distinction, and would not sit down to table till she was sent for; and, in consequence of this slight shewn her by the rest of the family, Mr. Fenton treated her with more tenderness and complaisance than any of his sisters.
Our Author carried through life a very fair reputation; he was beloved and esteemed by Mr. Pope, who honoured him with a beautiful epitaph. Mr. Fenton, after a life of ease and tranquillity, died at East-Hampstead Park, near Oakingham, the 13th of July 1730, much regreted by all men of taste, not being obnoxious to the resentment even of his brother writers.
In the year 1723 Mr. Fenton introduced upon the stage his tragedy of Mariamne, built upon the story related of her in the third volume of the Spectator, No. 171, which the ingenious Author collected out of Josephus. As this story so fully displays the nature of the passion of jealousy, and discovers so extraordinary a character as that of Herod, we shall here insert it, after which we shall consider with what success Mr. Fenton has managed the plot.
In a former paper the author having treated the passion of jealousy in various lights, and marked its progress through the human mind, concludes his animadversions with this story, which, he says, may serve as an example to whatever can be said on that subject.
"Mariamne had all the charms that beauty, birth, wit, and youth, could give a woman, and Herod all the love that such charms are able to raise in a warm and amorous disposition. In the midst of his fondness for Mariamne he put her brother to death, as he did her father not many years after. The barbarity of the action was represented to Mark Anthony, who immediately summoned Herod into Egypt, to answer for the crime that was laid to his charge. Herod attributed the summons to Anthony's desire of Mariamne, whom therefore, before his departure, he gave into the custody of his uncle Joseph, with private orders to put her to death if any such violence was offered to himself. This Joseph was much delighted with Mariamne's conversation, and endeavoured, with all his art and rhetoric, to set out the excess of Herod's passion for her; but when he still found her cold and incredulous, he inconsiderately told her, as a certain instance of her lord's affection, the private orders he had left behind him, which plainly shewed, according to Joseph's interpretation, that he could neither live nor die without her. This barbarous instance of a wild unreasonable passion quite put out, for a time, those little remains of affection she still had for her lord: her thoughts were so wholly taken up with the cruelty of his orders, that she could not consider the kindness which produced them, and therefore represented him, in her imagination, rather under the frightful idea of a murderer than a lover.
"Herod was at length acquitted, and dismissed by Mark Anthony, when his soul was all in flames for his Mariamne; but before their meeting he was not a little alarmed at the report he had heard of his uncle's conversation and familiarity with her in his absence: this, therefore, was the first discourse he entertained her with, in which she found it no easy matter to quiet his suspicions. But at last he appeared so well satisfied of her innocence, that from reproaches and wranglings he fell to tears and embraces. Both of them wept very tenderly at their reconciliation, and Herod poured out his whole soul to her in the warmest protestations of love and constancy; when, amidst all his sighs and languishings, she asked him whether the private orders he left with his uncle Joseph were an instance of such an enflamed affection? The jealous king was immediately roused at so unexpected a question, and concluded his uncle must have been too familiar with her before he would have discovered such a secret. In short he put his uncle to death, and very difficultly prevailed on himself to spare Mariamne.
"After this he was forced on a second journey into Egypt, when he committed his lady to the care of Sohemus, with the same private orders he had before given his uncle, if any mischief befell himself. In the mean-time Mariamne had so won upon Sohemus, by her presents and obliging behaviour, that she drew all the secret from him with which Herod had intrusted him; so that after his return, when he flew to her with all the transports of joy and love, she received him coldly with sighs and tears, and all the marks of indifference and aversion. This reception so stirred up his indignation, that he had certainly slain her with his own hands, had not he feared he himself should become the greater sufferer by it. It was not long after this when he had another violent return of love upon him; Mariamne was therefore sent for to him, whom he endeavoured to soften and reconcile with all possible conjugal caresses and endearments; but she declined his embraces, and answered all his fondness with bitter invectives for the death of her father and her brother.
"This behaviour so incensed Herod, that he very hardly refrained from striking her; when in the heat of their quarrel there came in a witness, suborned by some of Mariamne's enemies, who accused her to the King of a design to poison him. Herod was now prepared to hear any thing in her prejudice, and immediately ordered her servant to be stretched upon the rack, who in the extremity of his tortures confessed that his mistress's aversion to the King arose from something Sohemus had told her; but as for any design of poisoning, he utterly disowned the least knowledge of it. This confession quickly proved fatal to Sohemus, who now lay under the same suspicions and sentence that Joseph had before him on the like occasion: nor would Herod rest here, but accused her, with great vehemence, of a design upon his life, and, by his authority with the judges, had her publicly condemned and executed.
"Herod, soon after her decease, grew melancholy and dejected, retiring from the public administration of affairs into a solitary forest, and there abandoned himself to all the black considerations which naturally arise from a passion made up of love, remorse, pity, and despair. He used to rave for his Mariamne, and to call upon her in his distracted fits; and in all probability would have soon followed her, had not his thoughts been seasonably called off from so sad an object by public storms, which at that time very nearly threatened him."
Mr. Fenton, in the conduct of this design, has shewn himself a very great master of stage propriety; he has softened the character of Herod, well knowing that so cruel a tyrant as the story makes him could not be borne upon the English stage: he has altered the character of Sohemus from an honest confident to a crafty enterprising statesman, who, to raise his master to the throne of Judea, murthered the natural heir: he has introduced in his drama a character under the name of Salome, the King's sister, who bore an implacable hatred to Mariamne, and who, in league with Sohemus, pursues her revenge at no less a price than that of her brother's and the Queen's life.
After the wars which had subsisted between Cæsar and Anthony had subsided, and the world fell to the share of the former, Herod is represented as having just returned from Rome, where, as an hostage to the Emperor, he has stipulated to send his younger son there, and Flaminius, a noble Roman, accompanies him into Jewry, to carry off the young prince. The day in which this dramatic action begins is upon a grand festival, appointed in honour of Herod's safe return from Rome, and being still permitted to enjoy his kingdom. The hard condition of sending the prince to Rome greatly affects the heart of the Queen, whom the poet has drawn a most tender mother. This throws a cloud over the ceremony, and furnishes an opportunity for Sohemus and Salome to set their infernal engines at work; who, in conjunction with Sameas, the King's cup-bearer, contrive to poison the King and Queen at the feast: but the poisoned cup is first tasted by Hazeroth, a young lord related to the Queen, and the sudden effect which it has upon him discovers the villany.
The Queen's absence from the feast proves a fatal circumstance, and, as managed by Sohemus, fixes the appearance of guilt upon her. While Herod was absent at Rome Sohemus made addresses to Arsinoe, a Roman lady, confidante to Mariamne, to whom, in the ardour of his passion, he revealed the secret intrusted to him by Herod, of putting Mariamne to death, in case he, by any calamitous accident, should lose his life. Arsinoe, from a motive of affection, communicated this to Mariamne, as an instance of the violent passion which Herod had for her. This she did immediately before her departure for Rome with Flaminius the Roman envoy, who proved to be the lord of her wishes, whom she imagined to have been killed in fighting against Mark Anthony. Mariamne, thrown into this imminent danger, orders Arsinoe to be intercepted, whose return clears up her innocence, as she declares that no correspondence had ever been carried on between the Queen and Sohemus, of whom he was now jealous, as Mariamne had upbraided him with his cruel resolutions of putting her to death, intrusted to that minister. Herod is satisfied of her innocence by the evidence of Arsinoe; but as he had before given the cruel orders for putting the Queen to death, she, to prevent the execution of such barbarity, drank poison. The Queen is conducted in by the high-priest in the agonies of death, which gives such a shock to Herod, that, not able to survive her, he dies in the sight of the audience.
Sohemus, who knew what tortures would be reserved for him, kills himself, after having sacrificed Sameas, by whose treachery the plot was discovered, and who, in his falling, stabs Salome to the heart, as the last effort of his revenge.
As the plan of this play is regular, simple, and interesting, so are the sentiments no less masterly, and the characters graphically distinguished. It contains likewise many beautiful strokes of poetry.
When Narbal, a lord of the Queen's party, gives an account to Flaminius, the Roman general, of the Queen's parting with her son, he says,
Transform'd by grief to marble, and appear'd
Her own pale monument.
Flaminius, consistent with his character as a soldier, answers,
The trumpet's clangor, and the clash of arms.
That concert animates the glowing breast
To rush on death; but when our ear is pierc'd
With the sad notes which mournful Beauty yields,
Our manhood melts in sympathizing tears.
The character of Sameas, the King's cup-bearer, is one of the most villanous ever shewn upon a stage; and the poet makes Sohemus, in order to give the audience a true idea of him, and to prepare them for those barbarities he is to execute, relate the following instance of his cruelty.
He walk'd one evening, when the clam'rous rage
Of tempests wreck'd a ship: the crew were sunk;
The master only reach'd the neighb'ring strand,
Borne by a floating fragment; but so weak
With combating the storm, his tongue had lost
The faculty of speech; and yet for aid
He faintly wav'd his hand, on which he wore
A fatal jewel. Sameas, quickly charm'd
Both by its size and lustre, with a look
Of pity stoop'd to take him by the hand;
Then cut the finger off to gain the ring,
And plung'd him back to perish in the waves,
Crying, Go dive for more.—I'ave heard him boast
Of this adventure.
In the 5th act, when Herod is agitated with the rage of jealousy, his brother Pheroras thus addresses him:
Erase the faithful characters which Love
Imprinted on your heart.
Herod. Alas! the pain
We feel, whene'er we dispossess the soul
Of thattormenting tyrant, far exceeds
The rigour of his rule.
Pheroras. With reason quell
That haughty passion; treat it as your slave:
Resume the monarch.
The observation which Herod makes upon this is very affecting. The poet has drawn him so tortured with his passion, that he seems almost sufficiently punished for the barbarity of cutting off the father and brother of Mariamne.
The vulgar call us gods, and fondly think
That kings are cast in more than mortal moulds.
Alas! they little know that when the mind
Is cloy'd with pomp, our taste is pall'd to joy,
But grows more sensible of grief or pain.
The stupid peasant with as quick a sense
Enjoys the fragrance of a rose as I;
And his rough hand is proof against the thorn,
Which rankling in my tender skin would seem
A viper's tooth. Oh, blissful poverty!
Nature, too partial, to thy lot assigns
Health, freedom, innocence, and downy peace,
Her real goods; and only mocks the great
With empty pageantries. Had I been born
A cottager, my homely bowl had flow'd
Secure from pois'nous drugs; but not my wife!
Let me, good Heav'n! forget that guilty name,
Or madness will ensue.
Some critics have blamed Mariamne for yielding her affections to Herod, who had embrued his hands in her father and brother's blood: in this, perhaps, she cannot be easily defended; but the poet had a right to represent this as he literally found it in history, and being the circumstance upon which all the others depended. Though this play is one of the most beautiful in our language, yet it is in many places exposed to just criticism; but as it has more beauties than faults, it would be a kind of violence to candour to shew the blemishes.
The life of Mr. Fenton, like other poets who have been but little engaged in public business, being barren of incidents, we have dwelt the longer on this part of his Works, a tribute which his genius naturally demanded. As to the other poems of this amiable man, they will be found faithfully collected in the following pages.
Mr. Pope, as has been observed, wrote an epitaph upon Mr. Fenton, with which we shall close this life.
May truly say, Here lies an honest man:
A poet bless'd beyond the poets' fate,
Whom Heav'n kept sacred from the proud and great:
Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease,
Content with science in the vale of peace:
Calmly he look'd on either life, and here
Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear;
From Nature's temp'rate feast rose satisfy'd,
Thank'd Heav'n that he had liv'd, and that he dy'd.