The Works of Henry Fielding/Of True Greatness. An Epistle to George Dodington, Esq.
'TIS strange, while all to greatness homage pay,
So few should know the goddess they obey.
That men should think a thousand things the same,
And give contending images one name.
Not Greece, in all her temples' wide abodes,
Held a more wild democracy of Gods
Than various deities we serve, while all
Profess before one common shrine to fall.
Whether ourselves of greatness are possess'd,
Or worship it within another's breast.
While a mean crowd of sycophants attend,
And fawn and flatter, creep and cringe and bend;
The fav'rite blesses his superior state,
Rises o'er all, and hails himself the great.
Vain man! can such as these to greatness raise?
Can honour come from dirt? from baseness, praise?
Then India's gem on Scotland's coast shall shine,
And the Peruvian ore enrich the Cornish mine.
Behold, in blooming May, the May-pole stand,
Dress'd out in garlands by the peasant's hand;
Around it dance the youth, in mirthful mood;
And all admire the gaudy, dress'd-up wood.
See, the next day, of all its pride bereft,
How soon the unreguarded post is left.
So thou, the wonder of a longer day,
Raised high on pow'r, and dress'd in titles, gay,
Stripp'd of these summer garlands, soon would'st see
The mercenary slaves ador'd, not thee;
Would'st see them thronging thy successor's gate,
Shadows of power, and properties of state.
As the sun insects, pow'r court-friends begets.
Which wanton in its beams, and vanish as it sets.
Thy highest pomp the hermit dares despise,
Greatness (cries this) is to be good and wise.
To titles, treasures, luxury and show,
The gilded follies of mankind, a foe,
He flies society, to wilds resorts,
And rails at busy cities, splendid courts.
Great to himself, he in his cell appears,
As kings on thrones, or conquerors on cars.
O thou, that dar'st thus proudly scorn thy kind,
Search, with impartial scrutiny, thy mind;
Disdaining outward flatterers to win,
Dost thou not feed a flatterer within?
While other passions temperance may guide,
Feast not with too delicious meals thy pride.
On vice triumphant while thy censures fall,
Be sure no envy mixes with thy gall.
Ask thyself oft, to power and grandeur born,
Had power and grandeur then incurr'd thy scorn?
If no ill-nature in thy breast prevails,
Enjoying all the crimes at which it rails?
A peevish sour perverseness of the will,
Oft we miscall antipathy to ill.
Scorn and disdain the little cynic hurl'd
At the exulting victor of the world.
Greater than this what soul can be descried?
His who contemns the cynic's snarling pride.
Well might the haughty son of Philip see
Ambition's second lot devolve on thee;
Whose breast pride fires with scarce inferior joy.
And bids thee hate and shun men, him destroy.
But hadst thou, Alexander, wish'd to prove
Thyself the real progeny of Jove,
Virtue another path had bid thee find,
Taught thee to save, and not to slay, mankind.
Shall the lean wolf, by hunger fierce and bold,
Bear off no honours from the bloody fold?
Shall the dead flock his greatness not display;
But shepherds hunt him as a beast of prey?
While man, not drove by hunger from his den,
To honour climbs o'er heaps of murder'd men.
Shall ravaged fields and burning towns proclaim
The hero's glory, not the robber's shame?
Shall thousands fall, and millions be undone,
To glut the hungry cruelty of one?
Behold, the plain with human gore grow red,
The swelling river heave along the dead.
See, through the breach the hostile deluge flow.
Along it bears the unresisting foe:
Hear, in each street the wretched virgin's cries,
Her lover sees her ravish'd as he dies.
The infant wonders at its mother's tears,
And smiling feels its fate before its fears.
Age, while in vain for the first blow it calls,
Views all its branches lopp'd before it falls.
Beauty betrays the mistress it should guard,
And, faithless, proves the ravisher's reward:
Death, their sole friend, relieves them from their ills,
Their kindest victor he, who soonest kills.
Could such exploits as these thy pride create?
Could these, O Philip's son, proclaim thee Great?
Such honours Mahomet expiring crav'd,
Such were the trophies on his tomb engrav'd.
If greatness by these means may be possess'd,
Ill we deny it to the greater beast.
Single and arm'd by nature only, he
That mischief does, which thousands do for thee.
Not on such wings to fame did Churchill soar,
For Europe, while defensive arms he bore.
Whose conquests, cheap at all the blood they cost,
Saved millions by each noble life they lost.
Oh, name august! in capitals of gold,
In fame's eternal chronicle enroll'd!
Where Cæsar, viewing thee, asham'd withdraws,
And owns thee greater in a greater cause.
Thee, from the lowest depth of time, on high
Blazing, shall late posterity descry;
And own the purchase of thy glorious pains,
While Liberty, or while her name, remains.
But quit, great sir, with me this higher scene,
And view false greatness with more awkward mien,
For now, from camps to colleges retreat;
No cell, no closet here without the great.
See, how pride swells the haughty pedant's looks;
How pleas'd he smiles o'er heaps of conquer'd books.
Tully to him, and Seneca, are known,
And all their noblest sentiments his own.
These, on each apt occasion, he can quote;
Thus the false count affects the man of note,
Awkward and shapeless in a borrow'd coat.
Thro' books some travel, as thro' nations some,
Proud of their voyage, yet bring nothing home.
Critics thro' books, as beaus thro' countries stray,
Certain to bring their blemishes away.
Great is the man, who with unwearied toil
Spies a weed springing in the richest soil.
If Dryden's page with one bad line be bless'd,
'Tis great to show it, as to write the rest.
Others, with friendly eye run authors o'er,
Not to find faults, but beauties to restore;
Nor scruple (such their bounty) to afford
Folios of dulness to preserve a word:
Close, as to some tall tree the insect cleaves,
Myriads still nourish'd by its smallest leaves.
So cling these scribblers round a Virgil's name,
And on his least of beauties soar to fame.
Awake, ye useless drones, and scorn to thrive
On the sweets gather'd by the lab'ring hive.
Behold, the merchant give to thousands food,
His loss his own, his gain the public good.
Her various bounties Nature still confines.
Here gilds her sands, there silvers o'er her mines:
The merchant's bounty Nature hath outdone,
He gives to all, what she confines to one.
And is he then not great? Sir B. denies
True greatness to the creature whom he buys:
Blush the wretch wounded, conscious of his guile
B—nard and H—cote at such satire smile.
But if a merchant lives, who meanly deigns
To sacrifice his country to his gains,
Tho' from his house, untrusted and unfed,
The poet bears off neither wine nor bread;
As down Cheapside he meditates the song,
He ranks that merchant with the meanest throng.
Nor him the poet's pride contemns alone,
But all to whom the muses are unknown.
These, cries the bard, true honours can bestow,
And separate true worth from outward show;
Sceptres and crowns by them grow glorious things
(For tho' they make not, they distinguish kings).
Short-liv'd the gifts which kings to them bequeath;
Bards only give the never-fading wreath.
Did all our annals no Argyle afford,
The muse constrain'd could sing a common lord.
But should the muse withhold her friendly strain,
The hero's glory blossoms fair in vain;
Like the young spring's, or summer's riper flow'r,
The admiration of the present hour.
She gleans from death's sure scythe the noble name,
And lays up in the granaries of fame.
Thus the great tatter'd bard, as thro' the streets
He cautious treads, lest any bailiff meets.
Whose wretched plight the jest of all is made;
Yet most, if hapless, it betray his trade.
Fools in their laugh at poets are sincere,
And wiser men admire them thro' a sneer.
For poetry with treason shares this fate,
Men like the poem and the poet hate.
And yet with want and with contempt oppress'd,
Shunn'd, hated, mock'd, at once men's scorn and jest,
Perhaps from wholesome air itself confin'd,
Who hopes to drive out greatness from his mind?
Some greatness in myself perhaps I view;
Not that I write, but that I write to you.
To you! who in this Gothic leaden age,
When wit is banish'd from the press and stage,
When fools to greater folly make pretence,
And those who have it seem asham'd of sense;
When nonsense is a term for the sublime,
And not to be an idiot is a crime;
When low buffoons in ridicule succeed,
And men are largely for such writings fee'd,
As W—'s self can purchase none to read;
Yourself th' unfashionable lyre have strung,
Have own'd the muses and their darling Young.
All court their favour when by all approved;
Ev'n virtue, if in fashion, would be lov'd.
You for their sakes with fashion dare engage,
Mæcenas you in no Augustan age.
Some merit then is to the muses due;
But oh! their smiles the portion of how few!
Tho' friends may flatter much, and more ourselves,
Few, Dodington, write worthy of your shelves.
Not to a song which Cælia's smiles make fine,
Nor play which Booth had made esteem'd divine;
To no rude satire from ill-nature sprung,
Nor panegyric for a pension sung;
Not to soft lines that gently glide along,
And vie in sound and sense with Handel's song;
To none of these will Dodington bequeath
The poet's noble name and laureate wreath.
Leave, scribblers, leave the tuneful road to fame,
Nor by assuming damn a poet's name.
Yet how unjustly we the muses slight,
Unstirr'd by them because a thousand write!
Who would a soldier, or a judge upbraid,
That — wore ermine, — a cockade.[1]
To greatness each pretender to pursue,
Would tire, great sir, the jaded muse and you.
The lowest beau that skips about a court,
The lady's plaything, and the footman's sport;
Whose head adorn'd with bag or tail of pig,
Serves very well to bear about his wig;[2]
Himself the sign-post of his tailor's trade,
That shows abroad, how well his clothes are made;
This little, empty, silly, trifling toy,
Can from ambition feel a kind of joy;
Can swell, and even aim at looking wise,
And walking merit from its chair despise.
Who wonders, then, if such a thing as this
At greatness aims, that none the aim can miss!
Nor trade so low, profession useless, thrives,
Which to its followers not greatness gives.
What quality so mean, what vice can shame
The base possessors from the mighty claim?
To make our merits little weight prevail,
We put not virtue in the other scale;
Against our neighbour's scale our own we press,
And each man's great who finds another less.
In large dominions some exert their state,
But all men find a corner to be great.
The lowest lawyer, parson, courtier, squire,
Is somewhere great, finds some that will admire.
Where shall we say then that true greatness dwells?
In palaces of kings, or hermits' cells?
Does she confirm the minister's mock-state,
Or bloody on the victor's garland wait?
Warbles, harmonious, she the poet's song,
Or, graver, laws pronounces to the throng?
To no profession, party, place confin'd,
True greatness lives but in the noble mind;
Him constant through each various scene attends,
Fierce to his foes, and faithful to his friends.
In him, in any sphere of life she shines,
Whether she blaze a Hoadley 'mid divines,
Or, an Argyle, in fields and senates dare,
Supreme in all the arts of peace and war.
Greatness with learning deck'd in Carteret see,
With justice, and with clemency in Lee;
In Chesterfield to ripe perfection come,
See it in Littelton beyond its bloom.
Lives there a man, by nature form'd to please,
To think with dignity, express with ease;
Upright in principle, in council strong,
Prone not to change, nor obstinate too long:
Whose soul is with such various talents bless'd,
What he now does seems to become him best;
Whether the Cabinet demands his pow'rs,
Or gay addresses soothe his vacant hours,
Or when from graver tasks his mind unbends,
To charm with wit the muses or his friends.
His friends! who in his favour claim no place,
From titles, pimping, flattery or lace,
To whose blest lot superior portions fall,
To most of fortune, and of taste to all.
Aw'd not by fear, by prejudice not sway'd,
By fashion led not, nor by whim betray'd,
By candour only biass'd, who shall dare
To view and judge and speak men as they are?
In him (if such there be) is greatness shewn,
Nor can he be to Dodington unknown.
Author's Notes[edit]
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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