ABSTRACT
Written between 10 October (the beginning of S.’s first term at Oxford) and 17 November 1810, when it was published as the first poem in Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson. The publisher, Henry Slatter, recorded that ‘the ease with which he composed many of the stanzas therein contained, is truly astonishing; when surprised with a proof from the printers, in the morning, he would frequently start off his sofa, exclaiming that that had been his only bed, and, on being informed that the men were waiting for more copy, he would sit down and write off a few stanzas, and send them to the press without even revising or reading them,-this I have myself witnessed’ (note in Robert Montgomery’s Oxford, a Poem (3rd edn 1833) 165). Hogg (Hogg i 260–9) gives a circumstantial but different account of the genesis of this book. He was shown proofs of the poems, criticized their ‘many irregularities and incongruities’, and declared they were publishabe ‘only as burlesque poetry’. ‘The proofs lay in his rooms for some days, and we occasionally amused ourselves during an idle moment by making them more and more ridiculous; by striking out the more sober passages; by inserting whimsical conceits; and especially by giving them what we called a dithyrambic character, which was effected by cutting some lines in two, and joining the different parts together that would agree in construction, but were the most discordant in sense’. Hogg claimed credit for suggesting the title, which ‘gave an object and purpose to our burlesque; to ridicule the strange mixture of sentimentality with the murderous fury of revolutionists, that was so prevalent in the compositions of the day’. Margaret Nicholson was a local celebrity of Stockton–on-Tees, near Hogg’s family house at Norton, so she may have been his idea; but the poems do not support the rest of his account. S. certainly thought highly enough of 114this poem (which Hogg ascribed to ‘some rhymester of the day’ and dismissed as ‘puling trash’) to draw Godwin’s attention to it fifteen months later (L i 231 with important note). It is much more likely that S.’s ‘sly relish for a practical joke’ expressed itself in exploiting this title (like that of Q Mab) as a publicity stunt and as a safeguard for doctrines which were-in essentials-seriously held (see Cameron (1951) 319). The volume (‘with its expensive binding and grotesque gothic type set’: Holmes 49) was published to raise money in support of the Irish journalist Peter Finnerty, a campaigner against the British government’s Irish policies throughout the first decade of the 19th century (ibid. 49–51). The full title reads: Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson; being poems found amongst the papers of that noted female who attempted the life of the King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor. Margaret Nicholson was a weak-minded seamstress who had menaced George III with a dessert-knife in 1786 and was confined to Bedlam for life (she outlived S. by six years). For further details see SC i 34–8. By posing as the nephew of a mad regicide, S. could voice outrageous sentiments without specifying the ones he shared. ‘Fitzvictor’, ‘son of Victor’, suggests the author’s descent from Cazire’s coadjutator. Hogg (i 268) and C. K. Sharpe (Letters to and from Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., ed. Alexander Allardyce (1888) i 442–3) agree that the book enjoyed a limited vogue at Oxford, but the publisher (Montgomery, Oxford 165) remembered it as ‘almost still-born’. It is S.’s only volume of verse that received no review. The ‘Essay on War’ combines several stock contemporary themes: the dying soldier’s parting from his loved ones occurs e.g. in Campbell’s ‘Wounded Hussar’, Scott’s ‘Maid of Toro’, Cottle’s ‘War, a Fragment’, and E. Darwin’s Loves of the Plants; the devastation of war is stressed (if ironically) in Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society; the inevitable fall of kings is a traditional commonplace. Writing to Godwin on 16 January 1812 S. affirms (L i 231): ‘I have desired the publications of my earlier youth to be sent to you, you will perceive that Zastrozzi and St Irvyne were written prior to my acquaintance with your writings. The Essay on War a little Poem, since’. Probable direct influences include Enquirer Part II Essay V, Joseph Cottle’s poem ‘War, a Fragment’, and especially Volney’s Ruins. Cameron (Cameron (1951) 53–4) attributes the republicanism to Paine’s Rights of Man, but Paine derides the importance of monarchy whereas S. here blames the sufferings of war exclusively on the power and vices of kings. His exculpation of the ‘Almighty Power’ derives from Volney, as also does the confident conclusion (see note to lines 85–9). The following ‘Advertisement’, purposely equivocal and pedantic, headed the poems:
The energy and native genius of these Fragments, must be the only apology which the Editor can make for thus intruding them on the Public Notice. The FIRST I found with no title, and have left it so. It is intimately connected with the dearest interests of universal happiness; and much as we may deplore the fatal and enthusiastic tendency which the ideas of this poor female had acquired, we cannot fail to pay the tribute of unequivocal regret to the departed memory of genius, which, had it been rightly organized, would have made that intellect, which had since become the victim of frenzy and despair, a most brilliant ornament to society.
115In case the sale of these Fragments evinces that the Public have any curiosity to be presented with a more copious collection of my unfortunate Aunt’s Poems, I have other papers in my possession, which shall, in that case, be subjected to their notice. It may be supposed they require much arrangement; but I send the following to the press in the same state in which they came into my possession.
J.F.