3 inadequate. If Defoe, Steele, and Addison borrowed from their humble predecessor less openly than the editors of the British Apollo (1708-11) did, beyond question they were greatly indebted to him. They owed to him the very foundation of their success in the essay. And the obligation did not end with Dunton's question-and-answer project. After a long campaign of advertising, he issued, in 1697, a volume of light, informal essays called The Female War, purporting to be a collection of controversial letters that had passed between the misogynist Sir Thomas and some irate champions of their sex. No reader can turn from this playful dispute over paint, patches, powder, female learning, the female craze for French prose romances, and other foibles of the sex to the essays of Defoe, Steele, and Addison without realizing that The Female War deserves consideration. Those diverting epistles represent an important stage of transition between the brief "answers" in the Mercury and the completed essay-form of the Spectator. It is not certain, however, that even in this instance Dunton has been deprived of any rightful claim to recognition as a literary figure. Aside from the fact that few passages in the Mercury rise above the slipshod style practised by other journalists of the time, we can never know whether an exceptional passage was contributed by the projector himself or by one of his Athenian collaborators. The same uncertainty attends The Female War; for, although Dunton was apparently responsible for the clever scheme, the advertisement of it, and the final publication of the book, it does not follow that he composed a single one of the epistles. In a sense he was never a littérateur. He seems to have had 1 The Athenian Gazette: or Casuistical Mercury ran from March 17, 1690-1 to Feb. 8, 1695-6. It was revived May 14, 1697, but lasted through only ten numbers, ending June 14. For Dunton's account of this project, see The Life and Errors, etc. (1705), ed. J. B. Nichols, 1818, 1, 198-9 and Athenianism (1710), Project VI. The best of the questions and answers were collected and republished, with some additions, as The Athenian Oracle (1704). See also John Griffith Ames, The English Literary Periodical of Morals and Manners, 1904, Ch. I and pp. 130-1 and W. P. Trent, Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. IX (1913), p. 5. The latest treatment of the subject, G. S. Marr's Periodical Essayists of the Eighteenth Century, 1923, p. 14, is disappointingly brief. Dunton accused Defoe of plagiarizing his question-project (Life and Errors, II, 423). See Life and Errors, 1, 200. few illusions concerning his talent as a writer, and these were rapidly dispelled. His connection with literature arose accidentally from the circumstance that he was a dealer in books. From his place behind the counter at the Sign of the Raven he formed his estimate of literature in purely commercial terms. In order to succeed in business (and at one time he was highly successful), he had to stock his shelves with what his patrons-chiefly of the lower classes-would buy. It was mainly for the purpose of supplying himself with such articles of merchandise that he assumed the additional functions of author and publisher. Almost his sole significance is that of a shrewd entrepreneur. Whatever success or reputation he achieved is attributable mainly to two qualifications for business-a profound skill in seeing and foreseeing the trend of popular interest and a decidedly modern conception of the value and the methods of effective advertising. He discovered what his patrons liked, he provided it, and he notified them through every agency at his disposal. Dunton's title-pages are in themselves models in the art of advertisement. At the end of most books printed for him will be found a lengthy announcement of other indispensable works to be had at his shop, some of them recommended with a gusto worthy of present-day bookjackets. For the same purpose he availed himself of odd spaces in his Athenian Mercury and other papers, and he either established or at least controlled the Compleat Library (1692), a jcurnal devoted exclusively to the review of new books. Coming just at the time when the spirit of commercialism was beginning to manifest itself fully in the affairs of the nation, he applied it thoroughly to the business of making and selling literature. "A Third Project of mine, for the promotion of Learning, was a Monthly Journal of Books printed in London and beyond Sea, which was chiefly extracted out of 'The Universal Bibliotheque, and Journal des Sçavans; and it first appeared under the title of A Supplement to the Athenian Mercury,' but was afterwards called 'The Complete Library.' This design was carried on about ten months, when Monsieur Lecrose interfered with me, in a Monthly Journal, intituled The Works of the Learned'; upon which I dropped my own design, and joined with Lecrose's Bookseller in publishing 'The Works of the Learned'; but, Lecrose dying, it was discontinued, though the same design, under the same title, is yet on foot, and managed by several hands, one of which is the ingenious Mr. Ridpath...." Life and Errors, I, 198-9. With these modern commercial talents he combined a conveniently loose sense of meum et tuum. This was really a part of his genius. The slow methods of laborious honesty were precluded by his restless inventiveness. "The Mind of Man,” he says, looking into his own mind, " is naturally active, and prone to Thoughts, 'tis daily forming some NEW PROJECT." No sooner had he conceived one scheme for dazzling the public and attracting shillings to his till than a dozen others had suggested themselves. From beginning to end, his pathway is strewn with brilliant plans, many of which never got beyond the initial stage of the printed advertisement. His Athenianism, of 1710, contains a portrait of the author accompanied by "an heroic poem," proclaiming, Here's Dunton's Phiz, that new Athenian Swain, In the mad rush to keep pace with his inventions, he sacrificed everything, honesty included, to the necessity of speedy production. Of hack-writers he declares in a moment of injured righteousness "it is very remarkable, they will either persuade you to go upon another man's copy, to steal his thought, or to abridge his Book, which should have got him bread for his life-time." Yet Dunton employed such men constantly. Indeed it was due largely to him that they were first organized into a scribbling syndicate. Besides, he evidently set them an example in the works bearing his own signature. The most tangible evidence we have had so far of his plagiarism is in connection with the Letters from New England, an account based upon a visit to Boston in 1686 but first published in The Life and Errors (1705). Many of the best passages describing places, customs, and persons are now known to have been incorporated from works descriptive of New England and from collec 71, 86-144. The manuscript, with much other material, is in the Bodleian, MS Rawl., Miscell. 71 and 72, the contents of which are catalogued by Nichols, Life and Errors, II, 753 f. W. H. Whitmore's ed. of the eight letters was published for the Prince Society 1867. 8 tions of seventeenth-century prose characters. It has been remarked also that the most elegant poems inserted in A Voyage round the World (1691), a farrago which is said to have influenced Laurence Sterne, were copied from Cowley and Francis Osborn." He himself very nearly confesses to dishonesty in the Dedication to Athenianism (1710). He admits that for the poems in this volume he has borrowed "many curious thoughts" from Cowley, Dryden, Congreve, Sedley, and Charles Gould; he implies that he has made free also with the religious poetry of Joseph Stennet and Isaac Watts.10 But he makes this half-confession "without quoting the authors," that is, without attaching their names to their poems. The reason given by him for withholding this precise information is that he wishes to put his critics in the awkward position of never knowing whether they are criticizing him or someone else! The probable explanation is that he might thus secure credit for whatever the individual reader could not trace to its source. He then goes on to enunciate a theory somewhat after the manner of Milton's doctrine of plagiarism. "If at any time," he declares, "I have borrow'd a sparkling Thought, yet still-The Projection, Plot, and Method of every Project (both in Prose and Verse) is • Whitmore pointed out a few transgressions of the kind in his edition. A complete exposure was made by Chester Noyes Greenough in "John Dunton's Letters from New England," The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. XIV, pp. 213-257, 1912. Professor Greenough summarizes the results by saying "There are at least eighty-four cases in which Dunton incorporated borrowed material in the Letters. Of these Whitmore noted thirty-three: eighteen from Roger Williams, six from Cotton Mather, three from Josselyn, two from Increase Mather, two from J. W., one from John Eliot, and one from Joshua Moody. To these we have added fifty-one passages, twenty from Josselyn and thirty-one from various writers of characters; namely, fourteen from Overbury, seven from Fuller, four from Earle, three from Flecknoe, and three from the author of The Ladies Calling" (p. 253). • Life and Errors, 1, p. xiii, note (extract from Benjamin Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature). Dunton himself includes this among the seven books he had cause to repent of out of a total of six hundred he had published (Life and Errors, 1, 159). For Sterne's probable indebtedness to Dunton's mad book, see W. L. Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne, 1909, p. 135. 10 Professor Greenough called attention to the inclusion, besides, of four poems which had appeared in Samuel Wesley's Maggots, first printed for Dunton in 1685 (op. cit., p. 254). 11 entirely my own, and so for the most part are the Words; yet there's few extraordinary Thoughts in any of our modern Poets but are brought into Duntons Athenianism, but they are so much alter'd, enlarg'd, or adapted to new Purposes, that the Original Author can't pretend any Right to 'em." He now disclaims all pretensions to the art of poetry, admitting that his Muse is, at best, only a jade. In fact, it seems to him in this moment of disillusionment that there are only five poets of any real consequence in English literature-Cowley, Dryden, Garth, Stennet, ard Watts! He concludes, with charming inconsistency, by attacking pirate printers who have stolen his own wares and those of Defoe! The indications are that by 1710 Dunton's methods had become the subject of comment and that he was trying to put on the best face possible without making a frank confession. Already he had pretended to acknowledge all his sins, in The Life and Errors; but this is one of his most disingenuous works. Dunton's character is nowhere more plainly revealed than in his books of piety. As editor of the Mercury he had allotted much space to the discussion of religious topics. This was evidently his paramount interest as promoter and author. He was responsible for a greater output of solemn devotional literature than the most enterprising of his competitors among the publishers, and not a few of the treatises went under his own name. In strict accordance with the religious ideals then prevalent, he was concerned as a writer almost exclusively with the subject of death and the need of mortal man's constantly reflecting upon the dread fact of mor 11 If Dunton had ever had any illusions concerning his prose style, they had vanished much earlier. "I consider the pieces I have wrote that whatever subject I have applied to, I have generally over-done it, and so wrought it, that I have run it out of breath: by this means having made the thing so excessive plain, that the publick has admired it less than they might have done, had I just fleshed the hints, and left them undissected, in order for others to apply the game home themselves, and to take the pleasure of doing a little more than was already offered to their view. This, I am at last fully convinced, is the vice of an Author; for he must not devour his subject, if he would leave any relish in it for his Readers. This fault, of never leaving a Thought until one has worked it to death, I would by all means avoid, as I would expect that any performance of mine should be well received." This and much more pertinent self-criticism he inserted in Life and Errors, I, 314 f. |