By the blessing of God I have one quality of a public character, that my history may be read in a Nation's eyes, and almost in the eyes of all Europe; for people write abusive pamphlets against me in France, as virulently as in England; and many that justify me in both countries do it. upon the assumption of unreal facts, or of principles which I do not avow. I am ever, my dear Thompson, Your most affectionate friend 1 The letter was discovered by Mr. Strong among Lord St. Oswald's papers at Nostell Priory. Q "PATRON VERSUS PUBLISHER"1 HE author has not only achieved independencehe has done more than this, he has become selfconscious and self-confident, and the hard things that in his haste he used formerly to say of patrons he is now apt to say of publishers. If Johnson, who has been quoted both in season and out of season, coupled the patron and the jail, it was Byron who wroteon purpose to meet the eye of John Murray"-" now Barrabas was a publisher." I have dwelt upon this point, not with the object of bringing together both patron and publisher under one sentence of condemnation, but rather with the idea of reminding us that our sense of exaggeration in one case might warn us against possible exaggeration in the other. In spite of Byron, we none of us believe that publishers belong by nature or by profession to the tribe of Barabbas. On the contrary, more often than not, they are the surest friends and counsellors of authors. Why, then, should we continue to give currency almost as if it were a self-evident truth to Johnson's expressions of irritation and indignation? For himself, of course, his experience being unique, was also only too real and final; but that it was not universal we can easily convince ourselves, if we reflect that Hobbes, Locke, Priestley, and Burke, would not have been what they were if they had not found patrons. 1 Unpublished fragment-undated. 2 ["Barrabas was a publisher" was, as a fact, not a saying of Byron, and is not to be found in any of his letters or journals. The real author was Thomas Campbell, who did not apply the expression to John Murray, but to another firm of publishers; see letter from John Murray in "Notes and Queries," 7th Series, Vol. VIII, 7 September, 1889, page 193. In spite of this inaccuracy of detail, the "fragment"-itself roughly pencilled on the back of old envelopes-is printed as singularly characteristic of Strong's turn of mind.] ... One aspect of patronage has been, if not ignored, at least generally misunderstood. .. Swift said that it was a sure sign of a genius that the dunces were down upon him. For genius in the present day this terror is much mitigated, not perhaps because dunces are less numerous, but more probably because they are less united. But formerly they were powerful enough to suppress whatever in the way of opinion or discovery they may have found unusual or inconvenient. And there is little doubt that both Locke and Hobbes might have been silenced if their work had been done in the open instead of under the shelter of patronage. Nor is it to be supposed that the advantages of this system in the cases in which it worked well, were to the credit of one side only. On the contrary, there can be little doubt that such a relation as that between Locke and Shaftesbury must have greatly contributed to the enlargement and enrichment of political thinking and to the increase of freedom and tolerance in public life. |