INTRODUCTION THE History of John Buncle has never been a popular book. It is hardly possible to imagine a period whose standard of taste and culture would render it popular. Yet it is safe to predict that it will always, as in the past, be an object of interest to the connoisseur, the explorer of curious by-paths of literature, and to all who have a liking for the eccentricities of human nature, when conjoined with strength and shrewdness, and with candour of expression. Thrice during the last century was the book disinterred from the obscurity that covered it, and on each occasion by a critic distinguished by this taste for originality. Charles Lamb, in The Two Races of Men, hits off the book with delightful humour when he says, "In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with eyes closed, mourns his ravished mate." Hazlitt's enthusiasm led him, ill advisedly, to compare the author with a genius of a far superior order : "The soul of Francis Rabelais passed into John (sic) Amory, the author of The Life and Adventures of John Buncle. Both were physicians, and enemies of too much gravity. Their business was to enjoy life. Rabelais indulges his spirit of sensuality in wine, in dried neats'-tongues, in Bologna sausages, in botargos. John Buncle shows the same symptoms of inordinate satisfaction in tea and bread-and-butter. While Rabelais roared with Friar John and the monks, John Buncle gossiped with the ladies, and with equal and uncon. trolled gaiety. These two authors possessed all the insolence of health, so that their works give a fillip to the constitution; but they carried off the exuberance of their natural spirits in different ways. The title of one of Rabelais' chapters (and the contents answer to the title) is, 'How they chirped over their cups.' The title of a corresponding chapter in John Buncle would run thus: The author is invited to spend the evening with the divine Miss Hawkins, and goes accordingly; with the delightful conversation that ensued."" The essay is so well known and so sententious that it has probably led many a man to take its judgments on trust, and not trouble to peruse the book for himself. Leigh Hunt, on the contrary, in that charming literary vade mecum of his, A Book for a Corner, entices one to get the book and read it, or rather to roam about in its leisurely and discursive pages. But whoever has been so tempted hitherto must have met with an initial difficulty, the extreme scarcity of the work. Amory published the first volume in 1756, along with a complete edition in four volumes, 12mo. Another edition appeared in three volumes in 1825, since which date the chances of coming across the book in any form have steadily grown more remote. What is the peculiar attraction of John Buncle? That a book is merely a literary curiosity, or that it contains excellent passages interspersed amid a huge extent of tedious prosing, is certainly not the thing to secure the interest of Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt. What fascinates in the book is the vigour and the frankness with which a most exceptional, yet, in a way, a most representative kind of man reveals the whole of his character. For John Buncle is an eccentric only in the sense that he carries very common traits of char acter to a strange excess. In his love of good living, his sensuality combined with a pharisaic animus against vice, in that blind egotism and portentous arrogance, one might perceive the exaggeration of certain national qualities, with which the author, who was in the first case anonymous, shows his sympathy by exalting them to the degree of absurdity. John Bull, at least one side of him, was caricatured, unintentionally, in John Buncle. And the sectarian spirit that is so deeply ingrained in the national character is faithfully portrayed in John Buncle the unitarian, with his dogmatism and utter intolerance, and his delight in wordy argument untempered by the slightest capacity for understanding his adversary's point of view. It is, in fact, such a paradox of a book that it tempts every one to fly into paradoxes. Buncle himself is so hot in denouncing immorality and yet so immoral; condemns sensuality with so much eloquence yet is so shamelessly sensual; is so sincere and yet such a hypocrite; so fervent in his religious zeal, yet degrades religion so unblushingly to consecrate his unholy appetites. "It is impossible," said Leigh Hunt, to be serious with John Buncle, Esq., jolly dog, Unitarian, and Bluebeard; otherwise, if we were to take him at his word, we should pronounce him, besides being a jolly dog, to be one of a very selfish description, with too good a constitution to correct him, a prodigious vanity, no feeling whatever, and a provoking contempt for everything unfortunate, or opposed to his whims. He quarrels with bigotry, and is a bigot; with abuse, and riots in it. He hates the cruel opinions held by Athanasius, and sends people to the devil as an Arian. He kills off seven wives out of pure incontinence and love of change, yet cannot abide a rake or even the poorest victim of the rake, unless both happen to be his acquaintances. The way in which he tramples on the miserable wretches in the streets is the very rage and triumph of hard-heartedness, furious at seeing its own vices reflected on it, unredeemed by the privileges of law, divinity, and success. But the truth is, John is no more responsible for his opinions than health itself, or a high-mettled racer. He only thinks he's thinking.' He does, in reality, nothing at all but eat, drink, talk, and enjoy himself. Amory, Buncle's creator, was in all probability an honest man, or he would hardly have been innocent enough to put such extravagances on paper." Leigh Hunt also says in the same place: "John's life is not a classic: it contains no passage which is a general favourite: no extract could be made from it of any length to which readers of good taste would not find objections. Yet there is so curious an interest in all its absurdities; its jumble of the gayest and gravest considerations is so founded in the actual state of things; it draws now and then such excellent portraits from life; and, above all, its animal spirits are at once so excessive and so real, that we defy the best readers not to be entertained with it, and having had one or two specimens, not to desire more. Buncle would say, that there is cut and come again' in him like one of his luncheons of cold beef and a foaming tankard." The Life of John Buncle has many of the same merits as the life of Samuel Pepys, not the least of which is the unconscious humour of the book. Buncle himself is utterly devoid of a sense of humour; his heavy seriousness is something unconscionable. But I doubt if there be a more egregious example in literature of the unintentionally comic. The entire plan, or no-plan, of the book, with its aimless narrative and irrelevant digressions (the story seems to exist for the sake of the digressions) is so absurd; and the idea is so comic of the man going out to try his fortune in the world, "not like the Chevalier La Mancha, in hopes of conquering a kingdom, or marrying some great Princess; but to see if I could find another good country girl for a wife, and get a little more money; as they were the only two things united, that could secure me from melancholy, and confer real happiness." He puts the case with inimitable gravity: "In the next place, as I had forfeited my father's favour and estate, for the sake of christian-deism, and had nothing but my own honest industry to secure me daily bread, it was necessary for me to lay hold of every opportunity to improve my fortune. and of consequence do my best to gain the heart of the first rich young woman who came in my way, after I had buried a wife. It was not fit for me to sit snivelling for months, because my wife died before me, which was, at least, as probable, as that she should be the survivor; but instead of solemn affliction, and the inconsolable part, for an event I foresaw, it was incumbent on me, after a little decent mourning, to consecrate myself to virtue and good fortune united in the form of a woman.' Most diverting of all are the scenes of love-making, a kind of love-making which is, surely, quite unique in literature or in life. What coy maiden was ever wooed after the manner employed to win the "illustrious Statia " ? Indelicacy almost ceases to be indelicate when it becomes so elephantine. ། "Ponder, illustrious Statia, on the important point. Consider what it is to die a maid, when you may, in a regular way, produce heirs to that inestimable blessing of life and favour, which the munificence of the Most High was pleased freely to bestow, and which the great Christian mediator, agent, and nego ciator, republished, confirmed, and sealed with his blood. Marry then in regard to the gospel, and let it be the fine employment of your life, to open gradually the treasures of revelation to the understandings of the little Christians you produce. What do you say, illustrious Statia? Shall it be a succession, as you are an upright Christian? And may I hope to have the honour of sharing in the mutual satisfaction that must attend the discharge of so mo. mentous a duty?" Needless to say, the lady is not proof against such eloquence; and the nuptials are concluded with a dispatch befitting the urgency of the obligation. The disquisitions on fluxions, geometry, algebra (with diagrammatic illustrations), on the Hebraic covenant, the rite of circumcision, and similarly erudite topics, that take the place of amorous small talk, are equally entertaining in a way that their author never intended. The young ladies are charming in spite of their prodigious learning; but more charming is the force which their personal attractions add to their reasoning. "But is there no other way," asks John Buncle of an accomplished female who has been demonstrating a curious mathematical theorem, "of paying £100 in guineas and pistoles, besides the six ways you have mentioned ? "" "There is no other way, the fine girl answered." There is something most refreshing to hear Buncle, the epicure, the amorous, and the successful, delivering himself gravely on the subject of resignation to the decrees of providence : "This is a summary of my past life; what is before me heaven only knows. My fortune I trust with the Preserver of men, and the Father of spirits. One thing I am certain of by observation, few as the days of the years of my pilgrimage have been, that the emptiness, and unsatisfying nature of this world's enjoyments, are enough to prevent my having any fondness to stay in this region of darkness and sorrow. I shall never leap over the bars of life, let what will happen; but the sooner I have leave to depart, I shall think it the better for me." "Tis a very interesting," as Charles Lamb says, and an extraordinary compound of all manner of subjects, from the depth of the ludicrous to the heights of sublime religious truth. There is much abstruse science in it above my cut, and an infinite fund of pleasantry. John Buncle is a famous fine man, formed in Nature's most eccentric hour." And with all its defects and its offences against good taste, Lamb said emphatically to some one who objected to the epithet so applied, The Life of John Buncle is "a healthy book." It is perhaps a tribute to the originality of the book, and no detriment to its real merits, that a Saturday Reviewer called it a book which nowadays would have been dated from Colney Hatch, or, more likely, sup. pressed by the care of relatives." And that the Biographie Universelle should run it down is, perhaps, testimony as emphatic to its truly English qualities. John Buncle is virtually a sequel to an earlier book of Amory's published in 1755, entitled, Memoirs containing the Lives of several Ladies of Great Britain: "A History of Antiquities, Productions of Nature, and Monuments of Art: Observations on the Christian Religion as professed by the Established Church and Dissenters of every Denomination; Remarks on the Writings of the Greatest English Divines; with a Variety of Disquisitions and Opinions relative to Criticism and Manners; and many Extraordinary Actions." This is another Unitarian romance, as eccentric, rambling and bizarre in style as John Buncle, which it resembles in every respect save that it is, perhaps, even less like any other sort of book on record, and has less of the personal element in it. But such episodes as the casual meeting of the author with the beautiful Miss Bruce, in a little mansion set amidst "the finest flowering greens," in a sequestered spot among "the vast hills of Northumberland, a meeting that is, of course, the prelude to a lengthy discourse on Philosophic Deism; such characters as Miss West, Julia Desborough and Charles Benlow, paragons of virtue, wisdom and orthodox Unitarianism; with their adven. tures in the wilds of northern England, the Hebrides, and a sort of Deistic Utopia in the Cape Verde Islands, might have been taken from the pages of John Buncle. A reader of the latter volume might easily fancy himself familiar with such incidents as the two following, taken from the Memoirs : " They were riding to Crawford Dyke, near Dunglass, the place I intended for, and by a wrong turn in the road came to Mrs. Benlow's house instead of going to Robin's Toad, where they designed to bait. It was between eight and nine at night when they got to her door; and as they appeared, by the richness of their riding-dress, their servants, and the beautiful horses they rid, to be women of distinction, Mrs. Benlow invited them in, and requested they would lie at her house that night, as the inn they were looking for was very bad. Nothing could be more grateful to the ladies than this proposal. They were on the ground in a moment; and all sat down soon after, with the greatest cheerfulness, to a fine dish of trouts, roasted chickens, tarts, and sparragrass. The strangers were quite charmed with everything they saw. The sweet rural room they were in, and the wild beauties of the garden in view, they could not enough admire; and they were so struck with Mrs. Benlow's goodness, and the lively, happy manner she has of showing it, that they conceived immediately the greatest affection for her. Felicity could not rise higher than it did at this table. For a couple of hours we laughed most immoderately." 46 As I travelled once in the month of September, over a wild part of Yorkshire, and fancied in the afternoon that I was near the place I intended to rest at, it appeared, from a great water we came to, that we had for half a day been going wrong, and were many a mile from any village. This was vexatious; but what was worse, the winds began to blow outrageously, the clouds gathered, and, as the evening advanced, the rain came down like water. spouts from the heavens. All the good that offered was the ruins of a nunnery, within a few yards of the water, and among the walls, once sacred to devotion, a part of an arch that was enough to shelter us and our beasts from the floods and tempest. Into this we entered, the horses, and Moses, and his master, and for some hours were right glad to be so lodged. But, at last, the storm and rain were quite over, we saw the fair rising moon hang up her ready lamp, and with mild lustre drive back the hovering shades. Out then I came from the cavern, and as I walked for a while on the banks of the fine lake, I saw a handsome little boat, with two oars, in a creek, and concluded very justly, that there must be some habitation not far from one side or other of the water. Into the boat therefore we went, having secured our horses, and began to row round, the better to discover. Two hours we were at it as hard as we could labour, and then came to the bottom of a garden, which had a flight of stairs leading up to it. These I ascended. I walked on, and, at the farther end of the fine improved spot, came to a mansion. I immediately knocked at the door, sent in my story to the lady of the house, as there was no master, and in a few minutes was shown into a parlour. I continued alone for a quarter of an hour, and then entered a lady, who struck me into amazement. She was a beauty, of whom I had been passionately fond when she was fourteen and I sixteen years of age. I saw her first in a French family of distinction, where my father had lodged me for the same reason as her parents had placed her there; that is, for the sake of the purity of the French tongue; and as she had a rational generosity of heart, and an understanding that was surprisingly luminous for her years; could construe an Ode of Horace in a manner the most delightful, and read a chapter in the Greek Testament with great ease every morning; she soon became my heart's fond idol; she appeared in my eyes as something more than mortal. Í thought her a divinity. Books furnished us with an occasion of being often together, and we fancied the time was happily spent. But all at once she disappeared. As she had a vast fortune, and as there was a suspicion of an amour, she was snatched away in a moment, |