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SWANSEA'S LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS.

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SWANSEA'S LITERARY ASSOCIA- TIONS. BEAU NASH, SAVAGE, LANDOR, AND BOWDLER. "DR. SYNTAX" AS WAITER AT THE OLD MACKWORTH. (Bj Wilson Crawford, Neath.) "The dark Silurian Britons from the Swansea shore have made no great splash in the world of Letters. We think of Anne Hatton—"Anne of Swansea"—and sigh. "Layers of dust have accumulated (a super Jactation of dirt)" upon her works. Dis turb iC not. oho is nearly forgotten, and it is better so. There may be others, but Swansea has no literature of place, and claims no writer whose name "Drmgs a per- fume in the mention. Her people are sin- gularly lacking m appreciation of the charm oj association. The copper forges and i-n plate works have dried the sap of their ro- mantic entaiisiasra and chained them ,r eve? to the desk's dull drudgery. •Clia, of blessed memory we cry: "Confu- sion blast all mercantile transactions, ill traffic. and rot the very firs of the for- est that look so romantic alive, and die into desks." Associations create an atmos- poete and endow a town with a personality It is not enough for Swansea to advertise her ccmoecUon with the great ones of the earth. Each one of her townsmen must oe iastinct with the fact that he is "A citizen of no mean city." He should be scious that he is one of the race which has made itself loved by its versatility and its buoyant, laughing nature. He should fe<»l the -Wind from his stoned hills" on his forehead and have the songs of the old Cel-- W bards ier ever ringing in his ears, remem- bering always that "Where'er he treads, 'tis haunted holy ground." Then, and not I till then, will the dear, dead past become a living historic present. Then, and not till then, will people of other nations feel the charm of old-time memories, which should ciiu £ like a garment round about the an cient borough. Swansea has had one famous eon, who, it not a man of letters, has made literature Golden memories cluster round his nam? His life has been written by one of the best loved and most pathetic figures in literary history—Oliver Goldsmith. We refer, of eecrse, to Richard Nash, the brilliant Beau of Bath. Born at Swansea., on the 18th 0 > tobar, 1674, he had a truly amazing career. From his Oxford days his mind was turned to pleasure, and if he did not distinguish, himself as a student, ho was notorious for hiii intrigues. After Oxford the Army claimed him; n with that meteoric brilliance and rapidity which characterised his whole lite, chaaged the red coat for the lawyer s gown. He was a member of the Inner Temp e the Inns of Court entertained King William and on this occasion he had an opportum y of displaying his ability as a master ot cere- monies, in which yole he has passed into He created the fame of Bath, aJid in this way made his influence felt through the literature of Queen Anne, and in that of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. At the height of his splendour he was ac- tually King ox Bath in all bat name, and no one—neither duchess nor peer—dared transgress the laws he laid down for the guidance of the city and its citizens. To the end oi his long life he sought assi duously after pleasure, and in his old age became rather an object of pity than of ad miration. A man of unbounded generosity and deep sensibility, ho was pestered by supplicants who never asked in vain. He died in 1761, and his death called forth "elegies, groans and characters aid before he was buned there were epitaphs ready made to inscribe on his stone." Goidsmith wrote of him as follows:- •"This sensibility, this power ox feeling the misfortunes of the miserable, and his ad- dress and earnestness in relieving their j wants, exalts the character of Mr. Nash, and draws an impenetrable veil over his foibles. His singularities are forgotten when we behold his virtues, and he who laughed at the whimsical character and be- haviour of thid Monarch oi Bath, now la ments that he is no more." One of Nash's contemporaries, Richard Savage, the friend of Johnson, spent a year of ius aimless and miserable life a.t Swansea Born in Lcudcn in 16^7, he was, accord ng to his own account, the illegitimate son of Richard Savage, Earl Rivers, who had contracted a liaison with the wife of Charles, Lord Brandon. Johnson appears to have bfoe/. the only man who acoepted his story, although Pope, whose mean assistant be was, remained his friend and benefactor at- most to the end. The somewhat prosy friend of the immor tal Boswell wrote his life. This—and the fact that he killed a young man in a tavern brawl-appears to be his chief cl. ;n to fame; although his writings are of a cartaai interest to students of his age. He was granted a pension of £50 in 1732. The death of Queen Caroline deprived hin- of this, and his low and sensuaa habits lost him his most influential patron in Lord Tyrcormel, who had taken him into his family and allowed him two hundred pounds a year. Thus cast adrift, his friends agreed to make up an annuity for him of equal amount to his pension, to which Pope contributed can on condition that he withdrew to the country. He selected Swansea. When visiting Bristol lie was arrested for debt and c £ t into prison, where he died m 174o. From Savage to Syntax is no long step forward, for William Combe> the jU^°f Dr. Syntax, was bom in /Ma, and died m 182o. Of his SO or so odd worKs that men- tioned is the only one generally remember- ed, and even this owes much to illustra- tions of Rowlandson. I It is unceitain how much of his time he spent at Swansea but in any case it was >n the menial pest of waiter at tho old Mack worth Hotel! Pride, poverty, mediocrity and vice must Bow give place to respectability and com- piacdncy, and an even deeper mediocrity. To talk of respectability allied to compla- cency and then couple them with the name of Shakespeare seems much 1-ke egregious nonsense. Bat does it sound more Ludi- crous than Dowdier and Shakespeare, or Shakwpeare and Bowdler, or how you will? Even Sha.N and Shakespeare is better. It is at least alliterative. But to the ear at- tained to the eternal fitness of things it is incongruous to mention Shakespeare except alcne- Thomas Bowdler. editor of the "Family Shakespeare" and an expurgated Gibban, I' has by his fantastic tricks before h'gh heaven, added a word to *he English lan- | guaRo and mad° himwslf immortal by at- tempting to deodounae The Bard of AHe'spent the last fifteen years of h« life at Rhyddings, Swansea. A friend of Mr*. Montagu Mrs Chapone, and Hannah MQJe, heremembered Dr. Johnson ™<ily It is interesting t onote that he found a warm snopoiter in Mr. Swmburne wh<> m his "Studies in Prose and Poetry, has the *°"More nauseous or foolish cant was never chattered than that which wo aid aerides toe memory or deprecate the merits of Bowdl No man ever did better service to Snakvis- peare than the man who made it possiole to put him into the hands oi intelligent "tld imaginative children." < A writer on Heywood in "Chambers Cy clopsedia of English literature" says. It is rather startling to find in 'The f-nit Maid of the Exchange' that the 'a-moi.rin gallant,' who is far from careful of delicacy either in speech or deed, is called Bow\l«i— an odd example of the irony of histo-y be fore th* event." He died in 1825, and whether the reader can congratulate him on the "peculiar hap- gjness of having so purified Shakespeare and iiobor. that they no longer raise a blush on the chook..)t modest innocence, not riant a pang in the^ heart of the devout Christian, will largely depend, on his view point as to whether one man has the right to ruin the works 01 an immortal. We will now teavs the sterile Bowdler for a higher and more fruitful theme. From the editor of Shakespeare to the author A "The Imaginary Conversations," is a8 stray- fee from the barren, smoke-begrimed Black Country into the sunshine and glow of Italy which Walter Savage Landor loved so well. But he loved the Mumbles moif, for he once wrote that if he ever returned to England he would like to end his days thewe, At Swansea Landor met the Hon. Bess Aylmer, of the unforgettable lyric, whicn we cannot resist quoting for the benefit oi those readers who do not know it. "Ah, what awaits the sceptred race Ah, what the form divine: What every virtue, every grace! Rose Aylmer, all were thine. Rose Aylmer, whom theee wakeful eyes May w.jj, but never see, A night of memories and sighs I consecrate to thee." It is well known that Dickens intended "Mr. Boythorn" in "Bleak Houre" for a representation of the classic Landor, who on account of his lion-like aspect, imperious will, and massive intelligence, was one A the most original and striking figures of his own or any time. Certain it is that to all lovers of literature Landor's affection for Swaosea and its neigh bourhood is one of that town's chief glorios Carly le, who visited Wales in 1850, paid visit to Landor, then staying at Bath. Writ- ing to his wife, he speaks of him as fol- lows — "A proud, irascible, trenchant, yet gen erous, veracious and very dignified old man; reminded me somettung of old Ster- ling (the original 'Thunderer' 01 the 'Tunes'), except that for Irisn blarney you must substitute a fund of Welsh choler." "Irascible" from Carlyle is rather neat; but it would seem that the illustrious "Teufelsdrockh" was at that time suffering from one of his frequent "discharges -)f spiritual bile." "Swansea," he writes, "enveloped m thick, poisonous coppe" fumes, and striking out in winged desola- tion tfor the copper forges are of the last degree of squalor; low buts, with forests i f chimneys, and great mountains of red dross, which never changes into soil) is a very strange and very ugly place." Reader, judge lightlv of the "Clothes Philosopher." He can "be forgiven much, for he was "the salt of the earth." And now, you makers of books, here is i subject made to your hand. The -xjwe* Peninsular is virgin soil with a storv in every stone and a poem in every hilloc*. Set to work, and give Swansea 01 )t> surroundings a literature cf place. Wo tire of the «>ir of the Divorce Court. Wo P" ■el* the smell of the good red earth and lb? scent of the heather.

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