James Howell, born near Brecknock about 1594, was educated at Jesus College, Oxford. He was appointed manager of a patent glass manufactory in London, and travelled on the continent from 1619 to 1621, in which year he was elected a fellow of Jesus College. He became secretary to Lord Scrope in 1626, secretary to an extraordinary embassy to Denmark in 1632, and having filled various appointments, obtained the clerkship of the Council at Whitehall in 1640. Howell, sent to the Fleet in 1643, was liberated soon after the execution of Charles I., and at the Restoration was appointed historiographer royal. He died Nov. 1666, and was buried in the Temple Church. Howell was a prolific writer. His best known works are “Dendrologia, Dodona’s Grove, or the Vocal Forest,” a poem published in 1640, and the “Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ: Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, &c.” of which the first volume appeared in 1645, and the second in 1655.
Personal
Multifarious indeed were Howell’s acquirements. He was one of the best modern linguists of his day: sometimes he figures at the court of Denmark, delivering Latin speeches before the king: then in Ireland, under Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford—with whose death Howell’s hopes sank. He had long been a kind of poet of a low standard; and he consoled himself on mediocrity by presenting to Charles the First his “Vote,” a poem which procured him a place as Clerk of the Council, and gave him a suite of apartments at Whitehall.
A thorough Welshman, Howell became a celebrated English author in his day. He was past forty years of age before his first book was published. Then for the remaining twenty odd years of his life, with an incessant and unwearying industry, he wrote, compiled, or translated book after book, each varying greatly in subject. Lastly, he is one of the earliest instances of a literary man successfully maintaining himself with the fruits of his pen.
Howell has been accused of being a prig, which is harsh, and of being a coxcomb, which is true enough; and he has other qualities which are not in themselves gifts or graces. But his pedantry, his egotism, his adroit, if seldom quite abject flattery of the great, his spice of ill-nature now and then, his self-seeking and intriguing, present, as they are reflected in his style and matter, a spectacle by no means ugly, and very decidedly lively.
Dodona’s Grove, 1640
This is a strange allegory, without any ingenuity in maintaining the analogy between the outer and inner story, which alone can give a reader any pleasure in allegorical writing. The subject is the state of Europe, especially of England, about 1640, under the guise of animated trees in a forest. The style is like the following: “The next morning the royal olives sent some prime elms to attend Prince Rocolino in quality of officers of state; and, a little after, he was brought to the royal palace in the same state Elaiana’s kings use to be attended the day of their coronation.” The contrivance is all along so clumsy and unintelligible, the invention so poor and absurd, the story, if story there be, so dull an echo of well-known events, that it is impossible to reckon “Dodona’s Grove” any thing but an entire failure. Howell has no wit; but he has abundance of conceits, flat and commonplace enough. With all this, he was a man of some sense and observation.
The great bibliographer Haller was deceived into including the title of James Howell’s “Dendrologia, or Dodona’s Grove” (1640), in his “Bibliotheca Botanica.”
Familiar Letters
James Howell published his “Ho-Elianæ” for which he indeed was laughed at (not for his letters which acquainted us with a number of passages worthy to be known and had never else been preserved) but which, were the language enlightened with that sort of exercise and conversation, I should not question its being equal to any of the most celebrated abroad.
He had a singular command of his pen, whether in verse or in prose, and was well read in modern Histories, especially in those of the Countries wherein he had travelled, had a parabolical and allusive fancy, according to his motto Senesco non Segnesco. But the Reader is to know that his writings have been only to gain a livelihood, and by their dedications to flatter great and noble persons, are very trite and empty, stolen from other authors without acknowledgment, and fitted only to please the humours of novices…. Many of the said Letters were never written before the Author of them was in the Fleet, as he pretends they were, only feigned, (no time being kept with their dates) and purposely published to gain money to relieve his necessities, yet give a tolerable history of those times.
I believe the second published correspondence of this kind, and, in our language at least, of any importance after Hall, will be found to be “Epistolæ Hoelianæ, or the Letters of James Howell,” a great traveller, an intimate friend of Jonson, and the first who bore the office of the royal historiographer, which discover a variety of literature, and abound with much entertaining and useful information.
A work containing numberless anecdotes and historical narratives, and forming one of the most amusing and instructive volumes of the seventeenth century.
These letters were written in England, but are not the coinage of British soil. They are amusing and instructive, and have deservedly gone through half a score of editions. The account in them of the assassination of Henry IV. of France is minutely curious.
Montaigne and “Howel’s Letters” are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever and don’t weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy hours and only half remember them. I am informed that both of them tell coarse stories. I don’t heed them. It was the custom of their time, as it is of Highlanders and Hottentots, to dispense with a part of dress which we all wear in cities…. I love, I say, and scarcely ever tire of hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles’s Council.
To the list of writers whom it is impossible to use with confidence must, I am afraid, be added that agreeable letter-writer Howell. But there can be no doubt that many of his letters are mere products of the bookmaker’s skill, drawn up from memory long afterwards [e.g. I. ii. 12]. On the other hand, some of the letters have all the look of being what they purport to be, actually written at the time, but even then, the dates at the end are frequently incorrectly given.
He may be called the Father of Epistolary Literature, the first writer, that is to say, of letters which addressed to individuals, were intended for publication. A style animated, racy, and picturesque; keen powers of observation; great literary skill; an eager, restless, curious spirit; some humour and much wit; and a catholicity of sympathy very unusual with the writers of his age—are his chief claims to distinction.
It is strange that no new edition of Howell’s “Letters” has appeared for the last 130 years. In the century after their first appearance, no less than a dozen editions testified to their continued vitality, and stray allusions prove that they have never passed beyond the ken of the true lovers of books. A work which Thackeray has praised so highly, and Scott, Browning, and Kingsley have used for some of their most popular effects, cannot be said to have ever lost its chances of revival. Perhaps the supply of the second-hand copies of twelve editions has hitherto been sufficient to satisfy the demand. But the avidity of our American cousins is fast causing this source to fail, and the time seems opportune for Howell to make a fresh bid for the popularity he deserves.
Surpassed all previous letter-writers in the ease and liveliness of his letters.
Has survived in English literature as a retailer of lively and agreeable gossip and anecdotage…. Howell’s style is careless and colloquial, but his “Letters” will always retain their interest as a record of the life of the time, and for their genuine literary merit.
General
Not to know the Author of these Poems, were an ignorance beyond Barbarism…. He may be called the prodigie of his Age, for the variety of his Volumes; for from his Δενδζολογία or “Parly of Trees” [1640], to his Θηζολογία or “Parly of beasts” [1660] (not inferior to the other), there hath pass’d the Press above forty of his Works on various subjects; useful not only to the present times, but to all posterity. And ’tis observed that in all his Writings there is somthing still New either in the Matter, Method or Fancy, and in an untrodded Tract. Moreover, one may discover a kinde of Vein of Poesie to run through the body of his Prose, in the Continuity and succinctness thereof all along. He teacheth a new way of Epistolizing; and that “Familiar Letters” may not only consist of Words and a bombast of Compliments, but that they are capable of the highest Speculations and solidest kind of Knowledge.
He had a great knowledge in modern histories, especially in those of the countries in which he had travelled, and he seems, by his letters, to have been no contemptible politician: As to his poetry, it is smoother, and more harmonious, than was very common with the bards of his time. As he introduced the trade of writing for bread, so he also is charged with venal flattery, than which nothing can be more ignoble and base.
In the time of the civil war, he was committed a close prisoner to the Fleet, where he continued for many years. The greatest part of his works were written for his support during his confinement; and he indeed appears, in several of his hasty productions, to have been more anxious to satisfy his stomach, than to do justice to his fame. His “Dodona’s Grove,” which was published in the reign of Charles I. gained him a considerable reputation. But of all his performances, his “Letters” are the most esteemed, though, as Mr. Wood justly observes, many of them were never written till he was in prison.
Notable because he wrote so much; and I specially name him because he was the earliest and best type of what we should call a hackwriter; ready for anything; a shrewd salesman, too, of all he did write; travelling largely—having modern instincts, I think; making small capital—whether of learning or money—reach enormously. He was immensely popular, too, in his day; a Welshman by birth, and never wrote at all till past forty; but afterward he kept at it with a terrible pertinacity.
Howell is one of the earliest Englishmen who made a livelihood out of literature. He wrote with a light pen; and although he shows little power of imagination in his excursions into pure literature, his pamphlets and his occasional verse exhibit exceptional faculty of observation, a lively interest in current affairs, and a rare mastery of modern languages, including his native Welsh. His attempts at spelling reform on roughly phonetic lines are also interesting. He urged the suppression of redundant letters like the e in done or the u in honour (cf. Epist. Ho—el. ed. Jacobs, p. 510; Parley of Beasts, advt. at end). But it is in his “Epistolæ Hoelianæ: Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, divided into Sundry Sections, partly Historical, Political, and Philosophical,” that his literary power is displayed at its best. Philosophic reflection, political, social, and domestic anecdote, scientific speculation, are all intermingled with attractive ease in the correspondence which he professes to have addressed to men of all ranks and degrees of intimacy…. Most of Howell’s letters were in all probability written expressly for publication “to relieve his necessities” while he was in the Fleet.
A busy “polygraph” as the French say, and a professional man of letters who had travelled much, and tried many irons in many fires, has filled his letters (his miscellaneous writings are mostly unread) with such vivid and interesting details—gossip, anecdote, description, and what not—as have altogether bribed many good judges, and have not failed to produce an effect even upon the most incorruptible.
