Born about 1754: died at Naples, Aug. 1835. An English satirist and Italian scholar. He graduated at Trinity College. Cambridge. He went to Italy in 1817, and remained there the rest of his life. His “Pursuits of Literature” was begun in 1794. Other satires are “The Political Dramatist” (1795), “An Equestrian Epistle in Verse to the Earl of Jersey” (1796), “An Imperial Epistle from Kien Long, Emperor of China, to George III. in 1794.” His “Works of Gray” were published in 1814. In Italian he wrote “Poesie Liriche” and “Canzone Toscane.”

Personal

  Matthias, aged eighty-one, is rather younger than ever, but complains that he sees nobody. Craven had him to dinner, and remarked how clever he was at contriving to ask questions without ceasing, yet never to profit in the least by the answer.

  The Examiner, which I read, records his death. I knew him; he was of a kind and courteous disposition, of more acquirement than genius, and living latterly upon the reputation of having had a reputation from the “Pursuits of Literature,” which his Italian translations and complimentary sonnets did not enhance nor support.

Pursuits of Literature, 1794–98

  Mr. Mathias’s “Pursuits of Literature” were purchased with avidity, not as I conceive from the work being so generally read and understood, but in consequence of the unvarying ill-nature which characterised its pages, and the fame which it acquired with a set of scholastic critics who haunt the shops of the Piccadilly publishers, and gave it celebrity as a most classical production. For my own part, I must confess this work did not appear to me as deserving of the encomiums lavished upon its style, particularly on reference to the poetry, which never struck me as being above a certain degree of mediocrity; but when the candour of its decisions are examined, no man can regard the “Pursuits of Literature” but as a vehicle of the most unprovoked abuse, and rancorous ill-nature.

  In 1794 appeared the first part of an anonymous poem entitled the “Pursuits of Literature,” which, when completed in four parts, attracted universal notice, chiefly on account of the notes, which abound in deep and extensive learning, with keen and discriminating criticism on public men and opinions. It has been truly observed that “the cause of literature has never been supported in a day of danger and perversion, upon principles more excellent, or with powers better adapted to their object.” After ascribing this work to various writers of high rank, the general voice united in fixing it upon Mr. Mathias, who has been supposed to have received some material assistance in it from some leading members of his own college.

  The poem, which consists in all of only between 1500 and 1600 lines, spread over a volume of 450 pages, takes a general survey both of the literature and politics of its day; but the interest of the work lies chiefly in the prose prefaces and notes, the quantity of which amounts to about ten times that of the verse. Mathias’s gift of song was not of a high order; his poetry is of the same school with Gifford’s, but the verse of the “Pursuits of Literature” has neither the terseness and pungency nor the occasional dignity and elegance which make that of the “Baviad” and “Mæviad” so successful an echo of Pope—the common master of both writers. The notes, however, though splenetic, and avowing throughout a spirit of the most uncompromising partisanship, are written with a sharp pen, as well as in a scholarly style, and, in addition to much Greek and Latin learning, contain a good deal of curious disquisition and anecdote.

  The poem contained some slashing lines scattered among a mass of affected criticism, and as its sole idea was to ridicule those trading on literature, it soon proved wanting in life. George Steevens called it “a peg to hang the notes on,” and these were often of portentous length, though Rogers thought them “rather piquant.” De Quincey, in his “Essay on Parr,” speaks of it as marred by “much licence of tongue, much mean and impotent spite, and by a systematic pedantry without parallel in literature,” and he might have added, by the shameless puffing of his own works by Mathias. Cobbett, who shared many of his prejudices, called it a “matchless poem,” but Dr. Wolcot dubbed him “that miserable imp Mathias.”

  Thomas James Mathias, the author of “The Pursuits of Literature,” was a much nearer approach to the pedant pure and simple. For he did not, like Gifford, redeem his rather indiscriminate attacks on contemporaries by a sincere and intelligent devotion to older work; and he was, much more than Gifford, ostentatious of such learning as he possessed. Accordingly the immense popularity of his only book of moment is a most remarkable sign of the times. De Quincey, who had seen its rise and its fall, declares that for a certain time, and not a very short one, at the end of the last century and the beginning of this, “The Pursuits of Literature” was the most popular book of its own day, and as popular as any which had appeared since; and that there is not very much hyperbole in this is proved by its numerous editions, and by the constant references to it in the books of the time. Colman, who was one of Mathias’ victims, declared that the verse was a “peg to hang the notes on;” and the habit above referred to certainly justified the gibe to no small extent. If the book is rather hard reading nowadays (and it is certainly rather difficult to recognise in it even the “demon of originality” which De Quincey himself grants rather grudgingly as an offset to its defects of taste and scholarship), it is perhaps chiefly obscured by the extreme desultoriness of the author’s attacks and the absence of any consistent and persistent target. Much that Mathias reprehends in Godwin and Priestley, in Colman and Wolcot, and a whole crowd of lesser men, is justifiably censured; much that he lays down is sound and good enough. But the whole—which, after the wont of the time, consists of several pieces jointed on to each other and all flooded with notes—suffers from the twin vices of negation and divagation. Indeed, its chief value is that, both by its composition and its reception, it shows the general sense that literature was not in a healthy state, and that some renaissance, some reaction, was necessary.

General

  Talked of the “Pursuits of Literature,” and the sensation it produced when published. Matthias’s Italian poetry: Mr. Oakden said he had heard Florentines own he came nearer their poetry than any other foreigner had done, but that still he was but a foreigner at it.

  The name of Mathias is well known to every lover of the Italian tongue; his poetical productions rank with those of Milton in merit, and far exceed them in quantity.

  Mr. Mathias also wrote some Latin odes, and translated into Italian several English poems. He wrote Italian with elegance and purity, and it has been said that no Englishman, since the days of Milton, has cultivated that language with so much success.