John Tutchin

“ Builds Towns and Houses which may last and stand,
Thinking no Wealth so sure as firm Land;
Yet Fate the Animal does still pursue;
This slides from underneath his Feet, and leaves him too.
[4]
II.
Environ'd with Ten Thousand Fears we live,
For Fate do's seldom a just warning give;
Quicker than Thought its dire Resolves are made,
And swift as Lightning flies,
Around the vast extended Skies:
All things are by its Bolts in vast Confusion laid. ”

“ In The Observator (July 25-29, 1702) , he honestly admitted that he was never tried in Devonshire, but claimed he did buy his liberty of James II; and in a later issue (Aug. 4-7, 1703) he challenged an enemy: "if he Pleases to give the World an Account, When, Where, and for What I was Whip'd thro' a Market-Town, he will inform Mankind of more than I or any Body else knows...." John Dunton believed in the whipping sentence; and Defoe, the story of the petition to be hanged. Throughout Tutchin's stormy career, his enemies made political capital of the flogging that never took place. ”

“ That Tutchin was uneasy in his effort to write satire in the mode of Dryden is suggested by his abandonment of irony after the first part of A Pindarick Ode. In his introductory verses, Benjamin Bridgwater accurately observes that Erasmus' Ironia no longer suffices:
This hard'ned Age do's rougher Means require,
We must be Cupp'd and Cauteriz'd with Fire.
Echoing Dryden's Mac Flecknoe, Tutchin invites Dullness and "Immortal Nonsence" to inspire his ironic praise of the folly and knavery that now ride roughshod over such traditional values as learning, love, wit, and patriotism. ”

“ Poems published in the years 1696 to 1705—from A Pindarick Ode to - vi - The Tackers—exploit the satirical impulse that had been latent in Poems on Several Occasions. Increasingly he turns to general denunciation and thinly disguised lampoon. Of the two main Augustan traditions in satire—the "fine raillery" that Dryden perfected and the rough satire that reached back to Donne, Cleveland, and Oldham—Tutchin belongs to the latter. Defoe found him to be "so woundy touchy, and so willing to quarrel," and noted that "Want of Temper was his capital Error." ”

“ In its variety and themes, Poems on Several Occasions resembles Oldham's Works, which was published twice in 1684. Tutchin's "The Tory Catch," like Oldham's "A Dithyrambick. A Drunkard's Speech in a Mask," has a speaker who ironically brags of the social misconduct which the author satirizes. "A Letter to a Friend" is a skillfully exaggerated account of the attractions and dangers in rhyming. ”

“ Make a Man splendid live, or wealthy die?
The irony of A Pindarick Ode does not adequately mask the denunciation. In Stanza X, it is even replaced by the antiquated Hero's diatribe against "our modern Knavish Arts"—never to return to the rest of the poem. Doubtless, the indictment of the "nefarious Brood at Home" that grows rich in wartime was the heart of the satire. Defoe hinted at this motive in the satirical vignette of Tutchin as Shamwhig, which appeared in the first edition of The True-Born Englishman (1700) :
- vii -
As Proud as Poor, his Masters he'll defy ”

“ If contemporary accounts of the Port Royal earthquake are compared with The Earth-quake of Jamaica, the reader becomes impressed by Tutchin's way of adapting the well-known details to a moral comment on life. His scenes are indeed graphic, but they do not have the immediacy of such eye-witness accounts as the following, preserved by Luttrell:
I cannot sufficiently represent the terrible circumstances that attended it ”

“ Official reaction to The Foreigners came quickly. The untrustworthy William Fuller spread the gossip that Tutchin fled from his Majesty's messengers, and found refuge "in a blind Ale-house, at the Windmill, by Mr. Bowyers, at Camberwel." On August 10th, he was taken "into custody of a messenger"; and at the grand inquest for the city of London, held on August 28th, there was presented "a Poem called The Foreigners." [18] A mystery envelops the rest of the legal proceedings. ”

“ John Tutchin, Gentleman—irascible journalist, pamphleteer, and writer of verses.
The truth of the matter is that Pope was no more accurate about Tutchin's being whipped than about Defoe's losing his ears. From the sparse reliable information concerning Tutchin's early years, one consistent pattern emerges: he tended to depict himself as a hero and a martyr. Born in 1661 "a Freeman" of London, he was brought up in a family of scholarly nonconformist ministers probably on the Isle of Wight [2] . ”

“ Dunton generously summed up the widely varied causes of "the loyal and ingenious Tutchin (alias Master Observator) ; the bold Asserter of English Liberties; the scourge of the High-flyers; the Seaman's Advocate; the Detector of the Victualling-office; the scorn and terror of Fools and Knaves; the Nation's Argus, and the Queen's faithful Subject." [10] Even his death in Queen's Bench Prison, on September 23, 1707, was romanticized into another instance of martyrdom. "... he liv'd and dy'd," announced the Country-man of The Observator, "for the Service of his Country." ”

“ Lord Macaulay, who is incorrect on the facts taken from The Western Martyrology, certainly exaggerated in stating that Tutchin's temper was "exasperated to madness by what he had undergone." [6] That the Monmouth adventure and its aftermath mark a turning point in the young man's life, however, cannot doubted. ”

“ In defending his skill with languages against Defoe, he once told how at his school, boys translated and capped verses, and how he travelled "from Leivarden in Friezland, thro' Holland and the Spanish Flanders." [3] Throughout his life, he proudly designated himself a gentleman: during his trial for libel in late June of 1704, he even escaped punishment by setting forth that he was a gentleman, and not a laborer as the indictment read. ”

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“ Tutchin may have fought with William III's army in Ireland as an officer. [7] After the Glorious Revolution and the establishment of William and Mary on the throne, Tutchin devoted himself to a succession of liberal causes. On the one hand, he persisted in identifying himself with the former commonwealth, the Monmouth cause, the Revolution, the reform movement especially in the theater, and Whig liberty. He became noted for tactless exposés of high-level misconduct in his pamphlets and in The Observator (Apr. 1, 1702-Sept. 23, 1707) . ”

“ Tutchin's birth-year is variously given. The Van der Gucht engraving and the authentic Elegy of Tutchin's death state that he died "Aged 44"; but the mock Elegy, falsely claiming to be "Written by the Author of the Review," gives his age to be 47. In The Observator (Oct. 20-23, 1703) , Tutchin implied that he was "Born some years after the Restoration of King Charles the 2d." His certificate of marriage to Elizabeth Hicks on Sept. 30, 1686 places his age then at twenty-five, and supports the birth-year 1661, as given in the DNB. See also The Observator, May 17-20, 1704 ”

“ THE EARTH-QUAKE OF JAMAICA, Describ'd in a Pindarick Poem.
By Mr. TUTCHIN.
——namq; Diespiter
Igni corusco nubila dividens
Plerumq; per purum tonantes
Egit Equos volucremq; currum,
Quo bruta Tellus & vaga flumina,
Quo Styx, & invisi horrida Tænari
Sedes, Atlanteusq; finis
Concutitur. Valet ima summis
Mutare,——
Horat. lib. I. Ode 34.
L O N D O N, Printed, and are to be sold by R. Baldwin, near the
Oxford-Arms in Warwick-lane, 1692.
[2]
[3]
THE Earthquake of Jamaica Describ'd in a POEM. I.
Well may our Lives bear an uncertain date ”

“ Nevil Payne, Fatal Jealousy (1673) .
17. Nicholas Rowe, Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespeare (1709) .
18. "Of Genius," in The Occasional Paper, Vol. III, No. 10 (1719) ; and Aaron Hill's Preface to The Creation (1720) .
1949-1950
22. Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and two Rambler papers (1750) .
23. John Dryden, His Majesties Declaration Defended (1681) .
1950-1951
26. Charles Macklin, The Man of the World (1792) .
1951-52
31. Thomas Gray, An Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard (1751) ; and The Eton College Manuscript.
1952-1953
41. ”