From the Shelves of the Paco Library

Hugh Kingsmill (born Hugh Kingsmill Lunn in 1889) was an English writer whose oeuvre includes literary criticism, essays, biographies and novels, but it was his anthologies for which he was probably best known. His two-volume collection of invective (An Anthology of Invective and Abuse, and More Invective) was very popular, and provides a diverse sampling of the exercise of the intemperate pen throughout British history. Here are a couple of specimens (with commentary by Kingsmill).

The worship of Oliver Cromwell, first instituted by Carlyle, has died out of late years; and there are signs nowadays, notably a recent pamphlet by Mr. Hilaire Belloc, of a conscious movement against the nineteenth-century cult of Cromwell.

It would be a pity if this movement followed the line of argument marked out by Mr. Belloc so far as to forget that Cromwell’s contemporary ill-wishers did not see him merely as a muddle-headed crook, who was preserved from a nervous breakdown only by his over-developed sense of self-preservation…

[Excerpt from Abraham Cowley’s pamphlet, “From a Vision, Concerning His Late Pretended Highness, Cromwell the Wicked”]

“What can be more extraordinarily wicked, than for a person to pretend freedom for all men, and, under the help of that pretense, to make all men his servants?...To quarrel for the loss of three or four ears, and strike off three or four hundred heads?...To undertake the reformation of religion, to rob it even to the very skin, and then to expose it naked to the rage of all sects and heresies? To set up councils of rapine, and courts of murder?...To receive a commission for king and parliament, to murder (as I said) the one; and destroy, no less impudently, the other?...Good God! What have we seen? And what have we suffered? What do they say aloud to the whole nation, but this, even as plainly as if it were proclaimed through the streets of London, ‘You are slaves and fools, and so I will use you’?”

From the 18th century, among selections from several authors, Kingsmill includes excerpts from the Letters of Junius (“Junius” was an anonymous polemicist who sided with Wilkes in his struggles against the government, and sympathized with the American colonies).

The invective of Junius has the artificial air which is usually present in political invective, and is interesting nowadays chiefly as illustrating the extreme license of personal abuse permitted in the eighteenth century. It is, fortunately no doubt, impossible to imagine a modern newspaper printing anything similar…[Not anymore – Paco]

[From a Letter to the Duke of Grafton]

“…Let me be permitted to consider your character and conduct merely as a subject of curious speculation. There is something in both, which distinguishes you not only from all other ministers, but all other men. It is not that you do wrong by design, but that you should never do right by mistake. It is not that your indolence and your activity have been equally misapplied, but that the first uniform principle, or, if I may so call it, the genius of your life, should have carried you through every possible change and contradiction of conduct without the momentary imputation or colour of a virtue; and that the wildest spirit of inconsistency should never once have betrayed you into a wise or honourable action. This, I own, gives an air of singularity to your fortune, as well as to your disposition.”

In addition to political rants, there is a generous selection, as well, from the acid pens of the literati, in prose and poetry, plus a healthy sampling of more general and merely personal invective. The dozens of writers presented in these volumes include Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bernard Shaw, among many others who have had occasion to express themselves in anger, satire and withering scorn.

On a more temperate note, I also recommend Kingsmill’s one-volume anthology of the best in English literature, The High Hill of the Muses, which includes lengthy excerpts from a vast array of works – everything from the King James Bible to the prose and poems of the Victorians. It is practically a short-course in some of the best writing in the English language, and is a great browser.