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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In discussing “Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700–1760,” Professor C. A. Moore introduces Henry Needier (1690–1718) primarily to show that Shaftesbury had a few followers before the period of Thomson in which, according to his thesis, literary and ethical discipleship of the moralist and rhapsodist became common. That is to say, the “obscure poet” Needier affords a kind of running-start before the great leap is made, that of establishing a Shaftesburian influence, ethical, theological, and literary, on Thomson, and the oftentimes-designated imitators who sprang up after the Seasons was published. The purpose of the following discussion is to question Professor Moore's interpretation of Needler's indebtedness to Shaftesbury for his theology and his “poetical treatment of nature,” and to show what seem instead to have been the real sources of the poet's thinking and his stylistic achievements.
1 PMLA, xxxi (1916), 264–325. See especially 277–279, 285, 297.
2 See Lowndes, Bibliographer's Manual (Bohn ed.), ii, 1657, under “Henry Needier”; also see article “William Duncombe” in DNB and Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica. William Duncombe makes a footnote reference to the first edition in Letters from the Late Most Reverend Dr. Thomas Herring, etc., London, 1777, p. 215.
3 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, viii, 265–266.
4 Works, pp. ii-iii.
5 Ibid., p. iii.
6 See, for example, his essay “On The Excellence of Divine Contemplation” in Works. pp. 49–54.
7 Needler's Works, “Advertisement,” no pagination.
8 Works, p. 65.
9 Ibid., pp. 204–205.
10 See The Works of Mr. Henry Needier ... published by Mr. Duncombe, 3 ed., London, 1735, p. 216.
11 Ibid., p. 216.
12 Loc. cit. This letter is next to the last letter in the book, that one being dated to Mr. D. from London, June 15, 1717.
18 Duncombe, not Needier, gave the poem the title Poem in blank verse, proving the Being of a God from the Works of Creation. See Works, p. 135. “I leave you to bestow what title you shall think fit.”
14 See Works, pp. 135–139, for Needler's comments and the poem itself.
15 PMLA, xxxi (1916), 278.
16 Works, p. 125.
17 Works, p. 127.
18 We know that he was reading Newton at the time the argument on the true causes of natural effects originated. In a letter to Mr. D. on July 5, 1711, just ten days before the letter in which the argument begins, he wrote: “A letter from you wou'd at any time have been welcome to me, but was particularly so at this Juncture, when I am banish'd from all my Friends, and doom'd to converse with Persons of a Disposition altogether foreign from my own; so that if it were not for honest Horace and Sir Isaac, I shou'd be wholly separated from all commerce with the Learned World.” See Works, p. 105.
19 This part of his argument, found in the letter of September 2, is also used in his letter to Mr. D. on August 6.
20 Works, pp. 142–143.
21 See The Works of Richard Bentley, ed. by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, 3 vols., London, 1838, iii, Sermons vi, vii, and viii.
22 Bentley's Works, iii, 149.
23 Ibid., pp. 203 ff. For the basis of Needler's whole argument see Newton's Opera quae exstant omnia, Horsley edition, (five vols. 4 to 1779–85), iv, 258–259.
24 Opera, iv, 261.
25 Needler's Works, p. 217.
26 Works, p. 116.
27 Ibid., p. 218.
28 See Newton's Opera, iv, 263, for his discussion of the sensorium. Samuel Clark, the outstanding Newtonian divine of the period, used the same idea in his Boyle lectures, 1704–5. See A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of the Natural Religion, etc., 8th ed., London, 1732, p. 47. Clarke said that God exercised his attributes to all immensity “as if it were really all but one single point.” Newton's conception of God as being present to the world in his sensorium brought about the famous Clarke-Leibniz controversy. See Des Maizeaux' Recueil de diverses pieces, sur la philosophie, la religion naturelle ... par messieurs Leibniz, Clarke, Newton, 3d ed., 1757 (?), i, 2, 3, 16, 20, 62, 64, etc., for full discussions of Newton's idea that God is present to all parts of space as it were in a sensorium.
29 Works, pp. 64–65.
30 Ibid., pp. 75–76.
31 Ibid., p. 75.
32 See “A Vernal Hymn, in Praise of the Creator,” Works, pp. 43–46.
33 Though Professor Moore says in one sentence Needier made little use of Shaftesbury “except as to theology,” in another sentence he says that Needier could not resist Shaftesbury's “poetical treatment” of nature. See PMLA, xxxi, 2, p. 278. See also Moore's “A Predecessor of Thomson's Seasons” in Modern Language Notes, xxxiv (1919), 281.
34 Works, pp. 116–117.
35 Works, pp. 209–210.
36 It is interesting to note what Needier has to say of John Norris in connection with this love of country and solitude. “Mr. Norris gives us, in one of his Books, an account of what affected him with the most sensible Delight, and wherein he placed his chief Worldly Happiness. It was (to quote his own excellent Words) in ‘the Beauty of the Spring,’ the Magnificence of the Heavens, Solitary Walks and Gardens, the reading of close and fine-wrought Discourse, conversation with Men of tuneable and harmonious Dispositions, and in Majestick and well-compos'd Musick.’ I must needs own myself very much of his Mind, and believe there cannot be a Catalogue of more refined and solid Satisfactions cull'd out of the whole Creation.” Works, pp. 92–93.
37 Works, pp. 80–81.
38 Works, pp. 93–94.
39 Supra.
40 Needler's Poem in blank verse is an argumentative poem undertaking to prove the existence of God and his attributes by an appeal to the beauty and design of creation, and also by an appeal to the form and design of the parts of the body. The latter part of his argument is quite similar to that which Derham had used in his Boyle lectures, and Duncombe quoted an illustrative passage from Derham's sermons to show that it was. See Needler's Works, pp. 138–139.—In Needler's poem there is an arraignment of the “blind atheist,” a characteristic note found in the writings of the divines, certainly from Bentley's Boyle lectures of 1692–93 on, and in poems like Blackmore's Creation (1711).
41 I have already referred to the fact that Bentley had used such an argument as that of Derham's in his Boyle sermons of 1692–93, and had been advised by Sir Isaac Newton as to how best to make science serve the cause of religion. Samuel Clarke, the Newtonian divine, used a similar argument in the Boyle lectures of 1704–5. Needler's A Demonstration of the Being of one Eternal God is an epitome of Clarke's Boyle lectures in 1704. Like Clarke, Needier develops the demonstration by a series of propositions. See Works, pp. 54–55. It was, by Needler's time, a common thing to find books like John Ray's Three Physico-Theological Discourses, in its second edition by 1693, read and imitated by many writers like Needier. William Whiston's Astronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Revealed, London, 1717, belonged to the same category. Needler's references to Hooke's Micrographia and Le Clerc's Bibliothèque choisie, as well as his description of a visit to John Woodward, author of Natural History of the Earth and Terrestrial Bodyes (see Works, pp. 94 ff.), show his interest in such “philosophic” studies.
42 Works, pp. 33–37.