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CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.
• VOLUMES I., II.
:^
CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.
KY
ISAAC DISRAELI
WITH A VIEW OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR.
BY HIS SOX,
THE RIGHT HON> B. DISRAELI
FOUR VOLUMES IN THREE. VOLUMES I., II.
FROM THE FOURTEENTH CORRECTED LONDON EDITION.
NEW YORK: THOMAS Y. CROWELL,
744 BROADWAY. 1881.
MAR 2 6 1955,
UNIVERSITY PRESS : JOHN WILSON & SON, CAMBRIDGE.
TO
FRANCIS DOUCE, ESQ.
THESE VOLUMES OF SOME LITERARY RESEARCHES
AUK INSCRIBED; AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF FRIENDSHIP
AKl)
A GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO
A LOVER OF LITERATURE.
PREFACE.
OF a work which long has been placed on that shelf which Voltaire has discriminated as la Biblio- theque du Monde, it is never mistimed for the author to offer the many, who are familiar with its pages, a settled conception of its design.
The " Curiosities of Literature," commenced fifty years since, have been composed at various periods, and necessarily partake of those successive charac- ters which mark the eras of the intellectual habits of the writer.
In my youth, the taste for modern literary history was only of recent date. The first elegant scholar who opened a richer vein in the mine of MODKRN LITERATURE was JOSEPH WARTON ; — he had a frag- mentary mind, and he was a rambler in discursive criticism. Dr. JOHNSON was a famished man for anecdotical literature, and sorely complained of the penury of our literary history.
THOMAS WARTON must have found, in the taste of his brother and the energy of Johnson, his happiest prototypes : but he had too frequently to wrestle
v,ij PREFACE.
with barren antiquarianism, and was lost to us at the gates of that paradise which had hardly opened on him. These were the true founders of that more elegant literature in which France had preceded us. These works created a more pleasing species of eru- dition : — the age of taste and genius had come; but the age of philosophical thinking was yet but in its dawn.
Among my earliest literary friends, two distin- guished themselves by their anecdotical literature : JAMES PETIT ANDREWS, by his " Anecdotes, Ancient and Modern," and WILLIAM SEWARD, by his " Anec- dotes of Distinguished Persons." These volumes were favourably received, and to such a degree, that a wit of that day, and who is still a wit as well as a poet, considered that we were far gone in our " Anec- dotage."
I was a guest at the banquet, but it seemed to me to consist wholly of confectionery. I conceived the idea of a collection of a different complexion. I was then seeking for instruction in modern litera- ture ; and our language afforded no collection of the res Utterance. In the diversified volumes of the French Ana, I found, among* the best, materials to work on. I improved my subjects with as much of our own literature as my limited studies afforded. The volume, without a name, was left to its own unprotected condition. I had not miscalculated the wants of others by my own.
PREFACE. Jx
This first volume had reminded the learned of much which it is grateful to remember, and those who were restricted by their classical studies, or lounged only in perishable novelties, were in mod- em literature but dry wells, for which I had opened clear waters from a fresh spring. The work had ef- fected its design in stimulating the literary curiosity of these, who, with a taste for its tranquil pursuits, are impeded in their acquirement. Imitations were numerous. My reading became more various, and the second volume of " Curiosities of Literature " ap- peared, with a slight effort at more original investi- gation. The two brother volumes remained favour- ites during an interval of twenty years.
It was as late as 1817 that I sent forth the third volume ; without a word of preface. I had no longer anxieties to conceal or promises to perform. The subjects chosen were novel, and investigated with more original composition. The motto prefixed to this third volume from the Marquis of Halifax is lost in the republications, but expresses the peculiar delight of all literary researches for those who love them : " The struggling for knowledge hath a pleas- ure in it like that of wrestling with a fine woman."
The notice which the third volume obtained, re- turned me to the dream of my youth. I considered that essay writing, from Addison to the successors of Johnson, which had formed one of the most orig- inal features of our national literature, would now
x PREFACE.
fail in its attraction, even if some of those elegant writers themselves had appeared in a form which their own excellence had rendered familiar and de- prived of all novelty. I was struck by an observa- tion which Johnson has thrown out. That sage, himself an essayist and who had lived among our essayists, fancied that " mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically ; " and so athirst was that our first of great moral biographers for the details of human life and the incidental characteristics of indi- viduals, that he was desirous of obtaining anecdotes without preparation or connection. " If a man," said this lover of literary anecdotes, " is to wait till he weaves anecdotes, we may be long in getting them, and get bat few in comparison of what we might get." Another observation, of Lord Boling- broke, had long dwelt in my mind, that " when ex- amples are pointed out to us, there is a kind of ap- peal with which we are flattered made to our senses as well as our understandings." An induction from a variety of particulars seemed to me to combine that delight, which Johnson derived from anecdotes, with that philosophy which Bolingbroke founded on examples ; and on this principle the last three vol- umes of the " Curiosities of Literature " were con- structed, freed from the formality of dissertation and the vagueness of the lighter essay.
These " Curiosities of Literature " have passed through a remarkable ordeal of time ; they have
PREFACE. xj
survived a generation of rivals ; they are found wher- ever books are bought, and they have been repeatedly reprinted at foreign presses, as well as translated. These volumes have imbued our youth with their first tastes for modern literature, have diffused a delight in critical and philosophical speculation among cir- cles of readers who were not accustomed to literary topics ; and finally, they have been honoured by em- inent contemporaries, who have long consulted them and set their stamp on the metal.
A voluminous miscellany, composed at various periods, cannot be exempt from slight inadvertencies. Such a circuit of multifarious knowledge could not be traced were we to measure and count each step by some critical pedometer ; life would be too short to effect any reasonable progress. Every work must be judged by its design, and is to be valued by its result.
BRADENIIAM HOUSE, JfarcA, 1889.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE AUTIIOR • < ^V'. - ^> ; '?. 3 LIBRARIES ....•••••49
THE RIHL1OMAXIA »Y * 57
LITKKAKY JOURNALS ..*•••• GO
RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS 67
SKETCHES OF CKITICISM . . ^; i - . « • > 74
THE PERSKCUTKI) LKAKXKD . . » r -^ f V • .78
POVERTY OF THE LEARNED ...,,. 81
IMPRISONMENT OF THE .LEARNED . . • -'^ '••"•. 87
AMUSEMENTS OF THE LEARXED 90
PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS 94
DESTRUCTION OF BOOKS 100
SOME NOTICES OF LOST WORKS 112
QUODLI1SETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS . . .115 FAME CONTEMNED s !•-..., . . , . . . 1*22 THE SIX FOLLIES OF SCIEXCE . . . . . 122 IMITATORS 124
CICERO'S PUXS ^f'X'*, . . . . W. * 126
PREFACES .128
EARLY PRINTING . . . . . . . .130
ERRATA • . . .135
PATRONS 139
POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, AXD ARTISTS, MADE BY ACCI- DENT 1 12
INEQUALITIES OF GENIUS . . . . . 1 -16
GEOGRAPHICAL STYLE . . . . . . .147
LEGENDS . . . . . . • . . .148
TIIE PORT-ROYAL SOCIETY . 154
xiv CONTENTS.
PA03 THE PROGRESS OF OLD AGE IX NEW STUDIES . . 158
SPANISH POETRY 161
SAINT KVREMOND . . . . * . . . 163
MEN OF GENIUS DEFICIENT IN CONVERSATION . .104
VIDA 166
THE SCUDERIES 1'37
DK LA ROCHEFOCCAULT . » . jr^:';-*^ . * « 1 ?2
PRIOR'S HANS CARVEL . . . . . . ; 173
THE STUDENT IN THE METROPOLIS . . . .175
THE TALMUD . . . . . . . .177
RABBINICAL STORIES 185
ON THE CUSTOM OF SALUTING AFTER SNEEZING . .192
BONA VENTURE DE PER1ERS 194
GROTIUS 195
NOBLEMEN TURNED CRITICS . . . . . .197
LITERARY IMPOSTURES 198
CARDINAL RICHELIEU 205
ARISTOTLE AND PLATO .... # •' i" W-4 '*'•"-. 209
ABKLARD AND ELOISA 212
PHYSIOGNOMY 216
CHARACTERS DESCRIBED BY MUSICAL NOTES . . 219
MILTON 220
ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS 224
TRIALS AND PROOFS OF GUILT IN SUPERSTITIOUS AGES 232
INQUISITION 238
SINGULARITIES OBSERVED BY VARIOUS NATIONS IN THEIR
REPASTS 243
MONARCHS . . . . . . . . . .246
OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS, HIGHNESS, AND EXCEL- LENCE 249
TITLES OF SOVEREIGNS . 2f»2
ROYAL DIVINITIES 253
DETHRONED MOXARCHS . 255
FEUDAL CUSTOMS ...... . 258
GAMING 262
THE ARABIC CHRONICLE ...... 26G
METEMPSYCHOSIS ........ 268
SPANISH ETIQUETTE 271
THE GOTHS AND HUNS 273
CONTENTS. xv
PAdg
VICARS OF BRAY 273
DOUGLAS 274
CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY 275
SOLOMON AND SHEBA ...... • V 280
HELL V ', « , . . 281
THE ABSENT MAN 284
WAX- WORK * -V'f. . . 285
PASQUIN AND MARFORIO . . 287
FEMALE BEAUTY AND ORNAMENTS .... 290
MODERN PLATONISM ........ 292
ANECDOTES OF FASHION . • . . • .297
A SENATE OF JESUITS ~, ^ 314
THE LOVER'S HEART 31ti
THE HISTORY OF GLOVES 319
RELICS OF SAINTS . . 323
PERPETUAL LAMPS OF THE ANCIENTS ... . 328 NATURAL PRODUCTIONS RESEMBLING ARTIFICIAL COMPO- SITIONS 329
THE POETICAL GARLAND OF JULIA 332
TRAGIC ACTORS 334
JOCULAR PREACHERS 337
MASTERLY IMITATORS 345
EDWARD THE FOURTH 349
ELIZABETH . ; * . . . • • . . 352
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE . 356
MEDICAL MUSIC ........ 358
MINUTE WRITING , 365
NUMERICAL FIGURES 367
ENGLISH ASTROLOGERS . . . «^ .% . . 369
AI.CHYMY 374
TITLES OF BOOKS 379
LITERARY FOLLIES 385
LITERARY CONTROVERSY 401
LITERARY BLUNDERS . 415
A LITERARY WIFE 423
DEDICATIONS 434
PHILOSOPHICAL DESCRIPTIVE POEMS . .- , , . . 439
PAMPHLE'lS . ... 442
LIFE AND WRITINGS
MR. DISRAELI.
VOL. 1.
ON THE
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MR DISRAELI. BY HIS SON:
THE traditionary notion that the life of a man of letters is necessarily deficient in incident, appears to have originated in a misconception of the essential nature of human action. The life of every man is full of incidents, but the incidents are insignificant, because they do not affect his species ; and in general the importance of every occurrence is to be measured by the degree with which it is recognized by mankind. An author may influence the fortunes of the world to as great an extent as a statesman or a warrior ; and the deeds and performances by which this influence is created and exercised, may rank in their interest and importance with the decisions of great Congresses, or the skilful valour of a memo- rable field. M. de Voltaire was certainly a greater Frenchman than Cardinal Fleury, the Prime Min- ister of France in his time. His actions were more
4 LIFE AND WRITINGS
important ; and it is certainly not too much to main- tain, that the exploits of Homer, Aristotle, Dante, or my Lord Bacon, were as considerable events as any- thing that occurred at Actium, Lepanto, or Blen- heim. A Book may be as great a thing as a battle, and there axe systems of philosophy that have pro- duced as great revolutions as any that have dis- turbed even the social and political existence of our centuries.
The life of the author, whose character and career we are venturing to review, extended far beyond the allotted term of man : and, perhaps, no existence of equal duration ever exhibited an uniformity more sustained. The strong bent of his infancy was pur- sued through youth, matured in manhood, and main- tained without decay to an advanced old age. In the biographic spell, no ingredient is more magical than predisposition. How pure, and native, and indigenous it was in the character of this writer, can only be properly appreciated by an acquaintance with the circumstances amid which he was born, and by being able to estimate how far they could have directed or developed his earliest inclinations.
My grandfather, who became an English Denizen in 1748, was an Italian descendant from one of those Hebrew families, whom the Inquisition, forced to emigrate from the Spanish Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century, and who found a refuge in the more tolerant territories of the Venetian Republic
OF THE AUTHOR. 5
His ancestors had dropped their Gothic surname on their settlement in the Terra Firma, and grateful to the God of Jacob who had sustained them through unprecedented trials and guarded them through un- heard of perils, they assumed the name of DISRAELI, a name never borne before, or since, by any other family, in order that their race might be for ever recognized. Undisturbed and unmolested, they flour- ished as merchants for more than two centuries under the protection of the lion of St. Mark, which was but just, as the patron saint of the Republic was himself a child of Israel. But towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the altered circum- stances of England, favourable, as it was then sup- posed, to commerce and religious liberty, attracted the attention of my great-grandfather to this island, and he resolved that the youngest of his two sons, Benjamin, the " son of his right hand," should settle in a country where the dynasty seemed at length established through the recent failure of Prince Charles Edward, and where public opinion appeared definitb ely adverse to persecution on matters of creed and conscience.
The Jewish families, who were then settled in England, were few, though from their wealth, and other circumstances, they were far from unimportant They were all of them Sephardim, that is to say children of Israel, who had never quitted the shores of the Midland Ocean, until Torquamada had driven
6 LIFE AND WRITINGS
them from their pleasant residences and rich estates in Arragon, and Andalusia, and Portugal, to seek greater blessings, even than a clear atmosphere and a glowing sun, amid the marshes of Holland and the fogs of Britain. Most of these families, who held themselves aloof from the Hebrews of Northern Eu- rope, then only occasionally stealing into England, as from an inferior caste, and whose synagogue was reserved only for Sephardim, are now extinct; while the branch of the great family, which, notwithstand- ing their own sufferings from prejudice, they had the hardihood to look down upon, have achieved an amount of wealth and consideration which the Sephardim, even with the patronage of Mr. Pelham, never could have contemplated. Nevertheless, at the time when my grandfather settled in England, and when Mr. Pelham, who was very favourable to the Jews, was Prime Minister, there might be found, among other Jewish families, flourishing in this country, the Villa Reals, who brought wealth to these shores almost as great as their name, though that is the second in Portugal, and who have twice allied themselves with the English aristocracy, the Medinas — the Laras, who were our kinsmen — and the Mendez da Costas, who, I believe, still exist
Whether it were that my grandfather, on his ar- rival, was not encouraged by those to whom he had a right to look up, — which is often our hard case in the outset of life, — or whether he was alarmed at the
OF THE AUTHOR. 7
unexpected consequences of Mr. Pelham's favourable disposition to his countrymen in the disgraceful repeal of the Jew Bill, which occurred a very few years after his arrival in this country, I know not ; but certainly he appears never to have cordially or intimately mixed with his community. This ten- dency to alienation was no doubt subsequently encouraged by his marriage, which took place in 1765. My grandmother, the beautiful daughter of a family, who had suffered much from persecution, had imbibed that dislike for her race which the vain are too apt to adopt when they find that they are born to public contempt. The indignant feeling that should be reserved for the persecutor, in the mortification of their disturbed sensibility, is too often visited on the victim ; and the cause of an- noyance is recognized not in the ignorant malevo- lence of the powerful, but in the conscientious conviction of the innocent sufferer. Seventeen years, however, elapsed before my grandfather en- tered into this union, and during that interval he had not been idle. He was only eighteen when he com- menced his career, and when a great responsibility devolved upon him. He was not unequal to it He was a man of ardent character; sanguine, courageous, speculative, and fortunate ; with a tem- per which no disappointment could disturb, and a brain, amid reverses, full of resource. He made his fortune in the mid-way of life, and settled near En-
$ LIFE AND WRITINGS
field, where he formed an Italian garden, entertained his friends, played whist with Sir Horace Mann, who was his great acquaintance, and who had known his brother, at Venice as a banker, eat maca- roni which was dressed by the Venetian Consul, sang canzonettas, and notwithstanding a wife who never pardoned him for his name, and a son who disappointed all his plans, and who to the last hour of his life was an enigma to him, lived till he was nearly ninety, and then died in 1817, in the full enjoyment of prolonged existence.
My grandfather retired from active business on the eve of that great financial epoch, to grapple with which his talents were well adapted ; and when the wars and loans of the Revolution were about to create those families of millionaires, in which he might probably have enrolled his own. That, how- ever, was not our destiny. My grandfather had only one child, and nature had disqualified him, from his cradle, for the busy pursuits of men.
A pale, pensive child, with large dark brown eyes, and flowing hair, such as may be beheld in one of the portraits annexed to these volumes, had grown up beneath this roof of worldly energy and enjoy- ment, indicating even in his infancy, by the whole carriage of his life, that he was of a different order from those among whom he lived. Timid, suscep- tible, lost in reverie, fond of solitude, or seeking no better company than a book, the years had stolen
OF THE AUTHOR. 9
on, till he had arrived at that mournful period of boyhood when eccentricities excite attention and command no sympathy. In the chapter on Pre- disposition, in the most delightful of his works,* my father has drawn from his own, though his un- acknowledged feelings, immortal truths. Then com- menced the age of domestic criticism. His mother, not incapable of deep affections, but so mortified by her social position, that she lived until eighty with- out indulging in a tender expression, did not recog- nize in her only offspring a being qualified to control or vanquish his impending fate. His existence only served to swell the aggregate of many humiliating particulars. It was not to her a source of joy, or sympathy, or solace. She foresaw for her child only a future of degradation. Having a strong clear mind, without any imagination, she believed that she beheld an inevitable doom. The tart re- mark and the contemptuous comment on her part, elicited, on the other, all the irritability of the poetic idiosyncrasy. After frantic ebullitions for which, when the circumstances were analyzed by an or- dinary mind, there seemed no sufficient cause, my grandfather always interfered to soothe with good- tempered common-places, and promote peace. He was a man who thought that the only way to make people happy was to make them a present. He
on the Literary Character," Vol. I. chap, v
10 LIFE AND WRITINGS
took it for granted that a boy in a passion wanted a toy or a guinea. At a later date, when my father ran away from home, and after some wanderings was brought back, found lying on a tombstone in Hackney churchyard, he embraced him, and gave him a pony.
In this state of affairs, being sent to school in the neighbourhood, was a rather agreeable incident. The school was kept by a Scotchman, one Morison, a good man, and not untinctured with scholarship, and it is possible that my father might have reaped some advantage from this change; but jthe school was too near home, and his mother, though she tormented his existence, was never content if he were out of her sight. His delicate health was an excuse for converting him, after a short interval, into a day scholar ; then many days of attendance were omitted ; finally, the solitary walk home through Mr. Mellish's park, was dangerous to the sensibilities that too often exploded when they encountered on the arrival at the domestic hearth a scene which did not harmonize with the fairy land of reverie.
The crisis arrived, when, after months of unusual abstraction and irritability, my father produced a poem. For the first time, my grandfather was se- riously alarmed. The loss of one of his argosies, uninsured, could not have filled him with more blank dismay. His idea of a poet was formed from one of the prints of Hogarth hanging in his
OF THE AUTHOK. H
room, where an unfortunate wight in a garret was inditing an ode to riches, while dunned for his milk- score. Decisive measures were required to eradicate this evil, and to prevent future disgrace — so, as seems the custom when a person is in a scrape, it was resolved that my father should be sent abroad, where a new scene and a new -language might di- vert his mind from the ignominious pursuit which so fatally attracted him. The unhappy poet was consigned, like a bale of goods, to my grandfather's correspondent at Amsterdam, who had instructions to place him at some collegium of repute in that city. Here were passed some years not without profit, though his tutor was a great impostor, very neglectful of his pupils, and both unable and dis- inclined to guide them in severe studies. This pre- ceptor was a man of letters, though a wretched writer, with a good library, and a spirit inflamed with all the philosophy of the eighteenth century, then (1780-1) about to bring forth and bear its long matured fruits. The intelligence and disposition of my father attracted his attention, and rather inter- ested him. Pie taught his charge little, for he was himself generally occupied in writing bad odes, but he gave him free warren in his library, and before his pupil was fifteen, he had read the works of Voltaire and had dipped into Bayle. Strange that the characteristics of a writer so born and brought up, should have been so essentially English ; not
12 LIFE AND WETTINGS
merely from his mastery over our language, but from his keen and profound sympathy with all that concerned the literary and political history of our country at its most important epoch.
When he was eighteen, he returned to England a disciple of Rousseau. He had exercised his im- agination during the voyage in idealizing the inter- view with his mother, which was to be conducted on both sides with sublime pathos. His other par- ent had frequently visited him during his absence. He was prepared to throw himself on his mother's bosom, to bedew her hand with his tears, and to stop her own with his lips ; but, when he entered, his strange appearance, his gaunt figure, his excited manners, his long hair, and his unfashionable cos- tume, only filled her with a sentiment of tender aversion ; she broke into derisive laughter, and no- ticing his intolerable garments, she reluctantly lent him her cheek. Whereupon Emile, of course, went into heroics, wept, sobbed, and finally shut up in his chamber, composed an impassioned epistle. My grandfather, to soothe him, dwelt on the united so- licitude of his parents for his welfare, and broke to him their intention, if it were agreeable to him, to place him in the establishment of a great merchant of Bordeaux. My father replied that he had writ- ten a poem of considerable length, which he wished to publish, against Commerce, which was the cor- ruptor of man. In eight-and-forty hours confusion
OF THE AUTHOR. 13
again reigned in this household, and all from a want of psychological perception in its master and mistress.
My father, who had lost the timidity of his child- hood, who, by nature, was very impulsive, and indeed endowed with a degree of volatility which is only witnessed in the south of France, and which never deserted him to his last hour, was no longer to be controlled. His conduct was decisive. He inclosed his poem to Dr. Johnson, with an impassioned state- ment of his case, complaining, which he ever did, that he had never found a counsellor or literary friend. He left his packet himself at Bolt Court, where he was received by Mr. Francis Barber, the doctor's well-known black servant, and told .to call again in a week. Be sure that he was very punc- tual ; but the packet was returned to him unopened, with a message that the illustrious doctor was too ill to read anything. The unhappy and obscure aspirant, who received this disheartening message, accepted it, in his utter despondency, as a mechani- cal excuse. But, alas ! the cause was too true ; and, a few weeks after, on that bed, beside which tho voice of Mr. Burke faltered, and the tender spirit of Benett Langton was ever vigilant, the great soul of Johnson quitted earth.
But the spirit of self-confidence, the resolution to struggle against his fate, the paramount desire to find some sympathizing sage — some guide, philoso*
14 LIFE AND WRITINGS
pher, and friend — was so strong and rooted in my father, that I observed, a few weeks ago, in a mag- azine, an original letter, written by him about this time to Dr. Vicesimus Knox, full of high-flown sen- timents, reading indeed like a romance of Scudery and intreating the learned critic to receive him in his family, and give him the advantage of his wisdom, his taste, and his erudition.
With a home that ought to have been happy, sur- rounded with more than comfort, with the most good-natured father in the world, and an agreeable man, and with a mother whose strong intellect, under ordinary circumstances, might have been of great importance to him, my father, though himself of a very sweet disposition, was most unhappy. His parents looked upon him as moonstruck, while he himself, whatever his aspirations, was conscious that he had done nothing to justify the eccentricity of his course, or the violation of all prudential considera- tions in which he daily indulged. In these perplexi- ties, the -usual alternative was again had recourse to — absence ; he was sent abroad, to travel in France, which the peace then permitted, visit some friends, see Paris, and then proceed to Bordeaux if he felt inclined. My father travelled in France and then proceeded to Paris, where he remained till the eve of great events in that capital. This was a visit recollected with satisfaction. He lived with learned men and moved in vast libraries, and returned in the
OF THE AUTHOR. 15
earlier part of 1788, with some little knowledge of life, and with a^considerable quantity of books.
At this time Peter Pindar flourished in all the wantonness of literary riot. He was at the height of his flagrant notoriety. The novelty and the bold- ness of his style carried the million with him. The most exalted station was not exempt from his auda- cious criticism, and learned institutions trembled at the sallies whose ribaldry often cloked taste, intelli- gence, and good sense. His " Odes to the Acade- micians," which first secured him the ear of the town, were written by one who could himself guide the pencil with skill and feeling, and who, in the form of a mechanic's son, had even the felicity to discover the vigorous genius of Opie. The mock- heroic which invaded with success the sacred recesses of the palace, and which was fruitlessly menaced by Secretaries of State, proved a reckless intrepidity, which is apt to be popular with " the general." The powerful and the learned quailed beneath the lash with an affected contempt which scarcely veiled their tremor. In the mean time, as in the latter days of the empire, the barbarian ravaged the country, while Ihe pale-faced patricians were inactive within the walls. No one offered resistance.
There appeared about this time a satire " On the Abuse of Satire." The verses were polished and pointed ; a happy echo of that style of Mr. Pope which still lingered in the spellbound ear of the
16 LIFE AND WRITINGS
public. Peculiarly they offered a contrast to the irreg- ular effusions of the popular assailant whom they in turn assailed, for the object of their indignant invec- tive was the bard of the " Lousiad." The poem was anonymous, and was addressed to Dr. Warton in lines of even classic grace. Its publication was appropriate. There are moments when every one is inclined to praise, especially when the praise of a new pen may at the same time revenge the insults of an old one.
But if there could be any doubt of the success of this new hand, it was quickly removed by the con- duct of Peter Pindar himself. As is not unusual with persons of his habits, Wolcot was extremely sensitive, and, brandishing a tomahawk, always him- self shrank from a scratch. This was shown some years afterwards by his violent assault on Mr. Gif- ford, with a bludgeon, in a bookseller's shop, because the author of the " Baviad and Maeviad " had pre- sumed to castigate the great lampooner of the age. In the present instance, the furious Wolcot leapt to the rash conclusion, that the author of the satire was no less a personage than Mr. Hayley, and he assailed the elegant author of the " Triumphs of Temper " in a virulent pasquinade. This ill-considered move- ment of his adversary of course achieved the com- plete success of the anonymous writer.
My father, who came up to town to read the news- papers at the St. James' Coffee-house, found their
OF THE AUTHOR. 17
columns filled with extracts from the fortunate effu- sion of the hour, conjectures as to its writer, anc* much gossip respecting Wolcot and Hayley. He returned to Enfield laden with the journals, and, presenting them to his parents, broke to them the intelligence, that at length he was not only an author, but a successful one.
He was indebted to this slight effort for something almost as agreeable as the public recognition of his ability, and that was the acquaintance, and almost immediately the warm personal friendship, of Mr. Pye. Mr. Pye was the head of an ancient English family that figured in the Parliaments and struggles of the Stuarts ; he was member for the County of Berkshire, where his ancestral seat of Faringdon was situate, and at a later period (1790) became Poet Laureate. In those days, when literary clubs did not exist, and when even political ones were ex-? tremely limited and exclusive in their character, the booksellers' shops were social rendezvous. Debrett's was the chief haunt of the Whigs ; Hatchard's, I believe, of the Tories. It was at the latter house that my father made the acquaintance of Mr. Pye, then publishing his translation of Aristotle's Poetics, and so strong was party feeling at that period, that one day, walking together down Piccadilly, Mr. Pye, stopping at the door of Debrett, requested his com- panion to go in and purchase a particular pamph- let for him, adding that if he had the audacity to
vor,. i. 2
18 LIFE AND WRITINGS
enter, more than one person would tread upon his toes.
My father at last had a friend. Mr. Pye, though double his age, was still a young man, and the liter- ary sympathy between them was complete. Unfor- tunately, the member for Berkshire was a man rather of an elegant turn of mind, than one of that energy and vigour which a youth required for a companion at that moment. Their tastes and pursuits were perhaps a little too similar. They addressed poetical epistles to each other, and were, reciprocally, too gentle critics. But Mr. Pye was a most amiable and accomplished man, a fine classical scholar, and a master of correct versification. He paid a visit to Enfield, and by his influence hastened a conclusion at which my grandfather was just arriving, to wit, that he would no longer persist in the fruitless effort of converting a poet into a merchant, and that, con- tent with the independence he had realized, he would abandon his dreams of founding a dynasty of finan- ciers. From this moment all disquietude ceased beneath this always well-meaning, though often per- plexed, roof, while my father, enabled amply to grat- ify his darling passion of book-collecting, passed his days in tranquil study, and in the society of conge- nial spirits.
His new friend introduced him almost immediately to Mr. James Pettit Andrews, a Berkshire gentleman of literary pursuits, and whose hospitable table at
OF THE AUTHOR. 19
Brompton was the resort of the best literary society of the day. Here my father was a frequent guest, and walking home one night together from this house, where they had both dined, he made the ac- quaintance of a young poet, which soon ripened into intimacy, and which throughout sixty years, notwithstanding many changes of life, never died away. This youthful poet had already gained lau- rels, though he was only three or four years older than my father, but I am not at this moment quite aware whether his brow was yet encircled with the amaranthine wreath of the " Pleasures of Memory." Some years after this, great vicissitudes unhappily occurred in the family of Mr. Pye. He was obliged to retire from Parliament, and to sell .his family estate of Faringdon. His Majesty had already, on the death of Thomas Warton, nominated him Poet Laureate, and after his retirement from Parliament, the government which he had supported, appointed him a Commissioner of Police. It was in these days, that his friend, Mr. Penn, of Stoke Park, in Buckinghamshire, presented him with a cottage worthy of a poet on his beautiful estate ; and it was* thus my father became acquainted with the amiable descendant of the most successful of colonizers, and with that classic domain which the genius of Gray, as it were, now haunts, and has for ever hallowed, and from which he beheld with fond and musing eye, those
Di?tnnt spires «iivl antique tn-vrors.
20 LIFE AND WRITINGS
that no one can now look upon without remember- ing him. It was amid these rambles in Stoke Park, amid the scenes of Gray's genius, the elegiac church- yard, and the picturesque fragments of the Long Story, talking over the deeds of the " Great Rebel- lion" with the descendants of Cavaliers and Parlia- ment-men, that my father first imbibed that feeling for the county of Buckingham, which induced him occasionally to be a dweller in its limits, and ulti- mately, more than a quarter of a century afterwards, to establish his household gods in its heart. And here, perhaps, I may be permitted to mention a cir- cumstance, which is indeed trifling, and yet, as a coincidence, not, I think, without interest. Mr. Pye was the great-grandson of Sir Robert Pye, of Bra- denham, who married Anne, the eldest daughter of Mr. Hampden. How little could my father dream, sixty years ago. that he would pass the last quarter of his life in the mansion-house of Braderiham ; that his name would become intimately connected with the county of Buckingham; and that his own re- mains would be interred in the vault of the chancel of Bradenham Church, among the coffins of the descendants of the Hampdens and the Pyes. All which should teach us that, whatever may be our natural bent, there is a power in the disposal of events greater than human will.
It was about two years after his first acquaintance with Mr. Pye, that my father, being then in his twenty
OF THE AUTHOR. 21
fifth year, influenced by the circle in which he then lived, gave an anonymous volume to the press, the fate of which he could little have foreseen. The taste for literary history was then of recent date in England. It was developed by Dr. Johnson and the Wartons, who were the true founders of that elegant literature in which France had so richly preceded us. The fashion for literary anecdote prevailed at the end of the last century. Mr. Pettit Andrews, assisted by Mr. Pye and Captain Grose, and shortly after- wards, his friend, Mr. Seward, in his "Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons," had both of them produced ingenious works, which had experienced public fa- vour. But these volumes were rather entertaining than substantial, and their interest in many instances was necessarily fleeting ; all which made Mr. Rogers observe, that the world was far gone in its anec- dotage.
While Mr. Andrews and his friend were hunting for personal details in the recollections of their con- temporaries, my father maintained one day, that the most interesting of miscellanies. might be drawn up by a well-read man from the library in which he lived. It was objected, on the other hand, that such a work would be a mere compilation, and could not succeed with its dead matter in interesting the public. To test the truth of this assertion, my father occupied himself in the preparation of an octavo volume, the principal materials of which were found in the di-
22 LIFE AND WRITINGS
versified collections of the French Ana ; but he en- riched his subjects with as much of our own literature as his reading afforded, and he conveyed the result in that lively and entertaining style which he from the first commanded. This collection of "Anecdotes, Characters, Sketches, and Observations ; Literary, Critical, and Historical," as the title-page of the first edition figures, he invested with the happy baptism of " Curiosities of Literature."
He sought by this publication neither reputation nor a coarser reward, for he published his work anonymously, and avowedly as a compilation ; and he not only published the work at his own expense, but in his heedlessness made a present of the copy- right to the bookseller, which three or four- years afterwards, he was fortunate enough to purchase at a public sale. The volume was an experiment whether a taste for literature could not be infused into the multitude. Its success was so decided, that its projector was tempted to add a second volume two years afterwards, with a slight attempt at more original research ; I observe that there was a second edition of both volumes in 1794. For twenty years the brother volumes remained favourites of the public ; when after that long interval their writer, taking advantage of a popular title, poured forth all the riches of his matured intellect, his refined taste, and accumulated knowledge into their pages, and produced what may be fairly described
OF THE AUTHOR. 23
as the most celebrated Miscellany of Modern Litera- ture.
The moment that the name of the youthful au- thor of the "Abuse of Satire" had transpired, Peter Pindar, faithful to the instinct of his nature, wrote. a letter of congratulation and compliment to his assailant, and desired to make his acquaintance. The invitation was responded to, and until the death of Wolcot, they were intimate. My father always described Wolcot as a warm-hearted man ; coarse in his manners, and rather rough, but eager to serve those whom he liked, of which, indeed, I might appropriately mention an instance.
It so happened, that about the year 1795, when he was in his 29th year, there came over my father that mysterious illness to which the youth of men of sensibility, and especially literary men, is fre- quently subject — a failing of nervous energy, occa- sioned by study and too sedentary habits, early and habitual reverie, restless and indefinite purpose. The symptoms, physical and moral, are most dis- tressing : lassitude and despondency. And it usu- ally happens, as in the present instance, that the cause of suffering is not recognized ; and that med- ical men, misled by the superficial symptoms, and not seeking to acquaint themselves with the psy- chology of their patients, arrive at erroneous, often fatal, conclusions. In this case, the most eminent of the faculty gave it as their opinion, that the
24 LIFE AND WRITINGS
disease was consumption. Dr. Turton, if I recollect right, was then the most considered physician of the day. An immediate visit to a warmer climate was his specific ; and as the Continent was then dis- turbed and foreign residence out of the question, Dr. Turton recommended that his patient should establish himself without delay in Devonshire.
When my father communicated this impending change in his life to Wolcot, the modern Skelton shook his head. He did not believe that his friend was in a consumption, but being a Devonshire man, and loving very much his native province, he highly approved of the remedy. He gave my father several letters of introduction to persons of consideration at Exeter ; among others, one whom he justly described as a poet and a physician, and the best of men, the late Dr. Hugh Downman. Provincial cities very often enjoy a transient term of intellectual distinc- tion. An eminent man often collects around him congenial spirits, and the power of association some- times produces distant effects which even an indi- vidual, however gifted, could scarcely have antici- pated. A combination of circumstances had made at this time Exeter a literary metropolis. A number of distinguished men flourished there at the same moment : some of their names are even now remem- bered. Jackson of Exeter still survives as a native composer of original genius. He was also an au- thor of high sesthetical speculation. The heroic
OF THE AUTHOR. 25
poems of Hole are forgotten, but his essay on the Arabian Nights is still a cherished volume of elegant and learned criticism. Hayter was the classic anti- quary who first discovered the art of unrolling the MSS. of Herculaneum. There were many others, noisier and more bustling, who are now forgotten, though they in some degree influenced the literary opinion of their time. It was said, and I believe truly, that the two principal, if not sole, organs of periodical criticism at that time, I think the " Crit- ical Review " and the " Monthly Review," were principally supported by Exeter contributions. No doubt this circumstance may account for a great deal of mutual praise and sympathetic opinion on literary subjects, which, by a convenient arrange- ment, appeared in the pages of publications other- wise professing contrary opinions on all others. Exeter had then even a learned society which pub- lished its Transactions.
With such companions, by whom he was received with a kindness and hospitality which to the last he often dwelt on, it may easily be supposed that the banishment of my father from the delights of literary London was not as productive a source of gloom as the exile of Ovid to the savage Pontus, even if it had not been his happy fortune to have been received on terms of intimate friendship, by the accomplished family of Mr. Baring, who was then member foi Exeter, and beneath whose roof he passed a great
26 LIFE AND WRITINGS
portion of the period of nearly three years, during which he remained in Devonshire.
The illness of my father was relieved, but not removed, by this change of life. Dr. Downrnan was his physician, whose only remedies were port wine, horse-exercise, rowing on the neighbouring river, and the distraction of agreeable society. This wise physician recognized the temperament of his patient, and perceived that his physical derangement was an effect instead of a cause. My father instead of being in a consumption, was endowed with a frame of almost superhuman strength, and which was destined for half a century of continuous labour and sedentary life. The vital principle in him, in- deed, was so strong that when he left us at eighty- two, it was only as the victim of a violent epidemic, against whose virulence he struggled with so much power, that it was clear, but for this casualty, he might have been spared to this world even for sev- eral years.
I should think that this illness of his youth, and which, though of a fitful character, was of many years duration, arose from his inability to direct to a satisfactory end the intellectual power which he was conscious of possessing. He would men- tion the ten years of his life, from twenty-five to thirty-five years of age, as a period very deficient in self-contentedness. The fact is, with a poetic tem- perament, he had been born in an age when the
OF THE AUTHOK. 27
poetic faith of which he was a votary had fallen into decrepitude, and had become only a form with the public, not yet gifted with sufficient fervour to discover a new creed. He was a pupil of Pope and Boileau, yet both from his native impulse and from the glowing influence of Rousseau, he felt the ne- cessity and desire of infusing into the verse of the day more passion than might resound from the frigid lyre of Mr. Hayley. My father had fancy, sensibil- ity, and an exquisite taste, but he had not that rare creative power, which the blended and simultaneous influence of the individual organization and the spirit of the age, reciprocally acting upon each other, can alone, perhaps, perfectly develop ; the absence of which, at periods of transition, is so universally recognized and deplored, and yet which always, when it does arrive, captivates us, as it were, by surprise. How much there was of fresh- ness, and fancy, and natural pathos in his mind, may be discerned in his Persian romance of " The Loves of Mejnoon and Leila." We who have been accustomed to the great poets of the nineteenth century seeking their best inspiration in the climate and manners of the East; who are familiar with the land of the Sun from the isles of Ionia to the vales of Cashmere ; can scarcely appreciate the lit- erary originality of a writer who, fifty years ago, dared to devise a real Eastern story, and seeking inspiration in the pages of Oriental literature, com-
28 LIFE AND WRITINGS
pose it with reference to the Eastern mind, and customs, and landscape. One must have been familiar with the Almoran and Hamets, the visions of Mirza and the kings of Ethiopia, and the other dull and monstrous masquerades of Orientalism then prevalent, to estimate such an enterprise, in which, however, one should not forget the author had the advantage of the guiding friendship of that distinguished Orientalist, Sir William Ouseley. The reception of this work by the public, and of other works of fiction which its author gave to them anonymously, was in every respect encouraging, and their success may impartially be registered as fairly proportionate to their merits ; but it was not a success, or a proof of power, which, in my father's opinion, compensated for that life of literary re- search and study which their composition dis- turbed and enfeebled. It was at the ripe age of five-and-thirty that he renounced his dreams of being an author, and resolved to devote himself for the rest of his life to the acquisition of knowl- edge.
When my father, many years afterwards, made the acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott, the great poet, saluted him by reciting a poem of half-a-dozen stanzas which my father had written in his early youth. Not altogether without agitation, surprise was expressed that these lines should have been known, still more that they should have been re-
OF THE AUTHOR. 29
membered. " Ah ! " said Sir Walter, " if the writer of these lines had gone on, he would have been an English poet."*
It is possible ; it is even probable that, if my father had devoted himself to the art, he might have become the author of some elegant and popular didactic poem, on some ordinary subject, which his fancy would have adorned with grace and his sensi- bility invested with sentiment; some small volume which might have reposed with a classic title upon our library shelves, and served as a prize volume at Ladies' Schools. This celebrity was not reserved for him ; instead of this he was destined to give to his country a series of works illustrative of its liter- ary and political history, full of new information and new views, which time and opinion have ratified as just. But the poetical temperament was not thrown away upon him, it never is on any one; it was this great gift which prevented his being a mere literary antiquary; it was this which animated his page with picture and his narrative with interesting vivacity ; above all, it was this temperament, which invested him with that sympathy with his subject, which made him the most delightful biographer in our language. In a word, it was because he was a
* Sir Walter was sincere, for he inserted the poem in the " English Minstrelsy." It may now be found in these volumes, Vol. I. p. 313, where, In consequence of the recollection of Sir Walter, and as illustrative of manners novr obsolete, it was subsequently inserted.
30 LIFE AND WRITINGS
poet, that he was a popular writer, and made belles- lettres charming to the multitude.
It was during the ten years that now occurred, that he mainly acquired that store of facts which were the foundation of his future speculations. His pen was never idle, but it was to note and to register, not to compose. His researches were prosecuted every morning among the MSS. of the British Mu- seum, while his own ample collections permitted him to pursue his investigation in his own library into the night. The materials which he accumulated during this period are only partially exhausted. At the end of ten years, during which, with the exception of one anonymous work, he never indulged in com- position, the irresistible desire of communicating his conclusions to the world came over him, and after all his almost childish aspirations, his youth of rev- erie and hesitating and imperfect effort, he arrived at the mature age of forty-five before his career as a great author, influencing opinion, really commenced.
The next ten years passed entirely in production ; from 1812 to 1822 the press abounded with his works. His " Calamities of Authors," his " Memoirs of Literary Controversy," in the manner of Bayle ; his " Essay on the Literary Character," the most perfect of his compositions; were all chapters in that History of English Literature which he then com- menced to meditate, and which it was fated should never be completed.
OF THE AUTHOR. 31
Jt was during this period also that he published his "Inquiry into the Literary'and Political Charac- ter of James the First," in which he first opened those views respecting the -times and the conduct of the Stuarts, which were opposed to the long prevalent opinions of this country, but which with him were at least the result of unprejudiced research, and their promulgation, as he himself expressed it, " an affair of literary conscience." *
But what retarded his project of a History of our Literature at this time was the almost embarrassing success of his juvenile production, " The Curiosities of Literature." These two volumes had already reached five editions, and their author found himself, by the public demand, again called upon to sanction their reappearance. Recognizing in this circum- stance some proof of their utility, he resolved to make the work more worthy of the favour which it enjoyed, and more calculated to produce the benefit which he desired. Without attempting materially to alter the character of the first two volumes, he
* " The present inquiry originates in an affair of literary conscience. Many years ago I set off with the popular notions of the character of James the First; but in the course of study, and with a more enlarged comprehension of the age, I was frequently struck by the contrast between his real and his apparent character ***** * * * * It would be a cowardly silence to shrink from encountering all that popular prejudice and party feeling may oppose; this would be incompatible with that constant search after truth, which at least may be expected from the retired student." — Preface to the Inquiry
82 LIFE AND WRITINGS
revised and enriched them, while at the same time he added a third volume of a vein far more critical, and conveying the results of much original research. The success of this publication was so great, that its author, after much hesitation, resolved, as he was wont to say, to take advantage of a popular title, and pour forth the treasures of his mind in three additional volumes, which, unlike continuations in general, were at once greeted with the highest de- gree of popular delight and esteem. And, indeed, whether we consider the choice variety of the sub- jects, the critical and philosophical speculation which pervades them, the amount of new and interesting information brought to bear, and the animated style in which all is conveyed, it is diffi- cult to conceive miscellaneous literature in a garb more stimulating and attractive. These six volumes after many editions, are now condensed into the form at present given to the public, and in which the development of their writer's mind for a quarter of a century may be completely traced.
Although my father had on the whole little cause to complain of unfair criticism, especially considering how isolated he always remained, it is not to be supposed that a success so eminent should have been exempt in so long a course from some captious comment. It has been alleged of late years by some critics, that he was in the habit of exaggerating the importance of his researches ; that he was too fond
OF THE AUTHOR. 33
of styling every accession to our knowledge, how- ever slight, a discovery ; that there were some inac- curacies in his early volumes, (not very wonderful in so multifarious a work,) and that the foundation of his " secret history " was often only a single letter, or a passage in a solitary diary.
The sources of secret history at the present day are so rich and various ; there is such an eagerness among their possessors to publish family papers, even sometimes in shapes, and at dates so recent, as scarcely to justify their appearance ; that modern critics, in their embarrassment of manuscript wealth, are apt to view with too depreciating an eye, the more limited resources of men of letters at the com- mencement of the century. Not five-and-twenty years ago, when preparing his work on King Charles the First, the application of my father to make some researches in the State Paper Office, was refused by the Secretary of State of the day. Now, foreign potentates and ministers of State, and pub- lic corporations, and the heads of great houses, feel honoured by such appeals, and respond to them with cordiality. It is not only the State Paper Office of England, but the Archives of France, that are open to the historical investigator. But what has produced this general and expanding taste for literary research in the world, and especially in England? The labours of our elder authors, whose taste and acuteness taught us the value of the
VOL. I. 8
34 LIFE AND WRITINGS
materials which we in our ignorance neglected. When my father first frequented the reading-room of the British Museum at the end of the last cen- tury, his companions never numbered half a dozen ; among them, if I remember rightly, were Mr. Piri- kerton and Mr. Douce. Now these daily pilgrims of research may be counted by as many hundreds. Few writers have more contributed to form and diffuse this delightful and profitable taste for re- search, than the author of the " Curiosities of Lit- erature;" few writers have been more successful in inducing us to pause before we accepted with- out a scruple the traditionary opinion that has distorted a fact or calumniated a character ; and independently of every other claim which he pos- sesses to public respect, his literary discoveries, viewed in relation to the age and the means, were considerable. But he had other claims: a vital spirit in his page, kindred with the souls of a Bayle and a Montaigne. His innumerable imi- tators and their inevitable failure for half a century alone prove this, and might have made them suspect that there were some ingredients in the spell besides the accumulation of facts and a happy title. Many of their publications, perpetually appearing and constantly forgotten, were drawn up by persons of considerable acquirements, and were ludicrously mimetic of their prototype, even as to the size of the volume and the form of the page. What has
OF THE AUTHOR. 35
become of these " Varieties of Literature," and "Delights of Literature," and " Delicacies of Lit- erature," and " Relics of Literature," — and the other Protean forms of uninspired compilation ? Dead as they deserve to be : while the work, the idea of which occurred to its writer in his early youth, and which he lived virtually to execute in all the ripe- ness of his studious manhood, remains as fresh and popular as ever, — the Literary Miscellany of the English People.
I have ventured to enter into some details as to the earlier and obscurer years of my father's life, because I thought that they threw light upon hu- man character, and that without them, indeed, a just appreciation of his career could hardly be formed. I am mistaken, if we do not recognize in his instance two very interesting qualities of life: predisposition and self-formation. There was a third, which I think is to be honoured, and that was his sympathy with his order. No one has written so much about authors, and so well. In- deed, before his time the Literary Character had never been fairly placed before the world. He comprehended its idiosyncrasy: all its strength and all its weakness. He could soften, because he could explain, its infirmities; in the analysis and record of its power, he vindicated the right position of authors in the social scale. * They stand between the governors and the governed, he impresses on us
36 LIFE AND WRITINGS
in the closing pages of his greatest work.* Though he shared none of the calamities, and scarcely any of the controversies, of literature, no one has sym- pathized so intimately with the sorrows, or so zeal- ously and impartially registered the instructive dis- putes, of literary men. He loved to celebrate the exploits of great writers, and to show that, in these ages, the pen is a weapon as puissant as the sword. He was also the first writer who vindicated the position of the great artist in the history of genius. His pages are studded with pregnant instances and graceful details, borrowed from the life of Art and its votaries, and which his intimate and curious acquaintance with Italian letters readily and happily supplied. Above all writers, he has maintained the greatness of intellect, and the immortality of thought.
He was himself a complete literary character, a man who really passed his life in his library. Even marriage produced no change in thc;se habits ; he rose to enter the chamber where he lived alone with his books, and at night his lamp was ever lit within the same walls. Nothing, indeed, was more remarkable than the isolation of this prolonged ex- istence ; and it could only be accounted for by the united influence of three causes: his birth, which brought him no relations or family acquaintance,
* " Essay on the Literary Character," Vol. II. chap. xxv.
OF THE AUTHOR, 37
the bent of his disposition, and the circumstance of his inheriting an independent fortune, which rendered unnecessary those exertions, that would have broken up his self-reliance. He disliked busi- ness, and he never required relaxation ; he was absorbed in his pursuits. In London his only amusement was to ramble among booksellers; if he entered a club, it was only to go into the library, In the country, he scaTcely ever left his room, but to saunter in abstraction upon a terrace ; muse over a* chapter, or coin a sentence. He had not a single passion or prejudice : all his convictions were the result of his own studies, and were often opposed to the impressions which he had early imbibed. He not only never entered into the politics of the day, but he could never understand them. He never was connected with any particular body or set of men ; comrades of school or college, or confederates in that public life which, in England, is, perhaps, the only foundation of real friendship. In the con- sideration of a question, his mind was quite undis- turbed by traditionary preconceptions ; and it was this exemption from passion and prejudice which, although his intelligence was naturally somewhat too ingenious and fanciful for the conduct of close argument, enabled him, in investigation, often to show many of the highest attributes of the judicial mind, and particularly to sum up evidence with singular happiness and ability.
38 LIFE AND WRITINGS
Although in private life he was of a timid nature, his moral courage as a writer was unimpeachable. Most certainly, throughout his long career, he never wrote a sentence which he did not believe was true. He will generally be found to be the advocate of the discomfited and the oppressed. So his conclusions are often opposed to popular impressions. This was from no love of paradox, to which he was quite su- perior ; but because in the conduct of his researches, he too often found that the unfortunate are calum- niated. His vindication of King James the First, he has himself described as " an affair of literary conscience : " his greater work on the life and times of the son of the first Stuart arose from the same impulse. He had deeply studied our history during the first moiety of the seventeenth century ; he looked upon it as a famous age ; he was familiar with the works of its great writers, and there was scarcely one of its almost innumerable pamphlets with which he was not acquainted. During the thoughtful investi- gations of many years, he had arrived at results Vvhich were not adapted to please the passing multi- tude, but which, because he held them to be authentic, he was uneasy lest he should die without recording. Yet strong as were his convictions, although, not- withstanding his education in the revolutionary phi- losophy of the eighteenth century, his nature and his studies had made him a votary of loyalty and rever- ence, his pen was always prompt to do justice to
OF THE AUTHOR. 39
those who might be looked upon as the adversaries of his own cause : and this was because his cause was really truth. If he have upheld Laud under unjust aspersions, the last labour of his literary life was to vindicate the character of Hugh Peters. If, from the recollection of the sufferings of his race, and from profound reflection on the principles of the In- stitution, he was hostile to the Papacy, no writer in our literature has done more complete justice to the conduct of the English Romanists. Who can read his history of Chidiock Titchbourne unmoved ? Or can refuse to sympathize with his account of the painful difficulties of the English Monarchs with their loyal subjects of the old faith ? If in a parliamentary country he has dared to criticize the conduct of Par- liaments, it was only because an impartial judgment had taught him, as he himself expresses it, that " Par- liaments have their passions as well as individuals." He was five years in the composition of his work on the " Life and Reign of Charles the First," and the five volumes appeared at intervals between 1828 and 1831. It was feared by his publisher, that the distracted epoch at which this work was issued, and the tendency of the times, apparently so adverse to his own views, might prove very injurious to its re- ception. But the effect of these circumstances was the reverse. The minds of men were inclined to the grave and national considerations that were involved in these investigations. The principles of political
40 LIFE AND WRITINGS
institutions, the rival claims of the two Houses of Parliament, the authority of the Established Church, the demands of religious sects, were, after a long lapse of years, anew the theme of public discussion. Men were attracted to a writer who traced the origin of the anti-monarchical principle in modern Europe ; treated of the arts of insurgency ; gave them, at the same time, a critical history of the Puritans, and a treatise on the genius of the Papacy ; scrutinized the conduct of triumphant patriots, and vindicated a decapitated monarch. The success of this work was eminent ; and its author appeared for the first, and only time, of his life in public, when amidst the cheers of under-graduates, and the applause of graver men, the solitary student received an honorary degree from the University of Oxford, a fitting homage, in the language of the great University, " OPTIMI REGIS OPTIMO VINDICI."
I cannot but recall a trait that happened on this occasion. After my father returned to his hotel from the theatre, a stranger requested an interview with him. A Swiss gentleman, travelling in England at the time, who had witnessed the scene just closed, begged to express the reason why he presumed thus personally and cordially to congratulate the new Doctor of Civil Law. He was the son of my grand- father's chief clerk, and remembered his parent's em- ployer; whom he regretted did not survive to be aware of this honourable day. Thus, amid all the
OF THE AUTHOR. 41
strange vicissitudes of life, we are ever, as it were, moving in a circle.
Notwithstanding he was now approaching his sev- entieth year, his health being unbroken and his con- stitution very robust, my father resolved vigorously to devote himself to the composition of the history of our vernacular Literature. He hesitated for a moment, whether he should at once address himself to this greater task, or whether he should first com- plete a Life of Pope, for which he had made great preparations, and which had long occupied his thoughts. His review of " Spence's Anecdotes " in the Quarterly, so far back as 1820, which gave rise to the celebrated Pope Controversy, in which Mr. Campbell, Lord Byron, Mr. Bowles, Mr. Roscoe, and others less eminent broke lances, would prove how well qualified, even at that distant date, the critic was to become the biographer of the great writer, whose literary excellency and moral conduct he, on that occasion, alike vindicated. But, unfortunately as it turned out, my father was persuaded to address himself to the weightier task. Hitherto, in his pub- lications, he had always felt an extreme reluctance to travel over ground which others had previously visited. He liked to give new matter, and devote himself to detached points, on which he entertained different opinions from those prevalent. Thus his works are generally of a supplementary character, and assume in their readers a certain. degree of pre-
42 LIFE AND WRITINGS
liminary knowledge. In the present instance, he was induced to frame his undertaking on a different scale, and to prepare a history which should be com- plete in itself, and supply the reader with a perfect view of the gradual formation of out language and literature. He proposed to effect this in six vol- umes ; though, I apprehend, he would not have suc- ceeded in fulfilling his intentions within that limit. His treatment of the period of Queen Anne would have been very ample, and he would also have ac- complished in this general work, a purpose which he had also long contemplated, and for which he had made curious and extensive collections, namely, a History of the English Freethinkers.
But all these great plans were destined to a terri- ble defeat. Towards the end of the year 1839, still in the full vigour of his health and. intellect, he suf- fered a paralysis of the optic nerve 4 and that eye, which for so long a term had kindled with critical interest over the volumes of so many literatures and so many languages, was doomed to pursue its ani- mated course no more. Considering the bitterness of such a calamity to one whose powers were other- wise not in the least impaired, he bore on the whole his fate with magnanimity, even with cheerfulness. Unhappily, his previous habits of study and compo- sition rendered the habit of dictation intolerable, even impossible to him. But with the assistance of his daughter^ whose intelligent solicitude he has
OF THE AUTHOB. 43
commemorated in more than one grateful passage, he selected from his manuscripts three volumes, which he wished to have published under the be- coming title of " A Fragment of a History of Eng- lisk Literature," but which were eventually given to the public under that of " Amenities of Liter- ature."
He was also enabled during these last years of physical, though not of moral, gloom, to prepare a new edition of his work on the Life and Times of Charles the First which had been for some time out of print. He contrived, though slowly, and with great labour, very carefully to revise, and improve, and enrich these volumes, which will now be condensed into three. His miscellaneous works, all illustrative of the political and literary history of this country, will form three more. He was wont to say that the best monument to an author was a good edition of his works : it is my purpose that he should possess this memorial. He has been described by a great authority as a writer sui gen- eris ; and indeed had he never written, it appears to me, that there would have been a gap in our libra- ries, which it would have been difficult to supply. Of him it might be added that, for an author, his end was an euthanasia, for on the day before he was seized by that fatal epidemic, of the danger of which, to the last moment, he was unconscious, he was apprised by his publishers, that all hia works
44 LIFE AND WRITINGS
were out of print, and that their republication could no longer be delayed.
In this notice of the career of my father, I have ventured to draw attention to three circumstances which I thought would be esteemed interesting ; namely, predisposition, self-formation, and sympathy with his order. There is yet another which com- pletes and crowns the character, — constancy of purpose; and it is only in considering his course as a whole, that we see how harmonious and consistent have been that life and its labours, which, in a partial and brief view, might be supposed to have been somewhat desultory and fragmentary.
On his moral character I shall scarcely presume to dwell. The philosophic sweetness of his dis- position, the serenity of his lot, and the elevating nature of his pursuits, combined to enable him to pass through life without an evil act, almost without an evil thought. As the world has always been fond of personal details respecting men who have been celebrated, I will mention that he was fair, with a Bourbon nose, and brown eyes of extra- ordinary beauty and lustre. He wore a small black velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his boy- hood. His extremities were delicate and well- formed, and his leg, at his last hour, as shapely as in his youth, which showed the vigour of hia frame. Latterly he had become corpulent. He did
OF THE AUTHOR. 45
not excel in conversation, though in his domestic circle he was garrulous. Everything interested him ; and blind, and eighty-two, he was still as susceptible as a child. One of his last acts was to compose some verses of gay gratitude to his daughter-in-law, who was his London correspondent, and to whose lively pen his last years were indebted for constant amusement. He had by nature a singular volatility which never deserted him. His feelings, though always amiable, were not painfully deep, and amid joy or sorrow, the philosophic vein was ever evident. He more resembled Goldsmith than any man that I can compare him to: in his conversation, his apparent confusion of ideas ending with some fe- licitous phrase of genius, his naivete, his simplicity not untouched with a dash of sarcasm affecting innocence — one was often reminded o/ the gifted and interesting friend of Burke and Johnson. There was, however, one trait in which my father did not resemble Goldsmith: he had no vanity. Indeed, one of his few infirmities was rather a deficiency of self-esteem.
On the whole, I hope — nay I believe — that taking all into consideration — the integrity and complete- ness of his existence, the fact that, for sixty years, he largely contributed to form the taste, charm the leisure, and direct the studious dispositions, of the great body of the public, and that his works have
46 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR.
extensively and curiously illustrated the literary and political history of our country, it will be conceded, that in his life and labours, he repaid England for the protection and the hospitality which this country accorded to his father a century ago.
D.
HUGHEXDEN MANOR,
Christmas, 1848.
CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE
CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.
LIBRARIES.
THE passion for forming vast collections of books has necessarily existed in all periods of human curiosity ; but long it required regal munificence to found a national library. It is only since the art of multiplying the productions of the mind has been discovered, that men of letters themselves have been enabled to rival this imperial and patriotic honour. The taste for books, so rare before the fifteenth century, has gradually become general only within these four hundred years : in that small space of time the public mind of Europe has been created.
Of LIBRARIES, the following anecdotes seem most inter- esting, as they mark either the affection, or the veneration, which civilized men have ever felt for these perennial reposi- tories of their minds. The first national library founded in Egypt seemed to have been placed under the protection of the .divinities, for their statues magnificently adorned this temple, dedicated at once to religion and to literature. It was still further embellished by a well-known inscription, for tjver grateful to the votary of literature ; on the front was engraven — " The nourishment of the soul ; " or, according to Diodorus, " The medicine of the mind."
The Egyptian Ptolemies founded the vast library of Alex- voi* i. 4
50 LIBRARIES.
andria, which was afterwards the emulative labour of rival monarchs ; the founder infused a soul into the vast body he was creating, by his choice of the librarian, Demetrius Pha- lereus, whose skilful industry amassed from all nations their choicest productions. Without such a librarian, a national library would be little more than a literary chaos ; his well exercised memory and critical judgment are its best cata- logue. One of the Ptolemies refused supplying the famished Athenians with wheat, until they presented him with the original manuscripts of JEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides ; and in returning copies of these autographs, he allowed them to retain the fifteen talents which he had pledged with them as a princely security.
When tyrants, or usurpers, have possessed sense as well as courage, they have proved the most ardent patrons of literature ; they know it is their interest to turn aside the public mind from political speculations, and to afford their subjects the inexhaustible occupations of curiosity, and the consoling pleasures of the imagination. Thus Pisistratus is said to have been among the earliest of the Greeks, who projected an immense collection of the works of the learned, and is supposed to have been the collector of the scattered works, which passed under the name of Plomer.
The Romans, after six centuries of gradual dominion, must have possessed the vast and diversified collections of the writings of the nations they conquered : among the most valued spoils of their victories, we know that manuscripts were considered as more precious than vases of gold. Pau- lus Emilius, after the defeat of Perseus, king of Macedon, brought to Rome a great number which he had amassed in Greece, and which he now distributed among his sons, or presented to the Roman people. Sylla followed his example. After the siege of Athens, he discovered an entire library in the temple of Apollo, which having carried to Rome, he appears to have been the founder of the first Roman public library. After the taking of Carthage, the Roman senate
LIBRARIES. 51
rewarded the family of Eegulus with the books found in that city. A library was a national gift, and the most honourable they could bestow. From the intercourse of the Romans with the Greeks, the passion for forming libraries rapidly increased, and individuals began to pride themselves on their private collections.
Of many illustrious Romans, their magnificent taste in their libraries has been recorded. Asinius Pollio, Crassus, Caesar, and Cicero, have, among others, been celebrated for their literary splendor. Lucullus, whose incredible opulence exhausted itself on more than imperial luxuries, more hon- ourably distinguished himself by his vast collections of books, and the happy use he made of them by the liberal access he allowed the learned. " It was a library," says Plutarch, " whose walks, galleries, and cabinets, were open to all vis- itors ; and the ingenious Greeks, when at leisure, resorted to this abode of the Muses to hold literary conversations, in which Lucullus himself loved to join." This library, en- larged by others, Julius Ca3sar once proposed to open for the public, having chosen the erudite Varro for its librarian ; but the daggers of Brutus and his party prevented the meditated projects of Caesar. In this museum, Cicero frequently pur- sued his studies, during the time his friend Faustus had the charge of it ; which he describes to Atticus in his 4th Book, Epist. 9. Amidst his public occupations and his private studies, either of them sufficient to have immortalized one mjm, we are astonished at the minute attention Cicero paid to the formation of his libraries and his cabinets of antiqui- ties.
The emperors were ambitious, at length, to give their names to the libraries they founded ; they did not consider the purple as their chief ornament. Augustus was himself an author ; and to one of those sumptuous buildings, called Therma, ornamented with porticos, galleries, and statues, with shady walks, and refreshing baths, testified his love of literature by adding a magnificent library. One of these
i>2 LIBRARIES.
libraries he fondly called by the name of his sister Octavia j and the other, the temple of Apollo, became the haunt of the poets, as Horace, Juvenal, and Persius have commemorated. The successors of Augustus imitated his example, and even Tiberius had an imperial library, chiefly consisting of works concerning the empire and the acts of its sovereigns. These Trajan augmented by the Ulpian library, denominated from his family name. In a word, we have accounts of the rich ornaments the ancients bestowed on their libraries ; of their floors paved with marble, their walls covered with glass and ivory, and their shelves and desks of ebony and cedar.
The first public library in Italy was founded by a person of no considerable fortune : his credit, his frugality, and for- titude, were indeed equal to a treasury. Nicholas Niccoli, the son of a merchant, after the death of his father relin- quished the beaten roads of gain, and devoted his soul to study, and his fortune to assist students. At his death, he left his library to the public, but his debts exceeding his effects, the princely generosity of Cosmo de' Medici realized the intention of its former possessor, and afterwards enriched it by the addition of an apartment, in which he placed the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldaic, and Indian MSS. The intrepid spirit of Nicholas V. laid the foundations of the Vatican ; the affection of Cardinal Bessarion for his country first gave Venice the rudiments of a public library ; and to Sir T» Bodley we owe the invaluable one of Oxford. Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Hans Sloane, Dr. Birch, Mr. Cracherode, Mr. Douce, and others of this race of lovers of books, have all contributed to form these literary treasures, which our nation owe to the enthusiasm of individuals, who have conse- crated their fortunes and their days to this great public object ; or, which in the result produces the same public good, the collections of such men have been frequently pur- chased on their deaths, by government, and thus have been preserved entire in our national collections.
LITERATURE, like virtue, is often its own reward, and the
LIBRARIES. 53
enthusiasm some experience in the permanent enjoyments of a vast library has far outweighed the neglect or the calumny of the world, which some of its votaries have received. From the time that Cicero poured forth his feelings in his oration for the poet Archias, innumerable are the testimonies of men of letters of the pleasurable delirium of their re- searches. Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and Chan- cellor of England, so early as 1341, perhaps raised the first private library hi our country. He purchased thirty or forty volumes of the Abbot of St. Albans for fifty pounds' weight of silver. He was so enamoured of his large collection, that he expressly composed a treatise on his love of books, under the title of Philobiblion ; and which has been recently trans- lated.
He who passes much of his time amid such vast resources, and does not aspire to make some small addition to his library, were it only by a critical catalogue, must indeed be not more animated than a leaden Mercury. He must be as indolent as that animal called the Sloth, who perishes on the tree he climbs, after Jie has eaten all its leaves.
Rantzau, the founder of the great library at Copenhagen, whose days were dissolved in the pleasures of reading, dis- covers his taste and ardour in the following elegant effu- sion :-
Salvete aureoli mei libelli,
Meae deliciae, mei lepores!
Quara vos saepe oculis juvat videre,
Et tritos manibus tenere nostris 1
Tot vos eximii, tot eruditi,
Prisci lumina sseculi et recentis,
Confecere viri, suasque vobis '
Ausi credere lucubrationes :
Et sperare decus perenne scriptis ;
Neque haec irrita spes fefellit illos.
IMITATED.
Golden volumes ! richest treasures! Objects of delicious pleasures 1 You my eyes rejoicing please,
54 LIBRARIES.
You my hands in rapture seize I Brilliant wits, and musing sages, Lights who beamed through many ages, Left to your conscious leaves their story, And dared to trust you with their glory; And now their hope of fame achieved, Dear volumes ! you have not deceived !
This passion for the enjoyment of books has occasioned their lovers embellishing their outsides with costly ornaments ; a fancy which ostentation may have abused ; but when these volumes belong to the real man of letters, the most fanciful bindings are often the emblems of his taste and feelings. The great Thuanus procured the finest copies for his library, and his volumes are still eagerly purchased, bearing his auto- graph on the last page. A celebrated amateur, was Grollier ; the Muses themselves could not more ingeniously have orna- mented their favourite works. I have seen several in the libraries of curious collectors. They are gilded and stamped with peculiar neatness ; the compartments on the binding are drawn and painted, with subjects analogous to the works themselves ; and they are further adorned by that amiable inscription, Jo. Grollierii et amicorum ! — purporting that these literary treasures were collected for himself and for his friends.
The family of the Fuggers had long felt an hereditary passion for the accumulation of literary treasures ; and their portraits, with others in their picture gallery, form a curious quarto volume of 127 portraits, rare even in Germany, entitled " Fuggerorum Pinacotheca." Wolfius, who daily haunted their celebrated library, pours out his gratitude in some Greek verses, and describes this bibliotheque as a lite- rary heaven, furnished with as many books as there were stars in the firmament ; or as a literary garden, in which he passed entire days in gathering fruit and flowers, delighting and instructing himself by perpetual occupation.
In 1364, the royal library of France did not exceed twenty volumes. Shortly after, Charles V. increased it to 900, which, by the fate of war, as much at least as by that of money, the
LIBRARIES. 55
Duke of Bedford afterwards purchased and transported to London, where libraries were smaller than on the continent, about 1440. It is a circumstance worthy observation, that the French sovereign, Charles V. surnamed the Wise, ordered that thirty portable lights, with a silver lamp suspended from the centre, should be illuminated at night, that students might not find their pursuits interrupted at any hour. Many among us, at this moment, whose professional avocations admit not of morning studies, find that the resources of a public library are not accessible to them, from the omission of the regulation of the zealous Charles V. of France. An objection to night-studies in public libraries is the danger of fire, and in our own British Museum not a light is permitted to be carried about on any pretence whatever. The history of the " Bibliotheque du Roi " is a curious incident in litera- ture ; and the progress of the human mind and public opin- ion might be traced by its gradual accessions, noting the changeable qualities of its literary stores chiefly from theol- ogy, law, and medicine, to philosophy and elegant literature. It was first under Louis XIV. that the productions of the art of engraving were there collected and arranged ; the great minister Colbert purchased* the extensive collections of the Abbe* de Marolles, who may be ranked among the fathers of our print-collectors. Two hundred and sixty-four ample port- folios laid the foundations ; and the very catalogues of his collections, printed by Marolles himself, are rare and high- priced. Our own national print gallery is growing from its infant establishment.
Mr» Hallam has observed, that in 1440, England had made comparatively but little progress in learning — and Germany was probably still less advanced. However, in Germany, Trithemius, the celebrated abbot of Spanheim, who died in 1516, had amassed about two thousand manuscripts ; a liter- ary treasure which excited such general attention that princes and eminent men travelled to visit Trithemius and his library. About this time, six or eight hundred volumes formed a royal
56 LIBRARIES.
collection, and their cost could only be furnished by a prince. This was indeed a great advancement in libraries, for at the beginning of the fourteenth century the library of Louis IX. contained only four classical authors ; and that of Ox- ford, in 1300, consisted of "a few tracts kept in chests."
The pleasures of study are classed by Burton among those exercises or recreations of the mind which pass within doors. Looking about this " world of books," he exclaims, " I could even live and die with such meditations, and take more de- light and true content of mind in them than in all thy wealth and sport ! There is a sweetness, which, as Circe's cup, be- witcheth a student : he cannot leave off, as well may witness those many laborious hours, days, and nights, spent in their voluminous treatises. So sweet is the delight of study. The last day is prioris discipulus. Heinsius was mewed up in the library of Leyden all the year long, and that which to my thinking, should have bred a loathing, caused in him a greater liking. * I no sooner/ saith he, ' come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding Lust, Ambition, Avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is Idleness, the mother of Ignorance and Melancholy. In the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit, and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and rich men, that know not this happiness.' " Such is the incense of a votary who scatters it on the altar less for the ceremony than from the devotion.
There is, however, an intemperance in study, incompatible often with our social or more active duties. The illustrious Grotius exposed himself to the reproaches of some of his contemporaries for having too warmly pursued his studies, to the detriment of his public station. It was the boast of Cicero that his philosophical studies had never interfered with the services he owed the republic, and that he had only dedicated to them the hours which others give to their walks, their re- pasts, and their pleasures. Looking on his voluminous labours, we are surprised at this observation ; — how honourable is it
THE BIBLIOMANIA. 57
to him, that his various philosophical works bear the titles of the different villas he possessed, which indicates that they were composed in these respective retirements ! Cicero must have been an early riser ; and practised that magic art in the em- ployment of time, which multiplies our days.
THE BIBLIOMANIA.
THE preceding article is honourable to literature, yet even a passion for collecting books is not always a passion for literature.
The BIBLIOMANIA, or the collecting an enormous heap of books without intelligent curiosity, has, since libraries have existed, infected weak minds, who imagine that they them- selves acquire knowledge when they- keep it on their shelves. Their motley libraries have been called the madhouses of the human mind; and again, the tomb of books, when the posses- sor will not communicate them, and coffins them up in the cases of his library. It was facetiously observed, these col- lections are not without a Lock on the Human Understand- ing.*
The BIBLIOMANIA never raged more violently than in our own times. It is fortunate that literature is in no ways in- jured by the follies of collectors, since though they preserve the worthless, they necessarily protect the good.
Some collectors place all their fame on the view of a splendid library, where volumes, arrayed in all the pomp of lettering, Bilk linings, triple gold bands, and tinted leather, are locked up in wire cases, and secured from the vulgar hands of the
* An allusion and pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled, no doubt, by my facetioutly, he translates "mettant, comme on 1'a tres-judicieusement fait observer, 1'entendement humain sous la clef." The great work and the great author alluded to, having quite escaped him !
58 THE BIBLIOMANIA.
mere reader, dazzling our eyes like eastern beauties peering through their jalousies !
LA BKUYERE has touched on this mania with humour :— " Of such a collector, as soon as I enter his house, I am ready to faint on the staircase, from a strong smell of Morocco leather. In vain he shows me fine editions, gold leaves, Etruscan bindings, and naming them one after another, as if he were showing a gallery of pictures ! a gallery, by the by, which he seldom traverses when alone, for he rarely reads ; but me he offers to conduct through it ! I tha«k him for his politeness, and as little as himself care to visit the tan-house, which he calls his library."
LUCIAN has composed a biting invective against an igno- rant possessor of a vast library, like him, who in the present day, after turning over the pages of an old book, chiefly ad- mires the date. LUCIAN compares him to a pilot, who was never taught the science of navigation ; to a rider who cannot keep his seat on a spirited horse ; to a man who, not having the use of his feet, would conceal the defect by wearing em- broidered shoes ; but, alas ! he cannot stand in them ! He ludicrously compares him to Thersites wearing the armour of Achilles, tottering at every step ; leering with his little eyes under his enormous helmet, and his hunchback raising the cuirass above his shoulders. Why do you buy so many books ? You have no hah*, and you purchase a comb ; you are blind, and you will have a grand mirror ; you are deaf, and you will have fine musical instruments ! Your costly bind- ings are only a source of vexation, and you are continually discharging your librarians for not preserving them from the silent invasion of the worms, and the nibbling triumphs of the rats!
Such collectors will contemptuously smile at the collection of the amiable Melancthon. He possessed in his library only four authors, — Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, and Ptolemy the geog- rapher.
Ancillon was a great collector of curious books, and dex-
THE BIBLIOMANIA. 59
terously defended himself when accused of the Bibliomania. He gave a good reason for buying the most elegant editions ; which he did not consider merely as a literary luxury. The less the eyes are fatigued in reading a work, the more liberty the mind feels to judge of it: and as we perceive more clearly the excellences and defects of a printed book than when hi MS. ; so we see them more plainly in good paper and clear type, than when the impression and paper are both bad. He always purchased first editions, and never waited for second ones ; though it is the opinion of some that a first edition is only to be considered as an imperfect essay, which the author proposes to finish after he has tried the sentiments of the literary world. Bayle approves of Ancillon's plan. Those who wait for a book till it is reprinted, show plainly that they prefer the saving of a pistole to the acquisition of knowledge. With one of these persons, who waited for a second edition, which never appeared, a literary man argued, that it was better to have two editions of a book rather than to deprive himself of the advantage which the reading of the first might procure him. It has frequently happened, be- sides, that in second editions, the author omits, as well as adds, or makes alterations from prudential reasons ; the dis- pleasing truths which he corrects, as he might call them, are so many losses incurred by Truth itself. There is an advan- tage in comparing the first with subsequent editions ; among other things, we feel great satisfaction in tracing the varia- tions of a work, after its revision. There are also other secrets, well known to the intelligent curious, who are versed in affairs relating to books. Many first editions are not to be purchased for the treble value of later ones. The collector we have noticed frequently said, as is related of Virgil, " I collect gold from Ennius's dung." I find, in some neglected authors, particular things, not elsewhere to be found. He read many of these, but not with equal attention — " Sicut canis ad Nilum, libens et fugiens ; " like a dog at the Nile, drinking and running.
60 LITERARY JOURNALS.
Fortunate are those who only consider a book for the utility and pleasure they may derive from its possession. Students who know much, and still thirst to know more, may require this vast sea of books ; yet in that sea they may suffer many shipwrecks.
Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners I
LITERARY JOURNALS.
WHEN writers were not numerous, and readers rare, the unsuccessful author fell insensibly into oblivion ; he dissolved away in his own weakness. If he committed the private folly of printing what no one would purchase, he was not arraigned at the public tribunal — and the awful terrors of his day of judgment consisted only in the retributions of his publisher's final accounts. At length, a taste for literature spread through the body of the people ; vanity induced the inexperienced and the ignorant to aspire to literary honours. To oppose these forcible entries into the haunts of the Muses, periodical criticism brandished its formidable weapon ; and the fall of many, taught some of our greatest geniuses to rise. Multifarious writings produced multifarious strictures; and public criticism reached to such perfection, that taste was generally diffused, enlightening those whose occupations had otherwise never permitted them to judge of literary composi- tions.
The invention of REVIEWS, in the form which they have at length gradually assumed, could not have existed but in the most polished ages of literature ; for without a constant supply of authors, and a refined spirit of criticism, they could not excite a perpetual interest among the lovers of literature. These publications were long the chronicles of taste and
LITERARY JOURNALS. 61
science, presenting the existing state of the public mind, while they formed a ready resource for those idle hours, which men of letters would not pass idly.
Their multiplicity has undoubtedly produced much evil puerile critics and venal drudges manufacture reviews ; hence that shameful discordance of opinion, which is the scorn and scandal of criticism. Passions hostile to the peaceful trutlis of literature have likewise made tremendous inroads in the republic, and every literary virtue has been lost ! In " Ca- lamities of Authors " I have given the history of a literary conspiracy, conducted by a solitary critic, GILBERT STUART, against the historian HENRY.
These works may disgust, by vapid panegyric, or gross in- vective ; weary by uniform dulness, or tantalize by super ficial knowledge. Sometimes merely written to catch the public attention, a malignity is indulged against authors, to season the caustic leaves. A reviewer has admired those works in private, which he has condemned in his official capacity. But good sense, good temper, and good taste, will ever form an estimable journalist, who will inspire confidence, and give stability to his decisions.
To the lovers of literature these volumes, when they have outlived their year, are not unimportant. They constitute a great portion of literary history, and are indeed the annals of the republic.
To our own reviews, we must add the old foreign journals, which are perhaps even more valuable to the man of letters. Of these the variety is considerable ; and many of their wri- ters are now known. They delight our curiosity by opening new views, and light up in observing minds many projects of works, wanted in our own literature. GIBBON feasted on them ; and while he turned them over with constant pleas- ure, derived accurate notions of works, which no student could himself have verified ; of many works a notion is sufficient.
The origin of literary journals was the happy project of
62 LITERARY JOURNALS.
DENIS DE SALLO, a counsellor in the parliament of Paris. In 1665 appeared his Journal des S$avans. He published his essay in the name of the Sieur de Hedouville, his foot- man ! Was this a mere stroke of humour, or designed to insinuate that the freedom of criticism could only be allowed to his lacquey ? The work, however, met with so favourable a reception, that SALLO had the satisfaction of seeing it, the following year, imitated throughout Europe, and his Journal, at the same time, translated into various languages. But aa most authors lay themselves open to an acute critic, the an- imadversions of SALLO were given with such asperity of crit- icism, and such malignity of wit, that this new journal excited loud murmurs, and the most heart-moving complaints. The learned had their plagiarisms detected, and the wit had his claims disputed. Sarasin called the gazettes of this new Aristarchus, Hebdomadary Flams ! Billevesees hebdom- adaires ! and Menage having published a law book, which Sallo had treated with severe raillery, he entered into a long argument to prove, according to Justinian, that a lawyer is not allowed to defame another lawyer, &c. : Senatori male- dicere non licet, remaledicere jus fasque est. Others loudly declaimed against this new species of imperial tyranny, and this attempt to regulate the public opinion by that of an in- dividual. Sallo, after having published only his third volume, felt the irritated wasps of literature thronging so thick about him, that he very gladly abdicated the throne of criticism. The journal is said to have suffered a short interruption by a remonstrance from the nuncio of the pope, for the energy with which Sallo had defended the liberties of the Gallican church.
Intimidated by the fate of SALLO, his successor, the Abbe GALLOIS, flourished in a milder reign. He contented him- self with giving the titles of books, accompanied with ex- tracts; and he was more useful than interesting. The public, who had been so much amused by the raillery and severity of the founder of this dynasty of new critics, now
LITERARY JOURNALS. 63
murmured at the want of that salt and acidity by which they had relished the fugitive collation. They were not satisfied with having the most beautiful, or the most curious parts of a new work brought together ; they wished for the unreason- able entertainment of railing and raillery. At length an- other objection was conjured up against the review ; mathe- maticians complained that they were neglected to make room for experiments in natural philosophy ; the historian sickened over works of natural history ; the antiquaries would have nothing but discoveries of MSS. or fragments of antiquity. Medical works were called for by one party, and reprobated by another. In a word, each reader wished only to have accounts of books, which were interesting to his profession or his taste. But a review is a work presented to the public at large, and written for more than one country. In spite of all these difficulties, this work was carried to a vast extent. An index to the Journal des S$avans has been arranged on a critical plan, occupying ten volumes in quarto, which may be considered as a most useful instrument to obtain the science and literature of the entire century.
The next celebrated reviewer is BAYLE, who undertook, in 1684, his Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres. He possessed the art, acquired by habit, of reading a book by his fingers, as it has been happily expressed ; and of com- prising, in concise extracts, a just notion of a book, without the addition of irrelevant matter. Lively, neat, and full of that attic salt which gives a relish to' the driest disquisitions, for the first time the ladies and all the beau-monde took an interest in the labours of the critic. He wreathed the rod of criticism with roses. Yet even BAYLE, who declared himself to be a reporter, and not a judge, BAYLE, the dis- creet sceptic, could not long satisfy his readers. His pane- gyric was thought somewhat prodigal ; his fluency of style somewhat too familiar ; and others affected not to relish his gaiety. In his latter volumes, to still the clamour, he assumed the cold sobriety of an historian : and has bequeathed no
64 LITERARY JOURNALS.
mean legacy to the literary world, in thirty-six small volumes of criticism, closed in 1687. These were continued by Ber- nard, with inferior skill ; and by Basnage more successfully, in his Histoire des Ouvrages des S$avans.
The contemporary and the antagonist of BAYLE was LE CLERC. His firm industry has produced three Bibliotheques — Universelle et Historigue, O/ioisie, and Ancienne et Mo- derne ; forming hi all eighty-two volumes, which, complete, bear a high price. Inferior to BAYLE in the more pleasing talents, he is perhaps superior in erudition, and shows great skill in analysis : but his hand drops no flowers ! GIBBON resorted to Le Clerc's volumes at his leisure, " as an inex- haustible source of amusement and instruction." Apostolo Zeno's Giornak dei Litterati d 'Italia, from 1710 to 1733, is valuable.
BEAUSOBRE and L'ENFANT, two learned Protestants, wrote a Bibliotheque Germanique, from 1720 to 1740, in 50 volumes. Our own literature is interested by the " Biblio- theque Britannique? written by some literary Frenchmen, noticed by La Croze, in his " Voyage Litteraire," who desig- nates the writers in this most tantalizing manner : " Les auteurs sont gens de merite, et qui entendent tous parfaite- ment 1'Anglois ; Messrs. S. B., le M. D., et le savant Mr. D." Posterity has been partially let into the secret: De Missy was one of the contributors, and Warburton commu- nicated his project of an edition of Velleius Paterculus. This useful account of English books begins in 1733, and closes in 1747, Hague, 23 vols. : to this we must add the Journal Britannique, in 18 vols., by Dr. MATY, a foreign physician residing in London ; this Journal exhibits a view of the state of English literature from 1750 to 1755. GIB- BON bestows a high character on the journalist, who some- times " aspires to the character of a poet and a philosopher ; one of the last disciples of the school of Fontenelle."
MATY'S son produced here a review known to the curious ; his style and decisions often discover haste and heat, with
LITERARY JOURNALS. 65
Borne striking observations : alluding to his father, in his motto, Maty applies Virgil's description of the young Ascan- ius, " Sequitur patrem non passibus sequis." He says he only holds a monthly conversation with the public. His obstinate resolution of carrying on this review without an associate, has shown its folly and its danger; for a fatal illness produced a cessation, at once, of his periodical labours and his life.
Other reviews, are the Memoires de Trevoux, written by the Jesuits. Their caustic censure and vivacity of style made them redoubtable in their day; they did not even spare their brothers. The Journal Litteraire, printed at the Hague, was chiefly composed by Prosper Marchand, Sallengre, and Van Effen, who were then young writers. This list may be augmented by other journals, which some- times merit preservation in the history of modern litera- ture.
Our early English journals notice only a few publications, with little acumen. Of these, the " Memoirs of Literature," and the " Present State of the Republic of Letters," are the best. The Monthly Review, the venerable (now the de- ceased) mother of our journals, commenced in 1749.
It is impossible to form a literary journal in a manner such as might be wished ; it must be the work of many, of differ- ent tempers and talents. An individual, however versatile and extensive his genius, would soon be exhausted. Such a regular labour occasioned Bayle a dangerous illness, and Maty fell a victim to his Review. A prospect always ex- tending as we proceed, the frequent novelty of the matter, the pride of considering one's self as the arbiter of literature, animate a journalist at the commencement of his career ; but the literary Hercules becomes fatigued ; and to supply his craving pages he gives copious extracts, till the journal be comes tedious, or fails in variety. The Abbe" Gallois was frequently diverted from continuing his journal, and Fonte- nelle remarks, that this occupation was too restrictive for a
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66 LITERARY JOURNALS.
mind so extensive as his ; the Abbe* could not resist the charms of revelling in a new work, and gratifying any sud- den curiosity which seized him ; this interrupted perpetually the regularity which the public expects from a journalist.
The character of a perfect journalist would be only an ideal portrait ; there are, however, some acquirements which are indispensable. He must be tolerably acquainted with the subjects he treats on ; no common acquirement ! He must possess the literary history of his own times ; a science which, Fontenelle observes, is almost distinct from any other. It is the result of an active curiosity, which takes a lively interest in the tastes and pursuits of the age, while it saves the journalist from some ridiculous blunders. We often see the mind of a reviewer half a century remote from the work reviewed. A fine feeling of the various manners of writers, with a style adapted to fix the attention of the indolent, and to win the untractable, should be his study ; but candour is the brightest gem of criticism ! He ought not to throw every thing into the crucible, nor should he suffer the whole to pass as if he trembled to touch it. Lampoons and satires in time will lose their effect, as well as panegyrics. He must learn to resist the seductions of his own pen ; the pretension of composing a treatise on the subject, rather than on the book he criticizes — proud of insinuating that he gives, in a dozen pages, what the author himself has not been able to perform in his volumes. Should he gain confidence by a popular delusion, and by unworthy conduct, he may chance to be mortified by the pardon or by the chastisement of insulted genius. The most noble criticism is that in wliich the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author.
RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS. 67
RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS.
OUR ancient classics had a very narrow escape from total annihilation. Many have perished : many are but fragments ; and chance, blind arbiter of the works of genius, has left us some, not of the highest value ; which, however, have proved very useful, as a test to show the pedantry of those who adore antiquity not from true feeling, but from traditional prejudice.
We lost a great number of ancient authors, by the con- quest of Egypt by the Saracens, which deprived Europe of the use of the papyrus. They could find no substitute, and knew no other expedient but writing on parchment, which became every day more scarce and costly. Ignorance and barbarism unfortunately seized on Roman manuscripts, and industriously defaced pages once imagined to have been im- mortal ! The most elegant compositions of classic Rome were converted into the psalms of a breviary, or the prayers of a missal. Livy and Tacitus " hide their diminished heads " to preserve the legend of a saint, and immortal truths were converted into clumsy fictions. It happened that the most voluminous authors were the greatest sufferers ; these were preferred, because their volume being the greatest, most profitably repaid their destroying industry, and furnished ampler scope for future transcription. A Livy or a Diodorus was preferred to the smaller works of Cicero or Horace ; and it is to this circumstance that Juvenal, Persius, and Martial have come down to us entire, rather probably than to these pious personages preferring their obscenities, as some have accused them. At Rome, a part of a book of Livy was found, between the lines of a parch- ment but half effaced, on which they had substituted a book of the Bible ; and a recent discovery of Cicero De Republica, which lay concealed under some monkish writing, shows the fate of ancient manuscripts
68 RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS.
That the Monks had not in high veneration the profane authors, appears by a facetious anecdote. To read the classics was considered as a very idle recreation, and some held them in great horror. To distinguish them from other books, they invented a disgraceful sign : when a monk asked for a pagan author, after making the general sign they used in their manual and silent language when they wanted a book, he added a particular one, which consisted in scratch- ing under his ear, as a dog, which feels an itching, scratches himself in that place with his paw — because, said they, an unbeliever is compared to a dog ! In this manner they expressed an itching for those dogs Virgil or Horace !
There have been ages when, for the possession of a manu- script, some would transfer an estate, or leave in pawn for its loan hundreds of golden crowns ; and when even the sale or loan of a manuscript was considered of such importance as to have been solemnly registered by public acts. Abso- lute as was Louis XI. he could not obtain the MS. of Rasis, an Arabian writer, from the library of the Faculty of Paris, to have a copy made, without pledging a hundred golden crowns ; and the president of his treasury, charged with this commission, sold part of his plate to make the deposit. For the loan of a volume of Avicenna, a Baron offered a pledge of ten marks of silver, which was refused : because it was not considered equal to the risk incurred of losing a volume of Avicenna ! These events occurred in 1471. One cannot but smile, at an anterior period, when a Countess of Anjou bought a favourite book of homilies for two hundred sheep, some skins of martins, and bushels of wheat and rye.
In these times, manuscripts were important articles of commerce ; they were excessively scarce, and preserved with the utmost care. Usurers themselves considered them as precious objects for pawn. A student of Pavia, who was reduced, raised a new fortune by leaving in pawn a manu- script of a body of law ; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a fire, rebuilt his house with two small volumes of Cicero.
RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS.
69
At the restoration of letters, the researches of literary men were chiefly directed to this point ; every part of Europe and Greece was ransacked ; and, the glorious end considered, there was something sublime in this humble industry, which often recovered a lost author of antiquity, and gave one more classic to the world. This occupation was carried on with enthusiasm, and a kind of mania possessed many, who exhausted their fortunes in distant voyages and profuse prices. In reading the correspondence of the learned Italians of these times, their adventures of manuscript- hunting are very amusing ; and their raptures, their con- gratulations, or at times their condolence, and even their censures, are all immoderate. The acquisition of a province would not have given so much satisfaction as the discovery of an author little known, or not known at all. " Oh, great gain ! Oh, unexpected felicity ! I intreat you, my Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that I may see it before I die !" exclaims Aretino, in a letter overflowing with enthusiasm, on Poggio's discovery of a copy of Quint ilian. Some of the half-witted, who joined in this great hunt were often thrown out, and some paid high for manuscripts not authentic ; the knave played on the bungling amateur of manuscripts, whose credulity exceeded his purse. But even among the learned, much ill blood was inflamed ; he who had been most successful in acquiring manuscripts was envied by the less fortunate, and the glory of possessing a manuscript of Cicero seemed to approximate to that of being its author. It is curious to observe that in these vast importations into Italy of manuscripts from Asia, John Aurispa, who brought many hundreds of Greek manuscripts, laments that he had chosen more profane than sacred writers ; which circumstance he tells us was owing to the Greeks, who would not so easily part with theological works, but did not highly value profane writers !
These manuscripts were discovered in the obscurest re- cesses of monasteries ; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, but rotting in dark unfrequented corners with rub-
70 RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS.
bish. It required not less ingenuity to find out places where to grope in, than to understand the value of the acquisition. An universal ignorance then prevailed in the knowledge of ancient writers. A scholar of those times gave the first rank among the Latin writers to one Valerius, whether he meant Martial or Maximus is uncertain ; he placed Plato and Tully among the poets, and imagined that Ennius and Statius were contemporaries. A library of six hundred volumes was then considered as an extraordinary collection.
Among those whose lives were devoted to this purpose, Poggio the Florentine stands distinguished ; but he com- plains that his zeal was not assisted by the great. He found under a heap of rubbish in a decayed coffer, in a tower be- longing to the monastery of St. Gallo, the work of Quintilian. He is indignant at its forlorn situation ; at least, he cries, it should have been preserved in the library of the monks ; but I found it in teterrimo quodam et obscuro carcere — and to his great joy drew it out of its grave ! The monks have been complimented as the preservers of literature, but by facts, like the present, their real affection may be doubted.
The most valuable copy of Tacitus, of whom so much is wanting, was likewise discovered in a monastery of West- phalia. It is a curious circumstance in literary history, that we should owe Tacitus to this single copy ; for the Roman emperor of that name had copies of the works of his illustrious ancestor placed in all the libraries of the empire, and every year had ten copies transcribed ; but the Roman libraries seem to have been all destroyed, and the imperial protection availed nothing against the teeth of time.
The original manuscript of Justinian's Pandects was dis- covered by the Pisans, when they took a city in Calabria ; that vast code of laws had been in a manner unknown from the time of that emperor. This curious book was brought to Pisa ; and when Pisa was taken' by the Florentines, was transferred to Florence, where it is still preserve
It sometimes happened that manuscripts
RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS. 71
in the last agonies of existence. Papirius Masson found, in the house of a bookbinder of Lyons, the works of Agobart ; the mechanic was on the point of using the manuscripts to line the covers of his books. A page of the second decade of Livy, it is said, was found by a man of letters in the parchment of his battledore, while he was amusing himself in the country. He hastened to the maker of the battledore — but arrived too late ! The man had finished the last page of Livy — about a week before.
Many works have undoubtedly perished in this manuscript state. By a petition of Dr. Dee to Queen Mary, in the Cotton library, it appears that Cicero's treatise De Republica was once extant in this country. Huet observes that Petro- nius was probably entire in the days of John of Salisbury, who quotes fragments, not now to be found in the remains of the Roman bard. Raimond Soranzo, a lawyer in the papal court, possessed two books of Cicero " on Glory," which he presented to Petrarch, who lent them to a poor aged man of letters, formerly his preceptor. Urged by extreme want, the old man pawned them, and returning home died suddenly without having revealed where he had left them. They have never been recovered. Petrarch speaks of them with ecstasy, and tells us that he had studied them perpetually. Two centuries afterwards, this treatise on Glory by Cicero was mentioned in a catalogue of books bequeathed to a monastery of nuns, but when inquired after was missing. It was supposed that Petrus Alcyonius, physician to that house- hold, purloined it, and after transcribing as much of it as he could into his own writings, had destroyed the original. Al- cyonius, in his book De Exilio, the critics observed, had many splendid passages which stood isolated in his work, and were quite above his genius. The beggar, or in this case the thief, was detected by mending his rags with patches of purple and gold.
In this age of manuscript, there is reason to believe, that when a man of letters accidentally obtained an unknown
72 RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS.
work, he did not make the fairest use of it, but cautiously concealed it from his contemporaries. Leonard Aretino, a distinguished scholar at the dawn of modern literature, having found a Greek manuscript of Procopius De Bdlo Gothico, translated it into Latin, and published the work; but con- cealing the author's name, it passed as his own, till another manuscript of the same work being dug out of its grave, the fraud of Aretino was apparent. Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, in 1649, has printed among his works a treatise, obtained by one of his domestics bringing in a fish rolled in a leaf of writ- ten paper, which his curiosity led him to examine. He was sufficiently interested to run out and search the fish market, till he found the manuscript out of which it had been torn. He published it, under the title De Officio Episcopi. Ma- chiavelli acted more adroitly in a similar case ; a manuscript of the Apophthegms of the Ancients by Plutarch having fallen into his hands, he selected those which pleased him, and put them into the mouth of his hero Castrucio Castri- cani.
In more recent times, we might collect many curious anec- dotes concerning manuscripts. Sir Robert Cotton one day at his tailor's discovered that the man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures — an original Magna Charta, with all its appendages of seals and signatures. This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided in this coun- try ; and an original Magna Charta is preserved in the Cot- tonian library exhibiting marks of dilapidation.
Cardinal Granvelle left behind him several chests filled with a prodigious quantity of letters written in different lan- guages, commented, noted, and underlined by his own hand. These curious manuscripts, after his death, were left in a garret to the mercy of the rain and the rats. Five or six of these chests the steward sold to the grocers. It was then that a discovery was made of this treasure. Several learned men occupied themselves in collecting sufficient of these liter- ary relics to form eighty thick folios, consisting of original
RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS. 73
letters by all the crowned heads in Europe, with instructions for ambassadors, and other state-papers.
A valuable secret history by Sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate in Scotland, was rescued from a mass of waste paper sold to a grocer, who had the good sense to dis- criminate it, and communicated this curious memorial to Dr. M'Crie. The original, in the handwriting of its author, has been deposited in the Advocate's Library. There is an hiatus, which contained the history of six years. This work excited inquiry after the rest of the MSS., which were found to be nothing more than the sweepings of an attorney's office.
Montaigne's Journal of his Travels into Italy has been but recently published. A prebendary of Perigord, travelling through this province to make researches relative to its his- tory, arrived at the ancient chateau of Montaigne, in posses- sion of a descendant of this great man. He inquired for the archives, if there had been any. He was shown an old worm-eaten coffer, which had long held papers untouched by the incurious generations of Montaigne. Stifled in clouds of dust, he drew out the original manuscript of the travels of Montaigne. Two thirds of the work are in the handwriting of Montaigne, and the rest is written by a servant, who al- ways speaks of his master in the third person. But he must have written what Montaigne dictated, as the expressions and the egotisms are all Montaigne's. The bad writing and orthography made it almost unintelligible. They confirmed Montaigne's own observation, that he was very negligent hi the correction of his works.
Our ancestors were great hiders of manuscripts : Dr. Dee's singular MSS. were found in the secret drawer of a chest, which had passed through many hands undiscovered ; and that vast collection of state-papers of Thurloe's, the secretary of Cromwell, which formed about seventy volumes in the original manuscripts accidentally fell out of the false ceUing of some chambers in Lincoln's-Inn.
A considerable portion of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's
74 SKETCHES OF CRITICISM.
Letters I discovered in the hands of an attorney : family- papers are often consigned to offices of lawyers, where many valuable manuscripts are buried. Posthumous publications of this kind are too frequently made from sordid motives : discernment and taste would only be detrimental to the views of bulky publishers.
SKETCHES OF CRITICISM.
IT may, perhaps, be some satisfaction to show the young writer, that the most celebrated ancients have been as rudely subjected to the tyranny of criticism as the moderns. De- traction has ever poured the " waters of bitterness."
It was given out, that Homer had stolen from anterior poets whatever was most remarkable in the Iliad and Odys- sey. Naucrates even points out the source in the library at Memphis in a temple of Vulcan, which according to him the blind bard completely pillaged. Undoubtedly there were good poets before Homer ; how absurd to conceive that an elaborate poem could be the first ! We have indeed accounts of anterior poets, and apparently of epics, before Homer ; JElian notices Syagrus, who composed a poem on the Siege of Troy ; and Suidas the poem of Corinnus, from wrhich it is said Homer greatly borrowed. Why did Plato so severely condemn the great bard, and imitate him ?
Sophocles was brought to trial by his children as a lunatic ; and some, who censured the inequalities of this poet, have also condemned the vanity of Pindar ; the rough verses of JEschylus ; and Euripides, for the conduct of his plots.
Socrates, considered as the wisest and the most moral of men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athenaeus as illiterate ; the latter points out as a Socratic folly our phi- losopher disserting on the nature of justice before his judges, who were so many thieves. The malignant buffoonery of
SKETCHES OF CRITICISM. 75
Aristophanes treats him much worse ; but he, as Jortin says, was a great wit, but a great rascal.
Plato — who has been called, by Clement of Alexandria, the Moses of Athens ; the philosopher of the Christians, by Arnobius ; and the god of philosophers, by Cicero — Athe- naeus accuses of envy ; Theopompus, of lying ; Suidas, of avarice ; Aulus Gellius, of robbery ; Porphyry, of incon- tinence ; and Aristophanes, of impiety.
Aristotle, whose industry composed more than four hun- dred volumes, has not been less spared by the critics ; Diog- enes Laertius, Cicero, and Plutarch, have forgotten nothing that can tend to show his ignorance, his ambition, and his vanity.
It has been said that Plato was so envious of the celebrity of Democritus, that he proposed burning all his works ; but that Amydis and Clinias prevented it, by remonstrating that there were copies of them everywhere ; and Aristotle was agitated by the same passion against all the philosophers his predecessors.
Virgil is destitute of invention, if we are to give credit to Pliny, Carbilius, and Seneca. Caligula has absolutely de- nied him even mediocrity ; Herennus has marked his faults ; and Perihus Faustinus has furnished a thick volume with his plagiarisms. Even the author of his apology has con- fessed, that he has stolen from Homer his greatest beauties ; from Apollonius Rhodius, many of his pathetic passages ; from Nicander, hints for his Georgics ; and this does not ter- minate the catalogue.
Horace censures the coarse humour of Plautus ; and Horace, in his turn, has been blamed for the free use he made of the Greek minor poets.
The majority of the critics regard Pliny's Natural History only as a heap of fables ; and Pliny cannot bear with Diodo- rus and Vopiscus ; and in one comprehensive criticism, treats all the historians as narrators of fables.
Livy has. been reproached for his aversion to the Gauls ;
76 SKETCHES OF CRITICISM.
Dion, for his hatred of the republic ; Velleius Paterculus, for speaking too kindly of the vices of Tiberius ; and Herod- otus and Plutarch, for their excessive partiality to their own country : while the latter has written an entire treatise on the malignity of Herodotus. Xenophon and Quintus Curtius have been considered rather as novelists than historians ; and Tacitus has been censured for his audacity in pretending to discover the political springs and secret causes of events. Dionysius of Halicarnassus has made an elaborate attack on Thucydides for the unskilful choice of his subject, and his manner of treating it. Dionysius would have nothing written but what tended to the glory of his country and the pleasure of the reader — as if history were a song ! adds Hobbes, who also shows a personal motive in this attack. The same Dio- nysius severely criticizes the style of Xenophon, who, he says, in attempting to elevate his style, shows himself inca- pable of supporting it. Polybius has been blamed for his frequent introduction of reflections, which interrupt the thread of his narrative ; and Sallust has been blamed by Cato for indulging his own private passions, and studiously concealing many of the glorious actions of Cicero. The Jewish historian Josephus is accused of not having designed his history for his own people so much as for the Greeks and Romans, whom he takes the utmost care never to offend. Josephus assumes a Roman name, Flavius ; and considering his nation as entirely subjugated, to make them appear dig- nified to their conquerors, alters what he himself calls the Holy books. It is well known how widely he differs from the scriptural accounts. Some have said of Cicero, that there is no connection, and to adopt their own figures, no blood and nerves, in what his admirers so warmly extol. Cold in his extemporaneous effusions, artificial in his exordiums, trifling in his strained raillery, and tiresome in his digressions. This is saying a good deal about Cicero.
Quintilian does not spare Seneca ; and Demosthenes, called by Cicero the prince of orators, has, acceding to Hermippus,
SKETCHES OF CRITICISM. 77
more of art than of nature. To Demades, his orations ap- pear too much laboured ; others have thought him too dry and, if we may trust -ZEschines, his language is by no means pure.
The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, and the Deipnosophists of Athenceus, while they have been extolled by one party, have been degraded by another. They have been considered as botchers of rags and remnants ; their diligence has not been accompanied by judgment ; and their taste inclined more to the frivolous than to the useful. Compilers, indeed, are liable to a hard fate, for little distinction is made in their ranks ; a disagreeable situation, in which honest Burton seems to have been placed ; for he says of his work, that some will cry out, " This is a thinge of meere Industrie ; a collection without wit or invention ; a very toy ! So men are valued ; their labours vilified by fellowes of no worth themselves, as things of nought : Who could not have done as much ? Some understande too little, and some too much."
Should we proceed with this list to our own country, and to our own times, it might be curiously augmented, and show the world what men the Critics are ! but, perhaps, enough has been said to soothe irritated genius, and to shame fastid- ious criticism. " I would beg the critics to remember," the Earl of Roscommon writes, in his preface to Horace's Art of Poetry, " that Horace owed his favour and his fortune to the character given of him by Virgil and Varus ; that Fun- danius and Pollio are still valued by what Horace says ot them ; and that, in their golden age, there was a good under- standing among the ingenious ; and those who were the most esteemed, were the best natured."
78 THE PERSECUTED LEARNED.
THE PERSECUTED LEARNED.
THOSE who have laboured most zealously to instruct man- kind have been those who have suffered most from ignorance ; and the discoverers of new arts and sciences have hardly ever lived to see them accepted by the world. With a noble perception of his own genius, Lord Bacon, in his prophetic Will, thus expresses himself : " For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign na- tions, and the next ages." Before the times of Galileo and Harvey the world believed in the stagnation of the blood, and the diurnal immovability of the earth ; and for denying these the one was persecuted and the other ridiculed.
The intelligence and the virtue of Socrates were punished with death. Anaxagoras, when he attempted to propagate a just notion of the Supreme Being, was dragged to prison. Aristotle, after a long series of persecution, swallowed poison. Heraclitus, tormented by his countrymen, broke off all inter- course with men. The great geometricians and chemists, as Gerbert, Roger Bacon, and Cornelius Agrippa, were abhorred as magicians. Pope Gerbert, as Bishop Otho gravely re- lates, obtained the pontificate by having given himself up en- tirely to the devil : others suspected him, too, of holding an intercourse with demons ; but this was indeed a devilish age!
Virgilius, Bishop of Saltzburg, having asserted that there existed antipodes, the Archbishop of Mentz declared him a heretic; and the Abbot Trithemius, who was fond of im- proving stenography, or the art of secret writing, having published several curious works on this subject, they were condemned, as works full of diabolical mysteries ; and Frederic II., Elector Palatine, ordered Trithemius's orig- inal work, which was in his library, to be publicly burnt.
Galileo was condemned at Rome publicly to disavow sen- iments, the truth of which must have been to him abundant-
THE PERSECUTED LEARNED. 79
ly manifest. " Are these then my judges ? " he exclaimed in retiring from the inquisitors, whose ignorance astonished him. He was imprisoned, and visited by Milton, who tells us, he was then poor and old. The confessor of his widow, taking advantage of her piety, perused the MSS. of this great philosopher, and destroyed such as in his judgment were not fit to be known to the world !
Gabriel Naude, in his apology for those great men who have been accused of magic, has recorded a melancholy number of the most eminent scholars, who have found, that to have been successful in their studies was a success which harassed them with continual persecution — a prison or a grave !
Cornelius Agrippa was compelled to fly his country, and the enjoyment of a large income, merely for having displayed a few philosophical experiments, which now every school-boy can perform ; but more particularly having attacked the then prevailing opinion, that St. Anne had three husbands, he was obliged to fly from place to place. The people beheld him as an object of horror ; and when he walked he found the streets empty at his approach.
In those times it was a common opinion to suspect every great man of an intercourse with some familiar spirit. The favourite black dog of Agrippa was supposed to be a demon. When Urban Grandier, another victim to the age, was led to the stake, a large fly settled on his head : a monk, who had heard that Beelzebub signifies in Hebrew the God of Flies, reported that he saw this spirit come to take possession of him. M. de Langier, a French minister, who employed many spies, was frequently accused of diabolical communi- cation. Sixtus the Fifth, Marechal Faber, Roger Bacon, Caesar Borgia, his son Alexander VI., and others, ' like Socrates, had their diabolical attendant.
Cardan was believed to be a magician. An able naturalist, who happened to know something of the arcana of nature, was immediately suspected of magic. Even the learned
80 THE PERSECUTED LEAENED
themselves, who had not applied to natural philosophy, seem to have acted with the same feelings as the most ignorant for when Albert, usually called the Great, an epithet it has been said that he derived from his name De Groot, con- structed a curious piece of mechanism, which sent forth distinct vocal sounds, Thomas Aquinas was so much terri- fied at it, that he struck it with his staff, and to the mor- tification of Albert, annihilated the curious labour of thirty years !
Petrarch was less desirous of the laurel for the honour, than for the hope of being sheltered by it from the thunder of the priests, by whom both he and his brother poets were continually threatened. They could not imagine a poet, without supposing him to hold an intercourse with some demon. This was, as Abbe Resnel observes, having a most exalted idea of poetry, though a very bad one of poets. An jmti-poetic Dominican was notorious for persecuting all verse- makers ; whose power he attributed to the effects of heresy and magic. The lights of philosophy have dispersed all these accusations of magic, and have shown a dreadful chain of perjuries and conspiracies.
Descartes was horribly persecuted in Holland, when he first published his opinions. Voetius, a bigot of great in- fluence at Utrecht, accused him of atheism, and had even projected in his mind to have this philosopher burnt at Utrecht in an extraordinary fire, which, kindled on an eminence, might be observed by the seven provinces. Mr. Hallam has observed, that " the ordeal of fire was the great purifier of books and men." This persecution of science and genius lasted till the close of the seventeenth century.
" If the metaphysician stood a chance of being burnt as a heretic, the natural philosopher was not in less jeopardy as a magician," is an observation of the same writer, which sums up the whole. r$&
POVERTY OF THE LEARNED. 81
POVERTY OF THE LEARNED.
FORTUNE has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius : others find a hundred by-roads to Her palace ; there is but one open, and that a very indifferent one, for men of letters. Were we to erect an asylum for Venerable genius, as we do for the brave and the helpless part of our citizens, it might be inscribed, "An Hospital for Incurables ! " When even Fame will not protect the man of genius from Famine, Charity ought. Nor should such an act be considered as a debt incurred by the helpless member, but a just tribute we pay in his ^person to Genius itself. Even in these enlightened times, many have lived in obscurity, while their reputation was widely spread, and have perished in poverty, while their works were enriching the booksellers.
Of the heroes of modern literature the accounts are as copious as they are sorrowful.
Xylander sold his notes on Dion Cassius for a dinner. He tells us that at the age of eighteen he studied to acquire glory, but at twenty-five he studied to get bread.
Cervantes, the immortal genius of Spain, is supposed to have wanted food ; Camoens, the solitary pride of Portugal, deprived of the necessaries of life, perished in an hospital at Lisbon. This fact has been accidentally preserved in an entry in a copy of the first edition of the Lusiad, in the possession of Lord Holland. It is a note, written by a friar who must have been a witness of the dying scene of the poet, and probably received the volume which now preserves the Bad m smorial, and which recalled it to his mind, from the hands of the unhappy poet : " What a lamentable thing to see so great a genius so ill rewarded ! I saw him die in an hospital in Lisbon, without having a sheet or shroud, una sauana, to cover him, after having triumphed in the East Indies, and sailed 5500 leagues ! What good advice for those who weary themselves night and day in study without VOL. i. 6
82 POVERTY OF THE LEARNED.
profit ! " Camoens, when some fidalgo complained that he had not performed his promise in writing some verses for him, replied, " When I wrote verses I was young, had suf- ficient food, was a lover, and beloved by many friends and by the ladies ; then I felt poetical ardour : now I have no spirits, no peace of mind. See there my Javanese, who asks me for two pieces to purchase firing, and I have them not to give him." The Portuguese, after his death, bestowed on the man of genius they had starved, the appellation of Great ! Vondel, the Dutch Shakspeare, after composing a number of popular tragedies, lived in great poverty, and died at ninety years of age; then he had his coffin carried by fourteen poets, who without his genius probably partook of his wretchedness.
The great Tasso was reduced to such a dilemma that he was obliged to borrow a crown for a week's subsistence. He alludes to his distress when, entreating his cat to assist him, during the night, with the lustre of her eyes — " Nun avendo candele per iscrivere i suoi versi ! " having no candle to see to write his verses.
When the liberality of Alphonso enabled Ariosto to build a small house, it seems that it was but ill furnished. When told that such a building was not fit for one who had raised so many fine palaces in his writings, he answered, that the structure of words and that of stones was not the same thing. " Che porvi le pietre, e porvi le parole, non e il medesimo ! " At Ferrara this house is still shown. " Parva sed apta," he calls it, but exults that it was paid for with his own money. This was in a moment of good humour, which he did not always enjoy ; for in his Satires he bitterly complains of the bondage of dependence and poverty. Little thought the poet that the commune would order this small house to be pur- chased with their own funds, that it might be dedicated to his immortal memory.
Cardinal Bentivoglio, the ornament of Italy and of litera- ture, languished, in his old age, in the most distressful pov-
POVERTY OF THE LEARNED. 83
erty ; and having sold his palace to satisfy his creditors, left nothing behind him but his reputation. The learned Pom- ponius Laetus lived in such a state of poverty, that his friend Platina, who wrote the lives of the popes, and also a book of cookery, introduces him into the cookery book by a facetious observation, that " If Pomponius Lsetus should be robbed of a couple of eggs, he would not have wherewithal to purchase two other eggs." The history of Aldrovandus is noble and pathetic; having expended a large fortune in forming his collections of natural history, and employing the first artists in Europe, he was suffered to die in the hospital of that city, to whose fame he had eminently contributed.
Du Ryer, a celebrated French poet, was constrained to write with rapidity, and to live in the cottage of an obscure village. His bookseller bought his heroic verses for one hundred sols the hundred lines, and the smaller ones for fifty sols. What an interesting picture has a contemporary given of a visit to this poor and ingenious author ! " On a fine summer day we went to him, at some distance from town. He received us with joy, talked to us of his numerous projects, and showed us several of his works. But what more interested us was, that, though 'dreading to expose to us his poverty, he contrived to offer some refreshments. We seated ourselves under a wide oak, the table-cloth was spread on the grass, his wife brought us some milk, with fresh water and brown bread, and he picked a basket of cherries. He welcomed us with gaiety, but we could not take leave of this amiable man, now grown old, without tears, to see him so ill treated by fortune, and to have nothing left but literary honour ! "
Vaugelas, the most polished writer of the French language, who devoted thirty years to his translation of Quintus Cur- tius, (a circumstance which modern translators can have no conception of,) died possessed of nothing valuable but his precious manuscripts. This ingenious scholar left his corpse to the surgeons, for the benefit of his creditors !
g4 POVERTY OF THE LEAENED.
Louis the Fourteenth honoured Racine and Boileau with a private monthly audience. One day the king asked what there was new in the literary world. Racine answered, that he had seen a melancholy spectacle in the house of Corueille, whom he found dying, deprived even of a little broth ! The king preserved a profound silence ; and sent the dying poet a sum of money.
Dryden, for less than three hundred pounds, sold Tonson ten thousand verses, as may be seen by the agreement.
Purchas, who, in the reign of our first James, had spent his life in compiling his Relation of the World, when he gave it to the public, for the reward of his labours was thrown into prison, at the suit of his printer. Yet this was the book which, he informs Charles I. in his dedication, his father read every night with great profit and satisfaction.
The Marquis of Worcester, in a petition to parliament, in the reign of Charles II., offered to publish the hundred pro- cesses and machines, enumerated in his very curious " Cen- tenary of Inventions," on condition that money should be granted to extricate him from the difficulties in which he had involved himself, by the prosecution of useful discoveries. The petition does not appear to have been attended to ! Many of these admirable inventions were lost. The steam engine and the telegraph may be traced among them.
It appears by the Harleian MS. 7524, that Rushworth, the author of the " Historical Collections," passed the last years of his life in jail, where indeed he died. After the Restora- tion, when he presented to the king several of the privy council's books, which he had preserved from ruin, he re- ceived for his only reward the thanks of his majesty.
Rymer, the Collector of the Fo3dera, must have been Badly reduced, by the following letter, I found addressed by Peter le Neve, Norroy, to the Earl of Oxford.
" I am desired by Mr. Rymer, historiographer, to lay be- fore your lordship the circumstances of his affairs. He was forced some years back to part with all his choice printed
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85
books to subsist himself : and now, he says, he must be forced, for subsistence, to sell all his MS. collections to the best bid- der, without your lordship will be pleased to buy them for the queen's library. They are fifty volumes in folio, of public affairs, which he hath collected, but not printed. The price he asks is five hundred pounds."
Simon Ockley, a learned student in Oriental literature, addresses a letter to the same earl, in which he paints his distresses in glowing colours. After having devoted his life to Asiatic researches, then very uncommon, he had the mor- tification of dating his preface to his great work from Cam- bridge Castle, where he was confined for debt ; and, with an air of triumph, feels a martyr's enthusiasm in the cause for which he perishes.
He published his first volume of the History of the Sara- cens, in 1708; and, ardently pursuing his oriental studies, published his second, ten years afterwards, without any patronage. Alluding to the encouragement necessary to bestow on youth, to remove the obstacles to such studies, he observes, that " young men will hardly come in on the pros- pect of finding leisure, in a prison, to transcribe those papers for the press, which they have collected with indefatigable labour, and oftentimes at the expense of their rest, and all the other conveniences of life, for the service of the public. No ! though I were to assure them, from my own experience, that I have enjoyed more true liberty, more happy leisure, and more solid repose, in six months HERE, than in thrice the same number of years before. Evil is the condition of that historian who undertakes to write the lives of others before he knows how to live himself. — Not that I speak thus as if I thought I had any just cause to be angry with the world — I did always in my judgment give the possession of wisdom the preference to that of riches ! "
Spenser, the child of Fancy, languished out his life in misery. " Lord Burleigh," says Granger, " who it is said prevented the queen giving him a hundred pounds, seems to
86 POVERTY OF THE LEARNED.
have thought the lowest clerk in his office a more deserving person." Mr. Malone attempts to show that Spenser had a small pension ; but the poet's querulous verses must not b& forgotten —
" Full little knowest thou, that hast not try'd What Hell it is, in suing loug to bide."
To lose good days — to waste long nights — and, as he feel- ingly exclaims,
" To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To speed, to give, to want, to be undone ! "
How affecting is the death of Sydenham, who had devoted his life to a laborious version of Plato ! He died in a spung- ing house, and it was his death which appears to have given rise to the Literary Fund " for the relief of distressed au- thors."
Who will pursue important labours when they read these anecdotes ? Dr. Edmund Castell spent a great part of his life in compiling his Lexicon Heptaglotton, on which he be- stowed incredible pains, and expended on it no less than 12,000£, broke his constitution, and exhausted his fortune. At length it was printed, but the copies remained unsold on his hands. He exhibits a curious picture of literary labour in his preface. " As for myself, I have been unceasingly occupied for such a number of years in this mass," Molen- dino he calls them, "that that day seemed, as it were, a holiday in which I have not laboured so much as sixteen or eighteen hours in these enlarging lexicons and Polyglot Bibles."
Le Sage resided in a little cottage while he supplied the world with their most agreeable novels, and appears to have derived the sources of his existence in his old age from the filial exertions of an excellent son, who was an actor of some genius. I wish, however, that every man of letters could apply to himself the epitaph of this delightful writer : —
IMPRISONMENT OF THE LEARNED. 87
Sous ce tombeau git LE SAGE, abattu Par le ciseau de la Earque importune ; S'il ne fut pas ami de la fortune, II fut toujours ami de la vertu.
Many years after this article had been written, I pub- lished " Calamities of Authors," confining myself to those of our own country; the catalogue is incomplete, but far too numerous.
IMPRISONMENT OF THE LEARNED.
IMPRISONMENT has not always disturbed the man of letters in the progress of his studies, but has unquestionably greatly promoted them.
In prison Boethius composed his work on the Consolations of Philosophy ; and Grotius wrote his Commentary on Saint Matthew, with other works ; the detail of his allotment of time to different studies, during his confinement, is very in- structive.
Buchanan, in the dungeon of a monastery in Portugal composed his excellent Paraphrases of the Psalms of David.
Cervantes composed the most agreeable book in the Span- ish language during his captivity in Barbary.
Fleta, a well-known law production, was written by a per- son confined in the Fleet for debt ; the name of the place, though not that of the author, has thus been preserved ; and another work, " Fleta Minor, or the Laws of Art and Nature in knowing the bodies of Metals, &c. by Sir John Pettus, 1683 ; " received its title from the circumstance of his having translated it from the German during his confinement in this prison.
Louis the Twelfth, when Duke of Orleans, was long im- prisoned in the Tower of Bourges : applying himself to his studies, which he had hitherto neglected, he became, in con- sequence, an enlightened monarch.
88 IMPRISONMENT OF THE LEARNED.
Margaret, queen of Henry the Fourth, King of France confined in the Louvre, pursued very warmly the studies of elegant literature, and composed a very skilful apology for the irregularities of her, conduct.
Sir Walter Raleigh's unfinished History of the World, which leaves us to regret that later ages had not been cele- brated by his eloquence, was the fruits of eleven years of imprisonment. It was written for the use of Prince Henry, as he and Dallington, who also wrote "Aphorisms " for the same prince, have told us ; the prince looked over the manu script. Of Raleigh it is observed, to employ the language of Hume, " They were struck with the extensive genius of the man, who, being educated amidst naval and military enter- prises, had surpassed, in the pursuits of literature, even those of the most recluse and sedentary lives ; and they admired his unbroken magnanimity, which, at his age, and under his circumstances, could engage him to undertake and execute so great a work, as his History of the World." He was assisted hi this great work by the learning of several eminent per- sons, a circumstance which has not been usually noticed.
The plan of the " Henriade " was sketched, and the greater part composed, by Voltaire during his imprisonment in the Bastile ; and " the Pilgrim's Progress " of Bunyan was per- formed in the circuit of a prison's walls.
Howell, the author of " Familiar Letters," wrote the chief part of them, and almost all his other works, during his long confinement in the Fleet prison ; he employed his fertile pen for subsistence ; and in all his books we find much entertain- ment.
Lydiat, while confined in the King's Bench for debt, wrote his Annotations on the Parian Chronicle, which were first published by Prideaux. He was the learned scholar alluded to by Johnson ; an allusion not known to Boswell and others.
The learned Selden, committed to prison for his attacks on the divine right of tithes and the king's prerogative, prepared during his confinement hjs " History of Eadmer," enriched by his notes.
IMPKISONMENT OF THE LEARNED. 89
Cardinal Polignac formed the design of refuting the argu- ments of the skeptics which Bayle had been renewing in hia dictionary ; but his public occupations hindered him. Two exiles at length fortunately gave him the leisure ; and the Anti-Lucretius is the fruit of the court disgraces of its author.
Freret, when imprisoned in the Bastile, was permitted only to have Bayle for his companion. His dictionary was always before him, and his principles were got by heart. To this circumstance we owe his works, animated by all the powers of skepticism.
Sir William Davenant finished his poem of Gondibert during his confinement by the rebels in Carisbrook Castle. George Wither dedicates his " Shepherd's Hunting," " To his ' friends, my visitants in the Marshalsea : " these " eclogues " having been printed in his imprisonment.
De Foe, confined in Newgate for a political pamphlet, began his " Review ; " a periodical paper, which was ex- tended to nine thick volumes in quarto, and it has been sup- posed served as the model of the celebrated papers of Steele.
Wicquefort's curious work " on Ambassadors " is dated from his prison, where he had been confined for state affairs. He softened the rigour of those heavy hours by several historical works.
One of the most interesting facts of this kind is the fate of an Italian scholar, of the name of Maggi. Early addicted to the study of the sciences, and particularly to the mathematics, and military architecture, he successfully defended Fama- gusta, besieged by the Turks, by inventing machines which destroyed their works. When that city was taken in 1571, they pillaged his library and carried him away in chains. Now a slave, after his daily labours he amused a great part of his nights by literary compositions ; De Tintinnabulis, on Bells, a treatise still read by the curious, was actually com- posed by him when a slave in Turkey, without any other resource than the erudition of his own memory, and the genius of which adversity could not deprive him.
90 AMUSEMENTS OF THE LEARNED.
AMUSEMENTS OF THE LEARNED.
AMONG the Jesuits it was a standing rule of the order that after an application to study for two hours, the mind of the student should be unbent by some relaxation, however trilling. WJben Petavius was employed in his Dogmata Theologica, a work of the most profound and extensive erudition, the great recreation of the learned father was, at the end of every second hour, to twirl his chair for five minutes. After protracted studies Spinosa would mix with the family-party where he lodged, and join in the most triv- ial conversations, or unbend his mind by setting spiders, to fight each other ; he observed their combats with so much interest,, that he was often seized with immoderate fits of laughter. A continuity of labour deadens the soul, observes Seneca, in closing his treatise on " The Tranquillity of the Soul," and the mind must unbend itself by certain amuse- ments. Socrates did not blush to play with children ; Cato, over his bottle, found an alleviation from the fatigues of gov- ernment ; a circumstance, Seneca says in his manner, which rather gives honour to this defect, than the defect dishonours Cato. Some men of letters portioned out their day between repose and labour. Asinius Pollio would not suffer any business to occupy him beyond a stated hour; after that time he would not allow any letter to be opened, that his hours of recreation might not be interrupted by unforeseen labours. In the senate, after the tenth hour, it was not allowed to make any new motion.
Tycho Brahe diverted himself with polishing glasses for all kinds of spectacles, and making mathematical instruments ; an employment too closely connected with his studies to be deemed an amusement.
D'Andilly, the translator of Josephus, after seven or eight hours of study every day, amused himself in cultivating trees ; Barclay, the author of the Argenis, in his leisure hours waa
AMUSEMENTS OF THE LEARNED. 91
a florist ; Balzac amused himself with a collection of crayon portraits ; Peiresc found his amusement amongst his medals and antiquarian curiosities ; the Abbe de Marolles with his prints ; and Politian in singing airs to his lute. Descartes passed his afternoons in the conversation of a few friends, and in cultivating a little garden ; in the morning, occupied by the system of the world, he relaxed his profound speculations by rearing delicate flowers.
Conrad ab Uffenbach, a learned German, recreated his mind, after severe studies, with a collection of prints of em- inent persons, methodically arranged ; he retained this ardour of the Grangerite to his last days.
Rohault wandered from shop to shop to observe the me- chanics labour ; Count Caylus passed his mornings in the studios of artists, and his evenings in writing his numerous works on art. This was the true life of an amateur.
Granville Sharpe, amidst the severity of his studies, found a social relaxation in the amusement of a barge on the Thames, which was well known to the circle of his friends ; there, was festive hospitality with musical delight. It was resorted to by men of the most eminent talents and rank. His little voyages to Putney, to Kew, and to Richmond, and the literary intercourse they produced, were singularly happy ones. " The history cf his amusements cannot be told with- out adding to the dignity of his character," observes Prince Hoare, in the life of this great philanthropist.
Some have found amusement in composing treatises on odd subjects. Seneca wrote a burlesque narrative of Claudian's death. Pierius Valerianus has written an eulogium on beards ; and we have had a learned one recently, with due gravity and pleasantry, entitled " Eloge de Perruques."
Holstein has written an eulogium on the North Wind; Heinsius, on " the Ass ; " Menage, " the Transmigration of the Parasitical Pedant to a Parrot ; " and also the " Petition of the Dictionaries."
Erasmus composed, to amuse himself when travelling, his
92 AMUSEMENTS OF THE LEARNED.
panegyric on Moria, or Folly ; which, authorized by the pun, he dedicated to Sir Thomas More.
Sallengre, who would amuse himself like Erasmus, wrote, in imitation of his work, a panegyric on Ebriety. He says, that he is willing to be thought as drunken a man as Erasmus was a foolish one. Synesius composed a Greek panegyric on Baldness. These burlesques were brought into great vogue by Erasmus's MOTICR Encomium.
It seems, Johnson observes in his life of Sir Thomas Browne, to have been in all ages the pride of art to show how it could exalt the low and amplify the little. To this ambition perhaps we owe the Frogs of Homer ; the Gnat and the Bees of Virgil; the Butterfly of Spenser; the Shadow of Wowerus ; and the Quincunx of Browne.
Cardinal de Richelieu, amongst all his great occupations, found a recreation in violent exercises ; and he was once dis- covered jumping with his servant, to try who could reach the highest side of a wall. De Grammont, observing the cardi- nal to be jealous of his powers, offered to jump with him ; and, hi the true spirit of a courtier, having made some efforts which nearly reached the cardinal's, confessed the cardinal surpassed him. This was jumping b'ke a politician ; and by this means he is said to have ingratiated himself with the minister.
The great Samuel Clarke was fond of robust exercise ; and this profound logician has been found leaping over tables and chairs. Once perceiving a pedantic fellow, he said, " Now we must desist, for a fool is coming in ! "
An eminent French lawyer, confined by Ids business to a Parisian life, amused himself with collecting from the classics all the passages which relate to a country life. The collec- tion was published after his death.
Contemplative men seem to be fond of amusements which accord with their habits. The thoughtful game of chess, and the tranquil delight of angling, have been favourite recre- ations with the studious. Paley had himself painted with a
AMUSEMENTS OF THE LEARNED. 93
rod and line in his hand ; a strange characteristic for the author of " Natural Theology." Sir Henry Wotton called ' angling " idle time not idly spent : " we may suppose that his meditations and his amusements were carried on at the same moment.
The amusements of the great d'Aguesseau, chancellor of France, consisted in an interchange of studies ; his relax- ations were all the varieties of literature. " Le changemerit de 1'etude est mon seul delassement," said this great man ; and " in the age of the passions, his only passion was study."
Seneca has observed on amusements proper for literary- men, that, in regard to robust exercises, it is not decent to see a man of letters exult in the strength of his arm, or the breadth of his back ! Such amusements diminish the activity of the mind. Too much fatigue exhausts the animal spirits, as too much food blunts the finer faculties : but elsewhere he allows his philosopher an occasional slight inebriation ; an amusement which was very prevalent among our poets formerly, when they exclaimed,
Fetch me Ben Jonson's scull, and fill't with sack, Rich as the same he drank, when the whole pack Of jolly sisters pledged, and did agree It was no sin to be as drunk as he !
Seneca concludes admirably, "whatever be the amuse- ments you choose, return not slowly from those of the body to the mind ; exercise the latter night and day. The mind is nourished at a cheap rate ; neither cold nor heat, nor age itself, can interrupt this exercise ; give therefore all your cares to a possession which ameliorates even in its old age!"
An ingenious writer has observed, that "a garden just accommodates itself to the perambulations of a scholar, who would perhaps rather wish his walks abridged than ex- tended." There is a good characteristic account of the mode in which the Literati may take exercise, in Pope's
94 PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS.
Letters. " I, like a poor squirrel, am continually in motion indeed, but it is but a cage of three foot ! my little excursions are like those of a shopkeeper, who walks every day a mile or two before his own door, but minds his business all the while." A turn or two in a garden will often very happily close a fine period, mature an unripened thought, and raise up fresh associations, whenever the mind like the body becomes rigid by preserving the same posture. Buffon often quitted the old tower he studied in, which was placed in the midst of his garden, for a walk in it ; Evelyn loved " books and a garden."
PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS.
WITH the ancients, it was undoubtedly a custom to place the portraits of authors before their works. Martial's 186th epigram of his fourteenth book is a mere play on words, con- cerning a little volume containing the works of Virgil, and which had his portrait prefixed to it The volume and the characters must have been very diminutive.
Quam brevis immensum cepit membrana Maronem! Ipdw VuUusprima tabetta geril.
Martial is not the only writer who takes notice of the ancients prefixing portraits to the works of authors. Seneca, in his ninth chapter on the Tranquillity of the Soul, com- plains of many of the luxurious great, who, like so many of our own collectors, possessed libraries as they did their es- tates and equipages. " It is melancholy to observe how the portraits of men of genius, and the works of their divine intelligence, are used only as the luxury and the ornaments of walls."
Pliny .has nearly the same observation, lib. xxxv. cap. 2. He remarks, that the custom was rather modern in his time ; and attributes to Asinius Pollio the honour of having intro-
PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS. 95
duced it into Rome. " In consecrating a library with the portraits of our illustrious authors, he has formed, if I may so express myself, a republic of the intellectual powers of men." To the richness of book-treasures, Asinius Pollio had associated a new source of pleasure, in placing the statues of their authors amidst them, inspiring the minds of the spec- tators even by their eyes.
A taste for collecting portraits, or busts, was warmly pur- sued in the happier periods of Rome ; for the celebrated Atticus, in a work he published of illustrious Romans, made it more delightful, by ornamenting it with the portraits of those great men ; and the learned Varro, in his biography of Seven Hundred celebrated Men, by giving the world their true features and their physiognomy in some manner, all quo modo imaginibus is Pliny's expression, showed that even their persons should not entirely be annihilated ; they indeed, adds Pliny, form a spectacle which the gods themselves might contemplate ; for if the gods sent those heroes to the earth, it is Varro who secured their immortality, and has so multi- plied and distributed them in all places, that we may carry them about us, place them wherever we choose, and fix our eyes on them with perpetual admiration. A spectacle that every day becomes more varied and interesting, as new heroes appear, and as works of this kind are spread abroad.
But as printing was unknown to the ancients (though stamping an impression was daily practised, and, in fact, they possessed the art of printing without being aware of it), how were these portraits of Varro so easily propagated ? If copied with a pen, their correctness was in some danger, and their diffusion must have been very confined and slow ; per- haps they were outlines. This passage of Pliny excites curiosity difficult to satisfy ; I have in vain inquired of sev- eral scholars, particularly of the late Grecian, Dr. Burney.
A collection of the portraits of illustrious characters, affords not only a source of entertainment and curiosity, but dis- plays the different modes or habits of the time ; and in set-
96 PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS.
tling our floating ideas upon the true features of famous persons, they also fix the chronological particulars of their birth, age, death, sometimes with short characters of them, besides the names of painter and engraver. It is thus a single print, by the hand of a skilful artist, may become a varied banquet. To this Granger adds, that in a collection of engraved portraits, the contents of many galleries are reduced into the narrow compass of a few volumes ; and the portraits of eminent persons, who distinguished themselves tlirough a long succession of ages, may be turned over in a few hours.
" Another advantage," Granger continues, " attending such an assemblage is, that the methodical arrangement has a surprising effect upon the memory. We see the celebrated contemporaries of every age almost at one view ; and the mind is insensibly led to the history of that period. I may add to these, an important circumstance, which is, the power that such a collection will have in awakening genius. A skilful preceptor will presently perceive the true bent of the temper of his pupil, by his being struck with a Blake or a Boyle, a Hyde or a Milton."
A circumstance in the life of Cicero confirms this observa- tion. Atticus had a gallery adorned with the images or portraits of the great men of Rome, under each of which he had severally described their principal acts and honours, in a few concise verses of his own composition. It was by the contemplation of two of these portraits (the ancient Brutus and a venerable relative in one picture) that Cicero seems to have incited Brutus, by the example of these his great ancestors, to dissolve the tyranny of Csesar. General Fair- fax made a collection of engraved portraits of warriors. A etory much in favour of portrait-collectors is that of the Athenian courtesan, who, in the midst of a riotous banquet with her lovers, accidentally casting her eyes on the portrait of a.philosopher that hung opposite to her seat, the happy character of temperance and virtue struck her with so lively
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an image of her own unworthiness, that she suddenly re- treated for ever from the scene of debauchery. The Orien- talists have felt the same charm in their pictured memorials ; for " the imperial Akber," says Mr. Forbes, in his Oriental Memoirs, u employed artists to make portraits of all the principal omrahs and officers in his court ; " they were bound together in a thick volume, wherein, as the Ayeen Akbery, or the Institutes of Akber, expresses it, " The PAST are kept in lively remembrance ; and the PRESENT are insured immortality."
Leonard Aretin, when young and in prison, found a por- trait of Petrarch, on which his eyes were perpetually fixed; aud this sort of contemplation inflamed the desire of imitat- ing this great man. Buffon hung the portrait of Newtou before his writing-table.
On this subject, Tacitus sublimely expresses himself at the close of his admired biography of Agricola: "I do not mean to censure the custom of preserving in brass or marble the shape and stature of eminent men ; but busts and statues, like their originals, are frail and perishable. The soul is formed of finer elements, its inward form is not to be ex- pressed by the hand of an artist with unconscious matter- our manners and our morals may in some degree trace the resemblance. All of Agricola that gained our love and raised our admiration still subsists, and ever will subsist, pre- served in the minds of men, the register of ages and the records of fame."
What is more agreeable to the curiosity of the mind and the eye than the portraits of great characters ? An old philosopher, whom Marville invited to see a collection of landscapes by a celebrated artist, replied, "Landscapes I prefer seeing in the country itself, but I am fond of contem- plating the pictures of illustrious men." This opinion has some truth ; Lord Orford preferred an interesting portrait to either landscape or historical painting. " A landscape, how- ever excellent in its distributions of wood and water, and
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buildings, leaves not one trace in the memory ; historical painting is perpetually false in a variety of ways, in the cos- tume, the grouping, the portraits, and is nothing more than fabulous painting ; but a real portrait is truth itself, and calls up so many collateral ideas as to fill an intelligent mind more than any other species."
Marville justly reprehends the fastidious feelings of those ingenious men who have resisted the solicitations of the artist, to sit for their portraits. In them it is sometimes as much pride as it is vanity in those who are less difficult in this respect. Of Gray, Fielding, and Akenside, we have no heads for which they sat ; a circumstance regretted by their admirers, and by physiognomists.
To an arranged collection of PORTRAITS, we owe several interesting works. Granger's justly esteemed volumes orig- inated in such a collection. Perrault's Eloges of " the illus- trious men of the seventeenth century " were drawn up to accompany the engraved portraits of the most celebrated characters of the age, which a fervent lover of the fine arts and literature had had engraved as an elegant tribute to the fame of those great men. They are confined to his nation, as Granger's to ours. The parent of this race of books may perhaps be the Eulogiums of Paulus Jovius, which originated in a beautiful CABINET, whose situation he has described with all its amenity.
Paulus Jovius had a country house, in an insular situation, of a most romantic aspect. Built on the ruins of the villa of Pliny, in his time the foundations were still to be traced, "When the surrounding lake was calm, in its lucid bosom were still viewed sculptured marbles, the trunks of columns, and the fragments of those pyramids which had once adorned the residence of the friend of Trajan. Jovius was an en- thusiast of literary leisure ; an historian, with the imagination of a poet ; a Christian prelate nourished on the sweet fictions of pagan mythology. His pen colours like a pencil. He paints rapturously his gardens bathed by the waters of the
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lake, the shade and freshness of his woods, his green hills, his sparkling fountains, the deep silence, and the calm of solitude. He describes a statue raised In his gardens to NA TURE ; in his hall an Apollo presided with his lyre, and the Muses with their attributes ; his library was guarded by Mercury, and an apartment devoted to the three Graces was embellished by Doric columns, and paintings of the most pleasing kind. Such was the interior ! Without, the pure and transparent lake spread its broad mirror, or rolled its voluminous windings, by banks richly covered with olives and laurels ; and in the distance, towns, promontories, hills rising in an amphitheatre blushing with vines, and the eleva- tions of the Alps covered with woods and pasturage, and sprinkled with herds and flocks.
In the centre of this enchanting habitation stood the CABINET, where Paulus Jovius had collected, at great cost, the PORTRAITS of celebrated men of the fourteenth and two succeeding centuries. The daily view of them animated his mind to compose their eulogiums. These are still curious, both for the facts they preserve, and the happy conciseness with which Jovius delineates a character. He had collected these portraits as others form a collection of natural history ; and he pursued in their characters what others do in their experiments.
One caution in collecting portraits must not be forgotten ; it respects their authenticity. We have too many supposititious heads, and ideal personages. Conrad ajb Uffenbach, who seems to have been the first collector who projected a methodical arrangement, condemned those spurious portraits which were fit only for the amusement of children. The painter does not always give a correct likeness, or the en- graver misses it in his copy. Goldsmith was a short thick man, with wan features arid a vulgar appearance, but looks tall and fashionable in a bag- wig. Bayle's portrait does not resemble him, as one of his friends writes. Rousseau, in his Montero cap, is in the same predicament. Winkelmann's
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portrait does not preserve the striking physiognomy of the man, and in the last edition a new one is substituted. The faithful Vertue refused to engrave for Houbraken's set, be- cause they did not authenticate their originals ; and some of these are spurious, as that of Ben Jonson, Sir Edward Coke, and others. Busts are not so liable to these accidents. It is to be regretted that men of genius have not been careful to transmit their own portraits to their admirers ; it forms a part of their character ; a false delicacy has interfered. Erasmus did not like to have his own diminutive person sent down to posterity, but Holbein was always affectionately painting his friend. Montesquieu once sat to Dassier the medallist, after repeated denials, won over by the ingenious argument of the artist ; " Do you not think," said Dassier, " that there is as much pride in refusing my offer as in accepting it ? "
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THE literary treasures of antiquity have suffered from the malice of Men, as well as that of Time. It is remarkable that conquerors, in the moment of victory, or in the unspar- ing devastation of their rage, have not been satisfied with destroying men, but have even carried their vengeance to books.
The Persians, from hatred of the religion of the Phoeni- cians and the Egyptians, destroyed their books, of which Eusebius notices a great number. A Grecian library at Gnidus was burnt by the sect of Hippocrates, because the Gnidians refused to follow the doctrines of their master. If the followers of Hippocrates formed the majority, was it not very unorthodox in the Gnidians to prefer taking physic their own way ? But Faction has often annihilated books.
The Romans burnt the books of the Jews, of the Chris-
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tians, and the Philosophers ; the Jews burnt the books of the Christians and the Pagans; and the Christians burnt the books of the Pagans and the Jews. The greater part of the books of Origen and other heretics were continually burnt by the orthodox party. Gibbon pathetically describes the empty library of Alexandria, after the Christians had destroyed it. " The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or de- stroyed ; and near twenty years afterwards the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator, whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages; and either the zeal or avarice of the archbishop might have been satiated with the richest spoils which were the rewards of his victory."
The pathetic narrative of Nicetas Choniates, of the ravages committed by the Christians of the thirteenth century in Con- stantinople, was fraudulently suppressed in the printed edi- tions. It has been preserved by Dr. Clarke ; who observes, that the Turks have committed fewer injuries to the works of art than the barbarous Christians of that age.
The reading of the Jewish Talmud has been forbidden by various edicts, of the Emperor Justinian, of many of the French and Spanish kings, and numbers of Popes. All the copies were ordered to be burnt : the intrepid perseverance of the Jews themselves preserved that work from annihila- tion. In 1569 twelve thousand Copies were thrown into the flames at Cremona. John Reuchlin interfered to stop this universal destruction of Talmuds ; for which he became hated by the monks, and condemned by the Elector of Mentz, but appealing to Rome, the prosecution was stopped ; and the traditions of the Jews were considered as not neces- sary to be destroyed.
Conquerors at first destroy with the rashest zeal the na-
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tional records of the conquered people ; hence it is that the Irish people deplore the irreparable losses of their most ancient national memorials, which their invaders have been too successful in annihilating. The same event occurred in the conquest of Mexico ; and the interesting history of the New World must ever remain imperfect, in consequence of the unfortunate success of the first missionaries. Clavigero, the most authentic historian of Mexico, continually laments this affecting loss. Every thing in that country had been painted, and painters abounded there as scribes in Europe, The first missionaries, suspicious that superstition was mixed with all their paintings, attacked the chief school of these artists, and collecting, in the market-place, a little mountain of these precious records, they set fire to it, and buried in the ashes the memory of many interesting events. Afterwards, sensible of their error, they tried to collect information from the mouths of the Indians ; but the Indians were indignantly silent : when they attempted to collect the remains of these painted histories, the patriotic Mexican usually buried in concealment the fragmentary records of his country.
The story of the Caliph Omar proclaiming throughout the kingdom, at the taking of Alexandria, that the Koran con- tained every thing which was useful to believe and to know, and therefore he commanded that all the books in the Alex- andrian library should be distributed to the masters of the baths, amounting to 4000, to be used in heating their stoves during a period of six months, modern paradox would attempt to deny. But the tale would not be singular even were it true ; it perfectly suits the character of a bigot, a barbarian, and a blockhead. A similar event happened in Persia. When Abdoolah, who in the third century of the Mohamme- dan aera governed Khorassan, was presented at Nishapoor with a MS. which was shown as a literary curiosity, he asked the title of it — it was the tale of Wamick and Oozra, com- posed by the great poet Noshirwan. On this Abdoolah observed, that those of his country and faith had nothing to
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do with any other book than the Koran ; and all Persian MSS. found within the circle of his government, as the works of idolators, were to be burnt. Much of the most ancient poetry of the Persians perished by this fanatical edict.
When Buda was taken by the Turks, a Cardinal offered a vast sum to redeem the great library founded by Matthew Corvini, a literary monarch of Hungary ; it was rich in Greek and Hebrew lore, and the classics of antiquity. Thirty amanuenses had been employed in copying MSS. and illum- inating them by the finest art. The barbarians destroyed most of the books in tearing away their splendid covers and their silver bosses ; an Hungarian soldier picked up a book as a prize : it proved to be the Ethiopics of Heliodorus, from which the first edition was printed in 1534.
Cardinal Ximenes seems to have retaliated a little on the Saracens ; for at the taking of Granada, he condemned to the flames five thousand Korans.
The following anecdote respecting a Spanish missal, called St. Isidore's, is not incurious ; hard fighting saved it from destruction. In the Moorish wars, all these missals had been destroyed, excepting those in the city of Toledo. There, in six churches, the Christians were allowed the free exer- cise of their religion. When the Moors were expelled several centuries afterwards from Toledo, Alphonsus the Sixth ordered the Roman missal to be used in those churches ; but the people of Toledo insisted on having their own, as revised by St. Isidore. It seemed to them that Alphonsus was more tyrannical than the Turks. The con- test between the Roman and the Toletan missals came to that height, that at length it was determined to decide their fate by single combat ; the champion of the Toletan missal felled by one blow the knight of the Roman missal. Alphonsus etill considered this battle as merely the effect of the heavy arm of the doughty Toletan, and ordered a fast to be pro- claimed, and a great fire to be prepared, into which, after his majesty and the people had joined in prayer frr heavenly
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assistance in this ordeal, both the rivals (not the men, but the missals), were thrown into the flames — again St. Isidore's missal triumphed, and this iron book was then allowed to be orthodox by Alphonsus, and the good people of Toledo were allowed to say their prayers as they had long been used to do. However, the copies of this missal at length became very scarce ; for now, when no one opposed the reading of St. Isidore's missal, none cared to use it. Cardinal Ximenes found it so difficult to obtain a copy, that he printed a large impression, and built a chapel, consecrated to St. Isidore, that this service might be daily chaunted as it had been by the ancient Christians.
The works of the ancients were frequently destroyed at the instigation of the monks. They appear sometimes to have mutilated them, for passages have not come down to us, which once evidently existed ; and occasionally their in- terpolations and other forgeries formed a destruction in a new shape, by additions to the originals. They were inde- fatigable in erasing the best works of the most eminent Greek and Latin authors, in order to transcribe their ridiculous lives of saints on the obliterated vellum. One of the books of Livy is in the Vatican most painfully defaced by some pious father for the purpose of writing on it some missal or psalter, and there have been recently others discovered hi the same state. Inflamed with the blindest zeal against every thing pagan, Pope Gregory VII. ordered that the library of the Palatine Apollo, a treasury of literature formed by succes- sive emperors, should be committed to the flames ! He issued this order under the notion of confining the attention of the clergy to the holy scriptures ! From that time all ancient learning which was not sanctioned by the authority of the church, has been emphatically distinguished as profane in opposition to sacred. This pope is said to have burnt the works of Varro, the learned Roman, that Saint Austin should escape from the charge of plagiarism, being deeply indebted to Varro fbr much of his great work " the City of God."
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The Jesuits, sent by the Emperor Ferdinand to proscribe Lutheranism from Bohemia, converted that flourishing king- dom comparatively into a desert. Convinced that an en« lightened people could never be long subservient to a tyrant, they struck one fatal blow at the national literature ; every book they condemned was destroyed, even those of antiquity ; the annals of the nation were forbidden to be read, and writ- ers were not permitted even to compose on subjects of Bohe- mian literature. The mother-tongue was held out as a mark of vulgar obscurity, and domiciliary visits were made for the purpose of inspecting the libraries of the Bohemians. With their books arid their language they lost their national char- acter and their independence.
The destruction of libraries in the reign of Henry VIII. at the dissolution of the monasteries, is wept over by John Bale. Those who purchased the religious houses took the libraries as part of the booty, with which they scoured their furniture, or sold the books as waste paper, or sent them abroad in ship-loads to foreign bookbinders.
The fear of destruction induced many to hide manuscripts under ground, and in old walls. At the Reformation popular rage exhausted itself on illuminated books, or MSS. that had red letters in the title-page ; any work that was decorated was sure to be thrown into the flames as a superstitious one. Red letters and embellished figures were sure marks of being papistical and diabolical. We still find such volumes muti- lated of their gilt letters and elegant initials. Many have been found under-ground, having been forgotten ; what escaped the flames were obliterated by the damp : such is the deplorable fate of books during a persecution I
The puritans burned every thing they found which bore the vestige of popish origin. We have on record many cuiious accounts of their pious depredations, of their maiming images and erasing pictures. The heroic expeditions of one Dows- ing are journalized by himself: a fanatical Quixote, to whose intrepid arm many of our noseless saints, sculptured on our Cathedrals, owe their misfortunes.
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The following are some details from the diary of this re» doubtable Goth, during his rage for reformation. His entries are expressed with a laconic conciseness, and it would seem with a little dry humour. "At Sunbury, we brake down ten mighty great angels in glass. At Barham, brake down the twelve apostles in the chancel, and six superstitious pictures more there ; and eight in the church, one a lamb with a cross (-f ) on the back ; and digged down the steps and took up four superstitious inscriptions in brass," &c. " Lady truce's house, the chapel, a picture of God the Father, of the Trinity, of Christ, the Holy Ghost, and the cloven tongues, which we gave orders to take down, and the lady promised to do it." At another place they " brake six hundred super- stitious pictures, eight Holy Ghosts, and three of the Son." And in this manner he and his deputies scoured one hundred and fifty parishes ! It has been humorously conjectured, that from this ruthless devastator originated the plirase to give a Dowsing. Bishop Hall saved the windows of his chapel at Norwich from destruction, by taking out the heads of the figures; and this accounts for the many faces in church windows which we see supplied by white glass.
In the various civil wars in our country, numerous libra- ries have suffered both in MSS. and printed books. " I dare maintain," says Fuller, " that the wars betwixt York and Lancaster, which lasted sixty years, were not so de- structive as our modern wars in six years." He alludes to the parliamentary feuds in the reign of Charles I. " For during the former their differences agreed in the same re- ligion, impressing them with reverence to all allowed muniments ! whilst our civil wars, founded in faction and variety of pretended religions, exposed all naked church records a prey to armed violence ; a sad vacuum, which will be sensible in our English historic"
When it was proposed to the great Gustavus of Sweden to destroy the palace of the Dukes of Bavaria, that hero nobly refused ; observing, " Let us not copy the example of OUT
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unlettered ancestors, who, by waging war against every production of genius, have rendered the name of GOTH universally proverbial of the rudest state of barbarity."
Even the civilization of the eighteenth century could not preserve from the destructive fury of an infuriated mob, in the most polished city of Europe, the valuable MSS. of the great Earl of Mansfield, which were madly consigned to the flames during the riots of 1780 ; as those of Dr. Priestley were consumed by the mob at Birmingham.
In the year 1599, the Hall of the Stationers underwent as great a purgation as was carried on in Don Quixote's library. Wurton gives a list of the best writers who were ordered for immediate conflagration by the prelates Whitgift and Ban- croft, urged by the Puritanical and Calvinistic factions. Like thieves and outlaws, they were ordered to be taken wheresoever they may be found. — " It was also decreed that no satires or epigrams should be printed for the future. No plays were to be printed without the inspection and per- mission of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London ; nor any English historyes, I suppose novels and romances, without the sanction of the privy council. Any pieces of this nature, unlicensed, or now at large and wan- dering abroad, were to be diligently sought, recalled, and delivered over to the ecclesiastical arm at London-house."
At a later period, and by an opposite party, among other extravagant motions made in parliament, one was to destroy the Records in the Tower, and to settle the nation on a new foundation ! The very same principle was attempted to be acted on in the French Revolution by the " true sans-culottes." With us Sir Matthew Hale showed the weakness of the pro- iect, and while he drew on his side " all sober persons, stopped even the mouths of the frantic people themselves."
To descend to the losses incurred by individuals, whose names ought to have served as an amulet to charm away the demons of literary destruction. One of the most interesting is the fate of Aristotle's library ; he who by a Greek term
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was first saluted as a collector of books ! His works have come down to us accidentally, but not without irreparable injuries, and with no slight suspicion respecting their authen- ticity. The story is told by Strabo, in his thirteenth book. The books of Aristotle came from his scholar Theophrastus to Neleus, whose posterity, an illiterate race, kept them locked up without using them, buried in the earth ! Apellion, a curious collector, purchased them, but finding the MSS. in- jured by age and moisture, conjecturally supplied their de- ficiencies. It is impossible to know how far Apellion has corrupted and obscured the text. But the mischief did not end here ; when Sylla at the taking of Athens brought them to Rome, he consigned them to the care of Tyrannic, a gram- marian, who employed scribes to copy them ; he suffered them to pass through his hands without correction, and took great freedoms with them ; the words of Strabo are strong : " Ibique Tyrannionem grammaticum iis usum atque (ut fama est) intercidisse, aut invertisse." He gives it indeed as a report ; but the fact seems confirmed by the state in which we find these works : Averroes declared that he read Aris- totle forty times over before he succeeded in perfectly under- standing him ; he pretends he did at the one-and-fortieth tune ! And to prove this, has published five folios of commentary !
We have lost much valuable literature by the illiberal or malignant descendants of learned and ingenious persons. Many of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters have been destroyed, I am informed, by her daughter, who im- agined that the family honours were lowered by the addition of those of literature : some of her best letters, recently published, were found buried in an old trunk. It would have mortified her ladyship's daughter to have heard, that her mother was the Sevigne of Britain.
At the death of the learned Peiresc, a chamber in his house filled with letters from the most eminent scholars of the age was discovered : the learned in Europe had ad
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dressed Peiresc in their difficulties, who was hence called " the attorney -general of the republic of letters." The nig- gardly niece, although repeatedly entreated to permit them to be published, preferred to use these learned epistles occa- sionally to light her fires !
The MSS. of Leonardo da Vinci have equally suffered from his relatives. When a curious collector discovered some, he generously brought them to a descendant of the great painter, who coldly observed, that " he had a great deal more in the garret, which had lain there for many years, if the rats had not destroyed them ! " Nothing which this great artist wrote but showed an inventive genius.
Menage observes on a friend having had his library de- stroyed by fire, in which several valuable MSS. had per- ished, that such a loss is one of the greatest misfortunes that can happen to a man of letters. This gentleman afterwards consoled himself by composing a little treatise De Bibliothecce incendio. It must have been sufficiently curious. Even in the present day men of letters are subject to similar mis- fortunes ; for though the fire-offices will insure books, they will not allow authors to value their own manuscripts.
A fire in the Cottonian library shrivelled and destroyed many Anglo-Saxon MSS. — a loss now irreparable. The antiquary is doomed to spell hard and hardly at the baked fragments that crumble in his hand..
Meninsky's famous Persian dictionary met with a sad fate. Its excessive rarity is owing to the siege of Vienna by the Turks : a bomb fell on the author's house, and consumed the principal part of his indefatigable labours. There are few sets of this high-priced work which do not bear evident proofs of the bomb ; while many parts are stained with the water sent to quench the flames.
The sufferings of an author for the loss of his manuscripts strongly appear in the case of Anthony Urceus, a great scholar of the fifteenth century. The loss of his papers beems immediately to have been followed by madness. At
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Forli, he had an apartment hi the palace, and had prepared an important work for publication. His room was dark, and he generally wrote by lamp-light. Having gone out, he left the lamp burning ; the papers soon kindled, and his library was reduced to ashes. As soon as he heard the news, he ran furiously to the palace, and knocking his head violently against the gate, uttered this blasphemous language : " Jesus Clirist, what great crime have I done ! who of those who believed in you have I ever treated so cruelly ? Hear what I am saying, for I am in earnest, and am resolved. If by chance I should be so weak as to address myself to you at the point of death, don't hear me, for I will not be with you, but prefer hell and its eternity of torments." To which, by the by, he gave little credit. Those who heard these ravings, vainly tried to console him. He quitted the town, and lived franticly, wandering about the woods !
Ben Jonson's Execration on Vulcan was composed on a like occasion ; the fruits of twenty years* study were con- sumed in one short hour ; our literature suffered, for among some works of imagination there were many philosophical collections, a commentary on the poetics, a complete critical grammar, a life of Henry V., his journey into Scotland, with all his adventures in that poetical pilgrimage, and a poem on the ladies of Great Britain. What a catalogue of losses !
Castelvetro, the Italian commentator on Aristotle, having heard that his house was on fire, ran through the streets ex- claiming to the people, alia Poetica ! alia Poetica ! To the Poetic ! To the Poetic ! He was then writing his com- mentary on the Poetics of Aristotle.
Several men of letters have been known to have risen from their death-bed, to destroy their MSS. So solicitous have they been not to venture their posthumous reputation in the hands of undiscerning friends. Colardeau, the elegant versifier of Pope's epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, had not yet destroyed what in had written of a translation of Tasso. At the approach of death, he recollected his unfinished
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labour ; he knew that his friends would not have the courage to annihilate one of his works ; this was icserved for him. Dying, he raised himself, and as if animated by an honoura- ble action, he dragged himself along, and with trembling hands seized his papers, and consumed them in one sacrifice. — I recollect another instance of a man of letters, of our own country, who acted the same part. He had passed his life in constant study, and it was observed that he had written several folio volumes, which his modest fears would not per- mit him to expose to the eye even of his critical friends. He promised to leave his labours to posterity ; and he seemed sometimes, with a glow on his countenance, to exult that they would not be unworthy of their acceptance. At his death his sensibility took the alarm; he had the folios brought to his bed : no one could open them, for they were closely locked. At the sight of his favourite and mysterious labours, he paused ; he seemed disturbed in his mind, while he felt at every moment his strength decaying ; suddenly he raised his feeble hands by an effort of firm resolve, burnt his papers, and smiled as the greedy Vulcan licked up every page. The task exhausted his remaining strength, and he soon afterwards expired. The late Mrs. Inchbald had writ ten her life in several volumes ; on her death-bed, from a motive perhaps of too much delicacy to admit of any argu- ment, she requested a friend to cut them into pieces before her eyes — not having sufficient strength left herself to per- form this funereal office. These are instances of what may be called the heroism of authors.
The republic of letters has suffered irreparable losses by ehipwvecks. Guarino Veronese, one of those learned Ital- ians who travelled through Greece for the recovery of MSS., had his perseverance repaid by the acquisition of many valu- able works. On his return to Italy he was shipwrecked, and lost his treasures ! So poignant was his grief on this occa- sion that, according to the relation of one of his countrymen, his hair turned suddenly white.
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About the year 1700, Hudde, an opulent burgomaster of Middleburgh, animated solely by literary curiosity, went to China to instruct himself in the language, and in whatever was remarkable in this singular people. He acquired the skill of a mandarine in that difficult language ; nor did the form of his Dutch face undeceive the physiognomists of China. He succeeded to the dignity of a mandarine ; he travelled through the provinces under this character, and returned to Europe with a collection of observations, the cherished labour of thirty years, and all these were sunk in the bottomless sea.
The great Pinellian library, after the death of its illus- trious possessor, filled three vessels to be conveyed to Naples. Pursued by corsairs, one of the vessels was taken ; but the pirates finding nothing on board but books, they threw them all into the sea : such was the fate of a great portion of this famous library. National libraries have often perished at sea, from the circumstance of conquerors transporting them into their own kingdoms.
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ALTHOUGH it is the opinion of some critics that our liter ary losses do not amount to the extent which others imagine, they are however much greater than they allow. Our se- verest losses are felt in the historical province, and particu- larly in the earliest records, which might not have been the least interesting to philosophical curiosity.
The history of Phrenicia by Sanchoniathon, supposed to be a contemporary with Solomon, now consists of only a few valuable fragments preserved by Eusebius. The same ill fortune attends Manetho's history of Egypt, and Berosus's history of Chaldea. The histories of these most ancient
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nations, however veiled in fables, would have presented to the philosopher singular objects of contemplation.
Of the history of Polybius, which once contained forty books, we have now only five ; of the historical library of Diodorus Siculus fifteen books only remain out of forty ; and half of the Roman antiquities of Dionysius Halicarnassensis has perished. Of the eighty books of the history of Dion Cassius, twenty-five only remain. The present opening book of Ammianus Marcellinus is entitled the fourteenth. Livy's history consisted of one hundred and forty books, and we only possess thirty-five of that pleasing historian. What a treasure has been lost in the thirty books of Tacitus ! little more than four remain. Murphy elegantly observes, that " the reign of Titus, the delight of human kind, is totally lost, and Domitian has escaped the vengeance of the histo- rian's pen." Yet Tacitus in fragments is still the colossal torso of history. Velleius Paterculus, of whom a fragment only has reached us, we owe to a single copy : no other hav- ing ever been discovered, and which has occasioned the text of this historian to remain incurably corrupt. Taste and criticism have certainly incurred an irreparable loss in that Treatise on the Causes of the Corruption of Eloquence, by Quintilian ; which he has himself noticed with so much sat- isfaction in his " Institutes." Petrarch declares, that in his youth he had seen the works of Varro, and the second Decad of Livy ; but all his endeavours to recover them were fruit- less.
These are only some of the most known losses ; but in reading contemporary writers we are perpetually disco vering many important ones. We have lost two precious works in ancient biography : Varro wrote the lives of seven hundred illustrious Romans ; and Atticus, the friend of Cicero, com- posed another, on the acts of the great men among the Romans. When we consider that these writers lived famil- iarly with the finest geniuses of their times, and were opu- lent, hospitable, and lovers of the fine arts, their biography
114 SOME NOTICES OF LOST WORKS.
and their portraits, which are said to have accompanied them, are felt as an irreparable loss to literature. I suspect like- wise we have had great losses of which we are not always aware ; for in that curious letter in which the younger Pliny describes in so interesting a manner the sublime industry, for it seems sublime by its magnitude, of his Uncle,* it appears that his Natural History, that vast register of the wisdom and the credulity of the ancients, was not his only great labour ; for among his other works was a history in twenty books, which has entirely perished. We discover also the works of writers, which, by the accounts of them, appear to have equalled in genius those which have descended to us. Pliny has feelingly described a poet of whom he tells us " his works are never out of my hands ; and whether I sit down to write any thing myself, or to revise what I have already wrote, or am in a disposition to amuse myself, I constantly take up this agreeable author ; and as often as I do so, he is still new.f" He had before compared this poet to Catullus ; and in a critic of so fine a taste as Pliny, to have cherished so constant an intercourse with the writings of this author, indicates high powers. Instances of this kind frequently occur. Who does not regret the loss of the Anti- cato of Caesar?
The losses which the poetical world has sustained are suffi- ciently known by those who are conversant with the few invaluable fragments of Menander, who might have inter- ested us perhaps more than Homer: for he was evidently the domestic poet, and the lyre he touched was formed of the strings of the human heart. He was the painter of passions, and the historian of the manners. The opinion of Quintilian is confirmed by the golden fragments preserved for the Eng- lish reader in the elegant versions of Cumberland. Even of ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, who each wrote about one hundred dramas, seven only have been preserved of
* Book HI. Letter V. Melmoth's translation, f Book I. Letter XVL
QUODI.1BETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS. H5
JEschylus and of Sophocles, and nineteen of Euripides. Of the one hundred and thirty comedies of Plautus, we only inherit twenty imperfect ones. The remainder of Ovid's Fasti has never been recovered.
I believe that a philosopher would consent to lose any poet to regain an historian ; nor is this unjust, for some future poet may arise to supply the vacant place of a lost poet, but it is not so with the historian. Fancy may be supplied ; but Truth once lost hi the annals of mankind leaves a chasm never to be filled.
QUODLIBETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS.
THE scholastic questions were called Questiones Quodlibe ticce ; and they were generally so ridiculous that we have retained the word Quodlibet in our vernacular style, to express any thing ridiculously subtile ; something which comes at length to be distinguished into nothingness,
" With all the rash dexterity of wit."
The history of the scholastic philosophy furnishes an in- structive theme ; it enters into the history of the human mind, and fills a niche in our literary annals. The works of the scholastics, with the debates of these Quodlibetarians, at once show the greatness and the littleness of the human intel- lect ; for though they often degenerate into incredible absur- dities, those who have examined the works of Thomas Aqui- nas and Duns Scotus have confessed their admiration of the Herculean texture of brain which they exhausted in demol- ishing their aerial fabrics.
The following is a slight sketch of the school divinity.
The Christian doctrines in the primitive ages of the gospel were adapted to the simple comprehension of the multitude ; metaphysical subtilties were not even employed by the
]]5 QUODLIBETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS.
Fathers, of whom several are eloquent. The Homilies ex- plained, by an obvious interpretation, some scriptural point, or inferred, by artless illustration, some moral doctrine. When the Arabians became the only learned people, and their empire extended over the greater part of the known world, they impressed their own genius on those nations with whom they were allied as friends, or reverenced as masters. The Arabian genius was fond of abstruse studies ; it was highly metaphysical and mathematical, for the fine arts theii religion did not permit them to cultivate ; and the first knowl- edge which modern Europe obtained of Euclid and Aristotle was through the medium of Latin translations of Arabic, versions. The Christians in the west received their first lessons from the Arabians in the east ; and Aristotle, with his Arabic commentaries, was enthroned in the schools of Christendom.
Then burst into birth from the dark cave of metaphysics, a numerous and ugly spawn of monstrous sects ; unnatural chil- dren of the same foul mother, who never met but for mutual destruction. Religion became what is called the study of Theology ; and they all attempted to reduce the worship of God into a system! and the creed into a thesis! Every point relating to religion was debated through an endless chain of infinite questions, incomprehensible distinctions, with differences mediate and immediate, the concrete and the abstract, a perpetual civil war carried on against common sense in all the Aristotelian severity. There existed a rage for Aristotle ; and Melancthon complains that in sacred assemblies the ethics of Aristotle were read to the people instead of the gospel. Aristotle was placed a-head of St. Paul ; and St. Thomas Aquinas in his works distinguishes him by the title of " The Philosopher ; " inferring, doubtless, that no other man could possibly be a philosopher who dis- agreed with Aristotle. Of the blind rites paid to Aristotle, the anecdotes of the Nominalists and Realists are noticed in the article " Literary Controversy " in this work.
QUODLIBETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS. H7
Had their subtile questions and perpetual wranglings only been addressed to the metaphysician in his closet, and had nothing but strokes of the pen occurred, the scholastic divinity would only have formed an episode in the calm narrative of literary history ; but it has claims to be registered in political annals, from the numerous persecutions and tragical events with which they too long perplexed their followers, and dis- turbed the repose of Europe. The Thomists, and the Scotists, the Occamites, and many others, soared into the regions of mysticism.
Peter Lombard had laboriously compiled, after the cele- brated Abelard's " Introduction to Divinity," his four books of " Sentences," from the writings of the Fathers ; and for this he is called " The Master of Sentences." These Sen- tences, on which we have so many commentaries, are a col- lection of passages from the Fathers, the real or apparent contradictions of whom he endeavours to reconcile. But his successors were not satisfied to be mere commentators on these "sentences," which they now only made use of as a row of pegs to hang on their fine-spun metaphysical cobwebs. They at length collected all these quodlibetical questions into enormous volumes, under the terrifying form, for those who have seen them, of Summaries of Divinity ! They contrived, by their chimerical speculations, to question the plainest truths ; to wrest the simple meaning of the Holy Scriptures, and give some appearance of truth to the most ridiculous and monstrous opinions.
One of the subtile questions which agitated the world in the tenth century, relating to dialectics, was concerning universal* (as for example, man, horse, dog, &c.) signifying not this or that in particular, but all in general. They distinguished universals, or what we call abstract terms, by the genera and species rerum ; and they never could decide whether these were substances — or names ! That is, whether the abstract idea we form of a horse was not really a being as much as the horse we ride ! All this, and some congenial points re-
118 QUODLIBETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS.
specting the origin of our ideas, and what ideas were, and whether we really had an idea of a thing before we dis- covered the thing itself — in a word, what they called univer- sals, and the essence of universals ; of all this nonsense, on which they at length proceeded to accusations of heresy, and for which many learned men Were excommunicated, stoned, and what not, the whole was derived from the reveries of Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, about the nature of ideas, than which subject to the present day no discussion ever degener- ated into such insanity. A modern metaphysician infers that we have no ideas at all !
Of the scholastic divines, the most illustrious was Saint THOMAS AQUINAS, styled the Angelical Doctor. Seventeen folio volumes not only testify his industry but even his genius. He was a great man, busied all his life with making the charades of metaphysics.
My learned friend Sharon Turner has favoured ma with a notice of his greatest work — his " Sum of all Theology," Summa totius Theologies, Paris, 1615. It is a metapliysico- logical treatise, or the most abstruse metaphysics of theology. It occupies above 1250 folio pages, of very small close print in double columns. It may be worth noticing that to this work are appended 1 9 folio pages of double columns of errata, and about 200 of additional index !
The whole is thrown into an Aristotelian form ; the difficul- ties or questions are proposed first, and the answers are then appended. There are 1 68 articles on Love — 358 on Angels — 200 on the Soul — 85 on Demons — 151 on the Intellect — 134 on Law — 3 on the Catamenia — 237 on Sins — 17 on Virginity, and others on a variety of topics.
The scholastic tree is covered with prodigal foliage, but is barren of fruit ; and when the scholastics employed themselves in solving the deepest mysteries, their philosophy became nothing more than an instrument in the hands of the Roman Pontiff. Aquinas has composed 358 articles on angels, of which a few of the heads have been culled for the reader.
QUODLIBETS, OK SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS. H9
He treats of angels, their substance, orders, offices, natures, habits, &c. — as if he himself had been an old experienced angel !
Angels were not before the world !
Angels might have been before the world !
Angels were created by God — They were created imme- diately by him — They were created in the Empyrean sky — They were created in grace — They were created in imper- fect beatitude. After a severe chain of reasoning, he shows, that angels are incorporeal compared to us, but corporeal compared to God.
An angel is composed of action and potentiality ; the more superior he is, he has the less potentiality. They have not matter properly. Every angel differs from another angel in species. An angel is of the same species as a soul. Angels have not naturally a body united to them. They may as- sume bodies; but they do not want to assume bodies for themselves, but for us.
The bodies assumed by angels are of thick air.
The bodies they assume have not the natural virtues which they show, nor the operations of life, but those which are common to inanimate things.
An angel may be the same with a body.
In the same body there are, the soul formally giving being, and operating natural operations ; and the angel operating supernatural operations.
Angels administer and govern every corporeal creature.
God, an angel, and the soul, are not contained in space, but contain it.
Many angels cannot be in the same space.
The motion of an angel in space is nothing else than dif- ferent contacts of different successive places.
The motion of, an angel is a succession of his different operations.
His motion may be continuous and discontinuous as he will.
120 QUODLIBETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS.
The continuous motion of an angel is necessary through every medium, but may be discontinuous without a medium.
The velocity of the motion of an angel is not according to the quantity of his strergth, but according to his will.
The motion of the illumination of an angel is threefold, or circular, straight, and oblique.
In this account of the motion of an angel we are reminded of the beautiful description of Milton, who marks it by a continuous motion,
" Smooth-sliding without step."
The reader desirous of being merry with Aquinas's angels may find them in Martiuus Scriblerus, in Ch. VII. who in- quires if angels pass from one extreme to another without going through the middle ? And if angels know things more clearly in a morning ? How many angels can dance on the point of a very fine needle, without jostling one another ?
All the questions in Aquinas are answered with a subtlety of distinction more difficult to comprehend and remember than many problems in Euclid ; and perhaps a few of the best might still be selected for youth as curious exercises of the understanding. However, a great part of these peculiar productions are loaded with the most trifling, irreverent, and even scandalous discussions. Even Aquinas could gravely debate, Whether Christ was not an hermaphrodite ? Whether there are excrements in Paradise? Whether the pious at the resurrection will rise with their bowels ? Others again debated— Whether the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary in the shape of a serpent, of a dove, of a man, or of a woman ? Did he seem to be young or old ? In what dress was he ? Was his garment white or of two colours ? Was his linen clean or foul? Did he appear in the morning, noon, or evening? What was the colour of the Virgin Mary's hair ? Was she acquainted with the mechanic and liberal arts? Had she a thorough knowledge of the Book of Sentences, and all it contains ? that is, Peter Lombard's
QUODLIBETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS. 121
compilation from the works of the Fathers, written 1200 years after her death. — But these are only trifling matters : they also agitated, Whether when during her conception the Virgin was seated, Christ too was seated ; and whether when she lay down, Christ also lay down ? The following question was a favourite topic for discussion, and the acutest logicians never resolved it : " When a hog is carried to market with a rope tied about his neck, which is held at the other end by a man, whether is the hog carried to market by the rope or the man ? "
In the tenth century,* after long and ineffectual contro- versy about the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, they at length universally agreed to sign a peace. This mutual forbearance must not .however be ascribed to the prudence and virtue of those times. It was mere ignorance and incapacity of reasoning which kept the peace, and de- terred them from entering into debates to which they at length found themselves unequal !
Lord Lyttleton, in his Life of Henry II., laments the un- happy effects of the scholastic philosophy on the progress of the human mind. The minds of men were turned from clas- sical studies to the subtilties of school divinity, which Rome encouraged, as more profitable for the maintenance of her doctrines. It was a great misfortune to religion and to learn- ing, that men of such acute understandings as Abelard and Lombard, who might have done much to reform the errors of the church, and to restore science in Europe, should have depraved both, by applying their admirable parts to weave those cobwebs of sophistry, and to confound the clear sim- plicity of evangelical truths, by a false philosophy and a captious logic.
* Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, Vol. V. p. 17.
122 THE SIX FOLLIES OF SCIENCE.
FAME CONTEMNED.
ALL men are fond of glory, and even those philosophers who wrote against that noble passion prefix their names to their own works. It is worthy of observation that the authors of two religious books, universally received, have concealed their names from the world. The " Imitation of Christ " is attributed, without any authority, to Thomas A'Kempis ; and the author of the " Whole Duty of Man " still remains undis- covered. Millions of their books have been dispersed in the Christian world.
To have revealed their names would have given them as much worldly fame as any moralist has obtained — but they contemned it ! Their religion was raised above all worldly passions ! Some profane writers indeed have also concealed their names to great works, but their motives were of a very different cast.
THE SIX FOLLIES OF SCIENCE.
NOTHING is so capable of disordering the intellects as an intense application to any one of these six things : the Quad- rature of the Circle; the Multiplication of the Cube; the Perpetual Motion ; the Philosophical Stone ; Magic ; and Judicial Astrology. "It is proper, however," Fontenelle remarks, " to apply one's self to these inquiries ; because we find, as we proceed, many valuable discoveries of which we were before ignorant." The same thought Cowley has ap- plied, in an address to his mistress, thus —
" Although I think thou never wilt be found, Yet I'm resolved to search for thee: The search itself rewards the pains. So though the chymist his great secret miss,
THE SIX FOLLIES OF SCIENCE. 123
(For neither it in art nor nature is) .» Yet things well worth his toil he gains; And does his charge and labour pay
With good unsought experiments by the way."
t
The same thought is in Donne ; perhaps Cowley did not Suspect that he was an imitator ; Fontenelle could not have read either ; he struck out the thought by his own reflection. Glauber searched long and deeply for the philosopher's stone, which though he did not find, yet in his researches he discovered a very useful purging salt, which bears his name.
Maupertuis observes on the Philosophical Stone, that we cannot prove the impossibility of obtaining it, but we can easily see the folly of those, who employ their time and money in seeking for it. This price is too great to counter- balance the little probability of succeeding in it. However, it is still a bantling of modern chemistry, who has nodded very affectionately on it ! — Of the Perpetual Motion, he shows the impossibility, in the sense in which it is generally received. On the Quadrature of the Circle, he says he cannot decide if this problem be resolvable or not: but he observes, that it is very useless to search for it any more ; since we "* have arrived by approximation to such a point of accuracy, that on a large circle, such as the orbit which the earth describes round the sun, the geometrician will not mis- take by the thickness of a hair. The quadrature of the circle is still, however, a favourite game of some visionaries, and several are still imagining that they have discovered the perpetual motion ; the Italians nick-name them matto per- petuo ; and Bekker tells us of the fate of one Hartmann, of Leipsic, who was in such despair at having passed his life so vainly, hi studying the perpetual motion, that at length he hanged himself!
124 IMITATORS.
IMITATORS.
SOME writers, usually pedants, imagine that they can supply, by the labours of industry, the deficiencies of nature. Paulus Manutius frequently spent a month in writing a single letter. He affected to imitate Cicero. But although he painfully attained to something of the elegance of his style, destitute of the native graces of unaffected composition, he was one of those whom Erasmus bantered in his Cice- ronianus, as so slavishly devoted to Cicero's style, that they ridiculously employed the utmost precautions when they were seized by a Ciceronian fit. The Nosoponus of Erasmus tells us of his devotion to Cicero ; of his three indexes to all his words, and his never writing but in the dead of night, em- ploying months upon a few lines ; and his religious veneration for words, with his total indifference about the sense.
Le Brun, a Jesuit, was a singular instance of such un- happy imitation. He was a Latin poet, and his themes were religious. He formed the extravagant project of sub- stituting a religious Virgil and Ovid merely by adapting his works to their titles. His Christian Virgil consists, like the Pagan Virgil, of Eclogues, Georgics, and of an Epic of twelve books ; with this difference, that devotional subjects are sub- stituted for fabulous ones. His epic is the Ignaciad, or the pilgrimage of Saint Ignatius. His Christian Ovid is in the same taste ; every thing wears a new face. His Epistles are pious ones ; the Fasti are the six days of the Creation , the Elegies are the Lamentations of Jeremiah ; a poem on the Love of God is substituted for the Art of Love ; and the liistory of some Conversions supplies the place of the Meta- morphoses ! This Jesuit would, no doubt, have approved of a family Shakspeare !
A poet of far different character, the elegant Sannazarius, has done much the same thing in his poem De Partu Vir- ginis. The same servile imitat'on of ancient taste appears.
IMITATORS. 125
It professes to celebrate the birth of Christ, yet his name is not once mentioned in it ! The Virgin herself is styled spes deorum ! " The hope of the gods ! " The Incarnation is predicted by Proteus ! The Virgin, instead of consulting the sacred writings, reads the Sibylline oracles! Her at- tendants are dryads, nereids, &c. This monstrous mixture of polytheism with the mysteries of Christianity appeared in every thing he had about him. In a chapel at one of his country seats he had two statues placed at his tonib, Apollo and Minerva ; catholic piety found no difficulty in the pres- ent case, as well as in innumerable others of the same kind, to inscribe the statue of Apollo with the name of David, and that of Minerva with the female one of Judith !
Seneca, in his 1 1 4th Epistle, gives a curious literary anecdote of the sort of imitation by which an inferior mind becomes the monkey of an original writer. At Rome, when Sallust was the fashionable writer, short sentences, uncommon words, and an obscure brevity were affected as so many elegances. Arruntius, who wrote the history of the Punic Wars, pain- fully laboured to imitate Sallust. Expressions which are rare in Sallust are frequent in Arruntius, and, of course, without the motive that induced Sallust to adopt them. What rose naturally under the pen of the great historian, the minor one must have run after with ridiculous anxiety. Seneca adds several instances of the servile affectation of Arruntius, which seem much like those we once had of Johnson, by the undis- cerning herd of his apes.
One cannot but smile at these imitators ; we have abounded with them. In the days of Churchill, every month produced an effusion which tolerably imitated his slovenly versification, his coarse invective, and his careless mediocrity — but the genius remained with the English Juvenal. Sterne had his countless multitude ; and in Fielding's time, Tom Jones pro- duced more bastards in wit than the author could ever sus- pect. To such literary echoes, the reply of Philip of Macedon 1C one who prided himself on imitating the notes of the night-
126 CICERO'S PUNS.
higale may be applied : "I prefer the nightingale herself!" Even the most successful of this imitating tribe must be doomed to share the fate of Silius Italicus in his cold imita- tion of Virgil, and Cawthorne in his empty harmony of Pope. To all these imitators I must apply an Arabian anecdote. Ebn Saad, one of Mahomet's amanuenses, when writing what the prophet dictated, cried out by way of admiration — u Blessed be God, the best Creator I " Mahomet approved of the expression, and desired him to write those words down as part of the inspired passage. — The consequence was, that Ebn Saad began to think himself as great a prophet as his master, and took upon himself to imitate the Koran according to his fancy ; but the imitator got himself into trouble, and only escaped with life by falling on his knees, and solemnly swearing he would never again imitate the Koran, for which he was sensible God had never created him.
CICERO'S PUNS.
c< I SHOULD," says Menage, " have received great pleasure to have conversed with Cicero, had I lived in his time. He must have been a man very agreeable in conversation, since even Caesar carefully collected his bons mots. Cicero has boasted of the great actions he has done for his country, because there is no vanity in exulting in the performance of our duties ; but he has not boasted that he was the most eloquent orator of his age, though he certainly was ; because nothing is more disgusting than to exult in our intellectual powers."
Whatever were the bons mots of Cicero, of which few have come down to us, it is certain that Cicero was an inveterate punster ; and he seems to have been more ready with them than with repartees. He said to a senator, who was the Bon of a tailor, «« JRem acu tetigisti" You have touched it
CICEEO'S PUNS. 12?
sharply; acu means sharpness as well as the point of a needle. To the son of a cook, " Ego quoque tibi jure fa- vebo" The ancients pronounced coce and quoque like co-ke, which alludes to the Latin cocus, cook, besides the ambiguity of jure, which applies to broth or law— jus. A Sicilian sus- pected of being a Jew, attempted to get the cause of Verres into his own hands ; Cicero, who knew that he was a creature of the great culprit, opposed him, observing " What has a Jew to do with swine's flesh ? " The Romans called a boar pig Verres. I regret to afford a respectable authority for forensic puns ; however, to have degraded his adversaries by such petty personalities, only proves that Cicero's taste was not exquisite.
There is something very original in Montaigne's censure of Cicero. Cotton's translation is admirable.
" Boldly to confess the truth, his way of writing, and that of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very tedious ; for his preface, definitions, divisions, and etymologies, take up the greatest part of his work : whatever there is of life and marrow, is smothered and lost in the preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a great deal for me, and recollect what I have thence extracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing but wind : for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his purpose, and the reasons that should properly help to loose the knot 1 would untie. For me, who only desired to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian dis- quisitions of poets are of no use. I look for good and solid rea- sons at the first dash. I am for discourses that give the first charge into the heart of the doubt ; his languish about the sub- ject, and delay our expectation. Those are proper for the schools, for the bar, and for the pulpit, where we have leisure to nod, and may awake a quarter of an hour after, time enough to find again the thread of the discourse. It is necessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a man has a design, right or wrong, to incline to favour his cause ; to children and
128 PEEFACES.
common people, to whom a man must say all he can. 1 would not have an author make it his business to render me attentive ; or that he should cry out fifty times 0 yes ! as the clerks and heralds do.
" As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that, learning excepted, he had no great natural parts. He was a good citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat heavy men — (gras et gausseurs are the words in the original, meaning perhaps broad jokers, for Cicero was not fat) — such as he was, usually are ; but given to ease, and had a mighty share of vanity and ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinking his poetry fit to be published. T is no great imper- fection to write ill verses ; but it is an imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy bad verses were of the glory of his name. For what concerns his eloquence, that is totally out of comparison, and I believe will never be equalled.'*
PREFACES.
A PREFACE, being the entrance to a book, should invite by its beauty. An elegant porch announces the splendour of the interior. I have observed that ordinary readers skip over these little elaborate compositions. The ladies consider them as so many pages lost, which might better be employed in the addition of a picturesque scene, or a tender letter to their novels. For my part I always gather amusement from a preface, be it awkwardly or skilfully written ; for dulness, or impertinence, may raise a laugh for a page or two. A pref- ace is frequently a superior composition to the work itself: for, long before the days of Johnson, it had been a custom for many authors to solicit for this department of their work the ornamental contribution of a man of genius. Cicero tells his friend Atticus, that he had a volume of prefaces or introduc- tions always ready by him to be used as circumstances re
PREFACES. 129
quired. These must have been like our periodical essays. A good preface is as essential to put the reader into good humour, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony to an opera, containing something analogous to the work itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified. The Italians call the preface La salsa del libro, the sauce of the book, and if well seasoned it creates an appetite in the reader to devour the book itself. A preface badly composed prejudices the reader against the work. Authors are not equally fortunate in these little intro- ductions; some can compose volumes more skilfully than prefaces, and others can finish a preface who could never be capable of finishing a book.
On a very elegant preface prefixed to an ill- written book, it was observed that they ought never to have come together ; but a sarcastic wit remarked that he considered such mar- riages were allowable, for they were not of kin.
In prefaces an affected haughtiness or an affected humility are alike despicable. There is a deficient dignity in Robert- son's ; but the haughtiness is now to our purpose. This is called by the French, " la morgue litteraire," the surly pom- posity of literature. It is sometimes used by writers who have succeeded in their first work, while the failure of their subsequent productions appears to have given them a literary hypochondriasm. Dr. Armstrong, after his classical poem, never shook hands cordially with the public for not relishing his barren labours. In the preface to his lively " Sketches " lie tells us, " he could give them much bolder strokes as well as more delicate touches, but that he dreads the danger of writing too well, and feels the value of his own labour too sensibly to bestow it upon the mobility" This is pure milk compared to the gall in the preface to his poems. There he tells us, " that at last he has taken the trouble to collect them ! What he has destroyed would, probably enough, have been better received by the great majority of readers. But he has always most heartily despised their opinion" These prefaces
130 EAKLY FEINTING.
remind one of the prologi galeati, prefaces with a helmet ! as St. Jerome entitles the one to his Version of the Scriptures. These armed prefaces were formerly very common in the age of literary controversy; for half the business of an author consisted then, either in replying, cr anticipating a reply to the attacks of his opponent.
Prefaces ought to be dated; as these become, after a seiios of editions, leading and useful circumstances in literary- history.
Fuller with quaint humour observes on INDEXES — "An INDEX is a necessary implement, and no impediment of a book, except in the same sense wherein the carriages of an army are termed Impedimenta. Without this, a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the reader therein. I confess there is a lazy kind of learning which is only Indi- cal; when scholars (like adders which only bite the horse's heels) nibble but at the tables, which are calces librorum, neglecting the body of the book. But though the idle deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used by them, but on them), pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit thereof, and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation of an index, most used by those who most pretend to contemn it.*'
• EARLY PRINTING.
THERE is some probability that this art originated in China, where it was practised long before it was known in Europe. Some European traveller might have imported the hint. That the Romans did not practise the art of printing cannot but excite our astonishment, since they actually used it, un- conscious of their rich possession. I have seen Roman stereotypes, or immovable printing types, with which they Stamped their pottery. How in daily practising the art, though confined to this object, it did not occur to so ingenious
EARLY PRINTING. 13]
a people to print their literary works, is not easily to be accounted for. Did the wise and grave senate dread those inconveniences which attend its indiscriminate use ? Or per- haps they did not care to deprive so large a body of scribes of their business. Not a hint of the art itself appears in their wiitings.
When first the art of printing was discovered, they only made use of one side of a leaf; they had not yet found out the expedient of impressing the other. Afterwards they thought of pasting the blank sides, which made them appear like one leaf. Their blocks were made of soft woods, and their letters were carved ; but frequently breaking, the ex- pense and trouble of carving and gluing new letters suggested our movable types, which have produced an almost miracu lous celerity in this art. The modern stereotype, consisting of entire pages in solid blocks of metal, and, not being liable to break like the soft wood at first used, has been profitably employed for works which require to be frequently reprinted. Printing in carved blocks of wood must have greatly retarded the progress of universal knowledge : for one set of types could only have produced one work, whereas it now serves for hundreds.
When their editions were intended to be curious, they omitted to print the initial letter of a chapter ; they left that blank space to be painted or illuminated, to the fancy of the purchaser. Several ancient volumes of these early times have been found where these letters are wanting, as they neglected to have them painted.
The initial carved letter, which is generally a fine wood- cut, among our printed books, is evidently a remains or imi- tation of these ornaments. Among the very earliest books printed, which were religious, the Poor Man's Bible has wooden cuts in a coarse style, without the least shadowing or crossing of strokes, and these they inelegantly daubed over with broad colours, which they termed illuminating, and sold at a cheap rate to those who could not afford to purchase
132 EARLY PRINTING.
costly missals elegantly written and painted on vellum. Specimens of these rude efforts of illuminated prints may be Been in Strutt's Dictionary of Engravers. The Bodleian library possesses the originals.
In the productions of early printing may be distinguished the various splendid editions of Primers, or Prayer-books. These were embellished with cuts finished in a most elegant taste : many of them were grotesque or obscene. In one of them an angel is represented crowning the Virgin Mary, and God the Father himself assisting at the ceremony. Some- times St. Michael is overcoming Satan ; and sometimes St. Anthony is attacked by various devils of most clumsy forms —not of the grotesque and limber family of Callot !
Printing was gradually practised throughout Europe from the year 1440 to 1500. Caxton and his successor Wynkyn de Worde were our own earliest printers. Caxton was a wealthy merchant, who, in 1464, being sent by Edward IV. to negotiate a commercial treaty with the Duke of Burgundy, returned to his country with tliis invaluable art. Notwith- standing his mercantile habits, he possessed a literary taste, and his first work was a translation from a French historical miscellany.
The tradition of the Devil and Dr. Faustus was said to have been derived from the odd circumstance in which the Bibles of the first printer, Fust, appeared to the world ; but if Dr. Faustus and Faustus the printer are two different persons, the tradition becomes suspicious, though, in some respects, it ha* a foundation in truth. When Fust had dis- covered this new art, and printed off a considerable number of copies of the Bible to imitate those which were commonly sold as MSS., he undertook the sale of them at Paris. It was his interest to conceal this discovery, and to pass off his printed copies for MSS. But, enabled to sell his Bibles at sixty crowns, while the other scribes demanded five hundred, this raised universal astonishment ; and still more when he produced copies as fast as they were wanted, and even low-
EARLY PRINTING. 133
ered his price. The uniformity of the copies increased the wonder. Informations were given in to the magistrates against him as a magician ; and in searching his lodgings a great number of copies were found. The red ink, and Fust's red ink is peculiarly brilliant, which embellished his copies, was said to be his blood ; and it was solemnly adjudged that he was in league with the Infernals. Fust at length was obliged, to save himself from a bonfire, to reveal his art to the Par- liament of Paris, who discharged him from all prosecution in consideration of the wonderful invention.
When the art of printing was established, it became the glory of the learned to be correctors of the press to eminent printers. Physicians, lawyers, and bishops themselves occu- pied this department. The printers then added frequently to their names those of the correctors of the press ; and editions were then valued according to the abilities of the corrector.
The prices of books in these times were considered as an object worthy of the animadversions of the highest powers. This anxiety in favour of the studious appears from a privi- lege of Pope Leo X. to Aldus Manutius for printing Varro, dated 1553, signed Cardinal Bembo. Aldus is exhorted to put a moderate price on the work, lest the Pope should with- draw his privilege, and accord it to others.
Robert Stephens, one of the early printers, surpassed in correctness those who exercised the same profession.
To render his editions immaculate, he hung up the proofs in public places, and generously recompensed those who were BO fortunate as to detect any errata.
Plantin, though a learned man, is more famous as a printer. His printing-office was one of the wonders of Europe. This grand building was the chief ornament of the city of Ant- werp. Magnificent in its structure, it presented to the spec- tator a countless number of presses, characters of all figures and all sizes, matrixes to cast letters, and all other printing materials ; which Baillet assures us amounted to immense Bums.
134 EARLY PRINTING.
In Italy, the three Manutii were more solicitous of correct- ness and illustrations than of the beauty of their printing. They were ambitious of the character of the scholar, not of the printer.
It is much to be regretted that our publishers are not liter- ary men, able to form their own critical decisions. Among the learned printers formerly, a book was valued because it came from the presses of an Aldus or a Stephens ; and even in our own time the names of Bowyer and Dodsley sanc- tioned a work. Pelisson, in his history of the French Acad- emy, mentions that Camusat was selected as their bookseller, from his reputation for publishing only valuable works. " He was a man of some literature and good sense, and rarely printed an indifferent work ; and when we were young I recollect that we always made it a rule to purchase his pub- lications. His name was a test of the goodness of the work." A publisher of this character would be of the greatest utility to the literary world : at home he would induce a number of ingenious men to become authors, for it would be honourable to be inscribed in his catalogue ; and it would be a direction for the continental reader.
So valuable a union of learning and printing did not, un- fortunately, last. The printers of the seventeenth century became less charmed with glory than with gain. Their cor- rectors and their letters evinced as little delicacy of choice.
The invention of what is now called the Italic letter in printing was made by Aldus Manutius, to whom learning owes much. He observed the many inconveniences result- ing from the vast number of abbreviations, which were then so frequent among the printers, that a book was difficult to understand ; a treatise was actually written on the art of reading a printed book, and this addressed to the learned ! He contrived an expedient, by which these abbreviations might be entirely got rid of, and yet books suffer little in- crease in bulk. This he effected by introducing what is now called the Italic letter, though it formerly was distinguished by the name of the inventor, and called the Aldine.
ERRATA. 135
EKRATA,
BESIDES the ordinary errata, which happen in printing a work, others have been purposely committed, that the errata may contain what is not permitted to appear in the body of the work. Wherever the Inquisition had any power, partic- ularly at Rome, it was not allowed to employ the word fatum, or fata, in any book. An author, desirous of using the latter word, adroitly invented this scheme : he had printed in his book facta, and, in the erratay he put, " For facta, read fata."
Scarron has done the same thing on another occasion. He had composed some verses, at the head of which he placed this dedication — A Guillemette, Chienne de ma Sceur ; but having a quarrel with his sister, he maliciously put into the errata, " Instead of Chienne de ma Sceur, read ma Chienne de Sceur."
Lully at the close of a bad prologue said, the word Jin du prologue was an erratum, it should have been Ji du pro- logue !
In a book, there was printed, le docte Morel. A wag put into the errata, " For le docte Morel, read le Docteur Morel." This Morel was not the first docteur not docte.
When a fanatic published a mystical work full of unintel- ligible raptures, and which he entitled Les Delices de VEs- prit, it was proposed to print in his errata, "For Delices read Delires"
The author of an idle and imperfect book ended with the usual phrase of cetera desiderantur, one altered it, Non de- tiderantur sed desunt ; " The rest is wanting, but not wanted."
At the close of a silly book, the author as usual printed the word FINIS. — A wit put this among the errata, with this pointed couplet :
FINIS ! — an error, or a lie, my friend !
In writing foolish books — there is no End!
136 ERRATA.
In the year 1561, was printed a work, entitled "the Anat- omy of the Mass." It is a thin octavo, of 172 pages, and it is accompanied by an Errata of 15 pages ! The editor, a pious monk, informs us that a very serious reason induced him to undertake this task : for it is, says he, to forestall the artifices of Satan. He supposes that the Devil, to ruin the fruit of this work, employed two very malicious frauds : the first before it was printed, by drenching the MS. in a kennel, and having reduced it to a most pitiable state, rendered sev- eral parts illegible: the second, in obliging the printers to commit such numerous blunders, never yet equalled in so small a work. To combat this double machination of Satan he was obliged carefully to re-peruse the work, and to form this singular list of the blunders of printers, under the in flu- ence of Satan. All this he relates in an advertisement pre- fixed to the Errata.
A furious controversy raged between two famous scholars from a very laughable but accidental Erratum, and threat- ened serious consequences to one of the parties. Flavigny wrote two letters, criticizing rather freely a polyglot Bible edited by Abraham Ecchellensis. As this learned editor had sometimes censured the labours of a friend of Flavigny, this latter applied to him the third and fifth verses of the seventh chapter of St. Matthew, which he printed in Latin. Ver. 3. Quid vides festucam in OCULO fratris tui, et trabem in OCULO tuo non vides ? Ver. 5. Ejice primum trabem de OCULO tuo, et tune videbis ejicere festucam de OCULO fratris tui. Ecchellensis opens his reply by accusing Flavigny of an enormous crime committed in this passage ; attempting to correct the sacred text of the Evangelist, and daring to re- ject a word, while he supplied its place by another as impious as obscene ! This crime, exaggerated with all the virulence of an angry declaimer, closes with a dreadful accusation. Flavigny's morals are attacked, and his reputation over- turned by a horrid imputation. Yet all this terrible re- proach is only founded on an Erratum ! The whole arose
ERE AT A. 137
from the printer having negligently suffered the first letter of the word Oculo to have dropped from the form when he happened to touch a line with- his finger, which did not stand straight ! He published another letter to do away the impu- tation of Ecchellensis ; but thirty years afterwards his rage against the negligent printer was not extinguished ; the wits were always reminding him of it.
Of all literary blunders none equalled that of the edition of the Vulgate, by Sixtus V. His Holiness carefully super- intended every sheet as it passed through the press; and, to the amazement of the world, the work remained without a rival — it swarmed with errata ! A multitude of scraps were printed to paste over the erroneous passages, in order to give the true text. The book makes a whimsical appearance with these patches ; and the heretics exulted in this demonstration of papal infallibility ! The copies were called in, and violent attempts made to suppress it ; a few still remain for the rap- tures of the biblical collectors ; not long ago the bible of Sixtus V. fetched above sixty guineas — not too much for a mere book of blunders! The world was highly amused "at the bull of the editorial Pope prefixed to the first volume, which excommunicates all printers who in reprinting the work should make any alteration in the text!
In the version of the Epistles of St. Paul into the Ethi- opic language, which proved to be full of errors, the editors allege a good-humoured reason — "They who printed the work could not read, and we could not print ; they helped us, and we helped them, as the blind helps the blind."
A printer's widow in Germany, while a new edition of the Bible was printing at her house, one night took an opportu- nity of stealing into the office, to alter that sentence of subjec- tion to her husband, pronounced upon Eve in Genesis, chap. 3, v. 16. She took out the first two letters of the word HERR, and substituted NA in their place, thus altering the sentence from "and he shall be thy LORD" (fferr), to "and he shall be thy FOOL " (Narr). It is said her life paid for
138 ERRATA.
this intentional erratum ; and that some secreted copies of this edition have been bought up at enormous prices.
We have an edition of the -Bible, known by the name of The Vinegar BiUe ; from the erratum in the title to the 20th Chap, of St. Luke, in which " Parable of the Vineyard" is printed " Parable of the Vinegar." It was printed in 1717, at the Clarendon press.
We have had another, where " Thou shalt commit adul- tery " was printed, omitting the negation ; which occasioned the archbishop to lay one of the heaviest penalties on the Company of Stationers that was ever recorded in the annals of literary history.
Herbert Croft used to complain of the incorrectness of our English classics, as reprinted by the booksellers. It is evi- dent some stupid printer often changes a whole text inten- tionally. The fine description by Akenside of the Pantheon, " SEVERELY great," not being understood by the blockhead, was printed serenely great. Swift's own edition of " The City Shower," has "old ACHES throb." Aches is two sylla- bles, but modern printers, who had lost the right pronuncia- tion, have aches as one syllable ; and then, to complete the metre, have foisted in "aches^iV/ throb." Thus what the poet and the linguist wish to preserve is altered, and finally lost.
It appears by a calculation made by the printer of Stee- vens's edition of Shakspeare, that every octavo page of that work, text and notes, contains 2,680 distinct pieces of metal ; which in a sheet amount to 42,880 — the misplacing of any one of which would inevitably cause a blunder ! With this curious fact before us, the accurate state of our printing, in general, is to be admired, and errata ought more freely to be pardoned than the fastidious minuteness of the insect eye of certain critics has allowed.
Whether such a miracle as an immaculate edition of a classical author does exist, I have never learnt; but an at- tempt has been made to obtain this glorious singularity — and
PATRONS. 139
vas as nearly realized as is perhaps possible in the magnifi- cent edition of Os Lusiadas of Camoens, by Dom Joze Souza, in 1817. This amateur spared no prodigality of cost and labour, and flattered himself, that by the assistance of Didot, not a single typographical error should be found in that splendid volume. But an error was afterwards discov- ered in some of the copies, occasioned by one of the letters in the word Lusitano having got misplaced during the work- ing of one of the sheets. It must be confessed that this was an accident or misfortune — rather than an Erratum!
One of the most remarkable complaints on ERRATA is that of Edw. Leigh, appended to his curious treatise on " Religion and Learning." It consists of two folio pages, in a very minute character, and exhibits an incalculable number of printers' blunders. " We have not," he says, " Plantin nor Stephens amongst us ; and it is no easy task to specify the chiefest errata ; false interp unctions there are too many ; here a letter wanting, there a letter too much ; a syllable too much, one letter for another ; words parted where they should be joined ; words joined which should be severed ; words mis- placed ; chronological mistakes," &c. This unfortunate folio was printed in 1656. Are we to infer, by such frequent complaints of the authors of that day, that either they did not receive proofs from the printers, or that the printers never attended to the corrected proofs ? Each single erra- tum seems to have been felt as a stab to the literary feelings of the poor author.
PATRONS.
AUTHORS have too frequently received ill treatment, even from those to whom they dedicated their works.
Some who felt hurt at the shameless treatment of such mock Maecenases have observed that no writer should dedi- cate his works but to his FRIENDS, as was practised by the
140 PATRONS.
ancients, T\ ho usually addressed those who had solicited their labours, or animated their progress. Theodosius Gaza had no other recompense for having inscribed to Sixtus IV. his translation of the book of Aristotle on the Nature of Animals, than the price of the binding, which this charitable father of the church munificently bestowed upon him.
Theocritus fills his Idylliums with loud complaints of the neglect of his patrons ; and Tasso was as little successful in his dedications.
Ariosto, in presenting his Orlando Furioso to the Cardinal d'Este, was gratified with the bitter sarcasm of — " Dove dia- volo avete pigliato tante coglionerie ? " Where the devil have you found all this nonsense ?
"When the French historian Dupleix, whose pen was in- deed fertile, presented his book to the Duke d'Epernon, this Maecenas, turning to the Pope's Nuncio, who was present, very coarsely exclaimed — " Cadedids ! ce monsieur a un flux enrage", il chie un livre toutes les Junes ! "
Thomson, the ardent author of the Seasons, having ex- travagantly praised a person of rank, who afterwards ap- peared to be undeserving of eulogiums, properly employed his pen in a solemn recantation of his error. A very different conduct from that of Dupleix, who always spoke highly of Queen Margaret of France for a little place he held in her household : but after her death, when the place became extinct, spoke of her with all the freedom of satire. Such is too often the character of some of the literati, who only dare to reveal the truth when they have no interest to conceal it.
Poor Mickle, to whom we are indebted for so beautiful a Tersion of Camoens's Lusiad, having dedicated this work, the continued labour of five years, to the Duke of Buccleugh, had the mortification to find, by the discovery of a friend, that he had kept it in his possession three weeks before he could collect sufficient intellectual desire to cut open the pages I The neglect of this nobleman reduced the poet to a state of
PATRONS. 141
despondency. This patron was a political economist, the pupil of Adam Smith ! It is pleasing to add, in contrast with this frigid Scotch patron, that when Mickle went to Lisbon, where his translation had long preceded his visit, he found the Prince of Portugal waiting on the quay to be the first to receive the translator of his great national poem ; and during a residence of six mouths, Mickle was warmly re- garded by every Portuguese nobleman.
" Every man believes," writes Dr. Johnson, to Baretti, " that mistresses are unfaithful, and patrons are capricious. But he excepts his own mistress, and his own patron."
A patron is sometimes oddly obtained. Benserade at- tached himself to Cardinal Mazarin ; but his friendship produced nothing but civility. The poet every day indulged his easy and charming vein of amatory and panegyrical poetry, wliile all the world read and admired his verses. One evening the cardinal, in conversation with the king, described his mode of life when at the papal court. He. loved the sciences ; but his chief occupation was the belles lettres, composing little pieces of poetry ; he said that he was then in the court of Rome what Benserade was now in that of France. Some hours afterwards, the friends of the poet related to him the conversation of the cardinal. He quitted them abruptly, and ran to the apartment of his eminence, knocking with all his force, that he might be certain of being heard. The cardinal had just gone to bed ; but he inces- santly clamoured, demanding entrance ; they were compelled to open the door. He ran to his eminence, fell upon his knees, almost pulled off the sheets of the bed in rapture, imploring a thousand pardons for thus disturbing him ; but such was his joy in what he had just heard, which he re- peated, that he could not refrain from immediately giving vent to his gratitude and his pride, to have been compared with his eminence for his poetical talents ! Had the door not been immediately opened, he should have expired ; he was not rich, it is truo, but he should now die contented I
142 POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND ARTISTS,
The cardinal was pleased with his ardour, and probably never suspected his flattery ; and the next week our new actor was pensioned.
On Cardinal Richelieu, another of his patrons, he grate- fully made this epitaph : —
Cy gist, ouy gist, par la mort bleu, Le Cardinal de Richelieu, Et ce qui cause mon ennuy Ma PENSION avec lui.
Here lies, egad, 'tis very true, The illustrious Cardinal Richelieu : My grief is genuine — void of whim I Alas ! my pension lies with him !
Le Brun, the great French artist, painted himself holding in his hand the portrait of his earliest patron. In this ac- companiment the Artist may be said to have portrayed the features of his soul. If genius has too often complained •of its patrons, has it not also often over-valued their pro- tection ?
POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND ARTISTS, MADE BY ACCIDENT.
ACCIDENT has frequently occasioned the most eminent geniuses to display their powers. "It was at Rome," says Gibbon, "on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City first started to my mind."
Father Malebranche having completed his studies in plii losophy and theology without any other intention than de- voting himself to some religious order, little expected the celebrity his works acquired for him. Loitering in an idle hour in the shop of a bookseller, and turning over a parcel of
MADE BY ACCIDENT. 143
books, L'Homme de Descartes fell into his hands. Having dipt into parts, he read with such delight, that the palpita- tions of his heart compelled him to lay the volume down. It was this circumstance that produced those profound contem- plations which made him the Plato of his age.
Cowley became a poet by accident. In his mother's apart inent he found, when very young, Spenser's Fairy Queen ; and, by a continual study of poetry, he became so enchanted by the Muse, that he grew irrecoverably a poet.
Sir Joshua Reynolds had the first fondness for his art ex- cited by the perusal of Richardson's Treatise.
Vaucanson displayed an uncommon genius for mechanics. His taste was first determined by an accident : when young, he frequently attended his mother to the residence of her confessor ; and while she wept with repentance, he wept with weariness ! In this state of disagreeable vacation, says Helved us, he was struck with the uniform motion of the pendulum of the clock in the hall. His curiosity was roused ; he approached the clock-case, and studied its mes aanism ; what he could not discover he guessed at. He tnen pro- jected a similar machine ; and gradually his genius produced a clock. Encouraged by this first success, he proceeded in his various attempts ; and the genius, which thus could form a clock, in time formed a fluting automaton.
Accident determined the taste of Moliere for the stage. His grandfather loved the theatre, and frequently carried him there. The young man lived in dissipation ; the father observing it asked in anger, if his son was to be made an actor. " Would to God," replied the grandfather, " he were as good an actor as Monrose." The words struck young Moliere, he took a disgust to his tapestry trade, and it is to this circumstance France owes her greatest comic writer.
Corneille loved ; he made verses for his mistress, became a poet, composed Melite and afterwards his other celebrated works. The cliscreet Corneille had else remained a lawyer.
We owe the great discovery of Newton to a very trivial
144 POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND ARTISTS,
accident. When a student at Cambridge, he had retired during the time of the plague into the country. As he was reading under an apple-tree, one of the fruit fell, and struck him a smart blow on the head. When he observed the smallness of the apple, he was surprised at the force of the stroke. This led him to consider the accelerating motion of falling bodies; from whence he deduced the principle of gravity, and laid the foundation of his philosophy.
Ignatius Loyola was a Spanish gentleman, who was dan- gerously wounded at the siege of Pampeluna. Having heated his imagination by reading the Lives of the Saints during his illness, instead of a romance, he conceived a strong ambition to be the founder of a religious order ; whence originated the celebrated society of the Jesuits.
Rousseau found his eccentric powers first awakened by •the advertisement of the singular annual subject which the Academy of Dijon proposed for that year, in which he wrote his celebrated declamation against the arts and sciences. A circumstance which decided his future literary efforts.
La Fontaine, at the age of twenty-two, had not taken any profession, or devoted himself to any pursuit. Having acci- dentally heard some verses of Malherbe, he felt a sudden impulse, which directed his future life. He immediately bought a Malherbe, and was so exquisitely delighted with this poet that, after passing the nights in treasuring his verses in his memory, he would run in the day-time to the woods, where, concealing himself, he would recite his verses to the surrounding dryads.
Flamsteed was an astronomer by accident, He was taken from school on account of his illness, when Sacrobosco's book De Sphsera having been lent to him, he was so pleased with it that he immediately began a course of astronomic Studies. Pennant's first propensity to natural history was the pleasure he received from an accidental perusal of Wil- loughby's work on birds. The same accident*of finding, on the table of his professor, Reaumur's History of Insects,
MADE BY ACCIDENT. 145
which he read more than he attended to the lecture, and, having been refused the loan, gave such an instant turn to the mind of Bonnet, that he hastened to obtain a copy ; after many difficulties in procuring this costly work, its possession gave an unalterable direction to his future life. This nat- uralist indeed lost the use of his sight by his devotion to the microscope.
Dr. Franklin attributes the cast of his genius to a similar accident. " I found a work of De Foe's, entitled an ' Essay on Projects,' from which perhaps I derived impressions that have since influenced some of the principal events of my life."
I shall add the incident which occasioned Roger Ascham to write his Schoolmaster, one of the few works among our elder writers, which we still read with pleasure.
At a dinner given by Sir William Cecil, at his apartments at Windsor, a number of ingenious men were invited. Sec- retary Cecil communicated the news of the morning, that several scholars at Eton had run away on account of their master's severity, which he condemned as a great error in the education of youth. Sir William Petre maintained the contrary ; severe in his own temper, he pleaded warmly in defence of hard flogging. Dr. Wootton, in softer tones, sided with the secretary. Sir John Mason, adopting no side, bantered both. Mr. Haddon seconded the hard-hearted Sir William Petre, and adduced, as an evidence, that the best schoolmaster then in England Was the hardest flogger. Then was it that Roger Ascham indignantly exclaimed, that if such a master had an able scholar it was owing to the boy's genius, and not the preceptor's rod. Secretary Cecil and others were pleased with Ascham's notions. Sir Rich- ard Sackville was silent, but when Ascham after dinner went to the queen to read one of the orations of Demosthenes, he took him aside, and frankly told him that, though he had taken no part in the debate, he would not have been absent from that conversation for a great deal ; that he knew to hia
VOL. I. 10
146 INEQUALITIES OF GENIUS.
cost the truth that Ascham had supported ; for it was the perpetual flogging of such a schoolmaster that had given him an unconquerable aversion to study. And as he wished to remedy this defect in his own children, he earnestly exhorted Ascham to write his observations on so interesting a topic. Such was the circumstance which produced the admirable treatise of Roger Ascham.
INEQUALITIES OF GENIUS.
SINGULAR inequalities are observable in the labours of genius ; and particularly in those which admit great enthu- siasm, as in poetry, in painting, and in music. Faultless mediocrity, industry can preserve in one continued degree ; but excellence, the daring and the happy, can only be at- tained, by human faculties, by starts.
Our poets who possess the greatest genius, with perhaps the least industry, have at the same time the most splendid and the worst passages of poetry. Shakspeare and Dryden are at once the greatest and the least of our poets. With some, their great fault consists in having none.
Carraccio sarcastically said of Tintoret — Ho veduto il Tin- toretto hora eguale a Titiano, hora minors del Tintoretto — • " I have seen Tintoret now equal to Titian, and now less than Tintoret."
Trublet justly observes — The more there are beauties and great beauties in a work, I am the less surprised to find faults and great faults. When you say of a work that it has many faults, that decides nothing : and I do not know by this, whether it is execrable or excellent. You tell me of another, that it is without any faults : if your account be just, it is certain the work cannot be excellent.
It was observed of one pleader, that he knew more than he said; and of another, that he said more than he knew.
GEOGRAPHICAL STYLE. 147
Lucian happily describes the works of those who abound with the most luxuriant language, void of ideas. He calls their unmeaning verbosity " anemone-words ; " for anemonies are flowers, which, however brilliant, only please the eye, leaving no fragrance. Pratt, who was a writer of flowing but nugatory verses, was compared to the daisy ; a flower in- deed common enough, and without odour.
GEOGRAPHICAL STYLE.
THERE are many sciences, says Menage, on which we cannot indeed compose in a florid or elegant diction, such as geography, music, algebra, geometry, &c. When Atticus requested Cicero to write on geography, the latter excused himseif, observing that its scenes were more adapted to please the eye than susceptible of the embellishments of style. However, in these kinds of sciences, we may lend an ornament to their dryness by introducing occasionally some elegant allusion, or noticing some incident suggested by the object.
Thus when we notice some inconsiderable place, for in- stance Woodstock, we may recall attention to the residence of Chaucer, the parent of our poetry, or the romantic laby- rinth of Rosamond ; or as in " an Autumn on the Rhine," at Ingelheim, at the view of an old palace built by Charle- magne, the traveller adds, with " a hundred columns brought from Rome," and further it was " the scene of the romantic amours of that monarch's fair daughter, Ibertha, with Egin- hard, his secretary ; " and viewing the Gothic ruins on the banks of the Rhine, he noticed them as having been the haunts of those illustrious chevaliers voleurs, whose chivalry consisted in pillaging the merchants and towns, till, in the thirteenth century, a citizen of Mayence persuaded the mer- chants of more than a hundred towns to form a league
148 LEGENDS.
against these little princes and counts ; the origin of the famous Rhenish league, which contributed so much to the commerce of Europe. This kind of erudition gives an in- terest to topography, by associating in our memory great events and personages with the localities.
The same principle of composition may be carried with the happiest effect into some dry investigations, though the profound antiquary may not approve of these sports of wit or fancy. Dr. Arbuthnot^ in his Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures, a topic extremely barren of amuse- ment, takes every opportunity of enlivening the dulness of his task ; even in these mathematical calculations he betrays his wit ; and observes that " the polite Augustus, the emperor of the world, had neither any glass in his windows, nor a shirt to his back ! " Those uses of glass and linen indeed were not known in his time. Our physician is not less curious and facetious in the account of the fees which the Roman physicians received.
LEGENDS.
THOSE ecclesiastical histories entitled Legends are said to have originated in the following circumstance.
Before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools were held, the professors' in rhetoric frequently gave their pupils the life of some saint for a trial of their talent at amplification. The students, at a loss to furnish out their pages, invented most of these wonderful adventures. Jortin observes, that the Christians used to collect out of Ovid, Livy, and other pagan poets and historians, the miracles and portents to be found there, and accommodated them to their own monks and saints. The good fathers of that age, whose simplicity was not inferior to their devotion, were so delighted with these flowers of rhetoric, that they were
LEGENDS 149
induced to make a collection of these miraculous composi- tions ; not imagining that, at some distant period, they would become matters of faith. Yet, when James de Voragine, 'Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Lives of the Saints, they sought for their materials in the libraries of the monasteries ; and, awakening from the dust these manuscripts of amplification, imagined they made an invaluable present to the world, by laying before them these voluminous absur- dities. The people received these pious fictions with all imaginable simplicity, and as these are adorned by a number of cuts, the miracles were perfectly intelligible to their eyes. Tiliemont, Fleury, Baillet, Launoi, and Bollandus, cleared away much of the rubbish; the enviable title of Golden Legend, by which James de Voragine- called his work, has been disputed ; iron or lead might more aptly describe its character.
When the world began to be more critical in their reading, the monks gave a graver turn to their narratives ; and became penurious of their absurdities. The faithful Catholic contends, that the line of tradition has been preserved unbroken ; notwithstanding that the originals were lost in the general wreck of literature from the barbarians, or came down in a most imperfect state.
Baronius has given the lives of many apocryphal saints ; for instance, of a Saint Xinoris, whom he calls a martyr of Antioch ; but it appears that Baronius having read in Chry- sostom this word, which signifies a couple, or pair, he mistook it for the name of a saint, and contrived to give the most authentic biography of a saint who .never existed ! The Catholics confess this sort of blunder is not uncommon, but then it is only fools who laugh ! As a specimen of the hap- pier inventions, one is given, embellished by the diction of Gibbon —
"Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am tempted to distinguish the memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers ; whose imaginary date corresponds with the reign
150 LEGENDS.
of the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa bj the Vandals. When the Emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed them- selves in a spacious cavern on the side of an adjacent" mountain ; where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured with a pile of stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years. At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones to supply materials for some rustic edifice. The light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the Seven Sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber as they thought of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger; and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to pur- chase bread for the use of his companions. The youth, if we may still employ that appellation, could no longer recog- nize the once familiar aspect of his native country ; and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross, triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire ; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a Pagan tyrant. The bishop of Ephesus, the clergy, the magistrates, the people, and, it is said, the Emperor Theodosius himself, hastened to visit the cavern of the Seven Sleepers ; who bestowed their benediction, related their story, and at the same instant peaceably expired.
" This popular tale Mahomet learned when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria ; and he has introduced it, as a
LEGENDS. 151
divine revelation, into the Koran." — The same story has been adopted and adorned by the nations, from Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion.
The too curious reader may perhaps require other speci- mens of the more unlucky inventions of this " Golden Legend ; " as characteristic of a certain class of minds, the philosopher will contemn these grotesque fictions.
These monks imagined that holiness was often proportioned to a saint's filthiness. St. Ignatius, say they, delighted to appear abroad with old dirty shoes ; he never used a comb, but let his hair clot ; and religiously abstained from paring his nails. One saint attained to such piety as to have near three hundred patches on his breeches ; which, after his death, were hung up in public as an incentive to imitation. St. Francis discovered, by certain experience, that the devils were frightened away by such kind of breeches, but were animated by clean clothing to tempt and seduce the wearers ; and one of their heroes declares that the purest souls are in the dirtiest bodies. On this they tell a story which may not be very agreeable to fastidious delicacy. Brother Juniper was a gentleman perfectly pious, on this principle ; indeed so great was his merit in this species of mortification, that a brother declared he could always nose Brother Juniper when within a mile of the monastery, provided the wind was at the due point. Once, when the blessed Juniper, for he was no saint, was a guest, his host, proud of the honour of entertain- ing so pious a personage, the intimate friend of St. Francis, provided an excellent bed, and the finest sheets. Brother Juniper abhorred such luxury. And this too evidently appeared after his sudden departure in the morning, unknown to his kind host. The great Juniper did this, says his biog- rapher, having told us what he did, not so much from his habitual inclinations, for which he was so justly celebrated, as from his excessive piety, and as much as he could to mortify worldly pride, and to show how a true saint despised clean sheets.
152 LEGENDS.
In the life of St. Francis we find, among other grotesque miracles, that he preached a sermon in a desert, but he soon collected an immense audience. The birds shrilly warbled to every sentence, and stretched out their necks, opened their beaks, and when he finished, dispersed with a holy rapture into four companies, to report his sermon to all the birds in the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to tittle-tattle of their sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched his paws in the hands of the saint, followed him through towns, and became half a Christian.
This same St. Francis had such a detestation of the good things of this world, that he would never suffer his followers to touch money. A friar having placed in a window some money collected at the altar, he desired him to take it in his mouth, and throw it on the dung of an ass! St. Philip Nerius was such a lover of poverty, that he frequently prayed that God would bring him to that state as to stand in need of a penny, and find nobody that would give him one !
But St. Macaire was so shocked at having killed a louse, that he endured seven years of penitence among the thorns and briars of a forest. A circumstance which seems to have reached Moliere, who gives this stroke to the character of his Tartuffe : —
U s'impute a pe'che* la moindre bagatelle; Jusqnes-la qu'il se vint, 1'autre jour, s' accuser D'avoir pris une puce en faisant sa priere, Et de 1'avoir tue"e avec trop de colere !
I give a miraculous incident respecting two pious maidens. The night of the Nativity of Christ, after the first mass, they
LEGENDS. 153
both retired into a solitary spot of their nunnery till the second mass was rung. One asked the other, " Why do you want two cushions, when I% have only one ? " The other replied, " I would place it between us, for the child Jesus ; as the Evangelist says, where there are two or three persons assembled I am in the midst of them." — This being done, they sat down, feeling a most lively pleasure at their fancy ; and there they remained, from the Nativity of Christ to that of John the Baptist ; but this great interval of time passed with these saintly maidens as two hours would appear to others. The abbess and her nuns were alarmed at their absence, for no one could give any account of them. In the eve of St. John, a cowherd, passing by them, beheld a beau- tiful child seated on a cushion between this pair of runaway nuns. He hastened to the abbess with news of these stray sheep ; she came and beheld this lovely child playfully seated between these nymphs ; they, with blushing countenances, inquired if the second bell had already rung ? Both parties were equally astonished to find our young devotees had been there from the Nativity of Jesus to that of St. John. The abbess inquired about the child who sat between them ; they solemnly declared they saw no child between them ! and per- sisted in their story !
Such is one of these miracles of "the Golden Legend," which a wicked wit might comment on, and see nothing extraordinary in the whole story. The two nuns might be missing between the Nativities, and be found at the last with a child seated between them. — They might not choose to account either for their absence or their child — the only touch of miracle is, that they asseverated, they saw no child — that I confess is a little (child) too much.
The lives of the saints by Alban Butler is the most sensi- ble history of these legends ; Ribadeneira's lives of the saints exhibit more of the legendary spirit, for wanting judgment and not faith, he is more voluminous in his details. The antiquary may collect much curious philosophical informa-
154 THE PORT-ROYAL SOCIETY.
tion, concerning the manners of the times, from these singu- lar narratives.
THE PORT-ROYAL SOCIETY.
EVERY lover of letters has heard of this learned society, which contributed so greatly to establish in France a taste for just reasoning, simplicity of style, and philosophical method. Their " Logic, or the Art of Thinking," for its lucid, accurate, and diversified matter, is still an admirable work ; notwithstanding the writers had to emancipate them- selves from the barbarism of the scholastic logic. It was the conjoint labour of Arnauld and Nicolle. Europe has bene- fited by the labours of these learned men : but not many have attended to the origin and dissolution of this literary society.
In the year 1637, Le Maitre, a celebrated advocate, re- signed the bar, and the honour of being Gonseiller d'Etat, which his uncommon merit had obtained him, though then only twenty-eight years of age. His brother, De Sericourt, who had followed the military profession, quitted it at the same time. Consecrating themselves to the service of reli- gion, they retired into a small house near the Port-Royal of Paris, where they were joined by their brothers De Sacy, De St. Elme, and De Valmont. Arnauld, one of their most illustrious associates, was induced to enter into the Jansenist controversy, and then it was that they encountered the pow- erful persecution of the Jesuits. Constrained to remove from that spot, they fixed their residence at a few leagues from Paris, and called it Port-Royal des Champs.
These illustrious recluses were joined by many distin gushed persons who gave up their parks and houses to be appropriated to their schools ; and this community was called the Society of Port-Royal.
THE PORT-ROYAL SOCIETY. 155
Here were no rules, no vows, no constitution, and no cells formed. Prayer and study, and manual labour, were their only occupations. They applied themselves to the education of youth, and raised up little academies in the neigh- bourhood, where the members of Port-Royal, the most illus- trious names of literary France, presided. None considered his birth entitled him to any exemption from their public offices, relieving the poor and attending on the sick, and em- ploying themselves in their farms and gardens ; they were carpenters, ploughmen, gardeners, and vine-dressers, as if they had practised nothing else ; they studied physic, and surgery, and law ; in truth, it seems that, from religious mo- tives, these learned men attempted to form a community of primitive Christianity.
The Duchess of Longueville, once a political chief, sacri- ficed her ambition on the altar of Port-Royal, enlarged the monastic inclosure with spacious gardens and orchards, built a noble house, and often retreated to its seclusion. The learned D'Andilly, the translator of Josephus, after his studi- ous hours, resorted to the cultivation of fruit-trees ; and the fruit of Port-Royal became celebrated for its size and flavour. Presents were sent to the Queen-Mother of France, Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin, who used to call it " fruit b^ni." It appears that " families of rank, affluence, and piety, who did not wish entirely to give up their avocations in the world, built themselves country-houses in the valley of Port- Royal, in order to enjoy the society of its religious and liter- ary inhabitants."
In the solitudes of Port-Royal Racine received his educa- tion ; and, on his death-bed, desired to be buried in its ceme- tery, at the feet of his master Plamon. Arnauld, persecuted, and dying in a foreign country, still cast his lingering looks on this beloved retreat, and left the society his heart, which was there inurned.
The Duchess of Longueville, a princess of the blood-royal, erected a house near the Port-Royal, and was, during her
156 THE PORT-KOYAL SOCIETY.
life, the powerful patroness of these solitary and religious men: but her death, in 1679, was the fatal stroke which dis- persed them for ever.
The envy and the fears of the Jesuits, and their rancour against Arnauld, who with such ability had exposed their designs, occasioned the destruction of the Port- Royal Society. Exinanite^ exinanite usque ad fundamentum in ea ! — " An- nihilate it, annihilate it, to its very foundations ! " Such are the terms of the Jesuitic decree. The Jesuits had long called the little schools of Port-Royal the hot-beds of heresy. The Jesuits obtained by their intrigues an order from government to dissolve that virtuous society. They razed the buildings, and ploughed up the very foundation ; they exhausted their hatred even on the stones, and profaned even the sanctuary of the dead ; the corpses were torn out of their graves, and dogs were suffered to contend for the rags of their shrouds. The memory of that asylum of innocence and learning was still kept alive by those who collected the engravings repre- senting the place by Mademoiselle Hortemels. The police, under Jesuitic influence, at length seized on the plates in the cabinet of the fair artist. — Caustic was the retort courteous which Arnauld gave the Jesuits — " I do not fear your pen, but its knife"
These were men whom the love of retirement had united to cultivate literature, in the midst of solitude, of peace, and of piety. Alike occupied on sacred, as well as on profane writers, their writings fixed the French language. The ex- ample of these solitaries shows how retirement is favourable to penetrate into the sanctuary of the Muses.
An interesting anecdote is related of Arnauld on the occa- eion of the dissolution of this society. The dispersion of these great men, and their young scholars, was lamented by every one but their enemies. Many persons of the highest rank participated in their sorrows. The excellent Arnauld, in that moment, was as closely pursued as if he had been a felon.
THE PORT-ROYAL SOCIETY. 157
It was then the Duchess of Longueville concealed Arnauld in an obscure lodging, who assumed the dress of a layman, wearing a sword and full-bottomed wig. Arnauld was at- tacked by a feTer, and in the course of conversation with his physician, he inquired after news. " They talk of a new book of the Port- Royal," replied the doctor, " ascribed to Arnauld or to Sacy ; but I do not believe it comes from Sacy ; he does not write so well." — " How, sir ! " exclaimed the philosopher, forgetting his sword and wig ; " believe me, my nephew writes better than I do." — The physician eyed his patient with amazement — he hastened to the duchess, and told her, " The malady of the gentleman you sent me to is not very serious, provided you do not suffer him to see any one, and insist on his holding his tongue." The duchess, alarmed, immediately had Arnauld conveyed to her palace. She concealed him in an apartment, and persisted to attend him herself. — " Ask," she said, " what you want of the ser- vant, but it shall be myself who shall bring it to you."
How honourable is it to the female character, that, in many similar occurrences, their fortitude has proved to be equal to their sensibility ! But the Duchess of Longueville contemplated in Arnauld a model of human fortitude which martyrs never excelled. His remarkable reply to Nicolle, when they were hunted from place to place, should never be forgotten : Arnauld wished Nicolle to assist him in a new work, when the latter observed, " We gfre now old, is it not time to rest ? " " Rest ! " returned Arnauld, " have we not all Eternity to rest in ? " The whole of the Arnauld family were the most extraordinary instance of that hereditary char- acter which is continued through certain families : here it was a sublime, and, perhaps, singular union of learning with religion. The Arnaulds, Sacy, Pascal, Tillemont, with other illustrious names, to whom literary Europe will owe perpetual obligations, combined the life of the monastery with that of the library.
158 THE PROGRESS OF OLD AGE IN NEW STUDIES.
THE PROGRESS OF OLD AGE IN NEW STUDIES.
OF the pleasures derivable from the cultivation of the arts, sciences, and literature, time will not abate the growing pas- sion ; for old men still cherish an affection and feel a youthful enthusiasm in those pursuits, when all others have ceased to interest. Dr. Reid, to his last day, retained a most active curiosity in his various studies, and particularly in the revo- lutions of modern chemistry. In advanced life we may- resume our former studies with a new pleasure, and in old age we may enjoy them with the same relish with which more youthful students commence. Adam Smith observed to Dugald Stewart, that " of all the amusements of old age, the most grateful and soothing is a renewal of acquaintance with the favourite studies and favourite authors of youth — a remark, adds Stewart, which, in his own case, seemed to be more particularly exemplified while he was re-perusing, with the enthusiasm of a student, the tragic poets of ancient Greece. I have heard him repeat the observation more than once, while Sophocles and Euripides lay open on his table."
Socrates learnt to play on musical instruments in his old age ; Cato, at eighty, thought proper to learn Greek ; and Plutarch, almost as late in his life, Latin.
Theophrastus began his admirable work on the Characters of Men at the extreme age of ninety. He only terminated his literary labours by his death.
Ronsard, one of the fathers of French poetry, applied himself late to study. His acute genius, and ardent applica- tion, rivalled those poetic models which he admired ; and Boccaccio was thirty-five years of age when he commenced his studies in polite literature.
The great Arnauld retained the vigour of his genius, and the command of his pen, to the age of eighty-two, and was Still the great Arnauld.
Sir Henry Spelman neglected the sciences in his youth,
THE PROGRESS OF OLD AGE IN NEW STUDIES- 159
but cultivated them at fifty years of age. His early years were chiefly passed in farming, which greatly diverted him from his studies ; but a remarkable disappointment respecting a contested estate disgusted him with these rustic occupations : resolved to attach himself to regular studies, and literary society, he sold his farms, and became the most learned anti- quary and lawyer.
Colbert, the famous French minister, almost at sixty, re- turned to his Latin and law studies.
Dr. Johnson applied himself to the Dutch language but a few years before his death. The Marquis de Saint Aulaire, at the age of seventy, began to court the Muses, and they crowned him with their freshest flowers. The verses of this French Anacreon are full of fire, delicacy, and sweetness.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were the composition of his latest years : they were begun in his fifty-fourth year, and finished in his sixty-first.
Ludovico Monaldesco, at the extraordinary age of 115, wrote the memoirs of his times. A singular exertion, noticed by Voltaire ; who himself is one of the most remarkable in- stances of the progress of age in new studies.
The most delightful of auto-biographies for artists is that of Benvenuto Cellini ; a work of great originality, which was not begun till " the clock of his age had struck fifty-eight."
Koornhert began at forty to learn the Latin and Greek languages, of which he became a master ; several students, who afterwards distinguished themselves, have commenced as late in life their literary pursuits. Ogilby, the translator of Homer and Virgil, knew little of Latin or Greek till he was past fifty ; and Franklin's philosophical pursuits began when he had nearly reached his fiftieth year.
Accorso, a great lawyer, being asked why he began the study of the law so late, answered, beginning it late, he should master it the sooner.
Dryden*s complete works form the largest body of poetry from the pen of a single writer in the English language ; yet
160 THE PROGRESS OF OLD AGE IN NEW STUDIES.
he gave no public testimony of poetic abilities till his twenty- seventh year. In- his sixty-eighth year he proposed to trans- late the whole Iliad : and his most pleasing productions were written in his old age.
Michael Angelo preserved his creative genius even in extreme old age : there is a device said to be invented by him, of an old man represented in a go-cart, with an hour- glass upon it ; the inscription Ancora imparo ! — YET I AM
LEARNING !
We have a literary curiosity in a favourite treatise with Erasmus and men of letters of that period, De Ratione Studii, by Joachim Sterck, otherwise Fortius de Ringelberg. The enthusiasm of the writer often carries him to the verge of ridicule ; but something must be conceded to his peculiar situation and feelings ; for Baillet tells us that this method of studying had been formed entirely from his own practical knowledge and hard experience : at a late period of life he had commenced his studies, and at length he imagined that he had discovered a more perpendicular mode of ascending" the hill of science than by its usual circuitous windings. His work has been compared to the sounding of a trumpet.
Menage, in his Anti-Baillet, has a very curious apology for writing verses in his old age, by showing how many poets amused themselves notwithstanding their grey hairs, and wrote sonnets or epigrams at ninety.
La Casa, in one of his letters, humorously said, lo credo cK io faro Sonnetti venti cinque anni, o trenta, poi die io sard morto. — "I think I may make sonnets twenty-five, or per- haps thirty years, after I shall be dead!" Petau tells us that he wrote verses to solace the evils of old age —
Petavius seger
Cantabat veteris quaerens solatia morbi.
Malherbe declares the honours of genius were his, yet young—
Je les posseday jeune, et les possfede encoro A la fin de mes jours 1
SPANISH POETRY.
SPANISH POETRY.
PERE BOUHOCRS observes, that the Spanish poets display an extravagant imagination, which is by no means destitute of esprit — shall we say wit ? but which evinces little taste or judgment.
Their verses are much in the style of our Cowley — trivial points, monstrous metaphors, and quaint conceits. It is evi- dent that the Spanish poets imported this taste from the time of Marino in Italy ; but the warmth of the Spanish climate appears to have redoubled it, and to have blown the kindled sparks of chimerical fancy to the heat of a Vulcanian forge.
Lopes de Vega, in describing an afflicted shepherdess, in one of his pastorals, who is represented weeping near the sea-side, says, " That the sea joyfully advances to gather her tears ; and that, having enclosed them in shells, it converts them into pearls."
" Y el mar como imbidioso A tierra por las lagrimas salia, Y alegre de cogerlas Las guarda en conchas, y convierte en perlas."
Villegas addresses a stream — "Thou who runnest over sands of gold, with feet of silver," more elegant than our Shakspeare's " Thy silver skin laced with thy golden blood," which possibly he may not have written. Villegas mon- strously exclaims, " Touch my breast, if you doubt the power of Lydia's eyes — you will find it turned to ashes." Again — " Thou art so great that thou canst only imitate thyself with thy own greatness ; " much like our " None but himself can be his parallel."
Gongora, whom the Spaniards once greatly admired, and distinguished by the epithet of The Wonderful, abounds with these conceits.
He imagines that a nightingale, who enchantingly varied her notes, and sang in different manners, had a hundred
VOT,. T. 11
162 SPANISH POETRY.
thousand other nightingales in her breast, which alternately sang through her throat —
" Con diferencia tal, con gracia tanta, Aquel ruysenor llora, que sospecho Que tiene otros cien mil dentro del pecho, Que alternan su dolor por su garganta."
Of a young and beautiful lady he says, that she has but a few years of life, but many ages of beauty.
" Muchos siglos de hermosura En pocos anos de edad."
Many ages of beauty is a false thought, for beauty becomes not more beautiful from its age ; it would be only a superan- nuated beauty. A face of two or three ages old could have but few charms.
In one of his odes he addresses the River of Madrid by the title of the Duke of Streams, and the Viscount of Rivers —
* Man^anares, Man^anares, Os que en todo el aguatismo, Estais Duque de Arroyos, Y Visconde de los Rios."
He did not venture to call it a Spanish Grandee, for, in fact, it is but a shallow and dirty stream ; and as Quevedo wittily informs us, " Man$anares is reduced, during the sum- mer season, to the melancholy condition of the wicked rich man, who asks for water in the depths of hell." Though so small, this stream in the time of a flood spreads itself over the neighbouring fields ; for this reason Philip the Second built a bridge eleven hundred feet long ! — A Spaniard, pass- ing it one day, when it was perfectly dry, observing this superb bridge, archly remarked, " That it would be proper that the bridge should be sold to purchase water." — Ms menester vender la puente, para comprar agua.
The following elegant translation of a Spanish madrigal of the kind here criticized I found in a newspaper, but it is evi- dently by a master-hand.
SAINT EVKEMOND. 163
On the green margin of the land,
Where Guadalhorce winds his way,
My lady lay: With golden key Sleep's gentle hand
Had closed her eyes so bright —
Her eyes, two suns of light —
And bade his balmy dews
Her rosy cheeks suffuse. The River God in slumber saw her laid:
He raised his dripping head,
With weeds o'erspread,
Clad in his wat'ry robes approach1 d the maid, And with cold kiss, like death,
Drank the rich perfume of the maiden's breath. The maiden felt that icy kiss :
Her suns unclosed, their Jtame
Full and unclouded on th' intruder came.
Amazed th' intruder felt
HisfrotJiy body melt And heard the radiance on his bosom hiss ;
And, forced hi blind confusion to retire,
Leapt in the water to escape tfiejire
SAINT EVREMOND.
THE portrait of St. Evremond is delineated by his own hand.
In his day it was a literary fashion for writers to give their own portraits ; a fashion that seems to have passed over into our country, for Farquhar has drawn his own character in a letter to a lady. Others of our writers have given these self- miniatures. Such painters are, no doubt, great flatterers, and it is rather their ingenuity, than their truth, which we admire in these cabinet-pictures.
" I am a philosopher, as far removed from superstition as from impiety ; a voluptuary, who has not less abhorrence of debauchery, than inclination for pleasure ; a man, who has never known want nor abundance. I occupy that station of life which is contemned by those who possess every tiling
164 MEN OF GENIUS DEFICIENT IN CONVERSATION.
envied by those who have nothing; and only relished by those who make their felicity consist in the exercise of their reason. Young, I hated dissipation ; convinced that man must possess wealth to provide for the comforts of a long life. Old, I disliked economy; as I believe that we need not greatly dread want, when we have but a short time to be miserable. I am satisfied with what nature has done for me, nor do I repine at fortune. I do not seek in men what they have of evil, that I may censure ; I only discover what they have ridiculous, that I may be amused. I feel a pleasure in detecting their follies ; I should feel a greater in communicat- ing my discoveries, did not my prudence restrain me. Life is too short, according to my ideas, to read all kinds of books, and to load our memories with an endless number of things at the cost of our judgment. I do not attach myself to the observations of scientific men to acquire science ; but to the most rational, that I may strengthen my reason. Sometimes, 1 seek for more delicate minds, that my taste may imbibe their delicacy ; sometimes, for the gayer, that I may enrich my genius with their gaiety ; and, although I constantly read, I make it less my occupation than my pleasure. In religion, and in friendship, I have only to paint myself such as I am— in friendship more tender than a philosopher ; and in religion, as constant and as sincere as a youth who has more simplicity than experience. My piety is composed more of justice and charity than of penitence. I rest my confidence on God, and hope every thing from his benevolence. In the bosom of providence I find my repose, and my felicity."
MEN OP GENIUS DEFICIENT IN CONVERSATION.
THE student or the artist who may shine a luminary of learning and of genius, in his works, is found, not rarely, to lie obscured beneath a heavy cloud in colloquial discourse.
MEN OF GENIUS DEFICIENT IN CONVERSATION. 165
If you love the man of letters, seek him in the privacies of his study. It is in the hour of confidence and tranquillity that his genius shall elicit a ray of intelligence, more fervid than the labours of polished composition.
The great Peter Corneille, whose genius resembled that of our Shakspeare, and who has so forcibly expressed the sub- lime sentiments of the hero, had nothing in his exterior that indicated his genius ; his conversation was so insipid that it never failed of -wearying. Nature, who had lavished on him the gifts of genius, had forgotten to blend with them her more ordinary ones. He did not even speak correctly that language of which he was such a master. When his friends repre- sented to him how much more he might please by not disdaining to correct these trivial errors, he would smile, and say — " I am not the less Peter Corneille!"
Descartes, whose habits were formed in solitude and medi- tation, was silent in mixed company ; it was said that he had received his intellectual wealth from nature in solid bars, but not in current coin ; or as Addison expressed the same idea, by comparing himself to a banker who possessed the wealth of his friends at home, though he carried none of it in his pocket; or as that judicious moralist Nicolle, of the Port- Royal Society, said of a scintillant wit — " He conquers me in the drawing-room, but he surrenders to me at discretion on the staircase." Such may say with Themistocles, when asked to play on a lute, — " I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great city."
The deficiencies of Addison in conversation are well known. He preserved a rigid silence amongst strangers; but if he was silent, it was the silence of meditation. How often, at that moment, he laboured at some future Spec- tator !
Mediocrity can talk ; but it is for genius to observe.
The cynical Mandeville compared Addison, after having passed an evening in his company, to "a silent parson in a tie-wig."
166 VIDA.
Virgil was heavy in conversation, and resembled more an ordinary man than an enchanting poet.
La Fontaine, says La Bruyere, appeared coarse, heavy, and stupid ; he could not speak or describe what he had just seen ; bu-t when he wrote he was the model of poetry.
It is very easy, said a humorous observer on La Fontaine, to be a man of wit, or a fool ; but to be both, and that too in the extreme degree, is indeed admirable, and only to be found in him. This observation applies to that fine natural genius Goldsmith. Chaucer was more facetious in his tales than in his conversation, and the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him by saying, that his silence was more agree- able to her than his conversation.
Isocrates, celebrated for his beautiful oratorical composi- tions, was of so timid a disposition, that he never ventured to speak in public. He compared himself to the whetstone which will not cut, but enables other things to do so ; for his productions served as models to other orators. Vaucanson was said to be as much a machine as any he had made.
Dryden says of himself, — " My conversation is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees."
VIDA.
WHAT a consolation for an aged parent to see his child, by the efforts of his own merits, attain from the humblest obscurity to distinguished eminence ! What a transport for the man of sensibility to return to the obscure dwelling of his parent, and to embrace him, adorned with public honours ! Poor Vida was deprived of this satisfaction ; but he is placed higher in our esteem by the present anecdote, than even by that classic composition, which rivals the Art of Poetry of his great master.
THE SCUDERIES.
Jerome Vida, after having long served two Popes, at length attained to the episcopacy. Arrayed in the robes of his new dignity, he prepared to visit his aged parents, and felicitated himself with the raptures which the old couple would feel in embracing their son as their bishop. When he arrived at their village, he learnt that it was but a few days since they were no more. His sensibilities were exquisitely pained. The muse dictated some elegiac verse, and in the solemn pathos deplored the death and the disappointment of his parents.
THE SCUDERIES.
Bien heureux SCUDKRY, dont la fertile plume Peut tous les mois sans peine enfanter un volume.
BOILEATJ has written this couplet on the Scuderies, the brother and sister, both famous in their day for composing romances, which they sometimes extended to ten or twelve volumes. It was the favourite literature of that period, as novels are now. Our nobility not unfrequently condescended to translate these voluminous compositions.
The diminutive size of our modern novels is undoubtedly an improvement : but, in resembling the size of primers, it were to be wished that their contents had also resembled their inoffensive pages. Our great-grandmothers were incom- moded with overgrown folios ; and, instead of finishing the eventful history of two lovers at one or two sittings, it was sometimes six months, including Sundays, before they could get quit of their Clelias, their Cyruses, and Parthenissas.
Mademoiselle Scudery had composed ninety volumes / She had even finished another romance, which she would not give the public, whose taste, she perceived, no more relished this kind of works. She was one of those unfor- tunate authors who, living to more than ninety years of age, survive their own celebrity.
168 THE SCUDEKIES.
She had her panegyrists in her day : Menage observes, " What a pleasing description has Mademoiselle Scudery made, in her Cyrus, of the little court at Rambouillet ! A thousand things in the romances of this learned lady render them inestimable. She has drawn from the ancients their happiest passages, and has even improved upon them ; like the prince in the fable, whatever she touches becomes gold. "We may read her works with great profit, if we possess a correct taste, and love instruction. Those who censure their length only show the littleness of their judgment ; as if Homer and Virgil were to be despised, because many of their books were filled with episodes and incidents that necessarily retard the conclusion. It does not require much penetration to observe, that Cyrus and Clelia are a species of the epic poem. The epic must embrace a number of events to suspend the course of the narrative ; wliich, only taking in a part of the life of the hero, would terminate too soon to display the skill of the poet. Without this artifice, the charm of uniting the greater part of the episodes to the principal subject of the romance would be lost. Madem- oiselle de Scudery has so well treated them, and so aptly introduced a variety of beautiful passages, that nothing in this kind is comparable to her productions. Some expres- sions, and certain turns, have become somewhat obsolete ; all the rest will last for ever, and outlive the criticisms they have undergone."
Menage has here certainly uttered a false prophecy. The curious only look over her romances. They contain doubtless many beautiful inventions ; the misfortune is, that time and patience are rare requisites for the enjoyment of these Iliads in prose.
" The misfortune of her having written too abundantly has occasioned an unjust contempt," says a French critic. " We confess there are many heavy and tedious passages in her voluminous romances ; but if we consider that in the Clelia and the Artamene are to be found inimitable delicate touches,
THE SCUDEKIES. 169
and many splendid parts which would do honour to some of our living writers, we must acknowledge that the great de- fects of all her works arise from her not writing in an age when taste had reached the acme of cultivation. Such is her erudition, that the French place her next to the cel- ebrated Madame Dacier. Her works, containing many secret intrigues of the court and city, her readers must have keenly relished on their early publication."
Her Artamene, or the Great Cyrus, and principally her Clelia, are representations of what then passed at the court of France. The Map of the Kingdom of Tenderness, in Clelia, appeared, at the time, as one of the happiest inveii tions. This once celebrated map is an allegory which dis- tinguishes the different kinds of TENDERNESS, which aro reduced to Esteem, Gratitude, and Inclination. The map represents three rivers, which have these three names, and on which are situated three towns called Tenderness : Ten- derness on Inclination ; Tenderness on Esteem ; and Ten- derness on Gratitude. Pleasing Attentions, or Petits Soins, is a village very beautifully situated. Mademoiselle de Scudery was extremely proud of this little allegorical map ; and had a terrible controversy with another writer about its originality.
GEORGE SCUDERY, her brother, and inferior in genius, had a striking singularity of character : — he was one of the most complete votaries to the universal divinity, Vanity. With a heated imagination, entirely destitute of judgment, his military character was continually exhibiting itself by that peaceful instrument the pen, so that he exhibits a most amusing contrast of ardent feelings in a cool situation ; not liberally endowed with genius, but abounding with its sem- blance in the fire of eccentric gasconade ; no man has por- trayed his own character with a bolder colouring than himself, in his numerous prefaces and addresses; sur- rounded by a thousand self-illusions of the most sublime class, every thing that related to himself had an Homeric grandeur of conception.
170 THE SCUDEKIES.
In an epistle to the Duke of Montmorency, Scudery says, u I will learn to write with my left hand, that my right hand may more nobly be devoted to your service ; " and alluding to his pen (plume), declares " he comes from a family who never used one, but to stick in their hats." When he solicits small favours from the great, he assures them " that princes, must not think him importunate, and that his writings are merely inspired by his own individual interest ; no ! (he exclaims) I am studious only of your glory, while I am careless of my own fortune." And indeed to do him justice, he acted up to these romantic feelings. After he had pub- lished his epic of Alaric, Christina of Sweden proposed to honour him with a chain of gold of the value of five hundred pounds, provided he would expunge from his epic the eulo- giums he bestowed on the Count of Gardie, whom she had disgraced. The epical soul of Scudery magnanimously scorned the bribe, and replied, that "If the -.chain of gold should be as weighty as that chain mentioned in the history of the Incas, I will never destroy any altar on which I have sacrificed ! "
Proud of his boasted nobility and erratic life, he thus ad- dresses the reader : " You will lightly pass over any faults in my work, if you reflect that I have employed the greater part of my life in seeing the finest parts of Europe, and that I have passed more days in the camp than in the library. I have used more matches to light my musket than to light my candles ; I know better to arrange columns in the field than those on paper; and to square battalions better than to round periods." In his first publication, he began his literary career perfectly in character, by a challenge to his critics !
He is the author of sixteen plays, chiefly heroic tragedies ; children who all bear the features of their father. He first introduced, in his " I/ Amour Tyrannique," a strict observ- ance of the Aristotelian unities of time and place ; and the necessity and advantages of this regulation are insisted on,
THE SCUDERIES. 171
which only shows that Aristotle's art goes but little to the composition of a pathetic tragedy. In his last drama, " Ar- minius," he extravagantly scatters his panegyrics on its fifteen predecessors ; but of the present one he has the most exalted notion: it is the quintessence of Scudery ! An ingenious critic calls it " The downfall of mediocrity ! " It is amusing to listen to this blazing preface : — " At length, reader, nothing remains for me but to mention the great Arminius which I now present to you, and by which I have resolved to close my long and laborious course. It is indeed my master-piece ! and the most finished work that ever came from my pen ; for whether we examine the fable, the manners, the sentiments, or the versification, it is certain that I never performed any thing so just, so great, nor more beautiful ; and if my labours could ever deserve a crown, I would claim it for this work ! " The actions of this singular personage were in unison with his writings : he gives a pompous description of a most un- important government which he obtained near Marseilles, but all the grandeur existed only in our author's heated imagination. Bachaumont and de la Chapelle describe it, in their playful " Voyage : "
Mais il faut vous parler du fort, Qui sans doute est une merveille; C'est notre dame de la garde ! Gouvernement commode et beau, A qui suffit pour tout garde, Un Suisse avec sa hallebarde Peint sur la porte du chateau 1
A fort very commodiously guarded ; only requiring one sen- tinel with his halbert — painted on the door !
In a poem on his disgust with the world, he tells us how intimate he has been with princes : Europe has known him through all her provinces ; he ventured every thing in a thousand combats :
L'on me vit obelr, Ton me vit commander,
Et mon poll tout poudreux a blanchi sous les armes ;
172 E>E LA ROCHEFOUCAULT.
II est peu de beaux arts ou je ne sois instruit; En prose et en vers, mon nom fit quelque bruit; Et par plus d'un chemin je parvins a la gloire.
IMITATED.
Princes were proud my friendship -to proclaim,
And Europe gazed, where'er her hero camel
I grasp'd the laurels of heroic strife,
The thousand perils of a soldier's life;
Obedient in the ranks each toilful day !
Though heroes soon command, they first obey. .-
'T was not for me, too long a time to yield !
Born for a chieftain in the tented field !
Around my plumed helm, my silvery hair
Hung like an honour'd wreath of age and care !
The finer arts have charm' d my studious hours,
Versed in their mysteries, skilful in their powers;
In verse and prose my equal genius glow'd,
Pursuing glory by no single road !
Such was the vain George Scudery! whose heart, how- ever, was warm : poverty could never degrade him ; adversity never broke down his magnanimous spirit !
DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT.
THE maxims of this noble author are in the hands of every one. To those who choose to derive every motive and every action from the solitary principle of self-love, they are inestimable. They form one continued satire on human nature ; but they are not reconcilable to the feelings of the man of better sympathies, or to him who passes through life with the firm integrity of virtue. Even at court we find a Sully, a Malesherbes, and a Clarendon, as well as a Roche- foucault and a Chesterfield.
The Duke de la Rochefoucault, says Segrais, had not studied ; but he was endowed with a wonderful degree of discernment, and knew the world perfectly well. This
PRIOR'S HANS CARVEL. 173
afforded him opportunities of making reflections, and reducing into maxims those discoveries which he had made in the heart of man, of which he displayed an admirable knowl- edge.
It is perhaps worthy of observation, that this celebrated French duke could never summon resolution, at his election, to address the Academy. Although chosen a member, he never entered, for such was his timidity, that he could not face an audience and deliver the usual compliment on his introduction; he whose courage, whose birth, and whose genius, were alike distinguished. The fact is, as appears by Mad. de Sevigne*, that Rochefoucault lived a close domestic life ; there must be at least as much theoretical as practical knowledge in the opinions of such a retired philosopher.
Chesterfield, our English Rochefoucault, we are also informed, possessed an admirable knowledge of the heart of man; and he too has drawn a similar picture of human nature. These are two noble authors whose chief studies seem to have been made in courts. May it not be possible, allowing these authors not to have written a sentence of apocrypha, that the fault lies not so much in human nature as in the satellites of Power breathing their corrupt atmos- phere ?
PRIOR'S HANS CARVEL.
WERE we to investigate the genealogy of our best modern Btories, we should often discover the illegitimacy of our fa- vourites ; and retrace them frequently to the East. My well- read friend Douce, had collected materials for such a work. The genealogies of tales would have gratified the curious in literature.
The story of the ring of Hans Carvel is of very ancient standing, as are most of the tales of this kind.
Menage says that Poggius, who died in 1459, has the
174 PRICK'S HANS CARVEL.
merit of its invention ; but I suspect he only related a very popular story.
Rabelais, who has given it in his peculiar manner, changed its original name of Philelphus to that of Hans Carvel.
This title is likewise in the eleventh of Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles collected in 1461, for the amusement of Louis XL when Dauphin, and living in solitude.
Ariosto has borrowed it, at the end of his fifth Satire ; but has fairly appropriated it by his pleasant manner.
In a collection of novels at Lyons, in 1555, it is introduced into the eleventh novel.
Celio Malespini has it again in page 288 of the second part of his Two Hundred Novels, printed at Venice in 1 609.
Fontaine has prettily set it off, and an anonymous writer has composed it in Latin Anacreontic verses ; and at length our Prior has given it with equal gaiety and freedom. After Ariosto, La Fontaine, and Prior, let us hear of it no more ; yet this has been done, in a manner, however, which here cannot be told.
Voltaire has a curious essay to show that most of our best modern stories and plots originally belonged to the eastern nations, a fact which has been made more evident by recent researches. The Amphitryon of Moliere was an imitation of Plautus, who borrowed it from the Greeks, and they took it from the Indians ! It is given by Dow in his History of Hindostan. In Captain Scott's Tales and Anecdotes from Arabian writers, we are surprised at finding so many of our favourites very ancient orientalists. — The Ephesian Matron, versified by La Fontaine, was borrowed from the Italians ; it is to be found in Petronius, and Petro- nius had it from the Greeks. But where did the Greeks find it ? In the Arabian Tales ! And from whence did the Arabian fabulists borrow it ? From the Chinese ! It is found in Du Halde, who collected it from the Versions of the Jesuits.
THE STUDENT IN THE METROPOLIS. 175
THE STUDENT IN THE METROPOLIS.
A MAN of letters, more intent on the acquisitions of litera- ture than on the intrigues of politics, or the speculations of commerce, may find a deeper solitude in a populous metropo- lis than in the seclusion of the cotmtry.
The student, who is no flatterer of the little passions of men, will not be much incommoded by their presence. Gibbon paints his own situation in the heart of the fashion- able world: "I had not been endowed by art or nature with those happy gifts of confidence and address which unlock every door and every bosom. While coaches were rattling through Bond-street, I have passed many a solitary evening in my lodging with my books. I withdrew without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure." And even after he had published the first volume of his History, he observes that in London his confinement was solitary and sad ; " the many forgot my existence when they saw me no longer at Brookes's, and the few who sometimes had a thought on their friend were detained by business or pleasure, and I was proud and happy if I could prevail on my bookseller, Elmsly, to enliven the dulness of the evening."
A situation, very elegantly described in the beautifully polished verses of Mr. Rogers, in his " Epistle to a Friend : *
When from his classic dreams the student steals Amid the buz of crowds, the whirl of wheels, To muse unnoticed, while around him press The meteor-forms of equipage and dress; Alone in wonder lost, he seems to stand A very stranger in his native land.
He compares the student to one of the Seven Sleepers in the ancient legend.
Descartes residing in the commercial city of Amsterdam.
176 THE STUDENT IN THE METROPOLIS.
writing to Balzac, illustrates these descriptions with great force and vivacity.
" You wish to retire ; and your intention is to seek the solitude of the Chartretix, or, possibly, some of the most beautiful provinces of France and Italy. I would rather advise you, if you wish to observe mankind, and at the same time to lose yourself in the deepest solitude, to join me in Amsterdam. I prefer this situation to that even of your de- licious villa, where I spent so great a part of the last year ; for, however agreeable a country-house may be, a thousand little conveniences are wanted, which can only be found in a city. One is not alone so frequently in the country as one could wish : a number of impertinent visitors are continually besieging you. Here, as all the world, except myself, is oc- cupied in commerce, it depends merely on myself to live un- known to the world. I walk every day amongst immense ranks of people, with as much tranquillity as you do in your green alleys. The men I meet with make the same impres- sion on my mind as would the trees of your forests, or the flocks of sheep grazing on your common. The busy hum too of these merchants does not disturb one more than the pur- ling of your brooks. If sometimes I amuse myself in contem- plating their anxious motions, I receive the same pleasure which you do in observing those men who cultivate your land ; for I reflect that the end of all their labours is to embellish the city which I inhabit, and to anticipate all my wants. If you contemplate with delight the fruits of your orchards, with all the rich promises of abundance, do you think I feel less in observing so many fleets that convey to me the pro- ductions of either India ? What spot on earth could you find, which, like this, can so interest your vanity and gratify your taste ? "
THE TALMUD. 177
THE TALMUD.
THE JEWS have their TALMUD ; the CATHOLICS their LEGENDS of Saints ; and the TURKS their SONNAH. The PROTESTANT has nothing but his BIBLE. The former are three kindred works. Men have imagined that the more there is to be believed, the more are the merits of the be- liever. Hence all traditionists formed the orthodox and the strongest party. The word of God is lost amidst those heaps of human inventions, sanctioned by an order of men con- nected with religious duties; they ought now, however, to be regarded rather as CURIOSITIES OP LITERATURE. I give a sufficiently ample account of the TALMUD and the LE- GENDS ; but of the SONNAH I only know that it is a collec- tion of the traditional opinions of the Turkish prophets, di- recting the observance of petty superstitions- not mentioned in the Koran.
The TALMUD is a collection of Jewish traditions which have been orally preserved. It comprises the MISHNA, which is the text ; and the GEMARA, its commentary. The whole forms a complete system of the learning, ceremonies, civil, and canon laws of the Jews ; treating indeed on all subjects ; even gardening, manual arts, &c. The rigid Jews persuaded themselves that these traditional explications are of divine origin. The Pentateuch, say they, was written out by their legislator before his death in thirteen copies, distrib- uted among the twelve tribes, and the remaining one deposit- ed in the Ark. The oral law Moses continually taught in the Sanhedrim, to the elders and the rest of the people. The law was repeated four times ; but the interpretation was de- livered only by word of month from generation to generation.
In the fortieth year of the flight from Egypt, the memory of the people became treacherous, and Moses was constrained to repeat this oral law, which had been conveyed by succes- sive traditionists* Such is the account of honest David Levi;
VOL. I. 12
178 THE TALMUD.
it is the creed of every rabbin. — David believed in every thing, but in Jesus.
This history of the Talmud some inclined to suppose apocryphal, even among a few of the Jews themselves. When these traditions first appeared, the keenest controversy has never been able to determine. It cannot be denied that there existed traditions among the Jews in the time of Jesus Christ. About the second century, they were industriously collected by Rabbi Juda the Holy, the prince of the rabbins, who enjoyed the favour of Antoninus Pius. He has the merit of giving some order to this multifarious collection.
It appears that the Talmud was compiled by certain Jew- ish doctors, who were solicited for this purpose by their nation, that they might have something to oppose to their Christian adversaries.
The learned W. Wotton, in his curious " Discourses " on the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees, supplies an analy- sis of this vast collection ; he has translated entire two divis- ions of this code of traditional laws, with the original text and the notes.
There are two Talmuds : the Jerusalem and the Baby- lonian. The last is the most esteemed, because it is the most bulky.
R. Juda, the prince of the rabbins, committed to writing all these traditions, and arranged them under six general heads, called orders or classes. The subjects are indeed curious for philosophical inquirers, and multifarious as the events of civil life. Every order is formed of treatises / every treatise is divided into chapters ; every chapter into mishnas, which word means mixtures or miscellanies, in the form of aphorisms. In the first part is discussed what relates to seeds, fruits, and trees ; in the second, feasts ; in the third, women, their duties, their disorders, marriages, di- vorces, contracts, and nuptials ; in the fourth, are treated the damages or losses sustained by beasts or men ; of things found; deposits; usuries; rents ; farms ; partnerships in
THE TALMUD. 179
commerce ; inheritance ; sales and purchases ; oaths ; wit- nesses ; arrests; idolatry; and here are named those by whom the oral law was received and preserved. In the fifth part are noticed sacrifices and holy things ; and the sixth treats of purifications; vessels ; furniture ; clothes; houses; leprosy ; baths ; and numerous other articles. All this forms the MISHNA.
The GEMARA, that is, the complement or perfection, con- lains the DISPUTES arid the OPINIONS of the RABBINS on the oral traditions. Their last decisions. It must be con- fessed that absurdities are sometimes elucidated by other absurdities ; but there are many admirable things in this vast repository. The Jews have such veneration for this compi- lation, that they compare the holy writings to water, and the Talmud to wine ; the text of Moses to pepper, but the Tal- mud to aromatics. Of the twelve hours of which the day is composed, they tell us that God employs nine to study the Talmud, and only three to read the written law !
St. Jerome appears evidently to allude to this work, and notices its " Old Wives' Tales," and the filthiness of some of its matters. The truth is, that the rabbins resembled the Jesuits and Casuists ; and Sanchez's work on " Matrimonio " is well known to agitate matters with such scrupulous nice- ties, as to become the most offensive thing possible. But as among the schoolmen and the casuists there have been great men, the same happened to these Gemaraists. Maimonides was a pillar of light among their darkness. The antiquity of this work is of itself sufficient to make it very curious.
A specimen of the topics may be shown from the table and contents of " Mishnic Titles." In the order of seeds, we find the following heads, which present no uninteresting picture of the pastoral and pious ceremonies of the ancient Jews.
The Mishna, entitled the Corner, i. e. of the field. The laws of gleaning are commanded according to Leviticus ; xix. 9, 10. Of the corner to be left in a corn-field. When the
180 THE TALMUD.
corner is due and when not. Of the forgotten sheaf. Of the ears of corn left in gathering. Of grapes left upon the vine. Of olives left upon the trees. When and where the poor may lawfully glean. What sheaf, or olives, or grapes, may be looked upon to be forgotten, and what not. Who are the proper witnesses concerning the poor's due, to ex- empt it from tithing, &c. The distinguished uncircumci;<ed fruit : — it is unlawful to eat of the fruit of any tree trll the fifth year of its growth : the first three years of its bearing, it is called uncircumcised ; the fourth is offered to God ; and the fifth may be eaten.
The Mishna, entitled Heterogeneous Mixtures, contains several curious horticultural particulars. Of divisions be- tween garden-beds and fields, that the produce of the several sorts of grains or seeds may appear distinct. Of the distance between every species. Distances between vines planted in ^orn-fields from one another and from the corn ; between vines planted against hedges, walls, or espaliers, and any thing sowed near them. Various cases relating to vineyards planted near any forbidden seeds.
In their seventh, or sabbatical year, in which the produce of all estates was given up to the poor, one of these regula- tions is on the different work which must not be omitted in the sixth year, lest (because the seventh being devoted to the poor) the produce should be unfairly diminished, and the public benefit arising from this law be frustrated. Of what- ever is not perennial, and produced that year by the earth, no money may be made ; but what is perennial may be sold.
On priests' tithes, we have a regulation concerning eating the fruits carried to the place where they are to be separated.
The order women is very copious. A husband is obliged to forbid his wife to keep a particular man's company before two witnesses. Of the waters of jealousy by which a sus- pected woman is to be tried by drinking, we find ample par- ticulars. The ceremonies of clothing the accused woman at her trial. Pregnant women, or who suckle, are not obliged
THE TALMUD. 181
to drink ; for the rabbins seem to be well convinced of the effects of the imagination. Of their divorces many are the laws ; and care is taken to particularize bills of divorces written by men in delirium or dangerously ill. One party of the rabbins will not allow of any divorce, unless something light was found in the woman's character, while another (the Pharisees) allow divorces even when a woman has only been BO unfortunate as to suffer her husband's soup to be burnt !
In the order of damages, containing rules how to tax the damages done by man or beast, or other casualties, their dis- tinctions are as nice as their cases are numerous. What beasts are innocent and what convict. By the one they mean creatures not naturally used to do mischief in any particular way ; and by the other, those that naturally, or by a vicious habit, are mischievous that way. The tooth of a beast is convict, when it is proved to. eat its usual food, the property of another man, and full restitution must be made ; but if a beast that is used to eat fruits and herbs gnaws clothes or damages tools, which are not its usual food, the owner of the beast shall pay but half the damage when committed on the property of the injured person ; but if the injury is commit- ted on the property of the person who does the damage, he is free, because the beast gnawed what was not its usual food. As thus ; if the beast of A. gnaws or tears the clothes of B. in B.'s house or grounds, A. shall pay half the dam- ages ; but if B.'s clothes are injured in A.'s grounds by A.'s beast, A. Is free, for what had B. to do to put his clothes in A.'s grounds ? They made such subtile distinctions, as when an ox gores a man or beast, the law inquired into the habits of the beast ; whether it was an ox that used to gore, or an ox that was not used to gore. However acute these niceties sometimes were, they were often ridiculous. No beast could be convicted of being vicious till evidence was given that he had done mischief three successive days ; but if he leaves of! those vicious tricks for three days more, he is innocent again. An ox may be convict of goring an ox and not a man, or of
182 THE TALMUD.
goring a man and not an ox : nay, of goring on the Sabbath, and not on a working day. Their aim was to make the pun- ishment depend on the proofs of the design of the beast that did the injury ; but this attempt evidently led them to dis- tinctions much too subtile and obscure. Thus some rabbins say that the morning prayer of the Shemdh must be read at the time they can distinguish blue from white ; but another, more indulgent, insists it may be when we can distinguish blue from green ! which latter colours are so near akin as to require a stronger light. With the same remarkable acute- ness in distinguishing things, is their law respecting not touching fire on the Sabbath. Among those which are speci- fied in this constitution, the rabbins allow the minister to look over young children by lamp-light, but he shall not read him- self. The minister is forbidden to read by lamp-light, lest he should trim his lamp ; but he may direct the children where they should read, because that is quickly done, and there would be no danger of his trimming his lamp in their pres- ence, or suffering any of them to do it in his. All these regulations, which some, may conceive as minute and frivo- lous, show a great intimacy with the human heart, and a spirit of profound observation which had been capable of achieving great purposes.
The owner of an innocent beast only pays half the costs for the mischief incurred. Man is always convict, and for all mischief he does he must pay full costs. However there are casual damages, — as when a man pours water accident- ally on another man ; or makes a thorn-hedge which annoys his neighbour ; or falling down, and another by stumbling on him incurs harm : how such compensations are to be made. He that has a vessel of another's in keeping, and removes it, but in the removal breaks it, must swear to his own integrity ; i. e. that he had no design to break it. All offensive or noisy trades were to be carried on at a certain distance from a town. Where there is an estate, the sons inherit, and the daughters are maintained ; but if there is not enough for all,
THE TALMUD. 183
the daughters are maintained, and the sons must get theii living as they can, or even beg. The contrary to this excel- lent ordination has been observed in Europe.
These few titles may enable the reader to form a general notion of the several subjects on which the Mishna treats. The Gemara or Commentary is often overloaded with inepti tudes and ridiculous subtilties. For instance in the article of " Negative Oaths." If a man swears he will eat no bread, and does eat all sorts of bread, in that case the perjury is but one ; but if he swears that hs will eat nei;her barley, nor wheaten, nor rye-bread ; the perjury is multiplied as he mul- tiplies his eating of the several sorts. — Again, the Pharisees and the Sadducees had strong differences about touching the holy writings with their hands. The doctors ordained that whoever touched the book of the law must not eat of the truma (first fruits of the wrought produce of the ground), till they had washed their hands. The reason they gave was this. Jn times of persecution, they used to hide those sacred books in secret places, and good men would lay them out of the way when they had done reading them. It was possible then that these rolls of the law might be gnawed by mice. The hands then that touched these books when they took them out of the places where they had laid them up, were supposed to be unclean, so far as to disable them from eating the truma till they were washed. On that account they made this a general rule, that if any part of the Bible (except .Ecclesiastes, because that excellent book their sagacity ac- counted less holy than the rest) or their phylacteries, or the strings of their phylacteries, were touched by one who had a right to eat the truma, he might not eat it till he had washed his hands. An evidence of that superstitious trifling, for which the Pharisees and the later Rabbins have been so justly reprobated.
They were absurdly minute in the literal observance of their vows, and as shamefully subtile in their artful evasion of them. The Pharisees could be easy enough to themselves
184 THE TALMUD.
when convenient, and always as hard and unrelenting as possible to all others. They quibbled, and dissolved their vows, with experienced casuistry. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees in Matthew xv. and Mark vii. for flagrantly vio- lating the fifth commandment, by allowing the vow of a son, perhaps made in hasty anger, its full force, when he had sworn that his father should never be the better for him, or any thing he had, and by which an indigent father might be suffered to starve. There is an express case to this purpose in the Mishna, in the title of Vows. The reader may be amused by the story : — A man made a vow that his father should not profit by him. This man afterwards made a wed- ding-feast for his son, and wishes his father should be present ; but he cannot invite him, because he is tied up by his vow. He invented this expedient: — He makes a gift of the court in which the feast was to be kept, and of the feast itself, to a third person in trust, that his father should be invited by that third person, with the other company whom he at first de- signed. This third person then says, — If these things you thus have given me are mine, I will dedicate them to God, and then none of you can be the better for them. The son replied, — I did not give them to you that you should conse- crate them. Then the third man said, — Yours was no dona- tion, only you were willing to eat and drink with your father. Thus, says R. Juda, they dissolved each other's intentions ; and when the case came before the rabbins, they decreed, that a gift which may not be consecrated by the person tc whom it is given is not a gift.
The following extract from the Talmud exhibits a subtile mode of reasoning, which the Jews adopted when the learned of Rome sought to persuade them to conform to their idolatry. It forms an entire Mishna, entitled Seder NeziTdn, Avoda Zara, iv. 7, on idolatrous worship, translated by Wotton.
" Some Roman senators examined the Jews in this man- ner : — If God hath no delight in the worship of idols, why did he not destroy them ? The Jews made answer, — If men
RABBINICAL STORIES. 135
had worshipped only things of which the world had had no need, he would have destroyed the object of their worship ; but they also worship the sun and moon, stars and planets ; and then he must have destroyed his world for the sake of these deluded men. But still, said the Romans, why does not God destroy the things which the world does not want, and leave those things which the world cannot be without? Because, replied the Jews, this would strengthen the hands of such as worship these necessary things, who would then say, — Ye allow now that these are gods, since they are not destroyed."
RABBINICAL STORIES.
THE preceding article furnishes some of the mor3 serious investigations to be found in the Talmud. Its levities may amuse. I leave untouched the gross obscenities and immoral decisions. The Talmud contains a vast collection of stories, apologues, and jests ; many display a vein of pleasantry, and at times have a wildness of invention which sufficiently mark the features of an eastern parent. Many extravagantly pue- rile were designed merely to recreate their young students. When a rabbin was asked the reason of so much nonsense, he replied that the ancients had a custom of introducing mu- sic in their lectures, which accompaniment made them more agreeable ; but that not having musical instruments in the schools, the rabbins invented these strange stories to arouse attention. This was ingeniously said ; but they make miser- able work when they pretend to give mystical interpretations to pure nonsense.
In 1711, a German professor of the Oriental languages, Dr. Eisenmenger, published in two large volumes, quarto, his " Judaism Discovered," a ponderous labour, of which the scope was to ridicule' the Jewish traditions.
I shall give a dangerous adventure into which King David
186 RABBINICAL STORIES.
was drawn by the devil. The king one day hunting, Satan appeared before him in the likeness of a roe. David dis- charged an arrow at him, but missed his aim. He pursued the feigned roe into the land of the Philistines. Ishbi, the brother of Goliath, instantly recognized the king as him who had slain that giant. He bound him, and bending him neck and heels, laid him under a wine-press in order to press him to death. A miracle saves David. The earth beneath him became soft, and Ishbi could not press wine out of him. That evening in the Jewish congregation a dove, whose wings were covered with silver, appeared in great perplexity ; and evidently signified the king of Israel was in trouble. Abis- hai, one of the king's counsellors, inquiring for the king, and finding him absent, is at a loss to proceed, for according to the Mishna, no one may ride on the king's horse, nor sit upon his throne, nor use his sceptre. The school of the rabbins, however, allowed these things in time of danger. On this Abishai vaults on David's horse, and (with an Oriental meta- phor) the land of the Philistines leaped to him instantly ! Arrived at Ishbi's house, he beholds his mother Orpa spin- ning. Perceiving the Israelite, she snatched up her spinning- wheel and threw it at him, to kill him ; but not hitting him, she desired him to bring the spinning-wheel to her. He did not do this exactly, but returned it to her in such a way that she never asked any more for her spinning-wheel. When Ishbi saw this, and recollecting that David, though tied up neck and heels, was still under the wine-press, he cried out, " There are now two who will destroy me ! " So he threw David high up into the air, and stuck his spear into the ground, imagining that David would fall upon it and perish. But Abishai pronounced the magical name, which the Tal- mudists frequently make use of, and it caused David to hover between earth and heaven, so that he fell not down ! Both at length unite against Ishbi, and observing that two young lions should kill one lion, find no difficulty in getting rid of the brother of Goliath !
RABBINICAL STORIES. 187
Of Solomon, another favourite hero of the Talmudists, a fiLe Arabian story is told. This king was an adept in necro- mancy, and a male and a female devil were always in waiting for an emergency. It is observable, that the Arabians, who have many stories concerning Solomon, always describe him as a magician. His adventures with Aschmedai, the prince of devils, are numerous j and they both (the king and the devil) served one another many a slippery trick. One of the most remarkable is when Aschmedai, who was prisoner to Solomon, the king having contrived to possess himself of the devil's seal-ring, and chained him, one day offered to answer an unholy question put to him by Solomon, provided he re- turned him his seal-ring and loosened his chain. The imper- tinent curiosity of Solomon induced him to commit this folly. Instantly Aschmedai swallowed the monarch ; and stretching out his wings up to the firmament of heaven, one of his feet remaining on the earth, he spit out Solomon four hundred leagues from him. This was done so privately, that no one knew anything of the matter. Aschmedai then assumed the likeness of Solomon, and sat on his throne. From that hour did Solomon say, " This then is the reward of all my labour," according to Ecclesiasticus, i. 3 ; which this means, one rab- bin says, his walking-staff; and another insists was his ragged coat. For Solomon went a begging from door to door ; and wherever he came he uttered these words : " I, the preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem." At length coming be- fore the council, and still repeating these remarkable words, without addition or variation, the rabbins said, " This means something : for a fool is not constant in his tale ! " They asked the chamberlain, if the king frequently saw him ? and he replied to them, No ! Then they sent to the queens, to ask if the king came into their apartments? and they an- swered, Yes ! The rabbfas then sent them a message to take notice of his feet; for the feet of devils are like the feet of cocks. The queens acquainted them that his majesty always came in slippers, but forced them to embrace at times for-
188 RABBINICAL STORIES.
bidden by the law. He had attempted to lie with his mother Bathsheba, whom he had almost torn to pieces. At this the rabbins assembled in great haste, and taking the beggar with them, they gave him the ring and the chain in' which the great magical name was engraven, and led him to the palace. Aschmedai was sitting on the throne as the real Solomon entered ; but instantly he shrieked and flew away. Yet to his last day was Solomon afraid of the prince of devils, and had his bed guarded by the valiant men of Israel, as is written in Cant. iii. 7, 8.
They frequently display much humour in their inventions, as in the following account of the manners and morals of an infamous town, which mocked at all justice. There were in Sodom four judges, who were liars, and deriders of justice. When any one had struck his neighbour's wife, and caused her to miscarry, these judges thus counselled the husband : — " Give her to the offender, that he may get her with child for thee." When any one had cut off an ear of his neighbour's ass, they said to the owner, — " Let him have the ass till the ear is grown again, that it may be returned to thee as thou wishest." When any one had wounded his neighbour, they told the wounded man to " give him a fee for letting him blood." A toll was exacted in passing a certain bridge ; but if any one chose to wade through the water, or walk round about to save it, he was condemned to a double toll. Eleasar, Abraham's servant, came thither, and they wounded him. When, before the judge, he was ordered to pay his fee for having his blood let, Eleasar flung a stone at the judge, and wounded him; on which the judge said to him, — "What meaneth this ? " Eleasar-replied, — " Give him who wounded me the fee that is due to myself for wounding thee." The people of this town had a bedstead on which they laid travel- lers who asked to rest. If any one was too long for it, they cut off his legs ; and if he was shorter than the bedstead, they strained him to its head and foot. When a beggar came to this town, every one gave him a penny, on which was in-
RABBINICAL STORIES. 189
scribed the donor's name ; but they would sell him no bread, nor let him escape. When the beggar died from hunger, then they came about him, and each man took back his penny. These stories are curious inventions of keen mockery and malice, seasoned with humour. It is said some of the famous decisions of Sancho Panza are to be found in the Talmud.
Abraham is said to have been jealous of his wives, and built an enchanted city for them. He built an iron city and put them in. The walls were so high and dark, the sun could not be seen in it. He gave them a bowl full of pearls and jewels, which sent forth a light in this dark city equal to the sun. Noah, it seems, when in the ark, had no other light than jewels and pearls. Abraham, in travelling to Egypt, brought with him a chest. At the custom-house the officers exacted the duties. Abraham would have readily paid, but desired they would not open the chest. They first insisted on the duty for clothes, which Abraham consented to pay; but then they thought, by his ready acquiescence, that it might be gold. Abraham consents to pay for gold. They now sus- pected it might be silk. Abraham was willing to pay for silk, or more costly pearls ; and Abraham generously consented to pay as if the chest contained the most valuable of things. It was then they resolved to open and examine the chest ; and, behold, as soon as that chest was opened, that great lustre of human beauty broke out which made such a noise in the land of Egypt ; it was Sarah herself! The jealous Abra- ham, to conceal her beauty, had locked her up in this chest.
The whole creation in these rabbinical fancies is strangely gigantic and vast. The works of eastern nations are full of these descriptions ; and Hesiod's Theogony, and Milton's battles of angels, are puny in comparison with these rabbin- ical heroes, or rabbinical things. Mountains are hurled, with all their woods, with great ease, and creatures start into ex- istence too terrible for our conceptions. The winged monster in the " Arabian Nights," called the Roc, is evidently one of
190 RABBINICAL STORIES.
the creatures of rabbinical fancy ; it would sometimes, when very hungry, seize and fly away with an elephant. Captain Cook found a bird's nest in an island near New Holland, built with sticks on the ground, six-and-twenty feet in circum- ference, and near three feet in height. But of the rabbinical birds, lish, and animals, it is not probable any circumnavi- gator will ever trace even the slightest vestige or resem- blance.
One of their birds, when it spreads its wings, blots out the sun. An egg from another fell out of its nest, and the white thereof broke and glued about three hundred cedar-trees, and overflowed a village. One of them stands up to the lower joint of the leg in a river, and some mariners, imagining the water was not deep, were hastening to bathe, when a voice from heaven said, — " Step not in there, for seven years ago there a carpenter dropped his axe, and it hath not yet reached the bottom."
The following passage, concerning fat geese, is perfectly in the style of these rabbins : " A rabbin once saw in a desert a flock of geese so fat that their feathers fell off, and the rivers flowed in fat. Then said I to them, shall we have part of you in the other world when the Messiah shall come ? And one of them lifted up a wing, and another a leg, to signify these parts we should have. "We should otherwise have had all parts of these geese ; but we Israelites shall be called to an account touching these fat geese, because their sufferings are owing to us. It is our iniquities that have de- layed the coming of the Messiah ; and these geese suffer greatly by reason of their excessive fat, which daily and daily increases, and will increase till the Messiah comes ! "
What the manna was which fell in the wilderness, has often been disputed, and still is disputable ; it was sufficient for the rabbins to have found in the Bible that the taste of it was " as a wafer made with honey," to have raised their fancy to its pitch. They declare it was " like oil to children; honey to old men, and cakes to middle age." It had every
RABBINICAL STORIES. 191
kind of taste except that of cucumbers, melons, garlic, and onions, and leeks, for these were those Egyptian roots which the Israelites so much regretted to have lost. This manna had, however, the quality to accommodate itself to the palate of those who did not murmur in the wilderness ; and to these it became fish, flesh, or fowl.
The rabbins never advance an absurdity without quoting a text in Scripture ; and to substantiate this fact they quote Deut. ii. 7, where it is said,," Through this great wilderness these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee, and thou hast lacked nothing ! " St. Austin repeats this explana- tion of the rabbins, that the faithful found in this manna the taste of their favourite food ! However, the Israelites could not have found all these benefits, as the rabbins tell us ; for in Numbers xi. 6, they exclaim, " There is nothing at all besides this manna before our eyes ! " They had just said that they remembered the melons, cucumbers, &c., which they had eaten of so freely in Egypt. One of the hyper- boles of the rabbins is, that the manna fell in such mountains, that the kings of the east and the west beheld them ; which they found on a passage in the 23d Psalm ; " Thou pre- parest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies ! " These may serve as specimens of the forced interpretations on which their grotesque fables are founded.
Their detestation of Titus, their great conqueror, appears by the following wild invention. After having narrated cer- tain things too shameful to read, of a prince whom Josephus describes in far different colours, they tell us that on sea Titus tauntingly observed, in a great storm, that the God of the Jews was only powerful on the water, and that, there fore, he had succeeded in drowning Pharaoh and Sisera, " Had he been strong, he would have waged war with me in Jerusalem." On uttering this blasphemy, a voice from heaven said, " Wicked man ! I have a little creature in the world which shall wage war with thee ! " When Titua lauded, a gnat entered his nostrils, and for seven years
192 ON THE CUSTOM OF
together made holes in his brains. When his skull was opened, the gnat was found to be as large as a pigeon : the mouth of the gnat was of copper, and the claws of iron. A collection which has recently appeared of these Talmudical stories has not been executed with any felicity of selection. That there are, however, some beautiful inventions in the Talmud, I refer to the story of Solomon and Sheba, in the present volume.
ON THE CUSTOM OF SALUTING AFTER SNEEZING.
IT is probable that this custom, so universally prevalent, originated in some ancient superstition ; it seems to have ex- cited inquiry among all nations.
" Some Catholics," says Father Feyjoo, " have attributed the origin of this custom to the ordinance of a pope, Saint Gregory, who is said to have instituted a short benediction to be used on such occasions, at a time when, during a pesti- lence, the crisis was attended by sneezing, and in most cases followed by death"
But the rabbins, who have a story for every thing, say, that, before Jacob, men never sneezed but once, and then im- mediately died : they assure us that that patriarch was the first who died by natural disease ; before him all men died by sneezing ; the memory of which was ordered to be pre- served in all nations, by a command of every prince to his sub- jects to employ some salutary exclamation after the act of sneezing. But these are Talmudical dreams, and only serve to prove that so familiar a custom has always excited inquiry.
Even Aristotle has delivered some considerable nonsense on this custom ; he says it is an honourable acknowledgment of the seat of good sense and genius — the head — to distinguish it from two other offensive eruptions of air, which are never accompanied by any benediction from the by-standers. The
SALUTING AFTER SNEEZING. 193
custom, at all events, existed long prior to Pope Gregory. The lover in Apuleius, Gyton in Petronius, and allusions to it in Pliny, prove its antiquity ; and a memoir of the French Academy notices the practice in the New World, on the first discovery of America. Everywhere man is saluted for sneezing.
An amusing account of the ceremonies which attend the sneezing of a king of Monomotapa, shows what a national concern may be the sneeze of despotism. — Those who are near his person, when this happens, salute him in so loud a tone, that persons in the ante-chamber hear it, and join in the acclamation ; in the adjoining apartments they do the same, till the noise reaches the street, and becomes propa- gated throughout the city; so that, at each sneeze of his majesty, results a most horrid cry from the salutations of many thousands of his vassals.
When the king of Sennaar sneezes, his courtiers imme- diately turn their backs on him, and give a loud slap on their right thigh.
With the ancients sneezing was ominous ; from the right it was considered auspicious ; and Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, says, that before a naval battle it was a sign of conquest ! Catullus, in his pleasing poem of Acme and Septimus, makes this action from the deity of Love, from the left, the source of his fiction. The passage has been elegantly versified by a poetical friend, who finds authority that the gods sneezing on the right in heaven, is supposed to come to us on earth on the left.
Cupid sneezing in his flight, Once was heard upon the right, Boding woe to lovers true ; But now upon the left he flew, And with sporting sneeze divine, Gave to joy the sacred sign. Acm& bent her lovely face, Flush'd with rapture's rosy grace, And those eyes that swam in bliss, Prest with many a breathing kiss;
194 BONA VENTURE DE PERIERS.
Breathing, murmuring, soft, and low,
Thus might life for ever flow !
" Love of my life, and life of love I
Cupid rules our fates above,
Ever let us vow to join
In homage at his happy shrine."
Cupid heard the lovers true,
Again upon the left he flew,
And with sporting sneeze divine, .
Renew'd of joy the sacred sign J
BONAVENTURE DE PERIERS.
A HAPPT art in the relation of a stoiy is, doubtless, a very agreeable talent j it has obtained La Fontaine all the applause which his charming naivete deserves.
Of " Bonaventure de Periers, Valet de Chambre de la Royne de Navarre" there are three little volumes of tales in prose, in the quaint or the coarse pleasantry of that day. The following is not given as the best, but as it introduces a novel etymology of a word in great use : —
" A student at law, who studied at Poitiers, had tolerably improved himself in cases of equity ; not that he was over- burthened with learning ; but his chief deficiency was a want of assurance and confidence to display his knowledge. His father, passing by Poitiers, recommended him to read aloud, and to render his memory more prompt by continued exer- cise. To obey the injunctions of his father, he determined to read at the Ministery. In order to obtain a certain quantity of assurance, he went every day into a garden, which was a very retired spot, being at a distance from any house, and where there grew a great number of fine large cabbages. Thus for a long time he pursued his studies, and repeated his lectures to these cabbages, addressing them by the title of gentlemen, and balancing his periods to them as if they had composed an audience of scholars. After a fortnight or three weeks' preparation, he thought it was high time to take the
GROTIUS. 195
chair; imagining that he should be able to lecture his scholars as well as he had before done his cabbages. He comes forward, he begins his oration — but before a dozen words his tongue freezes between his teeth ! Confused, and hardly knowing where he was, all he could bring out was— Domini, Ego bene video quod non estis caules ; that is to say — for there are some who will have every thing in plain English — Gentlemen, I now clearly see you are not cabbages ! In the garden he could conceive the cabbages to be scholars ; but in the chair, he could not conceive the scholars to be cabbages."
On this story La Monnoye has a note, which gives a new origin to a familiar term.
" The hall of the School of Equity at Poitiers, where the institutes were read, was called La Ministerie. On which head Florimond de Remond (book vii. ch. 11), speaking of Albert Babinot, one of the first disciples of Calvin, after having said he was called ' The good man,' adds, that be- cause he had been a student of the institutes at this Minis- terie of Poitiers, Calvin and others styled him Mr. Minister ; from whence, afterwards, Calvin took occasion to give the name of MINISTERS to the pastors of his church."
GROTIUS.
THE Life of Grotius shows the singular felicity of a man of letters and a statesman ; and how a student can pass his hours in the closest imprisonment. The gate of the prison has sometimes been the porch of fame.
Grotius, studious from his infancy, had also received from Nature the faculty of genius, and was so fortunate as to find in his father a tutor who had formed his early taste and his moral feelings. The younger Grotius, in imitation of Horace, has celebrated his gratitude in verse.
19G GKOTIUS.
One of the most interesting circumstances in the life of this great man, which strongly marks his genius and fortitude, is displayed in the manner in which he employed his time during his imprisonment. Other men, condemned to exile and captivity, if they survive, despair ; the man of letters may reckon those days as the sweetest of his life.
When a prisoner at the Hague, he laboured on a Latin essay on the means of terminating religious disputes, which occasion so many infelicities in the state, in the church, and in families ; when he was carried to Louvenstein, he resumed his law studies, which other employments had interrupted. He gave a portion of his time to moral philosophy, which engaged him to translate the maxims of the ancient poets, collected by Stobaeus, and the fragments of Menander and Philemon.
Every Sunday was devoted to the Scriptures, and to hia Commentaries on the New Testament. In the course of the work he fell ill ; but as soon as he recovered his health, he composed his treatise, in Dutch verse, on the Truth of the Christian Religion. Sacred and profane authors occupied him alternately. His only mode of refreshing his mind was to pass from one work to another. He sent to Vossius his observations on the Tragedies of Seneca. He wrote several other works ; particularly a little Catechism, in verse, for his daughter Cornelia ; and collected materials to form his Apology. Add to these various labours an extensive cor- respondence he held with the learned ; and his letters were often so many treatises ; there is a printed collection amount- ing to two thousand. Grotius had notes ready for every classical author of antiquity, whenever they prepared a new edition ; an account of his plans and his performances might furnish a volume of themselves ; yet he never published in haste, and was fond of revising them. "We must recollect, notwithstanding such uninterrupted literary avocations, his hours were frequently devoted to the public functions of an ambassador : " I only reserve for my studies the time which
NOBLEMEN TURNED CRITICS. 197
other ministers give to their pleasures, to conversations often useless, and to visits sometimes unnecessary ; " such is the language of this great man ! Although he produced thus abundantly, his confinement was not more than two years. We may well exclaim here, that the mind of Grotius had never been imprisoned.
I have seen this great student censured for neglecting his official duties ; but, to decide on this accusation, it would be necessary to know the character of his accuser.
NOBLEMEN TURNED CRITICS.
I OFFER to the contemplation of those unfortunate mortals who are necessitated to undergo the criticisms of lords, this pair of anecdotes : —
Soderini, the Gonfaloniere of Florence, having had a statue made by the great Michael Angela, when it was finished, came to inspect it ; and having for some time saga- ciously considered it, poring now on the face, then on the arms, the knees, the form of the leg, and at length on the foot itself; the statue being of such perfect beauty, he found himself at a loss to display his powers of criticism, only by lavishing his praise. But only to praise might appear as if there had been an obtuseness in the keenness of his criticism. He trembled to find a fault, but a fault must be found. At length he ventured to mutter something concerning the nose ; it might, he thought, be something more Grecian. Angelo differed from his grace, but he said he would attempt to gratify his taste. He took up his chisel, and concealed seme marble dust in his hand ; feigning to re-touch the part, he adroitly let fall some of the dust he held concealed. The cardinal observing it as it fell, transported at the idea of his . critical acumen, exclaimed — "Ah, Angelo I you have now given an inimitable grace ! "
198 LITERARY [MPOSTURES.
When Pope was first introduced to read his Iliad to Lord Halifax, the noble critic did not venture to be dissatisfied with so perfect a composition ; but, like the cardinal, this passage, and that word, this turn, and that expression, formed the broken cant of his criticisms. The honest poet was stung with vexation ; for, in general, the parts at which his lord- ship hesitated were those with which he was most satisfied. As he returned home with Sir Samuel Garth, he revealed to him the anxiety of his mind. " Oh," replied Garth laughing, "you are not so well acquainted with his lordship as myself; he must criticize. At your next visit, read to him those very passages as they now stand ; tell him that you have recol- lected his criticisms ; and I'll warrant you of his approbation of them. This is what I have done a hundred times myself. Pope made use of this stratagem ; it took, like the marble dust of Angela ; and my lord, like the cardinal, exclaimed— " Dear Pope, they are now inimitable."
LITERARY IMPOSTURES.
SOME authors have practised singular impositions on the public. Varillas, the French historian, enjoyed for some time a great reputation in his own country for his historical compositions, but when they became more known, the schol ars of other countries destroyed the reputation which he had unjustly acquired. His continual professions of sincerity prejudiced many in his favour, and made him pass for a writer who had penetrated into the inmost recesses of the cabinet : but the public were at length undeceived, and were convinced that the historical anecdotes which Varillas put off for authentic facts had no foundation, being wholly his own inventions : — though he endeavoured to make them pass for realities by affected citations of titles, instructions, letters, memoirs, and relations, all of them imaginary ! He had
LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 199
read almost every thing historical, printed and manu- script ; but his fertile political imagination gave his con- jectures as facts, while he quoted at random his pretended authorities. Burnet's book against Varillas is a curious little volume.
Gemelli Carreri, a Neapolitan gentleman, for many years never quitted his chamber ; confined by a tedious indisposi- tion, he amused himself with writing a Voyage round the. World ; giving characters of men-, and descriptions of coun- tries, as if he had really visited them : and his volumes are still very interesting. I preserve this anecdote as it has long come down to us ; but Carreri, it has been recently ascer- tained, met the fate of Bruce ; for he had visited the places he has described ; Humboldt and Clavigero have confirmed his local knowledge of Mexico, and of China, and found his book useful and veracious. Du Halde, who has written so voluminous an account of China, compiled it from the Me- moirs of the Missionaries, and never travelled ten leagues from Paris in his life ; though he appears, by his writings, to be familiar with Chinese scenery.
Damberger's Travels some years ago made a great sensa tion — and the public were duped ; they proved to be the ideal voyages of a member of the German Grub-street, about his own garret. Too many of our "Travels" have been manufactured to fill a certain size ; and some which bear names of great authority were not written by the professed authors.
There is an excellent observation of an anonymous author : — " Writers who never visited foreign countries, and travellers who have run through immense regions with fleeting pace, have given us long accounts of various countries and people ; evidently collected from the idle reports and absurd traditions of the ignorant vulgar, from whom only they could have received those relations which we see accumulated with such undiscerning credulity."
Some authors have practised the singular imposition of
200 LITERARY IMPOSTURES.
announcing a variety of titles of works preparing for the press, but of which nothing but the titles were ever written.
Paschal, historiographer of France, had a reason for these ingenious inventions ; he continually announced such titles, that his pension for writing on the history of France might not be stopped. When he died, his historical labours did not exceed six pages !
Gregorio Led is an historian of much the same stamp as Varillas. He wrote with great facility, and hunger generally quickened his pen. He took every thing too lightly ; yet his works are sometimes looked into for many anecdotes of Eng- lish history not to be found elsewhere ; and perhaps ought not to have been there if truth had been consulted. His great aim was always to make a book : he swells his volumes with digressions, intersperses many ridiculous stories, and applies all the repartees he collected from old novel-writers to modern characters.
Such forgeries abound ; the numerous " Testaments Poli- tiques " of Colbert, Mazarin, and other great ministers, were forgeries usually from the Dutch press, as are many pre- tended political "'Memoirs."
Of our old translations from the Greek and Latin authors, many were taken from French versions.
The Travels, written in Hebrew, of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, of which we have a curious translation, are, I believe, apocryphal. He describes a journey, which, if ever he took, it must have been with his night-cap on ; being a perfect dream ! It is said that to inspirit and give importance to his nation, he pretended that he had travelled to all the syna- gogues in the East ; he mentions places which he does not appear ever to have seen, and the different people he describes no one has known. He calculates that he has found near eight hundred thousand Jews, of which about half are inde- pendent, and not subjects of any Christian or Gentile sover- eign. These fictitious travels have been a source of much trouble to the learned ; particularly to those who in their
LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 201
real to authenticate them followed the aerial footsteps of the Hyppogriffe of Rabbi Benjamin. He affirms that the tomb of Ezekiel, with the library of the first and second temples, were to be seen in his time at a place on the banks of the river Euphrates ; Wesselius of Groningen, and many other literati, travelled on purpose to Mesopotamia, to reach the tomb and examine the library ; but the fairy treasures were never to be seen, nor even heard of!
The first on the list of impudent impostors is Annius of Viterbo, a Dominican, and master of the sacred palace under Alexander VI. He pretended he had discovered the entire works of Sanchoniatho, Manetho, Berosus, and others, of which only fragments are remaining. He published seven- teen books of antiquities ! But not having any MSS. to produce, though he declared he had found them buried in the earth, these literary fabrications occasioned great contro- versies ; for the author died before he made up his mind to a confession. At their first publication universal joy was diffused among the learned. Suspicion soon rose, and detec- tion followed. However, as the forger never would acknowl- edge himself as such, it has been ingeniously conjectured that he himself was imposed on, rather than that he was the impostor ; or, as in the case of Chatterton, possibly all may not be fictitious. It has been said that a great volume in MS., anterior by two hundred years to the seventeen books of Annius, exists in the Bibliotheque Colbertine, in which these pretended histories were to be read ; but as Annius would never point out the sources of his, the whole may be consid- ered as a very wonderful imposture. I refer the reader to Tyrwhitt's Vindication of his Appendix to Rowley's or Chat- terton's Poems, p. 140, for some curious observations, and some facts of literary imposture.
An extraordinary literary imposture was that of one Joseph Vella, who, in 1794, was an adventurer in Sicily, and pre- tended that he possessed seventeen of the lost books of Livy in Arabic : he had received this literary treasure, he said,
202 LITERARY IMPOSTURES.
from a Frenchman, who had purloined it from a shelf in St. Sophia's church at Constantinople. As many of the Greek and Roman classics have been translated by the Arabians, and many were first known in Europe in their Arabic dress, there was nothing improbable in one part of his story. He was urged to publish these long-desired books ; and Lady Spencer, then in Italy, offered to defray the ex- penses. He had the effrontery, by way of specimen, .to edit an Italian translation of the sixtieth book, but that book took up no more than one octavo page ! A professor of Oriental literature in Prussia introduced it in his work, never suspect- ing the fraud ; it proved to be nothing more than the epitome of Florus. He also gave out that he possessed a code which he had picked up in the abbey of St. Martin, containing the ancient history of Sicily in the Arabic period, comprehending above two hundred years ; and of which ages their own his- torians were entirely deficient in knowledge. Vella declared he had a genuine official correspondence between the Arabian governors of Sicily and their superiors in Africa, from the first landing of the Arabians in that island Vella was now loaded with honours and pensions! It is true he showed Arabic MSS., which, however, did not contain a syllable of what he said. He pretended he was in continual correspond- ence with friends at Morocco and elsewhere. The King of Naples furnished him with money to assist his researches. Four volumes in quarto were at length published! Vella had the adroitness to change the Arabic MSS. he possessed, which entirely related to Mahomet, to matters relative to Sicily; he bestowed several weeks' labour to disfigure the whole, altering page for page, line for line, and word for word, but interspersed numberless dots, strokes, and flour- ishes; so that when he published a fac-simile, every one admired the learning of Vella, who could translate what no one else could read. He complained he had lost an eye in this minute labour ; and every one thought his pension ought to have been increased. Every thing prospered about him,
LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 203
except his eye, which some thought was not so bad neither It was at length discovered by his blunders, &c. that the whole was a forgery : though it had now been patronized, translated, and extracted through Europe. When this MS. was examined by an Orientalist, it was discovered to be nothing but a history of Mahomet and h'ls family. Vella was condemned to imprisonment.
The Spanish antiquary, Medina Conde, in order to favour the pretensions of the church in a great lawsuit, forged deeds and inscriptions, which he buried in the ground, where ho knew they would shortly be dug up. Upon their being found, he published engravings of them, and gave explana- tions of their unknown characters, making them out to be so many authentic proofs and evidences of the contested assump- tions of the clergy.
The Morocco ambassador purchased of him a copper brace- let of Fatima, which Medina proved by the Arabic inscription and many certificates to be genuine, and found among the ruins of the Alhambra, with other treasures of its last king, who had hid them there in hope of better days. This famous bracelet turned out afterwards to be the work of Medina's own hand, made out of an old brass candlestick !
George Psalmanazar, to whose labours we owe much of the great Universal History, exceeded in powers of decep- tion any of the great impostors of learning. His Island of Formosa was an illusion eminently bold, and maintained with as much felicity as erudition ; and great must have been that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar, and fertile the genius which could invent the his- tory of an unknown people : it is said that the deception was only satisfactorily ascertained by his own penitential confes- sion; he had defied and baffled the most learned. The literary impostor Lauder had much more audacity than ingenuity, and he died contemned by all the world. Ireland's "Shakspeare" served to show that commentators are not blessed, necessarily, with an interior and unerring tact.
204 LITERARY IMPOSTURES.
Genius and learning are ill directed in forming literary impositions, but at least they must be distinguished from the fabrications of ordinary impostors.
A singular forgery was practised on Captain Wilford by a learned Hindu, who, to ingratiate himself and his studies with the too zealous and pious European, contrived, among other attempts, to give the history of Noah and his three sons, in his " Purana," under the designation of Satyavrata. Captain Wilford having read the passage, transcribed it for Sir William Jones, who translated it as a curious extract ; the whole was an interpolation by the dexterous introduction of a forged sheet, discoloured and prepared for the purpose of deception, and which, having served his purpose for the moment, was afterwards withdrawn. As books in India are not bound, it is not difficult to introduce loose leaves. To confirm his various impositions, this learned forger had the patience to write two voluminous sections, in which he con- nected all the legends together in the style of the Puranas, consisting of 12,000 lines. When Captain Wilford resolved to collate the manuscript with others, the learned Hindu began to disfigure his own manuscript, the captain's, and those of the college, by erasing the name of the country and substituting that of Egypt. With as much pains, and with a more honourable direction, our Hindu Lauder might have immortalized his invention.
We have authors who sold their names to be prefixed to works they never read ; or, on the contrary, have prefixed the names of others to their own writings. Sir John Hill, once when he fell sick, owned to a friend that he had over- fatigued himself with writing seven works at once ! one of which was on architecture, and another on cookery ! This hero once contracted to translate Swammerdam's work on insects for fifty guineas. After the agreement with the book- seller, he recollected that he did not understand a word of the Dutch language ! Nor did there exist a French transla- tion ! The work, however, was not the less done for this
CARDINAL RICHELIEU. 205
email obstacle. Sir John bargained with another translator for twenty-five guineas. The second translator was precisely in the same situation as the first ; as ignorant, though not so well paid as the knight. He rebargained with a third, who perfectly understood his original, for twelve guineas! So that the translators who could not translate feasted on venison and turtle, while the modest drudge, whose name never appeared to the world, broke in patience his daily bread 1 The craft of authorship has many mysteries. One of the great patriarchs and primeval dealers in English literature was Robert Green, one of the most facetious, profligate, and indefatigable of the Scribleri family. He laid the foundation of a new dynasty of literary emperors. The first act by which he proved his claim to the throne of Grub-street has served as a model to his numerous successors — it was an ambidextrous trick ! Green sold his " Orlando Furioso " to two different theatres, and is among the first authors in Eng- lish literary history who wrote as a trader ; or as crabbed Anthony Wood phrases it, in the language of celibacy and cynicism, " he wrote to maintain his wife, and that high and loose course of living which poets generally follow." With a drop still sweeter, old Anthony describes Gayton, another worthy ; " he came up to London to live in a shirking condi- tion, and wrote trite things merely to get bread to sustain him and his wife." The hermit Anthony seems to have had a mortal antipathy against the Eves of literary men.
CARDINAL RICHELIEU.
THE present anecdote concerning Cardinal Richelieu may serve to teach the man of letters how he deals out criticisms to the great, when they ask his opinion of manuscripts, be they in verse or prose.
The cardinal placed in a gallery of his palace the portraits
206 CARDINAL RICHELIEU.
of several illustrious men, and was desirous of composing the inscriptions under the portraits. The one which he intended for Montluc, the marechal of France, was conceived in these terms : MuUa fecit, plura scripsit, vir tamen magnus fuit. He showed it without mentioning the author to Bourbon, the royal Greek professor, and asked his opinion concerning it. The critic considered that the Latin was much in the style of the breviary ; and, had it concluded with an allelujah, it would serve for an anthem to the magnificat. The cardinal agreed with the severity of his strictures, and even acknowl- edged the discernment of the professor ; " for," he said, " it is really written by a priest." But however he might approve of Bourbon's critical powers, he punished without mercy his ingenuity. The pension his majesty had bestowed on him was withheld the next year.
The cardinal was one of those ambitious men who foolishly attempt to rival every kind of genius ; and seeing himself constantly disappointed, he envied, with all the venom of rancour, those talents which are so frequently the all that men of genius possess.
He was jealous of Balzac's splendid reputation ; and offered the elder Heinsius ten thousand crowns to write a criticism which should ridicule his elaborate compositions. This Heinsius refused, because Salmasius threatened to revenge Balzac on his Herodes Infanticida.
He attempted to rival the reputation of Corneille's " Cid," by opposing to it one of the most ridiculous dramatic produc- tions ; it was the allegorical tragedy called " Europe," in which the minister had congregated the four quarters of the world ! Much political matter was thrown together, divided into scenes and acts. There are appended to it keys of the dra- matis personas and of the allegories. In this tragedy Fran- cion represents France ; Ibere, Spain ; Parthenope, Naples, &c. ; and these have their attendants : — Lilian (alluding to the French lilies) is the servant of Francion, while Hispale is the confident of Ibere. But the key to the allegories is
CARDINAL RICHELIEU. 207
much more copious : — Albione signifies England ; three knots of the hair of Austrasie mean the towns of Clermont, Stenay, and Jamet, these places once belonging to Lorraine. A box of diamonds of Austrasie is the town of Nancy, belonging once to the dukes of Lorraine. The key of Ibere's great porch is Perpignan, which France took from Spain ; and <n this manner is this sublime tragedy composed ! When he first sent it anonymously to the French Academy it was rep- robated. He then tore it in a rage, and scattered it about his study. Towards evening, like another Medea lamenting over the members of her own children, he and his secretary passed the night in uniting the scattered limbs. He then ventured to avow himself; and having pretended to correct this incorrigible tragedy, the submissive Academy retracted their censures, but the public pronounced its melancholy fate on its first representation. This lamentable tragedy was intended to thwart Corneille's " Cid." Enraged at its success, Richelieu even commanded the Academy to publish a severe critique of it, well known in French literature. Boileau on this occasion has these two well-turned verses : —
" En vain centre le Cid, un ministre se ligue ; Tout Paris, pour Giimene, a les yeux de Rodrigue."
tt To oppose the Cid, in vain the statesman tries; All Paris, for Qiimene, has Roderick's eyes."
It is said that, in consequence of the fall of this tragedy, the French custom is derived of securing a number of friends to applaud their pieces at their first representations. I find the following droll anecdote concerning this droll tragedy in Beauchamp's Recherches sur le Theatre.
The minister, after the ill success of his tragedy, retired unaccompanied the same evening to his country-house, at Ruel. He then sent for his favourite Desmaret, who was at supper with his friend Petit. Desmaret, conjecturing that the interview would be stormy, begged his friend to accompany him.
208 CARDINAL KICHELIEU.
" Well ! " said the Cardinal, as soon as he saw them, " the French will never possess a taste for what is lofty: they seem not to have relished my tragedy." — "My lord," an- swered Petit, "it is not the fault of the piece, which is so admirable, but that of the players. Did not your eminence perceive that not only they knew not their parts, but that they were all drunk ? " — " Really," replied the Cardinal, something pleased, "I observed they acted it dreadfully ill."
Desmaret and Petit returned to Paris, flew directly to the players to plan a new mode of performance, which was to secure a number of spectators ; so that at the second represen- tation bursts of applause were frequently heard !
Richelieu had another singular vanity, of closely imitating Cardinal Ximenes. Pliny was not a more servile imitator of Cicero. Marville tells us that, like Ximenes, he placed himself at the head of an army ; like him, he degraded prin- ces and nobles ; and like him, rendered himself formidable to all Europe. And because Ximenes had established schools of theology, Richelieu undertook likewise to raise into notice the schools of the Sorbonne. And, to conclude, as Ximenes had written several theological treatises, our cardinal was also desirous of leaving posterity various polemical works. But his gallantries rendered him more ridiculous. Always in ill health, this miserable lover and grave cardinal would, in a freak of love, dress himself with a red feather in his cap and sword by his side. He was more hurt by an offen- sive nickname given him by the queen of Louis XIII., than even by the hiss of theatres and the critical condemnation of academies.
Cardinal Richelieu was assuredly a great political genius. Sir William Temple observes, that he instituted the French Academy to give employment to the wits, and to hinder them from inspecting too narrowly his politics and his administra- tion. It is believed that the Marshal de Grammont lost an important battle by the orders of the cardinal; that in this critical conjuncture of affairs his majesty, who was
ARISTOTLE AND PLATO. 209
inclined to dismiss him, could not then absolutely do without him.
Vanity in this cardinal leveUed a great genius. He who would attempt to display universal excellence will be im- pelled to practice meannesses, and to act follies which, if he has the least sensibility, must occasion him many a pang and many a blush.
ARISTOTLE AND PLATO
No philosopher has been so much praised and censured as Aristotle : but he had this advantage, of which some of the most eminent scholars have been deprived, that he enjoyed during his life a splendid reputation. Philip of Macedon must have felt a strong conviction of his merit when he wrote to him, on the birth of Alexander : — " I receive from the gods this day a son ; but I thank them not so much for the favour of his birth, as his having come into the world at a time when you can have the care of his education ; and that through you he will be rendered worthy of being my son."
Diogenes Laertius describes the person of the Stagyrite. — His eyes were small, his voice hoarse, and his legs lank. He stammered, was fond of a magnificent dress, and wore costly rings. He had a mistress whom he loved passionately, and for whom he frequently acted inconsistently with the philo- sophic character ; a thing as common with philosophers as with other men. Aristotle had nothing of the austerity of the philosopher, though his works are so austere : he was open, pleasant, and even charming in his conversation ; fiery and volatile in his pleasures ; magnificent in his -dress. He is described as fierce, disdainful, and sarcastic. He joined to a taste for profound erudition, that of an elegant dissipation. His passion for luxury occasioned him such expenses when he was young, that he consumed all his property. Laertius
VOL. I 14
210 ARISTOTLE AND PLATO.
has preserved the will of Aristotle, which is curious. The chief part turns on the future welfare and marriage of his daughter. " If, after my death, she chooses to marry, the executors will be careful she marries no person of an inferior rank. If she resides at Chalcis, she shall occupy the apart- ment contiguous to the garden ; if she chooses Stagyra, she fehall reside in the house of my father, and my executors shall furnish either of those places she fixes on."
Aristotle had studied under the divine Plato ; but the dis- ciple and the master could not possibly agree in their doc- trines : they were of opposite tastes and talents. Plato was the chief of the academic sect, and Aristotle of the peripatetic. Plato was simple, modest, frugal, and of austere manners ; a good friend and a zealous citizen, but a theoretical politician : a lover indeed of benevolence, and desirous of diffusing it amongst men, but knowing little of them as we find them his " Republic " is as chimerical as Rousseau's ideas, or Sir Thomas More's Utopia.
Rapin, the critic, has sketched an ingenious parallel of these two celebrated philosophers : —
" The genius of Plato is more polished, and that of Aristotle more vast and profound. Plato has a lively and teeming imagination; fertile in invention, in ideas, in expressions, and in figures ; displaying a thousand turns, a thousand new colours, all agreeable to their subject; but after all it is nothing more than imagination. Aristotle is hard and dry in all he says, but what he says is all reason, though it is expressed drily : his diction, pure as it is, has something uncommonly austere ; and his obscurities, natural or affected, disgust and fatigue his readers. Plato is equally delicate in his thoughts and in his expressions. Aristotle, though he may be more natural, has not any delicacy ; his style is simple and equal, but close and nervous ; that of Plato is grand and elevated, but loose and diffuse. Plato always says more than he. should say : Aristotle never says enough, and leaves the reader always to think more than he says.
ARISTOTLE AND PLATO. 211
The one surprises the mind, and charms it by a flowery and sparkling character : the other illuminates and instructs it by a just and solid method. Plato communicates something of genius, by the fecundity of his own ; and Aristotle something of judgment and reason, by that impression of good sense which appears in all he says. In a word, Plato frequently only thinks to express himself well : and Aristotle only thinks to think justly."
An interesting anecdote is related of these philosophers. — Aristotle became the rival of Plato. Literary disputes long subsisted betwixt them. The disciple ridiculed his master, and the master treated contemptuously his disciple. To make his superiority manifest, Aristotle wished for a regular disputation before an audience, where erudition and reason might prevail ; but this satisfaction was denied.
Plato was always surrounded by his scholars, who took a lively interest in his glory. Three of these he taught to rival Aristotle, and it became their mutual interest to depreciate his merits. Unfortunately one day Plato found himself in his school without these three favourite scholars. Aristotle flies to him — a crowd gathers and enters with him. The idol whose oracles they wished to overturn was presented to them. He was then a respectable old man, the weight of whose years had enfeebled his memory. The combat was not long. Some rapid sophisms embarrassed Plato. He saw himself surrounded by the inevitable traps of the subtlest logician. Vanquished, he reproached his ancient scholar by a beautiful figure : — " He has kicked against us as a colt against its mother."
Soon after this humiliating adventure he ceased to give public lectures. Aristotle remained master in the field of battle. He raised a school, and devoted himself to render it (he most famous in Greece. But the three favourite scholars of Plato, zealous to avenge the cause of their master, and to make amends for their imprudence in having quitted him, armed themselves against the usurper. — Xenocrates, the
212 ABELAKD AND ELOISA.
most ardent of the three, attacked Aristotle, confounded the logician, and reestablished Plato in all his rigjits. Since that time the academic and peripatetic sects, animated by the spirits of their several chiefs, avowed an eternal hos- tility. In what manner his works have descended to us has been told in a preceding article, on Destruction of Books. Aristotle having declaimed irreverently of the gods, and dreading the fate of Socrates, wished to retire from Athens. In a beautiful manner he pointed out his successor. There were two rivals in his schools : Menedemus the Rhodian, and Theophrastus the Lesbian. Alluding delicately to his own critical situation, he told his assembled scholars that the wine he was accustomed to drink was injurious to him, and he desired them to bring the wines of Rhodes and Lesbos. He tasted both, and declared they both did honour to their soil, each being excellent, though differing in their quality ; — the Rhodian wine is the strongest, but the Lesbian is the sweetest, and that he himself preferred it. Thus his in- genuity designated his favourite Theophrastus, the author of the " Characters," for his successor.
ABELAKD AND ELOISA.
ABELARD, so famous for his writings and his amours with Eloisa, ranks amongst the Heretics for opinions concerning the Trinity ! His superior genius probably made him appear so culpable in the eyes of his enemies. The cabal formed against him disturbed the earlier part of his life with a thousand persecutions, till at length they persuaded Ber- nard, his old friend, but who had now turned saint, that poor Abelard was what their malice described him to be. Bernard, inflamed against him, condemned unheard the unfortunate scholar. But it is remarkable that the book which was burnt as unorthodox, and as the composition of
ABELARD AND ELOISA. 213
Abelard, was in fact written by Peter Lombard, bishop of Paris ; a work which has since been canonized in the Sor- bonne, and on which the scholastic theology is founded. The objectionable passage is an illustration of the Trinity by the nature of a syllogism ! — " As (says he) the three propositions of a syllogism form but one truth, so the Father and -Son con- stitute but one essence. The major represents the Father, the minor the Son, and the conclusion the Holy Ghost!" It is curious to add, that Bernard himself has explained tliis mystical union precisely in the same manner, and equally clear. " The understanding/' says this saint, " is the image of God. We find it consists of three parts : memory, intel- ligence, and will. To memory, we attribute all which we know, without cogitation ; to intelligence, all truths we dis- cover which have not been deposited by memory. By memory, we resemble the Father ; by intelligence, the Son ; and by will, the Holy Ghost." Bernard's Lib. de Anima, cap. i. num. 6, quoted in the " Mem. Secretes de la Repub- lique des Lettres." We may add, also, that because Abelard, in the warmth of honest indignation, had reproved the monks of St. Denis, in France, and St. Gildas de Ruys, in Bretagne, for the horrid incontinence of their lives, they joined his enemies, and assisted to embitter the life of this ingenious scholar, who perhaps was guilty of no other crime than that of feeling too sensibly an attachment to one who not only possessed the enchanting attractions of the softer sex, but, what indeed is very unusual, a congeniality of disposition, and an enthusiasm of imagination.
'* Is it, in heaven, a crime to love too well ? "
It appears by a letter of Peter de Cluny to Eloisa, that she had solicited for Abelard's absolution. The abbot gave it to her. It runs thus : — " Ego Petrus Cluniacensis Abbas, qui Petrum Abselardum in monachum Cluniacensem recepi, et corpus ejus furtim delatum Heloissse abbatissa? et moniali Paracleti eoucessi, auctoritate omnipotentis Dei et omnium
214 ABELAKD AND ELOISA.
sanctorum absolve eum pro officio ab omnibus peccatis euis."
An ancient chronicle of Tours records, that when they deposited the body of the Abbess Eloisa in the tomb of her lover, Peter Abelard, who had been there interred twenty years, this faithful husband raised his arms, stretched them, and closely embraced his beloved Eloisa. This poetic fiction was invented to sanctify, by a miracle, the frailties of their youthful days. This is not wonderful ; — but it is strange that Du Chesne, the father of French history, not only re- lates this legendary tale of the ancient chroniclers, but gives it as an incident well authenticated, and maintains its possi- bility by various other examples. Such fanciful incidents once not only embellished poetry, but enlivened history.
Bayle tells us that billets doux and amorous verses are two powerful machines to employ in the assaults of love, particu- larly when the passionate songs the poetical lover composes are sung by himself. This secret was well known to the ele- gant Abelard. Abelard so touched the sensible heart of Eloisa, and infused such fire into her frame, by employing his fine pen, and hisjlne voice, that the poor woman never recovered from the attack. She herself informs us that he displayed two qualities which are rarely found in philoso- phers, and by which he could instantly win the affections of the female ; — he wrote and sung finely. He composed love- verses so beautiful, and songs so agreeable, as well for the words as the airs, that all the world got them by heart, and the name of his mistress was spread from province to prov- ince.
What a gratification to the enthusiastic, the amorous, the vain Eloisa ! of whom Lord Lyttleton, in his curious Life of Henry II., observes, that had she not been compelled to read the fathers and the legends in a nunnery, and had been suf- fered to improve her genius by a continued application to polite literature, from what appears in her letters, she would have excelled any man of that age. u .,.,-
ABELARD AND ELOISA. 215
Eloisa, I suspect, however, would have proved but a very indifferent polemic ; she seems to have had a certain delicacy in her manners which rather belongs to the fine lady. We cannot but smile at an observation of hers on the Apostles, which we find in her letters : — " We read that the apostles, even in the company of their Master, were so rustic and ill- bred, that, regardless of common decorum, as they passed through the corn-fields they plucked the ears, and ate them like children. Nor did they wash their hands before they sat down to table. To eat with unwashed hands, said our Saviour to those who were offended, doth not defile a man."
It is on the misconception of the mild apologetical reply of Jesus, indeed, that religious fanatics have really considered, that, to be careless of their dress, and not to free themselves from filth and slovenliness, is an act of piety ; just as the late political fanatics, who thought that republicanism consisted in the most offensive filthiness. On this principle, that it is saint-like to go dirty, ragged, and slovenly, says Bishop Lav* ington, " Enthusiasm of the Methodists and Papists," how piously did Whitfield take care of the outward man, who in his journals writes, " My apparel was mean — thought it un- becoming a penitent to have powdered hair. — I wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes ! "
After an injury, not less cruel than humiliating, Abelard raises the school of the Paraclete ; with what enthusiasm is he followed to that desert ! His scholars in crowds hasten to their adored master ; they cover their mud sheds with the branches of trees ; they care not to sleep under better roofs, provided they remain by the side of their unfortunate mas- ter. How lively must have been their taste for study ! — it formed their solitary passion, and the love of glory was grat- ified even in that desert.
The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa, too cele- brated among certain of its readers —
" Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove; No, — make me mistress to the man I love ! — "
216 PHYSIOGNOMY.
are, however, found in her original letters. The author of that ancient work, " The Romaunt of the Rose," has given it thus naively; a specimen of the natural style in those
days : —
Si 1'empereur, qui est a Romet Soubz qui doyvent etre tout homme, Me daignoit prendre pour sa femme, Et me faire du monde dame ! Si vouldroye-je mieux, dist-elle Et Dieii en tesmoing en appelle, Etre sa Putaine appellee Qu'etre emperiere couronne'e.
PHYSIOGNOMY.
A VERY extraordinary physiognomical anecdote has been given by De la Place, in his " Pieces Interessantes et pett Connues" vol. iv. p. 8.
A friend assured him that he had seen a voluminous and secret correspondence which had been carried on between Louis XIV. and his favourite physician, De la Chambre, on this science. The faith of the monarch seems to have been great, and the purpose to which this correspondence tended was extraordinary indeed, and perhaps scarcely credible. Who will believe that Louis XIV. was so convinced of that talent which De la Chambre attributed to himself, of deciding merely by the physiognomy of persons, not only on the real bent of their character, but to what employment they were adapted, that the king entered into a secret correspondence to obtain the critical notices of his physiognomist ? That Louis XIV. should have pursued this system, undetected by his own courtiers, is also singular ; but it appears, by this cor- respondence, that this art positively swayed him in his choice of officers and favourites. On one of the backs of these letters De la Chambre had written, "If I die before -his majesty, he will incur great risk of making many an unfor- tunate choice ! "
PHYSIOGNOMY. . . 217
This collection of physiognomical correspondence, if it does really exist, would form a curious publication ; we have heard nothing of it ! De la Chambre was an enthusiastic physiognomist, as appears by his works ; " The Characters of the Passions," four volumes in quarto ; " The Art of Knowing Mankind ; " and " The Knowledge of Animals." Lavater quotes his " Vote and Interest " in favour of his favourite science. It is, however, curious to add, that Philip Earl of Pembroke, under James L, had formed a particular collection of portraits, with a view to physiognomical studies. According to Evelyn on Medals, p. 302, such was his saga- city in discovering the characters and dispositions of men by their countenances, that James I. made no little use of his extraordinary talent on the first arrival of ambassadors at court.
The following physiological definition of PHYSIOGNOMY is extracted from a publication by Dr. Gwither, of the year 1604, which, dropping his history of " The Animal Spirit " is curious : —
" Soft wax cannot receive more various and numerous impressions than are imprinted on a man's face by objects moving his affections : and not only the objects themselves have this power, but also the very images or ideas ; that is to say, any thing that puts the animal spirits into the same motion that the object present did, will have the same effect with the object. To prove the first, let one observe a man's face looking on a pitiful object, then a ridiculous, then a strange, then on a terrible or dangerous object, and so forth. For the second, that ideas have the same effect with the object, dreams confirm too often.
" The manner I conceive to be thus : — the animal spirits, moved in the sensory by an object, continue their motion to the brain ; whence the motion is propagated to this or that particular part of the body, as is most suitable to the design of its creation ; having first made an alteration in the face by its nerves, especially by the pathetic and oculorum motorii
218 PHYSIOGNOMY.
actuating its many muscles, as the dial-plate to that stupen- dous piece of clock-work which shows what is to be expected next from the striking part ; not that I think the motion of the spirits hi the sensory continued by the impression of the object all the way, as from a finger to the foot ; I know it too weak, though the tenseness of the nerves favours it. But I conceive it done in the medulla of the brain, where is the common stock of spirits ; as in an organ, whose pipes being uncovered, the air rushes into them ; but the keys let go, are stopped again. Now, if by repeated acts of frequent enter- taining of a favourite idea of a passion or vice, which natural temperament has hurried one to, or custom dragged, the face is so often put into that posture wlu'ch attends such acts, that the animal spirits find such latent passages into its nerves, that it is sometimes unalterably set: as the Indian religious are by long continuing in strange postures in their pagods. But most commonly such a habit is contracted, that it falls insensibly into that posture when some present object does not obliterate that more natural impression by a new, or dissimulation hide it.
" Hence it is that we see great drinkers with eyes generally set towards the nose, the adducent muscles being often em- ployed to let them see their loved liquor in the glass at the time of drinking ; which were, therefore, called bibitory. Lascivious persons are remarkable for the oculorum mobilis petulantia, as Petronius calls it. From this also we may solve the Quaker's expecting face, waiting for the pretended spirit ; and the melancholy face of the sectaries ; the studious face of men of great application of mind ; revengeful and bloody men, like executioners in the act : and though silence in a sort may awhile pass for wisdom, yet, sooner or later, Saint Martin peeps through the disguise to undo all. A changeable face I have observed to show a changeable mind. But I would by no means have what has been said understood as without exception ; for I doubt not but sometimes there are found men with great and virtuous souls under very unprom- ising outsides."
CHARACTERS DESCRIBED BY MUSICAL NOTES. 219
The great Prince of Conde was very expert in a sort of physiognomy which showed the peculiar habits, motions, and postures of familiar life and mechanical employments. He would sometimes lay wagers with his friends, that he would guess, upon the Pont Neuf, what trade persons were of that passed by, from their walk and air.
CHARACTERS DESCRIBED BY MUSICAL NOTES.
THE idea of describing characters under the names of Mu- sical Instruments has been already displayed in two most pleasing papers which embellish the Tatler, written by Addi- son. He dwells on this idea with uncommon success. It has been applauded for its originality ; and in the general preface to that work, those papers are distinguished for their felicity of imagination. The following paper was published in the year 1700, in a, volume of " Philosophical Transactions and Collections," and the two numbers of Addison in the year 1710. It is probable that this inimitable writer borrowed the seminal hint from this work : —
"A conjecture at dispositions from the modulations of the voice.
" Sitting in some company, and having been but a little before musical, I chanced to take notice, that, in ordinary discourse, words were spoken in perfect notes ; and that some of the company used eighths, some fifths, some thirds ; and that his discourse which was most pleasing, his words, as to their tone, consisted most of concords, and were of discords of such as made up harmony. The same person was the most affable, pleasant, and best-natured in the company. This suggests a reason why many discourses which one hears with much pleasure, when they come to be read scarcely eeem the same things.
" From this difference of Music in SPEECH, we may con
220 MILTON.
jecturc that of TEMPERS. We know the Doric mood sounda gravity and sobriety ; the Lydian, buxomness and freedom ; the JEolic, sweet stillness and quiet composure ; the Phrygian, jollity and youthful levity ; the Ionic is a stiller of storms and disturbances arising from passion ; and why may we not reasonably suppose, that those whose speech naturally runs into the notes peculiar to any of these moods, are likewise in nature hereunto congenerous ? G Fa ut may show me to be of an ordinary capacity, though good disposition. G Sol re ut, to be peevish and effeminate. Flats, a manly or melancholic sadness. He who hath a voice which will in some measure agree with all cliffs, to be of good parts, and fit for variety of employments, yet somewhat of an inconstant nature. Like- wise from the TIMES : so semi-briefs may speak a temper dull and phlegmatic ; minims, grave and serious ; crotchets, a prompt wit ; quavers, vehemency of passion, and scolds use them. Semi-brief-rest may denote one either stupid or fuller of thoughts than he can utter; minim-rest, one that delibe- rates ; crotchet-rest, one in a passion. So that from the natural use of MOOD, NOTE, and TIME, we may collect DISPOSITIONS."
MILTON.
IT is painful to observe the acrimony which the most emi- nent scholars have infused frequently in their controversial writings. The politeness of the present times has in some degree softened the malignity of the man, in the dignity of the author ; but this is by no means an irrevocable law.
It is said not to be honourable to literature to revive such controversies ; and a work entitled " Querelles Litte- raires," when it first appeared, excited loud murmurs ; but it has its moral : like showing the drunkard to a youth, that he may turn aside disgusted with ebriety. Must we suppose Uiat men of letters are exempt from the human passions ?
MILTON. 221
Their sensibility, on the contrary, is more irritable than that of others. To observe the ridiculous attitudes in which great men appear, when they employ the style of the fish-market, may be one great means of restraining that ferocious pride often breaking out in the republic of letters. Johnson at least appears to have entertained the same opinion ; for he thought proper to republish the low invective of Dryden against Settle ; and since I have published my " Quarrels of Authors," it becomes me to say no more.
The celebrated controversy of 'Salmasius, continued by Morus with Milton — the first the pleader of King Charles, the latter the advocate of the people — was of that magnitude, that all Europe took a part in the paper-war of these two great men. The answer of Milton, who perfectly massacred Salmasius, is now read but by the few. Whatever is ad- dressed to the times, however great may be its merits, is doomed to perish with the times ; yet on these .pages the philosopher will not contemplate in vain.
It will form no uninteresting article to gather a few of the rhetorical weeds, for flowers we cannot well call them, with which they mutually presented each other. Their rancour was at least equal to their erudition, the two most learned antagonists of a learned age !
Salmasius was a man of vast erudition, but no taste. His writings are learned, but sometimes ridiculous. He called his work Defensio Regia, Defence of Kings. The opening of this work provokes a laugh : — " Englishmen ! who toss the heads of kings as so many tennis-balls ; who play with crowns as if they were bowls ; who look upon sceptres as so many crooks."
That the deformity of the body is an idea we attach to the deformity of the mind, the vulgar must acknowledge ; but surely it is unpardonable in the enlightened philosopher thus to compare the crookedness of corporeal matter with the rectitude of the intellect ; yet Milbourne and Dennis, the last a formidable critic, have frequently considered, that
222 MILTON.
comparing Dryden and Pope to whatever the eye turned from with displeasure, was very good argument to lower their literary abilities. Salmasius seems also 'to have enter- tained this idea, though his spies in England gave him wrong information ; or, possibly, he only drew the figure of his own distempered imagination.
Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of man ; an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless being, composed of nothing but skin and bone ; a contemptible pedagogue, fit only to flog his boys : and, rising into a poetic frenzy, applies to him the words of Virgil, " Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui luinen ademptum" Our great poet thought this senseless declamation merited a serious refutation ; perhaps he did not wish to appear despicable in the eyes of the ladies ; and he would not be silent on the subject, he says, lest any one should consider him as the credulous Spaniards are made to believe by their priests, that a heretic is a kind of rhinoceros or a dog-headed monster. Milton says, that he does not think any one ever considered him as unbeautiful ; that his size rather approaches mediocrity than the diminutive ; that he still felt the same courage and the same strength which he possessed when young, when, with his sword, he felt no dif- ficulty to combat with men more robust than himself; that his face, far from being pale, emaciated, and wrinkled, was sufficiently creditable to him : for though he had passed his fortieth year, he was in all other respects ten years younger. And very pathetically he adds, " that even his eyes, blind as they are, are unblemished in their appearance ; in this in- stance alone, and much against my inclination, I am a de- ceiver ! "
Morus, in his Epistle dedicatory of his Regii Sanguinis Clamor, compares Milton to a hangman ; his disordered vision to the blindness of his soul, and vomits forth his venom.
When Salmasius found that his strictures on the person of
MILTON. 223
Milton were false, and that, on the contrary, it was uncom- monly beautiful, he then turned his battery against those graces with which Nature had so liberally adorned his ad- versary : and it is now that he seems to have laid no restric- tions on his pen ; but, raging with the irritation of Milton's success, he throws out the blackest calumnies, and the most infamous aspersions.
It must be observed, when Milton first proposed to an- swer Salmasius, he had lost the use of one of his eyes ; and his physicians declared, that if he applied himself to the con- troversy, the other would likewise close for ever ! His pa- triotism was not to be baffled, but with life itself. Unhap- pily, the prediction of his physicians took place ! Thus & learned man in the occupations of study falls blind ; a cir- cumstance even now not read without sympathy. Salmasius considers it as one from which he may draw caustic ridicule and satiric severity.
Salmasius glories that Milton lost his health and his eyes in answering his apology for King Charles ! He does not now reproach him with natural deformities ; but he malig- nantly sympathizes with him, that he now no more is in pos- session of that beauty which rendered him so amiable during his residence in Italy. He speaks more plainly in a follow- ing page ; and, in a word, would blacken the austere virtue of Milton with a crime infamous to name.
Impartiality of criticism obliges us to confess that Milton was not destitute of rancour. When he was told that his adversary boasted he had occasioned the loss of his eyes, he answered, with ferocity — " And I shall cost him his life ! " A prediction which was soon after verified ; for Christina, Queen of Sweden, withdrew her patronage from Salmasius, and sided with Milton. The universal neglect the proud scholar felt hastened his death in the course of a twelve- month.
The greatness of Milton's mind was degraded ! He act- ually condescended to enter into a correspondence in Hoi-
224 ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.
land, to obtain little scandalous anecdotes of his miserable adversary, Mortis ; and deigned to adulate the unworthy Christina of Sweden, because she had expressed herself favourably on his " Defence." Of late years, we have had too many instances of this worst of passions, the antipathies of politics !
ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.
WE are indebted to the Italians for the idea of news- papers. The title of their gazettas was, perhaps, derived from gazzera, a magpie or chatterer ; or, more probably, from a farthing coin, peculiar to the city of Venice, called gazetta, which was the common price of the newspapers. An- other etymologist is for deriving it from the Latin gaza, which would colloquially lengthen into gazetta, and signify a little treasury of news. The Spanish derive it from the Latin gaza, and likewise their gazatero, and our gazetteer, for a writer -of the gazette, and, what is peculiar to them selves, gazetista, for a lover of the gazette.
Newspapers then took their birth in that principal land of modern politicians, Italy, and under the government of that aristocratical republic, Venice. The first paper was a Ve- netian one and only monthly ; but it was merely the news- paper of the government. Other governments afterwards adopted the Venetian plan of a newspaper with the Vene- tian name : — from a solitary government gazette, an inunda- tion of newspapers has burst upon us.
Mr. George Chalmers, in his Life of Ruddiman, gives a curious particular of these Venetian gazettes: "A jealous government did not allow a printed newspaper ; and the Venetian gazetta continued long after the invention of print- ing, to the close of the sixteenth century, and even to our own days, to be distributed in manuscript." In the Mag-
OKIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS. 225
liabechian library at Florence, are thirty volumes of Vene- tian gazettas, all in manuscript.
Those who first wrote newspapers were called by the Ital- ians menanti ; because, says Vossius, they, intended com- monly by these loose papers to spread about defamatory reflections, and were therefore prohibited in Italy by Gregory XIII. by a particular bull, under the name of menantes, from the Latin ?ninantes, threatening. Menage, however, derives it from the Italian menare, which signifies to lead at large, or spread afar.
We are indebted to the wisdom of Elizabeth and the pru- dence of Burleigh for the first newspaper. The epoch of the Spanish Armada is also the epoch of a genuine news-^ paper. In the British Museum are several newspapers which were printed while the Spanish fleet was in the Eng- lish Channel during the year 1588. It was a wise policy to prevent, during a moment of general anxiety, the danger of false reports, by publishing real information. The earliest newspaper is entitled " The English Mercuric," which by authority was " imprinted at London by her highness's printer, 1588." These were, however, but extraordinary gazettes, not regularly published. In this obscure origin they were skilfully directed by the policy of that great statesman Bur- leigh, who, to inflame the national feeling, gives an extract of a letter from Madrid which speaks of putting the queen to death, and the instruments of torture on board the Span- ish fleet.
George Chalmers first exultingly took down these patriar- chal newspapers, covered with the dust of two centuries.
The first newspaper in the collection of the British Museum is marked No. 50, and is in Roman, not in black letter. It contains the usual articles of news, like the London Gazette of the present day. In that curious paper, there are news dated from Whitehall, on the 23d July, 1588. Under the date of July 26, there is the following notice: "Yesterday the Scots ambassador, being introduced to Sir Francis Wal-
VOL,. I. 15
226 ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.
singham, had a private audience of her majesty, to whom he delivered a letter from the king his master ; containing the most cordial assurances of his resolution to adhere to her majesty's interests, and to those of the protestant religion. And it may not here be improper to take notice of a wise and spiritual saying of this young prince (he was twenty-two) to the queen's minister at his court, viz : That all the favour he did expect from the Spaniards was the courtesy of Poly- pheme to Ulysses, to be the last devoured." The gazetteer of the present day would hardly give a more decorous account of the introduction of a foreign minister. The aptness of King James's classical saying carried it from the newspaper into history. I must add, that in respect to his wit no man has been more injured than this monarch. More pointed sentences are recorded of James I. than perhaps of any prince; and yet, such is the delusion of that medium by which the popular eye sees things in this world, that he is usually considered as a mere royal pedant. I have entered more largely on this subject, in an " Inquiry of the literary and political character of James I." *
* Since the appearance of the eleventh edition of this work, the detec- tion of a singular literary deception has occurred. The evidence respect- ing " The English Mercuric " rests on the alleged discovery of the literary antiquary, George Chalmers. I witnessed, fifty years ago, that laborious researcher busied among the long dusty shelves of our periodical papers, which then reposed in the ante-chamber to the former reading-room of the British Museum. To the industry which I had witnessed, I confided, and such positive and precise evidence could not fail to be accepted by all. In the British Museum, indeed, George Chalmers found the printed " Eng- lish Mercuric; " but there also, it now appears, he might have seen tiie original, with all its corrections, before it was sent to the press, written on paper of modern fabric. The detection of this literary imposture has been ingeniously and unquestionably demonstrated by Mr. Thomas Watts, in a letter to Mr. Panizzi, the keeper of the printed books in the British Mu- seum. The fact is, the whole is a modern forgery, for which Birch, preserving it among his papers, has not assigned either the occasion or the motive. I am inclined to suspect that it was a jeu d1 esprit of historical antiquarian- ism, concocted by himself and his friends the Yorkes, with whom, as it is well known, he was concerned in a more elegant literary reel-cation, the composition of the Athenian Letters. The blunder of George Chalmers has
ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS. 227
In these " Mercuries " some advertisements of books run much like those of the present times, and exhibit a picture of the literature of those days. All these publications were "imprinted and sold" by the queen's printers, Field and Baker.
1st. An admonition to the people of England, wherein are answered the slanderous untruths reproachfully uttered by Mar-prelate, and others of his brood, against the bishops and chief of the clergy.*
2dly. The copy of a letter sent to Don Bernardin Men doza, ambassador in France, for the king of Spain ; declar- ing the state of England, &c. The second edition.
3dly. An exact journal of all passages at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. By an eye-witness.
4thly. Father Parsons' coat well dusted ; or, short and pithy animadversions on that infamous fardle of abuse and falsities, entitled Leicester's Commonwealth, f
5thly. Elizabetha Triumphans, an heroic poem, by James Aske ; with a declaration how her excellence was entertained at the royal course at Tilbury, and of tht overthrow of the Spanish fleet.
Periodical papers seem first to have been more generally used by the English, during the civil wars of the usurper Cromwell, to disseminate amongst the people the sentiments of loyalty or rebellion, according as their authors were dis- posed. Peter Heylin, in the preface to his Cosmography,
been repeated in numerous publications throughout Europe, and in America. I think it better to correct the text by this notice, than by a silent sup- pression, that it may remain a memorable instance of the danger incurred by the historian from forged documents; and a proof that multiplied au- thorities add no strength to evidence, when all are to be traced to a single source.
* I have written the history of the Mar-prelate faction, in " Quarrels of Authors," which our historians appear not to have known. Th$ materials •were suppressed by government, and not preserved even in our national depositories.
t A curious secret history of the Earl of Leicester, ascribed in its day to the Jesuit Parsons.
228 ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.
mentions, that " the affairs of each town, of war, were better presented to the reader in the Weekly News-books" Hence we find some papers, entitled " News from Hull," " Truths from York," " Warranted Tidings from Ireland," &c. We find also " The Scots' Dove " opposed to " The Parliament Kite," or " The Secret Owl." — Keener animosities produced keener titles : u Heraclitus ridens " found an antagonist in " Democritus ridens," and " The Weekly Discoverer "was shortly met by "The Discoverer stript naked." "Mercurius Britannicus " was grappled by " Mercurius Mastix, faithfully lashing all Scouts, Mercuries, Posts, Spies, and others." Under all these names, papers had appeared, but a " Mercury " was the prevailing title of these " News-books," and the prin- ciples of the writer were generally shown by the additional epithet. We find an alarming number of these Mercuries, which, were the story not too long to tell, might excite laugh- ter ; they present us with a very curious picture of those singular times.
Devoted to political purposes, they soon became a public nuisance by serving as receptacles of party malice, and echoing to the farthest ends of the kingdom the insolent voice of all factions. They set the minds of men more at variance, inflamed their tempers to a greater fierceness, and gave a keener edge to the sharpness of civil discord.
Such works will always find adventurers adapted to their scurrilous purposes, who neither want at times either talents, or boldness, or wit, or argument. A vast crowd issued from the press, and are now to be found in private collections. They form a race of authors unknown to most readers of these times : the names of some of their chiefs, however, have reached us, and in the minor chronicle of domestic literature, I rank three notable heroes ; Marchamont Need- ham, Sir John Birkenhead, and Sir Roger L'Estrange.
Marchamont Needham, the great patriarch of newspaper writers, was a man of versatile talents and more versatile politics ; a bold adventurer, and most successful, because the
ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS. 229
most profligate of his tribe. From college he came to Lon- don; was an usher in Merchant Tailors' school; then an under clerk in Gray's Inn ; at length studied physic, and practised chemistry ; and finally, he was a captain, and in the words of our great literary antiquary, " siding with the rout and scum of the people, he made them weekly sport by railing at all that was noble, in his Intelligence, called Mer- curius Britannicus, wherein his endeavours were to sacrifice the fame of some lord, or any person of quality, and of the king himself, to the beast with many heads." He soon be- came popular, and was known under the name of Captain Needham, of Gray's Inn ; and whatever he now wrote was deemed oracular. But whether from a slight imprisonment for aspersing Charles I. or some pique with his own party, he requested an audience on his knees with the king, recon- ciled himself to his majesty, and showed himself a violent royalist in his " Mercurius Pragmaticus," and galled the presbyterians with his wit and quips. Some time after, when the popular party prevailed, he was still further enlightened and was got over by President Bradshaw, as easily as by Charles I. Our Mercurial writer became once more a vir- ulent presbyterian, and lashed the royalists outrageously in his " Mercurius Politicus ; " at length on the return of Charles II. being now conscious, says our cynical friend Anthony, that he might be in danger of the halter, once more he is said to have fled into Holland, waiting for an act of oblivion. For money given to a hungry courtier, Needham obtained his pardon under the great seal. He latterly prac- tised as a physician among his party, but lived detested by the royalists ; and now only committed harmless treasons with the College of Physicians, on whom he poured all that gall and vinegar which the government had suppressed from flowing through its natural channel.
The royalists were not without their Needham in the prompt activity of Sir John Birkenhead. In buffoonery, keenness, and boldness, having been frequently imprisoned,
230 ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.
he was not inferior, nor was he at times less an adventurer. His "Mercurius Aulicus" was devoted to the court, then at Oxford. But he was the fertile parent of numerous political pamphlets, which appear to abound in banter, wit, and satire. Prompt to seize on every temporary circumstance, he had equal facility in execution. His "Paul's Churchyard" is a bantering pamphlet, containing fictitious titles of books and acts of parliament, reflecting on the mad reformers of those times. One of his poems is entitled " The Jolt" being writ- ten on the Protector having fallen off his own coach-box : Cromwell had received a present from the German Count Oldenburgh, of six German horses, and attempted to drive them himself in Hyde Park, when this great political Phae- ton met the accident of which Sir John Birkenhead was not slow to comprehend the benefit, and hints how unfortunately for the country it turned out! Sir John was during the dominion of Cromwell an author by profession. After various imprisonments for his majesty's cause, says the venerable historian of English literature already quoted, " he lived by his wits, in helping young gentlemen out at dead lifts in making poems, songs, and epistles on and to their mistresses ; as also in translating, and other petite employments." He lived however after the Restoration to become one of the masters of requests, with a salary of £3,000 a year. But he showed the baseness of his spirit, says Anthony, by slighting those who had been his benefac- tors in his necessities.
Sir Roger L? Estrange among his rivals was esteemed as the most perfect model of political writing. He was a strong party-writer on the government side, for Charles the Second, and the compositions of the author seem to us coarse, yet they contain much idiomatic expression. His ^Esop's Fables are a curious specimen of familiar style. Queen Mary showed a due contempt of him after the Revolution, by this anagram : —
Lye strange Roger I
ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS. 231
Such were the three patriarchs of newspapers. De Saint Foix gives the origin of newspapers to France. Renaudot, a physician at Paris, to amuse his patients was a great col- lector of news; and he found by these means that he was more sought after than his learned brethren. But as the seasons were not always sickly, and he had many hours not occupied by his patients, he reflected, after several years of assiduity given up to this singular employment, that he might turn it to a better account, by giving every week to his patients, who in this case were the public at large, some fugitive sheets which should contain the news of various countries. He obtained a privilege for this purpose in 1632.
At the. Restoration the proceedings of parliament were interdicted to be published, unless by authority ; and the first daily paper after the Revolution took the popular title of " The Orange Intelligencer."
In the reign of Queen Anne, there was but one daily paper ; the others were weekly. Some attempted to intro- duce literary subjects, and others topics of a more general speculation. Sir Richard Steele formed the plan of his Tathr. He designed it to embrace the three provinces, of manners and morals, of literature, and of politics. The public were to be conducted insensibly into so different a track from that to which they had been hitherto accustomed. Hence politics were admitted into his paper. But it remained for the chaster genius of Addison to banish this painful topic from his elegant pages. The writer in polite letters felt himself degraded by sinking into the diurnal narrator of political events, which so frequently originate in rumours and party fictions. From this time, newspapers and period- ical literature became distinct works — at present, there seems to be an attempt to revive this union ; it is a ret*<>grade step for the independent dignity of literature.
232 TRIALS AND PROOFS OF GUILT
TKIALS AND PROOFS OF GUILT IN SUPERSTI- TIOUS AGES.
THE strange trials to which those suspected of guilt were put in the middle ages, conducted with many devout ceremo- nies by the ministers of religion, were pronounced to be the judgments of God! The ordeal consisted of various kinds: walking blindfold amidst burning ploughshares ; passing through fires ; holding in the hand a red-hot bar ; and plung- ing the arm into boiling water : the popular affirmation, — • " I will put my hand in the fire to confirm this," was derived from this custom of our rude ancestors. Challenging the accuser to single combat, when frequently the stoutest cham- pion was allowed to supply their place ; swallowing a morsel of consecrated bread ; sinking or swimming in a river for witchcraft; or weighing a witch; stretching out the arms before the cross, till the champion soonest wearied dropped his arms, and lost his estate, which was decided by this very short chancery suit, called the judicium crucis. The bishop of Paris and the abbot of St. Denis disputed about the patronage of a monastery : Pepin the Short, not being able to decide on their confused claims, decreed one of these judg- ments of God, that of the Cross. The bishop and abbot each chose a man, and both the men appeared in the chapel, where they stretched out their arms in the form of a cross. The spectators, more devout than the mob of the present day, but still the mob, were piously attentive, but betted however now for one man, now for the other, and critically watched the slightest motion of the arms. The bishop's man was first tired : — he let his arms fall, and ruined his patron's cause forever. Though sometimes these trials might be eluded by the artifice of the priest, numerous were the innocent victims who unquestionably suffered in these superstitious practices,
From the tentjj to the twelfth century they were common. Hildebert, bishop of Mans, being accused of high treason by
IN SUPERSTITIOUS AGES. 233
our William Rufus, was prepared to undergo one of these trials, when Ives, bishop of Chartres, convinced him that they were against the canons of the constitutions of the church, and adds, that in this manner Innocentiam defendere, est innocentiam perdere.
An abbot of St. Aubin, of Angers, in 1066, having refused to present a horse to the Viscount of Tours, which the vis- count claimed in right of his lordship, whenever an abbot first took possession of that abbey ; the ecclesiastic offered to justify himself by the trial of the ordeal, or by duel, for which he proposed to furnish a man. The viscount at first agreed to the duel ; but, reflecting that these combats, though sanctioned by the church, depended wholly on the skill or vigour of the adversary, and could therefore afford no sub- stantial proof of the equity of his claim, he proposed to compromise the matter in a manner which strongly charac- terizes the times : he waived his claim, on condition that the abbot should not forget to mention in his prayers himself, his wife, and his brothers ! As the orisons appeared to the abbot, in comparison with the horse, of little or no value, he accepted the proposal.
In the tenth century the right of representation was not fixed : it was a question, whether the sons of a son ought to be reckoned among the children of the family, and succeed equally with their uncles, if their fathers happened to die while their grandfathers survived. This point was decided by one of these combats. The champion in behalf of the right of children to represent their deceased father proved victori- ous. It was then established by a perpetual decree that they should thenceforward share in the inheritance, together with their uncles. In the eleventh century the same mode was practised to decide respecting two rival Liturgies ! A pair of knights, clad in complete armour, were the critics to decide which was the authentic.
" If two neighbours," says the capitularies of Dagobert, " dispute respecting the boundaries of their possessions, let a
234 TRIALS AND PROOFS OF GtILT
piece of turf of the contested land be dug up by the judge, and brought by him into the court ; the two parties shall touch it with the points of their swords, calling on God as a witness of their claims ; — after this let them combat, and let victory decide on their rights ! "
In Germany, a solemn circumstance was practised in these judicial combats. In the midst of the lists they placed a bier. — By its side stood the accuser and the accused ; one at the head and the other at the foot of the bier, and leaned there* for some time in profound silence, before they began the combat.
The manners of the age are faithfully painted in the ancient Fabliaux. The judicial combat is introduced by a writer of the fourteenth century, in a scene where Pilate challenges Jesus Christ to single combat. Another describes the person who pierced the side of Christ as a knight who jousted with Jesus.
Judicial combat appears to have been practised by the Jews. Whenever the rabbins had to decide on a dispute about property between two parties, neither of which could produce evidence to substantiate his claim, they terminated it by single combat. The rabbins were impressed by a notion, that consciousness of right would give additional confidence and strength to the rightful possessor. It may, however, be more philosophical to observe, that such judicial combats were more frequently favorable to the criminal than to the innocent, because the bold wicked man is usually more fero- cious and hardy than he whom he singles out as his victim, and who only wishes to preserve his own quiet enjoyment : — in this case the assailant is the more terrible combatant.
Those accused of robbery were put to trial by a piece of barley-bread, on which the mass had been said ; which, if they could not swallow, they were declared guilty. This mode of trial was improved by adding to the bread a slice of cheese ; and such .was their credulity, that they were very particular in this holy bread and cheese, called the corsned.
IN SUPEKSTIT10US AGES. 235
The bread was to be of unleavened barley, s»nd the cheese made of ewe's milk in the month of May.
Du Cange observed, that the expression — " May this piece of bread choice me ! " comes from this custom. The anec- dote of Earl Godwin's death by swallowing a piece of bread, in making this asseveration, is recorded in our history. Doubtless superstition would often terrify the innocent per- son, in the attempt of swallowing a consecrated morsel.
Among the proofs of guilt in superstitious ages was that of the bleeding of a corpse. It was believed, that at the touch or approach of the murderer the blood gushed out of the murdered. By the side of the bier, if the slightest change was observable in the eyes, the mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the mtfrderer was conjectured to be present, and many innocent spectators must have suffered death. " When a body is full of blood, warmed by a sudden external heat and a putrefaction coming on, some of the blood-vessels will burst, as they will all in time." This practice was once al- lowed in England, and is still looked on in some of the unciv- ilized parts of these kingdoms as a detection of the criminal. It forms a solemn picture in the histories and ballads of our old writers. lihwi
Robertson observes, that all these absurd institutions were cherished from the superstitious of the age believing the legendary histories of those saints, who crowd and olisgrace the Roman calendar. These fabulous miracles had been de- clared authentic by the bulls of the popes and the decrees of councils ; they were greedily swallowed by the populace ; and whoever believed that the Supreme Being had inter- posed miraculously on those trivial occasions mentioned in legends, could not but expect the intervention of Heaven in these most solemn appeals. These customs were a substitute for written laws, which that barbarous period had not ; and as no society can exist without laws, the ignorance of the people had recourse to these customs, which, evil and absurd as they were, closed endless controversies. Ordeals are in
236 TRIALS AND PROOFS OF GUILT
truth the rude laws of a barbarous people who have not yet obtained a written code, and are not sufficiently advanced in civilization to enter into the refined inquiries, the subtile dis- tinctions, and elaborate investigations, which a court of law demands.
These ordeals probably originate in that one of Moses called the " Waters of Jealousy." The Greeks likewise had ordeals, for in the Antigonus of Sophocles, the soldiers offer to prove their innocence by handling red-hot iron, and walk- ing between fires. One cannot but smile at the whimsical ordeals of the Siamese. Among other practices to discover the justice of a cause, civil or criminal, they are particularly attached to using certain consecrated purgative pills, which they make the contending parties swallow. 'He who retains them longest gains his cause ! The practice of giving In- dians a consecrated grain, of rice to swallow is known to dis- cover the thief, in any company, by the contortions and dis- may evident on the countenance of the real thief.
In the middle ages, they were acquainted with secrets to pass unhurt these singular trials. Voltaire mentions one for undergoing the ordeal of boiling water. Our late travellers in the East have confirmed this statement. The Mevleheh dervises can hold red-hot iron between their teeth. Such artifices have been often publicly exhibited at Paris and London. Mr. Sharon Turner observes on the ordeal of the Anglo-Saxons, that the hand was not to be immediately inspected, and was left to the chance of a good constitution to be so far healed during three days (the time they required to be bound up and sealed, before it was examined) as to discover those appearances when inspected, which were allowed to be satisfactory. There was likewise much pre- paratory training, suggested by the more experienced ; be- sides, the accused had an opportunity of going alone into the church, and making terms with the priest. The few specta- tors were always distant ; and cold iron might be substituted, and the fire diminished, at the moment.
IN SUPERSTITIOUS AGES. 237
They possessed secrets and medicaments, to pass through these trials in perfect security. An anecdote of these times may serve to show their readiness. A rivalship existed be- tween the Austin-friars and the Jesuits. The father-general of the Austin-friars was dining with the Jesuits ; and when the table was removed, he entered into a formal discourse of the superiority of the monastic order, and charged the Jes- uits, in unqualified terms, with assuming the title of " fratres," while they held not the three vows, which other monks were obliged to consider as sacred and binding. The general of the Austin-friars was very eloquent and very authoritative :— and the superior of the Jesuits was very unlearned, but not half a fool.
The Jesuit avoided entering the list of controversy with the Austin-friar, but arrested his triumph by asking him if he would see one of his friars, who pretended to be nothing more than a Jesuit, and one of the Austin-friars who relig- iously performed the aforesaid three vows, show instantly which of them would be the readier to obey his superiors ? The Austin-friar consented. The Jesuit then turning to one of his brothers, the holy friar Mark, who was waiting on them, said, " Brother Mark, our companions are cold. 1 command you, in virtue of the holy obedience you have sworn to me, to bring here instantly out of the kitchen-fire, and in your hands, some burning coals, that they may warm themselves over your hands." Father Mark instantly obeys, and to the astonishment of the Austin-friar, brought in his hands a supply of red burning coals, and held them to who- ever chose to warm himself ; and at the command of his su- perior returned them to the kitchen-hearth. The general of the Austin-friars, with the rest of his brotherhood, stood amazed; he looked wistfully on one of his monks, as if he wished to command him to do the like. But the Austin- monk, who perfectly understood him, and saw this was not a time to hesitate, observed, — " Reverend father, forbear, and do not command me to tempt God ! I am ready to fetch
238 INQUISITION.
you fire in a chafing-dish, but not in my bare hands." The triumph of the Jesuits was complete ; and it is not necessary to add, that the miracle was noised about, and that the Aus- tin-friars could never account for it, notwithstanding their strict performance of the three vows !
INQUISITION.
INNOCENT the Third, a pope as enterprising as he was successful in his enterprises,. having sent Dominic with some missionaries into Languedoc, these men so irritated the here- tics they were sent to convert, that most of them were assas- sinated at Toulouse in the year 1200. He called in the aid of temporal arms, and published against them a crusade, granting, as was usual with the popes on similar occasions, all kinds of indulgences and pardons to those who should arm against these Mahometans, so he styled these unfortunate Languedocians. Once all were Turks when they were not Romanists. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was constrained to submit. The inhabitants were passed on the edge of the sword, without distinction of age or sex. It was then he established that scourge of Europe, THE INQUISITION. This pope considered that, though men might be compelled to submit by arms, numbers might remain professing partic- ular dogmas ; and he established this sanguinary tribunal solely to inspect into all families, and INQUIRE concerning all persons who they imagined were unfriendly to the inter- ests of Rome. Dominic did so much by his persecuting in- quiries, that he firmly established the Inquisition at Toulouse.
Not before the year 1484 it became known in Spain. To another Dominican, John de Torquemada, the court of Rome owed this obligation. As he was the confessor of Queen Isa- bella, he had extorted from her a promise that if ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to extirpate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Granada,
INQUISITION. 239
and had expelled from the Spanish realms multitudes of un- fortunate Moors. A few remained, whom, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians : they at least assumed the name ; but it was well known that both these nations natur- ally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Chris- tians. This race was afterwards distinguished as Christianas Novos ; and in forming marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its purity by mingling with such a sus- picious source.
Torquemada pretended that this dissimulation would greatly hurt the interests of the holy religion. The queen listened with respectful diffidence to her confessor; and at length gained over the king to consent to the establishment of this unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada, indefatigable in his zeal for the holy chair, in the space of fourteen years that he exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have prose- cuted near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were condemned to the flames.
Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal horror such proceedings spread. "A general jeal- ousy and suspicion took possession of all ranks of people : friendship and sociability were at an end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children."
The situation and the feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the Inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a mild, and meek, and learned man, whose controversy with Lim- borch is well known. When he escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself in the cell of the Inquisition. " Inclosed in this dungeon I could not even find space enough to turn myself about ; I suffered so much that I felt my brain disordered. I fre- quently asked myself, am I really Don Balthazar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so greatly enjoyed myself with my wife and children ? I often imagined that all my life had only been a dream, and
240 INQUISITION.
that I really had been born in this dungeon! The only amusement I could invent was metaphysical disputations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and praeses ! " 9
In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous in- quisitor ; six pillars surround this tomb ; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to his being burnt. On this St. Foix ingeniously observes, u If ever the Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model."
The Inquisition punished heretics by jire, to elude the maxim, " Ecclesia non novit sanguinem ; " for burning a man, say they, does not shed his blood. Otho, the bishop at the Norman invasion, in the tapestry worked by Matilda the queen of William the Conqueror, is represented with a mace in his hand, for the purpose that when he despatched his an- tagonist he might not spill blood, but only break his bones ! Religion has, had her quibbles as well as law.
The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in France ; but it may perhaps surprise the reader that a recor- der of London, in a speech, urged the necessity of setting up an Inquisition in England ! It was on the trial of Penn the Quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury, which highly provoked the said recorder. " Magna Charta" writes the prefacer to the trial, " with the recorder of London, is noth- ing more than Magna F / " It appears that the jury,
after being kept two days and two nights to alter their ver- dict, were in the end both fined and imprisoned. Sir John Howell, the recorder^ said, " Till now I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffer- ing the Inquisition among them ; and certainly it will not be well with us, till something like unto the Spanish Inquisition be in England" Thus it will ever be, while both parties struggling for the preeminence rush to the sharp extremity of things, and annihilate the trembling balance of the constitu- tion. But the adopted motto of Lord Erskine must ever be that of every Briton, « Trial by Jury"
INQUISITION. 241
So late as the year 1761, Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of seventy, was burnt by these evangelical executioners. His trial was printed at Amsterdam, 1762, from the Lisbon copy. And for what was this unhappy Jesuit condemned ? Not, as some have imagined, for his having been concerned in a con- spiracy against the king of Portugal. No other charge is laid to him in this trial but that of having indulged certain heretical notions, which any other tribunal but that of the Inquisition would have looked upon as the delirious fancies of a fanatical old man. Will posterity believe, that in the eighteenth century an aged visionary was led to the stake for having said, amongst other extravagances, that " The holy Virgin having commanded him to write the life of Anti- Christ, told him that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John the Evangelist ; that there were to be three Anti-Christs, and that the last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920 ; and that he would marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies."
For such ravings as these the unhappy old man was burnt in recent times. Granger assures us, that in his remem- brance a horse that had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, the hour of the day, &c. by significant tokens, was, to- gether with his owner, put into the Inquisition for both of them dealing with the devil ! A man of letters declared that, having fallen into their hands, nothing perplexed him so much as the ignorance of the inquisitor and his council : and it Seemed very doubtful whether they had read even the scrip- tures.
One of the most interesting anecdotes relating to the ter- rible Inquisition, exemplifying how the use of the diabolical engines of torture forces men to confess crimes they have not been guilty of, was related to me by a Portuguese gentleman.
A nobleman in Lisbon having heard that his physician and friend was imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale pre- text of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, assuring the inquisitor that his friend was as
VOL. I. IS
242 INQUISITION.
orthodox a Christian as himself. The physician, notwith- standing this high recommendation, was put to the torture ; and, as was usually the case, at the height of his sufferings confessed everything they wished ! This enraged the noble- man, and feigning a dangerous illness he begged the inquisitor would come to give him his last spiritual aid.
As soon as the Dominican arrived, the lord, who had pre- pared his confidential servants, commanded the inquisitor in their presence to acknowledge himself a Jew, to write hia confession, and to sign it. On the refusal of the inquisitor, the nobleman ordered his people to put on the inquisitor's head a red-hot helmet, which to his astonishment, in drawing aside a screen, he beheld glowing in a small furnace. At the sight of this new instrument of torture, " Luke's iron crown," the monk wrote and subscribed the abhorred confession. The nobleman then observed, " See now the enormity of your manner of proceeding with unhappy men ! My poor physi- cian, like you, has confessed Judaism ; but with this differ- ence, only torments have forced that from him which fear alone has drawn from you ! "
The Inquisition has not failed of receiving its due praises. Macedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, has discovered the " Origin of the Inquisition " in the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to allege that God was the first who began the functions of an inquisitor over Cain and the workmen of Babel ! Macedo, however, is not so dreaming a personage as he appears ; for lie obtained a Professor's chair at Padua for the arguments* he delivered at Venice against the pope, which were pub- lished by the title of " The literary Roarings of the Lion at St. Mark ;" besides, he is the author of 109 different works ; but it is curious to observe how far our interest is apt to pre- vail over our conscience, — Macedo praised the Inquisition up to the skies, while he sank the pope to nothing !
Among the great revolutions of this age, and since the last edition of this work, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal is abolished — but its history enters into that of the human mind ;
SINGULARITIES IN REPASTS. 243
and the history of the Inquisition by Limborch, translated by Chandler, with a very curious " Introduction," loses none of its value with the philosophical mind. This monstrous tri- bunal of human opinions aimed at the sovereignty of the intellectual world, without intellect.
In these changeful times, the history of the Inquisition is not the least mutable. The Inquisition, which was abolished, was again restored — and at the present moment, I know not whether it is to be restored or abolished.
SINGULARITIES OBSERVED BY VARIOUS NATIONS IN THEIR REPASTS.
THE Maldivian islanders eat alone. They retire into the most hidden parts of their houses ; and they draw down the cloths that serve as blinds to their windows, that they may eat unobserved. This custom probably arises from the savage, in early periods of society, concealing himself to eat : he fears that another, with as sharp an appetite, but more strong than himself, should come and ravish his meal from him. The ideas of witchcraft are also widely spread among barbarians ; and they are not a little fearful that some incantation may be thrown among their victuals.
In noticing the solitary meal of the Maldivian islander, another reason may be alleged for this misanthropical repast. They never will eat with any one who is inferior to them in birth, in riches, or dignity ; and as it is a difficult matter to settle this equality, they are condemned to lead this unsocial life.
On the contrary, the islanders of the Philippines are re- markably social. Whenever one of them finds himself with- out a companion to partake of his meal, he runs till he meets with one ; and we are assured that, however keen his appetite may be, he ventures not to satisfy it without a guest.
244 SINGULARITIES OF NATIONS
Savages, says Montaigne, when they eat, " S'essuyent les doigts aux cuisses, a la bourse des genitoires^et a la plante des picds" We cannot forbear exulting in the polished con- venience of napkins !
The tables of the rich Chinese shine with a beautiful var- nish, and are covered with silk carpets very elegantly worked. They do not make use of plates, knives, and forks : every guest has two little ivory or ebony sticks, which he handles very adroitly.
The Otaheiteans, who are naturally social, and very gentle in their manners, feed separately from each other. At the hour of repast, the members of each family divide ; two brothers, two sisters, and even husband and wife, father and mother, have each their respective basket. They place themselves at the distance of two or three yards from each other ; they turn their backs, and take their meal in profound silence.
The custom of drinking at different hours from those assigned for eating, exists among many savage nations. Originally begun from necessity, it became a habit, which subsisted even when the fountain was near to them. A people transplanted, observes an ingenious philosopher, pre- serve in another climate modes of living which relate to those from whence they originally came. It is thus the Indians of Brazil scrupulously abstain from eating when they drink, and from drinking when they eat.*
When neither decency nor politeness is known, the man •who invites his friends to a repast is greatly embarrassed to testify his esteem for his guests, and to offer them some amusement ; for the savage guest imposes on himself this obligation. Amongst the greater part of the American Indians, the host is continually on the watch to solicit them to eat, but touches nothing himself. In New France, he wearies himself with singing, to divert the company while they eat.
* Esprit des Usages, et des Coutumes.
IN THEIK EEPASTS. 245
When civilization advances, men wish to show their dertce to their friends : they treat their guests as relations ; and it is said that in China the master of a house, to give a mark of his politeness, absents himself while his guests regale themselves at his table with undisturbed revelry.
The demonstrations of friendship in a rude state have a savage and gross character, which it is not a little curious to observe. The Tartars pull a man by the ear to press him to drink, and they continue tormenting him till he opens hia mouth, then they clap their hands and dance before him.
No customs seem more ridiculous than those practised by a Kamschatkan, when he wishes to make another his friend. He first invites him to eat. The host and his guest strip themselves in a cabin which is heated to an uncommon de- gree. While the guest devours the food with which they serve him, the other continually stirs the fire. The stranger must bear the excess of the heat as well as of the repast. He vomits ten times before he will yield ; but, at length obliged to acknowledge himself overcome, he begins to compound matters. He purchases a moment's respite by a present of clothes or dogs ; for his host threatens to heat the cabin, and oblige him to eat till he dies. The stranger has the right of retaliation allowed to him : he treats in the same manner, and exacts the same presents. Should his host not accept the invitation of him whom he had so hand- somely regaled, in that case the guest would take possession of his cabin, till he had the presents returned to him which the other had in so singular a manner obtained.
For this extravagant custom a curious reason has been alleged. It is meant to put the person to a trial, whose friendship is sought. The Kamschadale, who is at the ex- pense of the fires, and the repast, is desirous to know if the stranger has the strength to support pain with him, and if he is generous enough to share with him some part of his prop- erty. While the guest is employed on his meal, he continues heating the cabin to an insupportable degree ; and for a last
246 MONARCHS.
proof of the stranger's constancy and attachment, he exacts more clothes and more dogs. The host passes through the same ceremonies in the cabin of the stranger ; and he shows, in his turn, with what degree of fortitude he can defend his friend. The most singular customs would appear simple, if it were possible for the philosopher to understand them on the spot.
As a distinguishing mark of their esteem, the negroes of Ardra drink out of one cup at the same time. The king of Loango eats in one house, and drinks in another. A Kam- schatkan kneels before his guests ; he cuts an enormous slice from a sea-calf; he crams it entire into the mouth of his friend, furiously crying out " Tana ! " — There ! and cutting away what hangs about his lips, snatches and swallows it with avidity.
A barbarous magnificence attended the feasts of the an- cient monarchs of France. After their coronation or conse- cration, when they sat at table, the nobility served them on horseback.
MONARCHS.
SAINT CHRYSOSTOM has this very acute observation on kings : many monarchs are infected with a strange wish that their successors may turn out bad princes. Good kings desire it, as they imagine, continues this pious politician, that their glory will appear the more splendid by the contrast ; and the bad desire it, as they consider such kings will serve to countenance their own misdemeanors.
Princes, says Gracian, are willing to be aided, but not surpassed: which maxim is thus illustrated.
A Spanish lord having frequently played at chess^with Philip II., and won all the games, perceived, when his majesty rose from play, that he was much ruffled with chagrin. The lord, when he returned home, said to his
MONARCHS. 247
family, — " My children, we have nothing more to do at court: there we must expect no favour; for the king is offended at my having won of him every game of chess." — As chess entirely depends on the genius of the players, and not on fortune, King Philip the chess-player conceived he ought to suffer no rival.
This appears still clearer by the anecdote told of the Earl of Sunderland, minister to George I., who was partial to the game of chess. He once played with the Laird of Cluny, and the learned Cunningham, the editor of Horace. Cun- ningham, with too much skill and too much sincerity, beat his lordship. "The earl was so fretted at his superiority and surliness, that he dismissed him without any reward. Cluny allowed himself sometimes to be beaten ; and by that means got his pardon, with something handsome besides."
In the Criticon of Gracian, there is a singular anecdote relative to kings.
A Polish monarch having quitted liis companions when he was hunting, his courtiers found him, a few days after, in a market-place, disguised as a porter, and lending out the use of his shoulders for a few pence. At this they were as much surprised as they were doubtful at first whether the porter could be his majesty. At length they ventured to express their complaints that so great a personage should debase himself by so vile an employment. His majesty having heard them, replied, " Upon my honour, gentlemen, the load which I quitted is by far heavier than the one you see me carry here : the weightiest is but a straw, when compared to that world under which I laboured. I have slept more in four nights than I have during all my reign. I begin to live, and to be king of myself. Elect whom you choose. For me, who am so well, it were madness to return to court.'9 Another Polish king, who succeeded this philosophic mo- narchical porter, when they placed the sceptre in his hand, exclaimed, — " I had rather tug at an oar ! " The vacillating fortunes of the Polish monarchy present several of these
248 MONAKCHS.
anecdotes ; their monarchs appear to have frequently been philosophers ; and, as the world is made, an excellent philos- opher proves but an indifferent king.
Two observations on kings were offered to a courtier with great naivete by that experienced politician the Duke of Alva. — " Kings who affect to be familiar with their com- panions make use of men as they do of oranges £ they take oranges to extract their juice ; and when they are well sucked they throw them away. Take care the king does not do the same to you ; be careful that he does not read all your thoughts ; otherwise he will throw you aside to the back of his chest, as a book of which he has read enough." " The squeezed orange," the king of Prussia applied in his dispute with Voltaire.
"When it was suggested to Dr. Johnson that kings must be unhappy because they are deprived of the greatest of all satisfactions, easy and unreserved society, he observed that this was an ill-founded notion. " Being a king does not ex- clude a man from such society. Great kings have always been social. The king of Prussia, the only great king at present (this was THE GREAT Frederic) is very social. Charles the Second, the last king of England who was a man of parts, was social; our Henries and Edwards were all social."
The Marquis of Halifax, in his character of Charles II., has exhibited a trait in the royal character of a good-natured monarch ; that trait, is sauntering. I transcribe this curious observation, which introduces us into a levee.
" There was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours which he passed amongst his mistresses, who served only to fill up his seraglio, while a bewitching kind of pleas- ure, called SAUNTERING, was the sultana queen he de- lighted in.
" The thing called SAUNTERING is a stronger temptation to princes than it is to others. — The being galled with impor- tunities, pursued from one room to another with asking faces ;
OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTKIOUS, HIGHNESS, ETC. 249
the dismal sound of unreasonable complaints and ill-grounded pretences; the deformity of fraud ill-disguised: — all these would make any man run away from them, and I used to think it was the motive for making him walk so fast."
OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS, HIGHNESS, AND EXCELLENCE.
THE title of illustrious was never given, till the reign of Constantine, but to those whose reputation was splendid in arms or in letters. Adulation had not yet adopted this noble word into her vocabulary. Suetonius composed a book to record those who had possessed this title ; and, as it was then bestowed, a moderate volume was sufficient to contain their names.
In the time of Constantine, the title of illustrious was given more particularly to those princes who had distinguished themselves in war ; but it was not continued to their descend- ants. At length, it became very common ; and every son of a prince was illustrious. It is now a convenient epithet for the poet.
In the rage for TITLES the ancient lawyers in Italy were not satisfied by calling kings ILLUSTRES ; they went a step higher, and would have emperors to be super-illustres, a barbarous coinage of their own.
In Spain, they published a book of titles for their kings, as well as for the Portuguese ; but Selden tells us, that " their Cortesias and giving of titles grew at length, through the affectation of heaping great attributes on their princes, to such an insufferable forme, that a remedie was provided against it." This remedy was an act published by Philip III. which ordained that all the Cortesias, as they termed these strange phrases, they had so servilely and ridiculously invented, should be reduced to a simple superscription, " To
250 OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS,
the king our lord," leaving out those phantastical attributes of which every secretary had vied with his predecessors in increasing the number.
It would fill three or four of these pages to transcribe the titles and attributes of the Grand Signior, which he assumes in a letter to Henry IV. Selden, in his " Titles of Honour," first part, p. 1 40, has preserved them. This " emperor of victorious emperors," as he styles himself, at length conde- scended to agree with the emperor of Germany, in 1606, that in all their letters and instruments they should be only styled father and son : the emperor calling the sultan his son ; and the sultan the emperor, in regard of his years, his father.
Formerly, says Houssaie, the title of highness was only given to kings ; but now it has become so common that all the great houses assume it. All the great, says a modern, are desirous of being confounded with princes, and are ready to seize on the privileges of royal dignity. We have already come to highness. The pride of our descendants, I suspect, will usurp that of majesty.
Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and his queen Isabella of Cas tile, were only treated with the title of highness. Charles was the first who took that of majesty : not in his quality of king of Spain, but as emperor. St. Foix informs us, that kings were usually addressed by the titles of most illustrious, or your serenity, or your grace ; but that the custom of giving them that of majesty was only established by Louis XI., a prince the least majestic in all his actions, his manners, and his exterior — a severe monarch, but no ordinary man, the Tiberius of France. The manners of this monarch were most sordid ; in public audiences he dressed like the meanest of the people, and affected to sit on an old broken chair, with a filthy dog on his knees. In an account found of his house- hold, this majestic prince has a charge made him for two new sleeves sewed on one of his old doublets.
Formerly kings were apostrophized by the title of your
HIGHNESS, AND EXCELLENCE. 251
grace. Henry VIII. was the first, says Houssaie, who assumed the title of highness ; and at length majesty. It was Francis I. who saluted him with this last title, in their interview in the year 1520, though he called himself only the first gentleman in his kingdom !
So distinct were once the titles of highness and excellence* that when Don Juan, the brother of Philip IL, was permitted to take up the latter title, and the city of Granada saluted him by the title of highness, it occasioned such serious jealousy at court, that, had he persisted in it, he would have been con- demned for treason.
The usual title of cardinals, about 1GOO, was seignoria illustrissima ; the Duke of Lerma, the Spanish minister and cardinal, in his old age, assumed the title of eccellencia reve- rendissima. The church of Rome was in its glory, and to be called reverend was then accoun^d a higher honour than to be styled illustrious. But by use illustrious grew familiar, and reverend vulgar, and at last the cardinals were distinguished by the title of eminent.
After all these historical notices respecting these titles, the reader will smile when he is acquainted with the reason of an honest curate of Montferrat, who refused to bestow the title of highness on the Duke of Mantua, because he found in his breviary these words, Tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissi- mus ; from all which he concluded, that none but the Lord was to be honoured with the title of highness ! The " Titles of Honour " of Selden is a very curious volume, and, as the learned Usher told Evelyn, the most valuable work of this great scholar. The best edition is a folio of about one thousand pages. Selden vindicates the right of a king of England to the title of emperor.
" And never yet was TITLE did not move; And naver eke a mind, that TITLE did not love.r
252 TITLES OF SOVEREIGNS.
TITLES OF SOVEREIGNS.
IN countries where despotism exists in all its force, and is gratified in all its caprices, either the intoxication of power has occasioned sovereigns to assume the most solemn and the most fantastic titles ; or the royal duties and functions were considered of so high and extensive a nature, that the people expressed their notion of the pure monarchical state by the most energetic descriptions of oriental fancy.
The chiefs of the Natchez are regarded by their people as the children of the sun, and they bear the name of their father.
The titles which some chiefs assume are not always hon- ourable in themselves ; it is sufficient if the people respect them. The king of Quiterva calls himself the great lion ; and for this reason lions ^ire there so much respected, that they are not allowed to kill them, but at certain royal huntings.
The king of Monomotapa is surrounded by musicians and poets, who adulate him by such refined flatteries as lord of the sun and moon ; great magician ; and great thief! — where probably thievery is merely a term for dexterity.
The Asiatics have bestowed what to us appear as ridicu- lous titles of honour on their princes. The king of Arracan assumes the following ones : " Emperor of Arracan, possessor of the white elephant, and the two ear-rings, and in virtue of this possession legitimate heir of Pegu and Brahma ; lord of the twelve provinces of Bengal, and the twelve kings who place their heads under his feet." • *•>':•'
His majesty of Ava is called God : when he writes to a foreign sovereign he calls himself the king of kings, whom all others should obey, as he is the cause of the preservation of all animals ; the regulator of the seasons, the absolute master of the ebb and flow of the sea, brother to the sun, and king of the four-and-twenty umbrellas ! These urn brellas are always carried before him as a mark of his dignity.
KOYAL DIVINITIES. 253
The titles of the kings of Achem are singular, though voluminous. The most striking ones are sovereign of the universe, whose body is luminous as the sun ; whom God created to be as accomplished as the moon at her plenitude ; whose eye glitters like the northern star ; a king as spiritual as a ball is round ; who when he rises shades all his people ; from under whose feet a sweet odour is wafted, &c. &c.
The Kandyan sovereign is called Dewo (God). In a deed of gift he proclaims his extraordinary attributes. " The pro- tector of religion, whose fame is infinite, and of surpassing excellence, exceeding the moon, the unexpanded jessamine buds, the stars, &c. ; whose feet are as fragrant to the noses of other kings as flowers to bees ; our most noble patron and god by custom," &c.
After a long enumeration of the countries possessed by the king of Persia, they give him some poetical distinctions : the branch of honour ; the mirror of virtue ; and the rose of delight.
ROYAL DIVINITIES.
THERE is a curious dissertation in the " Memoires de 1' Academic des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres," by the Abbe Mongault, "on the divine honours which were paid to the governors of provinces during the Roman republic ; " in their lifetime these originally began in gratitude, and at length degenerated into flattery. These facts curiously show how far the human mind can advance, when led on by customs that operate unperceivably on it, and blind us in our absurd- ities. One of these ceremonies was exquisitely ludicrous. When they voted a statue to a proconsul, they placed it among the statues of the gods in the festival called Lectister- nium, from the ridiculous circumstances of this solemn fes- tival. On that day the gods were invited to a repast, which was however spread in various quarters of the city, to satiate
254 ROYAL DIVINITIES.
mouths more mortal. The gods were however taken down from their pedestals, laid on beds ornamented in their tem- ples ; pillows were placed under their marble heads ; and while they reposed in this easy posture they were served with a magnificent repast. When Caesar had conquered Rome, the servile senate put him to dine with the gods! Fatigued by and ashamed of these honours, he desired the senate to erase from his statue in the capitol the title they had given him of a demi-god !
The adulations lavished on the first Roman emperors were extravagant; but perhaps few know that they were less offensive than the flatterers of the third century under the Pagan, and of the fourth under the Christian emperors. Those who are acquainted with the character of the age of Augustulus have only to look at the one, and the other code, to find an infinite number of passages which had not been tolerable even in that age. For instance, here is a law of Arcadius and Honorius, published in 404 : —
" Let the officers of the palace be warned to abstain from frequenting tumultuous meetings ; and that those who, insti- gated by a sacrilegious temerity, dare to oppose the authority of our divinity, shall be deprived of their employments, and then* estates confiscated." The letters they write are holy. When the sons speak of their fathers, it is, " Their father of divine memory ; " or " Their divine father." They call their own laws oracles, and celestial oracles. So also their sub- jects address them by the titles of " Your Perpetuity, your Eternity." And it appears by a law of Theodoric the Great, that the emperors at length added this to their titles. It begins, " If any magistrate, after having concluded a public work, put his name rather than that of Our Perpetuity, let him be judged guilty of high-treason." All this reminds one of " the celestial empire " of the Chinese.
Whenever the Great Mogul made an observation, Bernier tells us that some of the first Omrahs lifted up their hands, crying, " Wonder ! wonder 1 wonder ! " And a proverb cur-
DETHRONED MONARCHS. 255
rent in his dominion was, " If the king saith at noonday it is night, you are to say, Behold the moon and the stars ! " Such adulation, however, could not alter the general condition and fortune of this unhappy being, who became a sovereign with- out knowing what it is to be one. He was brought out of the seraglio to be placed on the throne, and it was he, rathei- than the spectators, who might have truly used the interjee tion of astonishment !
DETHRONED MONARCHS.
FORTUNE never appears in a more extravagant humour than when she reduces monarchs to become mendicants. Half a century ago it was not imagined that our own times should have to record many such instances. After having contemplated kings raised into divinities, we see them now depressed as beggars. Our own times, in two opposite senses, may emphatically be distinguished as the age of kings.
In Candide, or the Optimist, there is an admirable stroke of Voltaire's. Eight travellers meet in an obscure inn, and some of them with not sufficient money to pay for a scurvy dinner. In the course of conversation, they are discovered to be eight monarchs in Europe, who had been deprived of their crowns !
What added to this exquisite satire was, that there were eight living monarchs at that moment wanderers on the earth ; — a circumstance which has since occurred 1
Adelaide, the widow of Lothario king of Italy, one of the most beautiful women in her age, was besieged in Pavia by Berenger, who resolved to constrain her to marry his son after Pavia was taken ; she escaped from her prison with her almoner. The archbishop of Reggio had offered her an asylum : to reach it, she and her almoner travelled on foot through the country by night, concealing herself in the day
256 DETHRONED MONARCHS.
time among the corn, while the almoner begged for alms and food through the villages.
The emperor Henry IV. after having been deposed and imprisoned by his son, Henry V., escaped from prison ; poor, vagrant, and without aid, he entreated the bishop of Spires to grant him a lay prebend in his church. " I have studied," said he, " and have learned to sing, and may therefore be of some service to you." The request was denied, and he died miserably and obscurely at Liege, after having drawn the attention of Europe to his victories and his grandeur!
Mary of Medicis, the widow of Henry the Great, mother of Louis XIII., mother-in-law of three sovereigns, and regent of France, frequently wanted the necessaries of life, and died at Cologne in the utmost misery. The intrigues of Richelieu compelled her to exile herself, and live an unhappy fugitive. Her petition exists, with this supplicatory opening : " Supplie Marie, Reine de France et de Navarre, disant, que depuis le 23 Fevrier elle aurait et4 arretee prisonniere au chateau de Compiegne, sans etre ni accusee ni soupponnee," &c. Lilly, the astrologer, in his Life and Death of King Charles the First, presents us with a melancholy picture of this unfortu- nate monarch. He has also described the person of the old queen-mother of France : —
"In the month of August, 1641, I beheld the old queen- mother of France departing from London, in company of Thomas Earl of Arundel. A sad spectacle of mortality it was, and produced tears from mine eyes and many other beholders, to see an aged, lean, decrepit, poor queen, ready for her grave, necessitated to depart hence, having no place of residence in this world left her, but where the courtesy of her hard fortune assigned it. She had been the only stately and magnificent woman of Europe : wife to the greatest king that ever lived in France ; mother unto one king and unto two queens."
In the year 1595, died at Paris, Antonio king of Portugal. His body is interred at the Cordeliers, and his heart deposited
DETHRONED MONARCHS. 257
at the Ave-Maria. Nothing on earth could compel this prince to renounce his crown. He passed over to England, and Elizabeth assisted him with troops ; but at length he died in France in great poverty. This dethroned monarch was happy in one thing, which is indeed rare: in all his miseries he had a servant, who proved a tender and faithful friend, and who only desired to participate in his misfortunes, and to soften his miseries ; and for the recompense of his services he only wished to be buried at the feet of his dear master. This hero in loyalty, to whom the ancient Romans would have raised altars, was Don Diego Bothei, one of the greatest lords of the court of Portugal, and who drew his origin from the kings of Bohemia.
Hume supplies an anecdote of singular royal distress. The queen of England, with her son Charles, " had a mod- erate pension assigned her ; but it was so ill paid, and her credit ran so low, that one morning when the Cardinal de Retz waited on her, she informed him that her daughter, the Princess Henrietta, was obliged to lie a-bed for want of a fire to warm her. To such a condition was reduced, in the midst of Paris, a queen of England, and a daughter of Henry IV. of France!" We find another proof of her extreme poverty. Salmasius, after publishing his celebrated political book, in favour of Charles L, the Defensio Regia^ was much blamed by a friend for not having sent a copy to the widowed queen of Charles, who, he writes, " though poor would yet have paid the bearer."
The daughter of James the First, who married the Elector Palatine, in her attempts to get her husband crowned, was reduced to the utmost distress, and wandered frequently in disguise.
A strange anecdote is related of Charles VII. of France. Our Henry V. had shrunk his kingdom into the town of Bourges. It is said that having told a shoemaker, after he bad just tried a pair of his boots, that he had no money to pay for them, Crispin had such callous feelings that he refused
VOL. i. 17
258 FEUDAL CUSTOMS.
his majesty the boots. " It is for this reason," says Coraines, " J praise those princes who are on good terms with the low- est of their people ; for they know not at what hou? they may want them."
Many monarchs of this day have experienced mort than once the truth of the reflection of Comines.
"We may add here, that in all conquered countries the descendants of royal families have been found among the dregs of the populace. An Irish prince has been discovered in the person of a miserable peasant ; and in Mexico, its faithful historian Clavigero notices, that he has known a locksmith, who was a descendant of its ancient kings, and a tailor, the representative of one of its noblest families.
FEUDAL CUSTOMS.
BARBAROUS as the feudal customs were, they were the first attempts at organizing European society. The northern nations, in their irruptions and settlements in Europe, were barbarians independent of each other, till a sense of public safety induced these hordes to confederate. But the private individual reaped no benefit from the public union ; on the contrary, he seems to have lost his wild liberty in the subju- gation ; he in a short time was compelled to suffer from his chieftain ; and the curiosity of the philosopher is excited by contemplating in the feudal customs a barbarous people car- rying into their first social institutions their original ferocity. The institution of forming cities into communities at length gradually diminished this military and aristocratic tyranny ; and the freedom of cities, originating in the pursuits of com- merce, shook off the yoke of insolent lordships. A famous ecclesiastical writer of that day, who had imbibed the feudal prejudices, calls these communities, which were distinguished by the name of libertates (hence probably our municipal term
FEUDAL CUSTOMS. 259
the liberties), as " execrable inventions, by which, contrary to law and justice, slaves withdrew themselves from that obedience which they owed to their masters." Such was 'he expiring vo;ce of aristocratic tyranny ! This subject has been ingeniously discussed by Robertson in his preliminary volume to Charles V. ; but the following facts constitute the picture which the historian leaves to be gleaned by the minuter inquirer.
The feudal government introduced a species of servitude which till that tune was unknown, and which was called the servitude of the land. The bondmen or serfs, and the vil- lains or country servants, did not reside in the house of the lord : but they entirely depended on his caprice ; and he sold them, as he did the animals, with the field where they lived, and which they cultivated.
It is difficult to conceive with what insolence the petty lords of those times tyrannized over their villains : they not only oppressed their slaves with unremitted labour, instigated by a vile cupidity ; but their whim and caprice led them to inflict miseries without even any motive of interest.
In Scotland they had a shameful institution of maiden- rights ; and Malcolm the Third only abolished it, by ordering that they might be redeemed by a quit-rent. The truth of this circumstance Dalrymple has attempted, with excusable patriotism, to render doubtful. There seems, however, to be no doubt of the existence of this custom ; since it also spread through Germany, and various parts of ^Europe ; and the French barons extended their domestic tyranny to three nights of involuntary prostitution. Montesquieu is infinitely French, when he could turn this shameful species of tyranny into a ban mot ; for he boldly observes on this, " 0" etoit bicn ces trois nuit& Id qu'ilfalloit choisir ; car pour les autres on n'auroit pas donne beaucoup d'argent." The legislator in the wit forgot the feelings of his heart.
Others, to preserve this privilege when they could not enjoy it in all its extent, tlirust their leg booted into the bed
260 FEUDAL CUSTOMS.
of the new-married couple. This was called the droit d* cuisse. When the bride was in bed, the esquire or lord per- formed this ceremony, and stood there, his thigh in the bed, with a lance in his hand : in this ridiculous attitude he re- mained till he was tired ; and the bridegroom was not suffered to enter the chamber, till his lordship had retired. Such in- decent privileges must have originated in the worst of inten- tions ; and when afterwards they advanced a step in more humane manners, the ceremonial was preserved from avari- cious motives. Others have compelled their subjects to pass the first night at the top of a tree, and there to consummate their marriage ; to pass the bridal hours in a river ; or to be bound naked to a cart, and to trace some furrows as they were dragged ; or to leap with their feet tied over the horns of stags.
Sometimes their caprice commanded the bridegroom to appear in drawers at their castle, and plunge into a ditch of mud ; and sometimes they were compelled to beat the waters of the ponds to hinder the frogs from disturbing the lord!
Wardship, or the privilege of guardianship enjoyed by some lords was one of the barbarous inventions of the feudal ages ; the guardian had both the care of the person, and for his own use the revenue 'of the estates. This feudal custom was so far abused in England, that the king sold these lord- ships to strangers ; and when the guardian had fixed on a marriage for the infant, if the youth or maiden did not agree to this, they forfeited the value of the marriage ; that is, the sum the guardian would have obtained by the other party had it taken place. This cruel custom was a source of do- mestic unhappiness, particularly in love-affairs, ar d has served as the groundwork of many a pathetic play by cur elder dramatists.
There was a time when the German lords reckoned amongst their privileges that of robbing on the highways of their territory ; which ended in raising up the famous Han*
FEUDAL CUSTOMS. 261
Peatic Union, to protect their commerce against rapine and avaricious exactions of toll. *'
Geoffrey, lord of Coventry, compelled his wife to ride naked on a white pad through the streets of the town ; that by this mode he might restore to the inhabitants those privi- leges of which his wantonness had deprived them. This anecdote some have suspected to be fictitious, from its extreme barbarity ; but the character of the m'.ddle ages will admit of any kind of wanton barbarism.
When the abbot of Figeac made his entry into that town, the lord of Montbron, dressed in a harlequin's coat, and one of his legs naked, was compelled by an ancient custom to conduct him to the door of his abbey, leading his horse by the bridle. Blount's " Jocular Tenures " is a curious collec tion of such capricious clauses in the grants of their lands.
The feudal barons frequently combined to share among themselves those children of their villains who appeared to be the most healthy and serviceable, or remarkable for their talents ; and not unfrequently sold them in their markets.
The feudal servitude is not, even in the present enlight- ened times, abolished in Poland, in Germany, and in Russia. In those countries, the bondmen are still entirely dependent on the caprice of their masters. The peasants of Hungary or Bohemia frequently revolt, and attempt to shake off the pressure of feudal tyranny.
An anecdote of comparatively recent date displays their unfeeling caprice. A lord or prince of the northern coun- tries passing through one of his villages, observed a small assembly of peasants and their families amusing themselves with dancing. He commands his domestics to part the men from the women, and confine them in the Houses. He orders the coats of the women to be drawn up above their heads, and tied with their garters. The men were then liberated, and those who did not recognize their wives in that state received a severe castigation.
Absolute dominion hardens the human heart ; and nobles
262 GAMING.
accustomed to command their bondmen will treat their do- mestics as slaves, as capricious or inhuman West Indians treated their domestic slaves. Those of Siberia punish theirs by a free use of the cudgel or rod. The Abbe Chappe saw two Russian slaves undress a chambermaid, who had by some trifling negligence given offence to her mistress ; after having uncovered as far as her waist, one placed her head betwixt his knees ; the other held her by tlie feet ; while both, armed with two sharp rods, violently lashed her back till it pleased the domestic tyrant to decree it was enough !
After a perusal of these anecdotes of feudal tyranny, we may exclaim with Goldsmith —
" I fly from PETTY TYRANTS— to the THRONE."
Mr Hallam's " State of Europe during the Middle Ages " renders this short article superfluous in a philosophical view.
GAMING.
GAMING appears to be a universal passion. Some have attempted to deny its universality; they have imagined that it is chiefly prevalent in cold climates, where such a passion becomes most capable of agitating and gratifying the torpid minds of their inhabitants.
The fatal propensity of gaming is to be discovered, as well amongst the inhabitants of the frigid and torrid zones, as amongst those of the milder climates. The savage and the civilized, the illiterate and the learned, are alike capti- vated by the hope of accumulating wealth without the la- bours of industry.
Barbeyrac has written an elaborate treatise on gaming, and we have two quarto volumes, by C. Moore, on suicide, gaming, and duelling, which may be placed by the side of Barbeyrac. All these works are excellent sermons ; but a
GAMING. 263
sermon to a gambler, a duellist, or a suicide ! A dice-box, a sword and pistol, are the only things that seem to have any power over these unhappy men, for ever lost in a labyrinth of their own construction.
I am much pleased with the following thought. " The ancients," says the author of Amusemens Serieux et Com- iques, " assembled to see their gladiators kill one another ; they classed this among their games! What barbarity! But are we less barbarous, we who call a game an assembly — who meet at the faro table, where the actors themselves confess they only meet to destroy one another ? " In both these cases the philosopher may perhaps discover their origin in the listless state of ennui requiring an immediate impulse of the passions ; and very inconsiderate as to the fatal means which procure the desired agitation.
The most ancient treatise by a modern on this subject, is said to be by a French physician, one Eckeloo, who pub- lished in 1.569, De Aled, sive de curandd Ludendi in Pecu- niam cupiditate, that is, " On games of chance, or a cure for gaming.'1 The treatise itself is only worth notice from the circumstance of the author being himself one of the most in- veterate gamblers ; he wrote this work to convince himself of this folly. But in spite of all his solemn vows, the prayers of his friends, and his own book perpetually quoted before his face, he was a great gamester to his last hour ! The same circumstance happened to Sir John Denham, who also published a tract against gaming, and to the last remained a gamester. They had not the good sense of old Montaigne, who gives the reason why he gave over gaming. " I used to like formerly games of chance with cards and dice ; but of that folly I have long been cured ; merely because I found that whatever good countenance I put on when I lost, I did not feel my vexation the less." Goldsmith fell a victim to this madness. To play any game well requires serious study, time, and experience. If a literary man plays deeply, he will be duped even by shallow fellows, as well as by pro- fessed gamblers.
264 GAMING.
Dice, and that little pugnacious animal the cock, are the chief instruments employed by the numerous nations of the East, to agitate their minds and ruin their fortunes ; to which the Chinese, who are desperate gamesters, add the use of cards. When all other property is played away, the Asiatic gambler scruples not to stake his wife or his child, on the cast of a die, or the courage and strength of a martial bird. If still unsuccessful, the last venture he stakes is himself.
In the island of Ceylon, coclc-f.qhting is carried to a great height. The Sumatrans are addicted to the use of dice. A strong spirit of play characterizes a Malayan. After having resigned every thing to the good fortune of the winner, he is reduced to a horrid state of desperation ; he then loosens a certain lock of hair, which indicates war and destruction to all whom the raving gamester meets. He intoxicates him- self with opium ; and working himself into a fit of frenzy, he bites or kills every one who comes in his way. But as soon as this lock is seen flowing, it is lawful to fire at the person and to destroy him as fast as possible. This custom is what is called " To run a muck." Thus Dryden writes—
M Frontless and satire-proof, he scours the streets, And runs an Indian muck at all he meets."
Thus also Pope —
" Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run a muck, and tilt at all I meet."
Johnson could not discover the derivation of the word muck. To " run a muck " is an old phrase for attacking madly and indiscriminately ; and has since been ascertained to be a Malay word.
To discharge their gambling debts, the Siamese sell their possessions, their families, and at length themselves. The Chinese play night and day, till they have lost all they are worth ; and then they usually go and hang themselves. Such is the propensity of the Japanese for high play, that they were compelled to make a law, that " Whoever ventures his
GAMING. 265
money at play shall be put to death." In the newly-discov- ered islands of the Pacific Ocean, they venture even their hatchets, which they hold as invaluable acquisitions, on run- ning matches. — " We saw a man," says Cook, " beating his breast and tearing his hair in the violence of rage, for hav- ing lost three hatchets at one of these races, and which he had purchased with nearly half his property."
The ancient nations were not less addicted to gaming: Persians, Grecians, and Romans ; the Goths, and Germans. To notice the modern ones were a melancholy task : there is hardly a family in Europe which cannot record, from their own domestic annals, the dreadful prevalence of this passion.
Gamester and cheater were synonymous terms in the time of Shakspeare and Jonson : they have hardly lost much of their double signification in the present day.
The following is a curious picture of a gambling-house, from a contemporary account, and appears to be an estab- lishment more systematic even than the " Hells " of the pres- ent day.
" A list of the officers established in the most notorious gaming-houses," from the DAILY JOURNAL, Jan. 9, 1731.
1st. A COMMISSIONER, always a proprietor, who looks in of a night ; and the week's account is audited by him and two other proprietors.
2d. A DIRECTOR, who superintends the room.
3d. An OPERATOR, who deals the cards at a cheating game, called Faro.
4th. Two CROWPEES, who watch the cards, and gather the money for the bank.
5th. Two PUFFS, who have money given them to decoy others to play.
6th. A CLERK, who is a check upon the PUFFS, to see that they sink none of the money given them to play with.
7th. A SQUIB is a puff of lower rank, who serves at half- pay salary while he is learning to deal.
8th. A FLASHER, to swear how often the bank has been stript.
266 THE ARABIC CHRONICLE.
9th. A DUNNER, who goes about to recover money lost at play.
10th. A WAITER, to fill out wine, snuff candles, and at- tend the gaming-room.
llth. An ATTORNEY, a Newgate solicitor.
12th. A CAPTAIN, who is to fight any gentleman who is peevish for losing his money.
13th. An USHER, who lights gentlemen up and down stairs, and gives the word to the porter.
14th. A PORTER, who is generally a soldier of the Foot Guards.
15th. An ORDERLY MAN, who walks up and down the outside of the door, to give notice to the porter, and alarm the house at the approach of the constable.
16th. A RUNNER, who is to get intelligence of the justices' meeting.
17th. LINK-BOYS, COACHMEN, CHAIRMEN, or others who bring intelligence of the justices' meetings, or of the consta- bles being out, at half-a-guinea reward.
18th. COMMON-BAIL, AFFIDAVIT-MEN, RUFFIANS, BRA- VOES, ASSASSINS, cum multis aliis.
The " Memoirs of the most famous Gamesters from the reign of Charles II. to Queen Anne, by T. Lucas, Esq., 1714," appears to be a bookseller's job ; but probably a few traditional stories are preserved.
THE ARABIC CHRONICLE.
AN Arabic chronicle is only valuable from the time of Mahomet. For such is the stupid superstition of the Arabs, that they pride themselves on being ignorant of whatever 'has passed before the mission of their Prophet. The Arabic chronicle of Jerusalem contains the most curious information concerning the crusades : Longuerue translated several por-
THE ARABIC CHRONICLE. 267
tions of this chronicle, which appears to be written with impartiality. It renders justice to the Christian heroes, and particularly dwells on the gallant actions of the Count de St. Gilles.
Our historians chiefly write concerning Godfrey de Bouil- lon ; only the learned know that the Count de St. Gilles acted there so important a character. The stories of the Saracens are just the reverse ; they speak little concerning Godfrey, and eminently distinguish Saint Gilles.
Tasso has given in to the more vulgar accounts, by making the former so eminent, at the cost of the other heroes, in his Jerusalem Delivered. Thus Virgil transformed by his magi- cal power the chaste Dido into a distracted lover ; and Homer the meretricious Penelope into a moaning matron. It is not requisite for poets to be historians, but historians should not be so frequently poets. The same charge, I have been told, must be made against the Grecian historians. The Persians are viewed to great disadvantage hi Grecian history. It would form a curious inquiry, and the result might be unex- pected to some, were the Oriental student to comment on the Grecian historians. The Grecians were not the de mi-gods they paint themselves to have been, nor those they attacked the contemptible multitudes they describe. These boasted victories might be diminished. The same observation at- taches to Caesar's account of his British expedition. He never records the defeats he frequently experienced. The national prejudices of the Roman historians have undoubtedly occasioned us to have a very erroneous conception of the Carthaginians, whose discoveries in navigation and com- mercial enterprises were the most considerable among the ancients. We must indeed think highly of that people, whose works on agriculture, which they had raised into a science, the senate of Rome ordered to be translated into Latin. They must indeed have been a wise and grave people. — Yet they are stigmatized by the Romans for faction, cruelty, and cowardice; and the "Punic" faith has come
263 METEMPSYCHOSIS.
down to us in a proverb : but Livy was a Roman ! and there is such a thing as a patriotic malignity I
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
IF we except the belief of a future remuneration beyond this life for suffering virtue, and retribution for successful crimes, there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to our understanding, as that of the metempsychosis. The pains and the pleasures of this life are by this system con- sidered as the recompense or the punishment of our actions in an anterior state: so that, says St. Foix, we cease to wonder that, among men and animals, some enjoy an easy and agreeable life, while others seem born only to suffer all kinds of miseries. Preposterous as this system may appear, it has not wanted for advocates in the present age, which indeed has revived every kind of fanciful theory. Mercier, in Uan deux mille quatre cents quarante, seriously maintains the present one.
If we seek for the origin of the opinion of the metempsy- chosis, or the transmigration of souls into other bodies, we must plunge into the remotest antiquity; and even then we shall find it impossible to fix the epoch of its first author. The notion was long extant in Greece before the time of Pythagoras. Herodotus assures us that the Egyptian priests taught it ; but he does not inform us of the time it began to cpread. It probably followed the opinion of the immortality of the soul. As soon as the first philosophers had established this dogma, they thought they could not maintain this immor- tality without a transmigration of souls. The opinion of the metempsychosis spread in almost every region of the earth ; and it continues, even to the present time, in all its force amongst those nations who have not yet embraced Christian- ity. The people of Arracan, Peru, Siam, Camboya, Ton-
METEMPSYCHOSIS. 269
quin, Cochin-China, Japan, Java, and Ceylon, still entertain that fancy, which also forms the chief article of the Chinese religion. The Druids believed in transmigration. The bardic triads of the Welsh are full of this belief; and a Welsh antiquary insists, that by an emigration which formerly took place, it was conveyed to the Bramins of India from Wales ! The Welsh Bards tell us that the souls of men transmigrate into the bodies of those animals whose habits and characters they most resemble, till after a circuit of such penitential miseries, they are purified for the celestial presence ; for man may be converted into a pig or a wolf, till at length he as- sumes the inoffensiveness of the dove.
My learned friend Sharon Turner has explained, in his "Vindication of the ancient British Poems," p. 231, the Welsh system of the metempsychosis. Their bards mention three circles of existence. The circle of the all-enclosing cir- cle holds nothing alive or dead, but God. The second circle, that of felicity, is that which men are to pervade after they have passed through their terrestrial changes* The circle of evil is that in which human nature passes through those varying stages of existence which it must undergo before it is qualified to inhabit the circle of felicity.
The progression of man through the circle of evil is marked by three infelicities : Necessity, oblivion, and deaths. The deaths which follow our changes are so many escapes from their power. Man is a free agent, and has the liberty of choosing ; his sufferings and changes cannot be foreseen. By his misconduct he may happen to fall retrograde into the lowest state from which he had emerged. If his conduct in any one state, instead of improving his being, had made it worse, he fell back into a worse condition, to commence again his purifying revolutions. Humanity was the limit of the degraded transmigrations. All the changes above humanity produced felicity. Humanity is the scene of the contest; and after man has traversed every state of animated exist- ence, and can remember all that he has passed through, that
270 METEMPSYCHOSIS.
consummation follows which he attains in the circle of felicity. It is on this system of transmigration that Taliessin, the Welsh bard, who wrote in the sixth century, gives a recital of his pretended transmigrations. He tells how he had been a serpent, a wild ass, a buck, or a crane, &c. ; and this kind of reminiscence of his former state, this recovery of memory, was a proof of the mortal's advances to the happier circle. For to forget what we have been was one of the curses of the circle of evil. Taliessin therefore, adds Mr. Turner, as profusely boasts of his recovered reminiscence as any modern sectary can do of his state of grace and election.
In all these wild reveries there seems to be a moral fable in the notion, that the clearer a man recollects what a brute he has been, it is a certain proof that he is in an improved state!
According to the authentic Clavigero, in his history of Mexico, we find the Pythagorean transmigration carried on in the West, and not less fancifully than in the countries of the East. The people of Tlascala believe that the souls of persons of rank went after their death to inhabit the bodies of beautiful and sweet singing birds, and those of the nobler quadrupeds ; while the souls of inferior persons were sup- posed to pass into weasels, beetles, and such other meaner animals.
There is something not a little ludicrous in the description Plutarch gives at the close of his treatise on " the delay of heavenly justice." Thespesius saw at length the souls of those who were condemned to return to life, and whom they violently forced to take the forms of all kinds of animals. The labourers charged with this transformation forged with their instruments certain parts ; others, a new form ; and made some totally disappear; that these souls might be rendered proper for another kind of life and other habits. Among these he perceived the soul of Nero, which had already suffered long torments, and which stuck to the body by nails red from the fire. The workmen seized on
SPANISH ETIQUETTE. 271
him to make a viper of, under which form he was now to live, after having devoured the breast that had carried him. — But in this Plutarch only copies the fine reveries of Plato.
SPANISH ETIQUETTE.
THE etiquette, or rules to be observed in royal palaees, b necessary for keeping order at court. In Spain it was car- ried to such lengths as to make martyrs of their kings. Here is an instance, at which, in spite of the fatal conse- quences it produced, one cannot refrain from smiling.
Philip the Third was gravely seated by the fire-side : the; fire-maker of the court had kindled so great a quantity of wood, that the monarch was nearly suffocated with heat, and his grandeur would not suffer him to rise from the chair ; the domestics could not presume to enter the apartment, be- cause it was against the etiquette. At length the Marquis de Potat appeared, and the king ordered him to damp the fire ; but he excused himself; alleging that he was forbidden by the etiquette to perform such a function, for which the Duke d'Usseda ought to be called upon, as it was his business. The duke was gone out: the fire burnt fiercer; and the king endured it, rather than derogate from his dignity. But his blood was heated to such a degree, that an erysipelas of the head appeared the next day, which, succeeded by a violent fever, carried him off in 1621, in the twenty-fourth year of his reign.
The palace was once on fire; a soldier, who knew the king's sister was in her apartment, and must inevitably have been consumed in a few moments by the flames, at the risk of his life rushed in, and brought her highness safe out in his arms ! but the Spanish etiquette was here wofully broken into ! The loyal soldier was brought to trial ; and as it was impossible to deny that he had entered her apartment, the
272 SPANISH ETIQUETTE.
judges condemned him to die ! The Spanish Princess how- ever condescended, in consideration of the circumstance, to pardon the soldier, and very benevolently saved his life.
When Isabella, mother of Philip II., was ready to be de- livered of him, she commanded that all the lights should be extinguished : that if the violence of her pain should occa- sion her face to change colour, no one might perceive it. And when the midwife said, " Madam, cry out, that will give you ease," she answered in good Spanish, " How dare you give me such advice ? I would rather die than cry out."
" Spain gives us pride — which Spain to all the earth May largely give, nor fear herself a dearth! "—Churchill
Philip the Third was a weak bigot, who suffered himself to be governed by his ministers. A patriot wished to open his eyes, but he could not pierce through the crowds of his flatterers ; besides that the voice of patriotism heard in a corrupted court would have become a crime never pardoned. He found, however, an ingenious manner of conveying to him his censure. He caused to be laid on his table, one day, a letter sealed, which bore this address — " To the King of Spain, Philip the Third, at present in the service of the Duke of Lerma."
In a similar manner, Don Carlos, son to Philip the Second, made a book with empty pages, to contain the voyages of his father, which bore this title — " The great and admirable Voyages of the King Mr. Philip." All these voyages con- sisted in going to the Escurial from Madrid, and returning to Madrid from the Escurial. Jests of this kind at length cost him his life.
THE GOTHS AND HUNS.— VICARS OF BRAY. 273
THE GOTHS AND HUNS.
THE terrific honours which these ferocious nations paid to their deceased monarchs are recorded in history, by the in- terment of Attila, king of the Huns, and Alaric, king of the Goths.
Attila died in 453, and was buried in the midst of a vast champaign in a coffin which was inclosed in one of gold, another of silver, and a third of iron. With the body were interred all the spoils of the enemy, harnesses embroidered with gold and studded with jewels, rich silks, and whatever they had taken most precious in the palaces of the kings they had pillaged ; and that the place of his interment might for ever remain concealed, the Huns deprived of life all who assisted at his burial !
The Goths had done nearly the same for Alaric in 410, at Cosen9a, a town in Calabria. They turned aside the river Vasento ; and having formed a grave in the midst of its bed where its course was most rapid, they interred this king with prodigious accumulations of riches. After having caused the river to reassume its usual course, they murdered, without exception, all those who had been concerned in digging this singular grave.
VICARS OF BRAY.
THE vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, was a papist under the reign of Henry the Eighth, and a protestant under Edward the Sixth; he was a papist again under Mary, and once more became a protestant in the reign of Elizabeth. When this scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an incon- stant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, " Not so
VOL. I. 18
274 DOUGLAS.
neither ; for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle ; which is, to live and die the vicar of Bray ! " This vivacious and reverend hero has given birth to a proverb peculiar to this county, " The vicar of Bray will be vicar of Bray still." But how has it happened that this vicar should be so notorious, and one in much higher rank, acting the same part, should have escaped notice ? Dr. Kitchen, bishop of Llandaff, from an idle abbot under Henry VIII. was made a busy bishop ; protestant under Edward, he returned to his old master under Mary ; and at last took the oath of supremacy under Elizabeth, and finished as a parliament protestant. A pun spread the odium of his name ; for they said that he had always loved the Kitchen better than the Church 1
DOUGLAS.
IT may be recorded as a species of Puritanic barbarism, that no later than the year 1757, a man of genius was perse- cuted because he had written a tragedy which tended by no means to .hurt the morals ; but, on the contrary, by awaken- ing the piety of domestic affections with the nobler passions, would rather elevate and purify the mind.
When Home, the author of the tragedy of Douglas, had it performed at Edinburgh, some of the divines, his acquain tance, attending the representation, the clergy, with the mon- astic spirit of the darkest ages, published a paper, which I abridge for the contemplation of the reader, who may won- der to see such a composition written in the eighteenth cen tury.
" On Wednesday, February the 2d, 1757, the Presbytery of Glasgow came to the following resolution. They having seen a printed paper, intituled, 'An admonition and exhorta- tion of the reverend Presbytery of Edinburgh ; ' which, among
CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY. 275
other evils prevailing, observing the following melancholy but notorious facts : that one who is a minister of the church of Scotland did himself write and compose a stage-play, in- tituled, * The tragedy of Douglas/ and got it to be acted at the theatre of Edinburgh ; and that he with several other ministers of the church were present ; and some of them oftener than once, at the acting of the said play before a numerous audience. The presbytery being deeply affected with this new and strange appearance, do publish these senti- ments," &c. Sentiments with which I will not disgust the reader ; but which they appear not yet to have purified and corrected, as they have shown in the case of Logan and other Scotchmen, who have committed the crying sin of composing dramas 1
CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY.
M. MORIN, in the Memoirs of the French Academy, has formed a little history of Poverty, which I abridge.
The writers on the genealogies of the gods have not no- ticed the deity of Poverty, though admitted as such in the pagan heaven, while she has had temples and altars on earth. The allegorical Plato has pleasingly narrated, that at the feast which Jupiter gave on the birth of Venus, Poverty modestly stood at the gate of the palace to gather the frag- ments of the celestial banquet ; when she observed the god of riches, inebriated with nectar, roll out of the heavenly residence, and passing into the Olympian gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity hon- oured her with his caresses ; and from this amour sprung the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory is in- genious. The union of poverty with riches must inevitably produce the most delightful of pleasures.
276 CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY.
' The golden age, however, had but the duration of a flower when it finished, Poverty began to appear. The ancestors of the human race, if they did not meet her face to face, knew her in a partial degree ; the vagrant Cain encountered her. She was firmly established in the patriarchal age. Wft hear of merchants who publicly practised the commerce of vending slaves, which indicates the utmost degree of poverty She is distinctly marked by Job : this holy man protests, that he had nothing to reproach himself with respecting the poor for he had assisted them in their necessities.
In the scriptures, legislators paid great attention to their relief. Moses, by his wise precautions, endeavoured to soften the rigours of this unhappy state. The division of lands, by tribes and families ; the septennial jubilees ; the regulation to bestow at the harvest-time a certain portion of all the fruits of the earth for those families who were in want ; and the obligation of his moral law to love one's neighbour as one's self; were so many mounds erected against the inundations of poverty. The Jews under their Theocracy had few or no mendicants. Their kings were unjust ; and rapaciously seiz- ing on inheritances which were not their right, increased the numbers of the poor. From the reign of David there were oppressive governors, who devoured the people as their bread. It was still worse under the foreign powers of Babylon, of Persia, and the Roman emperors. Such were the extortions of their publicans, and the avarice of their governors, that the number of mendicants dreadfully augmented ; and it was probably for that reason that the opulent families consecrated a tenth part of their property for their succour, as appears in the time of the evangelists. In the preceding ages no more was given, as their casuists assure us, than the fortieth or thirtieth part ; a custom which this singular nation still practise. If there are no poor of their nation where they reside, they send it to the most distant parts. The Jewish merchants make this charity a regular charge in their trans- actions with each other ; and at the close of the year render an account to the poor of their nation.
CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY. 277
By the example of Moses, the ancient legislators were taught to pay a similar attention to the poor. Like him, they published laws respecting the division of lands ; and many ordinances were made for the benefit of those whom fires, inundations, wars, or bad harvests had reduced to want. Convinced that idleness more inevitably introduced poverty than any other cause, it was rigorously punished ; the Egyp- tians made it criminal, and no vagabonds or mendicants were suffered under any pretence whatever. Those who were convicted of slothfulness, and still refused to labour for the public when labour was offered to them, were punished with death. The famous Pyramids are the works of men who otherwise had remained vagabonds and mendicants.
The same spirit inspired Greece. Lycurgus would not have in his republic either poor or rich : they lived and laboured in common. As in the present times, every family has its stores and cellars, so they had public ones, and distri- buted the provisions according to the ages and constitutions of the people. If the same regulation was not precisely ob- served by the Athenians, the Corinthians, and the other people of Greece, the same, maxim existed in full force against idleness.
According to the laws of Draco, Solon, &c., a conviction of wilful poverty was punished with the loss of life. Plato, more gentle in his manners, would have them only banished. He calls them enemies of the state ; and pronounces as a maxim, that where there are great numbers of mendicants, fatal revolutions will happen ; for as these people have noth- ing to lose, they plan opportunities to disturb the public repose.
The ancient Romans, whose universal object was the public prosperity, were not indebted to Greece on this head. One of the principal occupations of their censors was to keep a watch on the vagabonds. Those who were condemned as incorrigible sluggards were sent to the mines, or made to labour on the public edifices. The Romans of those times,
278 CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY.
unlike the present race, did not consider the far niente as an occupation ; they were convinced that their liberalities were ill-placed in bestowing them on such men. The little repub- lics of the bees and the ants were often held out as an ex- ample ; and the last particularly, where Virgil says, that they have elected overseers who correct the sluggards :
" Pars agmina cogunt,
Castigantque moras."
And if we may trust the narratives of our travellers, the beavers pursue this regulation more rigorously and exactly than even these industrious societies. But their rigour, al- though but animals, is not so barbarous as that of the ancient Germans ; who, Tacitus informs us, plunged the idlers and vagabonds in the thickest mire of their marshes, and left them to perish by a kind of death which resembled their inactive dispositions.
Yet, after all, it was not inhumanity that prompted the an- cients thus severely to chastise idleness ; they were induced to it by a strict equity, and it would be doing them injustice to suppose, that it was thus they treated those unfortunate poor, whose indigence was occasioned by infirmities, by age, or unforeseen calamities. Every family constantly assisted its branches to save them from being reduced to beggary; which to them appeared worse than death. The magistrates protected those who were destitute of friends, or incapable of labour. When Ulysses was disguised as a mendicant, and presented himself to Eurymachus, this prince observing him to be robust and healthy, offered to give him employment, or otherwise to leave him to his ill fortune. When the Roman Emperors, even in the reigns of Nero and Tiberius, bestowed their largesses, the distributors were ordered to exempt those from receiving a share whose bad conduct kept them in mis- ery; for that it was better the lazy should die with hunger than be fed in idleness.
Whether the police of the ancients was more exact, or
CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY. 279
whether they were more attentive to practise the' duties of humanity, or that slavery served as an efficacious corrective of idleness ; it clearly appears how small was the misery, and how few the numbers of their poor. This they did, too, without having recourse to hospitals.
At the establishment of Christianity, when the apostles commanded a community of wealth among their disciples, the miseries of the poor became alleviated in a greater degree. If they did not absolutely live together, as we have seen reli- gious orders, yet the wealthy continually supplied their dis- tressed brethren : but matters greatly changed under Con- fitantine. This prince published edicts in favour of those Christians who had been condemned in the preceding reigns to slavery, to the mines, to the galleys, or prisons. The church felt an inundation of prodigious crowds of these miser- able men, who brought with them urgent wants and corporeal infirmities. The Christian families were then not numerous ; they could not satisfy these claimants. The magistrates pr6r tected them : they built spacious hospitals, under different titles, for the sick, the aged, the invalids, the widows, and orphans. The emperors, and the most eminent personages, were seen in these hospitals, examining the patients ; they assisted the helpless ; they dressed the wounded. This did so much honour to the new religion, that Julian the Apostate introduced this custom among the pagans. But the best things are continually perverted.
These retreats were found insufficient. Many slaves, proud of the liberty they had just recovered, looked on them as prisons ; and, under various pretexts, wandered about the country. They displayed with art the scars of their former wounds, and exposed the imprinted marks of their chains. They found thus a lucrative profession in begging, which had been interdicted by the laws. The profession did not finish with them : men of an untoward, turbulent, and licentious disposition, gladly embraced it. It spread so wide that the succeeding emperors were obliged to institute new laws ; and
,280 SOLOMON AND SHEBA.
individuals were allowed to seize on these mendicants foi their slaves and perpetual vassals : a powerful preservative against this disorder. It is observed in almost every part of the world, but ours ; and prevents that populace of beggary which disgraces Europe. China presents us with a noble example. No beggars are seen loitering in that country. All the world are occupied, even to the blind and the lame ; and only those who are incapable of labour live at the public expense. What is done there may also be performed here. Instead of that hideous, importunate, idle, licentious poverty, as pernicious to the police as to morality, we should see the poverty of the earlier ages, humble, modest, frugal, robust, industrious, and laborious. Then, indeed, the fable of Plato might be realized : Poverty might be embraced by the god of Riches ; and if she did not produce the voluptuous off- spring of Love, she would become the fertile mother of Agri- culture, and the ingenious parent of the Arts and Manufac- tures.
SOLOMON AND SHEBA.
A RABBIN once told me an ingenious invention, which in the Talmud is attributed to Solomon.
The power of the monarch had spread his wisdom to the remotest parts of the known world. Queen Sheba, attracted by the splendour of his reputation, visited this poetical king at his own court ; there, one day to exercise the sagacity of the monarch, Sheba presented herself at the foot of the throne : in each hand she held a wreath ; the one was com- posed of natural, and the other of artificial, flowers. Art, in the labour of the mimetic wreath, had exquisitely emulated the lively hues of nature ; so that, at the distance it was held by the queen for the inspection of the king, it was deemed impossible for him to decide, as her question imported, which wreath was the production of nature, and which the work of
HELL. 281
art. The sagacious Solomon seemed perplexed ; yet to be vanquished, though in a trifle, by a trifling woman, irritated his pride. The son of David, he who had written treatises on the vegetable productions " from the cedar to the hyssop," to acknowledge himself outwitted by a woman, with shreds of paper and glazed paintings ! The honour of the monarch's reputation for divine sagacity seemed diminished, and the whole Jewish court looked solemn and melancholy. At length an expedient presented itself to the king ; and one it must be confessed worthy of the naturalist. Observing a cluster of bees hovering about a window, he commanded that it should be opened : it was opened ; the bees rushed into the court, and alighted immediately on one of the wreaths, while not a single one fixed on the other. The baffled Sheba had one more reason to be astonished at the wisdom of Solomon. This would make a pretty poetical tale. It would yield an elegant description, and a pleasing moral ; that the bee only rests on the natural beauties, and never fixes on the painted flowers, however inimitably the colours may be laid on. Applied to the ladies, this would give it pungency. In the " Practical Education " of the Edgeworths, the reader will find a very ingenious conversation founded dn this story.
HELL.
OLDHAM, in his " Satires upon the Jesuits," a work which would admit of a curious commentary, alludes to their " lying legends," and the innumerable impositions they prac- tised .on the credulous. I quote a few lines in which he has collected some of those legendary miracles, which I have noticed in the article LEGENDS, and the amours of the Vir gin Mary are detailed at page 28, Vol. II. art. Religious Nouvellettes.
Tell, how blessed Virgin to come down was seen, Like play-house punk descending in machine,
282 HELL.
How she writ billet-doux and love-discourse, Made assignations, visits, and amour* ; How hosts distrest, her smock for banner wore, Which vanquished foes ! — — how^s/i in conventicles met, And mackerel were with bait of doctrine caught How cattle have judicious hearers been I—- How consecrated hives with bells were hung, And bees kept mass, and holy anthems sung ! How pigs to th' rosary kneel'd, and sheep were taught To bleat Te Deum and Magnificat ; How fly-flap, of church-censure houses rid Of insects, which at curse offryar died. How ferrying cowls religious pilgrims bore O'er waves, without the help of sail or oar ; How zealous crab the sacred image bore, And swam a catholic to the distant shore. With shams like these the giddy rout mislead, Their folly and their superstition feed.
All these are allusions to the extravagant fictions in the " Golden Legend." Among other gross impositions to de- ceive the mob, Oldham likewise attacks them for certain pub- lications on topics not less singular. The tales he has recounted, Oldham says, are only baits for children, like toys at a fair ; but they have their profounder and higher matters for the learned and the inquisitive. He goes on : —
One undertakes by scales of miles to tell The bounds, dimensions, and extent of HELL ; How many German leagues that realm contains! How many chaldrons Hell each year expends In coals for roasting Hugonots and friends ! Another frights the rout with useful stories Of wild cnimeras, limbos — PURGATORIES — Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung, Like a Westphalia gammon or neat's tongue, To be redeem'd with masses ard a song.
SATIRE IV.
The readers of Oldham, for Oldham must ever have read- ers among the curious in our poetry, have been greatly disap- pointed in the pompous edition of a Captain Thompson, which illustrates none of his allusions. In the above lines Oldham alludes to some singular works.
HELL. 283
Treatises and topographical descriptions of HELL, PURGA- TORY, and even HEAVEN, were once the favorite researches among certain zealous defenders of the Romish Church, who exhausted their ink-horns in building up a Hell to their own taste, or for their particular purpose. We have a treatise of Cardinal Bellarmin, a Jesuit, on Purgatory ; he seems to have the science of a surveyor, among all the secret tracks and the formidable divisions of " the bottomless pit."
Bellarmin informs us that there are beneath the earth four different places, or a profound place divided into four parts. The deepest of these places is Hell ; it contains all the souls of the damned, where will be also their bodies after the resurrection, and likewise all the demons. The place near- est Hell is Purgatory, where souls are purged, or rather where they appease the anger of God by their sufferings. He says that the same fires and the same torments are alike in both these places, the only difference between Hell and Purgatory consisting in their duration. Next to Purgatory is the limbo of those infants who die without having received the sacrament ; and the fourth place is the limbo of the Fathers ; that is to say, of those just men who died before the death of Christ. But since the days of the Redeemer, this last division is empty, like an apartment to be let. A later catholic theologist, the famous Tillemont, condemns all the illustrious Pagans to the eternal torments of Hell! be- cause they lived before the time of Jesus, and therefore could not be benefited by the redemption ! Speaking of young Tiberius, who was compelled to fall on his own sword, Tillemont adds, " Thus by his own hand he ended his miser- able lifo, to begin another, the misery of which will never end!" Yet history records nothing bad of this prince. Jortin observes that he added this reflection in his later edi- tion, so that the good man as he grew older grew more un- charitable in his religious notions. It is in this manner too that the Benedictine editor of Justin Martyr speaks of the illustrious pagans. This father, after highly applauding Soo
284 THE ABSENT MAN.
rates, and a few more who resembled him, inclines to think that they are not fixed in Hell. But the Benedictine editor takes great pains to clear the good father from the shameful imputation of supposing that a virtuous pagan might be saved as well as a Benedictine monk 1 For a curious specimen of this odium theologicum, see the " Censure " of the Sorbonnq on MarmontePs Belisarius.
The adverse party, who were either philosophers or re- formers, received all such information with great suspicion. Anthony Cornelius, a lawyer in the sixteenth century, wrote a small tract, which was so effectually suppressed, as a mon- ster of atheism, that a copy is now only to be found in the hands of the curious. This author ridiculed the absurd and horrid doctrine of infant damnation, and was instantly de- cried as an atheist, and the printer prosecuted to his ruin ! Cselius Secundus Curio, a noble Italian, published a treatise De Amplitudine beati Regni Dei, to prove that Heaven has more inhabitants than Hett, or in his own phrase that the elect are more numerous than the reprobate. However we may incline to smile at these works, their design was benevo- lent. They were the first streaks of the morning light of the Reformation. Even such works assisted mankind to ex- amine more closely, and hold in greater contempt, the extravagant and pernicious doctrines of the domineering papistical church.
THE ABSENT MAN.
THE character of Bruyere's "Absent Man" has been translated in the Spectator, and exhibited on the theatre. It is supposed to be a fictitious character, or one highly col- oured. It was well known, however, to his contemporaries, to be the Count de Brancas. The present anecdotes concern- ing the same person have been unknown to, or forgotten by,
WAX-WORK. 285
Bruyere ; and are to the full as extraordinary as those which characterize Menalcas, or the Absent Man.
The count was reading by the fireside, but Heaven knows with what degree of attention, when the nurse brought him his infant child. He throws down the book ; he takes the child in his arms. He was playing with her, when an im- portant visitor was announced Having forgot he had quilted his book, and that it was his child he held in his hands, he hastily flung the squalling innocent on the table.
The count was walking in the street, arid the Duke de la Rochefoucault crossed the way to speak to him. — " God bless thee, poor man ! " exclaimed the count. Rochefoucault Bmiled, and was beginning to address him : — " Is it not enough," cried the count, interrupting him, and somewhat in a passion ; " is it not enough that I have said, at first, I have nothing for you ? Such lazy vagrants as you hinder a gen- tleman from walking the streets." Rochefoucault burst into a loud laugh, and awakening the absent man from his lethar- gy, he was not a little surprised, himself, that he should have taken his friend for an importunate mendicant ! La Fon- taine is recorded to have been one of the most absent men ; and Furetiere relates a most singular instance of this absence of mind. La Fontaine attended the burial of one of his friends, and some time afterwards he called to visit him. At first he was shocked at the information of his death ; but recovering from his surprise, observed — " True ! True I I recollect I went to his funeral."
WAX-WORK.
WE have heard of many curious deceptions occasioned by the imitative powers of wax-work. A series of anatomical sculptures in coloured wax was projected by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, under the direction of Fontana. Twenty apart-
286 WAX-WOKK.
ments have been filled with those curious imitations. They represent in every possible detail, and in each successive stage of denudation, the organs of sense and reproduction ; the muscular, the vascular, the nervous, and the bony system. They imitate equally well the form, and more exactly the colouring of nature than injected preparations; and they Lave been employed to perpetuate many transient phenom- ena of disease, of which no other art could have made so lively a record.
There is a species of wax-work, which, though it can hardly claim the honours of the fine arts, is adapted to afford much pleasure. I mean figures of wax, which may be mod- elled with great truth of character.
Menage has noticed a work of this kind. In the year 1 675, the Duke de Maine received a gilt cabinet, about the size of a moderate table. On the door was inscribed, " The Apartment of Wit" The inside exhibited an alcove and a long gallery. In an arm-chair was seated the figure of the duke himself composed of wax, the resemblance the most perfect imaginable. On one side stood the Duke de la Rochefoucault, to whom he presented a paper of verses for his examination. M. de Marsillac, and Bossuet bishop of Meaux, were standing near the arm-chair. In the alcove, Madame de Thianges and Madame de la Fayette sat retired, reading a book. Boileau, the satirist, stood at the door of the gallery, hindering seven or eight bad poets from entering. Near Boileau stood Racine, who seemed to beckon to La Fontaine to come forwards. All these figures were formed of wax ; and this philosophical baby-house, interesting for the personages it imitated, might induce a wish hi some phi- losophers to play once more with one.
There was lately an old canon at Cologne who made a col- lection of small wax models of characteristic figures, such as personifications of Misery, in a haggard old man with a scanty crust and a brown jug before him ; or of Avarice, in a keen-looking Jew miser counting his gold : which were
PASQUIN AND MARFOBIO. 287
done with such a spirit and reality that a Flemish painter a Hogarth or Wilkie, could hardly have worked up the feel- ing of the figure more impressively. " All these were done with truth and expression which I could not have imagined the wax capable of exhibiting," says the lively writer of " An Autumn near the Rhine." There is something very infantine in this taste ; but I lament that it is very rarely gratified by such close copiers of nature as was this old canon of Cologne
PASQUIN AND MARFORIO.
ALL the world have heard of these statites : they have served as vehicles for the keenest satire in a land of the most uncontrolled despotism. The statue ofPasquin (from whence the word pasquinade) and that of Marforio are placed in Rome in two different quarters. Marforio is an ancient statue of Mars found in the Forum, which the people have corrupted into Marforio. Pasquin is a marble statue, greatly mutilated, supposed to be the figure of a gladiator. To one or other of these statues, during the concealment of the night, are affixed those satires or lampoons which the authors wish should be dispersed about Rome without any danger to them- selves. When Marforio is attacked, Pasquin comes to his succour ; and when Pasquin is the sufferer, he finds in Mar- forio a constant defender. Thus, by a thrust and a parry, the most serious matters are disclosed : and the most illus- trious personages are attacked by their enemies, and defended by their friends.
Misson, in his Travels in Italy, gives the following account of the origin of the name of the statue of Pasquin : —
A satirical tailor, who lived at Rome, and whose name waa Pasquin, amused himself by severe raillery, liberally bestowed on those who passed by his shop ; which in time became the lounge of the newsmongers. The tailor had precisely the
288 PASQUIN AND MARFORIO.
talents to head a regiment of satirical wits ; and had he had time to publish, he would have been the Peter Pindar of his day ; but his genius seems to have been satisfied to rest cross-legged on his shopboard. When any lampoons or amusing bon-mots were current at Rome, they were usually called, from his shop, pasquinades. After his death this statue of an ancient gladiator was found under the pavement of his shop. It was soon set up, and by universal consent was inscribed with his name ; and they still attempt to raise him from the dead, and keep the caustic tailor alive, in the marble gladiator of wit.
There is a very rare work, with this title : — " Pasquillorum Tomi Duo ; " the first containing the verse, and the second the prose pasquinades, published at Basle, 1544. The rarity of this collection of satirical pieces is entirely owing to the arts of suppression practised by the papal government. Sallengre, in his literary Memoirs, has given an account of this work ; his own copy had formerly belonged to Daniel Heinsius, who, in two verses written in his hand, describes its rarity and the price it cost : —
Roma meos fratres igni dedit, unica Phoenix Vivo, aureisque venio centum Heinsio.
" Rome gave my brothers to the flames, but I survive a solitary Phoenix. Heinsius bought me for a hundred golden ducats."
This collection contains a great number of pieces composed at different times, against the popes, cardinals, &c. They are not indeed materials for the historian, and they must be taken with grains of allowance. We find sarcastic epigrams on Leo X., and the infamous Lucretia, daughter of Alexander VI, : even the corrupt Romans of the day were capable of expressing themselves with the utmost freedom. Of Alex- ander VI. we have an apology for his conduct :
Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum ; Emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest.
"Alexander setts the keys, the altars, and Christ; As he bought them first, he had a right to sell them!*9
PASQUIN AND MARFORIO. 289
On Lucretia : —
Hoc tumulo dormit Lucretia nomine, sed re Thais ; Alexandri filia, sponsa, nurus !
" Beneath this stone sleeps Lucretia by name, but by nature Thais ; the daughter, the wife, and the daughter-in-law of Alexander! "
Leo X. was a frequent butt for the arrows of Pasquin :—
Sacra sub extrema, si forte requiritis, hora Cur Leo non potuit sumere ; vendiderat.
" Do you ask why Leo did not take the sacrament on his death-bed ? — How could he ? He had sold it ! "
Many of these satirical touches depend on puns. Urban VII., one of the Barberini family, pillaged the Pantheon of brass to make cannon, on which occasion Pasquin was made to say : —
Quod non fecerunt Sarban Romae, fecit Barberwi.
On Clement VII., whose death was said to be occasioned by the prescriptions of his physician : —
Curtius occidit Clementem ; Curtius auro Donandus, per quern publica parta salus.
" Dr. Curtius has killed the pope by his remedies ; he ought to be re- munerated as a man who has cured the state."
The following, on Paul III., are singular conceptions :—
Papa Medusaeum caput est, coma turba Nepotum; Perseu caede caput, Caesaries periit.
" The pope is the head of Medusa; the horrid tresses are his nephews; Perseus, cut off the head, and then we shall be rid of these serpent-locks.'*
Another is sarcastic —
Ut canerent data multa olim sunt Vatibus sera: Ut taceam, quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?
" Heretofore money was given to poets that they might sing; how much will you give me, Paul, to be silent? "
This collection contains, among other classes, passages from the Scriptures which have been applied to the court of Rome ; to different nations and persons ; and one of "Sortes Vir*
Vf.T.. I. . 10
290 FEMALE BEAUTY AND ORNAMENTS.
giliancB per Pasquillum collects" — passages from Virgil fre- quently happily applied ; and those who are curious in the history of those times will find this portion interest- ing. The work itself is not quite so rare as Daniel Hein- sius imagined ; the price might now reach from five to ten guineas.
The satirical statues are placed at opposite ends of the town, so that there is always sufficient time to make Marforio reply to the gibes and jeers of Pasquin in walking from one to the other. They are an ingenious substitute for publishing to the world, what no Roman newspaper would dare to print.
FEMALE BEAUTY AND ORNAMENTS.
THE ladies in Japan gild their teeth ; and those of the Indies paint them red. The pearl of teeth must be dyed black to be beautiful in Guzerat. In Greenland the women colour their faces with blue and yellow. However fresh the complexion of a Muscovite may be, she would think herself very ugly if she was not plastered over with paint. The Chinese must have their feet as diminutive as those of the she-goat ; and to render them thus, their youth is passed in tortures. In ancient Persia an aquiline nose was often thought worthy of the crown ; and if there was any compe- tition between two princes, the people generally went by this criterion of majesty. In some countries, the mothers break the noses of their children ; and in others press the head between two boards, that it may become square. The mod- ern Persians have a strong aversion to red hair : the Turks, on the contrary, are warm admirers of it. The female Hot- tentot receives from the hand of her lover, not silks nor Wreaths of flowers, but warm guts and reeking tripe, to dress herself with enviable ornaments.
In China small round eyes are liked ; and the girls are
FEMALE BEAUTY AND ORNAMENTS. 291
continually plucking their eye-brows, that they may be thin and long. The Turkish women dip a gold brush in the tinc- ture of a black drug, which they pass over their eye-brows. It is too visible by day, but looks shining by night. They tinge their nails with a rose-colour. An African beauty must have small eyes, thick lips, a large flat nose, and a skin beautifully black. The Emperor of Monomotapa would not change his amiable negress for the most brilliant European beauty.
An ornament for the nose appears to us perfectly unneces- sary. The Peruvians, however, think otherwise ; and they hang on it a weighty ring, the thickness of which is propor- tioned by the rank of their husbands. The custom of boring it, as our ladies do their ears, is very common in several nations. Through the perforation are hung various materials ; such as green crystal, gold, stones, a single and sometimes a great number of gold rings. This is rather troublesome to them in blowing their noses ; and the fact is, as some have informed us, that the Indian ladies never perform this very useful operation.
The female head-dress is carried in some countries to sin- gular extravagance. The Chinese fair carries on her head the figure of a certain bird. This bird is composed of cop- per or of gold, according to the quality of the person ; the wings spread out, fall over the front of the head-dress, and conceal the temples. The tail, long and open, forms a beau- tiful tuft of feathers. The beak covers the top of the nose ; the neck is fastened to the body of the artificial animal by a spring, that it may the more freely play, and tremble at the slightest motion.
The extravagance of the Myantses is far more ridiculous than the above. They carry on their heads a slight board, rather longer than a foot, and about six inches broad ; with this they cover their hair, and seal it with wax. They can- not lie down, or lean, without keeping the neck straight ; and the country being very woody, it is not uncommon to find
292 MODERN PLATONISM.
them with their head-dress entangled in the trees. "When- ever they comb their hair, they pass an hour by the fire in melting the wax ; but this combing is only performed once or twice a year.
The inhabitants of the land of Natal wear caps or bon- nets, from six to ten inches high, composed of the fat of oxen. They then gradually anoint the head with a purer grease, which mixing with the hair, fastens these bonnets for their lives.
MODERN PLATONISM.
ERASMUS in his Age of Religious Revolution expressed an alarm, "which in some shape has been since realized. He strangely, yet acutely observes, that " literature began to make a great and happy progress ; but," he adds, " I fear two things — that the study of Hebrew will promote Judaism, and the study of philology will revive PAGANISM." He speaks to the same purpose in the Adages, c. 189, as Jortin observes. Blackwell, in his curious Life of Homer, after showing that the ancient oracles were the fountains of knowledge, and that the votaries of the god of Delphi had their faith confirmed by the oracle's perfect acquaintance with the country, parentage, and fortunes of the suppliant, and many predictions verified; that besides all this, the oracles that have reached us discover a wide knowledge of everything relating to Greece ; — this learned writer is at a loss to account for a knowledge that he thinks has something divine in it : it was a knowledge to be found no where in Greece but among the Oracles. He would account for this phenomenon, by supposing there existed a succession of learned men devoted to this purpose. He says, " Either we must admit the knowledge of the priests, or turn converts to the ancients, and believe in the omniscience of Apollo, which in this age I know nobody in hazard of" Yet to the aston-
MODERN PLATONISM. 293
ishment of this writer, were he now living, he would have witnessed this incredible fact ! Even Erasmus himself might have wondered.
We discover the origin of MODERN PLATONISM, as it may be distinguished, among the Italians. About the middle of the fifteenth century, some time .before the Turks had become masters of Constantinople, a great number of philosophers flourished. Gemisthus Pletho, was one distinguished by his genius, his erudition, and his fervent passion for platonism. Mr. Roscoe notices Pletho : " His discourses had so power- ful an effect upon Cosmo de' Medici, who was his constant auditor, that he established an academy at Florence for the sole purpose of cultivating this new and more elevated species of philosophy." The learned Marsilio Ficino trans- lated Plotinus, that great archimage of platonic Mysticism. Such were Pletho's eminent abilities, that in his old age those whom his novel system had greatly irritated either feared or respected him. He had scarcely breathed his last when they began to abuse Plato and our Pletho. The fol- lowing account is written by George of Trebizond.
" Lately has risen amongst us a second Mahomet : and this second, if we do not take care, will exceed in greatness the first, by the dreadful consequences of his wicked doctrine, as the first has exceeded Plato. A disciple and rival of this philosopher in philosophy, in eloquence, and in science, he had fixed his residence in the Peloponnese. His common name was Gemischus, but he assumed that of Pletho. Per- haps Gemisthus, to make us believe more easily that he was descended from heaven, and to engage us to receive more readily his doctrine and his new law, wished to change his name, according to the manner of the ancient patriarchs, of whom it is said, that at the time the name was changed they were called to the greatest things. He has written with no vulgar art, and with no common elegance. He has given new rulea for the conduct of life, and for the regulation of human affairs ; and at the same time has vomited forth a great num-
294 MODERN PLATONISM.
her of blasphemies against the Catholic religion. He was so zealous a platonist that he entertained no other sentiments than those of Plato, concerning the nature of the gods, souls, sacrifices, &c. I have heard him myself, when we were to- gether at Florence, say, that in a few years all men on the face of the earth would embrace with one common consent, and with one mind, a single and simple religion, at the first instructions which should be given by a single preaching. And when I asked him if it would be the religion of Jesua Christ, or that of Mahomet ? he answered, * Neither one nor the other ; but a third, which will not greatly differ from paganism.' These words I heard with so much indignation, that since that time I have always hated him : I look upon him as a dangerous viper ; and I cannot think of him with- out abhorrence."
The pious writer might have been satisfied to have be- stowed a smile of pity or contempt.
When Pletho died, full of years and honours, the malice of his enemies collected all its venom. This circumstance seems to prove that his abilities must have been great indeed, to have kept such crowds silent. Several catholic writers lament that his book was burnt, and regret the loss of Pletho's work; which, they say, was not designed .to subvert the Christian religion, but only to unfold the system of Plato, and to collect what he and other philosophers had written on religion and politics.
Of his religious scheme, the reader may judge by this summary account. The general title of the volume ran thus: "This book treats of the laws of the best form of government, and what all men must observe in their public and private stations, to live together in the most perfect, the most innocent, and the most happy manner." The whole was divided into three books. The titles of the chapters where paganism was openly inculcated are reported by Gen- nadi us, who condemned it to the flames, but who has not thought proper to enter into the manner of his arguments.
MODERN PLATONISM. 295
The extravagance of this new legislator appeared, above all, in the articles which concerned religion. He acknowledges a plurality of gods : some superior, whom he placed above the heavens ; and the others inferior, on this side the heavens The first existing from the remotest antiquity ; the others younger, and of different ages. He gave a king to all these gods, and he called him ZEY2, or Jupiter; as the pagans named this power formerly. According to him, the stars had a soul ; the demons were not malignant spirits ; and the world was eternal. He established polygamy, and was even inclined to a community of women. All his work was filled with such reveries, and with not a few impieties, which my pious author has not ventured to give.
What were the intentions of Pletho? If the work was only an arranged system of paganism, or the platonic philos- ophy, it might have been an innocent, if not a curious volume. He was learned and humane, and had not passed his life entirely in the solitary recesses of his study.
To strain human curiosity to the utmost limits of human credibility, a modern Pletho has risen in Mr. Thomas Taylor, who, consonant to the platonic philosophy, in the present day religiously professes polytheism ! At the close of the eigh- teenth century, be it recorded, were published many volumes, in which the author affects to avow himself a zealous Platon- ist, and asserts that he can prove that the Christian religion is " a bastardized and barbarous Platonism ! " The divinities of Plato are the divinities to be adored, and we are to be taught to call God, Jupiter ; the Virgin, Venus ; and Christ, Cupid ! The Iliad of Homer allegorized, is converted into a Greek bible of the arcana of nature ! Extraordinary as this literary lunacy may appear, we must observe, that it stands not singular in the annals of the history of the human mind. The Florentine academy, which Cosmo founded, had, no doubt, some classical enthusiasts ; but who, perhaps, according to the political character of their country, were prudent and reserved. The platonic furor, however, appears to have
296 MODERN PLATONISM.
reached other countries. In the reign of Louis XII. a scholar named Hemon de la Fosse, a native of Abbeville, by continually reading the Greek and Latin writers, became mad enough to persuade himself that it was impossible that the religion of such great geniuses as Homer, Cicero, and Virgil was a false one. On the 25th of August, 1503, being at church, he suddenly snatched the host from the hands of the priest, at the moment it was raised, exclaiming — " What ! always this folly 1" He was immediately seized. In the hope that he would abjure his extravagant errors, .they de- layed his punishment ; but no exhortation nor entreaties availed. He persisted in maintaining that Jupiter was the sovereign God of the universe, and that there was no other paradise than the Elysian fields. He was burnt alive, after having first had his tongue pierced, and his hand cut off. Thus perished an ardent and learned youth, who ought only to have been condemned as a Bedlamite.
Dr. More, the most rational of our modern Platonists, abounds, however, with the most extravagant reveries, and was inflated with egotism and enthusiasm, as much as any of his mystic predecessors. He conceived that he communed with the Divinity itself! that he had been shot as a fiery dart into the world, and he hoped he had hit the mark. He carried his self-conceit to such extravagance, that he thought his urine smelt like violets, and his body in the spring season had a sweet odour ; a perfection peculiar to himself. These, visionaries indulge the most fanciful vanity.
The "sweet odours," and that of "the violets," might, however, have been real — for they mark a certain stage of the disease of diabetes, as appears in a medical tract by the elder Dr. Latham.
ANECDOTES OF FASHION. 297
ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
A voi ITME on this subject might be made very curious and entertaining, for our ancestors were not less vacillating, and perhaps more capriciously grotesque, though with infi- nitely less taste, than the present generation. Were a philosopher and an artist, as well as an antiquary, to compose such a work, much diversified entertainment, and some curious investigation of the progress of the arts and taste, would doubtless be the result ; the subject otherwise appears of trifling value ; the very farthing pieces of history.
The origin of many fashions was in the endeavour to conceal some deformity of the inventor : hence the cushions, ruffs, hoops, and other monstrous devices. It a reigning beauty chanced to have an unequal hip, thost who had very handsome hips would load them with that faist- rump which the other was compelled by the unkindnes* of nature to substitute. Patches were invented in England in the reign of Edward VI. by a foreign lady, who in this manner ingen- iously covered a wen on her neck. Full-bottomed wigs were invented by a French barber, one Duviller, whose name they perpetuated, for the purpose of concealing an elevation in the shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VII. of France introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs. Shoes with very long points, full two feet in length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large excrescence on one of his feet. When Francis I. was obliged to wear his hair short, owing to a wound he received in the head, it became a prevailing fashion at court. Others, on the con- trary, adapted fashions to set off" their peculiar beauties : as Isabella of Bavaria, remarkable for her gallantry, and the fairness of her complexion, introduced the fashion of leaving the shoulders and part of the neck uncovered.
Fashions have frequently originated from circumstances as silly as the following one. Isabella, daughter of Philip II.
208 ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
and wife of the Archduke Albert, vowed not to change her linen till Ostend was taken ; this siege, unluckily for her comfort lasted three years ; and the supposed colour of the archduchess's linen gave rise to a fashionable colour, hence called Vlsabeau, or the Isabella ; a kind of whitish-yellow- dingy. Sometimes they originate in some temporary event ; as after the battle of Steenkirk, where the allies wore largo cravats, by which the French frequently seized hold of them, a circumstance perpetuated on the medals of Louis XIV., cravats were called Steenkirks ; and after the battle of Ramilies, wigs received that denomination.
The court, in all ages and in every country, are the mod- ellers of fashions ; so that all the ridicule, of which these are so susceptible, must fall on them, and not upon their servile imitators the citizens. This complaint is made even so far back as in 1586, by Jean des Caures, an old French moralist, who, in declaiming against the fashions of his day, notices one, of the ladies carrying mirrors fixed to their waists, which seemed to employ their eyes in perpetual activity. From this mode will result, according to honest Des Caures, their eternal damnation. " Alas ! (he exclaims) in what an age do we live : to see such depravity which we see, that induces them even to bring into church these scandalous mir- rors hanging about their waists ! Let all histories, divine, human, and profane, be consulted ; never will it be found that these objects of vanity were ever thus brought into pub- lic by the most meretricious of the sexJ It is true, at present none but the ladies of the court venture to wear them ; but long it will not be before every citizen's daughter and every female servant, will have them ! " Such in all times has been the rise and decline of fashion ; and the absurd mimicry of the citizens, even of the lowest classes, to their very ruin, in straining to rival the newest fashion, has mortified and galled the courtier.
On this subject old Camden, in his Remains, relates a story of a trick played off on a citizen, which I give in the plain
ANECDOTES OF FASHION. 299
ness of his own venerable style. " Sir Philip Calthrop purged John Drakes, the shoemaker of Norwich, in the time of King Henry VIII. of the proud humour which our people have to be of the gentlemen's cut. This knight bought on a time as much fine French tawny cloth as should make him a gown, and sent it to the taylor's to be made. John Drakes, ci shoemaker of that town, coming to this said taylor's, and seeing the knight's gown cloth lying there, liking it well, caused the taylor to buy him as much of the same cloth and price to the same intent, and further bade him to make it of the same fashion that the knight would have his made of. Not long after, the knight coming to the taylor's to take measure of his gown, perceiving the like cloth lying there, asked of the taylor whose it was ? Quoth the taylor, it is John Drakes's the shoemaker, who will have it made of the self -same fashion that your's is made of! l Well ! ' said the knight, * in good time be it ! I will have mine made as full of cuts as thy shears can make it.' l It shall be done ! ' said the taylor ; whereupon, because the tune drew near, he made haste to finish both their garments. John Drakes had no time to go to the taylor's till Christmas-day, for serving his customers, when he hoped to have worn his gown ; perceiv- ing the same to be full of cuts began to swear at the taylor, for the making his gown after that sort. *I have done nothing,' quoth the taylor, « but that you bid me ; for as Sir Philip Calthrop's garment is, even so have I made yours ! ' * By my latchet ! ' quoth John Drakes, * / will never wear gentlemen's fashions again ! ' '
Sometimes fashions are quite reversed in their use in one age from another. Bags, when first in fashion in France, were only worn en deshabille ; in visits of ceremony, the hair was tied by a riband and floated over the shoulders, which is exactly reversed in the present fashion. In the year 1735 the men had no hats but a little chapeau de bras ; in 1745 they wore a very small hat ; in 1755 they wore an enormous one, as may be seen in Jeffrey's, curious " Collection of Habita
300 ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
in all Nations." Old Puttenham, in « The Art of Poesie," p. 239, on the present topic gives some curious information. " Henry VIII. caused his own head, and all his courtiers, to be polled, and his beard to be cut short ; before that time it was thought more decent, both for old men and young, to be all shaven, and weare long haire, either rounded or square. Now again at this time (Elizabeth's reign), the young gen- tlemen of the court have taken up the long haire tray ling on their shoulders, and think this more decent; for what respect I would be glad to know."
When the fair sex were accustomed to behold their lovers with beards, the sight of a shaved chin excited feelings of horror and aversion ; as much indeed as, in this less heroic age, would a gallant whose luxuriant beard should
" Stream like a meteor to the troubled air."
When Louis VII., to obey the injunctions of his bishops, cropped his hair, and shaved his beard, Eleanor, his consort, found him, with this unusual appearance, very ridiculous, and soon very contemptible. She revenged herself as she thought proper, and the poor shaved king obtained a divorce. She then married the Count of Anjou, afterwards our Henry II. She had for her marriage dower the rich provinces of Poitou and Guienne ; and this was the origin of those wars which for three hundred years ravaged France, and cost the French three millions of men. All which, probably, had never oc- curred had Louis VII. not been so rash as to crop his head and shave his beard, by which he became so disgustful in the eyes of our Queen Eleanor.
We cannot perhaps sympathize with the feelings of her Majesty, though at Constantinople she might not have been considered unreasonable. There must be something more powerful in beards and mustachios than we are quite aware of; for when these were in fashion — and long after this was written — the fashion has returned on us — with what enthu- were they not contemplated ! When mustachios were
ANECDOTES OF FASHION. 301
in general use, an author, in his Elements of Education,' pub- lished in 1 640, thinks that " hairy excrement," as Armado in " Love's Labour Lost " calls it, contributed to make men val- orous. He says, " I have a favourable opinion of that young gentleman who is curious in fine mustachios. The time he employs in adjusting, dressing, and curling them, is no lost tune ; for the more he contemplates his mustachios, the more his mind will cherish and be animated by masculine and courageous notions." The best reason that could be given for wearing the longest and largest beard of any Englishman •was that of a worthy clergyman in Elizabeth's reign, " that no act of his life might be unworthy of the gravity of his appearance."
The grandfather of Mrs. Thomas, the Corinna of Crom- well, the literary friend of Pope, by her account, " was very nice in the mode of that age, his valet being some hours every morning in starching his beard and curling his whis- kers ; during which time he was always read to." Taylor, the water poet, humorously describes the great variety of beards hi his time, which extract may be found in Grey's Hudibras, Vol. I. p. 300. The beard dwindled gradually under the two Charleses, till it was reduced into whiskers, and became extinct in the reign of James II., as if its fatal- ity had been connected with that of the house of Stuart.
The hair has in all ages been an endless topic for the declamation of the moralist, and the favourite object of fash- ion. If the beau monde wore their hair luxuriant, or their wig enormous, the preachers, in Charles the Second's reign, instantly were seen in the pulpit with their hair cut shorter, and their sermon longer, in consequence ; respect was, how- ever, paid by the world to the size of the wig, in spite of the hair-cutter in the pulpit. Our judges, and till lately our phy- sicians, well knew its magical effect. In the reign of Charles II. the hair-dress of the ladies was very elaborate ; it waa not only curled and frizzled with the nicest art, but set off vrith certain artificial curls, then too emphatically known by
302 ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
the pathetic terms of heart-breakers and love-locks. So late as William and Mary, lads, and even children, wore wigs ; and if they had not wigs, they curled their hair to resemble this fashionable ornament. Women then were the hair- dressers.
There are flagrant follies in fashion which must be endured while they reign, and which never appear ridiculous till they are out of fashion. In the reign of Henry III. of France, they could not exist without an abundant use of comfits. All the world, the grave and the gay, carried in their pockets a comfit-box, as we do snuff-boxes. They used them even on the most solemn occasions ; when the Duke of Guise was shot at Blois, he was found with his comfit-box in his hand. — Fashions indeed have been carried to so extravagant a length, as to have become a public offence, and to have required the interference of government. Short and tight breeches were so much the rage in France, that Charles V. was compelled to banish this disgusting mode by edicts, which may be found in Mezerai. An Italian author of the fifteenth century sup- poses an Italian traveller of nice modesty would not pass through France, that he might not be offended by seeing men whose clothes rather exposed their nakedness than hid it. The very same fashion was the complaint in the remoter period of our Chaucer, in his Parson's Tale.
In the reign of our Elizabeth the reverse of all this took place ; then the mode of enormous breeches was pushed to a most laughable excess. The beaux of that day stuffed out their breeches with rags, feathers, and other light matters, till they brought them out to an enormous size. They re- sembled wool-sacks, and in a public spectacle they were obliged to raise scaffolds for the seats of these ponderous beaux. To accord with this fantastical taste, the ladies in- vented large hoop farthingales ; two lovers aside could surely never have taken one another by the hand. In a preceding reign the fashion ran on square toes ; insomuch that a pro- clamation was issued that no person should wear shoes above
ANECDOTES OF FASHION. 303
six inches square at the toes ! Then succeeded picked pointed shoes ! The nation was again, in the reign of Eliza- beth, put under the royal authority. " In that time," says honest John Stowe, " he was held the greatest gallant that had the deepest ruff and longest rapier : the offence to the eye of the one, and hurt unto the life of the subject that came by the other — this caused her Majestic to make proclamation against them both, and to place selected grave citizens at every gate, to cut the ruffes, and breake the rapiers' points ct all passengers that exceeded a yeard in length of their rapiers, and a nayle of a yeard in depth of then* ruffes.*' These " grave citizens," at every gate cutting the ruffs and breaking the rapiers, must doubtless have encountered in then* ludicrous employment some stubborn opposition; but this regulation was, in the spirit of that age, despotic and effectual. Paul, the Emperor of Russia, one day ordered the soldiers to stop every passenger who wore pantaloons, and with their hangers to cut off, upon the leg, the offending part of these superfluous breeches; so that a man's legs depended greatly on the adroitness and humanity of a Russ or a Cossack ; however this war against pantaloons was very successful, and obtained a complete triumph in favour of the breeches in the course of the week.
A shameful extravagance in dress has been a most vener- able folly. In the reign of Richard II. their dress was sumptuous beyond belief. Sir John Arundel had a change of no less than fifty-two new suits of cloth of gold tissue. The prelates indulged in all the ostentatious luxury of dress. Chaucer says, they had " chaunge of clothing everie daie." Brantome records of Elizabeth, Queen of Philip II. of Spain, that she never wore a gown twice ; this was told him by her majesty's own tailleur, who from a poor man soon became as rich as any one he knew. Our own Elizabeth left no less than three thousand different habits in her wardrobe when she died. She was possessed of the dresses of all countries. The catholic religion has ever considered the pomp of the
304 ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
clerical habit as not the slightest part of its religious cere- monies ; their devotion is addressed to the eye of the people. In the reign of our catholic Queen Mary, the dress of a priest was costly indeed; and the sarcastic and good- humoured Fuller gives, in his Worthies, the will of a priest to show the wardrobe of men of his order, and desires that the priest may not be jeered for the gallantry of his splendid apparel. He bequeaths to various parish churches and per- sons, " My vestment of crimson satin — my vestment of crim- son velvet — my stole and fanon set with pearl — my black gown faced with taffeta," &c.
Chaucer has minutely detailed in " The Persone's Tale " the grotesque and the costly fashions of his day ; and the simplicity of the venerable satirist will interest the antiquary and the philosopher. Much, and curiously, has his caustic severity or lenient humour descanted on the " moche super- fluitee," and " wast of cloth in vanitee," as well as " the dis- ordinate scantnesse." In the spirit of the good old times, he calculates "the coste of the embrouding or embroidering; endenting or barring ; ounding or wavy ; paling or imitating pales ; and winding or bending ; the costlewe furring in the gounes ; so much pounsoning of chesel to maken holes (that is, punched with a bodkin) ; so moche dagging of sheres (cutting into slips) ; with the superfluitee in length of the gounes trailing in the dong and in the myre, on horse and eke on foot, as wel of man as of woman — that all thilke trailing," he verily believes, which wastes, consumes, wears threadbare, and is rotten with dung, are all to the damage of " the poor folk," who might be clothed only out of the flounces and draggle-tails of these children of vanity. But then his Parson is not less bitter against "the horrible disordinat scantnesse of clothing," and very copiously he describes, though perhaps in terms and with a humour too coarse for me to transcribe, the consequences of these very tight dresses. Of these persons, among other offensive matters, he sees " the buttokkes behind, as if they were the hinder part of a sheap,
ANECDOTES OF FASHION. 305
in the full of the mone." He notices one of the most gro- tesque modes, the wearing a parti-coloured dress ; one stock- ing part white and part red, so that they looked as if they had been flayed. Or white and blue, or white and black, or black and red ; this variety of colours gave an appearance to their members of St. Anthony's fire, or cancer, or other mis- chance !
The modes of dress during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were so various and ridiculous, that they afforded perpetual food for the eager satirist.
The conquests of Edward III. introduced the French fashions into England; and the Scotch adopted them by their alliance with the French court, and close intercourse with that nation.
Walsingham dates the introduction of French fashions among us from the taking of Calais hi 1347 ; but we appear to have possessed such a rage for imitation hi dress, that an English beau was actually a fantastical compound of all the fashions in Europe, and even Asia, in the reign of Elizabeth. In Chaucer's time, the prevalence of French fashions was a common topic with our satirist ; and he notices the affectation of our female citizens hi speaking the French language, a stroke of satire which, after four centuries, is not obsolete, if applied to their faulty pronunciation. In the prologue to the Prioresse, Chaucer has these humorous lines : —
Entewned in her voice full seemly, And French she spake full feteously, After the Scole of Stratford at Bowe ; . The French of Paris was to her unknowe.
A beau of the reign of Henry IV. has been made out, by the labourious Henry. They wore then long-pointed shoes to such an immoderate length, that they could not walk till they were fastened to their knees with chains. Luxury im- proving on this ridiculous mode, these chains the English beau of the fourteenth century had made of gold and silver ; but the grotesque fashion did not finish here, for the tops of their
VOL. i. 20
306 ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
shoes were carved in the manner of a church window. The ladies of that period were not less fantastical.
The wild variety of dresses worn in the reign of Henry VIII. is alluded to in a print of a naked Englishman holding a piece of cloth hanging on his right arm, and a pair of shears in his left hand. It was invented by Andrew Borde, a learned wit of those days. The print bears the following inscription : —
I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, Musing in my mind, what rayment 1 shall were ; For now I will were this, and now I will were that, And now I will were what I cannot tell what.
At a lower period, about the reign of Elizabeth, we are presented with a curious picture of a man of fashion by Puttenham, in his " Arte of Poetry," p. 250. This author was a travelled courtier, and has interspersed his curious work with many lively anecdotes of the times. This is his fantastical beau in the reign of Elizabeth. " May it not seeme enough for a courtier to know how to weare a feather and set his cappe aflaunt ; his chain en echarpe ; a straight buskin, al Inglese ; a loose a la Turquesque ; the cape alia Spaniola ; the breech a la Franqoise, and, by twentie maner of new-fashioned garments, to disguise his body and his face with as many countenances, whereof it seems there be many that make a very arte and studie, who can shewe himselfe most fine, I will not say most foolish or ridiculous." So that a beau of those times wore in the same dress a grotesque mixture of all the fashions in the world. About the same period the ton ran in a different course in France. There, fashion consisted in an affected negligence of dress; for Montaigne honestly laments, in Book i. Cap. 25. — " I have never yet been apt to imitate the negligent garb which is yet observable among the young men of our time ; to wear my cloak on one shoulder, my bonnet on one side, and one stocking in something more disorder than the other, meant to express a manly disdain of such exotic ornaments, and a contempt of art."
ANECDOTES OF FASHION. 3()7
The fashions of the Elizabethan age have been chronicled by honest John Stowe. Stowe was originally a tailor, and when he laid down the shears, and took up the pen, the taste and curiosity for dress was still retained. He is the grave chronicler of matters not grave. The chronology of ruffs, and tufted taffetas ; the revolution of steel poking-sticks, in- stead of bone or wood, used by the laundresses ; the invasion of shoe-buckles, and the total rout of shoe-roses ; that grand adventure of a certain Flemish lady, who introduced the art of starching the ruffs with a yellow tinge into Britain : while Mrs. Montague emulated her in the royal favour, by present- ing her highness the queen with a pair of black silk stock- ings, instead of her cloth hose, which her majesty now for ever rejected ; the heroic achievements of the Right Honour- able Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who first brought from Italy the whole mystery and craft of perfumery, and costly washes ; and among other pleasant things besides, a perfumed jerkin, a pair of perfumed gloves trimmed with roses, in which the queen took such delight, that she was actually pictured with those gloves on her royal hands, and for many years after the scent was called the Earl of Oxford's Perfume. These, and occurrences as memorable, receive a pleasant kind of historical pomp in the important, and not incurious, narrative of the antiquary and the tailor. The toilet of Elizabeth was indeed an altar of devotion, of which she was the idol, and all her ministers were her votaries : it was the reign of coquetry, and the golden age of millinery ! But of grace and elegance they had not the slightest feeling ! There is a print by Vertue, of Queen Elizabeth going in a procession to Lord Hunsdon. This procession is led by Lady Hunsdon, who no doubt was the leader likewise of the fash- ion ; but it is impossible, with our ideas of grace and comfort, not to commiserate this unfortunate lady, whose standing-up wire ruff, rising above her head ; whose stays, or bodice, so long-waisted as to reach to her knees, and the circumference of her large hoop farthingale, which seems to enclose her in
308 ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
a capacious tub, mark her out as one of the most pitiable martyrs of ancient modes. The amorous Sir Walter Raleigh must have found some of the maids of honour the most im- pregnable fortification his gallant spirit ever assailed : a coup de main was impossible.
I shall transcribe from old Stowe a few extracts, which may amuse the reader : —
" In the second yeere of Queen Elizabeth 1560, her silke woman, Mistris Montague, presented her majestic for a new yeere's gift, a paire of black knit silk stockings, the which, after a few days' wearing, pleased her highness so well, that she sent for Mistris Montague, and asked her where she had them, and if she could help her to any more ; who answered, saying, i I made them very carefully of purpose only for your majestic, and seeing these please you so well, I will presently set more in hand.' * Do so (quoth the queene), for indeed 1 like silk stockings so well, because they are pleasant, fine, and delicate, that henceforth 1 will wear no more CLOTH STOCK- INGS ' — and from that time unto her death the queene never wore any more cloth hose, but only silke stockings ; for you shall understand that King Henry the Eight did weare onely cloath hose, or hose cut out of ell-broade taffety, or that by great chance there came a pair of Spanish silk stockings from Spain. King Edward the Sixthad &payre of long Spanish silke stockings sent him for a great present. — Dukes' daughters then wore gownes of satten of Bridges (Bruges) upon solemn dayes. Cushens, and window pillows of welvet and damaske, formerly only princely furniture, now be very plenteous in most citizens' houses."
" Milloners or haberdashers had not then any gloves im- broydered, or trimmed with gold, or silke ; neither gold nor imbroydered girdles and hangers, neither could they make any costly wash or perfume, until about the fifteenth yeere of the queene, the Right Honourable Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, came from Italy, and brought with him gloves, sweete bagges, a perfumed leather jerkin, and other pleasant things -,
ANECDOTES OF FASHION. SQQ
and that yeere the queene had a pair of perfumed gloves trimmed only with four tuffes, or roses of coloured silk. The queene took such pleasure in those gloves, that she was pic- tured with those gloves upon her handes, and for many years after it was called « The Earl of Oxfords perfume. ' "
In such a chronology of fashions, an event not less impor- tant surely was the origin of starching ; and here we find it treated with the utmost historical dignity.
" In the year 1564, Mistris Dinghen Van den Plasse, borne at Taenen in Flaunders, daughter to a worshipfull knight of that province, with her husband, came to London for their better safeties, and there professed herself a starcher, wherein she excelled, unto whom her owne nation presently repaired, and payed her very liberally for her worke. Some very few of the best and most curious wives of that time, observing the neatness and delicacy of the Dutch for whitenesse and fine wearing of linen, made them cambricke rirffs, and sent them to Mistris Dinghen to starch, and after awhile they made them ruffes of lawn, which was at that time a stuff most strange, and wonderfull, and thereupon rose a general scoffe or by -word, that shortly they would make ruff's of a spider's web ; and then they began to send their daughters and nearest kinswomen to Mistris Dinghen to learn how to starche ; her usuall price was at that time, foure or five pound, to teach them how to starch, and twenty shillings how to seeth starch."
Thus Italy, Holland, and France, supplied us with fashions and refinements. But in those days they were, as I have shown from Puttenham, as extravagant dressers as any of their present supposed degenerate descendants. Stowe affords us another curious extract. " Divers noble per- sonages made them ruffes, a full quarter of a yeard deepe, and two lengthe in one ruffe. This fashion in London was called the French fashion ; but when Englishmen came to Paris, the French knew it not, and in derision called it the English monster." An exact parallel this of many of our own Parisian modes in the present day.
310 ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
This was the golden period of cosmetics. The beaux of that day, it is evident, used the abominable art of painting their faces as well as the women. Our old comedies abound with perpetual allusions to oils, tinctures, quintessences, pomatums, perfumes, paint white and red, &c. One of their prime cosmetics was a frequent use of the bath, and the ap- plication of wine. Strutt quotes from an old MS. a recipe to make the face of a beautiful red color. The person was to be in a bath that he might perspire, and afterwards wash his face with wine, and " so should be both faire and roddy." In Mr. Lodge's " Illustrations of British History," the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had the keeping of the unfortunate Queen of Scots, complains of the expenses of the Queen for bathing in wine, and requires a further allowance. A learned Scotch professor informed me, that white wine was used for these purposes. They also made a bath of milk. Elder beauties bathed in wine, to get rid of their wrinkles ; and perhaps not without reason, wine being a great astringent. Unwrinkled beauties bathed in milk, to preserve the softness and sleekness of the skin. Our venerable beauties of the Elizabethan age were initiated coquettes ; and the mysteries of their toilet might be worth unveiling.
The reign of Charles II. was the dominion of French fashions. In some respects the taste was a little lighter, but the moral effect of dress, and which no doubt it has, was much worse. The dress was very inflammatory; and the nudity of the beauties of the portrait-painter, Sir Peter Lely, has been observed. The queen of Charles II. exposed her breast and shoulders without even the gloss of the lightest gauze ; and the tucker, instead of standing up on her bopom, is with licentious boldness turned down, and lies upon her stays. This custom of baring the bosom was much exclaimed against by the authors of that age. That honest divine, Richard Baxter, wrote a preface to a book, entitled, "A just and seasonable reprehension of naked breasts and shoulders. In 1672 a book was published, entitled, "New instructions
ANECDOTES OF FASHION. 3H
Unto youth for their behaviour, and also a discourse upon eome innovations of habits and dressing ; against powdering of hair, naked breasts, black spots (or patches), and other unseemly customs." A whimsical fashion now prevailed among the ladies, of strangely ornamenting their faces with abundance of black patches cut into grotesque forms, such as a coach and horses, owls, rings, suns, moons, crowns, cross and crosslets. The author has prefixed two ladies' heads; the one representing Virtue, and the other Vice. Virtue is a lady modestly habited, with a black velvet hood, and a plain white kerchief on her neck, with a border. Vice wears no handkerchief; her stays cut low, so that they display great part of the breasts ; and a variety of fantastical patches on her face.
The innovations of fashions in the reign of Charles II. were watched with a jealous eye by the remains of those strict puritans, who now could only pour out their bile in such solemn admonitions. They affected all possible plain- ness and sanctity. When courtiers wore monstrous wigs, they cut their hair short ; when they adopted hats with broad plumes, they clapped on round black caps, and screwed up their pale religious faces ; and when shoe-buckles were revived, they wore strings. The sublime Milton, perhaps, exulted in his intrepidity of still wearing latchets ! The Tatler ridicules Sir William Whitelocke for his singularity in still affecting them. "Thou dear Witt Shoestring, how shall I draw thee ? Thou dear outside, will you be combing your wig, playing with your box, or picking your teeth," &c. Wigs and snuff-boxes were then the rage. Steele's own wig, it is recorded, made at one time a considerable part of his annual expenditure. His large black periwig cost him, even at that day, no less than forty guineas ! — We wear nothing at present in this degree of extravagance. But such a wig was the idol of fashion, and they were performing perpetually their worship with infinite self-complacency; combing their wigs in public was then the very spirit of gallantry and rank
312 ANECDOTES OF FASHION.
The hero of Richardson, youthful and elegant as he wished him to be, is represented waiting at an assignation, and de- ficribing his sufferings in bad weather by lamenting that " his wig and his linen were dripping with the hoar frost dissolving on them." Even Betty, Clarissa's lady's maid, is described as "tapping on her snuff-box" and frequently taking snuff. At this time nothing was so monstrous as the head-dresses of the ladies in Queen Anne's reign : they formed a kind of edifice of three stories high ; and a fashionable lady of that day much resembles the mythological figure of Cybele, the mother of the gods, with three towers on her head.
It is not worth noticing the changes in fashion, unless to ridicule them. However, there are some who find amuse ment in these records of luxurious idleness ; these thousand and one follies! Modern fashions, till very lately a purer taste has obtained among our females, were generally mere copies of obsolete ones, and rarely originally fantastical. The dress of some of our beaux will only be known in a few years hence by their caricatures. In 1751 the dress of a dandy is described in the Inspector. A black velvet coat, a green and silver waistcoat, yellow velvet breeches, and blue stockings. This too was the sera of black silk breeches ; an extraordinary novelty, against which "some frowsy people attempted to raise up worsted in emulation." A satirical writer has described a buck about forty years ago ; * one could hardly have suspected such a gentleman to have been one of our contemporaries. "A coat of light green, with sleeves too small for the arms, and buttons too big for the sleeves ; a pair of Manchester fine stuff breeches, without money in the pockets ; clouded silk stockings, but no legs ; a club of hair behind larger than the head that carries it ; a hat of the size of sixpence on a block not worth a far- tiling."
As this article may probably arrest the volatile eyes of my fair readers, let me be permitted to felicitate them on their
* This was written in 1790.
ANECDOTES OF FASHION. 313
improvement in elegance in the forms of their dress ; and the taste and knowledge of art which they frequently exhibit But let me remind them that tnere are universal principles of beauty in dress independent of all fashions. Tacitus remarks of Poppea, the consort of Nero, that she concealed a part of her face ; to the end that, the imagination having fuller play by irritating curiosity, they might think higher of her beauty than if the whole of her face had been exposed. The sentiment is beautifully expressed by Tasso, and it will not be difficult to remember it : —
" Non copre sue bellezze, e non 1'espose."
I conclude by a poem, written hi my youth, not only be- cause the late Sir Walter Scott once repeated some of the lines, from memory, to remind me of it, and has preserved it in "The English Minstrelsy," but also as a memorial of some fashions which have become extinct in my own days.
STANZAS
ADDRESSED TO LAURA, ENTREATING HER NOT TO PAINT, TO POWDKB, OR TO GAME, BUT TO RETREAT INTO THE COUNTRY.
AH, LAURA ! quit the noisy town,
And FASHION'S persecuting reign: Health wanders on the breezy down,
And Science on the silent plain.
How long from Art's reflected hues
Shalt thou a mimic charm receive? Believe, my fair ! the faithful muse,
They spoil the blush they cannot give.
Must ruthless art, with tortuous steel,
Thy artless locks of gold deface, In serpent folds their charms conceal,
And spoil, at every touch, a grace.
Too sweet thy youth's enchanting bloom To waste on midnight's sordid crews:
Let wrinkled age the night consume, For age has but its hoards to lose-
314 A SENATE OF JESUITS.
Sacred to love and sweet repose, Behold that trellis'd bower is nigh!
That bower the«verdant walls enclose, Safe from pursuing Scandal's eye.
There, as in every lock of gold Some flower of pleasing hue I weave,
A goddess shall the muse behold, And many a votive sigh shall heave.
So the rude Tartar's holy rite A feeble MORTAL once array'd;
Then trembled in that mortal's sight, And own'd DIVINE the power he MADI
A SENATE OF JESUITS.
IN a book entitled " Interets et Maximes des Princes et des Etats Souverains, par M. le due de Rohan; Cologne, 1666," an anecdote is recorded concerning the Jesuits, which neither Puffendorf nor Vertot has noticed in his history.
When Sigismond, king of Sweden, was elected king of Poland, he made a treaty with the states of Sweden, by which he obliged himself to pass every fifth year in that kingdom. By his wars with the Ottoman court, with Mus- covy, and Tartary, compelled to remain in Poland to encounter these powerful enemies, during fifteen years he failed in accomplishing his promise. To remedy this in some shape, by the advice of the Jesuits, who had gained an ascendancy over him, he created a senate to reside at Stock- holm, composed of forty chosen Jesuits. He presented them with letters-patent, and invested them with the royal author ity.
While this senate of Jesuits was at Dantzic, waiting for a
* The Lama, or God of the Tartars, is composed of such frail materials as mere mortality ; contrived, however, by the power of priestcraft, to appear immortal ; the succession of Lamas never failing !
A SENATE OF JESUITS. 315
fair wind to set sail for Stockholm, he published an edictj that the Swedes should receive them as his own royal person. A public council was immediately held. Charles, the uncle of Sigismond, the prelates, and the lords, resolved to prepare for them a splendid and magnificent entry.
But in a private council, they came to very contrary reso- lutions : for the prince said, he could not bear that a senate of priests should command, in preference to all the princes and lords, natives of the country. All the others agreed with him in rejecting this holy senate. The archbishop rose, and said, " Since Sigismond has disdained to be our king, we also must not acknowledge him as such ; and from this mo- ment we should no longer consider ourselves as his subjects. His authority is in suspense, because he has bestowed it on the Jesuits who form this senate. The people have not yet acknowledged them. In this interval of resignation on the one side, and assumption on the other, I absolve you all of the fidelity the king may claim from you as his Swedish subjects." The prince of Bithynia addressing himself to Prince Charles, uncle of the king, said, " I own no other king than you ; and I believe you are now obliged to receive us as your affectionate subjects, and to assist us to hunt these vermin from the state." All the others joined him, and ac- knowledged Charles as their lawful monarch.
Having resolved to keep their declaration for some time secret, they deliberated in what manner they were to receive and to precede this senate in their entry into the harbour, who were now on board a great galleon, which had anchored two leagues from Stockholm, that they might enter more magnif- icently in the night, when the fire- works they had prepared would appear to the greatest advantage. About the time of their reception, Prince Charles, accompanied by twenty-five or thirty vessels, appeared before this senate. Wheeling about and forming a caracol of ships, they discharged a vol- ley, and emptied all their cannon on the galleon bearing this senate, which had its sides pierced through with the balls.
316 THE LOVER'S HEART.
The galleon immediately filled with water and sunk, without one of the unfortunate Jesuits being assisted : on the con- trary, their assailants cried to them that this was the time to perform some miracle, such as they were accustomed to do in India and Japan ; and if they chose, they could walk on the waters !
The report of the cannon, and the smoke which the pow- der occasioned, prevented either the cries or the submersion of the holy fathers from being observed : and as if they were conducting the senate to the town, Charles entered tri- umphantly; went into the church, where they sung Te Deum ; and to conclude the night, he partook of the enter- tainment which had been prepared for this ill-fated senate.
The Jesuits of the city of Stockholm having come, about midnight, to pay their respects to the Fathers, perceived their loss. They directly posted up placards of excommuni- cation against Charles and his adherents, who had caused the senate of Jesuits to perish. They urged the people to rebel; but they were soon expelled the city, and Charles made a public profession of Lutheranism.
Sigismond, King of Poland, began a war with Charles in 1604, which lasted two years. Disturbed by the invasions of the Tartars, the Muscovites, and the Cossacks, a truce was concluded ; but Sigismond lost both his crowns, by his bigoted attachment to Roman Catholicism.
THE LOVER'S HEART.
THE following tale, recorded in the Historical Memoirs of Champagne, by Bougier, has been a favourite narrative with the old romance writers ; and the principal incident, however objectionable, has been displayed in several modern poems.
Howell, in his " Familiar Letters," in one addressed to Ben Jonson, recommends it to him as a subject " which
THE LOVER'S HEART. 317
peradventure you may make use of in your way ; " and con- cludes by saying, " in my opinion, which vails to yours, this is choice and rich stuff for you to put upon your loom, and make a curious web of."
The Lord de Coucy, vassal to the Count de Champagne, was one of the most accomplished youths of his time. He loved, with an excess of passion, the lady of the Lord du Fayel, who felt a reciprocal affection. With the most poig- nant grief this lady heard from her lover, that he had re- solved to accompany the king and the Count de Champagne to the 'wars of the Holy Land ; but she would not oppose his wishes, because she hoped that his absence might dissipate the jealousy of her husband. The time of departure having come, these two lovers parted with sorrows of the most lively tenderness. The lady, in quitting her lover, presented him with some rings, some diamonds, and with a string that she had woven herself of his own hair, intermixed with silk and buttons of large pearls, to serve him, according to the fashion of those days, to tie a magnificent hood which covered his helmet. This he gratefully accepted.
In Palestine, at the siege of Acre, in 1191, in gloriously ascending the ramparts, he received a wound, which wa? declared mortal. He employed the few moments he had to live in writing to the Lady du Fayel ; and he poured forth the fervour of his soul. He ordered his squire to embalm his heart after his death, and to convey it to his beloved mistress, with the presents he had received from her hands in quitting her.
The squire, faithful to the dying injunction of his master, returned to France, to present the heart and the gifts to the lady of Du Fayel. But when he approached the castle of this lady, he concealed himself ia the neighbouring wood, watching some favourable moment to complete his promise. He had the misfortune to be observed by the husband of this lady, who recognized him, and who immediately sus- pected he came in search of his wife with some message
313 THE LOVER'S HEART.
from his master. He threatened to deprive him of his life if he did not divulge the occasion of his return. The squire assured him that his master was dead ; but Du Fayel not believing it, drew his sword on him. This man, frightened at the peril in which he found himself, confessed every thing ; and put into his hands the heart and letter of his master. Du Fayel was maddened by the fellest passions, and he took a wild and horrid revenge. He ordered his cook to mince the heart; and having mixed it with meat, he caused a favourite ragout, which he knew pleased the taste of his wife, to be made, and had it served to her. The lady ate heartily of the dish. After the repast, Du Fayel inquired of his wife if she had found the ragout according to her taste : she answered him that she had found it excellent. " It is for this reason that I caused it to be served to you, for it is a kind of meat which you very much liked. You have, Madam," the savage Du Fayel continued, " eaten the heart of the Lord de Coucy." But this the lady would not be- lieve, till he showed her the letter of her lover, with the string of his hair, and the diamonds she had given him. Shuddering in the anguish of her sensations, and urged by the utmost despair, she told him— u It is true that I loved that heart, because it merited to be loved : for never could it find its superior ; and since I have eaten of so noble a meat, and that my stomach is the tomb of so precious a heart, T will take care that nothing of inferior worth shall ever be mixed with it." Grief and passion choked her utterance. She retired to her chamber ; she closed the door for ever ; and refusing to accept of consolation or food, the amiable victim expired on the fourth day.
THE HISTORY OF GLOVES. 319
THE HISTORY OF GLOVES.
THE present learned and curious dissertation is compiled from the papers of an ingenious antiquary, from the " Pres- ent State of the Republic of Letters," vol. x. p! 289.
The antiquity of this part of dress will form our first in- quiry ; and we shall then show its various uses in the several ages of the world.
It has been imagined that gloves are noticed in the 108th Psalm, where the royal prophet declares, he will cast his shoe over Edom ; and still farther back, supposing them to be used in the times of the Judges, Ruth iv. 7, where the cus- tom is noticed of a man taking off his shoe and giving it to his neighbour, as a pledge for redeeming or exchanging any thing. The word in these two texts, usually translated shoe by the Chaldee paraphrast, in the latter is rendered glove. Casaubon is of opinion that gloves were worn by the Chal- deans, from the word here mentioned being explained hi the Talmud Lexicon, the clothing of the hand.
Xenophon gives a clear and distinct account of gloves. Speaking of the manners of the Persians, as a proof of their effeminacy he observes, that, not satisfied with covering their head and their feet, they also guarded their hands against the cold with thick gloves. Homer, describing Laertes at work in his garden, represents him with gloves on his hands, to secure them from the thorns. Varro, an ancient writer, is an evidence in favour of their antiquity among the Romans. In lib. ii. cap. 55, De Re Rusticd, he says, that olives gath- ered by the naked hand are preferable to those gathered with gloves. Athenceus speaks of a celebrated glutton who always came to table with gloves on his hands, that he might be able to handle and eat the meat while hot, and devour more than the rest of the company.
These authorities show that the ancients were not stran- gers to the use of gloves, though their use was not common.
320 THE HISTORY OF GLOVES.
In a hot climate to wear gloves implies a considerable degree of effeminacy. We can more clearly trace the early use of gloves in northern than in southern nations. When the an- cient severity of manners declined, the use of gloves prevailed among the Romans ; but not without some opposition from the philosophers. Mmonius, a philosopher, who lived at the close of the first century of Christianity, among other invec- tives against the corruption of the age, says, It is shameful that persons in perfect health should clothe their hands and feet with soft and hairy coverings. Their convenience, how- ever, soon made the use general. Pliny the younger informs us, in his account of his uncle's journey to Vesuvius, that his secretary sat by him ready to write down whatever occurred remarkable ; and that he had gloves on his hands, that the coldness of the weather might not impede his business.
In the beginning of the ninth century, the use of gloves was become so universal, that even the church thought a reg- ulation in that part of dress necessary. In the reign of Louis le Debonair, the council of Aix ordered that the monks should only wear gloves made of sheep-skin.
That time has made alterations in the form of this, as hi all other apparel, appears from the old pictures and monu- ments.
Gloves, beside their original design for a covering of the hand, have been employed on several great and solemn occa- sions ; as in the ceremony of investitures, in bestowing lands, or in conferring dignities. Giving possession by the delivery of a glove, prevailed in several parts of Christendom in later ages. In the year 1002, the bishops of Paderborn and Mon- cerco were put into possession of their sees by receiving a glove. It was thought so essential a part of the episcopal habit, that some abbots in France presuming to wear gloves, the council of Poitiers interposed in the affair, and forbad them the use, on the same principle as the ring and sandals ; these being peculiar to bishops, who frequently wore them richly adorned with jewels.
THE HISTORY OF GLOVES. 321
Favin observes, that the custom of blessing gloves at the coronation of the kings of France, which still subsists, is a remain of the eastern practice of investiture by a glove. A remarkable instance of this ceremony is recorded. The un- fortunate Gonradin was deprived of his crown and his life by the usurper Mainfroy. When having ascended the scaf- fold, the injured prince lamenting his hard fate, asserted his right to the crown, and, as a token of investiture, threw his glove among the crowd, intreating it might be conveyed to some of his relations, who would revenge his death, — it was taken up by a knight, and brought to Peter, king of Aragon, who in virtue of this glove was afterwards crowned at Pa- lermo.
As the delivery of gloves was once a part of the ceremony used in giving possession, so the depriving a person of them was a mark of divesting him of his office, and of degradation. The Earl of Carlisle, in the reign of Edward the Second, impeached of holding a correspondence with the Scots, was condemned to die as a traitor. Walsingham, relating other circumstances of his degradation, says, " His spurs were cut off with a hatchet ; and his gloves and shoes were taken off," &c.
Another use of gloves was in a duel ; he who threw one down was by this act understood to give defiance, and he who took it up to accept the challenge.
The use of single combat, at first designed only for a trial of innocence, like the ordeals of fire and water, was in suc- ceeding ages practised for deciding rights and property. Challenging by the glove was continued down to the reign of Elizabeth, as appears by an account given by Spelman of a duel appointed to be fought in Tothill Fields, in the year 1571. The dispute was concerning some lands in the county of Kent. The plaintiffs appeared in court, and demanded single combat. One of them threw down his glove, which the other, immediately taking up, carried off on the point of his sword, and the day of fighting was appointed j this
21
322 THE HISTORY OF GLOVES.
affair was however adjusted by the queen's judicious inter- ference.
The ceremony is still practised of challenging by a glove at the coronation of the kings of England, by his majesty's champion entering Westminster Hall completely armed and mounted.
Challenging by the glove is still in use in some parts of the world. In Germany, on receiving an affront, to send a glove to the offending party is a challenge to a duel.
The last use of gloves was for carrying the hawk. In for- mer tunes, princes and other great men took so much" pleas- ure in carrying the hawk on their hand, that some of them have chosen to be represented in this attitude. There is a monument of Philip the First of France, on which he is rep- resented at length, on his tomb, holding a glove in his hand.
Chambers says that, formerly, judges were forbid to wear gloves on the bench. No reason- is assigned for this prohibi- tion. Our judges lie under no such restraint ; for both they and the rest of the court make no difficulty of receiving gloves from the sheriffs, whenever the session or assize con- cludes without any one receiving sentence of death, which is called a maiden assize ; a custom of great antiquity.
Our curious antiquary has preserved a singular anecdote concerning gloves. Chambers informs us, that it is not safe at present to enter the stables of princes without pulling off our gloves. He does not tell us in what the danger consists ; but it is an ancient established custom in Germany, that whoever enters the stables of a prince, or great man, with his gloves on his hands, is obliged to forfeit them, or redeem them by a fee to the servants. The same custom is observed in some places at the death of the stag ; in which case if the gloves are not taken off, they are redeemed by money given to the huntsmen and keepers. The French king never failed of pulling off one of his gloves on that occasion. The reason of this ceremony seems to be lost.
We meet with the term glove-money in our old records ; by
RELICS OF SAINTS. 323
which is meant, money given to servants to buy gloves. This, probably, is the origin cf the phrase giving a pair of gloves, to signify making a present for some favour or service.
Gough, in his " Sepulchral Monuments," informs us that gloves formed no part of the female dress till after the Ref- ormation. I have seen some so late as in Anne's time richly worked and embroidered.
There must exist in the Denny family some of the oldest gloves extant, as appears by the following glove anecdote.
At the sale of the Earl of Arran's goods, April 6th, 1759, the gloves given by Henry VIII. to Sir Anthony Denny were sold for 3SL 17 s. ; those given by James I. to his son Edward Denny for 221. 4s. ; the mittens given by Queen Elizabeth to Sir Edward Denny's lady, 251. 4s. ; all which were bought for Sir Thomas Denny, of Ireland, who was descended in a direct line from the great Sir Anthony Denny, one of the executors of the will of Henry VIII.
RELICS OF SAINTS.
WHEN relics of saints were first introduced, the relique- mania was universal ; they bought and they sold, and, like other collectors, made no scruple to steal them. It is enter- taining to observe the singular ardour and grasping avidity of some, to enrich themselves with these religious morsels ; their little discernment, the curious impositions of the vender, and the good faith and sincerity of the purchaser. The pre- late of the place sometimes ordained a fast to implore God that they might not be cheated with the relics of saints, which he sometimes purchased for the holy benefit of the village or town.
Guibert de Nogent wrote a treatise on the relics of saints ; acknowledging that there were many false ones, as well as false legends, he reprobates the inventors of these lying mir-
324 RELICS OF SAINTS.
acles. He wrote his treatise on the occasion of a tooth of our Lord's, by which the monks of St. Medard do Soissons pretended to operate miracles. He asserts that this preten- sion is as chimerical as that of several persons, who believed they possessed the navel, and other parts less decent, of—- the body of Christ !
A monk of Bergsvinck has given a history of the transla- tion of St. Lewin, a virgin and a martyr : her relics were brought from England to Bergs. He collected with relig- ious care the facts from his brethren, especially from the con- ductor of these relics - from England. After the history of the translation, and a panegyric of the saint, he relates the miracles performed in Flanders since the arrival of her relics. The prevailing passion of the times to possess fragments of saints is well marked, when the author particularizes with a certain complacency all the knavish modes they used to carry off those in question. None then objected to this sort of robbery ; because the gratification of the reigning passion had made it worth while to supply the demand.
A monk of Cluny has given a history of the translation of the body of St. Indalece, one of the earliest Spanish bishops, written by order of the abbot of St. Juan de la Penna. He protests he advances nothing but facts : having himself seen, or learnt from other witnesses, all he relates. It was not difficult for him to be well informed, since it was to the mon- astery of St. Juan de la Penna that the holy relics were transported, and those who brought them were two monks of that house. He has authenticated his minute detail of cir- cumstances by giving the names of persons and places. His account was written for the great festival immediately insti- tuted in honour of this translation. He informs us of the miraculous manner by which they were so fortunate as to discover the body of this bishop, and the different plans they concerted to carry it off. He gives the itinerary of the two monks who accompanied the holy remains. They were not a little cheered in their long journey by visions and miracles.
RELICS OF SAINTS. 325
Another has written a history of what he calls the transla tion of the relics of St. Majean to the monastery of Ville- magne. Translation is in fact only a softened expression for the robbery of the relics of the saint committed by two monks, who carried them off secretly to enrich their monas- tery ; and they did not hesitate at any artifice or lie to com- plete their design. They thought every thing was permitted to acquire these fragments of mortality, which had now be- come a branch of commerce. They even regarded their possessors with an hostile eye. Such was the rcl'gious opin- ion from the ninth to the twelfth century. Our Canute com- missioned his agent at Rome to purchase St. Augustirfs arm for one hundred talents of silver and one of gold; a much greater sum, observes Granger, than the finest statue of anti- quity would have then sold for.
Another monk describes a strange act of devotion, attested by several contemporary writers. When the saints did not readily comply with the prayers of their votaries, they flogged their relics with rods, in a spirit of impatience which they conceived was necessary to make them bend into com- pliance.
Theofroy, abbot of Epternac, to raise our admiration, re- lates the daily miracles performed by the relics of saints, their ashes, their clothes, or other mortal spoils, and even by the instruments of their martyrdom. He inveighs againsr that luxury of ornaments which was indulged under a relig- ious pretext : " It is not to be supposed that the saints are desirous of such a profusion of gold and silver. They care not that we should raise to them such magnificent churches, to exhibit that ingenious order of pillars which shine with gold, nor those rich ceilings, nor those altars sparkling with jewels. They desire not the purple parchment of price for their writings, the liquid gold to embellish the letters, nor the precious stones to decorate their covers, while you have such little care for the ministers of the altar." The pious writer has not forgotten himself in this copartnership with the saints*
326 RELICS OF SAINTS.
The Roman church not being able to deny, says Bayle, that there have been false relics, which have operated mir- acles, they reply that the good intentions of those believers who have recourse to them obtained from God this reward for their good faith ! In the same spirit, when it was shown that two or three bodies of the same saint are said to exist in different places, and that therefore they all could not be authentic, it was answered that they were all genuine ; for God had multiplied and miraculously reproduced them for the comfort of the faithful ! A curious specimen of the in- tolerance of good sense.
When the Reformation was spread in Lithuania, Prince Radzivil was so affected by it, that he went in person to pay the pope all possible honours. His holiness on this occasion presented him with a precious box of relics. The prince having returned home, some monks entreated permission to try the effects of these relics on a demoniac, who had hitherto resisted every kind of exorcism. They were brought into the church with solemn pomp, and deposited on the altar, accompanied by an innumerable crowd. After the usual conjurations, which were unsuccessful, they applied the relics. The demoniac instantly recovered. The people called out " a miracle ! " and the prince, lifting his hands and eyes to heaven, felt his faith confirmed. In this transport of pious joy, he observed that a young gentleman, who was keeper of this treasure of relics, smiled, and by his motions ridiculed the miracle. The prince indignantly took our young keeper of the relics to task ; who, on promise of pardon, gave the following secret intelligence concerning them. In travelling from Rome he had lost the box of relics ; and not daring to mention it, he had procured a similar one, which he had filled with the small bones of ctogs and cats, and other trifles simi- lar to what were lost. He hoped he might be forgiven for gmiling, when he found that such a collection of rubbish was idolized with such pomp, and had even the virtue of expelling demons. It was by the assistance of this box that the prince
KELICS OF SAINTS. 327
discovered the gross impositions of the monks and the de- moniacs, and Radzivil afterwards became a zealous Lu- theran.
The elector Frederic, surnamed the Wise, was an inde- fatigable collector of relics. After his death, . one of the monks employed by him solicited payment for several parcels he had purchased for our wise elector; but the times had changed ! lie was advised to give over this business ; the relics for which he desired payment they were willing to return ; that the price had fallen considerably since the reformation of Luther; and that they would find a better market in Italy than in Germany!
Our Henry III., who was deeply tainted with the super- stition of the age, summoned ah1 the great in the kingdom to meet in London. This summons excited the most general curiosity, and multitudes appeared. The king then ac- quainted them that the great master of the Knights Tem plars had sent him a phial containing a small portion of the precious blood of Christ which he had shed upon the cross ; and attested to be genuine by the seals of the patriarch of Jerusalem and others ! He commanded a procession the following day ; and the historian adds, that though the road between St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey was very deep and miry, the king kept his eyes constantly fixed on the phial. Two monks received it, and deposited the phial in the abbey, " which made ah1 England shine with glory, dedi- cating it to God and St. Edward."
Lord Herbert, in his Life of Henry VIII., notices the great fall of the price of relics at the dissolution of the monasteries. " The respect given to relics, and some pretended miracles, fell ; insomuch, as I find by our records, that a piece of St. Andrew's finger (covered only with an ounce of silver), being laid to pledge by a monastery for forty pounds, was left un- redeemed at the dissolution of the house ; the king's com- missioners, who upon surrender of any foundation undertook to pay the debts, refusing to return the price again." Tliat
328 PERPETUAL LAMPS OF THE ANCIENTS.
is, they did not choose to repay the forty pounds to receive a piece of the finger of St. Andrew.
About this time the property of relics suddenly sunk to a South-sea bubble ; for shortly after the artifice of the Rood of Grace, at Boxley in Kent, was fully opened to the eye of the populace ; and a far-famed relic at Hales, in Gloucester- shire, of the blood of Christ, was at the same time exhibited. It was shown in a phial, and it was believed that none could see it who were in mortal sin ; and after many trials usually repeated to the same person, the deluded pilgrims at length went away fully satisfied. This relic was the blood of a duck, renewed every week, and put in a phial ; one side was opaque, and the other transparent ; the monk turned either side to the pilgrim, as he thought proper. The success of the pil- grim depended on the oblations he made ; those who were scanty in their offerings were the longest to get a sight of the blood : when a man was in despair, he usually became gen- erous !
PERPETUAL LAMPS OF THE ANCIENTS.
No. 379 of the Spectator relates an anecdote of a person who had opened the sepulchre of the famous Rosicrucius. He discovered a lamp burning, which a statue of clock-work struck into pieces. Hence the disciples of this visionary said that he made use of this method to show " that he had re- invented the ever-burning lamps of the ancients."
Many writers have made mention of these wonderful lamps. ^ --T
It has happened frequently that inquisitive men examin- ing with a flambeau ancient sepulchres which had been just opened, the fat and gross vapours kindled as the flambeau approached them, to the great astonishment of the spectators, who frequently cried out " a miracle ! " This sudden in- flammation, although very natural, has given room to believe
NATURAL PRODUCTIONS, ETC. £29
that these flames proceeded from perpetual lamps, which some have thought were placed in«the tombs of the ancients, and which, they 6aid, were extinguished at the moment that these tombs opened, and were penetrated by the exterior air.
The accounts of the perpetual lamps which ancient writers give have occasioned several ingenious men to search after their composition. Licetus, who possessed more erudition than love of truth, has given two receipts for making this eternal fire by a preparation of certain minerals. More credible writers maintain that it is possible to make lamps perpetually burning, and an oil at once inflammable and in- consumable ; but Boyle, assisted by several experiments made on the air-pump, found that these lights, which have been viewed in opening tombs, proceeded from the collision of fresh air. This reasonable observation conciliates all, and does not compel us to deny the accounts.
The story of the lamp of Rosicrucius, even if it ever had the slightest foundation, only owes its origin to the spirit of party, which at the time would have persuaded the world that Rosicrucius had at least discovered something.
It was reserved for modern discoveries in chemistry to prove that air was not only necessary for a medium to the existence of the flame, which indeed the air-pump had already shown ; but also as a constituent part of the inflammation, and without which a body, otherwise very inflammable in all its parts, cannot, however, burn but in its superficies, which alone is in contact with the ambient ah*.
NATURAL PRODUCTIONS RESEMBLING ARTIFICIAL COMPOSITIONS.
SOME stones are preserved by the curious, for representing distinctly figures traced by nature alone, and without the aid of art.
330 .NATURAL PRODUCTIONS, ETC.
Pliny mentions an agate, in which appeared, formed by the hand of nature, Apoljp amidst the Nine Muses holding a harp. At Venice another may be seen, in which is naturally formed the perfect figure of a man. At Pisa, in the church of St. John, there is a similar natural production, which rep- resents an old hermit in a desert, seated by the side of a stream, and who holds in his hands a small bell, as St; Anthony is commonly painted. In the temple of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, there was formerly on a white marble the image of St. John the Baptist covered with the skin of a camel ; with this only imperfection, that nature had given but one leg. At Ravenna, in the church of St. Vital, a cordelier is seen on a dusky stone. They found in Italy a marble, in which a crucifix was so elaborately finished, that there appeared the nails, the drops of blood, and the wounds, as perfectly as the most excellent painter could have per- formed. At Sneilberg, in Germany, they found in a mine a certain rough metal, on which was seen the figure of a man, who carried a child on his back. In Provence they found in a mine a quantity of natural figures of birds, trees, rats, and serpents ; and in some places of the western parts of Tartary, are seen on divers rocks the figures of camels, horses, and sheep. Pancirollus, in his Lost Antiquities, attests, that in a church at Rome, a marble perfectly represented a priest celebrating mass, and raising the host. Paul III. conceiving tha' «irt had been used, scraped the marble to discover whether any painting had been employed : but nothing of the kind was discovered. " I have seen," writes a friend, " many of these curiosities. They are always helped out by art. In my father's house was a gray marble chimney-piece, which abounded in portraits, landscapes, &c., the greatest part of which was made by myself." I have myself seen a large collection, many certainly untouched by art. One stone appears like a perfect cameo of a Minerva's head ; another shows an old man's head, beautiful as if the hand of Raffaelle had designed it. Both these stones are transparent. Some exhibit portraits.
NATUKAL PRODUCTIONS, ETC. 331
There is preserved in the British Museum a black stone, on which nature has sketched a resemblance of the portrait of Chaucer. Stones of this kind possessing a sufficient degree of resemblance, are rare ; but art appears not to have been used. Even in plants, we find this sort of resemblance. There is a species of the orchis, where Nature has formed a bee, apparently feeding in the breast of the flower, with so much exactness, that it is impossible at a very small distance to distinguish the imposition. Hence the plant derives its name, and is called the BEE-FLOWER. Langhorne elegantly notices its appearance : —
" See on that flow'ret's velvet breast, How close the busy vagrant lies ! His thin-wrought plume, his downy breast, The ambrosial gold that swells his thighs.
" Perhaps his fragrant load may bind
His limbs; — we'll set the captive free — I sought the LIVING BEE to find, And found the PICTURE of a BEE."
The late Mr. Jackson, of Exeter, wrote to me on this sub- ject : " This orchis is common near our sea-coasts ; but in- stead of being exactly like a BEE, it is not like it at all. It has a general resemblance to a fly, and by the help of im- agination may be supposed to be a fly pitched upon the flower. -The mandrake very frequently has a forked root, which may be fancied to resemble thighs and legs. I have seen it helped out with nails on the toes."
An ingenious botanist, after reading this article, was so kind as to send me specimens of the fly orchis, ophrys musci- fera, and of the bee orchis, ophrys apifera. Their resem- blance to these insects when in full flower is the most perfect conceivable : they are distinct plants. The poetical *ye of Langhorne was equally correct and fanciful ; and that too of Jackson, who differed so positively. Many controversies have been carried on, from a want of a little more knowl- edge ; like that of the BEE orchis and the FLY orchis, both parties prove to be right.
332 THE POETICAL GARLAND OF JULIA.
Another curious specimen of the playful operation? of nature is the mandrake ; a plant indeed, when it is bare of leaves, perfectly resembling that of the human form. The ginseng-tree is noticed for the same appearance. This object the same poet has noticed : —
" Mark how that rooted mandrake wears
His human feet, his human hands ; Oft, as his shapely form he rears, Aghast the frighted ploughman stands."
He closes this beautiful fable with the following stanza, not inapposite to the curious subject of this article : —
" Helvetia's rocks, Sabrina's waves,
Still many a shining pebble bear: Where nature's studious hand engraves The PERFECT FOKM, and leaves it there."
THE POETICAL GARLAND OF JULIA.
HUET has given a charming description of a present made by a lover to his mistress ; a gift which romance has seldom equalled for its gallantry, ingenuity, and novelty. It was called the garland of Julia. To understand the nature of this gift, it will be necessary to give the history of the par- ties.
The beautiful Julia d'Angennes was in the flower of her youth and fame, whec the celebrated Gustavus, king of Swe- den, was making war in Germany with the most splendid success. Julia expressed her warm admiration of this hero. She had his portrait placed on her toilet, and took pleasure in declaring that she would have no other lover than Gusta- vus. The Duke de Montausier was, however, her avowed and ardent admirer. A short time after the death of Gusta- vus, he sent her, as a new-year's gift, the POETICAL GARLAND of which the following is a description.
The most beautiful flowers were painted in miniature by
THE POETICAL GARLAND OF JULIA. 333
an eminent artist, one Robert, on pieces of vellum, all of equal dimensions. Under every flower a space was left open for a madrigal on the subject of the flower there painted. The duke solicited the wits of the time to assist in the com- position of these little poems, reserving a considerable num- ber for the effusions of his own amorous muse. Under every flower he had its madrigal written by N. du Jarry, celebrated for his beautiful caligraphy. A decorated frontispiece offered a splendid garland composed of aU these twenty-nine flowers ; and on turning the page a cupid is painted to the life. These were magnificently bound, and enclosed in a bag of rich Spanish leather. When Julia awoke on new-year's day, she found this lover's gift lying on her toilet ; it was one quite to her taste, and successful to the donor's hopes.
Of this Poetical Garland, thus formed by the hands of Wit and Love, Huet says, " As I had long heard of it, I fre- quently expressed a wish to see it : at length the Duchess of Usez gratified me with the sight. She locked me hi her cab- inet one afternoon with this garland : she then went to the queen, and at the close of the evening liberated me. I never passed a more agreeable afternoon."
One of the prettiest inscriptions of these flowers, is the following, composed for
THE VIOLET.
* Modeste en ma couleur, modeste en mon sejour, Tranche d'ambition, je me cache sous 1'herbe; Mais, si sur votre front je puis me voir un jour, La plus humble des fleurs sera la plus superbe."
" Modest ray colour, modest is my place, Pleased in the grass my lowly form to hide ; But mid your tresses might I wind with grace, The humblest flower would feel the loftiest pride."
The following is some additional information respecting « the Poetical Garland of Julia.**
At the sale of the library of the Duke de la Valliere, in 1784, among its numerous literary curiosities this garland
334 TRAGIC ACTORb.
appeared. It was actually sold for the extravagant sura of 14,510 livres ! though in 1770, at Gaignat's sale, it only cost 780 livres. It is described to be " a manuscript on vellum, composed of twenty-nine flowers painted by one Robert, under which are inserted madrigals by various authors." But the Abbe Rive, the superintendent of the Valliere li- brary, published in 1779 an inflammatory notice of this gar- land ; and as he and the duke had the art of appreciating, arid it has been said making spurious literary curiosities, this notice was no doubt the occasion of the maniacal price.
In the great French Revolution, this literary curiosity found its passage into this country. A bookseller offered it for sale at the enormous price of £500 sterling ! No curious collector has been discovered to have purchased this unique ; which is most remarkable for the extreme folly of the pur- chaser who gave the 14,510 livres for poetry and painting not always exquisite. The history of the Garland of Julia is a child's lesson for certain rash and inexperienced collect- ors, who may here
** Learn to do well by others' harm."
TRAGIC ACTORS.
MONTFLEURY, a French player, was one of the greatest actors of his time for characters highly tragic. He died of the violent efforts he made hi representing Orestes in the Andromache of Racine. The author of the " Parnasse Re- forme " makes him thus express himself in the shades. There is something extremely droll in his lamentations, with a severe raillery on the inconveniences to which tragic .actors are liable.
" Ah ! how sincerely do I wish that tragedies had never been invented ! I might then have been yet in a state capa- ble of appearing on the stage ; and if I should not have
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attained the glory of sustaining sublime characters, I should at least have trifled agreeably, and have worked off my spleen in laughing ! I have wasted my lungs in the violent emotions of jealousy, love, and ambition. A thousand times liave I been obliged to force myself to represent more pas- sions than Le Brun ever painted or conceived. I saw myself frequently obliged to dart terrible glances ; to roll my eyes furiously in my head, like a man insane ; to frighten others by extravagant grimaces ; to imprint on my countenance the redness of indignation and hatred ; to make the paleness of fear and surprise succeed each other by turns ; to express the transports of rage and despair ; to cry out like a demo- niac ; and consequently to strain all the parts of my body to render my gestures fitter to accompany these different im- pressions. The man then who would know of what I died, let him not ask if it were of the fever, the dropsy, or the gout : but let him know that it was of the Andromache I "
The Jesuit Rapin informs us, that when Mondory acted Herod in the Mariamne of Tristan, the spectators quitted the theatre mournful and thoughtful ; so tenderly were they penetrated with the sorrows of the unfortunate heroine. In this melancholy pleasure, he says, we have a rude picture of the strong impressions which were made by the Grecian tragedians. Mondory indeed felt so powerfully the character he assumed, that it cost him his life.
Some readers may recollect the death of Bond, who felt so exquisitely the character of Lusignan in Zara, which he per- sonated when an old man, that Zara, when she addressed him, found him dead in his chair !
The assumption of a variety of characters, by a person of irritable and delicate nerves, has often a tragical effect on the mental faculties. We might draw ap a list of ACTORS, who have fallen martyrs to their tragic characters. Several have died on the stage, and, like Palmer, usually in the midst of gome agitated appeal to the feelings.
Baron, who was the French Garrick, had a most elevated
336 TRAGIC ACTORS.
notion of his profession ; he used to say, that tragic actora should be nursed on the lap of queens ! Nor was his vanity inferior to his enthusiasm for his profession ; for, according to him, the world might see once in a century a Ccesar, but that it required a thousand years to produce a Baron ! A variety of anecdotes testify the admirable talents he displayed. Whenever he meant to compliment the talents or merit of distinguished characters, he always delivered in a pointed manner the striking passages of the play, fixing his eye on them. An observation of his respecting actors, is not less applicable to poets and to painters. " RULES," said this sublime actor, " may teach us not to raise the arms above the head ; but if PASSION carries them, it will be well done ;
PASSION KNOWS MORE THAN ART."
Betterton, although his countenance was ruddy and san- guine, when he performed Hamlet, through the violent and sudden emotion of amazement and horror at the presence of his father's spectre, instantly turned as white as his neck- cloth, while his whole body seemed to be affected with a strong tremor: had his father's apparition actually risen before him, he could not have been seized with more real agonies. This struck the spectators so forcibly that they felt a shuddering in their veins, and participated in the astonisn- ment and the horror so apparent in the actor. Davies in his Dramatic Miscellanies records this fact ; and in the Richard- soniana, we find that the first time Booth attempted the ghost when Betterton acted Hamlet, that actor's look at him struck him with such horror that he became disconcerted to such a degree, that he could not speak his part. Here seems no want of evidence of the force of the ideal presence in this marvellous acting : these facts might deserve a philosophical investigation.
Le Kain, the French actor, who retired from the Parisiar stage, like our Garrick, covered with glory and gold, was one day congratulated by a company on the retirement which he was preparing to enjoy. "As to glory," modestly replied
JOCULAR PREACHERS. 337
this actor, " I do not flatter myself to have acquired much. This kind of reward is always disputed by many, and you yourselves would not allow it, were I to assume it. As to the money, I have not so much reason to be satisfied ; at the Italian theatre, their share is far more considerable than mine ; an actor there may get twenty to twenty-five thousand livres, and my share amounts at the most to ten or twelve thousand." " How ! the devil ! " exclaimed a rude chevalier of the order of St. Louis, who was present, " How ! the devil ! a vile stroller is not content with twelve thousand livres an- nually, and I, who am in the king's service, who sleep upon a cannon and lavish my blood for my country, I must con- sider myself as fortunate in having obtained a pension of one thousand livres." " And do you account as nothing, sir, the liberty of addressing me thus ? " replied Le Kain, with all the sublimity and conciseness of an irritated Orosmane.
The memoirs of Mademoiselle Clairon display her exalted feeling of the character of a sublime actress ; she was of opinion, that in common life the truly sublime actor should be a hero, or heroine off the stage. " If I am only a vulgar and ordinary woman during twenty hours of the day, what- ever effort I may make, I shall only be an ordinary and vulgar woman in Agrippina or Semiramis, during the re- maining four." In society she was nicknamed the Queen of Carthage, from her admirable personification of Dido in a tragedy of that name.
JOCULAR PREACHERS.
THESE preachers, whose works are excessively rare, form a race unknown to the general reader. I shall sketch the characters of these pious buffoons, before I introduce them to his acquaintance. They, as it has been said of Sterne, seemed to have wished, every now and then, to have thro wo their wigs into the faces of their auditors.
VOL. i. 22
338 , JOCULAR PREACHERS.
These preachers flourished in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries ; we are therefore to ascribe their extrav- agant mixture of grave admonition with facetious illustration, comic tales which have been occasionally adopted by the most licentious writers, and minute and lively descriptions, to the great simplicity of the times, when the grossest indecency was never concealed under a gentle periphrasis, but every thing was called by its name. All this was enforced by the most daring personalities, and seasoned by those temporary allusions which neither spared nor feared even the throne. These ancient sermons therefore are singularly precious, to those whose inquisitive pleasures are gratified by tracing the manners of former ages. When Henry Stephens, in his apology for Herodotus, describes the irregularities of the age, and the minutiae of national manners, he effects this chiefly by extracts from these sermons. Their wit is not always the brightest, nor their satire the most poignant ; but there is always that prevailing naivete of the age running through their rude eloquence, which interests the reflecting mind. In a word, these sermons were addressed to the multitude ; and therefore they show good sense and absurdity, fancy and puerility ; satire and insipidity ; extravagance and truth.
Oliver Maillard, a famous cordelier, died in 1502. This preacher having pointed some keen traits in his sermons at Louis XI., the irritated monarch had our cordelier informed that he would throw him into the river. He replied un- daunted, and not forgetting his satire : " The king may do as he chooses ; but tell him that I shall sooner get to paradise by water, than he will arrive by all his post-horses." He alluded to travelling by post, which this monarch had lately introduced into France. This bold answer, it is said, intimi- dated Louis ; it is certain that Maillard continued as cour- ageous and satirical as ever in his pulpit.
The following extracts are descriptive of the manners of the times.
In attacking rapine and robbery, under the first head ho
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describes a kind of usury, which was practised in the days of Ben Jonson, and I am told in the present, as well as in the times of Maillard. " This," says he, " is called a palliated usury. It is thus. When a person is in want of money, he goes to a treasurer, (a kind of banker or merchant,) on whom he has an order for 1000 crowns ; the treasurer tells him that he will pay him in a fortnight's time, when he is to re- ceive the money. The poor man cannot wait. Our good treasurer tells him, I will give you half in money and half in goods. So he passes his goods that are worth 100 crowns for 200." He then touches on the bribes which these treas- urers and clerks in office took, excusing themselves by alleging the little pay they otherwise received. "All these practices be sent to the devils!" cries Maillard, in thus addressing himself to the ladies ': "it is for you all this damnation en- sues. Yes ! yes ! you must have rich satins, and girdles of gold out of this accursed money. When any one has any thing to receive from the husband, he must make a present to the wife of some fine gown, or girdle, or ring. If you ladies and gentlemen who are battening on your pleasures, and wear scarlet clothes, I believe if you were closely put in a good press, we should see the blood of the poor gush out, with which your scarlet is dyed."
Maillard notices the following curious particulars of the mode of cheating in trade in his times.
He is violent against the apothecaries for their cheats. " They mix ginger with cinnamon, which they sell for real spices : they put their bags of ginger, pepper, saffron, cinna- mon, and other drugs in damp cellars, that they may weigh heavier ; they mix oil with saffron, to give it a color, and to make it weightier." He does not forget those tradesmen who put water in their wool, and moisten their cloth that it may stretch ; tavern-keepers, who sophisticate and mingle wines ; the butchers, who blow up their meat, and who mix hog's lard with the fiat of their meat. He terribly declaims against ihose who buy with a great allowance of measure and weight,
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and then sell with a small measure and weight ; and curses those who, when they weigh, press the scales down with their finger. But ifc is time to conclude with Master Oliver ! His catalogue is, however, by no means exhausted ; and it may not be amiss to observe, that the present age has re- tained every one of the sins.
The following extracts are from Menot's sermons, which are written, like Maillard's, in a barbarous Latin, mixed with old French.
Michael Menot died in 1518. I think he has more wit than Maillard, and occasionally displays a brilliant imagination ; with the same singular mixture of grave declamation and farcical absurdities. He is called in the title-page the golden tongued. It runs thus, Predicatoris qui lingua aurea, sua tempestate nuncupatus est, Sermones quadragesimales, ab ipso olim Turonis declamati. Paris, 1525, 8vo.
When he compares the church with a vine, he says, " There were once some Britons and Englishmen who would have carried away all France into their country, because they found our wine better than their beer ; but as they well knew that they could not always remain in France, nor carry away France into their country, they would at least carry with them several stocks of vines ; they planted some in England ; but these stocks soon degenerated, because the soil was not adapted to them." Notwithstanding what Menot said in 1500, and that we have tried so often, we have often flattered ourselves that if we plant vineyards we may have English wine.
The following beautiful figure describes those who live neglectful of their aged parents, who had cherished them into prosperity. " See the trees flourish and recover their leaves ; it is their root that has produced all ; but when the branches are loaded with flowers and with fruits, they yield nothing to the root. This is an image of those children who prefer their own amusements, and to game away their for- tunes, than to give to their old parents that which they want"
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He acquaints us with the following circumstances of the immorality of that age : " Who has not got a mistress besides his wife ? The poor wife eats the fruits of bitterness, and even makes the bed for the mistress. Oaths were not un- fashionable in his day. " Since the world has been world, this crime was never greater. There were once pillories for these swearers ; but now this crime is so common, that the child of five years can swear ; and even the old dotard of eighty, who has only two teeth remaining, can fling out an oath."
On the power of the fair sex of his day, he observes, " A father says, my son studies ; he must have a bishopric, or an abbey of 500 livres. Then he will have dogs, horses, and mistresses, like others. Another says, I will have my son placed at court, and have many honourable dignities. To succeed well, both employ the mediation of women ; un- happily the church and the law are entirely at their disposal. We have artful Dalilahs who shear us close. For twelve crowns and an ell of velvet given to a woman, you gain the worst law-suit, and the best living."
In his last sermon, Menot recapitulates the various topics he had touched on during Lent. This extract presents a curious picture, and a just notion of the versatile talents of these preachers
" I have told ecclesiastics how they should conduct them- selves ; not that they are ignorant of their duties ; but I must ever repeat to girls, not to suffer themselves to be duped by them. I have told these ecclesiastics that they should imitate the lark ; if she has a grain she does not remain idle, but feels her pleasure in singing, and in singing always is ascend- ing towards heaven. So they should not amass ; but elevate the hearts of all to God ; and not do as the frogs who are crying out day and night, and think they have a fine throat, but always remain fixed in the mud.
" I have told the men of the law that they should have the qualities of the eagle. The first is, that this bird when it
342 JOCULAR PREACHERS.
flies fixes its eye on the sun ; so all judges, counsellors, and attorneys, in judging, writing, and signing, should always have God before their eyes. And secondly, this bird is never greedy ; it willingly shares its prey with others ; so all lawyers, who are rich in crowns after having had their bills paid, should distribute some to the poor, particularly when they are conscious that their money arises from their prey.
" I have spoken of the marriage state, but all that I have said has been disregarded. See those wretches who break the hymeneal chains, and abandon their wives ! they pass their holidays out of their parishes, because if they remained at home they must have joined their wives at church ; they liked their prostitutes better ; and it will be so every day in the year! I would as well dine with a Jew or a heretic, as with them. What an infected place is this! Mistress Lubricity has taken possession of the whole city ; look in every corner, and you'll be convinced.
" For you married women ! If you have heard the night- ingale's song, you must know that she sings during three months, and that she is silent when she has young ones. So there is a time in which you may sing and take your pleas- ures in the marriage state, and another to watch your children. Don't damn yourselves for them ; and remember it would be better to see them drowned than damned.
" As to widows, I observe, that the turtle withdraws and sighs in the woods, whenever she has lost her companion ; so must they retire into the wood of the cross, and having lost their temporal husband, take no other but Jesus Christ.
" And, to close all, I have told girls that they must fly from the company of men, and not permit them to embrace, nor even touch them. Look on the rose ; it has a delightful odour ; it embalms the place in which it is placed ; but if you grasp it underneath, it will prick you till the blood issues. The beauty of the rose is the beauty of the girl. The beauty and perfume of the first invite to smell and to handle it, but when il is touched underneath it pricks sharply ; the beauty
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of a girl likewise invites the hand ; but you, my young ladies, you must never suffer this, for I tell you that every man who does this designs to make you harlots."
These ample extracts may convey the same pleasure to the reader which I have received by collecting them from their scarce originals, little known even to the curious. Menot, it cannot be denied, displays a poetic imagination, and a fertility of conception which distinguishes him among lu's rivals. The same taste and popular manner came into our country, and were suited to the simplicity of the age. In 1527, our Bishop Latimer preached a sermon, in which he expresses himself thus : — " Now ye have heard what -is meant by this first card, and how ye ought to play. I pur- pose again to deal unto you another card of the same suit ; for they be so nigh affinity, that one cannot be well played without the other." It is curious to observe about a century afterwards, as Fuller informs us, that when a country clergy- man imitated these familiar allusions, the taste of the con- gregation had so changed that he was interrupted by peals of laughter !
Even in more modern times have Menot and Maillard found an imitator in little Father Andre, as well as others. His character has been variously drawn. He is by some represented as a kind of buffoon in the pulpit ; but others more judiciously observe, that he only indulged his natural genius, and uttered humorous and lively things, as the good father observes himself, to keep the attention of his audience awake. He was not always laughing. " He told many a bold truth," says the author of Guerre des Auteurs anciens et modernes, " that sent bishops to their dioceses, and made many a coquette blush. He possessed the art of biting when he smiled; and more ably combated vice by Ids ingenious satire than by those vague apostrophes which no one takes to himself. While others were straining their minds to catch at sublime thoughts which no one understood, he lowered his talents to the most humble situations, and to the minutest
<J44 JOCULAR PREACHERS.
things. From them he drew his examples and his compari- sons ; and the one and the other never failed of success." Marville says, that " His expressions were full of shrewd simplicity. He made very free use of the most popular proverbs. His comparisons and figures were always bor- rowed from the most familiar and lowest things." To ridi- cule effectually the reigning vices, he would prefer quirks or puns to sublime thoughts ; and he was little solicitous of his choice of expression, so the things came home. Gozzi, in Italy, had the same power in drawing unexpected inferences from vulgar and familiar occurrences. It was by this art Whitfield obtained so many followers. In Piozzi's British Synonymes, vol. ii. p. 205, we have an instance of Gozzi's manner. In the time of Charles II., it became fashionable to introduce humour into sermons. Sterne seems to have revived it in his : South's sparkle perpetually with wit and pun. ^
Far different, however, are the characters of the sublime preachers, of whom the French have preserved the following descriptions.
We have not any more Bourdaloue, La Rue, and Massil- lon ;. but the idea which still exists of their manner of address- ing their auditors may serve instead of lessons. Each had his own peculiar mode, always adapted to place, time, cir- cumstance ; to their auditors, their style, and their subject.
Bourdaloue, with a collected ah-, had little action ; with eyes generally half closed, he penetrated the hearts of the people by the sound of a voice uniform and solemn. The tone with which a sacred orator pronounced the words, Tu e&t ille vir ! " Thou art the man ! " in suddenly addressing them to one of the kings of France, struck more forcibly than their application. Madame de Sevigne describes our preacher, by saying, " Father Bourdaloue thunders at Notre Dame."
La Kue appeared with the air of a prophet. His manner was irresistible, full of fire, intelligence, and force. He had strokes perfectly original. Several old men, his contempo-
MASTERLY IMITATORS. 345
raries, still shuddered at the recollection of the expression which he employed in an apostrophe to the God of vengeance, Evaginare gladium tuum !
The person of Massillon affected his admirers. He was seen in the pulpit with that air of simplicity, that modest de- meanour, those eyes humbly declining, those unstudied ges- tures, that passionate tone, that mild countenance of a man penetrated with his subject, conveying to the mind the most luminous ideas, and to the heart the most tender emotions. Baron, the tragedian, coming out from one of his sermons, truth forced from his lips a confession humiliating to his pro- fession: "My friend," said he to one of his companions, " this is an orator / and we are only actors."
MASTERLY IMITATORS.
THERE have been found occasionally some artists who could so perfectly imitate the spirit, the taste, the character, and the peculiarities of great masters, that they have not un- frequently deceived the most skilful connoisseurs. Michael Angelo sculptured a sleeping Cupid, of which having broken off an arm, he buried the statue in a place where he knew it would soon be found. The critics were never tired of ad- miring it, as one of the most precious relics of antiquity. It was sold to the Cardinal of St. George, to whom Michael Angelo discovered the whole mystery, by joining to the Cupid the arm which he had reserved.
An anecdote of Peter Mignard is more singular. This great artist painted a Magdalen, on a canvas fabricated at Rome. A broker, in concert with Mignard, went to the Chevalier de Clairville, and told him as a secret that, he was to receive from Italy a Magdalen of Guido, and his master- piece. The chevalier caught the bait, begged the preference, and purchased the picture at a very high price.
346 MASTERLY IMITATORS.
He was informed that he had been imposed upon, and that the Magdalen was painted by Mignard. Mignard himself caused the alarm to be given, but the amateur would not believe it ; all the connoisseurs agreed it was a Guido, and the famous Le Brun corroborated this opinion.
The chevalier came to Mignard : — " Some persons assure me that my Magdalen is your work ! " — " Mine ! they do me great honour. I am sure that Le Brun is not of this opinion." — " Le Brun swears it can be no other than a Guido. You shall dine with me, and meet several of the first connois- seurs."
On the day of meeting, the picture was again more closely inspected. Mignard hinted his doubts whether the piece was the work of that great master ; he insinuated that it was pos- sible to be deceived ; and added, that if it was Guide's, he did not think it in his best manner. " It is a Guido, sir, and in his very best manner," replied Le Brun, with warmth ; and all the critics were unanimous. Mignard then spoke in a firm tone of voice : "And I, gentlemen, will wager three hundred louis that it is not a Guido." The dispute now be came violent : Le Brun was desirous of accepting the wager. In a word, the affair became such that it could add nothing more to the glory of Mignard. " No, sir," replied the latter, " I am too honest to bet when I am certain to win. Monsieur le Chevalier, this piece cost you two thousand crowns : the money must be returned, — the painting is mine" Le Brun would not believe it. " The proof," Mignard continued, " is easy. On this canvas, which is a Roman one, was the por- trait of a cardinal ; I will show you his cap." — The chevalier did not know which of the rival artists to credit. The propo- sition alarmed him. " He who painted the picture shall repair it," said Mignard. He took a pencil dipped in oil, and rubbing the hair of the Magdalen, discovered the cap of the cardinal. The honour of the ingenious painter could no longer be disputed ; Le Brun, vexed, sarcastically exclaimed, "Always paint Guido, but never Mignard."
MASTERLY IMITATORS. 347
TL ere is a collection of engravings by that ingenious artist Bernard Picart, which has been published under the title of The Innocent Impostors. Picart had long been vexed at the taste of his day, which ran wholly in favour of antiquity, and no one would look at, much less admire, a modern master. He published a pretended collection, or a set of prints, from the designs of the great painters ; in which he imitated the etchings and engravings of the various masters, and much were these prints admired as the works of Guido, Rembrandt, and others. Having had his joke, they were published under the title of Imposteurs Innocens. The connoisseurs, how- ever, are strangely divided in their opinion of the merit of this collection. Gilpin classes these " Innocent Impostors " among the most entertaining of his works, and is delighted by the happiness with which he has outdone in their own excel- lences the artists whom he copied ; but Strutt, too grave to admit of jokes that twitch the connoisseurs, declares that they could never have deceived an experienced judge, and repro- bates such kinds of ingenuity, played off at the cost of the venerable brotherhood of the cognoscenti !
The same thing was, however, done by Goltzius, who being disgusted at the preference given to the works of Albert Durer, Lucas of Leyden, and others of that school, and hav- ing attempted to introduce a better taste, which was not im- mediately relished, he published what were afterwards called his master-pieces. These are six prints in the style of these masters, merely to prove that Goltzius could imitate their works, if he thought proper. One of these, the Circumcision, he had printed on soiled paper ; and to give it the brown tint of antiquity had carefully smoked it, by which means it was sold as a curious performance, and deceived some of the. most capital connoisseurs, of the day, one of whom bought it as one of the finest engravings of Albert Durer : even Strutt acknowledges the merit of Goltzius's master-pieces !
To these instances of artists I will add others of celebrated authors. Muretus rendered Joseph Scaliger, a great stickler
348 MASTERLY IMITATORS.
for the ancients, highly ridiculous by an artifice which he practised. He sent some verses which he pretended were copied from an old manuscript. The verses were excellent, and Scaliger was credulous. After having read them, he exclaimed they were admirable, and affirmed that they were written by an old comic poet, Trabeus. He quoted them, in his commentary on Varro De JRe Rustica, as one of the most precious fragments of antiquity. It was then, when he had fixed his foot firmly in the trap, that Muretus informed the world of the little dependence to be placed on the critical sagacity of one so prejudiced in favour of the ancients, and who considered his judgment as infallible.
The Abbe* Regnier Desmarais, having written an ode, or, as the Italians call it, canzone, sent it to the Abbe Strozzi at Florence, who used it to impose on three or four academicians of Delia Crusca. He gave out th,at Leo Allatius, librarian of the Vatican, in examining carefully the MSS. of Petrarch preserved there, had found two pages slightly glued, which having separated, he had discovered this ode. The fact was not at first easily credited ; but afterwards the similarity of style and manner rendered jt highly probable. When Strozzi unde- ceived the public, it procured the Abbe Regnier a place hi the academy, as an honourable testimony of his ingenuity.
Pere Commire, when Louis XIV. resolved on the con- quest of Holland, composed a Latin fable, entitled " The Sun and the Frogs," in which he assumed with such felicity the style and character of Phaedrus, that the learned Wolfius was deceived, and innocently inserted it in his edition of that fabulist.
Flaminius Strada would have deceived most of the critics of his age, if he had given as the remains of antiquity the dif- ferent pieces of history and poetry which he composed on the model of the ancients, in his Prolusiones Academicce. To preserve probability he might have given out that he had drawn them from some old and neglected library ; he had then only to have added a good commentary, tending to dis-
EDWARD THE FOURTH. 349
play the conformity of the style and manner of these frag- ments with the works of those authors to whom he ascribed them.
Sigonius was a great master of the style of Cicero, and ventured to publish a treatise De Consolatione, as a compo- sition of Cicero recently discovered ; many were deceived by the counterfeit, which was performed with great dexterity, and was long received as genuine ; but he could not deceive Lipsius, who, after reading only ten lines, threw it away, ex- claiming, " Vah ! non est Ciceronis." The late Mr. Burke succeeded more skilfully in his " Vindication of Natural So- ciety," which for a long time passed as the composition of Lord Bolingbroke ; so perfect is this ingenious imposture of the spirit, manner, and course of thinking of the noble author. I believe it was written for a wager, and fairly won.
EDWARD THE FOURTH.
OUR Edward the Fourth was dissipated and voluptuous , and probably owed his crown to his handsomeness, his enor- mous debts, and passion for the fair sex. He had many Jane Shores. Honest Philip de Comines, his contemporary, says, " That what greatly contributed to his entering London as soon as he appeared at its gates, was the great debts this prince had contracted, which made his creditors gladly assist him ; and the high favour in which he was held by the bour- geoises, into whose good graces he had frequently glided, and who gained over to him their husbands, who, for the tranquillity of their lives, were glad to depose or to raise monarchs. Many ladies and rich citizens' wives, of whom formerly he had great privacies and familiar acquaintance, gained over to him their husbands and relations."
This is the description of his voluptuous life ; we must re- collect that the writer had been an eye-witness, and was an honest man :—
350 EDWARD THE FOURTH.
" He had been during the last twelve years more accus- tomed to his ease and pleasure than any other prince who lived in his time. He had nothing in his thoughts but les dames, and of them more than was reasonable ; and hunting- matches, good eating, and great care of his person. When he went in their seasons to these hunting-matches, he always had carried with him great pavilions for les dames, and at the same time gave splendid entertainments ; so that it is not surprising that his person was as jolly as any one I ever saw. He was then young, and as handsome as any man of his age ; but he has since become enormously fat."
Since I have got old Philip in my hand, the reader will not, perhaps, be displeased, if he attends to a little more of his naivete, which will appear in the form of a conversazione of the times. He relates what passed between the English and the French Monarch.
" When the ceremony of the oath was concluded, our king, who was desirous of being friendly, began to say to the king of England, in a laughing way, that he must come to Paris, and be jovial amongst our ladies ; and that he would give him the Cardinal de Bourbon for his confessor, who would very willingly absolve him of any sin which perchance he might commit. The king of England seemed well pleased at the invitation, and laughed heartily; for he knew that the said cardinal was un fort bon compagnon. When the king was returning, he spoke on the road to me ; and said that he did not like to find the king of England so much inclined to come to Paris. ' He is,' said he, * a very handsome king ; he likes the women too much. He may probably find one at Paris that may make him like to come too often, or stay too long. His predecessors have already been too much at Paris and in Normandy ; ' and that ' his company was not agree- able this side of the sea ; but that, beyond the sea, he wished to be bon frere et amy? "
I have called Philip de Comines honest. The old writers, from the simplicity of their style, usually receive this honour-
EDWARD THE FOURTH. 351
able epithet ; but sometimes they deserve it as little as most modern memoir writers. No enemy is indeed so terrible as a man of genius. Comines's violent enmity to the Duke of Burgundy, which appears in these memoirs, has been traced by the minute researchers of anecdotes ; and the cause is not honourable to the memoir-writer, whose resentment was im- placable. De Comines was born a subject of the Duke of Burgundy, and for seven years had been a favourite ; but one day returning from hunting with the Duke, then Count de Charolois, in familiar jocularity he sat himself down be- fore the prince, ordering the prince to pull off his boots. The count laughed, and did this ; but in return for Comines's princely amusement, dashed the boot in his face, and gave Comines a bloody nose. From that time he was mortified in the court of Burgundy by the nickname of the booted head. Comines long felt a rankling wound in his mind ; and after this domestic quarrel, for it was nothing more, he went over to the king of France, and wrote off his bile against the Duke of Burgundy in these " Memoirs," which give posterity a caricature likeness of that prince, whom he is ever censuring for presumption, obstinacy, pride, and cruelty. This Duke of Burgundy, however, it is said, with many virtues, had but one great vice, the vice of sovereigns, that of ambition !
The impertinence of Comines had not been chastised with great severity ; but the nickname was never forgiven : un- fortunately for the duke, Comines was a man of genius. When we are versed in the history of the times, we often discover that memoir-writers have some secret poison in their hearts. Many, like Comines, have had the boot dashed on their nose. Personal rancour wonderfully enlivens the style of Lord Orford and Cardinal de Retz. Memoirs are often dictated by its fiercest spirit ; and then histories are composed from memoirs. Where is TRUTH ? Not always in histories and memoirs !
352 ELIZABETH.
ELIZABETH.
THIS great queen passionately admired handsome persons, and he was already far advanced in her favour who ap- proached her with beauty and grace. She had so uncon- querable an aversion for men who had been treated unfor tunately by nature, that she could not endure their presence.
When she issued from her palace, her guards were careful to disperse from before her eyes hideous and deformed peo- ple, the lame, the hunchbacked, &c. ; in a word, all those whose appearance might shock her fastidious sensations.
" There is this singular and admirable in the conduct of Elizabeth that she made her pleasures subservient to her policy, and she maintained her affairs by what in general occasions the ruin of princes. So secret were her amours, that even to the present day their mysteries cannot be pen- etrated ; but the utility she drew from them is public, and always operated for the good of her people. Hgr lovers were her ministers, and her ministers were her lovers. Love commanded, love was obeyed ; and the reign of this princess was happy, because it was the reign of Love, in which its chains and its slavery are liked ! "
The origin of Raleigh's advancement -in the queen's graces was by an act of gallantry. Raleigh spoiled a new plush cloak, while the queen, stepping cautiously on this prodigal's footcloth, shot forth a smile, in wliich he read promotion. Captain Raleigh soon became Sir Walter, and rapidly ad- vanced in the queen's favour.
Hume has furnished us with ample proofs of the passion which her courtiers feigned for her, and it remains a question whether it ever went further than boisterous or romantic gallantry. The secrecy of her amours is not so wonderful as it seems, if there were impediments to any but exterior gallantries. Hume has preserved in his notes a letter written by Raleigh. It is a perfect amorous composition
ELIZABETH. 353
After having exerted his poetic talents to exalt her charms and his affection, he concludes, by comparing her majesty, who was then sixty, to Venus and Diana. Sir Walter was not her only courtier who wrote in this style. Even in her old age she .affected a strange fondness for music and danc- ing, with a kind of childish simplicity ; her court seemed a court of love, and she the sovereign. Secretary Cecil, the youngest son of Lord Burleigh, seems to have perfectly en- tered into her character. Lady Derby wore about her neck and in her bosom a portrait; the queen inquired about it, but her ladyship was anxious to conceal it. The queen in- sisted on having it ; and discovering it to be the portrait of young Cecil, she snatched it away, tying it upon her shoe, and walked with it ; afterwards she pinned it on her elbow, and wore it some time there. Secretary Cecil hearing of this, composed some verses and got them set to music ; this music the queen insisted on hearing. In his verses Cecil sang that he repined not, though her majesty was pleased to grace others ; he contented himself with the favour she had given him by wearing his portrait on her feet and on her arms ! The writer of the letter who relates this anecdote, adds, " All these things are very secret." In this manner she contrived to lay the fastest hold on her able servants, and her servants on her.
Those who are intimately acquainted with the private anecdotes of those times, know what encouragement this royal coquette gave to most who were near her person. Dodd, in his Church History, says, that the Earls of Arran and Arundel, and Sir William Pickering, " were not out of hopes of gaming Queen Elizabeth's affections in a matrimo- nial way."
She encouraged every person of eminence : she even vent so far, on the anniversary of her coronation, as publicly to take a ring from her finger, and put it on the Duke of Alenjon's hand. She also ranked amongst her suitors Henry the Third of France,' and Henry the Great.
VOL. T. 23
354 ELIZABETH.
She never forgave Buzenval for ridiculing her bad pro- nunciation of the French language; and when Henry IV. sent him over on an embassy, she would not receive him. So nice was the irritable pride of this great queen, that she made her private injuries matters of state.
" This queen," writes Du Maurier, in his Memoires pour servir a THistoire de la Hollande, u who displayed so many heroic accomplishments, had this foible, of wishing to be thought beautiful by all the world. I heard from my father, that at every audience he had with her majesty, she pulled off her gloves more than a hundred times to display her hands, which indeed were very beautiful and very white."
A not less curious anecdote relates to the affair of the Duke of Anjou and our Elizabeth ; it is one more prooi of her partiality for handsome men. The writer was Lewis Guyon, a contemporary.
" Francis Duke of Anjou, being desirous of marrying a crowned head, caused proposals of marriage to be made to Elizabeth, queen of England. Letters passed betwixt them, and their portraits were exchanged. At length her majesty informed him, that she would never contract a marriage with any one who sought her, if she did not first see his person. If he would not come, nothing more should be said on the subject. This prince, over-pressed by his young friends, (who were as little able of judging as himself,) paid no attention to the counsels of men of maturer judgment. He passed over to England without a splendid train. The said lady contemplated his person : she found him ugly, disfigured by deep scars of the smallpox, and that he also had an ill- shaped nose, with swellings in the neck ! All these were so many reasons with her, that he could never be admitted into her good graces."
Puttenham, in his very rare book of the " Art of Poesie," p. 248, notices the grace and majesty of Elizabeth's demean- our : " Her stately manner of walk, with a certaine granditie
ELIZABETH. 355
rather than gravietie, marching with leysure, which our sov- ereign ladye and mistresse is accustomed to doe generally, unless it be when she walketh apace for her pleasure, or to catch her a heate in the cold mornings."
By the following extract from a letter from one of her gentlemen, we discover that her usual habits, though studi- ous, were not of the gentlest kind, and that the service she exacted from her attendants was not borne without concealed murmurs. The writer groans in secrecy to his friend. Sir John Stanhope writes to Sir Robert Cecil in 1598 : " I was all the afternowne with her majestic, at my booke ; and then thinking to rest me, went in agayne with your letter. She was pleased with the Filosofer's stone, and hath ben all this daye reasonably quyett. Mr. Grevell is absent, and I am tyed so as I cannot styrr, but shall be at the wourse for yt, these two dayes ! "
Puttenham, p. 249, has also recorded an honourable anec- dote of Elizabeth, and characteristic of that high majesty which was in her thoughts, as well as in her actions. When she came to the crown, a knight of the realm, who had in- solently behaved to her when Lady Elizabeth, fell upon his knees and besought her pardon, expecting to be sent to the Tower : she replied mildly, " Do you not know that we are descended dP the lion, whose nature is not to harme or Drey upon the mouse, or any other such small vermin ? "
Queen Elizabeth was taught to write by the celebrated Roger Ascham. Her writing is extremely beautiful and correct, as may be seen by examining a little manuscript book of prayers, preserved in the British Museum. I have seen her first writing-book, preserved at Oxford in the Bod- leian Library : the gradual improvement in her majesty's handwriting is very honourable to her diligence ; but the most curious thing is the paper on which she tried her pens ; this she usually did by writing the name of her beloved brother Edward ; a proof of the early and ardent attachment she formed to that amiable prince.
353 THE CHINESE LANGUAGE.
The education of Elizabeth had been severely classical j she thought and she wrote in all the spirit of the characters of antiquity ; and her speeches and her letters are studded with apophthegms, and a terseness of ideas and language, that give an exalted idea of her mind. In her evasive answers to the commons, in reply to their petitions to her majesty to marry, she has employed an energetic word : " Were I to tell you that I do not mean to marry, I might gay less than I did intend ; and were I to tell you that I do mean to marry, I might say more than it is proper for you to know ; therefore I give you an answer, ANSWERLESS ! "
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE.
THE Chinese language is like no other on the globe : it is said to contain not more than about three hundred and thirty words, but it is by no means monotonous, for it has four ac- cents ; the even, the raised, the lessened, and the returning, which multiply every word into four ; as difficult, says Mr. Astle, for an European to understand, as it is for a Chinese to comprehend the six pronunciations of the French E. In fact, they can so diversify their monosyllabic %ords by the different tones which they give them, that the same character differently accented signifies sometimes ten or more different things.
P. Bourgeois, one of the missionaries, attempted, after ten months' residence at Pekin, to preach in the Chinese lan- guage. These are the words of the good father : " God knows how much this first Chinese sermon cost me ! I can assure you this language resembles no other. The same word has never but one termination ; and then adieu to all that in our declensions distinguishes the gender, and the number of things we would speak : adieu, in the verbs, to all which might explain the active person, how and in what
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE. 357
time it acts, if it acts alone or with others : in a word, with the Chinese, the. same word is substantive, adjective, verb, singular, plural, masculine, feminine, &c. It is the person who hears who must arrange the circumstances, and guess them. Add to all this, that all the words of this language are reduced to three hundred and a few more ; that they are pronounced in so many different ways, that they signify eighty thousand different things, which are expressed by as many different characters. This is not all : the arrangement of all these monosyllables appears to be under no general rule ; so that to know the language after having learnt the words, we must learn every particular phrase : the least in- version would make you unintelligible to three parts of the Chinese.
" I will give you an example of their words. They told me chou signifies a book: so that I thought whenever the word chou was pronounced, a book was the subject. Not at all ! Chou, the next time I heard it, I found signified a tree. Now I was to recollect ; chou was a book or a tree. But this amounted to nothing ; chou, I found, expressed also great heats; chou is to relate; chou is the Aurora ; chou means to be accustomed ; chou expresses the loss of a wager, &c. I should not finish, were I to attempt to give you all its sig- nifications.
" Notwithstanding these singular difficulties, could one but find a help in the perusal of their books, I should not com- plain. But this is impossible ! Their language is quite different from that of simple conversation. What will ever be an insurmountable difficulty to every European is the pronunciation; every word may be pronounced in five dif ferent tones, yet every tone is not so distinct that an un- practised car can easily distinguish it. These monosyllables fly with amazing rapidity ; then they are continually dis- guised by elisions, which sometimes hardly leave any thing of two monosyllables. From an aspirated tone you must pass immediately to an even one; from a whistling note
358 MEDICAL MUSIC.
to an inward one : sometimes your voice must proceed from the palate ; sometimes it must be guttural, and almost always nasal. I recited my sermon at least fifty times to my servant before I spoke it in public ; and yet I am told, though he continually corrected me, that of the ten parts of the sermon (as the Chinese express themselves), they hardly understood three. Fortunately the Chinese are wonderfully patient ; and they are astonished that any ignorant stranger should be able to learn two words of their language."
It has been said that " Satires are often composed hi China, which, if you attend to the characters, their import is pure and sublime ; but if you regard the tone only, they con- tain a meaning ludicrous or obscene. In the Chinese one word sometimes corresponds to three or four thousand char- acters ; a property quite opposite to that of our language, in which myriads of different words are expressed by the same letters."
MEDICAL MUSIC.
IN the Philosophical Magazine for May, 1806, we find that " several of the medical literati on the continent are at present engaged in making inquiries and experiments upon the influence of music in the cure of diseases" The learned Dusaux is said to lead the band of this new tribe of amateurs and cognoscenti.
The subject excited my curiosity, though I since have found that it is no new discovery.
There is a curious article in Dr. Burney's History of Music, "On the medicinal Powers attributed to Music by the Ancients," which he derived from the learned labours of a modem physician, M. Burette, who doubtless could play a tune to, as well as prescribe one to, his patient. He con- ceives that music can relieve the pains of the sciatica ; and that independent of the greater or less skill of the musician, by
MEDICAL MUSIC. 359
flattering the ear, and diverting the attention, and occasioning certain vibrations of the nerves, it can remove those obstruc- tions which occasion this disorder. M. Burette, and many modern physicians and philosophers, have believed that music has the power of affecting the mind, and the whole nervous system, so as to give a temporary relief in certain diseases, and even a radical cure. De Mairan, Bianchini, and other respectable names, have .pursued the same career. But the ancients record miracles !
The Rev. Dr. Mitchell, of Brighthelmstone, wrote a dis- sertation, " De Arte Medendi apud Priscos, Musices ope atque Carminum" printed for J. Nichols, 1783. He writes under the assumed name of Michael Gaspar ; but whether this learned dissertator be grave or jocular, more than one critic has not been able to resolve me. I suspect it to be a satire on the parade of Germanic erudition, by which they often prove a point by the weakest analogies and most fanciful conceits.
Amongst half-civilized nations, diseases have been gener- ally attributed to the influence of evil spirits. The depression of mind which is generally attendant on sickness, and the delirium accompanying certain stages of disease, seem to have been considered as especially denoting the immediate influence of a demon. The effect of music in raising the energies of the mind, or what we commonly call animal spirits, was obvious to early observation. Its power of at- tracting strong attention may in some cases have appeared to affect even those who laboured under a considerable de- gree of mental disorder. The accompanying depression of mind was considered as a part of the disease, perhaps rightly enough, and music was prescribed as a remedy to remove the symptom, when experience had not ascertained the probable cause. Homer, whose heroes exhibit high passions, but not refined manners, represents the Grecian army as . employing music to stay the raging of the plague. The Jewish nation, in the time of King David, appear not to have been much
360 MEDICAL MUSIC.
further advanced in civilization ; accordingly we find David employed in his youth to remove the mental derangement of Saul by his harp. The method of cure was suggested as a common one in those days, by Saul's servants ; and the suc- cess is not mentioned as a miracle. Pindar, with poetic license, speaks of -ZEsculapius healing acute disorders with soothing songs ; but ^Esculapius, whether man or deity, or between both, is a physician of the days of barbarism and fable. Pliny scouts the idea that music should affect real bodily injury, but quotes Homer on the subject; mentions Theophrastus as suggesting a tune for the cure of the hip gout, and Cato as entertaining a fancy that it had a good effect when limbs were out of joint, and likewise that Varro thought it good for the gout. Aulus Gellius cites a work of Theophrastus, which recommends music as a specific for the bite of a viper. Boyle and Shakspeare mention the effects of music super vesicam. Kircher's " Musurgia," and Swin- burne's Travels, relate the effects of music on those who are bitten by the tarantula. Sir W. Temple seems to have given credit to the stories of the power of music over dis- eases.
The ancients, indeed, record miracles in the tales they re- late of the medicinal powers of music. A fever is removed by a song, and deafness is cured by a trumpet, and the pesti- lence is chased away by the sweetness of an harmonious lyre. That deaf people can hear best in a great noise, is a fact alleged by some moderns, in favour of the ancient story of curing deafness by a trumpet. Dr. Willis tells us, says Dr. Burney, of a lady who could hear only while a drum was beating, insomuch that her husband, the account says, hired a drummer as her servant, in order to enjoy the pleasure of her conversation.
Music and the sounds of instruments, says the lively Vig- neul de Marville, contribute to the health of the body and the mind ; they quicken the circulation of the blood, they dis- sipate vapours, and open the vessels, so that the action of
MEDICAL MUSIC. 361
perspiration is freer. He tells a story of a person of distinc- tion, who assured him, that once being suddenly seized by violent illness, instead of a consultation of physiciJRfs, he im- mediately called a band of musicians ; and their violins played so well in his inside, that his bowels became perfectly in tune, and in a few hours were harmoniously becalmed. I o^ ce heard a story of Farinelli the famous singer, who was seat for to Madrid, to try the effect of his magical voice on the king of Spain. His majesty was buried in the profoundest melancholy : nothing could raise an emotion in him ; he lived in a total oblivion of life ; he sate in a darkened chamber, entirely given up to the most distressing kind of madness. The physicians ordered Farinelli at first to sing in an outer room ; and for the first day or two this was done, without any effect on the royal patient. At length it was observed, thai the king, awakening from his stupor, seemed to listen ; on the next day tears were seen starting in his eyes ; the day after he ordered the door of his chamber to be left open—- and at length the perturbed spirit entirely left our modern Saul, and the medicinal voice of Farinelli effected what no other medicine could.
I now prepare to give the reader some facts, which he may consider as a trial of credulity. — Their authorities are, how- ever, not contemptible. — Naturalists assert that animals and birds, as well as " knotted oaks," as Congreve informs us, are sensible to the charms of music. This may serve as an in- stance : — "An officer was confined in the Bastile ; he begged the governor to permit him the use of his lute, to soften, by the harmonies of his instrument, the rigours of his prison. At the end of a few days, this modern Orpheus, playing on his lute, was greatly astonished to see frisking out of their holes great numbers of mice ; and descending from their woven habitations crowds of spiders, who formed a circle about him, while he continued breathing his soul-subduing instrument. He was petrified with astonishment. Having ceased to play, the assembly, who did not come to see his
362 MEDICAL MUSIC.
person, but to hear his instrument, immediately broke up. As he had a great dislike to spiders, it was two days before he ventuifd again to touch his instrument. At length, having overcome, for the novelty of his company, his dislike of them, he recommenced his concert, when the assembly was by far more numerous than at first ; and in the course of farther time, he found himself surrounded by a hundred musical amateurs. Having thus succeeded in attracting this company, he treacherously contrived to get rid of them at his will. For this purpose he begged the keeper to give him a cat, which ha put in a cage, and let loose at the very instant when the little hairy people were most entranced by the Or- phean skill he displayed.
The Abbe Olivet has described an amusement of Pelisson during his confinement in the Bastile, which consisted in feeding a spider, which he had discovered forming its web in the corner of the small window. For some time he placed his flies at the edge, while his valet, who was with him, played on a bagpipe : little by little, the spider used itself to distin- guish the sound of the instrument, and issued from its hole to run and catch its prey. Thus calling it always by the same sound, and placing the flies at a still greater distance, he succeeded, after several months, to drill the spider by regular exercise, so that at length it never failed appearing at the first sound to seize on the fly provided for it, even on the knees of the prisoner.
Marville has given us the following curious anecdote on this subject. He says, that doubting the truth of those who eay that the love of music is a natural taste, especially the sound of instruments, and that beasts themselves are touched by it, being one day in the country I tried an experiment. While a man was playing on the trump marine, I made my observations on a cat, a dog, a horse, an ass, a hind, cows, small birds, and a cock and hens, who were in a yard, under a window on which I was leaning. I did not perceive that the cat was the least affected, and I even judged, by her air, that she
MEDICAL MUSIC. 363
would have given all the instruments in the world for a mouse, sleeping in the sun all the time ; the horse stopped short from time to time before the window, raising his head up now and then, as he was feeding on the grass ; the dog continued for above an hour seated on his hind legs, looking steadfastly at the player ; the ass did not discover the least indication of his being touched, eating his thistles peaceably ; the hind lifted up her large wide ears, and seemed very atten tive ; the cows slept a little, and after gazing, as though they had been acquainted with us, went forward ; some little bvirds» who were in an aviary, and others on the trees and bushes, almost tore their little throats with singing; but the cock, who minded only Ms hens, and the hens, who were solely employed in scraping a neighbouring dunghill, did not show in any manner that they took the least pleasure in hearing the trump marine.
A modem traveller assures us, that he has repeatedly ob- served in the island of Madeira, that the lizards are attracted by the notes of music, and that he has assembled a number of them by the powers of his instrument. When the negroes catch them, for food, they accompany the chase by whistling some tune, which has always the effect of drawing great numbers towards them. Stedman, in his Expedition to Suri- nam, describes certain sibyls among the negroes, who, among several singular practices, can charm or conjure down from the tree certain serpents, who will wreath about the arms, neck, and breast of the pretended sorceress, listening to her voice. The sacred writers speak of the charming of adders and serpents ; and nothing, says he, is more notorious than that the eastern Indians will rid the houses of the most venom- ous snakes, by charming them with the sound of a flute, which calls them out of their holes. These anecdotes seem fully confirmed by Sir William Jones, in his dissertation on the musical modes of the Hindus.
"After food, when the operations of digestion and absorp- tion give so much employment to the vessels, that a tempo-
36-4 MEDICAL MUSIC.
rary state of mental repose must be found, especially in hoi climates, essential to health, it seems reasonable to believe that a few agreeable airs, either heard or played without effort, must have all the good effects of sleep, and none of its disadvantages ; putting the soul in tune, as Milton says, for any subsequent exertion; an experiment often successfully made by myself. I have been assured by a credible eye- witness, that two wild antelopes used often to come from their woods to the place where a more savage beast, Sirajuddaulah, entertained himself with concerts, and that they listened to the strains with an appearance of pleasure, till the monster, in whose soul there was no music, shot one of them to dis- play his archery. A learned native told me that he had frequently seen the most venomous and malignant snakes leave their holes upon hearing tunes on a flute, which, as he supposed, gave them peculiar delight. An intelligent Per- sian declared he had more than once been present, when a celebrated lutenist, surnamed Bulbul (i. e. the nightingale), was playing to a large company, in a grove near Schiraz, where he distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the musician, sometimes warbling on the trees, sometimes fluttering from branch to branch, as if they wished to ap- proach the instrument, and at length dropping on the ground in a kind of ecstasy, from which they were soon raised, he assured me, by a change in the mode."
Jackson of Exeter, in reply to the question of Dryden, " What passion cannot music raise or quell ? " sarcastically returns, " What passion can music raise or quell ? " Would not a savage, who had never listened to a musical instrument, feel certain emotions at listening to one for the first iime ? But civilized man is, no doubt, particularly affected by as- sociation of ideas, as all pieces of national music evidently prove.
THE RANZ DBS VACHES, mentioned by Rousseau in his Dictionary of Music, though without any thing striking in the composition, has such a powerful influence over the Swiss,
MINUTE WRITING. 365
and impresses them with so violent a desire to return to their own country, that it is forbidden to be played in the Swiss regiments, in the French service, on pain of death. There is also a Scotch tune, which has the same effect on some of our North Britons. In one of our battles in Calabria, a bagpiper of the 78th Highland regiment, when the light in- fantry charged the French, posted himself on the right, and remained in his solitary situation during the whole of the battle, encouraging the men with a famous Highland charg- ing tune ; and actually upon the retreat and complete rout of the French changed it to another, equally celebrated in Scotland, upon the retreat of and victory over an enemy. His next-hand neighbour guarded him so well that he es- caped unhurt. This was the spirit of the " Last Minstrel," who infused courage among his countrymen, by possessing it in so animated a degree, and in so venerable a character.
MINUTE WRITING.
THE Iliad of Homer in a nutshell, which Pliny says that Cicero once saw, it is pretended might have been a fact, however to some it may appear impossible. JEli&n notices an artist who wrote a distich in letters of gold, which he en- closed in the rind of a grain of corn.
Antiquity and modern times record many such penmen, whose glory consisted in writing in so small a hand that the writing could not be legible to the naked eye. Menage men- tions, he saw whole sentences which were not perceptible to the eye without the microscope ; pictures and portraits which appeared at first to be lines and scratches thrown down at random ; one formed the face of the Dauphiness with the most correct resemblance. He read an Italian poem, in praise of this princess, containing some thousand verses, written by an officer, in a space of a foot and a half. This
366 MINUTE WRITING.
species of curious idleness has not been lost in our own coun- try ; where this minute writing has equalled any on record. Peter Bales, a celebrated caligrapher in the reign of Eliza- beth, astonished the eyes of beholders by showing them what they could not see ; for in the Harleian MSS. 530, we have a narrative of "a rare piece of work brought to pass by Peter Bales, an Englishman, and a clerk of the chancery ; " it seems by the description to have been the whole Bible " in an English walnut no bigger than a hen's egg. The nut lioldeth the book : there are as many leaves in his little book as the great Bible, and he hath written as much in one of his little leaves as a great leaf of the Bible. We are told that this wonderfully unreadable copy of the Bible was " seen by many thousands." There is a drawing of the head of Charles I. in the library of St. John's College at Oxford, wholly com- posed of minute written characters, which, at a small distance, resemble the lines of an engraving. The lines of the head, and the ruff, are said to contain the book of Psalms, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. In the British Museum we find a drawing representing the portrait of Queen Anne, not . much above the size of the hand. On this drawing appears a number of lines and scratches, which the librarian assures the marvelling spectator includes the entire contents of a thin folio, which on this occasion is carried in the hand.
The learned Huet asserts that, like the rest of the wrorld, he considered as a fiction the story of that indefatigable trifler who is said to have inclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. Ex- amining the matter more closely, he thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and eight in width, pliant and firm, can be folded up, and inclosed in the shell of a large walnut. It can hold in its breadth one line, which can contain 30 verses, and in its length 250 lines. With a crow-quill the writing can be perfect. A page of this piece of vellum will then contain 7500 verses, and the reverse as much ; the whole 1 5,000 verses of the Iliad. And
NUMERICAL FIGURES. 367
(his he proved by using a piece of paper, and with' a common pen. The thing is possible to be effected ; and if on any occasion paper should be most excessively rare, it may be useful to know that a volume of matter may be contained in a single leaf.
NUMERICAL FIGURES.
THE learned, after many contests, have at length agreed that the numerical figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, usually called Arabic, are of Indian origin. The Arabians do not pretend to have been the inventors of them, but borrowed them from the Indian nations. The numeral characters of the Bramins, the Persians, and the Arabians, and other eastern nations, are similar. They appear afterwards to have been introduced into several European nations, by their re- spective travellers, who returned from the East. They were admitted into calendars and chronicles, but they were not in- troduced into charters, says Mr. Astle, before the sixteenth century. The Spaniards, no doubt, derived their use from the Moors who invaded them. In 1240, the Alphonsean astronomical tables were made by the order of Alphonsus X. by a Jew, and an Arabian ; they used these numerals, from whence the Spaniards contend that they were first introduced by them.
They were not generally used in Germany mitil the be- ginning of the fourteenth century ; but in general the forms of the ciphers were not permanently fixed there till after the year 1531. The Russians were strangers to them, before Peter the Great had finished his travels in the beginning of the last century.
The origin of these useful characters with the Indians and Arabians, is attributed to their great skill in the arts of astron- omy and of arithmetic, which required more convenient char- acters than alphabetic letters, for the expressing of numbers.
368 NUMERICAL FIGURES.
Before the introduction into Europe of these Arabic numer- als, they used alphabetical characters, or Roman numerals. The learned authors of the Nouveau Traite* Diplomatique, the most valuable work on every thing concerning the arts and progress of writing, have given some curious notices on the origin of the Roman numerals. Originally men counted by their fingers ; thus to mark the first four numbers they used an I, which naturally represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger ; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsyturvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C — centum. The other letters D for 500, and M for a 1000, were afterwards added. They subsequently abbreviated their characters, by placing one of these figures before another ; and the figure of less value before a higher number, denotes that so much may be deducted from a greater number ; for instance, IV signifies five less one, that is four ; IX ten less one, that is nine ; but these abbreviations are not found amongst the ancient monuments. These numerical letters are still con- tinued by us, in the accounts of our Exchequer.
That men counted originally by their fingers, is no im- probable supposition; it is still naturally practised by the people. In semi-civilized states, small stones have been used, and the etymologists derive the words calculate and calculations from calculus* the Latin term for a pebble-stone, and by which they denominated their counters used for arith- metical computations.
Professor Ward, in a learned dissertation on this subject in the Philosophical Transactions, concludes that it is easier to falsify the Arabic ciphers than the Roman alpha- betic numerals ; when 1375 is dated in Arabic ciphers, if the 3 is only changed into an 0, three centuries are taken away ;
ENGLISH ASTROLOGERS, 369
if the 3 is made into a 9 and take away the 1, four hundred years are lost. Such accidents have assuredly produced much confusion among our ancient manuscripts, and still do in our printed books ; which is the reason that Dr. Robertson in his histories has also preferred writing his dates in words, rather than confide them to the care of a negligent printer. Gib- bon observes, that some remarkable mistakes have happened by the word mil. in MSS., which is an abbreviation for soldiers, or for thousands ; and to this blunder he attributes the incredible numbers of martyrdoms, which cannot other- wise be accounted for by historical records.
ENGLISH ASTROLOGERS.
A BELIEF in judicial astrology can now only exist in the people, who may be said to have no belief at all ; for mere traditional sentiments can hardly be said to amount to a belief. But a faith in this ridiculous system in our country is of late existence ; and was a favourite superstition with the learned.
When Charles the First was confined, Lilly the astrologer was consulted for the hour which would favour his escape.
A story, which strongly proves how greatly Charles the Second was bigoted to judicial astrology, is recorded in Bur- net's History of his Own Times.
The most respectable characters of the age, Sir William Dugdale, Elias Ashmole, Dr. Grew, and others, were mem- bers of an astrological club. Congreve's character of fore- sight, in Love for Love, was then no uncommon person, though the humour now is scarcely intelligible.
Dryden cast the nativities of his sons ; and, what is re- markable, his prediction relating to his son Charles took place. This incident is of so late a date, one might hope it would have been cleared up.
VOL. i. 24
370 ENGLISH ASTKOLOGERS.
In 1670, the passion for horoscopes and expounding the stars prevailed in France among the first rank. The new- born child was usually presented naked to the astrologer, who read the first lineaments in its forehead, and the transverse lines in its hand, and thence wrote down its future destiny. Catherine de Medicis brought Henry IV., then a child, to old Nostradamus, whom antiquaries esteem more for his chronicle of Provence than his vaticinating powers. The sight of the reverend seer, with a beard which " streamed like a meteor in the air," terrified the future hero who dreaded a whipping from so grave a personage. One of these magicians having assured Charles IX. that he would live as many days as he should turn about on his heels in an hour, standing on one leg, his majesty every morning performed that solemn gyration ; the principal officers of the court, the judges, the chancellors, and generals, likewise, in compliment, standing on one leg and turning round !
It has been reported of several famous for their astrologic skill, that they have suffered a voluntary death merely to verify their own predictions ; this has been reported of Car- dan, and Burton, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy.
It is curious to observe the shifts to which astrologers are put when their predictions are not verified. Great winds were predicted, by a famous adept, about the year 1586. No unusual storms, however, happened. Bodin, to save the reputation of the art, applied it as & figure to some revolutions in the state, and of which there were instances enough at that moment. Among their lucky and unlucky days, they pretend to give those of various illustrious persons and of families. One is very striking. — Thursday was the unlucky day of our Henry VIII. He, his son Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, all died on a Thursday ! This fact had, no doubt, great weight in this controversy of the astrologers with their adversaries.
Lilly, the astrologer, is the Sidrophel of Butler. His Life, written by himself, contains so much artless narrative,
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and so much palpable imposture, that it is difficult to know when he is speaking what he really believes to be the truth. In a sketch of the state of astrology in his day, those adepts, whose characters he has drawn, were the lowest miscreants of the town. They all speak of each other as rogues and impostors. Such were Booker, Backhouse, Gadbury ; men who gained a livelihood by practising on the credulity of even men of learning so late as in 1650, nor were they much out of date in the eighteenth century. In Ashmole's Life an account of these artful impostors may be found. Most of them had taken the air in the pillory, and others had conjured themselves up to the gallows. This seems a true statement of facts. But Lilly informs us, that in his various conferences with angels, their voice resembled that of the Irish, !
The work contains anecdotes of the tunes. The amours of Lilly with his mistress are characteristic. He was a very artful man, and admirably managed matters which required deception and invention.
Astrology greatly flourished in the time of the civil wars. The royalists and the rebels had their astrologers as well as their soldiers ! and the predictions of the former had a great influence over the latter.
On this subject, it may gratify curiosity to notice three or four works, which bear an excessive price. The price can- not entirely be occasioned by their rarity, and I am induced to suppose that we have still adepts, whose faith must be strong, or whose skepticism but Weak.
The Chaldean sages were nearly put to the rout by a quarto park of artillery, fired on them by Mr. John Chamber in 1601. Apollo did not use Marsyas more inhumanly than his scourging pen this mystical race, and his personalities made them feel more sore. ' However, a Norwich knight, the very Quixote of astrology, arrayed in the enchanted armour of his occult authors, encountered this pagan in a most stately carousal. He came forth with "A Defence of Judiciall Astrol- ogye, in answer to a treatise lately published by Mr. John
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Chamber. By Sir Christopher Heydon, Knight ; printed at Cambridge, 1603." This is a handsome quarto of about 500 pages. Sir Christopher is a learned writer, and a knight worthy to defend a better cause. But his Dulcinea had wrought most wonderfully on his imagination. This defence of this fanciful science, if science it may be called, demon- strates nothing, while it defends every thing. It confutes, according to the knight's own ideas : it alleges a few scattered facts in favour of astrological predictions, which may be picked up in that immensity of fabling which disgraces history. He strenuously denies, or ridicules, what the greatest writers have said against this fanciful art, while he lays great stress on some passages from authors of no authority. The most pleasant part is at the close where he defends the art from the objections of Mr. Chamber by recrimination. Chamber had enriched himself by medical practice ; and when he charges the astrologers with merely aiming to gain a few beggarly pence, Sir Christopher catches fire, and shows by his quotations, that if we are to despise an art, by its profes- sors attempting to subsist on it, or for the objections which may be raised against its vital principles, we ought by this argument most heartily to despise the medical science and medical men ! He gives here all he can collect against phy- sic and physicians ; and from the confessions of Hippocrates and Galen, Avicenna and Agrippa, medicine 'appears to be a vainer science than even astrology! Sir Christopher is a shrewd and ingenious adversary ; but when he says he means only to give Mr. Chamber oil for his vinegar, he has totally mistaken its quality.
The defence was answered by Thomas Vicars, in his " Madnesse of Astrologers."
But the great work is by Lilly ; and entirely devoted to the adepts. He defends nothing ; for this oracle delivers his dictum, and details every event as matters not questionable. He sits on the tripod ; and every page is embellished by a horoscope, which he explains with the utmost facility. Tliis
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voluminous monument of the folly of the age is a quarto valued at some guineas ! It is entitled, " Christian Astrology, modestly treated of in three books, by William Lilly, student in Astrology, 2d edition, 1659." The most curious part of this work is, "a Catalogue of most astrological authors." There is also a portrait of this arch rogue, and astrologer ^ on admirable illustration for Lavater !
Lilly's opinions, and his pretended science, were such favourites with the age, that the learned Gataker wrotQ professedly against this popular delusion. Lilly, at the head of his star-expounding friends, not only formally replied to but persecuted Gataker annually in his predictions, and even struck at his ghost, when beyond the grave. Gataker died in July, 1 654 ; and Lilly having written in his almanac of that year for the month of August this barbarous Latin verse : —
Hoc in tumbo jacet presbyter et nebulo !
Here in this tomb lies a presbyter and a knave !
he had the impudence to assert that he had predicted Gat- aker*s death ! But the truth is, it was an epitaph like lodgings to let ; it stood empty ready for the first passenger to inhabit. Had any other of that party of any eminence died in that month, it would have been as appositely applied to him. But Lilly was an exquisite rogue, and never at fault. Having prophesied in his almanac for 1 650, that the parliament stood upon a tottering foundation, when taken up by a messenger, during the night he was confined, he contrived to cancel the page, printed off another, and showed his copies before the committee, assuring them that the others were" none of hia own, but forged by his enemies.
374 ALCIIYMY.
ALCHYMY.
MRS. THOMAS, the Corinna of Dryden, in her Life, has recorded one of the delusions of alchymy.
An infatuated lover of this delusive art met with one who pretended to have the power of transmuting lead to gold; that is, in their language, the imperfect metals to the perfect one. The hermetic philosopher required only the materials, and time, to perform his golden operations. He was taken to the country residence of his patroness. A long laboratory was built, and that his labours might not be impeded by any disturbance, no one was permitted to enter into it. His door was contrived to turn on a pivot ; so that, unseen and un- seeing, his meals were conveyed to him without distracting the sublime meditations of the Sage.
During a residence of two years, he never condescended to speak but two or three times in a year to his infatuated patroness. When she was admitted into the laboratory, she saw, with pleasing astonishment, stills, cauldrons, long flues, and three or four Vulcanian fires blazing at different corners of this magical mine ; nor did she behold with less reverence the venerable figure of the dusty philosopher. Pale and emaciated with daily operations and nightly vigils, he re- vealed to her, in unintelligible jargon, his progresses ; and having sometimes condescended to explain the mysteries of the arcana, she beheld, or seemed to behold, streams of fluid and heaps of solid ore scattered around the laboratory. Sometimes he required a new still, and sometimes vast quantities of lead. Already this unfortunate lady had ex- pended the half of her fortune in supplying the demands of the philosopher. She began now to lower her imagination to the standard of reason. Two years had now elapsed, vast quantities of lead had gone in, and nothing but lead had come out. She disclosed her sentiments to the philosopher. He candidly confessed he was himself surprised at his tardy pro
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cesses ; but that now he would exert himself to the utmost^ and that he would venture to perform a laborious operation, which hitherto he Lad hoped not to have been necessitated to employ. His patroness retired, and the golden visions re- sumed all their lustre.
One day, as they sat at dinner, a terrible shriek, and one crack followed by another, loud as the report of cannon, assailed their ears. They hastened to the laboratory ; two of the greatest stills had burst, and one part of the laboratory and the house were in flames. We are told that, after an- other adventure of this kind, this victim to alchymy, after ruining another patron, in despair swallowed poison.
Even more recently we have a history of an alchymist in the life of Romney, the painter. This alchymist, after be- stowing much time and money on preparations for the grand projection, and being near the decisive hour, was induced, by the too earnest request of his wife, to quit his furnace one evening, to attend some of her company at the tea-table. While the projector was attending the ladies, his furnace blew up ! In consequence of this event, he conceived such an antipathy against his wife, that he could not endure the idea of living with her again.
Henry VI., Evelyn observes in his Numismata, endeav- oured to recruit his empty coffers by alchymy. The record of this singular proposition contains "the most solemn and serious account of the feasibility and virtues of the philos- opher's stone, encouraging the search after it, and dispensing with all statutes and prohibitions to the contrary." This record was probably communicated by Mr. Selden to his beloved friend Ben Jonson, when the poet was writing his comedy of the Alchymist.
After this patent was published, many promised to answer the king's expectations so effectually, that the next year he published another patent ; wherein he tells his subjects, that the happy hour was drawing nigh, and by means of THE STONE, which he should soon be master of, he would pay all
376 ALCHYMY.
the debts of the nation hi real gold and silver. The persona picked out for his new operators were as remarkable as the patent itself, being a most " miscellaneous rabble " of friars, grocers, mercers, and fishmongers !
This patent was likewise granted authoritate Parliamenti ; and is given by Prynne in his Aurum Regince, p. 135.
Alchymists were formerly called multipliers, although they never could multiply ; as appears from a statute of Henry IV. repealed in the preceding record.
11 None from henceforth shall use to multiply gold or silver, or use the craft of multiplication ; and if any the same do, he shall incur the pain of felony." Among the articles charged on the Protector Somerset is this extraordinary one : — " You commanded multiplication and alcumestry to be practised, thereby to abate the king's coin" Stowe, p. 601. What are we to understand ? Did they believe that alchymy would be so productive of the precious metals as to abate the value of the coin ; or does multiplication refer to an arbitrary rise in the currency by order of the government ?
Every philosophical mind must be convinced that alchymy is not an art, which some have fancifully traced to the re- motest times ; it may be rather regarded, when opposed to such a distance of time, as a modern imposture. Caesar commanded the treatises of alchymy to- be burnt throughout the Roman dominions : Caesar, who is riot less to be admired as a philosopher than as a monarch.
Mr. Gibbon has this succinct passage relative to alchymy • " The ancient books of alchymy, so liberally ascribed to Pythagoras, to Solomon, or to Hermes, were the pious frauds of more recent adepts. The Greeks were inattentive either to the use or the abuse of chemistry. In that immense regis- ter where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the arts, and the errors of mankind, there is not the least mention of the transmutations of metals ; and the persecution of Diocletian is the first authentic event in the history of alchymy. The conquest of Egypt by the Arabs diffused that vain science
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the globe. Congenial to the avarice of the human heart, it was studied in China, as in Europe, with equal eagerness and equal success. The darkness of the middla ages ensured a favourable reception to every tale of Wonder ; and the revival of learning gave new vigour to hope, and suggested more specious arts to deception. Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy ; and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry."
Elias Ashmole writes in his diary—" May 13, 1G53. My father Backhouse (an astrologer who had adopted him for his son, a common practice with these men) lying sick in Fleet- street, over against St. Dunstan's church, and not knowing whether he should live or die, about eleven of the clock, told me in syllables the true matter of the philosopher's stone, which he bequeathed to me as a legacy" By this we learn that a miserable wretch knew the art of making gold, yet always li ved a beggar ; and that Ashmole really imagined he was in possession of the syllables of a secret I He has, how- ever, built a curious monument of the learned follies of the last age, in his " Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum." Though Ashmole is rather the historian of this vain science than an adept, it may amuse literary leisure to turn over this quarto volume, in which he has collected the works of several Eng lish alchymists, subjoining his commentary. It affords a curious specimen of Rosicrucian mysteries; and Ashrnole relates several miraculous stories. Of the philosopher's stone, he says he knows enough to hold his tongue, but not enough to speak. This stone has not only the power of trans- muting any imperfect earthy matter into its utmost degree of perfection, and can convert the basest metals into gold, flints into stone, &c. ; but it has still more occult virtues, when the arcana have been entered into by the choice fathers of hermetic mysteries. The vegetable stone has power over the natures of man, beast, fowls, fishes, and all kinds of trees
378 ALCIIYMY.
and plants, to make them flourish and bear fruit at any tima The magical stone discovers any person wherever he is con- cealed; while the angelical stone gives the apparitions of angels," and a power of conversing with them. These great mysteries are supported by occasional facts, and illustrated by prints of the most divine and incomprehensible designs, which we would hope were intelligible to the initiated. It may be worth showing, however, how liable even the latter were to blunder on these mysterious hieroglyphics. Ashmole, in one of his chemical works, prefixed a frontispiece, which, in several compartments, exhibited Phoebus on a lion, and opposite to him a lady, who represented Diana, with the moon in one hand and an arrow in the other, sitting on a crab ; Mercury on a tripod, with the scheme of the heavens in one hand, and his caduceus in the other. These were intended to express the materials of the stone, and the season for the process. Upon the altar is the bust of a man, his head covered by an astrological scheme dropped from the clouds ; and on the altar are these words, " Mercuriophilus Anglicus," i. e. the English lover of hermetic philosophy. There is a tree, and a little creature gnawing the root, a pillar adorned with musical and mathematical instruments, and another with military ensigns. This strange composition created great in- quiry among the chemical sages. Deep mysteries were conjectured to be veiled by it. Verses were written in the highest strain of the Rosicrucian language. Ashmole confessed he meant nothing more than a kind of pun on his own name, for the tree was the ash, and the creature was a mole. One pillar tells his love of music and freemasonary, and the other his military preferment and astrological studies ! He after- wards regretted that no one added a second volume to his work, from which he himself had been hindered, for the honour of the family of Hermes, and " to show the world what excellent men we had once of our nation, famous for this kind of philosophy, and masters of so transcendent a secret."
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Modern chemistry is not without a hope, not to say a cer- tainty, of verifying the golden visions of the alchymists. Dr. Girtanner, of Gottingen, not long ago adventured the follow- ing prophecy : " In the nineteenth century the transmutation of metals will be generally known and practised. Every chemist and every artist will make gold; kitchen utensils will be of silver, and even gold, which will contribute more than any thing else to prolong life, poisoned at present by the oxides of copper, lead, and iron, which we daily swallow with our food." Phil. Mag. vol. vi. p. 383. This sublime chemist, though he does not venture to predict that universal elixir, which is to prolong life at pleasure, yet approximates to it. A chemical friend writes to me, that " The metals seem to be composite bodies, which nature is perpetually preparing ; and it may be reserved for the future researches of science to trace, and perhaps to imitate, some of these curious opera- tions." Sir Humphry Davy told me that he did not consider this undiscovered art an impossible thing, but which, should it ever be discovered, would certainly be useless.
TITLES OF BOOKS.
WERE it inquired of an ingenious writer what page of his work had occasioned him most perplexity, he would often point to the title-page. The curiosity which we there would excite, is, however, most fastidious to gratify.
Among those who appear to have felt this irksome situa tion, are most of our periodical writers. The " Tatler " and the " Spectator," enjoying priority of conception, have adopted titles with characteristic felicity ; but perhaps the invention of the authors begins to fail in the " Reader," the " Lover," and the " Theatre ! " Succeeding writers were as unfortu- nate in their titles, as their works ; such are the " Universal Spectator," and the " Lay Monastery." The copious mind
380 TITLES OF BOOKS.
of Johnsor could not discover an appropriate title, and indeed in the first ' Idler," acknowledged his despair. The " Ram- bler " was so little understood, at the time of its appearance, that a French journalist has translated it as "Le Chevalier Errant ; " and when it was corrected to 11 Errant, a foreigner drank Johnson's health one day, by innocently addressing him by the appellation of Mr. " Vagabond ! " The "Adven- turer " cannot be considered as a fortunate title ; it is not appropriate to those pleasing miscellanies, for any writer is an adventurer. The " Lounger," the " Mirror," and even the " Connoisseur," if examined accurately, present nothing in the titles descriptive of the works. As for the " "World," it could only have been given by the fashionable egotism of its authors, who considered the world as merely a circuit round St. James's Street. When the celebrated father of all re- views, Le Journal des Sqavans, was first published, the very title repulsed the public. The author was obliged in his suc- ceeding volumes to soften it down, by explaining its general tendency. He there assures the curious, that not only men of learning and taste, but the humblest mechanic, may find a profitable amusement. An English novel, published with the title of " The Champion of Virtue," could find no readers ; but afterwards passed through several editions under the happier invitation of "The Old English Baron." "The Concubine," a poem by Mickle, could never find purchasers, till it assumed the more delicate title of " Sir Martyn."
As a subject of literary curiosity, some amusement may be gathered from a glance at what has been doing in the world, concerning this important portion of every book.
The Jewish and many oriental authors were fond of alle- gorical titles, which always indicate the most puerile age of taste. The titles were usually adapted to their obscure works. It might exercise an able enigmatist to explain their allusions ; for we must understand by " The Heart of Aaron," that it is a commentary on several of the prophets. " The Bones of Joseph " is an introduction to the Talmud. " The
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Garden of Nuts," and " The Golden Apples," are theological questions ; and " The Pomegranate with its Flower," is a treatise of ceremonies, not any more practised. Jortin gives a title, whichkhe says of all the fantastical titles he can recol- lect is one of the prettiest. A rabbin published a catalogue of rabbinical writers, and called it Labia Dormientium, from Can tic. vii. 9. " Like the best wine of my beloved that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak" It hath a double meaning, of which he was not aware, for most of his rabbinical brethren talk very much like men in their sleep.
Almost all their works bear such titles as bread — gold — silver — roses — eyes, &c. ; in a word, any thing that signifies nothing.
Affected title-pages were not peculiar to the orientals : the Greeks and the Romans have shown a finer taste. They had their Cornucopias, or horns of abundance — Limones, or meadows — Pinakidions, or tablets— Pancarpes, or all sorts of fruits ; titles not unhappily adapted for the miscellanists. The nine books of Herodotus, and the nine epistles of JEschines, were respectively honoured by the name of a Muse; and three orations of the latter, by those of the Graces.
The modern fanatics have had a most barbarous taste for titles. We could produce numbers from abroad, and at home. Some works have been called, " Matches lighted at the Divine Fire," — and one " The Gun of Penitence : " a collection of passages from the fathers is called " The Shop of the Spiritual Apothecary : " we have " The Bank of Faith," and " The Sixpennyworth of Divine Spirit : " one of these works bears the following elaborate title ; " Some fine Biscuits baked in the Oven of Charity, carefully conserved for the Chickens of the Church, the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet Swallows of Salvation." Sometimes their quaintness has some humour. Sir Humphrey Lind, a zeal- ous puritan, published a work which a Jesuit answered by
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another, entitled "A pair of spectacles for Sir Humphrey Lind." The doughty knight retorted, by "A Case for Sir Humphrey Lind's Spectacles."
Some of these obscure titles have an enfertaining ab- surdity ; as " The Three Daughters of Job," which is a trea- tise on the three virtues of patience, fortitude, and pain. " The Innocent Love, or the Holy Knight," is a description of the ardours of a saint for the Virgin. " The Sound of the Trumpet," is a work on the day of judgment ; and "A Fan to drive away Flies," is a theological treatise on purgatory.
We must not write to the utter neglect of our title ; and a fair author should have the literary piety of ever having " the fear of his title-page before his eyes." The following are improper titles. Don Matthews, chief huntsman to Philip IV. of Spain, entitled his book " The Origin and Dignity of the Royal House," but the entire work relates only to hunting. De Chantereine composed several moral essays, which being at a loss how to entitle, he called " The Education of a Prince." He would persuade the reader in his preface, that though they were not composed with a view to this subject, they should not, however, be censured for the title, as they partly related to the education of a prince. The world was too sagacious to be duped ; and the author in his second edition acknowledges the absurdity, drops " the magnificent title," and calls his work " Moral Essays." Montaigne's im- mortal history of his own mind, for such are his " Essays," has assumed perhaps too modest a title, and not sufficiently discriminative. Sorlin equivocally entitled a collection of essays, " The Walks of Richelieu," because they were com- posed at that place ; " The Attic Nights " of Aulus Gellius were so called, because they were written ii> Attica. Mr. Tooke, in his grammatical " Diversions of Purley," must have deceived many.
A rhodomontade title-page was once a great favourite. There was a time when the republic of letters was over-built with " Palaces of Pleasure," " Palaces of Honour," and " Pal-
TITLES OF BOOKS. 383
aces of Eloquence;" with "Temples of Memory,5* and " Theatres of Human Life," and "Amphitheatres of Provi- dence ; " " Pharoses, Gardens, Pictures, Treasures." The epistles of Guevara dazzled the public eye with their splen- did title, for they were called " Golden Epistles ; " and the " Golden Legend " of Voragine had been more appropriately entitled leaden.
They were once so fond of novelty, that every book recom- mended itself by such titles as "A new Method ; new Ele- ments of Geometry ; the new Letter Writer, and the new Art of Cookery."
To excite the curiosity of the pK>us, some writers employed artifices of a very ludicrous nature. Some made their titles rhyming echoes ; as this one of a father, who has given his works under the title of Scalce Alee animi ; and Jesus esus novus Orbis. Some have distributed them according to the measure of time, as one Father Nadasi, the greater part of whose works are years, months, weeks, days, and hours. Some have borrowed their titles from the parts of the body ; and others have used quaint expressions, such as — Think before you leap — We must all die — Compel them to enter. Some of our pious authors appear not to have been aware that they were burlesquing religion. One Massieu having written a moral explanation of the solemn anthems sung in Advent, which begin with the letter o, published this work under the punning title of La douce Moelle, et la Sauce friande des os Savour eux de lAvent.
The Marquis of Carraccioli assumed the ambiguous title of La Jouissance de soi-meme. Seduced by the epicurean title of self-enjoyment, the sale of the work was continual with the libertines, who, however, found nothing but very tedious essays' on religion and morality. In the sixth edition the marquis greatly exults in his successful contrivance ; by which means he had punished the vicious curiosity of certain persons, and perhaps had persuaded some, whom otherwise his book might never have reached.
384 TITLES OF BOOKS.
If a title be obscure, it raises a prejudice against the author ; we are apt to suppose that an ambiguous title is the effect of an intricate or confused mind. Baillet censures the Ocean Macromicrocosmic of one Sachs. To understand this title, a grammarian would send an inquirer to a geographer, and he to a natural philosopher ; neither would probably think of recurring to a physician, to inform one that this am- biguous title signifies the connection which exists between the motion of the waters with that of the blood. He censures Leo Allatius for a title which appears to me not inelegantly conceived. This writer has entitled one of his books the Urban Bees ;. it is an account of those illustrious writers who flourished during the pontificate of one of the Barberinis. The allusion refers to the bees which were the arms of this family, and Urban VIII. is the Pope designed.
The false idea which a title conveys is alike prejudicial to the author and the reader. Titles are generally too prodigal of their promises, and their authors are contemned ; but the works of modest authors, though they present more than they promise, may fail of attracting notice by their extreme sim- plicity. In either case, a collector of books is prejudiced ; he is induced to collect what merits no attention, or he passes over those valuable works whose titles may not happen to be interesting. It is related of Pinelli, the celebrated collector of books, that the booksellers permitted him to remain hours, and sometimes days, in their shops to examine books before he purchased. He was desirous of not injuring his precious collection by useless acquisitions ; btft he confessed that he sometimes could not help being dazzled by magnificent titles, nor being mistaken by the simplicity of others, which had been chosen by the modesty of their authors. After all, many authors are really neither so vain, nor *so honest, as they appear ; for magnificent, or simple titles, have often been given from the difficulty of forming any others.
It is too often with the Titles of Books, as with those painted representations exhibited by the keepers of wild
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beasts; where, in general, the picture itself is made more striking and inviting to the eye, than the inclosed animal is always found to be.
LITERARY FOLLIES.
THE Greeks composed lipogrammatic works ; works in which one letter of the alphabet is omitted. A lipogramma- tist is a letter-dropper. In this manner Tryphiodorus wrote his Odyssey ; he had not a in his first book, nor ft in his second ; and so on with the subsequent letters one after another. This Odyssey was an imitation of the lipogrammatic Iliad of Nestor. Among other works of this kind, Athenseus men- tions an ode by Pindar, in which he had purposely omitted the letter S ; so that this inept ingenuity appears to have been one of those literary fashions which are sometimes en- couraged even by those who should first oppose such pro- gresses into the realms of nonsense.
There is in Latin a little prose work of Fulgentius, which the author divides into twenty-three chapters, according to the order of the twenty-three letters of the Latin alphabet. From A to O are still remaining. The first chapter is without A ; the second without B ; the third without C ; and so with the rest. There are five novels in prose of Lopes de Vega; the first without A, the second without E, the third without I, &c. Who will attempt to verify them ?
The Orientalists are not without this literary folly. A Persian poet read to the celebrated Jami a gazel of his own composition, which Jami did not like : but the writer replied, it was notwithstanding a very curious sonnet, for the letter Aliff was not to be found in any one of the words ! Jami sarcastically replied, " You can do a better thing yet ; take away all the letters from every word you have written."
To these works may be added the Ecloga de Calvis, by Hugbald the monk. All the words of this silly work begin
VOL. T. 25
386 LITERARY FOLLIES.
with a C. It is printed in Dornavius. Pugna Porcorum , all the words beginning with a P, in the Nugae Venales. Canum cum cattis certamen ; the words beginning with a C : a performance of the same kind in the same work. Gregorio Led presented a discourse to the Academy of the Humorists at Rome, throughout which he had purposely omitted the letter R, and he entitled it the exiled R. A friend having requested a copy, as a literary curiosity, for so he considered this idle performance, Leti, to show that this affair was not so difficult, replied by a copious answer of seven pages, in which he had observed the same severe ostracism against the letter R! Lord North, in the court of James L, has written a set of Sonnets, each of which begins with a successive letter of the alphabet The Earl of Rivers, in the reign of Edward IV., translated the Moral Proverbs of Christiana of Pisa, a poem of about two hundred lines, the greatest part of which he contrived to conclude with the letter E ; an instance of his lordship's hard appli- cation, and the bad taste of an age which, Lord Orford observes, had witticisms and whims to struggle with, as well as ignorance.
It has been well observed of these minute triflers, that extreme exactness is the sublime of fools, whose labours may be well called, in the language of Dryden,
" Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry." And Martial says,
Turpe est difficiles habere nugas, Et stultus labor est ineptiarum.
Which we may translate,
'Tis a folly to sweat o'er a difficult trifle, And for silly devices invention to rifle.
I shall not dwell on the wits who composed verses in the forms of hearts,*wings, altars, and true-love knots ; or as Ben Jonson describes their grotesque shapes,
" A pair of scissors and a comb in verse."
LITERARY FOLLIES. 387
Tom Nash, who loved to push the ludicrous to its extreme, in his amusing invective against the classical Gabriel Harvey, tells us that " he had writ verses in all kinds ; in form of a pair of gloves, a pair of spectacles, and a pair of pot-hooks/* &c. They are not less absurd, who expose to public ridicule the name of their mistress by employing it to form their acrostics. I have seen some of the latter where, both sides and crossways, the name of the mistress or the patron has been sent down to posterity with eternal torture. When one name is made out four times in the same acrostic, the great difficulty must have been to have found words by which the letters forming the name should be forced to stand in their particular places. It might be incredible that so great a genius as Boccaccio could have lent himself to these literary fashions ; yet one of the most gigantic of acrostics may be seen hi his works ; it is a poem of fifty cantos ! Guinguene* has preserved a specimen in his Literary History of Italy, vol. iii. p. 54. Puttenham, in " The Art of Poesie," p. 75, gives several odd specimens of poems in the forms of loz- enges, rhomboids, pillars, &c. Puttenham has contrived to form a defence for describing and making such trifling de- vices. He has done more : he has erected two pillars himself to the honour of Queen Elizabeth ; every pillar consists of a base of eight syllables, the shaft or middle of four, and the capital is equal with the base. The only difference between the two pillars consists in this ; in the one " ye must read upwards," and in the other the reverse. These pillars, notwithstanding this fortunate device and variation, may be fixed as two columns in the porch of the vast temple of literary folly.
It was at this period, when words or verse were tortured into such fantastic forms, that the trees in gardens were twisted and sheared into obelisks and giants, peacocks, or flower-pots. In a copy of verses, " To a hair of my mis- tress's eye-lash," the merit, next to the choice of the subject, must have been the arrangement, or the disarrangement, of
388 LITERARY FOLLIES.
the whole poem into the form of a heart. With a pair of wings many a sonnet fluttered, and a sacred hymn was ex- pressed by the mystical triangle. Acrostics are formed from the initial letters of every verse; but a different conceit regulated chronograms, which were used to describe dates—' the numeral letters, in whatever part of the word they stood, were distinguished from other letters by being written iu capitals. In the following chronogram from Horace,
—feriam sidera vertice,
by a strange elevation of CAPITALS the chronogrammatist compels even Horace to give the year of our Lord thus, — feriaM siDera Vertlce. MD VL
The Acrostic and the Chronogram are both ingeniously described in the mock epic of the Scribleriad. The initial letters of the acrostics are thus alluded to in the literary wars : —
Firm and compact, in three fair columns wove, O'er the smooth plain, the bold acrostics move ; High o'er the rest, the TOWERING LEADEKS rise With limbs gigantic, and superior size.
But the looser character of the chronograms, and the dis- order in which they are found, are ingeniously sung thus :—
Not thus the looser chronograms prepare Careless their troops, undisciplined to war; With rank irregular, confused they stand, The CHIEFTAINS MINGLING with the vulgar band.
He afterwards adds others of the illegitimate race of wit :—
To join these squadrons, o'er the champaign came A numerous race of no ignoble name ; Riddle and Rebus, Riddle's dearest son, And false Conundrum and insidious Pun. Fustian, who scarcely deigns to tread the ground, And Rondeau, wheeling in repeated round. On their fair standards, by the wind display' d, Eggs, altars, wings, pipes, axes, were pourtray'd.
I find the origin of Bouts-rimes, or " RhymiSg Ends," in Goujet's Bib. Fr. xvi. p. 181. One Dulot, a foolish poet,
LITERARY FOLLIES. 389
when sonnets were in demand, had a singular custom of pre- paring the rhymes of these poems to be filled up at his leisure. Having been robbed of his papers, he was regret- ting most the loss of three hundred sonnets : his friends were tistonished that he had written so many which they had never heard. " They were blank sonnets" he replied ; and ex- plained the mystery by describing his Bouts-rimes. The idea appeared ridiculously amusing ; and it soon became fashionable to collect the most difficult rhymes, and fill up the lines.
The Charade is of recent birth, and I cannot discover the origin of this species of logogriphes. It was not known in France so late as in 1771 ; in the great Dictionnaire de Trevoux, the term appears only as the name of an Indian sect of a military character. Its mystical conceits have occa- sionally displayed singular felicity.
Anagrams were another whimsical invention ; with the letters of any name they contrived to make out some entire word descriptive of the character of the person who bore the name. These anagrams, therefore, were either satirical or complimentary. When in fashion, lovers made use of them continually : I have read of one, whose mistress's name was Magdalen, for whom he composed, not only an epic under that name, but as a proof of his passion/one day he sent her three dozen of anagrams all on her lovely name. Scioppius imagined himself fortunate that his adversary Scaliger was perfectly Sacrilege in all the oblique cases of the Latin lan- guage ; on this principle Sir John Wiat was made out, to his own satisfaction — a wit. They were not always correct when a great compliment was required ; the poet John Cleve- land was strained hard to make Heliconian dew. This lite- rary trifle has, however, in our own times, produced several,, equally ingenious and caustic.
Verses of grotesque shapes have sometimes been contrived to convey ingenious thoughts. Pannard, a modern French poet, has tortured his agreeable vein of poetry into such forms.
390 LITERARY FOLLIES.
He has made some of his Bacchanalian songs to take the figures of bottles and others of glasses. These objects are perfectly drawn by the various measures of the verses which form the songs. He has also introduced an echo in his verses which he contrives so as not to injure their sense. This was practised by the old French bards in the age of Marot, and this poetical whim is ridiculed by Butler in his Hudibras, Part I. Canto 3, Verse 190. I give an example of these poetical echoes. The following ones are ingenious, lively, and satirical : —
Pour nous plaire, un iplumet
Met Tout en usage :
Mais on trouve souvent
Vent Dans son langage.
On y voit des Commw
Mis
Comme des Princes,
Apres e'tre venus
Nuds De leurs Provinces.
The poetical whim of Cretin, a French poet, brought into fashion punning or equivocal rhymes. Maret thus addressed him in his own way : —
L'homme, sotart, et rum sqavant Comme un rotisseur, qui lave oye, La faute d'autrui, nonce avant, Qu'il la cognoisse, ou qu'il la voye, &o.
In these lines of Du Bartas, this poet imagined that he imitated the harmonious notes of the lark : " the sound " is here, however, not "an echo to the sense."
La gentille aloiiette, avec son tirelire, Tirelire, a lire, et tireliran, tire Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu, Vire et desire dire adieu Dieu. adieu Dieu.
LITERARY FOLLIES. 391
The French have an ingenious kind of Nonsense Verses called Amphigouries. This word is composed of a Greek adverb signifying about, and of a substantive signifying a circle. The following is a specimen, elegant in the selec- tion of words, and what the French called richly rhymed, but in fact they are fine verses without any meaning what- ever. Pope's Stanzas, said to be written by a person of quality, to ridicule the tuneful nonsense of certain bards, and which Gilbert Wakefield mistook for a serious composition, and wrote two pages of Commentary to prove this song was disjointed, obscure, and absurd, is an excellent specimen of these Amphiyouries.
AMPHIGOURIE.
Qu'il est heureux de se defendre Quand le cocur ne s'est pas rendu ! Mais qu'il est fitcheux de se rendre Quand le bonheur est suspendu ! Par un di scours sans suite et tendre, Egarez un coeur e"perdu ; Souveflt par un mal-entendu L'amant adroit se fait entendre.
IMITATED.
How happy to defend our heart, When Love has never thrown a dart! But ah ! unhappy when it bends, If pleasure her soft bliss suspends ! Sweet in a wild disordered strain, A lost and wandering heart to gain! Oft in mistaken language wooed, The skilful lover's understood.
These verses have such a resemblance to meaning, that Fonte- nelle having listened to the song imagined that he had a glimpse of sense, and requested to have it repeated. " Don't you perceive," said Madame Tencin, " that they are nonsense verses ? " The malicious wit retorted, " They are so much like the fine verses I have heard here, that it is not surprising I should be for once mistaken."
392 LITERARY FOLLIES.
In the " Scribleriad " we find a good account of the Cento* A Cento primarily signifies a cloak made of patches. In poetry it denotes a work wholly composed of verses, or pas- sages promiscuously taken from other authors, only disposed in a new form or order, so as to compose a new work, and a new meaning. Ausonius has laid down the rules to be ob- served in composing Centos. The pieces may be taken either from the same poet, or from several ; and the verses may be either taken entire, or divided into two ; one hah'' to be connected with another half taken elsewhere ; but two verses are never to be taken together. Agreeable to these rules he has made a pleasant nuptial Cento from Virgil.
The Empress Eudoxia wrote the life of Jesus Christ, in centos taken from Homer; Proba Falconia from Virgil. Among these grave triflers may be mentioned Alexander Ross, who published " Virgilius Evangelizans, sive Historia Domini et Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi Virgilianis verbis et versibus descripta." It was republished in 1769.
A more difficult whim is that of "Reciprocal Verses" which give the same words whether read backwards or for- wards. The following lines by Sidonius Apollinaris were once infinitely admired : —
"Signa te signa temere me tangia et angis." "JRoma tibi subito motibu$ ibit amor"
The reader has only to take the pains of reading the lines backwards, and he will find himself just where he was after all his fatigue.
Capitaine Lasphrise, a French self-taught poet, boasts of his inventions ; among other singularities, one has at least the merit of la difficulte vaincue. He asserts this novelty to be entirely his own ; the last word of every verse forms the first word of the following verse : • .... -^
Falloit-il qtie le ciel me rendit amoureux Amourettx, jouissant d'une beaute* craintive, Craintive a recevoir la douceur excessive, Excessive au plaisir qui rend 1'amant keureux;
LITERARY FOLLIES. 393
Heureux si nous avions quelques paisibles lieux, Lieux ou plus surement 1'ami fiddle arrive, Arrive sans soup<?on de quelque ami attentive, Attentive a vouloir nous surprendre tous deux.
Francis Colonna, an Italian Monk, is the author of a sin- gular book entitled " The Dream of Poliphilus," in which he relates his amours with a lady of the name of Polia. It was considered improper to prefix his name to the work ; but being desirous of marking it by some peculiarity, that he might claim it at any distant day, he contrived that the initial let- ters of every chapter should be formed of those of his name, and of the subject he treats. This strange invention was not discovered till many years afterwards : when the wits employed themselves in deciphering it, unfortunately it be- came a source of literary altercation, being susceptible of various readings. The correct appears thus : — POLIAM FRA- TER FRANCISCUS COLUMNA PERAMAVIT. " Brother Fran- cis Colonna passionately loved Polia." This gallant monk, like another Petrarch, made the name of his mistress the subject of his amatorial meditations ; and as the first called his Laura, his Laurel, this called his Polia, his Polita.
A few years afterwards, Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus employed a similar artifice in his ZODIACUS VIT^E, " The Zodiac of Life :" the initial letters of the first twenty-nine verses of the first book of this poem forming his name, which curious particular was probably unknown to Warton in his account of this work. — The performance is divided into twelve books, but has no reference to astronomy, which we might naturally expect. He distinguished his twelve books by the twelve names of the celestial signs, and probably ex- tended or confined them purposely to that number, to humour his fancy. Warton however observes, " this strange pedantic title is not totally without a conceit, as the author was born at Stettada or Stettata, a province of Ferrara, and from whence he called himself Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus." The work itself is a curious satire on the Pope and the
394 LITERARY FOLLIES.
Church of Rome. It occasioned Bayle to commit a remark- able literary blunder, which I shall record in its place. Of Italian conceit in those times, of which Petrarch was the father, with his perpetual play on words and on his Laurel, or his mistress Laura, he has himself afforded a remarkable example. Our poet lost his mother, who died in her thirty- eighth year : he has commemorated her death by a sonnet com posed of thirty-eight lines. He seems to have conceived that the exactness of the number was equally natural and tender.
Are we not to class among literary follies the strange re- searches which writers, even of the present day, have made in Antediluvian times? Forgeries of the grossest nature have been alluded to, or quoted as authorities. A Book of Enoch once attracted considerable attention ; this curious forgery has been recently translated : the Sabeans pretend they possess a work wrritten by Adam ! and this work has been recently appealed to in favour of a visionary theory 1 Astle gravely observes, that "with respect to Writings at- tributed to the Antediluvians, it seems not only decent but rational to say that we know nothing concerning them." Without alluding to living writers, Dr. Parsons, in his erudite " Remains of Japhet," tracing the origin of the alphabetical character, supposes tha^ letters were known to Adam ! Some too have noticed astronomical libraries in the Ark of Noah ! Such historical memorials are the deliriums of learning, or are founded on forgeries.
Hugh Broughton, a writer of controversy in the reign of James the First, shows us, in a tedious discussion on Scrip- ture chronology, that Rahab was a harlot at ten years of age ; and enters into many grave discussions concerning the colour of Aaron's ephod, and the language which Eve first - spoke. This writer is ridiculed in Ben Jonson's Comedies : — he is not without rivals even in the present day ! Covarruvias; after others of his school, discovers that when male children are born they cry out with an A, being the first vowel of the word Adam, while the female infants prefer the letter E, in
LITERARY FOLLIES. 395
allusion to Eve ; and we may add that, by the pinch of a negligent nurse, they may probably learn all their vowels. Of the pedantic triflings of commentators, a controversy among the Portuguese on the works of Camoens is not the least. Some of these profound critics, w"ho affected great delicacy in the laws of epic poetry, pretended to be doubtful whether the poet had fixed on the right time for a king's dream ; whether, said they, a king should have a propitious dream on his first going to bed or at the dawn of the following morning ? No one seemed to be quite certain ; they puzzled each other till the controversy closed in tin's felicitous manner, and satisfied both the night and the dawn critics. Barreto discovered that an accent on one of the words alluded to in the controversy would answer the pur- pose, and by making king Manuel's dream to take place at the dawn would restore Camoens to their good opinion, and preserve the dignity of the poet.
Chevreau begins his History of the World in these words . — " Several learned men have examined in what season God created the world, though there could hardly be any season then, since there was no sun, no moon, nor stars. But as the world must have been created in one of the four seasons, this question has exercised the talents of the most curious, and opinions are various. Some say it was in the month of Nisan, that is, in the spring : others maintain that it was in the month of Tisri, which begins the civil year of the Jews, and that it was on the sixth day of this month, which answers to our September, that Adam and Eve were created, and that it was on a Friday, a little after four o'clock in the after- noon ! " This is according to the Rabbinical notion of the eve of the sabbath.
The Irish antiquaries mention public libraries that were before the flood ; and Paul Christian Ilsker, with profounder erudition, has given an exact catalogue of Adam's. Mes- sieurs O'Flaherty, O'Connor, and O'Halloran, have most gravely recorded as authentic narrations the wildest legen-
396 LITERARY FOLLIES.
dary traditions ; and more recently, to make confusion doubly confounded, others have built up what they call theoretical histories on these nursery tales. By which species of black art they contrive to prove that an Irishman is an Indian, and a Peruvian -may be a Welshman, from certain emigrations which took place many centuries before Christ, and some about two centuries after the flood ! Keating, in his " His- tory of Ireland," starts a favourite hero in the giant Partho- lanus, who was descended from Japhet, and landed on the coast of Munster 14th May, in the year of the world 1987. This giant succeeded in his enterprise, but a domestic mis- fortune attended him among his Irish friends: — his wife exposed him to their laughter by her loose behaviour, and provoked him to such a degree that he killed two favourite greyhounds ; and this the learned historian assures us was the first instance of female infidelity ever known in Ireland I
The learned, not contented with Homer's poetical pre-- eminence, make him the most authentic historian and most accurate geographer of antiquity, besides endowing him with all the arts and sciences to be found in our Encyclopaedia. Even in surgery, a treatise has been written to show, by the variety of the wounds of his heroes, that he was a most sci- entific anatomist ; and a military scholar has lately told us, that from him is derived all the science of the modern adju- tant and quarter master-general ; all the knowledge of tactics which we now possess ; and that Xenophon, Epaminondas, Philip, and Alexander, owed all their warlike reputation to Homer !
To return to pleasanter follies. Des Fontaines, the jour- nalist, who had wit and malice, inserted the fragment of a letter which the poet Rousseau wrote to the younger Racine whilst he was at the Hague. These were the words: "I enjoy the conversation within these few days of my associates in Parnassus. Mr. Piron is an excellent antidote against melancholy ; hit " — &c. Des Fontaines maliciously stopped at this but. In the letter of Rousseau it was, " but unfortu-
LITERAEY FOLLIES. 397
nately he departs soon." Piron was very sensibly aftected at this equivocal but, and resolved to revenge himself by composing one hundred epigrams against the malignant critic. He had written sixty before Des Fontaines died: but of these only two attracted any notice.
Towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, Antonio Cornezano wrote a hundred different sonnets on one subject, * the eyes of his mistress ! " to which possibly Shakspeare may allude, when Jaques describes a lover, with his
" Woeful ballad, Made to his mistress' eyebrow."
Not inferior to this ingenious trifler is Nicholas Franco, well known in Italian literature, who employed himself in writing two hundred and eighteen satiric sonnets, chiefly on the fam- ous Peter Aretin. This lampooner had the honour of being hanged at Rome for his defamatory publications. In the same class are to be placed two other writers. Brebeuf, who wrote one hundred and fifty epigrams against a painted lady. Another wit, desirous of emulating him, and for a literary bravado, continued the same subject, and pointed at this un- fortunate fair three hundred more, without once repeating the thoughts of Brebeuf! There is a collection of poems called " La PUCE des grands jours de Poitiers" " The FLEA of the carnival of Poictiers." These poems were begun by the learned Pasquier, who edited the collection, upon a FLEA which was found one morning hi the bosom of the famous Catherine des Roches !
Not long ago, a Mr. and Mrs. Bilderdyk, in Flanders, published poems under the whimsical title of " White and Red." — His own poems were called white, from the colour ol his hair ; and those of his lady red, in allusion to the colour of the rose. The idea must be Flemish !
Gildon, in his " Laws of Poetry," commenting on this line of the Duke of Buckingham's " Essay on Poetry," " Nature's chief master-piece is writing well: " very profoundly informs his readers " That what is here
398 LITERARY FOLLIES.
said has not the least regard to the penmanship, that is, to the fairness or badness of the handwriting," and proceeds throughout a whole page, with a panegyric on a fine hand- writing ! The stupidity of dulness seems to have at times great claims to originality !,
Littleton, the author of the Latin and English Dictionary, seems to have indulged his favourite propensity to punning so far as even to introduce a pun in the grave and elaborate work of a Lexicon. A story has been raised to account for it, and it has been ascribed to the impatient interjection of the lexicographer to his scribe, who, taking no offence at the peevishness of his master, put it down in the Dictionary. The article alluded to is, " CONCURRO, to run with others ; to run together ; to come together ; to fall foul of one an- other ; to CON-CM/-, to Cox-dog"
Mr. Todd, in his Dictionary, has laboured to show the "inaccuracy of this pretended narrative." Yet a similar blunder appears to have happened to Ash. Johnson, while composing his Dictionary, sent a note to the Gentleman's Magazine to inquire the etymology of the word curmudgeon. Having obtained the information, he records in his work the obligation to an anonymous letter-writer. " Curmudgeon, a vicious way of pronouncing cceur mechant. An unknown correspondent." Ash copied the word into his dictionary in this manner : " Curmudgeon : from the French cceur, un- known ; and mechant, a correspondent." This singular negli- gence ought to be placed in the class of our literary blunders : these form a pair of lexicographical anecdotes.
Two singular literary follies have been practised on Mil- ton. There is a prose version of his " Paradise Lost," which was innocently translated from the French version of his epic ! One Green published a specimen of a new version of the " Paradise Lost " into blank verse ! For this purpose he has utterly ruined the harmony of Milton's cadences, by what he conceived to be " bringing that amazing work somewhat nearer the summit of perfection"
LITERARY FOLLIES. 399
•
A French author, when his book had been received by the French Academy, had the portrait of Cardinal Richelieu engraved on his title-page, encircled by a crown of forty rayst in each of which was written the name of the celebrated forty academicians.
The self-exultations of authors, frequently employed by injudicious writers, place them in ridiculous attitudes. A writer of a bad dictionary, which he intended for a Cyclope- dia, formed such an opinion of its extensive sale, that he put on the title-page the words "first edition" a hint to the gentle reader that it would not be the last. Desmarest was so delighted with his " Clovis," an epic poem, that he solemnly concludes his preface with a thanksgiving to God, to whom he attributes all its glory ! This is like that conceited mem- ber of a French Parliament, who was overheard, after his tedious harangue, muttering most devoutly to himself, " Non nobis Domine."
Several works have been produced from some odd coinci- dence with the name of their authors. Thus, De Saussay has written a folio volume, consisting of panegyrics of persons of eminence whose Christian names were Andrew ; because Andrew was his own name. Two Jesuits made a similar collection of illustrious men whose Christian names were Theophilus and Philip, being their own. Anthony Saunderus has also composed a treatise of illustrious Anthonies ! And we have one Buchanan who has written the lives of those persons who were so fortunate as to have been his name- sakes.
Several forgotten writers have frequently been intruded on the public eye, merely through such trifling coincidences as being members of some particular society, or natives of some particular country. Cordeliers have stood forward to revive the writings of Duns Scotus, because he had been a cordelier ; and a Jesuit compiled a folio on the antiquities of a province, merely from the circumstance that the founder of his order, Ignatius Loyola, had been born there. Several
400 . LITERARY FOLLIES.
of the classics are violently extolled above others, merely from the accidental circumstance of their editors having col- lected a vast number of notes, which they resolved to dis- charge on the public. County histories have been frequently compiled, and provincial writers have received a temporary existence, from the accident of some obscure individual being an inhabitant of some obscure town.
On such literary follies Malebranche has made this refined observation. The critics, standing in some way connected with the author, their self-love inspires them, and abundantly furnishes eulogiums which the author never merited, that they may thus obliquely reflect some praise on themselves. This is made so adroitly, so delicately, and so concealed, that it is not perceived.
The following are strange inventions, originating in the wilful bad taste of the authors. OTTO VENIUS, the master of Rubens, is the designer of Le Theatre moral de la Vie humaine. In this emblematical history of human life, he has taken his subjects from Horace ; but certainly his conceptions are not Horatian. He takes every image in a literal sense. If Horace says, " Misce stultitiam CONSILIIS BREVEM," be* hold, Venius takes brevis personally, and represents Folly as a little short child ! of not above three or four years old ! In the emblem which answers Horaces's " Raro antecedentem tcelestum deseruit PEDE POENA CLAUD o," we find Punishment with a wooden leg. — And for " PULVIS ET UMBRA SUMUS," we have a dark burying vault, with dust sprinkled about the floor, and a shadow walking upright between two ranges of urns. For " Virtus est vitium fugure, et sapientia prima stul- titid caruisse" most flatly he gives seven or eight Vices pursuing Virtue, and Folly just at the heels of Wisdom. I saw in an English Bible printed in Holland an instance of the same taste : the artist, to illustrate " Thou seest the mote in thy neighbour's eye, but not the beam in thine own," has actually placed an immense beam which projects from the eye of the caviller to the ground !
LITERARY CONTROVERSY. 401
As a contrast to the too obvious taste of VENIUS, may be placed CKSARE DI RIPA, who is the author of an Italian work, translated into most European languages, the Iconologia ; the favourite book of the age, and the fertile parent of the most absurd offspring whieh Taste has known. Ripa is as darkly subtile as Venius is obvious ; and as far-fetched in his conceits as the other is literal. Ripa represents Beauty by a naked lady, with her head in a cloud ; because the true idea of beauty is hard to be conceived ! Flattery, by a lady with a flute in her hand, and a stag at her feet, because stags are said to love music so much, that they suffer themselves to be taken, if you play to them on a flute. Fraud, with two hearts in one hand, and a mask in the other ; — his collection is too numerous to point out more instances. Ripa also de- scribes how the allegorical figures are to be coloured ; Hope is to have a sky-blue robe, because she always looks towards heaven. Enough of these capriccios !
LITERARY CONTROVERSY.
IN the article MILTON, I had occasion to give some stric- tures on the asperity of literary controversy, drawn from his own and' Salmasius's writings. If to some the subject has appeared exceptionable, to me, I confess, it seems useful, and I shall therefore add some other particulars ; for this topic has many branches. Of the following specimens the gross- ness and malignity are extreme ; yet they were employed by the first scholars in Europe.
Martin Luther was not destitute of genius, of learning, or of eloquence ; but his violence disfigured his works with sin- gularities of abuse. The great reformer of superstition had himself all the vulgar ones of his day ; he believed that flies were devils ; and that he had had a buffeting with Satan, when his left ear felt the prodigious beating. Hear him ex-
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402 LITERARY CONTROVERSY.
press himself on the Catholic divines. u The Papists are all asses, and will always remain asses ; Put them in whatever sauce you choose, boiled, roasted, baked, fried, skinned, beat, hashed, they are always the same asses."
Gentle and moderate, compared with a salute to his Holi- ness : — *' The Pope was born out of the Devil's posteriors. He is full of devils, lies, blasphemies, and idolatries ; he is anti-Christ ; the robber of churches ; the ravisher of virgins ; the greatest of pimps ; the governor of Sodom, &c. If the Turks lay hold of us, then we shall be in the hands of the Devil ; but if we remain with the Pope, we shall be in hell. — What a pleasing sight would it be to see the Pope and the Cardinals hanging on one gallows in exact order, like the seals which dangle from the bulls of the Pope ! What an excellent council would they hold under the gallows ! "
Sometimes, desirous of catching the attention of the vulgar, Luther attempts to enliven his style by the grossest buffoone- ries : " Take care, my little Popa ! my little ass ! Go on slowly : the times are slippery : this year is dangerous : if thou fallest, they will exclaim, See ! how our little Pope is spoilt ! " It was fortunate for the cause of the Reformation that the violence of Luther was softened in a considerable degree by the meek Melancthon, who often poured honey on the sting inflicted by the angry wasp. Luther was no re- specter of kings ; he was so fortunate, indeed, as to find among his antagonists a crowned head ; a great good fortune for an obscure controversialist, and the very punctum saliens of controversy. Our Henry VIII. wrote his book against the new doctrine : then warm from scholastic studies, Henry presented Leo X. with a work highly creditable to his abili- ties, according to the genius of the age. Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History, has analyzed the book, and does not ill describe its spirit : " Henry seems superior to his adver- sary in the vigour and propriety of his style, in the force of his reasoning, and the learning of his citations. It is true he leans too much upon his character, argues in his garter-robes,
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and writes as 'twere with his scepter." But Luther in reply abandons his pen to all kinds of railing and abuse. He ad- dresses Henry VIII. in the following style : " It is hard to say if folly can be more foolish, or stupidity more stupid, than is the head of Henry. He has not attacked me with the heart of a king, but with the impudence of a knave. This rotten worm of the earth having blasphemed the majesty of my king, I have a just right to bespatter his English maj- esty with his own dirt and 'ordure. This Henry has lied." Some of his original expressions to our Henry VIII. are these : " Stulta, ridicula, et verissime Henriciana et Thomas- tica sunt hsec — Regem Angliae Henricum istum plane mentiri, &c. — Hoc agit inquietus Satan, ut nos a Scripturis avocet per sceleratos Henricos" &c. — He was repaid with capital and interest by an anonymous reply, said to have been written by Sir Thomas More, who concludes his arguments by leaving Luther in language not necessary to translate : " cum suis furiis et furoribus, cum suis merdis et stercoribus cacantem cacatumque*." Such were the vigorous elegancies of a con- troversy on the Seven Sacraments ! Long after, the. court of Rome had not lost the taste of these " bitter herbs : " for in the bull of the canonization of Ignatius Loyola in August, 1 623, Luther is called monstrum teterrimum et detestabilis pestis.
Calvin was less tolerable, for he had no Melancthon ! His adversaries are never others than knaves, lunatics, drunkards, and assassins ! Sometimes they are characterized by the fa- miliar appellatives of bulls, asses, cats, and hogs ! By him Catholic and Lutheran are alike hated. Yet, after having given vent to this virulent humour, he frequently boasts of his mildness. When he reads over his writings he tells us, that he is astonished at his forbearance ; but this, he adds, is the duty of every Christian ! at the same time, he generally finishes a period with — " Do you hear, you dog ? " " Do you hear, madman ? "
Beza, the disciple of Calvin, sometimes imitates the luxu-
404 LITERAKY CONTROVERSY.
riant abuse of his master. When he writes against Tillemont, a Lutheran minister, he bestows on him the following titles of honour : — " Polyphemus ; an ape ; a great ass, who is dis- tinguished from other asses by wearing a hat ; an ass on two feet ; a monster composed of part of an ape and wild ass ; a villain who merits hanging on the -first tree we find." And Beza was, no doubt, desirous of the office of executioner !
The Catholic party is by no means inferior in the felicities of their style. The Jesuit Raynaud calls Erasmus the " Ba- tavian buffoon," and accuses him of nourishing the egg which Luther hatched. These men were alike supposed by their friends to be the inspired regulators of Religion ! m
Bishop Bedell, a great and good man, respected even by his adversaries, in an address to his clergy, observes, " Our calling is to deal with errors, not to disgrace the man. with scolding words. It is said of Alexander, I think, when he overheard one of his soldiers railing lustily against Darius his enemy, that he reproved him, and added, t Friend, I en- tertain thee to fight against Darius, not to revile him ; ' and my sentiments of treating the Catholics," concludes Bedell, " are not conformable to the practice of Luther and Calvin ; but they were but men, and perhaps we must confess they suffered themselves to yield to the violence of passion."
The Fathers of the Church were proficients in the art of abuse, and very ingeniously defended it. St. Austin affirms that the most caustic personality may produce a wonderful effect, in opening a man's eyes to his own follies. He illus- trates his position with a story, given with great simplicity, of his mother Saint Monica with her maid. Saint Monica certainly would have been a confirmed drunkard, had not her maid timelily and outrageously abused her. The story will amuse. — "My mother had by little and little accustomed herself to relish wine. They used to send her to the cellar, as being one of the soberest in the family : she first sipped from the jug and tasted a few drops, for she abhorred wine, and did not care to drink. However, she gradually accus
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tomed herself, and from sipping it on her lips she swallowed a draught. As people from the smallest faults insensibly in- crease, she at length liked wine, and drank bumpers. But one day being alone with the maid who usually attended her to the cellar, they quarrelled, and the maid bitterly reproached her with being a drunkard! That single word struck her so poignantly that it opened her understanding ; and reflect- ing on the deformity of the vice, she desisted forever from its use."
To jeer and play the droll, or, in his own words, de bouf- fonner, was a mode of controversy the great Arnauld de- fended, as permitted by the writings of the holy fathers. It is still more singular, when he not only brings forward as an example of this ribaldry, Elijah mocking at the false divini- ties, but God himself bantering the first man after his fall. He justifies the injurious epithets which he has so liberally bestowed on his adversaries by the example of Jesus Christ and the apostles! It was on these grounds also that the celebrated Pascal apologized for the invectives with which he has occasionally disfigured his Provincial Letters. A Jesuit has collected "An Alphabetical Catalogue of the Names of Beasts by which the Fathers characterized the Heretics!" It may be found in Erotemata de malis ac bonis Libris, p. 93, 4to. 1653, of Father Kaynaud. This list of brutes and in- sects, among which are a vast variety of serpents, is accom- panied by the names of the heretics designated !
Henry Fitzsermon, an Irish Jesuit, was imprisoned for his papistical designs and seditious preaching. During his con- finement he proved himself to be a great amateur of con- troversy. He said, " he felt like a bear tied to a stake, and wanted somebody to bait him." A kind office, zealously undertaken by the learned Usher, then a young man. He engaged to dispute with him once a week on the subject of antichrist! They met several times. It appears that our bear was out-worried, and declined any further dog-baiting. This spread an universal joy through the Protestants in
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Dublin. At the early period of the Reformation, Dr. Smith of Oxford abjured papistry, with the hope of retaining his professorship, but it was given to Peter Martyr. On this our Doctor recants, and writes several controversial works against Peter Martyr ; the most curious part of which is the singular mode adopted of attacking others, as well as Peter Martyr. In his margin he frequently breaks out thus : " Let Hooper read this ! "— " Here, Ponet, open your eyes and see your errors!" — "Ergo, Cox, thou art damned!" In this manner, without expressly writing against these persons, the stirring polemic contrived to keep up a sharp bush-fighting in his margins. Such was the spirit of those times, very duTer- ent from our own. When a modern bishop was just advanced to a mitre, his bookseller begged to re-publish a popular the- ological tract of his against another bishop, because he might now meet him on equal terms. My lord answered — " Mr. * * *, no more controversy now ! " Our good bishop re- sembled Baldwin, who from a simple monk, arrived to the honour of the see of Canterbury. The successive honours successively changed his manners. < Urban the Second in- scribed his brief to him in this concise description — Balduino Monastico ferventissimo, Abbati calido, Episcopo tepido, Archiepiscopo remisso !
On the subject of literary controversies, we cannot pass over the various sects of the scholastics : a volume might be compiled of their ferocious wars, which in more than one in- stance were accompanied by stones and daggers. The most memorable, on account of the extent, the violence, and dura- tion of their contests, are those of the NOMINALISTS and the REALISTS.
It was a most subtle question assuredly, and the world thought for a long while that their happiness depended on deciding, whether universals, that is genera, have a real essence, and exist independent of particulars, that is species : — whether, for instance, we could form an idea of asses, prior to individual asses? Roscelinus, in the eleventh century,
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adopted the opinion that universals have no real existence, either before or in individuals, but are mere names and words by which the kind of individuals is expressed ; a tenet propagated by Abelard, which produced the sect of Nominal- ists. But the Realists asserted that universals existed inde- pendent of individuals, — though they were somewhat divided between the various opinions of Plato and Aristotle. Of the Realists the most famous were Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scfitus. The cause of the Nominalists was almost despe- rate, till Occam in the fourteenth century revived the dying embers. Louis XL adopted the Nominalists, and the Nom- inalists flourished at large in France and Germany; but unfortunately Pope John XXIII. patronized the Realists, and throughout Italy it was dangerous for a Nominalist to open his lips. The French King wavered, and the Pope triumphed ; his majesty published an edict in 1474, in which he silenced for ever the Nominalists, and ordered their books to be fastened up in their libraries with iron chains, that they might not be read by young students ! The leaders of that sect fled into England and Germany, where they united their forces with Luther and the first Reformers.
Nothing could exceed the violence with which these dis- putes were conducted. Vives himself, who witnessed the contests, says that, " when the contending parties had ex- hausted their stock of verbal abuse, they often came to blows; and it was not uncommon in these quarrels about universals, to see the combatants engaging not only with their fists, but with clubs and swords, so that many have been wounded and some killed."
On this war of words and all this terrifying nonsense John of Salisbury observes, " that there had been more time con- sumed than the Cassars had employed in making themselves masters of the world ; that the riches of Croesus were inferior to the treasures that had been exhausted in this controversy ; and that the contending parties, after having spent their whole lives in this single point, had neither been so happy as
408 LITERARY CONTROVERSY.
to determine it to their satisfaction, nor to find in the laby- rinths of science where they had been groping any discovery that was worth the pains they had taken." It may be added that Ramus having attacked Aristotle, for " teaching us chimeras," all his scholars revolted ; the parliament put a stop to his lectures, and at length having brought the matter into a law court, he wras declared " to be insolent and daring " — the king proscribed his works, he was ridiculed on the stage, and hissed at by his scholars. When at length, during the plague, he opened again his schools, he drew on himself a fresh storm by reforming the pronunciation of the letter Q, which they then pronounced like K — Kiskis for Quisquis, and Kamkam for Quamquam. This innovation was once more laid to his charge : a new rebellion ! and a new ejec- tion of the Anti-Aristotelian ! The brother of that Gabriel Harvey who was the friend of Spenser, and with Gabriel had been the whetstone of the town-wits of his time, distinguished himself by his wrath against the Stagyrite. After having with Gabriel predicted an earthquake, and alarmed the kingdom, which never took place (that is the earthquake, not the alarm), the wits buifeted him. • Nash says of him, that " Tarlton at the theatre made jests of him, and Elderton consumed his ale-crammed nose to nothing, in bear-baiting him with whole bundles of ballads." Marlow declared him to be " an ass fit only to preach of the iron age." Stung to madness by this lively nest of hornets, he avenged himself in a very cowardly manner — he attacked Aristotle himself ! for he set Aristotle with his heels upwards on the school gates at Cambridge, and with asses' ears on his head !
But this controversy concerning Aristotle and the school divinity was even prolonged. A professor in the' College at Naples published in 1688 four volumes of peripatetic philos- ophy, to establish the principles of Aristotle. The work was exploded, and he wrote an abusive treatise under the nom de guerre of Benedetto Aletino. A man of letters, Constantino Grimaldi, replied. Aletino rejoined ; he wrote letters, an
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apology for the letters, and would have written more for Aristotle than Aristotle himself perhaps would have done. However, Grimaldi was no ordinary antagonist, and not to be outwearied. He had not only the best of the argument, but he was resolved to tell the world so, as long as the world would listen. Whether he killed off Father Benedictus, the first author, is not affirmed ; but the latter died during the controversy. Grimaldi, however, afterwards pursued his ghost, and buffeted the father in liis grave. This enraged the University of Naples; and the Jesuits, to a man, de- nounced Grimaldi to Pope Benedict XIII. and to the viceroy of Naples. On this the Pope issued a bull prohibiting the reading of Grimaldi's works, or keeping them, under pain of excommunication ; and the viceroy, more active than the bull, caused all the copies which were found in the author's house to be thrown into the sea ! The author with tears in his eyes beheld his expatriated volumes, hopeless that their voyage would have been successful. However, all the little family of the Grimaldi's were not drowned — for a storm arose, and happily drove ashore many of the floating copies, and these falling into charitable hands, the heretical opinions of poor Grimaldi against Aristotle and school divinity were still read by those who were not out-terrified by the Pope's bulls. The salted passages were still at hand, and quoted with a double zest against the Jesuits !
We now turn to writers whose controversy was kindled only by subjects of polite literature. The particulars form a curious picture of the taste of the age.
"There is," says Joseph Scaliger, that great critic and reviler, " an art of abuse or slandering, of which those that are ignorant may be said to defame others much less than they show a willingness to defame."
" Literary wars," says Bayle, " are sometimes as lasting as they are terrible." A disputation between two great scholars was so interminably violent, that it lasted thirty years ! He humourously compares its duration to the German war which lasted as long.
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Baillet, when he refuted the sentiments of a certain author, always did it without naming him ; but when he found any observation which he deemed commendable, he quoted his name. Bayle observes, that " this is an excess of politeness, prejudicial to that freedom which should ever exist in the republic of letters ; that it should be allowed always to name those whom we refute ; and that it is sufficient for this pur- pose that we banish asperity, malice, and indecency."
After these preliminary observations, I shall bring forward various examples where this excellent advice is by no means regarded.
Erasmus produced a dialogue, in which he ridiculed those scholars who were servile imitators of Cicero ; so servile, that they would employ no expression but what was found in the works of that writer ; every thing \vith them was Cicero- nianized. This dialogue is written with great humour. Julius Caesar Scaliger, the father, who was then unknown to the world, had been long looking for some occasion to distinguish himself; he now wrote a defence of Cicero, but which in fact was one continued invective against Erasmus : he there treats the latter as illiterate, a drunkard, an impostor, an apostate, a hangman, a demon hot from hell ! The same Scaliger, acting on the same principle of distinguishing him- self at the cost of others, attacked Cardan's best work De Subtilitafe : his criticism did not appear till seven years after the first edition of the work, and then he obstinately stuck to that edition, though Cardan had corrected it in subsequent ones ; but this Scaliger chose, that he might have a wider field for his attack. After this, a rumour spread that Cardan had died of vexation from Julius Caesar's invincible pen ; then Scaliger pretended to feel all the regret possible for a man he had killed, and whom he now praised : however, hia regret had as little foundation as his triumph ; for Cardan outlived Scaliger many years, and valued his criticisms too cheaply to have suffered them to have disturbed his quiet. All this does not exceed the Invectives of Poggius, who has
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tli us entitled several literary libels composed against some of his adversaries, Laurentius Valla, Philelphus, &c., who re- turned the poisoned chalice to his own lips ; declamations of scurrility, obscenity, and calumny !
Scioppius was a worthy successor of the Scaligers : his favourite expression was, that he had trodden down his ad- versary.
Scioppius was a critic, as skilful as Salmasius or Scaliger, but still more learned in the language of abuse. This cynic was the Attila of authors. He boasted that he had oc- casioned the deaths of Casaubon and Scaliger. Detested and dreaded as the public scourge, Scioppius, at the close of his life, was fearful he should find no retreat in which he might be secure.
The great Casaubon employs the dialect of St. Giles's in his furious attacks on the learned Dalechamps, the Latin translator of Athenaeus. To this great physician he stood more deeply indebted than he chose to confess ; and to con- ceal the claims of this literary creditor, he called out Ve- sanum ! Insanum ! Tiresiam ! &c. It was the fashion of that day with the ferocious heroes of the literary republic, to overwhelm each other with invectives, and to consider that their own grandeur consisted in the magnitude of their volumes ; and their triumphs in reducing their brother giants into puny dwarfs. In science, Linnaeus had a dread of con- troversy— conqueror or conquered we cannot escape without disgrace ! Mathiolus would have been the great man of his day, had he not meddled with such matters. Who is grati- fied by " the mad Cornarus, or " the flayed Fox ? " titles which Fuchsius and Cornarus, two eminent botanists, have bestowed on each other. Some who were too fond of con- troversy, as they grew wiser, have refused to take up the gauntlet.
The heat and acrimony of verbal critics have exceeded description. Their stigmas and anathemas have been long known to bear no proportion to the offences against which
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they have been directed. " God confound you," cried one grammarian to another, "for your theory of impersonal verbs ! " There was a long and terrible controversy for- merly, whether the Florentine dialect was to prevail over the others. The academy was put to great trouble, and the Anti-Cruscans were often on the point of annulling this su- premacy ; una mordace scritura was applied to one of these literary canons ; and in a letter of those times the following paragraph appears : — " Pescetti is preparing to give a second answer to Beni, which will not please him ; I now believe the prophecy of Cavalier Tedeschi will be verified, and that this controversy, begun with pens, will end with poniards ! "
Fabretti, an Italian, wrote furiously against Gronovius, whom he calls Grunnovius : he compared him to all those animals whose voice was expressed by the word Grunnire, to grunt. Gronovius was so malevolent a critic, that he was distinguished by the title of the " Grammatical Cur."
When critics venture to attack the person as well as the performance of an author, I recommend the salutary proceed- ings of Huberus, the writer of an esteemed Universal His- tory. He had been so roughly handled by Perizonius, that he obliged him to make the' amende honorable in a court of justice ; where, however, I fear an English jury would give the smallest damages.
Certain authors may be distinguished by the title of LIT- ERARY BOBADILS, or fighting authors. One of our own celebrated writers drew his sword on a reviewer ; and an- other, when his farce was condemned, offered to fight any one of the audience who hissed. Scudery, brother of the cele- brated Mademoiselle Scudery, was a true Parnassian bully. The first publication which brought him into notice was his edition of the works of his friend Theophile. He concludes the preface with these singular expressions — " I do not hes- itate to declare, that, amongst all the dead, and all the living, there is no person who has any thing to show that approaches the force of this vigorous genius ; but if amongst the latter,
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any one were so extravagant as to consider that I detract from his imaginary glory, to show him that I fear as little as I esteem him, this is to inform him that my name is
" DE SCUDERY."
A similar rhodomontade is that of Claude Trellon, a poetical soldier, who begins his poems by challenging the critics ; assuring them that if any one attempts to censure him, he will only condescend to answer sword in hand. Father Macedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, having written against Cardinal Noris, on the monkery of St. Austin, it was deemed necessary to silence both parties. Macedo, compelled to re- linquish the pen, sent his adversary a challenge, and accord- ing to the laws of chivalry, appointed a place for meeting in the wood of Boulogne. Another edict to forbid the duel ! Macedo then murmured at his hard fate, which would not suffer him, for the sake of St. Austin, for whom he had a particular regard, to spill either his ink or his blood.
ANTI, prefixed to the name of the person attacked, was once a favourite title to books of literary controversy. With a critical review of such books Baillet has filled a quarto volume ; yet such was the abundant harvest, that he left con- siderable gleanings for posterior industry.
Anti-Gronovius was a book published against Gronovius, by Kuster. Perizonius, another pugilist of literature, entered into this dispute on the subject of the ^Es grave of the an- cients, to which Kuster had just adverted at the close of his volume. What was the consequence ? Dreadful ! — Answers and rejoinders from both, in which they bespattered each other with the foulest abuse. A journalist pleasantly blames this acrimonious controversy. He says, " To read the pam- phlets of a Perizonius and a Kuster on the ^Es grave of the ancients, who would not renounce all commerce with an- tiquity ? It seems as if an Agamemnon and an Acliilles were railing at each other. Who can refrain from laughter, when one of these commentators even points his attacks at the very name of his adversary ? According to Kuster, the
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name of Perizonius signifies a certain part of the human body. How is it possible, that with such a name he could be right concerning the JEs grave ? But does that of Kuster promise a better thing, since it signifies a beadle ; a man who drives dogs out of churches ? — What madness is this ! "
Corneille, like our Dryden, felt the acrimony of literary irri- tation. To the critical strictures of D' Aubignac it is acknowl- edged he paid the greatest attention, for, after this critic's Pratique du Theatre appeared, his tragedies were more art- fully conducted. But instead of mentioning the critic with due praise, he preserved an ungrateful silence. This occa- sioned a quarrel between the poet and the critic, in which the former exhaled his bile in several abusive epigrams, which have, fortunately for his credit, not been preserved in his works.
The lively Voltaire could not resist the charm of abusing his adversaries. We may smile when he calls a blockhead, a blockhead ; a dotard, a dotard ; but when he attacks, for a difference of opinion, the morals of another man, our sensi- bility is alarmed. A higher tribunal than that of criticism is to decide on the actions of men.
There is a certain disguised malice, which some writers have most unfairly employed in characterizing a contemporary. Burnet called Prior, one Prior. In Bishop Parker's History of his Own Times, an innocent reader may start at seeing the celebrated Marvell described as an outcast of society ; an infamous libeller ; and one whose talents were even more despicable .than his person. To such lengths did the hatred of party, united with personal rancour, carry this bishop, who was himself the worst of time-servers. He was, however, amply repaid by the keen wit of Marvell in ' The Rehearsal Transposed,' which may still be read with delight, as an ad- mirable effusion of banter, wit, and satire. Le Clerc, a cool ponderous Greek critic, quarrelled with Boileau about a pas- sage in Longinus, and several years afterwards, hi revising Moreri's Dictionary, gave a short sarcastic notice of the poet's
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brother ; in which he calls him the elder brother of him who has written the book entitled "Satires of Mr. Boileau Des- preaux!" — the works of the modern Horace which were then delighting Europe, he calls, with simple impudence, " a book entitled Satires ! "
The works of Homer produced a controversy, both long and virulent, amongst the wits of France ; this literary quar- rel is of some note in the annals of literature, since it has produced two valuable books ; La Motte's " Reflexions sur la Critique," and Madame Dacier's " Des Causes de la Corrup- tion du -Gout." La Motte wrote with feminine delicacy, and Madame Dacier like a University pedant. "At length, by the efforts of Valincour, the friend of art, of artists, and of peace, the contest was terminated." Both parties were for- midable in number, and to each he made remonstrances, and applied reproaches. La Motte and Madame Dacier, the op- posite leaders, were convinced by his arguments, made recip- rocal concessions, and concluded a peace. The treaty was formally ratified at a dinner, given on the occasion by a Madame De Stael, who represented "Neutrality." Liba- tions were poured to the memory of old Homer, and the parties were reconciled.
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WHEN Dante published his " Inferno," the simplicity of the age accepted it as a true narrative of his descent into hell.
When the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, was first published, it occasioned a pleasant, mistake. This political romance rep- resents a perfect, but visionary republic, in an island supposed to have been newly discovered in America. "As fhis was the age of discovery," says Granger, " the learned Budaeus, ttnd others, took it for a genuine history ; and considered it as
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highly expedient, that missionaries should be sent thither, in order to convert so wise a nation to Christianity."
It was a long while after publication that many readers were convinced^that Gulliver's Travels were fictitious.
But the most singular blunder was produced by the ingen- ious " Hermippus Redivivus " of Dr. Campbell, a curious ban- ter on the hermetic philosophy, and the universal medicine ; but the grave irony is so closely kept up, that it deceived for a length of time the most learned. His notion of the art of prolonging life, by inhaling the breath of young women, was eagerly credited. A physician, who himself had composed a treatise on health, was so influenced by it, that he actually took lodgings at a female boarding-school, that he might never be without a constant supply of the breath of young ladies. Mr. Thicknesse seriously adopted the project. Dr. Kippis acknowledged that after he had read the work in his youth, the reasonings and the facts left him several days in a kind of fairy land. I have a copy with manuscript notes by a learned physician, who seems to have had no doubts of its veracity. After all, the intention of the work was long doubtful ; till Dr. Campbell assured a friend it was a mere jeu-d'esprit ; that Bayle was considered as standing without a rival in the art of treating at large a difficult subject, with- out discovering to which side his own sentiments leaned: Campbell had read more uncommon books than most men, and wished to rival Bayle, and at the same time to give many curious matters little known.
Palavicini, in his History of the Council of Trent, to con- fer an honour on M. Lansac, ambassador of Charles IX. to that council, bestows on him a collar of the order of Saint Esprit ; but which order was not instituted till several years afterwards by Henry III. A similar voluntary blunder is that of Surita, in his Annales de la Corona de Aragon. This writer represents, in the battles he describes, many persons who were not present ; and tin's, merely to confer honour on some particular families.
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Fabiani, quoting a French narrative of travels in Italy, took for the name of the author the words, found at the end of the title-page, Enrichi de deux Lutes ; that is, " Enriched with two lists : " on this he observes, " that Mr. Enriched with two lists has not failed to do that justice to Ciampini which he merited." The abridgers of Gesner's Bibliotheca ascribe the romance of Amadis to one Acuerdo Olvido ; Remembrance, Oblivion; mistaking the French translator's Spanish motto on the title-page, for the name of the author.
D'Aquin, the French king's physician, in his Memoir on the Preparation of Bark, takes Mantissa, which is the title of the Appendix to the History of Plants, by Johnstone, for the name of an author, and who, he says, is so extremely rare, that he only knows him by name.
Lord Bolingbroke imagined, that in those famous verses, beginning with Excudent alii, &c., Virgil attributed to the Romans the glory of having surpassed the Greeks in histori- cal composition : according to his idea, those Roman historians whom Virgil preferred to the Grecians were Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. But Virgil died before Livy had written his history, or Tacitus was born.
An honest friar, who compiled a church history, has placed in the class of ecclesiastical writers Guarini, the Italian poet, on the faith of the title of his celebrated amorous pastoral, 11 Pastor Fido, " The Faithful Shepherd ; " our good father imagined that the character of a curate, vicar, or bishop, was represented in this work.
A blunder has " been recorded of the monks in the dark ages, which was likely enough to happen when their igno- rance was so dense. A rector of a parish going to law with his parishioners about paving the church, quoted this authority from St. Peter — Paveant illi, non paveam ego ; 'which he con- strued, They are to pave the church, not I. This was allowed to be good law by a judge, himself an ecclesiastic too !
One of the grossest literary blunders of modern times is that of the late Gilbert Wakefield, in his edition cf Pope.
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418 LITERARY BLUNDERS.
He there takes the well-known " Song by a Person of Quali- ty," which is a piece of ridicule on the glittering tuneful non- sense of certain poets, as a serious composition. In a most copious commentary, he proves that every line seems uncon- nected with its brothers, and that the whole reflects disgrace on its author ! A circumstance which too evidently shows how necessary the knowledge of modern literary history is to a modern commentator, and that those who are pro- found in verbal Greek are not the best critics on English writers.
The Abbe Bizot, the author of the medallic history of Hoi* land, fell into a droll mistake. There is a medal, struck when Philip II. set forth his invincible Armada, on which are rep- resented the King of Spain, the Emperor, the Pope, Elec- tors, Cardinals, &c., with their eyes covered with a bandage, and bearing for inscription this fine verse of Lucretius : —
0 caecas hominum menteis ! 0 pectora cseca !
The Abbe, prepossessed with the prejudice that a nation per- secuted by the Pope and his adherents could not represent them without some insult, did not examine with sufficient care the ends of the bandages which covered the eyes and waved about the heads of the personages represented on tliis medal : he rashly took them for asses' ears, and as such they are engraved !
Mabillon has preserved a curious literary blunder of some pious Spaniards, who applied to the Pope for consecrating a day in honour of Saint Viar. His holiness, in the volumi- nous catalogue of his saints, was ignorant of this one. The only proof brought forward for his existence was this in- scription : —
{•,,*.> s. VIAR.
An antiquary, however, hindered one more festival in the Catholic calendar, by convincing them that these letters were only the remains of an inscription erected for an ancient sur- veyor of the roads ; and he read their saintship thus :—
LITERARY BLUNDERS. 419
PRJEFECTUS VIARUM.
Maffei, in liis comparison between Medals and Inscriptions, detects a literary blunder in Spon, who, meeting with this
inscription,
Maximo VI Consule
takes the letters VI for numerals, which occasions a strange anachronism. They are only contractions of Viro lllustri —VI.
As absurd a blunder was this of Dr. Stukeley on the coins of Carausius ; finding a battered one with a defaced inscrip- tion of
FORTVNA AVG.
he read it
ORIVNA AVG.
And sagaciously interpreting this to be the wife of Carausius, makes a new personage start up in history; he contrives even to give some theoretical Memoirs of the August Oriuna !
Father Sirmond was of opinion that St. Ursula and her eleven thousand Virgins were all created out of a blunder. In some ancient MS. they found St. Ursula et Undecimilla V. M. meaning St. Ursula and Undecimilla, Virgin Martyrs ; imagining that Undecimilla with the V. and M. which fol- lowed, was an abbreviation for Undecem Millia Martyrum Virginum, they made out of Two Virgins the whole Eleven Thousand !
Pope, in a note on Measure for Measure, informs us, that its story was taken from Cinthio's Novels, Dec. 8, Nov. 5. That is, Decade 8, Novel 5. The critical Warburton, in his edition of Shakspeare, puts the words in full length thus, December 8, November 5.
When the fragments of Petronius made a great noise in the literary world, Meibomius, an erudit of Lubeck, read in a letter from another learned scholar from Bologna, " We have here an entire Petronius ; I saw it with mine own eyes,
420 LITERARY BLUNDERS.
and with admiration." Meibomius in post-haste is on the road, arrives at Bologna, and immediately inquires for the librarian Capponi. He inquires if it were true that they had at Bologna an entite Petronius ? Capponi assures him that it was a thing which had long been public. " Can I see this Petronius ? Let me examine it ! " — " Certainly," replies Capponi, and leads our erudit of Lubeck to the church where reposes the body of St. Petronius. Meibomius bites his lips, calls for his chaise, and takes his flight.
A French translator, when he. came to a passage of Swift, in which it is said that the Duke of Maryborough broke an officer ; not being acquainted with this Anglicism, he trans- lated it roue, broke on a wheel !
Cibber's play of " Love's last Shift " was entitled " La Dernier e Chemise de V Amour." A French writer of Con- greve's life has taken his Mourning for a Morning Bride, and translated it L'Epouse du Matin.
Sir John Pringle mentions his having cured a soldier by the use of two quarts of Dog and Duck water daily : a French translator specifies it as an excellent broth made of a duck and a dog! In a recent catalogue compiled by a French writer of Works on Natural History, he has inserted the well-known " Essay on Irish Bulls " by the Edgeworths. The proof, if it required any, that a Frenchman cannot understand the idiomatic style of Shakspeare appears in a French translator, who prided himself on giving a verbal translation of our great poet, not approving of Le Tourneur'a paraphrastical version. He found in the celebrated speech of Northumberland in Henry IV.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so wot-begone —
which he renders " Ainsi douleur ! va-fen ! "
The Abbe Gregoire affords another striking proof of the errors to which foreigners are liable when they decide on the language and customs of another country. The Abbe", in the excess of his philanthropy, to show to what dishonourable
LITERARY BLUNDERS. 421
offices human nature is degraded, acquaints us that at London he observed a sign-board, proclaiming the master as tueur des punaises de sa majeste ! Bug-destroyer to his majesty ! This is no doubt the honest Mr. Tiffin, in the Strand ; and the idea which must have occurred to the good Abbe was, that his majesty's bugs were hunted by the said destroyer, and taken by hand — and thus human nature was degraded !
A F'rench writer translates the Latin title of a treatise of Philo-Judaeus Omnis bonus liber est, Every good man is a free man, by Tout livre est bon. It was well for him, ob- serves Jortin, that he did not live within the reach of the Inquisition which might have taken this as a reflection on the Index Expurgatorius.
An English translator turned " Dieu defend 1'adultere n into " God defends adultery." — Guthrie, in his translation of Du Halde, has " the twenty-sixth day of the new moon." The whole age of the moon is but twenty-eight days. The blunder arose from his mistaking the word neuvieme (ninth) for nouvelle or neuve (new).
The facetious Tom Brown committed a' strange blunder in his translation of Gelli's Circe. The word Starne, not aware of its signification, he boldly rendered stares, probably from the similitude of sound ; the succeeding translator more cor- rectly discovered Starne to be red-legged partridges !
In Charles II.'s reign a new collect was drawn, in which a new epithet was added to the king's title, that gave great offence, and occasioned great raillery. He was styled our most religious king. Whatever the signification of religious might be in the Latin word, as importing the sacredness of the king's person, yet in the English language it bore a sig- nification that was no way applicable to the king. And he
as asked by his familiar courtiers, what must the nation think when they heard him prayed for as their most religious ling ?— Literary blunders of this nature are frequently dis- covered in the versions of good classical scholars, who would make the English servilely bend to the Latin and Greek.
422 LITERARY BLUNDERS.
Even Milton has been justly censured for his free use of Latinisms and Grecisms.
The blunders of modern antiquaries on sepulchral monu- ments are numerous. One mistakes a lion at a knight's feet for a water-curled dog ; another could not distinguish censers in the hands of angels from fishing-nets ; two angels at a lady's feet were counted as her two cherub-like lobes ; and another has mistaken a leopard and a hedgehog for a cat and a rat ! In some of these cases, are the antiquaries or the sculptors most to be blamed ?
A literary blunder of Thomas "Warton is a specimen of the manner in which a man of genius may continue to blunder with infinite ingenuity. In an old romance he finds these lines, describing the duel of Saladin with Richard Cceur de Lion : —
A Faucon brode in hande he bare, For he thought he wolde thare Have slayne Richard.
He imagines this Faucon brode means a falcon bird, or a hawk, and that Saladin is represented with this bird on his fist to express his contempt of his adversary. He supports his conjecture by noticing a Gothic picture, supposed to be the subject of this duel, and also some old tapestry of heroes on horseback with hawks on their fists ; he plunges into feudal times, when no gentlemen appeared on horseback without his hawk. After all this curious erudition, the rough but skilful Ritson inhumanly triumphed by dissolving the magical fancies of the more elegant Warton, by explaining a Faucon brode to be nothing more than a broad faulchion, which, in a duel, was certainly more useful than a bird. The editor of the private reprint of Hentzner, on that writer's tradition respecting " The Kings of Denmark who reigned in England " buried in the Temple Church, metamorphosed the two Inns of Court, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn, into the names of the Danish Kings, Gresin and Lyconin.
Bayle supposes that Marcellus Palingenius, who wrote the
A LITERARY WIFE. 423
poem entitled the Zodiac, fas twelve books bearing the names of the signs, from this circumstance assumed the title of Poeta Stellalus. But it appears that this writer was an Italian and a native of Stellada, a town in the Ferrarese. It is probable that his birthplace originally produced the conceit of the title of his poem : it is a curious instance how a criti- cal conjecture may be led astray by its own ingenuity, when ignorant of the real fact.
A LITERARY WIFE.
Marriage is such a rabble rout, That those that are out, would fain get in; And those that are in, would fain get out.
CHAUCER.
HAVING examined some literary blunders, we will now proceed to the subject of a literary wife, which may happen to prove one. A learned lady is to the taste of few. It is however matter of surprise, that several literary men should have felt such a want of taste in respect to " their soul's far dearer part," as Hector calls his Andromache. The wives of many men of letters have been dissolute, ill-humoured, slatternly, and have run into all the frivolities of the age. The wife of the learned Budaeus was of a different char- acter.
How delightful is it when the mind of the female is so hap- pily disposed, and so richly cultivated, as to participate in the literary avocations of her husband ! It is then truly that the intercourse of the sexes becomes the most refined pleasure. What delight, for instance, must the great Budaeus have tasted, even in those works which must have been for others a most dreadful labour ! His wife left him nothing to desire. The frequent companion of his studies, she brought him the books he required to his desk ; she collated passages, and
424 A LITEKABY WIFE.
transcribed quotations ; the same genius, the same inclination, and the same ardour for literature, eminently appeared in those two fortunate persons. Far from withdrawing her hus- band from his studies, she was sedulous to animate him when lie languished. Ever at his side, and ever assiduous ; ever with some useful book in her hand, she acknowledged herself to be a most happy woman. Yet she did not neglect the education of eleven children. She and Budseus shared in the mutual cares they owed their progeny. Budseus was not insensible of his singular felicity. In one of his letters, he represents himself as married to two ladies ; one of whom gave him boys and girls, the other was Philosophy, who produced books. He says that in his twelve first years, Philosophy had been less fruitful than marriage ; he had produced less books than children ; he had laboured more corporally than intellectually ; but he hoped to make more books than men. " The soul (says he) will be productive in its turn ; it will rise on the ruins of the body ; a prolific virtue is not given at the same time to the bodily organs and the pen."
The lady of Evelyn designed herself the frontispiece to his translation of Lucretius. She felt the same passion in her own breast which animated her husband's, who has written with such various ingenuity. Of Baron Haller it is recorded that he inspired his wife and family with a taste for his dif- ferent pursuits. They were usually employed in assisting his literary occupations ; they transcribed manuscripts, consulted authors, gathered plants, and designed and coloured under his eye. What a delightful family picture has the younger Pliny given posterity in his letters ! Of Calphurnia, his wife, he says, " Her affection to me has given her a turn to books ; and my compositions, which she takes a pleasure in reading, and even getting by heart, are continually in her hands. How full of tender solicitude is she when I am entering upon any cause ! How kindly does she rejoice with me when it Is over ! While I am pleading, she places persons to inform her from time to time how I am heard, what applauses I
. A LITERARY WIFE. 425
receive, and what success attends the cause. When at any time I recite my works, she conceals herself behind some curtain, and with secret rapture enjoys my praises. She sings my verses to her lyre, with no other master but love, the best instructor, for her guide. Her passion will increase with our days, for it is not my youth nor my person, which time gradually impairs, but my reputation and my glory, of which she is enamoured."
On the subject of a literary wife, I must introduce to the acquaintance of the reader Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. She is known, at least by her name, as a voluminous writer ; for she extended her literary productions to the number of twelve folio volumes.
Her labours have been ridiculed by some wits ; but had her studies been regulated, she would have displayed no ordi- nary genius. The Connoisseur has quoted her poems, and her verses have been imitated by Milton.
The duke, her husband, was also an author ; his book on horsemanship still preserves his name. He has likewise written comedies, and his contemporaries have not been penu- rious in their eulogiums. It is true he was a duke. Shad- well says of him, " That he was the greatest master of wit, the most exact observer of mankind, and the most accurate judge of humour that ever he knew/' The life of the duke is written " by the hand of his incomparable duchess." It was published in his lifetime. This curious piece of biogra- phy is a folio of 1 97 pages, and is entitled " The Life of the Thrice Noble, High, and Puissant Prince, William Caven- dish." His titles then follow: — "Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, his wife. London, 1667." This Life is dedi- cated to Charles the Second ; and there is also prefixed a copious epistle to her husband the duke.
In this epistle the character of our Literary Wife is de- scribed with all its peculiarities.
" Certainly, my lord, you have had as many enemies and
426 A LITERARY WIFK.
as many friends as ever any one particular person had ; nor do I so much wonder at it, since I, a woman, cannot be ex- empt from the malice and aspersions of spiteful tongues, which they cast upon my poor writings, some denying me to be the true authoress of them ; for your grace remembers well, that those books I put out first to the judgment of this censorious age were accounted not to be written by a woman, but that somebody else had writ and published them in rny name ; by which your lordship was moved to prefix an epis- tle before one of them in my vindication, wherein you assure the world, upon your honour, that what was written and printed in my name was my own ; and I have also made known that your lordship was my only tutor, in declaring to me what you had found and observed by your own experience ; for I being young when your lordship married me, could not have much knowledge of the world ; but it pleased God to command his servant Nature to endue me with a poetical and philosophical genius, even from my birth ; for I did write some books in that kind before I was twelve years of age, which for want of good method and order I would never di- vulge. But though the world would not believe that those conceptions and fancies which I writ were my own, but tran- scended my capacity, yet they found fault, that they were defective for want of learning, and on the other side, they said I had pluckt feathers out of the universities ; which was a very preposterous judgment. Truly, my lord, I confess that for want of scholarship, I could not express myself so well as otherwise I might have done in those philosophical writings I published first ; but after I was returned with your lordship into my native country, and led a retired country life, I applied myself to the reading of philosophical authors, on purpose to learn those names and words of art that are used in schools ; which at first were so hard to me, that I could not understand them, but was fain to guess at the sense of them by the whole context, and so writ them down, as I fimnd them in those authors ; at which my readers did won-
A LITERARY WIFE. 427
der, and thought it impossible that a woman could ha^s e so much learning and understanding in terms of art and scholas- tical expressions ; so that I and my books are like the old apologue mentioned in JEsop, of a father and his son who rid on an ass." Here follows a long narrative of this fable, which she applies to herself in these words — " The old man seeing he could not please mankind in any manner, and having re- ceived so many blemishes and aspersions for the sake of his ass, was at last resolved to drown him when he came to the next bridge. But I am not m> passionate to burn my writ- ings for the various humours of mankind, and for their find- ing fault ; since there is nothing in this world, be it the no- blest and most commendable action whatsoever, that shall escape blameless. As for my being the true and only auth- oress of them, your lordship knows best ; and my attending servants are witness that I have had none but my own thoughts, fancies, and speculations, to assist me ; and as soon as I set them down I send them to those that are to transcribe them, and fit them for the press ; whereof, since there have been several, and amongst them such as only could write a good hand, but neither understood orthography, nor had any learn- ing, (I being then in banishment, with your lordship, and not able to maintain learned secretaries,) which hath been a great disadvantage to my poor works, and the cause that they have been printed so false and so full of errors ; for besides that I want also skill in scholarship and true writing, I did many times not peruse the copies that were transcribed, lest they should disturb my following conceptions ; by which neglect, as I said, many errors are slipt into my works, which, yet I hope, learned and impartial men will soon rectify, and look more upon the sense than carp at words. I have been a student even from childhood; and since I have been your lordship's wife I have lived for the most part a strict and retired life, as is best known to your lordship; and therefore my censurers cannot know much of me, since they have little or
428 A LITERARY WIFE.
no acquaintance with me. 'Tis true I have been a traveller both before and after I was married to your lordship, and some times shown myself at your lordship's command in pub- lic places or assemblies, but yet I converse with few. In- deed, my lord, I matter not the censures of this age, but am rather proud of them ; for it shows that my actions are more than ordinary, and according to the old proverb, it is better to be envied than pitied ; for I know well that it is merely out of spite and malice, whereof this present age is so full that none can escape them, and4hey'U make no doubt to stain even your lordship's loyal, noble, and heroic actions, as well as they do mine ; though yours have been of war and fighting, mine of contemplating and writing: yours were performed publicly in the field, mine privately in my closet ; yours had many thousand eye-witnesses ; mine none but my waiting- maids. But the great God, that hitherto bless'd both your grace and me, will, I question not, preserve both our fames to after-ages.
u Your grace's honest wife,
" and humble servant,
" M. NEWCASTLE."
The last portion of this life, which consists of the observa- tions and good things which she had gathered from the con- versations of her husband, forms an excellent Ana ; and shows that when Lord Orford, in his " Catalogue of Noble Authors," says, that " this stately poetic couple was a picture of foolish nobility," he writes, as he does too often, with ex- treme levity. But we must now attend to the reverse of our medal.
Many chagrins may corrode the nuptial state of literary men. Females who, prompted by vanity, but not by taste, unite themselves to scholars, must ever complain of neglect. The inexhaustible occupations of a library will only present to such a most dreary solitude. Such a lady declared of her learned husband, that she was more jealous of his books than
A LITERARY WIFE. 429
his mistresses. It was probably while Glover was compos- ing his " Leonidas," that his lady avenged herself for this Homeric inattention to her, and took her flight with a lover. It was peculiar to the learned Dacier to be united to a woman, his equal in erudition and his superior in taste. When she wrote in the album of a German traveller a verse from Sophocles as an apology for her unwillingness to place herself among his learned friends, that " Silence is the fe- male's ornament," it was a trait of her modesty. The learned Pasquier was coupled to a female of a different character, since he tells us in one of his Epigrams that to manage the vociferations of his lady, he was compelled himself to become a vociferator. — " Unfortunate wretch that I am, I who am a lover of universal peace ! But to have peace I am obliged ever to be at war."
Sir Thomas More was united to a woman of the harshest temper and the most sordid manners. To soften the morose- ness of her disposition, " he persuaded her to play on the lute, viol, and other instruments, every day." Whether it was that she had no ear for music, she herself never became harmonious as the instrument she touched. All these ladies may be considered as rather too alert in thought, and too spirited in action ; but a tame cuckoo bird who is always re- peating the same note must be very fatiguing. The lady of Samuel Clarke, the great compiler of books in 1680, whose name was anagrammatized to " suck all cream" alluding to his indefatigable labours in sucking all the cream of every other author, without having any cream himself, is described by her husband as entertaining the most sublime conceptions of his illustrious compilations. This appears by her behaviour. He eays, " that she never rose from table without making him a curtesy, nor drank to him without bowing, and that hia tford was a law to her."
I was much surprised in looking over a correspondence of the times, that in 1590 the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, writing to the Earl of Shrewsbury on the subject of his liv-
430 A LITEEARY WIFE.
ing separate from his countess, uses as one of his arguments for their union the following curious one, which surely shows the gross and cynical feeling which the fair sex excited even among the higher classes of society. The language of this good bishop is neither that of truth, we hope, nor certainly that of religion.
" But some will saye in your Lordship's behalfe that the Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and therefore licke enough to shorten your lief, if shee should kepe yow com- pany. Indeede, my good Lord, I have heard some say so j but if shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a juste ,cause of sep- aration between a man and wiefe, I thinck fewe men in Englande would keepe their wives longe ; for it is a common jeste, yet trewe in some sense, that there is but one shrewe in all the worlde, and everee man hath her : and so everee man must be ridd of his wiefe that wolde be ridd of a shrewe." It is wonderful this good bishop did not use another argument as cogent, and which would in those times be allowed as something , the name of his lordship, Shrewsbury, would have afforded a consolatory pun!
The entertaining Marville says that the generality of ladies married to literary men are so vain of the abilities and merit of their husbands, that they are frequently insufferable.
The wife of Barclay, author of " The Argenis," considered herself as the wife of a demigod. This appeared glaringly after his death ; for Cardinal Barberini having erected a monument to the memory of his tutor, next to the tomb of Barclay, Mrs. Barclay was so irritated at this that she de- molished his monument, brought home his bust, and declared that the ashes of so great a genius as her husband should never be placed beside a pedagogue.
Salmasius's wife was a termagant ; Christina said she ad- mired his patience more than his erudition. Mrs. Salmasius indeed considered herself as the queen of science, because her husband was acknowledged as sovereign among the critics. She boasted that she had for her husband the most
A LITER AKY WIFE. 431
learned of all the nobles, and the most noble of all the learned. Our good lady always joined the learned con- ferences which he held in his study. She spoke loud, and decided with a tone of majesty. Salmasius was mild in conversation, but the reverse in his writings, for our proud Xantippe considered him as acting beneath himself if he did not magisterially call every one names !
The wife of Rohault, when her husband gave lectures on the philosophy of Descartes, used to seat herself on these days at the door, and refused admittance to every one shabbily dressed, or who did not discover a genteel air. So convinced was she that, to be worthy of hearing the lectures of her husband, it was proper to appear fashion- able. In vain our good lecturer exhausted himself in telling her, that fortune does not always give fine clothes to phi- losophers.
The ladies of Albert Durer and Berghem were both shrews. The wife of Durer compelled that great genius to the hourly drudgery of his profession, merely to gratify her own sordid passion : in despair, Albert ran away from his Tisiphone ; she wheedled him back, and not long after- wards this great artist fell a victim to her furious disposition. Berghem's wife would never allow that excellent artist to quit liis occupations ; and she contrived an odd expedient to detect his indolence. The artist worked in a room above her ; ever and anon she roused him by thumping a long stick against the ceiling, while the obedient Berghem answered by stamping his foot, to satisfy Mrs. Berghem that he was not napping.
JElian had an aversion to the married state. Sigoriius, a learned and well known scholar, would never marry, and alleged no inelegant reason ; " Minerva and Venus could not live together."
Matrimony has been considered by some writers as a con- dition not so well suited to the circumstances of philosophers and men of learning. There is a little tract which professes
4S2 A LITERARY WIFE.
to investigate the subject. It has for title, De Matrimonio Literati, an calibem esse, an verb nubere conveniat, i. e., of the Marriage of a Man of Letters, with an inquiry whether it is most proper for him to continue a bachelor, or to marry?
The author alleges the great merit of some women ; par- ticularly that of Gonzaga the consort of Montefeltro, duke of Urbino ; a lady of such distinguished accomplishments, that Peter Bembus said, none but a stupid man would not prefer one of her conversations to all the formal meetings and disputations of the philosophers.
The ladies perhaps will be surprised to find that it is a question among the learned, Whether they ought to marry? and will think it an unaccountable property of learning that it should lay the professors of it under an obligation to dis- regard the sex. But it is very questionable whether, in return for this want of complaisance in them, the generality of ladies would not prefer the beau, and the man of fashion. However, let there be Gonzagas, they will find converts enough to their charms.
The sentiments of Sir Thomas Browne on the consequences of marriage are very curious, in the second part of his Re- ligio Medici, sect. 9. When he wrote that work, he said, " I was never yet once, and commend their resolutions, who never marry twice." He calls woman " the rib and crooked piece of man." He adds, "I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to procreate the world without this trivial and vulgar way." He means the union of sexes, which he de- clares, " is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life ; nor is there any thing that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and un- worthy piece of folly he hath committed." He afterwards declares he is not averse to that sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful : " I could look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a
A LITERARY WIFE. 433
horse." He afterwards disserts very profoundly on the music there is in beauty, " and the silent note which Cupid strikes is far sweeter than the sound of an instrument." Such were his sentiments when youthful, and residing at Ley den ; Dutch philosophy had at first chilled his passion ; it is probable that passion afterwards inflamed his philosophy — for he married, and had sons and daughters !
Dr. Cocchi, a modern Italian writer, but apparently a cynic as old as Diogenes, has taken the pains of composing a treatise on the present subject enough to terrify the boldest Baclielor of Arts ! He has conjured up every chimera against the marriage of a literary man. He seems, however, to have drawn his disgusting portrait from his own country ; and the chaste beauty of Britain only looks the more lovely beside this Florentine wife.
I shall not retain the cynicism which has coloured such revolting features. When at length the doctor finds a woman as all women ought to be, he opens a new spring of misfor- tunes which must attend her husband. He dreads one of the probable consequences of matrimony — progeny, in which we must maintain the children we beget ! He thinks the father gains nothing in his old age from the tender offices admin- istered by his own children : he asserts these are much better performed by menials and strangers ! The more children he has, the less he can afford to have servants ! The mainte- nance of his children will greatly diminish his property ! Another alarming object in marriage is that, by affinity, you become connected with the relations of the wife. The en- vious and ill-bred insinuations of the mother, the family quarrels, their poverty or their pride, all disturb the un- happy sage who falls into the trap of connubial felicity ! But if a sage has resolved to marry, he impresses on him the prudential principle of increasing his fortune by it, and to remember his " additional expenses ! " Dr. Cocchi seems to have thought that a human being is only to live for him- self; he had neither a heart to feel, a head to conceive, nor
VOL. i. 28
434 DEDICATIONS.
a pen that could have written one harmonious period, or one beautiful image ! Bayle, in his article Raphelengius, note B, gives a singular specimen of logical subtlety, in " a reflection on the consequence of marriage." This learned man was imagined to have died of grief for having lost his wife, and passed three years in protracted despair. What therefore must we think of an unhappy marriage, since a happy one is exposed to such evils ? He then shows that an unhappy marriage is attended by beneficial consequences to the sur- vivor. In this dilemma, in the one case, the husband lives afraid his wife will die, in the other that she will not ! If you love her, you will always be afraid of losing her ; if you do not love her, you will always be afraid of not losing her. Our satirical celibataire is gored by the horns of the dilemma he has conjured up.
James Petiver, a famous botanist, then a bachelor, the friend of Sir Hans Sloane, in an album signs his name with this designation : —
" From the Goat tavern in the Strand, London,
Nov. 27. In the 34th year of my freedom,
A.D. 1697."
DEDICATIONS.
SOME authors excelled in this species of literary artifice. The Italian Doni dedicated each of his letters in a book called La Libraria, to persons whose name began with the first letter of the epistle, and dedicated the whole collection in another epistle ; so that the book, which only consisted of forty-five pages, was dedicated to above twenty persons. This is carrying literary mendicity pretty high. Politi, the editor of the Martyrologium Romanum, published at Rome in 1751, has unproved on the idea of Doni ; for to the 365 days of the year of this Martyrology he has prefixed to each an epistle dedicatory. It is fortunate to have a large circle of
DEDICATIONS. 435
acquaintance, though they should not be worthy of being saints. Galland, the translator of the Arabian Nights, pre- fixed a dedication to each tale which he gave ; had he fin- ished the " one thousand and one/' he would have surpassed even the Martyrologist.
Mademoiselle Scudery tells a remarkable expedient of an ingenious trader in this line — One Rangouze made a collec- tion of letters which he printed without numbering them. By this means the bookbinder put that letter which the author ordered him first ; so that all the persons to whom he presented this book, seeing their names at the head, consid- ered they had received a particular compliment. An Italian physician, having written on Hippocrates's Aphorisms, dedi- cated each book of his Commentaries to one of his friends, and the index to another !
More than one of our own authors have dedications in the same spirit. It was an expedient to procure dedicatory fees : for publishing books by subscription was an art then undis- covered. One prefixed a different dedication to a certain number of printed copies, and addressed them to every great man he knew, who he thought relished a morsel of flattery, and would pay handsomely for a coarse luxury. Sir Bal- thazar Gerbier, in his " Counsel to Builders," has made up half the work with forty-two dedications, which he excuses by the example of Antonio Perez ; but in these dedications Perez scatters a heap of curious things, for he was a very universal genius. Perez, once secretary of state to Philip II. of Spain, dedicates his " Obras." first to " Nuestro sanc- tissimo Padre," and "Al Sacro Collegio," then follows on§ to " Henry IV." and then one still more embracing, "A Todos." Fuller, in his " Church History," has with admirable contri- vance introduced twelve title-pages, besides the general one, and as many particular dedications, and no less than fifty or sixty of those by inscriptions which are addressed to his benefactors ; a circumstance which Heylin in his severity did not overlook ; for " making his work bigger by forty sheets at
436 DEDICATIONS.
the least ; and he was so ambitious of the number of his pa- trons, that having but four leaves at the end of his History, he discovers a particular benefactress to inscribe them to ! " This unlucky lady, the patroness of four leaves, Heylin com- pares to Roscius Regulus, who accepted the consular dignity for that part of the day on which Cecina by a decree of the senate was degraded from it, which occasioned Regulus to be ridiculed by the people all his life after, as the consul of half a day.
The price for the dedication of a play was at length fixed, from five to ten guineas from the Revolution to the time of George I., when it rose to twenty ; but sometimes a bargain was to be struck when the author and the play were alike indifferent. Sometimes the party haggled about the price, or the statue while stepping into his niche would turn round on the author to assist his invention. A patron of Peter Mot- teux, dissatisfied , with Peter's colder temperament, actually composed the superlative dedication to himself, and completed the misery of the apparent author by subscribing it with his name. This circumstance was so notorious at the time, that it occasioned a satirical dialogue between Motteux and his patron Heveningham. The patron, hi his zeal to omit no possible distinction that might attach to him, had given one circumstance which no one but himself could have known.
PATRON.
I must confess I was to blame, That one particular to name ; The rest could never have been known / made the style so like thy own.
POET. I beg your pardon, Sir, for that.
PATRON.
Why d— e what would you be at? I writ below myself, you sot ! Avoiding figures, tropes, what not;
DEDICATIONS. 437
»
For fear I should my fancy raise Above the level of tliy plays !
"Warton notices the common practice, about the reign of Elizabeth, of an author's dedicating a work at once to a num- ber of the nobility. Chapman's Translation of Homer has sixteen sonnets addressed to lords and ladies. Henry Lock, in a collection of two hundred 'religious sonnets, mingles with such heavenly works the terrestrial composition of a number of sonnets to his noble patrons ; and not to multiply more instances, our great poet Spenser, in compliance with this disgraceful custom, or rather in obedience to the established tyranny of patronage, has prefixed to the Faery Queene fifteen of these adulatory pieces, which in every respect are the meanest of his compositions. At this period all men, as well as writers, looked up to the peers, as on beings on whose smiles or frowns all sublunary good and evil depended. At a much later period, Elkanah Settle sent copies round to the chief party, for he wrote for both parties, accompanied by ad- dresses to extort pecuniary presents in return. He had lat- terly one standard Elegy, and one JZpithalamium, printed off with blanks, which by ingeniously filling up with the printed names of any great person who died or was married, no one who was* going out of life or was entering into it could pass scot-free.
One of the most singular anecdotes respecting DEDICA- TIONS in English bibliography, is that of the Polyglot bible of Dr. Castell. Cromwell, much to his honour, patronized that great labour, and allowed the paper to be imported free of all duties, both of excise and custom. It was published under the protectorate, but many copies had not been disposed of ere Charles II. ascended the throne. Dr. Castell had dedicated the work gratefully to Oliver, by mentioning him with peculiar respect in the preface, but he wavered with Richard Cromwell. At the Restoration, he cancelled the last two leaves, and supplied their places with three others, which softened down the republican strains, and blotted
438 DEDICATIONS.
Oliver's name out of the book of life ! The differences in what are now called the republican and the loyal copies have amused the curious collectors ; and the former being very scarce, are most sought after. I Have seen " the republican. In the loyal copies the patrons of the work are mentioned, but their titles are essentially changed ; Serenissimus, lllustrissi- 7Hws, and Honoratissimus, were" epithets that dared not show themselves under the levelling influence of the great fanatic republican.
It is a curious literary folly, not of an individual but of the Spanish nation, who, when the laws of Castile were reduced into a code under the reign of Alfonsp X. surnamed the Wise, divided the work into seven volumes ; that they might be dedicated to the seven letters which formed the name of his majesty !
Never was a gigantic baby of adulation so crammed with the soft pap of Dedications as Cardinal Richelieu. French flattery even exceeded itself. — Among the vast number of very extraordinary dedications to this man, in which the Di- vinity itself is disrobed of its attributes to bestow them on this miserable creature of vanity, I suspect that even the following one is not the most blasphemous he received. "Who has seen your face without being seized by those softened terrors which made the prophet shudder when God showed the beams of his glory ! But as he whom they dared not to approach in the burning bush, and in the noise of thunders, appeared to them sometimes in the freshness of the zephyrs, so the softness of your august countenance dissipates at the same time, and changes into dew the small vapours which cover its majesty." One of these herd of dedicators, after the death of Richelieu, suppressed in a second edition his hyperbolical panegyric, and, as a punishment to himself, dedicated the work to Jesus Christ!
The same taste characterizes our own dedications in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. The great Dryden has carried it to an excessive height ; and nothing is more usual
PHILOSOPHICAL DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. 439
than to compare the patron with the Divinity — and at times a fair inference may be drawn that the former was more in the author's mind than God himself I A Welsh bishop made
an apology to James I. for preferring the Deity to hia
Majesty ! Dryden's extravagant dedications were the vices of the time more than of the man ; they were loaded with flattery, and no disgrace was annexed to such an exercise of men's talents ; the contest being who should go farthest in the most graceful way, and with the best turns of expression. An ingenious dedication was contrived by Sir Simon Degge, who dedicated " the Parson's Counsellor " to Woods, Bishop of Lichfield, with this intention. Degge highly complimented the Bishop on having most nobly restored the church, which had been demolished in the civil wars, and was rebuilt but left unfinished by Bishop Hacket. At the time he wrote the dedication, Woods had not turned a single stone, and it is said, that much against his will he did something, from having been so publicly reminded of it by this ironical dedication
PHILOSOPHICAL DESCRIPTIVE POEMS.
THE " BOTANIC GARDEN " once appeared to open a new route through the trodden groves of Parnassus. The poet, to a prodigality of IMAGINATION, united all the minute accu- racy of SCIENCE. It is a highly repolished labour, and was in the mind and in the hand of its author for twenty years be- fore its first publication. The excessive polish of the verse has appeared too high to be endured throughout a long composi- tion ; it is certain that, in poems of length, a versification, which is not too florid for lyrical composition, will weary by its brilliance. Darwin, inasmuch as a rich philosophical fancy constitutes a poet, possesses the entire art of poetry ; no one has carried the curious mechanism of verse and the artificial magic of poetical diction to a higher perfection. Hi? volrani'1
440 PHILOSOPHICAL DESCRIPTIVE POEMS.
head flamed with imagination, but his torpid heart slept un- awakened by passion. His standard of poetry is by much too limited ; he supposes that the essence of poetry is something of which a painter can make a picture. A picturesque verse was with him a verse completely poetical. But the language of the passions has no connection with this principle ; in truth, what he delineates as poetry itself, is but one of its provinces. Deceived by his illusive standard, he has com- posed a poem which is perpetually fancy, and never passion. Hence his processional splendour fatigues, and his descriptive ingenuity comes at length to be deficient in novelty, and all the miracles of art cannot supply us with one touch of nature.
Descriptive poetry should be relieved by a skilful inter- mixture of passages addressed to the heart as well as to the imagination : uniform description satiates ; and has been con- sidered as one of the inferior branches of poetry. Of this both Thomson and Goldsmith were sensible. In their beau- tiful descriptive poems they knew the art of animating the pictures of FANCY with the glow of SENTIMENT.
Whatever may be thought of the originality of Darwin's poem, it has been preceded by others of a congenial disposi- tion. Brookes's poem on " Universal Beauty," published about 1735, presents us with the very model of Darwin's versification : and the Latin poem, of De la Croix, in 1727, entitled " Connubia Florum" with his subject. There also exists a race of poems which . have hitherto been confined to one object, which the poet selected from the works of nature, to embellish with all the splendour of poetic imagination. I have collected some titles.
Perhaps it is Homer, in his battle of the Frogs and Mice, and Virgil in the poem on a Gnat, attributed to him, who have given birth to these lusory poems. The Jesuits, par- ticularly when they composed in Latin verse, were partial to such subjects. There is a little poem on Gold, by P. Le Fevre, distinguished for its elegance ; and Brumoy has given the Art of making Glass ; in which he has described
PHILOSOPHICAL DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. 441
its various productions with equal felicity and knowledge. P. Vaniere has written on Pigeons, Du Cerceau on Butter' Hies. The success which attended these productions pro- duced numerous imitations, of which several were favourably received. Vaniere composed three on the Grape, the Vin- tage, and the Kitchen Garden. Another poet selected Oranges for his theme ; others have chosen for their sub jects, Paper, Birds, and fresh-water Fish. Tarillon has in- flamed his imagination with gunpowder ; a milder genius, delighted with the oaten pipe, sang of Sheep ; one who was more pleased with another kind of pipe, has written on To- bacco ; and a droll genius wrote a poem on Asses. Two writers have formed didactic poems on the Art of Enigmas, and on Ships.
Others have written on moral subjects. Brumoy has painted the Passions, with a variety of imagery and vi- vacity of description ; P. Meyer has disserted on Anger ; Tarillon, like our Stillingfleet, on the Art of Conversation ; and a lively writer has discussed the subjects of Humour and Wit.
Giannetazzi, an Italian Jesuit, celebrated for his Latin poetry, has composed two volumes of poems on Fishing and Navigation. Fracastor has written delicately on an indel- icate subject, his Syphilis. Le Brun wrote a delectable poem on Sweetmeats; another writer on Mineral Waters, and a third on Printing. Vida pleases with his Silk-worms, and his Chess ;• Buchanan is ingenious with the Sphere. Malapert has aspired to catch the Winds; the philosophic Iluet amused himself with Salt, and again with Tea. The Gardens of Rapin is a finer poem than critics generally can write ; Quillet's Callipedia, or Art of getting handsome Children, has been translated by Howe ; and Du Fresnoy at length gratifies the connoisseur with his poem on Paint- ing, by the embellishments which his verses have received from the poetic diction of Mason, and the commentary of Reynolds.
442 PAMPHLETS.
This list might be augmented with a few of our own poets, and there still remain some virgin themes which only require to be touched by the hand of a true poet. In the " Memoirs of Trevoux," they observe, in their review of the poem on Gold, " That poems of this kind have the advantage of in- structing us very agreeably. All that has been most remark- ably said on the subject is united, compressed in a luminous order, and dressed in all the agreeable graces of poetry. Such writers have no little difficulties to encounter : the style and expression cost dear ; and still more to give to an arid topic an agreeable form, and to elevate the subject with- out falling into another extreme. — In the other kinds of poetry the matter assists and prompts genius ; here we must possess an abundance to display it."
PAMPHLETS.
MYLES DA vis's " ICON LIBELLORUM, or a Critical His- tory of Pamphlets," affords some curious information ; and as this is a pamphlet-reading age, I shall give a sketch of its contents.
The author observes : " From PAMPHLETS may be learned the genius of the age, the debates of the learned, the follies of the ignorant, the bevues of government, and the mistakes of the courtiers. Pamphlets furnish beau« with their airs, coquettes with their charms. Pamphlets are as modish ornaments to gentlewomen's toilets as to gentlemen's pockets ; they carry reputation of wit and learning to all that make them their companions ; the poor find their account in stall- keeping and in hawking them ; the rich find in them their shortest way to the secrets of church and state. There is scarce any class of people but may think themselves inter- ested enough to be concerned with what is published in pamphlets, either as to their private instruction, curiosity,
PAMPHLETS. 443
and reputation, or to the public advantage and credit ; with all which both ancient and modern pamphlets are too often over familiar and free. — In short, with pamphlets the book- sellers and stationers adorn the gaiety of shop-gazing. Hence accrues to grocers, apothecaries, and chandlers, good furni- ture, and supplies to necessary retreats and natural occasions. In pamphlets lawyers will meet with their chicanery, physi- cians with their cant, divines with their Shibboleth. Pam- phlets become more and more daily amusements to the curious, idle, and inquisitive ; pastime to gallants and co- quettes ; chat to the talkative ; catch-words to informers ; fuel to the envious; poison to the unfortunate; balsam to the wounded ; employ to the lazy ; and fabulous materials tc romancers and novelists."
This author sketches the origin and rise of pamphlets. He deduces them from the short writings published by the Jewish Rabbins ; various little pieces at the time of the first propagation of Christianity ; and notices a certain pamphlet which was pretended to have been the composition of Jesus Christ, thrown from heaven, and picked up by the archangel Michael at the entrance of Jerusalem. It was copied by the priest Leora, and sent about from priest to priest, till Popt, Zachary ventured to pronounce it a forgery. He notices several such extraordinary publications, many of which pro- duced as extraordinary effects.
He proceeds in noticing the first Arian and Popish pam- phlets, or rather libels, i. e. little books, as he distinguishes them. He relates a curious anecdote respecting the forgeries of the monks. Archbishop Usher detected in a manuscript of St. Patrick's life, pretended to have been found at Lou vain, as an original of a very remote date, several passages taken, with little alteration, from his own writings.
The following notice of our immortal Pope I cannot pass over : "Another class of pamphlets writ by Roman Catholics is that of Poems, written chiefly by a Pope himself, a gentle- man of that name. He passed always amongst most of his ao
444 PAMPHLETS.
quaintance for what is commonly called a Whig ; for it seems the Roman politics are divided as well as popish missionaries. However, one Esdras, an apothecary, as he qualifies himself, has published a piping-hot pamphlet against Mr. Pope's 'Rape of the Lock,' which he entitles 'A Key to the Lock,' wherewith he pretends to unlock nothing less than a plot car- ried on by Mr. Pope in that poem against the last and this present ministry and government."
He observes on Sermons, — "'Tis not much to be ques- tioned, but of all modern pamphlets what or wheresoever, the English stitched Sermons be the most edifying, useful, and instructive, yet they could not escape the critical Mr. Bayle's sarcasm. He says, * Republique des Lettres,' March, 1710, in this article London, i We see here sermons swarm daily from the press. Our eyes only behold manna : are you de- sirous of knowing the reason ? It is, that the ministers being allowed to read their sermons in the pulpit, buy all they meet with, and take no other trouble than to read them, and thus pass for very able scholars at a very cheap rate ! ' '
He now begins more directly the history of pamphlets, which he branches out from four different etymologies. He says, " However foreign the word Pamphlet may appear, it is a genuine English word, rarely known or adopted in any other language : its pedigree cannot well be traced higher than the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. In its first state wretched must have been its appearance, since the great linguist John Minshew, in his * Guide into Tongues,' printed in 1617, gives it the most miserable character of which any libel can be capable. Mr. Minshew says (and his words were quoted by Lord Chief Justice Holt,) 'A PAM- PHLET, that is Opusculum Stolidorum, the diminutive per- formance of fools ; from ndv, all, and Tr^flw, I Jill, to wit, all places. According to the vulgar saying, all things are full of fools, or foolish things ; for such multitudes of pamphlets, unworthy of the very names of libels, being more vile than common shores and the filth of beggars, and being flying
PAMPHLETS. 445
papers daubed over and besmeared with the foams of drunk- ards, are tossed far and near into the mouths and hands of scoundrels ; neither will the sham oracles of Apollo be es- teemed so mercenary as a Pamphlet.' "
Those who will have the word to be derived from PAM, the famous knave of Loo, do not differ much from Minshew ; for the derivation of the word Pam is in all probability from rtav, all ; or the whole or the chief of the game.
Under this first etymological notion of Pamphlets may be comprehended the vulgar stories of the Nine Worthies of the World, of the Seven Champions of Christendom, Tom Thumb, Valentine and Orson, &c., as also most of apocryphal lucubrations. The greatest collection of this first sort of Pam- phlets are the Rabbinic traditions in the Talmud, consisting of fourteen volumes in folio, and the Popish legends of the Lives of the Saints, which, though not finished, form fifty folio volumes, all which tracts were originally in pamphlet forms.
^ The second idea of the radix of the word Pamphlet is, that it takes its derivations from ndv, all, and ^Aew, / love, signify- ing a thing beloved by all ; for a pamphlet being of a small portable bulk, and of no great price, is adapted to every one's understanding and reading. In this class may be placed all stitched books on serious subjects, the best of which fugitive pieces have been generally preserved, and even reprinted in collections, of some tracts, miscellanies, sermons, poems, &c. ; and, on the contrary, bulky volumes have been reduced, for the convenience of the public, into the familiar shapes of stitched pamphlets. Both these methods have been thus censured by the majority of the lower house of convocation, 1711. These abuses are thus represented: "They have republished, and collected into volumes, pieces written long ago on the side of infidelity. They have reprinted together, in the most contracted manner, many loose and licentious pieces, in order to their being purchased more cheaply, and dispersed more easily."
446 PAMPHLETS.
The third original interpretation of the word Pamphlet may be that of the learned Dr. Skinner, in his Etymoloyicon Lingua Anglican^ that it is derived from the Belgic word Pompier, signifying a little paper, or libel. To this third set of Pamphlets may be reduced all sorts of printed single' sheets, or half sheets, or any other quantity of single paper prints, such as Declarations, Remonstrances, Proclamations, Edicts, Orders, Injunctions, Memorials, Addresses, News- papers, &c.
The fourth radical signification of the word Pamphlet is that homogeneal acceptation of it, viz : as it imports any little book, or small volume whatever, whether stitched or bound, whether good or bad, whether serious or ludicrous. The only proper Latin term for a Pamphlet is Libellus, or little book. This word indeed signifies in English an abusive paper or little book, and is generally taken in the worst sense.
After all this display of curious literature, the reader may smile at the guesses of Etymologists ; particularly when he is reminded that the derivation of Pamphlet is drawn from quite another meaning to any of the present, by Johnson, which I shall give for his immediate gratification.
PAMPHLET, [par un filet, Fr. Whence this word is writ- ten anciently, and by Caxton, paunflet,~] a small book ; prop- erly a book sold unbound, and only stitched.
The French have borrowed the word Pamphlet from us, and have the goodness of not disfiguring its orthography. Roast Beef is also in the same predicament. I conclude that Pamphlets and Roast Beef have therefore their origin in our country.
Pinkerton favoured me with the following curious notice concerning pamphlets : —
" Of the etymon of pamphlet I know nothing ; but that the word is far more ancient than is commonly believed, take the following proof from the celebrated Philobiblon, ascribed to Richard de Buri, bishop of Durham, but written by Robert Holkot, at his desire, as Fabricius says, about the year
PAMPHLETS. 447
1344 (Fabr. Bibl. Medii -32 vi, voL L) ; it is in the eighth chapter.
" Sed, revera, libros non libras maluimus ; codicesque plus dileximus quam florenos : ac PANFLETOS exiguos phaleratis prsetulimus palescedis."
" But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds ; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer* small pam* phlets to war horses."
This word is as old as Lydgate's tune : among his works, quoted by Warton, is a poem " translated from a pamfletc in Frenshe."
END OP VOL. I.
CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.
VOLUME II.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II
PAQB
LITTLE BOOKS . ' . . , . . . . .9
A CATHOLIC'S REFUTATION 11
THE GOOD ADVICE OF AN OLD LITERARY SINNER . .12
MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIE8 . . 15
LOVE AND FOLLY, AN ANCIENT MORALITY • . • .25
RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTE8 . . V >.*';. 4 . . 27 "CRITICAL SAGACITY," AND "HAPPY CONJECTURE;" OR,
BENTLEY'S MILTON . . .*,*f-v* • . .35
A JANSENIST DICTIONARY $»***,£»<> WittW «*U . . 88
MANUSCRIPTS AND BOOKS . . . •JCiiftlcftA*?' :. ;-U*4J • 41
THE TURKISH SPY . . #•> *-*1ffH*l . . . 43 SPENSER, JONSON, AND SHAKSPEARB . . . .46
BEN JONSON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH • ' «Y«Mfibl-! 48
ARIOSTO AND TASSO . 54
BAYLE . -v». / -I^&M^ '<*<*•& *.***#&> . • . 60
CERVANTES 63
MAGLIABECHI 64
ABR1DGERS 67
PROFESSORS OF PLAGIARISM AND OBSCURITY . . 70
LITERARY DUTCH 73
THE PRODUCTIONS OF THE MIND NOT 8EIZABLE BY CREDI- TORS ... .- ,-*H«y:--U . 76 CRITICS . . . . *A.-«r . . . . .77 ANECDOTES OF CENSURED AUTHORS « . *O»MO:U:3 . 79
VIRGINITY . 83
A GLANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY *•:.'.•• . 85
POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS . i/.i*:.l» . 89
BCARRON . . . . '< -.U i :'..'*-;..'««•:. . 94
vi CONTENTS.
FAOB
PETER CORNEILLE 102
POETS . • . • 107
ROMANCES ...••••••• 119
THE ASTREA • • . . 130
POETS LAUREAT ......... 134
ANGELO POLITIAN . 137
ORIGINAL LETTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH . . . . 141
ANNE BULLEN . . .^ ? • ' ^i*1'' " .* ' i . 142
JAMES THE FIRST ........ 143
GENERAL MONK AND HIS WIFE 150
PHILIP AND MARY 151
CHARLES THE FIRST .....*. yf»>«*«f 153 DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM . . ^Wt'f W*i3ttJ» • • 157
THE DEATH OF CHARLES IX. !,»•** ,ff» • • • 160
ROYAL PROMOTIONS «,., t vet iff,**'* ,**| ',fif*M • • 163
NOBILITY. f . . . . . *>. ,f j,u f • • I65
MODES OF SALUTATION, AND AMICABLE CEREMONIES OB- SERVED IN VARIOUS NATIONS . •r»&**.ft ,»/?»!•• 165 SINGULARITIES OF WAR,. . . ';«>l.i;»> Vv««M-iW*'; 17°
FIRE AND THE ORIGIN OF FIRE- WORKS . , ,,|t . . 1 71
THE BIBLE PROHIBITED .AND IMPROVED ,*.£ . »« . 175 ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING. . u^ii j.. 180
ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS . • ,.»,»_ t,^. 188
THE EARLY DRAMA . . ../:/.. (»# £»T.r.44| cVt*W!/iii- 198
THE MARRIAGE OF THE ARTS . . •••;*«*, i^Tr 203
A CONTRIVANCE IN DRAMATIC DIALOGUE . . . 206
THE COMEDY OF A MADMAN 208
SOLITUDE . • 211
LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS 216
ANECDOTES OF ABSTRACTION OF MIND . . #)* . 221
RICHARDSON * »rj»t *( t*k 224
INFLUENCE OF A NAME . . vi «l^c;*<k»rurj«>o?l-!* 228 THE JEWS OF YORK . . . . ... 240
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEAS N. . . . • 245
ON THE CUSTOM OF KISSING HANDS i ***** ^t»«t< • 247
POPES . . . 249
LITERARY COMPOSITION . % V>*J»\»SW*l«<rt *« • 251
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES .a W,; . • 260
EXPLANATION OF THE FAC-SIMILE . . 280
CONTENTS. vij
PAOB
LITERARY FASHIONS 283
THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS .... 287
EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES ....... 802
MASSINGER, MILTON, AND THE ITALIAN THEATRE . 311 SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE . . 315
INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, FRUITS, ETC. . 324 USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY . . . 332
CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE 346
ELIZABETH AND HER PARLIAMENT 355
ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, THE SON OF JAMES I.,
WHEN A CHILD « ". 364
THE DIARY OF A MASTER OF THE CEREMONIES . . 374
DIARIES — MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL . . 888
LICENSERS OF THE PRESS . 399
OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES . . . .415
ORTHOGRAPHY OF PROPER NAMES . • . • .423
NAMES OF OUR STREETS 426
SECRET HISTORY OF EDWARD VERB, EARL OP OXFORD 430 ANCIENT COOKERY AND COOKS . . . . . . 433
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA .... 444
RELIQUIAE GETHINIAN^S . . . • • . .461
KOBINSON CRUSOE 4C5
CURIOSITIES OF UTERATUKE.
LITTLE BOOKS.
MTLES DA VIES has given an opinion of the advantages of Little Books, with some humour.
" The smallness of the size of a book was always its own commendation ; as, on the contrary, the largeness of a book is its own disadvantage, as well as terror of learning. In short, a big book is a scare-crow to the head and pocket of the author, student, buyer, and seller, as well as a harbour of ignorance ; hence the inaccessible masteries of the in- expugnable ignorance and superstition of the ancient hea- thens, degenerate Jews, and of the popish scholasters and canonists, entrenched under the frightful bulk of huge, vast, and innumerable volumes ; such as the great folio that the Jewish rabbins fancied in a dream was given by the angel Baziel to his pupil Adam, containing all the celestial sciences. And the volumes writ by Zoroaster, entitled The Similitude, which is said to have taken up no more space than 1260 hides of cattle : as also the 25,000, or, as some say, 36,000 volumes, besides 525 lesser MSS. of his. The grossness and multitude of Aristotle and Varro's books were both a preju- dice to the authors, and an hinderance to learning, and an occasion of the greatest part of them being lost. The large- ness of Plutarch's treatises is a great cause of his being
10 LITTLE BOOKS.
neglected, while Longinus and Epictetus, in their pamphlet Remains, are every one's companions. Origen's 6000 vol- umes (as Epiphanius will have it) were not only the occasion of his venting more numerous errors, but also for the most part of their perdition. — Were it not for Euclid's Elements, Hippocrates's Aphorisms, Justinian's Institutes, and Little- ton's Tenures, hi small pamphlet volumes, young mathema- ticians, freshwater physicians, civilian novices, and les ap- prentices en la ley cF Angleterre, would be at a loss and stand, and total disencouragement. One of the greatest advantages the Dispensary has over King Arthur is its pamphlet size. So Boileau's Lutrin, and his other pamphlet poems, in respect of Perrault's and Chapelain's St. Paulin and la Pucelle. These seem to pay a deference to the reader's quick and great understanding ; those to mistrust his capacity, and to confine his time as well as his intellect"
Notwithstanding so much may be alleged in favour of books of a small size, yet the scholars of a former age regarded them with contempt. Scaliger, says Baillet, cavils with Drusius for the smallness of his books ; and one of the great printers of the time (Moret, the successor of Plantin) com- plaining to the learned Puteanus, who was considered as the rival of Lipsius, that his books were too small for sale, and that purchasers turned away, frightened at their diminutive size ; Puteanus referred him to Plutarch, whose works con- sist of small treatises ; but the printer took fire at the com- parison, and turned him out of his shop, for his vanity at pretending that he wrote in any manner like Plutarch ! a specimen this of the politeness and reverence of the early printers for their learned authors ; Jurieu reproaches Cal- omies that he is a great author of little books !
At least, if a man is the author only of little books, he will escape the sarcastic observation of Cicero on a voluminous writer — that " his body might be burned with his writings," of which we have had several, eminent for the worthlessnesa and magnitude of then* labours.
A CATHOLIC'S REFUTATION. H
It was the literary humour of a certain Maecenas, who cheered the lustre of his patronage with the steams of a good dinner, to place his guests according to the size and thickness of the books they had printed. At the head of the table sat those who had published in folio, foliissimo ; next the authors in quarto ; then those in octavo. At that table Blackmore would have had the precedence of Gray. Addison, who found this anecdote in one of the Anas, has seized this idea, and applied it with his felicity of humour in No. 529 of the Spectator.
Montaigne's Works have been called by a Cardinal, " The Breviary of Idlers." It is therefore the book for many men. Francis Osborne has a ludicrous image in fr vour of such opuscula. "Huge volumes, like the ox roasted whole at Bartholomew fair, may proclaim plenty of labour, but afford less of what is delicate, savoury, and well-concocted, than
SMALLER PIECES."
In the list of titles of minor works, which Aulus Gellius has preserved, the lightness and beauty of such compositions are charmingly expressed. Among these we find — a Basket of Flowers ; an Embroidered Mantle ; and a Variegated Meadow.
A CATHOLIC'S REFUTATION.
IN a religious book published by a fellow of the Society of Jesus, entitled, " The Faith of a Catholic," the author ex- amines what concerns the incredulous Jews and other in- fidels. He would show that Jesus Christ, author of the religion which bears his name, did not impose on or deceive the Apostles whom he taught ; that the Apostles who preached it did not deceive those who were converted ; and that those who were converted did not deceive us. In prov- ing these three not difficult propositions, he says, he confounds " the Atheist, who does not believe in God ; the Pagan, who
12 THE GOOD ADVICE OF AN OLD LITERARY SINNER.
adores several ; the Deist, who believes in one God, but who rejects a particular Providence ; the Freethinker, who pre- sumes to serve God according to his fancy, without being attached to any religion ; the Philosopher, who takes reason and not revelation for the rule of his belief; the Gentile, who, never having regarded the Jewish people as a chosen nation, does not believe God promised them a Messiah ; and finally, the Jew, who refuses to adore the Messiah in the person of Christ."
I have given this sketch, as it serves for a singular Cata- logue of Heretics.
It is rather singular that so late as in the year 1765, a work should have appeared in Paris, which bears the title I translate, " The Christian Religion proved by a single fact ; or a dissertation in which is shown that those Catholics of whom Huneric, King of the Vandals, cut the tongues, spoke miraculously all the remainder of their days ; from whence is deduced the consequences of this miracle against the Arians, the Socinians, and the Deists, and particularly against the author of Emilius, by solving their difficulties." It bears this Epigraph, " Ecce Ego admirationem faciam populo huic, miraculo grandi et stupendo." There needs no further account of this book than the title.
THE GOOD ADVICE OF AN OLD LITERARY SINNER.
AUTHORS of moderate capacity have unceasingly harassed the public; and have at length been remembered only by the number of wretched volumes their unhappy industry has produced. Such an author was the Abbe de Marolles, other- wise a most estimable and ingenious man, and the patriarch of print-collectors.
This Abbe* was a most egregious scribbler; and so tor- mented with violent fits of printing, that he even printed lists
THE GOOD ADVICE OF AN OLD LITERARY SINNER. 13
and catalogues of his friends. I have even seen at the end of one of his works a list of names of those persons who had given him books. He printed his works at his own expense, as the booksellers had unanimously decreed this. Menage used to say of his works, " The reason why I esteem the productions of the Abbe" is, for the singular neatness of their bindings ; he embellishes them so beautifully, that the eye finds pleasure hi them." On a book of his versions of the Ep- igrams of Martial, this critic wrote, Epigrams against Martial. Latterly, for want of employment, our Abbe" began a trans- lation of the Bible; but having inserted the notes of the visionary Isaac de la Peyrere, the work was burnt by order of the ecclesiastical court. He was also an abundant writer in verse, and exultingly told a poet,vthat his verses cost him little: "They cost you what they are worth," replied the sarcastic critic. De Marolles in his Memoirs bitterly com- plains of the injustice done to him by his contemporaries ; and says, that in spite of the little favour shown to him by the public, he has nevertheless published, by an accurate calculation, one hundred and thirty-three thousand one hun- dred and twenty-four verses ! Yet this was not the heaviest of his literary sins. He is a proof that a translator may perfectly understand the language of his original, and yet produce an unreadable translation.
In the early part of his life this unlucky author had not been without ambition ; it was only when disappointed in his political projects that he resolved to devote himself to litera- ture. As he was incapable of attempting original composi- tion, he became known by his detestable versions. He wrote above eighty volumes, which have never found favour in the eyes of the critics ; yet his translations are not without their use, though they never retain by any chance a single passage of the spirit of their originals.
The most remarkable anecdote respecting these translations is, that whenever this honest translator came to a difficult passage, he wrote in the margin, " I have not translated this
14 THE GOOD ADVICE OF AN OLD LITERARY SINNER.
passage, because it is very difficult, and in truth I could never understand it." He persisted to the last in his uninterrupted amusement of printing books ; and his readers having long ceased, he was compelled to present them to his friends, who, probably, were not his readers. After a literary existence of forty years, he gave the public a work not destitute of entertainment in his own Memoirs, which he dedicated to his relations and all his illustrious friends. The singular postscript to his Epistle Dedicatory contains excellent advice for authors.
" I have omitted to tell you, that I do not advise any one of my relatives or friends to apply himself as I have done to study, and particularly to the composition of books, if he thinks that will add to his fame or fortune. I am persuaded that of all persons in the kingdom, none are more neglected than those who devote themselves entirely to literature. The small number of successful persons in that class (at present I do not recollect more than two or three) should not impose on one's understanding, nor any consequences from them be drawn in favour of others. I know how it is by my own ex- perience, and by that of several amongst you, as well as by many who are now no more, and with whom I was acquainted. Believe me, gentlemen ! to pretend to the favours of fortune it is only necessary to render one's self useful, and to be sup- ple and obsequious to those who are in possession of credit and authority ; to be handsome in one's person ; to adulate the powerful ; to smile, while you suffer from them every kind of ridicule and contempt whenever they shall do you the honour to amuse themselves with you; never to be frightened at a thousand obstacles which may be opposed to one ; have a face of brass and a heart of stone ; insult worthy men who are persecuted ; rarely venture to speak the truth , appear devout, with every nice scruple of religion, while at the same time every duty must be abandoned when it clashes with your interest. After these any other accomplishment is indeed superfluous."
MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES. 15
MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES.
THE origin of the theatrical representations of the ancients has been traced back to a Grecian stroller singing in a cart to the honour of Bacchus. Our European exhibitions, per- haps as rude in their commencement, were likewise for a long time devoted to pious purposes, under the titles of Mys- teries and Moralities. Of these primeval compositions of the drama of modern Europe, I have collected some anecdotes and some specimens.
It appears that pilgrims introduced these devout specta- cles. Those who returned from the Holy Land or other consecrated places composed canticles of their travels, and amused their religious fancies by interweaving scenes of which Christ, the Apostles, and other objects of devotion, served as the themes. Menestrier informs us that these pil- grims travelled in troops, and stood in the public streets, where they recited their poems, with their staff in hand ; while their chaplets and cloaks, covered with shells and im- ages of various colours formed a picturesque exhibition, which at length excited the piety of the citizens to erect oc- casionally a stage on an extensive spot of ground. These spectacles served as the amusements and instruction of the people. So attractive were these gross exhibitions in the middle ages, that they formed one of the principal ornaments of the reception of princes on their public entrances.
When the Mysteries were performed at a more improved period, the actors were distinguished characters, and frequent- ly consisted of the ecclesiastics of the neighbouring villages, who incorporated themselves under the title of Confreres de la Passion. Their productions were divided, not into acts, but into different days of performance, and they were per- formed in the open plain. This was at least conformable to the critical precept of that mad knight whose opinion is no- ticed by Pope. It appears by a MS. in the Harleian library,
16 MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES.
that they were thought to contribute so much to the informa- tion and instruction of the people, that one of the Popea granted a pardon of one thousand days to every person who resorted peaceably to the plays performed in the Whitsun week at Chester, beginning with the " Creation," and ending with the " General Judgment." These were performed at the expense of the different corporations of that city, and the reader may smile at the ludicrous combinations. " The Crea- tion " was performed by the Drapers ; the " Deluge " by the Dyers ; "Abraham, Melchisedech, and Lot," by the Barbers ; " The Purification " by the Blacksmiths ; " The Last Supper" by the Bakers ; the " Resurrection " by the Skinners ; and the "Ascension " by the Tailors. In these pieces the actors represented the person of the Almighty without being sensi- ble of the gross impiety. So unskilful were they in this in- fancy of the theatrical art, that very serious consequences were produced by their ridiculous blunders and ill-managed machinery. The following singular anecdotes are preserved, concerning a Mystery which took up several days in the per- formance.
" In the year 1437, when Conrad Bayer, bishop of Metz, caused the Mystery of ' The Passion ' to be represented on the plain of Veximel near that city, God was an old gentle- man, named Mr. Nicholas Neufchatel, of Touraine, curate of Saint Victory, of Metz, and who was very near expiring on the cross had he not been timely assisted. He was so en- feebled, that it was agreed another priest should be placed on the cross the next day, to finish the representation of the pei- eon crucified, and which was done ; at the same time Mr. Nicholas undertook to perform 'The Resurrection,' which being a less difficult task, he did it admirably well." — Another priest, whose name was Mr. John de Nicey, curate of Met- range, personated Judas, and he had like to have been stifled while he hung on the tree, for his neck slipped ; this being at length luckily perceived, he was quickly cut down and recovered.
MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES. 17
John Bouchet, in his "Annales d'Aquitaine," a work which contains many curious circumstances of the times, written with tha* agreeable simplicity which characterizes the old writers, informs us, that in 1486 he saw played and exhibited hi Mysteries by persons of Poitiers, " The Nativity, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ," in great triumph and splendour ; there were assembled on this occasion most of the ladies and gentlemen of the neighbouring counties.
We will now examine the Mysteries themselves. I prefer for this purpose to give a specimen from the French, which are livelier than our own. It is necessary to premise to the reader, that my versions being in prose will probably lose much of that quaint expression and vulgar naivete which prevail through the originals, written in octo-syllabic verses.
One of these Mysteries has for its subject the election of an apostle to supply the place of the traitor Judas. A dignity so awful is conferred in the meanest manner ; it is done by drawing straws, of which he who gets the longest becomes the apostle. Louis Chocquet was a favourite composer of these religious performances : when he attempts the pathetic, he has constantly recourse to devils ; but, as these characters are sustained with little propriety, his pathos succeeds in raising a laugh. In the following dialogue Annas and Caia- phas are introduced conversing about St. Peter and St. John: —
ANNAS.
I remember them once very honest people. They have often brought their fish to my house to sell.
CAIAFHAS.
Is this true?
i
ANNAS.
By God, it is true; my servants remember them very well. To live more at their ease they have left off business ; or perhaps they were in want of customers. Since that time they have followed Jesus, that wicked heretic, who has taught them magic; the fellow understands necromancy, and is the greatest magician alive, as far as Rome itself.
VOL. II. 2
18 MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES.
St. John, attacked by the satellites of Domitian, amongst whom the author has placed Longinus and Patroclus, gives regular answers to their insulting interrogatories. Some of these I shall transcribe ; but leave to the reader's conjectures the replies of the Saint, which are not difficult to anticipate.
PARTHEMIA.
You tell us strange things, to say there is but one God in three persons.
LONGINUS.
Is it any where said that we must believe your old prophets (with whom your memory seems overburdened) to be more perfect than our gods ?
PATROCLUS.
You must be very cunning to* maintain impossibilities. Now listen to me : Is it possible that a virgin can bring forth a child without ceasing to be a virgin ?
DOMITIAN.
Will you not change these foolish sentiments ? Would you pervert us ? Will you not convert yourself? Lords ! you perceive now very clearly what an obstinate fellow this is ! Therefore let him be stripped and put into a great caldron of boiling oU. Let him die at the Lathi Gate.
PESART.
The great devil of hell fetch me if I don't Latinize him well. Never •hall they hear at the Latin Gate any one sing so well as he shall sing
TORNEAT7.
I dare venture to say he won't complain of being frozen
PATROCLUS.
Frita, nm quick; bring wood and coals, and make the caldron ready.
FRITA.
I promise him, if he has the gout or the itch, he will soon get rid of them.
St. John dies a perfect martyr, resigned to the boiling oil and gross jests of Patroclus and Longinus. One is astonished in the present tunes at the excessive absurdity, and indeed blasphemy, which the writers of these Moralities permitted themselves, and, what is more extraordinary, were permitted by an audience consisting of a whole town. An extract from
MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES. 19
the " Mystery of St. Dennis " is in the Duke de la Valliere's " Bibliotheque du Theatre Fra^ois depuis son Origiue : Dresde, 1768."
The emperor Domitian, irritated against the Christians, persecutes them, and thus addresses one of his courtiers : —
•
Seigneurs Remains, j'ai enteudu Que d'un crucifix d'un pendu, On fait un Dieu par notre empire, Sans ce qu'on le nous daigne dire.
Roman lords, I understand
That of a crucified hanged man
They make a God in our kingdom,
Without even deigning to ask our permission.
He then orders an officer to seize on Dennis in France. When this officer arrives at Paris, the inhabitants acquaint him of the rapid and grotesque progress o£ this future saint :—
Sire, il preche un Dieu a Paris Qui fait tout les mouls et les vauls. II va a cheval sans chevauls. II fait et defait tout ensemble, n vit, il meurt, il sue, il tremble. II pleure, il rit, il veille, et dort. II est jeune et vieux, foible et fort. II fait d'un coq une poulette. H joue des arts de roulette, Ou je ne s^ais que ce peut £tre.
Sir, he preaches a God at Paris
Who has made mountain and valley.
He goes a horseback without horses.
He does and undoes at once.
He lives, he dies, he sweats, he trembles.
He weeps, he laughs, he wakes, and sleeps.
He is young and old, weak and strong,
He turns a cock into a hen.
He knows how to conjure with cup and ball,
Or I do not know who this can be.
Another of these admirers says, evidently alluding to the rite of baptism, —
20 MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES.
Sire, oyez que fait ce fol prestre : II prend de 1'yaue en une escuele, Et gete aux gens sur le cervele, Et dit que partants sont sauve's !
Sir, hear what this mad priest doeai He takes water out of a ladle, And, throwing it at people's heads, He says that when they depart they are saved !
This piece then proceeds to entertain the spectators with the tortures of St. Dennis, and at length, when more than dead, they mercifully behead him : the Saint, after his decap- itation, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm, and walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom.
It is justly observed by Bayle on these wretched represen- tations, that while they prohibited the people from meditating on the sacred history in the book which contains it in all its purity and truth, they permitted them to see it on the theatre sullied with a thousand gross inventions, which were ex- pressed in the most vulgar manner and in a farcical style. Warton, with his usual elegance, observes, " To those who are accustomed to contemplate the great picture of human follies which the unpolished ages of Europe hold up to our view, it will not appear surprising that the people who were forbidden to read the events of the sacred history in the Bible, in which they are faithfully and beautifully related, should at the same tune be permitted to see them repre sented on the stage disgraced with the grossest improprieties, corrupted with inventions and additions of the most ridiculous kind, sullied with impurities, and expressed in the language and gesticulations of the lowest farce." Elsewhere he philo- sophically observes that, however, they had their use, " not only teaching the great truths of scripture to men who could not read the Bible, but in abolishing the barbarous attach- ment to military games and the bloody contentions of the tournament, which had so long prevailed as the sole species of popular amusement. Rude, and even ridiculous as they were, they softened the manners of the people, by diverting
MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES. 21
the public attention to spectacles in which the mind was con- cerned, and by creating a regard for other arts than those of bodily strength and savage valour."
Mysteries are to be distinguished from Moralities and Farces, and Softies. Moralities are dialogues where the interlocutors represented feigned or allegorical personages. farces were more exactly what their title indicates — ob- scene, gross, and dissolute representations, where both the actions and words are alike reprehensible.
The Sotties were more farcical than farce, and frequently had the licentiousness of pasquinades. I shall give an inge- nious specimen of one of the MORALITIES. This Morality is entitled, " The Condemnation of Feasts, to the Praise of Diet and Sobriety for the Benefit of the Human Body."
The perils of gormandizing form the present subject. Towards the close is a trial between Feasting and Supper. They are summoned before Experience, the Lord Chief Justice ! Feasting and Supper are accused of having mur- dered four persons by force of gorging them. Experience condemns Feasting to the gallows ; and his executioner is Diet. Feasting asks for a father-confessor, and makes a public confession of so many crimes, such numerous con- vulsions, apoplexies, head-aches, and stomach-qualms, &c., which he has occasioned, that his executioner Diet in a rage stops his mouth, puts the cord about his neck, and strangles him. Supper is only condemned to load his hands with a certain quantity of lead, to hinder him from putting too many dishes on table : hejs also bound over to remain at the dis- tance of six hours' walking from Dinner upon pain of death. Supper felicitates himself on his escape, and swears to ob- serve the mitigated sentence.
The MORALITIES were allegorical dramas, whose tedious- ness seems to have delighted a barbarous people not yet accustomed to perceive that what was obvious might be omitted to great advantage : like children, every thing must be told in such an age ; their own unexercised imagination cannot supply any thing.
22 MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES.
Of the FARCES the licentiousness is extreme, but their pleasantry and their humour are not contemptible. The ** Village Lawyer," which is never exhibited on our stage without producing the broadest mirth, originates among these ancient drolleries. The humorous incident of the shepherd, who having stolen his master's sheep, is advised by his law- yer only to reply to his judge by mimicking the bleating of a sheep, and when the lawyer in return claims his fee, pays him by no other coin, is discovered in these ancient farces. Brueys got up the ancient farce of the "Patelin " in 1702, and we borrowed it from him.
They had another species of drama still broader than Farce, and more strongly featured by the grossness, the severity, and personality of satire : — these were called Softies, of which the following one I find in the Duke de la Valliere's *' Bibliotheque du Theatre Fra^ois."
The actors come on the stage with their fools'-caps each wanting the right ear, and begin with stringing satirical proverbs, till, after drinking freely, they discover that their fools'-caps want the right ear. They call on their old grand- mother Sottie, (or Folly,) who advises them to take up some trade. She introduces this progeny of her fools to the World, who takes them into his service. The World tries their skill, and is much displeased with their work. The Cobbler- fool pinches his feet by making the shoes too small; the Tailor-fool hangs his coat too loose or too tight about him ; the Priest-fool says his masses either too short or too tedious. They all agree that the World does not know what he wants, and must be sick, and prevail upon him to consult a phy- sician. The World obligingly sends what is required to a Urine-doctor, who instantly pronounces that " the World is as mad as a March hare ! " He comes to visit his patient, and puts a great many questions on his unhappy state. The World replies, " that what most troubles his head is the idea of a new deluge by fire, which must one day consume him to a powder ; " on which the physician gives this answer :—
MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES. 25
Et te troubles-tu pour cela? Monde, tu ne te troubles pas De voir ce larrons attrapars Vendre et acheter benefices; Les enfans en bras des Nourices Estre Abb 4s, Eveques, Prieurs, Chevaucher tres bien les deux soeurs, Tuer les gens pour leurs plaisirs, Jouer le leur, 1'autrui saisir, Donner aux flatteurs audience, Faire la guerre a toute outrance Pour un rien entre les chrestiens !
And you really trouble yourself about this t
Oh, World ! you do not trouble yourself about
Seeing those impudent rascals
Selling and buying livings ;
Children in the arms of their nurses .
Made Abbots, Bishops, and Priors,
Intriguing with girls,
Killing people for their pleasures,
Minding their own interests, and seizing on
what belongs to another, Lending their ears to flatterers, Making war, exterminating war, For a bubble, among Christians !
The World takes leave of his physician, but retains his advice ; and to cure his fits of melancholy gives himself up entirely to the direction of his fools. In a word, the World dresses himself in the coat and cap of Folly, and he becomes as gay and ridiculous as the rest of the fools.
This Sottie was represented in the year 1524.
Such was the rage for Mysteries, that Rene d'Anjou, king of Naples and Sicily, and Count of Provenfe, had them magnificently represented and made them a serious concern. Being in Proven9e, and having received letters from his son the Prince of Calabria, who asked him for an immediate aid of men, he replied, that " he had a very different matter in hand, for he was fully employed in settling the order of a Mystery — in honour of God"
Strutt, in his " Manners and Customs of the English," has
24 MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES;
given a description of the stage in England when Mysteries were the only theatrical performances. Vol. iii. p. 130.
" In the early da,wn of literature, and when the sacred Mysteries were the only theatrical performances, what is now called the stage did then consist of three several platforms, or stages raised one above another. On the uppermost sat the Pater Ccelestis, surrounded with his Angels ; on the second appeared the Holy Saints, and glorified men ; and the last and lowest was occupied by mere men who had not yet passed from this transitory life to the regions of eternity. On one side of this lowest platform was the resemblance of a dark pitchy cavern, from whence issued appearance of fire and flames ; and, when it was necessary, the audience were treated with hideous yellings and noises as imitative of the bowlings and cries of the wretched souls tormented by the relentless demons. From this yawning cave the devils themselves constantly ascended to delight and to instruct the spectators : — to delight, because they were usually the greatest jesters and buffoons that then appeared ; and to in- struct, for that they treated the wretched mortals who were delivered to them with the utmost cruelty, warning thereby all men carefully to avoid the falling into the clutches of such hardened and remorseless spirits." An anecdote relating to an English Mystery presents a curious specimen of the man- ners of our country, which then could admit of such a repre- sentation ; the simplicity, if not the libertinism, of the age was great. A play was acted in one of the principal cities of England, under the direction of the trading companies of that city, before a numerous assembly of both sexes, wherein Adam and Eve appeared on the stage entirely naked, per- formed their whole part in the representation of Eden, to the serpent's temptation, to the eating of the forbidden fruit, the perceiving of, and conversing about, their nakedness, and to the supplying of fig-leaves to cover it. Warton observes they had the authority of scripture for such a representation, and they gave matters just as they found them in the third
LOVE AND FOLLY, AN ANCIENT MORALITY. 25
chapter of Genesis. The following article will afford the reader a specimen of an Elegant Morality.
LOVE AND FOLLY, AN ANCIENT MORALITY.
ONE of the most elegant Moralities was composed by Louise L'Abe*, the Aspasia of Lyons in 1550, adored by her contemporaries. With no extraordinary beauty, she howevei displayed the fascination of classical learning, and a vein of vernacular poetry refined and fanciful. To accomplishments so various she added the singular one of distinguishing her- self by a military spirit, and was nick-named Captain Louise. She was a fine rider and a fine lutanist. She presided in the assemblies of persons of literature and distinction. Mar- ried to a rope-manufacturer, she was called La belle Cordiere, and her name is still perpetuated by that of the street she lived in. Her anagram was Belle a Soy.— But she was belle also for others. Her Morals in one point were not correct, but her taste was never gross : the ashes of her perishable graces may preserve themselves sacred from our severity; but the productions of her genius may still delight
Her Morality, entitled " Debat de Folie et d' Amour — the Contest of Love and Folly" is divided into five parts, and contains six mythological or allegorical personages. This division resembles our five acts, which, soon after the publica- tion of this Morality, became generally practised.
In the first part, Love and Folly arrive at the same moment at the gate of Jupiter's palace, to join a festival to which he had invited the Gods. Fotty observing Love just going to step in at the hall, pushes him aside and enters first. Love is enraged, but Folly insists on her precedency. Love, per- ceiving there was no reasoning with Folly, bends his bow and shoots an arrow ; but she baffled his attempt by rendering herself invisible. She in her turn becomes furious, falls on
26 LOVE AND FOLLY, AN ANCIENT MORALITY.
the boy, tearing out his eyes, and then covers them with a bandage which could not be taken off.
In the second part, Love, in despair for having lost hia eight, implores the assistance of his mother ; she tries hi vain to undo the magic fillet ; the knots are never to be unloosed.
In the third part, Venus presents herself at the foot of the throne of Jupiter to complain of the outrage committed by Fotty on her son. Jupiter commands Folly to appear. — She replies, that though she has reason to justify herself, she will not venture to plead her cause, as she is apt to speak too much, or to omit what should be said. Folly asks for a coun- sellor, and chooses Mercury; Apollo is selected by Venus. The fourth part consists of a long dissertation between Jupi- ter and Love, on the manner of loving. Love advises Jupiter, if he wishes to taste of truest happiness, to descend on earth, to lay down all his majesty, and, in the figure of a mere mor- tal, to please some beautiful maiden : " Then wilt thou feel quite another contentment than that thou hast hitherto en- joyed : instead of a single pleasure it will be doubled ; for there is as much pleasure to be loved as to love." Jupiter agrees that this may be true, but he thinks that to attain this it requires too much time, too much trouble, too many atten- tions,— and that, after all, it is not worth them.
In the fifth part, Apollo, the advocate for Venus, in a long pleading demands justice against Folly. The Gods, seduced by his eloquence, show by their indignation that they would condemn Folly without hearing her advocate Mercury. But Jupiter commands silence, and Mercury replies. His plead- ing is as long as the adverse party's, and his arguments in favour of Folly are so plausible, that, when he concludes hia address, the Gods are divided in opinion ; some espouse the cause of Love, and some, that of Folly. Jupiter, after try- ing in vain to make them agree together, pronounces this award : —
* On account of the difficulty and importance of your dis- putes and the diversity of your opinions, we have suspended
EELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES. 27
your contest from this day to three times seven times nine centuries. In the mean time we command you to live ami- cably together, without injuring one another. Folly shall lead Love, and take him whithersoever he pleases, and when restored to his sight, the Fates may pronounce sentence."
Many beautiful conceptions are scattered in this elegant Morality. It has given birth to subsequent imitations ; it was too original and playful an idea not to be appropriated by the poets. To this Morality we perhaps owe the panegyric of Folly by Erasmus, and the Love and Folly of La Fontaine.
RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES.
I SHALL notice a class of very singular works in which the spirit of romance has been called in to render religion more attractive to certain heated imaginations.
In the fifteenth century was published a little book of prayers, accompanied by figures, both of a very uncommon nature for a religious publication. It is entitled Hortulus Animae, cum Oratiunculis aliquibus superadditis quce in prioribus Libris non habentur.
It is a small octavo en lettres gothiques, printed by John Grunninger, 1500. "A garden," says the author, "which abounds with flowers for the pleasure of the soul ; " but they are full of poison. In spite of his fine promises, the chief part of these meditations are as puerile as they are supersti- tious. This we might excuse, because the ignorance and superstition of the times allowed such things; but \hefigure which accompany this work are to be condemned in all ages one represents Saint Ursula and some of her eleven thousand virgins, with all the licentious inventions of an Aretine. What strikes the ear does not so much irritate the senses, observes the sage Horace, as what is presented in all its nudity to the eye. One of these designs is only ridiculous : David is rep-
28 RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES.
resented as examining Bathsheba bathing, while Cupid hover- ing throws his dart, and with a malicious smile triumphs in his success. We have had many gross anachronisms in simi- lar designs. There is a laughable picture in a village in Hol- land, in which Abraham appears ready to sacrifice his son Isaac by a loaded blunderbuss ; but his pious intention is en- tirely frustrated by an angel urining in the pan. In another painting, the Virgin receives the annunciation of the angel Gabriel with a huge chaplet of beads tied / round her waist, reading her own offices, and kneeling before a crucifix; another happy invention, to be seen on an altar-piece at Worms, is that in which the Virgin throws Jesus into the hopper of a mill, while from the other side he issues changed into little morsels of bread, with which the priests feast the people. Matthison, a modern traveller, describes a picture in a church at Constance, called the Conception of the Holy Virgin. An old man lies on a cloud, whence he darts out a vast beam, which passes through a dove hovering just below ; at the end of a beam appears a large transparent egg, in which egg is seen a child in swaddling clothes with a glory round it. Mary sits leaning in an arm chair, and opens her mouth to receive the egg.
I must not pass unnoticed in this article a production as extravagant in its design, in which the author prided himself in discussing three thousand questions concerning the Virgin Mary.
The publication now adverted to was not presented to the world in a barbarous age and in a barbarous country, but printed at Paris in 1668. It bears for title, Devote Salutation des Membres sacres du Corps de la Glorieuse Vierge, Mere de Dieu. That is, "A Devout Salutation of the Holy Mem- bers of the Body of the Glorious Virgin, Mother of God." It was printed and published with an approbation and priv- ilege, which is more strange than the work itself. Valois reprobates it in these just terms : " What would Innocent XI. have done, after having abolished the shameful Office of the
EELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES. 29
Conception, Indulgences, &c. if he had seen a volume in which the impertinent devotion of that visionary monk caused to be printed, with permission of his superiors, Meditations on all the Parts of the Body of the Holy Virgin? Religion, decency, and good sense, are equally struck at by such an extravagance." I give a specimen ot the most decent of these salutations.
Salutation to the Hair.
" I salute you, charming hair of Maria ! Rays of the mystical sun ! Lines of the centre and circumference of all created perfection! Veins of gold of the mine of love! Chains of the prison of God ! Roots of the tree of life ! Rivulets of the fountain of Paradise ! Strings of the bow of charity ! Nets that caught Jesus, and shall be used in the hunting-day of souls ! "
Salutation to the Ears.
" I salute ye, intelligent ears of Maria ! ye presidents of the princes of the poor ! Tribunal for their petitions ; salva- tion at the audience of the miserable! University of all divine wisdom ! Receivers general of all wards ! Ye are pierced with the rings of our chains ; ye are impearled with our necessities ! "
The images, prints, and miniatures, with which the catho- lic religion has occasion to decorate its splendid ceremonies, have frequently been consecrated to the purposes of love : they have been so many votive offerings worthy to have been suspended in the temple of Idalia. Pope Alexander VI. had the images of the Virgin made to represent some of his mistresses ; the famous Vanozza, his favourite, was placed on the altar of Santa Maria del Popolo ; and Julia Farnese furnished a subject for another Virgin. The same genius of pious gallantry also visited our country. The statuaries made the queen of Henry III. a model for the face of the Virgin Mary. Hearne elsewhere affirms, that the Virgin Mary waa
30 RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES.
generally made to bear a resemblance to the queens of the ago, which, no doubt, produced some real devotion among the courtiers.
The prayer-books of certain pious libertines were decorated with the portraits of their favourite minions and ladies in the characters of saints, and even of the Virgin and Jesus. This scandalous practice was particularly prevalent in that reign of debauchery in France, when Henry III. held the reins of government with a loose hand. In a missal once appertain- ing to the queen of Louis XII. may be seen a mitred ape, giving its benediction to a man prostrate before it ; a keen reproach to the clergy of that day. Charles V., however pious that emperor affected to be, had a missal painted for his mistress by the great Albert Durer, the borders of which are crowded with extravagant grotesques, consisting of apes, who were sometimes elegantly sportive, giving clysters to one another, and in more offensive attitudes, not adapted to heigh- ten the piety of the Royal Mistress. This missal has two French verses written by the Emperor himself, who does not seem to have been ashamed of his present The Italians carried this taste to excess. The manners of our country were more rarely tainted with this deplorable licentiousness, although I have observed an innocent tendency towards it, by examining the illuminated manuscripts of our ancient metrical romances : while we admire the vivid colouring of these splendid manuscripts, the curious observer will perceive that almost every heroine is represented in a state which appears incompatible with her reputation. Most of these works are, I believe, by French artists.
A supplement might be formed to religious indecencies from the Golden Legend, which abounds in them. Henry Stephens's Apology for Herodotus might be likewise con- eulted with effect for the same purpose. There is a story of St. Mary the Egyptian, who was perhaps a looser liver than Mary Magdalen ; for not being able to pay for her passage to Jerusalem, whither she was going to adore the holy cross
RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES. 31
and sepulchre, in despair she thought of an expedient in lieu of payment to the ferryman, which required at least going twice instead of once, to Jerusalem as a penitential pilgrimage. This anecdote presents the genuine character of certain de- votees.
Melchior InchofFer, a Jesuit, published a book to vindicate the miracle of a Letter which the Virgin Mary had addressed to the citizens of Messina : when Naude brought him positive proofs of its evident forgery, Inchoffer ingenuously confessed the imposture, but pleaded that it was done by the orders of his superiors.
This same letter of the Virgin Mary was like a donation made to her by Louis the Eleventh of the whole county ot Boulogne, retaining, however, for his own use the revenues ! This solemn act bears the date of the year 1478, and is en- titled, " Conveyance of Louis the Eleventh to the Virgin of Boulogne, of the right and title of the fief and homage of the county of Boulogne, which is held by the Count of Saint Pol, to render a faithful account before the image of the said lady."
Maria Agreda, a religious visionary, wrote The Life of the Virgin. She informs us that she resisted the commands of God and the holy Mary till the year 1637, when she began to compose this curious rhapsody. When she had finished this original production, her confessor advised her to burn it ; she obeyed. Her friends, however, who did not think her less inspired than she informed them she was, advised her to rewrite the work. When printed it spread rapidly from country to country : new editions appeared at Lisbon, Madrid, Perpignan, and Antwerp. It was the rose of Sharon for those climates. There are so many pious absurdities in this book, which were found to give such pleasure to the devout, that it was solemnly honoured with the censure of the Sor- bonne ; and it spread the more.
The head of this lady was quite turned by her religion. In the first six chapters she relates the visions of the Virgin,
32 RELIGIOUS NODVELLETTES.
which induced her to write her life. She begins the history ab ovo, as it may be expressed ; for she has formed a narra tive of what passed during the nine months in which the Virgin was confined in the womb of her mother St. Anne. After the birth of Mary, she received an augmentation of angelic guards ; we have several conversations which God held with the Virgin during the first eighteen months after her birth. And it is in this manner she formed a circulating novel, which delighted the female devotees of the seventeenth century.
The worship paid to the Virgin Mary in Spain and Italy exceeds that which is given to the Son or the Father. When they pray to Mary, their imagination pictures a beautiful woman, they really feel a passion ; while Jesus is only re- garded as a Bambino, or infant at the breast, and the Father is hardly ever recollected : but the Madonna la Senhora, la Maria Santa, while she inspires their religious inclinations, is a mistress to those who have none.
Of similar works there exists an entire race, and the libra- ries of the curious may yet preserve a shelf of these religious nouvellettes. The Jesuits were the usual authors of these rhapsodies. I find an account of a book which pretends to describe what passes hi Paradise. A Spanish Jesuit pub lished at Salamanca a volume in folio, 1652, entitled Empy- reologia. He dwells with great complacency on the joys of the celestial abode ; there always will be music in heaven with material instruments as our ears are already accustomed to ; otherwise he thinks the celestial music would not be music for us ! But another Jesuit is more particular in his accounts. He positively assures us that we shall experience a supreme pleasure in kissing and embracing the bodies of the blessed; they will bathe in the presence of each other, and for this purpose there are most agreeable baths in which we shall swim like fish ; that we shall all warble as sweetly as larks and nightingales ; that the angels will dress them- selves in female habits, their hair curled ; wearing petticoat1*
BELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES. 33
and fardingales, and with the finest linen ; that men and women will amuse themselves in masquerades, feasts, and balls. — Women will sing more agreeably than men to height- en these entertainments, and at the resurrection will have more luxuriant tresses, ornamented with ribands and head- dresses as in this life !
Such were the books once so devoutly studied, and which doubtless were often literally understood. How very bold must the minds of the Jesuits have been, and how very hum- ble those of their readers, that such extravagancies should ever be published ! And yet, even to the time in which I am now writing, — even at this day, — the same picturesque and impassioned pencil is employed by the modern Apostle3 of Mysticism — the Swedenborgians, the Moravians, the Methodists !
I find an account of another book of this class, ridiculous enough to be noticed. It has for tithe, " The Spiritual Kal- endar, composed of as many Madrigals or Sonnets and Epigrams as there are days in the year; written for the consolation of the pious and the curious. By Father G. Cortade, Austin Preacher at Bayonne, 1665." To give a notion of this singular collection take an Epigram addressed to a Jesuit, who, young as he was, used to put spurs under his shirt to mortify the outer man ! The Kalendar-poet thus gives a point to these spurs : —
II ne pourra done plus ni ruer ni hennir
Sous le rude Eperon dont tu fais son supplice; Qui vit jamais tel artifice,
De piquer un cheval pour le niieux retenir!
HUMBLY IMITATED.
Your body no more will neigh and will kick, The point of the spur must eternally prick ; Whoever contrived a thing of such skill, To keep spurring a horse to make him stand still !
One of the most extravagant works projected on the sub- ject of the Virgin Mary was the following : — The prior of a
34 RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES.
convent in Paris, had reiteratedly entreated Varillas the historian to examine a work composed by one of the monks ; and of which — not being himself addicted to letters — he wished to be governed by his opinion. Varillas at length yielded to the entreaties of the prior ; and to regale the critic, they laid on two tables for his inspection seven enor- mous volumes in folio.
This rather disheartened our reviewer: but greater was his astonishment, when, having opened the first volume, he found its title to be Summa Dei-para ; and as Saint Thomas had made a Sum, or System of Theology, so our monk had formed a System of the Virgin ! He immediately compre- hended the design of our good father, who had laboured on this work full thirty years, and who boasted he had treated Three Thousand Questions concerning the Virgin ! of which he flattered himself not a single one had ever yet been im agined by any one but himself J
Perhaps a more extraordinary design was never known. Varillas, pressed to give his judgment on this work, advised the prior with great prudence and good-nature to amuse the honest old monk with the hope of printing these seven folios, but always to start some new difficulties ; for it would be inhuman to occasion so deep a chagrin to a man who had reached his 74th year, as to inform him of the nature of his favourite occupations; and that after his death he should throw the seven folios into the fire.
CRITICAL SAGACITY," "HAPPY CONJECTURE." 35
"CRITICAL SAGACITY," AND "HAPPY CONJEC- TURE;" OR, BENTLEY'S MILTON.
BEXTLEY, long to wrangling schools confined.
And but by books acquainted with." mankind^— To MILTON lending sense, to HORACE wit, He makes them write, what never poet writ.
DR. BENTLEY'S edition of our English Homer is sufficiently known by name. As it stands a terrifying beacon to conjec- tural criticism, I shall just notice some of those violations which the learned critic ventured to commit, with all the arrogance of a Scaliger. This man, so deeply versed in ancient learning, it will appear, was destitute of taste and genius in his native language.
Our critic, to persuade the world of the necessity of his edition, imagined a fictitious editor of Milton's Poems : and it was this ingenuity which produced all his absurdities. As it is certain that the blind bard employed an amanuensis, it was not improbable that many words of similar sound, but very different signification, might have disfigured the poem; but our Doctor was bold enough to conjecture that this amanu- ensis interpolated whole verses of his own composition hi the " Paradise Lost ! " Having laid down this fatal position, all the consequences of his folly naturally followed it. Yet if there needs any conjecture, the more probable one will be, that Milton, who was never careless of his future fame, had his poem read to him after it had been published. The first edition appeared in 1667, and the second in 1674, in which all the faults of the former edition are continued. By these faults, the Doctor means what he considers to be such : for we shall soon see that his " Canons of Criticism " are apocryphal.
Bentley says that he will supply the want of manuscripts to collate (to use his own words) by his own " SAGACITY," and "HAPPY CONJECTURE."
Milton, after the conclusion of Satan's speech to the fallen angels, proceeds thus : —
86 "CRITICAL SAGACITY," AND
1. He spake : and to confirm his words out flew
2. Millions of flaming SWORDS, drawn from the thighs 8. Of mighty cherubim : the sudden blaze
4. Far round illumin'd hell; highly they rag'd
6. Against the Highest ; and fierce with grasp'd ARMS
6. Clash'd on their sounding shields the din of war,
7. Hurling defiance tow'rd the VAULT of Heaven.
In this passage, which is as perfect as human wit can make, the Doctor alters three words. In the second line he puts'blades instead of swords ; in the fifth he puts swords in- stead of arms ; and in the last line he prefers walls to vault. All these changes are so many defoedations of the poem. The word swords is far more poetical than blades, which may as well be understood of knives as swords. The word arms, the generic for the specific term, is still stronger and nobler than swords; and the beautiful conception of vault, which is always indefinite to the eye, while the solidity of walls would but meanly describe the highest Heaven, gives an idea of grandeur and modesty.
Milton writes, book i. v. 63—
No light, but rather DARKNESS VISIBLE Served only to discover sights of woe.
Perhaps borrowed from Spenser : —
A little glooming light, much like a shade.
Faery Queene, b. i. c. 2, st. 14.
This fine expression of " DARKNESS VISIBLE " the Doctor's critical sagacity has thus rendered clearer : —
** No light, but rather A TRANSPICUOUS GLOOM."
Again our learned critic distinguishes the 74th line of the first book —
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole,
as " a vicious verse," and therefore with " happy conjec- ture/' and no taste, thrusts in an entire verse of his own composition —
" DISTANCE WHICH TO EXPRESS ALL MEASURE FAILS."
"HAPPY CONJECTURE," ETC. 37
Milton writes, m
Our torments, also, may in length of time Become our elements. B. ii. ver. 274.
Bentley CORRECTS —
u Then, AS WAS WELL OBSERV'D, our torments may Become our elements."
A curious instance how the insertion of a single prosaic ex- pression turns a fine verse into something worse than the vilest prose.
To conclude with one more instance of critical emendation Milton says, with an agreeable turn of expression, —
So parted they; the angel up to heaven,
From the thick shade ; and Adam to his bower.
Bentley " conjectures " these two verses to be inaccurate, and hi lieu of the last writes — -
" ADAM, TO RUMINATE ON PAST DISCOURSE.'*
And then our erudite critic reasons ! as thus : —
After the conversation between the Angel and Adam in the bower, it may be well presumed that our first parent waited on his heavenly guest at his departure to some little distance from it, till he began to take his flight towards heaven ; and therefore " sagaciously " thinks that the poet could not with propriety say that the angel parted from the thick shade, that is, the bower, to go to heaven. But if Adam attended the angel no farther than the door or entrance of the bower, then he shrewdly asks, " How Adam could return to his bower if he was never out of it ? "
Our editor has made a thousand similar corrections in his edition of Milton ! Some have suspected that the same kind intention which prompted Dryden to persuade Creech to undertake a translation of Horace influenced those who encouraged our Doctor, in thus exercising his " sagacity " and " happy conjecture " on the epic of Milton. He is one of those learned critics who have happily " elucidated thei*
38 A JANSENIST DICTIONARY.
autlipr into obscurity," and comes nearest to that " true con- jectural critic " whose practice a Portuguese satirist so greatly admired : by which means, if he be only followed up by future editors, we might have that immaculate edition, in which little or nothing should be found of the original !
I have collected these few instances as not uninteresting to men of taste ; they may convince us that a scholar may be familiarized to Greek and Latin, though a stranger to his vernacular literature ; and that a verbal critic may some- times be successful in his attempts on a single word, though he may be incapable of tasting an entire sentence. Let it also remain as a gibbet on the high roads of literature ; that " conjectural critics " as they pass may not forget the unhappy fate of Bentley.
The following epigram appeared on this occasion :—
ON MILTON'S EXECUTIONER.
Did MILTON'S PROSE, 0 CHARLES! thy death defend? A furious foe, unconscious, proves a friend; On MILTON'S VERSE does BENTLEY comment? know, A weak officious friend becomes a foe. While he would seem his author's fame to further, The MURTHEROUS CRITIC has avenged THY MURTHER.
The classical learning of Bentley was singular and acute , but the erudition of words is frequently found not to be allied to the sensibility of taste.
A JANSENIST DICTIONARY.
WIIEN L'Advocat published his concise Biographical Dic- tionary, the Jansenists, the methodists of France, considered it as having been written with a view to depreciate the merit of their friends. The spirit of party is too soon alarmed. The Abbe Barral undertook a dictionary devoted to their cause. In this labour, assisted by his good friends the Jan-
A JANSENIST DICTIONARY. 39
senists, he indulged all the impetuosity and acerbity of a splenetic adversary. The Abbe was, however, an able writer ; his anecdotes are numerous and well chosen ; and his style is rapid and glowing. The work bears for title, " Dic- tionnaire Historique, Litteraire, et Critique, des Hommes Celebres," 6 vols. 8vo. 1719. It is no unuseful specula- tion to observe in what manner a faction represents those who have not been its favourites : for this purpose I select the characters of Fenelon, Cranmer, and Luther.
Of Fenelon they write, " He composed for the instruction of the Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou, and Berri, several works ; amongst others, the Telemachus — a singular book, which partakes at once of the character of a romance and of a poem, and which substitutes a prosaic cadence for versifica- tion. But several luscious pictures would not lead us to suspect that this book issued from the pen of a sacred minis- ter for the education of a prince ; and what we are told by a famous poet is not improbable, that Fenelon did not compose it at court, but that it is the fruits of his retreat in his diocese. And indeed the amours of Calypso and Eucharis should not be the first lessons that a minister ought to give his scholars ; and, besides, the fine moral maxims which the author attrib- utes to the Pagan divinities are not well placed in their mouth. Is not this rendering homage to the demons of the great truths which we received from the Gospel, and to de- spoil J. C. to render respectable the annihilated gods of paganism ? This prelate was a wretched divine, more familiar with the light of profane authors than with that of the fathers of the church. Phelipeaux has given us, in his narrative of Quietism, the portrait of the friend of Madame Guyon. This archbishop has a lively genius, artful and supple, which can flatter and dissimulate, if ever any could. Seduced by a woman, he was solicitous to spread his seduction. He joined to the politeness and elegance of conversation a modest air, which rendered him amiable. He spoke of spirituality with the expression and the enthusiasm of a prophet ; with such
40 A JANSENIST DICTIONARY.
talents he flattered himself that every thing would yield to him."
In this work the Protestants, particularly the first Reform- ers, find no quarter ; and thus virulently their rabid Catholi- cism exults over the hapless end of Cranmer, the first Protestant archbishop : —
" Thomas Cranmer married the sister of Osiander. As Henry VIII. detested married priests, Cranmer kept this second marriage in profound secrecy. This action serves to show the character of this great reformer, who is the hero of Burnet, whose history is so much esteemed in England. What blindness to suppose him an Athanasius, who was at once a Lutheran secretly married, a consecrated archbishop under the Roman pontiff whose power he detested, saying the mass in which he did not believe, and granting a power to say it ! The divine vengeance burst on this sycophantic courtier, who had always prostituted his conscience to his fortune."
Their character of Luther is quite Lutheran in one sense, for Luther was himself a stranger to moderate strictures : —
" The furious Luther, perceiving himself assisted by the credit of several princes, broke loose against the church with the most inveterate rage, and rung the most terrible alarum against the pope. According to him we should have set fire to every thing, and reduced to one heap of ashes the pope and the princes who supported him. Nothing equals the rage of this phrenetic man, who was not satisfied with ex* haling his fury in horrid declamations, but who was for put- ting all in practice. He raised his excesses to the height by inveighing against the vow of chastity, and in marrying publicly Catherine de Bore, a nun, whom he enticed, with eight others, from their convents. He had prepared the minds of the people for this infamous proceeding by a treatise which he entitled * Examples of the Papistical Doctrine and Theology,' in which he condemns the praises which all the
MANUSCRIPTS AND BOOKS. 41,
saints bad given to continence. He died at length quietly enough, in 1546, at Eisleben, his country place — God reserving the terrible effects of -his vengeance to another life."
Cranmer, who perished at the stake, these fanatic religion- ists proclaim as an example of "divine vengeance;" but Luther, the true parent of the Reformation, " died quietly at Eisleben : " this must have puzzled, their mode of reasoning ; but they extricate themselves out of the dilemma by the usual way. Their curses are never what the lawyers call u lapsed legacies."
MANUSCRIPTS AND BOOKS.
IT would be no uninteresting literary speculation to describe the difficulties which some of our most favourite works en- countered in their manuscript state, and even after they had passed through the press. Sterne, when he had finished hia first and second volumes of Tristram Shandy, offered them to a bookseller at York for fifty pounds ; but was refused : he came to town with his MSS. ; and he and Robert Dodsley agreed in a manner of which neither repented.
The Rosciad, with all its merit, lay for a considerable time in a dormant state, till Churchill and his publisher became impatient, and almost hopeless of success. — Burn's Justice was disposed of by its author, who was weary of soliciting booksellers to purchase the MS., for a trifle, and it now yields an annual income. Collins burnt his odes before the door of his publisher. The publication of Dr. Blair's Sermons was refused by Strahan, and the " Essay on the Immutability of Truth," by Dr. Beattie, could find no publisher, and was printed by two friends of the author, at their joint expense.
"The sermon in Tristram Shandy" (says Sterne, in his preface to his Sermons) " was printed by itself some years
42 MANUSCRIPTS AND BOOKS.
ago, but could find neither purchasers nor readers." When it was inserted in his eccentric work, it met with a most favourable reception, and occasioned the others to be collected.
Joseph Warton writes, "When Gray published his ex- quisite Ode on Eton College, his first publication, little notice was taken of it." The Polyeucte of Corneille, which is now accounted to be his master-piece, when he read it to the lite- rary assembly held at the Hotel de Rambouillet, was not approved. Voiture came the next day, and in gentle terma acquainted him with the unfavourable opinion of the critics. Such ill judges were then the most fashionable wits of France !
It was with great difficulty that Mrs. Centlivre could get her " Busy Body " performed. Wilks threw down his part with an oath of detestation — our comic authoress fell on her knees and wept. — Her tears, and not her wit, prevailed.
A pamphlet published in the year 1738, entitled "A Letter to the Society of Booksellers, on the Method of forming a true Judgment of the Manuscripts of Authors," contains some curious literary intelligence.
"We have known books, that in the MS. have been damned, as well as others which seem to be so, since, after their appearance in the world, they have often lain by neg- lected. Witness the * Paradise Lost ' of the famous Milton, and the Optics of Sir Isaac Newton, which last, 'tis said, had no character or credit here till noticed in France. l The His- torical connection of the Old and New Testament,' by Shuck- ford, is also reported to have been seldom inquired after for about a twelvemonth's time ; however, it made a shift, though not without some difficulty, to creep up to a second edition, and afterwards even to a third. And which is another remarkable instance, the manuscript of Dr. Prideaux's ' Con- nection ' is well known to have been bandied about from hand to hand among several, at least five or six, of the most emi- nent booksellers, during the space of at least two years, to no purpose, none of them undertaking to print that excellen
THE TURKISH SPY. 43
work. It lay in obscurity, till Archdeacon Echard, the author's friend, strongly recommended it to Tonson. It was purchased, and the publication was very successful. Robinson Crusoe in manuscript also ran through the whole trade, nor would any one print it, though the writer, De Foe, was in good repute as an author. One bookseller at last, not remarkable for his discernment, but for his speculative turn, engaged in this publication. This bookseller got above a thousand guineas by it ; and the booksellers are accumulating money every hour by editions of this work in all shapes. The undertaker of the translation of Rapin, after a very considerable part of the work had been published, was not a little dubious of its success, and was strongly inclined to drop the design. It proved at last to be a most profitable literary adventure." It is, perhaps, useful to record, that while the Ime compositions of genius and the elaborate labours of eru- dition are doomed to encounter these obstacles to fame, and never are but slightly remunerated, works of another descrip- tion are rewarded in the most princely manner ; at the recent sale of a bookseller, the copyright of " Vyse's Spelling book " was sold at the enormous price of £2200, with an annuity of 50 guineas to the author 1
THE TURKISH SPY.
WHATEVER may be the defects of the " Turkish Spy," the author has shown one uncommon merit, by having opened a new species of composition, which has been pursued by other writers with inferior success, if we except the charm- ing " Persian Letters " of Montesquieu. The " Turkish Spy " is a book which has delighted our childhood, and to which we can still recur with pleasure. But its ingenious author is unknown to three parts of his admirers.
In Boswell's " Life of Johnson " is this dialogue concern-
44 THE TURKISH SPY.
ing the writer of the " Turkish Spy." " B.— Pray, Sit, is the * Turkish Spy ' a genuine book ? J. — No, Sir. Mrs. Manley, in her < Life* says, that her father wrote the two first volumes ; and in another book — * Dunton's Life and Errours,' we find that the rest was written by one Sault, at two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley."
I do not know on what authority Mrs. Manley advances that her father was the author ; but this lady was never nice in detailing facts. Dunton, indeed, gives some information in a very loose manner. He tells us, p. 242, that it is prob- able, by reasons which he insinuates, that one Bradshaw, a hackney author, was the writer of the " Turkish Spy." This man probably was engaged by Dr. Midgeley to translate the volumes as they appeared, at the rate of 40s. per sheet. On the whole, all this proves, at least, how little the author was known while the volumes were publishing, and that he is as little known at present by the extract from Boswell.
The ingenious writer of the Turkish Spy is John Paul Marana, an Italian ; so that the Turkish Spy is just as real a personage as Cid Hamet, from whom Cervantes says he had his " History of Don Quixote." Marana had been im- prisoned for a political conspiracy ; after his release he retired to Monaco, where he wrote the " History of the Plot," which is said to be valuable for many curious particulars. Marana was at once a man of letters and of the world. He had long wished to reside at Paris ; in that emporium of taste and luxury his talents procured him patrons. It was during his residence there that he produced his " Turkish Spy." By this ingenious contrivance he gave the history of the last age. He displays a rich memory, and a lively imagination ; but critics have said that he touches every thing, and pene- trates nothing. His first three volumes greatly pleased : the rest are inferior. Plutarch, Seneca, and Pliny, were his favourite authors. He lived in philosophical mediocrity ; and in the last years of his life retired to his native country, where he died in 1 693.
THE TURKISH SPY. 45
Charpentier gave the first particulars of this ingenious man. Even in his tune the volumes were read as they came out, while its author remained unknown. Charpentier's proof of the author is indisputable ; for he preserved the following curious certificate, written in Marana's own hand- writing.
" I, the under-written John Paul Marana, author of a manuscript Italian volume, entitled 'L'Esploratore Turco, tomo terzoj acknowledge that Mr. Charpentier, appointed by the Lord Chancellor to revise the said manuscript, has not granted me his certificate for printing the said manuscript, but on condition to rescind four passages. The first begin- ning, &c. By this I promise to suppress from the said manu- script the places above marked, so that there shall remain no vestige ; since, without agreeing to this, the said certificate would not have been granted to me by the said Mr. Char* pentier ; and for surety of the above, which I acknowledge to be true, and which I promise punctually to execute, I hav6 signed the present writing. Paris, 28th September, 1686.
"JOHN PAUL MARANA."
This paper serves as a curious instance in what manner the censors of books clipped the wings of genius when it was found too daring or excursive.
These rescindings of the Censor appear to be marked by Marana in the printed work. We find more than once chasms, with these words : " the beginning of this letter is wanting in the Italian translation ; the original paper being torn."
No one has yet taken the pains to observe the date of the. first editions of the French and the English Turkish Spies, which would settle the disputed origin. It appears by the document before us, to have been originally written in Italian, but probably was first published in French. Does the Eng- lish Turkish Spy differ from the French one ? *
* Marana appears to have carelessly deserted his literary offspring. It is not improbable that his English translators continued nis plan, and that
46 SPENSER, JONSON, AND SHAKSPEARE.
SPENSER, JONSON, AND SHAKSPEARE.
THE characters of these three great masters of English poetry are sketched by Fuller, in his " Worthies of England." It is a literary morsel that must not be passed by. The cri- ticisms of those who lived in or near the times when authors flourished merit our observation. They sometimes elicit a ray of intelligence, which later opinions do not always give.
He observes on SPENSER — " The many Chaucerisms used (for I will not say affected by him) are thought by the igno- rant to be blemishes, known by the learned to be beauties, to his book ; which, notwithstanding, had been more SALEABLE, if more conformed to our modern language."
On JONSON. — " His parts were not so ready to run of themselves, as able to answer the spur; so that it may be truly said of him, that he had an elaborate wit, wrought out by his own industry. — He would sit silent in learned com- pany, and suck in (besides wine) their several humours into his observation. What was ore in others, he was able to refine himself.
" He was paramount in the dramatic part of poetry, and taught the stage an exact conformity to the laws of come- dians. His comedies were above the Volge (which are only tickled with downright obscenity,) and took not so well at the Jlrst stroke as at the rebound, when beheld the second time ; yea, they will endure reading so long as either ingenuity or learning are fashionable in our nation. If his latter be not
their volumes were translated ; so that what appears the French original maybe, for the greater part, of our own home manufacture. The superior- ity of the first part was early perceived. The history of our ancient Grub- street is enveloped in the obscurity of its members, and there are more claimants than one for the honour of this continuation. We know too little of Marana to account for his silence; Cervantes was indignant at the impudent genius who dared to continue the immortal Quixote.
The tale yet remains imperfectly told.
See a correspondence on this subject in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1840 and 1841.
SPENSER, JONSON, AND SHAKSPEARE. 47
so spriteful and vigorous as his first pieces, all that are old will, and all who desire to be old should, excuse him therein."
On SHAKSPEARE. — " He was an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, po'eta nonfit, sed nascitur ; one is no( made, but born a poet. Indeed his learning was but verj little ; so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smooth, even as they are take? out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art which was used upon him.
" Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and ai» Eng- lish man of war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with an English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, and take advan- tage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and inven- tion."
Had these " Wit-combats," between Shakspcare and Jon- son, which Fuller notices, been chronicled by some faithful Boswell of the age, our literary history would have received an interesting accession. A letter has been published by Dr. Berkenhout relating to an evening's conversation between our great rival bards, and Alleyn the actor. Peele, a dramatic poet, writes to his friend Marlow, another poet. The Doctor unfortunately in giving this copy did not recollect his au- thority.
"FRIEND MARLOW,
" I never longed for thy companye more than last night . we were all very merrye at the Globe, where Ned Alleyn did not scruple to affirme pleasantly to thy friend WILL, that he had stolen his speech about the qualityes of an actor's excellencye in Hamlet his Tragedye, from conversations manyfold which had passed between them, and opinyons given by Alleyn touchinge this subject. SHAKSPEARE did not take this talk in good sorte ; but JONSON put an end to
48 *EN JONS ON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH.
the strife, by wittylie remarking, — this affaire needeth no con- tention : you stole it from NED, no doubt, do not marvel ; have you not seen him act times out of number ? "
This letter is one of those ingenious forgeries which the late George Steevens practised on the literary antiquary ; they were not always of this innocent cast. The present has been frequently quoted as an original document. I have preserved it as an example of Literary Forgeries, and the danger which literary historians incur by such nefarious practices.
BEN JONSON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH.
BEN JONSON, like most celebrated wits, was very unfor- tunate in conciliating the affections of his brother writers. He certainly possessed a great share of arrogance, and was desirous of ruling the realms of Parnassus with a despotic sceptre. That he was not always successful in his theatrical compositions is evident from his abusing, in their title page, the actors and the public. In this he has been imitated by Fielding. I have collected the following three satiric odes, written when the reception of his " New Inn, or The LigJd Heart" warmly exasperated the irritable disposition of our poet.
He printed the title in the following manner : —
" New Inn, or The Light Heart : a Comedy never acted, but most negligently played by some, the King's servants ; and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the King's subjects, 1629. Now at last set at liberty to the readers, his Majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged, 1631."
At the end of this play he published the following Ode, in which he threatens to quit the stage for ever ; and turn at once a Horace, an Anacreon, and a Pindar.
BEN JONSON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH. 49
" The just indignation the author took at the vulgar cen- sure of his play, begat this following Ode to himself :
Come, leave the loathed stage,
And the more loathsome age ; Where pride and impudence (in fashion knit,)
Usurp the chair of wit Inditing and arraigning every day
Something they call a play.
Let their fastidious, vaine
Commission of braine Run on, and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn;
They were not made for thee,— less thou for them.
Say that thou pour'st them wheat,
And they will acorns eat; 'Twere simple fury, still, thyself to waste
On such as have no taste ! To offer them a surfeit of pure bread,
Whose appetites are dead !
No, give them graines their fill,
Husks, draff, to drink and swill. If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, Envy them not their palate with the swine.
No doubt some mouldy tale Like PERICLES*, and stale As the shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish- Scraps, out of every dish Thrown forth, and rak't into the common-tub,
May keep up the play-club : There sweepings do as well As the best order'd meale, For who the relish of these guests will fit, Needs set them but the almes-basket of wit.
And much good do't you then, Brave plush and velvet men Can feed on orts, and safe in your stage clothes,
Dare quit, upon your oathes, The stagers, and the stage- wrights too (your peers),
Of larding your large ears With their foul comic socks, Wrought upon twenty blocks :
Which if they're torn, and turned, and patched enough, The gamesters share your guilt and you their stuff.
* This play, Langbaine says, is written by Shakspeare. VOT.. u. 4
50 BEN JONSON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH.
lueave things so prostitute, And take the Alcseick lute, Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyrej
Warm thee by Pindar's fire; And, tho' thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold,
Ere years have made thee old, Strike that disdainful heat Throughout, to their defeat; As curious fools, and envious of thy strain, May, blushing, swear no palsy's in thy brain.*
But when they hear thee sing The glories of thy King, His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men,
They may blood-shaken then, Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers,
As they shall cry like ours, In sound of peace, or wars, No harp ere hit the stars, In tuning forth the acts of his sweet raign, And raising Charles his chariot 'bove his wain."
This Magisterial Ode, as Langbaine calls it, was answered by Owen Fetiham, author of the admirable " Resolves," who has written with great satiric acerbity the retort courteous. His character of this poet should be attended to : —
AN ANSWER TO THE ODK, COME LEAVE THE LOATHED STAGE, &0
Come leave this sawcy way Of baiting those that pay Dear for the sight of your declining wit.
'Tis known it is not fit That a sale poet, just contempt once thrown,
Should cry up thus his own. I wonder by what dower, Or patent, you had power From all to rape a judgment. Let's suffice, Had you been modest, y'ad been granted wise.
'Tis known you can do well,
And that you do excell As a translator; but when things require
A genius, and fire, Not kindled heretofore by other pains,
As oft y'ave wanted brains
# He had the palsv at that time.
BEN JONS ON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH. 51
And art to strike the white,
As you have levelTd right: Yet if men vouch not things apocryphal, You bellow, rave, and spatter round your galL
Jug, Pierce, Peek, Fly*, and all Your jests so nominal, Are things so far beneath an able brain,
As they do throw a stain Thro' all th' unlikely plot, and do displease
As deep as PERICLES. Where yet there is not laid Before a chamber-maid
" Discourse so weigh' d,f as might have serv'd of old For schools, when they of love and valour told.
Why rage, then? when the show • Should judgment be, and know-J ledge, there are plush who scorn to drudge
For stages, yet can judge Not only poet's looser lines, but wits,
And all their perquisite; A gift as rich as high Is noble poesie :
Yet, tho' in sport it be for Kings to play, 'Tis next mechanicks' when it works for pay.
Alcaeus lute had none, Nor loose Anacreon E'er taught so bold assuming of the bays
When they deserv'cbno praise. To rail men into approbation
Is new to your's alone: And prospers not : for known, Fame is as coy, as you Can be disdainful; and who dares to prove A rape on her shall gather scorn — not love.
Leave then this humour vain,
And this more humourous strain, Where self-conceit, and choler of the blood,
Eclipse what else is good: Then, if you please those raptures high to touch,
* The names oT several of Jonson's Dramatis Personae. f New Inn, Act iii. Scene 2. — Act iv. Scene 4.
t Thrs break was purposely designed by the poet, to expose that sing- ular one in Ben's third stanza.
52 BEN JONS ON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH.
Whereof you boast so much :
And but forbear your crown
Till the world puts it on: . No doubt, from all you may amazement draw, Since braver theme no Phrebus ever saw.
To console dejected Ben for this just reprimand, Randolph, of the adopted poetical sons of Jonson, addressed him with all that warmth of grateful affection which a man of genius should have felt on the occasion.
AN ANSWER TO MR. BEN JONSON'S ODE, TO PERSUADE HIM NOT TO LEAVE THE STAGE.
Ben, do not leave the stage Cause 'tis a loathsome age; For pride and impudence will grow too bold,
When they shall hear it told They frighted thee; Stand high, as is thy cause;
Their hiss is thy applause: More just were thy disdain, Had they approved thy vein : So thou for them, and they for thee were born; They to incense, and thou as much to scorn.
Wilt thou engross thy*store Of wheat, and pour no more, Because their bacon-brains had such a taste
As more delight in mast: No ! set them forth a board of dainties, full
As thy best muse can cull Whilst they the while do pine And thirst, midst all their wine. What greater plague can hell itself devise, Than to be willing thus to tantalize ?
Thon canst not find them stuff,
That will be bad enough To please their palates : let 'em them refuse,
For some Pye-corner muse ; She is too fair an hostess, 'twere a sin For them to like thine Inn :
BEN JONSON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH 53,
*Twas made to entertain
Guests of a nobler strain; Yet, if they will have any of the store, Give them some scraps, and send them from thy dore.
And let those things in phish Till they be taught to blush, Like what they will, and more contented be
With what Broom* swept from thee. I know thy worth, and that thy lofty strains
Write not to cloaths, but brains : But thy great spleen doth rise, ' Cause moles will have no eyes : This only, in my Ben I faulty find, He's angry they'll not see him that are blind.
Why shou'd the scene be mute 'Cause thou canst touch the lute And string thy Horace V Let each Muse of nine
Claim thee, and say, th' art mine. 'Twere fond, to let all other flames expire,
To sit by Pindar's fire: For by so strange neglect I should myself suspect Thy palsie were as well thy brain's disease, If they could shake thy muse which way they please.
VI.
And tho' thou well canst sing The glories of thy King, And on the wings of verse his chariot bear
To heaven, and fix it there ; Yet let thy muse as well some raptures raise
To please him, as to praise. I would not have thee chuse Only a treble muse ; But have this envious, ignorant age to know,
Thou that canst sing so high, canst reach as low.
* His man, Richard Broome, wrote with success several comedies. He had been the amanuensis or attendant of Jonson. The epigram made against Pope for the assistance W. Broome gave him, appears to have been borrovrrd from this pun. Johnson has inserted it in " Broome's Life."
54 ARIOSTO AND TASSO.
ARIOSTO AND TASSO.
IT surprises one to find among the literary Italians the merits of Ariosto most keenly disputed : slaves to classical authority, they bend down to the majestic regularity of Tasso. Yet the father of Tasso, before his son had rivalled the roman- tic Ariosto, describes in a letter the effect of the " Orlando " on the people : " There is no man of learning, no mechanic, no lad, no girl, no old man, who are satisfied to read the t Orlando Furioso ' once. This poem serves as the solace of the traveller, who fatigued on his journey deceives his las- situde by chanting some octaves of this poem. You may hear them sing these stanzas in the streets and in the fields every day." One would have expected that Ariosto would have been the favourite of the people, and Tasso of the critics. But in Venice the gondoliers, and others, sing pas- sages which are generally taken from Tasso, and rarely from Ariosto. A different fate, I imagined, would have attended the poet who has been distinguished by the epithet of "The Divine." I have been told by an Italian man of letters, that this circumstance arose from the relation which Tasso's poem bears to Turkish affairs ; as many of the common people have passed into Turkey, either by chance or by war. Be- sides, the long antipathy existing between the Venetians and the Turks gave additional force to the patriotic poetry of Tasso. We cannot boast of any similar poems. Thus it was that the people of Greece and Ionia sang the poems of Homer.
The Accademia della Crusca gave a public preference to Ariosto. This irritated certain critics, and none more than Chapelain, who could taste the regularity of Tasso, but not feel the " brave disorder " of Ariosto. He could not approve of those writers,
" Who snatch a grace beyond the reach of art."
"I thank you," he writes, "for the sonnet which your indignation dictated, at the Academy's preference of Ariosto
ARIOSTO AND TASSO. 55
to Tasso. This judgment is overthrown by the confessions of many of the Cruscanti, my associates. It would be te- dious to enter into its discussion ; but it was passion and not equity that prompted that decision. We confess, that, as to tfhat concerns invention and purity of language, Ariosto has eminently the advantage over Tasso ; but majesty, pomp, numbers,' and .a style truly sublime, united . to regularity of design, raise the latter so much above the other that no com- parison can fairly exist."
The decision of Chapelain is not unjust ; though I did not know that Ariosto's language was purer than Tasso's.
Dr. Cocchi, the great Italian critic, compared "Ariosto's poem to the richer kind of harlequin's habit, made up of pieces of the very best silk, and of the liveliest colours. The parts of it are, many of them, more beautiful than in Tasso's poem, but the whole in Tasso is without comparison more of a piece and better made. The critic was extricating himself as safely as he could out of this critical dilemma ; for the dis- putes were then so violent, that I think one of the disputants took to his bed, and was said to have died of Ariosto and Tasso.
It is the conceit of an Italian to give the name of April to Ariosto, because it is the season of flowers ; and that of September to Tasso, which is that of fruits. Tiraboschi judi- ciously observes that no comparison ought to be made be- tween these great rivals. It is comparing " Ovid's Metamor- phoses " with " Virgil's ^Eneid ; " they are quite different tilings. In his characters of the two poets, he distinguishes between a romantic poem and a regular epic. Their designs required distinct perfections. But an English reader is not enabled by the wretched versions of Hoole to echo the rerse of La Fontaine, " JE CHERIS L'Arioste et J'ESTIME le Tasse."
Boileau, some time before his death, was asked by a critic if he had repented of his celebrated decision concerning the merits of Tasso, whom some Italians had compared with tnose of Virgil ? Boileau had hurled his bolts at these violators of
,56 ARIOSTO AND TASSO.
classical majesty. It is supposed that he was ignorant of the -Italian language, but some expressions in his answer may induce us to think that he was not.
" I have so little changed my opinion, that, on a re-perusal lately of Tasso, I was sorry that I had not more amply ex- plained myself on this subject in some of my reflections on * Longinus/ I should have begun by acknowledging that Tasso had a sublime genius, of great compass, with happy dispositions for the higher poetry. But when I came to the use he made of his talents, I should have shown that judi- cious discernment rarely prevailed in his works. That in the greater portion of his narrations he attached himself to the agreeable, oftener than to the just. That his descriptions are almost always overcharged with superfluous ornament*?. That in painting the strongest passions, and in the midst oi the agitations they excite, frequently he degenerates into witticisms, which abruptly destroy the pathetic. That he abounds with images of too florid a kind; affected turns; conceits and frivolous thoughts ; which, far from being adapted to his Jerusalem, could hardly be supportable in his 'Aminta.' So that all this, opposed to the gravity, the sobriety, the majesty of Virgil, what is it but tinsel compared with gold?"
The merits of Tasso seem here precisely discriminated ; and this criticism must be valuable to the lovers of poetry. The errors of Tasso were national.
In Venice the gondoliers know by heart long passages from Ariosto and Tasso, and often chant them with a pecu- liar melody. Goldoni, in his life, notices the gondolier re- turning with him to the city : " He turned the prow of the gondola towards the city, singing all the way the twenty-sixth stanza of the sixteenth canto of the Jerusalem Delivered." The late Mr. Barry once chanted to me a passage of Tasso in the manner of the gondoliers ; and I have listened to such from one who in his youth had himself been a gondolier. An anonymous gentleman has greatly obliged me with his ac-
ARIOSTO AND TASSO. 57
count of the recitation of these poets by the gondoliers of Venice.
There are always two concerned, who alternately sing the strophes. We know the melody eventually by Rousseau, to whose songs it is printed ; it has properly no melodious move- ment, and is a sort of medium between the canto fermo and the canto figurato ; it approaches to the former by recitativi- cal declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, by which one syllable is detained and embellished.
I entered a gondola by moonlight : one singer placed him- self forwards, and the other aft, and thus proceeded to Saint .Giorgio. One began the song ; when he had ended his stro- phe the other took up the lay, and so continued the song alternately. Throughout the whole of it, the same notes invariably returned, but, according to the subject matter of the strophe, they laid a greater or a smaller stress, some- times on one, and sometimes on another note, and indeed changed the enunciation of the whole strophe, as the object of the poem altered.
On the whole, however, their sounds were hoarse and screaming : they seemed, in the manner of all rude uncivil- ized men, to make the excellency of their singing consist hi the force of their voice : one seemed desirous of conquering ;the other by the strength of his lungs, and so far from re- ceiving delight from this scene (shut up as I was in the box of the gondola), I found myself in a very unpleasant situation.
My companion, to whom I communicated this circumstance, being very desirous to keep up the credit of his countrymen, assured me that this singing was very delightful when heard at a distance. Accordingly we got out upon the shore, leav- ing one of the singers in the gondola, while the other went to the distance of some hundred paces. They now began to sing against one another ; and I kept walking up and down between them both, so as always to leave him who was to begin his part. I frequently stood still, and hearkened to the one and to the other.
58 ARIOSTO AND TASSO.
Here the scene was properly introduced. The strong declamatory, and, as it were, shrieking sound, met the ear from far, and called forth the attention ; the quickly succeed- ing transitions, which necessarily required to be sung in a lower tone, seemed like plaintive strains succeeding the vocif- erations of emotion or of pain. The other, who listened at- tentively, immediately began where the former left off, answering him in milder or more vehement notes, according as the purport of the strophe required. The sleepy canals, the lofty buildings, the splendour of the moon, the deep shadows of the few gondolas that moved like spirits hither and thither, increased the striking peculiarity of the scene, and amidst all these circumstances it was easy to confess the character of this wonderful harmony.
It suits perfectly well with an idle solitary mariner, lying at length in his vessel at rest on one of these canals, waiting for his company or for a fare ; the tiresomeness of which situation is somewhat alleviated by the songs and poeti- cal stories he has in memory. He often raises his voice as loud as he can, which extends itself to a vast distance over the tranquil mirror ; and, as all is still around^ he is as it were in a solitude in the midst of a large and populous town. Here is no rattling of carriages, no noise of foot passengers ; a silent gondola glides now and then by him, of which the splashing of the oars is scarcely to be heard.
At a distance he hears another, perhaps utterly unknown to him. Melody and verse immediately attach the two strangers ; he becomes the responsive, echo to the former, and exerts himself to be heard as he had heard the other. By a tacit convention they alternate verse for verse ; though the song should last the whole night through, they entertain themselves without fatigue ; the hearers, who are passing between the two, take part in the amusement.
This vocal performance sounds best at a great distance, and is then inexpressibly charming, as it only fulfils its design iii the sentiment of remoteness. Tt is plaintive, but not dis-
ARIOSTO AND TASSO. 59
mal in its sound ; and at times it is scarcely possible to re- frain from tears. My companion, who otherwise was not a xery delicately organized person, said quite unexpectedly, " E singolare come quel canto intenerisce, e molto piu quando la cantano meglio."
I was told that the women of Lido, the long row of islands that divides the Adriatic from the Lagouns, particularly the women of the extreme districts of Malamocca and Palestrina, sing in like manner the works of Tasso to these and similar tunes.
They have the custom, when their husbands are fishing out at sea, to sit along the shore in the evenings and vociferate these songs, and continue to do so with great violence, till each of them can distinguish the responses of her own hus- band at a distance.
How much more delightful and more appropriate does this song show itself here, than the call of a solitary person uttered far and wide, till another equally disposed shall hear and answer him ! It is the expression of a vehement and hearty longing, which yet is every moment nearer to the happiness of satisfaction.
Lord Byron has told us that with the independence of Ve- nice the song of the gondolier has died away —
" In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more."
If this be not more poetical than true, it must have occurred at a moment when their last political change may have occa- gioned this silence on the waters. My servant Tita, who was formerly the servant of his lordship, and whose name has been immortalized in the " Italy" of Mr. Rogers, was himself a gondolier. He assures me that every night on the river the chant may be h^ard. Many who cannot even read have acquired the whole of Tasso, and some chant the stanzas of Ariosto. It is a sort of poetical challenge, and he who cannot take up the subject by continuing it is held as vanquished, and which occasions him no slight vexation. In a note in
60 BAYLE.
Lord Byron's works, this article is quoted by mistake as written by me, though I had mentioned it as the contribution of a stranger. We find by that note that there are two kinds of Tasso : the original, and another called the " Canta alia Barcarola" a spurious Tasso in the Venetian dialect : this latter, however, is rarely used. In the same note, a printer's error has been perpetuated through all the editions of Byron the name of Barry, the painter, has been printed Berry.
BAYLE.
FEW philosophers were more deserving of the title than Bayle. His last hour exhibits the Socratic intrepidity with •which he encountered the formidable approach of death. I have seen the original letter of the bookseller Leers, where he describes the death of our philosopher. " On the evening preceding his decease, having studied all day, he gave my corrector some copy of his 'Answer to Jacquelot,' and told him that he was very ill. At nine in the morning his laun- dress entered his chamber ; he asked her, with a dying voice, if his fire was kindled ? and a few moments after he died." His disease was an hereditary consumption, and his decline must have been gradual ; speaking had become with him a great pain, but he laboured with the same tranquillity of mind to his last hour ; and, with Bayle, it was death alone which could interrupt the printer.
The irritability of genius is forcibly characterized by this circumstance in his literary life. When a close friendship had united him to Jurieu, he lavished on him the most flatter- ing eulogiums : he is the hero of his " Republic of Letters." Enmity succeeded to friendship ; Jurieu is then continually quoted in his " Critical Dictionary," "whenever an occasion offers to give instances of gross blunders, palpable contra- dictions, and inconclusive arguments. These inconsistent
.BAYLE. 61
.opinions may be sanctioned by the similar conduct of a, Saint! St. Jerome praised Rufinus as the most learned .man of his age, while his friend ; but when the same Rufinua joined his adversary Origen, he called him one of the most ignorant !
As a logician Bayle had no superior ; the best logician will, however, frequently deceive himself. Bayle made long and close arguments to show that La Motte le Vayer never could have been a preceptor to the. king; but all his reason- ings are overturned by the fact being given in the " History of the Academy," by Pelisson.
Basnage said of Bayle, that he read much by his fingers. He meant that he ran over a book more than he read it ; and that he had the art of always falling upon that -which was most essential and curious in the book he examined.
There are heavy hours in which the mind of a man of letters is unhinged \ when the intellectual faculties lose all .their elasticity, and when nothing but the simplest actions are adapted to their enfeebled state. At such hours it is recorded -of the Jewish Socrates, Moses Mendelssohn, that he would stand at his window, and count the tiles of his neighbour's .house. An anonymous writer has told of Bayle, that he would frequently wrap himself in his cloak, and hasten to places where mountebanks resorted ; and that this was one of his chief amusements. He is surprised that so great a philosopher should delight in so trifling an object. This objection is not injurious to the character of Bayle ; it only proves that the writer himself was no philosopher.
The " Monthly Reviewer," in noticing this article, has con- .tinued the speculation by giving two interesting anecdotes. " The observation concerning * heavy hours,' and the want of elasticity in the intellectual faculties of men of letters, when the mind is fatigued and the attention blunted by incessant labour, reminds us of what is related by persons who were acquainted with the late sagacious magistrate Sir John Fielding ; who, when fatigued with attending to complicated
62 BAYLE.
cases, arid perplexed with discordant depositions, used to retire to a little closet in a remote and tranquil part of the house, to rest his mental powers and sharpen perception. He told a great physician, now living, who complained of the distance of places, as caused by the great extension of London, that ' he (the physician) would not have been able to visit many patients to any purpose, if they had resided nearer to each other ; as he could have had no time either to think or to rest his mind.' "
Our excellent logician was little accustomed to a mixed society ; his life was passed in study. He had such an infantine simplicity hi his nature, that he would speak on anatomical subjects before the ladies with as much freedom as before surgeons. When they inclined their eyes to the ground, and while some even blushed, he would then inquire if what he spoke was indecent ; and, when told so, he smiled, and stopped. His habits of life were, however, extremely pure ; he probably left himself little leisure " to fall into temptation"
Bayle knew nothing of geometry ; and, as Le Clerc in- forms us, acknowledged that he could never comprehend the demonstration of the first problem in Euclid. Le Clerc, however, was a rival to Bayle ; with greater industry and more accurate learning, but with very inferior powers of reasoning and philosophy. Both of these great scholars, like our Locke, were destitute of fine taste and poetical discernment.
When Fagon, an eminent physician, was consulted on the illness of our student, he only prescribed a particular regi- men, without the use of medicine. He closed his consul- tation by a compliment remarkable for its felicity. " I ardently wish one could spare this great man all this con- straint, and that it were possible to find a remedy as singular as the merit of him for whom it is asked."
Voltaire has said that Bayle confessed he would not have made his Dictionary exceed a folio volume, had he written
CERVANTES. 63
only for himself, and not for the booksellers. This Diction- ary, with all its human faults, is a stupendous work, which must last with literature itself. I take an enlarged view of BAYLE and his DICTIONARY, in a subsequent article.
CERVANTES.
M. Du BOULAY accompanied the French ambassador to Spain, when Cervantes was yet living. He told Segrais that the ambassador one day complimented Cervantes on the great reputation he had acquired by his Don Quixote ; and that Cervantes whispered in his ear, " Had it not been for the Inquisition, I should have made my book much more entertaining."
Cervantes, at the battle of Lepanto, was wounded, and enslaved. He has given his own history in Don Quixote, as indeed every great writer of fictitious narratives has usually done. Cervantes was known at the court of Spain, but he did not receive those favours which might have been ex- pected ; he was neglected. His first volume is the finest ; and his design was to have finished there : but he could not resist the importunities of his friends, who engaged him to make a second, which has not the same force, although it has many splendid passages.
We have lost many good things of Cervantes, and other writers, through the tribunal of religion and dulness. One Aonius Palearius was sensible of this ; and said, " that the Inquisition was a poniard aimed at the throat of literature." The image is striking, and the observation just ; but this vic- tim of genius w as soon led to the stake !
64 MAGLIABECHI.
MAGLIABECHL
ANTHONY MAGLIABECHI, who died at the age of eighty, was celebrated for his great knowledge of books. He has been called the ffettuo, or the Glutton of Literature, as Peter Gomestor received his nick-name from his amazing voracity for food he could never digest ; which- appeared when having fallen sick of so much false learning, he threw it all up in his "Sea of Histories" which proved to be the history of all things, and a bad history of every thing. Magliabechi's character is singular ; for though his life was wholly passed in libraries, being librarian to the Duke of Tuscany, he never wrote himself. There is a medal which represents him sit- ting, with a book in one hand, and a great number of books scattered on the ground. The candid inscription signifies, that " it is not sufficient to become learned to have read much, if we read without reflection." This is the only remains we have of his own composition that can be of service to posterity. A simple truth, which may, however, be inscribed in the study of every man of letters.
His habits of life were uniform. Ever among his books, he troubled himself with no other concern whatever ; and the only interest he appeared to take for any living thing was his spiders. While sitting among his literary piles, he affected great sympathy for these weavers of webs, and perhaps in contempt of those whose curiosity appeared impertinent, he frequently cried out, " to take care not to hurt his spiders ! * Although he lost no time in writing himself, he gave consid- erable assistance to authors who consulted him. He was himself an universal index to all authors ; the late literary antiquary Isaac Reed resembled him. He had one book, among many others, dedicated to him, and this dedication consisted of a collection of titles of works which he had had at different times dedicated to him, with all the eulogiums addressed to him in prose and verse. When he died, he left
MAGLIABECHI. $5,
his vast collection for the public use ; they now compose the public library of Florence.
Heyman, a celebrated Dutch professor, visited this erudite librarian, who was considered as the ornament of Florence. He found him amongst his books, of which the number was prodigious. Two or three rooms in the first story were crowded with them, not only along their sides, but piled in heaps on the floor ; so that it was difficult to sit, and more so to walk. A narrow space was contrived, indeed, so that by walking sideways, you might extricate yourself from one room to another. This was not all ; the passage below stairs was full of books, and the staircase from the top to the bottom was lined with them. When you reached the second story, you saw with astonishment three rooms, similar to those be- low, equally so crowded, that two good beds in these chambers were also crammed with books.
This apparent confusion did not, however, hinder Maglia- bechi from immediately finding the books he wanted. He knew them all so well, that even to the least of them it was sufficient to see its outside, to say what it was ; he knew his flock, as shepherds are said, by their faces ; and indeed he read them day and night, and never lost sight of any. He ate on his books, he slept on his books, and quitted them as rarely as possible. During his whole life he only went twice from Florence ; once to see Fiesoli, which is not above two leagues distant, and once ten miles further by order of the Grand Duke. Nothing could be more simple than his mode of life ; a few eggs, a little bread, and some water, were his ordinary, food. A drawer of his desk being open, Mr. Heyman saw there several eggs, and some money which Magliabechi had placed there for his daily use. But as this drawer was gener- ally open, it frequently happened that the servants of his friends, or strangers who came to see him, pilfered some of these things ; the money or the eggs.
His dress was as cynical as his repasts. A black doublet, which descended to his knees ; large and long breeches ; an
VOL. n. 5
66 MAGLIABECHI.
old patched black cloak ; an amorphous hat ; very much worn, and the edges ragged ; a large neckcloth of coarse cloth, begrimed with snuff; a dirty shirt, which he always wore as long as it lasted, and which the broken elbows of his doublet did not conceal ; and, to finish this inventory, a pair of ruffles which did not belong to the shirt. Such was the brilliant dress of our learned Florentine ; and in such did he appear in the public streets, as well as hi his own house. Let me not forget another circumstance ; to warm his hands, he gener- ally had a stove with fire fastened to his arms, so that his clothes were generally singed and burnt, and his hands scorched. He had nothing otherwise remarkable about him. To literary men he was extremely affable, and a cynic only to the eye ; anecdotes almost incredible are related of his memory. It is somewhat uncommon that as he was so fond of literary food, he did not occasionally dress some dishes of his own invention, or at least some sandwiches to his own relish. He indeed should have written CURIOSITIES OP LITERATURE. He was a living Cyclopaedia, though a dark lantern.
Of such reading men, Hobbes entertained a very contemp- tible, if not a rash opinion. His own reading was incon- siderable ; and he used to say, that if he had spent as much time in reading as other men of learning, he should have been as ignorant as they. He put little value on a large library, for he considered all books to be merely extracts and copies, for that most authors were like sheep, never deviating from the beaten path. History he treated lightly, and thought there were more lies than truths in it. But let us recollect after all this, that Hobbes was a mere metaphysician, idoliz- ing his own vain and empty hypotheses. It is true enough that weak heads carrying in them too much reading may be staggered. Le Clerc observes of two learned men, De Mar- cilly and Barthius, that they would have composed more use- ful works had they read less numerous authors, and digested the better writers.
ABRIDGERS. 67
ABRIDGERS.
ABRIDGERS are a kind of literary men to whom the indo- lence of modern readers, and indeed the multiplicity of au- thors, give ample employment.
It would be difficult, observe the learned Benedictines, the authors of the Literary History of France, to relate all the unhappy consequences which ignorance introduced, and the causes which produced that ignorance. But we must not forget to place in this number the mode of reducing, by way of abridgment, what the ancients had written in bulky vol- umes. Examples of this practice may be observed in pre- ceding centuries, but in the fifth century it began to be in general use. As the number of students and readers dimin- ished, authors neglected literature, and were disgusted with composition ; for to write is seldom done, but when the writer entertains the hope of finding readers. Instead of original authors, there suddenly arose numbers of Abridgers. These men, amidst the prevailing disgust for literature, imagined they should gratify the public by introducing a mode of reading works in a few hours, which otherwise could not be done in many months ; and, observing that the bulky volumes of the ancients lay buried in dust, without any one conde- scending to examine them, necessity inspired them with an invention that might bring those works and themselves into public notice, by the care they took of renovating them. This they imagined to effect by forming abridgments of these ponderous tomes.
All these Abridgers, however, did not follow the same mode. Some contented themselves with making a mere abridgment of their authors, by employing their own expres- sions, or by inconsiderable alterations. Others formed abridg- ments in drawing them from various authors, but from whose works they only took what appeared to them most worthy of observation, and embellished them in their own style. Others
68 ABRIDGERS.
again, having before them several authors who wrote on the same subject, took passages from each, united them, and thus combined a new work ; they executed their design by digest- ing in commonplaces, and under various titles, the most valuable parts they could collect, from the best authors they read. To these last ingenious scholars we owe the rescue of many valuable fragments of antiquity. They fortunately preserved the best maxims, characters, descriptions, and curious matters which they had found interesting in their studies.
Some learned men have censured these Abridgers as the cause of our having lost so many excellent entire works of the ancients ; for posterity becoming less studious was sat- isfied with these extracts, and neglected to preserve the originals, whose voluminous size was less attractive. Others, on the contrary, say that these Abridgers have not been so prejudicial to literature ; and that had it not been for their care, which snatched many a perishable fragment from that shipwreck of letters which the barbarians occasioned, we should perhaps have had no works of the ancients remaining. Many voluminous works have been greatly improved by their Abridgers. The vast history of Trogus Pompeius was soon forgotten and finally perished, after the excellent epitome of it by Justin, who winnowed the abundant chaff from the grain.
Bayle gives very excellent advice to an Abridger. Xiph- ilin, in his "Abridgment of Dion," takes no notice of a circumstance very material for entering into the character of Domitian : — the recalling the empress Domitia after having turned her away for her intrigues with a player. By omit- ting this fact in the abridgment, and which is discovered through Suetonius, Xiphilin has evinced, he says, a deficient judgment ; for Donn'tian's ill qualities are much better ex- posed, when it is known that he was mean-spirited enough to restore to the dignity of empress the prostitute of a player.
Abridgers, Compilers, and Translators, are now slightly
AB RID GEES. 69
regarded ; yet to form their works with skill requires an exertion of judgment, and frequently of taste, of which their contemners appear to have no due conception. Such literary labours it is thought the learned will not be found to want ; and the unlearned cannot discern the value. But to such Abridgers as Monsieur Le Grand, in his " Tales of the Min- strels," and Mr. Ellis, in his " English Metrical Romances," we owe much ; and such writers must bring to their task a congeniality of genius, and even more taste than their original possessed. I must compare such to fine etchers after great masters: — very few give the feeling touches in the right place.
It is an uncommon circumstance to quote the Scriptures on subjects of modern literature ! but on the present topic the elegant writer of the books of the Maccabees has delivered, in a kind of preface to that history, very pleasing and useful instructions to an Abridger. I shall transcribe the passages, being concise, from Book ii. Chap. ii. v. 23, that the reader may have them at hand : —
"All these things, I say, being declared by Jason of Cyrene, mjive books, we will assay to abridge in one volume. We will be careful that they that will read may have delight, and that they that are desirous to commit to memory might have ease, and that all into whose hands it comes might have vrofit" How concise and Horatian ! He then describes his literary labours with no insensibility : " To us that have taken upon us this painful labour of abridging, it was not easy, but a matter of sweat and watching" — And the writer employs an elegant illustration : " Even as it is no ease unto him that prepareth a banquet, and seeketh the benefit of others ; yet for the pleasuring of many, we will undertake gladly this great pain ; leaving to the author the exact hand- ling of every particular, and labouring to follow the rules of an abridgment." He now embellishes his critical account with a sublime metaphor to distinguish the original from the copier: "For as the master-builder of a new house must
70 PROFESSORS OF PLAGIARISM AND OBSCURITY.
care for the whole building ; but he that undertaketh to set it out, and paint it, must seek out fit things for the adorning thereof; even so I think it is with us. To stand upon every point, and go over things at large, and to be curious in par- ticulars, belonging to the first author of the story ; but to use brevity, and avoid much labouring of the work, is to be granted to him that will make an Abridgment."
Quintilian has not a passage more elegantly composed, iior more judiciously conceived.
PROFESSORS OF PLAGIARISM AND OBSCURITY.
AMONG the most singular characters in literature may be ranked those who do not blush to profess publicly its most dishonourable practices. The first vender of printed sermons imitating manuscript, was, I think, Dr. Trusler. He to whom the following anecdotes relate had superior ingenuity. Like the famous orator, Henley, he formed a school of his own. The present lecturer openly taught not to imitate the best authors, but to steal from them !
Richesource, a miserable declaimer, called himself " Mod- erator of the Academy of Philosophical Orators." He taught how a person destitute of literary talents might become emi- nent for literature ; and published the principles of his art under the title of " The Mask of Orators ; or the manner of- disguising all kinds of composition ; briefs, sermons, pane- gyrics, funeral orations, dedications, speeches, letters, pas- sages," &c. I will give a notion of the work : —
The author very truly observes, that all who apply them- selves to polite literature do not always find from their own funds a sufficient supply to insure success. For such he labours ; and teaches to gather, in the gardens of others, those fruits of which their own sterile grounds are destitute ; but so artfully to gather, that the public shall not perceive
PROFESSORS OF PLAGIARISM AND OBSCURITY. 71
their depredations. He dignifies this fine art by the title of PLAGIANISM, and thus explains it: —
" The Plagianism of orators is the art, or an ingenious and easy mode, which some adroitly employ, to change, or dis- guise, all sorts of speeches of their own composition, or that of other authors, for their pleasure, or their utility ; in such a manner that it becomes impossible even for the author him- self to recognize his own work, his own genius, and his own style, so skilfully shall the whole be disguised."
Our professor proceeds to reveal the manner of managing the whole economy of the piece which is to be copied or dis- guised ; and which consists in giving a new order to the parts, changing the phrases, the words, &c. An orator, for instance, having said that a plenipotentiary should possess three qual- ities,— probity, capacity, and courage ; the plagiarist, on the contrary, may employ courage, capacity, and probity. This is only for a general rule, for it is too simple to practice fre- quently. To render the part perfect we must make it more complex, by changing the whole of the expressions. The plagiarist in place of courage will put force, constancy, or vigour. For' 'probity he may say religion, virtue, or sincerity. Instead of capacity, he may substitute erudition, ability, or science. Or he may disguise the whole by saying, that the plenipotentiary should be firm, virtuous, and able.
The rest of this uncommon work is composed of passages extracted from celebrated writers, which are turned into the new manner of the plagiarist ; their beauties, however, are never improved by their dress. Several celebrated writers when young, particularly the famous Flechier, who addressed verses to him, frequented the lectures of this professor !
Richesource became so zealous in this course of literature, that he published a volume, entitled, " The Art of Writing and Speaking ; or, a Method of composing all sorts of Let- ters, and holding a polite Conversation." He concludes his preface by advertising his readers, that authors who may be in want of essays, sermons, letters of all kinds, written
72 PROFESSORS . OF PLAGIARISM AND OBSCURITY.
pleadings and verses, may be accommodated on application to him.
Our professor was extremely fond of copious title-pages, which I suppose to be very attractive to certain readers ; for it is a custom which the Richesources of the day fail not to employ. Are there persons who value books by the length of their titles, as formerly the ability of a physician was judged by the dimensions of his wig?
To this article may be added an account of another singu- lar school, where the professor taught obscurity in literary composition !
I do not believe that those who are unintelligible are very intelligent. Quintilian has justly observed, that the obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity. How- ever, as there is hardly a defect which does not find parti- sans, the same author informs us of a rhetorician, who was so great an admirer of obscurity, that he always exhorted his scholars to preserve it ; and made them correct, as blemishes, those passages of their works which appeared to him too intelligible. Quintilian adds, that the greatest pan- egyric they could give to a composition in that school was to jdeclare, " I understand nothing of this piece." Lycophron possessed this taste, and he protested that he would hang himself if he found a person who should understand his poem, called the " Prophecy of Cassandra." He succeeded so well, that this piece has been the stumbling-block of all the grammarians, scholiasts, and commentators ; and remains inexplicable to the present day. Such works Charpentier admirably compares to those subterraneous places, where the air is so thick and suffocating, that it extinguishes all torches. A most sophistical dilemma, on the subject of obscurity, was made by Thomas Anglus, or White, an English Catholic priest, the friend of Sir Kenelm Digby. This learned man frequently wandered in the mazes of metaphysical subtilties ; and became perfectly unintelligible to his readers. When accused of this obscurity, he replied, " Either the learned
LITERARY DUTCH. 73
understand me, or they do not. If they understand me, and find me in an error, it is easy for them to refute me ; if they do not understand me, it is very unreasonable for them to exclaim against my doctrines."
This is saying all that the wit of man can suggest in favour of obscurity ! Many, however, will agree with an observation made by Gravina on the over-refinement of modern con> position, that " we do not think we have attained genius, till others must possess as much themselves to understand us." Foutenelle, in France, followed by Marivaux, Thomas, and others, first introduced that subtilized manner of writing, which tastes more natural and simple reject ; one source of " such bitter complaints of obscurity.
LITERARY DUTCH.
PERE BOHOURS seriously asks if a German can be a BEL ESPRIT ? This concise query was answered by Kramer, in a ponderous volume which bears for title, Vindicice nominis Germanici. This mode of refutation does not prove that the question was then so ridiculous as it was considered. The Germans of the present day, although greatly superior to their ancestors, there are who opine are still distant from the acme of TASTE, which characterizes the finished compositions of the French and the English authors. Nations display genius before they form taste.
It was the mode with English and French writers to dis- honour the Germans with the epithets of heavy, dull, and phlegmatic compilers, without taste, spirit, or genius ; genuine descendants of the ancient Boeotians,
Crassoque sub acre nati.
Many imaginative and many philosophical performances have lately shown that this censure has now become unjust ;
74 LITERAEY DUTCH.
and much more forcibly answers the sarcastic question oi Bohours than the thick quarto of Kramer.
Churchill finely says of genius that it is independent of situation.
"And may hereafter even in HOLLAND rise.'*
Vondel, whom, as Marchand observes, the Dutch regard as their JEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, had a strange defective taste ; the poet himself knew none of these origi- nals, but he wrote on patriotic subjects, the sure way to obtain popularity ; many of his tragedies are also drawn from the Scriptures ; all badly chosen and unhappily executed. In his Deliverance of the Children of Israel, one of his principal characters is the Divinity! In his Jerusalem Destroyed we are disgusted with a tedious oration by the angel Gabriel, who proves theologically, and his proofs extend through nine closely printed pages in quarto, that this destruction has been predicted by the prophets : and, in the Lucifer of the same author, the subject is grossly scandalized by this haughty spirit becoming stupidly in love with Eve, and it is for her he causes the rebellion of the evil angels, and the fall of our first parents. Poor Vondel kept a hosier's shop, which he left to the care of his wife, while he indulged his poetical genius. His stocking-shop failed, and his poems produced him more chagrin than glory ; for in Holland, even a pa- triotic poet, if a bankrupt, would, no doubt, be accounted by his fellow-citizens, as a madman. Vondel had no other master but his genius, which, with his uncongenial situation, occasioned all his errors.
Another Dutch poet is even less tolerable. Having writ- ten a long rhapsody concerning Pyramus and Thisbe; he con- cludes it by a ridiculous parallel between the death of these unfortunate victims of love, and the passion of Jesus Christ, He says : —
Om t'concluderem van onsen begrypt, s
Dees.Historie moraliserende,
Is in den verstande wel accorderende,
By der Passie van Christus gebenedyt.
LITERARY DUTCH. 75
And upon this, after having turned Pyramus into the Son of God, and Thisbe into the Christian soul, he proceeds with a number of comparisons ; the latter always more impertinent than the former.
I believe it is well known that the actors on the Dutch theatre are generally tradesmen, who quit their aprons at the hour of public representation. This was the fact when I was in Holland more than forty years ago. Their comedies are offensive by the grossness of their buffooneries. One of their comic incidents was a miller appearing in distress for want of wind to turn his mill ; he had recourse to the novel scheme of placing his back against it, and by certain imita- tive sounds behind the scenes, the mill is soon set a-going. It is hard to rival such a depravity of taste.
I saw two of their most celebrated tragedies. The one was Gysbert Van Amstel, by Vondel ; that is Gysbrecht of Amsterdam, a warrior, who in the civil wars preserved this city by his heroism. It is a patriotic historical play, and never fails to crowd the theatre towards Christmas, when it is usually performed successively. One of the acts concludes with the scene of a convent ; the sound of warlike instru- ments is heard ; the abbey is stormed ; the nuns and fathers are slaughtered ; with the aid of " blunderbuss and thunder," every Dutchman appears sensible of the pathos of the poet. But it does not here conclude. After this terrible slaughter, the conquerors and the vanquished remain for ten minutes on the stage, silent and motionless, in the attitudes in which the groups happened to fall ! and this pantomimic pathos commands loud bursts of applause.
The other was the Ahasuerus of Schubart, or the Fall of Haman. In the triumphal entry the Batavian Mordecai was mounted on a genuine Flanders mare, that, fortunately, quietly received her applause with a lumpish majesty re* sembling her rider. I have seen an English ass once intro- duced on our stage which did not act with this decorum. Our late actors have frequently been beasts ; — a Dutch taste 1
76 PRODUCTIONS OF THE MIND NOT SEIZABLE.
Some few specimens of the best Dutch poetry which we have had, yield no evidence in favour of the national poetical taste. The Dutch poet Katz has a poem on the " Games of Children," where all the games are moralized ; I suspect the taste of the poet as well as his subject is puerile. When a nation has produced no works above mediocrity, with them a certain mediocrity is excellence, and their master-pieces, with a people who have made a greater progress in refinement, can never be accepted as the works of a master.
THE PRODUCTIONS OF THE MIND NOT SEIZABLE BY CREDITORS.
WHEN Crebillon, the French tragic poet, published his Catiline, it was attended with an honour to literature, which though it is probably forgotten, for it was only registered, I think, as the news of the day, it becomes one zealous in the cause of literature to preserve. I give the circumstance, the petition, and the decree.
At the time Catiline was given to the public, the creditors of the poet had the cruelty to attach the produce of this piece, as well at the bookseller's, who had printed the tragedy, as at the theatre where it was performed. The poet, irritated at these proceedings, addressed a petition to the king, in which he showed " that it was a thing yet unknown, that it should be allowed to class amongst seizable effects the pro- ductions of the human mind ; that if such a practice was per- mitted, those who had consecrated their vigils to the studies of literature, and who had made the greatest efforts to render themselves, by this means, useful to their country, would see themselves placed in the cruel predicament of not venturing to publish works, often precious and interesting to the state ; that the greater part of those who devote themselves to liter* ature require for the first wants of life those aids which they
CRITICS. 77
have a right to expect from their labours ; and that it never has been suffered in France to seize the fees of lawyers, and other persons of liberal professions.
In answer to this petition, a decree immediately issued from the King's council, commanding a replevy of the arrests and seizures of which the petitioner complained. This hon- ourable decree was dated 21st of May, 1749, and bore the following title : " Decree of the Council of his Majesty, in favour of M. Crebillon, author of the tragedy of Catiline, which declares that the productions of the mind are not amongst seizable effects."
Louis XV. exhibits the noble example of bestowing a mark of consideration to the remains of a man of letters. This King not only testified his esteem of Crebillon by having his works printed at the Louvre, but also by consecrating to his glory a tomb of marble.
CRITICS.
WRITERS who have been unsuccessful in original compo^ sition have their other productions immediately decried, what- ever merit they might once have been allowed to possess. Yet this is very unjust ; an author who has given a wrong direction to his literary powers may perceive, at length, where he can more securely point them. Experience is as excel- lent a mistress in the school of literature as in the school of human life. Blackmore's epics are insufferable ; yet neither Addison nor Johnson erred when they considered his philo- sophical poem as a valuable composition. An indifferent poet may exert the art of criticism in a very high degree ; and if he cannot himself produce an original work, he may yet be of great service in regulating the happier genius of another. This observation I shall illustrate by the charac- ters of two French critics ; the one is the Abbe d'Aubignac, and the other Chapelain.
7b CRITICS.
Boileau open- his Art of Poetry by a precept which though it be common is always important ; this critical poet declares, that " It is in vain a daring author thinks of attaining to the height-of Parnassus if he does not feel the secret influence of heaven, and if his natal star has not formed him to be a poet." This observation he founded on the character of our Abjbe ; who had excellently written on the economy of dra- matic composition. His Pratique du Theatre gained him an extensive reputation. When he produced a tragedy, the world expected a finished piece ; it was acted, and reprobated. The author, however, did not acutely feel its bad reception ; he everywhere boasted that he, of all the dramatists, had most scrupulously observed the rules of Aristotle. The Prince de Guemene, famous for his repartees, sarcastically observed, " I do not quarrel with the Abbe d'Aubignac for having so closely followed the precepts of Aristotle ; but I cannot pardon the precepts of Aristotle, that occasioned the Abbe* d'Aubignac to write so wretched a tragedy."
The Pratique du Theatre is not, however, to be despised, because the Tragedy of its author is despicable.
Chapelain's unfortunate epic has rendered him notorious. He had gained, and not undeservedly, great reputation for his critical powers. After a retention of above thirty years, his Pucette appea'red. He immediately became the butt of every unfledged wit, and his former works were eternally con- demned; insomuch that when Camusat published, after the death of our author, a little volume of extracts from his manuscript letters, it is curious to observe the awkward situa- tion in which he finds himself. In his preface he seems afraid that the very name of Chapelain will be sufficient to repel the reader. fiwfr-
Camusat observes of Chapelain, that " he found flatterers, who assured him his Pucelle ranked above the ^Eneid ; and this Chapelain but feebly denied. However this may be, it would be difficult to make the bad taste which reigns through- out this poem agree with that sound and exact criticism with
ANECDOTES OF CENSURED AUTHORS. 79
which tie decided on the works of others. So true is it, that genius is very superior to a justness of mind which is- suffi- cient to judge and to advise others." Chapelain was ordered to draw up a critical list of the chief living authors and men of letters in France, for the king. It is extremely impartial, and performed with an analytical skill of their literary char- acters which could not have been surpassed by an Aristotle or a Boileau.
The talent of judging may exist separately from the power of execution. An amateur may not" be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur ; and it is for this reason that young authors are not to contemn the precepts of such critics as even the Abbe" d' Aubignac and Chapelain. It is to Walsh, a miserable versifier, that Pope stands indebted for the hint of our poetry then being deficient in correctness and polish ; and it is from this fortunate hint that Pope derived his poeti- cal excellence. Dionysius Halicarnassensis has composed a lifeless history ; yet, as Gibbon observes, how admirably has he judged the masters, and defined the rules, of historical composition ! Gravina, with great taste and spirit, has writ- ten on poetry and poets, but he composed tragedies which give him no title to be ranked among them.
ANECDOTES OF CENSURED AUTHORS.
IT is an ingenious observation made by a journalist of Trevoux, on perusing a criticism not ill written, which pre tended to detect several faults in the compositions of Bruyere, that in ancient Rome the great men who triumphed amidst the applauses of those who celebrated their virtues, were at the same time compelled to listen to those who reproached them with their vices. This custom is not less necessary to the republic of letters than it was formerly to the republic of Home. Without this it is probable that authors would be in-
80 ANECDOTES OF CENSURED AUTHORS.
toxicated with success, and would then relax in their accus- tomed, vigour ; and the multitude who took them for models would, for want of judgment, imitate their defects.
Sterne and Churchill were continually abusing the Re- viewers, because they honestly told the one that obscenity was not wit, and obscurity was not sense ; and the other that dissonance in poetry did not excel harmony, and that his rhymes were frequently prose lines of ten syllables cut into verse. They applauded their happier efforts. Notwith- standing all this, it is certain that so little discernment exists among common writers and common readers, that the obscen- ity and flippancy of Sterne, and the bald verse and prosaic poetry of Churchill, were precisely the portion which they selected for imitation. The blemishes of great men are not the less blemishes, but they are, unfortunately, the easiest parts for imitation.
Yet criticism may be too rigorous, and genius too sensible to its fairest attacks. Racine acknowledged that one of the severe criticisms he received had occasioned him more vexa- tion than the greatest applauses had afforded him pleasure. Sir John Marsham, having published the first part of his " Chronology," suffered so much chagrin at the endless con- troversies which it raised — and some of his critics went so far as to affirm it was designed to be detrimental to revelation — that he burned the second part, which was ready for the press. Pope was observed to writhe with anguish in his chair on hearing mentioned the letter of Gibber, with other temporary attacks ; and it is said of Montesquieu, that he was so much affected by the criticisms, true and false, which he daily experienced, that they contributed to hasten his death. Ritson's extreme irritability closed in lunacy, while ignorant Reviewers, in the shapes of assassins, were haunting his death-bed. In the preface to his " Metrical Romances," he says — " Brought to an end in ill health and low spirits- certain to be insulted by a base and prostitute gang of lurk- ing assassins who stab in the dark, and whose poisoned
ANECDOTES OF CENSURED AUTHORS. gl
daggers he has already experienced." Scott, of Amwell, never recovered from a ludicrous criticism, which I dis- covered had been written by a physician who never pre- tended to poetical taste.
Pelisson has recorded a literary anecdote, which forcibly shows the danger of caustic criticism. A young man from a remote province came to Pans with a play, which he consid- ered as a masterpiece. M. L'Etoile was more than just in his merciless criticism. He showed the youthful bard a thousand glaring defects in his chef d'ceuvre. The humbled country author burnt his tragedy, returned home, took to his chamber, and died of vexation and grief. Of all unfortunate men, one of the unhappiest is a middling author endowed with too lively a sensibility for criticism. Athenseus, in his tenth book, has given us a lively portrait of this melancholy being. Anaxandrides appeared one day on horseback in the public assembly at Athens, to recite a dithyrambic poem, of which he read a portion. He was a man of fine stature, and wore a purple robe edged with golden fringe. But his com- plexion was saturnine and melancholy, which was the cause that he never spared his own writings. Whenever he was vanquished by a rival, he immediately gave his compositions to the druggists to be cut into pieces to wrap their articles in, without ever caring to revise his writings. It is owing to this that he destroyed a number of pleasing compositions ; age increased his sourness, and every day he became more and more dissatisfied at the awards of his auditors. Hence his " Tereus," because it failed to obtain the prize, has not reached us, which, with other of his productions, deserved preservation, though they had missed the crown awarded by the public.
Batteux having been chosen by the French government for the compilation of elementary books for the Military School, is said to have felt their unfavourable reception so acutely, that he became a prey to excessive grief. The lamentable death of Dr. Hawkesworth was occasioned by a
82 ANECDOTES OF CENSURED AUTHORS.
similar circumstance. Government had consigned to his care the compilation of the voyages that pass under his name: how he succeeded is well known. He felt the public recep- tion so sensibly, that he preferred the oblivion of death to the mortifying recollections of life.
On this interesting subject Fontenelle, in his " Eloge sur Newton," has made the following observation : — Newton was more desirous of remaining unknown than of having the calm of life disturbed by those literary storms which genius and science attract about those who rise to eminence." In one of his letters we learn that his " Treatise on Optics " being ready for the press, several premature objections which ap- peared made him abandon its publication. " I should re- proach myself," he said, " for my imprudence, if I were to lose a thing so real as my ease to run after a shadow." But this shadow he did not miss : it did not cost him the ease he so much loved, and it had for him as much reality as ease itself. I refer to Bayle, in his curious article " Hipponax," note P. To these instances we may add the fate of the Abbe Cassagne, a man of learning, and not destitute of talents. He was intended for one of the preachers at court ; but he had hardly made himself known in the pulpit, when he was struck by the lightning of Boileau's muse. He felt so acutely the caustic verses, that they rendered him almost incapable of literary exertion ; in the prime of life he became melan- choly, and shortly afterwards died insane. A modern painter, it is known, never recovered from the biting ridicule of a popular, but malignant wit. Cummyns, a celebrated quaker, confessed he died of an anonymous letter in a public paper, which, said he, " fastened on my heart, and threw me into this slow fever." Racine, who died of his extreme sensibility to a royal rebuke, confessed that the pain which one severe criticism inflicted outweighed all the applause he could re- ceive. The feathered arrow of an epigram has sometimes been wet with the heart's blood of its victim. Fortune has been lost, reputation destroyed, and every charity of life ex- tinguished, by the inhumanity of inconsiderate wit.
VIRGINITY. 83
Literary history, even of our own days, records the fat* of several who may be said to have died of Criticism. But there is more sense and infinite humour in the mode which Phaedrus adopted to answer the cavillers of his age. When he first published his Fables, the taste for conciseness and simplicity was so much on the decline, that they were both objected to him as faults. He used his critics as they de- served. To those who objected against the conciseness of his style, he tells a long tedious story (Lib. iii. Fab. 10, ver. 59), and treats those who condemned the simplicity of his style with a run of bombast verses, that have a great many noisy elevated words in them, without any sense at the bottom — this in Lib. iv. Fab. 6.
VIRGINITY.
THE writings of the Fathers once formed the studies of the learned. These labours abound with that subtilty of argu- ment which will repay the industry of the inquisitive, and the antiquary may turn them over for pictures of the manners of the age. A favourite subject with Saint Ambrose was that of Virginity, on which he has several works ; and perhaps he wished to revive the order of the vestals of ancient Rome, which afterwards produced the institution of Nuns. From his " Treatise on Virgins," written in the fourth century, we leam the lively impressions his exhortations had made on the minds and hearts of girls, not less in the most distant prov- inces, than in the neighbourhood of Milan, where he resided. The virgins of Bologna, amounting only, it appears, to the number of twenty, performed all kinds of needle-work, not merely to gain their livelihood, but also to be enabled to perform acts of liberality, and exerted their industry to allure other girls to join the holy profession of VIRGINITY He exhorts daughters, in spite of their parents, and even
84 VIRGINITY.
their lovers, to consecrate themselves. " I do not blame marriage," he says, "I only show the advantages of VIR- GINITY."
He composed this book in so florid a style, that he consid- ered it required some apology. A Religious of the Benedic- tines published a translation in 1689.
So sensible was Saint Ambrose of the rarity of the profes- sion he would establish, that he thus combats his adversaries : " They complain that human nature will be exhausted ; but I ask, who has ever sought to marry without finding women enough from amongst whom he might choose ? What mur- der, or what war, has ever been occasioned for a virgin ? It is one of the consequences of marriage to kill the adulterer, and to war with the ravisher."
He wrote another treatise On the perpetual Virginity of the Mother of God. He attacks Bonosius on this subject, and defends her virginity, which was indeed greatly suspected by Bonosius, who, however, incurred by this bold suspicion the anathema of Heresy. A third treatise was entitled Exhorta- tion to Virginity ; a fourth, On the Fate of a Virgin, is more curious. He relates the misfortunes of one Susannah, who was by no means a companion for her namesake ; for having made a vow of virginity, and taken the veil, she afterwards endeavoured to conceal her shame, but the precaution only tended to render her more culpable. Her behaviour, indeed, had long afforded ample food for the sarcasms of the Jews and Pagans. Saint Ambrose compelled her to perform public penance, and after having declaimed on her double crime, gave her hopes of pardon, if, like " So3ur Jeanne," this early nun would sincerely repent : to complete her chastisement, he ordered her every day to recite. the fiftieth psalm.
A GLANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY. 85
A GLANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY.
TN the republic of letters the establishment of an academy has been a favourite project ; yet perhaps -it is little more than an Utopian scheme. The united efforts of men of let- ters in Academies have produced little. It would seem that no man likes to bestow his great labours on a small commu- nity, for whose members he himself does not feel, probably, the most flattering partiality. The French Academy made a splendid appearance in Europe ; yet when this society pub- lished their Dictionary, that of Furetiere's became a formida- ble rival; and Johnson did as much as the forty themselves. Voltaire confesses that the great characters of the literary re- public were formed without the aid of academies. — " For what then," he asks, " are they necessary ? — To preserve and nourish the fire which great geniuses have kindled." By observing the Junto at their meetings we may form some opinion of the indolent manner in which they trifled away their time. We are fortunately enabled to do this, by a let- ter in which Patru describes, in a very amusing manner, the visit which Christina of Sweden took a sudden fancy to pay to the academy.
The Queen of Sweden suddenly resolved to visit the French Academy, and gave so short a notice of her design, that it was impossible to inform the majority of the members of her intention. About four o'clock fifteen or sixteen aca- demicians were assembled. M. Gombaut, who had never forgiven her majesty, because she did not relish his verses, thought proper to show his resentment by quitting the assem- bly.
She was received in a spacious hall. In the middle was a table covered with rich blue velvet, ornamented with a broad border of gold and silver. At its head was placed an arm- chair of black velvet embroidered with gold, and round the table were placed chairs w'th tapestry backs. The chancellor
86 A GLANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY.
had forgotten to hang in the hall the portrait of the queen, •which she had presented to the Academy, and which was considered as a great omission. About five, a footman be- longing to the queen inquired if the company were assembled. Soon after, a servant of the king informed the chancellor that the queen was at the end of the street ; and immediately her carriage drew up in the court-yard. The chancellor, followed by the rest of the members, went to receive her as she stepped out of her chariot ; but the crowd was so great, that few of them could reach her majesty. Accompanied by the chancellor, she passed through the first hall, followed by one of her ladies, the captain of her guards, and one or two of her suite.
When she entered the Academy she approached the fire, and spoke in a low voice to the chancellor. She then asked why M. Menage was not there ? and when she was told that he did not belong to the Academy, she asked why he did not? She was answered, that, however he might merit the honour, lie had rendered himself unworthy of it by several disputes he had had with its members. She then inquired aside of the chancellor whether the academicians were to sit or stand before her ? On this the chancellor consulted with a member, who observed that in the time of Ronsard, there was held an assembly of men of letters before Charles IX. several times, and that they were always seated. The queen conversed with M. Bourdelot; and suddenly turning to Madame de Bregis, told her that she believed she must not be present at the assembly ; but it was agreed that this lady deserved the honour. As the queen was talking with a member she ab ruptly quitted him, as was her custom, and in her quick way sat down in the arm-chair ; and at the same time the mem- bers seated themselves. The queen observing that they did not, out of respect to her, approach the table, desired them to come near ; and they accordingly approached it.
During these ceremonious preparations several officers of State had entered the hall, and stood behind the academicians.
A GLANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY. §7
The chancellor sat at the queen's left hand by the fire-side ; and at the right was placed M. de la Chambre, the director ; then Boisrobert, Patru, Pelisson, Cotin, the Abbe Tallemant, and others. M. de Mezeray sat at the bottom of the table facing the queen, with an inkstand, paper, and the portfolio of the company lying before him : he occupied the place of the secretary. When they were all seated the director rose, and the academicians followed him, all but the chancellor, who remained in his seat. The director made his compli- mentary address in a low voice, his body was quite bent, and no person but the queen and the chancellor could hear him. She received his address with great satisfaction.
All compliments concluded, they returned to their seats. The director then told the queen that he had composed a treatise on Pain, to add to his character of the Passions, and if it was agreeable to her majesty, he would read the first chapter. — " Very willingly," she answered. Having read it, he said to her majesty, that he would read no more lest he should fatigue her. " Not at all," she replied, " for I suppose what follows is like what I have heard."
M. de Mezeray observed that M. Cotin had some verses, which her majesty would doubtless find beautiful, and if it was agreeable they should be read. M. Cotin read them: they were versions of two passages from Lucretius : the one in which he attacks a Providence, and the other, where he gives the origin of the world according to the Epicurean sys- tem : to these he added twenty lines of his own, in which he maintained the existence of a Providence. This done, an abbe' rose, and, without being desired or ordered, read two son- nets, which by courtesy were allowed to be tolerable. It is remarkabte that both the poets read their verses standing, while the rest read their compositions seated.
After these readings, the director informed the queen that the ordinary exercise of the company was to labour on the dictionary ; and that if her majesty should not find it dis- agreeable, th 3y would read a cahier " Very willingly," she
88 A GLANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY.
answered. M. de Mezeray then read what related to the word Jeu ; Game. Amongst other proverbial expressions was this : Game of Princes, which only pleases the player, to express a malicious violence committed by one in power. At this the queen laughed heartily ; and they continued reading all that was fairly written. This lasted about an hour, when the queen observing that nothing more remained, arose, made a bow to the company, and returned in the manner she entered.
Furetiere, who was himself an academican, has described the miserable manner in which time was consumed at their assemblies. I confess he was a satirist, and had quarrelled with the academy; there must have been, notwithstanding, sufficient resemblance for the following picture, however it may be overcharged. He has been blamed for thus expos- ing the Eleusinian mysteries of literature to the uninitiated.
"He who is most -clamorous, is he whom they suppose has most reason. They all have the art of making long orations upon a trifle. The second repeats like an echo what the first said; but generally three or four speak together. When there is a bench of five or six members, one reads, another decides, two converse, one sleeps, and another amuses him- self with reading some dictionary which happens to lie before him. When a second member is to deliver his opinion, they are obliged to read again the article, which at the first perusal he had been too much engaged to hear. This is a happy manner of finishing their work. They can hardly get over two lines without long digressions ; without some one telling a pleasant story, or the news of the day ; or talking of affairs of state, and reforming the government."
That the French Academy were generally frivolously em- ployed appears also from an epistle to Balzac, by Boisrobert, the amusing companion of Cardinal Richelieu. " Every one separately," says he, " promises great things ; when they meet they do nothing. They have been six years employed on the letter F ; and I should be happy if I were certain of living till they got through G."
POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS. 89
The following anecdote concerns the forty arm-chairs of the academicians. Those cardinals who were academicians for a long time had not attended the meetings of the acade- my, because they thought that arm-chairs were indispensable to their dignity, and the academy had then only common chairs. These cardinals were desirous of being present at the election of M. Monnoie, that they might give him a distin- guished mark of their esteem. " The king," says D'Alembert, " to satisfy at once the delicacy of their friendship, and that of their cardinalship, and to preserve at the same time that academical equality, of which this enlightened monarch (Louis XIV.) well knew the advantage, sent to the academy forty arm-chairs for the forty academicians, the same chairs which we now occupy ; and the motive to which we owe them is sufficient to render the memory of Louis XIV. precious to the republic of letters, to whom it owes so many more important obligations 1 "
POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS.
IT will appear by the following anecdotes, that some men may be said to have died poetically and even grammatically.
There must be some attraction existing in poetry which is not merely fictitious, for often have its genuine votaries felt all its powers on the most trying occasions. They have dis- played the energy of their mind by composing or repeating verses, even with death on their lips.
The Emperor Adrian, dying, made that celebrated address to his soul, which is so happily translated by Pope. Lucan, when he had his veins opened by order of Nero, expired re- citing a passage from his Pharsalia, in which he had de- scribed the wound of a dying soldier. Petronius did the same thing on the same occasion.
Patris, a poet of Caen, perceiving himself expiring com
90 POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS.
posed some verses which are justly admired. In this little poem he relates a dream, in which he appeared to be placed next to a beggar,* when, having addressed him in the haughty strain he would probably have employed on this side of the e;rave, he receives the following reprimand : —
Ici tons sont e*gaux ; je ne te dois plus rien ; Je suis sur mon fumier comme toi sur le tien.
Here all are equal ! now thy lot is mine ! I on my dunghill, as thou art on thine.
Des Barreaux, it is said, wrote on his death-bed that well- known sonnet which is translated in the " Spectator."
Margaret of Austria, when she was nearly perishing in a storm at sea, composed her epitaph in verse. ,Had she perished, what would have become of the epitaph ? And if she escaped, of what use was it ? She should rather have said her prayers. The verses however have all the naivete of the tunes. They are —
Cy gist Margot, la gente demoiselle, Qu'eut deux maris, et si mourut pucelle.
Beneath this tomb is high-born Margaret laid, Who had two husbands, and yet died a maid.
She was ^betrothed to Charles VIII. of France, who for- sook her ; and being next intended for the Spanish infant, in her voyage to Spain, she wrote these lines in a storm.
Mademoiselle de Serment was surnamed the philosopher. She was celebrated for her knowledge and taste in polite literature. She died of a cancer in her breast, and suffered her misfortune with exemplary patience. She expired hi finishing these verses, which she addressed to Death ; —
Hectare clausa suo, Dignum tantorum pretium tulit ilia laborum.
It was after Cervantes had received extreme unction that he wrote the dedication of his Persiles.
Roscommon, at the moment he expired, with an energy of
POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS. 91
voice that expressed the most fervent devotion, uttered two lines of his own version of " Dies Irae ! " Waller, in his last moments, repeated some lines from Virgil ; and Chaucer seems to have taken his farewell of all human vanities by a moral ode, entitled, "A balade made by Geffrey Chaucyer upon his dethe-bedde lying in his grete anguysse."
Cornelius de Witt fell an innocent victim to popular pre- judice. His death is thus noticed by Hume : " This man, who had bravely served his country in war, and who had been invested with the highest dignities, was delivered into the hands of the executioner, and torn in pieces by the most inhuman torments. Amidst the severe agonies which he endured he frequently repeated an ode of Horace, which con- tained sentiments suited to his deplorable condition." It was the third ode of the third book which this illustrious philo- sopher and statesman then repeated.
Metastasio, after receiving the sacrament, a very short time before his last moments, broke out with all the enthu- siasm of poetry and religion in these stanzas : —
T' offro il tuo proprio Figlio, Che gia d'amore in pegno, Racchiuso in picciol segno Si voile a noi donar.
A lui rivolgi il ciglio.
Guardo chi t' offro, e poi Lasci, Signer, se vuoi, Lascia di perdonar.
" I offer to thee, 0 Lord, thine own Son, who already has given the pledge of love, enclosed in this thin emblem. Turn on him thine eyes: ah ! behold whom I offer to thee, and then desist, 0 Lord ! if thou canst dosist from mercy."
" The muse that has attended my course," says the dying Gleim in a letter to Klopstock, " still hovers round my steps to the very verge of the grave." A collection of lyrical poems, entitled " Last Hours," composed by Old Gleim on his death-bed, was intended to be published. The death of
92 . POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS.
Klopstock was one of the most poetical : in this poet's " Mes- siah," he had made the death of Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, a picture of the death of the Just ; and on his own death-bed he was heard repeating, with an expiring voice, his own verses on Mary ; he was exhorting himself to die by the accents of his own harp, the sublimities of his own muse! The same song of Mary was read at the public funeral of Klopstock.
Chatelar, a French gentleman, beheaded in Scotland for having loved the queen, and even for having attempted her honour, Brantome says, would not have any other viaticum than a poem of Ronsard. When he ascended the scaffold he took the hymns of this poet, and for his consolation read that on death, which our old critic says is well adapted to con- quer its fear.
When the Marquis of Montrose was condemned by his judges to have his limbs nailed to the gates of four cities, the brave soldier said that " he was sorry he had not limbs suf- ficient to be nailed to all the gates of the cities in Europe, as monuments of his loyalty." As he proceeded to his execu- tion, he put this thought into verse.
Philip Strozzi, imprisoned by Cosmo the First, Great Duke of Tuscany, was apprehensive of the danger to which he might expose his friends who had joined in his conspiracy against the duke, from the confessions which the rack might extort from him. Having attempted every exertion for the liberty of his country, he considered it as no crime therefore to die. He resolved on suicide. With the point of the sword, with which he killed himself, he cut out on the mantel- piece of the chimney this verse of Virgil : —
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor. Rise some avenger from our blood !
I can never repeat without a strong emotion the following stanzas, begun by Andre Chenier, in the dreadful period of
POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS. 93
the French revolution. He was waiting for his turn to be dragged to the guillotine, when he commenced this poem :—
Comrae un dernier rayon, comrae un dernier ze'phyre
Anime la fin d'un beau jour; Au pied de I'e'chafuud j'essaie encore ma lyre,
Peut-etre est ce bientot mon tour;
Peut-etre avant que I'h cure en cercle proraen^e
Ait pos(5 sur 1' (Small brillant, Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est borage
Son pied souore et vigilant,
Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere
Here, at this pathetic line, was Andre Chenier summoned to the guillotine ! Never was a more beautiful effusion of grief interrupted by a more affecting incident !
Several men of science have died in a scientific manner, llaller, the poet, philosopher, and physician, beheld his end approach with the utmost composure. He kept feeling his pulse to the last moment, and when he found that life was almost gone, he turned to his brother physician, observing, " My friend, the artery ceases to beat," and almost instantly expired. The same remarkable circumstance had occurred to the great Harvey : he kept making observations on the state of his pulse, when life was drawing to its close, " as if," says Dr. Wilson, in the oration spoken a few days after the event, " that he who had taught us. the beginning of life might himself, at his departing from it, become acquainted with those of death."
De Lagny, who was intended by his friends for the study of the law, having fallen on an Euclid, found it so congenial to his dispositions, that he devoted himself to mathematics. In his last moments, when he retained no further recollection of the friends who surrounded his bed, one of them, perhaps to make a philosophical experiment, thought proper to ask him the square of twelve : our dying mathematician instantly, and perhaps without knowing that he answered, replied, " One hundred and forty-four."
94 SCARRON.
The following anecdotes are of a different complexion, and may excite a smile.
Pere Bohours was a French grammarian, who had been justly accused of paying too scrupulous an attention to the minutiae of letters. He was more solicitous of his words than his thoughts. It is said, that when he was dying, he called out to his friends (a correct grammarian to the last), "'Je VAS, ouje VAIS mourir ; Tun ou Vautre se dit!"
When Malherbe was dying, he reprimanded his nurse for making use of a solecism in her language ; and when his con- fessor represented to him the felicities of a future state in low and trite expressions, the dying critic interrupted him: — " Hold your tongue," he said, " your wretched style only makes me out of conceit with them ! "
The favourite studies and amusements of the learned La Mothe le Vayer consisted in accounts of the most distant countries. He gave a striking proof of the influence of this master-passion, when death hung upon his lips. Bernier, the celebrated traveller, entering and drawing the curtains of his bed to take his eternal farewell, the dying man turning to him, with a faint voice inquired, " Well, my friend, what news from the Great Mogul ? " ,
SCARRON.
SCARRON, as a burlesque poet, but no other comparison exists, had his merit, but is now little read ; for the uniform- ity of. the burlesque style is as intolerable as the uniformity of the serious. From various sources we may collect some uncommon anecdotes, although he was a mere author.
His father, a counsellor, having married a second wife, the lively Scarron became the object of her hatred.
He studied, and travelled, and took the clerical tonsure ; but discovered dispositions more suitable to the pleasures of his age than to the gravity of his profession. He formed an
SCARRON. 95
acquaintance with the wits of the times ; and in the carnival of 1638 committed a youthful extravagance, for which his remaining days formed a continual punishment. He dis- guised himself as a savage ; the singularity of a naked man attracted crowds. After having been hunted by the mob, he was forced to escape from his pursuers ; and concealed liim- self in a marsh. A freezing cold seized him, and threw him, at the age of twenty-seven years, into a kind of palsy ; a cruel disorder which tormented him all his life. " It was thus," he says, " that pleasure deprived me suddenly of legs which had danced with elegance, and of hands, which could manage the pencil and the lute."
Goujet, without stating this anecdote, describes his disorder as an acrid humour, distilling itself on his nerves, and baffling the skill of his physicians ; the sciatica, rheumatism, in a word, a complication of maladies attacked him, sometimes successively, sometimes together, and made of our poor Abbe a sad spectacle. He thus describes himself in one of his letters ; and who could be in better humour ?
" I have lived to thirty : if I reach forty I shall only add many miseries to those which I have endured these last eight or nine years. My person was well made, though short ; my disorder has shortened it still more by a foot. My head is a little broad for my shape ; my face is full enough for my body to appear very meagre ; I have hair enough to render a wig unnecessary ; I have got many white hairs in spite of the proverb. My teeth, formerly square pearls, are now of the colour of wood, and will soon be of slate. My legs and (highs first formed an obtuse angle, afterwards an equilateral angle, and at length, an acute one. My thighs and body form another ; and my head, always dropping on my breast, makes me not ill represent a Z. I have got my arms short- ened as well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. In a word, I am an abridgment of human miseries."
He had the free use of nothing but his tongue and his hands j and he wrote on a portfolio placed on his knees.
96 SCARRON.
Balzac said of Scarron, that he had gone further in insen- sibility than the stoics, who were satisfied in appearing insensible to pain ; but Scarron was gay, and amused all the world with his sufferings.
He portrays himself thus humorously in his address to the queen : —
Je ne regarde plus qu'en bas, Je suis torticolis, j'ai la tete penchante;
Ma mine devient si plaisante Que quand on en riroit, je ne m'en plaindrois pas.
"lean only see under me; I am wry-necked; my head hangs down; my appearance is so«iroll, that if people laugh, I shall not complain.'*
He says elsewhere,
Parmi les torticolis
Je passe pour un des plus jolis.
" Among your wry-necked people I pass for one of the handsomest."
After having suffered this distortion of shape, and these acute pains for four years, he quitted his usual residence, the quarter du Marais, for the baths of the fauxbourg Saint Ger- main. He took leave of his friends, by addressing some verses to them, entitled, Adieu aux Marais ; in which he describes several celebrated persons. When he was brought into the street in a chair, the pleasure of seeing himself there once more overcame the pains which the motion occasioned, and he has celebrated the transport by an ode, which has for title, " The Way from le Marais to the Fauxbourg Saint Germain."
The baths he tried had no effect on his miserable disorder But a new affliction was added to the catalogue of his griefs.
His father, who had hitherto contributed to his necessities, having joined a party against Cardinal Richelieu, was exiled. This affair was rendered still more unfortunate by his mother- in-law with her children at Paris, in the absence of her hus- band, appropriating the property of the family to her own use.
SCARRON. 97
Hitherto Scarron had had no connection with Cardinal Richelieu. The conduct of his father had even rendered his name disagreeable to the minister, who was by no means prone to forgiveness. Scarron, however, when he thought his passion moderated, ventured to present a petition, which is considered by the critics as one of his happiest productions. Richelieu permitted it to be read to him, and acknowledged that it afforded him much pleasure, and that it was pleasantly dated. This- pleasant date is thus given by Scarron :—
Fait a Paris dernier jour d'Octobre, Par moi, Sourron, qui malgre moi suis sobre, L'an que 1'on prit le fameux Perpignant Et, saus canon, la ville de Sedan.
At Paris done, the .last day of October, By me, Scarron, who wanting wine am sober. The year they took fam'd Perpignan, And, without cannon-ball, Sedan.
This was flattering the minister adroitly in two points very agreeable to him. The poet augured well of the dispositions of the cardinal, and lost no time to return to the charge, by addressing an ode to him, to which he gave the title of THANKS, as if he had already received the favours which he hoped he should receive ! Thus Ronsard dedicated to Cath erine of Medicis, who was prodigal of promises, his hymn to PROMISE. But all was lost for Scarron by the death oi' the Cardinal.
When Scarron's father died, he brought his mother-in-law into court ; and, to complete his misfortunes, lost his suit. The cases which he drew up for the occasion were so ex- tremely burlesque, that the world could not easily conceive how a man could amuse himself so pleasantly on a subject on which his existence depended.
The successor of Richelieu, the Cardinal Mazarin, was insensible to his applications. He did nothing for him, although the poet dedicated to him his Typhon, a burlesque
VOL. u. 7
98 SCARRON.
poem, in which the author describes the wars of the giants with the gods. Our bard was so irritated at this neglect, that he suppressed a sonnet he had written in his favour, and aimed at him several satirical bullets. Scarron, however, consoled himself for this kind of disgrace with those select friends who were not inconstant in their visits to him. The Bishop of Mans also, solicited by a friend, gave him a living in his diocese. When Scarron had taken possession of it, he began his Roman Comique, ill translated into English by Comical Romance. He made friends by his dedications. Such resources were indeed necessary, for he not only lived well, but had made his house an asylum for his two sisters, who there found refuge from an unfeeling step-mother.
It was about this time that the beautiful and accomplished Mademoiselle d'Aubigne, afterwards so well known by the name of Madame de Maintenon, she who was to be one day the mistress, if not the queen of France, formed with Scarron the most romantic connection. She united herself in mar- riage with one whom she well knew could only be a lover. It was indeed amidst that literary society she formed her taste and embellished with her presence his little residence, where assembled the most polished courtiers and some of the finest geniuses of Paris of that famous party, called La Fronde, formed against Mazajrin. Such was the influence this marriage had over Scarron, that after this period his writings became more correct and more agreeable than those which he had previously composed. Scarron, on his side, gave a proof of his attachment to Madame de Maintenon ; for by marrying her he lost his living of Mans. But though without wealth, he was accustomed to say that "his wife and he would not live uncomfortable by the produce of his estate and the Marquisate of Quinet." Thus he called the revenue which his compositions produced, and Quinet was his book- seller.
Scarron addressed one of his dedications to his dog, to rid- icule those writers who dedicate their works indiscriminately,
SCARRON. 99
though no author has been more liberal of dedications thau himself; but, as he confessed, he made dedication a kind of business. When he was low in cash he always dedicated to some lord, whom he praised as warmly as his dog, but whom probably he did not esteem as much.
When Scarron was visited, previous to general conversa- tion his friends were taxed with a perusal of what he had written since he saw them last. Segrais and a friend calling on him, " Take a chair," said our author, " and let me try on you my l Roman Comique.' " He took his manuscript, read several pages, and when he observed that they laughed, he said, " Good, this goes well ; my book can't fail of success, since it obliges such able persons as yourselves to laugh ; " and then remained silent to receive their compliments. He used to call this trying on his romance, as a tailor tries his coat. He was agreeable and diverting in all things, even in his complaints and passions. Whatever he conceived he im- mediately too freely expressed ; but his amiable lady corrected him of this in tliree months after marriage.
He petitioned the queen, in his droll manner, to be per- mitted the honour of being her Sick-Man by right of office. These verses form a part of his address to her majesty :
Scarron, par la grace de Dieu, Malade indigne de la reine, Homme n'ayant ni feu, ni lieu, Mais bien du mal et de la peine ; Hopital allant et venant, Des jambes d'autrui cheminant, Des siennes n'ayant plus 1'usage, Souffrant beaucoup, dormant bien pen, Et pourtant faisant par courage Bonne mine et fort mauvais jeu.
" Scarron, by the grace of God, the unworthy Sick-Man of the Queen; a man without a house, though a moving hospital of disorders ; walking only with other people's legs, with great sufferings, but little sleep; and yet, in spite of all, very courageously showing a hearty countenance, tHough indeed he plays a losing game."
She smiled, granted the title, and, what was better, added
100 SCAKRON.
^
a small pension, which losing, by lampooning the minister Mazarin, Fouquet generously granted him a more considera- ble one.
The termination of the miseries of this facetious geniufe was now approaching. To one of his friends, who was taking leave of him for some time, Scarron said, " I shall soon die ; the only regret I have in dying is not to be enabled to leave some property to my wife, who is possessed of infinite merit, and whom I have every reason imaginable to admire and to praise."
One day he was seized with so violent a fit /*f the hiccough, that his friends now considered his prediction would soon be verified. When it was over, " If ever I recover," cried Scar- roH, " I will write a bitter satire against the hiccough." The satire, however, was never written, for he died soon after. A little before his death, when he observed his relations and domestics weeping and groaning, he was not much affected, but humourously told them, " My children, you will never weep for me so much as I have made you laugh." A few moments before he died, he said, that " he never thought that it was so easy a matter to laugh at the approach of death."
The burlesque compositions of Scarron are now neglected by the French. Tliis species of writing was much in vogue till attacked by the critical Boileau, who annihilated such puny writers as D'Assoucy and Dulot, with their stupid admi- rers. It is said he spared Scarron because his merit, though it appeared but at intervals, was uncommon. Yet so much were burlesque verses the fashion after Scarron's works, that the booksellers would not publish poems, but with the word " Burlesque " in the title-page. In 1 649 appeared a poem, which shocked the pious, entitled, " The Passion of our Lord, in burlesque Verses"
Swift, in his dotage, appears to have been gratified by such puerilities as Scarron frequently wrote. An ode which Swift calls " A Lilliputian Ode," consisting of verses of three sylla- bles, probably originated in a long epistle in verses of three
SCARRON. 101
syllables, which Scarron addressed to Sarrazin. It is pleas- ant, and the following lines will serve as a specimen :—
Epitre a M. Sarrazin.
Sarrazin Mon voisin, Cher ami, Qu'a demi, Je ne voi, Dont ma foi J'ai de*pit Un petit. N'es-tu pas Barrabas, Busiris, Phalaris, Ganelon, Le Felon?
He describes himself —
Un pauvret, Tres maigret, An col tors, Dont le corps Tout tortu, Tout bossu, Suranne*, De'charne', Est re"duit, Jour et nuit, A souffrir Sans gu^rir Des tourmens Vehemens.
He complains of Sarrazin's not visiting him, threatens to reduce him into powder if he comes not quickly ; and con- cludes,
Mais pourtant, Repentant Si tu viens, Et tu tiens Seulement Un moment
102 PETER CORNEILLE.
Avec nous, Mon courroux Finira, Ex CETERA.
The? Roman Comique of our author abounds with pleasan- try, with wit and character. His " Virgile Travestie " it is impossible to read long : this we likewise feel in " Cotton's Virgil travestied," which has notwithstanding considerable merit. Buffoonery after a certain time exhausts our patience. It is the chaste actor only who can keep the attention awake for a length of time. It is said that Scarron intended to write a tragedy ; this perhaps would not have been the least facetious of his burlesques.
PETER CORNEILLE.
Exact Racine and Corneille's noble fire Show'd us that France had something to admire.
POPE.
THE great Corneille having finished his studies, devoted himself to the bar ; but this was not the stage on which liis abilities were to be displayed. He followed the occupation of a lawyer for some time, without taste and without success. A trifling circumstance discovered to the world and to him- self a different genius. A young man who was in love with a girl of the same town, having solicited him to be his com- panion in one of those secret visits which he paid to the lady, it happened that the stranger pleased infinitely more than his introducer. The pleasure arising from this adventure excited in Corneille a talent which had hitherto been unknown to him, and he attempted, as if it were by inspiration, dramatic poetry. On this little subject, he wrote his comedy of Melite, in 1625. At that moment the French drama was at a low ebb : the most favourable ideas were formed of our juvenile
PETER CORNEILLE. 103
poet, and comedy, it was expected, would now reach its per- fection. After the tumult of approbation had ceased, the critics thought that Me"lite was too simple and barren of in- cident. Roused by this criticism, our poet wrote his Clitan- dre, and in that piece has scattered incidents and adventures with such a licentious profusion, that the critics say he wrote it rather to expose the public taste than to accommodate him- self to it. In this piece the persons combat on the theatre ; there are murders and assassinations ; heroines fight ; officers appear hi search of murderers, and women are disguised as men. There is matter sufficient for a romance of ten volumes ; "And yet," says a French critic, " nothing can be more cold and tiresome." He afterwards indulged his natural genius in various other performances; but began to display more forcibly his tragic powers in Medea. A comedy which he afterwards wrote was a very indifferent composition. He regained his full lustre in the famous Cid, a tragedy, of which he preserved in his closet translations in all the European languages, except the Sclavonian and the Turkish. He pur- sued his poetical career with uncommon splendour in the Horaces, Cinna, and at length in Polyeucte ; which produc- tions, the French critics say, can never be surpassed.
At length the tragedy of "Pertharite" appeared, and proved unsuccessful. This so much disgusted our veteran bard, that, like Ben Jonson, he could not conceal his chagrin in the preface. There the poet tells us that he renounces the theatre forever! and indeed this eternity lasted for several years !
Disgusted by the fate of his unfortunate tragedy, he directed his poetical pursuits to a different species of compo- sition. He now finished his translation in verse, of the " Imi- tation of Jesus Christ, by Thomas a Kempis." This work, perhaps from the singularity of its dramatic author becoming a religic us writer, was attended with astonishing success. Yet Fontenelle did not find in this translation the prevailing charm of the original, which consists in that simplicity and
104 PETER CORNEILLE.
naivete which are lost in the pomp of versification so natural to Corneille. "This book," he continues, "the finest that ever proceeded from the hand of man (since the gospel does not come from man) would not go so direct to the heart, and would not seize on it with such force, if it had not a natural and tender air, to which even that negligence which prevails in the style greatly contributes." Voltaire appears to confirm the opinion of our critic, in respect to the translation : " It is reported that Corneille's translation of the Imitation of Jesus Christ has been printed thirty-two times ; it is as difficult to believe this as it is to read the book once ! "
Corneille seems not to have been ignorant of the truth of this criticism. In his dedication to the Pope, he says, " The translation which I have chosen, by the simplicity of its style, precludes all the rich ornaments of poetry, and far from in- creasing my reputation, must be considered rather as a sacri- fice made to the glory of the Sovereign Author of all, which I may have acquired by my poetical productions." This is an excellent elucidation of the truth of that precept of John- son which respects religious poetry ; but of which the author of " Calvary " seemed not to have been sensible. The merit of religious compositions appears, like this " Imitation of Jesus Christ," to consist in a simplicity inimical to the higher poetical embellishments ; these are too human !
When Racine, the son, published a long poem on " Grace," taken in its holy sense, a most unhappy subject at least for poetry; it was said that he had written on Grace without grace.
During the space of six years Corneille rigorously kept his promise of not writing for the theatre. At length, over- powered by the persuasions of his friends, and probably by his own inclinations, he once more directed his studies to the drama. He recommenced in 1659, and finished in 167f>. During this time he wrote ten new pieces, and published a variety of little religious poems, which, although they do not attract the attention of posterity, were then read with delight,
PETER CORNEILLE. 105
and probably preferred to the finest tragedies by the good catholics of the day.
In 1675 he terminated his career. In the last year of his life his mind became so enfeebled as to be incapable of think- ing, and he died in extreme poverty. It is true that his un- common genius had been amply rewarded ; but amongst his talents that of preserving the favours of fortune he had not acquired.
Fontenelle, his -nephew, presents a minute and interesting description of this great man. Vigneul Marville says, that when he saw Corneille he had the appearance of a country tradesman, and he could not conceive how a man of so rustic an appearance could put into the mouths of his Romans such heroic sentiments. Corneille was sufficiently large and full in his person ; his air simple and vulgar ; always negligent ; and very little solicitous of pleasing by his exterior. His face had something agreeable, his nose large, his mouth not unhand- some, his eyes full of fire, his physiognomy lively, with strong features, well adapted to be transmitted to posterity on a medal or bust. His pronunciation was not very distinct : and he read his verses with force, but without grace.
He was acquainted with polite literature, with history, and politics ; but he generally knew them best as they related to the stage. For other knowledge he had neither leisure, cu- riosity, nor much esteem. He spoke little, even on subjects which he perfectly understood. He did not embellish what he said, and to discover the great Corneille it became neces- sary to read him.
He was of a melancholy disposition, had something blunt in his manner, and sometimes he appeared rude ; but in fact he was no disagreeable companion, and made a good father and husband. He was tender, and his soul was very susceptible of friendship. His constitution was very favourable to love, but never to debauchery, and rarely to violent attachment. His soul was fierce and independent : it could never be man- aged, for it would never bend. This indeed rendered him
106 PETER CORNEILLE.
very capable of portraying Roman virtue, but incapable of improving his fortune. Nothing equalled his incapacity for business but his aversion : the slightest troubles of this kind occasioned him alarm and terror. He was never satiated with praise, although he was continually receiving it ; but if he was sensible to fame, he was far removed from vanity.
What Fontenelle observes of Corneille's love of fame is strongly proved by our great poet himself, in an epistle to a friend, in which we find the following remarkable description of himself; an instance that what the world calls vanity, at least interests in a great genius.
Nous nons aimons un pen, c'est notre foible h tons;
Le prix que nous valons que le spait mieux que nous ?
Et puis la mode en est, et la cour 1'autorise,
Nous parlons de nous-memes avec toute franchise,
La fausse humilite" ne met plus en credit.
Je scais ce que je vaux, et crois ce qu'on m'en dit,
Pour me faire admirer je ne fais point de ligue ;
J'ai peu de voix pour moi, mais je les ai sans brigue;
Et mon ambition, pour faire plus de bruit
Ne les va point queter de rdduit en re"duit.
Mon travail sans appui monte sur le theatre,]
Chacun en libert£ 1'y blame ou 1'idolatre;
La, sans que mes amis prechent leurs sentimens,
J'arrache quelquefois leurs applaudissemens ;
La, content du succes que le m^rite donne,
Par d'illustres avis je n'eblouis personne;
Je satisfais ensemble et peuple et courtisans ;
Et mes vers en tous lieux sont mes seuls partisans;
Par leur seule beaute" ma plume est estim^e;
Je ne dois qu'a moi seul toute ma renomme'e;
Et pense toutefois n'avoir point de rival,
A qui je fasse tort, en le traitant d'e"gal.
I give his sentiments in English verse.
Self-love prevails too much in every state ;
Who, like ourselves, our secret worth can rate?
Since 'tis a fashion authorized at court,
Frankly our merits we ourselves report.
A proud humility will not deceive ;
I know my worth ; what others say, believe.
POETS. 107
To be admired I form no petty league;
Few are my friends, but gain'd without intrigue.
My bold ambition, destitute of grace,
Scorns still to beg their votes from place to place.
On the fair stage my scenic toils I raise,
While each is free to censure or to praise;
And there, unaided by inferior arts,
I snatch the applause that rushes from their hearts.
Content by Merit still to win the crown,
With no illustrious names I ch§at the town.
The galleries thunder, and the pit commends;
My verses, every where, my only friends !
'Tis from their charms alone my praise I claim;
*Tis to myself alone, I owe my fame ;
And know no rival whom I fear to meet,
Or injure, when I grant an equal seat.
Voltaire censures Corneille for making his heroes say con- tinually they are great men. But in drawing the character of an hero he draws his own. All his heroes are only so many Corneilles in different situations.
Thomas Corneille attempted the same career as his brother : perhaps his name was unfortunate, for it naturally excited a comparison which could not be favourable to him. Ga9on, the Dennis of his day, wrote the following smart impromptu under his portrait : —
Voyant le portrait de Corneille, Gardez-vous de crier merveille; Et dans vos transports n'allez pas Prendre ici Pierre pour Thoma*.
POETS.
IN all ages there has existed an anti-poetical party. This faction consists of those frigid intellects incapable of that glowing expansion so necessary to feel the charms of an art, which only addresses itself to the imagination ; or of writers who, having proved unsuccessful in their court to the muses,
108 POETS.
revenge themselves by reviling them ; and also of those re- ligious minds who consider the ardent effusions of poetry as dangerous to the morals and peace of society.
Plato, amongst the ancients, is the model of those moderns who profess themselves to be ANTI-POETICAL.
This writer, in his ideal republic, characterizes a man who occupies himself with composing verses as a very dangerous member of society, from the inflammatory tendency of his writings. It is by arguing from its abuse, that he decries this enchanting talent. At the same time it is to be recol- lected, that no hea,v? was more finely organized for the visions of the muse than Plato's : he was a true poet, and had ad- dicted himself in his prime of life to the cultivation of the art, but perceiving that he could not surpass his inimitable original, Homer, he employed this insidious manner of depre- ciating his works. In the Phoedon he describes the feelings of a genuine Poet. To become such, he says, it will never be sufficient to be guided by the rules of art, unless we also feel the ecstasies of that furor, almost divine, which in this kind of composition is the most palpable and least ambiguous character of a true inspiration. Cold minds, ever tranquil and ever in possession of themselves, are incapable of producing exalted poetry ; their verses must always be feeble, diffusive, and leave no impression ; the verses of those who are en- dowed with a strong and lively imagination, and who, like Homer's personification of t)iscord, have their heads inces- santly in the skies, and their feet on the earth, will agitate you, burn in your heart, and drag you along with them ; breaking like an impetuous torrent, and swelling your breast with that enthusiasm with which they are themselves pos-
Such is the character of a poet in a poetical age ! — The tuneful race have many corporate bodies of mechanics ; Pontypool manufacturers, ir.layers, burnishers, gilders, and filers !
Men of taste are sometimes disgusted in turning over the
POETS. 109
works of the anti-poetical, by meeting with gross railleries and false judgments concerning poetry and poets. Locke has expressed a marked contempt of poets ; but we see what ideas he formed of poetry by his warm panegyric of one of Blackmore's epics ! and besides he was himself a most un- happy poet ! Selden, a scholar of profound erudition, has given us his opinion concerning poets. " It is ridiculous for a lord to print verses ; he may make them to please himself. If a man in a private chamber twirls his band-strings, or plays with a rush to please himself, it is well enough ; but if he should go into Fleet-street, and sit upon a stall and twirl a band-string, or play with a rush, then all the boys in the street would laugh at him." — As if " the sublime and the beautiful " can endure a comparison with the twirling of a band-string or playing with a rush ! — A poet, related to an illustrious family, and who did not write unpoetically, entertained a far different notion concerning poets* So persuaded was he that to be a true poet required an elevated mind, that it was a inaxim with him that no writer could be an excellent poet who was not descended from a noble family. This opinion is as absurd as that of Selden : — but when one party will not grant enough, the other always assumes too much. The great Pascal, whose extraordinary genius was discovered in the sciences, knew little of the nature of poetical beauty. He said " Poetry has no settled object." This was the decision of a geometrician, not of a poet. " Why should he speak of what he did not understand?" asked the lively Voltaire. Poetry is not an object which comes under the cognizance of philosophy or wit.
Longuerue had profound erudition ; but he decided on poetry in the same manner as those learned men. Nothing so strongly characterizes such literary men as the following observations in the Longueruana, p. 170.
" There are two looks on ffomer, which I prefer to Homer himself. The first is Antiquitates Homericce of Feithius, where he has extracted every thing relative to the usages and
110 POETS.
customs of the Greeks ; the other is, Homeri Gnomologia per Duportum, printed at Cambridge. In these two books is found every thing valuable in Homer, without being obligee' to get through his Conies a dormir debout ! " Thus men of science decide on men of taste ! There are who study Homer and Virgil as the blind travel through a fine coun- try, merely to get to the end of their journey. It was ob- served at the death of Longuerue that in his immense library not a volume of poetry was to be found. He had formerly read poetry, for indeed he had read every thing. Racine tells us, that when young he paid him a visit ; the conver- sation turned on poets ; our erudit reviewed them all with the most ineffable contempt of the poetical talent, from which he said we learn nothing. He seemed a little chari- table towards Ariosto. — " As for that madman," said he, " he has amused me sometimes." Dacier, a poetical pedant after all, was asked who was the greater poet, Homer or Virgil ? he honestly answered, " Homer, by a thousand years ! "
But it is mortifying to find among the anti-poetical even poets themselves ! Malherbe, the first poet in France in his day, appears little to have esteemed the art. He used to say that " a good poet was not more useful to the state than a skilful player of nine-pins ! " Malherbe wrote with costive labour. When a poem was shown to him which had been highly commended, he sarcastically asked if it would " lower the price of bread ? " In these instances he maliciously con- founded the useful with the agreeable arts. Be it remem- bered, that Malherbe had a cynical heart, cold and unfeeling ; his character may be traced in his poetry ; labour, and cor- rectness, without one ray of enthusiasm.
Le Clerc was a scholar not entirely unworthy to be ranked amongst the Lockes, the Seldens, and the Longuerues ; and his opinions are as just concerning poets. In the Parrhasi- ana he has written a treatise on poets in a very unpoetical manner. I shall notice his coarse railleries relating to what he calls " the personal defects of poets." In vol. i. p. 33, he
POETS. 1U
says, " In the Scaligerana we have Joseph Scaliger's opinion concerning poets. l There never was a man who was a poet, or addicted to the study of poetry, but his heart was puffed up with his greatness.' — This is very true. The poetical en- thusiasm persuades those gentlemen, that they have some- thing in them superior to others, because they employ a lan- guage peculiar to themselves. When the poetic furor seizes them, its traces frequently remain on their faces, which make connoisseurs say with Horace,
Aut insanit homo, aut versus facit. There goes a madman or a bard !
Their thoughtful air and melancholy gait make them appear insane ; for, accustomed to versify while they walk, and to bite their nails in apparent agonies, their steps are measured and slow, and they look as if they were reflecting on some- thing of consequence, although they are only thinking, as the phrase runs, of nothing ! " I have only transcribed the above description of our jocular scholar, with an intention of de- scribing those exterior marks of that fine enthusiasm, of which the poet is peculiarly susceptible, and which have exposed many an elevated genius to the ridicule of the vulgar.
I find this admirably defended by Charpentier : " Men may ridicule as much as they please those gesticulations and contortions which poets are apt to make hi the act of compos- ing ; it is certain, however, that they greatly assist in putting the imagination into motion. These kinds of agitation do not always show a mind which labours with its sterility ; they frequently proceed from a mind which excites and animates itself. Quintilian has nobly compared them to those lashings of his tail which a lion gives himself when he is preparing to combat Persius, when he would give us an idea of a cold and languishing oration, says that its author did not strike his desk nor bite his nails.
*' Nee pluteum csedit, nee demorsos sapit ungues."
These exterior marks of enthusiasm may be illustrated by
112 POETS.
the following curious anecdote : — Domenichino, the painter, was accustomed to act the characters of all the figures he would represent on his canvas, and to speak aloud whatever the passion he meant to describe could prompt. Painting the martyrdom of St Andrew, Carracci one day caught him in a violent passion, speaking in a terrible and menacing tone. He was at that moment employed on a soldier who was threatening the saint When this fit of enthusiastic abstraction had passed, Carracci ran and embraced him, acknowledging that Domenichino had been that day his master ; and that he had learnt from him the true manner to succeed in catching the expression — that great pride of the painter's art
Thus different are the sentiments of the intelligent and the unintelligent on the same subject A Carracci embraced a kindred genius for what a Le Clerc or a Selden would have ridiculed.
Poets, I confess, frequently indulge reveries, which, though they offer no charms to their friends, are too delicious to forego. In the ideal world, peopled with all its fairy inhab- itants, and ever open to their contemplation, they travel with an unwearied foot. Crebillon, the celebrated tragic poet, was enamoured of solitude, that he might there indulge, without interruption, in those fine romances with which his imagi- nation teemed. One day when he was in a deep reverie, a friend entered hastily: " Don't disturb me," cried the poet; u I am enjoying a moment of happiness : I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish another who is an idiot/
Amongst the anti-poetical may be placed the father of the great monarch of Prussia. George the Second was not more the avowed enemy of the muses. Frederic would not suffer the prince to read verses ; and when he was desirous of study, or of the conversation of literary men, he was obliged to do it secretly. Every poet was odious to his majesty. One day, having observed some lines written on one of the doors of the palace, he asked a courtier their sig-
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nification. They were explained to him ; they were Latin verses composed by Wachter, a man of letters, then resident at Berlin. The king immediately sent for the bard, who came warm with the hope of receiving a reward for his inge- nuity. He was astonished, however, to hear the king, in a violent passion, accost him, " I order you immediately to quit this city and my kingdom." Wachter took refuge in Hano- ver. As little indeed was this anti-poetical monarch a friend to philosophers. Two or three such kings might perhaps renovate the ancient barbarism of Europe. Barratier, the celebrated child, was presented to his majesty of Prussia as a prodigy of erudition ; the king, to mortify our ingenious youth, coldly asked him, "If he knew the law?" The learned boy was constrained to acknowledge that he knew nothing of the law. " Go," was the reply of this Augustus, " go, and study it before you give yourself out as a scholar." Poor Barratier renounced for this pursuit his other studies, and persevered with such ardour that he became an excellent lawyer at the end of fifteen months ; but his exertions cost him at the same time his life !
Every monarch, however, has not proved so destitute of poetic sensibility as this Prussian. Francis I. gave repeated marks of his attachment to the favourites of the muses, by composing several occasional sonnets, which are dedicated to their eulogy. Andrelin, a French poet, enjoyed the happy fate of Oppian, to whom the emperor Caracalla counted as many pieces of gold as there were verses in one of his poems ; and with great propriety they have been called " golden verses." Andrelin, when he recited his poem on the Con- quest of Naples before Charles VIII., received a sack of sil- ver coin, which with difficulty he carried home. Charles IX., says Brantome, loved verses, and recompensed poets, not in- deed immediately, but gradually, that they might always be stimulated to excel. He used to say, that poets resembled race-horses, that must be fed but not fattened, for then they were good for nothing. Marot was so much esteemed by
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kings, that lie was called the poet of princes, and the prince of poets.
In the early state of poetry what honours were paid to its votaries ! Ronsard the French Chaucer was the first who carried away the prize at the Floral Games. This meed of poetic honour was an eglantine composed of silver. The reward did not appear equal to the merit of the work and the reputation of the poet ; and on this occasion the city of Tou- louse had a Minerva of solid silver struck, of considerable value. This image was sent to Ronsard, accompanied by a decree, in which he was declared, by way of eminence, " The French poet."
It is a curious anecdote to add, that when, at a later period, a similar Minerva was adjudged to Maynard for his verses, the Capitouls, of Toulouse, who were the executors of the Floral gifts, to their shame, out of covetousness, never obeyed the decision of the poetical judges. This circum- stance is noticed by Maynard in an epigram, which bears this title : On a Minerva of silver, promised but not given.
The anecdote of Margaret of Scotland, wife of the Dauphin of France, and Alain the poet, is generally known. Who is not charmed with that fine expression of her poetical sen- sibility ? The person of Alain was repulsive, but his poetry had attracted her affections. Passing through one of the halls of the palace, she saw him sleeping on a bench ; she approached and kissed him. Some of her attendants could not conceal their astonishment that she should press with her lips those of a man so frightfully ugly. The amiable princess answered, smiling, " I did not kiss the man, tut the mouth which has uttered so many fine things."
The great Colbert paid a pretty compliment to Boileau and Racine. This minister, at his villa, was enjoying the conversation of our two poets, when the arrival of a prelate was announced : turning quickly to the servant, he said, " Let him be shown every thing except myself ! "
To such attentions from this great minister, Boileau alludes in these verses : —
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Plus d'un grand m'aima jusques a la tendresse; Et ma vue a Colbert inspiroit 1'all^gresse.
Several pious persons have considered it as highly merit- able to abstain from the reading of poetry ! A good father, in his account of the last hours of Madame Racine, the lady of the celebrated tragic poet, pays high compliments to her religious disposition, which, he says, was so austere, that she would not allow herself to read poetry, as she considered it to be a dangerous pleasure ; and he highly commends her for never having read the tragedies of her husband ! Arnauld, though so intimately connected with Racine for many years, had not read his compositions. When at length, he was persuaded to read Phaedra, he declared himself to be delighted, but complained that the poet had set a dangerous example, in making the manly Hippolytus dwindle to an ef- feminate lover. As a critic, Arnauld was right ; but Racine had his nation to please. Such persons entertain notions of poetry similar to that of an ancient father, who calls poetry the wine of Satan ; or to that of the religious and austere Nicole, who was so ably answered by Racine : he said, that dramatic poets were public poisoners, not of bodies, but of souls.
Poets, it is acknowledged, have foibles peculiar to them- selves. They sometimes act in the daily commerce of life as if every one was concerned in the success of their pro- ductions. Poets are too frequently merely poets. Segraia has recorded that the following maxim of Rochefoucault was occasioned by reflecting on the characters of Boileau and Racine. " It displays," he writes, " a great poverty of mind to have only one kind of genius." On this Segrais observes, and Segrais knew them intimately, that their conversation only turned on poetry ; take them from that, and they knew nothing. It was thus with one Du Perrier, a good poet, but very poor. When he was introduced to Pelisson, who wished to be serviceable to him, the minister said, " In what can he be employed ? He is only occupied by his verses."
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All these complaints are not unfounded ; yet, perhaps, it is unjust to expect from an excelling artist all the petty accomplishments of frivolous persons, who have studied no art but that of practising on the weaknesses of their friends. The enthusiastic votary, who devotes his days and nights to meditations on his favourite art, will rarely be found that despicable thing, a mere man of the world. Du Bos has justly observed, that men of genius, born for a particular profession, appear inferior to others when they apply them- selves to other occupations. That absence of mind which arises from their continued attention to their ideas, renders them awkward in their manners. Such defects are even a proof of the activity of genius.
It is a common foible with poets to read their verses to friends. Segrais has ingeniously observed, to use bis own words, " When young I used to please myself in reciting my verses indifferently to all persons ; but I perceived when Scarron, who was my intimate friend, used to take his port- folio and read his verses to me, although they were good, I frequently became weary. I then reflected, that those to whom I read mine, and who, for the greater part, had no taste for poetry, must experience the same disagreeable sen- sation. I resolved for the future to read my verses only to those who entreated me, and to read but a few at a time. We flatter ourselves too much ; we conclude that what pleases us must please others. We will have persons in- dulgent to us, and frequently we will have no indulgence for those who are in want of it." An excellent hint for young poets, and for those old ones who carry odes and elegies in their pockets, to inflict the pains of the torture on their friends.
The affection which a poet feels for his verses has been frequently extravagant. Bayle, ridiculing that parental ten- derness which writers evince for their poetical compositions, tells us, that many having written epitaphs on friends whom they believed on report to have died, could not determine to
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keep them in their closet, but suffered them to appear in the lifetime of those very friends whose death they celebrated. In another place he says, that such is their infatuation for their productions, that they prefer giving to the public their panegyrics of persons whom afterwards they satirized, rather than suppress the verses which contain those pane- gyrics. We have many examples of this in the poems, and even in the epistolary correspondence of modern writers. It is customary with most authors, when they quarrel with a person after the first edition of their work, to cancel his eulo- gies in the next. But poets and letter-writers frequently do not do this ; because they are so charmed with the happy turn of their expressions, and other elegances of composition, that they prefer the praise which they may acquire for their style to the censure which may follow from their inconsistency.
After having given a hint to young poets, I shall offer one to veterans. It is a common defect with them that they do not know when to quit the muses in their advanced age. Bayle says, " Poets and orators should be mindful to retire from their occupations, which so peculiarly require the fire of imagination ; yet it is but too common to see them in their career, even in the decline of life. It seems as if they would condemn the public to drink even the lees of their nectar." Afer and Daurat were both poets who had acquired con- siderable reputation, but which they overturned when they persisted to write in their old age without vigour and with- out fancy.
What crowds of these impenitently bold,
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,
They run on poets, in a raging vein,
E'en to the dregs and squeezing? of the brain:
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with a_U the rage of impotence.
POPE.
It is probable he had Wycherley in his eye when he wrote this. The veteran bard latterly scribbled much indifferent
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verse ; anl Pope had freely given his opinion, by which he lost his friendship !
It is still worse when aged poets devote their exhausted talents to divine poems, as did Waller ; and Milton in his second epic. Such poems, observes Voltaire, are frequently entitled " sacred poems ; " and sacred they are, for no one touches them. From a soil so arid what can be expected but insipid fruits ? Corneille told Chevreau several years before his death, that he had taken leave of the theatre, for he had lost his poetical powers with his teeth.
Poets have sometimes displayed an obliquity of taste in their female favourites. As if conscious of the power of ennobling others, some have selected them from the lowest classes, whom, having elevated into divinities, they have ad- dressed in the language of poetical devotion. The Chloe of Prior, after all his raptures, was a plump bar-maid. Ronsard addressed many of his verses to Miss Cassandra, who followed the same occupation : in one of his sonnets to her, he fills it with a crowd of personages taken from the Iliad, which to the honest girl must have all been extremely mysterious. Colletet, a French bard, married three of his servants. His last lady was called la belle Claudine. Ashamed of such menial alliances, he attempted to persuade the world that he had married the tenth muse ; and for this purpose published verses in her name. When he died, the vein of Claudine became suddenly dry. She indeed published her " Adieux to the Muses ; " but it was soon discovered that all the verses of this lady, including her " Adieux," were the compositions of her husband.
Sometimes, indeed, the ostensible mistresses of poets have no existence ; and a slight occasion is sufficient to give birth to one. Racan and Malherbe were one day conversing on their amours ; that is, of selecting a lady who should be the object of their verses. Racan named one, and Malherbe another. It happening that both had the same name, Catha- rine, they passed the whole afternoon in forming it into an
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anagram. They found three: Arthenice, Eracinthe, and Charinte. The first was preferred ; and many a fine ode was written in praise of the beautiful Arthenice !
Poets change their opinions of their own productions won- derfully at different periods of life. Baron Haller was in his youth warmly attached to poetic composition. His house was on fire, and to rescue his poems he rushed through the flames. He was so fortunate as to escape with his beloved manuscript in his hand. Ten years afterwards he condemned to the flames those very poems which he had ventured his life to preserve.
Satirists, if they escape the scourges of the law, have rea- son to dread the cane of the satirized. Of this kind we have many anecdotes on record ; but none more poignant than the following : — Benserade was caned for lampooning the Due d'Epernon. Some days afterwards he appeared at court, but being still lame from the rough treatment he had received, he was forced to support himself by a cane. A wit, who knew what had passed, whispered the affair to the queen. She, dissembling, asked him if he had the gout ? " Yes, madam/' replied our lame satirist, " and therefore I make use of a cane." " Not so," interrupted the malignant Bautru, " Ben- serade in this imitates those holy martyrs who are always represented with the instrument which occasioned their suffer- ings."
ROMANCES.
ROMANCE has been elegantly defined as the offspring of FICTION and LOVE. Men of learning have amused them- selves with tracing the epocha of romances ; but the erudi- tion is desperate which would fix on the inventor of the first romance : for what originates in nature, who shall hope to detect the shadowy outlines of its beginnings ? The Thea- genes and Chariclea of Heliodorus appeared in the fourth
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century ; and this elegant prelate was the Grecian Fenelon. It has been prettily said, that posterior romances seem to be the children of the marriage of Theagenes and Chariclea, The Romance of u The Golden Ass," by Apuleius, which contains the beautiful tale of " Cupid and Psyche," remains unrivalled ; while the " Daphne and Chloe " of Longus, in the old version . of Amyot, is inexpressibly delicate, simple, and inartificial, but sometimes offends us, for nature there " plays her virgin fancies."
Beautiful as these compositions are, when the imagination of the writer is sufficiently stored with accurate observations on human nature, in their birth, like many of the fine arts, the zealots of an ascetic religion opposed their progress. However Heliodorus may have delighted those who were not insensible to the felicities of a fine imagination, and to the enchanting elegances of style, he raised himself, among nis brother ecclesiastics, enemies, who at length so far pre- vailed, that, in a synod, it was declared that his performance was dangerous to young persons, and that if the author did not suppress it, he must resign his bishopric. We are told he preferred his romance to his bishopric. Even so late as in Racine's time it was held a crime to peruse these un- hallowed pages. He informs us that the first effusions of his muse were in consequence of studying that ancient romance, which his tutor observing him to devour with the keenness of a famished man, snatched from his hands and flung it in the fire. A second copy experienced the same fate. What could Racine do? He bought a third, and took the precaution of devouring it secretly till he got it by heart : after which he offered it to the pedagogue with a smile, to burn like the others.
The decision of these ascetic bigots was founded in their opinion of the immorality of such works. They alleged that the writers paint too warmly to the imagination, address themselves too forcibly to the passions, and in general, by the freedom of their representations, hover on the borders of in-
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decency. Let it be sufficient, however, to observe, that thosQ who condemned the liberties which these writers take with the imagination could indulge themselves with the Anacreon- tic voluptuousness of the wise Solomon, when sanctioned by the authority of the church.
The marvellous power of romance over the human mind is exemplified in this curious anecdote of oriental literature.
Mahomet found they had such an influence over the im- aginations of his followers, that he has expressly forbidden them in his Koran ; and the reason is given in the following anecdote: — An Arabian merchant having long resided in Persia, returned to his own country while the prophet was publishing his Koran. The merchant, among his other riches, had a treasure of romances concerning the Persian heroes. These he related to his delighted countrymen, who considered them to be so excellent, that the legends of the Koran were neglected, and they plainly told the prophet that the " Persian Tales " were superior to his. Alarmed, he immediately had a visitation from the angel Gabriel, declar- ing them impious and pernicious, hateful to God and Mahomet. This checked their currency ; and all true believers yielded up the exquisite delight of poetic fictions for the insipidity of religious ones. Yet these romances may be said to have outlived the Koran itself ; for they have spread into regions which the Koran could never penetrate. Even to this day Colonel Capper, in his travels across the Desert, saw " Ara- bians sitting round a fire, listening to their tales with such attention and pleasure, as totally to forget the fatigue and hardship with which an instant before they were entirely overcome." And Wood, in his journey to Palmyra : " At night the Arabs sat in a circle drinking coffee, while one of the company diverted the rest by relating a piece of history on the subject of love or war, or with an extempore tale."
Mr. Ellis has given us " Specimens of the Early English Metrical Romances," and Ritson and Weber have printed two collections of them entire, valued by the poetical anti-
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quary. Learned inquirers have traced the origin of romantic fiction to various sources. From Scandinavia issued forth the giants, dragons, witches, and enchanters. .The curious reader will be gratified by " Illustrations of Northern Anti- quities," a volume in quarto; where he will find extracts from " The Book of Heroes " and " The Nibelungen Lay," with many other metrical tales from the old German, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic languages. In the East, Arabian fancy bent her iris of many softened hues over a delightful land of fiction : while the Welsh", in their emigration to Brit- tany, are believed to have brought with them their national fables. That subsequent race of minstrels, known by the name of Troubadours in the South of France, composed their erotic or sentimental poems ; and those romancers called Troveurs, or finders, in the North of France, culled and compiled their domestic tales or fabliaux, Dits, Conte^ or Lai. .Millot, Sainte Palaye, and Le Grand, have pre- served, in their " Histories of the Troubadours," their literary compositions. They were a romantic race of ambulatory poets, military and religious subjects their favourite themes, yet bold and satirical on princes, and even on priests ; severe moralizers, though libertines in their verse ; so refined and chaste in their manners, that few husbands were alarmed at the enthusiastic language they addressed to their wives. The most romantic incidents are told of their loves. But love and its grosser passion were clearly distinguished from each other in their singular intercourse with their " Dames." The object of their mind was separated from the object of their senses ; the virtuous lady to whom they vowed their hearts was in their language styled " la dame de ses pensees" a very dis- tinct being from their other mistress ! Such was the Platonic chimera that charmed in the age of chivalry ; the Laura of Petrarch might have been no other than " the lady of his thoughts."
From such productions in their improved state poets of all nations have drawn their richest inventions. The agreeable
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wildness of that fancy which characterized the Eastern na- tions was often caught by the crusaders. When they returned hom-3, they mingled in their own the customs of each country. The Saracens, being of another religion, brave, desperate, and fighting for their father-land, were enlarged to their fears, under the tremendous form of Paynim Giants, while the reader of that day followed with trembling sympathy the Redcross Knight. Thus fiction embellished religion, and religion invigorated fiction ; and such incidents have en- livened the cantos of Ariosto, and adorned the epic of Tasso. Spenser is the child of their creation ; and it is certain that we are indebted to them for some of the bold and strong touches of Milton. Our great poet marks his affection for " these lofty Fables and Romances, among which his young feet wandered." Collins was bewildered among their magi- cal seductions ; and Dr. Johnson was enthusiastically de- lighted by the old Spanish folio romance of " Felixmarte of Hircania," and similar works. The most ancient romances were originally composed in verse before they were converted into prose : no wonder that the lacerated members of the poet, have been cherished by the sympathy of poetical souls. Don Quixote's was a very agreeable insanity.
The most voluminous of these ancient romances is " Le Roman de Perceforest." I have seen an edition in six small folio volumes, and its author has been called the French Homer by the writers of his age. In the class of romances of chivalry, we have several translations in the black letter. These books are very rare, and their price is as voluminous. It is extraordinary that these writers were so unconscious of their future fame, that not one of their names has travelled down to us. There were eager readers in their days, but not a solitary bibliographer ! All these romances now re- quire some indulgence for their prolixity, and their Platonic amours ; but they have not been surpassed in the wildness of their inventions, the ingenuity of their incidents, the simplicity of their style, and their carious manners. Many a Homer
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lies hid among them but a celebrated Italian critic suggested to me that many of the fables of Homer are onlj disguised and degraded in the romances of chivalry. Those who vilify them as only barbarous imitations of classical fancy condemn them as some do Gothic architecture, as mere corruptions of a purer style : such critics form their decision by precon- ceived notions ; they are but indifferent philosophers, and to us seem to be deficient in imagination.
-As a specimen I select two romantic adventures: — The title of the extensive romance of Perceforest is, " The most elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and delightful history of Perceforest, King of Great Britain, &c." The most ancient edition is that -of 1528. The writers of these Gothic fables, lest they should be considered as mere triflers, pretended to an allegorical meaning concealed under the texture of their fable. From the following adventure we learn the power of beauty in making ten days appear as yesterday! Alexander the Great in search of Perceforest, parts with his knights in an enchanted wood, and each vows they will not remain «Jonger than one night in one place. Alexander, accompanied by a page, arrives at Sebilla's castle, who is a sorceress. He is taken by her witcheries and beauty, and the page, by the lady's maid, falls into the same mistake as his master, who thinks he is there only one night. They enter the castle with deep wounds, and issue perfectly recovered. I tran- scribe the latter part as a specimen of the manner. "When they were once out of the castle, the king said, " Truly, Floridas, I know not how it has been with me ; but certainly Sebilla is a very honourable lady, and very beautiful, and very charming in conversation. Sire (said Floridas), it is true ; but one thing surprises me : — how is it that our wounds have healed in one night ? I thought at least ten or fifteen days were necessary. Truly, said the king, that is astonish- ing! Now king Alexander met Gadiffer, king of Scotland, and the valiant knight Le Tors. "Well, said the king, have ye news of the king of England ? Ten days we have hunted
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him, and cannot find him out. How, said Alexander, did we not separate yesterday from each other? In God's name, gaid Gadiffer, what means your majesty ? It is ten days I Have a care what you say, cried the king. Sire, replied Gadiffer, it is so ; ask Le Tors. On my honour, said Le Tors, the king of Scotland speaks truth. Then, said the king, some of us are enchanted; Floridas, didst thou not think we separated yesterday ? Truly, truly, your majesty, I thought so ! But when I saw our wounds healed in one night, I had some suspicion that WE were enchanted?
In the old romance of Melusina, this lovely faiiy (though to the world unknown as such), enamoured of Count Ray- mond, marries him, but first extorts a solemn promise that he will never disturb her on Saturdays. On those days the inferior parts of her body are metamorphosed to that of a mermaid, as a punishment for a former error. Agitated by the malicious insinuations of a friend, his curiosity and his jealousy one day conduct him to the spot she retired to at those times. It was a darkened passage in the dungeon of the fortress. His hand gropes its way till it feels an iron gate oppose it ; nor can he discover a single chink, but at length perceives by his touch a loose nail ; he places his sword in its head and screws it out. Through this cranny he sees Melusina in the horrid form she is compelled to assume. • That tender mistress, transformed into a monsfer bathing in a fount, flashing the spray of the water from a scaly tail ! He repents of his fatal curiosity : she reproaches him, and their mutual happiness is for ever lost. The moral design of the tale evidently warns the lover to revere a Woman's Secret!
Such are the works which were the favourite amusements of our English court, and which doubtless had a due effect in refining the manners of the age, in diffusing that splendid military genius, and that tender devotion to the fair sex, which dazzle us in the reign of Edward III., and through that enchanting labyrinth of History constructed by the
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gallant Froissart. In one of the revenue rolls of Henry III. there is an entry of " Silver clasps and studs for his majesty's great book of Romances." Dr. Moore observes that the enthusiastic admiration of chivalry which Edward III. mani- fested during the whole course of his reign, was probably, in some measure, owing to his having studied the clasped book in his great grandfather's library.
The Italian romances of the fourteenth century were spread abroad in great numbers. They formed the polite literature of the day. But if it is not permitted to authors freely to express their ideas, and give full play to the imagi- nation, these works must never be placed in the study of the rigid moralist. They, indeed, pushed their indelicacy to the verge of grossness, and seemed rather to seek than to avoid scenes, which a modern would blush to describe. They, to employ the expression of one of their authors, were not ashamed to name what God had created. Cinthio, Bandello, and others, but chiefly Boccaccio, rendered libertinism agree- able by the fascinating charms of a polished style and a lux- uriant imagination.
This, however, must not be admitted as an apology for im- moral works; for poison is not the less poison, even when delicious. Such works were, and still continue to be, the favourites of a nation stigmatized for being prone to impure amours. They are still curious in their editions, ami are not parsimonious in their price for what they call an uncastrated copy. There are many Italians, not literary men, who are in possession of an ample library of these old novelists.
If we pass over the moral irregularities of these romances, we may discover a rich vein of invention, which only requires to be released from that rubbish which disfigures it, to be- come of an invaluable price. The Decameroncs, the Hecatom- miti, and the Novellas of these writers, translated into Eng- lish, made no inconsiderable figure in the little library of our Shakspeare. Chaucer had been a notorious imitator and lover of them. His " Knight's Tale " is little more than a
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paraphrase of " Boccaccio's TeseoideJ" Fontaine has caught all their charms with all their licentiousness. From such works, these great poets, and many of their contemporaries, frequently borrowed their plots ; not uncommonly kindled at their flame the ardour of their genius ; but bending too sub- missively to the taste of their age, in extracting the ore they have not purified it of the alloy. The origin of these tales must be traced to the inventions of the Troveurs, who doubt- less often adopted them from various nations. Of these tales, Le Grand has printed a curious collection ; and of the writers Mr. Ellis observes, in his preface to " Way's Fab- liaux," that the authors of the " Cento Novelle Antiche," Boccaccio, Bandello, Chaucer, Gower, — in short, the writers of all Europe, have probably made use of the inventions of the elder fablers. They have borrowed their general out- lines, which they have filled up with colours of their own, and have exercised their ingenuity in varying the drapery, in combining the groups, and in forming them into more regular and animated pictures.
We now turn to the French romances vof the last century, called heroic, from the circumstance of their authors adopt- ing the name of some hero. The manners are the mod- ern antique ; and the characters are a sort of beings made out of the old epical, the Arcadian pastoral, and the Pari- sian sentimentality and affectation of the days of Voiture. The Astrea of D'Urfe greatly contributed to their perfec- tion. As this work is founded on several curious cir- cumstances, it shall be the subject of the following article ; for it may be considered as a literary curiosity. The Astrea was followed by the illustrious Bassa, Artamene, or the Great Cyrus, Clelia, &c. which, though not adapted to the present age, once gave celebrity to their authors; and the Great Cyrus, in ten volumes, passed through five or six editions. Their style, as well as that of the Astrea, is diffuse and languid ; yet Zaide, and the Princess of Cleves, are master- pieces of the kind. Such works formed tho first studies of
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Rousseau, who, with his father, would sit up all night, till warned by the chirping of the swallows how foolishly they had spent it ! Some incidents in his Nouvelle Heloise have been retraced to these sources ; and they certainly entered greatly into the formation of his character.
Such romances at length were regarded as pernicious to good sense, taste, and literature. It was in this light they were considered by Boileau, after he had indulged in them in his youth.
A celebrated Jesuit pronounced an oration against these works. The rhetorician exaggerates and hurls his thunders on flowers. He entreats the magistrates not to suffer foreign romances to be scattered amongst the people, but to lay on them heavy penalties as on prohibited goods ; and represents this prevailing taste as being more pestilential than the plague itself. He has drawn a striking picture of a family devoted to romance-reading ; he there describes women occupied day and night with their perusal ; children just escaped from the lap of their nurse grasping in their little hands the fairy tales ; and a country squire seated in an old arm-chair, reading to his family the most wonderful passages of the ancient works of chivalry.
» These romances went out of fashion with our square- cocked hats : they had exhausted the patience of the public, and from them sprung NOVELS. They attempted to allure attention by this inviting title, and reducing their works from ten to two volumes. The name of romance, including imagi- nary heroes and extravagant passions, disgusted; and they substituted scenes of domestic life, and touched our common feelings by pictures of real nature. Heroes were not now taken from the throne : they were sometimes even sought after amongst the lowest ranks of the people. Scarron seems to allude sarcastically to this degradation of the heroes of Fiction ; for in hinting at a new comic history he had pro- jected, he tells us that he gave it up suddenly because he had " heard that his hero had just been hanged at Mans."
KOMANCES. 129
NOVELS, as they were long manufactured, form a library of illiterate authors for illiterate readers; but as they are created by genius, are precious to the philosopher. They paint the character of an individual or the mariners of the age more perfectly than any other species of composition : it is in novels we observe as it were passing under our eyes the refined frivolity of the French ; the gloomy and disordered sensibility of the German ; and the petty intrigues of the modern Italian in some Venetian Novels. We have shown the world that we possess writers of the first order in this delightful province of Fiction and of Truth ; for every Fic- tion invented naturally must be true. After the abundant invective poured on this class of books, it is time to settle for ever the controversy, by asserting that these works of fic- tion are among the most instructive of every polished nation, and must contain all the useful truths of human life, if com- posed with genius. They are pictures of the passions, useful to our youth to contemplate. That acute philosopher, Adam Smith, has given an opinion most favourable to NOVELS. " The poets and romance writers who best paint the refine- ments and delicacies of love and friendship, and of all other private and domestic affections, Racine and Voltaire, Rich- ardson, Marivaux, and Riccoboni, are in this case much bet- ter instructors than Zeno, Chrysippus, or Epictetus."
l&e history of romances has been recently given by Mr. Dunlop, with many pleasing details ; but this work should be accompanied by the learned Longlet du Fresnoy's " Bibliothe- que des Romans," published under the name of M. le C. Gordon de Percel ; which will be found useful for immediate reference for titles, dates, and a copious catalogue of romances and novels to the year 1734.
VOL* II.
130 THE ASTREA.
THE ASTREA.
I BRING the Astrea forward to point out the ingen- ious manner by which a fine imagination can veil the common incidents of life, and turn whatever it touches into gold.
Honore* d'TIrfe* was the descendant of an illustricus family. His brother Anne married Diana of Chateaumorand, the wealthy heiress of another great house. After a marriage of no less duration than twenty-two years, this union was broken by the desire of Anne himself, for a cause which the delicacy of Diana had never revealed. Anne then became an ecclesiastic. Some time afterwards, Honore, desirous of retaining the great wealth of Diana in the family, addressed this lady, and married her. This union, however," did not prove fortunate. Diana, like the goddess of that name, was a huntress, continually surrounded by her dogs : — they dined with her at table, and slept with her in bed. This insup- portable nuisance could not be patiently endured by the elegant Honore. He was also disgusted with the barrenness of the huntress Diana, who was only delivered every year of abortions. He separated from her, and retired to Pied- mont, where he passed his remaining days in peace, without feeling the thorns of marriage and ambition rankling ii* his heart. In this retreat he composed his Astrea ; a pastoral romance, which was the admiration of Europe during half a century. It forms a striking picture of human life, for the incidents are facts beautifully concealed. They relate the amours and gallantries of the court of Henry the Fourth. The personages in the Astrea display a rich invention ; and the work might be still read, were it not for those wire-drawn conversations, or rather disputations, which were then intro- duced into romances. In a modern edition, the Abbe Souchai has curtailed these tiresome dialogues ; the work still consists of ten duodecimos.
THE ASTREA. 131
In this romance, Celidee, to cure the unfortunate Celadon, and to deprive Thamire at the same time of every reason for jealousy, tears her face with a pointed diamond, and dis- figures it in so cruel a manner, that she excites horror in the breast of Thamire ; but he so ardently admires this exertion of virtue, that he loves her, hideous as she is represented, still more than when she was most beautiful. Heaven, to be just to these two lovers, restores the beauty of Celidee ; which is effected by a sympathetic powder. This romantic incident is thus explained : — One of the French princes (Thamire), when he returned from Italy, treated with coldness his ami- able princess (Celidee) ; this was the effect of his violent passion, which had become jealousy. The coolness subsisted till the prince was imprisoned, for state affairs, in the wood of Vincennes. The princess, with the permission of the court, followed him into his confinement. This proof of her love soon brought back the wandering heart and affections of the prince. The small-pox seized her; which is the pointed diamond, and the dreadful disfigurement of her face. She was so fortunate as to escape being marked by this dis- ease ; which is meant by the sympathetic powder. This trivial incident is happily turned into the marvellous : that a wife should choose to be imprisoned with her husband is not singular ; to escape being marked by the small-pox happens every day ; but to romance, as he has done, on such common circumstances, is beautiful and ingenious.
D'Urfe, when a boy, is said to have been enamoured of Diana ; this indeed has been questioned. D'Urfe, however, was sent to the island of Malta to enter into that order of knighthood ; and in his absence Diana was married to Anne. What an affliction for Honore* on his return to see her mar- ried, and to his brother ! His affection did not diminish, but he concealed it in respectful silence. He had some knowl- edge of his brother's unhappiness, and on this probably founded his hopes. After several years, during which the modest Diana had uttered no complaint, Anne declared him-
132 THE ASTKEA.
self; and shortly afterwards Honore, as we have noticed, married Diana.
Our author has described the parties under this false ap- pearance of marriage. He assumes the names of Celadon and Sylvander, and gives Diana those of Astrea and Diana. He is Sylvander and she Astrea while she is married to Anne ; and he Celadon and she Diana when the marriage is dissolved. Sylvander is represented always as a lover who sighs secretly ; nor does Diana declare her passion till ovei- come by the long sufferings of her faithful shepherd. For this reason Astrea and Diana, as well as Sylvander and Celadon, go together, prompted by the same despair, to the
FOUNTAIN of the TRUTH OF LOVE.
Sylvander is called an unknown shepherd, who has no other wealth than his flock ; because our author was the youngest of his family, or rather a knight of Malta who pos- sessed nothing but honour.
Celadon in despair throws himself into a river ; this refers to his voyage to Malta, Under the name of Alexis he dis- plays the friendship of Astrea for him, and all those innocent freedoms which passed between them as relatives : from this circumstance he has contrived a difficulty inimitably delicate.
Something of passion is to be discovered in these expres- sions of friendship. When Alexis assumes the name of Ce- ladon, he calls that love which Astrea had mistaken for fra- ternal affection. This was the trying moment. For though she loved him, she is rigorous in her duty and honour. She says, " what will they think of me if I unite myself to him, after permitting, for so many years, those familiarities which a brother may have taken with a sister, with me, who knew that in fact I remained unmarried ? "
How she got over this nice scruple does not appear ; it was, however, for a long time a great obstacle to the felicity of our author. There is an incident which shows the purity of tliia married virgin, who was fearful the liberties she allowed Ce- ladon might be ill construed. Phillis tells the druid Adamaa
THE ASTREA. 133
that Astrea was seen sleeping by the fountain of the Truth of Love, and that the unicorns which guarded those waters were observed to approach her, and lay their heads on her lap. According to fable, it is one of the properties of these animals never to approach any female but a maiden : at this strange difficulty our druid remains surprised ; while Astrea has thus given an incontrovertible proof of her purity.
The history of Philander is that of the elder D'Urfe. None but boys disguised as girls, and girls as boys, appear in the history. In this manner he concealed, without offending modesty, the defect of his brother. To mark the truth of this history, when Philander is disguised as a woman, wliile he converses with Astrea of his love, he frequently alludes to his misfortune, although in another sense.
Philander, ready to expire, will die with the glorious name of the husband of Astrea. He entreats her to grant him this favour ; she accords it to him, and swears before the gods that she receives him in her heart for her husband. The truth is, he enjoyed nothing but the name. Philander dies too, in combating with a hideous Moor, which is the personi- fication of his conscience, and which at length compelled him to quit so beautiful an object, and one so worthy of being eternally beloved.
The gratitude of Sylvander, on the point of being sacri- ficed, represents the consent of Honore's parents to dissolve his vow of celibacy, and unite him to Diana ; and the druid Adamas represents the ecclesiastical power. The FOUNTAIN of the TRUTH OF LOVE is that of marriage ; the unicorns are the symbols of that purity which should ever guard it ; and the flaming eyes of the lions, which are also there, represent those inconveniences attending marriage, but over which a faithful passion easily triumphs.
In this manner has our author disguised his own private his- tory ; and blended in his works a number of little amours which passed at the court of Henry the Great. These particulars were confided to Patru, on visiting the author in his retirement.
134 POETS LAUKEAT.
POETS LAUREAT.
THE present article is a sketch of the history of POETS LAUREAT, from a memoir of the French Academy, by the Abbe Resnel.
The custom of crowning poets is as ancient as poetry itself; it has, indeed, frequently varied ; it existed, however, as late as the reign of Theodosius, when it was abolished as a remain of paganism.
When the barbarians overspread Europe, few appeared to merit this honour, and fewer who could have read their works. It was about the time of PETRARCH that POETRY resumed its ancient lustre ; he was publicly honoured with the LAUREL CROWN. It was in this century (the thirteenth) that the establishment of Bachelor and Doctor was fixed in the uni- versities. Those who were found worthy of the honour, obtained the laurel of Bachelor ; or the laurel of Doctor ; Laurea Baccalaureatus ; Laurea Doctoratus. At their re- ception they not only assumed this title, but they also had a crown of laurel placed on their heads.
To this ceremony the ingenious writer attributes the revi- val of the custom. The poets were not slow in putting in their claims to what they had most a right ; and their patrons sought to encourage them by these honourable distinctions.
The folio wing formula is the exact style of those which are yet employed in the universities to confer the degree of Bachelor and Doctor, and serves to confirm the conjecture of Resnel : —
" We, count and senator," (Count d'Anguillara, who be- stowed the laurel on Petrarch,) " for us and our College, declare FRANCIS PETRARCH great poet and historian, and for a special mark of his quality of ppet we have placed with our hands on his head a crown of laurel, granting to him, by the tenor of these presents, and by the authority of King Robert, of the senate and the people of Rome, in the poetic,
POETS LAUREAT. 135
as well as in the historic art, and generally in whatever re- lates to the said arts, as well in this holy city as elsewhere, the free and entire power of reading, disputing, and inter- preting all ancient books, to make new ones, and compose poems, which, God assisting, shall endure from age to age."
In Italy, these honours did not long flourish ; although Tasso dignified the laurel crown by his acceptance of it. Many got crowned who were unworthy of the distinction. The laurel was even bestowed on QUERNO, whose character is given in the Dunciad : —
" Not with more glee, by hands pontific crown'd, With scarlet hats wide-waving circled round, Rome in her capitol saw Querno sit, Thron'd on seven hills, the antichrist of wit."
Canto H.
This man was made laureat, for the joke's sake ; his poetry was inspired by his cups, a kind of poet who came in with the dessert ; and he recited twenty thousand verses. He was rather the arch-buffoon than the arch-poet of Leo X. though honoured with the latter title. They invented for him a new kind of laureated honour, and in the intermixture of the foliage raised to Apollo, slily inserted the vine and the cabbage leaves, which he evidently deserved, from his ex- treme dexterity in clearing the pontiff's dishes and emptying his goblets.
Urban VIII. had a juster and more elevated idea of the children of Fancy. It appears that he possessed much poetic sensibility. Of him it is recorded, that he wrote a letter to Chiabrera to felicitate him on the success of his poetry : let- ters written by a pope were then an honour only paid to crowned heads. One is pleased also with another testimony of his elegant dispositions. Charmed with a poem which Bracciolini presented to him, he gave him the surname of DELLE-APE, of the bees, which were the arms of this ami- able pope. He, however, never crowned these favourite bards with the laurel, which, probably, he deemed unworthy of them.
136 POETS LAUREAT.
In Germany, the laureat honours flourished under the reign of Maximilian the First He founded, in 1504, a Poetical College at Vienna ; reserving to himself and the regent the power of bestowing the laurel. But the institu- tion, notwithstanding this well-concerted scheme, fell into dis- repute, owing to a cloud of claimants who were fired with the rage of versifying, and who, though destitute of poetic talents, had the laurel bestowed on them. Thus it became a prostituted honour; and satires were incessantly levelled against the usurpers of the crown of Apollo : it seems, not- withstanding, always to have had charms in the eyes of the Germans, who did not reflect, as the Abbe elegantly expres- ses himself, that it faded when it passed over so many heads.
The Emperor of Germany retains the laureatship in all its splendour. The selected bard is called 11 Poeta Cesareo. APOSTOLO ZENO, as celebrated for his erudition, as for his poetic powers, was succeeded by that most enchanting poet, METASTASIO.
The French never had a Poet Laureat, though they had Regal Poets ; for none were ever solemnly crowned. The Spanish nation, always desirous of titles of honour, seem to have known that of the Laureat ; but little information con- cerning it can be gathered from their authors.
Respecting our own country little can be added to the in formation of Selden. John Kay, who dedicated a History of Rhodes to Edward IV., takes the title of his humble Poet Laureat. Gower and Chaucer were laureats ; so was like- wise Skelton to Henry VIII. In the Acts of Rymer, there is a charter of Henry VII. with the title of pro Poeta Laureato, that is, perhaps, only a Poet laureated at the uni- versity, in the king's household.
Our poets were never solemnly crowned as in other coun tries. Selden, after all his recondite researches, is satisfied with saying, that some trace of this distinction is to be found in our nation. Our kings from time immemorial have placed a miserable dependent in their household appointment, who
ANGELO POLITIAN. 137
was sometimes called the King's poet, and the Kincfs versi- faator. It is probable that at length the selected bard assumed the title of Poet Laureat, without receiving the honours of the ceremony ; or, at the most, the crown of laurel was a mere obscure custom practised at our universities, and not attended with great public distinction. It was oftener placed on the skull of a pedant than wreathed on the head of a man of genius. Shadwell united the offices both of Poet Laureat and Historiographer ; and by a MS. account of the public revenue, it appears that for two years' salary he received six hundred pounds. At his death Rymer became the Historiographer and Tate the Laureat : both offices seem equally useless, but, if united, will not prove so to the Poet Laureat.
ANGELO POLITIAN.
ANGELO POLITIAN, an Italian, was one of the most polished wrriters of the fifteenth century. Baillet has placed him amongst his celebrated children ; for he was a writer at twelve years of age. The Muses indeed cherished him in his cradle, and the ^Graces hung round it their wreaths. When he became professor of the Greek language, such were the charms of his lectures, that Chalcondylas, a native of Greece, saw himself abandoned by his pupils, who re- sorted to the delightful disquisitions of the elegant Politian. Critics of various nations have acknowledged that his poetical versions have frequently excelled the originals. This happy genius was lodged in a most unhappy form ; nor were his morals untainted : it is only in his literary compositions that he appears perfect
As a specimen of his Epistles, here is one, which serves as prefatory and dedicatory. The letter is replete with litera- ture, though void of pedantry ; a barren subject is embel- lished by its happy turns. Perhaps no author has more
] 38 ANGELO POLITIAN.
playfully defended himself from the incertitude of criticism and the fastidiousness of critics.
MY LORD,
You have frequently urged me to collect my letters, to revise and to publish them in a volume. I have now gath- ered them, that I might not omit any mark of that obedience which I owe to him, on whom I rest all my hopes, and all my prosperity. I have not, however, collected them all, be- cause that would have been a more laborious task than to have gathered the scattered leaves of the Sibyl. It was never, indeed, with an intention of forming my letters into one body that I wrote them, but merely as occasion prompted, and as the subjects presented themselves without seeking for them. I never retained copies except of a few, which, less fortunate, I think, than the others, were thus favoured for the sake of the verses they contained. To form, however, a tolerable volume, I have also inserted some written by others, but only those with wlu'ch several ingenious scholars favoured me, and which, perhaps, may put the reader in good humour with my own.
There is one thing for which some will be inclined to cen- eure me ; the style of my letters is very unequal ; and, to confess the truth, I did not find myself always in the same humour, and the same modes of expression were not adapted to every person and every topic. They will not fail then to observe, when they read such a diversity of letters, (I mean if they do read them,) that I have composed not epistles, but (once more) miscellanies.
I hope, my Lord, notwithstanding this, that amongst such a variety of opinions, of those who write letters, and of those who give precepts how letters should be written, I shall find some apology. Some, probably, will deny that they are Ciceronian. I can answer such, and not without good au- thority, that in epistolary composition we must not regard Cicero as a model. Another perhaps will say, that I imitate
ANGELO POLITIAN. 139
Cicero. And him I will answer by observing, that I wish nothing better than to be capable of grasping something of this great man, were it but his shadow !
Another will wish that I had borrowed a little from the manner of Pliny the orator, because his profound sense and accuracy were greatly esteemed. I shall oppose him by ex- pressing my contempt of -all writers of the age of Pliny. If it should be observed, that I have imitated the manner of Pliny, I shall then screen myself by what Sidonius Apolli- naris, • an author who is by no means disreputable, says hi commendation of his epistolary style. Do I resemble Sym- machus ? 1 shall not be sorry, for they distinguish his open- ness and conciseness. Am I considered in nowise resembling him? I shall confess that I am not pleased with his dry manner.
Will my letters be condemned for their length? Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, and Cicero, have all written long ones. Will some of them be criticized for their brevity ? I allege in my favour the examples of Dion, Brutus, Apollonius, Phi lostratus, Marcus Antoninus, Alciphron, Julian, Symmachus, and also Lucian, who vulgarly, but falsely, is believed to have been Phalaris.
I shall be censured for having treated of topics which are not generally considered as proper for epistolary composition. I admit this censure, provided while I am condemned, Seneca also shares in the condemnation. Another will not allow of a sententious manner in my letters ; I will still justify myself by Seneca. Another, on the contrary, desires abrupt senten- tious periods ; Dionysius shall answer him for me, who maintains, that pointed sentences should not be admitted into letters.
Is my style too perspicuous ? It is precisely that which Philostratus admires. Is it obscure ? Such is that of Cicero to Atticus. Negligent ? An agreeable negligence in letters is more graceful than elaborate ornaments. Laboured? Nothing can be more proper, since we send epistles to oui
140 ANGELO POLITIAN.
friends as a kind of presents. If they display too nice an arrangement, the Halicarnassian shall vindicate me. If there is none ; Artemon says there should be none.
Now as a good and pure Latinity has its peculiar taste, its manners, and, to express myself thus, its Atticisms ; if in this sense a letter shall be found not sufficiently Attic, so much the better ; for what was Herod the sophist censured ? but that having been born an Athenian, he affected too much to appear one in his language. Should a letter seem too Attical ; still better, since it was by discovering Theophrastus, who was no Athenian, that a good old woman of Athens laid hold of a word, and shamed him.
Shall one letter be found not sufficiently serious ? I love to jest. Or is it too grave ? I am pleased with gravity. Is another full of figures ? Letters being the images of discourse, figures have the effect of graceful action in conversation. Are they deficient in figures ? This is just what characterizes a letter, this want of figures ! Does it discover the genius of the writer ? This frankness is recommended. Does it con- ceal it? The writer did not think proper to paint himself; and it is one requisite in a letter, that it should be void of ostentation. You express yourself, some one will observe, in common terms on common topics, and in new terms on new topics. The style is thus adapted to the subject. No, no, he will answer ; it is in common terms you express new ideas, and in new terms common ideas. Very well ! It is because I have not forgotten an ancient Greek precept which expressly recommends this.
It is thus by attempting to be ambidextrous, I try to ward off attacks. My critics will however criticize me as they please. It will be sufficient for me, my Lord, to be assured of having satisfied you, by my letters, if they are good ; or by my obedience, if they are not so. Florence, 1494.
ORIGINAL LETTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
ORIGINAL LETTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
IN the Cottonian Library, Vespasian, F. III. is preserved a letter written by Queen Elizabeth, then Princess. Her brother Edward the Sixth had desired to have her picture ; and in gratifying the wishes of his majesty, Elizabeth accom- panies the present with an elaborate letter. It bears no date of the year in which it was written ; but her place of resi- dence was at Hatfield. There she had retired to enjoy the silent pleasures of a studious life, and to be distant from the dangerous politics of the time. When Mary died, Elizabeth was still at Hatfield. At the time of its composition she was in habitual intercourse with the most excellent writers of anti- quity : her letter displays this in every part of it ; but it is too rhetorical. It is here now first published.
LETTER.
"LiKE as the riche man that dayly gathereth riches to riches, and to one bag of money layeth a greate sort til it come to infinit, so me thinkes, your Majestic not beinge suffised with many benefits and gentilnes shewed to me afore this time, dothe now increase them in askinge and desiring \vher you may bid and comaunde, requiring a thinge not worthy the desiringe for it selfe, but made worthy for your highness request. My pictur I mene, in wiche if the inward good mynde towarde your grace might as wel be declared as the outwarde face and countenance shal be seen, I wold nor haue taried the comandement but prevent it, nor haue bine the last to graunt but the first to offer it. For the face, I graunt, I might wel blusche to offer, but the mynde I shall neur be ashamed to present. For thogth from the grace of the pictur, the coulers may fade by time, may giue by wether, may be spotted by chance, yet the other nor time with her swift winges shall ouertake, nor the mistie cloudes with their low- eringes may darken, nor chance with her slipery fote may
142 ANNE BULLEN.
ouerthrow. Of this althogth yet the profe could not be greate because the occasions hath bine but smal, notwithstandinge as a dog hathe a day, so may I perchaunce haue time to declare it in dides wher now I do write them but in wordes. And further I shal most humbly beseche your Maiestie that whan you shal loke on my pictur you wil witsafe to thinke that as you haue but the outwarde shadow of the body afore you, so my inwarde minde wischeth, that the body it selfe wer oftener in your presence ; howbeit bicause bothe my so beinge I thinke coulde do your Maiestie litel pleasure thogth my selfe great good, and againe bicause I se as yet not the time agre ing theruto, I shal lerne to folow this saing of Grace, Feras non culpes quod vitari non potest. And thus I wil (troblinge your Maiestie I fere) end with my most humble thankes, besechinge God longe to preserue you to his honour, to your cofort, to the realmes profit, and to my joy. From Hatfilde this 1 day of May.
" Your Maiesties most humbly Sistar " and Seruante
" ELIZABETH.
ANNE BULLEN.
THAT minute detail of circumstances frequently found in writers of the history of their own times is more interesting than the elegant and general narratives of later, and probably of more philosophical historians. It is in the artless recitals of memoir-writers, that the imagination is struck with a lively impression, and fastens on petty circumstances, which must be passed over by the classical historian. The writings of Brantome, Comines, Froissart, and others, are dictated by their natural feelings : while the passions of modern writers are temperate with dispassionate philosophy, or inflamed by the virulence of faction. History instructs, but Memoirs delight These prefatory observations may serve as an apok
JAMES THE FIRST. 143
ogy for Anecdotes which are gathered from obscure corners. on which the dignity of the historian must not dwell.
In Houssaie's Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 435, a little circumstance is recorded concerning the decapitation of the unfortunate Anne Bullen, which illustrates an observation of Hume. Our historian notices that her executioner was a Frenchman of Calais, who was supposed to have uncommon skill. It is probable that the following incident might have been pre- served by tradition in France, from the account of the exe- cutioner himself : — Anne Bullen being on the scaffold, would not consent to have her eyes covered with a bandage, saying that she had no fear of death. All that the divine who assisted at her execution could obtain from her was, that she would shut her eyes. But as she was opening them at every moment, the executioner could not bear their tender and mild glances ; fearful of missing his aim, he was obliged to invent an expedient to behead the queen. He drew off his shoes, and approached her silently ; while he was at her left hand, another person advanced at her right, who made a great noise in walking, so that this circumstance drawing the attention of Anne, she turned her face from the executioner, who was enabled by this artifice to strike the fatal blow, with- out being disarmed by that spirit of affecting resignation which shone in the eyes of the lovely Anne Bullen.
" The Common Executioner,
Whose heart th' accustom' d sight of death makes hard, Falls not the axe upon the humble neck, But first begs pardon." SHAKSPEAHE.
JAMES THE FIRST.
IT was usual, in the reign of James the First, when they compared it with the preceding glorious one, to distinguish him by the title of Queen James, and his illustrious predeces- sor by that of King Elizabeth ! Sir Anthony Weldon informs
144 JAMES THE FIRST.
us, " that when James the First sent Sir Roger Aston as his messenger to Elizabeth, Sir Roger was always placed in the lobby : the hangings being turned so that he might see the Queen dancing to a little fiddle, which was to no other end than that he should tell his master, by her youthful dispo- sition, how likely he was to come to the crown he so much thirsted after ; " — and indeed, when at her death this same knight, whose origin was low, and whose language was suit- able to that origin, appeared before the English council, he could not conceal his Scottish rapture ; for, asked how the king did? he replied, "Even, my lords, like a poore man wandering about forty years in a wildernesse and barren soyle, and now arrived at the Land of Promise." A curious anecdote, respecting the economy of the court in these reigns, is noticed hi some manuscript memoirs written in James's reign, preserved in a family of distinction. The lady, who wrote these memoirs, tells us that a great change had taken place in cleanliness, since the last reign ; for having rose from her chair, she found, on her departure, that she had the honour of carrying upon her some companions who must have been inhabitants of the palace. The court of Elizabeth was celebrated occasionally for its magnificence, and always for its nicety. James was singularly effeminate ; he could not be- hold a drawn sword without shuddering ; was much too par- tial to handsome men ; and appears to merit the bitter satire of Churchill. If wanting other proofs, we should only read the second volume of " Royal Letters," 6987, in the Harleian collections, which contains Stenie's correspondence with James. The gross familiarity of Buckingham's address ia couched in such terms as these : — he calls his majesty " Dere dad and Gossope ! " and concludes his letters with " your humble slaue and dogge, Stenie." fie was a most weak, but not quite a vicious man ; yet his expertness in the art of dis- simulation was very great indeed. He called this King- Craft. Sir Anthony Weldon gives a lively anecdote of this dissimu- lation in the king's behaviour to the Earl of Somerset at the
JAMES THE FIRST. 145
very moment he had prepared to disgrace him. The . earl accompanied the king to Royston, and, to his apprehension, never parted from him with more seeming affection, though the king well knew he should never see him more. " The earl when he kissed his hand, the king hung about his neck, slabbering his cheeks, saying — For God's sake, when shall I see thee again ? On my soul I shall neither eat nor sleep until you come again. The earl told him on Monday (this being on the Friday). For God's sake let me, said the king: — Shall I, shall I ? — then lolled about his neck ; — then for God's sake give thy lady this kisse for me, in the same man- ner at the stayre's head, at the middle of the stayres, and at the stayre's foot. The earl was not in his coach when the king used these very words (in the hearing of four servants, one of whom reported it instantly to the author of this his- tory), * I shall never see his face more.' "
He displayed great imbecility in his amusements, which are characterized by the following one, related by Arthur Wilson: — When James became melancholy in consequence of various disappointments in state matters, Buckingham and his mother used several means of diverting him. Amongst the most ludicrous was the present. They had a young lady, who brought a pig hi the dress of a new-born infant : the countess carried it to the king, wrapped in a rich mantle. One Turpin, on this occasion, was dressed like a bishop in all his pontifical ornaments. He began the rites of baptism with the common prayer-book in his hand ; a silver ewer with water was held by another. The marquis stood as god-father. When James turned to look at the infant, the pig squeaked : an animal which he greatly abhorred. At this, highly dis- pleased, he exclaimed, — " Out ! Away for shame ! What blasphemy is this ! "
This ridiculous joke did not accord with the feelings of James at that moment ; he was not " i' the vein." Yet we may observe, that had not such artful politicians as Bucking- ham and his mother been strongly persuaded of the success
VOL. II. 10
146 JAMES THE FIRST.
of tliis puerile fancy, they would not have ventured on such " blasphemies." They certainly had witnessed amusements heretofore not less trivial which had gratified his majesty. The ac x>unt which Sir Anthony Weldon gives, in his Court of King James, exhibits a curious scene of James's amuse- ments. " After the king supped, he would come forth to see pastimes and fooleries ; in which Sir Ed. Zouch, Sir George Goring, and Sir John Finit, were the chiefe and master fools, and surely this fooling got them more than any others wisdome ; Zouch's part was to sing bawdy songs, and tell bawdy tales ; Finit's to compose these songs : there was a set of fiddlers brought to court on purpose for this fooling, and Goring was master of the game for fooleries, sometimes pre- senting David Droman and Archee Armstrong, the king's foole, on the back of the other fools, to tilt one at another, till they fell together by the eares ; sometimes they performed antick dances. But Sir John Millicent (who was never known before) was commended for notable fooling ; and was indeed the best extemporary foole of them all." Weldon's " Court of James " is a scandalous chronicle of the times.
His dispositions were, however, generally grave and stu- dious. He seems to have possessed a real love of letters, but attended with that mediocrity of talent which in a private person had never raised him into notice. " While there was a chance," writes the author of the Catalogue of Noble Authors, " that the dyer's son, Vorstius, might be divinity- professor at Leyden, instead of being burnt, as his majesty hinted to the Christian prudence of the Dutch that he deserved to be, our ambassadors could not receive instructions, and consequently could not treat on any other business. The king, who did not resent the massacre at Amboyna, was on the point of breaking with the States for supporting a man who professed the heresies of Enjedius, Ostodorus, &c., points of extreme consequence to Great Britain ! Sir Dudley Carle- ton was forced to threaten the Dutch not only with the hatred of king James, but also with his pen."
JAMES THE FIRST. 147
This royal pedant is forcibly characterized by the following observations of the same writer : —
" Among his majesty's works is a small collection of poetry. Like several of his subjects, our royal author has conde- scended to apologize for its imperfections, as having been written in his youth, and his maturer age being otherwise occupied. So that (to employ his own language) ' when his irtgyne and age could, his affaires and fascherie would not permit him to correct them, scarslie but at stolen moments, he having the leisure to blenk upon any paper.' When James sent a present of his harangues, turned into Latin, to the pro- testant princes in Europe, it is not unentertaining to observe in their answers of compliments and thanks, how each endeav- oured to insinuate that he had read them, without positively asserting it ! Buchanan, when asked how he came to make a pedant of his royal pupil, answered that it was the best he could make of him. Sir George Mackenzie relates a story of his tutelage, which shows Buchanan's humour, and the ven- eration of others for royalty. The young king being one day at play with his fellow pupil, t^e master of Erskine, Buchanan was reading, and desired them to make less noise. As they disregarded his admonition, he told his majesty, if he did not hold his tongue, he would certainly whip his breech. The king replied, he would be glad to see who would bell the cat, alluding to the fable. Buchanan lost his temper, and throw- ing his book from him, gave his majesty a sound flogging. The old Countess of Mar rushed into the room, and taking the king in her arms, asked how he dared to lay his hands on the Lord's anointed ? Madam, replied the elegant and im- mortal historian, I have whipped his a , you may kiss it
if you please ! "
Many years after this was published, I discovered a curi- ous anecdote : — Even so late as when James I. was seated on the throne of England, once the appearance of his frowning tutor in a dream greatly agitated the king, who in vain attempted to pacify his illustrious pedagogue in this porten-
148 JAMES THE FIRST.
tous vision. Such was the terror which the remembrance of this inexorable republican tutor had left on the imagination of his royal pupil.
James I. was certainly a zealous votary of literature ; his wish was sincere, when at viewing the Bodleian Library at Oxford, he exclaimed, " Were I not a king I would be an university man ; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would have no other prison than this library, and be chained together with these good authors."
Hume has informed us, that " his death was decent." The following are the minute particulars : I have drawn them from an imperfect manuscript collection, made by the cele- brated Sir Thomas Browne.
" The lord keeper, on March 22, received a letter from the court, that it was feared his majesty's sickness was dangerous to death ; which fear was more confirmed, for he, meeting Dr. Harvey in the road, was told by him that the king used to have a beneficial evacuation of nature, a sweating in his left arm, as helpful to him as any fontenel could be, which of late failed.
" When the lord keeper presented himself before him, he moved to cheerful discourse, but it would not do. He stayed by his bedside until midnight. Upon the consultations of the physicians in the morning he was out of comfort, and by the prince's leave told him, kneeling by his pallet, that his days to come would be but few in this world. * lam satisfied ',' said the king ; ' but pray you assist me to make me ready for the next world, to go away hence for Christ, whose mercies 1 call for, and hope to find.'
" From that time the keeper never left him, or put off his clothes to go to bed. The king took the communion, and professed he died in the bosom of the Church of England, whose doctrine he had defended with his pen, being persuaded it was according to the mind of Christ, as he should shortly answer it before him.
a He stayed hi the chamber to take notice of every thing
JAMES THE FIRST. 149
the king said, and to repulse those who crept much about the chamber door, and into the chamber ; they^were for the most addicted to the Church of Rome. Being rid of them, he continued in prayer, while the king lingered on, and at last shut his eyes with his own hands"
Thus, in the full power of his faculties, a timorous prince encountered the horrors of dissolution. Religion rendered cheerful the abrupt night of futurity ; and what can philos- ophy do more, or rather, can philosophy do as much ?
I proposed to have examined with some care the works of James I. ; but that uninviting task has been now postponed till it is too late. As a writer his works may not be valuable, and are infected with the pedantry and the superstition pf the age ; yet I suspect that James was not that degraded and feeble character in which he ranks by the contagious voice of criticism. He has had more critics than readers. After a great number of acute observations and witty allusions, made extempore, which we find continually recorded of him by contemporary writers, and some not friendly to him, I conclude that he possessed a great promptness of wit, and much solid judgment and acute ingenuity. It requires only a little labour to prove this.
That labour I have since zealously performed. Tin's ar- ticle, composed more than thirty years ago, displays the effects of first impressions and popular clamours. About ten years I suspected that his character was grossly injured, and lately I found how it has suffered from a variety of causes. , That monarch preserved for us a peace of more than twenty years ; and his talents were of a higher order than the calumnies of the party who have remorselessly degraded him have allowed a common inquirer to discover. For the rest I must refer the reader to " An Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of James I. ; " in which he may find many correc- tives for this article. I shall in a future work enter into further explanations of this ambiguous royal author.
150 GENERAL MONK AND HIS WIFE.
GENERAL MONK AND HIS WIFE.
FROM the MS. collection of Sir Thomas Browne, I shall rescue an anecdote,- which has a tendency to show that it is not advisable to permit ladies to remain at home, when polit- ical plots are to be secretly discussed. And while it displays the treachery of Monk's wife, it will also appear that, like other great revolutionists, it was ambition that first induced him to become the reformer he pretended to be.
" Monk gave fair promises to the Rump, but last agreed with the French ambassador to take the government on him- self ; Jby whom he had a promise from Mazarin of assistance from France. This bargain was struck late at night: but . not so secretly but that Monk's wife, who had posted herself conveniently behind the hangings, finding what was resolved upon, sent her brother Clarges away immediately with notice of it to Sir A. A. She had promised to watch her husband, and inform Sir A. how matters went. Sir A. caused the council of state, whereof he was a member, to be summoned, and charged Monk that he was playing false. The general insisted that he was true to his principles, and firm to what he had promised, and that he was ready to give them all satisfaction. Sir A. told him if he were sincere he might remove all scruples, and should instantly take away their commissions from such and such men in his army, and ap- point others, and that before he left the room. Monk con- sented ; a great part of the commissions of his officers were changed, and Sir Edward Harley, a member of the council, and then present, was made governor of Dunkirk, in the room of Sir William Lockhart ; the army ceased to be at Monk's devotion ; the ambassador was recalled, and broke his heart."
Such were the effects of the infidelity of the wife of Gen- eral Monk !
PHILIP AND MARY.
PHILIP AND MARY.
HOUSSA.IE, in his Me'moires, vol. i. p. 261, has given the following curious particulars of this singular union : —
" The second wife of Philip was Mary Queen of England ; a virtuous princess, (Houssaie was a good catholic,) but who had neither youth nor beauty. This marriage was as little happy for the one as for the other. The husband did not like his wife, although she doted on him ; and the English hated Philip still more than he hated them. Silhon says, that the rigour which he exercised in England against here- tics partly hindered Prince Carlos from succeeding to that crown, and for which purpose Mary had invited him in -case she died childless ! " — But no historian speaks of this pre- tended inclination, and is it probable that Mary ever thought proper to call to the succession of the English throne the son of the Spanish Monarch ? This marriage had made her nation detest her, and in the last years of her life she could be little satisfied with him, from his marked indifference for her. She well knew that the Parliament would never con- sent to exclude her sister Elizabeth, whom the nobility loved for being more friendly to the new religion, and more hostile to the house of Austria.
In the Cottonian Library, Vespasian F. in. is preserved a note of instructions in the handwriting of Queen Mary, of which the following is a copy. It was, probably, written when Philip was just seated on the English throne.
" Instructions for my lorde Previsel.
• " Firste, to tell the Kinge the whole state of this realme, w* all things appartaynyng to the same, as myche as ye kjaowe to be trewe.
" Seconde, to obey his commandment in all thyngs.
" Thyrdly, in all things he shall aske your aduyse to
152 PHILIP AND MARY.
declare your opinion as becometh a faythfull conceylloui to do. Mary the Quene."
Houssaie proceeds: "After the death of Mary, Philip sought Elizabeth in marriage ; and she, who was yet unfixed at the beginning of her reign, amused him at first with hopes. But as soon as she unmasked herself to the pope, she laughed at Philip, telling the Duke of Feria, his ambassador, that her conscience would not permit her to marry the husband of hex sister."
This monarch, however, had no such scruples. Incest ap- pears to have had in his eyes peculiar charms ; for he offered himself three times to three different sisters-in-law. He seems also to have known the secret of getting quit of his wives when they became inconvenient In state matters he spared no one whom he feared ; to them he sacrificed his only son, his brother, and a great number of princes and ministers.
It is said of Philip, that before he died he advised his sou to make peace with England, and war with the other powers. Pacem cum Anglo, bettum cum reliquis. Queen Elizabeth, and the ruin of his invincible fleet, physicked his frenzy into health, and taught him to fear and respect that country which he thought he could have made a province of Spain !
On his death-bed he did every thing he could for salvation The following protestation, a curious morsel of bigotry, he sent to his confessor a few days before he died : —
" Father confessor ! as you occupy the place of God, I protest to you that I will do every thing you shall say to be necessary for my being saved ; so that what I omit doing will be placed to your account, as I am ready to acquit my- self of all that shall be ordered to me."
Is there, in the records of history, a more glaring instance of the idea which a good Catholic attaches to the power of a confessor, than the present authentic example ? The most li- centious philosophy seems not more dangerous than a religion
CHARLES THE FIRST. 153
whose votary believes that the accumulation of crimes can be dissipated by the breath of a few orisons, and which, con- sidering a venal priest to " occupy the place of God," can traffic with the divine power at a very moderate price.
After his death a Spanish grandee wrote with a coal on the chimney-piece of his chamber the following epitaph, which ingeniously paints his character in four verses : —
Siendo 111090, luxurioso; Siendo hombre, fiie" cruel; Siendo viejo, codicioso: Que se puede esperar del?
In youth he was luxurious ; In manhood he was cruel; In old age he was avaricious : What could be hoped from him?
CHARLES THE FIRST.
OF his romantic excursion into Spain for the Infanta, many curious particulars are scattered amongst foreign writers, which display the superstitious prejudices which prevailed on this occasion, and, perhaps, develop the mysterious politics of the courts of Spain and Rome.
Cardinal Gaetano, who had long been nuncio in Spain, observes, that the people, accustomed to revere the Inquisi- tion as the oracle of divinity, abhorred the proposal of the marriage of the Infanta with an heretical prince ; but that the king's council, and all wise politicians, were desirous of its accomplishment. Gregory XV. held a consultation of cardinals, where it was agreed that the just apprehension which the English catholics entertained of being more cruelly persecuted, if this marriage failed, was a sufficient reason to justify the pope. The dispensation was therefore immedi- ately granted, and sent to the nuncio of Spain, with orders
154 CHARLES THE FIRST.
to inform the Prince of Wales, in case of rupture, that no impediment of the marriage proceeded from the court of Rome, who, on the contrary, had expedited the dispensation.
The prince's excursion to Madrid, was, however, universally blamed, as being inimical to state-interests. Nani, author of n history of Venice, which, according to his digress ve man- ner, is the universal history of his times, has noticed this affair. " The people talked, and the English murmured more than any other nation, to see the only son of the king and heir of his realms venture on so long a voyage, and present himself rather as a hostage, than a husband to a foreign court, which so widely differed in government and religion, to obtain by force of prayer and supplications a woman whom Philip and his ministers made a point of honour and con- science to refuse."
Houssaie observes, " The English council were against it, but king James obstinately resolved on it ; being over-per- suaded by Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, whose face- tious humour and lively repartees greatly delighted him. Gondomar persuaded him that the presence of the prince would not fail of accomplishing this union, and also the res- titution of the electorate to his son-in-law the palatine. Add to this the Earl of Bristol, the English ambassador-extra- ordinary at the court of Madrid, finding it his interest, wrote repeatedly to his majesty that the success was certain if the prince came there, for that the Infanta would be charmed with his personal appearance and polished manners. It was thus that James, seduced by these two ambassadors, and by his parental affection for both his children, permitted the Prince of Wales to travel into Spain." This account differs from Clarendon.
Wicquefort says, " that James in all this was the dupe of Gondomar, who well knew the impossibility of this marriage, which was alike inimical to the interests of politics and the Inquisition. For a long time^ he amused his majesty with hopes, and even got money for the household expenses of the
CHAKLES THE FIEST. 155
future queen. He acted his part so well, that the King of Spain recompensed the knave, on his return, with a seat in the council of state." There is preserved in the British Mu- seum a considerable series of letters which passed between James I. and the Duke of Buckingham and Charles, during their residence in Spain.
I shall glean some further particulars concerning this mysterious affair from two English contemporaries, Howel and Wilson, who wrote from their own observations. Howel had been employed in this projected match, and resided dur- ing its negotiation at Madrid.
Howel describes the first interview of Prince Charles and the Infanta. " The Infanta wore a blue riband about her arm, that the prince might distinguish her, and as soon as she saw the prince her colour rose very high." — Wilson informs us that " two days after this interview the prince was invited to run at the ring, where his fair mistress was a spectator, and to the glory of his fortune, and the great contentment both of himself and the lookers on, he took the ring the very first course." Howel, writing from Madrid, says, "The people here do mightily magnify the gallantry of the journey, and cry out that he deserved to have the Infanta thrown into his arms the first night he came." The people appear, however, some time after, to doubt if the English had -any religion at all. Again, " I have seen the prince have his eyes immova- bly fixed upon the Infanta half an hour together in a thought- ful speculative posture." Olivares, who was no friend to this match, coarsely observed that the prince watched her as a cat does a mouse. Charles indeed acted every thing that a lover in one of the old romances could have done. He once leapt over the walls of her garden, and only retired by the entreaties of the old marquis who then guarded her, and who, falling on his knees, solemnly protested that if the prince spoke to her his head would answer for it. He watched hours in the street to meet with her; and Wilson says he gave such liberal presents to the court, as well as Buckingham
}56 CHARLES THE FIRST.
to the Spanish beauties, that the Lord Treasurer Middlesex complained repeatedly of their wasteful prodigality.
Let us now observe by what mode this match was consented to by the courts of Spain and Rome. Wilson informs us that Charles agreed " That any one should freely propose to him the arguments in favour of the catholic religion, without giving any impediment ; but that he would never, directly or indirectly, permit any one to speak to the Infanta against the same." They probably had tampered with Charles concern- ing his religion. A letter of Gregory XV. to him is pre- served in Wilson's life, but its authenticity has been doubted. Olivares said to Buckingham, " You gave me some assurance and hope of the prince's turning catholic" The duke roundly answered that it was false. The Spanish minister, confounded at the bluntness of our English duke, broke from him in a violent rage, and lamented that state matters would not suffer him to do himself justice. This insult was never forgiven ; and some time afterwards he attempted to revenge himself on Buckingham, by endeavouring to persuade James that he was at the head of a conspiracy against him.
We hasten to conclude these anecdotes, not to be found in the pages of Hume and Smollett. — Wilson says that both kingdoms rejoiced : " Preparations were made in England to entertain the Infanta; a new church was built at St. James's, the foundation-stone of which was laid by the Span- ish ambassador, for the public exercise of her religion : her portrait was multiplied in every corner of the town ; such as hoped to flourish under her eye suddenly began to be power- ful. In Spain (as Wilson quaintly expresses himself) the substance was as much courted as the shadow here. Indeed the Infanta, Howel tells us, was applying hard to the English language, and was already called the Princess of England. To conclude, — Charles complained of the repeated delays; and he and the Spanish court parted with a thousand civilities. The Infanta however observed that had the Prince loved her, he would not have quitted her."
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 157
How shall we dispel those clouds of mystery with which politics have covered this strange transaction ? It appears that James had in view the restoration of the palatinate to his daughter, whom he could not effectually assist ; that the court of Rome had speculations of the most dangerous ten- dency to the protestant religion ; that the marriage was broken off by that personal hatred which existed between Olivares and Buckingham; and that, if there was any sincerity existing between the parties concerned, it rested with the Prince and the Infanta, who were both youthful and romantic, and were bu* two beautiful ivory balls in the hands of great players.
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.
THE Duke of Buckingham, in his bold and familiar man- ner, appears to have been equally a favourite with James I. and Charles I. He behaved with singular indiscretion both at the courts of France and Spain.
Various anecdotes might be collected from the memoir writers of those countries, to convince us that our court was always little respected by its ill choice of this ambassador. His character is hit off by one master-stroke from the pencil of Hume : " He had," says this penetrating observer of men, " English familiarity and French levity ; " so that he was in full possession of two of the most offensive qualities an am- bassador can possess.
Sir Henry Wotton has written an interesting life of our duke. At school his character fully discovered itself, even at that early period of life. He would not apply to any serious studies, but excelled in those lighter qualifications adapted to please in the world. He was a graceful horseman, musician, and dancer. His mother withdrew him from school at the early age of thirteen, and he soon became a domestic favour-
158 DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.
ite. Her fondness permitted him to indulge in every ca- price, and to cultivate those agreeable talents which were natural to him. His person was beautiful, and his mariners insinuating. In a word, he was adapted to become a courtier. The fortunate opportunity soon presented itself; for James saw him, and invited him to court, and showered on him, with a prodigal hand, the cornucopia of royal patronage.
Houssaie, in his political memoirs, has detailed an anecdote of this duke, only known to the English reader in the general observation- of the historian. When he was sent to France, to conduct the Princess Henrietta to the arms of Charles I., he had the insolence to converse with the Queen of France, not as an ambassador, but as a lover ! The Marchioness of Senecy, her lady of honour, enraged at seeing this conversa- tion continue, seated herself in the arm-chair of the Queen, who. that day was confined to her bed ; she did this to hinder the insolent duke from approaching the Queen, and probably taking other liberties. As she observed that he still persisted in the lover, " Sir," she said, in a severe tone of voice, " you must learn to be silent ; it is not thus we address the Queen of France."
This audacity of the duke is further confirmed by Nani, in his sixth book of the History of Venice ; an historian who is not apt to take things 'lightly. For when Buckingham was desirous of once more being ambassador at that court, in 1626, it was signified by the French ambassador, that for reasons well known to himself, his person would not be agree- able to his most Christian majesty. In a romantic threat, the duke exclaimed, he would go and see the queen in spite of the French court ; and to this petty affair is to be ascribed the war between the two nations !
The Marshal de Bassompiere, in the journal of his embassy, affords another instance of his " English familiarity." He says, " The King of England gave me a long audience, and a very disputatious one. He put himself in a passion, while I, without losing my respect, expressed myself freely. The
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 159
Duke of Buckingham, when he observed the king and my- self very warm, leapt suddenly betwixt his majesty and me, exclaiming ' I am come to set all to rights betwixt you, which I think is high time."
Cardinal Richelieu hated Buckingham as sincerely as did the Spaniard Olivares. This enmity was apparently owing to the cardinal writing to the duke without leaving tiny space open after the title of Monsieur; the duke, to show his equality, returned his answer in the same " paper-sparing " manner. Richelieu was jealous of Buckingham, whose favour with the Queen of France was known.
This ridiculous circumstance between Richelieu and Buck ingham reminds me of a similar one, which happened to two Spanish Lords : — One signed at the end of his letter EL Mar- ques (THE Marquis), as if the title had been peculiar to him- self for its excellence. His national vanity received a dread- ful reproof from his correspondent, who, jealous of his equality, signed OTRO Marques (ANOTHER Marquis).
An anecdote given by Sir Henry Wotton offers a charac- teristic trait of Charles and his favourite : —
" They were now entered into the deep time of Lent, and could get no flesh into their inns ; whereupon fell out a pleas- ant passage (if I may insert it by the way among more seri- ous) : — There was near Bayon a herd of goats with their young ones ; on which sight Sir Richard Graham (master of the horse to the marquis) tells the marquis he could snap one of the kids, and make some shift to carry him close to their lodgings ; which the prince overhearing, * Why, Richard,' says he, * do you think you may practise here your old tricks again upon the borders ? ' Upon which word they first gave the goat-herd good contentment, and then while the marquis and his servants, being both on foot, were chasing the kid about the flock, the prince from horseback killed him in the head with a Scottish pistol. Let this serve for a journal paren- thesis, which yet may show how his highness, even in such light and sportful damage, had a noble sense of just dealing."
160 THE DEATH OF CHARLES IX.
THE DEATH OF CHARLES IX.
DR. CAYET is an old French controversial writer, but is better known in French literature as an historian. His Chronologic Novenaire is full of anecdotes unknown to other writers. *He collected them from his own observations, for he was under-preceptor to Henry IV. The dreadful massa- cre of St. Bartholomew took place in the reign of Charles IX. ; on which occasion the English court went into mourn- ing. The singular death of Charles has been regarded by the Huguenots as an interposition of divine justice : he died bathed in his blood, which burst from his veins. The horrors of this miserable prince on his dying bed are forcibly depicted by the anecdotes I am now collecting. I shall premise, however, that Charles was a mere instrument in the hands of -his mother, the political and cruel Cathefine of Medicis.
Dr. Cayet, with honest naivete, thus relates what he knew to have passed a few hours before his death.
" King Charles, feeling himself near his end, after having passed some time without pronouncing a word, said, as he turned himself on one side, and as if he seemed to awake, ' Call my brother ! ' The queen mother was present, who immediately sent for the Duke of Alen9on. The king per- ceiving him, turned his back, and again said, l Let my brother come ! ' The queen, his mother, replied, ' Sir, I do not know whom you mean ; here is your brother.' The king was dis- pleased, and said, ' Let them bring my brother the King of Navarre ; it is he who is my brother/ The queen mother observing the dying monarch's resolute order, sent for him ; but, for reasons known only to herself, she commanded the captain of the guards to conduct him under the vaults. They went to the King of Navarre, and desired him to come and speak to the king; at that moment, this prince has since repeatedly said, he felt a shuddering and apprehension of
THE DEATH OF CHARLES IX. 161
death so much that he would not go. But King Charles persisting on his coming, the queen mother assured him that he should receive no injury. In this promise, however, he put little trust. He went, accompanied by the Viscount D'Auchy, on whose word he chiefly relied. Having, how- ever, observed under these vaults a great number of halber- diers and ' arquebusiers in ranks, he would have returned, when the viscount and the captain reassured him that no harm should happen to him. The soldiers bowed, and their behaviour was respectful. By a private staircase he entered the chamber of the king, who, immediately on perceiving him, turned towards him, and stretched out his arms. The King of Navarre was affected ; he sighed and wept, and fell on his knees at the side of the bed. Charles embraced, and having kissed him, said, ' My brother, you lose a good master and a good friend. I know it is not you who occasions me so much trouble ; had I believed what they said, you would not have been alive ; but I have always loved you. It is to you alone I trust my wife and daughter ; earnestly do I recom- mend them to your care. Do not trust the queen ; but God protect you ! '
" The queen mother here interrupted him, ' Ah, sir, do not say that!' — * Yes madam, I must say it; it is the truth. Believe me, my brother; love me; assist my wife and daughter, and implore God for mercy on me. Adieu, my brother, adieu ! ' The King of Navarre remained till his majesty expired."
The following minute particulars are drawn from the journal of Pierre de L'Etoile. In the simplicity of his narration, so pleasing in the old writers, the nurse and the monarch, — the religious remorse of the one, and the artless consolations of the other, — become interesting objects.
" King Charles, two days before his death, having called for Mazzille, his chief physician, and complaining of the pains he suffered, asked him if it was not possible that he, and so many other celebrated physicians that were in his realms,
VOL. II.
162 THE DEATH OF CHARLES IX.
could give some alleviation to his disorder ; * for I am,' said he, * cruelly and horridly tormented.' To which Mazzille replied, that whatever had depended on them had been tried, but that in truth God only could be the sovereign physician in such complaints. * I believe,' said the king, ' that what you say is true, and that you know nothing else. Draw from me my custode (or large cap), that I may try to rest.' Mazzille withdrew, and left orders that all should leave the king except three, viz: La Tour, St. Pris, and his nurse, whom his majesty greatly loved, although she was a Huguenot. As she had just seated herself on a coffer, and began to doze, she heard the king groan bitterly, weeping and sighing ; she then approached the bed softly, and drawing away his cus- tode, the king said to her, giving vent to a heavy sigh, and shedding tears plentifully, insomuch that they interrupted his discourse — ' Ah ! my dear nurse ! my beloved woman, what blood ! what murders ! Ah ! I have followed wicked advice !
0 my God ! pardon me, and be merciful. I know not where
1 am, they have made me so perplexed and agitated. How will all this end ! — What shall I do ? I am lost for ever ! I know it.' — Then the nurse thus addressed him : ' Sire, be the murders on those who forced you to order them ; your majesty could not help it, and since you never consented, and now regret them, believe God will never impute them to you, and will cover them with the mantle of justice of his Son, to whom alone you should look for aid. Ah ! for the honour of God, let your majesty cease from this weeping.' Having said this, she rose for a handkerchief, for his was drenched with tears : Charles having taken it from her, made a sign that she should retire and leave him to repose.
The dreadful narrative of the massacre of St. Bartholomew is detailed in the history of De Thou ; and the same scene is painted in glowing, though in faithful colours, by Voltaire in the Henriade. — Charles, whose last miserable moments we come from contemplating, when he observed several fugitive Huguenots about his palace in the morning after the massacre
ROYAL PROMOTIONS. 163
of 30,000 of their friends, took a fowling-piece, and repeatedly fired at them.
Such was the effect of religion operating, perhaps not on a malignant, but on a feeble mind 1
ROYAL PROMOTIONS.
IF the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.
Chevreau informs us that the Sultan Osman having ob- served a gardener planting a cabbage with some peculiar dex- terity, the manner so attracted his imperial eye that he raised him to an office near his person, and shortly afterwards he rewarded the planter of cabbages by creating him beglerbeg or viceroy of the Isle of Cyprus.
Marc Antony gave the house of a Roman citizen to a cook, who had prepared for him a good supper ! Many have been raised to extraordinary preferment by capricious monarchs for the sake of a jest. Lewis XI. promoted a poor priest whom he found sleeping in the porch of a church, that the proverb might be verified, that to lucky men good fortune will come even when they are asleep ! Our Henry VII. made a viceroy of Ireland if not for the sake of, at least with a clench. When the king was told that all Ireland could not rule the Earl of Kildare, he said, then shall this earl rule all Ireland.
It is recorded of Henry VIII. that he raised a servant to a considerable dignity because he had taken care to have a roasted boar prepared for him, when his majesty happened to be in the humour of feasting on one ! and the title of Sugar-loaf-court, in Leadenhall-street, was probably derived from another piece of munificence of this monarch : the widow of a Mr. Cornwallis was rewarded by the gift of a dissolved
164 ROYAL PROMOTIONS.
priory there situated, for some Jine puddings with which she had presented his majesty !
When Cardinal de Monte was elected pope, before he left the conclave he bestowed a cardinal's hat upon a servant, whose chief merit consisted in the daily attentions he paid to his holiness's monkey !
Louis Barbier owed all his good fortune to the familiar knowledge he had of Rabelais. He knew his Rabelais by heart. This served to introduce him to the Duke of Orleans, who took great pleasure in reading that author. It was for this he gave him an abbey, and he was gradually promoted till he became a cardinal.
George Villiers was suddenly raised from a private station, and loaded with wealth and honours by James the First, merely for his personal beauty. Almost all the favourites of James became so from their handsomeness.
M. de Chamillart, minister of France, owed his promotion merely to his being the only man who could beat Louis XIV* at billiards. He retired with a pension, after ruining the finances of his country.
The Duke of Luynes was originally a country lad, who insinuated himself into the favour-of Louis XIII. then young, by making bird-traps (pies-grieches) to catch sparrows. It was little expected (says Voltaire,) that these puerile amuse- mfjnts were to be terminated by a most sanguinary revolu- tion. De Luynes, after causing his patron, the Marshal D'Ancre, to be assassinated, and the queen mother to be imprisoned, raised himself to a title and the most tyrannical power.
Sir Walter Raleigh owed his promotion to an act of gal- lantry to Queen Elizabeth, and Sir Christopher Hatton owe4 his preferment to his dancing: Queen Elizabeth, observes Granger, with all her sagacity, could not see the future lord chancellor in the fine dancer. The same writer says, u Nothing could form a more curious collection of memoirs than anecdotes of preferment." Could the secret history of
MODES OF SALUTATION, ETC. 165
great men be traced, it would appear that merit is rarely the first step to advancement. It would much oftener be found to be owing to superficial qualifications, and even vices.
NOBILITY.
FRANCIS THE FIRST was accustomed to say, that when the nobles of his kingdom came to court, they were received by the world as so many little Icings; that the day after they were only beheld as so many princes ; but on the third day they were merely considered as so many gentlemen, and were confounded among the crowd of courtiers. — It was supposed that this was done with a political view of hum- bling the proud nobility; and for this reason Henry IV. frequently said aloud, in the presence of the princes of the blood, We are all gentlemen.
It is recorded of Philip the Third of Spain, that while he exacted the most punctilious respect from the grandees, he saluted the peasants. He would never be addressed but on the knees ; for which he gave this artful excuse, that as he was of low stature, every one would have appeared too high for him. He showed himself rarely even to his grandees, that he might the better support his haughtiness and repress their pride. He also affected to speak to them by half words ; and reprimanded them if they did not guess the rest. In a word, he omitted nothing that could mortify his nobility.
MODES OF SALUTATION, AND AMICABLE CERE- MONIES, OBSERVED IN VARIOUS NATIONS.
WHEN men, writes the philosophical compiler of " L? Esprit des Usages et des Coutumes" salute each other in an amicable
166 MODES OF SALUTATION, ETC.
manner, it signifies little whether they move a particular part of the body, or practise a particular ceremony. In these actions there must exist different customs. Every nation imagines it employs the most reasonable ones; but all are equally simple, and none are to be treated as ridiculous.
This infinite number of ceremonies may be reduced to two kinds ; to reverences or salutations, and to the touch of some part of the human body. To bend and prostrate one's self to express sentiments of respect, appears to be a natural motion ; for terrified persons throw themselves on the earth when they adore invisible beings ; and the affectionate touch of the per- son they salute is an expression of tenderness.
As nations decline from their ancient simplicity, much farce and grimace are introduced. Superstition, the manners of a people, and their situation, influence the modes of saluta- tion ; as may be observed from the instances we collect.
Modes of salutation have sometimes very different charac- ters, and it is no uninteresting speculation to examine their shades. Many display a refinement of delicacy, while others are remarkable for their simplicity, or for their sensibility. In general, however, they are frequently the same in the infancy of nations, and in more polished societies. Respect, humility, fear, and esteem, are expressed much in a similar manner, for these are the natural consequence of the organi- zation of the body.
These demonstrations become in time only empty civilities, which signify nothing ; we shall notice what they were orig- inally, without reflecting on what they are.
Primitive nations have no peculiar modes of salutation ; they know no reverences or other compliments, or they de- spise and disdain them. The Greenlanders laugh when they see an European uncover his head, and bend his body before him whom he calls his superior.
The Islanders, near the Philippines, take the hand or foot of him they salute, and with it they gently rub their face. The Laplanders apply their nose strongly against that of the
MODES OF SALUTATION, ETC. 1G7
person they salute. Dampier says, that at New Guinea they are satisfied to put on their heads the leaves of trees, which have ever passed for symbols of friendship and peace. This is at least a picturesque salute.
Other salutations are very incommodious and painful ; it requires great practice to enable a man to be polite in an island situated in the straits of the Sound. Houtman tells us they saluted him in this grotesque manner : " They raised his left foot, which they passed gently over the right leg, and from thence over his face." The inhabitants of the Philip- pines use a most complex attitude ; they bend their body very- low, place their hands on their cheeks, and raise at the same time one foot in the air with their knee bent.
An Ethiopian takes the robe of another, and ties it about his own waist, so that he leaves his friend half naked. Tliis custom of undressing on these occasions takes other forms ; sometimes men place themselves naked before the person whom they salute ; it is to show their humility, and that they are unworthy of appearing in his presence. This was practised before Sir Joseph Banks, when he received the visit of two female Otaheitans. Their innocent simplicity, no doubt, did not appear immodest in the eyes of the virtuoso.
Sometimes they only undress partially. The Japanese only take off a slipper ; the people of Arracan their sandals in the street, and their stockings in the house.
In the progress of time it appears servile to uncover one's self. The grandees of Spain claim the right of appearing covered before the king, to show that they are not so much sub- jected to him as the rest of the nation : and (this writer truly observes) we may remark that the English do not uncover their heads so much as the other nations of Europe. Mr. Hobhouse observes that uncovering the head, with the Turks, is a mark of indecent familiarity ; in their mosques the Franks must keep their hats on. The Jewish custom of wearing their hats in their synagogues is, doubtless, the same oriental custom.
168 MODES OF SALUTATION, ETC.
In a word, there is not a nation, observes the humoroua Montaigne, even to the people who when they salute turn their backs on their friends, but that can be justified in their customs.
The negroes are lovers of ludicrous actions, and hence all their ceremonies seem farcical. The greater part pull the fingers till they crack. Snelgrave gives an odd representation of the embassy which the king of Dahomy sent to him. The ceremonies of salutation consisted in the most ridiculous con- tortions. When two negro monarchs visit, they embrace in snapping three times the middle finger.
Barbarous nations frequently imprint on their salutations the dispositions of their character. When the inhabitants of Carmena (says Athenaeus) would show a peculiar mark of esteem, they breathed a vein, and presented for the beverage of their friend the flowing blood. The Franks tore the hair from their head, and presented it to the person they saluted. The slave cut his hair and offered it to his master.
The Chinese are singularly affected in their personal civil- ities. They even calculate the number of their reverences. These are the most remarkable postures. The men move their hands in an affectionate manner, while they are joined together on the breast, and bow their head a little. If they respect a person, they raise their hands joined, and then lower them to the earth in bending the body. If two persons meet after a long separation, they both fall on their knees and bend the face to the earth, and this ceremony they repeat two or three times. Surely we may differ here with the sen- timent of Montaigne, and confess this ceremony to be ridicu- lous. It arises from their national affectation. They substi- tute artificial ceremonies for natural actions.
Their expressions mean as little as their ceremonies. If a Chinese is asked how he finds himself in health ? He answers, Very well; thanks to your abundant felicity. If they would tell a man that he looks well, they sa"y, Prosperity is painted on your face : or, Tour air announces your happiness.
MODES OF SALUTATION, ETC. !(&
If you render them any service, they say, My thanks shall be immortal. If you praise them, they answer, How shall 1 dare to persuade myself of what you say of me ? If you dine with them, they tell you at parting, We have not treated you with sufficient distinction. The various titles they in- vent for each other it would be impossible to translate.
It .is to be observed that all these answers are prescribed by the Chinese ritual, or Academy of Compliments. There, are determined the number of bows ; the expressions to be employed ; the genuflexions, and the inclinations which are to be made to the right or left hand ; the salutations of the master before the chair where the stranger is to be seated, for he salutes it most profoundly, and wipes the dust away with the skirts of his robe ; all these and other things are noticed, even to the silent gestures by which you are entreated to enter the house. The lower class of people are equally nice in these punctilios ; and ambassadors pass forty days in practising them before they are enabled to appear at court. A tribunal of ceremonies has been erected ; and every day very odd decrees are issued, to which the Chinese most relig- iously submit.
The marks of honour are frequently arbitrary; to be seated with us is a mark of repose and familiarity ; to stand up, that of respect There are countries, however, in which princes will only be addressed by persons who are seated, and it is considered as a favour to be permitted to stand in their presence. This custom prevails in despotic countries ; a despot cannot suffer without disgust the elevated figure of his subjects ; he is pleased to bend their bodies with their genius ; his presence must lay those who behold him pros- trate on the earth ; he desires no eagerness, no attention ; ho would only inspire terror.
170 SINGULARITIES OF WAR.
SINGULARITIES OF WAR.
WAR kindles enthusiasm, and therefore occasions strange laws and customs. "We may observe in it whatever is most noble and heroic, mixed with what is most strange and wild. We collect facts, and the reader must draw his own cgnclu- sions.
They frequently condemned at Carthage their generals to die after an unfortunate campaign, although they were ac- cused of no other fault. We read in Du Halde that Captain Mancheou, a Chinese, was convicted of giving battle without obtaining a complete victory, and he was punished. — With such a perspective at the conclusion of a battle, generals will become intrepid, and exert themselves as much as possible, and this is all that is wanted.
When the savages of New France take flight, they pile the wounded in baskets, where they are bound and corded down as we do children in swaddling-clothes. — If they should hap- pen to fall into the hands of the conquerors, they would ex- pire in the midst of torments. It is better therefore that the vanquished should carry them away in any manner, though frequently even at the risk of their lives.
The Spartans were not allowed to combat often with the same enemy. They wished not to inure these to battle ; and if their enemies revolted frequently, they were accustomed to exterminate them.
The governors of the Scythian provinces gave annually a feast to those who had valiantly, with their own hands, dis- patched their enemies. The skulls of the vanquished served for their cups ; and the quantity of wine they were allowed to drink was proportioned to the number of skulls they pos- sessed. The youth, who could not yet boast of such martial exploits, contemplated distantly the solemn feast, without being admitted to approach it This institution formed cour- ageous warriors.
FIEE, AND THE ORIGIN OF FIRE-WORKS. 171
War has corrupted the morals of the people, and has occa- sioned them to form horrible ideas of virtue. When the Por- tuguese attacked Madrid, in the reign of Philip V., the cour- tesans of that city were desirous of displaying their patriotic zeal : those who were most convinced of the envenomed state of their bodies perfumed themselves, and went by night to the camp of the enemy ; the consequence was, that hi less than three weeks there were more than six thousand Portuguese disabled with venereal maladies, and the greater part died.
Men have frequently fallen into unpardonable contradic- tions, in attempting to make principles and laws meet which could never agree with each other. The Jews suffered them- selves to be attacked without defending themselves on the Sabbath-day, and the Romans profited by these pious scru- ples. The council of Trent ordered the body of the consta- ble of Bourbon, who had fought against the Pope, to be dug up, as if the head of the church was not as much subjected to war as others, since he is a temporal prince.
Pope Nicholas, in his answer to the Bulgarians, forbids them to make war in Lent, unless, he prudently adds, there be an urgent necessity.
FIRE, AND THE ORIGIN OF FIRE-WORKS.
IN the Memoirs of the French Academy, a little essay on this subject is sufficiently curious ; the following contains the facts : —
FIRE-WORKS were not known to antiquity. — It is certainly a modern invention. If ever the ancients employed fires at their festivals, it was only for religious purposes.
Fire, in primaeval ages, was a symbol of respect, or an in- strument of terror. In both these ways God manifested him- self to man. In the holy writings he compares himself some- times to an ardent fire, to display his holiness and his purity ;
172 FIRE, AND THE ORIGIN OF FIRE- WORKS.
sometimes he renders himself visible under the form of a burn- ing bush, to express himself to be as formidable as a devouring fire : again, he rains sulphur ; and often, before he speaks, he attracts the attention of the multitude by flashes of lightning.
Fire was worshipped as a divinity by several idolaters : the Platonists confounded it with the heavens, and considered it as the divine intelligence. Sometimes it is a symbol of majesty. — God walked (if we may so express ourselves) with his people, preceded by a pillar of fire ; and the monarchs of Asia, according to Herodotus, commanded that such ensigns of their majesty should be carried before them. These fires, according to Quintus Curtius, were considered as holy and eternal, and were carried at the head of their armies on little altars of silver, in the midst of the magi who accompanied them and sang their hymns.
Fire was also a symbol of majesty amongst the Romans ; and if it was used by them in their festivals, it was rather employed for the ceremonies of religion -than for a peculiar mark of their rejoicings. Fire was always held to be most proper and holy for sacrifices ; in this the Pagans imitated the Hebrews. The fire so carefully preserved by the Vestals was probably an imitation of that which fell from heaven on the victim offered- by Aaron, and long afterwards religiously kept up by the priests. Servius, one of the seven kings of Rome, commanded a great fire of straw to be kindled in the public place of every town in Italy to consecrate for repose a certain day in seed-time, or sowing.
The Greeks lighted lamps at a certain feast held in honour of Minerva, who gave them oil ; of Vulcan, who was the in- ventor of lamps ; and of Prometheus, who had rendered them service by the fire which he had stolen from heaven. An- other feast to Bacchus was celebrated by a grand nocturnal illumination, in which wine was poured forth profusely to all passengers. A feast in memory of Ceres, who sought so long in the darkness of hell for her daughter, was kept by burning a number of torches.
FIRE, AND THE ORIGIN OF FIRE-WORKS. 173
Great illuminations were made in various other meetings ; particularly in the Secular Games, which lasted three whole nights ; and so carefully were they kept up, that these nights had no darkness.
In all their rejoicings the ancients indeed used fires ; but they were intended merely to burn their sacrifices, and which, as the generality of them were performed at night, the illumi- nations served to give light to the ceremonies.
Artificial fires were indeed frequently used by them, but not in public rejoicings ; like us, they employed them for military purposes ; but we use them likewise successfully for our decorations and amusement.
From the latest times of paganism to the early ages of Christianity, we can but rarely quote instances of fire lighted up for other purposes, in a public form, than for the cere- monies of religion ; illuminations were made at the baptism of princes, as a symbol of that life of light in wliich they were going to enter by faith ; or at the tombs of martyrs, to light them during the watchings of the night. All these were abolished, from the various abuses they introduced.
We only trace the rise of feux-de-joie, or fire- works, given merely for amusing spectacles to delight the eye, to the epqcha of the invention of powder and cannon, at the close of the thirteenth century. It was these two inventions, doubt- less, whose effects furnished the ideas of all those machines and artifices which form the charms of these fires.
To the Florentines and the Siennese are we indebted not only for the preparation of powder with other ingredients to amuse the eyes, but also for the invention of elevated ma- chines and decorations adapted to augment the pleasure of the spectacle. They began their attempts at the feasts of Saint John the Baptist and the Assumption, on wooden edi- fices, which they adorned with painted statues, from whose mouth and eyes issued a beautiful fire. Callot has engraven numerous specimens of the pageants, triumphs, and proces- sions, under a great variety of grotesque forms : — dragons,
174 FIRE, AND THE ORIGIN OF FIRE-WORKS.
swans, eagles, &c., which were built up large enough to carry many persons, while they vomited forth the most amusing fire-work.
This use passed from Florence to Rome, where, at the creation of the popes, they displayed illuminations of* hand- grenadoes, thrown from the height of a castle. Pyrotechnics from that time have become an art, which, in the degree the inventors have displayed ability in combining the powers of architecture, sculpture, and painting, have produced a num- ber of beautiful effects, which even give pleasure to those who read the descriptions without having beheld them.
A pleasing account of decorated fire-works is given in the Secret Memoirs of France. In August, 1764, Torre*, an Italian artist, obtained permission to exhibit a pyrotechnic operation. — The Parisians admired the variety of the colours, and the ingenious forms of his fire. But his first exhibition was disturbed by the populace, as well as by the apparent danger of the fire, although it was displayed on the Boule- vards. In October it was repeated ; and proper precautions having been taken, they admired the beauty of the fire, with- out fearing it. These artificial fires are described as having been rapidly and splendidly executed. The exhibition closed with a transparent triumphal arch, and a curtain illuminated by the same fire, admirably exhibiting the palace of Pluto. Around the columns, stanzas were inscribed, supported by Cupids, with other fanciful embellishments. Among these little pieces of poetry appeared the following one, which in- geniously announced a more perfect exhibition :
Les vents, les frimats, les orages,
Eteindront ces FEUX, pour un terns; Mais, ainsi que les FLEURS, avec plus d'avantage,
Us renaitront dans le printems.
IMITATED.
The icy gale, the falling snow,
Extinction to these FIRES shall bring; But, like the FLOWERS, with brighter glow,
They shall renew their charms in spring.
THE BIBLE PROHIBITED AND IMPROVED. 175
The exhibition was greatly improved, according to this promist rf the artist. His subject was chosen with much felicity : it was a representation of the forges of Vulcan under Mount -ZEtna. The interior of the mount discovered Vulcan and his Cyclops. Venus was seen to descend, and demand of her consort armour for JEneas. — Opposite to this was seen the palace of Vulcan, which presented a deep and brilliant perspective. The labours of the Cyclops produced number* less very happy combinations of artificial fires. The public with pleasing astonishment beheld the effects of the volcano, so admirably adapted to the nature of these fires. At an- other entertainment he gratified the public with a represen- tation of Orpheus and Eurydice in hell ; many striking cir- cumstances occasioned a marvellous illusion. What subjects indeed could be more analogous to this kind of fire ? Such ecenical fire-works display more brilliant effects than our stars, wheels, and rockets.
THE BIBLE PROHIBITED AND IMPROVED.
THE following are the express words contained in the reg- ulation of the popes to prohibit the uSe of the Bible.
"As it is manifest, by experience, that if the use of the holy writers is permitted in the vulgar tongue more evil than profit will arise, because of the temerity of man ; it is for this reason all Bibles are prohibited (prohibentur Biblia) with all their parts, whether they be printed or written, in whatever vulgar language soever ; as also are prohibited all summaries or abridgments of Bibles, or any books of the holy writings, although they should only be historical, and that in whatever vulgar tongue they may be written."
It is there also said, " That the reading the Bibles of cath- olic editors may be permitted to those by whose perusal or power the faith may be spread, and who will not criticize it.
176 THE BIBLE PROHIBITED AND IMPROVED.
But this permission is not to be granted without an express order of the bishop, or the inquisitor, with the advice of the curate and confessor ; and their permission must first be had in writing. And he who, without permission, presumes to read the holy writings, or to have them in his possession, shall not be absolved of his sins before he first shall have returned the Bible to his bishop."
A Spanish author says, that if a person should come to his bishop to ask for leave to read the Bible, with the best intention, the bishop should answer him from Matthew, ch. xx. ver. 20, " You know not what you ask." And indeed, he observes, the nature of this demand indicates an heretical dis- position.
The reading of the Bible was prohibited by Henry VIII., except by those who occupied high offices in the state ; a noble lady or gentlewoman might read it in " their garden or orchard," or other retired places; but men and women hi the lower ranks were positively forbidden to read it, or to have it read to them, under the penalty of a month's impris- onment.
Dr. Franklin has preserved an anecdote of the prohibited Bible in the time of our Catholic Mary. His family had an English Bible ; and to conceal it the more securely, they con- ceived the project of fastening it open with packthreads across the leaves, on the inside of the lid of a close-stool ! " When my great-grandfather wished to read to his family, he reversed the lid of the close-stool upon his knees, and passed the leaves from one side to the other, which were held down on each by the packthread. One of the children was stationed at the door to give notice if he saw an officer of the Spiritual Court make his appearance; in that case the lid was re- stored to its place, with the Bible concealed under it as before."
The reader may meditate on what the popes did, and what they probably would have done, had not Luther happily been in a humour to abuse the pope, and begin a REFORMATION.
THE BIBLE PROHIBITED AND IMPROVED. 177
It would be curious to sketch an account of the probable situa- tion of Europe at the present moment, had the pontiffs pre- served the omnipotent power of which they had gradually possessed themselves.
It appears, by an act -dated in 1516, that the Bible was called Bibliotheca, that is per emphasijn, the Library. The word library was limited in its signification then to the bibli- cal writings ; no other books, compared with the holy writings, appear to have been worthy to rank with them, or constitute what we call a library.
We have had several remarkable attempts to recompose the Bible ; Dr. Geddes's version is aridly literal, and often ludicrous by its vulgarity ; as when he translates the Passover as the Skipover, and introduces Constables among the ancient Israelites ; but the following attempts are of a very different kind. Sebastian Castillon — who afterwards changed his name to Castalion, with his accustomed affectation referring to Castalia, the fountain of the Muses — took a very extraor- dinary liberty with the sacred writings. He fancied he could give the world a more classical version of the Bible, and for this purpose introduces phrases and entire sentences from profane writers into the text of holy writ. His whole style is finically quaint, overloaded with prettinesses, and all the ornaments of false taste. Of the noble simplicity of the Scripture he seems not to have had the remotest conception.
But an attempt by Pere Berruyer is more extraordinary ; in his Histoire du Peuple de Dieu, he has recomposed the Bible as he would have written a fashionable novel. He conceives that the great legislator of the Hebrews is too bar- ren in his descriptions, too concise in the events he records, nor is he careful to enrich his history by pleasing reflections and interesting conversation pieces, and hurries on the catas- trophes, by which means he omits much entertaining matter : as for instance, in the loves of Joseph and the wife of Poti- phar, Moses is very dry and concise, which, however, our Pere Berruyer is not. His histories of Joseph, and of King
VOL. n. 12
178 THE BIBLE PROHIBITED AND IMPROVED.
David, are relishing morsels, and were devoured eagerly in all the boudoirs of Paris. Take a specimen of the style. u Joseph combined, with a regularity of features and a bril- liant complexion, an air of the noblest dignity; all which contributed to render him one of the most amiable men in Egypt." At length " she declares her passion, and pressed him to answer her. It never entered her mind that the ad- vances of a woman of her rank could ever be rejected. Joseph at first only replied to all her wishes by his cold em- barrassments. She would not yet give him up. In vain he flies from her ; she was too passionate to waste even the mo- ments of his astonishment." This good father, however, does ample justice to the gallantry of the Patriarch Jacob. He offers to serve Laban, seven years for Rachel. " Nothing is too much," cries the venerable novelist, " when one really loves ; " and this admirable observation he confirms by the facility with which the obliging Rachel allows Leah for one night to her husband ! In this manner the patriarchs are made to speak in the tone of the tenderest lovers ; Judith 19 a Parisian coquette, Holofernes is rude as a German baron and their dialogues are tedious with all the reciprocal politesse of metaphysical French lovers ! Moses in the desert, it was observed, is precisely as pedantic as Pere Berruyer address- ing his class at the university. One cannot but smile at the following expressions : u By the easy manner in which God performed miracles, one might easily perceive they cost no effort." When he has narrated an "Adventure of the Patri- archs," he proceeds, "After such an extraordinary, or curious, or interesting adventure," &c. This good father had caught the language of the beau monde, but with such perfect sim- plicity that, in employing it on sacred history, he was not aware of the ludicrous he was writing.
A Gothic bishop translated the Scriptures into the Goth language, but omitted the Books of Kings! lest the wars, of which so much is there recorded, should increase their incli- nation to fighting, already too prevalent. Jortin notices this
THE BIBLE PROHIBITED AND IMPROVED. 179
castrated copy of the Bible in his Remarks on Ecclesiastical History.
As the Bible, in many parts, consists merely of historical transactions, and as too many exhibit a detail of offensive ones, it has often occurred to the fathers of families, as well as to the popes, to prohibit its general reading. Archbishop Tillotson formed a design of purifying the historical parts. Those who have given us a Family Shakspeare, in the same spirit may present us with a Family Bible.
In these attempts to recompose the Bible, the broad vulgar colloquial diction, which has been used by our theological writers, is less tolerable than the quaintness of Castalion and the floridity of Pere Berruyer.
The style now noticed long disgraced the writings of our divines ; and we see it sometimes still employed by some of a certain stamp. Matthew Henry, whose commentaries are well known, writes in this manner on Judges ix. : " We are here told by what acts Abimelech got into the saddle. — None would have dreamed of making such a fellow as he king.— See how he has wheedled them into the choice. He hired into his service the scum and scoundrels of the country. Jotham was really a fine gentleman. — The Sechemites, that set Abimelech up, were the first to kick him off. The Seche- mites said all the ill they could of him in their table-talk; they drank healths to his confusion. — Well, Gaal's interest in Sechem is soon at an end. Exit Gaal I "
Lancelot Addison, by the vulgar coarseness of his style^ forms an admirable contrast with the amenity and grace of his son's Spectators. He tells us, in his voyage to Barbary, that "A rabbin once told him, among other heinous stuff, that he did not expect the felicity of the next world on the ac- count of any merits but his own ; whoever kept the law would arrive at the bliss, by coming upon his own legs."
It must be confessed that the rabbin, considering he could not conscientiously have the same creed as Addison, did not deliver any very " heinous stuff," in believing that other peo-
180 OEIGIN OF THE MATEEIALS OF WRITING.
pie's merits have nothing to do with our own ; and that " we should stand on our own legs ! " But this was not " propei words in proper places ! "
ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING.
IT is curious to observe the various substitutes for paper before its discovery.
Ere the invention of recording events by writing, trees were planted, rude altars were erected, or heaps of stone, to serve as memorials of past events. Hercules probably could not write when he fixed his famous pillars.
The most ancient mode of writing was on bricks, tiles, and oyster-shells, and on tables of stone,' afterwards on plates of various materials, on ivory, on barks of trees, on leaves of trees.*
Engraving memorable events on hard substances was giv- ing, as it were, speech to rocks and metals. In the book of Job mention is made of writing on stone, on rocks, and on sheets of lead. On tables of stone Moses received the law written by the finger of God. Hesiod's works were written on leaden tables : lead was used for writing, and rolled up like a cylinder, as Pliny states. Montfaucon notices a very ancient book of eight leaden leaves, which on the back had rings fastened by a small leaden rod to keep them together.
* Specimens of most of these modes of writing may be seen at the British Museum. No. 3478, in the Sloanian library, is a Nabob's letter, on a piece of "bark, about two yards long, and richly ornamented with gold. No. 3207 is a book of Mexican hieroglyphics, painted on bark. In the same collection are various species, many from the Malabar coast and the East. The latter writings are chiefly on leaves. There are several copies of Bibles written on palm leaves. The ancients, doubtless, wrote on any leaves they found adapted for the purpose. Hence the leaf of a book, alluding to that of a tree, seems to be derived. At the British Museum we have also Babylonian tiles, or broken pots, which the people used, and made their contracts of business on j a custom mentioned in the Scriptures.
ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING. 181
They afterwards engraved on bronze : the laws of the Cre- tans were on bronze tables ; the Romans etched their public records on brass. The speech of Claudius, engraved on plates of bronze, is yet preserved, in the town-hall of Lyons in France. Several bronze tables, with Etruscan characters, have been dug up in Tuscany. The treaties between the Romans, Spartans, and the Jews, were written on brass ; and estates, for better security, were made over on this enduring metal. In many cabinets may be found the discharges of soldiers, written on copper-plates. This custom has been dis- covered in India : a bill of feoffment on copper has been dug up near Bengal, dated a century before the birth of Christ.
Among these early inventions many were singularly rude, and miserable substitutes for a better material. In the shep- herd state they wrote their songs with thorns and awls on straps of leather, which they wound round their crooks. The Icelanders appear to have scratched .their runes, a kind of hieroglyphics, on walls ; and Olof, according to one of the Sagas, built a large house, on the bulks and spars of which he had engraved the history of his own and more ancient times; while another northern hero appears to have had nothing better than his own chair and bed to perpetuate his own heroic acts on. At the town-hall, in Hanover, are kept twelve wooden boards, overlaid with bees* wax, on which are written the names of owners of houses, but not the names of streets. These wooden manuscripts must have existed before 1423, when Hanover was first divided into streets. Such manuscripts may be found in public collections. These are an evidence of a rude state of society. The same event occurred among the ancient Arabs, who, according to the history of Mahomet, seemed to have carved on the shoulder-, bones of sheep remarkable events with a knife, and tying them with a string, hung up these sheep-bone chronicles.
The laws of the twelve tables, which the Romans chiefly copied from the Grecian code, were, after they had been ap- proved by the people, engraven on brass : they were melted
182 ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING.
by lightning, which struck the Capitol ; a loss highly regretted by Augustus. This manner of writing we still retain, for inscriptions, epitaphs, and other memorials designed to reach posterity.
These early inventions led to the discovery of tables of wood ; and as cedar has an antiseptic quality from its bitter- ness, they chose this wood for cases or chests to preserve their most important writings. This well-known expression of the ancients, when they meant to give the highest eulogium of an excellent work, et cedro digna locuti, that it was worthy to be written on cedar, alludes to the oil of cedar, with which valuable MSS. of parchment were anointed, to preserve them from corruption and moths. Persius illustrates this : —
" Who would not leave posterity such rhymes As cedar oil might keep to latest times ! "
They stained materials for writing upon, with purple, and rubbed them with exudations from the cedar. The laws of the emperors were published on wooden tables, painted with ceruse ; to which custom Horace alludes : Leges incidere ligno. Such tables, the term now softened into tablets, are still used, but in general are made of other materials than wood. The same reason for which they preferred the cedar to other wood induced to write on wax, as being incorrupti- ble. Men generally used it to write their testaments on, the better to preserve them ; thus Juvenal says, Ceras implere capaces. This thin paste of wax was also used on tablets of wood, that it might more easily admit of erasure, for daily use.
They wrote with an iron bodkin, as they did on the other substances we have noticed. The stylus was made sharp at one end to write with, and blunt and broad at the other, t<> efface and correct easily : hence the phrase vertere stylum, to turn the stylus, was used to express blotting out. But the Romans forbad the use of this sharp instrument, from the circumstance of many persons having used them as daggers.
ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING. 183
A schoolmaster was killed by the Pugillares or table-books, and the styles of his own scholars. They substituted a stylus made of the bone of a bird, or other animal ; so that their writings resembled engravings. When they wrote on softer materials, they employed reeds and canes split like our perns at the points, which the orientalists still use to lay their colour or ink neater on the paper.
Naude observes, that when he was in Italy, about 1642, he saw some of those waxen tablets, called Pugillares, so called because they were held in one hand; and others com- posed of the barks of trees, which the ancients employed in lieu of paper.
On these tablets, or table-books Mr. Astle observes, that the Greeks and Romans continued the use of waxed table- books long after the use of the papyrus, leaves and skins became common ; because they were convenient for correct- ing extemporaneous compositions : from these table-books they transcribed their performances correctly into parchment books, if for their own private use ; but if for sale, or for the library, the Librarii, or Scribes, performed the office. The writing on table-books is particularly recommended by Quin- tilian in the third chapter of the tenth book of his Institutions ; because the wax is readily effaced for any corrections : he confesses weak eyes do not see so well on paper, and observes that the frequent necessity of dipping the pen in the inkstand retards the hand, and is but ill-suited to the celerity of the mind. Some of these table-books are conjectured to have been large, and perhaps heavy, for in Plautus, a school-boy is represented breaking his master's head with his table-book. The critics, according to Cicero, were accustomed in reading their wax manuscripts to notice obscure or vicious phrases by joining a piece of red wax, as we should underline such by red ink.
Table-books written upon with styles were not entirely laid aside in Chaucer's time, who describes them in his Sompner's tale:—
184 ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING.
** His fellow had a staffe tipp'd with home, A poire of tables all of iverie ; And &pointdl polished fetouslie, And wrote alwaies the names, as he stood, Of all folke, that gave hem any good."
By the word pen in the translation of the Bible we must understand an iron style. Table-books of ivory are still used for memoranda, written with black-lead pencils. The Ro- mans used ivory to write the edicts of the senate on, with a Dlack colour ; and the expression of libri elephantini, which some authors imagine alludes to books that for their size were called elephantine, were most probably composed of ivory, the tusk of the elephant: among the Romans they were undoubtedly scarce.
The pumice stone was a writing-material of the ancients ; they used it to smooth the roughness of the parchment, or to sharpen their reeds.
In the progress of time the art of writing consisted in paint- ing with different kinds of ink. This novel mode of writing occasioned them to invent other materials proper to receive their writing ; the thin bark of certain trees and plants or linen; and at length, when this was found apt to become mouldy, they prepared the skins of animals ; on the dried skins of serpents, were once written the Iliad and Odyssey. The first place where they began to dress these skins was Pergamus, in Asia ; whence the Latin name is derived of Pergamence or parchment. These skins are, however, better known amongst the authors of the purest Latin under the name of membrana ; so called from the membranes of vari- ous animals of which they were composed. The ancients had parchments of three different colours, white, yellow, and purple. At Rome white parchment was disliked, because it was more subject to be soiled than the others, and dazzled the eye. They generally wrote in letters of gold and silver on purple or violet parchment. This custom continued in the early ages of the church ; and copies of the evangelists of this kind are preserved in the British Museum.
ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING. 185
"When the Egyptians employed for writing the bark of a plant or 'reed, called papyrus, or paper-rush, it superseded all former modes, for its convenience. Formerly, it grew in great quantities on the sides of the Nile. This plant has given its name to our paper, although the latter is now com- posed of linen and rags, and formerly had been of cotton- wool, which was but brittle and yellow ; and improved by using cotton rags, which they glazed. After the eighth century the papyrus was superseded by parchment. The Chinese make their paper with silk. The use of paper is of great antiquity. It is what the ancient Latinists call charta or chartce. Before the use of parchment and paper passed to the Romans, they used the thin peel found between the wood and the bark of trees. This skinny substance they call liber, from whence the Latin word liber, a book, and library and librarian in the European languages, and the French livre for book ; but we of northern origin derive our book from the Danish bog, the beech-tree, because that being the most plentiful in Denmark was used to engrave on. Anciently, instead of folding this bark, this parchment, or paper, as we fold ours, they rolled it according as they wrote on it ; and the Latin name which they gave these rolls has passed into our language as well as the others. We say a volume, or volumes, although our books are composed of leaves bound together. The books of the ancients on the shelves of their libraries were rolled up on a pin and placed erect, titled on the outside in red letters, or rubrics, and ap- peared like a number of small pillars on the shelves.
The ancients were as curious as ourselves in having their books richly conditioned. Propertius describes tablets with gold borders, and Ovid notices their red titles ; but in later times, besides the tint of purple with which they tinged their vellum, and the liquid gold which they employed for their ink, they inlaid their covers with precious stones ; and I have seen, in the library at Triers or Treves, a manuscript, the donation of some princess to a monastery, studded with heads
186 ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING.
wrought in fine cameos. In the early ages of the church they painted on the outside commonly a dying Christ. In the curious library of Mr. Douce is a Psalter, supposed once to have appertained to Charlemagne ; the vellum is purple, and the letters gold. The Eastern nations likewise tinged their MSS. with different colours and decorations. Astle possessed Arabian MSS. of which some leaves were of a deep yellow, and others of a lilac colour. Sir William Jones describes an oriental MS. in which the name of Mohammed was fancifully adorned with a garland of tulips and carna- tions, painted in the brightest colours. The favourite works of the Persians are written on fine silky paper, the ground of which is often powdered with gold or silver dust; the leaves are frequently illuminated, and the whole book is sometimes perfumed with essence of roses, or sandal wood. The Romans had several sorts of paper for which they had as many different names ; one was the Charta Augusta, in compliment to the emperor ; another Liviana, named after the empress. There was a Charta Uanca, which obtained its title from its beautiful whiteness, and which we appear to have retained by applying it to a blank sheet of paper which is only signed, Charte blanche. They had also a Charta nigra, painted black, and the letters were in white or other colours.
Our present paper surpasses all other materials for ease and convenience of writing. The first paper-mill in England was erected at Dartford, by a German, in 1588, who was knighted by Elizabeth ; but it was not before 1713 that one Thomas Watkins, a stationer, brought the art of paper-making to any perfection, and to the industry of this individual we owe the origin of our numerous paper-mills. France had hitherto supplied England and Holland.
The manufacture of paper was not much encouraged at home, even so late as in 1662 ; and the following observa- tions by Fuller are curious, respecting the paper of his times : — " Paper participates in some sort of the characters of the country which makes it ; the Venetian, being neat, subtile,
ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING. 187
and court-like ; the French, light, slight, and slender ; and the Dutch, thick, corpulent, and gross, sucking up the ink with the sponginess thereof." He complains that the paper manufactories were not then sufficiently encouraged, " con- sidering the vast sums of money expended in our land for paper, out of Italy, France, and Germany, which might be lessened were it made in our nation. To such who object that we can never equal the perfection of Venice-paper, I return, neither can we match the purity of Venice-glasses ; and yet many green ones are blown in Sussex, profitable to the makers, and convenient for the users. Our home-spun paper might be found beneficial." The present German printing-paper is made so disagreeable both to printers and readers from their paper-manufacturers making many more reams of paper from one cwt. of rags than formerly. Rags are scarce, and German writers, as well as the language, are voluminous.
Mr. Astle deeply complains of the inferiority of our inks to those of antiquity ; an inferiority productive of the most serious consequences, and which appears to originate merely in negligence. From the important benefits arising to society from the use of ink, and the injuries individuals may suffer from the frands of designing men, he wishes the legislature would frame some new regulations respecting it. The com- position of ink is simple, but we possess none equal in beauty and colour to that used by the ancients ; the Saxon MSS. written in England exceed in colour any thing of the kind. The rolls and records from the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, compared with those of the fifth to the twelfth centuries, show the excellence of the earlier ones, which are all in the finest preservation ; while the others are eo much defaced, that they are scarcely legible.
The ink of the ancients had nothing in common with ours, but the colour and gum. Gall-nuts, copperas, and gum make up the composition of our ink ; whereas soot or ivory-black was the chief ingredient in that of the ancients.
188 ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS.
Ink has been, made of various colours ; we find gold and silver ink, and red, green, yellow, and blue inks ; but the black is considered as the best adapted to its purpose.
ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS.
THE following circumstances probably gave rise to the tyranny of the feudal power, and are the facts on which the fictions of romance are raised. Castles were erected to re- pulse the vagrant attacks of the Normans ; and in France, from the year 768 to 987, these places disturbed the public repose. The petty despots who raised these castles pillaged whoever passed, and carried off the females who pleased them. Rapine, of every kind, were the privileges of the feudal lords ! Mezeray observes, that it is from these cir- cumstances romancers have invented their tales of knights errant, monsters, and giants.
De Saint Foix, in his " Historical Essays," informs us that " women and girls were not in greater security when they passed by abbeys. The monks sustained an assault rather than relinquish their prey; if they saw themselves losing ground, they brought to their walls the relics of some saint. Then it generally happened that the assailants, seized with awful veneration, retired, and dared not pursue their ven- geance. This is the origin of the enchanters, of the enchant- ments, and of the enchanted castles described in romances."
To these may be added what the author of " Northern Antiquities," Vol. I. p. 243, writes, that as the walls of the castles ran winding round them, they often called them by a name which signified serpents or dragons ; and in these were commonly secured the women and young maids of distinction, who were seldom safe at a time when so many bold warriors were rambling up and down in search of adventures. It was this custom which gave occasion to ancient romancers, who
ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS. 189
knew not how to describe any thing simply, to invent so many fables concerning princesses of great beauty guarded by dragons.
A singular and barbarous custom prevailed during this period ; it consisted in punishments by mutilations. It be- came so general that the abbots, instead of bestowing canon- ical penalties on their monks, obliged them to cut off an ear, an arm, or a leg !
Velly, in his History of France, has described two festi- vals, which give a just idea of the manners and devotion of a later period, 1230, which like the ancient mysteries consisted of a mixture of farce and piety : religion in fact was their amusement ! The following one existed even to the Refor- mation : —
In the church of Paris, and in several other cathedrals of the kingdom, was held the Feast of Fools or madmen. " The priests and clerks assembled elected a pope, an archbishop, or a bishop, conducted them in great pomp to the church, which they entered dancing, masked, and dressed in the apparel of women, animals, and merry-andrews ; sung infa- mous songs, and converted the altar into a beaufet, where they ate and drank during the celebration of the holy mys- teries ; played with dice ; burned, instead of incense, the leather of their old sandals ; ran about, and leaped from seat to seat, with all the indecent postures with which the merry- andrews know how to amuse the populace."
The other does not yield in extravagance. " This festival was called the Feast of Asses, and was celebrated at Beau- vais. They chose a young woman, the handsomest in the town ; they made her ride on an ass richly harnessed, and placed in her arms a pretty infant. In this state, followed by the bishop and clergy, she marched in procession from the cathedral to the church of St. Stephen's; entered into the Banctuary ; placed herself near the altar, and the mass began ; whatever the choir sung was terminated by this charming burthen, ffihan, hihan ! Their prose, half Latin and half
190 ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS.
French, explained the fine qualities of the animal. Every strophe finished by this delightful invitation : —
* Hez, sire Ane, ?a chantez, Belle bouche rechignez, Vous aure*s du foin assez, . Et de Pavoine a plantez.'
They at length exhorted him, in making a devout genuflexion, to forget his ancient food, for the purpose of repeating without ceasing, Amen, Amen. The priest, instead of Ite missa est, sung three times, Hihan, hihan, hihan! and the people three times answered, Hihan, hihan, hihan ! to imitate the braying of that grave animal."
What shall we think of this imbecile mixture of superstition and farce ? This ass was perhaps typical of the ass which Jesus rode ! The children of Israel worshipped a golden ass, and Balaam made another speak. How fortunate then was James Naylor, who desirous of entering Bristol on an ass, Hume informs us — it is indeed but a piece of cold pleas- antry— that all Bristol could not afford him one !
At the time when all these follies were practised, they would not suffer men to play at chess! Velly says, "A statute of Eudes de Sully prohibits clergymen not only from playing at chess, but even from having a chess-board in their house." Who could believe, that while half the ceremonies of religion consisted in the grossest buffoonery, a prince pre- ferred death rather than cure himself by a remedy which offended his chastity ! Louis VIII. being dangerously ill, the physicians consulted, and agreed to place near the monarch while he slept a young and beautiful lady, who, when he awoke, should inform him of the motive which had conducted her to him. Louis answered, " No, my girl, I prefer dying rather than to save my life by a mortal sin ! " And, in fact, the good king died ! He would not be prescribed for, out of the whole Pharmacopoeia of Love !
An account of our taste in female beauty is given by Mr. Ellis, who observes, in his notes to Way's Fabliaux, " In the
ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS. 191
times of chivalry the minstrels deal with great complacency on the fair hair and delicate complexion of their damsels. This taste was continued for a long time, and to render the hair light was a great object of education. Even when wigs first came into fashion they were all flaxen. Such was the colour of the Gauls and of their German conquerors. It required some centuries to reconcile their eyes to the swarthy beauties of their Spanish and their Italian neighbours.".
The following is an amusing anecdote of the difficulty in which an honest Vicar of Bray found himself in those con- tentious times.
When the court of Rome, under the pontificates of Gregory IX. and Innocent IV., set no bounds to their ambitious pro- jects, they were opposed by the Emperor Frederick ; who was of course anathematized. A curate of Paris, a humor- ous fellow, got up in his pulpit with the bull of Innocent in his hand. "You know, my brethren (said he), that I am ordered to proclaim an excommunication against Frederick. I am ignorant of the motive. All that I know is, that there exist between this Prince and the Roman Pontiff great differ- ences, and an irreconcilable hatred. God only knows which of the two is wrong. Therefore with all my power I excom- municate him who injures the other ; and I absolve liim who suffers, to the great scandal of all Christianity."
The following anecdotes relate to a period which is suffi- ciently remote to excite curiosity ; yet not so distant as to weaken the interest we feel in those minutiae of the times.
The present one may serve as a curious specimen of the despotism and simplicity of an age not literary, in discover- ing the author of a libel. It took place in the reign of Henry VIII. A great jealousy subsisted between the Londoners and those foreigners who traded here. The foreigners prob- ably (observes Mr. Lodge, in his Illustrations of English History) worked cheaper and were more industrious.
There was a libel affixed on St. Paul's door, which reflected on Henry VIII. and these foreigners, who were accused ot
192 ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS.
buying up the wool with the king's money, to the undoing of Englishmen. This tended to inflame the minds of the peo- ple. The method adopted to discover the writer of the libel must excite a smile in the present day, while it shows the state in which knowledge must have been in this country. The plan adopted was this : In every ward one of the king's council, with an alderman of the same, was commanded to see every man write that could, and further took every man's book and sealed them, and brought them to Guildhall to con- front them with the original. So that if of this number many wrote alike, the judges must have been much puzzled to fix on the criminal.
Our hours of refection are singularly changed in little more than two centuries. In the reign of Francis I. (observes the author of Recreations Historiques) they were accustomed to say,—
" Lever a cinq, diner a neuf, Souper a cinq, coucher a neuf, Fait vivre d'ans nonante et neuf."
Historians observe of Louis XII. that one of the causes which contributed to hasten his death was the entire change of his regimen. The good king, by the persuasion of his wife, says the history of Bayard, changed his manner of liv- ing : when he was accustomed to dine at eight o'clock, he agreed to dine at twelve ; and when he was used to retire at six o'clock in the evening, he frequently sat up as late as midnight.
Houssaie gives the following authentic notice drawn from the registers of the court, which presents a curious account of domestic life in the fifteenth century. Of the dauphin Louis, son of Charles VI., who died at the age of twenty, we are told, " that he knew the Latin and French languages ; that he had many musicians in his chapel ; passed the night in vigils ; dined at three in the afternoon, supped at midnight, went to bed at the break of day, and thus was ascertene (that ib threatened) with a short life." Froissart mentions waiting
ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS. 193
upon the Duke of Lancaster at five o'clock in the afternoon, when he had supped.
The custom of dining at nine in. the morning relaxed greatly under Francis L, successor of Louis XII. However, persons of quality dined then the latest at ten ; and supper Avas at five or six in the evening. We may observe this in the preface to the Heptaemeron of the Queen of Navarre, where this princess, describing the mode of life which the lords and ladies whom she assembles at the castle of Madame Oysille, should follow, to be agreeably occupied and to banish languor, thus expresses herself: "As soon as the morning rose, they went to the chamber of Madame Oysille, -whom . they found already at her prayers ; and when they had heard during a good hour her lecture, and then the mass, they went to dine at ten o'clock ; and afterwards each privately retired to his room, but did not fail at noon to meet in the meadow." Speaking of the end of the first day (which was in Septem- ber) the same lady Oysille says, " Say where is the sun ? and hear the bell of the Abbey, which has for some time called us to vespers ; in saying this they all rose and went to the re- ligionists who had waited for them above an hour. Vespers heard, they went to supper, and after having played a thou- sand sports in the meadow they retired to bed." All this exactly corresponds with the lines above quoted. Charles V. of France, however, who lived near two centuries before Francis, dined at ten, supped at seven, and all the court was in bed by nine o'clock. They sounded the curfew, which bell warned them to cover their fire, at six in the winter, and be- tween eight and nine in the summer. Under the reign of Henry IV. the hour of dinner at court was eleven, or at noon the latest ; a custom which prevailed even in the early part of the reign of Louis XIV. In the provinces distant from Paris, it is very common to dine at nine ; they make a second repast about two o'clock, sup at five ; and their last meal is made just before they retire to bed. The labourers and peasants in France have preserved this custom, and make
VOL. II. 13
194 ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS.
three meals ; one at nine, another at three, and the last at the setting of the sun.
The Marquis of Mirabeau, in " L'Ami des Hommes," Vol. I. p. 261, gives a striking representation of the singular industry of the French citizens of that age. He had learnt from several ancient citizens of Paris, that if in their youth a workman did not work two hours by candle-light, either in the morning or evening, he even adds in the longest days, he would have been noticed as an idler, and would not have found persons to employ him. On the 12th of May, 1588, when Henry III. ordered his troops to occupy various posts at Paris, Davila writes that the inhabitants, warned by the noise of the drums, began to shut their doors and shops, which, according to the customs of that town to work before daybreak, were already opened. This must have been, tak- ing it at the latest, about four in the morning. " In 1750," adds the ingenious writer, " I walked on that day through Paris at full six in the morning ; I passed through the most busy and populous part of the city, and I only saw open some stalls of the venders of brandy ! "
To the article, "Anecdotes of Fashions," (see Vol. I. p. 297,) we may add, that in England a taste for splendid dress existed in the reign of Henry VII. ; as is observable by the following description of Nicholas Lord Vaux. " In the 17th of that reign, at the marriage of Prince Arthur, the brave young Vaux appeared in a gown of purple velvet, adorned with pieces of gold so thick and massive, that, ex- clusive of the silk and furs, it was valued at a thousand pounds. About his neck he wore a collar, of S. S. weighing eight hundred pounds in nobles. In those days it not only required great bodily strength to support the weight of their cumbersome armour ; their very luxury of apparel for the drawing-room would oppress a system of modern muscles/'
In the following reign, according to the monarch's and Wolsey'<s magnificent taste, their dress was, perhaps, more generally sumptuous. We then find the following rich
ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS. 195
ornaments in vogue. Shirts and shifts were embroidered with gold, and bordered with lace. Strutt notices also per- fumed gloves lined with white velvet, and splendidly worked with embroidery and gold buttons. Not only gloves, but various other parts of their habits, were perfumed ; shoes were made of Spanish perfumed skins.
Carriages were not then used ; so that lords would carry princesses on a pillion behind them, and in wet weather the ladies covered their heads with hoods of oil-cloth : a custom that has been generally continued to the middle of the seven- teenth century. Coaches were introduced into England by Fitzalan Earl of Arundel, in 1580, and at first were only drawn by a pair of horses. The favourite Buckingham, about 1619, began to have them drawn by six horses ; and Wilson, in his life of James L, tells us this " was wondered at as a novelty, and imputed to him as a mastering pride." The same arbiter elegantiarum introduced sedan chairs. In France, Catherine of Medicis was the first who used a coach, which had leathern doors and curtains, instead of glass windows. If the carriage of Henry IV. had had glass windows, this cir- cumstance might have saved his life. Carriages were so rare in the reign *of this monarch, that in a letter to his minister Sully, he notices that having taken medicine that day, though he intended to have called on him, he was prevented because the queen had gone out with the carriage. Even as late as in the reign of Louis XIV. the courtiers rode on horseback to their dinner parties, and wore their light boots and spurs. Count Hamilton describes his boots of white Spanish leather, with gold spurs.
Saint Foix observes, that in 1658 there were only 310 coaches in Paris, and in 1758 there were more than 14,000.
Strutt has judiciously observed, that though " luxury and grandeur were so much affected, and appearances of state and splendour carried to such lengths, we may conclude that their household furniture and domestic necessaries were also carefully attended to ; on passing through their houses, we
196 ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERSr
may expect to be surprised at the neatness, elegance, and superb appearance of each room, and the suitableness of every ornament ; but herein we may be deceived. The taste of elegance amongst our ancestors was very different from the present, and however we may find them extravagant in their apparel, excessive in their banquets, and expensive in their trains of attendants ; yet, follow them home, and within their houses you shall find their furniture is plain and homely ; no great choice, but what was useful, rather than any for ornament or show."
Erasmus, as quoted by. Jortin, confirms this account, and makes it worse ; he gives a curious account of English dirti- ness ; he ascribes the plague, from which England was hardly ever free, and the sweating-sickness, partly to the incommo- dious form, and bad exposition of the houses, to the filthiness of the streets, and to the sluttishness within doors. " The floors," says he, " are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes ; under which lies, unmolested, an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and every thing that is nasty." And NOW, certainly, we are the cleanest nation in Europe, and the word COMFORTABLE expresses so peculiar an idea, that it has been adopted by foreigners to describe a sensation experienced nowhere but in England.
I shall give a sketch of the domestic life of a nobleman in the reign of Charles the First, from the " Life of the Duke of Newcastle," written by his Duchess, whom I have already noticed. It might have been impertinent at the time of ita publication ; it will now please those who are curious about English manners.
"Of his Habit.
" He accoutres his person according to the fashion, if it be one that is not troublesome and uneasy for men of heroic exercises and actions. He is neat and cleanly ; which makes him to be somewhat long in dressing, though not so long as
ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS. 197
many effeminate persons are. He shifts ordinarily once a day, and every time when he uses exercise, or his temper is more hot than ordinary.
« Of his Diet.
" In his diet he is so sparing and temperate, that he never eats nor drinks beyond his set proportion, so as to satisfy only his natural appetite ; he makes but one meal a day, at which he drinks two good glasses of small beer, one about the be- ginning, the other at the end thereof, and a little glass of sack in the middle of his dinner ; which glass of sack he also uses in the morning for his breakfast, with a morsel of bread. His supper consists of an egg and a draught of small beer. And by tin's temperance he finds himself very healthful, and may yet live many years, he being now of the age of seventy- three.
" His Recreation and Exercise.
" His prime pastime and recreation hath always been the exercise of mannage and weapons, which heroic arts he used to practise every day; but I observing that when he had overheated himself he would be apt to take cold, prevailed so far, that at last he left the frequent use of the mannage, using nevertheless still the exercise of weapons ; and though he doth not ride himself so frequently as he hath done, yet he taketh delight in seeing his horses of mannage rid by his escuyers, whom he instructs in that art for his own pleasure. But in the art of weapons (in which he has a method beyond all that ever was famous in it, found out by his own ingenuity and practice) he never taught any body but the now Duke of Buckingham, whose guardian he hath been, and his own two sons. The rest of his time he spends hi music, poetry, archi- tecture, and the like."
The value of money, and the increase of our opulence, might form, says Johnson, a curious subject of research. In the reign of Edward the Sixth, Latimer mentions it as a proof of his father's prosperity, that though but a yeoman, he
198 THE EAELY DRAMA.
gave his daughters five pounds each for their portion. At the latter end of Elizabeth's reign, seven hundred pounds were such a temptation to courtship, as made all other motives suspected. Congreve makes twelve thousand pounds more than a counterbalance to the affection of Belinda. No poet will now fly his favourite character at less than fifty thousand. Clarissa Harlowe had but a moderate fortune.
In Sir John Vanbrugh's Confederacy, a woman of fashion is presented with a bill of millinery as long as herself. — Yet it only amounts to a poor fifty pounds ! at present this sounds oddly on the stage. I have heard of a lady of quality and fashion, who had a bill of her fancy-dress maker, for the ex* penditure of one year, to the tune of, or rather, which closed in the deep diapason of, six thousand pounds 1
THE EARLY DRAMA.
IT is curious to trace the first rude attempts of the drama, in various nations ; to observe at that moment, how crude is the imagination, and to trace the caprices it indulges ; and that the resemblance in these attempts holds in the earliest essays of Greece, of France, of Spain, of England, and, what appears extraordinary, even of China and Mexico.
The rude beginnings of the drama of Greece are sufficiently known, and the old mysteries of Europe have been exhibited in a former article. The progress of the French theatre has been this :-—
Etienne Jodelle, in 1552, seems to have been the first who had a tragedy represented of his own invention, entitled Cleopatra — it was a servile imitation of the form of the Grecian tragedy ; but if this did not require the highest genius, it did the utmost intrepidity ; for the people were, through long habit, intoxicated with the wild amusement they amply received from their farces and moralities.
THE EARLY DRAMA. 199
The following curious anecdote, which followed the first attempt at classical imitation, is very observable. Jodelle's success was such, that his rival poets, touched by the spirit of the Grecian muse, showed a singular proof of their enthu- siasm for this new poet, in a classical festivity which gave roon for no little scandal in that day ; yet as it was produced by a carnival, it was probably a kind of drunken bout. Fifty poets, during the carnival of 1552, went to Arcueil. Chance, says the writer of the life of the old French bard Ronsard, who was one of the present profane party, threw across their road a goat — which having caught, they ornamented the goat with chaplets of flowers, and carried it triumphantly to the hall of their festival, to appear to sacrifice to Bacchus, and to present it to Jodelle ; for the goat, among the ancients, was the prize of the tragic bards ; the victim of Bacchus, who presided over tragedy,
" Carmine, qui tragico, vilem certavit ob hircum."
The goat thus adorned, and his beard painted, was hunted about the long table, at which the fifty poets were seated ; and after having served them for a subject of laughter for some time, he was hunted out of the room, and not sacrificed to Bacchus. Each of the guests made verses on the occa- sion, in imitation of the Bacchanalia of the ancients. Ron- sard composed some dithyrambics to celebrate the festival of the goat of Etienne Jodelle ; and another, entitled " Our travels to Arcueil." However, this Bacchanalian freak did not finish as it ought, where it had begun, among the poets. Several ecclesiastics sounded the alarm, and one Chandieu accused Ronsard with having performed an idolatrous sacri- fice ; and it was easy to accuse the moral habits ofjifty poets assembled together, who were far, doubtless, from being irre- proachable. They repented for some time of their classical sacrifice of a goat to Tragedy.
Hardi, the French Lope de Vega, wrote 800 dramatic pieces from 1600 to 1637; his imagination was the most
200 THE EARLY DKAMA.
fertile possible ; but so wild and unchecked, that though its extravagances are very amusing, they served as so many instructive lessons to his successors. One may form a notion of his violation of the unities by his piece " La Force du Sang." In the first act Leocadia is carried off and ravished. In the second she is sent back with an evident sign of preg- nancy. In the third she lies in, and at the close of this act her son is about ten years old. In the fourth, the father of the child acknowledges him ; and in the fifth, lamenting his son's unhappy fate, he marries Leocadia. Such are the pieces in the infancy of the drama.
Rotrou was the first who ventured to introduce several persons in the same scene ; before his time they rarely ex- ceeded two persons ; if a third appeared, he was usually a mute actor, who never joined the other two. The state of the theatre was even then very rude ; the most lascivious embraces were publicly given and taken ; and Rotrou even ventured to introduce a naked page in the scene, who hi this situation holds a dialogue with one of his heroines. In another piece, " Scedase, ou Vhospitalite violee" Hardi makes two young Spartans carry off Scedase's two daugh- ters, ravish them on the stage, and, violating them in the side scenes, the spectators heard their cries and their com- plaints. Cardinal Richelieu made the theatre one of his favourite pursuits, and though not successful as a dramatic writer, his encouragement of the drama gradually gave birth to genius. Scudery was the first who introduced the twenty- four hours from Aristotle ; and Mairet studied the construc- tion of the fable, and the rules of the drama. They yet groped in the dark, and their beauties were yet only occa- sional ; Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Crebillon, and Voltaire, perfected the French drama.
In the infancy of the tragic art in our country, the bowl and dagger were considered as the great instruments of a sublime pathos ; and the " Die all" and " Die nobly " of the exquisite and affecting tragedy of Fielding were frequently
THE EARLY DRAMA. 201
realized in our popular dramas. Thomas Goff, of the uni- versity of Oxford, in the reign of James I. was considered as no contemptible tragic poet : he concludes the first part of his Courageous Turk by promising a second, thus : —
" If tm's first part, gentles ! do like you well, The second part shall greater murthers tell."
Specimens of extravagant bombast might be selected from his tragedies. The following speech of Amurath the Turk, who coming on the stage, and seeing " an appearance of the heavens being on fire, comets and blazing stars, thus ad- dresses the heavens," which seem to have been in as mad a condition as the poet's own mind.
" How now, ye heavens ! grow you So proud, that you must needs put on curled locks, And clothe yourselves in. periwigs ofjire!"
In the Raging Turk, or Bajazet the Second, he is intro- duced with this most raging speech : —
" Am I not emperor? he that breathes a no Damns in that negative syllable his soul; Durst any god gainsay it, he should feel The strength of fiercest giants in my armies ; Mine anger's at the highest, and I could shake The firm foundation of the earthly globe : Could I but grasp the poles in these two hands I'd pluck the world asunder. He would scale heaven, and when he had
got beyond the utmost sphere,
Besiege the concave of this universe,
And hunger-starve the gods till they confessed
What furies did oppress his sleeping soul."
These plays went through two editions : the last printed in 1656.
The following passage from a similar bard is as precious. The king hi the play exclaims,
«* By all the ancient gods of Rome and Greece,
1 love my daughter ! better than my niece !
If any one should ask the reason why,
I'd tell them Nature makes the stronger tie! "
202 THE EARLY DRAMA.
One of the rude French plays, about 1 600, is entitled " La Rebellion, on mescontentment des Grenouilles contre Jupiter" in five acts. The subject of this tragi-comic piece is nothing more than the fable of the frogs who asked Jupiter for a king. In the pantomimical scenes of a wild fancy, $ie actors were seen croaking in their fens, or climbing up the steep ascent of Olympus ; they were dressed so as to appear gigantic frogs ; and in pleading their cause before Jupiter and his court, the dull humour was to . croak sublimely, whenever they did not agree with their judge.
Clavigero, in his curious history of Mexico, has given Acosta's account of the Mexican theatre, which appears to resemble the first scenes among the Greeks, and these French frogs, but with more fancy and taste. Acosta writes, " The small theatre was curiously whitened, adorned with boughs, and arches made of flowers and feathers, from which were suspended many birds, rabbits, and other pleasing objects. The actors exhibited burlesque characters, feigning them- selves deaf, sick with colds, lame, blind, crippled, and address- ing an idol for the return of health. The deaf people answered at cross-purposes ; those who had colds by cough- ing, and the lame by halting ; all recited their complaints and misfortunes, which produced infinite mirth among the audi- ence. Others appeared under the names of different little animals ; some disguised as beetles, some like toads, some like lizards, and upon encountering each other, reciprocally explained then: employments, which was highly satisfactory to the people, as they performed their parts with infinite in- genuity. Several little boys also, belonging to the temple, appeared in the disguise of butterflies, and birds of various colours, and mounting upon the trees which were fixed there on purpose, little balls of earth were thrown at them with slings, occasioning many humorous incidents to the spectators.**
Something very wild and original appears in this singular exhibition; where at times the actors seem to have been spectators, and the spectators were actors.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE ARTS. 203
THE MARRIAGE OF THE ARTS.
As a literary curiosity, can we deny a niche to that " obliq> uity of distorted wit," of Barton Holyday, who has composed a strange comedy, in five acts, performed at Christ Church, Oxford, 1 630, not for the entertainment, as an anecdote re- cords, of James the First ?
The title of the comedy of this unclassical classic, for Holy- day is known as the translator of Juvenal with a very learned commentary, is TEXNOTAMIA, or the Marriage of the Arts, 1 630, quarto ; extremely dull, excessively rare, and extraor- dinarily high-priced among collectors.
It may be exhibited as one of the most extravagant inven- tions of a pedant. Who but a pedant could have conceived the dull fancy of forming a comedy, of five acts, on the sub- ject of marrying the Arts ! They are the dramatis personse of this piece, and the bachelor of arts describes their intrigues and characters. His actors are Polites, a magistrate ; — Phy- sica ; — Astronomia, daughter to Physica ; — Ethicus, an old man ; — Geographus, a traveller and courtier, in love with Astronomia ; — Arithmetica, in love with Geometres ; — Logi- cus; — Grammaticus, a schoolmaster; — Poeta; — Historia, in love with Poeta ; — Rhetorica, in love with Logicus ; — Melan- cholico, Poeta's man ; — Phan tastes, servant to Geographus ; — Choler, Grammaticus's man.
All these refined and abstract ladies and gentlemen have as bodily feelings, and employ as gross language, as if they had been e very-day characters. A specimen of his grotesque dulness may entertain : —
"Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit."
Geographus opens the play with declaring his passion to Astronomia, and that very rudely indeed ! See the pedant wreathing the roses of Love !
" Geoff. Come, now you shall, Astronomia.
204 THE MARRIAGE OF THE ARTS.
Ast. What shall I, Geographus ?
Geoff. Kisse !
Ast. What, in spite of my teeth !
Geoff. No, not so 1 I hope you do not use to kisse with your teeth.
Ast. Marry, and I hope I do not use to kisse without them.
Geoff. Ay, but my fine wit-catcher, I mean you do not show your teeth when you kisse."
lie then kisses her, as he says, in the different manners of a French, Spanish, and Dutch kiss. He wants to take off the zone of Astronomia. She begs he would not fondle her like an elephant as he is; and Geographus says again, " Won't you, then ?
Ast. Won't I what ?
Geoff. Be kinde !
Ast. Be kinde! How?"
Fortunately Geographus is here interrupted by Astrono- mia's mother Physica. This dialogue is a specimen of the whole piece : very, flat, and very gross. Yet the piece is still curious, — not only for its absurdity, but for that sort of inge- nuity, which so whimsically contrived to bring together the different arts; this pedantic writer, however, owes more to the subject, than the subject derived from .him ; without wit or humour, he has at times an extravagance of invention. As for instance, — Geographus and his man Phantasies, de- scribe to Poeta the lying wonders they pretend to have wit- nessed ; and this is one : —
Phan. Sir, we met with a traveller that could speak six languages at the same instant.
Poeta. How ? at the same instant, that's impossible !
Phan. Nay, sir, the actuality of the performance puts it beyond all contradiction. With his tongue he'd so vowel you out as smooth Italian as any man breathing ; with his eye he would sparkle forth the proud Spanish ; with his nose blow out most robustious Dutch ; the creaking of liis high-
THE MARRIAGE OF THE ARTS. 205
heeled shoe would articulate exact Polonian ; the knocking of his shinbone feminine French ; and his belly would grum ble most pure and scholar-like Hungary"
This, though extravagant without fancy, is not the worst part of the absurd humour which runs through this pedantic comedy.
The classical reader may perhaps be amused by the fol- lowing strange conceits. Poeta, who was in love with His- toria, capriciously falls in love with Astronomia, and thus compares his mistress : —
** Her brow is like a brave heroic line That does a sacred majestie inshrine; Her noae, Phultuciake-Yikej in comely sort, Ends in a Trochie, or a long and short. Her mouth is like a pretty Dimeter ; Her eie-drows like a little-longer Trimeter. Her chinne is an adonicke, and her tongue Is an Hypermeter, somewhat too long. Her eies I may compare them unto two Quick-turning dactyles, for their nimble view. Her ribs like staues of Sapphicks doe descend Thither, which but to name were to offend. Her arms like two lambivs raised on hie, Doe with her brow bear equal majestie ; Her legs like two straight spondees keep apace Slow as two scazons, but with stately grace."
The piece concludes with a speech by Polites, who settles all the disputes and loves of the Arts. Poeta promises for the future to attach himself to Historia. Rhetorica, though she loves Logicus, yet as they do not mutually agree, she is united to Grammaticus. Polites counsels Phlegmatico, who is Logicus's man, to leave off smoking, and to learn better manners ; and Choler, Grammaticus's man, to bridle himself; — that Ethicus and CEconoma would vouchsafe to give good advice to Poeta and Historia ; — and Physica to her children Geographus and Astronomia ! for Grammaticus and Rhe- torica, he says, their tongues will always agree, and will not fall out ; and for Geometres and Arithmetica, they will be
206 A CONTRIVANCE IN DRAMATIC DIALOGUE.
very regular. Melancholico, who is Poeta's man, is left quite alone, and agrees to be married to Musica: and at length Phantasies, by the entreaty of Poeta, becomes the servant of Melancholico, and Musica. Physiognomus and Cheiromantes, who are in the character of gypsies and fortune- tellers, are finally exiled from the island of Fortunata, where lies the whole scene of the action in the residence of the Married Arts.
The pedant-comic-writer has even attended to the dresses of his characters, which are minutely given. Thus Melan- cholico wears a black suit, a black hat, a black cloak, and black worked band, black gloves, and black shoes. Sanguis, the servant of Medicus, is in a red suit ; on the breast is a man with his nose bleeding ; on the back, one letting blood in his arm ; with a red hat and band, red stockings, and red pumps.
It is recorded of this play, that the Oxford scholars resolv- ing to give James I. a relish of their genius, requested leave to act this notable piece. Honest Anthony Wood tells us, that it being too grave for the king, and too scholastic for the auditory, or, as some have said, the actors had taken too much wine, his majesty offered several times, after two acts, to withdraw. He was prevailed to sit it out, in mere charity to the Oxford scholars. The following humorous epigram was produced on the occasion :-—
"At Christ-church marriage, done before the king, Lest that those mates should want an offering, The king himself did offer ; — What, I pray ? He offered twice or thrice — to go away 1 "
A CONTRIVANCE LN DRAMATIC DIALOGUE.
CROWN, in his " City Politiques," 1688, a comedy written to satirize the Whigs of those days, was accused of having copied his character too closely after life, and his enemies
A CONTRIVANCE IN DRAMATIC DIALOGUE. 2Q7
turned his comedy into a libel. He has defended himself in his preface from this imputation. It was particularly laid to his charge, that in the characters of Bartoline, an old corrupt lawyer, and his wife Lucinda, a wanton country girl, he in*
tended to ridicule a certain Serjeant M and his young
wife. It was even said that the comedian mimicked the odd speech of the aforesaid serjeant, who, having lost all his teeth, uttered his words in a very peculiar manner. On this, Crown tells us in his defence, that the comedian must not be blamed for this peculiarity, as it was an invention of the au- thor himself, who had taught it to the player. He seems to have considered it as no ordinary invention, and was so pleased with it that he has most painfully printed the speeches of the lawyer in this singular gibberish ; and his reasons, as well as his discovery, appear remarkable.
He says, that " Not any one old man more than another is mimiqued, by Mr. Lee's way of speaking, which all comedians can witness was my own invention, and Mr. Lee was taught it by me. To prove this farther, I have printed Bartoline's part in that manner of spelling by which I taught it Mr. Lee. They who have no teeth cannot pronounce many let- ters plain, but perpetually lisp and break their words, and some words they cannot bring out at all. As for instance th is pronounced by thrusting the tongue hard to the teeth, therefore that sound they cannot make, but something like it. For that reason you will often find in Bartoline's part, instead of th, ya, as yat for that; yish for this; yosh for those; sometimes a t is left out, as housand for thousand ; hirty for thirty. S they pronounce like sh, as sher for sir ; musht foi must ; t they speak like ckt — therefore you will find chrue for true ; chreason for treason ; cho for to ; ckoo for two ; chen for ten ; chake for take. And this ck is not to be pro- nounced like k, as 'tis in Christian, but as in child, church, chest. I desire the reader to observe these things, because otherwise he will hardly understand much of the lawyer's part, which in the opinion of all is the most divertising in the
208 THE COMEDY OF A MADMAN.
comedy ; but when this ridiculous way of speaking is familiar with him, it will render the part more pleasant."
One hardly expects so curious a piece of orthoepy in the preface to a comedy. It may have required great observa- tion and ingenuity to have discovered the cause of old tooth- less men mumbling their words. But as a piece of comic humour, on which the author appears to have prided himself, the effect is far from fortunate. Humour arising from a per- sonal defect is but a miserable substitute for that of a more genuine kind. I shall give a specimen of this strange gib- berish as it is so laboriously printed. It may amuse the reader to see his mother language transformed into so odd a shape that it is with difficulty he can recognize it.
Old Bartoline thus speaks : " I wrong*d my shelf, cho entcher incho bondsh of marriage and could not perform covenantsh I might well hinke you would choke the forfeiture of the bond ; and I never found equichy in a bedg in my life; but I'll trounce you boh ; I have paved jaylsh wi' the bonesh of hon- ester people yen you are, yat never did me nor any man any wrong, but had law of yeir shydsh and right o' yeir shydsh, but because yey had not me o' yeir shydsh. I ha' hroitm 'em in jaykh, and got yeir eshchatsh for my clyentsh yat had no more chytle to 'em yen dog&h"
THE COMEDY OF A MADMAN!
DESMARETS, the friend of Richelieu, was a very extraordi- nary character, and produced many effusions of genius in early life, till he became a mystical fanatic. It was said of him that " he was the greatest madman among poets, and the best poet among madmen." His comedy of " The Visiona- ries " is one of the most extraordinary dramatic projects, and, in respect to its genius and its lunacy, may be considered as a literary curiosity.
THE COMEDY OF A MADMAN. 209
In this singular comedy all Bedlam seems to be let loose on the stage, and every character has a high claim to an apartment in it. It is indeed suspected that the cardinal had a hand in this anomalous drama, and in spite of its extrava- gance it was favourably received by the public, who certainly had never seen anything like it.
Every character in this piece acts under some hallucination of the mind, or a fit of madness. Artabaze is a cowardly hero, who believes he has conquered the world. Amidor is a wild poet, who imagines he ranks above Homer. Filidan is a lover, who becomes inflammable as gunpowder for every mistress he reads of in romances. Phalante is a beggarly bankrupt, who thinks himself as rich as Croesus. Melisse, in reading the " History of Alexander," has become madly in love with this hero, and will have no other husband than uhim of Macedon." Hesperie imagines her fatal charms occasion a hundred disappointments in the world, but prides herself on her perfect insensibility. Sestiane, who knows no other happiness than comedies, and whatever she sees or hears, immediately plans a scene for dramatic effect, re- nounces any other occupation ; and finally, Alcidon, the father of these three mad girls, as imbecile as his daughters are wild. So much for the amiable characters !
The plot is in perfect harmony with the genius of the author, and the characters he has invented — perfectly uncon- nected, and fancifully wild. Alcidon resolves to marry his three daughters, who, however, have no such project of their own. He offers them to the first who comes. He accepts for his son-in-law the first who offers, and is clearly convinced that he is within a very short period of accomplishing his wishes. As the four ridiculous personages whom we have noticed frequently haunt his house, he becomes embarrassed in finding one lover too many, having only three daughters.
The catastrophe relieves the old gentleman from his em- barrassments. Melisse, faithful to her Macedonian hero, declares her resolution of dying before she marries any
VOL. n 14
210 THE COMEDY OF A MADMAN.
meaner personage. Hesperie refuses to marry, out of pity for mankind ; for to make one man happy she thinks she must plunge a hundred into despair. Sestiane, only passion- ate for comedy, cannot consent to any marriage, and tells her father, in very lively verses,
" Je ne veux point, mon pere, espouser un censeur; Puisque vous me souffrez recevoir la douceur Des plaisirs innocens que le theatre apporte, Prendrais-je le hasard de vivre d'autre sorte-? Puls on a des enfans, qui vous sont sur les bras, Les raener au theatre, 0 Dieux! quel embarras! Tantot couche ou grossesse, ou quelque maladie; Pour jamais vous font dire, adieu la come"die ! "
IMITATED.
No, no, my father, I will have no critic,
(Miscalled a husband) since you still permit
The innocent sweet pleasures of the stage ;
And shall I venture to exchange my lot?
Then we have children folded in our arms
To bring them to the play-house ; heavens ! what troubled *
Then we lie in, are big, or sick, or vex'd:
These make us bid farewell to comedy !
At length these imagined sons-in-law appear ; Filidan de- clares that in these three girls he cannot find the mistress he adores. Amidor confesses he only asked for one of his daughters out of pure gallantry, and that he is only a lover — in verse I When Phalante is questioned after the great fortunes he hinted at, the father discovers that he has not a stiver, and out of credit to borrow : while Artabaze declares that he only allowed Alcidon, out of mere benevolence, to flatter himself for a moment with the hope of an honour that even Jupiter would not dare to pretend to. The four lovers disperse and leave the old gentleman more embarrassed than ever, and his daughters perfectly enchanted to enjoy their whimsical reveries, and die old maids — all alike " Vision- aries I "
SOLITUDE.
SOLITUDE.
WE possess, among our own native treasures, two treatises on tliis subject, composed with no ordinary talent, and not their least value consists in one being an apology for solitude, while the other combats that prevailing passion of the studi- ous. Zimmerman's popular work is overloaded with com- mon-place ; the garrulity of eloquence. The two treatises now noticed may be compared to the highly-finished gems, whose figure may be more finely designed, and whose strokes may be more delicate in the smaller space they occupy than the ponderous block of marble hewed out by the German chiseler.
Sir George Mackenzie, a polite writer, and a most elo- quent pleader, published, in 1665, a moral essay, preferring Solitude to public employment. The eloquence of his style was well suited to the dignity of his subject ; the advocates for solitude have always prevailed over those for active life, because there is something sublime in those feelings which would retire from the circle of indolent triflers, or depraved geniuses. The tract of Mackenzie was ingeniously answered by the elegant taste of John Evelyn in 1667. Mackenzie, though he wrote in favour of solitude, passed a very active life, first as a pleader, and afterwards as a judge ; that he was an eloquent writer, and an eloquent critic, we have the authority of Dryden, who says, that till he was acquainted with that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, he had not known the beautiful turn of words and thoughts in poetry, which Sir George had explained and exemplified to him in conversation. As a judge, and king's advocate, will not the barbarous customs of the age defend his name ? He is most hideously painted forth by the dark pencil of a poet- ical Spagnoletti (Grahame), in his poem on " The Birds of Scotland." Sir George lived in the age of rebellion, and used torture : we must entirely put aside his political, to at-
212 SOLITUDE.
tend to his literary character. Blair has quoted his pleadings as a model of eloquence, and Grahame is unjust to the fame of Mackenzie, when he alludes to his " half-forgotten name." In 1689, he retired to Oxford, to indulge the luxuries of study in the Bodleian Library, and to practise that solitude which so delighted him in theory ; but three years afterwards he fixed himself in London. Evelyn, who wrote in favour of public employment being preferable to solitude, passed his days in the tranquillity of his studies, and wrote against the habits which he himself most loved. By this it may appear, that that of which we have the least experience ourselves, will ever be what appears most delightful ! Alas ! every- thing in life seems to have in it the nature of a bubble of air, and, when touched, we find nothing but emptiness in our hand. It is certain that the most eloquent writers in favour of solitude have left behind them too many memorials of their unhappy feelings, when they indulged this passion to excess ; and some ancient has justly said, that none but a god, or a savage, can suffer this exile from human nature.
The following extracts from Sir George Mackenzie's tract on Solitude are eloquent and impressive, and merit to be res- cued from that oblivion which surrounds many writers, whose genius has not been effaced, but concealed, by the transient crowd of their posterity : —
" I have admired to see persons of virtue and humour long much to be In the city, where, when they come they found nor sought for no other di- vertisement than to visit one another; and there to do nothing else than to make legs, view others' habit, talk of the weather, or some such pitiful subject, and it may be, if they made a farther inroad upon any other affair, they did so pick one another, that it afforded them matter of eternal quar- rel; for what was at first but an indifferent subject, is by interest adopted into the number of our quarrels. — What pleasure can be received by talk- ing of new fashions, buying and selling of lands, advancement or ruin of favourites, victories or defeats of strange princes, which is the ordinary- subject of ordinary conversation ? — Most desire to frequent their superiors, and these men must either suffer their raillery, or must not be suffered to continue in their society; if we converse with them who speak with more address than ourselves, then we repine equally at our own dulness, and envy the acuteness that accomplishes the speaker; or, if we converse with
SOLITUDE. 21 3
duller animals than ourselves, then we are weary to draw the yoke alone, and fret at our being in ill company ; but if chance blows us in amongst oui equals, then we are so at guard to catch all advantages, and so interested in point d'honneur, that it rather cruciates than recreates us. How many xnake themselves cheap by these occasions, whom we had valued highly if they had frequented us less ! And how many frequent persons who laugh at that simplicity which the addresser admires in himself as wit, and yet both recreate themselves with double laughters! "
In solitude, lie addresses his friend : — " My dear Celador, enter into your own breast, and there survey the several operations of your own soul, the progress of your passions, the strugglings of your appetite, the wanderings of your fancy, and ye will find, 1 assure you, more variety in that one piece than there is to be learned in all the courts of Christendom. Repre- sent to yourself the last age, all the actions and interests in it, how much this person was infatuated with zeal, that person with lust; how much one pursued honour, and another riches; and in the next thought draw that scene, and represent them all turned to dust and ashes ! "
I cannot close this subject without the addition of some anecdotes, which may be useful. A man of letters finds soli- tude necessary, and for him solitude has its pleasures and its conveniences ; but we shall find that it also has a hundred things to be dreaded.
Solitude is indispensable for literary pursuits. No consid- erable work has yet been composed, but its author, like an ancient magician, retired first to the grove or the closet, to invocate his spirits. Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm. When the youth sighs and lan- guishes, and feels himself among crowds in an irksome soli- tude,— that is the moment to fly into seclusion and meditation. Where can he indulge but in solitude the fine romances of his soul ? where but in solitude can he occupy himself in useful dreams by night, and, when the morning rises, fly without interruption to his unfinished labours? Retirement to the frivolous is a vast desert, to the man of genius it is the en- chanted garden of Armida.
Cicero was uneasy amidst applauding Rome, and he has designated his numerous works by the titles of his various villas, where they were composed. Voltaire had talents, and a taste for society, yet he not only withdrew by intervals, but
214 SOLITUDE.
at one period of his life passed five years in the most secret seclusion and fervent studies. Montesquieu quitted the bril- liant circles of Paris for his books, his meditations, and for his immortal work, and was ridiculed by the gay triflers he relinquished. Harrington, to compose his Oceana, severed himself from the society of his friends, and was so wrapped in abstraction, that he was pitied as a lunatic. Descartes, inflamed by genius, abruptly breaks off all his friendly con- nections, hires an obscure house in an unfrequented corner at Paris, and applies himself to study during two years unknown to his acquaintance. Adam Smith, after the publication of his first work, throw^ himself into a retirement that lasted ten years ; even Hume rallied him for separating himself from the world ; but the great political inquirer satisfied the world, and his friends, by his great work on the Wealth of Nations.
But this solitude, at first a necessity, and then a pleasure, at length is not borne without repining. I will call for a witness a great genius, and he shall speak himself. Gibbon says, " I feel, and shall continue to feel, that domestic soli- tude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by study, and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will grow more painful as I descend in the vale of years." And afterwards he writes to a friend, " Your visit has only served to remind me that man, however amused and occupied in his closet, was not made to live alone."
I must therefore now sketch a different picture of literary solitude than some sanguine and youthful minds conceive.
Even the sublimest of men, Milton, who is not apt to vent complaints, appears to have felt this irksome period of life. In the preface to Smectymnuus, he says, " It is but justice, not to defraud of due esteem the wearisome labours and studious watchings, wherein I have spent and tired out al- most a whole youth."
Solitude in a later period of life, or rather the neglect which awaits the solitary man, is felt with acuter sensibility Cowley, that enthusiast for rural seclusion, in his retirement
SOLITUDE. 215
calls himself " The melancholy Cowley." Mason has truly transferred the same epithet to Gray. Read in his letters the history of solitude. We lament the loss of Cowley's correspondence, through the mistaken notion of Sprat; he assuredly had painted the sorrows of his heart. But Shen- etone has filled his pages with the cries of an amiable being whose soul bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude. Listen to his melancholy expressions : " Now I am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased (though it is a gloomy joy) with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture through- out the year, in the following stanza by the same poet : —
" Tedious again to curse the drizzling day,
Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow ! Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow ! "
Swift's letters paint in terrifying colours a picture of soli- tude, and at length his despair closed with idiotism. The amiable Gresset could not sport with the brilliant wings of his butterfly muse, without dropping some querulous expres- sion on the solitude of genius. In his " Epistle to his Muse," he exquisitely paints the situation of men of genius:
" Je les vois, victimes du g^nie,
Au foible prix d'un e"clat passager, Vivre isole"s, sans jouir de la vie ! "
And afterwards he adds,
" Vingt ans d'ennuis, pour quelques jours de gloire ! "
I conclude with one more anecdote on solitude, which may amuse. When Menage, attacked by some, and abandoned'
216 LITERAKY FRIEND SHIPS.
by others, was seized by a fit of the spleen, he retreated into the country, and gave up his famous Mercuriales ; those Wednesdays when the literati assembled at his house, to praise, up or cry down one another, as is usual with the literary populace. Menage expected to find that tranquillity in the country which he had frequently described in his verses ; but as he was only a poetical plagiarist, it is not strange that our pastoral writer was greatly disappointed. Some country rogues having killed his pigeons, they gave him more vexation than his critics. He hastened his return to Paris. "It is better," he observed, "since we are born to Buffer, to feel only reasonable sorrows."
LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS.
THE memorable friendship of Beaumont and Fletcher so closely united their labours, that we cannot discover the pro- ductions of either ; and biographers cannot, without difficulty, compose the memoirs of the one, without running into the life of the other. They portrayed the same characters, while they mingled sentiment with sentiment ; and then* days were as closely interwoven as their verses. Metastasio and Fari- nelli were born about the same time, and early acquainted. They called one another Gemello, or The Twin ; both the delight of Europe, both lived to an advanced age, and died nearly at the same time. Their fortune bore, too, a resem- blance ; for they were both pensioned, but lived and died separated in the distant courts of Vienna and Madrid. Montaigne and Charron were rivals, but always friends ; such was Montaigne's affection for Charron, that he per- mitted him by his will to bear the full arms of his family ; and Charron evinced his gratitude to the manes of his departed friend, by leaving his fortune to the sister of Montaigne, who had married. Forty years of friendship,
LITEKARY FRIENDSHIPS. 217
uninterrupted by rivalry or envy, crowned the lives of Poggius and Leonard Aretin, two of the illustrious revivers of letters. A singular custom formerly prevailed among our own writers, which was an affectionate tribute to our literary veterans, by young writers. The former adopted the latter by the title of sons. Ben Jonson had twelve of these poetical sons. Walton the angler adopted Cotton, the translator of Montaigne.
Among the most fascinating effusions of genius are those little pieces which it consecrates to the cause of friendship. In that poem of Cowley, composed on the death of his friend Harvey, the following stanza presents a pleasing picture of the employments of two young students :—
tt Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights, How oft unwearied have we spent the nights I Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love, Wondered at us from above. We spent them not in toys, in lust, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence, and poetry, Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine."
Milton has not only given the exquisite Lycidas to the memory of a young friend, but in his Epitaphium Damonis, to that of Deodatus, has poured forth some interesting senti- ments. It has been versified by Langhorne. Now, says the poet,
" To whom shall I my hopes and fears impart, Or trust the cares and follies of my heart? "
The elegy of Tickell, maliciously called by Steele " prose in rhyme," is alike inspired by affection and fancy ; it has a melodious languor, and a melancholy grace. The sonnet of Gray to the memory of West is a beautiful effusion, 'and a model for English sonnets. Helvetius was the protector of men of genius, whom he assisted not only with his criticism, but his fortune. At his death, Saurin read in the French Academy an epistle to the manes of his friend. Saurin, wrestling with obscurity and poverty, had been drawn into
218 LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS.
literary existence by the supporting hand of Helvetius. Our poet thus addresses him in the warm tones of gratitude :
** C'est toi qui me cherchant au sein de I'infortune,
Relevas mon sort abattu, Et sus me rendre cliere une vie importune.
* * * *
Qu'importent ces pleurs —
0 douleur impuissante ! 6 regrets superflus ! Je vis, helas ! Je vis, et mon ami n'est plus ! "
IMITATED.
In Misery's haunts, thy friend thy bounties seize, And give an urgent life some days of ease ; Ah! ye vain griefs, superfluous tears I chide 1
1 live, alas ! I live — and thou hast died !
The literary friendship of a father with his son is one of the rarest alliances in the republic of letters. It was gratify- ing to the feelings of young Gibbon, in the fervour of literary ambition, to dedicate his first-fruits to his father. The too lively son of Crebillon, though his was a very different genius to the grandeur of his father's, yet dedicated his works to him, and for a moment put aside his wit and raillery for the pa- thetic expressions of filial veneration. We have had a remark- able instance in the two Kichardsons ; and the father, in his original manner, has in the most glowing language expressed his affectionate sentiments. He says, " My time of learning was employed in business ; but after all, I have the Greek and Latin tongues, because a part of me possesses them, to whom I can recur at pleasure, just as I have a hand when I would write or paint, feet to walk, and eyes to see. My son is my learning, as I am that to him which he has not. — We make one man, and such a compound man may probably produce what no single man can." And further, " I always think it my peculiar happiness to be as it were enlarged, expanded, made another man, by the acquisition of my son ; and he thinks in the same manner concerning my union with him." This is as curious as it is uncommon; however the cynic may call it egotism !
LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS. 219
Some for their friend have died penetrated with inconsol- able grief; some have sacrificed their character to preserve his own ; some have shared their limited fortune ; and some have remained attached to their friend in the cold season of adversity.
Jurieu denounced Bayle as an impious writer, and drew his conclusions from the "Avis aux Refugies." This work is written against the Calvinists, and therefore becomes impious in Holland. Bayle might have exculpated himself with facility, by declaring the work was composed by La Roque ; but he preferred to be persecuted rather than to ruin hia friend ; he therefore was silent, and was condemned. When the minister Fouquet was abandoned by all, it was the men of letters he had patronized who never forsook his prison ; and many have dedicated their works to great men in their adversity, whom they scorned to notice at the time when they were noticed by all. The learned Goguet bequeathed his MSS. and library to his friend Fugere, with whom he had united his affections and his studies. His work on the " Origin of the Arts and Sciences " had been much indebted to his aid. Fugere, who knew his friend to be past recovery, preserved a mute despair, during the slow and painful dis- ease ; and on the death of Goguet, the victim of sensibility perished amidst the manuscripts which his friend had in vain bequeathed to prepare for publication. The Abbe de Saint Pierre gave an interesting proof of literary friendship. When he was at college he formed a union with Varignon, the ge- ometrician. They were of congenial dispositions. When he went to Paris he invited Varignon to accompany him ; but Varignon had nothing, and the Abbe was far from rich. A certain income was necessary for the tranquil pursuits of geometry. Our Abbe had an income of 1,800 livres ; from this he deducted 300, which he gave to the geometrician, ac- companied by a delicacy which few but a man of genius could conceive. " I do not give it to you," he said, " as a salary, but an annuity, that you may be independent, and quit me when
220 LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS.
you dislike me." Something nearly similar embellishes oui own literary history. When Akenside was in great danger of experiencing famine as well as fame,. Mr. Dyson allowed him three hundred pounds a year. Of this gentleman, per- haps, nothing is known ; yet whatever his life may be, it merits the tribute of the biographer. To close with these honourable testimonies of literary friendship, we must not omit that of Churchill and Lloyd. It is known that when Lloyd heard of the death of our poet, he acted the part which Fugere did to Goguet. The page is crowded, but my facts are by no means exhausted.
The most illustrious of the ancients prefixed the name of some friend to the head of their works. — We too often place that of some patron. They honourably inserted it in their works. When a man of genius, however, shows that he is not less mindful of his social affection than his fame, he is the more loved by his reader. Plato communicated a ray of his glory to his brothers ; for in his Republic he ascribes some parts to Adimanthus and Glauchon ; and Antiphon the youngest is made to deliver his sentiments in the Parmenides. To perpetuate the fondness of friendship, several authors have entitled their works by the name of some cherished associate. Cicero to his Treatise on Orators gave the title of Brutus ; to that of Friendship, Lelius ; and to that of Old Age, Cato. They have been imitated by the moderns. The poetical Tasso to his dialogue on Friendship gave the name of Manso, who was afterwards his affectionate biographer. Sepulvueda entitles his Treatise on Glory by the name of his friend Gonsalves. Lociel to his Dialogues on the Lawyers of Paris prefixes the name of the learned Pasquier. Thus Plato distinguishes his Dialogues by the names of certain persons ; the one on Lying is entitled Hippius ; on Rhetoric, Gorgias ; and on Beauty, Phaedrus.
Luther has perhaps carried this feeling to an extravagant point. He was so delighted by his favourite " Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians," that he distinguished it by
ANECDOTES OF ABSTRACTION OF MIND. 221
a title of doting fondness ; he named it after his wife, and called it " His Catherine."
ANECDOTES OF ABSTRACTION OF MIND.
SOME have exercised this power of abstraction to a de- gree that appears marvellous to volatile spirits, and puny thinkers.
To this patient habit, Newton is indebted for many of his great discoveries ; an apple falls upon him in his orchard,— and the system of attraction succeeds in his mind ! he observes boys blowing soap bubbles, and the properties of light display themselves ! Of Socrates, it is said, that he would frequently remain an entire day and night in the same attitude, absorbed in meditation ; and why shall we doubt this, when we know that La Fontaine and Thomson, Descartes and Newton, ex- perienced the same abstraction ? Mercator, the celebrated geographer, found such delight in the ceaseless progression of his studies, that he would never willingly quit his maps to take the necessary refreshments of life. In Cicero's Treatise on Old Age, Cato applauds Gall us, who, when he sat down to write in the morning, was surprised by the evening ; and when he took up his pen in the evening was surprised by the appearance of the morning. Buffon once described these delicious moments with his accustomed eloquence : " Inven- tion depends on patience ; contemplate your subject long ; it will gradually unfold, till a sort of electric spark convulses for a moment the brain, and spreads down to the very heart a glow of irritation. Then come the luxuries of genius ! the true hours for production and composition ; hours so delight- fill that I have spent twelve and fourteen successively at my writing-desk, and. still been in a state of pleasure." The anecdote related of Marini, the Italian poet, may be true. Once absorbed in revising his Adonis, he suffered his leg to be burnt, for some time, without any sensation.
222 ANECDOTES OF ABSTRACTION OF MIND.
Abstraction of this sublime kind is the first step to that noble enthusiasm which accompanies Genius; it produces those raptures and that intense delight, which some curious facts will explain to us.
Poggius relates of Dante, that he indulged his meditations more strongly than any man he knew I whenever he read, he was only alive to what was passing in his mind ; to all human concerns, he was as if they had not been ! Dante went one day to a great public procession ; he entered the shop of a bookseller to be a spectator of the passing show. He found a book which greatly interested him ; he devoured it in silence, and plunged into an abyss of thought On his return he de- clared that he had neither seen, nor heard, the slightest occur- rence of the public exhibition which had passed before him. This enthusiasm renders every thing surrounding us as dis- tant as if an immense interval separated us from the scene. A modern astronomer, one summer night, withdrew to his chamber ; the brightness of the heaven showed a phenomenon. He passed the whole night in observing it, and when they came to him early in the morning, and found him in the same attitude, he said, like one who had been recollecting his thoughts for a few moments, " It must be thus ; but I'll go to bed before 'tis late ! " He had gazed the entire night in medi- tation, and did not know it.
This intense abstraction operates visibly ; this perturbation of the faculties, as might be supposed, affects persons of genius physically. What a forcible description the late Madame Roland, who certainly was a woman of the first genius, gives of herself on her first reading of Telemachus and Tasso. " My respiration rose ; I felt a rapid fire colour- ing my face, and my voice changing, had betrayed my agita- tion; I was Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred ; however, during this perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was any thing, for any one. The whole had no connection with myself, I sought for nothing around me 1 was them, I saw only the objects which existed for
ANECDOTES OF ABSTRACTION OF MIND. 223
them ; it was a dream, without being awakened." — Metastasio describes a similar situation. " When I apply with a little attention, the nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent tumult. I grow as red in the face as a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work." When Malebranche first took up Descartes on Man, the germ and origin of his philosophy, he was obliged frequently to interrupt his reading by a violent palpitation of the heart. When the first idea of the Essay on the Arts and Sciences rushed on the mind of Rousseau, it occasioned such a feverish agitation that it approached to a delirium.
This delicious inebriation of the imagination occasioned the ancients, who sometimes perceived the effects, to believe it was not short of divine inspiration. Fielding says, " I do not doubt but that the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears." He perhaps would have been pleased to have confirmed his observation by the following circum- stances. The tremors of Dryden, after having written an Ode, a circumstance tradition has accidentally handed down, were not unusual with him ; in the preface to his Tales he tells us, that in translating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil ; but it was not a pleasure without pain ; the continual agitation of the spirits must needs be a weakener to any constitution, especiaUy in age, and many pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the heats. In writing the ninth scene of the second act of the Olimpiade, Metastasio found himself in tears ; an effect which afterwards, says Dr. Burney, proved very contagious. It was on this occasion that that tender poet commemorated the circumstance in the following interesting sonnet : —
SONNET FROM METASTASIO.
Scrivendo TAutore in Vienna Tanno 1733 la yua Olimpiade si senti commosa Jino alle lagrime neW esprimere la divisions di due teneri amid : e meravigli* andosi che unfalso, e da lui inventato disastro, potesse cagionaryli una si vera passione, si f tee a riflettere quantopoco ragionevole e solidojbndamtnto
224: RICHARDSON.
pouano aver k altre die toglion frequentamente agitarcz, nel corio di nogtra vita.
" SOGNI e favole io fingo, e pure in carte
Mentre favole, e sogni, orno e disegno,
In lor, (folle ch' io son !) prendo tal parte
Che del mal che inventai piango, e mi sdegna
Ma forse allor che non m' inganna 1'arte,
Piii saggio io sono e 1' agitato ingegno
Forse allo piii tranquillo ? 0 forse parte
Da piii salda cagion 1'amor, Io sdqgno?
Ah che non sol quelle, ch' io canto,« scrivo
Favole son ; ma quanto temo, o spero,
Tutt1 e manzogna, e delirando io vivo !
Sogno della mia vita e il corso intero.
Deh tu, Signor, quando a destarmi arrivo
Fa, ch' io trovi riposo in sen del VERO."
In 1733, the Author composing his Olimpiade, felt himself suddenly moved, even to tears, in expi'essing the separation of two lender Lovers. Surprised thai a fictitious grief, invented too by himself, could raise so true a passion, he re- Jlectcd how little reasonable and solid a foundation the others had, which so fre- quently agitated us in this state of our existence.
S ONNET— IMITATED. FABLES and dreams I feign ; yet though but verse
The dreams and fables that adorn this scroll, Fond fool! I rave, and grieve as I rehearse;
While GENUINE TEARS for FANCIED SORROWS TOIL
Perhaps the dear delusion of my heart
Is wisdom ; and the agitated mind, As still responding to each plaintive part,
With love and rage, a tranquil hour can find. Ah ! not alone the tender RHYMES I give
Are fictions : but my FEARS and HOPES I deem Are FABLES all; deliriously I live,
And life's whole course is one protracted dream. Eternal Power! when shall I wake to rest
This wearied bruin on TRUTH'S immortal breast?
RICHARDSON.
THE censure which the Shakspeare of novelists has in- curred for the tedious procrastination and the minute details of
RICHARDSON. 225
his fable ; his slow unfolding characters, and the slightest ges- tures of his personages, is extremely unjust; for is it not evident that we could not have his peculiar excellences with- out these accompanying defects ? When characters are fully delineated, the narrative must be suspended. Whenever the narrative is rapid, which so much delights superficial readers, the characters cannot be very minutely featured; and the writer who ainw to instruct (as Richardson avowedly did) by the glow and eloquence of his feelings, must often sacrifice to this his local descriptions. Richardson himself has given us tho principle that guided him in composing. He tells us, "If I give speeches and conversations, I ought to give them justly; for the humours and characters of persons cannot be known unless I repeat what they say, and their manner of saying."
Foreign critics have been more just to Richardson than many of his own countrymen. I shall notice the opinions of three celebrated writers, D'Alembert, Rousseau, and Dide- rot.
D'Alembert was a great mathematician. His literary taste was extremely cold: he was not worthy of reading Richardson. The volumes, if he ever read them, must have fallen from his hands. The delicate and subtle turnings, those folds of the human heart, which require so nice a touch, was a problem which the mathematician could never solve. There is no other demonstration in the human heart, but an appeal to its feelings ; and what are the calculating feelings of an arithmetician of lines and curves? He therefore de- clared of Richardson that " La Nature est bonne a imiter, mais non pas jusqu'a 1'ennui."
But thus it was not with the other two congenial geniuses ! The fervent opinion of Rousseau must be familiar to the reader ; but Diderot, in his eloge on Richardson, exceeds even Rousseau in the enthusiasm of his feelings. I extract some of the most interesting passages. Of Clarissa he says, " I yet remember with delight the first time it came into my
VOL. II. 16
226 BICHARDSON.
hands. I was in the country. How deliriously was I af- fected ! At every moment I saw my happiness abridged by a page. I then experienced the same sensations those feel who have long lived with one they love, and are on the point of separation. At the close of the work I seemed to remain deserted."
The impassioned Diderot then breaks forth : " Oh Rich- ardson ! thou singular genius in my eyes ! thou shalt form my reading in all times. If forced by sharp necessity, my friend falls into indigence ; if the mediocrity of my fortune 13 not sufficient to bestow on my children the necessary cares for their education, I will sell my books, — but thou shalt remain ! yes, thou shalt rest in the same class with MOSES, HOMER, EURIPIDES, and SOPHOCLES, to be read alternately.
" Oh Richardson, I dare pronounce that the most veritable history is full of fictions, and thy romances are full of truths. History paints some individuals ; thou paintest the human species. History attributes to some individuals what they have neither said nor done ; ah1 that thou attributest to man he has said and done. History embraces but a portion of duration, a point on the surface of the globe ; thou hast em- braced all places and ah1 times. The human heart, which has ever been and ever shall be the same, is the model which thou copiest. If we were severely to criticize the best his- torian, would he maintain his ground as thou ? In this point of view, I venture to say, that frequently history is a miser- able romance ; and romance, as thou hast composed it, is a good history. Painter of nature, thou never liest !
" I have never yet met with a person who shared my en- thusiasm, that I was not tempted to embrace, and to press him in my arms !
" Richardson is no more ! His loss touches me, as if my brother was no more. I bore him in my heart without having seen him, and knowing him but by his works. He has not had all the reputation he merited. Richardson ! If living thy merit has been disputed ; how great wilt thou appear to
RICHARDSON. 227
our children's children, when we shall view thee at the dis- tance we now view Homer ! Then who will dare to steal a line from thy sublime works ! Thou hast had more ad- mirers amongst us than in thine own country, and at this I rejoice ! "
It is probable that to a Frenchman the style of Richardson is not so objectionable when translated, as to ourselves. I think myself, that it is very idiomatic and energetic ; others have thought differently. The misfortune of Richardson was, (hat he was unskilful in the art of writing, and that he could never lay the pen down while his inkhorn supplied it.
He was delighted by his own works. No author enjoyed so much the bliss of excessive fondness. I heard from the late Charlotte Lenox the anecdote which so severely repri- manded his innocent vanity, which Boswell has recorded. This lady was a regular visitor at Richardson's house, and she could scarcely recollect one visit which was not taxed by our author reading one of his voluminous letters, or two or three, if his auditor was quiet and friendly.
The extreme delight which he felt on a review of his own works the works themselves witness. Each is an evidence of what some will deem a violent literary vanity. To Pamela is prefixed a letter from the editor (whom we know to be the author), consisting of one of the most minutely laboured panegyrics of the work itself, that ever the blindest idolator of some ancient classic paid to the object of his frenetic imagination. In several places there, he contrives to repeat the striking parts of the narrative, which display the fertility of his imagination to great advantage. To the author's own edition of his Clarissa is appended an alphabetical arrange- ment of the sentiments dispersed throughout the work ; and such was the fondness that dictated this voluminous arrange- ment, that such trivial aphorisms as, " habits are not easily changed," " men are known by their companions," &c., seem alike to be the object of their author's admiration. This collection of sentiments, said indeed to have been sent to him
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anonymously, is curious and useful, and shows the value of the work, by the extensive grasp of that mind which could think so justly on such numerous topics. And in his third and final labour, to each volume of Sir Charles Grandison is not only prefixed a complete index, with as much exact- ness as if it were a History of England, but there is also appended a list of the similes and allusions in the volume ; some of which do not exceed three or four in nearly as many hundred pages.
Literary history does not record a more singular example of that self-delight which an author has felt on a revision of his works. It was this intense pleasure which produced his voluminous labours. It must be confessed there are readers deficient in that sort of genius which makes the mind of Richardson so fertile and prodigal.
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What's in a NAME ? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.
NAMES, by an involuntary suggestion, produce an extra ordinary illusion. Favour or disappointment has been often conceded as the name of the claimant has affected us ; and the accidental affinity or coincidence of a name, connected with ridicule or hatred, with pleasure or disgust, has operated like magic. But the facts connected with this subject will show how this prejudice has branched out.
Sterne has touched on this unreasonable propensity of judging by names, in his humorous account of the elder Mr. Shandy's system of Christian names. And Wilkes has ex- pressed, in Boswell's life of Johnson, all the influence of baptismal names, even in matters of poetry ! He said, " The last city poet was Elkanah Settle. There is something in names which one cannot help feeling. Now Elkanah Settle
INFLUENCE OF A NAME. 229
sounds so queer, who can expect much from tnat name ? We should have no hesitation to give it for John Dryden in preference to Elkanah Settle, from the names only, without knowing their different merits."
A lively critic noticing some American poets says, " There is or was a Mr. Dwight who wrote a poem in the shape of an epic ; and his baptismal name was Timothy ; " and involun- tarily we infer the sort of epic that a Timothy must write. Sterne humorously exhorts all godfathers not " to Nicodemus a man into nothing."
There is more truth in this observation than some may be inclined to allow ; and that it affects mankind strongly, all ages and all climates may be called on to testify. Even in the barbarous age of Louis XI., they felt a delicacy respect- ing names, which produced an ordinance from his majesty. The king's barber was named Olivier le Diable. At first the king allowed him to get rid of the offensive part by changing it to Le Malin ; but the improvement was not happy, and for a third time he was called Le Mauvais. Even this did not answer his purpose ; and as He was a great racer, he finally had his majesty's ordinance to be called Le Dain, under penalty of law if any one should call him Le Diable, Le Malin, or Le Mauvais. According to Platina, Sergius the Second was the first pope who changed his name in ascend- ing the papal throne ; because liis proper name was Hog's- mouth, very unsuitable with the pomp of the tiara. The ancients felt the same fastidiousness ; and among the Romans, those who were called to the equestrian order, having low and vulgar names, were new named on the occasion, lest the former one should disgrace the dignity.
When Barbier, a French wit, was chosen for the preceptor of Colbert's son, he felt his name was so uncongenial to his new profession, that he assumed the more splendid one of D'Acuour, by which he is now known. Madame Gomez had married a person named Bonhomme, but she would never exchange her nobler Spanish name to prefix her married one
230 INFLUENCE OF A NAME.
to her romances, which indicated too much of meek humility. Guez (a beggar) is a French writer of great pomp of style ; but he felt such extreme delicacy at so low a name, that to give some authority to the splendour of his diction, he as- sumed the name of his estate ; and is well known as Balzac. A French poet of the name of Theophile Viaut, finding that his surname pronounced like veau (calf), exposed him to the infinite jests of the minor wits, silently dropped it, by retain- ing the more poetical appellation of Theophile. Various literary artifices have been employed by some who, still preserving a natural attachment to the names of their fathers, yet blushing at the same time for their meanness, have in their Latin works attempted to obviate the ridicule which they provoked. One Gaucher (left-handed) borrowed the name of Scevola, because Scevola, having burnt his right arm, became consequently left-handed. Thus also one De la Borgne (one-eyed) called himself Strabo ; De Charpentier took that of Fabricius ; De Valet translated his Servilius ; and an unlucky gentleman, who bore the name of Du bout d'Homme, boldly assumed that of Virulus. Dorat, a French poet, had for his real name Disnemandi, which, in the dialect of the Limousins, signifies one who dines in the morning; that is, who has no other dinner than his breakfast. This degrading name he changed to Dorat, or gilded, a nickname which one of his ancestors had borne for his fair tresses. But by changing his name, his feelings were not entirely quieted, for unfortunately his daughter cherished an invincible passion for a learned man, who unluckily was named Goulu , that is, a shark, or gluttonous as a shark. Miss Disnemandi felt naturally a strong attraction for a goulu ; and in spite of her father's remonstrances, she once more renewed his sor- rows in this alliance !
There are unfortunate names, which are very injurious to the cause in which they are engaged ; for instance, the long parliament in Cromwell's time, called by derision the Rump, was headed by one Barebones} a leather-seller. It was after-
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wards called by his unlucky name, which served to heighten the ridicule cast over it by the nation.
Formerly a custom prevailed with learned men to change their names. They showed at once their contempt for vulgar denominations and their ingenious erudition. They christ- ened themselves with Latin and Greek. This disguising of names came, at length, to be considered to have a political tendency, and so much alarmed Pope Paul the Second, that he imprisoned several persons for their using certain affected names, and some, indeed, which they could not give a reason why they assumed. Desiderius Erasmus was a name formed out of his family name Gerard, which in Dutch signifies amiable ; or GAR all, A.ERD nature. He first changed it to a Latin word of much the same signification, desiderius, which afterwards he refined into the Greek Erasmus, by which name he is now known. The celebrated Reuchlin, which in German signifies smoke, considered it more dignified to smoke in Greek by the name of Capnio. An Italian physician of the name of Senza Malizia prided himself as much on his translating it into the Greek Akakia, as on the works which he published under that name. One of the most amiable of the reformers was originally named Hertz Schwarts (black earth), which he elegantly turned into the Greek name Me- lancthon. The vulgar name of a great Italian poet was Tra- passo ; but when the learned Gravina resolved to devote the youth to the muses, he gave him a mellifluous name, which they have long known and cherished — Metastasio.
Harsh names will have, in spite of all our philosophy, a painful and ludicrous effect on our ears and our associations : it is vexatious that the softness of delicious vowels, or the ruggedness of inexorable consonants, should at all be con- nected with a man's happiness, or even have an influence on his fortune.
The actor Macklin was softened down by taking in the first and last syllables of the name of Macklaughlin, as Mai' loch was polished to Mallet ; and even our sublime Milton, in
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a moment of humour and hatred to the Scots, condescends to insinuate that their barbarous names are symbolical of their natures, — and from a man of the name of Mac Collkittok, he expects no mercy. Virgil, when young, formed a design of a national poem, but was soon discouraged from proceeding, merely by the roughness and asperity of the old Roman names, such as Decius Mus ; Lucumo ; Vibius Caudex. The same tiling has happened to a friend who began an Epic on the subject of Drake's discoveries ; the name of the hero often will produce a ludicrous effect, but one of the most un- lucky of his chief heroes must be Thomas Doughty ! One of Blackmore's chief heroes in his Alfred is named Gunter ; a printer's erratum- might have been fatal to all his heroism ; as it is, he makes a sorry appearance. Metastasio found himself in the same situation. In one of his letters he writes, " The title of my new opera is 11 Re Pastor. The chief incident is the restitution of the kingdom of Sidon to the lawful heir : a prince with such a hypochondriac name, that he would have disgraced the title-page of any piece ; who would have been able to bear an opera entitled L'Abdo- lonimo ? I have contrived to name him as seldom as pos- sible." So true is it, as the caustic Boileau exclaims of an epic poet of his days, who had shown some dexterity in caco- phony, when he chose his hero—
" 0 le plaisant projet d'un poete ignorant, Qui de tant de heros va choisir Childebrand ! D'un seul nora quelquefois le son dur et bizarre Rend en poeme entier, ou burlesque ou barbare."
Art Poetique, c. iii. v. 241. u In such a crowd the Poet were to blame To choose King Chilperic for his hero's name."
SIR W. SOAMKS.
This epic poet perceiving the town joined in the severe raillery of the poet, published a long defence of his hero's name ; but the town was inexorable, and the epic poet after- wards changed Childebrand' s name to Charles Martel, which probably was discovered to have something more humane.
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Corneille's Pertharite was an unsuccessful tragedy, and Vol- taire deduces its ill fortune partly from its barbarous names such as Garibald and Edvidge. . Voltaire, in giving the names of the founders of Helvetic freedom, says, the difficulty of pronouncing these respectable names is injurious to their celebrity ; they are Melchthal, Stauffarcher, and Valther- furst.
We almost hesitate to credit what we know to be true, that the length or the shortness of a name can seriously influence the mind. But history records many facts of this nature. Some nations have long cherished a feeling that there is a certain elevation or abasement in proper names. Montaigne on this subject says, " A gentleman, one of my neighbours, in over-valuing the excellences of old times, never omitted noticing the pride and magnificence of the names of the no- bility of those days ! Don Grumedan, Quadragan, Argesi- Ian, when fully sounded, were evidently men of another stamp than Peter, Giles, and Michel." What could be hoped for from the names of Ebenezer, Malachi, and Methusalem ? The Spaniards have long been known for cherishing a pas- sion for dignified names, and are marvellously affected by long and voluminous ones ; to enlarge them they often add the places of their residence. We ourselves seem affected by triple names ; and the authors of certain periodical publica- tions always assume for their nom de guerre a triple name, which doubtless raises them much higher in their reader's esteem than a mere Christian and surname. Many Spaniards have given themselves names from some remarkable incident in their lives. One took the name of the Royal Transport, for having conducted the Infanta in Italy. Orendayes added de la Paz, for having signed the peace in 1725. Navarro, after a naval battle off Toulon, added la Vittoria, though he Had remained in safety at Cadiz while the French admiral Le Court had fought the battle, which was entirely in favour of the English. A favourite of the King of Spain, a great genius, and the friend of Farinelli, who had sprung from a
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very obscure origin, to express his contempt of these empty and haughty names, assumed, when called to the administra- tion, that of the Marquis of La Ensenada (nothing in him- self).
But the influence of long names is of very ancient stand- ing. Lucian notices one Simon, who coming to a great for- tune, aggrandized his name to Simonides. Dioclesian had once been plain Diodes before he was emperor. When Bruna became queen of France, it was thought proper to convey some of the regal pomp in her name by calling her Brunehauti.
The Spaniards then must feel a most singular contempt for a very short name, and on this subject Fuller has recorded a pleasant fact. An opulent citizen of the name of John Cuts (what name can be more unluckily short ?) was ordered by Elizabeth to receive the Spanish ambassador ; but the latter complained grievously, and thought he was disparaged by the shortness of his name. He imagined that a man bearing a monosyllabic name could never, in the great alphabet of civil life, have performed anything great or honourable ; but when he found that honest John Guts displayed a hospitality which had nothing monosyllabic in it, he groaned only at the utter- ance of the name of his host.
There are names indeed, which in the social circle will in spite of all due gravity awaken a harmless smile, and Shen- etone solemnly thanked God that his name was not liable to a pun. There are some names which excite horror, such as Mr. Stabback ; others contempt, as Mr. Twopenny ; arid others of vulgar or absurd signification, subject too often to the insolence of domestic witlings, which occasions irritation even in the minds of worthy, but suffering, men.
There is an association of pleasing ideas with certain names, — and in the literary world they produce a fine effect. Bloomfield is a name apt and fortunate for a rustic bard ; as Florian seems to describe his sweet and flowery style. Dr= Parr derived his first acquaintance with the late Mr. Homer
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from the aptness of his name, associating with his pursuits. Our writers of romances and novels are initiated into all the arcana of names, which cost them many painful inventions. It is recorded of one of the old Spanish writers of romance, that he was for many days at a loss to coin a fit name for one of his giants ; he wished to hammer out one equal in magni- tude to the person he conceived in imagination ; and in the haughty and lofty name of Traquitantos, he thought he had succeeded. Richardson, the great father of our novelists, appears to have considered the name of Sir Charles Grandi- son as perfect as his character, for his heroine writes, " You know his noble name, my Lucy." He felt the same for his Clementina, for Miss Byron writes, "Ah, Lucy, what a pretty name is Clementina ! " We experience a certain ten- derness for names, and persons of refined imaginations are fond to give affectionate or lively epithets to things and per- sons they love. Petrarch would call one friend Lelius, and another Socrates, as descriptive of their character.
In our own country, formerly, the ladies appear to have been equally sensible to poetical or elegant names, such as Alicia, Celicia, Diana, Helena, &c. Spenser, the poet, gave to his two sons two names of this kind ; he called one Silva- nus, from the woody Kilcolman, his estate ; and the other Peregrine, from his having been born in a strange place, and his mother then travelling. The fair Eloisa gave the whim- sical name of Astrolabus to her boy ; it bore some reference to the stars, as her own to the sun.
Whether this name of Astrolabus had any scientific influ- ence over the son, I know not ; but I have no doubt that whimsical names may have a great influence over our char- acters. The practice of romantic names among persons, even of the lowest orders of society, has become a very gen- eral evil: and doubtless many unfortunate beauties, of the names of Clarissa and JZloisa, might have escaped under the less dangerous appellatives of JElizabeth or Deborah. I know a person who has not passed liis life without some inconven-
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ience from his name, mean talents and violent passions not according with Antoninus; and a certain writer of verses might have been no versifier, and less a lover of the true Falernian, had it not been for his namesake Horace. The Americans, by assuming Roman names, produce ludicrous associations; Romulus Riggs, and Junius Brutus Booth. There was more sense, .when the Foundling Hospital was first instituted, in baptizing the most robust boys, designed for the sea-service, by the names of Drake, Norris, or Blake, after our famous admirals.
It is no trifling misfortune in life to bear an illustrious name ; and in an author it is peculiarly severe. A history now by a Mr. Hume, or a poem by a Mr. Pope, would be examined with different eyes than had they borne any other name. The relative of a great author should endeavour not to be an author. Thomas Corneille had the unfortunate hon- our of being brother to a great poet, and his own merits have been considerably injured by the involuntary comparison. The son of Racine has written with an amenity not unworthy of his celebrated father ; amiable and candid, he had his por- trait painted, with the works of his father in his hand, and his eye fixed on this verse from Phaedra,
" Et moi, fils inconnu d'un si glorieux pere ! "
But even his modesty only served to whet the dart of epi- gram. It was once bitterly said of the son of an eminent lit- erary character,
" He tries to write because his father writ, And shows himself a bastard by his wit."
Amongst some of the disagreeable consequences attending some names, is, when they are unluckily adapted to an un- common rhyme ; how can any man defend himself from this malicious ingenuity of wit ? Freret, one of those unfortu- nate victims to Boileau's verse, is said not to have been defi- cient in the decorum of his manners, and he complained that he was represented as a drunkard, merely because his name rhymed to Cabaret. Murphy, no doubt, felicitated himself hi
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Ms literary quarrel with Dr. Franklin, the poet and critical reviewer, by adopting the singular rhyme of " envy rank- ling " to his rival's and critic's name.
Superstition has interfered even in the choice of names, and this solemn folly has -received the name of a science, called Onomantia ; of which the superstitious ancients dis- covered a hundred foolish mysteries. They cast up the nu- meral letters of names, and Achilles was therefore fated to vanquish Hector, from the numeral letters in his name amounting to a higher number than his rival's. They made many whimsical divisions and subdivisions of names, to prove them lucky or unlucky. But these follies are not those that I am now treating on. Some names have been considered as more auspicious than others. Cicero informs us that when the Romans raised troops, they were anxious that the name of the first soldier who enlisted should be one of good ailgury. When the censors numbered the citizens, they always began by a fortunate name, such as Salvius Valereus. A person of the name of Regillianus was chosen emperor, merely from the royal sound of his name, and Jovian was elected because his name approached nearest to the beloved one of the philo- sophic Julian. This fanciful superstition was even carried so far that some were considered as auspicious, and others as unfortunate. The superstitious belief in auspicious names was so strong, that Caesar, in his African expedition, gave a command to an obscure and distant relative of the Scipios, to please the popular prejudice that the Scipios were invincible hi Africa. Suetonius observes that all those of the family of Csesar who bore the surname of Caius perished by the sword.
The Emperor Severus consoled himself for the licentious life of his empress Julia, from the fatality attending those of her name. This strange prejudice of lucky and unlucky names prevailed in modern Europe. The successor of Adrian VI. (as Guicciardini tells us) wished to preserve his own name on the papal throne : but he gave up the wish
238 INFLUENCE OF A NAME.
when the conclave of cardinals used the powerful argument that all the popes who had preserved their own names had died in the first year of their pontificates. Cardinal Marcel Cervin, who preserved his name when elected pope, died on the twentieth day of his pontificate, and this confirmed this superstitious opinion. La Motte le Vayer gravely asserts that all the queens of Naples of the name of Joan, and the kings of Scotland of the name of James, have been unfortu- 'nate ; and we have formal treatises of the fatality of Chris- tian names. It is a vulgar notion that every female of the name of Agnes is fated to become mad. Every nation has some names labouring with this popular prejudice.
Herrera, the Spanish historian, records an anecdote in which the choice of a queen entirely arose from her name. When two French ambassadors negotiated a marriage be- tween one of the Spanish princesses and Louis VIIL, the names of the royal females were Urraca and Blanche. The former was the elder and the more beautiful, and intended by the Spanish court for the French monarch ; but they reso- lutely preferred Blanche, observing that the name of Urraca would never do ! and for the sake of a more mellifluous sound, they carried off, exulting in their own discerning ears, the happier named, but less beautiful princess.
There are names indeed which are painful to the feelings, from the associations of our passions. I have seen the Christian name of a gentleman, *the victim of the caprice of his godfather, who is called Blast us Godly, — which, were he designed for a bishop, must irritate religious feelings. I am not surprised that one of the Spanish monarchs refused to employ a sound catholic for his secretary, because his name (Martin Lutero) had an affinity to the name of the reformer. Mr. Rose has recently informed us that an architect called Malacarne, who, I believe, had nothing against him but his name, was lately deprived of his place as principal architect by the Austrian government, — let us hope not for his unlucky name / though that government, according to Mr. Rose, acts
INFLUENCE OF A NAME. 239
on capricious principles! The fondness which some have felt to perpetuate their names, when their race has fallen ex- tinct, is well known ; and a fortune has then been bestowed for a change of name. But the affection for names has gone even farther. A similitude of names, Camden observes, " dothe kindle sparkes of love and liking among meere strangers." I have observed the great pleasure of persons with uncom- mon names meeting with another of the same name; an in- stant relationship appears to take place ; and I have known that fortunes have been bequeathed for namesakes. An or- namental manufacturer, who bears a name which he supposes to be very uncommon, having executed an order for a gen- tleman of the same name, refused to send his bill, never having met with the like, preferring to payment the honour of serving him for namesake.
Among the Greeks and the Romans, beautiful and signifi- cant names were studied. The sublime Plato himself has noticed the present topic ; his visionary ear was sensible to the delicacy of a name ; and his exalted fancy was delighted with beautiful names, as well as every other species of beauty. In his Cratylus he is solicitous that persons should have happy, harmonious, and attractive names. According to Aulus Gellius, the Athenians enacted by a public decree, that no slave should ever bear the consecrated names of their two youthful patriots, Harmodius and Aristogiton, — names which had been devoted to the liberties of their country, they con- sidered would be contaminated by servitude. The ancient Romans decreed that the surnames of infamous patricians should not be borne by any other patrician of that family, that their very names might be degraded and expire with them. Eutropius gives a pleasing proof of national friend- ships being cemented by a name ; by a treaty of peace be- tween the Romans and the Sabines, they agreed to melt the two nations into one mass, that they should bear their names conjointly ; the Roman should add his to the Sabine, and the Sabine take i Roman name.
240 THE JEWS OF YORK.
The ancients named both persons an$ things from some event or other circumstance connected with the object they were to name. Chance, fancy, superstition, fondness, and piety, have invented names. It was a common and whimsi- cal custom among the ancients, (observes Larcher) to give as nicknames the letters of the alphabet. Thus a lame girl was called Lambda, on account of the resemblance which her lameness made her bear to the letter A, or lambda ! JEsop was called Theta by his master, from his superior acuteness. Another was called Beta, from his love of beet It was thus Scarron, with infinite good temper, alluded to his zig-zag body, by comparing himself to the letter s or z.
The learned Calmet also notices among the Hebrews nick" names and names of raillery taken from defects of body or mind, &c. One is called Nabal, or fool; another Hamor, the Ass; Hagab, the Grasshopper, &c. Women had fre- quently the names of animals; as Deborah, the Bee; Rachel, the Sheep. Others from their nature or other quali- fications ; as Tamar, the Palm-trees ; Hadassa, the Myrtle ; Sarah, the Princess ; Hannah, the Gracious. The Indians of North America employ sublime and picturesque names ; such are the great Eagle — the Partridge — Dawn of the Day ! —Great swift Arrow ! — Path-opener ! — Sun-bright 1
THE JEWS OF YORK.
AMONG the most interesting passages of history are those in which we contemplate an oppressed, yet sublime spirit, agitated by the conflict of two terrific passions : implacable hatred attempting a resolute vengeance, while that vengeance, though impotent, with dignified and silent horror, sinks into the last expression of despair. In a degenerate nation, we may, on such rare occasions, discover among them a spirit superior to its companions and its fortune.
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In the ancient and modern history of the Jews we may find two kindred examples. I refer the reader for the more ancient narrative to the second book of Maccabees, ehap. xiv. v. 37. No feeble and unaffecting painting is presented in the simplicity of the original. I proceed to relate the narra- tive of the Jews of York.
When Richard I. ascended the throne, the Jews, to con- ciliate the royal protection, brought their tributes. Many had hastened from remote parts of England, and appearing at Westminster, the court and the mob imagined that they had leagued to bewitch his majesty. An edict was issued to for- bid their presence at the coronation ; but several, whose curi- osity was greater than their prudence, conceived that they might pass unobserved among the crowd, and ventured to in- sinuate themselves into the abbey. Probably their voice and their visage alike betrayed them, for they were soon dis- covered; they flew diversely in great consternation, while many were dragged out with little remains of life.
A rumour spread rapidly through the city, that in honout of the festival the Jews were to be massacred. The popu- lace, at once eager of royalty and riot, pillaged and burnt their houses, and murdered the devoted Jews. Benedict, a Jew of York, to save his life, received baptism ; and return- ing to that city, with his friend Jocenus, the most opulent of the Jews, died of his wounds. Jocenus and his servants narrated the late tragic circumstances to their neighbours, but where they hoped to move sympathy they excited rage. The people at York soon gathered to imitate the people at London ; and their first assault was on the house of the late Benedict, which having some strength and magnitude, con- tained his family and friends, who found their graves in its ruins. The alarmed Jews hastened to Jocenus, who conduct- ed them to the governor of York Castle, and prevailed on him to afford them an asylum for their persons and effects. In the mean while their habitations were levelled, and the owners murdered, except a few unresisting beings, who, un-
VOL. II. 1G
242 THE JEWS OF YORK.
manly in sustaining honour, were adapted to receive bap- tism.
The castle had sufficient strength for their defence ; but a suspicion arising that the governor, who often went out, in- tended to betray them, they one day refused him entrance. He complained to the sheriff of the county, and the chiefs of the violent party, who stood deeply indebted to the Jews, uniting with him, orders were issued to attack the castle. The cruel multitude, united with the soldiery, felt such a de- sire of slaughtering those they intended to despoil, that the sheriff, repenting of the order, revoked it, but in vain ; fanati- cism and robbery once set loose will satiate their appetency for blood and plunder. They solicited the aid of the superior citizens, who, perhaps not owing quite so much money to the Jews, humanely refused it ; but having addressed the clergy (the barbarous clergy of those days) were by them animated, conducted, and blest.
The leader of this rabble was a canon regular, whose zeal was so fervent that he stood by them in his surplice, which he considered as a coat of mail, and reiteratedly exclaimed, " Destroy the enemies of Jesus ! " This spiritual laconism in- vigorated the arm of men who perhaps wanted no other stim- ulative than the hope of obtaining the immense property of the besieged. It is related of this canon, that every morning before he went to assist in battering the walls he swallowed a consecrated wafer. One day having approached too near, defended as he conceived by his surplice, this church militant was crushed by a heavy fragment of the wall, rolled from the battlement.
But the avidity of certain plunder prevailed over any re- flection, which, on another occasion, the loss of so pious a leader might have raised. Their attacks continued ; till at length the Jews perceived they could hold out no longer, and a council was called, to consider what remained to be done in the extremity of danger.
Among the Jews, their elder Rabbin was most respected.
THE JEWS OF YORK. ^43
It has been customary with this people to invite for this place some foreigner, renowned among them for the depth of his learning, and the sanctity of his manners. At this time the ffaham, or elder Rabbin, was a foreigner, who had been sent over to instruct them in their laws, and was a person, as we shall observe, of no ordinary qualifications. When the Jew- ish council was assembled, the Haham rose, and addressed them in this manner — " Men of Israel ! the God of our an- cestors is omniscient, and there is no one who can say, Why doest thou this ? This day He commands us to die for His law; for that law which we have cherished from the first hour it was given, which we have preserved pure throughout our captivity in all nations, and which for the many consola- tions it has given us, and the eternal hope it communicates, can we do less than die ? Posterity shall behold this book of truth, sealed with our blood ; and our death, while it dis- plays our sincerity, shall impart confidence to the wanderer of Israel. Death is before our eyes ; and we have only to choose an honourable and easy one. If we fall into the hands of our enemies, which you know we cannot escape, our death will be ignominious and cruel ; for these Christians, «rho picture the Spirit of God in a dove, and confide in the meek Jesus, are athirst for our blood, and prowl around the castle like wolves. It is therefore my advice that we elude their tortures ; that we ourselves should be our own execu- tioners ; and that we voluntarily surrender our lives to our Creator. We trace the invisible Jehovah in his.acts ; God seems to call for us, but let us not be unworthy of that call. Suicide, on occasions like the present, is both rational and lawful ; many examples are not wanting among our fore- fathers: as I advise, men of Israel, they have acted on similar occasions." Having said this, the old man sat down and wept.
The assembly was divided in their opinions. Men of forti- tude applauded its wisdom, but the pusillanimous murmured that it was a dreadful counsel.
244 THE JEWS OF YORK.
Again the Rabbin rose, and spoke these few words in a firm and decisive tone : " My children ! since we are not unanimous in our opinions, let those who do not approve of my. advice depart from this assembly ! " — Some departed, but the greater number attached themselves to their venerable priest. They now employed themselves in consuming their valuables by fire ; and every man, fearful of trusting to the timid and irresolute hand of the women, first destroyed hid wife and children, and then himself. Jocenus and the Rabbin alone remained. Their lives were protracted to the last, that they might see every thing performed, according to their orders. Jocenus being the chief Jew, was distinguished by the last mark of human respect, in receiving his death from the consecrated hand of the aged Rabbin, who immediately after performed the melancholy duty on himself.
All this was transacted in the depth of the night. In the morning the walls of the castle were seen wrapt in flames, and only a few miserable and pusillanimous beings, unworthy of the sword, were viewed on the battlements, pointing to their extinct brethren. When they opened the gates of the castle, these men verified the prediction of their late Rabbin ; for the multitude, bursting through the solitary courts, found themselves defrauded of their hopes, and in a moment avenged themselves on the feeble wretches who knew not to die with honour.
Such is the narrative of the Jews of York, of whom the historian can only cursorily observe that five hundred de- stroyed thejnselves ; but it is the philosopher who inquires into the causes and the manner of these glorious suicides. These are histories which meet only the eye of few, yet they are of infinitely more advantage than those which are read by every one. We instruct ourselves in meditating on these scenes of heroic exertion ; and if by such histories we make but a slow progress in chronology, our heart however expands with sentiment.
I admire not the stoicism of Cato, more than the fortitude of the Rabbin ; or rather we should applaud that of the
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEAS. 245
Rabbin much more ; for Cato was familiar with the animat- ing visions of Plato, and was the associate of Cicero and of Caesar. The Rabbin had probably read only the Penta- teuch, and mingled with companions of mean occupations; and meaner minds. Cato was accustomed to the grandeur of the mistress of the universe ; and the Rabbin to the little- ness of a provincial town. Men, like pictures, may be placed in an obscure and unfavourable light ; but the finest picture, in the unilluminated corner, still retains the design and colour- ing of the master. My Rabbin is a companion for Cato. His history is a tale
" Which Cato's self had not disdained to hear."— POPK.
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEAS.
THE sovereignty of the seas, which foreigners dispute with us, is as much a conquest as any one obtained on land ; it is gained and preserved by our cannon, and the French, who, for ages past, exclaim against what they call our tyranny, are only hindered from becoming themselves universal tyrants over land and sea, by that sovereignty of the seas without which Great Britain would cease to exist.
In a memoir of the French Institute, I read a bitter phi- lippic against this sovereignty, and a notice then adapted to a writer's purpose, under Bonaparte, of two great works : the one by Selden, and the other by Grotius, on this subject. The following is the historical anecdote, useful to revive : —
In 1634 a dispute arose between the English and Dutch concerning the herring-fishery upon the British coast. The French and Dutch had always persevered in declaring that the seas were perfectly free ; and grounded their reasons on a work of Grotius.
So early as in 1 609 the great Grotius had published his treatise of Mare Liberum in favour of the freedom of the
246 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEAS.
seas. And it is a curious fact, that in 1618, Selden had composed another treatise in defence of the king's dominion over the seas ; but which, from accidents which are known, was not published till the dispute revived the controversy. Selden, in 1636, gave the world his Mare Clausum, in answer to the Mare Liberum of Grotius.
Both these great men felt a mutual respect for each other. They only knew the rivalry of genius.
As a matter of curious discussion and legal investigation, the philosopher must incline to the arguments of Selden, who has proved by records the first occupancy of the English ; and the English dominion over the four seas, to the utter exclusion of the French and Dutch from fishing, without our license. He proves that our kings have always levied great sums, without even the concurrence of their parliaments, for the express purpose of defending this sovereignty at sea. A copy of Selden's work was placed in the council-chest of the Exchequer, and in the court of admiralty, as one of our most precious records.
The historical anecdote is finally closed by the Dutch themselves, who now agreed to acknowledge the English sovereignty in the seas, and pay a tribute of thirty thousand pounds to the King of England, for liberty to fish in the seas, and consented to annual tributes.
That the Dutch yielded to Selden's arguments is a triumph we cannot venture to boast. The ultima ratio regum pre- vailed ; and when we had destroyed their whole fishing fleet, the affair appeared much clearer than in the ingenious vol- umes of Grotius or Selden. Another Dutchman presented the States- General with a ponderous reply to Selden's Mare Clausum, but the wise Sommelsdyke advised the States to suppress the idle discussion ; observing that this affair must be decided by the sword, and not by the pen.
It may be curious to add, that as no prevailing or fashion- able subject can be agitated, but some idler must interfere to make it extravagant and very new, so this grave subject did
THE CUSTOM OF KISSING HANDS. 247
Dot want for something of this nature. A learned Italian, I believe, agreed with our author Selden in general, that the sea, as well as the earthy is subject to some States ; but he maintained, that the dominion of the sea belonged to the Genoese I
ON THE CUSTOM OF KISSING HANDS.
M. Mo KIN, a French academician, has amused himself with collecting several historical notices of this custom. I give a summary, for the benefit of those who have had the honour of kissing his majesty's hand. It is not those who kiss the royal hand who could write best on the custom.
This custom is not only very ancient, and nearly universal, but has been alike participated by religion and society.
To begin with religion. From the remotest times men saluted the sun, moon, and stars, by kissing the hand. Job assures us that he was never given to this superstition, xxxi. 26. The same honour was rendered to Baal, Kings i. 18. Other instances might be adduced.
We now pass to Greece. There all foreign superstitions were received. Lucian, after having mentioned various sorts of sacrifices which the rich offered the gods, adds, that the poor adored them by the simpler compliment of kissing their hands. That author gives an anecdote of Demosthenes, which shows this custom. When a prisoner to the soldiers of Antipater, he asked to enter a temple. — When he entered, he touched his mouth with his hands, which the guards took for an act of religion. He did it, however, more securely to swallow the poison he had prepared for such an occasion. He mentions other instances.
From the Greeks it passed to the Romans. Pliny places it among those ancient customs of which they were ignorant of the origin or the reason. Persons were treated as athe-
248 THE CUSTOM OF KISSING HANDS.
ists, who would not kiss their hands when they entered a temple. When Apuleius mentions Psyche, he says, she was BO beautiful that they adored her as Venus, in kissing the right hand.
The ceremonial action rendered respectable the earliest in- stitutions of Christianity. It was a custom with the primaeval bishops to give their hands to be kissed by the ministers who served at the altar.
This custom, however, as a religious rite, declined with Paganism.
In society our ingenious academician considers the custom of kissing hands as essential to its welfare. It is a mute form, which expresses reconciliation, which entreats favours, or which thanks for those received. It is an universal lan- guage, intelligible without an interpreter; which doubtless preceded writing, and perhaps speech itself.
Solomon says of the flatterers and suppliants of his time, that they ceased not to kiss the hands of their patrons, till they had obtained the favours which they solicited. In Homer we see Priam kissing the hands and embracing the knees of Achilles, while he supplicates for the body of Hector.
This custom prevailed in ancient Rome, but it varied. In the first ages of the republic, it seems to have been only practised by inferiors to their superiors : — equals gave their hands and embraced. In the progress of time even the sol- diers refused to show this mark of respect to their generals ; and their kissing the hand of Cato when he was obliged to quit them was regarded as an extraordinary circumstance, at a period of such refinement. The great respect paid to the tribunes, consuls, and dictators, obliged individuals to live with them in a more distant and respectful manner ; and instead of embracing them as they did formerly, they con- sidered themselves as fortunate if allowed to kiss their hands. Under the emperors, kissing hands became an essential duty, even for the great themselves ; inferior courtiers were obliged to be content to adore thd purple, by kneeling, touching the
POPES. 249
robe of tlie emperor by the right hand, and carrying it to the mouth. Even this was thought too free ; and at length they saluted the emperor at a distance, by kissing their hands, in the same manner as when they adored their gods.
It is superfluous to trace this custom in every country where it exists. It is practised in every known country, in respect to sovereigns and superiors, even amongst the ne- groes, and the inhabitants of the New World. Cortez found it established at Mexico, where more than a thousand lords saluted him, in touching the earth with their hands, which they afterwards carried to their mouths.
Thus, whether the custom of salutation is practised by kissing the hands of others from respect, or in bringing one's own to the mouth, it is of all other customs the most uni- versal. This practice is now become too gross a familiarity, and it is considered as a meanness to kiss the hand of those with whom we are in habits of intercourse : and this custom would be entirely lost, if lovers were not solicitous to preserve it in all its full power.
POPES.
VALOIS observes that the Popes scrupulously followed, in the early ages of the church, the custom of placing their names after that of the person whom they addressed in their letters. This mark of their humility he proves by letters written by various Popes. Thus, when the great projects of politics were yet unknown to them, did they adhere to Chris- tian meekness. At length the day arrived when one of the Popes, whose name does not occur to me, said that " it was safer to quarrel with a prince than with a friar." Henry VI. being at the feet of Pope Celestine, his holiness thought proper to kick the crown off his head ; which ludicrous arid disgraceful action Baronius has highly praised. Jortin ob-
250 POPES.
serves on this great cardinal, and advocate of the Roman see, that he breathes nothing but fire and brimstone ; and ac- counts kings and emperors to be mere catchpolls and con- stables, bound to execute with implicit faith all the commands of insolent ecclesiastics. Bellarmin was made a cardinal for his efforts and devotion to the papal cause, and maintaining this monstrous paradox, — that if the Pope forbid the exercise of virtue, and command that of vice, the Roman church, under pain of a sin, was obliged to abandon virtue for vice, if it would not sin against conscience !
It was Nicholas I., a bold and enterprising Pope, who, in 858, forgetting the pious modesty of his predecessors, took advantage of the divisions in the royal families of France, and did not hesitate to place his name before that of the kings and emperors of the house of France, to whom he wrote. Since that time he has been imitated by all his succes- sors, and this encroachment on the honours of monarchy has passed into a custom from having been tolerated in its com- mencement.
Concerning the acknowledged infallibility of the Popes, it appears that Gregory VII., in council, decreed that the church of Rome neither had erred, and never should err. It was thus this prerogative of his holiness became received, till 1313, when John XXII. abrogated decrees made by three popes his predecessors, and declared that what was done amiss by one pope or council might be corrected by another ; and Gregory XI., 1370, in his will deprecates, si quid in catholicd jftde errasset. The university of Vienna protested against it, calling it a contempt of God, and an idolatry, if any one in matters of faith should appeal from a council to the Pope , that is, from God who presides in councils, to man. But the infallibility was at length established by Leo X., especially after Luther's opposition, because they despaired of defend- ing their indulgences, bulls, &c., by any other method.
Imagination cannot form a scene more terrific than when these men were in the height of power, and to serve their po-
LITERARY COMPOSITION. 251
litical purposes hurled the thunders of their excommunications over a kingdom. It was a national distress not inferior to a plague or famine.
Philip Augustus, desirous of divorcing Ingelburg, to unite himself to Agnes de Meranie, the Pope put his kingdom under an interdict. The churches were shut during the space of eight months ; they said neither mass nor vespers ; they did not marry ; and even the offspring of the married, born at this unhappy period were considered as illicit : and because the king would not sleep with his wife, it was not permitted to any of his subjects to sleep with theirs ! In that year France was threatened with an extinction of the ordinary generation. A man under this curse of public pen- ance was divested of all his functions, civil, military, and matri- monial ; he was not allowed to dress his hair, to shave, to bathe, nor even change his linen ; so that, upon the whole, this made a filthy penitent. The good king Robert incurred the censures of the church for having married his cousin. He was immediately abandoned. Two faithful domestics alone remained with him, and these always passed through the fire whatever he touched. In a word, the horror which an ex- communication occasioned was such, that a courtesan, with whom one Peletier had passed some moments, having learnt soon afterwards that he had been about six months an ex- communicated person, fell into a panic, and with great diffi- culty recovered from her convulsions.
LITERARY COMPOSITION.
To literary composition we may apply the saying of an ancient philosopher: "A little thing gives perfection, al- though perfection is not a little thing."
The great legislator of the Hebrews orders us to pull off the fruit for the first three years, and not to taste them. He
252 LITERARY COMPOSITION.
was not ignorant how it weakens a young tree to bring to maturity its first fruits. Thus, on literary compositions, our green essays ought to be picked away. The word Zamar, by a beautiful metaphor from pruning trees, means in Hebrew to compose verses. Blotting and correcting was s»> much Churchill's abhorrence, that I have heard from his publisher he once energetically expressed himself, that it was like cut- ting away #ne's own flesh. This strong figure sufficiently ehows his repugnance to an author's duty. Churchill now lies neglected, for posterity will only respect those who
-File off the mortal part
Of glowing thought with Attic art."
YOUNG.
I have heard that this careless bard, after a successful work, usually precipitated the publication of another, relying on its crudeness being passed over by the public curiosity excited by its better brother. He called this getting double pay, for thus he secured the sale of a hurried work. But Churchill was a spendthrift of fame, and enjoyed all his revenue while he lived ; posterity owes him little, and pays him nothing !
Bayle, an experienced observer in literary matters, tells us that correction is by no means practicable by some authors, as in the case of Ovid. In exile, his compositions were nothing more than spiritless repetitions of what he had formerly writ- ten. He confesses both negligence and idleness in the cor- rections of his works. The vivacity which animated his first productions failing him when he revised his poems, he found correction too laborious, and he abandoned it. This, how- ever, was only an excuse. " It is certain that some authors cannot correct. They compose with pleasure, and with ardour ; but they exhaust all their force. They fly with but one wing when they review their works ; the first fire does not return; there is in their imagination a certain calm which lu'nders their pen from making any progress. Their mind is like a boat, which only advances by the strength cf oars."
LITERARY COMPOSITION. 253
Dr. More, the Platonist, had such an exuberance of fancy, that correction was a much greater labour than composition. He used to say, that in writing his works, he was forced to cut his «ray through a crowd of thoughts qs through a wood, and thai he threw off in his compositions as much as would make an ordinary philosopher. More was a great enthusiast, and, of course, an egotist, so that criticism ruffled his temper, notwithstanding all his Platonism. When accused of obscu- rities and extravagancies, he said that, like the ostrich, he laid his eggs in the sands, which would prove vital and prolific in time ; however, these ostrich eggs have proved to be addled.
A habit of correctness in the lesser parts of composition will assist the higher. It is worth recording that the great Milton was anxious for correct punctuation, and that Addison was solicitous after the minutiae of the press. Savage, Arm- strong, and others, felt tortures on similar objects. It is said of Julius Scaliger, that he had this peculiarity in his manner of composition : he wrote with such accuracy that his MSS. and the printed copy corresponded page for page, and line for line.
Malherbe, the father of French poetry, tormented himself by a prodigious slowness ; and was employed rather in per- fecting than in forming works. His muse is compared to a fine woman in the pangs of delivery. He exulted in his tar- diness, and, after finishing a poem of one hundred verses, or a discourse of ten pages, he used to say he ought to repose for ten years. Balzac, the first writer hi French prose who gave majesty and harmony to a period, did not grudge to ex- pend a week on a page, never satisfied with his first thoughts. Our "costive" Gray entertained the same notion: and it is hard to say if it arose from the sterility of their genius, or their sensibility of taste.
The MSS. of Tasso, still preserved, are illegible from the vast number of their corrections. I have given a fac-simile, as correct as it is possible to conceive, of one page of Pope's MS. Homer, as a specimen of his continual corrections and
254 LITERARY COMPOSITION.
critical erasures. The celebrated Madame Dacier never could satisfy herself in translating Homer: continually re- touching the version, even in its happiest passages. There were several parts which she translated in six or seven man- ners ; and she frequently noted in the margin — I have not yet done it.
When Pascal became warm in his celebrated controversy, be applied himself with incredible labour to the composition of his " Provincial Letters." He was frequently twenty days occupied on a single letter. He recommenced some above seven and eight times, and by this means obtained that per- fection which has made his work, as Voltaire says, " one of the best books ever published in France."
The Quintus Curtius of Vaugelas occupied him thirty years : generally every period was translated in the margin five or six several ways. Chapelain and Conrart, who took the pains to review this work critically, were many times per- plexed in their choice of passages ; they generally liked best that which had been first composed. Hume had never done with corrections ; every edition varies from the preceding ones. But there are more fortunate and fluid minds than these. Voltaire tells us of Fenelon's Telemachus, that the amiable author composed it in his retirement, in the short period of three months. Fenelon had, before this, formed his style, and his mind overflowed with all the spirit of the ancients. He opened a copious fountain, and there were not ten erasures in the original MS. The same facility accom- panied Gibbon after the experience of his first volume ; and the same copious readiness attended Adam Smith, who dic- tated to his amanuensis, while he walked about his study.
The ancients were as pertinacious in their corrections. Isocrates, it is said, was employed for ten years on one of his works, and to appear natural studied with the most refined art. After a labour of eleven years, Virgil pronounced hia ^Eneid imperfect. Dio Cassius devoted twelve years to the composition of his history, and Diodorus Siculus thirty.
LITERARY COMPOSITION. 255
There is a middle between velocity and torpidity; the Italians say, it is not necessary to be a stag, but we ought not to be a tortoise.
Many ingenious expedients are not to be contemned in lite- rary labours. The critical advice,
" To choose an author as we would & friend,"
is very useful to young writers. The finest geniuses have always affectionately attached themselves to some particular author of congenial disposition. Pope, in his version of Ho- mer, kept a constant eye on his master Dryden ; Cornelia's favourite authors were the brilliant Tacitus, the heroic Livy, and the lofty Lucan : the influence of their characters may be traced in his best tragedies. The great Clarendon, when employed in writing his history, read over very carefully Tacitus and Livy, to give dignity to his style ; Tacitus did not surpass him in his portraits, though Clarendon never equal- led Livy in his narrative.
The mode of literary composition adopted by that admira- ble student Sir William Jones, is well deserving our attention. After having fixed on his subjects, he always added the model of the composition ; and thus boldly wrestled with the great authors of antiquity. On board the frigate which was carry* ing him to India, he projected the following works, and noted them in this manner :
1. Elements of the Laws of England.
Model — The Essay on Bailments. ARISTOTLE
2. The History of the American War.
Model — THCCYDIDES and POLTBIUS.
8. Britain Discovered, an Epic Poem. Machinery— Hindu Gods. Model — HOMER.
4. Speeches, Political and Forensic.
Model — DEMOSTHENES.
5. Dialogues, Philosophical and Historical.
Model — PLATO.
256 LITEBAKY COMPOSITION.
And of favourite authors there are also favourite work»; which we love to be familiarized with. Bartholinus has a dissertation on reading books, in which he points out the su- perior performances of different writers. Of St. Austin, his City of God ; of Hippocrates, Coacce Prcenotiones ; of Cicero, De Officiis ; of Aristotle, De Animalibus; of Catullus, Coma Berenices ; of Virgil, the sixth book of the jEneid, &c. Such judgments are indeed not to be our guides ; but such a mode of reading is useful, by condensing our studies.
Evelyn, who has written treatises on several subjects, was occupied for years on them. His manner of arranging his materials, and his mode of composition, appear excellent. Having chosen a subject, he analyzed it into its various parts, under certain heads, or titles, to be filled up at leisure. Under these heads he set down his own thoughts as they oc- curred, occasionally inserting whatever was useful from his reading. When his collections were thus formed, he digested his own thoughts regularly, and strengthened them by authori- ties from ancient and modern authors, or alleged his reasons for dissenting from them. His collections in time became voluminous, but he then exercised that judgment which the formers of such collections are usually deficient in. With Hesiod he knew that, " half is better than the whole," and it was his aim to express the quintessence of his reading, but not to give it in a crude state to the world, and when his treatises were sent to the press, they were not half the size of his collections.
Thus also Winkelmann, hi his " History of Art," an exten- sive work, was long lost in settling on a plan ; like artists, who make random sketches of their first conceptions, he threw on paper ideas, hints, and observations which occurred in his readings — many of them, indeed, were not con- nected with his history, but were afterwards inserted in some of his other works.
Even Gibbon tells us of his Roman History, " at the outset all was dark and doubtful ; even the title of the work, the
LITEEAKY COMPOSITION. 257
true aera of the decline and fall of the empire, the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of the narration ; and I was often tempted to cast away the labour of seven years." Akenside has exquisitely described the progress and the pains of genius in its delightful reveries, Pleasures of Imagination, b. iii. v. 373. The pleasures of composition in an ardent genius were never so finely described as by Buffon. Speaking of the hours of composition he said, " These are the most luxurious and delightful moments of life : moments whichr have often enticed me to pass fourteen hours at my desk in a state of transport ; this gratification more than glory is my reward."
The publication of Gibbon's Memoirs conveyed to the world a faithful picture of the most fervid industry ; it is in youth, the foundations of such a sublime edifice as his history must be laid. The world can now trace how this Colossus of erudition, day by day, and year by year, prepared himself for some vast work.
Gibbon has furnished a new idea in the art of reading ! "We ought, says he, not to attend to the order of our books, so •much as of our thoughts. " The perusal of a particular work gives birth perhaps to ideas unconnected with the subject it treats ; I pursue these ideas, and quit my proposed plan of reading." Thus in the midst of Homer he read Longinus ; a chapter of Longinus led to an epistle of Pliny ; and hav- ing finished Longinus, he followed the train of his ideas of the sublime and beautiful, in the Inquiry of Burke, and con- cluded with comparing the ancient with the modern Longi- nus Of all our popular writers the most experienced reader was Gibbon, and he offers an important advice to an author engaged on a particular subject : " I suspended my perusal of any new book on the subject till I had reviewed all that I knew, or believed, or had thought on it, that I might be quali- fied to discern how much the authors added to my original stock."
These are valuable hints to students, and such have been
VOL. II. 17
258 LITERARY COMPOSITION.
practised by others. Ancillon was a very ingenious student ; he seldom read a book throughout without reading in his progress many others ; his library-table was always covered with a number of books for the most part open : this variety of authors bred no confusion ; they all assisted to throw light on the same topic ; he was not disgusted by frequently seeing the same thing in different writers ; their opinions were so many new strokes, which completed the ideas which he had r.onceived. The celebrated Father Paul studied in the same manner. He never passed over an interesting subject till he had confronted a variety of authors. In historical researches he never would advance, till he had fixed, once for all, the places, time, and opinions — a mode of study which appears very dilatory, but in the end will make a great saving of time, and labour of mind : those who have not pursued this method are all their lives at a loss to settle their opinions and their belief, from the want of having once brought them to such a test.
I shall now offer a plan of Historical Study, and a calcula- tion of the necessary time it will occupy, without specifying the authors ; as I only propose to animate a young student, who feels he has not to number the days of a patriarch, that he should not be alarmed at the vast labyrinth historical re- searches present to his eye. If we look into public libra- ries, more than thirty thousand volumes of history may be found.
Lenglet du Fresnoy, one of the greatest readers, calculated that he could not read, with satisfaction, more than ten hours a day, and ten pages in folio an hour ; which makes one hun- dred pages every day. Supposing each volume to contain one thousand pages, every month would amount to three volumes, which make thirty-six volumes in folio in the year. In fifty years a student could only read eighteen hundred volumes in folio. All this, too, supposing uninterrupted health, and an intelligence as rapid as the eyes of the labori- ous researcher. A man can hardly study to advantage till
LITERARY COMPOSITION. 259
past twenty, and at fifty his eyes will be dimmed, and his head stuffed with much reading that should never be read. His fifty years for eighteen hundred volumes are reduced to thirty years, and one thousand volumes ! And, after all, the universal historian must resolutely face thirty thousand vol- umes!
But to cheer the historiographer, he shows, that a public library is only necessary to be consulted ; it is in our private closet where should be found those few writers who direct ua to their rivals, without jealousy, and mark, in the vast career of time, those who are worthy to instruct posterity. His cal- culation proceeds on this plan, that six hours a day, and the term of ten years, are sufficient to pass over, with utility, the immense field of history.
He calculates an alarming extent of historical ground.
For a knowledge of Sacred History he gives . . 3 months. Ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, modern Assyria
or Persia 1 do.
Greek History 6 do.
Roman History by the moderns . . . . 7 do.
Roman History by the original writers . . . . 6 do. Ecclesiastical History, general and particular . . 30 do.
Modern History 24 do.
To this may be added for recurrences and re-perusals 48 do.
The total will amount to 10£ years.
Thus, in ten years and a half, a student in history has ob- tained an universal knowledge, and this on a plan which permits as much leisure as every student would i/hoose to indulge.
As a specimen of Du Fresnoy's calculations, take that of Sacred History.
For reading Pere Calmet's learned dissertations in ) 19 ,
•the order he points out j
For Pere Calmet's History, in 2 vols. 4to. (now in 4) 12
For Prideaux's History 10
ForJosephus 12
For Basnage's History of the Jews . . . . 20
Tn all 66 days
260 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.
He allows, however, ninety days for obtaining a sufficient knowledge of Sacred History.
In reading this sketch, we are scarcely surprised at the erudition of a Gibbon ; but having admired that erudition, we perceive the necessity of such a plan, if we would not learn what we have afterwards to unlearn.
A plan, like the present, even in a mind which should feel itself incapable of the exertion, will not be regarded without that reverence we feel for genius animating such industry. This scheme of study, though it may never be rigidly pur sued, will be found excellent. Ten years' labour of happy diligence may render a student capable of consigning to pos- terity a history as universal in its topics, as that of the his- torian who led to this investigation.
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.
** Tantus amor florum, et genertmdi gloria mellis."
GEOUO. Lib. iv. v. 204.
" Such rage of honey in our bosom beats, And such a zeal we have for flowery sweets ! "
DRYDEN.
THIS article was commenced by me many years ago in the early volumes of the Monthly Magazine, and continued by various correspondents, with various success. I have col- lected only those of my own contribution, because I do not feel authorized to make use of those of other persons, how- ever some may be desirable. One of the most elegant of literary recreations is that of tracing poetical or prose imita- tions and similarities ; for assuredly, similarity is not always imitation. Bishop Kurd's pleasing essay on " The ^larks of Imitation " will assist the critic in deciding on what may only be an accidental similarity, rather than a studied imitation. Those critics have indulged an intemperate abuse in these entertaining researches, who from a single word derive the
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 2G1
imitation of an entire passage. Wakefield, in his edition of Gray, is very liable to this censure.
This kind of literary amusement is not despicable : there are few men of letters who have not been in the habit of marking parallel passages, or tracing imitation, in the thou- sand shapes it assuntes ; it forms, it cultivates, it delights taste to observe by what dexterity and variation genius con- ceals, or modifies, an original thought or image, and to view the same sentiment, or expression, borrowed with art, or heightened by embellishment. The ingenious writer of " A Criticism on Gray's Elegy, in continuation of Dr. Johnson's," has given some observations on this subject, which will please. "It is often entertaining to trace imitation. To detect the adopted image ; the copied design ; the transferred senti- ment ; the appropriated phrase ; and even the acquired manner and frame, under all the disguises that imitation, combination, and accommodation may have thrown around them, must require both parts and diligence ; but it will bring with it no ordinary gratification. A book professedly on the * History and Progress of Imitation in Poetry/ written by a man of perspicuity, an adept in the art of discerning likenesses, even when minute, with examples properly se- lected, and gradations duly marked, would make an impartial accession to the store of human literature, and furnish rational curiosity with a high regale." Let me premise that these notices (the wrecks of a large collection of passages I had once formed merely as exercises to form my taste) are not given with the petty malignant delight of detecting the un- acknowledged imitations of our best writers, but merely to habituate the young student to an instructive amusement, and to exhibit that beautiful variety which the same image is capable of exhibiting when retouched with all the art of genius.
Gray, in his "Ode to Spring," has
" The Attic warbler POURS HER THROAT."
Wakefield hi his " Commentary " has a copious passage on
262 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.
this poetical diction. He conceives it to be " an admirable improvement of the Greek and Roman classics : M
neev avtijv: HES. Scut. Her. 396.
" Suaves ex ore loquelas
Funde." LUCRET. i. 40.
This learned editor was little conversant with modern lit- erature, as he proved by his memorable editions of Gray and Pope. The expression is evidently borrowed not from Hesiod, nor from Lucretius, but from a brother at home.
" Is it for thee, the Linnet POURS HER THROAT? "
Essay on Man, Ep. iii. v. 33.
Gray, in the " Ode to Adversity," addresses the power thus,
" Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose IRON SCOURGE and TORTURING HOUR The bad affright, afflict the best."
Wakefield censures the expression " torturing hour" by dis- covering an impropriety and incongruity. He says, " consist- ency of figure rather required some material image, like iron scourge and adamantine chain" It is curious to observe a verbal critic lecture such a poet as Gray ! The poet prob- ably would never have replied, or, in a moment of excessive urbanity, he might have condescended to point out to this minutest of critics the following passage in Milton : —
" When the SCOURGE
Inexorably, and the TORTURING HOUR Calls us to penance."
Par. Lost, B. ii. v. 90.
Gray, in his " Ode to Adversity," has
" Light THEY DISPERSE, and with them go
The SUMMER FRIEND."
Fond of this image, he has it again hi his " Bard,"
" The SWARM, that in thy NOONTIDE BEAM are bora, Gone!"
Perhaps the germ of this beautiful image may be found in Shakspeare : —
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 263
" for men, like BUTTERFLIES,
Show not their mealy wings but to THE SUMMER."
Troilus and Cressida, Act iii. s. 7.
And two similar passages in Timon of Athens : — " The swallow follows not summer more willingly than we your lordship. Timon. Nor more willingly leaves winter ; such summer birds are men."
—Act iii.
Again in the same,
" one cloud of winter showers
These flies are couch'd." — Act ii.
Gray, in his " Progress of Poetry," has
" In climes beyond the SOLAR ROAD."
Wakefield has traced this imitation to Dryden ; Gray him- self refers to Virgil and Petrarch. Wakefield gives the line from Dryden, thus : —
" Beyond the year, and out of Heaven's high-way ; "
which he calls extremely bold and poetical. I confess a critic might be allowed to be somewhat fastidious in this un- poetical diction on the high-way, which I believe Dryden never used. I think his line was thus : —
" Beyond the year, out of the SOLAR WALK."
Pope has expressed the image more elegantly, though copied from Dryden,
" Far as the SOLAR WALK or milky way." Gray has in his " Bard,"
" Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart."
Gray himself points out the imitation in Shakspeare of the latter image ; but it is curious to observe that Otway, in his " Venice Preserved," makes Priuli most pathetically exclaim to his daughter, that she is
" Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life, Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee."
Gray tells us that the image of his " Bard *
" Loose his beard and hoary hair Streamed like a METEOR to the troubled air "
264 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILAEITIES.
was taken from a picture of the Supreme Being by Raphael. It is, however, remarkable, and somewhat ludicrous, that the beard of Hudibras is also compared to a meteor : and the ac- companying observation of Butler almost induces one to think that Gray derived from it the whole plan of that sublime Ode — since his Bard precisely performs what the beard of Hudibras denounced. These are the verses : —
" This HAIRY METEOR did denounce The Jail of sceptres and of crwon*."
Hud. c. 1.
I have been asked if I am serious in my conjecture that " the meteor beard " of Hudibras might have given birth to the "Bard" of Gray? I reply, that the burlesque and the sublime are extremes, and extremes meet. How often does it merely depend on our own state of mind, and on our own taste, to consider the sublime as burlesque ! A very vulgar, but acute genius, Thomas Paine, whom we may suppose des- titute of all delicacy and refinement, has conveyed to us a notion of the sublime, as it is probably experienced by ordi- nary and uncultivated minds ; and even by acute and judi- cious ones, who are destitute of imagination. He tells us that " the sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly re- lated, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again." May I venture to illustrate this opinion ? Would it not appear the ridiculous or burlesque to describe the sublime revolution of the Earth on her axle, round the Sun, by comparing it with the action of a top flogged by a boy ? And yet some of the most ex- quisite lines in Milton do this ; the poet only alluding in his mind to the top. The earth he describes, whether
" She from west her -silent course advance
With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps On her sofl axle, while she paces even." —
Be this as it may ! it has never I believe been remarked (to
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. j>G5
return to Gray) that when he conceived the idea of the beard of his Bard, he had in his mind the language of Milton, who describes Azazel sublimely unfurling
" The imperial ensign, which full high advanced, Shone like a meteor streaming to the ivind."
Par. Lost, B. i. v. 635. Very similar to Gray's
" Streamed like a meteor to Hie troubled air! '* Gray has been severely censured by Johnson, for the ex- pression,
" Give ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace.— The Bard.
On the authority of the most unpoetical of critics, we must
still hear that the poet has no line so bad. " ample room "
is feeble, but would have passed unobserved in any other poem but in the poetry of Gray, who has taught us to admit nothing but what is exquisite. " Verge enough " is poetical, since it conveys a material image to the imagination. No one appears to have detected the source from whence, proba- bly, the whole line was derived. I am inclined to think it was from the following passage in Dryden :
" Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me, I have a soul that, like an AMPLE SHIELD, Can take in all, and VERGE ENOUGH for more ! "
DRYDEN'S Don Sebastian. Gray in his Elegy has
" Even in our ashes live their wonted fires." This line is so obscure that it is difficult to apply it to what precedes it. Mason in his edition in vain attempts to derive it from a thought of Petrarch, and still more vainly attempts to amend it; Wakefield expends an octavo page to para- phrase this single verse. From the following lines of Chaucer, one would imagine Gray caught the recollected idea. The old Reve, in his prologue, says of himself, and of old men,
" For whan we may not don than wol we speken; Yet in our ASHEN cold is FIRE yreken."
TYRWHIT'S CHAUCER, vol. i. p. 153, v. 3879.
266 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.
Gray has a very expressive word, highly poetical, but I think not common :
" For who to DUMB FORGETFULNESS a prey " — and Daniel has, as quoted hi Cooper's Muses' Library, " And in himself with sorrow, does complain The misery of DARE *ORGETFULHKSS."
A line of Pope's in his Dunciad, " High-born Howard," echoed hi the ear of Gray, when he gave, with all the artifice
of alliteration,
" High-born Hoel's harp."
Johnson bitterly censures Gray for giving to adjectives the termination of participles, such as the cultured plain ; the daisied bank : but he solemnly adds, I was sorry to see hi the line of a scholar like Gray, " the honied spring." Had John- Bon received but the faintest tincture of the rich Italian school of English poetry, he would never have formed so tasteless a criticism. Honied is employed by Milton in more places than one.
" Hide me from day's garish eye While the bee with HONIED thigh.'*
Penseroso, v. 142.
The celebrated stanza in Gray's Elegy seems partly to be oorrowed.
" Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear: Fullfnany a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness in ike, desert air."
Pope had said ;
" There kept by charms conceal' d from mortal eye, Like roses that in deserts bloom and die."
Rape of the Lock. Young says of nature :
" In distant wilds by human eye unseen She rears her flowers and spreads her velvet green; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race."
And Shenstone has —
" And like the deserCs lily bloom to fade ! "
Elegy iv.
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 267
Gray was so fond of this pleasing imagery, that he repeats it in his Ode to the Installation ; and Mason echoes it, in his Ode to Memory.
Milton thus paints the evening sun :
" If chance the radiant SUN with FAREWELL, SWEKT Extends his evening beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew," &c.
Par. Lost, B. ii. v. 492.
Can there be a doubt that he borrowed this beautifuiy*are- wett from an obscure poet, quoted by Poole, in his " English Parnassus," 1657 ? The date of Milton's great work, I find since, admits the conjecture : the first edition being that of 1669. The homely lines in Poole are these, " To Thetis' watery bowers the sun doth hie, BIDDING FAREWELL, unto the gloomy sky."
Young, in his " Love of Fame," very adroitly improves on a witty conceit of Butler. It is curious to observe, that while Butler had made a remote allusion of a window to a pillory, a conceit is grafted on this conceit, with even more exquisite wit.
" Each WINDOW like the PILLORY appears, With HEADS thrust through: NAILED BY THE EARS! "
Hudibras, Part ii. c. 3. v. 391. "An opera, like a PILLORY, may be said To NAIL OUR EARS down, and EXPOSE OUR HEAD."
YOUNG'S Satires.
In the Duenna we find this thought differently illustrated ; by no means imitative, though the satire is congenial. Don Jerome alluding to the serenaders says, "These amorous orgies that steal the senses in the hearing ; as they say Egyptian embalmers serve mummies, extracting the brain through the ears." The wit is original, but the subject is the same in the three passages ; the whole turning on the allusion to the head and to the ears.
When Pope composed the following lines on Fame,
" How vain that second life in others' breath, The ESTATE which wits INHERIT after death; Ease, health, and life, for this they must resign, (Unsure the tenure, but how vast the fine. /)"
Temple of Fame.
268 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.
he seems to have had present in his mind a single idea of Butler, by which he has very richly amplified the entire im- agery. Butler says,
"Honour's a LEASE for LIVES TC COME, And cannot be extended from
The LEGAL TENANT."
Hud. Part i. c. 8. v. 1043.
The same thought may be found in Sir George Mackenzie's " Essay on preferring Solitude to public Employment," first published in 1665 : Hudibras preceded it by two years. The thought is strongly expressed by the eloquent Mackenzie : " Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts ; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve our*- selves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death."
Dryden, in his "Absalom and Ahitophel," says of the Earl of Shaftesbury,
" David for him his tuneful harp had strung, And Heaven had wanted one immortal song."
This verse was ringing in the ear of Pope, when with equal modesty and felicity he adopted it in addressing his friend Dr. Arbuthnot
" Friend of my life ; which did not you prolong, The world had wanted many an idle song ! "
Howell has prefixed to his Letters a tedious poem, written in the taste of the times, and he there says of letters, that they are
" The heralds and sweet harbingers that move From East to West, on embassies of love ; They can the tropic cut, and cross the line."
It is probable that Pope had noted this thought, for the following lines seem a beautiful heightening of the idea : *' Heaven first taught letters, for some wretch's aid, Some banish' d lover, or some captive maid."
Then he adds, they
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 269
** Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole."
Eloisa.
There is another passage in " Howell's Letters," which has a great affinity with a thought of Pope, who, in " The Rape of the Lock," says,
" Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair."
Howell writes, p. 290, " 'Tis a powerful sex : — they were too strong for the first, the strongest and wisest man that was ; they must needs be strong, when one hair of a woman can draw more than an hundred pair of oxen"
Pope's description of the death of the lamb, in his " Essay on Man," is finished with the nicest touches, and is one of the finest pictures our poetry exhibits. Even familiar as it is to our ear, we never examine it but with undiminished admira- tion.
tt The lamb, thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleased to the last he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.'*
After pausing on the last two fine verses, will not the reader smile that I should conjecture the image might origin- ally have been discovered in the following humble verses in a poem once considered not as contemptible :
"A gentle lamb has rhetoric to plead, And when she sees the butcher's knife decreed, Her voice entreats him not to make her bleed."
DR. KING'S " Mully of Mountown."
This natural and affecting image might certainly have been observed by Pope, without his having perceived it through the less polished lens of the telescope of Dr. King. It is, however, a similarity, though it may not be an imitation ; and is given as an example of that art in composition which can ornament the humblest conception* like the graceful vest thrown over naked and sordid beggary.
270 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.
I consider the following lines as strictly copied by Thomas Warton :
" The daring artist
Explored the pangs that rend the royal breast, Those wounds that lurk beneath the tissued res/."
T. WARTON on Shakspeare.
Sir Philip Sidney, in his " Defence of Poesie," has the same image. He writes, "Tragedy openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue.11
The same appropriation of thought will attach to the fol- lowing lines of Tickell : —
" While the charm'd reader with thy thought complies, And views thy Rosamond with Henry's eyes."
TICKELL to ADDISON.
Evidently from the French Horace :
** En vain contre le Cid un ministre se ligue ; Tout Paris, pour Oiimene, a les yeux de Rodrigue"
BOILEAU.
Oldham, the satirist, says in his satires upon the Jesuits, that had Cain been of this black fraternity, he had not been content with a quarter of mankind.
" Had he been Jesuit, had he but put on Their savage cruelty, the rest had gone ! "
Satire ii.
Doubtless at that moment echoed in his poetical ear the energetic and caustic epigram of Andrew Marvel, against Blood stealing the crown dressed in a parson's cassock, and sparing the life of the keeper :
" With the Priest's vestment had he but put on The Prelate's cruelty— the Crown had gone ! M
The following passages seem echoes to each other, and it is but justice due to Oldham, the satirist, to acknowledge lu'm as the parent of this antithesis :
" On Butler who can think without just rage, The glory and. the scandal of the age ? **
Satire against Poetry
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 271
It seems evidently borrowed by Pope, when he applies tho thought to Erasmus : —
" At length Erasmus, that great injured name, The glory of the priesthood and the shame 1 "
Young remembered the antithesis when he said,
u Of some for glory such the boundless rage, That they're the blackest scandal of the age."
Voltaire, a great reader of Pope, seems to have borrowed part of the expression r —
« Scandale d'Eglise, et des rois le modele."
De Caux, an old French poet, in one of his moral poems on an hour-glass, inserted in modern collections, has many ingenious thoughts. That this poem was read and admired by Goldsmith, the following beautiful image seems to indicate. De Caux, comparing the world to his hour-glass, says beauti- fully,
u Oest un verre gui luit,
Qu'un soufflepeut detrain, et qu'un souffle aproduit."
Goldsmith applies the thought very happily : —
" Princes and lords may nourish or may fade; A breath can make tfiem, as a breath has made."
I do not know whether we might not read, for modern copies are sometimes incorrect,
" A breath unmakes them, as a breath has made."
Thomson, in his pastoral story of Palemon and Lavinia, appears to have copied a passage from Otway. Palemon thus addresses Lavinia : —
" Oh, let me now into a richer soil
Transplant thee safe, where vernal suns and showers Diffuse their warmest, largest influence; And of my garden be the pride and joy ! "
Chamont employs the same image when speaking of Moni- mia ; he says, —
" You took her up a little tender flower, and with a careful loving hand
272 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.
Transplanted her into your own fair garden, Where the sun always shines."
The origin of the following imagery is undoubtedly Gre- cian ; but it is still embellished and modified by our best
poets : —
" While universal Pan,
Knit with the graces and the hours, in dance Led on th' eternal spring." — Paradise Lost.
Thomson probably caught this strain of imagery :
" Sudden to heaven
Thence weary vision turns, where leading soft The silent hours of love, with purest ray Sweet Venus shines." — Summer, v. 1692.
Gray, in repeating this imagery, has borrowed a remark- able epithet from Milton :
" Lo, where the rosy-bosom'd hours, Fair Venus' train, appear! " — Ode to Spring.
" Along the crisped shades and bowers Revels the spruce and jocund spring ; The graces and the rosy-bosom'd hours Thither all their bounties bring." — Comus, v. 984.
Collins, hi his Ode to Fear, whom he associates with Dan- ger, there grandly personified, was I think considerably indebted to the following stanza of Spenser :
" Next him was Fear, all ann'd from top to toe, Yet thought himself not safe enough thereby: But fear'd each sudden movement to and fro; And his own arms when glittering he did spy, Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly, As ashes pale of hue and wingy heel'd; And evermore on Danger fix'd his eye, 'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield, Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield."
Faery Queen, B. iii. o. 12, s. 12.
Warm from its perusal, he seems to have seized it as a hint to the Ode to Fear, and in his " Passions " to have very finely copied an idea here :
" First Fear, his hand, its skill to try, Amid the chords bewildered laid,
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 273
And back recoiled, he knew not why, E'en at the sound him&elf had made"
Ode to the Passions.
The stanza in Beattie's " Minstrel," first book, in which his " visionary boy," after " the storm of summer rain," views " the rainbow brighten to the setting sun," and runs to reach it :
" Fond fool, that deem'st the streaming glory nigh, How vain the chase thine ardour has begun ! 'Tis fled afar, ere half thy purposed race be run; Thus it fares with age," &c.
The same train of thought and imagery applied to the same subject, though the image itself be somewhat different, may be found in the poems of the platonic John Norris ; a writer who has great originality of thought, and a highly poet- ical spirit. His stanza runs thus :
" So to the unthinking boy the distant sky Seems on some mountain's surface to relie; He with ambitious haste climbs the ascent, Curious to touch the firmament ; But when with an unwearied pace, He is arrived at the long-wish'd-for place, With sighs the sad defeat he does deplore, His heaven is still as distant as before ! "
" The Infidel." by JOHN NORRIS.
In the modern tragedy of " The Castle Spectre " is this fine description of the ghost of Evelina : " Suddenly a female form glided along the vault. I flew towards her. My arms were already unclosed to clasp her, — when suddenly her figure changed! Her face grew pale — a stream of blood gushed from her bosom. While speaking, her form withered away ; the flesh fell from her bones ; a skeleton loathsome and mea- gre clasped me in her mouldering arms. Her infected breath was mingled with mine ; her rotting fingers pressed my hand ; and my face was covered with her kisses. Oh ! then how I trembled with disgust ! "
There is undoubtedly singular merit in this description. I shall contrast it with one which the French Virgil has writ-
VOL. II. 18
274 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. •
ten, in an age whose faith was stronger in ghosts than ours, yet which perhaps had less skill in describing them. There are some circumstances which seem to indicate that the author of the " Castle Spectre " lighted his torch at the altar of the French muse. Athalia thus narrates her dream, in which the spectre of Jezabel her mother appears :
" C'e"toit pendant 1'horreur d'une profonde nuit, Ma mere Jezabel devant moi s'est montrde, Corame au jour de sa mort, pompeusement pare"e.— — — — En achevant ces mots epouvantables, Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser, Et moi, je lui tendois les mains pour 1 embrasser, Mais ^'e n'aiplus trouve qu'un hwrible melange D'os et de chair meurtris, et trainee dans la fange, Des lambea'ux vleins de sang et des membres aflt'reux."
RACINE'S, Athalie, Acte ii. S. 6.
Goldsmith, when, in his pedestrian tour, he sat amid the Alps, as he paints himself in his " Traveller," and felt himself the solitary neglected genius he was, desolate amidst the sur- rounding scenery, probably at that moment, applied to him- self the following beautiful imagery of Thomson :
" As in the hollow breast of Apennine Beneath the centre of encircling hills, A myrtle rises, far from human eyes, And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild."
Autumn, v. 202.
Goldsmith very pathetically applies a similar image :
" E'en now where Alpine solitudes ascend, I sit me down a pensive hour to spend, Like yon neglected shrub at random cast, That shades the steep, and sighs at every blast."
Traveller.
Akenside illustrates the native impulse of genius by a sim- ile of Memnon's marble statue, sounding its lyre at the touch of the sun :
" For as old Memuon's image, long renown'd By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string Consenting, sounded through the warbling air Unbidden strains; even so did nature's hand," &C.,
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 275
It is remarkable that the same image, which does not ap- pear obvious enough to have been the common inheritance of poets, is precisely used by old Regnier, the first French satir- ist, in the dedication of his Satires to the French king. Louis XIV. supplies the place of nature to the courtly satirist. These are his words : " On lit qu'en P^thiopie il y avoit une statue qui rendoit un son harmonieux, toutes les fois que le eoleil levant la regardoit. Ce meme miracle, Sire, avez vous fait en moi, qui touche de 1'astre de Votre Majeste, ai repu la voix et la parole."
In that sublime passage in " Pope's Essay on Man," Epist. i. v. 237, beginning,
tt Vast chain of being! which from God began,'* and proceeds to
" From nature's chain whatever link you strike, Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike."
Pope seems to have caught the idea and image from Wal- ler, whose last verse is as fine as any in the " Essay on Man :"
u The chain that's fixed to the throne of Jove, On which the fabric of onr world depends, One link dissolved, the whole creation ends."
Of the Danger his Majesty escaped, &c. v. 168.
It has been observed by Thyer, that Milton borrowed the expression imbrowned and brown, which he applies to the evening shade, from the Italian. See Thyer's elegant note in B. iv. v. 246 :
"And where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noon tide bowers."
And B. ix, v. 1086.
" Where highest woods impenetrable
To sun or star-light, spread their umbrage broad, And brown as evening."
Fa rimbruno is an expression used by the Italians to de-
276 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.
note the approach of the evening. Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, have made a very picturesque use of this term, noticed by Thyer. I doubt if it be applicable to our colder climate ; but Thomson appears to have been struck by the fine effect it produces in poetical landscape ; for he has
" With quickened step
Brown niyht retires." — Summer, v. 61.
If the epithet be true, it cannot be more appropriately ap- plied than in the season he describes, which most resembles the genial clime with the deep serenity of an Italian heaven. Milton in Italy had experienced the brown evening, but it may be suspected that Thomson only recollected the lan- guage of the poet.
The same observation may be made on two other poetical epithets. I shall notice the epithet "LAUGHING," applied to inanimate objects ; and " PURPLE " to beautiful objects.
The natives of Italy and the softer climates receive emo- tions from the view of their WATERS in the SPRING not equally experienced in the British roughness of our skies. The fluency and softness of the water are thus described by Lucretius : —
" Tibi suaveis Daedala tellus
Submittit flores: libi RIDENT cequ&ra ponti."
Inelegantly rendered by Creech,
" The roughest sea puts on smooth looks, and SMILJCS." Dryden more happily,
" The ocean SMILES, and smooths her wavy breast." But Metastasio has copied Lucretius :—
"A te fioriscono
Glierbosiprati: E i flutti RIDONO Nel mar placati."
It merits observation, that the Northern Poets could not their imagination higher than that the water SMILED,
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 277
while the modern Italian, having before his eyes a different Spring, found no difficulty in agreeing with the ancients, that the waves LAUGHED. Modern poetry has made a very free use of the animating epithet LAUGHING. Gray has LAUGH- ING FLOWERS ; and Langhorne in two beautiful lines personi- fies Flora : —
" Where Tweed's soft banks in liberal beauty lie, And Flora LAUGHS beneath an azure sky."
Sir William Jones, in the spirit of Oriental poetry, has " the LAUGHING AIR." Dryden has employed this epithet boldly in the delightful lines, almost entirely borrowed from his original, Chaucer: —
u The morning lark, the messenger of day, Saluted in her song the morning gray; And soon the sun arose, with beams so bright, That all THE HORIZON LAUGHED to see the joyous sight." Palamon and Arcite, B. ii.
It is extremely difficult to conceive what the ancients pre- cisely meant by the word purpureits. They seem to have designed by it any thing BRIGHT and BEAUTIFUL. A classi- cal friend has furnished me with numerous significations of this word which are very contradictory. Albinovanus, in his elegy on Livia, mentions Nivem purpureum. Catullus, Quercus ramos purpureos. Horace, Purpureo bibet ore nectar, and somewhere mentions Olores purpureos. Virgil has Purpuream vomit ille animam ; and Homer calls the sea purple, and gives it in some other book the same epithet, when in a storm.
The general idea, however, has been fondly adopted by the finest writers in Europe. The PURPLE of the ancients is not known to us. What idea, therefore, have the moderns affixed to it ? Addison, in his Vision of the Temple of Fame, de- scribes the country as " being covered with a kind of PURPI B LIGHT.'* Gray's beautiful line is well known :
" The bloom of young desire su\A purple liylit of love."
278 POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.
And Tasso, in describing his hero Godfrey, says, Heaven
" Gli empie d' onor la faccia, e vi riduce Di Giovinezza it belpurpureo lume."
Both Gray and Tasso copied Virgil, where Venus gives to her son JEneas —
"Lumenque Juventse
Dryden has omitted the purple light in his version, nor is it given by Pitt ; but Dryden expresses the general idea by
• " With hands divine,
. — . — j
Had formed his curling locks and made Ms temples shine, And given his rolling eyes a sparkling grace."
It is probable that Milton has given us his idea of what was meant by this purple light, when applied to the human countenance, in the felicitous expression of .
tt CELESTIAL ROSY-RED."
Gray appears to me to be indebted to Milton for a hint for the opening of his EJegy : as in the first line he had Dante and Milton in his mind, he perhaps might also in the follow- ing passage have recollected a congenial one in Comus, which he altered. Milton, describing the evening, marks it out by
" What time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swinkt hedyer at his supper sat."
Gray has
u The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.*'
Warton has made an observation on this passage in Com us and observes further that it is a classical circumstance, but hot a natural cue, in an English landscape, for our plough- men quit their work at noon. I think therefore the imitation is still more evident; and as Warton observes, both Gray and Milton copied here from books, and not from life.
POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES. 279
There are three great poets who have given us a similar incident.
Dryden introduces the highly finished picture of the hare in his Annus Mirabilis : —
Stanza 131.
•* So have I seen some fearful hare maintain
A course, till tired before the dog she lay; Who stretched hehind her, pants upon the plain, Past power to kill, as she to get away.
132.
" With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey;
His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies; She trembling creeps upon the ground away And looks back to him with beseeching eyes."
Thomson paints the stag in a similar situation :
" Fainting breathless toil
Sick seizes on his heart — he stands at bay. The big round tears run down his dappled face, He groans in anguish." — Autumn, v. 451
Shakspeare exhibits the same object : —
** The wretched animal heaved forth stich groans, '<*
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting; and the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase."
Of these three pictures the beseeching eyes of Dryden perhaps is more pathetic than the big round tears, certainly borrowed by Thomson from Shakspeare, because the former expression has more passion, and is therefore more poetical. The sixth line in Dryden is perhaps exquisite for its imita- tive harmony, and with peculiar felicity paints the action it- self. Thomson adroitly drops the innocent nose, of which one word seems to have lost its original signification, and the other offends now by its familiarity. The dappled face is a term more picturesque, more appropriate, and more poet- ically expressed.
280 EXPLANATION OF THE FAC-SIMILE.
EXPLANATION OF THE FAC-SIMILE.
THE manuscripts of Pope's version of the Iliad and Odys« Bey are preserved in the British Museum in three volumes, the gift of David Mallet. They are written chiefly on the backs of letters, amongst which are several from Addison, Steele, Jervaise, Rowe, Young, Caryl, Walsh, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Fenton, Craggs, Congreve, Hughes, his mother Editha, and Lintot and Tonson the booksellers.
From these letters no information can be gathered, which merits public communication ; they relate generally to the common civilities and common affairs of life. What little could be done has already been given in the additions to Pope's works.
It has been observed, that Pope taught himself to write, by copying printed books : of this singularity we have in this collection a remarkable instance ; several parts are written in Roman and Italic characters, which for some time I mis- took for print ; no imitation can be more correct.
What appears on this Fac-Simile I have printed, to assist its deciphering ; and I have also subjoined the passage as it was given to the public, for immediate reference. The manu- script from whence this page is taken consists of the first rude sketches ; an intermediate copy having been employed for the press ; so that the corrected verses of this Fac-Simile occasionally vary from those published.
This passage has been selected, because the parting of Hector and Andromache is perhaps the most pleasing epi- sode in the Iliad, while it is confessedly one of the most finished passages.
The lover of poetry will not be a little gratified, when he
contemplates the variety of epithets, the imperfect idea, the
gradual embellishment, and the critical rasures which are
here discovered.* The action of Hector, in lifting his infant
* Dr. Johnson, in noticing th» MSS. of Milton, preserved at Cambridge,
EXPLANATION OF THE FAC-SIMILE. 281
in his arms, occasioned Pope much trouble ; and at length the printed copy has a different reading.
I must not omit noticing, that the whole is on the back of a letter franked by Addison ; which cover I have given at one corner of the plate.
The parts distinguished by Italics were rejected.
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy Extends his eager arms to embrace his boy,
lovely Stretched his fond arms to seize the beauteous boy;
babe
The boy clung crying to his nurse's breast, Scar'd at the dazzling helm and nodding crest.
each kind
With silent pleasure the fond parent smil'd, And Hector hasten' d to relieve his child. The glittering terrors unbound,
Hi$ radiant helmet from his brows unbraced,
on the ground he And on the ground the glittering terror plac'd,
beamy
And plac'd the radiant helmet on the ground, Then seized the boy and raising him in car,
lifting Then fondling in his arms his infant heir,
dancing Thus to the gods addrest a father's prayer.
glory fills O thou, whose thunder shakes th' ethereal throne,
deathless
And all ye oilier powers protect my son! Like mine, this war, blooming youth with every virtue VUA,
grace
The shield and glory of the Trojan race ; Like mine his valour, and his just renown, Like mine his labours, to defend the crown. Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
the Trojans To guard my country, to defend the crown:
has made, with his usual force of language, the following observation! '* Such reliques show how excellence is acquired : what we hope ever to do with ease, we may learn first to do with diligence."
282 EXPLANATION OF THE FAC-SIMILE.
In arms Wee me, his country's war to wage, And rise the Hector of the future age ! Against his country's foes the war to wage, And rise the Hector of the future age !
successful
So when triumphant from the glorious toils Of heroes slain, he bears the reeking spoils, Whole hosts may Att Troy shall hail him, with deserv'd acclaim,
own the son
And cry, this chief transcends his father's fame. While pleas'd, amidst the general shouts of Troy, His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy.
fondly on her
He said, and gazing o'er his consort's charms, Restor'd his infant to her longing arms.
on
Soft in her fragrant hreast the babe she laid, Prest to her heart, and with a smile survey'd;
to repose Hush'd him to rest, and with a smile survey'd.
passion But soon the troubled pleasure mixt with rising Jears,
dash'd with fear,
The tender pleasure soon, chastised by fear, She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
The passage appears thus in the printed work I have marked in Italics the variations.
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy Stretch'd his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy. The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast, Scar'd at the dazzling helm and nodding crest. With secret* pleasure each fond parent smil'd, And Hector hasted to relieve his child, The glittering terrors from his brows unbound, And placed the beaming helmet on the ground; TTien kissed the child, and lifting high in air, Thus to the gods preferr' d a father's prayer:
0 thou, whose glory fills th' ethereal throno And all ye deathless powers, protect my son !
* Silent in the MS. (observes a critical friend) is greatly superior to tccret, as it appears in the printed work.
LITERARY FASHIONS.
Grant him like me to purchase just renown, To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown ; Against his country's foes the war to wage, And rise the Hector of the future age ! So when, triumphant from successful toils, Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils, Whole hosts may hail him, with deserv'd acclaim, And say, this chief transcends his father's fame: While pleas'd amidst the general shouts of Troy, His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy.
He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms, Restor'd the pleasing burden to her arms: Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid, Hush'd to repose, and with a smile survey'd. The troubled pleasure soon chastis'd by fear, She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
LITERARY FASHIONS.
THERE is such a thing as Literary Fashion, and prose and Terse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats. Dr. Kippis, who had a taste for literary history, has observed that " ' Dodsley's (Economy of Human Life/ long received the most extravagant applause, from the supposition that it was written by a celebrated nobleman ; an instance of the power of Literary Fashion , the history of which, as it hath appeared in various ages and countries, and as it hath operated with respect to the different objects of science, learning, art, and taste, would form a work that might be highly instructive and entertaining."
The favourable reception of Dodsley's " (Economy of Hu- man Life," produced a whole family of ceconomies ; it was goon followed by a second part, the gratuitous ingenuity of one of those officious imitators, whom an original author never cares to thank. Other ceconomies trod on the heels of each other.
For some memoranda towards a history of literary fashions the following may be arranged : —
284 LITERARY FASHIONS
At the restoration of letters in Europe, commentators and compilers were at the head of the literati ; translators fol- lowed, who enriched themselves with their spoils on the commentators. When in the progress of modern literature, writers aimed to rival the great authors of antiquity, the different styles, in their servile imitations, clashed together ; and parties were formed who fought desperately for the style they chose to adopt. The public were long harassed by a fantastic race, who called themselves Ciceronian, of whom are recorded many ridiculous practices, to strain out the words of Cicero into their hollow verbosities. They were routed by the facetious Erasmus. Then followed the bril- liant aera of epigrammatic points ; and good sense, and good taste, were nothing without the spurious ornaments of false wit. Another age was deluged by a million of sonnets ; and volumes were for a long time read, without their readers being aware that their patience was exhausted. There was an age of epics, which probably can never return again ; for after two or three, the rest can be but repetitions with a few variations.
In Italy, from 1530 to 1580, a vast multitude of books were written on Love ; the fashion of writing on that subject (for certainly it was not always a passion with the indefatigable writer) was an epidemical distemper. They wrote like ped ants, and pagans ; those who could not write their love in verse, diffused themselves in prose. When the Poliphilus of Colonna appeared, which is given in the form of a dream, this dream made a great many dreamers, as it happens in company (says the sarcastic Zeno) when one yawner makeb many yawn. When Bishop Hall first published his satires, he called them " Toothless Satires," but his latter ones he distinguished as " Biting Satires ; " many good-natured men, who could only write good-natured verse, crowded in his footsteps, and the abundance of their labours only showed that even the " toothless " satires of Hall could bite more sharply than those of servile imitators. After Spenser's
LITERARY FASHIONS. 285
" Faerie Queen" was published, the press overflowed with many mistaken imitations, in which fairies were the chief actors — this circumstance is humorously animadverted on by Marston, in his satires, as quoted by Warton : every scribe now falls asleep, and in his
** dreams, straight tenne pound to one
Outsteps some fairy
Awakes, straiet rubs his eyes, and PRINTS HIS TALK."
The great personage who gave a fashion to this class of literature was the courtly and romantic Elizabeth herself; her obsequious wits and courtiers would not fail to feed and flatter her taste. Whether they all felt thte beauties, or lan- guished over the tediousness of " The Faerie Queen," and the " Arcadia " of Sidney, at least her majesty gave a vogue to such sentimental and refined romance. The classical Eliz- abeth introduced another literary fashion ; having translated the Hercules CEtacus, she made it fashionable to translate Greek tragedies. There was a time, in the age of fanati- cism, and the long parliament, that books were considered the more valuable for their length. The seventeenth cen- tury was the age of folios. Caryl wrote a " Commentary on Job " in two volumes folio, of above one thousand two hun- dred sheets ! as it was intended to inculcate the virtue of patience, these volumes gave at once the theory and the practice. One is astonished at the multitude of the divines of this age ; whose works now lie buried under the brick and mortar tombs of four or five folios, which, on a moderate calculation, might now be " wire- woven " into thirty or forty modern octavos.
In Charles I.'s time, love and honour were heightened by the wits into florid romance ; but Lord Goring turned all into ridicule ; and he was followed by the Duke of Bucking- ham, whose happy vein of ridicule was favoured by Charles II., who gave it the vogue it obtained.
Sir William Temple justly observes, that changes in veins of wit are like those of habits, or other modes. On the re-
286 LITERARY FASHIONS.
turn of Charles II., none were more out of fashion among the new courtiers than the old Earl of Norwich, who was es- teemed the greatest wit, in his father's time, among the old.
Modern times have abounded with what may be called fashionable literature. Tragedies were some years ago as fashionable as comedies are at this day ; Thomson, Mallet, Francis, Hill, applied their genius to a department in which they lost it all. Declamation and rant, and over-refined language, were preferred to the fable, the manners, and to nature — and these now sleep on our shelves ! Then too we had a family of paupers in the parish of poetry, in " Imita- tions of Spenser." Not many years ago, Churchill was the occasion of deluging the town with political poems in quarto. —•These again were succeeded by narrative poems, in the ballad measure, from all sizes of poets. — The Castle of Otranto was the father of that marvellous, which once overstocked the circulating library and closed with Mrs. Radcliffe. — Lord Byron has been the father of hundreds of graceless sons ! — Travels and voyages have long been a class of literature so fashionable, that we begin to prepare for, or to dread, the arrival of certain persons from the Continent !
Different times, then, are regulated by different tastes. What makes a strong impression on the public at one time, ceases to interest it at another ; an author who sacrifices to the prevailing humours of his day has but little chance of being esteemed by posterity ; and every age of modern litera- ture might, perhaps, admit of a new classification, by divid- ing it into its periods of fashionable literature
THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS. 287
THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.
U est des gens do qui 1' esprit guinde'
Sous un front jaraais de"ride*
Ne souffre, n'approuve, et n'estime
Que le pompeux, et le sublime;
Four moi j'ose poser en fait
Qu'en de certains moraens 1'esprit le plus parfait
Peut aimer sans rougir jusqu'aux marionettes;
Ef qu'il est des terns et des lieux,
Oil le grave, et le se"rieux,
Ne valent pas d'agre"ables sornettes.
Peau d'Ane.
People there are who never smile; Their foreheads still unsmooth'd the while, Some lambent flame of mirth will play, That wins the easy heart away; Such only choose in prose or rhyme A bristling pomp, — they call sublime ! I blush not to like Harlequin, Would he but talk, — and all his kin. Yes, there are times, and there are places, When flams and old wives' tales are worth the Graces.
CERVANTES, in the person of his hero, has confessed the delight he received from amusements which disturb the gravity of some, who are apt, however, to be more enter- tained by them than they choose to acknowledge. Don Quixote thus dismisses a troop of merry strollers — "Andad eon Vios, buena gente, y hazad vuestra fiesta, porque desde muchacho fui aficionado a la Caratula, y en mi mocedad se ne ivan los ojos tras la Farandula." In a literal version the passage may run thus : — " Go, good people, God be with you, and keep your merry making ! for from childhood I was in love with the Caratula, and in my youth my eyes would lose themselves amidst the Farandula" According to Pineda, La Caratula is an actor masked, and La Farandula is a kind of farce.*
* Motteux, whose translation Lord Woodhouselee distinguishes as the most curious, turns the passage thus : " I wish you well, good people : drive
288 THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.
Even the studious Bayle, wrapping himself in his cloak, and hurrying to the market-place to Punchinello, would laugh when the fellow had humour in him, as was usually the case ; and I believe the pleasures some still find in pantomimes, to the annoyance of their gravity, is a very natural one, and only wants a little more understanding in the actors and the spectators.
The truth is, that here our Harlequin and all his lifeless family are condemned to perpetual silence. They came to us from the genial hilarity of the Italian theatre, and were all the grotesque children of wit, and whim, and satire. Why is this burlesque race here privileged to cost so much, to do so little, and to repeat that little so often ? Our own panto- mime may, indeed, boast of two inventions of its own growth : we have turned Harlequin into a magician, and this produces the surprise of sudden changes of scenery, whose splendour and curious correctness have rarely been equalled : while in the metamorphosis of the scene, a certain sort of wit to the eye, " mechanic wit," as it has been termed, has originated ; as when a surgeon's shop is turned into a laundry, with the inscription " Mangling done here ; " or counsellors at the bar changed into fish-women.
Every one of this grotesque family were the creatures of national genius, chosen by the people for themselves. Italy, both ancient and modern, exhibits a gesticulating people of comedians, and the same comic genius characterized the nation through all its revolutions, as well as the individual through all his fortunes. The lower classes still betray their
on to act your play, for in ray very childhood I loved shows, and have been a great admirer of dramatic representations." Part II. c. xi. The other translators have nearly the same words. But in employing the generic term they lose the species, that is, the thing itself; but what is less toler- able, in the flatness of the style, they lose that delightfulness with which Cervantes conveys to us the recollected pleasures then busying the warm brain of his hero. An English reader, who often grows weary over his Quixote, appears not always sensible that one of the secret charms of Cer- vantes, like all great national authors, lies concealed in his idiom and Btyle.
THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS. 289
aptitude in that vivid humour, where the action is suited to the word — silent gestures sometimes expressing whole sentences. They can tell a story, and even raise the passions, without opening their lips. No nation in modern Europe possesses 30 keen a relish for the burlesque, insomuch as to show a class of unrivalled poems, which are distinguished by the very title ; and perhaps there never was an Italian in a foreign country, however deep in trouble, but would drop all remem- brance of his sorrows, should one of his countrymen present himself with the paraphernalia of Punch at the corner of a street. I was acquainted with an Italian, a philosopher and a man of fortune, residing in this country, who found so lively a pleasure in performing Punchinello's little comedy, that, for this purpose, with considerable expense and curiosity, he had his wooden company, in all their costume, sent over from his native place. The shrill squeak of the tin whistle had the same comic effect on him as the notes of the Ranz des Vaches have in awakening the tenderness of domestic emo- tions in the wandering Swiss — the national genius is dramatic. Lady Wortley Montagu, when she resided at a villa near Brescia, was applied to by the villagers for leave to erect a theatre in her saloon : they had been accustomed to turn the stables into a playhouse every carnival. She complied, and, as she tells us, was " surprised at the beauty of their scenes, though painted by a country painter. The performance was yet more surprising, the actors being all peasants ; but the Italians have so natural a genius for comedy, they acted as well as if they had been brought up to nothing else, particu- larly the Arlequino, who far surpassed any of our English, though only the tailor of our village, and I am assured never saw a play in any other place." Italy is the mother, and the nurse, of the whole Harlequin race.
Hence it is that no scholars in Europe, but the most learned Italians, smit by the national genius, could have devoted their vigils to narrate the revolutions of pantomime, to compile the annals of Harlequin, to unroll the genealogy of Punch, and
VOL. II. 19
290 THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.
to discover even the most secret anecdotes of the obscurer branches of that grotesque family, amidst their changeful for- tunes, during a period of two thousand years ! Nor is this all ; princes have ranked them among the Rosciuses ; and Harlequins and Scaramouches have been ennobled. Even Harlequins themselves have written elaborate treatises ou the almost insurmountable difficulties of their art. I despair to convey the sympathy they have inspired me with to my reader ; but every Tramontane genius must be informed, that of what he has never seen he must rest content to be told.
Of the ancient Italian troop we have retained three or four of the characters, while their origin has nearly escaped our recollection ; but of the burlesque comedy, the extempore dialogue, the humorous fable, and its peculiar species of comic acting, all has vanished.
Many of the popular pastimes of the Romans unquestion- ably survived their dominion, for the people will amuse them- selves, though their masters may be conquered ; and tradition has never proved more faithful than in preserving popular sports. Many of the games of our children were played by Roman boys ; the mountebanks, with the dancers and tum- blers on their movable stages, still in our fairs, are Roman ; the disorders of the Bacchanalia, Italy appears to imitate hi her carnivals. Among these Roman diversions certain comic characters have been transmitted to us, along with some of their characteristics, and their dresses. The speaking panto- mimes and extemporal comedies which have delighted the Italians for many centuries, are from this ancient source.
Of the Mimi and the Pantomimi of the Romans the follow ing notices enter into our present researches :
The Mimi were an impudent race of buffoons, who exulted in mimicry, and, like our domestic fools, were admitted into convivial parties to entertain the guests ; from them we de- rive the term mimetic art. Their powers enabled them to perform a more extraordinary office, for they appeal1 to have
THE PANTOMIMIC AL CHARACTERS. 291
been introduced into funerals, to mimic the person, and even the language of the deceased. Suetonius describes an Archi- mimus accompanying the funeral of Vespasian. This Arch- mime performed his part admirably, not only representing the person, but imitating, according to custom, ut est mos, the manners and language of the living emperor. He contrived a happy stroke at the prevailing foible of Vespasian, when he inquired the cost of all this funereal pomp — " Ten millions of sesterces ! " On this he observed, that if they would give him but a hundred thousand they, might throw his body into the Tiber.
The Pantomimi were quite of a different class. They were tragic actors, usually mute; they combined with the arts of gesture music and dances of the most impressive char- acter. Their silent language often drew tears by the pa- thetic emotions which they excited : " Their very nod speaks, their hands talk, and their fingers have a voice," says one of their admirers. Seneca, the father, grave as was his profes- sion, confessed his taste for pantomimes had become a pas- sion ; * and by the decree of the Senate, that " the Roman knights should not attend the pantomimic players in the streets," it is evident that the performers were greatly hon- oured. Lucian has composed a curious treatise on panto- mimes. We may have some notion of their deep conception of character, and their invention, by an anecdote recorded by Macrobius of two rival pantomimes. When Hylas, dancing a hymn, which closed with the words "The great Agamem- non," to express that idea he took it in its literal meaning, and stood erect, as if measuring his size — Pylades, his rival, exclaimed, " You make him tall, but not great ! " The audi- ence obliged Pylades to dance the same hymn ; when he came to the words he collected himself in a posture of deep meditation. This silent pantomimic language we ourselves have witnessed carried to singular perfection ; when the actor
# Tacitns, Annals, lib. i. sect. 77, in Murphy's translation
292 THE PANTOMIMICAL CHAEACTERS.
Palmer, after building a theatre, was prohibited the use of his voice by the magistrates. It was then he powerfully affected the audience by the eloquence of his action in the tragic pantomime of Don Juan !
These pantomimi seem to have been held in great honour ; many were children of the Graces and the Virtues ! The tragic and the comic masks were among the ornaments of the sepulchral monuments of an archmime and a pantomime. Montfaucon conjectures that they formed a select fraternity.* They had such an influence over the Roman people, that when two of them quarrelled, Augustus interfered to renew their friendship. Pylades was one of them ; and he observed to the emperor, that nothing could be more useful to him than that the people should be perpetually occupied with the squabbles between him and Bathyllus ! The advice was ac- cepted, and the emperor was silenced.
The parti-coloured hero, with every part of his dress, has been drawn out of the great wardrobe of antiquity : he was a Roman Mime. HARLEQUIN is described with his shaven head, ram capitibus ; his sooty face, fuligine faciem olducti ; his flat, unshod feet, planipedes ; and liis patched coat of many colours, Mimi centunculo.\ Even Pullicinetta, whom
* L'Antiq. Exp. v. 63.
t Louis Riccoboni, in his curious little treatise, " Du Theatre Italien," illustrated by seventeen prints of the Italian pantomimic characters, has duly collected the authorities. I give them, in the order quoted above, for the satisfaction of more grave inquirers. Vossius, Instit. Poet. lib. ii. 32, § 4. The Mimi blackened their faces. Diomedes de Orat. lib. iii. Apuleius in Apolog. And further, the patched dress was used by the ancient peas- ants of Italy, as appears by a passage in Varro, De Re Rust, lib. i. c. 8; and Juvenal employs the term centunculus as a diminutive of cento, for a coat made up. of patches. This was afterwards applied metaphorically to those well-known poems called centos, composed of shreds and patches of poetry, collected from all quarters. Goldoni considered Harlequin as a poor devil and dolt, whose coat is made up of rags patched together; his hat shows mendicity; and the hare's tail is still the dress of the peasantry of Bergamo. Quadrio, in his learned Storia (foyni Poesia, has diffused his erudition on the ancient Mimi and their successors. Dr. Clarke has dis- covered tb? light lath sword of Harlequin, which had hitherto baffled my
THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS. 293 '
we familiarly call PUNCH, may receive, like other person- ages of not greater importance, all his dignity from antiquity ; one of his Roman ancestors having appeared to an antiquary's visionary eye in a bronze statue ; more than one erudite dis- sertation authenticates the family likeness ; the nose long, prominent, and hooked ; the staring goggle eyes ; the hump at his back and at his breast; in a word, all the character which so strongly marks the Punch-race, as distinctly as whole dynasties have been featured by the Austrian lip and the Bourbon nose.*
most painful researches, amidst the dark mysteries of the ancient mythol* ogy ! We read with equal astonishment and novelty, that the prototypes of the modern pantomime are in the Pagan mysteries ; that Harlequin is Mercury, with his short sword called herpe, or his rod the caduceus, to ren- der himself invisible, and to transport himself from one end of the earth to the other; that the covering on his head was his petasus, or winged cap; that Columbine is Psyche, or the Soul ; the Old Man in our pantomimes is Charon; the Clown is Momus, the buffoon of heaven, whose large gaping mouth is an imitation of the ancient masks. The subject of an ancient vase engraven in the volume represents Harlequin, Columbine, and the Clown, as we see them on the English stage. The dreams of the learned are amusing when we are not put to sleep. Dr. Clarke's Travels, vol. iv. p. 459. The Italian antiquaries never entertained any doubt of this remote origin.
* This statue, which is imagined to have thrown so much light on the genealogy of Punch, was discovered in 1727, and is engraved in Ficoroni's amusing work on Maschere sceniche e lejiyure coniche cFantichi Romani, p. 48. It is that of a Mime called Maccus by the Romans; the name indicates a simpleton. But the origin of the more modern name has occasioned a little difference, whether it be derived from the nose or its squeak. The learned Quadrio would draw the name Pidlidnelb from Pulliceno, which Spartianus uses for ilpullo gallinaceo (I suppose this to be the turkey-cock) because Punch's hooked nose resembles its beak. But Baretti, in that strange book the " Tolondron," gives a derivation admirably descriptive of the peculiar squeaking nasal sound. He says, "Punchinello, or Punch, as you well know, speaks with a squeaking voice that seems to come out at his nose, because the fellow who in a puppet-show manages the puppet called Punchinello, or Punch, as the English folks abbreviate it, speaks with a tin whistle in his mouth, which makes him emit that comical kind of voice. But the English word Punchinello is in Italian Pukindla, which means a hen-chicken. Chickens' voices are squeaking and nasal; and they are timid and powerltss, and for this reason my whimsical countrymen havo given the name of Pulcinella, c* t?-n-chicken, to that comic character, to
294 THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.
The genealogy of the whole family is confirmed by the general term, which includes them all ; for our Zany, in Italian Zanni, comes direct from Sannio, a buffoon ; and a passage in Cicero, De Oratore, paints Harlequin and his brother gesticulators after the life ; the perpetual trembling motion of their limbs, their ludicrous and flexible gestures, and all the mimicry of their faces : — Quid enim potest tan/l ridiculum, quam SANNIO esse ? Qui ore, vultu, imitandis motibus, voce, denique, corpore ridetur ipso. Lib. ii. sect. 51. " For what has more of the ludicrous than SANNIO ? who, with his mouth, his face, imitating every motion, with his voice, and, indeed, with all his body, provokes laughter." *
These are the two ancient heroes of pantomime. Tho other characters are the laughing children of mere modern humour. Each of these chimerical personages, like so many county members, come from different provinces in the gestic- ulating land of pantomime ; in little principalities the rival inhabitants present a contrast in manners and characters which opens a wider field for ridicule and satire, than in a
convey the idea of a man that speaks with a squeaking voice through his nose, to express a timid and weak fellow, who is always thrashed by the other actors, and always boasts of victory after they are gone." — Tolvndron, p. 324. In Italian, Policinello is a little flea, active and biting and skip- ping; and his mask puce-colour, the nose imitating in shape the flea's pro- boscis. This grotesque etymology was added by Mrs. Thrale. I cannot decide between the " hen-chicken " of the scholar and " the skipping flea " of the lady, who however was herself a scholar.
* How the Latin Sannio became the Italian Zan/u, was a whirl in the roundabout of etymology, which put Riccoboni very ill at his ease; for he, having discovered this classical origin of his favourite character, was alarmed at Menage giving it up with obsequious tameness to a Cruscan cor- respondent. The learned Quadrio, however, gives his vote for the Greek Sannos, from whence the Latins borrowed their Sannio. Riccoboni's deri- vation, therefore, now stands secure from all verbal disturbers of human quiet.
Sanna is in Latin, as Ainsworth elaborately explains, " a mocking by grimaces, mows, a flout, a frump, a gibe, a scoff, a banter; " and Sannio is " a fool in a play." The Italians change the S into Z, for they say Zmyr- pa and Zambuco, for Smyrna and Sambuco; and thus they turned Sannio Into Zanno, and then into Zanni, and we caught the echo in our Zany.
THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS. 295
Jdngdom where an uniformity of government will produce an uniformity of manners. An inventor appeared in Ruzzante, an author and actor who flourished about 1530. Till his time they had servilely copied the duped fathers, the wild sons, and the tricking valets, of Plautus and Terence ; and, perhaps, not being writers of sufficient skill, but of some in- vention, were satisfied to sketch the plots of dramas, but boldly trusted to extempore acting and dialogue. Ruzzante peopled the Italian stage with a fresh enlivening crowd of pantomimic characters ; the insipid dotards of the ancient comedy were transformed into the Venetian Pantaloon and the Bolognese Doctor; while the hare-brained fellow, the arch knave, and the booby, were furnished from Milan, Bergamo, and Calabrja. He gave his newly-created beings new language and a new dress. From Plautus he appears to have taken the hint of introducing all the Italian dialects into one comedy, by making each character use his own; and even the modern Greek, which, it seems, afforded many an unexpected play on words, for the Italian.* This new kind of pleasure, like the language of Babel, charmed the national ear ; every province would have its dialect intro- duced on the scene, which often served the purpose both of recreation and a little innocent malice. Their masks and dresses were furnished by the grotesque masqueraders of the carnival, which, doubtless, often contributed many scenes and humours to the quick and fanciful genius of Ruzzante. I possess a little book of Scaramouches, &c. by Callot. Their masks and their costume must have been copied from these carnival scenes. We see their strongly-featured masks ; their attitudes, pliant as those of a posture-master ; the drollery of their figures ; while the grotesque creatures seem to leap, and dance, and gesticulate, and move about so fantastically under his sharp graver, that they form as individualize^ a race as our fairies and witches ; mortals, yet like nothing mortal !
* Riccoboni, Histoire du Theatre Italien, p. 63; Gimma, Italia Letter- ata, p. 196.
296 THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.
The first Italian actors wore masks — objections have been raised against their use. Signorelli shows the inferiority of the moderns in deviating from the movable or rather double masks of antiquity, by which the actor could vary the artifi- cial face at pleasure. The mask has had its advocates, for some advantages it possesses over the naked face ; a mask aggravates the features, and gives a more determined ex- pression to the comic character ; an important effect among this fantastical group.*
The HARLEQUIN in the Italian theatre has passed through all the vicissitudes of fortune. At first he was a true repre- sentative of the ancient Mime, but afterwards degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp- witted fellow, his companion, called Brighella ; the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became a child of nature, the delight of his country ; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader to correct his notions of one. from the absurd pretender with us who has usurped the title. " Sacchi possessed a lively and bril- liant imagination. While other Harlequins merely repeated themselves, Sacchi, who always adhered to the essence of the play, contrived to give an air of freshness to the piece by his new sallies and unexpected repartees. His comic traits and his jests were neither taken from the language of the lower orders, nor that of the comedians. He levied contributions on comic authors, on poets, orators, and philosophers ; and in his impromptus they often discovered the thoughts of Seneca, Cicero, or Montaigne. He possessed the art of appropriating the remains of these great men to himself, and allying them to the simplicity of the blockhead ; so that the same proposi- tion which was admired in a serious author, became highly ridiculous in the mouth of this excellent actor." f In France Harlequin was improved into a wit, and even converted into
* Signorelli, Storia Critica do Teatri, torn. iii. 263. t Mem. of Goldoni, i. 281.
THE PANTOMIMICAL CIIAEACTERS. 297
a moralist ; he is the graceful hero of Florian's channing compositions, which please even in the closet. " This im- aginary being, invented by the Italians, and adopted by the French," says the ingenious Goldoni, "has the exclusive right of uniting naivete with finesse, and no one ever sur- passed Florian in the delineation of this amphibious char- acter. He has even contrived to impart sentiment, pas- sion and morality, to his pieces." * Harlequin must be modelled as a national character, the creature of manners ; and thus the history of such a Harlequin might be that of the age and of the people, whose genius he ought to represent.
The history of a people is often detected in their popular amusements ; one of these Italian pantomimic characters shows this. They had a Capitan, who probably originated in the Miles gloriosus of Plautus ; a brother, at least, of our Ancient Pistol and Bobadil. The ludicrous names of this military poltroon were, Spavento (Horrid fright), Spezza-fer (Shiver-spear,) and a tremendous recreant was Captain Spa- vento de Val inferno. When Charles V. entered Italy, a Spanish Captain was introduced ; a dreadful man he was too, if we are to be frightened by names : Sangre e Fuego ! and Matamoro ! His business was to deal in Spanish rho- domontades, to kick out the native Italian Capitan, in com- pliment to the Spaniards, and then to take a quiet caning from Harlequin, in compliment to themselves. When the Spaniards lost their influence in Italy, the Spanish Captain was turned into Scaramouch, who still wore the Spanish dress, and was perpetually in a panic. The Italians could only avenge themselves on the Spaniards in pantomime ! On the same principle the gown of Pantaloon over his red waistcoat and breeches, commemorates a circumstance in Venetian history, expressive of the popular feeling; the dress is that of a Venetian citizen, and his speech the dia-
* Mem. of Goldoni, ii. 284.
298 THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS
lect ; but when the Venetians lost Negropont, they changed their upper dress to black, which before had been red, as a national demonstration of their grief.
The characters of the Italian pantomime "became so nu- merous, that every dramatic subject was easily furnished with the necessary personages of comedy. That loquacious pedant the Dottore was taken from the lawyers and the physicians, babbling false Latin in the dialect of learned Bologna. Scapin was a livery servant who spoke the dialect of Bergamo, a province proverbially abounding with rank intriguing knaves, who, like the slaves in Plautus and Terence, were always on the watch to further any wicked- ness ; while Calabria furnished the booby Giangurgello with his grotesque nose. Moliere, it has been ascertained, dis- covered in the Italian theatre at Paris his " Medecin malgre* lui," his " Etourdi," his " L'Avare," and his " Scapin." Milan offered a pimp in the Brighella ; Florence an ape of fashion in Gelsomino. These and other pantomimic characters, and some ludicrous ones, as the Tartaglia, a spectacled dotard, a stammerer, and usually in a passion, had been gradually in- troduced by the inventive powers of an actor of genius, to call forth his own peculiar talents.
The Pantomimes, or, as they have been described, the continual Masquerades, of Ruzzante, with all these diversified personages, talking and acting, formed, in truth, a burlesque comedy. Some of the finest geniuses of Italy became the votaries of Harlequin ; and the Italian pantomime may be said to form a school of its own. The invention of Ruzzante was one capable of perpetual novelty. Many of these actors have been chronicled either for the invention of some comic character, or for their true imitation of nature in performing some favourite one. One, already immortalized by having lost his real name in that of Captain Matamoros, by whose inimitable humours he became the most popular man in Italy, invented the Neapolitan Pullicinello ; while another, by deeper study, added new graces to another burlesque
THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS. 209
rival.* One Constantini invented the character of Mezetin* as the Narcissus of pantomime. He acted without a mask, to charm by the beautiful play of his countenar ce, and dis- play the graces of his figure ; the floating drapery of his fanciful dress could be arranged by the changeable humour of the wearer. Crowds followed him in the streets, and a King of Poland ennobled him. The Wit and Harlequin Dominic sometimes dined at the table of Louis XIV.— • Tiberio Fiurilli, who invented the character of Scaramouch, had been the amusing companion of the boyhood of Louis XIV. ; and from him Moliere learnt much, as appears by the verses under his portrait : —
" Get illustre come'dien De son art traca la carriere. II fut le maitre de Moliere, Et la Nature fut le sien."
The last lines of an epitaph on one of these pantomimic actors may be applied to many of them during their flourish- ing period : —
" Toute sa vie il a fait rire ; II a fait pleurer a sa mort."
Several of these admirable actors were literary men, who have written on their art, and shown that it was one. The Harlequin Cecchini composed the most ancient treatise on this subject, and was ennobled by the Emperor Matthias ; and Nicholas Barbieri, for his excellent acting called the Bel- trame, a Milanese simpleton, in his treatise on comedy, tells us that he was honoured by the conversation of Louis XIII. and rewarded with fortune.
What was the nature of that perfection to which the Italian pantomime reached; and that prodigality of genius which
* I am here but the translator of a grave historian. The Italian writes with all the feeling of one aware of the important narrative, and with a most curious accuracy in this genealogy of character: "Silvio FioriUo, che appeller sifacea il Capitano Matamoros, INVENTO il Puldnella Napolctano, c collo studio e grazia molto AGGIUNSE Andrea Cakese deUo Ciuccio par wpran* «w»e." — Ghnma Italia Letterata, p. 196.
300 THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.
excited such enthusiasm, not only among the populacf , but the studious, and the noble, and the men of genius ?
The Italian Pantomime had two peculiar features ; a spe- cies of buffoonery technically termed Lazzi, and one of a more extraordinary nature, the extempore dialogue of its comedy.
These Lazzi were certain pleasantries of gesticulation, quite national, yet so closely allied to our notions of buffoon- ery, that a northern critic will not readily detect the separat- ing shade ; yet Riccoboni asserts that they formed a critical, and not a trivial art. That these arts of gesticulation had something in them peculiar to Italian humour, we infer from Gherardi, who could not explain the term but by describing it as " Un Tour ; JEU ITALIEN ! " It was so peculiar to them, that he could only call it by their own name. It is difficult to describe that of which the whole magic consists in being seen ; and what is more evanescent than the humour which consists in gestures ?
"Lazzi" says Riccoboni, "is a term corrupted from the old Tuscan Lacci, which signifies a knot, or something which connects. These pleasantries called Lazzi are certain ac- tions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity ; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it ; thus to tie the whole together." Lazzi, then, seems a kind of mimicry and gesture, corresponding with the passing scene ; and we may translate the term by one in our green-room dialect, side-play. Riccoboni has ventured to describe some Lazzi. When Harlequin and Scapin represent two famished servants of a poor young mis- tress, among the arts by which they express their state of starvation, Harlequin having murmured, Scapin exhorts him to groan, a music which brings out their young mistress* Scapin explains Harlequin's impatience, and begins a propo- sal to her which might extricate them all from their misery.
THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS. 301
While Scapin is talking, Harlequin performs his Lazzi — im- agining he holds a hatful of cherries, he seems eating them, and gaily flinging the stones at Scapin ; or with a rueful countenance he is trying to catch a fly, and with his hand, in comical despair, would chop off the wings before he swallows the chameleon game. These, with similar Lazzi , harmonize with the remonstrance of Scapin, and reanimate it; and thus these "Lazzi, although they seem to interrupt the pro- gress of the action, yet in cutting it they slide back into it, and connect or tie the whole." These Lazzi are in great danger of degenerating into puerile mimicry or gross buffoon- ery, unless fancifully conceived and vividly gesticulated. But the Italians seem to possess the arts of gesture before that of speech ; and this national characteristic is also Roman. Such, indeed, was the powerful expression of their mimetic art, that when the select troop under Riccoboni, on their first introduction into France only spoke in Italian, the audience, who did not understand the words, were made completely masters of the action by their pure and energetic imitations of nature. The Italian theatre has, indeed, recorded some miracles of this sort. A celebrated Scaramouch, without uttering a syllable, kept the audience for a considerable time in a state of suspense by a scene of successive terrors ; and exhibited a living picture of a panic-stricken man. Gherardi in his "Theatre Italien," conveys some idea of the scene. Scaramouch, a character usually represented in a fright, is waiting for his master Harlequin in his apartment ; having put every thing in order, according to his confused notions, he takes the guitar, seats himself in an arm-chair, and plays. Pasquariel comes gently behind him, and taps time on his shoulders — this throws Scaramouch into a panic. " It was then that incomparable model of our most eminent actors," says Gherardi, " displayed the miracles of his art ; that art which paints the passions in the face, throws them into every gesture, and through a whole scene of frights upon frights, convoys the most powerful expression of ludicrous terror.
302 EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES.
This man moved all hearts by the simplicity of nature, more than skilful orators can with all the charms of persuasive rhetoric." On this memorable scene a great prince observed that " Scaramuccia non parla, e dica gran cosa : " " He speaks not, but he says many great things."
In gesticulation and humour our Rich appears to have been a complete Mime : his genius was entirely confined to Panto- mime ; and he had the glory of introducing Harlequin on the English stage, which he played under the feigned name of JLun. He could describe to the audience by his signs and gestures as intelligibly as others could express by words. There is a large caricature print of the triumph which Rich had obtained over the severe Muses of Tragedy and Comedy, which lasted too long not to excite jealousy and opposition from the corps dramatique.
Garrick, who once introduced a speaking Harlequin, has celebrated the silent but powerful language of Rich :—
" When LUN appear' d, with matchless art and whim, He gave the power of speech to every limb ; Tho' mask'd and mute, conveyed his quick intent, And told in frolic gestures what he meant: But now the motley coat and sword of wood Require a tongue to make them understood ! "
The Italian EXTEMPORAL COMEDY is a literary curiosity which claims our attention.
EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES.
IT is a curiosity in the history of national genius to dis- cover a people with such a native fund of comic humour, combined with such passionate gesticulation, that they could deeply interest in acting a Comedy, carried on by dialogue, intrigue, and character, all ' improvista, or impromptu ; the actors undergoing no rehearsal, and, in fact, composing while they were acting. The plot, called Scenario, consisting
EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES. 303
merely of the scenes enumerated, with the characters indi- cated, was first written out ; it was then suspended at the back of the stage, and from the mere inspection, the actors came forward to perform, the dialogue entirely depending on their own genius**
" These pieces must have been detestable, and the actors mere buffoons," exclaim the northern critics, whose imagina- tions have a coldness in them, like a frost in spring. But when the art of Extemporal Comedy flourished among these children of fancy, the universal pleasure these representations afforded to a whole vivacious people, and the recorded celeb- rity of their great actors, open a new field for the speculation of genius. It may seem more extraordinary that some of its votaries have maintained that it possessed some peculiar ad- vantages over written compositions. When Goldoni reformed the Italian theatre by regular Comedies, he found an invinci- ble opposition from the enthusiasts of their old Comedy : for two centuries it had been the amusement of Italy, and was a species of comic entertainment which it had created. Inven- tive minds were fond of sketching out these outlines of pieces, and other men of genius delighted in their representation.
The inspiration of national genius alone could produce this phenomenon ; and these Extemporal Comedies were, indeed, indigenous to the soil. Italy, a land of Improvisator!, kept up from the time of their old masters, the Romans, the same fervid fancy. The ancient AteUana Fabulce, or Atellane Farces, originated at Atella, a town in the neighbourhood of ancient Naples ; and these, too, were extemporal Interludes, or, as Livy terms them, Exodia. We find in that historian a little interesting narrative of the theatrical history of the
# Some of the ancient Scenarie were printed in 1661, by Flamininft Scala, one of their great actors. These, according to Riccoboni, consist of nothing more than the skeletons of Comedies ; the canevas, as the French technically term a plot and its scenes. He says, " they are not so ehort as those we now use to fix at the back of the scenes, nor so full as to furnish any aid to the dialogue : they only explain what the actor did on the 'tage, and the action which forms the subject, nothing more."
304 EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES.
Romans ; when the dramatic performances at Rome were becoming too sentimental and declamatory, banishing the playfulness and the mirth of Comedy, the Roman youth left these graver performances to the professed actors, and revived, perhaps in imitation of the licentious Satyra of the Greeks, the ancient custom of versifying pleasantries, and throwing out jests and raillery among themselves for their own diver- sion.* These Atellan Farces were probably not so low in humour as they have been represented ; f or at least the Ro- man youth, on their revival, exercised a chaster taste, for they are noticed by Cicero in a letter to his literary friend Papyrius Pretus. " But to turn from the serious to the jo- cose part of your letter — the strain of pleasantry you break into, immediately after having quoted the tragedy of CEno- maus, puts me in mind of the modern method of introducing at the end of these graver dramatic pieces the buffbo?i humour of our low Mimes instead of the more delicate burlesque of the old Atellan Farces." J This very curious passage dis- tinctly marks out the two classes, which so many centuries after Cicero were revived in the Pantomime of Italy, and in its Extemporal Comedy. §
* The passage in Livy is, " Juventus, histrionibus fabellarum actu re- licto, ipsa inter se, more antique, ridicula intexta versibus jactitare caepit." Lib. vii. cap. 2.
t As these Atellance Fabulce were never written, they have not descended to us in any shape. It has, indeed, been conjectured that Horace, in the fifth Satire of his first Book, v. 51, has preserved a scene of this nature between two practised buffoons in the " Pugnam Sarmenti Scurrse," who challenges his brother Cicerrus ; equally ludicrous and scurrilous. But surely thesa ware rather the low humour of the Mimes, than of the Atel- lan Farcers.
J Melmoth's Letters of Cicero, B. viii. lett. 20; in Graevius's edition, Lib. ix. ep. 16.
§ This passage also shows that our own custom of annexing a Farce, or petite piece, or Pantomime, to a tragic Drama, existed among the Ro- mans : the introduction of the practice in our country seems not to be as- certained ; and it is conjectured not to have existed before the Restoration. Shakspeare and his contemporaries probably were spectators of only a single drama.
EXTEMPOEAL COMEDIES. 305
The critics on our side of the Alps reproached the Italians for the extemporal comedies ; and Marmontel rashly declared that the nation did not possess a single comedy which could endure perusal. But he drew his notions from the low farces of the Italian theatre at Paris, and he censured what he had never read.* The comedies of Bibiena, Del Lasca, Del Secchi, and others, are models of classical comedy, but not the popular favourites of Italy. Signorelli distinguishes two species of Italian comedy : those which he calls commcdie an- tiche ed eruditi, ancient and learned comedies ; and those of commedie dell' arte, or a soggetto, comedies suggested. — The first were moulded on classical models, recited in their acad- emies to a select audience, and performed by amateurs ; but the commedie a soggeto, the extemporal comedies, were in- vented by professional actors of genius. More delightful to the fancy of the Italians, and more congenial to their talents, in spite of the graver critics, who even in their amusements cannot cast off the manacles of precedence, the Italians re- solved to be pleased for themselves, with their own natural vein ; and preferred a freedom of original humour and inven tion incompatible with regular productions, but which in- spired admirable actors, and secured full audiences.
Men of great genius had a passion for performing in these extemporal comedies. Salvator Rosa was famous for his character of a Calabrian clown ; whose original he had prob- ably often studied amidst that mountainous scenery in which his pencil delighted. Of their manner of acting I find an in- teresting anecdote in Passeri's life of this great painter ; he shall tell his own story.
" One summer Salvator Rosa joined a company of young persons who were curiously addicted to the making of com
* Storia Critica del Teatri de Signorelli, torn. iii. 258.— Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand dramas, made by Apostolo Zeno, of which the greater part were comedies. He allows that in tragedies his nation is inferior to the English and the French; but "no nation," he adds " can be compared uith us for pleasantry and humour in comedy." Some of the great- est names in Italian literature wei-e writers of comedy. Ital. Lib. 119.
VOL. II. 20
306 EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES.
medie all ' improviso. In the midst of a vineyard they raised a rustic stage, under the direction of one Mussi, who enjoyed some literary reputation, particularly for his sermons preached in Lent.
" Their second comedy was numerously attended, and I went among the rest ; I sat on the same bench, by good fortune, with the Cavalier Bernini, Romanelli, and Guido, all well- known persons. Salvator Rosa, who had already made him- self a favourite with the Roman people under the character of Formica,* opened with a prologue, in company with other actors. He proposed, for relieving themselves of the extreme heats and ennui, that they should make a comedy, and all agreed. Formica then spoke these exact words :
" Non boglio gia, che facimmo commedie come cierti, che taglia.no li panni aduosso a chisto, o a chillo ; perche co lo tiempo sefa vedere chiu veloce lo taglio de no rasuolo, che la penna de no poeta ; e ne manco boglio, che facimmo venire nella scena porla, citazioni, acquavitari, e crapari, e ste chif- enze che tengo spropositi da aseno."
One part of this humour lies in the dialect, which is Vene* tian ; but there was a concealed stroke of satire, a snake in the grass. The sense of the passage is, " I will not, however, that we should make a comedy like certain persons who cut clothes, and put them on this man's back, and on that man's back ; for at last the time comes which shows how much faster went the cut of the shears than the pen of the poet ; nor will we have entering on the scene, couriers, brandy-sellers and goat-herds, and there stare shy and blockish, which I tliink worthy the senseless invention of an ass."
Passeri now proceeds : "At this time Bernini had made a comedy in the Carnival, very pungent and biting; and that summer he had one of Castelli's performed in the suburbs^ where, to represent the dawn of day, appeared on the stage water-carriers, couriers, and goat-herds, going about — all
* Altieri explains Formica as a crabbed fellow who acts the butt iaa farce.
EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES. 307
which is contrary to rule, which allows of no character who is not concerned in the dialogue to mix with the groups. At these words of the Formica, I, who well knew his meaning, instantly glanced my eye at Bernini, to observe his move- ments ; but he, with an artificial carelessness, showed that this * cut of the shears ' did not touch him ; and he made no ap- parent show of being hurt. But Castelli, who was also near, tossing his head and smiling in bitterness, showed clearly that he was hit."
This Italian story, told with all the poignant relish of these vivacious natives, to whom such a stinging incident was an important event, also shows the personal freedoms taken on these occasions by a man of genius, entirely in the spirit of the ancient Roman Atellana, or the Grecian Satyra.
Riccoboni has discussed the curious subject of Extemporal Comedy with equal modesty and feeling ; and Gherardi, with more exultation and egotism. " This kind of spectacle" says Riccoboni, " is peculiar to Italy ; one cannot deny that it has graces perfectly its own, and which written Comedy can never exhibit. This impromptu mode of acting furnishes op- portunities for a perpetual change in the performance, so that the same scenario repeated still appears a new one : thus one Comedy may become twenty Comedies. An actor of this description, always supposing an actor of genius, is more vividly affected than one who has coldly got his part by rote." But Riccoboni could not deny that there were inconveniencies in this singular art. One difficulty not easily surmounted was Ihe preventing of all the actors speaking together ; each one eager to reply before the other had finished. It was a nice point to know when to yield up the scene entirely to a pre- dominant character, when agitated by violent passion ; nor did it require a less exercised tact to feel when to stop ; the vanity of an actor often spoiled a fine scene.
It evidently required that some of the actors at least should be blessed with genius, and what is scarcely less dif- ficult to find, with a certain equality of talents ; for the per-
308 EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES.
formance of the happiest actor of this school greatly depends on the excitement he receives from his companion ; an actor beneath mediocrity would ruin a piece. " But figure, mem- ory, voice, and even sensibility, are not sufficient for the actor aW improvista ; he must be in the habit of culthat- ing the imagination, pouring forth the flow of expression, and prompt in those flashes which instantaneously vibrate in the plaudits of an audience." And this accomplished 2xtemporal actor feelingly laments that those destined to his profession, who require the most careful education, are likely to have re- ceived the most neglected one. Lucian, in his curious treatise on Tragic Pantomime, asserts that the great actor should also be a man of letters, and such were Garrick and Kemble.
The lively Gherardi throws out some curious information respecting this singular art : "Any one may leam a part by rote, and do something bad, or indifferent, on another theatre. With us the affair is quite otherwise ; and when an Italian actor dies, it is with infinite difficulty we can supply his place. An Italian actor learns nothing by head ; he looks on the subject for a moment before he comes forward on the stage, and entirely depends on his imagination for the rest. The actor who is accustomed merely to recite what he has been taught is so completely occupied by his memory, that he appears to stand, as it were, unconnected either with the audience or his companion ; he is so impatient to deliver him- self of the burden he is carrying, that he trembles like a school-boy, or is as senseless as an Echo, and could never speak if others had not spoken before. Such a tutored actor among us would be like a paralytic arm to a body ; an un- serviceable member, only fatiguing tfce healthy action of the sound parts. Our performers, who became illustrious by their art, charmed the spectators by the beauty of their voice, their spontaneous gestures, the flexibility of their passions, while a certain natural air never failed them in their motions and their dialogue."
Here, then, is a species of the histrionic art unknown to us,
EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES. 309
and running counter to that critical canon which our great poet, but not powerful actor, has delivered to the actors them- selves, " to speak no more than is set down for them." The present art consisted in happily performing the reverse.
Much of the merit of these actors unquestionably must be attributed to the felicity of the national genius. But there were probably some secret aids in this singular art of Ex- temporal Comedy which the pride of the artist has concealed. Some traits in the character, and some wit in the dialogue, might descend traditionally ; and the most experienced actor on that stage would make use of his memory more than he was willing to confess. Goldoni records an unlucky adven- ture of his " Harlequin Lost and Found," which outline he had sketched for the Italian company ; it was well received at Paris, but utterly failed at Fontainebleau, for some of the actors had thought proper to incorporate too many jokes of the " Cocu Imaginaire," which displeased the court, and ruined the piece. When a new piece was to be performed, the chief actor summoned the troop in the morning, read the plot, and explained the story, to contrive scenes. It was like playing the whole performance before the actors. These hints of scenes were all the rehearsal. When the actor entered on the scene he did not know what was to come, nor had he any prompter to help him on : much, too, depended on the talents of his companions ; yet sometimes a scene might be preconcerted. Invention, humour, bold conception of character, and rapid strokes of genius, they habitually ex- ercised— and the pantomimic arts of gesture, the passionate or humorous expression of their feelings, would assist an actor when his genius for a moment had deserted him. Such excellence was not long hereditary, and in the decline of this singular art its defects became more apparent. The race had degenerated ; the inexperienced actor became loqua- cious ; long monologues were contrived by a barren genius to hide his incapacity for spirited dialogue ; and a wearisome repetition of trivial jests, coarse humour, and vulgar buf-
310 EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES.
foonery, damned the Commedia a soggetto, and sunk it to a Bartholomew-fair play. But the miracle which genius pro- duced it may repoat, whenever the same happy combination of circumstances and persons shall occur together.
I shall give one anecdote to record the possible excellence of the art. Louis Riccoboni, known in the annals of this theatre by the adopted name of Lelio, his favourite amoroso character, was not only an accomplished actor, but a literary man ; and with his wife Flaminia, afterwards the celebrated novelist, displayed a rare union of talents and of minds. It was suspected that they did not act alV improvista, from the facility and the elegance of their dialogue ; and a clamour was now raised in the literary circles, who had long been jealous of the fascination which attracted the public to the Italian theatre. It was said that the Riccobonis were imposing on the public credulity ; and that their pretended Extemporal Comedies were preconcerted scenes. To terminate this civil war between the rival theatres, La Motte offered to sketch a plot in five acts, and the Italians were challenged to perform it. This defiance was instantly accepted. On the morning of the representation Lelio detailed the story to his troop, hung up the Scenario in its usual place, and the whole com- pany was ready at the drawing of the curtain. The plot given in by La Motte was performed to admiration ; and all Paris witnessed the triumph. La Motte afterwards com- posed this very comedy for the French theatre, L'Amante difficile, yet still the extemporal one at the Italian theatre remained a more permanent favourite ; and the public were delighted by seeing the same piece perpetually offering nov- elties and changing its character at the fancy of the actors. This fact conveys an idea of dramatic execution which does not enter into our experience. Riccoboni carried the Com- medie delF Arte to a new perfection, by the introduction of an elegant fable and serious characters ; and he raised the dignity of the Italian stage, when he inscribed on its curtain,
" CASTIGAT RIDENDO MORES."
MAS SINGER, MILTON, AND THE ITALIAN THEATRE. 3H
MASSINGER, MILTON, AND THE ITALIAN THEATRE
THE pantomimic characters and the extemporal comedy of Italy may have had some influence even on our own dramatic poets: this source has indeed escaped all notice; yet I in- cline to think it explains a difficult point in Massinger, which has baffled even the keen spirit of Mr. Gifford.
A passage in Massinger bears a striking resemblance with one in Moliere's " Malade Imaginaire." It is in " The Em- peror of the East/' vol. iii. 317. The Quack or " Empiric's " humorous notion is so closely that of Moliere's, that Mr. Gifford, agreeing with Mr. Gilchrist, " finds it difficult to be- lieve the coincidence accidental ; " but the great difficulty is, to conceive that " Massinger ever fell into Moliere's hands.'* At that period, in the infancy of our literature, our native authors and our own language were as insulated as their country. It is more than probable that Massinger and Mo- liere had drawn from the same source — the Italian Comedy. Massinger's " Empiric," as well as the acknowledged copy of Moliere's " Medecin," came from the " Dottore " of the Ital- ian Comedy. The humour of these old Italian pantomimes was often as traditionally preserved as proverbs. Massinger was a student of Italian authors ; and some of the lucky hits of their theatre, which then consisted of nothing else but these burlesque comedies, might have circuitously reached the English bard ; and six-and-thirty years afterwards, the same traditional jests might have been gleaned by the Gallic one from the " Dottore," who was still repeating what he knew was sure of pleasing. Our theatres of the Elizabethan pe- riod seem to have had here the extemporal comedy after the manner of the Italians ; we surely possess one of these Scena- rios, in the remarkable " Platts," which were accidentally dis- covered at Dulwich College, bearing every feature of an Italian Scenario. Steevens calls them " a mysterious frag-
312 MASSINGEB, MILTON, AND THE ITALIAN THEATRE,
ment of ancient stage direction," and adds, that " the paper describes a species of dramatic entertainment of which no memorial is preserved in any annals of the English stage." * The commentators on Shakspeare appear not to have known the nature of these Scenarios. The " Platt," as it is called, is fairly written in a large hand, containing directions ap- pointed to be stuck up near the prompter's station ; and it has even an oblong hole in its centre to admit of being sus- pended on a wooden peg. Particular scenes are barely or- dered, and the names, or rather nick-names, of several of the players, appear in the most familiar manner, as they were known to their companions in the rude green-room of that day ; such as " Pigg, White and Black Dick and Sam, Little Will Barne, Jack Gregory, and the Red-faced Fellow." Some of these " Platts " are on solemn subjects, like the tragic pantomime ; and in some appear " Pantaloon, and his man Peascod, with spectacles.'1 Steevens observes, that he met with no earlier example of the appearance of Panta- loon, as a specific character on our stage ; and that this direc- tion concerning "the spectacles" cannot fail to remind the reader of a celebrated passage in "As You Like It : "
" The lean and slipper'd Pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose ."
Perhaps, he adds, Shakspeare alludes to this personage, as habited in his own time. The old age of Pantaloon is marked by his leanness, and his spectacles and his slippers. He always runs after Harlequin, but cannot catch him ; as he runs in slippers and without spectacles, is liable to pass him by without seeing him. Can we doubt that this Pantaloon had come from the Italian theatre, after what we have already said ? Does not this confirm the conjecture, that there existed an intercourse between the Italian theatre and our own? Farther, Tarleton the comedian, and others, celebrated for
* I refer the reader to Steevens's edition, 1793, vol. ii. p. 495, for a sight of these literary curiosities.
MASSINGER, MILTON, AND THE ITALIAN THEATRE. 313
their *•" extemporal wit," was the writer or inventor of one of these " Platts." Stowe records of one of our actors that " he had a quick, delicate, refined, extemporal wit." And of another, that " he had a wondrous, plentiful, pleasant, extern- poral wit." These actors, then, who were in the habit of exercising their impromptus, resembled those who performed in the unwritten comedies of the Italians. Gabriel Harvey, the Aristarchus of the day, compliments Tarleton for having brought forward a new species of dramatic exhibition. If this compliment paid to Tarleton merely alludes to his dex- terity at extemporaneous wit in the character of the clown, as my friend Mr. Douce thinks, this, would be sufficient to show that he was attempting to introduce on our stage the extem- poral comedy of the Italians, which Gabriel Harvey distin- guishes as " a new species." As for these " Platts," which I shall now venture to call " Scenarios," they surprise by their bareness, conveying no notion of the piece itself, though quite sufficient for the actors. They consist of mere exits and entrances of the actors, and often the real names of the actors are familiarly mixed with those of the dramatis per- sonce. Steevens has justly observed, however, on these skele- tons, that although " the drift of these dramatic pieces cannot be collected from the mere outlines before us, yet we must not charge them with absurdity. Even the scenes of Shak- speare would have worn as unpromising an aspect, had their skeletons only been discovered." The printed scenarios of the Italian theatre were not more intelligible ; exhibiting only the hints for scenes.
Thus, I think, we have sufficient evidence of an intercourse subsisting between the English and Italian theatres, not hith- erto suspected ; and I find an allusion to these Italian panto- mimes, by the great town-wit Tom Nash, in his " Pierce Pen- nilesse," which shows that he was well acquainted with their nature. He indeed exults over them, observing that our plays are " honourable and full of gallant resolution, not con- sisting, like theirs, of pantaloon, a zany, and a w — e, (alluding
314 MASS1NGER, MILTON, AND THE ITALIAN THEATRE.
to the women actors of the Italian stage ; *) but of emperors, kings, and princes." My conviction is still confirmed, when I find that Stephen Gosson wrote the comedy of " Captain Mario ; " it has not been printed, but " Captain Mario " is one of the Italian characters.
Even at a later period, the influence of these performances reached the greatest name in the English Parnassus. One of the great actors and authors of these pieces, who pub- lished eighteen of these irregular productions, was Andreini, whose name must have the honour of being associated with Milton's, for it was his comedy or opera which threw the first spark of the Paradise Lost into the soul of the epic poet — a circumstance which will hardly be questioned by those who have examined the different schemes and allegorical person- ages of the first projected drama of Paradise Lost : nor was Andreini, as well as many others of this race of Italian dramatists, inferior poets. The Adamo of Andreini was a personage sufficiently original and poetical to serve as the model of the Adam of Milton. The youthful English poet, at its representation, carried it away in his mind. Wit indeed is a great traveller ; and thus also the " Empiric " of Massinger might have reached us, from the Bolognese " Dottore."
The late Mr. Hole, the ingenious writer on the Arabian Nights, observed to me that Moliere, it must be presumed, never read Fletcher's plays, yet his " Bourgeois Gentilhomme " and the other's " Noble Gentleman " bear in some instances a great resemblance. Both may have drawn from the same Italian source of comedy which I have here indicated.
Many years after this article was written, has appeared " The History of English Dramatic Poetry," by Mr. Collier. That very laborious investigator has an article on " Extem- poral Plays and Plots," iii. 393. The nature of these " plats " or " plots " he observes, " our theatrical antiquaries have not
* Women were first introduced on the Italian stage about 1560— it waa therefore an extraordinary novelty in Nash's time.
SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE. 315
explained." The truth is that they never suspected theii origin in the Italian " scenarios." My conjectures are amply confirmed by Mr. Collier's notices, of the intercourse of our players with the Italian actors. Whetstone's Heptameron, in 1582, mentions " the comedians of Ravenna, who are not tied to any written device" In Kyd's Spanish Tragedy the extemporal art is described : —
" The Italian tragedians were so sharp of wit, That in one hour of meditation They would perform any thing in action."
These extemporal players were" witnessed much nearer than in Italy — at the Theatre des Italiens, at Paris — for one of the characters replies,
" I have seen the like, In Paris, among the French tragedians."
Ben Jonson has mentioned the Italian " extemporal plays," in his " Case is altered;" and an Italian com mediante and his company were in London in 1578, who probably let our players into many a secret.
SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE.
MEN of genius have devoted some of their hours, and even governments have occasionally assisted, to render the people happier by song and dance. The Grecians had songs appro- priated to the various trades. Songs of this nature would shorten the manufacturer's tedious task-work, and solace the artisan at his solitary occupation. A beam of gay fancy kind- ling his mind, a playful change of measures delighting his ear, even a moralizing verse to cherish his better feelings — these ingeniously adapted to each profession, and some to the display of patriotic characters, and national events, would contribute something to public happiness. Such themes are
316 SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE.
worthy of a patriotic bard, of the Southeys for their hearts, and the Moores for their verse.
Fletcher of Saltoun said, " If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make all the laws of a nation." The character of a people is preserved in their national songs. " God save the king " and " Rule Britannia" were long our English national airs.
*• The story of Amphion building Thebes with his lyre was not a fable," says Dr. Clarke. " At Thebes, in the harmo- nious adjustment of those masses which remain belonging to the ancient walls, we saw enough to convince us that this story was no fable ; for it was a very ancient custom to carry on immense labour by an accompaniment of music and sing- ing. The custom still exists both in Egypt and Greece. It might, therefore, be said that the Walls of Thebes were built at the sound of the only musical instrument then in use ; be- cause, according to the custom of the country, the lyre was necessary for the accomplishment of the work." * The same custom appears to exist in Africa. Lander notices at Yaoorie that the " labourers in their plantations were attended by a drummer, that they might be excited by the sound of his instrument to work well and briskly."
Athenaeus f has preserved the Greek names of different songs as sung by various trades, but unfortunately none of the songs themselves. There was a song for the corn-grind- ers ; another for the workers in wool ; another for the weav- ers. The reapers had their carol ; the herdsmen had a song which an ox-driver of Sicily had composed ; the kneaders, and the bathers, and the galley-rowers, were not without their chant. We have ourselves a song of the weavers, which Ritson has preserved in his " Ancient Songs ; " and it may be found in the popular chap-book of " The Life of Jack of Newbury ; " and the songs of anglers, of old Izaak Walton, and Charles Cotton, still retain their freskness.
* Dr. Clarke's Travels, vol. iv. p. 56. f Deip. lib. xiv. cap. iii.
SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE. 317
Among the Greeks, observed Bishop Heber, the hymn which placed Harmodius in the green and flowery island of the Blessed, was chanted by the potter to his wheel, and en- livened the labours of the Pirsean mariner.
Dr. Johnson is the only writer I recollect who has noticed something of this nature which he observed in the High- lands. " The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modu- lation of the harvest song, in which all their voices were united. They accompany every action which can be done in equal time with an appropriate strain, which has, they say, not much meaning, but its effects are regularity and cheerful- ness. There is an oar song used by the Hebrideans."
But if these chants " have not much meaning," they will not produce the desired effect of touching the heart, as well as giving vigour to the arm of the labourer. The gondoliers of Venice while away their long midnight hours on the water with the stanzas of Tasso. Fragments of Homer are sung by the Greek sailors of the Archipelago ; the severe labour of the trackers, in China, is accompanied with a song which encourages their exertions, and renders these simultaneous. Mr. Ellis mentions that the sight of the lofty pagoda of Tong- chow served as a great topic of incitement in the song of the trackers, toiling against the stream, to their place of rest. The canoemen, on the Gold Coast, in a very dangerous pas- sage, " on the back of a high curling wave, paddling with all their might, singing or rather shouting their wild song, follow it up," says M4Leod, who was a lively witness of this happy combination of song, of labour, and of peril, which he ac- knowledged was "a very terrific process." Our sailors at Newcastle, in heaving their anchors, have their " Heave and ho ! rum-below ! " but the Sicilian mariners must be more deeply affected by their beautiful hymn to the Virgin. A society, instituted in Holland for general good, do not consider among their least useful projects that of having printed at a low price a collection of songs for sailors.
It is extremely pleasing, as it is true, to notice the honest
318 SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE,
exultation of an excellent ballad-writer, C. Dibdin, in hig Professional Life. " I have learnt my songs have been con- sidered as an object of national consequence ; that they have been the solace of sailors and long voyagers, in storms, in battle ; and that they have been quoted in mutinies, to the restoration of order and discipline." The Portuguese soldiery in Ceylon, at the siege of Colombo, when pressed with misery find the pangs of hunger, during their marches, derived not only consolation but also encouragement, by rehearsing the stanzas of the Lusiad.
We ourselves have been a great ballad nation, and once abounded with songs of the people ; not, however, of this par- ticular species, but rather of narrative poems. They are described by Puttenham, a critic in the reign of Elizabeth, as " small and popular songs, sung by those Cantabanqui, upon benches and barrels' heads, where they have no other audi- ence than boys, or country fellows that pass by them hi the streets ; or else by blind harpers, or such like tavern minstrels, that give a fit of mirth for a groat." Such were these " Re- liques of ancient English Poetry," which Selden collected, Pepys preserved, and Percy published. Ritson, our great poetical antiquary in this sort of things, says that few are older than the reign of James I. The more ancient songs of the people perished by having been printed in single sheets, and by their humble purchasers having no other library to preserve them than the walls on which they pasted them. Those we have consist of a succeeding race of ballads, chiefly revived or written by Richard Johnson, the author of the well-known romance of the Seven Champions, and Delony, the writer of Jack of Newbury's Life, and the " Gentle Craft," who lived in the time of James and Charles. One Martin Parker was a most notorious ballad scribbler in the reign of Charles I. and the Protector.
These writers, in their old age, collected their songs into little penny books, called " Garlands," some of which have been republished by Ritson ; and a recent editor has well
SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE. 319
described them as " humble and amusing village strains, founded upon the squabbles of a wake, tales of untrue love, superstitious rumours, or miraculous traditions of the hamlet." They enter into the picture of our manners, as much as folio chronicles.
These songs abounded in the good old times of Elizabeth and James ; for Hall in Ms Satires notices them as
" Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the payle; "
that is, sung by maidens spinning, or milking ; and indeed Shakspeare had described them as " old and plain," chanted by
" The spinsters, and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids that weave their threads with bones."
Twelfth Night.
They were the favourites of the Poet of Nature, who takes every opportunity to introduce them into the mouths of his clown, his fool, and his itinerant Autolycus. When the musi- cal Dr. Burney, who had probably not the slightest concep- tion of their nature, and perhaps as little taste for their rude and wild simplicity, ventured to call the songs of Autolycus, " two nonsensical songs," the musician called down on himself one of the bitterest notes from Steevens that ever commenta- tor penned against a profane scoffer.*
Whatever these songs were, it is evident they formed a source of recreation to the solitary task- worker. But as the more masculine trades had their own songs, whose titles only appear to have reached us, such as " The Carman's Whistle," " Watkin's Ale," " Chopping Knives," they were probably appropriated to the respective trades they indicate. The tune of the "Carman's Whistle" was composed by Bird,
* Dr. Barney subsequently observed, that u this rogue Autolycus is the true ancient Minstrel in the old Fabliaux; " on which Steevens remarks, " Many will push the comparison a little further, and concur with me in thinking that our modern minstrels of the opera, like their predecessor Autolycus, are pickpockets as well as singers of nonsensical ballads." — Steevens's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 107, his own edition, 1793.
320 SONGS OF TRADES, OB SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE.
and the favourite tune of " Queen Elizabeth " may be found in the collection called " Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book." One who has lately heard it played says, that " it has more air than the other execrable compositions in her Majesty's book, something resembling a French quadrille."
The feeling our present researches would excite would naturally be most strongly felt in small communities, where the interest of the governors is to contribute to the individual happiness of the laborious classes. The Helvetic society requested Lavater to compose the Schweitzerlieder, or Swiss Songs, which are now sung by the youth of many of the cantons ; and various Swiss poets have successfully composed on national subjects, associated with their best feelings. In such paternal governments as was that of Florence under the Medici, we find that songs and dances for the people engaged the muse of Lorenzo, who condescended to delight them with pleasant songs composed in popular language ; the example of such a character was followed by the men of genius of the age. These ancient songs, often adapted to the different trades, opened a vein of invention in the new characters, and allusions, the humorous equivoques, and, sometimes, by the licentiousness of popular fancy. They were collected in 1559, under the title of " Canti Camascialeschi," and there is a modern edition, in 1750, in two volumes quarto. It is said they sing to this day a popular one by Lorenzo, be- ginning
" Ben venga Maggio E '1 gonfalon selvaggio,*
which has all the florid brilliancy of an Italian spring.
The most delightful songs of this nature would naturally be found among a people whose climate and whose labours alike inspire a general hilarity ; and the vineyards of France have produced a class of songs, of excessive gaiety and freedom, called Chansons de Vendange. Le Grand-d'Assoucy describes
* Mr. Roscoe has printed this very delightful song in the Life of Lorenzo No. xli. App.
SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE. 321
them in his Histoire de la Vie privee des Franqais. " The men arid women, each with a basket on their arm, assemble at the foot of the hill ; there stopping, they arrange them- selves in a circle. The chief of this band tunes up a joyous song, whose burden is chorused : then they ascend, and, dis- persed in the vineyard, they work without interrupting their tasks, while new couplets often resound from some of the vine-dressers ; sometimes intermixed with a sudden jest at a traveller. In the evening, their suppers scarcely over, their joy recommences, they dance in a circle, and sing some of those songs of free gaiety, which the moment excuses, known by the name of vineyard songs. The gaiety becomes gen- eral ; masters, guests, friends, servants, all dance together ; and in this manner a day of labour terminates, which one might mistake for a day of diversion. It is what I have wit- nessed in Champagne, in a land of vines, far different from the country where the labours of the harvest form so painful a contrast."
The extinction of those songs which formerly kept alive the gaiety of the domestic circle, whose burdens were always chorused, is lamented by the French antiquary. " Our fathers had a custom to amuse themselves at the desert of a feast by a joyous song of this nature. Each in his turn sung — all chorused." This ancient gaiety was sometimes gross and noisy ; but he prefers it to the tame decency of our times — these smiling, not laughing days of Lord Chesterfield.
" On ne rit plus, on sourit aujourd'hui ; Et nos plaisirs sont voisins de 1'ennui."
These are the old French Vaudevilles, formerly sung at meals by the company. Count de Grammont is mentioned by Hamilton as being
" Agitable et vif en propos; Celebre diseur de bon mots, JRecueil vivant d1 antiques Vaudevilles."
These Vaudevilles were originally invented by a fuller of VOL. 11. 21
322 SONGS OF TRADES, OR SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE.
Van de Vire, or the valley by the river Vire, and were sung by his men as they spread their cloths on the banks of the river. They were songs composed on some incident or ad- venture of the day. At first these gay playful effusions were called the songs of Van de Vire, till they became known as Vaudevilles. Boileau has well described them : —
" La libert^ frai^oise en see vers se de"ploie ; Cet enfant de plaisir veut naitre dans la joie."
It is well known how the attempt ended, of James I. and his unfortunate son, by the publication of their " Book of Sports," to preserve the national character from the gloom of fanatical puritanism ; among its unhappy effects there was however one not a little ludicrous. The Puritans, offended by the gentlest forms of mirth, and every day becoming more sullen, were so shocked at the simple merriment of the people, that they contrived to parody these songs into spiritual ones ; and Shakspeare speaks of the Puritan of his day " singing psalms to hornpipes." As Puritans are the same in all times, the Methodists in our own repeated the foolery, and set their hymns to popular tunes and jigs, which one of them said "were too good for the devil." They have sung hymns to the air of " The beds of sweet roses," &c. Wesley once, in the pulpit, described himself in his old age, in the well known ode of Anacreon, by merely substituting his own name ! There have been Puritans among other people as well as our own : the same occurrence took place both in Italy and France. In Italy, the Carnival songs were turned into pious hymns ; the hymn Jesufammi morire is sung to the music of
Vaga bella e gentile — Crucifisso a capo chino to that of Una donna d'amor jino, one of the most indecent pieces in the
Canzoni a ballo ; and the hymn beginning
" Ecco '1 Messia E la Madre Maria,"
was sung to the gay tune of Lorenzo de' Medici,
" Ben venga Maggio, E '1 goiifalon, selvaggio."
SONGS OF TKADES, OR SONGS FOR THF PEOPLE. 323
Athenaeus notices what we call slang or flash songs. He tells us that there were poets who composed songs in the dia- lect of the mob ; and who succeeded in this kind of poetry, adapted to their various characters. The French called such songs Chansons a la Vade ; the style of the Poissardes is ludicrously applied to the gravest matters of state, and con- vey the popular feelings in the language of the populace. This sort of satirical song is happily defined,
" II est 1'esprit de ceux qui n'en ont pas."
Athenaeus has also preserved songs, sung by petitioners who went about on holidays to collect alms. A friend of mine, with taste and learning, has discovered in his re- searches " The Crow Song " and " The Swallow Song," and has transfused their spirit in a happy version. I preserve a few striking ideas.
The collectors for " The Crow " sung :
" My good worthy masters, a pittance bestow, Some oatmeal, or barley, or wheat for the Grata. A loaf, or a penny, or e'en what you will; — From the poor man, a grain of his salt may suffice, For your Crow swallows all, and is not over-nice. And the man who can now give his grain, and no more, May another day give from a plentiful store. — Come, my lad, to the door, Plutus nods to our wish, And our sweet little mistress comes out with a dish ; She gives us her figs, and she gives us a smile — Heaven send her a husband ! — And a boy to be danced on his grandfather's knee, And a girl like herself all the joy of her mother, Who may one day present her with just such another.
Thus we carry our Crow-song to door after door, Alternately chanting we ramble along, And we treat all who give, or give not, with a song."
Swallow-singing, or Chelidonizing, as the Greek term is, was another method of collecting eleemosynary gifts, which took place in the month Boedromion, or August.
" The Swallow, the Swallow is here, With his back so black, and his belly so white, He brings on the pride of the year,
324 INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, ETC.
With the gay months of love, and the days of delight.
Come bring out your good humming stuff,
Of the nice tit-bits let the Swallow partake;
And a slice of the right Boedromion cake.
So give, and give quickly, —
Or •we'll pull down the door from its hinges:
Or we'll steal young madam away !
But see! we're a merry boy's party,
And the Swallow, the Swallow, is here! "
These songs resemble those of our own ancient mummers, who to this day, in honour of Bishop Blaize, the Saint of Woolcombers, go about chanting on the ev«s of their holi- days. A custom long existed in this country to elect a Boy- Bishop in almost every parish ; the Montem at Eton still prevails for the Boy- Captain ; and there is a closer connection, perhaps, between the custom which produced the " Songs of the Crow and the Swallow," and our Northern mummeries, than may be at first suspected. The Pagan Saturnalia, which the Swallow song by its pleasant menaces resembles, were afterwards disguised in the forms adopted by the early Christians ; and such are the remains of the Roman Catholic religion, in which the people were long indulged in their old taste for mockery and mummery. I must add in connection with our main inquiry, that our own ancient beggars had their songs, in their old cant language, some of which are as old as the Elizabethan period, and many are fancifully char- acteristic of their habits and their feelings.
INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, FRUITS, ETC.
THERE has been a class of men whose patriotic affection, or whose general benevolence, have been usually defrauded of the gratitude their country owes them : these have been the introducers of new flowers, new plants, and new roots into Europe ; the greater part which we now enjoy was drawn from the luxuriant climates of Asia, and the profusion which
INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, ETC. 325
now covers our land originated in the most anxious nursing, and were the gifts of individuals. Monuments are reared, and medals struck, to commemorate events and names, which are less deserving our regard than those who have trans- planted into the colder gardens of the North the rich fruits, die beautiful flowers, and the succulent pulse and roots of more favoured spots ; and carrying into their own country, as it were, another Nature, they have, as old Gerard well ex- presses it, " laboured with the soil to make it fit for the plants, and with the plants to make them delight in the soil."
There is no part of the characters of PEIRESC and EVELYN, accomplished as they are in so many, which seems more delightful to me, than their enthusiasm for the garden, the orchard, and the forest.
PEIRESC, whose literary occupations admitted of no inter- ruption, and whose universal correspondence throughout the habitable globe was more than sufficient to absorb his studious life, yet was the first man, as Gassendus relates in his inter- esting manner, whose incessant inquiries procured a great variety of jessamines ; those from China, whose leaves, always green, bear a clay-coloured flower, and a delicate perfume ; the American, with a crimson-coloured, and the Persian, with a violet-coloured flower ; and the Arabian, whose tendrils he delighted to train over " the banqueting-house in his garden ; " and of fruits, the orange-trees with a red and parti-coloured flower; the medlar; the rough cherry without stone; the rare and luxurious vines of Smyrna and Damascus ; and the fig-tree called Adam's, whose fruit by its size was conjectured to be that with which the spies returned from the land of Canaan. Gassendus describes the transports of Peiresc, when the sage beheld the Indian ginger growing green in his garden, and his delight in grafting the myrtle on the musk vine, that the experiment might show us the myrtle wine of the ancients. But transplanters, like other inventors, are sometimes baffled in their delightful enterprises ; and we are told of Peiresc's deep regret when he found that the Indian
326 INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, ETC.
cocoa nut would only bud, and then perish in the cold air of France, while the leaves of the Egyptian papyrus refused to yield him their vegetable paper. But it was his garden which propagated the exotic fruits and flowers, which her transplanted into the French king's, and into Cardinal Bar- berini's, and the curious in Europe ; and these occasioned a work on the manuring of flowers by Ferrarius, a botanical Jesuit, who there described these novelties to Europe.
Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his " Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees," his name would have ex- cited the gratitude of posterity. The voice of the patriot exults in the dedication to Charles II. prefixed to one of the later editions. " I need not acquaint your majesty, how many millions of timber-trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted throughout your vast dominions, at the instigation and by the sole direction of this work, be- cause your majesty has been pleased to own it publicly for my encouragement." And surely while Britain retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the " Sylva " of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius of the nation, and who, casting a prophetic eye towards the age in which we live, contributed to secure- our sovereignty of the seas. The present navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted !
Animated by a zeal truly patriotic, De Serres in France, 1599, composed a work on the art of raising silk-worms, and dedicated it to the municipal body of Paris, to excite the inhabitants to cultivate mulberry-trees. The work at first produced a strong sensation, and many planted mulberry-trees in the vicinity of Paris ; but as they were not yet used to raise and manage the silk-worm, they reaped nothing but their trouble for their pains. They tore up the mulberry- trees they had planted, and, in spite of De Serres, asserte<J that the northern climate was not adapted for the rearing of that tender insect. The great Sully, from his hatred of all
INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, ETC. 327
objects of luxury, countenanced the popular clamour, and crushed the rising enterprise of De Serres. The monarch was wiser than the minister. The book had made sufficient noise to reach the ear of Henry IV. ; who desired the author to draw up a memoir on the subject, from which the king was induced to plant mulberry-trees in all the royal gardens ; and having imported the eggs of silk-worms from Spain, this patriotic monarch gave up his orangeries, which he considered but as his private gratification, for that leaf which, converted into silk, became a part of the national wealth. It is to De Serres, who introduced the plantations of mulberry- trees, that the commerce of France owes one of her staple com- modities ; and although the patriot encountered the hostility of the prime minister, and the hasty prejudices of the popu- lace in his own day, yet his name at this moment is fresh in the hearts of his fellow-citizens ; for I have just received a medal, the gift of a literary friend from Paris, which bears his portrait, with the reverse, "Societe de Agriculture du De- partement de la Seine." It was struck in 1807. The same honour is the right of Evelyn from the British nation.
There was a period when the spirit of plantation was prevalent in this kingdom ; it probably originated from the ravages of the soldiery during the civil wars. A man, whose retired modesty has perhaps obscured his claims on our regard, the intimate friend of the great spirits of that age, by birth a Pole, but whose mother had probably been an Englishwoman,' Samuel Hartlib, to whom Milton addressed his tract on education, published every manuscript he collected on the subjects of horticulture and agriculture. The public good he effected attracted the notice of Cromwell, who rewarded him with a pension, which after the restoration of Charles II. was suffered to lapse, and Hartlib died in utter neglect and poverty. One of his tracts is "A design for plenty by an universal planting of fruit-trees." The project consisted in inclosing the waste lands and commons, and appointing officers, whom he calls fruiterers, or wood-wards,
328 INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, ETC.
to see the plantations were duly attended to. The writer of this project observes on fruits, that it is a sort of provisions so natural to the taste, that the poor man and even the child will prefer it before better food, " as the story goeth," which he has preserved in these ancient and simple lines : — " The poor man's child invited was to dine, With flesh of oxen, sheep, and fatted swine, (Far better cheer than he at home could find,) And yet this child to stay had little minde. Yo\i have, quoth he, no apple, froise, nor pie, Stewed pears, with bread and milk, and walnuts by."
The enthusiasm of these transplanters inspired their labours. They have watched the tender infant of their planting, till the leaf and the flowers and the fruit expanded under their hand; often indeed they have ameliorated the quality, increased the size, and even created a new species. The apricot, drawn from America, was first known in Europe in the sixteenth century : an old French writer has remarked, that it was originally not larger than a damson ; our gardeners, he says, have improved it to the perfection of its present size and richness. One of these enthusiasts is noticed by Evelyn, who for forty years had in vain tried by a graft to bequeathe his name to a new fruit ; but persisting on wrong principles this votary of Pomona has died without a name. We sympathize with Sir William Temple when he exultingly acquaints us with the size of his orange-trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and grapes, confessed by French- men to have equalled those of Fontainebleau and Gascony, while the Italians agreed that his white figs were as good as any of that sort in Italy ; and of his " having had the honour " to naturalize in this country four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distributions of cuttings from them, because " he ever thought all things of this kind the commoner they are the better."
The greater number of our exotic flowers and fruits were carefully transported into this country «t>y many of our travelled nobility and gentry ; some names have been casually
INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, ETC. 329
preserved. The learned Linacre first brought, on his return from Italy, the damask rose; and Thomas Lord Cromwell, in the reign of Henry VIIL, enriched our fruit gardens with three different plums. In the reign of Elizabeth, Edward Grindal, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, returning from exile, transported here the medicinal plant of the tamarisk : the first oranges appear to have been brought into England by one of the Carew family ; for a century after, they still flourished at the family seat at Beddington, in Surrey. The cherry orchards of Kent were first planted about Sittingbourne, by a gardener of Henry VIIL; and the currant-bush was transplanted when our commerce with the island of Zante was first opened in the same reign. The elder Tradescant, in 1 620, entered himself on board of a privateer, armed against Morocco, solely with a view of finding an opportunity of stealing apricots into Britain : and il appears that he succeeded in his design. To Sir Walter Raleigh we have not been indebted solely for the luxury of the tobacco-plant, but for that infinitely useful root, which forms a part of our daily meal, and often the entire meal of the poor man — the potato, which deserved to have been called a Rawleigh. Sir Anthony Ashley, of Winburne St. Giles, Dorsetshire, first planted cabbages in this country, and a cabbage at his feet appears on his monument : before his time we had them from Holland. Sir Richard Weston first brought clover grass into England from Flanders, in 1645 ; and the figs planted by Cardinal Pole at Lambeth, so far back as the reign of Henry VIIL, are said to be still re- maining there : nor is this surprising, for Spilman, who set up the first paper-mill in England, at Dartford, in 1590, is said to have brought over in his portmanteau the first two lime- trees, which he planted here, and which are still growing. The Lombardy poplar was introduced into England by the Earl of Rochford, in 175?. The first mulberry-trees in this country are now standing at Sion-house. By an Harleian MS. 6,884, we find that the first general planting of mul-
330 INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, ETC.
berries and making of silk in England was by William Stal- lenge, comptroller of the custom-house, and Monsieur Verton, in 1608. It is probable that Monsieur Verton transplanted this novelty from his own country, where we have seen De Serres's great attempt. Here the mulberries have .succeeds I better than the silk-worms.
The very names of many of our vegetable kingdom indi- cate their locality, from the majestic cedar of Lebanon, to the small Cos-lettuce, which came from the isle of Cos ; the cherries from Cerasuntis, a city of Pontus ; the peach, or persicum, or mala Persica, Persian apples, from Persia ; the pistachio, or psittacia, is the Syrian word for that nut. The chestnut, or chataigne, in French, and castagna in Italian, From Castagna, a town of Magnesia. Our plums coming chiefly from Syria and Damascus, the damson, or damascene plum, reminds us of its distant origin.
It is somewhat curious to observe on this subject, that there exists an unsuspected intercouse between nations, in the prop- agation of exotic plants. Lucullus, after the war with Mithridates, introduced cherries from Pontus into Italy ; and the newly-imported fruit was found so pleasing that it was rapidly propagated, and six-and-twenty years afterwards Pliny testifies the cherry-tree passed over into Britain. Thus a victory obtained by a Roman consul over a king of Pontus, with which it would seem that Britain could not have the re- motest interest, was the real occasion of our countrymen pos- sessing cherry-orchards. Yet to our shame must it be told, that these cherries from the king of Pontus's city of Ceras- untis are not the cherries we are now eating; for the whole race of cherry-trees was lost in the Saxon period, and was only restored by the gardener of Henry VIII., who brought them from Flanders — without a word to enhance his own merits, concerning the bellum Mithridaticum !
A calculating political economist will little sympathize with the peaceful triumphs of those active and generous spirits, who have thus propagated the truest wealth, and the most
INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, ETC. 331
innocent luxuries of the people. The project of a new tax, or an additional consumption of ardent spirits, or an act of parliament to put a convenient stop to population by forbid- ding the banns of some happy couple, would be more conge- nial to their researches ; and they would leave without regret the names of those, whom we have held out to the grateful recollections of their country. The Romans, who, with all their errors, were at least patriots, entertained very different notions of these introducers into their country of exotic fruits and "flowers. Sir William Temple has elegantly noticed the fact. " The great captains, and even consular men, who first brought them over, took pride in giving them their own names, by which they ran a great while in Rome, as in memory of some great service or pleasure they had done their country ; so that not only laws and battles, but several sorts of apples and pears, were called Manlian, and Claudian, Pompeyan and Tiberian, and by several other such noble names." Pliny has paid his tribute of applause to Lucullus, for bringing cherry and nut-trees from Pontus into Italy. And we have several modern instances, where the name of the transplanter, or rearer, has been preserved in this sort of creation. Peter Collinson, the botanist, to " whom the Eng- lish gardens are indebted for many new and curious species which he acquired by means of an extensive correspondence in America," was highly gratified when Linnaeus baptized a plant with his name ; and with great spirit asserts his honour- able claim : " Something, I think, was due to me for the great number of plants and seeds I have annually procured from abroad, and you have been so good as to pay it, by giving me a species of eternity, botanically speaking; that is, a name as long as men and books endure." Such is the true animating language of these patriotic enthusiasts !
Some lines at the close of Peacham's Emblems give an idea of an English fruit-garden in 1612. He mentions that cherries were not long known, and gives an origin to the name of filbert.
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u The Persian Peach, and fruitful Quince ; * And there the forward Almond grew,
With Cherries knowne no longer time since; The Winter Warden, orchard's pride;
The Philibert f that loves the vale, And red queen apple, J so en vide
Of school-boies, passing by the pale."
USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
A PERSON whose history will serve as a canvas to exhibi some scenes of the arts of the money-trader was one AUDLEY a lawyer, and a great practical philosopher, who concentrated his vigorous faculties in the science of the relative value of money. He flourished through the reigns of James I., Charles L, and held a lucrative office in the " court of wards," till that singular court was abolished at the time of the Resto- ration. In his own times he was called " The great Audley," an epithet so often abused, and here applied to the creation of enormous wealth. But there are minds of great capacity, concealed by the nature of their pursuits ; and the wealth of Audley may. be considered as the cloudy medium through which a bright genius shone, and which, had it been thrown into a nobler sphere of action, the " greatness " would have been less ambiguous.
Audley lived at a time when divines were proclaiming
* The quince comes from Sydon, a town of Crete, we are told by Le Grand, in his Vie prive"e des Francois, vol. i. p. 143; where may be found a list of the origin of most of our fruits.
f Peacham has here given a note. " The^fierf, so named of Pliilibert, a king of France, who caused by arte sundry kinds to be brought forth : as did a gardener of Otranto in Italic by cloue-gilliflowers, and carnations of such colours as we now see them."
J The queen-apple was probably thus distinguished in compliment to Elixabeth. In Moffet's " Health's Improvement," I find an account of apples which are st.id to have been " grafted upon a mulberry-stock, and ,hen wax thorough red as our queen apples, called by Ruellius, Rubdllana, and Claudiana by Pliny." I am told the race is not extinct ; but though an apple of this description may yet be found, it seems to have sadly de- generated.
USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 333
41 the "detestable sin of Usury," prohibited by God and man ; but the Mosaic prohibition was the municipal law of an agri- cultural commonwealth, which being without trade, the gen- eral poverty of its members could afford no interest for loans ; but it was not forbidden the Israelite to take usury from " the stranger." Or they were quoting from the Fathers, who un- derstood this point, much as they had that of " original sin/' and " the immaculate conception ; " while the scholastics amused themselves with a quaint and collegiate fancy which they had picked up in Aristotle, that interest for money had been forbidden by nature, because coin in itself was barren and unpropagating, unlike corn, of which every grain will produce many. But Audley considered no doubt that money was not incapable of multiplying itself, provided it was in hands which knew to make it grow and " breed," as Shylock affirmed. The lawyers then, however, did not agree with the divines, nor the college philosophers ; they were straining at a more liberal interpretation of this ,odious term " Usury." Lord Bacon declared, that the suppression of Usury is only fit for an Utopian government ; and Audley must have agreed with the learned Co well, who in his " Interpreter " derives the term ab usu et cere, quasi usu <zra, which in our vernac- ular style was corrupted into Usury. Whatever the sin might be in the eye of some, it had become at least a contro- versial sin, as Sir Symonds D'Ewes calls it, in his manuscript Diary, who however was afraid to commit it.* Audley, no
* D'Ewes's father lost a manor, which was recovered by the widow of the person who had sold it to him. Old D'Ewes considered this loss as a punishment for the usurious loan of money ; the fact is, that he had pur- chased that manor with the interests accumulating from the money lent on it. His son entreated him to give over " the practice of that controversial •m." This expression shows that even in that age there were rational po- litical economists. Jeremy Bentham, in his little treatise on Usury, offers just views, cleared from the indistinct and partial ones so long prevalent. Jeremy Collier has an admirable Essay on Usury, vol. iii. It is a curious notion of Lord Bacon that he would have interest at a lower rate in the country than in trading towns, because the merchant is besl. able to afford the highest.
S34 USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
doubt, considered that interest was nothing more than rent for money ; as rent was no better than Usury For land. The legal interest was then " ten in the hundred ; " but the thirty, the fifty, and the hundred for the hundred, the gripe of Usury, and the shameless contrivances of the money-traders, these he would attribute to the follies of others, or to his own genius.
This sage on tfce wealth of nations, with his pithy wisdom and quaint sagacity, began with two hundred pounds, and lived to view his mortgages, his statutes, and his judgments so numerous, that it was observed his papers would have made a good map of England. A contemporary dramatist, who copied from life, has opened the chamber of such an Usurer, —perhaps of our Audley.
" Here lay
A manor bound fast in a skin of parchment,
The wax continuing hard, the acres melting;
Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town,
If not redeem'd.this day, which is not in
The unthrift's power; there being scarce one shire
In Wales or England, where my moneys *are not
Lent out at usury, the certain hook
To draw in more."
MASSINGER'S " City Madam."
This genius of thirty per cent, first had proved the decided vigour of his mind, by his enthusiastic devotion to his law- studies : deprived of the leisure for study through his busy day, he stole the hours from his late nights and his early morn- ings ; and without the means to procure a law-library, he in- vented a method to possess one without the cost ; as far as he learned, he taught, and by publishing some useful tracts on temporary occasions, he was enabled to purchase a library. He appears never to have read a book without its furnishing hun with some new practical design, and he probably studied too much for his own particular advantage. Such devoted studies was the way to become a lord-chancellor ; but the science of the law was here subordinate to that of a money- trader.
USURERS OF 1HE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 335
When yet but a clerk to the Clerk in the Counter, frequent opportunities occurred which Audley knew how to improve. He became a money-trader as he had become a law-writer, and the fears and follies of mankind were to furnish him with a trading capital. The fertility of his genius appeared in expedients and in quick contrivances. He was sure to be the friend of all men falling out. He took a deep concern in the affairs of his master's clients, and often much more than they were aware of. No man so ready at procuring bail or compounding debts. This was a considerable traffic then, as now. They hired themselves out for bail, swore what was required, and contrived to give false addresses, which is now called leg-bail. They dressed themselves out for the occa- sion ; a great seal-ring flamed on the finger, which, however, was pure copper gilt, and they often assumed the name of some person of good credit. Savings, and small presents for gratuitous opinions, often afterwards discovered to be very fallacious ones, enabled him to purchase annuities of easy landholders, with their treble amount secured on their estates. The improvident owners, or the careless heirs, were soon en- tangled in the usurer's nets ; and, after the receipt of a few years, the annuity, by some latent quibble, or some irregu- larity in the payments, usually ended in Audley's obtaining the treble forfeiture. He could at all times out-knave a knave. One of these incidents has been preserved. A dra- per, of no honest reputation, being arrested by a merchant for a debt of £200, Audley bought the debt at £40, for which the draper immediately offered him £50. But Audley would not consent, unless the draper indulged a sudden whim of his own : this was a formal contract, that the draper should pay within twenty years, upon twenty certain days, a penny doubled. A knave, in haste to sign, is no calculator ; and, as the contemporary dramatist describes one of the arts of those citizens, one part of whose business was
" To swear and break: they all grow rich by breaking! "
336 USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
the draper eagerly compounded. He afterwards " grew rich." Audley, silently watching his victim, within two years, claims his doubled pennies, every month during twenty months. The pennies had now grown up to pounds. The knave perceived the trick, and preferred paying the forfeiture of his bond for £500, rather than to receive the visitation of all the little generation of compound interest in the last descend- ant of £2,000, which would have closed with the draper's shop. The inventive genius of Audley might have illustra- ted that popular tract of his own tunes, Peacham's " Worth of a Penny ; " a gentleman who, having scarcely one left, consoled himself by detailing the numerous comforts of life it might procure in the days of Charles II.
Such petty enterprises at length assumed a deeper cast of interest. He formed temporary partnerships with the stew- ards of country gentlemen. They underlet estates which they had to manage ; and anticipating the owner's necessities, the estates in due time became cheap purchases for Audley and the stewards. He usually contrived to make the wood pay for the land, which he called " making the feathers pay for the goose." He had, however, such a tenderness of conscience for his victim, that, having plucked the live feathers before he sent the unfledged goose on the common, he would bestow a gratuitous lecture in his own science — teaching the art of making them grow again, by showing how to raise the remaining rents. Audley thus made the tenant furnish at once the means to satisfy his own rapacity, and his employer's necessities. His avarice was not working by a blind, but on an enlightened principle ; for he was only enabling the landlord to obtain what the tenant, with due industry, could afford to give. Adam Smith might have delivered himself in the language of old Audley, so just was his standard of the value of rents. " Under an easy land- lord," said Audley, " a tenant seldom thrives ; contenting himself to make the just measure of his rents, and not labouring for any surplusage of estate. Under a hard one,
USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 337
the tenant revenges himself upon the land, and runs away with the rent. I would raise my rents to the present price of all commodities : for if we should let our lands, as other men have done before us, now other wares daily go on in price, we should fall backward in our estates." These axioms of political economy were discoveries in his day.
Audley knew mankind practically, and struck into their humours with the versatility of genius : oracularly deep with the grave, he only stung the lighter mind. When a lord borrowing money complained to Audley of his exactions, his lordship exclaimed, " What, do you not intend to use a con- science ? " " Yes, I intend hereafter to use it. We moneyed people must balance accounts : if you do not pay me, you cheat me; but, if you do, then I cheat your lordship." Audley's moneyed conscience balanced the risk of his lord- ship's honour, against the probability of his own rapacious profits. When he resided in the Temple among those " pul- lets without feathers," as an old writer describes the brood, the good man would pule out paternal homilies on improvi- dent youth, grieving that they, under pretence of " learning the law, only learnt to be lawless ; " and " never knew by their own studies the process of an execution, till it was served on themselves." Nor could he fail in his prophecy ; for at the moment that the stoic was enduring their ridicule, his agents were supplying them with the certain means of verifying it. It is quaintly said, he had his decoying as well as his decaying gentlemen.
The arts practised by the money-traders of that time have been detailed by one of the town-satirists of the age. Decker, in his " English Villainies," has told the story : we may ob- serve how an old story contains many incidents which may be discovered in a modern one. The artifice of covering the usury by a pretended purchase and sale of certain wares, even now practised, was then at its height.
In " Measure for Measure " we find,
" Here 's young Master Rash, he 's in for a commodity of broum popesr VOL It. 22
g38 USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
and old ginger, nine score and seventeen pounds ; of which he made live marks ready money."
The eager " gull," for his immediate wants, takes at an immense price any goods on credit, which he immediately resells for less than half the cost ; and when dispatch presses, the vender and the purchaser have been the same person, and the " brown paper and old ginger " merely nominal.
The whole displays a complete system of dupery, and the agents were graduated. " The Manner of undoing Gentle- men by taking up of Commodities," is the title of a chapter in " English Villainies." The " warren " is the cant term which describes the whole party; but this requires a word of explanation.
It is probable that rabbit-warrens were numerous about the metropolis, a circumstance which must have multiplied the poachers. Moffet, who wrote on diet in the reign of Elizabeth, notices their plentiful supply "for the poor's maintenance." — I cannot otherwise account for the appel- latives given to sharpers, and the terms of cheatery being so familiarly drawn from a rabbit-warren ; not that even in that day these cant terms travelled far out of their own circle ; for Robert Greene mentions a trial in which the judges, good simple men ! imagined that the coney-catcher at the bar was a warrener, or one who had the care of a warren.
The cant term of " warren " included the young coneys, or half-ruined prodigals of that day, with the younger brothers, who had accomplished their ruin ; these naturally herded together, as the pigeon and the black-leg of the present day. The coney-catchers were those who raised a trade on their necessities. To be " conie-catched " was to be cheated. The warren forms a combination altogether, to attract some novice, who in esse or in posse has his present means good, and those to come great ; he is very glad to learn how money can be raised. The warren seek after a tumbler, a sort of a hunting dog ; and the nature of a London tumbler was to " hunt dry-
USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 339
foot," in this manner : u The tumbler is let loose, and runs snuffing up and down in the shops of mercers, goldsmiths, drapers, haberdashers, to meet with a ferret, that is, a citizen who is ready to sell a commodity." The tumbler in his first course usually returned in despair, pretending to have out- wearied himself by hunting, and swears that the city ferrets are so coaped (that is, have their lips stitched up close) that he can't get them to open to so great a sum as £500, which the warren wants. " This herb being chewed down by the rabbit-suckers, almost kills their hearts. It irritates their appetite, and they keenly bid the tumbler, if he can't fasten on plate, or cloth, or silks, to lay hold of brown paper, Bar- tholomew babies, lute-strings, or hob-nails. It hath been verily reported," says Decker, " that one gentleman of great hopes took up £100 in hobby-horses, and sold them for £30 ; and £16 in joints of mutton and quarters of lamb, ready roasted, and sold them for three pounds." Such commodities were called purse-nets. — The tumbler, on his second hunt, trots up and down again ; and at last lights on a, ferret that will deal : the names are given in to a scrivener, who in- quires whether they are good men, and finds four out of the five are wind-shaken, but the fifth is an oak that can bear the hewing. " Bonds are sealed, commodities delivered, and the iumbler fetches his second career ; and their credit having obtained the purse-nets, the wares must now obtain money." The tumbler now hunts for the rabbit-suckers, those who buy these purse-nets ; but the .rabbit-suckers seem greater devils than the ferrets, for they always bid under ; and after many exclamations the warren is glad that the seller should re- purchase his own commodities for ready money, at thirty or fifty per cent, under the cost. The story does not finish till we come to the manner "How the warren is spoiled." I ghall transcribe this part of the narrative in the lively style of this town writer. " While there is any grass to nibble upon, the rabbits are there; but on the cold day of re- payment they retire into their caves ; so that when the
340 USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
ferret makes account of jive in chase, four disappear. Then he grows fierce, and tears open his own jaws to suck blood from him that is left. Serjeants, marshalmen, and bailiffs, are sent forth, who He scenting at every corner, and with terrible paws haunt every walk. The bird is seized upon by these hawks, his estate looked into, his wings broken, his lands made over to a stranger. He pays £500, who never had but £60, or to prison; or he seals any bond, mortgages any lordship, does any thing, yields any thing. A little way in, he cares not how far he wades ; the greater his possessions are, the apter he is to take up and to be trusted — thus gentlemen are ferreted and undone ! " It is evident that the whole system turns on the single novice ; those who join him in his bonds are stalking horses ; the whole was to begin and to end with the single individual, Ihe great coney of the warren. Such was the nature of those " commodities " to which Massinger and Shakspeare allude, and which the modern dramatist may exhibit in his comedy, and be still sketching after life.
Another scene, closely connected with the present, will complete the picture. " The Ordinaries " of those days were the lounging places of the men of the town, and the " fantas- tic gallants," who herded together. Ordinaries were the " ex- change for news," the echoing places for all sorts of town- talk : there they might hear of the last new play and poem, and the last fresh widow, who was sighing for some knight to make her a lady ; these resorts were attended also " to save charges of housekeeping." The reign of James I. is char- acterized by all the wantonness of prodigality among one class, and all the penuriousness and rapacity in another, which met in the dissolute indolence of a peace of twenty years. But' a more striking feature in these " Ordinaries " showed itself as soon as " the voyder had cleared the table." Then began " the shuffling and cutting on one side, and the bones rattling on the other." The " Ordinarie," in fact, was a gambling- house, like those now expressively termed " Hells," and I
USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 841
doubt if the present " Infernos " exceed the whole diablerie of our ancestors.
In the former scene of sharping they derived their cant terms from a rabbit-warren, but in the present their allusions partly relate to an aviary, and truly the proverb suited them, "of birds of a feather." Those who first proposed to sit down to play are called the leaders ; the ruined gamesters are the forlorn-hope ; the great winner is the eagle ; a stan- der-by, who encourages, by little ventures himself, the freshly- imported gallant, who is called the gull, is the wood-pecker : and a monstrous bird of prey, who is always hovering round the table, is the gull-groper, who, at a pinch, is the benevo- lent Audley of the Ordinary.
There was, besides, one other character of an original cast, apparently the friend of none of the party, and yet in fact, " the Atlas which supported the Ordinarie on his shoulders : " he was sometimes significantly called the impostor.
The gull is a young man whose father, a citizen or a squire, just dead, leaves him "ten or twelve thousand pounds in ready money, besides some hundreds a-year." Scouts are sent out, and lie in ambush for him ; they discover what " apothecarie's shop he resorts to every morning, or in what tobacco-shop in Fleet-street he takes a pipe of smoke in the afternoon ; " the usual resorts of the loungers of that day. Some sharp wit of the Ordinarie, a pleasant fellow, whom Robert Greene calls the " taker-up," one of universal con- versation, lures the heir of seven hundred a-year to " The Ordinarie.*' A gull sets the whole aviary in spirits ; and Decker well describes the flutter of joy and expectation : " The leaders maintained themselves brave ; the forlorn-hope, that drooped before, doth now gallantly come on ; the eagle feathers his nest ; the wood-pecker picks up the crumbs ; the gull-groper grows fat with good feeding ; and the gull himself, at whom every one has a pull, hath in the end scarce feathers to keep his back warm."
During the gull's progress through Primero and Gleek, he
842 USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
wants for no admirable advice and solemn warnings from two excellent friends ; the gull-groper, and at length, the impostor. The gull-groper, who knows, " to half an acre," all his means, takes the gull when out of luck to a side-window, and in a whisper talks of " dice being made of women's bones, which would cozen any man : " but he pours his gold on the board ; and a bond is rapturously signed for the next quarter-day. But the gull-g roper, by a variety of expedients, avoids having the bond duly discharged ; he contrives to get a judgment, and a serjeant with his mace procures the forfeiture of the bond ; the treble value. But the " impostor " has none of the milkiness of the " guU-groper" — he looks for no favour under heaven from any man ; he is bluff with all the Ordi- narie ; he spits at random ; gingles his spurs into any man's cloak; and his "humour" is, to be a devil of a dare-all. All fear him as the tyrant they must obey. The tender gull trembles, and admires this roysterer's valour. At length the devil he feared becomes his champion; and the poor gutt, proud of his intimacy, hides himself under this eagle's wings.
The impostor sits close by his elbow, takes a partnership in his game, furnishes the stakes when out of luck, and in truth does not care how fast the gull loses ; for a twirl of his mustachio, a tip of his nose, or a wink of his eye, drives all the losses of the gull into the profits of the grand confederacy at the Ordinarie. And when the impostor has fought the gull's quarrels many a time, at last he kicks up the table ; and the gull sinks himself into the class of the forlorn-hope ; he lives at the mercy of his late friends the gull-groper and the impostor, who send him out to lure some tender bird in feather.
Such were the hells of our ancestors, from which our worthies might take, a lesson ; and the " warren " in which the Audleys were the conie-catchers.
But to return to our Audley; this philosophical usurer never pressed hard for his debts ; like the fowler he never
USUREKS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 343
shook his nets lest he might startle, satisfied to have them, without appearing to hold them. With great fondness he compared his " bonds to infants, which battle best by sleep- ing." To battle is to be nourished, a term still retained at the University of Oxford. His familiar companions were all subordinate actors in the great piece he was performing ; he too had his part in the scene. When not taken by surprise, on his table usually lay open a great Bible, with Bishop An- drews's folio Sermons, which often gave him an opportunity of railing at the covetousness of the clergy ; declaring their religion was " a mere preach," and that " the time would never be well till we had Queen Elizabeth's Protestants again in fashion." He was aware of all the evils arising out of a population beyond the means of subsistence, and dreaded an inundation of men, spreading like the spawn of cod. Hence he considered marriage, with a modern political economist, as very dangerous ; bitterly censuring the clergy, whose children, he said, never thrived, and whose widows were left destitute. An apostolical life, according to Audley, required only books, meat, and drink, to be had for fifty pounds a year ! Celibacy, voluntary poverty, and all the mortifications of a primitive Christian, were the virtues practised by this puritan among his money bags.
Yet Audley's was that worldly wisdom which derives all its strength from the weaknesses of mankind. Every thing was to be obtained by stratagem ; and it was his maxim, that to grasp our object the faster, we must go a little round about it. His life is said to have beeii one of intricacies and mys- teries, using indirect means in all things ; but if he walked in a labyrinth, it was to bewilder others ; for the clue was still in his own hand ; all he sought was that his designs should not be discovered by his actions. His word, we are told, was his bond ; his hour was punctual ; and his opinions were compressed and weighty: but if he was true to his bond-word, it was only a part of the system to give facility to the carrying on of his trade, for he was not strict to his
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honour; the pride of victory, as well as the passion for acquisition, combined in the character of Audley, as in more tremendous conquerors. His partners dreaded the effects of his law-library, and usually relinquished a claim rather than stand a suit against a latent quibble. When one menaced him by showing some money-bags, which he had resolved to empty in law against ^im, Audley then in office in the court of wards, with a sarcastic grin, asked " Whether the bags had any bottom?" "Ay!" replied the exulting possessor, striking them. " In that case, I care not," retorted the cyni- cal officer of the court of wards ; " for in this court I have a constant spring ; and I cannot spend in other courts more than I gain in this." He had at once the meanness which would evade the law, and the spirit which could resist it.
The genius of Audley had crept out of the purlieus of Guildhall, and entered the Temple ; and having often saun- tered at " Powles " down the great promenade which was re- served for " Duke Humphrey and his guests," he would turn into that part called "The Usurer's Alley," to talk with " Thirty in the hundred," and at length was enabled to pur- chase his office at that remarkable institution, the court of wards. The entire fortunes of those whom we now call wards in chancery were in the hands, and often submitted to the arts or the tyranny of the officers of this court.
When Audley was asked the value of this new office, he replied, that " It might be worth some thousands of pounds to him who after his death would instantly go to heaven ; twice as much to him who would go to purgatory : and no- body knows what to him who would adventure to go to hell." Such was the pious casuistry of a witty usurer. Whether he undertook this last adventure, for the four hundred thou- sand pounds he left behind him, how can a skeptical biogra- pher decide ? Audley seems ever to have been weak, when temptation was strong.
Some saving qualities, however, were mixed with the vi- cious ones he liked best. Another passion divided dominion
USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 345
"with the sovereign one: Audley's strongest impressions of character were cast in the old law-library of his youth, and the pride of legal reputation was not inferior in strength to the rage for money. If in the " court of wards " he pounced on incumbrances which lay on estates, and prowled about to discover the craving wants of their owners, it appears that he also received liberal fees from the relatives of young heirs, to protect them from the rapacity of some great persons, but who could not certainly exceed Audley in subtilty. He was an admirable lawyer, for he was not satisfied with hearing, but examining his clients ; which he called " pinching the cause where he perceived it was foundered." He made two observations on clients and lawyers, which have not lost their poignancy. " Many clients in telling their case, rather plead than relate it, so that th£ advocate heareth not the true state of it, till opened by the adverse party. Some lawyers seem to keep an assurance-office in their chambers, and will war- rant any cause brought unto them, knowing that if they fail, they lose nothing but what was lost long since — their credit."
The career of Audley's ambition closed with the extinc- tion of the " court of wards," by which he incurred the loss of above £100,000. On that occasion he observed that " His ordinary losses were as the shavings of his beard, which only grew the faster by them : but the loss of this place was like the cutting off of a member, which was irrecoverable." The hoary usurer pined at the decline of his genius, discoursed on the vanity of the world, and hinted at retreat. A facetious friend told him a story of an old rat, who having acquainted the young rats that he would at length retire to his hole, de- siring none to come near him ; their curiosity, after some days, led them to venture to look into the hole ; and there they discovered the old rat sitting in the midst of a rich Par- mesan cheese. The loss of the last £100,000 may have dis- turbed his digestion, for he did not long survive his court of wards.
Such was this man, converting wisdom into cunning, in-
346 CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE.
vention into trickery, and wit into cynicism. Engaged in no honourable cause, he however showed a mind resolved ; mak- ing plain the crooked and involved path he trod. Sustine et abstine, to bear and forbear, was the great principle of Epic- tetus, and our moneyed Stoic bore all the contempt and hatred of the living smilingly, while he forbore all the conso- lations of our common nature to obtain his end. He died in unblest celibacy, — and thus he received the curses of the liv- ing for his rapine, while the stranger who grasped the million he had raked together owed him no gratitude at his death.
CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE.
I HAVE already drawn a picture of Jewish history in our country; the present is a companion-piece, exhibiting a Roman Catholic one.
The domestic history of our country awakens our feeling?! far more than the public. In the one, we recognize ourselves as men ; in the other, we are nothing but politicians. The domestic history is, indeed, entirely involved in the fate of the public ; and our opinions are regulated according to the different countries, and by the different ages we live in ; yet systems of politics, and modes of faith, are, for the individ- ual, but the chance occurrences of human life, usually found in the cradle, and laid in the grave : it is only the herd of mankind, or their artful leaders, who fight and curse one an- other with so much sincerity. Amidst these intestine strug- gles, or, perhaps, when they have ceased, and our hearts are calm, we perceive the eternal force of nature acting on human- ity : then the heroic virtues and private sufferings of persons engaged in an opposite cause, and acting on different princi- ples than our own, appeal to our sympathy, and even excite our admiration. A philosopher, born a Roman Catholic, as- suredly could commemorate many a pathetic history of some
CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE. 347
heroic Huguenot ; while we, with the same feeling in out heart, discover a romantic and chivalrous band of Catholics.
Chidioci Titchboume is a name which appears in the con- epiracy of Anthony Babington against Elizabeth, and the history of this accomplished young man may enter into the romance of real life. Having discovered two interesting do- mestic documents relative to him, I am desirous of preserv- ing a name and a character, which have such claims on our sympathy.
There is an interesting historical novel entitled " The Jesuit," whose story is founded on this conspiracy ; remarka- ble for being the production of a lady, without, if I recollect rightly, a single adventure of love. Of the fourteen charac- ters implicated in this conspiracy, few were of the stamp of men ordinarily engaged in dark assassinations. Hume has told the story with his usual grace : the fuller narrative may be found in Camden ; but the tale may yet receive, from the character of Chidiock Titchboume, a more interesting close.
Some youths, worthy of ranking with the heroes, rather than with the traitors of England, had been practised on by the subtilty of Ballard, a disguised Jesuit of great intrepidity and talents, whom Camden calls " a silken priest in a soldier's habit :" for this versatile intriguer changed into all shapes, and took up all names : yet, with all the arts of a political Jesuit, he found himself entrapped in the nets of that more crafty one, the subdolous Walsingham. Ballard had opened himself to Babington, a catholic ; a youth of large fortune, the graces of whose person were only inferior to those of his mind. In his travels, his generous temper had been touched by some confidential friends of the Scottish Mary ; and the youth, susceptible of ambition, had been recommended to that queen ; and an intercourse of letters took place, which seemed as deeply tinctured with love as with loyalty. The intimates of Babington were youths of congenial tempers and studies ; and, in their exalted imaginations, they could only view in the imprisoned Mary of Scotland, a sovereign, a saint, and a
348 CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE.
woman. But friendship, the most tender, if not the most sublime ever recorded, prevailed among this band of self- devoted victims ; and the Damon and Pythias of antiquity were here out-numbered.
But these conspirators were surely more adapted for lovers than for politicians. The most romantic incidents are inter- woven in this dark conspiracy. Some of the letters to Mary were conveyed by a secret messenger, really in the pay of Walsingham ; others were lodged in a concealed place, cov- ered by a loosened stone, in the wall of the queen's prison. All were transcribed by Walsingham before they reached Mary. Even the spies of that singular statesman were the companions or the servants of the arch-conspirator Ballard ; for the minister seems only to have humoured his taste in as- sisting him through this extravagant plot. Yet, as if a plot of so loose a texture was not quite perilous enough, the ex- traordinary incident of a picture, representing the secret con- spirators in person, was probably considered as the highest stroke of political intrigue ! The accomplished Babington had portrayed the conspirators, himself standing in the midst of them, that the imprisoned queen might thus have some kind of personal acquaintance with them. There was at least as much of chivalry as of Machiavelism in this con- spiracy. This very picture, before it was delivered to Mary, the subtile Walsingham had copied, to exhibit to Elizabeth the faces of her secret enemies. Houbraken, in his portrait of Walsingham, has introduced in the vignette the incident of this picture being shown to Elizabeth ; a circumstance happily characteristic of the genius of this crafty and vigilant, statesman. Camden tells us that Babington had first in- scribed beneath the picture this verse : —
" Hi mihi sunt comites, quos ipsa pericula ducunt." These are my companions, whom the same dangers lead.
But as this verse was considered by some of less heated fancies as much too open and intelligible, they put one more ambiguous : —
CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE. 349
" Quorsum haec alio properantibus ? " What are these things to men hastening to another purpose?
This extraordinary collection of personages must have occasioned many alarms to Elizabeth, at the approach of any stranger, till the conspiracy was suffered to be suf- ficiently matured to be ended. Once she perceived in her walks a conspirator ; and on that occasion erected her " lion port," reprimanding her captain of the guards, loud enough to meet the conspirator's ear, that " he had not a man in liis company who wore a sword." — " Am not I fairly guarded ? " exclaimed Elizabeth.
It is in the progress of the trial that the history and the feelings of these wondrous youths appear. In those times when the government of the country yet felt itself unsettled, and mercy did not sit in the judgment-seat, even one of the judges could not refrain from being affected at the presence of so gallant a band as the prisoners at the bar : " Oh Bal- lard, Ballard ! " the judge exclaimed, " what hast thou done ? A sort (a company) of brave youths, otherwise endued with good gifts, by thy inducement hast thou brought to their utter destruction and confusion." The Jesuit himself commands our respect, although we refuse him our esteem ; for he felt some compunction at the tragical executions which were to follow, and " wished all the blame might rest on him, could the shedding of his blood be the saving of Babington's life ! "
When this romantic band of friends were called on for their defence, the most pathetic instances of domestic affection ap- peared. One had engaged in this plot solely to try to save his friend, for he had no hopes of it, nor any wish for its success ; he had observed to his friend, that the " haughty and ambitious mind of Anthony Babington would be the destruction of himself and his friends ; " nevertheless he was willing to die with them ! Another, to withdraw if possible one of those noble youths from the conspiracy, although he had broken up housekeeping, said, to employ his own lan- guage, " I called back my servants again together, and began
§50 CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE.
to keep house again more freshly than ever I did, only be- cause I was weary to see Tom Salusbury's straggling, and willing to keep him about home." Having attempted to secrete his friend, this gentleman observed, u I am con- demned, because I suffered Salusbury to escape, when I knew he was one of the conspirators. My case is hard and lamentable ; either to betray my friend, whom I love as myself, and to discover Tom Salusbury, the best man in my country, of whom I only made choice, or else to break my allegiance to my sovereign, and to undo myself and my posterity for ever." Whatever the political casuist may determine on this case, the social being carries his own manual hi the heart. The principle of the greatest of repub- lics was to suffer nothing to exist in competition with its own ambition ; but the Roman history is a history without fathers and brothers ! Another of the conspirators replied, " For flying away with my friend, I fulfilled the part of a friend." When the judge observed, that, to perform his friendship, he had broken his allegiance to his sovereign, he bowed' his head and confessed, " Therein I have offended." Another, asked why he had fled into the woods, where he was discovered among some of the conspirators, proudly (or tenderly) re- plied, " For company ! "
When the sentence of condemnation had passed, then broke forth among this noble band that spirit of honour, which surely had never been witnessed at the bar among BO many criminals. Their great minds seemed to have reconciled them to the most barbarous of deaths ; but as their estates as traitors might be forfeited to the queen, their sole anxiety was now for their families and their creditors. One hi the most pathetic terms recommends to her majesty's protection a beloved wife; another a des- titute sister; but not among the least urgent of their supplications, was one that their creditors might not be injured by their untimely end. The statement of their affairs is curious and simple. " If mercy be not to be had,"
CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE. 351
exclaimed one, " I beseech you, my good lords, this ; I owe some sums of money, but not very much, and I have more owing to me ; I beseech that my debts may be paid with that which is owing to me." Another prayed for a pardon ; the judge complimented him, that " he was one who might have done good service to his country ; " but declares he cannot obtain it. — " Then," said the pris- oner, " I beseech that six angels, which such an one hath of mine, may be delivered to my brother to pay my debts/' — " How much are thy debts ? " demanded the judge. He answered, " The same six angels will discharge it."
That nothing might be wanting to complete the catastrophe of their sad story, our sympathy must accompany them to their tragical end, and to their last words. These heroic yet affectionate youths had a trial there, intolerable to their social feelings. The terrific process of executing traitors was the remains of feudal barbarism, a*nd has only been abolished very recently. I must not refrain from painting this scene of blood ; the duty of an historian must be severer than his taste, and I record in the note a scene of this nature.* The present one was full of horrors.
* Let not the delicate female start from the revolting scene, nor censure the writer, since that writer is a woman — suppressing her own agony, as she supported on her lap the head of the miserable sufferer. This account was drawn up by Mrs. Elizabeth Willoughby, a Catholic lady, who, amidst the horrid execution, could still her own feelings in the attempt to soften those of the victim: she was a heroine, with a tender heart.
The subject was one of the executed Jesuits, Hugh Green, who often went by the name of Ferdinand Brooks, according to the custom of these people, who disguised themselves by double names: he suffered in 1642; and this narrative is taken from the curious and scarce folios of Dodd, a Roman Catholic Church History of England.
" The hangman, either through unskilfulness, or for want of sufficient presence of mind, had so ill-performed his first duty of hanging him, that when he was cut down he was perfectly sensible, and able to sit upright upon the ground, viewing the crowd that stood about him. The person who undertook to quarter him was one Barefoot, a bai'ber, who, being very timorous when he found he was to attack a living man, it was near half an hour before the sufferer was rendered entirely insensible of pain. The mob pulled at the rope, and threw the Jesuit on his back. Then th«
352 CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE.
Ballard was first executed, and snatched alive from the gallows to be embowelled : Babington looked on with an undaunted countenance, steadily gazing on that variety of tortures which he himself was in a moment to pass through ; the others averted their faces, fervently praying. When the executioner began his tremendous office on Babingtcn, the spirit of this haughty and heroic man cried out amidst the agony, Parce mihi, Domine Jesu! Spare me, Lord Jesus! There were two- days of execution ; it was on the first that the noblest of these youths suffered; and the pity which such criminals had excited among the spectators evidently weakened the sense of their political crime ; the solemnity, not the barbarity, of the punishment affects the populace with right feelings. Elizabeth, an enlightened politician, commanded that on the second day the odious part of the sentence against traitors should not commence till after their death.
One of these generosi adolescentuli, youths of generous blood, was CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE, of Southampton, the more intimate friend of Babington. He had refused to con- nect himself with the assassination of Elizabeth, but his reluc- tant consent was inferred from his silence. His address to the populace breathes all the carelessness of life, in one who knew all its value. Proud of his ancient descent from a fam- ily which had existed before the Conquest till now without a Btain, he paints the thoughtless happiness of his days with his beloved friend, when any object rather than matters of state engaged their pursuits ; the hours of misery were only first
barber immediately fell to work, ripped up his belly, and laid the flaps of skin on both sides; the poor gentleman being so present to himself as to make the sign of the cross with one hand. During this operation, Mrs. Elizabeth Willoughby (the writer of this) kneeled at the Jesuit's head, and held it fast beneath her hands. His face was covered with a thick sweat ; the blood issued from his mouth, ears, and eyes, and his forehead burnt with so much heat, that she assures us she could scarce endure her hand upon it. The barber was still under a great consternation." — But I stop my pen amidst these circumstantial horrors.
CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE. 353
known the day he entered into the conspiracy. How feel- ingly he passes into the domestic scene, amidst his wife, his child, and his sisters ! and even his servants ! Well might he cry, more in tenderness than in reproach, " Friendship hath brought me to this ! "
" Countrymen, and my dear friends, you expect I should speak some- thing; I am a bad orator, and my text is worse : It were in vain to enter into the discourse of the whole matter for which I am brought hither, for that it hath been revealed heretofore; let me be a warning to all young gentle- men, especially generosis adolescentulis. I had a friend, and a dear friend, of whom I made no small account, whose friendship hath brought me to this ; he told me the whole matter, I cannot deny, as they had laid it down to be done ; but I always thought it impious, and denied to be a dealer in it ; but the regard of my friend caused me to be a man in whom the old proverb was verified ; I was silent, and so consented. Before this thing chanced, •we lived together in most flourishing estate : Of whom went report in the Strand, Fleet-Street, and elsewhere about London, but of Babington and Titchbourne ? No threshold was of force to brave our entry. Thus we lived, and wanted nothing we could wish for; and God knows what less in my head than matters of state. Now give me leave to declare the miseries I sustained after I was acquainted with the action, wherein I may justly compare my estate to that of Adam's, who could not abstain one tidng for- Udden, to enjoy all other things the world could afford ; the terror of con- science awaited me. After I considered the dangers whereinto I was fal- len, I went to Sir John Peters in Essex, and appointed my horses should meet me at London, intending to go down into tine country. I came to London, and then heard that all was bewrayed ; whereupon, like Adam, we fled into the woods to hide ourselves. My dear countrymen, my sorrows may be your joy, yet mix your smiles with tears, and pity my case ; / am descended from a house, from two hundred years before the Conquest, never stained till titis my misfortune. I have a wife, and one child; my wife, Agnes, my dear wife, and there's my grief- — and six sisters left in my hand- — my poor servants, I know their master being taken, were dispersed ; for all which I do most heartily grieve. I expected some favour, though I deserved nothing less, that the remainder of my years might in some sort have recompensed my former guilt; which seeing I have missed, let me now meditate on the joys I hope to enjoy." *
Titchbourne had addressed a letter to his " dear wife Ag- nes," the night before he suffered, which I discovered among the Harleian MSS.* It overflows with the most natural feeling, and contains some touches of expression, all sweet-
* Harl. MSS. 36, 60. VOL. II. 23
354 CHIDIOCK T1TCHBOURNE.
ness and tenderness, which mark the Shakspearean era. The same MS. has also preserved a more precious gem, in a small poem, composed at the same time, which indicates his genius, fertile in imagery, and fraught with the melancholy philos- ophy of a fine and wounded spirit. The unhappy close of the life of such a noble youth, with all the prodigality of his feelings, and the cultivation of his intellect, may still excite that sympathy in the generosis adolescentulis, which Chidiock Titchbourne would have felt for them !
u A letter written by CHEDIOCK TICHEBURNE the night before he suffered death, vnto his wife, dated of anno 1586.
" To the most loving wife alive, I commend me vnto her, and desire God to blesse her with all happiness, pray for her dead husband, and be of good comforte, for I hope in Jesus Christ this morning to see the face of my maker and redeemer in the most joyful throne of his glorious kingdome. Commend me to all my friends, and desire them to pray for me, and in all charitie to pardon me, if I have offended them. Commend me to my six sisters poore desolate soules, aduise them to seme God, for without him no goodness is to be expected: were it possible, my little sister Babb : the dar linge of my race might be bred by her, God would rewarde her; but I do her wrong I confesse, that hath by my desolate negligence too little for herselfe, to add a further charge vnto her. Deere wife forgive me, that have by these means so much impoverished her fortunes ; patience and pardon good wife I craue — make of these our necessities a vertue, and lay no further burthen on my neck than hath alreadie been. There be certain debts that I owe, and because I know not the order of the lawe, piteous it hath taken from me all, forfeited by my course of offence to her majestic, I cannot aduise thee to benefit me herein, but if there fall out wherewithall, let them be discharged for God's sake. I will not that you trouble yourselfe with the performance of these matters, my own heart, but make it known to my uncles, and desire them, for the honour of God and ease of their soule, to take care of them as they may, and especially care of my sisters bringing up the burthen is now laide on them. Now, Sweet-cheek, what is left to bestow on thee, a small joynture, a small re- compense for thy deservinge, these legacies followinge to be thine owne. God of his infinite goodness give thee grace alwaies, to remain his true and faithfull servant, that through the merits of his bitter and blessed pas- eion thou maist become in good time of his kingdom with the blessed women in heaven. May the Holy Ghost comfort thee with all necessaries for the wealth of thy soul in the world to come, where, until it shall please Almighty God I meete thee, farewell lovinge wife, farewell the dearest to me on all the earth, farewell !
" By the hand from the heart of thy most faithful louinge "husband,
" CHIDEOCK TICHEBURN."
ELIZABETH AND HER PARLIAMENT. 355
" VERSES,
Made by CHEDIOCK TICHEBORNE of himselfe in the Tower, the night before ha suffered death, who was executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields for treason. 1586.
" My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my goodes is but vain hope of gain. . The day is fled, and yet I saw no sun, And now I live, and now my life is done !
" My spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung, The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green,
My youth is past, and yet 1 am but young, I saw the world, and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done!
" I sought for death, and found it in the wombe,
I lookt for life, and yet it was a shade, I trade the ground, and knew it was my tombe,
And now I dye, and now I am but made. The glass is full, and yet my glass is run ; And now I live, and now my life is donel " *
ELIZABETH AND HER PARLIAMENT.
THE year 1566 was a remarkable period in the domestic annals of our great Elizabeth ; then, for a moment, broke forth a noble struggle between the freedom of the subject and the dignity of the sovereign.
One of the popular grievances of her glorious reign was the maiden state in which the queen persisted to live, notwith- standing such frequent remonstrances and exhortations. The
* This pathetic poem has been printed in one of the old editions of Sir Walter Rawleigh's Poems, but could never have been written by him. In those times the collectors of the works of a celebrated writer would insert any fugitive pieces of merit, and pass them under a name which was cer- tain of securing the reader's favour. The entire poem in every line echoe* the feelings of Chidiock Titchbourne, who perished with all the blossoms of life and genius about him in the May-time of his existence.
356 ELIZABETH AND HER PAELIAMENT.
nation in a moment might be thrown into the danger of a dis- puted succession ; and it became necessary to allay that fer- ment which existed among all parties, while each was fixing on its own favourite, hereafter to ascend the throne. The birth of James I. this year reanimated the partisans of Mary of Scotland ; and men of the most opposite parties in Eng- land unanimously joined in the popular cry for the marriage of Elizabeth, or a settlement of the succession. This was a subject most painful to the thoughts of Elizabeth ; she started from it with horror, and she was practising every imaginable artifice to evade it.
The real cause of this repugnance has been passed over by our historians. Camden, however, hints at it, when he places among other popular rumours of the day, that " men cursed Huic, the queen's physician, for dissuading her from marriage, for I know not what female infirmity." The queen's phy- sician thus incurred the odium of the nation for the integrity of his conduct : he well knew how precious was her life.*
This fact, once known, throws a new light over her con- duct ; the ambiguous expressions which she constantly em- ploys, when she alludes to her marriage in her speeches, and in private conversations, are no longer mysterious. She was always declaring, that she knew her subjects did not love her so little, as to wish to bury her before her time ; even in the letter I shall now give, we find this remarkable expression :— urging her to marriage, she said, was " asking nothing less than wishing her to dig her grave before she was dead." Conscious of the danger of her life by marriage, she had early declared when she ascended the throne, that " she would live and die a maiden queen : " but she afterwards discovered the
* Foreign authors who had an intercourse with the English court seem to have been better informed, or at least found themselves under less re- straint than our home-writers. In Bayle, note x., the reader will find this mysterious affair cleared up ; and at length in one of our own writers, Whitaker, in his Mary Queen of Scots vindicated, vol. ii. p. 502. Elizabeth's Answer to the first Address of the Commons, on her marriage, in Hume, vol. v. p. 13, is now more intelligible: he has preserved her fanciful style.
ELIZABETH AND HER PAELIAMENT. 357
political evil resulting from her unfortunate situation. Her conduct was admirable ; her great genius turned even her weakness into strength, and proved how well she deserved the character which she had already obtained from an enlightened enemy — the great Sixtus V., who observed of her, Ch'era un gran cervello di Principessa ! She had a princely head-piece 1 Elizabeth allowed her ministers to pledge her royal word to the commons, as often as they found necessary, for her reso- lution to marry ; she kept all Europe at her feet, with the hopes and fears of her choice ; she gave ready encourage- ments, perhaps allowed her agents to promote even invita- tions, to the oifers of marriage she received from crowned heads ; and all the coquetries and cajolings, so often and so fully recorded, with which she freely honoured individuals, made her empire an empire of love, where love, however, could never appear. All these were merely political artifices, to conceal her secret resolution, which was, not to marry.
At the birth of James I. as Camden says, " the sharp and hot spirits broke out, accusing the queen that she was neglect- ing her country and posterity." All " these humours," ob- serves Hume, " broke out with great vehemence, in a new session of parliament, held after six prorogations." The peers united with the commoners. The queen had an empty exchequer, and was at their mercy. It was a moment of high ferment. Some of the boldest, and some of the most British spirits were at work ; and they, with the malice or wisdom of opposition, combined the supply with the succes- sion ; one was not to be had without the other.
This was a moment of great hope and anxiety with the French court ; they were flattering themselves that her reign was touching a crisis ; and La Mothe Fenelon, then the French ambassador at the court of Elizabeth, appears to have been busied in collecting hourly information of the warm debates in the commons, and what passed in their interviews with the queen. We may rather be astonished where he procured so much secret intelligence : he sometimes com-
358 ELIZABETH AND HER PARLIAMENT.
plains that he is not able to acquire it as fast as Catherine de Medicis and her son Charles IX. wished. There must have been Englishmen at our court, who were serving as French spies. In a private collection, which consists of two or three hundred original letters of Charles IX., Catherine de Medicis, Henry III., and Mary of Scotland, &c., I find two dispatches of this French ambassador, entirely relating to the present occurrence. What renders them more curious is, that the debates on the question of the succession are imperfectly given in Sir Symonds d'Ewes's journals; the only resource open to us. Sir Symonds complains of the negligence of the clerk of the commons, who indeed seems to have exerted his negligence, whenever it was found most agreeable to the court party.
Previous to the warm debates in the commons, of which the present dispatch furnishes a lively picture, on Saturday, 12th October, 1566, at a meeting of the lords of the council, held in the queen's apartment, the Duke of Norfolk, in the name of the whole nobility, addressed Elizabeth, urging her to settle the suspended points of the succession, and of her marriage, which had been promised in the last parliament. The queen was greatly angered on the occasion ; she would not suffer their urgency on those points, and spoke with great animation. " Hitherto you have had no opportunity to com- plain of me ; I have well governed the country in peace, and if a late war of little consequence has broken out, which might have occasioned my subjects to complain of me, with me it has not originated, but with yourselves, as truly I believe. Lay your hands on your hearts, and blame yourselves. In respect to the choice of the succession, not one of ye shall have it ; that choice I reserve to myself alone* I will not be buried while I am living, as my sister was. Do I not well know, how during the life of my sister every one hastened to me at Hatfield ; I am at present inclined to see no such travellers, nor desire on this your advice in any way** In regard to * A curious trait of the neglect Queen Mary experienced, whose life
ELIZABETH AND HER PARLIAMENT. 359
my marriage, you may see enough, that I am not distant from it, and in what respects the welfare of the kingdom : go each of you, and do your own duty."
27ft October, 1566.
u SIRE,
" By my last dispatch of the 21st instant,* among other matters, I informed your majesty of what was said on Satur- day the 19th as well in parliament, as in the chamber of the queen, respecting the circumstance of the succession to this crown ; since which I have learned other particulars, which occurred a little before, and which I will not now omit to relate, before I mention what afterwards happened.
" On Wednesday, the 1 6th of the present month, the comp- troller of the queen's household f moved, in the lower house of parliament, where the deputies of towns and counties meet, to obtain a subsidy ; J taking into consideration, among other things, that the queen had emptied the exchequer, as well in the late wars, as in the maintenance of her ships at sea, for the protection of her kingdom, and her subjects ; and which expenditure has been so excessive, that it could no further be supported without the aid of her good subjects, whose duty it was to offer money to her majesty, even before she required
being considered very uncertain, sent all the intriguers of a court to Eliza- beth, the next heir, although then in a kind of state imprisonment.
* This dispatch is a .meagre account, written before the ambassador obtained all the information the present letter displays. The chief par- ticulars I have preserved above.
t By Sir Symonds D'Ewes's Journals it appears, that the French am- bassador had mistaken the day, Wednesday the 16th, for Thursday the 17th of October. The ambassador is afterwards right in the other dates. The person who moved the house, whom he calls "Le Scindicque de la Royne" was Sir Edward Rogers, comptroller of her majesty's household. The motion was seconded by Sir William Cecil, who entered more largely Into the particulars of the queen's charges, incurred in the defence of New- Haven, in France, the repairs of her navy, and the Irish war with O'Neil. In the present narrative we fully discover the spirit of the independent members; and, at its close, that part of the secret history of Elizabeth which so powerfully develops her majestic character.
J The original says, " ung subside de quatre solz pour liure."
360 ELIZABETH AND HER PARLIAMENT.
it, in consideration that, hitherto, she had been to them a be- nignant and courteous mistress.
" The comptroller having finished, one of the deputies, a country gentleman, rose in reply. He said, that he saw no occasion, nor any pressing necessity, which ought to move her majesty to ask for money of her subjects. And, hi regard to the wars, which it was said had exhausted her treasury, she had undertaken them from herself, as she had thought proper ; not for the defence of her kingdom, nor for the ad- vantage of her subjects; but there was one thing which seemed to him more urgent, and far more necessary to exa- mine concerning this campaign ; which was, how the money raised by the late subsidy had been spent ; and that every one who had had the handling of it should produce their ac- counts, that it might be known if the moneys had been well or ill spent.
" On this, rises one named Mr. Basche,* purveyor of the marine, and also a member of the said parliament ; who shows that it was most necessary that the commons should vote the said subsidies to her majesty, who had not only been at vast charges, and was so daily, to maintain a great number of ships, but also in building new ones ; repeating what the comptroller of the household had said, that they ought not to wait till the queen asked for supplies, but should make a voluntary offer of their services.
" Another country gentleman rises and replies, that the said Basche had certainly his reasons to speak for the queen hi the present case, since a great deal of her majesty's moneys for the providing of ships passed through his hands ; and the more he consumed, the greater was his profit. According to his notion, there were but too many purveyors in this king-
* This gentleman's name does not appear in Sir Symonds D'Ewes's Journals. Mons. Le Mothe Fenelon has, however, the uncommon merit, contrary to the custom of his nation, of writing an English name some- what recognizable; for Edward Basche was one of the general surveyors of the victualling of the queen's ships, 1573, as I find in the Lansdcwne MSS. vol. xvi. art. 69.
ELIZABETH AND HER PARLIAMENT. 361
dom, whose noses had grown so long, that they stretched from London to the west.* It was certainly proper to know if all they levied by their commission for the present cam- paign was entirely employed to the queen's profit. Nothing further was debated on that day.
" The Friday following when the subject of the subsidy was renewed, one of the gentlemen-deputies showed, that the queen having prayed | for the last subsidy, had promised, and pledged her faith to her subjects, that after that one she never more would raise a single penny on them ; and promised even to free them from the wine-duty, of which promise they ought to press for the performance ; adding, that it was far more necessary for this kingdom to speak concerning an heir or successor to their crown, and of her marriage, than of a subsidy.
"The next day, which was Saturday the 19th, they all began, with the exception of a single voice, a loud outcry for the succession. Amidst these confused voices and cries, one of the council prayed them to have a little patience, and with time they should be satisfied ; but that, at this moment, other matters pressed, — it was necessary to satisfy the queen about a subsidy. * No ! no ! ' cried the deputies, * we are expressly charged not to grant anything until the queen resolvedly answers that which we now ask : and we require you to in- form her majesty of our intention, which is such as we are commanded to, by all the towns and subjects of this kingdom, whose deputies we are. We further require an act, or ac- knowledgment, of our having delivered this remonstrance, that we may satisfy our respective towns and counties that
* In the original, " Ils auoient le nez si long qu'il s'estendoit despuia Londres jusques au pays d'West."
t This term is remarkable. In the original, " La Royne ayant impelre^ which in Cotgrave's Dictionary, a contemporary work, is explained by,— u To get by praier, obtain by sute, compass by in treaty, procure by request." This significant expression conveys the real notion of tins venerable Whig, before Whiggism had received a denomination, and formed a party.
362 ELIZABETH AND HER PARLIAMENT.
we have performed our charge.' They alleged for an ex- cuse, that if they had omitted any part of this, their heads would answer for it. We shall see what will come of this.*
" Tuesday the 22d, the principal lords, and the bishops of London, York, Winchester, and Durham, went together, after dinner, from the parliament to the queen, whom they found in her private apartment. There, after those who were present had retired, and they remained alone with her, the great treasurer, having the precedence in age, spoke first in the name of all. He opened, by saying, that the commons had required them to unite in one sentiment and agreement, to solicit her majesty to give her answer as she had promised, to appoint a successor to the crown ; declaring it was necessity that compelled them to urge this point, that they might pro- vide against the dangers which might happen to the kingdom, if they continued without the security they asked. This had been the custom of her royal predecessors, to provide long beforehand for the succession, to preserve the peace of the kingdom ; that the commons were all of one opinion, and so resolved to settle the succession before they would speak about a subsidy, or any other matter whatever ; that, hitherto, nothing but the most trivial discussions had passed in parlia- ment, and so great an assembly was only wasting their time, and saw themselves entirely useless. They, however, sup-- plicated her majesty, that she would be pleased to declare her will on this point, or at once to put an end to the parlia- ment, so that every one might retire to his home.
" The Duke of Norfolk then spoke, and, after him, every one of the other lords, according to his rank, holding the same language in strict conformity with that of the great treasurer.
" The queen returned no softer answer than she had on the preceding Saturday, to another party of the same company ; Baying that, i The commons were very rebellious, and that
* The French ambassador, no doubt, flattered himself and his master, that all this " parlance " could only close in insurrection and civil war.
ELIZABETH AND HER PARLIAMENT. 363
they had not dared to have attempted such things during the life of her father : that it was not for them to impede hei affairs, and that it did not become a subject to compel the sovereign. What they asked was nothing less than wishing her to dig her grave before she was dead.' Addressing her- self to the lords, she said, * My lords, do what you will ; as for myself, I shall do nothing but according to my pleasure. All the resolutions which you may make can have no force without my consent and authority ; besides, what you desire is an affair of much too great importance to be declared to a knot of hare-brains.* I will take counsel with men who understand justice and the laws, as I am deliberating to do: I will choose half-a-dozen of the most able I can find in my kingdom for consultation, and after having their advice, I will then discover to you my will.' On this she dismissed them in great anger.
" By this, sire, your majesty may perceive that this queen is every day trying new inventions to escape from this pas- sage (that is, on fixing her marriage, or the succession.) She thinks that the Duke of Norfolk is principally the cause of this insisting,t which one person and the other stand to ; and is so angried against him, that, if she can find any decent pretext to arrest him, I think she will not fail to do it ; and he himself, as I understand, has already very little doubt of this.J The duke told the earl of Northumberland, that the
# In the original, " A ting tas de cerveaulx si legieres." {• The word in the original is insistance ; an expressive word as used by the French ambassador; but which Boyer, in his Dictionary, doubts whether it be French, although he. gives a modern authority; the present is much more ancient.
J The Duke of Norfolk was, " without comparison, the first subject in England ; and the qualities of his mind corresponded with his high station," says Hume. He closed his career, at length, the victim of love and am* bition, in his attempt to marry the Scottish Mary. So great and honour- able a man could only be a criminal by halves ; and, to such, the scaffold, and not the throne, is reserved, when they engage in enterprises, which, by their secrecy, in the eyes of a jealous sovereign, assume the form and th« guilt of a conspiracy.
864 ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, SON "OF JAMES L
queen remained steadfast to her own opinion, and would take no other advice than her own, and would do every thing herself."
The storms in our parliament do not necessarily end in .political shipwrecks, whenever the head of the government is an Elizabeth. She, indeed, sent down a prohibition to the house from all debate on the subject But when she dis- covered a spirit in the commons, and language as bold as her own royal style, she knew how to revoke the exasperating prohibition. ^ She even charmed them by the manner ; for the commons returned her "prayers and thanks," and ac- companied them with a subsidy. Her majesty found by experience, that the present, like other passions, was more easily calmed and quieted by following than resisting, ob- serves Sir Symonds D'Ewes.
The wisdom of Elizabeth, however, did not weaken her in- trepidity. The struggle was glorious for both parties ; but how she escaped through the storm which her mysterious conduct had at once raised and quelled, the sweetness and the sharpness; the commendation and the reprimand of her noble speech in closing the parliament, are told by Hume with the usual felicity of his narrative.*
ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, THE SON OF JAMES L, WHEN A CHILD.
PRINCE HENRY, the son of James I., whose premature death was lamented by the people, as well as by poets and historians, unquestionably would have proved an heroic and military character. Had he ascended the throne, the whole face of our history might have been changed ; the days of Agincourt and Cressy had been revived, and Henry IX. had rivalled Henry V. It is remarkable that Prince Henry re-
* Hume, rol. v. c. 39; at the close of 1566.
ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, SON OF JAMES I. 365
sembled that monarch in his features, as Ben Jonson has truly recorded, though in a complimentary verse, and as we may see by his picture, among the ancient English ones at Dulwich College. Merlin, hi a masque by Jonson, ad- dresses Prince Henry,
u Yet rests that other thunderbolt of war, Harry the Fifth ; to whom hi face you are So like, as fate would have you so in worth !*
A youth, who perished in his eighteenth year, has furnished the subject of a volume, which even the deficient animation of its writer has not deprived of attraction.* If the juvenile age of Prince Henry has proved such a theme for our ad- miration, we may be curious to learn what this extraordinary youth was, even at an earlier period. Authentic anecdotes of children are rare ; a child has seldom a biographer by his side. We have indeed been recently treated with "Anecdotes of Children," in the " Practical Education " of the literary family of the Edgeworths ; but we may presume that as Mr. Edgeworth delighted in pieces of curious machinery in his liouse, these automatic infants, poets, and metaphysicians, of whom afterwards we have heard no more, seem to have re- sembled other automata, moving without any native impulse.
Prince Henry, at a very early age, not exceeding five years, evinced a thoughtfulness of character, extraordinary in a child. Something in the formation of this early character may be attributed to the Countess of Mar. This lady had been the nurse of James I., and to her care the king intrusted the prince. She is described in a manuscript of the times, as u an ancient, virtuous, and severe lady, who was the prince's governess from his cradle." At the age of five years the prince was consigned to his tutor, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Adam Newton, a man of learning and capacity, whom the prince at length chose for his secretary. The severity of the old coun- tess, and the strict discipline of his tutor, were not received without affection and reverence ; although not at times with' * Dr. Birch's Life of this Prince.
366 ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, SON OF JAMES L
out a shrewd excuse, or a turn of pleasantry, which latter faculty the princely boy seems to have possessed in a very high degree.
The prince early attracted the attention and excited the hopes of those who were about his person. A manuscript narrative has been preserved, which was written by one who tells us, that he was " an attendant upon the prince's person, since he was under the age of three years, having always diligently observed his disposition, behaviour, and speeches." * It was at the earnest desire of Lord and Lady Lumley that the writer of these anecdotes drew up this relation. The manuscript is without date ; but as Lord Lumley died in April, 1609, and leaving no heir, his library was then pur- chased for the prince, Henry could not have reached his fifteenth year ; this manuscript was evidently composed ear- lier: so that the latest anecdotes could not have occurred beyond his thirteenth or fourteenth year, — a time of life, when few children can .furnish a curious miscellany about themselves.
The writer set down every little circumstance he considered worth noticing, as it occurred. I shall attempt a sort of ar- rangement of the most interesting, to show, by an unity of the facts, the characteristic touches of the mind and disposi- tions of the princely boy, t "k, &
Prince Henry in his childhood rarely wept, and endured pain without a groan. When a boy wrestled with him in earnest, and threw him, he was not " seen to whine or weep at the hurt." His .sense of justice was early ; for when his playmate the little Earl of Mar ill-treated one of his pages, Henry reproved his puerile friend : " I love you because you are my lord's son and my cousin ; but, if you be not better conditioned, I will love such an one better," naming the child that had complained of him.
The first time he went to the town of Stirling, to meet the king, observing without the gate of the town a stack of corn, * Harleian MS.. 6391.
ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, SON OF JAMES I. 367
it fancifully struck him with the shape of the top he used to play with, and the child exclaimed, " That's a good top." u Why do you not then play with it ? " he was answered. " Set you it up for me, and I will play with it." This is just the fancy which we might expect in a lively child, with a shrewdness in the retort, above its years.
His martial character was perpetually discovering itself. "When asked what instrument he liked best, he answered, " a trumpet." We are told that none could dance with moie grace, but that he never delighted in dancing ; while he per- formed his heroical exercises with pride and delight, more particularly when before the king, the constable of Castile, and other ambassadors. He was instructed by his master to handle and toss the pike, to march and hold himself in an affected style of stateliness, according to the martinets of those days ; but he soon rejected such petty and artificial fashions ; yet to show that this dislike arose from no want of skill in a trifling accomplishment, he would sometimes resume it only to laugh at it, and instantly return to his own ^natural de- meanour. On one of these occasions, one of these martinets observing that they could never be good soldiers unless they always kept true order and measure in marching, " What then must they do," cried Henry, " when they wade through a swift-running water ? " In all things freedom of action from his own native impulse he preferred to the settled rules of his teachers; and when his physician told him that he rode too fast, he replied, " Must I ride by rules of physic ? * When he was eating a cold capon in cold weather, the physi- cian told him that that was not meat for the weather. u You may see, doctor," said Henry, " that my cook is no astrono- mer." And when the same physician, observing him eat cold and hot meat together, protested against it, " I cannot mind that now," said the royal boy facetiously, " though they should have run at tilt together in my belly."
His national affections were strong. When one reported to Henry that the King of France had said that his bastard,
368 ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, SON OF JAMES 1.
as well as the bastard of Normandy, might conquer England, the princely boy exclaimed, " I'll to cuffs with him, if he go about any such means." There was a dish of jelly before the prince, in the form of a crown, with three lilies ; and a kind of buffoon, whom the prince used to banter, said to the prince that that dish was worth a crown. "Ay ! " exclaimed the future English hero, " I would I had that crown ! " — " It would be a great dish," rejoined the buffoon. " How can that be," rejoined the prince, " since you value it but a crown ? " — When James I. asked him whether he loved Englishmen or Frenchmen better, he replied, " Englishmen, because he was of kindred to more noble persons of England than of France ; " and when the king inquired whether he loved the English or the Germans better, he replied the English ; on which the king observing that his mother was a German, the prince replied, " * Sir, you have the wyte thereof ; ' — a northern speech," adds the writer, " which is as much as to say, — you are the cause thereof."
Born in Scotland, and heir to the crown of England at a time when the mutual jealousies of the two nations were run- ning so high, the boy often had occasion to express the unity of affection which was really in his heart. Being questioned by a nobleman, whether, after his father, he had rather be king of England or Scotland, he asked, " which of them was best ? " Being answered, that it was England ; " Then," said the Scottish-born prince, " would I have both ! " And once, in reading this verse in Virgil,
" Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur,"
the boy said he would make use of that verse for himself, with a slight alteration, thus,
" Anglus Scotusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur."
He was careful to- keep alive the same feeling in another part of the British dominions ; and the young prince appears to have been regarded with great affection by the Welsh ; for
ANECDOTES OF PKINCE HENRY, SON OF JAMES I. 369
when once the prince asked a gentleman at what mark he should shoot, the courtier pointed with levity at a Welshman who was present. " Will you see, then,'* said the princely boy, " how I will shoot at Welshmen ? " Turning his back from him, the prince shot his arrow in the air. When a Welshman, who had taken a large carouse, in the fulness of his heart and his head, said in the presence of the king, that the prince should have 40,000 Welshmen, to wait upon him against any king in Christendom ; the king, not a little jeal- ous, hastily inquired, "To do what?" The little prince turned away the momentary alarm by his facetiousness : " To cut off the heads of 40,000 leeks."
His bold and martial character was discoverable in minute circumstances like these. Eating in the king's presence a dish of milk, the king asked him why he ate so much child's meat. " Sir, it is also man's meat," Henry replied ; and im- mediately after having fed heartily on a partridge, the king observed that that meat would make him a coward, according to the prevalent notions of the age respecting diet ; to which the young prince replied, " Though it be but a cowardly fowl, it shall not make me a coward." Once taking strawberries with two spoons, when one might have sufficed, our infant Mars gaily exclaimed, u The one I use as a rapier and the other as a dagger ! "
Adam Newton appears to have filled his office as preceptor with no servility to the capricious fancies of the princely boy. Desirous, however, of cherishing the generous spirit and play- ful humour of Henry, his tutor encouraged a freedom of jest- ing with him, which appears to have been carried at times to a degree of momentary irritability on the side of the tutor, by the keen humour of the boy. While the royal pupil held his master in equal reverence and affection, the gaiety of his temper sometimes twitched the equability or the gravity of the preceptor. When Newton, wishing to set an example to the prince in heroic exercises, one day practised the pike, and tossing it with such little skill as to have failed in the attempt,
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370 ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, SON OF JAMES I.
the young prince telling him of his failure, Newton obviously lost his temper, observing, that " to find fault was an evil hu- mour." " Master, I take the humour of you." " It becomes not a prince," observed Newton. " Then," retorted the young prince, "doth it worse become a prince's master!" Some of these harmless bickerings are amusing. When Ids tutor, playing at shuffle-board with the prince, blamed him for changing so often, and taking up a piece, threw it on the board, and missed his aim, the prince smilingly exclaimed, " Well thrown, master ; " on which the tutor, a little vexed, said "he would not strive with a prince at shuffle-board." Henry observed, "Yet, you gownsmen should be best at such exercises, which are not meet for men who are more stirring." The tutor, a little irritated, said, " I am meet for whipping of boys." " You vaunt then," retorted the prince, "that which a ploughman or cart-driver can do better than you." " I can do more," said the tutor, " for I can govern foolish children." On which the prince, who, in his respect for his tutor, did not care to carry the jest farther, rose from the table, and in a low voice to those near him said, " he had need be a wise man that could do that." — Newton was some- tunes severe in his chastisement ; for when the prince was playing at goff, and having warned his tutor, who was stand ing by in conversation, that he was going to strike the ball, and having lifted up the goff-club, some one observing, " Be- ware, sir, that you hit not Mr. Newton ! " the prince drew back the dub, but smilingly observed, " Had I done so, I had but paid my debts." — At another time, when he was amusing himself with the sports of a child, his tutor wishing to draw him to more manly exercises, amongst other things, said to him in good humour, " God send you a wise wife ! " " That she may govern you and me ! " said the prince. The tutor observed, that " he had one of his own ; " the prince re- plied, " But mine, if I have one, would govern your wife, and by that means would govern both you and me ! " — Henry, at this early age, excelled in a quickness of reply, combined
ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, SON OF JAMES 1. 371
with reflection, which marks the precocity of his intellect. His tutor having laid a wager with the prince that he could not refrain from standing with his back to the fire, and s< }ing him forget himself once or twice, standing in that posture, the tutor said, " Sir, the wager is won ! you have failed twice." " Master," replied Henry, " Saint Peter's cock crew thrice." —A musician having played a voluntary in his presence, was requested to play the same again. " I could not for the kingdom of Spain," said the musician, " for this were harder than for a preacher to repeat word by word a sermon that he had not learned by rote." A clergyman standing by, ob- served that he thought a preacher might do that: "Per- haps," rejoined the young prince, " for a bishopric ! "
The natural facetiousness of his temper appears frequently in the good humour with which the little prince was accus- tomed to treat his domestics. He had two of opposite characters, who were frequently set by the ears for the sake of the sport ; the one, Murray, nick-named " the tailor," loved his liquor ; and the other was a stout " trencherman." The king desired the prince to put an end to these broils, and to make the men agree, and that the agreement should be written and subscribed by both. " Then," said the prince, " must the drunken tailor sub- scribe it with chalk, for he cannot write his name, and then I will make them agree upon this condition — that the trencherman shall go into the cellar, and drink with Will Murray, and Will Murray shall make a great wallet for the trencherman to carry his victuals in." — One of his •servants having cut the prince's finger, and sucked out the blood with his mouth, that it might heal the more easily, the young prince, who expressed no displeasure at the accident, said to him pleasantly, "If, which God forbid my father, myself, and the rest of his kindred should fail, you might claim the crown, for you have now in you the blood-royal." — Our little prince once resolved on a hearty game of play, and for this purpose only admitted his young
372 ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, SON OF JAMES I.
gentlemen, and excluded the men : it happened that an old servant, not aware of the injunction, entered the apartment, on which the prince told him he might play too ; and when the prince was asked why he admitted this old man rather than the other men, he rejoined, " Because he had a right to be of their number, for Senex bis puer."
Nor was Henry susceptible of gross flattery, for when once he wore white shoes, and one said that he longed to kiss his foot, the prince said to the fawning courtier, " Sir, I am not the pope ; " the other replied that " he would not kiss the pope's foot, except it were to bite off his great toe." The prince gravely rejoined : " At Rome you would be glad to kiss his foot, and forget the rest."
It was then the mode, when the king or the prince tra- velled, to sleep with their suite at the houses of the nobility ; and the loyalty and zeal of the host were usually displayed in the reception given to the royal guest. It happened that in one of these excursions the prince's servants complained that they had been obliged to go to bed supperless, through the pinching parsimony of the house, which the little prince at the time of hearing seemed to take no great notice of. The next morning the lady of the house coming to pay her respects to him, she found him turning over a volume that had many pictures in it ; one of which was a painting of a company sitting at a banquet : this he showed her. " I in- vite you, madam, to a feast." " To what feast ? " she asked. " To this feast," said the boy. " What ! would your highness give me but a painted feast?" Fixing his eye on her, he said, "No better, madam, is found in this house." There was a delicacy and greatness of spirit in this ingenious repri- mand far excelling the wit of a child.
According to this anecdote-writer, it appears that James the First probably did not delight in the martial dispositions of Iris son, whose habits and opinions were, in all respects, forming themselves opposite to his own tranquil and literary character. The writer says, that " his majesty, with the tokens
ANECDOTES OF PRINCE HENRY, SON OF JAMES I. 373
of love to him, would sometimes interlace sharp speeches, and other demonstrations of fatherly severity. Henry, who how- ever lived, though he died early, to become a patron of ingenious men, and a lover of genius, was himself at least as much enamoured of the pike as of the pen. The king, to rouse him to study, told him, that if he did not apply more diligently to his book, his brother, duke Charles, who seemed already attached to study, would prove more able for govern- ment and for the cabinet, and that himself would be only fit for field exercises and military affairs. To his father, the little prince made no reply; but when his tutor one day reminded him of what his father had said, to stimulate our young prince to literary diligence, Henry asked, whether he thought his brother would prove so good a scholar. His tutor replied that he was likely to prove so. " Then,'* re- joined our little prince, " will I make Charles archbishop of Canterbury."
Our Henry was devoutly pious, and rigid in never permit- ting before him any licentious language or manners. It is well known that James the First had a habit of swearing, — expletives in conversation, which, in truth, only expressed the warmth of his feelings ; but in that age, when Puritanism had already possessed half the nation, an oath was considered as nothing short of blasphemy. Henry once made a keen allusion to this verbal frailty of his father's ; for when he was told that some hawks were to be sent to him, but it was thought that the king would intercept some of them, he re- plied, " He may do as he pleases, for he shall not be put to the oath for the matter." The king once asking him what were the best verses he had learned in the first book of Vir- gil, Henry answered, " These : —
4 Rex erat Jlneas nob is, quo justior alter Nee pietate fuit, nee bello major et armis.' "
Such are a few of the peurile anecdotes of a prince who died in early youth, gleaned from a contemporary manuscript, by an eye and ear witness. They are trifles, but trifles con-
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secrated by his namr . They are genuine ; and the philos- opher knows how to value the indications of a great and heroic character. There are among them some which may occasion an inattentive reader to forget that they are all the speeches and the actions of a child 1
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OP court-etiquette few are acquainted with the mysteries, and still fewer have lost themselves in its labyrinth of forms. Whence its origin ? Perhaps from those grave and courtly Italians, who, in their petty pompous courts, made the whole business of their effeminate days consist in pun ctilios ; and, wanting realities to keep themselves alive, affected the mere shadows of life and action, in a world of these mockeries of state. It suited well the genius of a people who boasted of elementary works to teach how affronts were to be given, and how to be taken ; and who had some reason to pride themselves in producing the Cortegiano of Castiglione, and the Galateo of Delia Casa. They carried this refining tem- per into the most trivial circumstances, when a court was to be the theatre, and monarchs and their representatives, the actors. Precedence, and other honorary discriminations, es- tablish the useful distinctions of ranks, and of individuals ; but their minuter court forms, subtilized by Italian conceits, with an erudition of precedents, and a logic of nice distinc- tions, imparted a mock dignity of science to the solemn fop- peries of a master of the ceremonies, who exhausted all the faculties of his soul on the equiponderance of the first place of inferior degree with the last of a superior ; who turned into a political contest the placing of a chair and a stool ; made a reception at the stairs'-head, or at the door, raise a clash between two rival nations ; a visit out of time require a negotiation of three months ; or an awkward invitation
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produce a sudden fit of sickness ; while many a rising antag- onist, in the formidable shapes of ambassadors, were ready to dispatch a courier to their courts, for the omission or neglect of a single punctilio. The pride of nations, in pacific times, has only these means to maintain their jealousy of power : yet should not the people be grateful to the sovereign who confines his campaigns to his drawing-room : whose field- marshal is a tripping master of the ceremonies ; whose strat- agems are only to save the inviolability of court-etiquette ; and whose battles of peace are only for precedence ?
When the Earls of Holland and Carlisle, our. ambassadors extraordinary to the court of France, in 1624, were at Paris, to treat of the marriage of Charles with Henrietta, and to join in a league against Spain, before they showed their propo- sitions, they were desirous of ascertaining in what manner Cardinal Richelieu would receive them. The Marquis of Ville-aux-Clers was employed in this negotiation, which ap- peared at least as important as the marriage and the league. He brought for answer, that the cardinal would receive them as he did the ambassadors of the Emperor and the King of Spain ; that he could not give them the right hand in-his own house, because he never honoured hi this way those ambassa- dors ; but that, in reconducting them out of his room, he would go farther than he was accustomed to do, provided that they would permit him to cover this unusual proceeding with a pretext, that the others might not draw any conse- quences from it in their favour. Our ambassadors did not disapprove of this expedient, but they begged time to receive the instructions of his majesty. As this would create a con- siderable delay, they proposed another, which would set at rest, for the moment, the punctilio. They observed, that if the cardinal would feign himself sick, they would go to see him : on which the cardinal immediately went to bed, and an interview, so important to both nations, took place, and arti- cles of great difficulty were discussed, by the cardinal's bed- side ! When the Nuncio Spada would have made the cardi-
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nal jealous of the pretensions of the English ambassadors, and reproached him with yielding his precedence to them, the cardinal denied this. " I never go before them, it is true, but likewise I never accompany them ; I wait for them only in the chamber of audience, either seated in the most honour- able place, or standing till the table is ready : I am always the first to speak, and the first to be seated ; and besides, I have never chosen to return their visit, which has made the Earl of Carlisle so outrageous." *
Such was the ludicrous gravity of those court etiquettes, or punctilios, combined with political consequences, of which I am now to exhibit a picture.
When James the First ascended the throne of his united kingdoms, and promised himself and the world long halcyon days of peace, foreign princes, and a long train of ambassa- dors from every European power, resorted td the English court. The pacific monarch, in emulation of an office which already existed in the courts of Europe, created that of MAS- TER OF THE CEREMONIES, after the mode of France, observes Roger Coke.f This was now found necessary to preserve the state, and allay the perpetual jealousies of the represen- tatives of their sovereigns. The first officer was Sir Lewis Lewknor,J with an assistant, Sir John Finett, who at length succeeded him, under Charles the First, and seems to have been more amply blest with the genius of the place ; his soul doted on the honour of the office ; and hi that age of peace and of ceremony, we may be astonished at the subtilty of his inventive shifts and contrivances, in quieting that school of angry and rigid boys whom he had under his care — the am- bassadors of Europe !
Sir John Finett, like a man of genius, in office, and living too in an age of diaries, has not resisted the pleasant labour
* La Vie de Card. Richelieu, anonymous, but written by J. Le Cloro 1695, vol. i. pp. 116-125.
t " A Detection of the Court and State of England," vol. i. p. 13. | Stowe's Annals, p. 824.
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of" perpetuating his own narrative.* He has told every cir- cumstance, with a chronological exactitude, which passed in his province as master of the ceremonies ; and when we con- sider that he was a busy actor amidst the whole diplomatic corps, we shall not be surprised by discovering, in this small volume of great curiosity, a vein of secret and authentic his- tory ; it throws a new light on many important events, in which the historians of the times are deficient, who had not the knowledge of this assiduous observer. But my present purpose is not to treat Sir John with all the ceremonious punctilios, of which he was himself the arbiter ; nor to quote him on grave subjects, which future historians may well do.
This volume contains the ruptures of a morning, and the peace-makings of an evening ; sometimes, it tells of " a clash between the Savoy and Florence ambassadors for pre- cedence ; " — now of " questions betwixt the Imperial and Venetian ambassadors, concerning titles and visits" how they were to address one another, and who was to pay the first visit ! — then " the Frenchman takes exceptions about placing." This historian of the levee now records, " that the French ambassador gets ground of the Spanish ; " but soon after, so eventful were these drawing-room politics, that a day of fes- tival has passed away in suspense, while a privy council has been hastily summoned, to inquire why the French ambassa- dor had " a defluction of rheum in his teeth, besides a fit of the ague," although he hoped to be present at the same festi- val next year ! or being invited to a mask, declared " his
* I give the title of this rare volume, " Finetti Philoxensis : Some choice observations of Sir John Finett, Knight, and master of the ceremonies to the last two kings ; touching the reception and precedence, the treatment and audience, the punctilios and contests of forren ambassadors in Eng- land. Legali Ugant Mundum. 1656." This very curious diary was pub- lished after the author's death by his friend James Howell, the well-known writer; and Oldys, whose literary curiosity scarcely any thing in our do- mestic literature has escaped, has analyzed the volume with his accus- tomed care. He mentions that there was a manuscript in being, more full than the one published, of which I have not been able to learn farther.— British Librarian, p. 163.
378 THE DIARY OF A MASTER OF THE CEREMONIES.
stomach would not agree with cold meats : " " thereby point- ing" (shrewdly observes Sir John) "at the invitation and presence of the Spanish ambassador, who, at the mask the Christmas before, had appeared in the first place."
Sometimes we discover our master of the ceremonies dis- entangling himself and the lord chamberlain from the most provoking perplexities by a clever and civil lie. Thus it happened, when the Muscovite "ambassador would not yield precedence to the French nor Spaniard. On this occasion, Sir John, at his wits' end, contrived an obscure situation, in which the Russ imagined he was highly honoured, as there he enjoyed a full sight of the king's face, though he could see nothing of the entertainment itself ; while the other am- bassadors were so kind as " not to take exception," not caring about the Russian, from the remoteness of his country, and the little interest that court then had in Europe ! But Sir John displayed even a bolder invention when the Muscovite, at his reception at Whitehall, complained that only one lord was in waiting at the stairs-head, while no one had met him in the court-yard. Sir John assured him that in England it was considered a greater honour to be received by one lord than by two !
Sir John discovered all his acumen in the solemn investi- gation of " Which was the upper end of the table ? " Argu- ments and inferences were deduced from precedents quoted ; but as precedents sometimes look contrary ways, this affair might still have remained subjudice, had not Sir John, oracu- larly pronounced that " in spite of the chimneys in England, where the best man sits, is that end of the table." Sir John, indeed, would often take the most enlarged view of things ; as when the Spanish ambassador, after hunting with the king at Theobalds, dined with his majesty in the privy-chamber, his son Don Antonio dined in the council-chamber with some of the king's attendants. Don Antonio seated himself on a Btool at the end of the table. " One of the gentlemen-ushers took exception at this, being, he said, irregular and unusual
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that place being ever wont to be reserved empty for state!" In a word, no person in the world was ever to sit on that stool ; but Sir John, holding a conference before he chose to disturb the Spanish grandee, finally determined that "this was the superstition of a gentleman-usher, and it was there- fore neglected." Thus Sir John could, at a critical moment, exert a more liberal spirit, and risk an empty stool against a little ease and quiet; which were no common occurrences with that martyr of state, a master of ceremonies !
But Sir John, — to me he is so entertaining a personage that I do not care to get rid of him, — had to overcome difli culties which stretched his fine genius on tenter-hooks. Once, — rarely did the like unlucky accident happen to. the wary master of the ceremonies,— did Sir John exceed the civility of his instructions, or rather his half-instructions. Being sent to invite the Dutch ambassador, and the States' commission- ers, then a young and new government, to the ceremonies of St. George's day, they inquired whether they should have the same respect paid to them as other ambassadors ? The bland Sir John, out of the milkiness of his blood, said he doubted it not. As soon, however, as he returned to the lord chamberlain, he discovered that he had been sought for up and down, to stop the invitation. The lord chamberlain said, Sir John had exceeded his commission, if he had invited the Dutchmen " to stand in the closet of the queen's side ; because the Spanish ambassador would never endure them so near him, where there was but a thin wainscot board between, and a window which might be opened ! " Sir John said gently, he had done no otherwise than he had been desired ; which however the lord chamberlain, in part, denied, (cautious and civil !) " and I was not so unmannerly as to contest against," (supple, but uneasy !) This affair ended miserably for the poor Dutchmen. Those new republicans were then regarded with the most jealous contempt by all the ambassadors, and were just venturing on their first dancing-steps, to move among crowned heads. The Dutch now resolved not to be present ;
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declaring they had just received an urgent invitation, from the Earl of Exeter, to dine at Wimbledon. A piece of supercherie to save appearances ; probably the happy con- trivance of the combined geniuses of the lord chamberlain and the master of the ceremonies !
I will now exhibit some curious details from these archives of fantastical state, and paint a courtly world, where politics and civility seem to have been at perpetual variance.
When the Palatine arrived in England to marry Elizabeth, the only daughter of James the First, " the feasting and jol- lity " of the court were interrupted by the discontent of the archduke's ambassador, of which these were the material points : —
Sir John waited on him, to honour with his presence the solemnity on the second or third days, either to dinner or Bupper, or both.
The archduke's ambassador paused : with a troubled coun- tenance inquiring whether the Spanish ambassador was in- vited. " I answered, answerable to my instructions in case of such demand, that he was sick, and could not be there. He was yesterday, quoth he, so well, as that the offer might have very well been made him, and perhaps accepted."
To this, Sir John replied, that the French and Venetian ambassadors holding between them one course of correspond- ence, and the Spanish and the archduke's another, their invi- tations had been usually joint.
This the archduke's ambassador denied ; and affirmed that they had been separately invited to Masques, &c. but he had never ; — that France had always yielded precedence to the archduke's predecessors, when they were but Dukes of Bur- gundy, of which he was ready to produce " ancient proofs ; " and that Venice was a mean republic, a sort of burghers, and a handful of territory, compared to his monarchical sovereign : —and to all this he added, that the Venetian bragged of the frequent favours he had received.
Sir John returns in great distress to the lord chamberlain
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and his majesty. A solemn declaration is drawn up, in which James I. most gravely laments that the archduke's ambassador has taken this offence; but his majesty offers these most cogent arguments in his own favour : that the Venetian had announced to his majesty, that his republic had ordered his men new liveries on the occasion, an honour, he adds, not usual with princes — the Spanish ambassador, not finding himself well for the first day (because, by the way, he did not care to dispute precedence with the Frenchman), his majesty conceiving that the solemnity of the marriage being one continued act through divers days, it admitted neither prius nor posterius : and then James proves too much, by boldly asserting, that the last day should be taken for the greatest day! — as in other cases, for instance, in that of Christmas, where Twelfth-day, the last day is held as the greatest.
But the French and Venetian ambassadors, so envied by the Spanish and the archduke's, were themselves not less chary, and crustily fastidious. The* insolent Frenchman first attempted to take precedence of the Prince of Wales ; and the Venetian stood upon this point, that they should sit on chairs, though the prince had but a stool ; and, particularly, that the carver should not stand before him ! " But," adds Sir John, " neither of them prevailed in their reasonless pre- tences."
Nor was it peaceable even at the nuptial dinner, which closed with the following catastrophe of etiquette : —
Sir John having ushered among the countesses the lady of the French ambassador, he left her to the ranging of the lord chamberlain, who ordered she should be placed at the table next beneath the countesses, and above the baronesses. But lo ! " The Viscountess of Effingham standing to her woman's right, and possessed already of her proper place (as she called it) would not remove lower, so held the hand of the ambas- sadrice, till after dinner, when the French ambassador, in- formed of the difference and opposition, called out for his
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wife's coach ! " With great trouble, the French lady was persuaded to stay, the Countess of Kildare and the Viscoun- tess of Haddington making no scruple of yielding their places. Sir John, unbending his gravity, facetiously adds, " The Lady of Effingham, in the interim, forbearing (with rather too much than little stomach) both her supper and her company." This spoilt child of quality, tugging at the French ambassa- dress to keep her down, mortified to be seated at the side of the Frenchwoman that day, frowning and frowned on, and going supperless to bed, passed the wedding-day of the Pal- atine and Princess Elizabeth, like a cross girl on a form.
One of the most subtle of these men of punctilio, and the most troublesome, was the Venetian ambassador ; for it was his particular aptitude to find fault, and pick out jealousies among all the others of his body.
On the marriage of the Earl of Somerset, the Venetian was invited to the masque, but not the dinner, as last' year the reverse had occurred. The Frenchman, who drew al- ways with the Venetian, at this moment chose to act by him- self on the watch of precedence, jealous of the Spaniard ewly arrived. When invited, he inquired if the Spanish ambassador was to be there ? and humbly beseeched his maj- esty to be excused, from indisposition. We shall now see Sir John put into the most lively action by the subtle Vene- tian.
" I was scarcely back at court with the French ambassa- dor's answer, when I was told that a gentleman from the Venetian ambassador had been tx> seek me ; who, having at last found me, said that his lord desired me, that if ever I would do him favour, I would take the pains to come to him instantly. I, winding the cause to be some new buzz gotten into his brain, from some intelligence he had from the French of that morning's proceeding, excused my present coming, that I might take further instructions from the lord chamber- lain ; wherewith, as soon as I was sufficiently armed, I went to the Venetian."
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But the Venetian would not confer with Sir John, though he sent for him in such a hurry, except in presence of his own secretary. Then the Venetian desired Sir John to re- peat the words of his invitation, and those also of his own answer ! which poor Sir John actually did ! For he adds, " I yielded, but not without discovering my insatisfaction to be so peremptorily pressed on, as if he had meant to trip me."
The Venetian having thus compelled Sir John to con over both invitation and answer, gravely complimented him on his correctness to a tittle ! Yet still was the Venetian not in less trouble : and now he confessed that the king had given a for- mal invitation to the French ambassador, — and not to him !
This was a new stage in this important negotiation : it tried all the diplomatic sagacity of Sir John to extract a discovery ; and which was, that the Frenchman had, indeed, conveyed the intelligence secretly to the Venetian.
Sir John now acknowledged that he had suspected as much when he received the message ; and not to be taken by sur- prise, he had come prepared with a long apology, ending, for peace* sake, with the same formal invitation for the Venetian Now the Venetian insisted again that Sir John should deliver the invitation in the same precise words as it had been given to the Frenchman. Sir John, with his never-failing courtly docility, performed it to a syllable. Whether both parties during all these proceedings could avoid moving a risible mus- cle at one another, our grave authority records not.
The Venetian's final answer seemed now perfectly satisfac- tory, declaring he would not excuse his absence as the Frenchman had, on the most frivolous pretence ; and farther, he expressed his high satisfaction with last year's substantial testimony of the royal favour, in the public honours conferred on him, and regretted that the quiet of his majesty should be BO frequently disturbed by these punctilios about invitations, which so often " over-thronged his guests at the feast."
Sir John now imagined that all was happily concluded, and
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was retiring with the sweetness of a dove, and the quietness of a mouse, to fly to the lord chamberlain, when behold the Venetian would not relinquish his hold, but turned on him •* with the reading of another scruple, et hinc illce lachrymce ! asking whether the archduke's ambassador was also invited ? "
Poor Sir John, to keep himself clear " from categorical as- severations," declared " he could not resolve him." Then the Venetian observed, " Sir John was dissembling ! and he hoped and imagined that Sir John had in his instructions, that he was first to have gone to him (the Venetian), and on his re- turn to the archduke's ambassador." Matters now threatened to be as irreconcilable as ever, for it seems the Venetian was standing on the point of precedency with the archduke's am- bassador. The political Sir John, wishing to gratify the Venetian at no expense, adds, " he thought it ill manners to mar a belief of an ambassador's making," and so allowed him to think that he had been invited before the archduke's am- bassador !
This Venetian proved himself to be, to the great torment of Sir John, a stupendous genius in his own way ; ever on the watch to be treated al paro di teste coronate — equal with crowned heads ; and, when at a tilt, refused being placed among the ambassadors of Savoy and the States-general, &c., while the Spanish and French ambassadors were seated alone on the opposite side. The Venetian declared that this would be a diminution of his quality ; the first place of an inferior degree being ever held worse than the last of a superior. This refined observation delighted Sir John, who dignifies it as an axiom, yet afterwards came to doubt it with a sed de hoc qucere — query this ! If it be true" in politics, it is not so in common sense, according to the proverbs of both nations ; for the honest English declares, that " Better be the head of the yeomanry than the tail of the gentry ; " while the subtle Italian has it, " E meglio esser testa di Luccio, che coda di Storione ; " " better be the head of a pike than the tail ot a sturgeon." But before we quit Sir John, let us hear him in
THE DIARY OF A MASTER OF THE CEREMONIES. 385
his own words, reasoning with fine critical tact, which he undoubtedly possessed, on right and left hands, but reasoning with infinite modesty as well as genius. Hear this sage of punctilios, this philosopher of courtesies.
" The Axiom before delivered by the Venetian ambassa- dor was judged upon discourse I had with some of under- standing, to be of value in a distinct company, but might be otherwise in a joint assembly ! " And then Sir John, like a philosophical historian, explores some great public event — "As at the conclusion of the peace at Vervins (the only part of the peace he cared about,) the French and Spanish meet- ing, contended for precedence — who should sit at the right nand of the pope's legate : an expedient was found, of send- ing into France for the pope's nuncio residing there, who, seated at the right hand of the said legate, (the legate him- self sitting at the table's end,) the French ambassador being offered the choice of the next place, he took that at the legate's left hand, leaving the second at the right hand to the Spanish, who, taking it, persuaded himself to have the better of it : sed de hoc qu&re" How modestly, yet how shrewdly insinuated !
So much, if not too much, of the Diary of a Master of the Ceremonies ; where the important personages strangely con- trast with the frivolity and foppery of their actions.
By this work it .appears that all foreign ambassadors were entirely entertained, for their diet, lodgings, coaches, with all their train, at the cost of the English monarch, and on their departure received customary presents of considerable value ; from 1,000 to 5,000 ounces of gilt plate ; and in more cases than one, the meanest complaints were made by the ambas- sadors, about short allowances. That the foreign ambassadors in return made presents to the masters of the ceremonies, from thirty to fifty " pieces," or in plate or jewels ; and some so grudgingly, that Sir John Finett often vents his indigna- tion, and commemorates the indignity. As thus, — on one of the Spanish ambassadors-extraordinary waiting at Deal for
VOL. ii. 25
386 THE DIARY OF A MASTER OF THE CEREMONIES.
three days, Sir John, " expecting the wind with the patience of an hungry entertainment from a close-handed ambassador^ as his present to me at his parting from Dover being but an old gilt livery pot, that had lost his fellow, not worth above twelve pounds, accompanied with two pair of Spanish gloves to make it almost thirteen, to my shame and his." When he left this scurvy ambassador-extraordinary to his fate aboard the ship, he exults that " the cross-winds held him in the Downs almost a seven-night before they would blow him over."
From this mode of receiving ambassadors, two incon- veniences resulted ; their perpetual jars of punctilios, and their singular intrigues to obtain precedence, which so com- pletely harassed the patience of the most pacific sovereign, that James was compelled to make great alterations in his domestic comforts, and was perpetually embroiled in the most ridiculous contests. At length Charles I. perceived the great charge of these embassies, ordinary and extraordinary, often on frivolous pretences ; and with an empty treasury, and an uncomplying parliament, he grew less anxious for such ruinous honours.* He gave notice to foreign ambassadors, that he should not any more " defray their diet, nor provide coaches for them," &c. " This frugal purpose " cost Sir John
* Charles I. had, however, adopted them, and long preserved the state- liness of his court with foreign powers, as appears by these extracts from manuscript letters of the time :
Mr. Mead writes to Sir M. Stuteville, July 25, 1629.
" His majesty was wont to answer the French ambassador in his own language; now he speaks in English, and by an interpreter. And so doth Sir Thomas Edmondes to the French king; contrary to the ancient cus- tom : so that altho' of late we have not equalled them in arms, yet now we shall equal them in ceremonies."
Oct. 31, 1628.
" This day fortnight, the States' ambassador going to visit my lord treas- urer about some business, whereas his lordship was wont always to bring them but to the stairs' head, he then, after a great deal of courteous resist- ance on the ambassador's part, attended him through the hall and court- yard, even to the very boot of his coache" — Sloane MSS. 4,178.
THE DIARY OF A MASTER OF THE CEREMONIES. 387
many altercations, who seems to view it as the glory of the British monarch being on the wane. The unsettled state of Charles was appearing in 1636, by the querulous narrative of the master of the ceremonies ; the etiquettes of the court were disturbed by the erratic course of its great star ; and the master of the ceremonies was reduced to keep blank let- ters to superscribe, and address to any nobleman who was to be found, from the absence of the great officers of state. On this occasion the ambassador of the Duke of Mantua, who had long desired his parting audience, when the king objected to the unfitness of the place he was then in, replied, that, " if it were under a tree, it should be to him as a palace."
Yet although we smile at this science of etiquette and these rigid forms of ceremony, when they were altogether discarded a great statesman lamented them, and found the ^convenience and mischief in the political consequences which followed their neglect. Charles II., who was no ad- mirer of these regulated formalities of court etiquette, seems to have broken up the pomp and pride of the former master of the ceremonies ; and the grave and great chancellor of human nature, as Warburton calls Clarendon, censured and felt all the inconveniences of this open intercourse of an am- bassador with the king. Thus he observed in the case of the Spanish ambassador, who, he writes, " took the advantage of the license of the court, where no rules or formalities were yet established, (and to which the king himself was not enough inclined,) but all doors open to all persons ; which the ambas- sador finding he made himself a domestic, came to the king at ah1 hours, and spake to him when, and as long as he would, without any ceremony, or desiring an audience according to the old custom ; but came into the bed-chamber while the king was dressing himself, and mingled in all discourses with the same freedom he would use in his own. And from this never-heard-of license, introduced by the French and the Spaniard at this time, without any dislike in the king though.
388 DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL.
not permitted in any court in Christendom, many incon- veniences and mischiefs broke in, which could never after be shut out/' *
DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL.
WE converse with the absent by letters, and with our- selves by diarie: ; but vanity is more gratified by dedicating its time to the little labours which have a chance of im- mediate notice, and may circulate from hand to hand, than by the honester pages of a volume reserved only for solitary contemplation ; or to be a future relic of ourselves, whS we shall no more hear of ourselves.
Marcus Antoninus's celebrated work entitled, Twv «'f eavrdv, Of the things which concern himself, would be a good defini- tion of the use and purpose of a diary. Shaftesbury calls a diary, "A Fault-book," intended for self-correction ; and a Colonel Harwood, in the reign of Charles the First, kept a diary, which, in the spirit of the times, he entitled " Slips, Infirmities, and Passages of Providence." Such a diary is a moral instrument, should the writer exercise it on himself, and on all around him. Men then wrote folios concerning themselves ; and it sometimes happened, as proved by many, which I have examined in manuscript, that often writing in retirement, they would write when they had nothing to write.
Diaries must be out of date in a lounging age ; although I have myself known several who have continued the practice with pleasure and utility. One of our old writers quaintly observes, that " the ancients used to take their stomach-pill of self-examination every night. Some used little books, or tablets, which they tied at their girdles, in which they kept a memorial of what they did, against their night-reckoning." We know that Titus, the delight of mankind, as he has been * Clarendon's Life, vol. ii. p. 160.
DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL. 389
called, kept a diary of all his actions, and when at night he found upon examination that he had performed nothing memorable, he would exclaim, "Amici ! diem perdidimus ! " Friends ! we have lost a day !
Among our own countrymen, in times more favourable for a concentrated mind than in this age of scattered thoughts and of the fragments of genius, the custom long prevailed : and we their posterity are still reaping the benefit of their lonely hours and diurnal records. It is always pleasing to recollect the name of Alfred, and we have deeply to regret the loss of a manual which this monarch, so strict a manager of his time, yet found leisure to pursue : it would have in- terested us much more even than his translations, which have come down to us. Alfred carried in his bosom memorandum leaves, in which he made collections from his studies, and took so much pleasure in the frequent examination of this journal, that he called it his hand-book, because, says Spel- man, day and night he ever had it in hand with him. This manual, as my learned friend Mr. Turner, in his elaborate and philosophical Life of Alfred, has shown by some curious extracts from Malmsbury, was the repository of his own oc- casional literary reflections. An association of ideas connects two other of our illustrious princes with Alfred.
Prince Henry, the son of James I., our English Marcellus, who was wept by all the Muses, and mourned by all the brave in Britain, devoted a great portion of his time to literary intercourse ; and the finest geniuses of the age ad- dressed their works to him, and wrote several at the prince's suggestion. Dallington, in the preface to his curious "Apho- risms, Civil and Militarie," has described Prince Henry's domestic life : " Myself," says he, " the unablest of many in that academy, for so was his family, had this especial employ- ment for his proper use, which he pleased favourably to entertain, and often to read over."
The diary of Edward VI., written with his own hand, conveys a notion of that precocity of intellect, in that early
390 DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL.
educated prince, which would not suffer his infirm health to relax in his royal duties. This prince was solemnly struck with the feeling that he was not seated on a throne to be a trifler or a sensualist : and this simplicity of mind is very re- markable in the entries of his diary ; where, on one occasion, to remind himself of the causes of his secret proffer of friendship to aid the Emperor of Germany with men against the Turk, and to keep it at present secret from the French court, the young monarch inserts, " This was done on intent to get some friends. The reasonings be in my desk." So zealous was he to have before him a state of public affairs, that often in the middle of the month he recalls to mind pas- sages which he had omitted in the beginning : what was done every day of moment, he retired into his study to set down. — Even James the Second wrote with his own hand the daily occurrences of his times, his reflections and conjectures. Adversity had schooled him into reflection, and softened into humanity a spirit of bigotry ; and it is something in his fa- vour, that after his abdication he collected his thoughts, and mortified himself by the penance of a diary. — Could a Clive or a Cromwell have composed one ? Neither of these men could suffer solitude and darkness ; they started at their casual recollections : — what would they have done, had mem- ory marshalled their crimes, and arranged them in the terrors of chronology?
When the national character retained more originality and individuality than our monotonous habits now admit, our later ancestors displayed a love of application, which was a source of happiness, quite lost to us. Till the middle of the last century they were as great economists of their time as of their estates ; and life with them was not one hurried yet tedious festival. Living more within themselves, more separated, they were therefore more original in their prejudices, their principles, and in the constitution of their minds. They resided more on their estates, and the metropolis was .usually resigned to the men of trade in their Royal Exchange, and
DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL. 39 \
the preferment-hunters among the backstairs at Whitehall. Lord Clarendon tells us, in his " Life," that his grandfather, in James the First's time, had never been in London after the death of Elizabeth, though he lived thirty years after- wards ; and his wife, to whom he had been married forty years, had never once visited the metropolis. On this fact he makes a curious observation : " The wisdom and frugality of that time being such, that few gentlemen made journeys to London, or any other expensive journey, but upon impor- tant business, and their wives never ; by which Providence they enjoyed and improved their estates in the country, and kept good hospitality in their house, brought up their children well, and were beloved by their neighbours." This will ap- pear a very coarse homespun happiness, and these must seem very gross virtues to our artificial feelings ; yet this assuredly created a national character ; made a patriot of every coun- try gentleman ; and, finally, produced in the civil wars some of the most sublime and original characters that ever acted a great part on the theatre of human life.
This was the age of DIARIES ! The head of almost every family formed one. Ridiculous people may have written ridiculous diaries, as Elias Ashmole's ; but many of our greatest characters in public life have left such monuments of their diurnal labours.
These diaries were a substitute to every thinking man for our newspapers, magazines, and annual registers ; but those who imagine that these are a substitute for the scenical and dramatic life of the diary of a man of genius, like Swift, who wrote one, or even of a lively observer, who lived amidst the scenes he describes, as Horace Walpole's letters to Sir Horace Man, which form a regular diary, only show that they are better acquainted with the more ephemeral and equivocal labours.
There is a curious passage in a letter of Sir Thomas Bodley, recommending to Sir Francis Bacon, then a young man on his travels, the mode by which he should make his
392 DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL.
life " profitable to his country and his friends." His expres- sions are remarkable. " Let all these riches be treasured up, not only in your memory, where time may lessen your stock, but rather in good writings and books of account, which will keep them safe for your use hereafter." By these good writings and books of account, he describes the diaries of a student and an observer ; these " good writings " will preserve what wear out in the memory, and these " books of account " render to a man an account of himself to himself.
It was this solitary reflection and industry which assuredly contributed so largely to form the gigantic minds of the Seldens, the Camdens, the Cokes, and others of that vigorous age of genius. When Coke fell into disgrace, and retired into private life, the discarded statesman did not pule himself into a lethargy, but on the contrary seemed almost to rejoice that an opportunity was at length afforded him of indulging in studies more congenial to his feelings. Then he found leisure not only to revise his former writings, which were thirty volumes written with his own hand, but, what most pleased him, he was enabled to write a manual, which he called Vade Mecum, and which contained a retrospective view of his life, since he noted in that volume the most remarkable occurrences which had happened to him. It is not probable that such a MS. could have been destroyed but by accident ; and it might, perhaps, yet be recovered.
" The interest of the public was the business of Camden's life," observes Bishop Gibson; and, indeed, this was the character of the men of that age. Camden kept a diary of all occurrences in the reign of James the First ; not that at his advanced age, and with his infirm health, he could ever imagine that he should make use of these materials ; but he did this, inspired by the love of truth, and of that labour which delights in preparing its materials for posterity. Bishop Gibson has made an important observation on the nature of such a diary, which cannot be too often repeated to those who have the opportunities of forming one; and for
DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL. 393
them I transcribe it. " Were this practised by persons of learning and curiosity, who have opportunities of seeing into the public affairs of a kingdom, the short hints, and strictures of this kind would often set things in a truer light than regular histories."
A student of this class was Sir Symonds d'Ewes, an inde- pendent country gentleman, to whose zeal we owe the valu- able journals of parliament in Elizabeth's reign, and who has left in manuscript a voluminous diary, from which may be drawn some curious matters. In the preface to his journals, he has presented a noble picture of his literary reveries, and the intended productions of his pen. They will animate the youthful student, and show the active genius of the gentlemen of that day. The present diarist observes, " Having now finished these volumes, I have already entered upon other and greater labours, conceiving myself not to be born for myself alone,
' Qui vivat sibi solus, homo nequit esse beatus, Malo mori, nam sic vivere nolo mihi.' "
He then gives a list of his intended historical works, and adds, " These I have proposed to myself to labour in, besides divers others, smaller works : like him that shoots at the sun, not in hopes to reach it, but to shoot as high as possibly his strength, art, or skill, will permit. So though I know it im- possible to finish all these during my short and uncertain life, having already entered into the thirtieth year of my age, and having many unavoidable cares of an estate and family, yet, if I can finish a little in each kind, it may hereafter stir up some able judges to add an end to the whole :
4 Sic mihi contingat vivere, sicque mori.' "
Richard Baxter, whose facility and diligence, it is said, pro- duced one hundred and forty-five distinct works, wrote, as he himself says, " in the crowd of all my other employments." Assuredly the one which may excite astonishment is his volu- minous autobiography, forming a folio of more than seven
394 DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL.
hundred closely-printed pages ; a history which takes a con- siderable compass, from 1615 to 1684; whose writer pries into the very seed of events, and whose personal knowledge of the leading actors of his times throws a perpetual interest over his lengthened pages. Yet this was not written with a view of publication by himself; he still continued this work, till time and strength wore out the hand that could no longer hold the pen, and left it tQ;,the judgment of others, whether it should be given to the world.
These were private persons. It may excite our surprise to discover that our statesmen, and others engaged in active public life, occupied themselves with the same habitual atten- tion to what was passing around them in the form of diaries, or their own memoirs, or in forming collections for future times, with no possible view but for posthumous utility. They seem to have been inspired by the most genuine passion of patriotism, and an awful love of posterity. What motive less powerful could induce many noblemen and gentlemen to transcribe volumes ; to transmit to posterity authentic narra- tives, which would not even admit of contemporary notice ; either because the facts were then well known to all, or of so secret a nature as to render them dangerous to be communi- cated to their own times. They sought neither fame nor interest ; for many collections of this nature have come down to us without even the names of the scribes, which have been usually discovered by accidental circumstances. It may be said that this toil was the pleasure of idle men : — the idlers then were of a distinct race from our own. There is scarcely a person of reputation among them, who has not left such laborious records of himself. I intend drawing up a list of such diaries and memoirs, which derive their importance from diarists themselves. Even the women of this time partook of the same thoughtful dispositions. It appears that the Duchess of York, wife to James the Second, and the daughter of Clarendon, drew up a narrative of his life : the celebrated Duchess of Newcastle has formed a dignified, biography of
DIARIES— MOKAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL. 395
her husband ; Lady Fanshaw's Memoirs have been recently published ; and Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs of her Colonel have delighted every curious reader.
Whitelocke's "Memorials" is a diary full of important publu* matters ; and the noble editor, the Earl of Anglesei, observes, that " our author not only served the state, in sev- eral stations, both at home and in foreign countries, but like- wise conversed with books, and made himself a large provision from his studies and contemplation, like that noble Roman Portius Cato, as described by Nepos. He was all along so much in business, one would not imagine he ever had leisure for books ; yet, who considers his studies might believe he had been always shut up with his friend Selden, and the dust of action never fallen on his gown." When Whitelocke was sent on an embassy to Sweden, he journalized it ; it amounts to two bulky quartos, extremely curious. He has even left us a History of England.
Yet all is not told of Whitelocke ; and we have deeply to regret the loss, or at least the concealment, of a work addressed to his family, which apparently would be still more interest- ing, as exhibiting his domestic habits and feelings, and afford- ing a model for those in public life, who had the spirit to imi- tate such greatness of mind, of which we have not many examples. — Whitelocke had drawn up a great work, which he entitled " Remembrances of the Labours of Whitelocke in the Annales of his Life, for the instruction of his Children" To Dr. Morton, the editor of Whitelocke's " Journal of the Swedish Ambassy," we owe the notice of this work ; and I shall transcribe his dignified feelings in regretting the want of these MSS. " Such a work, and by such a father, is become the inheritance of every child, whose abilities and station in h'fe may at any time hereafter call upon him to deliberate for his country, — and for his family and person, as parts of the great whole ; and I confess myself to be one of those who lament the suppression of that branch of the Annales which relates to the author himself in his private capacity ; they would
396 DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL.
have afforded great pleasure as well as instruction, to the world in their entire form. The first volume, containing the first twenty years of his life, may one day see the light ; but the greatest part has hitherto escaped my inquiries." This is all we know of a work of equal moral and philosophical curi- osity. The preface, however, to these " Remembrances," has been fortunately preserved, and it is an extraordinary pro- duction. In this it appears that Whitelocke himself owed the first idea of his own work to one left by his father, which ex- isted in the family, and to which he repeatedly refers his children. He says, " The memory and worth of your deceased grandfather deserves all honour and imitation, both from you and me ; his ' Liber Famelicus ' his own story, written by himself, will be left to you, and was an encouragement and precedent to this larger work." Here is a family picture quite new to us ; the heads of the house are its historians, and these records of the heart were animated by examples and precepts, drawn from their own bosoms ; and, as White- locke feelingly expresses it, " ah1 is recommended to the peru- sal and intended for the instruction of my own house ; and almost in every page you will find a dedication to you, my dear children."
The habit of laborious studies, and a zealous attention to the history of his own times, produced the Register and Chronicle of Bishop Kennett, " Containing matters of fact, delivered in the words of the most authentic papers and rec- ords, all daily entered and commented on : " it includes an account of all pamphlets as they appeared. This history, more valuable to us than to his own contemporaries, occupied two large folios, of wliich only one has been printed : a zeal- ous labour, which could only have been carried on from a motive of pure patriotism. It is, however, but a small part of the diligence of the bishop, since his own manuscripts form a small library of themselves.
The malignant vengeance of Prynne in exposing the diary of Laud to the public eye, lost all its purpose, for nothing ap-
DIAEIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL. 397
peared more favourable to Laud than this exposition of his private diary. We forget the harshness in the personal man- ners of Laud himself, and sympathize even with his errors, when we turn over the simple leaves of this diary, which obvi- ously was not intended for any purpose but for his own private eye and collected meditations. There his whole heart is laid open : his errors are not concealed, and the purity of his in- tentions is established. Laud, who too haughtily blended the prime minister with the archbishop, still, from conscientious motives, in the hurry of public duties, and in the pomp of public honours, could steal aside into solitude, to account to God and himself for every day, and " the evil thereof."
The diary of Henry Earl of Clarendon, who inherited the industry of his father, has partly escaped destruction ; it pre- sents us with a picture of the manners of the age, from whence, says Bishop Douglas, we may learn that at the close of the last century, a man of the first quality made it his constant practice to pass his time without shaking his arm a.t a gaming-table, associating with jockeys at Newmarket, or murdering time by a constant round of giddy dissipation, if not of criminal indulgence. Diaries were not uncommon in the last age : Lord Anglesea, who made so great a figure in the reign of Charles the Second, left one behind him ; and one said to have been written by the Duke of Shrewsbury still exists.
But the most admirable example is Lord Clarendon's His- tory of his own " Life," or rather of the court, and every event and person passing before him. In this moving scene he copies nature with freedom, and has exquisitely touched the individual character. There that great statesman opens the most concealed transactions, and traces the views of the most opposite dispositions; and, though engaged, when in exile, in furthering the royal intercourse with the loyalists, and when, on the Restoration, conducting the difficult affairs of a great nation, a careless monarch, and a dissipated court, yet besides his immortal history of the civil wars, " the chan-
398 DIARIES— MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL.
cellor of human nature " passed his life in habitual reflection, and his pen in daily employment. Such was the admirable industry of our later ancestors ; their diaries and their me- moirs are its monuments !
James the Second is an illustrious instance of the admir- able industry of our ancestors. With his own hand this prince wrote down the chief occurrences of his times, and often his instant reflections and conjectures. Perhaps no sovereign prince, said Macpherson, has been known to have left behind him better materials for history. We at length possess a considerable portion of his diary, which is that of a man of business and of honest intentions, containing many remarkable facts which had otherwise escaped from our historians.
The literary man has formed diaries purely of his studies, and the practice may be called journalizing the mind, in a summary of studies, and a register of loose hints and sbozzos, that sometimes happily occur ; and h'ke Eingelbergius, that enthusiast for study, whose animated exhortations to young students have been aptly compared to the sound of a trumpet in the field of battle, marked down every night, before going to sleep, what had been done during the studious day. Of this class of diaries, Gibbon has given us an illustrious model : and there is an unpublished quarto of the late Barre Roberts, a young student of genius, devoted to curious researches, which deserves to meet the public eye. I should like to see a little book published with this title, " Otium delitiosum in quo objecta vel in actione, vel in lectione, vel in visione ad singulos dies Anni 1629 observata representantur." This writer was a German, who boldly published for the course of one year, whatever he read or had seen every day in that year. As an experiment, if honestly performed, this might be curious to the philosophical, observer ; but to write down everything, may end in something like nothing.
A great poetical contemporary of our own country does not think that even Dreams should pass away unnoticed ;
LICENSERS OF THE PRESS. 399
and he calls this register his Nocturnals. His dreams are assuredly poetical ; as Laud's, who journalized his, seem to have been made up of the affairs of state and religion ; — the personages are his patrons, his enemies, and others ; his dreams are scenical and dramatic. Works of this nature are not designed for the public eye; they are domestic annals, to be guarded in the little archives of a family ; they are offerings cast before our Lares.
" Pleasing, when youth is long expired, to trace
The forms our pencil or our pen design'd; Such was our youthful air, and shape, and face, Such the soft image of our youthful mind."
SHENSTONE.
LICENSERS OF THE PllESS.
IN the history of literature, and perhaps in that of the human mind, the institution of the LICENSERS OF THE PRESS, and CENSORS OP BOOKS, was a bold invention, designed to counteract that of the Press itself; and even to convert this newly-discovered instrument of human free- dom into one which might serve to perpetuate that system of passive obedience, which had so long enabled modern Rome to dictate her laws to the universe. It was thought possible in the subtlety of Italian astuzia and Spanish monachism, to place a sentinel on the very thoughts as well as on the per- sons of authors ; and in extreme cases, that books might be condemned to the flames as well as heretics.
Of this institution, the beginnings are obscure, for it orig- inated in caution and fear ; but as the work betrays the workman, and the national physiognomy the native, it is evident that so inquisitorial an act could only have originated in the Inquisition itself. Feeble or partial attempts might previously have existed, for we learn that the monks had a part of their libraries called th°, inferno, which was not the
400 LICENSERS OF THE PRESS.
part which they least visited, for it contained, or hid, all the prohibited books which they could smuggle into it. But this inquisitorial power assumed its most formidable shape in the council of Trent, when some gloomy spirits from Rome and Madrid foresaw the revolution of this new age of books. The triple-browned pontiff had in vain rolled the thunders of the Vatican, to strike out of the hands of all men the volumes of Wiekliffe, of Huss, and of Luther, and even menaced their eager readers with death. At this council Pius IV. was presented with a catalogue of books of which they denounced that the perusal ought to be forbidden ; his bull not only con- firmed this list of the condemned, but added rules how books should be judged. Subsequent popes enlarged these cata- logues, and added to the rules, as the monstrous novelties started up. Inquisitors of books were appointed ; at Rome they consisted of certain cardinals and " the master of the holy palace ; " and literary inquisitors were elected at Ma- drid, at Lisbon, at Naples, and for the Low Countries ; they were watching the ubiquity of the human mind. These cata- logues of prohibited books were called Indexes ; and at Rome a body of these literary despots are still called " the Congre- gation of the Index." The simple Index is a list of con demned books which are never to be opened : but the JExpurgatory Index indicates those only prohibited till they have undergone a purification. No book was allowed to be on any subject, or in any language, which contained a single position, an ambiguous sentence, even a word, which, in the most distant sense, could be construed opposite to the doc- trines of the supreme authority of this council of Trent ; where it seems to have been enacted, that all men, literate and illiterate, prince and peasant, the Italian, the Spaniard and the -Netherlander, should take the mint-stamp of their thoughts from the council of Trent, and millions of souls be struck off at one blow, out of the same used mould.
The sages who compiled these Indexes, indeed, long had reason to imagine that passive obedience was attached to the
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human character: and therefore they considered, that the publications of their adversaries required no other notice than a convenient insertion in their indexes. But the heretics diligently reprinted them with ample prefaces and useful annotations ; Dr. James, of Oxford, republished an Index with due animadversions. The parties made an opposite use of them : while the catholic crossed himself at every title, the heretic would purchase no book which had not been indexed. One of their portions exposed a list of those authors whose heads were condemned as well as their books : it was a catalogue of men of genius.
The results of these indexes were somewhat curious. As they were formed in different countries, the opinions were often diametrically opposite to each other. The learned Arias Montanus, who was a chief inquisitor in the Nether- lands, and concerned in the Antwerp Index, lived to see his own works placed in the Roman Index ; while the inquisitor of Naples was so displeased with the Spanish Index, that he persisted to assert that it had never been printed at Madrid ! Men who began by insisting that all the world should not differ from their opinions, ended by not agreeing with them- selves. A civil war raged among the Index-makers ; and if one criminated, the other retaliated. If one discovered ten places necessary to be expurgated, another found thirty, and a third inclined to place the whole work in the condemned list. The -inquisitors at length became so doubtful of their own opinions, that they sometimes expressed in their license for printing, that " they tolerated the reading, after the book had been corrected by themselves, till such time as the work should be considered worthy of some farther correction." The expurgatory indexes excited louder complaints than those which simply condemned books ; because the purgers and castrators, as they were termed, or as Milton calls them, " the executioners of books," by omitting, or interpolating passages, made an author say, or unsay, what the inquisitors chose; and their editions, after the death of the. authors,
VOL. ii. 26
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were compared to the erasures or forgeries in records : foi the books which an author leaves behind him, with his last corrections, are like his last will and testament, and the pub- lic are the legitimate heirs of an author's opinions.
The whole process of these expurgatory Indexes, that " rakes through the entrails of many an old good author, with a violation worse than any could be offered to his tomb," as Milton says, must inevitably draw off the life- blood, and leave an author a mere spectre! A book in Spain and Portugal passes through six or seven court? before it can be published, and is supposed to recommend itself by the information, that it is published with all the necessary privileges. They would sometimes keep works from publication till they had "properly qualified them, interemse calijicam" which in one case is said to have occupied them during forty years. Authors of genius have taken fright at the gripe of " the master of the holy palace," or the lacerating scratches of the " corrector-general por su magestad." At Madrid and Lisbon, and even at Rome, this licensing of books has confined most of their authors to the body of the good fathers themselves.
The Commentaries on the Lusiad, by Faria de Souza, had occupied his zealous labours for twenty-five years, and were favourably received by the learned. But the commentator was brought before this tribunal of criticism and religion, as suspected of heretical opinions ; when the accuser did not succeed before the inquisitors of Madrid, he carried the charge to that of Lisbon ; an injunction was immediately issued to forbid the sale of the Commentaries, and it cost the commentator an elaborate defence, to demonstrate the Catholicism of the poet and himself. The Commentaries finally were released from perpetual imprisonment.
This system has prospered to admiration, in keeping public opinion down to a certain meanness of spirit, and happily preserved stationary the childish stupidity through the nation, on which so much depended.
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Nani's History of Venice is allowed to be printed, because it contained nothing against princes. Princes then were either immaculate or historians false. The History of Guicciardini is still scarred with the merciless wound of the papistic censor; and a curious account of the origin and increase of papal power was long wanting in the third and fourth book of his lu'story. Velly's History of France would have been an admirable work, had it not been printed at Paris !
When the insertions in the Index were found of no other use than to bring the peccant volumes under the eyes of the curious, they employed the secular arm in burning them in public places. The history of these literary conflagrations has often been traced by writers of opposite parties ; for the truth is, that both used them : zealots seem ah1 formed of one material, whatever be their party. They had yet to learn, that burning was not confuting, and that these public fires were an advertisement by proclamation. The publisher of Erasmus's Colloquies intrigued to procure the burning of his book, which raised the sale to twenty-four thousand !
A curious literary anecdote has reached us of the times of Henry VIII. Tonstall, Bishop of London, accused at that day for his moderation in preferring the burning of books to that of authors, which was then getting into practice, to tes- tify his abhorrence of Tindal's principles, who had printed a translation of the New Testament, a sealed book for the multitude, thought of purchasing all the copies of Tindal's translation, and annihilating them in the common flame. This occurred to him when passing through Antwerp in 1529, then a place of refuge for the Tindalists. He em- ployed an English merchant there for this business, who happened to be a secret follower of Tindal, and acquainted him with the bishop's intention. Tindal was extremely glad to hear of the project, for he was desirous of printing a more correct edition of his version ; the first impression still hung on his hands, and he was too poor to make a new one ; he
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gladly furnished the English merchant with all his unsold copies, which the bishop as eagerly bought, and had them all publicly burnt in Cheapside. The people not only declared this was a " burning of the word of God," but it inflamed the desire of reading that volume ; and the second edition was sought after at any price. When one of the Tindalists, who was sent here to sell them, was promised by the lord chan- cellor, in a private examination, that he should not suffer if he would reveal who encouraged and supported his party at Antwerp, the Tindalist immediately accepted the offer, and assured the lord chancellor that the greatest encouragement they had was from Tonstall, the Bishop of London, who had bought up half the impression, and enabled them to produce a second !
In the reign of Henry VIII., we seem to have burnt books on both sides ; it was an age of unsettled opinions ; in Ed- ward's, the Catholic works were burnt ; and Mary had her pyramids of Protestant volumes ; in Elizabeth's, political pamphlets fed the flames ; and libels in the reign of Jame8 I. and his sons.
Such was this black dwarf of literature, generated by Italian craft and Spanish monkery, which, however, was fondly adopted as it crept in among all the nations of Eu- rope. France cannot exactly fix on the era of her Cense urs de Livres ; and we ourselves, who gave it its death-blow, found the custom prevail without any authority from our statutes. The practice of licensing books was unquestionably derived from the Inquisition, and was applied here first to books of religion. Britain long groaned under the leaden stamp of an Imprimatur. Oxford and Cambridge still grasp at this shadow of departed literary despotism ; they have their licensers and their Imprimaturs. Long, even in our land, men of genius were either suffering the vigorous limba of their productions to be shamefully mutilated in public, or voluntarily committed a literary suicide in their own manu- scripts. Camden declared that he was not suffered to prinl
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all his Elizabeth, and sent those passages over to De Thou, the French historian, who printed his history faithfully two years after Camden's first edition, 1615. The same happened to Lord Herbert's History of Henry VIII. which has never been given according to the original, which is still in exist- ence. In the Poems of Lord Brooke, we find a lacuna of the first twenty pages ; it was a poem on Religion, cancelled by the order of Archbishop Laud. The great Sir Matthew Hale ordered that none of his works should be printed after his death ; as he apprehended that, in the licensing of them, some things might be struck out or altered, which he had observed, not without some indignation, had been done to those of a learned friend ; and he preferred bequeathing his uncorruptedMSS. to the Society of Lincoln's Inn, as their only guardians, hoping that they were a treasure worth keeping. Contemporary authors have frequent allusions to such books, imperfect and mutilated at the caprice or the violence of a licenser.
The laws of England have never violated the freedom and the dignity of its press. " There is no law to prevent the printing of any book in England, only a decree in the star- chamber," said the learned Selden.* Proclamations were occasionally issued against authors and books ; and foreign works were, at times, prohibited. The freedom of the press was rather circumvented, than openly attacked, in the reign of Elizabeth, who dreaded the Roman Catholics, who were at once disputing her right to the throne, and the religion of the state. Foreign publications, or " books from any parts beyond the seas," were therefore prohibited.! The press,
* Sir Thomas Crew's Collection of the Proceedings of the Parliament, 1628, p. 71.
t The consequence of this prohibition was, that our own men of learning were at a loss to know what arms the enemies of England, and of her re- ligion, were fabricating against us. This knowledge was absolutely nec- essary, as appears by a curious fact in Strype's Life of Whitgift. A license for the importation of foreign books was granted to an Italiitn merchant, with orders to collect abroad this sort of libels ; but he was to
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however, was not free under the reign of a sovereign, whose high-toned feelings, and the exigencies of the times, rendered as despotic in deeds, as the pacific James was in words. Al- though the press had then no restrictions, an author was always at the mercy of the government. Elizabeth too had a keen scent after what she called treason, which she allowed to take in a large compass. She condemned one author (with his publisher) to have the hand cut off which wrote his book; and she hanged another.* It was Sir Francis Bacon, or his father, who once pleasantly turned aside the keen edge of her regal vindictiveness ; for when Elizabeth was inquiring whether an author, whose book she had given him to examine, was not guilty of treason, he replied, " Not of treason, madam ; but of robbery, if you please ; for he has taken all that is worth noticing in him from Tacitus and Sallust. With the fear of Elizabeth before his eyes, Holin- shed castrated the volumes of his History. When Giles Fletcher, after his Russian embassy, congratulated himself
deposit them with the archbishop and the privy council. A few, no doubt, were obtained by the curious, Catholic or Protestant. Strype's Life of Whitgift, p. 268.
* The author, with his publisher, who had their right hands cut off, was John Stubbs of Lincoln's Inn, a hot-headed Puritan, whose sister was married to Thomas Cartwright, the head of that faction. This execution took place upon a scaffold, in the market place at Westminster. After Stubbs had his right hand cut off, with his left he pulled off his hat, and cried with a loud voice, " God save the Queen ! " the multitude standing deeply silent; either out of horror at this new and unwonted kind of punishment, or else out of commiseration of the undaunted man, whose character was unblemished. Camden, a witness to this transaction, has related it. The author, and the printer, and the publisher, were con- demned to this barbarous punishment, on an act of Philip and Mary against the authors and publishers of seditious writings. Some lawyers were honest enough to assert that the sentence was erroneous, for that act was only a temporary one, and died with Queen Mary ; but, of these honest lawyers, one was sent to the Tower, and another was so sharply repri- manded, that he resigned his place as a judge in the common pleas. Other lawyers, as the lord chief justice, who fawned on the prerogative far more then than afterwards in the Stuart reigns, asserted that Queen Mary was a king; and that an act made by any king, unless repealed, must always exist, because the King of England never dies !
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with having escaped with his head, and on his return wrote a book called " The Russian Commonwealth," describing its tyranny, Elizabeth forbad the publishing of the work. Our Russia merchants were frightened, for they petitioned the queen to suppress the work ; the original petition with the offensive passages exists among the Lansdowne manuscripts. It is curious to contrast this fact with another better known, under the reign of William the Third ; then the press had obtained its perfect freedom, and even the shadow of the sovereign could not pass between an author and his work. "When the Danish ambassador complained to the king of the freedom which Lord Molesworth had exercised on his master's government, in his Account of Denmark, and hinted that, if a Dane had done the same with a King of England, he would, on complaint, have taken the author's head off — " That I cannot do," replied the sovereign of a free people ; " but if you please, I will tell him what you say, and he shall put it into the next edition of his book." What an immense inter- val between the feelings of Elizabeth and William, with hardly a century betwixt them !
James the First proclaimed Buchanan's history, and a political tract of his, at " the Mercat Cross ; " and every one was to bring his copy " to be perusit and purgit of the offen- sive and extraordinare materis," under a heavy penalty. Knox, whom Milton calls " the Reformer of a Kingdom," was also curtailed ; and " the sense of that great man shall, to all posterity, be lost for the fearfulness or the presumptu- ous rashness of a perfunctory licenser."
The regular establishment of licensers of the press appeared under Charles the First. It must be placed among the pro- jects of Laud, and the king, I suspect, inclined to it ; for by a passage in a manuscript letter of the times, I find, that when Charles printed his speech on the dissolution of the parlia- ment, which excited such general discontent, some one printed Queen Elizabeth's last speech as a companion-piece. This was presented to the king by his own printer, John Bill, not
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from a political motive, but merely by way of complaint that another had printed, without leave or license, that which, as the king's printer, he asserted was his own copyright. Charles does not seem to have been pleased with the gift, and observed, " You printers print any thing." Three gentlemen of the bed-chamber, continues the writer, standing by, com- mended Mr. Bill very much, and prayed him to come oftener with such rarities to the king, because they might do some good.*
One of the consequences of this persecution of the press was, the raising up of a new class of publishers, under the government of Charles I., those who became noted for what was then called " unlawful and unlicensed books." Sparkes, the publisher of Prynne's " Histriomastix," was of this class. I have already entered more particularly into this subject.f The Presbyterian party in parliament, who thus found the press closed on them, vehemently cried out for its freedom: and it was imagined, that when they had ascended into power, the odious office of a licenser of the press would have been abolished ; but these pretended friends of freedom, on the contrary, discovered themselves as tenderly alive to the office as the old government, and maintained it with the ex- tremest vigour. Such is the political history of mankind.
The literary fate of Milton was remarkable ; his genius was castrated alike by the monarchical and the republican government. The royal licenser expunged several passages from Milton's history, in which Milton had painted the super- stition, the pride, and the cunning of the Saxon monks, which the sagacious licenser applied to Charles II. and the bishops ; but Milton had before suffered as merciless a mutilation from his old friends the republicans ; who suppressed a bold pic- ture, taken from life, which he had introduced into his History of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines. Milton
* A letter from J. Mead to Sir M. Stuteville, July 19, 1628. Sloane MSS. 4,178. t See " Calamities of Authors " vol. ii. p. 116.
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gave the unlicensed passages to the Earl of Anglesea, a literary nobleman, the editor of Whitelocke's Memorials; and the castrated passage, which 'could not be licensed in 1 670, was received with peculiar interest, when separately published in 1681.* " If there be found in an author's book one sentence of a venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal, and who knows whether it might not be the dictate of a divine spirit, yet not suiting every low decrepit humour of their own, they will not pardon him their dash."
This office seems to have lain dormant a short time under Cromwell, from the scruples of a conscientious licenser, who desired the council of state, in 1649, for reasons given, to be discharged from that employment. This Mabot, the licenser, was evidently deeply touched by Milton's address for " The Liberty of Unlicensed Printing." The office was, however, revived on the restoration of Charles II. ; and through the reign of James II. the abuses of licensers were unquestion- ably not discouraged ; their castrations of books reprinted appear to have been very artful ; for in reprinting Gage's " Survey of the West Indies," which originally consisted of twenty-two chapters, in 1648 and 1657, with a dedication to Sir Thomas Fairfax, — in 1677, after expunging the passages in honour of Fairfax, the dedication is dexterously turned into a preface ; and the twenty-second chapter being obnox- ious for containing particulars of the artifices of " the papa- lins," as Milton calls the Papists, in converting the author, was entirely chopped away by the licenser's hatchet. The castrated chapter, as usual, was preserved afterwards sepa-
* It is a quarto tract, entitled " Mr. John Milton's Character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines in 1641 ; omitted in his other works, and never before printed, and very seasonable for these times. 1681." It is inserted in the uncastrated edition of Milton's prose works in 1738. It is a retort on the Presbyterian Clement Walker's History of the Indepen- dent* ; and Warburton, in his admirable characters of the historians of this period, alluding to Clement Walker, says, " Milton was even with him in the fine and severe character be draws of the Presbyterian administra- tion."
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rately. Literary despotism at least is short-sighted in its views, for the expedients it employs are certain of overturn- ing themselves.
On this subject we must not omit noticing one of the noblest and most eloquent prose compositions of Milton ; " the Are- opagitica ; a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing." It is a work of love and inspiration, and breathing the most enlarged spirit of literature ; separating, at an awful distance from the multitude, that character " who was born to study and to love learning for itself, not for lucre, or any other end, but, perhaps, for that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise, which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labours advance the good of mankind."
One part of this unparalleled effusion turns on " the quality which ought to be in every licenser." It will suit our new licensers of public opinion, a laborious corps well known, who constitute themselves without an act of star-chamber. I shall pick out but a few sentences, that I may add some little facts casually preserved, of the ineptitude of such an officer.
" He who is made judge to sit upon the birth or death of books, whether they may be wafted into this world or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious ; there may be else no mean mistakes in his censure. If he be of such worth as behoves him, there cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing journey-work, a greater loss of time levied upon his head, than to be made the perpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets. There is no book acceptable, unless at certain seasons ; but to be enjoyned the reading of that at all times, whereof three pages would not down at any time, is an imposition which I cannot believe how he that values time and his own studies, or is but of a sensible nostril, should be able to endure. — What advantage is it to be a man over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only scaped the ferula to come under the fescue of an Imprimatur ? — if serious and elabor- ate writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporizing licenser? When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him ; he searches, meditates, is in- dustrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends, as well as any that writ before him ; if in this, the most consummate act of his
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fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book writing; and if he be not repulsed or slighted, must appear in print like a Punie with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer; it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning."
The reader may now follow the stream in the great origi- nal ; I must, however, preserve one image of exquisite sar- casm.
"Debtors and delinquents walk about without a keeper; but inoffensive books must not stir forth without a visible jailor in their title; nor is it to the common people less than a reproach; for if we dare not trust them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vitious, and ungrounded people, in such a sick and weak state of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing but thro' the glister pipe of a licenser! "
The ignorance and stupidity of these censors were often, indeed, as remarkable as their exterminating spirit. The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising sun, in the first book of the Paradise Lost, had nearly occasioned the suppression of our national epic : it was supposed to contain a treasonable allusion. The tragedy of Arminius, by one Paterson, who was an amanuensis of the poet Thomson, was intended for representation, but the dramatic censor refused a license : as Edward and Eleanora was not permitted to be performed, being considered a party work, our sagacious state- critic imagined that Paterson's own play was in the same predicament by being in the same hand-writing! Male- branche said, that he could never obtain an approbation for his " Research after Truth," because it was unintelligible to his censors ; at length Mezeray, the historian, approved of it as a book of geometry. Latterly, in France, it is said, that the greatest geniuses were obliged to submit their works to the critical understanding of persons who had formerly been low dependants on some man of quality, and who appear to
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have brought the same servility of mind to the examination of works of genius. There is something, which, on the prin- ciple of incongruity and contrast, becomes exquisitely ludi- crous, in observing the works of men of genius allowed to be printed, and even commended, by certain persons who have never printed their names but to their licenses. One of these gentlemen suppressed a work, because it contained principles of government, which appeared to him not conform- able to the laws of Moses. Another said to a geometrician, " I cannot permit the publication of your book : you dare to say, that, between two given points, the shortest line is the straight line. Do you think me such an idiot as not to per- ceive your allusion ? If your work appeared, I should make enemies of all those who find, by crooked ways, an easier admittance into court, than by a straight line. Consider their number ! " This seems, however, to be an excellent joke. At this moment the censors in Austria appear singularly in- ept; for, not long ago, they condemned as heretical, two books ; one of which, entitled Principes de la Trigonome* trie" the censor would not allow to be printed, because the Trinity, which he imagined to be included in trigonometry, was not permitted to be discussed : and the other, on the " Destruction of Insects," he insisted had a covert allusion to the Jesuits, who, he conceived, were thus malignantly desig- nated.
A curious literary anecdote has been recorded of the learned Richard Simon. Compelled to insert in one of his works the qualifying opinions of the censor of the Sorbonne, he inserted them within crotchets. But a strange misfortune attended this contrivance. The printer, who was not let into the secret, printed the work without these essential marks : by which means the enraged author saw his own peculiar opinions overturned in the very work written to maintain them !
These appear trifling minutiae ; and yet, like a hair in a watch, which utterly destroys its progress, these little inepti® obliged writers to have recourse to foreign presses; com-
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pelled a Montesquieu to write with concealed ambiguity, and many to sign a recantation of principles which they cculd never change. The recantation of Selden, extorted from his hand on his suppressed "Historic of Tithes," humiliated a great mind ; but it could not remove a particle from the mas- ses of his learning, nor darken the luminous conviction of his reasonings ; nor did it diminish the number of those who as- sented and now assent to his principles. Recantations usually prove the force of authority, rather than the change of opinion. When a Dr. Pocklington was condemned to make a recantation, he hit the etymology of the word, while he caught at the spirit — he began thus : " If canto be to sing, recanto is to sing again." So that he rechanted his offending opinions, by repeating them in his recantation.
At the revolution in England, licenses for the press ceased ; but its liberty did not commence till 1694, when every re- straint was taken off by the firm and decisive tone of the commons. It was granted, says our philosophic Hume, " to the great displeasure of the king and his ministers, who, see- ing nowhere in any government during present or past ages, any example of such unlimited freedom, doubted much of its salutary effects ; and, probably, thought that no books or writings would ever so much improve the general understand- ing of men, as to render it safe to entrust them with an indul- gence so easily abused."
And the present moment verifies the prescient conjecture of the philosopher. Such is the licentiousness of our press, that some, not perhaps the most hostile to the cause of free- dom, would not be averse to manacle authors once more with an IMPRIMATUR. It will not be denied that Erasmus was a friend to the freedom of the press ; yet he was so shocked at the licentiousness of Luther's pen, that there was a time when he considered it as necessary to restrain its liberty. It was then as now. Erasmus had, indeed, been miserably calumniated, and expected future libels. I am glad, however, , to observe, that he afterwards, on a more impartial investi-
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gation, confessed that such a remedy was much more danger- ous than the disease. To restrain the liberty of the press, can only be the interest of the individual, never that of the public ; one must be a patriot here : we must stand in the field with an unshielded breast, since the safety of the people is the supreme law. There were, in Milton's days, some who said of this institution, that, although the inventors were bad, the thing, for all that, might be good. " This may be so," replies the vehement advocate for "unlicensed printing." But as the commonwealths have existed through all ages, and have forborne to use it, he sees no necessity for the in- vention ; and held it as a dangerous and suspicious fruit from the tree which bore it. The ages of the wisest common- wealths, Milton seems not to have recollected, were not dis- eased with the popular infection of publications, issuing at all hours, and propagated with a celerity on which the ancients could not calculate. The learned Dr. James, who has de- nounced the invention of the Indexes, confesses, however, that it was not unuseful when it restrained the publications of atheistic and immoral works. But it is our lot to bear with all the consequent evils, that we may preserve the good invio- late ; since, as the profound Hume has declared, " THE LIB- ERTY OF BRITAIN is GONE FOR EVER, when such attempts shall succeed."
A constitutional sovereign will consider the freedom of the press as the sole organ of the feelings of the people. Calum- niators he will leave to the fate of calumny ; a fate similar to those, who, having overcharged their arms with the fellest intentions, find that the death which they intended for others, in bursting, only annihilates themselves.
OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES. 415
OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES.
THE " true " modern critics on our elder writers are apt to thunder their anathemas on innocent heads : little versed in the eras of our literature, and the fashions of our wit, popu- lar criticism must submit to be guided by the literary historian.
Kippis condemns Sir Symonds D'Ewes for his admiration of two anagrams, expressive of the feelings of the times. It required the valour of Falstaff to attack extinct anagrams ; and our pretended English Bayle thought himself secure, in pronouncing all anagrammatists to be wanting in judgment and taste : yet, if this mechanical critic did not know some- thing of the state and nature of anagrams, in Sir Symonds's day, he was more deficient in that curiosity of literature, which his work required, than plain honest Sir Symonds in the taste and judgment of which he is so contemptuously deprived. The author who thus decides on the tastes of another age by those of his own day, and whose knowledge of the national literature does not extend beyond his own century, is neither historian nor critic. The truth is, that ANAGRAMS were then the fashionable amusements of the wittiest and the most learned.
Kippis says, and others have repeated, " That Sir Symonds D'Ewes's judgment and taste, with regard to wit, were as contemptible as can well be imagined, will be evident from the following passage taken from his account of Carr Earl of Somerset, and his wife : * This discontent gave many satirical wits occasion to vent themselves into stingie [stinging] libels, in which they spared neither the persons nor families of that unfortunate pair. There came also two anagrams to my hands, not unworthy to be owned by the rarest wits of this age.* These were, one very descriptive of the lady, and the other, of an in- cident in which this infamous woman was so deeply criminated.
FRANCES HOWARD, THOMAS OVERBURIE,
Car Jinds a Whore, 0! 01 base Murther I ."
416 OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES.
This sort of wit is not falser at least than the criticism which infers that D'Ewes's "judgment and taste were as con- temptible as can well be ; " for he might have admired these anagrams, which, however, are not of the nicest construction, and yet not have been so destitute of those qualities of which he is so authoritatively divested.
Camden has" a chapter in his " Remains " on ANAGRAMS, which he defines to be a dissolution of a (person's) name into its letters, as its elements ; and a new connection into words is formed by their transposition, if possible without ad- dition, subtraction, or change of the letters : and the words must make a sentence applicable to the person named. The Anagram is complimentary or satirical ; it may contain some allusion to an event, or describe some personal characteristic.
Such difficult trifles it may be convenient at all times to discard ; but, if ingenious minds can convert an ANAGRAM into a means of exercising their ingenuity, the things them- selves will necessarily become ingenious. No ingenuity can make an ACROSTIC ingenious ; for this is nothing but a mechanical arrangement of the letters of a name, and yet this literary folly long prevailed in Europe.
As for ANAGRAMS, if antiquity can consecrate some follies, they are of very ancient date. They were classed, among the Hebrews, among the cabalistic sciences ; they pretended to discover occult qualities in proper names ; it was an oriental practice ; and was caught by the Greeks. Plato had strange notions of the influence of Anagrams when drawn out of persons' names ; and the later Platonists are full of the mysteries of the anagrammatic virtues of names. The chimerical associations of the character and qualities of a man with his name anagrammatized may often have insti- gated to the choice of a vocation, or otherwise affected hia imagination.
Lycophron has left some on record, — two on Ptolemoeus Philadelphus, King of Egypt, and his Queen Arsinoe. The king's name was thus anagrammatized : —
OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES. 417
HTOAEMAIOS,
'ATTO |U£/UTOf, MADE OF HONEY:
and the queen's,
AP2INOH, "Hpaj- lov, JUNO'S VIOLET.
Learning, which revived under Francis the First in France, did not disdain to cultivate this small flower of wit. Daurat had such a felicity in making these trifles, that many illustrious persons sent their names to him to be anagram- matized. Le Laboureur, the historian, was extremely pleased with the anagram made on the mistress of Charles the Ninth of France. Her name was
Marie Touchet.
JE OIIAKMK TOUT,
which is historically just.
In the assassin of Henry the Third,
Frere Jacques Clement,
they discovered
C'EST L'ENFER QUI M'A CREB.
I preserve a few specimens of some of our own anagrams. The mildness of the government of Elizabeth, contrasted with her intrepidity against the Iberians, is thus picked out of her title ; she is made the English ewe-lamb, and the lion- ess of Spain : —
Etizdbetka Regina Angliae.
ANGLIS AGNA, Hi BERIME LEA.
The unhappy history of Mary Queen of Scots, the depriva- tion of her kingdom, and her violent death, were expressed in this Latin anagram : —
Maria Steuarda Scotorum Regina : TRUSA vi REGNIS, MORTE AM AHA CADO:
and in
Maria Stevarta VERITAS ARMATA.
Another fanciful one on our James the First, whose right- ful claim to the British monarchy, as the descendant of the VOL. ii. 27
418 OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES.
visionary Arthur, could only have satisfied genealogists of romance reading: —
Charles James Steuart.
CLAIMS ARTHUR'S SEAT.
Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas, considered himself fortunate when he found in the name of his sovereign the strongest bond of affection to his service. In the dedication he rings loyal changes on the name of his liege, James Stuart, in which he finds a just master !
The anagram on Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, on the restoration of Charles the Second, included an import- ant date in our history : —
Georgius Monke, Dux de Aumarle,
Ego regem reduxi An0. Sa. MDCLVV.
A slight reversing of the letters in a name produced a hap- py compliment ; as in Vernon was found Renoun ; and the celebrated Sir Thomas Wiat bore his own designation in his name, a Wit. Of the poet Waller the anagrammatist said,
" His brows need not with Lawrel to be bound, Since in his name with Lawrel he is crown'd."
Randle Holmes, who has written a very extraordinary volume on heraldry, was complimented by an expressive ana- gram : —
Lo, Men's Herald !
These anagrams were often devoted to the personal attach ments of love or friendship. A friend delighted to twine his name with the name of his friend. Crashawe, the poet, had a literary intimate of the name of <7ar, who was his post- humous editor ; and, in prefixing some elegiac lines, discovers that his late friend Crashawe was Car ; for so the anagram of Crashawe runs : He was Car. On this quaint discovery he has indulged all the tenderness of his recollections : — " Was Car then Crashawe, or was Crashawe Car?
Since both within one name combined are.
Yes, Car's Crashawe, he Car; 'tis Love alone '
Which melts two hearts, of both composing one,
So Crashawe's still the same," &c.
OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES. 419
A happy anagram on a person's name might have a moral effect on the feelings : as there is reason to believe, that cer- tain celebrated names have had some influence on the per- sonal character. When one Martha Nicholson was found out to be Soon calm in Heart, the anagram, in becoming familiar to her, might afford an opportune admonition. But, perhaps, the happiest of anagrams was produced on a singu- lar person and occasion.- Lady Eleanor Davies, the wife of the celebrated Sir John Davies, the poet, was a very extra- ordinary character. She was the Cassandra of her age; and several of her predictions warranted her to conceive she was a prophetess. As her prophecies in the troubled times of Charles I. were usually against the government, she was at length brought by them into the court of High Commis- sion. The prophetess was not a little mad, and fancied the spirit of Daniel was in her, from an anagram she had formed of her name,
ELEANOR DAVIES.
REVEAL 0 DANIEL!
The anagram had too much by an L, and too little by an s ; yet Daniel and reveal were in it, and that was sufficient to satisfy her inspirations. The court attempted to dispossess the spirit from the lady, while the bishops were in vain rea- soning the point with her out of the scriptures, to no purpose, she poising text against text : — one of the deans of the arches, says Heylin, shot her thorough and thorough with an arrow borrowed from her own quiver : he took a pen, and at last hit upon this elegant anagram :
DAME ELEANOR DAVIES. NEVER so MAD A LAD IE!
The happy fancy put the solemn court into laughter, and Cassandra into the utmost dejection of spirit. Foiled by her own weapons, her spirit suddenly forsook her; and either she never afterwards ventured on prophesying, or the ana- gram perpetually reminded her hearers of her state — and w€ hear no more of this prophetess !
420 OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES.
Thus much have I written in favour of Sir Symonds d'Ewes's keen relish of a " stingie anagram ; '* and on the error of those literary historians, who do not enter into the spirit of the age they are writing on.
We find in the Scribleriad, the ANAGRAMS appearing in the land of false wit
" But with still more disordered march advance, (Nor march it seem'd, but wild fantastic dance,) The uncouth ANAGRAMS, distorted train, Shifting, in double mazes, o'er the plain."
C. ii. 161.
The fine humour of Addison was never more playful than in his account of that anagrammatist, who, after shutting him- self up for half a year, and having taken certain liberties with the name of his mistress, discovered, on presenting his anagram, that he had misspelt her surname ; by which he was so thunder-struck with his misfortune, that in a little time after he lost his senses, which, indeed, had been very much impaired by that continual application he had given to his anagram.
One Frenzelius, a German, prided himself on perpetuating the name of every person of eminence who died by an ana- gram ; but by the description of the bodily pain he suffered on these occasions, when he shut himself up for those rash attempts, he seems to have shared in the dying pangs of the mortals whom he so painfully celebrated. Others appear to have practised this art with more facility. A French poet, deeply in love, in one day sent his mistress, whose name was Maffdelatne, three dozen of anagrams on her single name !
Even old Camden, who lived in the golden age of ana- grams, notices the difficilia qua pulckra, the charming diffi- culty, " as a whetstone of patience to them that shall practise it. For some have been seen to bite their pen, scratch their heads, bend their brows, bite their lips, beat the board, tear their paper, when their names were fair for somewhat, and caught nothing therein." Such was the troubled happiness of
OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES. 421
an anagrammatist : yet, adds our venerable author, not with* standing " the sour sort of critics, good anagrams yield a delightful comfort, and pleasant motion in honest minds.*'
When the mania of making ANAGRAMS prevailed, the little persons at court flattered the great ones at inventing anagrams for them ; and when the wit of the maker proved to be as barren as the letters of the name, they dropped or changed them, raving with the alphabet, and racking their wits. Among the manuscripts of the grave Sir Julius Cajsar, one cannot but smile at a bundle emphatically indorsed " Trash." It is a collection of these court-anagrams; a remarkable evidence of that ineptitude to which mere fashionable wit can carry the frivolous.
In consigning this intellectual exercise to oblivion, we must not confound the miserable and the happy together. A man of genius would not consume an hour in extracting even a fortunate anagram from a name, although on an extraordi- nary person or occasion its appositeness might be worth an epigram. Much of its merit will arise from the association of ideas ; a trifler can only produce what is trifling, but an elegant mind may delight by some elegant allusion, and a satirical one by its causticity. We have some recent ones, which will not easily be forgotten.
A similar contrivance, that of ECHO VERSES, may here be noticed. I have given a specimen of these in a modern French writer, whose sportive pen has thrown out so much wit and humour in his ECHOES.* Nothing ought to be con- temned which, in the hands of a man of genius, is converted into a medium of his talents. No verses have been con- sidered more contemptible than these, which, with all their kindred, have been anathematized by Butler, in his exquisite character of "a small poet" in his "Remains," whom he describes as " tumbling through the hoop of an anagram * and " all those gambols of wit." The philosophical critic will be more tolerant than was the orthodox church wit of # See ante, LITERARY FOLLIES, what is said on Pannard.
422 Op ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES.
that day, which was, indeed, alarmed at the fantastical heresies whicli were then prevailing. I say not a word in favour of unmeaning ACROSTICS ; but ANAGRAMS and ECHO VERSES may be shown capable of reflecting the ingenuity of their makers. I preserve a copy of ECHO VERSES, which exhibit a curious picture of the state of our religious fanatics, the Roundheads of Charles I., as an evidence, that in the hands of a wit even such things can be converted into the instruments of wit.
At the end of a comedy presented at the entertainment of the prince, by the scholars of Trinity College, Cambridge, in March, 1641, printed for James Calvin, 1642, the author, Francis Cole, holds in a print a paper in one hand, and a round hat in another. At the end of all is this humorous little poem.
THE ECHO!
Now, Echo, on what's religion grounded?
Round-head I Whose its professors most considerable ?
Rabble! How do these prove themselves to be the godly?
Oddly! But they in life are known to be the holy,
Olie! Who are these preachers, men or women-common?
Common! Come they from any universitie ?
Cilie I Do they not learning from their doctrine saver?
Ever! Yet they pretend that they do edifie :
OJie! What do you call it then, to fructify?
Ay. What church have they, and what pulpits?
Pitt$! But now in chambers the Conventicle ;
Tickle! The godly sisters, shrewdly are belied.
Settled t The godly number then will soon transcend.
End!
ORTHOGRAPHY OF PROPER NAMES. 423
As for the temples, they with zeal embrace them.
Ease them I What do they make of bishop's hierarchy ?
Archie!* Are crosses, images, ornaments their scandall?
All! Nor will they leave us many ceremonies.
Monies I Must even religion down for satisfaction ?
Faction. How stand they affected to the government civil V
Evil! But to the king they say they are most loyal.
Lye all Then God keep King and State from these same men.
Amen!
ORTHOGRAPHY OF PROPER NAMES.
WE are often perplexed to decide how the names of some of our eminent men ought to be written ; and we find that they are even now written diversely. The truth is, that our orthography was so long unsettled among us, that it appears by various documents of the times which I have seen, that persons were at a loss how to write their own names, and most certainly have written them variously. I have some- times suspected that estates may have been lost, and descents confounded, by such uncertain and disagreeing signatures of the same person. In a late suit respecting the Duchess of Norfolk's estate, one of the ancestors has his name printed Higfordi while in the genealogy it appears Hickford. I think I have seen Ben Jonson's name written by himself with an h ; and Dryden made use of an i. I have seen an injunc-
* An allusion probably to Archibald Armstrong, the fool or privileged jester of Charles I., usually called Archy, who had a quarrel with Arch- bishop Laud, and of whom many arch things are on record. There is a little jest book, very high priced, and of little worth, which bears the title of Archie1 » Jests.
424 ORTHOGRAPHY OF PROPER NAMES.
tion to printers with the sign manual of Charles IT., not to print Samuel Boteler esquire's book or poem called Hudibras, without his consent ; but I do not know whether Butler thus wrote his name. As late as in 1660, a Dr. Crovne was at such a loss to have his name pronounced rightly, that he tried six different ways of writing it, as appears by printed books ; Cron, Croon, Crovn, Crone, Croone, and Crovne; all of which appear under his own hand, as he wrote it differently at different periods of his life. In the subscription book of the Royal Society he writes W. Croone, but in his will at the Commons he signs W. Crovne. Ray the naturalist informs us that he first wrote his name Wray, but afterwards omitted the W. Dr. Whitby, in books published by himself, writ* s his name sometimes Whiteby. And among the Harleian Manu- scripts there is a large collection of letters, to which I have often referred, written between 1620 and 1630, by Joseph Mead ; and yet in all his printed letters, and his works, even within that period, it is spelt Mede ; by which signature we recognize the name of a learned man better known to us : it was long before I discovered the letter-writer to have been this scholar. Oldys, in some curious manuscript memoirs of his family, has traced the family name through a great van ety of changes, and sometimes it is at such variance that the person indicated will not always appear to have belonged to the family. We saw recently an advertisement in the news- papers offering five thousand pounds to prove a marriage in the family of the Knevetts, which occurred about 1633. What most disconcerted the inquirers is their discovery that the family name was written in six or seven different ways : a circumstance which I have no doubt will be found in most family names in England. Fuller mentions that the name of Villers was spelt fourteen different ways in the deeds of that family.
I shall illustrate this subject by the history of the names of two of our most illustrious countrymen, Shakspeare, and Rawleigh.
ORTHOGRAPHY OF PROPER NAMES. 425
We all remember the day when a violent literary contro- versy was opened, nor is it yet closed, respecting the spelling of our poet's name. One great editor persisted in his trium- phant discovery, by printing Shakspere, while another would only partially yield, Shakspeare ; but all parties seemed wil- ling to drop the usual and natural derivation of his name, in which we are surely warranted from a passage in a contem- porary writer, who alludes by the name to a conceit of his own, of the martial spirit of the poet. The truth seems to be, then, that personal names were written by the ear, since the persons themselves did not attend to the accurate writing of their own names, which they changed sometimes capri- ciously, and sometimes with anxious nicety. Our great poet's name appears Shakspere in the register of Stratford church ; it is Shakspeare in the body of his will, but that very instru- ment is indorsed Mr. Shackspere's will. He himself has written his name in two different ways, Shakspeare and Shakspere. Mr. Colman says, the poet's name in his own county is pronounced with the first a short, which accounts for this mode of writing the name, and proves that the ortho- epy rather than the orthography of a person's name was most attended to ; a very questionable and uncertain stand- ard.
Another remarkable instance of this sort is the name of Sir Walter Rawley, which I am myself uncertain how to write ; although I have discovered a fact which proves how it should be pronounced.
Rawley's name was spelt by himself and by his contempo- raries in all sorts of ways. We find it Ralegh, Raleigh, Raw- leigh, Raweley, and Rawly ; the last of which at least pre- serves its pronunciation. This great man, when young, subscribed his name " Waller Raweley of the Middle Temple " to a copy of verses, prefixed to a satire called the Steel-Glass, in George Gascoigne's Works, 1576. Sir Walter was then a young student, and these verses, both by their spirit and signa- ture, cannot fail to be his ; however, this matter is doubtful, for
426 NAMES OF OUR STREETS.
the critics have not met elsewhere with his name thus written. The orthoepy of the name of this great man I can establish by the following fact. When Sir Walter was first introduced to James the First, on the King's arrival in England, with whom, being united with an opposition party, he was no fa- vourite, the Scottish monarch gave him this broad reception : " Rawly ! Rawly ! true enough, for I think of thee very Mawly, mon ! " There is also an enigma contained in a dis- tich written by a lady of the times, which preserves the real pronunciation of the name of this extraordinary man.
" What's bad for the stomach, and the word of dishonour, Is the name of the man, whom the king will not honour."
Thus our ancient personal names were written down by the ear at a period when we had no settled orthography ; and even at a later period, not distant from our own times, some persons, it might be shown, have been equally puzzled how to write their names ; witness the Thomsons, Thompsons ; the Wartons, Whartons, &c.
NAMES OF OUR STREETS.
LORD ORFORD has in one of his letters projected a curious work to be written in a walk through the streets of the me- tropolis, similar to a French work, entitled " Anecdotes des Rues de Paris." I know of no such work, and suspect the vivacious writer alluded in his mind to Saint Foix's " Essais Hisioriques sur Paris," a very entertaining work, of which the plan is that projected by his lordship. We have had Pennant's " London," a work of this description ; but, on the whole, this is a superficial performance, as it regards man- ners, characters, and events. That antiquary skimmed every thing, and grasped scarcely any thing ; he wanted the pa- tience of research, and the keen spirit which revivifies the
NAMES OF OUR STREETS. 427
past. Should Lord Orford's project be earned into execu- tion, or rather should Pennant be hereafter improved, it would be first necessary to obtain the original names, or the meanings, of our streets, free from the disguise in which time has concealed them. We shah1 otherwise lose many charac- ters of persons, and many remarkable events, of which their original denominations would remind the historian of our streets.
I have noted down a few of these modern misnomers, that this future historian may be excited to discover more.
Mincing-lane was Mincheon-lane ; from tenements per- taining to the Mincheons, or nuns of St. Helen's, in Bishops- gate-street.
Gutter-lane, corrupted from Guthurun's-lane ; from its first owner, a citizen of great trade.
Blackw all-hall was BakeweWs-hatt, from one Thomas Bakewell ; and originally called Basing* s-haugh, from a considerable family of that name, whose arms were once seen on the ancient building, and whose name is still per- petuated in Basing* s-lane.
Finch-lane was Finke's-lane, from a whole family of this name.
Thread-needle-street was originally Thrid-needle-street, as Samuel Clarke dates it from his study there.
Billiter-lane is a corruption of Bellzetter's-lane, from the first builder or owner.
Crutched-friars was Crowched or Crossed-friars.
Lothbury was so named from the noise of founders at their work ; and, as Howell pretends, this place was called Loth" bury, " disdainedly."
Garlick-hill was Garlicke-hithe, or hive, where garlick was sold.
Fetter-lane has been erroneously supposed to have some connection with the fetters of criminals. It was in Charles the First's time written Fewtor-lane, and is so in Howell's Londinopolis, who explains it as Fewtors (or idle people)
428 NAMES OF OUR STREETS.
lying there as in a way leading to gardens. It was the haunt of these Faitors, or " mighty beggars." The Faitour, that is, a defaytor, or defaulter, became Fewtor ; and in the rapid pronunciation, or conception, of names, Fewtor has ended in Fetter-lane.
Gracechurch-street, sometimes called Gracious-street, was originally Grass-street, from a herb-market there.
Fenchurch-street, from a fenny or *moorish ground by a river side.
Galley-key has preserved its name, but its origin may have been lost. Howell, in his " Londinopolis," says, " here dwelt strangers called Galley-men, who brought wines, &c. in Galleys"
" Greek-street" says Pennant, " I am sorry to degrade into Grig-street ; " whether it alludes to the little vivacious eel, or to the merry character of its tenants, he does not resolve.
Bridewell was St. Bridgets-well, from one dedicated to Saiiit Bride or Bridget.
Marybone was St. Mary-on-the-Bourne, corrupted to Mary- bone ; as Holborn was Old Bourn, or the Old River ; Bourne being the ancient English for river ; hence the Scottish Burn.
Newington was New-town.
Maiden-lane was so called from an image of the Virgin, which, in Catholic days, had stood there, as Bagford writes to Hearne ; and he says, that the frequent sign of the Maiden- head was derived from " our Lady's head."
Lad-lane was originally Lady's-lane, from the same per- sonage.
Rood-lane was so denominated from a Rood, or Jesus on the cross, there placed, which was held in great regard.
Piccadilly was named after a hall called Piccadilla-hall. a place of sale for Piccadillies, or turn-overs; a part of the fashionable dress which appeared about 1614. It has pre- served its name uncorrupted ; for Barnabe Rice, in his " Honestie of the Age," has this passage on " the body-
NAMES OF OUR STREETS. 429
makers that do swarm through all parts, both of London and about London. The body is still pampered up in the very dropsy of excess. He that some fortie years sithens should have asked after a Pickadilly, I wonder who would have understood him ; or could have told what a Pickadilly had been, either fish or flesh."
Strype notices that in the liberties of Saint Catharine is a place called Hang metis-gains ; the traders of Hammes and Guynes, in France, anciently resorted there ; thence the strange corruption.
Smithjield is a corruption of Smoothjield; Smith signifies smooth from the Saxon rmeS. An antiquarian friend has seen it designated in a deed as campus planus, which con- firms the original meaning. It is described in Fitz Stephen's account of London, written before the twelfth century, as a plain field, both in reality and namej where " every Friday there is a celebrated rendezvous of fine horses, brought hither to be sold. Thither come to look or buy a great number of earls, barons, knights, and a swarm of citizens. It is a pleasing sight to behold the ambling nags and gener- ous colts, proudly prancing." This ancient writer continues a minute description, and, perhaps, gives the earliest one of a horse-race in this country. It is remarkable that Smithjield should have continued as a market for cattle for more than six centuries, with only the change of its vowels.
This is sufficient to show how the names of our streets re- quire either to be corrected, or explained by their historian. The French, among the numerous projects for the moral im- provement of civilized man, had one, which, had it not been polluted by a horrid faction, might have been directed to a noble end. It was to name streets after eminent men. This would at least preserve them from the corruption of the peo- ple, and exhibit a perpetual monument of moral feeling and of glory, to the rising genius of every age. With what excitement and delight may the young contemplatist, who first studies at Gray's Inn, be reminded of Ferw/aw-buildings !
430 SECKET HISTORY OF EDWARD VERB, ETC.
The names of streets will often be found connected with some singular event, or the character of some person ; and anecdotes of our streets might occupy an entertaining anti- quary. Not long ago, a Hebrew, who had a quarrel with his community about the manner of celebrating the Jewish festival in commemoration of the fate of Haman, called Pu- rim, built a neighbourhood at Bethnal-green, and retained the subject of his anger in the name which the houses bear, of Pttnm-place. This may startle some theological anti- quary at a remote period, who may idly lose himself in ab- struse conjectures on the sanctity of a name, derived from a well-known Hebrew festival ; and, perhaps, in his imagi- nation be induced to colonize the spot with an ancient horde of Israelites !
SECRET HISTORY OF EDWARD VERE, EARL OF OXFORD.
IT is an odd circumstance in literary research, that I am enabled to correct a story which was written about 1680. The Aubrey papers, recently published with singular faith- fulness, retaining all their peculiarities, even to the grossest errors, were memoranda for the use of Anthony Wood's great work. But beside these, the Oxford antiquary had a very extensive literary correspondence ; and it is known, that when speechless and dying he evinced the fortitude to call in two friends to destroy a vast multitude of papers : about two bushels full were ordered for the fires lighted for the occa- sion; and, "as he was expiring, he expressed both his knowledge and approbation of what was done, by throwing out his hands." These two bushels full were not, however, all his papers ; his more private ones he had ordered not to be opened for seven years. I suspect also, that a great number of letters were not burnt on this occasion ; for I
SECRET HISTORY OF EDWARD VERE, ETC. 431
have discovered a manuscript written about 1720 to 1730 and which, the writer tells us, consists of " Excerpts out of Anthony Wood's papers." It is closely written, and contains many curious facts not to be found elsewhere. These papers of Anthony Wood probably still exist in the Ashmolean Museum ; should they have perished, in that case this solitary manuscript will be the sole record of many inter- esting particulars.
By these I correct a little story, which may be found in the Aubrey Papers, vol. iii. 395. It is an account of one Nicholas Hill, a man of great learning, and in the high confidence of a remarkable and munificent Earl of Oxford, travelling with him abroad. I transcribe the printed Aubrey account.
" In his travels with his lord, (I forget whether Italy or Germany, but I think the former,) a poor man begged him to give him a penny. * A penny ! ' said Mr. Hill ; ' what dost say to ten pounds ? * — * Ah ! ten pounds,' said the beg- gar ; * that would make a man happy.' Mr. Hill gave him immediately ten pounds, and putt it downe upon account. Item, to a beggar ten pounds to make him happy ! " — The point of this story has been marred in the telling : it was drawn up from the following letter by Aubrey to A. Wood, dated July 15, 1689. "A poor man asked Mr. Hill, his lordship's steward, once to give him sixpence, or a shilling, for an alms. ' What dost say, if I give thee ten pounds ? ' * Ten pounds ! that would make a man of me ! ' Hill gave it him, and put down in his account, * £10 for making a man,' which his lordship inquiring about for the oddness of the expression, not only allowed, but was pleased with it."
This philosophical humorist, was the steward of Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, in the reign of Elizabeth. This peer was a person of elegant accomplishments ; and Lord Orford, in his " Noble Authors," has given a higher character of him than perhaps he may deserve. He was of the highest rank, in great favour with the queen, and, in the style of the day,
432 SECRET HISTORY OF EDWARD VERE, ETC.
when all our fashions and our poetry were moulding them- selves on the Italian model, he was the " Mirrour of Tuscan- ismo ; " and, in a word, this coxcombical peer, after a seven years' residence in Florence, returned highly " Italianated." The ludicrous motive of this peregrination is given in the present manuscript account. Haughty of his descent and alliance, irritable with effeminate delicacy and personal van- ity, a little circumstance, almost too minute to be recorded, inflicted such an injury on his pride, that in his mind it re- quired years of absence from the court of England ere it could be forgotten. Once making a low obeisance to the queen, before the whole court, this stately and inflated peer suffered a mischance, which has happened, it is said, on a like occasion — it was " light as air ! " But this accident so sensi- bly hurt his mawkish delicacy, and so humbled his aristocratic dignity, that he could not raise his eyes on his royal mistress. He resolved from that day to " be a banished man," and re- sided for seven years in Italy, living in more grandeur at Florence than the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He spent in those years forty thousand pounds. On his return he pre- sented the queen with embroidered gloves and perfumes, then for the first time introduced into England, as Stowe has noticed. Part of the new presents seem to have some refer- ence to the earl's former mischance. The queen received them graciously, and was even painted wearing those gloves ; but my authority states, that the masculine sense of Elizabeth could not abstain from congratulating the noble coxcomb; perceiving, she said, that at length my lord had forgot the mentioning the little mischance of seven years ago !
This peer's munificence abroad was indeed the talk of Europe ; but the secret motive of this was as wicked as that of his travels had been ridiculous. This Earl of Oxford had married the daughter of Lord Burleigh, and when this great statesman would not consent to save the life of the Duke of Norfolk, the friend of this earl, he swore to revenge himself on the countess, out of hatred to his father-in-law. He not
ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS. 433
only forsook her, but studied every means to waste that great inheritance which had descended to him from his ancestors. Secret history often startles us with unexpected discoveries : the personal affectations of this earl induced him to quit a court, where he stood in the highest favour, to domesticate himself abroad ; and a family pique was the secret motive of that splendid prodigality which, at Florence, could throw into shade the court of Tuscany itself.
ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS.
THE memorable grand dinner given by the classical doctor in Peregrine Pickle, has indisposed our tastes for the cookery of the ancients ; but, since it is often " the cooks who spoil the broth," we cannot be sure but that even " the black Lace- daemonian," stirred by the spear of a Spartan, might have had a poignancy for him, which did not happen at the more recent classical banquet.
The cookery of the ancients must have been superior to our humbler art, since they could find dainties in the tough membraneous parts of the matrices of a sow, and the flesh of young hawks, and a young ass. The elder Pliny records, that one man had studied the art of fattening snails with paste so successfully, that the shells of some of his snails would contain many quarts.* The same monstrous taste fed up those prodigious goose livers ; a taste still prevailing in Italy. Swine were fattened with whey and figs ; and even fish in their ponds were increased by such artificial means. Our prize oxen might have astonished a Roman, as much as one of their crammed peacocks would ourselves. Gluttony produces monsters, and turns away from nature to feed on unwholesome meats. The flesh of young foxes about au- tumn, when they fed on grapes, is praised by Galen ; and * Nat. Hist. lib. ix. 56.
VOL. ii 28
434 ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS.
Hippocrates equals the flesh of puppies to that of birds. The humorous Dr. King, who has touched on this subject, suspects that many of the Greek dishes appear charming from their mellifluous terminations, resounding with a floios and toios. Dr. King's descriptions of the Virtuoso Bentivog- lio or Bentley, with his " Bill of Fare " out of Athenaeus, probably suggested to Smollett his celebrated scene.
The numerous descriptions of ancient cookery which Athe- naeus has preserved indicate a» unrivalled dexterity and re- finement : and the ancients, indeed, appear to have raised the culinary art into a science, and dignified cooks into professors. They had writers who exhausted their erudition and ingenu- ity in verse and prose ; wliile some were proud to immortalize their names by the invention of a poignant sauce, or a popu- lar gateau. Apicius, a name immortalized, and now synony- mous with a gorger, was the inventor of cakes called Api- cians ; and one Aristoxenes, after many unsuccessful combi- nations, at length hit on a peculiar manner of seasoning hams, thence called Aristoxenians. The name of a late nobleman among ourselves is thus invoked every day.
Of these Eruditce gulce Archestratus, a culinary philos- opher, composed an epic or didactic poem on good eating. His " Gastrology " became the creed of the epicures, and its pathos appears to have made what is so expressively called " their mouths water." The idea has been recently success- fully imitated by a French poet. Archestratus thus opens his subject : —
u I write these precepts for immortal Greece, That round a table delicately spread, Or three, or four, may sit in choice repast, Or five at most. Who otherwise shall dine, Are like a troop marauding for their prey."
The elegant Romans declared that a repast should not con sist of less in number than the Graces, nor of more than the Muses. They had, however, a quaint proverb, which Alex- ander ab Alexandro has preserved, not favourable even to so large a dinner-party as nine ; it turns on a play of words : —
ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS. 435
" Septem convivium, Novem convicium facere." *
An elegant Roman, meeting a friend, regretted he could not invite him to dinner, " because my number is complete."
When Archestratus acknowledges that some things are for the winter, and some for the summer, he consoles himself, that though we cannot have them at the same time, yet, at least, we may talk about them at all times.
This great genius seems to have travelled over land and seas that he might critically examine the things themselves, and improve, with new discoveries, the table-luxuries. He indicates the places for peculiar edibles and exquisite pota- bles ; and promulgates his precepts with the zeal of a sublime legislator, who is dictating a code designed to ameliorate the imperfect state of society.
A philosopher worthy to bear the title of cook, or a cook worthy to be a philosopher, according to the numerous curi- ous passages scattered in Athenaeus, was an extraordinary genius, endowed not merely with a natural aptitude, but with all acquired accomplishments. The philosophy, or the meta- physics, of cookery appears in the following passage : —
" * Know then, the COOK, a dinner that's bespoke, Aspiring to prepare, with prescient zeal Should know the tastes and humours of the guests; For if he drudges through the common work, Thoughtless of manner, careless what the place And seasons claim, and what the favouring hour Auspicious to his genius may present, Why, standing 'midst the multitude of men, Call we this plodding fricasseer a Cook V Oh differing far! and one is not the other! We call indeed the general of an army Him who is charged to lead it to the war; But the true general is the man whose mind, Mastering events, anticipates, combines; Else is he but a leader to his men ! With our profession thus: the first who cornea May with a humble toil, or slice, or chop,
* Genial. Dierum, II. 283, Lug. 1673. The writer has collected in this chapter a variety of curious particulars on this subject.
436 ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS.
Prepare the ingredients, and around the fire
Obsequious, him I call a fricasseer !
But ah ! the cook a brighter glory crowns !
Well skill'd is he to know the place, the hour,
Him who invites, and him who is invited,
What fish in season makes the market rich,
A choice delicious rarity ! I know
That all, we always find; but always all,
Channs not the palate, critically fine.
Archestratus, in culinary lore
Deep for his time, in this more learned age
Is wanting; and full oft he surely talks
Of what he never ate. Suspect his page,
Nor load thy genius with a ban-en precept. .
Look not in books for what some idle sage
So idly raved ; for cookery is an art
Comporting ill with rhetoric ; 'tis an art
Still changing, and of momentary triumph !
Know on thyself thy genius must depend.
All books of cookery, all helps of art,
All critic learning, all commenting notes,
Are vain, if, void of genius, thou wouldst cook! *
"The culinary sage thus spoke; his friend Demands, ' Where is the ideal cook thou paint'st?*
* Lo, I the man ! ' the savouring sage replied.
* Now be thine eyes the witness of my art! This tunny drest, so odorous shall steam, The spicy sweetness so shall steal thy sense, That thou in a delicious reverie
Shalt slumber heavenly o'er the Attic dish ! ' "
In another passage a Master-Cook conceives himself to be a pupil of Epicurus, whose favourite but ambiguous axiom, that " Voluptuousness is the sovereign good," was interpreted by the bon-vivans of antiquity in the plain sense.
MASTER COOK.
Behold in me a pupil of the school Of the sage Epicurus.
FRIEND.
Thou a sage ! MASTER COOK.
Ay ! Epicurus too was sure a cook, And knew the sovereign good. Nature his study, While practice perfected his theory.
ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS. 437
Divine philosophy alone can teach
The difference which the fish Glotiscu* * shows
In winter and in summer: how to learn
Which fish to choose, when set the Pleiades,
And at the solstice. 'Tis change of seasons
Which threats mankind, and shakes their changeful frame.
This dost thou comprehend ? Know, what we use
In season, is most seasonably good I
FRIEND. Most 'earned cook, who can observe these canons?
MASTER COOK.
And therefore phlegm and colics make a man A most indecent guest. The aliment Dress'd in my kitchen is true aliment; Light of digestion easily it passes; The chyle soft-blending from the juicy food Repairs the solids.
FRIEND.
Ah! the chyle! the solids! Thou new Democritus ! thou sage of medicine ! Versed hi the mysteries of the latric art !
MASTER COOK.
Now mark the blunders of our vulgar cooks ! See them prepare a dish of various fish, Showering profuse the pounded Indian grain, An overpowering vapour, gallimaufry A multitude confused of pothering odours! But, know, the genius of the art consists
* The commentators have not been able always to assign known names to the great variety of fish, particularly sea-fish, the ancients used, many of which we should revolt at. One of their dainties was a shell-fish, prickly like a hedge-hog, called Echinus. They ate the dog-fish, the star-fish, por- poises or sea-hogs, and even seals. In Dr. MofTet's " regiment of diet," an exceeding curious writer of the reign of Elizabeth, republished by Oldys, may be found an ample account of the " sea-fish " used by the ancients.— Whatever the Glociscus was, it seems to have been of great size, and a shell-fish, as we may infer from the following curious passage in Athenseus. A father, informed that his son is leading a dissolute life, enraged, remon- strates with his pedagogue:—" Knave! thou art the fault! hast thou ever known a philosopher yield himself so entirely to the pleasures thou tellest me of?" The pedagogue replies by a Yes! and that the sages of the portico are great drunkards, and none know better than they how to attach a Glocitcus.
438 ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS.
To make the nostrils feel each scent distinct; And not in washing plates to free from smoke. I never enter in my kitchen, I! But sit apart, and in the cool direct, Observant of what passes, scullions' toil.
FRIEND.
What dost thou there?
MASTER COOK.
I guide the mighty whole; Explore the causes, prophesy the dish. 'Tis thus I speak : " Leave, leave that ponderous ham; Keep up the fire, and lively play the flame Beneath those lobster patties ; patient here, Fix'd as a statue, skim, incessant skim. Steep well this small Glociscus in its sauce, And boil that sea-dog in a cullender; This eel requires more salt and marjoram; Roast well that piece of kid on either side Equal ; that sweetbread boil not over much.'* 'Tis thus, my friend, I make the concert play.
FRIEND.
O man of science! 'tis thy babble kills!
MASTER COOK.
And then no useless dish my table crowds; Hannonious 'ranged, and consonantly just.
FRIEND. Ha ! what means this ?
MASTER COOK.
Divinest music all I As in a concert instruments resound, My ordered dishes in their courses chime. So Epicurus dictated the art Of sweet voluptuousness, and ate in order, Musing delighted o'er the sovereign good! Let raving Stoics in a labyrinth Run after virtue; they shall find no end. Thou, what is foreign to mankind, abjure.
FRIEND.
Right honest Cook! thou wak'st me from their dreams!
Another cook informs us that he adapts his repasts to hia personages.
ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS. 439
* I like to see the faces of my guests, To feed them as their age and station claim. My kitchen changes, as my guests inspire The various spectacle; for lovers now, Philosophers, and now for financiers. If my young royster be a mettled spark, Who melts an acre in a savoury dish To charm his mistress, scuttle-fish and crabs, And all the shelly race, with mixture due Of cordials filtered, exquisitely rich. For such a host, my friend ! expends much more In oil than cotton ; solely studying love ! To a philosopher, that animal, Voracious, solid ham and bulky feet; But to the financier, with costly niceness, Glociscus rare, or rarity more rare. Insensible the palate of old age, More difficult than the soft lips of youth To move, I put much mustard in their dish; With quickening sauces make their stupor keen, And lash the lazy blood that creeps within."
Another genius, in tracing the art of cookery, derives from it nothing less than the origin of society ; and I think that some philosopher has defined man to be " a cooking animal.*
•COOK.
The art of cookery drew us gently forth
From that ferocious life, when void of faith
The Anthropophaginian ate his brother 1
To cookery we owe well-ordered states,
Assembling men in dear society.
Wild was the Dearth, man feasting upon man,
When one of nobler sense and milder heart
First sacrificed an animal ; the flesh
Was sweet; and man then ceased to feed on man!
And something of the rudeness of those times
The priest commemorates ; for to this day
He roasts the victim's entrails without salt.
In those dark times, beneath the earth lay hid
The precious salt, that gold of cookery !
But when its particles the palate thrill' d,
The source of seasonings, charm of cookery! came.
They served a paunch with rich ingredients stored;
And tender kid, within two covering plates,
Warm melted in the mouth. So art improved!
440 ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS.
At length a miracle not yet perform' d, They minced Ihe meat, which roll'd in herbage soft, Nor meat nor herbage seem'd, but to the eye And to the taste, the counterfeited dish Mimick'd some curious fish ; invention rare ! Then every dish was season'd more and more, Salted, or sour, or sweet, and mingled oft Oatmeal and honey. To enjoy the meal Men congregated in the populous towns, And cities flourish'd which we cooks adorn'd With all the pleasures of domestic life.
An arch-cook insinuates that there remain only two " pil- lars of the state," besides himself, of the school of Sinon, one of the great masters of the condimenting art. Sinon, we are told, applied the elements of all the arts and sciences to this favourite one. Natural philosophy could produce a secret seasoning for a dish ; and architecture the art of conducting the smoke out of the chimney : which, says he, if ungovern- able, makes a great difference in the dressing. From the military science he derived a sublime idea of order ; drilling the under cooks, marshalling the kitchen, hastening one, and making another a sentinel. We find, however, that a portion of this divine art, one of the professors acknowledges to be vapouring and bragging! — a seasoning in this art, as well as in others. A cook ought never to come unaccompanied by all the pomp and parade of the kitchen : with a scurvy ap- pearance, he will be turned away at sight ; for all have eyes? but few only understanding.
Another occult part of this profound mystery, besides va- pouring, consisted, it seems, in filching. Such is the counsel of a patriarch to an apprentice! a precept which contains a truth for all ages of cookery.
" Carian ! time well thy ambidextrous part, Nor always filch. It was but yesterday, Blundering, they nearly caught thee in the fact; None of thy balls had livers, and the guests, In horror, pierced their airy emptiness. Not even the brains were there, thou brainless hound! If thou art hired among the middling class,
ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS. 441
Who pay thee freely, be thou honourable !
But for this day, where now we go to cook,
E'en cut the master's throat for all I care ;
*A word to th' wise,' and show thyself my scholar!
There thou mayst filch and revel ; all may yield
Some secret profit to thy sharking hand.
'Tis an old miser gives a sordid dinner,
And weeps o'er every sparing dish at table ;
Then if I do not find thou dost devour
All thou canst touch, e'en to the very coals
I will disown thee ! Lo ! old Skin-flint comes ;
In his dry eyes what parsimony stares! "
These cooks of the ancients, who appear to have been hired for a grand dinner, carried their art to the most whimsical perfection. They were so dexterous as to be able to serve up a whole pig boiled on one side, and roasted on the other. The cook who performed this feat defies his guests to detect the place where the knife had separated the animal, or how it was contrived to stuff the belly with an olio, composed of thrushes and other birds, slices of the matrices of a sow, the yolks of eggs, the bellies of hens with their soft eggs, fla- voured with a rich juice, and minced meats highly spiced. When this cook is entreated to explain his secret art, he solemnly swears by the manes of those who braved all the dangers of the plain of Marathon, and combated at sea at Salamis, that he will not reveal the secret that year. But of an incident, so triumphant in the annals of the gastric art, our philosopher would not deprive posterity of the knowledge. The animal had been bled to death by a wound under the shoulder, whence, after a copious effusion, the master-cook extracted the entrails, washed them with wine, and hanging the animal by the feet, he crammed down the throat the stuf- fings already prepared. Then covering the half of the pig with a paste of barley, thickened with wine and oil, he put it in a small oven, or on a heated table of brass, where it was gently roasted with all due care : when the skin was browned, he boiled the other side ; and then, taking away the barley paste, the pig was served up, at once boiled and roasted. These
442 ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS.
cooks, with a vegetable, could counterfeit the shape and the taste of fish and flesh. The king of Bithynia, in some ex- pedition against the Scythians, in the winter, and at a great distance from the sea, had a violent longing for a small fish called aphy — a pilchard, a herring, or an anchovy. His cook cut a turnip to the perfect imitation of its shape ; then fried in oil, salted, and well powdered with the grains of a dozen black poppies, his majesty's taste was so exquisitely deceived, that he praised the root to his guests as an excellent fish. This transmutation of vegetables into meat or fish is a province of the culinary art which we appear to have lost ; yet these are cibi innocentes, compared with the things them- selves. No people are such gorgers of mere animal food as our own ; the art of preparing vegetables, pulse, and roots, is scarcely known in this country. This cheaper and health- ful food should be introduced among the common people, who neglect them from not knowing how to dress them. The peasant, for want of this skill, treads under foot the best meat in the world ; and sometimes the best way of dressing it is least costly.
The gastric art must have reached to its last perfection, when we find that it had its history ; and that they knew how to ascertain the sera of a dish with a sort of chronological ex- actness. The philosophers of Athenaeus at table dissert on every dish, and tell us of one called maati, that there was a treatise composed on it ; that it was first introduced at Athens, at the epocha of the Macedonian empire, but that it was undoubtedly a Thessalian invention ; the most sumptuous people of all the Greeks. The maati was a term at length applied to any dainty, of excessive delicacy, always served the last.
But as no art has ever attained perfection without numer- ous admirers, and as it is the public which only can make euch exquisite cooks, our curiosity may be excited to inquire, whether the patrons of the gastric art were as great enthusi- asts as its professors.
ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS. 443
We see they had writers who exhausted their genius on these professional topics ; and books of cookery were much read : for a comic poet, quoted by Athenaeus, exhibits a character exulting in having procured " The new Kitchen of Philoxenus, which," says he, " I keep for myself to read in my solitude." That these devotees to the culinary art under- took journeys to remote parts of the world, in quest of these discoveries, sufficient facts authenticate. England had the honour to furnish them with oysters, which they fetched from about Sandwich. Juvenal * records, that Montanus was so well skilled in the science of good eating, that he could tell by the first bite whether they were English or not. The well-known Apicius poured into his stomach an immense fortune. He usually resided at Minturna, a town in Cam- pania, where he ate shrimps at a high price : they were so large, that those of Smyrna, and the prawns of Alexandria, could not be compared with the shrimps of Minturna. How ever, this luckless epicure was informed that the shrimps in Africa were more monstrous ; and he embarks without losing a day. He encounters a great storm, and through imminent danger arrives at the shores of Africa, The fishermen bring him the largest for size their nets could furnish. Apicius shakes his head : " Have you never any larger ? " he in- quires. The answer was not favourable to his hopes. Api- cius rejects them, and fondly remembers the shrimps of his own Minturna. He orders his pilot to return to Italy, and leaves Africa with a look of contempt.
A fraternal genius was Philoxenus : he whose higher wish was to possess a crane's neck, that he might be the longer in savouring his dainties ; and who appears to have invented some expedients which might answer, in some degree, the purpose. This impudent epicure was so little attentive to the feelings of his brother guests, that in the hot bath he avow- edly habituated himself to keep his hands in the scalding water ; and even used to gargle his throat with it, that he * Sat. iv. 140.
444 ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
might feel less impediment in swallowing the hottest dishes. He bribed the cooks to serve up the repast smoking hot, that he might gloriously devour what he chose before any one else could venture to touch the dish. It seemed as if he had used his fingers to handle fire. " He is an oven, not a man ! " exclaimed a grumbling fellow-guest. Once having embarked for Ephesus, for the purpose of eating fish, his favourite food, he arrived at the market, and found all the stalls empty. There was a wedding in the town, and all the fish had been bespoken. He hastens to embrace the new-married couple, and singing an epithalamium, the dithyrambic epicure en- chanted the company. The bridegroom was delighted by the honour of the presence of such a poet, and earnestly requested he would come on the morrow. " I will come, young friend, if there is no fish at the market ! " — It was this Philoxenus, who, at the table of Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, having near him a small barbel, and observing a large one near the prince, took the little one, and held it to his ear. Dionysius inquired the reason. "At present," replied the ingenious epicure, " I am so occupied by my Galatea," (a poem in honour of the mistress of the tyrant,) " that I wished to inquire of this little fish, whether he could give me some information about Nereus ; but he is silent, and I imagine they have taken him up too young : I have no doubt that old one, opposite to you, would perfectly satisfy me." Dionysius rewarded the pleasant conceit with the large barbel.
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
THE Stagyrite discovered that our nature delights in imi- tation, and perhaps in nothing more than in representing personages different from ourselves in mockery of them ; in fact, there is a passion for masquerade in human nature. Children discover. this propensity; and in the populace, who
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA. 445
are the children of society, through all ages have been hu- moured by their governors with festivals and recreations, which are made up of this malicious transformation of per- sons and things ; and the humble orders of society have been privileged by the higher, to please themselves by burlesquing and ridiculing the great, at short seasons, as some consola- tion for the rest of the year.
The Saturnalia of the Romans is a remarkable instance of this characteristic of mankind. Macrobius could not trace the origin of this institution, and seems to derive it from the Grecians; so that it might have arisen in some rude period of antiquity, and among another people. This conjecture seems supported by a passage in Gibbon's Miscellanies,* who discovers traces of this institution among the more ancient nations ; and Huet imagined that he saw in the jubilee of the Hebrews some similar usages. It is to be regretted, that Gibbon does not afford us any new light on the cause in which originated the institution itself. The jubilee of the Hebrews was the solemn festival of an agricultural people, but bears none of the ludicrous characteristics of the Roman Saturnalia.
It would have been satisfactory to have discovered the occasion of the inconceivable licentiousness which was thus sanctioned by the legislator, — this overturning of the princi- ples of society, and this public ridicule of its laws, its customs, and its feelings. We are told, these festivals, dedicated to Saturn, were designed to represent the natural equality which prevailed in his golden age ; and for this purpose the slaves were allowed to change places with the masters. This was, however, giving the people a false notion of the equality of men ; for, while the slave was converted into the master, the pretended equality was as much violated as in the usual situation of the parties. The political misconception of this term of natural equality seems, however, to have been car- ried on through all ages; and the political Saturnalia had * Miscellaneous Works, vol. v. 504.
446 ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
lately nearly thrown Europe into a state of that worse than slavery, where slaves are masters.
The Roman Saturnalia were latterly prolonged to a week's debauchery and folly ; and a diary of that week's words and deeds would have furnished a copious chronicle of Facetia. Some notions we acquire from the laws of the Saturnalia of Lucian, an Epistle of Seneca's,* and from Horace, who from his love of quiet, retired from the city during this noisy season.
It was towards the close of December, that all the town was in an unusual motion, and the children every where in- voking Saturn ; nothing now to be seen but tables spread out for feasting, and nothing heard but shouts of merriment : all business was dismissed, and none at work but cooks and con- fectioners ; no account of expenses was to be kept, and it appears that one tenth part of a man's income was to be ap- propriated to this jollity. All exertion of mind and body was forbidden, except for the purposes of recreation ; nothing to be read or recited which did not provoke mirth, adapted to the season and the place. The slaves were allowed the utmost freedom of raillery and truth, with their masters ; f sitting with them at the table, dressed in their clothes, play- ing all sorts of tricks, telling them of their faults to their faces, while they smutted them. The slaves were imaginary kings, as indeed a lottery determined their rank ; and as their masters attended them, whenever it happened that these per- formed their offices clumsily, doubtless with some recollections of their own similar misdemeanors, the slave made the master leap into the water head-foremost. No one was allowed to be angry, and he who was played on, if he loved his own comfort, would be the first to laugh. Glasses of all sizes were to be ready, and all were to drink when and what they chose; none but .the most skilful musicians and tumblers
* Seneca, Ep. 18.
f Horace, in his dialogue with his slave Davus, exhibits a lively picture of this circumstance. Lib. ii. Sat. 7.
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA. 447
were allowed to perform, for those people are worth nothing unless exquisite, as the Saturnalian laws decreed. Dancing, singing, and shouting, and carrying a female musician thrice round on their shoulders, accompanied by every grotesque humour they imagined, were indulged in that short week, which was to repay the many in which the masters had their revenge for the reign of this pretended equality. Another custom prevailed at this season : the priests performed their sacrifices to Saturn bare-headed, which Pitiscus explains in the spirit of this extraordinary institution, as designed to show that time discovers, or, as in the present case of the bare-headed priests, uncovers, all things.
Such was the Roman Saturnalia, the favourite popular recreations of Paganism ; and as the sports and games of the people outlast the date of their empires, and are carried with them, however they may change their name and their place on the globe, the grosser pleasures of the Saturnalia were too well adapted to their tastes to be forgotten. The Saturnalia, therefore, long generated the most extraordinary institutions among the nations of modern Europe ; and what seems more extraordinary than the unknown origin of the parent absur- dity itself, the Saturnalia crept into the services and offices of the Christian church. Strange it is to observe at the altar the rites of religion burlesqued, and all its offices per- formed with the utmost buffoonery. It is only by tracing them to the Roman Saturnalia that we can at all account for these grotesque sports — that extraordinary mixture of libertinism and profaneness, so long continued under Chris* tianity
Such were the feasts of the ass, the feast of fools or mad- men, fetes desfous — the feast of the bull — of the Innocents— and that of the soudiacres, which perhaps, in its original term, meant only sub-deacons, but their conduct was ex- pressed by the conversion of a pun into saoudiacres or diacres saouls, drunken deacons. Institutions of this nature, even more numerous than the historian has usually recorded, and
448 ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
varied in their mode, seem to surpass each other in their utter extravagance.*
These profane festivals were universally practised in the middle ages, and, as I shall show, comparatively even in modern times. The ignorant and the careless clergy then imagined it was the securest means to retain the populace, who were always inclined to these pagan revelries.
These grotesque festivals have sometimes amused the pens of foreign and domestic antiquaries : for our own country has participated as keenly in these irreligious* fooleries. In the feast of asses, an ass covered with sacerdotal robes was gravely conducted to the choir, where service was performed before the ass, and a hymn chanted in as discordant a man- ner as they could contrive ; the office was a medley of all that had been sung in the course of the year ; pails of water, were flung at the head of the chanters ; the ass was supplied with drink aiid provender at every division of the service ; and the asinines were drinking, dancing, and braying for two days. The hymn to the ass has been preserved ; each stanza ends with the burden " Hez ! Sire Ane, hez ! " " Huzza ! Seignior Ass, Huzza ! " On other occasions, they put burnt old shoes to fume in the censers ; ran about the church, leap- ing, singing, and dancing obscenely; scattering ordure among the audience ; playing at dice upon the altar ! while a boy- bishop, or a pope of fools, burlesqued the divine service. Sometimes they disguised themselves in the skins of animals,
* A large volume might be composed on these grotesque, profane, and licentious feasts. Du Cange notices several under different terms in his Glossary — Festum Asinorum, Kalendae, Cervulo. A curious collection has been made by the Abbe1 Artigny, in the fourth and seventh volumes of his Me"moires d'Histoire, &c. Du Radier, in his R^crdations Historiques, vol. |. p. 109, has noticed several writers on the subject, and preserves one on the hunting of a man, called Adam, from Ash Wednesday to Holy- Thursday, and treating him with a good supper at night, peculiar to a town in Saxony. See Aricillon's Melange Critique, &c., i. 39, where the passage from Raphael de Volterra is found at length. In my learned friend Mr. Turner's second volume of his History of England, p. 367, will be found a copious and a curious note on this subject.
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA. 449
and pretending to be transformed into the animal they repre- sented, it became dangerous, or worse, to meet these aban- doned fools. There was a precentor of fools, who was shaved in public, during which he entertained the populace with all the balderdash his genius could invent. We had in Leices- ter, in 1415, what was called a glutton-mass, during the five days of the festival of the Virgin Mary. The people rose early to mass, during which they practised eating and drink- ing with the most zealous velocity, and, as in France, drew from the corners of the altar the rich puddings placed there. So late as in 1 645, a pupil of Gassendi, writing to his mas- ter, what he himself witnessed at Aix on the feast of the In- nocents, says, " I have seen, in some monasteries in this province, extravagancies solemnized, which the pagans would not have practised. Neither the clergy, nor the guardians, indeed, go to the choir on this day, but all is given up to the lay brethren, the cabbage-cutters, the errand-boys, the cooks and scullions, the gardeners ; in a word, all the menials fill their places in the church, #nd insist that they perform the offices proper for the day. They dress themselves with all the sacerdotal ornaments, but torn to rags, or wear them in- side out ; they hold in their hands the books reversed or side- ways, which they pretend to read with large spectacles without glasses, and to which they fix the shells of scooped oranges, which renders them so hideous, that one must have seen these madmen to form a notion of their appearance ; particularly while dangling the censers, they keep shaking them in derision, and letting the ashes fly about then- heads and faces one against the other. In this equipage they neither sing hymns, nor psalms, nor masses ; but mumble a certain gibberish, as shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market. The nonsense-verses they chant are singularly barbarous :—
* Haec est clara dies, clararum clara dierura, Haec est festa dies, festarum festa dieruin.' " *
* Thiers. Traite des Jenx. p. 449. VOL. ii. 29 *
450 ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
These are scenes which equal any which the humour of the Italian burlesque poets have invented, and which might have entered with effect into the " Malmantile racquistato " of Lippi ; but that they should have been endured amidst the solemn offices of religion, and have been performed in cathe- drals, while it excites our astonishment, can only be accounted for by perceiving that they were, in truth, the Saturnalia of the Romans. Mr. Turner observes, without perhaps having a precise notion that they were copied from the Saturnalia, that " It could be only by rivalling the pagan revelries, that the Christian ceremonies could gain the ascendancy." Our historian further observes, that these " licentious festivities were called the December liberties, and seem to have begun at one of the most solemn seasons of the Christian year, and to have lasted through the chief part of January.'* This very term, as well as the time, agrees with that of the an- cient Saturnalia : —
. »•* " Age, liberiate Decembri,
Quando ita majores volueruut, utere: narra."
HOR. lib. ii. sat. 7.
The Roman Saturnalia, thus transplanted into Christian churches, had for its singular principle, that of inferiors, whimsically and in mockery, personifying their superiors with a licensed licentiousness. This forms a distinct characteristic from those other popular customs and pastimes which the learned have also traced to the Roman, and even more an- cient nations. Our present inquiry is, to illustrate that proneness in man, of delighting to reverse the order of so- ciety, and ridiculing its decencies.
Here we had our boy-bishop, a legitimate descendant of this family of foolery. On St. Nicholas's day, a saint who was the patron of children, the boy-bishop with his mitra parva and a long crosier, attended by his school-mates as his diminutive prebendaries, assumed the title and state of a bishop. The child-bishop preached a sermon, and afterwards, accompanied by his attendants, went about singing and col-
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA. 451
lecting his pence : to such theatrical processions in collegiate bodies, Warton attributes the custom, still existing at Eton, of going ad montem. But this was a tame mummery, com- pared with the grossness elsewhere allowed in burlesquing religious ceremonies. The English, more particularly after the reformation, seem not to have polluted the churches with such abuses. The relish for the Saturnalia was not, however, less lively here than on the Continent ; but it took a more innocent direction, and was allowed to turn itself into civil Hie : and since the people would be gratified by mock digni- ties, and claimed the privilege of ridiculing their masters, it was allowed them by our kings and nobles ; and a troop of grotesque characters, frolicsome great men, delighting in merry mischief, are recorded in our domestic annals.
The most learned Selden, with parsimonious phrase and copious sense, has thus compressed the result of an historical dissertation : he derives our ancient Christmas sports at once" from the true, though remote, source. " Christmas succeeds the Saturnalia ; the same time, the same number of holy-days ; then the master waited upon the servant, like the lord of mis- rule" * Such is the title of a facetious potentate, who in this notice of Selden's, is not further indicated, for this personage was familiar in his day, but of whom the accounts are so scattered, that his offices and his glory are now equally obscure. The race of this nobility of drollery, and this le- gitimate king of all hoaxing and quizzing, like mightier dy- nasties, has ceased to exist.
In England our festivities at Christmas appear to hare been more entertaining than in other countries. We were once famed for merry Christmases and their pies : witness the Italian proverb, " Ha pin di fare che iforni di Natale in In- yhilterra : " " He has more business than English ovens at Christmas." Wherever the king resided, there was created for that merry season a Christmas prince, usually called u the Lord of Misrule ;" and whom the Scotch once knew under * Selden's Table Talk.
452 ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
the significant title of " the Abbot of Unreason." His office, according to Stowe, was " to make the rarest pastimes to de- light the beholder." Every nobleman, and every great family, surrendered their houses, during this season, to the Christmas prince, who found rivals or usurpers in almost every parish ; and more particularly, as we shall see, among the grave students in our inns of court.
The Italian Polydore Vergil, who, residing here, had clearer notions of this facetious personage, considered the Christmas Prince as peculiar to our country. Without venturing to ascend in his genealogy, we must admit his relationship to that ancient family of foolery we have noticed, whether he be legitimate or not. If this whimsical personage, at his crea- tion, was designed to regulate " misrule," his lordship, invested with plenary power, came himself, at length, to delight too much in his " merry disports." Stubbes, a morose puritan in the reign of Elizabeth, denominates him " a grand captaine of mischiefe," and has preserved a minute description of all his wild doings in the country ; but as Strutt has anticipated me in this amusing extract, I must refer to his " Sports and Pastimes of the People of England," p. 254. I prepare another scene of unparalleled Saturnalia, among the grave judges and Serjeants of the law, where the Lord of Misrule is viewed amidst his frolicsome courtiers, with the humour of hunting the fox and the cat with ten couple of hounds round their great hall, among the other merry disports of those joy- ous days when sages could play like boys.
For those who can throw themselves back amidst the gro- tisque humours and clumsy pastimes of our ancestors, who, without what we think to be taste, had whim and merriment — there has been fortunately preserved a curious history of the manner in which " A grand Christmas " was kept at our Inns of Court, by the grave and learned Dugdale, in his " Origines Juridicales : " it is a complete festival of foolery, acted by the students and law-officers. They held for that season every thing in mockery : they had a mock parliament, a Prince of
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA. 453
Sophie, or Wisdom, an honourable order of Pegasus, a high constable, marshal, a master of the game, a ranger of the forest, lieutenant of the Tower, which was a temporary prison for Christmas delinquents, all the paraphernalia of a court, burlesqued by these youthful sages before the boyish judges.
The characters personified were in the costume of their assumed offices. On Christmas-day, the constable-marshal, accoutred with a complete gilded "harness," showed that every thing was to be chivalrously ordered ; while the lieu- tenant of the Tower, in " a fair white armour," attended with his troop of halberdiers; and the Tower -was then placed beneath the fire. After this opening followed the costly feasting; and then, nothing less than a hunt with a pack of hounds in their hall !
The master of the game dressed in green velvet, and the ranger of the forest in green satin, bearing a green bow and arrows, each with a hunting-horn about their necks, blowing together three blasts of venery (or hunting), they pace round about the fire three times. The master of the game kneels to be admitted into the service of the high-constable. A huntsman comes into the hall, with nine or ten couple of hounds, bearing on the end of his staff a pursenet, which holds a fox and a cat : these were let loose and hunted by the hounds, and killed beneath the fire.
These extraordinary amusements took place after their repast; for these grotesque Saturnalia appeared after that graver part of their grand Christmas. Supper ended, the constable-marshal presented himself with drums playing, mounted on a stage borne by four men, and carried round ; at length he cries out " a lord ! a lord ! " &c., and then calls his mock court every one by name.
Sir Francis Flatterer, of Fowlshurt.
Sir Randall Rackabite, of Rascal-hall, in the county of Hakehell.
Sir Morgan Mumchance, of Much Monkery, in the county of Mad Mopery.
454 ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
Sir Bartholomew Bald-breech, of Buttock-bury, in the county of Break-neck.*
They had also their mock arraignments. The King's- eerjeant, after dinner or supper, " oratour-like," complained that the constable-marshal had suffered great disorders to prevail ; the complaint was answered by the common-ser- jeant, who was to show his talent at defending the cause. The king's-serjeant replies ; they rejoin, &c. : till one at length is committed to the Tower, for being found most deficient. If any offender contrived to escape from the lieu- tenant of the Tower into the buttery, and brought into the hall a manchet (or small loaf) upon the point of a knife, he was pardoned ; for the buttery in this jovial season was con- sidered as a sanctuary. Then began the revels. Blount de- rives this term from the French reveiller, to awake from sleep. These were sports of dancing, masking comedies, &c. (for some were called solemn revels,) used in great houses, and were so denominated because they were performed by night ; and these various pastimes were regulated by a master of the revels.
Amidst " the grand Christmas's," a personage of no small importance was " the Lord of Misrule." His lordship was abroad early in the morning, and if he lacked any of his officers, he entered their chambers to drag forth the loiterers ; but after breakfast his lordship's power ended, and it was in suspense till night, when his personal presence was para mount, or as Dugdale expresses it, "and then his power is most potent."
* A rare quarto tract seems to give an authentic narrative of one of these grand Christmas keepings, exhibiting all their whimsicality and burlesque humour: it is entitled " Gesta Grayorum; or the History of the high and mighty lYmce Henry, Prince of Purpoole, Arch-duke of Stap:tlia and Bernardia (Staple's and Bernard's Inns), Duke of High and Nether- Holborn, Marquess of St. Giles and Tottenham, Count Palatine of Blooms- bury and Clerkenwell, Great Lord of the Cantons of Islington, Kentish Town, &c. Knight and Sovereign of the most heroical order of the helmet, who reigned and died A. D. 1594." It is full of burlesque speeches and addresses. As it was printed in 1688, 1 suppose it was from some manu- script of the times; the preface gives no information.
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA. 455
Such were then the pastimes of the whole learned bench * and when once it happened that the under-barristers did not dance on Candlemas day, according to the ancient order of the society, when the judges were present, the whole bar wag oifended, and at Lincoln's-Inn were by decimation put out of commons, for example-sake ; and should the same omission be repeated, they were to be fined or disbarred ; for theso dancings were thought necessary, " as much conducing to the making of gentlemen more fit for their books at other times." I cannot furnish a detailed notice of these pastimes ; for Dug- dale, whenever he indicates them, spares his gravity from recording the evanescent frolics, by a provoking fyc. fyc. fyc.
The dance " round about the coal-fire " is taken off' in the u Rehearsal." These revels have also been ridiculed by Donne in his Satires, Prior in his Alma, and Pope in his Dunciad. " The judge to dance, his brother Serjeants calls." *
" The Lord of Misrule," in the inns of court, latterly did not conduct himself with any recollection of " Media tutissi- mus ibis" being unreasonable ; but the " Sparks of the Tem- ple," as a contemporary calls them, had gradually, in the early part of Charles the First's reign, yielded themselves up to excessive disorders. Sir Symonds D'Ewes, in his MS. diary in 1620, has noticed their choice of a lieutenant, or lord of misrule, who seems to have practised all the mischief he invented ; and the festival days, when " a standing table was kept," were accompanied by dicing, and much gaming, oaths, execrations, and quarrels : being of a serious turn of mind, lie regrets this, for he adds, " the sport, of itself, I conceive to be lawful."
I suspect that the last memorable act of a Lord of Misrule of the inns of court occurred in 1G27, when the Christmas game became serious. The Lord of Misrule then issued an edict to his officers to go out at Twelfth-night to collect hid rents in the neighbourhood of the Temple, at the rate of five shillings a hou.-e ; and on tho.se who were in their beds, or
* On the last Revels hold, see Geut. Mag. 1774, p. 273.
456 ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
would not pay, he levied a distress. An unexpected resist- ance at length occurred in a memorable battle with the Lord Mayor in person : — and I shall tell how the Lord of Misrule for some time stood victor, with his gunner and his trumpeter, and his martial array : and how heavily and fearfully stood my Lord Mayor amidst his " watch and ward : " and how their lordships agreed to meet half way, each to preserve his independent dignity, till one knocked down the other : and how the long halberds clashed with the short swords': how my Lord Mayor valorously took the Lord of Misrule prisoner with his own civic hand : and how the Christinas prince was immured in the Counter : and how the learned Templars insisted on their privilege, and the unlearned of llarn's-alley and Fleet-street asserted their right of saving their crown-pieces : and finally how this " combat of mockery and earnestness was settled, not without the introduction of " a god," as Horace allows on great occasions, in the inter- position of the king and the attorney-general — altogether the tale had been well told in some comic epic ; but the wits of that day let it pass out of their hands.
I find this event, which seems to record the last desperate effort of a " Lord of Misrule," in a manuscript letter of the learned Mede to Sir Martin Stuteville ; and some particulars are collected from Hammond L'Estrange's Life of Charles the First.
"Jan. 12,1627-8.
" On Saturday the Templars chose one Mr. Palmer their Lord of Misrule, who, on Twelfth-eve, late in the night, sent out to gather up his rents at five shillings a house, in Ram- alley and Fleet-street. At every door they came they winded the Temple-horn, and if at the second blast or summons they \uthin opened not the door, then the Lord of Misrule cried out, * Give fire, gunner ! ' His gunner was a robustious Vulcan, and the gun or petard itself was a huge overgrown smith's hammer. This being complained of to my Lord Mayor, he said he would be with them about eleven o'clock
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA. 457
on Sunday night last ; willing that all that ward should at- tend him with their halberds, and that himself, besides those that came out of his house, should bring the Watches along with him. His lordship, thus attended, advanced as high as Ram -alley in martial equipage ; when forth came the Lord of Misrule, attended by his gallants, out of the Temple-gate, with their swords, all armed in cuerpo. A halberdier bade the Lord of Misrule come to my Lord Mayor. He an- swered, No ! let the Lord Mayor come to me ! At length they agreed to meet half way ; and, as the interview of rival princes is never without danger of some ill accident, so it happened in this : for first, Mr. Palmer being quarrelled with for not pulling off his hat to my Lord Mayor, and giving cross answers, the halberds began to fly about his ears, and he and his company to brandish their swords. At last being beaten to the ground, and the Lord of Misrule sore wounded, they were fain to yield to the longer and more numerous weapon. My Lord Mayor taking Mr. Palmer by the shoulder, led him to the Compter, and thrust him in at the prison-gate with a kind of indignation ; and so, notwithstanding his hurts, he was forced to lie among the common prisoners for two nights. On Tuesday the king's attorney became a suitor to my Lord Mayor for their liberty ; which his lordship granted, upon condition that they should repay the gathered rents, and do reparations upon broken doors. Thus the game ended. Mr. Attorney-General, being of the same house, fetched them in his own coach, and carried them to the court, where the King himself reconciled my Lord Mayor and them to- gether with joining all hands ; the gentlemen of .the Temple being this Shrovetide to present a Mask to their majesties, over and besides the king's own great Mask, to be performed at the Banqueting-house by an hundred actors,"
Thus it appears, that although the grave citizens did well and rightly protect themselves, yet, by the attorney-general taking the Lord of Misrule in his coach, and the king giving his royal interference between the parties, that they consid-
458 ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
ered that this Lord of Foolery had certain ancient privilege.? ; and it was, perhaps, a doubt with them, whether this interfer- ence of the Lord Mayor might not be considered as severe and unseasonable. It is probable, however, that the arm of the civil power brought all future Lords of Misrule to their senses. Perhaps this dynasty in the empire of foolery closed with this Christmas prince, who fell a victim to the arbitrary taxation he levied. I find after this orders made for the In- ner Temple, for " preventing of that general scandal and obloquie, which the House hath heretofore incurred in time of Christmas : " and that " there be not any going abroad out of the gates of this House, by any lord or others, to break open any house, or take any thing in the name of rent or a distress."
These " Lords of Misrule," and their mock court and roy- alty, appear to have been only extinguished with the English sovereignty itself, at the time of our republican government Edmund Gayton tells a story, to show the strange impressions of strong fancies : as his work is of great rarity, I shall tran- scribe the story in his own words, both to give a conclusion to this inquiry, and a specimen of his style of narrating this sort of little things. " A gentleman was importuned, at a fire- night in the public hall, to accept the high and mighty place of a mock-emperor, which was duly conferred upon him by seven mock-electors. At the same time, with much wit and ceremony, the emperor accepted his chair of state, which was placed in the highest table in the hall ; and at his instalment all pomp, reverence, and signs of homage, were used by the whole company ; insomuch that our emperor, having a spice of self-conceit before, was soundly peppered now, for he was instantly metamorphosed into the stateliest, gravest, and com- manding soul that ever eye beheld. Taylor acting Arbaces, or Swanston D'Amboise, were shadows to him : his pace, his look, his voice, and all his garb, was altered. Alexander upon his elephant, nay, upon the castle upon that elephant, was not so high ; and so close did this imaginary honour stick
ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA. 459
lo his fancy, that for many years he could not shake off thi? one night's assumed deportments, until the times came that drove all monarchical imaginations not only out of his head, but every one's." * This mock " emperor " was unquestion- ably one of these " Lords of Misrule," or " a Christmas Prince." The "public-hall" was that of the Temple, or Lincoln's Inn, or Gray's Inn. And it was natural enough, when the levelling equality of our theatrical and practical commonwealths-men were come into vogue, that even the shadowy regality of mockery startled them by reviving the recollections of ceremonies and titles, which some might in- cline, as they afterwards did, seriously to restore. TLe " Prince of Christmas " did not, however, attend the Resto- ration of Charles the Second.
The Saturnalian spirit has not been extinct even in our days. The Mayor of Garrat, with the mock addresses and burlesque election, was an image of such satirical exhibitions of their superiors, so delightful to the people. France, at the close of Louis the Fourteenth's reign, first saw her imaginary " Regiment de la Calotte," which was the terror of the sin- ners of the day, and the blockheads of all times. This " regi- ment of the skull-caps " originated in an officer and a wit, who, suffering from violent headaches, was recommended the use of a skull-cap of lead ; and his companions, as great wits, formed themselves into a regiment, to be composed only of persons distinguished by their extravagances in words or in deeds. They elected a general, they had their arms bla- zoned, and struck medals, and issued " brevets," and " lettres patentes," and granted pensions to certain individuals, stating their claims to be enrolled in the regiment for some egregious extravagance. The wits versified these army commissions ; and the idlers, like pioneers, were busied in clearing their way, by picking up the omissions and commissions of the most noted characters." Those who were favoured with its
* Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixote, bv Edmund Gayton, Esq., folio, 1654, p. 24.
460 ANCIENT AND MODERN SATURNALIA.
" brevets " intrigued against the regiment ; but at length they found it easier to wear their " calotte," and say nothing. This society began in raillery and playfulness, seasoned by a epice of malice. It produced a great number of ingenious and satirical little things. That the privileges of the " calotte " were afterwards abused, and calumny too often took the place of poignant satire, is the history of human nature as well as of " the calotins." *
Another society in the same spirit has been discovered in one of the lordships of Poland. It was called " The Repub- lic of Baboonery." The society was a burlesque model of their own government : a king, chancellor, councillors, arch- bishops, judges, &c. If a» member would engross the con- versation, he was immediately appointed orator of the repub- lic. If he spoke with impropriety, the absurdity of his conversation usually led to some suitable office created to perpetuate his folly. A man talking too much of dogs, would be made a master of the buck-hounds ; or vaunting his courage, perhaps a field-marshal ; and if bigoted on dis- putable matters and speculative opinions in religion, he was considered to be nothing less than an inquisitor. This was a pleasant and useful project to reform the manners of the Polish youth ; and one of the Polish kings good-humouredly observed, that he considered himself "as much King of Baboonery as King of Poland." We have had in our own country some attempts at similar Saturnalia ; but their suc- cess has been so equivocal that they hardly afford materials for our domestic history.
* Their " brevets," &c. are collected in a little volume, " Recueil des Pieces du Regiment de la Calotte; a Paris, chez Jaques Colombat, Impri meur privilogid du Regiment. L'an de 1'Ere Calotine 7726." From the date, we infer, that the true calotine is as old as the creation.
RELIQULE GETHINIANJ:.
RELIQULE GETHINIAN^E.
IN the south aisle of Westminster Abbey stands a monu- ment erected to the memory of LADY GRACE GETHIN. ' A statue of her ladyship represents her kneeling, holding a book in her hand. This accomplished lady was considered as a prodigy in her day, and appears to have created a feeling of enthusiasm for her character. She died early, having scarcely attained to womanhood, although a wife ; for " all this good- ness and all this excellence was bounded within the compass of twenty years."
But it is her book commemorated in marble, and not her character, which may have merited the marble that chroni- cles it, which has excited my curiosity and my suspicion. After her death a number of loose papers were found in her handwriting, which could not fail to attract, and, perhaps, astonish their readers, with the maturity of thought and the vast capacity which had composed them. These reliques of genius were collected together, methodized under heads, and appeared with the title of " Reliquiae Gethinianae ; or some remains of Grace Lady Gethin, lately deceased : being a collection of choice discourses, pleasant apothegms, and witty sentences ; written by her for the most part by way of essay, and at spare hours ; published by her nearest relations, to preserve her memory. Second edition, 1700."
Of this book, considering that comparatively it is modern, and the copy before me is called a second edition, it is some- what extraordinary that it seems always to have been a very scarce one. Even Ballard, in his Memoirs of Learned Ladies (1750), mentions that these remains are "very difficult to be procured ; " and Sir William Musgrave in a manuscript note observed, that "this book was very scarce." It bears now a high price. A hint is given in the preface that the work was chiefly printed for the use of her friends ; yet, by a second edition, we must infer that the public at large were
462 RELIQULE GET1UNIANJE.
so. There is a poem prefixed with the signature AY. C. which no one will hesitate to pronounce is by Congreve ; he wrote indeed another poem to celebrate this astonishing book, for, considered as the production of a young lady, it is a mir- aculous, rather than a human, production. The last lines in this poem we might expect from Congreve in his happier vein, who contrives to preserve his panegyric amidst that caustic wit, with which he keenly touched the age.
" A POEM IK PRAISE OF THE AUTHOR.
M I that hate books, such as come daily out By public licence to the reading rout, A due religion yet observe to this; And here assert, if any thing's amiss, It cau be only the compiler's fault, Who has ill-drest the charming author's thought, — That was all right: her beauteous looks were joiu'd To a no less admired excelling mind. But, oh ! this glory of frail Nature's dead, As I shall be that write, and you that read.* Once, to be out of fashion, I'll conclude With something that may tend to public good; I wish that piety, for which in heaven The fair is placed — to the lawn sleeves were given: Her justice — to the knot of men, whose care From the raised millions is to take their share.
W. C."
The book claimed all the praise the finest genius could be- stow on it. But let us hear the editor. — He tells us, that " It is a vast disadvantage to authors to publish theiv private un- digested thoughts, and first notions hastily set down, and de- signed only as materials for a future structure." And he adds, " That the work may not come short of that great and just expectation which the world had of her while she was alive, and still has of every thing that is the genuine product of her pen, they must be told that this was written for the most part in haste, were her Jtrst conceptions and overflow- ings of her luxuriant fancy, noted with her pencil at spars
* Was this thought, that strikes with a sudden effect, in the mind of Hawkesworth, when he so pathetically concluded his last paper V
RELIQULE GETHINIAXJ:. 453
hours, or as she was dressing, as her Ilapcpjoi only; and set down just as they came into her mind."
All this will serve as a memorable example of the cant and mendacity of an editor! and that total absence of critical judgment that could assert such matured reflection, in so ex- quisite a style, could ever have been " first conceptions, just as they came into the mind of Lady Gethin, as she was dressing."
The truth is, that Lady Gethin may have had little con- cern in all these " Reliquiae Gethiniance." They indeed might well have delighted their readers ; but those who had read Lord Bacon's Essays, and other writers, such as Owen Felt- ham, and Osborne, from whom these relics are chiefly ex- tracted, might have wondered that Bacon should have been so little known to the families of the Nortons.and the Geth- ins, to whom her ladyship was allied ; to Congreve and to the editor ; and still more particularly to subsequent compi- lers, as Ballard in his Memoirs, and lately the Rev. Mark Noble in his Continuation of Granger; who both, with all the innocence of criticism, give specimens of these " Relics," without a suspicion that they were transcribing literally from Lord Bacon's Essays! Unquestionably Lady Gethin her- self intended no imposture ; her mind had all the delicacy of her sex ; she noted much from the books she seems most to have delighted in ; and nothing less than the most undiscern- ing friends could have imagined that every thing written by the hand of this young lady was her " first conceptions ; " and apologize for some of the finest thoughts, in the most vigor- ous style which the English language can produce. It seems, however, to prove that Lord Bacon's Essays were not much read at the time this volume appeared.
The marble book in Westminster Abbey, must, therefore, lose most of its leaves ; but it was necessary to discover the origin of this miraculous production of a young lady. What is Lady Gethin's, or what is not hers, in this miscellany of plagiarisms, it is not material to examine. Those passages
464 RELIQULE GETHINIANJE.
in which her ladyship speaks in her own person probably are of original growth ; of this kind many evince great vivacity of thought, drawn from actual observation on what was pass- ing around her ; but even among these are intermixed the splendid passages of Bacon and other writers.
I shall not crowd my pages with specimens of a very sus- picious author. One of her subjects has attracted my atten- tion ; for it shows the corrupt manners of persons of fashion who lived between 1G80 and 1700. To find a mind so pure and elevated as Lady Gethin's unquestionably was, discuss- ing whether it were most advisable to have for a husband a general lover, or one attached to a mistress, and deciding by the force of reasoning in favour of the dissipated man (for a woman, it seems, had only the alternative), evinces a public depravation o£ morals. These manners were the wretched remains of the court of Charles the Second, when Wycher ley, Dryden, and Congreve seem to have written with much less invention, in their indecent plots and language, than is imagined.
" I know not which is worse, to be wife to a man that is continually changing his loves, or to an husband that hath but one mistress whom he loves with a constant passion. And if you keep some measure of civility to her, he will at least esteem you; but he of the roving humour plays an hundred frolics that divert the town and perplex his wife. She often meets with her husband's mistress, and is at a loss how to carry herself towards her. 'Tis true the constant man is ready to sacrifice, every mo- ment, his whole family to his love; he hates any place where she is not, is prodigal in what concerns his love, covetous in other respects; expects you should be blind to all he doth, and though you can't but see, yet must not dare to complain. And though both he who lends his heart to whoso- ever pleases it, and he that gives it entirely to one, do both of them require the exactest devoir from their wives, yet I know not if it be not better to be wife to an inconstant husband (provided he be something discreet), than to a constant fellow who is always perplexing her with his inconstant hu- mour. For the unconstant lovers are commonly the best humoured ; but let them be what they will, women ought not to be unfaithful, for Virtue's sake and their own, nor to offend by example. It is one of the best bonds of charity and obedience in the wife if she think her husband wise, which she will never do if she find him jealous.
" Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and o*I men's nu*s3s."
ROBINSON CRUSOE. 465
The last degrading sentence is found alas ! in the Moral Essays of Bacon. Lady Gethin, with an intellect superior to that of the women of that day, had no conception of the dignity of the female character, the claims of virtue, and the duties of honour. A wife was only to know obedience and silence : however, she hints that such a husband should not be jealous ! There was a sweetness in revenge reserved for some of these married women.
ROBINSON CRUSOE.
ROBINSON CRUSOE, the favourite of the learned and the unlearned, of the youth and the adult ; the book that was to constitute the library of Rousseau's Emilius, owes its secret charm to its being a new representation of human nature, yet drawn from an existing state ; this picture of self-education, self-inquiry, self-happiness, is scarcely a fiction, although it includes all the magic of romance ; and is not a mere nar- rative of truth, since it displays all the forcible genius of one of the most original minds our literature can boast. The his- tory of the work is therefore interesting. It was treated in the author's time as a mere idle romance, for the philosophy was not discovered in the story ; after his death it was con- sidered to have been pillaged from the papers of Alexander Selkirk, confided to the author, and the honour, as well as the genius, of De Foe were alike questioned.
The entire history of this work of genius may now be traced, from the first hints to the mature state, to which only the genius of De Foe could have wrought it.
The adventures of Selkirk are well known : he was found on the desert island of Juan Fernandez, where he had for- merly been left, by Woodes Rogers, and Edward Cooke, who in 1712 published their voyages, and told the extraordi- nary history >f Crusoe's prototype, with all those curious and
VOL. n. 30
466 ROBINSON CKUSOE.
minute particulars which Selkirk had freely communicated to them. This narrative of itself is extremely interesting, and has been given entire by Captain Burney ; it may also be found in the Biographia Britannica.
In this artless narrative we may discover more than the embryo of Robinson Crusoe. — The first appearance of Sel- kirk, " a man clothed in goats' skins, who looked more wild than the first owners of them." The two huts he had built, the one to dress his victuals, the other to sleep in : his contri- vance to get fire, by rubbing two pieces of pimento wood to- gether ; his distress for the want of bread and salt, till he came to relish his meat without either ; his wearing out his shoes, till he 'grew so accustomed to be without them, that he could not for a long time afterwards, on his return home, use them without inconvenience ; his bedstead of his own con- triving, and his bed of goat-skins ; when his gunpowder failed, his teaching himself by continual exercise to run as swiftly as the goats ; his falling from a precipice in catching hold of a goat, stunned and bruised, till coming to his senses he found the goat dead under him ; his taming kids to divert himself by dancing with them and his cats ; his converting a nail into a needle ; his sewing his goat-skins with little thongs of the same ; and when his knife was worn to the back, con- triving to make blades out of some iron hoops. His solacing himself in this solitude by singing psalms, and preserving a social feeling in his fervent prayers. And the habitation which Selkirk had raised, to reach which they followed him " with difficulty, climbing up and creeping down many rocks, till they came at last to a pleasant spot of ground full of grass and of trees, where stood his two huts, and his numerous tame goats showed his solitary retreat ; " and, finally, his in- difference to return to a world, from which his feelings had been so perfectly weaned. — Such were the first rude materi- als of a new situation in human nature ; an European in a primeval state, with the habits or mind of a savage.
The year after this account was published, Selkirk and hia
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adventures attracted the notice of Steele, who was not likely to pass unobserved a man and a story so strange and so new. In his paper of " The Englishman," Dec. 1713, he communi- cates farther particulars of Selkirk. Steele became ac- quainted with him ; he says, that " he could discern that he had been much separated from company from his aspect and gesture. There was a strong but cheerful seriousness in hia looks, and a certain disregard to the ordinary things about him, as if he had been sunk in thought. The man frequently bewailed his return to the world, which could not, he said, with all its enjoyments, restore him to the tranquillity of his solitude." Steele adds another very curious change in this wild man, which occurred some time after he had seen him. " Though I had frequently conversed with him, after a few months' absence, he met me in the street, and though he spoke to me, I could not recollect that I had seen him. Fa- miliar converse in this town had taken off the loneliness of his aspect, and quite altered the air of his face." De Foe could not fail of being struck by these interesting particulars of the character of Selkirk ; but probably it was another ob- servation of Steele which threw the germ of Robinson Cru- Boe into the mind of De Foe. "It was matter of great curiosity to hear him, as he was a man of sense, give an ac- count of the different revolutions in his own mind in that long solitude"
The work of De Foe, however, was no sudden ebullition : long engaged in political warfare, condemned to suffer impris- onment, and at length struck by a fit of apoplexy, this un- happy and unprosperous man of genius on his recovery was reduced to a comparative state of solitude. To his injured feelings and lonely contemplations, Selkirk in his Desert Isle, and Steele's vivifying hint, often occurred ; and to all these we perhaps owe the instructive and delightful tale, which ehows man what he can do for himself, and what the fortitude of piety does for man. Even the personage of Friday is not a mere coinage of his brain : a Mosquito Indian, described
468 ROBINSON CRUSOE.
by Darapier, was the prototype. Robinson Crusoe was not given to the world till 1719, seven years after the publication of Selkirk's adventures. Selkirk could have no claims on De Foe ; for he had only supplied the man of genius with that which lies open to all ; and which no one had, or perhaps could have, converted into the wonderful story we possess but De Foe himself. Had De Foe not written Robinson Crusoe, the name and story of Selkirk had been passed over like others of the same sort; yet Selkirk has the merit of having detailed his own history, hi a manner so interesting, as to have attracted the notice of Steele, and to have inspired the genius of De Foe.
After this, the originality of Robinson Crusoe will no longer be suspected ; and the idle tale which Dr. Beattie has re- peated of Selkirk having supplied the materials of his story to De Foe, from which our author borrowed his work, and published for his own profit, will be finally put to rest. This ifl due to the injured honour and the genius of De Foe.
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