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CLASSIC

AND

HISTOEIC PORTRAITS

JAMES BRUCE

R E D F I E L D ,

110 AND 112 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK
18 5 4.

PREFACE.

I BELIEVE that there are not rnaiiy persons who
read biography with interest, who have not felt a
desire for a more intimate personal acquaintance,
as it may be called, than is usually afforded them
with those men and w^omen whose virtues and vices
joined with their natural gifts and acquired accom-
plishments, made them either illustrious or infamous
in their own days, and still influence the world at the
distance of centuries after their death. Those works
in which the narrative of great public aifairs is mixed
up with the more minute private and personal details
and descriptions, w^hich pedants and philosophers
consider to be below^ w^hat they call " the dignity of
history," are, I believe, in spite of learned reprehen-
sion, read with more pleasure than the more pretend-
ing volumes in which this disagreeable " dignity of
history" is stiffly and proudly sustained. When the
Roman historian deprecates the censure of those grave
and surly readers who, as he anticipates, will charge

IV P E E F A C E .

him with trifling for telling them who it was that gave
lessons in music to Epaminondas, and for informing
them that the Theban General danced excellently and
played learnedly on the pipe, I believe that all readers
possessed of an enlightened curiosity, will not only
heartily accept his apology, but thank him for what he
has told, and regret that he has not given us a great
deal more of the same kind of information.

In many cases, this natural curiosity to know as much
as possible of the appearance and manners of remark-
able persons is heightened by the consideration that
these personal matters influenced the destinies of
nations and of the world. The history of the Roman
empire might now exhibit a wholly different aspect
from what it does if, at an intensely critical period the
royal diadem of Egypt had not been placed on the
brows of a woman of the most marvellous accomplish-
ments, and possessed of the most inexhaustible arts of
pleasing, persuading and seducing ; a sorceress whose
chain

** Around two conquerors of the world was cast,
But for a third too feeble broke at last."

And as Octavius might have lost the empire of civilized
Europe, if the voice and tongue of Cleopatra had been
less sweet and persuasive than they were, so the Refor-
mation of religion in England might have been delayed
for many a year — though it could not have been averted
— had not, as the poet tells us,

•• The Gospel light first beamed from Bullen's eyes."

PREFACE. V

The description of the personal appearance, the dress,
the private habits and tastes of some of the most dis-
tinguished persons whose names figure on the page of
history, as collected from every source available to me,
and separated as far as possible from the often-told his-
tories of their lives, and interspersed but sparingly, and
where the temptation was irresistible, with criticism on
their moral and intellectual characters — is the desis^n
which I have had before me in compiling these volumes.
It would be a fatal error in a work of this kind, if the
writer were to give his readers minute personal sketches
of any persons but those whose names are famous
enough to be familiar to all but the entirely illiterate.
The Abbate Lanzi, in his History of Painting, justly
reproves Vassara and others of his predecessors for giv-
ing their readers full details about the persons and
habits of the inferior class of painters, but admits that
all the information of this kind which can be collected
about Raffaelle or the Carracci, or the other great mas-
ters of the art, is highly valuable. Montaigne, who
has not left the world in ignorance of his own private
life, in expressing his regret at the loss of the diaries
kept by Alexander, Augustus, Cato, Sylla and Brutus,
says : " Of such men we love and study the portraits
even in copper and in stone." The genius of the statu-
ary and the painter is unquestionably indebted for much
of the admiration which it receives, to this natural
desire to look on the likenesses of the great men who
have long left this world.

In speaking of some of the personages referred to, I

VI PREFACE.

have been led necessarily to discuss the ideas of beauty
which hgive prevailed in different ages and countries ;
and occasional references to painting and the kindred
arts have also been here and there, I hope not inappro-
priately, introduced.

I have found a difficulty in fixing on a title for these
volumes, and the one Vv'hich I have adopted is, I con-
fess, not so clearly explanatory of their contents as I
could have wished.

MAY, 1853.

CONTENTS

PAGE.

Sappho,

, ,

•

JESOF,

Pythagoras, .

, ,

ASPASIA, .

MiLTO,

• •

AgesilauSj

Socrates, .

Plato,

Alcibiades, .

Helen of Troy,

Alexander the

Great, .

•

Demetrius Poliorcetes,

SciPio Africanus

3 • •

Sylla, .

Cleopatra, .

• •

Julius Caesar, .

Augustus,

Tiberius,

. 104

Germanicus,

106

Caligula,

. 109

Lollia Paulina,

C.ES0NIA,

•

111
. 115

Boadicea,

118

CONTENT

Nero,

Agrippina,

PopPiEA Sabina,

Otho,

commodus. . . • .

Caracalla.

Heliogabalus,

Zenobia,

Julian the Apostate,

EUDOCIA,

Theodora, .

Charlemagne, .

Abelard and Heloise,

Elizabeth of Hungary,

Dante,

Robert Bruce, .

Inez de Castro.

Agnes Sorel, .

Jane Shore,

LucREZiA Borgia,

Anne Bullen,

Diana of Poitiers,

Catharine de' Medici,

Queen Elizabeth,

Mary Queen of Scots,

Cervantes,

Sir Kenelm Digby,

John Sobieski, .

Anne of Austria,

Ninon de L'Enclos,

Mademoiselle de Montpensier

The Duchess of Orleans,

Madame de Maintenon,

Catharine of Russia, .

Madame de Stael, .

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

SAPPHO.

Of one of the most celebrated women of antiquity, the
poetess Sapplio, living about six centuries before the Chris-
tian era, we have a personal description handed down, in all
probability, from her own time, if not indeed through writ-
ings of her own, now lost. This description is familiar to
most readers from the epistle which Ovid, in the name of
Sappho, has inscribed to Phaon, the object of her unre-
quited and fatal love. In this epistle, Sappho is made to
tell us that nature had denied her beauty but had gifted her
with genius ; that her fame was sung throughout the whole
world, and that her countryman Alcseus, though his was a
loftier strain, w^as not more celebrated than she was. She
tells Phaon that she is of short stature and of a dark com-
plexion ; but she reminds him that Andromeda (whom Gre-
cian fable makes the daughter of a king of Ethiopia,) with
the tawny color of her country, had pleased the heroic
Perseus.

2 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

When a woman otherwise famous, and living at a distant
date, is spoken of, if there be no specific information respect-
ing her person, tradition becomes gallant, and, in the ab-
sence of any evidence to the contrary, gifts her with beauty
in abundance. It is this consideration w^hich giv^es weight
to the belief that, in drawing her picture more than five hun-
dred years after Sappho had ceased to sing, Ovid did not
indulge in any wayward fancy of his own, rich and original
as his fancy was beyond that of any other of the Koman
poets, but embodied a well-founded and universally-received
tradition, if he even did not make use of authentic historical
information extant in his time. The lano-ua2,-e which Ovid
puts into her mouth is so specific as to give countenance to
the behef entertained by some writers that the finest parts
of this epistle, one of the best in the collection, were taken
from the writings of Sappho, which were in the poet's liands.

To the evidence furnished by Ovid, which is very strong,
that Sappho could not boast of personal beauty, some have
added a testimony which is certainly very weak. There are
two verses preserved amongst the fragments of Sappho, in
which she expresses her preference of the beauty of the
mind to the beauty of the person.* The argument drawn
from these verses — that Sappho undervalued what she did
not possess — is, I think, perfectly worthless. In all ages of
the world, both writers and speakers often, no doubt hypo-
critically enough, expressed the very decided preference
which they felt for moral and intellectual over personal
beauty ; and this preference, in truth, is one of the most
completely worn out of common-places. A volume of huge
size might, without muck trouble, be compiled on the praises
of intellect and virtue, and the worthlessness of fine faces
and fine figures. " Madame do Stael,"' says ]\r. Philarete

* Sappho "Fragmenta et Elogia." Cura Jo. Christiaiii Wolfii, p.
72. Hamburg, 1733.

SAPPHO. 3

Chasles, to whom I shall have again to refer on the subject
of Sappho's portrait, " whom nature had little favored, was
an enthusiast for beauty ; Charlotte Corday, beautiful as an
angel, thought on this subject like Sappho."* I have no
doubt that, whatever they might think, most beauties have
been in the habit of speaking like Sappho.

In opposition to the strong testimony of Ovid, it has been
urged that a series of writers, ranging from Plato, writing
about four hundred years before the Christian era, down to
the Princess Anna Comnena in the eleventh century, have
bestowed upon Sappho the Greek epithet which signifies
beautiful In looking, however, at the passages quoted, it
will, I think, be found that in none of them is the epithet
used in a very positive sense, but that in all of them it is ap-
plied vaguely and loosely, the subsequent writers simply
repeating the expression of Plato. In the " Phsedrus" Plato
represents Socrates speaking of some works " of the beauti-
ful Sappho," {Xa^^ovg Tr^i jcax?;?.) On this passage we have
an important criticism by the Platonic philosopher, Maximus
Tyrius, who tells us that Sappho who was " httle and black,"
{/j-Lxpav xao fis^aivav ]) and it is to be presumed that he had
other authority for bringing these charges against her than the
verses of Ovid, to which, it is to be observed, he makes no
reference w^hatever. But, besides this, Maximus Tyrius sup-
phes us with what I believe is the true explanation of the
epithet which Plato has joined to the name of Sappho, and
which others after him have allowed her, when he tells us
that Socrates called Sappho "beautiful" on account of her
poetry.f The sume interpretation may, I think, be fairly
put on all the other passages cited from the Greek writers.
Athenseus simply speaks of " the beautiful Sappho," (^ xa-kri

* <' Etudes sur I'Antiquite," p. 282. Paris, 1847.

t Maximus Tj-rius, " Dissertatio," viii, p. 00. Contab. 1703.

4 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Xaif^i^.)* Two passages are met with in the letters of the
Emperor Juhan, in wliich, while he is referring to the lit-
erary genius of the poetess, he calls her the beautiful Sap-
pho." " Sappho the beautiful," he says in one of these pas-
sages, " tells us that the moon is silvery, and that tiierefore
she obscures the face of the other stars."! In the other pas-
sage, wTiting to his friend Alypius, he acknowledges the Iam-
bic verses which he has received from him, and which he says
are such as the beautiful Sappho weaves in her odes.""| The
expression is the expression of Plato, borrowed by Julian, his
disciple and enthusiastic admirer. Now Plato himself, like his
master Socrates, to whom he attributes the expression about
Sappho, was sensible alike to the beauties of the person and
of the mind, and, indeed, considered the one to be the reflexion
of the other. • But anything so unphilosophical as delight in
the contemplation of female beauty has never been charged on
Julian whose passion was all for the charms of the cold god-
desses of Olympus. In the passage in which Anna Comnena
speaks of Sappho, the application of the term " beautiful" is
equally vague and unrestricted. The piincess is referring to
the horrible heresies of the Bogomilians, and says that she could
explain the w^iole, but that modesty forbids her, " as the beau-
tiful Sappho somewhere says," («? ita ^r^atv tj xa-Krj 2a7t<j)co.)||

In the face of such extremely loose and careless authorities
— all of them it may be assumed repeating the phrase of Plato,
w^hich his follower Maximus Tyrius evidently understood and
has explained in its proper sense — the description adopted by
Ovid has prevailed in the general belief

A fragment — a single line — of Alcseus, one of Sappho's

* " Athenoeus," lib. xiii, p 506. Edit. loll.

t Julian, "Epist. adHecebolum," XIX. Opera, p. 386. Lipsiro, 1G96.

:j: "Epist. ad Alj-pium," xxx. Opera, p. 403.

II Annae Comnena? Csssariensis '« Alexis," lib. xv, Venet., 1723.

SAPPHO. -5

lovers, has been preserved, in which he addresses her as his
'^ dark-haired, chaste, sweetly smiling Sappho ;" {lonxoxa^u'' ayva,
liieL7.tzoiJ.£i8£ 'ZaTT^oi ;)* a very moderate compliment fi'om a lover.
Antipater of Thessaly, a poet of the time of Augustus, has
unfairly been quoted as praising the beauty of Sappho. He
merely praises the Lesbian women, whose beauty has at all
times been as famous as the intensity of their passions, of which
Sappho had her share with the rest. In the verses referred
to, Antipater speaks of " Sappho, the ornament of the beauti-
ful haired woman of Lesbos," {Ass8ca^cov Sa-TT^co xo^uov

svTC7>.oxajxu>v.)^

In the Greek Anthology, there are also some verses ad-
dressed by Damocharis to Sappho, in which her beauty is
commended.J Damocharis, like Antipator, is a poet of the era
of Augustus, and the evidence of a passage inhiscom.phmentary
verses to the most distinguished of the Greek poetesses, has
really very little weight.

The proof that Sappho was destitute of personal beauty
has satisfied Bayle, who speaks of her in the most unromantic
terms. He is by no means surprised that Phaon would have
nothing to do with her. " Sappho," he says, " was a widow
in the decline of life, who had neverbeen pretty, who had given
occasion for being scandalously spoken of during her widow-
hood, and who paid no regard to decency in testifying the vio-
lence of her passion. "II

There was a statue of Sappho erected in the Prytanum of
Syracuse. Her figure was cut in brass by the statuary Si-
lanion. The people of Mytelene, it is said on somewhat doubt-
ful authority, stamped her effigy on their coins. Her portrait,
says Pliny, was drawn by the painter Leon. Ausonius has an

* "Fragmenta et Elogia."' "WoifF, p. 128.

t «' Anthologia Grteca," lib. ii, p. 65. Lipsi^v', 1829.

X " Anthologia," lib. iii, p. 304.

II Bayle, " Dictionnaire Hist et Crit." Art "Sappho."

6 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

epigram on the picture of Sappbo, in which, following another
epigram in the Anthology attributed to PJato, he calls her
" The Tenth Muse." The writer w4io gives an original idea
to the world is valuable. This fine idea of Plato has been
used over and over again without an}^ acknowledgment. The
title of " The Tenth Muse," is well deservedby Sappho, but it has
been somewhat lowered in having also been bestowed on Mar-
garet, the famous Queen of Navarre — a good woman, but not
a muse nor a poetical genius in any respect. A Mexican-
Spanish poetess of the seventeenth century, Dona Juan a Inez
de la Cruz, is styled in the title-page of her works " The Tenth
Muse ;" and this appellation has been completely prostituted
by having been awarded to that polyglott Dutch virgin, Anna
Maria a Schurman, a female admirable Crichton, without one
particle of genius or original talent about her. This title is
bestow^ed on Mademoiselle Schurman by the very learned
Fredrick Spanheim, in his address to the reader prefixed to
her works.*

Gronovius in his splendid collection of the effigies of illustrious
men and women, has engraved a sculpture of Sappho in the
form of the statues called Herm<x.\ The face is a half front,
the eye full of fire, the forehead protruding as we see it in wo-
men led into crime by furious passions, the nose masculine, the
mouth highly intellectual, and the w^hole expression of the fea-
tures that of deep melancholy energy. A copy of this en-
graving forms a striking frontispiece to Wolff's elaborate edi-
tion of the remains of Sappho. In speaking of this portrait,
M. Philarete Chasles takes notice of " the bold, masculine ex-
pression of the face, the audacious projection of the forehead,
speaking of passion and vehemence of thought, the lips a little

* ""Xobiliss. Virginis Annre Marit« a Schurman Opuscula." Tra-
jecti ad Rlieniim, 1652.

t Gronovius, << Thesaurus Antiquit. Orrecarum,'" ii. 3-1. Yenet 1732.

SAPPHO. 7

thick but well chiselled, ready to throw out sentiment and elo-
quence, the eye ardent and open, and animated with inexpres-
sible energy. This is Sappho. This is that woman gifted
with a masculine soul and impetuous senses, devoted to genius
and misfortune, to disasters and to distinction, to a fatal glory
which survives her works. In presence of this portrait we
are tempted to cry out with Plutarch, ' I see the volcano from
whence have issued flaming thoughts and burning hymns.' "
After telling us that he rejects as spurious all the portraits
extant of Sappho, except this admirable one, M. Chasles pro-
ceeds : " It would agree as well with one of the criminal hero-
ines of Byron or of Eschylus as with the lover of Phaon. It
bears the character of that organisation which consumes the
life, and which delivers up a woman to all the fury of the pas-
sions, to all the remorse and all the sorrow which they carry
along with them."*

In Ovid's picture of Sappho we have a portrait rescued
from extreme antiquity. It is no part of my design to record
the histories of the persons described in this work ; and in the
case of Sappho, this is a happy relief from a painful duty.
Madame Dacier was good-naturedly resolved to hold that
Sappho was an ill-used woman ; and the German Welcker
has written a book to prove her innocence. Thirlwall, the
present Bishop of St. David's, in his " History of Greece,"
treats her guilt as a slander; and Sir Edward LyttonBulwer
appears, from a remark in his " Athens and the Athenians,"
in reference to Welcker's work, to be one of those charitable
persons who believe in her purity. " Sappho," says Sir Ed-
ward, " (whose chaste and tender muse it was reserved for
the chivalry of a northern student five-and-twenty centuries
after her hand was cold and her tongue was mute, to vindicate
from the longest continued calumny that genius ever endured)

* "Etudes siir I'Antiquite," p. 282.

8 CLASSIC AKD HISTORIC PORTRxVITS.

gave to the most ardent of human passions the most delicate
coloring of female sentiment."*

The evidence on the other side is, however, painfully strong.
At the distance of more than two thousand years, the verses
of the unhappy Sappho still breathe the very soul of that
consuming passion, which called forth and lighted up the fire
of her genius. There is an unconcerted harmony in the strong
fiorurative lanouage which has been used in describim? her
poetry, by all who have spoken of it. Horace celebrates the
hot loves which the ^olian girl gave to her lyre ; Plutarch
says she breathes fire ; and Byron has called her " the burn-
ing Sappho." It was by the study of her writings, we are
told, that the physician Erasistratus discovered that the sick-
ness of Antiochus arose from his love for his mother-in-law
Stratonice.f

Sappho taught amatory writing to the Greek poets, and
amongst her scholars are reckoned the sad Simonides and that
Ibycus of Tvhegium, who, of all others, appeared to Cicero to
be warmest in love4

The ancients made this woman a heroine in their dramas
and romances. The love of Anacreon and Sappho is merely
a beautiful fiction, the credit of which is destroyed by chrono-
logy. " Diphilus the comedian," says Bentley, " in his Sappho
introduced Archilochus and Hipponax as gallants to that lady,
though the one was dead before she was born, and she dead
before the other was born."|| Had it been practicable for
Sappho to have been courted by Hipponax, she would have
had a lover, whose remarkabe person is commemorated by
iElian in his chapter on thin men, where we are told that the
poet was of small stature, and deformed, and very slender.*^

* "Athens/' b. i. c. 8

t Plutarch, "Demetrius."

X Cicero, " Tiiscul." iv, 33.

II Bentley, "Dissertation on Phalaris." Works i. p 183. Loud. 1836.

\ .^lian, " Varia Historia," lib. x, c. 6.

^SOP.

There arc certain great persons in history regarding
whom the traditions of fable and poetry, and the assertions
of plain falsehood, have triumphed in the vulgar belief of
ages over the most authentic records and the most complete
evidence. That Homer was a beggar; that Belisarius be-
came both blind and a beggar; that Shakspere had no clas-
sical learning ; and that /Esop, the fabulist, was a dwarf,
with a hump on his back, are at this moment historical
facts with, perhaps, ninety-nine out of a hundred who have
heard of these illustrious men.

The name of ^sop is amongst the most renowned that
have come down from antiquity. His era is some time
about five or six hundred years before Christ. He stands
somewhere between Homer and the great age of Grecian
literature. The story of his deformity is of comparatively
modern origin, even if the broad assertion of Bentley, who
holds that it was first sent forth to the world by Planudes.
a Byzantine monk of the fourteenth century, should be
found to be untenable.

1^ (9)

IP CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Of Phmudes, Bentley says, with characteristic politeness,
" that idiot of a monk has given us a book which he calls
' The Life of ^sop,' that perhaps cannot be matched in
any language for ignorance and nonsense."* It is some-
what curious to find Bentley resenting more w^armly than
he does all the other fictions in the monk's work the unfa-
vorable representation which it gives of ^Esop's person.
" But of all his injuries to ^sop, that w^hich can least be
forgiven him, is making such a monster of him for ugli-
ness ; an abuse that has found credit so universally, that all
the modern painters since the time of Planudes have drawn
him in the worst shapes and features that fancy could invent.
It w^as an old tradition amongst the Greeks that ^sop
revived again and lived a second life. Should he revive once
more and see the picture before the book that carries his
name, could he think it drawn for himself or for the monkey,
or some strange beast introduced in his fables ?"

Since the time of Planudes, a thousand authorities have
copied his description, and there is not a pictured edition of
^sop, or Phsedrus, or Fontaine, w^hich does not help to sanc-
tion and sanctify the belief. Yet the critical inquirer must
reject the tale. " What revelation," asks Bentley, " had this
monk about ^sop's deformity ? For he must learn it by
dream and vision, and not by ordinary methods of knowledge.
He lived about two thousand years after him ; and in all that
tract of time there's not one single author that has given the
least hint that ^sop was ugly."

It is said, and the remark is founded on a generous feeling
amongst mankind, that when once we begin to think that the
devil is not so very black as the vulgar represent him to be,
we never stop till we make him as fair as an angel. In this

* Bqntley, «' Dissertation upon the Fables of .Esop." Works, vol.
ii. p. 233.

^SOP. 11

spirit, Bentley is not content with showing that the popuhir
notion about the deformity and ugliness of ^Esop is unfounded,
but adduces arguments to make us beUeve that he was really
beautiful ; and his arguments are well arranged, and not with-
out weight. He tells us that in Plutarch's ' Convivium :'
" Our ^sop is one of the guests with Solon, and the other
sages of Greece ; there is abundance of jest and raillery
there among them, and imrticidarly upon JEsop ; but nobody
drolls upon his ugly face, which could hardly have escaped
had he had such a bad one. Perhaps you'll say it had been
rude and indecent to touch upon a natural imperfection. Not
at all, if it had been done softly and jocosely. In Plato's
' Feast,' they are very merry upon Socrates' face, that resem-
bled old Silenus ; and in this they twit ^Esop for having been
a slave, which was no more his fault than deformity would have
been. Philostratus has given us, in two books, a description of a
gallery of pictures ; one of which is ^sop, with a chorus of
animals about him. There he is represented smiling and look-
ing towards the ground in a posture of tliougJi.t ; but not a
word of his deformity, which, w^re it true, must needs have
been touched on in an account of a picture."

This is really ingenious, and in a great degree as solid as
it is ingenious. But there is still more in this line of argument
in which Bentley has displayed great abihty. He alludes to the
statue which Phsedrus tells us was erected by the Athenians
in honor of ^sop, and adds : " But had he been such a m-on-
ster as Planudes has made him, a statue had been no better
than a monument of his ughness; it had been kinder to his
memory to have let that alone. But the famous Lysippus was
the statuary that made it. And must so great a hand be
employed to dress up a lump of deformity'?'' Bentley next
refers to the epigram of Agathias uDon this statue, and asks :
" How could he, too, have omitted to speak of it, had his ugli-
ness been so notorious? The Greei^s have several proverbs

12 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

about persons deformed. Our ^E-sop, if so very ugiy, would
have been in the first rank of them ; especially when his statue
had stood there to put every body in mind of it." The con-
clusion of Bentley's argument is admirable. '' But I wish,"
he says, "I could do that justice to the memory of our Phry-
gian to oblige the painters to change their pencil. For it is
certain he was no deformed person, and it is probable he was
very liandsome. For whether he was a Phrygian, or as others
say, a Thracian, he must have been sold into Samos by a tra-
der in slaves. And it is well known that that sort of people
commonly bought up the most beautiful they could light on,
because they would yield the most profit. And there is men-
tion of two slaves, fellow servants together, Jisop and Ehodo-
pis, a woman ; and if we may guess him by his companion
and contubernalis^ we must needs believe him a comely person.
For that Rhodopis was the greatest beauty of all her age, and
even a proverb arose in memory of it : A^a-vB'' o^uota, xa.i

Upon the whole, Bentley has been successful in relieving
^sop of the hump which the almost unanimous voice of man-
kind in modern days had fixed on his back, and the evidence
brought to prove that he was really handsome is certainly re-
spectable.

From the time that the ugliness of ^sop was asserted in
the romance of Planudes, till Bentley attacked and demolish-
ed the credibility of the story, the belief that ^Fsop was a de-
formed dwarf appears to have been universal even amongst
the learned. Lord Bacon makes use of this behef in his
" Essay on Deformity." The author of " The Anatom)^ of
Melancholy" also assumes it as a fact. Eitterhusius, in his
Commentary on Phsedrus's Fables, while his attention must
have been called to the history of ^sop, in noticing the line
where Pheedrus says he aas known many excellent persons
with ugly faces {et. ficrpi facie midtos cognovi ojjtimos), gives

iESOP. 13

^^sop as his first instance of a good man with a deformed per-
son.* Bajle, who takes every opportunity of extolhng* the
ffifts of the mind over those of the body, tells us that intellect
is able to overcome, in the eyes of a beauty, the ill effects of
ugliness ; " ^sop," he says, " the most ugly of men, neverthe-
less touched the heart of Ehodope."t

It is somewhat remarkable that the old Scottish poet, Eob-
ert Henrysoun, writing between 1500 and 150S, in his Pro-
logue to his Fables, which are full of poetical beauty, repre-
sents ^sop, appearing to him in a dream — not as a little
hunchback, but as " the fairest man that he had ever seen,"
and of stature large.

It may be worth mentioning, that Dr. Blomfield (in the " Mu-
seum Criticum") asserts that the life of ^Esop, attributed to
Planudes, is more ancient than his time. But what is more
to the purpose, as proving that Bentley is so far wrong, though
substantially in the right, is this : the Eev. Mr. Dyce, in his
annotations on Bentley' s works, quotes Iluschke, a German
critic, as referring to a passage in the orations of Himerius, a
writer of the fourth century, in which ^Esop is spoken of as
uo-lv. Himerius thus becomes an authority upon the question
of ugliness, standing midway between ^Esop and Planudes,
and reducing the w^ide waste of two thousand years to one
thousand. But the evidence adduced by Bentley, that ^Esop
was not ugly, is still, I think nearly conclusive.

The notion that ^Esop was ill-favored and deformed, may
have originated in the vulgar belief in the wisdom. of hunch-
backs and crooked persons; a belief w^hich is prevalent
amongst those persons themselves, affording them more than
solaqe for their ungainly exterior. Lord Bacon is perhaps not

* Pheedri "Fabul^/'p. 35'.;. Amstel, 1698.

j Bayle, "Diet. Hist, et Crit." Art. " E,hodope "

14 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

fiXf wrong when he says that " all deformed persons are bold.
First, as in their own defence, as being exposed to scorn ; but
in process of time by a general habit. Also it stirreth in
them industry and especially of this kind, to watch and observe
the weakness of others that they may have somewhat to repay."
The renown of ^'Esop has been such as might satisfy any
ambition. The Athenians, we have seen, erected a public
statue in his honor. Socrates versified some of his Fables,
while lying in prison awaiting the executioner. Luther held
these apologues to be next in value to the New Testament.
And the children in all civilized countries at this day seek
pleasure and wisdom in them.

PYTHAGORAS.

The extreme beauty of Pythagoras, the father of philoso-
ph}^, is matter of uniform tradition, and is alluded to by all
his biographers. His mother, Pythias of Samos, was the
most beautiful woman of the age ; her charms being commem-
orated by a poet of her country, who declares, in a distich
which is preserved in Jamblichus, that she bore Pythagoras to
the God Apollo. Pythagoras himself appears to have been
not unwilling to be believed to be the son of Apollo, or even
Apollo himself come in the flesh. His disciple, Jamblichus,
with more respect for the honor of the philosopher's mother,
denies his divine origin, but admits that his soul was from
Apollo. AVhen his mother was with child, the oracle of Del-
phi declared that she would bring forth a son excelling all
men in beauty, and who would be a blessing to the world.*
The writer of the life of Pythagoras, ascribed to Porphyry,
tells us that Pythagoras had a very beautiful face and was
tall in stature, and that there was much grace and comeliness
in his manners and in all the movements of his body.f The

* Diogenes Lgertius, " Vit. Philos." Art. "Pj'tliagoras.' Jamblichus,
«'De Vita Pythagorse," c. ii, sec. 5. Amst. 1707
t Porphyrin?, sec 18.

16 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

epithet " Cometes " was applied to liim in allusion to his long
flowing hair, and he was also called " the 3'outh with the beau-
tiful hair.-' His personal elegance was accompanied with great
strength and admirable health, his life having been prolonged
to nearly a hundred years, or, as some say, to more than a
century. His appearance and voice fixed upon him the at-
tention of all who ever came in his presence.*

In his eighteenth year, Pythagoras appeared at the'Olympic
games, where he otiered himself as a boxer amongst the boys,
but the judges decided that he had passed boyhood, on which
he took up a match with the men, and vanquished them all.f
Pythagoras is not merely the father of philosophy, but also
the father of what in modern days is courteously called " the
noble art of self defence." He was the first who boxed sci-
entifically, and the lessons which he gave to his pupil Eury-
menes made him the champion of the ring. Eurymenes, as we
learn from Porphyry, was of small stature, but, under the in-
struction of Pythagoras, was able to thresh the biggest man
who appeared against him. The athletes were dieted upon
cheese and figs, but Eurymenes, by advice of Pythagoras,
took daily a certain allowance of animal food. J Jamblichus,
it may be mentioned, tells us nothing of this, but he mentions
another Pythagoras, a disciple of the philosopher, who wrote
some books on athletics, and who directed the wrestlers to eat
animal food. Phny also appears to believe that the philoso-
pher and the wrestler w^ere not the same person. He tells us
that the eating of figs gives strength to the body, and that hence
the athletes were fed on them, and that it was Pythagoras,
"the master of exercises" {exercitator^) who-first taught them
toeatfiesh.|[ The notion that Pythagoras and his disciples

* Jamblichus, c. 11, sec. 10.

t Diogenes Laertius. Art. " Pythagoras."

X Porphyrius, sec. 11.

II Plinius, " Hist. Xat." ]. xxiii, c. 7.

PYTHAGORAS. 17

wholly abstained from animal food, has no doubt helped the
belief in the distinction between the sage and the boxer. But
it is not established ; and Pythagoras had evely qualification
for excelling in the art of self defence, being, as Bentley says,
" a lusty proper man, and built, as it were, to make a good
boxer.* Jamblichus tells us that amongst their other exercises,
the disciples of Pythagoras w^ere instructed in anointing, racing,
and wrestling, in throwing the plummet, and in leaping, and in
short, in all exercises calculated to strengthen the powers of
the body.f The body was considered as worthy of education,
as the soul by the sages of Greece. Cleanthes, the stoic, the
strongest man of his age, was in his youth, like Pythag-
oras, a famous bruiser ; Chrysippus shone on the race-course,
while Plato and Lycon of Troas were distinguished as wrest-
lers.

In manhood and old age Pythagoras was remarkable for
the dignity and gravity of his aspect. No one, sa^^s Porphyry,
ever saw him either laugh or cry. His rebuke in one instance
is said to have been followed by the fatal effect which has
been attributed to the Satires of Archilochus. A young man,
reproved by Pythagoras, straightway went and hanged him-
self Seeing the alarming consequence of his reprimand,
which there need be no doubt was conveyed with all possible
mildness, the philosopher, who was of a sweet and amiable
temper, and who inculcated in his disciples the duty of being
gentle in censuring, ever afterwards, it is said, abstained from
reproving at all.

The beard of Pythagoras was long and flowing ; and as he
was regarded as the first philosopher, this circumstance helped
to make a long beard to be looked on as the badge of a wise
man, and to lead all the quacks, who aspired to the reputation

* Bentley, "Phalaris " Works i, p. 121.
t Jamblichus, c. xxt, sec 97.

18 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

and profits of philosophy, to take care to be fuinished with this
outward and visible sign of their inner wisdom, and of the
genuineness of their callino-. In all ages of the world evidence
of wisdom and virtue, quite as equivocal as a long beard, has
been received as perfectly satisfactory both by the learned and
the unlearned vulgar. It is a pretty story in illustration of
the reverence which the ancients paid to a long beard, which
is told by Aulus GelJius of the wise and good Herodes Atti-
cus. A person came to Herodes, wrapped in a cloak with
long hair and a very long beard, and asked money of him to
buy bread. Herodes inquired what he was, on which the beg-
gar, with a frowning face and surly voice, said he was a phi-
losopher, expressing at the same time his wonder that Herodes
should ask any question about what he must see. " I see,
indeed," replied the true philosopher, " the beard and the
cloak ; but the philosopher I do not yet see. I request you,
however, with your good leave, to tell me what reason you
think we have for knowing you to be a philosopher." On this
Herodes dismissed the needy quack with as much money as
would buy him bread for thirty days.*

Like Aristotle and Aristippus, Pythagoras delighted in the
adorning of his person, and was altogether a man of elegant
tastes. He wore a white robe with Persian trowsers
(avalrptfifc,) and a golden crown on his head.f His robe was
of linen, woollen clothes being for some reason or other avoided
by him and his disciples.^ There was a refinement about all
his habits, as indeed there was about those of the best of his
followers amongst the Greek philosophers. He delighted in
poetry ; his fiworite writers being Homer and Hesiod. The
verses which he used oftenest to sing were the lines in the

* Aulus Gellius, <'Noctes Attica?," 1. ix, c. 2.
t ^^lian, XI, c 38.

X Jamblichus, c xxviit, sec. 1^9.

PYTHAGORAS. 19

seventeenth book of the Ihad (5 1 , 60,) describing the death of
Euphorbus. Euphorbus, whose soul Pythagoras taught had
passed into his body, was, hke Pythagoras, extremely beauti-
ful. Like Pythagoras also he dehghted in tasteful ornaments :
" His locks," says Homer, " were like those of the Graces,
and were bound with gold and silver."

Like Sophocles, and the accomphshed and amiable Theban,
Epaminondas, Pythagoras was skilled in the science and prac-
tice of music and dancing.* The instrument of his preference
was the lute. Like the fabled Minerva and the true Alcibi-
ades, he probably objected to the pipe on account of its disfig-
uring the features of the player ; but Jamblichus tells us that
the Pythagoreans considered that the pipe had something ef-
feminate in it unworthy of free men. jMusic was part of the
regular discipline in the school of Pythagoras, and it was used
as a medicine for physical diseases, as well as for the sufferings
of the soul. " There were strains composed," says Jamblichus,
" for curing the affections of the body, and others which were
present remedies against sorrow and anguish of the heart ;"t
strains which, like the music described by Milton, could —

" Mitigate and suage
"With, solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow and pain
From mortal or immortal minds."'

The disciples of Pj'thagoras composed their minds to sleep by
soft and soothing airs played on the lyre, and were awakened
in the morning by strains of a stirring spirit. Such was the
use of music with the Pythagoreans ; and poetry appears to
have been employed also as affecting the health of the body
and the mind, and the dispelling of evil passions.

Pythagoras delivered his lectures to his disciples by twos

* Quintilian, " Institut. Orat." lib. ii.
t Jamblichus, xxv, sec 110.

20 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

and threes at a time, as they walked together in the- shade of
some beautiful grove. His instructions were sought after by
both sexes ; and his school was attended by several distin-
guished women. Amongst many other things which impress
us with a highly favorable idea of the intellect and character of
Pythagoras, are the traditions of the respect and kindness
which he paid to women, and the lessons of practical wisdom
which he taught them. But Pythagoras, it should be recol-
lected, lived in an era when women filled their natural and pro-
per station in Greece, and long before the Athenians learned
to regard their wives as merely household drudges, and breed-
ers of children for the service of the State, and to bestow their
respectful attachment on the imported courtezans of Ionia. I
am inclined to believe that it was no doctrine of the elegant
Pythagoras, which is imputed to him by the ascetic Platonists
of the latter ages, that no woman who did not profess unchas-
tity ought to wear gold ornaments.

With regard to his diet, the philosopher has, without reason
been sometimes claimed by the vegetarians as a member of
their dyspeptic fraternity ; and it has been asserted that he
fed altogether like a horse, except that he would not eat beans.
In more than one passage in the biographies of him by Jamb-
lichus and Porphyry, it is said absolutely that he abstained
from wine and flesh, and forbade their use to his disciples.
His ordinary food is said to have been bread and hone}^, and
honey-comb and pot-herbs. Millet also was held in much
esteem by the Pythagorians. Pythagoras himself, who per-'
suaded an ox not to eat beans, is also said to have instructed
a she-bear to eat bread and apples, and to have dismissed her
after taking her oath that she would never more taste animal
food.* These passages, however, are inconsistent with others
in the same biographies, in w^hich it is declared that he and his

* Jciinblichus, c. xiii, sec. 60. Porphyrins, sec. 23.

PYTHAGOKAS. 21

disciples ate the flesh of animals which it was lawful to sacri-
fice. Besides this, Aristoxenus, a disciple of Aristotle, left
behind him a work on Pythagoras, in which, as he is quoted by
Aulus Gellius, he says that of all kinds of pulse, Pythagoras
preferred beans, on account of his beHef in their medicinal
qualities : and that he also partook of kid's flesh and sucking-
pigs,* Difiiculties and doubts hang over this whole subject,
as indeed they do over everything connected with Pythagoras.
The probability is, that the philosopher relaxed and modified
his dietary laws according to the constitution and circum-
stances of his disciples, and according to their various stages
of advancement in philosophy.

The whole history of the life and opinions of this famous
man is involved in obscurity and contradiction. His character
is an interesting study. If we estimate him according to the
impression which he has made on the world, we must admit
him to have been one of the greatest of mortals. The philo-
sophy both of India and Egypt seems to have entered into
his system. His w^ritings have either been lost, or, according
to some authorities, he left nothing in writing behind him.
Yet the influence of his teaching endured directly for six cen-
turies in Greece, and is still felt in the world. Spealdng with
the imperfect and confused knowledge of PytJiagoras, which
has reached modern times, it appears that with all the real
wisdom and real philanthropy which he possessed, he mixed
up much of the spirit and craft of the impostor and the jug-
gler, and that he committed frauds on the ignorance and inex-
perience of his contemporaries, in order, it may be admitted,
to benefit his age and genei'ation. The author of " The Anat-
omy of Melancholy" gives Pythagoras the character of being
" part philosopher, part magician, and part witch." Sir Ed-
ward Bulwer Lytton in his " Student" has some fine remarks

* Aulus Gellius, lib. it, c. 11, sec. 4.

22 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTEAITS.

on distingnished men, who, for the sake of effect and influence,
have mingled quackery with their greatness, and Pythagoras
comes first on the hst. " Mankind," says Bulwer, " love to be
cheated ; thus the men of genins, who have not disappointed
the world in their externals, and what I shall term the man-
agement of self, have always played a part ; they have kept
alive the vulgar wonder by tricks suited to the vulgar under-
standing ; they have measured their conduct by device and
artifice, and have walked the paths of life in the garments of
the stage. Thus did Pythagoras and Diogenes ; thus did Na-
poleon and Louis XIY. (the last of w^hom was a man of ge-
nius, if only from the delicate beauty of his compliments;)
thus did Bolingbroke and Chatham (who never spoke except
in his best wig, as being the most imposing;) and, above all,
thus did Lord Byron. The last three w-ere men eminently in-
teresting to the vulgar, not so much from their genius as their
charlatanism."*

In his w^ork on " Athens," Bulwer has some admirable
remarks on the character of Pythagoras, whom he calls " a
demi-god in his ends, and an impostor in his means." " Look-
ing to the man himself," says Bulwer, " his discoveries, his
designs, his genius, his marvellous accomplishments, w^e cannot
but consider him as one of the most astonishing persons the
world ever produced ; and if in part a mountebank and an
impostor, no one, perhaps, ever deluded others with motives
more pure, from an ambition more disinterested and bene-
volent."!

Pythagoras seems to have perfectly understood the impor-
tant use which may be made of mysterious language, of
obscurity, and of pure, downright nonsense in dealing with
mankind; and to have justly appreciated and turned to good

* "The Student," vol. I, p. 4.

t "Athens," lib. iv, c. 17, sec. 20.

PYAHTGOKAS. 23

account the popular contempt for plain and intelligible teach-
ing. The five years silence which he prescribed to his disciples
— most probably an invention which he had taken from the
Indian Brahmins — was certainly the prescription of a quack.
Pythagoras, more than a thousand years before Mahomet,
enjoyed, if we are to believe himself, confidential communica-
tion with beasts and birds ; the arts of mesmerism he under-
stood more than two thousand years before Mesmer was born.
He persuaded his followers that he had a golden thigh ; and
though Jamblichus assures us that he showed it to Abaris,
the Hyperborean philosopher, he no doubt took good care not
to make a curiosity of this kind a sight for every body's
seeing. About the end of the sixteenth century of the Chris-
tian era, many people in Europe, including several men of
learning, believed that a boy in Silesia had a golden tooth,
which had grown naturally in his head ; and in this century,
the people were assured on the testimony of good witnesses
that a child was to be seen with the name of Xapoleon Buo-
naparte written at full length round the ball of his eye.

Audacity is the very soul of the art of conversion ; it has
the effect of fascination on the multitude, and Pythagoras
practised it. He gained believers in his doctrine of the transmi-
gration of souls by boldly relating the history of his own trans-
migrations. He recollected, he said, when his soul inhabited
the body of iEthalides, and also when he was Hermolitus, the
fisherman. At the Trojan war he w^as Euphorbus ; and in
the temple of Juno, at Argos, he pointed to the shield which
he bore in battle.* His followers carried on his history.
Aulus Gellius has quoted two ancient writers, Clearc husand
Dicearchus, w4io say that Pythagoras after^vards appeared
as Pyrander, then as Callicles, and then as the beautiful cour-
tesan Alce.f

* 0\'id, " Matam," lib. xv.

% Aulus Gellius, lib. iv, c 11, sec. 1.

24 CLASSIC AND HISTOEIC PORTRAITS.

It seems also, that while in this world, P3'thagoras either
possessed the faculty attributed by the Irishman to the birds of
being in two places at once, or kept a shadow of himself, such
as the GermaDs call a dojjj^elganger (about w^hich kind of
duplicate the reader will consult with pleasure Mrs. Crow^e's
interesting work, " The Night Side of Nature,") and that he
w^as seen on the same day, and at the same hour, at Metapon-
tus, and at the games of Crotona.*

For the successful carrying on of the business of a teacher
of mankind, the value of a prepossessing personal appearance
is incalculable. The fine figure and great comeliness of Pythago-
ras, which would justify the belief in his divine parentage, were
no doubt amongst the means by which he efiected the good
which he did in his own time, and by which he attained the
great name which has but little decayed for some five-and-
twenty centuries. Some part of the influence of Mahomet
may be attributed to the same cause, and there is a similarity
between the men, in so far as that while both could resort to
fraud and im^^osture, in order to establish and secure their
intellectual dominion over the minds of men, both were, under
Providence, great benefactors of the world ; and it would be
as uncharitable and unjust to the Arabian prophet, as it
would be to the philosopher of Samos, to doubt that the first
and habitual intentions of the one and the other were virtuous
and patriotic ; and that both might believe that their missions
were from heaven. It is only those who are unable to con-
ceive that the man who, w^hen driven to it by difficulties, occa-
sionally resorts to pious frauds and wholesome deceptions,
may at the same time be guided in his career mainly by sincere
enthusiasm and profound convictions, who will regard either
Pythagoras, or Mahomet, or any of the great teachers of tlie
world as a mere impostor. It may indeed be assumed as a
fact that no man ever yet imposed a faith on a large portion

* ^EUan, lib. ii, c. 26 ; and lib. rs', c. 17.

PYTHAGORAS. 25

of mankind, who was not himself to a great extent a sincere
convert to his own revelations.

The heathen writers, Jamblichus and Porphyry, are be
lieved to have drawn the character of Pythagoras with the
view of contrasting it, in his favor, with that of the teacher
of Christianity. On the other hand, the early Christian wri-
ters have most unjustly depreciated the real merits of Pytha-
goras. Tertullian civilly calls him a liar ; and Lactantius de-
scribes him as a stupid old man, and one who talked as an idle
old woman would do to a set of credulous children.
2

ASPASIA.

AsPASiA, of Miletus, is the most celebrated of that class of
Grecian women to which modern times and Christian nations
do not furnish any exact parallel ; though France, in the reign
of Louis XIV., produced something remarkably similar in the
famous Ninon de I'Enclos. The teacher of Socrates, and the
mistress and counsellor of Pericles, is said to have been beau-
tiful ; and the circumstance that, at a subsequent period, we
find a Greek woman of surpassing beauty, Milto of Phocis,
assuming her name, is better evidence of the charms of the
elder Aspasia than the passion of Pericles, which the wisdom,
the eloquence and the varied accomplishments of Aspasia
might have inflamed.

In the collection of ancient portraits by Gronovius, there is
a particularly fine bust of Aspasia. She wears a splendid
helmet and crest, the front of the helmet presenting the fig-
ures of horses coming half body out, as in the sculptures of
the Parthenon. She has a fine corslet, and her neck, which is
left bare, is encircled with a necklace. The whole armor,
which is gorgeous, speaks a woman's love of finery. In all
})robability, we are to understand this to be Aspasia, in the
character of Minerva; but, amidst all the warlike accoutre-

(26)

ASP ASIA. 27

ments, the picture is rather that of a Venues. The hair is
thick and long, and beautifully flowing; the cheeks are full,
and the face is at once voluptuous and intellectual.

Of Aspasia's lover, the accomplished Pericles, we have
only the vague tradition that he w^as of a prepossessing ap-
pearance ; and it is mentioned that when the Athenians began
to dread his ascendancy, and to fear that he was about to
usurp supreme dominion over them, they discovered that, in
his commanding person, he bore a striking resemblance to the
tyrant Pisistratus.

MILTO.

MiLTO, afterwards called Aspacia, from her resemblance, it
is said, to the mistress of Pericles, was the daughter of Her-
motimus of Phocis, in Ionia, and was the most beautiful w^o-
man of her time, which is somewhat later than that of her
namesake ; Milto, perhaps, having been born a little before the
elder Aspacia died. We have a tolerably full account of her
history J and a minute description of her person. Her mother
died in bringing her into the world, and her father, being a
very poor man^ educated her with difficulty.

While a little girl, though otherwise a great beauty, she had
a tumor on her chin, which occasioned much grief to herself as
well as to her doting father. A skilful physician offered to
remove the tumor, but he had the cruelty — rare, certainly, in
the profession to which he belonged, and which he disgraced —
to demand a reward for the operation, w^hich the poverty of
Milto's father made him unable to pay. But Milto was born
to splendor and greatness, and all obstacles were doomed to
vanish from her path. In the meantime, while she used to sit
holding her little mirror on her knees, and mourning deeply at
the sight of the deformity which impaired the perfection of her
beauty, she w^as cheered with dreams in w^hich she found her-
self united in wedlock with a beautiful and i^ood man.

MILTO. 29

One night, when, overcome with grief, she had gone to bed
without supper, in a vision, a dove, the bird of Venus, came
to her, and after assuming the form of a woman, of the God-
dess of Beauty herself, prescribed the cure that was successful.
The doubtful remedies of regular physicians are generally dis-
gusting; but the infalhble prescription of the goddess w^as
pleasant and lovely. Milto was directed to take the rosy chap-
let of Venus, w^hen it should be withered, and having reduced
it to a pow^der, to apply it to her chin.

^lian, in the longest chapter of his amusing Avork, gives us
a complete and minute portrait of Milto. Her hair was^j^ellow,
the locks a little curled ; she had very large eyes, the nose a
little aquiline, and small ears. Her skin w\as soft, and her
complexion approached to the rosy, on account of which, when
a child, she was called Milto. Her hps, as a matter of course,
were red; and, equally as a matter of course, her teeth w^ere
whiter than the snow. Her feet and legs w^ere handsome, and
she was what Homer calls xaxttf^upoj, " having beautiful ankles."
Her voice was sweet and tender, so that w^hen she spoke, you
would have thought that you listened to a syren. She used
no curious or superfluous female ornaments, it being expressly
mentioned that she was " beautiful without paint."

When she was brought before Cyrus, the other beauties of
the court had their hair adorned and their faces painted ; and
according to the fine expression which ^lian puts into the
mouth of the Persian prince, they were even more deceptive
in their manners than in their faces. The elevation of Milto
to be the favorite of Cyrus, was the accomplishment of her
visions ; and it was from him that she received the name of
Aspasia, by which she is best known in history.

In the portrait of Aspasia w^e have an embodiment of almost
all those features which w^ent to constitute beauty accor'"'
ing to the notions of the ancients, and according to the ta'
which has generally prevailed in Europe in all ages. Y'

30 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

hair — it is a palish flaxen yellow that has been most adored —
and large eyes are ingredients in almost every picture of a
beauty, whether the person be historical or imaginary. The
large eyes of Helen of Troy are celebrated in every descrip-
tion of her person which has come down to us. Juvenal men-
tions as one of the inroads which old age makes on beauty,
that, with the lapse of years, the eyes grow smaller.* In the
" Arabian Nights' Entertainments," the Vizier's daughter
describes her beloved Bedreddin Hassan as " the young man
who has large eyes and black eyebrows." The hair of Aspa-
sia wa5 a little curled. This is that crisped hair, " the smiling
locks" [crmes ridentes) of the Romans, to which there are so
many allusions in the poets. This is the hair universally at-
tributed to Helen of Troy. It was the hair of the Beatrice
of Dante —

•' lo miro i crespi e gli biondi capegli,"

the poet says in one of his canzoni ; and in another he speaks
of the fair locks which Love, to consume him, had gilded and
curled —

*' Biondi capelli
Ch' amor per consumarmi increspa e dora**'

Small ears and elegant ankles have been in general request;
and there are men whose criticism on female beauty goes no
farther than the ankles. The aquiline nose, while it is consid-
ered appropriate in the face of a military conmiander, is not
so decidedly according to orthodox taste in women's faces ;
but it is to be observed that ^lian has qualified the descrip-
tion to "slightly aquiline" (oTttyor f'7rlypv•7ro^) I am not sure
what is the true meaning of the expression in Petronius, in his
' -quisite description of Circe, where he speaks of her narcs

^eau * Juvenal, '• Sat." lib. vtj 144.

self un

MILTO 31

paululum inflexcE, which has generally been understood to mean
that her nose was rather aquilme.*

Kuhnius, the editor of ^lian, has a good note on the
description of Aspasia's nose. The Persians, he remarks,
amongst whom Aspasia had come, thought the aquiline nose
beautiful, and the token of a generous mind, because Cyrus,
the founder of their monarchy, was born with a hooked nose
(ypvTtoj). The ojityoi/, " a little," is however, he says, well added,
as a crooked nose is considered base by the admirers of
female beauty ; as in Terence we read : " Shall I marry that red
young woman with grey eyes, a wide mouth, and a crooked
nose ? Father, I cannot."

* Petronius, "SatjTricon," p. 96. Paris, 1601.

AGESILAUS

The ancient Spartans paid as much attention to the rearing
of men as the cattle-breeders in modern England do to the
breeding of cattle. They took charge of the firmness and
looseness of men's flesh, and regulated the degree of fatness
to which it was lawful, in a free state, for any citizen to ex-
tend his body. Those who dared to grow too soft or too fat
for military exercise and the service of Sparta, w^ere soundly
whipped. In one particular instance, that of Nauclis, the son
of Polybus, the offender was brought before the Ephori and a
meeting of the whole people of Sparta, at which his unlawful
fatness was publicly exposed, and he w^as threatened wdth per-
petual banishment if he did not bring his body within the reg-
ular Spartan compass, and give up his culpable mode of liv-
ing, which was declared to be more worthy of an Ionian than
of a son of Lacedemon.*

In the same spirit, the Spartans imposed a fine on their
king, Archidamus, for having married the little Eumolpa, to
the probable lowering of the stature of the royal family. That
little woman became the mother of little Agesilaus, and if her
memory must suffer for having given birth to a son, in point

*-^lian, XIV, c. 7.

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AGESILAUS. 33

of height unworthy of stalwart Sparta, to her we must award
the nobler praise — if it be true, as there is reason to believe
that it is, that the moral and intellectual qualities of men are
derived from their mothers — of having given to her country
one of its greatest heroes, and one of the most accomplished
and amiable men in the story of Lacedemon.

Agesilaus, in addition to his small stature, w^as lame of one
leg, and some accounts bear that he was otherwise deformed,
and that his features were disagreeable. Plutarch, however,
is probably right when he tells us that the defect of his lame-
ness was compensated by the agreeableness of the rest of his
person. AYe must presume also that his constitution was
good, as he was capable of enduring all the fatigues of Spar-
tan warfare and the hardships of Spartan diet, and yet lived
to the age of eighty-four, a period of life rarely attained by
those who undergo severe bodily exercise and live sparingly.

Plutarch tells us that there was no portrait nor statue of
Ao^esilaus, and that he would not allow one to be made. The
real motive for this might be a Spartan abhorrence of refine-
ment. We find that Plotinus, the Platonic philosopher, would
not yield to the wishes of his disciples to sit for his portrait ;
and a much better man, Montesquieu, showed a similar aver-
sion to having his likeness taken. M. de la Tour was ex-
tremely desirous of having the honor of making a portrait of
his illustrious countryman, but failed in persuading him to give
him the necessary sittings.

In the year 1752, Dassier, the celebrated medallist, was
sent from London to Paris, to make a medallion portrait of
the President. He for some time met with nothing but refu-
sals on the part of Montesquieu, till at last he said : "Do you
not think that there is as much pride in refusing my proposal
as there would be in accepting it ?" Montesquieu's delicacy
was overcome, and the medallion was made.*

* D'Alembert, "'Eloge de Montesquieu."

34 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTKAITS.

Amongst great men who would not allow their portraits to
be draw^n, we must reckon St. Francis Borgia. At different
times attempts were made to take his likeness, but he reso-
hitely refused to afford any sittings to the artists sent to him
for that purpose. A picture of him by Velasquez is mention-
ed by Mrs. Jameson ; and there are various engravings which
represent him as a lean-faced man, with a long aquiline nose,
With more true wisdom and with more kindness for posterity. •
some of the most famous saints have allowed their portraits to
be transmitted to our day. We have the genuine fat figure
of St. Theresa, and the gentle beauty of St. Francis of Sales.
And what Christian is not delighted at contemplating the por-
trait of the blessed St. Catharine of Sienna, from the pencil
of her friend and admirer, the painter Andrea Vanni ?

The moral portrait of Agesilaus is that of a man of heroic
spirit, of great abilities, and vast perseverance, with much hu-
manity, admirable good temper, and a cheerful disposition.
He warded off all jokes about his person by anticipating and
making them himself. lie is endeared to most readers by the
anecdote related of him by ^Elian, who tells us that, on being
foiidd by a friend riding on a stick, to amuse his son, he bade
his visitor not speak about it till he was a father himself.* A
similar story is told of Socrates,! and in modern times of one
of the kings of France.

* iElian, lib. xn, c. 15.

t Valerius Maximus, lib viii, c. 8.

SOCRATES

Sculpture has preserved to us that repulsive cast of features
from which the physiognomist Zopyrus pronounced that So-
crates was a man addicted to many vices, a judgment which
drew from the Athenian philosopher that admirable observa-
tion, that he was indeed inclined to these vices, but had cor-
rected his evil propensities by reason. What makes this anec-
dote the more interesting is, that we know that Socrates w^as
one of those w^ho held that the outward comelmess of the per-
son was an evidence of the inward beauty of the soul.

Socrates in the first place was bald, and the ancients held
baldness of itself to constitute ugliness. Agathocles, the
tjTant of Syracuse, who according to ^lian, had " a most
ridiculous and base head," out of which the hair fell by little
and little, was so ashamed of his baldness, that he wore a myr-
tle crown to conceal it.* We know also that of all the honors
conferred upon him, there was none that Caesar accepted more
gratefully than the right of wearing the laurel-crown which
concealed his baldness. t With the ancients, baldness had a
moral repulsiveness about it, as it was associated in their ideas

* -^lian> XI, c. 4.

t Suetonius, "Julius," c, 45.

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36 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

with licentiousness of life; and the Eoman soldiers, who
gibed at Csesar in the midst of his Gallic triumph, took care
not to lose sight of this connexion. Amongst the other
effects of his increasing years, Tacitus represents Tiberius as
ashamed of his baldness.* He occasionally wore a crown of
laurel on his head, but this was to protect him from tiie
lightning.! Domitian also, who had higher pretensions to
personal beauty, could not suffer any allusion to be made to
his baldness ; but he might be the more concerned about the
loss of his locks, as he had written a treatise on the care of the
hair. J The history of Elisha, mocked by the children, teaches
us that the prejudice is of extreme antiquity.

In additioQ to his baldness, Socrates had a dark complexion,
a iiat nose, protuberant eyes, and an ungracious expression.
His health and his strength, however, were good. He served
as a soldier in his country's wars; and in marching and en-
during the fatigues of military discipline, was without a rival.
He could also suffer well both hunger and thirst ; and when the
time for fasting was past, and the time for feasting arrived, he
was noted for being able to hold a larger quantity of drmk
thar. any of his comrades without being the worse of it.|l
As the wisest of the ancients believed occasional debauches
to be commendable, the capacity for enduring them was re-
garded as a valuable accomplishment. So also in Christian
times, thought Montaigne. In his remarks on education, ad-
dressed to Madame Diane de Foix, Countess of Gurson, and
intended for the benefit of the child with which the Countess
was then pregnant, and which Montaigne assured her would
be a boy, as " you are too generous not to commence with a
male ;"*^[ he recommends that his pupil should be taught to
stand drink well.

* Annales iv, c. 57 t Suetonius, " Tiberius," e. 69.

J Suetonius, ♦' Domitian,'' c 18. || Plutarch, " Symposium."
H Montaigne, *« E.s.sai^s,' lib i, c. 19. Paris, 1657.

SOCRATES. 37

" I wish," he says, " that even in debauchery he should sur-
pass his companions in vigor and firmness; and that he do not
forego the doing evil either from want of power or of science,
but from want of will." This abihty for hard drinking, Mon-
taigne thought absolutely necessary for great statesmen. Pitt,
with his vast capacity for port, would have been a minister of
state quite to his mind.

Socrates learned to play on the pipe in his old age ; he also
got himself taught singing, and danced every day. " He was
not ashamed," says Seneca, " to divert himself with children,
and was found one day by Alcibiades riding on a stick to
amuse his boys."

A great deal of nonsense has been spoken by Coleridge and
others about the profound philosophy, morality, and religion
of Rabelais ; but he certainly was a ripe scholar, and from
him I shall borrow what I consider to be the best picture of
the character of Socrates — including a sketch of his person —
that I have anywhere seen. It is, in fact, an able digesi of
what the Cure of Meudon must have gathered from an en
larged acquaintance with all that has been recorded of Socra-
tes. The reader may take it either in the unrivalled English
of Sir Thomas Urchard, or in the original of Rabelais, which
I give in a note. Rabelais has described one of those boxes
in the apothecary's shop with ugly figures on the outside, but
filled within with precious drugs, and he goes on : " Just such
another thing was Socrates, for to have eyed his outside, and
esteemed of him by his exterior appearance, you w^ould not
have given the peel of an onion for him, so deformed was he
in his body, and ridiculous in his gesture; he had a sharp-
pointed nose, with the look of a bull, and countenance of a
fool ; he was in his carriage simple, boorish in his apparel, iue
fortune poor, unhappy in his wives, unfit for all offices in tthe
state (this last statement, with Rabelais' leave, is a miat man
and a very great mist[iko indee<i.):il\v:(ys laugliing, tippUind took

38 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

merry carousing to every one with continual jibes and jeers,
the better by these means to conceal his divine knowledge.
Now opening this box, you would have found within it a
heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than human under-
standing, an admirable virtue, matchless learning, invincible
courage, inimitable sobriety, certain contentment of mind,
perfect assurance, and an incredible misregard of all
that, for which men commonly do so much watch, run, sail,
fight, travel, toil and turmoil themselves."*

* The Works of F. llabelais, M. D., done out of French by SirThos.
XJrchard, Kt., and others. London, 1694 : "Tel disoit estre Socrates;
par ce que, le voyant au dehors, et I'exteriore apparence, n'en eussiez
donne ung coupeau d'oignon, tant laid il estoit de corps, et ridicule en
son maiiitien, le nez poinctu, le reguard d'ung taureau, le visaige d'ung
fol, simple en meurs, rusticq en vestimens, paoure de fortune, infortune
en femmes, inepte a tous offices de lu republicque, tousiours riant, tousi-
ours beuuant daultant a ung chascun, tousiours se gaubelant, tousiours
dissimulant son diuin soauor. ^Mais ouurans ceste boyte, eussiez au de-
dans trouue une celeste et impreciable drogue, entendement plus que hu-
main, vertus merueilleuses, couraige invincible, sobresse nonpareille, con-
tentement certain, asseurance parfaicte, deprisement incroyable de tout
ce pourquoy les humains, tant veiglent, courent, trauaillent, nauigent, et
bataillent." — CEuyres de F. Rabelais, p. 2. Paris, ISlo.

SL,

jSue
11 Monta.

PLATO

Plato, who according to the superstitions belief of his
times, was the son of Apollo, w^as a tall and handsome man.
His name, he is said to have derived from his broad shoul-
ders. He had a protuberance at the back of his head. He
was of a grave countenance, and laughed but seldom. He
had a shrill but pleasing voice. He was temperate in sleeping,
eating and drinking, but approved of occasional intoxication.
The belief of the medical faculty for more than two thousand
3^ears was, that an occasional debauch promoted good health ;
all the great physicians of the middle ages insisted on their
patients getting drunk once a month. Plato lived in good
health to the age of eighty-four. He excelled in all the Gre-
cian exercises, having studied wrestling under Aristo the Ar-
give. He also apphed himself to poetry and painting. Being
a man of wealth, he used a decent splendor in his whole style
of living, and did not think the use of gold and silver plate
unbecoming a philosopher. He dressed genteelly, but reproved
the effeminacy and vain adornings of Aristotle, as much as he
did the proud sordidness of Diogenes. Notwithstanding the
dreamy nature of many of his speculations, Plato was a man
of the world, had the art of pleasing in conversation, and took

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40 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

particular care not to anno}^ his company by the introduction
of philosophical discussions.

The description left us of Aristotle is, that he was a man of
slender form, with spindle shanks and small eyes. He had a
shrill voice, and stammered in his speech.* Diogenes Laer-
tius, who tells us these things, as w^ell as most of the particu-
lars which I have gathered of Plato, quotes the authority of
Timotheus, the Athenian, for the fact that Aristotle hesitated
in his speech, and the circumstance is also mentioned by Plu-
tarch. He delighted in rich apparel, wore a number of rings
on his fingers, and w^as particular in shaving, and in trimming
his hair. In the ornamenting his person, he did not neglect
his shoes, which were adorned with precious materials. He
was much addicted to tallying, and had a sneering and fault-
finding expression in his face.f

Such is the portrait of him whom Southey calls " the most
sagacious man whom the world has j-et produced." No man
certainly has ever lived whose w^ritings, real or supposed, have
exercised so tyrannical an authority over mankind. His repu-
tation gathered strength for at least eighteen hundred years
after his death ; and during fifteen centuries of Christianity
his word, with the learned, held divided empire with the Gos-
pel itself

Amongst great men, who more or less delighted in magnifi-
cence, are enumerated, besides Aristotle, Pythagoras, Plato,
and Aristippus, Demosthenes the Athenian orator, and Hor-
tensius the Eoman. Both Demosthenes and Hortensius sub-
jected themselves to the ridicule and censure of their contem-
poraries for their excessive attention to elegance in dress.J
Parrhasius, the painter, delighted in the adornment of his per-

* Diogenes Laeitius, lib. v, c. 1, sec. 2.

t ^lian, lib. iii. c. 19.

t Aulus Gellius, lib. i, c. o.

PLATO. 41

son, and called himself AffpoSiattoj— the delicate, the elegant.
He wore a purple robe, and a golden crown on his head.* He
had a staff encircled with golden rings, and wore golden
clasps in his shoes.

Amongst military men, we find that Xenophon's love of
beauty in every thing made him select the most splendid
armor, the Argotic shield, the Attic coreelet, the helmet of
Boeotia, and the horse of Epidaurus. He tells us himself that
he was " most elegantly adorned for war."t Xenophon, who,
it may be remarked, was distinguished by great personal
beauty, used to say that if he conquered the enemy, he was
w^orthy of the most splendid adorning ; and if he lost his life
in battle, he would appear with grace in magnificent armor.
The horse of Epidaurus alluded to, Xenophon was once oblig-
ed to sell at Lampsacus ; but his friends, finding how much
he valued him, bought him again, and made a present of him
to the general.^ Hannibal also delighted in splendid armor,
and in fine horses. Montaigne mentions Alexander, Csesar,
and Lucullus, as generals w^ho loved to distinguish themselves
in battle by rich armor, and accoutrements of a shining and
conspicuous color. §

Agis, Agesilaus, and Philip the Great, Montaigne enumer-
ates amongst those who went to battle obscurely dressed, and
without any imperial array. Agesilaus, indeed, and Epami-
nondas affected an extreme poverty in their dress. In his old
age, Agesilaus went bare-footed, even in winter. || Epami
nondas, otherwise a man of elegant tastes, had but one poor
garment, and was obliged to keep the house whenever he
put it to the fuller to get the dirt taken out of it.l^

* iElian, lib. m, c. 24.

t Xenophon, ** Anabasis," lib. ui.

ij: " Anabasis," lib. vu.

{) '<Essais." lib. i, c. 47.

II ^lian, lib. vu. c. 13.

% -lElian, lib. v, c. 5.

42 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Amongst great men in modern times who have indulged in
magnificent dress and ornaments, the most illustrious are
Ealeigh, Buffon, and Haydn.

Charles of Sweden in his taste imitated Agesilaus ; Murat
was a warrior like Xenophon.

ALCIBIADES.

All historians agree that the accomplished Alcibiades was
by far the most handsome man of his age. On account of his
beauty, says Xenophon, who knew him personally, he was
" hunted" by many honorable ^Yomen.* The strong expres-
sion of Xenophon (0>;pco,afvo5,) which is taken from the chase, I
have translated literally. In ambiability of character and
beauty of person, says ^lian, Alcibiades Avas chief amongst
the Greeks, and Scipio amongst the Romans. f Of beautiful
persons. Lord Bacon says, that " they prove accomplished,
but not of great spirit, and study behavior rather than virtue.
But this holds not always ; for Augustus Csesar, Titus Yes-
pasianus, Phillip le Bel of France, Edward IV. of England,
Alcibiades of Athens, and Ismael the Sophi of Persia, were
all high and great spirits, and yet the most beautiful men of
their times." This list might easily be amplified. It w^ants
Demetrius Poliorcetes, who w^as beautiful beyond description ;
but its great defect is the omission of Alexander the Great,
the most warlike of mortals.

" Ttie beauty of Alcibiades," says Plutarch, "continued

* Xenophon, "Memorabilia Socratis," lib. i, c. 2, sec. 24.
t ^Eliaii, lib. xii, c. 14.

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44 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

with him through all the stages of childhood, youth, and man-
hood." He caused himself to be painted lying in the lap of
the courtesan Nemea. Plato notices the loose flowing robe,
which, after the fashion of the men of pleasure of these times,
characterised Alcibiades. The ancients — the men at least —
appear to have valued personal beauty more than the moderns
do, and took greater pains in preserving it. Plutarch tells us
that in learning music, Alcibiades chose the lyre, for its grace-
fulness. When he lived with his uncle Pericles, his tutor, An-
tigenis, attempted to teach him to play on the pipe ; but when
he looked at his face in the mirror, as he used the instrument,
he dashed it on the ground, and broke it in pieces. The boy
Alcibiades then led the fashion in everything ; and the Athe-
nians, when the story got abroad, gave up with one consent
the use of the pipe.* Alcibiades, it has been farther said, ob-
jected to the pipe because he could not accompany it with his
voice. I have noticed before that Pythagoras had chosen the
lyre in preference to the pipe, most probably for similar rea-
sons ; and there is a strong resemblance between the anecdote
of Alcibiades and the mythological story related by Ovid,
which tells us that when Minerva, as she played on the pipe,
looked into a fountain, and noticed the ungraceful swelling of
her cheeks, she threw away the instrument in disgust.f

The importance attached by the ancients to the cultivation
of music as a means of social improvement, appears ludicrous
to modern readers. The philosophic Montesquieu has devoted
a chapter of his great work to discussing their theories on
this subject.^ In his work on politics, Aristotle tells us that
at the close of the Peloponnesian war, there was scarcely a
freeborn Athenian unacquainted with the flute. ||

* Aulus Gellius, lib. xv, c. 17. t " ^rs. Amat." lib. iii.

t " Esprit des loix," lib. iv, c. 8. |1 " Politica," lib. viii, c. 6.

ALCIBIADES. 45

From Plutarch, who quotes contemporary authority, we
learn that Alcibiades had a lisp in his speech " which became
him and gave a grace to his discourse." The fact is estab-
lished by some lines, which Plutarch quotes from Archippus,
a poet of the times, who ridicules a son of Alcibiades, for im-
itating the sauntering step, the loose robe, the lisp, and the
bent neck of his father. With regard to the effect of a lisp
in the speech, opinions both in ancient and in modern times
have been very favorable. Ovid alludes to those women who,
by lisping, have found in their imperfection a charm to catch
mankind.* In popular belief, lisping in a woman is thought
to be characteristic of a disposition to love. Thus, in Ford's
" Lady's Trial," (Act iv. sc. 2.)

Amorette. I do not uthe
To thpend lip labor upon quethionths
That I mythelf can anth.Aver.

FuTELLi. No, sweet madame,
Your lips are destined to a better use,
Or else the proverb fails of lisping maids.

Amorette. Kithing, you mean.

And the chorus of the song which is sung after this is,

•* None kithethlike the lithping lath."

In the other sex we see from other instances than this of
Alcibiades, that this imperfect elocution has been admired.
Thus, Chaucer tells us of the friar,

'* Somewhat he lisped for his wantonnesse,
To make his English sweet upon his tongue."

And Barbour, the Scottish poetical historian, speaking of
* " Ars, Amat " lib. in.

46 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

the good Sir James Douglas, says that " he lisped like Hector
of Troy," and that his lisping became him remarivably well.
In more recent times, we learn of the Lord Keeper Coventry,
from an account published by Lodge, in his " Portraits of
Illustrious Persons of Great Britain," from a manuscript in the
Sloane Collection, that " he was of a very fine and grave elo-
cution, in a kinde of graceful! lisping ; so that w^here nature
might seeme to cast something of imperfection on his speech,
on due examination, she added a grace to the perfection of his
deliver3^"

That Hector lisped, Barbour, in all probability, learned from
the spurious w^ork on the destruction of Troy, attributed to
Dares the Phrygian. This book, which is now utterly des-
pised, was held to be genuine, and was highly admired in Bar-
bour's time, and is quoted in his poem. It contains personal
descriptions of most of. the men and women connected with
the Trojan war. Of Hector, we are told that he was " lisp-
ing fair-haired, crisp, quinting, swift of limb, of a venerable coun-
tenance, bearded, comely, great of mind, gracious to the peo-
ple, worthy of and fit for love."*

Barbour, it may be remarked, declares that Hector, like Sir
James Douglas, had black hair. Dares says he was fair ; for,
from the context, it is pretty clear that the term candidum
refers to his hair.

It would thus appear that, along w^ith the general tradition
of Hector's comeliness and his lisp, and his proverbial accep-
tability to the other sex, there is a fame that he squinted. So
did George Whitefield and Edward Irving, both of w^hom
were favorites with the fair, the latter being called " the ador-
able Edward Irving."

Descartes admired a squint, one story being that a w^oman
with whom he was in love looked at him obliquely ; w'hile

* Dares Phrygius, «« De ExcidoTroja3,"p. 170. Amst. 1631.

ALCIBIADES. 47

another version, which is adopted by Southey, is that this par-
tiality arose from his associating a squint with the recollection
of the eyes of a kind nurse. There is a recent case which
took place in Paris, in 1842, which is deserving of attention,
and which may be a lesson to those who are not content with
the eyes which heaven has given them. A young woman was
about to be married to a man with w^hom she was deeply in
love, he squinting most unmistakeably. At that time the
operation of strabism was much in vogue, and the thoughtless
lover imagined that by its means he would get rid of what he
regarded as a blemish in his countenance. Without letting
his mistress know his intention, he got the defect entirely
removed, and fancied that he would now appear with increased
favor in her eyes.

On his next meeting with her, however, she uttered a cry
of alarm, and in spite of all explanations, refused to receive as
her husband him whom she had loved and chosen under quite
a diiferent aspect.* The marriage was broken off; the sepa-
ration was for ever, the lady contenting herself with cherish-
ing in her own soul the squinting object of her young affec-
tions.

The philosophy of all this is very intricate. Where the
person or the mind is on the whole agreeable, peculiarities
which abstractly would be reckoned defects, by appearing as
parts of the whole, come, by a natural association of ideas, to
be regarded as constituent beauties. Thus we find persons
endowed with a graceful lameness who would be quite spoiled
if their legs were made equal, and others who would be dis-
figured if they were to recover a lost eye.

Anne of Brittany, the wife of Charles VIII. of France, and
the Princess of Conde, were beauties who moved gracefully

* Roussel, " Systeme Physique et Morale de la Femme," (Note by
H. Cerise,) p. 131. Paris. 1813.

48 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

through the world with one leg shorter than the other.
Catherine des Jardins, (now nearly forgotten as a writer of
poetry and dramas,) though strongly marked by small-pox,
had personal charms enough to gee for herself three husbands
and a great many lovers beside.

Mademoiselle de la Valliere, the most amiable of Louis
XIV.'s mistresses, has by recent writers generally been
described as a beauty, notwithstanding her admitted lameness.
But this is a mistake. Louis did not confine his admiration
of the sex to those of them who had beauty to attract him.
His first mistress, Mademoiselle de Mancini, was allowed to be
the reverse of either beautiful or handsome. She was stout,
but short and ill shaped, and had a very vulgar air. Histo-
rians have not been able to make up their minds as to what it
was that pleased the king in Mancini.

Mademoiselle de la Valliere was kind-hearted and amiable,
and Louis loved her because she first loved him. A contem-
porary author of a life of la Valliere, written and printed in
herhfetime, and who is extremely favorable to her real merits^
thus describes her .• — " As a man in a meadow, adorned with
an infinite variety of lovely flowers, is almost always embar-
rassed in his choice, so the king, in the midst of so many beau-
ties, did not know in favor of whom to determine. Chance
decided his choice, and Mademoiselle de la Valliere, who had
nothing to recommend her in point of beauty, triumphed over
all the rest. She is of middle stature and rather thin {assez
jlouette ;) she walks ungracefully, and is slightly lame ; she is
white and fair {blanche et hlond^ and marked with small-pox ;
her eyes are blackish (noiratres^) and her look languishing.
She has a large rosy mouth ; her teeth are not good. She
has no bosom ; her arm is flat, and does not give too favorable
an idea of the rest of her person. She is sometimes gay, and
has always a great deal of wit and vivacity ; she speaks agree-
ably, and wants neither knowledge nor soHdity. She is well

ALCIBIADES. 49

versed in literature, and has a soul great, generous and disin-
terested. She has sincerity and good faith ; she has always
had an extreme aversion for all that is called coquetry ; and,
above all, she has a good heart, and loves her friends as ten-
derly as can be."*

The dark languishing eyes here ascribed to la Valliere did
not, as might be thought, redeem her face from being plain ;
and Louis, even after he began to regard her, on discovering
her affection for himself, confessed her entire want of beauty;
and his taste in everything was admirable.

One day a courtier pointed her out to the ting, and said, in
a jeering tone : " Come hither, fair one, with the dying eyes
{Ja belle aux yeux inourans,) who are content with nothing less
than monarchs." La YaUiere was confused, and the king
w'as vexed at the rudeness. He still saw nothing to admire
about her, but after his gracious fashion, he saluted her with
the utmost respect and spoke kindly to her ; and he soon after
made it known that he wished to see her married to a noble-
man of high rank, and that he would compensate for her want
of personal charms by the fortune which he would bestow on
her. ^Yhen he came, however, after this to enter more fre-
quently into conversation with this affectionate creature, his
kindness became converted into love.f

Amongst beautiful squinters is enumerated the Greek poet,
Menander. A modern wu'iter on the calamities of genius, men-
tions the squint of Menander. :|: The poet is described as hv-
ing the life of a Sybarite. " Flowing wdth unguents and with
a loose robe," says Phsedrus, describing his appearance before

* " La Vie de la Duchesse de la Valliere,"' par. ... p. 90. A Co-
logne, chez Jean de la Verite. The place of publication is as fictitious
as the assumed name of the bookseller.

t '♦ La Tie de la Duchesse de la Yalliijre," p.96

X D. Josephus Barberius, " De Miseria Poetarum," p. ol. Neap 1686.

50 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

the tyrant Dionysius, " he came forward with a dehcate and
languid walk." His passion for female beauty is described as
a perfect madness, his love for the courtesan Glycera being
much celebrated am.ongst the Greeks.

Some there have been who inflamed all hearts by the fire of
a single eye, notwithstanding the almost universal prejudice in
favor of two. The Princess of Eboli, the mistress of Philip
II., of Spain, who was deprived of the sight of one of her eyes,
was, notwithstanding, a perfect miracle of beauty. " Nature,"
says the Pere la Moyne, " had finished with extraordinary care
both the mind and the body of this princess, but had only giv-
en her one eye ; whether it was that she despaired of being
able to make a second equal to the first ; or that, in this re-
spect, the princess might resemble the day, which has but one
eye; or, as Perez said to Henry the Great, that Nature was
afraid that if she had had two eyes she would have set the whole
world on fire."* Mrs. Jameson, in her " ^[emoirs of Early
Italian Painters," notices a picture by Titian, called " Philip
II. and the Princess of Eboli," in the Fitzw^illiam Museum, at;
Cambridge.

According to Dr. Joseph Warton, it was upon the Princess
of Eboli and Luis de Maguiron, the most beautiful man of
his time, and the favorite of Henry III., of Erance, wiio lost
an eye at the siege of Isore, that the famous epigram about
Aeon and Leonilla — the finest of modern Latin epigrams, as it
is justly allowed to be — was written. It has been translated,
but with little success, into various languages.

<• Lumine Aeon dextro, capta est Leonilla siuistro
Et potist est forma viucere uterque deos ;
Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori,
Sic tu cgecus Amor, sic erit ilia Venus.''

* La Galerie des Femmes Fortes," par le Pere le Moyne, partie ir, p.
25. Paris, 1663,

ALCIBIADES. 51

" Aeon is deprived of his right eye ; Leonilla of the left ;
and either of them in beauty is able to vanquish the gods.
Sweet youth, yield up to your sister the eye that you have; so
you will be blind Love, and she will be Yenus." AYarton
believed this renowned epigram to be anonymous. It is, how-
ever, the production of an obscure Italian poet, Girolamo
Amaltheo, (in Latin, Hieronymus Amaltheus,) and is to be
found amongst his pieces, in a collection of the beauties of
two hundred Italian poets.* Only one other epigram by
Amaltheo has obtained celebrity. It is the epigram Galla tibi
totus sua munera dedicat annus^ ^-c. " Oh, Galla, the whole
year dedicates its gifts to thee ; the spring has painted with
its red thy rosy cheeks and lips ; the summer has placed a
thousand fires in thy radiant eyes ; the autumn hides its fruit
in thy bosom, and the winter has sprinkled all the rest with its
snow."

* '* Deliti u C C Italorum Poetarum, hujus, superiorisque asvi lUus-
trium." Collectore Ranutio Ghero, 1608.

HELEN OF TROY.

Having brought forward a traditional portrait of Hector, I
ma}^ be allowed to refer to the pictures which have been given
of Helen of Troy, the most illustrious name in the liistory of
beauty. Helen, according to the author of the work which
bears the name of Dares, and which is beHeved to have been
written during the decline of the Roman literature, resembled
her brothers, Castor and Pollux, who had j^ellow hair and
large eyes. " She was besides," says Daws, " beautiful, of a
simple mind (as no doubt she was,) pleasant, with very fine
legs, having a marlv between her eyebrows {notam inter duo
supercilia habentem; this, I suspect, is the small space
admired by antiquity,) and a very little mouth."*

I have not met in any writer in any period when good taste
flourished, with a commendation of little mouths.; a little
mouth being condemned by all good judges, as being the al-
most unfailing accompaniment of want of intellect and taste
In the enumeration of the thirty points of female beauty,
\which are said to have all met in Helen, a small mouth is enu-
ii)yerated. There are other serious errors of taste in that pro-
diicN^ion, to which I shall afterwards have occasion to refer.

(52)

HELEN OF TROY. 53

It appears to have been written about the commencement of
the sixteenth century.

Homer, it has been observed, has told us nothing specific
about Helen's person or face. With him she is "the divine
woman," and Helen " with the face like that of the immortal
gods." In one place, he tells us that she was wrapped in an
ample robe. In Homer's great poem, Juno, with her white
arms, and her ox-eyes, is less of an abstraction than Helen.
What Homer has omitted to do has, however, been done by
writers of less fertile imagination. The picture drawn by
Constantino Manasses, a Byzantine writer, is the most detailed
and curious account. If it serves no other purpose, it is au-
thentic enough as a specimen of the Bj^zantine ideas of beauty.
Artopseus, the commentator on Dares, notices the tautology
of this description by Constantine, but I give it entire.

" She was a most beautiful woman, with beautiful eyebrows,
of a very fine complexion (svxpovaratr]) with beautiful cheeks,
a good face, large eyes, whiter than the snow^, with curved
eyebrows, delicate, a grove of graces, with ^vhite arms, given
to pleasures, breathing beauty, of a fair and agreeable com-
plexion, her cheeks rosy without paint, the rosy blush setting
off her great whiteness, as if one mingled the splendid purple
with the ivory, with a long and very white neck, whence she
w'as said to be the daughter of a swan." The description of
Helen by Cedrenus, another Byzantine writer, agrees in the
main points with this by Constantine Manasses. " Helen,"
says Cedrenus, "was most beautiful." " One day when Paris
looked into her garden, he saw that she was of incomparable
beauty for she was tall (srcroxos) with beautiful breasts, white
as snow% with beautiful eyebrows, an elegant nose, her hair
crisp {ovuOpt^,) and half yellow,* {viro^avGo^,) and with large

* Georgii Cedreni, "Compendium Historicum," torn i, pp. 121, 121.
Paris, 1647. The passage from Constantine Manasses, I have been
obliged to take from Artopffiu's *' Commentary on Dares."

54 CLASSIC AND HISTOKIC PORTRAITS.

eyes." I have translated the word iv&fo-Ko?, " tail," by advice
of Artopseus. He declares that those who have translated
fvffTo^of, " elegant in her dress " are wrong, as an elegant dress
is no part of the gifts of the person ; and as besides Helen
never was elegant in her dress till she ran off with Paris.
Evnro-Koi, he contends, is "tall, or of a deep waist." I have
seen it translated slender, but I cannot believe that a writer
of Constantinople would have praised slenderness ; and I did
not wish to place Cedrenus in direct opposition to Constantine
on this point. Cedrenus is not unsupported by venerable au-
thority when he calls Helen su^acfi'oj, " of a beautiful bosom."
In ancient days, Euripides, the woman-hater, who has be-
stowed the most opprobrious epithets on -Helen, has particu-
larly referred to the singular handsomeness of her bust. Helen
herself appears to have been perfectly sensible of her merits
in this respect, if it be true, as Pliny relates, that she pre-
sented as an offering to Minerva, a cup made of the precious
metal called electriwi, modelled after the form of her breast.*
The fine passage, in which Homer speaks of the effect of
Helen's beauty, even upon those who had reason to hate her,
has drawn forth something like a feeling of the spirit of poe-
try, even from Bayle. He tells us that all the descriptions of
her person which have come down to us, do not give us an
idea of her charms equal to that which we form when we hear
that the aged chiefs, when she made her appearance on the
walls, burst out into the exclamation, that the Trojans and
the Grecians were "not to be blamed for having so long
endured so much suffering for such a woman ; for in counte-
nance she is altogether like the immortal goddesses." Mar-
lowe, I think, has taken a hint from this really beautiful pas-

* Plinii, *' Hist. Naturalis," lib. xxxiii. c. 23. The electrum, according
to Pliny, was a composition of gold with a fifth part of silver, and had
the properties of shining brightly and of detecting poison.

HELEN OF TROY. 55

sage in the outburst which he puts into the mouth of Faustus,
when the devil brings before ium the shade of Helen

" Was tliis the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topmost towers of Illium r
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss !
Her lips suck forth my soul ! See where it flies !
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again !
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and, for love of thee,
Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack'd;
And I Avill combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colors on my plumed crest ;
Yea, I will wound AchiUes in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air —
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele ;
More lovely than the Monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusas azure arms,
And none but thou shaltbe my paramour."

Some writers have asserted that the charms of Helen did
not fade in old age. But the moralist, who wishes to with-
draw the soul from the contemplation of that beauty which is
but dust and ashes, to that comeliness to which increase of
years only gives increase of brightness, will be better pleased
with Ovid, who represents Helen looking in her mirror with
tears, and asking herself why first Theseus and then Paris
had stolen her away.

" Flet quoque ut in speculo rugas conspexit aniles
Tyndaris ; et secum cur sit bis rapta requirit."

ALEXANDEE THE GREAT

The common modern notion of Alexander the Great is,
that he \vas a man of short stature, wry -necked, and otherwise
deformed. I could quote many testimonies to this effect.
Burton, in his " Anatomy of Melancholy," tells us that the
Great Alexander was a 'Mittle man of stature." We are
assured by Pope that — •

" Great Ammon's son one shoulder had too high ;"

and Gillies, in his "History of Greece," says " he was of low
stature, and somewhat deformed." These statements are all
erroneous. The ancients knew Alexander only as beautiful
alike in face and form.

"We have, most unfortunately, no history of Alexander by
any contemporary writer, but we have the relations of authors,
who had the contemporary writers in their hands. Our
accounts of Alexander's person are from authors of the second
and third centuries of the Christian era; Arrian, Plutarch,
Tacitus, ^han, and Solinus. There is a complete harmony
amongst all these authorities ; all are agreed on the beauty of
Alexander ; and out of their statements, put together, we have
a detailed account of his person and appearance. The faith-
ful and accurate Arrian, who had before him the writings of

(56)

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 57

Ptolemy and Aristobulus, who had fought with Alexander,
tells us that he was in person most beautiful (ro 6s (f^^a

The curious and inquisitive ^lian gives Alexander as an
instance in his chapter on those who have excelled in beauty,
ranking him in this respect with Alcibiades, Scipio, and De-
metrius Poliorcetes, the comeliest of men. " His hair," he
says, " was 3'ellow and flowing."t Solinus says his stature was
lofty beyond the common, with a long neck, large and lustrous
ej-es, his cheeks gracefully ruddy, and beautiful in ail other
points with a certain air of majesty. J

Tacitus, in speaking of the death of Germanicus, tells us
that the people were led to compare his beauty, his youth, the
manner of his death, on account of the near neighborhood of
the places in w'hich both died, with the fate of Alexander the
Great ; " for both," adds the historian, " with great beauty of
person, and illustrious descent, at the age of little more than
thirty, had fallen amongst foreign nations by the treachery of
their own people."^ The beauty of the amiable Germanicus
is matter of established history, though in the proper place I
shall have to notice the defect which Suetonius describes in
his person.

There is no contradiction to these concurring accounts in
any ancient wTiter ; and Plutarch furnishes us with informa-
tion, from which we may see in what way the modern belief
that Alexander had a wry neck has arisen. Alexander had
the fashionable Greek habit, as the beautiful Alcibiades had,
and as others beautiful and not beautiful had, of leaning his
head gently and gracefully to one side ; perhaps not more than
a painter would have desired him to do, if he wished to draw

* Arrian, lib. viii, c. 28.
t yElian, lib. xii, c 14.
:|: Solinus, " Polyliistor," c. 14,
^ Taciti, »« Annales," lib 11, c. 73.
3=*

5S CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

him in an easy attitude. The fashion was in practice with the
Greek women as well as the men ; and is mentioned in a frag-
ment of the comic poet Alexis, quoted by Athenseus, as one
^ of the means which they took to make themselves amiable.

Montaigne, who thoroughly adnnred and perfectly under-
stood Alexander, has stated this matter well. " It was," he
savs, " an affectation arising from his beauty which made Al-
exander lean his head a little to one side."* This habit of
Alexander is also well described in an amusing passage in the
" Spectator." " If we look further back into history, we
shall find that Alexander the Great wore his head a little over
the left shoulder ; and then not a soul stirred out till he had
adjusted his neck-bone ; the whole nobility addressed the
prince and each other obliquely; and all matters of importance
were carried on in the Macedonian court with their poles on
one side."! In this attitude, and looking up to heaven, Lycip-
pus the sculptor, designed the statue of Alexander. " It was,"
says Plutarch, " Alexander's posture while he lived." Lycip-
pus showed himself a true master of his art by taking Alex-
ander in his favorite attitude ; as we frequently see painters
and statuaries destroy the whole spirit and character of a
work, otherwise possessed of merit, from want of attention to
this point.

Lycippus, Plutarch tells us in this same treatise, expressed
in brass, the vigor of Alexander's mind, and the lustre of his
virtues ; while others, imitating the bend in the neck, and the
rolling of the eye, failed to express the lionlike fierceness of
the face. In his hfe of Alexander, Plutarch tells us that he
had a terrible countenance, which struck and disturbed those
on whom he cast a look in anger — a description in no way in-
consistent with the idea of his great hea.\ity. Plutarch fur-
ther tells us that Alexander was fair and ruddy in the fuce

* " Essais, " lib. ii, c. 17.

t Plutarch, " De Fortuna Alexandri.'' lib. ir,

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 59

and breast, though Apelles, in painting him holding the thun-
derbolt, had made his face darker than it was. This I should
conjecture to be an ignorant criticism on a noble stroke of art
in the great painter.

In short, we have a superfluity of evidence that Alexander
had all that form which charmed antiquity ; and in his time
he was considered to be a living representation of the divine
Achilles, with whom he was pleased to be compared. A
striking proof of the idea of Alexander's person, universally
prevalent amongst the ancients, is furnished by the historian
Herodian. The mad emperor Caracalla had a passion for
imitating Achilles and Alexander ; and Herodian tells us that
the people laughed at seeing a man of his small stature aping
these very valiant and large [^ueyt^'rsj] warriors.*

The head of Alexander on his silver coins is bound with a
fillet; the hair is richly curled, the eyes large and open, the
nostrils wide, and the mouth finely shaped.

There are two circumstances in the history of Alexander, as
it is usually written, which may have helped to confirm the
fable of his being of small stature. In his Indian expedition,
he is said to hav ecaused suits of armor of a gigantic size to
be buried in the earth, in order that on their being afterwards
dug up by the people, they might give them an idea that the
Macedonian invaders were men of marvellous stature. This,
it has been said, is not like the expedient of a tall man.

Another story, or rather a romance, told by Quintus Curtius,
would, when ignorantly read, convey an impression of the
small stature of Alexander. He tells us that Thalestris, Queen
of the Amazons, out of desire to see the conqueror, left her
country at the head of three hundred of her women. When
slie saw the king, however, she was much disappointed with
his appearance, and looked at him with an unterrified counte

* Herodian, *' IIi!-:t." lib iv, c. IG

60 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

nance ; for, says the historian, with all the barbarians, venera-
tion is paid to majesty of person ; they do not consider any one
capable of great things, except those whom nature has
endowed with an extraordinary appearance.*

If all this, and all the love affair between the warlike queen
and Alexander, as related with much simplicity by Curtius,
were matters of real history, and not of romance, they would
prove nothing farther than that the Amazonian queen expected
to meet with a regular giant, which, in her case, would have
been a very natural expectation, and was disappointed. The
idea of a great conqueror, even in the minds of those who are
not barbarians, is that of a giant. See, in Shakespeare, how
the Countess of Auverny is disappointed when she finds that
the fierce Talbot, the scourge of France, is not a perfect ogre.

" Is this the scourge of France ?
Is this the Talbot, so much fear'd abroad,
That with his name the mothers still their babes ?
I see report is fabulous and false
I thought I should have seen some Hercules,
A second Hector, for his grim aspect,
And large proportion of his strong-knit limb?.
Alas ! this is a child, a si]ly dwarf, "-f

The sweet odor which Plutarch, referring to the memoirs
of Aristoxenes as his authority, tells us issued from the body
of Alexander, and perfumed his dress, is, in all probability, a
fable for w^hich we are indebted to the idolatry of his admirers,
or the deceit of his flatterers ; perhaps to an innocent fraud
on the part of Alexander himself This was a gift attributed
to his heathen goddesses ; and if we are to believe a thou-
sand legends of the Christian Church, was a virtue possessed
by the bodies of great saints, both during their lives and at\er

* Quintus Curtius, lib. vi, p 133. Amst. 1671.
t Henry vi. Act ii, sc 2.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 61

their deaths. Of Polycarp, the early martyr, many respectable
Christians believed at the time, and at this very day, I have no
doubt, many Christians still believe, that when he was fastened
to the stake, his body emitted a delightful fragrance like that
of frankincense to the senses of all present. Eusibus is the
authority for the tale.

The sensible Dr. Jortin has given a -very reasonable conjec-
tural explanation of the miraculous perfume felt at the pile of
Polycarp. " Scented wood," he says, " is common in hot coun-
tries, and the odor might proceed from the fuel, for the people
ran about the baths and other places to get wood ; and a
Cliristian might also join with them, and bring a bundle of
wood w^ith aromatics enclosed in it to honor the funeral of his
bishop. The Christians, however frugal in other respects in
their expenses, were ver}'- profuse in the interment of their bre-
thren."*

AVith regard to this alleged property of Alexander's, I do
not think it is calculated to raise our admiration of him ; and
I cannot help agreeing with Montaigne that the Macedonian
hero would have been as well without this singular endow-
ment. " The sweetness of the purest breaths has nothing
more perfect than to be without any odor like those of healthy
children. Hence says Plautus :

" ' ]Mulier turn, bene olet, ubi nihil olet.'
The most exquisite odor of a w^oman is to smell of nothing.
And as to the fine strange odors, we have reason to believe
that they are employed to cover some natural defect in that

way."t

The private habits of Alexander are well known. He de-
lighted in splendor and magnificence, and like Csesar had a
fine taste for literature and the arts, and was a judicious patron

* Jortin, " Rem. on Ecclesiastical History.'
j Montaigne, •' Essais, ' lib t, c 55.

02 CLASSIC AKD HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

of both. His great vice was the vice of his father and of his
country, the drunkenness which was as truly national in Mace-
donia in ancient times as it is in Sweden and Scotland in
modern da^^s. iElian has placed the name of Alexander
amongst those of distinguished drunkards. In a familiar line,
Pope has called x\lexander " Macedonia's madman." This
wonderful young man, who died at the age of thirty- two,
besides being a perfect master of the art of war, w^as a man of
cultivated and elegant tastes, a sagacious politician, and a
benefactor of the human race. We may safely leave his char-
acter to the enthusiastic praises of such men as Montesquieu
and Schlegel, and, above all of Bacon. All these men of
genius regarded Alexander as amongst the greatest of mere
men,

Trebellius Pollio, the Augustan liistorian, in his account of
the Macrian family, tells us that the men had the figure of
Alexander sculptured on their rings, and their silver plate ;
and that the women wore his figure in the net-work on their
heads, and in their bracelets {chxtrocherium is the word, mean-
ing the bracelet worn on the right arm,) and on every sort of
ornament, so that there were gowns and fringes and mantles in
the family at the time when Pollio wrote, which showed the
figure of Alexander in various fashions. He had seen Corne-
lius Macer when he gave a supper in the temple of Hercules,
present to the chief magistrate a goblet of electrum {paterum
dectrinam^) w^hich in the centre had the face of Alexander, while
the whole historj^ of Alexander was sculptured in minute
figures round its border. The cup, he says, was carried round
the whole company; all of them very fond of so great a man.
The historian adds, that it vras considered lucky to caiTy
about the person the figure of Alexander in gold or silver.*

The horses of great warriors — of Alexander, Ctesar, and

* Histori'B Augixstaj Scriptores," torn, ii, p. 296 Lup-d. Bat. 1371.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 63

the Cid of Spain — have had their appearance and characters
noticed in history. Alexander's Bucephalus has been sup-
posed to have derived his name from his head being hke that
of an ox; but Montaigne is in all probability right, when he
says that the name of " Ox-head" would merely denote that
he had a large head. In the same way, it is probable that
when Homer speaks of the " ox-eyes" of Juno, he merely
means that the eyes of the imperious queen of heaven were
large and round. A large head is not reckoned handsome,
either in a horse or in a woman ; but the numerous virtues of
Bucephalus w^ould atone for his want of personal beauty. He
had belonged to Philip, for whom he had been purchased for
thirteen talents.

When armed and adorned for the battle, he would allow^ no
one to mount him but Alexander. In the Indian war, he car-
ried his master into the heart of the enemy's ranks ; and being
mortally wounded in the neck and side, by a great effort he
brought him out again, and then fell down and died. Alexan-
der buried him with military honors, built a city on the place
where he was interred, and called it after his name.*

The Arabs attribute all the virtues of a horse to his moth-
er. The intellect of men is in general an inheritance from the
maternal side. If, however, intellect be hereditary, Alexander
on the side both of father and mother w^as singularly fortunate ;
and he seems to have inherited the great and good points of
both parents, with but little share of their vices. The great
abilities, splendid wit, beauty and intolerable arrogance of
Olympias, are matters of history. There is nothing in the
records of sarcasm finer than the reproof which she w^rote to
her son wdien, in the intoxication of vanity, he asserted his
divine parentage, commencing his letter to his mother with,

* Aulus Gellius, lib. v, c 2.

64 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

" Alexander, the son of Jupiter Amnion, sends health to his
mother."

"For my love," said Ol^^mpias in reply, "be quiet about
that, and do not bring me into trouble with Juno, who will
do me a mischief, if you represent me as her rival."*

What a world of satire on her son, on the pagan religion,
and on the jealous character of the queen of heaven ! and w^hat
a diverting religion it w^as which gave fair room for such
satire ! Another saying of Olympias is better than witty ; it
is great and generous. Phillip had fallen in love with a woman
of Thessaly, who, in the popular belief, was thought to have
made use of the magical arts, for which her country has
ahvays been renowned, to inflame the king's passion. Ol^^m-
pias caused her rival to be brought before her. She found
nothing to marvel at in her beauty, but after conversing with
her, she exclaimed: "Let slanders cease! your witchcraft is
in yourself!" What a compliment for a woman to receive from
a woman, and from such a woman as Olympias !

Alexander, besides his intellectual obligations to his mother,
was indebted to her for the beauty of his face. All the coins
and medals represent Alexander as bearing a striking resem-
blance to Olympias. Olympias has, in addition to a fine dou-
ble chin of her own, the large open eye, the fulness of face,
the Greek nose, and the exquisitely chiselled month of Alex-
ander.

In a very fine medal published in Snakenberg's Quintu^
Curtius, Olympias has her hair beautifully arranged with some
leaves gracefully intertwmed, and an ornament of a crescent
shape in front. In another coin or medallion the heads of
Alexander and his mother are placed together, and the resem-
blance is very remarkable.

Olympias has gained pardon from posterity for many great

* Aulus Gellius, lib. xiit, c 4.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 65

faults by the courage and calmness with which she met her
death, " submitting to her fate in such a way," says the histo-
rian, " that you might recognise Alexander in his dying moth-
er." Like Pol3^xena before her, and Csesar after her, in her
last moments she adjusted her robes and her hair, so as to be
graceful in death as she had been in her lifetime, carefully cov-
ering her bosom and limbs as she would wish to be seen.*

* Justin. Hist, xiv, c. 6. The reading has been much tortured by the
commentators : " Insuper expirans capillis et veste crura coiKcxiaso fertiir,
ne quid posset in corpore ejus indecorum videri." I have adopted the
reading of Graevius : " Insuper expirans papillas et veste crura contex-
isse fertur.'

DEMETKIUS. ^

Demetrius of Macedonia, called " the besieger of towns,"
was so very beautiful, that it was said no painter or sculptor
could do justice to the mingled grace and dignity of his face
and form, with which also his manners and conversation
admirably harmonized. This beauty he strove to improve,
according to the taste of his time, by art. Being naturally
pale, he used pigments to heighten his color.*

It is not improbable that, like the Roman Heliogabalus, he
in reality impaired his natural beauty by such effenunate
applications. To meet the requirements of his age, he dyed his
hair yellow by arts known in his time. The demand for golden
locks has not only led to the adoption of false hair, but to the
invention of scientific means of converting other colors into the
desired hue.

AVe know that Massalina, for the purpose of canying on
her infamous amors, hid her black hair w^ith yellow locks.f
Black hair was considered becoming in a matron, and yellow
hair was the color for youth. Those who imitated youth,
therefore, put on j^ellow hair, and hence it became the fashion

*^Elian, lib. ix, c. 9.

t Juvenal, " Sat." lib. vi, 120.

(06)

DEMETRIUS. * 67

adopted by unchaste women under the empire. The same
notion has prevailed in many ages in Europe. Mary Queen
of Scots wore false yellow hair. In the " Merchant of Ve-
nice," Bassanio, in an extremely beautiful passage, says :

'<Look on beauty,
And you shall see it purchased by the weight
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it ;
So are those crisped, snaky, golden locks,
Which make such wanton gambols with the .vind
Upon supposed fairness, often known
To be the dowry of a second head—
The scull that bred them in the sepulchre. '

The art of making the hair yellow or fair, has been known
and practised from a very remote period, and is familiarly
spoken of by ancient writers. Besides what he says about
Demetrius, ^Elian, speaking about Atalanta, tells us that " the
color of her hair was yellow, produced, not by any womanly
art or by tinctures or drugs administered, but altogether
natural"* ^Elian could not have spoken in this way if the
art had not been well known in his time. It is particularly
noticed by Tertullian in his interesting work on the ornaments
of women. " I see some of you," he writes to his " very dear
sisters in Christ," his black-haired countrywomen, " constantly
occupied in giving their hair a fair color. They are alinoet
ashamed of their country ; they are vexed at not having been
born in Gaul or Germany."!

As it has alwa^^s been considered lawful to draw people to
what is right by appealing to the motives by which they are
most likely to be influenced, Tertullian leaves the high ground
of denouncing these arts as inventions of the fallen angels, and

* iElian, lib. xii, c. 1.

t Tertullian, •' De Cultu Freminarum," lib it, c. 6 ; Opera i, 15G. Lut.
Par. 1664.

68 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

tells his countrywomen that by these processes the hair is lost,
and that the brain itself is enfeebled by the use of the liquors
employed, and " by the excessive heat of the sun in which you
take pleasure, in inflaming and drying your heads." The no-
tion that black hair became matronly years is alluded to by
Tertullian in this treatise. " There comes a time, however,"
he says, " when they strive to change their fair hair into black
— when, arrived at a fatal old age, they are grieved at having
hved too long."

St. Jerome, writing ne'arly two centuries later, notices the
dying of hair red. "Thou shalt not," says this vehement
father, " turn your hair red, making it ominous of the fires of
hell" (nee capillum inrufes et ei aliquid de gehennse ignibus
auspiceris.)

The strange art of converting black or dark-colored hair
into fair has been practised in modern times. The following
extract is from Mrs. Jameson's " Memoirs and Essays illustra-
tive of Art, Literature, and Social Morals." It is an interest-
ing commentary on the extracts from Tertullian, and shows
that what w^as known to the Venetian ladies in the sixteenth
century, was also familiar to the women of Carthage in the
second, as it was also to the Greeks long before the Christian
era ! Truly, there is nothing new under the sun in human
vanity.

""With regard to the Venetian women, every one must re-
member, in the Venetian pictures, not only the peculiar luxu-
riance, but the peculiar color of the hair, of every golden tint,
from a rich full shade of auburn to a sort of yellow flaxen hue,
or rather not flaxen, but like raw silk, such as we have seen
the peasants in Lombardy carrying over their arms, or on their
heads, in great shining twisted heaps. I have sometimes heard
it asked with wonder, whether those pale, golden masses of
hair — the true hiondina tint — could have been always natural ?

{

D£METRIUS. 69

On the contrary, it was often artificial — the color, not the
hair.

" In the days of the elder Palma and Georgione, yellow
hair was the fashion, and the paler the tint the more admired.
The women had a method of discharging the natural color by
first washing their tresses in some chemical preparation, and
then exposing them to the sun. I have seen a curious old Ve-
netian print, perhaps satirical, which represents the process.
A lady is seated on the roof, or balcony, of her house, wear-
ing a sort of broad-brimmed hat without a crown. The lon^r
hair is drawn over these wide brims, and spread out in the
sunshine, while the face is completely shaded."

Besides the coloring of the hair by what may be called a
chemical process, destroying the original color, the ancients
resorted to the less artificial and meclianical mode of making
their hair of the desired yellow by sprinkling it with a golden
powder. The elder Galenius, the emperor, used this powder.*
I do not know whether it be from a notion of its being beauti-
ful that many of the Arabs of Aden make their hair yellow
by the use of clay of that color.

^lian uses a very strong expression, which reminds us of
the terms in which the use of ointments on the person is spo-
ken of in the Hebrew Scriptures, when he says that Deme-
trius himself and his pavement flowed with unguents. The
fresh flowers of every season were strewed below him that he
might walk among them. This use of flowers, as it has some-
thing in it of a passion for the charms of nature, is certainly
the most defensible, as it is the most refined and elegant of
Sybarite luxuries.

Heliogabalus, otherwise a contemptible creature in compari-
son with Demetrius, according to the Augustan historian,

* Trebellius Pollio, "Hist. Aug. Scriptores," lib. n, p. 232.

70 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

strewed his seats, his beds, and the porticos of his houses with
roses, and walked amongst lihes and violets, hyacinths and
narcissuses. When the younger Dionysius revelled with the
women of Locria, he filled the insides of his palaces with roses
and wild thyme. The Emperor Galienus, the elder, lay on
beds of roses, which he procured even in spring.

^han has devoted a chapter to the history of two S3'barites
— Straton of Sidon, and Nicocles of Cyprus — w^ho contended
W'ith each other who should be most magnificent, luxurious,
and delicate ; and w^ien the one heard of any great exhibition
of splendid voluptuousness on the part of the other, he made it
his business to throw it into the shade by something still more
extraordinary. At his suppers, Straton was surrounded with
beautiful women, singing, playing on instruments, and danc-
ing. " Yet," says ^lian, gravely, " neither of these princes
could indulge in these pleasures for ever ; but both were re-
moved from the world by a violent death."*

Polysenus tells us that Nicocles hanged himself Of Straton
we learn that fearing to fall into the hands of the Persians, he
wished to slay himself, but got frightened at the sight of the
naked sword, and resolved to await his fate, when his wife,
snatching the weapon from his trembling hand, pierced him
through with it, and then stabbing herself mortall}^, threw
herself into his arms and died. The ancients would have
called this a good wife. •

But Demetrius could unite the character of the warrior
and the politician with that of the voluptuary. The union is
not common, but is not unexampled. In well-authenticated
history, the Eoman Emperor Otho is the most perfect example
of this strange mixture of the most luxurious effeminacy and
the utmost heroism of soul. Surena, the Parthian general,
who conducted the war against the Romans, w^as an Otho ou

*aElian, lib. vir, c 2.»

DEMETKIUS. 71

a less conspicuous field. History pronounces him to have
been the greatest warrior, the ablest politician, and the tallest
and most beautiful man of his time amongst the Parthians.*
In his expeditions he had a thousand camels bearing luggage,
and two hundred carriages conveying the women of his harem.
Though always the foremost man in the field or in the assault
on the fortified city, Surena's beauty was distinctly of a femi-
nine cast ; and while it was the Parthian custom to let the hair
grow wild and shaggy, in order to stril^e terror into their foes,
their heroic general, the most warlike amongst them, painted
his face, and parted his locks effeminately on his forehead,
after the luxurious fashion of the Medes. On the part of
Surena, who carried with him in all his marches a train of the
most beautiful Parthian w'omen, and spent his nights with
them in feasting and licentious singing and dancing, it was
bitter mockery when he show^ed his court the indecent books
of Aristides, w^hich had fallen into his hands amongst the bag-
gage of the Romans, as evidence of the luxuriousness of their
enemies, who could not travel without such things.

Amongst warlike and energetic monarchs wdio were at the
same time addicted to those soft vices which usually break
down all manliness of character, the History of England
gives us Edgar, Henry II., and Edward IV. France pre-
sents us with Erancis I. and Henry TV., and the Germ^an
empire gives us Ffederick, the great opponent of ecclesiastical
despotism in the thirteenth century. Ladislaus, king of Na-
ples, who w'as murdered by a young woman of Florence by
means of a poisoned handkerchief, w^as a man of this stamp.
" This good captain," says Montaigne, " courageous and am-
bitious, proposed to himself, as the chief end of his ambition,
the completion of his pleasure and the enjoyment of some rare
beauty, t

* Pkitaich, " Crasus3." t Montaigne, "Essais, p. 537.

72 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

In the other sex this character is not so rare as amongst
men. Prom the Semiramis of Assyria to the Semiramis of
the North, Catharine of Russia, there is a well filled up list of
women, illustrious for their heroic spirit and infamous for their
licentious passions.

Beauty, voluptuousness, and valor were met in the famed
queen of Assyria. " Semiramis," says ^lian, " was of all wo-
men most beautiful, but careless of her charms."* There is
amongst the portraits of Gronoviusf a full-length figure of
this remarkable woman, robed closely to the feet, with a slen-
der coronet on her head, and attended by a dove. Ancient
fable relates that as her mother, Dercete, was after death
changed into a fish with the face of a beautiful woman, so Se-
miramis was metamorphosed into a dove, which hence became
the Babylonian emblem. The dove is the bird of Venus, the
representative of tenderness and love; and the transmigration
of the soul of Semiramis was characteristic of the softer pas-
sions of that warlike woman.

Justin tells us something about her person. "When she
passed herself off as the son and not the widow of Ninus, Se-
miramis was aided by the circumstance that both were about
the same stature, both had the same slender voice, and both
in features resembled each other. She covered her arms and
legs with her robe, and placed a tiara on her head; and in
order that she might not appear to be concealing any thing
under this dress, she commanded the whole people to be
attired in the same way, in consequence of which this dress
became national. | This is the dress in which she appears in
the picture in Gronovius.

^han tells us that Semiramis did not exult when in the
chase she captured a lion, but was proud when she took a

* uElian, lib. vn, c. 1.

t Gronovius, "Thesaurus Antiq. Gra^carum," torn i. Note.

X Justin, lib. i, c. 1.

DEMETRIUS. 73

lioness, the clanger of the feat being esteemed as much
greater.*

It is really a pretty story which is told of Semiramis by
Valerius Maximus. She was one day dressing her hair when
tidings reached her that Babylon had revolted. She had got
the curls on one side of her head to her mind, but the tresses
on the other were still in loose disorder. But she threw her-
self, as she was, at the head of her soldiers, and flew to the
siege, and did not complete her toilet till she had first reduced
the city to obedience. Her statue in Babylon represented her
as she appeared on that day before its walls.f

It is somewhat remarkable that Sir Walter Ealeigh, who,
in his melancholy and grand history, has more than once ex-
pressed the most false opinions about the wickedness of wo-
man, refuses to beheve the voice of all history regarding the
licentiousness of Semiramis. " For her vicious life," he says,
" I ascribe the report thereof to the envious and lying Gre-
cians." His reasons for disbelief are, however, such as cannot
be allowed to invalidate a historical relation. " For delicacie
and ease," he continues, " do more often accompanie hcen-
tiousnesse in men and women than labour and hazzard do."J

I have already shown that this rule, as regards men, is not
without its exceptions ; as regards w^omen, it is still less to be
looked on as universal. The licentiousness of Semiramis is
established by constant and uniform historical tradition. Thus
Juvenal, speaking of the effeminate arts of the Emperor Otho,
who applied plasters of bread to his face to make it delicate,
declares that this was w^hat neither Semiramis nor Cleopatra
did.^ Diodorus represents her as building a palace, and con-
structing gardens in one of her cities, and making her habita-

* ^lian XII. c. 39.

t Valerius Maximus, lib. ix, c. in. sec. 4.

t Raleigh, " History' of the World," booki. c 12, sec. 4. Lond. 1614.
§ Juvenalis, " Sat." lib. ii. p. 108.
4

74 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

tion remarkable in the same way as in modern history the
tower of Nesle" is by the amors of the French princesses.*
Procopius, in his " Anecdota," in which he has so many things
to tell of the wickedness of women, refers as to an undoubted
fact to the dissolute life of tSemiramis (Ss,utpa^t6oj axo%a^rov
/3ioj/.)t And our own Shakspere has embodied the spirit of
ancient histor}^ regarding this famous woman —

** Or wilt thou sleep r we'll have thee to a couch,
Softer and sweeter than the lustful bed
On purpose trimm'd up for Semiramis." J

* Diod. Siculus," lib. n, c. 13.

t Procopius, " Anecdota," p. 0. Lip sias, 1827.

t "Tamins: of the Shrew." Ind. sc. 2.

SCIPIO AFEICANUS

The younger Scipio Africanus, according to the testimony
of his friend the historian Polybius, which is followed by Livy
and ^liau, w^as extremely beautiful. His person appears to
have indicated his amiable and elegant mind. He studied the
Greek literature, and anticipated the cultivation of the age of
Augustus. " He had nothing of the old Eoman severity about
him," says Michelet; " his was rather a Greek genius resem-
bling that of Alexander."

Livy has a passage about Scipio, which gives us a high
idea of his prepossessing personal appearance, from the im-
pression which it made on Massanissa. He tells us that Mas-
sanissa, being desirous of entering into an alliance with the
Romans, had formed a great admiration of Scipio from the
fame of his actions, and had conceived in his mind that the
hero was vast and stately in his person. Scipio, says the his-
torian, had much majesty in his nature. His hair was long
and flowing. His person was not scrupulously adorned, but
manly and truly military. Being then just recovered from
a sickness, he appeared as if he had been in the flower of his
youth.* From a passage in Tacitus, in reference to German-
icus, we learn that Scipio walked without retinue, with uncov-
ered feet, and in a similar dress w4th his soldiers.f

* Lirms, lib, xxvin, t Tacitus, " Annales," it, c. 59.

(75)

SYLLA.

The famous dictator Sylla considered himself, and was
regarded by others, as a beauty. He had yellow hair, with a
complexion in which red and white were strangely contrasted.
His eyes were of a lively blue, and fierce and threatening.
Owing to the mixture of colors in his face, Plutarch, from
whom we have these particulars about Sylla's person, tells us
that a satirist of the time compared it to a mulberry strewed
with flour. Sylla, who beheved himself to be the handsomest
man of his time, grounded his claims mainly on his fine hair.
"When the soothsayers announced that the troubles of Home
were to be settled by a man of courage and superior beauty,
Sylla declared that this could be none other than himself; —
" for my golden hair," he said, " sufiiciently proves my beauty
— and after what I have achieved, I need not hesitate in avow-
ing myself a man of courage."*

Sylla was reckoned the most fortunate man of his times;
and we find from the excuse which a woman made for touch-
ing him with her hand, as he sat in the theatre, that it was
with the ancients, as it is with the moderns, considered lucky

* Plutarch, •'Sylla."

{76)

SYLLA. 77

to touch a lucky person. From youth to age, he was an in-
discreet admirer of female beauty, and was passionately be-
loved by the sex. Plutarch appears to be right in believino-
that he was not naturally cruel, notwithstanding the crimes
into which his position and desire to rule drove him. His pas-
sion for a country life, and his actual retirement from the city,
and his pursuit of rural sports and fishing, are curious traits
in his character.

CLEOPATEA.

The charms of Cleopatra, the renowned Queen of Egypt,
are more celebrated than the beauty of any other woman
named in history, with the exception of Helen of Troy. His-
torians, hearing of her fascinations, have attributed them all
to mere face and form. Thus Dion assumes that she was the
most beautiful of all women. Yet, though her perfections
affected the course of this world's history, there is reason to
believe the testimony of Plutarch, that the beauty of her fiice
and figure w^as not remarkable beyond that of women of whose
attraction less has been said and written. In stature she was
small. Michelet calls her " a little wonder ;" and, in his
usual picturesque style, in allusion to her having got herself
conveyed to Csesar when he was in Alexandria, in a bundle
of clothes, says, " The height of her who v>'as carried to
Csesar, wrapped up in a bundle upon the shoulders of Apollo-
dorus, coAild not have been very imposing." The heads of
Cleopatra', on medals and coins, represent her as bearing a
considerable resemblance in features to her second lover, An-
tony. As in him, the chin and nose are rather hooked,

{78)

CLEOPATRA. 79

threatening an unpleasant approximation at an early age. The
cose of Cleopatra is also not so decidedly feminine as a sound
taste would demand.

All accounts, however, agree in attributing to Cleopatra an
infinite variety of accomplishments, the rarest literary acquire-
ments, a knowledge of languages only equalled in ancient
times by that attributed to Mithridates, the marvellous king
of Pontus, the finest taste in the arts, an unexplainable grace
in her manners, the most bewitching powers of conversation,
and a tone of voice which made those powers irresistible.
Dion, who says that she excelled all other women in elegance
of form, tells us that there was such a grace in her voice, that
udth whatever man she spoke, she could wheedle him with
this charm, and could draw any one, however averse to love
by nature or years, to be enamored of her.*

Cleopatra was in her twentieth year w^hen she captivated
Julius Caesar ; and she was twenty-five when Antony became
her admirer. Anton}'-, however, it is stated by Appian, when
he was general-of the horse in Egypt, under Gabinius, had
seen Cleopatra, then a child, and conceived a love for her.f
At her death she was in her fortieth year, and it is evident
that at that age she did not despair of charming Augustus ;
and if she failed there, it is not fair to attribute her want of
success to any decay in her powers of pleasing, but to her
having, in that selfish and cold-blooded politician, the very
worst subject possible to work upon.

The amors of Cleopatra with Julius, are forgotten by the
general reader in the greater celebrity and greater historical
consequences of her love of Marc Antony. As I shall notice
in the sketch of Julius, Merivale attributes a deteriorating in-
fiuence over his mind from his passion for the Egyptian
Queen. I am not able to trace a false step in all the splendid

* Dion. Cassius, "Hist. Rom." lib. xlii, c. 42, p. 201.
f Appian, " De Bell. Civ." lib. v, c. 8.

80 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTEAITS.

career of Csesar. Dion, however, gives support to the opinion
of this excellent historian, and alludes to actions of Caesar
which he did purely out of love to Cleopatra; and he tells
us that on their first meeting, Caesar became her slave. It is
a strong expression to apply to one of the most vigorously
minded men that ever Hved ; but Csesar was also the most
refined man of his time, and experience testifies that all culti-
vation of the mind only weakens its powders of resisting the
fascination of beauty and graceful manners.

" On women, nature did bestow two eyes

Like heaven's bright lamps in matchless beauty shining,

Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise,

And learned heads made rare by art's refining."

I have noticed the introduction of Cleopatra, by stealth,
into the presence of Caesar. "When Apollodorus laid down
his precious burden, there took place a remarkable inter-
view. It was an interview between the two most intellectu-
ally gifted persons who perhaps ever met together, the two
most accomplished persons of their age, perhaps of any age.
Never in this world, either before or since, did such a pair
meet in one apartment, in one city, in one country. Nature
had prodigally lavished all her graces on both the man and
the woman, and both had cultivated all the faculties of their
minds with the utmost assiduity and the most splendid suc-
cess. As has been observed of others who have fallen in
love together, there were several points of resemblance be-
tween the two. Both w^ere amongst the most learned per-
sons of their times, both had a passion for an elegant,
refined, and magnificent voluptuousness, both had an orna-
mental Greek cast of mind, both were of high courage,
both were fearless of danger and death, and both were irre-
ligious, or rather the religion of both was of that kind
which prevailed amongst the Egyptians and the Greeks, and

CLEOPATRA. §1

which taught that the certainty and quick approach of
death, and fhe thick darkness which hung over the nature and
the very existence of the future and unseen world, were the
most powerful reasons for making the best use of the present ;
motives calling on them to eat, drink, and be "merry, and par-
ticularly to love ; that spirit w^hich gives its bright lights and
its deep shades to the finest ode of Catullus : " Yivamus, mea
Lesbia, et amenus."

The conversation betw^een Csesar and Cleopatra, in all pro-
bability, was carried on in Greek, being the court language of
the time ; and being also, as we learn from Martial and Juve-
nal and other authorities, the language of love amongst the
Romans.

Plutarch represents Cleopatra at twenty-five, as feeling cer-
tain that when she appeared before him, Antony would not be
able to resist her in the ripeness of her beauty and under-
standing, seeing that when an inexperienced girl, and ignorant
of the world, she had made a conquest of Caesar and of the
son of Pompey.

Bayle is extremely pleased wath this reasoning of Cleopa-
tra's, and has in niore than one place taken an opportunity of
enforcing his doctrine of the powerlessness of mere beauty of
face and person when not supported by intellectual resources.
" This argument," he says, " is much better than those per-
sons imagine who only talk about girls of fifteen, of roses half
blowm, and with whom twenty is an entrance upon old age —
impertinent persons, who might easily discover, both by what
is passing in their own times, and by the history of former
ages, that the women wdio have most charmed great princes,
and have made the greatest disturbances in courts, were of an
age which enabled them to acquire an experience in business,
and to perfect their understanding, and that there are few

82 CLASSIC AND HISTOKIC PORTRAITS.

whose empire is of long duration if the graces of the niind do
not second those of the body."*

And again, in speaking of Csesonia, the wife of Caligula,
Bayle says : " It is strange that this woman, being neither
young nor beautiful, and having already had three children to
her husband, w^s able to inspire a passion so ardent and so
constant in this barbarian ; but, however much may be said
about the first flower of youth, it will be seen, if the matter
is carefully considered, that the address and practice of a wo-
man of from thirty to forty uphold her reign better when she
is mistress of a prince, than the mere beauty of a girl
would do."t

Plutarch lets us know that Cleopatra was neither younger
nor more beautiful than Antony's virtuous wife Octavia ;
and founding upon this information, Brantome has gone the
length of nearly disallowing any beauty whatever to Cleopa-
tra, and of asserting that Octavia was a hundred times pret-
tier, and that it was entirely Cleopatra's talk that seduced
Antony. " It was on this account," he says, " that Marc An-
tony loved Cleopatra so much, and preferred her to his wife
Octavia, who was a hundred times more loveable {aimable)
and beautiful than Cleopatra; but this Cleopatra had so deli-
cate a discourse {la parole si affectee,) and her w^ords were so
much to the purpose, with her loose fashions and graces, that
Antony forgot every thing for her love."J

Cleopatra's voice has been compared to an instrument of
many strings. There is a voice in some women, which, by
some not easily explainable sympathy between it and those
who listen to it, will do almost any thing ; it will atone for
the want of youth and beauty, and has a power which may

* Bayle. Art. «• Dellius."

t Bayle. Art. '« Caligula."

X Brantome, "Dames Galantes,*' CEuvres, tom. iii, p. 279.

CLEOPATRA. 83

without a figure of speech be called magical. It will make a
set of insipid verses appear in the reading to be the poetry of
the heart; it will carry through a worthless drama, and
make it pass for a fine tragedy.

It is one half the battle with an actress if she appear on the
stage with a voice of this kind. To such a voice as this it is
said Madame Roland owed in a great measure the strange
fascination which her e oquence exerted on all who came with-
in the circle of her attractions.

Miss Kavanagh, following the contemporary authorities,
has attempted to describe it. " Great as w^as the power of •
her personal charms, it yielded to that of her voice. Those
who had heard it once could never forget it again. The low,
clear tones — so mellow and so deep — haunted them like a
strain of exquisite melody through years, long after she who
gave them utterance had perished on a scaifold."*

Madame Roland herself was sensible what a gift this is, and
has left it on record that the voice of her husband, " Roland
the Just," was not a w'ell-modulated one. To this voice of
hers, and the infectious nature of political fanaticism, Madame
Roland's influence in her day is chiefly to be attributed. Her
character is not an amiable one. I can never read the fate
of Marie Antoinette without sorrow; but I confess that I
think that the death of Madame Roland was just a piece of
retributive justice, and I have no pity to afford her.

The Roman writers have used the strongest terms to des-
cribe the madness of Antony's passion for Cleopatra — that
passion for which it is not an heroic exaggeration to say that
he lost the empire of the world ; for he undoubtedly entered
on the contest for the prize with an amount of favor and pop-
ularity with the Romans, both citizens and soldiers, of w^hich
his successful rival Octavius was destitute.

* «• Women of France," vol. ii, p. 141.

84 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC POETRAITS.

" After the death of Cassius and Brutus," says Appian,
" Caesar went to Ital}'-, and Antony proceeded to Asia, where
Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt, having met him, instantly con-
quered him at first sight ; and their love brought destruction
on themselves, and after them entailed numerous ills on all
Egypt."* " i\.ntony," he says in another place, " wounded in
soul at the sight of her, presently began to love her as if he
were a boy, although he was then forty years of age, having,
as is said, always had a disposition for such passions. "f

The historian represents him as throwing aside all the for-
mer energy of his nature, following only the commands of
Cleopatra, with an utter disregard to all laws, human and
divine. " All the great army," says the same writer, " with
which Antony terrified the Bactrians and the Indians more
remote than these, Cleopatra alone rendered of no avail, for
out of his desire for her he did not commence the war at the
proper time, and he did every thing without consideration, not
being master of his senses, and so enslaved by the witchcraft
of that woman, that he thought not so much of victory as of
a speedy return to her.'"J

Dion speaks in a similar manner. '' Antony, seized with the
love of Cleopatra, cared nothing henceforth for honour, but
served the Egyptian woman. "<^ Our own Br. South, in his
admirable sermon on "ill-disposed affections the cause of error
in judgment," has noticed the weakness of Antony with his
usual vigor of language and closeness of logic. " Show me "
he says, " so much as one wise counsel or action of Marcus
Antonius, a person otherwise both valiant and eloquent, after
that he had subdued his understanding to his aflTections, and
his aiiections to Cleopatra !"

* Appian, «'De Bell. Civ." lib v. c. 1.

t Ibid. lib. Y. c. 8.

t Appian '« Parthica." Opera, lib. iv, p. 276. Lipsia^, 1829.

^ Dion, lib xltiii, p. 371.

CLEOPATRA. bo

Cleopatra was certainly no model of purity, but her \Yickecl-
ness has been exaggerated by the Eoman ^Yriters. Dion
speaks of her extreme general licentiousness.* Her wicked-
ness and her beauty have been exaggerated in the purest spi-
rit of romance by Aurehus Yictor.f Yet her amors wdth
Caesar and with Antony, and her unsuccessful attempt upon
Octavius, appear to have been mingled in her mind with a
desire to preserve the independence of her sovereignty.
TVomen are generally religious, and much worse women
than Cleopatra was — for she was a saint in comparison with
many of the Eoman queens, even Christian queens — have been
devout. This alleviation or aggravation of her guilt, which-
ever it may be called, it does not appear that Cleopatra could
plead.

Amongst her other wild freaks with Antony, Cleopatra, the
queen of a deeply rehgious people — the people who had torn
in pieces the Eoman soldier who, by accident, had killed a
sacred cat — appeared in the garb and character of the awful
Isis — whose veil, the ancient inscription said, no mortal had
ever removed — while the graceless Antony acted the part of
her Osiris.

Our notions of a charming woman are terribly shocked
when we hear of Cleopatra, even in the presence of Octavius,
flying at one of her slaves, and tearing his face with her
nails. I do not know if we are more or less shocked at this
than at hearing how the philosophical Cato, before proceeding
to meditate with Plato on the immortality of the soul, gave
his attendant a blow on the mouth because he had consid-
erately removed his sword, fearing that his master was about
to do himself a mischief

But the ideas of different ages and countries are very dis-

* Dion, lib. li, p. 453.

t S. Aurelius Victor : " Usee tantie libidinis fuit, ut s?epe prostiterit ;
tantEC piilchritudinis, ut multi noctem illius morte emerint."

66 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

similar in matters of this kind. Even in fiction, where the
writer has it in his power to make all his great people decor-
ous and amiable, we find, in the " Arabian Nights' Entertain-
ments," the most accomplished ladies doing as Cleopatra
did. Badoura, the charming Princess of China, seizes her
nurse by the hair of the head, and beats her till her face is
covered with blood.

But even in Cleopatra's days, it is gratifying to find that
Ovid, in that book of his " Art of Love," which is devoted
to instructing the fair sex how to make themselves agreeable,
expresses his repulsion to a W'Oman who loses her temper, and
beats or scratches her maid-servant.

There was a Lucrezia Gonzagua, a learned w-oman of the
sixteenth century, whose name has descended to the present
day with the warmest commendations of her erudition, virtue
and piety. Her injudicious admirers published her epistolary
correspondence as far as it could be collected, including the
letters which she wrote on her purely household aff'airs. A
quotation is made from one of these letters by Bayle, the
efiect of W'hich is to destroy all the reputation for goodness
which her friends have endeavored to rear up for her. She is
wanting to Lucia, who appears to have been at the head of
her domestic establishment, about a maid, Livia, and says:
" If Livia is not obedient to 3"ou, lift her petticoats to her head,
and whip her till her flesh be blue, and the blood ran down to
her heels." Such letters as these, Bayle calmly says, might
have been suppressed without doing injury to the writer.* 1
believe Lucrezia Gonzagua was an impudent woman, and a
hypocrite in morality and religion.

Plutarch has given us a great part of the information w^hich
we have about Cleopatra. He had, he tells us, picked up from

* Bayle. Art. " Gonzague," [Lucrece.] **Se Livia non vie obbedi-
ente, alzatele in capo i drappi e datelene tante che le carni si facciano
livide e il sangue le scorra sino alle calcasne "

CLEOPATRA. 87

his grandfather all that could be learned of the history of her
and Antony ; and whilst Plutarch is censurable for inaccuracy
in dates, and in the drier parts of history, this was just a sub-
ject on which this peculiarly interesting writer would be de-
sirous of being correct, and well-informed.

The arts which Cleopatra had practised through life did not
desert her in her final unsuccessful struggle. " She played
boldly," says Merivale, " with the loaded die, and threw her
last cast with a hand that had never faltered."* Her last
effort to preserve her independence is well described by Dion.
When she received Octavius, she was lying on a splendid
couch, highly adorned, but in mourning-weeds; which, the
historian tells us, became her wonderfully well. She was sur-
rounded by the portraits of Julius, and had the letters of her
illustrious lover in her bosom. She wept and kissed the let-
ters, and threw herself down before the bust of Caesar, and
adored it. She then turned her eyes towards Octavius, and
spoke to him in those tones which had melted the souls of Ju-
lius and Antony, but they were lost upon the heartless trium-
vir, who afterwards in cold blood murdered the boy whom
Cleopatra was pleased to call the child of Julius.

The queen was vexed that Octavius said nothing about her
kingdom, and spoke not a word of love; she threw herself at
his feet, but drew from him nothing but harsh reproaches.
This was not the language which she had been accustomed to
hear, when she chose to exert her powers of seducing and
pleasing. Octavius, who was anxious to prevent her from
committingr suicide, left her in what he believed to be safe
custody.

But Cleopatra disappointed the insolent conqueror of the
gratification which he had proposed to himself in dragging

* Merivale, "History of the Romans under the Empire," iii, p. 336.
Lond. 1851.

88 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

along- the great enchantress in his triumphal procession. She
had learnedly studied the nature of various poisons, in order
to ascertain which produced the easiest death. " The true
euthanasia," says Merivale, " she discovered, it is said, in the
bite of the asp, which suffused the brain with languor and
forgetfulness, and extinguished the faculties without any sense
of suffering."

The bite of the asp of Egypt, according to the ancients, is
followed by a desire of sleep, and a death without pain. An
asp w-as brought into the queen's apartment, concealed in a
basket of figs. The sight of her deliverer filled her with joy.
Cleopatra died in a manner characteristic of her elegant tastes
— and the Homan writers, hired to load her memory w4th exe-
cration, are imable to speak of her last moments w^ithout admi-
ration. She adorned herself in her richest robes, and had the
dead body of Antony placed beside her on a golden couch.
She anointed herself with perfumes, while her maids placed
the royal diadem of Egypt on her head. She then applied the
asp to her veins, and slept into death.

The anointing of the body with perfumes was an ancient
mode of preparing for death. Frenshemius, in a note on
the passage in Florus, in which the historian notices the
death of Cleopatra, remarks that the practice is not con-
demned by our Saviour. The reference of the commentator
is to that pathetic and beautiful passage in the Gospel
w^here, when the disciples murmured against the w'oman who
poured the alabaster-box of precious ointment on his head,
our Lord says, " Why trouble ye the woman ? for she hath
wrought a good ^vork upon me. For in that she hath poured
this ointment on my head, she did it for my burial. Verily I
say unto you, wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in
the whole world, there shall also this which this ^voman hath
done be told for a memorial of her."

The scene after Cleopatra's death is described by Plutarch

CLEOPATRA. 89

with great picturesque beauty. When the officers of Augus-
tus burst into the apartment, Cleopatra was dead, and her
maid Iras had also expired at her feet. Charmion, the other
maid, half- fainting, was placing the diadem aright on the
queen's brow. " "Was this well done ?" said one of the offi-
cers. " Perfectly w^ell," said Charmion, " and worthy the
daughter of the King of Egypt," and Charmion then fell down
dead.

There were no discolorations or spots, the usual indications
of poison, to be found on the body of Cleopatra. The marks
of two small punctures were, it is said, discovered on her arm
— and Octavius employed the Egyptian serpent-charmers in
the vain attempt to bring her to life again.

In the triumphal procession of the conqueror, the image of
Cleopatra had two serpents twined about the arms. A golden
statue of her w^as placed in the temple of Venus, round the
walls of which several ornaments, which belonged to her, were
suspended.

Mrs. Jameson, in describing the Cleopatra of Shakspeare,
has described the real Cleopatra. " Her mental accomplish-
ments, her unequalled graces, her woman's wit and woman's
wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of irregular
grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of
imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her false-
hood, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility
to flattery, her magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gor-
geous Eastern coloring of her character — all these contradic-
tory elements has Shakspeare seized, mingled them in their
extremes, and fused them into one brilliant impersonation
of classical elegance, oriental voluptuousness, and gipsey
sorcery."*

* " Characteristics of Women," vol. ii, p. 123.

JULIUS C^SAR

We have, fortunately, a complete-enough portrait of Julius
Caesar, and we know a good deal, though not nearly so much
as it would be desirable that we knew, of his habits and mode
of life. He was a tall, slender, well-made man, with a long
pale face ; his brow was high but not broad ; he had dark,
sparkling eyes, and his mouth was rather large. " A slight
puffing of the under lip," says Merivale, " which may be
traced in some of his best busts, must undoubtedly have de-
tracted from the admirable contom' of his countenance." Yet
he was still reckoned handsome, and in his moments of
vanity he delighted to trace his descent through his ancestor,
lulus, to the love of the goddess of beauty for the mortal An-
chises ; while the name of his ancestress, Venus, was actually
stamped on some of his coins.

His features, it is said, had something of the feminine
grace which afterwards appeared in his nephew Octavius.
Velleius Paterculus, who, however, is accused of flattering
the emperors, tells us that Julius was the most eminent in
beauty of all the citizens.* His coins and busts represent him

♦ Velleius Pater. " Hist. Horn." lib. ii, p. 149. Lugd. Bat. 16o3.

(90)

JULIUS C^SAR. 91

in his declining years, when his brow was furrowed with deep
and painful thought, and when the alternate military severity
and licentious indulgence of his early life had brought on pre-
mature decay. In youth he had in a great measure deserved
the praise of Yelleius. It was then that he affected that care-
lessness in dress, in reference to which Sylla was constantly
urging the aristocracy — none of whom, with the exception of
himself, was capable of measuring the grandeur of Csesar's
soul, or the vastness of the ambition by which it was devoured
— to beware of " the ill-girt boy" {fuermn male j^TCEcinctiim.Y

Julius, however, when a youth, uiight, out of policy indulge
in the loose dress of the debauchees of the time, while he was
secretly meditating schemes of future greatness ; or, possibly,
while pursuing his pleasures, a negligence in matters of dress
might be part of his system. Ovid, living very near his time,
has expressly recommended carelessness of costume as a means
of attraction, alleging that it was b}^ a total neglect of hair-
dressing, and sucli like ibpperies, that Theseus had won the
beautiful Ariadne ; and that the greatest achievements in
conquering hearts had been made by men who took no pains
in adorning their persons. f

Michelet, in his history of Rome, has a fine picture of Caesar.
" I should like," he says, " to have seen this white and pale
figure, faded before its time by the debauches of Eome, this
delicate epileptic man, marching under the rains of Gaul, at
the head of his legions, swimming over rivers, or riding on
horseback between the litters in which his secretaries were
carried." Seutonius, in a short chapter, (the fifty-seventh,)
has furnished, the idea so beautifully brought out here.

In manhood, and in his latter years, the once " ill-girt boy"
paid attention to the neatness of his attire. He shaved care-
full\r — there is no bust or coin of Ctesar with a beard— he was

* Seiitouius, " Julius,'- c. 45. t Ovid, " Ars. Amat." lib. i.

92 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

fond of gems and je\Ye]s, and loved a becoming magnificence
in his houses.

Caesar, thougli his health was generally good, was subject
to starting in his sleep, to fainting, and to the falling sickness,
having twice been seized with epileps}^ in public. This latter
malady is generally found in connection with feebleness of
mind, or rather tends to induce mental w^eakness. Merivale,
in noticing the case of Caesar, mentions that Napoleon had
attacks of epilepsy. Caesar's intellect certainly is amongst the
very highest that ever shone upon the world. The story that
Mahomet, a ^lan of the most vigorous mind, was subject to
falling sickness, is unknown to genuine history, being a fable
invented by his Christian opponents.

Caesar's baldness, with the notion w^hich the ancients at-
tached to the falling of the hair from the head, subjected
him to much ridicule. His soldiers, wdien they accom-
panied him in his Gallic triumph, with the license ac-
corded to them on such occasions, did not fail to jeer him on
this score.* He tried as far as he could to conceal this defect
by bringing forward his hair ; and, as I have elsewhere no-
ticed, of all the honors conferred upon him by the Senate, that
w^hich most delighted his heart was the right of continually
w^earino- the laurel w^reath round his brows.

The historians who have most severely censured Caesar's
want of chastity, have allowed that he was temperate in eat-
ing and drinking.f

Caesar's eloquence was of the very highest and most effective
order. Cicero confessed that he did not know any orator to
whom Caesar ought to give place. He spoke, w^e are told,
with a shrill voice, and used much gesture, but wath great
gracefulness. His language was just what might have been
expected of him — the image of his mind. It was, according

* Suetonius, "Julius," c. 51.
t Ibid. c. 53.

JULIUS CiESAK. 93

to Cicero, " elegant, and splendid, and magnificent, and gen-
erous."*

The horses of great warriors become the subjects of history.
Caesar's favorite liorse, it is gravely said, had feet almost like
those of a man, the hoofs being divided into toes. He had
been reared with great care, as the augurs had predicted that
the owner of this strange animal would become the master of
the world. Amongst the presages of Caesar's death, we are
told by Suetonius, that the horses which he had let loose to
graze refused to eat their food, and shed tears abundantly; as
Homer, in a very tender passage, represents the horses of
Achilles weeping bitterly for the death of their charioteer. In
some of the poems about the Cid, the Cid's horse, Babieca,
comes to see his master die, and sheds tears as he follows his
funeral.

Julius, says Yelleius, had " a soul elevated beyond human
nature and belief" Certainly, after allowing all the defects
which the most severe criticism has been able to discover in
his character, it still remains one of the most wonderfully great
and symmetrical in history, presenting a union of strength and
energy with gracefulness, elegance and refinement, such as
have neither before nor since been met with in one man.

From the time that, when a mere boy, he — and he alone —
offered resistance to the tyranny of Sylla and the aristocracy,
till he rose to the head of the empire, it is difficult to detect
one single error, or one false step in the whole of his splendid
career. He gathered together the fragments of the popular
party, scattered and downtrodden after the death of Marius,
and led them on, without a single repulse, to the final over-
throw of the aristocracy. Though no one on whom it was
ever bestowed better merited the title of the " father of his
country," which a grateful people bestowed upon him, it is

* Suetonius, "Julius," 55.

94 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

his higher praise that in him the feelings of patriotism were
mingled with aspirations for the good of all mankind. He
protected the peaceable citizen from the t}' ranny of the noble,
and the inhabitant of the most remote province of Home just-
ly regarded Caesar as his friend.

Strangers of all nations bewailed his death ; his tomb was
visited, with lamentations, night after night by the Jews, ab-
horred by the Komans, and oppressed b}^ them all but by
Csesar. He may even be said to have, by anticipation, taken
a generous revenge on his cow^ardly assassins. There was
scarcely one of them whom he had not overwhelmed with
favors. He had spared the life of Marcus Brutus, and taken
him to his bosom after he had forfeited pardon by appearing
against him in arms. Decimus Brutus he had made one of
his heirs.

Michelet powerfully describes the sensation created in Eome
by his death, accomplished with such treachery. " The con-
spirators thought that twenty poignard stabs had sufficiently
killed CiEsar, yet never was Ccesar more alive, more powerful,
more terrible than when his old and worn-out bod}^, his with-
ered corpse, lay pierced with wounds. He appeared then,
purified, redeemed, that which he had ever been, despite his
many stains — the man of humanity. An actor haA'ing pro-
nounced in the theatre this verse of a tragedy — ' Men' men'
servasse ut essent qui me perderent,' every eye was filled with
tears, and a storm of sobs and cries burst forth."

The greatest soldier and the most profound statesm.an
of his age, w^as eminentl}^, as Michelet calls him, " the man
of humanity."

Merivale, who has done justice to his virtues, imagines that
he can trace in the conduct and temper of Coesar a change for
the w^orse after he became acquainted with Cleopatra. This
excellent historian expresses himself strongly on this point —
misled, as I think, by a laudable desire to " point a moral."

JULIUS C^SAE. 95

'' If from henceforth," he says, " we find his generosity
tinged with ostentation, his courage with arrogance, his
resolution with harshness; if he becomes restless and fretful,
and impatient of contradiction ; if his conduct is marked with
contempt for mankind rather than with indulgence to their
weaknesses, it is to this impure source that the melancholy
change is to be traced." Kow Caesar did not become
acquainted w^ith Cleopatra till the power of the aristocracy,
against which he had contended, was broken for ever on the
field of Pharsalia.

After he had attained to the utmost height of greatness that
even his splendid ambition could have sighed for, he appears
to have been filled with a sad feeling of the unsatisfactory na-
ture of all earthly glory, and to have experienced the sure
disappointment which awaits the fulfilment of human wishes —
the curse which falls on the man who has all his desires grati-
fied. He became melancholy, careless of his now declining
years, and regardless of his personal safety. He expressed
his desire for death rather than life, preferring to fall by
treachery to being troubled to guard, against it.

His life, he said with truth, w^as of more value to his coun-
try than to himself, and he obstinately refused to take any
precautions whatever against the designs of his enemies and
false friends. When warned particularly against Brutus, he
said, ^' Brutus will wait for the end of this weak body." His
murder, calamitous to the empire, could scarcely be called
unfortunate to himself His prayer had been to be saved from
a slow decay, and that his death might be sudden, quick and
unforeseen.* Heaven, which had granted him success in
every action of his life, might be said to have gratified him in
the manner in which he terminated it.

Merivale remarks that on the coins which Brutus stamped

* Suetonius, <« Julius," c. 87.

96 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

with his effigy on one side, and a cap of Hberiy between two
daggers on the other, " the tyrannicide's face is tbin, and
bears out the famous saying of Caesar regarding both him and
Cassias."

Michelet says that Brutus had " a narrow forehead." I
presume the expression is u€ed as a figure of speech for a
slender understanding, which that weak tool of the aristocracy
certainly had.

AUGUSTUS.

The great personal beauty of Augustus is matter of estab-
lished history. Suetonius has used the strongest terms in de-
scribing the comeliness which distinguished him at every
period of his life. In his entertainments, at which he and his
friends appeared in the characters of the gods and goddesses,
the part of Octavius was to represent the graceful Apollo.
From an aflectation of modesty, Octavius melted down all
the silver statues that were erected in his honor, and dedicated
the value of them in the form of golden tripods to the Palatine
Apollo. He could act the humble patriot like Julius, and
when the people were violently forcing the dictatorship on
him, he fell on his knees, and uncovering his shoulders and
breast, refused the honor.

Augustus was of rather short stature, but this was so far
concealed by his extremely symmetrical figure, and was not,
as Suetonius tells us, well perceived except when a tall man
stood beside him. Besides this, he wore high shoes in order
that he might appear taller than he was — a fashion which we
learn was universal amongst the ancient princes of Persia,
where great stature was considered an attribute of royalty.
The features of Augustus were full of majestv, with something
5 (97)

98 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

of a feminine delicacy in them, particularly in the mouth and
chin, and then* expression was that of great calmness and tran-
quillity. His complexion was between brown and fair. His
yellowish hair was slightly curled, and he was careless of
dressing it, as he was of his toilet altogether. His beard he
sometimes had clipped and sometimes shaved, and these opera-
tions were performed while he was engaged in reading or
writing.*

Suetonius has noticed the lustre of the emperor's large
eyes : Pliny tells us that they were blue. Aurelius Victor,
following Suetonius, has referred still more distinctly to the
emperor's belief in their dazzling brightness. " In all his per-
son," says the historian, " he was beautiful, but particularly
so in his eyes. He darted their light like that of the brightest
stars, and was willing that others looking at him sliould be
struck by his glance as by the rays of the sun. A soldier
having turned away from him, on being asked by the emperor
why he did so, replied, ' Because I cannot suifer the lightning
of your eyes.' " Such compliments have been but rarely paid
to men ; but this was a prudent soldier, and I have no doubt
that he got rapid promotion.

Augustus's eyebrows were joined, a feature delightful to
the ancients and repulsive to the moderns. The passion of
the ancients was for eyebrows betw^een which the separation
was barely perceptible. "Do not," says Anacreon, in his
directions to the painter how to paint his mistress, " do not
separate the eyebrow^s nor fairly join them, but let her picture
have, as she has, the eyebrows indiscernibly running into each
other."!

The emperor's ears were of the middle size; his iio.-e was
elevated in the upper part, and drawn more slenderl}^ below.
"With all the points of beauty which were met in him, the pic-
torial Suetonius, like a faithful artist, tells us that Augustus's

* Suetonius, <• Octayius," c. 79. j Anacreon, Od. xxviii.

AUGUSTUS. 99

Iceth were few, small, and uneven; that in his latter years
he partially lost'^the sight of his left eye ; that he had a weak-
ness in his left side, and often halted on the left leg, and some-
times had not the use of the forefinger of his right hand. The
health of Augustus was weak ; he was afflicted with gravel ;
he could neither endure great heat nor great cold, and never
w^ent out of doors even under the winter sun without a broad
covering on his head. There were some roughnesses on his
skin arising from prickling, w^hich by the assiduous use of
brushing were gathered together in the form of ringworm.
AYe need not credit as any thing better than a mere stor}^,
as indeed Suetonius calls it, that the emperor had spots on
his breast and belly disposed in the order and number of the
stars in the constellation of the Bear.

Augustus excelled all who preceded him in the frequency,
variety, and magnificence of the public spectacles with which
he entertained the people. In his youth he loved to have about
him the most splendid Corinthian furniture, but in his mature
years he studied plainness in every thing. His beds and tables
scarcely equalled the elegance of those in private houses. He
wore the clothes that were spun for him by his wife, his
daughter, and his nieces. His toga was neither tight nor
loose; his robe was not narrow, neither was it broad, like
those of the nobles.*

Augustus caused his too famous daughter Juha, and his
nieces Julia and Agrippina, to be taught spinning — no doubt
from a sincere desire to keep them in the paths of virtue. In
Eome, from the days of the chaste Lucretia, the practice of
spinning was considered an evidence of virtue; and the eulo-
gium inscribed on a matron's tomb was, that she kept the
house and spun wool. But x\ugustus, fortunate in every
thing else, was unhappy in his family. The daughters of

* Suetonius, " Octavius," c. 73.

100 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Charlemagne had been brought up in the same way, and jfdt
their good names have not escaped the breath of scandal.

An industrious life, such as Auoustus assie^ned to the wo-
men of his household, is generally an innocent one ; and love
in particular has been called by a wise ancient " the aftection
of an indolent soul." Nevertheless, the two Julias and Agrip-
pina became the most abandoned women in Rome ; the con-
duct of the Julias having in after-times been referred to as
confirming the belief that women of that name are unchaste.
The profligacy of the learned and philosophical Julia, the wife
of Septimus Severus, gave additional authority to this silly
notion. Upon this point, Brantome tells us tlmt the virtuous
Severus, when reproached with the frailty of his queen, used
to say that " her name is Julia, and therefore she must be ex-
cused, as all women of that name, from the remotest antiqui-
ty have been subject to great weakness."*

Brantome goes farther, and declares that there are certam
names amongst Christian women, which subject those who
bear them to the fate of becoming hcentious ; but that from
the reverence which he owes to our holy religion, he will not
mention what these names are.

Augustus ate little, and only of the plainest food ; using
bread of a coarse quality, with fish, cheese, and green figs.
He was moderate in the use of wine, preferring that of Ehsetia.
To quench his thirst he made use of bread steeped in cold
water, or a piece of cucumber, or young lettuce-sprouts, or a
fresh and acid apple Vv'ith a winy juice.

During supper, Augustus loved to have plays acted, or to
see other entertainments of an amusing character. He is
charged with being too much addicted to playing at dice. On
the ground of this passion for gambling. Cardan, in his

Brantome, " Dames Galantes." CEuvres, tom. iii, p. 35. Bayle, wlio
has noticed this remark of Brantome, says that he has not found it in any
ancient historian — Dicriox. Hist, et Crit Art. Julie,

AUGUSTUS. ^ 101

Eulogium of Nero, contends that Nero was a much better
man than Augustus, as he did. not gamble, but played on the
harp.*

After his mid-day meal, the emperor was accustomed to
retire to rest with his dress and shoes on, covering his eyes
with his hand. Before retiring for the night, he finished his
daily writing. His sleep never exceeded seven hours ; and in
the course of that rest, he would aw'ake three or four times,
and call his attendants to read to him, or tell him stories. f

Augustus, who constitutionally was a coward on the field
of battle, was from superstition terribly frightened at thunder
and lightning, and constantly wore about his person the skin
of a sea-calf, as a protection against them ; while at the least
token of an approaching storm, he used to shut himself up in
a concealed place. He attended carefully to his own dreams,
and those of others, and acted upon the interpretation of them
by the soothsayers. During spring, it has been remarked, his
dreams were frequent, and very terrible ; at other times they
were rarer, and less wild. - He studied seriously all auspices
and omens ; if a dew fell as he set out on a journey, he felt
assured that it boded success ; if he put on his left shoe
instead of his right of a morning, he looked for evil fortune for
that day.J

The habits of Augustus, as a man of business and of litera-
ture, as they are recorded by Suetonius, are exceedingly in-
teresting. In the earlier part of his reign, we are told he used
as his seal a sphynx (highly characteristic certainly of his. am-
biguous character ;) afterwards he adopted a figure of Alex-
ander the Great, and lastly his own portrait. In dating his

* Hier. Cardani. "Neronis Encomium," p. 42. Amst. 1640.
t Suetonius, " Octavius," c. 74, 76, 77, 78.
X Suetonius, "Octavius," c, 16 90, 91, 92.

102 ^ CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

letters, he marked upon them not only the clay or night, but
the hour and the minute at which they were dispatched.*

A remarkable circumstance is related in reference to the
propriety and precision of his discourse. When he had to
speak even in private on important matters, he wrote down
and read what he had to say ; and he practised this kind of
discourse even with his beloved Livia. He studied elocution
under a master ; his voice was sweet, but occasionally, from
sore throat, he was obliged to make his public harangues
through a crier. f

I do not know w^hether or not he read his lectures to Julia
from a paper, but they appear to have all the inefficiency popu-
larly charged upon written sermons. He forbade her the use
of wine and of fine clothes, and kept a strict watch over all of
the other sex w^ho had access to see her. But all w^as in vain ;
and after deliberating whether he should not use the Eoman
father's right of putting his child to death, he sent her into
perpetual banishment. His daughter and his nieces he used
to call, by a strong figure of speech, his three misfortunes his
three cancers. J

Augustus's eloquence w^as elegant and chaste. Tacitus
and Aulus Gellius have joined with Suetonius in praising its
excellence. He avoided theofiensiveness {fcetores^ as he called it)
of recondite words, sa3's Suetonius. It is this passage in Sue-
tonius, I have no doubt, that has led Eabelais to attribute to
Octavius the saying of the greater Julius, who, in the first
book of his lost w^ork, " De Analogia" — " Avoid as a rock all
unheard and unusual words."§ The passage from Csesar is

* Suetonius, " Octavius," c. 50.

t Suetonius, ** Octavius." c 8^.

J Ibid. c. 65.

^ ** Habe semper in memoria atque in pectore ut taraquam scopulum,
sic fugias inauditum atque insolens verbum." — Caesak, quoted by Aulus
Gellius, lib. i, c. 10.

AUGUSTUS. 103

quoted from Auliis Gellius, to whom Rabelais expressly re-
fers ; but this very learned man had trusted to his memory,
without looliing at his authority.*

The style of Augustus, as described by Suetonius, would
serve as a criticism on Cobbett. He used to ridicule the nice-
ties of Maecenas, and the obsolete and out-of the-way language
of Tiberius; and accused Antony of writing in such a way as
to excite w^onder rather than to be understood, and of using
an eastern profusion of language. It appears, also, that he
felt called on to correct the slovenly literature and elocution,
as well as the loose morals, of his niece Agrippina.f

Suetonius has given us a minute account of the pecuharities
used by Augustus in his hand-writing, and of the singularities
which he affected in orthography.

Augustus, who had often prayed for a sudden and easy
death, had his prayer granted. When he felt his end ap-
proaching, he called for his mirror, and caused himself to be
adorned and have his hair dressed. Then asking his friends
if the farce of life had been well played, he bade them, quoting
a Greek verse, give him the due applause. Only once in the
course of his short illness, his mind exhibited any wandering,
wheft he started in terror and complained that forty young
men were carrying him off. The impression, says Suetonius,
Avas prophetic ; his body was removed by forty of the Praeto-
rian soldiers. He expired kissing Livia, with the words on
his lips, " Live mindful of our marriage, and farewell. "J

* " Ce que diet le philosophe et Aule Gelle qu il nous conuient parler
scion le languaige usite. Et comme disoit Octauian Auguste, qu il faut
euiter les motz espaues, en pareille diligence que les patrons de nauire
cfuitentles rochiers de mer." — Rabelais, " Pantagruel," lib. ii, c. 6.

t Suetonius, "Octavius," c. 86.

i Ibid. c. 99.

T I B E K I IT S .

Tiberius, the most cold-blooded and hateful of the Eoman
emperors, was a man of tall stature, with broad shoulders and
chest, and well proportioned limbs. He was a left-handed man ;
and with a finger, we are told, he could pierce through a fresh
apple, and could inflict a wound on the head of a boy with a
filip. This is the picture of Tiberius drawn by Suetonius,
and referring to the best days of his manhood. In old age,
as he is described by Tacitus, he grew thin. His complexion,
Suetonius tells us, was fair, and his face handsome, though
disfigured by blotches. His eyes w^ere very large, but dull
and heavy during the day ; while, like the treacherous bfeasts
of prey, which in his character he so much resembled, he
could see in the dark.

Causaubon, quoting Photius, tells us that such eyes had
Asclepiadorus, the philosopher. And Scaliger says that his
father could at times see in the dark, and that he himself had
this faculty from boyhood, till his twenty-third year. Tibe-
rius's hair was gathered at the back of his head, as was tho
case also with Caligula, covering his neck, a feature which ap-
peared, says Suetonius, to belong to his family. He was bald
in front, and in his latter years the sight of the hated de-
formity, with his reduced figure and the blotches on his face,
afflicted him greatly.

(104)

TIBERIUS. 105

The coins and medals of Tiberius represent him with a very
hirge neck — that is, a neck at once long and thick. He car-
ried his neck stiff, says Suetonius, with his face contracted.
It was characteristic of the calm wickedness of his character
that he spoke but little, and that little slowly. It is added
that he made use of certain effeminate gestures with his fin-
gers.

The notices of the private habits of Tiberius are not inter-
esting, but simply disgusting.

GEEMANICUS.

Suetonius unites with Tacitus and Dion in praising the great
beauty of the amiable Germanicus, the father of Cahgula;
but Suetonius, \Yhose dehght it was to be critical even in the
praise of comeliness, tells us that the slenderness of the legs of
Germanicus detracted from the perfection of his person.* He
appears to have propagated slender legs amongst his descen-
dants, both Caligula and Xero having been distinguished for
this peculiarity.! So was Domitian afterwards ; though it
must be observed that the line of the Cuesars by family extrac-
tion was broken by the accession of Galba to the empire.

The descent of personal features through successive gener-
ations is readily noticed in royal families. The thick upper lip
of the royal house of Austria, thence called " the Austrian
lip," which has appeared in all the sovereigns, is an inherit-
ance not from the Emperor Maximilian, as is sometimes said,
but from Mary of Burgundy, who was married to him in the
year 1478, The features of Maximilian were extremely regu-
lar ; but in Mary the development of the upper lip was enor-
mous. Wheu, in the course of time, it became known that a

* Suetonius, *' Caligula," c. 3.

t Ibid. c. .50. «' Xoro,'' c. oO.

(106)

GERMAKICUS. 107

tliick upper lip was an attribute of royalty, it came to be re-
garded as a beauty in Austria, as the aquiline nose, the prom-
inent characteristic of the descendants of Cyrus, was in ancient
Persia. An Austrian writer is quoted by Amelot de la Hous-
saye, speaking to this effect : " The princes of the house of
Austria have received great graces from God and nature ;
from nature, in having all long chins and thick lips, which show
their piety, constancy, and integrity ; from God, that in giving
with their hands a glass of water to a person afflicted with
goitre they cure him, and when they kiss a stuttering person,
they loosen his tongue."*

Germanicus, we are told by Suetonius, cured himself of the
slenderness of legs, which has been as much condemned in
modern as it was in ancient times, by constantly practising
riding on horseback after his meals. Mandeville, the author
of the Fable of the Bees, in his '' Treatise on the Hypochon-
driack Diseases," has noticed the slender legs of Germanicus,
and corrects a medical writer, Fuller, who in his " Medicina
Gymnastica" had taken it upon him to interpret the cruruni
gracilitas of Germanicus as meaning that he laboured under
atrophy. " I would have everybody," says Mandeville, " make
the most of his argument ; but I hate a man should wilfully
pervert the sense of a good author merely to serve his turn.
The matter of fact is this ; Suetonius describing the person
of Germanicus from head to foot, tells us that in his youth he
had spindle legs, but that by frequent riding this defect had
been much remedied. From this, what mortal could suppose
that he had an atrophy ?"t

The criticism of Mandeville as against Fuller is perfectly
sound, but it is remarkable that this ingenious writer does not

* Amelot de la Houssaye, "Meraoires Hist. Pollt. Crit. et Litteraires,"
torn. I, p.146. Amst. 1731.

t Mandeville, "Treatise on the llypocliondriack andllystcric Diseases,"
p. 310. London, 1721.

108 CLASSIC AND HISTOKIC PORTKAITS.

notice the singularity in the cure ; the riding being " after
meals" {post cibum^) which, if we are to believe what doctors
say, is like all exercise whatever after meals — whether of body
or of mind — most -unhealthy.

Germanicus died under suspicion of being poisoned by Tibe-
rius. Suetonius records some curious appearances about the
dead body. There were spots all over it, and froth at his
mouth ; and w^hen his remains were burned, the heart was
found still entire. It was the popular belief that the heart of
a person who had died of poison could not be consumed by
fire.

If the personal appearance of Germanicus improved with
his years, so it appears did that of his sister Livia (the wife of
Drusus,) of whom Tacitus tells us that, in early life, she was
of indifferent comeliness, but afterwards excelled in beauty.*

I have not discovered where Montaigne learned tliat Ger-
manicus w^as unable to endure either the sight or the crowing
of a cock.f

* Tacitus, " Annales," lib. iv, c. 3.
t Montaigne, *• Essais," lib. i, c. 19.

CALIGULA

Caligula, the son of the beautiful Germanicus, was by far
the ugliest of the Caesars. He %Yas tall and large in person,
with slender neck and legs, of a pale complexion, with hollow
eyes, and a broad and stern forehead ; and though otherwise
a rough, hairy man, the locks on his head were scanty, and
the crown was entirely bare.*

This is the substance of the picture by Suetonius. It is, in
every respect, borne out by the description of Caligula given
by Seneca, who must have been w^ell acquainted with the em-
peror's person. He describes his paleness as of a horrible
kind, and indicative of madness — his crooked eyes lurking un-
der a wrinkled forehead {sub f route anili ;) and the expression
is strange w^hen we recollect that at his death the emperor
was only twenty-nine. Though his head w^as destitute, his
neck was thick set with hair ; his legs were slender, and his
feet very large. f

This ill-made man had a particular delight in jeering at the
deformities of others, and in the most minute criticisms on
their personal appearance.J He would cause any good-looking

* Suetonius, '* Caligula," c. 50.

t Seneca, " De Constantia," c. xvm.

-}: Seneca, ut supra.

(109)

110 CLASSIC AND HISTOEIC POKTKAITS.

person whom he met with to be disfigured, by ordering his
hair to be cut in a ludicrous fashion. His own horrid and
dismal countenance he studied to make more frightful than it
naturally was, by practising the making of terrible faces before
a mirror.

The health of Caligula from his boyhood was bad. He was
frequently seized with fits. He could not sleep above three
hours at a time, and this short slumber was agitated by horrid
spectres. He would then awake, and sit up in bed, or walk
about the corridors calling for the daylight.*

Caligula sometimes appeared in the costume of a man, and
sometimes of a woman, and frequently as one of the gods or
goddesses. Sometimes he was Alexander the Great with his
breastplate, sometimes Jupiter with his golden beard and
thunderbolt, and sometimes Mercury with his caduceus ; and
sometimes the ugliest man of the age appeared in the charac-
ter of the goddess of beauty.f

Caligula was addicted to literary pursuits. His criticisms
on Homer, Virgil, Livy, and Seneca, are preserved by Sueto-
nius. He paid much attention to the study of eloquence.
Besides this, he was a singer and a dancer, a fencer and a
chariot-driver.J

* Suetonius, ut supra.

t Suetonius, " Caligula," c. 52.

\. Ibid c 53, oi. ■

LOLLIA PAULINA.

The beauty of Lollia Paulina, the second wife of Caligula,
whom he divorced for the sake of his beloved Csesonia, is less
noticed in history than her extravagant luxury. The proba-
bility is, that she was not deficient in the graces of the per-
son, though the reason given by the historian as that which
led Caligula to take her from her husband, " because he had
heard that her grandmother had been very beautiful,"* is far
from being conclusive on this point. Caligula should have
recollected that neither beauty nor virtue alwa^'s runs in the
blood, and that he himself, a monster of wickedness, and the
ugliest young man of his age, was the son of the comely and
virtuous Germanicus.

Pliny, who had seen Lollia, gives a description of her gor-
geous attire. Not merely on grand public occasions, but on
ordinary days, she carried on her person the spoils of whole
provinces, being covered with emeralds and pearls in alternate
rows in her hair, and hanging in her ears and about her neck,
her wrists, and her fingers, to the value of forty sesterces.f

It is to Lollia Paulina that Eabelais refers inaccurately un-
der the nam^e of Pompeie Pauline, " who attracted the admi-

* Suetonius, " Caligula," c. 25.

t Plinius, " Hist. Nat." lib rv', c. 58

(111)

1 1 2 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

ration of the whole city of Eome, and who was called the ditch
and magazine of the robber conquerors of the world.*

Pliny's description of Lollia carrying on her person the
spoils of whole provinces, has a parallel in Tertullian's account
of the ornaments of some Christian women of his time. " From
the smallest parts of the body a large patrimony is exposed.
Ten sesterces are held by one thread — one tender neck carries
about it forests and islands. The delicate lobes of the ears
cost a whole book of expenses, and the left hand carries, in
sport, a bag of money on each finger. Buch is the power of
ambition, that it makes one little person, and that of a woman,
able to carry all these treasures."!

Ofid, w'ho distinctly warns the fair against attempting to
charm by rich dresses, complains of an ostentatious young
woman that her person is the least part of herself; and
Thompson has taught many a one to repeat after him that

beauty

" Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is when unadorned adorned the most."

It is rather remarkable that St. Qhrysostom, in various pas-
sages of his works, in which he inveighs against the adorn-
ings and rich dresses of the women of his time, is not content-
ed with denouncing the sin and the extravagant expenditure,
but insists upon it that rich dresses and gold and pearls detract
from the personal appearance of the wearer. Thus, in one
passage in his Treatise on Virginity, he states that if a woman
is beautiful, she loses the charm of nature by these ornaments,
as their great abundance does not permit any part of her to
be seen naked ; and if she is ugly, it makes the matter worse,
as wdiat is in itself uncomely becomes still more so by con-
trast with the splendor of what is around it. " Pearls," he

* Rabelais, "Pantagruel," lib. iv, c. 42.

t Tertullian, "De Cultu Faeminarum," lib. ii, c 8.

LOLLIA PAULINA. 113

says, " make the blackness of the body blacker, and varied
colors make the ill-favored face still more ill-favored."*

It is, however, to be suspected that there are more people
who admire richly-dressed women than are willing to own it.
In fact, the love of dress would not be so prevailing a passion
in women as it is, if it was not their understanding that it had
some avowed and a great many concealed admirers in the
other sex. Even writers of fiction have admitted its attrac-
tion. In the Greek romance of " Daphnis a'hd Chloe," by
Longus, the writer tells ns how much external ornaments
help to set off beauty, and assures us that Chloe, when she
was dressed for her marriage with her hair twisted up into a net,
was so much improved that Daphnis, who had courted her
in her shepherdess's weeds, was hardly able to recognise her.

Brantome also, it is clear from most of his criticisms,
thought that rich dresses, as well as high titles, added un-
speakably to natural beauty; beauty being a gift which he
appears to have believed to be entirely monopolised by queens,
duchesses, and countesses, and which he scarcely recognises
in persons of low^ degree.

In this way he has celebrated the beauty of Queen Eliza-
beth of England, of which no other person, except those in-
tending to benefit themselves by flattering her, has spokei?
favorably. But Elizabeth dressed gorgeously, and it is but
fair to add that she had fine hands, of w^hich Brantome was
a fanatical admirer. He can, however, scarcely describe
beauty of face or form without mixing up his portrait wnth
passionate details about fine robes. It is not easy to discover
whether he more admired the beautiful legs of which Catha-
rine de Medici was so vain, or the charming stockings in
W'hich she invested them. In his accounts of some other

* St. Chrysostom, Opera, lib. i, p. 320. Paiis, 1718. And again, lib.
VIII, p. 412.

114 CLASSIC AND HISTOIIIC PORTKAITS.

princesses, the description of their clothes occupies more space
than the picture of their natural beauty.

Of the person of Lollia Paulina we have only one particu-
lar. According to Dion, there was something peculiar about
her teeth ; perhaps she had the gift of a complete and even
set. When Agrippina caused her to be murdered, she made
the assassin bring the head of Lolha to her, and she opened
the mouth in order to ascertain from the teeth if it was really
the head of hef victim.

CiESONIA

The third and favorite wife of Caligula was the remarkable
woman Csesonia. Pliny notices that Caesonia was an eight
months' child. The circumstance is not remarkable, were it
not for the venerable superstition, which has stood its
ground firmly from the days of Hippocrates to the present
hour, in the face of abundant contradiction from facts, that
though a seven months' child often lives, an eight months'
child always dies within eight days from the time of its
birth.

Though, as Suetonius tells us, neither young nor beautiful,
and having had three children to her former husband, and
with no recommendation that the world could see but her
licentious character, Csesonia was constantly and ardently
loved by this monster, w^ho scarcely loved any thing else. For
her sake he divorced Lollia Paulina. Caligula used to dress
Csesonia in a military cloak and helmet, and show her to the
army as she rode by his side. It is said that he also — though
he alone was sensible of her beauty — was led by vanity to
make the same display of the charms of his wife to his private
friends as in former days cost the indiscreet King of Lydia the
loss of his crown and his life.

(115)

116 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

The daughter whom Csesonia bore to Caligula, and whom
he named Julia Drusilla, appears also to have been loved by
her father. After carrying her through all the temples of the
divinities, he placed her in the bosom of Minerva, recommend-
ing her to the care and instruction of the goddess of wisdom.
x\s soon as little Julia began to scratch and tear the faces of
the children with whom she sported, the delighted emperor
expressed his satisfaction with this unequivocal evidence of her
being papa's own daughter.

The immecse affection which Caligula bore to Csesonia, as
well as the insanity which appears in his conduct, were in his
time attributed to a philtre given to him by the queen to make
him love her,* as the madness and suicide of the poet Lucre-
titis have been charged on a potion administered to him by his
wife for the same laudable purpose.

According to Juvenal, the charm administered to Caligula
was the hipiiomanes^ as it was called, taken from the forehead
of a foal at its birth, f and which Virgil represents Dido as
having recourse to in order to secure the affections of ^neas.
Concerning the notions of the ancients about this drug, or the
various articles to which the w^vcio, . hippomanes was applied,
the inquisitive reader will get every satisfaction in the special
dissertation by Bayle on the subject. J: The most remarkable
thing in that curious essay is a quotation made from a romance
of Bayle's own day, the " Avantures de Henriette Sylvie de
Moliere," in which certain ladies of Paris are represented as
having recourse to the use oihipjDomajies^ in order to secure a
return of affection from some gentlemen with whom they are
in love.

* Suetonius, " Caligula," c. 50.

I Juvenal, « Sat." lib. vi, 614. Bayle seems to give credit to this
story. Diet. " Hist, et Critique," Art. Caligula."

X Bayle, " Dissertation sur IHippomanes," Diet. lib. iv, 593. Basle
1738.

C^SONIA. 117

Caligula was playful in his atrocities ; and when he kissed
the necks of his favorites, he w^ould say, " What a beautiful
neck ! but as soon as I give the order, it will be cut asunder,"
and he said he would inquire *by the torture of the rack why
he loved Csesonia so passionately.*

* Suetonius, " Caligula," c. 33.

BOADIOE A

I WISH to avoid all affectation of being curious in a matter
of so little consequence as the correct and best spelling of this
woman's name, which may be met with in a great variety of
forms. Boadicea, Bouduca, Bonduca, Boundouica, and so
on ; all of them perhaps far off from her ancient British desig-
nation, and I have therefore adopted a very common spelling.
We have a striking and faithful portrait — for such it may
without much difficulty be admitted to be — of the warlike
Queen of the Iceni in the reign of Nero — a queen who, at the
head of her countrymen, captured from the Eomans two of
their towns lying on the banks of the Thames, and in the
neighborhood of London. For this" portrait we are indebted
to the picturesque Dion Cassius, living sufficiently near her
time to have collected his specific description of her person
and address from the Bomans, whose possession of Britain
had been threatened and endangered by her valor and^pat-
riotism.

When Boadicea appeared at the head of her army, she is
described as of gigantic stature, of a beautiful figure, a terri-
ble aspect, and a sharp voice; with yellow hair, which fell
in rich profusion down to her thighs. She wore round her
neck a larG:e cfolden collar or chain, and about her body a robe
° ^ (118)

BOADICEA. 119

of variegated colors, twisted into folds, and over this a thick
heavy mantle or cloak. As she addressed her countrymen,
she brandished in her hand a spear, in order to excite them to
valor.*

The Eoman historians, who have described the terrible ven-
geance which the heroic widow of Prasutagus took on the in-
habitants of the Eoman cities which fell into her hands, have
not disguised her terrible wrongs, and the wrongs of her hus-
band and her race. Prasutagus had made the emperor the
heir of his great wealth — great it is called by Tacitus, it is
to be presumed with reference to what might be expected of
a British prince in that age — in the hope of averting the Eo-
man hostility, and securing the quiet possession of his own
dominions. His kingdom was ravaged, his palace pillaged,
as if he had been a conquered foe ; his relatives were made
slaves, his w^fe, the heroic Boadicea, was scourged, and her
daughters were ravished. f

The fate of Prasutagus is not noticed by historians. After
the events which I have mentioned, Boadicea appears as the
Queen of the Iceni and the leader of the army, and her abili-
ties in both capacities are spoken of with respect.

Both Tacitus and Dion give — the former briefly and the lat-
ter at some length — a speech which they represent Boadicea
to have delivered to her countrymen. The eloquent address
which Dion puts into her mouth is no doubt, in the main,
the composition of his own closet, yet he may have had infor-
mation or recent tradition of the substance of w^hat she said.
It abounds in eloquent passages, and warlike as it is, it is 3'et
pervaded by a womanly spirit. Dion makes her draw a con-
trast between the simple lives of her countrymen and the vices
of Eome, and it is drawn v^•ith much beauty. The sighing

* Dion, " Hist." lib. LxiT, p. 701.

t Tacitus, " Annales," lib. xiv, c. 31."

120 CLASSIC AND HISTOBIC PORTRAITS.

after a simple and savage life is characteristic of ages of over-
refinement and vicious cultivation.

In early and rude ages when poets, w^riting in refined times,
would have us to believe that men employed themselves in
lying on the banks of rivers and under the shades of trees,
playing on pipes, and sighing out their souls in love, — while
the w^omen, on their part, were similarly disengaged and simi-
larly subjected to all the softer and sweeter influences, — the
real occupation of the men, in which they were often heartily
joined by the women, if any reliance is to be placed in the
songs of contemporary bards, w^as fighting battles, cutting
throats, giving and taking of hard blows and knocks, and
kicks and cufis, besides abusing each other vehemently with
their tongues, and telling and swearing to all manner of horri-
ble lies, and taking every possible advantage of each other.
Such is the true picture of early and primitive times, and such
are the subjects of the first records of all nations, of the songs
of all really ancient poets. It is amidst the corruption and
decline of over-civilized states, in the most sophisticated and
artificial and unpoetical condition of society, in the atmosphere
of courts and palaces, that men begin to dream of the exist-
ence of a happy pastoral life beyond the boundaries of wicked
cities ; and that poets over their claret set about describing as
a reality what never had and never can have an existence, ex-
cept in poets' brains.

These visions will steal gently over the soul of even the
blood-stained murderer. In the midst of his terrible proscrip-
tions, Sylla sighed to leave Eome, and longed for the simple
enjoyment of his rural cot, his countr^^ diversions, and a loved
and loving mistress; but he had so much massacreing work
on his hands, that he could never get to this fancied Elysium,
where his active mind W'Ould have been completely miserable
in three days' time.

It was either in the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus^ or in

BOADICEA. 121

the marble palaces of Syracuse, while \Yallowing in wealth
and luxury, and robed in purple and fine linen, that Theocri-
tus, who is allowed to be the simplest and the most natural
of all rural poets, the father and unapproached model of all
succeeding writers of pastorals, wrote those idyls w^hich are
regarded as the trtfest, most faithful, and most exact pictures
of that country life which the aristocratic and courtly poet
knew nothing about.

V'irgil was once, it is true, a bit of a farmer, and I have no
doubt a very bad and unimproving one, but it w^as after he
had forgotten what the country was like, and had become the
courtier and the flatterer of Octavius, and the man of w^ealth,
that he set about making the shepherds Meliboeus and Tityrus
talk such stuff as mortal shepherds never talked on this earth.
The inventors of the pastoral romance, Heliodorus, Longus,
and Xenophon of Ephesus, were men living under the corrup-
tion of literature, taste and morals, which characterised the
Byzantine empire. Tasso and Guarini were courtiers ; they
lived in no primitive or pastoral ages, and were entirely unac-
quainted with sheep and cattle.

Our own .poet Pope, the companion of debauched lords in
powdered wigs, embroidered coats and breeches with golden
buckles, and the sickly fondling of ladies made up of elongated
stays, hooped petticoats, steel and "ribs of whale," distorted
spines and unnatural waists — odors and perfumes, neither of
the violet nor the hawthorn, but of the civet cat and the apoth-
ecary's phials, and faces superficially composed of a mixture
of glaring carmine, contrasted with spotless ceruse and pro-
voking black plaster — this poet of the city, the poet of art,
and the most artful of poets, was truly a pretty gentleman to
sit down after a night of as much dissipation with his profli-
gate and prosaic companions as his feeble body could endure,
to tell us honestly and faithfully, and to the best of his know-
ledge what it w^as exactly that the love-sick Strephon sung in

122 CLASSIC A^'D HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

praise of Delia ; and what, on the other hand, Daphuis, equal-
ly deep in tenderness, was able to warble in commendation of
the sprightly Sylvia ; and how Damon, the pastoral umpire,
had his judgment so completely confounded by having listened
to both sides, that in consideration of what both had done for
love and poes}^, he w^as obhged to aw^ard the poetical pre-
mium— which fortunately w^as a double one — to both of
them !

To return to Dion, the governor of a Eoman province in
the age of Eome's most unmanly and most vicious emperors
— a man who had been conversant with such extremely unpas-
toral persons as Caracalla and Heliogabalus — would feel much
relief to his soul in drawing the fanciful picture of the virtuous
barbarians of Britain — a remote region, cut off from the civil-
ized world — " penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos," with which
the utmost acquaintance that Dion is likely to have possessed
would be derived through his palate, which would no doubt
often be gratilied by the delicate flavor of those sincerely es-
teemed oysters, for the sake of which the Eoman nobility
Bent ships and sailors to England's coasts, and for which many
of Eome's epicures thought the conquest and dominion of the
island alone valuable.

Historians have celebrated Boadicea's knowledge of the art
of war ; and in this speech the mode of warfare best adapted
for her soldiers, and the means of safety in the event of being
compelled to a temporary retreat, are ably laid down. The
superiority of the Britons in a skirmishing warfare, in which
the enemy might be cut off in detail, is insisted on. " In all
these things," she says, " they are much inferior to us, and
particularly because they cannot bear hunger, thirst, cold and
heat, as we can. They stand so much in need of shade, cov-
erings, kneaded corn, wine and oil, that if any of these things
fail them they die. To us, any herb or root is bread, any
juice is oil, all water is wine, any bush is a house. To us, all

BOADICEA. 123

places are familiar and, as it were, friendly to us in carry-
ing on the war ; to them they are unknown and hostile ; we
can swim the rivers naked, while they can only with difficulty
cross them in their boats."

She is made by the historian to understand the true inter-
ests of the inhabitants of Britain, owing to its seagirt situa-
tion, to be one family united against all foreign invasion — a
discovery which the inhabitants did not till after many long
centuries of bitter experience of the fruits of internal warfare
discover for themselves. " Citizens, friends, and relatives,
((Tryyfrft?,)" she says, " for I regard you all who inhabit this
island in common as my relatives." This is a powerful and
pathetic stroke of true eloquence.

In the midst of her address, Boadicea took an omen on the
event of the war after the fashion of her country. She drew
from her bosom a hare, and let it loose ; and it would appear
that the course which it took in running was hailed by the
Britons as a presage of victory. Boadicea is then represented
as lifting her hands to heaven, and thanking the goddess
whom she worshipped for the favorable omen, and imploring
her, as a woman, to grant to her — a woman called to rule
over men — victory, safety, and liberty. And here the historian
makes the warlike queen pour out a strain of invective on the
effeminate life of Nero, whose dominion she hopes will be con-
fined to the people of Eome, who are worthy to serve this
wom.an (as she terms him,) since they have borne with his
tyranny so long. " But thou, O divine lady !" she concludes,
" I earnestly pray thee, be ever alone present with us."

The Boman writers have, in general, not shown much jus-
tice— not to say generosity — in estimating the character of
those of their enemies whose prowess and obstinate patriotism
offered a dangerous resistance to the conquering career of the
imperial arms. The terms " cruel " and " perfidious " h-ave
been liberally heaped on Hannibal, their mo>:t formidable toe;

124 CLASSIC AND HISTOKIC PORTRAITS.

and according to the measure of their opposition to the Roman
power, have been the invectives poured out on other lesser
enemies, whose spirit of independence rose in rebelhon against
the Eoman lust for universal dominion.

The Eoman writers, in this respect, no doubt faithfully
echoed the voice of the contemporary Roman people ; and
something of this unfair spirit has at all times pervaded the
minds of warlike nations in the heat of great struggles. When
the hosts of Hyder, with his French allies, threatened the
existence of the British dominions in the East, there was no
story w^hich ingenuity or imagination could invent of the hor-
rible crimes attributed to the Mussulman prince, which was
not greedily received and believed at home by all w'ho had one
spark of patriotism left in their bosoms.

And in the days when the whole of Europe appeared about
to fall into the hands of Napoleon, the spirit of that country
which effectually resisted him, and finally overthrew^ him, led
her sons to regard the conqueror of kings as not merely a vil-
lain of the blackest dye — which w^as a judgment not very
unnatural — but to caricature him in songs, and prints, and
plays, as a fool and a coward, and to believe any incredible
crime which any patriotic British subject was good enough to
invent against him, for the purpose of keeping alive at home
the noble flame of national independence.

In the whole descriptions of the Roman historians, however,
there is discernible something of a generous admiration of the
courage of Boadicea ; and they have not concealed the recog-
nition that if her vengeance was terrible, her injuries were
equally dreadful. Her appearance in the field evidently threw
the Romans into great alarm, as is testified by the signs and
wonders by which it was said to be announced by Heaven.
The blue waters which roll between Britain and Gaul dis-
played the color of blood, preternatural sounds of barbarian
shouts and lauahter w^ere heard where no barbarians were

BOADICEA. 125

present, the image of the goddess of victory fell down on its
face as if it yielded to the enemy, and the appearance of a
submerged city was seen in the Thamevs.*

The first outburst of undisciplined valor is generally attend-
ed with decided success. Boadicea marched hastily on the
two Eoman cities, and captured them without difficulty, put-
ting the inhabitants to the sword ; the number of the slain
being, according to Dion, eighty — according to Tacitus, sev-
enty— thousand.

It may be believed that, under the command of a justly-
infuriated woman, thirsting for vengeance, the usages of an-
cient warfare were carried out in all their stern ferocity ; but
we may attribute to Eoman invention the narrative of the
revolting cruelties which Boadicea is said to have exercised on
her own sex, as, unfortunately, the Eomans have here the
advantage of telling both sides of the story, as they generally
have against all their enemies. The British reader will be
justified in disbelieving Dion when he tells us that Boadicea
seized upon Eoman women of rank and hung them up naked,
and having; cut off their breasts, fastened them to their mouths
" as if they might seem to eat them," and afterwards impaled
their bodies.

The sequel of the history is shortly told. Paulina was has-
tily called from the Isle of Man to check the progress of Boa-
dicea. Had the Britons now scattered themselves and retreat-
ed to the fastnesses, which might have defied the strength of
the enemy, the Eomans would have been deprived of their
retahation. But Boadicea was now at the head of a huge
army, animated with enthusiasm, and flushed with triumph,
and she hazarded a pitched battle. She drew up this vast
force, which Dion tells us amounted to two hundred and
twenty thousand men — in all probability the fighting women
are included in this number — in one long line.

* See Dion, lxti, p. 700; and Tacitus, " Annales," lib. xiv, c 32.

126 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Pauliniis divided his army into three divisions. The wives
of the British soldiers accompanied them in battle, and Boa-
dicea appeared in a chariot with her two injured daughters —
the sight of whom would inflame the thirst for vengeance
amongst the Britons. It was not till after a j^rotracted resist-
ance that the wild valor of the Britons gave way before the
steady discipline of the Eoman legions ; yet it may be gather-
ed, even from the Eoman historians themselves, that the victory
of Paulinus w^as far from being complete. The great prize,
w^hich would have been hailed with rapture at Home, escaped
him, as Cleopatra did Octavius.

Whether, as Tacitus says, Boadicea poisoned herself, or, as
Dion tells us, died naturally of disease, it is gratifying to
know that she did not fall into the hands of the enemy, to be
sent to Eome to grace an imperial triumph — for Nero would
have willingly taken the whole credit of her overthrow to him-
self— and that this heroic woman did not appear like Zenobia
in after days, loaded with burdensome ornaments and jewelry,
walking behind the chariot of the effeminate emperor whom
she had ridiculed as " a lady " and a " singer," an object of
pity to the people whom she had described as scarcely to be
called men — <' creatures reproachful, wicked, insatiable and
criminal, bathing themselves in hot water, eating dishes of
dainty cookery, drinking wine, besmeared with unguents,
lying on soft couches," and such other effeminacies which the
ancient queen would name openly, and the ancient historian
records faithfully, but which must not be alluded to here.

NEEO.

The Emperor ISTero ^vas about middle size ; his body was
spotted and dark ; his hair yellowish ; his face was beautiful
rather than handsome. It was, to use the distinction of Sue-
tonius, indcher rather than venustus. I can make nothing
more of this than one of the commentators on Suetonius
(Schildius) has done. He conceives \h^\, pulclier refers to the
complexion, and venustus to the form of the features. His
e3^es were grey and heavy ; his neck thick ; liis belly promi-
nent, and his legs slender.* This slenderness of legs was in-
herited from Germanicus. Xero, it will be observed, closed
the direct line from Augustus ; in the belief of the Romans,
he was the last lineal descendant of the Trojan ^neas. His
voice, according to both Dion and Suetonius, was husky and
extremely feeble.

In his dress, and in the care of his hair, Xero adopted vari
ous effeminate fashions which the Romans considered inde-
cent. He loved great splendor, and like our good Queen
Elizabeth, never wore the same dress twice. The Romans
made a feast on the occasion of a young man first undergoing
the operation of shaving. ISTero celebrated this event in hig

* Suetonius, "Xero," c. 51.
(127)

128 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

own life with peculiar splendor. At the entertainment
which he gave on the occasion^ it is noticed by Dion as some-
thing very remarkable that a lady of noble rank and great
wealth, in the eightieth year of her age, danced amongst the
company.* Nero preserved the hairs of his beard, and pre-
sented them in a gold casket to the Jupiter of the Capitol.
This is good reason to believe that Petronius, in his singular
work which presents us with so vivid a picture of the manners
of the times, has described Nero under the name of Trimal-
chio. In noticing the articles in Trimalchio's house, Petronius
mentions the household gods made of silver, a marble figure
of Venus, and a golden casket in which it was said that Tri-
malchio's beard was preserved. f It has been asserted that
there was a medal of Nero — a satirical one — which bore on
one side the words, " C. Nero August. Imp." and on the re-
verse, " Trimalchio."

This famous criminal, whose murder of his mother has
given to his name a proverbial pre-eminence in wickedness
over all the other bad emperors, was a young man of varied
accomplishments. He was a poet, a sculptor, and a painter ;
in music he was both a vocal and an instrumental performer ;
and besides all this he was a dancer, an amateur actor, and a
chariot driver. He would sit far into the night practising
singing with Terpnus the harp player, and he made use of all
the means then known for strengthening and improving his
voice, which was so very weak and indistinct, says Dion, that
to listen to him provoked both laughter and tears.

Suetonius describes some of the arts which Nero adopted
under the direction of a Phonascus, or voice doctor. Our
English poet, Nathaniel Lee, in his tragedy of "Theodosius,"
has embodied the information furnished by the historian.

* Dion "Hist." lib. lxi, p. 698.

\ Petronius, •' Satyricon," p. 22. Paris, 1601.

NERO. 129

Marcian upbraiding Theodosius, says :

*' But for you,
What can your partial sycophants inyent
To make you room among the emperors ?
Whose utmost is the smallest part of Xero ;
A pretty player, one that can act a hero
And never be one. O ye immortal gods !
Is this the old Ceesarian majesty r
Now in the name of our great Komulus,
Why sing you not, and fiddle too, as he did?
Why have you not, like Nero, a Phonascus ?
One to take care of your celestial voice ?
Lie on your back, my lord, and on your stomach
Lay a thin plate of lead— abstain from fruits."

The dramatist enumerates others of the luxurious follies
of Nero.

"Build too, like him, a palace lined -with gold,
As long and large as that to the Esquiline ;
Enclose a pool too in it, like the sea,
And at the empire's cost let navies meet.
Adorn your starry chambers too with gems,
Contrive the plated ceilings to turn round
With pipes to cast ambrosial oils upon you;
Consume with his prodigious vanity.
In mere perfumes and odorous distillations,
Of sesterces at once four hundred millions :
Let naked virgins wait you at your table,
And wanton cupids dance and clap their wings."

Nero, when he appeared as a singer upon the stage, was
called " The Celestial Voice, a circumstance to which the
poet alludes. He first came out as a vocalist in the theatre
at Naples, where he used to sing for whole consecutive days.
By an imperial edict no one w^as permitted to leave the thea-
tre when the Emperor was singing or acting ; so that, it is
6*

130 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

said, women were delivered of children within its \valls.
There is some humor in the story told by Dion that some
courtiers, in order to get away, feigned suddenly falling
dead, and were carried out by their servants. At these per-
formances this historian tells us that Seneca and Burrhus
used to applaud with their hands, and by lifting their robes in
order to lead on the rest ; but Nero had a body of five hun-
dred soldiers paid for the purpose of applauding. Of all his
courtiers, Thrasea alone refused to applaud, and Thrasea for
this and other similar offences paid the penalty with his hfe.
As a tragedian, Nero's favorite characters were those of Ca-
nace in labor, (in which he used to be delivered on the
stage,) Orestes, CEdipus, Alcmaon, Thyestes, and Hercules
m his rage. As a woman he used to appear dressed as his
departed and loved Poppeea.

According to Pliny, Nero was the first to set the exam-
ple of cooling water by immersing it in a glass vessel
amongst snow.

The reader of Poman history does not, I think, hate Nero
so much as he does some of the other emperors, certainly not
so much as Tiberius. Gibbon tells us that he was not so
much repelled by him as by Tiberias, Caligula or Domitian.*
There is reason to believe that he had some popular virtues,
though he would no doubt raise himself in the estimation of
the mob by his cruelties to the Christians. He was not uni-
versally execriited after his death. He appears to have been
capable of loving and of being loved. " Nor," says Suetonius,
" were there wanting those who for a long time after adorned
his tomb with the flowers of the spring and the summer."

* " Dois-je le dire et dire ici r Xero ne m'a jamais revolte autantqixe
Tibere, Caligula ou Domitien. II avait beaucoup de vices mais 11
n'etait pas sans vertus. Je vols dans son histoire peu de traits d'une
mechancete etudiee. II etait cruel, mais il I'etait plutot par crainte que
i-ar gout."— GiBBOx, Journal.

NEEO. 131

The eccentric Cardan, as I have elsewhere noticed, has
written a treatise on '' The Praise of Nero." From the title it
might be supposed that the work was satirical, but it is not
so ; it is a serious eulogium, and has not the merit of the least
ingenuity. In order to set off the virtues of Xero in high
relief, Cardan is liberal in the censure of every other person
mentioned in his work, and the first reprobates whom ne no-
tices are the historians Tacitus and Suetonius, who have
transmitted to us the records of Nero's life. Tacitus, he says,
was an idolatrous priest, and a man of the greatest ambition
and wickedness.

Cardan does not admit that there was one good emperor
in the whole series from Julius to his own day, except Alex-
ander Severus, and he mentions that even he was voracious
and ambitious. The philosopher Seneca we know was no
practical moralist, and Cardan calls him the worst of all men,
{niortaliwn improhissimus) and commends Nero for ridding
the world of him. He would rather that Nero had not mur-
dered Octavia, but contented himself with banishing her, as
she was guilty of sterility ; but as regards his mother, he
thinks that Nero was to blame for allowing her to live too long
— an endurance which leads him to think that he w^as the most
patient of men. He contrasts the innocence of Nero in many
respects with the guilt of the other emperors. Augustus,
Claudius, and Caligula played at dice, and Nero did not.
" What is worse," asks Cardan, '' what can be worse than
dice ?" " Is there," he repeats, " or can there be imagined
anything worse than dice ?" As an evidence of the amazing
goodness of Nero, Cardan begs to inquire, w^hat man is there
so patient that he could live with the most sweet-tempered
woman for four whole years without a quarrel, as Nero did
with Poppsea, the most peevish of all women {omnium fcemin-
arum morosisdma ?)

AGEIPPINA

I HAVE met with nothing recorded of the person of Agrip-
pina beyond the general praise of her great beauty, which is
spoken of in the strongest language by Dion. At the public-
spectacles, this historian describes her as wearing a cloak in-
terwoven with gold. The Roman people, who appear to
have tolerated much of JSTero's wickedness, were evidently
struck with horror at the murder of his mother ; caricatiu'es,
rhymes, and satirical pictures were fixed up in public places,
reviling the matricide. Nero himself appears to have been
distracted by his accusing conscience. He leaped in terror
from his bed in the night, and was alarmed by the sound of
trumpets heard over the spot where she was buried. The
murder was preceded by every circumstance of treachery and
hypocrisy. On taking leave of his mother on the night w^hen
his first attempt at her death by drowning was made, Nero
embraced her, says Dion, and kissed her eyes and her hands.
The remark which he made on looking at her dead body, says
the historian, was more wicked than the murder itself: " I did
not know that my mother was so beautiful."*

* Dion, «* Hist." lib. Lxi. p. 696. Ovx r^hsiv otc ovrc KaVkr^v i^rjrspa

(132)

AGRIPPINA. 133

Of all the lost works of the ancients, the loss most to be
deplored is that of the commentaries of Agrippina, to which
Tacitus refers as his authority for matters which he had not
found elsewhere. He describes the work as a history of her
own life, and of the fate of her relations.* The loss of a work
of history is a positive loss of wisdom to the world which can-
not be supplied ; in the case of a history written by a woman
of the great abilities of Agrippina, and who had mingled so
much as she had done in scenes of blood and licentiousness,
the loss is felt with double acuteness.

* Id ego a scriptoribus annalium non traditum, reperi in conimentariis
Agripinnae filiae ; quae Neronis principis mater, vitam suam et casus suo-
rum posteris memoravit." — Tacitus, Annales, lib. iv, c. 53.

POPP^A SABINA.

Popp/EA Sabina, the mistress and second wife of Nero,
according to Tacitus, inherited great beauty from her mother.
She had, Hke her lover, yellow hair; and Nero, who amongst
his other accomplishments was a poet, wrote verses in praise
of hev amber. locks {(x-ipillos siiccineos.)* The extreme white-
ness of her skin, the usual accompaniment of golden hair, she
preserved by bathing every day in asses' milk, and wherever
she went, she had along with her a troop of five hundred she-
asses to furnish her bath.f

In a curious little volume called " Abdeker, or the Art of
Preserving Beauty," Avritten by Camus, a French physician,
in the middle of the last century, the practice of Poppsea is
referred to, and the writer asserts that " this kind of milk,
as well as goats' milk, takes away the wrinkles of the skin,
and gives it a certain gloss that pleases both the senses of see-
ing and feeling."!

The receipt is probably as good as another which Camus
gives for procuring a white skin, and is certainly much safer,
where he advises walking by the side of a river in a fof.

* Plinius, "Hist. Natur," lib. xxxvii, c, 12.

t Ibid. lib. IX, c. 96.

:j: Abdeker, p. 75. Lond. 1754.

(134)

POPPiEA SABINA. 135

Wrinkles, he says, are removed by laying slices of veal on the
face before going to bed.

D'Israeli, in his " Curiosities of Literature," has noticed the
work of Camus, and speaks of the author as " a French phy-
sician, who combined literature with science, the author of
* Abdeker, or the Art of Cosmetics,' which he discovered in
exercise and temperance." It is quite clear from this erroneous
description of the book, that D'Israeli had never gone beyond
the title-page of " Abdeker." It is a collection of ridiculous
and nonsensical receipts for preserving beauty such as those
that I have quoted. Where fatness is not fashionable, for in-
stance, Camus tells iis that a woman may cure herself of it
by wearing a girdle of salt about her waist. Yy^here fatness
is admired, as in Egypt, he tells us a rather more natural
process which is had recourse to in order to obtain the desired
beauty.

" The women of Egypt," he says, " in order to acquire this
degree of fatness, bathe themselves several days in lukewarm
water. They stay so long in these baths, that they eat and
drink therein. During the time they are in the bath, they
take every half hour some broth made of a fit pullet, and
stuffed with sweet almonds, hazel-nuts, dates, and pistachio
nuts. (These, it may be remarked, are the identical materials
with which pullets are stuffed in Mussulman houses in Cairo,
at this day.) After taking this sort of broth four times, they
eat a fat pullet all but the head. When they come out of the
bath, they are rubbed over with perfumes and sweet-scented
pomatum, and after that, some of them take myrobalans be-
fore they go to bed ; others take a draught prepared with gum
tragacanth, and sugar-candy."

Besides this famous bath, Poppsea had other cosmetics
which have obtained celebrity. Juvenal, in noticing the coat-
ings of bread which the Eoman women and Eoman voluptua-
ries, like the Emperor Otho, l.'iid on their faces to improve the

136 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

delicacy of their complexions, mentions the ointments of Pop-
psea — pinguia Fopjpicena. These ointments were removed
when the Eoman women prepared for compan}^ The bitter
satirist tells us that the licentious wife smeared the lips of her
husband with plasterings and grease, but went to her para-
mour with these coatings removed, and her skin purely washed
and perfumed.*

Besides bathing in asses' milk, and using the famous oint-
ments which continued long after to bear her name, Poppsea,
it is believed, sought, like Otho, her second husband, to im-
prove the fairness of her face by the application to it of bread
steeped in milk.

The luxurious life of Poppsea w^as encouraged by Nero,
whose passion for her was fanatical. It is said that he caused
to be made for her a golden comb, and when one of her amber
hairs fell out, he made it be fastened in gold, and placed it on
the head of Juno's statue in her temple. It is to this circum-
stance, which is mentioned somewhere in one of Plutarch's
treatises, though I am unable to give the reference, that Jere-
my Taylor evidently alludes, in a passage in his beautiful
treatise, " The Eule and Exercises of Holy Living," and
w^iere he is speaking of persons who, in the midst of great
enjoyments, pine away on account of trifling vexations. *• Such
a person," he says, " is fit to bear Nero company in his fune-
ral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppsea's hairs, or help to
mourn for Lesbia's sparrow."t

Besides her expensive bath, Xiphelin tells us that the mules
on which Poppsea rode were led by golden cords. It appears
that she did not trust altogether to the powers of her mind,
excellent as they were, for preserving her influence. One
day, observing as she looked in her mirror, some traces of

* Juvenal, " Sat." lib.iv, 460.

t Jeremy Taylor, " Holy Living," 149. Lond. 1840.

POPP^A SABINA. 137

the decay of her beauty, she expressed a desire that she might
die rather than grow old. When Anne of Austria, the wife
of Louis XIII. , noticed during her last sickness that her
beautiful hands had begun to swell, she said, " It is time for
me to depart !"

All historians agree in ascribing to Poppsea the most con-
summate art in the management of her beauty, and in attract-
ing admiration. She could be licentious, Tacitus tells us,
with an appearance of modesty. She seldom went abroad,
and when she did she so, veiled the half of her face, in order
not to satisfy the desire of gazing at her ; or, as he malicious-
ly adds, because this fashion became her best. Tacitus has
described with great skill the arts by which she captivated
Xero, professing herself to be overcome by the emperor's
beaut}^ Her skill in heightening, by every artifice, the effect
of her charms, has become almost proverbial.

Our great dramatist, Massinger, has in more than one of his
plays, referred to Poppsea as an accomplished mistress of the
arts of attraction and seduction. Thus, in the " Duke of
Milan," (Act ii. sc. 2.)

'♦ And she that lately
Rivalled Poppaea in. her varied shapes."

In the " Picture," (Act ii. sc. 2.)

*' And in corrupting him I "will outgo
Nero's Poppa?a."

And again, in " A very Woman," Leonora says of Almirab,

" But so adorned as if she were to rival
Nero's Poppaea or the Egj'ptian Queen."

Poppsea's practice of bathing in milk as well as bathing in
wine, has not been unknown in modern times. Milk, it ap-
pears, is used for preserving beauty ; wine for recovering it.
D'Israeli refers to a^complaint of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who

138 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC POBTRAITS.

had the custody of Mary, Queen of Scots, during her impris-
onment at Fotheringhay, of the expenses of the Queen for
wine to her bath. " A learned Scotch physician," says D'Is-
raeli, " informed me that white wine was used for these pur-
poses. 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."*

The celebrated Diana of Poitiers, who is described as still
very beautiful in old age, according to a story preserved by
Brantome, though she used no painting, took the aurum pota-
bile and other drugs every morning, to keep her charms
fresh, t

The Lady Venetia Stanley, the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby,
by advice of her husband, who dived into all kinds of myste-
ries, and was filled with every sort of superstition, was put on
a diet of capons fed with vipers, which the knight had ascer-
tained to be a certain method of preserving beauty to extreme
old age.

An amiable desire to please has led to yet more heroic
efforts on the part of women. Montaigne tells us, as of a
thing w^ell known in his time, of a lady in Paris who caused
herself to be flayed, in order to acquire the freshness of a
new skin; J and in the works of the Duchess of Newcastle,
where she speaks of ladies pulling the hair out of their eye-
brows, and leaving only a thin row, she tells us of others
" peeling the first skin off the face with oil of vitriol, that anew
skin may come in its place, which," she adds, " is apt to
shrivel the skin underneath."

* ** Curiosities of Literature," p. 82. Lond. 1843.
I Brantome, " Dames Galantes," CEuvros, iv, p. 179.
\ Montaigne, " Essais," lib. i, c. 40.

POPP.EA SABINA. 139

Josephus, " the learned and warlike Jew" and unprincipled
politician, made use of the influence of Popp^ea to advance his
own interest, and is pleased to call her " a worshipper of the
gods," (0fO(j£(?»7j.) Tacitus has, after his usual manner, drawn
her character by a few vivid strokes. He allows her every
accomplishment, beauty of person, excellent powers of conver-
sation, and a good understanding, but denies her the posses-
sion of virtue.

The burial of Poppsea was unusual. Her death is attribut-
ed to her receiving a kick from Nero, when she ^vas great with
child. The emperor had lost temper at a joke which she
made. " The bod}'-," says Tacitus, who is willing to admit,
what appears to be the truth, that she was really loved by
ISTero, " was not burned with fire, after the Eoman fashion,
but interred with perfumes in the tomb of the Julii."* At
the celebration of her obsequies, Xero pronounced an eulo-
gium on her beauty.

Poppsea was deified, and a temple was erected to her honor
bearing the inscription " Sabinoe Dea3 Yeneri, Matronse fece-
runt."

* Tacitus, " Anuales, lib. xvi, c. 6.

OTHO.

The Emperor Otho appears in well-authenticated history as
the realisation of what we read in those imperfect and dreamy
but interesting rec(^ds, on which romance and poetry have
had room and encouragement to work, of the Assyrian mon-
arch Sardanapalus. Otho w\as brave in war, habitually calm
in soul, benevolent and kind, and wholly given up to the most
effeminate luxury. His reign was like a dream — it lasted just
ninety days. In his boyhood, he w^as much given to wild
midnight froHcs, for which he was often beaten. He became
the favorite of Nero, and took Poppsea from her husband, but
was obliged reluctantly to yield her up to the emperor. In
his banishment, which he owed to the jealousy of Nero, he
is allowed to have administered the affairs of the province
committed to his charge with moderation and forbearance *
Like all the Eoman emperors about that time, he believed in
magic. Galba, before him, had had his elevation tO- the
throne predicted to him by a soothsayer ; and Vitellius, after
him , had his fortune also foretold him. Seleucus, the magi-
cian, prophesied to Otho that he w^ould survive Nero, but

* Suetonius, « Otho," c. 3.
(140)

OTHO. 141

would only reign a short time. He helped the fulfilment of
the prophecy by his extreme liberality to the soldiers of the
guard,* who soon began to see clearly, and to declare plainly,
that Otho was worthy of the empire.

In person, Otho was like a woman, and he paid more than
a woman's regard to his toilet. His father is said to have
resembled in face the Emperor Tiberius,! and scandal reputed
him his son. It would be desirable, for the s^ke of poetic
effect, that we could believe that this elegant voluptuary, this
effeminate but heroic creature, was perfectly graceful in his
figure. But alas, the evidence of Suetonius destroys the dream
of his being a sort of Apollo — the embodiment of a Greek
sculptor's conception of a beautiful Sybarite ; and we learn
with pain that Otho was badly formed in the feet, and besides
was bandy-legged {male pcdatus^ scambusque.)\

The emperor was of the middle size. He used adornings,
says Juvenal, such as were not used either by the Assyrian
Semiramis, or by the sad Cleopatra at Actium.§ Like Sarda-
napalus, he painted his face; and hke the brave Parthian
Surena, he prepared for battle by dressing himself before a
miiTor. His body was smoothed, and freed from hairs; and
he practised shaving daily, preventing the growth of any ap-
pearance of a beard by the use of certain medicaments known
in his time. To make his face fair and soft, he applied to it a
paste made of bread. To conceal the thinness of the hair on
his head, he wore a false head-dress. Yet this voluptuary
could fight like a lion, and could cheerfully endure misfortune
and smile in the face of death, and could feel tenderly for the
sorrows of others, and could desire to see the v/hole world
happy.

* Tacitus, « Hist." lib. i, c. 13.

t Suetonius, " Otho," i.

:j: Ibid. 12.

^ Juvenalis, ** Sat." lib. ii, c. 107.

142 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

The death of Otho — if suicide were in any case permissible
— must he allowed to be much finer than that of the youn-
ger Cato; and even Christian writers have not been able to
refrain from admiration of some of the circumstances of his
last moments. After hearing of the victory of Yitellius, he
parted with his friends as night came on, kissing them as
usual. He also furnished those who wished to leave the
country with money sufficient to carry them ofi"; and he des-
troyed aU letters and papers which after his death might point
out his friends and followers to the vengeance of the con-
queror. He restrained the exercise of any force on those who
wished to desert to Yitellius. He wrote two consolatory let-
ters to his sister, and another to Messalina, the widow of
Nero, whom he loved, commending to her his memory. He
then, in the true Greek spirit, said, " Let us add this night
also to our lives," and threw^ himself on his couch, directing
that free admission should be given to all who wished to see
him.

At midnight he made choice of a poignard, and placing it
below his pillow, fell into a sound sleep. At daybreak, he
awoke and stabbed himself fatally under the left breast. The
soldiers, aroused by the noise of his fall, rushed in and w^ashed
his hands and his feet, as well as the wound, with their tears,
giving way to the most passionate grief. Several of them
stabbed themselves, and threw themselves on his dead bod3\
Others, at a distance, on hearing of his death, also slew
themselves. The body was quickly interred. It had been
Otho's request; he feared that his remains might be mutilated
by the brutal Yitellius, and he desired that his mangled body
might not be a disagreeable object.

The ancients admired fine deaths ; and the contemporaries
of Otho were in raptures at the details of his last moments.
Tacitus has dwelt wdth undisguised pleasure on the particulars
which we have on record. Suetonius tells us that even those

OTHO. 143

who hated the living Otho, now praised him dead, and
allowed that he had slfdn Galba not for the sake of reio-nino-,
but to restore liberty to Eome. And Dion, who is more
severe on the general character of Otho than the other his-
torians, concludes the history of his life by saying that
" though he had lived most wickedly, he died most beautifully
[xo^xktata n'^TsOavi) ; and the government which he had most
criminally usurped, he laid down with the greatest virtue."

COMMODUS

There are some of the Koman emperors whose wickedness
assumed so revolting a character that, in describing their man-
ners, it becomes necessary not so much to collect together, as
to make a selection from, the ample materials furnished by the
plain-speaking and, to modern notions, indelicate narratives of
their historians. Such a man as I have already noticed was
Tiberius ; and such a man was also the infamous and hateful
Commodus, the undoubted son of the wicked Faustina, and
the reputed and legitimate son of the philosophic Marcus An-
toninus.

The faithful and elegant Herodian, the Augustan historian
^lius Lampridius, and Dion Cassius all join in great harmony
in presenting us with a complete portrait of this very singular
and very wicked man.

Commodus was eminently handsome and beautiful. Hero-
dian calls him the most beautiful man of his age. His person
united dignity and elegance. His face, he says, was at once
beautiful and manly ; his eyes were shining ; his hair was of
that kind which the ancients admired either in man or woman,
yellow and crisped. When he walked in the sun, this histo-
rian tells us, his locks glittered like fire, so that some believed
they were sprinkled with gold-dust.

(144)

COMMODUS. 145

^lius Lampridius was one of those who held this belief—
for he tells us that Commodus's hair was always dyed and
illuminated with filings of gold. It is well known that some
of the emperors about this period sprinkled their hair with
gold-dust. Those, however, who thought that the alitter in
his hair w^as natural, regarded it as an evidence of his divine
origin. Commodus, monster of wickedness as he was, was
deified by the senate ; but those who were learned in court
scandal believed the Eoman emperor to be the fruit of his
profligate mother's love for one of the common boatmen.

iElius, w^ho tells us that Commodus was of middle stature,
detracts somewliat from the extreme beauty attributed to him
by Herodian, when he tells us that his face was like that of a
drunkard; but this remark has been thought to refer to the
gleaming of his eyes. Commodus was both a glutton and a
drunkard. Dion tells us that he drank largely, and Herodian
much more impressively conveys the same fact to his readers
in relating the last scenes of the emperor's life. He represents
his mistress Marcia, when she finds her name standing first
on the emperor's tablets in the list of persons to be put to
death, exclaiming, " Ah ! well done, Commodus ! And are
these the rewards of my kindness and love ? Is it this I have
deserved of thee for having for so many years borne with thy
reproaches and thy drunkenness. But these things shall not
succeed with thee, a drunken man, against a sober woman."

In speaking farther of his extreme beauty, Herodian tells
us that there was a soft dowm on Commodus's cheeks like that
which appears on flowers. iElius informs us that this mon-
ster, who was in the habit of cutting off people's noses and
ears for his amusement, was afraid to trust himself in the
hands of a barber, and used to burn his hair and beard.

Commodus received the highest education which the most
learned teachers of the age could impart to him. His father,
the philosophic emperor, had spared no expense in engaging
7

146 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

the most eminent masters in every kind of knowledge for the
instruction and cultivation of the mind of this strange young-
man.

It is historically true, that, like Nero, he commenced his
reign with the universal love of his people in his favor. All
Eome met him on his entrance after the death of Marcus, and
strewed his path with garlands and flowers, ^lius represents
him as abominably wicked from his very childhood. On the
other hand, Dion tells us that, at the age of nineteen, when
he became emperor, he was of an open, simple, and some-
what timid disposition, and easil^^ led to evil ; and Herodian,
in one part of his narrative, so far confirms this statement
w^hen he sa3's that " sometimes the memory of his father, and
then reverence for his friends, restrained this young man, but
presently a certain malignant and invidious fortune overthrew
the rectitude and moderation of his mind."

AYhat progress he made in the learned studies prescribed to
him by the pedants with v.hich his boyhood was surrounded,
does not clearly appear. ^Elius says his discourse was un-
polished. He was, however, like Nero, w'hom in so many
respects he resembled, the master of a variety of accomplish-
ments more or less becoming a prince. He danced and sung,
and played on the pipe; but these were also accomplishments
of the amiable Epaminondas. Commodus was, besides, a
chariot-driver, a gladiator, and a mimic or buffoon. He fre-
quented taverns, and places lower than taverns, and there
made himself generally useful. It is mentioned, to his deep
discredit, that he played at dice. The ancients attached to
playing at games of chance something like the same infamy
which the Mussulmans do. The eulogists of Augustus notice'
as a crime in him that he played at dice.

Jeremy Taylor, in his treatise on '- Holy Living," has an
enumeration of kings who degraded themselves by exercising
callings otherwise useful, but unsuitable to their stations.

COMMODUS. 147

" Some there are," be says, in the section on " Care of our
Time," "that employ their time in afiairs infinitely below the
dignity of their persons; and being called by God and by the
republic to help to bear great burdens, and to judge a people,
do enfeeble their understandings and disable their persons by
sordid and brutish business. Thus Nero went up and down
Greece, and challenged the fiddlers at their trade, ^ropus, a
Macedonian king, made lanterns. Harcatius, the king of Par-
thia, w^as a mole-catcher ; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed
needles." He does not mention that Commodus practised
the art of the potter and made cups.

Commodus was the strongest man of his time, and his
dexterity in killing wild beasts in the arena made him a
favorite with the populace, as, indeed, he continued to be
during the greater part of his reign. His delight was to
personate Hercules, and he went about with a large club in
his hand and a lion's hide thrown over his shoulders. The
people, who delighted in seeing him slaying ferocious animals,
and even exercising his great strength in killing the harmless
cameleopard, were disgusted when they saw their emperor
enter the arena as a naked gladiator.

Amongst his other wild freaks, in which he reminds us of
Nero and Caligula, Commodus ofi'ered sacrifices to Isis in his
palace, and appeared dressed as one of her priests, with his
head shaved. In her processions he was accustomed to carry
the image of " the dog Anubis," and to beat the bare heads
of the other priests with the snout of the beast.

This man, with the beauty of Apollo and the strength
of Hercules, indulged in every sensuality and efifeminacy.
He w^as at once a glutton and a drunkard. He used the
bath seven or eight times a day, and was in the habit of
eating in the bath — a fashion amono-st Oriental w^omen
which induces that fatness which is regarded as beauty. In

148 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTE AITS.

the theatre, Commodus sat in female attire and drunk before
the wliole audience. A woman, says Dion, presented him
with the most dehcious wine artificially cooled ; and when he
took the draught, the whole audience wished him " health."

There was a resemblance in three points between Commo-
dus and Caesar Borgia : both were extremely beautiful, pro-
digiously strong, and enormously wicked.

CAEACALLA

This contemptible man, who was killed at the early ago of
twenty-nine, was even at that age disgraced in the eyes of
his subjects by his baldness, besides being otherwise by na-
ture ill-favored and of small stature. In mere boyhood the
Augustan historian represents him as gentle, pleasant, affable,
benevolent, shedding tears or turning away his eyes from
sights of cruelty.* Writers and readers delight in strong
contrasts, and especially in making wonderful and unnatural
contrasts between the boyhood and the maturity of celebrated
men. These stories about the amiable virtues of the monster
Caracalla, are, I suspect, fictions and imaginations created to
feed the popular love of romance. Thus a thousand stories
are told about the stupidity, in boyhood, of men who after-
wards displayed the greatest genius. Sir "Walter Scott is
given as an instance. Yet that a boy could be stupid at ten
years of age and intellectual at twenty, may be safely pro-
nounced to be, if not an impossibiUty — because there is nothing
that mortals are entitled to pronounce impossible — ^yet certain-
ly a circumstance that never once happened in this world.

* ^lius Spartianus, "Hist. August. Scriptores," lib. i, 706. Lugd.
Batay. 1671.

(149)

150 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

These monstrous fables issue from the cloudy brains of
schoolmasters, the most ignorant of all judges of character and
intellect. A schoolmaster calls that boy clever who is dull
enough and mechanical enough and sufficiently devoid of a
mind of his own, to diligently imbibe the generally worthless
instruction which he communicates to him ; and he bestows
the name of dunce on the other boy who has enough of intre-
pidity about hirn to select his studies for himself, and to re-
gard his master's intellect v\^ith anything but unquestioning
veneration.

However it may have been with the boyhood of Caracalla,
the same historian who speaks so highly of his early virtues,
represents him as a most ferocious and bloodthirsty youth —
and at the same time in his aspect severe, gloomy, and trucu-
lent. Herodian describes with much minute detail and great
fidelity to nature, the rise, progress, and manifestations of the
hatred between him and his half-brother Geta. Dion gives
us a strange and most picturesque account of the murder of
Geta in the arms of his mother, the beautiful Julia. The bro-
thers, at the instance of the treacherous Caracalla, had agreed
to meet in the empress's bedchamber, to be reconciled in her
presence. Caracalla surrounded the palace with soldiers.
The picture is not complete unless we recollect that Geta was
a youth of twenty -five years of age. He was killed in his
mother's arms, while " he hung on her neck and clasped her
breasts, and weeped, and cried ' Mother ! mother ! parent !
help me — I am killed !' while Juha was bathed in his blood."*
The words given below may be received as the real language
used by Geta, which might be learned by Dion, living at the

* Mt^rsp At»?^fpj '^£xov(jaf Tsxovaa, Soridsij cq)a|o^at. Dion,
*' Hist. Rom." lib. Lxxvii, p. 871. (Leunclavius) Hanoviae, 1606. A
language like the English, without the tertninational distinctions of gen-
der, cannot do justice to this curious passage. In the Latin it is pretty-
faithfully rendered— Mater mater, genetrix, genetrix, &c.

CAPtACALLA. ]51

time. Both Caracalla and Geta were well instructed in
Greek in their childhood. It will be observed that Ilerodian
represents Caracalla as stabbing Geta with his own hand.
Dion attributes his death to the hired soldiers. Throiiohout
his after-life, Caracalla used to make jokes on the murdered
Geta ; at other times to shed tears when his name was men-
tioned, or when he happened to cast his eyes on an image or
statue of him.

Caracalla's want of hair would have subjected him to ridi-
cule with the Eomans even if he had been a man of virtue.
On one occasion in particular, it made him the subject of
contemptuous laughter to the rabble. This mean-looking
man had a passion for imitating and acting the characters of
Achilles and Alexander, both famous with the ancients for
their beauty. Amongst his other w^ild frolics, Caracalla pro-
ceeded to Troy, and visited what was believed to be the tomb
of the swift-footed son of Thetis, magnificently decked with
crowns and flowers. Then, in the character of Achilles, he
made a funeral of his deceased friend Festus, as his beloved
Patroculus. The pile was reared, the sacrifices were ofi'ered,
the wine was poured out, and the winds were invoked. But
when, after the fashion of Achilles and the rites of mourning
amongst the Greeks, he had to cut off his locks and throw
them into the flames, the spectators burst out into a shout of
laughter, when he could only get a few scattered hairs to
sacrifice.*

This degraded monster's favorite, however, was the heroic
Alexander. In order to keep alive the memory of the ]\Iace-
donian hero,., as if it were in danger of perishing without his
care, Caracalla busied himself in erecting statues and images
of him in all the temples. He had, Dion tells us, armor

* Ilerodian, iv, 14.

152 CLASSIC AKD IIISTOIUC PORTRAITS.

such as was worn, and cups such as were used by Alexander.
Amongst other monuments of the emperor's folly, Herodian
had seen a double-faced image, one side of which was the
portrait of Alexander, and the other that of Caracalla. The
emperor himself wore the Macedonian dress, and had a cho-
sen band of young men in his army whom he called " the Ma-
cedonian phalanx," all the captains of which he caused to
be called by the name of Alexander's generals. Dion re-
marks that Caracalla, cruel to all else, was kind and generous
to his soldiers in imitation of Alexander.

He proceeded to Alexandria, and there he visited the mon-
ument of Alexander, on which he deposited his rich vest-
ments, his rings, and other ornaments. All this, of course,
served not to promote his glory, but just to provoke the ridi-
cule of the people of Alexandria, who, says Herodian, as I
have mentioned before in the sketch of Alexander, laughed at
him, that he, a man of small stature, should ape Alexander
and Achilles, those very valiant and great warriors.

Caracalla labored under ill-health, arising, says Dion, from
manifest and secret diseases. Like Caligula, he was troubled
with visions of spectres. In his delirium he wms terrified by
the apparitions of his father and his brother brandishing
swords. In order to learn a remedy for his malady, he in-
voked the spirits of the dead, and especially of his father and
of Commodus, and Commodus is said to have given him an-
swers by no means of a soothing or cheering kind. He con-
sulted also the magicians, who predicted his death by the hand
of Macrinus.

Various prodigies foretold his fate. He was in the habit
of keeping tame lions about him. His favorite hon was called
Acinax. This beast used to dine at his table, and at night
to lie in bed with him, and the emperor was observed fre-
quently to kiss him in public. Shortly before his death, as

CARACALLA. 1 53

he was passing through a certain gate where Acinax was,
unobserved by him, the favorite lion laid hold of his robe and
tore it.

In the repositories of this hateful criminal, a variety of poi-
sons, procured by him at great expense from the East, were
discovered and consio-ned to the flames.

HELIOGABALITS.

We have a profusion of materials regarding the person,
habits, and fashions, as well as the follies and vices of Helio-
gabalus, that strange compound of Tiberius, Caligula, ISTero,
Vitellius, and Commodus, with the Assyrian Sardanapalus —
for there was a more Oriental taste about this effeminate crea-
ture than about any other of the Eoman emperors. The cir-
cumstance "Was observed by the populace, who, as w^e learn
from Dion, amongst the other epithets w^hich they bestowed
on him, called him Sardanapalus and Assyrius.*

This boy, for he was but a mere youth w^hen he was
killed, had before his death rivalled the varied wickedness of
all the worst of his predecessors. The Augustan historian
iElius Lampridius is copious to overflowing in all manner of
details about his daily life, and between him and the curious
Dion and the elegant Herodian, w^hich tw^o last historians may
have seen the emperor, w^e have the complete picture of this
monster of depravity. Lampridius in his narrative refers to
many records w^hich he says were compiled of the private life
of Heliogabalus, and especially to a biography of him by Ma-
rius Maximus. In the midst of all the horrible details with

* Dion, «' Hist." lib. lxix, p. 906.

(154)

HELIOGABALUS. 155

which he furnishes us, Lampridius professes to have made
merely a decent selection out of the materials before him,
omitting the more infamous particulars, and veiling in as mod-
est language as he could command what he was obliged as a
faithful historian to relate. From his selection, a re-selection
is all that can be made fit for presentation to modern readers.

Lampridius, in his voluminous description, does not allude
to the figure and face of Heliogabalus. This we have, how-
ever, described by Herodian, who more than once alludes to
the great beauty of his countenance, regreting that he spoiled
it with painting and unguents. Herodian's description of the
appearance of the young emperor as the priest of the god He-
liogabalus, whose name and honors he afterwards assumed, is
exceedingly striking and picturesque. Bassianus (Heliogaba-
lus's name was Bassianus Antoninus) and his younger bro-
ther, Alexianus, afterwards Alexander Severus, were both
priests of the Assyrian god Heliogabalus, or the Sun.

" Bassanius, as the elder," says Herodian, " discharged
the ofl5ce of chief priest. He walked in the Eastern dress,
wearing a cloak interwoven with gold, having long sleeves —
and which, falling down to his feet^ covered all his limbs to
the toes. His other robes were of purple, entwined with o-old.
On his head he bore a coronet, glittering with precious stones
of various colors. He was then in the flower of his youth,
and the most beautiful man of the times. Hence, with his
personal charms, his boyhood, and the remarkably effeminate
dress which he wore, he was naturally compared with the
most beautiful pictures of Bacchus."*

It will be observed that the historian censures as effeminate
the close dress of Heliogabalus. It is probable that the em-
peror, who indulged in every art and device of lasciviousness,
entertained the Eastern notion that a close dress is the cos-

* Herodian, lib. v, c. 5.

156 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTHAITS.

tume of indecency, and that virtue and innocence are beto-
kened by looseness of garments and an approach to nudity.

It is somewiiat curious, that the figures of the effeminate
Sardanapalus, and of the licentious Semiramis, and the statues
and medals of the Byzantine Theodora, who rivalled the wick-
edness of the most wicked of the ancients, represent them as
completely wrapped up in their robes, from the throat to the
toes. At this day, the virtuous Malabar woman goes all un-
covered above the waist, whilst almost everywhere in the
East, the dancing-girl, who is unchaste by religious obligation
— is loaded with clothes.

It w^as while celebrating the worship of his god, and leading
his chorus round the altar, in Oriental fashion, to the sound of
flutes and pipes, and other musical instruments, that the Eo-
man soldiers beheld their future emperor, and were struck
with his extreme beauty.

The directors and guides of Heliogabalus's youth were his
mother, w^ho is called Semiriama, or Sosemis, and his grand-
mother, Msesa, and both of these women he seems to have
honored and loved. His mother, who is described as the
most profligate woman in Rome, rivalling in licentiousness the
Messalina of a former age, instructed him in all manner of
wickedness.

The emperor introduced both his mother and his grandmo-
ther into the senate ; and there was then a senate occupied
with legislation on women's interests and affairs. This senate
declared what dress women were to w^ear, what orders of
them should give place to other orders, who should salute
each other with a kiss, w^hich classes should be carried on a
horse, an ass, a mule, or an ox, or on a couch, or in a chair ;
and whether the chair should be covered with skin, or bone,
or ivory, or silver, and who should or should not wear gold

HELIOGABALUS. 157

and gems in their shoes. These golden shoes were afterwards
prohibited in the simple reign of Alexander Severus.*

When he became emperor, Heliogabalus forbade the wor-
ship in Eome of any other god, except that Syrian divinity
whose name he bore, and whom he represented. All the
other worships he treated with contempt, profaning the altars,
violating the vestal virgins, and seeking to extinguish the
sacred fire.

The election of the emperor took place when he was in the
East. He proceeded to Nicomedia, and there spent the win-
ter. Here we have a vivid picture of his mode of life by He-
rodian. " He presentl}^ began to riot in licentiousness, cele-
brating the worship of his god with dances, clothed in a luxu-
rious robe interwoven with purple, and \vearing bracelets and
necklaces, and other golden ornaments and coronets, after the
form of the tiara, and adorned with gold and precious stones.
The fashion of his robe was compounded of the sacred stole
of Phoenicia and the soft attire of the Mede. The Eoraanand
Greek garments being made of wool, ' the vilest of things,' as
he used to say, nothing pleased him but the webs of Syria ;
and in celebrating the worship of his god, he walked abroad
to the sound of pipes and drums."!

All this is intensely Oriental. Heliogabalus had completely
understood and assumed the Eastern character.

The following account from Herodian gives a complete pic-
ture of an Oriental religious festival. Heliogabalus had re-
solved to lead out his god in a splendid procession, and made
great sports, and spectacles, and feasts for the people on the
occasion. The deity was placed on a chariot, ornamented
with gold and precious stones, and in this way was drawn
from the town to the countr}'.

* iElius Lainpridius, "Hist. August. Scriptores," lib. i, 798.
t Herodian, lib. v, c 11.

158 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

In the chariot were yoked horses of great size, and of a
spotless white color, and conspicuous from their splendid
trappings. Heliogabalus held the reins, but he did not ascend,
uor did an^^ mortal mount the chariot, which appeared to be
driven by the god himself So in the Indian processions of
Vishnu, the car pulled by his w^orshippers, appears to be
guided by the divinity himself Heliogabalus, with the reins
in his hands, ran backwards, with his eyes fixed on the idol,
and in this way completed the w^hole procession. To prevent
his slipping his foot, gold-dust was sprinkled on the road, and
the soldiers guarded him on each side for ear he might fall.
The people, in the meantime, ran in crowds, with torches in
their hands, scattering about flowers and garlands.

The images of the gods, and all the ornaments and furni-
ture of the temples, and the soldiers with the Eoman ensigns,
accompanied this exhibition. Lofty tow^ers were erected,
which, after the procession, the emperor ascended, and threw
down amongst the people gold and silver cups, and garments
of every kind. In the crushing made to lay hold of these
prizes, many were suffocated, others were trodden underfoot,
and others fell on the spears of the soldiers. The emperor, in
the meantime, was seen driving about, or dancing in the most
effeminate manner, with his eyes and his cheeks painted;
"disfiguring," says the historian, "his naturally beautiful
countenance with disgraceful colors.''*

Dion represents Heliogabalus as obtaining the empire
through the valor of his mother and grandmother, who ap-
peared in the field against Macrinus his rival ; and when the
soldiers were giving way, rallied them and brought th-em back
to victory.!

The grandmother of Msesa is described by Ilerodian as a
woman of masculine spirit, and vexed at the effeminate vices of

* Herodian, lib. v, c. 12. t Dion, «' Hist.'' lib. Lxxviii,p. 889.

HELIOGABALUS. • 159

Heliogabiilus. She earnestly entreated her grandson, before
he marched to Eome, to lay aside his Syrian robes and assume
the Roman dress, and not to oifend the people by appearing
in a costume which they regarded as only suitable for a
worthless woman. The emperor did every thing that he was
beseeched not to do. He resolved to prepare the people of
Rome to see him in all his Eastern adornments.

For this purpose he caused a full-length figure of himself to
be made, as he appeared in his sacerdotal robes, and sent it
before him to Eome, where it was erected on an elevation in
a conspicuous place, in order that when the senate met, they
might burn frankincense, and pour out libations of wine to
him. " When Heliogabalus himself thereafter entered Rome,"
says Herodian, " the people saw nothing that was new to
them."

His entrance to Rome, the emperor signalised by a largess
of corn to the people, and then by a sacrifice to his god on the
most magnificent scale. He built a vast and most beautiful
temple, and built several altars around it, at which every
morning hecatombs of bulls, and immense numbers of birds
were sacrificed. Odors and incense were heaped up on the
sacrifices, and the richest wines were mingled in profusion
with the blood of the victims. Women danced round the
altars in a circle, with cymbals and tabours in their hands.
The noblest in the land carried the articles required for the
sacrifices on their heads, clothed with the long Phoenician
robes, and w^earing the linen shoes of the Phoenician priest-
hood.*

In his familiarity with the gods and goddesses, Heliogabalus
bears most resemblance to Caligula, who fell in love with the
moon, and implored her to share the imperial bed. Helioga-
balus used to have the " Judgment of Paris " acted in his

* Herodian, lib. v, c. 12, 13.

160 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

palace, he himself performing not the part of Paris, but of the
goddess of beauty. He also sometimes appeared as Venus,
lamenting the cruel fate of Adonis — as indicating the grief
which would be felt for himself when he should be removed
from the world. The lamentation for Adonis, the Syrian
Thammuz, was, however, a piece of worship known through-
out the Eoman empire, and in particular was a favorite part
of the religious rites of Syria, which Heliogabalus brought
into fashion. How beautifully, and in what an Eastern spirit
has Milton described this worship when enumerating the hea-
then divinities amongst the fallen angels in hell !

'* Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In am'rous ditties all a summer's daj' ;
While smooth Adonis from his native well
Ran purple to the sea, suppos'd with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded ; the love tale
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezechiel saw when by the vision led,
His eyes surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah."

Heliogabalus, however, assumed the character and costume
of all the gods and goddesses. He was one day C3'bele, the
great mother of the gods, and like her had his chariot drawn
by lions. The next day he w^as Bacchus, and his chariot was
drawn by the Indian tigers. Heliogabalus married and repu-
diated two or three beautiful but mere mortal women before
he took a wife from Olympus. He divorced Cornelia Paula
because he discovered a spot on her body ; and then compelled
the vestal virgin, Aquila "Severa, to marr}^ him, in order that
from himself, the high priest, and her as a vestal, a celestial
progeny might be begotten. He next took to his bed the

HELIOGABALUS. 161

image of Pallas, which had been kept sacred from the sight
of men in her temple since the time when, according to tradi-
tion, it had been brought from burning Troy. The emperor
introduced the goddess at court as his wife. He grew tired,
however, of the martial maid, and took in her place the Syrian
Ashtaroth or Diana, alleging that there was much suitability
in the match between him and her — a marriage of the sun with
the moon. The nuptials were celebrated publicly and pri-
vately with the utmost splendor.

In his magnificence, Hehogabalus was truly Oriental. He
had beds and couches of solid silver. He adorned others of
his beds with gold. His chariots glittered with gems. They
were drawn sometimes by elephants, sometimes by stags, and
sometimes by beautiful naked women. His drinking and
cooking vessels were of silver. He was guilty of the luxury
which, at a later period, St. Chrysostom charges as a sin
against the Christian ladies of Constantinople — of using vessels
of the most precious material for the use of most ignoble purposes.
He had cups artificially perfumed for drinking, and others on
which lascivious designs were sculptured ; an iniquity not
confined to ancient and heathen times. At table he reclined
on couches stufied with the fur of hares or the down of part-
ridges. He wore cloaks heavy with gems, and used to say
that he was burdened with a load of pleasure. He had gems
in his shoes, sculptured with designs by the finest artists. He
wore a diadem of precious stones that he might resemble a
beautiful woman. He is said to have been the first Eomau
who wore robes of entire silk. He never, it is said, wore a
ring for more than one day, or twice put on the same, shoes.

In his more refined and elegant luxuries he was the rival of
the ancient Demetrius Poliorcetes. He had beds and couches
of roses, and walked amongst lilies, violets, hyacinths, and nar-
cissuses. When he wished to add the piquant flavor of cru-
elty to his enjoyments, he would stifle a courtier to death in a

162 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

bed of flowers. He swam in water perfumed with saffron and
precious unguents ; and wine and aromatics were poured into
bis fish-ponds and his baths. *

In eating and drinking he appears not so much as a glutton,
but as the chief all royal epicures — the equal is gastronomic
science of the renowed Apicius. He joined with all who
studied the pleasure of the palate in admiration of the dish
which the Eomans made of the teats of a newly farrowed pig
— the most celebrated of ancient luxuries. After the example
of Apicius he indulged in dishes made of the tender parts of
the heel of the camel, and of combs torn from the heads of
living cocks. This latter delicacy, Casaubon, in his comment-
ary on the passage in the Augustan historian in which it is
referred to, tells us, is at this da}^ — that is, in his day, two
hundred years ago — passionately sought after by men of learn-
ed palates. Like Yitellius he seems to have had his appetite
whetted by the expensiveness of the dishes which he procured;
and like him he took a pleasure in sacrificing the rarest and most
beautiful birds, for the sake of eating their heads, their brains,
or their tongues. At one entertainment he displayed on his
table the heads of six hundred ostriches, whose brains as well
as those of the flamingo and thrush, were amongst his favorite
repasts. He also indulged in the tongues of peacocks and
nightingales, beheving that they had a medical virtue in avert-
ing epilepsy. He also made dishes of the entrails and some-
times of the beards of the mullet, of the eggs of partridges,
and the heads of pheasants, peacocks, and parrots. We won-
der at the destruction of creatures so lovely to the sight as the
peacock, the flamingo, and the pheasant, for the particle of
delicate eating to be got from them ; but epicurism and glut-
ton}^ consume and destroy all the other tastes.

The Abbe Dubois, in his curious work on India, notices
with regret that the prospect of the immense influence over
the minds of the Hindus which they Vv'ould have acquired if

HELIOGABALUS. 163

they would only have consented to abstain from one single
article of food — the flesh of the cow ; the representative on
earth of the goddess Bhavani, would not restrain the English
from horrifying the heathen by eating of that one article, even
in the unsavory condition in which it is found in India, A
devout Danish missionary, of the Moravian sect, is still more
severe on the same subject. He tells us that when an Enghsh
child is shown any pretty bird or fish, its first question about
it is : " Is it good for eating ?"

We presume that Heliogabalus knew the rich merits of the
goose's Uver, though he may have been ignorant of that terri-
ble cruelty which Christian cooks, in modern times, are guilty
of practising to please Christian palates in the preparation of
the celebrated fat liver ; but it is recorded of him that, wdiile
he put grapes into his horses' mangers and fattened his hons
on parrots and pheasants, he fed his dogs with the livers of
geese.

The genius of Heliogabalus shone particularly bright in the
cooking of fish. In this department he is said to have in-
vented new modes unknown to Apicius ; but with a refined
hatred of things common and cheap, he would never taste fish
at all when he was near the sea, but always took delight in
them w^hen far removed from w^ater, just as he took a fancy
for having snow brought to him in Midsummer. He off"ered
rewards for the discovery of new dishes of exquisite flavor,
and he had a humorous way of stimulating the invention of
those around him in this science. When a courtier, after exert-
ing his best skill to please him, produced a dish which he did
not relish, he made the ingenious artist himself continue to eat
of that dish and of nothing else, till his faculties, sharpened
by disgust, enabled him to find out something superior for his
master.

Like Nero and Caligula, Heliogabalus had his jocularities —
generally practical ones — sometimes merely absurd, sometimes

164 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC POETEAITS.

characteristically cruel. His most harmless entertainments in
this way consisted of the suppers which he would give one
night to eight men all of them blind of one eye, sometimes to
eight bald, sometimes to eight afflicted with gout, then to eight
deaf men, eight black men, eight tall, and eight fat men. lie
kept lions and leopards, which lay at table with him, in order
to frighten his friends. He would get a company filled with
drink, and after locking them up for the night would let loose
amongst them lions, leopards, and bears, with their claws
pared, to terrify them ; and many, it is said, died of the
fright.

At other times, when daylight would break in on the com-
pany who had been drinking the night before,^ they w^ould find
them.selves in the arms of ugly black old women. At other
times he made sham entertainments, like the Barmicide's feast
in the Eastern tale, setting his guests down to dishes made of
wax, ivory, or stone, painted after nature. He collected ser-
pents together, and let them loose to bite his visitors. He
w'ould tie his courtiers to a w^heel, and have them whirled
round in w^ater, calling them, in allusion to the mythological
fable, his " Ixionite friends."

Fearing a violent death from the vengeance of the people,
Heliogabalus had made preparations which turned out to be"
all in vain, for terminating his existence in an elegant manner.
He had poisons mixed up with the most precious articles, he
had ropes of purple and crimson silk ready to strangle him-
self with, and golden swords to stab himself with. He had
also a high tower built with rich adornings, where he might
breathe out his last in royal state.

The manner of his death was just the reverse of all that he
desired. After being slain, his body was first thrown into
the common sewer, then dragged through the streets, and cast
into the Tiber. According to Herodian and Dion, the same
indi^-nities were inflicted on the body of his mother, who was

HELIOGABALUri. 165

killed at the same time. Dion represents Heliogabalus as
having been slain in her arms, and states that both their heads
were cut off, and their bodies stripped naked, and that the
one was thrown into one place of the river, and the other into
another.

We have a curious picture of Roman manners in these days
in the record of the various names of contempt and derision
which were bestowed on Heliogabalus in his lifetime, and after
his death. The most complimentary were those of " Sardan-
apalus" and " Assyrius," in allusion to the eastern luxury of
the emperor. From the licentious amours of his mother, he
derived, according to some authorities, the title of " Varius,"
indicative of the uncertainty of his paternity :* though another
derivation has been assigned to this epithet. After his death he
was called " Tractitius," from having been dragged through
the streets, and " Tiberinus" from having been cast into the
Tiber. His name of " Impurus" was, perhaps, conferred upon
him from his body having been thrown into the common sewer,
though this tittle w^as at least as well merited by him in life
as in death. Heliogabalus had lived like Vitellius, and the
circumstances of their deaths were remarkably similar.

* Et aiunt quidem, Yarii etiam. nomen idcirco eidem inditum a
condiscipulis, quod vario semine de meretrice utpote, conceptus vidertur*
^Lirs Lampridius, "Hist. August. Script.," lib. i, 794.

ZENOBIA.

The person and habits of Zenobia, the celebrated Queen of
Palmyra, have in some degree become familiar to the general
reader, from the notice of them which Gibbon, transcribing
from the full details furnished by the Augustan historian, Tre-
bellius Pollio, has embodied in his fascinating work. It is
rarely indeed that the character of Gibbon suffers from a com-
parison of his text ^^dth his authorities and references, and in
matters of curious interest he is seldom chargeable with want
of sufficient copiousness. He has, however, by no means ex-
hausted the personal description of Zenobia, and to some im-
portant particulars about her habits he has made no allu-
sion,

Zenobia says Pollio was the most noble and the most beauti-
ful of all the women of the East.* Her complexion, he tells
us, was brown, as is noticed by the monk in Chaucer :

* I say not that she had moche fairnesse,

But of hire schepe she might not be amended.' 'f

* Trebellius Pollio, "Hist. August. Script." lib. ii. p. 299. Ludg.
Bat. 1671.

t Chaucer, " Monke's Tale," b. xiv. 259.

(166)

ZENOBIA. 167

Yet it should be recollected that Zenobia was descended
of the Macedonian princes of Egypt, and reckoned Cleopati'a
amongst her ancestresses. Her eyes were black and sparkling
beyond measure,* says Poilio ; her spirit was divine, and her
beauty incredible. Her teeth were so white, that some thought
she wore pearls instead of teeth. This is the most distinctly
Oriental feature in the picture of Zenobia. There are teeth
sufficiently white to be found in Europe, if they be diligently
soiaght after ; but the tooth which is most accurately described
as " pearly," having an appearance of half transparency, is
purely Asiatic.

Her voice, says Poilio, was clear, and he adds, manly. She
lived in royal pomp, after the manner of the Persians, and like
the sovereigns of Persia, received divine honours. She feasted
after the fashion of the Pomans. She went to the public as-
semblies with a helmet on her head, and a purple bordered
robe, with jewels hanging from the fringe, her under robe
bound about her waist with a clasp, and her arms often bare.
On her shoulders she wore an imperial tunic, or small cloak,
after the usage of Queen Dido.

She was at once prudently liberal, says Poilio, and economi-
cal, beyond a woman's fashion, of her treasury. She used a
chariot in driving, seldom taking a coach, and often rode on
horseback. She frequently walked on foot three or four miles
with the soldiers.

" She marched at the head of her troops," says Father le
Moyne, " always the first at the fight, and the last to retreat.

* OcuHs supra modum vigentibvis, nigris. Salmasius tells us that the
Palatine manuscript, instead of vigentibus, read ingerJiLus. Gibbon lias
Avith great art, given Zenobia the full benefit of both readings, besides
adding a compliment of his own. "Her large black eyes," he says,
" sparkled -with uncommon fire, tempered with the most attractive
sweetness."

168 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC POrvTRAITS.

Her e3^es, indeed, were the common fire of the camp ; the most
cowardly were warmed at them, and drew from them \ngor
and courage ; and when she harangued her men on a day of
assault or of battle, she left nothing for the clarion or the trum-
pets to do."*

Temperance in the use of wine was not amongst her virtues
— a circumstance remarkable in a w^oman so renowned for her
singular chastity — but she had great powers in bearing liquor.
She drank often with her generals, says Pollio, though other-
wise she was sober ; she drank also with the Persians and the
Armenians that she might overcome them.

At her feasts she used vessels of gold adorned with gems,
such as Cleopatra was wont to display. She preferred being
attended by eunuchs of grave years rather than by women.
She made her sons speak Latin, so that it was only rarely and
with difficulty that they spoke Greek. She herself was not
wholly ignorant of Latin, says the historian, but modesty pre-
vented her from speaking it. She spoke the Egyptian lan-
guage perfectly, and was so well acquainted with Oriental his-
tory, that she is said to have ^^Titten a compendious account
of it.f

It is somewhat remarkable that Gibbon, one of whose great
weaknesses was the pleasure which he felt in speaking to the
discredit of women, and who, in the history of this very
Zenobia, has founded a censure of the sex not merely unjust
but at direct variance with truth, has omitted all notice of the
vice of drunkenness with which Zenobia has been charged,
and of which there is little doubt that she was really guilty.
It is true that Pollio tells us her reason for drinking ; but both
men and women readily find reasons, quite satisfactory to

* " Galerie des Femmes Fortes," par le Pere le Mo^me, p. 210.
Paris, 1663.

t "Hist. August." lib. II, 335.

ZENOBIA. 1G9

themselves, for indulging in their darling sins. The jolly En-
glish Churchman, who has enumerated in three Latin ver-
ses the five reasons for drinking, has judiciously made reason
fifth so broad as to include in it anything that any person at any
time may be pleased at consider as a reason.* The Ivoman
writer's statement is about as vand a vindication of Zenobia
as the defence made by Mr Alison the historian, of Pitt's deep
drinking. " Though he often," says Mr. Alison, in a passage
of rich, though perfectly unintended, humour, " drank deeply,
it was only to restore nature after the incessant exhaustion of
his parliamentary efforts." t Mr. Alison just shows that Pitt
had no worse and no better reason for " drinking largely" than
other large drinkers have, or than drinking weavers and cob-
blers have, while the defence embodies a belief in the danger-
ous doctrine that " drinking largely" as Pitt did, restores na-
ture when it is exhausted.

Towards Herod, the only son of her husband, Odenathus —
for Zenobia had a husband, though the readers of her history
are apt to forget the circumstance — Pollio tells us that she dis-
played the spirit of a step-mother. Herod was an effeminate
creature, wholly given up to Oriental luxury, delighting in pa-
vilions and tents ornamented with gold. Odenathus, " moved
by the afifection of paternal indulgence," says Pollio, sent to
Herod the concubines, riches and gems, which he captured in
war. Such a Sybarite was not likely to disturb the rule of
a woman of the masculine and warlike soul of Zenobia.

Pather le Moyne, in his rhapsodical work on great women,
has given a prominent place to Zenobia, '^ who," he says, " uni-

* The famous lines are by Dean Aldrich. :

" Si recte memini, caus£B sunt quinque bibendi,
Hospitis adventus, pr^esens sitis autque futura,
Aut vini bonitas, aut qurelibet altera causa."

t Alison, " Hist, of Eurone,"" vol. iii. v. 114. Edit. 18-17.

170 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

ted all the graces of her own sex to all the virtues of ours."
He speaks of her daughters, of whom I have not elsewhere
heard, as having the generosity, and wearing the dress of Ama-
zons. She, herself the descendant of Cleopatra, he says, inher-
ited the beauty, the wit and the magnificence of that celebrated
queen. She had, besides, cfther virtues of her own, being
chaste and magnanimous, eloquent and acute. Her beauty,
says the gallant priest, was a beauty majestic and military, a
beauty of command and of action. Her heroic figure, he
goes on to say, her assured countenance, her haughty and har-
dy grace, her eyes brilliant and full of fire, and all her exterior
was like that which painters have given to virtue and victory.
Her body, so perfect, was inhabited by a mind yet more per-
fect ; like a fine intelligence in a fiiir star. The Roman his-
torians, who for state reasons have blackened the reputation of
Cleopatra more than the sun of Eg3^pt had blackened her face,
have not touched the honour of her descendant. She was
more chaste, he adds, in marriage, than their vestal were in
their virginity ; and when Odenathus was taken from her, she
still remained married to his name and memory.

After a very long and flowery eulogium on Zenobia, from
which what I have here given are mere pickings, the good
father concludes the whole by dealing with Zenobia as honest
Launcelot Gobbo does with the Jew's daughter. " I was always
plain with you," says Launcelot, ^ " and so now I speak my
agitation of the matter ; therefore be of good cheer, for truly
I think you are damned." So Father le Moyne tells us that
with all her virtues, Zenobia is now in hell in the midst of ever-
lasting torments. The following piece of raving is what he
calls the reficxion morale on her case.

'' It is a pity that a generosity so high, a constancy so he-
roic, a chastity so invincible, graces so modest, so many
virtues of peace and war are damned ; and that Zenobia the
brave, the temperate and the chaste, has certainly ns bad an

ZEXOBIA. 171

eternity as Messalina the dissolute and debauched. The pagan
virtues, whatever beauty they may have, or however adorned
they may be, are but foolish virgins. The heavenly bride-
groom knows them not, and whatever importunity they may
make, the gates of his palace will never be opened to them.
The chastity, the temperance, the modesty, the fidelit}^ which
wnll not go to him with the lamp burning, and shall not be
presented to him by faith and by charity, shall not be at his
marriage. And if there be no place there for temperate and
modest pagan women, who shall not have been warned to pre-
pare their lamps and to follow the guides that are agreeable to
the bridegroom, w^hat will become of the licentious and disor-
derly Christian women, who shall have broken their lamps and
despised and rejected their guides ? Certainly if it is writ-
en that repentant Nineveh shall comdemn Jerusalem the in-
corrigible, it is much to be feared that the great Zenobia, and
other virtuous pagan women will rise at the general judgment
and bear testimony against our ladies w^ho refute their behef
by their lives ; who reprove by their softness and their luxury
the power of Christianity and the austerity of the Gospel ;
who love better to lose eternal crowns than to part with the
little half withered flowers w^hich only infect them with their
bad odour, and sting them with their prickles."

The edition of Le Moyne's work from which I have made
these extracts, contains a portrait of Zenobia in full armour ;
her helmet plumed, a rich necklace plaited across her breast,
and a hunting spear in her hand ; while in the background she
is represented on horseback engaged in combat with a lion.
She did not, says Father le Moyne, " chase the swans which
are harmonious and loveable, and only armed with plumes, nor
the bees w^hich carry honey about them, and respect innocent
persons and virgins."

PolUo teills us that Zenobia shared with her husband in the
pi-irsuit of the lion, the leopird, the bear nnd other wild beasts.

172 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

The courage of Zenobia deserted her when she fell into the
hands of the Romans. She became afraid of death, and
charged her guilt in resisting the power of Aurelian on the bad-
advice of her friends. Her secretary, the celebrated Longinus,
w'as amongst those who fell a sacrifice to the unworthy means
w^hich she adopted to save her hfe. Aurelian treated her as
Octavius intended to treat Cleopatra. After the barbarous
Eoman fashion, she w^as led in triumph by Aurelian in his pro-
cession, covered with ornaments, which only made her humilia-
tion more conspicuous. She was adorned with gems of such
size as to be a burden to carry ; and it is a picturesque and
affecting circumstance mentioned by Pollio, that she very often
stopped on the w^ay declaring that she could not bear the
w^eight with which she w\is loaded. Her hands and her feet
w^ere bound with gold ; and a large golden chain was placed
round her neck and carried before her by one of her Persian
attendants. It is spoken of as an act of clemency that the em-
peror permitted her to live, and gave her a possession near
the palace of Adrian, which was afterwards called by her name,
and where she lived in the style of a Roman matron.

Upon the means adopted by Zenobia, with a view^ to save
her life, Gibbon, as I have already noticed, has made a remark,
which is the reverse of being w^ell-founded. " As female for-
titude," he is pleased to say, " is commonly artificial, so it is
seldom steady and consistent." He would have been speak-
ing according to facts, if he had said that while the fortitude
of men is often artificial, blustering and shallow, and incapable
of confronting adversity, that of women is commonly natural,
calm and consistent, and acquires strength and cheerfulness
amidst trials and sufferings.

The case of a woman exposing the lives of others to dan-
ger in order to save her own, is very uncommon ; with men it
has been so usual, that it is only the exceptions w^hich have been
considered worthv of record. Hence it is that the terror of

ZEKOBIA. 173

Zenobia has been so much noticed. It must be admitted that
her conduct was unworthy of a woman, and the blot on her
memory is that she unhappily followed the example of many
men before her, rather than the lessons which she might have
learned from her own sex.

When the first conspiracy against Nero was discovered, the
woman Epicharis, who knew^ of the whole contrivance, persist-
ed, under the torture, in refusing to answer any questions that
might involve the safety of any of her accomplices. And when
all Nero's senators, and all the men around him, includino-, it
is to be feared, the philosopher Seneca, joined either passively
or actively, in the accusations raised against Octavia, at the in-
stigation of the emperor, when he became desirous of getting
rid of her, for the sake of Sabina, her maid-servant Pythias
alone refused, for court-favour, to deny or even conceal the
truth, and under the severest tortures still asserted the perfect
purity of her mistress;* rendering to an oppressed w^oman the
greatest and noblest service which can be rendered to those
who cannot be delivered from death ; for posterity accepts the
evidence of this solitary witness, and rejects the whole opposite
testimony which terror and bribery were able to procure
against Octavia.

Nay, the sentiment of heroic endurance which sustains
woman under the most terrible sufferings so much more than
it does men, is not confined to those who have been trained to
fortitude by a life of virtue. Anne Boleyn and Mary Queen
of Scots died as calmly as did Lady Jane Grey' or Marie An-
toinette; and ancient history records that Leaina, a courtezan
of Athens, engaged in the famous conspiracy of Harmodius
Aristogiton endured with courage and joy the most exquisite
tortures, rather than reveal what she knew of the j)lot.

* Dion, "Hist." lib. Lxii. p. 707.

JULIAN THE APOSTATE.

We may become familiarly acquainted with Julian the
Apostate from various sources, but particulary from the ad-
mirable narrative of his officer, Ammianus Marcellinus. He
was of middle stature; mediocris staturce is the expression of
Ammianus, his friend, and I must adhere to it. Julian, it may
be remarked, has been called a little man, and the people of
Antioch ridiculed him as a short man [homo brevis.) Ammi-
anus also tells us that when all Constantinople turned out to
see the new emperor, the hero of so many victories, the peo-
ple were surprised at his youth, and his small person {adullum
juvenem^ exiguo corpore.Y

All this, however, is, I think, quite consistent with the
behef, which I do not doubt is the true one, that Julian was
just as Ammianus says, of middle stature. The satirical
humor of the Antiochians would not stick closely to dry facts ;
and the mob of Constantinople would expect their heroic sov-
ereign to be a man of gigantic stature, as ail ideal warriors
are in popular belief

The hair on Julian's head was soft, as if he had carefully
combed it ; his beard was shaggy, ending in a point. As in

* Ammianus MarcelUnus, lib. xxii. c. 2. sec. 5.

(174)

JULIAN THE APOSTATE. 175

his mind, Julian, in some respects, bore a likeness, though with
a marked mferiority in point of intellect, to the most illus-
trious of the emperors, so in his face there were two features in
which he resembled Csesar. He had, like Ci3esar, the beauti-
ful briglit eyes which expressed every emotion of the mind ;
like Csesar also, his mouth was rather large. His eyebrows
were fine ; his lower lip fell down a little. He had a very
straight neck, somewhat bent ; and large and broad shoulders.
From his head, says the historian, to the very tips of his nails,
there was a proportion in all his parts ; and he excelled in
strength and swiftness.*

I ought to add, that in the view of St. Gregory Nazianzen,
Julian's shoulders were continually in motion, his eyes wild
and wandering, his walk irregular, his head always moving this
way or that way.

One of the coins of Julian represents him without a beard
as he was at the period when he outwardly professed Christi-
anity. In the coins on which he has the imperial title of " Au-
gustus," he has the rough, shaggy beard attributed to him.
On his head is a fillet, sometimes highly ornamented, apparent-
ly formed of strings of beads. Ammianus gives an amusing ac-
count of his coronation when the soldiers raised him on their
shields, and saluted him as Emperor.

He was beseeched to assume the diadem [, he said he had
no such thing about him. The soldiers said that his wife's
necklace, or an ornament from her head-dress would do.
Julian objected, that he thought at the outset of his reign to
wear a woman's toy would be a bad omen. The soldiers
w^ere then about to make a coronet out of part of a horse's
trappings, but this also Julian resisted. The dispute was put
an end to by one of his officers, whose name, Maurus, has been
preserved, who took the collar which he wore as the badge

* Ammianus, lib. xxv, c. 4, see. 22.

176 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

of his rank, and placed it on the head of the general, who ac-
cepted the throne, and distributed the usual presents.*

Julian's rough beard subjected him to ridicule at various
times. I am afraid that it was the affectation of looking like
a philosopher that led Julian to cultivate his beard. From
Julius, who was always shaved, to Julian, none of the emperors,
with the exception of Adrian had worn a beard. The Greek
emperors after Justinian, who was smoothly shaved, wore
their beards long. Amongst the Eomans, it is said, the fashion
of shaving daily having been introduced by the great Scipio
whom CiEsar perhaps wished to imitate in this — while the ex-
ample of Csesar would stamp the fashion as imperial. The
flatterers of the weak and mean Constaiitius at the time that
they did not foresee Julian's elevation to the throne jeered at
his person and habits. They called him a goat, and the
shaggy Julian, a talking mole [loqiiacem talpam is the expres-
sion in Ammianus,) an ape in purple, and a Greek literary
puppy [litter io Grcecus.)

On his visit to the Christian city of Antioch, the people
sung songs in derision of his character and rehgion, and did
not forget to deride his beard. They called him a little man
stretching out his shoulders, and carrying his goat's beard
before him, and walking big like a man of stature. He w'as
also called the priest's assistant {victi /nanus), in allusion to
his numerous sacrifices, and his carrying the sacrificial things
in the processions, surrounded by a troop of women.

Julian felt these attacks, but suppressed his anger, and re-
venged himself not like an emperor or a soldier, but like a
philosopher, or — if it might be so said of the champion of
fallen paganism — like a Christian, by writing in reply to
his libellers the piece called " Misopogon," in which he apolo-
gised for his own peculiarities, and satu'ised the vices of the

* Ammianus, xxv, c, 4. sec. 22.

JULIAN THE ArOSTATE. 177

people of Antiocti ; and this reply he caused to be affixed to
the gates of their dissolute capital.

With all his great virtues, the pedantry and affectation of
Julian furnished fair materials for satire. What of his habits
has been passed over in silence by Ainmianus, his own osten-
tation has supplied. He had the vanity to distinguish himself
not merely by the simplicity of his habits but by his iilthiness.
We learn from himself that he was almost wholly covered
with hair. His beard was not merely shaggy but, to use the
genteel expression of Gibbon, it was also " populous.'' Fanat-
icism produces similar results in all ages and countries, and
under every varying form of faith. Many Christian saints
have believed that God takes delight in all manner of filthiness ;
and Cardinal Bellarmier, undoubtedly a good man, had the
same passion for the comfort and nourishment of small
vermin as Juhan had.

In that portion of the very critical review of Julian's char-
acter which Ammianus devotes to the enumeration of his de-
fectS; we are told, amongst other points well known to his de-
tractors and his friends, that his tongue was too loose, and
rarely silent ; and that his greed of approbation made him
keep company with unworthy persons.

Julian in his early days had devoted some attention to the
study of music. He was also taught the Pyrrhic dance, a
military movement to the sound of flutes, but seems to have
thought this exercise unworthy of him.

In his diet Julian, we are told by Ammianus, was as ab-
stemious as if his food had been regulated by the sumptuary
laws of Lycurgus. He rejected the pheasants and other de-
licacies prepared for him, and contented himself with the meals
of the common soldiers ; and he would eat his hasty and
coarse fare, standing after the military fashion. The scantiness
and weakness of his food astonished his friends. From other
sources \ve learn that Julian was almost a vegetarian, being

178 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

one of those who fancy that a vegetable diet preserves the
health both of the body and of the mind. To Julian's diet
producing its usual efiects on his head and stomach, we may
attribute his beUef that he held personal conferences with the
gods and goddesses of his faith. His rehgion was of a
gloomy nature, and not that rich and cheerful " prodigality of
faith" which w^as the character of Grecian paganism in its
palmy days. His melancholy vision of the genius of Rome
leaving his tents may be ascribed to his dyspeptic supper.
He had been feeding on pulse, the diet of ancient Rome in the
days of its simplicity.*

Amraianus admits that the relio-ion of Julian was mino-led
with superstition ; and the heathens, while they loved him,
ridiculed his numerous and expensive sacrifices and observances.
As a Platonist, Julian believed in the transmigration of souls.
The ecclesiastical writer, Socrates, tells us, and on this point
I do not see that there is any occasion to reject his testimony,
that Julian believed that the soul of Alexander the Great
inhabited his body; that he was, indeed, Alexander in the per-
son of Julian.f Basilina, his mother, when about to be brought
to bed dreamed that she was delivered of Achilles, and after
waking, and while she w^as relating her dream to her attendants,
she brought Julian into the world.

After the ancient fashion Juhan sought to learn the secrets
of the future by inspecting the entrails of beasts. The Chris-
tian writers accuse him of using human sacrifices at the cele-
bration of his nocturnal rites. At Carrse, in the temple of
the moon, there was found, it is said, after his death, the body
of a woman hung up by the hair, with the arms extended, and
the belly opened. Julian is 'also charged with having killed a
great number of children in the performance of magical cere-
monies. Theodoret and St. Gregory Nazianzen are the author-

* Aramianus, lib. xxv, c. 11, sec. 2.

t Socrates, " Hisl. Eccles." lib. in, c. 21. Paris, 1568.

JULIAN THE APOSTATE. 179

ities for these stories, and their testimony wants confirmation.
A story is told by the monk Zonaras, which has more than one
parallel in history. It is said that a youth with yellow har
appeared to Julian in a dream, while he was at Antioch, and
told him he would die in Phrygia.* The spot where he was
killed, it appears, bore that name ; but Julian was misled by
believing the prediction to refer to the large country of
Phrygia.

Julian divided his time into three parts ; devoted to study,
business, and rest. He could, whenever he wished, awake
from sleep, an unhappy gift, the fruit, most probably, of
his spare vegetable diet. He rose, says Ammianus, in the
middle of the night, not from downy plumes or silken beds
sliining with ambiguous lustre,! but from a rough carpet. He
then prayed silently to Mercury, and next directed his atten-
tion to public business, and afterwards to the study of philoso-
phy, rhetoric, and history. The labor of war occupied his
days. In every respect he mortified the lusts of the flesh like
an anchoret. He was always " warring either against the
Persians or his own vices," is the beautiful eulogium of a
heathen writer.

The best and most complete character of Julian is to be
found in Motaigne's " Essay on Liberty of Conscience." It ia
no discredit to Julian to have been assailed by every kind of
calumny by writers who praise the character of such men as
Constantine and Constantius.

* Joa. Zonarae MonacM Annales, lib. n, p. 28. Paris, 1687,
t " Non e plumis vel stragtilis serioJ.s, ambiguo falgore nitentes," says
Ammianus. Is this changing color silk ?

EUDOCIA.

The Empress Eudocia, the queen of Theodosius the j^oung-
er, was, while a heathen, called Athenais, and was the daughter
of Leontius, a philosopher of Athens. " The writer of a
romance," says Gibbon, "would not have imagined that Athe-
nais was nearly twenty-eight years old when she enflamed the
heart of a young emperor." Having been ill-used by her bro-
thers, Athenais fled to Constantinople, where she was intro-
duced to Theodosius by his sister Pulcheria, who had previous-
ly given a glowing description " of the charms of the fair
refugee.

In Gibbon's account of Athenais, the physical and the senti-
mental are blended together in that writer's very best style.
" She had," he says, " large eyes, a well-proportioned nose,
a fair complexion, golden locks, a slender person, a graceful
demeanor, an understanding improved by study, and a virtue
tried by distress."

Theodosius, who was first permitted to behold this rare

beauty from behind a curtain, where he had been concealed by

Pulcheria, immediately fell in love with her, and made her his

queen. She, on her part, forsook the pagan faith, and at her

baptism assumed the pleasant Christian name of Eudocia.

The Christian empress delighted in eleoance and splendor,

(180)

EUl'OCIA. 181

loved gems and gold, and had a taste for literature and art
after the corrupted fashion of her age. She is the reputed
author of a cento from the verses of Homer, adapted to the hfe
of Christ, which is still extant. She converted several books
of the Old Testament into hexameter verse, and wrote the
'' Legend of St. Cyprian," and a " Panegyric on the Persian
Victories of Theodosius." The composition of a cento is a
sufficient proof of the depravity of the empress's taste, which,
however, would be much admired in her ow^n day ; and the
turning of the Old Testament into hexameters was certainly a
sad waste of time.

The empress enjoyed a high reputation for piety. Her
habits of devotion, however, did not save her good name from
the whisperings of scandal. The emperor became jealous of
her, and banished her to Jerusalem, where she died after an
exile of sixteen years, spent in religious exercises. The emper-
or's favorite eunuch raised the calumny, Eudocia was charg-
ed with an amour with Paulinus, the master of the horse,
whose comeliness is celebrated by the writers of the time. The
evidence of her guilt was that Paulinus had brought to the
emperor some apples which Theodosius himself had given to
Eudocia. Gibbon doubts the truth of even the story being-
alleged. If it were true, there is certainly good ground for
believing that a plot had been laid, such as in romances we
often find quite effectual for the ruin of a virtuous woman.

The reader, as Gibbon remarks, is reminded of the tale in
the " x\rabian Nights' Entertainment," of the young man who
kills his wife in a fit of jealousy, arising from her having given
away, as he supposes, one of the three apples which he had
bought for her in the caliph's garden at Balsora. Shakes-
pere's " Othello" has done great good in discouraging, through
the case of the handkerchief, all belief in this kind of circum-
stantial evidence.

In reading the story of Eudocia, as well as the Arabian tale,

182 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS:

it t^hould be recollected that, in the emblematic language of the
East, the ripe apple signifies requited love. " Comfort me with
apples," says the bride in the Canticles, '' for I am sick of love."
In some ancient paintings, Venus was represented with a ripe
apple in her hand. From Catullus, we learn that it was the
custom for the fair one who had secretly received an apple from
her lover, to conceal it in her bosom.* In one of the Love Epis-
tles of Aristsenetus, a wTiter living perhaps near to the time of
Eudocia, the lover is represented as inscribing a declaration on
the apple which he throws in the way of his mistress. f In
another of these love letters, the lover throws an apple into the
bosom of the woman with w^hom he is in love, w^hich she
receives and kisses, and hides in her girdle. J

* Catullus, *' Carm," lib. xv, Ad Ortalum.
t Aristaenetus, <« Epist." lib. i, Ep. x.
X Aristtenetus, "Epist." lib. i, Ep. xxv.

THEODOEA.

The Empress Theodora, the profligate wife of Justinian,
was, as her mother and her sisters Comitona and Anastasia
were, extremely beautiful. Yet her beauty was not of that
kind which has sometimes been possessed by licentious women
which simulates modesty ; for Procopius, using a remark which
has been attributed to many others since his time, tells us that
she carried indecency in her very face. It should be noticed
that she and her sisters were deliberately and studiously
brought up to wickedness by their mother. Each of them, as
she grew up, was sent to the stage of Constantinople. When
Comitona, the eldest, came out, Theodora, then a mere girl,
appeared as her attendant, wearing the long sleeves which
marked the dress of a servant, and carrying the seat on which
her sister sat. Theodora followed the career of Comitona, and
her beauty soon attracted admiration. Her face, such as it is
described to have been, was reckoned fine ; her complexion
was moderately pale ; her eyes were brilliant, and glanced
hither and thither. Her stature was short ; but the exquisite
beauty of her figure Vv'as such, we are told, as could not be
expressed by human art or declared by speech ; the statue erec-
ted of her by the Byzantines failing entirely, as Procopius says,
to do justice to the charms of her person.

(183)

CLASSIC AND HISTORIC POKTRAITS. 184

Theodora as empress loaded herself with jewels after the
fashion of Constantinople, that fashion so repeatedly inveighed
against by St. John Chrysostom in his discourses ; and a figure
of her in long robes, with strings of large pearls on her head,
neck and shoulders, has been engraved from a mosaic made of
her in her time at Eavenna.*

Beyond her talents as a comic actress — a sort of Columbine
— Theodora is not represented as having any of the accomphsh-
ments of her times, and it is expressly mentioned by Procopius
that she could neither sing, nor play on an instrument, nor
dance. She was thus deprived of some of the most powerful
weapons for attacking the human heart. Justinian, her devout
and theological husband, must have been one of those men
w^hom the grossest indecency attracts instead of repelling.
The law which forbade the marriage of a patrician with a
w^oman who had been on the stage was expressly and solemnly
repealed in favor of the most abandoned of stage performers —
of her whom the historian calls " of all bad women that ever
lived by far the most celebrated," — who practised arts " which
he who wishes God to be merciful to him may not even men-
tion." Justinian, adds Procopius, took for his own " the com-
mon disgrace of all mortals.'' The emperor multiplied statues
of her throughout the provinces. He also called cities, towns,
forts, and public baths afer her name.f

It has been said that the crimes of the Tiberiuses, Caligulas,
and Neros could not have been perpetrated by Christians. If
the parallels to these monsters are not easily to be found
amongst the emperors after Constantine, heathen Eome has
no female parallel to Theodora; for Messalina herself, with
all her infamy embalmed in the terrible verses of Juvenal,
gains something of character when her guilt is compared with

* See Procopius, '• Anecdota'" (Fig. 5 ) Lipsi^, 1827.

t See Alemanni, " Annotationes Historicae," Procopius, p 361, where
a list of places called after Theodora is given

THEODORA. 185

the horrible brutahties which, after all the deductions that can
be made, we are compelled to beheve of " the highly-tobe-re-
vered Theodora, given by G-od to Justinian," as the loving
emperor called her.

Human faith is staggered at the record of her impurities,
and might doubt if the Eoman senator who has told so much
and yet professes to have left more and worse actions unre-
corded, had not been over-credulous of an infamy than which
the deceased imagination of a romancer, revelling in ideal wick-
edness and painting a lascivious fiend, could have conceived
nothing more horrible. But though we should withhold our
behef from the anecdotes of Theodora in her palace, we are
compelled to give credit to Procopius, her contemporary, when
he relates what she did on the open stage of Byzantium. That
stage must have made rapid progress in shamelessness since
the time of Chrysostom ; for though in his discourses he has
more than one allusion to the unbecoming sights to be seen
there,* he has no description of anything like what is described
by Procopius.

The same reason which has led me merely to allude to the
ample record of the habits of Tiberius, compels me to adopt
u similar method with Theodora, and to pass over wholl}^ un-
touched the picture of Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, the
companion in wickedness of the empress.

Of such a woman as Theodora it may be censurable even
to hint that one good thing can be said. I do not know
whether it be to her credit, or otherwise, that after she be-
came empress she did not forget her old stage companions,
but kept with her Chrysomalla and Indara, who had been
dancers when Theodora was the comic actress. The empress
also was the foundress of one of those asylums — the earliest

* See Chrysostom, Opera, lib. vti. p. 113 ; and lib. xi. p. 464. Paris,
1718.

186 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

noticed in history — which in modern days are called by the
beautiful and tender name of Magdalen Institutions.

I am sure, however, that she deserves some credit for having
emplo3'ed her influence with her orthodox and persecuting
husband to procure a relaxation of the severities exercised
against heretics. Her own faith, it should be admitted, was
not quite orthodox. The clergy, who in all ages have been in
the habit of studiously disobeying the prohibition of the Sa-
viour against presuming to point to the sins of individuals as
the cause of the aflaictions with which Heaven may be pleased
to visit them, regarded the malady of which Theodora died —
a cancerous sore covering all that fair body which had raised
her to the throne of the greatest empire in the world — as the
result of the divine vengeance, not on her impure life, but on
her want of a perfectly accurate belief in the Athanasian
Creed. Had she in all matters of faith been what the trium-
phant religious party w^ould have had her to be, it is not un-
likely that they would have done something to save her
memory from the execration of posterity by obliterating the
record of her crimes.

Of the innocent arts which Theodora used to heighten the
effect of her beauty, something may lawfully be said. From
her system of living, as detailed by Procopius, it may be in-
ferred that in her time stoutness of form, for which the By-
zantines have long had a passion, was in request ; for her
habits were exactly such as are prescribed to those who desire
to be fat. She made abundant use of the bath, remaining in
it long, and only leaving it to eat and to rest in bed during
great part of the day as well as of the night. At table she
used an infinite variety of meats to provoke her to eat plen-
tifully.

" The sensual Byzantines," says M. Chasles, *' destroyed the
worship of beauty and proportion, in order to accord to stout-

THEODORA. 187

ness that preference which all the nations of the East have
professed."* The tastes of Constantinopohtans in this way is
sufficiently established by a variety of passages in the writers
of the Eastern capital. Chrysostom feels it necessary to tell
his hearers that " the virtue of the body does not consist in
fatness, nor in a good habit of person, but in the capacity of
bearing torments. '7

In a passage which M. Chasles has quoted, the same father
speaks of the great care and expense which the ladies took to
display the floating folds of their robes, the adornment of their
hair, and the roundness of their figures. I doubt, indeed, if
this taste has not been in most countries a more prevailing one
than critics on statuary are willing to allow ; and if the mod-
ern Americans are not the only people who are fairly charg-
able with a decided fancy for slenderness, while their beauties
have been severely censured by good judges on every point
except their feet, of which the German traveller, Grund, anxi-
ous to praise all that is right as well as all that is wrong in
America, has spoken with such rapture. 1:

Stoutness of figure, as it has certainly been the taste of
Asia and Africa, has not escaped admiration in Europe. I
have met with few commendations of slenderness in European

* Chasles, "Etudes sur le Moyen Age," p. 113.

t St. Chrysostom, Opera, lib. i, p. 724.

J *' There is one perfection," says Grund, "in ladies sometimes the first
to attract our notice, and the last to vanish when every other beauty has
faded and departed, -which consists indelicate feet and ankles. The idea
is taken from Goethe's novel, ' Die "Wahlverwandschaft en,' and would
hardly have found its introduction here, were I not backed by the all-
powerful authority of the immortal poet, who at the same time was the
most accomplished artist. Well, then, this perfection is one of which the
American ladies (fan certainly boast, and which they possess in a higher
degree than the French, though they take infinitely less pains to obtrude
it on the notice of strangers." — The Americans, by Francis J. Grund.
Vol. I, p. 37. Lond. 1837.

188 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

writers. Chaucer indeed tells us of Alison, the carpenter's
wife, that

*' Fayre Avas tliis young wif, and therewithal
As any weselhire body gent and small ;"

On the other hand, in a great variety of European writers
of different nations and ages, the embonpoint enters into the
description of a beauty. In the " Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,"
it almost uniformly forms an element in the charming women
mentioned. In the third novel, the Miller's wife is " very
beautiful and emhonpoint?'' In the twenty-first, the abbess is
described as " beautiful and young and emlonjjoint.'''' It is
true that in some other instances in these tales, the expression
embonpoint is evidently taken to mean " well made," generally
speaking ; but this only makes the proof stronger that stout-
ness was considered to be handsomeness, just as we find that
the Saxon passion for fair hair and fair complexions has made
the English word " fair" a synonyme for beauty.

The Queen of Navarre — who, however, borrows much of
her phraseology from the " Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles" — speaks
usually in the same way of her beauties. In her eighth novel
the jealous wife asks her husband if it is the beauty and ejn-
bonpoint of her servant-maid that have seduced his affec-
tions from her. In the fifteenth novel the wife ridicules the
bad taste of her faithless spouse for loving a lady who is thin-
ner and less beautiful than herself; and in the twent^^-fifth,
the wife of the advocate of Paris is described as " very beau-
tiful in the face and complexion, and still more beautiful for
her figure and her embonpoint ;" (fort belle cle visage et du
teint, et plus belle encore pour la taille et pour l'erabonj)oint.)*

These are pictures of women drawn by a woman, and they
show that the pious Queen of Navarre concurred in that taste

* <« Contes et Nouvelles," de Marguerite de Valois, torn i, p. 303.
Amst. 1698.

THEODOKA. " 1 »9

which I believe has been the general taste in France to the
present day. It was distinctly the taste of Brantome, and his
taste was undoubtedly the fashionable taste of his time. Mon-
taigne also describes the arts which were used by the ladies
in his day to give themselves a false appearance of stoutness.
Some years later we have the same taste displayed in a very
minute and particular portrait of a female beauty, drawn by
one who was herself a stout beauty. It is the description of
Mademoiselle de Villene, by Madame Deshoulieres. I give
the portrait entire.

<« Je ne puis m'enipecher de faire la peinture
Du plus charmant objet qu'ait forme la nature :
Cast la June Phyllis dont les divins appas
Se sont rendus fameux par cent milletrepas.
Je connois son esprit, sa beaute, son merite
Sa taille n'est encore ni grande ni petite ;
Elle est librc, mignonne et pleine d'agrement
Toute seule elle peut faire plus d'un amant,
Ses cheveux sont fort noirs ; son teint n'est pas de meme,
II est vif, delie ; sa blancheur est extreme.
Son nez n'est pas mal fait. Mais que ses yeux sont beaux
Qu'ils sont fins ! qu'ils sont doux ! et qu ils causent de maux !
Ces yeux noirs et brilliants ou 1' amour pour ses armes
Font naitre des desirs et repandre des larmes.
Tant d'illustres aniants que Ton voit en ces lieux
Sont, chere Amaryllis, I'ouvrage de ces yeux.
Sa bouche est d un beau tour ; elle est vive et charmante
Par sa forme on connait qu'elle est tres eloquente.
Elle a je ne sais quoi qu'on ne peut exprimer
Qui fait qu'on ne peut pas s'empechere de 1' aimer.
Elle a de belles dents ; le tour de son visage
Est si beau, qu'il n'est rien qui le-soit dayantage.
Elle a de I'embonpoint, comme il en faut avoir ;
Sa gorge est blanche, pleine : et Ton ne sauroit voir
En toute la nature une gorge plus belle ;
Et ses bras et ses mains sont aussi dignes d'elle.

190 CLASSIC AKD HISTORIC PORTKAITS.

La fraicheur de son teint, et sa vivacite

Font bieu voir que Phyllis a beaucoup de sante.

Elle a cet air gallant qiii sait plaire et qui donne

Tin charme inexprimable a toute sa personne.

Pour fair une conquete et pour la conserver

Elle a tout ce qullfaut ; et Ion doit avouer

Que sa gorge, ses bras et sa taille admirable

Sa bouche et ses beaux yeux n'ont rien de.comparable,

Son esprit tout divin repond a son beau corps

Le ciel en la faisant epuisa ses tresors."*

* «< CEu\Tres de Madame etde Mademoiselle Desboulieres," torn i, p. 1,
Paris, 1821.

CHAELEMAGNE

The person and habits of the Emperor Charlemagne have
been described with all the minuteness desirable by his secre-
tary and friend Eginhart.* He was large and strong in body,
of great but not gigantic stature, measuring seven times the
length of his foot.f It is probable that the emperor's foot
w^as a very long one. He does not appear to have derived
any of his personal features from his father Pepin the Little,
but from his mother, w'ho was very tall, and who is called
'< Bertha with the long foot." Pepin, his father, is described
as being of exceeding small stature, but of great courage and
incredible strength ; though I cannot believe that he cut off
the head of a lion with a stroke of his sword, as the French
chronicles relate 4 Bertha, his mother, in the early histories

*"Vita et Gesta Karoli Magni Imperatoris invictissimi," perEginhar-
tum ejus Secretarium descripta. Francof. 1707.

■f *« Statura eminenti," says Eginhart, " quve tamen justam non exce-
deret ; nam septem snorum pedum proceritatem ejus constat habuisse
figuram." " M. Gaillard," says Gibbon, "fixes the stature of Charle-
magne at five feet nine inches of French, about six feet one inch and a
fourth English measure."

ij: Mezerai " Abrege Chvonologique de I'Histoire de France," tom. i, p.
447. Paris, 1717.

(191)

192 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

of France figures as a giantess; later historians admit that
she was of great stature, and all agree that her character was
generous and noble. Mezerai insists that she got her name
of Bertha with the great foot, on account of her having one
foot longer than the other.* I hardly think that this is so
likely as that both her feet were large.

The head of Charlemagne was round and high, his eyes
were very large and sparkling, his nose a little exceeded the
middle size, his hair was beautifully white {ca?iitie pulchra^
says Eginhart,) his countenance cheerful. There w^as much
dignity in his appearance, whether sitting or standing. Al-
though his neck was thick and short, and his belly rather pro-
tuberant, those defects were concealed by the proportion of
his other parts. His walk was firm, and his whole bearing
manly. His voice w^as clear, but more slender than accorded
well with the appearance of his body.f

It may be w^orth w^hile to compare this sketch with the pic-
ture drawn by Mezerai. " One cannot hear the name of this
prince without immediately conceiving the idea of something
great. He was of an imposing figure, and well formed in all
his parts, except that his neck was a little too thick and short,
and his belly a little too protuberant. His w^alk was grave
and firm, his voice not sufiiciently clear. His eyes were well
opened and brilliant, his nose long and aquiline, his counte-
nance gay and serene, his complexion fresh and lively, nothing
effeminate in his action and in his bearing, but nothing proud
or disdainful ; his mind gentle, easy and jovial, his conversation
unrestrained and familiar." \

There w^as a general resemblance between Charlemagne and
Wilhara the Conqueror. Both were of great stature and full
in person; and as Eginhart says of Charlemagne, so William

* Mezerai, torn. 1, 544.
t Eginhart, 'Vita Karoli,' ut supra. % Mezerai, torn. 1, 458

CHARLEMAGNE. 193

of Malmesbaiy tells us of the Norman, that whether sitting or
standing his appearance was majestic.

The health of Charlemagne, Eginhart tells us, was good, ex-
cept tliat for four years, before his death he was frequently
seized with fevers. Latterly he was lame of one leo-. In his
illness he acted more according to his own notions of what was
good for him than by the advice of his physician, whom he
hated because he forbade him the roasted meats to which he
had been accustomed, and in which he delighted, and directed
him to use boiled meat. He exercised himself continually in
riding and hunting, according to the habit of his nation, as
there is, says Eginhart, scarcely to be found on the earth a
people who equal the Franks in this respect. He loved natu-
ral hot baths, frequently exercising himself in swimming, in
which he excelled. On this account he built a palace at Aix-
la-Chapelle ; and here in his latter days he remained constantly
till the end of his life. To these baths he invited his sons, his
nobles, and his friends, and sometimes a whole crowd of
attendants and guards ; so that occasionally there would be a
hundred or more persons bathing there.

In his dress the emperor followed the native Frank fashion,
wearing a linen shirt and trowsers, a jacket with a silk border
and trunk-hose. Besides these he h^d bands on his legs. In
winter he fortified his breast and shoulders with a corslet
made of otter skins. He wore a Venetian cloak, and was
always girt with a sword, the belt of which and the girdle on
which it hung were either of silver or gold. He had also a sword
adorned with jewels which he wore on the occurrence of so-
lemnities, or when ambassadors from distant nations were pre-
sent. He, however, rejected all foreign garments, however
beautiful, nor ever suffered them to be put upon him, except
that when he was at Eome, at the request of Pope Adrian and
again at the request of Leo, his successor, he appeared in a long
robe and cloak and shoes after the Roman fashion.
9

194 CLASSIC AND HISTOKIC rOIlTRAITS.

At great public ceremonies he wore a garment intervvoveQ
with gold and jewelled shoes, with a golden clasp fastening his
cloak. He then walked adoraed with a diadem of gems and
gold. On other occasions his dress was little ditferent from
that of the vulgar. In his eating and drinking he was tempe-
rate, but particularly in his drinking; for he abominated
drunkenness in any man, and more particularly in himself, and
those about him. He could not, however, Eginhart goes on
to say, abstain so well from eating, and used to complain that
fastings were hurtful to his body. He fasted rarely, and then
principally on great days and with a great number of persons.
At his ordinary suppers,* the emperor alwaj's had his roasted
meats, of which, as I have before noticed from Eginhart, he
partook more willingly than of any other food. During sup-
per he either had a play performed before him, or listened to a
reader. The reading in which he delighted most was the
histories of ancient kings. It is mentioned also that he took
great pleasure in the treatise of St. Augustin " De Civitate
Dei."

In summer, after his noon's repast {cibus meridianus,) he
used to take some apples, and drink a little, and then putting
off his robes, as at night he would retire to rest for two or
three hours.

Eginhart, who furnishs all these particulars, is an historian
of the highest veracity. In the midst of all his partiality for
his patron we can learn the whole truth about the emperor's
habits. Charlemagne was temperate in his drinking^ but vora-
cious in his eating ; and this, as will be seen, is what legend
and romance unite in recording of him.

Gluttony, which would be reckoned exceedingly vulgar in

* The cccna of Charlemagne, which I have translated supper, was
with the emperor as with the Romans, the principal meal of the day,
answering in this respect, and from the time of which it was taken, to
the modern dinner of England

CHARLEMAGNE. 195

liuTiible life, is a kingly and aristocratic vice, and is not reck-
oned ungenteel in royal and exalted persons. ''La noblesse
oblige,''^ says the Baroness d'Oberkirch, " nobility ennobles."
Eoyai and aristocratic blood makes that refined in those who
possess it, which is regarded as brutish among people who are
not of good families. There is a long list of imperial gluttons
ranging from the great Mithridates of Pontus — that king so
wonderful in everything : who could drive six horses in hand,
speak fluently twenty-two diflerent languages, and sw^allow
with impunity any ordinary poison — ranging from this mar-
vellous man down to a living continental princess. The Baro-
ness d'Oberkirch, who considered, as she herself tells us, the
want of high blood as the only fault utterly unpardonable, re-
cords a feat of her own in gluttony in the confectionery line,
for which she paid the penalty of several days' severe sick-
ness, while all the time she had the mortification to see another
lady of high family, who she says, had outdone her in the
quantity which she had devoured, walking about apparently

quite uninjured.

The emperor, says Eginhart, was accustomed to break his
rest at night by waking several times and occasionally rising.
Then, when he was girt, he not only admitted his friends, but if
the count of the palace reported to him any lawsuit which
could not be settled without his authority, he presently or-
dered the litigants to be brought in, and examined the case
and gave judgment as if he were sitting in court. Besides
this, he would at these times dispatch any other business and
give orders to his servants. In these matters Eginhart de-
scribes a practice which the emperor had in common with Au-
gustus and Napoleon.

Charlemagne, says his secretary, was copious in discourse,
and could express very clearly whatever he wished to say.
Not contented with his own language he bestowed pains in the
acquiring of foreign tongues; and he learned Latin so well,

196 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

that be was accustomed to pray in that language as well as in
his native tongue. The Greek, however, we are told, he could
understand better than he could pronounce it. He cultivated
the liberal arts most studiously, and loaded with honors those
who taught him. His teacher in grammar was Peter of Pisa ;
in his other studies he listened to Albinus, called Alcuinus the
Saxon, a deacon from Britaio. Under him he devoted mnch
time to the acquiring of rhetoric, and dialectics and astronomy.
He attempted also to write, and for this purpose he carried
about with him in his bed, under his pillow, tablets and little
books, so that when he had leisure he might accustom his
hand in forming the letters. But this labor, says Eginhart
compassionately, " unreasonable and late begun," succeeded
but indifferently. The affectionate secretary enlarges on the
emperor's works of piety and almsgiving, mentioning that he
corrected the reading and singing in the churches, though he
himself neither read nor sung in public, but in a low voice and
in common with the rest of the congregation.

Such is the substance of Eginhart's highl}'' intersting account
of Charlemagne's studies, and from his kindly statements there
is no great difficulty in fairly estimating the extent of the
emperor's scholastic attainments. This great man, who makes
so prominent a figure in history as a warrior and statesman^
and a munificent patron and warm lover of literature and sci-
ence as he undoubtedly was, could read but could not write.
■ I do not know, however whether his painful efforts to acquire
the art of writing in his advanced years do not excite an admi-
ration of the greatness of his character as much as if we were
to hear that he had been a scholar from his youth upwards.
The amount of Charlemagne's Latin was that he was able to
pray in that language — that is, he could repeat the Latin
prayers of the Church, which many a one can do who can
neither read nor write.

The Scottish King, Malcolm IIL, a man of good intellect

CHARLEMAGNE. 197

and a patron of learning, might as well be called a Latin
scholar as Charlemagne, because he used to kiss the book
which his wife the sainted Margaret read to him. There is no
necessity nor even excuse for extending the meaning of the
word orare in the secretary's phraseology farther than under-
standing it to signify that the emperer used the prayers pre-
scribed by the Church. [Latinum ita didicit ut ceque ilia ac
j)atria lingua orare sit solitus.) The expression about his
Greek is obscure and evasive ; and it may be fairly inferred
that his being able to say " Kyrie Eleison" in church was
about the full extent of Charlemagne's acquirements in that
rich language. But what man, even what learned man in France
or Germany, in that age understood Greek? Tiraboschi
declines believing that even Italy, where, if anywhere in the
w^est, the knowledge of it might be expected to be lingering,
could boast of a single Greek scholar. " I do not find," he
says, " to tell the truth, in the ninth century, any writer of
our provinces, of whom it can be affirmed that he knew
Greek."*

Yfith the genuine portrait of the emperor, furnished by his
contemporary and friend, the particulars of which I have given
in a condensed form, it is curious and interesting to compare
the picture drawn about three centuries later by a writer who,
adopting the grave air of history, has given us the romance of
Charlemagne. It will be seen, however, that this is a romance
" founded on facts." In the history, Charlemagne is a tall
man and an excellent eater ; in the romance, he swells into the
stature of a giant with a giant's strength, and the appetite of
an ogre; while his temperance in drinking is eulogised by the
romancer just as it is by the historian.

In the life of Charles the Great and Eoland, falsely attri-

* Tiraboschi. "Storia della Letteratura Italiana," torn, vi, p 118.
Fireuze, 1776.

198 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

buted to Turpin, Archbishop of Eheims, who was the empe-
ror's contemporary, the twenty-first chapter is entitled, " De
persona et fortitudine Caroh." Here we are told that Charles
was Brown, [bninus after the German braun'] red in the face,
handsome and beautiful in the body, but terrible in the aspect.
His stature was eight times [the history says scve7i times] the
length of his feet, ivhich ivas very long, [silicet qui erant long-
issimi.] His shoulders were very broad, continues the ro-
mancer, and his loins proportionately so ; and he had a suit-
able bell}^, with thick arms and legs. He was most beautiful
in all his joints, strong in conflict, and a most keen soldier.
His face was a span and a half in length, his beard a span and
his nose about half a span. His forehead was a foot in
breadth, and his eyes as the eyes of a lion sparkled like car-
buncles ; every man on whom he looked in wrath was terrified.
His girdle was eight spans.

In the eating department, Charles is made to figure like one
of those terrible monsters for clearing the world of which, a
meritorious young man, familiarly called " Jack," has acquired
the immortal title of " the giant killer." At dinner, says
the pseudo Turpin, the emperor took little bread, but eat
the fourth part of a ram, or two fowls, or a goose, or a piece
of pork [sjmtula porcina — a most indefinite description of quan-
tity,) or a peacock, or a crane, or a whole hare. He drank,
how^ever, but little wine, and that soberly diluted with water.
He was so strong, that with his sword he cut down an armed
soldier sitting on horseback, horse and all, from the crown of
the head to the ground with one stroke.

Similar stories have found their way into other histories be-
sides this of the so-called Turpin. Montaigne censures Bodin
for treating his favorite Plutarch as a fabulist when he relates
that Pyrrhus, with his sword, cut down an armed man into
two halves.* In the history of Scotland, however, the full

* Montaigne, "Essais,;, liv. iv. c. 32.

CHARLEMAGNE. 100

feat attributed to Charlemagne of cutting man and liorso
asunder at a stroke, is ascribed to a Scottish knight fighting in
the French army during the wars between England and France
in the fifteenth century. Charlemagne, we are farther told,
could raise an armed man on his palm with one hand from
the ground to his head. He was, says the pretended Turpin,
in conclusion most generous in his gifts, most righteous in his
judgments, and pleasant in his discourse.*

The reader who listens to the way in which, according to
this wonderful history, the bed of Charlemagne was guarded
by night, will not be surprised that his slumbers were neither
sound nor lengthened, " About his bed every night a hun-
dred and twenty brave and orthodox men (the author of the
romance is intensely orthodox and exceedingly theological)
w^ere placed to guard him. Forty of these passed the first
watch of the night, namely ten at his head and ten at his feet,
ten on his right side and ten on his left, holding each in his
rioht hand a naked sword, and in his left a burning candle.
In the same way, other forty kept the second watch ; and, in
like manner, other forty kept the third watch even until day,
the rest in the meanwhile sleeping."! The emperor must have
been as famous for sleeping as he was for eating, if he could
have slept with all these annoyances about him.

On four solemn festivals of his Church, says Turpin, when

* " De Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi Historia, Juamii Turpino, ArcM-
episeopo Riraensi vulgo tributa,' p. 56. Florentiae, 1822.— The real
Archbishop Turpin died in the year 800, fourteen, years before Charle-
magne. The romance attributed to him has been pretty accurately as-
signed to the end of the eleventh or the beginning of thetwelfeh century,
between 1090 and 1120. By some vrriters, Pope Calixtus II , who in
1122 put the seal of his infallible authority on the truth of the whole
story, has been charged with the authorship of this curious book.

t Turpin, "De Vita Caroli,^' p. o7.

200 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC FORTH AITS.

the Emperor kept his court in Spain, he wore his crown and
carried his sceptre; namely, on the birthday of the Saviour,
on the eve of Pasch^ on the day of Pentecost, and on St.
Jamed's-day.

MIDDLE AGE PORTRAITS.

I A>M aware that as the memory of the heroes who lived
before Agamemnon has perished, because, as Horace tells us,
they had not a poet to celebrate their deeds, so there is much
ignorance prevailing about the personal appearance and char-
acteristics of the great and enlightened men and women of the
dark ao-es, arisino* not so much from the want of writers and
chroniclers in these ages as from their obscurit}^ at this day,
vmd the dryness of their manner, v.'hich repels the perusal of
modern readers. The Byzantine writers, in particular, are
tasteless, silly, and cold.

Mr. Hallam is not perfectly, though tolerably, correct when
he tells us that between the appearance of the work of Boe-
thius, " De Consolatione Philosophise," (anno 460) and the
date of the " Letters of Abelard and Heloise" (1 170,) Europe
did not produce a single entertaining work. He might have
added to this list, as coming within this dry period, that
Prance mixe to the world the " History of the Franks," by
Gregory of Tours (591 ;) Germany, Eginhard's " Life of Char-
lemagne" (870 ;) and England, the histories of the Venerable
Bedo (730) and William of Malmesbury (1142;) all of them
very interesting works.

I should have liked well to have been able to have presented

(201)

202 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC POETRAITS.

my readers with a complete portrait of the famous Queen
Brunehilde, " the murderess of seven kings," as the old chroni-
clers call her ; of the great and good King Alfred ; and of
the famous Gerbert, or Pope Sylvester II., the greatest man
of science of his age, of whose connexion with the devil so many
stories have been handed down to us by a succession of credu-
lous historians. But above all, 1 regret, with M. Chasles, that
we are entirely ignorant of the outward appearance, the man-
ners and habits of Eoswidn, the nun of Gandesheim, who,
amidst the thick darkness of the tenth century — the darkest
of the dark — the s<xci/h(?n obscii nun of h\siov\Sins—^N\th a pious
and faithful hand, trimmed the lamp of knowledge in her
chamber in the convent, and having studied the drama in the
plays of the heathen Terence, wrote those Christian comedies
still extant which are mentioned with such high praise by the
earliest literary annalists of Europe, as works calculated to
lead those who witnessed their performance in the paths of
virtue and religion.

The Christian theatre was then, as it had always been since
its origin with St. Gregory of Nyssa, and continued to be till
about the end of the sixteenth century, the faithful ally of the
pulpit and the Church. Little did the cheerful and good-
humored nun dream that the time would come when a set of
sour, surly fellows, calling themselves what she would not have
called herself, godly, would rise up and make a divorce between
religion and everything that is agreeable, and declare that such
innocent and instructive recreations as had pi'oduced roars of
salutary laughter amongst her spiritual sisters, were the inven-
tions and contrivances of Satan, who according to the Puri-
tans, is the author of everything that is pleasing, graceful, or
elegant, or that tends, in any measure, to make the burden of
this weary life bearable.*

* The question has been raised, were fhe comedies of Roswida inten-

MIDDLE AGE PORTRAITS. 203

M.^Chasles is, I think, pretty safe in assuring us that whe-
ther Koswida was or was not beautiful, her appearance must
have been intellectual and expressive. His picture of the
young nun reading Terence under the shadow of the great
oaks on the banks of the Ganda is extremely fine.

ded for performance and actually performed, or only designed for peru-
sal ? From the specimen of their character, and the nature of the fun
which pervaded them, as given by M. Chasles, I cannot doubt that they
were actually performed. Mr. Hallam (•• Introduction to the Literature
of Europe," lib. i, c. 14,) speaks -with contempt of the nuns comedies ;
but Hallam speaks contemptuously of "Bayle's Dictionary," and had a
perfect passion for everything that is dry and unreadable, and an utter
destitution of all imagination, taste, or feeling. M Chasles, who has
the faculties of a true critic about him, gives a favorable judgment on
the writings of Roswida. See his Essay "Hrosvita, Religieuse de Gan-
desheim,' in his " Etudes sur leMoyenAge," p. 243.

ABELAED AND HELOISE.

We have but little, and that very imperfect, knowledge of
the persons of the famous Abelard and Heloise. In modern
times doubts, not well founded I think, have been entertained,
whether Heloise was really beautiful. It may not be good
evidence of her personal charms, that Abelard, from the first
time of his becoming acquainted with her, meditated her se-
duction ; but the fair interpretation of the celebrated passage,
in which he ranks her literary attainments above her beauty,
is, I think, a testimony that she was possessed of beauty.

From this passage, it must be admitted that no less acute a
critic than Bayle, w^ho, however, had a predisposition to un-
dervalue the influence of mere personal beauty in exciting
love, has inferred that Heloise was but moderately comely.

" As in her face," says Abelard, " she was not the lowest,
so in literature she w^as supreme " (cum per faciem non esset
infitma, per abundantium literatum esset suprema.*) From
this indirect mode of compliment, Bayle argues that Heloise
was merely "sufficiently pretty" (assez belle;) and he asks

* " Petri Abelardi Abbatis lluycnsis et Heloisre Abbatiss c Paracle-
tensis Epist. I, p. 9. Lond. 1718. (llawlinson's Edit )

(204)

ABELAKD AND HELOISE. 205

whether those who have described her as possessed of the
most ravishing beauty are to be believed in preference to Abe-
lard, who had an interest in magnifying her charms.*

Now, it is certainly to be regretted that Abelard, who has
shown so little modesty and so much distinctness in speaking
of his own great personal attractions, has not avoided all am-
biguity in his description of Heloise, though the circumstance
is perfectly characteristic of the man. Yet it may still be
contended, and with good reason, that the non infima may be
taken to express a great degree of beauty, and be an equiva-
lent for eximia.

A completely parallel usage of the same form of compli-
ment occurs in the Gospel of Matthew\ " And thou Bethle-
hem, in the land of Judah, art not the least {o^x e-kazcsta)
amongst the princes of Judah ; for out of thee shall come a
king who will rule my people," where it cannot be disputed
that the highest honor is intended to be bestowed on the city
which gave birth to the Saviour. On the whole, I think we
have Abelard's testimony, as far as it is valuable, to the beauty
of Heloise ; and if on this subject he has been much more con-
cise than could have been wished, we must remember, that
when he penned this passage, his days of rapture were fled for
ever.

In an interesting abstract of the history of Abelard and
Heloise, M. Villenave states his opinion that Heloise had a
moderate beauty (ime beaute mediocre ;) and from some expres-
sions in the strange commentary which Abelard makes in his
second epistle to Heloise, on the passage in the song of Solo-
mon, " I am black but comely," he ventures to assert that she
was of a dark complexion.

We have evidence that both Heloise and Abelard were of
tall stature. M. Yillenave's essay contains an account of the

" Dictionuaire Hist, et Crit." Art. <' Heloise."

206 CLASSIC AKD HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

various translations, from place to place, which the remains of
this famous pair underwent, from the time that they Avere lirst
interred in the priory of Saint Marcel, till they were removed
to the cemetery of Pere le Chaise. " They have been troubled
and agitated in death," he says, " as they had been in life."

When Lucien Buonaparte, as Minister of the Interior, in
ISOO, directed that their remains should be removed from their
then resting-place, in the church of Xogent, to the Museum of
French Monuments, the coffin was opened. The head of Abe-
lard was found to be incomplete, but that of Heloise w^as per-
fectly entire. Besides the head of Heloise, the coffin contained
the lower jaw in two parts, and the thighs, the legs, and the
arms, all completely preserved.

On this occasion, Delaunaye, the author of a life of Abelard,
examined with care the bones remaining of both skeletons
(which were separated by a leaden plate,) and declared that
both had been persons of great stature and line proportions
{iVune gr ancle stature ct cle belles proportions.) Lenoir, the
originator of the Museum of Monuments, came to the same
conclusion, adding, that " the head of Heloise is beautifully
proportioned ; the forehead of a flowing form {rV une forme
coulante^) well-rounded, and in harmony with the other parts
of the head, expresses still a great beauty."

While their remains were in the Church at Nugent, enor-
mous sums, amounting sometimes to a thousand crowns, were
several times offered for a single tooth of Heloise. " 1 have
no occasion to add," saj^s Delaunaye, " that these offers were
made by Englishmen." Lenoir preserved in his cabinet, some
fragments of the bones and teeth of both Heloise and
Abelard.*

* Yillenave, " Abelard et Jleloisc, leurs Amours, leurs Malheurs, et
leurs Ouvrages," p. 118, prefixed to " Lettres d' Abelard et Heloise."
Paris, 1840.

ABELARD AND HELOISE. 207

" There is," saj's M. Yillenave, ''no authentic image of these
illustrious personages, who for a moment were the light of let-
ters and of philosophy in the long darkness of the middle ages."
There are, it appears, two medallions of Abelard and Heloise
ia an old and miserable house in the cloister of Notre Dame,
said to have been the residence of Fulbert, Heloise's uncle ; but
the costume of both proves that these figures are works of a
comparativel}^ modern date. Busts of the two were moulded
by direction of Lenoir from casts taken from their skulls.

Those who do not seek so much to be accurate as entertain-
ing in their histories, never fail to ascribe abundance of beauty
to women who have inspired a powerful passion in the other
sex. The popular stories of Heloise all agree in heaping
a crowd of charms upon her person, which they have
composed out of the usual materials of black hair, black eyes,
ruddy hps, white teeth, perfect symmetry of form, &c. Such
testimonies mjght be easily set aside, if in addition to the evi-
dence furnished by Delaunaye and Lenoir, we had not other
opinions from writers who had studied the history of the famous
lovers, and were not able to put Bayle's interpretation on Abe-
lard's words. Papire Masson tells us that Heloise was of ex-
cellent wit and beauty {prcestanti ingenio et forma.y

Gervase also, who had studied every document referring to
her and Abelard, and who certainly bad nothing either of sen-
tim.ent or romance about him, and whose avowed object was
to withdraw attention from the history of the erring lovers to
the record of the piety of the abbot and the abbess, consider-
ing that in treating as they had done of " the least edifying
days" of Abelar^, other writers had "composed pieces of gal-
lantry only suited to nourish an impure flame ;" even Gervase,
the recluse of La Trappe, with these hiyh views, feels justified
in telling us of Heloise that •' few girls surpassed her in beau-
ty, while in the kingdom and perhaps on earth she had not her
equal in wit and learning-"' (Peu de filles la surpassoieiit un

208 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

beaute; mais il n'y en avoit clansle royaume, ni peut-etre sur
la terre qui Tegaloit en esprit et en erudition.*)

Brucker, the historian of Philosophy, also tells us that she
was " commendable for her exquisite beauty" {eximia pul-
chritudine commendabilis^\ which is suflScient to show that
this very learned writer had read the testimony of Abelard
in the same spirit as I think it ought to be read.

Of Abelard we have his own testimony that he w^as very
beautiful ; and though he was in every respect a conceited cox-
comb, perhaps his evidence on this point cannot well be rejec-
ted. He tells us that when he contemplated the seduction of
Heloise he believed he woul4 have a very easy task. " For I
was then," he says, "of so great reputation and was so endo\ved
with the graces of youth and .form, that I feared no repulse
from any woman whatever on whom I might condescend to
bestow my love."j: This language is remarkably characteris-
tic of Abelard. At the time to which he refers he was forty
and Heloise not half that age; and yet he could speak of his
"youth." There is no doubt that downright impudence, in
which Abelard was an eminent proficient, has a great charm
for most men and women in this world. The power of audac-
it}^ in politics and in war is invariably acknowledged, and in
love also that assurance which is blind to all chance of failure
will often succeed w4iere a world of modest merit may fail.
The younger Crebillion in his best and indeed his only decent
romance, " Les Egarements du Coeur et de PEsprit," introdu-
ces the universal favorite Versac instructing ]\[eilcour in the
art of succeeding in female society, and assuring him that all

* " Vide de Pierre Abeilard," &c. torn 1, p 42 Paris 1720.

I « Historia Critica Philosophic^,"' torn. iir. p. 74-1. Lipsice, 1743.

X *' Tanti quippe tunc nominis eram et juventutis et forma; gratia
priTeminebam, ut quanieumque fajminaruni nostro dignarer amore, nul-
lanivererer rop iilsam " Ahelahdi '<Epist "' i, p 9.

ABELARD AND HELOISE. 209

tliat iri required is to talk incessantly about himself and in
praise of himself; and that it was by professing a highly favor-
able opinion of himself that he had driven all his rivals out of
the field. "Let us not," says Versac, "be inwardly preju-
diced in favor of our own merit, but let us appear to be so ;
let a certain assurance be painted in our eyes, in the tone of
our voices, in our gestures, and even in the regard we have for
others. Above all, let us speak continually and speak well of
ourselves ; let us not fear to say and say again that we are
possessed of superior merit. There are thousands of people
who are believed to have merit, simply because they never
cease tellini? us that they have."*

Abelard could act accordingly to the laws here laid down
without being guilty of any hypocrisy ; for this arrogant man
was sincerely and profoundly impressed with a sense of his
own talents. It is not an uncommon thing to see a woman
passionately in love with a man who has not one particle of
love or admiration, or even respect, to bestow upon any crea-
ture in the world but himself; w^iose whole worship is paid
at his own shrine ; and who, to the eyes of all indifferent per-
sons, appears scarcely to put a decent veil over his heartless
and ignorant contempt of the being who loves him ardently,
and of the whole sex to which she belongs. Such a man was
Abelard ; such a woman w^as Heloise. It is certainly far from
evident that Abelard ever loved Heloise at all. Heloise her-
self, constitutionally the victim of vehement passion, had more
than mere misgivings on this subject; and in a very remarka-
ble passage in her first letter she reproaches Abelard with hav-
ing neither friendship nor love for her ; " and this," she adds,
*' my dearest, is not so much my thought as that of all
others." f

"*" "Les Egarements du Coeur et de I'Esprit," p. 277. Maestricht,
1786.

I " Concupiscentia te mihi potius quam amicitia sociavit, libidinis ardor

210 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

That Heloise ardentl}^ loved and generously loved Abelard,
there is uo room to doubt. Hers was a better nature ; and it
is to be regretted that in their attempts to palliate the hate-
ful selfishness of her seducer, most of liis biographers have
done great injustice to his victim. Her expressed desire to be
considered the mistress rather than the wife of Abelard, after
their secret marriage, has been represented as an effusion of
diseased licentiousness. But Heloise may surely claim to be
judged by reference to the opinions of the age in which she
lived. To have been avow^edly a married priest, would have
ruined the worldly prospects and crossed the ambition of
Abelard ; while to have kept a mistress or anj^ quantity of
mistresses, w'ould have been no bar to his sitting in the chair
of St. Peter, and acting as the Vicar of God.

The prevailing opinion in Heloise's time was, that it w^as
positively pollution for a priest to be married, but quite allow^-
able for an unchaste man to officiate at the altar. This opinion
was sincerely and devoutly held by Heloise, and in this light,
which was her light, what has been charged against her as the
delirium of profligacy, was the fruit of her zeal for the honor
and the interests of Abelard. The great joy W'hich she felt at
the 23rospect of becoming a mother, is characteristic of the
woman and a favorable characteristic. " She wrote to me
about it," says Abelard, " with the greatest exultation" (cuqu
summa exultatione.)* I suspect that the profligate theologian

quam amor. Hecc, delectissime, non tarn mea est quam omnium conjec-
tura." — Epist. Heloisce, i, p. 51. This is most painfully unromantic.
Heloise ^vrote with terrible vigor ; and literary women of the twelfth cen-
tury used language which is not permitted to men in the nineteenth,
" She loved like St. Theresa, and wrote sometimes like Seneca," says
M . Cousin. In her third letter, amidst a crowd of references to Scrip-
ture and to the writings of the Fathers and Saints of the Church, she
makes a special and verbatim quotation from Ovid's " Art of Love."'

* Abelardi, "Epist " i, p. 12.

ABELAED AND HELOTSE. 211

did not read the letter conveying the happy tidings with any
exultation at all.

Perhaps Heloise was aware that her vain lover would tai^e
care to let the world know sufficiently about his tine figure
without her assistance. It must, however, be regarded as
somewhat remarkable that the evidence of the woman who
loved him to distraction is wanting to confirm the very favor-
able judgment which Abelard passes on his own beauty.
Heloise alludes distinctly enough to his accomplishments, and
tells us in language breathing of her own intense passion that
neither maid nor married woman could resist him.* " There
were in particular in you, " she says, " two gifts by which you
could presently draw towards you the heart of any woman —
the arts of talking and of singing ; gifts rarely attained by
philosophers."

Abelard besides was a poet; I venture to conjecture a cold,
stiff, and pedantic poet, and Heloise alludes to his amatory
verses, which, on account of their sweetness of diction and
music, she says, were in every one^s mouth — as a principal
cause why the women sighed for love of him ; and " as these
songs," she tells us, " for the most part treated of our loves,
they spread my name in many regions and kindled the envy
of many women against me."t She adds, and this is the only
reference which she makes to his person, and it is vague enough
— '' For what gift of mind or body did not adorn thy youth ?"

Pope, in his beautiful epistle of Heloise, makes her predict
that her love would be grafted " immortal" on the fame of
Abelard. I dare say that this might be the thought of Heloise,
but it is just the reverse that has taken place. Abelard owes

* *' Quffi conjugata qyas virgo non concupiscebat absentem et non
exardebat in parseentem r" — Epist. Heloise, i, p. 51. Heloise's language
is imfortun ately always gross.

t " Epist. Heloise," i, p. 51.

212 CLASSIC AND niSTOPJC PORTRAITS.

^ill the fame which he now enjoys to the passion entertained for
him by lieloise, who deserved a more worthy lover ; he owes
all the knowdedge which exists of his name to his profligacy.

Popular opinion, misled by a succession of romance writers,
has been amazingly favorable to the memory of Abelard, in
whose real character it is difficult to discover one redeeming
point- For the guilt of Heloise, many excuses may be pleaded.
x\belardwas a grave divine of forty years of age, a commenta-
tor on the Scriptures, and a teacher of religion, when he delib-
erately undertook the ruin of Heloise, then a girl between
seventeen and eighteen ;* and for this purpose he appealed to
the avarice of her uncle, by offering to educate his niece at
whatever price he should be pleased to pay. All this is stated
in the plainest and coolest language by Abelard himself, in the
first of the epistles published in Rawlinson's collection. He
adds that he was comfounded at the simplicity of Fulbertin
accepting his offer, and delivering his niece wholly into his
hands, " as if he had committed a tender lamb to a famished
wolf" iquam si agnam teneram famelico lupl committer el.)]
All this is rather infamous than romantic; it is quite different
from any of the tales in which those w^ho have " loved not
wisel}' , but too well," have mutually been the seducers of each
other.

* The writers of the romances which have been made about Abeli d
evade all allusion to this dreadful disparity between the years of the
seducer and the seduced. Both Abelard and Heloise died in their grand
climacteric — the 63rd year of their ages ; Abelard on the 21st of April,
1142 (Gervase, torn, ii, p. 132) ; Heloise on the 17th of May, 1164 (Ger-
vase, lib. ii, p. 284.) Gervase expressly tells us that she was seventeen
or eighteen when she became the pupil of Abelard (Gervase, torn, i, p.
42,) and when Abelard was consequently forty — more than double her
age by two years. In the face of these dates, it avails nothing that Abe-
lard, with his usual impudence speaks of his youth.

t Abelardi, " Epist." i, p. 9.

ABELARD AND HELOISE. 213

The latter days of the Abbess Heloise were not particularly
edifying. Her mind, naturally easy to corrupt, had been com-
pletely debauched by the arts of Abelard; and when he was
compelled to be virtuous himself, and desired to wean her
affections from the deceitful pleasures of this w^orld, and turn
her soul to the all-satisfying love of God, he failed in his endea-
vors. Her letters afford the most unmistakable evidence, that
never w^as mortal woman more feebly qualified for the office
of an abbess than was the unfortunate Heloise, whose burning
imagination in the midst of her devotions presented to her soul
none but the most sensual ideas and images.

There has often been remarked something like a temporal
judgment in the loathsome deaths of many who have desired
to live in sinful pleasures. The Empress Theodora, we have
seen, was ct)vered with ulcers. The disease of which Abelard
died has been described as the itch. His body appears to have
been as completely overrun with sores, as was that of the
patriarch Job in the days of his affliction. Gervase compares
him to the man of IJz, both in his sufferings and in his patience,
and has given a minutely painful account of his disease and
his torments, with which I shall. not trouble my readers.

ELIZABETH OF HUNGAEY.

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and her husband Louis the
Landgrave of Thuringia were the most beautiful persons of
their times. The eloquent modern biographer of EHzabeth,
the Count de Montalembert, has in his extremely interesting
work collected from a crowd of authorities the particulars of
her form, and features, and appearance. All the chroniclers
agree in praise of her extreme beauty.

" She was very beautiful in the person," say the Bollandists
{corporevoMe speciosa erat.) '^ Saint Elizabeth," says the Ger-
man Adam Ursinus, " was perfect in the body" {yolkommcn
an clem Leibe.) " There was not a more beautiful person in
the world," says a French writer, quoted by Montalembert.
Her fio-ure was tall and stout, and her features admirable.
Her hair was black, and her complexion was dark but beauti-
ful ; (Braiin an clem Angesiclite unci schon) says L^rsinus. And
all authorities agree that her whole appearance and carriage
were noble and majestic.

Montalembert has combined all the particulars furnished by
his authorities into a fine portrait. " Her beauty," he says,
" was regular and perfect ; her entire figure left no improve-
ment to be desired in it; her complexion v;as dark and clear

(214)

ELIZABETH OF HUNGAKY. 215

{son teint etait brim et fur^ her hair black, her figure of unri-
valled elegance and grace, her walk grave, and full of noble-
ness and majesty ; above all, her eyes appeared like a fire
(Joyer) of tenderness, of charity, and of compassion. It was
easy to see that in this earthly beaut}^, there was painted a
brilliant reflexion of the immortal beauty of her soul."*

The biographers of illustrious persons have generally shown
a disposition, while intending to exalt the character of their
heroes and heroines, to paint them like themselves ; and often
to lower them to their own standard. Thus D'Aubigne, trying
to exalt Luther, makes him like a modern Evangelical preacher,
and by leaving out one-half, and that certainly not the w^orse
half of his character, has succeeded in depriving it of what
helped to make the great German reformer the natural, impul-
sive, likeable man that he was ; presenting to us a person little
better than D'Aubigne himself, instead of the true man Lu-
ther ; the player at skettles, the advocate of the theatre, the
drinker of ale, whose favorite lines expressed his favorite tastes,
wd^ich were for wine, beauty and music —

" Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weiber und Gesang,
Der bleibt ein Narr sein. Lebelan^r."

In this spirit, some ascetic writers have painted Elizabeth,
very much such as they themselves were, and have tried to
make an absurd and w^himsical devotee of her who appears to
have been aperfect lady. Writers of a more sound and cheerful
religion have described her as everything that is amiable and
graceful in mind, as she was in body — a light and joy to the
circle in which she moved. The amiable St. Frances of
Sales, a saint of the first and truest order, himself by-the-by
like Fenelon, whom he so much resembled in mind, distin-

* " Histoire de Sainte Elizabeth, de Hongrie," par le Compt de Mou-
talernbert, p. 226. Paris, 1349.

216 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

guished for his personal beauty; "the gentleman saint,'' as
Leigh Hunt, in one of his essays calls him — as if to be a saint
and a gentleman were a marvel^ if not even a miracle — this
St. Francis, in his charming work on the devout life — the
prettiest and most practical of books of piety — tells us of Eliza-
beth that " As for St. Elizabeth of Hungary, she played and
danced sometimes when she was in company to which these
things were pleasures, which did no harm whatever to her de-
votion, for that was so deep rooted in her soul, that as the
rocks by the lake of Eietta grow larger amidst the waves and
billows, so did her devotion increase amidst the pomps and
vanities to which her condition exposed her. Great fires are
made greater by the wind ; it is only the small ones which are
extinguished if they be not protected by a cover."*

The taste of Elizabeth was for plain and humble attire ; but
at any time, at the request of her husband, or to please the
assemblies in which she had to appear, she would dress and
adorn her beautiful person with a magnificence becoming her
rank.

The fame and virtues of Elizabeth have thrown the name and
history of her husband, the pious Louis, into the shade. It
may be mentioned as interesting, that this matchless dark
beauty w^as married to a prince of an exceedingly fair com-
plexion, with long light hair flowing over his shoulders. His
figure was well proportioned, the expression of his features
calm and benevolent. " The charm of his smile," says Mon-
talembert, " was irresistible. His walk was noble and digni-
fied ; his voice of extreme sweetness." " Many persons," adds
the enthusiastic writer, "believed that they saw in him a strik-
ing resemblance to the portrait which tradition has preserved
of the Son of God made man."t

* S. Franooise de Sales, "Introduction a la Vie Devote," c. xxxiv.
Paris, 18.50.

t " Histoire de Sainte Elizabeth," ji, 215.

DANTE.

"We are familiar with the slender, wasted, melancholy, and
somewhat feminine featm'es of the great Dante, conveyed to
us evidently with fidelity by the earliest Italian painters,
copying from the great Giotto, his contemporary. The soft,
slender, halfshut eye is said to be a peculiarity in the paint-
ings of Giotto, and part of his manner. The sallov/, tinged
complexion of the poet is well known, from its association
with the belief of the common people of Italy in his time that
Dante had actually visited those regions of pain — " the griev-
ing city," and " the lost people," — which he has described in
that immortal work which awoke to life the long-slumbering
genius of modern Europe and modern poetry. The original
fresco portrait of Dante has been revealed in our da3^s on the
wall of the chapel of the Palazzo del Eodesta at Florence,
where it had for nearly five hundred years been covered over
with a thick dirty coating.

The exquisitely beautiful imaginative picture of Dante me-
ditating the story of Francesca di Rimino, by Mr. Xoel Paton,
a Scottish artist of a peculiarly graceful genius — which, from
the calm sweet atmosphere which it presents, would be a fine
picture of the figure of Dante were a mere accessory, like a
10 (217)

218 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC TOETRAITS.

shepherdess in a landscape of Claude — has the merit of giv-
ing us the Dante of Giotto — though the Dante of latter days ;
for the fresco discovered in 1840 is Dante in his thirtieth year.
" On comparing," says Mrs. Jameson, " the head of Dante,
painted was about thirt}^ prosperous and distinguished
in his native city, with the latter portraits of him when
he was an exile, worn, wasted, embittered by misfortune,
and disappointed and wounded pride, the difference of ex-
pression is as touching as the identity of features is indu-
bitable."*

* Mrs. Jameson, "Memoirs of tlie Early Italian Painters," vol i, p. 32.

EOBEET BEUCE.

Egbert Bruce, the greatest of Scottish kings, was, accord-
ing to Major the historian, " of a fair, graceful, and active
body, with broad shoulders, and a beautiful countenance ; his
hair after the fashion of the Northerns being yellow^, and his
eyes blue and sparkling."* His statue, as it was ascertained
by the disinterment of his remains in the year 1818, "when
Scotland after five centuries again beheld her great deliverer,"
was between five feet ten and six feet. From the measure-
ment of the thigh bone. Dr. Gregory calculated that he was
from five feet ten to five feet eleven ; while others thought the
skeleton that of a man of six feet. His head was of the mid-
dle size and well formed, such as is generally found in men of
the highest abilit}^

The coins of King Eobert represent him with his locks long
and curled. The lower jaw was found to be remarkably
strong and deep. This, says Sir Eobert Liston, in his ana-
tomical remarks on the skeleton, has been considered as indi-
cative of great strength ; and hence the ancient sculptors in-
their figures of the divinities combined depth of this bone with

* "Eratenim pulckro, decoro et vegeto corpore, latis humeris, venusta
facie, flava, more borealium caesarie, caeruleis et micantibus ociilis." —
!Ma.tor " Hist. Majoris Brittanmx," lib. v, c. 2

(•219)

220 CLASSIC AKD HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

the shortness peculiar to youth. The ramus, (the bone pro-
ceeding upwards from the back part of the jaw,) he adds, rises
almost perpendicularly from the base of the bone.

It appears that, as in the instances of Juhus Caesar and the
illustrious Sobieski, the hardships and toils of his early years
brought upon Eobert Bruce a premature old age. The dis-
ease of which he died is attributed by Barbour, who in this
point is followed by Bishop Leslie, to his out-door life during
the days of his adversity.

In the character of this man there was a singularly harmo-
nious and beautiful union of the best moral and intellectual
gifts. His intellect was at once vigorous, refined, and subtle.
"With all his heroism as a warrior and his wisdom as a politi-
cian, he could never have done what he did, if he had not
added to his heroism and his wisdom the rarest patience in
affliction, and the most unwavering reliance on Providence.
"What he really achieved, and how he achieved it, make his
genuine history like the richest treasures of romance. He had
to contend with poor resources against a wealthy enemy, and
with inferior numbers against armies and leaders who were
the terror of all Europe, and yet this extraordinary contest
was completely successful.

If Poland or Hungary, in their struggles for nationality in
modern days, had had a head like that of Pobert Bruce to
guide them, they would at this hour have been completely
independent nations. And this man, if he had not been a great
warrior and a profound politician, and called on to exercise
all his high and varied gifts for the noblest national purposes,
would have shone, as Caesar and Alexander would have shone,
in private life. He was, as his recorded sayings prove, a man
of a poetical mind, and of a gentle and graceful wit. He had
those soft parts of conversation " which win the favor of the
other sex." He resembled in all their good points Henry IT.
of England, and Henry IV. of Erance; and as men being

ROBERT BRUCE. " 221

humaa must be imperfect, there is reason to believe that in
some measure, though to a less degree, he also resembled
those great kings in their too warm admiration of female
beauty.

On the other hand, it has been alleged that, as is recorded
of Augustus, he made his affairs of gallantry subservient to
his state policy ; and it certainly does not appear that they
ever, as they frequently did with the English and the Prench
Henry, stood in the way of his duty to himself and his coun-
try. However this may be, it is certain that it was in the
depth of difficulties and dangers, out of which no genius less
splendid and no virtues less obstinate than his could have
delivered him, that a woman, gifted perhaps with a presenti-
ment that a bright day of triumph was about to dawn on so
much heroism and so much goodness, placed with her own
hands the crown on the brows of the most illustrious of Scot-
land's monarchs.

INEZ BE CASTEO,

The true history of Inez de Castro, the mistress, and in suc-
cession the wife, and lastly, in death, the crowned queen of
Pedro of Portugal, called " the Cruel," is as full of melancholy
romance and of terrible and grand tragedy as anything that
poetry and fiction have ever conceived. The extreme beauty
of her neck and bosom has been celebrated. A portrait of
her has been transmitted to our times. An engraving of it,
borrowed from a work entitled " Eetratose elogios dos Varoes
e Donas que illustraron a nagao Portugueza," is prefixed to
the second volume of Adamson's " Life of Caraoens," as her
history forms an episode in the great epic poem of Portugal.
The features are uncommonly regular and handsome, and the
whole face and expression are marked by calmness and gentle-
ness. Even the peculiar and unnatural head dress in which
she appears does not destro}^, though undoubtedly it does not
add grace to, her sweet features.

That must have been an affecting and solemn ceremony,
exciting emoticms at once pleasing, sublime, and terrible —
something to which there is no parallel in all history, when,
four whole years after the barbarous murder of this famous
beauty, Pedro, on coming to the throne, caused the body of
his adored wife to be translated from its tomb in the monns-

(222)

INEZ DE CASTRO. ' 223

tery of Santa Clara to that of Alabaca. When the corpse
was disinterred in the midst of the nobles, the dead lady was
placed on a royal throne, and Pedro with his own hands put
a golden crown on her head, while all present kneeled before
her, saluting her, and kissing her hand as Queen of Portuo-al.
When the procession arrived at Alabaca, this appalling yet pa-
thetic coronation of a mouldering carcase was repeated. The
beautiful figure of Inez was sculptured on her tomb, but was
afterwards injured by an attempt to open it made by King
Sebastian.

The care which Pedro took solemnly to remove all manner of
doubt of his having been married to Inez, though state policy had
compelled him to espouse her only in private, redeems a mul-
titude of crimes. We understand and compassionate the
gloominess of his after character ; we sympathise with the terri-
ble vengeance w^hich he took on the assassins of his bride. He
was deeply injured if ever man was. The murder of Rizzio
by the Scottish barons was a crime of atrocious baseness; but
I do not know in what terms the killing of Inez de Casto by
the Portuguese nobles can be at all adequately described.

The narrative now given of the resurrection of Inez contra-
dicts and refutes the story sometimes told that the murderers
cut off her head. She was stabbed with poinards in the neck
and bosom, " that neck of alabaster," says Camoens, " w^ich
bore those perfections with which love killed him who after-
wards made her queen."

<* No collo de alabastro que sostinha

As obras com que Amor maton de araores
A quelle que despois a fez rainha."

AGNES BOREL

Agnes Sorel, the mistress of Charles VII., is the most
celebrated French beauty of her age, inheriting from her own
day to this the title of " the beautiful Agnes." Posterity has
dealt very gently with her memory and character, and has re-
presented her as at once endowed with the meekness and humi-
lity of Mademoiselle de la Valliere, and with the patriotism
and generous public spirit of Nell Gwynne. To her influence
over the king is attributed all the good that appeared in him,
and she in particular gets credit for having roused him to the
effort which drove the English out of France. The popular
portrait of this frail beauty is indeed quite enchanting. " Hea-
ven," says Mademoiselle de B ■, " had not only endowed

Agnes with the charms of face ; she had an air of grace, an
admirable figure, more wit than any other woman in the world
and that the most delicate and finely turned, and a certain
greatness of soul which led her naturally to generosity ; all
her inclinations were noble ; she was attentive, compassionate,
ardent in friendship, discreet, sincere, and in short, altogether
fitted to make herself be loved to distraction.*

After noticing her death under suspicion of poison, Made-

* " Histoire de-j Favorites," par Mademoiselle de E , p. 102.

(•224)

AGNES SOPvEL. . 225

moiselle de B goes on to say : " Such was the unfortunate

end of the most beautiful person whom France ever gave birth
to. Her memory has ever been esteemed there. Celebrated
authors speak favorably of her ; never did the mistress of a king
make so generous a use of her favor, which she never employed
but for the good of others. The care which she took to inspire
the project of w^ar into the king covers her with much glory, and
on this point Francis I. bestowed on her illustrious testimonies
which will make her live eternally."*

The reference to Francis I.'s testimony reminds us of the
verses said to have been written by him on Agnes, which cer-
tainly show that he, living about a century after her, believed
in her gentleness and in her patriotism. The king, finding her
portrait amongst several others in a portfolio, w^rote some
lines under each of them, and the following under that of
Agnes :

** Gentilie Agnes ! plus cVhonneur tu merites

La cause etant de France recouvree

Que ce que peut dans un cloitre ouvrer

Close nonain, on bien devote hermite."

The historian Duclos has adopted these stories. " Agnes,"
he says, " was the mistress for whom Charles had the greatest
passion, and she was the most worthy of his attachment. Her
singular beauty caused her to be called ' the Fair Agnes,' and
she was also called * the lady of beauty,' a rare example for
those who enjoy the same favor. She loved Charles only for
himself, and had no other object in her conduct than the glory
of her lover and the good of the state. Agnes Sorel distin-
guished herself by qualities preferable to those which are
found in her sex."t And again, he says that Agnes " died
this year (1450) regretted by the king, the court, and the peo-

* " Historic des Favorites," p. 158.

t "Histoire de Louis XL" par M. Duclos, torn, i, p. 6. Amst. 17^6,
10*

226 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

pie. She never abused favor, and united the rare qualities of
a tender mistress, a true friend, and a good citizen." "I do not
know," he candidly adds, " how Alain Chartier strove so
much to defend the chastity of Agnes, who died in childbed.
She had three daus^hters to Charles."*

A violent death, and distance of years soften the asperity
with which persons in the situation of Agnes Sorel are assailed
during their lives ; and after the grave has closed over her,
charitable posterity is willing to believe that an unchaste
woman may not have been altogether a demon. The rancor
of her own sex has long ceased to persecute the memory of
Fair Eosamond, and even of the more guilty Jane Shore ; and
the most harshly virtuous of the sex in the present day are
good enough to hope that both the one and the other have
found that grace which was given to Mary Magdalen and
Eahab the harlot. Under the notion, which is the prevailing
one in the present day, that Agnes Sorel was an extremely
amiable sinner, and a lover of her country and her country's
glory, a set of quadrilles bearing her name isadmitted to a place
on virtuous pianos ; just as Nell Gwynne is at this day intro-
duced on the stage in decent comedies.

Yet there is unfortunately stubborn contemporary authority
for destroying the whole idea of Agnes's moral loveableness
and her patriotism, and for leaving her nothing to recommend
her but mild features, her alabaster skin, and her golden hair,
which have never been disputed. It is historically untrue that
it was by her persuasion that the king was excited to expel
the English from France. The peace of iVrraswas concluded
eight years before Charles became enamored of Agnes. From
certain contemporary accounts which it is not easy to distrust
in favor of later testimonies, there is reason to believe that the
meekness and sweetness attributed to Agnes Sorel, were
rather the property of Mary of Anjou, Charles's injured queen.
* Duclos, torn 1, p. 61.

AGNES SOREL. 227

George Chastelain, a contemporary writer, in his " Chro-
nique des Dues cle Bourgogne" represents Agnes as a woman
ostentatious in her splendor, and not merely immodest in her
manners, but a zealous teacher of immodesty in other women.
She appeared at court in all the state of a princess ; her apart-
ments were more richly adorned than those of the queen, she
had more female attendants, and she had all the reverence
shown to her that she could have had if she had herself been
queen. Her beds, her tapestries, her linen, the vessels and
dishes on her table, the rings and the jewels which she wore,
were all liner than those of the queen, and so was her kitchen,
and so was everything about her. There was in short, he
tells us, no princess in Christendom so highly adorned, and
kept in such state. " With this woman, called Agnes," says
Chastelain, " whom I have seen and known, the king was ter-
ribly besotted." To please her, he tells us, Charles did many
things against his honor, and the murmurs against both her
and him were loud. The trains which she wore, he adds, were
longer by a third than any princess of this kingdom had, and
her robes were more costly. "And of everything," Chastelain
says, " in the way of dress that can seduce to immodesty and
licentiousness, she was the producer and promoter."* He
describes with indignation the extreme to vt'hich Agnes carried
the lowness of her dress, and the zeal with which she studied
day and night to make all virtuous women throw aside honor,
shame and good manners, and the great influence which she
exercised in corrupting the morals of France. f The wdiole

* George Chastelain, as quoted by Le Roux de Lincy in his introduc-
tion to the " Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," p. 14. Paris, 1844.

t " Descouvrioit les espaules et le seing devant, jusques aux tettins,
donnoit a toute baudeur ley et conrs, feust a homme, feust a femme, ne
estudiott qu'en vainite jour et nuit pour desvoier gens, et pourfaire et
donner example aux preudes femmes de perdicion d'onneur, de vergoigne
et de bonnes nieurs."' — Chastel-UN as quoted by Le Roux de Lincy.

228 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

nobility, he says, gave themselves up to vanity by her exhorta-
tion and example.

In what Chastelain says of the richness of apparel in which
Agnes delighted, his testimony is confirmed by Olivier de la
Marche, and by Monstrelet, both of them contemporary histo-
rians ; and those who speak of the simplicity and plainness of
her dress, and her unostentatious habits are manifestly in the
wrong. " This fair Agnes," says Monstrelet, " had been five
years in the service of the queen, during which she had enjoyed
all the pleasures of life in wearing rich clothes, furred robes,
golden chains, and precious stones."*

We must presume that the extreme openness of dress,
which Chastelain so much reprobates in Agnes, had been
introduced by her amongst the women at court; as otherwise,
if she had merely followed the established fashion, she could
not be fairly charged with immodesty. As to her indulgence
in the most gorgeous garments, while it may argue bad taste,
it can hardly be reckoned criminal ; and it is not fair to treat
that as a sin in Agnes which is mentioned without any repro-
bation in women of unquestioned innocence. There is, in truth,
an appearance in Chastelain's statements — which, however, in
substance are confirmed by other good authorities, and cannot
be rejected — of a wish to make Agnes look at least as bad as
she was. Besides calling her by the harshest name which can
be bestowed on a frail woman, he adds that she was a poor
servant {povre ancelle^ and of an insignificant and low house,
{de 'petit basse maison.)

This is pure spite on the part of the virtuous chronicler. It
is no alleviation of Agnes's guilt to recollect that she had the
miserable merit of being of noble rank, and of an ancient family,
bemo: the dauo-hter of the Seioneur de St. Geran, while her

* "The Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet," vol. ix, p. 96,
(Johnes's Trans.) Lond. 1810.

AGNES SOREL. 229

poor service was that of being first the attendant of Isabella,
Queen of Naples and Sicily, and afterwards of Mary, the wife
of Charles. Her situation in the household of the amiable
queen when she became the king's mistress, her rank by birth,
and her education, are all aggravations of her criminality.
Neither extreme youth, nor ignorance, nor any chain of
unfortunate circumstances can be pleaded in her behalf She

was not the girl of seventeen as Mademoiselle de B , for

the sake of romantic effect, makes her when the king fell in
love with her. It was in the year 1431, when she was two-
and-twenty, that she entered the service of Isabella of Naples.

How^ long after this it was till she became lady in waiting to
the Queen of France, when Charles could first have seen her,
I have not been able to ascertain. I have seen a calculation
which makes her about eight-andtwenty when the king fell in
love with her ; there is, however, better reason to beUeve that
she was three-and-thirty. Olivier de la Marche, a contemporary
writing about certain events which took place in 1444 tells us
in connexion with them that " the king had just {noitvellement)
elevated a poor lady, a pretty woman {genti femme) called
Agnes du Sorel, and placed her in such triumph and power,
that her state was comparable to that of the great princess of
the realm."*

The truth appears to be that Agnes became known as mis-
tress to the king, who was rather her junior, at the ripe age
of thirty-three. This fact, for such I assume it to be, spoils one
of Mademoiselle de B 's most effecting sentences. Speak-
ing of Agnes, when the king fell in love with her, she sa3''s :
" That penetrating vivacity which the age of seventeen gives
to an infinite beauty, spread an air full of charms on the least
of her actions, and the most insensible souls could not resist
her."t

* «< Olivier de la Marche," quoted by La Roux de Lincy, ut sup. p. 13.

-j- " Histoire des Favorites," p. 104.

230 CLASSIC AND HISTOKIC POETRAITS.

Seventeen has always been the favorite figure with roman-
cers in fixing the age of a heroine at the peried of her most
splendid achievements. It is the age of womanhood in Asia,
and in novels and poetry in England, "where it has the great
merit of alliterating pretty tolerably with " sweet." Hence
^Yhile " sweet seventeen" is a stock phrase with the dealers in
fiction, we never hear of sweet eighteen, nor sweet twenty ;
much less of sweet three-and-thirty.

"Whatever merits Agnes may have had, it is hardly consist-
ent with the idea of her being possessed of much humility, that
she should strive, as it is a fact that she did, to outshine the
queen in all hinds of magnificence; more especially as Mary
appears to have borne the alienation of the king's love from her,
not merely with resignation, but with sweetness of temper, and
by no action or word ever to have reproached the reigning
favorite.

1 suspect, after all, that when we add to Agnes's beauty, the
gay temper, pleasing manners, and agreeable conversation
which Monstrelet allows her, we have summed up her perfec-
tions ; and all that can farther be pleaded w^ith truth in her
favor, is her charity to the poor — quite a common, and indeed
a characteristic virtue amongst women of Agnes's class — and
her death-bed repentance, both of which are attested by genu-
ine history. Her arrogance, and disregard for the feelings of
the Queen, are hardly to be doubted. On one occasion the
dauphin (afterwards Louis IX.), it is said, gave Agnes a blow
on the face, for uttering some irritating languge — some say
for speaking disrespectfully of the queen.

It is not easy to say much in favor of Louis'^ character,
but his attachment to his mother was sincere, and he resented
the ill-usage which she suffered, so far as to quarrel with his
father about it ; while he hated Agnes Sorel, for her ostenta-
tious magnificence, and the contempt in which she is said to
have held the queen.

AGXES SOREL. 231

There is reason to doubt if Agnes Sorel died of poison, as is
positively affirmed by several historians. Mezerai states it
broadly as a fact. The scandal went, that the poison was
administered by the dauphin. The known ill-will which he
bore to Agnes, would naturally lead to the fixing of such an
accusation upon him. Agnes was seized with violent purg-
ings, which continued a long time, and then carried her off, in
the fortieth year of her age.

'' She was," said Monstrelet, who shows her no particular
favor, " very contrite, and sincerely repented of her sins. She
often remembered Mary Magdalen, who had been a great sin-
ner, and devoutly invoked God and the Virgin Mary to her
aid. Like a true Catholic, after she had received the Sacra-
ments, she called for her book of prayers (in which she had writ-
ten W'ith her own hand the verses of St. Bernard,) to repeat
them. She then made many gifts, which, including alms and the
payment of her servants, might amount to nearly sixty thou-
sand crowns."*

The interesting chronicler who tells us these particulars
seems to relent in her favor, when he describes, as he does with
much simple pathos, the last moments of this renowmed
beauty. " The fair Agnes," he says, " perceiving that she was
daily growing weaker, said to the Lord de la Trimouille, the
lady of the Seneschal of Poitou, and one of the King's equer-
ries cahed Gouffier, in the presence of all her damsels, that our
fragile life was but a stinking ordure. She then required
that her confessor would give her absolution from all her sins
and wickedness, conformable to an absolution which was, as
she said, at Loches, w^hich the confessor, on her assurance,
complied with. After this, she uttered a loud shriek, and
called on the mercy of God, and the support of the blessed
Virgin Mary, and gave up the ghost on Monday, the 9th day
of February, in the year 1449, about six o'clock in the after-
* "Monstrelet," lib i, p. 98.

232 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

noon." Monstrelet kindly adds: ''May God have mercy on her
soul, and admit it into Paradise !"

The body of Agnes was interred in the church at Loches,
which had been enriched by her pious liberality. Her figure
in white marble was placed on a black tombstone. At one end
were two angels supporting the pillow on which her head
rested, while in the playful allusion to her name, which was
common in her days, two lambs lay at her feet. I think I have
read somewhere that at the devolution this monument w^as
destroyed by a. horde of ruffians, who scattered about the
bones of the royal favorite. Those ingenious persons who have
persuaded themselves that that insane revolution was an out-
burst of the indignation of a virtuous people against the vices
of kings and queens, and who find in every brutality of that
period a proof of the sincere love of goodness by which its
perpetrators were actuated, will be able to attribute this
atrocity to the reverence which the revolutionists felt for that
virtue in which poor Agnes was specially deficient.

Charles lamented the death of Agnes with unaffected grief.
He survived her seven j^ears. Out of his affectionate memory
for the aunt he immediately made her niece (others say her
cousin,) Madame de Villequier, his next chief mistress ; but
the greatness of his sorrow required the consolation of a whole
seraglio.

Mezerai is bitterly sarcastic on the grief of this bespotted
voluptuary. "In 1449," says the historian, " when the king
was at J umieges, they poisoned for him his dear Agnes Sorel,
without whom he could not live a moment. To console him,
Antoinette de Maignelais, lady of Villequier, the cousin of
the deceased, took her place; but she was not alone. This
voluptuous monarch set himself to keep a great number of
beautiful girls, at least for the pleasure of his eyes." After
the lady of Villequier came another who was called, probably
from her imperiousness, or her control over the kingdom, Mud-

AGNES SOREL. 233

ame la Regente, and who is celebrated for her extreme regard
to decorum ; and fourthly, and lastly, the daughter of a pas-
try-cook came into favor. She is kno^Yn in history as Madame
des Chaperons — the lady of hoods ; " because," says Chaste-
lain, " of all women in the world, she it was who best put on
her hood."

It has been noticed that Chastelain blames Agnes Sorel for
introducing the open dress which he condemns. The censure,
in all likelihood , is bestowed at random. The same charge has
been brought by various historians against Isabella of Bavaria,
the wife of Charles VI., famed for the fairness of her com-
plexion and the foulness of her soul, and who died about the
time that Agnes Sorel became known at court. The fashion
which Chastelain inveighs against has in Europe, where fash-
ions are not eternal, been going out and coming in at intervals,
according to accidental circumstances, since the first time that
women fell into the habit of wearing clothes at all. The loose
open dress would become general when those women in whose
hands was the control of the taste of their sex conceived, as
Isabella of Bavaria it is well known did, that they had every-
thing to gain by the freest exposure of their perfections ; and
it would become more close when the rulers of fashion fan-
cied, as it is said Madame de Maintenon did, that it was for
their advantage to place more reliance on the imagination
than on the eyes of their admirers. Nearly a century before
Isabella of Bavaria is said to have invented the anathematised
costume, the censure of Dante had immortalised the low dress
of the women of Florence, whom the great poet foolishly
calls impudent, because they did not choose to fashion the fronts
of their gowns according to his taste.* These censurers mis-
* Dante, " Divina Commedia," Purgat. xxiii, 98 :

•' Tempo future m' e gia nel cospetto

Cui sara quest' ora molto antica

Nel qual sara in pergan^o interdetto

Alle sfacciate donne Florentine

L" andar mostrando colle poppeil petto.''

234 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC POETRAITS.

take matters of mere convention for matters of the essence of
moralit}^, and always take care to denounce the reigning
fashion, whatever it be, as immoral.

Tertullian and Chrysostom direct all decent women to veil
their faces. Poppsea veiled her face, but abated nothing of
her profligacy. Tertulhan takes it upon him to declare that
it is the revealed will of Heaven that a woman should wear a
veil, and also that this veil should cover her person from the
head to the loins ; this is the dimension which he says an angel
of heaven revealed to a holy sister of his acquaintance. The
African father's notions were those of his countr}', and he
has expressly praised the Arab women for covering the whole
face except one eye; " content to enjoy half the light rather
than prostitute the whole face."* Yet unlawful love does not
rage so furiously, in countries where women expose their faces*
and persons with the greatest freedom, as it does where they
are closely veiled. In many countries, close dressing is the
ensign of those women who put no value on their chastity
and the nearest approach to nudity is the costume of the pure
in heart and life.

There is a terrible story of a moral Queen of Malabar, who
subjected one of her women to the martyrdom which has im-
mortalised St. Agnes, because she had dared to come into her
presence with her bosom covered after the licentious fashion
of the Europeans. If the pious Eichard Baxter felt called
upon to write " A just and seasonable reprehension of naked
breasts and shoulders," when these were fashionable, he would,
if the fashion had run the other way, have published " a just
and seasonable reprehension" of tuckers and neckerchiefs, and
proved them to his own satisfaction to be unscriptural and a
sinful departure from the simplicity of primitive times.

The philosophy of the whole matter is this, that such
women as Isabella of Bavaria would not be more modest in

* Tertullian, ' De Velatia Yirgmibus," c. 16, Opera, torn i, 182.

AGNES SOREL. 235

one dress than in another ; and that singularity in dress is
more immodest than any dress whatever, which has ever
become general, can be. The rule for gowns and fashions is
the same as that for words and expressions —

" Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

On this point, the young Antonia, in Mandeville's curious
dialogue, has all the reason on her side, in opposition to her
censorious aunt. " Though you are pleased," says the niece,
" to find fault with my behavior, I don't know that ever I was
guilty of any immodesty in my life ; I don't invent the fashions ;
but indeed I don't love to be pointed at for affecting singular-
ity. I dress myself as I see other young gentlewomen do ;
my stays are not cut lower than other people's."

This is the moral of the case ; and what follows is equally
good. " Y»^omen, in strictness," says Aunt Lucinda, " should
never appear in pubhc but veiled ; at least, young women
should never show their faces but to their nearest relations."

To this Turkish doctrine of the old lady, the reply of the
niece is admirable. " Indeed, aunt, when 'tis the fiishion to go
veiled, I won't stick out, but I shall hardly begin first."*
* " The Virgin Unmasked,'' p 18. Lond. 1742.

MES. JANE SHOEE.

Mrs. Jane Shore is known to the present age by the suf-
ficiently distinct accounts of her person, handed down from her
own tirae. "Two or three poems," says Michael Drayton,
" written by sundry men, have magnified this woman's beauty,
whom that ornament of England, and London's more particu-
lar glory. Sir Thomas More, very highly hath praised for Lier
beauty, she being alive in his time, though very poor and
aged. Her stature was mean, her hair of a dark yellow, her
face round and full, her eye grey, delicate harmony betwixt
each part's proportion, and each proportion's color ; her body
fat, white, and smooth, her countenance cheerful, and like to
her condition. That picture which I have seen of her, was
such as she rose out of bed in the morning, having nothing on
but a rich mantle, cast under one arm on her shoulders, and
sitting on a chair, on which her naked arm did lie."*

Sir Thomas More, whose account of Mrs. Shore, in her

* " England's Heroical Epistles." " The greater part of this passage,
as well as the extracts from Sir Thomas More afterwards given, are
appended by Bishop Percy to his ' Ballad of Jane Shore.' " — EELiauES
OF AxciE>^T English Poetry, vol. ii, p. 190. Lond. 1846.

(236)

MRS. JANE SHORE. 237

extreme old age, I shall afterwards quote, gives us a fine pic-
ture of her doing public penance in St. Paul's Churchyard,
walking in a procession in a white sheet, and with a taper in
her hand, before the cross. He says, "She went so fair and
lovely, namely, while the wondering of the people cast a love-
ly rud in her chekes (of which she before had much misse,)
that her great shame won her much praise among those that
were more amorous of her body, than curious of her soule."
Sir Thomas says there was " nothing in her body that you
would have changed, but if you had wished her somewhat
higher."

Such was Mrs. Shore, when she attracted the love of Ed-
ward IV., the handsomest prince of his time.

In the picture-gallery at Hampton Court, there is a picture
of Jane Shore, in which it is impossible to trace a particle of
beauty. Over her head is the inscription: " Baker's wife, mis-
tris to a King." Jane Shore was a goldsmith's wife.

In the common histories of her, there is an attempt to allevi-
ate her guilt, by representing her as haviug been married
against her inclination, by her parents, when she w^as eighteen,
and Mathew Shore thirty ; and for her benefit, the romance
tells us that he was ill-favored, mean-looking, and strongly
marked with small-pox. In direct opposition to this testimony,
we have the statement of Sir Thomas More, which I think
must be received, that the imfortunate goldsmith was " young
and goodly, and of good substance." And Michael Drayton,
no doubt well-informed on the subject, though not a contem-
porary, tells us that he was a " young man of right goodly
person."

It is but justice to Jane Shore to receive without hesitation
or qualification the uncontradicted testimony of Sir Thomas
More, as to the use w^hich she made of her influence with the
king. Archbishop Tennyson, a prelate of irreproachable life,

238 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

did not shrink from publicly speaking of the virtues of Nell
Gwynne ; and Jane Shore, more guilty than the poor orange
girl, has been fortunate in receiving a eulogium from such a
man as Sir Thomas More.

According to More, Jane Shore was the only one of his
mistresses whom the king loved, and *' whose favor, to say the
truth — for sin it were to behe the devil — she never abused to
any man's hurt, but to many a man's comfort and relief.
Where the king took displeasure, she would mitigate and
appease his mind ; w'here men were out of favor, she would
bring them in his grace ; for many that had highly offended,
she obtained pardon ; of great forfeitures, she obtained remis-
sion ; and finally, in many weighty suits, she stood many men
in great stead, either for none or very small rewards, and
those rather gay than rich ; either for that she was content
with the deed itself well done, or for that she delighted to be
sued unto, and to show what she was able to do with the kino:,
or for that wanton woman and wealthy be not always
covetous."

"We are the more impressed with Jane Shore's merit in
these matters when we recollect that the throne of England was
never filled by a more selfish, heartless, and cruel wretch than
her lover. Of the beauty of Jane Shore in her youth there is
no room to doubt. But she survived her charms. Alas !
" age that gives whiteness to the swan, gives it not unto
woman." Sir Thomas More, writing in 1513, thirty years
after the death of King Edward, tells us that there w^ere peo-
ple who " deemed her never to have been well visaged ; whose
judgment," he adds, pathetically, " seemeth to me somewhat
like as though men should guesse the beauty of one lono-
before departed, by the scalp taken out of the charnel-house ;
for now she is old, lene, withered, and dried up, nothing left
but ryvilde skin and hard bone. And yet being even such,

MRS. JAKE SHORE. 239

whoso will advise her visage might gesse and devise which
partes how filled would make it a fair face."

The little fat and fair young woman when old, thin, and
withered, and her golden locks exchanged for grey and scanty
hairs, her queenly ornaments for the weeds of poverty, and
her joyous spirit for pining melancholy, was not likely to
retain much of the charms which once distinguished her. In
fact, Jane Shore's style of beauty, fascinating while it lasts,
rapidly passes into decay. "We have seen that yellow hair,
both by the ancients and moderns, has been considered the
ornament of youth; it never indeed, or very rarely, remains to
adorn advanced years. The comparison between Jane Shore
of 1483, and the Jane Shore of 1513, as furnished between
Drayton and Sir Thomas More, is a powerful sermon on the
instability of worldly grandeur and the frailty of human beauty.
There is a sonnet in a fine spirit addressed to such a beauty as
Mrs. Shore was in the days w^hen her beauty lost her her virtue,
by an Italian poet, Antonio Tibaldeo, which is so pretty, that
its insertion here will not be deemed out of place.

"Non saranno i capei sempre d'or fino

Non saran' sempre perle i bianchi denti,

Non sempre avran splendor gli occhi tuo' ardenti
Ne sempre rose il bel yolto divino.
Bellezza e come i fior' che nel mattiiio

Son Freschi e vaghi, e poi la sera spenti ;

Ne noi ci renoviam, come i serpenti,
Cke nati son sotto miglior destine.
Deh muta ormai questi costumi altieri

Che i giorni corron piu che cervi e pardi,
E stolta sei, se sempre durar speri.

Manca ogni cosa, e nel specchio guardi,
Vedrai che non se' quale fosti jeri

Pero provedi a non pentirti tardi."

LUCEEZIA BORaiA

In speaking of the celebrated picture of Titian, in which the
famous, or as vulgar opinion says, the infamous Lucrezia
Borgia is introduced as presented to her husband by the
Madonna, Mrs. Jameson says : " I looked in vain in the coun-
tenance of Lucrezia for some trace, some testimony of the
crimes imputed to her ; but she is a fair, golden-haired, gentle-
looking creature, with a feeble and vapid expression."*

There certainly are instances of persons whose looks have
betrayed nothing of the vigor, energy, and strong passions of
their nature. Thus of the ferocious ruffian Graham of Claver-
house. Sir Walter Scott fells us that he had " a beautiful and
melancholy visage, worthy of the most pathetic dreams of
romance;" and Lord Byron says that the cruel Aii Pacha was
" mildest-looking gentleman" that he ever saw. The gentle,
childish-looking Couthon was unquestionably one of the most
ferocious monsters of the French Revolution ; and when he
was carried to the tribune, as he was required to be on account
of his extreme bodily weakness, his soft, mild voice was ever
lifted up in calling for more cruel bloodshed, and more sweep-
ing slaughters.

* Mrs. Jameson, <' Visits and Sketches,"' vol. ii, p. 120.

(240)

LUCREZIA BORGIA. 241

As a general rule, however— and it is a rule which guides
us every day in life, and guides us with safety — when furious,
and cruel, and treacherous passions live in the heart, they are
to be traced in manhood in the hneaments of the face. The
personal description of the stalwart Cataline, his pallid com-
plexion, his unpleasant, unhealthy eye,* his walk sometimes
rapid, at other times slow, and the frenzy in his face and fea-
tures, as noticed by Sallust, a great painter, is familiar to all
readers. Fuzeli used to decline the company of the famous
French painter, David. David had a hare lip ; but it was not
this innocent disfigurement which displeased Fuzeli. He said,
that when he looked at the French artist, he could never divest
his mind of the atrocities of the French Revolution, nor separ-
ate them from the part he had acted in them, for they were
stamped on his countenance.f

On the whole, in judging of the nature of our fellow-creatures
at first sip-ht, an observer with his own heart and feelino-s as
they ought to be, will very rarely be far deceived by confiding
in that natural skill in physiognomy with which we all come
into the world. " Heaven," as some one says, " is not in the
way of hanging out false colors." The face is a book in which
the innocent and the good may every day read lessons of cau-
tion and aversion for their guidance, protection and defence,

and find

" How surer than suspicion's thousand eyes

, Is that fine sense which to the pure in heart,

By mere repugnancy of their own goodness,

Reveals the approach of evil."

I do not believe that an authentic instance can be quoted of
a thoroughly good man with a sinister expression of counten-

* It is not easy to translate the expression ffedi oculi (Sallust " Cata-
lina," c. XV ;) but an unhealthy-looking eye is strikingly descriptive of
great criminals.

t Knowles, «« Life and Works of Fuzeli," vol. i, p. 258.
11

242 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

ance, though it would appear that there have been bad men
with pleasing features ; though I suspect a good eye would
have detected a serpent like beaut}' in those of them who were
decidedly and deliberately wicked. The world does not put
any faith in th-at professional physiognomist who denounced
Socrates as a vicious man ; we merely believe that his features
were rude and inelegant in the extreme.

There is scarcely a man amongst all the good, great, and
wise men of antiquity whom it would be safe to prefer toPho-
cion — to honest, wise, and witty Phocion. There was a beau-
tiful balance of the moral and intehectual gifts in this man.
He was the sagest of his times ; and of all the ancients he was,
perhaps, as his recorded sayings amply attest, the wittiest.
His great moral virtues were rigid honesty, a passionate at-
tachment to truth, and great kindness of disposition. Yet of
this admirable man, Plutarch tells us — and he evidently speaks
from contemporary statements — that " though one of the most
humane and best tempered men in the world," his countenance
was severe, ill-natured, and forbidding, so much so that it
repelled strangers from addressing him.

This account also agrees with an admission in one of Pho-
cion's sayings, that his brow appeared lowering.' Yet it is
nowhere stated that there were any traces of cunning, of dis-
simulation, or of sycophancy in this rough face. I think no
more can be made of this narrative than that Phocion, like
many other good men, was " no beauty" — no Alcibiades, nor
Xenophon, nor Critias. And nowhere in this world would the
want of fine features in a ruler or general be criticised with
more exaggeration of severity than in Athens — Athens, which
though deficient in beautiful women, boasted above ail the
states of Greece of her beautiful men.*

* See the very curious dissertation of M. de Pauw, '♦ de la Constitution
physique des Athenians," in his " Researches Philosophiques sur Ics
Grecs," torn. 1, p 107. Berhn, 1787.

LUCREZIA BORGIA. 243

On this point, however, it is to be observed that, in general,
the, vices and the real character, w^here it is bad, are more
easily to be read in the faces of men than of women, owing,
no doubt, to the greater shallowness and simphcity of the
manly nature, and to the greater power which, in protection
of their inferior physical strength, nature has given to women
in controlling and concealing the outward expression of the
passions w^hich rage, and the fires which burn in their hearts
and their brains. A woman certainly is no more to be blamed
for having more art in her nature, and more w^isdom in her
daily contrivances than a man, than a fox is to be censured
for having about him more cunning and wiles than a lion.

Tbe face of the man of middle age, whose breast has, for a
life-time, been agitated by violent passions, will not be un-
wrinkled ; and the habitual tone of his voice, though he may
strive to modulate it to serve his purposes, w^ill have acquired
something, at least, of a harshness which once did not belong
to it. But it is not uncommon to meet mth a woman who
has passed through a painful career of crimes and passions, of
agony and grief, still speaking with the sweet voice which en-
chanted the listener in the days of her innocence and happi-
ness, still wearing the composed features, the " cheek unpro-
faned by a tear," which might be thought to betoken days spent
wholly in the indolent enjoyment of pleasure, and with a brow
still perfectly smooth ; as smooth, indeed, as the ocean in a
calm — that same ocean which, a few hours before, has torn to
pieces in its fury, and engulphed in its never satiated jaws,
noble fleets of which not a trace can now be found on its
bosom — that calm bosom w^hich invites the disconsolate to rest
upon it, and there find peace to their troubled hearts.

The reader who believes all that is recorded of the crimes
of Lucrezia, and looks to the portrait of her as described by
Mrs. Jameson, even after he makes allowance for some sweet-
ness which the great art of Titian may have added to it, has a
strikino; illustration of these remarks and is compelled to con-

244 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC POXITEAITS.

fess that this is not the woman that he looked for. Even he,
who charitably and better instructed, can find no good evi-
dence of the more dreadful and more disgusting crimes attri-
buted to Lucrezia, must still look for sorhething harsh, distract-
ed, or melancholy in the face of the woman who was the
daughter of Alexander, and the sister of Csesar Borgia, who
had been brought up and had lived so much amidst scenes of
infamy, and witnessed, as she must have witnessed, so much
of habitual, and daily, and revolting wickedness. But less flat-
tering describers than Titian have testified that the traces nei-
ther of sin nor of sorrow were to be found in her fair face.

Lucrezia, however, notwithstanding the lustre thrown
around her by the pencil of the painter and the verses of a
poet she patronised, was not exactly a beauty. The contrast
between the fair golden hair and black eyes, given to her by the
great artist, is always striking, as in nature it is extremely
rare. In picture galleries all the celebrated Italian women of
Lucrezia's time appear with this fascinating half flaxen, half-
golden hair -which painters give to their Venuses and other
ideal beauties. It may hence be doubted if the charming color
of Lucrezia's hair was not the production of her own skill,
though in bare justice, we must give a woman full credit
for all the beauty v\dth which she can array herself, and judge
of her as she appears at her best, in fair reward of the amiable
desire to please which leads to the use and perfection of the
cosmetic science.

The world of antiquity allow^ed to the Queen of Heaven her-
self all the graces and witchcrafts which she could derive from
placing the celestial girdle around her waist; and no earthly
woman deserves either commendation or thanks for being less
beautiful than she might be if she liked. On the matter-
of fact, as to whether the hair of Lucrezia was by nature or
only by art golden, there is, I believe, no evidence. For the
rest of her features and person, between the favorable eulo-
gium of an Italian poet and the more specific criticism of a

LUCREZTA BORGIA. 245

German prose writer, agreeing together in substance, as praise
and censure often do, and taking these two descriptions along
with her portraits, we learn pretty accurately what this famous
woman w^as like. Her eyes were black and piercing, and her
luxuriant hair fell in profusion over her shoulders. She had it
tied tastefully with a black band. Her figure was large, and
it had the great fault of exhibiting something like a masculine
vigor in it. Her features were far from being regular. Her
forehead was indeed comely and well shaped, but her nose was
long and slender; her lips were deficient in fullness, and the
lower part of her face was retreating. Such is the picture which
is compounded out of the materials furnished by Strozzi and
Burckhardt, as they are quoted by M. Chasles.*

Leigh Hunt, in one of his essays on female beauty, assures
us, on the evidence of his own eyes, that the hair of Lucrezia
was of that color which is justly and properly called golden.
Mr. Hunt was in possession of an interesting and aflecting relic
of mortality — a solitary hair of this famous woman's head. " It
was given us," he says, " by a lamented friend (Lord Byron,) who
obtamed it from a lock of her hair preserved in the Ambrosian
Library, at Milan. On the envelope he put a happy motto, ' and
beauty draws us with a single hair.' If ever hnir was golden it is
this. It is not red, it is not yellow, it is not auburn ; it is gol-
den and nothing else ; and though natural-looking too, must
have had a surprising appearance in the mass. Lucrezia, beauti-
ful in every respect, must have looked like a vision in a picture,
an angel from the sun. Every body who sees it, cries out and
pronounces it the real thing.

" We must confess, after all, we prefer the auburn, as we
construe it. It forms, we think, a finer shade for the skin, a
richer warmth, a darker lustre. But Lucrezia's hair must have
been still divine. Mr. Lander, whom we had the pleasure of
becoming acquainted with over it, as other acquaintances com-

* H. Philarete Cliasles, "Etudes sur le Moyen Age,"' p. 409.

246 CLASSIC Ais^D HISTORIC , PORTRAITS.

inence over a bottle, was inspired on this occasion with the

following verses : —

" Borgia, thou once -v^-ert almost too august
And high for adoration ; now thourt dust ;
All that remains of thee these plaits unfold,
Calm hair meandering with pellucid gold."

" The sentiment," continues Mr. Hunt, " implied in the last
line will be echoed by every bosom that has worn a lock of
hair next it, or longed to do so. Hair is at once the most deli-
cate and lasting of our materials, and survives us like love.
It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that
with a lock of hair belonging to a child or a friend, we may
almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic
nature ; may almost say , ' I have a piece of thee here, not un-
worthy of thy being now.' "*

This is a very learned and exquisitely fine and tender dis-
course on hair. As regards the great beauty which Leigh
HuDt attributes to Lucrezia, I must say that, although it may
be quite safe and perfectly logical to judge of the stature of
Hercules by his foot; and though both ancient history and a
beautiful modern fairy tale join in informing us that a man of
susceptible feelings is able to fall in love with a woman at the
bare sight of one of her slippers, it yet appears like the sub-
lime of gallant rapture to discover, from the inspection of a
single hair from that large flowing mass — and in hair, mere
length and quantity are undoubtedly great beauties — which
once adorned the head of Lucrezia Borgia, that her large and
tall person was " beautiful in ever}'- respect."

A cold-hearted sneerer may think that Leigh Hunt and
Walter Savage Landor more than came up to a parallel with
the man immortalised by Hierocles, the Joe Miller of the
ancients, who, having a house for sale, went about amongst
the pubhc, carrying a brick in his pocket as a specimen. The

* Leigh Hunt, "Men, Women, and Books," vol. 1, p 240.

LUCREZIA EOilGIA. 247

single brick ^vou]d at least show of what materiul^s the man's
house was constructed; but the single hair, besides that it
might be dyed, might be a selected hair. For there is one
pecuHarly bewitching sort of hair which Leigh Hunt has un-
fortunately omitted to commemorate and laud in his catalogue
though it is capable of competing for victory with the very
finest and rarest. This consists of soft auburn locks, inter-
mingled here and there with bright golden hairs. This kind
of hair, which is extremely difficult to find, will do much for
a woman's head which has nothing else, externally or inter-
nally, to recommend it to admiration or love.

The character of Lucrezia Borgia has labored with the mass
of readers, from her own day to ours, under terrible stains ;
but she has not w^anted her defenders, and even eulogisers.
The greater part of her life appears, in wicked times and in
wicked places, to have been passed in all outward decorum,
decency and dignity. Eanke quotes from a contemporary
report of the Ambassador of Venice to the Court of Kome, a
passage about Lucrezia, in which she is called " wise and lib-
eral ;" and as her great natural abilities and talents have not
been questioned, she is, taking her at the worst estimate that
has been formed of her, entitled to this eulogium. Her per-
sonal beauty and her moral character have both gained some-
thing v.'ith posterity by her generous patronage of literature,
and particularly of poetry ; for a poet w^ho knows his craft,
will praise anything or anybody, if he is well paid for his
panegyric. It is more to her true glory, that her counsel, her
influence, and the free use of her purse, were all given to the
establishment and difi"usion of the art of printing in Italy.

There was wisdom, as well as liberality and enlightenment
in this. The patronage of printing, which in the long run,
says M. Chasles, corrects its own errors, was a far more une-
quivocal proof of her real liberality, than the giving of pen-
sions to sycophantic court poets.

248 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Sbe knew, however, what Virgil and Horace had done for
Augustus ; and there was something good in her desire that
both her soul and her body should appear as fair and bright
as possible in the ej^es of a merciful posterity. She knew
what liberality to men of letters had done for other famous
women. She knew that canonised saints of the Church and
grave bishops had praised the Christian virtues and piety of
Brunehilde, " the murderess of seven kings;" and Lucrezia's
liberality was as great, and her guilt certainl}^ not so great, as
that of the ancient Frank queen. Though Mr. Eoscoe's
defence of the perfect innocence of Lucrezia may not be wholly
satisfactory, still there is room left for disbelieving the more
revolting charges which have been heaped on the memory of
this woman.

If, however, the extreme guilt and the extreme beauty of
Lucrezia are questionable, the atrocious crimes and the singu-
lar beauty of her brother, Ccesar Borgia, are not in the least
doubtful. Contemporary history declares that this horrible
monster, who in a Christian age and country, renewed by his
crimes the memory of the Roman Commodus, whom he resem-
bled in strength and personal attractions, was the most beau-
tiful young man in the world ; comparing him in this respect
with Ferdinand, King of Naples, celebrated at that time for
his great personal comeliness, and giving the preference to
Borgia. He was an Achilles, tall and graceful in person, and
beautiful in the ftice, and, like Achilles, of prodigious strength
— a Hercules and Adonis united. Yet it must be doubted if
his face could have any of that moral beauty, which appears
in the countenances of men who get no credit for comeliness,
though Borgia might present a beauty nothing less than that
of " archangel ruined."

Pope has adopted the name of this monster as descriptive
of the height of incarnate wickedness; and I am afraid that
the name of Boroia, borne bv the father Alexander and the

LUCRE ZI A BORGIA. 249

brother Caesar, has an air of blood, of poison and sensuality
about it, which throws a black cloud of prejudice around the
memory of Lucrezia, the daughter and sister.

In the loathing and horror which this verj- name produces,
it appears to be entirely forgotten that in St. Francis Borgia
the Church of Eome has canonised a man of rank with the hu-
mility of a true fohower of Him who was born in a manger ; a
saint with all innocent and virtuous accomplishments ; a wit
and a scholar, and one who is to be honored with Xavier and
Borromeo, as amongst the most amiable of men.

After the death of Lucrezia, her third husband, Duke
Alfonzo of Ferrara, married a poor country girl of extraordin-
ary beauty. All who have seen any pictures, are familiar and
delighted with that charming portrait by Titian, which has
been multiplied by copies more than, perhaps, any other of his
works — representing a young and very fair woman twining
her luxuriant yellow hair. Tliis is beheved to be this peasant
oirl, Donna Laura, the second wife of Alfonso.

"Titian," says Mrs. Jameson, " painted her several times,
e nuclei e vestita. I have never seen in any gallery a portrait
by Titian recognised as the portrait of Donna Laura ; but for
several reasons, on which I cannot enlarge in this place, I
beheve the famous picture in the Louvre styled ' Titian's
Mistress,' to be the portrait of this peasant duchess."*

* Mrs. Jameson, " Sacred and Legendary Art," p. 341.

ANNE BULLEN

The power of charming, possessed by this celebrated woman,
is historical!}^ established. Her claims to a high rank in pure
physical beaut}^, have, however, been disputed. Her perfec-
tions in this way have been made the subject of controversy
— even of religious controversy — the fiercest and firiest of all
contentions.

Anne Bullen, who lived and died in the ancient faith of
Rome, is, nevertheless, though no saint in her own age, yet in
ours, on account of the services which her personal charms
rendered to the Eeformation, a woman of good memory with
Protestants; as on the other hand, and from the same cause,
she is an object of severe judgment, of reprobation, and of
calumny with Eoman Catholics. If her beauty did not create
the Eeformation in England, it undoubtedly hastened its out-
break, and accelerated its lagging progress. Heaven, which
works its great and good ends by whatever instruments it
thinks proper, made lust and avarice the great and conspicuous
promoters of the purification of religion in England. " The
British Bluebeard" was the leader of the hosts of the Eeform-
ed Faith ; and the base panderer to his guilty passion was its
hi oh priest.

(250)

ANNE BULLEN. 251

There will be found an agreement in the main about the
beauties and the defects which w^ere to be found in Anne
Bullen. Both Protestants and Roman Catholics are agreed
that she was tall, and that her figure and limbs were, on the
whole, handsome ; though the Roman Catholics, as will be
seen, censure several of the details. Her fine black hair, her
beautiful black eyes, her exquisitely formed mouth, and the
elegant oval shape of her face, are admitted on both sides,

Protestant writers have made it a point of faith, an article
stantis aid cadentis ecde&icc^ to describe her as without spot or
wrinkle. The Roman Catholic writers have found out about
as many spots and wrinkles on her body as they have discov-
ered in her soul, and they have adhered to facts in their unfa-
vorable portrait. They tell us that her skin was so yellow\
that she always looked as if she had the jaundice; and this is
perfectly true. It is admitted by her passionate admirer,
Wj^at the poet, w^hile speaking of her " rare and admirable
beauty," " that her face was not so whitely clear and fresh ;"
in plain words it really was yellow, but it was beautiful not-
withstanding.

The Roman Catholics assure us also, and this is perfectly
true, that one of her upper teeth stood out from the rest.
Then as to their exaggerated facts. The Roman Cathohcs
tell us that she had six fingers on her left hand, and a tumor
below her chin. These superfluities coming in aid of her yel-
low face, could scarcely be said to make her " a dainty dish to
set before the king."

But the Protestants have reduced the sixth finger on her
left hand to something like an abortive attempt on the part of
nature at a second little finger, amounting after all to nothing
better than a very large wart, which, however, Anne took
great care to conceal, as constantly as possible, with a glove.
As to the tumor below the chin, in Protestant eyes it dwin-
dled down, and sweetened and beautified itself into a handsome

252 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

mole, which is no disfigurement, but rather a grace to a woman,
if it be well placed; besides being indicative, as the voice of
ages has declared, of a loving constitution, which Anne had,
and of great worldly prosperity, which assuredly she had not.
To conceal the wart, or superfluous little finger on her left
hand, Anne Bullen introduced the fashion of hanoins: sleeves.
The large mole under her chin she concealed under a richly
ornamented collar, which also became the fashion amongst the
Court ladies. The mole is certainly not to be seen in Holbein's
portrait of her, in which her neck is bare.

With all this, the expression of Anne's features was sweet
and sprightly. Her bitterest enemies have joined with her
most partial friends in allowing that her taste in dress, and in
all kinds of adorning was admirable, and that she displayed
much genius in striking out new and splendid fashions. She
had a graceful manner, and spoke in a sweet voice, and was
highly accomplished in dancing and singing and in playing on
the lute.

DIANA OF POITIEES.

Diana of Poitiers, created by Henry II. of FraDce, Duch-
ess of Valentinois, is one of the most famous of those women,
who in the maturity of life have inspired a violent passion, and
who have retained the power of charming even in old age,
" I have seen the Duchess of Valentinois," says Brantome, " at
the age of seventy, as beautiful in the face, as fresh and as
amiable as at the age of thirty."* Brantome takes care never
to underrate w^onders of this kind ; Diana was only sixty-seven
at her death. " I saw her," he says afterwards, " six months
before her death, still so beautiful that I know not a heart so
rocky as not to be moved at the sight of her, though before
that she had broken her leg on the street in Orleans. She was
managing her horse as dexterously as ever she had done, but
he slipped and fell under her. From the sufferings which she
endured from this accident, it might have been thought," he
says, " that her beautiful face would be altered ; but nothing
was farther from the result ; her beauty, her grace, her majesty,
her fine appearance, were all the same as they ever had been. I
bcheve," he adds, " if this lady had lived a hundred years she
would never have grown old either in the face, so finely was it
composed, or in the person, so good was her constitution, and

* Brantome, "Dames Galantes," (Euvves, torn. iv. p. 179.

(253)

254 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

SO excellent her habit of body. It is a pity that the earth covers
this beautiful bod3\"

Diana, as we learn from Brantome, had an extreme whiteness
of skin, " and that without painting at all." Brantome adds,
how^ever, a report that every morning she took some soups con-
taining aurum ]iotabile and other drugs which he could not de-
scribe, to preserve her charms. Such a woman as Diana we may
be sure would neglect no means of averting the appearance of
old age, and the means she would use would bo those that
would be least liable to detection or suspicion. Amongst more
scrupulous women, there has been a distinction drawn between
such arts as Brantome attributes to Diana, and the les.s innocent
practice of outward painting, as it would be esteemed by those
who forebore it.

In a very curious '< Discourse of Artificial Beauty," in the
form of a dialogue between two ladies, the one who advocates
every means of making the face and the person agreeable, speaks
of" some who arraign before the rash tribunal of their judgments
every face, whose handsomeness they either envy, if natural, or
grievously reproach, if they think it hath anything artificial
beyond what themselves are wonted to or acquainted with ;
who yet in other things do as much contend against the defects,
deformities and decays of nature and age as may be, by wash-
ings, anointings and plasterings, by many secret medicaments
and close receipts, w^hich may either fiil and plump their skins,
if flat and wrinkled, or smooth and polish them, if rugged and
chapped, or clear and brighten them, if tanned and freckled ;
only in the point of color or tinctures, added in the least kind
or degree, they are not more scrupulous than censorious; as if
every one that used these had forsaken Christ's banner, and
now fought under the devil's colors."*

* A Discourse of Arlificial Beauty in the Point of Conscience between
two Ladies, p. 2. London, 1692.

DIANA OF POITIEES. 255

The little treatise from ^Yhich I have made this extract is a
well and closely reasoned and really eloquent defence of the
j;)ractice of painting the face in'order to add to its beauty, or to
conceal the decay of its freshness, against the sophistical objec-
tions of Puritanism and hypocrisy. The arguments brought..
from Scripture are shown to be wholly irrelevant. It is to be
observed that as the great strength of the puritan argument
against dancing is the fact that the wicked daughter of Herodias
danced, so the pretended argument from Scripture against
painting the face is that Jezebel, like other women of her time,
painted her flice, which be it observed, should prove to those
who are capable of being deluded by such absurdities, that it
is also unscriptural to tire the head as Jezebel did, or even
to " look out of the window," as Jezebel also did.

It would never occur to such arguers as these that it is a
virtue to desire to please ; and that as a woman can hardly go
against the customs and usages of her age and country, and
be innocent, so where face painting and patching are the
fashion, a wise man will not look for the best and most amiable
of the sex amongst those who abstain from what is forbidden
neither by reason nor Scripture. All the arguments against
women using every art to heighten and preserve their charms,
when the fashion runs in the direction of these arts, resolve
themselves into the hateful belief of the ascetic, that everything
that is offensive to man is agreeable to Heaven, and the rela-
tive belief that all that is agreeable to man is offensive in the
sight of God — a belief which has characterised all false reli-
gions since the beginning of time till the present hour.

Jezebel was justly punished, not for making herself beauti-
ful, but for the murder of Naboth. Yet Jezebel may be slan-
dered, and they have slandered her, who in the face of the
taunting language which she gave to Jehu, insist upon it that
her object in adorning her person was to attract his unlawful
love. From the whole history of her death, it is the fair infer-

£55 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.'

ence that calmly contemplating the fall of her throne and her
own fate, she resolved like Cleopatra to die like a queen, defying
her enemy. In the " Discourse of Artificial Beauty" beforg^,
quoted, justice is done to Jezebel as regards her behavior at
her death. " She puts herself into a posture of majesty, as
showing that height and greatness of mind which could own
herself in the pomp and splendor of a princess, even then
when she expected her enemy and her end ; that she might at
least perish (as she thought) with the more reputation of a
comely person, and undaunted spirit which abhorred to humble
and abase itself after the manner of fearful and squalid suppli-
ants in sackcloth, or to abate any of those accustomed orna-
ments with which she used as a queen to entertain herself in
her prosperity."*

Henry had been married to Catherine de' INIedici when he
and his bride were only fourteen years of age ; and he fell in
love with Diana when he was eighteen and she thirty-nine, and
his love continued unabated till his death, ^vhen she was sixty-
seven. It gives us a striking idea of the disparity in years
between these lovers, to reflect that Henry was younger than
Diana's own children. She was married to the Seneschal of
Normandy four years before Henry was born, and had been
the mother of two daughters. By the vulgar, the influence of
Diana over Henry was attributed to witchcraft ; and the grave
historian De Thou, has imputed it to the effect of philtres and
medicines. We need not believe that she had recourse to
either the chemist or the apothecary, in order either to preserve
her beauty or to bewitch the king ; but that she gained his
love by the beauty which is not unusual in a Frenchwoman of
forty, and retained it by the indescribable graces of manner
and conversation which make the inevitable decay of beauty
unobserved, and by the power of a strong mind over a weak.

Mademoiselle de Luzan makes her a perfect Popposa in the

* "A Discourse of Artificial Beauty," p. 10.

DIANA OF POITIERS. 257

art of varying her attractions. " The Duchess of Valentmois,"
she says, " had lived long enough to be experienced in pleasure,
voluptuous by nature, and attentive in preserving her conquest,
she every day devised new entertainments. She was too
knowing not to recollect that at upwards of forty, she had
unceasingly to guard the heart of a young prince who was
not twenty-nine. (He was nineteen when she was forty.) In
place of the air of flowery youth which was somewhat wanting
in her beauty, she employed art, and this art was guided by
long experience in gallantry, by a mind acute, cunuing and
adroit, by a lively gaiety, or by a soft languor. With these
advantages a woman in her decline may preserve her conquest,
but it is difficult for her to make a new one. Diana preserved
hers by a thousand charms of the mind, happily put into oper-
ation. She was a sort of Proteus ; she knew how to exhibit
herself to Henry under a form always new."*

During the whole period of Henry's reign, Diana openly rulgd
the king, and influenced all the pubhc affairs of France. Even
the queen, Catherine de' ]\[edici, with all her vigor of mind
and ambition, and great talents for business, never resisted the
will of the favorite, nor sought to thwart her schemes.

" She mixed herself up with everything," sa3's Mezerai.
" She could do everything; she was, so to speak, the soul of
the king's counsels. And in order that it might be known
that it was she who reigned, it was his will that there should
be seen on the furniture, on the devices, and even on the fronts
of his royal buildings, a crescent, and the bows and arroAvs
which were the arms of this unchaste Diana. The love of a
young king for a woman of forty, who had several children
to her husband, might be called an enchantment without
charms."

Mezerai, it will be observed, speaks with less gallantry than
the courtly Brantome. " There w^as^" he says, " more of old

* Mademoiselle de Luzan, "Annales Galantes de La Cour de Henri
Second,'' torn, i, p. 129. Amst. 1749.

258 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

age than of bashfulness on her forehead ; and years which had
extmguished the brilliancy of youth in her eyes, lighted up
more violently the flames of desire in her heart. She Avas
unjust, violent, and proud towards those who displeased her,
but otherwise she was beneficent and liberal. She also had a
very agreeable mind, and her hand.s still more so, as she
bestovN'ed much, and with a good grace. The king loved her
because she was very sensible of love, and her temperament
sometimes led her to seek elsewhere for the completion of her
pleasures, as she found in him the completion of her fortune
and her honors."*

Diana of Poitiers is an instance — though not a solitary one by
any means — of a woman loved to distraction by a man whose
mother, in respect of difference of ages, she might have been.
Such affections are unrom antic ; but romances and poetry have
both given very unfair representations of the loves of this
actual world.

European writers have not had the courage to speak of the
beauty of a woman past tw^enty, their notions on this subject
being drawn neither from feeling nor experience, but servilely
stolen from Eastern writers describing beauty in countries
where a woman is a mother at fifteen and an old wom.an at
thirty. Yet there are more writers than Ovid who have done
justice to the beauty of matured womanhood. In one of the
Love Epistles of Arista^netus, Terpsion is introduced, censuring
her lover for his bad taste in preferring the charms of a girl to
the richer beauty of a woman, and urging the superiority of the
latter with great effect.f Our own pious and amiable Dr.
Donne tells us that

" Xo spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in an autumnal face."

«-
* Mezerai, " Abrege Chronologique," torn, in, p. 103.

t AristiiMietus, "Epist." lib. ii, Ep. vii, p. lol.

DIANA OF POITIERS. 259

I have elsewhere noticed that Gibbon, in speaking of the
Empress Eudocia ( Athenais,) says that "the writer of a romance
would not have imagined that Athenais was nearly twenty-eight
when she inflamed the heart of a young emperor." The
remark is a sound one; but, as an exception to its truth, it may
De mentioned that Crebillon, in his best romance, the "Egare-
ments du Coeur et de I'Esprit," makes Madame de Lursay by
far the most interesting and effective beauty in the story, arrived
at the age of forty, when she makes a conquest of the young
hero of the novel.

It is to Diana of Poitiers that Brantome is understood to
reter in another part of his " Dames Galantes,'" wiiere he speaks
of" a great sovereign who loved so passionately a great lady
an aged widow, that he left his queen, beautiful as she was
and all others for her sake. But in this,"' he says, after his
usual fashion, in speaking of such matters, " he was right; for
she was one of the most beautiful and loveable ladies that one
could see ; and her winter, indeed, was better than the spring,
the summer, and the autumn of others."*

Mrs. Jameson, in her account of the paintings at Althorpe
describes one that has been several times copied — " that most
curious picture of Diana of Poitiers once in the Crawford collec-
tion. It is a small halflength ; the features fair and regular.
The hair is elaborately dressed with a profusion of jewels, but
there is no drapery \vh.3.teYev— force pierreries et tres peu de
Hnge, as Madame de Sevigne described the two Mancini."t

With regard to this picture, it may be conjectured that the
Duchess had chosen to have herself represented thus naked, in
the character of her namesake in the ancient mythology. We
have seen that amongst the devices on her equipage she used
the moon, the representative of Diana in heaven, and a bow and

* Brantome, '' Dames Galantes, CEuvres, torn iv, p. 103.

t Mrs. Jameson, " Visits and Sketches at Home and xibroad," yd. u,
p. 2io.

260 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

arrows tbo weapons of the goddess of the chase upon earth.
As an active huntress the Duchess miiilit be flattered bv beinG:
compared to the Greek Diana, but she should not have invited
those awkward comparisons which her name and character
together must have suggested between her and the cold divinity
who bore the title of '' the perpetual virgin."

At Hampton Court, in the Queen's G-allery, there is a curi-
ous picture called " Francis I. and the Duchess of Valentinois."
The bringing of these two together in a picture keeps alive the
scandal which, though affirmed by more than one French
historian, is not well authenticated, that Diana, before she
became the favorite of Henry, had been mistress to his father.
In this picture, Francis and the lady who is squinting
into his tlice, form a ludicrously ugly couple. There can be
no doubt that though a caricature of his likeness, this is Fran-
cis, as may be seen by a comparison of it with his portrait by
Holbein in the same room. There may be doubts, however,
if the other portrait is that of the Duchess of Valentinois.
All the portraits of Francis represent him with these small
eyes. In this picture they are peculiarly piggish. The little
woman beside him is yellow-haired, amazingly ill-favored,
with very small and very ill shaped eyes.

AVe must not be surprised that an artist should put out of
his hands a thing like this as representing a handsome prince
and a beautiful lady, seeing that many painters, and amongst
these some of 'great name, have given us portraits of the god-
dess of beauty herself in which the face is devoid of charms, and
the figure offends painfully against the natural proportion of
the female form.

CATHAEINE DE' MEDICI.

Between Brantome and one or two other writers, we have^
a tolerably complete picture of that remarkable and interest-
ing woman Catharine de' Medici. Brantome does the purely
eulogistic part to perfection. Catharine, he tells us, was of a
very beautiful and gorgeous figure, of great majesty, always
very gentle when there was occasion, of fine appearance and
good grace, her face fair and pleasant, her bosom very beau-
tiful and white and full, her body also was very beautiful and
fiiir. She was of a very rich embonpoint^ her legs very hand-
some, and she loved to wear fine stockings.*

Catharine, though stout in womanhood, was a slender girl,
a very common and indeed the usual case. She is described by
Antonio Suriano, ambassador from Venice to Rome, who saw
her in 1533, as slender and small in person; her features not
delicate, a*d he adds, that she had the Jarge eyes pecuHar to the
Medici family. " Her nature," he adds, " is lively, her spirit
gentle, and her manners good."t This is the description of
Catharine at the age of fourteen, when an Italian girl is con-

* " Relatio Antonii Suriani," quoted by Ranke, " History of the Pope-,'
Appendix, No. 20.

t Brantome, «' Dames Illustres," CEuvres, torn, ii, p. 41.

(201)

262 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

sidered a young woman. Catharine was married at fourteen
It is the age of Shakespere's Juliet.

Lady Capulet. — Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.
Nurse. — Faith I cau tell her age unto an hour.
Lady Capulet. — She's not fourteen.
NuiiSE. — I'll lay fourteen of my teeth —

And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four —

She is not fourteen How long is it now

To Lammas-tide ?
Lady Capulet.— A fortnight and odd days.
Nurse.— Even or odd, of all days in the year,

Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.

The great beauty which Brantome attributes to Catharine
endured with her, as he tells us, as a wife and widow almost
to her death ;" " not that she was then," he says with a caution
unusual with him in such cases, " as fresh as she was in her
most flourishing years, but in good preservation, and very
desirable and agreeable."

The flattering picture painted by Brantome must be modi-
fied by the siietches drawn by writers less prejudiced in favor
of royal charms. Catharine de' Medici was not a beauty.
There were serious drawbacks to the perfections which Bran-
tome finds in her. The more faithful picture by Mezerai bears
manifest marks of minute accuracy, and of being derived from
contemporary sources. Catharine, according to ^lezerai, was
of middle height, and fat and square in the figure (grosse ct
garree,) and her face was rather large, the mouth projecting
(the phrase here is, la bouche relevee^ which may have some
other signification,) lier complexion was perfectly white, but
with little carnation in it, the eyes soft but large and rolling
about with great volubility, her head very large, and she could
not walk even a short distance without bathing it in water. A
face rather large and a head very large are perfectly destruc-
tive of beauty. A small head in a woman is more tolerable to
a just taste than a head which can be called large, much less
very large.

263 CATHARINE DE MEDICI.

" As for the rest," says Brnntome, " Catherine had the finest
hand I beheve that ever was seen. The poets have praised
Aurora for having beautiful hands and beautiful fingers, but I
believe that the queen would have surpassed her in this, and
she kept her hands beautiful even till her death. Iier son
Henry III. inherited from his mother a great deal of this
beauty of the hands."

Brantome is very liberal of fine hands to his ladies, but there
is reason to believe that Catherine was proud of her hands
and her feet. A narrow^ hand with long slender fingers ap-
pears to be what is required. Such are the hands of Dante's
Beatrice in the Canzone, in which he draws so complete a
picture of beauty. With the exception of the broad forehead
which Dante bestow-s on his mistress, the rest of her portrait
is entirely after the ancient taste. She has the crisped gol-
den locks, the mouth, " amorous and beautiful." the nose
straight, the chin small, the neck white and slender, finely join-
ing with the shoulders and bosom, and as heightening their effect
the slender hands of Beatrice are attached to arms which the
poet says were large and broad :

" I bracci suoi distesi e grossi."

The hand of Alcina in her enchanted form in the " Orlando

Furioso" is long and narrow^, and her picture is one of the

most complete descriptions of a beauty to be found in all

poetry :

*< Lunglietta alciuanto e dllarghczza augustat."*

" Her hands long and her fimgers slender," is part of a very
minute description of a perfect woman in the curious and
learned work of Nicolas Venetta. I give the wdiole portrait
as drawn by Venetta in a note below, as it contains some pe-
culiar points.!

* Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, c. viii, st. xiv.

1- «< En efiet, sa taille est haute, bien prise et des plus fines ; son air
a je no scay quoy si remply de majeste qu'il inspire du respect aux plus

264 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Fine hands — that is fair and slender hands — have even been
admired in the other sex. In the Queen of Navarre's novel,
where the lady of Pampeluna falls in love with the Cordelier,
the beautiful hands of the priest are made to play a principal
part in inspiring this unhappy passion. She goes to church on
the first day of Lent. " After sermon the Cordelier celebrated
mass, at which the lady was present, and took the ashes from
his hand, which was as beautiful and white as a lady could
have. The devout lady paid much more attention to the
priest's hand than to the ashes he gave her, persuaded that
this spiritual love could not be hurtful to the conscience,
whatever pleasure she received from it."*

D'Israeli, in his " Curiosities of Literature," notices that
Henrietta the Queen of Charles I., in describing the famous
Earl of Stafford, in a private letter says : " Though not hand-
some he was agreeable enough, and he had the finest hands

hardis ; son liumeur est agreable et son esprit vif et brilliant. A la con-
siderer en particulier, son embonpoint est accomply etletour de son visage
merveilleux Ses dents sont blanches, ses joues et ses levres sont du cou-
leur do rose, son front est assez large, ses yeux grands et blevs, bien
ouverts et pleins de feu, ses sourcils noirs, sa houche et ses oreilles
petites, son nez bien fait, sa gorge un peu elevee, ses mains longues et
doigts deliez, sa poitrine large, sonflanc, presse, ses pieds petits et deli-
cates " Venette then adds what he considers the ancient portrait of a
beauty, and here the small forehead comes in place of the large one in
his own picture. ** Et si I'on veut une beaute qui plaisoit aux anciens,
je dlray avec Petrone, qu'elle a les cheveux naturellement frisez, qui lui
battent agreablement les epaules ; que son fronte est petit au dessus du-
quel on voit de veritables cheveux retroussez agreablement, que ses sour-
cils se courbent, que ses yeux sont plus brilliants que les etoiles dans
I'obscurite de la nuit, que son nez est un peu acjuilin ; que sa bouche
est petite semblable a celle de Venus de Praxitele. Enfin que son visage,
sa gorge, ses bras etses jambes ornez de lien, de cooliers et de brasselets
d'or effacent la blancheur du marbre le plus estime."— Nicolas Venette,
" Tableau de lAmour Conjugal," p. 242. Cologne, 1696.

*• *' Contes et Nouvelles de Marguerite de Valois," torn ii, p 17.

CATHARI^'E DE MEDICI. 265

of any man in the world.'' Ninon de PEnclos, as will be men-
tioned afterwards, felt a repugnance to a man with large
hands. More than one French writer dwells with enthusiasm
on the beautiful hands of Napoleon.

All writers, who have spoken on the subject, have agreed
in praising the elegant taste and splendor which Catharine dis-
played in her dresses, and in her retinues. "She always
dres.-^ed very well and superbly," says Brantome, " displaying
every new and genteel inveation.'' Corneille, the painter, he
says, drew Catharine dressed after the French fashion, with a
bonnet adorned with large pearls, and a robe with wide sleeves
of silvered lace, trimmed with wolf's fur. Her three daugh-
ters appeared beside her in this picture. The Queen w^as
delighted with her portrait, which ladies seldom are.

Varillas celebrates the skill wdtb which all her dresses were
adapted to her person. She rested her claims to admiration
greatly on her fine ankles ; and in order to do justice to their
excellence, she had her silk stockings drawn tight upon them ;
and in riding, which w^as her usual exercise, she threw one leg
rather ostentatiously over the pommel of the saddle. In her
days, and long after, it should be observed, that stockings
were an article of dress which women attended to with great
care, and bestowed much expense upon. A common present
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from a gentleman
to a lady, as a New-year's gift, was a pair of stockings and
garters, often of the costliest and most curious materials and
adornment.* Carnation-colored stockings and yellow garters
were the handsome fashion ; and those gaudy and expensive
ornaments were intended only for partial concealment.

* In Southey's " Common Place Book" we find the following notices
about stockings. The first is from the Skipton Accounts under date
1618 ; "Paid for a pair of carnation silk stockings and a pair of assho-
colored tafFata garters and roses, edged with silver lace, given by my Lord
to Mrs. Douglas Shiefield, she drawing mv Lord for her valentine, £3 10s. '
12

266 CLASSIC AKD HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Catharine, as we are told by Brantome, delighted in tiic
chase, and could manage a horse admirably, though in the
course of her life she suffered severely from falls. On one
occasion she broke, her leg:, and on another received so severe
an injury on the head, that she had to undergo the operation
of trepanning. In fine weather she played at the 2mlle??iail and
at the arbalest a jaliet, a sort of cross bow for shooting clay-
pellets. For bad weather she was always inventing some new
dance, or ballet. She patronised theatrical entertainments, as
also the performances of zanies ana pantaloons, at which, says
Brantome, she would laugh her fill. She had a great relish for
humor, and showed her enjoyment of such jokes as men even
must not make now-a-days.

Catharine loved to surround herself with beautiful women as
her attendants. Amidst the general accusations, which have
been cast upon her, her chastity has not been spared, and she
has been accused of having various amors with persons of
low" rank. These charges may, I think, be dismissed as not
supported by any good authority. The general licentiousness
of her court, however, is well established;" but it should be
recollected that her immediate predecessors were Francis I.,
and Henry II., and that the court and the kingdom had long
been ruled by mistresses ; and the amount of the charge that
can fairly be brought against Catharine on this score is, that
she did not reform the morals of the palace. It must farther
be admitted that she made use of the circle of beauty, which
she gathered around her, for political objects,

'' She brought with her," says ]\Iezerai, in speaking of a visit
she made to her son Henry III., " a great band of very beau-
tiful women, whom she displayed in all her negociations, like
snares, to catch those with whom she treated."

Under date 1611, Avehave : *' Sir F. Bacon sends to Sir M. Hicke's lady
and daughters a Xew-j'ear's gift of carnation stockings to wear fur his
sake."— Soutpey's " Co^imox Pl.vce Book," pp.321 and 513.

CATHAPJNE De' MEDICI. 267

In order to retain the powers of the state in her own vigor-
ous hands, she encouraged the debaucheries of her sons. She
made a complete Sybarite of Henry III. He threw away
prodigious sums in gambling; he disguised himself in mas-
querade, and appeared dressed as a worn an. And Mezerai
tells us that Catharine entertained him at a feast, at which the
most beautiful women of the court attended with their iiair
dishevelled, and their bosoms uncovered.*

The court of Catharine in short was altogether like what the
court of her husband had been. Speaking of Henry IL, Mez-
erai says : " Almost all the vices which ruin great states, and
draw down the wrath of Heaven, reigned in his court — luxury,
immodesty, libertinage, blasphemies, and the curiosity, as fool-
ish as impious, of searching after the secrets of the future by
the detestable illusions of magical art."

The account which the historian gives of the court under
Charles IX. (that is, under Catharine), is a parallel to this with
some still darker shades in the picture. " Before this reign, it
was the men that by their example and persuasions drew the
women into gallantry ; but now that love affairs formed the
greater part of the intrigues and mysteries of state, the women
went before the men ; their husbands left the bridle loose upon
them from complaisance, and from interest ; and besides those
who loved change, found a satisfaction in this liberty which,
instead of one wife, gave them a hundred.'"!

During this reign, the court and the kingdom swarmed with
sorcerers. The queen herself studied and practised mngic.
She wore about her person some characters written on apiece
of the skin of a dead born child.

Catharine was ten years married before she had a child, and
in the ten subsequent years she had ten children, three of
whom died in infancy. Brantome makes the remark that it

* Mezerai, " Abrege Chronologiqiie, ' tom iir, p. 230.
t Mezerai, tom. iii, p. 254.

26b CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

was the nature of the women of the jNIedici family to be late
in conceiving. During the period of her barrenness, Catharine
who, during the whole life-time of Plenry, is allowed to have
conducted herself with prudence, was neglected and despised ;
but her subsequent fertility, says Mezerai, " made her triumph
over the ill-will of her enemies, and acquired for her the affec-
tion of the people, and the esteem of the court, who regard-
ed her afterwards with admiration and respect, as a beauti-
ful tree always loaded with flowers and fruits."*

The employment of the famous John Fernelius, the physi-
cian, at her deliveries is noticed by the historians of Catharine.
She rewarded him with a hundred thousand crowns, or about
six thousand pounds sterling, on each occasion. It does not
appear that the example of Catherine brought the practice of
employing physicians instead of midwives into fashion. It is
certain that, more than a century afterwards, when a medical
man was employed at the first delivery of Mademoiselle de la
Yalliere, it was considered a thmg unpf ecedented ; and the
reason for the departure from ordinary usage in this case was
not any anticipated difficulty in labor, but the king's desire —
certainly a vain desire — to make the delivery a secret, by keep-
ing it out of the mouths of women.

Up till this time (1663,) a learned physician, omitting to
notice the exception in the case of Catherine de Medici, asserts
that the employment of physicians as midwives was unknown
in any country in Europe. f In the history of ancient Athens,
there was, for a very short time, a departure from the usage
of all nations which created terrible consternation and discon-
tent. After the exampl-e set in the instance of La Yalliere

* Mezerai, tom. iii, p. l-i9.

t Iloussol, " Systeme Physique et Morale de la Femme,"' p. 277.
Paris, 18-io. The same assertion is made by Astruc in his " Histoire
Sommaire de 1' Art d'Accoucher '

CATnARINE DE' MEDICI. 2fi9

the practice of employing physicians appeo.rs to have prevailed
in France,

Bayle, writing about 1690, asserts that it was then unknown
in any country except France. But he adds this prediction :
" The time, perhaps, will come when the same fashion will pre-
vail in the greater part of Europe ; and modesty will undergo
the fate of a thousand other things which are subject to the
fantastic and inconstant laws of custom."* The prophecy has
been fulfilled.

Mezerai has not been favourable to the moral character of,
Catharine, but there is a great deal of truth and of sagacity in
his sketch. " Her mind," he says, " was extremely subtle,
concealed, full of ambition and of artifice, able to accommodate
itself to all sorts of persons, to dissemble her I'eal views, and
to conduct her designs with incredible patience; ready in find-
ing expedients in cases of need, being never surprised by any
accident, as if she had herself desired and brought about all
that happened. Otherwise, she was gentle — at least, in appear-
ance— generous, and magnificent. . . . She also merits
the praise of not only loving architecture, painting, and sculp-
ture, but also of having favored men of letters, and having
brought from Greece and Italy many ancient and rare manu-
scripts, which are, at this day, the most beautiful ornaments
of the Royal Library.

" She entertained all strangers with much courtesy, and her
own domestics with great familiarity. She had a marvellous
grace in persuading, and loved diversions even in the midst
of the greatest diflQcultics in her affairs. . . . From the
time of the death of her husband she strove to keep the sover-
eign authority in her own hands. This she could not do with-
out distracting her mind with continual pain and disquietude,
and the kingdom with troubles and disagreements, arousing
and elevating sometimes one faction, and sometimes lowering
* Bayle, "Diet." art: " Hierophile."

270 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTKAITS.

and lulliDg to rest another, uniting sometimes with the weaker
out of prudence for fear that the stronger might overwhelm
her, sometimes again with the stronger from necessity, and
sometimes liolding herself neutral when she felt herself power-
ful enouoh to control both ; but never intendincr to extinouish

O 7 CD O

them altogether."*

I am afraid that I may be considered as offering an outrage
to virtue itself, if I speak of any good and noble qualities in
the woman whose name, to many readers, awakens no other
memory than that of St. Bartholomew's-day. It cannot, I
admit, be considered any palliation of this execrable crime
that it w^as not the fruit either of fanaticism or of bigotry.
Catharine was neither a fanatic nor a bigot; and in religious
matters, as separated from state politics, was a friend to toler-
ation. Indeed, her enemies in her own day gave her credit
for the boldest latitudinarianism.

In a little book published in her own lifetime, and written
no doubt, with the same intention as John Knox wrote his
treatise against the " Monstrous Regiment of Woman," to
incite her subjects to rebellion against her, Catharine, whom
the writer elaborately compares to the horrible Fredegondes
and Brunehildes of the early Frank history, is plainly called
an atheist. " Catherine," says this waiter, " being of the race
of an atheist, and nourished in atheisme, hath replenished the
realme, but specially the Court, with atheistes."t

The massacre of St. Bartholomew w^as a coup cVetat dictated
by what she considered a pressing emergency, w^hen her throne
was tottering under the assaults of its enemies, and it was con-

* Mezerai, torn, iii, p. 150.

+ " Aiie Meruelloiis Discours upon theLyfe, Deedes, and Behauioui
of Katherine de Medicis, Quene Mother," printed at Cracow, lo76.
I have used the copy of this curious httle book, -which is in the Advocate s
Library at Edinbui'gh. As the place of pubhcation, perhaps, we should
read Edinhurs;h for Cracow.

CATllEKINE DE MEDICI. L^71

cclved and carried out in the spirit of that expediency iu which
she had been educated ; the Itahan pohcy of the period. It
was a terrible blow, struck at a dangerous and powerful enemy ;
a deed which men who were neither fanatics nor bif^-ots hiMilv
approved, as extremely salutary in prostrating the power of
what they regarded as hateful, hypocritical, intriguing, and

insidious faction.

We cannot suppose that Catharine, who lived amongst them
and knew them, could look on the Huguenots of France as
they are regarded by the Protestants of the nineteenth century ;
as a congregation of saints. This certainly w^as not the light in
which they were regarded by men at that period, who cannot
be accused of fanaticism either in politics or in religion. We
may safely call Montaigne — a liberal, a tolerant, and a philo-
sophic man — as a witness to his impressions of the character of
the Huguenots. " In this contest," says Montaigne, in his
" Essay on Liberty of Conscience," " by which France is at pre-
sent agitated with civil wars, the better arid the sounder party
is without doubt, that which maintains the ancient religion and
the ancient pohcy of the country."*

The most dreadful crimes have been commited conscientiously
and as the philosophical Tacitus half approves of the cruelties
of Xero to the early Christians, whom the historian unhappily
regarded as a hateful people, so I can believe, notwithstanding
the tale of the remorse which visited her dying pillow, that
Catharine, to the last, believed that the massacre of the
Huguenots was a patriotic deed.

Catharine's conduct as a W'ife appears to have been exemp-
lary. The uncomplaining patience with which she endured the
king's neglect of her for the love of Diana of Poitiers may, by
those who are not disposed to put a good construction on her
extraordinary forbearance, be received as merely a proof of
her great control over the expression of her feelings. But
* Montaigne, " Essais,'' lir. ii, c. 19.

272 CLASSIC AXD HISTORTC POHTRAITS.

after she assumed and, as queen-mother, vigorously exercised
the powers of monarchy, the magnanimity with which she
refused to revenge herself, or allow any others to revenge her
upon her who, for tw-enty years, had been iier rival ; and the
care which she took, while succeeding lawfully to all the
pohtical authority which the Duchess of Yalentinois had so
long unlawfully exercised, that neither the wealth, nor the
palaces, nor any of the presents w^hich Henry had bestowed
on his favourite should be withdrawn from her, will compel
those who are capable of giving due weight to the rare and
great merit of such conduct, to confess that, if Catharine's
memory is loaded with one of the most gigantic crimes in
history, she exhibited, on more than one occasion, virtues, in
which few indeed of those who can execrate her great guilt will
be inclined or able to imitate her.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

If it were desired to prove from partial testimonies that tliis
unamiable woman was a great beauty and a perfect saint, it
would not be difficult to collect a good body of evidence on
both points from her contemporaries, and from persons who
ought to have known what she was like, including herself. Her
admiration of her own beauty was intense and enthusiastic.
Whether or not it be true that she instructed her painters to
paint her face without any shadow in it, it is certain that she
never could be satisfied with an}" likeness made of lier, in how-
ever courteous and flattering a manner the artist had behaved
towards her. She w^ts disgusted with the best efibrts in this
line ; feeling how far those painters who w^ere most anxious to
please had fa.len short in doing justice to the charms w^hich
her faithful looking-glass, which could not lie, revealed to her
in herself. She viewed with execration the attempts made to
convey her features to the canvas.

She executed wrath against innumerable portraits of herself
painted with the most passionate desire of pleasing her, or at
least of appeasing her indignation, and with the most sincere
and loyal design of imposing her on the w^orld, and on all who
had not seen or were not Ukely to see her, as a beauty ; as not
12* (273)

274 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

merely the rival, but the vanquisher of her fair cousin, Mary
of Scotland. No Iconoclast of Byzantium, no conquering son
of the Koran ever, in his devoutest rage, manife sted a more
religious fury against graven images, and the likenesses of divine
or human beings, either in the heavens above or the earth
beneath, than the Virgin Queen, the "bright occidental star"
did against the best portraits of herself; her sacred wrath
against the more favorable being only surpassed by that
with which she burned against the more faithful. Sir Walter
Kaleigh, her admirer, tells us of " the pictures of Queen Eliza-
beth made by unsJdllful and common painters w^hich by her
own commandment w^vQ knockt inpeeces and cast into the fire."*
As some excuse for her blindness to the moderate charms of
her person and of her mind, it should be recollected that never
was woman more flattered as to both than was Elizabeth. A
volume of eulogiums on both might be compiled without
trouble, the contents being in prose and verse, concluding, in
the latter department, with the famous lines :

♦* She was, she is, what can there more be said,
On earth the first, in heaven the second maid "

The general appearance of Queen Elizabeth, as discernible
through all the mists and the rose-coloring of flattery, is not
difficult to gather. She was of the middle height. "When she
learned that Mary, whom she regarded as her audacious rival
in beauty, though no rival ship was dreamed of by the unfortu-
nate Queen of Scots, or was ever dreamed of by any person
of taste, was tall, she declared, as thousands of women imder
similar circumstances have declared of themselves, that Mary
was too tall, and that she herself was of the true proper height
for a woman. The person of Elizabeth it is understood is
done justice to, and is accurately embodied in the equestrian
fioure of her to be seen in the Tower of London. There were
some good points about her. Her person was reasonably well
* Raleigh, " History of the World." Preface. I ond 16 U

QUEEN ELIZABETH. 275

proportioned ; her shouluers and bu.^t were irood. Various
writers have spoken of the dignity and stateliness of her walk
and carriage ; but these, Hke her whole character, partook of
something of the harshness of masculine vigor.

Her hands have been praised for their beauty and fairness ;
they were narrow, the fingers being long, and these are the hands
of the admired fashion. Such was the hand of Ariosto's
beautiful enchantress, as I have elsewhere noticed, "luno-hetta
alquanto e di larghezza augusta." Elizabeth was aware of
this excellence, and endeavoured to make the most of it.
Before company she was continually pulling off and on her
gloves, and her fingers were decorated with rings and precious
stones in order to call attention to their symmetry. But her
face was long, liard, full of harsh lines, and intensely unwoman-
ly, her hooked nose being particularly unfeminine. Her eyes
were small, her teeth bad, and her lips thin and tasteless. Her
hair and complexion were of a sandy, or insipid washed-out
whitey-broW'U hue. Her little eyes are generally said to have
been grey ; but a very accurate observer who had gazed on her
with much interest, and whom I am about to quote, tells us
that they were black.

The appearance of Elizabeth, from childhood to old age,
may be studied in the various porti-aits of her in Hampton
Palace. They all bear resemblance, Elizabeth becoming gra-
dually less and less comely as she advanced from childhood to
youth, womanhood and old age. The picture of her when a
mere child, by Holbein, in the King's Writing Closet (281 in
the catalogue,) is like that of a boy, and bears a great resem-
blance to another picture by the same painter (•28:2) when she
was a girl. The portraits by Zucchero and by M. Garrand (283
and 285) represent her in old age. In the allegorical picture
of her by Luke de Heere (284) the resemblance to the other
portraits cannot be mistaken. This picture represents Eliza-

2/b CLASSIC AND HISTOIl C rORTRAITS.

beth as vanquishing Juno in power, Minerva in intellect, and
Venus in beauty.

" Juno potens sceptris et mentis accuinine Pallas

Et roseo Veneris fulget in ore decus ;

Adfuit Elizabeth, Juno perculsa refugit

Obstupuit Pallas, erubuitque Venus."

There is a very curious and rare book of travels originally
written in Latin, by Paul Hentzner, a German who paid a visit
to England in the time of Elizabeth, in the capacit}^ of tutor to
a young German nobleman. The work of Hentznerns lay in
manuscript in the original Latin till about the middle of last
century, when it was translated by Horace Walpole and
printed at his private press at Strawberry Hill. The edition
now before me is a small volume of a hundred and fifty pages,
printed from the private edition of Walpole with the portraits
of several persons mentioned by Hentzner. An engraving of
Zucchero's portrait of Elizabeth " done by order of the Parlia-
ment" forms the frontispiece.

Hentzner's work is extremely interesting. He had an eye
for detail in everything, and he has described everything that
he saw. "When admitted into Queen Elizabeth's presence
chambers, he gazed on her with the eye of a painter, a milliner
and a jeweller, and he has faithfully committed the fruit of his
gazings to paper. He has given us a picture of Elizabeth in
her sixty-fifth year, her face, her form, her dress, her retinue,
her speech and her manners, I extract liberally from his
picturesque pages.

" We were admitted by an order Mr. Eogers had procured
from the Lord Chamberlain, into the presence chamber, hung
with rich tapestry ; and the floor, after the English fashion,
strewed with hay, through which the Queen commonly passed
in her way to Chapel : at the door stood a gentleman dressed in
velvet, with a gold chain, whose office w^as to introduce to the

QUEEN ELIZxVBETH. 277

Queen any person of distinction that came to wait on ber : it
was Sunday, when there is usually the greatest attendance of
nobility. In the same hall were the Archbishop of Canterbury,
the Bishop of London, a great number of counsellors of state,
officers of the crown, and gentlemen, who waited the Queen's
coming out ; which she did from her own apartment, when it
was time to go to prayers, attended in the following manner :

" First went gentlemen, barons, earls, knights of the garter,
all richly dressed and bare-headed : next came the chancellor,
bearing the seals in a red silk purse between two ; one of which
carried the royal sceptre, the other the sword of state, in a red
scabbard, studded with golden fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards;
next came the Queen, in the sixty-fifth year of her age, as we
were told, very majestic ; her face oblong, fair but wrinkled ;
her eyes small, yet black and pleasant,'her nose a little hooked;
her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English
seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar) ; she had in
her ears two pearls, with very rich drops ; she wore false hair,
and that red ; upon her head she had a small crown, reported
to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg
table ; her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have
it, till they marry ; and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine
jewels ; her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature
neither tall nor low ; her air was stately, her manner of speak-
ing mild and obliging. That day she was dressed in white
silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a
mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads ; her train was
very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness ; instead of a
chain, she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels.

" As she went along in all this state and magnificence, she
spoke very graciously first to one and then to another, whether
foreio-n ministers, or those who attended for different reasons,
in English, French, or Italian; for besides being well skilled in
Greek, Latin, and the languages I have mentioned, she is mis-

278 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

tress of Spanish, Scotch and Dutch; whoever speaks to lier,
it is kneehng ; now and then she raises some with her hand.
While we were there, M. Slawata, a Bohemian baron, had let-
ters to present to her, and she, after pulUng ofi' her glove, gave
him her right hand to kiss, sparkling with rings and jewels, a
mark of particular favor : wherever she turned her face, as she
was going along, everybody fell down on their knees. The
ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome and
well shaped, and for the most part dressed in white ; she was
guarded on each side by the gentlemen-pensioners, fifty in num-
ber, with gilt battle-axes.

" In the antechapel next the hall where we were, petitions
were presented to her, and she received them most graciously,
which occasioned the exclamation of ' Long live Queen Eliza-
beth 1' She answered it with ' I thank you, my good people !'
In the chapel was excellent music ; as soon as it and the ser-
vice were over, which scarce exceeded half an hour, the queen
returned to the same state and order, and prepared to go to
dinner. But while she was still at prayers., we saw her table
laid out with the following solemnity. A gentleman entered
the room bearino- a rod, and along with him another who had
a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times
with the utmost veneration, he spread upon the table ; and
after kneeling again they both retired. Then came two
others, one with the rod again, the other with a saltseller, a
plate, and bread ; when the}' had kneeled, as the others had
done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they
too retired with the same ceremonies performed by the first.

^' At last came an unmarried lady (we were told she was a
countess), and along with her a married one, bearing a toasting-
knife ; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she had
prostrated herself three times in the most graceful manner,
approached the table, and rubbed the plates with bread and
salt with as much care as if the queen had been present ; when

QUEEN ELIZABETH. 279

they had waited there a little while, the yeomen of the guards
entered, bare-headed, clothed in scarlet, with a golden rose
upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course of twenty-
four dishes, served in plates, most of it gilt ; these dishes were
received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought,
and placed upon the table, while the lady-taster gave to each
of the guards a mouthful to eat of the particular dish he had
brought, for fear of any poison.

"During the time that this guard, which consists of the tall-
est and stoutest men that can be found in all Eno;land, beino-
carefully selected for this service, were bringing in dinner,
twelve trumpeters, and two kettle-drummers, made the hall ring
for half an hour together. At the end of all this ceremonial,
a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who, with a particular
solemnity, lifted the meat ofif the table, and conveyed it into the
queen's inner and more private chamber, where, after she had
chosen for herself, the rest goes to the ladies of the court.
The queen dines and sups alone with very few attendants; and
it is very seldom that anybody, foreigner or native, is admitted
at that time, and then only at the intercession of somebody in
power."*

Here is valuable evidence from a most valuable witness.
"Walpole remarks with pleasure: " Fortunately so memorable
a personage as Queen Elizabeth happened to fall under his
notice ! The excess of respectful ceremonial used at decking
her majesty's table, though not in her presence, and the kind
of adoration and genuflexion paid to her person, approach to
Eastern homage. When we observe such worship offered to
an old woman with bare neck, black teeth, and false red hair,
it makes one smile ; but makes one reflect what masculine sense
was couched under those weaknesses, and which could com-
mand such awe from a nation like England."

* " Paul Hentzner's Travels in England during the reign of Queen
Elizabeth," p. 33. Lond, 17;;7.

2S0 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Walpole has appended to his translation of lientzner the
" Pragmenta Eegaha; or observations on the late Queen Eliza-
beth, her times and favorites, by Sir Eobert Naunton, Master
of the Courts of Wards." All that Naunton, in his professed
eulogium of Elizabeth, tells us of her is, that " she was of
person tall (the middle size rises into tallness when measured by
a panegyrist), of hair and complexion fair, and therewith well-
favored, but high-nosed, of limbs and features neat, and, which
added to the lustre of these external graces, of a stately and
majestic comportment." Farther on he tells us that " her
w^onted oath" was " God's death." This was her favorite
affirmation, but it was certainly not her solitary one, for she
had abundant variety, and swore with an energy becoming
her character.

Elizabeth covered herself with rich dress and cumbrous
ornaments gathered from all quarters of the worli. At her
death it is said that there were three thousand costly suits in her
wardrobe. Brantome, who thought a woman amazingly fine
when she was weighed to the earth with gold and gems, and
who also speaks with rapture of the dazzling beauty of ladies
of sixty, seventy, and fourscore years of age, had seen
Elizabeth, as he expresses it, in her summer and in her
autumn, though not in her winter, and he thus describes her
as she appeared to his polite and courtier eyes. It is extremely
awkward for Elizabeth that Brantome places this account of
her in that part of his " Dames Galantes" which is devoted
to " amorous old women" {veilles amoureuses.)

" The Queen Elizabeth of England," he says, " who reigns
at this day, I am told is as beautiful as ever ; which, if she
really is, I hold her as a beautiful princess; for I have seen
her in her summer and in her autumn ; as to her winter, she
approaches it closely, if she be not now in it ; for it is a long
time now since I have seen her. The first tune I saw her, I
know what age she was then said to be of; I believe that what

QUEEN ELIZABETH. * 281

Las preserved her so long in her beauty, is that she has never
been married, nor has borne the weight of marriage, which
is very bm'densome, and particularly when one has several
children."*

Elizabeth's continual refusals of marriage, notwithstanding
her evident admiration of handsome courtiers, has been
appealed to amongst other proofs of her guilt by those writers
who have described her as a licentious princess. The evidence
ao-ainst her on this score is certainly very imperfect, and her
celibacy is now generally accounted for from an innocent
cause. This view is confirmed by some passages in her
answers to the applications made to her by the Parliament
praying her to take a husband, and it is alluded to by the
historians Camden and Mezerai, as well as by Amelotte de
la Houssaye, Bayle and various other subsequent writers.

* Brantorae, •' Dames Galantes," (Euvres, iv, 188 .

MAEY QUEEN OF SOOTS

The personal charms of Mary Queen of Scots have been
more extensively celebrated than those of any other woman
of modern times, and more so, perhaps, than those of any
v.'oman in all history, Helen of Troy alone excepted. It is
possible, had she led a life unmarked by romantic incidents, or
had her history been less deeply tragical from her childhood
to the tomb than it was, that the praise of her beauty would
have been less extravagant, though it is not possible to doubt
that with this fatal gift — fatal to her, certainly — she was
abundantly endowed.

The modern notions of her beauty are far from being distinct
or well settled. This certainly does not arise from any want
of pictures claiming to be original portraits of Mary, which
are to be found in abundance in the mansions of aristocratic
collectors in England and on the continent. There was an
Itahan painter, who has obtained the name of Lippo dalle
Madonne, or " Phillip of the Madonnas," on account of his
constantly employing himself in the painting of heads of the
blessed Virgin Mary. In the same way, a great many
painters have occupied themselves in inultiplying portraits of
Mary Queen of Scots, The greater number of these portraits

(282

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. ' 2S3

may be fairly considered as works of imagination, com-
pounded out of sucii features as the painter thought would
together make a line picture.

Such beauties of the artist's imagination, are always, as
if by a regular law, infinitely inferior to the portraits of real
women of ordinary comeliness. Even when he attempts to
improve nature herself out of the materials which she furnishes
him, the painter always fails. " The Greek," says Jeremy
Taylor, " that designed the most exquisite picture that could
be imagined, fancied the eye of Chione, and the hair of
Psegnium and Tarsia's hp, Philenium's chin and the forehead
of Delphia, and set them all on Melphidippa's neck and
thought that he should outdo both art and nature. But when
he came to view the proportions, he found that what was excel-
lent in Tarsia did not agree with the other excellency of
Phiienium, and that though singly they were rare pieces, yet
in the whole they made an ugly face."

It is not given to mortal painter either to create by his
imagination or compound by his learning, anything to compare
with the faces which are to be seen in profusion in the real
world. A perfectly beautiful face when we meet with it in
painting, is sure to be the face of an individual. Look over
the pages of a book of imaginary beauties, '■ Idols of Memory,"
" Flowers of Loveliness," "Dreams of my Youth," and so;
and then turn to Vandyk's portrait of Margaret Lemon in the
gallery at Hampton Palace, and see and feel how inferior the
brightest imagination of a conceited painter is to the workman-
ship of Heaven.

It is to be feared that Mary's real beauty has suffered from
the imagination of painters. Very few of the extant portraits of
her have any beaut}'' or grace about them at all. I have scarce
ly seen one wdth a line forehead or even an approach to the
shape of a fine forehead — that sweetly arched brow which we
see in the real portraits of Lady Denhan], the Duchess of Som-

284 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

erset, Miss Bagot, or many others of Sir Peter Lely's beauties,
and in the portraits of the fascinating Xinon de I'Endos. Yet
this fine form of head is by no means a rarity in real hfe. x^l-
most all the portraits of Mary agree in destroying the beauty of
the lower part of the face by surmounting it with an offensively
high broad and square-formed forehead

It is probable that Mary, with all her beauty otherwise, had
such a forehead ; for mere imagination, which when trusted to
always leads painters far astray from true beaut}^, would
have taught them to avoid the unpardonable error of giving
to a woman so renowned for the effect of her charms a fore-
head which repels a refined taste ; and besides this they
had the example exquisitely formed and graceful foreheads
presented to them in the Yenuses, Cleopatras and Magdalenes
of the great masters.

The celebrated picture of Mary at Hardwicke, is thus
described by Mrs. Jameson. It is " a full-length, in a mourning
habit with a wdiite cap (of her own peculiar fashion) and a veil
of white gauze. This I believe is the celebrated picture so often
copied and engraved. It is dated 1578, the twenty-sixth year of
her age and the tenth of her captivity. The figure is elegant
and the face pensive and sweet." This is the picture of Mary
which, as it appears in prints makes the nearest approach to the
likeness of a beaut3^

"The lovely picture by Zucchero," continues Mrs. Jameson, "is
at Chiswick. There is another small head of her in a cap and
feathers at Hardwicke, said to have been painted in France.
The turn of the head is airy and graceful. As to the features
they are so much marred by some soi-disant restorer that it is
difficult to say what they may have been originally."*

Mary w^as tall in person and gracefully formed. Her hair,
which, in childhood or girlhood, was yellow, grew to a dark
auburn in womanhood, fading in the colour afterwards, and
* Mrs. Jameson, "Visits and Sketchc?,"' vol ii., p. 201.

MAKY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 285

becoming grey before her death, with sufiering and grief. Her
hair, says Brantome, " so beautiful, fair, and ashy — si beaux, si
blonds, et cendres?'' Mary, however, hke her royal cousin
Elizabeth, who had more need of deceit, often wore false
locks of yellow or red. Her eyes were grey, her face was
oval, and the lower part was well formed ; the chin, which
approached to be what is called a double chin, being extremely
handsome.

Her grief for the death of the husband of her girlhood was
no doubt sincere ; but we are not obliged to believe Brantome
when he assures us that she lost all her colour from sorrow
at the death of the Dauphin, tier face, however, in woman-
hood is said to have been pale ; her complexion generally was
clear. In her latter days her hair, as noticed before, became
grey ; but she did not pine away into fleshlessness with grief,
but grew corpulent. Yet when she appeared on the scaflfold
at Fotheringay, in the forty-ninth year of a life, the last
eighteen years of which had been passed in dreary imprison-
ment, she still was a beautiful woman.

As far as being real pictures of her style of dressing, all the
old portraits of Mary may be depended on as authentic records.
It is remarkable that though no one of these dresses is calcula-
ted to show her figure to advantage, her dresses, even the stif-
fest of them, are free from the cumbersomeness so general in
the female attire of the times. What a contrast does the most
formal and courtly of her suits present to the dress of EHza-
beth, which always appears to do injustice to her person by
concealing her well formed shoulders !

The portraits of Mary, as a young woman, often represent her
in a kind of riding-dress — a dress disagreeable in itself, and
extremely unfavourable for a portrait — helping, in her case, by
its close fastening up to the throat and entire want of freedom
and openness, the ill effect of the masculine forehead generally

2S6 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

given to her, and making her bear a very oflensive resemblance
to a handsome young man.

Brantome, who it is to be recollected accompanied Mary to
Scotland after the death of the Dauphin, has some highly
characteristic remarks on her dress. Such he tells us, were the
cha>ms of her person, that when she was dressed like a savage
as he had seen her, after the barbarous fashion of the savages
of her country, she appeared in a mortal body and in
barbarous and rude costume, a true goddess, " What
then would she appear," he exclaims in a fine and truly
Parisian rapture and in the most sublime style of a French
dressmaker, " what then would she appear in her fine and rich
garments, either French or Spanish, or with her Italian bonnet,
or in her white full mourning dress in which she looked so
beautiful ; Ibr the whiteness of her complexion contended tor
the victory with her veil ; but in the end the art of her veil lest
the day, and the snow of her lovely face outshone the other."*
As to her discourse, Brantome tells us such was the grace of
her talking, that the rude and barbarous and unseemly lan-
guage of her country became very beautitul and agreeable in
her, " but not in others," he adds. All this is truly and
delightfully after the manner of Brantome.

Mar}'- had learned dressing, or the art of being dressed, at
the court of Catharine de' Medici, and was herself a woman of
the greatest good taste. All the continental fashions of dress-
ing were well enough known amongst the ladies of Scotland
long before Brantome came amongst them ; but it may readily
be conceded, that the women of the British Islands of tho
highest rank will never to the end of time be able to put their
garments about them, with the elegant grace and ease which
are common amongst all women in France, Spain and Italv.
With Brantome all that was French was beyond improvement.

I do not know if the in'ioroiiL mjanness and poverty of the
* Brantome, " Dames Illuitres,'' CEuvres, torn, n, p. 108.

MxVRY QUEEN OF FCOTS. 2b7

French language, its harsh consonantal, and perhaps still more
disagreeable diphthong sounds have ever been acknowledged
— perhaps they have never been perceived by any Frenchman,
for the French are a thoroughly patriotic people. As to the
question of language, however, and of comparative euphony,
there need be no hesitation in declaring; the Scottish lano-uaoe
of the sixteenth century to have been a very superior language
to the French Court language of any century. Brantome's
tastes, however, were wholly conventional, and his standard
w^as the French Court. By that standard he judged not only of
fashions and of manners, but of morals, and it is to be feared
even of women's faces. And as this was his general standard,
so his particular standard was the French Court exactly as
it existed in his own day, at the very period at which he wrote.
Thus, though Isabella of Bavaria, the Queen of Charles
VI, and the ladies of her Court adopted the style of dress
which they considered capable of setting off their beauty to
the best advantage, Brantome looking to their costume, as it
appeared in the tapestries of the period, treats it with contempt
as compared with the fashions introduced by Margaret of
France and Navarre in his time.* Indeed, if we may believe
hin:i, neither ancient nor modern, mortal nor immortal women
w^ere ever dressed like the women of the French Court in his
time. Speaking of the voluptuous Margaret's dress, he says,
" I have seen her sometimes, and so have others beside me,
dressed in a robe of white satin, covered with tinsel with a lit-
tle carnation, with a veil of tan-colored crape or Eoman gauze,
thrown over her head carelessly, but never was anything so
beautiful; and whatever may be said of the goddesses of old
or of the empresses, as we see them in the ancient medals
pompously adorned, they looked like mere chamber-maids
beside her."t

* Brantome, " Dames lUustres, ' (Euvres, torn, n , p. l'J2.
+ Ibid. II, p. 194.

288 CLASSIC AND HISTUIUC PORTRAITS.

I think a refined taste would uphold the elegance of the
head-dress of Olj-mpias, the mother of Alexander, in the medal
to which I have referred in another place, in opposition to the
most elegant head-dress to be seen in any French picture of
the sixteenth century. Speaking elsewhere, Brantome says :
" The Eoman ladies, as they are to be seen in the ancient
statues and medals, will be found with their head-dresses and
their garments in perfection, and very fit to make them be loved;
now our French ladies surpass all, but it is to the Queen of
Navarre that they owe thanks."

This Queen, whose fine taste is thus enthusiastically cele-
brated, was a very tall and stout woman. She barely preser-
ved decency in her manners, and is said to have studied inven-
tions to make herself beloved, such as are only to be read of
in amorous romances.

Mary did not neglect the care of her beauty during her long
imprisonment in Fotheringhay Oastle. Brantome is rapturous
about the charms of her person, which the awkwardness of the
executioner unexpectedly exposed, when he tore off the body
of her gown and her low collar. But Mary, who like Anne
Bullen, studied effect in death, had prepared to be charming
in the last scene ; and like Anne Bullen she was not only pious
but really witty in her dying moments. She hastily gathered
her dress about her, and pleasantly reproved the executioner
by saying : " I am really not in the habit of putting off my
clothes before so much company." If Mary had not murder
ed the worthless and heartless Darnley, she would have been
deservedly ranked amongst the most amiable of women ;
while her long captivity, and her death on the scaffold — cer-
tainly not on account of her great crime — fully entitle her to
be regarded as a martyr to her own beauty, the victim of
another woman who envied her and abhorred her for her
charms, and who, if Mary had not been so provokingly lovely,

* Brantome, CExivres, torn, in p. 289.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 289

would have easily pardoned her for the death of a husband
who had proved himself wholly undeserving of her love or even
respect. The murderess of Darnley had real injuries to
avenge ; the assassins of Rizzio had simply a thirst for blood to
gratify.

Mary was accomplished in singing, in playing on the virgin-
als and in dancing.

Miss Strickland has prefixed to her histor}' of Mary, in her
" liives of the Queens of Scotland," an engraving from the
famous painting in Culzean Castle, which was presented to the
Earl of Cassilis by Mary herself It represents Mary in the
fourteenth year of her age, in the days of her happiness. Miss
Strickland's description of the original painting is well worthy
of quotation. " This most beautiful and undoubted likeness
of Mary Stuart," she says, " represents her in the morning
flower of her charms, when she appeared at the summit of all
earthly felicity and grandeur. It is in a nobler style of portrait
painting than that of Zucchero, and worthy of Titian or Guerci-
no. It is scarcely possible for an engraving to do justice to a
picture, of which the tone and coloring are so exquisite. The
perfection of features and contour is there united with femin-
ine softness, and the expression of commanding intellect. Her
hair is of a rich chesnut tint, almost black, which Nicholas
White (who had ascertained the fact from her ladies) assures
us was its real color. Her complexion is that of a delicate
brunette, clear and glowing; and this accords with the dark-
ness of her eyes, hair, and majestic eyebrows. Her hair is
parted in wide bands across the forehead, and rolled back in a
large curl on each temple, above the small delicately moulded
ears. She wears a little round crimson velvet cap, embroid-
ered with gold and ornamented with gems, placed almost at
the back of her head, resembling indeed a Greek cap, with
this difference, that a coronal frontlet is formed by the
disposition of the pearls, which gives a regal charac-
13

290 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

ter to the head-dress. Her dress is of very rich crimson
damask embroidered with gold and ornamented with gems.
It fits tight to her bust and taper waist, which is long and
slender; so is her gracefully turned throat. She has balloon
shaped tops to her sleeves, rising above the natural curve of
her shoulders. Her dress is finished at the throat with a collar
band, supporting a lawn collarette, with a finely quilted demi-
rufif. Her only ornament is a string of large round beads,
carelessly knotted about her throat from which depends an
amethyst cross."*

The portrait, thus described and thus admired by Miss
Strickland, is not that of a female beauty. Making every
allowance for the defect of the engraving in wantino- the
exquisite coloring of the painting, the head is altogether unwo-
manly in form, and form is the foundation of beauty in a face.
The forehead — that large and ungracefully shaped forehead —
it need hardly be said would have repelled Zeuxis or Guido ; it
is a forehead that might be very becoming in a stupid professor
of mathematics. No painter, left to himself to devise a female
face, would dare to bestow such a forehead as this upon it.

The admiration of such foreheads in women is a depravity
of modern times, and is yet and ever will be confined to a few
sectarians in taste. The ancients — erring perhaps on the other
side, but the sate and gentle side — sighed for narrow and low
foreheads. I cannot recollect in any ancient writer a passage
in praise of a large forehead in a woman. f Horace calls
Lycoris " illustrious" for her slender forehead,

*' Insignem tenui fronte Lycorida
Cyri torret amor."

» Miss Strickland, " Lives of the Queens of Scotland " vol. in., ]). 94.

t In one of the elegies attributed to Cornelius G alius the phrase frous
libera occurs :

*' Nigra supercilia, et frons libera, lumina nigra
Urebant animum s^epe notata meum. "
It would surely be a forcing of the meaning of the passage to make a
broad forehead out of this. Frons libera is a free smooth brow.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 291

Wiukelman,^vho has noticed this passage in his work on
" Ancient Art," tells us that the Greek women, where the real
beauty was wanting, gave the appearance of loveliness to their
foreheads by fastening a band below their hair ; and that the
beautiful women of Circassia produce the same effect by an
ingenious manner of combing dovai their locks. Petronius, in
his exquisite picture of Circe — in which he has assembled so
many points of high beauty — the naturally curled hair flowing
down on her shoulders, and the eyebrow^s almost joined, does
not forget to describe the forehead as " very small."*

From a passage in Montaigne, founded no doubt on the
relations of travellers, it appears that the charm of low foreheads
is understood by the women of Mexico ; and that in order to
produce its appearance, they make use of every art to make the
hair grow down on their brows. f

The oldest seeming commendation of a large forehead in a
woman, that I have happened to meet with, occurs in the Can-
zone of Dante. " lo miro i crespi e gli biondi capegli," where
he gives a detailed and very fine description of his mistress,
and praises, as appears, her -" ample forehead," " la spaziosa
fronte." But in justice to Beatrice^ may not her lover's spaziosa
be the Latin " speciosa," beautiful ? Chaucer however, follow
ing soon after Dante, is unequivocal in praising the broad fore-
head of the prioress.

" Sickerly she had a fair forehead ;
It was almost a span broad, I trow."

The celebrated verses, which enumerate the thirty points of

woman's beauty, all of which are said to have been assembled

together in Helen of Troy, are of unknown authorship. They

have been translated into most languages, and are found in

French, Latin, Italian, and Spanish, the French being believed

to be the original ;t but they have never been regarded as

# Petronius, " Satyricon." p. 96. Paris, 1601.

t "Les Mexicaines content entres les beautez, la pctitasse du froutc et

292 CLASSIC AND HISTOKIC POKTilAlTS.

older than the commencement of the sixteenth century. In
these hnes, it is hiid down that the perfect woman must have
three parts broad, " the breast, the forehead, and the space
between the eyes."* It is somewhat remarkable that out of
these three, the ancients desired two — the two latter — to be
narrow. But there are great offences against sound taste in
this enumeration of the thirty points ; and if Helen has been
such as this writer supposes her to have been, Paris would
never have stolen her away —

*' Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres."

ou elles se defont le poll, par tout le reste du corps, elles le nourrissent
au front et peuplent par art." — Moxtaigne, " Essais," liv. ii, c. 12.

* " Tres anchas ; los pechos, la frente, y el entrecejo."

CEEVANTES

It is fortunate that the immortal author of" Don Quixote,"
of whose romantic personal history, all that we know is so ex-
tremely interesting, as all that we learn of his character is so
amiable, has not neglected, while giving us some hints in the
most modest manner about the chief points in his adventures,
to draw a striking picture of himself, according in every respect
with the animated and intellectual portraits of him which have
come down to our times. Tiiis picture occurs in the prologue
to his novels, and refers to the portrait made of him by Don
Juan de Jaregui, to be engraved for this work, in order to
satisf}" the desires of those who wished to know what the face
and fio;ure of the author were like. Cervantes tells us that
his face is oval, his hair chestnut color, his forehead smooth
and free [lisa i disembarazada,) his ejes> cheerful, his nose
crooked {corbo,) though well proportioned ; his beard silvery,
though not twenty years ago it was golden; his moustaches
large, the mouth small, the teeth neither small nor large, be-
cause there are but six of them, and these ill-conditioned, and
worse placed, as they have no communication the one with the
other ; the body between the two extremes, neither large nor
small; the complexion clear, rather fair than brown; rather
round in the shoulders, and not very light in the feet.

294 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

He goes on to tell us that he lost his left hand in the naval
battle of Lepanto by the shot of an arquebuss ; " a ^YOuncl,"
he says, with characteristic nobility of spirit, " which he re-
gards as beautiful {Jiermosa,) as he received it in the most
memorable and lofty occasion which these past ages have seen,
or those to come may hope to see, fighting under the conquer-
ing banners of the son of that thunderbolt of w^ar Charles V.
of happy memory."*

This is quite in the spirit of Cervantes himself, and of the
noble age of Spanish literature, when all her poets and great
authors were soldiers and adventurers who had fought at home
and abroad, by sea and land — Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Men-
doza, Boscan, Montemayor, Garcilazo, Ercilla, Calderon (first
a soldier and then a priest).

The fighting periods in all civilized countries are, as was
particularly and pre-eminently the-case in ancient Greece and
modern Spain, those periods in which what are sometimes
called " the arts of peace" flourish most prosperoush^, and
when literary genius has shone forth with the greatest bril-
liancy. Socrates, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Xenophon, were
all themselves men who fought their countries' battles, as well
as conferred honor on her literature. All this is quite in the
teeth of the statements made at the conferences of the Peace
Society, but in perfect accordance with the truth of history.

With our Xorthern notions, which associate black hair with
the pictures of the people of the South, w^e are often surprised
in reading how^ many distinguished men of Spain and Italy
have had brown, yellow, or red hair. We find Cervantes with
brown hair on his head, and his beard yellow; Camoens, the
gloiy of Portugal, and Tasso, the great epic poet of Italy, with

* "Vida de IVIiguel de Cervantes Saavedra," autor, '* Don Gregorio
Mayans i Siscar," p. 171 : prefixed to the vida y Heclios del Ingenioso
Hidalgo Don Quixote." Haya, 1744.

CERVANTES. 295

yellow hair ; and Alfieri, who, in our time, revived the literary
spirit of his country, rejoicing like the Eoman Sylla, and en-
chanting the other sex with his flowing locks.

lu the case of the women of Cervantes's times, the frequent
occurrence of golden hair may be accounted for from the cir-
cumstance that, as the passion for yellow hair ran very hi^h in
the sixteenth century, those women who were afflicted with
the misfortune of having black, imitated the color which in-
spired love by wearing a false head-dress, as did the ancient
Messalina when, in matronly years, she wished to allure her
lovers by the show of youthful beauty, or practised that
strange and apparently lost art of discharging the black color
and assuming the golden, which was known in ancient Greece
to both women and men, which, in the days of Tertullian, was
employed by his countrywomen of Carthage upon their strong,
vigorous, African black hair — that great denouncer of women's
vanities, describing, as I have noticed before, the torture and
danger to which they subjected themselves in order to make
themselves beautiful ; and which was unquestionably both
known and universally practised in Europe in the sixteenth
century.

The taste of Cervantes in women's hair was the taste of his
age. He could have adorned the head of his hero's imaginary
mistress with hair of any color that he chose — and he has cho-
sen to make it yellow — in the splendid description of her given
by her romantic lover.

" I can only declare," said Don Quixote to Senor Vivaldo,
after heaving a deep sigh, " that her name is Dulcinea ; her
country Toboso, in La Mancha ; her rank at least that of a
princess, seeing that she is my queen and mistress ; her beauty
superhuman, since in her are truly met all the impossible and
chimerical beauties which poets give to their ladies ; her hair
is golden, her forehead the fields of Elysium, her eyebrows tiie
bow of heaven, her eyes suns, her lips coral, her teeth pearls,

296 CLAFRIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her
whiteness that of snow ; while all of her that modesty conceals
from human vision is such, as I think and understand, that a
discreet consideration can onh'' extol, but must not compare
with anything."

Except in reference to the absolutely essential beauty of
yellow hair, all this, though extremely eloquent, is sufficiently
vague and undefined.

There was a curious resemblance between Cervantes, the
glory of Spain, and Camoens, the glory of Portugal, extending
to their general history, their captivity, poverty, genius, chival-
rous spirit, and personal appearance. Both were soldiers and
jiterar}^ men of a highly poetical character. Cervantes lost
his left hand in battle ; Camoens his right eye. It has been
remarked, as to personal appearance, that the nose of Cer-
vantes, the peculiar characteristic of which is the elevation in
the middle, is exactly the nose of Camoens as seen in his por-
traits. The complexion of the two was nearly the same.

Camoen's early biographer, Manoel Severin de Faria, tells
us that the poet was of middle stature, with a full face, his
countenance a little lowering (which that of Cervantes was not
any more than his spirit,) his nose long, raised in the middle,
and large at the end. This is the nose of Cervantes accurately
described. In his youth, the hair of Camoens, which after-
wards became grey with sorrow and sufiering, is described as_
being yellow like saffron. It is hardly worth mentioning that
this elevation in the middle of the nose, as described in Cer-
vantes and Camoens, has been declared, by some whimsical
observers, to be a physiognomical characteristic of genius.

No romances are finer than the histories, as far as they have
been related, of Cervantes and Camoens, particularly of the
cheerful Cervantes. It is not generally known that Madrid
has not the undisputed reputation of his birth; and that as
several cities strove for the honor of having produced Homer,

CERVANTES. 297

there is a contention between four places in Spain for the
glory of giving Cervantes to the world, the claims of Madrid
being denied by Esquivias, Seville, and Lucena. The verses
in praise of Madrid cited from Cervantes' own " Yiage del
Parnaso," are far from being conclusive in favor of the Span-
ish capital.

Cervantes died in the same year and in the same month,
though it is not positive!}^ established that it w'as on the same
day, with Shakspere — that 23d of April which is the anniver-
sary both of the birth and the death of England's great dra-
matist, and by a curious comcidence is also the anniversary of
the feast of England's patron saint, George of Cappadocia.
The death of Cervantes, on whose life, as, on his writings,
there is no stain of evil or unworthiness, is highly interesting.
He lived and died poor but contented ; feeling, as there can
be little doubt that ever}^ great man, neglected by his own
age, has felt, that just posterity would amply repay him for
the praises withheld from him by his contemporaries.

" I have given," he says in his " Viage del Parnaso," in
' Don Quixote ' an amusement to the melancholy and angry
breast, in every season and for all time."

'* Yo he dado en Don Quijote passatiempo
Al pecho melancollco i mohino
En qualqiiiera savon, en todo tiempo."

The reader who is able to form a conception of the plea-
sures of a life of literary labor, is delighted to hear that the
last work of the studious Bayle was to send a revised proof
sheet to the printer. Cervantes died still more decidedly in
harness. He wrote on to the last under the increasing afflic-
tion of dropsy, and completed his romance of " Persiles and
Segismunda." On the 18th of April, 1616, wishing "to go
forth, like a Christian wrestler victorious in the last struggle,"
he received extreme unction, and then waited on death with a

298 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

serene soul. Next day, he wrote the graceful and cheerful-
dedication of his last romance, to the Duke of Lermos, in
which he says, he must commence with the old lines once so
famous, and which he could wish were not so pat to his pur-
pose just now. " Having placed my foot in the stirrup while
in the pains of death, I write this to you, great lord:"

" Puesto ya el pie en el estrivo
Con las ansias de la muerte,
Gran Senor, esta te escrivo.'*

Tliis is exceedingly striking, and his pious biographer, Don
Gregorio, feels the beauty of it ; and only those Avho can see
no good in a well-spent life, but think that a man should keep
lip all his religion in order to make it blaze out unexpectedly
on his death-bed, will fail to admire the characteristic fine tem-
per displayed by Cervantes in his last earthly moments. He
could look back on years of honorable toll and sufferings,
which the world had not recompensed, but which he had
endured with patience and even in a joyful spirit — on writings
in v,'hich there is " no line which, dying, he could wish to blot;"
on a great work left as a treasure of delight to mankind, and
distinguished for its purity even in the particularly pure and
chaste literature for which his country is honorably distin-
guished above all other countries — that country of which there
is this singular thing to sa}^, that while it alone has produced
more dramas than all other lettered nations, ancient and mod-
ern, put together, as their dramas now exist, have accumu-
lated, it has no Congreve, nor Yanburgh, nor Gibber, no single
drama in which there is anything to call up a blush on the
cheek of modest3\

* «' Vida de Miguel de Cervantes," p. 169.

SIR KENELM DIGBY.

Sir Kenelm Digby and his wife, Venetia Stanley, were a
husband and spouse in every way remarkable, both being
endowed with personal gifts and graces which attracted the
admiration of their contemporaries. Mrs. Jameson describee
the portrait of Sir Kenelm at Althorpe, and seems to have
been disappointed at not finding him an Adonis.* She mistook
the character of his appearance. Everything about the knight
Was romantic, and his figure was that of a giant. I am sur-
prised that the description of his person and manners given by
Wood appears not to have met the eye of Mrs. Jameson, for
it is not to be forgotten. " His person," says "Wood, " was
handsome and gigantic, and nothing was wanting to make him
a complete cavalier. He had so graceful elocution and noble
address, that if he had been dropt out of the clouds in any
part of the world, he w^ould have made himself respect."*

Mrs. Jameson, in her account of Althorpe, has well
described " the beautiful but appalling picture of Yenetia
Digby, painted by Vandyk after she was dead. She was
found one morning sitting up in her bed, leaning her head on
her hand, and lifeless ; and thus she is painted. Notwithstand-

* AS'ood, *• Athense O.xonienses," vol, n, p. 354.

(299)

300 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

ing the ease and grace of the attitude and the dehcacy of the
feature?, there is no mistaking this for t-1 umber ; a heavier hand
has pressed upon those eyeUds, which will never more open to
the light ; there is a leaden lifeles&ness about them, too shock-
ingly true and real :

<• ' It thrills us with mortality,
And curdles to the gazer's heart.'

"The picture at Windsor," Mrs. Jameson continues, "is
the most perfectly beautiful, and impre:<sive female portrait I
ever saw. How have I longed, when gazing at it, to conjure
her out of her frame, and bid her reveal the secret of her mys-
terious life and death."

Horace Walpole notices a portrait of Lady Digby by Van-
dyk, in which "she is represented as treading on Envy and
Malice, and is unhurt by a serpent that twines round her arm."
Walpole had aiso in his possession portraits of Lady Digby
by Isaac and Peter Oliver.

" Nearly opposite to the dead Venetia," sa3's Mrs. Jameson,
" in strange contrast, hangs her husband, who loved her to mad-
ness, or was mad before he married her, in the very prime of
life and 3'outh. This picture, by Cornelius Jansen, is as fine
as anything of Vandyk's. The character expresses more of
intellectual power and physical strength, than of that elegance
of face and form we should have looked for in such a fanciful
beintr as Sir Kenelm Digby. He looks more like one of the
Athletai than a poet, a metaphysician and a squire of dames.''*

As a good specimen of the ingenious art by which a person
conscious of some perfections in himself, may direct attention
to them by praising the same graces in another, let the reader
oompare the description of Sir Kenelm, which I have given
from AVood, with the compliments which Sir Kenelm passes

* Mrs. Jameson, " Visits and Sketches," vol. 11, p. 243.

SIR KENELM DIGBY. 301

on the Earl of Dorset in his " Observations on the Religio
Medici " of Sir Thomas Browne, which are inscribed to that
nobleman. In the com'se of an argument about personal iden-
tity, Sir Kenelm says, " Give me leave to ask your Lordship
if you now see the cannons^ the ensignes, the amies and other
martial preparations at Oxford with the same eyes w-herewith
many years agone you looked upon Porphyrie's and Aris-
totle's peeces there ? I doubt not but you will answer me — •
Assuredly with the very same. Is that yiohle and graceful ijer-
son of yours^ that begetteth both delight and reverence in every
one that looketh upon it ? Is that body of yours that noiv is
groune to such comely and full dimensions^ as nature can give
her none more advantageous, the same person, the same body
which your virtuous and excellent mother bore nine months in
her chaste and honored wombe, and that your nurse gave suck
unto? Most certainly it is the same."*

I have noticed elsewhere that Sir Kenelm, whose head was
filled with every kind of nonsense, is said to have put his wife
on a diet of capons, which had been fed upon vipers, believing
that this w^as a means of preserving beauty to extreme old age.
I think Sir Kenelm is better characterised in the mere allu-
sion to his turn of mind made by Mrs. Jameson in her usual
graceful and sionificant manner, than lie is in the strange
eulogium passed by Southey on the eccentric knight, '' of
whose conversion," he says, " were men to be estimated accord-
ing to their talents and accomplishments, the Romish Church
might be more proud than of any other in this country of
w'hich it may ever have had to boast. "f AVe may give up the
case of Gibbon's temporary conversion to Romanism, though
in truth it gives a color to every page in which the great
historian discusses any matter of controversy between the

* '• Observations upon the Religio Medici," occasionally written by
Sir Kenelm Digby, Knight, p. 49. Lond. 1659.

t Southey's " Essays," vol. ii, p. 361. Lond 1832,

302 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Church of Eome and the churches of the Reformation ; it
being the fact that a man may be a zealous Eomanist or a
zealous Protestant as far as he is called on to speak on the
question between the two creeds, without being a Christian at
all But should the instance of Gibbon be given up, surely Mr.
Southey must have forgotten the conversion of Dryden in the
maturity of his intellect to the Church of Rome ; and there is
no good evidence to lead us to doubt the sincerity of that con-
version. The seduction of such a man as Dryden may be fairly
set off as a parallel to the conversion on the continent in our
days of the accomplished Friedrich Schlegel.

JOHN SOBIESKI.

John III. of Poland, better known as John Sobieski, the
deliverer of Christendom from the Mussidmans, is one of the
most romantic characters in history. His exploits, if they had
taken place in the seventh and not in the seventeenth century,
would have been read with disbelief by the present generation.
In his own day he was called " The Wizard King."

In the year 1677 the famous Dr. South accompanied his
pupil, the son of the Earl of Clarendon, on an embassy to Po-
land, to congratulate Sobieski on his election to the throne,
which had taken place two years before. This was six jeaTS
before Sobieski compelled the Turks to raise the siege of
Vienna, the exploit with which his renown is now immortally
associated, but already the King of Poland was looked on as
the noblest soldier in Europe. After having been, like Csesar,
regarded as a fashionable and dissipated young man, his military
genius had broken out in all its refulgence, and he had gained
those great victories which are celebrated under the harsh look-
ing Slavonic names of Slobodisza, Podhaice, Kalusg, and Cho-
cim, and been declared by his country to have ten times saved
the state by his wisdom and valor.

Dr. South has left us a description of the person of Sobieski,
in a letter addressed to the famous scholar Dr. Edward Po-

(303)

304 CLASSIC A^'D HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

cocke. '' As for what relates to his majesty's person," says
South, " he is a tall and corpulent prince, large-faced and full
eyes, and goes always in the same dress with his subjects, with
his hair cut round his ears like a monk, and wears a fur cap,
but extraordinary rich with diamonds and jewels, large whis-
kers, and no neckcloth. A Ions; robe hano^s down to his heels in
the fashion of a coat, and a waistcoat under that of the
same length, tied close about the waist with a girdle. He
never wears any gloves, and this long coat is of strong scarlet
cloth, lined in the winter with rich fur, but in the summer only
with silk. Instead of shoes, he always wears both at home
and abroad Turkey leather boots, with very thin soles and hoi-
low^ deep heels, made of a blade of silver bent hoop-ways into
the form of a half moon. He carries always a large scimitar
by his side, the sheath equally flat and broad from the handle
to the bottom, and curiously set with diamonds."

The large full face of Sobieski is well shown in a portrait of
him engraved in the " Mercure Hollandais," for May, 1674.*
The king is represented without a neckcloth, and with a fur
tippet on his shoulders.

The large person of Sobieski, like the gigantic figure of the
ancient Mithridates, was the habitation of a mind of vast capa-
city. Besides his military acquirements, Sobieski was skilled
both in science and literature.

" This prince," continues South, " is a very well-spoken
prince, very easy of access, and extremely civil, having most
of the qualities requisite to form a complete gentleman. He
is not only well versed in all military affairs, but likewise,
through the means of a French education, very opulently stored
with all polite and scholastic learning. Besides his own tongue,
the Slavonian, he understands the Latin, French, Italian, G-er-

* " Mercure Hollandais." Amst. 1676. This volume contains also
spirited portraits of the Prince of Orange, M. de Raubenhanpt, Admiral
de Ruyter Viscount Turenne, and Charles IV., Duke of Lorraine.

JOHN SOBIESKI. 305

mnn, and Turkish languages; he delights much in natural his-
tory, and in all the parts of physics ; he is wont to reprimand
the clergy for not admitting the modern philosophy such as
Le Grand's and Cartesius's into the universities and scliools,
and loves to hear people discourse of these matters, and has a
peculiar talent to set people about him very artfully by the
ears, that by these disputes he might be directed, as it hap-
pened once or twice during this embassy, where he showed a
poignancy of wit on the subject of a dispute held between the
Bishop of Posen and Father de la Motte, a Jesuit, and his
majesty's confessor, that gave me an extraordinary opinion of
his parts."

The hard life led by Sobieski in his earlier days — when his
relaxations from war consisted in following the chase — had the
eflfect of hastening on decay and old age. He was but fifty-
four years of age, a period at which the mental and bodily
constitution of a great general might be thought to be at its
best, when by the terror of his name as much as of his arms,
he drove the Turks from the borders of Christendom, and at
that time he is described as broken down and infirm, and with
diflSculty able to mount his horse.

Long before his death, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, he
was feeble and sickly in body and mind, and in allusion to his
infirmities and his notorious subjection to his wife, he was cari-
catured in some prints at the time as an old man suckled in a
woman's lap. In his last illness, immense quantities of mercury
were administered to him by a Jewish physician. His death,
however, followed a stroke of apoplexy, by which he was
attacked on the •27th of June, 1696. When Charles XII.
visited his tomb, he burst into tears, and said, " So great a
king as this ought to have never died."*

* Solignac, "Ilistoire gjnerale de Pologiie, ' Contin. torn, iv, p. yi.
Ams. 17 SO.

306 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Sobieski, all his life long from his marriage, was under the
most submissive subjection to his wife, Marie Casimire de la
Grange d'Arquien. She was the daughter of the Marquis de
la Grange d'Arquien, had been married to the Prince Zamo-
isky, and was one of the maids of honor to the queen of King
Casimir w^ien Sobieski espoused her. During all his wars, he
never ceased communicating everything that happened to his
" beloved Mariette, only joy of my soul." He writes to her
about his rheumatism and the pains in his back ; he sends her
the stirrup of the vizier, bestudded with gems, which had been
found on the field at Vienna ; and describes to her the magni-
ficent furniture seized in the captured camp of the Mussul-
mans.*

Marie de la Grange is described as a beauty and a wit. In
his fate in wedlock, Sobieski has been comptu-ed with the he-
roic Belisarius ; but the comparison with the profligate Anto-
nina does injustice to Mariette. His slavish subjection to his
wife, indeed, brought ridicule on his illustrious name; but I
have nowhere learned that there was any crime in the Queen
of Poland.

* I have taken these particulars about Soblesld's letters from some
source to which I have mislaid the reference.

ANNE OF AUSTRIA

This queen deserves attention, were it only that the true
politeness and graceful manners of her son, Louis XIV. of
France, are said to have, in a great measure, been imparted to
him or cultivated in him by her ; while it is added that, in
their utmost perfection in the great monarch, they were but a
faint and feeble souvenir of the fascination which dwelt in his
mother.

Anne, the wnfe of Louis XIIL, w^as, as we learn from the
description of her given by Madame de Motteville, her maid
of honor, collated with other accounts, tall in stature, with an
air of mingled majesty and sw^eetness in her deportment. Her
hair was light brown, slightly curled, and fell in profusion over
her shoulders. After the fashion of the times, she wore pow-
der. The complexion of her face was not delicate, and she
painted grossly. Her skin otherwise w^as soft and very fair.
Her nose w^as rather large and unfeminine; her eyes were
pleasing, though there was observable in them a tinge of green
— her forehead and the contour of her face were excellent; her
mouth was small, but well made ; her lips were rosy, and iier
smile exceedingly fascinating. Her neck and bosom were
beautifully formed. Her arms and her hands, which were
finely shaped, were widely celebrated for their exquisite pro-

(307)

308 CLASSIC AND HISTOIIIC PORTRAITS.

portions. On her hands, one of Menage's friends made the
following hnes :

" II pendoit au bout de ses manclies,

Une pair de mains si blanches,

Que je voudrois en verite

En avoir ete soufflete."

Anne was one of the numerous gluttons of royal rank. As
a general rule, women are neither epicures nor gluttons as
compared with men ; and spareness in eating, with something
like an indiflference to the quality of what is eaten, are recom-
mendations of a woman to the other sex. Yet ^lian has a
chapter devoted to the voracity of xlglais, the daughter of
Megacles, who consumed at one meal twelve pounds of flesh
(pounds of twelve ounces, it is understood.) and four choenixes
of bread, and drank a measure of wine (about a gallon.) The
choenix was usually baked into four small loaves. This female
glutton, it is mentioned, played on the pipe, and wore false
hair, with a crest on the crown of her head.*

A female writer of royal blood, who knew Anne, and has
made some terrible revelations of the grossness of manners
which prevail at courts, tells us that the queen eat in a manner
perfectly frightful — cVune manierc toute effrayante — four times
a da3^ To this voracity, some thought that the terrible dis-
ease of which she died was owing. f

In her latter years, Anne, who had been scrupulously and
sensitively delicate about the care of her person to make her-
self agreeable to all around her, so that no linen or cambric
was fine enough for her, suffered dreadfully from sores, which
covered her whole body. Under this affliction — a terrible one
to a beauty — her patience w^as heroic, and she struggled to the

* ^Elian, lib. i, c. 26.

t ««Memoires sur la Cour de Louis XIV. et de la Kegenee, Extraits de
la Correspondance Allemande de Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, ! uchesse
d Orleans, p. 326. Paris, 1823.

ANNE OF AUSTRIA. 309

last to make her person as little offensive to those about her as
possible by using perfumes — " the strongest perfumes of Spain,"
says the Duchess of Orleans. When she observed that her
beautiful hands began to swell, she said : " It is time for me to
depart.'^

The moral character of this queen appears, on the whole, to
have been good ; but she had the weakness to encourage, or
at least not to discourage, declarations of passionate love, and
of admiration of her beauty, which ill-natured observers have
turned to account against her fair fame. The Duchess of
Orleans, her daughter-in-law, assures us that she was secretly
married to the Cardinal Mazarin ; and as that princess, of all
scandalous chroniclers, appears to have had no special ill will
to Anne, it is difficult to refuse her testimony on this point.
The cardinal was not a priest, the duchess tells us, and there
was nothing to hinder him from contracting a marriage.

It is to be observed that, if the queen had been a Messalina,
it would not have degraded her in the eyes of the duchess ;
but to have been honorably married to a person below her
royal rank was a guilt not to be effaced.

It is confirmatory of the existence of the marriage that
Anne, who, at one time, showed every manifestation of love to
the cardinal, exhibited, at a later period, the most decided
enmity — perhaps the sole enmity of her gentle life. " He tired
dreadfully of the good queen," says the duchess, " and treated
her harshly, which is the ordinary consequence of such mar-
riages."*

There was a woman, Madame la Beauvais, the confidante
of the queen-regent's secret marriage, who held the situatioa
of first lady of her bed-chamber; Scire volunt secreta clomus^
atque inde timeri. La Beauvais was old and frightfully ugly

" blind on one eye and bleared on the other," says the Due

de St. Simon. This woman, however, was experienced in
* " Mcmoircs de la Coxir de Louis XIV." p. 320.

310 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

afiairs of profligate love — the very picture, physically and mo-
rally, of a malevolent and licentious witch in a fairy tale. She
had in her keeping the secret of the queen's marriage, and
could show at any time, if offended by neglect, the private
passage by which the cardinal every night entered her ro37al
mistress's bed-room. Hence she ruled the good-natured Anne,
and made her do what she pleased. The great, and all who
desired to be great, paid their devotions at the shrine of this
ugly goddess. La Beauvais appeared at court in the splendor
of a lady of the highest rank, and was treated with every dis-
tinction till the hour of her death.

The queen's great powers of eating descended to her royal
successors. The polite Louis XIV. had the appetite of an
ogre; and the communicative Duchess of Orleans, the king's
brother, was little less distinguished in this faculty, which
flows in high blood, and lost nothing of its strength in the
daughter, and in the Due de Berri.

" I have often seen the king," says this female Suetonius,
"sup four dishes of different soup, then a whole pheasant, and
next a whole partridge, after these a great plate of salad, then
mutton with gravy and garlick, two large slices of ham, a dish
of pastry, and after that fruits and confectionary. Both the
king and the deceased monsieur (the duke, her husband) were
extremely fond of hard-boiled eggs."*

The duchess adored Louis, and was his most intimate friend.
Her testimony as regards him cannot be set aside. The details
I have. here given are disgusting, but they would not offend
such an admirer of royal blood as the duchess: and what the
Bourbons did in the way of eating down to Louis XVL, who
ate with great vigor up till the hour that he laid his innocent
head on the block, there is abundant historical evidence to
prove to be entirely after the fashion of princes and princesses,
and of the highest of the male and female aristocracy, and a
* "Memoires dela Cour de Louis XIV." p. 51.

ANNE OF AUSTRIA. 311

thiDg only regarded as vulgar in humble and undignified
circles.

Louis's queen — the good, affectionate, amorous, little, fair
and fat Maria Teresa, the Infanta of Spain — did not sit down
to any of these terrible devourings, but iiept eating and munch-
ing continually at nice small bits, as if she had been, says the
Duchess of Orleans, "a little canary."*
* " Memoires, ' p. 84.

NINON DE L'ENCLOS

The famous Ninon de I'Enclos, the object of the admiration
of Paris for the greater part of a century, is known upon un-
questionable evidence to have been one of those rare women
who have preserved their beauty from childhood to an extreme-
ly lengthened period of life. At every stage of her girlhood,
her maturity, and her old age, up till her eightieth birthday,
she made fresh conquests. She is farther remembered as be-
ing the only woman, except perhaps Madame Duchatelet, who
in modern times has successfully filled in society the place
which was held by the Aspasias and other Hetaires of ancient
Athens, educated and accomplished women, all of them impor-
tations from Ionia, who, while allowed to have many virtues,
and all kinds of modern graces, did not even profess that vir-
tue, the want of which in a different state of society, entails
along with it in public estimation, and often in reality, a want
of almost every other.

AVe read, with amazement at the state of ancient manners,
that in Greece, the most refined people of antiquit}^, at the pe-
liod of their greatest refinement denied education to those who
were to be their wives and the mothers of their children, and
bestowed instruction in every kind of learning on those wo-
inen who were deliberately trained to indulgence in sensual

(312)

NINON DE L ENCLOS. 313

pleasure. We read with more amazement how generally these
W'omen, thus educated, were possessed not merely of those vir-
tues which are not incompatible with the absence of chastity,
but of others, which a woman who throws away her honor is
generally believed, as a matter of course, to fling along with it.
Aspasia was the counsellor of Pericles, if not also his speech-
maker; Socrates listened with admiration to her lessons in
wisdom, and those men who did not wish their wives and
daughters to be entirely ignorant, brought them to the house
of Aspasia to be instructed. Something of the same kind has
not been unknown in the East;* and in one of the best of the
ancient Indian dramas, the courtesan of the piece is painted
with every amiable virtue, and with the most charming meek-
ness and modesty to recommend her, and is made the instru-
ment of bringing about that moral and happy denouement
which the laws of Hindu tragedy inexorably demand.

The history of Ninon is well known, and I have nothing far-
ther to do with it, than to remark that all the most marvellous
parts of it appear to be perfectly true. She was the child of a
pious mother and of a licentious father. From the mother she
received the best of Christian instruction, while her father,
who was vicious from principle, diligently taught her to follow
his example. Ninon preferred her father's instruction. Her
mother died w^hen the daughter was only fourteen years of
age, and her father followed her to the grave within a year
after. If that be a good child w^hich obe3^s the dying injunc-
tions of a parent, Ninon did her duty in becoming a voluptua-
ry^ ; — she sinned in obedience to the fifth commandment. Her
father regretted that his career of licentious indulgence had
been cut short, and with his dying breath beseechedhis daugh-
ter to make the best use of her years, and to be quite unscru-
pulous about the number, but at the same time select and deli-
cate in the choice, of her pleasures.

* The *« Yes ay" of the Hindus is the Greek 'fTatp);.
14

314 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Kever did child in this world more faithfully obey the last
will of a dear parent. And plenty of time was afforded her
to manifest her unswerving obedience. Her father was no
sooner dead, than she foreswore marriage and devoted herself
to literature and love. One amour succeeded another with her,
from her first avowed lover, the Count de Coligni, whose mis-
tress she became at eighteen, to the Abbe Gedouin, whom she
chose as her favorite when she was eighty.

The advice of Xinon's father recalls us to the palmy days of
the Greek and Eoman heathenism, when the consideration of
the near approach and certainty of death was urged, as it is
urged in the loveliest and most pathetic of the odes of Catullus
{viva?mis, mea Lesbia, et amemus) as the strongest motive to
omit no opportunity of enjoying this world's pleasures. Un-
der the better influence of the religion which points to the
world hereafter as the only abode of true bliss, the same con-
sideration is pressed upon us as a motive to self mortification,
and the abhorrence of sensual indulgences.

All the portraits and descriptions of Ninon present us with
a woman of that face and figure which promise endnring
beauty. She was above the middle height — stout and well-
proportioned ; the face is round rather than oval ; the whole
features are vigorous, decided and intellectual. The eye is
beautifully large, open and soft. " Decency and passion,"
says one of her biographers, " disputed in those eyes for em-
pire."* The nose is particularly fine, and the mouth, where
W'C look for the indication of taste and the love of pleasure, is
exquisitely formed. The hair is long and beautifully curling,
and tastefully arranged and adorned with pearls. The bust
is full and handsome-; the fall of the shoulders extremely ele-
gant ; her complexion was fresh and brilliant.

Lady Lytton Eulwer has introduced a description of Ninon
into her novel, " The School for Husbands." As this pic-

* Vis de Mademoiselle de TEnclos, p. -5, Lettres, &c. Lond. 1782.

NINON DE l'eNCLOS. 315

ture has evidently been accurately and laboriously worked up
from portraits and contemporary testimony, I give it entire.

" Rupert now directed his attention to the boxes on either
side of him, which were rapidly filling : the stage box more
especially, on his right hand, excited his curiosity, from seeing
a young lady, apparently about eighteen or twenty, of great
personal attractions, enter it, surrounded by a perfect swarm
of men; one removing her hood, another carrying her fan, a
third her bouquet, while a fourth arranged her chair, and a
fifth stooped down to place a footstool for her : the w^hole
house, including les somites arisfocratiques, evinced the greatest
empressement to bow to this lady, who returned their greetings
with a circular salutation, which included them all, in the most
graceful manner, and with the least possible trouble to her-
self, as she ^sank into a chair, and leant back to speak to one
of her satellites, who was in waiting at the back of it. She
was very little above the middle height, of beautifully rounded
proportions, and plump, without being fat ; her skin was of a
dazzling and satiny whiteness, her bust, hands and arms being
most symmetrical ; her face was more round than oval, her
forehead was high aiid intellectual, the brows being low,
straight, and beautifully pencilled; her eyes were large and
liquid, and of a dark hazel; her nose small, white, and exces-
sively inquant^ having the end descended a little below the
delicately chiselled nostrils, which had those little fussettes at
each side, that a century and a half later Madame de Genlis
was so vain of possessing. Her cheeks were suffused with
that vivid, yet delicate and peach like bloom, so rare among
lier countrywomen ; her mouth was a little large, but the lips
were so deep and bright a red, and formed such a perfect Cu-
pid's bow, from the short upper lip to the dimpled chin, and
the teeth within it were so dazzlingly white, that envy itself
could find nothing to criticise. Her magnificent hair (which
was a dark brown, with that Georgione or horse chestnut-red

316 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

varnished tinge through it, as if sunbeams had got entangled
amongst its meshes) she wore, according to the fashion of the
time, wreathed in plaits round the back of her head, and di-
vided very low on the forehead, with a profusion of long ten-
dril-like ringlets on either side, which were tied with knots of
blue ribbon, over which, so as to show the ribbon through,
were large bows of set pearls, w^ith streamers and tassels of
fine Oriental, pear-shaped, strung pearls, and the shoulders
and front part of her Berthe w^ere also fastened with the same,
likewise the centre of her bodice, down to the point of her
stomacher, where hung one large pearl, nearly the size of a
pigeon's Qgg ; her dress was composed of white iiioire^ with a
broad sky-blue velvet stripe upon it, wiiile the Berthe was en-
tirely of blue velvet, with a B^esille or network of pearls over
it, which formed no contrast to her snowy skin. ' What a
beautiful girl !' exclaimed Rupert. '■ Who is she ?' ' You are
partly right, and partly wrong: beautiful she most unques-
tionably is, but for her girlhood ! if you want to find that, you
must go back to the time Avhen our friend Moliere accompa-
nied his late Majesty, Louis Treize, to Narbonne, in 1641, and
even then she was not over girlish, being at that time fiveand-
twenty, as last Tuesday she completed her forty-sixth year.'
' Impossible,' said Rupert. ' Nothing is impossible to Ninon
de I'Enclos, except, perhaps, ceasing to be Ninon,' rejoined
Eohault.

Ninon, we are told, and need not doubt it, had a soft and
interesting voice ; she sung with more taste than brilliancy,
and danced admirably. She played well on the lute, in which
she had been instructed by her father.

From early life she cultivated her mind by reading. When
a mere child, we are told that her favorite authors were Mon-
taigne and Charron. Montaigne is certainly not to be perused
v^ithout pleasure at any age ; but notwithstanding the great
reputation of Charron, we fear that most of his readers, if they

NINON DE l'eNCLOS. 317

dared to speak the truth, would confess that they find his work
on "wisdom" very tedious. When taken to church by her
mother, Ninon used to pass the time there in reading romances,
when she appeared to be looking on her prayer book.

There is nobody perfect, and the biographer of Ninon whom
we have already quoted, admits that there was some shght
defects which obscured her numerous good qualities. Firstly,
he tells us that she was naturally jealous of the merit of other
women; secondly, she could not suffer a man who had large
hands and a big belly (which was illiberal ;) and lastly, though
she played perfectly well on the lute, she required too much
pressing to begin. Upon the whole, this was a moderate share
of the frailties of humanity. The first-mentioned fault is to be
found in the very best of women, and has by excellent judges
been reckoned a virtue. " To say the truth," says Dean
Swift, in his " Letter to a Young Lady," " I never yet knew
a tolerable woman to be fond of her own sex." The Dean
speaks strongly ; but in fact, a woman who delights, or affects
to delight in the society of her own sex is far from being amia-
ble in the eyes of the more judicious of the other.

It is sti-ange to find admirers of Ninon, like St. Evremonde
and others, wTiting to her and complimenting her with the
classic name of Leontium — the name of that woman on whom
Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, and all who have spoken of her,
have bestowed the most opprobrious designations that can be
inflicted on even a courtesan. The title was first bestowed in
the most eulogistic manner on Ninon, by the Abbe Chauteau-
neuf, in his " Dialogue sur la Musique des Anciens." The
name of Leontium is greater in literature and philosophy than
that of Ninon ; but her extreme licentiousness has thrown scan-
dal on the whole school of Epicurus in which she studied.

MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER.

There have been some women, who have taken care not to
let the world to come after them lament its ignorance of their
personal appearance and their characteristic habits, as far as
these were fairly known to themselves.

Amongst these is Henrietta de Bourbon, daughter of Gas-
ton, Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis XIIL, who has left
copious memories of her times. These memories are the most
decidedly personal memoirs that have ever been given to the
world. They are wholly about Mademoiselle de Montpensier
herself; nobody else, and nothing else being alluded to except
in so far as their connection with herself obliged her to notice
them. In matters of court introductions and entertainments,
and in details of the vulgarities of the great, she is perfectly
silly ; but in such rubbish, and in the explanations of the gene-
alogies of the illustrious obscure, she has since been quite out-
done by the Baroness d'Oberkirch.

Mademoiselle — this is her designation in the French histo-
ries and memoirs of the time — tells us that her figure was good
and graceful, her aspect open, her bosom rather handsome,
while her hands and arms were good but not fine. " My legs,"
ehe adds, " are straight, and my feet well-made. My hair is
of a fine ash-color, my face is long, my nose large and aqui-

(318)

MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPEXSIER. 819

line ;" which, it may be mentioned, as she has made no retlce-
tion on it herself, might be und is said to be royal, but is not
beautiful. *' My mouth is neither large nor small, but well
proportioned, and my lips are of a good color. My teeth,
though not fine, are far from being bad; my eyes are light
blue, clear and sparkling."

Upon one point there is a discrepancy between different
parts of her own evidence. There is reason to beheve that her
teeth were very bad. While here in one place she tells us
that they were far from being bad, in another she lets us know
that it was characteristic of her royal race to have bad teeth.
" I believe," she said one day to Monsieur de Lauzun, as she
relates the conversation herself, " that my teeth are not beau-
tiful, but this is a defect belonging to our family, and ought
therefore to be less displeasing to you than another."

Her air, Mademoiselle tells us, was stately, but not haughty.
"Une grande fille be belle taille," was the description of her
figure which she one day overheard from the mouth of a per-
son of taste.

In her girlhood she had smali-pox, but according to her own
account that cruel malady treated her gently, and did not
leave on her face even a redness behind it.

She does not take much credit for her taste in dressing, as
she lets us know that whatever dress she assumed was sure to
become her admirably. " I dress," she says in one place,
''negligently, but not slovenly, and* whether in dishabille or
attired magnificently, I alw.iys preserve an air of distinction.
Neolioence of dress does not misbecome me, and when I do
adorn myself, I venture to say that I disfigure the ornaments
which I put on me less than they embeilish me.''

This is c()tn[»limentary enouuh, but she is still more decided
on lier powder of charminn-, independently of intrinsic orna-
ments, in a description which she gives of herself as she shone
forth in full splendor at a fete in the Palace Royal. She had

320 CLASSIC AND HISTOEIC PORTRAITS.

been attired for the occasion under the direction of her aunt,
the ^Queen Dowager, whose remarkably good taste is noticed
by all w^ho have spoken to her. If it was Mademoiselle's usual
[)ractice to be negligent in her dress, she made up for much
arrear in care by the patience with which she submitted to be
made a block for showing off court dresses and fashions upon.

" They were three whole days," says Mademoiselle, " in
arranging my finery. My dress was studded with diamonds
and colored flowers. I wore all the crow-n jewels, and also
those of the Queen of England (Henrietta Maria,) who at that
time had still some remaining. Nothing more magnificent
could be seen than my dress on this occasion ; yet did I find
many gentlemen who told me that my beautital figure, my good
looks, the fairness of my complexion, and the brightness of my
light hair were more dazzling than all the riches that shone on
my person." Mademoiselle would find many gentlemen who
would tell her this, when once it was discovered that she
would believe it.

Mademoiselle's favorite amusements were dancing, riding
on horseback, and joining in the chase.

THE DUCHESS OF OELEANS.

The most singular portrait, personal, moral, and intellectual,
which we have of a woman of royal blood, and proud to insanity
of that blood, is perhaps that of the Princess Palatine, Ciiarlotte
Elizabeth, second wife of the Duke of Orleans (brother to
Louis XIV.,) and mother of the more famous Eegent, the
Duke of Orleans. The picture in every respect is complete
as we find it in the memoirs of her times, but particularly as it
is portrayed in all its coarse, vulgar, and disgusting details by
herself, in those of her letters which have been published; and
though decency has induced the booksellers to suppress much
of what was in their hands, and though hundreds, if not thou-
sands, of her scandalous letters are still, it is believed, extant
in manuscript in various royal and noble houses, she has reveal-
ed so much of herself and others, that, considering what her
pictures are like, it would be unreasonable to desire more.

Her writings and descriptions, addressed to various princes
and princesses, dukes and duchesses throughout Europe, and
as we must suppose, acknowledged on their part by letters par-
taking at least of much of the grossness of those which they
continued to receive,* are useful in dispelling that extremely

* The French. Editor is struck with horror at the filthiness of two let-
ters, one written by the Duchess and another hythe Electress of Hanover,
1 4* ("v-^l)

322 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS-

ignorant delusion that courts are the seats of politeness, refine-
ment and elegance. The court of Louis XIV. was perhaps the
most refined court ever seen. Louis himself was unquestion-
ably a man of genuine politeness ; of that true politeness which
is not in the least conventional, and is not, except in a very
slight degree, to be acquired by education, but is a natural gift,
partaking of the character of a virtue, as with the world it
passes for virtue itself, and is to be found ii^ whole nations and
races of men, while it is wanting entirely in other whole
nations and races ; and which is to be met with as frequently
in the humblest ranks as in the highest; though as a rule it is
most rare in the extremes, in the lowest and in the most exalt-
ed stations in society, amongst those who are either below or
above the necessity or temptation of cultivating the favor and
good opinion and love of their fellow^ creatures.

In the polite court of Louis XIV. Charlotte Elizabeth, Prin-
cess Palatine, and Duchess of Orleans, with the utmost con-
ceivable brutality in mind, manners, and language, held divided
reign with Maintenon, the insidiously polished Maintenon
herself

I may, first of all, take Madame's minute description of her
own person. " Madame" is the title which she bears in the
French memoirs of her times. As, however, she is unreason-
ably deprecatory of herself, I must, in justice to her memory,
compare her own sketch with the rather more favorable por-
traits dravvn of her by others.

It may be thought strange, though Madame was sensible
that she did not excel in beauty of face and person, that

v.-hich had been printed entire, without alteration or suppression of any-
thing in the German edition of Strasbourg, 1798. *' Lon a pousse 1'
exactitude jusqu' a imprimer textuellement deux lettres, une de la Prin-
cesse Palatine, et 1 autre de 1 Electrice d'Hanovre, toutes deux si orduri-
eres, quon les prendrait pour un assaut. C est un enigmedont le mot
n est pas connu " — Memoires, Avis de l' Editeur, p. 7.

THE DUCHESS OF ORLEANS. 323

sbo should be more severe on her own ugliness than any
other person who had seen her; but this is not inconsistent
with such a character as hers. It might b^ also wondered at
that her own pen should describe scenes in which she herself
is represented as behaving herself like a beast, and talking lan-
guage which it w^ould have called up a blush in the face of the
poorest unfortunate woman walking the streets of Paris
to have listened to.

It is all accounted for by the fact that, in ^Nladauie's belief,
there was just one thing, and one thing alone, that gave dig-
nity and nobility of character to man or w^oman, and that was
old blood royal. Beauty, virtue, intellect, manners, were all
perfectly worthless without this ; with this, nothing else w^as
necessary for procuring the worship of the world. This she
had in the highest possible perfection ; for though her lather —
a poor German prince, the Elector Palatine Charles Louis —
was a brute, who, at the ro}al table in his savage palace,
would give her royal mother a blow on the face when she hap-
pened to say anything that did not please him, Madame held
her family to be far exalted above every other royal house in
Europe, and believed that she herself had shown a marvellous
condescension, w^hen she stooped to bestow all her personal
plainness, all her coarseness, rudeness of manners, vulgarity,
and ignorance, the hand which she herself describes as the ug-
liest in the world, and the heart which was certainly none of the
purest, on a beautiful prince, the brother of the most powerful
monarch of the times.

" I must be ugly," says Madame. " I have no features ; I
have smah eyes, a short and thick nose, and long and flat lips.
All this won't make a physiognomy. I have, besides, great
hanging cheeks, and a large face, yet I am very short in per-
son. My body and my thighs are also short ; in one word, I
am truly a little ugly creature {efi petit laideron.) If I had not
a good heart (there is reason to dispute her title to a good

324 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

heart,) I would not "be tolerated anywhere. In order to ascer-
tain if my eyes indicate my mind, the}^ would require to be ex-
amined by a microscope, or with spectacles, otherwise it would
be difficult to judge. Uglier hands than mine are, it would
probably be difficult to find in the whole world. The king has
often remarked this, and has made me laugh heartily. As not
being able in conscience to flatter m.yself that I have anything
pretty about me, I have adopted the course of being the first
to laugh at my own ugliness. This has succeeded well w-ith
me, and I have often had occasion to laugh."*

This is the portrait of the duchess drawn by herself; but in
consideration of the modesty which this woman, grossly immo-
dest in every other respect, displays in disclaiming all personal
attractions, she is entitled to the benefit of the moderate com-
mendation which her outward appearance has received from
others. In another part of her narrative, she tells us that in
youth she was slender, but grew stout in mature womanhood.
Madame Sevigne simply tells us that she was by no means a
brilliant beauty, that her features were masculine, her fio-ure
coarse and full, and her countenance robust.

The Due de St. Simon has, however, been able to point out
some merits in her foce and figure, and is pleased even with
her small eyes. " Her complexion," he says, " her bosom, and
her arms were admirable, and so were her eyes." These par
ticulars, we should think, would have made her at least tolera-
ble. " Her mouth," he adds, 'Svas well enough. She had
fine teeth, a little long; her cheeks were too large and too
hanging, which spoiled her, but did not destroy her beauty.
What disfigured her most were the places for her eyebrows,
w'hich were peeled off and red, with very few^ hairs. Her eye-

* " Memoires sur la Cour de Louis XIV. et de la E,egence, Extraits de
la Correspondance Allemande de Madame Elizabeth.- Charlotte, Duchesse
d'Orleans," p. 2. Paris, 1823.

THE DUCHESS OF OELEANS. 325

lids were beautiful, and her cbesnut hair was well arranged.
AVithout being a hunchback or deformed, she had one side
larger than the other, and walked awry."

Here, it will be observed, is a discovery of beauties and of
defects which Madame herself had omitted, or affected to omit
discovering. The swelling on her side is, however, noticed in
another manner by the duchess. She tells us that, " I am na-
turally a little melancholy, and when any thing vexes me, my
left side swells as if I had a ball of water within me."*

With characteristic coarseness of mind and manners, the
duchess, no doubt considering that no kind of polite acquire-
ments can add lustre to royal blood, never learned to either
speak or write decently the language of her adopted country.
The puppyism of the great Frederick, in encouraging the use
of French at his court, and discouraging his own nobler Ger-
man, was not better evidence of vulgarity of mind than the
duchess's neglect in learning the language of the court in
which she lived, and the pride she took in her ignorance as
something quite in accordance with the dignity of her royal
birth and ancient lineage.

The rudeness of John Bull is sufficiently marked in his ad-
herence, wherever he is placed and whatever lands he may
visit, to the monotonous round of English eating and English
cookery. This weakness was intense in the duchess At the
court of France, she would neither eat nor drink anything that
was French. She would defile her royal mouth with notliing
but German dishes. She stuck spitefully to her saur-kraut
and salad dressed with hog's lard ; and persuaded Louis to
join her in her omelette with pickled herrings.

" I breakfast rarely," she says, " and on nothing but bread
and butter. I take neither chocolate, coffee, nor tea; I cannot
endure these foreign drugs. I am German in all my habits —
and I think nothing good either in eating or drinking except

* " Memoires," &c p. 3.

326 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

what is in conformity with our ancient usages. I taste no
soup, excepting what is prepared with milk, beer, or wine."

She then alludes to the ordinary French dishes, the tasting
of which makes her sick. Her body, she says, swells, and she
suffers from colic, sometimes vomiting till the blood comes. In
this case, the duchess assures us that nothing but ham and
sausages were capable of putting her stomach to rights again.
" I never had French manners," she says, " and I could not
adopt them, as I have always regarded it as an honor to be a
German, and to preserve the maxims of my country, which
rarely succeed here."

This repulsive woman regretted that she had not been crea-
ted of the other sex. In her girlhood, she preferred swords
and guns to dolls, and made some desperate attempts to be-
come a boy. Having heard the story of that Marie Germain,
who, by practising leaping, had changed her sex, she imitated
her exan)ple, and made, as she says, such terrible leaps, that it
was a miracle tliat she did not a hundred times break her neck.

In an after part of her work, this repulsive woman expresses
something like dissatisfaction with the means appointed by
Providence for the continuance of the human race. Agreeing
with Sir Thomas Browne on this point, she does not express
herself with Sir Thomas Browne's politeness.*

* " J'ai ete blen aise quand, apres la naissance de ma nlle, mou epoux
a fait lit a part, car je n'ai point aime le metier de faire des enfans.
C etait aussi, bien desagreable de coucher avec ^Monsieur ; il ne pouvoit
soiifFrir qu'on le touchat pendant son sommeil ; il fallait done me coucher
sur le bord du lit, d'ou je suis tombee quelquefois comme un sac."' —
Mi:moires, p. 12. Those to whom details of the lives of the great have
a peculiar value, will be pleased with these little domestic events, related
by a lady, of the unapproachable grandeur of the duchess. In an after
part of her Memoirs, she lets us know that Louis's amiable queen, of
whom it may be remarked that she has no slander to tell, by no means
sympathized Avith her in the peculiar notion which she shared with the
philosoi^her of Norwich. - See Memoires, p. 84.

THE DUCHESS OF ORLEANS. 327

I have noticed in another place that a young man on being
reproved by Pythagoras, is said to have died of grief, to the
deep afHiction of the philosopher. The Duchess of Orleans
tells us with infinite satisfaction, that she caused the death of a
young lady by an admirable scolding which she gave her, and
which the duchess herself reports, adding that Louis would
say in allusion to this event, " One must not trifle with you in
regard to your house ; life depends on it." The crime w^hich
this lady committed, was that she and her sister had stated,
probably with perfect truth, that they were Countesses Palatine
of Lutzelstein, The duchess in a fury, called her a liar and a
bastard, and her mother the worst of all names; assuring her
that if even the Count Palatin had been regularly married to
her mother, who belonged to the house of Gehlen, her daugh-
ter w^as not the less a bastard for all that, as in the case of
Counts Palatin, marriages with women below their own rank
are not valid, and that her mother's real husband w^as a haut-
boy player; and that if she ever dared again in her life to say
that she was a Countess Palatin, she would cause her petti-
coats to be cut off. " The girl," adds the duchess, and this is
all she does add, " took this so much to heart, that she died
of it very soon after." The other sister and Countess Palatin
she caused to change her name, and allowed her to fly; je Pai
laisse courir*

* «' Memoires.'' p. 81. I have not been able to do justice to the bru-
tality of the duchess in this scene. The following is an extract from the
French : " J appelai I'une des lilies et lui demandai qui elle etait. EUe
me (lit en face, qu'elle etait une Comtesse Palatine de Lutzelstein. De la
main, gauche 1 ** Non," repnndit elle ; '• je ne suis point batarde ; le jeune
Cointe Palatin a epouse ma mere, qui est de la maison de Gehlen. ' Je
lui dis : *' En ce cas vous ne pouvez etre Comtesse ; car chez nous autres
Comtes Palatins les mesalliances ne sont d'aucune valtur ; je dirai encore
plus ; tu mens en disant que le Comte Palatin a epouse ta mere ; c'est une
putaine avec laquelle le Comte Palatin j^eut avoir couche comme tant
d'autres ; je sais qui est son veritable mari, c'est un hautbois. Si a

328 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

It is only a selection of the personal characteristics of this
repulsive woman as described by herself, that can be presented
to a modern reader. She has told of her own sex, as for in-
stance of Madame Maintenon, and of Catharine of Sweden,
horrible things, as horrible as any that Suetonius has related
of Tiberius or Caligula; things not hinted at, even by the
most scandalous of male writers. She wrote continually, and
circulated amongst the princesses, and the female nobility of
the continent, such abominable letters as the most despised of
her sex would hardly read, receiving, it must be presumed,
from some of her fair and royal correspondents, returns of a
quality not unsimilar to that of the communications which she
sent them.

" The numerous correspondences," says the French editor
of the selected letters which I have used, " are probably yet
buried in the archives of Spain, of Naples, of Berlin, and other
great cities. Two or three correspondents only have been
published, at least in extracts. The princess wrote a barbar-
ous German, mingled with the provincialisms of the Palatinate
and French phrases ; there is in her expressions an indecency
which treats nothing gently, and which contrasts strangely
with the delicate and graceful style of the Sevignes, Cayluses,
Maintenons, and other women of the court of Louis XIV.
The correspondence forms, however, a true Chronique Scan-
daleuse ; all the anecdotes afloat find a place in them. What
an increase of light there will one day be, when these archives
will be open to give to the public the rest of this voluminous
correspondence ! Many families may be offended at it, but
the history of manners will gain much. A false brilliancy has
long dazzled the eyes of posterity in regard to the age of Louis
XIY; it is well that this illusion should be destroyed by per-
sons who were close witnesses of its pretended grandeurs, and

ravenir tu te fais pesser pour une Comtesse Palatin, je te ferai ooupei- les
jupes an ras du cu]."-Memoikp:s, p. 81.

THE DUCHESS OF ORLEANS. 329

who had the good sense to appreciate them at their true
worth.'"*

As there is here a compliment paid to the good sense of
5ladame — the existence of which is extremely doubtful — and
as other writers have spoken of her virtues, it may be as well
just to notice, that her possession of virtue, in the restricted
sense, has not been disputed. She is just a specimen of the
fact that as a woman may lose her honor without losing that
modesty which should have been its safeguard, so a woman
may be perfectly virtuous in the qualified sense of the w^ord,
as Madame was, and utterly destitute of a rag or shadow of
shame, as she also was. Neither the Greek Theodora (whose
history Madame had studied in the free pages of Procopius,)
nor the Eoman Messalina, was in heart and soul more de-
bauched than this virtuous Duchess of Orleans.
* " Memoires," Avis de I'Editeur, p. 33.

MADAME DE MAINTENOJST.

The great personal beauty of Madame de Maintenon is
admitted by all her contemporaries, even by those women of
her time who hated her most ; and never, certainl}^, w^as woman
more sincerely and ardently hated. This hatred has descended
to our own times, and I have never met a woman, and certainly
not often a man, acquainted with her history, who did not
regard Madame de Maintenon, the decorous, prudish, and
apparently devout wife of Louis XIV., as by far the worst of
all the ladies of the French court in her days.

The Baroness d'Oberkirch speaks the general opinion of
this beautiful, accomplished, and highly intellectual woman
when she says : " Of all the women of infamous celebrity, I
feel the greatest antipathy to Madame Maintenon, notwith-
standing the marriage, which cast a veil over her errors." It
is here assumed that Madame de Maintenon was profligate ; a
charge for which, whatever faults she had, there is certainly a
want of proof ; while it is certain that, for many a long 3^ear,
she endured the greatest poverty, which she could at once liave
relieved, if she had been regardless of her reputation. Her
marriao-e with the king was, I suspect, an unforgiveable crime
with the Baroness d'Oberkirch.

(.330)

MADAME DE MAINTEXON. 331

The figure of Mademoiselle d'Aubigne was tall and grace-
ful, and when, as the ^Yidow Scarron, she was brought to
court at the age of forty, she was a perfectly charming woman.
Her air and walk w^ere dignified and modest beyond descrip-
tion. Her arms were beautiful, and her hands, as her whole
complexion was, w^ere exceedingly fair. All who have spoken
of her have noticed her remarkably fine large black eyes, which
charmed those on whom she smiled, and overawed those
who dreaded her enmity.

Her first husband, the hunchbacked, invalid, and witty
Scarron, whom she married when she was but sixteen, has
given a humorous enumeration of the items of her marriage
portion, particularizing amongst the stock " a pair of large,
black, killing eyes, an elegant figure, a pair of fine hands, and
a great deal of wit."

The lovely Montespan, who, like Louis, regarded Maintenon
as her religious instructor, and looked up to her with awe, on
the occasion of her being delivered of a daughter, writes to
Maintenon praying her to come and see her; "but do not,"
she says, tremblingly, for Montespan's religion was sincere and
deep, and the pious reproofs with which Maintenon visited
her frailty often shook her soul with terror, " do not glare at
me with those black eyes of yours; they frighten me." The
ugly Duchess of Orleans, who hated Maintenon not certainly
for her vices, even the horrible and unnatural vices which she
falsely attributes to her, but for having dared to marry the
king, admits that Maintenon " was eloquent, and had fine eyes."

The expression of Madame de Maintenon's face was
extremely varied. There was usually a calm gravity about
her features, which, at first^ repelled the king; but w^hen
Maintenon had a purpose to serve by being agreeable, her
smile was perfectly bewitching, and her manners sweetly gra-
cious. The form of the lower part of her face was particular-
ly fine, the chin and the mouth being exquisitely shaped. The

332 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

fairness of her skin was remarkable. " Her black eyes," says
her biographer, La Beaumelle, '' contrasted with the whiteness
of her skin, like fire sparkling amidst snow."

The art of dressing to advantage, Madame de Maintenon,
whose taste was, like that of liOuis, exquisite in everything,
understood far better than any other woman in the court
wiiere she reigned, where every one exerted all her talents and
skill, and art to please, fascinate, and seduce. Her attire, ac-
cording to Madame Sevigne, was rich, but modest ; other ac-
counts bear that a plain, unexpensive dress, when she put it
on, assumed an appearance of costliness. Like the ancient
Poppsea she is said to have heightened the effect of her charms
by a modest concealment of them. The Countess of Blessing-
ton, who had in her possession a neckerchief pin, said to have
once belonged to Maintenon, attributes, in a very indelicate
passage in one of her works, the modest style in which the
royal favorite dressed to true art; maUciously insinuating that
a more loose fashion of attire would have been injurious to the
effect of what was concealed. In other words, the bust of
Madame Maintenon was not so elegantly formed as that of the
" gorgeous Lady Blessington."

The Duchess of Orleans, who cannot allude to Madame
Maintenon without prefixing to her name the worst epithet
which her impure mind can suggest, and w^ho seldom speaks
of her without charging her with some crime, tells us of one
innocent art which it appears Maintenon had recourse to, to
make her person agreeable, or rather to conceal a defect.
" Nobody at court," says Madame, " used perfumes, except
Old Maintenon." La vieillc Mamtenon is the expression of her
French translator, but he lets us understand in his preface that
he has been obliged to curtail the exuberant filthiness of Ma-
dame's vocabulary, and that in the original German the sub-
stantive never fails to be accompanied by a shockingly offen-
sive adjective — die alte Zote ; "an expression," he adds with

MADAME D£ MAINTENON. 333

infinite grace, which the delicacy of the French language does
not permit me to translate, and which contains nothing flatter-
ing to the morals of her to whom it refers. "What a hatred
must have existed between these two women to carry them to
such extremities ! It is well that the public should know
these things, in order to avoid the chimerical notions which
are usually entertained about the amenity of courts, and parti-
cularly that of LouiJB the Fourteenth."*

For whatever reason Madame de Maintenon might have
used perfumes, it could not have been to please the king ; for
if we are to believe the Duchess of Orleans — his most intimate
friend, next to Maintenon — Louis hated all perfumes, and
could not, she says, endure them on any one but on Maintenon.
Yet it appears from the context of this passage that he could
not suffer them even on her; for she says that when in his
company Maintenon always laid the blame of the perfumes on
some other lady.

I have no doubt that this revelation about the perfumes and
the deceptions of Maintenon is made by the ugly duchess from
the most malevolent motive, as it certainly is brought forward
with all the skill of a malignant woman. In stating the bare
facts, she leaves the intelligent reader to save her the trouble
of drawing the obvious inference w^hich must be drawn from
them, that after all Maintenon had not every personal charm,
and that nature, so liberal to her in face and form, had neglect-
ed to besow on her " the cow's ambrosial breath," and in its
stead had given her that which is popularly said to be a usual
accompaniment to a skin of extreme whiteness such as Main-
tenon's was. Louis had a pure taste, and he no doubt held
with Montaigne that there is a natural defect to hide where
grateful odors are had recourse to ; and with the ancient dra-
matists, that a woman is the most pleasantly perfumed when
she smells of no perfume.

* "Memoires sur la Cour de Louis XIV.," p. 31.

334 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

Besides those great powers of conversation which are attest-
ed by so good a judge as Madame de Sevigne, and so fiendish
an enemy as the Duchess of Orleans, Maintenon possessed that
rare and enviable art of telling a story beautifully, which has
made the name of the gifted Princess Scheherazade immortal,
and rendered her memory dear to all generations of the human
race. What a compliment is implied to this talent of hers in
what is related of her when she was the humble wife of Scar-
ron, and when her visitors were the most intellectual that
Paris could afibrd, that her guests fed on her discourse, in dis-
regard of the quality of her dinners, the occasional meagreness
of which was overlooked and forgotten in the delight inspired
by the fascinating hostess. " There must be another storj-,
Madame," whispered a female attendant to her one day, "/t>/-
tJie roast is too small."'

The truth of all the eulogies bestowed on her tongue is
more than substantiated by this anecdote. At these parties
there would be present the very learned Manage and the
graceful Count de Grammont ; the pleasant Marchioness de
Sevigne and the voluminous Mademoiselle de Scuderi ; the
beautiful Ninon de PEnclos and the ill-favored Pelisson, he to
whom a lad}^ once said : " Sir, you positively abuse the privi-
lege which men have of being ugly.''

The presence of the famous Ninon at Madam Scarron's par-
ties has been laid hold of as a proof of the licentious life which
some of her less judicious enemies have charged against her.
But the charge, it must in fairness be recollected, would
involve in the same censure Madame de Sevigne, Mademoiselle
Scuderi, and many other women whose reputations have come
down untainted to our times. The testimony of Ninon her-
self, who despised chastity out of principle, may be received in
behalf of Madame Scarron. ' She has told us contemptuously
of the poet's wife, that she was virtuous, not so much from
coldness of constitution as from weakness of mind. " I mis^ht

MADAME DE MAINTEXON. 335

easily have cured her of that, had she not been afraid of offend-
ing God."

Madame de Montespan also, though profligate herself in
morals, appears to have regarded Madame Maintenon as per-
fectly virtuous. She committed the education of her children
to her, and Madame de Montespan was just the woman to de-
sire that her children should be brought up in the paths of vir-
tue, and taught to avoid the errors of their mother. Through-
out her whole wicked career, in the mind of Montespan a
painful conflict between the love of pleasure and the most
fervid religious impressions tore and wrung her soul with re-
morse. Her history relates to agonizing and convulsive efforts
which at different times she made to divorce from her heart the
love of the king ; and they are but ill-read in the deep and mys-
terious histories of the human heart w^ho will attribute to
hypocrisy the rehgious professions made by such a woman as
she was. The histories of the pious King of Israel, of St. Au-
gustin, of St. Theresa, and of many more obscure saints of
both sexes, furnish abundant proof that that constitution which
is most naturally susceptible of high devotional feelings is, as
a natural consequence of its capacity for heavenly love, the
weakest to resist the assailments of mere earthly passion.

Madame de Maintenon has been charged with hypocrisy in
her religion as in every thing else. However much truth there
may be in this, it is certain that while the utmost outward de-
corum marked her whole behavior in every station in life, the
wife and widow^ of Scarron, and the favorite and wife of the
king, never omitted the regular discharge of all the religious
observxmces of her Church.

There are strange stories told of the mere chances by which
this woman, whose name bears a conspicuous place in the an-
nals of Europe for a considerable part of a century,- escaped
death in her childhood. She came to the world in a loathsome
dungeon, where her father and mother were confined, and

336 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

where they were discovered and relieved by a relative when
emaciated with hunger; the infant Francis d'Aubigne, then
two days old, crying for the food which her mother, whose
breasts were dried up by distress, could not give her. After
being thus once saved from the jaws of death, a second deliv-
erance still more wonderful, awaited her when a girl. While
with her father and her mother on their passage to America,
she fell sick, and the vital energies sunk so low that she was
believed to be dead. The gun was loaded which was to give
the signal for committing to the deep that beautiful person
which was destined to rule the most splendid court in Europe.
A sailor had the body of the little Francis d'Aubigne in his
arms, when her mother desired once more to press her to her
bosom : she felt her heart beating ; and the future wife of
Louis XIV. was restored to the world.

These tales do savor something of romance. The chief par-
ticulars are related in the " Memoirs of M. Anquetil ;" but he
is not so distinct as could be wished in reference to the autho-
rities which bear him out in his marvellous narrative. One
thing, however, is certain, that in childhood Francis d'Aubigne
endured much poverty and harsh usage, having been particu-
larly subjected for whole years to the tyranny of her own sex,
a calamity which it may be believed exercised so far a baneful
influence on her character — as it has on thousands of others
similarly circumstanced — as to help to foster that cold selfish-
ness which was the repulsive feature in it. It has been men-
tioned, that in her girlhood, as if foreseeing the elevation which
she was one day to attain, Mademoiselle d'Aubigne took care
to preserve her beauty. AYhile employed in a farm-yard look-
ing after poultry, she is said to have protected from the attacks
of the sun's rays, by using a mask, that fair face which, with
her other graces, afterwards raised her to the supreme au-
thority in France.

There are several persons who have made a great noise in

MADAME DE MAINTEXOX. 337

the woi'ld, whose existence, immediately after birth, is said to
have been almost miraculous ; and what is observed, is that
such persons, when the first danger is over, become more
healthy, more beautiful, and often more long-lived than others.
Such was Madame de Maintenon, who lived in the enjoyment
of good health till the age of eighty-three. St. Francis of
Sales was a seven months' child, and his death for many a day
was daily and hourly expected ; but be grew up to manhood
in increasing beauty of person and elegance of mind, and con-
stantly improving health, and died in a mature age.

Such was the profligate Marechal deEichelieu, " the Nestor
of gallantry," as he was called, destined by the graces of his
person to be for nearly a century the most beloved by the
other sex, as he was perhaps in all other respects the most
worthless man in France ; to find himself surrounded by the
hearts of constant women, while he himself had no heart at all,
and to marry a young beauty at the age of eighty -four.

Eicheheu, in this circumstance, if in nothing else, like St.
Francis of Sales, was a seven months' child, and in the desper-
ate hope of saving him, the infant was swaddled in cotton and
placed by the fire ; his parents in the mean time endeavoring
to reconcile their minds to his death. His father, however,
having a wise horror of doctors, kept them carefnlly aw^ay
from the cradle of his child, and the result was that Nature
took him into her own hands, and reared him up into the hand-
somest man in France. One day a sudden convulsion appeared
to end his life, and he was for some minutes regarded as dead,
but by the skill of a femme de chamhre he was restored to the
hghtofday. The singular beauty of this woman, his earliest
female acquaintance, was afterwards remarked as prophetic ot
his future universal favor with her sex. " The Marechal,"
says one of his biographers with a dehcate wit, " spent his
lifetime in returning her thanksgivings."*

* " Vie privee du Marechal de Kichelieu, contenant ses amours et intri-
15

338 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

There is rather a pretty epigrammatic epitaph on the Mare-
chal, ascribed to the pen of Maintenon, who, however, died
long before him. His name was Louis Francis Amand du
Plessis. I can only now give an English version of the lines,

" Here lies Amand,

Whom Cupid gave, in malice to the fair,

His smile, his quiver, and his wings to wear."

gues et tout ce qui a rapport aux divers roles qu'a joues cet homme cele-
bre pendant plus de quatre-vingt ans. torn, i, p. 2. Paris, 1791. The
following is an extract regarding the Maiechalfrom the Editors preface :
*' L'amour le traita encore plus favorablement ; toutes les femmes se dis-
putaient son coetir ; les pleurs qu'il devoit leur fairs repandro ne les
empechoient pas de voler au devant de I'infidele ; elles etoient encore
heureuses de partager entr'elles la portion de I'amour quil daignoit leur
accorder,"

CATHAEINE OF RUSSIA.

The personal appearance' of this interesting woman, and
her mode and habits of hfe, are easily gathered from the
concurring accounts of various writers who had seen her
familiarly. At the age of forty -three she was in the full
pow'er of her robust style of beauty, and perfectly elegant
in her figure, which was purely feminine from the shoulders
to the feet, which were remarkably handsome, and of which
she was very proud.

In her latter years, her extreme corpulence made her ap-
pear not so tall as she was in youth. Her face had cousider-
able comeliness in it. Her forehead, though w^ell formed and
free, w^as, however, larger than is pleasant in a woman —
and there was something of a want of feminine grace about
the lower parts of her face. Her eyes were large, and of a
pleasant greyish-blue, as they have been generally described
— though less favorable observers have noticed something
of a disagreeable expression in them. She herself also was
sensible of the ill-effect of a wrinkle at the base of her nose,
and wished it to be omitted in her portraits.* Her neck was

"The celebrated Lampie had lately painted a striking likeness of her,
though extremely flattering ; Catherine, however, remarking that he had
not entirely omitted that unfortunate wrinkle, the evil genius of her face.

(;J39)

340 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

thick, but well-turned, and not short. It was the neck
which we see on the coins of the voluptuous Eoman em-
perors and empresses. Her bosom was full and her shoul-
ders very finely formed ; and all who have spoken of her
have admired the grace and dignity of attitude with which
she wore the crown. Her hair, which was of a beautiful
light brown, she dressed with much simplicity and taste ; and
her taste in matters of dress was good. She improved the
attire of her time, and sensible of the fineness of her bust,
she introduced a fashion at court calculated to do justice to
a handsome figure. Since her time the ladies of Eussia have
relapsed into a former costume, which does the greatest in-
jury to the best forms.

After the usage of her country, however, Catharine rouged
grossl3^ Her walk was extremely dignified and graceful, and

was greatly dissatisfied, and said that Lampi had made her too serious and
too wrinkled. He must accordingly retouch and spoil the picture, which,
appeared now like the portrait of a young nymph. The celebrated Le
Brun, who was at Petersburg!!, and who could not obtain the honor of
taking her likeness when living, saw her after she was dead, and drew it
from liis memory and imagination. I saw the rough draught of this
portrait, which was extremely like.'— Secret Memoirs of the Court op
Petersburg, particularly towards the end of the reign of Catherine,
vol. II, p. 40. Dublin, 1801. This work, from which I have taken some of
the particulars about Catherine's person, professes to be a translation
from the French, though there is no reference to the name of the author
He is said, however, to have lived about ten years in Petersburgh, and to
have been frequently near the person of the Empress. But for some
unmistakable French eloquence in this work, there would be something
suspicious in the statement in the advertisment prefixed, in which we are
told that " the publishers of the following translation have been induced,
by a sense of decency and propriety, to suppress or soften a few anecdotes
contained in the original, the grossness of which would undoubtedly out-
rage the public and private feelings of Englishmen." Notwithstanding
the sacrifice which has been made to the extreme delicacy of " the public
and private feelings of Englishmen," the work is a very curious contri-
bution to the history of Catharine.

CATHARINE OF RUSSIA. 341

her whole carriage and movements such as became a great
empress. Her usual dress was very plain, but on great state
and solemn occasions she appeared with her hair and the body
of her dress ghttering with brilliants. In pubhc processions
she wore a coronet of diamonds. The habitual expression of
her features was that of the utmost composure, characteristic
of the calmess and mildness of her disposition. As she walked,
she usually threw her eyes on the ground. Before her death
she hud become excessively corpulent ; her legs were swollen
and diseased, which impaired her grace in walking ; and most
of her teeth were gone, which disfigured her face, besides ren-
dering her speech indistinct. Her voice also was hoarse and
broken.

Catharine had a cultivated mind, a love and a taste for music,
painting and statuary, and a good appreciation of the value
of literature, of which she w^as not merely a generous but a
most judicious patroness. Like her lover Potemkin, she wrote
poetry. She never danced, but in the ball-room occupied her-
self at a card-table, preferring those games which did not
interrupt that pleasant and . good-natured conversation in
which she so much delighted, and of which she was so great a
mistress. She was moderate in everything but in love. She
contrasted favorably in all respects, except in respect of her
one great failing, with her predecessor the empress Elizabeth,
who had her fair share of that great failing also, and was
besides, what Catharine was not, a rehgious hypocrite, a
drunkard, and a truly royal and enormous eater.

Summer and winter, Catharine rose early, and as she
desired to give as little trouble as possible to her servants, even
in a country where servants are slaves, made her breakfast of
coffee for herself, and generally finished her toilet without
assistance.

It seems to be but seldom recollected that it is the splen-
dor of Catharine's talents and the greatness of her virtues, as

342 CLASSIC AXD HISTORIC POBTRAITS.

compared with those of other sovereigns, that have brought so
much to hght, and phiced in such strong contrast the weak
part of her character. By those who speak of her in the
coarse and viralent language which Lord Brougham has
employed in reference to her amors, it is entirely forgotten
that before her and around her on every side Catharine could
never have seen examples of anything whatever but of the
coarsest, the most undisguised, and the most regular and for-
mal licentiousness.

At the court of Eussia it certainly could not be said, in the
language of Burke, that " vice itself lost half its evil by losing
all its grossness." On the other hand, Catharine could not, in
the society in which she lived, see an example of any of the
great virtues which she herself possessed, and which were
wholly her owm, being far above those of her country, her
age, her rank, and in some respects even of her sex. She
was one of those women who could neither be vicious nor vir-
tuous on a small scale. There was a magnificence in her vir-
tues, and she had no petty weaknesses.

Power and greatness, so generally injurious to the character
of women, neither dazzled nor corrupted her. Though a des-
potic sovereign, ruHng over a nation of barbarians, she ruled
with singular humanity and beneficence. The good of her
subjects was ever near and dear to her great heart ; she pur-
sued with energy every measure for ameliorating their social
condition. Under her the toleration of all religious opinions
was carried out to the full extent required by the Gospel, at a
time when England was practising the basest and cruellest per-
secution. She improved the criminal law, and with less osten-
tation, but certainly not with less zeal, was a greater reformer
of prison discipline than Howard, " the philanthropist," who
when in her capital treated her, after his usual harsh fashion,
with a rudeness ill deserved bv one w^ho, besides her conde-

CATHARINE OF RUSSIA. 343

scensioii to him, had been so distinguished a laborer in the
cause which he professed to have so much at heart.

She ^Yould not allow the execution of a criminal to take
place in any part of her immense dominions till she herself had
the fullest opportunity of making herself acquainted wdth the
whole circumstances of his crime, in the hope of being able to
extend towards him that mercy which she always delighted to
exercise.

Such she was as a ruler. As a woman, in many of her vir-
tues, she rose far above the general level of those of her sex
who are free from her great vice, and are regarded by them-
selves and by the world as models of female virtue.

It has been said — and history shows that there is a certain
amount of truth in the statement — that a woman cannot simply
cease to love ; that when her love begins to grow lukewarm,
a reaction has commenced, which stops short of nothing but
yiolent hatred. It may not be unnatural that a Vv-oman shall
hate the man who is in possession of the secret of a passion
which, in her, has died away, and that where the powder exists
she will desire the death of the forsaken lover.

Thus did the Assyrian Semiramis, if tradition so hoary as
that which reaches from her day is to be credited ; and tradi-
tion, though it may not be always true to history, is generally
true to human nature.* Thus also did the three beautiful and
voluptuous princesses of Burgundy, whose wantonness and
cruelty have given a romantic interest to the history of the
Tower of Nesle.

Catharine was more powerful than these princesses, and
lived in a more barbarous age, and she was as powerful as the
Assvrian queen ; but she showed that cruelty is not the neces-
sary companion of licentiousness. Those whom she divorced
from her arms w^ere not deprived of her fiivor and kindness.
There is no intance of her ill-treating nny of her discharged

* See Dioloriis Riculus, lib. ii, c 13.

344 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

lovers. But Catharine, who was in ever}^ way as great, was,
in many respects, a very good woman. Her liighest praise —
and it is rare praise — is that she had completely overcome the
characteristic guilt of women — the great and repulsive stain
of the sex — even of those women who are otherwise commend-
able, and who regard themselves as perfectly pure, which
Catharine was too humble in heart to do. She, before whose
footstool the highest in rank were equally humbled with the
lowest, was utterly devested of that passion which women have,
where they have the power, of oppressing, degrading, and tor-
turing their own sex — torturing them in their feelings, I
mean.

Her delight was to make all her domestics around her happ}'-,
to consult their comfort, to gratify their feelings, and to sur-
round herself with their affections. And when all Kussia
lamented the death of its great sovereign, the warmest tears
were shed by the humblest of Catharine's attendants, who
bewailed the loss of the courteous and gracious mistress, who
never spoke to them but with the sweetest familiarity, and with
whom they had freely shared in that cheerful conversation,
the charm which was felt by the noblest and the most highly
accomplished in the land.

MADAME DE STAEL

The famous Madame de Stael, the most influential political
writer in the earlier part of this century, and the greatest writer
of her sex of whom any country can boast, is described by
most of those who had seen her as having little pretensions to
beauty, or being what in the slang of fashion is called " plain,"
The coarse lines of a poet in the " Anti-jacobin," about her
" purple cheek and pimpled nose," lines no doubt inspired by
that base and mean hatred with which feeble-minded men
regard women whose intellect throws their own into obscurity
have no doubt contributed to keep ahve an erroneous idea that
she was positively ugly. This is the opinion expressed by
M. Chasles, in a passage which I have quoted in the sketch of
Sappho. The modern Corinne was no ways the rival in
beauty of her Boeotion namesake, whose charms deluded the
sense of the judges who five times over awarded her the prize
in lyric poetry over Pindar himself,* and with whose name

* Of Corinna, the most beautiful of the Greek poetesses, there was,
according to Pausanias, a portrait in the public gymnasium of the cit}- of
Tanagra, representing her as a most beautiful -svoman, -with a fillet
wreathed round her temples, on account of her having excelled Pindar
in poetry. The vanquished poet gave expression to his wrath by ungal-
lantly calling Corinna " a pig " From this expression, handed down to
15* (345)

346 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAIT^.

Madame de Stael has associated her own by adopting it. as
the title of perhaps her most celebrated work.

A woman, however, who had seen her, and must have de-
spised her with all her transcendent intellectual gifts, for want
of the dull, sluggish blood of high aristocracy in her veins,
admits quite enough to redeem the modern Corinne from the
imputation of being entirely destitute of personal attractions.
" But for her eyes, which are spleiidid^'^ says the Baroness
dOberkirch, " one would almost say that she is ugly. Her
figure is beautiful ; she is very fair, and there is a sjoarkling
intelligence in her glance."* A woman with splendid eyes, a
sparkling intelligence in her glance, and a beautiful figure, can-
not W' ell be despicable in point of personal comeliness.

But Madame de Stael had more points of beauty than these.
Her fair complexion was contrasted with her thick, strong
coal-black hair. There was that largeness and bold outline
about her features which mark a decided and intellectual
character, and gratify a vigorous taste; and when such fea-
tures have once made an impression, they retain their hold on
the mind more powerfully than a face with gentler and more
delicate lines. And though Madame de Staei was not a
Nourmahal, her face, it is admitted, displayed a continually
changing expression in accordance with the emotions of her
soul, and with the infinitely varying tones of her voice.

us by iSlian, M. Philarete Chasles draws the inference that Corinna was
very stout in person. I cannot sec any other fair inference that can be
drawn from it than that Pindar, as might have been expected of a poet
under such circumstances, had lost his temper and behaved like a beast.
The belief of the world is, that it was the beauty of Corinna's persori,
and not her poetry, that decided the award of the judges. " On reading
her works," says Barthelemy, as the young Anacharsis, " we are tempted
to ask v.'hy, in poetical competitions they were so often preferred to
those of Pindar ; but when we view her portrait, we inquire why thej/
have not always obtained the preference."

* "^Memoirs of the Baroness dOberkirch," i, "16-

MADAME DE STAEL. 347

AYhen her mind for a moment was but fiiintly excited, her
eyelids appeared to be heavy. Her stout figure which, as the
Baroness d'Oberkirch admits, %vas beautiful, was shown to
advantage by the grace of her carriage. It is not always,
though it might be thought that it should be always, that a
woman with a fine figure has a lono- with it that grace of motion

O O D

and attitude which arises from the control of a refined mind
over the body.

Napoleon's Marie Louise had an admirable figure physically
considered, but her heavy lumpish soul could not mipart ele-
gance, or anything but awkwardness to her postures

Madame de Stael's arms were particularly beautiful ; their
fine rounded form is to be seen in the common portraits of her.
Some accounts bear that she dressed with taw^driness and vul-
garity ; it is certain that she loved decided and gaudy colors,
and com.mitted the grave offence against society of consulting
her own taste in what she wore, rather than adopting the pre-
vailing modes.

Madame de Stael loved poetry, painting, statuar}', architec-
ture, music and dramatic performances, all to enthusiasm,
as she did everything that refines and elevates humanity, j^
Though she w^as anything but learned in the technicalities ^nd
cant of criticism, there is no writer of her country v^ho has
given to the world so many bright, beautiful and '^^rofound
thoughts on the sentiment of art, on the feelings ai^d emotions-
which its master-pieces excite. There has been vmuch written
by both men and women on the greatness and grandeur of St.
l^eter's, but nothing that is worth reading w^/^en it is placed
beside the reflections on it in " Corinne." /

Madame de Stael w^as a musician, botl/ vocal and instril-
menta], and in private theatricals acted \Tnth the enthusiasm
and emotion which might be expected frqfc^ her character. In
company she was not merely a splend'i*^^ talker, but to this
proud character she added the more an^u^'ble one of being an

348 CLASSIC AND HISTORIC PORTRAITS.

earnest and attentive listener. It has been remarked to her
honor that she made no hj^pocritical avowals of humble talents
and moderate gifts — avowals which in her would have been
most offensive.

When we reflect that Napoleon did not only not admire and
reverence this woman ; that he did not merely treat her rudely,
but proceeded from rudeness to persecution, we are amazed
that his mind could be so great in some things, so mean and
miserable in others. I dare say, however, that Wellington could
ha^ve seen nothing in her ; but Alexander would have honored
her as a princess, and Caesar would have adored her.

Nou

changih^
soul, and ,

us by /Elian, M.
very stout in pert,
drawn from it than
under such circumst
The belief of the avoi
and not her poetry, thai
her Avorks," says BartheL
to ask v.'hy, in poetical c
those of Pindar ; but wh..
laave not always obtained tl.

* •' Memoirs of the Earont

INDEX

Ajbelabd, 201.
JEsoY, 9.
Agathocles, 35.
Agesilaus, 32.
Aglais, 308.
Agrippina, 132.
Alcffius, 4.
Alcibiades, 43.
Alcuinus, 196.
Alexander the Great, 56.
Alfieri, 295.
Alfred, 202.

Amaltheo Girolamo, 51.
Anacreon, 98.
Anna Comnena, 4.
Anne of Austria, 307.
Anne of Brittany, 47.
Antipater, 5.
Apelles, 59.
Aristffinetus, 182, 258.
Aristotle, 40.
Asclepiadorus, 104.

xVsPASlA, 26.

Aubigne, M. de, 215.
Augustus, 97.
Aulus Gellms. 18
Ausonius, 5.

Barbour, John, 45.
Baxter, Richard, 234.
Bayle, 5, 54, 81, -86, 116, 204,
297.

239,

Beauvais, Madame de la, 309.

Bede,201.

Bentley, Dr., 9,

Bertha, 192.

Blessington, Countess of, 332.

Boadicea, lis. ^

Boethius, 201.

Borgia, Cesar, 148, 248.

Borgia, Francis, 57, 219.

Borgia, Lucrezia, 240.

Brantome,82, 100, 113, 181, 191,253,

261, 280, 286.
Bruce, Robert, 219.
Brucker, 122, 208.
Brunchilde, 202.
BuLLEN, Anne, 250.
Bulwer, Sir Edward, 21.
Bulwer, Lady, 314.
Burton, 56.

Cesar,. Julius, 90.
Cesonia, 115.
Caligula, 109.
Camoens, 209, 294, 296.
Camus, 134.
Caracalla, 149.
Cardan, Hier, 100,131.
Cassaubon, Isaac, 104, 162.
Castro, Inez de, 222
Catharine dk" Medici, 261.
Catharine of Russia, 339.
Catharine, St., of Sienna, 34.
Cedrenus, 53.

350

INDEX

Cervantes, 293.
Charlemagne, 191.
Charles of Sweden, 42, 305.
Charron, 316.

Chasles, M., 2, 6, 186, 202, 345.
Chastelain, George, 227.
Chaucer, 166,188, 291.
Chrysostom, Jolin, 112, 184, IS

187, 234.
Cleopatra, 78.
Comitona, 183.
Coligne, Count de, 314.

COMMODUS, 144.

Constantine Manasses, 53.
Corday, Charlotte, 3.
Corinna, 345.
Cousin, M., 210.
Crebillon, M., 208, 259.

Dacier, Madame, 7.
Damocharis, 5.
Dante, 217.
Dares Jphrygius, 52.
David the Painter, 241.
Delaunaye, M., 206.
Demetrius Poliorcetes, 66.
Demosthenes, 40.
Descartes, 40.
Deshoulieres, Madam, 189.
Diana of Poitiers, 253.
DiGBY, SirKenelm, 299.
Dion, 119, 132, 143.
Diphilus, 8.
D 'Israeli 135, 264.
Domitian, 36.
Donne, Dr., 258.
Douglas, Sir James, 46.
Drayt, Michael, 236.
Dryden, John, 302.
Duchatelet, 312.

Eboli, Princess of, 50.
Eginhart, 191.
Elizabeth, Quekx, 273.
Elizabeth oe Hungary, 214.
Epaminondas, ) I .
Eudocia, 180.

Fenelon, 215.
Francis I., 225.

5, Galienus, 69.

Gedouin Abbe de, 314.
Genli.s, Madame de, 315.
Gerbert, 202.
Germanicus, 106.
Gervase, 207.
Gibbon, 130, ISO, 302.
Gillies, Dr., 56.
Gioto, 217.

Gonzagua, Lucrezia, 86.
Grange, Marie de la, 306.
Gregory of Nyssa, 202.
Gregory of Tours, 201.
Grund, Francis J., 187.

Hallam, Mr., 201, 203.
Hannibal, 41.
Hector, 46.
Helen of Troy, 52.
Heliogabalus, 154.
Heloise, 204.
Henrysoun, Robert, 13.
Herodes Atticus, 18.
Hipponax, 8.
Holbein, 252.
Hortensius, 40.
Howard, John, ^42.
Hunt, Leigh, 216,245.

Isabella c-f Bavaria, 233.

Jamblichas, 15.

Jameson, Mrs. 68, 89, 259, 284

Jerome, St., 68.

Jortin, Dr. 61.

Josephus, 139.

Juha, 100.

INDEX

351

Julian the Apostate, 174.
Justinian, 181.

Kavanagh, Miss, 83.
Knox, John, 270.

Ladislaus, 71.

Larapi, 339.

Lampridius, Hi.

Landor, Walter, 24.5.

Lauzun, 319.

Lee, Nathaniel, 128.

Lenoir, M., 206.

Liston, Sir Robert, 219.

LoLLiA Paulina, 111.

Longus, 113.

Louis XIV ,322.

Louis of Thu

Luther, 215.

Luzan, Mademoiselle de, 256.

Lycippus, 58.

Mahomet, 2i, 92.

Maintenon, Madame de, 330.

Malcolm in. , 196.

Mandeville, B., 107, 235

Margaret of Navarre, 5, 18S. 26-4.

Margaret of Scotland, 1'J7

Marie Louise, ol7.

Mary of Burgundy,, 106.

Mary Queen of Scots, 282.

Maximilian, 106.

Maximus Tvrius, 3.

Merivale, Mr., 79, 90, 94.

Menander, 49.

Messalina, 66, 184.

Mezerai, 192, 231, 232, 257, 262, 267

269.
Michelct,M, 78, 91, 94, 96.
MiLTO, 28
Mithridates, 195.
Monstrelet, M. 228.
Montaigne, 58, 108, 138, 189, 198,

271,316.
Montalembert, M., 214.

Montespan, Madame, 331, 335.
Montesquieu, 33.

MONTPENSIER, MADEMOISELLE DE,
318.

More, Sir Thomas, 236.
Motteville, Madame de, 307.
Moyne, Pere le, 50.

Napoleon, 92, 348.

Nero, 127.

Newcastle, Duchess of, 138.

Nicocles, 70.

Ninon de l'Enclos, 312.

Oberkirch, Baroness, d', 19,"
Olivier de laMarche, 228.
Orleans, Duchess of, 321.
Otho, 140.
Ovid, 112.

PapireMasson, 207.
Paterculus, 90.
Paton, Noel, 217.
Pelisson, M. 334.
Peter of Pisa, 196.
Petronius 128.
Phocion, 242.
Planudes, 10.
Pl.\to, 3;^.
Pliny, 111.
Plotinus, 33.
Polvcarp, 61.
Pope, 121, 248.
PoppEA Sabina, 134.
Procopius, 183.
Pythagoras, 15

Rabelais, 37, 111.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 73, 274.
Richelieu Marechal de, 337.
Roland, Madame, 83.
Roswida, 202.
Rousset, 47, 268.

352

INDEX.

Sales, St. Francis, 34, 215, 337.
Sallust. 241.

SxVPPHO, I.

Scaliger, 104.

Schurman, Anna, 5,

SciPio Africanus, 75.

Scott, Sir Walter, 149.

Semiramis, 72, 343.

Shore, Jane, 236.

Simon, Due de, 324.

SoBiESKi, John, 303

Socrates, 35.

SoREL Agnes, 224.

South Dr., 84, 303.

Souther, 40, 265, 301.

Stael Madame be, 345.

Stanley, Lady Yenetia, 138, 299.

Straton, 70.

Surena, 71.

Suriano, 261.

Sylla, 76.

Tacitus, 57.
Tasso, 294.

Taylor, Jeremy, 136, 146, 283.
Tertullian, 67,*'ll2, 234.
Theocritus, 121.
Theodora, 183.
Theresa, Maria, 311.
Theresa, St., 34.

Thomson, 112.

Thou, M. de, 256.

Tibaldeo, Antonio, 239.

Tiberius, 104.

Tiraboschi, 197.

Titian, 249.

Turpin, Archbishop, 198

Valliere, Mademoiselle de la, 4S,

268.
Vanni Andrea, 34.
Venette, Nicolas, 263.
Yillenave, M., 205.
Yirgi], 121.

Walpole, Horace, 279.
Welcker, 7.

William of Malmsbury, 201.
AV^illiam the Conqueror, 192.
Winkelman, 291.

Xenophon, 41.
Xiphelin, 136.

Zenobia, 166.

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A STRAY YANKEE IN TEXAS.

A Stray Yankee in Texas. By Philip Paxton. With Illustra-
tions by Darley. Second Edition, 12mo., cloth. $1 25.

" The work is a chef d'ceuvre in a style of literature in which our country has nc
rivul, and we commend it to all who are afllicted with the blues or ennui, as an effec-
tual means ot tickling their diaphragms, and giving their cheeks a holyday.'" — Boston
Yarihea Blade.

" We find, on a perusal of it, that Mr. Paxton has not only produced a readable, bul
ft valuable book, as regards reliable information on Texan affairs. — Hartford Christian
Secretary.

" The book is strange, wild, humorous, and yet truthful. It will be found admirably
descriptive ot a state of society which is fast losing its distinctive peculiarities in the
rapid increase of population." — Arthur's Home Gazette.

"One of the richest, most entertaining, and, at the same time, instructive works one
could well desire."— Syracuse Daily Journal.

" The book is a perfect picture of western manners and Texan adventures, and will
occasion many a hearty laugh in the reader." — Albany Daily State Register.

NICK OF THE WOODS.

Nick of the Woods, or the Jibbenainosay ; a Tale of Kentucky. By
Robert M. Bird, M. D., Author of "Calavar," "The Infidel,"
&c. New and Revised Edition, with Illustrations by Darley. 1
volume, r2mo., cloth, $1 25.

•' One of those singular tales which impress themselves in ineradicable charactera
upon the memory of every imaginative reader." — Arthur's Home Gazette.

" Notwithstanding it takes the form of a novel, it is understood to be substantial truth
in the dress of fiction ; and nothing is related but which has its prototype in actual
reality.'" — Albany Argus.

•' It is a talo of frontier life and Indian warfare, written by a masterly pen, with its
scenes so graphically depicted that they amount to a well-executed painting, at once
striking and ihnUwg."— Buffalo Express.

WHITE, RED, AND BLACK.

Sketches of American Society, during the Visits of their Guests, by
Francis and Theresa Pulszky. Two vols., 12mo., cloth, $2.

•' Mr. Pulszky and his accomplished wife have produced an eminently candid and
judicious book, which will be read with pleasure and profit on both sides of the Atlan-
tic."— Ncto York Daily Times.

" The authors have here furnished a narrative of decided interest and value. They
have given us a view of the Hungarian war, a description of the Hungarian passage to
this country, and a sketch of Hungarian travels over the country." — Philad. Christian
Chrnvirle.

" Of all the recent books on America by foreign travellers, this is at once the most
fair and the most correct."— Philad. Saturday Gazette.

"Unlike most foreign tourists in the Uiiited State.?, they speak of our institutions,
manneis, customs, <fcc , with marked candor, and at the same time evince a pretty thor
ou2h knGwledu;e of our history " — Hartford Christian Secretary.

"This is a valuable book, when we consider the amount and variety of the informa
tion it cotitaijis, and when we estimate the accuracy with which the facts ore dotuiled-
— Worcester Spy

RIDF{KLD*S NEW AND POPULAR PUDLICATIONS.

NAPOLEON IN EXILE ;

Or, a Voice from St. Helena. Being the opinions and leflections of
Napoleon, on the most important events in his Life and Govern-
ment, in his own words. By Barry E. O'Meara, his late Sur-
geon, with a Portrait of Napoleon, after the celebrated picture of
Delarochc, and a view of St. Helena, both beautifully engraved
on steel. 2 vols. 12mo, cloth, $2.

" Nothing can exceed the graphic truthfulnese with which these volumes record the
words and habits of Napoleon at St. Helena, and its pages are endowed with a charm
t;ir transcendins: that of romance." — Albany State Register.

" Every one vvho desires to obtain a thorough knowledge of the character of Napoleon,
should possess himself of this book of O'lSIeara's." — Arthur's Home Gazette.

" It is something indeed to know Napoleon's opinion of the men and events of the
thirty years preceding hia fall, and his comments throw more light upon history than
ftriytliing we have read."— A^fiawy Express.

'"' 'I'he two volumes before us are worthy supplements to any history of France."—
f stun Evening Gazette

MEAGHER S SPEECHES.

Speeches on the Legislative Independence of Ireland, with Intro-
ductory Notes. By Francis Thomas Meagher. 1 vol. 12mo,

Cloth. Portrait. $1.

" The volume before us embodies some of the noblest specimens of Irish eloquence ;
not florid, bombastic, nor acrimonious, but direct, manly, and convincing."— iVew York
Tribune.

" There is a glowing, a burning eloquence, in these speeches, which prove the author
a man of extraordinary intellect." — Boston Olive Branch.

" As a brilliant and eflective orator, Meagher stands unrivalled." — Portland Eclectic.

" All desiring to obtain a good idea of the political history of Ireland and the move-
ments of her people, will be greatly assisted by reading the8<* speeches."— Sytacust
Daily Star.

" It is copiously illustrated by explanatory notes, so that the reader will have no diffi-
culty in understanding the exact state of afifairs when each speech was delivered." —
Boslon Traveller.

THE PRETTY PLATE,

k new and beautiful juvenile. By John Vincent. Illustrated by
Darley. 1 vol. ICmo, Cloth, gilt, 63 cts. Extra gilt edges, 88 cts.

"We venture to say that no reader, great or small, who takes up this book, will lay it
down unfinished." — Courier and Enquirer.

" This is an elegant little volume for a juvenile gift-book. The story is one of peculiai
Instruction and interest to the young, and is illustrated with beautiful engravings."—
Boston Christian Freeman.

" One of the very bc?t told and sweetest juvenile stories that has been issued from tha
press this season. It has a most excellent inoml."— Detroit Daily Advertiser.

" A nice little book for a holyday present. Our little girl has read it through, and pro-
nounces it first rate." — Hartford Christian Secretary.

''Tt is a pleasant child's book, well told, handsomely published, and illustrated i»
Darlej's best st^iln."— Albany Express.

REDFIELD S NEW AND POPUL IR PUBLICATIONS.

CLOVERNOOK;

Or, Recollections of our Neighborhood in the West. By Alick
CARE«f. Illustrated by Darlet. One vol., 12mo., price $1.00.
(Fourtli edition.)

" In this volume there is a freshness which perpetually charms the reader. You seem
to be made free of western homes at once." — Old Colony Memorial.

" They bear the true stamp of genius— simple, natural, truthful — and evince a keen
Bcnse of the humor and pathos, of the comedy and tragedy, of life in the country." — J
a Whittier.

BREAM-LAND BY DAY-LIGHT :

A Panorama of Romance. By Caroline Chesebho'. Illustrated
by Darlet. One vol., 12mo., price $1.25. (Second edition.)

" These simple and beautiful stories are all highly endued with an exquisite percep-
tion of natural beauty, with which is combined an appreciative sense of its relation to
the highest moral emotions." — Albany State Register.

" Gladly do we greet this floweret in the field of our literature, for it is fragrant with
sweet and bright with hues that mark it to be of Heaven's own planting." — Courier and
Engidr'er.

"There is a depth of sentiment and feeling not ordinarily met with, and some of the
noblest faculties and aflections of man's nature are depicted and illustrated by the skil-
ful pen of the authoress." — Churchman.

LAYS OF THE SCOTTISH CAVALIERS.

By William E. Aytoun, Professor of Literature and Belles-Let-
tres in the University of Edinburgh and Editor of Blackwood's
Magazine. One vol., 12mo. cloth, price $1.00.

" Since Lockhart and Macaulay's ballads, we have had no metrical work to be com-
pnred in spirit, vigor, and rhythm with this. These ballads imbcdy and embalm the
chief historical incidents of Scottish history— Htcrally in 'thoughts that breathe and
words that bum.' They are full of lyric energy, graphic description, and genuine feel
ing." — Home Journal.

" The fine ballad of ' Montrose' in this collection is alone worth the price of the book.'
Boatn Transcript.

Q/^

THE BOOK OF BALLADS.

Bon Gaultier. One volume, 12mo., cloth, price 75 cents.

"Here is a book for everybody who loves classic fun. It is made up of ballads of
nil sorts, each a capital parody upon the style of some one of the best lyric writers of
the time, from the thundering versification of Lockhart and Macaulay to the sweetest
and simplest strains of Wordsworth and Tennyson, The author is one of the first
scholars, and one of the most finished writers of the day, and this production is but the
frolic of his genius in play-time" — Courier and Enquirer.

" We do not know to wlvim belongs this vom de plume, but he is certainly a hnmoriat
-".* no cnmmcn powrr." — Providence Journal.

redfield's new and popular publications.
" SHAKESPEARE AS HE WROTE IT."

THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE,

Reprinted from the newly-discovered copy of the Folio of 1632
in the possession of J. Payne Collier, containing nearly

Twenty Thousand Manuscript Corrections,

With a History of the Stage to the Time, an Introduction tt
each Flay, a Life of the Poet, etc.

By J. PAYNE COLLIER, F.S.A.

To which are added, Glossarial and other Notes, the Headings of Former
Editions, a Portrait after that by Martin Droeshout, a. Vignette Titlb
on Steel, and a Facsimile of the Old Folio, with the Manuscript Cor-
rections. 1 vol, Imperial 8vo. Cloth $4 00.

The ^VORMS OF SHAKESPEARE the same as the above.

Uniform in Size with the celebrated Chiswick Edition, 8 vols.

1 6 mo, cloth $6 00. Half calf or moroc. extra

These are American Copyright Editions, the Notes being expressly prepared
for the work. The English edition contains simply the text, without a single
note or indication of the changes made in the text. In the present, the vari-
ations from old copies are noted by reference of all changes to former editions
(abbreviated f. e.), and eveiy indication and explanation is given essential to a
clear understanding of the author. The prefatory matter, Life, &c., will be fuller
than in any American edition now published.

"This is the only correct edition of the works of the 'Bard of Avon' ever issued,
and no lover or student of Shakespeai-e should be without it." — Philadelphia Argus.

" Altogether the most correct and therefore the most valuable edition extant." — Alba'
ny Express.

" This edition of Shakespeare will ultimately supersede all others. It must certainly
be deemed an essential acquisition by every lover of the great dramatist." — N. Y. Com-
mercial Advertiser.

"This great work commends itself in the highest terms to every Shakespearian schol-
ar and student." — Philadelphia City Itein.

" This edition embraces all that is necessary to make a copy of Shakespeare desirabk
and correct." — Niagara Democrat.

" It must sooner or later drive all others from the market." — N. Y. Evening Post.

" Beyond all question, the very best edition of the great bard hitherto published."- -
IfciD England Religious Herald.

" It must hereafter be the standard edition of Shakespeare's plays." — National Arg^ «.

" It is clear from internal evidence that they are genuine restorations of the ori ,i
nal plays." — Detroit Daily Times.

"This must we think supersede all other editions of Shakespeare hitherto publisl -d.
Collier's corrections make it really a different work from its predecessors. CompHted
with it we consider them hardly worth possessing." — Daily Georgian, Savannah.

" One who will probably hereafter be considered as the only true authority. No one
we think, will wish to -Purchase an edition of Shakespeare, except it shall be conlbrm-
able to the amended text oy Collier." — Newark Daily Advertiser.

" A great outcry has been made in England against this edition of the bard, by Sin-
ger and others interested in other editions ; but the emendations commend tbemaelvea
too strongly to the good sense of every reader to be dropped by the public^the old
editions must become obsolete."— 7a7zfcee Blade, Boston.

FEB 5 - 1935

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