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 THE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 ISAAC DISRAELI. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 ISAAC BISIRAl LI 
 
 I:oI^rDOll^, g-eorg-e roittiiEDG-e josd C9
 
 CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. 
 
 BY 
 
 ISAAC DISRAELI. 
 
 a Neto lEKition, 
 
 EDITED, T\riTII MEMOIE ^^ND NOTES, 
 
 BY HIS SON, 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI, 
 
 CHANCELLOR OF HBE MAJESTY'S EXCHEQUER. 
 
 IN THKEE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 G. EOUTLEDGE & CO., FARRINGDON STEEET. 
 
 NEW YORK : 18, BEEKMAN STREET. 
 1858.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, 
 
 CHANDOS STREET.
 
 r /v 
 X>(f3c 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 This is the first collected edition of a series of works which 
 have separately attained to a great popularity : volumes that 
 have been always delightful to the young and ardent in- 
 quirer after knowledge. They offer as a whole a diversified 
 miscellany of literary, artistic, and political history, of cri- 
 tical disquisition and biographic anecdote, such as it is 
 believed cannot be elsewhere found gathered together in a 
 form so agreeable and so attainable. Some notes are aji- 
 pended to illustrate or to correct the text, where more recent 
 discoveries have brought to light facts unknown when these 
 volumes were originally published. 
 
 _i^.. '•»>• ^-f *"^ ■— •' —■
 
 ON THE 
 
 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MR. DISRAELI. 
 
 BY HIS SON. 
 
 The traditionary notion that the life of a man of letters is 
 necessarily deficient in incident, appears to have originated 
 in a misconception of the essential nature of human action. 
 The life of every man is full of incidents, but the incidents 
 are insignificant, because they do not affect his species ; and 
 in general the importance of every occurrence is to be mea- 
 sured by the degree with which it is recognised by mankind. 
 An author may influence the fortunes of the world to as 
 great an extent as a statesman or a warrior ; and the deeds 
 and performances by which this influence is created and 
 exercised, may rank in their interest and importance with 
 the decisions of great Congresses, or the skilful valour of a 
 memorable field. M. de Voltaire was certainly a greater 
 Frenchman than Cardinal Fleurv, the Prime Minister of 
 France in his time. His actions were more important ; and 
 it is certainly not too much to maintain that the exploits of 
 Homer, Aristotle, Dante, or my Lord Bacon, were as con- 
 siderable events as anything that occurred at Actium, 
 Lepanto, or Blenheim. A Book may be as great a thing 
 as a battle, and there are systems of philosophy that have 
 produced as great revolutions as any that have disturbed 
 even the social and political existence of our centuries.
 
 viii Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 The life of the author, whose character and career we are 
 venturing to review, extended far beyond the allotted term 
 of man : and, perhaps, no existence of equal duration ever 
 exhibited an uniformity more sustained. The strong bent 
 of his infancy was pursued through youth, matured in man- 
 hood, and maintained without decay to an advanced old age. 
 In the biographic spell, no ingredient is more magical than 
 predisposition. How pure, and native, and indigenous it 
 was in the character of this writer, can only be properly 
 appreciated by an acquaintance with the circumstances amid 
 which he was born, and by being able to estimate how far 
 they could have directed or developed his earliest incUna- 
 tions. 
 
 My grandfather, who became an English Denizen in 1748, 
 was an Italian descendant from one of those Hebrew families 
 whom the Inquisition forced to emigrate from the Spanish 
 Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century, and who found 
 a refuge in the more tolerant territories of the Venetian 
 Republic. His ancestors had dropped their Gothic surname 
 on their settlement in the Terra Firma, and grateful to the 
 Grod of Jacob who had sustained them through unprece- 
 dented trials and guarded them through unheard-of perils, 
 they assumed the name of disra.eli, a name never borne 
 before or since by any other family, in order that their race 
 might be for ever recognised. Undisturbed and unmolested, 
 they floui'ished as merchants for more than two centuries 
 under the protection of the lion of St. Mark, which was but 
 just, as the patron saint of the Republic was himself a child 
 of Israel. But towards the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, the altered circumstances of England, favourable, as 
 it was then supposed, to commerce and religious liberty, 
 attracted the attention of my great-grandfather to this 
 island, and he resolved that the youngest of his two sons, 
 Benjamin, the " son of his right hand," should settle in a 
 country where the dynasty seemed at length estabhshed,
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. ix 
 
 through the recent faUure of Prince Charles Edward, and 
 where pubUc opinion appeared definitively adverse to perse- 
 cution on matters of creed and conscience. 
 
 The Jewish families who were then settled in England 
 were few, though, from their wealth and other circumstances, 
 they were far from unimportant. They were all of them 
 Sephardim, that is to say, children of Israel, who had never 
 quitted the shores of the Midland Ocean, until Torquamada 
 had driven them from their pleasant residences and rich 
 estates in Arragon, and Andalusia, and Portugal, to seek 
 greater blessings, even than a clear atmosphere and a glowing 
 sun, amid the marshes of Holland and the fogs of Britain. 
 Most of these families, who held themselves aloof from the 
 Hebrews of Northern Europe, then only occasionally stealing 
 into England, as from an inferior caste, and whose synagogue 
 was reserved only for Sephardim, are now extinct ; while the 
 branch of the great family, which, notwithstanding their own 
 sufferings from prejudice, they had the hardihood to look 
 down upon, have achieved an amount of wealth and con- 
 sideration which the Sephardim, even with the patronage of 
 Mr. Pelham, never could have contemplated. Nevertheless, 
 at the time when my grandfather settled in England, and 
 when Mr. Pelham, who was veiy favourable to the Jews, 
 was Prime Minister, there might be found, among other 
 Jewish families flourishing in this country, the Villa Reals, 
 who brought wealth to these shores almost as great as their 
 name, though that is the second in Portugal, and who have 
 twice allied themselves with the English aristocracy, the 
 Medinas — the Laras, who were our kinsmen — and the 
 Mendez da Costas, who, I believe, still exist. 
 
 Whether it were that my grandfather, on his arrival, was 
 not encouraged by those to whom he had a right to look 
 up, — which is often our hard case in the outset of life, — or 
 whether he was alarmed at the unexpected consequences of 
 Mr. Pelham' s favourable disposition to his countrymen in
 
 X Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 the disgraceful repeal of the Jew Bill, which occurred a very 
 few years after his arrival in this country, I know not ; but 
 certainly he appears never to have cordially or intimately 
 mixed with his community. This tendency to alienation 
 was, no doubt, subsequently encouraged by his marriage, 
 which took place in 1765. My grandmother, the beautiful 
 daughter of a family who had suffered much from persecu- 
 tion, had imbibed that dislike for her race which the vain 
 are too apt to adopt when they find that they are born to 
 public contempt. The indignant feeling that should be 
 reserved for the persecutor, in the mortification of their 
 disturbed sensibility, is too often visited on the victim ; and 
 the cause of annoyance is recognised not in the ignorant 
 malevolence of the powerful, but in the conscientious con- 
 viction of the innocent sufferer. Seventeen years, however, 
 elapsed before my grandfather entered into this union, and 
 during that interval he had not been idle. He was only 
 eighteen when he commenced his career, and when a great 
 responsibility devolved upon him. He was not unequal to 
 it. He was a man of ardent character ; sanguine, coura- 
 geous, speculative, and fortunate ; with a temper which no 
 disappointment could disturb, and a brain, amid reverses, 
 full of resource. He made his fortune in the midway of 
 life, and settled near Enfield, where he formed an Italian 
 garden, entertained his friends, pla3^ed whist with Sir Horace 
 Mann, who was his great acquaintance, and who had known 
 his brother at Venice as a banker, eat macai'oni which was 
 dressed by the Venetian Consul, sang canzonettas, and not- 
 withstanding a wife who never pardoned him for his name, 
 and a son who disappointed all his plans, and who to the 
 last hour of his life was an enigma to him, lived till he was 
 nearly ninety, and then died in 1817, in the full enjoyment 
 of prolonged existence. 
 
 My grandfather retired from active business on the eve of 
 that great financial epoch, to grapple with which his talents
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xi 
 
 were well adapted ; and when the wars and loans of the 
 Revolution were about to create those families of millionaires, 
 in which he might probably have enrolled his own. That, 
 however, was not our destiny. My grandfather had only 
 one child, and nature had disqualified him, from his cradle, 
 for the busy pursuits of men. 
 
 A pale, pensive child, with large dark brown eyes, and 
 flowing hair, such as may be beheld in one of the portraits 
 annexed to these volumes, had grown up beneath this roof 
 of worldly energy and enjoyment, indicating even in his 
 infancy, by the whole carriage of his life, that he was of a 
 different order from those among whom he lived. Timid, 
 susceptible, lost in reverie, fond of solitude, or seeking no 
 better company than a book, the years had stolen on, till he 
 had arrived at that mournful period of boyhood when eccen- 
 tricities excite attention and command no sympathy. In 
 the chapter on Predisposition, in the most delightful of 
 his works,* my father has drawn from his own, though 
 his unacknowledged feelings, immortal truths. Then com- 
 menced the age of domestic criticism. His mother, not 
 incapable of deep affections, but so mortified by her social 
 position that she lived until eighty without indulging in a 
 tender expression, did not recognise in her only offspring a 
 being qualified to control or vanquish his impending fate. 
 His existence only served to swell the aggregate of many 
 humiUating particulars. It was not to her a source of joy, 
 or sympathy, or solace. She foresaw for her child only a 
 future of degradation. Having a strong, clear mind, without 
 any imagination, she believed that she beheld an inevitable 
 doom. The tart remark and the contemptuous comment on 
 her part, elicited, on the other, all the irritability of the 
 poetic idiosyncrasy. After frantic ebullitions, for which, 
 when the circumstances were analysed by an ordinary mind, 
 
 * "Essay ou the Literary Character," Vol. I. chap. v.
 
 xii Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 there seemed no sufficient cause, my grandfather always 
 interfered to soothe with good-tempered commonplaces, and 
 promote peace. He was a man who thought that the only 
 way to make people happy was to make them a present. 
 He took it for granted that a hoy in a passion wanted a toy 
 or a guinea. At a later date, when my father ran away from 
 home, and after some wanderings was brought back, found 
 lying on a tombstone in Hackney churchyard, he embraced 
 him, and gave him a pony. 
 
 In this state of aifairs, being sent to school in the neigh- 
 bourhood, was a rather agreeable incident. The school was 
 kept by a Scotchman, one Morison, a good man, and not 
 untinctured with scholarship, and it is possible that my fixther 
 might have reaped some advantage from this change ; but the 
 school was too near home, and his mother, though she tor- 
 mented his existence, was never content if he were out of her. 
 sight. His delicate health was an excuse for converting him, 
 after a short interval, into a day scholar ; then many days of 
 attendance were omitted ; finally, the solitary walk home 
 through Mr. Mellish's park was dangerous to the sensibili- 
 ties that too often exploded when they encountered on the 
 arrival at the domestic hearth a scene which did not harmonise 
 with the fairy-land of reverie. 
 
 The crisis arrived, when, after months of unusual abstrac- 
 tion and irritabiUtjr, my father produced a poem. For the first 
 time, my grandfather was seriously alarmed. The loss of one 
 of his argosies, uninsured, could not have filled him with more 
 blank dismay. His idea of a poet was formed from one of the 
 prints of Hogarth hanging in his room, where an unfortunate 
 wight in a garret was inditing an ode to riches, while dunned 
 for his milk-score. Decisive measures were required to eradi- 
 cate this evil, and to prevent future disgrace — so, as seems the 
 custom when a person is in a scrape, it was resolved that my 
 father should be sent abroad, where a new scene and a new 
 language might divert his mind from the ignominious pursuit
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xiii 
 
 which so fatally attracted him. The unhappy poet was con- 
 signed like a bale of goods to my grandfather's correspondent 
 at Amsterdam, who had instructions to place him at some 
 collegium of repute in that city. Here were passed some 
 years not without profit, though his tutor was a great im- 
 postor, very neglectful of his pupils, and both unable and 
 disinclined to guide them in severe studies. This preceptor 
 was a man of letters, though a wretched writer, with a good 
 library, and a spirit inflamed with all the philosophy of the 
 eighteenth century, then (1780-1) about to bring forth and 
 bear its long-matured fruits. The intelligence and disposition 
 of my father attracted his attention, and rather interested 
 him. He taught his charge little, for he was himself generally 
 occupied in writing bad odes, but he gave him free warren in 
 his library, and before his pupil was fifteen, he had read the 
 works of Voltaire and had dipped into Bayle. Strange that 
 the characteristics of a writer so born and bi'ought up should 
 have been so essentially English ; not merely from his mastery 
 over our language, but from his keen and profound sympathy 
 with all that concerned the literary and political history of 
 our country at its most important epoch. 
 
 When he was eighteen, he returned to England a disciple 
 of Rousseau. He had exercised his imagination during the 
 voyage in idealizing the interview with his mother, which was 
 to be conducted on both sides with sublime pathos. His other 
 parent had frequently visited him during his absence. He was 
 prepared to throw himself on his mother's bosom, to bedew 
 her hands with his tears, and to stop her own with his lips ; 
 but, when he entered, his strange appearance, his gaunt 
 figure, his excited manners, his long hair, and his unfashion- 
 able costume, only filled her with a sentiment of tender 
 aversion ; she broke into derisive laughter, and noticing his 
 intolerable garments, she reluctantly lent him her cheek. 
 Whereupon Emile, of course, went into heroics, wept, sobbed, 
 and finally, shut up in his chamber, composed an impas-
 
 xiv Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 sioned epistle. My grandfather, to soothe him, dwelt on the 
 united solicitude of his parents for his welfare, and hroke to 
 him their intention, if it were agreeable to him, to place him 
 in the establishment of a great merchant at Bordeaux. My 
 father replied that he had written a poem of considerable 
 length, which he wished to publish, against Commerce, which 
 was the corrupter of man. In eight-and-forty hours confu- 
 sion again reigned in this household, and all from a want of 
 psychological perception in its master and mistress. 
 
 My father, who had lost the timidity of his childhood, who, 
 by nature, was veiy impulsive, and indeed endowed with a 
 degree of volatility which is only witnessed in the south of 
 France, and which never deserted him to his last hour, was no 
 longer to be controlled. His conduct was decisive. He 
 enclosed his poem to Dr. Johnson, with an impassioned state- 
 ment of his case, complaining, which he ever did, that he had 
 never found a counsellor or literary friend. He left his packet 
 himself at Bolt Court, where he was received by Mr. Francis 
 Barber, the doctor's well-known black servant, and told to call 
 again in a week. Be sure that he was very punctual ; but 
 the packet was returned to him unopened, with a message 
 that the illustrious doctor was too ill to read anything. The 
 unhappy and obscure aspirant, who received this disheartening 
 message, accepted it, in his utter despondency, as a mechanical 
 excuse. But, alas ! the cause was too true ; and, a few weeks 
 after, on that bed, beside which the voice of Mr. Bui-ke 
 faltered, and the tender spirit of Benett Langton was ever 
 vigilant, the great soul of Johnson quitted earth. 
 
 But the spirit of self-confidence, the resolution to struggle 
 against his ftite, the paramount desire to find some sympa- 
 thising sage — some guide, philosopher, and friend — was so 
 strong and rooted in my father, that I observed, a few weeks 
 ago, in a magazine, an original letter, written by him about 
 this time to Dr. Vicesimus Knox, full of high-flown senti- 
 ments, reading indeed hke a romance of Scudery, and entreat-
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xv 
 
 ing the learned critic to receive him in his family, and give 
 him the advantage of his wisdom, his taste, and his erudition. 
 
 With a home that ought to have been happy, surrounded 
 with more than comfort, with the most good-natured father 
 in the world, and an agreeable man; and with a mother whose 
 strong intellect, under ordinary circumstances, might have 
 been of great importance to him ; my father, though himself 
 of a very sweet disposition, was most unhappy. His parents 
 looked upon him as moonstruck, while he himself, whatever 
 his aspirations, was conscious that he had done nothing to 
 justify the eccentricity of his course, or the violation of all 
 prudential considerations in which he daily indulged. In 
 these perplexities, tlie usual alternative was again had recourse 
 to — absence ; he was sent abroad, to travel in France, which 
 the peace then permitted, visit some friends, see Paris, and 
 then proceed to Bordeaux if he felt inclined. My father 
 travelled in France, and then proceeded to Paris, where he 
 remained till the eve of great events in that capital. This 
 was a visit recollected with satisfaction. He lived with 
 learned men and moved in vast libraries, and returned in the 
 earlier part of 1788, with some little knowledge of life, and 
 with a considerable quantity of books. 
 
 At this time Peter Pindar flourished in all the wantonness 
 of literary riot. He was at the height of his flagrant noto- 
 riety. The novelty and the boldness of his style carried the 
 million with him. The most exalted station was not exempt 
 from his audacious criticism, and learned institutions trem- 
 bled at the sallies whose ribaldry often cloaked taste, intelli- 
 gence, and good sense. His "Odes to the Academicians," 
 which first secured him the ear of the town, were written by 
 one who could himself guide the pencil with skill and feeling, 
 and who, in the form of a mechanic's son, had even the 
 felicity to discover the vigorous genius of Opie. The mock- 
 heroic which invaded with success the sacred recesses of the 
 palace, and which was fruitlessly menaced by Secretaries of
 
 xvi Life and Writings of the Author, 
 
 State, proved a reckless intrepidity, which is apt to be popu- 
 lar with "the general." The powerful and the learned 
 quailed beneath the lash with an aifected contempt which 
 scarcely veiled their tremor. In the meantime, as in the 
 latter days of the Empire, the barbarian ravaged the country, 
 while the pale-faced patricians were inactive within the walls. 
 No one offered resistance. 
 
 There appeared about this time a satire " On the Abuse of 
 Satire." The verses were polished and pointed; a happy echo 
 of that style of Mr. Pope which still lingered in the spell-bound 
 ear of the public. Peculiarly they offered a contrast to the 
 irregular effusions of the popular assailant whom they in turn 
 assailed, for the object of their indignant invective was the 
 bard of the " Lousiad." The poem was anonymous, and was 
 addressed to Dr. Warton in lines of even classic grace. Its 
 publication was appropriate. There are moments when every 
 one is inclined to praise, especially when the praise of a new 
 pen may at the same time revenge the insults of an old one. 
 
 But if there could be any doubt of the success of this 
 new hand, it was quickly removed by the conduct of Peter 
 Pindar himself. As is not unusual with persons of his habits, 
 Wolcot was extremely sensitive, and, brandishing a toma- 
 hawk, always himself shrank from a scratch. This was shown 
 some years afterwards by his violent assault on Mr. Gifford, 
 with a bludgeon, in a bookseller's shop, because the author of 
 the "Baviad and Mseviad " had presumed to castigate the 
 great lampooner of the age. In the present instance, the 
 furious Wolcot leapt to the rash conclusion, that the author 
 of the satire was no less a personage than Mr, Hayley, and 
 he assailed the elegant author of the " Triumphs of Tem- 
 per " in a virulent pasquinade. This ill-considered movement 
 of his adversary of course achieved the complete success of 
 the anonymous writer. 
 
 My father, who came iip to town to read the newspapers 
 at the St. James's Coffee-house, found their columns filled
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xvii 
 
 with extracts from the fortunate effusion of the liour, conjec- 
 tures as to its writer, and much gossip respecting Wolcot and 
 Hayley. He returned to Enfield laden with the journals, 
 and, presenting them to his parents, broke to them the intel- 
 ligence, that at length he was not only an author, but a 
 successful one. 
 
 He was indebted to this slight effort for something almost 
 as agreeable as tlie public recognition of his ability, and that 
 was the acquaintance, and almost immediately the warm per- 
 sonal friendship, of Mr. Pye. Mr. Pye was the head of an 
 ancient English family that figured in the Parliaments and 
 struggles of the Stuarts ; he was member for the County of 
 Berkshire, where his ancestral seat of Faringdon was situate, 
 and at a later period (1790) became Poet Laureat. In 
 those days, when literary clubs did not exist, and when even 
 political ones were extremely limited and exclusive in their 
 character, the booksellers' shops were social rendezvous. 
 Debrett's was tbe chief haunt of the Whigs ; Hatchard's, I 
 believe, of the Tories, It was at the latter house that my 
 father made the acquaintance of Mr. Pye, then publishing 
 his translation of Aristotle's Poetics, and so strong was party 
 feeling at tbat period, that one day, walking together down 
 Piccadilly, Mr. Pye, stopping at the door o! Debrett, requested 
 his companion to go in and purchase a particular pamphlet 
 for him, adding that if he had the audacity to enter, more 
 than one person would tread upon his toes. 
 
 My father at last had a friend. Mr. Pye, though double 
 his age, was still a young man, and the hterary sympathy 
 between them was complete. Unfortunately, the member 
 for Berkshire was a man rather of an elegant turn of mind, 
 than one of that energy and vigour which a youth required 
 for a companion at that moment. Their tastes and pursuits 
 were perhaps a little too similar. They addressed poetical 
 epistles to each other, and were, reciprocally, too gentle 
 critics. But Mr. Pye was a most amiable and accomplished 
 
 YOL. I. b
 
 xviii Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 man, a fine classical scholar, and a master of correct versifica- 
 tion. He paid a visit to Enfield, and by his influence 
 hastened a conclusion at which my grandfather was just 
 arriving, to wit, that he would no longer persist in the fruit- 
 less effort of converting a poet into a merchant, and that con- 
 tent with the independence he had realised, he would abandon 
 his dreams of founding a dynasty of financiers. From this 
 moment all disquietude ceased beneath this always well- 
 meaning, though often perplexed, roof, while my father, 
 enabled amply to gratify his darling passion of book-collect- 
 ing, passed his days in tranquil study, and in the society of 
 congenial spirits. 
 
 His new friend introduced him almost immediately to Mr. 
 James Pettit Andrews, a Berkshire gentleman of literary 
 pursuits, and whose hospitable table at Brompton was the 
 resort of the best literary society of the day. Here my 
 father was a frequent guest, and walking home one night 
 together from this house, where they had both dined, he 
 made the acquaintance of a young poet, which soon ripened 
 into intimacy, and which throughout sixty years, notwith- 
 standing many changes of life, never died away. This youth- 
 ful poet had already gained laurels, though he was only three 
 or four years older than my father, but I am not at this 
 moment quite aware whether his brow was yet encircled with 
 the amaranthine wreath of the " Pleasures of Memory." 
 
 Some years after this, great vicissitudes unhappily occurred 
 in the family of Mr. Pye. He was obliged to retire from 
 Parliament, and to sell his family estate of Faringdon. His 
 Majesty had already, on the death of Tliomas Warton, nomi- 
 nated him Poet Laureat, and after his retirement from Par- 
 liament, the government which he had supported, appointed 
 him a Commissioner of Police. It was in these days that 
 his friend, Mr. Penn, of Stoke Park, in Buckinghamshire, 
 presented him with a cottage worthy of a poet on his beau- 
 tiful estate ; and it was thus my father became acquainted
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xix 
 
 with the amiable descendant of the most successful of colo- 
 nisers, and with that classic domain which the genius of 
 Gray, as it were, now haunts, and has for ever hallowed, and 
 from .which he beheld with fond and musing eye, those 
 
 Distant spires and antique towers, 
 
 that no one can now look upon without remembering him. 
 It was amid these rambles in Stoke Park, amid the scenes of 
 Gray's genius, the elegiac churchyard, and the picturesque 
 fragments of the Long Story, talking over the deeds of the 
 "Great Rebellion" with the descendants of Cavaliers and 
 Parliament-men, that my father first imbibed that feeling 
 for the county of Buckingham, which induced him occasionally 
 to be a dweller in its limits, and ultimately, more than a 
 quarter of a century afterwards, to establish his household 
 gods in its heart. And here, perhaps, I may be permitted to 
 mention a circumstance, which is indeed trifling, and yet, as 
 a coincidence, not, I think, without interest. Mr. Pye was 
 the great-grandson of Sir Robert Pye, of Bradenham, who 
 married Anne, the eldest daughter of Mr. Hampden. How 
 little could my father dream, sixty years ago, that he would 
 pass the last quarter of his life in the mansion-house of Bra- 
 denham ; tbat his name would become intimately connected 
 with the county of Buckingham ; and that bis own remains 
 would be interred in the vault of the chancel of Bradenham 
 Church, among the coffins of the descendants of the Hamp- 
 dens and the Pyes. All which should teach us that, what- 
 ever may be our natural bent, there is a power in the disposal 
 of events greater than human will. 
 
 • It was about two years after his first acquaintance with 
 Mr. Pye, that my father, being then in his twenty-fifth year, 
 influenced by the circle in which he then lived, gave an 
 anonymous volume to the press, the fate of which he could 
 little have foreseen. The taste for literary history was then 
 of recent date in England. It was developed by Dr. Johnson 
 
 J2
 
 XX Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 and the Wartons, who were the true founders of that elegant 
 literature in which France had so richly preceded us. The 
 fashion for literary anecdote prevailed at the end of the last 
 century. Mr. Pettit Andrews, assisted hy Mr. Pye and Cap- 
 tain Grose, and shortly afterwards, his friend, Mr. Seward, in 
 his "Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons," had both of them 
 produced ingenious works, which had experienced public 
 favour. But these volumes were rather entertaining than 
 substantial, and their interest in many instances was necessa- 
 rily fleeting ; all which made Mr. Rogers observe, that the 
 world was far gone in its anecdotage. 
 
 While Mr. Andrews and his friend were hunting for per- 
 sonal details in the recollections of their contemporaries, my 
 father maintained one day, that the most interesting of 
 miscellanies might be drawn up by a well-read man from the 
 library in which he lived. It was objected, on the other 
 hand, that such a work would be a mere compilation, and 
 could not succeed with its dead matter in interesting the 
 public. To test the truth of this assertion, my father occu- 
 pied himself in the preparation of an octavo volume, the prin- 
 cipal materials of which were found in the diversified collec- 
 tions of the French Ana ; but he enriched his subjects with 
 as much of our own literature as his reading afforded, and he 
 conveyed the result in that lively and entertaining style which 
 he from the first commanded. This collection of " Anecdotes, 
 Characters, Sketches, and Observations ; Literary, Critical, 
 and Historical," as the title-page of the first edition figures, 
 he invested with the happy baptism of " Curiosities of Lite- 
 rature." 
 
 He sought by this publication neither reputation nor a 
 coarser reward, for he published his work anonymously, and 
 avowedly as a compilation ; and he not only published the 
 work at his own expense, but in his heedlessness made a pre- 
 sent of the copyright to the bookseller, which three or four 
 years afterwards he was fortunate enough to purchase at a
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xxi 
 
 public sale. The volume was an experiment whether a taste 
 for literature could not be infused into the multitude. Its 
 success was so decided, that its projector was tempted to add 
 a second volume two years afterward, with a slight attempt 
 at more original research ; I observe that there was a second 
 edition of both volumes in 1794. For twenty years the 
 brother volumes remained favourites of the public ; when 
 after that Ions: interval their writer, taking advantage of a 
 popular title, poured forth all the riches of his matured intel- 
 lect, his refined taste, and accumulated knowledge into their 
 pages, and produced what may be fairly described as the most 
 celebrated Miscellanj^ of Modern Literature. 
 
 The moment that the name of the youthful author of the 
 " Abuse of Satire" had transpired, Peter Pindar, faithful to 
 the instinct of his nature, wrote a letter of congratulation 
 and compliment to his assailant, and desired to make his ac- 
 quaintance. The invitation was responded to, and until the 
 death of Wolcot, they were intimate. My father always 
 described Wolcot as a warm-hearted man ; coarse in his 
 manners, and rather rough, but eager to serve those whom he 
 liked, of which, indeed, I might appropriately mention an 
 instance. 
 
 It so happened, that about the year 1795, when he was in 
 his 29th year, there came over my father that mysterious 
 illness to which the youth of men of sensibility, and espe- 
 cially literary men, is frequently subject — a failing of nervous 
 energy, occasioned by study and too sedentary habits, early 
 and habitual reverie, restless and indefinite purpose. The 
 symptoms, physical and moral, are most distressing : lassi- 
 tude and despondency. And it usually happens, as in the 
 present instance, that the cause of suffering is not recog- 
 nised ; and that medical men, misled by the superficial 
 symptoms, and not seeking to acquaint themselves with the 
 psychology of their patients, arrive at erroneous, often fatal, 
 conclusions. In this case, the most eminent of the faculty
 
 xxii Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 gave it as their opinion, that the disease was consumption. 
 Dr. Turton, if I recollect right, was then the most considered 
 physician of the day. An immediate visit to a warmer cli- 
 mate was his specific ; and as the Continent was then dis- 
 turbed and foreign residence out of the question, Dr. Turton 
 recommended that his patient should establish himself with- 
 out delay in Devonshire. 
 
 When my father communicated this impending change in 
 his life to Wolcot, the modern Skelton shook his head. He 
 did not believe that his friend was in a consumption, but 
 being a Devonshire man, and loving very much his native 
 province, he highly approved of the remedy. He gave my 
 father several letters of introduction to persons of considera- 
 tion at Exeter ; among others, one whom he justly described 
 as a poet and a physician, and the best of men, the late Dr. 
 Hugh Downman. Provincial cities very often enjoy a tran- 
 sient term of intellectual distinction. An eminent man often 
 collects around him congenial spirits, and the power of asso- 
 ciation sometimes produces distant effects which even an in- 
 dividual, however gifted, could scarcely have anticipated. A 
 combination of circumstances had made at this time Exeter 
 a literary metropolis. A number of distinguished men flou- 
 rished there at the sams moment : some of their names are 
 even now remembered. Jackson of Exeter still survives as 
 a native composer of original genius. He was also an author 
 of high sesthetical speculation. The heroic poems of Hole 
 are forgotten, but his essay on the Arabian Nights is still a 
 cherished volume of elegant and learned criticism. Hayter 
 was the classic antiquai'y who first discovered the art of un- 
 rolling the MSS. of Herculaneum. There were many 
 others, noisier and more bustling, who are now forgotten, 
 though they in some degree influenced the literary opinion of 
 their time. It was said, and I believe truly, that the two 
 principal, if not sole, organs of periodical criticism at that 
 time, I think the " Critical Review" and the " Monthly
 
 Life and Writings of the Author, xxiii 
 
 Review," were principally supported by Exeter contribu- 
 tions. No doubt this circumstance may account for a great 
 deal of mutual praise and sympathetic opinion on literary 
 subjects, which, by a convenient arrangement, appeared in the 
 pages of publications otherwise professing contrary opinions 
 on all others. Exeter had then even a learned society which 
 published its Transactions. 
 
 With such companions, by whom he was received with a 
 kindness and hospitality which to the last he often dwelt on, 
 it may easily be supposed that the banishment of my father 
 from the delights of literary London was not as productive 
 a source of gloom as the exile of Ovid to the savage Pontus, 
 even if it had not been his happy fortune to have been re- 
 ceived on terms of intimate friendship by the accomplished 
 family of Mr. Baring, who was then member for Exeter, and 
 beneath whose roof he passed a great portion of the period 
 of nearly three years during which he remained in Devon- 
 shire. 
 
 The illness of my father was relieved, but not removed, by 
 this change of life. Dr. Downman was his physician, whose 
 only remedies were port wine, horse-exercise, rowing on the 
 neighbouring river, and the distraction of agreeable society. 
 This wise physician recognised the temperament of his 
 patient, and perceived that his physical derangement was an 
 effect instead of a caiise. My father instead of being in a 
 consumption, was endowed with a frame of almost super- 
 human strength, and which was destined for half a century 
 of continuous labour and sedentary life. The vital principle 
 in him, indeed, was so strong that when he left us at eighty- 
 two, it was only as the victim of a violent epidemic, against 
 whose virulence he struggled with so much power, that it 
 was clear, but for this casualty, he might have been spared to 
 this world even for several years. 
 
 I should think that this illness of his youth, and which, 
 though of a fitful character, was of many years' duration,
 
 xxiv Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 arose from his inability to direct to a satisfactory end the in- 
 tellectual power which he was conscious of possessing. He 
 would mention the ten years of his hfe, from twenty-five to 
 thirty-five years of age, as a period very deficient in self-con- 
 tentedness. The fact is, with a poetic temperament, he had 
 been born in an age when the poetic faith of which he was 
 a votary had fallen into decrepitude, and had become only a 
 form with the public, not yet gifted with sufficient fervour to 
 discover a new creed. He was a pupil of Pope and Boileau, 
 yet both from his native impulse and from the glowing influ- 
 ence of Rousseau, he felt the necessity and desire of infusing 
 into the verse of the day more passion than might resound 
 from the frigid lyre of Mr. Hayley. My father had fancy, 
 sensibility, and an exquisite taste, but he had not that rare 
 creative power, which the blended and simultaneous influence 
 of the individual organisation and the spirit of the age, reci- 
 procally acting upon each other, can alone, perhaps, perfectly 
 develope ; the absence of which, at periods of transition, is so 
 universally recognised and deplored, and yet which always, 
 when it does arrive, captivates us, as it were, by surprise. 
 How much there was of freshness, and fancy, and natural 
 pathos in his mind, may be discerned in his Persian romance 
 of "The Loves of Mejnoou and Leila." We who have been 
 accustomed to the great poets of the nineteenth century 
 seeking their best inspiration in the climate and mannei's of 
 the East ; who ai'e familiar with the land of the Sun from 
 the isles of Ionia to the vales of Cashmere ; can scarcely ap- 
 preciate the literary originality of a writer who, fifty years 
 ago, dared to devise a real Eastern story, and seeking inspira- 
 tion in the pages of Oriental literature, compose it with 
 reference to the Eastern mind, and customs, and landscape. 
 One must have been familiar with the Almorans and Hamets, 
 the Visions of Mirza and the kings of Ethiopia, and the other 
 dull and monstrous masquerades of Orientalism then preva- 
 lent, to estimate such an enterprise, in which, however, one
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xxv 
 
 should not forget the author had the advantage of the guid- 
 ing friendship of that distinguished OriontaHst, Sir Wilhain 
 Ouseley. The reception of this work by tlie puljHc, and of 
 other works of fiction which its author gave to them anon\- 
 mousl}'', was in every respect encouraging, and their success 
 may impartially be registered as fairly proportionate to their 
 merits ; but it was not a success, or a proof of power, which, 
 in my father's opinion, compensated for that life of literary 
 research and study which their composition disturbed and 
 enfeebled. It was at the ripe age of five-and-thirty that he 
 renounced his dreams of being an author, and resolved to 
 devote himself for the rest of his life to the acquisition of 
 knowledge. 
 
 When my father, many years afterwards, made the ac- 
 quaintance of Sir Walter Scott, the great poet saluted him by 
 reciting a poem of half-a-dozen stanzas which my father had 
 written in his early youtli. Not altogether without agita- 
 tion, surprise was expressed that these lines should have been 
 known, still more that they should have been remembered. 
 '' Ah !" said Sir Walter, " if the writer of these lines had 
 gone on, he would have been an English poet."* 
 
 It is possible ; it is even probable that, if my father had 
 devoted himself to the art, he might have become the author 
 of some elegant and popular didactic poem^ on some ordinary 
 subject, which his fancy would have adorned with grace and 
 his sensibility invested with sentiment ; some small volume 
 which might have reposed with a classic title upon our library 
 shelves, and served as a prize volume at Ladies' Schools. This 
 celebrity was not reserved for him : instead of this he was des- 
 tined to give to his country a series of works illustrative of 
 its literary and political history, full of new information and 
 
 * Sir Walter was sincere, for he inserted the poem in the "English 
 Minstrelsy," It may now be found in these volumes, Vol. I. p. 230, 
 ■where, in consequence of the recollection of Sir Walter, and as illustrative 
 of manners now obsolete, it was subsequently inserted.}
 
 xxvi Life and TVritings of the Author. 
 
 new views, which time and opinion has ratified as just. But 
 the poetical temperament was not thrown away upon him ; 
 it never is on any one ; it was this great gift which pre- 
 vented his heing a mere Hterary antiquary ; it was this 
 which animated his page with picture and his narrative with 
 interesting vivacity ; above all, it was this temperament, 
 which invested him with that sympathy with his subject, 
 which made him the most delightful biographer in our lan- 
 guage. In a word, it was because he was a poet, that he 
 was a popular writer, and made belles-lettres charming to the 
 multitude. 
 
 It was during the ten years that now occurred that he 
 mainly acquired that store of facts which were the foundation 
 of his future speculations. His pen was never idle, but it 
 was to note and to register, not to compose. His researches 
 were prosecuted every morning among the MSS. of the 
 British Museum, while his own ample collections permitted 
 him to pursue his investigation in his own library into the 
 night. The materials which he accumulated during this 
 period are only partially exhausted. At the end of ten years, 
 during which, with the exception of one anonymous work, he 
 never indulged in composition, the irresistible desire of com- 
 municating his conclusions to the world came over him, and 
 after all his almost childish aspirations, his youth of reverie 
 and hesitating and imperfect effort, he arrived at the mature 
 age of forty-five before his career as a great author, influ- 
 encing opinion, really commenced. 
 
 The next ten years passed entirely in production : from 
 1812 to 1822 the press abounded with his works. His 
 " Calamities of Authors," his " Memoirs of Literary Con- 
 troversy," in the manner of Bayle ; his " Essay on the 
 Literary Character," the most perfect of his compositions; 
 were all chapters in that History of English Literature 
 which he then commenced to meditate, and which it was 
 fated should never be completed.
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xxvii 
 
 It was during this period also that he published his 
 " Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of James 
 the First," in which he first opened those views respecting 
 the times and the conduct of the Stuarts, which were opposed 
 to the long prevalent opinions of this country, but which 
 with him were at least the result of unprejudiced research, 
 and their promulgation, as he himself expressed it, " an affair 
 of literary conscience."* 
 
 But what retarded his project of a History of our Lite- 
 rature at this time was the almost embarrassing success of 
 his juvenile production, " The Curiosities of Literature." 
 These two volumes had already reached five editions, and 
 their author found himself, by the public demand, again 
 called upon to sanction their re-appearance. Eecognising in 
 this circumstance some proof of their utility, he resolved to 
 make the work more worthy of the favour which it enjoyed, 
 and more calculated to produce the benefit which he desired. 
 Without attempting materially to alter the character of the 
 first two volumes, he revised and enriched them, while at the 
 same time he added a third volume of a vein far more critical, 
 and conveying the results of much original research. The 
 success of this publication was so great, that its author, after 
 much hesitation, resolved, as he was wont to say, to take 
 advantage of a popular title, and pour forth the treasures of 
 his mind in three additional volumes, which, unlike continua- 
 tions in general, were at once greeted with the highest degree 
 of popular delight and esteem. And, indeed, whether we 
 
 * ' ' Tke present inquiry originates in an affair of literai-y conscience. 
 Many years ago I set off witli tlie popular notions of the character of 
 James the First ; but in the course of study, and with a more enlarged 
 comprehension of the age, I was frequently struck by the contrast between 
 his real and his apparent character. ******* 
 * * It would be a cowardly silence to shrink from encountering all 
 that popular prejudice and party feeling may oppose ; this would he 
 incompatible with that constant search after truth, which at least may be 
 expected from the retired student." — Preface to the Inquiry.
 
 xxviii Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 consider the choice varietj' of the subjects, the critical and 
 philosophical speculation which pervades them, the amount 
 of new and interesting information brought to bear, and the 
 animated style in which all is conveyed, it is difficult to 
 conceive miscellaneous literature in a garb more stimulating 
 and attractive. These six volumes, after many editions, are 
 now condensed into the form at present given to the public, 
 and in which the development of the writer's mind for a 
 quarter of a century may be completely traced. 
 
 Althouofh my father had on the whole little cause to com- 
 plain of unfair criticism, especially considering how isolated 
 he always remained, it is not to be supposed that a success so 
 eminent should have been exempt in so long a course from some 
 captious comments. It has been alleged of late years by some 
 critics, that he was in the habit of exaggerating the import- 
 ance of his researches ; that he was too fond of styling every 
 accession to our knowledge, however slight, as a discovery ; 
 that there were some inaccuracies in his early volumes (not 
 very wonderful in so multifarious a work), and that the 
 foundation of his " secret history" was often only a single 
 letter, or a passage in a solitary diary. 
 
 The sources of secret history at the present day are so rich 
 and various ; there is such an eagerness among their possessors 
 to publish family papers, even sometimes in shapes, and at 
 dates so recent, as scarcely to justify their appearance ; that 
 modern critics, in their embarrassment of manuscript wealth, 
 are apt to view with too depreciating an eye the more limited 
 resources of men of letters at the commencement of the 
 century. Not five-and-twenty years ago, when preparing his 
 work on King Charles the First, the application of my father 
 to make some researches in the State Paper Office was re- 
 fused by the Secretary of State of the da3^ Now, foreign 
 potentates and ministers of State, and public corporations 
 and the heads of great houses, feel honoured by such appeals, 
 and respond to them with cordiality. It is not only the
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xxix 
 
 State Paper Office of England, but the Archives of France, 
 that are open to the historical investigator. But what has 
 produced this general and expanding taste for literary research 
 in the world, and especially in England ? The labours of 
 our elder authors, whose taste and aouteness tauglit us the 
 value of the materials which we in our ignorance neglected. 
 When my father first frequented the reading-room of the 
 British Museum at the end of the last century, his com- 
 panions never numbered half-a-dozen ; among them, if I 
 remember rightly, were Mr. Pinkerton and Mr. Douce. Now 
 these daily pilgrims of research may be counted by as many 
 hundreds. Few writers have more contributed to form and 
 diffuse this delightful and profitable taste for research than 
 the author of the " Curiosities of Literature ;" few writers 
 have been more successful in inducing us to pause before we 
 accepted without a scruple the traditionary opinion that has 
 distorted a fact or calumniated a character ; and indepen- 
 dently of every other claim which he possesses to public 
 respect, his literary discoveries, viewed in relation to the age 
 and the means, were considerable. But he had other claims : 
 a vital spirit in his page, kindred with the souls of a Bayle 
 and a Montaigne. His innumerable imitators and their ine- 
 vitable failure for half a century alone prove this, and might 
 have made them suspect that there were some ingredients in 
 the spell besides the accumulation of fiicts and a happy 
 title. Many of their publications, perpetually appearing and 
 constantly forgotten, were drawn up by persons of consider- 
 able acquirements, and were ludicrously mimetic of their pro- 
 totype, even as to the size of the volume and the form of the 
 page. What has become of these "Varieties of Literature," 
 and " Delights of Literature," and " Delicacies of Literature," 
 and " B,elics of Literature," — and the other Protean forms of 
 uninspired compilation ? Dead as they deserve to be : while 
 the work, the idea of which occurred to its writer in his 
 early youth, and which he lived virtually to execute in all
 
 XXX Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 the ripeness of his studious manhood, remains as fresh and 
 popular as ever, — the Literary Miscellany of the English 
 People. 
 
 I have ventured to enter into some details as to the earlier 
 and obscurer years of my father's life, because I thought that 
 they threw light upon human character, and that without 
 them, indeed, a just appreciation of his career could hardly 
 be formed, I am mistaken, if we do not recognise in his in- 
 stance two very interesting qualities of life : predisposition 
 and self-formation. There was a third, which I think is to 
 be honoured, and that was his sympathy with his order. No 
 one has written so much about authors, and so well. Indeed, 
 before his time, the Literary Character had never been fairly 
 placed before the world. He comprehended its idiosyncrasy: 
 all its strength and all its weakness. He could soften, because 
 he could explain, its infirmities ; in the analysis and record of 
 its power, he vindicated the right position of authors in the 
 social scale. They stand between the governors and the 
 governed, he impresses on us in the closing pages of his 
 greatest work.* Though he shared none of the calamities, 
 and scarcely any of the controversies, of literature, no one has 
 sympathised so intimately with the sorrows, or so zealously 
 and impartially registered the instructive disputes, of literary 
 men. He loved to celebrate the exploits of great writers, 
 and to show that, in these ages, the pen is a weapon as puis- 
 sant as the sword. He was also the first writer who vindi- 
 cated the position of the great artist in the history of genius. 
 His pages are studded with pregnant instances and graceful 
 details, borrowed from the life of Art and its votaries, and 
 which his intimate and curious acquaintance with Italian 
 letters readily and happily supplied. Above all writers, he 
 has maintained the greatness of intellect, and the immortality 
 of thought. 
 
 ^&' 
 
 ■ Essay on the Literary Character," Vol. II. chap. xxv.
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 He was himself a complete literary character, a man who 
 really passed his life in his library. Even marriage produced 
 no change in these habits ; he rose to enter the chamber 
 where he lived alone with his books, and at night his lamp 
 was ever lit within the same walls. Nothing, indeed, was 
 more remarkable than the isolation of this prolonged exist- 
 ence ; and it could only be accounted for by the united influ- 
 ence of three causes : his birth, which brought him no rela- 
 tions or family acquaintance ; the bent of his disposition ; and 
 the circumstance of his inheriting an independent fortune, 
 which rendered unnecessary those exertions that would have 
 broken up his self-reliance. He disliked business, and he 
 never required relaxation ; he was absorbed in his pursuits. 
 In London his only amusement was to ramble among book- 
 sellers ; if he entered a club, it was only to go into the 
 library. In the country, he scarcely ever left his room but 
 to saunter in abstraction upon a terrace ; muse over a chapter, 
 or coin a sentence. He had not a single passion or prejudice : 
 all his convictions were the result of his own studies, and 
 were often opposed to the impressions which he had early 
 imbibed. He not only never entered into the politics of the 
 day, but he could never understand them. He never was 
 connected with any particular body or set of men ; comrades 
 of school or college, or confederates in that public life which, 
 in England, is, perhaps, the only foundation of real friend- 
 ship. In the consideration of a question, his mind was quite 
 undisturbed by traditionary preconceptions ; and it was this 
 exemption from passion and prejudice which, although his 
 intelligence was naturally somewhat too ingenious and fanciful 
 for the conduct of close argument, enabled him, in investiga- 
 tion, often to show many of the highest attributes of the 
 judicial mind, and particularly to sum up evidence with sin- 
 gular happiness and ability. 
 
 Although in private life he was of a timid nature, his moral 
 courage as a writer was unimpeachable. Most certainly,
 
 xxxii Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 throughout his long career, he never wrote a sentence which 
 he did not heUeve was true. He will generally be found to 
 be the advocate of the discomfited and the oppressed. So 
 his conclusions are often opposed to popular impressions. 
 This was from no love of paradox, to which he was quite 
 superior ; but because in the conduct of his researches, he too 
 often found that the unfortunate are calumniated. His vin- 
 dication of King James the First, he has himself described as 
 " an affair of literary conscience :" his greater work on the 
 Life and Times of the son of the first Stuart arose from the 
 same impulse. He had deeply studied our history during 
 the first moiety of the seventeenth century ; he looked upon 
 it as a famous age ; he was familiar with the works of its 
 great writers, and there was scarcely one of its almost innu- 
 merable pamphlets vvitli which he was not acquainted. During 
 the thoughtful investigations of many years, he had arrived 
 at results which were not adapted to please the passing mul- 
 titude, but which, because he held them to be authentic, he 
 was uneasy lest he should die without recording. Yet strong 
 as were his convictions, although, notwithstanding his educa- 
 tion in the revolutionary philosophy of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, his nature and his studies had made him a votary of 
 loyalty and reverence, his pen was always prompt to do jus- 
 tice to those who might be looked upon as the adversaries of 
 his own cause : and this was because his cause was really 
 truth. If he has upheld Laud under unjust aspersions, the 
 last labour of his literary life was to vindicate the character 
 of Hugh Peters. If, from the recollection of the sufferings 
 of his race, and from profound reflection on the principles of 
 the Institution, he was hostile to the Papacy, no writer in 
 our literature has done more complete justice to the conduct 
 of the English Romanists. Who can read his history of 
 Chidiock Titchbourne unmoved ? or can refuse to sympa- 
 thise with his account of the painful difficulties of the English 
 Monarchs with their loyal subjects of the old faith ? If in a
 
 l,ife and Writings of the Author. xxxiii 
 
 parliamentary country he has dared to criticise the conduct 
 of Parliaments, it was only because an impartial judgment 
 had taught him, as he himself expresses it, that " Parliaments 
 have their passions as well as individuals." 
 
 He was five years in the composition of his work on the 
 " Life and Reign of Charles the First," and the five volumes 
 appeared at intervals between 1828 and 1831. It was feared 
 by his publisher, that the distracted epoch at which this 
 work was issued, and the tendency of the times, apparently 
 so adverse to his own views, might prove very injurious to its 
 reception. But the effect of these circumstances was the 
 reverse. The minds of men were inclined to the grave and 
 national considerations that were involved in these investi- 
 gations. The principles of political institutions, the rival 
 claims of the two Houses of Parliament, the authority of the 
 Established Church, the demands of religious sects, were 
 after a long lapse of years, anew the theme of public discus- 
 sion. Men were attracted to a writer who traced the origin 
 of the anti-monarchical principle in modern Europe ; treated 
 of the arts of insurgency ; gave them, at the same time, a 
 critical history of the Puritans, and a treatise on the genius 
 of the Papacy ; scrutinised the conduct of triumphant pa- 
 triots, and vindicated a decapitated monarch. The success of 
 this work was eminent ; and its author appeared for the first 
 and only time of his life in public, when amidst the cheers of 
 under-graduates, and the applause of graver men, the solitary 
 student received an honorary degree from the University of 
 Oxford, a fitting homage, in the language of the great Uni- 
 versity, " OPTIMI EEGIS OPTIMO VINDICI." 
 
 I cannot but recall a trait that happened on this occasion. 
 After my father returned to his hotel from the theatre, a 
 stranger requested an interview with him. A Swiss gentle- 
 man, travelling in England at the time, who had witnessed 
 the scene just closed, begged to express the reason why he 
 presumed thus personally and cordially to congratulate the 
 
 TOL. I. c
 
 xxxiv Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 new Doctor of Civil Law. He was the son of my grand- 
 father's chief clerk, and remembered his parent's employer ; 
 whom he regretted did not survive to be aware of this ho- 
 nourable day. Thus, amid all the strange vicissitudes of life, 
 we are ever, as it were, moving in a circle. 
 
 Notwithstanding he was now approaching his seventieth 
 year, his health being unbroken and his constitution very 
 robust, my father resolved vigorously to devote himself to 
 the composition of the history of our vernacular Literature. 
 He hesitated for a moment, whether he should at once ad- 
 dress himself to this greater task, or whether he should first 
 complete a Life of Pope, for which he had made great pre- 
 parations, and which had long occupied his thoughts. His 
 review of " Spence's Anecdotes" in the Quarterly, so far back 
 as 1820, which gave rise to the celebrated Pope Controversy, 
 in which Mr. Campbell, Lord Byron, Mr. Bowles, Mr. 
 Eoscoe, and others less eminent broke lances, would prove 
 how well qualified, even at that distant date, the critic was 
 to become the biographer of the great writer, whose literary 
 excellency and moral conduct he, on that occasion, alike vin- 
 dicated. But, unfortunately as it turned out, my father was 
 persuaded to address himself to the weightier task. Hi- 
 therto, in his publications, he had always felt an extreme re- 
 luctance to travel over ground which others had previously 
 visited. He liked to give new matter, and devote himself to 
 detached points, on which he entertained different opinions 
 from those prevalent. Thus his Avorks are generally of a 
 supplementary character, and assume in their readers a certain 
 degree of preliminary knowledge. In the present instance, 
 he was induced to frame his undertaking on a different scale, 
 and to prepare a history which should be complete in itself, 
 and supply the reader with a perfect view of the gradual for- 
 mation of our language and literature. He proposed to effect 
 this in six volumes ; though, I apprehend, he would not have 
 succeeded in fulfilling his intentions within that limit. His
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xxxv 
 
 treatment of the period of Queen Anne would have been very 
 ample, and he would also have accomplished in this general 
 work a purpose which he had also long contemplated, and for 
 which he had made curious and extensive collections, namely, 
 a History of the English Freethinkers. 
 
 But all these great plans were destined to a terrible defeat. 
 Towards the end of the year 1839, still in the full vigour of 
 his health and intellect, he suffered a paralysis of the optic 
 nerve ; and that eye, which for so long a term had kindled 
 with critical interest over the volumes of so many literatures 
 and so many languages, was doomed to pursue its animated 
 course no more. Considering the bitterness of such a cala- 
 mity to one whose powers were otherwise not in the least 
 impaired, he bore on the whole his fate with magnanimity, 
 even with cheerfulness. Unhappily, his previous habits of 
 study and composition rendered the habit of dictation intole- 
 rable, even impossible to him. But with the ass-istance of his 
 daughter, whose intelhgent solicitude he has commemorated 
 in more than one grateful passage, he selected from his ma- 
 nuscripts three volumes, which he wished to have published 
 under the becoming title of " A Fragment of a History of 
 English Literature," but which were eventually given to the 
 public under that of " Amenities of Literature." 
 
 He was also enabled during these last years of physical, 
 though not of moral, gloom, to prepare a new edition of his 
 work on the Life and Times of Charles the First, which had 
 been for some time out of print. He contrived, though slowly, 
 and with great labour, very carefully to revise, and improve, and 
 enrich these volumes. He was wont to say that the best 
 monument to an author was a good edition of his works : it 
 is my purpose that he should possess this memorial. He 
 has been described by a great authority as a writer sui 
 generis ; and indeed had he never written, it appears to me, 
 that there would have been a gap in our libraries, which it 
 would have been difficult to supply. Of him it might be 
 
 c2
 
 xxxvi Life and Writings of the Author. 
 
 added that, for an author, his end was an euthanasia, for on 
 the day before he was seized by that fatal epidemic, of the 
 danger of which, to the last moment, he was unconscious, 
 he was apprised by his publishers, that all his works were 
 out of print, and that their re-publication could no louger 
 be delayed. 
 
 In this notice of the career of my father, I have ventured 
 to draw attention to three circumstances which I thouo-ht 
 would be esteemed interesting ; namely, predisposition, self- 
 formation, and sympathy with his order. There is yet another 
 which completes and crowns the character, — constancy of 
 purpose ; and it is only in considering his course as a whole, 
 that we see how harmonious and consistent have been that 
 life and its labours, which, in a partial and brief view, might 
 be supposed to have been somewhat desultory and frag- 
 mentary. 
 
 On his moral character I shall scarcely presume to dwell. 
 The philosophic sweetness of his disposition, the serenity of 
 his lot, and the elevating nature of his pursuits, combined to 
 enable him to pass through life without an evil act, almost 
 without an evil thought. As the world has always been fond 
 of personal details respecting men who have been celebrated, 
 I will mention that he was fair, with a Bourbon nose, and 
 brown eyes of extraordinary beauty and lustre. He wore a 
 small black velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his 
 shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his boyhood. His 
 extremities were delicate and well-formed, and his leg, at his 
 last hour, as shapely as in his youth, which showed the vigour 
 of his frame. Latterly he had become corpulent. He did 
 not excel in conversation, though in his domestic circle he was 
 garrulous. Everything interested him ; and blind, and eighty- 
 two, he was still as susceptible as a child. One of his last 
 acts was to compose some verses of gay gratitude to his 
 daughter-in-law, who was h^'s I(Ondon correspondent, and to 
 whose lively pen his last years were indebted for constant
 
 Life and Writings of the Author. xxxvii 
 
 amusement. He had by nature a singular volatility which 
 never deserted him. His feelings, though always amiable, 
 were not painfully deep, and amid joy or sorrow, the philosophic 
 vein was ever evident. He more resembled Goldsmith than 
 any man that I can compare him to : in his conversation, his 
 apparent confusion of ideas ending with some felicitous phrase 
 of genius, his naivete, his simplicity not untouched with a 
 dash of sarcasm affecting innocence — one was often reminded 
 of the gifted and interesting friend of Burke and Johnson. 
 There was, however, one trait in which my father did not 
 resemble Groldsmith : he had no vanity. Indeed, one of his 
 few infirmities was rather a deficiency of self-esteem. 
 
 On the whole, I hope — nay I believe — that taking all into 
 consideration — the integrity and completeness of his exist- 
 ence, the fact that, for sixty years, he largely contributed to 
 form the taste, charm the leisure, and direct the studious dis- 
 positions, of the great body of the public, and that his works 
 have extensively and curiously illustrated the literary and 
 political history of our country, it will be conceded, that in his 
 life and labours, he repaid England for the protection and the 
 hospitality which this country accorded to his father a 
 century ago. 
 
 D. 
 
 HUGHENDEN MaNOR, 
 
 Christmas, 1848.
 
 CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. 
 
 BT 
 
 I. DISRAELI.
 
 TO 
 
 FKANCIS DOUCE, ESQ. 
 
 THESE VOLUMES OF SOME LITERARY RESEARCHES 
 
 ABE INSCRIBED; 
 
 AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 A GSATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 A LOVER OF LITERATURE.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Op a work which long has been placed on that shelf which 
 Voltaire has discriminated as la Bibliotlieque du Monde, it 
 is never mistimed for the author to offer the many, who are 
 familiar with its pages, a settled conception of its design. 
 
 The " Curiosities of Literature," commenced fifty years 
 since, have been composed at various periods, and necessarily 
 partake of those successive characters which mark the eras 
 of the intellectual habits of the writer. 
 
 In my youth, the taste for modern literary history was 
 only of recent date. The first elegant scholar who opened 
 a richer vein in the mine of Modern Ltteratuee was 
 Joseph Waeton ; — he had a fragmentary mind, and he 
 was a rambler in discursive criticism. Dr. Johnson was a 
 famished man for anecdotical literature, and sorely com- 
 plained of the penury of our literary history. 
 
 Thomas Warton must have found, in the taste of his 
 brother and the energy of Johnson, his happiest prototypes ; 
 but he had too frequently to wrestle with barren antiqua- 
 rianism, and was lost to us at the gates of that paradise 
 which had hardly opened on him. These were the true 
 founders of that more elegant literature in which France 
 had preceded us. These works created a more pleasing 
 species of erudition : — the age of taste and genius had come ; 
 but the age of philosophical thinking was yet but in its 
 dawn.
 
 xlii Preface. 
 
 Among my earliest literary friends, two distinguished 
 themselves by their anecdotical literature : James Petit 
 Andeews, by his " Anecdotes, Ancient and Modern," and 
 William Sewaed, by his " Anecdotes of Distinguished 
 Persons." These volumes were favourably received, and to 
 such a degree, that a wit of that day, and who is still a wit 
 as well as a poet, considered that we were far gone in our 
 " Anecdotage." 
 
 I was a guest at the banquet, but it seemed to me to 
 consist wholly of confectionery. I conceived the idea of a 
 collection of a different complexion. I was then seeking for 
 instruction in modern literature ; and our language afforded 
 no collection of the res litterarice. In the diversified volumes 
 of the French Ana, I found, among the best, materials to 
 work on. I improved my subjects with as much of our 
 own literature as my limited studies afforded. The volume, 
 without a name, was left to its own unprotected condition. 
 I had not miscalculated the wants of others by my own. 
 
 This fii'st volume had reminded the learned of much which 
 it is grateful to remember, and those who were restricted by 
 theu" classical studies, or lounged only in perishable novelties, 
 were in modern literature but dry wells, for which I had 
 opened clear waters from a fresh spring. The work had 
 effected its design in stimulating the literary curiosity of 
 those, who, with a taste for its tranquil pursuits, are impeded 
 in their acquirement. Imitations were numerous. My 
 reading became more various, and the second volume of 
 " Curiosities of Literature" appeared, with a slight effort 
 at more original investigation. The two brother volumes 
 remained favourites during an interval of twenty years. 
 
 It was as late as 1817 that I sent forth the third volume ; 
 without a word of preface. I had no longer anxieties to
 
 Preface. xliii 
 
 conceal or promises to perform. The subjects chosen were 
 novel, and investigated with more original composition. 
 The motto prefixed to this third volume from the Marquis 
 of Halifax is lost in the republications, but expresses the 
 peculiar delight of all literary researches for those who love 
 them : " The struggling for knowledge hath a pleasure in it 
 like that of wrestling with a fine woman." 
 
 The notice which the third volume obtained, returned me 
 to the dream of my youth. I considered that essay writing, 
 from Addison to the successors of Johnson, which had formed 
 one of the most original features of our national literature, 
 would now fail in its attraction, even if some of those elegant 
 writers themselves had appeared in a form which their own 
 excellence had rendered familiar and deprived of all novelty. 
 I was struck by an observation which Johnson has thrown 
 out. That sage, himself an essayist and who had lived among 
 our essayists, fancied that " mankind may come in time to 
 write all aphoristically ;" and so athirst was that first of our 
 great moral biographers for the details of human life and the 
 incidental characteristics of individuals, that he was desirous 
 of obtaining anecdotes without preparation or connexion. 
 " If a, man," said this lover of literary anecdotes, " is to wait 
 till he weaves anecdotes, we may be long in getting them, 
 and get but few in comparison to what we might get." 
 Another observation, of Lord Bolingbroke, had long dwelt 
 in my mind, that " when examples are pointed out to us, 
 there is a kind of appeal with which we are fiattered made to 
 our senses as well as our understandings." An induction 
 from a variety of particulars seemed to me to combine that 
 delight, which Johnson derived from anecdotes, with that 
 philosophy which Bolingbroke founded on examples ; and on 
 this principle the last three volumes of the " Curiosities of
 
 xliv Preface. 
 
 Literature" were constructed, freed from the formality of 
 dissertation, and the vagueness of the lighter essay. 
 
 These " Curiosities of Literature" have passed through a 
 remarkable ordeal of time ; they have survived a generation 
 of rivals ; they are found wherever books are bought, and 
 they have been repeatedly reprinted at foreign presses, as well 
 as translated. These volumes have imbued our youth with 
 their first tastes for modern literature, have diffused a delight 
 in critical and philosophical speculation among circles of 
 readers who were not accustomed to literary topics ; and 
 finally, they have been honoured by eminent contemporaries, 
 who have long consulted them and set their stamp on the 
 metal. 
 
 A voluminous miscellany, composed at various periods, 
 cannot be exempt from slight inadvertencies. Such a circuit 
 of multifarious knowledge could not be traced were we to 
 measure and count each step by some critical pedometer ; 
 life would be too short to effect any reasonable progress. 
 Every work must be judged by its design, and is to be valued 
 by its result. 
 
 Bradenham House, 
 
 March, 1839.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LIBRARIES 1 
 
 THE BIBLIOMANIA 9 
 
 LITERARY JOURNALS 12 
 
 KECOYERY OP MANUSCRIPTS 17 
 
 SKETCHES OP CRITICISM 24 
 
 THE PERSECUTED LEARNED 27 
 
 POVERTY OF THE LEARNED 29 
 
 IMPRISONMENT OP THE LEARNED 35 
 
 AMUSEMENTS OP THE LEARNED 38 
 
 PORTRAITS OP AUTHORS 42 
 
 DESTRUCTION OF BOOKS 47 
 
 SOME NOTICES OF LOST WORKS 58 
 
 QUODLIBETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS 60 
 
 FAME CONTEMNED 66 
 
 THE SIX FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 66 
 
 IMITATORS 67 
 
 CICERO's PUNS 69 
 
 PREFACES 71 
 
 EARLY PRINTING 73 
 
 ERRATA 78 
 
 PATRONS 82 
 
 POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND ARTISTS, MADE BY ACCIDENT .... 85 
 
 INEQUALITIES OP GENIUS 88 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL STYLE 88 
 
 LEGENDS 89 
 
 THE PORT-ROYAL SOCIETY 94 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF OLD AGE IN NEW STUDIES 98 
 
 SPANISH POETRY 100 
 
 SAINT EVREMOND , 102
 
 xlvi Contents. 
 
 PA5B 
 
 MEN OF GENIUS DEFICIENT IN CONVERSATION 103 
 
 VIDA 105 
 
 THE SCUDEKIES 105 
 
 DE LA ROCHEFOTJCAULT , ... 110 
 
 prior's HANS CARVEL HI 
 
 THE STUDENT IN THE METROPOLIS 112 
 
 THE TALMUD 113 
 
 RABBINICAL STORIES 120 
 
 ON THE CUSTOM OF SALUTING AFTER SNEEZING 126 
 
 BONAVENTURE DE PERIEKS 128 
 
 GROTIUS 129 
 
 NOBLEMEN TURNED CRITICS 131 
 
 LITERARY IMPOSTURES 132 
 
 CARDINAL RICHELIEU 139 
 
 ARISTOTLE AND PLATO 142 
 
 ABELARD AND ELOISA 145 
 
 PHYSIOGNOMY 148 
 
 CHARACTERS DESCRIBED BY MUSICAL NOTES 150 
 
 MILTON 152 
 
 ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS 155 
 
 TRIALS AND PROOFS OF GUILT IN SUPERSTITIOUS AGES 161 
 
 INQUISITION 166 
 
 SINGULARITIES OBSERVED BY VARIOUS NATIONS IN THEIR REPASTS . 170 
 
 MONARCHS 173 
 
 OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS, HIGHNESS, AND EXCELLENCE . . .175 
 
 TITLES OF SOVEREIGNS 178 
 
 ROYAL DIVINITIES 179 
 
 DETHRONED MONARCHS 181 
 
 FEUDAL CUSTOMS 183 
 
 GAMING 187 
 
 THE ARABIC CHRONICLE 191 
 
 METEMPSYCHOSIS 192 
 
 SPANISH ETIQUETTE 194 
 
 THE GOTHS AND HUNS 196 
 
 VICARS OF BRAY 196 
 
 DOUGLAS • 197 
 
 CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY 198
 
 Contents. xlvii 
 
 PAGE 
 SOLOMON AND SHEBA 202 
 
 HELL 203 
 
 THE ABSENT MAN 206 
 
 WAX-WORK 206 
 
 PASQXTIN AND MARFORIO 208 
 
 FEMALE BEAUTY AND ORNAMENTS 211 
 
 MODERN PLATONISM 213 
 
 ANECDOTES OF FASHION 216 
 
 A SENATE OF JESUITS 231 
 
 THE lover's heart 233 
 
 THE HISTORY OF GLOVES 235 
 
 RELICS OF SAINTS 239 
 
 PERPETUAL LAMPS OF THE ANOIENTS 243 
 
 NATURAL PRODUCTIONS RESEMBLING ARTIFICIAL COMPOSITIONS . . . 244 
 
 THE POETICAL GARLAND OF JULIA 247 
 
 TRAGIC ACTORS 248 
 
 JOCULAR PREACHERS 251 
 
 MASTERLY IMITATORS 258 
 
 EDWARD THE FOURTH 261 
 
 ELIZABETH 264 
 
 THE CHINESE LANGUAGE 267 
 
 MEDICAL MUSIC 269 
 
 MINUTE WRITING 275 
 
 NUMERICAL FIGURES 276 
 
 ENGLISH ASTROLOGERS 278 
 
 ALCHYMY 283 
 
 TITLES OP BOOKS 288 
 
 LITERARY FOLLIES 293 
 
 LITERARY CONTROVERSY 308 
 
 LITERARY BLUNDERS 320 
 
 A LITERARY WIFE 327 
 
 DEDICATIONS 337 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC DESCRIPTIVE POEMS 341 
 
 PAMPHLETS 343 
 
 LITTLE BOOKS 347 
 
 A catholic's REFUTATION 349 
 
 THE GOOD ADVICE OF AN OLD LITERARY SINNER 350
 
 xlviii Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 mysteries, moralities, farces, and sotties 352 
 
 love and folly, an ancient morality 362 
 
 religious nouvellettes 363 
 
 "critical sagacity," and "happy conjecture;" ok, bentley's 
 
 MILTON 370 
 
 A JANSENIST DICTIONARY 373 
 
 MANUSCRIPTS AND BOOKS 375 
 
 THE TURKISH SPY 377 
 
 SPENSER, JONSON, AND SHAKSPEARE 379 
 
 BEN JONSON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH 381 
 
 ARIOSTO AND TASSO 386 
 
 BAYLE 391 
 
 CERVANTES 394 
 
 MAGLIABECHI 394 
 
 ABRIDGERS . 397 
 
 PROFESSORS OP PLAGIARISM AND OBSCURITY 400 
 
 LITERARY DUTCH 403 
 
 THE PRODUCTIONS OF THE MIND NOT SEIZABLE BY CREDITORS . . 405 
 
 CRITICS 406 
 
 ANECDOTES OF CENSURED AUTHORS 408 
 
 VIRGINITY 412 
 
 A GLANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY . . . . ^ 413 
 
 POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS , 417 
 
 SCARRON 421 
 
 PETER CORNEILLE 428 
 
 POETS . , 432 
 
 ROMANCES 442 
 
 THE ASTREA . , 451 
 
 POETS LAUREAT 454 
 
 ANGELO POLITIAN 456 
 
 ORIGINAL LETTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH . 460 
 
 ANNE BULLEN 461 
 
 JAMES THE FIRST 462 
 
 GENERAL MONK AND HIS WIFE 468 
 
 PHILIP AND MARY 469
 
 CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. 
 
 LIBRARIES. 
 
 The passion for forming vast collections of books has neces- 
 sarily existed in all periods of human curiosity ; but long it 
 required regal munificence to found a national library. It is 
 only since the art of multiplying the productions of the mind 
 has been discovered, that men of letters themselves have been 
 enabled to rival this imperial and patriotic honour. The 
 taste for books, so rare before the fifteenth century, has 
 gradually become general only within these four hundred 
 years : in that small space of time the public mind of Europe 
 has been created. 
 
 Of Libraries, the following anecdotes seem most inte- 
 resting, as they mark either the affection, or the veneration, 
 which civilised men have ever felt for these perennial reposi- 
 tories of their minds. The first national library founded in 
 Egypt seemed to have been placed under the protection of 
 the divinities, for their statues magnificently adorned this 
 temple, dedicated at once to religion and to literature. It 
 was still further embellished by a well-known inscription, for 
 ever grateful to the votary of literature ; on the front was 
 engraven, — " The nourishment of the soul;" or, according to 
 Diodorus, " The medicine of the mind." 
 
 The Egyptian Ptolemies founded the vast library of Alex- 
 andria, which was afterwards tlie emulative labour of rival 
 monarchs ; the founder infused a soul into the vast body he 
 was creating, by his choice of the librarian, Demetrius 
 Phalereus, whose skilful industry ainassed from all nations 
 their choicest productions. Without such a librarian, a 
 national library would be little more than a literary chaos ; 
 his well exercised memory and critical judgment are its best 
 catalogue. One of the Ptolemies refused supplying the 
 famished Athenians with wheat, until they presented him 
 with the original manuscripts of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 Libraries. 
 
 Euripides ; and in returning copies of these autographs, he 
 allowed them to retain the fifteen talents which he had 
 pledged with them as a princely security. 
 
 When tyrants, or usurpers, have possessed sense as well as 
 courage, they have proved the most ardent patrons of litera- 
 ture ; they know it is their interest to turn aside the public 
 mind from political speculations, and to aifbrd their subjects 
 the inexhaustible occupations of curiosity, and the consoling 
 pleasures of the imagination. Thus Pisistratus is said to 
 have been among the earliest of the Greeks, who projected an 
 immense collection of the works of the learned, and is 
 supposed to have been the collector of the scattered works, 
 which passed under the name of Homer. 
 
 The Romans, after six centuries of gradual dominion, must 
 have possessed the vast and diversified collections of the 
 writings of the nations they conquered : among the most 
 valued spoils of their victories, we know that manuscripts 
 were considered as more precious than vases of gold. Paulus 
 Emilius, after the defeat of Perseus, king of Macedon, 
 brought to Rome a great number which he had amassed in 
 Greece, and which he now distributed among his sons, or pre- 
 sented to the Roman people. Sylla followed his example. 
 After the siege of Athens, he discovered an entire library in 
 the temple of Apollo, which having carried to Rome, he 
 appears to have been the founder of the first Roman public 
 library. After the taking of Carthage, the Roman senate 
 rewarded the family of Regulus with the books found in that 
 city. A library was a national gift, and the most honourable 
 they could bestow. From the intercourse of the Romans 
 with the Greeks, the passion for forming libraries rapidly 
 increased, and individuals began to pride themselves on their 
 private collections. 
 
 Of many illustrious Romans, their magnificent taste in 
 their libraries has been recorded. Asinius Pollio, Crassus, 
 Caesar, and Cicero, have, among others, been celebrated for 
 their literary splendor. Lucullus, whose incredible opulence 
 exhausted itself on more than imperial luxuries, more honour- 
 ably distinguished himself by his vast collections of books, 
 and the happy use he made of them by the liberal access he 
 allowed the learned. " It was a library," says Plutarch, 
 " whose walks, galleries, and cabinets, were open to all visitors ; 
 and the ingenious Greeks, when at leisure, resorted to 
 this abode of the Muses to hold literary conversations, in
 
 Libraries. 3 
 
 which LucuUus himself loved to join." This lihraiy 
 enlarged by others, Julius Csesar once proposed to open 
 for the public, having chosen the erudite Varro for its 
 librarian ; but the daggers of Brutus and his party prevented 
 the meditated projects of Csesar. In this museum, Cicero 
 frequently pursued his studies, dui'ing the time his friend 
 Faustus had tlie charge of it ; which he describes to Atticus 
 in his 4th Book, Epist. 9. Amidst his ])ublic occupations 
 and his private studies, either of them sufficient to have im- 
 mortalised one man, we are astonished at the minute atten- 
 tion Cicero paid to the formation of his libraries and his 
 cabinets of antiquities. 
 
 The emperors were ambitious, at length, to give their names 
 to the libraries they founded ; they did not consider the pur- 
 ple as their chief ornament. Augustus was himself an author ; 
 and to one of those sumptuous buildings, called Thermce, 
 ornamented with porticos, galleries, and statues, with shady 
 walks, and refreshing baths, testified his love of literature by 
 adding a magnificent library. One of these libraries he fondly 
 called by the name of his sister Octavia ; and the other, the 
 temple of Apollo, became the haunt of the poets, as Horace, 
 Juvenal, and Persius have commemorated. The successors 
 of Augustus imitated his example, and even Tiberius had an 
 imperial library, chiefly consisting of works concerning the 
 empire and the acts of its sovereigns. These Trajan aug- 
 mented by the Ulpian library, denominated from his family 
 name. In a word, we have accounts of the rich ornaments 
 the ancients bestowed on their libraries ; of their floors paved 
 with marble, their walls covered with glass and ivory, and 
 their shelves and desks of ebony and cedar. 
 
 The first public library in Italy was founded by a person of 
 no considerable fortune : his credit, his frugality, and forti- 
 tude, were indeed equal to a treasury. Nicholas Niccoli, the 
 son of a merchant, after the death of his father relinquished 
 the beaten roads of gain, and devoted his soul to study, and 
 his fortune to assist students. At his death, he left his 
 library to the public, but his debts exceeding his effects, the 
 princely generosity of Cosmo de' Medici realised the intention 
 of its former possessor, and afterwards enriched it by the 
 addition of an apartment, in which he placed the Greek, 
 Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldaic, and Indian MSS. The intrepid 
 spirit of Nicholas V. laid the foundations of the Vatican ; tlie 
 affection of Cardinal Bessarion for his countrv first gave 
 
 b2
 
 4 Libraries. 
 
 Venice the rudiments of a public library ; and to Sir T. Bod- 
 ley we owe the invaluable one of Oxford. Sir Robert Cotton, 
 Sir Hans Sloane, Dr. Birch, Mr. Cracherode, Mr. Douce, and 
 others of this race of lovers of books, have all contributed to 
 form these literary treasures, which our nation owe to the 
 enthusiasm of individuals, who have consecrated their fortunes 
 and their days to this great public object ; or, which in the 
 result produces the same public good, the collections of snch 
 men have been frequently purchased on their deaths, by 
 government, and thus have been preserved entire in our 
 national collections.* 
 
 LiTERATDRE, like virtue, is often its own reward, and the 
 enthusiasm some experience in the permanent enjoyments of 
 a vast library has far outweighed the neglect or the calumny 
 of the world, which some of its votaries have received. From 
 the time that Cicero poured forth his feelings in his oration 
 for the poet Archias, innumerable are the testimonies of men of 
 letters of the jdeasurable delirium of their researches. 
 Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and Chancellor of Eng- 
 land so early as 1341, perhaps raised the first private library 
 in our country. He purchased thirty or forty volumes of 
 the Abbot of St. Albans for fifty pounds' weight of silver. 
 He was so enamoured of his large collection, that he expressly 
 composed a treatise on his love of books, under the title of 
 I'hilohihJion ; and which has been recently translated.f 
 
 He who passes much of his time amid such vast resources, 
 and does not aspire to make some small addition to his 
 library, were it only by a critical catalogue, must indeed be 
 
 * The Cottonian collection is tlie richest English historic library we 
 possess, and is now located in the British Museum, having been purchased 
 for the use of the nation by Parliament in 1707, at a cost of 4500Z. The 
 collection of Sir Hans Sloane was added thereto in 1753, for the sum of 
 20,000Z. Dr. Birch and ]\Ir. Cracherode bequeathed their most valuable 
 collections to the British Aluseum. Mr. Douce is the only collector in the 
 list above who bequeathed his curious gatherings elsewhere. He was an 
 officer of the JTuseum for many years, but preferred to leave his treasures 
 to the Bodleian Library, where they are preserved intact, according to his 
 earnest wish, a wish he feared might not be gratified in the national 
 building. It is to this scholar and friend, the author of these volumes has 
 dedicated them, as a lasting memorial of an esteem which endured during 
 the life of each. 
 
 + By Mr. luglis, in 1832. This famous bishop is said to have possessed 
 more books than all the others in England put together. Like Magliabechi, 
 he lived among them, and those who visited him had to dispense with cere- 
 mony and step over the volumes that always strewed his floor.
 
 Libraries. 5 
 
 not more animated than a leaden Mercmy. He must be as 
 indolent as that animal called the Sloth, who perishes on the 
 tree he climbs, after he has eaten all its leaves. 
 
 JRantzau, the founder of the great library at Copenhagen, 
 whose days were dissolved in the pleasures of reading, dis- 
 covers his taste and ardour in the followinir eleijant eifusion: — 
 
 Salvete aureoli mei libelli, 
 Me£e delicim, mei lepores ! 
 Quam vos Sfepe oculis juvat videre, 
 Et tritos manibus tenere uostris ! 
 Tot vos eximii, tot eruditi, 
 Prisci lumina steculi et recentis, 
 Cont'ecere viri, suasque vobis 
 Ausi credere lucubrationes : 
 Et sperare decus perenne scriptis ; 
 !Neque lisec irrita spes fefellit illos. 
 
 IMITATED. 
 
 Golden volumes ! richest treasures ! 
 Objects of delicious pleasures ! 
 You my eyes rejoicing please, 
 You my hands in rapture seize ! 
 Brilliant wits, and musing sages, 
 Liglits who beamed through many ages, 
 Left to your conscious leaves their story, 
 And dared to trust you with their glory; 
 And now their hope of fame achieved, 
 Dear volumes ! you have not deceived ! 
 
 This passion for the enjoyment of hoolcs has occasioned their 
 lovers embellishing their outsides with costly ornaments;* a 
 
 * The earliest decorated books were the Consular Diptycha, ivory book- 
 covers richly sculptured in relief, and destined to contain upon their tablets 
 the Fasti Consulares, the list ending with the name of the new consul, 
 whose property they happened to be. Such as have descended to our own 
 times appear to be works of the lower empire. They were generally 
 decorated with full length figures of the consul and attendants, superin- 
 tending the sports of the circus, or conjoined with portraits of the reigning 
 prince and emblematic figures. The Greek Church adopted the style for 
 the covers of the sacred volume, and ancient clerical librai'ies formerly pos- 
 sessed many such specimens of early bookbinding; the covers being richly 
 sculptured in ivory, with bas-reliefs designed from Scripture history. Sucli 
 ivories were sometimes placed in the centre of the covers, and framed in 
 an ornamental metal-work studded with precious stones and engraved 
 cameos. The barbaric magnificence of these volumes has never been sur- 
 passed; the era of Charlemagne was the culmination of their glory. One 
 such volume, presented by that sovereign to the Cathedral at Treves, is 
 enriched with Roman ivories and decorative gems. The value of manu- 
 scripts in the middle ages, suggested costly bindings for books that consumed 
 the labour of lives to copy, and decorate with ornamental letters, or
 
 6 Libraries. 
 
 fancy which ostentation may have abused; but when these 
 volumes belong to the real man of letters, the most fanciful bind- 
 ings are often the emblems of his taste and feelings. The great 
 Thuanus procured the finest copies for his library, and his 
 volumes are still eagerlj^ purchased, bearing his autograph on 
 the last page. A celebrated amateur was GroUier ; the Muses 
 themselves could not more ingeniously have ornamented their 
 favourite works. I have seen several in the libraries of curious 
 collectors. They are gilded and stamped with peculiar neat- 
 ness ; the compartments on the binding are drawn, and painted, 
 with subjects analogous to the works themselves ; and they 
 are further adorned by that amiable inscription, Jo. Grollierii 
 et amicorum ! — purporting that these literary treasures were 
 collected for himself and for his friends. 
 
 The family of the Fuggers had long felt an hereditary pas- 
 sion for the accumulation of literary treasures : and their por- 
 traits, with others in their pictui-e gallery, form a curious 
 quarto volume of 127 portraits, rare even in Germany, entitled 
 " Fuggerorum Pinacotheea."* Wolfius, who daily haunted 
 their celebrated library, pours out his gratitude in some Greek 
 verses, and describes this bibliotheque as a literary heaven, 
 furnished with as many books as there were stars in the fir- 
 mament ; or as a literary garden, in which he passed entire 
 days in gathering fruit and flowers, delighting and instructing 
 himself by perpetual occupation. 
 
 In 1364, the royal library of France did not exceed twenty 
 volumes. Shortly after, Charles V. increased it to 900, which, 
 by the fate of war, as much at least as by that of money, the 
 Duke of Bedford afterwards purchased and transported to 
 
 illustrative paintings. In the fifteenth century covers of leather embossed 
 with storied ornament were in use ; ladies also frequently employed their 
 needles to construct, with threads of gold and silver, on grounds of coloured 
 silk, the cover of a favourite volume. In the British Museum one is pre- 
 served of a later date — the work of our Queen Elizabeth. In the sixteenth 
 century small ornaments, capable of being conjoined into a variety of elabo- 
 rate patterns, were first used for stamping the covers with gilding ; the 
 leather was stained of various tints, and a beauty imparted to volumes 
 which has not been surpassed by the most skilful modern workmen. 
 
 * The Fuggers were a rich family of merchants, residing at Augsburg, 
 carrying on trade with both the Indies, and from thence over Europe. 
 They were ennobled by the Emperor Maximilian I. Their wealth often 
 maintained the armies of Charles V. ; and when Anthony Fugger received 
 that sovereign at his house at Augsburg he is said, as a part of the enter- 
 tainment, to have consumed in a fire of fragrant woods the bond of the 
 emperor who condescended to become his guest.
 
 Libraries. 7 
 
 London, where libraries were smaller than on the continent, 
 about 1440. It is a circumstance worthy observation, that 
 the French sovereign, Charles V. surnamed tiie Wise, ordered 
 that thirty portable lights, with a silver lamp suspended from 
 the centre, should be illuminated at night, that students might 
 not find their pursuits interrupted at any hour. Many among 
 us, at this moment, whose professional avocations admit not of 
 morning studies, find that tlie resources of a public library are 
 not accessible to them, from the omission of the regulation of the 
 zealous Charles V. of France. An objection to night-studies 
 in public libraries is the danger of fire, and in our own British 
 Museum not a light is permitted to be carried about on any 
 pretence whatever. The liistory of the " Bibliotheque du Roi" 
 is a curious incident in literature ; and the progress of the 
 human mind and public opinion might be traced by its gra- 
 dual accessions, noting tlie changeable qualities of its literary 
 stores chiefly from theology, law, and medicine, to philosophy 
 and elegant literature. It was first under Louis XIV. that the 
 productions of the art of engraving were there collected and 
 arranged ; the great minister Colbert purchased the extensive 
 collections of the Abbe de Marolles, who may be ranked 
 among the fathers of our print-collectors. Two hundred and 
 sixty -four ample portfolios laid the foundations , and the very 
 catalogues of his collections, printed by Marolles himself, are 
 rare and high-priced. Our own national print gallery is 
 growing from its infant establishment. 
 
 Mr. Hallam has observed, that in 1440, England had made 
 comparatively but little progress in learning — and Germany 
 was probably still less advanced. However, in Germany, 
 Trithemius, the celebrated abbot of Spanheim, who died in 
 151(3, had amassed about two thousand manuscripts ; a lite- 
 rary treasure which excited such general attention, that 
 princes and eminent men travelled to visit Trithemius and his 
 library. About this time, six or eight hundred volumes 
 formed a royal collection, and their cost could only be fur- 
 nished by a prince. This was indeed a great advancement in 
 libraries, for at the beginning of the fourteenth century the 
 library of Louis IX. contained only four classical authors ; 
 and that of Oxford, in 1300, consisted of '" a few tracts kept 
 in chests." 
 
 The pleasures of study are classed by Burton among those 
 exercises or recreations of the mind which pass within doors. 
 Looking about this " world of books," he exclaims, " I could
 
 8 Libraries. 
 
 even live and die with such meditations, and take more delight 
 and true content of mind in them than in all thy wealth and 
 sport ! There is a sweetness, which, as Circe's cup, bewitcheth 
 a student : he cannot leave otT, as well may witness those 
 many laborious hours, days, and nights, spent in their volu- 
 minous treatises. So sweet is the delight of study. The 
 last day is prior is discipulus. Heinsius was mewed up in 
 the library of Leyden all the year long, and that which, to 
 my thinking, should have bred a loathing, caused in him a 
 greater liking. ' 1 no sooner,' saith he, ' come into the library, 
 but I bolt the door to me, excluding Lust, Ambition, Avarice, 
 and all such vices, whose nurse is Idleness, the mother of 
 Ignorance and Melancholy. In the very lap of eternity, 
 amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty 
 a spirit, and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and 
 rich men, that know not this happiness.' " Such is the in- 
 cense of a votary who scatters it on the altar less for the 
 ceremony than from the devotion.* 
 
 There is, however, an intemperance in study, incompatible 
 often with our social or more active duties. The illustrious 
 Grotius exposed himself to the reproaches of some of his con- 
 temporaries for having too warmly pursued his studies, to the 
 detriment of his ])ublic station. It was the boast of Cicero 
 that his philosophical studies had never interfered with the 
 services he owed the republic, and that he had only dedicated 
 to them the hours which others give to their walks, their 
 repasts, and their pleasures. Looking on his voluminous 
 labours, we are surprised at this observation ; — how honour- 
 able is it to him, that his various philosophical works bear 
 the titles of the different villas he possessed, which indicates 
 that they were composed in these respective retirements! 
 Cicero must have been an early riser; and practised that 
 magic art in the employment of time, which multipUes our 
 days. 
 
 _ * A living poet thus enthusiastically describes the charms of a student's 
 life among his books — "he has his Home, his Florence, his whole glowing 
 Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins 
 of an antique world, and the glories of a modern one." — Longfellow's 
 Hyperion,
 
 THE BIBLIOMANIA. 
 
 The preceding article is honourable to literature, yet even 
 a passion for collecting books is not always a passion for 
 literature. 
 
 The Bibliomania, or the collecting an enormous heap of 
 books without intelligent curiosity, has, since libraries have 
 existed, infected weak minds, wlio imagine that they them- 
 selves acquire knowledge when they keep it on their shelves. 
 Their motley libraries have been called the madhouses of the 
 human mind ; and again, the tomb of hooks, when the possessor 
 will not communicate them, and coffins them up in the cases 
 of his library. It was facetiously observed, these collections 
 are not without a Lock on the Human Undersfandinr/.* 
 
 The Bibliomania never raged more violently than in our 
 own times. It is fortunate that literature is in no ways 
 injured by the follies of collectors, since though they preserve 
 the worthless, they necessarily protect the good.f 
 
 Some collectors place all their fame on the view of a 
 splendid library, where volumes, arrayed in all the pomp of 
 lettering, silk linings, triple gold bands, and tinted leather, 
 are locked up in wire cases, and secured from tlie vulgar hands 
 of the mere reader, dazzling our eyes like eastern beauties 
 peering through their jalousies ! 
 
 * An allusion and pun which occasioned the French translator of the 
 present work an unlucky blunder : puzzled, no doubt, by my facctioudij, 
 he translates "mettant, comnie on Fa trcs-jiidicicusemait fait observer, 
 I'entendement humain sous la clef." The great work and the great author 
 alluded to, having quite escaped him ! 
 
 + The earliest satire on the mere book-collector is to be found in Barclay's 
 translation of Brandt's "Ship of Fools," first printed by Wynkyn de 
 Worde, in 1508. He thus announces his true position : — 
 I am the first foul of the whole navie 
 To keepe the poupe, the helme, and eke the sayle : 
 For this is my miude, this one pleasure have I, 
 Of bookes to have greate plentie and apparayle. 
 Still I am busy bookes assembling, 
 For to have plenty it is a pleasaunt thing 
 In my conceyt, and to have them aye in hande : 
 But wliat they meane do I not understaude. 
 But yet I have them in great reverence 
 And honoure, saving them from filth and ordure, 
 By often brushing and much diligence ; 
 Full goodly bound in pleasaunt coverture, 
 Of damas, satten, or else of velvet pure : 
 I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost, 
 For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.
 
 10 The Bibliomania. 
 
 La. Bbittere has touched on this mania with humour : — 
 " Of such a collector, as soon as I enter his house, I am ready 
 to faint on the staircase, from a strong smell of Morocco 
 leather. In vain he shows me fine editions, gold leaves, 
 Etruscan bindings, and naming them one after another, as if 
 he were showing a gallery of pictures ! a gallery, by-the-bye, 
 which he seldom traverses when alone, for he rarely reads ; 
 hut me he offers to conduct through it ! I thank him for his 
 politeness, and as little as himself care to visit the tan-house, 
 which he calls his library." 
 
 LuciAX has composed a biting invective against an igno- 
 rant possessor of a vast libi'ary, like him, who in the present 
 day, after turning over the pages of an old book, chiefly 
 admires the date. Lucian compares him to a pilot, who was 
 never taught the science of navigation ; to a rider who cannot 
 keep his seat on a spirited horse ; to a man who, not having 
 the use of his feet, would conceal the defect by wearing 
 embroidered shoes ; but, alas ! he cannot stand in them ! He 
 ludicrously compares him to Thersites w^earing the armour of 
 Achilles, tottering at every step ; leering with his little eyes 
 under his enormous helmet, and his hunchback raising the 
 cuirass above his shoulders. Why do you buy so many books ? 
 You have no hair, and you purchase a comb ; you are blind, 
 and you will have a grand mirror ; you are deaf, and you will 
 have fine musical instruments ! Your costly bindings are 
 only a source of vexation, and you are continually discharging 
 your librarians for not preserving them from the silent inva- 
 sion of the worms, and the nibbling triumphs of the rats ! 
 
 Such collectors will contemptuously smile at the collection 
 of the amiable Melancthon. He possessed in his library 
 only four authors, — Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, and Ptolemy the 
 geographer. 
 
 Ancillon was a great collector of curious books, and dexte- 
 rously defended himself when accused of the Bibliomania. 
 He gave a good reason for buying the most elegant editions ; 
 which he did not consider merely as a literary luxury.* The 
 
 * David Ancillon was born at Metz in 1617. From his earliest years 
 his devotion to study was so great as to call for the interposition of his 
 father, to prevent his health being seriously aifected by it ; .he was de- 
 scribed as " intemperately studious." The Jesuits of Metz gave him the 
 free range of their college library ; but his studies led him to Protestantism, 
 and in 1633 he removed to Geneva, and devoted himself to the duties of 
 the Reformed Church. Throughout an honourable life he retained unabated 
 his love of books ; and having a fortune by marriage, he gratified himself in
 
 The Bibliomania. 11 
 
 less tlie eyes are fatigued in reading a work, tlie more liberty 
 the mind feels to judge of it : and as we perceive more clearly 
 the excellences and defects of a printed book than when in 
 MS. ; so we see them more plainly in good paper and clear 
 type, than when the impression and paper are both bad. He 
 always purchased first editions, and never waited for second 
 ones ; though it is the opinion of some that a first edition is 
 only to be considered as an imperfect essaj^ which the author 
 proposes to finish after he has tried the sentiments of the 
 literary world. Bayle approves of Ancillon's plan. Those 
 who wait for a book till it is reprinted, show plainly that they 
 prefer the saving of a pistole to the acquisition of knowledge. 
 With one of these persons, who waited for a second edition, 
 which never appeared, a literary man argued, that it was 
 better to have two editions of a book rather than to deprive 
 himself of the advantage which the reading of the first might 
 procure him. It has frequently happened, besides, that in 
 second editions, the author omits, as well as adds, or makes 
 alterations from prudential reasons ; the displeasing truths 
 which he corrects, as he might call them, are so many losses 
 incurred by Truth itself There is an advantage in comparing 
 the first and subsequent editions ; among other things, we 
 feel great satisfaction in tracing the variations of a work after 
 its revision. There are also other secrets, well known to the 
 intelligent curious, who are versed in affturs relating to books. 
 Many first editions are not to be pm-cliased for the treble 
 value of later ones. The collector we have noticed frequentl}' 
 said, as is related of Virgil, "'I collect gold from Ennius's 
 dung." I find, in some neglected authors, particular things, 
 not elsewhere to be found. He read many of these, but not 
 with equal attention — " Sicut canis ad Nilum, hihens et 
 fugiens ;'' like a dog at the Nile, drinking and running. 
 
 Fortunate are those who only consider a book for the 
 utility and pleasure they may derive from its possession. 
 Students, who know much, and still thirst to know more, 
 may require this vast sea of books ; yet in that sea they may 
 suffer many shipwrecks. 
 
 constantly collecting them, so that he ultimately possessed one of the finest 
 private libraries in France. For very many years his life passed peaceably 
 and happily amid his books and his duties, when the revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes drove him from his country. His noble library was scat- 
 tered at waste-paper prices, "thus in a single day was destroyed the 
 labour, care, and expense of forty-four years." He died seven years after- 
 wards at Brandenburff.
 
 12 Literary Journals. 
 
 Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents 
 besides the damp, the worms, and the rats ; one not less 
 common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the 
 piirloiners ! 
 
 LITERARY JOURNALS. 
 
 WiiEK writers were not numerous, and readers rare, the un- 
 successful author fell insensibly into oblivion ; he dissolved 
 away in his own weakness. If he committed the private 
 folly of printing what no one would purchase, he was not 
 arraigned at the public tribunal — and the awful terrors of 
 his day of judgment consisted only in the retributions of his 
 publisher's final accounts. At length, a taste for literature 
 spread through the body of the people ; vanity induced the 
 inexperienced and the ignorant to aspire to literary honours. 
 To oppose these forcible entries into the haunts of the 
 Muses, periodical criticism brandished its formidable weapon ; 
 and the fall of many, taught some of our greatest geniuses to 
 rise. Multifarious writings produced multifarious strictures ; 
 and public criticism reached to such perfection, that taste was 
 generally diffused, enlightening those whose occupations had 
 otherwise never permitted them to judge of literary compo- 
 sitions. 
 
 The invention of Retiews, in the form which they have 
 at length gradually assumed, could not have existed but in 
 the most polished ages of literature : for without a constant 
 supply of authors, and a refined spirit of criticism, they could 
 not excite a perpetual interest among the lovers of literature. 
 These publications were long the chronicles of taste and 
 science, presenting the existing state of the public mind, 
 while they formed a ready resource for those idle hours, 
 which men of letters would not pass idly. 
 
 Their multiplicity has undoubtedly produced much evil ; 
 puerile critics and venal drudges manufacture reviews ; hence 
 that shameful discordance of opinion, which is the scorn and 
 scandal of criticism. Passions hostile to the peaceful truths 
 of literature have likewise made tremendous inroads in the 
 republic, and every literary virtue has been lost ! In " Cala- 
 mities of Authors" I have given the history of a literai'y 
 conspiracy, conducted by a solitary critic, Gilbert Stuaet, 
 against the historian Henry. 
 
 These works may disgust by vapid panegyric, or gross in-
 
 Literary Journals. 13 
 
 vectlve ; weary bj uniform dulness, or tantalise by superficial 
 knowledge. Sometimes merely written to catch the public 
 attention, a malignity is indulged against authors, to season 
 the caustic leaves. A reviewer has admired those works in 
 private, which he has condemned in his official capacity. 
 But good sense, good temper, and good taste, will ever form 
 an estimable journalist, who will inspire confidence, and give 
 stability to his decisions. 
 
 To the lovers of literature these volumes, when they have 
 outlived their year, are not unimportant. They constitute a 
 great portion of literary history, and are indeed the annals of 
 the republic. 
 
 To our own reviews, we must add the old foreign journals, 
 which are perhaps even more valuable to the man of letters. 
 Of these the variety is considerable ; and many of their 
 writers are now known. They delight our curiosity by 
 opening new views, and light up in observing minds many 
 projects of works, wanted in our own literature. Gibbok 
 feasted on them ; and while he turned them over with con- 
 stant pleasure, derived accurate notions of works, which no 
 student could himself have verified ; of many works a notion 
 is sufficient. 
 
 The origin of literary journals was the happy project of 
 Denis de Sallo, a counsellor in the parliament of Paris. 
 In 16o5 appeared his Journal ties Sgavans. He published his 
 essay in the name of the Sieur de Hedouville, his footman ! 
 Was this a mere stroke of humour, or designed to insinuate 
 that the freedom of criticism could only be allowed to his 
 lacquey ? The work, however, met with so favourable a re- 
 ception, that Sallo had the satisfaction of seeing it, the fol- 
 lowing year, imitated throughout Europe, and his Journal, 
 at the same time, translated into various lansruaares. But as 
 most authors lay themselves open to an acute critic, the ani- 
 madversions of Sallo were given with such asperity of cri- 
 ticism, and such malignity of wit, that this new journal 
 excited loud murmurs, and the most heart-movina: com- 
 plaints. The learned had their plagiarisms detected, and the 
 wit had his claims disputed. Sarasin called the gazettes of 
 this new Aristarchus, Hebdomadary Flams ! BiUevesees 
 hehdomidaires ! and Menage having published a law book, 
 which Sallo had treated with severe raillery, he entered into 
 a long argument to prove, according to Justinian, that a 
 lawyer is not allowed to defame another lawyer, «&c. : Sena-
 
 14 Literary Journals. 
 
 tori maledicere non licet, remaledieere jus fasque est. Others 
 loudly declaimed against this new species of imperial 
 tyranny, and this attempt to regulate the puhlie opinion by 
 that of an individual. Sallo, after having published only his 
 third volume, felt the irritated wasps of literature thronging 
 so thick about him, that he very gladly abdicated the throne 
 of criticism. The journal is said to have suffered a short in- 
 terruption by a remonstrance from the nuncio of the pope, for 
 the energy with which Sallo had defended the liberties of 
 the Galilean church. 
 
 Intimidated by the fate of Sallo, his successor, the Abbe 
 Gallois, flourished in a milder reign. He contented himself 
 •with giving the titles of books, accompanied with extracts ; 
 and he was more useful than interesting. The public, who 
 had been so much amused by the raillery and severity of the 
 founder of this dynasty of new critics, now murmured at the 
 want of that salt and acidity by which they had relished the 
 fugitive collation. They were not satisfied with having the 
 most beautiful, or the most curious parts of a new work 
 brought together ; they wished for the unreasonable enter- 
 tainment of railing and raillery. At length another objection 
 was conjured up against the review; mathematicians com- 
 plained that they were neglected to make_ room for experi- 
 ments in natural philosophy ; the historian sickened over 
 works of natural history; the antiquaries would have no- 
 thing but discoveries of MSS. or fragments of antiquity. 
 Medical works were called for by one party, and reprobated 
 by another. In a word, each reader wished only to have ac- 
 counts of books, which were interesting to his profession or 
 his taste. But a review is a work presented to the public at 
 large, and written for more than one country. In spite of 
 allthese difficulties, this work was carried to a vast extent. 
 An index to the Journal des S^avans has been arranged on a 
 critical plan, occupying ten volumes in quarto, which may be 
 considered as a most useful instrument to obtain the science 
 and literature of the entire century. 
 
 The next celebrated reviewer is'BATLE, who undertook, in 
 1684, his Nouvelles de la Eepublique des Lettres. He pos- 
 sessed the art, acquired by habit, of reading a book by his 
 fingers, as it has been happily expressed ; and of comprising, 
 in concise extracts, a just notion of a book, without the ad- 
 dition of irrelevant matter. Lively, neat, and full of that 
 attic salt which gives a relish to the di-iest disquisitions, for
 
 Literary Journals. 15 
 
 the first time the ladies and all the hcau-monde took an inte- 
 rest i-n the labours of the critic. He wreathed the rod of 
 criticism with roses. Yet even Bayle, who declared himself 
 to be a reporter, and not a judge, Bayle, the discreet sceptic, 
 coidd not long satisfy his readei's. His panegyric was 
 thought somewhat prodigal ; his fluency of style somewhat 
 too familiar ; and others affected not to relish his gaiety. In 
 his latter volumes, to still the clamour, he assumed the cold 
 sobriety of an historian : and has bequeatlied no mean legacy 
 to the literar}" world, in thirty-six small volumes of criticism, 
 closed in 1687. These were continued by Bernard, with in- 
 ferior skill ; and by Basnage more successfully, in his His- 
 toire des Ouvrarjes des Sqavans. 
 
 The contemporary and the antagcniist of Bayle was Le 
 Clerc. His firm industry has produced three Bihliotheques 
 — JJniverselle et Historique, Choisie, and Ancienne et Mo- 
 derne ; forming in all eighty-two volumes, which, complete, 
 bear a high price. Inferior to Bayle in the more pleasing 
 talents, he is perhaps sujjerior in erudition, and shows great 
 skill in analysis : but his hand drops no flowers ! Gibbois' 
 resorted to Le Clerc's volumes at his leisure, " as an inex- 
 haustible source of amusement and instruction." Apostolo 
 Zeno's Giornale dei Litterati d' Italia, from 1710 to 1733, is 
 valuable. 
 
 Beausobbe and L'Enfakt, two learned Protestants, 
 wrote a Bibliotheque Germanique, from 1720 to 1740, in 50 
 volumes. Our own literature is interested by the " Biblio- 
 theqiie Brifannique,'^ written by some literary Frenchmen, 
 noticed by La Croze, in his " Voyage Litteraire," who de- 
 signates the writers in this most tantalising manner : " Les 
 auteurs sont gens de merite, et qui entendent tons j^arfaite- 
 ment I'Anglois ; Messrs. S. B., le M. D., et le savant Mr. 
 D." Posterity has been partially let into the secret : De 
 Missy was one of the contributors, and Warburton conmui- 
 nicated his project of an edition of Velleius Paterculus. This 
 useful account of English books begins in 1733, and closes in 
 1747, Hague, 23 vols. : to this we must add the Journal 
 Brifaiiniqiie, in 18 vols., by Dr. Maty, a foreign physician 
 residing in London ; this Joiu'nal exhibits a view of the state 
 of English literature from 1750 to 1755. Gibbon bestows 
 a high character on the journalist, who sometimes " aspires 
 to the character of a poet and a philosopher ; one of the last 
 disciples of the school of Eontenelle."
 
 16 Literary Journals. 
 
 Matt's son produced here a review known to the curious ; 
 his style and decisions often discover haste and heat, with 
 some striking observations : alluding to his father, in his 
 motto. Maty applies Virgil's description of the young Asca- 
 nius, " Sequitur patrem non passibus sequis." He sa3's he 
 only holds a monthly conversation with the public. His ob- 
 stinate resolution of carrying on this review without an 
 associate, has shown its folly and its danger ; for a fatal ill- 
 ness produced a cessation, at once, of his periodical labours 
 and his life. 
 
 Other reviews, are the Ilemoires de Trevoucc, written by 
 the Jesuits. Their caustic censure and vivacity of style 
 made them redoubtable in their day ; they did not even spare 
 their brothers. The Journal Litteraire, printed at the 
 Hague, was chiefly composed by Prosper Marchand, Sal- 
 lengre, and Van Effen, who were then young writers. This 
 list ma}'' be augmented by other journals, which sometimes 
 merit preservation in the history of modern literature. 
 
 Our early English journals notice only a few publications, 
 with little acumen. Of these, the " Memoirs of Literature," 
 and the " Present State of the Eepublic of Letters," are the 
 best. The Monthly Eeview, the venerable (now the de- 
 ceased) mother of our journals, commenced in 1749. 
 
 It is impossible to form a literary journal in a manner such 
 as might be wished ; it must be the work of many, of different 
 tempers and talents. An individual, however versatile and 
 extensive his genius, would soon be exhausted. Such a regular 
 labour occasioned Bayle a dangerous illness, and Maty fell a 
 victim to his Review. A prospect always extending as we 
 proceed, the frequent novelty of the matter, the pride of 
 considering one's self as the arbiter of literature, animate a 
 journalist at the commencement of his career ; but the literary 
 Hercules becomes fatigued ; and to supply his craving pages 
 he gives copious extracts, till the journal becomes tedious, or 
 fails in variety. The Abbe Gallois was frequently diverted 
 from continuing his journal, and Fontenelle remarks, that this 
 occupation was too restrictive for a mind so extensive as his ; 
 the Abbe could not resist the charms of revelling in a new 
 work, and gratifying any sudden curiosity which seized him ; 
 this interrupted perpetually the regularity which the pubhc 
 expects from a journalist. 
 
 The character of a perfect journalist would be only an ideal 
 portrait; there are, however, some acquirements which are
 
 Recovery of Manuscripts. 1 7 
 
 indispensable. He must be tolerably acquainted with the 
 subjects he treats on ; no common acquirement ! He must 
 possess tbe literary histori/ of his own times : a science whicli, 
 Fontenelle observes, is almost distinct fi-om any other. It is 
 the result of an active curiosity, which takes a lively interest 
 in the tastes and pursuits of the age, while it saves" the jour- 
 nalist from some ridiculous blunders. We often see the mind 
 of a reviewer half a century remote from the work reviewed. 
 A fine feeling of the various manners of writers, with a style 
 adapted to fix the attention of the indolent, and to win the 
 untractable, should be his study ; but candour is the brightest 
 gem of criticism! He ought not to throw everything into 
 the crucible, nor should he suffer the whole to pass as if he 
 trembled to touch it. Lampoons and satires in time will lose 
 their effect, as well as panegyrics. He must learn to resist 
 the seductions of his own pen : the pretension of composing a 
 treatise on the subject, rather than on the book he criticises — 
 proud of insinuating that he gives, in a dozen pages, what the 
 author himself has not been able to perform in his volumes. 
 Should he gain confidence by a popular delusion, and by un- 
 worthy conduct, he may chance to be mortified by the 
 pardon or by the chastisement of insulted genius. The 
 most noble criticism is that in which the critic is not the 
 antagonist so much as the rival of the author. 
 
 RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 OuE ancient classics had a very narrow escape from total 
 annihilation. Many have perished : many are but fragments ; 
 and chance, blind arbiter of the works of genius, has left us 
 some, not of the highest value ; which, however, have proved 
 very useful, as a test to show the pedantry of those who adore 
 antiquity not from true feeling, but from traditional prejudice. 
 
 We lost a great number of ancient authors by the conquest 
 of Egypt by the Saracens, which deprived Europe of the use of 
 the papyrus. They could find no substitute, and knew no other 
 expedient but writing on parchment, which became every day 
 more scarce and costly. Ignorance and barbarism unfortunately 
 seized on Roman manuscripts, and industriously defaced pages 
 once imagined to have been immortal ! The most elegant 
 compositions of classic Rome were converted into the psalms 
 of a breviary, or the prayers of a missal. Livy and Tacitus 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 18 Recovery of Manuscripts. 
 
 "hide their diminished heads" to preserve the legend of a saint, 
 and immortal truths were converted into clumsy fictions. It 
 happened that the most voluminous authors were the greatest 
 sufferers; these were preferred, because their volume being the 
 greatest, most profitably repaid their destroying industry, and 
 furnished ampler scope for future transcription. A Livy or a 
 Diodorus was preferred to the smaller works of Cicero or 
 Horace ; and it is to this circumstance that Juvenal, Persius, 
 and Martial have come down to us entire, rather probably than 
 to these pious personages preferring their obscenities, as 
 some have accused them. At Rome, a part of a book of Livy 
 was found, between the lines of a parchment but half effaced, 
 on which they had substituted a book of the Bible ; and a 
 recent discover}'' of Cicero De Repuhlicd, which lay concealed 
 under some monkish writing, shows the fate of ancient manu- 
 scripts.* 
 
 That the Monks had not in high veneration the profane 
 authors, appears by a facetious anecdote. To read the classics 
 was considered as a very idle recreation, and some held them 
 in great horror. To distinguish them from other books, they 
 invented a disgraceful sign : when a monk asked for a pagan 
 author, after making the general sign they used in their 
 manual and silent language when they wanted a book, he added 
 a particular one, which consisted in scratching under his ear, 
 as a dog, which feels an itching, scratches himself in that 
 place with his paw- — because, said they, an unbeliever is com- 
 pared to a dog ! In this manner they expressed an itcliing 
 for those dogs Virgil or Horace If 
 
 There have been ages when, for the possession of a manu- 
 script, some would transfer an estate, or leave in pawn for its 
 loan hundreds of golden crowns ; and when even the sale or 
 loan of a manuscript was considered of such importance as to 
 
 * This important political treatise was discovered in the year 1823, by 
 Angelo Mail, in the library of the Vatican. A treatise on the Psalms 
 covered it. This second treatise was written in the clear, minute character 
 of the middle ages, but beneath it Mali saw distinct traces of the larger letters 
 of the work of Cicero ; and to the infinite joy of the learned succeeded iu 
 restoring to the world one of the most important works of the great 
 orator. 
 
 t "Many bishops and abbots began to consider learning as pernicious to 
 true piety, and confounded illiberal ignorance with Christian simplicity," 
 says Warton. The study of Pagan authors was declared to inculcate 
 Paganism ; the same sort of reasoning led others to say that the reading of 
 the Scriptures would inftillibly change the readers to Jews ; it is amusing 
 to look back on these vain eiforts to stop the effect of the printiag-press.
 
 Recovery of Mmiuscripts. 19 
 
 have been solemnly registered by public acts. Absolute as was 
 Louis XL he could not obtain the MS. of Rasis, an Arabian 
 writer, from the library of the Faculty of Paris, to have a copy 
 made, without pledging a hundred golden crowns ; and the 
 president of his treasury, charged with this commission, sold 
 part of his plate to make the deposit. For the loan of a volume 
 of Avicenna, a Baron offered a pledge of ten marks of silver, 
 which was refused : because it was not considered equal to the 
 risk incurred of losing a volume of Avicenna ! These events 
 occurred in 1471. One cannot but smile, at an anterior period, 
 when a Countess of Anjou bought a favourite book of homilies 
 for two hundred sheep, some skins of martins, and bushels of 
 wheat and rye. 
 
 In those times, manuscripts were important articles of com- 
 merce ; they were excessively scarce, and preserved with the 
 utmost care. Usurers themselves considered them as precious 
 objects for pawn. A student of Pavia, who was reduced, raised 
 a new fortune by leaving in pawn a manuscript of a body of 
 law ; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a fire, rebuilt his 
 house with two small volumes of Cicero. 
 
 At the restoration of letters, the researches of literary men 
 were chiefly directed to this point ; every part of Eui'ope and 
 Greece was ransacked ; and, the glorious end considered, there 
 was something sublime in this humble industry, which often 
 recovered a lost author of antiquity, and gave one more classic 
 to the world. This occupation was carried on with enthu- 
 siasm, and a kind of mania possessed many, who exhausted 
 their fortunes in distant voyages and profuse prices. In reading 
 the correspondence of the learned Italians of these times, their 
 adventures of manuscript-hunting are very amusing; and their 
 raptures, their congratulations, or at times their condolence, 
 and even their censures, are all immoderate. Tlie acquisition 
 of a province would not have given so much satisfaction as 
 the discovery of an author little known, or not known at all. 
 " Oh, great gain! Oh, unexpected felicity! I intreat yovi, my 
 Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that I may 
 see it before I die!" exclaims Aretino, in a letter overflowing 
 with enthusiasm, on Poggio' s discovery of a copy of Quintilian. 
 Some of the half-witted, who joined in this great hunt, were 
 often thrown out, and some paid high for manuscripts not 
 authentic ; the knave played on the bungling amateur of 
 manuscripts, whose credulity exceeded his purse. But even 
 among the learned, much ill-blood was inflamed ; he who had 
 
 c2
 
 20 Recovery of Manuscripts. 
 
 been most successful in acquiring manuscripts was envied by 
 the less fortunate, and the glory of possessing a manuscript of 
 Cicero seemed to approximate to that of being its author. It 
 is curious to observe that in these vast importations into Italy 
 of manuscripts from Asia, John Aurispa, who brought many 
 hundreds of Greek manuscripts, laments that he had chosen 
 more profane than sacred writers ; which circumstance he 
 tells us was owing to the Greeks, who would not so easily 
 part with theological works, but did not highly value profane 
 writers ! 
 
 These manuscripts were discovered in the obscurest recesses 
 of monasteries ; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, 
 but rotting in dark unfrequented corners with rubbish. It 
 required not less ingenuity to find out places where to grope 
 in, than to understand the value of the acquisition. An uni- 
 versal ignorance then prevailed in the knowledge of ancient 
 writers. A scholar of those times gave the first rank among 
 the Latin writers to one Valerius, whether he meant Martial 
 or Maximus is uncertain ; he placed Plato and TuUy among 
 the poets, and imagined that Ennius and Statius were contem- 
 poraries. A iibi'ary of six hundred volumes was then consi- 
 dered as an extraordinary collection. 
 
 Among those whose lives were devoted to this purpose, 
 Poggio the Florentine stands distinguished ; but he complains 
 that his zeal was not assisted by the great. He found under 
 a heap of rubbish in a decayed coflfer, in a tower belonging to 
 the monastery of St. Gallo, the work of Quintilian. He is in- 
 dignant at its forlorn situation ; at least, he cries, it should 
 have been preserved in the library of the monks ; but I found 
 it in teterrimo quodam et obscuro carcere — and to his great joy 
 drew it out of its grave! The monks have been complimented 
 as the preservers of literature, but by facts, like the present, 
 their real affection may be doubted. 
 
 The most valuable copy of Tacitus, of whom so much is 
 wanting, was likewise discovered in a monastery of Westphalia. 
 It is a curious circumstance in literary history, that we should 
 owe Tacitus to this single copy; for the Roman emperor of 
 that name had copies of the works of his illustrious ancestor 
 placed in all the libraries of the empire, and every year had 
 ten copies transcribed ; but the Roman libraries seem to have 
 been all destroyed, and the imperial protection availed no- 
 thing against the teeth of time. 
 
 The original manuscript of Justinian's Pandects was dis-
 
 Recovery of Manuscripts. 21 
 
 covered by the Pisans, when they took a city in Calabria ; 
 that vast code of laws had been in a manner unknown 
 from the time of that emperor. This curious book was 
 brought to Pisa ; and when Pisa was taken by the Floren- 
 tines, was transferred to Florence, where it is still preserved. 
 
 It sometimes happened that manuscripts were discovered 
 in the last agonies of existence. Papirius Masson found, in the 
 house of a bookbinder of Lyons, the works of Agobard ; the 
 mechanic was on the point of using the manuscripts to line 
 the covers of his books.* A page of the second decade of 
 Livy, it is said, was found by a man of letters in the parch- 
 ment of his battledore, while he was amusing himself in the 
 country. He hastened to the maker of the battledore — but 
 arrived too late ! The man had finished the last page of 
 Livy — about a week before. 
 
 Many works have undoubtedly perished in this manuscript 
 state. By a petition of Dr. Dee to Queen Mary, in the 
 Cotton library, it appears that Cicero's treatise De Bepuhlicd 
 was once extant in this country. Huet observes that Petro- 
 nius was probably entire in the days of John of Salisbury, 
 who quotes fragments, not now to be found in the remains 
 of the Roman bard. Eaimond Soranzo, a lawyer in the 
 papal court, possessed two books of Cicero " on Grlory," 
 which he presented to Petrarch, who lent them to a poor 
 aged man of letters, formerly his preceptor. Urged by ex- 
 treme want, the old man pawned them, and returning home 
 died suddenly without having revealed where he had left 
 them. They have never been recovered. Petrarch speaks 
 of them with ecstasy, and tells us that he had studied them 
 perpetually. Two centuries afterwards, this treatise on Glory 
 by Cicero was mentioned in a catalogue of books bequeathed 
 to a monastery of nuns, but when inquired after was missing. 
 It was supposed that Petrus Alcyonius, physician to that 
 
 * Agobard was Archbishop of Lyons, and one of the most learned men of 
 the ninth century. He was born in 779 ; raised to the prelacy in 816, 
 from which he was expelled by Louis le Debonuaire for espousing the cause 
 of his son Lothaire ; he tied to Italy, but was restored to his see in 838, 
 dying in 840, when the Church canonized him. He was a strenuous 
 Churchman, but with enlightened views ; and his style as an author is 
 remarkable alike for its clearness and perfect simplicity. His works were 
 unknown until discovered in the manner narrated above, and were pub- 
 lished by the discoverer at Paris in 160-3, the originals being bequeathed 
 to the Royal Library at his death. On examination, several errors were 
 found in this edition, and a new one was published in 1662, to which an- 
 other treatise by Agobard was added.
 
 22 Recovery of Manuscripts, 
 
 houseliold, purloined it, and after transcribing as mueh of it 
 as he could into his ovvn writings, had destroyed the original. 
 Alcyonius, in his book De Exilio, the critics observed, had 
 many splendid passages which stood isolated in his work, and 
 were quite above his genius. The beggar, or in this case 
 the thief, was detected by mending his rags with patches of 
 purple and gold. 
 
 In this age of manuscript, there is reason to believe, that 
 when a man of letters accidentally obtained an unknown 
 work, he did not make the fairest use of it, but cautiously 
 concealed it from his contemporaries. Leonard Aretino, a 
 distinguished scholar at the dawn of modern literature, having 
 found a Greek manuscript of Procopius De Bello Gothico, 
 translated it into Latin, and published the work ; but con- 
 cealing the author's name, it passed as his own, till another 
 manuscript of the same work being dug out of its grave, the 
 fraud of Aretino was apparent. Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, 
 in 1G49, has printed among his works a treatise, obtained by 
 one of his domestics bringing in a fish rolled in a leaf of 
 written paper, which his curiosity led him to examine. He 
 was sufficiently interested to run out and search the fish 
 market, till he found the manuscript out of which it had 
 been torn. He published it, under the title De Officio 
 JEpiscopi. Machiavelli acted more adroitly in a similar 
 case ; a manuscript of the Apophthegms of the Ancients by 
 Plutarch having fallen into his hands, he selected those 
 which pleased him, and put them into the mouth of his hero 
 Castrucio Castricani. 
 
 In more recent times, we might collect many curious anec- 
 dotes concerning manuscripts. Sir Robert Cotton one day at 
 his tailor's discovered that the man was holding in wis hand, 
 ready to cut up for measures — an original Magna Chai'ta, 
 with all its appendages of seals and signatures. This anec- 
 dote is told by Coloraies, who long resided in this country ; 
 and an original Magna Charta is preserved in the Cottoniau 
 library exhibiting marks of dilapidation. 
 
 Cardinal Granvelle* left behind him several chests filled 
 with a prodigious quantity of letters written in different 
 languages, commented, noted, and underlined by his own 
 hand. These curious manuscripts, after his death, were left 
 in a garret to the mercy of the rain and the rats. Five or 
 
 * The celebrated minister of Philip II.
 
 Recovery of Manuscripts. 23 
 
 six of these chests tlie steward sold to the grocers. It was 
 then that a discovery was made of this treasure. Several 
 learned men occupied themselves in collecting sufficient of 
 these literary relics to form eighty thick folios, consisting of 
 original letters by all the crowned heads in Europe, with 
 instructions for ambassadors, and other state-papers. 
 
 A valuable secret histor^^ by Sir Greorge Mackenzie, the 
 king's advocate in Scotland, was rescued from a mass of 
 waste paper sold to a grocer, who had the good sense to 
 discriminate it, and communicated this curious memorial to 
 Dr. M'Crie. The oriijmal, in the handvvritino- of its author, 
 has been deposited in the Advocate's Library. There is an 
 hiatus, which contained the history of six years. This work 
 excited inquiry after the rest of the MSS., which were found 
 to be nothing more than the sweepings of an attorney's 
 office. 
 
 Montaigne's Journal of his Travels into Italy has been 
 but recently published. A prebendary of Perigord, travelling 
 through this province to make researches relative to its his- 
 tory, arrived at the ancient chateau of Montaigne, in posses- 
 sion of a descendant of this great man. He inquired for the 
 archives, if there had been any. He was shown an old worm- 
 eaten coffi3r, which had long held papers untouched by the 
 incurious generations of Montaigne. Stifled in clouds of 
 dust, he drew out the original manuscript of the travels of 
 Montaigne. Two-thirds of the work are in the handwriting 
 of Montaigne, and the rest is written by a servant, who 
 always speaks of his master in the third person. But he 
 must have written what Montaigne dictated, as the expres- 
 sions and the egotisms are all Montaigne's. The bad writing 
 and orthography made it almost unintelligible. They con- 
 firmed Montaigne's own observation, that he was very negli- 
 gent in the correction of his works. 
 
 Our ancestors were great hiders of manuscripts : Dr. Dee's 
 singular MSS. were found in the secret drawer of a chest, 
 which had passed through many hands undiscovered ; and 
 that vast collection of state-papers of Thurloe's, the secretary 
 of Cromwell, which formed about seventy volumes in the 
 original manuscripts, accidentally fell out of the false ceiling 
 of some chambers in Lincoln' s-Iim. 
 
 A considerable portion of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's 
 Letters I discovered in the hands of an attorney: family- 
 papers are often consigned to offices of lawyers, where many
 
 34 Sketches of Criticism. 
 
 valuable manuscripts are buried. Posthumous publications 
 of this kind are too frequently made from sordid motives : 
 discernment and taste would only be detrimental to the views 
 of bulky publishers.* 
 
 SKETCHES OF CRITICISM. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be some satisfaction to show the young 
 writer, that the most celebrated ancients have been as rudely 
 subjected to the tyranny of criticism as the moderns. De- 
 traction has ever poured the " waters of bitterness." 
 
 It was given ovit, that Homer had stolen from anterior 
 poets whatever was most remarkable in the Iliad and Odyssey. 
 Naucrates even points out the source in the library at Mem- 
 phis in a temple of Vulcan, which according to him the blind 
 bard completely pillaged. Undoubtedly there were good 
 poets before Homer ; how absurd to conceive that an elabo- 
 rate poem could be the first ! We have indeed accounts of 
 anterior poets, and apparently of epics, before Homer ; ^lian 
 notices Syagrus, who composed a poem on the Siege of Troy ; 
 and Suidas the poem of Corinnus, from which it is said Homer 
 greatly borrowed. Why did Plato so severely condemn the 
 great bard, and imitate him ? 
 
 Sophocles was brought to trial by his children as a lunatic ; 
 and some, who censured the inequalities of this poet, have 
 also condemned the vanity of Pindar ; the rough verses of 
 iEschylus ; and Euripides, for the conduct of his plots. 
 
 Socrates, considered as the wisest and the most moral of 
 men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athenaeus 
 as illiterate ; the latter points out as a Socratic folly our 
 philosopher disserting on the nature of justice before his 
 judges, who were so many thieves. The malignant buf- 
 foonery of Aristophanes treats him much worse ; but he, as 
 Jortin says, was a great wit, but a great rascal. 
 
 Plato — who has been called, by Clement of Alexandria, 
 the Moses of Athens ; the philosopher of the Christians, by 
 
 * One of the most curious modern discoveries was that of the Fairfax 
 papers and correspondence by the late J. N. Hughes, of Winchester, who 
 purchased at a sale at Leeds Castle, Kent, a box apparently filled with old 
 coloured paving-tiles ; on removing the upper layers he found a large mass 
 of manuscripts of the time of the Civil wai's, evidently thus packed for con- 
 cealment ; they have since been published, and add most valuable infor- 
 mation to this interesting period of English history.
 
 Sketches of Criticism. 25 
 
 Arnobius ; and the god of philosophers, by Cicero — Athenseus 
 accuses of envy ; Tlieopompus of lying ; Suidas of avarice ; 
 Aulus Gellius, of robbery ; Porphyry, of incontinence ; and 
 Aristophanes, of impiety. 
 
 Aristotle, whose industry composed more than four hundred 
 volumes, has not been less spared by the critics ; Diogenes 
 Laertius, Cicero, and Plutarch, have forgotten nothing that 
 can tend to show his ignorance, his ambition, and his vanity. 
 
 It has been said, that Plato was so envious of the celebrity 
 of Democritus, that he proposed burning all his works ; but 
 that Amydis and Clinias prevented it, by remonstrating that 
 there were copies of them everywhere ; and Aristotle was 
 agitated by the same passion against all the philosophers his 
 predecessors. 
 
 Virgil is destitute of invention, if we are to give credit to 
 Pliny, Carbilius, and Seneca. Caligula has absolutely denied 
 him even mediocrity ; Herennus has marked his faults ; and 
 Perilius Faustinus has furnished a thick volume with his 
 plagiarisms. Even the author of his apology has confessed, 
 that he has stolen from Homer his greatest beauties ; from 
 ApoUonius Rhodius, many of his pathetic passages ; from 
 Nicander, hints for his Georgics; and this does not terminate 
 the catalogue. 
 
 Horace censures the coarse humour of Plautus ; and Horace, 
 in his turn, has been blamed for the free use he made of the 
 Greek minor poets. 
 
 The majority of the critics regard Pliny's Natural History 
 only as a heap of fiibles ; and Pliny cannot bear with Diodorus 
 and Vopiscus ; and in one comprehensive criticism, treats all 
 the historians as narrators of fables. 
 
 Livy has been reproached for his aversion to the Gauls ; 
 Dion, for his hatred of the republic ; Velleius Paterculus, for 
 speaking too kindly of the vices of Tiberius; and Herodotus 
 and Plutarch, for their excessive ])artiality to their own 
 country : while the latter has written an entire treatise on 
 the malignity of Herodotus. Xenophon and Quintus Curtius 
 have been considered rather as novelists than historians ; and 
 Tacitus has been censured for his audacity in pretending to 
 discover the political springs and secret causes of events. 
 Dionysius of Harlicarnassus has made an elaborate attack on 
 Thucydides for the unskilful choice of his subject, and his 
 manner of treating it. Dionysius would have nothing written 
 but what tended to the glory of his country and the pleasure
 
 26 Sketches of Criticism. 
 
 of the reader — as if history were a song ! adds Hobbes, who 
 also shows a personal motive in this attack. The same 
 Dionysius severely criticises the style of Xenophon, who, he 
 says, in attempting to elevate his style, shows himself inca- 
 pable of supporting it. Polybius has been blamed for his 
 frequent introduction of reflections which interrupt the 
 thread of his narrative ; and Sallust has been blamed by 
 Cato for indulging his own private passions, and studiously 
 concealing many of the glorious actions of Cicero. The 
 Jewish historian, Josephus, is accused of not having designed 
 his history for his own people so much as for the Greeks and 
 Romans, whom he takes the utmost care never to offend. 
 Josephus assumes a lloman name, Flavius ; and considering 
 his nation as entirely subjugated, to make them appear dig- 
 nified to their conquerors, alters what he himself calls the 
 HoJi/ boolcs. It is well known how widely he differs from 
 the scriptural accounts. Some have said of Cicero, that 
 there is no connexion, and to adopt their own figures, no 
 blood and nerves, in what his admirers so warmly extol. 
 Cold in his extemporaneous effusions, artificial in his exor- 
 diums, trifling in his strained raillery, and tiresome in his 
 digressions. This is saying a good deal about Cicero. 
 
 Quintilian does not spare Seneca ; and Demosthenes, called 
 by Cicero the prince of orators, has, according to Hermippus, 
 more of art than of nature. To Demades, his orations appear 
 too much laboured ; others have thought him too dry ; and, 
 if we may trust ^Eschines, his language is by no means pure. 
 
 The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, and tlie Deipnosophists 
 of Athenaeus, while they have been extolled by one party, 
 have been degraded by another. They have been considered 
 as botchers of rags and remnants ; tlieir diligence has not 
 been accompanied by judgment ; and their taste inclined more 
 to the frivolous than to the useful. Compilers, indeed, are 
 liable to a hard fate, for little distinction is made in their 
 ranks ; a disagreeable situation, in which honest Burton seems 
 to have been placed ; for he says of his work, that some will 
 cry out, " This is a thinge of meere Industrie ; a collection 
 without wit or invention ; a very toy ! So men are valued ; 
 their labom-s vilified by fellowes of no worth themselves, as 
 things of nought : Who could not have done as much ? 
 Some understande too little, and some too much." 
 
 Should we proceed with this list to our own countr}^, and 
 to our own times, it might be cm-iously augmented, and show
 
 The Persecuted Learned. 27 
 
 the world what men the Critics are ! but, perhaps, enough 
 has been said to soothe irritated genius, and to shame fas- 
 tidious criticism. " I would beg the critics to remember," 
 the Earl of Roscommon writes, iu his preface to Horace's 
 Art of Poetry, " that Horace owed his favour and his fortune 
 to the character given of him by Virgil and Varus ; that 
 Fundanius and Pollio are still valued by wliat Horace says of 
 them ; and that, in their golden age, there was a good under- 
 standing among the ingenious ; and those who were the most 
 esteemed, were the best natured." 
 
 THE PERSECUTED LEARNED. 
 
 Those who have laboured most zealously to instruct man- 
 kind have been those who have suffered most from ignorance ; 
 and the discoverers of new arts and sciences have hardly ever 
 lived to see them accepted by the world. With a noble per- 
 ception of his own genius. Lord Bacon, in his prophetic Will, 
 thus expresses himself: " For my name and memory, I leave 
 it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and 
 the next ages." Before the times of Galileo and Harvey the 
 world believed in the stagnation of the blood, and the diurnal 
 immovability of the earth ; and for denying these the one was 
 persecuted and the other ridiculed. 
 
 The intelligence and the virtue of Socrates were punished 
 with death. Anaxagoras, when he attempted to propagate a 
 just notion of the Supreme Being, was dragged to prison. 
 Aristotle, after a long series of persecution, swallowed poison. 
 Heraclitus, tormented by his countrymen, broke off all inter- 
 course with men. The great geometricians and chemists, as 
 Gerbert, Roger Bacon, and Cornelius Agrippa, were abhorred 
 as magicians. Pope Gerbert, as Bishop Otho gravely relates, 
 obtained the pontificate by having given himself up entirely 
 to the devil : others suspected him, too, of holding an in- 
 tercourse with demons ; but this was indeed a devilish 
 age! 
 
 Virgilius, Bishop of Saltzburg, having asserted that there 
 existed antipodes, the Archbishop of Mentz declared him a 
 heretic ; and the Abbot Trithemius, who was fond of im- 
 proving stenography, or the art of secret w)-iting, having 
 published several curious works on this subject, they were 
 condemned, as works full of diabolical mysteries ; and 
 
 \ 
 \
 
 28 The Persecuted Learned. 
 
 Frederic II., Elector Palatine, ordered Trithemius's original 
 work, which was in his library, to be publicly burnt. 
 
 Galileo was condemned at Rome publicly to disavow senti- 
 ments, the truth of which must have been to him abundantly 
 manifest. " Are these then my judges ?" he exclaimed, in 
 retiring from the inquisitors, whose ignorance astonished him. 
 He was imprisoned, and visited by Milton, who tells us, he 
 was then j^oor and old. The confessor of his widow, taking 
 advantage of her piety, perused the MSS. of this great phi- 
 losopher, and destroyed such as in \\\s, judgment were not fit 
 to be known to the world ! 
 
 Gabriel Naude, in his apology for those great men who 
 have been accused of magic, has recorded a melancholy 
 number of the most eminent scholars, who have found, that 
 to have been successful in their studies, was a success which 
 liarassed them with continual persecution — a prison or a 
 grave ! 
 
 Cornelius Agrippa was compelled to fly his country, and 
 the enjoyment of a large income, merely for having displaj^ed 
 a few philosophical experiments, which now every school-boy 
 can perform ; but more particularly having attacked the then 
 prevailing opinion, that St. Anne had three husbands, he was 
 obliged to fly from place to place. The people beheld him as 
 an object of horror ; and when he walked, he found the streets 
 empty at his approach. 
 
 In those times, it was a common opinion to suspect every 
 great man of an intercourse with some familiar spirit. The 
 favourite black dog of Agrippa was supposed to be a demon. 
 When Urban Grandier, another victim to the age, was led to 
 the stake, a large fl^^ settled on his head : a monk, who had 
 heard that Beelzebub signifies in Hebrew the God of Flies, 
 reported tliat he saw this spirit come to take possession of 
 him. M. de Langier, a French minister, who employed many 
 spies, was frequently accused of diabolical communication. 
 Sixtus the Fifth, Marechal Faber, lioger Bacon, Caesar Borgia, 
 his son Alexander VI., and others, like Socrates, had their 
 diabolical attendant. 
 
 Cardan was believed to be a magician. An able naturalist, 
 who happened to know something of the arcana of nature, 
 was immediately suspected of magic. Even the learned them- 
 selves, who had not applied to natural philosophy, seem to 
 have acted with the same feelin<?s as the most ig-norant ; for 
 when Albert, usually called the Great, an epithet it has been
 
 Poverty of the Learned. 29 
 
 said that he derived from his name De Groot, constructed a 
 curious piece of mechanism, whicli sent forth distinct vocal 
 sounds, Thomas Aquinas was so much terrified at it, that he 
 struck it with his staff, and, to the mortification of Alhert, 
 annihilated the curious labour of thirty years ! 
 
 Petrarch was less desirous of the laurel for the honour, 
 than for the hope of being sheltered by it from the thunder 
 of the priests, by wliom both he and his brother poets were 
 continually threatened. They could not imagine a poet, 
 without su])posing him to hold an intercourse with some 
 demon. This was, as Abbe Resnel observes, having a most 
 exalted idea of poetry, though a very bad one of poets. An 
 anti-poetic Dominican was notorious for persecuting all 
 verse-makers ; whose power he attributed to the effects of 
 heresy and magic. The lights of philosophy have dispersed 
 all these accusations of magic, and have shown a dreadful 
 chain of perjuries and conspiracies. 
 
 Descartes was horribly persecuted in Holland, when he first 
 published his opinions. Voetius, a bigot of great influence 
 at Utrecht, accused him of atheism, and had even projected 
 in his mind to have this philosopher burnt at Utrecht in an 
 extraordinary fire, which, kindled on an eminence, might be 
 observed by the seven provinces. Mr. Hallam has observed, 
 that " the ordeal of fire was the great purifier of books and 
 men." This persecution of science and genius lasted till the 
 close of the seventeenth century. 
 
 " If the metaphysician stood a chance of being burnt as a 
 heretic, the natural philosopher was not in less jeopardy as a 
 magician," is an observation of the same writer, whicli sums 
 up the whole. 
 
 POVERTY OF THE LEARNED, 
 
 Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of 
 genius : others find a hundred by-roads to her palace ; there 
 is but one open, and that a very indifferent one, for men of let- 
 ters. Were we to erect an asylum for venerable genius, as we 
 do for the brave and the helpless part of our citizens, it might 
 be inscribed, "An Hospital for Incurables !" When even Fame 
 will not protect the man ofgenius from Famine, Charity ought. 
 Nor should such an act be considered as a debt incurred by 
 the helpless member, but a just tribute we pay in his person
 
 30 Poverty of the Learned. 
 
 to Genius itself. Even in these enlightened times, many have 
 lived in obscurity, while their reputation was widely spread, 
 and have perished in poverty, while their works were enrich- 
 ing the booksellers. 
 
 Of the heroes of modern literature the accounts are as 
 copious as they are sorrowful. 
 
 Xylander sold his notes on Dion Cassius for a dinner. He 
 tells us that at the age of eighteen he studied to acquire 
 glory, but at twenty-five he studied to get bread. 
 
 Cervantes, the immortal genius of Spain, is supposed to 
 have wanted food ; Camoens, the solitary pride of Portugal, 
 deprived of the necessaries of life, perished in an hospital at 
 Lisbon. This fact has been accidentally preserved in an 
 entry in a copy of the first edition of the Lusiad, in the posses- 
 sion of Lord Holland. It is a note, written by a friar who 
 must have been a witness of the dying scene of the poet, 
 and probably received the volume which now preserves the 
 sad memorial, and which recalled it to his mind, from the 
 hands of the unhappy poet : — " What a lamentable thing to 
 see so great a genius so ill rewarded ! I saw him die in an 
 hospital in Lisbon, without having a sheet or shroud, una 
 sauana, to cover him, after having triumphed in the East 
 Indies, and sailed 5500 leagues ! What good advice for those 
 who weary themselves night and day in study vvithout profit !" 
 Camoens, when some fidalgo complained that he had not per- 
 formed his promise in wa-iting some verses for him, replied, 
 "When I wrote verses I was young, had sufficient food, was 
 a lover, and beloved by many friends and by the ladies ; then 
 I felt poetical ardour : now I have no spirits, no peace of 
 mind. See there my Javanese, who asks me for two pieces to 
 purchase firing, and I have them not to give him." The 
 Portuguese, after his death, bestowed on the man of genius 
 they had starved, the appellation of Great!* Von del, the Dutch 
 
 * For some time previous to his death he was in so abject a state of 
 poverty as to be dependent for subsistence upon the exertions of his faith- 
 ful servant Antonio, a native of Java, whom he had brought with him from 
 India, and who was accustomed to beg by night for the bread which was to 
 save his unhappy master from perishing by want the next day. Camoens, 
 when death at last put an end to a life which misfortune and neglect had 
 rendered insupportable, was denied the solace of having his faithful Antonio 
 to close his eyes. He was aged only fifty-five when he breathed his last in 
 the hospital. This event occurred in 1579, but so little regard was paid 
 to the memory of this great man that the day or month on which he expired 
 remains unknown. — Adamson's Memoirs of Camoens, 1820.
 
 Poverty of the Learned. 3l 
 
 Shakspeare, after composing a number of popular tragedies, 
 lived in great poverty, and died at ninety years of age ; then 
 he had his coffin carried by fourteen poets, who without his 
 genius probably partook of his wi'etchedness. 
 
 The great Tasso was reduced to such a dilemma that he 
 was obliged to borrow a crown for a week's subsistence. He 
 alludes to his distress when, entreating his cat to assist him, 
 during the night, with the lustre of her eyes — " Non avendo 
 canclele per iscrivere i suoi versi !'' having no candle to see 
 to write his verses. 
 
 When the liberality of Alphonso enabled Ariosto to build 
 a small house, it seems that it was but ill furnished. When 
 told that such a building was not fit for one wlio had raised 
 so many fine palaces in his writings, he answered, that the 
 structure of words and that of stones was not the same thing. 
 " Che pervi le pietre, e porvi le parole, non e il medesimo !" 
 At Ferrari this house is still shown. " Parva sed apta " he 
 calls it, but exults that it was paid for with his own money. 
 This was in a moment of good humour, which he did not 
 always enjoy ; for in his Satires he bitterly complains of 
 the bondage of dependence and poverty. Little thought the 
 poet that the commune would order this small house to be 
 purchased with their own funds, that it might be dedicated to 
 his immortal memory. 
 
 Cardinal Bentivoglio, the ornament of Italy and of litera- 
 ture, languished, in his old age, in the most distressful 
 poverty ; and having sold his palace to satisfy his creditors, 
 left nothing behind him but his reputation. The learned 
 Pomponius Laetus lived in such a state of poverty, that his 
 friend Platina, who wrote the lives of the popes, and also a 
 book of cookery, introduces him into the cookery book by a 
 facetious observation, tliat " If Pomponius Laitus should be 
 robbed of a couple of eggs, he would not have wherewithal 
 to purchase two other eggs." The history of Aldrovandus is 
 noble and pathetic ; having expended a large fortune in form- 
 ing his collections of natural history, and employing the first 
 artists in Europe, he was suffered to die in the hospital of 
 that city, to whose fame he had eminently contributed. 
 
 Du Kyer, a celebrated French poet, was constrained to 
 write with rapidity, and to live in the cottage of an obscure 
 village. His bookseller bought his heroic verses for one 
 hundred sols the hundred lines, and the smaller ones for fifty 
 sols. What an interesting picture has a contemporary given
 
 32 Poverty of the Learned. 
 
 of a visit to this poor and ingenious author ! " On a fine 
 summer day we went to him, at some distance from town. 
 He received us with joy, talked to us of his numerous pro- 
 jects, and showed us several of his works. But what more 
 interested us was, that, though dreading to expose to us his 
 poverty, he contrived to offer some refreshments. We seated 
 ourselves under a wide oak, the tahle-cloth was spread on the 
 grass, his wife brought us some milk, with fresh water and 
 brown bread, and he picked a basket of cherries. He wel- 
 comed us with gaiety, but we could not take leave of this 
 amiable man, now grown old, without tears, to see him so ill 
 treated by fortune, and to have nothing left but literary 
 honour!" 
 
 Vaugelas, the most polished writer of the Trench language, 
 who devoted thirty years to his translation of Quintus Cur- 
 tius, (a circumstance which modern translators can have no 
 conception of), died possessed of nothing valuable but his 
 precious manuscripts. This ingenious scholar left his corpse 
 to the surgeons, for the benefit of his creditors ! 
 
 Louis the Fourteenth honoured Racine and Boileau with a 
 private monthly audience. One day the king asked what 
 there was new in the literary world. Eacine answered, that 
 he had seen a melancholy spectacle in the house of Corneille, 
 whom he found dying, deprived even of a little broth ! The 
 king preserved a profound silence ; and sent the dying poet a 
 sum of money. 
 
 Dryden, for less than three hundred pounds, sold Tonson 
 ten thousand verses, as may be seen by the agreement. 
 
 Purchas, who in the reign of our first James, had spent his 
 life in compiling his BeJation of tlie Wbrhl, when he gave it 
 to the public, lor the reward of his labours was thrown into 
 prison, at the suit of his printer. Yet this was the book 
 which, he informs Charles I. in his dedication, his father read 
 every night with great profit and satisfaction. 
 
 The Marquis of Worcester, in a petition to parliament, in 
 the reign of Charles 11., offered to publish the hundred pro- 
 cesses and machines, enumerated in his very curious " Cente- 
 nary of Inventions," on condition that money should be 
 granted to extricate him from the difficulties in which he had 
 involved himself hy the prosecution of useful discoveries. The 
 petition does not appear to have been attended to ! Many of 
 these admirable inventions were lost. The steam-engine and 
 the telegraph may be traced among them.
 
 Poverty of the Learned. 33 
 
 It appears by the Harleian MS. 7524, that Rushworth, the 
 author of the "Historical Collections," passed the last years 
 of his life in gaol, where indeed he died. After the Restora- 
 tion, when he presented to the king several of the privy 
 council's books, which he had preserved from ruin, he received 
 for his only reward the thanks of his majesty. 
 
 Rymer, the collector of the Foedera, must have been sadly 
 reduced, by the following letter, I found addressed by Peter 
 le Neve, Norroy, to the Earl of Oxford. 
 
 " I am desired by Mr. Rymer, historiographer, to lay before 
 your lordship the circumstances of his affairs. He was forced 
 some years back to part with all his choice printed books to 
 subsist himself: and now, he says, he must be forced, for 
 subsistence, to sell all his MS. collections to the best bidder, 
 without your lordship will be pleased to buy them for the 
 queen's library. They are fifty volumes in folio, of public 
 affairs, which he hatli collected, but not printed. The price 
 he asks is five hundred pounds." 
 
 Simon Ockley, a learned student in Oriental literature, 
 addresses a letter to the same earl, in which he paints his 
 distresses in glowing colours. After having devoted his life 
 to Asiatic researches, then very uncommon, he had the mor- 
 tification of dating his preface to his great work from Cam- 
 bridge Castle, where he was confined for debt ; and, with an 
 air of triumph, feels a martyr's enthusiasm in the cause for 
 which he perishes. 
 
 He published his first volume of the History of the Sara- 
 cens in 1708; and, ardently pursuing his oriental studies, 
 published his second, ten years afterwards, without any 
 pati'onage. Alluding to the encouragement necessary to 
 bestow on youth, to remove the obstacles to such studies, he 
 observes, that " young men will hardly come in on the pros- 
 pect of finding leisure, in a prison, to transcribe those papers 
 for the press, which they have collected with indefatigable 
 labour, and oftentimes at the expense of their rest, and all the 
 other conveniences of life, for the service of the public. No ! 
 though I were to assure them, from my own experience, that 
 / have enjoyed more true liberty, more happy leisure, and 
 more solid repose, in six montlis here, than in thrice the 
 same number of years before. JSvil is the condition of that 
 historian ivho undertakes to icrite the lives of others, before 
 he Jcnows how to live himself. — Not that 1 speak thus as if I 
 thought I had any just cause to be angry with the world — I 
 YOL. I. D
 
 34 Poverty of the Learned. 
 
 did always In my judgment give the possession of loisdom the 
 preference to that of riches /" 
 
 Spenser, the child of Fancy, languished out his life in 
 misery. "Lord Burleigh," says Granger, "who it is said 
 prevented the queen giving him a hundred pounds, seems to 
 have thought the lowest clerk in his office a more deserving 
 person." Mr. Malone attempts to show that Spenser had a 
 small pension , hut the poet's querulous verses must not be 
 forgotten — 
 
 " Full little knowest thou, that hast not try'd, 
 What Hell it is, in suing long to bide." 
 
 To lose good days — to waste long nights — and, as he feel- 
 ingly exclaims, 
 
 ' ' To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run. 
 To speed, to give, to want, to be undone !" 
 
 How affecting is the death of Sydenham, who had devoted 
 his life to a laborious version of Plato ! He died in a 
 sponging-house, and it was his death which appears to have 
 given rise to the Literary Fund " for the relief of distressed 
 authors."* 
 
 Who will pursue important labours when they read these 
 anecdotes ? Dr. Edmund Castell spent a great part of his 
 life in compiling his Lexicon Heptaglotton, on which he 
 bestowed incredible pains, and expended on it no less than 
 12,000/., broke his constitution, and exhausted his fortune. 
 At length it was printed, but the copies remained unsold on 
 his hands. He exhibits a curious picture of literary labour 
 in his preface. " As for myself, I have been unceasingly 
 occupied for such a number of years in this mass," Ilolendino 
 
 * This melandioly event happened in 1788, fifteen years after the original 
 projector of the Literary Fund, Mr. David Williams, had endeavoured to 
 establish it. It appears that Mr. Floyer Sydenham was arrested "for a 
 small debt ; he never spoke after being arrested, and sunk under the 
 pressure of his calamity." This is the published record of the event by 
 the officers of the present fund ; and these simple words are sufficiently 
 indicative of the harrowing nature of the catastrophe ; it was strongly felt 
 that Mr. Williams' hopeful plan of preventing a second act so fatal should 
 be encouraged. A small literary club took the initiative, and subscribed a 
 few guineas to pay for such advertisements as were necessary to keep the 
 intended objects of the founder before the public, and solicit its aid. Two 
 years afterwards a committee was formed ; another two years saw it take 
 position among the established institutions of the country. In 1818 it 
 obtained a royal charter. In its career it has relieved upwards of 1300 
 applicants, and devoted to that purpose 47,725i.
 
 Imprisonment of the Learned. 35 
 
 he calls them, " that that day seemed, as it were, a holiday in 
 which I have not laboured so much as sixteen or eighteen 
 hours in these enlarging lexicons and Polyglot Bibles." 
 
 Le Sage resided in a little cottage while he supplied the 
 world with their most agreeable novels, and appears to have 
 derived the sources of his existence in his old age from the 
 filial exertions of an excellent son, who was an actor of some 
 genius. I wish, however, that every man of letters could 
 apply to himself the epitaph of this delightful writer : — 
 
 " Sous ce tombeau git Le Sage, abattu 
 Par le ciseau de la Parque importune; 
 S'il lie fut pas ami de la fortune, 
 II fut toujours ami de la vertu." 
 
 Many years after this article had been written, I published 
 "Calamities of Authors," confining myself to those of our 
 own country ; the catalogue is incomplete, hut far too 
 numerous. 
 
 IMPKISONMENT OF THE LEARNED. 
 
 Imprisonment has not always disturbed the man of letters 
 in the progress of his studies, but has unquestionably greatly 
 promoted them. 
 
 In prison Boethius composed his work on the Consolations 
 of Philosophy ; and Grotius wrote his Commentary on Saint 
 Matthew, with other works : the detail of his allotment of 
 time to different studies, during his confinement, is very 
 instructive. 
 
 Buchanan, in the dungeon of a monastery in Portugal, 
 composed his excellent Paraphrases of the Psalms of David. 
 
 Cervantes composed the most agreeable book in the Spanish 
 language during his captivity in Barbary. 
 
 Fleta, a well-known law production, was written by a person 
 confined in the Fleet for debt ; the name of the place, though 
 not that of the author, has thus been preserved ; and another 
 work, "Fleta Minor, or the Laws of Art and Nature in 
 knowing the bodies of Metals, «fcc. by Sir John Pettus, 
 1683;" received its title from the circumstance of his having 
 translated it from the German dm'ing his confinement in this 
 prison. 
 
 Louis the Twelfth, when Duke of Orleans, was long im- 
 prisoned in the Tower of Bourges : applying himself to his 
 
 d2
 
 36 Imprisonment of the Learned. 
 
 studies, which he had hitherto neglected, he became, in con- 
 sequence, an enhghtened monarch. 
 
 Margaret, queen of Henry the Fourth, King of France, 
 confined in the Louvre, pursued very warmly the studies of 
 elegant literature, and composed a very skilful apology for 
 the irregularities of her conduct. 
 
 Sir Walter Ealeigh's unfinished History of the World, 
 which leaves us to regret that later ages had not been cele- 
 brated by his eloquence, was the fruits of eleven years of im- 
 prisonment. It was written for the use of Prince Henry, as 
 he and Dallington, who also wrote "Aphorisms" for the 
 same prince, have told us ; the prince looked over the manu- 
 script. Of Ealeigh it is observed, to employ the language of 
 Hume, " They were struck with the extensive genius of the 
 man, who, being educated amidst naval and military enter- 
 prises, had surpassed, in the pursuits of literature, even those 
 of the most recluse and sedentary lives ; and they admired 
 his unbroken magnanimity, which, at his age, and under his 
 circumstances, could engage him to undertake and execute so 
 great a work, as his History of the World." He was assisted 
 in this great work by the learning of several eminent persons, 
 a cinaimstance which has not been usually noticed. 
 
 The plan of the '■'■ Henriade'^ was sketched, and the 
 greater part composed, by Voltaire during his imprisonment 
 in the Bastile ; and " the Pilgrim's Progress" of Bunyan was 
 performed in the circuit of a prison's walls. 
 
 Howell, the author of " Familiar Letters," wrote the chief 
 part of them, and almost all his other works, during his long 
 confinement in the Fleet prison : he employed his fertile pen 
 for subsistence ; and in all his books we find much entertain- 
 ment. 
 
 Lydiat, while confined in the King's Bench for debt, wrote 
 his Annotations on the Parian Chronicle, which were first 
 published by Prideaux. He vvas the learned scholar alluded 
 to by Johnson ; an allusion not known to Boswell and 
 others. 
 
 The learned Selden, committed to prison for his attacks on 
 the divine right of tithes and the king's prerogative, prepared 
 during his confinement his " History of Eadmer," em-iched by 
 his notes. 
 
 Cardinal Polignac formed the design of refuting the argu- 
 ments of the sceptics which Bayle had been renewing in his 
 dictionary ; but his public occupations hindered him. Two
 
 Imprisonment of the Learned. 37 
 
 exiles at length fortunately gave him the leisure ; and the 
 Anti-Lucretius is the fruit of the court disgi'aces of its 
 author. 
 
 Freret, when imprisoned in the Bastile, was permitted only 
 to have Bayle for his companion. His dictionary was always 
 before him, and his principles were got by heart. To this 
 circumstance we owe his works, animated by all the powers 
 of scepticism. 
 
 Sir William Davenant finished his poem of Gondibert 
 during his confinement by the rebels in Carisbrook Castle. 
 George Withers dedicates his " Shepherds Hunting," " To 
 his friends, my visitants in the Mai'shalsea :" these 
 "eclogues" having been printed in his imprisonment.* 
 
 De Foe, confined iu Newgate for a political pamphlet, 
 began his "Review;" a periodical paper, which was ex- 
 tended to nine thick volumes in quarto, and it has been sup- 
 posed served as the model of the celebrated papers of Steele. 
 
 Wicquefort's curious work " on Ambassadors" is dated from 
 his prison, where he had been confined for state affairs. He 
 softened the rigour of those heavy hours by several historical 
 works. 
 
 One of the most interesting facts of this kind is the fate 
 of an Italian scholar, of the name of Maggi. Early atldicted 
 to the study of the sciences, and particularly to the mathe- 
 matics, and military architecture, he successfully defended 
 
 * Witliers, throughout these unique eclogues, which are supposed to 
 narrate the discourses of " friendly shepherds" who visit him — 
 
 ' ' —pent 
 Within the jaws of strict imprisonment; 
 A forlorn shepherd void of all the means. 
 Whereon man's common hope in danger leads" 
 
 — is still upheld by the same consciousness of rectitude which inspired Sir 
 Richard Lovelace in his better-known address " To Althea from Prison." 
 Withers' poem was published before Lovelace was born. A few lines from 
 Withers will display this similarity. Speaking of his enemies, he says : — 
 
 " They may do much, but when they have done all, 
 Only my body they may bring in thrall. 
 And 'tis not that, my Willy; 'tis my mind. 
 My mind's more precious freedom I so weigh, 
 A thousand ways they may my body bind. 
 In thousand thralls, but ne'er my mind betray : 
 And hence it is that I contentment find, 
 And bear with patience this my load away : 
 I'm still myself, and that I'd rather be. 
 Than to be lord of all these downs in fee."
 
 38 Amusements of the Learned. 
 
 Famagusta, besieged by the Turks, by inventing machines 
 which destroyed their works. When that city was taken in 
 1571, they pillaged his library and carried him away in 
 chains. Now a slave, after liis daily labours he amused a 
 great part of his nights by literary compositions ; De Tin- 
 tinnabulis, on Bells, a treatise still read by the curious, was 
 actually composed by him when a slave in Turkey, without 
 any other resource than the erudition of his own memory, 
 and the genius of which adversity could not deprive him. 
 
 AMUSEMENTS OF THE LEARNED. 
 
 Among the Jesuits it was a standing rule of the order, that 
 after an application to study for two hours, the mind of the 
 student should be unbent by some relaxation, however 
 trifling. When Petavius was emploj'ed in his Dogmata 
 Theologica, a work of the most profound and extensive eru- 
 dition, the great recreation of the learned father was, at the 
 end of every second hour, to twirl his chair for five minutes. 
 After protracted studies Spinosa would mix with the family- 
 party where he lodged, and join in the most trivial conversa- 
 tions, or unbend his mind by setting spiders to fight each 
 other ; he observed their combats with so much intei'est, that 
 he was often seized with immoderate fits of laughter. A 
 continuity of labour deadens the soul, observes Seneca, in 
 closing his ti'eatise on " The Tranquillity of the Soul," and 
 the mind must unbend itself by certain amusements. 
 Socrates did not blush to play with children ; Cato, over his 
 bottle, fovnid an alleviation from the fatigues of government ; 
 a circumstance, Seneca says in his manner, which rather gives 
 honour to this defect, than the defect dishonours Cato. 
 Some men of letters portioned out tlieir day between repose 
 and labour. Asinius Pollio would not suffer any business to 
 occupy him beyond a stated hour ; after that time he would 
 not allow any letter to be opened, that his hours of recrea- 
 tion might not be interrupted by unforeseen labours. In the 
 senate, alter the tenth hour, it was not allowed to make any 
 new motion. 
 
 Tycho Brahe diverted himself with polishing glasses for 
 all kinds of spectacles, and making mathematical instru- 
 ments ; an employment too closely connected with his studies 
 to be deemed an amusement.
 
 Amusements of the Learned. 39 
 
 D'Andilly, the translator of Josephus, after seven or eight 
 hours of study every day, amused himself in cultivating 
 trees ; Barclay, the author of the Argenis, in his leisure 
 hours was a florist ; Balzac amused himself with a collection 
 of crayon portraits ; Peiresc found his amusement amongst 
 his medals and antiquarian curiosities ; the Abbe de Marolles 
 with his prints ; and Politian in singing airs to his lute. 
 Descartes passed his afternoons in the conversation of a few 
 friends, and in cultivating a little garden ; in the morning, 
 occupied by the system of the world, he relaxed his profound 
 speculations by rearing delicate flowers. 
 
 Conrad ab Uflenbach, a learned German, recreated his 
 mind, after severe studies, with a collection of prints of 
 eminent persons, methodically arranged ; he retained this 
 ardour of the Grangerite to his last days. 
 
 Rohault wandered from shop to shop to observe the me- 
 chanics labour ; Count Caylus passed his mornings in the 
 studios of artists, and his evenings in writing his numei'ous 
 works on art. This was the true life of an amateur. 
 
 Granville Sharp, amidst the severity of his studies, found 
 a social relaxation in the amusement of a barge on the 
 Thames, which was well known to the circle of his friends ; 
 there, was festive hospitality with musical delight. It was 
 resorted to by men of the most eminent talents and rank. 
 His little voyages to Putney, to Kew, and to Richmond, and 
 the literary intercourse they produced, were singularly hapjw 
 ones. " The history of his amusements cannot be told with- 
 out adding to the dignity of his character," observes Prince 
 Hoare, in the life of this great philanthropist. 
 
 Some have found amusement in composing treatises on odd 
 subjects. Seneca wrote a burlesque narrative of Claudian's 
 death. Pierius Valerianus has written an eulogium on 
 beards ; and we have had a learned one recently, with due 
 gravity and pleasantry, entitled " Eloge de Perruques." 
 
 Holstein has written an eulogium on the North Wind ; 
 Heinsius, on "the Ass;" Menage, "the Transmigration of 
 the Parasitical Pedant to a Parrot ;" and also the " Petition 
 of the Dictionaries." 
 
 Erasmus composed, to amuse himself when travelling, his 
 panegyric on Moria, or folly ; which, authorised by the pun, 
 he dedicated to Sir Thomas More. 
 
 Sallengre, who would amuse himself like Erasmus, wrote, 
 in imitation of his work, a panegyric on Ehrieti/. He says^
 
 40 Amusements of the Learned. 
 
 that he is willing to be thought as drunken a man as Erasmus 
 was a foolish one. Synesius composed a Greek panegyric on 
 Baldness. These burlesques were brought into great vogue 
 by Erasmus's Moriw Encomium. 
 
 It seems, Johnson observes in his life of Sir Thomas Browne, 
 to have been in all ages the pride of art to show how it could 
 exalt the low and amplify the little. To this ambition, per- 
 haps, we owe the Frogs of Homer ; the Gnat and the Bees of 
 Virgil ; the Butterfly of Spenser ; the Shadow of Wowerus ; 
 and the Quincunx of Browne. 
 
 Cardinal de Richelieu, amongst all his great occupations, 
 found a recreation in violent exercises ; and he was once dis- 
 covered jumping with his servant, to try who could reach the 
 highest side of a wall. De Grammont, observing the cardinal 
 to be jealous of his powers, offered to jump with him ; and, 
 in the true spirit of a courtier, having made some efforts 
 which nearly reached the cardinal's, confessed the cardinal 
 surpassed him. This was jumping like a politician ; and by 
 this means he is said to have ingratiated himself with the 
 minister. 
 
 The great Samuel Clarke was fond of robust exercise ; and 
 this profound logician has been found leaping over tables and 
 chairs. Once perceiving a pedantic fellow, he said, " Now we 
 must desist, for a fool is coming in !"* 
 
 An eminent French lawyer, confined by his business to a 
 Parisian life, amused himself with collecting from the classics 
 all the passages which relate to a country life. The collection 
 was published after his death. 
 
 Contemplative men seem to be fond of amusements which 
 accord with their habits. The thoughtful game of chess, 
 and the tranquil delight of angling, have been favourite re- 
 creations with the studious. Paley had himself painted with 
 a rod and line in his hand ; a strange characteristic for the 
 author of " Natural Theology." Su' Henry Wotton called 
 angling "idle time not idly spent :" we may suppose that his 
 meditations and his amusements were carried on at the same 
 moment. 
 
 The amusements of the great d'Aguesseau, chancellor of 
 France, consisted in an interchange of studies ; his relax- 
 ations were all the varieties of literature. " Le changement 
 
 * The same anecdote is related of Dr. Johnson, who once being at a club 
 ■where other literary men were indulging in jests, upon the entry of a new 
 visitor exclaimed, " Let us be grave — here is a fool conung."
 
 Amusements of the Learned. 41 
 
 de I'etude est mon seul delassement," said this great man ; 
 and "in the age of the passions, his only passion was 
 study." 
 
 Seneca has observed on amusements proper for literary 
 men, that, in regard to robust exercises, it is not decent to 
 see a man of letters exult in the strength of his arm, or the 
 breadth of his back ! Such amusements diminish the activity 
 of the mind. Too much fatigue exhausts the animal spirits, 
 as too much food blunts the finer faculties : but elsewhere he 
 allows his philosopher an occasional slight inebriation ; an 
 amusement which was very prevalent among our poets for- 
 merly, when they exclaimed : — 
 
 " Fetch me Ben Jonson's scull, and fill 't with sack, 
 Kich as the same he drank, when the whole pack 
 Of jolly sisters pledged, and did agree 
 It was no sin to be as drank as he !" 
 
 Seneca concludes admirably, " whatever be the amusements 
 you choose, return not slowly from those of the body to the 
 mind ; exercise the latter night and day. The mind is nou- 
 rished at a cheap rate ; neither cold nor heat, nor age itself, 
 can interrupt this exercise ; give therefore all your cares to a 
 possession ynMcIi ameliorates even in its old age !" 
 
 An ingenious writer has observed, that " a garden just 
 accommodates itself to the perambulations of a scholar, who 
 would perhaps rather wish his walks abridged than extended." 
 There is a good characteristic account of the mode in which 
 the Literati may take exercise, in Pope's Letters. " I, like 
 a poor squirrel, am continually in motion indeed, but it is 
 but a cage of three foot ! my little excursions are like those 
 of a shopkeeper, who walks every day a mile or two beibre 
 his own door, but minds his business all the while." A turn 
 or two in a garden will often very happily close a fine period, 
 mature an unripened thought, and raise up i'resh associations, 
 whenever the mind, like the body, becomes rigid by pre- 
 serving the same posture. Buffbn often quitted the old 
 tower he studied in, which was placed in the midst of his 
 garden, for a walk in it. Evelyn loved " books and a 
 garden."
 
 42 
 
 PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS. 
 
 With the ancients, it was undoubtedly a custom to place 
 the portraits of authors before their works. Martial's 186th 
 epigram of his fourteenth book is a mere play on words, con- 
 cerning a little volume containing the works of Virgil, and 
 which had his portrait prefixed to it. The volume and the 
 characters must have been very diminutive. 
 
 Quam brevis immensum cepit memhrana Maronem I 
 Ipsius Vultus prima tabella gerit. 
 
 Martial is not the only writer who takes notice of the 
 ancients prefixing poi'traits to the works of authors. Seneca, 
 in his ninth chapter on the Tranquillity of the Soul, com- 
 plains of many of the luxurious great, who, like so many of 
 our own collectors, possessed libraries as they did their 
 estates and equipages. " It is melancholy to observe how 
 the portraits of men of genius, and the works of their divine 
 intelligence, are used only as the luxury and the ornaments 
 of walls." 
 
 Pliny has nearly the same observation, lib. xxxv. cap. 2. 
 He remarks, that the custom was rather modern in his time ; 
 and attributes to Asinius PoUio the honour of having intro- 
 duced it into Rome. " In consecrating a library with the 
 portraits of oui' illustrious authors, he has formed, if I may 
 so express myself, a republic of the intellectual powers of 
 men." To the richness of book-treasures, Asinius PoUio had 
 associated a new source of pleasure, by placing the statues of 
 their authors amidst them, inspiring the minds of the spec- 
 tators, even by their e^'es. 
 
 A taste for collecting portraits, or busts, was warmly pur- 
 sued in the happier periods of Rome ; for the celebrated 
 Atticus, in a work he published of illustrious Romans, made 
 it more delightful, by ornamenting it with the portraits of 
 those great men ; and the learned Varro, in his biography of 
 Seven Hundred celebrated Men, by giving the world their 
 true features and their physiognomj' in some tnanner, aliquo 
 modo imaginihus is Pliny's expression, showed that even their 
 persons should not entirely be annihilated ; they indeed, adds 
 Pliny, form a spectacle which the gods themselves might 
 contemplate ; for if the gods sent those heroes to the earth, 
 it is Varro who secured their immortahty, and has so multi-
 
 Portraits of Authors. 43 
 
 plied and distributed them in all places, that we may carry 
 them about us, place them wherever we choose, and fix our 
 eyes on them with perpetual admiration. A spectacle that 
 every day becomes more varied and interesting, as new heroes 
 appear, and as works of this kind are spread abroad. 
 
 But as printing was unknown to the ancients (though 
 stamjnng an impression was daily practised, and, in fact, they 
 possessed the art of printing without being aware of it*), 
 how were these portraits of A^arro so easily propagated ? If 
 copied with a pen, their correctness was in some danger, and 
 their diffusion must have been very confined and slow ; per- 
 haps they were outlines. This passage of Pliny excites 
 curiosity difficult to satisfy ; I have in vain inquired of several 
 scholars, particularly of the late Grecian, Dr. Burney. 
 
 A collection of the portraits of illustrious characters 
 affords not only a source of entertainment and curiosity, but 
 displays the different modes or habits of the time ; and in 
 settling our ffoating ideas upon the true features of famous 
 persons, they also fix the chi-onological particulars of their 
 birth, age, death, sometimes with short characters of them, 
 besides the names of painter and engraver. It is thus a 
 single print, by the hand of a skilful artist, may become a 
 varied banquet. To this Granger adds, that in a collection 
 of engraved portraits, the contents of many galleries are re- 
 duced into the narrow compass of a few volumes ; and the 
 portraits of eminent persons, who distinguished themselves 
 through a long succession of ages, may be turned over in a 
 few hours. 
 
 "Another advantage," Granger continues, "attending such 
 an assemblage is, that the methodical arrangement has a 
 surprising effect upon the memory. We see the celebrated 
 contemporaries of every age almost at one view; and the mind 
 is insensibly led to the history of that period. I may add to 
 these, an important circumstance, which is, the power that such 
 a collection will have in awakeuinc/ genius. A skilful preceptor 
 will presently perceive the true bent of the temper of his pupil, 
 by his being struck with a Blake or a Boyle, a Hyde or a 
 Milton." 
 
 A circumstance in the life of Cicero confirms this observa- 
 
 * Impressions have been taken from plates engraved by the ancient 
 Egyptians ; and one of these, printed by the ordinary rolling-press, was 
 exhibited at the Great Manchester Exhibition, 1857 ; it being for all jn-ac- 
 tical purposes similar to those executed in the present day.
 
 44 Portraits of Authors. 
 
 tion. Atticus had a gallery adorned with the images or por- 
 traits of the great men of Kome, under each of which he had 
 severally described their principal acts and honours, in a few 
 concise verses of his own composition. It was by the con- 
 templation of two of these portraits (the ancient Brutus and 
 a venerable relative in one picture) that Cicero seems to have 
 incited Brutus, by the example of these his great ancestors, to 
 dissolve the tyranny of Caesar. General Fairfax made a col- 
 lection of engraved portraits of warriors. A story much in 
 favour of portrait-collectors is that of the Athenian courtesan, 
 who, in the midst of a riotous banquet with her lovers, acci- 
 dentally casting her eyes on i\\Q portrait o^ 3i. philosopher that 
 hung opposite to her seat, the happy character of temperance 
 and virtue struck her with so lively an image of her own un- 
 worthiness, that she suddenly retreated for ever from the scene 
 of debauchery. The Orientalists have felt the same charm in 
 their pictured memorials ; for " the imperial Akber," says Mr. 
 Forbes, in his Oriental Memoirs, " emplo3'ed artists to make 
 portraits of all the principal omrahs and officers in his court;" 
 they were bound together in a thick volume, wherein, as the 
 Ayeen Akbery, or the Institutes of Akber, expresses it, " The 
 Past are kept in lively remembrance ; and the Pbesent are 
 insured immortality." 
 
 Leonard Ai-etin, when young and in prison, found a por- 
 trait of Petrarch, on which his eyes were perpetually fixed ; 
 and this sort of contemplation inflamed the desire of imitating 
 this great man. Buffon hung the portrait of Newton before 
 his writing-table. 
 
 On this subject, Tacitus sublimely expresses himself at the 
 close of his admired biography of Agricola : " I do not mean 
 to censure the custom of preserving in brass or marble the 
 shape and stature of eminent men ; but busts and statues, like 
 their originals, are frail and perishable. The soul is formed 
 of finer elements, its inward form is not to be expressed by 
 the hand of an artist with unconscious matter ; our manners 
 and our morals may in some degree trace the resemblance. 
 All of Agricola that gained our love and raised our admiration 
 still subsists, and ever will subsist, preserved in the minds of 
 men, the register of ages and the records of fame." 
 
 What is more agreeable to the curiosity of the mind and 
 the eye than the portraits of great characters ? An old philo- 
 sopher, whom Marville invited to see a collection of landscapes 
 by a celebrated artist, replied, " Landscapes I prefer seeing in
 
 Portraits of Authors. 45 
 
 the country itself, but I am fond of contemplating the pic- 
 tures of illustrious men." This opinion has some truth ; Lord 
 Orford preferred an interesting portrait to either landscape or 
 historical painting. " A landscape, however excellent iu its 
 distributions of wood, and water, and buildings, leaves not 
 one trace in the memory ; historical painting is perpetually 
 false in a variety of ways, in the costume, the grouping, the 
 portraits, and is nothing more than fabulous painting ; but a 
 real portrait is truth itself, and calls up so many collateral 
 ideas as to fill an intelligent mind more than any other 
 species." 
 
 Marville justly reprehends the fastidious feelings of those 
 ingenious men who have resisted the solicitations of the artist, 
 to sit for their portraits. In them it is sometimes as much 
 pride as it is vanity in those who are less difficult in this re- 
 spect. Of Gray, Fielding, and Akenside, we have no heads 
 for which they sat ; a circumstance regretted by their ad- 
 mirers, and by physiognomists. 
 
 To an arranged collection of Poetkaits, we owe several 
 interesting works. Granger's justly esteemed volumes ori- 
 ginated in such a collection. Perrault's Eloges oi ^'' the illus- 
 triou.s men of the seventeenth century" were drawn up to 
 accompany the engraved portraits of the most celebrated cha- 
 racters of the age, which a fervent love of the fine arts and 
 literature had had engraved as an elegant tribute to the fame 
 of those great men. The}'- are confined to his nation, as 
 Granger's to ours. The parent of this race of books may 
 perhaps be the Eulogiums of Paulus Jovius, which originated 
 in a beautiful Cabinet, whose situation he has described with 
 all its amenity. 
 
 Paulus Jovius had a country house, in an insular situation, 
 of a most romantic aspect. Built on the ruins of the villa of 
 Pliny, in his time the foundations were still to be traced. 
 When the surrounding lake was calm, in its lucid bosom 
 were still viewed sculptured marbles, the trunks of columns, 
 and the fragments of those pyramids which had once adorned 
 the residence of the friend of Trajan. Jovius was an enthu- 
 siast of literary leisure : an historian, with the imagination 
 of a poet ; a christian prelate nourished on the sweet fictions 
 of pagan mythology. His pen colours like a pencil. He 
 paints rapturously his gardens bathed by the waters of the 
 lake, the shade and freshness of his woods, his green hills, his 
 sparkling fountains, the deep silence, and the calm of solitude.
 
 46 Portraits of Authors. 
 
 He describes a statue raised in his gardens to Nature; in his 
 hall an Apollo presided with his lyre, and tlie Muses with their 
 attributes ; his library was guarded by Mercury, and an apart- 
 ment devoted to the three Graces was embellished by Doric 
 columns, and paintings of the most pleasing kind. Such was 
 the interior ! Without, the pure and transparent lake spread 
 its broad mirror, or rolled its voluminous windings, by banks 
 richly covered with olives and laurels ; and in the distance, 
 towns, promontories, hills rising in an amphitheatre blushing 
 with vines, and the elevations of the Alps covered with woods 
 and pasturage, and sprinkled with herds and flocks. 
 
 In the centre of this enchanting habitation stood the 
 Cabinet, where Paulus Jovius had collected, at great cost, 
 the Portraits of celebrated men of the fourteenth and two 
 succeeding centuries. The daily view of them animated his 
 mind to compose their eulogiums. These are still curious, 
 both for the facts they preserve, and the happy conciseness 
 with which Jovius delineates a character. He had collected 
 these portraits as others form a collection of natural history; 
 and he pursued in their characters what others do in their 
 experiments. 
 
 One caution in collecting portraits must not be forgotten ; 
 it respects their authenticity. We have too many suppositi- 
 tious heads, and ideal personages. Conrad ab Uffenbach, who 
 seems to have been the first collector who projected a metho- 
 dical arrangement, condemned those spurious portraits which 
 were fit only for the amusement of children. The painter does 
 not always give a correct likeness, or the engraver misses it 
 in his copy. Goldsmith was a short thick man, with wan 
 features and a vulgar appearance, but looks tall and fashion- 
 able in a bag-wig. Bayle's portrait does not resemble him, 
 as one of his friends writes. Rousseau, in his Montero cap, 
 is in the same predicament. Winkelmann's portrait does not 
 preserve the striking physiognomy of the man, and in the last 
 edition a new one is substituted. The faithful Vertue refused 
 to engrave for Houbraken's set, because they did not authen- 
 ticate their originals ; and some of these are spurious, as that 
 of Ben Jonson, Sir Edward Coke, and others. Busts are not 
 so liable to these accidents. It is to be regretted that men 
 of genius have not been careful to transmit their own por- 
 traits to their admirers : it forms a part of their character ; 
 a false delicacy has interfered. Erasmus did not like to have 
 his own diminutive person sent down to posterity, but Holbein
 
 Destruction of Books. 4i7 
 
 was always affectionately painting his friend. Montesquieu 
 once sat to Dassier the medallist, after repeated denials, won 
 over by the ingenious ai-gument of the artist ; " Do you not 
 think," said Dassier, " that there is as much pride in refusing 
 my offer as in accepting it ?" 
 
 DESTRUCTION OF BOOKS. 
 
 The literary treasures of antiquity have suffered from the 
 malice of Men as well as that of Time. It is remarkable 
 that conquerors, in the moment of victory, or in the un- 
 sparing devastation of their rage, have not been satisfied 
 with destroying men, but have even carried their vengeance 
 to books. 
 
 ^ The Persians, from hatred of the religion of the Phceni- 
 eians and the Egyptians, destroyed their books, of which 
 Eusebius notices a great number. A Grecian library at 
 Gnidus was burnt by the sect of Hippocrates, because the 
 Gnidians refused to follow the doctrines of their master. If 
 the followers of Hippocrates formed the majority, was it not 
 very unorthodox in the Gnidians to prefer taking physic their 
 own way ? But Faction has often annihilated books. 
 
 The Eomans burnt the books of the Jews, of the Christians, 
 and the Philosophers; the Jews burnt the books of the 
 Christians and the Pagans; and the Christians burnt the 
 books of the Pagans and the Jews. The greater part of the 
 books of Origen and other heretics were continually burnt by 
 the orthodox party. Gibbon pathetically describes the empty 
 library of Alexandria, after the Christians had destroyed it. 
 " The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; 
 and near twenty years afterwards the appearance of the 
 eni'iity shelves excited the regret and indignation of every 
 spectator, whose mind was not totally darkened by religious 
 prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of 
 which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been 
 excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and 
 instruction of succeeding ages ; and either the zeal or avarice 
 of the archbishop might have been satiated with the richest 
 spoils which were the rewards of his victory." 
 
 The pathetic narrative of Nicetas Choniates, of the ravages 
 committed by the Christians of the thirteenth century in 
 Constantinople, was fraudulently suppressed in the printed
 
 48 Destruction of Books. 
 
 editions. It has been preserved by Dr. Clarke ; who observes, 
 that the Turks have committed fewer injuries to the works 
 of art than the barbarous Christians of that age. 
 
 The reading of the Jewish Talmud has been forbidden by- 
 various edicts, of the Emperor Justinian, of many of the 
 French and Spanish kings, and numbers of Popes. All the 
 copies were ordered to be burnt : the intrepid perseverance of 
 the Jews themselves preserved that work from annihilation. 
 In 1569 twelve thousand copies were thrown into the flames 
 at Cremona. John Reuchlin interfered to stop this universal 
 destruction of Talmnds ; for which he became hated by the 
 monks, and condemned by the Elector of Mentz, but appeal- 
 ing to Rome, the prosecution was stopped ; and the tradi- 
 tions of the Jews were considered as not necessary to be 
 destroyed. 
 
 Conquerors at first destroy with the rashest zeal the 
 national records of the conquered people ; hence it is that 
 the Irish people deplore the irreparable losses of their most 
 ancient national memorials, which their invaders have been 
 too successful in annihilating. The same event occurred in 
 the conquest of Mexico ; and the interesting history of the 
 New World must ever remain imperfect, in consequence of 
 the unfortunate success of the first missionaries. Clavigero, 
 the most authentic historian of Mexico, continually laments 
 this aflPecting loss. Everything in that country had been 
 painted, and painters abounded there as scribes in Europe. 
 The first missionaries, suspicious that superstition was mixed 
 with all their paintings, attacked the chief school of these 
 artists, and collecting, in the market-place, a little mountain 
 of these precious records, they set fire to it, and buried in the 
 ashes the memory of many interesting events. Afterwards, 
 sensible of their error, they tried to collect information from 
 the mouths of the Indians ; but the Indians were indignantly 
 silent : when they attempted to collect the remains of these 
 painted histories, the patriotic Mexican usually buried in con- 
 cealment the fragmentary records of his country. 
 
 The story of the Caliph Omar proclaiming throughout the 
 kingdom, at the taking of Alexandria, that the Koran con- 
 tained everything which was useful to believe and to know, 
 and therefore he commanded that all the books in the Alex- 
 andrian library should be distributed to the masters of the 
 baths, amounting to 4000, to be used in heating their stoves 
 during a period of six months, modern paradox would attempt
 
 Destruction of Books. 49 
 
 to deny. But the tale would not be singular even were it 
 true : it perfectly suits the character of a bigot, a barbarian, 
 and a blockhead. A similar event happened in Persia. Wlien 
 Abdoolah, who in the third century of the Mc>hammedan sera 
 governed Khorassan, was presented at Nishapoor with a MS. 
 which was shown as a literary curiosity, he asked the title 
 of it — it was the tale of Warnick and Oozra, composed by the 
 great poet Noshirwan. On this Abdoolah observed, that 
 those of his country and faith had nothing to do with any 
 other book than the Koran ; and all Persian MSS. found 
 within the circle of his government, as the works of idola- 
 ters, were to be burnt. Much of the most ancient poetry of 
 the Persians perished by this fanatical edict. 
 
 When I3uda was taken by the Turks, a Cardinal offered a 
 vast sum to redeem the great library founded by Matthew 
 Corvini, a literary monarch of Hungary : it was rich in Greek 
 and Hebrew lore, and the classics of antiquity. Thirty 
 amanuenses had been employed in copying MSS. and illumi- 
 nating them by the finest art. The barbarians destroyed 
 most of the books in tearing away their splendid covers and 
 their silver bosses ; an Hungarian soldier picked up a book 
 as a prize : it proved to be the Ethiopics of Heliodorus, from 
 which the first edition was printed in 1534. 
 
 Cardinal Ximenes seems to have retaliated a little on the 
 Saracens ; for at the taking of Granada, he condemned to the 
 flames five thousand Korans. 
 
 The following anecdote respecting a Spanish missal, called 
 St. Isidore's, is not incurious ; hard fighting saved it from 
 destruction. In the Moorish wars, all these missals had been 
 destroyed, excepting those in the city of Toledo. There, in 
 six churches, the Christians were allowed the free exercise of 
 their religion. When the Moors were expelled several cen- 
 turies afterwards from Toledo, Alphonsus the Sixth ordered 
 the Roman missal to be used in those churches ; but the 
 people of Toledo insisted on having their own, as revised by 
 St. Isidore. It seemed to them tliat Alphonsus was more 
 tyrannical than the Turks. The contest between the Roman 
 and the Toletan missals came to that heia'ht, that at lenofth 
 it was deternnned to decide their fate by single combat ; the 
 champion of the Toletan missal felled by one blow the knight 
 of the Koman missal. Alphonsus still considered this battle 
 as merely the effect of the heavy arm of the doughty Toletan, 
 and ordered a fast to be proclaimed, and a great fire to be 
 
 YOL. I. E
 
 50 Destruction of Books. 
 
 prepared, into which, after his majesty and the people had 
 joined in prayer for heavenly assistance in this ordeal, both 
 the rivals (not tlie men, but the missals) vpere thrown into 
 the flames — again St. Isidore's missal triumphed, and this 
 iron book was then allowed to be orthodox by Alphonsus, 
 and the good people of Toledo were allowed to say their 
 prayers as they had long been used to do. However, the 
 copies of this missal at length became very scarce ; for now, 
 when no one opposed the reading of St. Isidore's missal, none 
 cared to use it. Cardinal Ximenes found it so difficult to 
 obtain a copy, that he printed a large impression, and built 
 a chapel, consecrated to St. Isidore, that this service might 
 be daily chaunted as it had been by the ancient Christians. 
 
 The works of the ancients were frequently destroyed at the 
 instigation of the monks. They appear sometimes to have 
 mutilated them, for passages have not come down to us, 
 which once evidently existed ; and occasionally their inter- 
 polations and other forgeries formed a destruction in a new 
 shape, by additions to the originals. They were indefatigable 
 in erasinuf the best works of the most eminent Greek and 
 Latin authors, in order to transcribe their ridiculous lives of 
 saints on the obliterated vellum. One of the books of Livy 
 is in the Vatican most painfully defaced by some pious father 
 for the purpose of writing on it some missal or psalter, and 
 there have been recently others discovered in the same state. 
 Inflamed with the blindest zeal against everything pagan, 
 Pope Gregory VIJ. ordered that the library of the Palatine 
 Apollo, a treasury of literature formed by successive emperors, 
 should be committed to the tlames ! He issued this order 
 under the notion of confining the attention of the clergy to 
 the holy scriptures ! From that time all ancient learning 
 which was not sanctioned by the authority of the church, 
 has been emphatically distinguished as profane in opposition 
 to sacred. This pope is said to have burnt the works of 
 Varro, the learned lioman, that Saint Austin should escape 
 from the charge of plagiarism, being deeply indebted to Varro 
 for much of his great work " the City of God." 
 
 The Jesuits, sent by the emperor Ferdinand to proscribe 
 Lutheranism from Bohemia, converted that flourishing king- 
 dom comparatively into a desert. Convinced that an en- 
 lightened people could never be long subservient to a tyrant, 
 they struck one fatal blow at the national literature : every 
 book they condemned was destroyed, even those of antiquity ;
 
 Destruction of Books, 51 
 
 the annals of the nation were forbidden to be read, and writers 
 were not permitted even to compose on subjects of Boliemian 
 literature. The mother-tongue was held out as a mark of 
 vulgar obscurity, and domiciliary visits were made for the 
 purpose of inspecting the libraries of the Bohemians. With 
 their books and their language they lost their national cha- 
 racter and their independence. 
 
 The destruction of libraries in the reign of Henry VIII. at 
 the dissolution of tlie monasteries, is wept over by John 
 Bale. Those who purchased the religious houses took the 
 libraries as part of the booty, with which they scoured their 
 furniture, or sold the books as waste paper, or sent them 
 abroad in ship-loads to foreign bookbinders.* 
 
 The fear of destruction induced many to hide manuscripts 
 under ground, and in old walls. At the Reformation popular 
 rage exhausted itself on illuminated books, or MSS. that had 
 red letters in the title ])age : any work that was decorated 
 was sure to be thrown into the flames as a superstitious one. 
 Red letters and embellished figures were sure marks of being 
 papistical and diabolical. We still find such volumes muti- 
 lated of their gilt letters and elegant initials. Many have 
 been found underground, having been forgotten ; what 
 escaped the flames were obliterated by the damp : such is the 
 deplorable fate of books during a persecution ! 
 
 The puritans burned everything they found which bore the 
 vestige of popish origin. We have on record many curious 
 accounts of their pious depredations, of their maiming 
 images and erasing pictures. The heroic expeditions of one 
 
 * Henry gave a commission to the famous antiquary, John Leland, to 
 examine the libraries of the suppressed religious houses, and preserve such 
 as concerned history. Though Leland, after his search, told the king he 
 had "conserved many good authors, the which otherwyse had bene lyke to 
 Lave peryshed, to the no smal incommodite of good letters," he owns to 
 the ruthless destruction of all such as were connected with the " doctryne 
 of a rowt of Romayne l)ysshopps." Strype consequently notes with great 
 sorrow that many "ancient manuscripts and writings of learned British and 
 Saxon authors were lost. Libraries were sold by mercenary men for any- 
 thing they could get, in that confusion and devastation of religious houses. 
 Bale, the antiquai'y, makes mention of a merchant that bought two noble 
 libraries about these times for forty shillings ; the books whereof served 
 him for no other use but for waste paper ; and tliat he had been ten years 
 consuming them, and yet there remained still store enough for as many 
 years more. Vast quantities and numbers of these books vanished with 
 the monks and friars from their monasteries, were conveyed away and car- 
 ried beyond seas to booksellers there, by whole ship ladings ; and a great 
 many more were used in shops and kitchens." 
 
 E 2
 
 52 Destruction of Books. 
 
 Dowsing are journalised by himself : a fanatical Quixote, to 
 whose intrepid arm many of our noseless saints, sculptured on 
 our Cathedrals, owe their misfortunes. 
 
 The following are some details from the diary of this re- 
 doubtable Goth, during his rage for reformation. His entries 
 are expressed with a laconic conciseness, and it would seem 
 with a little dry humour. " At Sunbmy, we brake down ten 
 mighty great angels in glass. At Bar'ham, brake down the 
 twelve apostles in the chancel, and six superstitious pictures 
 more there ; and eight in the church, one a lamb with a cross 
 ( + ) on the back ; and digged down the steps and took up 
 four superstitious inscriptions in brass," &c. " Lady Bruce' s 
 house, the chapel, a picture of Clod the Father, of the 
 Trinity, of Christ, the Holy Ghost, and the cloven tongues, 
 which we gave orders to take down, and the lady promised 
 to do it." At another place they " brake six hundred 
 superstitious pictures, eight Holy Ghosts, and three of the 
 Son." And in this manner he and his deputies scoured one 
 hundred and fifty parishes ! It has been humorously conjec- 
 tured, that from this ruthless devastator originated the phrase 
 to give a Doicsing. Bishop Hall saved the windows of his 
 chapel at Norwich from destruction, by taking out the heads 
 of the figures; and this accounts for the many faces in 
 church windows which we see supplied by white glass. 
 
 In the various civil wars in our country, numerous libraries 
 have suffered both in MSS. and printed books. "I dare 
 maintain," says Fuller, "that the wars betwixt York and 
 Lancaster, which lasted sixty years, were not so destructive 
 as our modern wars in six years." He alludes to the parlia- 
 mentary feuds in the reign "^of Charles I. "For during the 
 former their differences agreed in the same religion, impressing 
 them with reverence to all allowed muniments ! whilst our civil 
 tears, founded in faction and variety of pretended religions, 
 exposed all naked church records a prey to armed violence ; 
 a sad vacuum, which will be sensible in our Emjlish historie/'' 
 
 When it was proposed to the great Gustavu's of Sweden to 
 destroy the palace of the Dukes of Bavaria, that hero nobly 
 refused ; observing, " Let us not copy the example of our 
 unlettered ancestors, who, by waging war against every pro- 
 duction of genius, have rendered the name of Goth univer- 
 sally proverbial of the rudest state of barbarity." 
 
 Even the civilisation of the eighteenth century could not 
 preserve from the destructive fury of an infuriated mob, in
 
 Destruction of Books. 53 
 
 tlie most polished city of Europe, the valuable MSS. of the 
 great Earl of Mansfield, which were madly consigned to the 
 flames during the riots of 1780 ; as those of Dr. Priestley 
 were consumed by the mob at Birmingham. 
 
 In the year 1599, the Hall of the Stationers underwent as 
 great a purgation as was carried on in Don Quixote's library. 
 Warton gives a list of the best writers who were ordered for 
 immediate conflagration by the prelates Whitgift and ]3an- 
 croft, urged by the Puritanical and Calvinistic tactions. Like 
 thieves and outlaws, they were ordered to he taken ivhereso- 
 ever they may he found. — " It was also decreed that no satires 
 or epigrams shoTild be printed for the future. No plays were 
 to be printed without the inspection and permission of the 
 archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London ; nor any 
 Mnglish historyes, I suppose novels and romances, without 
 the sanction of the privy council. Any pieces of this nature, 
 unlicensed, or now at large and wandering abroad, were to 
 be diligently sought, recalled, and delivered over to the eccle- 
 siastical arm at London-house." 
 
 At a later period, and by an opposite party, among other 
 extravagant motions made in parliament, one was to destroy 
 the Kecords in the Tower, and to settle the nation on a new 
 foundation ! The very same principle was attempted to be 
 acted on in the French Revolution by the "true sans- 
 culottes." With us Sir Matthew Hale showed the weakness of 
 the project, and while he drew on his side " all sober persons, 
 stopped even the mouths of the frantic people themselves." 
 
 To descend to the losses incurred by individuals, Avhose 
 names ought to have served as an amulet to charm away the 
 demons of literary destruction. One of the most interesting 
 is the fate of Aristotle's library ; he who by a Greek term 
 was first saluted as a collector of books ! His works have 
 come down to us accidentally, but not without irreparable 
 injuries, and with no slight suspicion respecting their 
 authenticity. The story is told by Strabo, in his thirteenth 
 book. The books of Ainstotle came from his scholar Tlieo- 
 phrastus to Neleus, whose posterity, an illiterate race, kept 
 them locked up without using them, buried in the earth ! 
 Apellion, a curious collector, purchased them, but finding the 
 MSS. injured by age and moisture, conjectui-ally supplied 
 their deficiencies. It is impossible to know how far Apellion 
 has corrupted and obscured the text. But the mischief did 
 not end here ; when Sylla at the taking of Athens brought
 
 54 Destruction of Books. 
 
 them to Rome, he consigned them to the care of Tyrannic, a 
 grammarian, who employed scribes to copy them ; he suffered 
 them to pass through his hands without correction, and took 
 great freedoms with them ; the words of Strabo are strong : 
 " Ibiqne Tyrannionem grammaticum iis usum atque (ut fama 
 est) inter cidisse, aut invertissey He gives it indeed as a 
 report ; but the fact seems confirmed by the state in which 
 we find these works : Averroes declared that he read Aristotle 
 forty times over before he succeeded in perfectly understand- 
 ing him ; he pretends he did at the one-and-fortieth time ! 
 And to prove this, has published five folios of commentary ! 
 
 We have lost much valuable literature by the illiberal or 
 malignant descendants of learned and ingenious persons. 
 Many of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters have been 
 destroyed, I am informed, by her daughter, who imagined that 
 the fanaily honours were lowered by the addition of those of 
 literature : some of her best letters, recently published, were 
 Ibund buried in an old trunk. It would have mortified her 
 ladyship's daughter to have heard, that her mother was the 
 Sevigne of Britain. 
 
 At the death of the learned Peiresc, a chamber in his 
 house filled with letters from the most eminent scholars of 
 the age was discovered : the learned in Europe had addressed 
 Peiresc in their difficulties, who was hence called " the 
 attorney-general of the republic of letters." The niggardly 
 niece, although repeatedly entreated to permit them to be 
 published, preferred to use these learned epistles occasionally 
 to light her fires !* 
 
 Tlie MSS. of Leonardo da Vinci have equally suffered from 
 his relatives. When a curious collector discovered some, he 
 generously brought them to a descendant of the great 
 painter, who coldly observed, that " he had a great deal more 
 
 * One of the most disastrous of these losses to the admirers of the old 
 drama occurred through the neglect of a collector — John Warburton, 
 Somerset herald-at-arrns (who died 1759), and who had many of these 
 early plays in manuscript. They were left carelessly in a corner, and 
 during his absence his cook used them for culinary purposes as waste 
 paper. The list published of his losses is, however, not quite accurate, as 
 one or more escaped, or were mislaid by this careless man ; for Massin- 
 ger's tragedy, The Tyrant, stated to have been so destroyed, was found 
 among his books, and sold at his sale in 1759 ; another play by the same 
 author, Believe as You List, was discovered among some papers from 
 Garrick's library in 1844, and was printed by the Percy Society, 1849. 
 It appears to be the very manuscript copy seen and described by Gibber 
 and Chetwood.
 
 Destruction of Books. 55 
 
 in the garret, which had lain there for many years, if the rats 
 had not destroyed them !" Nothing which this great artist 
 wrote but showed an inventive genius. 
 
 Menage observes on a friend having had his library 
 destroyed by fire, in which several valuable MSS. had perished, 
 that such a loss is one of the greatest misfortunes that can 
 happen to a man of letters. Tliis gentleman afterwards con- 
 soled himself by composing a little treatise De Bibliothecce 
 incendio. It must have been sufficiently curious. Even in 
 the present day men of letters are subject to similar mis- 
 fortunes ; for though the fire-offices will insui'e books, they will 
 not allow autliors to value their own manuscripts. 
 
 A fire in the Cottonian library shrivelled and destroyed 
 many Anglo-Saxon MSS. — a loss now irreparable. The anti- 
 quary is doomed to spell hai-d and hardly at the baked frag- 
 ments that crumble in his hand.* 
 
 Meninsky's famous Persian dictionary met with a sad fate. 
 Its excessive rarity is owing to the siege of Vienna by the 
 Turks : a bomb fell on the author's house, and consumed the 
 principal part of his indefatigable labours. There are lew 
 sets of this high-priced work which do not bear evident 
 proofs of the bomb ; while many parts are stained with the 
 water sent to quench the flames. 
 
 The suffijrings of an author lor the loss of his manuscripts 
 strongly appear in the case of Anthony Urceus, a great 
 scholar of the fifteenth century. The loss of his papers seems 
 immediately to have been followed by madness. At Forli,he 
 had an apartment in the palace, and liad prepared an important 
 work for publication. His room was dark, and he generally 
 wrote by lamp-light. Having gone out, he left the lamp 
 burning ; the papers soon kindled, and his library was reduced 
 to ashes. As soon as he heard the news, he ran furiously to 
 the palace, and knocking his head violently against the gate, 
 uttered this blasphemous language : " Jesus Christ, what 
 
 * One of these shrivelled volumes is preserved in a case in our British 
 Museum. The leaves have been twisted and drawn almost into a solid 
 ball by the action of fire. Some few of the charred manuscrii)ts have been 
 admirably restored of late years by judicious pressure, and inlaying the 
 damaged leaves in solid margins. The fire occurred while the collection 
 was temporarily placed in Ashburnham House, Little Dean's Yard, West- 
 minster, in October, 1731. From the Report published by a Committee of 
 the House of Commons soon after, it appeal's that the original number of 
 volumes was 953 — "of which are lost, burnt, or entii'ely spoiled, 114 ; 
 and damaged so as to be defective, 98."
 
 56 Destruction of Books. 
 
 great crime have I done ! who of those who believed in you 
 have I ever treated so cruelly ? Hear what I am saying, for 
 I am in earnest, and am resolved. If by chance I should be 
 so weak as to address myself to you at the point of death, 
 don't hear me, for I will not be with you, but prefer hell and 
 its eternity of torments." To which, \>j the by, he gave 
 little credit. Those who heard these ravings, vainly tried to 
 console him. He quitted the town, and lived franticly, 
 wandei'ing about the woods ! 
 
 Ben Jonson's Exea^ation on Vulcan was composed on a like 
 occasion ; the fruits of twenty years' study were consumed in 
 one short hour ; our litei-ature suffered, for among some 
 works of imagination there were many philosophical collec- 
 tions, a commentary on the poetics, a complete critical 
 grammar, a life of Henry V., his journey into Scotland, with 
 all his adventures in that poetical pilgrimage, and a poem on 
 the ladies of Great Britain. What a catalogue of losses ! 
 
 Castelvetro, the Italian commentator on Aristotle, having 
 heard that his house was on fire, ran through the streets 
 exclaiming to the people, alia Poetica ! alia Foetica I To 
 the Poetic ! To the Poetic ! He was then writins: his com- 
 mentary on the Poetics of Aristotle. 
 
 Several men of letters have been known to have risen from 
 their death-bed to destroy their MSS. So solicitous have they 
 been not to venture their posthumous reputation in the hands 
 of undiscerning friends. Colardeau, the elegant versifier of 
 Pope's epistle of Eliosa to Abelard, had not yet destro_yed 
 what he had written of a translation of Tasso. At the 
 approach of death, he recollected his unfinished labour ; he 
 knew that his fi'iends would not have the couraore to annihilate 
 one of his works ; this was reserved for him. Dying, he 
 raised himself, and as if animated by an honourable action, he 
 dragged himself along, and with trembling hands seized his 
 papers, and consumed them in one sacrifice. — I recollect 
 another instance of a man of letters, of our own country, 
 who acted the same part. He had passed his life in constant 
 study, and it was observed tliat he had written several folio 
 volumes, which his modest fears would not permit him to 
 expose to the eye even of his critical friends. He promised 
 to leave his laboui-s to posterity ; and he seemed sometimes, 
 with a glow on his countenance, to exult that they would not 
 be unworthy of their acceptance. At his death his sensibility 
 took the alarm ; he had the folios brouglit to his bed ; no one
 
 Destruction of Books. 57 
 
 could open them, for they were closely locked. At the sight 
 of his favourite and mysterious labours, he paused ; he seemed 
 disturbed in his mind, while he felt at every moment his 
 strength decaying ; suddenly he raised his feeble hands by an 
 effort of firm resolve, burnt his papers, and smiled as the 
 greedy Vulcan licked up every page. The task exhausted his 
 remaining strength, and he soon afterwards expired. The late 
 Mrs. Inchbald had written her life in several vohmies ; on her 
 death-bed, from a motive perhaps of too much delicacy to 
 admit of any argument, she requested a friend to cut them 
 into pieces before her eyes — not having sufficient strength left 
 herself to perform this funereal office. These are instances 
 of what may be called the heroism of authors. 
 
 The republic of letters has suffered irreparable losses by 
 shipwrecks. Guarino Veronese, one of those learned Italians 
 who travelled through Greece for the recovery of MSS., had 
 his perseverance repaid by the acquisition of many valuable 
 works. On his return to Italy he was shipwrecked, and lost 
 his treasures! So poignant was his grief on this occasion that, 
 according to the i-elation of one of his countrymen, his hair 
 turned suddenly white. 
 
 About the year 1700, Hudde, an opulent burgomaster of 
 Middleburgh, animated solely by literary curiosity, went to 
 China to instruct himself in the language, and in whatever 
 was remarkable in this singular people. He acquired the skill 
 of a mandarine in that difficult language ; nor did the form of 
 his Dutch face undeceive the physiognomists of China. He 
 succeeded to the dignit}^ of a mandarine ; he travelled through 
 the provinces under this character, and returned to Europe 
 with a collection of observations, the cherished labour of thirty 
 years, and all these were sunk in the bottomless sea. 
 
 The great Pinellian library, after the death of its illustrious 
 possessor, filled three vessels to be conveyed to Naples. Pur- 
 sued by corsairs, one of the vessels was taken; but the pirates 
 finding nothing on board but books, they threw them all into 
 the sea : such was the fate of a great portion of this famous 
 library.* National libraries have often perished at sea, from 
 the circumstance of conquerors ti'ansporting them into their 
 own kingdoms. 
 
 * Gianvincenzo Pinelli was descended from a noble Genoese familj', and 
 born at Naples in 1535. At tbe age of twenty-three he removed to Padua, 
 then noted for its learning, and here he devoted his time and fortune to 
 literary and scientitic pursuits. There was scarcely a branch of knowledge
 
 58 
 
 SOME NOTICES OF LOST WORKS. 
 
 ALTnouGii it is the opinion of some critics that our literary 
 losses do not amount to tlie extent which others imagine, they 
 are however much greater than they allow. Our severest 
 losses are felt in the historical province, and particularly in 
 the earliest records, which might not have beeu the least in- 
 teresting to philosophical curiosity. 
 
 The history of Phoenicia by Sanchoniathon, supposed to be 
 a contemporary with Solomon, now consists of only a few 
 valuable fragments preserved by Eusebius. The same ill for- 
 tune attends Manetho's history of Egypt, and Berosu's history 
 of Chaldea. The histories of these most ancient nations, 
 however veiled in fables, would have presented to the philo- 
 sopher singular objects of contemplation. 
 
 Of the history of Polybios, which once contained forty 
 books, we have now only five; of the historical library of 
 Diodorus Siculus fifteen books only remain out of forty; and 
 half of the Koman antiquities of Dionysius Helicarnassensis 
 has perished. Of the eighty books of the history of Dion 
 Cassius, twenty-five only remain. The present opening book 
 of Ammianus Marcellinus is entitled the fourteenth. Livy's 
 history consisted of one hundred and forty books, and we 
 only possess thirty-five of that pleasing historian. What a 
 treasure has been lost in the thirty books of Tacitus ! little 
 more than four remain. Murphy elegantly observes, that 
 " the reign of Titus, the delight of human kind, is totally 
 lost, and Domitian has escaped the vengeance of the historian's 
 pen." Yet Tacitus in fragments is still the colossal torso of 
 history. Velleius Paterculas, of whom a fragment only has 
 
 that he did not cultivate; and at his death, in 1601, he left a noble 
 library behind him. But the Senate of Venice, ever fearful that an undue 
 knowledge of its proceedings should be made public, set their seal upon 
 his collection of manuscripts, and took away more than two hundred vo- 
 lumes which related in some degree to its affairs. The rest of the books 
 were packed to go to Naples, where his heirs resided. The printed books 
 are stated to have filled one hundred and sixteen chests, and the manu- 
 scripts were contained in fourteen others. Three ships were freighted with 
 them. One fell into the hands of corsairs, and the contents were destroyed, as 
 stated in the text ; some of the books, scattered on the beach at Fermo, 
 were purchased by the Bishop there. The other shiploads were ultimately 
 obtained by Cardinal Borromeo, and added to his library.
 
 Some Notices of Lost Works. 51) 
 
 reached us, we owe to a single copy: no otlier having ever 
 been discovered, and which has occasioned the text of this 
 historian to remain incurably corrupt. Taste and criticism 
 have certainly incurred an irreparable loss in that Treatise 
 on the Causes of the Corruption of Eloquence, by Quintiliaii; 
 which he has himself noticed with so much satisfaction in his 
 " Institutes." Petrarch declares, that in his youth he had 
 seen the works of Varro, and the second Decad of Livy; but 
 all his endeavours to recover them were fruitless. 
 
 These are only some of the most known losses; but in 
 reading contemporary writers we are perpetually discovering 
 many important ones. We have lost two precious works in 
 ancient biography: Varro wrote the lives of seven hundred 
 illustrious liomans ; and Atticus, the friend of Cicero, com- 
 posed another, on the acts of the great men among the 
 Romans. When we consider that these writers lived fami- 
 liarly with the finest geniuses of their times, and were opu- 
 lent, hospital)le, and lovers of the fine arts, their biography 
 and their portraits, which are said to have accompanied them, 
 ai-e felt as an irreparable loss to literature. I suspect likewise 
 we have had great losses of which we are not always aware; 
 for in that curious letter in which the younger Pliny describes 
 in so interesting a manner the sublime industry, for it seems 
 sublime by its magnitude, of his Uncle,* it appears that his 
 Natural History, that vast register of the wisdom and the 
 credulity of the ancients, was not his only great labour; for 
 among his other works was a history in twenty books, whiclx 
 has entirely perished. We discover also the works of writers, 
 which, by the accounts of them, appear to have equalled in 
 genius those which have descended to us. Pliny has feelingly 
 described a poet of whom he tells us, " his works are never 
 out of my hands ; and whether I sit down to write anything 
 myself, or to revise what I have already wrote, or am in a dis- 
 position to amuse myself, I constantly take up this agreeable 
 author ; and as often as I do so, he is still new."t He had be- 
 fore compared this poet to Catullus ; and in a critic of so fine 
 a taste as Pliny, to have cherished so constant an intercourse 
 with the writings of this author, indicates high powers. In- 
 stances of this kind frequently occur. Who does not regret 
 the loss of the Anticato of Caesar ? 
 
 * Book III. Letter V. Melmotli's translation, f Book I. Letter XVI.
 
 60 Quodlibets, or Scholastic Disquisitions. 
 
 The losses which the poetical world has sustained are suffi- 
 ciently known by those who are conversant with the few in- 
 valuable fragments of Menander, who might have interested 
 us perhaps moi-e than Homer: for he was evidently the do- 
 mestic poet, and the lyre he touched was formed of the strings 
 of the human heart. He was the painter of passions, and the 
 historian of the manners. The opinion of Quintilian is con- 
 firmed by the golden fragments preserved for the English 
 reader in the elegant versions of Cumberland. Even of 
 ^sehylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, who each wrote about one 
 hundred dramas, seven only have been preserved of Jilschylus 
 and of Sophocles, and nineteen of Euripides. Of the one 
 hundred and thirty comedies of Plautus, we only inherit 
 twenty imperfect ones. The remainder of Ovid's Fasti has 
 never been recovered. 
 
 I believe that a philosopher would consent to lose any poet 
 to regain an historian ; nor is this unjust, for some future 
 poet may arise to supply the vacant place of a lost poet, but 
 it is not so with the historian. Fancy may be supplied ; but 
 Truth once lost in the annals of mankind leaves a chasm never 
 to be filled. 
 
 QUODLIBETS, OR SCHOLASTIC DISQUISITIONS. 
 
 The scholastic questions were called Questiones Quodlibeficcs; 
 and they were generally so ridiculous that we have retained 
 the word QuocUihet in our vernacular style, to express any- 
 thing ridiculously subtile ; something which comes at length 
 to be distinguished into nothingness, 
 
 "With all the rash dexterity of wit." 
 
 The history of the scholastic philosophy furnishes an in- 
 structive theme ; it enters into the history of the human 
 mind, and fills a niche in our literary annals. The works of 
 the scholastics, with the debates of these Quodlibetarimis, at 
 once show the greatness and the littleness of the human in- 
 tellect ; for though they often degenerate into incredible 
 absurdities, those who have examined the works of Thomas 
 Aquinas and Duns Scotus have confessed their admiration of 
 the Herculean texture of brain which they exhausted in 
 demolishing their aerial fabrics. 
 
 The following is a slight sketch of the school divinity.
 
 Quodlibets, or Scholastic Disquisitions. 01 
 
 The christian doctrines in the primitive ages of the gospel 
 Avere adajited to the simple comprehension of the multitude ; 
 metaphysical subtilties were not even employed by the 
 Fathers, of whom several are eloquent. The Homilies ex- 
 plained, by an obvious interpretation, st>me scriptural ])oiiit, 
 or inferred, by artless illustration, some moral doctrine. 
 When the Arabians became the only learned people, and 
 their empire extended over the greater part of the known 
 world, they impressed their own genius on those nations with 
 whom they were allied as i'riends, or reverenced as masters. 
 The Arabian genius was fond of abstruse studies ; it was 
 highly metaphysical and mathematical, for the fine arts their 
 religion did not j)ermit them to cultivate ; and the first 
 knowledge which modern Europe obtained of Euclid and 
 Aristotle was through the medium of Latin translations of 
 Arabic versions. The Christians in the west received their 
 first lessons from the Arabians in the east ; and Aristotle, 
 with his Arabic commentaries, was enthroned in the schools 
 of Christendom. 
 
 Then burst into birth, from the dark cave of metaphysics, 
 a numerous and ugly spawn of monstrous sects ; unnatural 
 children of the same foul mother, who never met but for 
 mutual destruction. Religion became what is called the study 
 of Theology ; and they all attempted to reduce the worship 
 of God into a system ! and the creed into a thesis ! Every 
 point relating to religion was debated througli an endless 
 chain of infinite questions, incomprehensible distinctions, with 
 differences mediate and. immediate, the concrete and the 
 abstract, a perpetual civil war cari'ied on against common 
 sense in all the Aristotelian severity'. There existed a rage 
 for Aristotle ; and Melancthon complains that in sacred 
 assemblies the ethics of Aristotle were read to the people 
 instead of the gospel. Aristotle was placed a-head of St. 
 Paul ; and St. Thomas Aquinas in his works distinguishes 
 him by the title of "The Philosopher ;" inferring, doubtless, 
 that no other man could possibly be a philosoi)her who dis- 
 agreed with Aristotle. Of the blind rites paid to Aristotle, 
 the anecdotes of the Nominalists and liealists are noticed in 
 the article " Literary Controversy" in this work. 
 
 Had their subtile questions and perpetual wranglings only- 
 been addressed to the metaphysician in his closet, and had 
 nothing but strokes of the pen occurred, the scholastic divi- 
 nity would only have formed an episode in the calm narrative
 
 63 Quodlibets, or Scholastic Disquisitions. 
 
 of literaiy history ; but it has claims to he registered in poli- 
 tical annals, from the numerous persecutions and tragical 
 events with which they too long perplexed their followers, 
 and disturbed the repose of Europe. The Thomists, and the 
 Scotists, the Oceamites, and many others, soared into the 
 regions of m^'sticism. 
 
 Peter Lombard had laboriously compiled, after the cele- 
 brated Abelard's " Introduction to Divinity," his four books 
 of " Sentences," from the writings of the Fathers ; and for 
 this he is called "The Master of Sentences." These Sen- 
 tences, on which we have so many commentaries, are a collec- 
 tion of passages from the Fathers, the real or apparent con- 
 tradictions of whom he endeavours to reconcile. But his 
 successors were not satisfied to be mere commentators on 
 these " sentences," which they now only made use of as a 
 row of pegs to hang on their fine-spun metaphysical cobwebs. 
 They at length collected all these quodlibetical questions into 
 enormous volumes, under the terrifying form, for those who 
 have seen them, of Summaries of Divinity I They contrived, 
 by their chimerical speculations, to question the plainest 
 truths ; to wrest the simple meaning of the Holy Scriptures, 
 and give some appearance of truth to the most ridiculous 
 and monstrous opinions. 
 
 One of the subtile questions which agitated the world in 
 the tenth century, relating to dialectics, was concerning 
 uiiiversals (as for example, man, horse, dog, &c.) signifying 
 not tJiis or that in particular, but all in general. They dis- 
 tinguished universals, or what we call abstract terms, by the 
 genera and species 7'erum ; and they never could decide 
 whether these were substances — or names ! That is, whether 
 the abstract idea we form of a horse was not really a being as 
 much as the horse we ride ! All this, and some congenial 
 points respecting the origin of our ideas, and what ideas were, 
 and whether we really had an idea of a thing before we dis- 
 covered the thing itself — in a word, what they called univer- 
 sals, and the essence of universals ; of all this nonsense, on 
 which they at length proceeded to accusations of heresy, and 
 for which many learned men were excommunicated, stoned, 
 and what not, the whole was derived from the reveries of 
 J-'lato, Aristotle, and Zeno, about the nature of ideas, than 
 which subject to the present day no discussion ever degene- 
 rated into such insanity. A modern metaphysician infers 
 that we have no ideas at all !
 
 Quodlibets, or Sc/iolastic Disquisitions. C3 
 
 Of the scholastic divines, the most illustrious was Saint 
 Thomas Aquinas, styled the Angelical Doctor. Seventeen 
 folio volumes not only testify his industry but even his genius. 
 He was a great man, busied all his life with making the cha- 
 rades of metaphysics. 
 
 My learned friend Sharon Turner has favoured me with 
 a notice of his greatest work — his "Sum of all Theology," 
 Siimma totiiis Theologice, Paris, lUlS. It is a metaphysico- 
 logical treatise, or the most abstruse metaphysics of theology. 
 It occupies above 1250 folio pages, of very small close jDrint 
 in double columns. It may be worth noticing that to this 
 work are appended 19 folio pages of double columns of errata, 
 and about 200 of additional index ! 
 
 The whole is thrown into an Aristotelian form ; the diffi- 
 culties or questions are proposed first, and the answers are 
 then appended. There are 108 articles on Love — 358 on 
 Angels — 200 on the Soul — 85 on Demons — 151 on the Intel- 
 lect — 134 on Law — 3 on the Catamenia — 237 on Sins — 17 
 on Virginity, and others on a variety of topics. 
 
 The scholastic tree is covered with prodigal foliage, but is 
 barren of fruit ; and when the scholastics employed them- 
 selves in solving the deepest mysteries, their philosophy 
 became nothing more than an instrument in the hands of 
 the Roman Pontiif. Aquinas has composed 358 articles on 
 angels, of which a few of the heads have been culled for the 
 reader. 
 
 He treats of angels, their substance, orders, offices, natures, 
 habits, &c., as if he himself had been an old experienced angel ! 
 
 Angels were not before the world ! 
 
 Angels might have been before the world ! 
 
 Angels were created by God — They were created imme- 
 diately by Him — Tbey were created in the Empyrean sky — 
 They were created in grace — The^^ were created in imperfect 
 beatitude. After a severe chain of reasoning, he shows that 
 angels are incorporeal compared to us, but corporeal compared 
 to God. 
 
 An angel is composed of action and potentiality ; the more 
 superior he is, he has the less potentiality. They have not 
 matter properly. Every angel differs from another angel in 
 species. An angel is of the same species as a soul. Angels 
 have not naturally a body united to them. They may assume 
 bodies ; but they do not want to assume bodies for them- 
 selves, but for us.
 
 64 Quodlibets, or Scholastic Disquisitions. 
 
 The bodies assumed by angels are of thick air. 
 
 The bodies they assume have not the natural virtues which 
 they show, nor the operations of life, but those which are 
 common to inanimate things. 
 
 An angel may be the same with a body. 
 
 In the same body there are, the soul formally giving being, 
 and operating natural operations ; and the angel operating 
 supernatural operations. 
 
 Angels administer and govern every corporeal creature. 
 
 Grod, an angel, and the soul, are not contained in space, but 
 contain it. 
 
 Many angels cannot be in the same space. 
 
 The motion of an angel in space is nothing else than 
 different contacts of different successive places. 
 
 The motion of an angel is a succession of his different 
 operations. 
 
 His motion may be continuous and discontinuous as he 
 will. 
 
 The continuous motion of an angel is necessary through 
 every medium, but may be discontinuous without a medium. 
 
 The velocity of the motion of an angel is not according to 
 the quantity of his strength, but according to his will. 
 
 The motion of the illumination of an angel is threefold, or 
 circular, straight, and oblique. 
 
 In this account of the motion of an angel we are reminded 
 of the beautiful description of Milton, who marks it by a 
 continuous motion, 
 
 "Smooth-sliding witliout step." 
 
 The reader desirous of being merry with Aquinas's angels 
 may find them in Martinus Scriblerus, in Ch. VII. who in- 
 quires if angels pass from one extreme to another without 
 going through the middle ? And if angels know things more 
 clearly in a morning ? How many angels can dance on the 
 point of a very fine needle, without jostling one another ? 
 
 All the questions in Aquinas are answered with a subtlety 
 of distinction more difficult to comprehend and remember 
 than many problems in Euclid ; and perliaps a few of the 
 best might still be selected for youth as curious exercises of 
 the understanding. However, a great part of these peculiar 
 productions are loaded with the most trifling, irreverent, and 
 even scandalous discussions. Even Aquinas could gravely 
 debate. Whether Christ was not an hermaphrodite ? Whe-
 
 Quodlibets, or Scholastic Disquisitions. 65 
 
 ther there are excrements in Paradise ? Whether the pious 
 at the resurrection will rise with their bowels ? Others again 
 debated — Whether the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin 
 Mary in the shape of a serpent, of a dove, of a man, or of a 
 woman ? Did he seem to be young or old ? In what dress 
 was he ? Was his garment white or of two colours ? Was 
 his linen clean or foul ? Did he appear in the morning, noon, 
 or evening ? What was the colour of the Virgin Mary's 
 hair ? Was she acquainted with the mechanic and liberal 
 arts ? Had she a thorough knowledge of the Book of Sen- 
 tences, and all it contains ? that is, Peter Lombard's com- 
 pilation from the works of the Fathers, written 1200 years 
 after her death. — But these are only trifling matters : they also 
 agitated. Whether when during her conception the Virgin 
 was seated, Clirist too was seated ; and whether when she 
 lay down, Christ also lay down ? The following question 
 was a favourite topic for discussion, and the acutest logicians 
 never resolved it : " When a hog is carried to market with a 
 rope tied about his neck, which is held at the other end by 
 a man, whether is the Iwg carried to market by the rojie or 
 the man 7'^ 
 
 In the tenth century,* after long and ineffectual controversy 
 about the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, they at 
 length universally agreed to sign a peace. This mutual for- 
 bearance must not, however, be ascribed to the prudence and 
 virtue of those times. It was mere ignorance and incapacity 
 of reasoning which kept the peace, and deterred them from 
 entering into debates to which they at length found them- 
 selves unequal ! 
 
 Lord Lyttleton, in his Life of Henry II., laments the 
 unhappy effects of the scholastic philosophy on the progress 
 of the human mind. The minds of men were turned from 
 classical studies to the subtilties of school divinity, which 
 Rome encouraged, as more profitable for the maintenance of 
 her doctrines. It was a great misfortune to religion and to 
 learning, that men of such acute understandings as Abelard 
 and Lombard, who might have done much to reform the 
 errors of the church, and to restore science in Europe, should 
 have depraved both, by applying their admirable parts to 
 weave those cobwebs of sophistry, and to confound the clear 
 simplicity of evangelical truths, by a false philosophy and a 
 captious logic. 
 
 * Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. v. p. 17. 
 
 TOL. I. E
 
 66 
 
 FAME CONTEMNED. 
 
 All men are fond of glory, and even those philosophers who 
 write against that noble passion prefix their names to their 
 own works. It is worthy of observation that the authors of 
 two religious hooks, universally received, have concealed their 
 names from the world. The " Imitation of Christ" is attri- 
 buted, without any authority, to Thomas A'Kempis ; and 
 the author of the " Whole Duty of Man" still remains un- 
 discovered. Millions of their books liave been dispersed in 
 the Christian world. 
 
 To have revealed their names would have given them as 
 much worldly fame as any moralist has obtained — but they 
 contemned it ! Their religion was raised above all worldly 
 passions ! Some profane writers, indeed, have also concealed 
 their names to great works, but their 7notives were of a very 
 different cast. 
 
 THE SIX FOLLIES OF SCIENCE. 
 
 Nothing is so capable of disordering the intellects as an 
 intense application to any one of these six things : the Qua- 
 drature of the Circle ; the Multiplication of the Cube ; the 
 Perpetual Motion ; the Philosophical Stone ; Magic ; and 
 Judicial Astrology. " It is proper, however," Fontenelle 
 remarks, " to apply one's self to these inquiries ; because we 
 find, as we proceed, many valuable discoveries of which 
 we were before ignorant." The same thought Cowley has 
 applied, in an address to his mistress, thus — 
 
 "Although I think thou never wilt be found, 
 Yet I'm resolved to seai-ch for thee : 
 The search itself rewards the pains. 
 
 So though the chymist his great secret miss, 
 (For neither it in art nor nature is) 
 
 Yet things well worth his toil he gains ; 
 And does his charge and labour pay 
 With good unsought expeiiments by the way." 
 
 The same thought is in Donne ; perhaps Cowley did not 
 suspect that he was an imitator ; Fontenelle could not have 
 read either ; he struck out the thought by his own reflection. 
 Glauber searched long and deeply for the philosopher's stone, 
 which though he did not find, yet in his researches he disco- 
 vered a very useful purging salt, which bears his name.
 
 Imitators. 67 
 
 Maiipertuis observes on the Philosophical Stone, that we 
 cannot prove the impossibility of obtaining it, but we can 
 easily see the folly of those who employ their time and 
 money in seeking for it. This price is too great to counter- 
 balance the little probability of succeeding in it. However, 
 it is still a bantling of modern chemistry, who has nodded 
 very affectionately on it ! — Of the Perpetual Motion, he shows 
 the impossibility, in the sense in which it is generally received. 
 On the Quadrature of the Circle, he says he cannot decide if 
 this problem be resolvable or not : but he observes, that it is 
 very useless to search for it any more ; since we have arrived 
 by approximation to such a point of accuracy, that on a large 
 circle, such as the orbit which the earth descinbes round the 
 sun, the geometrician will not mistake by the thickness of 
 a hair. The quadrature of the circle is still, however, a 
 favourite game with some visionaries, and several are still 
 imagining that they have discovered the perpetual motion ; 
 the Italians nickname them matto perpefiio : and Bekker 
 tells us of the fate of one Hartmann, of Leipsic, who was 
 in such despair at having passed his life so vainly, in studying 
 the perpetual motion, that at length he hanged himself ! 
 
 IMITATORS. 
 
 Some writers, usually pedants, imagine that they can sup- 
 ply, by the labours of industry, the dehciencies of nature. 
 Paulus Manutius frequently spent a month in writing a single 
 letter. He affected to imitate Cicero. But although he 
 painfully attained to something of the elegance of his style, 
 destitute of the native graces of unaffected composition, he 
 was one of those whom Erasmus bantered in his Giceronianus, 
 as so slavishly devoted to Cicero's style, that they ridiculously 
 employed the utmost precautions when they were seized by a 
 Ciceronian fit. The Nosoponus of Erasmus tells of his devo- 
 tion to Cicero ; of his three indexes to all his words, and his 
 never writing but in the dead of night, employing months 
 upon a few lines ; and his religious veneration for loords, with 
 his total indifference about the sense. 
 
 Le Brun, a Jesuit, was a singular instance of such unhappy 
 imitation. He was a Latin poet, and his themes were reli- 
 gious. He formed the extravagant project of substituting a 
 religious Virgil and Ovid merely by adapting his works to 
 
 r2
 
 68 Imitators. 
 
 their titles. His Christian Virgil consists, like the Pagan 
 Virgil, of Eclogues, Georgics, and of an Epic of twelve books ; 
 with this difierence, that devotional subjects are substituted 
 for fabulous ones. His epic is the Ignaciad, or the pilgrimage 
 of Saint Ignatius. His Christian Ovid, is in the same taste ; 
 everything wears a new face. His Ejnstles are pious ones ; 
 the Fasti are the six days of the Creation ; the Elegies are 
 the six Lamentations of Jeremiah ; a poem on the Love of 
 Ood is substituted for the Art of Love ; and the history of 
 some Conversions supplies the place of the Metamorphoses ! 
 This Jesuit would, no doubt, have approved of a family 
 ShaTcspeare ! 
 
 A poet of a far different charactei', the elegant Sannazarius, 
 has done much the same thing in his poem De Partu Virginis. 
 The same servile imitation of ancient taste appears. It pro- 
 fesses to celebrate the birth of Christ, yet his name is not 
 once mentioned in it ! The Virgin herself is styled spes 
 deorum ! " The hope of the gods !" The Lncarnation is 
 predicted by Proteus ! The Virgin, instead of consulting the 
 sacred loritings, reads the Sihylline oracles ! Her attendants 
 are dryads, nereids, &c. This monstrous mixture of poly- 
 theism with the mysteries of Christianity, appears in every- 
 thing he had about him. In a chapel at one of his country 
 seats he had two statues placed at his tomb, Apollo and 
 Minerva; catholic piety found no difficulty in the present 
 case, as well as in innumerable others of the same kind, to 
 inscribe tlie statue of Apollo with the name of David, and 
 that of Minerva with the female one of Judith ! 
 
 Seneca, in his 114th Epistle, gives a curious literary anec- 
 dote of the sort of imitation by which an inferior mind 
 becomes the monkey of an original writer. At Rome, when 
 Sallust was the fashionable writer, short sentences, uncom- 
 mon words, and an obscure brevity, were affected as so many 
 elegances. AiTuntius, who wrote the history of the Punic 
 Wars, painfully laboured to imitate Sallust. Expressions 
 which are rare in Sallust are frequent in Arruntius, and, of 
 course, without the motive that induced Sallust to adopt 
 them. What rose naturally under the pen of the great his- 
 torian, the minor one must have run after with ridiculous 
 anxiety. Seneca adds several instances of the servile affecta- 
 tion of Arruntius, which seem much like those we once had 
 of Johnson, by the undiscerning herd of his apes. 
 
 One cannot but smile at these imitators ; we have abounded
 
 Cicero's Puns. 69 
 
 with them. In the days of Churchill, every month produced 
 an effusion which tolerably imitated his slovenly versitication, 
 his coarse invective, and his careless mediocrity, — but the 
 genius remained with the English Juvenal. Sterne had his 
 countless multitude ; and in Fielding's time, Tom Jones pro- 
 duced more bastards in wit than the author could ever suspect. 
 To such literary echoes, the reply of Philip of Macedon to 
 one who prided himself on imitating the notes of tlie night- 
 ingale may be applied: "I prefer the nightingale herself!" 
 Even the most successful of this imitating ti-ibe must be 
 doomed to share the f\ite of Silius Italicus, in his cold imita- 
 tion of Virgil, and Cawthorne in his empty harmony of 
 Pope. 
 
 To all these imitators T must apply an Arabian anecdote. 
 Ebn Saad, one of Mahomet's amanuenses, when writing what 
 the prophet dictated, cried out by way of admiration — 
 "Blessed be God, the best Creator!" Mahomet approved of 
 the expression, and desired him to write those words down as 
 part of the inspired passage. — The consequence was, that Ebn 
 Saad began to think himself as great a prophet as his master, 
 and took upon himself to imitate the Koran according to his 
 fancy ; but the imitator got himself into trouble, and only 
 escaped with life by falling on his knees, and solemnly swearing 
 he would never again imitate tlie Koran, for which he was 
 sensible God had never created him. 
 
 CICERO'S PUNS. 
 
 " I SHOULD," says Menage, " have received great pleasure to 
 have conversed with Cicero, had I lived in his time. He 
 must have been a man very agreeable in conversation, since 
 even Cajsar carefully collected his ho7is mots. Cicero has 
 boasted of the great actions he has done for his country, be- 
 cause there is no vanity in exulting in the performance of our 
 duties ; but he has not boasted that he was the most elo- 
 quent orator of his age, though he certainly was ; because 
 nothing is more disgusting than to exult in our intellectual 
 powers." 
 
 Whatever were the hons mots of Cicero, of which few have 
 come down to us, it is certain that Cicero was an inveterate 
 punster ; and he seems to have been more ready with them 
 -than with repartees. He said to a senator, who was the son
 
 70 Cicero's Puns. 
 
 of a tailor, ''Hem acu tetigisti.''^ You have touched it 
 sharply ; acu means sharpness as well as the point of a 
 needle. To the son of a cook, " ego quoque tibi jure favebo^ 
 The ancients pronounced coce and quoque like co-he, which 
 alludes to the Latin cocus, cook, besides the ambiguity of 
 jure, which applies to hroth or law — jiis. A Sicilian sus- 
 pected of being a Jew, attempted to get the cause of Verres 
 into his own hands ; Cicero, who knew that he was a crea- 
 ture of the great culprit, opposed him, observing " What has 
 a Jew to do with swine's flesh ?" The Romans called a 
 boar pig Verres. I regret to afford a respectable authority 
 for forensic puns ; however, to have degraded his adversariciS 
 by such petty personalities, only proves that Cicero's taste 
 was not exquisite. 
 
 There is something very original in Montaigne's censure of 
 Cicero. Cotton's translation is admirable. 
 
 " Boldly to confess the truth, his way of writing, and that 
 of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very tedious ; 
 for his preface, definitions, divisions, and etymologies, take up 
 the greatest part of his work ; whatever there is of life and 
 marrow, is smothered and lost in the preparation. When I 
 have spent an hour in reading him, which is a great deal for 
 me, and recollect what I have thence extracted of juice and 
 substance, for the most part I find nothing but wind : for he 
 is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his purpose, 
 and the reasons that should properly help to loose the knot I 
 would untie. For me, who only desired to become more 
 wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristo- 
 telian disquisitions of poets are of no use. I look for good 
 and solid reasons at the first dash. I am for discourses that 
 give the first charge into the heart of the doubt ; his languish 
 about the subject, and delay our expectation. Those are 
 proper for the schools, for the bar, and for the pulpit, where 
 we have leisure to nod, and may awake a quarter of an hour 
 after, time enough to find again the thread of the discourse. 
 It is necessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a 
 man has a design, right or wrong, to incline to favour his 
 cause ; to children and common people, to whom a man must 
 say all he can. I would not have an author make it his 
 business to render me attentive ; or that he should cry out 
 fifty times yes ! as the clerks and heralds do. 
 
 " As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that, learning 
 excepted, he had no great natural parts. He was a good
 
 Prefaces. 71 
 
 citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat heavy men — {gras et 
 gausseurs are the words in the original, meaning perhaj^s 
 broad jokers, for Cicero was not fat) — such as he was, usually 
 are ; but given to ease, and had a mighty share of vanity and 
 ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him for think- 
 ing his poetry fit to be published. 'Tis no great imperfection 
 to write ill verses ; but it is an imperfection not to be able to 
 judge how unworthy bad verses were of the glory of his 
 name. For what concerns his eloquence, that is totally out 
 of comparison, and I believe will never be equalled." 
 
 PREFACES. 
 
 A PREFACE, being the entrance to a book, should invite by its 
 beauty. An elegant porch announces the splendour of the 
 interior. I have observed that ordinary readers skip over 
 these little elaborate compositions. The ladies consider them 
 as so many pages lost, which might bett(!r be employed in 
 the addition of a picturesque scene, or a tender letter to their 
 novels. For my part I always gather amusement from a 
 prefiice, be it awkwardly or skilfully written ; for dulness, or 
 impertinence, may raise a laugh for a page or two. A preface 
 is frequently a superior composition to the work itself: for, 
 long before the days of Johnson, it had been a custom for 
 many authors to solicit for this department of their work the 
 ornamental contribution of a man of genius. Cicero tells his 
 friend Atticus, that he had a volume of prefaces or introduc- 
 tions always ready by him to be used as circumstances re- 
 quired. These must have been like our periodical essays. 
 A good preface is as essential to put the reader into good 
 humour, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony 
 to an opera, containing something analogous to the work 
 itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere 
 to be gratified. The Italians call the preface La salsa del 
 llbro, the sauce of the book, and if well seasoned it creates an 
 appetite in the reader to devour the book itself. A preface 
 badly composed prejudices the reader against the work. 
 Authors are not equally fortunate in these little introduc- 
 tions ; some can compose volumes more skilfully than pre- 
 faces, and others can finish a preface who could never be 
 capable of finishing a book. 
 
 On a very elegant preface prefixed to an ill-written book, it
 
 72 Prefaces. 
 
 was observed that they ought never to have come together ; 
 but a sarcastic wit remarked that he considered such mar- 
 riages were allowable, for they were not of kin. 
 
 In prefaces an affected haughtiness or an affected humility 
 are alike despicable. There is a deficient dignity in Robert- 
 son's ; but the haughtiness is now to our purpose. This is 
 called by the French, " la morgue litteraire'' the surly pom- 
 posity of literature. It is sometimes used by writers who 
 have succeeded in their first work, while the failure of their 
 subsequent productions appears to have given them a literary 
 hypochondriasm. Dr. Armstrong, after his classical poem, 
 never shook hands cordially with the public for not relishing 
 his barren labours. In the preface to his lively " Sketches" 
 he tells us, " he could give them much bolder strokes as well 
 as more delicate touches, but that he dreads tlie danger of 
 writing too well, and feels the value of his own labour too 
 sensibly to bestow it upon the mobility''' This is pure milk 
 compared to the gall in the preface to his poems. There he 
 tells us, " tliat at last he has taken the trouble to collect 
 them ! What he has destroyed would, probably enough, have 
 been better received by the great majority of readers. But 
 he has always most heartily despised their opinion." These 
 prefaces remind one of the prologi galeati, prefaces with a 
 helmet ! as St. Jerome entitles the one to his Version of the 
 Scriptures. These armed prefaces were formerly very com- 
 mon in the age of literary controversy ; for half the business 
 of an author consisted then, either in replying, or anticipating 
 a reply, to the attacks of his opponent. 
 
 Prefaces ought to be dated ; as these become, after a series of 
 editions, leading and useful circumstances in literary history. 
 
 Fuller with quaint humour observes on Indexes — " An 
 Index is a necessary implement, and no impediment of a book, 
 except in the same sense wherein the carriages of an army are 
 tei-med Impedimenta. Without this, a large author is but a 
 labyrinth without a clue to direct the reader therein. I con- 
 fess there is a lazy kind of learning which is only Indical ; 
 when scholars (like adders which only bite the horse's heels) 
 nibble but at the tables, which are calces lihrorum, neglecting 
 the body of the book. But though the idle deserve no 
 crutches (let not a staff be used by them, but on them), 
 pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit thereof, 
 and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation of an 
 index, most used by those who most pretend to contemn it."
 
 EARLY TRINTING. 
 
 There is some probability tbat this art originated in China, 
 where it was practised long befoi'e it was known in Europe. 
 Some European traveller might have imported the hint.* 
 That the Romans did not practise the art of printing cannot 
 but excite our astonishment, since they actually used it, 
 unconscious of their rich possession. I have seen Koman 
 stereotypes, or immoveable printing types, with which they 
 stamped their pottery. t How in daily practising the art, 
 though confined to this object, it did not occur to so ingenious 
 a people to print their literary works, is not easily to be 
 accounted for. Did the wise and grave senate dread those 
 inconveniences which attend its indiscriminate use ? Or per- 
 haps they did not care to deprive so large a body of scribes 
 of their business. Not a hint of the art itself appears in 
 their writings. 
 
 When first the art of printing was discovered, they only 
 made use of one side of a leaf ; they had not yet found out 
 the expedient of impressing the other. Afterwards they 
 thought of pasting the blank sides, which made them appear 
 like one leaf. Their blocks were made of soft woods, and 
 their letters were carved ; but frequently breaking, the 
 expense and trouble of carving and gluing new letters 
 suggested our moveable types, which have produced an almost 
 miraculous celerity in this art. The modern stereotype, con- 
 sisting of entire pages in solid blocks of metal, and, not being 
 liable to break like the soft wood at first used, has been profit- 
 ably employed for works which require to be frequently 
 reprinted. Printing in carved blocks of wood must have 
 greatly retarded the progress of universal knowledge : for one 
 
 * China is the stronghold where antiquarian controversy rests. Beaten 
 in affixing the origin of any art elsewhere, the controversialist enshrines 
 himself within the Great Wall, and is allowed to repose in peace. Oppo- 
 nents, lilve Arabs, give up the chase when these gates close, though pos- 
 sibly with as little reason as the children of the desert evince when they 
 quietly succumb to any slight defence. 
 
 t They are small square blocks of metal, with the name in raised 
 letters within a border, precisely similar to those used by the modern 
 printer. Sometimes the stamp was round, or in the shape of a foot or 
 hand, with the potter's name in the centre. They were in constant use 
 for impressing the clay-works which supplied the wants of a Roman house- 
 hold. The list of potters' marks found upon fragments discovered iu London 
 alone amounts to several hundreds.
 
 74 Early Printing. 
 
 set of types could onl}'^ have produced one work, whereas it 
 now serves for hundreds. 
 
 When their editions were intended to be curious, they 
 omitted to print the initial letter of a chapter : they left that 
 blank space to be painted or illuminated, to the fancy of the 
 purchaser. Several ancient volumes of these early times have 
 been found where these letters are wanting, as they neglected 
 to have them painted. 
 
 The initial carved letter, which is generally a fine wood-cut, 
 among our printed books, is evidently a remains or imitation 
 of these ornaments.* Among the very earliest books printed, 
 which were religious, the Poor Man's Bible has wooden cuts 
 in a coarse style, without the least shadowing or crossing of 
 strokes, and these they inelegantly daubed over with broad 
 colours, which they termed illuminating, and sold at a cheap 
 rate to those who could not afford to purchase costly missals 
 elegantly written and painted on vellum. Specimens of these 
 rude efforts of illuminated prints may be seen in Strutt's 
 Dictionary of Engravers. The Bodleian library possesses the 
 originals. t 
 
 * Another reason for the omission of a great initial is given. There 
 was difficulty in obtaining such enriched letters by engraving as were used 
 in manuscripts ; and there was at this time a large number of professional 
 scribes, whose interests were in some degree considered by the printer. 
 Hence we find in early books a large space left to be filled in by the hand, 
 of the scribe with the proper letter indicated by a small type letter placed in 
 the midst. The famous Psalter printed by Faust and Scheffer, at Mentz, 
 in 1497, is the first book having large initial letters printed in red and blue 
 inks, in imitation of the handwork of the old caligraphers. 
 
 t The British Museum now possesses a remarkably fine series of these 
 early works. They originated in the large sheet woodcuts, or "broad- 
 sides," representing saints, or scenes from saintly legends, used by the 
 clergy as presents to the peasantry or pilgrims to certain shrines — a cus- 
 tom retained upon the Continent to the present time ; puch cuts exhibiting 
 little advance in art since the days of their origin, being almost as rude, 
 and daubed in a similar way with coarse colour. One ancient cut of this 
 kind in the British Museum, representing the Saviour brought before 
 Pilate, resembles in style the pen-drawings in manuscripts of the four- 
 teenth century. Another exhibits the seven stages of human life, with 
 the wheel of fortune in the centre. Another is an emblematic representa- 
 tion of tlie Tower of Sapience, each stone formed of some mental qualifica- 
 tion. When books were formed, a large series of such cuts included pic- 
 tures and type in each page, and in one piece. The so-called Poor Man's 
 Bible (an evidently erroneous term for it, the invention of a bibliographer 
 of the last century) was one of these, and consists of a series of pictures 
 from Scripture history, with brief explanations. It was most probably 
 preceded by the block books known as the Apocalypse of St. John, the 
 Cantico Canticorum, and the Ars Memorandi.
 
 Early Printing. 75 
 
 In the productions of early printing may be distinguished 
 the various splendid editions of Primers, or Prayer-hooks. 
 These were embellished with cuts finished in a most elegant 
 taste : many of them were grotesque or obscene. In one of 
 them an angel is represented crowning the Virgin Mary, and 
 Grod the Father himself assisting at the ceremony. Some- 
 times St. Michael is overcoming Satan ; and sometimes St. 
 Anthony is attacked by various devils of most clumsy forms 
 — not of the grotesque and limber family of Callot ! 
 
 Printing was gradually practised throughout Europe from 
 the year 1440 to 1500. Caxton and his successor Wynkyn 
 de Worde were our own earliest printers. Caxton was a 
 wealthy merchant, who, in 1464, being sent by Edward IV. 
 to negotiate a commercial treaty with the Duke of Burgundy, 
 returned to his country with this invaluable art. Notwith- 
 standing his mercantile habits, he possessed a literary taste, 
 and his first work was a translation from a French historical 
 miscellany.* 
 
 The tradition of the Devil and Dr. Faustus was said to have 
 been derived from the odd circumstance in which the Bibles 
 of the first printer. Fust, appeared to the world ; but if Dr. 
 Faustus and Faustus the printer are two diff'erent persons, 
 tlie tradition becomes suspicious, though, in some respects, it 
 has a foundation in truth. When Fust had discovered this 
 new art, and printed off" a considerable number of copies of 
 the Bible to imitate those which were commonly sold as 
 MSS., he undertook the sale of them at Paris. It was his 
 interest to conceal this discovery, and to pass off his printed 
 copies for MSS. But, enabled to sell his Bibles at sixty 
 crowns, while the other scribes demanded five hundred, this 
 raised universal astonishment ; and still more when he pro- 
 duced copies as fast as they were wanted, and even lowered 
 his price. The uniformity of the copies increased the wonder. 
 Informations were given in to tlie magistrates against him as 
 a magician ; and in searching his lodgings a great number ot 
 copies were found. The red ink, and Fust's red ink is pecu- 
 
 * This was Eaoul le Fevre's Recueil des Histoires de Troye, a fanciful 
 compilation of adventures, ia which the heroes of antiquity perform tlie 
 parts oiihepreux chevaliers of the middle ages. It was " ended in the 
 Holy City of Colen," in September, 1471. The first book printed by him 
 in Eng\a.nd wa-s The Game and Pluye of the Chesse, in March, 1474. It 
 is a fanciful moralizatiou of the game, abounding with quaint old legends 
 and stories.
 
 ■^6 Early Printing. 
 
 liarly brilliant, which embellished his copies, was said to be 
 his blood ; and it was solemnly adjudged that he was in 
 league with the Infernals. Fust at length was obliged, to 
 save himself from a bonfire, to reveal his art to the Parlia- 
 ment of Paris, who discharged him from all prosecution in 
 consideration of the wonderful invention. 
 
 When the art of printing was established, it became the 
 glory of the learned to be correctors of the press to eminent 
 prmters. Physicians, lawyers, and bishops themselves occu- 
 pied this department. The printers then added frequently to 
 their names those of the correctors of the press ; and editions 
 were then valued according to the abilities of the corrector. 
 
 The prices of books in these times were considered as an 
 object worthy of the animadversions of the highest powers. 
 This anxiety in favour of the studious appears from a privilege 
 of Pope Leo X. to Aldus Manutius for printing Varro, dated 
 1553, signed Cardinal Bembo. Aldus is exhorted to put a 
 moderate price on the work, lest the Pope should withdraw 
 his privilege, and accord it to others. 
 
 Eobert Stephens, one of the early printers, surpassed in 
 correctness those who exercised the same profession.* 
 
 To render his editions immaculate, lie hung up the proofs 
 in public places, and generously recompensed those who were 
 so fortunate as to detect any errata. 
 
 Plantin, though a learned man, is more famous as a printer. 
 His printing-office was one of the wonders of Europe. This 
 
 Robert Stephens was the most celebrated of a family renowned 
 through several generations in the history of printing. The first of the 
 dynasty, Henry Estienne, who, in the spirit of the age, latinized his name, 
 was born in Paris, in 1470, and commenced printing there at the begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth century. His three sons— Francis, Robert, and 
 Charles — were all renowned printers and scholars ; Robert the most cele- 
 brated for the correctness and beauty of his work. His Latin Bible of 
 1532 made for him a great reputation ; and he was appointed printer to 
 Francis I. A new edition of his Bible, in 1545, brought him into trouble 
 with the formidable doctors of the Sorbonne, and he ultimately left Paris 
 for Geneva, where he set up a printing-office, which soon became famous. 
 He died in 1559. He was the author of some learned works, and a 
 printer whose labours in the "noble art" have never been excelled. He 
 left two sons — Henry and Robert— also remarkable as learned printers ; ' 
 and they both had sons who followed the same pursuits. There is not 
 one of this large family without honourable recognition for labour and 
 knowledge, and in their wives and daughters they found learned assistants. 
 Chalmers says — " They were at once the ornament and reproach of the 
 age in which they lived. They were all men of great learning, all exten- 
 si\e benefactors to literature, and all persecuted or unfortunate."
 
 Early Printing. 77 
 
 grand building was the chief ornament of the city of Antwerp. 
 Magnificent in its structure, it presented to the spectator a 
 countless number of presses, characters of all figures and all 
 sizes, matrixes to cast letters, and all other printing materials ; 
 which Baillet assures us amounted to immense simis.* 
 
 In Italy, the three Manutii were more solicitous of correct- 
 ness and illustrations than of the beauty of their printing. 
 They were ambitious of the character of the scholar, not of 
 the printer. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that our }mblishers are not lite- 
 rary men, able to form their own critical decisions. Among 
 the learned printers formerly, a book was valued because it 
 came from the presses of an Aldus or a Stephens ; and even 
 in our own time the names of Bowyer and Dodsley sanctioned 
 a work. Pelisson, in his history of the French Academy, 
 mentions that Camusat was selected as their bookseller, from 
 his reputation for publishing onl}^ valuable works. " He was 
 a man of some literature and good sense, and rarely printed 
 an indifferent work ; and when we were young I recollect 
 that we always made it a rule to purchase his publications. 
 His name was a test of the goodness of the work." A pub- 
 hsher of this character would be of the greatest utility to the 
 literary world : at home he would induce a number of inge- 
 nious men to become authors, for it would be honourable to 
 be inscribed in his catalogue ; and it would be a direction for 
 the continental reader. 
 
 So valuable a union of learning and printing did not, un- 
 fortunately, last. The printers of the seventeenth century 
 became less charmed with glory than with gain. Their cor- 
 rectors and their letters evinced as little delicacy of choice. 
 
 The invention of what is now called the Italic letter in 
 printing was made by Aldus Manutius, to whom learning owes 
 
 * Plantiu's office is still existing in Antwerp, and is one of the most 
 interesting places in that interesting city. It is so carefully preserved, that 
 its quadrangle was assigned to the soldiery in the last great revolution, to 
 prevent any hostile incursion and damage. It is a lonely building, in 
 which the old office, with its presses and printing material, still remains 
 as when deserted by the last workman. The sheets of the last books 
 printed there are still lying on the tables ; and in the presses and drawers 
 are hundreds of the woodcuts and copperplates used by Plantin for the books 
 that made his office renowned throughout Europe. In the quadrangle are 
 busts of himself and his successors, the Morels, and the scholars who were 
 connected with them. Plantiu's own room seems to want only his pre- 
 sence to perfect the scene. The furniture and fittings, the quaint decora- 
 tion, leads the imagination insensibly back to the days of Charles V.
 
 78 Errata. 
 
 much. He observed the many inconveniences resulting from 
 the vast number of abbreviations, which were then so frequent 
 among the printers, that a book was difficult to understand ; 
 a treatise was actually written on the art of reading a printed 
 book, and this addressed to the learned ! He contrived an 
 expedient, by which these abbreviations might be entirely got 
 rid of, and yet books suffer little increase in bulk. This he 
 effected by introducing what is now called the Italic letter, 
 though it formerly was distinguished by the name of the in- 
 ventor, and called the Aldine. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Besides the ordinary errata, which happen in printing a 
 work, others have been purposely committed, that the errata 
 may contain what is not permitted to appear in the body of 
 the work. Wherever the Inquisition had any power, parti- 
 cularly at Rome, it was not allowed to employ the word /attim, 
 ov fata, in any book. An author, desirous of using the latter 
 word, adroitly invented this scheme ; he had printed in his 
 book facta, and, in the errata, he put, "For facta, read 
 fatar 
 
 Scarron has done the same thing on another occasion. He 
 had composed some verses, at the head of which he placed 
 this dedication — A Guillemette, Chienne de ma Sceur; but 
 having a quarrel with his sister, he maliciousl}^ put into the 
 errata, " Instead of Chienne de ma Soeur, read ma Chienne de 
 JSceur.'' 
 
 Lully, at the close of a bad prologue said, the word fin du 
 prologue was an erratum, it should have been fi du pro- 
 logue ! 
 
 In a book, there was printed, le docte 3forel. A wag put 
 into the errata, " For le docte Morel, read le Docteur Morel." 
 This Morel was not the first docteur not docte. 
 
 When a fanatic published a mystical work full of unintelli- 
 gible raptures, and which he entitled Ties Delices de V Esprit, 
 it was proposed to print in his errata, " For Delices read 
 Delires." 
 
 The author of an idle and imperfect book ended with the 
 usual phrase of cetera desiderantur, one altered it, Non 
 desiderantur sed desunt; " The rest is wanting, but not 
 wanted." 
 
 At the close of a silly book, the author as usual printed the
 
 Errata. 79 
 
 word Finis. — A wit put this among the errata, with this 
 pointed couplet : — 
 
 Finis ! — an error, or a lie, my friend ! 
 
 In writing foolish books — there is no End I 
 
 In the year 1561 was printed a work, entitled "the Anatomy 
 of the Mass." It is a thin octavo, of 172 pages, and it is 
 accompanied by an Errata of 15 pages ! The editor, a pious 
 monk, informs us that a very serious reason induced him to 
 undertake this task : for it is, says he, to forestal the artifices 
 of Satan. He supposes that the Devil, to ruin the fruit of 
 this work, employed two very malicious frauds : the first be- 
 fore it was printed, by drenching the MS. in a kennel, and 
 having reduced it to a most pitiable state, rendered several 
 parts illegible : the second, in obliging the printers to commit 
 such numerous blunders, never yet equalled in so small a work. 
 To combat this double machination of Satan he was obliged 
 carefully to re-peruse the work, and to form this singular list 
 of the blunders of printers under the influence of Satan. All 
 this he relates in an advertisement prefixed to the Errata. 
 
 A furious controversy raged between two famous scholars 
 from a very laughable but accidental .£/rra^wOT, and threatened 
 serious consequences to one of the parties. Flavigny wrote 
 two letters, criticising rather freely a polyglot Bible edited by 
 Abraham Ecchellensis. As this learned editor had sometimes 
 censured the labours of a friend of Flavigny, this latter applied 
 to him the third and fifth verses of the seventh chapter of St. 
 Matthew, which he printed in Latin. Ver 3. Quid vides fes- 
 tucam in ocvJjO firatris tui, et trahem in OCULO tuo 7ion vides? 
 Ver. 5. Ejice primiim trahem de octjlo tuo, et tunc videhis 
 ejicere festucam de ocvi,o fratris tui. Ecchellensis opens his 
 reply by accusing Flavigny of an enormous crime committed 
 in this passage ; attempting to correct the sacred text of the 
 Evangelist, and daring to reject a word, while he supplied its 
 place by another as impious as obscene! This crime, exagge- 
 rated with all the virulence of an angry declaimer, closes with 
 a dreadful accusation. Flavigny's morals are attacked, and 
 his reputation overturned by a horrid imputation. Yet all 
 this terrible reproach is only founded on an Erratum! The 
 whole arose from the printer having negligently suffered the 
 first letter of the word Oculo to have dropped from the form 
 when he happened to touch a line with his finger, which did 
 not stand straight ! He published another letter to do away
 
 80 Errata. 
 
 the imputation of Ecchellensis ; but thirty years afterwards 
 his rage against the negligent printer was not extinguished ; 
 the wits were always reminding him of it. 
 
 Of all literary blunders none equalled that of the edition of 
 the Vulgate, by SixtusV. His Holiness carefully superintended 
 every sheet as it passed through the press; and, to the amaze- 
 ment of the world, the work remained without a rival — it 
 swarmed with errata ! A multitude of scraps were printed to 
 paste over the erroneous passages, in order to give the true 
 text. The book makes a whimsical appearance with these 
 patches ; and the heretics exulted in this demonstration of 
 papal infallibility! The copies were called in, and violent at- 
 tempts made to suppress it ; a few still remain for the raptures 
 of the biblical collectors ; not long ago the bible of Sixtus V. 
 fetched above sixty guineas — not too much for a mere book of 
 blunders ! The world was highly amused at the bull of the 
 editorial Pope prefixed to the first volume, which excommu- 
 nicates all printers who in reprinting the work should make 
 any alteration in the text ! 
 
 In the version of the Epistles of St. Paul into the Ethiopia 
 language, which proved to be full of errors, the editors allege 
 a good-humoured reason — " They who printed the work could 
 not read, and we could not print ; they helped us, and we 
 helped them, as the blind helps the blind." 
 
 A printer's widow in Germany, while a new edition of the 
 Bible was printing at her house, one night took an opportu- 
 nity of stealing into the office, to alter that sentence of sub- 
 jection to her husband, pronounced upon Eve in Genesis, 
 chap. 3, V. 16. She took out the two first letters of the word 
 Hebe, and substituted Na in their place, thus altering the 
 sentence from " and he shall be thy Loed" {Herr), to " and 
 he shall be thy Fool" {JVarr). It is said her life paid for 
 this intentional erratum ; and that some secreted copies of 
 this edition have been bought up at enormous prices. 
 
 We have an edition of the Bible, known by the name of 
 The Vinegar Bible; from the erratum in the title to the 
 20th chap, of St. Luke, in which " Parable of the Vineyard" 
 is printed, "Parable of the Vinegar." It was printed in 
 1717, at the Clarendon press. 
 
 We have had another, where " Thou shalt commit adul- 
 tery" was printed, omitting the negation ; which occasioned 
 the ai'chbishop to lay one of the heaviest penalties on the
 
 Errata. 81 
 
 Company of Stationers that was ever recorded in the annals 
 of literary histor3^* 
 
 Herbert Croft used to complain of the incorrectness of our 
 English classics, as reprinted by the booksellers. It is evi- 
 dent some stu])id printer often changes a whole text in- 
 tentionally. The fine description by Akenside of the Pan- 
 theon, "severely great," not being understood by the 
 blockhead, was printed serenely great. Swift's own edition, 
 of "The City Shower," has "old aches throb." Aches is 
 two syllables, but modern printers, who had lost the right 
 pronunciation, have aches as one syllable ; and then, to com- 
 plete the metre, have foisted in " aches will throb." Thus 
 what the poet and the linguist wish to preserve is altered, 
 and finally lost.f 
 
 It appears by a calculation made by the printer of Steevens's 
 edition of Shakspeare, that every octavo page of that work, 
 text and notes, contains 26S0 distinct pieces of metal ; which 
 in a sheet amount to 42,880 — the misplacing of any one of 
 which would inevitably cause a blunder! With this curious 
 fact before us, the accurate state of our printing, in genei'al, 
 is to be admii-ed, and errata ought more freely to be pardoned 
 than the fastidious minuteness of the insect eye of certain 
 critics has allowed. 
 
 Whether such a miracle as an immaculate edition of a 
 classical author does exist, I have never learnt; but an attempt 
 
 * It abounded with other errors, and was so rigidly suppressed, that a 
 "well-known collector was thirty years endeavouring ineffectually to obtain 
 a copy. One has recently been added to the British Museum collection. 
 
 + A good example occurs in Uudibras (Part iii. canto 2, line 407), 
 ■where persons are mentioned who 
 
 " Can by their pangs and aches find 
 All turns and changes of the wind." 
 The rhythm here demands the dissyllable a-ches, as used by the older 
 writers, Shakspeare particularly, who, in his Tempest, makes Prospero 
 thi'eaten Caliban — 
 
 " If thou neglect' st, or dost unwillingly 
 What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps ; 
 Fill all thy bones with aches ; make thee roar 
 That beasts shall tremble at thy din." 
 John Kemble was aware of the necessity of using this word in this instance 
 as a dissyllable, but it was so unusual to his audiences that it excited 
 ridicule ; and during the O.P. row, a medal was struck, representing him 
 as manager, enduring the din of cat-calls, trumpets, and rattles, and ex- 
 claiming, "Oh I my head aitches/" 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 Patrons. 
 
 has been made to obtain this glorious singularity — and was 
 as nearly realised as is perhaps possible in the magnificent 
 edition of Os Lusiadas of Camoens, by Dom Joze Souza, in 
 1817. This amateur spared no prodigality of cost and labour, 
 and flattered himself, that by the assistance of Didot, not a 
 single typographical error should be found in that splendid 
 volume. Eut an error was afterwards discovered in some of 
 the copies, occasioned by one of the letters in the word Lusi- 
 tano having got misplaced during the working of one of the 
 sheets. It must be confessed that this was an accident 
 or misfortune — rather than an Erratum ! 
 
 One of the most remarkable complaints on eeeata is that 
 of Edw. Leigh, appended to his curious treatise on " Religion 
 and Learning." It consists of two folio pages, in a very 
 minute character, and exhibits an incalculable number of 
 printers' blunders. " We have not," he says, " Plantin nor 
 Stephens amongst us ; and it is no easy task to specify the 
 chiefest errata ; false interpunctions there are too many ; here 
 a letter wanting, there a letter too much ; a syllable too much, 
 one letter for another ; words parted where they should be 
 joined ; words joined which should be severed ; words mis- 
 placed ; chronological mistakes," &c. This unfortunate folio 
 was printed in 1G56. Are we to infer, by such frequent com- 
 plaints of the authors of that day, that either they did not 
 receive proofs from the printers, or that the printers never 
 attended to the corrected proofs ? Each single erratum seems 
 to have been felt as a stab to the literary feelings of the poor 
 author ! 
 
 PATRONS. 
 
 Atjtiioiis have too frequently received ill treatment even from 
 those to whom they dedicated their works. 
 
 Some who felt hurt at the shameless treatment of such 
 mock Maecenases have observed that no writer should dedi- 
 cate his works but to his triekds, as was practised by the 
 ancients, who usually addressed those who had solicited their 
 labours, or animated their progress. Theodosius Gaza had 
 no other recompense for having inscribed to Sixtus IV. his 
 translation of the book of Aristotle on the Nature of Animals, 
 than the price of the binding, which this charitable father of 
 the church munificently bestowed upon him. 
 
 Theocritus fills his Idylliums with loud complaints of the
 
 Patrons. 83 
 
 neglect of his patrons ; and Tasso was as little successful in 
 his dedications. 
 
 Ariosto, ill presenting his Orlando Furioso to the Cardinal 
 d'Este, was gratitied with the bitter sarcasm of — " Dove 
 diavolo avete pigliaio tante corjlionerieV Where the devil 
 have you found all this nonsense ? 
 
 When the French historian Dupleix, whose pen was indeed 
 fertile, presented his hook to the Duke d'Epernon, this 
 Maecenas, turning to the Pope's Nuncio, who was present, 
 very coarsely exclaimed — " Cadedids ! ce monsieur a un flux 
 enrage, il chie un livre toutes les luncs !" 
 
 Thomson, the ardent author of the Seasons, having extra- 
 vagantly praised a person of rank, who afterwards appeared 
 to be undeserving of eulogiums, properly employed his pen in 
 a solemn recantation of his error. A ver}"- different conduct 
 from that of Dupleix, who always spoke highly of Queen 
 Margaret of France for a little place he held in her house- 
 hold : but after her death, when the place became extinct, 
 spoke of her with all the freedom of satire. Such is too often 
 the character of some of the literati, who only dare to reveal 
 the truth when they have no interest to conceal it. 
 
 Poor Mickle, to whom we are indebted for so beautiful a 
 version of Camoens' Lusiad, having dedicated this work, the 
 continued labour of five years, to the Duke of Buccleugh, had 
 the mortification to find, by the discovery of a friend, that 
 he had kept it in his possession three weeks before he could 
 collect sufficient intellectual desire to cut open the pages ! 
 The neglect of this nobleman reduced the poet to a state of 
 despondency. Tliis patron was a political economist, the 
 pupil of Adam Smith ! It is pleasing to add, in contrast with 
 this frigid Scotch patron, that when Mickle went to Lisbon, 
 where his translation had long preceded his visit, he found 
 the Prince of Portugal waiting on the quay to be the first to 
 receive the translator of his great national poem ; and during 
 a residence of six months, Mickle was warmly regarded by 
 every Portuguese nobleman. 
 
 "Every man believes," writes Dr. Johnson to Baretti, 
 " that mistresses are unfaithful, and patrons are capricious. 
 But he excepts his own mistress, and his own patron." 
 
 A patron is sometimes oddl}^ obtained. Benseradc attached 
 himself to Cardinal Mazarin ; but his friendship produced 
 nothing but civility. The poet every day indulged his easy 
 and charming vein of amatory and panegyrical poetry, while 
 
 g2
 
 84 Patrons. 
 
 all the world read and admired his verses. One evening the 
 cardinal, in conversation with the king, described his mode 
 of life when at the papal court. He loved the sciences ; but 
 his chief occupation was the belles lettres, composing little 
 pieces of poetry ; he said that he was then in the court of Rome 
 what Benserade was now in that of France. Some hours 
 afterwards, the friends of the poet related to him the conver- 
 sation of the cardinal. He quitted them abruptly, and ran 
 to the apartment of his eminence, knocking with all his force, 
 that he might be certain of being heard. The cardinal had 
 just gone to bed; but he incessantly clamoured, demanding 
 entrance ; they were compelled to open the door. He ran to 
 his eminence, fell upon his knees, almost pulled off the sheets 
 of the bed in rapture, imploring a thousand pardons for thus 
 disturbing him ; but such was his joy in what he had just 
 heard, which he repeated, that he could not refrain from im- 
 mediately giving vent to his gratitude and his pride, to have 
 been compared with his eminence for his poetical talents ! 
 Had the door not been immediately opened, he should have 
 expired ; he was not rich, it was true, but he should now die 
 contented ! The cardinal was pleased with his ardour, and 
 probably never suspected \v\.?, flattery ; and the next week our 
 new actor was pensioned. 
 
 On Cardinal Richelieu, another of his patrons, he gi'ate- 
 fuUy made this epitaph : — 
 
 Cy gist, ony gist, par la mort bleu, 
 Le Cardinal de Richelieu, 
 Et ce qui cause mon ennuy 
 Ma PENSION avec lui. 
 
 Here lies, egad, 'tis very true, 
 The illustrious Cardinal Richelieu : 
 My grief is genuine — void of whim ! 
 Alas ! my ^jcKsiow lies with him ! 
 
 Le Brun, the great French artist, painted himself holding 
 in his hand the portrait of his earliest patron. In this 
 accompaniment the Artist may be said to have portrayed 
 the features of his soul. If genius has too often complained 
 of its patrons, has it not also often over-valued their protec- 
 tion ?
 
 85 
 
 POETS, THILOSOPHERS, AND ARTISTS, MADE BY ACCIDENT. 
 
 Accident has frequently occasioned the most eminent 
 geniuses to display their powers. " It was at Rome," says 
 Gibbon, " on the loth of October, 1761, as I sat musing amidst 
 the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were sing- 
 ing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing 
 the Decline and Fall of the City first started to my mind." 
 
 Father Malebranche having completed his studies in philo- 
 sophy and theology without any otlier intention than devoting 
 himself to some religious order, little expected the celebrity 
 his works acquired for him. Loitering in an idle hour in the 
 shop of a bookseller, and turning over a parcel of books, 
 L' Homme de Descartes fell into his hands. Having dipt 
 into parts, he read with such delight that the palpitations of 
 his heart compelled him to lay the volume down. It was 
 this circumstance that produced those profound contempla- 
 tions which made him the Plato of his age. 
 
 Cowley became a poet by accident. In his mother's apart- 
 ment he found, when very young, Spenser's Fairy Queen ; 
 and, by a continual study of poetry, he became so enchanted 
 by the Muse, that he grew irrecoverably a poet. 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds had the first fondness for his art 
 excited by the perusal of Richardson's Treatise. 
 
 Vaucanson displayed an micommon genius for mechanics. 
 His taste was first determined by an accident : when young, 
 he frequently attended his mother to the residence of her 
 confessor ; and while she wept with repentance, he wept with 
 weariness ! In this state of disagreeable vacation, says Hel- 
 vetius, he was struck with the uniform motion of the pen- 
 dulum of the clock in the hall. His curiosity was roused ; 
 he approached the clock-case, and studied its mechanism ; 
 what he could not discover he guessed at. He then projected 
 a similar machine ; and gradually his genius produced a clock. 
 Encouraged by this first success, he proceeded in his various 
 attempts ; and the genius, which thus could form a clock, in 
 time formed a fluting automaton. 
 
 Accident determined the taste of Moliere for the stage. 
 His grandfather loved the theatre, and frequently carried 
 him there. The young man lived in dissipation ; the father 
 observing it asked in anger, if his son was to be made an. 
 actor. " Would to God," replied the grandfather, " he were
 
 86 Poets, Philosoph€7's, and Artists, made hj accident. 
 
 as srood an actor as Monrose." The words struck young 
 Moliere, he took a disgust to his tapestry trade, and it is to 
 this circumstance France owes her greatest comic writer. 
 
 Corneille loved ; he made verses for his mistress, became a 
 poet, composed Melite and afterwards his other celebrated 
 works. The discreet Corneille had else remained a lawyer.^ 
 
 We owe the great discovery of Newton to a very trivial 
 accident. When a student at Cambridge, he had retired 
 during the time of the plague into the country. As he was 
 reading under an apple-tree, one of the fruit fell, and struck 
 him a smart blow on the head. When he observed the 
 smallness of the apple, he was surprised at the force of the 
 stroke. This led him to consider the accelerating motion 
 of faUing bodies ; from whence he deduced the principle of 
 gravity, and laid the foundation of his philosophy. 
 
 Ignatius Loyola was a Spanish gentleman, who was dan- 
 gerously wounded at the siege of Panipeluna. Having heated 
 his imagination by reading the Lives of the Saints during his 
 illness, instead of a romance, he conceived a strong ambition 
 to be the founder of a rehgious order ; whence originated the 
 celebrated society of the Jesuits. 
 
 Rousseau found his eccentric powers first awakened by 
 the advertisement of the singular annual subject which the 
 Academy of Dijon proposed for that year, in which he wrote 
 his celebrated declamation against the arts and sciences, A 
 circumstance which decided his future literaiy efforts. 
 
 La Fontaine, at the age of twenty -two, had not taken any 
 profession, or devoted himself to any pursuit. Having acci- 
 dentally heard some verses of Malherbe, he felt a sudden 
 impulse, which directed his future life. He immediately 
 bought a Malherbe, and was so exquisitely delighted with 
 this poet that, after passing the nights in treasuring his 
 verses in his memory, he would run in the day-time to the 
 woods, where, concealing himself, he would recite his verses 
 to the surrounding dryads. 
 
 Flamsteed was an astronomer by accident. He was taken 
 from school on account of his illness, when Sacrobosco's book 
 De Sphasra having been lent to him, he was so pleased with 
 it that he immediately began a course of astronomic studies. 
 Pennant's first propensity to natural history was the pleasure 
 he received from an accidental perusal of Willonghby's work 
 on birds. The same accident of finding, on the table of his 
 professor, Eeaumur's History of Insects, which he read more
 
 Poets, Philosophers, and Artists, made by accident. 87 
 
 than he attended to the lecture, and, having heen refused the 
 loan, gave such an instant turn to the mind of Bonnet, that 
 he hastened to obtain a copy ; after many difficulties in pro- 
 curing this costly work, its possession gave an unalterable 
 direction to his future life. This naturahst indeed lost the 
 use of his sight by his devotion to the microscope. 
 
 Dr. Franklin attributes the cast of his genius to a similar 
 accident. " I found a work of De Toe's, entitled an ' Essay 
 on Projects,' from which perhaps I derived impressions that 
 have since influenced some of the principal events of my 
 life." 
 
 I shall add the incident which occasioned Roger Ascham 
 to write his School master, one of the few works among our 
 elder writers, which we still read with pleasure. 
 
 At a dinner given by Sir William Cecil, at his apartments 
 at Windsor, a number of ingenious men were invited. Secre- 
 tary Cecil communicated the news of the morning, that seve- 
 ral scholars at Eton had run away on account of their 
 master's severity, which he condemned as a great error in 
 the education of youth. Sir William Petre maintained the 
 contrary ; severe in his own tempjer, he pleaded warmly in 
 defence of hard flogging. Dr. Wootton, in softer tones, 
 sided with tlie secretary. Sir John Mason, adopting no side, 
 bantered both. Mr. Haddon seconded the hard-liearted Sir 
 William Petre, and adduced, as an evidence, that the best 
 schoolmaster then in England was the hardest flogger. Then 
 was it that Roger Ascham indignantly exclaimed, that if 
 such a master had an able scholar it was owing to the boy's 
 genius, and not the preceptor's rod. Secretary Cecil and 
 others were pleased with Ascham's notions. Sir Richard 
 Sackville was silent, but when Ascham after dinner went to 
 the queen to read one of the orations of Demosthenes, he 
 took him aside, and frankly told him that, though he had 
 taken no part in the debate, he would not have been absent 
 from that conversation for a great deal ; that he knew to his 
 cost the truth that Ascham had supported ; for it was the 
 perpetual flogging of such a schoolmaster that had given 
 him an unconquerable aversion to study. And as he wished 
 to remedy this defect in his own children, he earnestly ex- 
 horted Ascham to write his observations on so interesting 
 a topic. Such was tlie circumstance which produced the 
 admirable treatise of Roger Ascham.
 
 88 
 
 INEQUALITIES OF GENIUS. 
 
 SiNGTTLAR inequalities are observable in the labours of genius ; 
 and particularly in those which admit great enthusiasm, as in 
 poetry, in painting, and in music. Faultless mediocrity in- 
 dustry can preserve in one continued degree ; but excellence, 
 the daring and the happy, can only be attained, by human 
 faculties, b}"" starts. 
 
 Our poets who possess the greatest genius, with perhaps 
 the least industry, have at the same time the most splendid 
 and the worst passages of poetry. Shakspeare and Dryden 
 are at once the greatest and the least of our poets. With 
 some, their great fault consists in having none. 
 
 Carraccio sarcastically said of Tintoret — Ho veduto il Tin- 
 toretto hora equale a Titiano, hora minore del Tintoretto — " I 
 have seen Tintoret now equal to Titian, and now less than 
 Tintoret." 
 
 Trublet justly observes — The more there are leauties and 
 great beauties in a work, I am the less surprised to fiwdi faults 
 and great faults. When you say of a work that it has many 
 faults, that decides nothing: and I do not know by this, 
 whether it is execrable or excellent. You tell me of another, 
 that it is without any faults : if your account be just, it is 
 certain the work cannot be excellent. 
 
 It was observed of one pleader, that he knew more than he 
 said ; and of another, that he said more than he knew. 
 
 Lucian happily describes the works of those who abound 
 with the most luxuriant language, void of ideas. He calls 
 their unmeaning verbosity " anemone-words ;" for anemonies 
 are flowers, which, however brilliant, only please tlie eye, 
 leaving no fragrance. Pratt, who was a writer of flowing but 
 nugatory verses, was compared to the daisy ; a flower indeed 
 common enough, and without odour. 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL STYLE. 
 
 Theee are many sciences, says Menage, on which we cannot 
 indeed compose in a florid or elegant diction, such as geo- 
 graphy, music, algebra, geometry, «fec. When Atticus re- 
 quested Cicero to write on geography, the latter excused 
 himself, observing that its scenes were more adapted to please
 
 Legends. 89 
 
 the eye, than susceptible of the embellishments of style. 
 However, in these kind of sciences, we may lend an orna- 
 ment to their dryness by introducing occasionally some elegant 
 allusion, or noticing some incident suggested by the object. 
 
 Thus when we notice some inconsiderable jjlaee, for in- 
 stance Woodstock, we may recall attention to tlie residence 
 of Chancer, the })arent of our poetry, or the romantic laby- 
 rinth of Rosamond ; or as in " an Autumn on tlie Rhine," at 
 Ingelheim, at the view of an old palace built by Charlemagne, 
 the traveller adds, with '"a hundred columns brought from. 
 Rome," and farther it was " the scene of the romantic amours 
 of that monarch's fair daughter, Ibertha, witli Eginhard, his 
 secretary:" and viewing the Gothic ruins on the banks of the 
 Rhine, he noticed them as having been the haunts of those 
 illustrious cJievaliers voleurs whose chivalry consisted in pil- 
 laging the merchants and towns, till, in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, a citizen of Mayence persuaded the merchants of more 
 than a hundred towns to form a league against these little 
 princes and counts ; the origin of the famous Rhenish league, 
 which contributed so much to the commerce of Europe. This 
 kind of erudition gives an interest to topography, by asso- 
 ciating in our memory great events and personages with the 
 localities. 
 
 The same principle of composition may be carried with the 
 happiest eflect into some dry investigations, though the pro- 
 found antiquary may not approve of these sports of wit or 
 fanc}'. Dr. Arbuthnot, in his Tables of Ancient Coins, 
 Weights, and Measures, a topic extremely barren of amuse- 
 ment, takes every opportunity of enlivening the dulness of 
 his task ; even in these mathematical calculations he betrays 
 his wit; and observes that " the polite Augustus, the emperor 
 of the world, had neither any glass in his windows, nor a 
 shirt to his back !" Those uses of glass and linen indeed 
 were not known in his time. Our )»hysician is not less 
 curious and facetious in the account of the fees which the 
 Roman physicians received. 
 
 LEGENDS. 
 
 Those ecclesiastical histories entitled Legends are said to 
 have originated in the following: circumstance. 
 
 Before collecjes were established in the monasteries where 
 the schools were held, the professors in rhetoric frequently
 
 90 Legends. 
 
 gave their pupils the Hfe of some saint for a trial of their 
 talent at amplijication. The students, at a loss to furnish out 
 their pages, invented most of these wonderful adventures. 
 Jortin observes, that the Christians used to collect out of 
 Ovid, Livj, and other pagan poets and historians, the 
 miracles and portents to be found there, and accommodated 
 them to their own monks and saints. The good fathers of 
 that age, whose simplicity was not inferior to their devotion, 
 were so delighted with these flowers of rhetoric, that they 
 were induced to make a collection of these miraculous com- 
 positions ; not imagining that, at some distant period, they 
 would become matters of faith. Yet, when James de Vora- 
 gine, Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Lives of 
 the Saints, they sought for their materials in the libraries of 
 the monasteries ; and, awakening from the dust these manu- 
 scripts of amplification, imagined they made an invaluable 
 present to the world, by laying before them these voluminous 
 absurdities. The people received these pious fictions with all 
 imaginable simplicity, and as these are adorned by a number 
 of cuts, the miracles were perfectly intelligible to tlieir eyes. 
 Tillemont, Fleury, Baillet, Launoi, and Bollandus, cleared 
 away much of the rubbish ; the enviable title of Golden 
 Legend, hy which James de Voragine called his Avork, has 
 been disputed ; iron or lead might more aptly describe its 
 character. 
 
 When the world began to be more critical in their reading, 
 the monks gave a graver turn to their narratives ; and became 
 penurious of their absurdities. The faithful Catholic con- 
 tends, that tlie line of tradition has been preserved un- 
 broken ; notwithstanding that the originals were lost in the 
 general wreck of literature from the barbarians, or came 
 down in a most imperfect state. 
 
 Baronius has given the lives of manj' apocryphal saints ; 
 for instance, of a Saint Xinoris, whom he calls a martyr of 
 Antioch ; but it appears that Baronius having read in Chrys- 
 ostom this word, which signifies 2i couple or pair, he mistook 
 it for the name of a saint, and contrived to give the most 
 authentic biography of a saint who never existed !* The 
 Cathohcs confess this sort of blunder is not uncommon, but 
 then it is only fools who laugh ! As a specimen of the hap- 
 
 * 
 
 See the article on "Literary Blunders," in this volume, for the his- 
 tory of similar inventions, particularly the legend of St. Ursuala and the 
 eleven thousand virgins, and the discovery of a certain St. Viar.
 
 Legends. 91 
 
 pier inventions, one is given, embellished by the diction of 
 Gibbon — 
 
 " Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am 
 tempted to distinguish the memorable fable of tlie Seven 
 Sleepers ; whose imaginary date corresponds witli the reign 
 of the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa by the 
 Vandals. When the Emperor Decius jjcrsecuted the Chris- 
 tians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in 
 a spacious cavern on the side of an adjacent mountain ; where 
 they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, wlio gave orders 
 that tlie entrance should be firmly secured with a pile of 
 stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which 
 was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of 
 life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years. 
 At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the 
 inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the 
 stones to supply materials for some rustic edifice. The light 
 of the sun darted into the cavern, and the Seven Sleepers 
 were permitted to awake. After a slumber as they thought 
 of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger ; 
 and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should 
 secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of 
 his companions. The youth, if we may still employ that 
 appellation, could no longer recognise the once familiar aspect 
 of his native countr}' ; and his surprise was increased by the 
 appearance of a large cross, triumphantly erected over the 
 principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete 
 lanjTuasre confounded the baker, to whom he offered an an- 
 cient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire ; and 
 Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was 
 dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced 
 the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost 
 elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the 
 rage of a Pagan tyrant. The Bishop of Ephesus, the 
 clergy, the magistrates, the people, and, it is said, the Em- 
 peror Theodosius himself, hastened to visit the cavern of the 
 Seven Sleepers ; who bestowed their benediction, related 
 their story, and at the same instant peaceably expired. 
 
 " This popular tale Mahomet learned when he drove his 
 camels to the iiiirs of Syria ; and he has introduced it, as a 
 divine revelat ion, mio i\\e Koran." — The same story has been 
 adopted and adorned by the nations, from liengal to Africa, 
 who profess the Mahometan religion.
 
 93 Legends. 
 
 The too curious reader may perhaps require other speci- 
 mens of the more unlucky inventions of this " Golden 
 Legend ;" as characteristic of a certain class of minds, the 
 philosopher will contemn these grotesque fictions. 
 
 These monks imagined that holiness was often propor- 
 tioned to a saint's filthiness. St. Ignatius, say they, de- 
 lighted to appear abroad with old dirty shoes ; he never used 
 a comb, but let his hair clot ; and religiously abstained from 
 paring his nails. One saint attained to such piety as to have 
 near three hundred patches on his breeches ; which, after his 
 death, were hung up in public as an incentive to imitation. 
 St. Francis discovered, by certain experience, that the devils 
 were frightened away by such kinds of breeches, but were 
 animated by clean clothing to tempt and seduce the wearers ; 
 and one of their heroes declares that the purest souls are in 
 the dirtiest bodies. On this they tell a story which may not 
 be very agreeable to fastidious delicacy. Brother Juniper 
 was a gentleman perfectly pious, on this principle; indeed so 
 great was his merit in this species of mortitication, that a 
 brother declared he could always nose Brother Juniper when 
 within a mile of the monastery, provided the wind was at 
 the due point. Once, when the blessed Juniper, for he was 
 no saint, was a guest, his host, proud of the honour of en- 
 tertaining so pious a personage, the intimate friend of St. 
 Francis, provided an excellent bed, and the finest sheets. 
 Brother Juniper abhorred such luxury. And this too evi- 
 dently appeared after his sudden departure in the morning, 
 unknown to his kind host. The great Juniper did this, says 
 his biographer, having told us what he did, not so much from 
 his habitual inclinations, for which he was so justly cele- 
 brated, as from his excessive piety, and as much as he could 
 to mortify worldly pride, and to show how a true saint de- 
 spised clean sheets. 
 
 In the life of St. Francis we find, among other grotesque 
 miracles, that he preached a sermon in a desert, but he soon 
 collected an immense audience. The birds shrilly warbled to 
 every sentence, and stretched out their necks, opened their 
 beaks, and when he finished, dispersed with a holy rapture 
 into four companies, to report his sermon to all the birds in 
 the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. 
 Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered 
 on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, 
 that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed
 
 Legends. 93 
 
 them by desiring tliem not to tittle-tattle of their sister, the 
 nightingale. Attacked hy a wolf, with only the sign-manual 
 of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, 
 till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched his paws in the 
 hands of the saint, followed him through towns, and became 
 half a Christian. 
 
 This same St. Francis had such a detestation of the good 
 things of this world, that he would never suffer his followers 
 to touch money. A friar having placed in a window some 
 mone^r collected at the altar, he desired him to take it in his 
 mouth, and throw it on the dung of an ass ! St. Philip 
 Nerius was such a lover of poverty^ that he frequently prayed 
 that God would bring him to that state as to stand in need 
 of a penny, and find nobody that would give hirn one ! 
 
 But St. Macaire was so shocked at having Jellied a louse, 
 that he endured seven years of penitence among the thorns 
 and briars of a forest. A circumstance which seems to have 
 reached Moliere, who gives this stroke to the character of his 
 Tartuffe :— 
 
 II s'impute a peclie la moindre bagatelle ; 
 Jusques-la qu'il se vint, Tautre jour, s' accuser 
 D'avoir pris une puce eu faisant sa priere, 
 Et de I'avoir tuee avec trop de colere ! 
 
 I give a miraculous incident respecting two pious maidens. 
 The night of the Nativity of Christ, alter the first mass, they 
 both retired into a solitary spot of their nunnery till the 
 second mass was rung. One asked the other, " Why do you 
 want two cushions, when I have only one ?" The other 
 replied, " I would place it between us, for the child Jesus ; 
 as the Evangelist saj's, where thei'e are two or three persons 
 assembled 1 am in the midst of them." — This being: done, 
 they sat down, feeling a most lively pleasure at their fancy ; 
 and there they remained, from the Nativity of Christ 
 to that of John the Baptist ; but this great interval of 
 time passed with these saintly maidens as two hours would 
 appear to others. The abbess and nuns were alarmed at their 
 absence, for no one could give any account of them. In the 
 eve of St. John, a cowherd, passing by them, beheld a beauti- 
 ful child seated on a cushion between this pair of runaway 
 nuns. He hastened to the abbess with news of these stray 
 sheep ; she came and beheld this lovely child playl'uUy seated 
 between these nymphs; they, with blushing countenances, 
 inquired if the second bell had already rung ? Both parties
 
 94 The Port-Royal Society. 
 
 were equally astonished to find our young devotees had been 
 there from the Nativity of Jesus to that of St. John. The 
 abbess inquired about the child who sat between them ; they 
 solemnly declared they saw no child between them ! and per- 
 sisted in their story ! 
 
 Such is one of these miracles of "the Golden Legend," 
 which a wicked wit might comment on, and see nothing 
 extraordinary in the whole story. The two nuns might be 
 missing between the Nativities, and be found at last with a 
 child seated between them. — They might not choose to 
 account either for their absence or their child — the only touch 
 of miracle is that, they asseverated, they saw no child — that 
 I confess is a lit fie (cJiild) too much. 
 
 The lives of the saints by Alban Butler is the most sensible 
 history of these legends ; Ribadeneira's lives of the saints 
 exhibit more of the legendary spirit, for wanting judgment 
 and not faith, he is more voluminous in his details. The 
 antiquary may collect much curious philosophical informa- 
 tion, concerning the manners of the times, from these singular 
 narratives. 
 
 THE POKT-EOYAL SOCIETY. 
 
 Eteet lover of letters has heard of this learned society, 
 which contributed so greatly to establish in France a taste for 
 just reasoning, simplicity of style, and philosophical method. 
 Their "Logic, or the Art of Thinking," for its lucid, accu- 
 rate, and diversified matter, is still an admirable work ; not- 
 withstanding the writers had to emancipate themselves from 
 the barbarism of the scholastic logic. It was the conjoint 
 labour of Arnauld and Nicolle. Europe has benefited by the 
 labours of these learned men : but not many have attended 
 to the origin and dissolution of this literary society. 
 
 In the year 1637, Le Maitre, a celebrated advocate, resigned 
 the bar, and the honour of being Conseiller d'J^iaf, which 
 his uncommon merit had obtained him, though then only 
 twenty-eight years of age, His brother, De Sericourt, who 
 had followed the military profession, quitted it at the same 
 time. Consecrating themselves to the service of religion, they 
 retired into a small house near the Port-Roi/al of Paris, where 
 they were joined by their brothers De Sacy, De St. Elme, and 
 De Valmont. Arnauld, one of their most illustrious associates,
 
 The Port-Royal Society. 95 
 
 was induced to enter into the Jansenist controversy, and then 
 it was tliat the}'' encountered the powerful persecution of the 
 Jesuits. Constrained to remove from that spot, tliey fixed 
 their residence at a few leagues from Paris, and called it Port- 
 Royal des Cliamps.* 
 
 These illustrious recluses were joined by many distinguished 
 persons who gave up their parks and houses to be appro- 
 priated to their schools ; and this community was called the 
 Society of Port-Hoijal. 
 
 Here were no rules, no vows, no constitution, and no cells 
 formed. Prayer and study, and manual labour, were their 
 only occupations. They applied themselves to the education 
 of youth, and raised up little academies in the neiglibourhood, 
 where the members of Port-Royal, the most illustrious names 
 of hterary France, presided. None considered his birth 
 entitled him to any exemption from their public offices 
 relieving the poor and attending on the sick, and employing 
 themselves in their farms and gardens ; they were carpenters, 
 ploughmen, gardeners, and vine-dressers, as if they had 
 practised nothing else ; they studied physic, and surgery, and 
 law ; in truth, it seems that, from religious motives, these 
 learned men attempted to form a community of primitive 
 Christianity. 
 
 The Duchess of Longueville, once apolitical chief, sacrificed 
 her ambition on the altar of Port-Royal, enlarged the 
 monastic inclosure with spacious gardens and orchards, built 
 a noble house, and often retreated to its seclusion. The 
 learned D'Andilly, the translator of Josephus, after his 
 studious hours, resorted to the cultivation of fruit-trees ; and 
 the fruit of Port-Royal became celebrated for its size and 
 flavour. Presents were sent to the Queen-Mother of France, 
 Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin, who used to call it 
 "fruit beni." It appears that "families of rank, affluence, 
 and piety, who did not wish entirely to give up their avoca- 
 tions in the world, built themselves country-houses in the 
 
 * The early history of the houfse is not given quite clearly and correctly 
 in the text. The old foundation of CisterciaDS, named Port-Royal des 
 Champs, was situated in the valley of Chevreuse, near Versailles, and 
 founded in 1204 by Bishop Eudes, of Paris. It was in the reign of Louis 
 XIII. that Madame Arnauld, the mother of the then Abbess, hearing that 
 the sisterhood suffered from the damp situation of their convent and its 
 confined space, purchased a house as an infirmary for its sick members in 
 the Fauxbourg St. Jacques, and called it the Port-lloyal da Paris, to dis- 
 tinguish it from the older foundation.
 
 96 Tlie Port-Royal Society. 
 
 valley of Port-Eoyal, in order to enjoy the society of its reli- 
 gious and literary inhabitants." 
 
 In the solitudes of Port-Royal Racine received his educa- 
 tion ; and, on his death-bed, desired to be buried in its cemetery, 
 at the feet of his master Hamon. Arnauld, persecuted, and 
 dying in a foreign country, still cast his lingering looks on 
 this beloved retreat, and left the society his heart, which was 
 there inurned. 
 
 The Duchess of Longueville, a princess of the blood-royal, 
 was, during her life, the powerful patroness of these solitary 
 and religious men : but her death, in 1679, was the fatal 
 stroke which dispersed them for ever. 
 
 The envy and the fears of the Jesuits, and their rancour 
 against Arnauld, who with such ability had exposed their 
 designs, occasioned the destruction of the Port-Royal Society. 
 JExinanite, exinanite bisque ad fundamentunn in ea ! — " Anni- 
 hilate it, annihilate it, to its very foundations !" Such are 
 the terms of the Jesuitic decree. The Jesuits had long 
 called the little schools of Port-Royal the hot-beds of heresy. 
 The Jesuits obtained by their intrigues an order from govern- 
 ment to dissolve that virtuous society. They razed the build- 
 ings, and ploughed up the very foundation ; they exhausted 
 their hatred even on the stones, and profaned even the sanc- 
 tuary of the dead ; the corpses were torn out of their graves, 
 and dogs were suffered to contend for the rags of their 
 shrouds. The memory of that asylum of innocence and learn- 
 ing was still kept alive b^^ those who collected the engravings 
 representing the place by Mademoiselle Hortemels. The 
 police, under Jesuitic influence, at length seized on the plates 
 in the cabinet of the fair artist. — Caustic was the retort cour- 
 teous which Arnauld gave the Jesuits — " 1 do not fear your 
 pen, but its Tcnife^ 
 
 These were men whom the love of retirement had united 
 to cultivate literature, in the midst of solitude, of peace, and 
 of piety. Alike occupied on sacred, as on profane writers, 
 their writings fixed the French language. The example of 
 these solitaries shows how retirement is favourable to pene- 
 trate into the sanctuary of the Muses. 
 
 An interesting anecdote is related of Arnauld on the occa- 
 sion of the dissolution of this society. The dispersion of 
 these great men, and their young scholars, was lamented by 
 every one but their enemies. Many persons of the highest 
 rank participated in their sorrows. The excellent Arnauld,
 
 The Port-Royal Society. 97 
 
 in that moment, was as closely pursued as if he had been a 
 felon. 
 
 It was then the Duchess of Longueville concealed Arnauld 
 in an obscure lodging, who assumed the dress of a layman, 
 wearing a sword and full-bottomed wig. Arnauld was attacked 
 by a fever, and in the course of conversation with his physi- 
 cian, he inquired after news. " They talic of a new book of 
 the Port-Royal," replied the doctor, "ascribed to Arnauld or 
 to Sacy ; but I do not believe it comes from Sacy ; he does 
 not write so well." — " How, sir!" exclaimed the philosopher, 
 forgetting his sword and wig ; " believe me, my nephew 
 writes better than I do." — Tiie physician eyed his patient 
 with amazement — he hastened to the duchess, and told her, 
 " The malady of tlie gentleman you sent me to is not very 
 serious, provided you do not suffer him to see any one, and 
 insist on his holding his tongue." The duchess, alarmed, 
 immediately had Arnauld conveyed to her palace. She con- 
 cealed him in an apartment, and persisted to attend him her- 
 self. — "Ask," she said, "what you want of the servant, but 
 it shall be myself who shall bring it to you." 
 
 How honom'able is it to the female character, that, in 
 many similar occurrences, their fortitude has proved to be 
 equal to their sensibiHty ! But the Duchess of Longueville 
 contemplated in Arnauld a model of human fortitude which 
 martyrs never excelled. His remarkable reply to Nicolle, 
 when they were hunted from place to place, should never be 
 forgotten : Arnauld wished Nicolle to assist liim in a new 
 work, when the latter observed, " We are now old, is it not 
 time to rest?" "Rest!" returned Arnauld, "have we not 
 all Eternity to rest in ?" The whole of the Arnauld family 
 were the most extraordinary instance of that hereditary cha- 
 racter, which is continued through certain families : here it 
 was a sublime, and, perhaps, singular union of learning with 
 religion. The Arnaulds, Sacy, Pascal, Tillemont, with other 
 illustrious names, to whom literary Europe will owe perpetual 
 obligations, combined the life of the monastery with that of 
 the library. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 98 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF OLD AGE IN NEW STUDIES. 
 
 Op the pleasm-es derivable from the cultivation of the arts, 
 sciences, and literature, time will not abate the growing pas- 
 sion ; for old men still cherish an affection and feel a youthful 
 enthusiasm in those pursuits, when all others have ceased to 
 interest. Dr. Reid, to his last da}^, retained a most active 
 curiosity in his various studies, and particularly in the revo- 
 lutions of modern chemistry. In advanced life we may 
 resume our former studies with a new pleasure, and in old 
 age we may enjoy them with the same relish with which 
 more youthful students commence. Adam Smith observed to 
 Dugald Stewart, that " of all the amusements of old age, the 
 most grateful and soothing is a renewal of acquaintance with 
 the favourite studies and favourite authors of youth — a re- 
 mark, adds Stewart, which, in his own case, seemed to be 
 more particularly exemplified while he was reperusing, with 
 the enthusiasm of a student, the tragic poets of ancient 
 Greece. I have heard him repeat the observation more than 
 once, while Sophocles and Euripides lay open on his table." 
 
 Socrates learnt to play on musical instruments in his old 
 age ; Cato, at eighty, thought proper to learn Greek ; and 
 Plutarch, almost as late in his life, Latin. 
 
 Theophrastus began his admirable work on the Characters 
 of Men at the extreme age of ninety. He only terminated 
 his literary labours by his death. 
 
 Eonsard, one of the fathers of French poetry, applied him- 
 self late to study. His acute genius, and ardent application, 
 rivalled those poetic models which he admired ; and Boccaccio 
 was thirty -five years of age when he commenced his studies 
 in polite literature. 
 
 The great Arnauld retained the vigour of his genius, and 
 the command of his pen, to the age of eighty-two, and was 
 still the great Arnauld. 
 
 Sir Henry Spelman neglected the sciences in his youth, 
 but cultivated them at fifty years of age. His early years 
 were chiefly passed in farming, which greatly diverted him 
 from his studies ; but a remarkable disappointment respecting 
 a contested estate disgusted him with these rustic occupa- 
 tions : resolved to attach himself to regular studies, and lite- 
 rary society, he sold his farms, and became the most learned 
 antiquary and lawyer.
 
 The Progress of Old Age in New Studies. 99 
 
 Colbert, the famous French minister, almost at sixty, re- 
 turned to his Latin and law studies. 
 
 Dr. Johnson applied himself to the Dutch language hut a 
 few years before his death. The Marquis de Saint Aulaire, 
 at the age of seventy, began to court the Muses, and they 
 crowned him with their freshest flowers. The verses of this 
 French Anacreon are full of fire, delicacy, and sweetness. 
 
 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were the composition of his 
 latest years : they were begun in his fifty-fom'th year, and 
 finished in his sixty-first. 
 
 Ludovico Monaldesco, at the extraordinary age of 115, 
 wrote the memoirs of his times. A singular exertion, noticed 
 by Voltaire ; who himself is one of the most remarkable in- 
 stances of the progress of age in new studies. 
 
 The most delightful of autobiographies for artists is that 
 of Benvenuto Cellini ; a work of great originality, which was 
 not begun till "the clock of his age had struck fifty-eight." 
 
 Koornhert began at forty to learn the Latin and Greek 
 languages, of which he became a master; several students, 
 who afterwards distinguished themselves, have commenced as 
 late in life their literary pursuits. Ogilby, the translator of 
 Homer and Virgil, knew little of Latin or Greek till he was 
 past fifty ; and Franklin's philosophical pursuits began when 
 he had nearly reached his fiftieth year. 
 
 Accorso, a great lawyer, being asked why he began the 
 study of the law so late, answered, beginning it late, he 
 should master it the sooner. 
 
 Dryden's complete works form the largest body of poetry 
 from the pen of a single writer in the English language ; yet 
 he gave no public testimony of poetic abilities till his twenty- 
 seventh year. In his sixty-eighth year he proposed to trans- 
 late the whole IHad : and his most pleasing productions were 
 written in his old age. 
 
 Michael Angelo preserved his creative genius even in ex- 
 treme old age : there is a device said to be invented by him, 
 of an old man represented in a go-cart, with an hour-glass 
 upon it; the inscription Ancora imparo! — Yet I am 
 
 LEABNING ! 
 
 We have a literary curiosity in a favourite treatise with 
 Erasmus and men of letters of that period, De Ratione Studii, 
 by Joachim Sterck, otherwise Fortius de Kingelberg. The 
 enthusiasm of the writer often carries him to the verge of 
 ridicule; but something must be conceded to his peculiar 
 
 h2
 
 100 Spanish Poetry. 
 
 situation and feelings ; for Baillet tells us that this method 
 of studying had been formed entirely I'rom his own practical 
 knowledge and hard experience : at a late period of life he 
 had commenced his studies, and at length he imagined that 
 he had discovered a more perpendicular mode of ascending 
 the hill of science than by its usual circuitous windings. His 
 work has been compared to the sounding of a trumpet. 
 
 Menage, in his Anti-Baillet, has a very curious apology for 
 writing verses in his old age, by showing how many poets 
 amused themselves notwithstanding theu' grey hairs, and 
 wrote sonnets or epigrams at ninety. 
 
 La Casa, in one of his letters, humorously said, lo credo 
 cW io faro Sonnetti venti cinque an7ii, o trenta, pio die io sarb 
 morto. — " I think I may make sonnets twenty-five, or perhaps 
 thirty years, after I shall be dead!" Petau tells us that he 
 wrote verses to solace the evils of old age — 
 
 Petavius seger 
 
 Cantabat veteris qujerens solatia morbi. 
 
 Malherhe declares the honours of genius were his, yet 
 
 ung — 
 
 Je les posseday jeune, et les possede encore 
 A la fin de mes jours ! 
 
 yo-"o 
 
 SPANISH POETRY. 
 
 Peee Botjhotjes observes, that the Spanish poets display an 
 extravagant imagination, which is by no means destitute of 
 esprit — shall we say loit? but which evinces little taste or 
 judgment. 
 
 Their verse? are much in the style of our Cowley — trivial 
 points, monstrous metaphors, and quaint conceits. It is 
 evident that the Spanish poets imported this taste from the 
 time of Marino in Italy ; but the warmth of the Spanish 
 climate appears to have redoubled it, and to have blown the 
 kindled sparks of chimerical iancy to the heat of a Vulcanian 
 forge. 
 
 Lopez de Vega, in describing an afflicted shepherdess, in 
 one of his pastorals, who is represented weeping near the sea- 
 side, says, "That the sea joyfully advances to gather her 
 tears ; and that, having enclosed them in shells, it converts 
 them into peaids."
 
 Spanish Poetry. 101 
 
 " Y el mar como imbidioso 
 A tierra por las lagrimas salia, 
 
 Y alegre de cogerlas 
 
 Las guarda en conchas, y convierte en perlas." 
 
 Villegas addresses a stream — " Thou who runnest over sands 
 of gold, with feet of silver," more elegant than our Shak- 
 speare's — " Thy silver skin laced with thy golden blood," 
 which possibly he may not have written. Villegas mon- 
 strously exclaims, " Touch my breast, if you doubt the power 
 of Lydia's eyes — you will find it turned to ashes." Again — 
 " Thou art so great that thou canst only imitate thyself with 
 thy own greatness ;" much like our "None but himself cau 
 be his parallel." 
 
 Gongora, whom the Spaniards once greatly admired, and 
 distinguished by the epithet of The Wonderful, abounds with 
 these conceits. 
 
 He imagines that a nightingale, who enchantingly varied 
 her notes, and sang in different manners, had a hundred thou- 
 sand other nightingales in her breast, which alternately sang 
 through her throat — 
 
 ' ' Con diferancia tal, con gracia tanta, 
 A quel ruysenor llora, que sospecho 
 Que tiene otros cien mil deutro del pecho, 
 Que alterno su dolor por su garganta." 
 
 Of a young and beautiful lady he says, that she has but a 
 few years of life, but many ages of beauty. 
 
 "Muchos siglos de hermosura 
 En pocos anos de edad." 
 
 Many ages of beauty is a false thought, for beauty becomes 
 not more beautiful from its age ; it would be only a super- 
 annuated beauty. A face of two or three ages old could have 
 but few charms. 
 
 In one of his odes he addresses the Kiver of Madrid by the 
 title of the Duke of Streams, and the Viscount of Rivers — 
 
 " Man9anares, Man9anares, 
 Os que en todo el aguatismo, 
 Estois Duque de Arroyos, 
 
 Y Visconde de los Rios." 
 
 He did not venture to call it a Spanish Grandee, for, in 
 fact, it is but a shallow and dirty stream ; and as Quevedo 
 wittily informs us, " 3Ianganares is reduced, during the sum- 
 mer season, to the melancholy condition of the wicked rich
 
 102 Saint Evremond. 
 
 man, who asks for water in the depths of hell." Though so 
 small, this stream in the time of a flood spreads itself over the 
 neighbouring fields ; for this reason Philip the Second built a 
 bridge eleven hundred feet long ! — A Spaniard passing it one 
 day, when it was perfectly dry, observing this superb bridge, 
 archly remarked, " That it would be proper that the bridge 
 should be sold to purchase water." — Es menester, vender la 
 puente, por comprar agua. 
 
 The ibllovving elegant translation of a Spanish madrigal of 
 the kind here criticised I found in a newspaper, but it is 
 evidently by a master-hand. 
 
 On the green margin of the land, 
 
 Where Guadalhorce winds his way, 
 
 My lady lay : 
 With golden key Sleep's gentle hand 
 
 Had closed her eyes so bright — 
 
 Her eyes, two suns of light — 
 
 And bade his balmy dews 
 
 Her rosy cheeks suffuse. 
 The River God in slumber saw her laid : 
 
 He raised his dripping head. 
 
 With weeds o'erspread, 
 Clad in his wat'ry robes approach'd the maid, 
 And with cold kiss, like death, 
 
 Drank the rich perfume of the maiden's breath. 
 The maiden felt that icy kiss : 
 
 Her suns unclosed, their fiame 
 
 Full and unclouded on th' intruder came. 
 
 Amazed th' intruder felt 
 
 His frothy body melt 
 And heard the i-adiance on his bosom hiss ; 
 
 And, forced in blind confusion to retire, 
 
 Leapt in the water to escape the fire. 
 
 SAINT EVREMOND. 
 
 The portrait of St. Evremond is delineated by his o\vn hand. 
 
 In his day it was a literary fashion for writers to give their 
 own portraits ; a fashion that seems to have passed over into 
 our country, for Farquhar has drawn his own character in a 
 letter to a lady. Others of our writers have given these self- 
 miniatures. Such painters are, no doubt, great flatterers, and 
 it is rather their ingenuity, than their truth, which we admire 
 in these cabinet-pictures. 
 
 " I am a philosopher, as far removed from superstition as 
 .from impiety; a voluptuary, who has not less abhorrence of
 
 Men of Genius Deficient in Conversation. 103 
 
 debauchery than inclination for pleasure ; a man who has 
 never known want nor abundance. I occupy that station of 
 life which is contemned by those who possess everything ; 
 envied by those who have nothing ; and only relished by those 
 who make their felicity consist in the exercise of their reason. 
 Young, I hated dissipation ; convinced that man must jios- 
 sess wealth to provide for the comforts of a long life. Old, 
 I disliked economy; as I believe that we need not greatly 
 dread want, when we have but a short time to be miserable. 
 I am satisfied with what nature has done for me, nor do I 
 repine at fortune. I do not seek in men what they have of 
 evil, that I may censure ; I only discover what they have 
 ridiculous, that I may be amused. I feel a pleasure in de- 
 tecting their follies ; I should feel a greater in communicating 
 my discoveries, did not my prudence restrain me. Life is too 
 short, according to my ideas, to read all kinds of books, and 
 to load our memories with an endless number of things at 
 the cost of our judgment. I do not attach m3^self to the 
 observations of scientific men to acquire science ; but to the 
 most rational, that I may strengthen my reason. Sometimes 
 I seek for more delicate minds, that my taste may iml)ibe their 
 delicacy ; sometimes for the gayer, that I may enrich my 
 genius with their gaiety ; and, although I constantly read, I 
 make it less my occupation than my pleasure. In religion, 
 and in friendship, I have only to paint myself such as I am — 
 in friendship more tender than a philosopher ; and in religion, 
 as constant and as sincere as a youth who has more simplicity 
 than experience. My piety is composed more of justice and 
 charity than of penitence. I rest my confidence on God, and 
 hope everything from His benevolence. In the bosom of 
 Providence I find my repose, and my felicity." 
 
 MEN OF GENIUS DEFICIENT IN CONVERSATION. 
 
 The student or the artist who may shine a luminary of learn- 
 ing and of genius, in his works, is found, not rarely, to lie 
 obscured beneath a heavy cloud in colloquial discourse. 
 
 If you love the man of letters, seek him in the privacies of 
 his study. It is in the hour of confidence and tranquillity that 
 his genius shall elicit a ray of intelligence more fervid than 
 the labours of polished composition. 
 
 The great Peter Corneille, whose genius resembled that of
 
 104 Men of Genius Deficient in Conversation. 
 
 our Shakspeare, and who has so forcibly expressed the sublime 
 sentiments of the hero, had nothing in his exterior that indi- 
 cated his genius ; his conversation was so insipid that it 
 never failed of wearying. Nature, who had lavished on him 
 the gilts of genius, had forgotten to blend with them her 
 more ordinary ones. He did not even speak correctly that 
 language of which he was such a master. When his friends 
 represented to him how much more he might please by not 
 disdaining to correct these trivial errors, he would smile, and 
 say — '■'■ I am not the less Peter Corneille /" 
 
 Descartes, whose habits were formed in solitude and medi- 
 tation, was silent in mixed company ; it was said that he 
 had received his intellectual wealth from nature in solid 
 bars, but not in current coin ; or as Addison expressed the 
 same idea, by comjjaring himself to a banker who possessed 
 the wealth of his friends at home, though he carried none of 
 it in his pocket ; or as that judicious moralist NicoUe, of the 
 Port-Royal Society, said of a scintillant wit — " He conquers 
 me in the drawing-room, but he surrenders to me at discretion 
 on the staircase." Such may say with Themistocles, when 
 asked to play on a lute — " I cannot fiddle, but 1 can make a 
 little village a great city." 
 
 The deficiencies of Addison in conversation are well known. 
 He preserved a rigid silence amongst strangers ; but if he was 
 silent, it was the silence of meditation. How often, at that 
 moment, he laboured at some future Spectator ! 
 
 Mediocrity can talk ; but it is for genius to observe. 
 
 The cynical Mandeville compared Addison, after having 
 passed an evening in his company, to " a silent parson in a 
 tie-wig." 
 
 Virgil was heavy in conversation, and resembled more an 
 ordinary man than an enchanting poet. 
 
 La Fontaine, says La Bruyere, appeared coarse, heavy, and 
 stupid ; he could not speak or describe what he had just 
 seen ; but when he wrote he was a model of poetry. 
 
 It is very easy, said a humorous observer on La Fontaine, 
 to be a man of wit, or a fool ; but to be both, and that too 
 in the extreme degree, is indeed admirable, and only to be 
 found in him. This observation applies to that fine natural 
 genius Goldsmith. Chaucer was more facetious in his tales 
 than in his conversation, and the Countess of Pembroke used 
 to rally him by saying, that his silence was more agreeable to 
 her than his conversation.
 
 The Scuderies. 105 
 
 Tsocrates, celebrated for his beautiful oratorical composi- 
 tions, was of so timid a disposition, that he never ventured 
 to speak in public. He compared himself to the whetstone 
 which will not cut, but enables other things to do so ; for his 
 productions served as models to other orators. Vaucanson 
 was said to be as much a machine as any he had made. 
 
 Dryden says of himself — " My conversation is slow and 
 dull, my humour saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none 
 of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or make 
 repartees."* 
 
 VIDA. 
 
 What a consolation for an aged parent to see his child, by 
 the efforts of his own merits, attain from the humblest 
 obscurity to distinguished eminence ! What a transport for 
 the man of sensibility to return to the obscure dwelling of 
 his parent, and to embrace him, adorned with public honours ! 
 Poor Vida was deprived of this satisfaction ; but he is placed 
 higher in our esteem by the present anecdote, than even by 
 that classic composition, which rivals the Art of Poetry of 
 his great master. 
 
 Jerome Vida, after having long served two Popes, at length 
 attained to the episcopacy. Arrayed in the robes of his new 
 dignity, he prepared to visit his aged parents, and felicitated 
 himself with the raptures which the old couple would feel in 
 embracing their son as their bishop. When he arrived at 
 their village, he learnt that it was but a few days since they 
 were no more. His sensibilities were exquisitely pained. 
 The muse dictated some elegiac verse, and in the solemn 
 pathos deplored the death and the disappointment of his 
 parents. 
 
 THE SCUDERIES. 
 
 Bien lieureux Scudery, dont la fertile plume 
 Peut tous les rnois sans peine enfanter un volume. 
 
 BoiLEAU has written this couplet on the Scuderies, the 
 brother and sister, both famous in their day for composing 
 romances, which they sometimes extended to ten or twelve 
 
 * The same is reported of Butler ; and it is said that Charles II. de- 
 clared he could not believe him to be the author of Hudibras; that witty 
 poem being such a contradiction to his heavy manners.
 
 106 The Scuderies. 
 
 volumes. It was the favourite literature of that period, as 
 novels are now. Our nobility not unfrequentlj condescended 
 to translate these voluminous compositions. 
 
 The diminutive size of our modern novels is undoubtedly 
 an improvement : but, in resembling the size of primers, it 
 were to be wished that their contents had also resembled 
 their inoffensive pages. Our great-grandmothers were in- 
 commoded with overgrown folios ; and, instead of finishing 
 the eventful history of two lovers at one or two sittings, 
 it was sometimes six months, including Sundays, before 
 they could get quit of their Clelias, their Cyrus's, and Par- 
 thenissas. 
 
 Mademoiselle Scudery had composed ninety volumes ! She 
 had even finished another romance, which she would not give 
 the public, whose taste, she perceived, no more relished this 
 kind of works. She was one of those unfortunate authors 
 who, living to more than ninety years of age, survive their 
 own celebrity. 
 
 She had her panegyrists in her day : Menage observes — 
 " What a pleasing description has Mademoiselle Scudery 
 made, in her Cyrus, of the little court at Eambouillet ! A 
 thousand things in the romances of this learned lady render 
 them inestimable. She has drawn from the ancients their 
 happiest passages, and has even improved upon them ; like 
 the prince in the fable, whatever she touches becomes gold. 
 We may read her works with great protit, if we possess a 
 correct taste, and love instruction. Those who censure their 
 length only show the littleness of their judgment ; as if 
 Homer and Virgil were to be despised, because many of their 
 books were filled with, episodes and incidents that necessarily 
 retard the conclusion. It does not require much penetration 
 to observe that Cyrus and Clelia are a species of the epic 
 poem. The epic must embrace a number of events to suspend 
 the course of the narrative ; which, only taking in a part 
 of the life of the hero, would terminate too soon to display 
 the skill of the poet. Without this artifice, the charm of 
 uniting the greater part of the episodes to the principal 
 subject of the romance would be lost. Mademoiselle de 
 Scudery has so well treated them, and so aptly introduced 
 a variety of beautiful passages, that nothing in this kind is 
 comparable to her productions. Some expressions, and cer- 
 tain turns, have become somewhat obsolete ; all the rest
 
 The Scuderies. 107 
 
 will last for ever, and outlive the criticisms they have 
 undergone." 
 
 Menage has here certainly uttered a false prophecy. The 
 curious only look over her romances. They contain doubt- 
 less many beautiful inventions ; the misfortune is, that time 
 and patience are rare requisites for the enjoyment of these 
 Iliads in prose. 
 
 " The misfortune of her having written too abundantly 
 has occasioned an unjust contempt," says a French critic. 
 " We confess there are many heavy and tedious passages 
 in her voluminous romances ; but if we consider that in the 
 Clelia and the Artamene are to be found inimitable delicate 
 touches, and many splendid parts, which would do honour to 
 some of our living writers, we must acknowledge that the 
 great defects of all her works arise from her not writing in 
 an atje when taste had reached the acme of cultivation. 
 Such is her erudition, that the French place her next to the 
 celebrated Madame Dacier. Her works, containing many 
 secret intrigues of the court and city, her readers must have 
 keenly relished on their early publication. 
 
 Her Artamene, or the Great Cyrus, and principally her 
 Clelia, are representations of what then passed at the court 
 of France. The Map of the Kingdom of Tenderness, in 
 Clelia, appeared, at the time, as one of the happiest inven- 
 tions. This once celebrated «?ap is an allegory which dis- 
 tinguishes the different kinds of Tenderisess, which are 
 reduced to Esteem, Gratitude, and Inclination. The map 
 represents three rivers, which have these three names, and 
 on which are situated three towns called Tenderness : Ten- 
 derness on Inclination ; Tenderness on Esteem ; and Tender- 
 ness on Gratitude. Pleasing Attentions, or, Eetits Soins, is 
 a village very beautifully situated. Mademoiselle de Scudery 
 was extremely proud of this little allegorical map ; and had 
 a terrible controversy with another writer about its origi- 
 nality. 
 
 GrEORGE ScuDERT, her brother, and inferior in genius, had 
 a sti'iking singularity of character: — be was one of the most 
 complete votaries to the universal divinity, Vanity. With a 
 heated imagination, entirely destitute of judgment, his mili- 
 tary character was continually exhibiting itself by that peace- 
 ful instrument the pen, so that he exhibits a most amusing 
 contrast of ardent feelings in a cool situation ; not liberally
 
 108 The Scuderies. 
 
 endowed with genius, but abounding with its semblance in 
 the fire of eccentric gasconade ; no man has portrayed his 
 own character with a bolder colouring than himself, in his 
 numerous prefaces and addresses ; surrounded by a thousand 
 self-illusions of the most sublime class, everything that re- 
 lated to himself had an Homeric grandeur of conception. 
 
 In an epistle to the Duke of Montmorency, Scudery says, 
 " I will learn to write with my left hand, that my right hand 
 may more nobly be devoted to your service;" and alluding 
 to his pen (^plume), declares " he comes from a family who 
 never used one, but to stick in their hats." When he solicits 
 small favours from the great, he assures them " that princes 
 must not think him importunate, and that his writings are 
 merely inspired by his own individual interest ; no ! (he 
 exclaims) I am studious only of your glory, while I am care- 
 less of my own fortune." And indeed, to do him justice, he 
 acted up to these romantic feelings. After he had published 
 his epic of Alaric, Christina of Sweden proposed to honour 
 him with a chain of gold of the value of five hundred pounds, 
 provided he would expunge fi'om his epic the eulogiums he 
 bestowed on the Count of Gardie, whom she had disgraced. 
 The epical soul of Scudery magnanimously scorned the bribe, 
 and replied, that " If the chain of gold should be as weighty 
 as that chain mentioned in the history of the Incas, I will 
 never destroy any altar on which I have sacrificed!" 
 
 Proud of his boasted nobility and erratic life, he thus 
 addresses the reader : " You will lightly pass over any faults 
 in my work, if you reflect that I have employed the greater 
 part of my life in seeing the finest parts of Europe, and that 
 I have passed more days in the camp than in the library. I 
 have used more matches to light my musket than to light 
 my candles ; I know better to arrange columns in the field 
 than those on paper ; and to square battalions better than 
 to round periods." In his first publication, he began his 
 literary career perfectly in character, by a challenge to his 
 critics ! 
 
 He is the author of sixteen plays, chiefly heroic tragedies ; 
 children who all bear the features of their father. He first 
 introduced, in his " L' Amour Tyrannique," a strict observance 
 of the Aristotelian unities of time and place ; and the neces- 
 sity and advantages of this regulation are insisted on, which 
 only shows that Aristotle's art goes but little to the compo- 
 sition of a pathetic tragedy. In kis last drama, " Arminius,"
 
 The Scuderies. 109 
 
 he extravagantly scatters his panegyrics on its fifteen prede- 
 cessors ; but of" the present one he has the most exalted 
 notion : it is the quintessence of Scudery ! An ingenious 
 critic calls it " The downfall of mediocrity !" It is amusing 
 to listen to this blazing preface : — " At length, reader, nothing 
 remains for me but to mention the great Arminius which I 
 now present to you, and by which 1 have resolved to close 
 my long and laborions course. It is indeed my masterpiece ! 
 and the most finished work that ever came from my pen ; for 
 whether we examine the fable, the manners, the sentiments, 
 or the versification, it is certain that I never performed any- 
 thing so just, so great, nor more beautiful ; and if my labours 
 could ever deserve a crown, I would claim it for this work !" 
 The actions of this singular personage were in unison with 
 his writings : he gives a pompous description of a most unim- 
 portant government which he obtained near Marseilles, but 
 all the grandeur existed only in our author's heated imagina- 
 tion. Bachaumont and De la Chapelle describe it, in their 
 playful " Voyage :" 
 
 Mais il faut vous parler du fort, 
 Qui sans doute est une merveille; 
 C'est notre dame de la garde ! 
 Gouvernement commode et beau, 
 A qui suflit pour tout garde, 
 Un Suisse avec sa baliebai'de 
 Peint sur la porte du chateau ! 
 
 A fort very commodiously guarded ; only requiring one senti- 
 nel with his halbert — painted on the door ! 
 
 In a poem on his disgust with the world, he tells us how 
 intimate he has been with princes : Europe has known him 
 through all her provinces ; he ventured everything in a thou- 
 sand combats : 
 
 L'on me vit obeir, I'on me vit commander, 
 Et mon poil tout poudreux a blancbi sous les armes; 
 II est peu de beaux arts oil je ne sois instruit ; 
 En prose et en vers, mon nom fit quelque bruit ; 
 Et par plus d'un chemin je parvins a la gloire. 
 
 IMITATED. 
 
 Princes were proud my friendship to proclaim, 
 And Europe gazed, where'er her hero came ! 
 I grasp'd the laurels of heroic strife, 
 The thousand perils of a soldier's life ; 
 Obedient in the ranks each toilful day 1 
 Though heroes soon command, they first ohey.
 
 110 De la Rochefoucault. 
 
 'Twas not for me, too long a time to yield ! 
 Born for a chieftain in the tented field ! 
 Around my plumed helm, my silvery hair 
 Hung like an honour'd wreath of age and care ! 
 The finer arts have charm'd my studious hours, 
 Versed in their mysteries, skilful in their powers ; 
 In verse and prose my equal genius glow'd, 
 Pursuing glory by no single road ! 
 
 Such was the vain George Scudery ! whose heart, how- 
 ever, was warm : poverty could never degrade him ; adversity 
 never broke down his magnanimous spirit ! 
 
 DE LA EOCHEFOUCAULT. 
 
 The maxims of this noble author are in the hands of every 
 one. To those who choose to derive every motive and every 
 action from the solitary principle of self-love, they are ines- 
 timable. They form one continued satire on human nature ; 
 but they are not reconcilable to the feelings of the man of 
 better sympathies, or to him who passes through life with 
 the firm integrity of virtue. Even at court we find a Sully, 
 a Malesherbes, and a Clarendon, as well as a Rouchefoucault 
 and a Chesterfield. 
 
 Tbe Duke de la Rochefoucault, says Segrais, had not 
 studied ; but he was endowed with a wonderful degree of 
 discernment, and knew the world perfectly well. This 
 afforded him opportunities of making reflections, and re- 
 ducing into maxims those discoveries which he had made 
 in tbe heart of man, of which he displaj^ed an admirable 
 knowledge. 
 
 It is perhaps worthy of observation, that this celebrated 
 French duke could never summon resolution, at his election, 
 to address the Academy. Although chosen a member, he 
 never entered, for such was his timidity, that he could not 
 face an audience and deliver the usual compliment on his 
 introduction ; he whose courage, whose birth, and whose 
 genius were alike distinguished. The fact is, as appears by 
 Mad. de Sevigne, that Rochefoucault lived a close domestic 
 life ; there must be at least as much theoretical as practical 
 knowledge in the opinions of such a retired philosopber. 
 
 Chesterfield, our English Rochefoucault, we are also in- 
 formed, possessed an admirable knowledge of the heart of 
 man; and he, too, has drawn a similar picture of human
 
 Prior's Hans Carvel. Ill 
 
 nature. These are two nohle aiitliors whose chief studies 
 seem to have been made in courts. May it not be possible, 
 allowing these authors not to have written a sentence of 
 apocrypha, that the fault lies not so much in human nature 
 as in the satellites of Power breathing their corrupt atmo- 
 sphere ? 
 
 PRIOR'S HANS CARVEL. 
 
 Were we to investigate the genealogy of our best modern 
 stories, we should often discover the illegitimacy of our 
 favourites ; and retrace them frequently to the East. My 
 well-read friend Douce had collected materials for such a 
 work. The genealogies of tales would have gratified the 
 curious in literature, 
 
 The story of the ring of Hans Carvel is of very ancient 
 standing, as are most of the tales of this kind. 
 
 Menage says that Poggius, who died in 1459, has the 
 merit of its invention ; but I suspect be only related a very 
 popular story. 
 
 Kabelais, who has given it in his peculiar manner, changed 
 its original name of Philelphus to that of Hans Carvel. 
 
 This title is likewise in the eleventh of Les Cent Nou- 
 velles NoiiveUes collected in 1461, for the amusement of 
 Louis XL when Dauphin, and living in solitude. 
 
 Ariosto has borrowed it, at the end of his fifth Satire ; but 
 has fairly appropriated it by his pleasant manner. 
 
 In a collection of novels at Lyons, in 1555, it is introduced 
 into the eleventh novel. 
 
 Celio Malespini has it again in page 288 of the second part 
 of his Two Hundred Novels, printed at Venice in 1609. 
 
 Fontaine has prettily set it off", and an anonymous writer 
 has composed it in Latin Anacreontic verses ; and at length 
 our Prior has given it with equal gaiety and fi-cedom. After 
 Ariosto, La Fontaine, and Prior, let us hear of it no more ; 
 yet this has been done, in a manner, hov.'ever, which here 
 cannot be told. 
 
 Voltaire has a curious essay to show that most of our best 
 modern stories and plots originally belonged to the eastern 
 nations, a fact which has been made more evident by recent 
 researches. The Amphitrj^on of Moliere was an imitation of 
 Plautus, who borrowed it from the Greeks, and they took it 
 from the Indians ! It is given by Dow in his History of
 
 112 The Student in the Metropolis. 
 
 Hindostan. In Captain Scott's Tales and Anecdotes from 
 Arabian writers, we are surprised at finding so many of our 
 favourites very ancient orientalists. — The Ephesian Matron, 
 versified by La Fontaine, was borrowed from the Italians ; it 
 is to be found in Petronius, and Petronius had it from the 
 Greeks. But where did the Greeks find it ? In the Arabian 
 Tales ! And from whence did the Arabian fabulists borrow 
 it ? From the Chinese ! It is found in Du Halde, who col- 
 lected it from the Versions of the Jesuits. 
 
 THE STUDENT IN THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 A MAN of letters, more intent on the acquisitions of litera- 
 ture than on the intrigues of politics, or the speculations of 
 commerce, may find a deeper solitude in a populous metro- 
 polis than in the seclusion of the country. 
 
 The student, who is no flatterer of the little passions of 
 men, will not be much incommoded by their presence. 
 Gibbon paints his own situation in the heart of the fashion- 
 able world : — " I had not been endowed by art or nature with 
 those happy gifts of confidence and address which unlock 
 every door and eveiy bosom. While coaches were rattling 
 through Bond-street, I have passed many a solitary evening 
 in my lodging with my books. I withdrew without reluc- 
 tance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without 
 company, and dissipation without pleasure." And even after 
 lie had published the first volume of his History, he observes 
 that in London his confinement was solitary and sad ; " the 
 manj' forgot my existence when they saw me no longer at 
 Brookes's, and the few who sometimes had a thought on 
 their friend were detained by business or pleasure, and I was 
 proud and happy if I could prevail on my bookseller, Elmsly, 
 to enliven the dulness of the evening." 
 
 A situation, very elegantly described in the beautifully 
 polished verses of Mr. Rogers, in his " Epistle to a Friend :" 
 
 When from his classic dreams the student steals 
 Amid the buzz of crowds, the whirl of wheels, 
 To muse unnoticed, while around him press 
 The meteor-forms of equipage and dress ; 
 Alone in wonder lost, he seems to stand 
 A very stranger in his native land. 
 
 He compares the student to one of the seven sleepers in 
 the ancient legend.
 
 The Talmud. 113 
 
 Descartes residing in the commercial cit}^ of Amsterdam, 
 writing to Balzac, illustrates these descriptions with great 
 force and vivacity. 
 
 " You wisli to retire ; and your intention is to seek the 
 solitude of the Chartreux, or, possibly, some of the most 
 beautiful provinces of France and Italy. I would rather 
 advise you, if you wish to observe mankind, and at the same 
 time to lose yourself in the deepest solitude, to join me in 
 Amsterdam. I prefer this situation to that even of your 
 delicious villa, where I spent so great a part of the last year ; 
 for, however agreeable a country-house may be, a thousand 
 little conveniences are wanted, which can only be found in a 
 city. One is not alone so frequently in the country as one 
 could wish : a number of impertinent visitors are continually 
 besieging you. Here, as all the world, except myself, is 
 occupied in commerce, it depends merely on myself to live 
 unknown to the world. I walk every day amongst immense 
 ranks of people, with as much tranquillity as you do in your 
 green alleys. The men I meet with make the same impres- 
 sion on my mind as would the trees of your forests, or the 
 flocks of sheep grazing on your common. The busy hum too 
 of these merchants does not disturb one more than the 
 purling of your brooks. If sometimes I amuse m3^self in 
 contemplating their anxious motions, I receive the same plea- 
 sure which you do in observing those men who cultivate 
 your land ; for I reflect that the end of all their labours is to 
 embellish the city which I inhabit, and to anticipate all my 
 wants. If you contemplate with delight the fruits of your 
 orchards, with all the rich promises of abundance, tlo you 
 think I feel less in observing so many fleets that convey to 
 me the productions of either India ? What spot on earth 
 could you find, which, like this, can so interest your vanity 
 and gratify your taste ?" 
 
 THE TALMUD. 
 
 The Jews have their Talmud ; the Catholics their 
 Legends of Saints ; and the Turks their Sonnah. The 
 Protestais^t has nothing but his Bible. The former are 
 three kindred works. Men have imagined that the more 
 there is to be believed, the more are the merits of the be- 
 liever. Hence all traditioivists formed the orthodox and the 
 
 YOL. I. I
 
 114 The Talmud. 
 
 strongest party. The word of God is lost amidst those heaps 
 of human inventions, sanctioned by an order of men con- 
 nected with religious duties ; they ought now, however, to be 
 regarded rather as Curiosities of Ltteeatuke. I give a 
 sufficiently ample account of the Talmud and the Legenbs ; 
 but of the SoKNAH I only know that it is a collection of the 
 traditional opinions of the Turkish prophets, directing the 
 observance of petty superstitions not mentioned in the 
 Koran. 
 
 The Talmud is a collection of Jewish traditions which 
 have been orally preserved. It comprises the Mishna, which 
 is the text ; and the Gemaea, its commentary. The whole 
 forms a complete system of the learning, ceremonies, civil 
 and canon laws of the Jews ; treating indeed on all subjects ; 
 even gardening, manual arts, &c. The rigid Jews persuaded 
 themselves that these traditional explications are of divine 
 origin. The Pentateuch, say they, was written out by their 
 legislator before his death in thirteen copies, distributed 
 among the twelve tribes, and the remaining one deposited in 
 the ark. The oral law Moses continually taught in the San- 
 liedrim, to the elders and the rest of the people. The law 
 was repeated four times ; but the interpretation was delivered 
 only by word of mouth from generation to generation. In 
 the fortieth year of the flight from Egypt, the memory of 
 the people became treacherous, and Moses was constrained to 
 repeat this oral law, which had been conveyed by successive 
 traditionists. Such is the account of honest David Levi ; it 
 is the creed of every rabbin. — David believed in everything 
 but in Jesus. 
 
 This history of the Talmud some inclined to suppose 
 apocryphal, even among a few of the Jews themselves. When 
 these traditions first appeared, the keenest controversy has 
 never been able to determine. It cannot be denied that there 
 existed traditions among the Jews in the time of Jesus 
 Christ. About the second century, they were industriously 
 collected by Rabbi Juda the Holy, the prince of the rabbins, 
 who enjoyed the favour of Antoninus Pius. He has the merit 
 of giving some order to this multifarious collection. 
 
 It appears that the Talmud was compiled by certain Jew- 
 ish doctors, who were solicited for this purpose by their 
 nation, that they might have something to oppose to their 
 Christian adversaries. 
 
 The learned W. Wotton, in his curious " Discourses " on
 
 The Talmud. 115 
 
 the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees, supplies an analy- 
 sis of tliis vast collection ; he has translated entire two 
 divisions of this code of traditional laws, with the original 
 text and the notes. 
 
 There are two Talmuds : the Jerusalem and the Baby- 
 lonian. The last is the most esteemed, because it is the 
 most bulky. 
 
 E.. Juda, the prince of the rabbins, committed to writing 
 all these traditions, and arranged them under six general 
 heads, called orders or classes. The subjects are indeed 
 curious for philosophical inquirers, and multifarious as the 
 events of civil life. Every order is formed oftreafises; every 
 treatise is divided into chapters, every chapter into mishnas, 
 which word means mixtures or miscellanies, in the form of 
 aphorisms. In the first part is discussed what relates to seeds, 
 fruits, and trees ; in the ^ecouA, feasts ; in the third, t«o?«<?«, 
 their duties, their disorders, marriacjes, divorces, contracts, 
 and nuptials; in the fourth, are treated the damages or losses 
 sustained by beasts or men ; of things found ; deposits ; 
 usuries; rents ; farms ; partnerships m commerce; inherit- 
 ance; sales and purchases; oaths; tvitnesses ; arrests; 
 idolatry ; and here are named those by whom the oral law was 
 received and preserved. In the fifth part are noticed sacrifices 
 and hoi 1/ thinqs; and the sixth treats o{ purifications; vessels; 
 furniture; clothes; houses; lejyrosy ; haths ; and numerous 
 other articles. All this forms the Misiina. 
 
 The Gemara, that is, the complement or perfection, con- 
 tains the Disputes and the Opinions of the Rabbins on the 
 oral traditions. Their last decisions. It must be confessed 
 that absurdities are sometimes elucidated by other absurdi- 
 ties ; but there are many admirable things in this vast 
 repository. The Jews have such veneration for this compila- 
 tion, that the}^ compare the holy writings to ivater, and the 
 Talmud to loine ; the text of Moses to pepper, but the Tal- 
 mud to aromatics. Of the twelve hours of which the day is 
 composed, they tell us that God employs nine to study the 
 Talmud, and only three to read the written law ! 
 
 St. Jerome appears evidently to allude to this work, and 
 notices its " Old Wives' Tales," and the filthiness of some of 
 its matters. The truth is, that the rabbins resembled the 
 Jesuits and Casuists; and Sanchez's work on " 3Iafrimonio^^ 
 is well known to agitate matters with such scrupulous niceties 
 as to become the most offensive thing possible. But as among 
 
 i2
 
 116 The Talmud. 
 
 the schoolmen and casuists there have been great men, the 
 same happened to these Gemaraists. Maimonides was a pillar 
 of light among their darkness. The antiquity of this work 
 is of itself sufficient to make it very curious. 
 
 A specimen of the topics may be shown from the table and 
 contents of " Mishnic Titles." In the order of seeds, we find 
 the following heads, which present no uninteresting picture 
 of the pastoral and pious ceremonies of the ancient Jews. 
 
 The Mishna, entitled the Corner, i.e. of the field. The 
 laws of gleaning are commanded according to Leviticus ; 
 xix. 9, 10. Of the corner to be left in a corn-field. When 
 the corner is due and when not. Of the forgotten sheaf. Of 
 the ears of corn left in gathering. Of grapes left upon the 
 vine. Of olives left upon the trees. When and where the 
 poor may lawfully glean. What sheaf, or olives, or grapes, 
 naay be looked upon to be forgotten, and what not. Who are 
 the proper witnesses concerning the poor's due, to exempt it 
 from tithing, &c. They distinguished uncircumcised fruit : — 
 it is unlawful to eat of the fruit of any tree till the fifth year 
 of its growth : the first three years of its bearing, it is called 
 uncircumcised ; the fourth is offered to God ; and the fifth 
 may be eaten. 
 
 The Mishna, entitled Heterogeneous Mixtures, contains 
 several curious horticultural particulars. Of divisions between 
 garden-beds and fields, that the produce of the several sorts 
 of grains or seeds may appear distinct. Of the distance 
 between every species. Distances between vines planted in 
 corn-fields from one another and from the corn ; between 
 vines planted against hedges, walls, or espaliers, and anything 
 sowed near them. Various cases relating to vineyards planted 
 near any forbidden seeds. 
 
 In their seventh, or sabbatical year, in which the produce 
 of all estates was given up to the poor, one of these regula- 
 tions is on the different work which must not be omitted in 
 the sixth year, lest (because the seventh being devoted to the 
 poor) the produce should be unfiiirly diminished, and the 
 public benefit arising from this law be frustrated. Of 
 whatever is not perennial, and produced that year by the 
 earth, no money may be made ; but what is perennial may be 
 &old. 
 
 On priests' tithes, we have a regulation concerning eating 
 the fruits carried to the place where t\\Qj are to be separated. 
 
 The order women is very copious. A husband is obliged to
 
 The Talmud. 117 
 
 forbid his wife to keep a particular man's company before two 
 witnesses. Of the waters of jealousy by which a suspected 
 woman is to be tried by drinking, we find ample particulars. 
 The ceremonies of clothing the accused woman at her trial. 
 Pregnant women, or who suckle, are not obliged to drink ; 
 for the rabbins seem to be well convinced of the effects of the 
 imagination. Of their divorces many are the laws ; and care 
 is taken to particularise bills of divorces written by men in 
 delirium or dangerously ill. One party of tlie rabbins will 
 not allow of any divorce, unless something light was found 
 in the woman's character, while another (the Pharisees) allow 
 divorces even when a woman has only been so unfortunate as 
 to suffer her husband's soup to be burnt ! 
 
 In the order of damages, containing rules how to tax the 
 damages done by man or beast, or other casualties, their dis- 
 tinctions are as nice as their cases are numerous. What 
 beasts are innocent and what convict. By the one they mean 
 creatures not naturally used to do mischief in any particular 
 way ; and by the other, those that naturally, or by a vicious 
 habit, are mischievous that way. The tooth of a beast is 
 convict, when it is proved to eat its usual food, the property 
 of another man, and full restitution must be made ; but if a 
 beast that is used to eat fruits and herbs gnaws clothes or 
 damages tools, which are not its usual food, the owner of the 
 beast shall pay but half the damage when committed on the 
 property of the injured person; but if the injury is committed 
 on the propei'ty of the person who does the damage, he is 
 free, because the beast gnawed what was not its usual food. 
 As thus ; if the beast of A. gnaws or tears the clothes of B. 
 in B.'s house or grounds, A. shall pay half the damages ; but 
 if B.'s clothes are injured in A.'s grounds by A.'s beast, A. is 
 free, for what had B. to do to put his clothes in A.'s grounds ? 
 They made such subtile distinctions, as when an ox gores a man 
 or beast, the law inquired into the habits of the beast; 
 whether it was an ox that used to gore, or an ox that was 
 not used to gore. However acute these niceties sometimes 
 were, they were often ridiculous. No beast could be con- 
 victed of being vicious till evidence was given that he had 
 done mischief three successive days ; but if he leaves off 
 those vicious tricks for three days more, he is innocent again. 
 An ox may be convict of goring an ox and not a man, or of 
 goring a man and not an ox : nay, of goring on the sabbath, 
 and not on a working day. Their aim was to make the
 
 118 The Talmud. 
 
 punishment depend on the proofs of the design of the beast 
 that did the injury ; but this attempt evidently led them to 
 distinctions much too subtile and obscure. Thus some 
 rabbins say that the morning prayer of the Shemdh must be 
 read at the time they can distinguish blue from white ; but 
 another, more indulgent, insists it may be when we can dis- 
 tinguish blue from green ! which latter colours are so near 
 akin as to require a stronger light. With the same remark- 
 able acuteness in distinguishing things, is their law respecting 
 not touching fire on the Sabbath. AtTiong those which are 
 specified in this constitution, the rabbins allow the minister 
 to look over young children by lamp-light, but he shall not 
 read himself. The minister is forbidden to read by lamp- 
 light, lest he should trim his lamp ; but he may direct the 
 children where they should read, because that is quickly 
 done, and there Avould be no danger of his trimming his lamp 
 in their presence, or suffering any of them to do it in his. 
 All these regulations, which some may conceive as minute 
 and frivolous, show a great intimacy with the human heart, 
 and a spirit of profound observation which had been capable 
 of achieving great purposes. 
 
 The owner of an innocent beast only pays half the costs 
 for the mischief incurred. Man is always convict, and for all 
 mischief he does he must pay full costs. However there are 
 casual damages, — as when a man pours water accidentally on 
 another man ; or makes a thorn-hedge which annoys his 
 neighbour ; or falling down, and another by stumbling on him 
 incurs harm : how such compensations are to be made. He 
 that has a vessel of another's in keeping, and removes it, but 
 in the removal breaks it, must swear to his own integrity ; 
 i.e., that he had no design to break it. All offensive or noisy 
 trades were to be carried on at a certain distance from a town. 
 Where there is an estate, the sons inherit, and the daughters 
 are maintained ; but if there is not enough for all, the daugh- 
 ters are maintained, and the sons must get their living as 
 they can, or even beg. The contrary to this excellent ordi- 
 nation has been observed in Europe. 
 
 These few titles may enable the reader to form a general 
 notion of the several subjects on which the Mishna treats. 
 The Gemara or Commentary is often overloaded with inepti- 
 tudes and ridiculous subtilties. For instance, in the article of 
 "Negative Oaths." If a man swears he will eat no bread, 
 and does eat all sorts of bread, in that case the perjury is but
 
 The Talmud. 119 
 
 one ; but if he swears that lie will eat neither barley, nor 
 wheaten, nor r^'e-bi'ead, the perjury is multiplied as he multi- 
 plies his eating of the several sorts. — Again, the Pharisees 
 and the Sadducees had strong differences about touching the 
 holy writings with their hamls. The doctors ordained that 
 whoever touched the book of the law must not eat of the 
 truma (first fruits of the wrought produce of the ground), 
 till they had waslied their hands. The reason they gave was 
 this. In times of persecution, they used to hide those sacred 
 books in secret places, and good men would lay them out of 
 the way when they had done reading them. It was pos- 
 sible, then, that these I'olls of the law might be gnawed by 
 mice. The hands then that touclied these books when they 
 took them out of the places where they had laid them up, 
 were supposed to be unclean, so far as to disable them from 
 eating the truma till they were washed. On that account 
 they made this a general rule, that if any part of the Bible 
 (except Ecclesiastes, because that excellent book their saga- 
 city accounted less holy than the rest) or their ph3'lacteries, 
 or the strings of their phylacteries, were touched by one who 
 had a right to eat the truma, he might not eat it till he had 
 washed his hands. An evidence of that superstitious trifling, 
 for vyhich the Pharisees and the later llabbins have been so 
 justly reprobated. 
 
 They were absurdly minute in the literal observance of 
 their vows, and as shamefully subtile in their artful evasion 
 of them. The Pharisees could be easy enough to themselves 
 when convenient, and always as hard and unrelenting as pos- 
 sible to all others. They quibbled, and dissolved their vows, 
 with experienced casuistry. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees 
 in Matthew xv. and Mark vii. for flagrantly violating the 
 fifth commandment, by allowing the vow of a son, perhaps 
 made in hasty anger, its full force, when he had sworn that 
 his father should never be the better for him, or anything he 
 had, and by which an indigent father might be sufifered to 
 starve. There is an express case to this purpose in the 
 Mishna, in the title of Vows. The reader may be amused by 
 the story : — A man made a vow that his father should not 
 projit hij him. Tliis man afterwards made a wedding-feast for 
 his son, and wishes his father should be present; but he 
 cannot invite him, because he is tied up by his vow. He in- 
 vented this expedient : — He makes a gift of the court in 
 which the feast was to be kept, and of the feast itself, to a
 
 120 Rabbinical Stories. 
 
 third person in trust, that his father should be invited by 
 that third person, with the other company whom he at first 
 designed. This third person then says — If these things you 
 thus have given me are mine, I will dedicate them to God, 
 and then none of you can be the better for them. The son 
 replied — I did not give them to j^ou that you should conse- 
 crate them. Then the third man said — Yours was no dona- 
 tion, only you were willing to eat and drink with your father. 
 Thus, says R. Juda, they dissolved each other's intentions ; 
 and when the case came before the i-abbins, they decreed that 
 a gift which may not be consecrated by the person to whom 
 it is given is not a gift. 
 
 The following extract from the Talmud exhibits a subtile 
 mode of reasoning, which the Jews adopted when the learned 
 of Rome sought to persuade them to conform to their idolatry. 
 It forms an entire Mishna, entitled Sedir Nezihm, Avoda 
 Zara, iv. 7. on idolati'ous worship, translated by Wotton. 
 
 " Some Roman senators examined the Jews in this 
 manner : — If God hath no delight in the worship of idols, 
 why did he not destroy them ? The Jews made answer — 
 If men had worshipped only things of which the world 
 had had no need, he would have destroyed the object of their 
 VForship ; but they also worship the sun and moon, stars and 
 planets ; and then he must have destroyed his world for the 
 sake of these deluded men. But still, said the Romans, why 
 does not God destroy the things which the world does not 
 want, and leave those things which the world cannot be with- 
 out ? Because, i*eplied the Jews, this would strengthen the 
 hands of such as worship these necessary things, who would 
 then say — Ye allow now that these are gods, since the}'^ are 
 not destroyed." 
 
 RABBINICAL STORIES. 
 
 The preceding article furnishes some of the more serious 
 investigations to be found in the Talmud. Its levities may 
 amuse. I leave untouched the gross obscenities and immoral 
 decisions. The Talmud contains a vast collection of stories, 
 apologues, and jests ; many display a vein of pleasantry, and 
 at times have a wildness of invention, which sufticiently mark 
 the features of an eastern parent. Many extravagantly puerile 
 were designed merely to recreate their young students. When 
 a rabbin was asked the reason of so much nonsense, he replied
 
 Rabbinical Stories. 1.21 
 
 that the ancients had a custom of introducing music in their 
 lectures, whicli accompaniment made tliem more agreeable; 
 but that not having musical instruments in the scliools, the 
 rabbins invented these strange stories to arouse attention. 
 This was ingeniously said ; but they make miserable work 
 when they pretend to give mystical interpix-tations to pure 
 nonsense. 
 
 In 1711, a German professor of the Oriental languages, 
 Dr. Eisenmenger, published in two large volumes quarto, his 
 " Judaism Discovered," a ponderous labour, of wiiich the 
 scope was to ridicule the Jewish traditions. 
 
 1 sliall give a dangerous adventure into which King David 
 was drawn by the devil. The king one day hunting, Satan 
 appeared before him in the likeness of a roe. David dis- 
 charged an arrow at him, but missed his aim. He pursued 
 the feigned roe into the land of tlie Philistines. Ishbi, the 
 brother of Goliath, instantly recognised the king as him who 
 had slain that giant. He bound him, and bending him neck 
 and heels, laid him under a wine-press in order to press him 
 to death. A miracle saves David. The earth beiieath him 
 became soft, and Ishbi could not press wine out of him. That 
 evening in the Jewish congregation a dove, whose wings were 
 covered with silver, appeared in great perplexity ; and evi- 
 dently signitied the king of Israel was in trouble. Abishai, 
 one of the king's counsellors, inquiring for the king, and find- 
 ing him absent, is at a loss to proceed, for according to the 
 Mishna, no one may ride on the king's horse, nor sit upon 
 his throne, nor use his sceptre. The school of the rabbins, 
 however, allowed these things in time of danger. On this 
 Abishai vaults on David's horse, 'and (with an Oriental meta- 
 phor) the land of the Pliilistines leaped to him instantly ! 
 Arrived at Ishbi's house, he beholds his mother Orpa spinning. 
 Perceiving the Israelite, she snatched up her spinning-wheel 
 and threw it at him, to kill him ; but not hitting him, she 
 desired him to bring the spinning-wheel to her. He did not 
 do this exactly, Imt returned it to her in such a way that she 
 never asked any more for her spinning-wheel. When Ishbi 
 saw this, and recollecting that David, though tied up neck 
 and heels, was still under the wine-press, he cried out. " There 
 are now two who will destroy me !" So he threw David high 
 up into the air, and stuck his spear into the ground, imagining 
 that David would lall upon it and perish. But Abishai pro- 
 nounced the magical name, which the Talmudi.<ts frequently
 
 122 Rabbinical Stories. 
 
 make use of, and it caused David to hover between earth and 
 heaven, so that he fell not down ! Both at length unite 
 against Ishbi, and observing that two 3'oung lions should kill 
 one lion, find no difiiculty in getting rid of the brother of 
 Goliath. 
 
 Of Solomon, another favourite hero of the Talmudists, a 
 fine Arabian story is told. This king was an adept in necro- 
 mancy, and a male and a female devil were always in waiting 
 for an emergency. It is observable, that the Arabians, who 
 have many stories concerning Solomon, always describe him as 
 a magician. His adventures with Aschmedai, the prince of 
 devils, are numerous ; and they both (the king and the devil) 
 served one another many a slippery trick. One of the most 
 remarkable is when Aschmedai, who was prisoner to Solomon, 
 the king having contrived to possess himself of the devil's 
 seal-ring, and chained him, one day offei'ed to answer an un- 
 holy question put to him by Solomon, provided he returned 
 him his seal-ring and loosened his chain. The impertinent 
 curiosity of Solomon induced him to commit this folly. In- 
 stantl}' Aschmedai swallowed the monarch ; and stretching 
 out his wings up to the firmament of heaven, one of his I'eet 
 remaining on the earth, he spit out Solomon four hundred 
 leagues from him. This was done so privately, that no one 
 knew anything of the matter. Aschmedai then assumed the 
 likeness of Solomon, and sat on his throne. From that hour 
 did Solomon say, " This then is the reward of all my labour," 
 according to Ecclesiasticus i. 3 ; which this means, one rabbin 
 says, his walking-statt"; and another insists was his ragged 
 coat. For Solomon went a begging from door to door ; and 
 wherever he came he uttered these words ; " I, the preacher, 
 was king over Israel in Jerusalem." At length coming be- 
 fore the council, and still repeating these remarkable words, 
 without addition or variation, the rabbins said, " This means 
 something: for a fool is not constant in his tale!" They 
 asked the chamberlain, if the king frequently saw him ? and 
 he replied to them, No ! Then they sent to the queens, to 
 ask if the king came into their apartments ? and they an- 
 swered. Yes ! The rabbins then sent them a message to take 
 notice of his feet ; for the feet of devils are like the feet of 
 cocks. The queens acquainted them that his majesty always 
 came in slippers, but forced them to embrace at times for- 
 bidden by the law. He had attempted to lie with his mother 
 Bathsheba, whom he had almost torn to pieces. At this the
 
 Rabbinical Stories. 123 
 
 rabbins assembled in great haste, and taking the beggar with 
 them, they gave him the ring and the chain in which the 
 great magical name was engraven, and led him to the palace. 
 Aschmedai was sitting on the throne as the real Solomon 
 entered ; but instantly he shrieked and flew away. Yet to 
 his last day was Solomon afraid of the prince of devils, and 
 had his bed guarded by the valiant men of Israel, as is written 
 in Cant. iii. 7, 8. 
 
 They frequently display much humour in their inventions, 
 as in tlie following account of the manners and morals of an 
 infamous town, which mocked at all justice. There were in 
 Sodom four judges, who were liars, and deriders of justice. 
 When any one had struck his neighbour's wife, and caused her 
 to miscarry, these judges thus counselled the husband : — 
 " Give her to the offender, that he may get her with child for 
 thee." When any one had cut off an ear of his neighbour's 
 ass, they said to the owner — " Let him have the ass till the 
 ear is grown again, that it may be returned to thee as thou 
 wishest." When any one had wounded his neighbour, they 
 told the wounded man to " give him a fee for letting him 
 blood." A toll was exacted in passing a certain bridge; but 
 if any one chose to wade through the water, or walk round 
 about to save it, he was condemned to a double toll. Eleasar, 
 Abraham's servant, came thither, and they wounded him. 
 When, before the judge, he was ordered to pay his fee for 
 having his blood let, Eleasar flung a stone at the judge, and 
 wounded him ; on which the judge said to him — '' What 
 meaneth this?" Eleasar replied — " Give him who wounded 
 me the fee that is due to myself for wounding thee." The 
 people of this town had a bedstead on which they laid tra- 
 vellers who asked for rest. If any one was too long for it, 
 they cut off his legs ; and if he was shorter than the bed- 
 stead, they strained him to its head and foot. When a beggar 
 came to this town, every one gave him a penny, on which 
 was inscribed the donor's name ; but they would sell him no 
 bread, nor let him escape. When the beggar died from 
 hunger, then they came about him, and each man took back 
 his penny. These stories are curious inventions of keen 
 mockery and malice, seasoned with humour. It is said some 
 of the famous decisions of Sancho Panza are to be found in 
 the Talmud. 
 
 Abraham is said to have been jealous of his wives, and built 
 an enchanted city for them. He built an iron city and put
 
 124 Rabbinical Stories. 
 
 them in. The walls were so high and dark, the sun could not 
 be seen in it. He gave them a bowl full of pearls and jewels, 
 which sent forth a light in this dark city equal to the sun. 
 Noah, it seems, when in the ark, had no other light than 
 jewels and pearls. Abraham, in travelling to Egypt, brought 
 with him a chest. At the custom-house the officers exacted 
 the duties. Abraham would have readily paid, but desired 
 they would not open the chest. They first insisted on the 
 duty for clothes, which Abraham consented to pay ; but then 
 they thought, by his ready acquiescence, that it might be 
 gold. Abraham consents to pay for gold. They now sus- 
 pected it might be silk. Abi'aham was willing to pay for silk, 
 or more costly pearls ; and Abraham generously consented to 
 pay as if the chest contained the most valuable of things. It 
 was then they resolved to open and examine the chest ; and, 
 behold, as soon as that chest was opened, that great lustre of 
 human beauty broke out which made such a noise in the land 
 of Egypt; it was Sarah herself! The jealous Abraham, to 
 conceal her beauty, had locked her up in this chest. 
 
 The whole creation in these rabbinical fancies is strangely 
 gigantic and vast. The works of eastern nations are full of 
 these descriptions; and Hesiod's Theogony, and Milton's 
 battles of angels, are puny in comparison with these rabbinical 
 ht;roes, or rabbinical things. Mountains are hurled, with all 
 their woods, with great ease, and creatures start into exis- 
 tence too terrible for our conceptions. The winged monster 
 in the "Arabian Nights," called the Roc, is evidently one of 
 the creatures of rabbinical fancy ; it would sometimes, when 
 very hungry, seize and fly away with an elephant. Captain 
 Cook found a bird's nest in an island near New Holland, built 
 with sticks on the ground, six-and-twenty feet in circum- 
 ference, and near three feet in height. But of the rabbinical 
 birds, fish, and animals, it is not probable any circumnavi- 
 gator will ever trace even the slightest vestige or resemblance. 
 
 One of their birds, when it spreads its wings, blots out the 
 sun. An e^g from another fell out of its nest, and the white 
 thereof broke and glued about three hundred cedai'-trees, and 
 overflowed a village. One of them stands up to the lower 
 joint of the leg in a river, and some mariners, imagining 
 the water was not deep, were hastening to bathe, when a 
 voice from heaven said — " Step not in there, for seven years 
 ago there a carpenter dropped his axe, and it hath not yet 
 reached the bottom."
 
 Rabbinical Stories. 125 
 
 The following passage, concerning fat geese, is perfectly in 
 the style of these rabbins : — " A rabbin once saw in a desert 
 a flock of geese so fat that their feathers fell off, and the 
 rivers flowed in fat. Then said I to them, shall we have part 
 of you in the other world when the Messiah shall come ? 
 And one of them lifted up a wing, and another a leg, to sig- 
 nify these parts we should have. We should otherwise have 
 had all parts of these geese ; but we Israelites shall be called 
 to an account touching these fat geese, because their suf- 
 ferings are owing to us. It is our iniquities that have de- 
 layed the coming of the Messiah ; and these geese suffer 
 greatly by reason of their excessive fat, which daily and 
 daily inci'eases, and will increase till the Messiah comes !" 
 
 What the manna was which fell in the wilderness, has often 
 been disputed, and still is disputable ; it was sufficient for the 
 rabbins to have found in the Bible that the taste of it was 
 " as a wafer made with honey," to have raised their fancy to 
 its pitch. They declare it was '' like oil to children, honey 
 to old men, and cakes to middle age." It had every kind of 
 taste except that of cucumbers, melons, garlic, and onions, 
 and leeks, for these were those Egyptian roots which the 
 Israelites so much regretted to have lost. This manna had, 
 however, the quality to accommodate itself to the palate of 
 those who did not murmur in the wilderness ; and to these 
 it became fish, flesh, or fowl. 
 
 The rabbins never advance an absurdity without quoting a 
 text in Scripture ; and to substantiate this fact they quote 
 Deut. ii. 7, where it is said, " Through this great wilderness 
 these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee, and 
 thou hast lacTced nothing .'" St. Austin repeats this explana- 
 tion of the Rabbins, that the faithful found in this manna the 
 taste of their favourite food ! However, the Israelites could 
 not have found all these benefits, as the rabbins tell us ; for in 
 Numbers xi. 6, they exclaim, " There is nothing at all besides 
 this manna before our eyes!" They had just said that they 
 remembered the melons, cucumbers, &c., which they had 
 eaten of so freely in Egypt. One of the hyperboles of the 
 rabbins is, that the manna fell in such mountains, that the 
 kings of the east and the west beheld them ; which they 
 found on a passage in the 23rd Psalm ; " Thou pi-eparest a 
 table before me in the presence of mine enemies !" These 
 may serve as specimens of the forced interpretations on which 
 their grotesque fables are founded.
 
 126 On the Custom of Saluting after Sneezing. 
 
 Their detestation of Titus, their great conqueror, appears 
 by the following wild invention. After having narrated 
 certain things too shameful to read, of a prince whom Jose- 
 phus describes in far different colours, they tell us that on sea 
 Titus tauntingly observed, in a great storm, that the Grod of 
 the Jews was only powerful on the water, and that, there- 
 fore, he had succeeded in drowning Pharaoh and Sisera. 
 " Had he been strong, he would have waged war with me in 
 Jerusalem." On uttering this blasphemy, a voice from 
 heaven said, " Wicked man ! I have a little creature in the 
 world which shall wage war with thee !" When Titus 
 landed, a gnat entered his nostrils, and for seven years toge- 
 ther made holes in his brains. When his skull was opened, 
 the gnat was found to be as large as a pigeon : the mouth of 
 the gnat was of copper, and the claws of iron. A collection 
 which has recently appeared of these Talmudical stories has 
 not been executed with any felicity of selection. That there 
 are, however, some beautiful inventions in the Talmud, I 
 refer to the story of Solomon and Sheba, in the present 
 volume. 
 
 ON THE CUSTOM OF SALUTING AFTER SNEEZING, 
 
 It is probable that this custom, so universally prevalent, ori- 
 ginated in some ancient superstition ; it seems to have excited, 
 inquiry among all nations. 
 
 " Some Catholics," says Father Fej'joo, " have attributed 
 the origin of this custom to the ordinance of a pope, Saint 
 Gregory, who is said to have instituted a short benediction to 
 be used on such occasions, at a time when, during a pesti- 
 lence, the ci-isis was attended by sneezing, and in most cases 
 followed by deaths 
 
 But the rabbins, who have a story for everything, say, 
 that before Jacob men never sneezed but once, and then im- 
 mediately died : they assure us that that patriarch was the 
 first who died by natural disease ; before him all men died by 
 sneezing ; the memory of which was ordered to be preserved 
 in all nations, by a command of every prince to his subjects 
 to employ some salutary exclamation after the act of sneez- 
 ing. But these are Talmudical dreams, and only serve to 
 prove that so familiar a custom has always excited in- 
 quiry.
 
 On the Custom of Saluting after Sneezing. 127 
 
 Even Aristotle has delivered some considerable nonsense on 
 this custom ; he says it is an honourable acknowledgment of 
 the seat of good sense and genius — the head — to distinguish 
 it from two other offensive eruptions of air, which are never 
 accompanied by any benediction from the by-standers. The 
 custom, at all events, existed long prior to Po]je Gregory. 
 The lover in Apuleius, Gyton in Petronius, and allusions to it 
 in Pliny, prove its antiquity ; and a memoir of the French 
 Academy notices the practice in the New World, on the first 
 discovery of America. Everywhere man is saluted for 
 sneezing. 
 
 An amusing account of the ceremonies which attend the 
 sneezing of a king of Monomotapa, shows what a national 
 concern may be tlie sneeze of despotism. — Those who are 
 near his person, when this happens, sahite him in so loud a 
 ton^, that persons in the ante-chamber hear it, and join in the 
 acclamation ; in the adjoining apartments they do the same, 
 till the noise reaches the street, and becomes propagated 
 throughout the city ; so that, at each sneeze of his majesty, 
 results a most horrid cry from the salutations of many thou- 
 sands of his vassals. 
 
 When the king of Sennaar sneezes, his courtiers imme- 
 diately turn their backs on him, and give a loud slap on their 
 right thigh. 
 
 With the ancients sneezing was ominous ;* from the right 
 it was considered auspicious ; and Plutarch, in his Life of 
 Themistocles, says, that before a naval battle it was a sign of 
 conquest ! Catullus, in his pleasing poem of Acme and Sep- 
 timus, makes this action from the deitj'^ of Love, from the 
 left, the source of his fiction. The passage has been ele- 
 gantly versified by a poetical f:'iend, who finds authority that 
 the gods sneezing on the right in heaven, is supposed to come 
 to us on earth on the left. 
 
 * Xenoplion having addressed -a speech to his sohliers, in which he de- 
 clared he felt many reasons for a deijendence on the favour of the gods, 
 had scarcely concluded his words when one of them emitted a loud sneeze. 
 Xenophon at once declared this a spontaneous omen sent by Jupiter as a 
 sign that his protection was awarded them. 
 
 ' ' 0, happy Bridegroom ! thee a lucky sneeze 
 To Sparta welcom'd." — T/icocritus, Idyll xviii. 
 
 "Prometheus was the first that wished well to the sneezer, when the 
 man which he had made of clay fell into a iit of sternutation upon the 
 approach of that celestial fire which he stole from the sun." — Ross's 
 Arcana MicrocosniL
 
 128 Bonaventure de Periers. 
 
 Cupid sneezuxg in his flight, 
 Once was heard upon the right, 
 Boding woe to lovers true ; 
 But now upon the left he flew, 
 And with sporting sneeze divine, 
 Gave to joy the sacred sign. 
 Acme bent her lovely face, 
 Flush'd with rapture's rosy grace. 
 And those eyes that swam in bliss, 
 Prest with many a breathing kiss ; 
 Breathing, murmuring, soft, and low, 
 Thus might life for ever flow ! 
 " Love of my life, and life of love ! 
 Cupid rules our fates above. 
 Ever let us vow to join 
 In homage at his happy shrine." 
 Cupid heard the lovers true. 
 Again upon the left he flew. 
 And with sporting sneeze divine, 
 Renew'd of joy the sacred sign ! 
 
 BONAVENTURE DE PERIERS. 
 
 A HAPPY art in the relation of a story is, doubtless, a ver^'- 
 agreeable talent ; it has obtained La Fontaine all the applause 
 which his charming naivete deserves. 
 
 Of " Bonaventure de Periers, Valet de Chamhre de la 
 Soyne de Navarre,''' there are three little volumes of tales in 
 prose, in the quaint or the coarse pleasantry of that day. 
 The following is not given as the best, but as it introduces a 
 novel etymology of a word in great use : — 
 
 " A student at law, who studied at Poitiers, had tolerably 
 improved himself in cases of equity ; not that he was over- 
 burthened witli learning; but his chief deficiency was a 
 want of assurance and confidence to display his knowledge. 
 His father, passing by Poitiers, recommended him to read 
 aloud, and to render his memory more prompt by continued 
 exercise. To obey the injunctions of his father, he deter- 
 mined to read at the Ministery. In order to obtain a certain 
 quantity of assurance, he went every day into a garden, 
 which was a very retired spot, being at a distance from anj' 
 house, and where there grew a great number of fine large 
 cabbages. Thus for a long time he pursued his studies, and 
 repeated his lectures to these cabbages, addressing them by 
 the title oi gentlemen, and balancing his periods to them as if 9 
 they had composed an audience of scholars. After a fort- ? 
 
 night or three weeks' preparation, he thought it was high
 
 Grotius. 129 
 
 time to take the cTiair ; imagining that he should be able to 
 lectm'e his scholars as well as he had before done his cab- 
 bages. He comes forward, he begins his oration — but before 
 a dozen words his tongue freezes between his teeth ! Con- 
 fused, and hardly knowing where he was, all he could bring 
 out was — Domini, Ego bene video quod non estis caules ; that 
 is to say — for there are some who will have everything in 
 plain English — Gentlemen, ^ now clearly see you are not 
 cahbaqes ! In the garden he could conceive the cahhages to 
 be scholars ; but in the chair, he could not conceive the 
 scholars to be cabbages. ^^ 
 
 On this story La Monnoye has a note, which gives a new 
 origin to a familiar term. 
 
 " The hall of the School of Equity at Poitiers, where the 
 institutes were read, was called La Minister ie. On which 
 head Florimond de Remond (book vii. ch. 11), speaking of 
 Albert Babinot, one of the first disciples of Calvin, after 
 having said he was called 'The ^yoor/ man,^ adds, that because 
 he had been a student of the institutes at this Minister'ie of 
 Poitiers, Calvin and others styled him Mr. Minister ; from 
 whence, afterwards, Calvin took occasion to give the name of 
 MiNiSTEES to the pastors of his church." 
 
 GROTIUS. 
 
 The Life of Grotius shows the singular felicity of a man of 
 letters and a statesman, and how a student can pass his 
 hours in the closest imprisonment. The gate of the prison 
 has sometimes been the porch of fame. 
 
 Grotius, studious from his infancy, had also received from 
 Nature the faculty of genius, and was so fortunate as to find 
 in his father a tutor who formed his early taste and his moral 
 feelings. The younger Grotius, in imitation of Horace, has 
 celebrated his gratitude in verse. 
 
 One of the most interesting circumstances in the life of 
 this gi'eat man, which strongly marks his genius and forti- 
 tude, is displayed in the manner in which he employed his 
 time during his imprisonment. Other men, condemned to 
 exile and captivity, if they survive, despair ; the man of let- 
 ters may reckon those days as the sweetest of his life. 
 
 When a prisoner at the Hague, he laboured on a Latin 
 essay on the means of terminating religious disputes, which 
 
 VOL, I. K
 
 130 Grotius. 
 
 occasion so many infelicities in the state, in the church, and 
 in families ; when he was carried to Louvenstein, he resumed 
 his law studies, which other emploj-ments had interrupted. 
 He gave a portion of his time to moral philosophy, which 
 engaged him to translate the maxims of the ancient poets, 
 collected by Stobseus, and the fragments of Menander and 
 Philemon. 
 
 Every Sunday was devoted to the Scriptures, and to his 
 Commentaries on the New Testament. In the course of the 
 work he fell ill ; but as soon as he recovered his health, he 
 composed his treatise, in Dutch verse, on the Truth of the 
 Christian Eeligion. Sacred and profane authors occupied 
 him alternately. His only mode of refreshing his mind was 
 to pass from one work to another. He sent to Vossius his 
 observations on the Tragedies of Seneca. He wrote several 
 other works — particularly a little Catechism, in verse, for 
 his daughter Cornelia — and collected materials to form his 
 Apology. Although he produced thus abundantly, his con- 
 finement was not more than two years. We may well ex- 
 claim here, that the mind of Grotius had never been impri- 
 soned. 
 
 To these various labours we may add an extensive corre- 
 spondence he held with the learned ; his letters were often so 
 many treatises, and there is a printed collection amounting 
 to two thousand. Grotius had notes ready for every classical 
 author of antiquity, whenever a new edition was prepared ; 
 an account of his plans and his performances might furnish a 
 volume of themselves ; yet he never pubhshed in haste, and 
 was fond of revising them. We must recollect, notwith- 
 standing such uninterrupted literary avocations, his hom's 
 were frequently devoted to the public functions of an ambas- 
 sador :• — " I only reserve for my studies the time which other 
 ministers give to their pleasures, to conversations often 
 useless, and to,visits sometimes unnecessary." Such is the 
 language of this great man ! 
 
 I have seen this great student censured for neglecting his 
 official duties ; but, to decide on this accusation, it would be 
 necessary to know the character of his accuser.
 
 131 
 
 NOBLEMEN TURNED CRITICS. 
 
 I OFFER to the contemplation of those unfortunate mortals 
 who are necessitated to undergo the criticisms of lords, this 
 pair of anecdotes : — 
 
 Soderini, the Gonfaloniere of Florence, having had a statue 
 made by the great Michael Angela, when it was finished, came 
 to inspect it ; and having for some time sagaciously consi- 
 dered it, poring now on tlie face, then on the arms, the 
 knees, the form of the leg, and at length on the foot itself; 
 the statue being of such perfect beauty, he found himself at 
 a loss to display his powers of criticism, only by lavishing 
 his praise. But only to praise might appear as if there had 
 been an obtuseness in the keenness of his criticism. He 
 trembled to find a fault, but a fault must be found. At 
 length he ventured to mutter something concerning the nose 
 — it might, he thought, be something more Grecian. Angelo 
 differed from his Grace, but he said he would attempt to 
 gratify his taste. He took up his chisel, and concealed some 
 marble dust in his hand ; feigning to re-touch the part, he 
 adi-oitly let fall some of the dust he held concealed. The 
 Cardmal observing it as it fell, transported at the idea of his 
 critical acumen, exclaimed — "Ah, Angela, you have now 
 given an inimitable grace !" 
 
 When Pope was first introduced to read his Iliad to Lord 
 Halifax, the noble critic did not venture to be dissatisfied 
 with so perfect a composition ; but, like the cardinal, this 
 passage, and that word, this turn, and that expression, formed 
 the broken cant of his criticisms. The honest poet was 
 stung with vexation ; for, in general, the parts at which his 
 lordship hesitated were those with which he was most satis- 
 fied. As he returned home with Sir Samuel Garth, he 
 revealed to him the anxiety of his mind. " Oh," replied 
 Garth, laughing, " you are not so well acquainted with his 
 lordship as myself; he must criticize. At your next visit, 
 read to him those very passages as they now stand ; tell him 
 that you have recollected his criticisms ; and I'll warrant 
 you of his approbation of them. This is what I have done a 
 hundred times myself." Fope made use of this stratagem; 
 it took, like the marble dust of Angela ; and my lord, like 
 the cardinal, exclaimed — " Dear Pope, they are now inimi- 
 table!" 
 
 k2
 
 132 
 
 LITERARY lAIPOSTURES. 
 
 Some authors have practised singular impositions on the 
 pubhc. Varillas, the French historian, enjoyed for some time 
 a great reputation in his own country for his historical com- 
 positions ; but when they became more known, the scholars 
 of other countries destroyed the reputation which he had 
 unjustly acquired. His continual professions of sincerity 
 prejudiced many in his favour, and made him pass for a 
 writer who had penetrated into the inmost recesses of the 
 cabinet ; but the public were at length undeceived, and were 
 convinced that the historical anecdotes which Varillas put off 
 for authentic facts had no foundation, being wholly his own 
 inventions — though he endeavoured to make them pass for 
 realities by affected citations of titles, instructions, letters, 
 memoirs, and relations, all of them imaginary ! He had read 
 almost everything historical, printed and manuscript ; but 
 his fertile political imagination gave his conjectures as facts, 
 while he quoted at random his pretended authorities. Bur- 
 net's book against Varillas is a curious little volume.* 
 
 Gemelli Carreri, a Neapolitan gentleman, for many years 
 never quitted his chamber ; confined by a tedious indisposi- 
 tion, he amused himself with writing a Voyage round the 
 World; giving characters of men, and descriptions of coun- 
 tries, as if he had really visited them : and his volumes are 
 still very interesting. I preserve this anecdote as it has 
 long come down to us ; but Carreri, it has been recently 
 ascertained, met the fate of Bruce — for he had visited the 
 places he has described ; Humboldt and Clavigero have con- 
 
 * Burnet's little 12mo volume was printed at Amsterdam, "in the 
 ■Warmoes-straet near the Dam," 16S6, and compiled by him when living 
 for safety in Holland during the reign of James II. He particularly 
 attacks Varillas' ninth book, which relates to England, and its false 
 histoi-y of the Reformation, or rather " his own imagination for true his- 
 tory." On the authority of Catholic students, he says "the greatest 
 number of the pieces he cited were to be found nowhere but in his own 
 fancy." Burnet allows full latitude to an author fur giving the best co- 
 louring to his own views and that of his party — a latitude he certainly 
 always allowed to himself; but he justly censures the falsifying, or rather 
 inventing, of history; after Varillas' fashion. " History, " says Burnet, 
 "is a sort of trade, in which false coyn and false weights are more crimi- 
 nal than in other matters ; because the errour may go further and run 
 longer, though their authors colour their copper too slightly to make it 
 keep its credit long."
 
 Literary Impostures. 133 
 
 firmed his local knowledge of Mexico and of China, and found 
 his book useful and veracious. Du Halde, who has written 
 so voluminous an account of China, compiled it from the 
 Memoirs of the Missionaries, and never travelled ten leagues 
 from Paris in his life, — though he appears, by his writings, 
 to be familiar with Chinese scener}^. 
 
 Damberger's Travels some years ago made a great sensa- 
 tion — and the public were duped ; they proved to be the ideal 
 voyages of a member of the German (Irub-street, about his 
 own garret. Too many of our "Travels" have been manu- 
 factured to fill a certain size ; and some which bear names 
 of great authority were not written by the professed 
 authors. 
 
 There is an excellent observation of an anonymous author: — 
 " Writers who never visited foreign countries, and travellers 
 who have run through immense regions with fleeting pace, 
 have given us long accounts of various countries and people ; 
 evidently collected from the idle reports and absurd traditions 
 of the ignorant vulgar, from whom only they could have re- 
 ceived those relations which we see accumulated with such 
 undiscerning credulity." 
 
 Some authors have practised the singular imposition of 
 announcing a variety of titles of woi'ks preparing for the 
 press, but of which nothing but the titles were ever written. 
 
 Paschal, historiographer of Prance, had a reason for these 
 ingenious inventions ; he continually announced such titles, 
 that his pension for wi-iting on the histor}"- of France might 
 not be stopped. When he died, his historical labours did not 
 exceed six pages ! 
 
 Gregorio Leti is an historian of much the same stamp as 
 Varillas. He wrote with great facilitj^ and hunger generally 
 quickened his pen. He took everything too lightly ; yet his 
 works are sometimes looked into for many anecdotes of 
 English history not to be found elsewhere ; and perhaps 
 ought not to have been there if truth had been consulted. 
 His great aim was always to make a book : he swells his 
 volumes with digressions, intersperses many ridiculous stories, 
 and applies all the repartees he collected from old novel- 
 writers to modern characters. 
 
 Such forgeries abound ; the numerous " Testaments Poli- 
 tiques" of Colbert, Mazarin, and other great ministers, were 
 forgeries usually from the Dutch press, as are many pre- 
 tended political " Memoirs."
 
 134 Literary Impostures. 
 
 Of our old translations from the Greek and Latin authors, 
 many were taken from French versions. 
 
 The Travels, written in Hebrew, of Eabbi Benjamin of 
 Tudela, of which we have a curious translation, are, I believe, 
 apocryphal. He describes a journey, which, if ever he took, 
 it must have been with his night-cap on ; being a perfect 
 dream ! It is said that to inspirit and give importance to his 
 nation, he pretended that he had travelled to all the syna- 
 gogues in the East ; he mentions places which he does not 
 appear ever to have seen, and the different people he describes 
 no one has known. He calculates that he has found near 
 eight hundred thousand Jews, of which about half are inde- 
 pendent, and not subjects of any Christian or Gentile sove- 
 reign. These fictitious travels have been a source of much 
 trouble to the learned ; particularly to those who in their 
 zeal to authenticate them followed the aerial footsteps of the 
 Hyppogriffe of Eabbi Benjamin. He affirms that the tomb 
 of Ezekiel, with the library of the first and second temples, 
 were to be seen in his time at a place on the banks of the river 
 Euphrates ; Wesselius of Groningen, and many other literati, 
 travelled on purpose to Mesopotamia, to reach the tomb and 
 examine the library ; but the fairy treasures were never to be 
 seen, nor even heard of! 
 
 The first on the list of impudent impostors is Annius of 
 Viterbo, a Dominican, and master of the sacred palace under 
 Alexander YI. He pretended he had discovered the entire 
 works of Sanchoniatho, Manetho, Berosus, and others, of 
 which only fragments are remaining. He published seven- 
 teen books of antiquities ! But not having any MSS. to pro- 
 duce, though he declared he had found them buried in the 
 earth, these literary fabrications occasioned great controver- 
 sies ; for the author died before he made iip his mind to a 
 confession. At their first publication universal joy was 
 diffused among the learned. Suspicion soon rose, and detec- 
 tion followed. However, as the forger never would acknow- 
 ledge himself as such, it has been ingeniously conjectured 
 that he himself was imposed on, rather than that he was the 
 impostor ; or, as in the case of Chatterton, possibly all may 
 not be fictitious. It has been said that a great volume in 
 MS., anterior by two hundred years to the seventeen books cf 
 Annius, exists in the Bibliotheque Colbertine, in which these 
 pretended histories were to be read ; but as Annius would 
 never point out the sources of his, the whole may be consi-
 
 Literary Impostures. 135 
 
 dered as a very wonderful imposture. I refer the reader to 
 Tyrwhitt's Vindication of his Appendix to Rowley's orChat- 
 terton's Poems, p. 140, for some cm-ious observations, and 
 some facts of literary imposture. 
 
 An extraordinary literary imposture was that of one Joseph 
 Vella, who, in 1794, was an adventurer in Sicily, and pre- 
 tended that he possessed seventeen of the lost books of Livy 
 in Arabic : he liad received this literary treasure, he said, 
 from a Frenchman, who had purloined it from a shelf in St. 
 Sophia's church at Constantinople. As many of tlie Greek 
 and lioman classics have been translated by the Arabians, 
 and many were first known in Europe in their Arabic dress, 
 there was nothing improl)able in one part of his story. He 
 was urged to publish these long-desired books ; and Lady 
 Spencer, then in Italy, offered to defray the expenses. He 
 had the effrontery, by way of specimen, to edit an Italian 
 translation of the sixtieth book, but that book took up no 
 more than one octavo page ! A professor of Oriental litera- 
 ture in Prussia introduced it in his work, never suspecting 
 the fraud ; it proved to be nothing more than the epitome of 
 Florus. He also gave out that he possessed a code which he 
 had picked up in the abbey of St. Martin, containing the 
 ancient history of Sicily in the Arabic period, comprehending 
 above two hundi-ed years ; and of which ages their own his- 
 torians were entirely deficient in knowledge. Vella declared 
 he had a genuine official correspondence between the Arabian 
 governors of Sicily and their superiors in Africa, from the 
 first landing of the Arabians in that island. Vella was now 
 loaded with honours and pensions ! It is true he showed 
 Arabic MSS., which, however, did not contain a syllable of 
 what he said. He pretended he was in continual correspon- 
 dence with friends at Morocco and elsewhere. The King of 
 Naples furnished him with money to assist his researches. 
 Four volumes in quarto were at lencrth published! Vella had 
 the adroitness to change the Arabic MSS. he possessed, which 
 entirely related to Mahomet, to matters relative to Sicily ; he 
 bestowed several weeks' labour to disfigure the whole, altering 
 page for page, line for line, and word for word, but interspersed 
 numberless dots, strokes, and flourishes ; so that when he 
 published a fac-simile, every one admired the learning of Vella, 
 who could translate what no one else could read. He com- 
 plained he had lost an eye in this minute labour ; and every 
 one thought his pension ought to have been increased. Every-
 
 136 Lite7'ary Impostures. 
 
 thing prospered about him, except his eye, which some 
 thought was not so bad neither. It was at length discovered 
 by his blunders, &c., that the whole was a forgery : though it 
 had now been patronised, translated, and extracted through 
 Europe. When this MS. was examined by an Orientalist, it 
 was discovered to be nothing but a history of Mahomet and 
 Ids family. Vella was condemned to imprisonment. 
 
 The Spanish antiquary, Medina Conde, in order to favour 
 the pretensions of the church in a great lawsuit, forged deeds 
 and inscriptions, which he buried in the ground, where he 
 knew they would shortly be dug up. Upon their being found, 
 he published engravings of them, and gave explanations o*' 
 their unknown characters, making them out to be so many 
 authentic proofs and evidences of the contested assumptions 
 of the clergy. 
 
 The Morocco ambassador purchased of him a copper bracelet 
 of Fatima, which Medina proved by the Arabic inscription 
 and many certificates to be genuine, and found among the 
 ruins of the Alhambra, with other treasures of its last king, 
 who had hid them there in hope of better days. This famous 
 bracelet turned out afterwards to be the work of Medina's 
 own hand, made out of an old brass candlestick ! 
 
 George Psalmanazar, to whose labours we owe much of 
 the great Universal History, exceeded in powers of deception 
 any of the great impostors of learning. His Island of For- 
 mosa was an illusion eminently bold,* and maintained with 
 as much felicity as erudition ; and great must have been that 
 erudition which could form a pretended language and its 
 grammar, and fertile the genius which could invent the his- 
 tory of an unknown people : it is said that the deception was 
 only satislactorily ascertained by his own penitential confes- 
 
 * The volume was published in 8vo in 1704, as "An Historical and 
 Geographical Description of Formosa, au Island subject to the Emperor of 
 Japan." It is dedicated to the Bishop of London, who is told that "the 
 Europeans have such obscure and various notions of Japan, and especially 
 of our island Formosa, that they believe nothing for truth that has been 
 said of it." He accordingly narrates the political history of the place ; the 
 manners and customs of its inhabitants ; their religion, language, &c. A 
 number of engravings illustrate the whole, and depict the dresses of the 
 people, their houses, temples, and ceremonies, A " Formosan Alphabet" 
 is also given, and the Lord's Prayer, Apostles' Creed, and Ten Command- 
 ments, are "translated" into this imaginary language. To keep up the 
 imposition, he ate raw meat wlien dining with the Secretary to the Koyal 
 Society, and Formosa appeared in the maps as a real island, in the spot he 
 had described as its locality.
 
 Literary Imjjostures. 137 
 
 sion ; he had defied and baffled the most learned.* The Hte- 
 tary impostor Lauder had much more audacity than ingenuity, 
 and he died contemned by all the world. t Ireland's " Shak- 
 speare" served to show that commentators are not blessed, 
 necessarily, with an interior and unerring tact.| Genius and 
 learning are ill directed in forming literary impositions, but 
 at least they must be distinguished from the fabrications of 
 ordinary impostors. 
 
 A singular forgery was practised on Captain Wilford by 
 a learned Hindu, who, to ingratiate himself and his studies 
 with the too zealous and pious European, contrived, among 
 other attempts, to give the history of Noah and his three 
 
 * Psalmanazar would never reveal the true history of his early life, but 
 acknowledged one of the southern provinces of France as the place of his 
 birth, about 1679. He received a fair education, became lecturer in a 
 Jesuit college, then a tutor at Avignon ; he afterwards led a wandering 
 life, subsisting on charity, and pretending to be an Irish student travelling 
 to Rome for conscience sake. He soon found he would be more successful 
 if he personated a Pagan stranger, and hence he gradually concocted his 
 talf of Formosa; inventing an alphabet, and perfecting his story, which 
 was not fully matured before he had had a few years' hard labour as a sol- 
 dier in the Low Countries ; where a Scotch gentleman introduced him to 
 the notice of Dr. Compton, Bishop of Loudon ; who patronised him, and 
 invited him to England. He came, and to oblige the booksellers compiled 
 his History of Formosa, by the two editions of which he realized the noble 
 sum of 121. He ended in becoming a regular bookseller's hack, and so 
 highly moral a character, that Dr. Johnson, who knew him well, declared 
 he was " the best man he had ever known." 
 
 + William Lauder first began his literary impostures in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine for 1747, where he accused Milton of gross plaj^iarisms in his 
 Paradise Lost, pretending that he had discovered the prototypes of his 
 best thoughts in other authors. This he did by absolute invention, in one 
 instance interpolating twenty verses of a Latin translation of Milton into 
 the works of another author, and then producing them with great virulence 
 as a proof that Milton was a plagiarist. The falsehood of his pretended 
 quotations was demonstrated by Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, in 1751, 
 but he returned to the charge in 1754. His character and conduct became 
 too bad to allow of his continued residence in England, and he died in 
 Barbadoes, "in universal contempt," about 1771. 
 
 X Ireland's famous forgeries began when, as a young man in a lawyer's 
 office, he sought to imitate old deeds and letters in the name of Shakspeare 
 and his friends, urged thereto by his father's great anxiety to discover 
 some writings connected with the great bard. Such was the enthusiasm 
 with which they were received by men of great general knowledge, that 
 Ireland persevered in fresh forgeries until an entire play was "disco- 
 vered." It was a tragedy founded on early British history, and named 
 Vortifjern. It was prcjduced at Kemble's Theatre, and was damned. Ire- 
 land's downward course commenced from that night. He ultimately pub- 
 lished confessions of his frauds, and died very poor in 1835.
 
 138 Literary Impostures. 
 
 sons, in his " Purana," under the designation of Satyavrata. 
 Captain Wilford having read the passage, transcribed it for Sir 
 WiUiam Jones, who translated it as a curious extract ; the 
 whole was an interpolation by the dexterous introduction of 
 a forged sheet, discoloured and prepared for the purpose of 
 deception, and which, having served his purpose for the 
 moment, was afterwards withdrawn. As books in India are 
 not bound, it is not difficvilt to introduce loose leaves. To 
 confirm his various impositions, this learned forger had the 
 patience to write two voluminous sections, in which he con- 
 nected all the legends together in the style of the Puranas, 
 consisting of 12,000 lines. When Captain Wilford resolved 
 to collate the manuscript with others, the learned Hindu 
 began to disfigure his own manuscript, the captain's, and 
 those of the college, by erasmg the name of the country and 
 substituting that of Egypt. With as much pains, and with 
 a more honourable direction, our Hindu Lauder might have 
 immortalized his invention. 
 
 We have authors who sold their names to be prefixed to 
 works they never read; or, on the contrary, have prefixed 
 the names of others to their own writings. Sir John Hill, 
 once when he fell sick, owned to a friend that he had over- 
 fatigued himself with writing seven works at once ! one of 
 which was on architecture, and another on cookery ! This 
 hero once contracted to translate Swammerdam's work on 
 insects for fifty guineas. After the agreement with the 
 bookseller, he recollected that he did not understand a word 
 of the Dutch lanajuaore ! Nor did there exist a French trans- 
 lation ! The work, howevei", was not the less done for this 
 small obstacle. Sir John bargained with another translator 
 for twenty-five guineas. The second translator was precisely 
 in the same situation as the first — as ignorant, though not so 
 well paid as the knight. He rebargained with a third, who 
 perfectly imderstood his original, for twelve guineas ! So 
 that the translators who could not translate feasted on veni- 
 son and turtle, while the modest drudge, whose name never 
 appeared to the world, broke in patience his daily bread ! 
 The craft of authorship has many mysteries.* One of the 
 
 * Fielding, the novelist, in The Author's Farce, one of those slight 
 plays which he wrote so cleverly, has used this iiicideut, probably from 
 his acquaintance with Hill's trick. lie introduces his author trying to 
 sell a translation of the ^£neid, which the bookseller will not purchase ; 
 but after some conversation offers him " employ" in the house as a trans- 
 lator; he then i;j compelled to own himself "not qualified," because
 
 Cardinal Richelieu. 139 
 
 great patriarchs and primeval dealers in English literature 
 was Robert Green, one of the most facetious, proiligate, and 
 indefatigable of the Scribleri family. He laid the foundation 
 of a new dynasty of literary emperors. Tlie first act by 
 which he proved his claim to the throne of Grub-street has 
 served as a model to his numerous successors- — it was an 
 ambidextrous trick! Green sold his "Orlando Furioso" to 
 two different theatres, and is among the first authors in 
 English literary history who wrote as a trader ;* or as crabbed 
 Anthony Wood phrases it, in the language of celibacy and 
 cynicism, " he wrote to maintain his loife, and that high and 
 loose course of living which poets ffenerallt/ follow." With a 
 drop still sweeter, old Anthony describes Gayton, another 
 worthy ; " he came up to London to live in a shirking con- 
 dition, and wrote trite things merely to get bread to sustain 
 him and his wife."i The hermit Anthony seems to have 
 had a mortal antipathy against the Eves of literary men. 
 
 CARDINAL RICHELIEU. 
 
 The present anecdote concerning Cardinal Eichelieu may 
 serve to teach the man of letters how he deals out criticisms 
 to the great, when they ask his opinion of manuscripts, be 
 they in verse or prose. 
 
 The cardinal placed in a gallery of his palace the portraits 
 of several illustrious men, and was desirous of composing the 
 inscriptions under the portraits. The one which he intended 
 for Montluc, the marechal of France, was conceived in these 
 
 he "understauds do language but his own." "What! and translate 
 Virgil .'" exclaims the astonished bookseller. The detected author answers 
 despondingly, "Alas ! sir, I translated him out of Dryden f The book- 
 seller joyfully exclaims, "Not qualified ! If I was an Emperor, thou 
 should'st be my Prime Minister ! Thou art as well vers'd in thy trade 
 as if thou had'st laboured in my garret these ten years !" 
 
 * The story is told in The Defence of Coneycatching, 1592, where he 
 is said to have "sold Orlando Furioso to the Queen's players for twenty 
 nobles, and when they were in the country sold the same play to the Lord 
 Admirall's men for as much more." 
 
 + Edmund Gayton was born in 1609, was educated at Oxfoi-d, then led 
 the life of a literary drudge in London, where the best book he produced 
 was Pleasant Notes upon Bon Quijcote, in which are many curious and 
 diverting stories, and among the rest the original of Prior's ladle. ^ He 
 ultimately retired to Oxford, and died there very poor, in a subordinate 
 place in his college.
 
 140 Cardinal Richelieu. 
 
 terms : Multa fecit, plura scripsit, vir tamen magnus fuit. 
 He showed it without mentioning the author to Bourbon, 
 the royal Greek professor, and asked his opinion concerning 
 it. The critic considered that the Latin was much in the 
 style of the breviary ; and, had it concluded with an allelujah, 
 it would serve for an anthem to the magnificat. The cardinal 
 agreed with the severity of his strictures, and even acknow- 
 ledged the discernment of the professor; "for," he said, 
 " it is really written by a priest." But however he might 
 approve of Bourbon's critical powers, he punished without 
 mercy his ingenuity. The pension his majesty had bestowed 
 on him was withheld the next year. 
 
 The cardinal was one of those ambitious men who foolishly 
 attempt to rival every kind of genius ; and seeing himself 
 constantly disappointed, he envied, with all the venom of 
 rancour, those talents which ai'e so frequently the all that 
 men of genius possess. 
 
 He was jealous of Balzac's splendid reputation ; and offered 
 the elder Heinsius ten thousand crowns to write a criticism 
 which should ridicule his elaborate compositions. This Hein- 
 sius refused, because Salmasius threatened to revenge Balzac 
 on his Herodes Infanticida. 
 
 He attempted to rival the reputation of Corneille's " Cid," 
 by opposing to it one of the most ridiculous dramatic produc- 
 tions ; it was the allegorical tragedy called " Europe," in 
 which the minister had congregated the four quarters of the 
 world ! Much poHtical matter was thrown together, divided 
 into scenes and acts. There are appended to it keys of the 
 dramatis persona? and of the allegories. In this tragedy 
 Francion represents France ; Ibere, Spain ; Parthenope, 
 Naples, &c. ; and these have their attendants : — Lilian 
 (alluding to the French lilies) is the servant of Francion, 
 while Hispale is the confidant of Ibere. But the key to 
 the allegories is much more copious : — Albione signifies 
 England ; three knots of the hair of Austrasie mean the 
 towns of Clermont, Stenay, and Jamet, these places once 
 belonging to Lorraine. A box of diamonds of Austrasie is 
 the town of Nancy, belonging once to the dukes of Lorraine, 
 The key of Ibere' s great porch is Perpignan, which France 
 took from Spain ; and in this manner is this sublime tragedy 
 composed ! When he first sent it anonymovisly to the 
 French Academy it was reprobated. He then tore it in a 
 rage, and scattered it about his study. Towards evening,
 
 Cardinal Richelieu. 141 
 
 like another Medea lamenting over the members of her own 
 children, he and his secretary passed the night in uniting the 
 scattered limbs. He then ventured to avow himself; and 
 having pretended to correct this incorrigible tragedy, the 
 submissive Academy retracted their censures, but the public 
 pronounced its melancholy fate on its first representation. 
 This lamentable tragedy was intended to thwart Corneille's 
 '• Cid." Enraged at its success, Richelieu even commanded 
 the Academy to publish a severe critique of it, well known 
 in French literature. Boileau on this occasion has these two 
 well-turned verses : — 
 
 "En vain centre le Cid, un ministre se ligue ; 
 Tout Paris, pour Chimene, a les yeux de Rodrigue." 
 
 "To oppose the Cid, in vain the statesman tries ; 
 All Paris, for Chimene, has EodericFs eyes." 
 
 It is said that, in consequence of the fall of this tragedy, 
 the French custom is derived of securing a number of friends 
 to applaud their pieces at their first representations. I find 
 the following droll anecdote concerning this droll tragedy in 
 Beauchamp's Recherches sur le Thtatre. 
 
 The minister, after the ill success of his tragedy, retired 
 unaccompanied the same evening to his country-house at 
 Ruel. He then sent for his favourite Desmaret, who was at 
 supper with his friend Petit. Desmaret, conjecturing that 
 the interview would be stormy, begged his friend to accom- 
 pany him. 
 
 " Well !" said the Cardinal, as soon as he saw them, " the 
 French will never possess a taste for what is lofty ; they 
 seem not to have relished my tragedy."' — " My lord," an- 
 swered Petit, " it is not the fault of the piece, which is so 
 admirable, but that of the players. Did not your eminence 
 perceive that not only they knew not their parts, but that 
 they were all drunk .'"' — " Keally," replied the Cardinal, some- 
 thing pleased, " I observed they acted it dreadfully ill." 
 
 Desmaret and Petit returned to Paris, flew directly to the 
 players to plan a neio tnode of performance, which was to 
 secure a number of spectators ; so that at the second repre- 
 sentation bursts of applause were frequently heard ! 
 
 Richelieu had another singular vanity, of closely imitating 
 Cardinal Ximenes. Pliny was not a more servile imitator of 
 Cicero. Marville tells us that, like Ximenes, he placed him- 
 self at the head of an army ; like him, he degraded princes
 
 142 Aristotle and Plato. 
 
 and nobles ; and like him, rendered himself formidable to all 
 Europe. And because Ximenes had established schools of 
 theology, Richelieu undertook likewise to raise into notice 
 the schools of the Sorbonne. And, to conclude, as Ximenes 
 had written several theological treatises, our cardinal was also 
 desirous of leaving posterity various polemical works. But 
 his gallantries rendered him more ridiculous. Always in ill 
 health, this miserable lover and grave cardinal would, in a 
 freak of love, dress himself with a red feather in his cap 
 and sword by his side. He was more hurt by an offensive 
 nickname given him by the queen of Louis XIII., than even 
 by the hiss of theatres and the critical condemnation of 
 academies. 
 
 Cardinal Richelieu was assuredly a great political genius. 
 Sir William Temple observes, that he instituted the French 
 Academy to give employment to the wits, and to hinder 
 them from inspecting too narrowly his politics and his admi- 
 nistration. It is believed that the Marshal de Grammont 
 lost an important battle by the orders of the cardinal ; that 
 in this critical conjuncture of affairs his majesty, who was 
 inclined to dismiss him, could not then absolutely do without 
 him. 
 
 Vanity in this cardinal levelled a great genius. He who 
 would attempt to display universal excellence will be impelled 
 to practise meanness, and to act follies which, if he has the 
 least sensibility, must occasion him many a pang and many a 
 blush. 
 
 ARISTOTLE AND PLATO. 
 
 No philosopher has been so much praised and censured as 
 Ai'istotle : but he had this advantage, of which some of the 
 most eminent scholars have been deprived, that he enjoyed 
 during his life a splendid reputation. Philip of Macedon 
 must have felt a strong conviction of his merit, when he 
 •wrote to him, on the birth of Alexander :—." I receive from 
 the gods this day a son ; but I thank them not so much for 
 the favour of his birth, as his having come into the world 
 at a time when you can have the care of his education ; 
 and that through you he will be rendered worthy of being 
 my son." 
 
 Diogenes Laertius describes the person of the Stagj'rite. — 
 His eyes were small, his voice hoarse, and his legs lank. He
 
 Aristotle and Plato. 143 
 
 stammered, was fond of a magnificent dress, and wore costly- 
 rings. He had a mistress whom he loved passionately, and 
 for whom he frequently acted inconsistently with the philo- 
 sophic character ; a thing as common with philosophers as 
 with other men. Ai'istotle had nothing of the austerity of 
 the philosopher, though his works ai*e so austere : he was 
 open, pleasant, and even charming in his conversation ; fiery 
 and volatile in his pleasures ; magnificent in his dress. He 
 is descrlhed as fierce, disdainful, and sarcastic. He joined to 
 a taste for profound erudition, that of an elegant dissipation. 
 His passion for luxury occasioned him such expenses when he 
 was young, that he consumed all his property. Laertius has 
 preserved the will of Aristotle, which is curious. The chief 
 part turns on the futm'e welfare and marriage of his daughter. 
 " If, after my death, she chooses to marr}^ the executors will 
 be careful she marries no person of an inferior rank. If she 
 resides at Chalcis, she shall occupy the apartment contiguous 
 to the garden ; if she chooses Stagyra, she shall reside in the 
 house of my father, and my executors shall furnish either of 
 those places she fixes on." 
 
 Aristotle had studied under the divine Plato ; but the 
 disciple and the master could not possibly agree in their 
 doctrines : they were of opposite tastes and talents. Plato 
 was the chief of the academic sect, and Aristotle of the 
 peripatetic. Plato was simple, modest, frugal, and of austere 
 manners ; a good friend and a zealous citizen, but a theo- 
 retical politician : a lover indeed of benevolence, and desirous 
 of diff'using it amongst men, but knowing little of them as we 
 find them ; his " Kepublic" is as chimerical as Rousseau's 
 ideas, or Sir Thomas More's Utopia. 
 
 Rapin, the critic, has sketched an ingenious parallel of 
 these two celebrated philosophers : — 
 
 " The genius of Plato is more polished, and that of Aris- 
 totle more vast and profound. Plato has a livel}' and teeming 
 imagination ; fertile in invention, in ideas, in expressions, 
 and in figures ; displaying a thousand turns, a thousand new 
 colours, all agreeable to their subject ; but after all it is 
 nothing more than imagination. Aristotle is hard and dry 
 in all he sa3's, but what he says is all reason, though it is 
 expressed drily : his diction, pure as it is, has something 
 uncommovily austere ; and his obscurities, natural or affected, 
 disgust and fatigue his readers. Plato is equally delicate in 
 his thoughts and in his expressions. Aristotle, though he
 
 144 Aristotle and Plato. 
 
 may be more natural, has not any delicacy: Ws style is 
 simple and equal, but close and nervoas ; that of Plato is 
 grand and elevated, but loose and diffuse. Plato always says 
 more than he should say : Aristotle never says enough, and 
 leaves the reader always to think more than he says. The 
 one surprises the mind, and charms it by a flowery and spark- 
 ling character : the other illuminates and instructs it by a just 
 and solid method. Plato communicates something of genius, 
 by the fecundity of his own ; and Aristotle something of 
 judgment and reason, by that impression of good sense which 
 appears in all he says. In a word, Plato frequently only 
 thinks to express himself well : and Aristotle only thinks to 
 think justly." 
 
 An interesting anecdote is related of these philosophers. — 
 Aristotle became the rival of Plato. Literary disputes long 
 subsisted betwixt them. The disciple ridiculed his master, 
 and the master treated contemptuously his disciple. To 
 make his superiority manifest, Aristotle wished for a regular 
 disputation before an audience, where erudition and reason 
 might prevail ; but this satisfaction was denied. 
 
 Plato was always surrounded by his scholars, who took a 
 lively interest in his glory. Three of these he taught to rival 
 Aristotle, and it became their mutual interest to depreciate 
 his merits. Unfortunately one day Plato found himself in his 
 school without these three favourite scholars. Aristotle flies to 
 him — a crowd gathers and enters with him. The idol whose 
 oracles they wished to overturn was presented to them. He 
 was then a respectable old man, the weight of whose years 
 had enfeebled his memory. The combat was not long. Some 
 rapid sophisms embarrassed Plato. He saw himself surrounded 
 by the inevitable traps of the subtlest logician. Vanquished, 
 he reproached his ancient scholar by a beautiful figure : — " He 
 has kicked against us as a colt against its mother." 
 
 Soon after this humiliating adventure he ceased to give 
 public lectures. Aristotle remained master in the field of 
 battle. He raised a school, and devoted himself to render it 
 the most famous in Greece. But the three favourite scholars 
 of Plato, zealous to avenge the cause of their master, and to 
 make amends for their imprudence in having quitted him, 
 armed themselves against the usurper. — Xenocrates, the most 
 ardent of the three, attacked Aristotle, confounded the logi- 
 cian, and re-established Plato in all his rights. Since that 
 time the academic and peripatetic sects, animated by the
 
 Abelard and Eloisa. 145 
 
 spirits of their several chiefs, avowed an eternal hostility. In 
 what manner his works have descended to us has been told 
 in a preceding' article, on Destruction of Books. Aristotle 
 having declaimed irreverently of the gods, and dreading the 
 fate of Socrates, wished to retire from Athens. In a beautiful 
 manner he pointed out his successor. There were two rivals 
 in his schools : Menedemus the Illiodian, and Theophrastus 
 the Lesbian. Alluding delicately to his own critical situation, 
 he told his assembled scholars that the wine he was accus- 
 tomed to drink was injurious to him, and he desired them to 
 bring the wines of lihodes and Lesbos. He tasted both, and 
 declared they both did honour to their soil, each being excel- 
 lent, though differing in their quulit}' ; — the llhodian wine is 
 the strongest, but the Lesbian is the sweetest, and that he 
 himself preferred it. Thus his ingenuity designated his 
 favourite Theophrastus, the author of the " Characters," for 
 his successor. 
 
 ABELARD AND ELOISA. 
 
 Abelaed, so famous for his writings and his amours with 
 Eloisa, ranks amongst the Heretics for opinions concerning 
 the Trinity! His superior genius probably made him appear 
 so culpable in the eyes of his enemies. The cabal formed 
 against him disturbed the earlier part of his life with a thou- 
 sand persecutions, till at length they persuaded Bernard, his old 
 friend, but who had now turned saint, that poor Abelard was 
 what their malice desciibed him to be. Bernard, inflamed 
 against him, condemned unheard the unfortunate scholar. 
 But it is remarkable that the book which was burnt as un- 
 orthodox, and as the composition of Abelard, was in fact 
 written by Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris ; a work which 
 has since been canonised in the Sarbonne, and on which the 
 scholastic theology is founded. The objectionable passage is 
 an illustration of the trinity by the nature of a st/Uogism ! — 
 " As (says he) the three propositions of a syllogism tbrm but 
 one truth, so the Father and Son constitute but one essence. 
 The major represents the Father, the minor the Son, and the 
 conclusion the Holy Ghost!''' It is curious to add, that 
 Bernard himself has explained this mystical union precisely 
 in the same manner, and equally clear. " The understanding," 
 says this saint, " is the image of God. We find it consists of 
 three parts : memory, intelligence, and will. To memory, we 
 
 TOL I. L
 
 146 Abelarcl and Eloisa. 
 
 attribute all which we know, without cogitation ,- to intelli- 
 gence, all truths we discover which have not been deposited 
 by memory. By memory, we resemble the Father ; by intel- 
 ligence, the Son ; and by idll, the Holy Ghost." Bernard's 
 Lib. de Anima, cap. i. num. 6, quoted in the " Mem. Secretes 
 de la Ptepublique des Lettres." We may a^^d also, that be- 
 cause Abelard, in the warmth of honest indignation, had re- 
 proved the monks of St. Denis, in France, and St. Gildas de 
 Euys, in Bretagne, for the horrid incontinence of their lives, 
 they joined his enemies, and assisted to embitter the life of 
 this ingenious scholar, who perhaps was guilty of no other 
 crime than that of feeling too sensibly an attachment to one 
 who not only possessed the enchanting attractions of the 
 softer sex, but, what indeed is very unusual, a congeniality of 
 disposition, and an enthusiasm of imagination. 
 
 " Is it, in heaven, a crime to love too well ?" 
 
 It appears by a letter of Peter de Cluny to Eloisa, that she 
 had solicited for Abelard's absolution. The abbot gave it to 
 her. It runs thus : — " Ego Petrus Cluniacensis Abbas, qui 
 Petrum Abselardum in monachum Cluniacensem recepi, et 
 corpus ejus furtim delatum Heloissse abbatissce et mouiali 
 Paracleti concessi, auctoritate omnipotentis Dei et omnium 
 sanctorum absolvo eum pro officio ab omnibus peccatis suis." 
 
 An ancient chronicle of Tours records, that when they de- 
 posited the body of the Abbess Eloisa in the tomb of her 
 lover, Peter Abelard, who had been there interred twenty 
 years, this faithful husband raised his arms, stretched them, 
 and closely embi'aced his beloved Eloisa. This poetic fiction 
 was invented to sanctify, by a miracle, the frailties of their 
 youthful days. This is not wonderful ; — but it is strange 
 that Du Chesne, the father of Frencli history, not only re- 
 lates this legendary tale of the ancient chroniclers, but gives 
 it as an incident well authenticated, and maintains its possi- 
 bility by various other examples. Such fanciful incidents 
 once not only embellished poetry, but enlivened history. 
 
 Bayle tells us that billets doux and amorous verses are two 
 powerful machines to employ in the assaults of love, parti- 
 cularly when the passionate songs the poetical lover composes 
 are sung by himself. This secret was well known to the 
 elegant Abelard. Abelard so touched the sensible heart of 
 Eloisa, and infused such fire into her frame, by employing 
 his fine pen, and his fine voice, that the poor woman never
 
 Abelard and Eloisa. 147 
 
 recovered from the attack. She herself informs us that he 
 displayed two qualities which are rarely found in philosophers, 
 and by which he could instantly win the affections of the 
 female ; — he wrote and sung finely. He composed love-verses 
 so beautiful, and songs so agreeable, as well for the words as 
 the airs, that all the world got them by heart, and the name 
 of his mistress was spread from province to province. 
 
 What a gratihcation to the enthusiastic, the amorous, the 
 vain Eloisa ! of whom Lord Lyttleton, in his curious Life of 
 Henry II., observes, that had she not been compelled to read 
 the fathers and the legends in a nunnery, and had been suf- 
 fered to improve her genius by a continued application to 
 polite literature, from what appears in her letters, she would 
 have excelled any man of that age. 
 
 Eloisa, I suspect, however, would have proved but a very 
 indifferent polemic ; she seems to have had a certain delicacy 
 in her manners which rather belongs to the Jine lady. We 
 cannot but smile at an observation of hers on the Apostles 
 which we find in her letters : — " We read that the apostles, 
 even in the company of their Master, were so rustic and ill- 
 bred, that, regardless of common decorum, as they passed 
 through the corn-fields they plucked the ears, and ate them 
 like children. Nor did they wash their hands before they sat 
 down to table. To eat with unwashed hands, said our 
 Saviour to those who were offended, doth not defile a man." 
 
 It is on the misconception of the mild apologetieal reply of 
 Jesus, indeed, that religious fanatics have really considered, 
 that, to be careless of their dress, and not to free themselves 
 from filth and slovenliness, is an act of piety ; just as the late 
 political fanatics, who thought that republicanism consisted in 
 the most offensive tilthiness. On this principle, that it is 
 saint-like to go dirty, ragged and slovenly, says Bishop 
 Lavington, in his "Enthusiasm of the Methodists and 
 Papists," \vo\w piously did Whitfield take care of the outward 
 man, who in his journals writes, " My apparel was mean — 
 thought it unbecoming a penitent to have powdered hair. — 
 I wore woollen gloves, & patched gown, and dirty shoes!" 
 
 After an injury, not less cruel than humiliating, Abelard 
 raises the school of the Paraclete ; with what enthusiasm is 
 he followed to that desert ! His scholars in crowds hasten to 
 their adored master ; they cover their mud sheds with the 
 branches of trees ; they care not to sleep under better roofs, 
 provided they remain by the side of their unfortunate master. 
 
 l2
 
 148 Physiognomy. 
 
 How lively must have been their taste for study ! — it formed 
 their solitary passion, and the love of glory was gratified even 
 in that desert. 
 
 The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa, too celebrated 
 among certain of its readers — 
 
 " Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove ; 
 No, — make me mistress to the man I love !" — 
 
 are, however, found in her original letters. The author of 
 that ancient work, " The Romaunt of the Rose," has given 
 it thus ndively; a specimen of the natural style in those 
 
 days : — 
 
 Si I'empereur, qui est a Rome, 
 Soubz qui doyvent etre tout liomme, 
 Me daignoit prendre pour sa femme, 
 Et me faire du monde dame ! 
 Si vouldroye-je mieux, dist-elle 
 Et Dieii en tesmoing en appelle, 
 Etre sa Putaine appellee 
 Qu'etre emperiere couronnee. 
 
 PHYSIOGNOMY. 
 
 A TEUT extraordinary physiognomical anecdote has been 
 given by De la Place, in his " Pieces Inleressantes et peu 
 Connues," vol. iv. p. 8. 
 
 A friend assured him that he had seen a voluminous and 
 secret correspondence which had been carried on between 
 Louis XIV. and his favourite physician, De la Chambre, on 
 this science. The faith of the monarch seems to have been 
 great, and the purpose to which this correspondence tended 
 was extraordinary indeed, and perhaps scarcely credible. Who 
 Avill believe that Louis XIV. was so convinced of that talent 
 which De la Cliambre attributed to himself, of deciding 
 merely by the physiognomy of persons, not only on the real 
 bent of their character, but to what employment they were 
 adapted, that the king entered into a secret correspondence to 
 obtain the critical notices of his phi/siognomist ? That Louis 
 XIV. should have pm-sued this system, undetected by his own 
 courtiers, is also singular ; but it appears, by this corres- 
 pondence, that this art positively swayed him in his choice of 
 officers and favourites. On one of tlie backs of these letters 
 De la Chambre had written, " If I die before his majesty, he 
 will incur- great risk of making many an unfortunate choice!"
 
 Pliysiognomy. 149 
 
 This collection of physiognomical correspondence, if it does 
 really exist, would form a curious publication ; we have heard 
 nothing of it ! De la Chambre was an enthusiastic physiogno- 
 mist, as appears by his works; "The Characters of the 
 Passions," four volumes in quarto; " Tlie Art of Knowing 
 Mankind;" and "The Knowledge of Animals." Lavater 
 quotes his " Vote and Interest," in favour of his favourite 
 science. It is, however, curious to add, that Philip Earl of 
 Pembroke, under James I., had formed a particular collection 
 of portraits, with a view to phj^siognomical studies. Accord- 
 ing to Evelyn on Medals, p. 302, such was his sagacity in 
 discovering the characters and dis[)ositions of men by their 
 countenances, that James I. made no little use of his extra- 
 ordinary talent on the_^rs^ arrival of ambassadors at court. 
 
 Tne "following physiological detinition of PiirsiOGNOMY is 
 extracted from a publication by Dr. Gwither, of the year 
 1604, which, dropping his history of " The ^Animal Spirits," 
 is curious : — 
 
 " Soft wax cannot receive more various and numerous 
 impressions than are imprinted on a man's face by objects 
 moving his affections : and not only the objects themselves 
 have this power, but also the very images or ideas ; that is to 
 say, anything that puts the animal spirits into the same 
 motion that the object present did, will have the same effect 
 with the object. To prove the iirst, let one observe a man's 
 face looking on a pitiful object, then a ridiculous, then a 
 strange, then on a terrible or dangerous object, and so forth. 
 Eor the second, that ideas have the same effect with tiie 
 object, dreams confirm too often. 
 
 " The manner I conceive to be thus : — the animal spirits, 
 moved in the sensory by an object, continue their motion to 
 the brain ; whence the motion is propagated to this or that 
 particular part of the body, as is most suitable to the design 
 of its creation ; having first made an alteration in the face by 
 its nerves, especially by the pathetic and oculorum motorii 
 actuating its many muscles, as the dial-plate to that stupen- 
 dous piece of clock-work which shows what is to be ex- 
 pected next from the striking part ; not that I think the 
 motion of the spirits in the sensory continued by the im- 
 pression of the object all the way, as from a finger to the 
 foot ; I know it too weak, though the tenseness of the 
 nerves favours it. But I conceive it done in the medulla of 
 the brain, where is the common stock of spirits ; as in an
 
 150 Characters described by Musical Notes. 
 
 organ, whose pipes being uncovered, the air rushes into 
 them ; but the keys let go, are stopped again. Now, if by 
 repeated acts of frequent entertaining of a favourite idea of 
 a passion or vice, which natural temperament has hurried one 
 to, or custom dragged, the face is so often put into that 
 posture which attends such acts, that the animal spirits find 
 such latent passages into its nerves, that it is sometimes un- 
 alterably set : as the Indian religious are by long continuing 
 in strange postures in their pagods. But most commonly 
 such a habit is contracted, that it falls insensibly into that 
 posture when some present object does not obliterate that 
 more natural impression by a new, or dissimulation hide it. 
 
 " Hence it is that we see great drinkers with eyes gene- 
 rally set towards the nose, the adducent muscles being often 
 employed to let them see their loved liquor in the glass at the 
 time of drinking ; which were, therefore, called liUtory. 
 Lascivious persons are remarkable for the oculorum nohilis 
 petulanfia, as Petronius calls it. From this also we may 
 solve the Quaker's expecting face, waiting for the pretended 
 spirit; and the melancholy face of the sectaries; the studious 
 face of men of great application of mind; revengeful and 
 hloody men, like executioners in the act : and though silence in 
 a sort may awhile pass for wisdom, yet, sooner or later. Saint 
 Martin peeps through the disguise to undo all. A cliangeahle 
 face I have observed to show a cliangeahle mind. But I 
 would by no means have what has been said understood as 
 without exception ; for I doubt not but sometimes there are 
 found men with great and virtuous souls under very unpro- 
 mising outsides." 
 
 The great Prince of Conde was very expert in a sort of 
 physiognomy which showed the peculiar habits, motions, and 
 postures of familiar life and mechanical^ employments. He 
 would sometimes lay wagers with his friends, that he would 
 guess, upon the Pont Neuf, what trade persons were of that 
 passed by, from their walk and air. 
 
 CHARACTERS DESCRIBED BY MUSICAL NOTES. 
 
 The idea of describing characters under the names of Musical 
 Instruments has been already displayed in two most pleasing 
 papers which embellish the Tatler, written by Addison. He 
 dwells on this idea with uncommon success. It has been
 
 Characters described by Musical Notes. 151 
 
 applauded for its originality ; and in the general preface to 
 that work, those paj^ers are distinguished for their felicity of 
 imagination. The following ])aper was published in the 3'ear 
 1700, in a volume of " Pliilosophical Transactions and Col- 
 lections," and the two numbers of Addison in the year 1710. 
 It is probable that this inimitable writer borrowed the semi- 
 nal hint from this work : — 
 
 " A conjecture at dispositions from the modulations of the 
 voice. 
 
 " Sitting in some company, and having been but a little 
 before musical, I chanced to take notice that, in ordinary 
 discourse, words were spoken in perfect )wtcs ; and tliat some 
 of the company used eitjliths, some Ji/t Its, some tltirds ; and 
 that his discourse which was the most pleasing, his ivords, as 
 to their tone, consisted most of concords, and were of discords 
 of such as made up harmony. The same person was the most 
 affable, pleasant, and best-natured in the company. This 
 suggests a reason why many discourses which one hears with 
 much pleasure, when they come to be read scarcely seem the 
 same thinq-s. 
 
 " From this difference of Music in Speech, we may con- 
 jecture that of Tempers. We know the Doric mood sounds 
 gravity and sobriety ; the Lydiau, buxomness and freedom ; 
 the ^olic, sweet stillness and quiet composure ; the Phry- 
 gian, jollity and youthful levity ; the Ionic is a stiller of 
 storms and disturbances arising from passion ; and why may 
 we not reasonably suppose, tliat those whose speech natu- 
 rally runs into the notes peculiar to any of these moods, are 
 likev ise in nature hereunto congenerous ? C Fa ut inay 
 show me to be of an ordinary capacity, tliough good disposi- 
 tion. G Sol re ut, to be pcevisli and effeminate. Flats, a 
 manly or melancholic sadness. He who hath a voice which 
 will in some measure agree with all clijfs, to be of good 
 ])arts, and fit for variety of employments, yet somewhat of an 
 inconstant nature. Likewise from the Times : so semi-hriefs 
 may speak a temper dull and phlegmatic ; minims, grave and 
 serious ; crotcliets, a prompt wit ; quavers, vehemency of pas- 
 sion, and scolds use them. iSeini-brief-rest may denote one 
 either stupid or fuller of thoughts than he can utter ; viinim- 
 rest, one that deliberates ; crotchet-rest, one in a passion. So 
 that from the natural use of MooD, Note, and Time, we 
 may collect Dispositions."
 
 152 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 It is painful to observe the acrimony which the most emi- 
 nent scholars have infused frequently in their controversial 
 writings. The politeness of the present times has in some 
 degree softened the malignity of the man, in the dignity of 
 the author ; but this is by no means an irrevocable law. 
 
 It is said not to be honourable to literature to revive such 
 controversies ; and a work entitled " Querelles Litteraires," 
 when it first appeared, excited loud mui'murs ; but it has its 
 moral : like showing the drunkard to a youth, that he may 
 turn aside disgusted with ebriety. Must we suppose that 
 men of letters are exempt from the human passions ? Their 
 sensibility, on the contrary, is more irritable than that of 
 others. To observe the ridiculous attitudes in which great 
 men appear, when they employ the style of the fish-market, 
 may be one great means of restraining that ferocious pride 
 often breaking out in the republic of letters. Johnson at 
 least appears to have entertained the same opinion ; for he 
 thought proper to republish the low. invective of Dryden 
 against Settle; and since I have published my "Quarrels of 
 Authors," it becomes me to say no more. 
 
 The celebrated controversy of Salmasius, continued by 
 Morus with Milton — the first the pleader of King Charles, 
 the latter the advocate of the people — was of that magnitude, 
 that all Europe took a part in the paper-war of these two 
 great men. The answer of Milton, who perfectly massacred 
 Salmasius, is now read but by the few. Whatever is ad- 
 dressed to the times, however great may be its merits, is 
 doomed to perish with the times ; yet on these pages the 
 philosopher will not contemplate in vain. 
 
 It will form no uninteresting article to gather a few of the 
 rhetorical iveeds, for flowers we cannot well call them, with 
 which they mutually presented each other. Their rancour 
 was at least equal to their erudition, — the two most learned 
 antagonists of a learned age ! 
 
 Salmasius was a man of vast erudition, but no taste. His 
 writings are learned, but sometimes ridiculous. He called 
 his work Defensio Eegia, Defence of Kings. The opening of 
 this work provokes a laugh : — " Englishmen ! who toss the 
 heads of kings as so many tennis-balls ; who play with crowns
 
 Milton. 153 
 
 as if tliey were bowls ; who look upon sceptres as so many 
 crooks." 
 
 That the deformity of tlie body is an idea we attach to tlie 
 deformity of the mind, the vulgar must acluiowledge ; but 
 surely it' is unpardonable in the enlightened philosopher thus 
 to compare the crookedness of corporeal matter with the 
 rectitude of the intellect ; yet Milbourne and Dennis, the 
 last a formidable critic, have frequently considered, that com- 
 paring Dryden and Pope to whatever the eye turned from 
 with displeasure, was VGvy good argument to lower their 
 literary abilities. Salmasius seems also to have entertained 
 this idea, though his spies in England gave him wrong infor- 
 mation ; or, possibly, he only drew the ligure of his own dis- 
 tempered imagination. 
 
 Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a 
 j)uny piece of man ; an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the 
 human figure, a bloodless being, composed of nothing but 
 skin and bone ; a contemptible pedagogue, fit only to flog his 
 boys : and, rising into a poetic frenzy, applies to him the 
 words of Virgil, " Ilonstrum Iiorreiulum, informe, ingens, cui 
 lumen adempfiimy Our great poet thought this senseless 
 declamation merited a serious refutation ; perhaps he did not 
 wish to appear despicable in the eyes of the ladies ; and he 
 would not be silent on the subject, he says, lest aiij' one 
 should consider him as the credulous Spaniards are made to 
 believe by their priests, that a heretic is a kind of rhinoceros 
 or a dog-headed monster. Milton says, that he does not 
 think any one ever considered him as unbeautiful ; that his 
 size rather approaches mediocrity than the diminutive ; that 
 he still felt the same courage and the same strength which 
 he possessed when young, when, with his sword, he felt no 
 difficulty to combat with men more robust than himself; 
 that his face, far from being pale, emaciated, and wrinkled, 
 was sufficiently creditable to him : for though he had passed 
 his fortieth year, he was in all other respects ten years 
 younger. And very pathetically he adds, "that even his 
 eyes, blind as they are, are unblemished in their appearance ; 
 in this instance alone, and much against my inclination, I am 
 a deceiver I" 
 
 Morus, in his Epistle dedicatory of his Begii Sanguinis 
 Clamor, compares Milton to a hangman ; his disordered vision 
 to the blindness of his soul, and so vomits forth his venom.
 
 154 Milton. 
 
 When Salmasius found that his strictures on the person of 
 Milton were false, and that, on the contrary, it was uncom- 
 monly beautiful, he then turned his battery against those 
 graces with which Nature had so liberally adorned his adver- 
 sary : and it is now that he seems to have laid no restric- 
 tions on his pen ; but, raging with the irritation of Milton's 
 success, he throws out the blackest calumnies, and the most 
 infamous aspersions. 
 
 It must be observed, when Milton first proposed to answer 
 Salmasius, he had lost the use of one of his eyes ; and his 
 physicians declared that, if he applied himself to the conti'o- 
 versy,the other would likewise close for ever! His patriotism 
 was not to be baffled, but with life itself. Unhappily, the 
 prediction of his physicians took place ! Thus a learned 
 man in the occupations of study falls blind — a circumstance 
 even now not read without sympathy. Salmasius considers 
 it as one from which he may draw caustic ridicule and satii'ic 
 severity. 
 
 Salmasius glories that Milton lost his health and his eyes 
 in answering his apology for King Charles ! He does not 
 now reproach him with natural deformities ; but he malig- 
 nantly sympathises with him, that he now no more is in 
 possession of that beauty which rendered him so amiable 
 during his residence in Italy. He speaks more plainly in a 
 following page ; and, in a word, would blacken the austere 
 virtue of Milton with a crime infamous to name. 
 
 Impartiality of criticism obliges us to confess that Milton 
 was not destitute of rancour. When he was told that his 
 adversary boasted he had occasioned the loss of his eyes, he 
 answered, with ferocity — '■'■And I shall cost him his life J" 
 A prediction which was soon after verified ; for Christina, 
 Queen of Sweden, withdrew her patronage from Salmasius, 
 and sided with Milton. The universal neglect the proud 
 scholar felt hastened his death in the course of a twelve- 
 month. 
 
 The greatness of Milton's mind was degraded! He 
 actually condescended to enter into a correspondence in 
 Holland, to obtain little scandalous anecdotes of his miserable 
 adversary, Morus ; and deigned to adulate the unworthy 
 Christina of Sweden, because she had expressed herself 
 favom-ably on his " Defence." Of late years, we have had 
 too many instances of this worst of passions, the antipa- 
 thies of politics !
 
 ]55 
 
 ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS. 
 
 We are indebted to the Italians for the idea of newspapers. 
 The title of their gazettas was, perhaps, derived from c/azzera, 
 a magpie or chatterer; or, more probably, from a farthing 
 coin, peculiar to the city of Venice, called gazetta, which was 
 the common price of the newspapers. Another etymologist 
 is for deriving it from the Latin f/aza, which would collo- 
 quially lengthen into gazetta, and signify a little treasury of 
 news. The Spanish derive it from the Latin gaza, and like- 
 wise their gazatero, and our gazetteer, for a writer of the 
 gazette, and, what is peculiar to themselves, gazetista, for a 
 lover of the gazette. 
 
 Newspapers, then, took their birth in that principal land 
 of modern politicians, Italy, and under the government of 
 that aristocratical republic, Venice. The first paper was a 
 Venetian one, and only monthly ; but it was merely the 
 newspaper of the government. Other governments after- 
 wards adopted the Venetian plan of a newspaper, with the 
 Venetian name : — from a solitary government gazette, an 
 inundation of newspapers has burst upon us. 
 
 Mr. George Chalmers, in his Life of Ruddiman, gives a 
 curious particular of these Venetian gazettes : — " A jealous 
 government did not allow a printed newspaper ; and the 
 Venetian gazetta continued long after the invention of print- 
 ing, to the close of the sixteentli century, and even to our 
 own days, to be distributed in manuscript.'^ In the Maglia- 
 bechian library at Florence are thirty volumes of Venetian 
 gazettas, all in manuscript. 
 
 Those who first wrote newspapers were called by the 
 Italians menanti ; because, says Vossius, they intended com- 
 monly by these loose papers to spread about defamatory 
 reflections, and wei-e therefore prohibited in Italy by Gregory 
 XIII. by a particular bull, under the name o^ men antes, from 
 the Latin minantes, threatening. Menage, however, derives 
 it from the Italian menare, which signifies to lead at large, 
 or spread afar. 
 
 We are indebted to the wisdom of Elizabeth and the pru- 
 dence of liurleigh for the first newspaper. The epoch of the 
 Spanish Armada is also the epoch of a genuine newspaper. 
 In the British Museum are several newspapers which were 
 printed while the Spanish fleet was in the English Channel
 
 156 Origin of Newspapers, 
 
 during the year 1588. It was a wise policy to prevent, 
 during a moment of general anxiety, the danger of false 
 reports, by publishing real information. The earliest news- 
 paper is entitled " The English Mercurie," which by 
 authority was " imprinted at London by her highness's 
 printer, 1588." These were, however, but extraordinary 
 gazettes, not regularly published. In this obscure origin 
 they were skilfully directed by the policy of that great 
 statesman Burleigh, who, to inflame the national feeling, 
 gives an extract of a letter from Madrid which speaks of 
 putting the queen to death, and the instruments of torture 
 on board the Spanish fleet. 
 
 George Chalmers first exultingly took down these patri- 
 archal newspapers, covered with the dust of two centuries. 
 
 The first newspaper in the collection of the British Museum 
 is marked No. 50, and is in Roman, not in black letter. It 
 contains tlie usual articles of news, like the London Gazette 
 of the present day. In that curious paper, there are news 
 dated from Whitehall, on the 23rd July, 1588. Under the 
 date of July 2G, there is the following notice : — " Yesterday 
 the Scots ambassador, being introduced to Sir Francis Wal- 
 .singham, had a private audience of her majesty, to whom he 
 delivei'ed a letter from the king his master; containing the 
 most cordial assurances of his resolution to adhere to her 
 majesty's interests, and to those of the Protestant religion. 
 And it may not here be improper to take notice of a wise 
 and spiritual saying of this young prince (he was twenty- 
 two) to the queen's minister at his court, viz. — That all the 
 favour he did expect from the Spaniards was the courtesy 
 of Pol^'pheme to Ulysses, to be the last devoured.'''' The 
 gazetteer of the present day would hardly give a more de- 
 corous account of the introduction of a foreign minister. 
 The aptness of King James's classical sajdng carried it from 
 the newspaper into history. I must add, that in respect to 
 his loit no man has been more injured than this monarch. 
 More pointed sentences are recorded of James I. than perhaps 
 of any prince ; and yet, such is the delusion of that medium 
 by which the popular eye sees things in this world, that he 
 is usually considered as a mere royal pedant. I have entered 
 more largely on this subject, in an " Inquiry of the Literary 
 and Political Character of James I."* 
 
 * Since the appearance of the eleventh edition of this work, the detec- 
 tion of a singular literary deception has occurred. The evidence respecting
 
 Orifjin of Ncivsjjapers. 157 
 
 Periodical papers seem first to have been more generally 
 used by the English, during the civil wars of the usurper 
 Cromwell, to disseminate amongst the people the sentiments 
 of loyalty or rebellion, according as their authors were dis- 
 posed. Feter Heylin, in the preface to his Cosmog^xiphy, 
 mentions, that " the atfairs of each town, of war, were better 
 presented to the reader in the WeeJcly News-looks^ Hence 
 we find some papers, entitled "News from Hull," "Truths 
 from York," " Warranted Tidings from Ireland," &c. We 
 find also, " The Scots' Dove" o])posed to " The Parliament 
 Kite," or " The Secret Owl," — Keener animosities produced 
 keener titles: " Heraclitus ridens" found an antaa-onist in 
 " Democritus ridens," and " Tlie Weekly Discoverer" was 
 shortly met by " The Discoverer stript naked." " Mercurius 
 Britannicus" was grappled by " Mercurius Mastix, faitlifully 
 lashing all Scouts, Mercuries, Posts, Spies, and others." Under 
 all these names papers had appeared, but a " Mercury" was 
 the prevailing title of these " News-books," and the principles 
 
 The English Mercuric rests on the alleged discovery of the literary anti- 
 quary, George Chalmers. I witnessed, fifty years ago, that laborious re- 
 searcher busied among the long dusty shelves of our periodical papers, 
 which then reposed in the antechamber to the former reading-room of the 
 British Museum. To the industry which I had witnessed, I confided, and 
 such positive and precise evidence could not fail to be accepted by all. In 
 the British Museum, indeed, George Chalmers found the printed English 
 Mercurie ; but there also, it now appears, he might have seen the original, 
 with all its corrections, before it was sent to the press, written on paper 
 of modern fabric. The detection of this literary imposture has been inge- 
 niously and unquestionably demonstrated by Mr. Thomas Watts, in a 
 letter to Mr. Panizzi, the keeper of the printed books in the British Mu- 
 seum. The fact is, the whole is a modern forgery, for which Birch, pre- 
 serving it among his papers, has not assigned either the occasion or the 
 motive. Mr. Watts says — "The general impression left on the mind by 
 the perusal of the Mercurie is, that it must have been written after the 
 Spectator ■''' that the manuscript was composed in modern spelling, after- 
 wards antiquated in the printed copy ; while the type is similar to that 
 used by Caslon in 1766. By this accidental reference to the originals, 
 "the unaccountably successful imposition of fifty years was shattered to 
 fragments in five minutes." I am inclined to suspect that it was a jen 
 d'esprit of historical antiquarianism, concocted by Birch and his friends the 
 Yorkes, with whom, as it is well known, he was concerned in a more elegant 
 literary recreation, the composition of the Athenian Letters. The blunder of 
 George Chalmers has been repeated in numerous publications throughout 
 Europe and in America. I think it better to correct the text by this 
 notice than by a silent suppression, that it may remain a memorable 
 instance of the danger incurred by the historian from forged documents ; 
 and a proof that multiplied authorities add no strength to evidence, when 
 all are to be traced to a single source.
 
 158 Origin of 'Newspapers. 
 
 of the writer were generally shown by the additional epithet. 
 We find an alarming number of these Mercuries, which, were 
 the story not too long to tell, might excite laughter ; they 
 present us with a very curious picture of those singular times. 
 
 Devoted to political purposes, they soon became a public 
 nuisance by serving as receptacles of party malice, and echoing 
 to the fartliest ends of the kingdom the insolent voice of all 
 factions. They set the minds of men more at variance, in- 
 flamed their tempers to a greater fierceness, and gave a keener 
 edge to the sharpness of civil discord. 
 
 Such works will always find adventurers adapted to their 
 scurrilous purposes, who neither want at times either talents, 
 or boldness, or wit, or argument. A vast crowd issued from 
 the press, and are now to be found in private collections. 
 They form a race of authors unknown to most readers of 
 these times : the names of some of their chiefs, however, 
 have reached us, and in the minor chronicle of domestic 
 literature I rank three notable heroes ; Marchmont Need- 
 ham, Sir John Birkenhead, and Sir Eoger L'Estrange. 
 
 Marclimont Needliam, the great patriarch of newspaper 
 writers, was a man of versatile talents and more versatile 
 politics ; a bold adventurer, and most successful, because the 
 most profligate of his tribe. From college he came to Lon- 
 don ; was an usher in Merchant Tailors' school ; then an 
 under clerk in Gray's Inn ; at length studied physic, and 
 practised chemistry ; and finally, he was a captain, and in the 
 words of our great literary antiquary, " siding with the rout 
 and scum of the people, he made them weekly sport by rail- 
 ing at all that was noble, in his Intelligence, called Mer- 
 curius Britannicus, wherein his endeavours were to sacrifice 
 the fame of some lord, or any person of qualit}^, and of the 
 king himself, to the beast with many heads." He soon 
 became popular, and was known under the name of Captain 
 Needham, of Gray's Inn ; and whatever he now wrote was 
 deemed oracular. But whether from a slight imprisonment 
 for aspersing Charles I. or some pique with his own part}'-, he 
 requested an audience on his knees with the king, reconciled 
 himself to his majesty, and showed himself a violent royalist 
 in his " Mercurius Pragmaticus," and galled the Presby- 
 terians with his wit and quips. Some time after, when the 
 popular party prevailed, he was still further enlightened, and 
 was got over by President Bradshaw, as easily as by Charles 
 I. Our Mercurial writer became once more a virulent Pres-
 
 Origin of Neivspapers. 159 
 
 byterian, and lashed the ro^^ahsts outrageously in his " IMer- 
 eurius Politicus ;" at length on the return of Charles II. 
 being now conscious, says our cynical friend Anthony, that 
 he might be in danger of the halter, once more he is said to 
 have lied into Holland, waiting for an act of oblivion. For 
 money given to a hungry'- courtier, Needham obtained his 
 pardon under the great seal. He latterly practised as a phy- 
 sician among his party, but lived detested by the royalists ; 
 and now only committed harmless treasons with the College 
 of Physicians, on whom he poured all that gall and vinegar 
 which the government had suppressed from llowing through 
 its natural channel. 
 
 The royalists were not without their Needham in the 
 prompt activity of Sir Jolin Birkenhead. In buffoonery, 
 keenness, and boldness, having been frequently imprisoned, he 
 was not inferior, nor was he at times less an adventurer. 
 His " Mercurius Aulicus" was devoted to the court, then at 
 Oxford. But he was the fertile parent of numerous political 
 pamphlets, which appear to abound in banter, wit, and satire. 
 Prompt to seize on every temporary circumstance, he had 
 equal facility in execution. His "Paul's Church-yard" is a 
 bantering pamphlet, containing fictitious titles of books and 
 acts of parliament, reflecting on the mad reformers of those 
 times. One of his poems is entitled " Tlw Jolt,'' being 
 written on the Protector having fallen off his own coach- 
 box : Cromwell had received a present from the German 
 Count Oldenburgh, of six German horses, and attempted to 
 drive them himself in Hyde Park, when this great political 
 Phaeton met the accident, of which Sir John Birkenhead 
 was not slow to comprehend the benefit, and hints how un- 
 fortunately for the country it turned out! Su- John was 
 during the dominion of Cromwell an author by profession. 
 After various imprisonments for his majesty's cause, says the 
 venerable historian of English literature already quoted, " he 
 lived by his wits, in helping young gentlemen out at dead 
 lifts in making poems, songs, and epistles on and to their 
 mistresses ; as also in translating, and other petite employ- 
 ments." He lived however after the Restoration to become 
 one of the masters of requests, with a salary of 3000/. a 
 year. But he showed the baseness of his spirit, says An- 
 thony, by slighting those who had been his benefactors in his 
 necessities. 
 
 Sir Roger L' Estrange among his rivals was esteemed as
 
 160 Origin of Newspapers. 
 
 the most perfect model of political writing. He was a strong 
 party-writer on the government side, I'or Charles the Second, 
 and the compositions of the author seem to us coarse, yet 
 they contain much idiomatic expression. His ^Esop's Fables 
 are a curious specimen of familiar style. Queen Mary showed 
 a due contempt of him, after the Kevolution, by this ana- 
 gram : — 
 
 Roger L'Estranrie, 
 
 Lye strange Roger ! 
 
 Such were the three patriarchs of newspapers. De Saint 
 Foix gives the origin of newspapers to France. Renaudot, a 
 physician at Paris, to amuse his patients was a great collector 
 of news ; and he found by these means that he was more 
 sought after than his learned brethren. But as the seasons 
 were not always sickly, and he had many hours not occupied 
 by his patients, he reflected, after several years of assiduity 
 given up to this singular employment, that he might turn it 
 to a better account, by giving every week to his patients, 
 who in this case were the public at large, some fugitive 
 sheets which should contain the news of various countries. 
 He obtained a privilege for this purpose in 1632. 
 
 At the Restoration the proceedings of parliament were in- 
 terdicted to be published, unless by authority ; and the first 
 daily paper after the Revolution took the popular title of 
 " The Orange Intelligencer." 
 
 In the reign of Queen Anne, there was but one daily 
 paper ; the others were weekly. Some attempted to intro- 
 duce literary subjects, and others topics of a more general spe- 
 culation. 8ir Richard Steele formed the plan of his Tatler. 
 He designed it to embrace the three provinces, of manners 
 and morals, of literature, and of politics. The public were to 
 be conducted insensibly into so different a track from that to 
 which they had been hitherto accustomed. Hence politics 
 were admitted into his paper. But it remained for the 
 chaster genius of Addison to banish this painful topic from 
 his elegant pages. Tlie writer in polite letters felt himself 
 degraded by sinking into the diurnal narrator of political 
 events, which so frequently originate in rumours and party 
 fictions. From this time, newspapers and periodical litera- 
 ture became distinct works — at present, there seems to be an 
 attempt to revive this union ; it is a retrograde step for tbe 
 independent dignity of literature.
 
 161 
 
 TRIALS AND PROOFS OF GUILT IN SUPERSTITIOUS AGES. 
 
 The strange trials to which those suspected of guilt were 
 put in the middle ages, conducted with many devout cere- 
 monies by the ministers of religion, were j^ronounced to be 
 the judgments of God ! The ordeal consisted of various 
 kinds : walking blindfold amidst burning ploughshares ; 
 passing through fires ; holding in the hand a red-hot bar ; 
 and plunging the arm into boiling water : the popular affir- 
 mation — " I will put my hand in the fire to confirm this," 
 was derived from this custom of our rude ancestors. Chal- 
 lenging the accuser to single combat, when frequently the 
 stoutest champion was allowed to supply their place ; swal- 
 lowing a morsel of consecrated bread ; sinking or swimming 
 in a river for witchcraft ; or weighing a witch ; stretching out 
 the arms before the cross, till the champion soonest wearied 
 dropped his arms, and lost his estate, which was decided by 
 this very short chancery suit, called the judicium cruets. 
 The bishop of Paris and the abbot of St. Denis disputed 
 about the patronage of a monastery : Pepin the Short, not 
 being able to decide on their confused claims, decreed one of 
 these judgments of God, that of the Cross. The bishop and 
 abbot each chose a man, and both the men appeared in the 
 chapel, where they stretched out their arras in the form of a 
 cross. The spectators, more devout than the mob of the 
 present day, but still the mob, were piously attentive, but 
 betted however now for one man, now for the other, and cri- 
 tically watched the slightest motion of the arms. The 
 bishop's man was first tired : — he let his ai-ms fall, and ruined 
 his patron's cause for ever. Though sometimes these trials 
 might be eluded by the artifice of the priest, numerous were 
 the innocent victims who unquestionably suffered in these 
 superstitious practices. 
 
 Prom the tenth to the twelfth centurv they were common. 
 Hildebert, bishop of Mans, being accused of high treason by 
 our William Rufus, was prepared to undergo one of these 
 trials, when Ives, bishop of Chartres, 3onvinced him that 
 they were against the canons of the constitutions of the 
 church, and adds, that in this manner Innocentiam defenders, 
 est innocentiam per dere. 
 
 An abbot of St. Aubin, of Angers, in 10G6, having refused 
 to present a horse to the V'3C0unt of Tours, which the 
 
 TOL. I. M
 
 162 Trials and Proofs of Guilt in Superstitious Ages. 
 
 viscount claimed in right of his lordship, whenever an ahbot 
 first took possession of that abbey, the ecclesiastic offered to 
 justify himself by the trial of the ordeal, or by duel, for 
 which he proposed to furnish a man. The viscount at first 
 agreed to the duel ; but, reflecting that these combats, though 
 sanctioned by the church, depended wholly on the skill or 
 vigour of the adversary, and could therefore atford no substan- 
 tial proof of the equity of his claim, he proposed to com- 
 promise the matter in a manner which strongly characterises 
 the times : he waived his claim, on condition that the abbot 
 should not forget to mention in his prayers himself, his wife, 
 and his brothers ! As the orisons appeared to the abbot, in 
 comparison with the Jiorse, of little or no value, he accepted 
 the proposal. 
 
 In the tenth century the right of representation was not 
 fixed : it was a question Avhether the sons of a son ought to 
 be reckoned among the children of the family, and succeed 
 equally with their uncles, if their fathers happened to die 
 while their grandfathers survived. This point was decided 
 by one of these combats. The champion in behalf of the 
 right of children to represent their deceased father proved 
 victorious. It was then established by a perpetual decree that 
 they should thenceforward share in the inheritance, together 
 with their uncles. In the eleventh century the same mode 
 was practised to decide respecting two rival Liturgies ! A 
 pair of knights, clad in complete armour, were the critics to 
 decide which was the authentic. 
 
 "If two neighbours," say the capitularies of Dagobert, 
 " dispute respecting the boundaries of their possessions, let a 
 piece of tm-f of the contested land be dug up by the judge, 
 and brought by him into the court ; the two parties shall 
 touch it with the points of their swords, calling on God as a 
 witness of their claims ; — after this let them combat, and let 
 victory decide on their rights !" 
 
 In Germany, a solemn circumstance was practised in these 
 judicial combats. In the midst of the lists they placed a bier. — 
 By its side stood the accuser and the accused ; one at the 
 head and the other at the foot of the bier, and leaned there 
 for some time in profound silence, before they began the 
 combat. 
 
 The manners of the age are faithfully painted in the 
 ancient Fabliaux. The judicial combat is introduced by a 
 writer of the fourteenth century, in a scene where Pilate
 
 Trials and Proofs of Guilt in Superstitious Ages. 163 
 
 challenges Jesus Christ to single comhat. Another describes 
 the person who pierced the side of Chi'ist as a knight who 
 jousted with Jesus* 
 
 Judicial combat appears to have been practised by the 
 Jews. Whenever the rabbins had to decide on a dispute 
 about property between two parties, neither of which could 
 produce evidence to substantiate his claim, they terminated 
 it by single combat. The rabbins were impressed by a notion, 
 that consciousness of right would give additional conlidence 
 and strength to the rightful possessor. It may, however, be 
 more philosophical to observe, tliat such judicial combats 
 were more frequently favourable to the criminal than to the 
 innocent, because the bold wicked man is usually more fero- 
 cious and hardy than he whom he singles out as his victim, 
 and who only wishes to preserve his own quiet enjoyment : — 
 in this case the assailant is the more terrible combatant. 
 
 Those accused of robbery were put to trial by a piece of 
 barley-bread, on which the mass had been said ; which if 
 they could not swallow, they were declared guilty. This 
 mode of trial was improved by adding to the bread a slice of 
 cheese; and such was their credulity, that they were very 
 particular in this holy bread and cheese, called the corsned. 
 The bread was to be of unleavened barley, and the cheese 
 made of ewe's milk in the month of May. 
 
 Du Cange observed, that the expression — " Mag this piece 
 of bread choke me T^ comes from this custom. The anecdote 
 
 * These curious passages, so strikingly indicative of the state of thought 
 in the days of their authors, are worth clearly noting. Pilate's challenge 
 to the Saviour is completely in the taste of the writer's day. He was 
 Adam Davie, a poet of the fourteenth century, of whom an account is 
 preserved in Warton^s History of English, Poetry ; and the passage occurs 
 in his poem of the Battle of Jerusalem, the incidents of which are treated 
 as Froissart would treat the siege of a town happening in his own day. 
 
 The second passage above quoted occurs in the Vision of Piers Plow- 
 man, a poem of the same era, where the Roman soldier — whose name, 
 according to legendary history, was Longinus, and who pierced the 
 Saviour's side— is described as if he had given the wound in a passage of 
 arms, or joust ; and elsewhere in the same poem it is said that Christ, 
 
 " For mankyndes sake, 
 Justed in Jerusalem, 
 A joye to us all.' 
 
 And in another part of the poem, speaking of the victory of Christ, it 
 is said — 
 
 " Jhesus justede well." 
 
 M 2
 
 164 Trials and Proofs of Guilt in Superstitious Ages. 
 
 of Earl Godwin's death by swallowing a piece of bread, in 
 making this asseveration, is recorded in our history. Doubt- 
 less superstition would often terrify the innocent person, in 
 the attempt of swallowing a consecrated morsel. 
 
 Among the proofs of guilt in superstitious ages was that 
 of the hleeding of a corpse. It was believed, that at the 
 touch or approach of the murderer the blood gushed out of 
 the murdered. By the side of the bier, if the slightest 
 change was observable in the eyes, the mouth, feet, or hands 
 of the corpse, the murderer was conjectured to be present, 
 and many innocent spectators must have suflFered death. 
 " When a body is full of blood, warmed by a sudden external 
 heat, and a putrefaction coming on, some of the blood-vessels 
 will burst, as they will all in time." This practice was once 
 allowed in England, and is still looked on in some of the un- 
 civilized parts of these kingdoms as a detection of the criminal. 
 It forms a solemn picture in the histories and ballads of our 
 old writers. 
 
 Kobertson observes, that all these absurd institutions were 
 cherished from the superstitious of the age believing the 
 legendary histories of those saints who crowd and disgrace 
 the Roman calendar. These fabulous miracles had been de- 
 clared authentic by the bulls of the popes and the decrees of 
 councils ; they were greedily swallowed by the populace ; and 
 whoever believed that the Supreme Being had interposed 
 miraculously on those trivial occasions mentioned in legends, 
 could not but expect the intervention of Heaven in these 
 most solemn appeals. These customs were a substitute for 
 written laws, which that barbarous period had not ; and as 
 no society can exist without laws, the ignorance of the 
 people had recourse to these customs, which, evil and absurd 
 as they were, closed endless controversies. Ordeals are in 
 truth the rude laws of a barbarous people who have not yet 
 obtained a written code, and are not sufficiently advanced in 
 civilization to enter into the refined inquiries, the subtile dis- 
 tinctions, and elaborate investigations, which a court of law 
 demands. 
 
 These ordeals probably originate in that one of Moses 
 called the "Waters of Jealousy." The Greeks likewise had 
 ordeals, for in the Antigonus of Sophocles the soldiers offer 
 to prove their innocence by handling red-hot iron, and walk- 
 ing between fires. One cannot but smile at the whimsical 
 ordeals of the Siamese. Among other practices to discover
 
 Trials and Proofs of Guilt in Superstitious Ages. 165 
 
 the justice of a cause, civil or criminal, they are particularly 
 attached to using certain consecrated purgative pills, which 
 they make the contending parties swallow. He who retains 
 them longest gains his cause ! The practice of giving Indians 
 a consecrated grain of rice to swallow is known to discover 
 the thief, in any company, by the contortions and dismay 
 evident on the countenance of the real thief. 
 
 In the middle ages, they were acquainted with secrets to 
 pass unhurt these singular trials. Voltaire mentions one for 
 undergoing the ordeal of boiling water. Our late travellers 
 in the East have confirmed this statement. The Mevleheh 
 dervises can hold red-hot iron between their teeth. Such 
 artifices have been often publicly exhibited at Paris and 
 London, Mr. Sharon Turner observes, on the ordeal of the 
 Anglo-Saxons, that the hand was not to be immediately in- 
 spected, and was left to the chance of a good constitution to 
 be so far healed during three days (the time tliey required to 
 be bound up and sealed, before it was examined) as to dis- 
 cover those appearances when inspected, which were allowed 
 to be satisfactory. There was likewise much preparatory 
 training, suggested by the more experienced ; besides, the 
 accused had an opportunity of going alone into the church, 
 and making terms with the priest. The few spectators were 
 always distant ; and cold iron might be substituted, aud the 
 fire diminished, at the moment. 
 
 They possessed secrets and medicaments, to pass through 
 these trials in perfect security. An anecdote of these times 
 may serve to show their readiness. A rivalship existed be- 
 tween the Austin-friars and the Jesuits. The father-general 
 of the Austin-friars was dining with the Jesuits ; and when 
 the table was removed, he entered into a formal discourse of 
 the superiority of the monastic order, and charged the Jesuits, 
 in unqualified terms, with assuming the title of "fratres," 
 while they held not the three vows, which other monks were 
 obliged to consider as sacred and binding. The general of 
 the Austin-friars was very eloquent and very authoritative : — 
 and the superior of the Jesuits was very unlearned, but not 
 half a fool. 
 
 The Jesuit avoided entering the list of controversy with 
 the Austin-friar, but arrested his triumph by asking him if 
 he would see one of his friars, who pretended to be nothing 
 more than a Jesuit, and one of the Austin-friars who reli- 
 giously performed the aforesaid three vows, show instantly
 
 166 The Inquisition. 
 
 which of them would be the readier to obey his superiors ? 
 The Austin-friar consented. The Jesuit then turning to one 
 of his brothers, the holy friar Mark, who was waiting ou 
 them, said, " Brother Mark, our companions are cold. I 
 command you, in virtue of the holy obedience you have 
 sworn to me, to bring here instantly out of the kitchen-fire, 
 and in your hands, some burning coals, that they may warm 
 themselves over your hands." Father Mark instantly obeys, 
 and, to the astonishment of the Austin-friar, brought in his 
 hands a supply of red burning coals, and held them to who- 
 ever chose to warm himself; and at the command of his 
 superior returned them to the kitchen-hearth. The general 
 of the Austin-friars, with the rest of his brotherhood, stood 
 amazed ; he looked wistfully on one of his monks, as if he 
 wished to command him to do the like. But the Austin 
 monk, who perfectly understood him, and saw this was not a 
 time to hesitate, observed, — " Reverend father, forbear, and 
 do not command me to tempt God ! I am ready to fetch 
 you fire in a chafing-dish, but not in my bare hands." The 
 triumph of the Jesuits was complete ; and it is not necessary 
 to add, that the miracle was noised about, and that the 
 Austin-friars could never account for it, notwithstanding their 
 strict performance of the three vows ! 
 
 THE INQUISITION. 
 
 Innocent the Third, a pope as enterprising as he was suc- 
 cessful in his enterprises, having sent Dominic with some mis- 
 sionaries into Languedoc, these men so irritated the heretics 
 they were sent to convert, that most of them were assassi- 
 nated at Toulouse in the year 1200. He called in the aid of 
 temporal arms, and published against them a crusade, grant- 
 ing, as was usual with the popes on similar occasions, all 
 kinds of indulgences and pardons to those who should arm 
 against these Mahometans, so he termed these unfortunate 
 Lana:uedocians. Once all were Turks when thev were not 
 Romanists. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was constrained 
 to submit. The inhabitants were passed on the edge of the 
 sword, without distinction of age or sex. It was then he 
 established that scourge of Europe, The Inquisition. This 
 pope considered that, though men might be compelled to
 
 The Inquisition. 167 
 
 submit by arms, numbers migbt remain professing par- 
 ticular dogmas ; and he established this sanguinary tribunal 
 solely to inspect into all families, and inquiee concerning all 
 persons who they imagined were unfriendly to the interests 
 of Kome. Dominic did so much by his persecuting inquiries, 
 that he firmly established the Inquisition at Toulouse. 
 
 Not before the year 1484< it became known in Spain. To 
 another Dominican, John de Torquemada, the court of Rome 
 owed this obligation. As he was the confessor of Queen 
 Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise, that if ever she 
 ascended the throne, she would use every means to extir- 
 pate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Grranada, 
 and had expelled from the Spanish realms multitudes of un- 
 fortunate Moors. A few remained, whom, with the Jews, he 
 compelled to become Christians : they at least assumed 
 the name ; but it was well known that both these nations 
 naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of 
 the Christians. This race was afterwards distinguished as 
 Cliristianos Novos ; and in forming marriages, the blood of 
 the Hidalgo was considered to lose its purity by mingling 
 with such a suspicious source. 
 
 Torquemada pretended that this dissimulation would greatly 
 hurt the interests of the holy religion. The queen listened 
 with respectful diffidence to her confessor ; and at length, 
 gained over the king to consent to the establishment of this 
 unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada, indefatigable in his zeal 
 for the holy chair, in the space of fourteen years that he ex- 
 ercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have prosecuted 
 near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were 
 condemned to the flames. 
 
 Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the 
 universal horror such proceedings spread. " A general jea- 
 lousy and suspicion took possession of all ranks of people : 
 friendship and sociability were at an end ! Brothers were 
 afraid of brothers, fathers of their children." 
 
 The situation and the feelings of one imprisoned in the 
 cells of the Inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a 
 mild, and meek, and learned man, whose controversy with 
 Limborch is well known. When he escaped from Spain he 
 took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died a philoso- 
 phical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself 
 in the cell of the Inquisition. " Inclosed in this dungeon I 
 could not even find space enough to turn myself about ; I suf-
 
 168 The Inquisition. 
 
 fered so mucli ttat I felt my brain disordered. I frequently asked 
 myself, am 1 really Don Balthazar Orobio, who used to walk 
 about Seville at my pleasure, who so greatly enjoyed myself 
 with my wife and children ? I often imagined that all my 
 life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born 
 in this dungeon ! The only amusement I could invent was 
 metaphysical disputations. I was at once opponent, respon- 
 dent, and praeses !" 
 
 In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous in- 
 quisitor ; six pillars surround this tomb ; to each is chained a 
 Moor, as preparatory to his being burnt. On this St. Fois 
 ingeniously observes, " If ever the Jack Ketch of any country 
 should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might 
 serve as an excellent model." 
 
 The Inquisition punished heretics by Jire, to elude the 
 maxim, " Ecclesia non novit sanguinem ;" for burning a man, 
 say they, does not sJied his blood. Otho, the bishop at the 
 Norman invasion, in the tapestry worked by Matilda the 
 queen of William the Conqueror, is represented with a mace 
 in his hand, for the purpose that when he despatched his 
 antagonist he might not spill blood, but only break his bones ! 
 Religion has had her quibbles as well as law. 
 
 The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in 
 France ; but it may perhaps surprise the reader that a recorder 
 of London, in a speech, urged the necessity of setting up an 
 Inquisition in England ! It was on the trial of Penn the 
 Quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury, which highly 
 provoked the said recorder. ^^ Magna Charta'' writes the 
 prefacer to the trial, " with the recorder of London, is nothing 
 
 rtxore i\i?in Magna F .'" It appears that the jury, after 
 
 being kept two days and two nights to alter their verdict, 
 were in the end both fined and imprisoned. Sir John 
 Howell, the recorder, said, " Till now I never understood the 
 reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffer- 
 ing the Inquisition among them ; and certainly it will not be 
 well with us, till something like unto the Sjjanish Inquisition 
 he in England.'" Thus it will ever be, while both parties 
 struggling for the pre-eminence rush to the sharp extremity 
 of things, and annihilate the trembling balance of the con- 
 stitution. But the adopted motto of Lord Erskine must ever 
 be that of every Briton, " Trial by Juryy 
 
 So late as the year 1761, Gabriel Malagrida, an old man 
 of seventy, was burnt by these evangelical executioners. His
 
 The Inquisition. 169 
 
 trial was printed at Amsterdam, 1762, from the Lisbon copy. 
 And for what was this unhappy Jesuit condemned ? Not, as 
 somehaveimagined,for his havingbeenconcernedinaconspiracy 
 against the king of Portugal. No other charge is laid to him 
 in this trial but tliat of having indulged certain heretical 
 notions, which any other tribunal but that of the Inquisition 
 would have looked upon as the delirious fancies of a fanatical 
 old man. Will posterity believe, that in the eighteenth 
 century an aged visionary was led to the stake for having said, 
 amongst other extravagances, that " The holy Virgin having 
 commanded him to write the life of Anti-Christ, told him that 
 he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John 
 the Evangelist ; that there were to be three Anti-Christs, 
 and that the last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a 
 nun, in the year 19120 ; and that he would marry Pi'oserpine, 
 one of the infernal furies." 
 
 For such ravings as these the unhappy old man was burnt 
 in recent times. Granger assures us, that in his remembrance 
 a horse that had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, the 
 hour of the day, &c., by significant tokens, was, together with 
 his owner, put into the Inquisition for both of them dealing 
 with the devil ! A man of letters declared that, having 
 fallen into their hands, nothing perplexed him so much as the 
 ignorance of the inquisitor and his council ; and it seemed 
 very doubtful whether they had read even the Scriptures.* 
 
 One of the most interesting anecdotes relating to the 
 terrible Inquisition, exemplifying how the use of the diabolical 
 engines of torture forces men to confess crimes they have not 
 been guilty of, was related to me by a Portuguese gentleman. 
 
 A nobleman in Lisbon having heard that his physician and 
 friend was imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale 
 pretext of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them to 
 request his freedom, assuring the inquisitor that his friend was 
 as orthodox a Christian as himself. The physician, notwith- 
 standing this high recommendation, was put to the torture ; 
 and, as was usually the case, at the height of his sufferings 
 confessed everything they wished ! This enraged the noble- 
 man, and feigning a dangerous illness he begged the inquisitor 
 would come to give him his last spiritual aid. 
 
 As soon as the Dominican arrived, the lord, who had pre- 
 pared his confidential servants, commanded the inquisitor in 
 
 * See also the remark of Galileo in a previous page of tliis volume, in 
 the article ieaded " The Persecuted Learned."
 
 170 The Inquisition. 
 
 their presence to acknowledge himself a Jew, to write his 
 confession, and to sign it. On the refusal of the inquisitor, 
 the nobleman ordered his people to put on the inquisitor's 
 head a red-hot helmet, which to his astonishment, in drawing 
 aside a screen, he beheld glowing in a small furnace. At the 
 sight of this new instrument of torture, " Luke's iron 
 crown," the monk wrote and subscribed the abhorred con- 
 fession. The nobleman then observed, " See now the 
 enormity of your manner of proceeding with unhappy men ! 
 My poor physician, like you, has confessed Judaism ; but with 
 this difference, only torments have forced that from him which 
 fear alone has drawn from you !" 
 
 The Inquisition has not failed of receiving its due praises. 
 Macedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, has discovered the " Origin of 
 the Inquisition'^ in the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to 
 allege that God was the first who began the functions of an 
 inquisitor over Cain and the workmen of Babel ! Macedo, 
 however, is not so dreaming a personage as he appears ; for 
 he obtained a Professor's chair at Padua for the arguments he 
 delivered at Venice against the pope, which were published by 
 the title of " The literary Roarings of the Lion at St. Mark ;" 
 besides he is the author of 109 different works ; but it is 
 curious to observe how far our interest is apt to prevail over 
 our conscience, — Macedo praised the Inquisition up to the 
 skies, while he sank the pope to nothing ! 
 
 Among the great revolutions of this age, and since the last 
 edition of this work, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal is 
 abolished — but its history enters into that of the human 
 mind ; and the history of the Inquisition by Limborch, 
 translated by Chandler, with a very curious " Introduction," 
 loses none of its value with the philosophical mind. This 
 monstrous tribunal of human opinions aimed at the sovereignty 
 of the intellectual world, without intellect. 
 
 In these changeful times, the history of the Inquisition is 
 not the least mutable. The Inquisition, which was abolished, 
 was again restored — and at the present moment, I know not 
 whether it is to be restored or abolished.
 
 171 
 
 SINGULARITIES OBSERVED BY VARIOUS NATIONS IN THEIR 
 
 REPASTS, 
 
 The Makllvian islanders eat alone. They retire into the most 
 hidden parts of their houses ; and they draw down the cloths 
 that serve as blinds to their windows, that they may eat 
 unobserved. This custom probably arises from the savage, in 
 early periods of society, concealing himself to eat : he fears 
 that another, with as sharp an appetite, but more strong than 
 himself, should come and ravish his meal from him. The ideas 
 of witchcraft are also widely spread among barbarians ; and 
 they are not a little fearful that some incantation may be 
 thrown among their victuals. 
 
 In noticing the solitary meal of the Maldivian islander, 
 another reason may be alleged for this misanthropical repast. 
 They never will eat with any one who is inferior to them in 
 birth, in riches, or dignity ; and as it is a difficult matter to 
 settle this equality, they are condemned to lead this unsocial 
 life. 
 
 On the contrary, the islanders of the Philippines are 
 remarkably social. Whenever one of them finds himself 
 without a companion to partake of his meal, he runs till he 
 meets with one ; and we are assured that, however keen his 
 appetite may be, he ventures not to satisfy it without a guest.* 
 
 Savages, says Montaigne, when they eat, " S'essui/ent les 
 doigts aux cuisses, a la bourse des genitoires, et a la jjldnte 
 des pieds" We cannot forbear exulting in the polished con- 
 venience of napkins ! 
 
 The tables of the rich Chinese shine with a beautiful 
 varnish, and are covered with silk carpets very elegantly 
 worked. They do not make use of plates, knives, and forks : 
 every guest has two little ivory or ebony sticks, which he 
 bandies very adroitly. 
 
 The Otaheiteans, who are naturally social, and very gentle 
 in their manners, feed separately from each other. At the 
 hour of repast, the members of each family divide ; two 
 brothers, two sisters, and even husband and wife, father and 
 mother, have each their respective basket. They place them- 
 selves at the distance of two or three yards from each other ; 
 
 * In Cocbin-China, a traveller may always obtain his dinner by simply 
 joining the family of the first house he may choose to enter, such hospita- 
 lity being the general custom.
 
 173 Singularities of Nations in their Repasts. 
 
 they turn their backs, and take their meal in profound 
 silence. 
 
 The custom of drinking at different hours from those 
 assigned for eating exists among many savage nations. Ori- 
 ginally begun from necessity, it became a habit, which sub- 
 sisted even when the fountain was near to them, A people 
 transplanted, observes an ingenious philosopher, preserve in 
 another climate modes of living which relate to those from 
 whence they originally came. It is thus the Indians of 
 Brazil scrupulously abstain from eating when they drink, 
 and from drinking when they eat.* 
 
 When neither decency nor politeness is known, the man 
 who invites his friends to a repast is greatly embarrassed to 
 testify his esteem for his guests, and to offer them some 
 amusement ; for the savage guest imposes on himself this 
 obligation. Amongst the greater part of the American 
 Indians, the host is continually on the watch to solicit them 
 to eat, but touches nothing himself. In New France, he 
 wearies himself with singing, to divert the company while 
 they eat. 
 
 When civilization advances, men wish to show their confi- 
 dence to their friends : they treat their guests as relations ; 
 and it is said that in China the master of a house, to give a 
 mark of his politeness, absents himself while his guests regale 
 themselves at his table with undisturbed revelry. f 
 
 The demonstrations of friendship in a rude state have a 
 savage and gross chai-acter, which it is not a little curious to 
 observe. The Tartars pull a man by the ear to press him to 
 drink, and they continue tormenting him till he opens his 
 mouth ; then they clap their hands and dance before him. 
 
 No customs seem more i-idiculous than those practised by 
 a Kamschatkan, when he wishes to make another his friend. 
 He first invites him to eat. The host and his guest strip 
 themselves in a cabin which is heated to an uncommon 
 degree. While the guest devours the food with which they 
 serve him, the other continually stirs the fire. The stranger 
 must bear the excess of the heat as well as of the repast. He 
 vomits ten times before he will yield ; but, at length obliged 
 to acknowledge himself overcome, he begins to compound 
 matters. He purchases a moment's respite by a present of 
 
 * Esprit des Usages, et des Coutumes. 
 •j- If the master be present, he devotes himself to cramming his guests 
 to repletion.
 
 MonarcJis. 173 
 
 clothes or dogs ; for his host threatens to heat the cabin, 
 and obhjje him to eat till he dies. The stranger has the 
 right of retaliation allowed to him : he treats in the same 
 manner, and exacts the same presents. Should his host not 
 accept the invitation of him whom he had so handsomely 
 regaled, in that case the guest would take possession of his 
 cabin, till he had the presents returned to him which the 
 other had in so singular a manner obtained. 
 
 For this extravagant custom a curious reason has been 
 alleged. It is meant to put the person to a trial, whose 
 friendship is sought. The Kamschatkan who is at the ex- 
 pense of the fires, and the repast, is desirous to know if the 
 stranger has the strength to support pain with him, and if 
 he is generous enough to share with him some part of his 
 property. While the guest is employed on his meal, he con- 
 tinues heating the cabin to an insupportable degree ; and for 
 a last proof of the stranger's constancy and attachment, he 
 exacts more clothes and more dogs. The host passes through 
 the same ceremonies in the cabin of the stranger ; and he 
 shows, in his turn, with what degree of fortitude he can 
 defend his friend. The most singular customs would appear 
 simple, if it were possible for the philosopher to understand 
 them on the spot. 
 
 As a distinguishing mark of their esteem, the negroes of 
 Ardra drink out of one cup at the same time. The king of 
 Loango eats in one house, and drinks in another. A Kam- 
 schatkan kneels before his guests ; he cuts an enormous slice 
 from a sea-calf; he crams it entire into the mouth of his 
 friend, furiously crying out "Tana!"'' — There! and cutting 
 avyay what hangs about his lips, snatches and swallows it 
 with avidity. 
 
 ^ A barbarous magnificence attended the feasts of the an- 
 cient monarchs of France. After their coronation or conse- 
 cration, when they sat at table, the nobility served them on 
 horseback. 
 
 MONARCHS. 
 
 Saint Chutsostom has this very acute observation on Icings: 
 Many monarchs are infected with a strange wish that their 
 successors may turn out bad princes. Good kings desire it, 
 as they imagine, continues this pious politician, that their 
 glory will appear the more splendid by the contrast ; and the
 
 174 Monarchs. 
 
 bad desire it, as they consider such kings will serve to coun- 
 tenance their own misdemeanours. 
 
 Princes, says Gracian, are willing to be aided, but not 
 surpassed: which maxim is thus illustrated. 
 
 A Spanish lord having frequently played at chess with 
 Philip II., and won all the games, perceived, when his Ma- 
 jesty rose from play, that he was much ruffled with chagrin. 
 The lord, when he returned home, said to his family — " My 
 children, we have nothing more to do at court : there we must 
 expect no favour ; for the king is offended at my having won 
 of him every game of chess." As chess entirely depends on 
 the genius of the players, and not on fortime, King Philip 
 the chess-player conceived he ought to suffer no rival. 
 
 This appears still clearer by the anecdote told of the Earl 
 of Sunderland, minister to George I., who was partial to the 
 game of chess. He once played with the Laird of Cluny, and 
 the learned Cunningham, the editor of Horace. Cunningham, 
 with too much skill and too much sincerity, beat his lord- 
 ship. " The earl was so fretted at his superiority and surli- 
 ness, that he dismissed him without any reward. Cluny 
 allowed himself sometimes to be beaten ; and by that means 
 got his pardon, with sovnething handsome besides." 
 
 In the Criticon of Gracian, there is a singular anecdote 
 relative to kings. 
 
 A Polish monarch having quitted his companions when he 
 was hunting, his courtiers found him, a few days after, in a 
 market-place, disguised as a porter, and lending out the use 
 of his shoulders for a few pence. At this they were as much 
 surprised as they were doubtful at first whether the porter 
 could be his majesty. At length they ventured to express 
 their complaints that so great a personage should debase 
 himself by so vile an employment. His majesty having 
 heard them, replied — " Upon my honour, gentlemen, the load 
 which I quitted is by far heavier than the one you see me 
 '^arry here : the weightiest is but a straw, when compared to 
 that world under which I laboured. I have slept more in 
 four nights than I have during all my reign. I begin to 
 live, and to be king of myself. Elect whom you choose. For 
 me, who am so well, it were madness to return to courts 
 Another Polish king, who succeeded this philosophic monar- 
 chical porter, when they placed the sceptre in his hand, ex- 
 claimed — "I had rather tug at an oar!" The vacillating 
 fortunes of the Polish monarchy present several of these
 
 Monarchs. 175 
 
 anecdotes ; their monarchs appear to have frequently been 
 philosophers ; and, as the world is made, an excellent philo- 
 sopher proves but an inditierent king. 
 
 Two observations on kings were offered to a courtier with 
 great naivete by that experienced politician, the Duke of 
 Alva : — " Kings who affect to be familiar with their compa- 
 nions make use of men as they do of oranges; they take 
 oranges to extract their juice, and when they are well sucked 
 they throw them away. Take care the king does not do the 
 same to you ; be careful that he does not read all your 
 thoughts ; otherwise he will throw you aside to the back of 
 his chest, as a book of which he has read enough." " The 
 squeezed orange," the Xing of Prussia applied in his dispute 
 with Voltaire. 
 
 When it was suggested to Dr. Johnson that kings must be 
 unhappy because they are deprived of the greatest of all 
 satisfactions, easy and unreserved society, he observed that 
 this was an ill-founded notion. " Being a king does not ex- 
 clude a man from such society. Great kings have always 
 been social. The King of Prussia, the only great king at 
 present (this was the great Frederic) is very social. 
 Charles the Second, the last king of England who was a man 
 of parts, was social ; our Henries and Edwards were all 
 social." 
 
 The Marquis of Halifax, in his character of Charles II., 
 has exhibited a trait in the royal character of a good-natured 
 monarch ; that trait, is sauntering. I transcribe this curious 
 observation, which introduces us into a levee. 
 
 " There was as much of laziness as of love in all those 
 hours which he passed amongst his mistresses, who served 
 only to fill up his seraglio, while a bewitching kind of 
 pleasure, called sauntering, was the sultana queen he de- 
 lighted in. 
 
 " The thing called sauntering is a stronger temptation 
 to princes than it is to others. — The being galled with im- 
 portunities, pursued from one room to another with asking 
 faces; the dismal sound of unreasonable complaints and ill- 
 grounded pretences ; the deformity of fraud ill-disguised : — 
 all these would make any man run away from them, and I 
 used to think it was the motive for making him walk so 
 fast."
 
 176 
 
 OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS, HIGHNESS, AND 
 EXCELLENCE. 
 
 The title of ilhistnous was never given, till the reign of 
 Constantine, but to those whose reputation was splendid in 
 arms or in letters. Adulation had not yet adopted this 
 noble woi-d into her vocabulary. Suetonius composed a book 
 to record those who had possessed this title ; and, as it was 
 then bestowed, a moderate volume was sufficient to contain 
 their names. 
 
 In the time of Constantine, the title of illusfriovs was 
 given more particularly to those princes who had distin- 
 guished themselves in war ; but it was not continued to 
 their descendants. At length, it became very common ; "and 
 every son of a prince was illustrious. It is now a conve- 
 nient epithet for the poet. 
 
 In the rage for titles the ancient lawyers in Italy were 
 not satisfied by calling kings illtjstres ; they went a step 
 higher, and would have emperors to be super-illustres, a 
 barbarous coinage of their own. 
 
 In Spain, they published a book of titles for their kings, 
 as well as for the Portuguese ; but Selden tells us, that 
 " their Cortesias and giving of titles grew at length, through 
 the affectation of heaping great attributes on their princes 
 to such an insuff'erable forme, that a remedie was provided 
 against it." This remedy was an act published by Philip 
 III. which ordained that all the Cortesias, as they termed 
 these strange phrases they had so servilely and ridiculously 
 invented, should be reduced to a simple superscription, " To 
 the king our lord," leaving out those fantastical attributes 
 of which every secretary had vied with his predecessors in 
 increasing the number. 
 
 It would fill three or four of these pages to transcribe the 
 titles and attributes of the Grand Signior, which he assumes 
 in a letter to Henry IV. Selden, in his " Titles of Honour," 
 first part, p. 140, has preserved them. This " emperor of 
 victorious emperors," as he styles himself, at length con- 
 descended to agree with the emperor of Germany, in 1606, 
 that in all their letters and instruments they should be only 
 styled father and son : the emperor calling the sultan his 
 son ; and the sultan the emperor. \v regard of his years, his 
 father^
 
 Of the Titles of Illustrious, Highness, ^c. 177 
 
 Formerly, says Houssaie, the title of highness was only 
 given to kings ; but now it has become so common that all 
 the great houses assume it. All the great, says a modern 
 are desirous of being confounded with princes, and are ready 
 to seize on the privileges of royal dignity. We have already 
 come to highness. The pride of our descendants, I suspect, 
 will usurp that of majesty. 
 
 Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and his queen Isabella of Cas- 
 tile, were only treated with the title of highness. Charles 
 was the first who took that of majesty : not in his quality of 
 king of Spain, but as emperor. St. Foix informs us, that 
 kings were usually addressed by the titles of most illustrious, 
 or your serenity, or your grace; but that the custom of 
 giving them that of majesty was only established by Louis 
 XI., a prince the least majestic in all his actions, his manners, 
 and his exterior — a severe monarch, but no ordinary man, 
 the Tiberius of France. The manners of this moiiarch were 
 most sordid ; in public audiences he dressed like the meanest 
 of the people, and affected to sit on an old broken chair, with 
 a filthy dog on his knees. In an account found of his house- 
 hold, this majestic prince has a charge made him for two new 
 sleeves sewed on one of his old doublets. 
 
 Formerly kings were apostrophised by the title of your 
 grace. Henry VIII. was the first, says Houssaie, who 
 assumed the title of highness ; and at length majesty. It 
 was Francis I. who saluted him with this last title, in their 
 interview in the year 1520, though he called himself only the 
 first gentleman in his kingdom ! 
 
 So distinct were once the titles of highness and excellence, 
 that when Don Juan, the brother ol" Pliilip II., was per- 
 mitted to take up the latter title, and the city of Granada 
 saluted him by the title of highness, it occasioned such serious 
 jealousy at court, that had he persisted in it, he would have 
 been condemned for treason. 
 
 The usual title of cardinals, about IGOO, was seignoria 
 illustrissima ; the Duke of Lerma, the Spanish minister and 
 cardinal, in his old age, assumed the title of eccellencia 
 reverendissima. The church of Rome was in its glory, and 
 to be called reverend was then accounted a higher honour 
 than to be styled illustrious. But by use illustrious grew 
 familiar, and reverend vulgar, and at last the cardinals were 
 distinguished by the title of eminent. 
 
 After all these historical notices respecting these titles, the 
 
 TOL, I. N
 
 178 Titles of Sovereigns. 
 
 reader will smile when he is acquainted with the reason of an 
 honest curate of Montferrat, who refused to bestow the title 
 of Jiigliness on the duke of Mantua, because he found in his 
 breviary these words, Tii solus Dominus, tii solus Altissimus ; 
 from all which he concluded, that none but the Lord was to 
 be honoured with the title of liighness ! The " Titles of 
 Honour" of Selden is a very curious volume, and, as the 
 learned Usher told Evelyn, the most valuable work of this 
 great scholar. The best edition is a folio of about one thou- 
 sand pages. Selden vindicates the right of a king of England 
 to the title of emperor. 
 
 " And never yet was title did not move ; 
 And never eke a mind, that title did not love." 
 
 TITLES OF SOVEREIGNS. 
 
 In countries where despotism exists in all its force, and is 
 gratified in all its caprices, either the intoxication of power 
 has occasioned sovereigns to assume the most solemn and the 
 most fantastic titles ; or the royal duties and functions were 
 considered of so high and extensive a nature, that the people 
 expressed their notion of the pure monarchical state by the 
 most energetic descriptions of oriental fancy. 
 
 The chiefs of the Natchez are regarded by their people as 
 the children of the sun, and they bear the name of their 
 father. 
 
 The titles which some chiefs assume are not always honour- 
 able in themselves ; it is sufficient if the people respect them. 
 The king of Quiterva calls himself the great lion ; and for 
 this reason lions are there so much respected, that they are 
 not allowed to kill them, but at certain royal huntings. 
 
 The king of Monomotapa is surrounded by musicians and 
 poets, who adulate him by such refined flatteries as lord of 
 the sun and moon ; great magician ; and great thief! — where 
 probably thievery is merely a term for dexterity. 
 
 The Asiatics have bestowed what to us appear as ridicu- 
 lous titles of honour on their princes. The king of Arracan 
 assumes the following ones : " Emperor of Arracan, possessor 
 of the white elephant, and the two ear-rings, and in vu-tue of 
 this possession legitimate heir of Pegu and Brama ; lord of 
 the twelve provinces of Bengal, and the twelve kings who 
 place their heads under his feet."
 
 Royal Divinities. 1 79 
 
 His majesty of Ava is called God: when he writes to a 
 foreign sovereign he calls himself the king of kings, whom all 
 others should obey, as he is the cause of the preservation of 
 all animals ; the regulator of the seasons, the absolute master 
 of the ebb and flow of the sea, brother to the sun, and king of 
 the four-and-twenty umbrellas ! These umbrellas are always 
 carried before him as a mark of his dignity. 
 
 The titles of the kings of Achem are singular, though 
 voluminous. The most striking ones are sovereign of the 
 universe, whose body is luminous as the sun ; whom God 
 created to be as accomplished as the moon at her plenitude ; 
 whose eye glitters like the northern star ; a king as spiritual 
 as a ball is round ; who when he rises shades all his people ; 
 from under whose feet a sweet odour is wafted, &c. &c. 
 
 The Kandyan sovereign is called Deivo (God). In a deed 
 of gift he proclaims his extraordinary attributes. " The 
 protector of religion, whose fome is infinite, and of surpassing 
 excellence, exceeding the moon, the unexpanded jessamine 
 buds, the stars, &c. ; whose feet are as fragrant to the noses 
 of other kings as flowers to bees ; our most noble patron and 
 god by custom," &c. 
 
 After a long enumeration of the countries possessed by the 
 king of Persia, they give him some poetical distinctions : the 
 branch of honour ; the mirror of virtue ; and the rose of 
 delight. 
 
 ROYAL DIVINITIES. 
 
 Theee is a curious dissertation in the " Memoires de I'Aca- 
 demie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres," by the Abbe 
 Mongault, " on the divine honours which were paid to the 
 governors of provinces during the Roman republic ;" in their 
 lifetime these originally began in gratitude, and at length 
 degenerated into flattery. These facts curiously show how 
 far the human mind can advance, when led on by customs 
 that operate unperceivably on it, and blind us in our absurdi- 
 ties. One of these ceremonies was exquisitely ludicrous. 
 When they voted a statue to a proconsul, they placed it 
 among the statues of the gods in the festival called Lecti- 
 sternium, from the ridiculous circumstances of this solemn 
 festival. On that day the gods were invited to a repast, 
 which was however spread in various quarters of the city, to 
 satiate mouths more mortal. The gods were however taken 
 
 N 2
 
 180 Royal Divinities. 
 
 down from their pedestals, laid on beds ornamented in their 
 temples ; pillows were placed under their marble heads ; and 
 while they reposed in this easy posture they were served with 
 a magnificent repast. When Cassar had conquered Rome, the 
 servile senate put him to dine with the gods ! Fatigued by 
 and ashamed of these honours, he desired the senate to erase 
 from his statue in the capitol the title they had given him of 
 a demi-god ! 
 
 The adulations lavished on the first Roman emperors were 
 extravagant ; but perhaps few know that they were less 
 offensive than the flatterers of the third century under the 
 Pagan, and of the fourth under the Christian emperors. 
 Those who are acquainted with the character of the age of 
 Augustulus have only to look at the one, and the other code, 
 to find an infinite number of passages which had not been 
 tolerable even in that age. For instance, here is a law of 
 Arcadius and Honorius, published in 404 : — 
 
 " Let the oflficers of the palace be warned to abstain from 
 frequenting tumultuous meetings ; and that those who, insti- 
 gated by a sacrilegious temerity, dare to oppose the authority 
 of our divinity, shall be deprived of their employments, and 
 their estates confiscated." The letters they write are holy. 
 When the sons speak of their fathers, it is, " Their father of 
 divine meraovy \'' or " Their <^?/y/«e father." They call their 
 own laws oracles, and celestial oracles. So also their subjects 
 address them by the titles of " Your Perpetuity, your 
 Eternity.''^ And it appears by a law of Theodoric the Great, 
 that the emperors at length added this to their titles. It 
 begins, " If any magistrate, after having concluded a public 
 work, put his name rather than that of Our Peiyetuify, let 
 him be judged guilty of high-treason." All this reminds one 
 of "the celestial empire" of the Chinese. 
 
 Whenever the Great Mogul made an observation, Bernier 
 tells us that some of the first Omrahs lifted up their hands, 
 crying, " Wonder ! wonder ! wonder !" And a proverb current 
 in his dominion was, " If the king saith at noonday it is 
 night, you are to say. Behold the moon and the stars !" 
 Such adulation, however, could not alter the general condition 
 and fortune of this unhappy being, who became a sovereign 
 without knowing what it is to be one. He was brought out 
 of the seraglio to be placed on the throne, and it was he, 
 rather than the spectators, who might have truly used the 
 interjection of astonishment !
 
 181 
 
 DETHRONED MONARCHS. 
 
 ToTiTtrKE never appears in a more extravagant humour than 
 when she reduces monarchs to become mendicants. HaU' a 
 century ago it was not imagined that our own times should 
 have to record many such instances. After having contem- 
 plated kings raised into divinities, we see them now depressed 
 as ber/gars. Our own times, in two opposite senses, may em- 
 phatically be distinguished as the oge of kings. 
 
 In Candide, or the Optimist, there is an admirable stroke 
 of Voltaire's. Eight travellers meet in an obscure inn, and 
 some of them with not sufficient money to pay for a scurvy 
 dinner. In the course of conversation, they are discovered to 
 be eight monarchs in Europe, who had been deprived of their 
 crowns ! 
 
 What added to this exquisite satire was, that there were 
 eight living monarchs at that moment wanderers on the 
 earth ; — a circumstance which has since occurred ! 
 
 Adelaide, the widow of Lothario, king of Italy, one of the 
 most beautiful women in her age, was besieged in Pavia by 
 Berenger, who resolved to constrain her to marry his son 
 after Pavia was taken ; slie escaped from her prison with her 
 almoner. The archbishop of Eeggio had offered her an 
 asylum : to reach it, she and her almoner travelled on foot 
 through the country by night, concealing herself in the day- 
 time among the corn, wliile the almoner begged for alms and 
 food through the villages. 
 
 The emperor Henry IV. after having been deposed and 
 imprisoned by his son, Henry V., escaped from prison ; poor, 
 vagrant, and without aid, he entreated the bishop of Spires 
 to grant him a lay prebend in his church, " I have studied," 
 said he, " and have learned to sing, and may therefore be of 
 some service to you." The request was denied, and he died 
 miserably and obscurely at Liege, after having drawn the at- 
 tention of Europe to his victories and his grandeur ! 
 
 Mary of Medicis, the widow of Henry the Great, mother 
 of Louis XIII., mother-in-law of three sovereigns, and 
 regent of France, frequently wanted the necessaries of life, 
 and died at Cologne in the utmost misery. The intrigues of 
 Richelieu compelled her to exile herself, and live an unhappy 
 fugitive. Her petition exists, with this supphcatory open-
 
 183 Dethroned Monarchs. 
 
 ing : " Supplie Mavie, Reine de France et de Navarre, disant, 
 que depuis le 23 Fevrier elle aurait ete arretee prisonniere au 
 chateau de Compiegne, sans etre ni accuses tii soup^onne," 
 &c. Lilly, the astrologer, in his Life and Death of King 
 Charles the First, presents us with a melancholy picture of 
 tliis unfortunate monarch. He has also described the person 
 of the old queen-mother of France : — 
 
 " In the month of August, 1641, I beheld the old queen- 
 mother of France departing from London, in company of 
 Thomas, Earl of Arundel. A sad spectacle of mortality it 
 was, and produced tears from mine eyes and many other be- 
 holders, to see an aged, lean, decrepit, poor queen, ready for 
 her grave, necessitated to depart hence, having no place of 
 residence in this world left her, but where the courtesy of 
 her hard fortune assigned it. She had been the only stately 
 and magnificent woman of Europe : wife to the greatest 
 king that ever lived in France ; mother unto one king and 
 unto two queens." 
 
 In the year 1595, died at Paris, Antonio, king of Portugal. 
 His body is interred at the Cordeliers, and his heart deposited 
 at the Ave-Maria. Nothing on earth could compel this 
 prince to renounce his crown. He passed over to England, 
 and Elizabeth assisted him with troops; but at length he 
 died in France in great poverty. This dethroned monarch 
 was happy in one thing, which is indeed rare : in all his 
 miseries he had a servant, who proved a tender and faithful 
 friend, and who only desii'ed to participate in his misfor- 
 tunes, and to soften his miseries ; and for the recompense of 
 his services he only wished to be buried at the feet of his 
 dear master. This hero in loyalty, to whom the ancient 
 Romans would have raised altars, was Don Diego Bothei, 
 one of the greatest lords of the court of Portugal, and who 
 drew his origin from the kings of Bohemia. 
 
 Hume supplies an anecdote of singular ro3^al distress. The 
 queen of England, with her son Charles, " had a moderate 
 pension assigned her ; but it was so ill paid, and her credit 
 ran so low, that one morning when the Cardinal de Retz 
 waited on her, she informed him that her daughter, the 
 Princess Henrietta, was obliged to lie a-bed for want of a 
 fire to warm her. To such a condition was reduced, in the 
 midst of Paris, a queen of England, and a daughter of Henry 
 IV. of France 1" We find another proof of her extreme
 
 Feudal Customs. 183 
 
 poverty. Salmasius, after publishing his celebrated political 
 book, in favour of Charles I., the Defensio Regia, was much 
 blamed by a friend for not having sent a copy to the widowed 
 queen of Charles, who, he writes, " though poor, would yet 
 have paid the bearer." 
 
 The daughter of James the First, who married the Elector 
 Palatine, in her attempts to get her husband crowned, was 
 reduced to the utmost distress, and wandered frequently in 
 disguise. 
 
 A strange anecdote is related of Charles VII. of France. 
 Our Henry V. had shrunk his kingdom into the town of 
 Bourges. It is said that having told a shoemaker, after he 
 had just tried a pair of his boots, that he had no money to 
 pay for them, Crispin had such callous feelings that he refused 
 his majesty the boots. " It is for this reason," says 
 Comines, " I praise those princes who are on good terms with 
 the lowest of their people ; for they know not at what hour 
 they may want them." 
 
 Many monai'chs of this day have experienced more than 
 once the truth of the reflection of Comines. 
 
 We may add here, that in all conquered countries the de- 
 scendants of royal families have been found among the dregs 
 of the populace. An Irish prince has been discovered in the 
 person of a miserable peasant ; and in Mexico, its faithful 
 historian Clavigero notices, that he has known a locksmith, 
 who was a descendant of its ancient kings, and a tailor, the 
 representative of one of its noblest families. 
 
 FEUDAL CUSTOMS. 
 
 Ba-EBAEOUS as the feudal customs were, they were the first 
 attempts at organising European society. The northern na- 
 tions, in their irruptions and settlements in Em'ope, were 
 barbarians independent of each other, till a sense of public 
 safety induced these hordes to confederate. But the private 
 jidividual reaped no benefit from tlie public union ; on the 
 contrary, he seems to have lost his wild liberty in the subju- 
 gation ; he in a short time was compelled to suffer from his 
 chieftain ; and the curiosity of the philosopher is excited by 
 contemplating in the feudal customs a barbarous people car- 
 rying into their first social institutions their original ferocity.
 
 184 Feudal Customs. 
 
 The institution of forming cities into communities at length 
 gradually diminished this military and aristocratic tyranny ; 
 and the freedom of cities, originating in the pursuits of com- 
 merce, shook off the yoke of insolent lordships. A famous 
 ecclesiastical writer of that day, who had imbibed the feudal 
 prejudices, calls these communities, which were distinguished 
 by the name of Ubertates (hence probably our municipal term 
 the liberties), as " execrable inventions, by which, contrary to 
 law and justice, slaves withdrew themselves from that obe- 
 dience which they owed to their masters." Such was the ex- 
 piring voice of aristocratic tyranny ! This subject has been 
 ingeniously discussed by Robertson in his preliminary volume 
 to (Jharles V. ; but the following facts constitute the picture 
 which the historian leaves to be gleaned by the minuter in- 
 quirer. 
 
 The feudal government introduced a species of servitude 
 which till that time was unknown, and which was called the 
 servitude of the land. The bondmen or serfs, and the villains 
 or country servants, did not reside in the house of the lord : 
 but they entirely depended on his caprice ; and he sold them, 
 as he did the animals, with the field where they lived, and 
 which they cultivated. 
 
 It is difficult to conceive with what insolence the petty 
 lords of those times tyrannized over their villains : they not 
 only oppressed their slaves with unremitted labour, instigated 
 by a vile cupidity, but their whim and caprice led them to 
 inflict miseries without even any motive of interest. 
 
 In Scotland they had a shameful institution of maiden- 
 rights ; and Malcolm the Third only abolished it, by ordering 
 that they might be redeemed by a quit-rent. The truth of 
 this circumstance Dahymple has attempted, with excusable 
 patriotism, to render doubtful. There seems, however, to be 
 no doubt of the existence of this custom ; since it also spread 
 through Germany, and various parts of Europe ; and the 
 French barons extended their domestic tyranny to three 
 nights of involuntary prostitution. Montesquieu is infinitely 
 French, when he could turn this shameful species of tyranny 
 jnto a hon mot ; for he boldly observes on this, " Cetoit bie/i 
 ces trois nuits-la qxCilfalloit clioisir ; car pour les autres on 
 ■rCauroit pas donne beaucoup d'argenty The legislator in the 
 wit forgot the feelings of his heart. 
 
 Others, to preserve this privilege when they could not 
 enjoy it in all its extent, thrust their leg booted into the bed
 
 Feudal Customs. 185 
 
 of the new-married couple. This was called the droit de 
 cuisse. When the bride was in bed, the esquire or lord per- 
 formed this ceremony, and stood there, his thigh in the bed, 
 with a lance in his hand : in this ridiculous attitude he re- 
 mained till he was tired ; and the bridegroom was not suffered 
 to enter the chamber till his lordship had retired. Such 
 indecent privileges must have originated in the worst of 
 intentions ; and when afterwards they advanced a step in 
 more humane manners, the ceremonial was preserved frona 
 tjf^aricious moti/es. Others have compelled their subjects to 
 pass the first night at the top of a tree, and there to consum- 
 mate their marriage ; to pass the bridal hours in a river ; or 
 to be bound naked to a cart, and to trace some furrows as 
 they were dragged ; or to leap with their feet tied over the 
 horns of stags. 
 
 Sometimes their caprice commanded the bridegroom to 
 appear in di-awers at their castle, and plunge into a ditch 
 of mud ; and sometimes they were compelled to beat the 
 waters of the ponds to hinder the frogs from disturbing the 
 lord! 
 
 Wardship, or the privilege of guardianship enjoyed by 
 some lords, was one of the barbarous inventions of the feudal 
 ages ; the guardian had both the care of the person, and for 
 his own use the revenue of the estates. This feudal custom 
 was so far abused in England, that the king sold these lord- 
 ships to strangers ; and when the guardian had fixed on a 
 marriage for the infant, if the youth or maiden did not agree 
 to this, they forfeited the value of the marriage ; that is, 
 the sum the guardian would have obtained by the other 
 party had it taken place. This cruel custom was a source of 
 domestic unhappiness, particularly in love-affairs, and has 
 served as the ground-work of many a pathetic play by our 
 elder dramatists. 
 
 There was a time when the German lords reckoned amongst 
 their privileges that of robbing on the highways of their 
 territory ; which ended in raising up the famous Hanseatic 
 Union, to protect their commerce against rapine and avaricious 
 exactions of toll. 
 
 Geoffrey, lord of Coventr}^, compelled his wife to ride naked 
 on a white pad through the streets of the town ; that by this 
 mode he might restore to the inhabitants those privileges of 
 which his wantonness had deprived them. This anecdote 
 some have suspected to be fictitious, from its extreme bar-
 
 186 Feudal Customs. 
 
 barity ; but the character of the middle ages will admit of 
 any kind of wanton barbarism. 
 
 When the abbot of Figeac made his entry into that town, 
 the lord of Montbron, dressed in a harlequin's coat, and one 
 of his legs naked, was compelled by an ancient custom to 
 conduct him to the door of his abbey, leading his horse by 
 the bridle. Blount's " Jocular Tenures" is a curious collection 
 of such capricious clauses in the grants of their lands.* 
 
 The feudal barons frequently combined to share among 
 themselves those children of their villains who appeared to 
 be the most healthy and serviceable, or remarkable for their 
 talent ; and not unfrequently sold them in their markets. 
 
 The feudal servitude is not, even in the present enlightened 
 times, abolished in Poland, in Germany, and in Russia. la 
 those countries, the bondmen are still entirely dependent on 
 the caprice of their masters. The peasants of Hungary or 
 Bohemia frequently revolt, and attempt to shake off the pres- 
 sure of feudal tyranny. 
 
 An anecdote of comparatively recent date displays their un- 
 feeling caprice. A lord or prince of the northern countries 
 passing through one of his villages, observed a small assem- 
 bly of peasants and their families amusing themselves with 
 dancing. He commands his domestics to part the men from 
 the women, and confine them in the houses. He orders the 
 coats of the women to be drawn up above their heads, and 
 tied with their garters. The men were then liberated, and 
 those who did not recognise their wives in that state received 
 a severe castigation. 
 
 Absolute dominion hardens the human heart ; and nobles 
 accustomed to command their bondmen will treat their domes- 
 tics as slaves, as capricious or inhuman West Indians treated 
 their domestic slaves. Those of Siberia punish theirs by a 
 free use of the cudgel or rod. The Abbe Chappe saw two 
 Russian slaves undress a chambermaid, who had by some 
 
 * Many are of the nature of "peppercorn rents." Thus a manor was 
 held from the king "by the service of one rose only, to be paid yearly, at 
 the feast of St. John the Baptist, for all services ; and they gave the king 
 one penny for the price of the said one rose, as it was appraised by the 
 barons of the Exchequer." Nicholas De Mora, in the reign of Henry 
 III., " rendered at the Exchequer two knives, one good, and the other 
 a very bad one, for certain land which he held in Shropshire." The 
 citizens of London still pay to the Exchequer six horseshoes with nails, 
 for their right to a piece of ground in the parish of St. Clement, oinginaDy 
 granted to a farrier, as early as the reign of Henry III.
 
 Gaming. 187 
 
 triflinsr nesrlis'ence s:iven offence to her mistress ; after havinc: 
 uncovered as far as her waist, one phvced her head hetwixt his 
 knees ; the other held her by the feet ; while both, armed 
 with two sharp rods, violently lashed her back till it pleased 
 the domestic tyrant to decree it tvas enough ! 
 
 After a perusal of these anecdotes of feudal tyranny, we 
 may exclaim with Goldsmith — 
 
 "I fly from petiy tyrants — to the thkone." 
 
 Mr. Hallam's " State of Europe during the Middle Ages" 
 renders this short article superfluous in a philosophical view. 
 
 GAMING. 
 
 Gaming appears to be an universal passion. Some have 
 attempted to deny its universality ; they have imagined that 
 it is chiefly prevalent in cold climates, where such a passion 
 becomes most capable of agitating and gratifying the torpid 
 minds of their inhabitants. 
 
 The fatal propensity of gaming is to be discovered, as well 
 amongst the inhabitants of the frigid and torrid zones, as 
 amongst those of the milder climates. The savage and the 
 civilized, the illiterate and the learned, are alike captivated by 
 the hope of accumulating wealth without the labours of 
 industry. 
 
 Barbeyrac has written an elaborate treatise on gaming, and 
 we have two quarto volumes, byC. Moore, on suicide, gaming, 
 and duelling, which may be placed by the side of Barbeyrac. 
 All these works are excellent sermons ; but a sermon to a 
 gambler, a duellist, or a suicide ! A dice-box, a sword, and 
 pistol, are the only things that seem to have any power over 
 these unhappy men, for ever lost in a labyrinth of their own 
 construction. 
 
 I am much pleased with the following thought. " The 
 ancients," says the author of Amusemens Serieux et Comiques, 
 " assembled to see their gladiators kill one another ; they 
 classed this among their games ! What barbarity ! But are 
 we less barbarous, we who call a game an assembly — ^who 
 meet at the faro table, where the actors themselves confess 
 they only meet to destro}^ one another?" In both these 
 cases the philosopher may perhaps discover their origin in the
 
 1 88 Gaming. 
 
 listless state of ennui requiring' an immediate impulse of the 
 passions, and very inconsiderate as to the fatal means which 
 procure the desired agitation. 
 
 The most ancient treatise by a modern on this subject, is 
 said to be by a French physician, one Eckeloo, who piibHshed 
 in 1569, De Aled, sive de curandd Ludendi in Pecuniam 
 cupiditafe, that is, " On games of chance, or a cure for 
 gaming." The treatise itself is only worth notice from the 
 circumstance of the author being himself one of the most 
 inveterate gamblers ; he wrote this work to convince himself 
 of this folly. But in spite of all his solemn vows, the 
 prayers of his friends, and his own book perpetually quoted 
 before his face, he was a great gamester to his last hour ! 
 The same circumstance happened to Sir John Denham, who 
 also published a tract against gaming, and to the last remained 
 a gamester. They had not the good sense of old Montaigne, 
 who gives the reason why he gave over gaming. " I used to 
 like formerly games of chance with cards and dice ; but of 
 that folly I have long been cured ; merely because I found 
 that whatever good countenance I put on when I lost, I did 
 not feel my vexation the less." Goldsmith fell a victim to 
 this madness. To play any game well requires serious study, 
 time, and experience. If a literary man plays deeply, he will 
 be duped even by shallow fellows, as well as by professed 
 gamblers. 
 
 Dice, and that little pugnacious animal the cocJc, are the 
 chief instruments employed by the numerous nations of the 
 East, to agitate their minds and ruin their fortunes ; to which 
 the Chinese, who are desperate gamesters, add the use of 
 cards. When all other property is played away, the Asiatic 
 gambler scruples not to stake his ^vife or his child, on the cast 
 of a die, or the courage and strength of a martial bird. If 
 still unsuccessful, the last venture he stakes is himself. 
 
 In the Island of Ceylon, cock-Jighting is carried to a great 
 height. The Sumatrans are addicted to the use of dice. A 
 strong spirit of play characterises a Malayan. After having 
 resigned everything to the good fortune of the winner, he is 
 reduced to a horrid state of desperation ; he then loosens a 
 certain lock of hair, which indicates war and destruction to 
 all whom the raving gamester meets. He intoxicates himself 
 with opium ; and working himself into a fit of frenzy, he 
 bites or kills every one who comes in his way. But as soon 
 as this lock is seen flowing, it is lawful to fire at the person
 
 Gaming. 189 
 
 and to destroy lilm as fast as possible. This custom is wlaat 
 is called " To run a muck." Thus Dryden writes — 
 
 "Frontless and satire-proof, he scours the streets, 
 And runs an Indian muck at all he meets." 
 
 Thus also Pope — 
 
 "Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet 
 To run a muck, and tilt at all I meet." 
 
 Johnson could not discover the derivation of the word 
 muck. To "run a muck" is an old phrase for attacking 
 madly and indiscriminately ; and has since been ascertained to 
 be a Malay word. 
 
 To discharge their gambling debts, the Siamese sell their 
 possessions, their families, and at length themselves. The 
 Chinese play night and day, till they have lost all they are 
 worth ; and then they usually go and hang themselves. Such 
 is the propensity of the Javanese for high play, that they were 
 compelled to make a law, that " Whoever ventures his money 
 at play shall be put to death." In the newly-discovered 
 islands of the Pacific Ocean, they venture even their hatchets, 
 which they hold as invaluable acquisitions, on running- 
 matches. — " We saw a man," says Cook, "beating his breast 
 and tearing his hair in the violence of rage, for having lost 
 three hatchets at one of these races, and which he had pur- 
 chased with nearly half his property." 
 
 The ancient nations were not less addicted to gaming : 
 Persians, Grecians, and Romans ; the Goths, and Germans. 
 To notice the modern ones were a melancholy task : thei'e is 
 hardly a family in Europe which cannot record, from their 
 own domestic annals, the dreadful prevalence of this passion. 
 
 Gamester and cheater were synonymous terms in the time 
 of Shakspeare and Jonson : they have hardly lost much of 
 their double signification in the present day. 
 
 The following is a curious picture of a gambling-house, from 
 a contemporary account, and appears to be an establishment 
 more systematic even than the " Hells " of the present day. 
 
 " A list of the officers established in the most notorious 
 gaming-houses," from the Daily Jouknal, Jan. 9th, 1731. 
 
 1st. A Commissioner, always a proprietor, who looks in of 
 a night ; and the week's account is audited by him and two 
 other proprietors. 
 
 2nd. A DiRECTOK, who superintends the room.
 
 190 Gaming. 
 
 3rd. An Operatoe, wlio deals the cards at a cheating game, 
 called Faro. 
 
 4th. Two Ceowpees, who watch the cards, and gather the 
 money for the bank. 
 
 5th. Two Purrs, who have money given them to decoy 
 others to play. 
 
 6th. A Cleek, who is a check upon the Ptjfes, to see that 
 they sink none of the money given them to play with. 
 
 7th. A Squib is a puff of lower rank, who serves at half- 
 pay salary while he is learning to deal. 
 
 8th. A Flashes, to swear how often the hank has been 
 stript. 
 
 9th. A DuNNEE, who goes about to recover money lost at 
 play. 
 
 10th. A Waitee, to fill out wine, snuff candles, and attend 
 the gaming-roora. 
 
 11th. An Attoeney, a Newgate solicitor. 
 
 12th. A Captaik, who is to fight any gentleman who is 
 peevish for losing his money. 
 
 13th. An Ushee, who hghts gentlemen up and down 
 stairs, and gives the word to the porter. 
 
 11th. A Poetee, who is generally a soldier of the Foot 
 Guards. 
 
 15th. An Oedeelt Mak, who walks up and down the out- 
 side of the door, to give notice to the porter, and alarm the 
 house at the approach of the constable. 
 
 16th. A Eunnee, who is to get intelHgence of the justices' 
 meeting. 
 
 17th. LiNK-BoTS, CoACHMEiif, Chatemen, or others who 
 bring intelligence of the justices' meetings, or of the con- 
 stables being out, at half-a-guinea reward. 
 
 18th. Common-bail, Affidavit-men, Euffians, Bea- 
 VOES, Assassins, cum multis aliis. 
 
 The " Memoirs of the most famous Gamesters from the 
 reign of Charles II. to Queen Anne, by T. Lucas, Esq., 1714," 
 appears to be a bookseller's job ; but probably a few tradi- 
 tional stories are preserved.* 
 
 * This curious little Tolume deserves more attention than the slight 
 mention above would occasion. It is diffuse in style, and hence looks a 
 little like a " bookseller's job," of which the most was to be made ; but the 
 same fault has characterised many works whose authors possess a bad 
 style. Many of the tales narrated of well-known London characters of 
 the "merry days" of Charles the Second are very characteristic, and are 
 not to be met with elsewhere.
 
 191 
 
 THE ARABIC CHRONICLE. 
 
 An Arabic chronicle is only valuable from the time of Ma- 
 homet. For such is the stupid superstition of the Arabs, 
 that they pride themselves on being ignorant of whatever 
 has passed before the mission of their Prophet. The Arabic 
 chronicle of Jerusalem contains the most curious information 
 concerning the crusades : Longuerue translated several por- 
 tions of this chronicle, which appears to be written with 
 impartiality. It renders justice to the Christian heroes, and 
 particularly dwells on the gallant actions of the Count de 
 St. Gilles. 
 
 Our historians chiefly write concerning Godfrey de Bouillon; 
 only the learned know that the Count de St. Gilles acted 
 there so important a character. The stories of the Saracens 
 are just the reverse ; they speak little concerning Godfrey, 
 and eminently distinguish Saint Gilles. 
 
 Tasso has given in to the more vulgar accounts, by making 
 the former so eminent, at the cost of the other heroes, in his 
 Jerusalem Delivered. Thus Virgil transformed by his magical 
 power the chaste Dido into a distracted lover ; and Homer 
 the meretricious Penelope into a moaning matron. It is not 
 requisite for poets to be historians, but historians should not 
 be so frequentl}^ poets. The same charge, I have been told, 
 must be made against the Grecian historians. The Persians 
 are viewed to great disadvantage in Grecian history. It 
 would form a curious inquiry, and the result might be unex- 
 pected to some, were the Oriental student to comment on 
 the Grecian historians. The Grecians were not the demi- 
 gods they paint themselves to have been, nor those they 
 attacked the contemptible multitudes they describe. These 
 boasted victories might be diminished. Tlie same observation 
 attaches to Caesar's account of his British expedition. He 
 never records the defeats he frequently experienced. The 
 national prejudices of the Roman historians have undoubtedly 
 occasioned us to have a very erroneous conception of the 
 Carthaginians, whose discoveries in navigation and com- 
 mercial enterprises were the most considerable among the 
 ancients. We must indeed think highly of that people, 
 whose works on agriculture, which they had raised into a 
 science, the senate of Rome ordered to be translated into
 
 193 Metempsychosis. 
 
 Latin. They must indeed have been a wise and grave 
 people. — Yet they are stigmatised by the Romans for fac- 
 tion, cruelty, and cowardice ; and the " Punic" faith has 
 come down to us in a proverb : but Livy was a Eoman ! 
 and there is such a thing as a patriotic malignity ! 
 
 METEMPSYCHOSIS. 
 
 If we except the belief of a future remuneration beyond this 
 life for suffering virtue, and retribution for successful crimes, 
 there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to our 
 understanding, as that of the metempsychosis. The pains 
 and the pleasures of this life are b}^ this system considered 
 as the recompense or the punishment of our actions in an 
 anterior state : so that, says St. Foix, we cease to wonder 
 that, among men and animals, some enjoy an easy and 
 agreeable life, while others seem born only to suffer all kinds 
 of miseries. Preposterous as this system may appear, it has 
 not wanted for advocates in the present age, which indeed 
 has revived every kind of fanciful theory. Mercier, in L'aii 
 deux milJe qiiafre cents g^uarante, seriously maintains the 
 present one. 
 
 If we seek for the origin of the opinion of the metempsy- 
 chosis, or the transmigration of souls into other bodies, we 
 must plunge into the remotest antiquity ; and even then we 
 shall find it impossible to fix the epoch of its first author. 
 The notion was long extant in Greece before the time of 
 Pythagoras. Herodotus assures us that the Egyptian priests 
 taught it ; but he does not inform us of the time it began to 
 spread. It probably followed the opinion of the immortality 
 of the soul. As soon as the first philosophers had established 
 this dogma, they thought they could not maintain this im- 
 mortality without a transmigration of souls. The opinion of 
 the metempsychosis spread in almost every region of the 
 earth ; and it continues, even to the present time, in all its 
 force amongst those nations who have not yet embraced 
 Christianity. The people of Arracan, Peru, Siam, Camboya, 
 Tonquin, Cochin-China, Japan, Java, and Ceylon still enter- 
 tain that fancy, which also forms the chief article of the 
 Chinese religion. The Druids believed in transmigration. 
 The bardic triads of the Welsh are full of this belief ; and a 
 Welsh antiquary insists, that by an emigration which for-
 
 Metempsychosis. 193 
 
 merly took place, it was conveyed to the Bramins of India 
 from Wales ! The Welsh bards tell us that tlie souls of men 
 transmigrate into the bodies of those animals whose habits 
 and characters they most resemble, till after a circuit of 
 such penitential miseries, they are purified for the celestial 
 presence ; for man may be converted into a pig or a wolf, till 
 at length he assumes the inoffensiveness of the dove. 
 
 My learned friend Sharon Turner has explained, in his 
 " Vindication of the ancient British Poems," p. 231, the 
 Welsh system of the metempsychosis. Their bards mention 
 three circles of existence. The circle of the all-enclosing 
 circle holds nothing alive or dead, but God. The second 
 circle, that of felicity, is that which men are to pervade after 
 they have passed through their terrestrial changes. The 
 circle of evil is that in which human nature passes through 
 those varj'ing stages of existence which it must undergo 
 before it is qualified to inhabit the circle of felicity. 
 
 The progression of man through the circle of evil is marked 
 by three infelicities : Necessity, oblivion, and deaths. The 
 deaths which follow our changes are so many escapes from 
 their power. Man is a free agent, and has the liberty of 
 choosing; his sufferings and changes cannot be foreseen. 
 By his misconduct he may happen to fall retrograde into 
 the lowest state from which he had emerged. If his conduct 
 in any one state, instead of improving his being, had made it 
 worse, he fell back into a worse condition, to commence again 
 his purifying revolutions. Humanity was the limit of the 
 degraded transmigrations. All the changes above humanity 
 produced felicity. Humanity is the scene of the contest ; 
 and after man has traversed every state of animated existence, 
 and can remember all that he has passed through, that con- 
 summation follows which he attains in the circle of felicity. 
 It is on this system of transmigration that Taliessin, the 
 Welsh bard, who wrote in the sixth century, gives a recital 
 of his pretended ti-ansmigrations. He tells how he had been 
 a serpent, a wild ass, a buck, or a crane, &c. ; and this kind 
 of reminiscence of his former state, this recovery of memory, 
 was a proof of the mortal's advances to the happier circle. 
 Eor to forget what we have been was one of the curses of 
 the circle of evil. Taliessin, therefore, adds Mr. Turner, as 
 profusely boasts of his recovered reminiscence as any modern 
 sectary can do of his state of grace and election. 
 
 In all these wild reveries there seems to be a moral fable 
 
 TOL. I.
 
 194 Spmiish Etiquette. 
 
 in the notion, that the clearer a man recollects what a Irufe 
 he has been, it is a certain proof that he is in an improved 
 state ! 
 
 According to the authentic Clavigero, in his history of 
 Mexico, we find the Pythagorean transmigration carried on 
 in the West, and not less fancifully than in the countries of 
 the East. The people of Tlascala believe that the souls of 
 persons of rank went after their death to inhabit the bodies 
 of beautiful and sweet singing bii'ds, and those of the nobler 
 quadrupeds ; while the souls of inferior persons were supposed 
 to pass into iveasels, beetles, and such other meaner animals. 
 
 There is something not a little ludicrous in the description 
 Plutarch gives at the close of his treatise on " the delay 
 of heavenly justice." Thespesius saw at length the souls of 
 those who were condemned to return to life, and whom they 
 violently forced to take the forms of all kinds of animals. 
 The labourers charged with this transformation forged with 
 their instruments certain parts ; others, a new form ; and 
 made some totally disappear ; that these souls might be 
 rendered proper for another kind of life and other habits. 
 Among these he perceived the soul of Nero, which had 
 already suffered long torments, and which stuck to the body 
 by nails red from the fire. The workmen seized on him to 
 make a viper of, under which form he was now to live, after 
 having devoured the breast that had carried him. — But in 
 this Plutarch only copies the fine reveries of Plato. 
 
 SPANISH ETIQUETTE. 
 
 The etiquette, or rules to be observed in royal palaces, is 
 necessary for keeping order at court. In Spain it was carried 
 to such lengths as to make martyrs of their kings. Here is 
 an instance, at which, in spite of the fatal consequences it 
 produced, one cannot refrain from smiling. 
 
 Philip the Third was gravely seated by the fire-side : the 
 fire-maker of the court had kindled so great a quantity of 
 wood, that the monarch was nearly suffocated with heat, and 
 his grandeur would not suffer him to rise from the chair; the 
 domestics could not presume to enter the apartment, because 
 it was against the etiquette. At length the Marquis de 
 Potat appeared, and the king ordered him to damp the fire j
 
 Spanish Etiquette. . 195 
 
 but he excused himself; alleging that he was forbidden by the 
 etiquette to perform such a function, for wliich the Duke 
 d'tJssada ought to be called upon, as it was his business. The 
 duke was gone out : the fire burnt fiercer ; and the Icing 
 endured it, rather than derogate from his dignity. But his 
 blood was heated to such a degree, that an erysipelas of the 
 head appeared the next day, which, succeeded by a violent 
 fever, carried him off' in 1G21, in the twenty-fourth year of 
 his reign. 
 
 The palace was once on fire ; a soldier, who knew the 
 king's sister was in her apartment, and must inevitably have 
 been consumed in a few moments by the flames, at the risk of 
 his life rushed in, and brought her highness safe out in his 
 arms : but the Spanish etiquette was here wofuUy broken into ! 
 The loyal soldier was brought to trial ; and as it was impossi- 
 ble to deny that he had entered her a])artment, the judges 
 condemned him to die ! The Spanish Princess however con- 
 descended, in consideration of the circumstance, to pardon 
 the soldier, and very benevolently saved his life. 
 
 When Isabella, mother of Philip II., was ready to be 
 delivered of him, she commanded that all the lights should 
 be extinguished : that if the violence of her pain should 
 occasion her face to change colour, no one might perceive it. 
 And when the midwife said, " Madam, cry out, that will give 
 you ease," she answered in good Spanisli, " How dare you 
 give me such advice ? I would rather die than cry out." 
 
 " Spain gives us priVZe — wliich Sp^in to all the earth 
 May largely give, nor fear herself a dearth !" — Churchill. 
 
 Philip the Third was a weak bigot, who suffered himself to 
 be governed by his ministers. A patriot wished to open his 
 eyes, but he could not pierce through the crowds of his 
 flatterers ; besides that the voice of patriotism heard in a 
 corrupted court would have become a crime never pardoned. 
 He found, however, an ingenious manner of conveying to him 
 his censure. He caused to be laid on his table, one day, a 
 letter sealed, which bore this address — '-To the King of 
 Spain, Philip the Third, at present in the service of the i)uke 
 of Lerma." 
 
 In a similar manner, Don Carlos, son to Philip the Second, 
 made a book with empty pages, to contain the voyages of his 
 father, which bore this title — "The great and admirable 
 Voyages of the King Mr. Philip." All these voyages con- 
 
 o2
 
 196 Vicars of Bray. 
 
 sisted in going to the Escurial from Madrid, and returning to 
 Madrid from the Escurial. Jests of this kind at length cost 
 him his life. 
 
 THE GOTHS AND HUNS. 
 
 The terrific honours which these ferocious nations paid to 
 their deceased monarchs are recorded in history, by the 
 interment of Attila, king of the Huns, and Alaric, king of 
 the Goths. 
 
 Attila died in 453, and was buried in the midst of a vast 
 champaign in a coffin which was inclosed in one of gold, 
 another of silver, and a third of iron. With the body were 
 interred all the spoils of the enemy, harnesses embroidered 
 with gold and studded with jewels, rich silks, and whatever 
 they had taken most precious in the palaces of the kings they 
 had pillaged ; and that the place of his interment might for ever 
 remain concealed, the Huns deprived of life all who assisted 
 at his burial ! 
 
 The Goths had done nearly the same for Alaric in 410, at 
 Cosen^a, a town in Calabria. They turned aside the river 
 Vasento ; and having formed a grave in the midst of its bed 
 where its course was most rapid, they interred this king with 
 prodigious accumulations of riches. After having caused the 
 river to reassume its usual course, they murdered, without 
 exception, all those who had been concerned in digging this 
 singular grave. 
 
 VIGAES OF BRAY. 
 
 The vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, was a papist under the 
 reign of Henry the Eighth, and a Protestant under Edward 
 the Sixth ; he was a papist again under Mary, and once more 
 became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth.* When this 
 scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of 
 religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an incon- 
 stant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, " Not so 
 neither ; for if 1 changed my religion, I am sure I kept true 
 to my principle ; which is, to live and die the vicar of I3ray !" 
 
 * His name was Simon Symonds. The popular ballad absurdly exagge- 
 rates his deeds, and gives them untrue amplitude. It is not older than 
 the last centm-y, and is printed in Ritson's Enylkh Songs.
 
 Douc/las. 197 
 
 This vivacious and reverend hero has given birth to a 
 proverb peculiar to this county, " The vicar of Bray will be 
 vicar of Bray still." But how has it happened that this 
 vicar should be so notorious, and one in much higher rank, 
 acting the same part, should have escaped notice ? Dr. 
 Kitchen, bishop of Llandaff, from an idle abbot under Henry 
 VIII. was made a busy bishop ; Protestant under Edward, he 
 returned to his old master under Mary ; and at last took the 
 oath of supremacy under Elizabeth, and finished as a parlia- 
 ment Protestant. A pun spread the odium of his name ; for 
 they said that he had always loved the Kitchen better than 
 the Church ! 
 
 DOUGLAS. 
 
 It may be recorded as a species of Puritanic barbarism, that 
 no later than the year 1757, a man of genius was persecuted 
 because he had written a tragedy which tended by no means 
 to hurt the morals ; but, on the contrary, by awakening the 
 piety of domestic affections with the nobler passions, would 
 rather elevate and purify the mind. 
 
 When Home, the author of the tragedy of Douglas, had 
 it performed at Edinburgh, some of the divines, his acquaint- 
 ance, attending the representation, the clergy, with the 
 monastic spirit of the darkest ages, published a paper, which 
 I abridge for the contemplation of the reader, who may 
 wonder to see such a composition written in the eighteenth 
 century." 
 
 " On Wednesday, February the 2nd, 1757, the Presbytery 
 of Glasgow came to the following resolution. They having 
 seen a printed paper, intituled, ' An admonition and exhorta- 
 tion of the reverend Presbytery of Edinburgh;' which, among 
 other evils prevaihng, observing the following melanclioly but 
 notorious facts : that one who is a minister of the church of 
 Scotland did himself write and comyo^e a stai/e-piai/, intituled, 
 ' The tragedy of Douglas,' and got it to be acted at the 
 theatre of Edinburgh ; and that he with several other ministers 
 of the church were present ; and some of them oftener than 
 once, at the acting of the said play before a numerous 
 audience. The presbytery being deepljf affected with this new 
 and strange appearance, do publish these sentiments," &c. 
 Sentiments with which I will not disgust the reader j but
 
 198 Critical History of Poverty. , 
 
 which they appear not yet to have purified and corrected, as 
 they have sliown in tlie case of Logan and other Scotchmen, 
 who have committed the crying sin of composing dramas ! 
 
 CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY. 
 
 M. MoEiN, in the Memoirs of the French Academy, has 
 formed a little history of Poverty, which I abridge. 
 
 The writers on the genealogies of the gods have not 
 noticed the deity of Poverty, though admitted as such in the 
 pagan heaven, while she has had temples and altars on earth. 
 The allegorical l^lato has pleasingly narrated, that at the 
 feast which Jupiter gave on the birth of Venus, Poverty 
 modestly stood at the gate of the palace to gather the frag- 
 ments of the celestial banquet ; when she observed the god 
 of riches, inebriated with nectar, roll out of the heavenly 
 residence, and passing into the Olympian Gardens, throw 
 himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to 
 become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity 
 honoured her with his caresses ; and from this amour sprung 
 the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and 
 mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory is inge- 
 nious. The union of poverty with riches must inevitably 
 produce the most delightful of j^leasures. 
 
 The golden age, however, had but the duration of a 
 flower ; when it finished, Poverty began to appear. The 
 ancestors of the human race, if they did not meet her face to 
 face, knew her in a partial degree ; the vagrant Cain encoun- 
 tered her. She was firmly established in the patriarchal age. 
 We hear of merchants who publicly practised the commerce 
 of vending slaves, which indicates the utmost degree of 
 povert3^ She is distinctly marked by Job : this holy man 
 protests, that he had nothing to reproach himself with re- 
 specting the poor, for he had assisted them iu their neces- 
 sities. 
 
 In the scriptures, legislators paid great attention to their 
 relief. Moses, by his wise precautions, endeavoured to soften 
 the rigours of this unhappy state. The division of lands, by 
 tribes and families ; the septennial jubilees ; the regulation to 
 bestow at the harvest-time a certain portion of all the fruits 
 of the earth for those families who were in want ; and the 
 obligation of his moral law to love one's neighbour as one's
 
 Critical History of Poverty. 199 
 
 self; were so many mounds erected against the inundations 
 of poverty. The Jews under their Theocracy had few or no 
 mendicants. Their kings were unjust ; and rapaciously 
 seizing on inheritances which were not their right, increased 
 the numbers of the poor. From the reign of David there 
 were oppressive governors, who devoured the people as their 
 bread. It was still worse under the foreign powers of 
 Babylon, of Persia, and the lloman emperors. Such were 
 the extortions of their publicans, and the avarice of their 
 governors, that the number of mendicants dreadfully aug- 
 mented ; and it was probably for that reason that the opu- 
 lent families consecrated a tenth part of their property for 
 their succour, as appears in the time of the evangelists. In 
 the preceding ages no more was given, as their casuists assure 
 us, than the fortieth or thirtieth part ; a custom which this 
 singular nation still practise. If there are no poor of their 
 nation where they reside, tliey send it to the most distant 
 parts. The Jewish merchants make this charity a regular 
 charge in their transactions with each other ; and at the 
 close of the year render an account to the poor of their 
 nation. 
 
 By the example of IMoses, the ancient legislators were 
 taught to pay a similar attention to the poor. Like him, 
 they published laws respecting the division of lands ; and 
 many ordinances were made for the benefit of those whom 
 fires, inundations, wars, or bad harvests had i-educed to want. 
 Convinced that idleness more inevitably introduced poverty 
 than any other cause, it was rigorously punished ; the 
 Egyptians made it criminal, and no vagabonds or mendicants 
 were suffered under any pretence whatever. Those who 
 were convicted of slothfulness, and still refused to labour for 
 the public when labour was offered to them, were punished 
 with death. The famous Pyramids are the works of men 
 who otherwise had remained vagabonds and mendicants. 
 
 The same spirit inspired Greece, Lycurgus would not 
 have in his republic either j^oor or rich : they lived and 
 laboured in common. As in the present times, every family 
 has its stores and cellars, so they had public ones, and distri- 
 buted the provisions according to the ages and constitutions 
 of the people. If the same regulation was not precisely ob- 
 served by the Athenians, the Corinthians, and the other 
 people of Greece, the same maxim existed in full force against 
 idleness.
 
 *200 Critical Histonj of Poverty. 
 
 According to the laws of Draco, Solon, &c., a conviction of 
 wilful poverty was punished with the loss of life. Plato, 
 more gentle in his manners, would have them only banished. 
 He calls them enemies of the state; and pronounces as a 
 maxim, that where there are great numbers of mendicants, 
 fatal revolutions will happen ; for as these people have no- 
 thing to lose, they plan opportunities to disturb the public 
 repose. 
 
 The ancient Eomans, whose universal object was the 
 public prosperity, were not indebted to Grreece on this head. 
 One of the principal occupations of their censors was to keep 
 a watch on the vagabonds. Those who were condemned as 
 incorrigible sluggards were sent to the mines, or made to 
 labour on the public edifices. The Romans of those times, 
 unlike the present race, did not consider the far niente as an ' 
 occupation ; they were convinced that their liberalities were 
 ill-placed in bestowing them on such men. The little re- 
 publics of the hees and the ants were often held out as an 
 example ; and the last particularly, where Virgil says, that 
 they have elected overseers who correct the sluggards : 
 
 Pars agmina cogunt, 
 
 Castigantque moras." 
 
 And if we may trust the narratives of our travellers, the 
 heavers pursue this regulation more rigorously and exactly 
 than even these industrious societies. But their rigour, al- 
 though but animals, is not so barbarous as that of the 
 ancient Germans ; who, Tacitus informs us, plunged the 
 idlers and vagabonds in the thickest mire of their marshes, 
 and left them to perish by a kind of death which resembled 
 their inactive dispositions. 
 
 Yet, after all, it was not inhumanity that prompted the 
 ancients thus severely to chastise idleness ; they were induced 
 to it by a strict equity, and it would be doing them injustice 
 to suppose, that it was thus they treated those unfortunate 
 poor, whose indigence was occasioned by infirmities, b}' age, 
 or unforeseen calamities. Every family constantly assisted 
 its branches to save them from being reduced to beggary ; 
 which to them appeared worse than death. The magistrates 
 protected those who were destitute of friends, or incapable of 
 labour. When Ulysses was disguised as a mendicant, and 
 presented himself to Eurymachus, this prince observing him 
 to be robust and healthy, offered to give him employment, or
 
 Critical History of Poverty. 201 
 
 otliervvise to leave him to his ill fortune. When the Roman 
 Emperors, even in the reigns of Nero and Tiberius, bestowed 
 their largesses, the distributors were ordered to exempt tliose 
 from receiving a share whose bad conduct ke]:it them in 
 misery ; for that it was better the lazy should die with 
 hunger than be fed in idleness. 
 
 Whether the police of the ancients was more exact, or 
 •whether they were more attentive to practise the duties of 
 humanity, or that slavery served as an efficacious corrective 
 of idleness ; it clearly appears how small was the misery, and 
 how few the numbers of their poor. This they did, too, 
 without having recourse to hospitals. 
 
 At the establishment of Christianit}^, when the apostles 
 commanded a community of wealth among their disciples, 
 the miseries of the poor became alleviated in a greater 
 degree. If they did not absolutely live together, as we have 
 seen religious orders, yet the wealthy continually supplied 
 their distressed bretliren : but matters greatly changed under 
 Constantine. This prince published edicts in favour of those 
 Christians who had been condemned in the preceding reigns 
 to slaverj^ to the mines, to the galleys, or prisons. The 
 church felt an inundation of prodigious crowds of these 
 miserable men, who brouglit with them urgent wants and 
 corporeal infirmities. The Cliristian families were tlien not 
 numerous ; they could not satisfy these claimants. The ma- 
 gistrates protected them : they built spacious hospitals, under 
 different titles, for the sick, the aged, the invalids, the 
 widows, and orphans. The emperors, and the most eminent 
 personages, were seen in these hospitals, examining the pa- 
 tients ; they assisted the helpless ; they dressed the wounded. 
 This did so much honour to the new relisrion, that Julian the 
 Apostate introduced this custom among the pagans. But the 
 best things are continually perverted. 
 
 These retreats w^re found insufficient. Many slaves, 
 proud of the liberty they had just recovered, looked on them 
 as prisons ; and, under various pretexts, wandered about the 
 countiy. They displayed with art the scars of their former 
 wounds, and exposed the imprinted marks of their chains. 
 They found thus a lucrative profession in begging, which had 
 been interdicted by the laws. The profession did not finish 
 with them : men of an untoward, turbulent, and licentious 
 disposition, gladly embraced it. It spread so wide that the 
 succeeding emperors were obliged to institute new laws ; and
 
 202 Solomon and Sheba. 
 
 individuals were allowed to seize on these mendicants for 
 their slaves and perpetual vassals : a powerful preservative 
 against this disorder. It is observed in almost every part of 
 the world but ours ; and prevents that populace of beggary 
 which disgraces Europe. China presents us with a noble 
 example. No beggars are seen loitering in that country. All 
 the world are occupied, even to the blind and the lame ; and 
 only those who are incapable of labour live at the public ex- 
 pense. Wliat is done there may also be performed here. 
 Instead of that hideous, importunate, idle, licentious poverty, 
 as pernicious to the police as to morality, we should see the 
 poverty of the earlier ages, humble, modest, frugal, robust, 
 industrious, and laborious. Then, indeed, the fable of Plato 
 might be realised ; Poverty might be embraced by the god 
 of Riches ; and if she did not produce the voluptuous 
 offspring of Love, she would become the fertile mother of 
 Agriculture, and the ingenious parent of the Arts and 
 Manufactures. 
 
 SOLOMON AND SHEBA. 
 
 A EABBTX once told me an ingenious invention, which in the 
 Talmud is attributed to Solomon. 
 
 The power of the monarch had spread his wisdom to the 
 remotest parts of the known world. Queen Sheba, attracted 
 by the splendour of his reputation, visited this poetical king 
 at his own court ; there, one day to exercise the sagacity of 
 the monarch, Sheba presented herself at the foot of the 
 throne: in each hand she held a wreath; the one was com- 
 posed of natural, and the other of artificial, flowers. Art, in 
 the labour of the mimetic wreath, had exquisitely emulated 
 the lively hues of nature ; so that, at the distance it was held 
 by the queen for the inspection of the king, it was deemed 
 impossible for him to decide, as her question imported, which 
 wreath was the production of nature, and which the work of 
 art. The sagacious Solomon seemed perplexed ; yet to be 
 vanquished, though in a trille, by a trifling woman, irritated 
 his pride. The son of David, he who had written treatises 
 on the vegetable productions "from the cedar to the hyssop," 
 to acknowledge himself outwitted by a woman, with shreds 
 of pajjer and glazed paintings ! The honour of the monarch's 
 reputation for divine sagacity seemed diminished, and the
 
 Hell 203 
 
 whole Jewish court looked solemn and melancholy. At 
 length an expedient presented itself to the king ; and one it 
 must be confessed worthy of the naturalist. Observing a 
 cluster of bees hovering about a window, he commanded that 
 it should be opened : it was opened ; the bees rushed into the 
 court, and alighted immediately on one of the wreaths, while 
 not a single one fixed on the other. The baffled Sheba had 
 one more reason to be astonished at the wisdom of Solomon. 
 
 This would make a pretty poetical tale. It would yield an 
 elegant description, and a pleasing moral ; tliat the bee only 
 rests on the natural beauties, and never Jixes on the painted 
 flowers, however inimitably the colours may be laid on. 
 Applied to the ladies, this would give it pungency. In the 
 " Practical Education " of the Edgeworths, the reader will 
 find a very ingenious conversation founded on this story. 
 
 HELL. 
 
 Oldham, in his " Satires upon the Jesuits," a work which 
 would admit of a curious commentary, alludes to their " lying 
 legends," and the innumerable impositions they practised on 
 the credulous. I quote a few lines in which he has collected 
 some of those legendary miracles, which I have noticed in the 
 article Legends, and the amours of the Virgin Mary are 
 detailed in thrit on Religious Nouvellettes. 
 
 Tell, how blessed Virgin to come down was seen, 
 Like play-house punk descending in machine, 
 How she writ billet-doux an I love-discourse, 
 Made assignations, visits, and amours; 
 How hosts distrest, her smock for banner wore. 
 Which vanquished foes ! 
 
 how fish in conventicles met, 
 
 And macJcerel were with bait of doctrine caught : 
 
 How cattle have judicious hearers been ! — 
 
 How consecrated hives with bells were hung, 
 
 And bees kept mass, and holy anthems sung ! 
 
 How pigs to th' rosary kneel' d, and sheep were taught 
 
 To bleat Te Dcum and Magnificat ; 
 
 How fiij-fiap, of church -censure houses rid 
 
 Of insects, which at cui'se offrt/ar died. 
 
 How ferrying cowls religious pilgrims bore 
 
 O'er waves, without the help of sail or oar ; 
 
 How zealous crab the sacred image bore, 
 
 And swam a catholic to the distant shore. 
 
 With shams like these the giddy rout mislead, 
 
 Their folly and their superstition feed.
 
 204 Hell. 
 
 All these are allusions to the extravagant fictions in the 
 " G-olden Legend." Among other gross impositions to 
 deceive the mob, Oldham likewise attacks them for certain 
 publications on topics not less singular. The tales he has 
 recounted, Oldham sajs, are only baits for children, like toys 
 at a fair ; but they have their profounder and higher matters 
 for the learned and inquisitive. He goes on :— 
 
 One undertakes by scales of miles to tell 
 
 The bounds, dimensions, and extent of hell ; 
 
 How many German leagues that realm contains ! 
 
 How many chaldrons Hell each year expends 
 
 In coals for roasting Hugonots and friends 1 
 
 Another frights the rout with useful stories 
 
 Of wild chimeras, limbos — purgatories — 
 
 Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung, 
 
 Like a Westphalia gammon or neat's tongue, 
 
 To be redeem'd with masses and a song. — Satire IV. 
 
 The readers of Oldham, for Oldham must ever have readers 
 among the curious in our poetry, have been greatly dis- 
 appointed in the pompous edition of a Captain Thompson, 
 which illustrates none of his allusions. In the above lines 
 Oldham alludes to some singular works. 
 
 Treatises and topographical descriptions of hell, puega- 
 TORT, and even heavek, were once the favourite researches 
 among certain zealous defenders of the Romish Church, who 
 exhausted their ink-horns in building up a Hell to their own 
 taste, or for their particular purpose.* We have a treatise of 
 Cardinal Eullarmin, a Jesuit, on Purgatory ; he seems to have 
 the science of a surveyor among all the secret tracks and the 
 formidable divisions of " the bottomless pit." 
 
 Bellarmin informs us that there are beneath the earth four 
 different places, or a profound place divided into four parts. 
 The deepest of these places is Hell ; it contains all the souls of 
 the damned, where will be also their bodies after the resur- 
 rection, and likewise all the demons. The place nearest Hell 
 is Purgatory, where souls are purged, or rather where they 
 appease the anger of God by their sufferings. He says that 
 the same fires and the same torments are alike in both these 
 
 * One of the most horrible of these books was the work of the Jesuit 
 Pinamonti ; it details with frightful minuteness the nature of hell- 
 torments, accompanied by the most revolting pictures of the condemned 
 under various refined torments. It was translated in an abbreviated form, 
 and sold for a few pence as a popular religious book in Ireland, and may 
 be so still. It is divided into a series of meditations for each day in the 
 week, on hell and its torments.
 
 Hell. 205 
 
 places, the only difference between Hell and Purgatory con- 
 sisting in their duration. Next to Purgatorj/ is the limho of 
 those infants who die without having received the sacrament ; 
 and the fourth place is the Umbo of the Fathers ; that is to 
 say, of those just men who died before the death of Christ. 
 But since the days of the Redeemer, this last division is 
 empty, like an apartment to be let. A later catholic theolo- 
 gist, the famous Tillemont, condemns all the illustrious pagans 
 to the eternal torments of Hell ? because they lived before the 
 time of Jesus, and therefore could not be benefited by the 
 redemption ! Speaking of young Tiberius, who was compelled 
 to fall on his own sword, Tillemont adds, " Thus by his own 
 hand he ended his miserable life, to begin another, the misery 
 of which will never end r"" Yet history records nothing bad 
 of this prince. Jortin observes that he added this reflection 
 in his later edition, so tbat the good man as he grew older 
 grew more uncharitable in his religious notions. It is in this 
 manner too that the Benedictine editor of Justin Martyr 
 speaks of the illustrious pagans. This fiither, after highly 
 applauding Socrates, and a few more who resembled him, 
 inclines to think that they are not fixed in Hell. But the 
 Benedictine editor takes great pains to clear the good father 
 from the shameful imputation of supposing that a virtuous 
 pagan might be saved as well as a Benedictine monk ! For a 
 curious specimen of this odium theologicum, see the " Cen- 
 sure " of the Sorbonne on Marmontel's Belisarius. 
 
 The adverse party, who were either philosophers or re- 
 formers, I'eceived all such information with great suspicion. 
 Anthony Cornelius, a lawyer in the sixteenth century, wrote 
 a small tract, whicli was so eff'ectually suppressed, as a mon- 
 ster of atheism, tbat a copy is now only to be found in the 
 hands of the curious. This author ridiculed the absurd and 
 horrid doctrine o^ infant damnation, and was instantly decried 
 as an atheist, and the printer prosecuted to his ruin ! Cielius 
 Secundus Curio, a noble Italian, published a treatise De 
 Amplitudine beati Eegni Dei, to prove that Heaven has more 
 inhabitants than Hell, — or, in his own phrase, tbat the elect 
 are more numerous than the reprobate. However we may 
 incline to smile at these works, their design was benevolent. 
 They were the first streaks of the morning light of the Re- 
 formation. Even such works assisted mankind to examine 
 more closely, and hold in greater contempt, the extravagant 
 and pernicious doctrines of the domineering papistical church.
 
 206 
 
 THE ABSENT MAN. 
 
 The character of Bruyere's " Absent Man" has been trans- 
 lated in the Spectator, and exhibited on the theatre. It is 
 supposed to be a fictitious character, or one highly coloured. 
 It was well known, however, to his contemporaries, to be the 
 Count de Brancas. The present anecdotes concerning the 
 same person were unknown to, or forgotten by, Bruyere ; and 
 are to the full as extraordinary as those which characterise 
 Menalcas, or the Absent Man. 
 
 The count was reading by the fireside, but Heaven knows 
 with what degree of attention, when the nurse brought him 
 his infant child. He throws down the book ; he takes the 
 child in his arms. He was playing with her, when an im- 
 portant visitor was announced. Having forgot he had quitted 
 his book, and that it was his child he held in his hands, he 
 hastily flung the squalling innocent on the table. 
 
 The count was walking in the street, and the Duke de la 
 Rochefoucault crossed the way to speak to him. — " God bless 
 thee, poor man !" exclaimed the count. Rochefoucault 
 smiled, and was beginning to address him : — " Is it not 
 enough," cried the count, interrupting him, and somewhat in 
 a passion ; " is it not enough that I have said, at first, I have 
 nothing for you F Such lazy vagrants as you hinder a gen- 
 tleman from walking the streets." Rochefoucault burst into 
 a loud laugh, and awakening the absent man from his 
 lethargy, he was not a little surprised, himself, that he should 
 have taken his friend for an importunate mendicant ! La 
 Fontaine is recorded to have been one of the most absent 
 men ; and Furetiere relates a most singular instance of this 
 absence of mind. La Fontaine attended the burial of one of 
 his friends, and some time afterwards he called to visit him. 
 At first he was shocked at the information of his death ; but 
 recovering from his surprise, observed — " True ! true ! I 
 recollect I went to his funeral." 
 
 WAX-WORK. 
 
 We have heard of many curious deceptions occasioned by the 
 imitative powers of wax-work. A series of anatomical sculp- 
 tures in coloured wax was projected by the Grand Duke of
 
 Wax-work. 207 
 
 Tuscany, under the direction of Fontana. Twenty apart- 
 ments have been tilled with those curious imitations. They 
 represent in every possible detail, and in each successive stage 
 of denudation, the organs of sense and reproduction ; the mus- 
 cular, the vascular, the nervous, and the bony system. They 
 imitate equalh' well the form, and more exactly the colour- 
 ing, of nature tlian injected preparations ; and they have 
 been employed to perpetuate many transient phenomena of 
 disease, of which no other art could have made so lively a 
 record.* 
 
 There is a species of wax-work, which, though it can 
 hardly claim the honours of the fine arts, is adapted to afford 
 much pleasure — I mean figures of wax, which may be mo- 
 delled with great truth of character. 
 
 Menage has noticed a work of this kind. In the year 
 1675, the Duke de Maine received a gilt cabinet, about the 
 size of a moderate table. On the door was inscribed, " The 
 Apartment of JVit." The inside exhibited an alcove and a 
 long gallery. In an arm-chair was seated the figure of the 
 duke himself, composed of wax, the resemblance the most 
 perfect imaginable. On one side stood the Duke de la Koche- 
 foucault, to whom he presented a paper of verses for his 
 examination. M. de Marsillac, and Bossuet bishop of Meaux, 
 were standing near the arm-chair. In the alcove, Madame 
 de Thianges and Madame de la Fayette sat retired, reading 
 a book. Boileau, the satirist, stood at the door of the gal- 
 lery, hindering seven or eight bad poets from entering. Near 
 Boileau stood Racine, who seemed to beckon to La Fontaine 
 to come forwards. All these figures were formed of wax ; 
 and this philosophical baby-liouse, interesting for the per- 
 sonages it imitated, might induce a wish in some philosophers 
 to play once more with one. 
 
 There was lately an old canon at Cologne who made a 
 collection of small wax models of characteristic figures, such 
 as personifications of Miseiy, in a haggard old man with a 
 scanty crust and a brown jug before liim ; or of Avarice, in a 
 keen-looking Jew miser counting his gold : which were done 
 with such a spirit and reality that a Flemish painter, a 
 Hogarth or Wilkie, could hardly have worked up the feeling 
 
 * The finest collection at present is in Guy's Hospital, South wark ; they 
 are the work of au artist especially retained there, who by long practice 
 has become perfect, making a labour of love of a pursuit that would be 
 disgustful to many.
 
 208 Pasquin and Marforio. 
 
 of the figure more impressively. " All these were done with 
 truth and expression which I could not have imagined the 
 wax capable of exhibiting," says the lively writer of "An 
 Autumn near the Rhine." There is something very infan- 
 tine in this taste ; but I lament that it is very rarely gra- 
 tified by such close copiers of nature as was this old canon of 
 Colosrne. 
 
 ■'&' 
 
 PASQUIN AND MARFORIO. 
 
 All the world have heard of these statues : they have served 
 as vehicles for the keenest satire in a land of the most un- 
 controlled despotism. The statue of Pasquin (from whence 
 the word pasquinade^ and that of Marforio are placed in 
 Home in two different quarters. Marforio is an ancient 
 statue of Mars, found in the Forum, which the people have 
 corrupted into Marforio. Pasquin is a marble statue, greatly 
 mutilated, supposed to be the figure of a gladiator.* To one 
 or other of these statues, during the concealment of the 
 night, are affixed those satires or lampoons which the authors 
 wish should be dispei'sed about Rome without any danger to 
 themselves. When Marforio is attacked, Pasquin comes to 
 his succour; and when Pasquin is the sufferer, he finds in 
 Marforio a constant defender. Thus, by a thrust and a 
 parry, the most serious matters are disclosed : and the most 
 illustrious personages are attacked by their enemies, and de- 
 fended by their friends. 
 
 Misson, in his Travels in Italy, gives the following account 
 of the origin of the name of the statue of Pasquin : — 
 
 * The description of these two famous statues is not correctly given in 
 the text. The statue called Marforio is the figure of a recumbent river 
 god of colossal proportions, found near the arch of Septimius Severus. 
 When the museum of the capitol was completed, the Pope moved the figure 
 into the courtyard ; there it is still to be seen. He also wished to move 
 that of Pasquin, but the Duke de Braschi refused to allow it ; and it still 
 stands on its pedestal, at the angle of the Braschi Palace, in the small 
 square that takes the name of Piazza del Pasquino from that circumstance. 
 It is much mutilated, but is the ruin of a very fine work ; Bernini ex- 
 pressed great admiration for it. It is considered by Count Maffei to repre- 
 sent Ajax supporting Meuelaus. The torso of the latter figure only is 
 left, the arms of the former are broken away ; but enough remains of both 
 to conjecture what the original might have been in design. The pose 
 of both figures is similar to the fine group known as Ajax and Telamon, iu 
 the Loggia of the Pitti Palace at Florence.
 
 Pasquin and Marforio. 209 
 
 A satirical tailor, who lived at Rome, and whose name was 
 Pasquin, amused himself by severe raillery, liberally bestowed 
 on those who passed by his shop ; which iu time became the 
 lounge of the newsmongers. The tailor had precisely the 
 talents to head a regiment of satirical wits ; and had he had 
 time to puhlisli, he would have been the Peter Pindar of his 
 day ; but his genius seems to have been satisfied to rest cross- 
 legged on his shopboard. When any lampoons or amusing 
 bon-mots were current at Rome, they were usually called, 
 from his shop, pasqainades. After his death, this statue of 
 an ancient gladiator was found under the pavement of his 
 shop. It was soon set up, and by universal consent was 
 inscribed with his name ; and they still attempt to raise him 
 from the dead, and keep the caustic tailor alive, in the marble 
 gladiator of wit. 
 
 There is a very rare work, with this title : — " Pasquillorum 
 Tomi Duo ;" the first containing the verse, and the second 
 the prose pasquinades, published at Basle, 1544. The rarity 
 of this collection of satirical pieces is entirely owing to the 
 arts of suppression practised by the papal government. Sal- 
 lengre, in his literary Memoirs, has given an account of this 
 work ; his own copy had formerly belonged to Daniel Hein- 
 sius, who, in verses written in his hand, describes its rarity 
 and the price it too cost : — 
 
 Roma meos fratres igni dedit, unica Phcenix 
 Vivo, aureisque venio centum Heinsio. 
 
 " Rome gave my brothers to the flames, but I survive a solitary Phoenix. 
 Heinsius bought me for a hundred golden ducats." 
 
 This collection contains a great number of pieces composed 
 at different times, against the popes, cardinals, &c. They are 
 not, indeed, materials for the historian, and they must be 
 taken with grains of allowance. We find sarcastic epigrams 
 on Leo X., and the infamous Lucretia, daughter of Alexander 
 VI. : even the corrupt Romans of the day were capable of 
 expressing themselves with the utmost freedom. Of Alex- 
 ander VI. we have an apology for his conduct : 
 
 Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum ; 
 Emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest. 
 
 "Alexander sells the keys, the altars, and Christ; 
 As he bought them first, he had a right to sell them!" 
 
 VOL.
 
 210 Pasquin and Marforio, 
 
 On Lucretia : — 
 
 Hoc tumulo dormit Lucretia nomine, sed re 
 Thais ; Alexandri filia, sponsa, nurus ! 
 
 " Beneath this stone sleeps Lucretia by name, but by nature Thais; the 
 daughter, the wife, and the daughter-in-law of Alexander !" 
 
 Leo X. was a frequent butt for the arrows of Pasquin : — 
 
 Sacra sub extremS,, si forte requiritis, hora 
 Cur Leo non potuit sumere ; vendiderat. 
 
 "Do you ask why Leo did not take the sacrament on his death-bed ? — 
 How could he ? He had sold it !" 
 
 Many of these satirical touches depend on puns. Urban 
 VII., one of the Barherini family, pillaged the Pantheon of 
 brass to make cannon,* on which occasion Pasquin was made 
 to say : — 
 
 Quod non fecerunt Barbari Romse, fecit Barherini. 
 
 On Clement VII., whose death was said to be occasioned 
 by the prescriptions of his physician : — 
 
 Curtius occidit Clementem ; Curtius auro 
 Donandus, per quern publica parta salus. 
 
 "Dr. Curtius has killed the pope by his remedies; he ought to be 
 remunerated as a man who has cured the state." 
 
 The following, on Paul III., are singular conceptions : — 
 
 Papa Medusffium caput est, coma turba Nepotum ; 
 Perseu csede caput, Cassaries periit. 
 
 "The pope is the head of Medusa; the horrid tresses are his nephews; 
 Perseus, cut off the head, and then we shall be rid of these serpent-locks." 
 
 Another is sarcastic — 
 
 TJt canerent data multa olim sunt Vatibus sera : 
 Ut taceam, quantum tu niihi, Paule, dabis ? 
 
 ' ' Heretofore money was given to poets that they might sing : how much 
 will you give me, Paul, to be silent ?" 
 
 This collection contains, among other classes, passages from 
 the Scriptures which have been applied to the court of 
 Rome ; to different nations and persons ; and one of " Soi'tes 
 VirgiliancB per JPasquillum collectcB," — passages from Virgil 
 
 * The cannon were to supply the castle of St. Angelo, but a large portion 
 of the metal (which formerly covered the roof of the temple) was used to 
 construct the canopy and pillars which still stand over the tomb of St. 
 Peter, in the great cathedral at Rome.
 
 Female Beauty and Ornaments. 211 
 
 frequently happily applied ; and those who are curious in the 
 history ol" those times will find this portion interesting. The 
 work itself is not quite so rare as Daniel Heinsius imagined ; 
 the price might now reach from five to ten guineas.* 
 
 These satirical statues are placed at opposite ends of the 
 town, so that there is always sufficient time to make Marforio 
 reply to the gibes and jeers of Pasquin in walking from one 
 to the other. They are an ingenious substitute for publish- 
 ing to the world, what no Roman newspaper would dare to 
 print. 
 
 FEMALE BEAUTY AND ORNAMENTS. 
 
 The ladies in Japan gild their teeth ; and those of the Indies 
 paint them red. The pearl of teeth must be d^'cd black to 
 be beautiful in Guzerat. In Greenland the women colour 
 their faces with blue and yellow. However fresh the com- 
 plexion of a Muscovite may be, she would think herself very 
 ugly if she was not plastered over with paint. The Chinese 
 must have their feet as diminutive as those of the she-goat ; 
 and to render them thus, their youth is passed in tortures. 
 In ancient Persia an aquiline nose was often thought worthy 
 of the crown ; and if there was any competition between two 
 princes, the people generally went by this criterion of majesty. 
 In some countries, the mothers break the noses of their chil- 
 dren ; and in others press the head between two boards, that 
 it may become square. The modern Persians have a strong 
 aversion to red hair : the Turks, on the contrary, are w^arm 
 admirers of it. The female Hottentot receives from the hand 
 of her lover, not silks nor wreaths of flowers, but warm guts 
 and reeking tripe, to dress herself with enviable ornaments. 
 
 In China, small round eyes are liked ; and the girls are 
 continually plucking their eye-brows, that the}^ may be thin 
 and long. The Turkish women dip a gold brush in the tinc- 
 ture of a black drug, which they pass over their eye-brows. 
 It is too visible by day, but looks shining by night. They 
 tinge their nails with a rose-colour. An African beauty 
 must have small eyes, thick lips, a large flat nose, and a 
 skin beautifully black. The Emperor of Monomotapa would 
 
 * This vehicle for satire was introduced early into England ; thus, in 
 1589, was published " The return of the renowned Cavaliero Pasquill to 
 England from the other side of the seas, and his meeting with Marforio at 
 London, upon the Hoyall Exchange." 
 
 p2
 
 212 Female Beauty and Ornaments. 
 
 not change his amiable negress for the most brilliant Euro- 
 pean beauty. 
 
 An ornament for the nose appears to us perfectly unneces- 
 sary. The Peruvians, however, think otherwise ; and they 
 hang on it a weighty ring, the thickness of which is pro- 
 portioned by the rank of their husbands. The custom of 
 boring it, as oiu" ladies do their ears, is very common in 
 several nations. Through the perforation are hung various 
 materials ; such as green crystal, gold, stones, a single and 
 sometimes a great number of gold rings.* This is rather 
 troublesome to them in blowing their noses ; and the fact is, 
 as some have informed us, that the Indian ladies never per- 
 form this very useful operation. 
 
 The female head-dress is carried in some countries to 
 singular extravagance. The Chinese fair carries on her head 
 the figure of a certain bird. This bird is composed of copper 
 or of gold, according to the quality of the person ; the wings 
 spread out, fall over the front of the head-dress, and conceal 
 the temples. The tail, long and open, forms a beautiful tuft 
 of feathers. The beak covers the top of the nose ; the neck 
 is fastened to the body of the artificial animal by a spring, 
 that it may the more freely play, and tremble at the sHghtest 
 motion. 
 
 The extravagance of the Myantses is far more ridiculous 
 than the above. They carry on their heads a slight board, 
 rather longer than a foot, and about six inches broad ; with 
 this they cover their hair, and seal it with wax. They can- 
 not lie down, or lean, without keeping the neck straight ; 
 and the country being very woody, it is not uncommon to 
 find them with their head-dress entangled in the trees. 
 Whenever they comb their hair, they pass an hour by the 
 fiire in melting the wax ; but this combing is only performed 
 once or twice a year. 
 
 The inhabitants of the land of Natal wear caps or bonnets, 
 from six to ten inches high, composed of the fat of oxen. 
 They then gradually anoint the head with a purer grease, 
 which mixing with the hair, fastens these bonnets for their 
 lives, 
 
 * For some very strong remarks on this fashion, the reader may consult 
 Bulwer's Anthropometamorphosis, or Artificiall Changeling, 1653. The 
 author is very ungallantin his strictures on "precious jewels in the snouts 
 of such swine."
 
 213 
 
 MODERN PLATONISM. 
 
 EuASMiJS, in his Age of Eeligious Revolution, expressed an 
 alarm, which in some shape has been since realized. He 
 strangely, yet acutely observes, that " literature began to 
 make a great and happy progress ; but," he adds, " I fear 
 two things — that the study of Hebrew will promote Judaism, 
 and the study of philolof/if will revive paganism." He speaks 
 to the same purpose in the Adages, c. 189, as Jortin observes. 
 Blackwell, in his curious Life of Homer, after showing that 
 the ancient oracles were the fountains of knowledge, and 
 that the votaries of the god of Delphi had their faith con- 
 firmed by the oracle's perfect acquaintance with the country, 
 parentage, and fortunes of the suppliant, and many predic- 
 tions verified ; that besides all this, the oracles that have 
 reached us discover a wide knowledge of everything relating 
 to Greece ; — this learned writer is at a loss to account for a 
 knowledge that he thinks has something divine in it : it was 
 a knowledge to be found nowhere in Greece but among the 
 Oracles. He would account for this phenomenon by sup- 
 posing there existed a succession of learned men devoted to 
 this purpose. He says, " Either we must admit the know- 
 ledge of the priests, or turn converts to the ancients, and 
 believe in the omniscience of Apollo, which in this age I 
 know nohody in hazard of^ Yet, to the astonishment of 
 this writer, were he now living, he would have witnessed 
 this incredible fact ! Even Erasmus himself might have 
 wondered. 
 
 We discover the origin of modern platontsm, as it may 
 be distinguished, among the Italians. About the middle of 
 the fifteenth century, some time before the Turks had be- 
 come masters of Constantinople, a great number of philoso- 
 phers flourished. Gemisthus I'letho was one distinguished 
 by his genius, his erudition, and his fervent passion for 
 platonism. Mr. Roscoe notices Pletho : " His discourses had 
 so powerful an effect upon Cosmo de' Medici, who was his 
 constant auditor, that he established an academy at Florence, 
 for the sole purpose of cultivating this new and more elevated 
 species of pliilosophy." The learned Marsilio Ficino trans- 
 lated Plotinus, that great archimage of platonic mysticism. 
 Such were Pletho's eminent abilities, that in his old age those 
 whom his novel system had greatly irritated either feared or
 
 214 Modern Platonism. 
 
 respected liim. He had scarcely breathed his last when they 
 began to abuse Plato and our Pletho. The following account 
 is written by George of Trebizond. 
 
 "Lately has risen amongst us a second Mahomet: and 
 this second, if we do not take care, will exceed in greatness 
 the first, by the dreadful consequences of his wicked doctrine, 
 as the first has exceeded Plato. A disciple and rival of this 
 philosopher in philosophy, in eloquence, and in science, he 
 had fixed his residence in the Peloponnese. His common 
 name was Gemisthiis, but he assumed that of PJetlio. Per- 
 haps Gemisthus, to make us believe more easily that he was 
 descended from heaven, and to engage us to receive more 
 readily his doctrine and his new law, wished to change his 
 name, according to the manner of the ancient patriarchs, of 
 whom it is said, that at the time the name was changed they 
 were called to the greatest things. He has written with no 
 vulgar art, and with no common elegance. He has given 
 new rules for the conduct of life, and for the regulation of 
 human affan-s ; and at the same time has vomited forth a 
 great number of blasphemies against the Catholic religion. 
 He was so zealous a platonist that he entertained no other 
 sentiments than those of Plato, concerning the nature of the 
 gods, souls, sacrifices, &c. I have heard him myself, when 
 we were together at Florence, say, that in a few years all 
 men on the face of the earth would embrace with one common 
 consent, and with one mind, a single and simple religion, at 
 the first instructions which should be given by a single 
 preaching. And when I asked him if it would be the reli- 
 gion of Jesus Christ, or that of Mahomet ? he answered, 
 ' Neither one nor the other ; but a third, which will not 
 greatly differ from paganism.'' These words I heard with so 
 much indignation, that since that time I have always hated 
 him : I look upon him as a dangerous viper ; and I cannot 
 think of him without abhorrence." 
 
 The pious writer might have been satisfied to have bestowed 
 a smile of pity or contempt. 
 
 When Pletho died, full of years and honours, the malice 
 of his enemies collected all its venom. This circumstance 
 seems to prove that his abilities must have been great indeed, 
 to have kept such crowds silent. Several Catholic writers 
 lament that his book was burnt, and regret the loss of Pletho's 
 work; which, they say, was not designed to subvert the 
 Christian religion, but 01:1 ly to unfold the system of Plato,
 
 Modern Platonism. 215 
 
 and to collect what he and other philosophers had written on 
 religion and politics. 
 
 Of his religious scheme, the reader may judge by this sum- 
 mary account. The general title of the volume ran thus : — 
 " This book treats of the laws of the best form of govern- 
 ment, and what all men must observe in their public and 
 private stations, to live together in the most perfect, the 
 most innocent, and the most happy manner." The whole 
 was divided into three books. The titles of the chapters 
 where paganism was openly inculcated are reported by Genna- 
 dius, who condemned it to the flames, but who has not thought 
 proper to enter into the manner of his arguments. The extra- 
 vagance of this new legislator appeared, above all, in the articles 
 which concei'ned religion. He acknowledges a plurality of 
 gods : some superior, whom he placed above the heavens ; and 
 the others inferior, on this side tlie heavens. The fii-st exist- 
 ing from the remotest antiquity ; the others younger, and of 
 different ages. He gave a king to all these gods, and he called 
 him ZEYS, or Jupite}' ; as the pagans named this power foi*- 
 mei'ly. According to him, the stars had a soul ; the demons 
 were not malignant spirits ; and the world was eternal. He 
 established polygamy, and was even inclined to a community 
 of women. All his work was filled with such reveries, and 
 with not a few impieties, which my pious author has not ven- 
 tured to give. 
 
 What were the intentions of Pletho ? If the work was 
 only an arranged system of paganism, or the platonic philo- 
 sophy, it might have been an innocent, if not a curious volume. 
 He was learned and humane, and had not passed his life en- 
 tirely in the solitary recesses of his study. 
 
 To strain human curiosity to the utmost limits of human 
 credibility, a modern Pletho has risen in Mr. Thomas Taylor, 
 who, consonant to the platonic philosophy in the present 
 day, religiously professes polytheism ! At the close of the 
 eighteenth century, be it recorded, were published many 
 volumes, in which the author affects to avow himself a zealous 
 Platonist, and asserts that he can prove that the Christian 
 religion is "a bastardized and barbarous Platonism." The 
 divinities of Plato are the divinities to be adored, and we are 
 to be taught to call God, Jupiter ; the Virgin, Venus ; and 
 Christ, Cupid ! The Iliad of Homer allegorised, is converted 
 into a Greek bible of the arcana of nature ! Extraordinary 
 as this literary lunacy may appear, we must observe, that it
 
 216 Anecdotes of Fashion. 
 
 stands not singular in the annals of the history of the human 
 mind. The Florentine Academy, which Cosmo founded, 
 had, no doubt, some classical enthusiasts; but who, perhaps, 
 according to the political character of their country, were 
 prudent and reserved. The platonic furor, however, appears 
 to have reached other countries. In the reign of Louis XII., 
 a scholar named Hemon de la Fosse, a native of Abbeville, 
 by continually reading the Greek and Latin writers, became 
 mad enough to persuade himself that it was impossible that 
 the religion of such great geniuses as Homer, Cicero, and 
 Virgil was a false one. On the 25th of August, 1503, being 
 at church, he suddenly snatched the host from the hands of 
 the priest, at the moment it was raised, exclaiming- — " What ! 
 always this foll}^ !" He was immediately seized. In the hope 
 that he would abjure his extravagant errors, they delayed his 
 punishment ; but no exhortation or entreaties availed. He 
 persisted in maintaining that Jupiter was the sovereign God 
 of the universe, and that there was no other paradise than 
 the Elvsian fields. He was burnt alive, after havinsf first had 
 his tongue ]:)iereed, and his hand cut off. Thus perished an 
 ardent and learned youth, who ought only to have been con- 
 demned as a Bedlamite. 
 
 Dr. More, the most rational of our modern Platonists, 
 abounds, however, with the most extravagant reveries, and 
 was inflated with egotism and enthusiasm, as much as any of 
 his mystic predecessors. He conceived that he communed 
 with the Divinity itself! that he had been shot as a fiery dart 
 into the world, and he hoped he had hit the mark. He car- 
 ried his self-conceit to such extravagance, that he thouE^ht his 
 urme smelt like violets, and his body in the spring season had 
 a sweet odour ; a perfection peculiar to himself. These vision- 
 aries indulge the most fanciful vanity. 
 
 The "sweet odours," and that of "the violets," might, 
 however, have been real — for they mark a certain stage of the 
 disease of diabetes, as appears in a medical tract by the elder 
 Dr. Latham. 
 
 ANECDOTES OF FASHION. 
 
 A VOLUME on this subject might be made very curious and 
 entertaining, for our ancestors were not less vacillating, and 
 perhaps more capriciously grotesque, though with infinitely 
 less taste, than the present generation. Were a philosopher
 
 Anecdotes of Fash ion. 217 
 
 and an artist, as well as an antiquary, to compose such a 
 work, much diversified entertainment, and some curious in- 
 vestigation of the progress of the arts and taste, would 
 douhtless be the result; the suhject otherwise appears of 
 trifling value ; the very farthing pieces of history. 
 
 The origin of many fashions was in the endeavour to con- 
 ceal some deformity of the inventor : hence the cushions, 
 ruffs, hoops, and other monstrous devices. If a reigning 
 beauty chanct^I to have an unequal hip, those who had very 
 handsome hips would load them with that false rump which 
 the other was compelled by the unkindness of nature to 
 substitute. Patches were invented in England in the reign 
 of Edward YI. by a foreign lady, who in this manner inge- 
 niously covered a wen on her neck. Full-bottomed wigs 
 were invented by a French barber, one Duviller, whose name 
 they perpetuated, for the purpose of concealing an elevation 
 in the shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VIl. of France in- 
 troduced lono: coats to hide his ill-made lesrs. Shoes with 
 very long points, full two feet in length, were invented by 
 Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large ex- 
 crescence on one of his feet. When Francis I. was obliged 
 to wear his hair short, owing to a wound he received in the 
 head, it became a prevailing fashion at court. Others, on the 
 contrary, adapted fashions to set ofi" their peculiar beauties : 
 as Isabella of Bavaria, remarkable for her gallantr}^, and the 
 fairness of her complexion, introduced the fashion of leaving 
 the shoulders and part of the neck uncovered. 
 
 Fashions have frequently originated from circumstances as 
 silly as the following one. Isabella, daughter of Philip II. 
 and wife of the Archduke Albert, vowed not to change her 
 linen till Ostend was taken ; this siege, unluckily for her 
 comfort, lasted three years ; and the supposed colour of the 
 archduchess's linen gave rise to a fashionable colour, hence 
 called risabeau, or the Isabella ; a kind of whitish-yellow- 
 dingy. Sometimes they originate in some temporary event ; 
 as after the battle of Steenkirk, where the allies wore large 
 cravats, by which the French frequently seized hold of them, 
 a circumstance perpetuated on the medals of Louis XIV., 
 cravats were called Steenkirks ; and alter the battle of 
 Eamilies, wigs received that denomination. 
 
 The court, in all ages and in every country, are the mo- 
 dellers of fashions ; so that all the ridicule, of which these 
 are so susceptible, must fall on them, and not upon their ser-
 
 218 Anecdotes of Fashion, 
 
 vile imitators tlie citizens. This complaint is made even so 
 far back as in 1586, by Jean cles Caures, an old French mo- 
 ralist, who, in declaiming against the fashions of his day, 
 notices one, of the ladies carrying mirrors fixed to their 
 ivaists, which seemed to employ their ej'es in perpetual 
 activity. From this mode will result, according to honest 
 Des Caures, tlieir eternal damnation. " Alas ! (he exclaims) 
 in what an age do we live : to see such depravity which we 
 see, that induces them even to bring into church these scan- 
 dalous mirrors hanging ahout their waists I Let all histories, 
 divine, human, and profane, be consulted ; never will it be 
 found that these objects of vanity were ever thus brought 
 into public by the most meretricious of the sex. It is true, 
 at present none but the ladies of the court venture to wear 
 them ; but long it will not be before everg citizen^ s daughter 
 and every female servant, will have them !" Such in all 
 times has been the rise and decline of fashion ; and the 
 absurd mimicry of the citizens, even of the lowest classes, to 
 their very ruin, in straining to rival the newest fashion, has 
 mortified and galled the courtier. 
 
 On this subject old Camden, in his Remains, relates a story 
 of a trick played off on a citizen, which I give in the plain- 
 ness of his own venerable style. " Sir Philip Calthrop 
 jDurged John Drakes, the shoemaker of Norwich, in the time 
 of King Henry VIIT. of the ^^ro?;</ humour which ovxy people 
 have to he of the gentlemen^ s cut. This knight bought on a 
 time as much fine French tawny cloth as should make him a 
 gown, and sent it to the taylor's to be made. John Drakes, 
 a shoemaker of that town, coming to this said taylor's, and 
 seeing the knight's gown cloth lying there, liking it well, 
 caused the taylor to buy him as much of the same cloth and 
 price to the same intent, and further bade him to make it of 
 the same fashion that the Jcnight would have his made of. 
 Not long after, the knight coming to the taylor's to take 
 measure of his gown, perceiving the like cloth lying there, 
 asked of the taylor whose it was ? Quoth the taylor, it is 
 John Drakes' the shoemaker, who will have it made of the 
 self-same fashion that yours is made of! 'Well!' said the 
 knight, ' in good time be it ! I will have mine made as, full 
 of cuts as thy shears can make it.' ' It shall be done !' said 
 the taylor ; whereupon, because the time drew near, he made 
 liaste to finish both their garments. John Drakes had no
 
 Anecdotes of Fashion, 219 
 
 time to go to the taylor's till Christmas-day, for serving his 
 customers, when he hoped to have worn his gown ; perceiv- 
 ing the same to he fall of cuts hegan to swear at the taylor, 
 for the makins: his sfown after that sort. " I have done no- 
 thing,' quoth the taylor, 'but that you bid me; for as Sir 
 Philip Calthrop's garment is, even so I have made yours 1' 
 'By my latchet!' quoth John Drakes, ^ I will never wear 
 gentlemen'' s fashions again /' " 
 
 Sometimes fashions are quite reversed in their use in one 
 age from another. Bags, when first in fashion in France, 
 were only worn en desliabiUe ; in visits of ceremony, the hair 
 was tied by a riband and floated over the shoulders, which is 
 exaetl}^ reversed in the present fashion. In the year 1735 
 the men had no hats but a little chapeau de bras ; in 1745 
 they wore a very small hat ; in 1755 they wore an enormous 
 one, as may be seen in Jeffrey's curious " Collection of 
 Habits in all Nations." Old Puttenham, in " The Art of 
 Poesie," p. 239, on the present topic gives some curious in- 
 formation. "Henry VIII. caused his own head, and all his 
 courtiers, to be polled and his heard to be cut short ; before 
 that time it was thought more decent, both for old men and 
 young, to be all shaven, and weare lone/ haire, either rounded 
 or square. Now agahi at this time (Elizabeth's reign), the 
 young gentlemen of the court have taken up the long haire 
 trayling on their shoulders, and think this more decent ; for 
 what respect I would be glad to know." 
 
 When the fair sex were accustomed to behold their lovers 
 with beards, the sight of a shaved chin excited feelings of 
 horror and aversion ; as much indeed as, in this less heroic 
 age, would a gallant whose luxuriant beard should 
 
 " Stream like a meteor to the troubled air." 
 
 When Louis VII., to obey the injunctions of his bishops, 
 cropped his hair, and shaved his beard, Eleanor, his consort, 
 found him, with this unusual appearance, very ridiculous, and 
 soon very contemptible. She revenged herself as she 
 thought proper, and the poor shaved king obtained a divorce. 
 She then married the Count of Anjou, afterwards our Henry 
 II. She had for her marriage dower the rich provinces of 
 Poitou and Guienne; and this was the origin of those wars 
 which for three hundred years ravaged France, and cost the 
 French three millions of men. All which, probably, had
 
 220 Anecdotes of Fashion. 
 
 never occuiTed had Louis VII. not been so rash as to crop his 
 head and shave his beard, by which he became so disgustful 
 in the eyes of our Queen Eleanor. 
 
 We cannot perhaps sympathise with the feelings of her 
 majesty, though at Constantinople she might not have been 
 considered unreasonable. There must be something more 
 powerful in beards and mustachios than we are quite aware 
 of; for when these were in fashion — and long after this was 
 written — the fashion has returned on us — with what enthu- 
 siasm were they not contemplated ! When onustachios w^ere 
 in general use, an author, in his Elements of Education, 
 published in 1640, thinks that " hairy excrement," as 
 Armado in " Love's Labour Lost" calls it, contributed to 
 make men valorous. He says, " I have a favourable opinion 
 of that young gentleman who is curious in fine mustachios. 
 The time he employs in adjusting, di-essing, and curling 
 them, is no lost time ; for the more he contemplates his 
 mustachios, the more his mind will cherish and be animated 
 by masculine and courageous notions." The best reason that 
 could be given for wearing the longest and largest heard of 
 any Englishman was that of a worthy clergyman in Eliza- 
 beth's reign, " that no act of his life might be unworthy of 
 the gravity of his appearance." 
 
 The grandfather of Mrs. Thomas, the Corinna of Cromwell, 
 the literary friend of Pope, by her account, " was very nice in 
 the mode of that age, his valet being some hours every morn- 
 ing in s^arc7?2H<7 A«'s heard andi curling his vjhiskers ; during 
 which time he was always read to." Taylor, the water poet, 
 humorously describes the great variety of beards in his time, 
 which extract may be found in Grey's Hudibras, Vol. I. p. 300. 
 The heard dwindled gradually under the two Charleses, till it 
 was reduced into tchiskers, and became extinct in the reign of 
 James II., as if its fatality had been connected with that of 
 the house of Stuart. 
 
 The hair has in all ages been an endless topic for the decla- 
 mation of the moralist, and the favourite object of fashion. 
 If the heau monde wore their hair luxuriant, or their wig 
 enormous, the preachers, in Charles the Second's reign, in- 
 stantly were seen in the pulpit with their hair cut shorter, 
 and their sermon longer, in consequence ; respect was, how- 
 ever, paid by the world to the size of the wig, in spite of the 
 hair-cutter in the pulpit. Our judges, and till lately our 
 physicians, well knew its magical effect. In the reign of
 
 Anecdotes of Fashion. 221 
 
 Charles II. the hair-dress of the ladies was very elaborate ; 
 it was not only curled and frizzled with the nicest art, but 
 set off with certain artificial curls, then too emphatically 
 known by the pathetic terms of heart-hreakers and love- 
 locks. So late as WiUiam and Mary, lads, and even children, 
 wore wigs ; and if they had not wigs, they curled their hair 
 to resemble this fashionable ornament. Women then were 
 the hair-dressers. 
 
 There are flagrant follies in fashion which must be endured 
 while they reign, and which never appear ridiculous till they 
 are out of fashion. In the reign of Henry III. of France, they 
 could not exist without an abundant use of comfits. All the 
 world, the grave and the gay, carried in their pockets a comfit- 
 hox, as we do snuff-boxes. They used them even on the most 
 solemn occasions ; when the Duke of Guise was shot at Blois, 
 he was found with his comfit-box in his hand. — Fashions in- 
 deed have been carried to so extravagant a length, as to have 
 become a public offence, and to have required the interference 
 of government. Short and tight breeches were so much the 
 rage in France, that Charles V. was compelled to banish this 
 disgusting mode by edicts, which may be Ibund in Mezerai. 
 An Italian author of the fifteenth century supposes an Italian 
 traveller of nice modesty would not pass through France, 
 that he might not be offended by seeing men whose clothes 
 rather exposed their nakedness than hid it. The very same 
 fashion was the complaint in the remoter period of our 
 Chaucer, in his Parson's Tale. 
 
 In the reign of our Elizabeth the reverse of all this took 
 place ; then the mode of enormous breeches was pushed to a 
 most laughable excess. The beaux of that day stuffed out 
 their breeches with rags, feathers, and other light matters, 
 till they brought them out to an enormous size. They resem- 
 bled woolsaclis, and in a public spectacle they were obliged to 
 raise scaffolds for the seats of these ponderous beaux. To 
 accord with this fantastical taste, the ladies invented large 
 hoop farthingales ; two lovers aside could surely never have 
 taken one another by the hand. In a preceding reign the 
 fashion ran on square toes ; insomuch that a proclamation 
 was issued that no person should wear shoes above six inches 
 square at the toes ! Then succeeded picked-pointed shoes ! 
 The nation was again, in the reign of Elizabeth, put under 
 the royal authority. "In that time," says honest John 
 Stowe, " he was held the greatest gallant that had the deepest
 
 222 Anecdotes of Fashion. 
 
 <ruff 2Ci\di longest rapier: tlie offence to the eye of the one, and 
 hurt unto the Hfe of the subject that came by the other — 
 this caused her Majestic to make proclamatioji against them 
 ioth, and to place selected grave citizens at every gate, to cut 
 the ruffes, and hreaJce the rapiers' points of all passengers 
 that exceeded a yeard in length of their rapiers, and a nayle 
 of a yeard in depth of their ruffes." These " grave citizens," 
 at every gate cutting the ruffs and breaking the rapiers, must 
 doubtless have encountered in their ludicrous employment 
 some stubborn opposition ; but this regulation was, in the 
 spirit of that age, despotic and effectual. Paul, the Emperor 
 of Russia, one day ordered the soldiers to stop every passenger 
 who vpore pantaloons, and with their hangers to cut off, upon 
 the leg, the offending part of these superfluous breeches ; so 
 that a man's legs depended greatly on the adroitness and 
 humanity of a Russ or a Cossack ; however this war against 
 pantaloons was very successful, and obtained a complete 
 triumph in favour of the breeches in the course of the week. 
 
 A shameful extravagance in dress has been a most vene- 
 rable folly. In the reign of Richard II. their dress was 
 sumptuous beyond belief. Sir John Arundel had a change of 
 no less than fifty-two new suits of cloth of gold tissue. The 
 prelates indulged in all the ostentatious luxury of dress. 
 Chaucer says, they had " chaunge of clothing everie daie." 
 Brantome records of Elizabeth, Queen of Philip II. of Spain, 
 that she never wore a gown twice ; this was told him by her 
 majesty's own tailleur, who from a poor man soon became as 
 rich as any one he knew. Our own Elizabeth left no less 
 than three thousand different habits in her wardrobe when 
 she died. She was possessed of the dresses of all countries. 
 
 The catholic religion has ever considered the pomp of the 
 clerical habit as not the slightest part of its religious cere- 
 monies ; their devotion is addressed to the eye of the people. 
 In the reign of our catholic Queen Mar}^ the dress of a priest 
 Vfas costly indeed ; and the sarcastic and good-humoured 
 Puller gives, in his Worthies, the will of a priest, to show 
 the wardrobe of men of his order, and desires that the priest 
 may not be jeered for the gallantry of his splendid apparel. 
 He bequeaths to various parish churches and persons, " My 
 vestment of crimson satin — my vestment of crimson velvet 
 — my stole and fanon set with pearl — my black gown faced 
 with taffeta," &c. 
 
 Chaucer has minutely detailed in " The Persone's Tale"
 
 Anecdotes of Fashion. 2.23 
 
 the grotesque and the costly fashions of his day ; and the 
 simplicity of the venerable satirist will interest the antiquary 
 and the philosopher. Much, and curiously, has his caustic 
 severity or lenient humour descanted on the " moche super- 
 fluitee," and "wast of cloth in vanitee," as well as "the 
 disordinate scantnesse." In the spirit of the good old times, 
 he calculates " the coste of the embrouding or embroidering ; 
 endenting or barring ; ounding or wavy ; paling or imitating 
 pales ; and winding or bending ; the costlevve furring in the 
 gounes ; so much pounsoning of chesel to maken holes (that 
 is, punched with a bodkin) ; so moche dagging of sheres 
 (cutting into slips) ; with the superfluitee in length of the 
 gounes trailing in the dong and in the myre, on horse and 
 eke on i'oot, as wel of man as of woman — that all thilke 
 trailing," he verily believes, which wastes, consumes, wears 
 threadbare, and is rotten with dung, are all to the damage 
 of "the poor folk," who inight be clothed only out of the 
 flounces and draggle-tails of these childi'en of vanity. But 
 then his Parson is not less bitter against " the horrible dis- 
 ordinat scantnesse of clothing," and very copiously he de- 
 scribes, though perhaps in terms and with a humour too 
 coarse for me to transcribe, the consequences of these very 
 tight dresses. Of these persons, among other offensive mat- 
 ters, he sees " the buttokkes behind, as if they were the 
 hinder part of a sheap, in the ful of the mone." He notices 
 one of the most grotesque modes, the wearing a parti-coloured 
 dress ; one stocking part white and part red, so that they 
 looked as if they had been flayed. Or white and blue, or 
 white and black, or black and red ; this variety of colours 
 gave an appearance to their members of St. Anthony's fire, 
 or cancer, or other mischance ! 
 
 The modes of dress during the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries were so various and ridiculous, that they afforded 
 perpetual food for the eager satirist. 
 
 The conquests of Edward III. introduced the French 
 fashions into England ; and the Scotch adopted them by their 
 alliance with the French court, and close intercourse with 
 that nation. 
 
 Walsino-ham dates the introduction of French fashions 
 among us from the taking of Calais in 1317 ; but we appear 
 to have possessed such a rage for imitation in dress, that an 
 English beau was actually a fantastical compound of all the 
 fashions in Europe, and even Asia, in the reign of Elizabeth.
 
 224 Anecdotes of Fashion. 
 
 In Chaucer's time, the prevalence of French fashions was a 
 common topic with our satirist ; and he notices the affecta- 
 tion of our female citizens in speaking the French language, 
 a stroke of satire which, after four centuries, is not obsolete, 
 if applied to their faulty pronunciation. In the prologue to 
 the Prioresse, Chaucer has these humorous lines : — 
 
 Entewned in her voice full seemly, 
 And Frencb slie spake full feteously, 
 After the Scole of Stratford at Bowe : 
 The French of Paris was to her unknowe. 
 
 A beau of the reign of Henry IV. has been made out, by 
 the laborious Henry. They wore then long-pointed shoes to 
 such an immoderate length, that they could not walk till 
 they were fastened to their knees with chains. Luxury im- 
 proving on this ridiculous mode, these chains the English 
 beau of the fourteenth century had made of gold and silver ; 
 but the grotesque fashion did not finish here, for the tops of 
 their shoes were carved in the manner of a church window. 
 The ladies of that period were not less fantastical. 
 
 The wild variety of dresses worn in the reign of Henry 
 VIII. is alluded to in a print of a naked ^Englishman holding 
 a piece of cloth hanging on his right arm, and a pair of 
 shears in his left hand. It was invented by Andrew Borde, 
 a learned wit of those days. The print bears the following 
 inscription : — 
 
 I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here. 
 Musing in my mind, what rayment I shall were ; 
 For now I will were this, and now I will were that, 
 And now I will were what I cannot tell what. 
 
 At a lower period, about the reign of Elizabeth, we ai'e 
 presented with a curious picture of a man of fashion by Put- 
 tenham, in his " Arte of Poetry," p. 250. This author was 
 a travelled courtier, and has interspersed his curious work 
 with many lively anecdotes of the times. This is his fantas- 
 tical beau in the reign of Elizabeth. " May it not seeme 
 enough for a courtier to know how to iveare a feather 
 and set Ms cappe aflaunt; his chain en echarpe ; a 
 straight buskin, al Inglese ; a loose a la Turquesque ; the 
 cape alia Spaniola ; the breech ci la Frangoise, and, by 
 twentie maner of new-fashioned garments, to disguise his 
 body and his face with as many countenances, whereof it 
 seems there be many that make a very arte and studie, who
 
 Anecdotes of FasJdon. 225 
 
 can shewe liimselfe most fine, I will not say most foolish or 
 ridiculous." So that a beau of those times wore in the same 
 dress a grotesque mixture of all the fashions in the world. 
 About the same period the ton ran in a different course in 
 France. There, fashion consisted in an affected negligence of 
 dress ; for Montaigne honestly laments, in Book i. Cap. 25 — 
 •' I have never yet been apt to imitate the negligent garb 
 which is yet observable among the young men of our time ; 
 to wear my cloak on one shoulder, my bonnet on one side, and 
 one stocking in something more disorder titan the other, meant 
 to express a manly disdain of such exotic ornaments, and a 
 contempt of art." 
 
 The fashions of the Elizabethan age have been chronicled 
 bv honest John Stowe. Stowe was originally a tailor, and 
 when he laid down the shears, and took up the pen, the taste 
 and curiosity for dress was still retained. He is the grave 
 chronicler of matters not grave. The chronology of ruffs, 
 and tufted taffetas ; the revolution of steel poking-stieks, 
 instead of bone or wood, used by the laundresses ; the invasion 
 of shoe-buckles, and the total rout of shoe-roses ; that grand 
 adventure of a certain Flemish lady, who introduced the art 
 of starching the ruffs with a yellow tinge into Britain : while 
 Mrs. Montague emulated her in the royal favour, by pre- 
 senting her highness the queen with a pair of black silk 
 stockings, instead of her cloth hose, which her majesty now 
 for ever rejected ; the heroic achievements of the Right 
 Honourable Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who first 
 brought from Italy the whole mystery and craft of per- 
 fumery, and costly washes ; and among other pleasant things 
 besides, a perfumed jerkin, a pair of perfumed gloves trimmed 
 with roses, in which the queen took such delight, that she 
 was actvially pictured with those gloves on her royal hands, 
 and for many years after the scent was called the Earl of 
 Oxford's Perfume. These, and occurrences as memorable, 
 receive a pleasant kind of historical pomp in the important, 
 and not incurious, narrative of the antiquary and the tailor. 
 The toilet of Elizabeth was indeed an altar of devotion, of 
 which she was the idol, and all her ministers were her vota- 
 ries : it was the reign of coquetry, and the golden age of 
 millinery ! But for grace and elegance they had not the 
 slightest feeling ! There is a print by Vertue, of Queen 
 Elizabeth going in a procession to Lord Hunsdon. This pro- 
 cession is led by Lady Hunsdon, who no doubt was the 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 Anecdotes of Fashion. 
 
 leader likewise of the fashion ; but it is impossible, with our 
 ideas of grace and comfort, not to commiserate this unfortunate 
 lady ; whose standing-up wire ruff, rising above her head ; 
 whose stays, or bodice, so long-waisted as to reach to her 
 knees ; and the circumference of her large hoop farthingale, 
 which seems to enclose her in a capacious tub ; mark her out 
 as one of the most pitiable martyrs of ancient modes. The 
 amorous Sir Walter Ealeigh must have found some of the 
 maids of honour the most impregnable foi'tification his gallant 
 spirit ever assailed : a coiq? de main was impossible. 
 
 I shall transcribe from old Stowe a few extracts, which may 
 amuse the reader : — 
 
 " In the second yeere of Queen Elizabeth, 1560, her silke 
 woman, Mistris Montague, presented her majestic for a new 
 yeere's gift, apaire of' black knit silk stockings, the which, 
 after a few days' wearing, pleased her highness so well, that 
 she sent for Mistris Montague, and asked her where she had 
 them, and if she could help her to any more ; who answered, 
 saying, ' I made them very carefully of purpose only for your 
 majestie, and seeing these please you so well, I will presently 
 set more in hand.' ' Do so (quoth the queene), for indeed I 
 like silk stockings so u'ell, because they are pleasant, Jine, and 
 delicate, tliat henceforth I loill wear no more cloth stock- 
 ings ' — and from that time unto her death the queene never 
 wore any more cloth hose, but only silke stockings ; for you 
 shall understand that King Henry the Eight did weare onely 
 cloath hose, or hose cut out of ell-broade taffety, or that by 
 great chance there came a pair of Spanish silk stockings from 
 Spain. King Edward the Sixt had a jiJi/yre o/" Zowy /S);a?z/«7i 
 silk stockings sent him for a great present. — Dukes' 
 daughters then wore gownes of satten of Bridges (Bruges) 
 upon solemn dayes. Cushens, and window pillows of velvet 
 and damaske, formerly only princely furniture, now be very 
 plenteous in most citizens' houses." 
 
 " Milloners or haberdashers had not then any gloves im- 
 hroydered, or trimmed with gold, or silke ; neither gold nor 
 imbroydered girdles and hangers, neither could they «2«X;e a?zy 
 costly ivash or ■perfume, until about the fifteenth yeere of the 
 queene, the Right Honourable Edward de Yere, Earl of 
 Oxford, came from Italy, and brought with him gloves, sweete 
 bagges, a perfumed leatlier jerkin, and other pleasant things ; 
 and that yeere the queene had a pair of perfumed gloves 
 trimmed only with four tufies, or ros^ of coloured silk. The
 
 Anecdotes of Fashion. 227 
 
 queene took such pleasure in tliose g^loves, that she was 
 jnctured with those gloves vipon hei' handes, and for many 
 years after it was called ' The lllarl of OjcforcVs j^eifume.'' " 
 
 In such a chronology of fashions, an event not less impor- 
 tant surely was the origin of starcliing ; and hei'e we find it 
 treated with the utmost historical dignity. 
 
 " In the year 15G4, Mistris Diughen Van den Plasse, home 
 at Tsenen in Flaunders, daughter to a worshipful! knight of 
 that province, with her hushand, came to London for their 
 better safeties, and there professed herself a starclier, wherein 
 she excelled, unto whom her owne nation presently repaired, 
 and payed her very liberally for her worke. Some very few 
 of the best and most cm-ious wives of that time, observinsr 
 the neatness and delicacy of tlie Dutch for- whitenesse and 
 fine loearincj of linen, made them camlricke ruffs, and sent 
 them to Mistris Dinghen to starch, and after awliile they made 
 them ruffes of hum, which was at tiiat time a stutf most 
 strange, and wonderful!, and thereupon rose a general scoffe 
 or by-word, that shortly they would )nake ruffs of a spider s 
 weh ; and tlien tliey began to send tlieir daughters and nearest 
 kinswomen to Mistris Dinghen to ^effry? how to starclie ; her 
 usual! price was at tliat time, foure or five pound, to teaeli 
 them liow to starch, and twenty shillings liow to seeth 
 starchy 
 
 Thus Italy, Holland, and France supplied us witli fashions 
 and refinements. But in those da^^s tliere were, as I have 
 sliown from Puttenliam, as extravagant dressers as any of 
 tlieir present supposed degenerate descendants. Stowe affords 
 us another curious extract. " Divers noble personages made 
 them riffes, a full quarter of a yeard deepe, and two lengthe 
 in one ruffe. '^\\\'s, fashion in London was called the French 
 fashion ; but when Englishmen came to Paris, the French 
 knew it not, and in derision called it the Enylish monster.'''' 
 An exact parallel this of many of our own Parisian modes in 
 the present day. 
 
 Tliis was the golden period of cosmetics. The beaux of 
 that day, it is evident, used tlie abominable art of painting 
 their faces as well as the women. Our old comedies abound 
 witli perpetual allusions to oils, tinctures, quintessences, 
 pomatums, perfumes, paint white and red, &c. One of their 
 prime cosmetics was a frequent use oii\whath, and the appli- 
 cation of wine. Strutt quotes from an old MS. a recipe to 
 make the face of a beautiful red colour. The person was to be 
 
 q2
 
 228 Anecdotes of Fashion. 
 
 in a bath that he might perspire, and afterwards wash his face 
 with wine, and " so should be both faire and roddj'." In Mr. 
 Lodge's "Illustrations of British History," the Earl of 
 Shrewsbury, who had the keeping of the unfortunate Queen 
 of Scots, complains of the expenses of the queen for 
 hathing in trine, and requires a further allowance. A learned 
 Scotch professor informed me that u-hite wine was used for 
 these purposes. They also made a bath of milk. Elder 
 beauties hatlied in tvine, to get rid of their wrinkles ; and per- 
 haps not without reason, wine being a great astringent. Un- 
 wrinkled beauties bathed in milk, to preserve the softness and 
 sleekness of the skin. Our venerable beauties of the Eliza- 
 bethan age were initiated coquettes ; and the mysteries of 
 their toilet might be worth jinveiling. 
 
 The reign of Charles IT. was the dominion of French 
 fashions. In some respects the taste was a little lighter, but 
 the moral effect of dress, and which no doubt it has, was 
 much worse. The dress was very inflammatory ; and the 
 nudity of the beauties of the portrait-painter, Sir Peter Lely, 
 nas been observed. The queen of Charles II. exposed her 
 breast and shoulders without even the gloss of the lightest 
 gauze ; and the tucker, instead of standing up on her bosom, 
 is with licentious boldness turned down, and lies upon her 
 stays. This custom of baring the bosom was much exclaimed 
 against by the authors of that age. That honest divine, 
 Richard Baxter, wrote a preface to a book, entitled, " A just 
 and seasonable reprehension of naked breasts and shoiilders." 
 In 1672 a book was published, entitled, " New instructions 
 unto 3^outh for their behaviour, and also a discourse upon some 
 innovations of habits and dressing ; afjainst fowderinrj of hair, 
 naked breasts, black spots (or patches), and other unseemly 
 customs." A whimsical fashion now prevailed among the 
 ladies, of strangel}' ornamenting their faces with abundance 
 of black patches cut into grotesque forms, such as a coach and 
 liorses, owls, rings, suns, moons, crowns, cross and crosslets. 
 The author has prefixed two ladies^ heads; the one represent- 
 ing Virtue, and the other Vice. Virtue is a lady modestly 
 habited, with a black velvet hood, and a plain white kerchief 
 on her neck, with a border. Vice wears no handkerchief ; her 
 stays cut low, so that they display great part of the breasts ; 
 and a variety of fantastical patches on her face. 
 
 The innovations of iashions in the reign of Charles II. were
 
 Anecdotes of Fashion. 229 
 
 watched with a jealous eye by the remains of those strict 
 puritans, who now could only pour out their bile in such 
 solemn admonitions. They affected all possible plainness and 
 sanctity. When courtiers wore monstrous wigs, they cut 
 their hair short ; when they adopted hats with broad plumes, 
 they clapped on round black caps, and screwed up their jiale 
 religious faces ; and when shoe-buckles were revived, tliey wore 
 strings. Tbe sublime Milton, perhaps, exulted in his intre- 
 pidity of still wearing latchets ! The Tatler ridicules iSir 
 William Whitelocke for his singularity in still affecting them. 
 " Thou dear W^ill Shoestrinrj, how shall I draw thee ? Thi^u 
 dear outside, will you be conibliig your wirj, playing with your 
 box, or picking your teeth ?" &e. Wigs and snuffboxes were 
 then the rage. Steele's own wig, it is recorded, made at one 
 time a considerable part of his annual expenditure. His 
 large black periwig cost him, even at that day, no less than 
 forty guineas ! — We wear nothing at present in this degree of 
 extravagance. But such a wig was the idol of fashion, and 
 they wei-e performing perpetually their worship with infinite 
 self-complacency ; combing their wigs in public was then the 
 very spirit of gallantry and rank. The hero of Richardson, 
 youthful and elegant as he wished him to be, is represented 
 waiting at an assignation, and describing his sufferings in bad 
 weather by lamenting that " his ivig and his linen were 
 dripping with the hoar frost dissolving on them." Even 
 Betty, Clarissa's lady's-maid, is described as "tapping 
 on her snuff-box^'' and frequently taking snuff. At this time 
 nothing was so monstrous as the head-dresses of the ladies 
 in Queen Anne's reign: they formed a kind of edifice of three 
 stories high ; and a fashionable lady of that day much resem- 
 bles the mythological figure of Cybele, the mother of the 
 gods, with three towers on her head.* 
 
 It is not worth noticing the changes in fashion, unless to 
 ridicule them. However, there are some who find amuse- 
 ment in these records of luxurious idleness ; these thousand 
 and one follies ! Modern fashions, till, very lately, a purer 
 taste has obtained among our females, were generally mere 
 copies of obsolete ones, and rarely originally fantastical. The 
 dress of some of our beaux will only be known in a few years 
 
 * It consisted of three borders of lace of different deptlis, set one above 
 tlie otber, and was called a Fontange, from its inventor, Mademoiselle 
 Fout-Ange, a lady of tbe Court of Louis XIV.
 
 230 Anecdotes of Fashion. 
 
 hence by their caricatures. In 1751 the dress of a dandy is 
 described in the Inspector. A hlack velvet coat, & green and 
 silver waistcoat, yelloiv velvet breeches, and blue stockings. 
 This too was the sera of black silk breed) es ; an extraordinary- 
 novelty against which " some frowsy people attempted to raise 
 up 'Worsted in emulation." A satirical writer has described a 
 buck about forty years ago ;* one could hardly have suspected 
 such a gentleman to have been one of our contemporaries. 
 " A coat of light green, with sleeves too small for the arms, 
 and buttons too big for the sleeves ; a pair of Manchester 
 fine stuff breeches, without money in the pockets ; clouded 
 silk stockings, but no legs ; a club of hair behind larger than 
 the head that carries it ; a hat of the size of sixpence on a 
 block not worth a farthing." 
 
 As this article may probably arrest the volatile eyes of my 
 fair readers, let me be permitted to felicitate them on their 
 improvement in elegance in the forms of their dress ; and the 
 taste and knowledge of art which they frequently exhibit. 
 But let me remind them that there are universal principles of 
 beauty in dress independent of all fashions. Tacitus remarks 
 of Poppea, the consort of Nero, that she concealed a part of 
 her face ; to the end that, the imagination having fuller play 
 by irritating curiosity, they might think higher of her beauty 
 than if the whole of her face had been exposed. The senti- 
 ment is beautifully expressed by Tasso, and it will not be 
 difficult to remember it : — 
 
 "Non copre sue bellezze, e non I'espose." 
 
 I conclude by a poem, written in my youth, not only be- 
 cause the late Sir Walter Scott once repeated some of the 
 lines, from memory, to remind me of it, and has preserved it 
 in " The English Minstrelsy," but also as a memorial of some 
 fashions which have become extinct in my own days. 
 
 STANZAS 
 
 ADDRESSED TO LAURA, ENTREATING HER NOT TO PAINT, TO POWDER, OK TO 
 GAME, BUT TO RETREAT INTO THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Ah, Laura ! quit the noisy town, 
 
 And Fashion's persecuting reign : 
 Health wanders on the breezy down, 
 
 And Science on the silent plain. 
 
 This was written in 1790.
 
 A Senate of Jesuits. 231 
 
 How long from Art's reflected hues 
 
 Shalt thou a miinic charni receive? 
 Believe, my fair ! the faithful muse, 
 
 They spoil the blush they cannot give. 
 
 Must ruthless art, with tortuous steel, 
 
 Thy artless locks of gold deface, 
 In serpent folds tlieir charms conceal, 
 
 And spoil, at every touch, a grace. 
 
 Too sweet thy youth's enchanting bloom 
 
 To waste on midnight's sordid crews : 
 Let wrinkled age the night consume. 
 
 For age has but its hoards to lose. 
 
 Sacred to love and sweet repose, 
 
 Behold that trellis'd bower is nigh ! 
 That bower the verdant walls enclose. 
 
 Safe from pursuing Scandal's eye. 
 
 There, as in every lock of gold 
 
 Some flower of pleasing hue I weave, 
 A goddess shall the muse behold, 
 
 And many a votive sigh shall heave. 
 
 So the rude Tartar's holy rite 
 
 A feeble mortal once array'd ; 
 Then trembled in that mortal's sight, 
 
 And own'd divine the power he made. 
 
 * 
 
 A SENATE OF JESUITS. 
 
 Ik a book entitled " Interets et Maximes des Princes et des 
 Etats Souverains, par M. le due de Eohan ; Cologne, 166(5," 
 an anecdote is recorded concerning the Jesuits, which neither 
 Puffendorf nor Vertot has noticed in his history. 
 
 When Sigismond, king of Sweden, was elected king of 
 Poland, he made a treaty with the states of Sweden, by 
 which he obliged himself to pass every fifth year in that 
 kingdom. By his wars with the Ottoman court, with Mus- 
 covy, and Tartary, compelled to remain in Poland to encounter 
 these powerful enemies, during fifteen years he failed in 
 accomplishing his promise. To remedy this in some shape, 
 by the advice of the Jesuits, who had gained an ascendancy 
 over him, he created a senate to reside at Stockholm, composed 
 
 * The Lama, or God of the Tartars, is composed of such frail materials 
 as mei'e mortality ; contrived, however, by the power of priestcraft, to 
 appear immortal ; the succession of Lamas never failing !
 
 233 A Senate of Jesuits. 
 
 of forty chosen Jesuits. He presented them with letters- 
 patent, and invested them with the royal authority. 
 
 While this senate of Jesuits was at Dantzic, waiting for a 
 fair wind to set sail for Stockholm, he puhHshed an edict, 
 that the Swedes should receive them as his own royal person. 
 A public council was immediately held. Charles, the uncle 
 of Sigismond, the prelates, and the lords, resolved to prepare 
 for them a splendid and magnificent entxy. 
 
 But in a private council, they came to very contrary resolu- 
 tions : for the prince said, he could not bear that a senate of 
 priests should command, in preference to all the princes and 
 lords, natives of the country. All the others agreed with him 
 in rejecting this holy senate. The archbishop rose, and said, 
 " Since Sigismond has disdained to be our king, we also must 
 not acknowledge him as such ; and from this moment we 
 should no longer consider ourselves as his subjects. His 
 authority is in suspense, because he has bestowed it on the 
 Jesuits who form this senate. The people have not yet 
 acknowledged them. In this interval of resignation on the 
 one side, and assumption on the other, I absolve you all of 
 the fidelity the king may claim from you as his Swedish sub- 
 jects." The prince of Bithynia addressing himself to Prince 
 Charles, uncle of the king, said, " I own no other king than 
 you ; and I believe you are now obliged to receive us as your 
 affectionate subjects, and to assist us to hunt these vermin 
 from the state." All the others joined him, and acknowledged 
 Charles as their lawful monarch. 
 
 Having resolved to keep their declaration for some time 
 secret, they deliberated in what manner they were to receive 
 and to precede this senate in their entry into the harbour, 
 who were now on board a great galleon, which had anchored 
 two leagues from Stockholm, that they might enter more 
 magnificently in the night, when tlie fireworks they had pre- 
 pared would appear to the greatest advantage. About the 
 time of their reception. Prince Charles, accompanied by 
 twenty-five or thirty vessels, appeared before this senate. 
 Wheeling about, and forming a caracol of ships, they dis- 
 charged a volley, and emptied all their cannon on the galleon 
 bearing this senate, which had its sides pierced through with 
 the balls. The ga,lleon immediately filled with water and 
 sunk, without one of tlie unfortunate Jesuits being assisted : 
 on the conti'ary, their assailants cried to them that this was 
 the time to perform some miracle, such as they were accus-
 
 The Lover's Heart. 233 
 
 tomed to do in India and Japan ; and if they chose, they 
 could walk on the waters ! 
 
 The report of the cannon, and the smoke which the 
 powder occasioned, prevented either the cries or the submer- 
 sion of the holy fathers from being observed : and as if they 
 were conducting the senate to the town, Charles entered 
 tribmphantly ; went into tlie church, Avhere they sung Te 
 Beum ; and to conclude the night, he partook of the enter- 
 tainment which had been prepared for tliis ill-fated senate. 
 
 The Jesuits of the city of Stockholm having come, about 
 midnight, to pay their respects to the Fathers, perceived 
 their loss. They directly posted up j^^ccards of excommuni- 
 cation against Charles and his adhei-ents, who had caused the 
 senate of Jesuits to perish. They urged the people to rebel ; 
 but they were soon expelled the city, and Charles made a 
 public profession of Lutheranism. 
 
 Sigismond, King of Poland, began a war with Charles in 
 1604, which lasted two years, Distui'bed by the invasions of 
 the Tartars, the Muscovites, and the Cossacs, a truce was 
 concluded ; but Sigismond lost both his crowns, by his bigoted 
 attachment to Roman Catholicism. 
 
 THE LOVER'S HEART. 
 
 The following tale, recorded in the Historical Memoirs of 
 Champagne, by Bougier, has been a favourite narrative with 
 the old romance writers ; and the principal incident, however 
 objectionable, has been displayed in several modern poems. 
 
 Howell, in his " Familiar Letters," in one addressed to Ben 
 Jonson, recommends it to him as a subject " which peradven- 
 ture you may make use of in your way ;" and concludes by 
 saying, " in my opinion, which vails to yours, this is choice 
 and rich stuff for you to put upon your loom, and make a 
 curious web of." 
 
 The Lord de Coucy, vassal to the Count de Champagne, 
 was one of the most accomplished youths of his time. He 
 loved, with an excess of passion, the lady of the Lord du 
 Fayel, who felt a reciprocal affection. With the most poig- 
 nant grief this lady heard from her lover, that he had resolved 
 to accompany the king and the Count de Champagne to the 
 wars of the Holy Land ; but she would not oppose his wishes, 
 because she hoped that his absence might dissipate the
 
 234 The Lover's Heart. 
 
 jealousy of her liusband. The time of departure having come, 
 these two lovers parted with sorrows of the most lively 
 tendernf.'ss. The lady, in quitting her lover, presented him 
 with some I'ings, some diamonds, and with a string that she 
 had woven herself of his own hair, intermixed with silk and 
 buttons of large pearls, to serve him, according to the fashion 
 of those days, to tie a magnificent hood which covered his 
 helmet. This he gratefully accepted. 
 
 In Palestine, at the siege of Acre, in 1191, in gloriously 
 ascending the ramparts, he received a wound, which was 
 declared mortal. He employed the few moments he had to 
 live in writing to the Lad}^ du Fayel ; and he poured forth 
 the fervour of his soul. He ordered his squire to embalm his 
 heart after his death, and to convey it to his beloved mis- 
 tress, with the presents he had received from, her hands in 
 quitting her. 
 
 The squire, faithful to the dying injunction of his master, 
 returned to France, to present the heart and the gifts to the 
 lady of Du Fayel. But wht^n he approached the castle of 
 this lady, he concealed himself in the neighbouring wood, 
 watching some favourable moment to complete his promise. 
 He had the misfortune to be observed by the husband of this 
 lady, who recognised him, and who immediately suspected he 
 came in search of his wife with some message from his master. 
 He threatened to deprive him of his life if he did not divulge 
 the occasion of his return. The squire assured him that his 
 master was dead ; but Du Fayel not believing it, drew his 
 sword on him. This man, frightened at the peril in which 
 he found himself, confessed everything; and put into his 
 hands the heart and letter of his master. Du Fayel was 
 maddened by the fellest passions, and he took a wild and 
 horrid revenge. He ordered his cook to mince the heart ; 
 and having mixed it with meat, he caused a favourite ragout, 
 which he knew pleased the taste of his wife, to be made, and 
 had it served to her. The lady ate heartily of the dish. 
 Alter the repast, Du Fayel inquired of his wife if she had 
 found the ragout according to her taste : she answered him 
 that she had found it excellent. " It is for this reason that 
 I caused it to be served to you, for it is a kind of meat which 
 you very much liked. You have, Madame," the savage Du 
 Fayel continued, " eaten the heart of the Lord de Coucy." 
 But this the lady would not believe, till he showed her the 
 letter of her lover, with the string of his hair, and the dia-
 
 The History of Gloves. 235 
 
 monds she had given him. Shuddering in the anguish of her 
 sensations, and urged by the utmost despair, she told him — 
 " It is true that I loved that heart, because it merited to be 
 loved: for never could it find its superior; and since I have 
 eaten of so noble a meat, and that my stomach is the tomb 
 of so precious a heart, I will take care that nothing of infe- 
 rior worth shall ever be mixed with it." Grief and passion 
 choked her utterance. She retired to her chamber : she 
 closed the door for ever ; and refusing to accept of consolation 
 or food, the amiable victim expired on the fourth day. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF GLOVES. 
 
 The present learned and curious dissertation is compiled from 
 the papers of an ingenious antiquary, from the '' Present State 
 of the liepublic of Letters," vol. x. p. 289.* 
 
 The antiquity of this part of dress will form our first in- 
 quiry ; and we shall then show its various uses in the 
 several ages of the world. 
 
 It has been imagined that gloves are noticed in the lOSth 
 Psalm, where the royal prophet declares, he will cast his shoe 
 over Edom ; and still farther back, supposing them to be 
 used in the times of the Judges, Ruth iv. 7, where the custom 
 is noticed of a man taking ofi^' his shoe and giving it to his 
 neighbour, as a pledge for redeeming or exchanging anything. 
 The word in these two texts, usually translated shoe by the 
 Chaldee paraphrast, in the latter is rendered glove. Casaubon 
 is of opinion that gloves were worn by the Chaldeans, from 
 the word here mentioned being explained in the Talmud 
 Lexicon, the clothing of the hand. 
 
 Xenophon gives a clear and distinct account of gloves. 
 Speaking of the manners of the Persians, as a proof of their 
 effeminacy, he observes, that, not satisfied with covering their 
 head and their feet, they also guarded their hands against the 
 cold with thick gloves. Homer, describing Laertes at work 
 in his garden, represents him with gloves on his hands, to 
 secure them from the thorns. Varro, an ancient writer, is an 
 evidence in favour of their antiquity among the Romans. In 
 lib. ii. cap. 55, Z>e He Rusticd, he says, that olives gathered 
 
 * In 1834 was published a ciirious little volume by William Hull, "The 
 History of the Glove Trade, with the Customs connected with the Glove," 
 which adds some interesting information to the present article.
 
 236 The History of Gloves. 
 
 by tlie naked hand are preferable to those gathered with 
 gloves. AtJieiueus speaks of a celebrated glutton who always 
 came to table with gloves on his hands, that he might be able 
 to handle and eat the meat while hot, and devour more than 
 the rest of the companj". 
 
 These authorities show that the ancients were not strangers 
 to the use oi gloves, though their use was not common. In a 
 hot climate to wear gloves implies a considerable degree of 
 effeminacy. We can more clearly trace the early use of gloves 
 in northern than in southern nations. When the ancient 
 severity of manners declined, the use of gloves prevailed 
 among the Romans ; but not without some opposition from 
 the philosophers. Musonius, a philosopher, who lived at the 
 close of the first century of Christianity, among other invec- 
 tives against the corruption of the age, says, It is shameful 
 that persons in perfect health should clothe their hands and 
 feet with soft and hairy coverings. Their convenience, how- 
 ever, soon made the use general. Pliny the younger informs 
 us, in his account of his uncle's journey to Vesuvius, that 
 his secretarj' sat by him ready to write down whatever oc- 
 curred remarkable ; and that he had gloves on his hands, that 
 the coldness of the weather might not impede his business. 
 
 In the beginning of the ninth century, the use of gloves 
 was become so universal, that even the church thought a 
 regulation in that part of dress necessary. In the reign of 
 Louis le Debonair, the council of Aix ordered that the 
 monks should only wear gloves made of sheep-skin. 
 
 That time has made alterations in the form of this, as 
 in all other apparel, appears from the old pictures and monu- 
 ments. 
 
 Gloves, beside their original design for a covering of the 
 hand, have been employed on several great and solemn occa- 
 sions ; as in the ceremony of investitures, in bestowing lands, 
 or in conferring dignities. Giving possession by the delivery 
 of a glove, prevailed in several parts of Christendom in later 
 ages. In the year 1002, the bishops of Paderborn and Mon- 
 cerco were put into possession of their sees by receiving a 
 glove. It was thought so essential a part of the episcopal 
 habit, that some abbots in France presuming to wear gloves, 
 the council of Poitiers interposed in the affair, and forbad 
 them the use, on the same principle as the ring and sandals ; 
 these being peculiar to bishops, who frequently wore them 
 richly adorned with jewels.
 
 The History of Gloves. 237 
 
 Favin observes, that the custom of blessing gloves at the 
 coronation of the kings of France, which still subsists, is a 
 remain of the eastern practice of investiture b}' a cjlove. A 
 remarkable instance of this ceremony is recorded. The unfor- 
 tunate Conraclin was deprived of his crown and his life by 
 the usurper Mainfroy. When having ascended the scaffold, 
 the injured prince lamenting his hard fate, asserted his right 
 to the crown, and, as a token of investiture, threw his glove 
 among the crowd, intreating it might be conveyed to some of 
 his relations, who would revenge his death, — it was taken up 
 by a knight, and bi'ought to Peter, king of Aragon, who in 
 virtue of this glove was afterwards crowned at Palermo. 
 
 As the delivery of gloves was once a part of the ceremony 
 used in giving possession, so the depriving a person of them 
 was a mark of divesting him of his office, and of degradation. 
 The Earl of Carlisle, in the reign of Edward the Second, 
 impeached of holding a correspondence with the Scots, was 
 condemned to die as a traitor. Walsingham, relating other 
 circumstances of his degradation, says, " His spurs were 
 cut off with a hatchet ; and his gloves and shoes were taken 
 off," &c. 
 
 Another use of gloves was in a duel ; he who threw one 
 down was by this act understood to give defiance, and he who 
 took it up to accept the challenge.* 
 
 The use of single comV>at, at first designed only for a trial 
 of innocence, like the ordeals of fire and water, was in suc- 
 ceeding ages practised for deciding rights and property. 
 Challenging by the glove was continued down to the reign 
 of Elizabeth, as appears by an account given by Spelman of 
 a duel appointed to be fought in Tothill Fields, in the year 
 1571. The dispute was concerning some lands in the county 
 of Kent. The plaintiffs appeared in court, and demanded 
 single combat. One of them threw down his glove, which 
 the other immediately taking up, carried off on the point of 
 his sword, and the day of fighting was appointed ; this affair 
 was, however, adjusted by the queen's judicious interference. 
 
 The ceremony is still practised of challenging by a glovr 
 at the coronations of the kings of England, by his majesty's 
 
 * A still more curious use for gloves was proposed by the Marquis of 
 Worcester, in his "Century of Inventions," lti59; it was to make them 
 with "knotted silk strings, to signify any letter," or "pinked with tlie 
 alphabet," that they might by this means be subservient to the practice 
 of secret correspondence.
 
 238 The History of Gloves. 
 
 champion entering Westminster Hall completely armed and 
 mounted. 
 
 Challenging b}^ the c/love is still in use in some parts of the 
 world. In Germany, on receiving an affront, to send a glove 
 to the offending party is a challenge to a duel. 
 
 The last i;se of gloves was for carrying the haivTc. In 
 former times, princes and other great men took so much 
 pleasure in carrying the hawk on their hand, that some of 
 them have chosen to be represented in this attitude. There 
 is a monument of Philip the First of France, on which he 
 is represented at length, on his tomb, holding a glove in his 
 hand. 
 
 Chambers says that, formerly, judges were forbid to wear 
 gloves on the bench. No reason is assigned for this pro- 
 hibition. Our judges lie under no such restraint; for both 
 they and the rest of the court make no difficulty of receiving 
 gloves from the sheriffs, whenever the session or assize con- 
 cludes without any one receiving sentence of death, which is 
 called a maiden assize ; a custom of great antiquity. 
 
 Our curious antiquary has preserved a singular anecdote 
 concerning gloves. Chambers informs us, that it is not safe 
 at present to enter the stables of princes without pulling off 
 our gloves. He does not tell us in what the danger consists ; 
 but it is an ancient established custom in Germany, that 
 whoever enters the stables of a prince, or great man, with his 
 gloves on his hands, is obliged to forfeit them, or redeem 
 them by a fee to the servants. The same custom is observed 
 in some places at the death of the stag ; in which case, if 
 the gloves are not taken off, they are redeemed by money 
 given to the huntsmen and keepers. The French king never 
 failed of pulling off one of his gloves on that occasion. The 
 reason of this ceremony seems to be lost. 
 
 We meet with the term glove-money in our old records ; 
 by which is meant, money given to servants to buy gloves. 
 This, probabl\', is the origin of the phrase giving a jjciv of 
 gloves, to signify making a present for some favour or service. 
 Gough, in his '' Sepulchral Monuments," informs us that 
 gloves formed no part of the female dress till after the 
 Reformation.* 1 have seen some as late as the time of Anne 
 richly worked and embroidered. 
 
 * This is an exti'aordinary mistake for so accurate an antiquary to 
 make. They occur on monumental effigies, or brasses; also in illuminated 
 manuscripts, continually from the Sa.xon era; as may be seen in Strutt's 
 plates to any of his books.
 
 Relics of Saints. 239 
 
 There must exist in the Denny family some of the oldest 
 gloves extant, as appears by the following glove anecdote. 
 
 At the sale of the Earl of Arran's goods, April 6th, 1759, 
 the gloves given by Henry VIII. to Sir Anthony Denny 
 were sold for 38Z. 17s. ; those given by James I. to his son 
 Edward Denny for 22/. 4s. ; the mittens given by Queen 
 Elizabeth to Sir Edward Denny's lady, 2ol. 4s. ; all which 
 were bought for Sir Thomas Denny, of Ireland, who was 
 descended in a direct line from the great Sir Anthony Denny, 
 one of the executors of the will of Henry VIII. 
 
 RELICS OF SAINTS. 
 
 When relics of saints were first introduced, the relique-mania 
 was universal ; they bought and they sold, and, like other 
 collectors, made no scruple to steal them. It is entertaining 
 to observe the singular ardour and grasping avidity of some, 
 to enrich themselves with these religious morsels ; their little 
 discernment, the curious impositions of the vendor, and the 
 good faith and sincerity of the purchaser. The prelate of 
 the place sometimes ordained a fast to implore God that 
 they might not be cheated with the relics of saints, which 
 he sometimes purchased for the holy benefit of the village 
 or town. 
 
 Guibert de Nogent wrote a treatise on the relics of saints ; 
 acknowledging that there were many false ones, as well as 
 false legends, he reprobates the inventors of these lying 
 miracles. He wrote his treatise on the occasion of a tooth 
 of our Lord's, by which the monks of St. Medard de Soissons 
 pretended to operate miracles. He asserts that this preten- 
 sion is as chimerical as tliat of several persons, who believed 
 they possessed the navel, and other parts less decent, of — 
 the body of Christ ! 
 
 A monk of Bergsvinck has given a history of the transla- 
 tion of St. Lewin, a virgin and a martyr : her relics were 
 brought from England to Bergs. He collected with religious 
 care the facts from his brethren, especially from the conductor 
 of these relics from England. After the history of the trans- 
 lation, and a panegyric of the saint, he relates the miracles 
 performed in Flanders since the arrival of her relics. The 
 prevailing passion of the times to possess fragments of saints 
 is well marked, when the author particularises with a certain 
 complacency all the knavish modes they used to carry oft'
 
 240 Relics of Saints. 
 
 those in question. None then objected to this sort of 
 robbery ; because the gratification of the reigning passion 
 had made it worth while to supply the demand. 
 
 A monk of Cluny has given a history of the translation of 
 the body of St. Indalece, one of the earliest Spanish bishops, 
 written by order of the abbot of St. Juan de la Penna. He 
 protests he advances nothing but facts : having himself seen, 
 or learnt from other witnesses, all he relates. It was not 
 difficult for him to be well informed, since it was to the 
 monastery of St. Juan de la Penna that the holy relics were 
 transported, and those who brought them were two monks 
 of that house. He has authenticated his minute detail of 
 circumstances by giving the names of persons and places. 
 His account was written for the great festival immediately 
 instituted in honour of this translation. He informs us of 
 the miraculous manner by which they were so fortunate as 
 to discover the body of this bishop, and the different plans 
 they concerted to carry it off. He gives the itinerary of 
 the two monks who accompanied the holy remains. They 
 were not a little cheered in their long journey by visions 
 and miracles. 
 
 Another has written a history of what he calls the trans- 
 lation of the relics of St. Majean to the monastery of Ville- 
 raagne. Translation is, in fact, only a softened expression 
 for the robbery of the i-elics of the saint committed by 
 two monks, who carried them off secretly to enrich their 
 monastery ; and they did not hesitate at any artifice or lie 
 to complete their design. They thought everything was 
 permitted to acquire these fragments of mortality, which 
 had now become a branch of commerce. They even re- 
 garded their possessors with an hostile eye. Such was the 
 religious opinion from the ninth to the twelfth century. 
 Our Canute commissioned his agent at Rome to purchase 
 St. Augustin''s arm for one hundred talents of silver and 
 one of gold ; a much greater sum, observes Granger, than 
 the finest statue of antiquity would have then sold for. 
 
 Another monk describes a strange act of devotion, attested 
 by several contemporary writers. When the saints did not 
 readily comply with the prayers of their votaries, they flogged 
 their relics with rods, in a spirit of impatience which they 
 conceived was necessary to make them bend into compliance. 
 
 Theofroy, abbot of Epternac, to raise our admiration, re- 
 lates the daily miracles performed by the relics of saints, their
 
 Relics of Saints. 241 
 
 ashes, their clothes, or other mortal spoils, and even by the 
 instruments of their martyrdom. He inveighs ngainst that 
 luxury of ornaments which was indulged under religious pre- 
 text : " It is not to be supposed that the saints are desirous 
 of such a profusion of gold and silver. They care not that 
 we should raise to them such magnificent churches, to exhibit 
 that ingenious order of pillars which sliine with gold, nor 
 those rich ceilings, nor those altars sparkling with jewels. 
 They desire not the purple parchment of price for their 
 writings, the liquid gold to embellish the letters, nor the 
 precious stones to decorate their covers, while you have such 
 little care for the ministers of the altar." The pious writer 
 has not forgotten himself in this copartnership with the 
 saints. 
 
 The Roman church not being able to deny, says Bayle, 
 that there have been false relics, which have operated 
 miracles, they reply that the good intentions of those be- 
 lievers who have recourse to them obtained from God this 
 reward for their good faith ! In the same spirit, when it 
 was shown that two or three bodies of the same saint was 
 said to exist in difierent places, and that therefore they all 
 could not be authentic, it was answered that they were all 
 genuine ; for God liad multiplied and miraculously repro- 
 duced them for the comfort of the faithful ! A curious 
 specimen of the intolerance of good sense. 
 
 When the Reformation was spread in Lithuania, Prince 
 Radzivil was so affected by it, that he went in person to pay 
 the pope all possible honours. His holiness on this occasion 
 presented him with a precious box of relics. The prince 
 having returned home, some monks entreated permission to 
 try the effects of these relics on a demoniac, who had hitherto 
 resisted every kind of exorcism. They were brought into the 
 church with solemn pomp, and deposited on the altar, accom- 
 panied by an innumerable crowd. After the usual conjura- 
 tions, which were unsuccessful, they applied the relics. The 
 demoniac instantly recovered. The people called out " a 
 miracle r' and the prince, lifting his hands and eyes to 
 heaven, felt his faith confirmed. In this transport of pious 
 joy, he observed that a young gentleman, who was keeper of 
 this treasure of relics, smiled, and by his motions ridiculed 
 the miracle. The prince indignantly took our young keeper 
 of the relics to task ; who, on promise of pardon, gave the 
 following secret intelligence concerning them. In travelling 
 
 VOL. I. B,
 
 242 Relics of Saints. 
 
 from Rome lie had lost tlie box of relics ; and not daring to 
 mention it, he had procured a similar one, which he had 
 filled with the small bones of dogs and cats, and other trifles 
 similar to what were lost. He hoped he might be forgiven 
 for smiling, when he fomid that svich a collection of rubbish 
 was idolized with such pomp, and had even the virtue of 
 expelling demons. It was by the assistance of this box that 
 the prince discovered the gross impositions of the monks and 
 the demoniacs, and Radzivil afterwards became a zealous 
 Lutheran . 
 
 The elector Frederic, surnamed tlie Wise, was an inde- 
 fatigable collector of relics. After his death, one of the 
 monks emploj^ed by him solicited payment for several parcels 
 he had pm-chased for our wise elector ; but the times had 
 changed ! He was advised to give over this business ; the 
 relics for which he desired payment .they were willing to 
 return; that the price had fallen considerably since the 
 reformation of Luther ; and that they would find a letter 
 market in Italy than in Germany ! 
 
 Our Henry III., who was deeply tainted with the super- 
 stition of the age, summoned all the great in the kingdom 
 to meet in London. This summons excited the most 
 general curiosity, and multitudes appeared. The king then 
 acquainted them that the great master of the Knights 
 Templars had sent him a phial containing a small portion of 
 tlie •precious hlood of Christ which he had shed upon the 
 cross ; and attested to he genuine by the seals of the patri- 
 arch of Jerusalem and others ! He commanded a procession 
 the following day ; and the historian adds, that though the 
 road between St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey was very 
 deep and miry, the king kept his eyes constantly fixed on 
 the phial. Two monks received it, and deposited the phial 
 in the abbey, " which made all England shine with glory, 
 dedicating it to God and St. Edward." 
 
 Lord Herbert, in his Life of Henry VIII., notices the 
 ffreat fall of the price of relics at the dissolution of the 
 monasteries. " The respect given to relics, and some pre- 
 tended miracles, fell ; insomuch, as I find by our records, 
 that a piece of St. Andrew's finger (covered only with an 
 ounce of silver), being laid to pledge by a monastery for 
 forty pounds, was left unredeemed at the dissolution of the 
 house ; the king's commissioners, who upon surrender of any 
 foundation undertook to pay the debts, refusing to return
 
 Perjietual Lamps of the Ancients. 243 
 
 the price again." That is, they did not choose to repay the 
 forty potmcls, to receive a piece of the finger of St. Andrew. 
 
 About this time the property of rehcs suddenly sunk to a 
 South-sea bubble ; for shortly after the artifice of the Rood 
 of Grace, at Boxley, in Kent, was fully opened to the eye of 
 the populace ; and a far-famed relic at Hales, in Gloucester- 
 shire, of the blood of Christ, was at the same time exhibited. 
 It was shown in a phial, and it was believed that none could 
 see it who were in mortal sin ; and after many trials usually 
 repeated to the same person, tlie deluded pilgrims at length 
 went away fully satisfied. Tliis relic was the blood of a duck, 
 renewed every week, and put in a phial ; one side was opaque, 
 and the other ^mHs^;rtre;i/; the monk turned either side to 
 the pilgrim, as he thought proper. The success of the pil- 
 grim depended on the oblations he made ; those who were 
 scanty in their offerings were the longest to get a sight of 
 the blood : when a man was in despair, he usually became 
 generous ! 
 
 PERPETUAL LAMPS OF THE ANCIENTS. 
 
 No. 879 of the Spectator relates an anecdote of a person 
 who had opened the sepulchre of the famous Rosicrucius. 
 He discovered a lamp burning, which a statue of clock-work 
 struck into pieces. Hence, the disciples of this visionary 
 said that he made use of this method to show " that he had 
 re-invented the ever-burning lamps of the ancients." 
 
 Many writers have made mention of these wonderful 
 lamps. 
 
 It has happened frequently that inquisitive men exami- 
 ning with a flambeau ancient sepulchres which had been just 
 opened, the fat and gross vapours kindled as the flambeau 
 approached them, to the great astonishment of the spec- 
 tators, who frequently cried out " a miracle /" This sudden 
 inflammation, although very natural, has given room to 
 believe that these flames proceeded from perpetual lamps, 
 wdiich some have thought were placed in the tombs of the 
 ancients, and which, they said, were extinguished at the 
 moment that these tombs opened, and were penetrated by 
 the exterior air. 
 
 The accounts of the perpetual lamps which ancient writers 
 give have occasioned several ingenious men to search after 
 their composition. Licetus, who possessed more erudition 
 
 B 2
 
 244 Natural Productions, ^c. 
 
 than love of truth, has given two receipts for making this 
 eternal fire by a preparation of certain minerals. More 
 credible writers maintain that it is possible to make lamps 
 perpetually burning, and an oil at once inflammable and 
 inconsumable ; but Boyle, assisted by several experiments 
 made on the air-pump, found that these lights, which have 
 been viewed in opening tombs, proceeded from the collision 
 of fresh air. This reasonable observation conciliates all, and 
 does not compel us to deny the accounts. 
 
 The story of the lamp of Rosicrucius, even if it ever had 
 the sliglitest foundation, only owes its origin to the spirit of 
 party, which at the time would have persuaded the world 
 that Rosicrucius had at least discovered something. 
 
 It was reserved for modern discoveries in chemistry to 
 prove that air was not only necessary for a medium to the 
 existence of the flame, which indeed the air-pump had already 
 shown ; but also as a constituent part of the inflammation, 
 and without which a body, otherwise very inflammable in all 
 its parts, cannot, however, burn but in its superficies, which 
 alone is in contact with the ambient air. 
 
 NATURAL PRODUCTIONS RESEMBLING ARTIFICIAL 
 COMPOSITIONS. 
 
 Some stones are preserved by the curious, for representing 
 distinctly figures traced by nature alone, and without the aid 
 of art. 
 
 Pliny mentions an agate, in which appeared, formed by the 
 hand of nature, Apollo amidst the Nine Muses holding a 
 harp. At Venice another may be seen, in which is naturally 
 formed the perfect figure of a man. At Pisa, in the church 
 of St. John, there is a similar natural production, which re- 
 presents an old hermit in a desert, seated by the side of a 
 stream, and who holds in his hands a small bell, as St. An- 
 thony is commonly painted. In the temple of St. Sophia, at 
 Constantinople, there was formerly on a white marble the 
 image of St. John the Baptist covered with the skin of a 
 camel ; with this only imperfection, that nature had given 
 but one leg. At Ravenna, in the church of St. Vital, a cor- 
 delier is seen on a dusky stone. They found in Italy a 
 marble, in which a crucifix was so elaborately finished, that 
 there appeared the nails, the drops of blood, and the wounds,
 
 Natural Productions, ^r. 245 
 
 as perfectly as the most excellent painter could have per- 
 formed. At Sneilberg, in Germany, they found in a mine a 
 certain rough metal, on which was seen the figure of a man, 
 who carried a child on his back. In Provence they found in 
 a mine a quantity of natural tigures of birds, trees, rats, and 
 serpents ; and in some places of the western parts of Tar- 
 tary, are seen on divers rocks the figures of camels, horses, 
 and sheep. PanciroUus, in his Lost Antiquities, attests, that 
 in a church at Home, a marble perfectly represented a priest 
 celebrating mass, and raising the host. Paul III. conceiving 
 that art had been used, scraped tlie marble to discover whe- 
 ther any painting had been employed : but nothing of the 
 kind was discovered " I have seen," writes a friend, " many 
 of these curiosities. They are always helped out by art. In 
 my father's house was a gray marble chiu:iney-piece, which 
 abounded in portraits, landscapes, &c., the greatest part of 
 which was made by myself." I have myself seen a large 
 collection, many certainl}" untouched by art. One stone ap- 
 pears like a perfect cameo of a Minerva's head ; another 
 shows an old man's head, beautiful as if the hand of Raf- 
 faelle had designed it. Both these stones are transparent. 
 Some exhibit portraits. 
 
 There is preserved in the British Museum a black stone, on 
 which nature has sketched a resemblance of the portrait of 
 Chaucer.* Stones of this kind, possessing a sufficient degree 
 of resemblance, are rare ; but art appears not to have been 
 used. Even in plants, we find this sort of resemblance. 
 There is a species of the orchis, where Nature has formed a 
 bee, apparently feeding in the breast of the tlower, with so 
 much exactness, that it is impossible at a very small distance 
 to distinguish the imposition. Hence the plant derives its 
 name, and is called the Bee-Flowee. Langhorne elegantly 
 notices its appearance : — - 
 
 See on that flow'ret's velvet breast. 
 How close the busy vagrant lies ! 
 
 * One of the most curious of these natural portraits is the enormous 
 rock in Wales, known as the Pitt Stone. It is an immense fragment, the 
 outline bearing a perfect resemblance to the profile of the great statesman. 
 The frontispiece to Brace's "Visit to Norway and Sweden" represents an 
 island popularly known as " The Horseman's Island," that takes the form 
 of a gigantic mounted horseman wading through the deep. W. B. Cooke, 
 the late eminent eugraver, amused himself by depicting a landscape with 
 waterfalls and ruins, which, when turned on one side, formed a perfect 
 human face.
 
 246 Natural Productions, ^c. 
 
 His thin-wrought plume, his downy breast, 
 The ambrosial gold that swells his thighs. 
 
 Perhaps his fragrant load may bind 
 
 His limbs; — we'll set the captive free — ■ 
 
 I sought the LIVING bee to find, 
 And found the picture of a bee. 
 
 The late Mr. Jackson, of Exeter, wrote to me on this 
 subject : " This orchis is common near our sea-coasts ; but 
 instead of being exactly hke a bee, it is not like it at all. It 
 has a general resemblance to a fly, and by the help of imagi- 
 nation may be supposed to be a fly pitched upon the flower. 
 The mandrake very frequently has a forked root, which may 
 be fancied to resemble thighs and legs. I have seen it helped 
 out with nails on the toes." 
 
 ^ An ingenious botanist, after reading this article, was so 
 kind as to send me specimens of the fly orchis, oplirys musci- 
 fera, and of the hee orchis, ophrys apifera. Their resem- 
 blance to these insects when in full flower is the most perfect 
 conceivable : they are distinct plants. The poetical eye of 
 Langhorne was equally correct and fanciful ; and that too of 
 Jackson, who ditfered so positively. Many controversies 
 have been carried on, from a want of a little more know- 
 ledge ; like that of the bee orchis and the ELY orchis, both 
 parties prove to be right. 
 
 Another cmious specimen of the playful operations of 
 nature is the mandrake ; a plant, indeed, when it is bare of 
 leaves, perfectly resembling that of the human form. The 
 ginseng tree is noticed for the same appearance. This object 
 the same poet has noticed : — 
 
 Mark how that rooted mandrake wears 
 
 His human feet, his human hands; 
 Oft, as his shapely form he rears, 
 
 Aghast the frighted ploughman stands. 
 
 He closes this beautiful fable with the following stanza, 
 not inapposite to the curious subject of this article : 
 
 Helvetia's rocks, Sabrina's waves, 
 
 Still many a shining pebble bear : 
 Where nature's studious hand engraves 
 
 The PERFECT FORM, and leaves it there.
 
 247 
 
 THE POETICAL GARLAND OF JULIA 
 
 HuET has given a charming description of a present made by 
 a lover to his mistress ; a gift wliieh romance has seldom 
 equalled for its gallantry, ingenuity, and novelty. It was 
 called the garland of Julia. To understand the nature of 
 this gift, it will be necessary to give the history of the 
 parties. 
 
 The beautiful Julia d'Angennes was in the flower of her 
 youth and fame, when the celebrated Gustavus, king of 
 Sweden, was making war in Germany with the most splendid 
 success. Julia expressed her warm admiration of this hero. 
 She had his portrait placed on her toilet, and took pleasure iu 
 declarins: that she would have no other lover than Gustavus. 
 The Duke de Montausier was, however, her avowed and 
 ardent admirer. A short time after the death of Gustavus, 
 he sent her, as a new-j^ear's gift, the poetical garland of 
 which the following is a description. 
 
 The most beautiful flowers were painted in miniature by an 
 eminent artist, one Robert, on pieces of vellum, all of equal 
 dimensions. Under every flower a space was left open for a 
 madrigal on the subject of the flower there painted. The 
 duke solicited the wits of the time to assist in the composition 
 of these little poems, reserving a considerable number for the 
 effusions of his own amorous muse. Under every flower he 
 had its madrigal written by N. Du Jarry, celebrated for his 
 beautiful caligraphy. A decorated frontispiece offered a 
 splendid garland composed of all these twentj-'-nine flowers ; 
 and on turning the page a eupid is painted to the life. These 
 were magnificently bound, and enclosed in a bag of rich 
 Spanish leather. When Julia awoke on new-year's day, she 
 found this lover's gift lying on her toilet ; it was one quite to 
 her taste, and successful to the donor's hopes. 
 
 Of this Poetical Garland, thus formed by the hands of Wit 
 and Love, Huet says, " As 1 had long heard of it, I frequently 
 expressed a wish to see it : at length the Duchess of Usez 
 gratified me with the sight. She locked me in her cabinet 
 one afternoon with this garland : she then went to the queen, 
 and at the close of the evening liberated me. I never j^assed 
 a more agreeable afternoon."
 
 248 Tragic Actors. 
 
 One of the prettiest inscriptions of these flowers is the fol- 
 lowing, composed for 
 
 THE VIOLET. 
 
 Modeste en ma couleur, modeste en mon sejour, 
 Franclie d'ambition, je me cache sous I'herbe ; 
 Mais, si sur votre front je puis me voir un jour, 
 La plus humble des fleurs sera la plus superbe. 
 
 Modest my colour, modest is my place, 
 Pleased in the grass my lowly form to hide ; 
 But mid your tresses might I wind with grace. 
 The humblest flower would feel the loftiest pride. 
 
 The following is some additional information respecting 
 "the Poetical Garland of Julia." 
 
 At the sale of the library of the Duke de la Valliere, in 
 1784, among its numerous literary curiosities this garland 
 appeared. It was actually sold for the extravagant sum of 
 14,510 livres ! though in 1770, at Gaignat's sale, it only cost 
 780 livres. It is described to be " a manuscript on vellum, 
 composed of twenty-nine flowers painted by one Eobert, 
 under which are inserted madrigals by various authors." 
 But the Abbe Rive, the superintendent of the Valliere 
 library, published in 1779 an inflammatory notice of this 
 garland ; and as he and the duke had the art of appreciating, 
 and it has been said making spurious literary curiosities, this 
 notice was no doubt the occasion of the maniacal price. 
 
 In the great French Revolution, this literary curiosity found 
 its passage into this country. A bookseller ofi^ered it for sale 
 at the enormous price of 500Z. sterling ! No curious collector 
 has been discovered to have purchased this unique ; which is 
 most remarkable for the extreme folly of the purchaser who 
 gave the 14,510 livres for poetry and painting not always ex- 
 quisite. The history of the Garland of Julia is a child's lesson 
 for certain rash and inexperienced collectors, who may here 
 
 Learn to do well by others harm. 
 
 TRAGIC ACTORS. 
 
 MoNTFLEURT, a French player, was one of the greatest 
 actors of his time for characters highly tragic. He died of 
 the violent efforts he made in representing Orestes in the 
 Andromache of Racine. The author of the "Parnasse 
 Reforme " makes him thus express himself in the shades. 
 There is something extremely droll in his lamentations, with
 
 Tragic Actors. 249 
 
 a severe raillery on the inconveniences to which tragic actors 
 are liable. 
 
 " Ah ! how sincerely do I wish that ti'agedies had never 
 been invented ! I might then have been yet in a state capa- 
 ble of appearing on the stage ; and if I should not have 
 attained the glory of sustaining sublime characters, I should 
 at least have trifled agreeably, and have worked off my spleen 
 in laughing ! I have wasted my lungs in the violent emotions 
 of jealousy, love, and ambition. A thousand times have 1 
 been obliged to force myself to represent more passions than 
 Le Brun ever painted or conceived. I saw myself frequently 
 obliged to dart terrible glances ; to roll my eyes furiously in 
 my head, like a man insane ; to frighten others by extrava- 
 gant grimaces ; to imprint on my countenance the redness of 
 indignation and hatred ; to make the paleness of fear and 
 surprise succeed each other by turns ; to express the transports 
 of rage and despair ; to cry out like a demoniac : and conse- 
 quently to strain all the parts of my body to render my ges- 
 tures fitter to accompany these ditferent impressions. The 
 man then who would know of what I died, let him not ask if 
 it were of the fever, the dropsy, or the gout : but let him 
 know that it was of the Andromache .'" 
 
 The Jesuit Rapin informs us, that when Mondory acted 
 Herod in the Mariamne of Tristan, the spectators quitted the 
 theatre mournful and thoughtful ; so tenderly were they 
 penetrated with the sorrows of the unfortunate heroine. In 
 this melancholy pleasure, he says, we have a rude pictui-e of 
 the strong impressions which were made by the Grecian 
 tragedians. Mondory indeed felt so powerfully the character 
 he assumed, that it cost him his life. 
 
 Some readers may recollect the death of Bond, who felt so 
 exquisitely the character of Lusignan in Zara, which he per- 
 sonated when an old man, that Zara, when she addressed him, 
 found him dead in his chair. 
 
 The assumption of a variety of characters by a person of 
 irritable and delicate nerves, has often a tragical efl'ect on the 
 mental faculties. We might draw up a list of actors, who 
 have fallen martyrs to their tragic characters. Several have 
 died on the stage, and, like Palmer, usually in the midst of 
 some agitated appeal to the feelings.* 
 
 * Palmer's death took place on the Liverpool stage, August 2, 1798 ; be 
 was in tbe fifty-seventh year of his age. The death of his wife and his 
 sou had some time before thrown him into a profound melancholy, and on
 
 250 Tragic Actors, 
 
 Baron, who was the French Garrick, had a most elevated 
 notion of his profession : he used to say, that tragic actors 
 should be nursed on the lap of queens ! Nor was his vanity 
 inferior to his enthusiasm for his profession ; for, according to 
 him, the world might see once in a century a Ccesar, but that 
 it required a thousand years to produce a Baron ! A variety 
 of anecdotes testify the admirable talents he displayed. 
 Whenever he meant to compliment the talents or merits of 
 distinguished characters, he always delivered in a pointed 
 manner the stinking passages of the play, fixing his eye on 
 them. An observation of his respecting actors, is not less 
 applicable to poets and to painters. " Rules," said this 
 sublime actor, " may teach us not to raise the arms above the 
 head ; but if passiok carries them, it will be well done ; 
 
 PASSION KNOWS MORE THAN AET." 
 
 Betterton, although his countenance was ruddy and san- 
 guine, when he performed Hamlet, through the violent and 
 sudden emotion of amazement and horror at the presence of 
 his father's spectre, instantly turned as white as his neckcloth, 
 while his whole body seemed to be affected with a strong 
 tremor : had his father's apparition actually risen before him, he 
 could not have been seized with more real agonies. This struck 
 the spectators so forcibly, tliat tliey felt a shuddering in their 
 veins, and participated in the astonishment and the horror so 
 apparent in the actor. Davies in his Dramatic Miscellanies 
 records this fact; and in the Uichardsoniana, we find that the first 
 time Booth attempted the ghost when Betterton acted Ham- 
 let, that actor's look at him struck him with such horror that 
 he became disconcerted to such a degree, that he could jaot 
 speak his part. Here seems no want of evidence of the force 
 
 this occasion lie was unfortunately "cast" for the agitating part of "the 
 Stranger." He appeaxed unusually moved on uttering the words "there 
 is another and a better world," in the third act. In the first scene of the 
 following act, when he was asked " Why did you not keep your children 
 with you? they would have amused you in many a dreary hour," he turned 
 to reply — and ' ' for the space of about ten seconds, he paused as if waiting 
 for the prompter to give him the word " — says Mr. Whitfield the actor, 
 who was then with him upon the stage — "then put out his right hand, as 
 if going to take hold of mine. It dropt, as if to support his fall, but it 
 had no power ; in that instant he fell, but not at full length, he crouched 
 in falling, so that his head did not strike the stage with great violence. 
 He never breathed after. I think I may venture to say he died without a 
 pang." It is one of the most melancholy incidents connected with theatrical 
 history.
 
 Jocular Preachers. 251 
 
 of the ideal presence in this marvellous acting : these facts 
 might deserve a philosophical investigation. 
 
 Le Kain, the French actor, who retired from the Parisian 
 stage, like our Garrick, covered with glory and gold, was one 
 day congratulated by a company on the retirement which he 
 was preparing to enjoy. " As to glory," modestly replied this 
 actor, " I do not flatter myself to have acquired much. This 
 kind of reward is always disputed by many, and you your- 
 selves would not allow it, were 1 to assume it. As to the 
 money, I have not so much reason to be satisfied ; at the 
 Italian Theatre, their share is far more considerable than mine ; 
 an actor there may get twenty to twenty-five thousand livres, 
 and my share amounts at the most to ten or twelve thousand." 
 "How! the devil!" exclaimed a rude chevalier of the order 
 of St. Louis, who was present, "How! the devil! a vile 
 stroller is not content with twelve thousand livres annually, 
 and I, who am in the king's service, who sleep upon a cannon 
 and lavish my blood for my country, I must consider myself 
 as fortunate in having obtained a pension of one thousand 
 livres." " And do you account as nothing, sir, the liberty of 
 addressing me thus ?" replied Le Kain, with all the sublimity 
 and conciseness of an irritated Orosmane. 
 
 The memoirs of Mademoiselle Clairon display her exalted 
 feeling of the character of a sublime actress ; she was of 
 opinion, that in common life the truly sublime actor should 
 be a hero, or heroine oft' the stage. " If I am only a vulgar 
 and ordinary woman during twenty hours of the day, what- 
 ever effort I may make, I shall only be an ordinary and vulgar 
 woman in Agrippina or Semiramis, during the remaining four." 
 In society she was nicknamed the Queen of Carthage, 
 from her admirable personification of Dido in a tragedy of 
 that name. 
 
 JOCULAR PREACHERS. 
 
 These preachers, whose works are excessively rare, form a 
 race unknown to the general reader. I shall sketch the 
 characters of these pious buftbons, before I introduce them to 
 his acquaintance. They, as it has been said of Sterne, seemed 
 to have wished, every now and then, to have thrown their 
 wigs into the faces of their auditors.
 
 252 Jocular Preachers. 
 
 These preachers flourished in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and 
 sixteenth centuries ; we are therefore to ascribe their extrava- 
 gant mixture of grave admonition with facetious illustration, 
 comic tales which have been occasionally adopted by the most 
 licentious writers, and minute and lively descriptions, to the 
 great simplicity of the times, when the grossest indecency was 
 never concealed under a gentle periphrasis, but everything 
 was called by its name. All this was enforced by the most 
 daring personalities, and seasoned by those temporary allu- 
 sions which neither spared, nor feared even the throne. These 
 ancient sermons therefore are singularly precious, to those 
 whose inquisitive pleasures are gratified by tracing the manners 
 of former agers. When Henry Stephens, in his apology for 
 Herodotus, describes the irregularities of the age, and the 
 minutiae of national manners, he effects this chiefly by ex- 
 tracts from these sermons. Their wit is not always the 
 brightest, nor their satire the most poignant ; but there is 
 always that prevailing naivete of the age running through 
 their rude eloquence, which interests the reflecting mind. 
 In a word, these sermons were addressed to the multitude ; 
 and therefore they show good sense and absurdity; fancy 
 and puerility ; satire and insipidity ; extravagance and truth. 
 
 Oliver Maillard, a famous cordelier, died in 1502. This 
 preacher having pointed some keen traits in his sermons at 
 Louis XI., the irritated monarch had our cordelier informed 
 that he would throw him into the river. Pie replied un- 
 daunted, and not forgetting his satire : " The king may do 
 as he chooses ; but tell him that I shall sooner get to para- 
 dise by water, than he will arrive by all his post-horses." He 
 alluded to travelling by post, which this monarch had lately 
 introduced into France. This bold answer, it is said, intimi- 
 dated Louis : it is certain that Maillard continued as coura- 
 geous and satirical as ever in his pulpit. 
 
 The following extracts are descriptive of the manners of 
 the times. 
 
 In attacking rapine and robbery, under the first head he 
 describes a kind of usury, which was practised in the days of 
 Ben Jonson, and I am told in the present, as well as in the 
 times of Maillard. " This," says he, " is called a palliated 
 usury. It is thus. When a person is in want of money, he 
 goes to a treasurer (a kind of banker or merchant), on whom 
 he has an order for 1000 crowns ; the treasurer tells him that 
 he will pay him in a fortnight's time, when he is to receive
 
 Jocular Preachers. 253 
 
 the money. The poor man cannot wait. Our good treasurer 
 tells him, I will give you half in money and half in goods. 
 So he passes his goods that are worth 100 crowns for 200." 
 He then touches on the bribes which these treasurers and 
 clerks in office took, excusing themselves by alleging the little 
 pay they otherwise received. " All these practices be sent to 
 the devils !" cries Maillard, in thus addressing himself to the 
 ladies: "it is for you all this damnation ensues. Yes! yes! 
 you must have rich satins, and girdles of gold out of this 
 accursed money. When any one has anything to receive 
 from the husband, he must make a present to the wife of 
 some fine gown, or girdle, or ring. If you ladies and gentle- 
 men who are battening on your pleasures, and wear scarlet 
 clothes, I believe if you were closely put in a good press, we 
 should see the blood of the poor gush out, with which your 
 scarlet is dyed." 
 
 Maillard notices the following curious particulars of the 
 mode of cheating in trade in his times. 
 
 He is violent against the apothecaries for their cheats. 
 " They mix ginger with cinnamon, which they sell for real 
 spices : they put their bags of ginger, pepper, saffron, cin- 
 namon, and other drugs in damp cellars, that they may weigh 
 heavier ; they mix oil with saffron, to give it a colour, and to 
 make it weightier." He does not forget those tradesmen 
 who put water in their wool, and moisten their cloth that it 
 may stretch ; tavern-keepers, who sophisticate and mingle 
 wines ; the butchers, who blow up their meat, and who mix 
 hog's lard with the fat of their meat. He terribly declaims 
 against those who buy with a great allowance of measui*e and 
 weight, and then sell with a small measure and weight ; and 
 curses those who, when they weigh, press the scales down 
 with their finger. But it is time to conclude with Master 
 Oliver ! His catalogue is, however, by no means exhausted ; 
 and it may not be amiss to observe, that the present age has 
 retained every one of the sins. 
 
 The following extracts are from Menot's sermons, which 
 are written, like Maillard's, in a barbarous Latin, mixed with 
 old French. 
 
 Michael Menot died in 1518. I think he has more wit 
 than Maillard, and occasionally displays a brilliant imagi- 
 nation ; with the same singular mixture of grave declamation 
 and farcical absurdities. He is called in the title-page the 
 golden-tongued. It i*uns thus, Fredicatoris qui lingua aurea,
 
 254 Jocular Preachers. 
 
 sua tempestate nuncupatus est, Sermones quadragesimales, ah 
 ipso olim Turonis declamati. Taris, 1525, 8vo. 
 
 When he compares the church with a vine, he says, "There 
 were once some Britons and Enghshmen who would have 
 carried away all France into their country, because they found 
 our wine better than their beer ; but as they well knew that 
 they could not always remain in France, nor carry away 
 France into their country, they would at least carry with 
 them several stocks of vines ; they planted some in England ; 
 but these stocks soon degenerated, because the soil was not 
 adapted to them." Notwithstanding what Menot said in 
 1500, and that we have tried so often, we have often flattered 
 ourselves that if we plant vineyards, we may have English 
 wine. 
 
 The following beautiful figure describes those who live 
 neglectful of their aged parents, who had cherished them into 
 prosperity. " See the trees flourish and recover their leaves ; 
 it is their root that has produced all ; but when the branches 
 are loaded with flowers and with fruits, they yield nothing to 
 the root. This is an image of those children who prefer their 
 own amusements, and to game away their fortunes, than to 
 give to their old parents that which they want." 
 
 He acquaints us with the following circumstances of the 
 immorality of that age : " Who has not got a mistress besides 
 his wife? The poor wife eats the fruits of bitterness, and even 
 makes the bed for the mistress." Oaths were not unfashion- 
 able in his day. " Since the world has been world, this crime 
 was never greater. There were once pillories for these 
 swearers ; but now this crime is so common, that the child of 
 five years can swear ; and even the old dotard of eighty, who 
 has onl}^ two teeth remaining, can fling out an oath." 
 
 On the power of the fair sex of his day, he observes — " A 
 father says, my son studies ; he must have a bishopric, or an 
 abbey of 500 livres. Then he will have dogs, horses, and 
 mistresses, like others. Another says, I will have my son 
 placed at court, and have many honourable dignities. To 
 succeed well, both employ the mediation of women ; unhap- 
 pily the church and the law are entirely at their disposal. 
 We have artful Dalilahs who shear us close. For twelve 
 crowns and an ell of velvet given to a woman, you gain the 
 worst la\vsuit, and the best living." 
 
 In his last sermon, Menot recapitulates the various topics 
 he had touched on during Lent. This extract presents a
 
 Jocular Preachers. 255 
 
 curious picture, and a just notion of the versatile talents of 
 these preachers. 
 
 " I have told ecclesiastics how they should conduct them- 
 selves ; not that they are ignorant of their duties ; hut I 
 must ever repeat to girls, not to suffer themselves to he 
 duped hy them. I have told these ecclesiastics that they 
 should imitate the lark ; if she has a grain she does not re- 
 main idle, hut feels her pleasure in singing, and in singing 
 always is ascending towards heaven. So they should not 
 amass; but elevate the hearts of all to God; and not do as 
 the frogs who are ci'ying out day and night, and think they 
 have a fine throat, but alwa3's remain fixed in the mud. 
 
 " I have told the men of the law that they should have the 
 qualities of the eagle. The first is, that this bird when it 
 flies fixes its eye on the sun ; so all judges, counsellors, and 
 attorneys, in judging, writing, and signing, shoidd alwaj^s 
 have God before their eyes. And secondly, this bird is never 
 greedy ; it willingly shares its prey with others ; so all law- 
 yers, who are rich in crowns after having had their bills paid, 
 should distribute some to the poor, particularly when they 
 are conscious that their money arises from their prey. 
 
 " I have spoken of the marriage state, but all that I have 
 said has been disregarded. See those wretches who break the 
 hymeneal chains, and abandon their wives ! they pass their 
 hoHdays out of their parishes, because if they remained at 
 home they must have joined their wives at church ; thej' liked 
 their prostitutes better; and it will be so ever}" day in the 
 year ! I would as well dine with a Jew or a heretic, as with 
 them. What an infected place is this ! Mistress Lubricity 
 has taken possession of the whole city ; look in every corner, 
 and you'll be convinced. 
 
 " For you married women I If you have heard the night- 
 ingale's song, you must know that she siAgs during three 
 months, and that she is silent when she has young ones. So 
 there is a time in which you may sing and take your plea- 
 sures in the marriage state, and another to watch your chil- 
 dren. Don't damn yourselves for them ; and remember it 
 would be better to see them drowned than damned. 
 
 " As to widows, I observe, that the turtle withdraws and 
 sighs in the woods, whenever she has lost her companion ; so 
 must they retire into the wood of the cross, and having lost 
 their temporal husband, take no other but Jesus Christ. 
 
 " And, to close all, I have told girls that they must fly
 
 256 Jocular Preachers. 
 
 from the company of men, and not permit them to emhrace, 
 nor even touch them. Look on the rose ; it has a dehghtful 
 odour ; it emhalms the place in which it is placed ; but if 
 you grasp it underneath, it will prick you till the blood 
 issues. The beauty of the rose is the beauty of the girl. The 
 beauty and perfume of the first invite to smell and to handle 
 it, but when it is touched underneath it pricks sharply ; the 
 beauty of a girl likewise invites the hand ; but you, my young 
 ladies, you must never suiFer this, for I tell you that every 
 man who does this designs to make you harlots." 
 
 These ample extracts may convey the same pleasure to the 
 reader which I have received by collecting them from their 
 scarce originals, little known even to the curious. Menot, it 
 cannot be denied, displays a poetic imagination, and a fer- 
 tility of conception which distinguishes him among his rivals. 
 The same taste and popular manner came into our country, 
 and were suited to the simphcity of the age. In 1527, our 
 Bishop Latimer preached a sermon,* in which he expresses 
 himself thus: — "Now, ye have heard what is meant by this^rs^ 
 card, and how ye ought to play. I purpose again to deal 
 unto 3'ou another card of the same suit ; for they be so nigh 
 affinity, that one cannot be well played without the other. "t 
 It is curious to observe about a centur}' afterwards, as Fuller 
 informs us, that when a country clergyman imitated these 
 familiar allusions, the taste of the congregation had so changed 
 that he was interrupted by peals of laughter ! 
 
 Even in more modern times have Menot and Maillard 
 found an imitator in little Father Andre, as well as others. 
 His character has been variously drawn. He is by some re- 
 presented as a kind of bufibon in the pulpit ; but others more 
 judiciously observe, that he only indulged his natural genius, 
 and uttered humorous and lively things, as the good Father 
 observes himself, to keep the attention of his audience awake. 
 
 * In it he likens Christianity to a game at cards. 
 
 t In his "Sermon of the Plough," preached at Paul's Cross, 1548, we 
 meet the same quaint imagery. "Preaching of the Gospel is one of God's 
 plough works, and the preacher is one of God's ploughmen — and well may 
 the preacher and the ploughman be likened together : first, for their labour 
 at all seasons of the year; for there is no time of the year in which the 
 jjloughman hath not some special work to do." He says that Satan "is 
 ever busy in following his plough ;" and he winds up his peroration by 
 the somewhat startling words, " the devil shall go for my money, for he 
 applieth to his business. Therefore, ye unpreaching prelates, learn of the 
 devil : to be diligent in doing your office learn of the devil ; and if you will 
 not learn of God, nor good men, for shame learn of the devil."
 
 Jocular Preachers. 257 
 
 He was not always laughing. " He told many a bold truth," 
 says the author of Guerre des Auteurs anciens et modernes, 
 " that sent bishops to their dioceses, and made many a co- 
 quette blush. He possessed the art of biting when he 
 smiled ; and more ably combated vice by his ingenious satire 
 than by those vague apostrophes which no one takes to him- 
 self. While others were straining their minds to catch at 
 sublime thoughts which no one understood, he lowered his 
 talents to the most humble situations, and to the minutest 
 things. From them he drew his examples and his compari- 
 sons ; and the one and the other never failed of success." Mar- 
 ville says, that " his expressions were full of shrewd simpli- 
 city. He made very free use of the most popular proverbs. 
 His comparisons and figures were always borrowed from the 
 most familiar and lowest things." To ridicule effectually the 
 reigning vices, he would prefer quirks or puns to sublime 
 thoughts ; and he was little solicitous of his choice of expres- 
 sion, so the things came home. Gozzi, in Italy, had the same 
 power in drawing unexpected inferences from vulgar and 
 familiar occurrences. It was by this art Whitfield obtained 
 so many followers. In Piozzi's British Synonymes, vol. ii. 
 p. 205, we have an instance of Gozzi's manner. In the time 
 of Charles II. it became fashionable to introduce humour into 
 sermons. Sterne seems to have revived it in his : South's 
 sparkle perpetually with wit and pun. 
 
 Far different, however, are the characters of the sublime 
 preachers, of whom the French have preserved the following 
 descriptions. 
 
 We have not any more Bourdaloue, La Rue, and Massillon ; 
 but the idea which still exists of their manner of addressins: 
 their auditors may serve instead of lessons. Each had his 
 own peculiar mode, always adapted to place, time, circum- 
 stance ; to their auditors, their style, and their subject. 
 
 Bourdaloue, with a collected air, had little action ; with 
 eyes generally half closed he penetrated the hearts of the 
 people by the sound of a voice uniform and solemn. The 
 tone with which a sacred orator pronounced the words, Tu est 
 ille vir ! "Thou art the man!" in suddenly addressing them 
 to one of the kings of France, struck more forcibly than their 
 application. Madame de Sevigne describes our preacher, by 
 saying, " Father Bourdaloue thunders at Notre Dame." 
 
 La Rue appeared with the air of a prophet. His manner 
 was irresistible, full of fire, intelligence, and force. He had 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 Masterly Imitators. 
 
 strokes perfectly original. Several old men, his contempo- 
 raries, still shuddered at the recollection of the expression 
 which he employed in an apostrophe to the God of vengeance, 
 JEvaginare gladium tuum ! 
 
 The person of Massillon affected his admirers. He was 
 seen in the pulpit with that air of simplicity, that modest 
 demeanour, those eyes humbly declining, those unstudied 
 gestures, that passionate tone, that mild countenance of a 
 man penetrated with his subject, conveying to the mind the 
 most luminous ideas, and to the heart the most tender emo- 
 tions. Baron, the tragedian, coming out from one of his 
 sermons, truth forced from his lips a confession humiliating 
 to his profession; "My friend," said he to one of his com- 
 panions, " this is an orator ! and we are only actors /" 
 
 MASTERLY IMITATORS. 
 
 Theee have been found occasionally some artists who could 
 so perfectly imitate the spirit, the taste, the character, and 
 the peculiarities of great masters, that they have not unfre- 
 quently deceived the most skilful connoisseurs. Michael Angelo 
 sculptured a sleeping Cupid, of which having broken off an 
 arm, he bui-ied the statue in a place where he knew it would 
 soon be found. The critics were never tired of admiring it, 
 as one of the most precious relics of antiquity. It was sold 
 to the Cardinal of St. George, to whom Michael Angelo dis- 
 covered the whole mystery, by joining to the Cupid the arm 
 which he had reserved. 
 
 An anecdote of Peter Mignard is more singular. This 
 great artist painted a Magdalen on a canvas fabricated at 
 Rome. A broker, in concert with Mignard, went to the 
 Chevalier de Clairville, and told him as a secret that he was 
 to receive from Italy a Magdalen of Guido, and his master- 
 piece. The chevalier caught the bait, begged the pre- 
 ference, and pui'chased the picture at a very high price. 
 
 He was informed that he had been imposed upon, and that 
 the Magdalen was painted by Mignard. Mignard himself 
 caused the alarm to be given, but the amateur would not be- 
 lieve it ; all the connoisseurs agreed it was a Guido, and the 
 famous Le Brun corroborated this opinion. 
 
 The chevalier came to Mignard : — " Some persons assure 
 me that my Magdalen is your work !" — " Mine ! they do me
 
 Masterly Imitators. 259 
 
 great honour. I am sure that Le Brun is not of this 
 opinion." " Le Brun swears it can be no other than a 
 Guido. You shall dine with me, and meet several of the 
 first connoisseurs." 
 
 On the day of meeting, the picture was again more closely 
 inspected. Mignard hinted his doubts whether the piece was 
 the work of that great master ; he insinuated that it was 
 possible to be deceived ; and added, that if it was Guide's, he 
 did not think it in his best manner. " It is a Guido, sir, and 
 in his very best manner," replied Le Brun, with warmth ; 
 and all the o'itics were unanimous. Mignard then spoke in 
 a firm tone of voice : " And I, gentlemen, will wager three 
 hundred louis that it is not a Guido." The dispute now be- 
 came violent : Le Brun was desirous of accepting the wager. 
 In a word, the affair became such that it could add nothing 
 more to the glory of Mignard. " No, sir," replied the latter, 
 " I am too honest to bet when I am certain to win. Mon- 
 sieur le Chevalier, this piece cost 3^ou two thousand crowns : 
 the money must be returned,' — the painting is mine.'''' Le 
 Brun would not believe it. "The proof," Mignard con- 
 tinued, " is easy. On this canvas, which is a Roman one, 
 was the portrait of a cardinal ; I will show you his cap." — • 
 The chevalier did not know which of the rival artists to 
 credit. The proposition alarmed him. " He who painted 
 the picture shall repair it," said Mignard. He took a pencil 
 dipped in oil, and rubbing the hair of the Magdalen, dis- 
 covered the cap of the cardinal. The honour of the inge- 
 nious painter could no longer be disputed ; Le Brun, vexed, 
 sarcastically exclaimed, " Always paint Guido, but never 
 Mignard." 
 
 There is a collection of engravings by that ingenious artist 
 Bernard Picart, which has been published under the title of 
 The Innocent Impostors. Picart had long been vexed at the 
 taste of his day, which ran wholly in favour of antiquity, 
 and no one would look at, much less admire, a modern 
 master. He published a pretended collection, or a set of 
 prints, from the designs of the great painters ; in which he 
 imitated the etchings and engravings of the various masters, 
 and much were these prints admired as the works of Guido, 
 Kembrandt, and others. Having had his joke, they were 
 published under the title of Imposteurs Innocentes. 'J'he con- 
 noisseurs, however, are strangely divided in their opinion of 
 the merit of this collection. Gilpin classes these " Innocent 
 
 s 2
 
 260 Masterly Imitators. 
 
 Impostors" among the most entertaining of his works, and is 
 dehghted by the happiness with which he has outdone in 
 their own excellences the artists whom he copied ; but 
 Strutt, too grave to admit of jokes that twitch the connois- 
 seurs, declares that they could never have deceived an expe- 
 rienced judge, and reprobates such kinds of ingenuity, played 
 off at the cost of the venerable brotherhood of the cogno- 
 scenti ! 
 
 The same thing was, however, done by Goltzius, who being 
 disgusted at the preference given to the works of Albert 
 Durer, Lucas of Leyden, and others of that school, and having 
 attempted to introduce a better taste, which was not imme- 
 diately relished, he published what were afterwards called 
 his masterpieces. These are six prints in the style of these 
 masters, merely to prove that Goltzius could imitate their 
 works, if he thought proper. One of these, the Circum- 
 cision, he had printed on soiled paper ; and to give it the 
 brown tint of antiquity had carefully smoked it, by which 
 means it was sold as a curious performance, and deceived 
 some of the most capital connoisseurs of the day, one of 
 whom bought it as one of the finest engravings of Albert 
 Durer : even Strutt acknowledges the merit of Goltzius's 
 masterpieces ! 
 
 To these instances of artists T will add others of celebrated 
 authors. Muretus rendered Joseph Sealiger, a great stickler 
 for the ancients, highly ridiculous by an artifice which he 
 practised. He sent some verses which he pretended were 
 copied from an old manusci-ipt. The verses were excellent, 
 and Sealiger was credulous. After having read them, he ex- 
 claimed they were admirable, and afiirmed that they were 
 written by an old comic poet, Trabeus. He quoted them, in 
 his commentary on Varro De lie Hustica, as one of the most 
 precious fragments of antiquity. It was then, when he had 
 fixed his foot firmly in the trap, that Muretus informed the 
 world of the little dependence to be placed on the critical 
 sagacity of one so prejudiced in favour of the ancients, and 
 who considered his judgment as infallible. 
 
 The Abbe Regnier Desmarais, having written an ode or, as 
 the Italians call it, canzone, sent it to the Abbe Strozzi at 
 Florence, who used it to impose on three or four academicians 
 of Delia Crusca. He gave out that Leo Allatius, librarian of 
 the Vatican, in examining carefully the MSS. of Petrarch 
 preserved there, had found two pages slightly glued, which
 
 Edward the Fourth. 261 
 
 • 
 having separated, he had discovered this ode. The fact was 
 not at first easily credited ; but afterwards the simihirity of 
 style and manner rendered it highly probable. When Strozzi 
 undeceived the public, it procured the Abbe Regnier a place 
 in the academy, as an honourable testimony of his ingenuity. 
 
 Pere Commire, when Louis XIV. resolved on the conquest 
 of Holland, composed a Latin fable, entitled " The Sun and 
 the Frogs," in which he assumed with such felicity the style 
 and character of Phsedrus, that the learned Wolfius was de- 
 ceived, and innocently inserted it in his edition of that 
 fabulist. 
 
 Flaminius Strada would have deceived most of the critics 
 of bis age, if he had given as the remains of antiquity the 
 different pieces of history and poetry which he composed on 
 the model of the ancients, in his Prolusiones Academicce. 
 To preserve probability he might have given out that he had 
 drawn them from some old and neglected library ; he had 
 then only to have added a good commentary, tending to dis- 
 play the conformity of the style and manner of these frag- 
 ments with the works of those authors to whom he ascribed 
 them. 
 
 Sigonius was a great master of the style of Cicero, and 
 ventured to publish a treatise De Consolatione, as a compo- 
 sition of Cicero recently discovered ; many were deceived by 
 the counterfeit, which was performed with great dexterity, 
 and was long received as genuine ; but he could not deceive 
 Lipsius, who, after reading only ten lines, threw it away, ex- 
 claiming, " Vah I non est Ciceronis.''' The late Mr. Burke 
 succeeded more skilfully in his " Vindication of Natural 
 Society," which for a long time passed as the composition of 
 Lord Bolingbroke ; so perfect is this ingenious imposture of 
 the spirit, manner, and course of thinking of the noble 
 author. I believe it was written for a wager, and fairly 
 won. 
 
 EDWARD THE FOURTH. 
 
 OuB Edward the Fourth was dissipated and voluptuous ; and 
 probably owed his crown to his handsomeness, his enormous 
 debts, and passion for the fair sex. He had many Jane 
 Shores. Honest Philip de Comines, his contemporary, says, 
 " That what greatly contributed to his entering London as 
 soon as tie appeared at its gates was the great debts this
 
 263 Edivard the Fourth. 
 
 % 
 
 prince had contracted, which made his creditors gladly assist 
 him ; and the high favour in which he was held by the 
 hoiirgeoises, into whose good graces he had frequently glided, 
 and who gained over to him their husbands, who, for the 
 tranquillity of their hves, were glad to depose or to raise 
 monarchs. Many ladies and rich citizens' wives, of whom 
 formerly he had great privacies and familiar acquaintance, 
 gained over to him their husbands and relations." 
 
 This is the description of his voluptuous life ; we must re- 
 collect that the writer had been an eye-witness, and was an 
 honest man. 
 
 " He had been during the last twelve years more accus- 
 tomed to his ease and pleasure than any other prince who 
 lived in his time. He had nothing in his thoughts but les 
 dames, and of them more than was reasonable ; and hunting- 
 matches, good eating, and great care of his person. When 
 he went in their seasons to these hunting-matches, he always 
 had carried with him great pavilions for les dames, and at the 
 same time gave splendid entertainments ; so that it is not 
 surprising that his person was as jolly as any one I ever saw. 
 He was then young, and as handsome as any man of his age ; 
 but he has since become enormously fat." 
 
 Since 1 have got old Philip in my hand, the reader will 
 not, perhaps, be displeased, if he attends to a little more of 
 his naivete, which will appear in the form of a conversazione 
 of the times. He relates what passed between the EngHsh 
 and the French Monarch. 
 
 '• When the ceremony of the oath was concluded, our king, 
 who was desirous of being friendly, began to say to the king 
 of England, in a laughing way, that he must come to Paris, 
 and be jovial amongst our ladies ; and that he would give him 
 the Cardin;;! de Bourbon for his confessor, who would very 
 willingly absolve him of any sin which perchance he might 
 commit. The king of England seemed well pleased at the 
 invitation, and laughed heartily ; for he knew that the said 
 cardinal was un fort bon compagnon. When the king was 
 returning, he spoke on the road to me ; and said that he did 
 not like to find the king of England so much inclined to come 
 to Pai-is. ' He is,' said he, ' a very handsome king ; he hkes 
 the women too much. He may probably find one at Paris 
 that may make him like to come too often, or stay too ong. 
 His predecessors have already been too much at Paris and in 
 Normandy j' and that 'his company was not agreeable this
 
 Edward the Fourth. 263 
 
 side of tTie sea ; but that, beyond the sea, he wished to be 
 honfrere et amy.'' " 
 
 I have called Philip de Comines honest. The old writers, 
 from the simplicity of their style, usually receive this 
 honourable epithet ; but sometimes they deserve it as little as 
 most modern memoir writers. No enemy is indeed so ter- 
 rible as a man of genius. Comines's violent enmity to the 
 Duke of Burgundy, which appears in these memoirs, has 
 been traced by the minute researchers of anecdotes ; and the 
 cause is not honourable to the memoir-writer, whose resent- 
 ment was implacable. De Comines was born a subject of 
 the Duke of Burgundy, and for seven years had been a 
 favourite ; but one day returning from hunting with the 
 Duke, then Count de Charolois, in familiar jocularity he sat 
 himself down before the prince, ordering the prince to pull off 
 his boots. The count laughed, and did this ; but in return 
 for Comines's princely amusement, dashed the boot in his 
 face, and gave Comines a bloody nose. From that time he 
 w^as mortified in the court of Burgundy by the nickname of 
 the hooted head. Comines lonof felt a ranklinor wound in his 
 mind ; and after this domestic quarrel, for it was nothing 
 more, he went over to the king of France, and wrote off his 
 bile against the Duke of Burgundy in these " Memoirs," 
 which give posterity a caricature likeness of that prince, 
 whom he is ever censuring for presumption, obstinacy, pride, 
 and cruelty. This Duke of Burgundy, however, it is said, 
 with many virtues, had but one great vice, the vice of sove- 
 reigns, that of ambition ! 
 
 The impertinence of Comines had not been chastised with 
 great severity ; but the nickname was never forgiven : un- 
 fortunately for the duke, Comines was a man of genius. 
 When we are versed in the history of the times, we often 
 discover that memoir-writers have some secret poison in their 
 hearts. Many, like Comines, have had the boot dashed on 
 their nose. Personal rancour wonderfully enlivens the style 
 of Lord Oribrd and Cardinal de Retz. Memoirs are often 
 dictated by its fiercest spirit ; and then histories are composed 
 from memoirs. Where is tiiuth ? Not always in histories 
 and memoirs !
 
 264 
 
 ELIZABETH. 
 
 This great queen passionately admired handsome persons, 
 and he was ah-eady far advanced in her favour who 
 approached her with beauty and grace. She had so uncon- 
 querable an aversion for men who had been treated unfortu- 
 nately by nature, that she could not endure their presence. 
 
 When she issued from her palace, her guards were careful 
 to disperse from before her eyes hideous and deformed people, 
 the lame, the hunchbacked, &c. ; in a word, all those whose 
 appearance might shock her fastidious sensations. 
 
 " There is this sinsrular and admirable in the conduct of 
 Elizabeth that she made her pleasures subservient to her 
 policy, and she maintained her affairs by what in general 
 occasions the ruin of princes. So secret were her amours, 
 that even to the present day their mysteries cannot be pene- 
 trated ; but the utility she drew from them is public, and 
 always operated for the good of her people. Her lovers were 
 her ministers, and her ministers were her lovers. Love com- 
 manded, love was obeyed ; and the reign of this princess was 
 happy, because it was the reign of Love, in which its chains 
 and its slavery are liked!" 
 
 The origin of Raleigh's advancement in the queen's graces 
 was by an act of gallantry. Ealeigh spoiled a new plush 
 cloak, while the queen, stepping cautiously on this prodigal's 
 footcloth, shot forth a smile, in which he read promotion. 
 Captain Raleigh soon became Sir Walter, and rapidly ad- 
 vanced in the queen's favour. 
 
 Hume has furnished us with ample proofs of the passion 
 which her courtiers feigned for her, and it remains a question 
 whether it ever went further than boisterous or romantic 
 gallantry. The secrecy of her amours is not so wonderful as 
 it seems, if there were impediments to any but exterior 
 gallantries. Hume has preserved in his notes a letter written 
 by Raleigh. It is a perfect amorous composition. After 
 having exerted his poetic talents to exalt Iter charms and Ids 
 affection, he concludes, by comparing her majesty, who was 
 then sixty, to Venus and Diana. Sir Walter was not her 
 only courtier who wrote in this style. Even in her old age 
 she affected a strange fondness for music and dancing, with a 
 kind of childish simplicity ; her court seemed a court of love,
 
 Elizabeth. 265 
 
 and she the sovereign. Secretary Cecil, the youngest son of 
 Lord Burleigh, seems to have perfectly entered into her cha- 
 racter. Lady Derby wore about her neck and in her bosom 
 a portrait ; the queen inquired about it, but her ladyship was 
 anxious to conceal it. The queen insisted on having it ; and 
 discovering it to be the portrait of young Cecil, she snatched 
 it away, tying it upon her shoe, and walked with it ; after- 
 wards she pinned it on her elbow, and wore it some time 
 there. Secretary Cecil hearing of this, composed some verses 
 and got them set to music ; this music the queen insisted on 
 hearing. In his verses Cecil said that he repined not, though 
 her majesty was pleased to grace others ; he contented him- 
 self with the favour she had given him by wearing his por- 
 trait on her feet and on her arms ! The writer of the letter 
 who relates this anecdote, adds, " All these things are very 
 secret." In this manner she contrived to lay the fastest hold 
 on her able servants, and her servants on her. 
 
 Those who are intimately acquainted with the private 
 anecdotes of those times, know what encouragement this 
 royal coquette gave to most who were near her person. 
 Dodd, in his Church History, says, that the Earls of Arran 
 and Ai'undel, and Sir William Pickering, " were not out of 
 hopes of gaining Queen Elizabeth's atfections in a matrimo- 
 nial way." 
 
 She encouraged every person of eminence : she even Avent 
 so far, on the anniversary of her coronation, as publicly to 
 take a ring from her finger, and put it on the Duke of Alen- 
 9on's hand. She also ranked amongst her suitors Henry the 
 Third of France, and Henry the Great. 
 
 She never forgave Buzenval for ridiculing her bad pronun- 
 ciation of the French language; and when Henry IV. sent 
 him over on an embassy, she would not receive him. So nice 
 was the irritable pride of this great queen, that she made her 
 private injuries matters of state. 
 
 " This queen," writes Du Maurier, in his llemoires pour 
 servir a rJIistoire de la Rollande, "who displayed so many 
 heroic accomplishments, had this foible, of wishing to be 
 thought beautiful by all the world. I heard from my father, 
 that at every audience he had with her majesty, she pulled 
 off her gloves more than a hundred times to display her hands, 
 which indeed were very beautiful and very white." 
 
 A not less curious anecdote relates to the affair of the Duke 
 of Anjou and our Elizabeth ; it is one more proof of her par-
 
 206 Elizabeth. 
 
 tiality for handsome men. The writer was Lewis Guy on, a 
 contemporary. 
 
 " Francis Duke of Anjou, being desirous of marrying a 
 crowned head, caused proposals of marriage to be made to 
 Elizabeth, queen of England. Letters passed betwixt them, 
 and their portraits were exchanged. At length her majesty 
 informed him, that she would never contract a marriage with 
 any one who sought her, if she did not first see his person. 
 If he would not come, nothing more should be said on the 
 subject. This prince, over-pressed by his young friends (who 
 were as little able of judging as himself), paid no attention 
 to the counsels of men of niaturer judgment. He passed 
 over to England without a splendid train. The said lady 
 contemplated his person : she found him uffl^, disfigured by 
 deep scars of the sniaU-pox, and that he also had an ill-shaped 
 nose, with swellings in the neck ! All these were so many 
 I'easons with her, that he could never be admitted into her 
 good graces." 
 
 Puttenham, in his very rare book of the " Art of Poesie," 
 p. 248. notices the grace and majesty of Elizabeth's demeanour: 
 " Her stately manner of walk, with a certaine grandltie rather 
 than gravietie, marching with ley sure, which our sovereign 
 ladye and mistresse is accustomed to doe generally, unless it 
 be when she walketh apace for her pleasure, or to catch her a 
 heate in the cold mornings." 
 
 By the following extract from a letter from one of her 
 gentlemen, we discover that her usual habits, though stu- 
 dious, were not of the gentlest kind, and that the service she 
 exacted from her attendants was not borne without concealed 
 murmurs. The writer groans in secrecy to his friend. Sir 
 John Stanhope writes to Sir Robert Cecil in 1598 : " I was all 
 the afternowne with her majestic, at my hooke ; and then^ 
 thinking to rest me, went in agayne with your letter. She 
 was pleased with the Pilosofer's stone, and hath ben all this 
 daye reasonally qiiyett.' Mr. Grevell is absent, and 1 am tyed 
 .so as I cannot styrr, but shall be at the wourse for yt, these 
 two dayes !"* 
 
 Puttenham, p. 249, has also recorded an honourable anec- 
 dote of Elizabeth, and characteristic of that high majesty 
 whicJi was in her thoughts, as well as in her actions. When 
 
 * Sir Robert Cecil, in a letter to Sir John Harrington, happily charac- 
 terized her Majesty as occasionally "being more than a man, and, in 
 truth, sometimes less than a woman."
 
 The Chinese Language. 2G7 
 
 she came to the crown, a knight of the realm, who had inso- 
 lently behaved to her when Lady Elizabeth, fell upon his 
 knees and besought her pardon, expecting to be sent to the 
 Tower : she replied mildly, " Do you not know that we are 
 descended of the lion, whose nature is not to harme or prey 
 upon the mouse, or any other such small vermin ?" 
 
 Queen Elizabeth was taught to write by the celebrated 
 Roger Ascham. Her writing is extremely beautiful and cor- 
 rect, as may be seen by examining a little manuscript book 
 of prayers, preserved in the British Museum. I have seen 
 her first writing-book, preserved at Oxford in the Bodleian 
 Library : the gradual improvement in her majesty's hand- 
 writing is very honourable to her diligence ; but the most 
 curious thing is the paper on which she tried her pens ; this 
 she usually did by writing the name of her beloved brother 
 Edward ; a proof of the early and ardent attachment she 
 formed to that amiable prince. 
 
 The education of Elizabeth had been severely classical ; 
 she thought and she wrote in all the spirit of the characters 
 of antiquity ; and her speeches and her letters are studded 
 with apophthegms, and a terseness of ideas and language, 
 that give an exalted idea of her mind. In her evasive 
 answers to the Commons, in reply to their petitions to her 
 majesty to marry, she has employed an energetic word : 
 " Were I to tell j^ou that I do not mean to marry, I might 
 say less than I did intend ; and were I to tell you that I do 
 mean to marry, I might say more than it is proper for you 
 to know; therefore I give you an answer, Answehless !" 
 
 THE CHINESE LANGUAGE. 
 
 The Chinese language is like no other on the globe ; it is 
 said to contain not more than about three hundred and thirty 
 words, but it is by no means monotonous, for it has four 
 accents ; the even, the raised, the lessened, and the returning, 
 which multiply every word into four ; as difficult, says Mr. 
 Astle, for an European to understand, as it is for a (Jhinese 
 to comprehend the six pronunciations of the French E. In 
 fact, they can so diversify their monosyllabic words by the 
 different tones which they give them, that the same character 
 differently accented signifies sometimes ten or more different 
 things.
 
 268 The Chinese Language. 
 
 P. Bourgeois, one of the missionaries, attempted, after ten 
 months' residence at Pekin, to preach in the Chinese lan- 
 guage. These are the words of the good father : " God 
 knows how much this first Chinese sermon cost me ! I can 
 assure you this language resembles no other. The same word 
 has never but one termination ; and then adieu to all that in 
 our declensions distinguishes the gender, and the nvimber of 
 things we would, speak : adieu, in the verbs, to all which 
 might explain the active person, how and in what time it 
 acts, if it acts alone or with others : in a word, with the 
 Chinese, the same word is substantive, adjective, verb, sin- 
 gular, plural, masculine, feminine, &c. It is the person who 
 hears who must arrange ■^.he circumstances, and guess them. 
 Add to all this, that all the words of this language are re- 
 duced to three hundred and a few more ; that they are pro- 
 nounced in so many different ways, that they signify eighty 
 thousand different things, which are expressed by as many 
 different characters. This is not all : the arrangement of all 
 these monosyllables appears to be under no general rule ; 
 so that to know the lan^uas^e after bavins' learnt the 
 words, we must learn every particular phrase : the least 
 inversion would make you unintelligible to three parts of 
 the Chinese, 
 
 " I will give you an example of their words. They told 
 me cliou signifies a hook : so that I thought whenever the 
 word cJioti was pronounced, a book was the subject. Not at 
 all ! Chou, the next time I heard it, I found signified a tree. 
 Now I was to recollect ; chou was a book or a tree. But 
 this amounted to nothing; chou, I found, expressed also 
 great heats ; chou is to relate ; chou is the Aurora ; chou 
 means to be accustomed ; chou expresses the loss of a 
 wager, &c. I should not finish, were I to attempt to give 
 you all its significations. 
 
 " Notwithstanding these singular difficulties, could one but 
 find a help in the perusal of their books, 1 should not com- 
 plain. But this is impossible ! Their language is quite dif- 
 ferent from that of simple conversation. What will ever be 
 an insurmountable difficulty to every European is the pro- 
 nunciation ; every word may be pronounced in five different 
 tones, yet every tone is not so distinct that an unpractised 
 ear can easily distinguish it. These monosyllables fly with 
 amazing rapidity ; then they are continually disguised by 
 elisions, which sometimes hardly leave anything of two mono-
 
 Medical Music. 269 
 
 syllables. From an aspirated tone you must pass imme- 
 diatol}'' to an even one ; from a whistling note to an inward 
 one : sometimes your voice must proceed from the palate ; 
 sometimes it must be guttural, and almost always nasal. I 
 recited my sermon at least fifty times to my servant before I 
 spoke it in public ; and yet 1 am told, though he continually 
 corrected me, that of the ten parts of the sermon (as the 
 Chinese express themselves), they hardly understood three. 
 Fortunately the Chinese are wonderfully patient ; and they 
 are astonished that any ignorant stranger should be able to 
 learn two words of their language." 
 
 It has been said that " Satires are often composed in China, 
 which, if you attend to the characters, their import is pure 
 and sublime ; but if you regai'd the tone only, they contain a 
 meaning ludicrous or obscene. In the Chinese one loord 
 sometimes corresponds to three or four thousand characters ; 
 a property quite opposite to that of our language, in which 
 myriads of different words are expressed by the same letters.'''' 
 
 MEDICAL MUSIC. 
 
 .In the Philosophical Magazine for May, 1806, we find that 
 " several of the medical literati on the continent are at pre- 
 sent engaged in making inquiries and experiments upon the 
 influence of music in the cure of diseases.'" The learned 
 Dusaux is said to lead the band of this new tribe of amateurs 
 and cognoscenti. 
 
 The subject excited my curiosity, though I since have found 
 that it is no new discovery. 
 
 There is a curious article in Dr. Burney's History of 
 Music, " On the Medicinal Powers attributed to Music by 
 the Ancients," which he derived from the learned labours of 
 a modern physician, M. Burette, who doubtless could play a 
 tune to, as well as prescribe one to, his patient. He con- 
 ceives that music can relieve the pains of the sciatica; and 
 that, independent of the greater or less skill of the musician, 
 by flattering the ear, and diverting the attention, and occa- 
 sioning certain vibrations of the nerves, it can remove those ob- 
 structions which occasion this disorder. M. Burette, and many 
 modern physicians and philosophers, have believed that music 
 has the power of affecting the mind, and the whole nervous 
 system, so as to give a temporary relief in certain diseases,
 
 270 Medical Music. 
 
 and even a radical cure. De Mairan, Biancliini, and other 
 respectable names, have pursued the same career. But the 
 ancients recorded miracles ! 
 
 The Eev. Dr. Mitchell, of Brighthelmstone, wrote a dis- 
 sertation, " De Arte Medendi apud Priscos, Musices ope 
 atque Carminum^'' printed for J. Nichols, 1783. He writes 
 under the assumed name of Michael Gaspar ; but whether 
 this learned dissertator be grave or jocular, more than one 
 critic has not been able to resolve me. I suspect it to be a 
 satire on the parade of Germanic erudition, by which they 
 often prove a point by the weakest analogies and most fanciful 
 conceits. 
 
 Amongst half-civilized nations, diseases have been generally 
 attributed to the influence of evil spirits. The depression of 
 mind which is generally attendant on sickness, and the deli- 
 rium accompanying certain stages of disease, seem to have 
 been considered as especially denoting the immediate influence 
 of a demon. The effect of music in raising the energies of 
 the mind, or what we commonly call animal spirits, was 
 obvious to early observation. Its power of attracting strong 
 attention may in some cases have appeared to afl'ect even 
 those who laboured under a considerable degree of mental 
 disorder. The accompanying depression of mind was consi- 
 dered as a part of the disease, perhaps rightly enough, and 
 music was prescribed as a remedy to remove the symptom, 
 when experience had not ascertained the probable cause. 
 Homer, whose heroes exhibit high passions, but not reflned 
 manners, represents the Grecian army as employing music to 
 stay the raging of the plague. The Jewish nation, in the 
 time of King David, appear not to have been much further 
 advanced in civilization ; accordingly we find David employed 
 in his youth to remove the mental derangement of Saul by 
 his harp. The method of cure was suggested as a common 
 one in those days, by Saul's servants ; and the success is not 
 mentioned as a miracle. Pindar, with poetic licence, speaks 
 of iEsculapius healing acute disorders with soothing songs ; 
 but ^sculapius, whether man or deity, or between both, is a 
 physician of the days of barbarism and fable. Pliny scouts 
 the idea that music could affect real bodily injury, but quotes 
 Homer on the subject ; mentions Theophrastus as suggesting 
 a tune for the cure of the hip gout, and Cato as entertaining 
 a fanc}^ that it had a good effect when limbs were out of joint, 
 and likewise that Varro thought it good for the gout. Aulus
 
 Medical Music. 271 
 
 Gellius cites a work of Theophrastus, whicli recommends 
 music as a specific for the bite of a viper. Boyle and Shak- 
 speare mention the eft'ects of music super vesicam. Kircher's 
 " Musurgia," and Swinburne's Travels, relate the effects of 
 music on those who are bitten by the tarantula. Sir W. 
 Temple seems to have given credit to the stories of the 
 power of music over diseases. 
 
 The ancients, indeed, record miracles in the tales they relate 
 of the medicinal powers of music. A fever is removed by a 
 song, and deafness is cured by a trumpet, and the pestilence 
 is chased away by the sweetness of an harmonious lyre. 
 That deaf people can hear best in a great noise, is a fact 
 alleged by some moderns, in favour of the ancient story of 
 curing deafness by a trumpet. Di-. Willis tells us, says Dr. 
 Burney, of a lady who could hear only while a drum was 
 heating, insomuch that her husband, the account says, hired 
 a drummer as her servant, in order to enjoy the pleasui-e of 
 her conversation. 
 
 Music and the sounds of instruments, says the lively 
 Vigneul de Marville, contribute to tlie health of the body 
 and the mind ; they quicken the circulation of the blood, 
 they dissipate vapours, and open the vessels, so that the action 
 of perspiration is freer. He tells a story of a person of dis 
 tinction, who assured him, that once being suddenly seized 
 by violent illness, instead of a consultation of physicians, he 
 immediately called a band of musicians ; and their violins 
 played so well in his inside, that his bowels became per- 
 fectly in tune, and in a few hours were harmoniously becalmed. 
 I once heard a story of Farinelli, the famous singer, who was 
 sent for to Madrid, to try the effect of his magical voice on 
 the king of Spain. His majesty was buried in the profoundest 
 melancholy ; nothing could raise an emotion in him ; he lived 
 in a total oblivion of life ; he sate in a darkened chamber, 
 entirely given up to the most distressing kind of madness. 
 The physicians ordered Farinelli at first to sing in an outer 
 room ; and for the first day or two this was done, without 
 any effect on the royal patient. At length it was observed, 
 that the king, awakening from his stupor, seemed to listen ; 
 on the next day tears were seen starting in his eyes ; the day 
 after he ordered the door of his chamber to be left open — 
 and at length tlie perturbed spirit entirely left our modern 
 Saul, and the medicinal voice of Farinelli effected what no 
 other medicine could.
 
 272 Medical Music. 
 
 I now prepare to give the reader some facts, which he may 
 consider as a trial of credulity. — Their authorities are, how- 
 ever, not contemptible. — Naturalists assert that animals and 
 birds, as well as "knotted oaks," as Congreve informs us, are 
 sensible to the charms of music. This may serve as an in- 
 stance : — "An officer was confined in the Bastile ; he begged 
 the governor to permit him the use of his lute, to soften, by 
 the harmonies of his instrument, the rigours of his prison. 
 At the end of a few days, this modern Orpheus, playing on his 
 lute, was greatly astonished to see frisking out of their holes 
 great numbers of mice , and descending from their woven 
 habitations crowds of spiders, who formed a circle about him, 
 while he continued breathing his soul-subduing instrument. 
 He was petrified with astonishment. Having ceased to play, 
 the assembly, who did not come to see his person, but to hear 
 his instrument, immediately broke up. As he had a great 
 dislike to spiders, it was two days before he ventured again to 
 touch his instrument. At length, having overcome, for the 
 novelty of his company, his dislike of them, he recommenced 
 his concert, when the assembly was by far more numerous 
 than at first ; and in the course of farther time, he found 
 himself surrounded by a hundred musical amateurs. Having 
 thus succeeded in attracting this company, he treacherously 
 contrived to get rid of them at his will. For this purpose 
 he begged the keeper to give him a cat, which he put in 
 a cage, and let loose at the very instant when the little 
 hairy people were most entranced by the Orphean skill he 
 displayed. 
 
 The Abbe Olivet has described an amusement of Pelisson 
 during his confinement in the Bastile, which consisted in 
 feeding a spider, which he had discovered forming its web in 
 the corner of a small window. For some time he placed his 
 flies at the edge, while his valet, who was with him, played 
 on a bagpipe : little by little, the spider used itself to distin- 
 guish the sound of the instrument, and issued from its hole 
 to run and catch its prey. Thus calling it always by the 
 same sound, and placing the flies at a still greater distance, 
 he succeeded, after several months, to drill the spider by 
 regular exercise, so that at length it never failed appearing at 
 the first sound to seize on the fly provided for it, even on the 
 knees of the prisoner. 
 
 Marville has given us the following curious anecdote on 
 this subject. He says, that doubting the truth of those who
 
 Medical Music. 273 
 
 say that the love of music is a natural taste, especially the 
 sound of instruments, and that beasts themselves are touched 
 hy it, being one day in the country I tried an experiment. 
 While a man was playing on the trump marine, I made my 
 observations on a cat, a dog, a horse, an ass, a hind, cows, 
 small birds, and a cock and hens, who were in a yard, under a 
 window on which I was leaning. I did not jjerceive that the 
 eat was the least affected, and I even judged, by her air, that 
 she would liave given all the instruments in the world for a 
 mouse, sleeping in the sun all the time; the horse stopped 
 short from time to time before the window, raising his head 
 \ip now and then, as he was feeding on the grass ; the dog 
 continued for above an hour seated on his hind legs, lo jkin,"" 
 steadfastly at the player ; the ass did not discover the least 
 indication of his being touched, eating his thistles peaceably ; 
 the hind lifted up her large wide ears, and seemed very atten- 
 tive ; the cows slept a little, and after gazing, as though they 
 had been acquainted with us, went forward ; some little birds 
 who were in an aviary, and others on the trees and bushes, 
 almost tore their little throats with singing ; but the cock, 
 who minded only his hens, and the hens, who were solely em- 
 ployed in scraping a neighbouring dunghill, did not show in 
 any manner that they took the least pleasure in hearing the 
 trump marine. 
 
 A modern traveller assures us, that he has repeatedlj^ 
 observed in the island of Madeira, that the lizards are 
 attracted by the notes of music, and that he has assem- 
 bled a number of them by the powers of his instrument. 
 When the negroes catch them for food, they accompany 
 the chase by whistling some tune, which has always the 
 effect of drawing great numbers towards them. Sted- 
 man, in his Expedition to Surinam, describes certain sibyls 
 among the negroes, who, among several singular practices, 
 can charm or conjure down from the tree certain serpents, 
 who will wreath about the arms, neck, and breast of the pre- 
 tended sorceress, listening to her voice. The sacred writers 
 speak of the charming of adders and serpents ; and nothing, 
 says he, is more notorious than that the eastern Indians 
 will rid the houses of the most venomous snakes, by charm- 
 ing them with the sound of a flute, which calls them out of 
 their holes. These anecdotes seem fully confirmed by Sir 
 William Jones, in his dissertation on the musical modes of 
 the Hindus. 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 Medical Music. 
 
 " After food, when the operations of digestion and absorp- 
 tion give so much employment to the vessels, that a tem- 
 porary state of mental repose must be found, especially in hot 
 climates, essential to health, it seems reasonable to believe that 
 a few agreeable airs, either heard or played without effort, 
 must have all the good effects of sleep, and none of its dis- 
 advantages ; puttinrj the soul in tune, as Milton says, for any 
 subsequent exertion ; an experiment often successfully made 
 by myself. I have been assured by a credible eye-witness, 
 that two wild antelopes used often to come from their woods 
 to the place where a more savage beast, Sirajuddaulah, enter- 
 tained himself with concerts, and that they listened to the 
 strains with an appearance of pleasure, till the monster, in 
 whose soul there was no music, shot one of them to display 
 his archery. A learned native told me that he had frequently 
 seen the most venomous and malignant snakes leave their 
 holes upon hearing tunes on a flute, which, as he supposed, 
 gave them peculiar delight. An intelligent Persian declared 
 he had more than once been present, when a celebi-ated lutenist, 
 surnamed Bulbul (i. e., the nightingale), was playing to a large 
 company, in a grove near Shiraz, where he distinctly saw the 
 nightingales trying to vie with the musician, sometimes warb- 
 ling on the trees, sometimes flattering from branch to branch, 
 as if they wished to approach the instrument, and at length 
 dropping on the ground in a kind of ecstacy, from vk^hich 
 they were soon raised, he assured me, by a change in the 
 mode." 
 
 Jackson of Exeter, in reply to a question of Dryden, 
 " What passion cannot music raise or quell?" sai'castically 
 returns, " What passion can music raise or quell?" Would 
 not a savage, who had never listened to a musical instrument, 
 feel certain emotions at listening to one for the first time ? 
 But civilized man is, no doubt, particularly affected by 
 association of ideas, as all pieces of national music evidently 
 prove. 
 
 The Ranz des Vaches, mentioned by Rousseau in his 
 Dictionary of Music, though without anything striking in the 
 composition, has such a powerful influence over the Swiss, and 
 impresses them with so violent a desire to return to their own 
 country, that it is forbidden to be played in the Swiss regi- 
 ments, in the French service, on pain of death. There is also 
 a Scotch tune, which has the same effect on some of our North 
 Britons. In one of our battles in Calabria, a bagpiper of the
 
 Minute TVriting. 275 
 
 7Sth Highland regiment, when the Hght infantrj'- charged the 
 Fi'ench, posted liimself on the right, and remained in his soli- 
 tary situation during the whole of the hattle, encouraging the 
 men with a famous Highland charging tune ; and actually 
 upon the retreat and complete rout of the French changed it 
 to another, equally celehrated in Scotland, upon the retreat of 
 and victory over an enemy. His next-hand neighhour 
 guarded him so well that lie escaped unhurt. This was the 
 spirit of the " Last Minstrel," who infused courage among 
 his countrymen, by possessing it in so animated a degree, and 
 in so venerable a character. 
 
 MINUTE WRITING. 
 
 The Iliad of Homer in a nutshell, which Pliny says that 
 Cicero once saw, it is pretended might have been a fact, 
 however to some it may appear impossible. ^Elian notices 
 an artist who wrote a distich in letters of gold, whicli he 
 enclosed in the rind of a grain of corn. 
 
 Antiquity and modern times record many such penmen, 
 whose glory consisted in writing in so small a hand that the 
 writing could not be legible to the naked eye. Menage men- 
 tions, he saw whole sentences which were not perceptible to 
 the eye without the microscope ; pictures and portraits which 
 appeared at first to be lines and scratches thrown down at 
 random ; one formed the face of the Dauphiness with the 
 most correct resemblance. He read an Italian poem, in 
 praise of this princess, containing some thousand verses, 
 written by an officer, in a space of a foot and a half. This 
 species of curious idleness has not been lost in our own coun- 
 try, where this minute writing has equalled any on record. 
 Peter Bales, a celebrated caligrapher in the reign of EUzabeth, 
 astonished the eyes of beholders by showing them what they 
 could not see ; for in the Harleian MSS. 530, we have a 
 narrative of " a rare piece of work brought to pass by Peter 
 Bales, an Englishman, and a clerk of the chancery ;" it 
 seems by the description to have been the whole Bible " in 
 an English walnut no bigger than a hen's egg. The nut 
 holdeth tlie book : there are as many leaves in his little book 
 as the gi'eat Bible, and he hath written as much in one of 
 his little leaves as a great leaf of the Bible." "We are told 
 that this wonderfully unreadable copy of the Bible was " seen 
 
 t2
 
 276 Numerical Figures. 
 
 by many thousands." There is a drawing of the head of 
 Charles I. in the library of St. John's College, at Oxford, 
 wholly composed of minute written characters, which, at a 
 small distance, resemble the lines of an engraving. The lines 
 of the liead, and the ruff, are said to contain the book of 
 Psalms, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. In the British 
 Museum we find a drawing representing the portrait of Queen 
 Anne, not much above the size of the hand. On this drawing 
 appears a number of lines and scratches, which the librarian 
 assures the marvelling spectator includes the entire contents 
 of a thin/o//o, which on this occasion is carried in the hand.. 
 The learned Huet asserts that, like the rest of the world, 
 he considered as a fiction the story of that indefatigable 
 trifler who is said to have enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. 
 Exaniining the matter more closely, he thought it possible. 
 One day this learned man trilled half an hour in demonstrat- 
 ing it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and 
 eight in width, pliant and firm, can be folded up, and enclosed 
 in the shell of a large walnut. It can hold in its breadth one 
 line, which can contain 30 verses, and in its length 250 lines. 
 With a crow-quill the writing can be perfect. A page of this 
 piece of vellum will then contain 7500 verses, and the reverse 
 as much ; the whole 15,000 verses of the Iliad. And this he 
 proved by using a ))iece of paper, and with a common pen. 
 Tlie thing is possible to be ettected ; and if on any occasion 
 paper should he most excessively rare, it may be useful to 
 know that a volume of matter may be contained in a single 
 leaf. 
 
 NUMERICAL FIGURES. 
 
 The learned, after many contests, have at length agreed that 
 the numerical figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, usually called 
 Aralic, are of Indian origin. The Arabians do not pretend 
 to have been the inventors of themj but borrowed them from 
 the Indian nations. The numeral characters of the Bramins, 
 the Persians, the Arabians, and other eastern nations, are 
 similar. They appear afterwards to have been introduced into 
 several European nations by their respective travellers, who 
 returned from the East. They were admitted into calendars 
 and chronicles, but they were not introduced into charters, 
 says Mr. Astle, before the sixteenth century. The Spaniards, 
 no doubt, derived their use from the Moors who invaded
 
 Numerical Figures. '^77 
 
 them. In 1210, the Alplionsean astronomical tables were 
 made by the order of Alphonsus X. by a Jew, and an Arabian ; 
 they used these numerals, from whence the Spaniards contend 
 that they were first introduced by them. 
 
 They were not generally used in Germany until the be- 
 ginning of the fourteenth century ; but in general the forms 
 of the ciphers were not permanently fixed there till after the 
 year 1531. The Russians were strangers to them, before 
 Peter the Great had finished his travels in the beginning of 
 the last century. 
 
 The oriffin of these useful characters with the Indians and 
 Arabians is attributed to their great skill in the arts of 
 astronomy and of arithmetic, which required more conve- 
 nient characters than alphabetic letters for the expressing of 
 numbers. 
 
 Before the introduction into Europe of these Arabic nume- 
 rals, they used alphal)etical characters, or Roman numerals. 
 The learned authors of the Nouveau Traite Diplomatique, 
 the most valuable work on everything concerning the arts 
 and progress of writing, have given some curious notices on 
 the origin of the Roman numerals. Originally men counted 
 by their fingers ; thus, to mark the first four numbers they 
 used an I, which naturally represents them. To mark the 
 fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending mwards 
 the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb 
 and the little finger ; and for the tenth they used an X, 
 which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. 
 From this the progression of these numbers is always from 
 one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified 
 by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C — centum. The 
 other letters, D for 500, and M for a 1000, were afterwards 
 added. They subsequently abbreviated their characters, by 
 placing one of these rigm*es before another ; and the figure of 
 less value before a higher number, denotes that so much may 
 be deducted from a greater number ; for instance, IV signifies 
 five less one, that is four ; IX ten less one, that is nine ; but 
 these abbreviations are not found amonarst the ancient monu- 
 ments.* These numerical letters are still continued by us in 
 the accounts of our Exchequer. 
 
 That men counted originally by their fingers, is no impro- 
 
 * A peculiar arrangement of letters was in use by the German and 
 Flemish printers of the 16th century. Tlius do denoted 1000, and lo, 
 500. The date 1619 would therefore be thus printed :— do. locixx.
 
 278 English Astrologers. 
 
 bable supposition ; it is still naturally practised by the people. 
 In semi-civilized states small stones have been used, and the 
 etymologists derive the words calculate and calculations from 
 calculus, the Latin term for a pebble-stone, and by which 
 they denominated their counters used for arithmetical compu- 
 tations. 
 
 Professor Ward, in a learned dissertation on this subject in 
 the Philosophical Transactions, concludes that it is easier to 
 falsify the Arabic ciphers than the Koman alphabetical nume- 
 rals ; when 1375 is dated in Arabic ciphers, if the 3 is only 
 changed into an 0, three centuries are taken awaj' ; if the 3 
 is made into a 9 and take away the 1, four hundred yeai's are 
 lost. Such accidents have assuredly produced much confu- 
 sion among our ancient manuscripts, and still do in our pi'inted 
 books ; which is the reason that Dr. Hobertson in his histo- 
 ries has also preferred writing his dates in ivords, rather than 
 confide them to the care of a negligent printer. Gibbon ob- 
 serves, that some remarkable mistakes have happened by the 
 word mil. in MSS., which is an abbreviation for soldier's, or for 
 thousands; and to this blunder he attributes the incredible 
 numbers of martyrdoms, which cannot otherwise be accounted 
 for by historical records. 
 
 ENGLISH ASTROLOGERS. 
 
 A BELIEF in judicial astrology can now only exist in the 
 people, who may be said to have no belief at all ; for mere 
 traditional sentiments can hardly be said to amount to a 
 belief. But a faith in this ridiculous system in our country 
 is of late existence ; and was a favourite superstition with 
 the learned. 
 
 When Charles the First was confined, Lilly the astrologer 
 was consulted for the hour which would favour his escape. 
 
 A story, which strongly proves how greatl}^ Charles the 
 Second was bigoted to judicial astrology, is recorded in Bur- 
 net's History of his Own Times. 
 
 The most respectable characters of the age. Sir William 
 Dugdale, Elias Ashmole, Dr. Grew, and others, were members 
 of an astrological club. Congreve's character of Foresight, 
 in Love for Love, was then no uncommon person, though the 
 humour now is scarcely intelligible.
 
 English Astrologers. 279 
 
 Drytlen cast the nativities of his sons ; and, what is re- 
 markable, his prediction relating to his son Charles took 
 place. This incident is of so late a date, one might hope it 
 would have been cleared up. 
 
 In 1G70, the passion for horoscopes and expounding the 
 stars prevailed in France among the first rank. The new- 
 born child was usuall}'^ presented naked to the astrologer, who 
 read the first lineaments in his ibrehead, and the transverse 
 lines in its hand, and thence wrote down its future destin3^ 
 Catherine de Medicis brought Henry IV., then a child, to old 
 Nostradamus, whom antiquaries esteem more for his chronicle 
 of Provence than his vaticinating powers. The sight of the 
 reverend seer, with a beard which " streamed like a meteor in 
 the air," terrified the future hero, who dreaded a whipping 
 from so grave a ]iersonage. One of these magicians having 
 assured Charles IX. that he would live as many days as he 
 should turn about on his heels in an hour, standing on one 
 leg, his majesty every morning performed that solemn gyra- 
 tion ; the principal olhcersof the court, the judges, the chan- 
 cellors, and generals, likewise, in compliment, standing on 
 one leg and turning round ! 
 
 It has been reported of several famous for their astrologic 
 skill, that they have suffered a voluntary death merely to 
 verify their own predictions ; this has been reported of Cardan, 
 and Burton, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy. 
 
 It is curious to observe the shifts to which astrologers are 
 put when their predictions are not verified. Great ivinds 
 were predicted, by a famous adept, about the year 1586. No 
 unusual storms, however, happened. Bodin, to save the re- 
 putation of the art, applied it as d, figure to some revolutions 
 in the state, and of which there were instances enough at 
 that moment. Among their lucky and unlucky days, they 
 pretend to give those of various illustrious persons and of 
 families. One is very striking.— Thursday was the unlucky 
 day of our Henry VIII. He, his son Edward VI., Queen 
 Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, all died on a Thursday ! This 
 fact had, no doubt, great weight in this controversy of the 
 astrologers with their adversaries.* 
 
 * " Day fatality" was especially insisted on by these students, and is 
 curiously noted iu a folio tract, published in 1687, particularly devoted to 
 "Remai'ques on the 14th of October, being the auspicious birth-day of his 
 present Majesty James IL," whose author speaks of having seen in the 
 hands of "that general scholar, and great astrologer, E. Ashmole," a
 
 280 English Astrologers. 
 
 Lilly, the astrologer, is the Sidrophel of Butler. His Life, 
 written by himself, contains so much artless narrative, and so 
 much palpable imposture, that it is difficult to know when he 
 is speaking what he really believes to be the truth. In a 
 sketch of the state of astrology in his day, those adepts, 
 whose characters he has drawn, were the lowest miscreants 
 of the town. They all speak of each other as rogues and im- 
 postors. Such were Booker, Backhouse, Gadbury ; men 
 who gained a livelihood by practising on the credulity of 
 even men of learning so late as in 1650, nor were the^^ much 
 out of date in the eighteenth century. In Ashmole's Life an 
 account of these artful impostors may be found. Most of 
 them had taken the air in the pillory, and others had conjured 
 themselves up to the gallows. This seems a true statement 
 of facts. But Lilly informs us, that in his various conferences 
 with amjels, their voices resembled that of the Irish I 
 
 The work contains anecdotes of the times. The amours of 
 Lilly with his mistress are characteristic. He was a very 
 arti'ul man, and admirably managed matters which required 
 deception and invention. 
 
 Astrology greatly floui'ished in the time of the civil wars. 
 The royalists and the rebels had their astrologers, as well as 
 
 manuscript in wliicli the following barbarous monkisli rhymes were in- 
 serted, noting the unlucky days of each month : — 
 
 January . . . Prima dies menses, et septima truncat ut ensis. 
 February . . Quarta subit mortem, prosternit tertia fortem. 
 March .... Primus mandentem, disrumpit quarta bibeutem. 
 April .... Denus et undeuus est mortis vulnere plenus. 
 
 May Tertius occidit, et septimus ora relidit. 
 
 June Deuus pallescit, quindenus fcedra nescit. 
 
 July Ter-decimus mactat, Julii denus labefactat. 
 
 August .... Prima necat fortem prosternit secunda cohortem. 
 September . . Tertia Septembris, et denus fert mala membris. 
 October . . . Tertius et denus, est sicut mors alienus. 
 November . . Scorpius est quintus, et tertius e nece cinctus. 
 December . . Septimus exanguis, virosus denus et anguis. 
 
 The author of this strange book fortifies his notions on " day fatality" by 
 printing a letter from Sir Winstan Churchill, who says, "I have made 
 great experience of the truth of it, and have set down Fryday as my own 
 lucky day ; the day on which I was born, christened, married, and I 
 believe will be the day of my death. The day whereon I have had sundry 
 deliverances from perils by sea and land, perils by false brethren, perils 
 of lawsuits, &c. I was knighted (by chance unexpected of myself) on the 
 same day, and have several good accidents happened to me on that day ; 
 and am so superstitious in the belief of its good omen, that I choose to 
 begin any considerable action that concerns me on the same day."
 
 English Astrologers. 281 
 
 their soldiers! and the predictions of the former had a great 
 influence over the latter. 
 
 On this subject, it may gratify curiosity to notice three or 
 four works, which hear an excessive price. The price cannot 
 entirely be occasioned by their rarity, and I am induced to 
 suppose that we have still adepts, wliose faith must be strong, 
 or wliose scepticism but weak. 
 
 The Chaldean sages were nearly put to the rout by a quarto 
 park of artillery, fired on them by Mr. John Chamber, in 
 1601. Apollo did not use Marsyas more inhumanly than his 
 scourging pen this mystical race, and his personalities made 
 them feel more sore. However, a Norwich knight, the veiy 
 Quixote of astrology, arrayed in the enchanted armour of his 
 occult authors, encountered this pagan in a most stately 
 carousal. He came forth with " A Defence of Judiciall 
 Astrologye, in answer to a treatise lately published by Mr. 
 John Chamber. By Sir Christopher Heydon, Knight ; 
 printed at Cambridge, 1G03." This is a handsome quarto of 
 about 500 pages. Sir Christopher is a learned writer, and a 
 knight worthy to defend a better cause. But his Dulcinea 
 had wrought most wonderfully on his imagination. This 
 defence of this fanciful science, if science it may be called, 
 demonstrates nothing, while it defends everything. It con- 
 futes, according to the knight's own ideas : it alleges a few 
 scattered facts in favour of astrological predictions, which 
 may be picked up in that immensity of fabling which dis- 
 graces history. He strenuously denies, or ri<licules, what 
 the greatest writers have said against this fanciful art, while 
 he lays great stress on some passages from authors of no 
 authority. The most pleasant part is at the close, where he 
 defends the art from the objections of Mr. Chamber by recri- 
 mination. Chamber had enriched himself by medical prac- 
 tice ; and when he charges the astrologers with merely aiming 
 to gain a few beggarly pence, Sir Christopher catches lire, 
 and shows by his quotations, that if we are to despise an art, 
 by its professors attempting to subsist on it, or for the objec- 
 tions which may be raised against its vital principles, we 
 ought by this argument most heartily to despise the medical 
 science and medical men ! He gives here all he can collect 
 against physic and physicians ; and from the confessions of 
 Hippocrates and Galen, Avicenna and Agrippa, medicine ap- 
 pears to be a vainer science than even astrology ! Sir Chris- 
 topher is a shrewd and ingenious adversary ; but when he
 
 282 English Astrologers. 
 
 says he means only to give Mr. Chamber oil for his vinegar, 
 he has totally mistaken its quality. 
 
 The defence was answered by Thomas Vicars, in his "Mad- 
 nesse of Astrolo^rers." 
 
 But the great work is by Lilly; and entirely devoted to 
 the adepts. He defends nothing ; for this oracle delivers his 
 dictum, and details every event as matters not questionable. 
 He sits on the tripod ; and every page is embellished by a 
 horoscope, which he explains with the utmost facility. This 
 voluminous monument of the folly of the age is a quarto 
 valued at some guineas ! It is entitled, "Christian Astrology, 
 modestly treated of in three books, by William Lilly, student 
 in Astrology, 2nd edition, 1659." The most curious part of 
 this work is " a Catalogue of most astrological authors." 
 There is also a portrait of this arch rogue, and astrologer : an 
 admirable illustration for Lavater!* 
 
 Lilly's opinions, and his pretended science, were such fa- 
 vourites with the age, that the learned Gataker wrote profess- 
 edly against this popular delusion. Lilly, at the head of his 
 star-expounding friends, not only formally replied to, but per- 
 secuted Cataker annually in his predictions, and even struck 
 at his ghost, when beyond the grave. Gataker died in July, 
 1654 ; and Lilly having written in his almanac of that year 
 for the month of August this barbarous Latin verse : — 
 
 Hoc in tumbo jacet presbyter et nebulol 
 
 Here in this tomb lies a presbyter and a knave ! 
 
 he had the impudence to assert that he had predicted Gata- 
 ker's death ! But the truth is, it was an epitaph like lodgings 
 to let ; it stood empty ready for the first passenger to in- 
 habit. Had any other of that party of any eminence died in 
 
 * Lilly was at one time a staunch adherent of the Roundheads, and 
 " read in the stars" all kinds of successes for them. His great feat -was 
 a prediction made for the month of June, 1645 — "If now we fight, a victory 
 stealeth upon us." A figlit did occur at Naseby, and concluded the over- 
 throw of the imfortunate Charles the First. The words are sufficiently am- 
 biguous ; but not so much so, as many other "prophecies" of the same 
 notable quack, happily constructed to shift with changes in events, and so 
 be made to fit them. Lilly was opposed by Wharton, who saw in the stars 
 as many good signs for the Royal Army ; and Lilly himself began to see 
 differently as the power of Cromwell waned. Among the hundreds of pamph- 
 lets poured from the press in the excited days of the great civil wars in 
 England, few are more curious than these " strange and remarkable predic- 
 tions," "Signs in the Sky," and "Warnings to England," the productions 
 of star-gazing knaves, which " terrified our isle from its propriety."
 
 Alchymy. 283 
 
 that month, it would have been as appositely applied to him. 
 But Lilly was an exquisite vogue, and never at fault. 
 Having ])roj)hesied in his almanac for 1650, that the parlia- 
 ment stood upon a tottering foundation, when taken up by a 
 messenger, during the night he was confined, he contrived to 
 cancel the page, printed off another, and showed his copies 
 before the committee, assuring them that the others were 
 none of his own, but forged by his enemies. 
 
 ALCHYMY. 
 
 Mrs. TnoMAS, the Corinna of Dryden, in her Life, has re- 
 corded one of the delusions of alchymy. 
 
 An infatuated lover of this delusive art met with one who 
 pretended to have the power of transmuting lead to gold ; 
 that is, in their language, the imperfect metals to the j^erfect 
 one. The hermetic philosopher required only the materials, 
 and time, to perforin his golden operations. He was taken 
 to the country residence of his patroness. A long laboratory 
 was built, and that his labours might not be impeded by any 
 disturbance, no one was permitted to enter into it. His door 
 was contrived to turn on a pivot ; so that, unseen and un- 
 seeing, his meals were conveyed to him without distracting 
 the sublime meditations of the sage. 
 
 During a residence of two years, he never condescended to 
 speak but two or three times in a year to his infatuated 
 patroness. When she was admitted into the laboratory, she 
 saw, with pleasing astonishment, stills, cauldrons, long flues, 
 and three or four Vulcanian fires blazing at different corners 
 of this magical mine ; nor did she behold with less reverence 
 the venerable figure of the dusty philosopher. Pale and 
 emaciated with daily operations and nightly vigils, he revealed 
 to her, in unintelligible jargon, his progresses ; and having 
 Sometimes condescended to explain the mysteries of the 
 arcana, she beheld, or seemed to behold, streams of fluid and 
 heaps of solid ore scattered around the laboratory. Some- 
 times he required a new still, and sometimes vast quantities 
 of lead. Already this unfortunate lady had expended the 
 half of her fortune in supplying the demands of the philoso- 
 pher. She began now to lower her imagination to the stan- 
 dard of reason. Two years had now elapsed, vast quantities 
 of lead had gone in, and nothing but lead had come out. She
 
 284 Alchymy. 
 
 disclosed her sentiments to the philosopher. He candidly 
 confessed he was himself surprised at his tardy processes ; 
 but that now he would exert himself to the utmost, and that 
 he would venture to perform a laborious o[)eration, which 
 hitherto he had hoped not to have been necessitated to 
 employ. His patroness retired, and the golden visions re- 
 sumed all their lustre. 
 
 One day, as they sat at dinner, a terrible shriek, and one 
 crack followed by another, loud as the report of cannon, 
 assailed their ears. They hastened to the laboratory ; two 
 of the greatest stills had burst, and one part of the laboratory 
 and the house were in flames. We are told that, after another 
 adventure of this kind, this victim to alchymy, after ruining 
 another patron, in despair swallowed poison. 
 
 Even more recently we have a history of an alchymist in 
 the life of llomney, the painter. This alchjanist, after be- 
 stowing much time and money on preparations for the grand 
 projection, and being near the decisive hour, was induced, by 
 the too earnest request of his wife, to quit his furnace one 
 evening, to attend some of her company at the tea-table. 
 While the projector was attending the ladies, his furnace 
 blew up ! In consequence of this event, he conceived such an 
 antipathy against his wife, that he could not endure the idea 
 of living with her again.* 
 
 Henry VI., Evelyn obsei'ves in his Numismata, endea- 
 voured to recruit his empt}' coffers by alchymy. The record 
 of this singular proposition contains " the most solemn and 
 serious account of the feasibility and virtues of the philoso- 
 plier's stone, encouraging the search after it, and dispensing 
 with all statutes and prohibitions to the contrary " This 
 record was probably communicated by Mr. Selden to his be- 
 loved friend Ben Jonson, when the poet was writing his 
 comedy of the Alchymist. 
 
 After this patent was published, many promised to answer 
 the king's expectations so effectually, that the next year he 
 published another patent ; wherein he tells his subjects, that 
 the happy hour was drawing nigh, and by means of the 
 
 * He was assisted in the art by one Williamson, a watchmaker, of Dal- 
 ton, Lancashire, with whom Romney lived in constant companionship. 
 They were partners in a furnace, and had kept the fire burning for nine 
 months, when the contents of the crucible began to assume the yellow hue 
 which excited all their hopes ; a few moments of neglect led to the catas- 
 trophe narrated above.
 
 Alchymy. 285 
 
 STONE, wliich lie should soon be master of, he would pay all 
 the debts of the nation in real gold and silver. Tlie persons 
 picked out for his new operators were as remarkable as the 
 patent itself, being a most "miscellaneous rabble" of friars, 
 grocers, mercers, and fishmongers ! 
 
 This patent was likewise granted authoritate Parliamenti ; 
 and is given by Prynne in his Aurum Ber/ince, p. 13-*5. 
 
 Alchymists were formerly called multipliers, •A\t\\o\\g\\ they 
 never could multiph/; as appears from a statute of Henry IV. 
 repealed in the preceding record. 
 
 "None from henceforth shall use to miildpli/ gold or 
 silver, or use the croft of multiplication ; and if any the same 
 do, he shall incur the pain of i'elony." Among the articles 
 charged on the Protector Somerset is this extraordinary 
 one: — "You commanded multiplication and alcumestry to 
 be practised, thereby to abate the king's coin.'' Stowe, 
 p, 601. What are we to understand ? Did they believe 
 that alchymy would be so productive of the precious metals 
 as to ahate the value of the coin ; or does viultiplication 
 refer to an arbitrary rise in the currency by order of the 
 government ? 
 
 Every philosophical mind must be convinced that alchymy 
 is not an art, which some have fancii'ully traced to the re- 
 motest times; it may be rather regarded, when oiijjosed to 
 such a distance of time, as a modern imposture. Cassar com- 
 manded the treatises of alchymy to be burnt throughout the 
 Roman dominions : Ca3sar, who is not less to be admired as 
 a philosopher than as a monarch. 
 
 Gibbon has this succinct passage relative to alchymy : — 
 "The ancient books of alchymy, so liberally ascribed to 
 Pythagoras, to Solomon, or to Hermes, were the pious frauds 
 of more recent adepts. The Greeks were inattentive either 
 to the use or the abuse of chemistry. In that immense re- 
 gister where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the ai'ts, and 
 the errors of mankind, there is not the least mention of the 
 transmutations of metals ; and the persecution of Diocletian 
 is the first authentic event in the history of alchymy. The 
 conquest of Egypt by the Arabs diffused that vain science 
 over the globe. Congenial to the avarice of the human heart, 
 it was studied in China, as in Europe, with equal eagerness 
 and equal success. The darkness of the middle ages ensured 
 a favourable reception to every tale of wonder ; and the re- 
 vival of learning gave new vigour to hope, and suggested
 
 286 Alchymy. 
 
 iDore specious arts to deception. Philosophy, with the aid 
 of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy ; 
 and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content 
 to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and 
 industr3\" 
 
 Elias Ashmole writes in his diary — " May 13, 1G53. My 
 father Backhouse (an astrologer who had adopted him for 
 his son, a common practice with these men) lying sick in 
 Fleet-street, over against St. Dunstan's church, and not 
 knowing whether he should live or die, about eleven of the 
 clock, told me in si/Uahlesthti true matter of the 2)Jiilosopher's 
 stone, which he bequeathed to me as a legacy.'''' By this we 
 learn that a miserable wretch knew the art of making gold, 
 yet always lived a beggar ; and that Ashmole really imagined 
 he was in possession of the syllables of a secret ! He has, 
 however, built a curious monument of the learned follies of 
 the last age, in his " Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum." 
 Thouo:h Ashmole is rather the historian of this vain science 
 than an adept, it may amuse literary leisure to turn over this 
 quarto volume, in which he has collected the works of several 
 English alchymists, subjoining his commentary. It affords a 
 curious specimen of Bosicrucian mysteries ; and Ashmole re- 
 lates several miraculous stories. Of the philosopher's stone, 
 he says he knows enough to hold his tongue, but not enough 
 to speak. This stone has not only the power of transmuting 
 any imperfect earthy matter into its utmost degree of perfec- 
 tion, and can convert the basest metals into gold, flints into 
 stone, &c. ; but it has still more occult virtues, when the 
 arcana have been entered into by the choice fathers of her- 
 metic mysteries. The vegetable stone has power over the 
 natures of man, beast, fowls, flsbes, and all kinds of trees and 
 plants, to make them flourish and bear fruit at any time. 
 The magical stone discovers any person wherever he is con- 
 cealed ; while the angelical stone gives the apparitions of 
 angels, and a power of conversing with them. These great 
 mysteries are supported by occasional facts, and illustrated by 
 prints of the most divine and incomprehensible designs, which 
 we would hope were intelligible to the initiated. It may be 
 worth showing, however, how liable even the latter were to 
 blunder on these mysterious hieroglyphics. Ashmole, in one 
 of his chemical works, prefixed a frontispiece, which, in several 
 compartments, exhibited Phoebus on a lion, and opposite to 
 him a lady, who represented Diana, with the moon in one
 
 Alchijmy. 287 
 
 hand and an arrow in the other, sitting on a crab ; Mercury 
 on a tripod, with the scheme of the heavens in one hand, and 
 his caduceus in the other. These were intended to express 
 the materials of the t-tone, and the season for tlie process. 
 Upon the altar is the bust of a man, his head covered by an 
 astrological scheme dropped from tlie clouds ; and on the 
 altar are these words, '' Mereuriophilus Anglieus," i.e., the 
 English lover of hermetic philosophy. Tliere is a tree, and a 
 little creature gnawing the root, a pillar adorned with musical 
 and mathematical instruments, and another with military 
 ensigns. This strange com])osition created great inquiry 
 among the chemical sages. Deep mysteries were conjectured 
 to be veiled by it. Verses were written in the highest strain 
 of the Rosicrucian language. Ashmole confessed he meant 
 nothing more than a kind of pion on his own name, for the 
 tree was the ash, and the creature was a mole. One pillar 
 tells his love of music and freemasonry, and the other his 
 military preferment and astrological studies ! He afterwards 
 resrretted that no one added a second volume to his work, 
 from which he himself had been hindered, for the honour of 
 the family of Hermes, and " to show the world what excellent 
 men we had once of our nation, famous for this kind of philo- 
 sophy, and masters of so transcendant a secret." 
 
 Modern chemistry is not without a hope, not to say a cer- 
 tainty, of verifying the golden visions of the alchjnnists. Dr. 
 Grirtanner, of Gottingen,not long ago adventured the following- 
 prophecy : " In the nineteenth century the transmutation of 
 metals will be generally known and practised. Every chemist 
 and every artist will w«/(;e_<7oW; kitchen utensils will be of 
 silver, and even gold, which will contribute more than any- 
 thing else \iO prolong life, poisoned at present by the oxides 
 of copper, lead, and iron, which we daily swallow with our 
 food." Phil. Mag. vol. vi., p. 383. This sublime chemist, 
 though he does not venture to predict that universal elixir, 
 which is to prolong life at pleasure, yet approximates to it. 
 A chemical friend writes to me, that " The metals seem to be 
 composite bodies, which nature is perpetually preparing ; and 
 it may be reserved for the future researches of science to trace, 
 and perhaps to imitate, some of these curious operations." 
 Sir Humphry Davy told me that he did not consider this 
 undiscovered art an impossible thing, but which, should it ever 
 be discovered, would certainly be useless.
 
 288 
 
 TITLES OF BOOKS. 
 
 Were it inquired of an ingenious writer what page of his 
 work had occasioned him most perpk^xity, he would often 
 point to the title-page. The curiosity which we there would 
 excite, is, however, most fastidious to gratify. 
 
 Among those who appear to have felt this irksome situa- 
 tion, are most of our ])eriodical writers. The " Tatler " and 
 the " Spectator," enjoying priority of conception, have 
 adopted titles with characteristic felicity ; but perhaps the 
 invention of the authors begins to fail in the " Eeader," the 
 " Lover," and the " Theatre !" Succeeding writers were as 
 unfortunate in their titles, as their works ; such are the 
 " Universal Spectator," and the " Lay Monastery." The co- 
 pious mind of Johnson could not discover an appropriate title, 
 and indeed in the first "Idler" acknowledged his despair. The 
 " Rambler " was so little understood, at the time of its appear- 
 ance, that a French journalist has translated it as "Ze Chevalier 
 Errant;'" and when it was corrected toL'^rra??;', a foreigner 
 drank Johnson's health one day, by innocently addressing him 
 by the ap])ellation of Mr. " Vagabond !" The "Adventurer" 
 cannot be considered as a fortunate title ; it is not appropriate 
 to those pleasing miscellanies, for any writer is an adventurer. 
 The "Lounger," the "Mirror," and even the "Connois- 
 seur," if examined accurately, present nothing in the titles 
 descriptive of the works. As for the " World," it could only 
 have been given by the fashionable egotism of its authors, 
 who considered the world as merely a circuit round St. James's 
 Street. When the celebrated father of reviews, Le Journal 
 des Scavans, was first published, the very title repulsed the 
 public. The author was obliged in his succeeding volumes to 
 soften it down, by explaining its general tendency. He there 
 assures the curious, that not only men of learning and taste, 
 but the humblest m.echanic, may find a profitable amusement. 
 An Englisli novel, published with the title of " The Champion 
 of Virtue," could find no readers; but afterwards passed 
 through several editions under the happier invitation of " The 
 Old English Baron." "The Concubine," a poem by Mickle, 
 could never find purchasers, till it assumed the more delicate 
 title of "Sir Martyn." 
 
 As a subject of literary curiosity, some amusement may be
 
 Titles of Books. 289 
 
 gathered from a glance at what has been doing in the world, 
 concerning this important portion of every book. 
 
 The Jewish and many oriental authors were fond of alle- 
 gorical titles, which always indicate the most puerile age of 
 taste. The titles were usually adapted to their obscure works. 
 It might exercise an able enigmatist to explain their allu- 
 sions ; for we must understand by " The Heart of Aaron," 
 that it is a commentary on several of the prophets. " The 
 Bones of Joseph " is an introduction to the Talmud. " The 
 Garden of Nuts," and " The Golden Apples," are theological 
 questions; and "The Pomegranate with its Flower," is a 
 treatise of ceremonies, not any more practised. Jortin gives 
 a title, which he says of all the fantastical titles he can 
 recollect is one of the prettiest. A rabbin published a cata- 
 logue of rabbinical writers, and called it Labia Dormientium, 
 from Cantic. vii. 9. " Like the best wine of my beloved that 
 goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep 
 to speak.'" It hath a double meaning, of which he was not 
 aware, for most of his rabbinical brethren talk very much like 
 men in their sleep. 
 
 Almost all their woi'ks bear such titles as bread — gold — 
 silver — roses — eyes, &c. ; in a word, anything that signifies 
 nothing. 
 
 Affected title-pages were not peculiar to the orientals : the 
 Greeks and the Romans have shown a finer taste. They had 
 their Cornucopias, or horns of abundance — Limones, or mea- 
 dows — Pinakidions, or tablets — Pancarpes, or all sorts of 
 fruits ; titles not unhappily adapted for the miscellanists. 
 The nine books of Herodotus, and the nine epistles of 
 ^Eschines, were respectively honoured by the name of a Muse ; 
 and three orations of the latter, by those of the Graces. 
 
 The modern fanatics have had a most barbarous taste for 
 titles. We could produce numbers from abroad, and at home. 
 Some works have been called, " Matches lighted at the 
 Divine Fire," — and one "The Gun of Penitence :" a collection 
 of passages from the fathers is called " The Shop of the 
 Spiritual Apothecary :" we have " The Bank of Faith," and 
 " The SLxpennyworth of Divine Spirit :" one of these works 
 bears the following elaborate title: "Some fine Biscuits 
 baked in the Oven of Charity, carefully conserved for the 
 Chickens of the Church, the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the 
 sweet Swallows of Salvation." Sometimes their quaintness 
 has some humour. Sir Humphrey Lind, a zealous puritan, 
 
 YOL. I. U
 
 290 Titles of Books. 
 
 published a work which a Jesuit answered by another, 
 entitled " A Pair of Spectacles for Sir Humphrey Lind." 
 The doughty knight retorted, by " A Case for Sir Humphrey 
 Lind's Spectacles." 
 
 Some of these obscure titles have an entertaining absurdity ; 
 as "The Three Daughters of Job," which is a treatise on the 
 three virtues of patience, fortitude, and pain. " The Innocent 
 Love, or the Holy Knight," is a description of the ardours of 
 a saint for the Vii-gin. "The Sound of the Trumpet," is a 
 work on the day of judgment; and "A Fan to drive away 
 Flies," is a theological treatise on purgatory. 
 
 We must not write to the utter neglect of our title ; and a 
 fair author should have the literary piety of ever having " the 
 fear of his title-page before his eyes." The following are im- 
 proper titles. Don Matthews, chief huntsman to Philip IV. 
 of Spain, entitled his book " The Origin and Dignity of the 
 Royal House," but the entire work relates only to hunting. 
 De Chantereine composed several moral essays, which being 
 at a loss how to entitle, he called " The Education of a 
 Prince." He would persuade the reader in his preface, that 
 though they were not composed with a view to this subject, 
 they should not, however, be censured for the title, as they 
 partly related to the education of a prince. The world was 
 too sagacious to be duped, and the author in his second edition 
 acknowledges the absurdity, drops " the magnificent title," 
 and calls his work "Moral Essays." Montaigne's immortal his- 
 tory of his own mind, for such are his " Essays," has assumed 
 perhaps too modest a title, and not sufficiently discriminative. 
 Sorlin equivocally entitled a collection of essays, " The Walks 
 of Richelieu," because they were composed at that place ; 
 " The Attic Nights " of Aulus Gellius were so called, because 
 they were written in Attica. Mr. Tooke, in his grammatical 
 " Diversions of Purley," must have deceived many. 
 
 A rhodoraontade title-page was once a great favourite. 
 There was a time when the republic of letters was over-built 
 with " Palaces of Pleasure," " Palaces of Honour," and 
 " Palaces of Eloquence ;" with " Temples of Memory," and 
 "Theatres of Human Life," and "Amphitheatres of Provi- 
 dence;" "Pharoses, Gardens, Pictures, Treasures." The 
 epistles of Guevara dazzled the public eye with their splendid 
 title, for they were called "Golden Epistles;" and the 
 " Golden Legend " of Voragine had been more appropriately 
 entitled leaden.
 
 Titles of Books. 291 
 
 They were once so fond of novelty, that every book recom- 
 mended itself by such titles as " A new Method ; new Ele- 
 ments of Geometry ; the new Letter Writer, and the new Art 
 of Cookery." 
 
 To excite the curiosity of the pious, some writers employed 
 artifices of a very ludicrous nature. Some made their titles 
 rhyming echoes ; as this one of a father, who has given his 
 works under the title of Scales Ales animi ; and Jesus esus 
 novus Orhis. Some have distributed them according to the 
 measure of time, as one Father Nadasi, the greater part of 
 whose works are years, months, loeeks, days, and Jiours. Some 
 have borrowed their titles from the parts of the body ; and 
 others have used quaint ex])ressions, such as — Think before you 
 leap — TVe must all die — Compel them to enter. Some of our 
 pious authors appear not to have been aware that they were 
 bui-lesquing religion. One Massieu having written a moral 
 explanation of the solemn anthems sung in Advent, which 
 begin with the letter o, published this work under the pimning 
 title of La douce Moelle, et la Sauce friande des os Savoureux 
 de V A vent.* 
 
 The Marquis of Carraccioli assumed the ambiguous title of 
 La Jouissance de soi-m^me. Seduced by the epicurean title 
 of self-enjoyment, the sale of the work was continual with the 
 libertines, who, however, found nothing but very tedious 
 essays on religion and morality. In the sixth edition the mar- 
 
 * Religious parody seems to have carried no sense of impropriety with 
 it to the minds of the men of the 15th and 16th centuries. Luther was 
 an adept in this art, and the preachers who followed him continued the 
 practice. The sermons of divines in the following century often sought an 
 attraction by quaint titles, such as — " Heaven ravished" — "The Black- 
 smith, a sermon preached at Whitehall before the King," 1606. Beloe, in 
 his Anecdotes of Literature,yo\. 6, has recorded many of these quaint titles, 
 among them the following : — " The Nail hit on the head, and driven into 
 the city and cathedral wall of Norwich. By John Carter, 1644." " Tlie 
 Wheel turned by a voice from the throne of glory. By John Carter, 1647." 
 ^^ Two Sticks made one, or the excellence of Unity. By Matthew Mead, 
 1691." " Peter s Net let downe, or the Fisher and the Fish, botli prepared 
 towards a blessed haven. By R. Matthew, 1634." In the middle of the 
 last century two religious tracts were published, one bearing the alarming 
 title, "Die and be Damned," the other being termed, "A sure Guide to 
 Hell." The first was levelled against the preaching of the Methodists, 
 and the title obtained from what the author asserts to be the words of 
 condemnation then frequently applied by them to all who dilfered from 
 their creed. The second is a satirical attack on the prevalent follies and 
 vices of the day, which form the surest "guide," in the opinion of the 
 author, to the bottomless pit. 
 
 u2
 
 293 Titles of Books. 
 
 quis greatly exults in his successful contrivance ; by wliieli 
 means he had punished the vicious curiosity of certain 
 persons, and perhaps had persuaded some, whom otherwise 
 his book might never have reached. 
 
 If a title be obscure, it raises a prejudice against the 
 author ; we are apt to suppose that an ambiguous title is the 
 effect of an intricate or confused mind. Baillet censures the 
 Ocean Macromicrocosmic of one Sachs. To understand this 
 title, a grammarian would send an inquirer to a geographer, 
 and he to a natural philosopher ; neither would probably 
 think of recurring to a physician, to inform one that this 
 ambiofuous title signifies the connexion which exists between 
 the motion of the waters with that of the blood. He cen- 
 sures Leo Allatius for a title which appears to me not inele- 
 gantly conceived. This writer has entitled one of his books 
 the Urban Bees ; it is an account of those illustrious writers 
 who flourished during the pontificate of one of the Barbe- 
 rinis. The allusion refers to the bees which were the arms of 
 this family, and Urban VIII. is the Pope designed. 
 
 The false idea which a title conveys is alike prejudicial to 
 the author and the reader. Titles are generally too prodigal 
 of their promises, and their authors are contemned ; but the 
 works of modest authors, though they present more than 
 they promise, may fail of attracting notice by their extreme 
 simplicity. In either case, a collector of books is prejudiced ; 
 he is induced to collect what merits no attention, or he passes 
 over those valuable works whose titles may not happen to be 
 interesting. It is related of Pinelli, the celebrated collector 
 of books, that the booksellers permitted him to remain hours, 
 and sometimes days, in their shops to examine books before 
 he purchased. He was desirous of not injuring his precious 
 collection by useless acquisitions ; but he confessed that he 
 sometimes could not help being dazzled by magnificent titles, 
 nor being mistaken by the simplicity of others, which had 
 been chosen by the modesty of their authors. After all, 
 many a.uthors are really neither so vain, nor so honest, as they 
 appear ; for magnificent, or simple titles, have often been 
 given from the diflSculty of forming any others. 
 
 It is too often with the Titles of Books, as with those 
 painted representations exhibited by the keepers of wild 
 beasts ; where, in general, the picture itself is made more 
 striking and inviting to the eye, than the inclosed animal is 
 always found to be.
 
 293 
 
 LITERARY FOLLIES. 
 
 The Greeks composed lipogramra,atic works ; works in whicli 
 one letter of the alphabet is omitted. A lipogrammatist is a 
 letter-dropper. In this manner Tryphiodorus wrote his 
 Odyssey ; he had not a in his first book, nor /) in his second ; 
 and so on with the subsequent letters one after another. 
 This Odyssey was an imitation of the lipogrammatic Iliad of 
 Nestor. Among other works of this kind, Athenaeus men- 
 tions an ode by Pindar, in which he had purposely omitted 
 the letter S ; so that this inept ingenuity appears to have 
 been one of those literary fashions which are sometimes en- 
 couraged even by those who should first oppose such pro- 
 gresses into the realms of nonsense. 
 
 There is in Latin a little prose work of Fulgentius, which 
 the author divides into twenty-three chapters, according to 
 the order of the twenty-three letters of the Latin alphabet. 
 From A to O are still remaining. The first chapter is with- 
 out A ; the second without B ; the third without C ; and so 
 with the rest. There are five novels in prose of Lopes de 
 Vega; the first without A, the second without E, the third 
 without I, &c. Who will attempt to verifv them ? 
 
 The Orientalists are not without this literary folly. A 
 Persian poet read to the celebrated Jami a gazel of his own 
 composition, which Jami did not like : but the writer replied, 
 it was notwithstanding a very curious sonnet, for the letter 
 AliJfwAS not to be found in any one of the words! Jami 
 sarcasticalh'- replied, " You can do a better thing yet ; take 
 away all the letters from every word you have written." 
 
 To these works may be added the Ecloga cle Galvis, by 
 Hugbald the monk. All the words of this silly work begin 
 with a C. It is printed in Dornavius. Piigna Porcorum ; 
 all the words beginning with a P, in the Nugse Venales, 
 Canum cum cattis certamen ; the words beginning with a C : 
 a performance of the same kind in the same work. Gregorio 
 Leti presented a discourse to the Academy of the Humorists 
 at Home, throughout which he had purposely omitted the 
 letter K, and he entitled it the exiled E.. A friend having 
 requested a copy, as a literary curiosity, for so he considered 
 this idle ]3erformance, Leti, to show that this affair was not 
 so difficult, replied by a copious answer of seven pages, in 
 which he had observed the same severe ostracism against the
 
 294 Literary Follies. 
 
 letter E ! Lord North, in the court of James I., has written 
 a set of Sonnets, each of which begins with a successive 
 letter of the alphabet. The Earl of Rivers, in the reign of 
 Edward IV., translated the; Moral Proverbs of Christiana of 
 Pisa, a poem of about two hundred lines, the greatest part of 
 which he contrived to conclude with the letter E ; an in- 
 stance of his lordship's hard application, and the bad taste of 
 an age which. Lord Orford observes, had witticisms and 
 whims to struggle with, as well as ignorance. 
 
 It has been well observed of these minute triflers, that ex- 
 treme exactness is the sublime of fools, whose labours may be 
 well called, in the language of Dryden, 
 
 Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry. 
 
 And Martial says, 
 
 Turpe est difficiles habere nugas, 
 Et stultus labor est ineptiarum. 
 
 Which we may translate, 
 
 'Tis a folly to sweat o'er a difficult trifle, 
 And for silly devices invention to rifle. 
 
 I shall not dwell on the wits who composed verses in the 
 forms of hearts, wings, altars, and true-love knots ; or as Ben 
 Jonson describes their grotesque shapes, 
 
 A pair of scissors and a comb in verse. 
 
 Tom Nash, who loved to push the ludicrous to its ex- 
 treme, in his amusing invective against the classical Gabriel 
 Harvey, tells us that " he had writ verses in all kinds ; in 
 form of a ])air of gloves, a pair of spectacles, and a pair of 
 pot-hooks," &c. They are not less absurd, who expose to 
 public ridicule the name of their mistress by employing it to 
 form their acrostics. I have seen some of the latter where, 
 hoth sides and crossways, the name of the mistress or the 
 patron has been sent down to posterity with eternal torture. 
 When one name is made out four times in the same acrostic, 
 the great difficulty must have been to have found words by 
 which the letters forming the name should be forced to stand 
 in their particular places. It might be incredible that so 
 great a genius as Boccaccio could have lent himself to these 
 literary I'ashions ; yet one of the most gigantic of acrostics 
 may be seen in his works ; it is a poem of fifty cantos ! 
 Ginguene has preserved a specimen in his Literary History of 
 Italy, vol. iii. p. 54:. Puttenham, in "The Art of Poesie,"
 
 Literary Follies. 295 
 
 p. 75, gives several odd specimens of poems in the forms of 
 lozenges, rhomboids, pillars, &c. Puttenham has contrived to 
 form a defence for describing and making such trilling 
 devices. He has done more : he has erected two pillars 
 himself to the honour of Queen Elizabetli ; every pillar con- 
 sists of a base of eight syllables, the shaft or middle of four, 
 and the capital is equal with the base. The only difference 
 between the two pillars consists in this ; in the one " ye 
 must read upwards," and in the other the reverse. These 
 pillars, notwithstanding this fortunate device and variation, 
 may be fixed as two columns in the porch of the vast temple 
 of literary folly. 
 
 It was at this period, when ivords or verse were tortured 
 into such fantastic forms, that the trees in gardens were 
 twisted and sheared into obelisks and giants, peacocks, or 
 flower-pots. In a copy of verses, " To a hair of my mis- 
 tress's eye-lash," tlie merit, next to the choice of the subject, 
 must have been the arrangement, or the disarrangement, of 
 the whole poem into the form of a heart. With a pair of 
 wings many a sonnet fluttered, and a sacred hymn was ex- 
 pressed by the mystical triangle. Acrostics are formed from 
 the initial letters of ever^ verse ; but a different conceit re- 
 gulated chronograms, which were used to describe dates — the 
 numeral letters, in whatever part of the word they stood, 
 were distinguished from other letters by being written in 
 capitals. In the following chronogram from Horace, 
 
 — feriam sidcra vertice, 
 by a strange elevation of capitals the chronofjrammatist 
 compels even Horace to give the year of our Lord thus, 
 — feriaM siDera Vertice. MDVI. 
 
 The Acrostic and the Chronogram are both ingeniously de- 
 scribed in the mock epic of the Scribleriad.* The initial 
 
 * The Scribleriad is a poem now scarcely known. It was a partial imi- 
 tation of the Dunciad written by Richard Owen Cambridge, a scholar and 
 man of fortune, who, ia his residence at Twickenham, surrounded by 
 friends of congenial tastes, enjoyed a life of literary ease. The Scribleriad 
 is an attack on pseudo-science, the hero being a virtuoso of the most 
 Quixotic kind, who travels far to discover rarities, loves a lady with 
 the plica Polonira, waits three years at Naples to see the eruption of 
 Vesuvius ; and plays all kinds of fantastic tricks, as if in continual 
 ridicule of The Philosophical Transactions, which are especially aimed 
 at in the notes which accompany the poem. It achieved considerable 
 notoriety in its own day, and is not without merit. It was published by 
 Dodsley, in 1751, in a handsome quarto, with some good engravings by 
 Boitard.
 
 296 Literary Follies. 
 
 letters of tlie acrostics are thus alluded to in the literary 
 wars : — 
 
 Firm and compact, in three fair columns wove, 
 O'er the smoott plain, the bold acrostics move; 
 High o'er the rest, the towering leaders rise 
 With limbs gigantic, and superior size* 
 
 But the looser character of the chronograms, and the dis- 
 order in which they are found, are ingeniously sung thus : — 
 
 Not thus the looser chronograms prepare 
 Careless tlieir troops, undisciplined to war ; 
 With rank irregular, confused they stand, 
 The CHIEFTAINS MINGLING with the vulgar band. 
 
 He afterwards adds others of the illegitimate race of wit : — 
 
 To join these squadrons, o'er the champaign came 
 A numerous race of no ignoble name; 
 Riddle and Rebus, Riddle's dearest son. 
 And false Conundrum and insidious Pun. 
 Fustian, who scarcely deigns to tread the ground, 
 And Rondeau, wheeling in repeated round. 
 On their fair standards, by the wind display'd, 
 £ggs, altars, loings, pipes, axes, were pourtray'd. 
 
 I find the origin of Bouts-rimes, or " Ehyming Ends," in 
 Goujet's Bih. Fr. xvi. p. 181. One Dulot, a foolish poet, 
 when sonnets were in demand, had a singular custom of 
 preparing the rhymes of these poems to be filled up at his 
 leisure. Having been robbed of his papers, he was regretting 
 most the loss of three hundred sonnets : his friends were 
 astonished that he had written so many which they had 
 never heard. " They were Hank sonnets," \\e replied; and 
 explained the mystery by describing his Bouts-rimes. The 
 
 * Thomas Jordan, a poet of the time of Charles II,, has the following 
 specimen of a double acrostic, which must have occupied a large amount 
 of labour. He calls it "a cross acrostick on two crost lovers." The man's 
 name running through from top to bottom, and the female's the contrary 
 way of the poem. 
 
 ^Though crost in our affections, still the flames 
 Of l^onour shall secure our noble iSames; 
 Nor shall <©ur fate divorce our faith, (©r cause 
 The least Jtlislike of love's IBiviner lawes. 
 Crosses sometimes ^re cures, ^Sow let us prove, 
 That no strength Shall "abate the power of love : 
 Honour, wit, beauty, lliches, wise men call 
 Frail fortune's IBadges, En true love lies all. 
 Therefore to him we 'gield, our Uowes shall be 
 Paid — 5Read, and written in Eternity : 
 That "311 may know when men grant no ^Redress, 
 JHuch love can sweeten the unhappinesS.
 
 Literary Follies. JOT 
 
 idea appeared ridiculously amusing ; and it soon became 
 fashionable to collect the most difficult rhymes, and fill up 
 the lines. 
 
 The Charade is of recent birth, and I cannot discover the 
 origin of this species of logogriphes. It was not known in 
 France so late as in 1771 ; in the great Dietionnaire de Tre- 
 voux, the term appears only as the name of an Indian sect of 
 a military character. Its mystical conceits have occasionally 
 displayed singular felicity. 
 
 Anagrams were another whimsical invention ; with tlie 
 letters of any naine they contrived to make out some entire 
 word, descriptive of the chai-acter of the person who bore the 
 name. These anagrams, therefore, were either satirical or 
 complimentary. When in fashion, lovers made use of them 
 continually : I have read of one, whose mistress's name was 
 Magdalen, for whom he composed, not only an epic under 
 that name, but as a proof of his passion, one day he sent her 
 three dozen of anagrams all on her lovely name. Seioppius 
 imagined himself fortunate that his adversary ScaUger was 
 perfectly Sacrilege in all the oblique cases of the Latin 
 language ; on this principle Sir John Wiat was made out, 
 to his own satisfaction — a loit. They were not always cor- 
 rect when a great compliment was required ; the poet John 
 Cleveland was strained hard to make Helicon Ian dew. This 
 literary trifle has, however, in our own times produced several, 
 equally ingenious and caustic. 
 
 Verses of grotesque shapes have sometimes been contrived 
 to convey ingenious thoughts. Pannard, a modern French 
 poet, has tortured his agreeable vein of poetry into such 
 forms. He has made some of his Bacchanalian songs to take 
 the figures of bottles, and others of glasses. These objects 
 are perfectly drawn by the various measures of the verses 
 which form the song's. He has also introduced an echo in 
 his verses which he contrives so as not to injure their sense. 
 This was practised by the old French bards in the age of 
 Marot, and this poetical whim is ridiculed by Butler in his 
 Hudibras, Part I. Canto 3, Verse 190. I give an example 
 of these poetical echoes. The following ones are ingenious, 
 lively, and satirical : — ■ 
 
 Pour nous plaire, un plwrnei 
 
 Met 
 
 Tout en usage :
 
 293 Literary Follies. 
 
 Mais on trouve solvent 
 I Vent 
 
 ' Dans son langage. 
 
 On y voit des Gommis 
 
 Mis 
 
 Comme des Princes, 
 
 Apres etre vewws 
 
 Nuds 
 De leurs Provinces. 
 
 The poetical whim of Cretin, a French poet, hrought into 
 fashion punning or equivocal rhymes. Maret thus addressed 
 him in his own way : — 
 
 L'homme, sotart, et non sfavant 
 Comrae nn rotisseur, qui lave oye. 
 La faute d'autrui, nonce avant, 
 Qu'il la cognoisse, ou qu'il la voye, &c. 
 
 In these lines of Du Bartas, this poet imagined that he 
 imitated the harmonious notes of the lark: "the sound" is 
 here, however, not " an echo to the sense." 
 
 La gentille aloiiette, avec son tirelire, 
 
 Tire] ire, a lire, et tireliran, tire 
 
 Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu, 
 
 Vire et desire dire adieu Dieu, adieu Dieu. 
 
 The French have an ingenious kind of Nonsense Verses 
 called Amphigouries. This word is composed of a Greek 
 adverb signifying about, and of a substantive signifyhig a 
 circle. The following is a specimen, elegant in the selection 
 of words, and what the French called richly rhymed, but in 
 fact they are line verses without any meaning whatever. 
 Pope's Stanzas, said to be written by a person of q^ualit\j, to 
 ridicule the tuneful nonsense of certain bards, and which 
 Gilbert Wakefield mistook for a serious composition, and 
 wrote two pages of Commentary to prove this song was 
 disjointed, obscure, and absurd, is an excellent specimen of 
 these Amphigouries. 
 
 AMPHIGOURIE. 
 
 Qu'il est lieureux de se defendre 
 Quand le cceur ne s'est pas rendu ! 
 Mais qu'il est facheux de se reudre 
 Quand le bouheur est suspendu !
 
 Literary Follies. 299 
 
 Par un discours sans suite et tendre, 
 Egarez un coeur eperdu ; 
 Souvent par un mal-entendu 
 L'amant adroit se fait entendre. 
 
 IMITATED, 
 
 How happy to defend our heart, 
 When Love has never thrown a dart ! 
 But ah ! unhappy when it bends, 
 If pleasure her soft bliss suspends ! 
 Sweet in a wild disordered sti-ain, 
 A lost and wandering heart to gain ! 
 Oft in mistaken language wooed, 
 The skilful lover's understood. 
 
 These verses have such a resemblance to meaning, that 
 Tontenelle, having listened to the song, imagined that he 
 had a glimpse of sense, and requested to have it repeated. 
 " Don't you perceive," said Madame Tencin, " that they are 
 nonsense verses?'''' The malicious wit retorted, " They are 
 so much like the fine verses I have heard here, that it is not 
 surprising I should be for once mistaken." 
 
 In the " Scribleriad" we find a ^ood account of the Cento. 
 A Cento primarily signifies a cloak made of patches. In 
 poetry it denotes a work wholly composed of verses, or pas- 
 sages promiscuously taken from other authors, only disposed 
 in a new form or order, so as to compose a new work and a 
 new meaning. Ausonius has laid down the rules to be 
 observed in composing Cento's. The pieces may be taken 
 either from the same poet, or from several ; and the verses 
 may be either taken entire, or divided into two ; one half to 
 be connected with another half taken elsewhere ; but two 
 verses are never to be taken too-ether. Arrreeable to these 
 rules, he has made a pleasant nuptial Cento from Virgil.* 
 
 The Empress Eudoxia wrote the life of Jesus Christ, in 
 centos taken from Homer ; Proba Falconia fi'om Vii-gil. 
 Among these grave trifiers may be mentioned Alexander 
 
 * The following example, barbarously made up in this way from passages 
 in the JJueid and the Georgics, is by Stephen de Pleurre, and describes the 
 adoration of the Magi. The references to each half line of the originals are 
 given, the central cross marks the length of each quotation. 
 
 Tum Reges 
 
 7 M • 98. Externi veniunt x qua3 cuiq ; est copia Ireti. 6 M ' 100. 
 
 11 Jil • 333. Munera portantes X molles sua tura Sabisi. 1 U ' 57. 
 
 3 ^'464. Donadehincaurograviax Mynhaque madentes. 12 ^"100. 
 9 ^"659. Agnovere Deum Ilegum X Regumque parentum. 6 Ji • .548. 
 1 Gr "418. Mutavere vias X perfectis ordine votis. 10 iE • 548.
 
 300 Literary Follies. 
 
 Eoss, who published " Virgllius Evangelizans, sive Historia 
 Domini et Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi Virgilianis verbis et 
 versibus descripta." It was republished in 1769. 
 
 A more difficult whim is that of " Reciprocal Verses" 
 which give the same words whether read backwards or for- 
 wards. The following lines by Sidonius ApolUnaris were 
 once infinitely admired : — 
 
 Signa te siqna temere me tangis et angis. 
 Roma tibi suhito motibus ihit amor. 
 
 The reader has only to take the pains of reading the lines 
 backwards, and he will find himself just where he was after 
 all his fatigue.* 
 
 Capitaine Lasphrise, a French self-taught poet, boasts of 
 his inventions; among other singularities, one has at least 
 the merit of la difficuUe vaincue. He asserts this novelty to 
 be entirely his own ; the last word of every verse forms the 
 first word of the followinoj verse : 
 
 o 
 
 Falloit-il que le ciel me reudit amoureux 
 Amoureux, jouissant d'une beaute craintive, 
 Craintive a i-ecevoir la douceur excessive, 
 Excessive au plaisir qui rend I'amaiit heureux ; 
 Heureux si nous avions quelques paisibles lieux, 
 Lieux ou plus surement I'ami fidele arrive, 
 Arrive sans soupgon de quelque ami attentive, 
 Attentive a vouloir nous surprendre tous deux. 
 
 Francis Colonna, an Italian Monk, is the author of a 
 singular book entitled " The Dream of Poliphilus," in which 
 he relates his amours with a lady of the name of Polia. It 
 was considered improper to prefix his name to the work ; but 
 being desirous of marking it by some peculiarity, that he 
 might claim it at any distant day, he contrived that the 
 initial letters of every chapter should be formed of those of 
 his name, and of the subject he treats. This strange inven- 
 tion was not discovered till many years afterwards: when 
 the wits employed themselves in deciphering it, unfortunately 
 it became a source of literary altercation, being susceptible 
 of various readhigs. Tlie correct appears thus : — Poliam 
 Feater Feanciscus Coltjmna PERAMAViT. " Brother 
 Francis Colonna passionately loved Polia." This gallant 
 monk, like another Petrarch, made the name of his mistress 
 
 * The old Poet, Gascoigne, composed one of the longest English 
 specimens, which he says gave him infinite trouble. It is as follows : — 
 "Lewd did I live, evil I did dwel."
 
 Literary Follies. 301 
 
 the svilycct of his amatorial meditations ; and as the first 
 called his Laura, his Laurel, this called his Polia, his Polita. 
 
 A few years afterwards, Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus 
 employed a similar artifice in his Zodiacus Vitje, " The 
 Zodiac of Life :" the initial letters of the first twenty-nine 
 verses of the first book of tliis poem forming his name, which 
 curious particular was probably unknown to Warton in his 
 account of this work. — The performance is divided into 
 twelve books, but has no reference to astronomy, which we 
 might naturally expect. He distinguished his twelve books 
 by the twelve names of tlie celestial signs, and probably 
 extended or confined them purposely to that number, to 
 humour his fancy. Warton, however, observes, " This 
 strange pedantic title is not totally without a conceit, as 
 the author was born at SteUada or Stellata, a province of 
 Ferrara, and from whence he called himself Marcellus Palin- 
 genius Stellatus." The work itself is a curious satire on 
 the Pope and the Church of Rome. It occasioned Bayle 
 to commit a remarkable literary blunder, which I shall record 
 in its place. Of Italian conceit in those times, of which 
 Petrarch was the father, with his perpetual play on words 
 and on his Laurel, or his mistress Laura, he has himself 
 afforded a remarkable example. Our poet lost his mother, 
 who died in her thirty-eighth year : he has commemorated 
 her death by a sonnet composed of thirty-eight lines. He 
 seems to have conceived that the exactness of the number 
 was eqiaally natural and tender. 
 
 Are we not to class among literary follies the strange 
 researches which writers, even of the present day, have made 
 in Antediluvian times? Forgeries of the grossest nature 
 have been alluded to, or quoted as authorities. A Booh of 
 Enoch once attracted considerable attention; this curious 
 forgery has been recently translated. The Sabeans pretend 
 they possess a work written by Adam I and this work has 
 been recently appealed to in favour of a visionary theory !* 
 Astle gravely observes, that " with respect to Writings 
 attributed to the Antediluvians, it seems not only decent 
 but rational to say that we know nothing concerning them." 
 Without alluding to living writers. Dr. Parsons, in his erudite 
 " Remains of Japhet," tracing the origin of the alphabetical 
 
 * We need feel little wonder at this when " The Book of Mormon" 
 could be fabricated in our own time, and, with abundant evidence of that 
 fact, yet become the Gospel of a very large number of persons.
 
 302 Literarij Follies. 
 
 character, supposes that letters were known to Adam ! Some, 
 too, have noticed astronomical librai'ies in the Ark of Noah ! 
 Such historical memorials are the deliriums of learning, or 
 are founded on forgeries. 
 
 Hugh Broughton, a writer of controversy in the reign of 
 James the First, shows \is, in a tedious discussion on Scrip- 
 ture chronology, that Rahah was a harlot at ten years of 
 age ; and enters into many grave discussions concerning the 
 colour of Aaron's epliod, and the language which Mve first 
 spoke. This writer is ridiculed in Ben Jonson's Comedies : — 
 he is not without rivals even in the present day ! Covar- 
 ruvias, after others of his school, discovers that when male 
 children are born they cry out with an A, being the first 
 vowel of the word Adam, while the female infants prefer the 
 letter E, in allusion to J^ve ; and we may add that, by the 
 pinch of a negligent nurse, they may probably learn all theu* 
 vowels. Of the pedantic triflings of commentators, a contro- 
 versy among the Portuguese on the works of Camoens is not 
 the least. Some of these profound critics, who afi'ected great 
 delicacy in the laws of epic poetry, pretended to be doubtful 
 whether the poet had fixed on the right time for a Jcing's 
 dream ; whether, said the3% a king should have a pi'opitious 
 dream on \\\?,Jirst going to bed or at the daio^i of the following 
 morning ? No one seemed to be quite certain ; they puzzled 
 each other till the controversy closed in this lelicitous manner, 
 and satisfied both the night and the dawn critics. Bari'eto 
 discovered that an accent on one of the words alluded to in 
 the controversy would answer the purpose, and by making 
 king Manuel's dream to take place at the dawn would restore 
 Camoens to their good opinion, and preserve the dignity of 
 the poet. 
 
 Chevreau begins his History of the World in these words : 
 — " Several learned men have examined in what season God 
 created the world, though there could hardly be any season 
 then, since there was no sun, no moon, nor stars. But as the 
 world must have been created in one of the four seasons, this 
 question has exercised the talents of the most curious, and 
 opinions are various. Some say it was in the month oi Nisan, 
 that is, in the spring : others maintain that it was in the 
 month of Tisri, which begins the civil year of the Jews, and 
 that it was on the sij^th dag of this month, which answers to 
 our September, that Adam and Eve were created, and that it 
 was on a Friday, a little after four o'clock in the afternoon !"
 
 Literary Follies. 303 
 
 This is according to the Kabbinical notion of the eve of the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 The Irish antiquaries mention ^;?<Z'//(7 libraries that were 
 before the ilood ; and Paul Christian Ilsker, with profounder 
 erudition, has given an exact eataloffue of Adam''s. Messieurs 
 O'Fhiherty, O'Connor, and O'Halloran, have most gravely 
 recorded as authentic narrations the wildest legendary tra- 
 ditions ; and more recently, to make confusion doubly con- 
 founded, others have built up what they call theoretical his- 
 tories on these nursery tales. By which species of black art 
 they contrive to prove that an Irishman is an Indian, and a 
 Peruvian may be a Welshman, from certain emigrations 
 which took place many centuries before Christ, and some 
 about two centuries after the Hood ! Keating, in his " His- 
 tory of Ireland," starts a favourite hero in the giant Partho- 
 lanus, who was descended from Japhet, and landed on the 
 coast of Munster 14th May, in the year of the world 1987. 
 This giant succeeded in his enterprise, but a domestic mis- 
 fortune attended him among his Irish friends : — his wife 
 exposed him to their laughter by her loose behaviour, and 
 provoked him to such a degree that he killed two favourite 
 greyhounds ; and this the learned historian assures us was 
 the Jirsf instance of female infidelity ever known in Ireland ! 
 
 The learned, not contented with Homer's poetical pre- 
 eminence, make him the most authentic historian and most 
 accurate geographer of antiquity, besides endowing him with 
 all the arts and sciences to be found in our Encyclopaedia. 
 Even in surgery, a treatise has been written to show, by the 
 variety of the wounds of his heroes, that he was a most scien- 
 tific anatomist ; and a military scholar has lately told us, that 
 from him is derived all the science of the modern adjutant and 
 quarter-master-general ; all the knowledge of tactics which 
 we now possess ; and that Xenophon, Epaminondas, Philip, 
 and Alexander, owed all their warlike reputation to Homer ! 
 
 To return to pleasanter follies. Des Fontaines, the jour- 
 nalist, who had wit and malice, inserted the fragment of a 
 letter which the poet Rousseau wrote to the younger Racine 
 whilst he was at the Hague. These were the words : " I 
 enjoy the conversation within these few days of my associates 
 in Parnassus. Mr. Piron is an excellent antidote against 
 melancholy; buf — &c. Des Fontaines maliciously stopped 
 at this but. In the letter of Rousseau it was, " but unfortu- 
 nately he departs soon," Piron was very sensibly affected at
 
 304 Literary Follies. 
 
 this equivocal hut, and resolved to revenge himself by com- 
 posing one hundred epigrams against the mahgnant critic. 
 He had written sixty before Des Fontaines died : but of these 
 only two attracted any notice. 
 
 Towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, Antonio 
 Cornezano wrote a hundred different sonnets on one subject, 
 " the eyes of his mistress!" to which possibly Shakspeare may 
 allude, when Jaques describes a lover, with his 
 
 Woeful ballad, 
 Made to his mistress' eyebrow. 
 
 Not inferior to this ingenious trifler is Nicholas Franco, well 
 known in Italian literature, who employed himself in writing 
 two hundred and eighteen satiric sonnets, chiefly on the 
 famous Peter Aretin. This lampooner had the honour of 
 being hanged at Rome for his defamatory publications. In 
 the same class are to be placed two other writers. Brebeuf, 
 who wrote one hundred and fifty epigrams against a painted 
 lady. Another wit, desirous of emulating him, and for a 
 literary bravado, continued the same subject, and pointed at 
 this unfortunate fair three hundred more, without once re- 
 peating the thoughts of Brebeuf! There is a collection of 
 poems called "Zo puce des grands jours de Foitiers.'''' "The 
 FLEA of the carnival of Poictiers." These poems were begun 
 by the learned Pasquier, who edited the collection, upon a 
 FLEA which was found one morning in the bosom of the 
 famous Catherine des Roches ! 
 
 Not long ago, a Mr. and Mrs. Bilderdyk, in Flanders, pub- 
 lished poems under the whimsical title of " White and Red." 
 — His own poems were called white, from the colour of his 
 hair ; and those of his lady red, in allusion to the colour of 
 the rose. The idea must be Flemish ! 
 
 Giklon, in his "Laws of Poetry," commenting on this line 
 of the Duke of Buckingham's " Essay on Poetry," 
 
 Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well : 
 
 very profoundly informs his readers " That what is here said 
 has not the least regard to the penmanslnp, that is, to the fair- 
 ness or badness of the handwriting," and proceeds throughout 
 a whole page, with a panegyric on ^Jine handwriting ! The 
 stupidity of dulness seems to have at times great claims to 
 originality ! 
 
 Littleton, the author of the Latin and English Dlctionaiy,
 
 Literary Follies. 305 
 
 seems to have indulged his favourite propensity to punning 
 so far as even to introduce a pun in the grave and elaborate 
 work of a Lexicon. A story has been raised to account for 
 it, and it has been ascribed to the impatient interjection of 
 the lexicographer to his scribe, who, taking no offence at the 
 peevishness of his master, put it down in the Dictionary. 
 The article alluded to is, " Concurko, to run with others ; 
 to run together ; to come together ; to fall foul of one an- 
 other ; to Gos-cur, to CoK-rfoy." 
 
 Mr. Todd, in his Dictionary, has laboured to show the 
 " inaccuracy of this pretended narrative." Yet a similar 
 blunder appears to have happened to Ash. Johnson, while 
 composing his Dictionary, sent a note to the Gentleman's 
 Magazine to inquire the etymology of the word curmudgeon. 
 Having obtained the information, he records in his work the 
 obligation to an anonymous letter-writer. " Curmudgeon, a 
 vicious way of pronouncing coeur mediant. An unknown 
 correspondent." Ash copied the word into his dictionary 
 in this manner: "Curmudgeon: from the French cceiir, 
 unknown ; and mechant, a correspondent." This singular 
 negligence ought to be placed in the class of our literary 
 blunders ; these form a pair of lexicographical anecdotes. 
 
 Two singular literary follies have been practised on Milton. 
 There is a prose version of his " Paradise Lost," which was 
 innocently translated from the French version of his epic ! 
 One Green published a specimen of a new version of the 
 " Paradise Lost" into blank verse! For this purpose he has 
 utterly ruined the harmony of Milton's cadences, by what he 
 conceived to be "bringing that amazing work somewhat 
 nearer the summit ofperfectio7i.'''' 
 
 A French author, when his book had been received by the 
 French Academy, had the portrait of Cardinal Eichelieu 
 engraved on his title-page, encircled by a crown o^ forty rays, 
 in each of which was written the name of the celebiated/or/y 
 academicians. 
 
 The self-exaltation frequently employed by injudicious 
 writers, sometimes places them in ridiculous attitudes. A 
 writer of a bad dictionary, which he intended for a Cyclopaedia, 
 formed such an opinion of its extensive sale, that he put 
 on the title-page the words ''first edition,'' a hint to the 
 gentle reader that it would not be the last. Desmarest w-as 
 so delighted with his " Clovis," an epic poem, that he 
 solenmly concludes his preface with a thanksgiving to God, 
 
 VOL. I. s:
 
 306 Literary Follies. 
 
 to whom he attributes all its glory ! This is like that con- 
 ceited member of a French Parliament, who was overheard, 
 after his tedious harangue, muttering most devoutly to him- 
 self, " Non nohis Domine." 
 
 Several works have been produced from some odd coinci- 
 dence with the name of tlieir autliors. Thus, De Saussay has 
 written a folio volume, consisting of panegyrics of persons of 
 eminence whose christian names were Andrew; because 
 Andrew was his owu name. Two Jesuits made a similar 
 collection of illustrious men whose christian names were 
 Theopltilus and Philip, being their own. AntJiony Saunderus 
 has also composed a treatise of iWusirions Anthonies ! And 
 we have one BucJianan, who has written the lives of those 
 persons who were so fortunate as to have been his name- 
 sakes. 
 
 Several forgotten writers have frequently been intruded on 
 the public eye, merely through such trifling coincidences as 
 being members of some particular society, or natives of some 
 particular country. Cordeliers have stood forward to revive 
 the writings of Duns Scotus, because he had been a cordelier ; 
 and a Jesuit compiled a folio on the antiquities of a province, 
 merely from the circumstance that the founder of his order, 
 Ignatius Loyola, had been born there. Several of the classics 
 are violently extolled above others, merely from the accidental 
 circumstance of their editors having collected a vast number 
 of notes, which they resolved to discharge on the public. 
 County histories have been frequently compiled, and provin- 
 cial writers have received a temporary existence, from the 
 accident of some obscure individual being an inhabitant of 
 some obscure town. 
 
 On such literary follies Malebranche has made this refined 
 observation. The critics, standing in some wa}^ connected 
 with the mctlior, their self-love inspires them, and abundantly 
 furnishes eulogiums which the author never merited, that 
 they may thus obliquely reflect some praise on themselves. 
 This is made so adroitly, so delicately, and so concealed, that 
 it is not perceived. 
 
 The following are strange inventions, originating in the 
 wilful bad taste of the authors. Otto Ve:nius, the master of 
 Bubens, is the designer of Le Theatre moral de la Vie hu- 
 onaine. In this emblematical history of human life, he has 
 taken his subjects from Horace ; but certainly his conceptions 
 are not Horatian. He takes every image in a literal sense.
 
 Literary Follies. 307 
 
 If Horace says, '^ 3Iisce stultitiam consiliis bbevem," be- 
 hold, Venius takes Irevis personally, and represents Folly as 
 a little short child ! of not above three or four years old ! 
 In the emblem which answers Horace's " Haro antecedentem 
 scelestum deseruit pede p(ena claudo," we find Punishment 
 with a wooden leg.—kndi for " pulvis et umbra sumus," 
 we have a dark buryins^ vault, with dust sprinkled about the 
 floor, and a shadow walking upright between two ranges of 
 urns. For " Virtus est vitium fucjere, et scqnentia prima 
 stultitid caruisse" most flatly he gives seven or eight Vices 
 pursuing Virtue, and Folly just at the heels of Wisdom. I 
 saw in an English Bible printed in Holland an instance of 
 the same taste : the artist, to illustrate " Thou seest the mote 
 in thy neighbour's eye, but not the beam in thine own," has 
 actually placed an immense beam which projects from the eye 
 of the cavalier to the ground!* 
 
 As a contrast to the too obvious taste of Venius, may be 
 placed Cesaee di Eipa, who is the author of an Italian 
 work, translated into most European languages, ihelconologia; 
 the favourite book of the age, and the fertile parent of the 
 most absurd oftspring which Taste has known. Kipa is as 
 darkly subtle as Venius is obvious ; and as far-fetched in his 
 conceits as the other is literal. Ripa represents Beauty by a 
 naked lady, with her head in a cloud ; because the true idea 
 of beauty is hard to be conceived ! Flattery, by a lady with 
 a flute in her hand, and a stag at her feet ; because stags are 
 said to love music so much, that they suff'er themselves to be 
 taken, if you play to them on a flute. Fraud, with two hearts 
 in one hand, and a mask in the other ; — his collection is too 
 numerous to point out more instances. liipa also describes 
 how the allegorical figures are to be coloured ; Hope is to 
 have a sky-blue robe, because she always looks towards 
 heaven. Enough of these capriccios! 
 
 * There are sevei-al instances of this ludicrous literal representation. 
 Daniel Hopter, a German engraver of the 16th ceotui-y, published a large 
 print of this subject ; the scene is laid in the interior of a Gothic church, 
 and the beam is a solid squared piece of timber, reaching from the eye of 
 the'man to the walls of the building. This peculiar mode of treating the 
 subject may be traced to the earliest picture-books — thus the Ars 
 Memorandi, a block-book of the early part of the 15th century, repre- 
 sents this figure of speech by a piece of timber transfixing a human eye. 
 
 x2
 
 308 
 
 LITERARY CONTROVERSY. 
 
 Ik the article Milton, I had occasion to give some strictures 
 on the asperity of literary controversy, drawn from his own 
 and Salmasius's writings. If to some the subject has ap- 
 peared exceptionable, to me, 1 confess, it seems useful, and I 
 shall therefore add some other particulars ; for this topic has 
 many branches. Of the following specimens the grossness 
 and malignity are extreme ; yet they were employed by the 
 fii'st scholars in Europe. 
 
 Martin Luther was not destitute of genius, of learning, or 
 of eloquence ; but his violence disfigured his works with 
 singularities of abuse. The great reformer of superstition 
 had himself all the vulgar ones of his day ; he believed that 
 flies were devils ; and that he had had a buffeting with 
 Satan, when his left ear felt the prodigious beating. Hear 
 him express himself on the Catholic divines : " The Papists 
 are all asses, and will always remain asses. Put them in 
 whatever sauce you choose, boiled, roasted, baked, fried, 
 skinned, beat, hashed, they are always the same asses." 
 
 Gentle and moderate, compared with a salute to his holi- 
 ness : — " The Pope was born out of the Devil's posteriors. 
 He is full of devils, lies, blasphemies, and idolatries ; he is 
 anti-Christ ; the robber of churches ; the ravisher of virgins ; 
 the greatest of pimps ; the governor of Sodom, &c. If the 
 Turks lay hold of us, then we shall be in the hands of the 
 Devil ; but if we remain with the Pope, we shall be in hell. 
 — What a pleasing sight would it be to see the Pope and the 
 Cardinals hanging on one gallows in exact order, like the 
 seals which dangle from the bulls of the Pope ! What an 
 excellent council would they hold under the gallows!"* 
 
 Sometimes, desirous of catching the attention of the 
 vulgar, Luther attempts to enliven his style by the grossest 
 buffooneries : " Take care, my little Popa ! my little ass ! Gro 
 on slowly : the times are slippery : this year is dangerous : if 
 
 * Caricaturists were employed on both sides of the question, and by 
 pictures as well as words the war of polemics was vigorously carried on. 
 In one instance, the head of Luther is represented as the Devil's Bagpipe ; 
 he blows into his ear, and uses his nose as a chanter. Cocleus, in one of 
 his tracts, represents Luther as a monster with seven heads, indicative of 
 his follies ; the first is that of a disputatious doctor, the last that of 
 Barabbas ! Luther replied in other pamphlets, adorned with equally gross 
 delineations levelled at his opponents.
 
 Literary Controversy. 309 
 
 thou fallest, they will exclaim, See ! how oui' httle Pope is 
 spoilt!" It was fortunate for the cause of the Eeformation 
 that the violence of Luther was softened in a considerable 
 degree by the meek Melancthon, who often poured honey on 
 the sting inflicted by the angry wasp. Luther was no re- 
 specter of kings ; he was so fortunate, indeed, as to find 
 among his antagonists a crowned head ; a great good fortune 
 for an obscure controversialist, and the very pimctum saliens 
 of controversy. Our Henry VIII. wrote his book against 
 the new doctrine : then warm from scholastic studies, Henry 
 presented Leo X. with a work highly creditable to his 
 abilities, according to the genius of the age. Collier, in his 
 Ecclesiastical History, has analysed the book, and does not ill 
 describe its spirit ; " Henry seems superior to his adversary in 
 the vigour and propriety of his style, in the force of his rea- 
 soning, and the learning of his citations. It is true he leans 
 too much upon his character, argues in his garter-rohes, and 
 writes as 'twere with his sce^Jtre.''^ But Luther in reply 
 abandons his pen to all kinds of railing and abuse. He ad- 
 dresses Henry VIII. in the following style : " It is hard to 
 say if folly can be more foolish, or stupidity more stupid, than 
 is the head of Heniy. He has not attacked me with the 
 heart of a king, but with the impudence of a knave. This 
 rotten worm of the earth having blasphemed the majesty of 
 my king, I have a just right to bespatter his English majesty 
 with his own dirt and ordure. This Henry has lied." 
 Some of his original expressions to our Henry VIII. are 
 these : " Stulta, ridicula, et verissime Henriciana et Thomas- 
 tica sunt hsec — Eegem Angliae Henricum istum plane men- 
 tiri, &c.^PIoc agit inquietus Satan, ut nos a Scripturis avocet 
 per sceleratos Henricosr &c. — He was repaid with capital 
 and interest by an anonymous reply, said to have been written 
 by Sir Thomas More, who concludes his arguments by leav- 
 ing Luther in language not necessary to translate : " cum suis 
 furiis et furoribus, cum suis merdis et stercoribus cacantem 
 cacatumque." Such were the vigorous elegancies of a con- 
 troversy on the Seven Sacraments ! Long alter, the court of 
 Home had not lost the taste of these " bitter herbs :" for in 
 the bull of the canonization of Ignatius Loyola in August, 
 1623, Luther is called monstrum teterrinmm et detestahilis 
 pestis. 
 
 Calvin was less tolerant, for he had no Melancthon ! His 
 adversaries are never others than knaves, lunatics, drunkards
 
 310 Literary Controversy. 
 
 aud assassins ! Sometimes they are characterised by the 
 famihar appellatives of bulls, asses, cats, and hogs ! By him 
 Catholic and Lutheran are alike hated. Yet, after having 
 given vent to this virulent humour, he frequently boasts of 
 his mildness. When he reads over his writhigs, he tells us, 
 that he is astonished at his forbearance ; but this, he adds, is 
 the duty of every Christian ! at the same time, he generally 
 finishes a period with — •" Do you hear, you dog ?" " Do you 
 hear, madman ?" 
 
 Beza, the disciple of Calvin, sometimes imitates the luxu- 
 riant abuse of his master. When he writes against Tille- 
 mont, a Lutheran minister, he bestows on him the following 
 titles of honour : — " Polyphemus ; an ape ; a great ass, who 
 is distinguished from other asses by wearing a hat ; an ass on 
 two feet ; a monster composed of part of an ape and wild 
 ass ; a villain who merits hanging on the first tree we find." 
 And Beza was, no doubt, desirous of the office of execu- 
 tioner ! 
 
 The Catholic party is by no means inferior in the felicities 
 of tlieir style. The Jesuit Raynaud calls Erasmus the 
 "Batavian buffoon," and accuses him of nourishing the egg 
 which Lvither hatched. These men were alike supposed by 
 their friends to be the inspired regulators of religion !* 
 
 Bishop Bedell, a great and good man, respected even by his 
 adversaries, in an address to his clergy, observes, " Our calling 
 is to deal with errors, not to disgrace the man with scolding- 
 words. It is said of Alexander, I think, when he overheard 
 one of his soldiers railing lustily against Darius his enemy, 
 that he reproved him, and added, ' Friend, I entertain thee to 
 fight against Darius, not to revile him ;' and my sentiments 
 
 * Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry -will furnish an ex- 
 ample of the coarseness of invective used by both parties during the era of 
 the Reformation ; in such rhymes as "Plain Truth and Blind Ignorance" 
 — " A Ballad of Luther and the Pope," &c. The old interlude of " Newe 
 Custome," printed in Dodsley's Old Plays; and that of " Lusty Juventus," 
 in Hawkins's English Drama, are choice specimens of the vulgarest abuse. 
 Bishop Bale in his play of King John (published in 1838 by the Camdeu 
 Society), indulges in a levity and coarseness that would not now be tolerated 
 in an alehouse — " stynkyng heretic" on one side, and " vile popysh swyne" 
 on the other, are among the mildest epithets used in these religious satires. 
 One of the most curious is a dialogue between John Bon, a husbandman, 
 and "Master Parson" of his parish, on the subject of transubstantiation ; 
 it was so violent in its style as to threaten great trouble to author and 
 printer (see Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials). It may be seen in vol. xxx. 
 of the Percy Society's publications.
 
 Literanj Controvei'sy . 311 
 
 of treating the Catholics," concludes Bedell, " are not con- 
 formable to the practice of Luther and Calvin ; hut they 
 were but men, and perhaps we must confess they suffered 
 themselves to yield to the violence of passion." 
 
 The Fathers of the Church were proficients in the art of 
 abuse, and very ingeniously defended it. St. Austin affirms 
 that the most caustic personality may produce a wonderful 
 effect, in opening a man's eyes to his own foUies. He illus- 
 trates his position with a story, given with great simplicity, 
 of his mother Saint Monica with her maid. Saint Monica 
 certainly would have been a confirmed drunkard, had not her 
 maid timelily and outrageously abused her. The story will 
 amuse. — " My mother had by little and little accustomed 
 herself to relish wine. They used to send her to the cellar, 
 as being one of the soberest in the family : she first sipped 
 from the jug and tasted a few drops, for she abhorred wine, 
 and did not care to drink. However, she gradually accus- 
 tomed herself, and from sipping it on her lips she swallowed 
 a draught. As people from the smallest faults insensibly in- 
 crease, she at length liked wine, and drank bumpers. But 
 one day being alone with the maid who usually attended her 
 to the cellar, they quarrelled, and the maid bitterly re- 
 proached her with being a drunkard 1 That single word 
 struck her so poignantly that it opened her understanding ; 
 and reflecting on the deformity of the vice, she desisted for 
 ever from its use." 
 
 To jeer and play the droll, or, in his own words, de hoitf- 
 fonner, was a mode of controversy the great Arnauld de- 
 fended, as permitted by the writings of the holy fathers. It 
 is still more singular, when he not only brings forward as an 
 example of this ribaldry, Elijah viocJcing at the false divi- 
 nities, but God himself hantering the first man after his fall. 
 He justifies the injurious epithets which he has so liberally 
 bestowed on his adversaries by the example of Jesus Christ 
 and the apostles ! It was on these grounds also that the 
 celebrated Pascal apologised for the invectives with which he 
 has occasionally disfigured his Provincial Letters. A Jesuit 
 has collected " An Alphabetical Catalogue of the Names of 
 Beasts by which the Fathers characterised the Heretics !" 
 It may be found in Erotemata de mails ac bonis Lihris, p. 93, 
 4to. 1653, of Father Eaynaud. This list of brutes and 
 insects, among which are a vast variety of serpents, is 
 accompanied by the names of the heretics designated 1
 
 312 Literary Controversy. 
 
 Henry Fitzsermon, an Irish Jesuit, was imprisoned for his 
 papistical designs and seditious preaching. During his con- 
 finement he proved himself to be a great amateur of contro- 
 versy. He said, " he felt like a hear tied to a stake, and 
 wanted somebody to lait him." A kind office, zealously un- 
 dertaken by the learned Usher, then a young man. He en- 
 gaged to dispute with him once a iveeh on the subject of 
 antichrist ! They met several times. It appears that our 
 hear was out-worried , and declined any further dog-baiting. 
 This spread an universal joy through the Protestants in 
 Dublin. At the early period of the Reformation, Dr. Smith 
 of Oxford abjured papistry, with the hope of retaining his 
 professorship, but it was given to Peter Martyr. On this 
 our Doctor recants, and writes several controversial works 
 against Peter Martyr ; tlie most curious part of which is the 
 singular mode adopted of attacking others, as well as Peter 
 Martyr. In his margin he frequently breaks out thus : " Let 
 Hooper read this !" — " Here, Ponet, open your eyes and see 
 your errors!" — "Ergo, Cox, thou art damned!" In this 
 manner, without expressly writing against these persons, the 
 sthring polemic contrived to keep up a sharp biash-fighting in 
 his margins. Such was the spirit of those times, very diffe- 
 rent from our own. When a modern bishop was just ad- 
 vanced to a mitre, his bookseller begged to re-publish a 
 popular theological tract of his against another bishop, be- 
 cause he might now meet him on equal terms. My lord an- 
 swered — "Mr. * * *, no more controversy now !" Our good 
 bishop resembled Baldwin, who from a simple monk, arrived 
 to the honour of the see of Canterbury. The successive 
 honours successively changed his manners. Urban the Second 
 inscribed his brief to him in this concise description — Hal- 
 duino Monastico ferventissitno, Ahhati calido, Episcopo 
 tepido, Archiepisco])0 remisso I 
 
 On the subject of literary controversies, we cannot pass 
 over the various sects of the scholastics : a volume might be 
 compiled of their ferocious wars, which in more than one in- 
 stance were accompanied by stones and daggers. The most 
 memorable, on account of the extent, the violence, and dura- 
 tion of their contests, are those of the NoMijfALiSTS and the 
 Eealists. 
 
 It was a most subtle question assuredly, and the world 
 thought for a long while that their happiness depended on 
 deciding, whether vmiversals, that is genera, have a real
 
 Literary Controversij . 313 
 
 essence, and exist independent of particulars, that is species: — 
 whether, for instance, we could form an idea of asses, prior to 
 individual asses ? Koscelinus, in the eleventh century, adopted 
 the opinion that universals have no real existence, either be- 
 fore or in individuals, but are mere names and words by which 
 the kind of individuals is expressed ; a tenet propagated by 
 Abelard, which jjroduced the sect of Nominalists. But the 
 Healisfs asserted that universals existed independent of indi- 
 viduals, — though they were somewhat divided between the 
 various opinions of Plato and Aristotle. Of the Eealists the 
 most famous were Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. The 
 cause of the Nominalists was almost desperate, till Occam in 
 the fourteenth century revived the dying embers. Louis XI. 
 adopted the Nominalists, and the Nominalists flourished at 
 large in France and Germany : but unfortunately Pope John 
 XXIII. patronised the Eealists, and throughout Italy it was 
 dangerous for a Nominalist to open his lips. The French 
 King wavered, and the Pope triumphed ; his majesty pub- 
 lished an edict in 1474, in which he silenced for ever the 
 Nominalists, and ordered their books to be fastened up in their 
 libraries with iron chains, that they might not be read by 
 young students ! The leaders of that sect fled into England 
 and Germany, where they united their forces with Luther 
 and the first Eeformers. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the violence with which these dis- 
 putes were conducted. Vives himself, who witnessed the 
 contests, says that, "when the contending parties had ex- 
 hausted their stock of verbal abuse, they often came to 
 blows ; and it was not uncommon in these quarrels about 
 unive7'sals, to see the combatants engaging not only with 
 their fists, but with clubs and swords, so that many have been 
 wounded and some killed." 
 
 On this war of words, and all this terrifying nonsense John 
 of Salisbury observes, " that there had been more time con- 
 sumed than the Csesars had employed in making themselves 
 masters of the world ; that the riches of Croesus were infe- 
 rior to the treasures that had been exhausted in this contro- 
 versy ; and that the contending parties, after having spent 
 their whole lives in this single point, had neither been so 
 happy as to determine it to their satisfaction, nor to find in 
 the labyrinths of science where they had been groping any 
 discovery that was worth the pains they had taken." It may 
 be added that Ilamus having attacked Aristotle, for " teach-
 
 314 Liter anj Controversy. 
 
 ing us chimeras," all his scholars revolted ; the parliament 
 put a stop to his lectures, and at length having brought the 
 matter into a law court, he was declared " to be insolent and 
 daring" — the king proscribed his works, he was ridiculed on 
 the stage, and hissed at by his scholars. When at length, 
 during the plague, he opened again his schools, he drew on 
 himself a fresh storm by reforming the pronunciation of the 
 letter Q, which they then pronounced like K — Kiskis for 
 Quisquis, and Kamkam for Quamquam. This innovation 
 ■was once more laid to his charge : a new rebellion ! and a 
 new ejection of the Anti-Aristotelian ! The brother of that 
 Gabriel Harvey who was the friend of Spenser, and with 
 Gabriel had been the whetstone of the town-wits of his time, 
 distinguished himself by his wrath against the Stagyrite. 
 After having with Gabriel predicted an earthquake, and 
 alarmed the kingdom, which never took place (that is the 
 earthquake, not the alarm), the wits buifeted him. Nash 
 says of him, that " Tarlton at the theatre made jests of him, 
 and Elderton consumed his ale-crammed nose to nothing, in 
 bear-baiting him with whole bundles of ballads." Marlow 
 declared him to be " an ass fit only to preach of the iron 
 age." Stung to madness by this lively nest of hornets, he 
 avenged himself in a very cowardly manner — he attacked 
 Aristotle himself! for he set Aristotle with his heels upwards 
 on the school gates at Cambridge, and with asses' ears on his 
 head ! 
 
 But this controversy concerning Aristotle and the school 
 divinity was even prolonged. A professor in the College at 
 Naples published in 1688 four volumes of peripatetic philo- 
 sophy, to establish the principles of Aristotle. The work was 
 exploded, and he wrote an abusive treatise vmder the nom cle 
 guerre of Benedetto Aletiiio. A man of letters, Constantino 
 "Grimaldi, replied. Aletino rejoined; he wrote letters, an 
 apology for the letters, and would have written more for 
 Aristotle than Aristotle himself perhaps would have done. 
 However, Grimaldi was no ordinary antagonist, and not to be 
 outwearied. He had not only the^best of the argument, but 
 he was resolved to tell the world so, as long as the world 
 would listen. Whether he killed off Father Benedictus, the 
 first author, is not affirmed ; but the latter died during the 
 controversy. Grimaldi, however, afterwards pursued his 
 ghost, and buffeted the father in his grave. This enraged 
 the University of Naples; and the Jesuits, to a man, de-
 
 Literary Controversy. 315 
 
 nouneecl Grimaldi to Pope Benedict XIII. and to tlie Viceroy 
 of Naples. On this the Pope issued a bull prohibiting the 
 reading of Grimaldi's works, or keeping them, under pain of 
 excommunication ; and the vicero}'-, more active than the bull, 
 caused all the copies which were Ibund in the author's house 
 to be thrown into the sea ! The author with tears in his 
 eyes beheld his expatriated volumes, hopeless that their voyage 
 would have been successful. However, all the little family of 
 the Grimaldis were not drowned — for a storm arose, and hap- 
 pily drove ashore many of the floating copies, and these falling 
 into charitable hands, the heretical opinions of poor Grimaldi 
 against Aristotle and school divinity were still read by those 
 who were not out-terrifled by the Pope's bulls. The salted 
 passages \vei"e still at hand, and quoted with a double zest 
 against the Jesuits ! 
 
 We now turn to writers whose controversy was kindled 
 only by subjects of polite literature. The particulars form a 
 curious pictm'e of the taste of the age. 
 
 "There is," says Joseph Scaliger, that great critic and re- 
 viler, " an art of abuse or slandering, of which those that are 
 ignorant may be said to defame others much less than they 
 show a willingness to defame." 
 
 "Literary wars," says Baj^le, "are sometimes as la,sting as 
 the}' are terrible." A disputation between two great scholars 
 was so interminably violent, that it lasted thirty years ! He 
 humorously compares its duration to the German war which 
 lasted as long. 
 
 Baillet, when he refuted the sentiments of a certain 
 author always did it without naming him ; but when he 
 found any observation which he deemed commendable, he 
 quoted his name. Bayle observes, that "this is an excess of 
 politeness, prejudicial to that freedom which should ever 
 exist in the republic of letters ; that it should be allowed 
 always to name those whom we refute ; and that it is suffi- 
 cient for this purpose that we banish asperity, malice, and 
 indecenc}'." 
 
 After these preliminary observations, I shall bring forward 
 various examples where this excellent advice is by no means 
 regarded. 
 
 Erasmus produced a dialogue, in which he ridiculed those 
 scholars who were servile imitators of Cicero ; so servile, that 
 they would employ no expression but what was found in the 
 works of that writer ; everything with them was Ciceronian-
 
 316 Literary Controversy. 
 
 ised. This dialogue is written with great humour. JuHus 
 Caesar ScaUger, the father, who was then unknown to the 
 world, had been long looking for some occasion to distinguish 
 himself; he now wrote a defence of Cicero, hut which in fact 
 was one continued invective against Erasmus : he there treats 
 the latter as illiterate, a drunkard, an impostor, an apostate, 
 a hangman, a demon hot from hell ! The same Scaliger, 
 acting on the same principle of distinguishing himself at the 
 cost of others, attacked Cardan's best work De Suhtilitate : 
 his criticism did not appear till seven years after the first 
 edition of the work, and then he obstinately stuck to that 
 edition, though Cardan had corrected it in subsequent ones ; 
 but this Scaliger chose, that he might have a wider field for 
 his attack. After this, a rumour spread that Cardan had 
 died of vexation from Julius Caesar's invincible pen ; then 
 Scaliger pretended to feel all the regret possible for a man he 
 had killed, and whom he now praised : however, his regret 
 had as little foundation as his triumph ; for Cardan outlived 
 Scaliger many years, and valued his criticisms too cheaply 
 to have suffered them to have disturbed his quiet. All this 
 does not exceed the Jnvecfives of Poggius, who has thus 
 entitled several literary libels composed against some of his 
 adversaries, Laurentius Valla, Philelphus, &c., who returned 
 the poisoned chalice to his own lips ; declamations of scurri- 
 lity, obscenity, and calumny ! 
 
 Scioppius was a worthy successor of the Scaligers : his 
 favourite expression was, that he had trodden down his 
 adversary. 
 
 Scioppius was a critic, as skilful as Salmasius or Scaliger, 
 but still more learned in the language of abuse. This cynic 
 was the Attila of authors. He boasted that he had occa- 
 sioned the deaths of Casaubon and Scaliger. Detested and 
 dreaded as the public scourge, Scioppius, at the close of his 
 life, was fearful he should find no retreat in which he might 
 be secure. 
 
 The great Casaubon employs the dialect of St. Giles's in 
 his furious attacks on the learned Dalechamps, the Latin 
 translator of Athenasus. To this great physician he stood 
 more deeply indebted than he chose to confess ; and to conceal 
 the claims of this literary creditor, he called out Vesanum ! 
 Insanum ! Tiresiam ! &c. It was the fashion of that day 
 with the ferocious heroes of the literary republic, to over- 
 whelm each other with invectives, and to consider that their
 
 Literary Controversy. 317 
 
 own grandeur consisted in the magnitude of their volumes ; 
 and their triumphs in reducing their brother giants into puny 
 dwarfs. In science, Linnasus had a dread of controversy — 
 conqueror or conquered we cannot escape without disgrace ! 
 Mathiolus would have been the great man of his day, had he 
 not meddled with such matters. Who is gratified by " the 
 mad Cornarus," or "the flayed Fox?" titles which Fuchsius 
 and Cornarus, two eminent botanists, have bestowed on each 
 other. Some who were too fond of controversy, as they grew 
 wiser, have refused to take up the gauntlet. 
 
 The heat and acrimony of verbal critics have exceeded 
 description. Their stigmas and anathemas have been long 
 known to bear no proportion to the offences against which 
 they have been directed. " God confound you," cried one 
 grammarian to another, " for your theory of impersonal 
 verbs !" There was a long and terrible controversy formerly, 
 whether the Florentine dialect was to prevail over the others. 
 The academy was put to great trouble, and the Anti-Cruscans 
 were often on the point of annulling this supremacy ; una 
 mordace scritura was applied to one of these literary canons ; 
 and in a letter of those times the following paragraph 
 appears : — " Pescetti is preparing to give a second answer to 
 Beni, which will not please him ; I now believe the prophecy 
 of Cavalier Tedeschi will be verified, anijl that this controversy, 
 begun with pens, will end with poniards !" 
 
 Fabretti, an Italian, wrote furiously against Gronovius, 
 whom he calls Grtmnovius : he compared him to all those 
 animals whose voice was expressed by the word Grunnire, to 
 grunt. Gronovius was so malevolent a critic, that he was 
 distinguished by the title of the '' Grammatical Cur." 
 
 When critics venture to attack the person as well as the 
 performance of an author, I recommend the salutary proceed- 
 ings of Huberus, the writer of an esteemed Universal History. 
 He had been so roughly handled by Perizonius, that he 
 obliged him to make the amende honorable in a court of jus- 
 tice ; where, however, I fear an English jury would give the 
 smallest damages. 
 
 Certain authors may be distinguished by the title of Lite- 
 EA.BT BoBADiLS, or fighting authors. One of our own 
 celebrated writers drew his sword on a reviewer ; and another, 
 when his farce was condemned, ofi^ered to fight any one of the 
 audience who hissed. Scudery, brother of the celebrated 
 Mademoiselle Scudery, was a true Parnassian bully. The
 
 318 Literary Controversy . 
 
 first publication which brought him into notice was his 
 edition of the works of his friend Theophile. He concludes 
 the preface witli these singular expressions — " I do not hesi- 
 tate to declare, that, amongst all the dead, and all the living, 
 there is no person who has anything to show that approaches 
 the force of this vigorous genius ; but if amongst the latter, 
 any one were so extravagant as to consider that I detract 
 from his imaginary glory, to show him that I fear as little as 
 I esteem him, this is to inform him that my name is 
 
 " De Scudeet." 
 
 A similar rhodomontade is that of Claude Trellon, a poetical 
 soldier, who begins his poems by challenging the critics ; 
 assuring them that if any one attempts to censure him, he 
 will only condescend to answer sword in hand. Father 
 Maeedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, having written against Cardinal 
 Noris, on the monkery of St. Austin, it was deemed necessary 
 to silence both parties. Maeedo, compelled to relinquish the 
 pen, sent his adversary a challenge, and according to the laws 
 of chivalry, appointed a place for meeting in the wood of 
 Boulogne. Another edict forbad the duel ! Maeedo then 
 murmured at his hard fate, which would not suffer him, for 
 the sake of St. Austin, for whom he had a particular regard, 
 to spill either his ink or his hlood. 
 
 Anti, prefixed to the name of the person attacked, was 
 once a favourite title to books of literary controversy. With 
 a critical review of such books Baillet has filled a quarto 
 volume ; yet such was the abundant harvest, that he left 
 considerable gleanings for posterior industry. 
 
 Anti-Gronovius was a book published against Gronovius, by 
 Kuster. Perizonius, another pugilist of literature, entered 
 into this dispute on the subject of the M^ grave of the 
 ancients, to which Kuster had just adverted at the close of 
 his volume. What was the consequence ? Dreadful I — • 
 Answers and rejoinders from both, in wliich they bespattered 
 each other with the foulest abuse. A jom-nalist pleasantly 
 blames this acrimonious controversy. He says, " To read 
 the pamphlets of a Perizonius and a Kuster on the iEs grave 
 of the ancients, who would not renounce all commerce with 
 antiquity ? It seems as if an Agamemnon and an Achilles 
 were railing at each other. Who can refrain from laughter, 
 when one of these commentators even points his attacks at the 
 very name of his adversary ? According to Kuster, the name
 
 Literary Controversy/. 319 
 
 of Perizonius signifies a certain part of the human body. How 
 is it possible, that with such a name he could be right concern- 
 ing the tEs grave ? But does that of Kuster promise a 
 better thing, since it signifies a beadle ; a man who drives 
 dogs out of churches ? — What madness is this !" 
 
 Corneille, like our Dryden, felt the acrimony of literary 
 irritation. To the critical strictures of D'Aubignae it is 
 acknowledged he paid the greatest attention, for, after this 
 critic's Pratique du Tliedtre appeared, his tragedies were more 
 artfully conducted. But instead of mentioning the critic with 
 due praise, he preserved an ungrateful silence. This occa- 
 sioned a quarrel between the poet and the critic, in which the 
 former exhaled his bile in several abusive epigrams, which 
 have, fortunately for his credit, not been preserved in his 
 works. 
 
 The lively Voltaire could not resist the charm of abusing 
 his adversaries. We may smile when he calls a blockhead, a 
 blockhead ; a dotard, a dotard ; but when he attacks, for a 
 difference of opinion, the morals of another man, our sensi- 
 bility is alarmed. A higher tribunal than that of criticism 
 is to decide on the actions of men. 
 
 There is a certain disguised malice, which some writers have 
 most unfairly employed in characterising a contemporary. 
 Burnet called Prior, one J^rior. In Bishop Parker's History 
 of his Own Times, an innocent reader may start at seeing the 
 celebrated Marvell described as an outcast of society ; an 
 infamous libeller ; and one whose talents were even more 
 despicable than his ]3erson. To such lengths did the hatred 
 of party, united with personal rancour, carry this bishop, who 
 was himself the worst of time-servers. He was, however, 
 amply paid by the keen wit of Marvell in " The Rehearsal 
 Transposed," which may still be read with delight, as an 
 admirable effusion of banter, wit, and satire. Le Clerc, a cool 
 ponderous Greek critic, quari-elled with Boileau about a 
 passage in Longinus, and several years afterwards, in revising 
 Moreri's Dictionary, gave a short sarcastic notice of the poet's 
 brother; in which he calls him the elder brother of Jiim who 
 has written the book entitled " /Satires of Mr. Boileau Des- 
 preaux !" — the works of the modern Horace, which were then 
 delighting Europe, he calls, with simple impudence, " a book 
 entitled Satires !" 
 
 The works of Homer produced a controversy, both long and 
 virulent, amongst the wits of France. This literary quarrel
 
 320 Literary Blunders. 
 
 is of some note in the annals of literature, since it has pro- 
 duced two valuable books ; La Motte's " Reflexions sur la 
 Critique," and Madame Dacier's " Des Causes de la Corrup- 
 tion du Gout." La Motte wrote wnth feminine delicacy, and 
 Madame Dacier like a University pedant. " At length, by 
 the efibrts of Valincour, the friend of art, of artists, and of 
 peace, the contest was terminated." Both parties were for- 
 midable in number, and to each he made remonstrances, and 
 applied reproaches. La Motte and Madame Dacier, the 
 opposite leaders, were convinced by his arguments, made 
 reciprocal concessions, and concluded a peace. The treaty was 
 formally ratified at a dinner, given on the occasion by a 
 Madame De Stael, who represented " Neutrality." Libations 
 were poured to the memory of old Homer, and the parties 
 were reconciled. 
 
 LITERARY BLUNDERS. 
 
 When Dante published his " Inferno," the simplicity of the 
 age accepted it as a true narrative of his descent into hell. 
 
 When the Utopia of Sir Thomas More was first published, 
 it occasioned a pleasant mistake. This political romance 
 represents a perfect, but visionary republic, in an island 
 supposed to have been newly discovered in America. " As 
 this was the age of discovery," says Granger, "the learned 
 Budseus, and others, took it for a genuine history ; and con- 
 sidered it as highly expedient, that missionaries should be sent 
 thither, in order to convert so wise a nation to Christianity." 
 
 It was a long while after publication that many readers 
 were convinced that Gulliver's Travels were fictitious.* 
 
 But the most singular blunder was produced by the ingenious 
 " Hermippus Eedivivus " of Dr. Campbell, a curious banter 
 on the hermetic philosophy, and the universal medicine ; but 
 the grave irony is so closely kept up, that it deceived for a 
 
 * The first edition had all the external appearance of truth : a portrait 
 of "Captain Lemuel Gulliver, of Redriff, aetat. sure Iviii." faces the title ; 
 and maps of all the places, he only, visited, are carefully laid down in 
 connexion with the realities of geography. Thus " Lilliput, discovei-ed 
 A.D. 1699," lies between Sumatra and Van Dieman's Land. "Brobdig- 
 nag, discovered a.d. 1703," is a peninsula of North America. One Richard 
 Sympson vouches for the veracity of his "antient and intimate friend," in 
 a Preface detailing seme "facts" of Gulliver's Life. Arbuthnot says he 
 * ' lent the book to an old gentleman, who went immediately to his map to 
 search for Lilliput."
 
 Literary Blunders. 321 
 
 lenj^tli of time the most learned. His notion of the art of 
 prolonging life, by inhaling the breath of young women, was 
 eagerly credited. A physician, who himself had composed a 
 treatise on health, was so influenced by it, that he actually 
 took lodgings at a female boarding-school, that he might never 
 be without a constant supply of the breath of young ladies. 
 Mr. Thicknesse seriously adopted the project. Dr. Ivippis 
 acknowledged that after he had read the work in his youth, 
 the reasonings and the facts left him several days in a kind of 
 fairy land. I have a copy with manuscript notes by a learned 
 physician, who seems to have had no doubts of its veracity. 
 After all, the intention of the work was long doubtful ; till 
 Dr. Campbell assured a friend it was a mere jeu-d'esprit ; that 
 Bayle was considered as standing without a rival in the art of 
 treating at large a difficult subject, without discoveringto which 
 side his own sentiments leaned : Campbell had read more un- 
 common books than most men, and wished to rival Bayle, and 
 at the same time to give many curious matters little known. 
 
 Palavicini, in his History of the Council of Trent, to con- 
 fer an honour on M. Lansac, ambassador of Charles IX. to 
 that council, bestows on him a collar of the order of Saint 
 Esprit ; but which order was not instituted till several years 
 afterwards by Henry III. A similar voluntary blunder is 
 that of Surita, in his AnnaJes de la Corona de Aragon. This 
 writer represents, in the battles he describes, many persons 
 who were not present ; and this, merely to confer honour on 
 some particular families. 
 
 Fabiana, quoting a French narrative of travels in Italy, 
 took for the name of the author the words, found at the end of 
 the title-page, EnricM de deux Listes ; that is, " Enriched 
 with two lists :" on this he observes, "that Mr. Enriched 
 with two lists has not failed to do that justice toCiampini which 
 he merited."* The abridgers of Gesner's Bibliutheca ascribe 
 the romance of Amadis to one Acuerdo Oloido ; Eemem- 
 
 * In Nagler's Kunstler-Lexicon is a -whimsical error conceraing a living 
 English artist — George Cruilishank. Some years ago the relative merits 
 of himself and brother were contrasted in an English review, and George 
 was spoken of as " The real Simon Pure" — the first who had illustrated 
 scenes of " Life in London." Unaware of the real significance of a quota- 
 tion which has become proverbial among us, the German editor begins his 
 Memoir of Cruikshank, by gravely informing us that he is an English 
 artist, "whose real name is Simon Pure !" Turning to the artists under 
 the letter P, we accordingly read: — "Pure (Simon), the real name of the 
 celebrated caricaturist, George Cruikshank." 
 
 YOL. I. Y
 
 322 Literartj Blunders. 
 
 brance, Oblivion ; mistaking the French translator's Spanish 
 motto on the title-page for the name of the author. 
 
 D'Aquin, the French king's physician, in his Memoir on 
 the Preparation of Bark, takes Mcmfissa, which is the title 
 of the Appendix to the History of Plants, by Johnstone, for 
 the name of an author, and who, he says, is so extremely 
 rare, that he only knows him by name. 
 
 Lord Bolingbroke imagined, that in those famous verses, 
 beginning with Excudent alii, &c., Virgil attributed to the 
 Romans the glory of having surpassed the Greeks in historical 
 composition : according to his idea, those Roman historians 
 whom Virgil preferred to the Grecians were Sallust, Livy, 
 and Tacitus. But Virgil died before Livy had written his 
 history, or Tacitus was born. 
 
 An honest friar, who compiled a church history, has placed 
 in the class of ecclesiastical writex's Guarini, the Italian poet, 
 on the faith of the title of his celebrated amorous pastoral, 
 II Pastor Fido, "The Faithful Shepherd ;" our good father 
 imagined that the character of a curate, vicar, or bishop, was 
 represented in this work. 
 
 A blunder has been recorded of the monks in the dark 
 ages, which was likely enough to happen when their igno- 
 rance was so dense. A rector of a parish going to law with 
 his parishioners about paving the church, quoted this autho- 
 rity from St. Peter — Faveant illi, non paveam ecjo ; which 
 he construed, They are to pave the church, not I. This was 
 allowed to be good law by a judge, himself an ecclesiastic too. 
 
 One of the grossest literary blunders of modern times is 
 that of the late Gilbert Wakefield, in his edition of Pope. 
 He there takes the well-known " Song by a Person of 
 Quality," which is a piece of ridicule on the glittering tune- 
 ful nonsense of certain poets, as a serious composition. In a 
 most copious commentary, he proves that every line seems 
 unconnected with its brothers, and that the whole reflects 
 disgrace on its author ! A circumstance which too evidently 
 shows how necessary the knowledge of modern literary his- 
 tory is to a modern commentator, and that those who are 
 profound in verbal Greek are not the best critics on English 
 writers. 
 
 The Abbe Bizot, the author of the medallic history of 
 Holland, fell into a droll mistake. There is a medal, struck 
 when Philip II. set forth his invincible Armada, on which 
 are represented the King of Spain, the Emperor, the Pope,
 
 Literary Blunders. 3.23 
 
 Electors, Cardinals, &c., with their ej^es covered with a 
 bandage, and bearing for inscription this fine verse of Lu- 
 cretius : — 
 
 csecas hominum menteis ! pectora caeca ! 
 
 The Abbe, prepossessed with the prejudice that a nation 
 persecuted by the Pope and liis adherents could not repre- 
 sent them without some insult, did not examine with suffi- 
 cient care the ends of the bandages which covered the eyes 
 and waved about the heads of the personages represented on 
 this medal : he rashly took them for asses' ears, and as such 
 they are engraved ! 
 
 Mabillon has preserved a curious literary blunder of some 
 pious Spaniards, who applied to the Pope for consecrating a 
 day in honour of Samt Viar. His holiness, in the volumi- 
 nous catalogue of his saints, was ignorant of this one. The 
 only proof brought forward for his existence was this inscrip- 
 tion : — 
 
 S. VIAE. 
 
 An antiquary, however, hindered one more festival in the 
 Catholic calendar, by convincing them that these letters were 
 only the remains of an inscription erected for an ancient sur- 
 veyor of the roads ; and he read their saintship thus : — 
 
 PE^rECTuS VIAEuM. 
 
 Maffei, in his comparison between Medals and Inscriptions, 
 detects a literary blunder in Spon, who, meeting with this 
 inscription, 
 
 Maximo VI Consule 
 
 takes the letters VI for numerals, which occasions a strange 
 anachronism. They are only contractions of Viro Illustri 
 —VI. 
 
 As absurd a blunder was this of Dr. Stukeley on the coins 
 of Carausius ; finding a battered one with a defaced inscrip- 
 tion of 
 
 FOKTVNA AVG. 
 
 he read it 
 
 OEIVNA AVG. 
 
 And sagaciously interpreting this to be the loife of Carau- 
 
 y2
 
 324 Literary Blunders. 
 
 sius, makes a new personage start up in history ; he con- 
 trives even to give some theoretical Memoirs of the August 
 Oriuna* 
 
 Father Sirmond was of opinion that St. Ursula and her 
 eleven thousand Virgins were all created out of a blunder. 
 In some ancient MS. they found St. Ursula et Undecimilla 
 V. M. meaning St. Ursula and Undecimilla, Virgin Martyrs ; 
 imasriuiiiCT tliat Undecimilla with the V. and M. which fol- 
 lowed, was an abbreviation for Undecem Millia Martyrum 
 Virginum, they made out of Two Virgins the whole Eleven 
 Thousand! 
 
 Pope, in a note on Measure for Measure, informs us, that 
 its story was taken from Cinthio's Novels, Dec. 8. Nov. 5. 
 That is. Decade 8, Novel 5. The critical Warburton, in his 
 edition of Shakspeare, puts the words in full length thus, 
 December 8, November 5. 
 
 When the fragments of Petronius made a great noise in 
 the literary world, Meibomius, an erudit of Lubeck, read in 
 a letter from another learned scholar from Bologna, " We 
 have here an entire Petronius ; I saw it with mine own eyes, 
 and with admiration." Meibomius in post-haste is on the 
 road, arrives at Bologna, and immediately inquires for the 
 librarian Capponi. He inquires if it were true that they had 
 at Bologna an entire Petronius ? Capponi assures him that 
 it was a thing which had long been public. " Can I see this 
 Petronius? Let me examine it!"- — "Certainly," replies 
 Capponi, and leads our erudit of Lubeck to the church 
 where reposes the body of St. Petronius. Meibomius bites 
 his lips, calls for his chaise, and takes his flight. 
 
 A French translator, when he came to a passage of Swift, 
 in which it is said that the Duke of Marlborough broke an 
 officer ; not being acquainted with this Anglicism, he trans- 
 lated it 7^oue, broke on a wheel ! 
 
 * The whole of Dr. Stukeley's tract is a most curious instance of learned 
 perversity and obstinacy. The coin is broken away where the letter F 
 should be, and Stukeley himself allows that the upper part of the T might 
 be worn away, and so the inscription really he For tuna Aug ; but he cast 
 all such evidence aside, to construct an imaginary life of an imaginary 
 empress ; "that we have no history of this lady," he says, "is not to be 
 wondered at," and he forthwith imagines one ; that she was of a martial 
 disposition, and "signalized herself in battle, and obtained a victory," 
 as he guesses from the laurel wreath around her bust on the coin ; her 
 name he believes to be Gaulish, and "equivalent to what we now call 
 Lucia," and that a regiment of soldiers was under her command, after the 
 fashion of "the present Czarina," the celebrated Catherine of Russia.
 
 Literary Blunders. 325 
 
 Gibber's play of ^^ Love's Last SJiiff" was entitled "La 
 Derniere Chemise de V Amour.'''' A French writer of Con- 
 greve's life has taken his 3Ioitrning for a Morning Bride, and 
 translated it U Espouse du Matin. 
 
 Sir John Pringle mentions his having cured a soldier by 
 the use of two quarts of Dog and Duck water daily : a 
 French translator specifies it as an excellent hrotli made of 
 a duck and a dog ! In a recent catalogue compiled by a 
 French writer of Worhs on Natural History, he has inserted 
 the well-known " Essay on Irish Bulls'" by the Edgeworths. 
 The proof, if it required an}^, that a Frenchman cannot 
 understand the idiomatic style of Shakspeare appears in a 
 French translator, who prided himself on giving a verbal 
 translation of our great poet, not approving of Le Tourneur's 
 paraphrastical version. He found in the celebrated speech of 
 Northumberland in Henrv IV. 
 
 Eveu such a man, so faint, so spiritless, 
 So dull, so dead in look, so woe-hcgone — 
 
 which he renders " Ainsi douleur I va-fen ./" 
 
 The Abbe Gregoire affords another striking proof of the 
 errors to which foreigners are liable when they decide on the 
 language and customs of another country. The Abbe, in the 
 excess of his philanthropy, to show to what dishonourable 
 offices human nature is degraded, acquaints us that at London 
 he observed a sign-board, proclaiming the master as tueur des 
 punaises de sa majeste ! Bug-destroyer to his majesty ! This 
 is, no doubt, the honest Mr. Tiffin, in the Strand ; and the 
 idea which must have occurred to the good Abbe was, that 
 his majesty's bugs were hunted by the said destroyer, and 
 taken by hand — and thus human nature was degraded ! 
 
 A French writer translates the Latin title of a treatise of 
 Philo-Judseus Omnis bonus liber est. Every good man is a 
 free man, by Tout livre est bon. It was well for him, ob- 
 serves Jortiu, that he did not live within the reach of the 
 Inquisition, which might have taken this as a reflection on 
 the Index Expurgatorius. 
 
 An English translator turned " Dieu defend I'adultere" 
 into " God defends adultery."— Guthrie, in his translation of 
 Du Halde, has " the twenty-sixth day of the new moon." 
 The whole age of the m.oon is but twenty-eight days. The 
 blunder arose from his mistaking the word neuvihne (ninth) 
 for nouvelle or neuve (new) .
 
 326 Literary Blunders, 
 
 The facetious Tom Brown committed a strange blunder in 
 his translation of Gelli's Circe. The word Starne, not aware 
 of its signification, he boldly I'endered stares, probably from 
 the similitude of sound ; the succeeding translator more cor- 
 rectly discovered Starne to be red-legged partridges ! 
 
 In Charles II. 's reign a new collect was drawn, in which a 
 new epithet was added to the king's title, that gave great 
 offence, and occasioned great raillery. He was styled our 
 most religious Tcing. Whatever the signification of religious 
 might be in the Latin word, as importing the sacredness of 
 the king's person, yet in the English language it bore a sig- 
 nification that was no way applicable to the king. And he 
 was asked by his familiar courtiers, what must the nation 
 think when they heard him prayed for as their most religious 
 king? — Literary blunders of this nature are frequently dis- 
 covered in the versions of good classical scholars, who would 
 make the English servilely bend to the Latin and Greek. 
 Even Milton has been justly censured for his free use of 
 Latinisms and Grecisms. 
 
 The blunders of modern antiquaries on sepulchral monu- 
 ments are numerous. One mistakes a lion at a knight's feet 
 for a curled water clog ; another could not distinguish censers 
 in the hands of angels h'om. fishing-nets ; two angels at a 
 lady's feet were counted as her two cherub-like babes ; and 
 another has mistaken a leopard and a hedgehog for a cat and 
 a rat ! In some of these cases, are the antiquaries or the 
 sculptors most to be blamed r* 
 
 A literary blunder of Thomas Warton is a specimen of the 
 manner in which a man of genius may continue to blunder 
 with infinite ingenuity. In an old romance he finds these 
 lines, describing the duel of Saladin with Richard Coeur de 
 Lion : — 
 
 A Faucon hrode in hande he bare, 
 For lie thought he wolde thare 
 Have slayne Kichard. 
 
 He imagines this Faucon brode means a falcon bird, or a 
 hawk, and that Saladin is represented with this bird on his 
 
 * One of the most curious pictorial aud antiquarian blunders may be 
 seen in Vallancey's Collectanea. He found upon one of the ancient stones on 
 the Hill of Tara an inscription which he read i^eZi Divose, "to Belus, God 
 of Fire ;' but which ultimately proved to be the work of some idler who, 
 lying on the stone, cut upside down his name and the date of the year, 
 E. Conid, 1731; upon turning this engraving, the fact is apparent.
 
 A Literary Wife. 327 
 
 fist to express his contempt of his adversary. He supports 
 his conjecture bv noticing a Gothic picture, supposed to be 
 the subject of this duel, and also some old tapestry of heroes 
 on horseback with hawks on their lists ; he plunges into 
 feudal times, when no gentleman appeared on horseback 
 without his hawk. After all this curious erudition, the 
 rough but skilful llitson inhumanly triumphed by dissolving 
 the magical fancies of the more elegant Warton, by explaining 
 a Faucon hrode to be nothing more than a hroad faulchion, 
 which, in a duel, was certainly more useful than a hird. The 
 editor of the private reprint of Hentzner, on that writer's 
 tradition respecting " the Kings of Denmark who reigned in 
 England" buried in the Temple Church, metamorphosed the 
 two Inns of Court, Graijs Inn and Lincoln's Inn, into the 
 names of the Danish kings, Gresin and lyconin* 
 
 Bayle supposes that Marcellus Palingenius, who wrote the 
 poem entitled the Zodiac, the twelve books bearing the names 
 of the signs, from this circumstance assumed the title of 
 Poeta Stellafus. But it appears that this writer was an 
 Italian and a native of Stellada, a town in the Ferrarese. 
 It is probable that his birthplace originally produced the 
 conceit of the title of his poem : it is a curious instance how 
 critical conjecture may be led astray by its own ingenuity, 
 when ignorant of the real fact. 
 
 A LITERARY WIFE. 
 
 Marriage is sucli a rabble rout; 
 That those that are out, would fain get in ; 
 And those that are in, would fain get out. 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 Having examined some literary hlunders, we will now pro- 
 ceed to the subject of a literary ivife, which may happen to 
 prove one. A learned lady is to the taste of few. It is 
 however matter of surprise, that several literary men should 
 have felt such a want of taste in respect to " their soul's far 
 dearer part," as Hector calls his Andromache. The wives of 
 
 * Erroneous proper names of places occur continually in early writers, 
 particularly French ones. There are some in Froissart that cannot be 
 at all understood. Bassompierre is equally erroneous. Jorchaux is in- 
 tended by him for York House ; and, more wonderful still, Inhimthort, 
 proves by the context to be Kensington 1
 
 328 A Literarij Wife. 
 
 many men of letters have been dissolute, ill-humoured, slat- 
 ternly, and have run into all the frivolities of the age. The 
 wife of the learned Budseus was of a different character. 
 
 How delio-htful is it when the mind of the female is so 
 happily disposed, and so richly cultivated, as to participate in 
 the literary avocations of her husband ! It is then trul}^ that 
 the intercourse of the sexes becomes the most refined plea- 
 sure. What delight, for instance, must the great Budasus 
 have tasted, even in those works which must have been for 
 others a most dreadful labour ! His wife left him nothing to 
 desire. The frequent companion of his studies, she brought 
 him the books he required to his desk ; she collated passages, 
 and transcribed quotations ; the same genius, the same incli- 
 nation, and the same ardour for literature, eminently appeared 
 in those two fortunate persons. Far from withdrawing her 
 husband from his studies, she was sedulous to animate him 
 when he languished. Ever at his side, and ever assiduous ; 
 ever with some useful book in her hand, she acknowledged 
 herself to be a most happy woman. ^Yet she did not neglect 
 the education of eleven children. She and Budseus shared in 
 the nmtual cares they owed their progeny. Budseus was not 
 insensible of his singular felicity. In one of his letters, he 
 represents himself, as married to two ladies ; one of whom 
 gave him boys and girls, the other was Philosophy, who 
 produced books. He says that in his twelve first years, 
 Philosophy had been less fruitful than marriage ; he had pro- 
 duced less books than children ; he had laboured more cor- 
 porally than intellectually ; but he hoped to make more books 
 than men. " The soul (says he) will be productive in its 
 turn ; it will rise on the ruins of the body ; a prolific virtue 
 is not given at the same time to the bodily organs and the 
 pen." 
 
 The lady of Evelyn designed herself the frontispiece to his 
 translation of Lucretius. She felt the same passion in her 
 own breast which animated her husband's, who has written 
 with such various ingenuity. Of Baron Haller it is recorded 
 that he inspired his wife and family with a taste for his dif- 
 ferent pursuits. They were usually employed in assisting his 
 literary occupations ; they transcribed manuscripts, consulted 
 authors, gathered plants, and designed and coloured under his 
 eye. What a delightful lamily picture has the younger Pliny 
 given posterity in his letters ! Of Calphm'nia, his wife, he 
 says, " Her affection to me has given her a turn to books ;
 
 A Literary Wife. 329 
 
 and my compositions, which she takes a pleasure in reading, 
 and even getting by heart, are continually in her hands. 
 How full of tender solicitude is she when I am entering upon 
 any cause ! How kindly does she rejoice with me when it is 
 over ! While I am pleading, she places persons to inform her 
 from time to time how I am heard, what applauses I receive, 
 and what success attends the cause. When at any time I 
 recite my works, she conceals herself behind some curtain, 
 and with secret rapture enjoys my praises. She sings my 
 verses to her lyre, with no other master but love, the best 
 instructor, for her guide. Her passion will increase with our 
 days, for it is not my youth nor my person, which time gra- 
 dually impairs, but my reputation and my glory, of which 
 she is enamoured." 
 
 On the subject of a literary wife, I must introduce to the 
 acquaintance of the reader Margaret Duchess of Newcastle. 
 She is known, at least by her name, as a voluminous writer; 
 for she extended her literary productions to the number of 
 twelve folio volumes. 
 
 Her labours have been ridiculed by some wits ; but had her 
 studies been regulated, she would have displayed no ordinary 
 genius. The Connoisseur has quoted her poems, and her 
 verses have been imitated by Milton. 
 
 The duke, her husband, was also an author ; his book on 
 horsemanship still preserves his name. He has likewise 
 written comedies, and his contemporaries have not been 
 penurious in their eulogiums. It is true he was a duke. 
 Shadwell says of him, " That he was the greatest master of 
 wit, the most exact observer of mankind, and the most accu- 
 rate judge of humour that ever he knew." The life of the 
 duke is written " by the hand of his incomparable duchess." 
 It was published in his lifetime. This curious piece of bio- 
 graphy is a folio of 197 pages, and is entitled " The Life of 
 the Thrice Noble, High, and Puissant Prince, William 
 Cavendish." His titles then follow : — " Written by the 
 Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, Margaret 
 Duchess of Newcastle, his wife. London, 10G7." This Life 
 is dedicated to Charles the Second ; and there is also prefixed 
 a copious epistle to her husband the duke. 
 
 In this epistle the character of our Literary Wife is de- 
 scribed with all its peculiarities. 
 
 " Certainly, my lord, you have had as many enemies and as 
 many friends as ever any one particular person had ; nor do I
 
 330 A Literary Wife. 
 
 so much wonder at it, since I, a woman, cannot be exempt 
 from the niahce and aspersions of spiteful tongues, which 
 they cast upon my poor writings, some denying me to be the 
 true authoress of them ; for your grace remembers well, that 
 those books I put out first to the judgment of this censoi'ious 
 age were accounted not to be written by a woman, but that 
 somebody else bad writ and published them in my name ; by 
 which your lordship was moved to prefix an epistle before 
 one of them in my vindication, wherein you assure the 
 world, upon your honour, that what was written and printed 
 in my name was my own ; and I have also made known that 
 your lordship was ray only tutor, in declaring to me what 
 you had found and observed by your own experience ; for I 
 being young when your lordship married me, could not have 
 much knowledge of the world ; but it pleased God to com- 
 mand his servant N^ature to endue me with a poetical and 
 philosophical genius, even from my birth ; for I did write 
 some books in that kind before I was twelve years of age, 
 which for want of good method and order I would never 
 divulge. But though the world would not believe that 
 those conceptions and fancies which I writ were my own, 
 but transcended ray capacity, yet they found fault, that they 
 were defective for want of learning, and on the other side, 
 they said I had pluckt feathers out of the universities ; which 
 was a very preposterous judgment. Truly, my lord, I con- 
 fess that for want of scholarship, I could not express myself 
 so well as otlierwise I might have done in those philoso- 
 phical wiitings I published first ; but after I was returned 
 with your lordship into my native country, and led a retired 
 country life, I applied myself to the reading of pliilosophical 
 authors, on purpose to learn those names and words of art 
 that are used in schools ; which at first were so hard to me, 
 that I could not understand them, but was fain to guess at 
 the sense of them by the whole context, and so writ them 
 down, as I found them in those authors ; at which my 
 readers did wonder, and thought it impossible that a woman 
 could have so much learning and understanding in terms of 
 art and scholastical expressions ; so that I and my books are 
 like the old apologue mentioned in Msop, of a father and his 
 son who rid on an ass." Here follows a long narrative of 
 this fable, which she applies to herself in these words — " The 
 old man seeing he could not please mankind in any manner, 
 and having received so many blemishes and aspersions for the
 
 A Literary Wife. 331 
 
 sake of his ass, was at last resolved to drown liiin when he 
 came to the next bridge. But I am not so passionate to burn 
 my writings for the various humours of mankind, and for 
 their finding fault ; since there is nothing in this world, be it 
 the noblest and most commendable action whatsoever, that 
 shall escape blameless. As for my being the true and only 
 authoress of them, your lordship knows best; and my attend- 
 ing servants are witness that I have had none but my own 
 thoughts, fancies, and speculations, to assist me ; and as soon 
 as I set them down I send them to those that are to tran- 
 scribe them, and fit them for the press ; whereof, since there 
 have been several, and amongst them such as only could write 
 a good hand, but neither understood ortliography, nor had 
 any learning, (I being then in banishment, with your loi'd- 
 ship, and not able to maintain learned secretaries,) which hath 
 been a great disadvantage to my poor works, and the cause 
 that they have been printed so false and so lull of errors ; for 
 besides that I want also skill in scholarship and true writing, 
 I did many times not peruse the copies that were transcribed, 
 lest they should disturb my following conceptions ; by which 
 neglect, as I said, many errors are slipt into my Avorks, 
 which, yet I hope, learned and impartial men will soon 
 rectify, and look more upon the sense than carp at words. I 
 have been a student even from childhood ; and since 1 have 
 been your lordship's wife I have lived for the most part a 
 strict and retired life, as is best known to your lordship ; and 
 therefore my censurers cannot know much of me, since they 
 have httle or no acquaintance with me, 'Tis true I have 
 been a traveller both before and after I was married to your 
 lordship, and some times shown m_yself at your lordship's 
 command in public places or assemblies, but yet T converse 
 with few. Indeed, my lord, I matter not the censures of 
 this age, but am rather proud of them ; for it shows that my 
 actions are more than ordinary, and according to the old pro- 
 verb, it is better to be envied than pitied ; for I know well 
 that it is merely out of spite and malice, whereof this pre- 
 sent age is so full that none can escape them, and they'll 
 make no doubt to stain even your lordship's loyal, noble, and 
 heroic actions, as well as they do mine ; tlsough yours have 
 been of war and fighting, mine of contemplating and writ- 
 ing : yours were performed publicly in the field, mine pri- 
 vately in my closet ; 3'ours had many thousand eye-witnesses ; 
 mine none but ray waiting-maids. But the great God, that
 
 332 A Literary Wife. 
 
 hitherto bless'd both your grace and me, will, I question not, 
 preserve both our fames to after-ages. 
 
 " Your grace's honest wife, 
 
 " and humble servant, 
 
 " M. Newcastle." 
 
 The last portion of this life, wbich consists of the obser- 
 vations and good things which she had gathered from the 
 conversations of her husband, forms an excellent Ana ; and 
 shows tliat when Lord Orford, in his " Catalogue of Noble 
 Authors," says, that " this stately poetic couple was a 
 picture of foolish nobility," he writes, as he does too often, 
 with extreme levity. But we must now attend to the re- 
 verse of our medal. 
 
 Many chagrins may corrode the nuptial state of literary 
 men. Females who, prompted by vanity, but not by taste, 
 imite themselves to scholars, must ever complain of neglect. 
 The inexhaustible occupations of a library will only present 
 to such a most dreary solitude. Such a lady declared of her 
 learned husband, that she was more jealous of his books than 
 his mistresses. It was probably while Glover was composing 
 his " Leonidas," that liis lady avenged herself for this 
 Homeric inattention to her, and took her flight with a lover. 
 It was peculiar to the learned Dacier to be united to a 
 woman, his equal in erudition and his superior in taste. 
 When she wrote in the album of a German traveller a verse 
 from Sophocles as an apology for her unwillingness to place 
 herself among his learned friends, that " Silence is the 
 female's ornament," it was a trait of her modesty. The 
 leai-ned Pasquier was coupled to a female of a different cha- 
 racter, since he tells us in one of his Epigrams that to 
 manage the vociferations of his lady, he was compelled him- 
 self to become a vociferator. — " Unfortunate wretch that I 
 am, I who am a lover of universal peace ! But to have peace 
 I am obliged ever to be' at war." 
 
 Sir Thomas More was united to a woman of the harshest 
 temper and the most sordid manners. To soften the morose- 
 ness of her disposition, " he persuaded her to play on the lute, 
 viol, and other instruments, every day." Whether it was 
 that she had no ear for music, she herself never became har- 
 monious as the instrument she touclied. All these ladies 
 may be considered as rather too alert in thought, and too 
 spirited in action ; but a tame cuckoo bird who is always re-
 
 A Literanj Wife. 333 
 
 peating the same note must be very fatiguing. The lady of 
 Samuel Clarke, the great compiler of books in 1G80, whose 
 name was anagrammatised to "suck all cream," alluding to 
 his indefatigable labours in sucking all the cream of every 
 other author, without having any cream himself, is described 
 by her husband as entertaining the most sublime conceptions 
 of his illustrious compilations. This appears by her behaviour. 
 He says, " that she never rose from talde without making him 
 a curtsey, nor drank to him without bowing, and that his 
 word was a law to her." 
 
 I was much surprised in looking over a correspondence of 
 the times, that in 1590 the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 
 writing to the Earl of Shrewsl)ury on the subject of his 
 living separate from his countess, uses as one of his arguments 
 for their union the following curious one, which surely shows 
 the gross and cynical feeling which the fair sex excited even 
 among the higher classes of society. The language of this 
 good bishop is neither that of truth, we hope, nor certainly 
 that of religion. 
 
 " But some will saye in your Lordship's behalfe that the 
 Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and therefore licke 
 enough to shorten your lief, if shee should kepe yow company. 
 Indeede, my good Lord, I have heard some say so ; but if 
 shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a juste cause of separation 
 between a man and wiefe, I thinck fewe men in Englande 
 would keepe their wives longe ; for it is a common jeste, yet 
 trewe in some sense, that there is but one shrewe in all the 
 worlde, and everee man hath her : and so everee man must be 
 ridd of his wiefe that wolde be ridd of a shrewe." It is won- 
 derful this good bishop did not use anotiier argument as 
 cogent, and which would in those times be allowed as some- 
 tliing ; the name of his lordship, Shrewsbury/, would have 
 afforded a consolatory pun ! 
 
 The entertaining Marville says that the generality of 
 ladies married to literary men are so vain of the abilities 
 and merit of their husbands, that they are frequently in- 
 sufferable. 
 
 The wife of Barclay, author of "The Argenis," considered 
 herself as the wife ol" a demigod. Tbis appeared glaringly 
 after his death ; for Cardinal Barberini having erected a 
 monument to the memory of his tutor, next to the tomb of 
 Barclay, Mrs. Barclay was so irritated at this that she demo- 
 lished his monument, brought home his bust, and declared
 
 334 A Literary Wife. 
 
 that the ashes of so great a genius as her husband should 
 never be placed beside a pedagogue. 
 
 Salmasius's wife was a termagant ; Christina said she 
 admired his patience more than his erudition. Mrs. Salma- 
 sius indeed considered herself as the queen of science, because 
 her husband was acknowledged as sovereign among the critics. 
 She boasted that she had for her husband the most learned 
 of all the nobles, and the most noble of all the learned. Our 
 good lady always joined the learned conferences which he 
 held in his stud}'. She spoke loud, and decided with a tone 
 of majesty. Salmasius was mild in conversation, but the re- 
 verse in his writings, for our proud Xantippe considered him 
 as acting beneath himself if he did not magisterially call 
 every one names ! 
 
 The wife of Eohault, when her husband gave lectures on 
 the philosophy of Descartes, used to seat herself on these 
 days at the door, and refused admittance to every one shab- 
 bily dressed, or who did not discover a genteel air. So con- 
 vinced was she that, to be worthy of hearing the lectures of 
 her husband, it was proper to appear fashionable. In vain 
 our good lecturer exhausted himself in telling her, that for- 
 tune does not always give fine clothes to philosophers. 
 
 The ladies of Albert Durer and Berghem were both shrews. 
 The wife of Durer compelled that great genius to the hourly 
 drudgery of his profession, merely to gratify her own sordid 
 passion : in despair, Albert ran away from his Tisiphone ; 
 she wheedled him back, and not long afterwards this great 
 artist fell a victim to her furious disposition.* Berghem's 
 wife would never allow that excellent artist to quit his occu- 
 pations ; and she contrived an odd expedient to detect his 
 indolence. The artist worked in a room above her ; ever and 
 anon she roused him by thumping a long stick against the 
 ceiling, while the obedient Berghem answered by stamping 
 his foot, to satisfy Mrs. Berghem that he was not napping. 
 
 ^lian had an aversion to tlie married state. Sisronius, a 
 learned and well-known scholar, would never marry, and 
 alleged no inelegant reason ; " Minerva and Venus could not 
 live together." 
 
 Matrimony has been considered by some writers as a con- 
 dition not so well suited to the circumstances of philosophers 
 
 * Leopold Schefer, the German novelist, has composed an excellent 
 sketch of Durer's married life. It is an admirably philosophic narra- 
 tive of an intellectual man's wretchedness.
 
 A Literary Wife. 335 
 
 and men of learning. There is a little tract which professes 
 to investigate the subject. It has for title, Be, Matrirnonio 
 Literati, an cceUhem esse, an vero niibere conveniat, i.e., of 
 the Marriage of a Man of Letters, with an inquiry whether 
 it is most proper for him to continue a bachelor, or to marry ? 
 
 The author alleges the great merit of some women ; parti- 
 cularly that of Gonzaga the consort of Montefeltro, Duke of 
 Urbino ; a lady of such distinguished accomplishments, that 
 Peter Bembus said, none but a stupid man would not prefer 
 one of her conversations to all the formal meetings and dis- 
 putations of the philosophers. 
 
 The ladies perhaps will be surprised to find that it is a 
 question among the learned, W/iefher tlieij ovght to marry ? 
 and will think it an unaccountable property of learning that 
 it should lay the professors of it under an obligation to dis- 
 regard the sex. But it is very questionable wheilier, in return 
 for this want of complaisance in them, the generality of ladies 
 would not prefer the beau, and the man of fashion. However, 
 let there be Gonzagas, they will find converts enough to their 
 charms. 
 
 The sentiments of Sir Thomas Browne on the consequences 
 of marriage are very curious, in the second part of his Eeh'gio 
 Medici, sect. 9. When he wrote that work, lie said, " I was 
 never yet once, and commend their resolutions, who never 
 marry twice." He calls woman "the rib and crooked piece 
 of man." He adds, " I could be content that we might pro- 
 create like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any 
 way to procreate the world without this trivial and vulgar 
 way." He means the union of sexes, which he declares, " is 
 the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life ; nor is 
 there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, 
 when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of 
 folly he hath committed." He afterwards declares he is not 
 averse to that sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is 
 beautiful : " I could look a whole day with delight upon a 
 handsome picture, though it be but of a horse." He after- 
 wards disserts very profoundly on the music there is in beauty, 
 " and the silent note which Cupid strikes is far sweeter than 
 the sound of an instrument." Such were his sentiments 
 when youthful, and residing at Leyden ; Dutch philosophy 
 had at first chilled his passion ; it is probable that passion 
 afterwards inflamed his philosophy — for he married, and had 
 sons and daughters !
 
 336 A Literary Wife. 
 
 Dr. Cocchi, a modern Italian writer, but apparently a cynic 
 as old as Diogenes, has taken the pains of composing a trea- 
 tise on the present subject enough to terrify the boldest 
 Baclielor of Arts ! He has conjured up every chimera against 
 the marriage of a literary man. He seems, however, to have 
 drawn his disgusting portrait from his own country ; and the 
 chaste beauty of Britain only looks the more lovely beside 
 this Florentine wife. 
 
 I shall not retain the cynicism which has coloured such 
 revolting features. When at length the doctor finds a woman 
 as all women ought to be, he opens a new string of misfor- 
 tunes which must attend her husband. He dreads one of the 
 probable consequences of matrimony — progeny, in which we 
 must maintain the children we beget ! He thinks the father 
 gains nothing in his old age from the tender offices adminis- 
 tered by his own children : he asserts these are much better 
 performed by menials and strangers ! The more childi'en he 
 has, the less he can afford to have servants ! The mainte- 
 nance of his children will greatly diminish his property ! 
 Another alarming object in marriage is that, by aflanity, you 
 become connected with the relations of the wife. The envious 
 and ill-bred insinuations of the mother, the family quarrels, 
 their poverty or their pride, all disturb the unhappy sage who 
 falls into the trap of connubial felicity ! But if a sage has 
 resolved to many, he impresses on him the prudential prin- 
 ciple of increasing his fortvme by it, and to remember his 
 " additional expenses !" Dr. Cocchi seems to have thought 
 that a human being is only to live for himself; he had neither 
 heart to feel, a head to conceive, nor a pen that could have 
 written one harmonious period, or one beavitiful image ! Bayle, 
 in his article Raphelengms, note B, gives a singular specimen 
 of logical subtlety, in " a reflection on the consequence of 
 marriage." This learned man was imagined to have died of 
 grief, lor having lost his wife, and passed three years in pro-' 
 tracted despair. What thei'efore must we think of an unhappy 
 marriage, since a happy one is exposed to such evils ? He 
 then shows that an unhappy marriage is attended by bene- 
 ficial consequences to the survivor. In this dilemma, in the 
 one case, the husband lives afraid his wife will die, in the 
 other that she will not ! If you love her, you will always 
 be afraid of losing her ; if you do not love her, you will always 
 be afraid of not losing her. Our satirical celibataire is gored 
 by the horns of the dilemma he has conjured up.
 
 Dedications. 337 
 
 James Petiver, a famous botanist, then a bachelor, the 
 friend of Sir Hans Sloane, in an album signs his name with 
 this designation : — 
 
 " From the Goat tavern in the Strand, London, 
 Nov. 27. In the 34th year of my freedom, 
 A.D. 1G97." 
 
 DEDICATIONS. 
 
 Some authors excelled in this species of literary artifice. 
 The Italian Doni dedicated each of his letters in a book 
 called La Lihraria, to persons whose name began with the 
 first letter of the epistle, and dedicated the whole collection 
 in another epistle ; so that the book, wliich only consisted of 
 forty-five pages, was dedicated to above twenty persons. 
 This is carrying literary mendicity pretty high. PoHti, the 
 editor of the 3Iartyrologium Roinanum, published at Rome 
 in 1751, has improved on the idea of Doni ; for to the 365 
 days of the year of this Martyrology he has prefixed to each 
 an epistle dedicatory. It is fortunate to have a large circle 
 of acquaintance, though they should not be worthy of being 
 saints, Galland, the translator of the Arabian Nights, pre- 
 fixed a dedication to each tale which he gave ; had he finished 
 the "one thousand and one," he would have surpassed even 
 the Martyrologist. 
 
 Mademoiselle Scudery tells a remarkable expedient of an 
 ingenious trader in this line— One Ilangouze made a collec- 
 tion of letters which he printed without numbering them. 
 By this means the bookbinder put that letter which the 
 author ordered him first ; so that all the persons to whom he 
 presented this book, seeing their names at the head, consi- 
 dered they had received a particular compliment. An Italian 
 physician, having written on Hippocrates's Aphorisms, dedi- 
 cated each book of his Commentaries to one of his friends, 
 and the index to another ! 
 
 More than one of our own authors have dedications in the 
 same spirit. It was an expedient to procure dedicatory fees : 
 for pubUshing books by subscription was then an art undis- 
 covered. One prefixed a different dedication to a certain 
 number of printed copies, and addressed them to every great 
 man he knew, who he thought relished a morsel of flattery, 
 
 VOL. I. Z
 
 338 Dedications, 
 
 and would pay handsomely for a coarse luxury. Sir Baltha- 
 zar Gerbier, in his "Counsel to Builders," has made up half 
 the work with forty-two dedications, which he excuses by the 
 example of Antonio Perez ; but in these dedications Perez 
 scatters a heap of curious things, for he was a very universal 
 genius. Perez, once secretary of state to Philip II. of Spain, 
 dedicates his " Obras," first to "Nuestro sanctissimo Padre," 
 and " Al Sacro Collegio," then follows one to " Henry IV.," 
 and then one still more embracing, " A Todos." Fuller, in 
 his "Church History," has with admirable contrivance intro- 
 duced twelve title-pages, besides the general one, and as many 
 particular dedications, and no less than fifty or sixty of those 
 by inscriptions which are addressed to his benefactors ; a 
 circumstance which Heylin in his severity did not overlook ; 
 for " making his work bigger by forty sheets at the least ; 
 and he was so ambitious of the number of his patrons, that 
 having but four leaves at the end of his History, he discovers 
 a particular benefactress to inscribe them to!" This unlucky 
 lady, the patroness of four leaves, Heylin compares to Roscius 
 Begulus, who accepted the consular dignity for that part of 
 the day on which Cecina by a decree of the senate was de- 
 graded from it, which occasioned Regulus to be ridiculed by 
 the people all his life after, as the consul of half a day. 
 
 The price for the dedication of a play was at length fixed, 
 from five to ten guineas from the Revolution to the time of 
 George I., when it rose to twenty ; but sometimes a bargain 
 was to be struck when the author and the play were alike 
 indifi^erent. Sometimes the party haggled about the price, or 
 the statue while stepping into his niche would turn round on 
 the author to assist his invention. A patron of Peter Motteux, 
 dissatisfied with Peter's colder temperament, actually com- 
 posed the superlative dedication to himself, and completed 
 the misery of the apparent author by subscribing it with his 
 name. This circumstance was so notorious at the time, that 
 it occasioned a satirical dialogue between Motteux and his 
 patron Heveningham. The patron, in his zeal to omit no pos- 
 sible distinction that might attach to him, had given one 
 circumstance which no one but himself could have known. 
 
 Patron. 
 
 I must confess I was to blame, 
 That one particular to name ; 
 The rest could never have been known 
 / made the style so like thy own.
 
 Dedications, 339 
 
 Poet. 
 I beg your pardon, Sir, for that. 
 
 Patron. 
 
 Why d e what would you be at ? 
 
 I writ hcloiv myself, you sot ! * 
 
 Avoiding figures, tropes, what not; 
 For fear I should my fancy raise 
 Above tlie level of tinj plajjs! 
 
 Warton notices the common practice, about tlie reign of 
 Elizabeth, of an author's dedicating a work at once to a num- 
 ber of the nobility. Chapman's Translation of Homer has 
 sixteen sonnets addressed to lords and ladies. Henry Lock, 
 in a collection of two hundred religious sonnets, mingles with 
 such heavenly works the terrestrial composition of a number 
 of sonnets to his noble patrons ; and not to multiply more 
 instances, our great poet Spenser, in compliance with this 
 disgraceful custom, or rather in obedience to the established 
 tyranny of patronage, has prefixed to the Faery Queen fifteen 
 of these adulatory pieces, which in every respect are the 
 meanest of his compositions. At this period all men, as well 
 as writers, looked vip to the peers as if they were beings on 
 whose smiles or frowns all sublunary good and evil depended. 
 At a much later period, Elkanah Settle sent copies round to 
 the chief party, for he wrote for both parties, accompanied 
 by addresses to extort pecuniary presents in return. He had 
 latterly one standard Elegy, and one Ejyitlialamlmn, printed 
 off with blanks, which by ingeniously filling up with the 
 printed names of any great person who died or was married ; 
 no one who was going out of life, or was entering into it, 
 could pass scot-free. 
 
 One of the most singular anecdotes respecting Dedications 
 in English bibliography is that of the Polj'glot Bible of Dr. 
 Castell, Cromwell, much to his honour, patronized that 
 great labour, and allowed the paper to be imported free of 
 all duties, both of excise and custom. It was published under 
 the protectorate, but many copies had not been disposed of 
 ere Charles II. ascended the throne. Dr. Castell had dedi- 
 cated the work gratefullj'- to Oliver, by mentioning him with 
 peculiar respect in the preface, but he wavered with Richard 
 Cromwell. At the Kestoration, he cancelled the two last 
 leaves, and supplied their places with three others, which 
 softened down the republican strains, and blotted Oliver's 
 
 z2
 
 34^0 Dedications. 
 
 name out of the book of life ! The differences in what are 
 now called -the republican and the loi/al copies have amused 
 the curious collectors ; and the former being very scarce, are 
 most sought after. I have seen the republican. In the loi/al 
 copies the patrons of the work are mentioned, but their tilles 
 are essentially changed ; Serenissiiinis, Illustrissimus, and 
 Ilonoratissimus, were epithets that dared not shew them- 
 selves under the levelling influence of the great fanatic re- 
 publican. 
 
 It is a curious literary folly, not of an individual but of the 
 Spanish nation, who, when the laws of Castile were reduced 
 into a code under the reign of Alfonso X. surnamed the Wise, 
 divided the work into seven volumes ; that they might be 
 dedicated to the seven letters which formed the name of his 
 majesty ! 
 
 Never was a gigantic baby of adulation so crammed with 
 the soft pap of Dedications as Cardinal Richelieu. French 
 flattery even exceeded itself. — Among the vast number of very- 
 extraordinary dedications to this man, in which the Divinity 
 itself is disrobed of its attributes to bestow them on this 
 miserable creature of vanity, I suspect that even the following 
 one is not the most blasphemous he received. " Who has seen 
 your face without being seized by those softened terrors 
 which made the prophets shudder when God showed the 
 beams of his glory ! But as He whom they dared not to 
 approach in the burning bush, and in the noise of thunders, 
 appeared to them sometimes in the freshness of the zephyrs, 
 so the softness of your august countenance dissipates at the 
 same time, and changes into dew, the small vapours which 
 cover its majesty." One of these herd of dedicators, after 
 the death of Kichelieu, suppressed in a second edition his 
 hyperbolical panegyric, and as a punishment to himself, dedi- 
 cated the work to Jesus Christ ! 
 
 The same taste characterises our own dedications in the 
 reigns of Charles II. and James II. The great Dryden has 
 carried it to an excessive height ; and nothing is more usual 
 than to compare t\\Q patron with the Divinity — and at times 
 a fair inference may be drawn that the former was more in 
 the author's mind than God himself ! A Welsh bishop made 
 
 an apology to James I. for preferring the Deity to his 
 
 Majesty ! Dryden's extravagant dedications were the vices 
 of the time more than of the man ; they were loaded with 
 flattery, and no disgrace was annexed to such an exercise of
 
 Philosophical Descriptive Poems. 341 
 
 men's talents ; the contest being who should go farth(;st in 
 the most graceful way, and with the best turns of expres- 
 sion. 
 
 An ingenious dedication was contrived by Sir Simon Degge, 
 who dedicated " the Parson's Counsellor" to Woods, Bishop of 
 Lichfield. Degge highly complimented the bishop on having 
 most nobly restored the church, which had been demolished 
 in the civil wars, and was rebuilt but left unfinished by 
 Bishop Hacket. At the time he wrote the dedication, Woods 
 had not turned a single stone, and it is said, that much 
 against his will he did something, from having been so publicly 
 reminded of it by this ironical dedication. 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. 
 
 The "Botanic Gaeden" once appeared to open a new route 
 through the trodden groves of Parnassus. The poet, to a 
 prodigality of Imagination, united all the minute accuracy 
 of Science. It is a highly-repolished labour, and was in the 
 mind and in the hand of its author for twenty years before 
 its first publication. The excessive polish of the verse has 
 appeared too high to be endured throughout a long compo- 
 sition ; it is certain that, in poems of length, a versification, 
 which is not too florid for lyrical composition, will weary by 
 its brilliance. Darwin, inasmuch as a rich philosophical 
 fancy constitutes a poet, possesses the entire art of poetry ; 
 no one has carried the curious mechanism of verse and the 
 artificial magic of poetical diction to a higher perfection. 
 His volcanic head flamed with imagination, but his torpid 
 heart slept una wakened by passion. His standard of poetry 
 is by much too limited ; he supposes that the essence of 
 poetry is something of which a painter can make a picture. 
 A picturesque verse was with him a verse completely poetical. 
 But the language of the passions has no connexion with this 
 principle; in truth, what he delineates as poetry itself, is but 
 one of its provinces. Deceived by his illusive standard, he 
 has composed a poem which is perpetually^ fancy, and never 
 passion. Hence his processional splendour fatigues, and his 
 descriptive ingenuity comes at length to be deficient in 
 novelty, and all the miracles of art cannot supply us with one 
 touch of nature.
 
 342 Philosophical Descriptive Poems. 
 
 Descriptive poetry should be relieved by a skilful inter- 
 mixture of passages addressed to the heart as well as to the 
 imagination : uniform description satiates ; and has been 
 considered as one of the inferior branches of poetry. Of this 
 both Thomson and Goldsmith were sensible. In their beau- 
 tiful descri|)tive poems they knew the art of animating the 
 pictures of Fancy with the glow of Sentiment. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the originality of Darwin's 
 poem, it had been preceded by others of a congenial dispo- 
 sition. Brookes's poem on " Universal Beauty," published 
 about 1735, presents us with the very model of Darwin's ver- 
 sification : and the Latin poem of De la Croix, in 1727, en- 
 titled " Connuhia Florum^'' with his subject. There also 
 exists a race of poems which have hitherto been confined to 
 one subject, which the poet selected from the works of nature, 
 to embellish with all the splendour of poetic imagination. I 
 have collected some titles, 
 
 Perhai)s it is Homer, in his battle of the Frogs and Mice, 
 and Virgil in the poem on a Gnat, attributed to him, who 
 have given birth to these lusory poems. The Jesuits, par- 
 ticularly when they composed in Latin verse, were partial to 
 such subjects. There is a little poem on Gold, by P. Le 
 Fevre, distinguished for its elegance ; and Brumoy has given 
 the Art of viaking Glass in which he has described its 
 various productions with equal felicity and knowledge. P. 
 Vaniere has written on Pigeons, Du Cerceau on Butterflies. 
 The success which attended these productions produced 
 numerous imitations, of which several were favourably 
 received. Vaniere composed three on the Grape, the Vintage, 
 and the Kitchen Garden. Another poet selected Oranges for 
 his theme ; others have chosen for their subjects, Paper, 
 Birds, and fresh-water Fish. Tarillon has inflamed his 
 imagination with gunpowder ; a milder genius, delighted with 
 the oaten pipe, sang of Sheep ; one who was more pleased 
 with another kind of pipe, has written on Tobacco ; and a 
 droll genius wrote a poem on Asses. Two writers have foi'med 
 didactic poems on the Art of Enigmas, and on Ships. 
 
 Others have written on moral subjects. Brumoy has 
 painted the Passions, with a variety of imagery and vivacity 
 of description ; P. Meyer has disserted on A nger ; Tarillon, 
 like our Stillingfleet, on the Art of Conversation ; and a lively 
 writer has discussed the subjects of Humour and IVit. 
 
 Giannetazzi, an Italian Jesuit, celebrated for his Latin
 
 Pamphlets. 343 
 
 poetry, has composed two volumes of poems on Fisldng and 
 Navigation. Fracastor has written dehcately on an indeU- 
 cate subject, his Syphilis. Le Brun wrote a delectable poem 
 on Sweetmeats ; another writer on Mineral Waters, and a 
 third on Printinr/. Vida pleases with his Silk-ioorms, and 
 his Chess ; Buchanan is ingenious with the Sphere. Mala- 
 pert has aspired to catch the Winds; the philosophic Huet 
 amused himself with Salt and again with Tea. The Gardens 
 of Rapin is a finer poem than critics generally can write ; 
 Quillet's Callipedia, or Art of getting handsome Children, 
 has been translated by Rowe ; and Du Fresuoy at length 
 gratifies the connoisseur with his poem on Painting, hj the 
 embellishments which his verses have received from the 
 poetic diction of Mason, and the commentary of Reynolds. 
 
 This list might be augmented with a ^aw of our own poets, 
 and there still remain some virgin themes wliich oidv require 
 to be touched by the hand of a true poet. In the "Memoirs 
 of Trevoux," they observe, in their review of the poem on 
 Gold, " That poems of this kind have the advantage of 
 instructing us very agreeably. All that has been most 
 remarkably said on the subject is united, compressed in a 
 luminous order, and dressed in all the agreeable graces of 
 poetry. Such writers have no little difficulties to encounter : 
 the style and expression cost dear ; and still more to give to 
 an arid topic an agreeable form, and to elevate the subject 
 without falling into another extreme. — In the other kinds of 
 poetry the matter assists and prompts genius ; here we must 
 possess an abundance to display it." 
 
 PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Myles Da.vis's "Icox Libelloeum, or a Critical History 
 of Pamphlets," affords some curious information ; and as this 
 is a pamphlet-reading age, I shall give a sketch of its contents. 
 The author observes : " From Pamphlets may be learned 
 the genius of the age, the debates of the learned, the follies of 
 the ignorant, the heviies of government, and the mistakes of 
 the courtiers. Pamphlets furnish beaus with their airs, 
 coquettes with their charms. Pamphlets are as modish 
 ornaments to gentlewomen's toilets as to gentlemen's pockets ; 
 they carry reputation of wit and learning to all that make 
 them their companions ; the poor find their account in stall-
 
 344 Pamphlets. 
 
 keeping and in hawking them ; the rich find in them their 
 shortest way to the secrets of church and state. There is 
 scarce any class of people but may think themselves inte- 
 rested enough to be concerned with what is published in 
 pamphlets, either as to their private instruction, curiosity, 
 and reputation, or to the public advantage and credit ; with 
 all which both ancient and modern pamphlets are too often 
 over familiar and free. — In short, with pamphlets the book- 
 sellers and stationers adorn the gaiety of shop-gazing. Hence 
 accrues to grocers, apothecaries, and chandlers, good furniture, 
 and supplies to necessary retreats and natural occasions, in 
 pamphlets lawj'ers will meet with their chicanery, phj^sicians 
 with their cant, divines with their Shibboleth. Pamphlets 
 become more and more daily amusements to the curious, idle, 
 and inquisitive ; pastime to gallants and coquettes ; chat to 
 the talkative ; catch-words to informers ; fuel to the envious ; 
 poison to the unfortunate ; balsam to the wounded ; employ 
 to the lazy ; and fabulous materials to romancers and 
 novelists." 
 
 This author sketches the origin and rise of pamphlets. He 
 deduces them from the short writings published by the Jew- 
 ish Eabbins ; various little pieces at the time of the first 
 propagation of Christianity ; and notices a certain pamphlet 
 which was pretended to have been the composition of Jesus 
 Christ, thrown from heaven, and picked up by the archangel 
 Michael at the entrance of Jerusalem. It was copied by the 
 priest Leora, atid sent about from priest to priest, till Pope 
 Zachary ventured to pronounce it a forgery. He notices 
 several such extraordinary publications, many of which pro- 
 duced as extraordinary effects. 
 
 He proceeds in noticing the first Arian and Popish pam- 
 phlets, or rather libels, i. e. little books, as he distinguishes 
 them. He relates a curious anecdote respecting the forgeries 
 of the monks. Archbishop Usher detected in a manuscript 
 of St. Patrick's life, pretended to have been found at Louvain, 
 as an original of a very remote date, several passages taken, 
 with little alteration, from his own writings. 
 
 The following notice of our immortal Pope I cannot pass 
 over : " Another class of pamphlets writ by Roman Catholics 
 is that of Poems, written chiefiy by a Pope himself, a gentle- 
 man of that name. He passed always amongst most of his 
 acquaintance for what is commonly called a Whig ; for it 
 seems the Eoman politics are divided as well as popish
 
 Pamphlets. 345 
 
 missionaries. However, one Esdras, an apothecary, as he 
 qualifies himself, has puhlished a piping-hot pamplilet against 
 Mr. Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' which he entitles 'A Kinj 
 to the LocJc' wherewith he pretends to unlock nothing less 
 than a plot carried on by Mr. Pope in that poem against the 
 last and this present ministry and government." 
 
 He observes on Sermons, — ■'■'■ 'Tis not much to be questioned, 
 but of all modern pamphlets what or wheresoever, the Mnglish 
 stitched Sermons be the most edilVinof, useful, and instructive, 
 yet they could not escape the critical Mr. Bayle's sarcasm. 
 He says, ' Kepublique des Lettres,' Mai-ch, 1710, in this 
 article London, ' We see here sermons swarm daily from the 
 press. Our eyes only behold manna: are you desirous of 
 knowing the reason ? It is, that the ministers being allowed 
 to read their sermons in the pulpit, bui/ all fhei/ meet with, 
 and take no other trouble tlian to read them, and thus pass 
 for very able scholars at a very cheap rate !' " 
 
 He now begins more directly the history of pamphlets, 
 which he branches out irom four different etymologies. He 
 says, " However foreign the word Pamphlet may appear, it 
 is a genuine English word, rarely known or adopted in any 
 other language : its pedigree cannot well be traced higher 
 than the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. In its first 
 state wretched must have been its appearance, since the great 
 linguist John Minshew, in his ' Guide into Toncjites,' printed 
 in 1617, gives it the most miserable character of which any 
 libel can be capable. Mr. Minshew says (and his words were 
 quoted by Lord Chief Justice Holt), ' A Pampulet, that is 
 Opusculum Stolidorum, the diminutive performance of fools ; 
 from Tcdv, all, and TrXifiM, I Jill, to wit, all places. According 
 to the vulgar saying, all things are full of fools, or foolish 
 things ; for such multitudes of pamphlets, unworthy of the 
 very names of libels, being more vile than common shores 
 and the filth of beggars, and being flying papers daubed over 
 and besmeared with the foams of drunkaixls, are tossed far and 
 near into the mouths and hands of scoundrels ; neither will 
 the sham oracles of Apollo be esteemed so mercenary as a 
 Pamphlet.' " 
 
 Those who will have the word to be derived from Pam, the 
 famous knave of Loo, do not differ much from Minshew ; for 
 the derivation of the word Famis in all probability fromTrai/, 
 all ; or the whole or the chief of the game. 
 
 Under t\i\s first etymological notion of Pamphlets may be
 
 346 Pamphlets. 
 
 comprehended the vulgar stories of the Nine Worthies of the 
 World, of the Seven Champions of Christendom, Tom 
 Thumb, Valentine and Orson, &c., as also most of apocryphal 
 lucubrations. Tlve greatest collection of this first sort of 
 Pamphlets are the Rabbinictraditions in the Talmud, consisting 
 of fourteen volumes in folio, and the Popisli legends of the 
 Lives of the Saints, which, though not finished, form fifty 
 folio volumes, all which tracts were originally in pamphlet 
 forms. 
 
 The second idea of the radix of the word Pamphlet is, that 
 it takes its derivations from irav, all, and tpiXiw, I love, signi- 
 fying a thing beloved by all ; for a pamphlet being of a 
 small portable bulk, and of no great price, is adapted to every 
 one's understanding and reading. In this class may be placed 
 all stitched books on serious subjects, the best of which fugi- 
 tive pieces have been generally preserved, and even reprinted 
 in collections of some tracts, miscellanies, sermons, poems, 
 &c. ; and, on the contrary, bulky A'olumes have been reduced, 
 for the convenience of the public, into the familiar shapes of 
 stitched pamphlets. Both these methods have been thus 
 censured by the majority of the lower house of convocation 
 1711. These abuses are thus represented : "They have re- 
 published, and collected into volumes, pieces written long ago 
 on the side of infidelity. They have reprinted together in 
 the most contracted manner, many loose and licentious pieces, 
 in order to their being purchased more cheaply, and dispersed 
 more easily." 
 
 The third original interpretation of the word Pamphlet 
 may be that of tlie learned Dr. Skinner, in his Efymolocjicon 
 LingucB Anglicans, that it is derived from the Belgic word 
 Pampier, signiiying a little paj^er, or libel. To this third set 
 of Pamphlets may be reduced all sorts of printed single sheets, 
 or half sheets, or any other quantity of single paper prints, 
 such as Declarations, Remonstrances, Proclamations, Edicts, 
 Orders, Injunctions, Memorials, Addresses, Newspapers, &c. 
 
 The fourth radical signification of the word Pamphlet is 
 that homogeneal acceptation of it, viz., as it imports any 
 little book, or small volume whatever, whether stitched or 
 bound, whether good or bad, whether serious or ludicrous. 
 The only proper Latin term for a Pamphlet is Lihellns, or 
 little book. This word indeed sis^nifies in Enarlish au abusive 
 paper or little book, and is generally taken in the worst 
 sense.
 
 Little Books. 347 
 
 After all this display of curious literature, the reader may 
 snoile at the guesses of Etymologists ; particularly when he 
 is reminded tliat the derivation of Famphlet is drawn from 
 quite another meaning to any of the present, by Johnson, 
 which I shall give for his immediate gratification. 
 
 Pampulet [par un filet, Fr. Whence tliis word is written 
 anciently, and by Caxton, paunfiet'] a small book ; properly a 
 book sold unbound, and only stitched. 
 
 The French liave borrowed the word Pamphlet from us, 
 and have the goodness of not disfiguring its orthography. 
 Roast Beef'M also in the same predicament. I conclude that 
 Pamptdets and Boast Beef have therefore their origin in our 
 country. 
 
 Pinkerton favoured me with the following curious notice 
 concerning pamphlets : — 
 
 " Of the etymon oi pamphlet I know nothing; but that 
 the word is far more ancient than is commonly believed, take 
 the following proof from the celebrated Fhilobihlo7i, ascribed 
 to Richard cle Buri, bishop of Durham, but written by Robert 
 Holkot, at his desire, as Fabricius says, about the 3^ear 1344, 
 (Fabr. Bibl. Medii ^vi, vol. i.) ; it is in the eighth chapter. 
 
 " Sed, revera, libros non libras maluimus ; codicesque plus 
 dileximus quam florenos : ae panpletos exiguos phaleratis 
 prtetulimus palescedis." 
 
 " But, indeed, we prefer- hooks to pounds ; and we love 
 manuscripts better than florins ; and we prei'er small pam- 
 phlets to war horses." 
 
 This word is as old as Lydgate's time : among his works, 
 quoted by Warton, is a poem " translated from a, pamflete in 
 Frenshe." 
 
 LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
 Myles Davies has given an opinion of the advantages of 
 Little Books, with some humour. 
 
 " The smallness of the size of a book was always its own 
 commendation ; as, on the contrary, the largeness of a book 
 is its own disadvantage, as well as the terror of learning. In 
 short, a big book is a scare-erow to the head and pocket of 
 tli€ author, student, buyer, and seller, as well as a harbour of 
 ignorance ; hence the inaccessible masteries of tlie inexpug- 
 nable ignorance and superstition of the ancient heathens, de- 
 generate Jews, and of the popish scholasters and canonists.
 
 348 Utile Books. 
 
 entrenched under the frightful hulk of huge, vast, and innu- 
 merable volumes ; such as the great folio that the Jewish 
 rabbins fancied in a dream was given hj the angel Kaziel to 
 his pupil Adam, containing all the celestial sciences. And 
 the volumes writ by Zoroaster, entitled The Similitude, which 
 is said to have taken up no more space than 1260 hides of 
 cattle : as also the 25,000, or, as some say, 36,000 volumes, 
 besides 525 lesser MSS. of his. The grossness and multitude 
 of Aristotle and Varro's books were both a prejudice to the 
 authors, and an hindrance to learning, and an occasion of 
 the greatest part of them being lost. The largeness of Plu- 
 tarch's treatises is a great cause of his being neglected, while 
 Longinus and Epictetus, in their pamphlet Remains, are 
 every one's companions. Origen's 6000 volumes (as Epi- 
 phanius will have it) were not only the occasion of his vent- 
 ing more numerous errors, but also for the most part of their 
 perdition. — Were it not for Euclid's Elements, Hippocrates' 
 Aphorisms, Justinian's Institutes, and Littleton's Tenures, 
 in small pamphlet volumes, young mathematicians, fresh- 
 water physicians, civilian novices, and les apprentices en la 
 ley d'Angleterre, would be at a loss and stand, and total 
 disencouragement. One of the greatest advantages the Dis- 
 pensary has over King Arthur is its pamphlet size. So 
 Boileau's Lutrin, and his other pamphlet poems, in respect 
 of Perrault's and Chapelain's St. Paulin and la Pucelle. 
 These seem to pay a deference to the reader's quick and great 
 understanding ; those to mistrust his capacity, and to confine 
 his time as well as his intellect." 
 
 Notwithstanding so much may he alleged in favour of 
 books of a small size, yet the scholars of a former age 
 regarded them with contempt. Sealiger, says Baillet, cavils 
 with Drusius for the smallness of his books ; and one of the 
 great printers of the time (Moret, the successor of Plantin) 
 complaining to the learned Puteanus, who was considered as 
 the rival of Lipsius, that his books were too small for sale, 
 and that purchasers turned away, frightened at their diminu- 
 tive size ; Puteanus referred him to Plutarch, whose works 
 consist of small treatises ; but the printer took fire at the 
 comparison, and turned him out of his shop, for his vanity at 
 pretending that he wrote in any manner like Plutarch ! a 
 specimen this of the politeness and reverence of the early 
 printers for their learned authors ; Jurieu reproaches Calomies 
 that lie is a great author of little hooks !
 
 A Catholic's Refutation. 349 
 
 At least, if a man is the autlior only of little books, he will 
 escape the sarcastic observation of Cicero on a voluminous 
 writer — that " his body might be burned with his writings," 
 of which we have had several, eminent for the worthlessness 
 and magnitude of their labours. 
 
 It was the literary humour of a certain Maecenas, who 
 cheered the lustre of his patronage with the steams of a good 
 dinner, to place his guests according to the size and thickness 
 of the books they had printed. At the head of the table sat 
 those who had published i\\ folio, foliissimo ; next the authors 
 in auarto ; then those in octavo. At that table Blackmore 
 would have had the precedence of Gray, Addison, who found 
 this anecdote in one of the Anas, has seized this idea, and 
 applied it with his felicity of humour in No. 529 of the Spec- 
 tator. 
 
 Montaigne's Works have been called by a Cardinal, " The 
 Breviary of Idlers." It is therefore the book for many men. 
 Francis Osborne has a ludicrous image in favour of such 
 opuscula. " Huge volumes, like the ox roasted whole at 
 Bartholomew fair, may proclaim plenty of labour, but afford 
 less of what is delicate, savoury, and loell-concocted, than 
 
 SMxVLIiKE PIECES." 
 
 In the list of titles of minor works, which Aulus Gellius 
 has preserved, the lightness and beauty of such compositions 
 are charmingly expressed. Among these we find — a Basket 
 of Flowers ; an Embroidered Mantle ; and a Variegated 
 Meadow. 
 
 A CATHOLIC'S REFUTATION. 
 
 In" a religious book published by a fellow of the Society of 
 Jesus, entitled, " The Faith of a Catholic," the author exa- 
 mines what concerns the incredulous Jews and other infidels. 
 He would show that Jesus Christ, author of the reliarion 
 which bears his name, did not impose on or deceive the 
 Apostles whom he taught; that the Apostles who preached 
 it did not deceive those who were converted ; and that those 
 who were converted did not deceive us. In proving these 
 three not difficult propositions, he says, he confounds " the 
 Atheist, who does not believe in God ; the Fagaii, who adores 
 several ; the Deist, who believes in one God, but who rejects 
 a particular Providence ; the FreethinJcer, who presumes to 
 serve God according to his fancy, without being attached to
 
 350 The Good Advice of an Old Literary Sinner. 
 
 any religion ; the PJiilosopJier, who takes reason and not 
 revelation for the rule of his belief; the Gentile, who, never 
 having regarded the Jewish people as a chosen nation, does 
 not believe God promised them a Messiah ; and finally, the 
 Jew, who refuses to adore the Messiah in the person of 
 Christ." 
 
 I have given this sketch, as it serves for a singular 
 Catalogue of Heretics. 
 
 It is rather singular that so late as in the year 1765, a 
 work should have appeared in Paris, which bears the title I 
 translate, " The Christian Eeligion jjroved by a single fact ; 
 or a dissertation in which is shown that those Catholics of 
 whom Huneric, King of the Vandals, cut the tongues, spoke 
 miraculously all the remainder of their days ; from whence is 
 deduced the consequences of this miracle against the Arians, 
 the Socinians, and the Deists, and particularly against the 
 author of Emilius, by solving their difficulties." It bears 
 this Epigraph, " Ecce Erjo aclmirationem faciam populo huic, 
 miraculo grandi et stupendo^ There needs no further ac- 
 count of this book than the title. 
 
 THE GOOD ADVICE OF AN OLD LITERARY SINNER, 
 
 AuTHOKS of moderate capacity have unceasingly harassed the 
 public ; and have at length been remembered only by the 
 number of wretched volumes their unhappy industry has 
 produced. Such an author was the Abbe de Marolles, other- 
 wise a most estimable and ingenious man, and the patriarch 
 of print-collectors. 
 
 This Abbe was a most egregious scribbler ; and so tor- 
 mented with violent fits of printing, that he even printed 
 lists and catalogues of his friends. I have even seen at the end 
 of one of his works a list of names of those persons who had 
 given him books. He printed his works at his own expense, 
 as the booksellers had unanimously decreed this. Menage 
 used to say of his works, " The reason why I esteem the 
 productions of the Abbe is, for the singular neatness of their 
 bindings ; he embellishes them so beautifully, that the eye 
 finds pleasure in them." On a book of his versions of the 
 Epigrams of Martial, this critic wrote. Epigrams against 
 Martial. Latterly, for want of employment, our Abbe began 
 a translation of the Bible ; but having inserted the notes of
 
 The Good Advice of an Old Literary Sinner. 351 
 
 the visionary Isaac de la Peyrere, the work was burnt by order 
 of tlie ecclesiastical court. He was also an abundant writer 
 in verse, and exultingly told a poet, that his verses cost him 
 little: "They cost you what they are worth," replied the 
 sarcastic critic. De MaroUes in his Memoirs bitterly com- 
 plains of the injustice done to him by his contemporaries ; 
 and says, that in spite of the little favour sliown to him by 
 the public, he has nevertheless published, by an accurate cal- 
 culation, one hundred and thirty-three thousand one hundred 
 and twenty-four verses! Yet this was not the heaviest of 
 his literary sins. He is a proof that a translator may per- 
 fectly understand the language of his original, and yet pro- 
 duce an unreadable translation. 
 
 In the early part of his life this unlucky author had not 
 been without ambition ; it was onl}' when disappointed in his 
 pohtical projects that he resolved to devote himself to litera- 
 ture. As he was incapable of attempting original composi- 
 tion, he became known by his detestable versions. He wrote 
 above eighty volumes, which have never found f\ivour in the 
 eyes of the critics ; yet his translations are not without their 
 use, though they never retain by any chance a single passage 
 of the spirit of their originals. 
 
 The most remarkable anecdote respecting these transla- 
 tions is, that whenever this honest translator came to a diffi- 
 cult passage, he wrote in the margin, " I have not translated 
 this passage, because it is very difficult, and in truth I could 
 never understand it." He persisted to the last in his unin- 
 terrupted amusement of printing books; and his readers 
 having long ceased, he was compelled to present them to his 
 friends, who, probably, were not his readers. After a literary 
 existence of forty years, he gave the public a work not desti- 
 tute of entertainment in his own Memoirs, which he dedicated 
 to his relations and all his illustrious friends. The sino-ular 
 postscript to his Epistle Dedicatory contains excellent advice 
 for authors. 
 
 " I have omitted to tell you, that I do not advise any one 
 of my relatives or friends to apply himself as I have done to 
 study, and particularly to the composition of books, if he 
 thinks that will add to his fame or fortune. I am persuaded 
 that of all persons in the kingdom, none are more neglected 
 than those who devote themselves entirely to literature. The 
 small number of successful persons in that class (at present I 
 do not recollect more than two or three) should not impose
 
 352 Mysteries, Moralities, Farces, and Sotties. 
 
 on one's understanding, nor any consequences from them be 
 drawn in favour of others. I know how it is by my own 
 experience, and by that of several amongst j^ou, as well as by 
 many who are now no more, and with whom I was acquainted. 
 Believe me, gentlemen ! to pretend to the favours of fortune 
 it is only necessary to render one's self useful, and to be 
 supple and obsequious to those who are in possession of credit 
 and authority ; to be handsome in one's person ; to adulate 
 the powerful ; to smile, while you suffer from them every 
 kind of ridicule and contempt whenever they shall do you the 
 honour to amuse themselves with you ; never to be fright- 
 ened at a thousand obstacles which may be opposed to one ; 
 have a face of brass and a heart of stone ; insult worthy men 
 who are persecuted ; rarely venture to speak the truth ; ap- 
 pear devout, with every nice scruple of religion, while at the 
 same time every duty must be abandoned when it clashes 
 with your interest. After these any other accomplishment 
 is indeed superfluous." 
 
 MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES. 
 
 The origin of the theatrical representations of the ancients 
 has been traced back to a Grecian stroller singing in a cart 
 to the honour of Bacchus. Our European exhibitions, per- 
 haps as rude in their commencement, were likewise for a long 
 time devoted to pious purposes, under the titles of Mysteries 
 and Moralities. Of these primeval compositions of the drama 
 of modern Europe, I have collected some anecdotes and some 
 specimens.* 
 
 * Since this article was written, many of these ancient Mysteries and 
 Moralities have been printed at home and al)road. Hone, in his " Ancient 
 Mysteries Described," 1825, first gave a summary of the ZmcZms Coventrice, 
 the famous mysteries performed by the trading companies of Coventry ; 
 the entire series have been since printed by the Shakspeare Society, under 
 the editorship of Mr. Halliwell, and consist of forty two dramas, founded 
 on incidents in the Old and New Testaments. The equally famous Chester 
 Mysteries were also printed by the same society under the editorship of 
 Mr. Wright, and consist of twenty-five long dramas, commencing with 
 "The Fall of Lucifer," and ending with "Doomsday." In 1834, the 
 Abbotsford Club published some others from the Digby MS., in the 
 Bodleian Library, Oxford. In 1825, Mr. Sharp, of Coventry, published a 
 dissertation on the Mysteries once performed there, and printed the 
 Pageant of the Sheremen and Taylor's Company ; and in 1836 the Abbots- 
 ford Club printed the Pageant played by the Weavers of that city. la
 
 Mysteries, Moralities, Farces, arid Sotties. 353 
 
 It appears that pilgrims introduced these devout spectacles. 
 Those who returned from the Holy Land or other consecrated 
 places composed canticles of their travels, and amused their 
 religious fancies by interweaving scenes of which Christ, the 
 Apostles, aiid other objects of devotion, served as the themes. 
 Menestrier informs us that these pilgrims travelled in troops, 
 and stood in the ])ublic streets, where they recited their 
 poems, with their staif in hand; while their chaplets and 
 cloaks, covered with shells and images of various colours 
 formed a picturesque exhibition, which at length excited the 
 piety of the citizens to erect occasionally a stage on an exten- 
 sive spot of ground. These spectacles served as the amuse- 
 ments and instruction of the people. So attractive were 
 these gross exhibitions in the middle ages, that they formed 
 one of the principal ornaments of the reception of princes on 
 their public entrances. 
 
 When the Mysteries were performed at a more improved 
 period, the actors were distinguished characters, and fre- 
 quently consisted of the ecclesiastics of the neighbouring 
 villages, who incorporated themselves under the title of Con- 
 freres cle la Passion. Their productions were divided, not 
 into acts, but into different days of performance, and they 
 were performed in the open plain. This was at least conform- 
 able to the critical precept of that mad knight whose opinion 
 is noticed by Pope. It appears by a MS. in the Harleian 
 library, that they were thought to contribute so much to the 
 information and instruction of the people, that one of the 
 Popes granted a pardon of one thousand days to every person 
 who resorted peaceably to the plays performed in theWhitsuu 
 week at Chester, beginning with " The Creation," and ending 
 with the "General Judgment." These were performed at 
 the expense of the different corporations of that city, and the 
 reader may smile at the ludicrous combinations. " The 
 Creation" was performed by the Drapers; the " Dehige" by 
 the Dyers ; " Abraham, Melchisedech, and Lot," by the 
 Barbers; "The Purification" by the Blacksmiths; "The 
 Last Supper" by the Bakers; the "Resurrection" by the 
 
 1836, the Surtees Society published the series known as The Towneley 
 Mysteries, consisting of thirty-two dramas ; in 1838, Dr. Marriott pub- 
 lished in English, at Basle, a selection of the most curious of these 
 dramas. In 1837, M. Achille Jubinal published two octavo volumes of 
 French "Mysteres inedits du Quinzienie Siecle." This list might be 
 swelled by other notes of such books, printed within the last thii'ty years, 
 in illustration of these early religious dramas. 
 
 YOL. I. A A
 
 354 Mysteries, Moralities, Farces, and Sotties. 
 
 Skinners; and the "Ascension" by the Tailors. In these 
 pieces the actors represented the person of the Almighty 
 without being sensible of the gross impiety. So unskilful 
 were tliey in this infancy of the theatrical art, that very 
 serious consequences were produced by their ridiculous blun- 
 ders and ill-managed machinery. The following singular 
 anecdotes are jn-eserved, concerning a Mystery which took up 
 several days in the performance. 
 
 " In the year 1437, when Conrad Bayer, Bishop of Metz, 
 caused the Mystery of ' The Passion' to be represented on the 
 plain of Veximel near that city, God was an old gentleman, 
 named Mr. Nicholas Neufchatel, of Touraine, curate of Saint 
 Victory, of Metz, and whowas very near expiring on the cross 
 had he not been timely assisted. He was so enfeebled, that it 
 was agreed another priest should be placed on the cross the 
 next day, to finish the representation of the person crucified, 
 and which was done ; at the same time Mr. Nicholas under- 
 took to perform ' The Resurrection,' which being a less diffi- 
 cult task, he did it admirably well." — Another priest, whose 
 name was Mr. John de Nicey, curate of Metrange, personated 
 Judas, and he had like to have been stifled while he hung on 
 the tree, for his neck slipped ; this being at length luckily 
 perceived, he was quickly cut down and recovered. 
 
 John Bouchet, in his " Annales d'Aquitaine," a work 
 which contains many curious circumstances of the times, 
 written with that agreeable simplicity which characterises 
 the old writers, informs us, that in 1486 he saw played and 
 exhibited in Mysteries by persons of Poitiers, " The 
 Nativity, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ," in great 
 triumph and splendour ; there were assembled on this occa- 
 sion most of the ladies and gentlemen of the neighbouring 
 counties. 
 
 We will now examine the Mysteries themselves. I prefer 
 for this purpose to give a specimen from the French, which 
 are livelier than our own. It is necessary to premise to the 
 reader, that my versions being in prose will probably lose 
 much of that quaint expression and vulgar naivete which 
 prevail through the originals, written in octo-syllabic verses. 
 
 One of these Mysteries has for its subject the election of 
 an apostle to supply the place of the traitor Judas. A 
 dignity so awful is conferred in the meanest manner ; it is 
 done by drawing straws, of which he who gets the longest 
 becomes the apostle, Louis Chocquet was a favourite com-
 
 Mysteries, Moralities, Farces, and Softies. 355 
 
 poser of these religious performances : when he attempts the 
 pathetic, he has constantly recourse to devils ; but, as these 
 characters arc sustained with little propriety, his pathos suc- 
 ceeds in raising a laugh. Tn the following dialogue Annas 
 and Caiaphas are introduced conversing about St. Peter and 
 St. John : — 
 
 ANNAS. 
 
 I remember them once very honest people. They have often brought 
 their fish to my house to sell. 
 
 CAIAPHAS. 
 
 Is this true ? 
 
 ANNAS. 
 
 By God, it is true ; my servants remember them very well. To live 
 more at their ease they have left oif business ; or perhaps they were in 
 want of customers. Since that time they liave followed Jesus, that wicked 
 heretic, who has taught them magic ; tlie fellow understands necromancy, 
 and is the greatest magician alive, as far as Rome itself. 
 
 St. John, attacked by the satellites of Domitian, amongst 
 whom the author has placed Longinus and Patroclus, gives 
 refrular answers to their insulting interrogatories. Some of 
 
 'O 
 
 these I shall transcribe ; but leave to the reader's conjectures 
 the replies of the Saint, which are not difficult to anticipate. 
 
 PARTHEMIA. 
 
 You tell us strange things, to say there is but one God in three persons. 
 
 LONGINUS. 
 
 Is it any where said that we must believe your old prophets (with whom 
 your memory seems overburdened) to be more perfect than our gods ? 
 
 PATROcms. 
 
 You must be very cunning to maintain impossibilities. Now listen to 
 me : Is it possible that a virgin can bring forth a child without ceasing to 
 be a virgin ? 
 
 DOMITIAN. 
 
 Will you not change these foolish sentiments ? Would you pei-vert us? 
 Will you not convert yourself? Lords ! you perceive now very clearly what 
 an obstinate fellow this is ! Therefore let him be stripped and put into a 
 great caldron of boiling oil. Let him die at the Latin Gate. 
 
 PESART. 
 
 The great devil of hell fetch me if I don't Latinise him well. Never 
 shall they hear at the Latin Gate any one sing so well as he shall sing. 
 
 TORNEAU. 
 
 I dare venture to say he won't complain of being frozen. 
 
 A a2
 
 356 Mysteries, Moralities, Farces, and Soities. 
 
 PATROCLUS. 
 
 Frita, run quick ; bring wood and coals, and make the caldron ready. 
 
 FRITA. 
 
 I promise him, if he has the gout or the itch, he will soon get rid of 
 them. 
 
 St. John dies a perfect martyr, resigned to the boiling oil 
 and gross jests of Patroclus and Longinus. One is astonished 
 in the present times at the excessive absurdity, and indeed 
 blasphemy, which the writers of these Moralities permitted 
 themselves, and, what is more extraordinary, were permitted 
 by an audience consisting of a whole town. An extract from, 
 the " Mystery of St. Dennis" is in the Duke de la Valliere's 
 " Bibliotheque du Theatre Francois depuis son Origine : 
 Dresde, 1768." 
 
 The emperor Domitian, irritated against the Christians, 
 persecutes them, and thus addresses one of his courtiers : — 
 
 Seigneurs Romains, j'ai entendu 
 Que d'un crucifix d'un pendu, 
 On fait un Dieu par notre empire, 
 Sans ce qu'on le nous daigne dire. 
 
 Roman lords, I understand 
 That of a crucified hanged man 
 They make a God in our kingdom. 
 Without even deigning to ask our permission. 
 
 He then orders an officer to seize on Dennis in France. 
 When this officer arrives at Paris, the inhabitants acquaint 
 him of the rapid and grotesque progress of this future saint : — 
 
 Sire, il preche un Dieu a Paris 
 Qui fait tout les mouls et les vauls. 
 II va a cheval sans chevauls. 
 II fait et defait tout ensemble. 
 II vit, il meurt, il sue, il tremble. 
 II pleure, il rit, il veille, et dort. 
 II est jeune et vieux, foible et fort. 
 II fait d'un coq une poulette. 
 II joue des arts de roulette, 
 Ou je ne sgais que ce pent etre. 
 
 Sir, he preaches a God at Paris 
 
 Who has made mountain and valley. 
 
 He goes a horseback without horses. 
 
 He does and undoes at once. 
 
 He lives, he dies, he sweats, he trembles. 
 
 He weeps, he laughs, he wakes, and sleeps.
 
 Mysiei'ies, Moralities, Farces, and Sot ties. 357 
 
 He is young and old, weak and strong. 
 He turns a cock into a hen. 
 He knows how to conjure with cup and ball, 
 Or I do not know who this can be. 
 
 Another of these admirers says, evidently alluding to the 
 rite of baptism, — 
 
 Sire, oyez que fait ce fol prestre : 
 H preiid de I'yaue en une escuele, 
 Et gete aux gens sur le cervele, 
 Et dit que partants sont sauves ! 
 
 Sir, hear what this mad priest does : 
 
 He takes water out of a ladle, 
 
 And, throwing it at people's heads, 
 
 He says that when they depart they are saved ! 
 
 This piece then proceeds to entertain the spectators with 
 the tortures of St. Dennis, and at length, wlien more than 
 dead, they mercifully behead him : the Saint, after his deca- 
 pitation, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm, and 
 walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom. 
 
 It is justly observed by Bayle on these wretched represen- 
 tations, that while they prohibited the people from medi- 
 tating on the sacred history in the book which contains it in 
 all its purity and truth, they permitted them to see it on the 
 theatre sullied with a thousand gross inventions, which were 
 expressed in the most vulgar manner and in a farcical style, 
 Warton, with his usual elegance, observes, " To those who 
 are accustomed to contemplate the great picture of human 
 follies which the unpolished ages of Europe hold up to our 
 view, it will not appear surprising that the people who were 
 forbidden to read the events of the sacred history in the 
 Bible, in which they are faithfully and beautifully related, 
 should at the same time be permitted to see them represented 
 on tlie stage disgraced with the grossest improprieties, cor- 
 rupted with inventions and additions of the most ridiculous 
 kind, sullied with impurities, and expressed in the language 
 and gesticulations of the lowest farce." Elsewhere he phi- 
 losophically observes that, however, they had their use, " not 
 only teaching the great truths of scripture to men who could 
 not read the Bible, but in abolishing the barbarous attach- 
 ment to military games and the bloody contentions of the 
 tournament, which had so long prevailed as the sole species 
 of popular amusement. Rude, and even ridiculous as they 
 were, they softened the maimers of the people, by diverting
 
 358 Mysteries, Moralities, Farces, and Sotties. 
 
 the public attention to spectacles in which the mind was 
 concerned, and by creating a regard for other arts than those 
 of bodily strength and savage valour." 
 
 Mysteries are to be distinguished from Moralities, and 
 Farces, and Sotties. Moralities are dialogues where the in- 
 terlocutors represented feigned or allegorical personages. 
 Farces were more exactly what their title indicates — 
 obscene, gross, and dissolute representations, where both the 
 actions and words are alike reprehensible. 
 
 The Sotties were more farcical than farce, and frequently 
 had the licentiousness of pasquinades. I shall give an inge- 
 nious specimen of one of the Moralities. This Morality is 
 entitled, " The Condemnation of Feasts, to the Praise of 
 Diet and Sobriety for the Benefit of the Human Body."_ 
 
 The perils of gormandising form the present subject. 
 Towards the close is a trial between Feasting and Supper. 
 They are summoned before Fxperience, the Lord Chief Jus- 
 tice ! Feasting and Supper are accused of having murdered 
 four persons by force of gorging them. Experience con- 
 demns Feasting to the gallows ; and his executioner is Diet. 
 Feasting asks for a father-confessor, and makes a public con- 
 fession of so many crimes, such numei-ous convulsions, apo- 
 plexies, headaches, and stomach-qualms, &c., which he has 
 occasioned, that his executioner Diet in a rage stops his 
 mouth, puts the cord about his neck, and strangles him. 
 Supper is only condemned to load his hands with a certain 
 quantity of lead, to hinder him from putting too many dishes 
 on table : he is also bound over to remain at the distance of 
 six hours' walking from Dinner upon pain of death. Supper 
 fehcitates himself on his escape, and swears to observe the 
 mitigated sentence.* 
 
 The Moralities were allegorical dramas, whose tedious- 
 ness seems to have delighted a barbarous people not yet 
 accustomed to perceive that what was obvious might be 
 omitted to great advantage : like children, everything must 
 be told in such an age ; their own unexercised imagination 
 cannot supply anything. 
 
 Of the Farces the hcentiousness is extreme, but their 
 pleasantry and their humour are not contemptible. The 
 
 * In Jubinal's Tapisseries Anciennes is engraved that found in the tent 
 of Charles the Bold, at Nancy, and still preserved in that city. It is par- 
 ticularly curious, inasmuch as it depicts the incidents described in the 
 Morality above-named.
 
 Mysteries, Moralities, Farces, and Sotties. 359 
 
 " Village Lawyer," which is never exhihited on our stage 
 without producing the broadest mirth, originates among these 
 ancient drolleries. The humorous incident of the shepherd, 
 who having stolen his master's sheep, is advised by his lawyer 
 only to reply to his judge by mimicking the bleating of a 
 sheep, and when the lawyer in return claims his fee, pays him 
 by no other coin, is discovered in these ancient farces. Brueys 
 got up the ancient farce of the " Patelin " in 1702, and we 
 borrowed it from him. 
 
 They had another species of drama still broader than Farce, 
 and more strongly featured by the grossness, the severity, and 
 personality of satire: — these were called /So;';'/*:'*-, of which the 
 following one I find in the Duke de la VaUiere's " Biblio- 
 theque du Theatre Francois."* 
 
 The actors come on the stage with their fools'-caps each 
 wanting the right ear, and begin with stringing satirical 
 proverbs, till, alter drinking freely, they discover that their 
 fools'-caps want the right ear. They call on their old grand- 
 mother Softie (or Folly), who advises them to take up some 
 trade. She introduces this progeny of her fools to the World, 
 who takes them into his service. The ^Fbr/r/tries their skill, 
 and is much displeased with their work. The Gobble r-'iool 
 pinches his feet by making the shoes too small ; the Tailor- 
 tool hangs his coat too loose or too tight about him ; the 
 T'nest-hol says his masses either too short or too tedious. 
 They all agree that the World does not know vvdiat he wants, 
 and must be sick, and prevail upon him to consult a physician. 
 The World obligingly sends what is required to a Urine- 
 doctor, who instantly pronounces that " the World is as mad 
 as a March hai'e !" He comes to visit his patient, and puts a 
 great many questions on his unhappy state. The World 
 replies, " that what most troubles his head is the idea of a 
 
 * The British Museum library was enriched in 1845 by a very curious 
 collection of tliese old comic plays, which was formed about 1560. It consists 
 of sixty-four dramas, of which number only five or six were known before. 
 They are exceedingly curious as pictures of early manners and amusements ; 
 very simple in construction, and containing few characters. One is a 
 comic dialogue between two persons as to the best way of managing a wife. 
 Another has for its plot the adventure of a husband sent from home by 
 the seigneur of the village, that he may obtain access to his wife ; and 
 who is checkmated by the peasant, who repairs to the neglected lady of the 
 seigneur. Some are entii-ely composed of allegorical characters ; all are 
 broadly comic, in language equally broad. They were played by a jocular 
 society, whose chief was termed Prince des Sots ; hence the name Sotties 
 given to the farces.
 
 360 Mysteries, Moralities, Farces, and Sotties. 
 
 new deluge by fire, which must one day consume him to 
 a powder ;" on which the physician gives this answer: — 
 
 Et te troubles-tu pour cela ? 
 Monde, tu ne te troubles pas 
 De voir ce larrons attrapai-s 
 Yendre et aclieter benetices ; 
 Les enfans en bras des Nourices 
 Estre Abbes, Eveques, Prieurs, 
 Chevaucher tres bien les deux soeurs, 
 Tuer les gens pour leurs plaisirs, 
 Jouer le leur, I'autrui saisir, 
 Donner aux flatteurs audience, 
 Faire la guerre a toute outrance 
 Pour un rien entre les chrestiens ! 
 
 And you really trouble yourself about tliis ? 
 
 Ob, World ! you do not trouble yourself about 
 
 Seeing those impudent rascals 
 
 Selling and buying livings ; 
 
 Children in the arms of their nurses 
 
 I^Iade Abbots, Bishops, and Priors, 
 
 Intriguing with girls, 
 
 Killing people for their pleasures, 
 
 Minding their own interests, and seizing on 
 
 what belongs to another. 
 Lending their ears to flatterers, 
 Making war, exterminating war. 
 For a bubble, among Christians ! 
 
 The World takes leave of his physician, but retains his 
 advice ; and to cure his fits of melancholy gives himself up 
 entirely to the direction of his fools. In a word, the World 
 dresses himself in the coat and cap of Folli/, and he becomes 
 as gay and ridiculous as the rest of the fools. 
 
 This Lottie was represented in the year 152-1. 
 
 Such was the rage for Mysteries, that Rene d'Anjou, king 
 of Naples and Sicily, and Count of Provence, had them mag- 
 nineently represented and made them a serious concern. 
 Being in Provence, and having received letters from his son 
 the Prince of Calabria, who asked him for an immediate aid 
 of men, he replied, that " he had a very different matter in 
 hand, for he was fully employed in settling the order of a 
 Mystery — in honour of God.''* 
 
 * The peasants of the Ober-Ammergau, a Tillage in the Bavarian Alps, 
 still perform, at intervals of ten years, a long miracle play, detailing the 
 chief incidents of the Passion of our Saviour from his entrance into Jeru- 
 salem to his ascension. It is done in fultilment of a vow made during a 
 pestilence in 1633. The performance lasted twelve hours in 1850, when 
 it was last performed. The actors were all of the peasant class.
 
 Mysteries, Moralities, Farces, and Sotties. 361 
 
 Strutt, in his " Manners and Customs of the English," has 
 given a description of the stag-e in Eughmd when Mysteries 
 were the only theatrical performances. Vol. iii. p. 130. 
 
 " In the early dawn of literature, and when the sacred 
 M^ysteries were the only theatrical performances, what is now 
 called the stage did then consist of three several platforms, 
 or stages I'aised one above another. On the uppermost sat the 
 Pater Ccelestis, surrounded with his Angels ; on tiie second 
 appeared the Holy Saints, and glorified men; and the last 
 -and lowest was occupied by mere men who had not yet 
 passed from this transitory life to the regions of eternity. On 
 one side of this lowest platform was the resemblance of 
 a dark pitchy cavern, from whence issued appearance of fire 
 and flames ; and, when it was necessary, the audience were 
 treated with hideous yellings and noises as imitative of the 
 howlings and cries of the wretched souls tormented by the 
 relentless demons. From this vawning' cave the devils them- 
 selves constantly ascended to delight and to instruct the 
 spectators : — to delight, because they were usually the great- 
 est jesters and buttbons that then appeared ; and to instruct, 
 for that they treated the wretched mortals who were delivered 
 to them with the utmost cruelty, v.'aruing thereby all men 
 carefully to avoid the falling into the clutches of such 
 hiirdened and remorseless spirits." An anecdote relating to an 
 English Mystery presents a curious specimen of the manners 
 of our country, which then could admit of such a representa- 
 tion ; the simplicity, if not the libertinism, of the age was 
 great. A play was acted in one of the principal cities of 
 England, under the direction of the trading companies of that 
 city, before a numei'ous assembly of both sexes, wherein 
 Adam and Eoe appeared on the stage entirely naked, per- 
 formed their whole part in the re])resentation of Eden, to the 
 serpent's temptation, to the eating- of the forbidden fruit, the 
 i;erceiving of, and conversing about, their nakedness, and to 
 the supplying of fig-leaves to cover it. Warton observes they 
 had the authority of scripture for such a representation, and 
 they gave matters just as they found them, in the third chap- 
 ter of Genesis. The following article will afford the reader a 
 specimen of an Elegant Morality.
 
 363 
 
 LOVE AND FOLLY, AN ANCIENT MORALITY. 
 
 One of the most elegant Moralities was composed by Louise 
 L' Abe ; the Aspasia of Lyons in 1550, adored by her contem- 
 poraries. With no extraordinary beauty, she however dis- 
 played the fascination of classical learning, and a vein of 
 vernacular poetry retined and fanciful. To accomplishments 
 so various she added the sinofular one of distino^uishinof herself 
 by a military s])irit, and was nicknamed Captain Louise. She 
 was a fine rider and a fine lutanist. She presided in the 
 assemblies of persons of literature and distinction. Mari'ied 
 to a rope-manufacturer, she was called La belle Cordlere, and 
 her name is still perpetuated by that of the street she lived in. 
 Her anagram was Belle a Soi/. — But she was helle also for 
 others. Her Morals in one point were not correct, but her 
 taste was never gross : the ashes of her perishable graces may 
 preserve themselves sacred from our severity ; but the pro- 
 ductions of her genius may still delight. 
 
 Her Morality, entitled " Debat de Folie et d' Amour — the 
 Contest of Love and Folly,^' is divided into five parts, and 
 contains six mythological or allegorical personages. This 
 division resembles our five acts, which, soon after the publi- 
 cation of this Morality, became generally practised. 
 
 In the first part. Love and Folly arrive at the same moment 
 at the gate of Jupiter's palace, to join a festival to which he 
 had invited the gods. Folly observing Love just going to 
 step in at the hall, pushes him aside and enters first. Love 
 is enraged, but Folly insists on her precedency. Love, per- 
 ceiving there was no reasoning with Folly, bends his bow and 
 shoots an arrow ; but she baffled his attempt by rendering 
 herself invisible. She in her turn becomes furious, falls on the 
 boy, tearing out liis eyes, and then covers them with a bandage 
 which could not be taken off". 
 
 In the second part. Love, in despair for having lost his 
 sight, implores the assistance of his mother; she tries in vain 
 to undo the magic fillet ; the knots are never to be unloosed. 
 
 In the third part, Venus presents herself at the foot of the 
 throne of Jupiter to complain of the outrage committed by 
 Folly on her son. Jupiter commands Folly to appear. — She 
 replies, that though she has reason to justify herself, she will 
 not venture to plead her cause, as she is apt to speak too much, 
 or to omit what should be said. Folly asks for a counsellor,
 
 Religious Nouvellettes. 363 
 
 and chooses Mercury ; Apollo is selected by Venus. The 
 fourth part consists of a long dissertation between Jupiter 
 and Love, on the manner of loving. Love advises Jupiter, if 
 he wishes to taste of truest happiness, to descend on earth, to 
 lay down all his majesty, and, in the figure of a mere mortal, 
 to please some beautiful maiden: "Then wilt thou I'eel quite 
 another contentment than that thou hast hitherto enjoyed : 
 instead of a single pleasure it will be doubled ; for there is 
 as much pleasure to be loved as to love. Jupiter agrees that 
 this may be true, but he thinks that to attain this it requires 
 too much time, too much trouble, too many attentions, — and 
 that, after all, it is not worth them. 
 
 In the fifth part, Apollo, the advocate for Venus, in a 
 long pleading demands justice against FoJhj. The Gods, 
 seduced by his eloquence, show by their indignation that they 
 M'ould condemn FoUu without hearing her advocate Mercury. 
 But Jupiter commands silence, and Mercury replies. His 
 pleading is as long as the adverse party's, and his arguments 
 in favour of FoUy are so plausible, that, when he concludes his 
 address, the gods are divided in opinion ; some espouse the 
 cause of Love, and some, that of Folly. Jupiter, alter trying 
 in vain to make them agree together, pronounces this award : — 
 
 " On account of the difficulty and importance of your dis- 
 putes and the diversity of your opinions, we have suspended 
 your contest from this day to three times seven times nine cen- 
 turies. In the mean time we command you to live amicably 
 together without injuring one another, i'o//// shall lead Love, 
 and take him whitliersoever he pleases, and when restored to 
 his sight, the Fates may pronounce sentence." 
 
 Many beautiful concej^tions are scattered in this elegant 
 Morality. It has given birth to subsequent imitations ; it 
 was too original and playful an idea not to l)e appropriated 
 by the poets. To this Morality we perhaps owe the 
 panegyric of Folly by Erasmus, and the Love and Folly of 
 La Fontaine. 
 
 RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES. 
 
 I SHALL notice a class of very singular works, in which the 
 spirit of romance has been called in to render religion more 
 attractive to certain heated imagfinations. 
 
 In the fifteenth century was published a little book of
 
 364 Religious Nouvellettes. 
 
 prayers, accompanied hj figures, both of a very uncommon 
 nature for a religious publication. It is entitled Hortulus 
 Animce, cum Oratmnculis aliquibus superadditis qiice in 
 priorilus Lihris own liabentur. 
 
 It is a small octavo en lettres gotliiques, printed by John 
 Grunninger, 1500. "A garden," says the author, "which 
 abounds with Bowers for the pleasure of the soul ;" but they 
 are full of poison. In spite of his fine promises, the chief 
 part of these meditations are as puerile as they are supersti- 
 tious. Tliis we might excuse, because the ignorance and 
 superstition of the times allowed such things ; but i\\Q figures 
 which accompany this work are to be condemned in all ages ; 
 one represents Saint Ursula and some of her eleven thousand 
 virgins, with all the licentious inventions of an Aretine. 
 What strikes the ear does not so much irritate the senses, 
 observes the sage Horace, as what is presented in all its nudity 
 to the eye. One of these designs is only ridiculous : David 
 is represented as examining Bathsheba bathing, while Cupid 
 hovering throws his dart, and with a malicious smile triumphs 
 in his success. We have had many gross anachronisms in 
 similar designs. There is a laughable picture in a village in 
 Holland, in which Abraham appears ready to sacrifice his son 
 Isaac by a loaded blunderbuss ; but his pious intention is 
 entirely frustrated by an angel urining in the pan. In another 
 painting, the Virgin receives the annunciation of the angel 
 Gabriel with a huge chaplet of beads tied round her waist, 
 reading her own offices, and kneeling before a crucifix ; another 
 happy invention, to be seen on an altar-piece at Worms, is that 
 in which the Virgin throws Jesus into the hopper of a mill, 
 while from the other side he issues changed into little morsels 
 of bread, with which the priests feast the people. Matthison, 
 a modern traveller, describes a picture in a church at Con- 
 stance, called the Conception of the Holy Virgin. An old 
 man lies on a cloud, whence he darts out a vast beam, which 
 passes through a dove hovering just below ; at the end of a 
 beam appears a large transparent Qg^, in which egg is seen a 
 child in swaddling clothes with a glory round it. Mary sits 
 leaning in an arm chair, and opens her mouth to receive the 
 
 po-cr. 
 
 1 must not pass unnoticed m this article a production as 
 extravagant in its design, in which the author prided himself 
 in discussing three thousand questions concerning the Virgin 
 Mary.
 
 Religious Nouvellettes. 3G5 
 
 The publication now adverted to was not presented to the 
 world in a barbarous age and in a barbarous country, but 
 printed at Paris in IGtiS. It bears for title, Devote Saluta- 
 tion des Memhres sacres du Gorps dela Glorieuse Vierge,31ere 
 de Dieu. That is, " A Devout Salutation of the Holy Mem- 
 bers of tbe Body of the glorious Virgin, Mother of God." It 
 was printed and published with an approbation and privilege, 
 which is rriore strange than the work itself. Valois reprobates 
 it in these just terms : " What would Innocent XI. have 
 done, after having abolished the shameful Office of the Con- 
 ception, Indulgences, &c. if he had seen a volume in which 
 the impertinent devotion of that visionary monk caused to be 
 printed, with permission of his superiors, Meditations on all 
 the Parts of the Body of the Holy Virgin ? Religion, 
 decency, and good sense, are equally struck at by such an 
 extravagance." I give a specimen of the most decent of 
 these salutations. 
 
 Salutation to the Hair. 
 
 " I salute you, charming hair of Maria ! Rays of the mys- 
 tical sun ! Lines of the centre and circumference of all 
 created perfection ! Veins of gold of the mine of love ! Chains 
 of the prison of God ! Roots of the tree of life ! Rivulets 
 of the fountain of Paradise ! Strings of the bow of charity ! 
 Nets that caught Jesus, and shall be used in the hunting-day 
 of souls !" 
 
 Salutation to the Ears. 
 
 " I salute ye, intelligent ears of Maria ! ye presidents of 
 the princes of the poor ! Tribunal for their petitions ; salva- 
 tion at the audience* of the miserable ! University of all 
 divine wisdom 1 Receivers general of all wards ! Ye are 
 pierced with the rings of our chains ; ye are impearled with 
 our necessities !" 
 
 The images, prints, and miniatures, with which the catho- 
 lic religion has occasion to decorate its splendid ceremonies, 
 have frequently been consecrated to the purposes of love: 
 they have been so many votive offerings worthy to have been 
 suspended in the temple of Idalia. Pope Alexander VI. had 
 the images of the Virgin made to represent some of his mis- 
 tresses ; the famous Vanozza, his favourite, was placed on the 
 altar of Santa Maria del Popolo ; and Julia Farnese furnished 
 a subject lor another Virgin. The same genius of pious
 
 366 Religious Nouvellettes. 
 
 gallantry also visited our country. The statuaries made the 
 queen of Henry III. a model for the face of the Virgin Mary. 
 Ilearne elsewhere affirms, that the Virgin Mary was gene- 
 rally made to bear a i-esemblance to the queens of the age, 
 which, no doubt, produced some real devotion among the 
 courtiers. 
 
 The prayer-books of certain pious libertines were decorated 
 with the portraits of their favourite minions and ladies in the 
 characters of saints, and even of the Virgin and Jesus. This 
 scandalous practice was particularly prevalent in that reign 
 of debauchery in France, when Henry III. held the reins 
 of government with a loose hand. In a missal once apper- 
 taining to the queen of Louis XII. may be seen a mitred ape, 
 giving its benediction to a man prostrate before it ; a keen 
 reproach to the clergy of that day. Charles V., however 
 pious that emperor affected to be, had a missal painted for 
 his mistress by the great Albert Durer, the borders of which 
 are crowded with extravagant grotesques, consisting of apes, 
 who were sometimes elegantly sportive, giving clysters to 
 one another, and in more offensive attitudes, not adapted to 
 heighten the piety of the Royal Mistress. This missal has 
 two French verses written by the Emperor himself, who does 
 not seem to have been ashamed of his present. The Italians 
 carried this taste to excess. The manners of our country 
 were more rarely tainted with this deplorable licentiousness, 
 although I have observed an innocent tendency towards it, 
 by examining the illuminated manuscripts of our ancient 
 metrical romances : while we admire the vivid colouring of 
 these splendid manuscripts, the curious observer will perceive 
 that almost every heroine is represented in a state which 
 appears incompatible with her reputation. Most of these 
 works are, I believe, by French artists. 
 
 A supplement might be formed to religious indecencies 
 from the Golden Legend, which abounds in them. Henry 
 Stephens's Apology for Herodotus might be likewise con- 
 sulted with effect for the same purpose. There is a story of 
 St. Mary the Egyptian, who was perhaps a looser liver than 
 Mary Magdalen ; for not being able to pay for her passage to 
 Jerusalem, whither she was going to adore the holy cross 
 and sepulchre, in despair she thought of an expedient in lieu 
 of payment to the ferryman, which required at least going 
 twice, instead of once, to Jerusalem as a penitential pilgri-
 
 Religions Nom^eJlettes. 367 
 
 mage. This anecdote presents the genuine character of cer- 
 tain devotees. 
 
 Melchior Inehoffer, a Jesuit, published a book to vindicate 
 the miracle of a Letter which the Virgin Marj had addressed 
 to the citizens of Messina : when Naude brought him posi- 
 tive proofs of its evident forgery, InchofTer ingenuously con- 
 fessed the imposture, but pleaded that it was done by the 
 orders of his superiors. 
 
 This same letter of the Virgin Mary was like a donation 
 made to her by Louis the Eleventh of the whole county of 
 Boulogne, retaining, however, for his own tise the revemies ! 
 This solemn act bears the date of the year 1478, and is entitled, 
 " Conveyance of Louis the Eleventh to the Virgin of Boulogne, 
 of the right and title of the fief and homage of the county 
 of Boulogne, which is held by the Count of Saint Pol, to 
 render a iaithful account before the image of the said lady." 
 Maria Agreda, a religious visionary, wrote The Life of the 
 Virgin. She informs us that she resisted the commands of 
 God and the holy Mary till the year 1G37, when she began 
 to compose this curious rhapsody. When she had finished 
 this original production, her confessor advised her to hirii it; 
 she obeyed. Her friends, however, who did not think her 
 less inspired than she informed them she was, advised her to 
 re-write the work. When printed it spread rapidly from 
 country to country : new editions appeared at Lisbon, Madrid, 
 Perpignan, and Antwerp. It was the rose of Sharon for 
 those climates. There are so many pious absurdities in this 
 book, which were found to give such pleasure to the devout, 
 that it was solemnly honoured with the censure of the Sor- 
 bonne ; and it spread the more. 
 
 The head of this lady was quite turned by her religion. 
 In the first six chapters she relates the visions of the Virgin, 
 which induced her to write her life. She begins the history 
 ah ovo, as it may be expressed ; for she has formed a narra- 
 tive of what passed during the nine months in which the 
 Virgin was confined in the womb of her mother St. Anne. 
 After the birth of Mary, she received an augmentation of 
 angelic guards ; we have several conversations which God 
 held with the Virgin during the first eighteen months after 
 her birth. And it is in this manner she formed a circulating 
 novel, which delighted the female devotees of the seventeenth 
 century.
 
 368 Religious Nouvellettes. 
 
 The worship paid to the Virgin Mary in Spain and Italy- 
 exceeds that wliieh is given to the Son or the Father. When 
 they pray to Mary, their imagination pictures a beautiful 
 woman, they really feel a 2)((ssion ; while Jesus is only re- 
 garded as a Bamhino, or infant at the breast, and the Father 
 is hardly ever recollected : but the Madonna la Seiihora, la 
 Maria Santa, while she inspires their religious inclinations, 
 is a mistress to those who have none. 
 
 Of similar works there exists an entire race, and the libraries 
 of the cui-ious may yet preserve a shelf of these religious 
 nouvellettes. The Jesuits were the usual authors of these 
 rhapsodies. I find an account of a book which pretends to 
 describe what passes in Paradise. A Spanish Jesuit published 
 at Salamanca a volume in folio, 1652, entitled Empyreologia. 
 He dwells with great complacency on the joys of the celestial 
 abode ; there always will be music in heaven with material 
 instruments as our ears are already accustomed to ; otherwise 
 he thinks the celestial music would not be music for us ! But 
 another Jesuit is more particular in his accounts. He posi- 
 tively assures us that we shall experience a supreme pleasure 
 in kissing and embracing the bodies of the blessed ; they will 
 bathe in the presence of each other, and for this purpose there 
 are most agreeable baths in which we shall swim like fish ; 
 that we shall all warble as sweetly as larks and nightingales ; 
 that the angels will dress themselves in female habits, their 
 hair curled ; wearing petticoats and fardingales, and with the 
 finest linen ; that men and women will amuse themselves in 
 masquerades, feasts, and balls. — Women will sing more agree- 
 ably than men to heighten these entertainments, and at the 
 resurrection will have more luxuriant tresses, ornamented 
 with ribands and head-dresses as in this life ! 
 
 Such were the books once so devoutly studied, and which 
 doubtless were often literally understood. How very bold 
 must the minds of the Jesuits have been, and how very 
 humble those of their readers, that such extravagances 
 should ever be published ! And yet, even to the time in 
 which I am now writing, — even at this day, — the same pic- 
 turesque and impassioned pencil is employed by the modern 
 Apostles of Mysticism— the Swedenborgians, the Moravians, 
 the Methodists ! 
 
 I find an account of another book of this class, ridiculous 
 enough to be noticed. It has for title, " The Spiritual 
 Kalendar, composed of as many Madi-igals or Sonnets and
 
 Religious Nouvellettes. 3G9 
 
 Epigrams as tliei'e are clays in the year ; written for the 
 consoUition of the pious and the curious. By Father G. 
 Cortade, Austin Preacher at Bayonne, 1665." To give a 
 notion of this singular collection take an Epigram addressed 
 to a Jesuit, who, young as he was, used to i^'-^t spurs under 
 his sliirt to mortify the outer man! The Ivalendar-poet 
 thus gives a point to these spurs : — 
 
 II ne pourra done plus ni riier ni liennir 
 
 Sous le rude Eperon dont tu fais son supplice ; 
 Qui vit jamais tel artifice, 
 
 De piquer un cbeval pour le mieux retenir ! 
 
 HUMBLT IMITATED. 
 
 Your body no more will neigh and will kick, 
 The point of the spur must eternally piick ; 
 "Whoever contrived a thing with such skill, 
 To keep spui-ring a horse to make him stand still ! 
 
 One of the most extravagant works projected on the sub- 
 ject of the Virgin Mary was the following : — The prior of a 
 convent in Paris had reiteratedly entreated Yarillas the his- 
 torian to examine a work composed by one of the monks ; 
 and of which — not being himself addicted to letters — he 
 wished to be govei'ned by his opinion. Varillas at length 
 yielded to the entreaties of the prior ; and to regale the 
 critic, they laid on two tables for his inspection seven enor- 
 mous volumes in folio. 
 
 Tliis rather disheartened our reviewer: but greater was his 
 astonishment, when, having opened the first volume, he found 
 its title to be Summa Dei-parcp ; and as Saint Thomas had 
 made a Sum, or System of Theology, so our monk had formed 
 a Si/stem of the Virgin ! He immediately comprehended the 
 design of our good father, who had laboured on this work full 
 thirty years, and who boasted he had treated Three Thousand 
 Questions concerning the Virgin ! of which he flattered him- 
 self not a single one had ever yet been imagined by any one 
 but himself! 
 
 Perhaps a more extraordinary design was never known. 
 Varillas, pressed to give his judgment on this work, advised 
 the prior with great prudence and good-nature to amuse the 
 honest old monk with the hope of printing these seven folios, 
 but always to start some new difficulties ; for it would be 
 inhuman to occasion so deep a chagrin to a man who had 
 
 TOL. 1. B B
 
 370 " Critical Sagacity " and " Happy Conjecture." 
 
 reached his seventy-fourth year, as to inform him of the 
 nature of his favourite occupations ; and that after his death 
 he should throw the seven folios into the fire. 
 
 "CEITICAL SAGACITY," AND "HAPPY CONJECTURE j" OR, 
 BENTLEY'S MILTON, 
 
 -Bentlet, long to wrangling schools confined. 
 
 And but by books acquainted with mankind- 
 To Milton lending sense, to Horace wit. 
 He makes them write, what never poet writ. 
 
 De. Bentlet's edition of our English Homer is sufficiently 
 known by name. As it stands a terrifying beacon to con- 
 jectural criticism, I shall just notice some of those violations 
 which the learned critic ventured to commit, with all the 
 arrogance of a Scaliger. This man, so deeply versed in 
 ancient learning, it will appear, was destitute of taste and 
 genius in his native language. 
 
 Our critic, to persuade the world of the necessity of his 
 edition, imagined a fictitious editor of Milton's Poems : and 
 it was this ingenuity which produced all his absurdities. As 
 it is certain that the blind bard employed an amanuensis, it 
 was not improbable that many words of similar sound, but 
 very different signification, might have disfigured the poem ; 
 but our Doctor was bold enough to conjecture that this 
 amanuensis interpolated whole verses of his own composition 
 in the "Paradise Lost!" Having laid down this fatal 
 position, all the consequences of his folly naturally followed 
 it. Yet if there needs any conjecture, the more probable one 
 will be, that Milton, who was never careless of his future 
 fame, had his poem read to him after it had been published. 
 The first edition appeared in 1667, and the second in 1674, 
 in which all the faults of the former edition are continued. 
 By these faults, the Doctor means what he considers to be 
 such : for we shall soon see that his " Canons of Criticism" 
 are apocryphal. 
 
 Bentley says that he will supply the want of manuscripts 
 to collate (to use his own words) by his own " Sagacity," 
 and " HAPPY Conjecture." 
 
 Milton, after the conclusion of Satan's speech to the fallen 
 angels, proceeds thus : —
 
 " Critical Sagacity," and " Happij Conjecture." 371 
 
 1. He spake : and to confirm his words out flew 
 
 2. Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs 
 
 3. Of mighty cherubim : the sudden blaze 
 
 4. Far round illumin'd hell ; highly they rag'd 
 
 5. Against the Highest ; and fierce with grasped ARMS 
 
 6. Clash'd on their sounding shields the din of war, 
 
 7. Hurling defiance tow'rd the vault of heaven. 
 
 In this passage, which is as perfect as human wit can 
 make, the Doctor alters three words. In the second Hne he 
 puts hlades instead of swords; in the fifth he puts sioords 
 instead of arms; and in the last line he prefers loalls to 
 vault. All these changes are so many defoedations of the 
 poem. The word swords is far more poetical than hlades, 
 which may as well be understood of knives as sioords. The 
 word arms, the generic for the specific term, is still stronger 
 and nobler than swords ; and the beautiful conception of vault, 
 which is always indefinite to the eye, while the solidity of 
 walls would but meanly describe the highest Heaven, gives 
 an idea of gi'andeur and modesty. 
 
 Milton writes, book i. v. 63 — 
 
 No light, but rather darkness yisible 
 Served only to discover sights of woe. 
 
 Perhaps borrowed from Spenser : — 
 
 A little glooming light, much like a shade. 
 
 Faery Queene, b. i. c. 2. st. 14. 
 
 This fine expression of " da.bkness yisible" the Doctor's 
 critical sagacity has thus rendered clearer : — 
 
 No light, but rather a transpicuous gloom. 
 
 Again, our learned critic distinguishes the 74th line of the 
 first book — 
 
 As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole, 
 
 as " a vicious verse," and therefore with " happy conjecture," 
 and no taste, thrusts in an entire verse of his own compo- 
 sition — 
 
 Distance which to express all measure fails. 
 Milton writes, 
 
 Our torments, also, may in length of time 
 Become our elements. ■ B. ii. ver. 274. 
 
 Bentley coerects — 
 
 Then, as was well observ'd, our torments may 
 Become our elements. 
 
 bb2
 
 372 " Critical Sagacity," and " Haj)j)y Conjecture." 
 
 A curious instance how the insertion of a single prosaic 
 expression turns a fine verse into something worse than the 
 vilest prose. 
 
 To conclude with one more instance of critical emendation : 
 Milton says, with an agi'eeable turn of expression — 
 
 So parted they ; the angel up to heaven, 
 
 From the thick shade ; and Adam to his bower. 
 
 Bentley " conjectures" these two verses to be inaccurate, and 
 in lieu of the last writes — 
 
 Adam, to ruminate on past discourse. 
 
 And then our erudite critic reasons ! as thus : — 
 
 After the conversation between the Angel and Adam in 
 the bower, it may be well presumed that our first parent 
 waited on his heavenly guest at his departure to some little 
 distance from it, till he began to take his flight towards 
 heaven ; and therefore " sagaciously" thinks that the poet 
 could not with propriety say that the angel parted from the 
 thick shade, that is, the bower, to go to heaven. But if 
 Adam attended the Angel no farther than the door or 
 entrance of the bower, then he shrewdly asks, " How Adam 
 could return to his bower if he was never out of it ? " 
 
 Our editor has made a thousand similar corrections in his 
 edition of Milton ! Some have suspected that the same kind 
 intention which prompted Dryden to persuade Creech to 
 undertake a translation of Horace influenced those who 
 encouraged our Doctor, in thus exercising his " sagacity" and 
 " happy conjecture" on the epic of Milton. He is one of 
 those learned critics who have happily " elucidated their 
 author into obscurity," and comes nearest to that " true 
 conjectural critic" whose practice a Portuguese satirist so 
 greatly admired : by which means, if he be only followed up 
 by future editors, we might have that immaculate edition, in 
 which little or nothing should be found of the original ! 
 
 1 have collected these few instances as not unintei'esting to 
 men of taste ; they may convince us that a scholar may be 
 familiarized to Greek and Latin, though a stranger to his 
 vernacular literature ; and that a verbal critic may sometimes 
 be successful in his attempts on a single word, though he 
 may be incapable of tasting an entire sentence. Let it also 
 remain as a gibbet on the high roads of literature ; that 
 " conjectural critics" as they pass may not forget the unhappy 
 fate of Bentlej'.
 
 A Jamenist Dictionary. 373 
 
 The following epigram appeared on this occasion : — 
 
 ON milton's executionek. 
 
 Did Milton's prose, CnAr.LEs! thy death defend? 
 
 A furious foe, unconscious, proves a friend; 
 
 On Milton's verse does Bentley comment? know, 
 
 A weak officious friend becomes a foe. 
 
 Wliile lie would seem his author's fame to further-, 
 
 The MURTHEROUS critic has avenged thy murtiier. 
 The classical learning of Bentley was singular and acute ; 
 but the erudition of words is frequently found not to be allied 
 to the sensibiUty of taste.* 
 
 A JANSENIST DICTIONARY. 
 
 When L'Advocat published his concise Biographical Dic- 
 tionary, the Jansenists, the methodists of France, considered 
 it as having been written with a view to depreciate the merit 
 of their friends. The spirit of party is too soon alarmed. 
 The Abbe Barral undertook a dictionary devoted to their 
 cause. In this labour, assisted by his good friends the Jan- 
 senists, he indulged all the impetuosity and acerbity of a 
 splenetic adversary. Tlie Abbe was, however, an able writer ; 
 his anecdotes are numerous and well chosen ; and his style is 
 rapid and glowing. The work bears for title, " Dictionnaire 
 Historique, Litteraire, et Critique, des Hommes Celebres," 
 6 vols. 8vo. 1719. It is no unuseful speculation to observe 
 in what manner a faction represents those who have not been 
 its favourites: for this purpose I select the characters of 
 Fenelon, Cranmer, and Luther. 
 
 Of Fenelon tliey write, " He composed for the instruction 
 of the Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou, and Berri, several worlvs ; 
 amongst others, the Telemachus — -a singular book, which 
 partakes at once of the character of a romance and of a poem, 
 and which substitutes a prosaic cadence for versification. 
 
 * An amusing instance of his classical emendations occurs in the text 
 of Shakspeare. [King Henry IV. pt. 2, act 1, sc. 1.] The poet speaks 
 of one who 
 
 " woebegone 
 
 Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night. 
 And would have told him half his Troy was burn'd." 
 Bentley alters the first word of the sentence to a proper name, which is 
 given in the third bouk of the Iliad, and the second of the ^neid ; and 
 reads the passage thus : — 
 
 " Ucaligon 
 
 Drew Priam's curtain, " kc. !
 
 374 A Jansenist Dictionary. 
 
 But several luscious pictures would not lead us to suspect 
 that this book issued from the pen of a sacred minister for 
 the education of a prince ; and what we are told by a famous 
 poet is not improbable, that Fenelon did not compose it at 
 court, but that it is the fruits of his retreat in his diocese. 
 And indeed the amours of Calypso and Eucharis should not 
 be the first lessons that a minister ought to give his scholars ; 
 and, besides, the fine moral maxims which the author attri- 
 butes to the Pagan divinities are not well placed in their 
 mouth. Is not this rendering homage to the demons of the 
 great truths which we receive from the Gospel, and to despoil 
 J. C. to render respectable the annihilated gods of paganism ? 
 This prelate was a wretched divine, more familiar with the 
 light of profane authors than with that of the fathers of the 
 church. Phelipeaux has given us, in his narrative of Quietism, 
 the portrait of the friend of Madame Gu^'on. This archbishop 
 has a lively genius, artful and supple, which can flatter and 
 dissimulate, if ever any could. Seduced by a woman, he was 
 solicitous to spread his seduction. He joined to the polite- 
 ness and elegance of conversation a modest air, which rendered 
 liim amiable. He spoke of spirituality with the expression 
 and the enthusiasm of a prophet ; with such talents he flat- 
 tered himself that everything would yield to him." 
 
 In this work the Protestants, particularly the first Re- 
 formers, find no quarter ; and thus virulently their rabid 
 Catholicism exults over the hapless end of Cranmer, the fii'st 
 Protestant archbishop : — 
 
 " Thomas Cranmer married the sister of Osiander. As 
 Henry VIII. detested married priests, Cranmer kept this 
 second mai'riage in profound secrecy. This action serves to 
 show the character of this great reformer, who is the hero of 
 Burnet, whose history is so much esteemed in England. 
 What blindness to suppose him an Athanasius, who was at 
 once a Lutheran secretly married, a consecrated archbishop 
 under the Roman pontiff' whose power he detested, saying 
 the mass in which he did not believe, and granting a power 
 to say it! The divine vengeance burst on this sycophantic 
 courtier, who had always prostituted his conscience to his 
 fortune." 
 
 Their character of Luther is quite Lutheran in one sense, 
 for Luther was himself a stranger to moderate strictures : — 
 
 " The furious Luther, perceiving himself assisted by the 
 credit of several princes, broke loose against the church with
 
 Manuscripts and Books. 375 
 
 the most inveterate rage, and rung the most terrible alarum 
 against the pope. According to him we should have set fire 
 to everything, and reduced to one heap of ashes the pope and 
 the princes who supported him. Nothing equals the rage of 
 this phrenetic man, who was not satisfied with exhaling his 
 fury in horrid declamations, but who was for putting all in 
 practice. He raised his excesses to the height by inveighing 
 against the vow of chastity, and in marrying publicly Cathe- 
 rine de Bore, a nun, whom he enticed, with eight others, from 
 their convents. He had prepared the minds of the people for 
 this infamous proceeding by a treatise which he entitled 
 ' Examples of the Papistical Doctrine and Theology,' in 
 which he condemns the praises which all the saints had 
 given to continence. He died at length quietly enough, in 
 154!;, at Eisleben, his country place — God reserving the 
 terrible effects of his vengeance to another life." 
 
 Cranmer, who perished at the stake, these fanatic reli- 
 gionists proclaim as an example of " divine vengeance ;" but 
 Luther, the true parent of the Reformation, " died quietly at 
 Eisleben:" this must have puzzled their mode of reasoning ; 
 but they extricate themselves out of the dilemma by the 
 usual way. Their curses are never what the lawyers call 
 " lapsed legacies." 
 
 MANUSCRIPTS AND BOOKS. 
 
 It would be no uninteresting literary speculation to describe 
 the difficulties which some of our most favourite works en- 
 countered in their manuscript state, and even after they had 
 passed through the press. Sterne, when he had finished his 
 first and second volumes of Tristram Shandy, offered them to 
 a bookseller at York for fifty pounds ; but was refused : he 
 came to town with his MSS. ; and he and Robert Dodsley 
 agreed in a manner of which neither repented. 
 
 The Rosciad, with all its merit, lay for a considerable time 
 in a dormant state, till Churchill and his publisher became 
 impatient, and almost hopeless of success. — Burn's Justice 
 was disposed of by its author, who was weary of soliciting 
 booksellers to purchase the MS., for a trifle, and it now yields 
 an annual income. Collins burnt his odes after indemnifying 
 his publisher. The publication of Dr. Blair's Sermons was 
 refused by Strahan, and the " Essay on the Immutability of
 
 376 Manuscripts and Books. 
 
 Truth," by Dr. Beattie, could find no publisher, and was 
 printed by two friends of the author, at their joint expense. 
 
 "The sermon in Tristram Shandy" (says Sterne, in his 
 preface to his Sermons) " was printed by itself some years 
 ago, but could find neither purchasers nor readers." When it 
 was inserted in his eccentric work, it met with a most 
 favourable reception, and occasioned the others to be col- 
 lected. 
 
 Joseph Warton writes, " When Gray published his exqui- 
 site Ode on Eton College, his first publication, little notice 
 was taken of it." The Polyeucte of Corneille, which is now 
 accounted to be his masterpiece, when he read it to the lite- 
 rary assembly held at the Hotel de Rambouillet, was not ap- 
 proved. Voiture came the next day, and in gentle terms 
 acquainted him with the unfavourable opinion of the critics. 
 Such ill judges were then the most fashionable wits of 
 France ! 
 
 It was with great difiiculty that Mrs. Centlivre could get 
 her "Busy Body" performed. Wilks threw down his part 
 with an oath of detestation — our comic authoress fell on her 
 knees and wept. — Her tears, and not her wit, prevailed. 
 
 A pamphlet published hi the year 1738, entitled " A Letter 
 to the Society of Booksellers, on the Method of forming a 
 true Judgment of the Manuscripts of Authors," contains 
 some curious literary intelligence. 
 
 " We have known books, that in the MS. have been 
 damned, as well as others which seem to be so, since, after 
 their appearance in the world, they have often lain by 
 neglected. Witness the ' Paradise Lost' of the famous 
 Milton, and the Optics of Sir Isaac Newton, which last, 'tis 
 said, had no character or credit here till noticed in France. 
 ' The Historical Connection of the Old and New Testament,' 
 by Shuckford, is also reported to have been seldom inquired 
 after for about a twelvemonth's time ; however, it made a 
 shift, though not without some difiiculty, to creep up to a 
 second edition, and afterwards even to a third. And which 
 is another remarkable instance, the manuscript of Dr. Pri- 
 deaux's ' Connection' is well known to have been bandied 
 about from hand to hand among several, at least five or six, 
 of the most eminent booksellers, during the space of at least 
 two years, to no purpose, none of them undertaking to 
 print that excellent work. It lay in obscurity, till Arch- 
 deacon Echard, the author's friend, strongly recommended it
 
 The Turkish Sjnj. Zll 
 
 to Tonson. It was purchased, and the publication was very 
 successful. Robinson Crusoe in manuscript also ran through 
 the whole trade, nor would any one print it, though the 
 writer, De Foe, was in good repute as an author. One 
 bookseller at last, not remarkable for his discernment, but for 
 his speculative turn, engaged in this publication. This 
 bookseller got above a thousand guineas by it ; and the 
 booksellers are accumulating money every hour by editions of 
 this work in all shapes. The undertaker of the translation 
 of Eapin, after a very considerable part of the work had been 
 published, was not a little dubious of its success, and was 
 strongly inclined to drop the design. It proved at last to be 
 a most profitable literary adventure." It is, perhaps, useful 
 to record, that while the fine compositions of genius and the 
 elaborate labours of erudition are doomed to encounter these 
 obstacles to fame, and never are but slightly remunerated, 
 works of another description are rewarded in the most 
 princely manner; at the recent sale of a bookseller, the 
 copyright of " Vyse's Spelling-book" was sold at the enor- 
 mous ])riee of £2200, with an annuity of 50 guineas to the 
 author ! 
 
 THE TUEEISH SPY. 
 
 Whatevee may be the defects of the "Turkish Spy," the 
 author has shown one uncommon merit, by having opened a 
 new species of composition, which has been pursued by other 
 writers with inferior success, if we except the charming 
 " Persian Letters" of Montesquieu. The " Turkish Spy" is 
 a book which has delighted our childhood, and to which we 
 can still recur with pleasure. But its ingenious author is 
 unknown to three parts of his admirers. 
 
 In Boswell's " Life of Johnson" is this dialogue concerning 
 the writer of the "Turkish Spy." " B.— Pray, Sir, is tlie 
 'Turkish Spy' a genuine book? J. — No, Sir. Mrs. 
 Manley, in her ' Life' says, that lier fatlier icrote the two 
 first volumes; and in another book — 'Dunton's Life and 
 Errours,' we find that the rest was ivritten by one SaiiJf, at 
 two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley." 
 
 I do not know on what authority Mrs. Manley advances 
 that her father was the author ; bat this lady was never nice 
 in detailing facts. Dunton, indeed, gives some information in 
 a very loose manner. He tells us, p. 242, that it is probable,
 
 378 The Turldsh Spij. 
 
 by reasons which he insinuates, that one Bradshaw, a hack- 
 ney author, was the writer of the " Turkish Spy." This 
 man probably was engaged by Dr. Midgeley to translate the 
 volumes as they appeared, at the rate of 40s. per sheet. On 
 the whole, all this proves, at least, how little the author was 
 known while the volumes Avere publishing, and that he is as 
 little known at present by the extract from Boswell. 
 
 The ingenious writer of the Turkish Spy is John Paul 
 Marana, an Italian ; so that the Turkish Spy is just as real a 
 personage as Cid Hamet, from whom Cervantes says he had 
 his " History of Don Quixote." Marana had been impri- 
 soned for a political conspiracy ; after his release he retired to 
 Monaco, where he wrote the " History of the Plot," which 
 is said to be valuable for many curious particulars. Marana 
 was at once a man of letters and of the world. He had long 
 wished to reside at Paris ; in that emporium of taste and 
 luxury his talents procured him patrons. It was during his 
 residence there that he produced his "Turkish Spy." By 
 this ingenious contrivance he save the historv of the last 
 age. He displays a rich memory, and a lively imagination ; 
 but critics have said that he touches everything, and pene- 
 trates nothing. His first three volumes greatly pleased : the 
 rest are inferior. Plutarch, Seneca, and Pliny, were his 
 favourite authors. He lived in philosophical mediocrity ; and 
 in the last years of his life retired to his native country, 
 where he died in 1693. 
 
 Charpentier gave the first particulars of this ingenious 
 man. Even in his time the volumes were read as they came 
 out, while its author remained unknown. Charpentier's 
 proof of the author is indisputable ; for he preserved the fol- 
 lowing curious certificate, written in Marana's own hand- 
 writing, 
 
 " I, the under-written John Paul Marana, author of a 
 manuscript Italian volume, entitled ' L' Esploratore Turco, 
 tomo terzo,' acknowledge that Mr. Charpentier, appointed by 
 the Lord Chancellor to revise the said manuscript, has not 
 granted me his certificate for printing the said manuscript, 
 but on condition to rescind four passages. The first begin- 
 ning, &c. By this I promise to suppress from the said 
 manuscript the places above marked, so that there shall re- 
 main no vestige ; since, without agreeing to this, the said 
 certificate would not have been granted to me by the said 
 Mr. Charpentier ; and for surety of the above, which I ac-
 
 Spenser, Jonson, and Shakspeare. 379 
 
 knowledg'e to be true, and which I promise punctually to 
 execute, I have signed the present writing. Paris, 28th 
 Septenaber, 1686. 
 
 "John Paul Maeana." 
 
 This paper serves as a curious instance in what manner the 
 censors of books clipped the wings of genius when it was 
 found too daring or excursive. 
 
 These rescindings of the Censor appear to be marked by 
 Marana in the printed work. We find more than once 
 chasms, with these words : " the beginning of this letter is 
 wanting iu the Italian translation ; the original paper being 
 torn^ 
 
 No one has yet taken the pains to observe the date of the 
 first editions of the French and the English Turkish Spies, 
 which would settle the disputed origin. It appears by the 
 document before us, to have been originally written in 
 Italian, but probably was first piihlislied in French. Does 
 tlie English Turkish Spy differ from the French one ?* 
 
 SPENSER, JONSON, AND SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 The characters of these three great masters of English 
 poetry are sketched by Fuller, in his " Worthies of Eng- 
 land." It is a literary morsel that must not be passed by. 
 The criticisms of those who lived in or near the times when 
 authors flourished merit our observation. They sometimes 
 elicit a ray of intelligence, which later opinions do not 
 always give. 
 
 He observes on Spensek — " The many Chaucerisms used 
 (for I will not say affected by him) are thought by the 
 ignorant to be blemishes, known by the learned to be beau- 
 
 * Marana appears to have carelessly deserted his literary offspring. It 
 is not improbable that his English translators continued his plan, and that 
 their volumes were translated ; so that what appears the French original 
 may be, for the greater part, of our own home manufacture. The supe- 
 riority of the first part was early perceived. The history of our ancient 
 Grub-street is enveloped in the obscurity of its members, and there are 
 more claimants than one for the honour of this continuation. We know 
 too little of Marana to account for his silence ; Cervantes was indignant at 
 the impudent genius who dared to continue the immortal Quixote. 
 
 The tale remains imperfectly told. 
 
 See a correspondence on this subject in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1840 
 and 1841.
 
 380 Spenser, Jonson, and Shakspeare. 
 
 ties, to his book ; which, notwithstanding, had been more 
 SALEABLE, if more conformed to our modern language." 
 
 On Jonson. — "His parts were not so ready to run of 
 themselves, as able to answer the spur ; so that it may be 
 truly said of him, that he had an elaborate wit, wrought out 
 by his own industry. — He would sit silent in learned com- 
 pany, and suck in (besides wine) their several humours into 
 his observation. What was ore in others, he was able to 
 rejine himself. 
 
 " He was paramount in the dramatic part of poetry, and 
 taught the stage an exact conformity to the laws of come- 
 dians. His comedies were above the Volge (which are only 
 tickled with downright obscenity), and took not so well at 
 the^r^^ stroke as at the rebound, when beheld the second 
 time ; yea, they will endure reading so long as either inge- 
 nuity or learning are fashionable in our nation. If his latter 
 be not so spriteful and vigorous as his first pieces, all that are 
 old will, and all who desire to be old should, excuse him 
 therein." 
 
 On Shakspeare. — " He was an eminent instance of the 
 truth of that rule, poeta non fit, sed nascitur ; one is not 
 made, but born a poet. Indeed his learning was but very 
 little ; so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any 
 lapidary, but are pointed and smooth, even as they are taken 
 out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art which was 
 used upon him. 
 
 " Many were the ivit-combafs betwixt him and Ben Jonson, 
 which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and an 
 English man of tear. Master Jonson (like the former) was 
 built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow in his perform- 
 ances. Shakspeare, with an English man of war, lesser in 
 hidk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, and 
 take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and 
 invention." 
 
 Had these " Wit-combats," between Shakspeare and Jonson, 
 which Fuller notices, been chronicled by some faithful Boswell 
 of the age, our literary history would have received an 
 interesting accession. A letter has been published by Dr. 
 Berkenhout relating to an evening's conversation between 
 our great rival bards, and AUeyu the actor. Peele, a di-amatic 
 poet, writes to his friend Marlow, another poet. The Doctor 
 unfortunately in giving this copy did not recollect his 
 authority.
 
 Ben Jonson, Feltham, and Randolph. 381 
 
 " Teiend Mablow, 
 
 " I never longed for thy companye more than last night : 
 we were all very merrye at the Globe, where Ned Alleyn did 
 not scruple to affirms pleasantly to thy friend Will, that he 
 had stolen his speech about the qualityes of an actor's excel- 
 lencye in Hamlet his Tragedye, from convei'sations manyfold 
 wliich had passed between them, and opinyons given by 
 Alleyn touchinge this subject. Shakspeare did not take this 
 talk in good sorte ; but Jonson put an end to the strife, by 
 wittylie remarking, — this affaire needeth no contention : you 
 stole it from Ned, no doubt, do not marvel ; have you not 
 seen him act times out of number?" 
 
 This letter is one of those ingenious forgeries which the 
 late George Steevens practised on the litei'ary antiquary ; they 
 were not always of this innocent cast. The present has been 
 frequently quoted as an original document. I have preserved 
 it as an example of Literary Forgeries, and the danger which 
 literary historians incur by siich nefarious practices. 
 
 BEN JONSON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH. 
 
 Ben Jokson, like most celebrated wits, was very unfortunate 
 in conciliating the affections of his brother writers. He cer- 
 tainly possessed a great share of arrogance, and was desirous 
 of ruling the realms of Parnassus with a despotic sceptre. 
 Tliat he was not always successful in his theatrical composi- 
 tions is evident from his abusing, in their title-page, the 
 actors and the public. In this he has been imitated by 
 Fielding. I have collected the following three satiric odes, 
 written when the reception of his " New Inn, or The Light 
 Heart, ^'' warmly exasperated the irritable disposition of our 
 poet. 
 
 He printed the title in the following manner: — 
 " The New Inn, or The Light Heart ; a Comedy never acted, 
 but most negligently played by some, the King's servants ; 
 and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the 
 King's subjects, 1629. Now at last set at liberty to the 
 readers, his Majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged, 
 1G31." 
 
 At the end of this play he published the following Ode, in 
 which he threatens to quit the stage for ever ; and turn at 
 once a Horace, an Anacreon, and a Pindar,
 
 382 Ben Jonson, Feltham, and Randolph. 
 
 " The just indignation the author took at the vulgar cen- 
 sure of his play, begat this following Ode to himself: — 
 
 V 
 
 Come, leave the loathed stage, 
 And the more loathsome age ; 
 .Where pride and impudence (in faction knit,) 
 
 Usurp the chair of wit ; 
 Inditing and arraigning every day 
 Something they call a play. 
 Let their fastidious, vaine 
 Commission of braine 
 Eun on, and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn ; 
 They were not made for thee, — less thou for them. 
 
 Say that thou pour'st them wheat, 
 And they will acorns eat; 
 'Twere simple fury, still, thyself to waste 
 
 On such as have no taste ! 
 To offer them a surfeit of pure bread, 
 Whose appetites are dead ! 
 No, give them graines their fill, 
 Husks, draff, to drink and swill. 
 If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, 
 Envy them not their palate with the swine. 
 
 No doubt some mouldy tale 
 Like Pericles,* and stale 
 As the shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish- 
 Scraps, out of every dish 
 Thrown forth, and rak't into the common-tub, 
 May keep up the play- club : 
 There sweepings do as well 
 As the best order'd meale. 
 For who the relish of these guests will fit. 
 Needs set them but the almes-basket of wit. 
 
 And much good do't you then. 
 Brave plush and velvet men 
 Can feed on orts, and safe in your stage clothes. 
 
 Dare quit, upon your oathes, 
 The stagers, and the stage-wrights too (your peers), 
 Of larding your large ears 
 With their foul comic socks, 
 Wrought upon twenty blocks : 
 Which if they're torn, and turn'd, and patch'd enough 
 The gamesters share your gilt and you their stuff. 
 
 Leave things so prostitute. 
 And take the Alcseick lute, 
 
 This play, Langbaine says, is written by Shakspeare.
 
 Ben Jonson, Feltham, and Randolph. 383 
 
 Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre ; 
 
 Warm thee by Pindar's fire ; 
 And, the' thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold, 
 Ere years have made thee old, 
 Strike that disdainful heat 
 Throughout, to their defeat; 
 As curious fools, and envious of thy strain. 
 May, blushing, swear no palsy's in thy brain.* 
 
 But when they hear thee sing 
 The glories of thy King, 
 His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men, 
 
 They may blood-shaken then, 
 Feel such a flesh -quake to possess their powers, 
 As they shall cry ' like ours. 
 In sound of peace, or wars. 
 No harp ere hit the stars, 
 In tuning forth the acts of his sweet raign. 
 And raising Charles his chariot 'bove his wain.' " 
 
 This Magisterial Ode, as Langbaine calls it, was answered 
 by Oicen Feltham, author of the admirable " Resolves," who 
 has written with great satiric acerbity the retort courteous. 
 His character of this poet should be attended to : — 
 
 AN ANSWER TO THE ODE, COME LEAVE THE LOATHED STAGE, &C. 
 
 Come leave this sawcy way 
 Of baiting those that pay 
 Dear for the sight of your declining wit : 
 
 'Tis known it is not fit 
 That a sale poet, just contempt once thrown, 
 Should cry up thus his own. 
 I wonder by what dower. 
 Or patent, you had power 
 From all to rape a judgment. Let 't suffice, 
 Had you been modest, y'ad been granted wise. 
 
 'Tis known you can do well, 
 And that you do excell 
 As a translator ; but when things requii'e 
 
 A genius, and fire. 
 Not kindled heretofore by other pains, 
 As oft y'ave wanted brains 
 And art to strike the white. 
 As you have levelFd right : 
 Yet if men vouch not things apocryphal. 
 You bellow, rave, and spatter round your gall, :' 
 
 He had the palsy at that time.
 
 384 Ben Jonson, Feltha7n, and Randolph. 
 
 Jug, Pierce, Peek, Fly,* and all 
 Your jests so nominal. 
 Are tilings so far beneath an able brain, 
 
 As they do throw a stain 
 Thro' all th' unlikely plot, and do displease 
 As deep as Pericles. 
 Where yet there is not laid 
 Before a chamber-maid 
 Discourse so weigh'd,+ as might have serv'd of old 
 For schools, when they of love and valour told. 
 
 Why rage, then ? when the show 
 
 Should judgment be, and know-J 
 
 ledge, there are plush who scorn to drudge 
 
 For stages, yet can judge 
 Not only poet's looser lines, but wits, 
 And all their perquisits ; 
 A gift as rich as high 
 Is noble poesie : 
 Yet, tho' in sport it be for Kings to play, 
 'Tis next mechanicks' when it works for pay. 
 
 Alcseus lute had none, 
 Nor loose Anacreon 
 E'er taught so bold assuming of the bays 
 
 When they deserv'd no praise. 
 To rail men into approbation 
 Is new to your's alone : 
 And prospers not : for known, 
 Fame is as coy, as you 
 Can be disdainful ; and who dares to prove 
 A rape on her shall gather scorn — not love. 
 
 Leave then this humour vain, 
 And this more humourous strain. 
 Where self-conceit, and choler of the blood, 
 
 Eclipse what else is good : 
 Then, if you please those raptures high to touch, 
 Whereof you boast so much : 
 And but forbear your crown 
 Till the world puts it on : 
 No doubt, from all you may amazement draw. 
 Since braver theme no Phoebus ever saw. 
 
 To console dejected Ben for this just reprimand, Randolph, 
 of the adopted poetical sons of Jonson, addressed him with 
 all that warmth of grateful affection which a man of genius 
 should have felt on the occasion. 
 
 * The names of several of Jonson's dramatis personse. 
 •f- New Inn, Act iii. Scene 2. — Act iv. Scene 4. 
 
 X This break was purposely designed by the poet, to expose that singular 
 one in Ben's third stanza.
 
 Ben Jonson, Feltham, and Randolph. 385 
 
 AN ANSWER TO MR. BEN JONSON S ODE, TO PERSUADE HIM 
 NOT TO LEAVE THE STAOE. 
 
 Ben, do not leave the stage 
 Cause 'tis a loathsome age ; 
 For pride and impudence will grow too bold, 
 
 When they shall hear it told 
 They frighted thee ; Stand high, as is thy cause ; 
 Their hiss is thy applause : 
 More just were thy disdain, 
 Had they approved thy vein : 
 So thou for them, and they for thee were born ; 
 They to incense, and thou as much to scorn. 
 
 II. 
 
 Wilt thou engross thy store 
 Of wheat, and pour no more. 
 Because their bacon-brains had such a taste 
 
 As more delight in mast : 
 No ! set them forth a board of dainties, full 
 As thy best muse can cull 
 Whilst they the while do pine 
 And thirst, midst all their wine. 
 What greater plague can hell itself devise, 
 Than to be willing thus to tantalise ? 
 
 in. 
 
 Thou canst not find them stuff, 
 That will be bad enough 
 To please their palates : let 'em them refuse, 
 
 For some Pye-corner muse ; 
 She is too fair an hostess, 'twere a sin. 
 For them to like thine Inn : 
 'Twas made to entertain 
 Guests of a nobler strain ; 
 Yet, if they will have any of the store. 
 Give them some scraps, and send them fi-om thy dore. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And let those things in plush 
 
 Till they be taught to blush, 
 Like what they will, and more contented be 
 
 With whnt Broome* swept from thee. 
 I know thy worth, and that thy lofty strains 
 Write not to deaths, but brains : 
 
 * His man, Richard Broome, wrote with success several comedies. He 
 had been the amanuensis or attendant of Jonson. The epigram made 
 against Pope for the assistance W. Broome gave him appears to have been 
 borrowed from this pun. Johnson has inserted it in " i3roome's Life. " 
 
 YOL. I. C C
 
 386 Ariosto and Tasso. 
 
 But thy great spleen doth rise, 
 'Cause moles will have no eyes : 
 This only in my Ben I faulty find, 
 He's angry they'll not see him that are hlind. 
 
 Why shou'd the scene he mute 
 'Cause thou canst touch the lute 
 And string thy Horace ! Let each Muse of nine 
 
 Claim thee, and say, th'art mine. 
 'Twere fond, to let all other flames expire, 
 To sit by Pindar's fire : 
 For by so strange neglect 
 I should myself suspect 
 Thy palsie were as well thy brain's disease. 
 If they could shake thy muse which way they please. 
 
 TI. 
 
 And tho' thou well canst sing 
 The glories of thy King, 
 And on the wings of verse his chariot bear 
 
 To heaven, and fix it there ; 
 Yet let thy muse as well some raptures raise 
 To please him, as to praise. 
 I would not have thee chuse 
 Only a treble muse ; 
 But have this envious, ignorant age to know, 
 Thou that caust sing so high, canst reach as low. 
 
 ARIOSTO AND TASSO. 
 
 It surprises one to find among the literary Italians the merits 
 of Ariosto most keenly disputed : slaves to classical authority, 
 they bend down to the majestic regularity of Tasso. Yet 
 the father of Tasso, before his son had rivalled the romantic 
 Ariosto, describes in a letter the effect of the "Orlando" on 
 the people : — " There is no man of learning, no mechanic, no 
 lad, no girl, no old man, who is satisfied to read the 
 ' Orlando Furioso' once. This poem serves as the solace of 
 the traveller, who fatigued on his journey deceives his lassi- 
 tude by chanting some octaves of this poem. You may hear 
 them sing these stanzas in tlie streets and in the fields every 
 day." One would have expected that Ariosto would have 
 been the favourite of the people, and Tasso of the critics. 
 But in Venice the gondoliers, and others, sing passages which 
 are generally taken from Tasso, and rarely from Ariosto. A 
 different fate, I imagined, would have attended the poet who
 
 Ariosto and Tasso. 387 
 
 has been dlstingulshecl by the epithet of " TJ/e Divine." I 
 have been told by an Italian man of letters, that this circum- 
 stance arose from the relation which Tasso's poem bears to 
 Turkish affairs ; as many of the common people have passed 
 into Turkey either by chance or by war. Besides, tlie long 
 antipathy existing between the Venetians and the Turks gave 
 additional force to the patriotic poetry of Tasso. We cannot 
 boast of any similar poems. Thus it was that the people of 
 Greece and Ionia sang the poems of Homer. 
 
 The Accademia della Crusca gave a public preference to 
 
 Ariosto. This irritated certain critics, and none more than 
 
 Chapelain, who could taste the regularity of Tasso, but not 
 
 feel the " brave disorder" of Ariosto. He could not approve 
 
 of those writers, 
 
 "Who snatch a grace beyond the reach of art. 
 
 " I thank you," he writes, " for the sonnet which 3'our 
 indignation dictated, at the Academy's preference of Ariosto 
 to Tasso. This judgment is overthrown by the confessions 
 of many of the Cruscanti, my associates. It would be tedious 
 to enter into its discussion ; but it was passion and not equity 
 that prompted that decision. We confess, that, as to what 
 concerns invention and purity of language, Ariosto has emi- 
 nently the advantage over Tasso ; but majesty, pomp, num- 
 bers, and a style truly sublime, united to regularity of design, 
 raise the latter so much above the other that no comparison 
 can fairly exist." 
 
 The decision of Chapelain is not unjust ; though I did not 
 know that Ariosto's language was purer than Tasso's. 
 
 Dr. Cocchi, the great Italian critic, compared " Ariosto's 
 poem to the richer kind of harlequin's habit, made up of 
 pieces of the very best silk, and of the liveliest colours. 
 The parts of it are, many of them, more heautiful than in 
 Tasso's poem, but the whole in Tasso is without comparison 
 more of a piece and better made." The critic was extricating 
 himself as safely as he could out of this critical dilemma ; for 
 the disputes were then so violent, that I think one of the dis- 
 putants took to his bed, and was said to have died of Ariosto 
 and Tasso. 
 
 It is the conceit of an Italian to give the name of April to 
 Ariosto, because it is the season of flowers ; and that of 
 September to Tasso, which is that oi^f raits. Tiraboschi judi- 
 ciously observes that no comparison ought to be made be- 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 Ariosto and Tasso. 
 
 tween these great rivals. It is comparing " Ovid's Meta- 
 morphoses" with " Virgil's ^neid ;" they are quite different 
 things. In his characters of the two poets, he distinguishes 
 between a romantic poem and a regular epic. Their designs 
 required distinct perfections. But an English reader is not 
 enabled by the wretched versions of Hoole to echo the verse 
 of La Fontaine, " Je chekis L'Arioste et J'estime le 
 Tasse." 
 
 Boileau, some time before his death, was asked by a critic 
 if he had repented of his celebrated decision concerning the 
 merits of Tasso, which some Italians had compared with 
 those of Virgil ? Boileau had hurled his bolts at these vio- 
 lators of classical majesty. It is supposed that he was igno- 
 rant of the Italian language, but some expressions in his 
 answer may induce us to think that he was not. 
 
 " I have so little changed my opinion, that, on a re-perusal 
 lately of Tasso, I was sorry that I had not more amply ex- 
 plained myself on this subject in some of my reflections on 
 * Longinus.' I should have begun by acknowledging that 
 Tasso had a sublime genius, of great compass, with happy 
 dispositions for the higher poetry. But when I came to 
 the use he made of his talents, I should have shown that 
 judicious discernment rarely prevailed in his works. Tliat iu 
 the greater portion of his narrations he attached himself to 
 the agreeable, oftener than to the just. That his descriptions 
 are almost always overcharged with superfluous ornaments. 
 That in painting the strongest passions, and in the midst of 
 the agitations they excite, frequently he degenerates into 
 witticisms, which abruptly destroy the pathetic. That he 
 abounds with images of too florid a kind ; aftected turns ; 
 conceits and frivolous thoughts ; which, far from being 
 adapted to his Jerusalem, could hardly be supportable in his 
 ' Aminta.' So that all this, opposed to the gravity, the 
 sobrietv, the majesty of Virgil, what is it but tinsel compared 
 with gold?" 
 
 The merits of Tasso seem here precisely discriminated ; and 
 this criticism must be valuable to the lovers of poetry. The 
 errors of Tasso were national. 
 
 In Venice the gondoliers know by heart long passages from 
 Ariosto and Tasso, and often chant them with a peculiar 
 melody. Goldoni, in his life, notices the gondolier returning 
 with him to the city : " He turned the prow of the gondola 
 towards the city, singmg all the way the twenty-sixth stanza
 
 Ariosto and Tasso. 389 
 
 of the sixteenth canto of the Jerusalem Dehvered." The 
 late Mr. Barry once chanted to me a passage of Tasso in the 
 manner of the gondoliers ; and I have listened to such from 
 one who in his youth had himself been a gondolier. An 
 anonymous gentleman has greatly obliged me with his 
 account of the recitation of these poets by the gondoliers of 
 Venice. 
 
 There are always two concerned, who alternately sing the 
 strophes. We know the melody eventually by Rousseau, to 
 whose songs it is printed ; it has properly no melodious 
 movement, and is a sort of medium between the canto fermo 
 and the canto figurato ; it approaches to the former by reci- 
 tativical declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, 
 by which one syllable is detained and embellished. 
 
 I entered a gondola by moonlight : one singer placed him- 
 self forwai'ds, and the other aft, and thus proceeded to Saint 
 Giorgio. One began the song : when he had ended his strophe 
 the other took up the lay, and so continued the song alter- 
 nately. Throughout the whole of it, the same notes inva- 
 riably returned ; but, according to the subject matter of the 
 strophe, they laid a greater or a smaller stress, sometimes on 
 one, and sometimes on another note, and indeed changed the 
 enunciation of the whole strophe, as the object of the poem 
 altered. 
 
 On the whole, however, their sounds were hoarse and 
 screaming : they seemed, in the manner of all rude uncivilised 
 men, to make the excellency of their singing consist in the 
 force of their voice ; one seemed desirous of conquering the 
 other by the strength of his lungs, and so far from receiving 
 delight from this scene (shut up as I was in the box of the 
 gondola), I found myself in a very unpleasant situation. 
 
 My companion, to whom I communicated this circum- 
 stance, being very desirous to keep up the credit of his coun- 
 trymen, assured me that this singing was very delightful 
 when heard at a distance. Accordingly we got out upon the 
 shore, leaving one of the singers in the gondola, while the 
 other went to the distance of some hundred paces. They 
 now began to sing against one another ; and I kept walking 
 up and down between them both, so as always to leave him 
 who was to begin his part. 1 frequently stood still, and 
 hearkened to the one and to the other. 
 
 Here the scene was properly introduced. The strong de- 
 clamatory, and, as it were, shrieking sound, met the ear from
 
 390 Ariosio and Tasso. 
 
 far, and called forth the attention ; the quickly succeeding 
 transitions, which necessarily required to be sung in a lower 
 tone, seemed like plaintive strains succeeding the vociferations 
 of emotion or of pain. The other, who listened attentively, 
 immediately began where the former left off, answering him 
 in milder or more vehement notes, according as the purport 
 of the strophe required. The sleepy canals, the lofty build- 
 ings, the splendour of the moon, the deep shadows of the 
 few gondolas that moved like spirits hither and thither, in- 
 creased the striking peculiarity of the scene, and amidst all 
 these circumstances it was easy to confess the character of 
 this wonderful harmony. 
 
 It suits perfectly well with an idle solitary manner, lying 
 at length in his vessel at rest on one of these canals, waiting 
 for his company or for a fare ; the tiresomeness of which 
 situation is somewhat alleviated by the songs and poetical 
 stories he has in memory. He often raises his voice as loud 
 as he can, which extends itself to a vast distance over the 
 tranquil mirror ; and, as all is still around, he is as it were in 
 a solitude in the midst of a large and populous town. Here 
 is no rattling of carriages, no noise of foot passengers ; a 
 silent gondola glides now and then by him, of which the 
 splashing of the oars is scarcely to be heard. 
 
 At a distance he hears another, perhaps utterly unknown 
 to him. Melody and verse immediately attach the two 
 strangers ; he becomes the responsive echo to the former, 
 and exerts himself to be heard as he had heard the other. 
 By a tacit convention they alternate verse for verse ; though 
 the song should last the whole night through, they entertain 
 themselves without fatigue ; the hearers, who are passing be- 
 tween the two, take part in the amusement. 
 
 This vocal performance sounds best at a great distance, 
 and is then inexpressibly charming, as it only fulfils its design 
 in the sentiment of remoteness. It is plaintive, but not dis- 
 mal in its sound ; and at times it is scarcely possible to re- 
 frain from tears. My companion, who otherwise was not a 
 very delicately organised person, said quite unexpectedly, " E 
 singolare come quel canto intenerisce, e molto piii quando la 
 cantano meglio." 
 
 I was told that the women of Lido, the long row of islands 
 that divides the Adi-iatic from the Lagouns, particularly the 
 women of the extreme districts of Malamocca and Palestrina, 
 singin like mannerthe works of Tasso to these and similar tunes.
 
 Bayle. 391 
 
 They have the custom, when their hushands are fishing out 
 at sea, to sit along the shore in the evenings and vociferate 
 these songs, and continue to do so with great violence, till 
 each of them can distinguish the responses of her own hus- 
 band at a distance. 
 
 How much more delightful and more appropriate does this 
 song show itself here, than the call of a solitary person 
 uttered far and wide, till another equally disposed shall hear 
 and answer him ! It is the ex])ression of a vehement and 
 hearty longing, which yet is every moment nearer to the 
 happiness of satisfaction. 
 
 Lord Byron has told us that with the independence of 
 Venice the song of the gondolier has died away — 
 
 In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more. 
 
 If this be not more poetical tlian true, it must have occurred 
 at a moment when their last political change may have occa- 
 sioned this silence on the waters. My servant Tlta, who was 
 formerly the servant of his lordship, and whose name has 
 been immortalised in the "Italy" of Mr. Rogers, was himself 
 a gondolier. He assures me that every night on the river 
 the chant may be heard. Many who cannot even read have 
 acquired the whole of Tasso, and some chant the stanzas of 
 Ariosto. It is a sort of poetical challenge, and he who caimot 
 take up the subject by continuing it is held as vanquished, 
 and which occasions him no slight vexation. In a note in 
 Lord Byron's works, this article is quoted by mistake as 
 written by me, though I had mentioned it as the contribu- 
 tion of a stranger. We find by that note that there are two 
 kinds of Tasso ; the original, and another called the " Cant a 
 alia Barcarola,'' a spurious Tasso in the Venetian dialect : 
 this latter, however, is rarely used. In the same note, a 
 printer's error has been perpetuated through all the editions 
 of Byron ; the name of Barry, the painter, has been printed 
 Berry. 
 
 BAYLE. 
 
 Few philosophers were more deserving of the title than 
 Bayle. His last hour exhibits the Socratic intrepidity with 
 v.'hich he encountered the formidable approach of death. I 
 have seen the original letter of the bookseller Leers, where 
 he describes the death of our philosopher. " On the evening
 
 393 Bayle. 
 
 preceding his decease, having studied all day, he gave my 
 corrector some copy of his ' Answer to Jacquelot,' and told 
 him that he was very ill. At nine in the morning his laun- 
 dress entered his chamber ; he asked her, with a dying voice, 
 if his fire was kindled ? and a few moments after he died." 
 His disease was an hereditary consumption, and his decline 
 must have been gradual ; speaking had become with him a 
 great pain, but he laboured with the same tranquillity of mind 
 to his last hour ; and, with Bayle, it was death alone which 
 could interrupt the printer. 
 
 The irritability of genius is forcibly characterised by this 
 circumstance in his literary life. When a close friendship had 
 united him to Jurieu, he lavished on him the most flattering 
 eulogiums : he is the hero of his " Eepublic of Letters." 
 Enmity succeeded to friendship ; Jurieu is then continually 
 quoted in his "Critical Dictionary," whenever an occasion 
 offers to give instances of gross blunders, palpable contradic- 
 tions, and inconclusive arguments. These inconsistent opi- 
 nions may be sanctioned by the similar conduct of a Saint! 
 St. Jerome praised Eufinus as the most learned man of his 
 age, while his friend ; but when the same Eufinus joined his 
 adversary Origen, he called him one of the most ignorant ! 
 
 As a logician Bayle had no superior ; the best logician will, 
 however, frequently deceive himself. Bayle made long and 
 close arguments to show that La Motte le Vayer never could 
 have been a preceptor to the king ; but all his reasonings are 
 overturned by the fact being given in the " History of the 
 Academy," by Pelisson. 
 
 Basnage said of Bayle, that lie read mucJi hy his fingers. 
 He meant that he ran over a book more than he read it ; and 
 that he had the art of always falling upon that which was 
 most essential and curious in the book he examined. 
 
 There are heavy hours in which the mind of a man of 
 letters is unhinged ; when the intellectual faculties lose all 
 their elasticity, and when nothing but the simplest actions 
 are adapted to their enfeebled state. At such hours it is re- 
 corded of the Jewish Socrates, Moses Mendelssohn, that he 
 would stand at his window, and count the tiles of his neigh- 
 bour's house. An anonymous writer has told of Bayle, that 
 he would frequently wrap himself in his cloak, and hasten to 
 places where mountebanks resorted ; and that this was one of 
 his chief amusements. He is surprised that so great a philo- 
 sopher should delight in so trifling an object. This objection
 
 Bmjle. 393 
 
 is not injurious to the character of Bayle ; it only proves that 
 the writer himself was no philosopher. 
 
 The " Monthly Reviewer," in noticing this article, has 
 continued the speculation by giving two interesting anecdotes. 
 " The observation concerning ' heavy hours,' and the want of 
 elasticity in the intellectual faculties of men of letters, when 
 the mind is fatigued and the attention blunted by incessant 
 labour, reminds us of what is related by persons who were 
 acquainted with the late sagacious magistrate Sir John Field- 
 ing; who, when fatigued with attending to complicated 
 cases, and perplexed with discordant depositions, used to retire 
 to a little closet in a remote and trancjuil part of the house, 
 to rest his mental powers and sharpen perception. He told a 
 great physician, now living, who complained of the distance 
 of places, as caused by the great extension of London, that 
 ' he (the physician) would not have been able to visit many 
 patients to any purpose, if they had resided nearer to each 
 other ; as he could have had no time either to tliink or to 
 rest his mind.' " 
 
 Our excellent logician was little accustomed to a mixed 
 society : his life was passed in study. He had such an in- 
 fantine simplicity in his nature, that he would speak on ana- 
 tomical subjects before the ladies with as much freedom as 
 before surgeons. When they inclined their eyes to the 
 ground, and while some even blushed, he would then inquire 
 if what he spoke was indecent ; and, when told so, he smiled, 
 and stopped. His habits of life were, however, extremely 
 pure ; he probably left himself little leisure " to fall into temp- 
 tation.''^ 
 
 Bayle knew nothing of geometry ; and, as Le Clerc informs 
 us, acknowledged that he could never comprehend the demon- 
 stration of the first problem in Euclid. Le Clerc, however, 
 was a rival to Bayle ; with greater industry and more accurate 
 learning, but with very inferior powers of reasoning and phi- 
 losophy. Both of these great scholars, like our Locke, were 
 destitute of fine taste and poetical discernment. 
 
 When Fagon, an eminent physician, was consulted on the 
 illness of our student, he only prescribed a particular regimen, 
 without the use of medicine. He closed his consultation by 
 a compliment remarkable for its felicity. " I ardently wish 
 . one could spare this great man all this constraint, and that it 
 were possible to find a remedy as singular as the merit of him 
 for whom it is asked."
 
 394 Magliabechi. 
 
 Voltaire has said that Bayle confessed he would not have 
 made his Dictionary exceed a folio volume, had he written 
 only for himself, and not for the booksellers. This Dictionary, 
 with all its human faults, is a stupendous work, which must 
 last with literature itself. I take an enlarged view of Bayle 
 and his Dictionary, in a subsequent article. 
 
 CERVANTES. 
 
 M. Du BoTTLAY accompanied the French ambassador to Spain, 
 when Cervantes was yet living. He told Segrais that the 
 ambassador one day complimented Cervantes on the great 
 reputation he had acquired by his Don Quixote ; and that 
 Cervantes whispered in his ear, " Had it not been for the 
 Inquisition, I should have made my book much more enter- 
 taining." 
 
 Cervantes, at the battle of Lepanto, was wounded, and 
 enslaved. He has given his own history in Don Quixote, as 
 indeed every great writer of fictitious narratives has usually 
 done. Cervantes was known at the court of Spain, but he did 
 not receive those favours which might have been expected ; 
 he was neglected. His first volume is the finest ; and his 
 design was to have finished there : but he could not resist the 
 importunities of his friends, who engaged him to make a second, 
 which has not the same force, although it has many splendid 
 passages. 
 
 We have lost many good things of Cervantes, and other 
 writers, through the tribunal of religion and dulness. One 
 Aonius Palearius was sensible of this ; and said, " that the 
 Inquisition was a poniard aimed at the throat of literature." 
 The image is striking, and the observation just ; but this 
 victim of genius was soon led to the stake ! 
 
 MAGLIABECHI. 
 
 Anthony Magliabechi, who died at the age of eighty, was 
 celebrated for his great knowledge of books. He has been 
 called the Helluo, or the Glutton of Literature, as Peter 
 Gomestor received his nickname from his amazing voracity 
 for food he could never digest ; which appeared when having 
 fallen sick of so much false learning, he threw it all up in his
 
 Magliabechi. 395 
 
 " Sea of Sistories,'" which proved to be the history of all 
 things, and a bad history of everything. Magliabechi's 
 character is singular ; for though liis life was wholly passed iu 
 libraries, being librarian to tlie Duke of Tuscany, he never 
 wrote himself. There is a medal which represents him sitting, 
 with a book in one hand, and a great number of books scattered 
 on the ground. The candid inscription signifies, that " it is 
 not sufficient to become learned to have read much, if we read 
 without reflection." This is the only remains we have of his 
 own composition that can be of service to posterity. A sim- 
 ple truth, which may, however, be inscribed in the study of 
 every man of letters. 
 
 His habits of life were uniform. Ever among his books, he 
 troubled himself with no other concern whatever ; and the 
 only interest he appeared to take for any living thing was his 
 spiders. While sitting among his literary piles, he affected 
 great sympathy for these weavers of webs, and perhaps in 
 contempt of those whose curiosity appeai-ed impertinent, he 
 frequently cried out, " to take care not to hurt his spiders !" 
 Although he lost no time in writing himself, he gave considera- 
 ble assistance to authors who consulted him. He was himself 
 an universal index to all authors ; the late literary antiquary, 
 Isaac Eeed, resembled him.* He had one book, among many 
 others, dedicated to him, and this dedication consisted of a col- 
 lection of titles of works which he had had at different times 
 dedicated to him, with all the eulogiums addressed to him in 
 prose and verse. When he died, he left his vast collection 
 for the public use ; they now compose the public library of 
 Florence. 
 
 Heyman, a celebrated Dutch professor, visited this erudite 
 librarian, who was considered as the ornament of Florence. 
 He found him amongst his books, of which the number was 
 prodigious. Two or three rooms in the first story were 
 crowded with them, not only along their sides, but piled in 
 heaps on the floor ; so that it v/as difficult to sit, and more so 
 to walk. A narrow space was contrived, indeed, so that by 
 walking sideways you might extricate yourself from one room 
 to another. This was not all ; the passage below stairs was 
 
 * He was remarkable for his memory of all that he read, not only the 
 matter but the form, the contents of each page and the peculiar spelling 
 of every word. It is said he was once tested by the pretended destruc- 
 tion of a manuscript, which he reproduced without a variation of word or 
 line.
 
 396 MagliahecU. 
 
 full of books, and the staircase from the top to the bottom 
 was lined with them. When you reached the second story, 
 you saw with astonishment three rooms, similar to those 
 below, equally so crowded, that two good beds in these cham- 
 bers were also crammed with books. 
 
 This apparent confusion did not, however, hinder Maglia- 
 bechi from immediately finding the books he wanted. He 
 knew them all so well, that even to the least of them it was 
 sufficient to see its outside, to say what it was ; he knew his 
 flock, as shepherds are said, by their faces; and indeed he read 
 them day and night, and never lost sight of any.* He ate 
 on his books, he slept on his books, and quitted them as 
 rarely as possible. During his whole life he only went 
 twice from Florence ; once to see Fiesoli, which is not above 
 two leagues distant, and once ten miles further by order of 
 the Grand Duke. Nothing could be more simple than his 
 mode of life ; a few eggs, a little bread, and some water, were 
 his ordinary food. A drawer of his desk being open, Mr. 
 Heyman saw there several eggs, and some money which 
 Magliabechi had placed there for his daily use. But as this 
 drawer was generally open, it frequently happened that the 
 servants of his friends, or strangers who came to see him, 
 pilfered some of these things ; the money or the eggs. 
 
 His dress was as c^^nical as his repasts. A black doublet, 
 which descended to his knees ; large and long breeches ; an 
 old patched black cloak ; an amorphous hat, very much worn, 
 and the edges ragged ; a large neckcloth of coarse cloth, 
 begrimed with snuff ; a dirty shirt, which he always wore as 
 long as it lasted, and which the broken elbows of his doublet 
 did not conceal ; and, to finish this inventory, a pair of ruffles 
 which did not belong to the shirt. Such was the brilliant 
 dress of our learned Florentine ; and in such did he appear in 
 the public streets, as well as in his own house. Let me not 
 forget another circumstance ; to warm his hands, he generally 
 had a stove with fire fastened to his arms, so that his clothes 
 were generally singed and burnt, and his hands scorched. He 
 had nothing otherwise remarkable about him. To literary 
 men he was extremely affable, and a cynic only to the eye ; 
 anecdotes almost incredible are related of his memory. It is 
 somewhat uncommon that as he was so fond of literary /borf, 
 
 * He used to lie in a sort of lounging-chair in the midst of his study, 
 surrounded by heaps of dusty volumes, never allowed to be removed, and 
 forming a colony for the spiders whose society he so highly valued.
 
 Abridgers. 397 
 
 he did not occasionally dress some dishes of his own invention, 
 or at least some sandwiches to his own relish. He indeed 
 should have written CuiiiosiTiES of Lttehatuee. He was 
 a living Cyclopajdia, though a dark lantern.* 
 
 Of such reading men, Hobbes entertained a very contemp- 
 tible, if not a rash opinion. His own reading was inconsider- 
 able ; and he used to say, that if he had spent as much time in 
 readinj as other men of learning, he should have been as i(jno- 
 rant as they. He put little value on a large library, for he 
 considered all hooTis to be merely extracts and copies, for that 
 most authors were like sheep, never deviating from the beaten 
 path. History he treated lightly, and thought there were more 
 lies than truths in it. But let us recollect after all this, that 
 Hobbes was a mere metaphysician, idolising his own vain and 
 empty hypotheses. It is true enough that weak heads carry- 
 ing in them too much reading may be staggered. Le Clerc 
 observes of two learned men, De Marcilly and Barthius, that 
 they would have composed more useful works had they read 
 less numerous authors, and digested the better writers. 
 
 ABRIDGERS. 
 
 Abkidgers are a kind of literary men to whom the indolence 
 of modern readers, and indeed the multiplicity of authors, 
 give ample employment. 
 
 It would be difficult, observed the learned Benedictines, the 
 authors of the Literary History of France, to relate all the 
 unhappy consequences which ignorance introduced, and the 
 causes which produced that ignorance. But we must not 
 forget to place in this number the mode of reducing, by way 
 of abridgment, what the ancients had written in bulky volumes. 
 Examples of this practice may be observed in preceding- 
 centuries, but in the fifth century it began to be in general use. 
 As the number of students and readers diminished, autliors 
 neglected literature, and were disgusted with composition ; 
 for to write is seldom done, but when the writer entertains 
 the hope of finding readers. Instead of original authors, 
 there suddenly arose numbers of Abridgers. These men, 
 
 * His comparatively useless life was quietly satirized by the Rev. Mr. 
 Spence, in " a parallel after the manner of Plutarch," between llagliabechi 
 and Hill, a self-taught tailor of Buckinghamshii-e. It is published in 
 Dodsley's Fugitive Pieces, 2 vols., 12mo, 1774.
 
 398 Abridgers. 
 
 amidst the prevailing disgust for literature, imagined they 
 should gratify the public by introducing a mode of reading 
 works in a fewhours, which otherwise could not be done in many 
 months ; and, observing that the bulky volumes of the 
 ancients lay buried in dust, without any one condescending to 
 examine them, necessity inspired them with an invention that 
 might bring those works and themselves into public notice, 
 by the care they took of renovating them. This they 
 imagined to effect by forming abridgments of these ponderous 
 tomes. 
 
 All these Abridgers, however, did not follow the same 
 mode. Some contented themselves with making a mere 
 abridgment of their authors, by employing their own expres- 
 sions, or by inconsiderable alterations. Others formed 
 abridgments in drawing them from various authors, but from 
 whose works they only took what appeared to them most 
 worthy of observation, and embellished them in their own 
 style. Others again, having before them several authors who 
 wrote on the same subject, took passages from each, united 
 them, and thus combined a new work ; they executed their 
 design by digesting in commonplaces, and under various 
 titles, the most valuable parts they could collect, from the 
 best authors they read. To these last ingenious scholars we 
 owe the rescue of many valuable fragments of antiquity. 
 They fortunately preserved the best maxims, characters, de- 
 scriptions, and curious matters which they had found interest- 
 ins: in their studies. 
 
 Some learned men have censured these Abridsrers as the 
 cause of our having lost so many excellent entire works of the 
 ancients ; for posterity becoming less studious was satisfied 
 with these extracts, and neglected to preserve the originals, 
 whose voluminous size was less attractive. Others, on the 
 contrary, say that these Abridgers have not been so preju- 
 dicial to literature ; and that had it not been for their care, 
 which snatched many a perishable fragment from that ship- 
 wreck of letters which the barbarians occasioned, we should 
 perhaps have had no works of the ancients remaining. Many 
 voluminous works have been greatly improved by their 
 Abridgers. The vast history of Trogus Pompeius was soon 
 forgotten and finally perished, after the excellent epitome 
 of it by Justin, who winnowed the abundant chaff from the 
 grain. 
 
 Bayle gives very excellent advice to an Abridger. Xiphilin,
 
 Abridgers. 399 
 
 in his " Abridgment of Dion," takes no notice of a circum- 
 stance very material for entering into the character of Domi- 
 tian : — the recalling the empress Domitia after liaving turned 
 her away for her intrigues with a plaj'er. By omitting this 
 fact in the abridgment, and which is discovered through 
 Suetonius, Xiphilin has evinced, he says, a deficient judgment; 
 for Domitian's ill qualities are much better exposed, when it 
 is known that he was mean-spirited enough to restore to the 
 dignity of Empress the prostitute of a player. 
 
 Abridgers, Compilers, and Translators, are now slightly 
 regarded ; yet to form their works with skill requires an exer- 
 tion of judgment, and frequently of taste, of which their 
 contemners appear to have no due conception. Such literary 
 labours it is thought the learned will not be found to want ; 
 and the unlearned cannot discern the value. But to such 
 Abridgers as Monsieur Le Grand, in his " Tales of the Min- 
 strels," and Mr. Ellis, in his "English Metrical Romances," 
 we owe much ; and such writers must bring to their task a 
 congeniality of genius, and even more taste than their 
 original possessed. I must compare such to tine etchers after 
 great masters : — very few give the feeling touches in the right 
 place. 
 
 It is an uncommon circumstance to quote the Scriptures on 
 subjects of modern literature ! but on the present topic the 
 elegant writer of the books of the Maccabees has delivered, in 
 a kind of preface to that history, very pleasing and useful 
 instructions to an Ahridger. I shall transcribe the passages, 
 being concise, from Book ii. Chap. ii. v. 23, that the reader 
 may have them at hand : — 
 
 " All these things, 1 say, being declared by Jason of Cyrene, 
 in five books, we will assay to abridge in one volume. We 
 will be careful that they that will read may have delight, and 
 that they that are desirous to commit to memory might have 
 ease, and that all into whose hands it comes might have 
 •profit y How concise and Horatian ! He then describes his 
 literary labours with no insensibility :— " To us that have 
 taken upon us this painful labour of abridging, it was not easy, 
 but a matter of sweat and watching ^ — And the writer em- 
 ploys an elegant illustration : " Even as it is no ease unto hini 
 that prepareth a banquet, and seeketh the benefit of others ; 
 yet for the pleasuring of many, we will undertake gladly this 
 great pain ; leaving to the author the exact handling of every 
 particular, and labouring to follow the rules of an abridg-
 
 400 Professors of Plagiarism and Obscurity. 
 
 menty He now embellishes his critical account with a 
 sublime metaphor to distinguish the original from the copier : 
 — " For as the master builder of a new house must care for 
 the whole building ; but he that undertaketh to set it out, 
 and paint it, must seek out fit things for the adorning there- 
 of ; even so I think it is with us. To stand upon every point, 
 and go over things at large, and to be curious in particulars, 
 belonging to the first author of the story ; but to use brevity, 
 and avoid onuch labouring of the work, is to be granted to him 
 that will make an Abridgment." 
 
 Quintilian has not a passage more elegantly composed, nor 
 more judiciously conceived. 
 
 PEOFESSORS OF PLAGIARISM AND OBSCURITY. 
 
 AilONa the most singular characters in literature mav be 
 ranked those who do not blush to profess publicly its most 
 dishonourable practices. The first vender of printed sermons 
 imitating manuscript, was, I think, Dr. Trusler. He to whom 
 the following anecdotes relate had superior ingenuity. Like 
 the famous orator, Henley, he formed a school of his own. The 
 present lecturer openly taught not to imitate the best authors, 
 but to steal from them ! 
 
 Richesource, a miserable declaimer, called himself " Mode- 
 rator of the Academy of Philosophical Orators." He taught 
 how a person destitute of literary talents might become emi- 
 nent for literature ; and published the principles of his art 
 under the title of " The Mask of Orators ; or the manner of 
 disgu^ising all kinds of composition ; briefs, sermons, pane- 
 gyrics, fmieral orations, dedications, speeches, letters, passages," 
 &c. I will give a notion of the work : — 
 
 The author very truly observes, that all who apply them- 
 selves to polite literature do not always find from their own 
 funds a sufficient supply to insure success. For such he labours ; 
 and teaches to gather, in the gardens of others, those fruits of 
 which their own sterile grounds ai-e destitute ; but so artfully 
 to gather, that the public shall not perceive their depreda- 
 tions. He dignifies this fine art by the title of PlagianTsm, 
 and thus explains it : — 
 
 " The Plagianism of orators is the art, or an ingenious and 
 easy mode, which some adroitly employ, to change, or dis- 
 guise, all sorts of speeches of their own composition, or that
 
 Professors of Plagiarism and Obscurity. 401 
 
 of other authors, for their pleasure or their utility ; in such a 
 manner that it becomes impossible, even for the author him- 
 self to recognise his own work, his own genius, and his own 
 style, so skilfully shall the whole be disguised." 
 
 Our professor proceeds to reveal the manner of managing 
 the whole economy of the piece which is to be copied or dis- 
 guised ; and which consists in giving a new order to the parts, 
 changing the phrases, the words, &c. An orator, for instance, 
 having said that a plenipotentiary should possess three quali- 
 ties, — probity, capacity, and courage ; the plagiarist, on the 
 contrary, may employ, courage, capacity, and probity. This 
 is only for a general rule, for it is too simple to practise fre- 
 quently. To render the part perfect we must make it more 
 complex, by changing the whole of the expressions. The 
 plagiarist in place of courage, will put force, constancy, or 
 vigour. Y or probity he may say religion, virtue, or sincerity. 
 Instead of capacity, he may substitute erudition, ability, or 
 science. Or he may disguise the whole by saying, that the 
 plenipotentiary should be firm, virtuous, and able. 
 
 The rest of this uncommon work is composed of passages 
 extracted from celebrated writers, which are turned into the 
 new manner of the plagiarist ; their beauties, however, are 
 never improved by their dress. Several celebrated writers 
 when young, particularly the famous Flechier, who 
 addressed verses to him, frequented the lectures of this pro- 
 fessor ! 
 
 Richesource became so zealous in this course of literature, 
 that he published a volume, entitled, " The Art of Writing 
 and Speaking ; or, a Method of composing all sorts of Letters, 
 and holding a polite Conversation." He concludes his pre- 
 face by advertising his readers, that authors who may be in 
 want of essays, sermons, letters of all kinds, written plead- 
 ings and verses, may be accommodated on application to him. 
 
 Our professor was extremely fond of copious title-pages, 
 which I suppose to be very attractive to certain readers ; for 
 it is a custom which the Richesources of the day fail not to 
 employ. Are there persons who value books by the length of 
 their titles, as formerly the ability of a physician was judged 
 by the dimensions of his wig ? • 
 
 To this article may be added an account of another sin- 
 gular school, where the professor taught obscurity in literary 
 composition ! 
 
 I do not believe that those who are unintelligible are very 
 
 VOL, I. D D
 
 4-02 Professors of Plagiarism and Obscurity. 
 
 intelligent. Quintilian has justly observed; that the obscurity 
 of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity. 
 However, as there is hardly a defect which does not find 
 partisans, the same author informs us of a rhetorician, who 
 was so great an admirer of obscurity, that he always ex- 
 hoi'ted his scholars to preserve it ; and made them correct, as 
 blemishes, those passages of their works which appeared to 
 him too intelligible. Quintilian adds, that the greatest 
 panegyric they could give to a composition in that school was 
 to declare, " I understand nothing of this piece." Lyco- 
 phron possessed this taste, and he protested that he would 
 hang himself if he found a person who should understand his 
 poem, called the " Prophecy of Cassandra." He succeeded 
 so well, that this piece has been the stumbling-block of all 
 the grammarians, scholiasts, and commentators ; and remains 
 inexplicable to the present day. Such works Charpentier 
 admirably compares to those subterraneous places, where the 
 air is so thick and suffocating, that it extinguishes all 
 torches. A most sophistical dilemma, on the subject of ob- 
 scurity, was made by Thomas Anglus, or White, an English 
 Catholic priest, the friend of Sir Kenelm Digby. This 
 learned man frequently wandered in the mazes of metaphy- 
 sical subtilties; and became perfectly unintelligible to his 
 readers. When accused of this obscurity, he replied, 
 " Either the learned understand me, or tliey do not. If they 
 understand me, and find me m an error, it is easy for them to 
 refute me ; if they do not understand me, it is very unrea- 
 sonable for them to exclaim against my doctrines." 
 
 This is saying all that the wit of man can suggest in 
 favour of obscurity ! Many, however, will agree with au 
 observation made by Gravina on the over-refinement of 
 modern composition, that " we do not think we have at- 
 tained genius, till others must possess as much themselves to 
 understand us." Fontenelle, in France, followed by Mari- 
 vaux, Thomas, and others, first introduced that subtilised 
 manner of writing, which tastes more natural and simple 
 reject ; one som'ce of such bitter complaints of obscuiity.
 
 403 
 
 LITERARY DUTCH. 
 
 Pere Bohoijks seriously asks if a German can he a bel 
 ESPRIT ? This concise query was answered by Kramer, in a 
 ponderous volume which bears for title, Vindicice nominis 
 Germardci. This mode of refutation does not prove that the 
 question was then so ridiculous as it was considered. The 
 Germans of the present day, although greatly sujjerior to 
 their ancestors, there are wlio opine are still distant I'rom the 
 acme of taste, which characterises the finished compositions 
 of the French and the English authors. Nations display 
 (jenius before they form taste. 
 
 It was the mode with English and French writers to dis- 
 honour the Germans with the epithets of heavy, dull, and 
 phlegmatic compilers, without taste, spirit, or genius ; 
 genuine descendants of the ancient Boeotians, 
 
 Crassoque sub seere nati. 
 
 Many imaginative and many philosophical performances have 
 lately shown that this censure has now become unjust; and 
 much more forcibly answers the sarcastic question of 
 Bohours than the thick quarto of Kramer. 
 
 Churchill finely says of genius that it is independent of 
 situation, 
 
 And may Hereafter even in Hollakd rise. 
 
 Vondel, whom, as Marchand observes, the Dutch regard as 
 their J^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, had a strange de- 
 fective taste ; the poet himself knew none of these originals, 
 but he wrote on patriotic subjects, the sure way to obtain 
 popularity ; many of his tragedies are also drawn from the 
 Scriptures ; all badly chosen and unhappily executed. In his 
 Deliverance of the Children of Israel, one of his principal 
 characters is the Divinity ! In his Jerusalem Destroyed we 
 are disgusted with a tedious oration by the angel Gabriel, 
 who proves theologically, and his proofs extend through nine 
 closely printed pages in quarto, that this destruction has been 
 predicted by the prophets . and, in the Lucifer of the same 
 author, the subject is grossly scandalised by this haughty 
 spirit becoming stupidly in love with Eve, and it is for her he 
 causes the rebellion of the evil angels, and the fall of our first 
 parents. Poor Vondel kept a hosier's shop, which he left to 
 
 dd2
 
 404 Literary Dutch. 
 
 the care of his wife, while he indulged his poetical genius. 
 His stocking-shop failed, and his poems produced him more 
 chagrin than glory; for in Holland, even a patriotic poet, if a 
 bankrupt, would, no doubt, be accounted by his fellow-citizens 
 as a madman. Vondel had no other master but his genius, 
 which, with his uncongenial situation, occasioned all his 
 errors. 
 
 Another Dutch poet is even less tolerable. Having written 
 a long rhapsody concerning Pyramus and Thisbe, he con- 
 cludes it by a ridiculous parallel between the death of these 
 unfortunate victims of love, and the passion of Jesus Christ. 
 He says : — 
 
 Om t'concluderem van onsen begrypt, 
 
 Dees Historie moraliserende, 
 
 Is in den verstande wel accorderende, 
 
 By der Passie van Christus gebenedyt. 
 
 And upon this, after having turned Pyramus into the Son of 
 God, and Thisbe into the Christian soul, he proceeds with a 
 number of comparisons ; the latter always more impertinent 
 than the former, 
 
 I believe it is well known that the actors on the Dutch 
 theatre are generally tradesmen, who quit their aprons at the 
 hour of public representation. This was the fact when I 
 was in Holland more than forty years ago. Their comedies 
 are offensive by the grossness of their buffooneries. One of 
 their comic incidents was a miller appearing in distress for 
 want of wind to turn his mill ; he had recourse to the novel 
 scheme of placing his back against it, and by certain imi- 
 tative sounds behind the scenes the mill is soon set a-goiug. 
 It is hard to rival such a depravity of taste. 
 
 I saw two of their most celebrated tragedies. The one 
 was G^^sbert Van Amstel, by Vondel ; that is Gysbrecht of 
 Amsterdam, a warrior, who in the civil wars preserved this 
 city by his heroism. It is a patriotic historical play, and 
 never fails to crowd the theatre towards Christmas, when it 
 is usually performed successively. One of the acts concludes 
 with the scene of a convent ; the sound of warlike instru- 
 ments is heard ; the abbey is stormed ; the nuns and fathers 
 are slaughtered ; with the aid of " blunderbuss and thunder," 
 every Dutchman appears sensible of the pathos of the poet. 
 But it does not here conclude. After this terrible slaughter, 
 the conquerors and the vanquished remain for ten minutes on 
 the stage, silent and motionless, in the attitudes in which the
 
 Productions of the Mind not seizable by Creditors. 405 
 
 groups happened to fall ! and this pantomimic pathos com- 
 mands loud bursts of applause.* 
 
 The other was the Ahasuerus of Schubart, or the Fall of 
 Haman. In the triumphal entry the Batavian Mordecai was 
 mounted on a genuine Flanders mare, that, fortunately, 
 quietly received her applause with a lumpish majesty resem- 
 bling her rider. I have seen an Enghsh ass once introduced 
 on our stage which did not act with this decorum. Our late 
 actors have frequently been beasts ; — a Dutch taste !t 
 
 Some few specimens of the best Dutch poetry which we 
 have had, yield no evidence in favour of the national poetical 
 taste. The Dutch poet Katz has a poem on the " Games of 
 Children," where all the games are moralised ; I suspect the 
 taste of the poet as well as his subject is puerile. When a 
 nation has produced no works above mediocrity, with them a 
 certain mediocrity is excellence, and their masterpieces, with 
 a people who have made a greater progress in refinement, can 
 never be accepted as the works of a master. 
 
 THE PRODUCTIONS OF THE MIND NOT SEIZABLE BY 
 
 CREDITORS. 
 
 When Crebillon, the French tragic poet, published his Cati- 
 line, it was attended with an honour to literature, which 
 though it is probably forgotten, for it was only registered, I 
 think, as the news of the day, it becomes one zealous in the 
 cause of literatm-e to preserve. I give the cii'cum stance, the 
 petition, and the decree. 
 
 At the time Catiline was given to the public, the creditors 
 
 * The Dutch are not, however, to be entirely blamed for repulsive 
 scenes on the stage. Shakspeare's Titus Andronicus, and many of the 
 dramas of our Elizabethan writers, exhibit cruelties very repulsive to 
 modern ideas. The French stage has occasionally exhibited in modern 
 times scenes that have been afterwards condemned by the censors ; and 
 in Italy the "people's theatre" occasionally panders to popular tastes by 
 execution scenes, where the criminal is merely taken off the stage ; the 
 blow struck on a wooden block, to give reality to the action ; and the execu- 
 tioner re-enters flourishing a bloody axe. 
 
 ")• Ned Shuter was the comedian who first introduced a donkey on the 
 stage. , Seated on the beast he delivered a prologue written on the occasion 
 of his benefit. Sometimes the donkey wore a great tie-wig. Animals edu- 
 cated to play certain parts are a later invention. Horses, dogs, and ele- 
 phants have been thus trained in the present century, and plays written 
 expressly to show their proficiency.
 
 406 Critics. 
 
 of the poet had the cruelty to attach the produce of this 
 piece, as well at the bookseller's, who had printed the 
 tragedy, as at the theatre where it was performed. The 
 poet, irritated at these proceedings, addressed a petition to 
 the king, in which he showed " that it was a thing yet un- 
 known, that it should be allowed to class amongst seizable 
 effects the productions of the human mind ; that if such a 
 practice was permitted, those who had consecrated their 
 vigils to the studies of literature, and who had made the 
 greatest efforts to render themselves, by this means, useful to 
 their country, would see themselves placed in the cruel pre- 
 dicament of not venturing to publish works, often precious 
 and interesting to the state ; that the greater part of those 
 who devote themselves to literature require for the first 
 wants of life those aids which they have a right to expect 
 from their labours ; and that it never has been suffered in 
 France to seize the fees of lawyers, and other persons of 
 liberal professions." 
 
 In answer to this petition, a decree immediately issued from 
 the King's council, commanding a replevy of the arrests and 
 seizures of which the petitioner complained. This honour- 
 able decree was dated 21st of May, 1749, and bore the fol- 
 lowing title ; — " Decree of the Council of his Majesty, in 
 favour of M. Crebillon, author of the tragedy of Catiline, 
 which declares that the productions of the mind are not 
 amongst seizable effects." 
 
 Louis XV. exhibits the noble example of bestowing a mark 
 of consideration to the remains of a man of letters. This 
 King not only testified his esteem of Crebillon by having his 
 works printed at the Louvre, but also by consecrating to his 
 glory a tomb of marble. 
 
 CRITICS. 
 
 Writers who have been unsuccessful in original composition 
 have their other productions immediately decried, whatever 
 merit they might once have been allowed to possess. Tet 
 this is very unjust ; an author who has given a wrong direc- 
 tion to his literary powers may perceive, at length, where he 
 can more securely point them. Experience is as excellent a 
 mistress in the school of literature as in the school of human 
 life. Blackm ore's epics are insufferable ; yet neither Addison
 
 Critics. 407 
 
 nor Johnson erred when they considered his philosophical 
 poem as a valuable composition. An indifferent poet may- 
 exert the art of criticism in a very high degree ; and if be 
 cannot himself produce an original work, he may yet be of 
 great service in regulating the happier genius of another. 
 This observation I shall illustrate by the characters of two 
 French critics ; the one is the Abbe d'Aubignac, and the 
 other Chapelain. 
 
 Boileau opens his Art of Poetry by a precept which 
 though it be common is always important ; this critical poet 
 declares, that " It is in vain a daring author thinks of at- 
 tainino- to the height of Parnassus if he does not feel the 
 secret influence of heaven, and if his natal star has not 
 formed him to be a poet." This observation he founded on 
 the character of our Abbe ; who had excellently written on 
 the economy of dramatic composition. His Pratique du 
 Theatre gained him an extensive reputation. When he pro- 
 duced a tragedy, the world expected a finished piece ; it was 
 acted, and reprobated. The author, however, did not acutely 
 feel its bad reception ; he everywhere boasted that he, of all 
 the dramatists, had most scrupulously observed the rules of 
 Aristotle. The Prince de Guemene, famous for his i^epartees, 
 sarcastically observed, "I do not quarrel with the Abbe 
 d'Aubignac for having so closely followed the precepts of 
 Aristotle ; but I cannot pardon the precepts of Aristotle, that 
 occasioned the Abbe d'Aubignac to write so wretched a 
 tragedy." 
 
 The Pratique du Theatre is not, however, to be despised, 
 because the Tragedy of its author is despicable. 
 
 Chapelain's unfortunate epic has rendered him notorious. 
 He had gained, and not undeservedly, great reputation for 
 his critical powers. After a retention of above thirty years, 
 his Pucelle appeared. He immediately became the butt of 
 every unfledged wit, and his former works were eternally con- 
 demned ; insomuch that when Camusat published, after the 
 death of our author, a little volume of extracts from his 
 manuscript letters, it is curious to observe the awkward 
 situation in which he finds himself. In his preface he seems 
 afraid that the very name of Chapelain will be sufficient to 
 repel the reader. 
 
 Camusat observes of Chapelain, that " he found flatterers, 
 who assured him his Pucelle ranked above the ^neid ; and 
 this Chapelain but feebly denied. However this may be, it
 
 408 Anecdotes of Censured Authors. 
 
 would be difficult to make the bad taste which reigns through- 
 out this poem agree with that sound and exact criticism with 
 which he decided on the works of others. So true is it, 
 that ^^re??? MS is very superior to a justness of mind which is 
 sufficient to judge and to advise others.' ' Chapelain was ordered 
 to draw up a critical list of the chief hving authors and men 
 of letters in France, for the king. It is extremely impartial, 
 and performed with an analytical skill of their literary cha- 
 racters which could not have been surpassed by an Aristotle 
 or a Boileau. 
 
 The talent of judging may exist separately from ihe power 
 of execution. An amateur may not be an artist, though an 
 artist should be an amateur ; and it is for this reason that 
 young authors are not to contemn the precepts of such critics 
 as even the Abbe d'Aubignac and Chapelain. It is to Walsh, 
 a miserable versifier, that Pope stands indebted for the hint 
 of our poetry then being deficient in correctness and polish ; 
 and it is from this fortunate hint that Pope derived his 
 poetical excellence. Dionysius Halicarnassensis has com- 
 posed a lifeless history ; yet, as Gibbon observes, how admir- 
 ably has he judged the masters, and defined the rules, of 
 historical composition ! Gravina, with great taste and spirit, 
 has written on poetry and poets, but he composed tragedies 
 which give him no title to be ranked among them. 
 
 ANECDOTES OF CENSURED AUTHORS. 
 
 It is an ingenious observation made by a journalist of 
 Trevoux, on perusing a criticism not ill written, which pre- 
 tended to detect several faults in the compositions of Bruyere, 
 that in ancient Eome the great men who triumphed amidst 
 the applauses of those who celebrated tlieir virtues, were at 
 the same time compelled to listen to those who reproached 
 them with their vices. This custom is not less necessary to 
 the republic of letters than it was formerly to the republic 
 of Rome. Without this it is probable that authors would 
 be intoxicated with success, and would then relax in their 
 accustomed vigour ; and the multitude who took them for 
 models would, for want of judgment, imitate their defects. 
 
 Sterne and Churchill were continually abusing the 
 Eeviewers, because they honestly told the one that obscenity 
 was not wit, and obscurity was not sense ; and the other that
 
 Anecdotes of Censured Authors. 409 
 
 dissonance in poetry did not excel harmony, and that his 
 rhymes were frequently prose lines of ten syllables cut into 
 verse. They applauded their happier efforts. Notwithstand- 
 ing all this, it is certain that so little discernment exists amono; 
 common writers and common readers, that the obscenity and 
 flippancy of Sterne, and the bald verse and prosaic poetry of 
 Churchill, were precisely the portion which they selected 
 for imitation. The blemishes of great men are not the less 
 blemishes, but they are, unfortunately, the easiest parts for 
 imitation . 
 
 Yet criticism may be too rigorous, and genius too sensible 
 to its fairest attacks. Sir John Marsham, having published 
 the first part of his " Chronologj^," suffered so mucli chagrin 
 at the endless controversies which it raised— and some of his 
 critics went so far as to affirm it was desisrned to be detri- 
 mental to revelation — that he burned the second part, which 
 was ready for the press. Pope was observed to writhe with 
 anguish in his chair on hearing mentioned the letter of Gibber, 
 with other temporary attacks ; and it is said of Montesquieu, 
 that he was so much affected by the criticisms, true and false, 
 which he daily experienced, that they contributed to hasten his 
 death. Ritson's extreme irritability closed in lunacy, while 
 ignorant Keviewers, in the shapes of assassins, were haunting 
 his death-bed. In the preface to his " Metrical Romances," 
 he describes himself as " brought to an end in ill health and 
 low spirits — certain to be insulted by a base and prostitute 
 gang of lurking assassins who stab in the dark, and whose 
 poisoned daggers he has already experienced." Scott, of 
 Amwell, never recovered from a ludicrous criticism, which 
 I discovered had been written by a physician who never 
 pretended to poetical taste. 
 
 Pelisson has recorded a literary anecdote, which forcibly 
 shows the danger of caustic criticism. A young man from a 
 remote province came to Paris with a play, which he consi- 
 dered as a masterpiece. M. L'Etoile was more than just in 
 his merciless criticism. He showed the youthful bard a thou- 
 sand glaring defects in his chef-d'oeuvre. The humbled 
 country author burnt his tragedy, returned home, took to his 
 chamber, and died of vexation and grief. Of all unfortunate 
 men, one of the unhappiest is a middling author endowed 
 with too lively a sensibility for criticism. Athenaeus, in his 
 tenth book, has given us a lively portrait of this melancholy 
 being. Anaxandrides appeared one day on horseback in the
 
 410 Anecdotes of Censured Authors. 
 
 public assembly at Athens, to recite a dithjrambic poem, of 
 which he read a portion. He was a man of fine stature, and 
 wore a purple robe edged with golden fringe. But his com- 
 plexion was saturnine and melancholy, which was the cause 
 that he never spared his own writings. Whenever he was 
 vanquished by a rival, he immediately gave his compositions 
 to the druggists to be cut into pieces to wrap their articles 
 in, without ever caring to revise his writings. It is owing to 
 this that he destroyed a number of pleasing compositions ; 
 age increased his sourness, and every day he became more 
 and more dissatisfied with the awards of his auditors. Hence 
 his " Tereus," because it failed to obtain the prize, has not 
 reached us, which, with other of his productions, deserved 
 l)reservation, though they had missed the crown awarded by 
 the public. 
 
 Batteux having been chosen by the French government for 
 the compilation of elementary books for the Military Scliool, 
 is said to have felt their unl'avourable reception so acutely, 
 that he became a prey to excessive grief. The lamentable 
 death of Dr. Hawkesworth was occasioned by a similar cir- 
 cumstance. Government had consigned to his care the com- 
 pilation of the voyages that pass under his name : how he 
 succeeded is well known. He felt the public reception so 
 sensibly, that he preferred the oblivion of death to the mor- 
 tifying recollections of life.* 
 
 On this interesting subject Fontenelle, in his " Eloge sur 
 Newton," has made the following observation : — " Newton 
 was more desirous of remaining unknown than of having the 
 calm of life disturbed by those literary storms which genius 
 and science attract about those who rise to eminence." In 
 one of his letters we learn that his " Treatise on Optics" 
 being ready for the press, several premature objections which 
 appeared made him abandon its publication. " I should 
 reproach myself," he said, " for my imprudence, if I were to 
 lose a thing so real as my ease to run after a shadow." But 
 this shadow he did not miss : it did not cost him the ease he 
 so much loved, and it had for him as much reality as ease 
 itself. I refer to Bayle, in his curious article, " Hipponax," 
 note r. To these instances we may add the fate of the Abbe 
 
 * The doctor was paid 6000?. to prepare the narrative of the Voyages 
 of Captain Cook from the rough notes. He indulged in much pruriency of 
 description, and occasional remarks savouring of infidelity. They were 
 loudly and generally condemned, and he died soon afterwards.
 
 Anecdotes of Censured Authors. 411 
 
 Cassagne, a man of learning, and not destitute of talents. 
 He was intended for one of the preachers at coui't ; but he 
 had hardly made himself known in the pulpit, when he was 
 struck by the lightning of Boileau's muse. He felt so acutely 
 the caustic verses, that they rendered him almost incapable 
 of literary exertion ; in the prime of life he became melan- 
 choly, and shortly afterwards died insane. A modern painter, 
 it is known, never recovered from the biting ridicule of a 
 popular, but malignant wit. Cummyns, a celebrated quaker, 
 confessed he died of an anonymous letter in a public 
 paper, which, said he, "fastened on my heart, and threw 
 me into this slow fever." Eacine, who died of his extreme 
 sensibility to a royal rebuke, confessed that the pain which 
 one severe criticism inflicted outweighed all the applause 
 he could receive. The feathered arrow of an epigram has 
 sometimes been wet with the heart's blood of its victim. 
 Fortune has been lost, reputation destroyed, and every 
 charity of life extinguished, by the inhumanity of incon- 
 siderate wit. 
 
 Literary history, even of our own days, records the fate of 
 several who may be said to have died of Criticism* But 
 there is more sense and infinite humour in the mode which 
 Phaidrus adopted to answer the cavillers of his age. When 
 he first published his Fables, the taste for conciseness and 
 simplicity were so much on the decline, that they were both 
 objected to him as faults. He used his critics as they de- 
 served. To those who objected against the conciseness of his 
 style, he tells a long tedious story (Lib. iii. Fab. 10, ver. 59), 
 and treats those who condemned the simplicity of his style 
 with a run of bombast verses, that have a great many noisy 
 elevated words in them, without any sense at the bottom — 
 this in Lib. iv. Fab. 6. 
 
 * Keats is the most melancholy instance. The effect of the severe 
 criticism in the Quarterly Review upon his writings, is said by Shelley to 
 have ' ' appeared like madness, and he was with difficulty prevented from 
 suicide." He never recovered its baneful effect ; and when he died in 
 Rome, desired his epitaph might be, "Here lies one whose name was writ 
 in water." The tombstone in the Pi-otestant cemetery is nameless, and 
 simply records that " A young English poet" lies there.
 
 413 
 
 VIRGINITY. 
 
 The writings of the Fathers once formed the studies of the 
 learned. These labours abound with that subtilty of argu- 
 ment which will repay the industry of the inquisitive, and 
 the antiquary may turn them over for pictures of the man- 
 ners of the age. A favourite subject with Saint Ambrose 
 was that of Virginity, on which he has several works ; and 
 perhaps he wished to revive the order of the vestals of ancient 
 Home, which afterwards produced the institution of Nuns. 
 From his " Treatise on Virgins," written in the fourth cen- 
 tury, we learn the lively impressions his exhortations had 
 made on the minds and hearts of girls, not less in the most 
 distant provinces, than in the neighbovirhood of Milan, where 
 he resided. The Virgins of Bologna, amounting only, it 
 appears, to the number of twenty, performed all kinds of 
 needlework, not merely to gain their livelihood, but also to 
 be enabled to perform acts of liberality, and exerted their 
 industry to allure other girls to join the holy profession of 
 Virginity. He exhorts daughters, in spite of their parents, 
 and even their lovers, to consecrate themselves. " I do not 
 blame marriage," he says, " I only show the advantages of 
 
 ViKGINlTY." 
 
 He composed this book in so florid a style, that he con- 
 sidered it required some apology. A Religious of the Bene- 
 dictines published a translation in 1(589. 
 
 So sensible was St. Ambrose of the rarity of the profession 
 he would establish, that he thus combats his adversaries : 
 " They complain that human nature will be exhausted ; but 
 I ask, who has ever sought to marry without finding women 
 enough from amongst whom he might choose ? What mur- 
 der, or what war, has ever been occasioned for a virgin ? It 
 is one of the consequences of marriage to kill the adidterer, 
 and to war with the ravisher." 
 
 He wrote another treatise On tlie perpetual Virginity of 
 the Mother of God. He attacks Bonosius on this subject, 
 and defends her virginity, which was indeed greatly suspected 
 by Bonosius, who, however, incurred by this bold suspicion 
 the anathema of Heresy. A third treatise was entitled Ex- 
 hortation to Virginity ; a fourth, On the Fate of a Virgin, is 
 more curious. He relates the misfortunes of one Susannah, 
 who was by no means a companion for her namesake ; for
 
 A Glance into the French Academy. 413 
 
 having made a vow of virginity, and taken the veil, she after- 
 wards endeavoured to conceal her shame, but the precaution 
 only tended to render her more culpable. Her behaviour, 
 indeed, had long afforded ample food for the sarcasms of the 
 Jews and Pagans. Saint Ambrose compelled her to perform 
 public penance, and after having declaimed on her double 
 crime, gave her hopes of pardon, if, like " Sceur Jeanne," this 
 early nun would sincerely repent : to complete her chastise- 
 ment, he ordered her every day to recite the fiftieth psalm. 
 
 A GLANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY. 
 
 In the republic of letters the establishment of an academy 
 has been a favourite project ; yet perhaps it is little more 
 than an Utopian scheme. The united efforts of men of letters 
 in Academies have produced little. It would seem that no 
 man likes to bestow his great labours on a small community, 
 for whose members he himself does not feel, probably, the 
 most flattering partiality. The French Academy made a, 
 splendid appearance in Europe ; yet when this society pub- 
 lished their Dictionary, that of Furetiere's became a formid- 
 able rival; and Johnson did as much as the /brify themselves. 
 Voltaire confesses that the great characters of the literary 
 republic were formed without the aid of academies. — " For 
 what then," he asks, " are they necessary ? — To preserve and 
 nourish the fire which great geniuses have kindled." By 
 observing the Junto at their meetings we may form some 
 opinion of the indolent manner in which they trifled away 
 their time. We are fortunately enabled to do this, by a 
 letter in which Patru describes, in a very amusing manner, 
 the visit which Christina of Sweden took a sudden fancy to 
 pay to the Academy. 
 
 The Queen of Sweden suddenly resolved to visit the French 
 Academy, and gave so short a notice of her design, that it 
 was impossible to inform the majority of the members of her 
 intention. About four o'clock fiiteen or sixteen academicians 
 were assembled. M. Gombaut, who had never forgiven her 
 majesty, because she did not relish his verses, thought proper 
 to show his resentment by quitting the assembly. 
 
 She was received in a spacious hall. In the middle was a 
 table covered with rich blue velvet, ornamented with a broad 
 border of gold and silver. At its head was placed an arm-
 
 414 A Glance into the French Academy. 
 
 chair of black velvet embroidered with gold, and round the 
 table were placed chairs with tapestry backs. The chancellor 
 had forgotten to hang in the hall the portrait of the queen, 
 which she had presented to the Academy, and which was 
 considered as a great omission. About five, a footman be- 
 longing to the queen inquired if the company were assembled. 
 Soon alter, a servant of the king informed the chancellor that 
 the queen was at the end of the street ; and immediately her 
 carriage drew up in the court-yard. The chancellor, ibllowed 
 by the rest of the members, went to receive her as she stepped 
 out of her chariot ; but the ci'owd was so great, that few of 
 them could reach her majesty. Accompanied by the chan- 
 cellor, she passed through the first hall, followed by one of 
 her ladies, the captain of her guards, and one or two of her 
 suite. 
 
 When she entered the Academy she approached the fire, 
 and spoke in a low voice to the chancellor. She then asked 
 why M. Menage was not there ? and when she was told that 
 he did not belong to the Academy, she asked why he did 
 not ? She was answered, that, however he might merit the 
 honour, he had rendered himself unworthy of it by several 
 disputes he had had with its members. She then inquired 
 aside of the chancellor whether the academicians were to sit 
 or stand before her ? On this the chancellor consulted with 
 a member, who observed that in the time of Ronsard, there 
 was held an assembly of men of letters before Chai-les IX. 
 several times, and that they were alwaj's seated. The 
 queen conversed with M. Bourdelot ; and suddenly turning 
 to Madame de Bregis, told her that she believed she must 
 not be present at the assembly ; but it was agreed that this 
 lady deserved the honour. As the queen was talking with a 
 member she abruptly quitted him, as was her custom, and in 
 her quick way sat down in the arm-chair ; and at the same 
 time the members seated themselves. The queen observing 
 that they did not, out of respect to her, approach the 
 table, desired them to come near ; and they accordingly 
 approached it. 
 
 During these ceremonious preparations several officers of 
 state had entered the hall, and stood behind the acade- 
 micians. The chancellor sat at the queen's left hand bv 
 the fire-side ; and at the right was placed M. de la Chambre, 
 the director ; then Boisrobert, Patru, Pelisson, Cotin, the 
 Abbe Tallemant, and others. M. de Mezeray sat at the bot-
 
 A Glance into the French Academy. 415 
 
 torn of the table facing the queen, with an inkstand, paper, 
 and the portfoUo of the company lying before him : lie occu- 
 pied the place of the secretary. When they were all seated 
 the director rose, and the academicians followed him, all but 
 the chancellor, who remained in his seat. The director made 
 his complimentary address in a low voice, his body was quite 
 bent, and no person but the queen and the chancellor could 
 hear him. She received his address with great satisfaction. 
 
 All compliments concluded, they returned to their seats. 
 The director then told the queen that he had composed a 
 treatise on Pain, to add to his character of the Passions, and 
 if it was agreeable to her majesty, he would read the first 
 chapter. — " Very willingly," she answered. Having read it, 
 he said to her majesty, that he would read no more lest he 
 should fatigue her. " Not at all," she replied, '" for 1 sup- 
 pose what follows is like what I have heard." 
 
 M. de Mezeray observed that M. Cotin had some verses, 
 which her majesty would doubtless find beautiful, and if it 
 was agreeable they should be read. M. Cotin read them : 
 they were versions of two passages from Lucretius : the one 
 in which he attacks a Providence, and the otlier, where he 
 gives the origin of the world according to the Epicurean 
 system : to these he added twenty lines of his own, in which 
 he maintained the existence of a Providence. This done, an 
 abbe rose, and, without being desired or ordered, read two 
 sonnets, which by courtesy were allowed to be tolerable. It 
 is remarkable that both the poets read their vei'ses standing, 
 while the rest read tlieir compositions seated. 
 
 After these readings, the director informed the queen that 
 the ordinary exercise of the company was to labour on the 
 dictionary ; and that if her majesty should not find it dis- 
 agreeable, they would read a cahier. " Very willingly," she 
 answered. M. de Mezeray then read what related to the 
 word Jeu ; Game. Amongst other proverbial expressions 
 was this: Game of Princes, ivhich only jileases the player, 
 to express a malicious violence committed by one in power. 
 At this the queen laughed heartily ; and they continued 
 reading all that was fairly written. This lasted about an 
 hour, when the queen observing that nothing more remained, 
 arose, made a bow to the company, and returned in the 
 manner she entered. 
 
 Furetiere, who was himself an academician, has described 
 the miserable manner in which time was consumed at their
 
 416 A Glance into the French Academy. 
 
 assemblies. I confess he was a satirist, and had quarrelled 
 with the Academy ; there must have been, notwithstanding, 
 sufficient resemblance for the following picture, however it 
 may be overcharged. He has been blamed for thus exposing 
 the Eleusinian mysteries of literature to the uninitiated. 
 
 " He who is most clamorous, is he whom they suppose has 
 most reason. They all have the art of making long orations 
 upon a trifle. The second repeats like an echo what the first 
 said ; but generally three or four speak together. When 
 there is a bench of five or six members, one reads, another 
 decides, two converse, one sleeps, and another amuses himself 
 with reading some dictionary which happens to lie before 
 him. When a second member is to deliver his opinion, they 
 are obliged to read again the article, which at the first 
 perusal he had been too much engaged to hear. This is a 
 happy manner of finishing their work. They can hardly get 
 over two lines without long digressions ; without some one 
 telling a pleasant story, or the news of the day ; or talking 
 of affairs of state, and reforming the government." 
 
 That the French Academy were generally frivolously em- 
 ])loyed appears also from an epistle to Balzac, by Boisrobert, 
 the amusing companion of Cardinal Eichelieu. " Every one 
 separately," says he, " promises great things ; when they meet 
 they do nothing. They have been sice years employed on the 
 letter F ; and I should be happy if I were certain of living 
 till they got through G." 
 
 The following anecdote concerns W\q forty arm-cliairs of the 
 academicians.* Those cardinals who were academicians for a 
 long time had not attended the meetings of the Academy, be- 
 cause they thought that arm-chairs were indispensable to 
 their dignity, and the Academy had then only common chairs. 
 These cardinals were desirous of being present at the election 
 of M. Monnoie, that they might give him a distinguished 
 mark of their esteem. "The king," says D'Alembert, " to 
 satisfy at once the delicacy of their friendship, and that of 
 their cardinalship, and to preserve at the same time that 
 academical equality, of which this enlightened monarch 
 (Louis XIV.) well knew the advantage, sent to the Academy 
 
 * A very clever satire Las been concocted in an imaginary history of 
 "a forty-first chair" of the Academy which has been occupied by the 
 great men of literature who have not been recognised members of the official 
 body, and whose "existence there has been unaccountably forgotten" in the 
 annals of its members.
 
 Poetical and Grammatical Deaths. ^V7 
 
 forty arm-chairs for the forty academicians, the same chairs 
 which we now occupy ; and the motive to which we owe 
 them is sufficient to render the memory of Louis XIV. pre- 
 cious to the repubHc of letters, to whom it owes so many 
 more important obhgations !" 
 
 POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS. 
 
 It will appear by the following anecdotes, that some men 
 may be said to have died poetically and even grammatically , 
 
 There must be some attraction existing in poetry which is 
 not merely fictitious, for often have its genuine votaries felt 
 all its powers on the most trying occasions. They have dis- 
 played the energy of their mind by composing or repeating 
 verses, even with death on their lips. 
 
 The Emperor Adrian, dying, made that celebrated address 
 to his soul, which is so happily translated by Pope. Lucan, 
 when he had his veins opened by order of Nero, expired re- 
 citing a passage from his Pharsalia, in which he had described 
 the wound of a dying soldier. Petronius did the same thing 
 on the same occasion. 
 
 Patris, a poet of Caen, perceiving himself expiring, com- 
 posed some verses which are justly admired. In this little 
 poem he relates a dream, in which he appeared to be placed 
 next to a beggar, when, having addressed him in the haughty 
 strain he would probably have emploj^ed on this side of the 
 grave, he receives the following reprimand : — 
 
 Ici tous sont egaux ; je ne te dois plus rien ; 
 Je suis sur mon fuiuier comme toi sur le tien. 
 
 Here all are equal ! now thy lot is mine ! 
 I on my dunghill, as thou art on thine. 
 
 Des Barreaux, it is said, wrote on his death-bed that well- 
 known sonnet which is translated in the " Spectator." 
 
 Margaret of Austria, when she was nearly perishing in a 
 storm at sea, composed her epitaph in verse. Had she pe- 
 rished, what would have become of the epitaph ? And if 
 she escaped, of what use was it ? She should rather have 
 said her prayers. The verses however have all the naivete of 
 the times. They are — 
 
 Cy gist Margot, la gente demoiselle, 
 Qu'eut deux maris, et si mourut pucelle. 
 
 Beneath this tomb is high-born Margaret laid, 
 Who had two husbands, and yet died a maid. 
 YOL. I. E E
 
 418 Poetical and Grammatical Deaths. 
 
 She was betrothed to Charles VIII. of France, who forsook 
 her ; and being next intended for the Spanish infant, in her 
 voyage to Spain, she wrote these lines in a storna. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Serment was surnamed the philosopher. 
 She was celebrated for her knowledge and taste in polite lite- 
 rature. She died of a cancer in her breast, and suffered ber 
 misfortune with exemplary patience. She expired in finishing 
 these verses, which she addressed to Death : — 
 
 Nectare clausa suo, 
 Dignum tantorum pretium tulit ilia laborum. 
 
 It was after Cervantes had received extreme unction that 
 he wrote the dedication of his Persiles. 
 
 Roscommon, at the moment he expired, with an energy of 
 voice that expi-essed the most fervent devotion, uttered two 
 lines of his own version of "Dies Irse !" Waller, in his last 
 moments, repeated some lines from Virgil ; and Chaucer seems 
 to have taken his farewell of all human vanities by a moral 
 ode, entitled, " A balade made by Geffrey Chaucyer upon his 
 dethe-bedde lying in his grete anguysse."* 
 
 Cornelius de Witt fell an innocent victim to popular pre- 
 judice. His death is thus noticed by Hume : — " This man 
 who had bravely served his country in war, and who had been 
 invested with the highest dignities, was delivered into the 
 hands of the executioner, and torn in pieces by the most 
 ' inhuman torments. Amidst the severe agonies which he 
 endured he frequently repeated an ode of Horace, which con- 
 tained sentiments suited to his deplorable condition." It 
 was the third ode of the third book which this illustrious 
 philosopher and statesman then repeated. 
 
 Metastasio, after receiving the sacrament, a very short 
 time before his last moments, broke out with all the enthu- 
 siasm of poetry and religion in these stanzas : — 
 
 T' offro 11 tuo proprio Figlio, 
 Che gia d'amore in pegno, 
 Racchiuso in picciol segno 
 Si voile a noi donar. 
 
 * Barham, the author of the Ingoldshy Legends, wrote a similar death- 
 bed lay in imitation of the older poets. It is termed " As I laye a- 
 thinkynge." Bewick, the wood-engraver, was last employed upon, and 
 left unfinished at his death, a cut, the subject of which was "The old 
 Horse waiting for Death."
 
 Poetical and Grammatical Deaths. 419 
 
 A lui rivolgi il ciglio. 
 
 Guardo chi t' offro, e poi 
 Lasci, Signer, se vuoi, 
 Lascia di perdonar. 
 
 "I offer to tliee, Lord, thine own Son, who already has given the 
 pledge of love, enclosed in this thin emblem. Turn on him thine eyes : 
 ah ! behold whom I offer to thee, and then desist, Lord 1 if thou canst 
 desist from mercy." 
 
 " The muse that has attended my course," says the dying 
 Gleim in a letter to Klopstock, " still hovers round my steps 
 to the very verge of the grave." A collection of lyrical poems, 
 entitled " Last Hours," composed by old Gleim on his death- 
 bed, was intended to be published. The death of Klopstock 
 was one of the most poetical: in this poet's "Messiah," he 
 had made the death of Mary, the sister of Martha and 
 Lazarus, a picture of the death of the Just ; and on his own 
 death-bed he was heard repeating, with an expiring voice, his 
 own verses on Mary ; he was exhorting himself to die by the 
 accents of his own harp, the sublimities of his own muse ! 
 The same song of Mai-y was read at the public funeral of 
 Klopstock. 
 
 Chatelar, a French gentleman, beheaded in Scotland for 
 having loved the queen, and even for having attempted her 
 honour, Brantome says, would not have any other viaticum than 
 a poem of Ronsard. When he ascended the seaftbld he took the 
 hymns of this poet, and for his consolation read that on death, 
 which our old critic says is well adapted to conquer its fear. 
 
 When the Marquis of Montrosewas condemned by his judges 
 to have his limbs nailed to the gates of four cities, the brave 
 soldier said that " he was sorry he had not limbs sufficient to 
 be nailed to all the gates of the cities in Europe, as monu- 
 ments of his loyalty." As he proceeded to his execution, he 
 put this thought into verse. 
 
 Philip Strozzi, imprisoned by Cosmo the First, Great Duke 
 of Tuscany, was apprehensive of the danger to which he might 
 expose his friends who had joined in his conspiracy against 
 the duke, from the confessions which the rack might extort 
 from him. Having attempted every exertion for the liberty 
 of his country, he considered it as no crime therefore to die. 
 He resolved on suicide. With the point of the sword, with 
 which he killed himself, he cut out on the mantel-piece of 
 the chimney this verse of Virgil : — 
 
 Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor. 
 Else some avenger from our blood ! 
 
 E E 2
 
 420 Poetical and Grammatical Deaths. 
 
 I can never repeat without a strong emotion the following 
 stanzas, begun by Anch'e Chenier, in the dreadful period of 
 the French revolution. He was waiting for his turn to be 
 dragged to the guillotine, when he commenced this poem : — 
 
 Comme un dernier rayon,' comme un dernier zephyre 
 
 Anime la fin d'un beau jour; 
 Au pied de I'echafaud j'essaie encore ma lyre, 
 
 Peut-etre est ce bientot men tour ; 
 
 Peut-etre avant que I'heure en cercle promenee 
 
 Ait pose sur 1' email brillant, 
 Dans les soixante pas oil sa route est bornee 
 
 Son pied sonore et vigilant, 
 
 Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere 
 
 Here, at this pathetic line, was Andre Chenier summoned 
 to the guillotine ! Never was a more beautiful effusion of 
 grief interrupted by a more affecting incident ! 
 
 Several men of science have died in a scientific manner. 
 Haller, the poet, philosopher, and physician, beheld his end 
 approach with the utmost composure. He kept feeling his 
 pulse to the last moment, and when he found that life was 
 almost gone, he turned to his brother pliysician, observing, 
 " My friend, the artery ceases to beat," and almost instantly 
 expired. The same remarkable circumstance had occurred to 
 the great Harvey : he kept making observations on the state 
 of his pulse, when life was drawing to its close, "as if," says 
 Dr. Wilson, in the oration spoken a few days after the event, 
 " that he who had taught us the beginning of life might 
 himself, at his departing from it, become acquainted with 
 those of death." 
 
 De Lagny, who was intended by his friends for the study 
 of the law, having fallen on an Euclid, found it so congenial 
 to his dispositions, that he devoted himself to mathematics. 
 In his last moments, when he retained no further recollection 
 of the friends who surrounded his bed, one of them, perhaps 
 to make a philosophical experiment, thought proper to ask 
 him the square of twelve : our dying mathematician instantly, 
 and perhaps without knowing that he answered, replied, "One 
 hundred and forty-four." 
 
 The following anecdotes are of a different complexion, and 
 may excite a smile. 
 
 Pere Bohom's was a French grammarian, who had been 
 justly accused of paying too scrupulous an attention to the
 
 Sca7'ron. 421 
 
 minutise of letters. He was more solicitous of his words than 
 his thoughts. It is said, that when he was dying, he called 
 out to his friends (a correct grammarian to the last), " Je 
 VAS ouje VAis moiirir ; Vuii on V autre se dif !" 
 
 When Malherbe was dying, he reprimanded his nurse for 
 making use of a solecism in her language ; and when his con- 
 fessor represented to him the felicities of a future state in 
 low and trite expressions, the dying critic interrupted him: — 
 "Hold your tongue," he said; "your wretched style only 
 makes me out of conceit with them !" 
 
 The favourite studies and amusements of the learned La 
 Mothe le Vayer consisted in accounts of the most distant 
 countries. He gave a striking proof of the influence of this 
 master-passion, when death hung upon his lips. Bernier, the 
 celebrated traveller, entering and drawing the curtains of his 
 bed to take his eternal fai-ewell, the dying man turning to 
 him, with a faint voice inquired, " Well, my friend, what news 
 from the Great Mogul ?" 
 
 SCARRON. 
 
 ScAEEON, as a hurlesque poet, but no other comparison 
 exists, had his merit, hut is now little read ; for the uni- 
 formity of the bui-lesque style is as intolerable as the uni- 
 formity of the serious. From various sources we may collect 
 some uncommon anecdotes, although he was a mere author. 
 
 His father, a counsellor, having married a second wife, the 
 lively Scarron became the object of her hatred. 
 
 He studied, and travelled, and took the clerical tonsure ; 
 but discovered dispositions more suitable to the pleasures of 
 his age than to the gravity of his profession. He formed an 
 acquaintance with the wits of the times ; and in the carnival 
 of 1638 committed a youthful extravagance, for which his 
 remaining days formed a continual punishment. He dis- 
 guised himself as a savage ; the singularity of a naked man 
 attracted crowds. After having been hunted by the mob, he 
 was forced to escape from his pursuers ; and concealed himself 
 in a marsh, A freezing cold seized him, and threw him, at 
 the age of twenty-seven years, into a kind of palsy ; a cruel 
 disorder which tormented him all his life. " It was thus," 
 he says, " that pleasure deprived me suddenly of legs which
 
 422 Scarron. 
 
 had danced with elegance, and of hands, which could manage 
 the pencil and the lute." 
 
 Goujet, without stating this anecdote, describes his disorder 
 as an acrid humour, distilling itself on his nerves, and baMng 
 the skill of his physicians ; the sciatica, rheumatism, in a 
 word, a complication of maladies attacked him, sometimes 
 successively, sometimes together, and made of our poor Abbe 
 a sad spectacle. He thus describes himself in one of his 
 letters ; and who could be in better humour ? 
 
 " I have lived to thirty : if I reach forty, I shall only add 
 many miseries to those which I have endured these last eight 
 or nine years. My person was well made, though short ; my 
 disorder has shortened it still more by a foot. My head is a 
 little broad for my shape ; my face is full enough for my body 
 to appear very meagre ; I have hair enough to render a wig 
 unnecessary ; I have got many white hairs, in spite of the 
 proverb. My teeth, formerly square pearls, are now of the 
 colour of wood, and will soon be of slate. My legs and 
 thighs first formed an obtuse angle, afterwards an equilateral 
 angle, and at length, an acute one. My thighs and body form 
 another ; and my head, always dropping on my breast, makes 
 me not ill represent a Z. I have got my arms shortened as 
 well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. In a 
 word, I am an abridgment of human miseries," 
 
 He had the free use of nothing but his tongue and bis 
 hands ; and he wrote on a portfolio placed on his knees. 
 
 Balzac said of Scarron, that he had gone further in insen- 
 sibility than the Stoics, who were satisfied in appearing in- 
 sensible to pain ; but Scarron was gay, and amused all the 
 world with his sufferings. 
 
 He pourtrays himself thus humorously in his address to 
 the queen : — 
 
 Je ne regard plus qu'en bas, 
 Je suis torticolis, j'ai la tete penchante; 
 Ma mine devient si plaisante 
 Que quand on en riroit, je ne m'en plaindrois pas. 
 
 "lean only see under me; I am wry-necked ; my head hangs down; 
 my appearance is so droll, that if people laugh, I shall not complain." 
 
 He says elsewhere, 
 
 Panni les torticolis 
 
 Je passe pour un des plus jolis. 
 
 " Among your wry-necked people I pass for one of the handsomest."
 
 Scarron. 423 
 
 After having suffered this distortion of shape, and these 
 acute pains for four years, he quitted his usual residence, the 
 quarter du Marais, for the baths of th(; Fauxbourg Saint 
 Germain. He took leave of his friends, by addressing some 
 verses to them, entitled, Adieu aux Marais ; in which he 
 describes several celebrated persons. When he was brought 
 into the street in a chair, the pleasure of seeing himself there 
 once more overcame the pains which the motion occasioned, 
 and he has celebrated the transport by an ode, which has for 
 title, "The Way from le Marais to the Fauxbourg Saint 
 Germain." 
 
 The baths he tried had no effect on his miserable disorder. 
 But a new affliction was added to the catalogue of his griefs. 
 
 His father, who had hitherto contributed to his necessities, 
 having joined a party against Cardinal Richelieu, was exiled. 
 This affair was rendered still more unfortunate by his 
 mother-in-law with her children at Paris, in the absence of 
 her husband, appropriating the property of the family to her 
 own use. 
 
 Hitherto Scarron had had no connexion with Cardinal 
 Richelieu. Tlie conduct of his father had even rendered his 
 name disagreeable to the minister, who was by no means 
 prone to forgiveness. Scarron, however, when he thought 
 his passion moderated, ventured to present a petition, which 
 is considered by the critics as one of his happiest produc- 
 tions. Richelieu permitted it to be read to him, and ac- 
 knowledged that it afforded him much pleasure, and that it 
 was pleasantli/ dated. This pleasant date is thus given by 
 Scarron : — 
 
 Fait h Paris dernier jour d'Octobre, 
 Par moi, Scarron, qui malgre moi suis sobre, 
 L'an que I'on prit le fameux Perpignan, 
 Et, sans canon, la ville de Sedan. 
 
 At Paris done, tlie last day of October, 
 By me, Scarron, who wanting wine am sober, 
 The year they took fam'd Perpignan, 
 And, without cannon-ball, Sedan. 
 
 This was flattering the minister adroitly in two points very 
 agreeable to him. The poet augured well of the dispositions 
 of the cardinal, and lost no time to return to the charge, by 
 addressing an ode to him, to which he gave the title of 
 Thanks, as if he had already received the favours which he 
 hoped he should receive ! Thus Ronsard dedicated to Cathe-
 
 424 Scarron. 
 
 rine of Medicis, wlio was prodigal of promises, his hymn to 
 Promise. But all was lost for Scarron by the death of the 
 Cardinal. 
 
 When Scarron' s father died, he brought his mother-in-law 
 into court ; and, to complete his misfortunes, lost his suit. 
 The cases which he drew up for the occasion were so 
 extremely burlesque, that the world could not easily conceive 
 how a man could amuse himself so pleasantly on a subject on 
 which his existence depended. 
 
 The successor of Richelieu, the Cardinal Mazarin, was in- 
 sensible to his applications. He did nothing for him, 
 although the poet dedicated to him his Typhon, a burlesque 
 poem, in which the author describes the wars of the giants 
 with the gods. Our bard was so irritated at this neglect, 
 that he suppressed a sonnet he had written in his favour, and 
 aimed at him several satirical bullets. Scarron, however, 
 consoled himself for this kind of disgrace with those select 
 friends who were not inconstant in their visits to him. The 
 Bishop of Mans also, solicited by a friend, gave him a living 
 in his diocese. When Scarron had taken possession of it, he 
 began his Homan Comiqiie, ill translated into English by 
 Comical Romance. He made friends by his dedications. 
 Such resources were indeed necessary, for he not only lived 
 well, but had made his house an asylum for his two sisters, 
 who there found refuge from an unfeeling step-mother. 
 
 It was about this time that the beautiful and accomplished 
 Mademoiselle d'Aubigne, afterwards so well known by the 
 name of Madame de Maintenon, she who was to be one day 
 the mistress, if not the queen of France, formed with Scarron 
 the most romantic connexion. She united herself in mar- 
 riage with one whom she well knew could only be a lover. 
 It was indeed amidst that Hterary society she formed her 
 taste and embellished with her presence his little residence, 
 where assembled the most polished courtiers and some of the 
 finest geniuses of Paris of that famous party, called La 
 Fronde, formed against Mazarin. Such was the influence 
 this marriage had over Scarron, that after this period his 
 writings became more correct and more agreeable than those 
 which he had ])reviously composed. Scarron, on his side, 
 gave a proof of his attachment to Madame de Maintenon ; 
 for by marrying her he lost his living of Mans. But though 
 without wealth, he was accustomed to say that " his wife 
 •and he would not live uncomfortable by the produce of his
 
 Scarron. 425 
 
 estate and the Ifarquisafe of Qtmi-ety Thus he called the 
 revenue which his compositions produced, and Quinet was 
 his bookseller. 
 
 Scarron addressed one of his dedications to his dog, to 
 ridicule those writers who dedicate their works indiscri- 
 minately, though no author has been more liberal of dedica- 
 tions than himself; but, as he confessed, he made dedication 
 a kind of business. When he was low in cash he always 
 dedicated to some lord, whom he praised as warmly as his 
 dog, but whom probably he did not esteem as much. 
 
 When Scarron was visited, previous to general conversation 
 his friends were taxed with a perusal of what he had written 
 since he saw them last. Segrais and a friend calling on him, 
 " Take a chair," said our author, " and let me try on you my 
 ' Eoman Comique.' " He took his manuscript, read several 
 pages, and when he observed that they laughed, he said, 
 " Good, this goes well ; my book can't fail of success, since it 
 obliges such able persons as yourselves to laugh ;" and then 
 remained silent to receive their compliments. He used to 
 call this tryiny on his romance, as a tailor tries his coat. He 
 was agreeable and diverting in all thuigs, even in his com- 
 plaints and passions. Whatever he conceived he immediately 
 too freely expressed ; but his amiable lady corrected him of 
 this in three months after marriage. 
 
 He petitioned the queen, in his droll manner, to be per- 
 mitted the honour of being her Sick-Man hy right of office. 
 These verses form a part of his address to her majesty : 
 
 Scarron, par la grace de Dieu, 
 Malatle indigne de la reine, 
 Homme n'ayaut ni feu, ni lieu, 
 Jfais biea du mal et de la peine; 
 Hopital allant et venant, 
 Des jambes d'autrui cheminant, 
 Des siennes n'ayant plus I'usage, 
 Souifrant beaucoup, dormant bien pen, 
 Et pourtant faisajit par courage 
 Bouue mine et fort mauvais jeu. 
 
 "ScaiTon, by the gi-ace of God, the unworthy Sick-Man of the Queen ; a 
 man without a house, though a moving hospital of disorders; walking only 
 with other people's legs, with great suflerings, but little sleep ; and yet, 
 in spite of all, very courageously showing a hearty countenance, though 
 indeed he plays a losing game." 
 
 She smiled, granted the title, and, what was better, added 
 a small pension, which losing, by lampooning the minister
 
 436 Scarron. 
 
 Mazarln, Fouquet generously granted him a more consider- 
 able one. 
 
 The termination of the miseries of this facetious genius 
 was now approaching. To one of his friends, who was 
 taking leave of him for some time, Scarron said, " I shall 
 soon die ; the only regret I have in dying is not to be enabled 
 to leave some property to my wife, who is possessed of infi- 
 nite merit, and whom I have every reason imaginable to 
 admire and to praise." 
 
 One day he was seized with so violent a fit of the hic- 
 cough, that his friends now considered his prediction would 
 soon be verified. When it was over, " If ever I recover," 
 cried Scarron, " I will write a bitter satire against the hic- 
 cough." The satire, however, was never written, for he died 
 soon after. A little before his death, when he observed his 
 relations and domestics weeping and groaning, he was not 
 much affected, but humorously told them, " My children, you 
 wUl never weep for me so much as I have made you laugh." 
 A few moments before he died, he said, that " he never 
 thought that it was so easy a matter to laugh at the ap- 
 proach of death." 
 
 The burlesque compositions of Scarron are now neglected 
 by the French. This species of writing was much in vogue 
 till attacked by the critical Boileau, who annihilated such 
 puny writers as D'Assoucy and Dulot, with their stupid ad- 
 mirers. It is said he spared Scarron because his merit, 
 though it appeared but at intervals, was uncommon. Yet so 
 much were burlesque vei'ses the fashion after Scarrori's works, 
 that the booksellers would not publish poems, but with the 
 word "Burlesque" in the title-page. In IBiQ appeared a 
 poem, which shocked the pious, entitled, " The Passion of 
 our Lord, in burlesque Verses.^^ 
 
 Swift, in his dotage, appears to have been gratified by such 
 puerilities as Scarron frequently wrote. An ode which Swift 
 calls "A Lilliputian Ode," consisting of verses of three 
 syllables, probably originated in a long epistle in verses of 
 three syllables, which Scarron addressed to Sarrazin. It is 
 pleasant, and the following lines will serve as a specimen : — 
 
 E_pttre a M. Sarrazin. 
 
 Sarrazin 
 Mon voisin, 
 Cher ami, 
 Qu'a demi,
 
 Scarron. 427 
 
 Je ne voi, 
 
 Dont ma foi 
 J'ai depit 
 Un petit. 
 N'es-tu pas 
 Barrabas, 
 Busiris, 
 Plialaris, 
 Ganelon, 
 Le Felon ? 
 
 He describes himself- 
 
 Fn pauTret, 
 Tres maigret, 
 An col tors, 
 Dont le corps 
 Tout tortu, 
 Tout bossu, 
 Suranne, 
 Becharne, 
 Est reduit, 
 Jour et nuit, 
 A sonfl'rir 
 Sans guerir 
 Des toui'mens 
 Vehemens. 
 
 He complains of Sarrazin's not visiting him, threatens to 
 reduce him into powder if he comes not quickly ; and con- 
 cludes, 
 
 Mais ponrtant, 
 
 Repentant 
 
 Si tu viens 
 
 Et tu tieus 
 
 Seulement 
 
 Un moment 
 
 Avec nous, 
 
 Mon courroux 
 
 Finira, 
 
 Et Cetera. 
 
 The Roman Comique of oiu' author abounds with plea- 
 santry, with wit and character. His " Virgile Travestie " it 
 is impossible to read long : this we likewise feel in " Cotton's 
 Virgil travestied," which has notwithstanding considerable 
 merit. Buffoonery after a certain time exhausts our patience. 
 It is the chaste actor only who can keep the attention awake 
 for a length of time. It is said that Scarron intended to 
 write a tragedy ; this perhaps would not have been the least 
 facetious of his burlesques.
 
 428 
 
 PETER CORNEILLR 
 
 Exact Racine and Corneille's noble fire 
 
 Show'J us that France had something to admire. 
 
 Pope. 
 
 The great Corneille having finished his studies, devoted him- 
 self to the bar ; but this was not the stage on wliich his 
 abiUties were to be displaj^ed. He followed the occupation of 
 a lawyer for some time, without taste and without success. 
 A trifiing circumstance discovered to the world and to him- 
 self a different genius. A young man who was in love with a 
 girl of the same town, having solicited him to be his compa- 
 nion in one of those secret visits which he paid to the lady, 
 it happened that the stranger pleased infinitely more than 
 his introducer. The pleasure arising from this adventure 
 excited in Corneille a talent which had hitherto been un- 
 known to him, and he attempted, as if it were by inspiration, 
 dramatic poetry. On this little subject he wrote his comedy 
 of Melite, in 1625. At that moment the French drama was 
 at a low ebb : the most favourable ideas were formed of our 
 juvenile poet, and comedy, it was expected, would now 
 reach its perfection. After the tumult of approbation had 
 ceased, the critics thought that Melite was too simple and 
 barren of incident. Roused by this criticism, our poet wrote 
 his Clitandre, and in that piece has scattered incidents and 
 adventures with such a licentious profusion, that the critics 
 say he wrote it rather to expose the public taste than to 
 accommodate himself to it. In this piece the persons combat 
 on the theatre; there are murders and assassinations; heroines 
 fight ; officers appear in search of murderers, and women are 
 disguised as men. There is matter sufficient for a romance 
 of ten volumes ; " And yet," says a French critic, " nothing 
 can be more cold and tiresome." He afterwards indulged his 
 natural genius in various other performances ; but began to 
 display more forcibly his tragic powers in Medea. A comedy 
 which he afterwards wrote was a very indiffijrent composition. 
 He regained his full lustre in the famous Cid, a tragedy, of 
 which he preserved in his closet translations in all the 
 European languages, except the Sclavonian and the Turkish. 
 He pursued his poetical career with uncommon splendour in 
 the Horaces, Cinna, and at length in Polyeucte ; which pro- 
 ductions, the French critics say, can never be surpassed.
 
 Peter Corneille. 429 
 
 At length the tragedy of " Pertharite" appeared, and 
 proved unsuccessful. This so rauch disgusted our veteran 
 bard, that, like Ben Jonson, he could not conceal his chagrin 
 in the preface. There the poet tells us that he renounces 
 the theatre for ever! and indeed this eternity lasted for 
 several years ! 
 
 Disgusted by the fate of his unfortunate tragedy, he 
 directed his poetical pursuits to a different species of compo- 
 sition. He now finished his translation in verse, of the 
 "Imitation of Jesus Christ," by Thomas a Kempis. This 
 work, perhaps from the singularity of its dramatic author 
 becoming a religious writer, was attended with astonishing 
 success. Yet Fontenelle did not find in this translation the 
 prevailing charm of the original, which consists in that sim- 
 plicity and naivete which are lost in the pomp of versification 
 so natural to Corneille. "This book," he continues, "the 
 finest that ever proceeded from the hand of man (since the 
 gospel does not come from man) would not go so direct to 
 the heart, and would not seize on it with such force, if it had 
 not a natural and tender air, to which even that negligence 
 which prevails in the style greatly contributes." Voltaire 
 appears to confirm the opinion of our critic, in respect to the 
 translation : " It is reported that Corneille's translation of 
 the Imitation of Jesus Christ has been printed thirty-two 
 times ; it is as difficult to believe this as it is to read the 
 hook once /" 
 
 Corneille seems not to have been ignorant of the truth of 
 this criticism. In his dedication to the Pope, he says, " The 
 translation which I have chosen, by the simplicity of its 
 style, precludes all the rich ornaments of poetry, and far 
 from increasing my reputation, must be considered rather as 
 a sacrifice made to the glory of the Sovereign Author of all, 
 which I may have acquired by my poetical productions." 
 This is an excellent elucidation of the truth of that precept 
 of Johnson which respects religious poetry ; but of which the 
 author of "Calvary" seemed not to have been sensible. The 
 merit of religious compositions appears, like this " Imitation 
 of Jesus Christ," to consist in a simplicity inimical to the 
 higher poetical embellishments ; these are too human ! 
 
 AVhen Racine, the son, published a long poem on " Grace," 
 taken in its holy sense, a most unhappy subject at least for 
 poetry ; it was said that he had written on Grace without 
 grace.
 
 430 Peter Corneille. 
 
 During the space of six years Corneille rigorously kept his 
 promise of not writing for the theatre. At length, over- 
 powered hy the persuasions of his friends, and probahly by 
 his own inclinations, he once more directed his studies to the 
 drama. He recommenced in 1659, and finished in 1675. 
 During this time he wrote ten new pieces, and published a 
 variety of little religious poems, which, although they do not 
 attract the attention of posterity, were then read with delight, 
 and probably preferred to the finest tragedies by the good 
 catholics of the day. 
 
 In 1675 he terminated his career. In the last year of 
 his life his mind became so enfeebled as to be incapable of 
 thinking, and he died in extreme poverty. It is true that 
 his uncommon genius had been amply rewarded ; but amongst 
 his talents that of preserving the favours of fortune he had 
 not acquired. 
 
 Fontenelle, his nephew, presents a minute and interesting 
 description of this great man. Vigneul Marville says, that 
 when he saw Corneille he had the appearance of a country 
 tradesman, and he could not conceive how a man of so rustic 
 an appearance could put into the mouths of his Romans such 
 heroic sentiments. Corneille was sufficiently large and full 
 in his person ; his air simple and vulgar ; always negligent ; 
 and very little solicitous of pleasing by his exterior. His 
 face had something agreeable, his nose large, his mouth not 
 unhandsome, his eyes full of fire, his physiognomy lively, 
 with strong features, well adapted to be transmitted to pos- 
 terity on a medal or bust. His pronunciation was not very 
 distinct : and he read his verses with force, but without 
 grace. 
 
 He was acquainted with polite literature, with history, and 
 politics ; but he generally knew them best as they related 
 to the stage. For other knowledge he had neither leisure, 
 curiosity, nor much esteem. He spoke little, even on sub- 
 jects which he perfectly understood. He did not embelhsh 
 what he said, and to discover the great Corneille it became 
 necessary to read him. 
 
 He was of a melancholy disposition, had something blunt 
 in his manner, and sometimes he appeared rude ; but in fact 
 he was no disagreeable companion, and made a good father 
 and husband. He was tender, and his soul was very suscep- 
 tible of friendship. His constitution was very favourable to 
 love, but never to debauchery, and rarely to violent attach-
 
 Peter Corneille. 431 
 
 ment. His soul was fierce and independent : it could never 
 be managed, for it would never bend. This, indeed, rendered 
 him very capable of portraying Roman virtue, but incapable 
 of improving his fortune. Nothing equalled his incapacity 
 for business but his aversion : the slightest troubles of this 
 kind occasioned him alarm and terror. He was never satiated 
 with praise, although he was continually receiving it ; but if 
 he was sensible to fame, he was far removed from vanity. 
 
 What Fontenelle observes of Corneille's love of fame is 
 strongly proved by our great poet himself, in an epistle to a 
 friend, in which we find the following remarkable description 
 of himself; an instance that what the world calls vanity, at 
 least interests in a great genius. 
 
 Nous nous aimons un peu, c'est notre foible a tous; 
 
 Le prix que nous valons que le S9ait mieux que nous ? 
 
 Et puis la mode en est, et la cour rautorise, 
 
 Nous parlons de nous-memes avec toute franchise, 
 
 La fausse humilite ne met plus en credit. 
 
 Je s^ais ce que je vaux, et crois ce qu'on m'en dit. 
 
 Pour me faire admirer je ne fais point de ligue ; 
 
 J'ai peu de voix pour moi, mais je les ai sans brigue; 
 
 Et mon ambition, pour faire plus de bruit 
 
 Ne les va point queter de reduit en reduit. 
 
 Mon travail sans appui monte sur le theiXtre, 
 
 Chacun en liberte I'y blame ou idoMtre ; 
 
 La, sans que mes amis prechent leurs sentimens, 
 
 J'arrache quelquefois leurs applaudissemens ; 
 
 La, content du succes que le merite donne, 
 
 Par d'illustres avis je n'eblouis personne ; 
 
 Je satisfais ensemble et peuple et courtisans ; 
 
 Et mes vers en tous lieux sont mes seuls partisans ; 
 
 Par leur seule beaute ma plume est estimee ; 
 
 Je ne dois qu'a moi seul toute ma renommee; 
 
 Et pense toutefois n' avoir point de rival, 
 
 A qui je fasse tort, en le traitant d'^gaL 
 
 I give his sentiments in English verse. 
 
 Self-love prevails too much in every state ; 
 
 "Who, like ourselves, our secret worth can rate ? 
 
 Since 'tis a fashion authorised at court, 
 
 Frankly our merits we ourselves report. 
 
 A proud humility will not deceive; 
 
 I know my worth ; what others say, believe. 
 
 To be admired I form no petty league ; 
 
 Few are my friends, but gain'd without intrigue. 
 
 My bold ambition, destitute of grace. 
 
 Scorns still to beg their votes from place to place. 
 
 On the fair stage my scenic toils I raise, 
 
 While each is free to censure or to praise ;
 
 432 Poets. 
 
 And tliere, unaided by inferior arts, 
 
 I snatch the applause that rushes from their hearts. 
 
 Content by Merit still to win the crown, 
 
 With no illustrious names I cheat the town. 
 
 The galleries thunder, and the pit commends ; 
 
 My verses, everywhere, my only friends ! 
 
 'Tis from their charms alone my praise I claim ; 
 
 'Tis to myself alone, I owe my fame; 
 
 And know no rival whom I fear to meet, 
 
 Or injure, when I grant an equal seat. 
 
 Voltaire censures Corneille for making his heroes say con- 
 tinually they are great men. But in drawing the character of 
 a hero he draws his own. All his heroes are only so many 
 Corneilles in different situations. 
 
 Thomas Corneille attempted the same career as his brother ; 
 perhaps his name was unfortunate, for it naturally excited a 
 comparison which could not be favourable to him. Ga9on, the 
 Dennis of his day, wrote the following smart impromptu under 
 his portrait : — 
 
 Voyant le portrait de Corneille, 
 Gardez-vous de crier merveille ; 
 Et dans vos transports n'allez pas 
 Prendre ici Pierre pour Thomas. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 In all ages there has existed an anti-poetical party. This fac- 
 tion consists of those frigid intellects incapable of that glowing 
 expansion so necessary to feel the charms of an art, which only 
 addresses itself to the imagination ; or of writers who, having 
 proved unsuccessful in their court to the muses, revenge 
 themselves by reviling them ; and also of those religious minds 
 who consider the ardent effusions of poetry as dangerous to 
 the morals and peace of society. 
 
 Plato, amongst the ancients, is the model of those moderns 
 who profess themselves to be anti-poetical. 
 
 This writer, in his ideal republic, characterises a man who 
 occupies himself with composing verses as a very dangerous 
 member of society, from the inflammatory tendency of his 
 writings. It is by arguing from its abuse, that he decries this 
 enchanting talent. At the same time it is to be recollected, 
 that no head was more finely organised for the visions of the 
 muse than Plato's : he was a true poet, and had addicted him-
 
 Poets. 433 
 
 self in his prime of life to the cultivation of the art, but 
 perceiving that he could not surpass his inimitable original, 
 Homer, he employed this insidious manner of depreciating his 
 works. In the Phsedon he describes the feelings of a genuine 
 Poet. To become such, he says, it vi'iW. never be sufficient to 
 be guided by the rules of art, unless we also feel the ecstasies 
 of that y^ror, almost divine, which in this kind of composition 
 is the most palpable and least ambiguous character of a true 
 inspiration. Cold minds, ever tranquil and ever in possession 
 of themselves, are incapable of producing exalted poetry ; 
 their verses must always be feeble, diffusive, and leave no 
 impression ; the verses of those who are endowed with a strong 
 and lively imagination, and who, like Homer's ])ersonificatioa 
 of Discord, have their heads incessantly in the skies, and their 
 feet on the earth, will agitate you, burn in your heai't, and 
 drag you along with them ; breaking like an impetuous 
 torrent, and swelling your breast with that enthusiasm with 
 which they are themselves possessed. 
 
 Such is the character of a poet in a poetical age ! — The 
 tuneful race have many corporate bodies of mechanics; Ponty- 
 pool manufacturers, inlayers, burnishers, gilders, and filers ! 
 
 Men of taste are sometimes disgusted in turning over the 
 works of the anti-poetical, by meeting with gross railleries 
 and false judgments concerning poetry and poets. Locke has 
 expressed a marked contempt of poets ; but we see what 
 ideas he formed of poetry by his warm panegyric of one of 
 Blackmore's epics ! and besides he was himself a most un- 
 happy poet ! Seldea, a scholar of profound erudition, has 
 given us his opinion concerning poets. " It is ridiculous for 
 a lo7'd to print verses ; he may make them to please himself. 
 If a man in a private chamber twirls his band-strings, or plays 
 with a rush to please himself, it is well enough ; but if he 
 should go into Fleet-street, and sit upon a stall and twirl a 
 hand-string, or play with a rush, then all the boys in the 
 street would laugh at him." — As if " the sublime and the 
 beautiful " can endure a comparison with the twirling of a 
 hand-string or playing with a rush ! — A poet, related to an 
 illustrious family, and who did not write unpoetically, enter- 
 tained a far different notion concerning poets. So persuaded 
 was he that to be a true poet required an elevated mind, that 
 it was a maxim with him that no writer could be an excellent 
 poet who was not descended from a noble family. This 
 opinion is as absurd as that of Selden : — but when one party 
 
 VOL. I. F P
 
 434. Poets. 
 
 will not grant enough, the other always assumes too much. 
 The great Pascal, whose extraordinary genius was discovered 
 in the sciences, knew httle of the nature of poetical beauty. 
 He said " Poetry has no settled object." This was the decision 
 of a geometrician, not of a poet. " Why should he speak of 
 what he did not understand ? " asked the lively Voltaire. 
 Poetry is not an object which comes under the cognizance of 
 philosophy or wit. 
 
 Longuerue had profound erudition; but he decided on poetry 
 in the same manner as tliose learned men. Nothing so 
 strongly characterises such literary men as the foUowiug 
 observations in the Longueruana, p. 170. 
 
 " There are two hooks on Homer, which I prefer to Homer 
 himself. The first is Antiquitates Homericce of Feithius, 
 where he has extracted everything relative to the usages and 
 customs of the Greeks ; the other is, Homeri Gnomologia per 
 Duportum, printed at Cambridge. In these two books is 
 found everything valuable in Homer, without being obliged 
 to get througli his Contes a dormir clebout !" Thus men of 
 science decide on men of taste ! There are who study Homer 
 and Virgil as the blind travel thi'ough a fine countr}--, merely 
 to get to the end of their journey. It was observed at the 
 death of Longuerue that in his immense library not a volume 
 of poetry was to be found. He had formerly read poetry, for 
 indeed he had read everything. Racine tells us, that when 
 young he paid him a visit; the conversation turned on poets ; 
 our enulit reviewed them all with the most ineffable con- 
 tempt of the poetical talent, from which he said we learn 
 nothing. He seemed a little charitable towards Ariosto. — 
 "As for that madman" said he, "he has amused me some- 
 times." Dacier, a poetical pedant after all, was asked who 
 was the greater poet. Homer or Virgil ? he honestly an- 
 swered, " Homer by a thousand years !" 
 
 But it is mortifying to find among the anti-poetical even 
 poets themselves ! Malherbe, the first poet in France in his 
 day, appears little to have esteemed the art. He used to say 
 that '• a good poet was not more useful to the state than a 
 skilful player of nine-pins !" Malherbe wrote with costive 
 labour. When a poem was shown to him which had been 
 highly commended, he sarcastically asked if it would " lower 
 the ju'ice of bread F" In these instances he maliciously con- 
 founded the useful with the agreeahle arts. Be it remembei'ed, 
 that Malherbe had a cynical heart, cold and unfeeling ; his
 
 Poets. 435 
 
 character may be traced in his poetry ; labour and correct- 
 ness, without one ray of enthusiasm. 
 
 Le Clerc was a schohar not entirely unworth}' to be ranked 
 amongst the Lockes. the Seklens, and the Longuerues ; and 
 his opinions are as just concerning poets. In the Parha- 
 siana he has written a treatise on poets in a very unpoetical 
 manner. I shall notice his coarse railleries relating to what 
 he calls " the personal defects of poets." In vol. i. p. 33, he 
 says, " In the Scaligerana we have Joseph Scaliger's opinion 
 concerning poets. ' There never was a man who was a poet, 
 or addicted to the study of poetry, but his heart was puffed up 
 with his greatness.' — This is very true. The poetical enthu- 
 siasm persuades those gentlemen that they have something in 
 them superior to others, because they employ a language 
 peculiar to themselves. When the poetic furor seizes them, 
 its traces frequently remain on their faces, which make con- 
 noisseurs say with Horace, 
 
 Aut insanit homo, aut versus facit. 
 
 There goes a madman or a bard ! 
 
 Their thoughtful air and melancholy gait make them appear 
 insane ; for, accustomed to versify while they walli, and to bite 
 their nails in apparent agonies, their steps are measured and 
 slow, and they look as if they were reflecting on something 
 of consequence, although they are only thinking, as the phrase 
 runs, of nothing !" I have only transcribed the above 
 description of our jocular scholar, with an intention of describ- 
 ing those exterior marks of that tine enthusiasm, of which the 
 poet is peculiarly susceptible, and which have exposed many 
 an elevated genius to the ridicule of the vulgar. 
 
 I find this admirably defended by Charpentier : " Men may 
 ridicule as much as they please those gesticulations and con- 
 tortions which poets are apt to make in the act of composing; 
 it is certain, however, that they greatly assist in putting the 
 imagination into motion. These kinds of agitation do not 
 always show a mind which labours with its sterility ; they 
 frequently proceed from a mind which excites and animates 
 itself. Quintilian has nobly compared them to those lash- 
 ings of his tail which a lion gives himself when he is prepar- 
 ing to combat. Persius, when he would give us an idea of a 
 cold and languishing oration, says that its author did not 
 strike his desk nor bite his nails. 
 
 Nee pluteum CKdit, uec demorsos sapit ungues. 
 
 r r 2
 
 436 Poets. 
 
 These exterior marks of enthusiasm may be illustrated by 
 the following curious anecdote : — Domenichino, the painter, 
 was accustomed to act the characters of all the figures he 
 would represent on his canvas, and to speak aloud whatever 
 the passion he meant to describe could prompt. Painting the 
 martyrdom of St. Andrew, Carraeci one day caught him in a 
 violent passion, speaking in a terrible and menacing tone. 
 He was at that moment employed on a soldier who was 
 threatening the saint. When this fit of enthusiastic abstrac- 
 tion had passed, Carraeci ran and embraced him, acknowledg- 
 ing that Domenichino had been that day his master ; and 
 that he had learnt from him the true manner to succeed in 
 catching the expression — that great pride of the painter's art. 
 
 Thus different are the sentiments of the inteUigent and the 
 unintelligent on the same subject. A Carraeci embraced 
 a kindred genius for what a Le Clerc or a Selden would have 
 ridiculed. 
 
 Poets, I confess, frequently indulge reveries, which, 
 though they offer no charms to their friends, are too delicious 
 to forego. In the ideal world, peopled with all its fairy 
 inhabitants, and ever open to their contemplation, they travel 
 with an unwearied foot. Crebillon, the celebrated tragic 
 poet, was enamoured of solitude, that he might there 
 indulge, without interruption, in those fine romances with 
 which his imagination teemed. One day when he was in a 
 deep reverie, a friend entered hastily : " Don't disturb me," 
 cried the poet; "I am enjoying a moment of happiness : I 
 am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish another 
 who is an idiot." 
 
 Amongst the anti-poetical may be placed the father of the 
 great monarch of Prussia. George the Second was not more 
 the avowed enemy of the muses. Frederic would not suffer 
 the prince to read verses ; and when he was desirous of study, 
 or of the conversation of literary men, he was obliged to do it 
 secretly. Every poet was odious to his majesty. One day, 
 having observed some lines written on one of the doors of the 
 palace, he asked a courtier their signification. They were 
 explained to him ; they were Latin verses composed by 
 Wachter, a man of letters, then resident at Berlin. The king 
 immediately sent for the bard, who came warm with the hope 
 of receiving a reward for his ingenuity. He was astonished, 
 however, to hear the king, in a violent passion, accost him, 
 " I order you immediately to quit this city and my kingdom."
 
 Poets. 437 
 
 Wacbter took refuge in Hanovei". As little indeed was this 
 anti-poetical monarch a friend to philosophers. Two or three 
 such kings might perhaps renovate the ancient barbarism of 
 Europe. Barratier, the celebrated child, was presented to his 
 majesty of Prussia as a prodigy of erudition ; the king, to 
 mortify our ingenious youth, coldly asked him, " If he knew 
 the law ?" The learned boy was constrained to acknowledge 
 that he knew nothing of the law. " Go," was the reply of 
 this Augustus, " go, and study it before you give yourself out 
 as a scholar." Poor Barratier renounced for this pursuit his 
 other studies, and persevered with such ardour that he became 
 an excellent lawyer at the end of fifteen months ; but his 
 exertions cost him at the same time his life ! 
 
 Every monarch, however, has not proved so destitute of 
 poetic sensibilit}^ as this Prussian. Francis I. gave repeated 
 marks of his attachment to the favourites of the muses, by 
 composing several occasional sonnets, which are dedicated to 
 their eulogy. Andrelin, a French poet, enjo3'ed the happy 
 fate of Oppian, to whom the emperor Caracalla counted as 
 many pieces of gold as there were verses in one of his poems ; 
 and with great propriety they have been called " golden 
 verses." Andrelin, when he recited his poem on the Conquest 
 of Naples before Charles VIII. , received a sack of silver coin, 
 which with difficulty he carried home. Charles IX., says 
 Brantome, loved verses, and recompensed poets, not indeed 
 immediately, but gradually, that they might always be 
 stimulated to excel. He used to say, that poets resembled 
 race-horses, that must be fed but not fattened, for then they 
 were good for nothing. Marot was so much esteemed by 
 kings, that he was called the poet of princes, and the prince 
 of poets. 
 
 In the early state of poetry what honours were paid to 
 its votaries ! Ronsard, the French Chaucer, was tlie first 
 who carried away the prize at the Floral Games. This meed 
 of poetic honoui- was an eglantine composed of silver. The 
 reward did not appear equal to the merit of the work and 
 the reputation of the poet ; and on this occasion the city of 
 Toulouse had a Minerva of solid silver struck, of considerable 
 value. This image was sent to Ronsard, accompanied by a 
 decree, in which he was declared, by way of eminence, " The 
 French Poet." 
 
 It is a curious anecdote to add, that when, at a later 
 period, a similar Minerva was adjudged to Maynard for his
 
 438 Poets. 
 
 verses, the Capltouls, of Toulouse, who were the executors 
 of the Floral gifts, to their shame, out of covetousness, never 
 obe3'-ecl the decision of the poetical judges. This circumstance 
 is noticed hy Maynard in an epigi-am, which hears this title : 
 On a Minerva of silve7', promised hut not given. 
 
 The anecdote of Margaret of Scotland, wife of the Dauphin 
 of France, and Alain the poet, is generally known. Who is 
 not charmed with that fine expression of her poetical sensi- 
 bility ? The person of Alain was repulsive, but his poetry 
 had attracted her affections. Passintr throuofh one of the 
 halls of the palace, she saw him sleeping on a bench ; she 
 approached and kissed him. Some of her attendants could 
 not conceal their astonishment that she should press with 
 her lips those of a man so frightfully ugly. The amiable 
 princess answered, smiling, " I did not kiss the man, but the 
 mouth which has uttered so many fine things." 
 
 The great Colbert paid a pretty compliment to Boileau 
 and Racine. This minister, at his villa, was enjoying the 
 conversation of our two poets, when the arrival of a prelate 
 was announced : turning quickly to the servant, he said, " Let 
 him be shown everything except myself!" 
 
 To such attentions from this great ministei', Boileau alludes 
 in these verses : — 
 
 Plus d'un grand m'aima jusques a la tendresse ; 
 Et ma vue a Colbert inspiroit I'allegresse. 
 
 Several pious persons have considered it as highly meritable 
 to abstain from the reading of poetry ! A good father, in 
 his account of the last hours of Madame Racine, the lady of 
 the celebrated tragic poet, pays high compliments to her 
 religious disposition, which, he says, was so austere, that she 
 would not allow herself to read poetry, as she considered it 
 to be a dangerous pleasure ; and he highly commends her for 
 never having read the tragedies of her husband ! Arnauld, 
 though so intimately connected with Racine for many years, 
 had not read his compositions. When at length he was per- 
 suaded to read Phaedra, he declared himself to be delighted, 
 but complained that the poet had set a dangerous example, in 
 making the manly Hippolytus dwindle to an effeminate lover. 
 As a critic, Arnauld was right ; but Racine had his nation to 
 please. Such persons entertain notions of poetry similar to 
 that of an ancient father, who calls poetry the wine of Satan ; 
 or to that of the religious and austere Nicole, who was so
 
 Poets. 439 
 
 ably answered by "Racine : he said, that dramatic poets were 
 public poisoners, not of bodies, but of souls. 
 
 Poets, it is acknowledged, have foil)les peculiar to them- 
 selves. Tliey sometimes act in the daily commerce of life as 
 if every one was concerned in the success of their pi-oduc- 
 tions. Poets are too frequently merely poets. Segrais has 
 recorded that the following maxim of Rochefoucault was 
 occasioned by retleeting on the characters of Boileau and 
 Racine. "It displays," he writes, "a great poverty of mind 
 to have only one kind of genius." On this Segrais observes, 
 and Segrais knew them intimately, that their conversation 
 only turned on poetry ; take them from that, and they knew 
 nothing. It was thus with one Du Perrier, a good poet, but 
 very poor. When he was introduced to Pelisson, who wished 
 to be serviceable to him, the minister said, " In what can he 
 be employed ? He is only occupied by his verses." 
 
 All these complaints are not unfounded ; yet, perhaps, it 
 is unjust to expect from an excelling artist all the petty 
 accomplishments of frivolous persons, who have studied no 
 art but that of practising on the weaknesses of their friends. 
 The enthusiastic votary, who devotes his days and niglits to 
 meditations on his favourite art, will rarely be found that 
 despicable thing, a mere man of the world. Du Bos has 
 justly observed, that men of genius, born for a particular pro- 
 fession, appear inferior to others when they apply themselves 
 to other occupations. That absence of mind which arises 
 from their continued attention to their ideas, renders them 
 awkward in their manners. Such defects are even a proof of 
 the activity of genius. 
 
 It is a common foible with poets to read their verses to 
 friends. Segrais has ingeniously observed, to use his own 
 words, " When young I used to please myself in reciting my 
 verses indifferently to all persons ; but I perceived when 
 Scarron, who was my intimate friend, used to take his port- 
 folio and read his verses to me, although they were good, I 
 frequently became weary. I then reflected, that those to 
 whom I read mine, and who, for the greater part, had no 
 taste for poetry, must experience the same disagreeable sensa- 
 tion. I resolved for the future to read my verses only to 
 those who entreated me, and to read but a few at a time. 
 We flatter ourselves too much ; we conclude that what 
 pleases us must please others. We will have persons in- 
 dulgent to us, and frequently we will have no indulgence
 
 440 Poets. 
 
 for those who are in want of it." An excellent hint for 
 young poets, and for those old ones who carry odes and 
 elegies in their pockets, to inflict the pains of the torture on 
 their friends. 
 
 The affection which a poet feels for his verses has been 
 frequently extravagant. Bayle, ridiculing that parental ten- 
 derness which writers evince for their poetical compositions, 
 tells us, that many having written epitaphs on friends whom 
 they believed on report to have died, could not determine to 
 keep them in their closet, but suffered them to appear in the 
 lifetime of those very friends whose death they celebrated. 
 In another place he says, such is their infatuation for their 
 productions, that they prefer giving to the pubHc their pane- 
 gyrics of persons whom afterwards they satirized, rather than 
 suppress the verses which contain those panegyrics. We have 
 many examples of this in the poems, and even in the epis- 
 tolary correspondence of modern wi'iters. It is customary 
 with most authors, when they quarrel with a person after 
 the first edition of their work, to cancel his eulogies in the 
 next. But poets and letter-writers frequently do not do 
 this ; because they are so charmed with the happy turn of 
 their expressions, and other elegancies of composition, that 
 the}'' perfer the praise which they may acquire for their style 
 to the censure which may follow from their inconsistency. 
 
 After having given a hint to young poets, I shall offer one 
 to veterans. It is a common defect with them that they do 
 not knoAv when to quit the muses in their advanced age. 
 Baj'le says, " Poets and orators should be mindful to retire 
 from their occupations, which so peculiarly require the fire of 
 imagination ; yet it is but too common to see them in their 
 career, even in the decline of life. It seems as if they would 
 condemn the public to drink even the lees of their nectar." 
 Afer and Daurat were both poets who had acquired consi- 
 derable reputation, but which they overturned when they 
 persisted to write in their old age without vigour and without 
 
 fancy. 
 
 What crowds of these impenitently bold. 
 
 In sounds and jingling syllables grown old, 
 
 They run on poets, in a raging vein, 
 
 E'en to the dregs and squeezings of the brain : 
 
 Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense, 
 
 And rhyme with all the rage of impotence. 
 
 Pope. 
 
 It is probable he had Wycherley in his eye when he wrote
 
 Poets. 441 
 
 this. The veteran bard latterly scribbled much indifferent 
 verse ; and Pope had freely given his opinion, by which he 
 lost his friendship ! 
 
 It is still worse wdien aged poets devote their exhausted 
 talents to divine poems, as did Waller ; and Milton in his 
 second epic. Such poems, observes Voltaire, are frequently 
 entitled '''' sacred poems f and sacred they are, for no one 
 touches them. From a soil so arid what can be expected 
 but insipid fruits ? Corneille told Chevreau several years be- 
 fore his death, that he had taken leave of the theatre, for he 
 had lost his poetical powers with his teeth. 
 
 Poets have sometimes displayed an obliquity of taste in. 
 their female favourites. As if conscious of the power of en- 
 nobling others, some have selected them from the lowest 
 classes, whom, having elevated into divinities, they have ad- 
 dressed in the language of poetical devotion. The Chloe of 
 Prior, after all his raptures, was a plump barmaid. Ronsard 
 addressed many of his verses to Miss Cassandra, who followed 
 the same occupation : in one of his sonnets to her, he tills it 
 with a crowd of personages taken from the Iliad, which to the 
 honest girl must have all been extremely mysterious. CoUetet, 
 a French bard, married three of his servants. His last lady 
 was called la 'belle Climdine. Ashamed of such menial 
 alliances, he attempted to persuade the world that he had 
 married the tenth muse ; and for this purpose published verses 
 in her name. When he died, the vein of Claudine became 
 suddenly dry. She indeed published her " Adieux to the 
 Muses;" but it was soon discovered that all the verses of 
 this lady, including her "Adieux," were the compositions of 
 her husband. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, the ostensible mistresses of poets have 
 no existence ; and a slight occasion is sufficient to give birth 
 to one. Racan and Malherbe were one day conversing on 
 their amours ; that is, of selecting a lady who should be the 
 object of their verses. Racan named one, and Malherbe 
 another. It happening that both had the same name, 
 Catherine, they passed the whole afternoon in forming it into 
 an anagram. They found three : Artheniee, Eraeinthe, and 
 Charinte. The first was preferred, and many a fine ode was 
 written in praise of the beautiful Artheniee ! 
 
 Poets change their opinions of their own productions won- 
 derfully at different periods of life. Baron Haller was in his 
 youth warmly attached to poetic composition. His house
 
 443 Romances. 
 
 was on fire, and to rescue his poems he rushed through the 
 flames. He was so fortunate as to escape with his beloved 
 manuscripts in his hand. Ten years afterwards he condemned 
 to the flames those very poems which he had ventured his 
 life to preserve. 
 
 Satirists, if they escape the scourges of the law, have 
 reason to dread the cane of the satirised. Of this kind we 
 have many anecdotes on record ; but none more poignant 
 than the following: — Benserade was caned for lampooning 
 the Due d'Epernon. Some days afterwards he appeared at 
 court, but being still lame from the rough treatment he had 
 received, he was forced to support himself by a cane. A 
 wit, who knew what had passed, whispered the affair to the 
 queen. She, dissembling, asked him if he had the gout ? 
 " i^'es, madam," replied our lame satirist, "and therefore I 
 make use of a cane." " Not so," interrupted the malignant 
 Bautru, '• Benserade in this imitates those holy martyrs who 
 are alvvavs represented wirth the instrument which occasioned 
 their sufferings." 
 
 ROMANCES. 
 
 EoMAXCE has been elegantly defined as the offspring of 
 Fiction and Love. Men of learning have amused them- 
 selves with tracing the e^wcha of romances ; but the erudi- 
 tion is desperate which would fix on the inventor of the first 
 romance : for what originates in nature, who shall hope to 
 detect the shadowy outlines of its beginnings ? The Theagenes 
 and Chariclea of Heliodorus appeared in the fourth century ; 
 and this elegant prelate was tlie Grecian Fenelon. It has 
 been prettily said, that posterior romances seem to be the 
 children of the mari-iage of Theagenes and Chariclea. The 
 Eomance of '"The Grolden Ass," by Apuleius, which contains 
 the beautiful tale of " Cupid and Psyche," remains unrivalled ; 
 while the " Daphne and Chloe" of Longus, in the old version 
 of Amyot, is inexpressibly delicate, simple, and inartificial, 
 but sometimes offends us, for nature there " plays her virgin 
 fancies." 
 
 Beautiful as these compositions are, when the imagination 
 of the writer is sufficiently stored with accurate observations 
 on human nature, in their birth, like many of the fine arts, 
 the zealots of an ascetic religion opposed their progress.
 
 Romances. 443 
 
 However Heliodorus rnuy have delighted those who were 
 not insensible to the felicities of a fine imagination, and to 
 the enchanting elegancies of style, he raised himself, among 
 his brother ecclesiastics, enemies, who at length so far pre- 
 vailed, that, in a synod, it was declared that his performance 
 was dangerous to young persons, and that if the author did. 
 not suppress it, he must resign his bishopric. We are told he 
 preferred his romance to his bishopric. Even so late as in 
 Racine's time it was held a crime to peruse these unhallowed 
 pages. He informs us that the first effusions of his muse 
 were in consecjuence of studying that ancient romance, which 
 his tutor observing him to devour with the keenness of a 
 famished man, snatched from his hands and flung it in the 
 fire. A second copy experienced the same fate. What could 
 Racine do ? He bought a third, and took the precaution of 
 devouring it secretly'- till he got it by heart : after which he 
 offered, it to the pedagogue with a smile, to burn like the 
 others. 
 
 The decision of these ascetic bigots was founded in their 
 opinion of the immorality of such works. They alleged that 
 the writers paint too warmly to the imagination, address 
 themselves too forcibly to the passions, and in general, by the 
 freedom of their representations, hover on the borders of in- 
 decency. Let it be sufficient, however, to observe, that those 
 who condemned the liberties which these writers take with 
 the imagination could indulge themselves with the Anacreon- 
 tic voluptuousness of the wise Solomon, when sanctioned by 
 the authority of the church. 
 
 The marvellous power of romance over the human mind is 
 exemplified in this curious anecdote of oriental literature. 
 
 Mahomet found tliey had such an influence over the ima- 
 ginations of his followers, that he has expressly forbidden 
 them in his Koran ; and the reason is given in the following 
 anecdote : — An Arabian merchant having long resided in 
 Persia, returned to his own country while the prophet was 
 publishing his Koran. The merchant, among his other 
 riches, had a treasure of romances concerning the Persian 
 heroes. These he related to his delighted countrymen, who 
 considered them to be so excellent, that the legends of the 
 Koran were neglected, and they plainly told the prophet that 
 the " Persian Tales" were superior to his. Alarmed, he im- 
 mediately had a visitation from the angel Gabriel, declaring 
 them impious and pernicious, hateful to God and Mahomet.
 
 444 Romances. 
 
 This checked their currency ; and all true believers yielded up 
 the exquisite delight of poetic fictions for the insipidity of 
 religious ones. Yet these romances may be said to have out- 
 lived the Koran itself; for they have spread into regions 
 which the Koran could never penetrate. Even to this day 
 Colonel Capper, in his travels across the Desert, saw 
 " Arabians sitting round a fire, listening to their tales with 
 such attention and pleasure, as totally to forget the fatigue 
 and hardi^liip with which an instant before they were entirely 
 overcome." And Wood, in his journey to Palmyra: — "At 
 night the Arabs sat in a circle drinking coffee, while one of 
 the company diverted the rest by relating a piece of history 
 on the subject of love or war, or with an extempore tale." 
 
 Mr. Ellis has given us " Sjjecimens of the Early English 
 Metrical Romances," and Eitson and Weber have printed two 
 collections of them entire, valued by the poetical antiquary. 
 Learned inquirers have traced the origin of romantic fiction 
 to various sources.* From Scandinavia issued forth the 
 giants, dragons, witches, and enchanters. The curious reader 
 will be gratified by " Illustrations of ISTorthern Antiquities," 
 a volume in quarto ; where he will find extracts from " The 
 Book of Heroes" and "The Nibelungen Lay,"t with many 
 other metrical tales from the old German, Danish, Swedish, 
 and Icelandic languages. In the East, Arabian fancy bent 
 her iris of man}^ softened hues over a delightful land of fic- 
 tion : while the Welsh, in their emigration to Britanny, are 
 believed to have brought with them their national fables. 
 That subsequent race of minstrels, known by the name of 
 Troubadours in the South of France, composed their erotic 
 or sentimental poems ; and those romancers called Troveurs, 
 or finders, in the North of France, culled and compiled their 
 domestic tales or Fabliaux, Dits, Conie, or Lai. Millot, 
 Sainte Palaye, and Le Grand, have preserved, in their " His- 
 tories of the Troubadours," their literary compositions. 
 They were a romantic race of ambulatory poets, military and 
 religious subjects their favourite themes, yet bold and sati- 
 
 * Since tli« above was written, many other volumes have been published 
 illustrative of this branch of literature. The Bannatyne and Maitland Club 
 and the Camden and Percy Societies have printed Metrical llomances entire. 
 
 t This filmed lay has been magnificently published in Germany, where 
 it is now considered as the native epic of the ancient kingdom. Its scenes 
 have been delineated by the greatest of their artists, who have thus given 
 a world-wide reputation to a poem comparatively unknown when the first 
 edition of this work was printed.
 
 Romances, 445 
 
 rical on princes, and even on priests ; severe moralisers, 
 though libertines in their verse ; so refined and chaste in their 
 manners, that few husbands were alarmed at the enthusiastic 
 language they addressed to their wives. The most romantic 
 incidents are told of their loves. But love and its grosser 
 passion were clearly distinguished from each other in their 
 singular intercourse with their "Dames." The object of 
 their mind was separated from the object of their senses ; the 
 virtuous lady to whom they vowed their hearts was in their 
 language styled " la dame de ses pensees,^' a very distinct 
 being I'rom their other mistress ! Such was the Platonic 
 chimera that charmed in the age of chivalry ; the Laura of 
 Petrarch might have been no other than " the lady of his 
 thoughts." 
 
 Fi'om such productions in their improved state poets of all 
 nations have drawn their richest inventions. The asrreeable 
 wildness of that fancy which characterised the Eastern na- 
 tions was often caught by the crusaders. When they re- 
 turned home, they mingled in their own the customs of each 
 country. The Saracens, being of another religion, brave, 
 desperate, and fighting for their fatherland, were enlarged to 
 their fears, under the tremendous form of Paynim Giants, 
 while the reader of that day followed with trembling sj^m- 
 pathy the Redcross Kniglit. Thus fiction embellished reli- 
 gion, and religion invigorated fiction ; and such incidents have 
 enlivened the cantos of Ariosto, and adorned the epic of 
 Tasso. Spenser is the child of their creation ; and it is cer- 
 tain that we are indebted to them for some of the bold and 
 strong touches of Milton. Our great poet marks his affection 
 for " these lofty Fables and Komances, among which his 
 young feet wandered." Collins was bewildered among their 
 magical seductions ; and Dr. Johnson was enthusiastically 
 delighted by the old Spanish folio romance of " Felixmarte of 
 Hircania," and similar works. The most ancient romances 
 were originally composed in verse before they were converted 
 into prose : no wonder that the lacerated members of the 
 poet have been cherished by the sympathy of poetical souls. 
 Don Quixote's was a very agreeable insanity. 
 
 The most voluminous of these ancient romances is " Le 
 Roman de Perceforest." I have seen an edition in six small 
 folio volumes, and its author has been called the French 
 Homer by the writers of his age. In the class of romances 
 of chivalry, we have several translations in the black letter.
 
 446 Romances. 
 
 These books are very rare, and their price is as voluminous. 
 It is extraordinary that these writers were so unconscious of 
 their future fame, that not one of their names has travelled 
 down to us. There were easier readers in their davs, but not 
 a solitary bibliographer! All these romances now require 
 some indulgence for their prolixity, and their Platonic 
 amours ; but they have not been surpassed in the wildness of 
 their inventions, the ingenuity of their incidents, the sim- 
 plicity of their style, and their curious manners. Many a 
 Homer lies hid among them ; but a celebrated Italian critic 
 suggested to me that many of the fables of Homer are only 
 disguised and degraded in the romances of chivalry. Those 
 who vilify them as only barbarovis imitations of classical 
 fancy condemn them as some do Gothic architecture, as mere 
 corruptions of a purer style : such critics form their decision 
 by preconceived notions ; they are but indifferent philoso- 
 phers, and to us seem to be deficient in imagination. 
 As a specimen I select two romantic adventures : — 
 The title of the extensive romance of Perceforest is, " The 
 most elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and delightful history of 
 Perceforest, King of Great Britain, &c." The most ancient 
 edition is that of 1528. The writers of these Gothic fables, 
 lest they should be considered as mere triflers, pretended to 
 an allegorical meaning concealed under the texture of their 
 fable. From the following adventure we learn the power of 
 beauty in making ten days appear as yesterday ! Alexander 
 the Great in search of Perceforest, parts with his knights in 
 an enchanted wood, and each vows they will not remain 
 longer than one night in one place. Alexander, accompanied 
 by a page, arrives at Sebilla's castle, who is a sorceress. He 
 is taken by her witcheries and beauty, and the page, by the 
 lady's maid, falls into the same mistake as his master, who 
 thinks he is there only one night. They enter the castle with 
 deep wounds, and issue perfectly recovered. I transcribe 
 the latter part as a specimen of the manner. When they 
 were once out of the castle, the king said, " Truly, Floridas, 
 I know not how it has been with me ; but certainly Sebilla 
 is a very honourable lady, and very beautiful, and very 
 charming in conversation. Sire (said Floridas), it is true ; 
 but one thing surprises me : — how is it that our wounds 
 have healed in one night ? I thought at least ten or fifteen 
 daj's were necessary. Truly, said the king, that is astonish- 
 ing ! Now king Alexander met Gadiff'er, king of Scotland,
 
 Romances. 4A7 
 
 and the valiant knight Le Tors. Well, said the king, have 
 ye news of the king of England ? Ten days we have 
 hunted him, and cannot find him out. How, said Alexander, 
 did we not separate yesterday from each other ? In God's 
 name, said Gadifi'er, what means your majesty ? It is ten 
 days ! Have a care what you say, cried the king. Sire, re- 
 plied Gadiffer, it is so ; ask Le Tors. On my honour, said Le 
 Tors, the king of Scotland speaks truth. Then, said the 
 king, some of us are enchanted ; Floridas, didst thou not 
 think we separated yesterday ? Truly, truly, your majesty, 
 I thought so ! But wlien I saw our wounds healed in one 
 night, I had some suspicion that we were enchanted^ 
 
 In the old romance of Mehisina, this lovely fairy (though 
 to the world unknown as such), enamoured of Count Ray- 
 mond, marries him, hut first extorts a solemn promise that he 
 will never disturb her on Saturdays. On those days the in- 
 ferior parts of her body are metamorphosed to that of a 
 mermaid, as a punishment for a former error. Agitated by 
 the malicious insinuations of a friend, his curiosity and his 
 jealousy one day conduct him to the spot she retired to at 
 those times. It was a darkened passage in the dungeon of 
 the fortress. His hand gropes its way till it feels an iron 
 gate oppose it ; nor can he discover a single chink, but at 
 length perceives by his touch a loose nail ; he places his 
 sword in its head and screws it out. Through this cranny 
 he sees Melusina in the horrid form she is compelled to 
 assume. That tender mistress, transformed into a monster 
 bathing in a fount, flashing the spray of the water from a 
 scaly tail ! He repents of his fatal curiositj^ : she reproaches 
 him, and their mutual happiness is for ever lost. The moral 
 design of the tale evidently warns the lover to revere a 
 Woman's Secret ! 
 
 Such are the works which were the favourite amusements 
 of our English court, and which doubtless had a due effect in 
 refining the manners of the age, in diffusing that splendid 
 militai'y genius, and that tender devotion to tlie i'air sex, 
 which dazzle us in the reign of Edward III., and through 
 that enchanting labyrinth of History constructed by the 
 gallant Froissart. In one of the revenue rolls of Henry III. 
 there is an entry of " Silver clasps and studs for his majesty's 
 great hook of Romances.'''' Dr. Moore observes that the en- 
 thusiastic admiration of chivahy which Edward 111. mani- 
 fested during the whole coui-se of his reign, was probably, iu
 
 448 Romances. 
 
 some measure, owing to his having studied the clasped hook 
 in his great grandfather's library. 
 
 The Itahan romances of the fourteenth century were 
 spread abroad in great numbers. They formed the polite 
 literature of the day. But if it is not permitted to authors 
 freely to express their ideas, and give full play to the imagi- 
 nation, these works must never be placed in the study of the 
 rigid moralist. They, indeed, pushed their indelicacy to the 
 verge of gi'ossness, and seemed rather to seek than to avoid 
 scenes, which a modern would blush to describe. Thej'', to 
 employ the expression of one of their authors, were not 
 ashamed to name what God had created. Cinthio, Bandello, 
 and others, but chiefly Boccaccio, rendered libertinism agree- 
 able by the fascinating charms of a polished style and a 
 luxuriant imagination. 
 
 This, however, must not be admitted as an apology for 
 immoral works ; for poison is not the less poison, even when 
 delicious. Such works were, and still continue to be, the 
 favourites of a nation stigmatized for being prone to impure 
 amours. They are still curious in their editions, and are not 
 parsimonious in their price for what they call an uncastrated 
 copy. There are many Italians, not literary men, who are in 
 possession of an ample library of these old novelists. 
 
 If we pass over the moral irregularities of these romances, 
 we may discover a rich vein of invention, which only requires 
 to be released from that rubbish which disfigures it, to become 
 of an invaluable price. The Decamerones, the Hecatommiti, 
 and the Novellas of these winters, translated into English, 
 made no inconsiderable figure in the little library of our 
 Shakspeare.* Chaucer had been a notorious imitator and 
 lover of them. His " Knight's Tale" is little more than a 
 paraphrase of " Boccaccio's Teseoide." Fontaine has caught 
 all their charms with all their licentiousness. From such 
 works these great poets, and many of their contemporaries, 
 frequently borrowed their plots ; not uncommonly kindled at 
 their flame the ardour of their genius ; but bending too sub- 
 missively to the taste of their age, in extracting the ore they 
 have not purified it of the alloy. The origin of these tales 
 must be traced to the inventions of the Troveurs, who doubt- 
 less often adopted them from various nations. Of these tales, 
 
 * These early novels have been collected and published by Mr. J. P. 
 Collier, under the title of Shakespeare's Library. They form the foundation 
 of some of the great Poet's best dramas.
 
 Romances. 449 
 
 Le Grand has printed a curious collection ; and of the writers 
 Mr. Ellis observes, in his preface to " Way's Fabliaux," that 
 the authors of the " Cento Novelle Antiche," Boccaccio, Ean- 
 dello, Chaucer, Cower, — in short, the writers of all Europe 
 have probably made use of the inventions of the elder fablers. 
 They have borrowed their general outlines, which they have 
 filled up with colours of their own, and have exercised their 
 ingenuity in varying the drapery, in combining the groups, 
 and in forming them into more regular and animated pictures. 
 
 "We now turn to the French romances of the last century, 
 called heroic, i'rom the circumstance of their authors adopting 
 the name of some hero. The manners are the modern antique ; 
 and the characters are a sort of beings made out of the old 
 epical, the Arcadian pastoral, and the Parisian sentimentality 
 and affectation of the days of Voiture.* The Astrea of 
 D'Urfe greatly contributed to their perfection. As this work 
 is founded on several curious circumstances, it shall be the 
 subject of the following article ; for it may be considered as 
 a literary curiosity. The Astrea was followed by the illus- 
 trious Bassa, Artamene, or the Great Cyrus, Clelia, &c., 
 which, though not adapted to the present age, once gave 
 celebrity to their authors ; and the Great C^rus, in ten 
 volumes, passed through five or six editions. Their style, 
 as well as that of the Astrea, is diffuse and languid ; yet 
 Za'ide, and the Princess of Cleves, are masterpieces of the 
 kind. Such works formed the first studies of Rousseau, who, 
 with his father, would sit up all night, till warned by the 
 chirping of the swallows how foolishly they had spent it ! 
 Some incidents in his Nouvelle Heloise have been I'etraced to 
 these sources ; and they certainly entered greatly into the 
 formation of his character. 
 
 Such romances at length were regarded as pernicious to 
 good sense, taste, and literature. It was in tliis light they 
 were considered by Boileau, after he had indulged in them in 
 his youth, 
 
 A celebrated Jesuit pronounced an oration against these 
 works. The rhetorician exaggerates and hurls his thunders 
 
 * They were ridiculed in a French burlesque Romance of the Shepherd 
 Lysis, translated by Davis, and published 1660. Don Quixote, when dying, 
 made up his mind, if he recovered, to turn shepherd, in imitation of some 
 of the romance-heroes, who thus finished their career. This old "anti- 
 romance" works out this notion by a mad reader of pastorals, who assumes 
 the shepherd habit and tends a few wretched sheep at St. Cloud. 
 
 VOL. I. G a
 
 450 Romances. 
 
 on flowers. He entreats the magistrates not to suffer foreign 
 romances to be scattered amongst the people, but to lay on 
 them heavy penalties, as on ):)rohibited goods ; and represents 
 this prevailing taste as being more pestilential than the 
 plague itself. He has drawn a striking picture of a family 
 devoted to romance-reading ; he there describes women occu- 
 pied day and night with their perusal ; children just escaped 
 from the lap of their nurse grasping in their little hands the 
 fairy tales ; and a country squire seated in an old arm-chair, 
 reading to his family the most wonderful passages of the 
 ancient works of chivalry. 
 
 These romances went out of fashion with our square-cocked 
 hats : they had exhausted the patience of the public, and from 
 them sprung is'ovels. They attempted to allure attention 
 by this inviting title, and reducing their works from ten to 
 two volumes. The name of romance, including imaginary 
 heroes and extravagant passions, disgusted ; and they substi- 
 tuted scenes of domestic life, and touched our common feel- 
 ings by pictures of real nature. Heroes were not now taken 
 from the throne : t)\Qj were sometimes even sought after 
 amongst the lowest ranks of the people. Scarron seems to 
 allude sarcastically to this degradation of the heroes of Fic- 
 tion : for in hinting at a new comic history he had projected, 
 he tells us that he gave it up suddenly because he had 
 " heard that his hero had just been hanged at Mans." 
 
 Novels, as they were long manufactured, form a library 
 of illiterate authors for illiterate readers ; but as they are 
 created by genius, are precious to the philosopher. They 
 paint the character of an individual or the manners of the 
 age more perfectly than any other species of composition : it 
 is in novels we observe as it were passing under our ej'es the 
 refined frivolity of the French ; the gloomy and disordered 
 sensibility of the German ; and the petty intrigues of the 
 modern Italian in some Venetian Novels. We have shown 
 the world that we possess writers of the first order in this 
 delightful province of Fiction and of Truth ; for every Fiction 
 invented naturally, must be true. After the abundant invec- 
 tive poured on this class of books, it is time to settle for ever 
 the controversy, by asserting that these works of fiction are 
 among the most instructive of every polished nation, and 
 must contain all the useful truths of human life, if composed 
 with genius. They are pictures of the passions, useful to our 
 youth to contemplate. That acute philosopher, Adam Smith,
 
 The Astrea. 451 
 
 has given an opinion most favourable to Notels. " The 
 poets and romance writers who best paint the refinements 
 and dehcac'ies of love and friendship, and of all other private 
 and domestic affections, Kacine and Voltaire, Kichardson, 
 Marivaux, and Riccoboni, are in this case much better instruc- 
 tors than Zeno, Chrysippus, or Epictetus." 
 
 The history of romances has been recently given by Mr. 
 Dunlop, with many pleasing details ; but this work should 
 be accompanied by the learned Lenglet du Fresnoy's " Bi- 
 bliotheque des Romans," ])ublished under the name of M. le 
 C. Gordon de Percel ; which will be found useful for imme- 
 diate reference for titles, dates, and a copious catalogue of 
 romances and novels to thcyear 1734. 
 
 THE ASTEEA. 
 
 I BUTNG the Astrea forward to point out the ingenious manner 
 by which a fine imagination can veil the common incidents of 
 life, and turn whatever it touches into gold. 
 
 Honore D'Urfe was the descendant of an illustrious family. 
 His brother Anne married Diana of Chateaumorand, the 
 wealth}^ heiress of another great house. After a marriage of 
 no less duration than twenty -two years, this union was broken 
 by the desire of Anne himself, for a cause which the delicacy 
 of Diana had never revealed. Anne then became an eccle- 
 siastic. Some time afterwards, Honore, desirous of retainingf 
 the great wealth of Diana in the family, addressed this lady, 
 and married her. This union, however, did not prove fortu- 
 nate. Diana, like the goddess of that name, was a huntress, 
 continually surrounded by her dogs : — they dined with her at 
 table, and slept with her in bed. This insupportable nuisance 
 could not be patiently endured by the elegant Honore. He 
 was also disgusted with the bari-enness of the huntress Diana, 
 who was only delivered every year of abortions. He separated 
 from her, and retired to Piedmont, where he passed his re- 
 maining days in peace, without feeling the thorns of marriage 
 and ambition rankling in his heart. In this retreat he com- 
 posed his Astrea ; a pastoral romance, which was the admira- 
 tion of Europe during half a century. It forms a striking 
 picture of human life, for the incidents are fivets beautifully 
 concealed. They relate the amours and gallantries of the 
 court of Henry the Fourth. The personages in the Astrea 
 
 G Q 2
 
 452 The Astrea. 
 
 display a rich invention ; and the work might be still read, 
 were it not for those wire-drawn conversations, or rather dis- 
 putations, winch were then introduced into romances. In a 
 modern edition, the Abbe Souchai has curtailed these tire- 
 some dialogues ; the work still consists of ten duodecimos. 
 
 In this romance, Celidee, to cure the unfortunate Celadon, 
 and to deprive Thamire at the same time of ever}^ reason for 
 jealousy, tears her face with a pointed diamond, and disfigures 
 it in so cruel a manner, that she excites horror in the breast 
 of Thamire; but he so ardently admires this exertion of 
 virtue, that he loves her, hideous as she is represented, still 
 more than when she was most beautiful. Heaven, to be just 
 to these two lovers, restores the beauty of Celidee ; which is 
 effected by a sympathetic powder. This romantic incident 
 is thus explained: — One of the French princes (Thamire), 
 when he returned from Italy, treated with coldness his 
 amiable princess (Celidee) ; this was the effect of his violent 
 passion, which had become jealousy. The coolness subsisted 
 till the prince was imprisoned, for state affairs, in the wood 
 of Vincennes. The princess, with the permission of the court, 
 followed him into his confinement. This proof of her love 
 soon brought back the wandering heart and affections of the 
 prince. The small-pox seized her ; which is the pointed 
 diamond, and the dreadful disfigurement of her face. She 
 was so fortunate as to escape being marked by this disease ; 
 which is meant by the sympathetic powder. This trivial 
 incident is happily turned into the marvellous : that a wife 
 should choose to be imprisoned with her husband is not sin- 
 gular; to escape being marked by the small-pox happens every 
 day ; but to romance, as he has done, on such common cir- 
 cumstances, is beautii'ul and ingenious. 
 
 D'Urfe, when a boy, is said to have been enamoured of 
 Diana ; this indeed has been questioned. D'Urfe, however, 
 was sent to the island of Malta to enter into that order of 
 knighthood ; and in his absence Diana was married to Anne. 
 What an affliction for Honoi-e on his return to see her mar- 
 ried, and to his bi-other ! His affection did not diminish, 
 but he concealed it in respectful silence. He had some 
 knowledge of his brother's unliappiness, and on this probably 
 founded his hopes. After several years, during which the 
 modest Diana had uttered no complaint, Anne declared him- 
 self; and shortly afterwards Honore, as we have noticed, 
 married Diana.
 
 The Astrea. 453 
 
 Our author has described the parties under this false 
 appearance of marriage. He assumes the names of Celadon 
 and Sylvander, and gives Diana tliose of Astrea and Diana. 
 He is Sylvander and she Astrea while she is married to Anne ; 
 and he Celadon and she Diana when the marriage is dissolved. 
 Sylvander is i-epresented always as a lover who sighs secretly ; 
 nor does Diana declare her passion till overcome by the long- 
 sufferings of her faithful shepherd. For this reason Astrea 
 and Diana, as well as Sylvander and Celadon, go together, 
 prompted by the same despair, to the fountain of the 
 
 TRUTH OP LOVE. 
 
 Sylvander is called an unknown shepherd, who has no 
 other wealtli than his flock ; because our author was the 
 youngest of his family, or rather a knight of Malta who pos- 
 sessed nothing but honour. 
 
 Celadon in despair throws himself into a river ; this refers 
 to his vovaare to Malta. Under the name of Alexis he dis- 
 plays the friendship of Astrea for him, and all those innocent 
 freedoms which passed between them as relatives ; from this 
 circumstance he has contrived a difficulty inimitably delicate. 
 
 Something of passion is to be discovered in these expres- 
 sions of friendship. When Alexis assumes the name of 
 Celadon, he calls that love which Astrea had mistaken for 
 I'raternal affection. Iliis was the trvinsf moment. For 
 though she loved him, she is rigorous in her duty and honour. 
 She says, " what will they think of me if I unite myself to 
 him, after permitting, for so many years, those I'amiliarities 
 which a brother may have taken with a sister, with me, who 
 knew that in fact 1 remained unmarried ?" 
 
 How she got over this nice scruple does not appear ; it was, 
 however, for a long time a great obstacle to the felicity of 
 our author. There is an incident which shows the purity of 
 this married virgin, who was fearful the liberties she allowed 
 Celadon might be ill construed. Phillis tells the druid 
 Adamas that Asti'ea was seen sleeping by the fountain of the 
 Truth of Love, and that the unicorns which guarded those 
 waters were observed to approach her, and lay their heads on 
 lier lap. According to lable, it is one of the properties of 
 these animals never to approach any female but a maiden : at 
 this strange difficulty our druid remains surprised ; while 
 Astrea has thus given an incontrovertible proof of her purity. 
 The history of Philander is that of the elder D'Urfe. 
 None but boys disguised as girls, and girls as boys, appear in
 
 454 Poets Laureat. 
 
 the history. In this manner he concealed, without offending 
 modesty, the defect of his brother. To mark the truth of 
 this history, when Philander is disguised as a woman, while 
 he converses with Astrea of his love, he frequently alludes to 
 his misfortune, although in another sense. 
 
 Philander, ready to expire, will die with the glorious name 
 of the husband of Astrea. He entreats her to grant him this 
 favour ; she accords it to him, and swears before the gods 
 that she receives him in her heart for her husband. The 
 truth is, he enjoyed nothing but the name. Philander dies 
 too, in combating with a hideous Moor, which is the personi- 
 fication of his conscience, and which at length compelled him 
 to quit so beautiful an object, and one so worthy of being 
 eternally beloved. 
 
 The gratitude of Sj'lvander, on the point of being sacrificed, 
 represents the consent of Honore's parents to dissolve his 
 vow of celibacy, and unite him to Diana ; and the druid 
 Adamas represents ecclesiastical power. The fountain ot 
 the TRUTH OP LOVE is that of marriage ; the unicorns are the 
 symbols of that purity which should ever guard it ; and the 
 flaming eyes of the lions, which are also there, represent those 
 inconveniences attending marriage, but over which a faithful 
 passion easily triumphs. 
 
 In this manner has our author disguised his own private 
 history ; and blended in his works a number of little amours 
 which passed at the court of Henry the Great. These par- 
 ticulars were confided to Patru, on visiting the author in Lis 
 retirement. 
 
 POETS LAUREAT. 
 
 The present article is a sketch of the history of poets 
 LAUKEAT, from a memoir of the French Academy, by the 
 Abbe Resnel. 
 
 The custom of crowning poets is as ancient as poetry itself ; 
 it has, indeed, frequently varied ; it existed, however, as late 
 as the reign of Theodosius, when it was abolished as a remain 
 of paganism. 
 
 When the barbarians overspread Europe, few appeared to 
 merit this honoui', and fewer who could have read their woi'ks. 
 It was about the time of Petrarch that Poetry resumed its 
 ancient lustre ; he was publicly honoured with the laurel 
 crown. It was in this century (the thirteenth) that the
 
 Poets Laureat. 455 
 
 establishment of Bachelor and Doctor was fixed in the vuii- 
 versities. Tiiose who were found worthy of the honour, 
 obtained the laurel of Bachelor, or the lau7^el of Doctor ; 
 Laiirea Baccalaureatus ; Laurea Doctoratiis. At their re- 
 ception they not only assumed this title, but they also had a 
 crown of laurel placed on their heads. 
 
 To this ceremony the ingenious writer attributes the revival 
 of the custom. The poets were not slow in putting in their 
 claims to what they had most a right; and their patrons 
 sought to encourage them by these honourable distinctions. 
 
 The following formula is the exact style of those which 
 are yet employed in the universities to confer the degree of 
 Bachelor and Doctor, and serves to confirm the conjecture of 
 Resnel : — 
 
 "We, count and senator," (Count d'Anguillara, who 
 bestowed the laurel on Petrarch,) " for us and our College, 
 declare Feancis Petrarch great poet and historian, and for 
 a special mark of his quality of poet we have placed with our 
 hands on his head a crown of laurel, granting to him, by the 
 tenor of these presents, and by the authority of King Robert, 
 of the senate and the people of Home, in the poetic, as well 
 as in the historic art, and generally in whatever relates to the 
 said arts, as well in this holy city as elsewhere, the free and 
 entire power of reading, disputing, and interpreting all ancient 
 books, to make new ones, and compose poems, which, God 
 assisting, shall endure from age to age." 
 
 In Italy, these honours did not long flourish ; although 
 Tasso dignified the laurel crown by his acceptance of it. 
 Many got crowned who were unworthy of the distinction. 
 The laurel was even bestowed on Qderiso, whose character is 
 given in the Dunciad : — 
 
 Not with more glee, by hands pontific crown' d, 
 With scarlet hats wide-waving circled round, 
 Rome in her capitol saw Querno sit, 
 Thron'd on seven hills, the Antichrist of wit. 
 
 Canto II. 
 
 This man was made laureat, for the joke's sake ; his poetry 
 was inspired by his cups, a kind of poet who came in with the 
 dessert ; and he recited twenty thousand verses. He was 
 rather the arcli-huffoon than the arch-jjoet of Leo. X. though 
 honoured with the latter title. They invented for him a new 
 kind of laureated honour, and in the intermixture of the foliage 
 raised to Apollo, slily inserted the vine and the cabbage leaves,
 
 456 Poets Laureat. 
 
 which he evidently deserved, from • his extreme dexterity in 
 clearing the pontiff's dishes and emptying his goblets. 
 
 Urban VIII. had a juster and more elevated idea of the 
 children of Fancy. It appears that he possessed much poetic 
 sensibility. Of him it is recorded, that he wrote a letter to 
 Chiabrera to felicitate him on the success of his poetry : 
 letters written by a pope were then an honour only paid to 
 crowned heads. One is pleased also with another testimony 
 of his elegant dispositions. Charmed with a poem which 
 Bracciolini presented to him, he gave him the surname of 
 Delle-Ape, of the bees, which were the arras of this 
 amiable pope. He, however, never crowned these favourite 
 bards with the laurel, which, probably, he deemed unworthy 
 of them. 
 
 In Germany, the laureat honours flourished under the reign 
 of Maximilian the First. He founded, in 1504, a Poetical 
 College at Vienna ; reserving to himself and the regent the 
 power of bestowing the laurel. But the institution, notwith- 
 standing this well -concerted scheme, fell into disrepute, owing 
 to a cloud of claimants who were fired with the rage of ver- 
 sifying, and who, though destitute of poetic talents, had the 
 laurel bestowed on them. Thus it became a prostituted 
 honour ; and satires were incessantly levelled against the 
 usurpers of the crown of Apollo : it seems, notwithstanding, 
 alvva^'s to have had charms in the eyes of the Germans, who 
 did not reflect, as the Abbe elegantly expresses himself, that 
 it faded" when it passed over so many heads. 
 
 The Emperor of Germany retains the laureatship in all its 
 splendour. The selected bard is called II Poeta Cesareo. 
 Apostolo Zeno, as celebrated for his erudition as for his 
 poetic powers, was succeeded by that most enchanting poet, 
 Metastasio. 
 
 The French never had a Poet Laureat, though they had 
 Pegal Poets ; for none were ever solemnly crowned. The 
 Spanish nation, always desii'ous of titles of honour, seem to 
 have known that of the Laureat ; but little information con- 
 cerning it can be gathered from their authors. 
 
 Respecting our own country little can be added to the 
 information of Selden. John Kay, who dedicated a History 
 of Rhodes to Edward IV., takes the title of his humble Poet 
 Laureat. Gower and Chaucer were laureats ; so was likewise 
 Skelton to Henry VIII. In the Acts of Rynier, there is a 
 charter of Henry VII. with the title of pro Poeta Laureato,
 
 Angela Politian. 457 
 
 that is, perhaps, only a Foet laureated at the university, m 
 the king's household. 
 
 Our poets were never solemnly crowned as in other coun- 
 tries. Selden, after all his recondite researches, is satisfied 
 with saying, that some trace of this distinction is to be 
 found in our nation. Our kings from time immemorial have 
 placed a miserable dependent in tbeir household appointment, 
 who was sometimes called the King's foet, and the Kimjs 
 versificatoT. It is probable that at length the selected bard 
 assumed the title of l^oet Laureat, without receiving the 
 honours of the ceremony ; or, at the most, the crown of laurel 
 was a mere obscure custom practised at our universities, and 
 not attended with great public distinction. It was oftener 
 placed on the skull of a pedant than wreathed on the head of 
 a man of genius. Shadwell united the offices both of Poet 
 Laureat and Historiographer ; and by a MS. account of the 
 public revenue, it appears that for two years' salary he 
 received six hundred pounds. At his death liymer became 
 the Historiographer and Tate the Laureat : both offices seem 
 equally useless, but, if united, will not prove so to the Poet 
 Laureat. 
 
 ANGELO POLITIAN. 
 
 Angelo Politian, an Italian, was one of the most polished 
 writers of the fifteenth century. Baillet has placed him 
 amongst his celebrated children ; for he was a w^-iter at 
 twelve 3'ears of age. The Muses indeed cherished him in 
 his cradle, and the Graces hung round it their wreaths. 
 When he became professor of the Greek language, such were 
 the charms of his lectures, that Chalcondylas, a native of 
 Greece, saw himself abandoned by his pupils, who resorted to 
 the delightful disquisitions of the elegant Politian. Critics 
 of various nations have acknowledged that his poetical versions 
 have frequently excelled the originals. This happy genius 
 was lodged in a most unhappy ibrm ; nor were his morals 
 untainted : it is only in his literary compositions that lie 
 appears perfect. 
 
 As a specimen of his Epistles, here is one, which serves as 
 prefatory and dedicatory. The letter is replete with literature, 
 though void of pedantry ; a barren subject is embellished b}'' 
 its happy turns. Perhaps no author has more playfully de- 
 
 \
 
 458 Angela Politian. 
 
 fended himself from the incertitude of criticism and the fas- 
 tidiousness of critics. 
 
 Mt Loed, 
 
 You have frequent!}^ urged me to collect my letters, to 
 revise and to publish them in a volume. I have now gathered 
 them, that I might not omit any mark of that obedience 
 which I owe to him, on whom I rest all my hopes, and all mj 
 prosperity. I have not, however, collected them all, because 
 that would have been a more laborious task than to have 
 gathered the scattered leaves of the Sibyl. It was never, 
 indeed, with an intention of forming my letters into one body 
 that I wrote them, but merely as occasion prompted, and as 
 the subjects presented themselves without seeking for them. 
 I never retained copies except of a few, which, less fortunate, 
 I think, than the others, were thus favoured for the sake of 
 the verses they contained. To form, however, a tolerable 
 volume, I have also insei-ted some written by others, but only 
 those with which several ingenious scholars favoured me, and 
 which, perhaps, may put the reader in good humour with 
 my own. 
 
 There is one thing for which some will he inclined to cen- 
 sure me ; the style of my letters is very unequal ; and, to 
 confess the truth, I did not find myself always in the same 
 humour, and the same modes of expression were not adapted 
 to every person and every topic. They will not fail then to 
 observe, when they read such a diversity of letters (I mean if 
 they do read them), that I have composed not epistles, but 
 (once more) miscellanies. 
 
 I hope, my Lord, notwithstanding this, that amongst such 
 a variety of opinions, of those who write letters, and of those 
 who give precepts how letters should be written, I shall find 
 some apology. Some, probably, will deny that they are 
 Ciceronian. I can answer such, and not without good 
 authorit}^, that in epistolary composition we must not regard 
 Cicero as a model. Another perhaps will say that I imitate 
 Cicero. And him 1 will answer by observing, that I wish" 
 nothing better than to he capable of grasping something of 
 this great man, were it but his shadow ! 
 
 Another will wish that I had borrowed a little from the 
 manner of Pliny the orator, because his profound sense and 
 accuracy were greatly esteemed. I shall oppose him by ex- 
 pressing my contempt of all writers of the age of Pliny. If
 
 Angela Politian. 459 
 
 it should be observed, that I have imitated the manner of 
 Pliny, I shall then screen myself by what Sidonius Apollhiaris, 
 an author who is by no means disreputable, says in com- 
 mendation of his epistolary style. Do I resemble Symma- 
 chus ? I shall not be sorry, for they distinguish his open- 
 ness and conciseness. Am I considered in nowise resembling' 
 him ? I shall confess that I am not pleased with his dry 
 manner. 
 
 Will my letters be condemned for their length ? Plato, 
 Aristotle, Thucydides, and Cicero, have all written long ones. 
 Will some of them be criticised for their brevity ? I allege 
 in my favour the examples of Dion, Brutus, Apollonius, Phi- 
 lostratus, Marcus Antoninus, Alciphron, Julian, Symmachus, 
 and also Lucian, who vulgarl}^, but falsely, is believed to have 
 been Phalaris. 
 
 I shall be censured for having treated of topics which are 
 not generally considered as pi'oper for epistolary composition. 
 I admit this censure, provided, while I am condemned, Seneca 
 also shares in the condemnation. Another will not allow of 
 a sententious manner in my letters ; 1 will still justify mj^self 
 by Seneca. Another, on the contrary, desires abrupt sen- 
 tentious periods ; Dionysius shall answer him for me, who 
 maintains that pointed sentences should not be admitted into 
 letters. 
 
 Is my style too perspicuous ? It is precisely that wdiicli 
 Philostratus admires. Is it obscure ? Such is that of Cicero 
 to Attica. Negh'gent ? An agreeable negligence in letters is 
 more graceful than elaborate ornaments. Laboured ? Nothing 
 can be more proper, since we send epistles to our friends as a 
 kind of presents. If they display too nice an arrangement, 
 the Halicarnassian shall vindicate me. If there is none ; 
 Artemon says there should be none. 
 
 Now as a good and pure Latinity has its peculiar taste, its 
 manners, and, to express myself thus, its Atticisms ; if in 
 this sense a letter shall be found not sufficiently Attic, so 
 much the better ; for what was Herod the sophist censured ? 
 but that having been born an Athenian, he atiected too much 
 to appear one in his language. Should a letter seem too 
 Attical ; still better, since it was by discovering Theophrastus, 
 who was no Athenian, that a good old woman of Athens laid 
 hold of a word, and shamed him. 
 
 Shall one letter be found not sufficiently serious ? I love 
 to jest. Or is it too grave ? I am pleased with gravity. Is
 
 460 Original Letter of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 another full of figures ? Letters being the images of dis- 
 course, figures have the effect of graceful action in con- 
 versation. Are they deficient in figures ? This is just what 
 characterises a letter, this want of figure! Does it discover 
 the genius of the writer? This frankness is recommended. 
 Does it conceal it F The writer did not think proper to paint 
 himself; and it is one requisite in a letter, that it should be 
 void of ostentation. You express yourself, some one will 
 observe, in common terms on common topics, and in new 
 terms on new topics. Thestyle is thus adapted to the subject. 
 No, no, he will answer ; it is in common terms you express 
 new ideas, and in new terms common ideas. Very well ! It 
 is because I have not forgotten an ancient Greek precept 
 which expressly recommends this. 
 
 It is thus by attempting to be ambidextrous, I try to ward 
 off attacks. My critics, however, will criticise me as they 
 please. It will be sufficient for me, my Lord, to be assured 
 of having satisfied you, by my letters, if they are good ; or 
 by my obedience, if they are not so. 
 
 Florence, H94. 
 
 ORIGINAL LETTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 
 
 In the Cottonian Library, Vespasian, F. III. is preserved a 
 letter written by Queen Elizabetb, then Princess. Her 
 brother, Edward the Sixth, had desired to have her picture ; 
 and in gratifying the wishes of his majesty, Elizabeth accom- 
 panies the present with an elaborate letter. It bears no date 
 of the year in which it was written ; but her place of resi- 
 dence was at Hatfield. There she had retired to enjoy the 
 silent pleasures of a studious life, and to be distant from the 
 dangerous politics of the time. When Mary died, Elizabeth 
 was still at Hatfield. At the time of its composition she was 
 in habitual intercourse with the most excellent writers of 
 antiquity : her letter displays this in every part of it ; but it 
 is too rhetorical. It is here now first published. 
 
 LETTER. 
 
 " Like as the riche man that dayly gathereth riches to 
 riches, and to one bag of money layeth a greate sort til it 
 come to infinit, so me thinkes, your Majestic not beinge
 
 Anne Bullen. 461 
 
 suffised with many benefits and gentilnes shewed to me afore 
 this time, dothe now increase them in askinge and desiring 
 wher you may hid and comamide, requiring a thinge not 
 worthy the desiringe for it selfe, but made worthy for your 
 highness request. My pictur I mene, in wiche if the inward 
 good mynde towarde your grace might as wel be declared as 
 the outvvarde face and countenance shal be seen, I wold nor 
 haue taried the comandement but prevent it, nor haue bine 
 the last to graunt but the first to offer it. For the face, I 
 graunt, I might wel blusche to offer, but the mynde I shall 
 neur be ashamed to present. For thogth from the grace of 
 the pictur, the coulers may fade by time, may giue by wether, 
 may be spotted by chance, yet the other nor time with her 
 swift winges shall ouertake, nor the mistie cloudes with their 
 loweringes may darken, nor chance with her slipery fote may 
 ouerthrow. Of this althogth yet the profe could not be 
 greate because the occasions hath bine but smal, notwith- 
 standinge as a dog bathe a day, so may 1 perchaunce haue 
 time to declare it in dides wher now I do write them but 
 in wordes. And further I shal most humbly beseche your 
 Maiestie that whan you shal loke on my pictur you wil 
 witsafe to thinke that as you haue but the outwarde shadow 
 of the body afore you, so my inwarde minde wischeth, that 
 the body it selfe wer oftener in your presence ; howbeit 
 bicause bothe my so beinge I thinke coulde do your Maiestie 
 litel pleasure thogth my selfe great good, and againe bicause 
 I se as yet not the time agreing thertito, I shal lerne to 
 folow this saing of Grace, Feras non culpes quod vitari non 
 potest. And thus I wil (troblinge your Maiestie I fere) end 
 with my most humble thankes, beseching God long to pre- 
 serue you to his honour, to your cofort, to the realmes profit, 
 and to my joy. From Hatfilde this 1 day of May. 
 
 " Your Maiesties most humbly Sistar 
 " and Seruante 
 
 " Elizabeth." 
 
 ANNE BULLEN. 
 
 That minute detail of circumstances frequently found in 
 writei's of the history of their own times is more interesting 
 than the elegant and general narratives of later, and probably 
 of more philosophical historians. It is in the artless recitals
 
 462 James the First. 
 
 of memoir-writers, that the imagination is struck with a 
 lively impression, and fastens on petty circumstances, which 
 must be passed over hj the classical historian. The writings 
 of Brantome, Comines, Froissart, and others, are dictated b}'" 
 their natural feelings : while the passions of modern writers 
 are temperate with dispassionate philosophy, or inflamed by 
 the virulence of faction. History instructs, but Memoirs de- 
 light. These prefatory observations may serve as an apology 
 for Anecdotes which are gathered from obscure corners, on 
 which the dignity of the historian must not dwell. 
 
 In Houssaie's Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 435, a little circumstance 
 is recorded concerning the decapitation of the unfortunate 
 Anne Bullen, which illustrates an observation of Hume. Our 
 historian notices that her executioner was a Frenchman of 
 Calais, who was supposed to have uncommon skill. It is 
 probable that the following incident might have been pre- 
 served by tradition in France, from the account of the exe- 
 cutioner himself: — Anne Bullen being on the scaffold, would 
 not consent to have her eyes covered with a bandage, saying 
 that she had no fear of death. All that the divine who 
 assisted at her execution could obtain from her was, that she 
 would shut her e3^es. But as she was opening them at every 
 moment, the executioner could not bear their tender and 
 mild glances ; fearful of missing his aim, he was obliged to 
 invent an expedient to behead the queen. He drew off his 
 shoes, and approached her silently ; while he was at her left 
 hand, another person advanced at her right, who made a 
 great noise in walking, so that this circumstance drawing 
 the attention of Anne, she turned her face from the execu- 
 tioner, who was enabled by this artifice to strike the fatal 
 blow, without being disarmed by that spirit of affecting re- 
 signation which shone in the eyes of the lovely Anne Bullen. 
 
 The Common Executioner, 
 Whose heart th' acciistom'd sight of death makes hard, 
 Falls not the axe upon the humble neck 
 But first begs pardon. 
 
 Shakspeaee. 
 
 JAMES THE FIRST. 
 
 It was usual, in the reign of James the First, when they 
 compared it with the preceding glorious one, to distinguish 
 him by the title of Queen James, and his illustrious prede-
 
 James the First. 463 
 
 cesser by that of King EUzahetTi ! Sir Anthony Weldon 
 informs us, " That when James the First sent Sir Roarer 
 Aston as his messenger to Elizabeth, Sir Roger was always 
 placed in the lobby : the hangings being turned so that he 
 might see the Queen dancing to a little fiddle, which was to 
 no other end than that he should tell his master, by her 
 youthful disposition, how likely he was to come to the crown 
 he so much thirsted after ;" — and, indeed, when at her death 
 this same knight, whose origin was low, and whose language 
 was suitable to that origin, appeared before the English 
 council, he could not conceal his Scottish rapture, for, asked 
 how the king did ? he replied, " Even, my lords, like a poore 
 man wandering about forty years in a wildernesse and barren 
 soyle, and now arrived at the Land of Promise.'''' A curious 
 anecdote, respecting the economy of the court in these reigns, 
 is noticed in some manuscript memoirs written in James's 
 reign, preserved in a family of distinction. The lady, who 
 wrote these memoirs, tells us that a great change had taken 
 place in cleanliness, since the last reign ; for, having rose 
 from her chair, she found, on her departure, that she had 
 the honour of carrying upon her some companions who 
 must have been inhabitants of the palace. The court of 
 Elizabeth was celebrated occasionally for its magnificence, 
 and always for its nicety. James was singularly effemi- 
 nate ; he could not behold a drawn sword without shud- 
 dering ; was much too partial to handsome men ; and 
 appears to merit the bitter satire of Churchill. If want- 
 ing other proois, we should only read the second volume of 
 " Royal Letters," 6987, in the Harleian collections, which 
 contains Stenie's correspondence with James. The gross 
 familiarity of Buckingham's address is couched in such terms 
 as these: — he calls his majesty " Dere dad and Gossope!" 
 and concludes his letters with " your humble slaue and dogge, 
 Stenie."* He was a most weak, but not quite a vicious man ; 
 yet his expertness in the art of dissimulation was very 
 great indeed. He called this King -Graft. Sir Anthony 
 
 * Buckingham's style was even stronger and coarser than the text leads 
 one to suppose. " Your sowship" is the beginning of one letter, and "I 
 kiss your dirty hands" the conclusion of another. The king had encou- 
 raged this by his own extraordinary familiarity. "My own sweet and 
 dear child," " Sweet hearty," "My sweet Steenie and gossip," are thecom- 
 mencements of the royal epistles to Buckingham ; and in one instance, 
 ■where he proposes a hunting party and invites the ladies of his family, he 
 does it in words of perfect obscenity.
 
 464 James the First. 
 
 Weldon gives a lively anecdote of this dissimulation in the 
 king's behaviour to the Earl of Somerset at the very moment 
 he had prepared to disgrace him. Tlie earl accompanied the 
 king to Royston, and, to his apprehension, never parted from 
 him with more seeming affection, though the king well knew 
 he should never see him more. " The earl, when he kissed 
 his hand, the king hung about his neck, slabbering his cheeks, 
 saying — ' For God's sake, when shall I see thee again ? On 
 my soul I shall neither eat nor sleep until you come again.' 
 The earl told him on Monday (this being on the Friday). 
 ' For Grod's sake let me,' said the king : — ' Shall I, shall I ?' — 
 then lolled about his neck ; ' then for God's sake give thy 
 lady this kisse for me, in the same manner at the stayre's 
 head, at the middle of the stayres, and at the stayre's foot.' 
 The carl was not in his coach when the king used these very 
 words (in the hearing of four servants, one of whom reported 
 it instantly to the author of this history), ' I shall never see 
 his face more.' " 
 
 He displa^'ed great imbecility in his amusements, which 
 are characterised by the following one, related by Arthur 
 Wilson: — When James became melancholy in consequence of 
 various disappointments in state matters, Buckingham and 
 his mother used several means of diverting him. Amongst 
 the most ludicrous was the present. They had a j'oung 
 lady, who brought a pig in the dress of a new-born infant : 
 the countess carried it to the king, wrapped in a rich mantle. 
 One Turpin, on this occasion, was dressed like a bishop in all 
 his pontifical ornaments. He began the rites of baptism with 
 the common prayer-book in his hand ; a silver ewer with 
 water was held by another. The marquis stood as god- 
 father. When James turned to look at the infant, the pig 
 squeaked : an animal which- he greatly abhorred. At this, 
 highly displeased, he exclaimed, — "• Out ! Away for shame ! 
 What blasphemy is this !" 
 
 This ridiculous joke did not accord with the feelings of 
 James at that moment ; he was not " i' the vein." Yet w^e 
 may observe, that had not such artful politicians as Bucking- 
 ham and his mother been strongly persuaded of the success 
 of this puerile fancy, they would not have ventured on such 
 " blasphemies." They certainly had witnessed amusements 
 heretofore not less trivial which liad gratified his majesty. 
 The account which Sir Anthony Weldon gives, in his Court 
 of King 'James, exhibits a curious scene of James's amuse-
 
 James the First. 465 
 
 ments. " After the king supped, he woukl come forth to see 
 pastimes and fooleries ; in which Sir Ed. Zouch, Sir George 
 Goring, and Sir John Finit, were the chiefe and master fools, 
 and surel}^ this fooling got them more than any otliers wis- 
 dome ; Zouch's part was to shig bawdy songs, and tell bawdy 
 tales ; Finit's to compose these songs : there was a set of 
 fiddlers brought to court on purpose for this fooling, and 
 Goring was master of the game for fooleries, sometimes pre- 
 senting David Droman and Archee Armstrong, the kings 
 foole, on the back of the other fools, to tilt one at another, 
 till the}" fell together by the eares ; sometimes they performed 
 antick dances. But Sir John Millicent (who was never 
 known before) was commended for notable fooling ; and was 
 indeed the best extemporary foole of them all." Weldon's 
 " Court of James" is a scandalous chronicle of the times. 
 
 His dispositions were, however, generall}'' grave and stu- 
 dious. He seems to have possessed a real love of letters, but 
 attended with that mediocrity of talent which in a private 
 person had never raised him into notice. " While there was 
 a chance," writes the author of tlie Catalogue of Noble 
 Authors, " that the dyer's son, Vorstius, might be divinity- 
 professor at Leyden, instead of being burnt, as his majest}^ 
 hinted to the Cliristian prudence of the Dutch that he de- 
 served to be, our ambassadors could not receive instructions, 
 and consequently could not treat on any other business. The 
 king, who did not resent the massacre at Amboyna, was on 
 the point of breaking with the States for sujiporting a man 
 who professed the heresies of Enjedius, Ostodorus, &c., 
 points of extreme consequence to Great Britain ! Sir Dudley 
 Carleton was forced to threaten the Dutch, not only with 
 the hatred of King James, but also with his pen." 
 
 This royal pedant is forcibly characterised by the following 
 observations of the same writer : — 
 
 "Among his majesty's works is a small collection of 
 poetry. Like several of his subjects, our royal author has 
 condescended to apologise for its imperfections, as having 
 been written in his youth, and his maturer age being other- 
 wise occiipied. So that (to employ his own language) 
 ' when his ingyne and age could, his affaires and fascherie 
 would not permit him to correct them, scarslie but at stolen 
 moments, he having the leisure to blenk upon any paper.' 
 When James sent a present of his harangues, turned into 
 Latin, to the Protestant princes in Europe, it is not unenter- 
 
 VOL. I. H H
 
 466 James the First. 
 
 taining to observe in their answers of compliments and 
 thanks, how each endeavoured to insinuate that he had read 
 them, without positively asserting it ! Buchanan, when 
 asked how he came to make a pedant of his roj'al pupil, an- 
 swered that it was the best he could make of him. Sir 
 George Mackenzie relates a story of his tutelage, which 
 shows Buchanan's humour, and the veneration of others for 
 royalty. The young king being one day at play with his 
 fellow-pupil, the master of Erskine, Buchanan was reading, 
 and desired them to make less noise. As they disregarded 
 his admonition, he told his majesty, if he did not hold his 
 tongue, he would certainly whip his breech. The king re- 
 plied, he would be glad to see who would hell the cat, 
 alluding to the fable. Buchanan lost his temper, and throw- 
 ing his book from him, gave his majesty a sound flogging. 
 The old countess of Mar rushed into the room, and taking 
 the king in her arms, asked how he dared to lay his hands on 
 the Lord's anointed ? Madam, replied the elegant and im- 
 mortal historian, I have whipped his a , you may kiss it 
 
 if you please !" 
 
 Many years after this was published, I discovered a curious 
 anecdote : — Even so late as when James I. was seated on the 
 throne of England, once the appearance o^ his frowning tutor 
 in a dream greatly agitated the king, who in vain attempted 
 to pacify his illustrious pedagogue in this portentous vision. 
 Such was the terror which the remembrance of this inexor- 
 able republican tutor had left on the imagination of his royal 
 pupil. 
 
 James I. was certainly a zealous votary of literature ; his 
 wish was sincere, when at viewing the Bodleian Library at 
 Oxford, he exclaimed, " Were I not a king I would be an 
 university man ; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, 
 if I might have my wish, I would have no other prison than 
 this library, and be chained together with these good 
 authors." 
 
 Hume has informed us, that "his death was decent." 
 The following are the minute particulars : I have drawn them 
 from an imperfect manuscript collection, made by the cele- 
 brated Sir Thomas Browne. 
 
 " The lord keeper, on March 22, received a letter from the 
 court, that it was feared his majesty's sickness was dangerous 
 to death ; which fear was more contirmed, for he, meeting 
 Dr. Harvey in the road, was told by him that the king used
 
 James the First. 467 
 
 to hav^e a beneficial evacuation of nature, a sweating in his 
 left arm, as helpful to him as any fontenel could be, which of 
 late failed. 
 
 " When tlie lord keeper presented himself before him, he 
 moved to cheerful discourse, but it would not do. He stayed 
 by his bedside until midnight. Upon the consultations of 
 the phj'sicians in the morning he was out of comfort, and by 
 the prince's leave told him, kneehng by his pallet, that his 
 days to come would be but few in this world. ' / am satis- 
 Jied' said the king ; ' but pray you assist me to make me 
 ready for the next world, to go away hence for Christ, whose 
 mercies I call for, and hope to find.' 
 
 " From that time the keeper never left him, or put off his 
 clothes to go to bed. The king took the communion, and 
 professed he died in the bosom of the Church of England, 
 whose doctrine he had defended with his pen, being per- 
 suaded it was according to the mind of Christ, as he should 
 shortly answer it before him. 
 
 " He stayed in the chamber to take notice of everything 
 the king said, and to repulse those who crept much about the 
 chamber door, and into the chamber ; they were for the most 
 addicted to the Church of Rome. Being rid of them, he 
 continued in prayer, while the king lingered on, and at last 
 shut his eyes loith his own hands.'''' 
 
 Thus, in the full power of iiis faculties, a timorous prince 
 encountered the horrors of dissolution. Religion rendered 
 cheerful the abrupt night of futurity ; and what can philo- 
 sophy do more, or rather, can philosophy do as much ? 
 
 I proposed to have examined with some care the works of 
 James I. ; but that uninviting task has been now postponed 
 till it is too late. As a writer, his works may not be valuable, 
 and are infected with the pedantry and the superstition of the 
 age ; yet I suspect that James was not that degraded and 
 feeble character in which he ranks by the contagious voice of 
 criticism. He has had more critics than readers. After \ 
 great number of acute observations and witty allusions, made 
 extempore, which we find continually recorded of him by con- 
 temporary writers, and some not friendly to him, I conclude 
 that lie possessed a great promptness of wit, and much solid 
 judgment and acute ingenuity. It requires only a little labour 
 to prove this. 
 
 That labour I have since zealously performed. This article, 
 
 HH 2
 
 468 General Monk and his Wife. 
 
 composed moj-e than thirty years ago, displays the effects of 
 first impressions and popular clamours. About ten years I 
 suspected that his character was grossly injured, and lately I 
 foundhowit has suffered from avariety of causes. That monarch 
 preserved for us a peace of more than twenty years ; and his 
 talents were of a higher order than the calumnies of the party 
 who have remorselessly degraded him have allowed a common 
 inquirer to discover. For the rest I must refer the reader 
 to " An Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of 
 James I.;" in which he may find many correctives for this 
 article. I shall in a future work enter into further explana- 
 tions of this ambiguous royal author. 
 
 GENERAL MONK AND HIS WIFE. 
 
 Trom the MS. collection of Sir Thomas Browne, I shall 
 rescue an anecdote, which has a tendency to show that it is 
 not advisable to permit ladies to remain at home, when 
 political plots are to be secretly discussed. And while it dis- 
 plays the treachery of Monk's wife, it will also appear that, 
 like other great revolutionists, it was ambition that first 
 induced him to become the reformer he pretended to be. 
 
 " Monk gave fair promises to the Rump, but last agreed 
 with the French Ambassador to take the government on him- 
 self ; by whom he had a promise from Mazarin of assistance 
 from France. This bargain was struck late at night : but not 
 so secretly but that Monk's wife, who had posted herself con- 
 veniently behind the hangings, finding what was resolved upon, 
 sent her brother Clarges away immediately with notice of it 
 to Sir A. A. She had promised to watch her husband, and 
 inform Sir A. how matters went. Sir A. caused the council 
 of state, whereof he was a member, to be summoned, and 
 charged Monk that he was playing false. The general 
 insisted that he was true to his principles, and firm to what he 
 had promised, and that he was ready to give them all satisfac- 
 tion. Sir A. told him if he were sincere he might remove all 
 scruples, and should instantly take away their commissions 
 from such and such men in his army, and appoint others, and 
 that before he left the room. ]\Ionk consented ; a great part 
 of the commissions of his officers were changed, and Sir 
 Edward Harley, a member of the council, and then present,
 
 Philrp and Mary. 469 
 
 was made governor of Dunkirk, in the room of Sir William 
 Lockhart ; the army ceased to be at Monk's devotion ; the 
 ambassador was recalled, and broke his heart." 
 
 Such were the effects of the infidelity of the wife of Gene- 
 ral Monk ! 
 
 PHILIP AND MARY. 
 
 HoFSSAiE, in his Memoires, vol. i. p. 261, has given the 
 following curious particulars of this singular union : — 
 
 " The second wife of Philip was Mary Queen of England ; 
 a virtuous princess (Houssaie was a good catholic), but who 
 had neither youth nor beauty. This marriage was as little 
 happy for the one as for the other. The husband did not 
 like his wife, although she doted on him ; and the English 
 hated Philip still more than he hated them. Silhon says, 
 that the rigour which he exercised in England against here- 
 tics partly hindered Prince Carlos from succeeding to that 
 crown, and for which purpose Mary had invited him in case 
 she diecl childless 1" — But no historian speaks of this pre- 
 tended inclination, and is it probable that Mary ever thought 
 proper to call to the succession of the English throne the son 
 of the Spanish Monarch ? This marriage had made her 
 nation detest her, and in the last years of her life she could 
 be httle satisfied with him, from his marked indifference for 
 her. She well knew that the Parliament would never con- 
 sent to exclude her sister Elizabeth, whom the nobility loved 
 for being more friendly to the new religion, and more hostile 
 to the house of Austria. 
 
 In the Cottonian Library, Vespasian F. iit. is preserved a 
 note of instructions in the handwriting of Queen Mary, of 
 which the following is a copy. It was, probably, written 
 when Philip was just seated on the English throne." 
 
 " Instructions for my lorde Previsel. 
 " Firste, to tell the Kinge the whole state of this realme, 
 
 fill* 
 
 w*- all thmgs appai'taynyng to the same, as myche as ye knowe 
 to be trewe. 
 
 " Seeonde, to obey his commandment in all thyngs. 
 
 "Thyrdly, in all things he shall aske your aduyse to
 
 470 Philip and Mary. 
 
 declare your opinion as becometb a faythfull conceyllour 
 to do. 
 
 " Maet the Quene." 
 
 Houssaie proceeds : " After the death of Mary, Phihp 
 sought Elizabeth in marriage ; and she, who was yet unfixed 
 at the beofinnino' of her reiern, amused bim at first with 
 hopes. But as soon as she unmasked herself to the pope, she 
 laughed at Philip, telling the Duke of Feria, his ambassador, 
 that her conscience would not permit her to marry the hus- 
 band of her sister." 
 
 This monarch, however, had no such scruples. Incest 
 appears to have had in his eyes peculiar charms ; for he 
 offered himself three times to three different sisters-in-law. 
 He seems also to have known the secret of getting quit of 
 his wives when they became inconvenient. In state matters 
 he spared no one whom he feared ; to them he sacrificed his 
 only son, his brother, and a great number of princes and 
 ministers. 
 
 It is said of Philip, that before he died he advised his son 
 to make peace with England, and war with the other powers. 
 Pacem cum Anglo, bellum cum reliquis. Queen Elizabeth, 
 and the ruin of his invincible fleet, physicked his frenzy into 
 health, and taught him to fear and respect that country 
 which he thought he could have made a province of Spain. 
 
 On his death-bed he did everything he could for salvation. 
 The following {protestation, a curious morsel of bigotry, he 
 sent to his confessor a few days before he died : — 
 
 " Father confessor ! as you occupy the place of God, I pro- 
 test to you that I will do everything you shall say to be 
 necessary for my being saved ; so that what I omit doing 
 will be placed to your account, as I am ready to acquit myself 
 of all that shall be ordered to me." 
 
 Is there, in the records of history, a more glaring instance 
 of the idea which a good Catholic attaches to the power of a 
 confessor, than the present authentic example ? The most 
 licentious philosophy seems not more dangerous than a reli- 
 gion whose votary believes that the accumulation of crimes 
 can be dissipated by the breath of a few orisons, and which, 
 considering a venal priest to " occupy the place of God," can 
 traffic with the divine power at a very moderate price. 
 
 After his death a Spanish grandee wrote with a coal on the
 
 Philip and Mary. 471 
 
 chimney-piece of his chamber the following ej^itaph, which 
 ingeniously paints his character in four verses : — 
 
 Siendo mo^o luxurioso ; 
 Siendo hombre, fue cruel ; 
 Siendo viejo, codicioso : 
 Que SB puede esperar del ? 
 
 In youtli he was luxurious ; 
 In manhood he was cruel ; 
 In old age he was avaricious : 
 What could be hoped from him ? 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 lONDOW : 
 
 SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PBINTBB8, 
 
 OHANDOS STBKBI.
 
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