mmf\<: a 1 1 Yc'-' i t VX t ft I C •' Ex Libris I C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ^> ^ -i //JY: 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 feelinhammedan 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?«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 > I 3 '1 1 I ' ' ' ' i^iM ■■:■■■:■;: 'H j ' 1 '- I :^ ^ * • i 1 1 ; 1 -• ., ^ . ^ 1 > 1 1 111 1 1 ■ 'i > :1 :i ■;■;■: > « 1 ; '1 ' T * .1 V I / > ■ I I ■i ' ■' ■ ) I *1 \\'