Canto XXXIII (part 1 of 3)

Canto XXXIII (part 1 of 3)

"The friar Alberigo," answered he, "Am I, who from the evil garden pluck'd Its fruitage, and am here repaid the date More luscious for my fig."

CARY'S Dante.

This was Manfred, the Lord of Fuenza, who, after many cruelties, turned friar. Reconciling himself to those whom he had so often opposed, to celebrate the renewal of their friendship he invited them to a magnificent entertainment. At the end of the dinner the horn blew to announce the dessert--but it was the signal of this dissimulating conspirator!--and the fruits which that day were served to his guests were armed men, who, rushing in, immolated their victims.

Among these historical proverbs none are more entertaining than those which perpetuate national events, connected with those of another people. When a Frenchman would let us understand that he has settled with his creditors, the proverb is J'ai payé tous mes Anglois: "I have paid all my English." This proverb originated when John, the French king, was taken prisoner by our Black Prince. Levies of money were made for the king's ransom, and for many French lords; and the French people have thus perpetuated the military glory of our nation, and their own idea of it, by making the English and their creditors synonymous terms. Another relates to the same event--Le Pape est devenu François, et Jesus Christ Anglais: "Now the Pope is become French and Jesus Christ English;" a proverb which arose when the Pope, exiled from Rome, held his court at Avignon in France; and the English prospered so well, that they possessed more than half the kingdom. The Spanish proverb concerning England is well known--

_Con todo el mondo guerra, Y paz con Inglaterra!_

War with the world, And peace with England!

Whether this proverb was one of the results of their memorable armada, and was only coined after their conviction of the splendid folly which they had committed, I cannot ascertain. England must always have been a desirable ally to Spain against her potent rival and neighbour. The Italians have a proverb, which formerly, at least, was strongly indicative of the travelled Englishmen in their country, Inglese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato; "The Italianised Englishman is a devil incarnate." Formerly there existed a closer intercourse between our country and Italy than with France. Before and during the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First that land of the elegant arts modelled our taste and manners: and more Italians travelled into England, and were more constant residents, from commercial concerns, than afterwards when France assumed a higher rank in Europe by her political superiority. This cause will sufficiently account for the number of Italian proverbs relating to England, which show an intimacy with our manners that could not else have occurred. It was probably some sarcastic Italian, and, perhaps, horologer, who, to describe the disagreement of persons, proverbed our nation--"They agree like the clocks of London!" We were once better famed for merry Christmases and their pies; and it must have been the Italians who had been domiciliated with us who gave currency to the proverb--Ha piu da fare che i forni di natale in Inghilterra: "He has more business than English ovens at Christmas." Our pie-loving gentry were notorious, and Shakspeare's folio was usually laid open in the great halls of our nobility to entertain their attendants, who devoured at once Shakspeare and their pasty. Some of those volumes have come down to us, not only with the stains, but inclosing even the identical piecrusts of the Elizabethan age.

I have thus attempted to develope THE ART OF READING PROVERBS; but have done little more than indicate the theory, and must leave the skilful student to the delicacy of the practice. I am anxious to rescue from prevailing prejudices these neglected stores of curious amusement, and of deep insight into the ways of man, and to point out the bold and concealed truths which are scattered in these collections. There seems to be no occurrence in human affairs to which some proverb may not be applied. All knowledge was long aphoristical and traditional, pithily contracting the discoveries which were to be instantly comprehended and easily retained. Whatever be the revolutionary state of man, similar principles and like occurrences are returning on us; and antiquity, whenever it is justly applicable to our times, loses its denomination, and becomes the truth of our own age. A proverb will often cut the knot which others in vain are attempting to untie. Johnson, palled with the redundant elegancies of modern composition, once said, "I fancy mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connexion, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made." Many a volume indeed has often been written to demonstrate what a lover of proverbs could show had long been ascertained by a single one in his favourite collections.

An insurmountable difficulty, which every paræmiographer has encountered, is that of forming an apt, a ready, and a systematic classification: the moral Linnæus of such a "systema naturæ" has not yet appeared. Each discovered his predecessor's mode imperfect, but each was doomed to meet the same fate.[40] The arrangement of proverbs has baffled the ingenuity of every one of their collectors. Our Ray, after long premeditation, has chosen a system with the appearance of an alphabetical order; but, as it turns out, his system is no system, and his alphabet is no alphabet. After ten years' labour, the good man could only arrange his proverbs by commonplaces--by complete sentences--by phrases or forms of speech--by proverbial similes--and so on. All these are pursued in alphabetical order, "by the first letter of the most 'material word,' or if there be more words 'equally material,' by that which usually stands foremost." The most patient examiner will usually find that he wants the sagacity of the collector to discover that word which is "the most material," or, "the words equally material." We have to search through all that multiplicity of divisions, or conjuring boxes, in which this juggler of proverbs pretends to hide the ball.[41]

A still more formidable objection against a collection of proverbs, for the impatient reader, is their unreadableness. Taking in succession a multitude of insulated proverbs, their slippery nature resists all hope of retaining one in a hundred; the study of proverbs must be a frequent recurrence to a gradual collection of favourite ones, which we ourselves must form. The experience of life will throw a perpetual freshness over these short and simple texts; every day may furnish a new commentary; and we may grow old, and find novelty in proverbs by their perpetual application.

There are, perhaps, about twenty thousand proverbs among the nations of Europe: many of these have spread in their common intercourse; many are borrowed from the ancients, chiefly the Greeks, who themselves largely took them from the eastern nations. Our own proverbs are too often deficient in that elegance and ingenuity which are often found in the Spanish and the Italian. Proverbs frequently enliven conversation, or enter into the business of life in those countries, without any feeling of vulgarity being associated with them: they are too numerous, too witty, and too wise to cease to please by their poignancy and their aptitude. I have heard them fall from the lips of men of letters and of statesmen. When recently the disorderly state of the manufacturers of Manchester menaced an insurrection, a profound Italian politician observed to me, that it was not of a nature to alarm a great nation; for that the remedy was at hand, in the proverb of the Lazzaroni of Naples, Metà consiglio, metà esempio, metà denaro! "Half advice, half example, half money!" The result confirmed the truth of the proverb, which, had it been known at the time, might have quieted the honest fears of a great part of the nation.

Proverbs have ceased to be studied or employed in conversation since the time we have derived our knowledge from books; but in a philosophical age they appear to offer infinite subjects for speculative curiosity. Originating in various eras, these memorials of manners, of events, and of modes of thinking, for historical as well as for moral purposes, still retain a strong hold on our attention. The collected knowledge of successive ages, and of different people, must always enter into some part of our own! Truth and nature can never be obsolete.

Proverbs embrace the wide sphere of human existence, they take all the colours of life, they are often exquisite strokes of genius, they delight by their airy sarcasm or their caustic satire, the luxuriance of their humour, the playfulness of their turn, and even by the elegance of their imagery, and the tenderness of their sentiment. They give a deep insight into domestic life, and open for us the heart of man, in all the various states which he may occupy--a frequent review of proverbs should enter into our readings; and although they are no longer the ornaments of conversation, they have not ceased to be the treasuries of Thought!

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Taylor's Translation of Plato's works, vol v. p. 36.

[30] Shakspeare satirically alludes to the quality of such rhymes in his Merchant of Venice, Act v. Sc. 1. Speaking of one

"------ whose poesy was For all the world like cutler's poetry Upon a knife, Love me, and leave me not."

[31] One of the fruit trenchers, for such these roundels are called in the Gent. Mag. for 1798, p. 398, is engraved there, and the inscriptions of an entire set given.--See also the Supplement to that volume, p. 1187. The author of the "Art of English Poesie," 1589, tells us they never contained above one verse, or two at the most, but the shorter the better. Two specimens may suffice the reader. One, under the symbol of a skull, thus morally discourses:--

"Content thyself with thine estate, And send no poor wight from thy gate; For why, this counsel I you give, To learne to die, and die to live."

On another, decorated with pictures of fruit, are these satirical lines:--

"Feed and be fat: hear's pears and plums, Will never hurt your teeth or spoil your gums. And I wish those girls that painted are, No other food than such fine painted fare."

[32] This constant custom of engraving "posies," as they were termed, on rings, is noted by many authors of the Elizabethan era. Lilly, in his "Euphues," addresses the ladies for a favourable judgment on his work, hoping it will be recorded "as you do the posies in your rings, which are always next to the finger not to be seene of him that holdeth you by the hand, and yet knowne by you that weare them on your hands." They were always engraved withinside of the ring. A MS. of the time of Charles I. furnishes us with a single posy, of one line, to this effect--"This hath alloy; my love is pure." From the same source we have the two following rhyming, or "double posies"--

"Constancy and heaven are round, And in this the emblem's found." "Weare me out, love shall not waste; Love beyond tyme still is placed."

[33] Heywood's "Dialogue, conteyninge the Number in Effecte of all the Proverbes in the English Tunge, 1561." There are more editions of this little volume than Warton has noticed. There is some humour in his narrative, but his metre and his ribaldry are heavy taxes on our curiosity.

[34] The whole of Tusser's "Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie," 1580, was composed in quaint couplets, long remembered by the peasantry for their homely worldly wisdom. One, constructed for the bakehouse, runs thus:--

"New bread is a drivell (waste); Much crust is as evil."

Another for the dairymaid assures her--

"Good dairie doth pleasure; Ill dairie spends treasure."

Another might rival any lesson of thrift:--

"Where nothing will last, Spare such as thou hast."

[35] Townshend's Historical Collections, p. 283.

[36] It was published in 1616: the writer only catches at some verbal expressions--as, for instance:--

The vulgar proverb runs, "The more the merrier."

The cross,--"Not so! one hand is enough in a purse."

The proverb, "It is a great way to the bottom of the sea."

The cross,--"Not so! it is but a stone's cast."

The proverb, "The pride of the rich makes the labours of the poor."

The cross,--"Not so! the labours of the poor make the pride of the rich."

The proverb, "He runs far who never turns."

The cross,--"Not so! he may break his neck in a short course."

[37] It has been suggested that this whimsical amusement has been lately revived, to a certain degree, in the acting of charades among juvenile parties.

[38] Now the punning motto of a noble family.

[39] At the ROYAL INSTITUTION there is a fine copy of Polydore Vergil's "Adagia," with his other work, curious in its day, De Inventoribus Rerum, printed by Frobenius, in 1521. The wood-cuts of this edition seem to me to be executed with inimitable delicacy, resembling a pencilling which Raphael might have envied.

[40] Since the appearance of the present article, several collections of PROVERBS have been attempted. A little unpretending volume, entitled "Select Proverbs of all Nations, with Notes and Comments, by Thomas Fielding, 1824," is not ill arranged; an excellent book for popular reading. The editor of a recent miscellaneous compilation, "The Treasury of Knowledge," has whimsically bordered the four sides of the pages of a Dictionary with as many proverbs. The plan was ingenious, but the proverbs are not. Triteness and triviality are fatal to a proverb.

[41] A new edition of Ray's book, with large additions, was published by Bohn, in 1855, under the title of "A Handbook of Proverbs." It is a vast collection of "wise saws" of all ages and countries.

CONFUSION OF WORDS.

"There is nothing more common," says the lively Voltaire, "than to read and to converse to no purpose. In history, in morals, in law, in physic, and in divinity, be careful of equivocal terms." One of the ancients wrote a book to prove that there was no word which did not convey an ambiguous and uncertain meaning. If we possessed this lost book, our ingenious dictionaries of "synonyms" would not probably prove its uselessness. Whenever the same word is associated by the parties with different ideas, they may converse, or controverse, till "the crack of doom!" This with a little obstinacy and some agility in shifting his ground, makes the fortune of an opponent. While one party is worried in disentangling a meaning, and the other is winding and unwinding about him with another, a word of the kind we have mentioned, carelessly or perversely slipped into an argument, may prolong it for a century or two--as it has happened! Vaugelas, who passed his whole life in the study of words, would not allow that the sense was to determine the meaning of words; for, says he, it is the business of words to explain the sense. Kant for a long while discovered in this way a facility of arguing without end, as at this moment do our political economists. "I beseech you," exclaims a poetical critic, in the agony of a confusion of words, on the Pope controversy, "not to ask whether I mean this or that!" Our critic, positive that he has made himself understood, has shown how a few vague terms may admit of volumes of vindication. Throw out a word, capable of fifty senses, and you raise fifty parties! Should some friend of peace enable the fifty to repose on one sense, that innocent word, no longer ringing the tocsin of a party, would lie in forgetfulness in the Dictionary. Still more provoking when an identity of meaning is only disguised by different modes of expression, and when the term has been closely sifted, to their mutual astonishment both parties discover the same thing lying under the bran and chaff after this heated operation. Plato and Aristotle probably agreed much better than the opposite parties they raised up imagined; their difference was in the manner of expression, rather than in the points discussed. The Nominalists and the Realists, who once filled the world with their brawls, and who from irregular words came to regular blows, could never comprehend their alternate nonsense; "whether in employing general terms we use words or names only, or whether there is in nature anything corresponding to what we mean by a general idea?" The Nominalists only denied what no one in his senses would affirm; and the Realists only contended for what no one in his senses would deny; a hair's breadth might have joined what the spirit of party had sundered!

Do we flatter ourselves that the Logomachies of the Nominalists and the Realists terminated with these scolding schoolmen? Modern nonsense, weighed against the obsolete, may make the scales tremble for awhile, but it will lose its agreeable quality of freshness, and subside into an equipoise. We find their spirit still lurking among our own metaphysicians! "Lo! the Nominalists and the Realists again!" exclaimed my learned friend, Sharon Turner, alluding to our modern doctrines on abstract ideas, on which there is still a doubt whether they are anything more than generalising terms.[42] Leibnitz confused his philosophy by the term sufficient reason: for every existence, for every event, and for every truth there must be a sufficient reason. This vagueness of language produced a perpetual misconception, and Leibnitz was proud of his equivocal triumphs in always affording a new interpretation! It is conjectured that he only employed his term of sufficient reason for the plain simple word of cause. Even Locke, who has himself so admirably noticed the "abuse of words," has been charged with using vague and indefinite ones; he has sometimes employed the words reflection, mind, and spirit in so indefinite a way, that they have confused his philosophy: thus by some ambiguous expressions, our great metaphysician has been made to establish doctrines fatal to the immutability of moral distinctions. Even the eagle-eye of the intellectual Newton grew dim in the obscurity of the language of Locke. We are astonished to discover that two such intellects should not comprehend the same ideas; for Newton wrote to Locke, "I beg your pardon for representing that you struck at the root of morality in a principle laid down in your book of Ideas--and that I took you for a Hobbist!"[43] The difference of opinion between Locke and Reid is in consequence of an ambiguity in the word principle, as employed by Reid. The removal of a solitary word may cast a luminous ray over a whole body of philosophy: "If we had called the infinite the indefinite," says Condillac, in his Traité des Sensations, "by this small change of a word we should have avoided the error of imagining that we have a positive idea of infinity, from whence so many false reasonings have been carried on, not only by metaphysicians, but even by geometricians." The word reason has been used with different meanings by different writers; reasoning and reason have been often confounded; a man may have an endless capacity for reasoning, without being much influenced by reason, and to be reasonable, perhaps differs from both! So Moliere tells us,

Raisonner est l'emploi de toute ma maison; Et le raisonnement en bannit la raison!

In this research on "confusion of words," might enter the voluminous history of the founders of sects, who have usually employed terms which had no meaning attached to them, or were so ambiguous that their real notions have never been comprehended; hence the most chimerical opinions have been imputed to founders of sects. We may instance that of the Antinomians, whose remarkable denomination explains their doctrine, expressing that they were "against law!" Their founder was John Agricola, a follower of Luther, who, while he lived, had kept Agricola's follies from exploding, which they did when he asserted that there was no such thing as sin, our salvation depending on faith, and not on works; and when he declaimed against the Law of God. To what length some of his sect pushed this verbal doctrine is known; but the real notions of this Agricola probably never will be! Bayle considered him as a harmless dreamer in theology, who had confused his head by Paul's controversies with the Jews; but Mosheim, who bestows on this early reformer the epithets of ventosus and versipellis, windy and crafty! or, as his translator has it, charges him with "vanity, presumption, and artifice," tells us by the term "law," Agricola only meant the ten commandments of Moses, which he considered were abrogated by the Gospel, being designed for the Jews and not for the Christians. Agricola then, by the words the "Law of God," and "that there was no such thing as sin," must have said one thing and meant another! This appears to have been the case with most of the divines of the sixteenth century; for even Mosheim complains of "their want of precision and consistency in expressing their sentiments, hence their real sentiments have been misunderstood." There evidently prevailed a great "confusion of words" among them! The grace suffisante and the grace efficace of the Jansenists and the Jesuits show the shifts and stratagems by which nonsense may be dignified. "Whether all men received from God sufficient grace for their conversion!" was an inquiry some unhappy metaphysical theologist set afloat: the Jesuits, according to their worldly system of making men's consciences easy, affirmed it; but the Jansenists insisted, that this sufficient grace would never be efficacious, unless accompanied by special grace. "Then the sufficient grace, which is not efficacious, is a contradiction in terms, and worse, a heresy!" triumphantly cried the Jesuits, exulting over their adversaries. This "confusion of words" thickened, till the Jesuits introduced in this logomachy with the Jansenists papal bulls, royal edicts, and a regiment of dragoons! The Jansenists, in despair, appealed to miracles and prodigies, which they got up for public representation; but, above all, to their Pascal, whose immortal satire the Jesuits really felt was at once "sufficient and efficacious," though the dragoons, in settling a "confusion of words," did not boast of inferior success to Pascal's. Former ages had, indeed, witnessed even a more melancholy logomachy, in the Homoousion and the Homoiousion! An event which Boileau has immortalised by some fine verses, which, in his famous satire on L'Equivoque, for reasons best known to the Sorbonne, were struck out of the text.

D'une syllabe impie un saint mot augmenté Remplit tous les esprits d'aigreurs si meurtrières-- Tu fis, dans une guerre et si triste et si longue, Périr tant de Chrétiens, martyrs d'une diphthongue!

Whether the Son was similar to the substance of the Father, or of the same substance, depended on the diphthong oi, which was alternately rejected and received. Had they earlier discovered, what at length they agreed on, that the words denoted what was incomprehensible, it would have saved thousands, as a witness describes, "from tearing one another to pieces." The great controversy between Abelard and St. Bernard, when the saint accused the scholastic of maintaining heretical notions of the Trinity, long agitated the world; yet, now that these confusers of words can no longer inflame our passions, we wonder how these parties could themselves differ about words to which we can attach no meaning whatever. There have been few councils or synods where the omission or addition of a word or a phrase might not have terminated an interminable logomachy! At the council of Basle, for the convenience of the disputants, John de Secubia drew up a treatise of undeclined words, chiefly to determine the signification of the particles from, by, but, and except, which it seems were perpetually occasioning fresh disputes among the Hussites and the Bohemians. Had Jerome of Prague known, like our Shakspeare, the virtue of an IF, or agreed with Hobbes, that he should not have been so positive in the use of the verb IS, he might have been spared from the flames. The philosopher of Malmsbury has declared that "Perhaps Judgment was nothing else but the composition or joining of two names of things, or modes, by the verb IS." In modern times the popes have more skilfully freed the church from this "confusion of words." His holiness, on one occasion, standing in equal terror of the court of France, who protected the Jesuits, and of the court of Spain, who maintained the cause of the Dominicans, contrived a phrase, where a comma or a full stop, placed at the beginning or the end, purported that his holiness tolerated the opinions which he condemned; and when the rival parties despatched deputations to the court of Rome to plead for the period, or advocate the comma, his holiness, in this "confusion of words," flung an unpunctuated copy to the parties; nor was it his fault, but that of the spirit of party, if the rage of the one could not subside into a comma, nor that of the other close by a full period!

In jurisprudence much confusion has occurred in the uses of the term rights; yet the social union and human happiness are involved in the precision of the expression. When Montesquieu laid down, as the active principle of a republic, virtue, it seemed to infer that a republic was the best of governments. In the defence of his great work he was obliged to define the term; and it seems that by virtue he only meant political virtue, the love of the country.

In politics, what evils have resulted from abstract terms to which no ideas are affixed,--such as, "The Equality of Man--the Sovereignty or the Majesty of the People--Loyalty--Reform--even Liberty herself!--Public Opinion--Public Interest;" and other abstract notions, which have excited the hatred or the ridicule of the vulgar. Abstract ideas, as sounds, have been used as watchwords. The combatants will usually be found willing to fight for words to which, perhaps, not one of them has attached any settled signification. This is admirably touched on by Locke, in his chapter of "Abuse of Words." "Wisdom, Glory, Grace, &c., are words frequent enough in every man's mouth; but if a great many of those who use them should be asked what they mean by them, they would be at a stand, and know not what to answer--a plain proof that though they have learned those sounds, and have them ready at their tongue's end, yet there are no determined ideas laid up in their minds which are to be expressed to others by them."

When the American exclaimed that he was not represented in the House of Commons, because he was not an elector, he was told that a very small part of the people of England were electors. As they could not call this an actual representation, they invented a new name for it, and called it a virtual one. It imposed on the English nation, who could not object that others should be taxed rather than themselves; but with the Americans it was a sophism! and this virtual representation, instead of an actual one, terminated in our separation; "which," says Mr. Flood, "at the time appeared to have swept away most of our glory and our territory; forty thousand lives, and one hundred millions of treasure!"

That fatal expression which Rousseau had introduced, l'Egalité des Hommes, which finally involved the happiness of a whole people, had he lived he had probably shown how ill his country had understood. He could only have referred in his mind to political equality, but not an equality of possessions, of property, of authority, destructive of social order and of moral duties, which must exist among every people. "Liberty," "Equality," and "Reform" (innocent words!) sadly ferment the brains of those who cannot affix any definite notions to them; they are like those chimerical fictions in law, which declare the "sovereign immortal, proclaim his ubiquity in various places," and irritate the feelings of the populace, by assuming that "the king can never do wrong!" In the time of James the Second "it is curious," says Lord Russell, "to read the conference between the Houses on the meaning of the words 'deserted' and 'abdicated,' and the debates in the Lords whether or no there is an original contract between king and people." The people would necessarily decide that "kings derived their power from them;" but kings were once maintained by a "right divine," a "confusion of words," derived from two opposite theories, and both only relatively true. When we listen so frequently to such abstract terms as "the majesty of the people," "the sovereignty of the people," whence the inference that "all power is derived from the people," we can form no definite notions: it is "a confusion of words," contradicting all the political experience which our studies or our observations furnish; for sovereignty is established to rule, to conduct, and to settle the vacillations and quick passions of the multitude. Public opinion expresses too often the ideas of one party in place; and public interest those of another party out! Political axioms, from the circumstance of having the notions attached to them unsettled, are applied to the most opposite ends! "In the time of the French Directory," observes an Italian philosopher of profound views, "in the revolution of Naples, the democratic faction pronounced that 'Every act of a tyrannical government is in its origin illegal;' a proposition which at first sight seems self-evident, but which went to render all existing laws impracticable." The doctrine of the illegality of the acts of a tyrant was proclaimed by Brutus and Cicero, in the name of the senate, against the populace, who had favoured Cæsar's perpetual dictatorship; and the populace of Paris availed themselves of it, against the National Assembly.

This "confusion of words," in time-serving politics, has too often confounded right and wrong; and artful men, driven into a corner, and intent only on its possession, have found no difficulty in solving doubts, and reconciling contradictions. Our own history in revolutionary times abounds with dangerous examples from all parties; of specious hypotheses for compliance with the government of the day or the passions of parliament. Here is an instance in which the subtle confuser of words pretended to substitute two consciences, by utterly depriving a man of any! When the unhappy Charles the First pleaded that to pass the bill of attainder against the Earl of Strafford was against his conscience, that remarkable character of "boldness and impiety," as Clarendon characterizes Williams, Archbishop of York, on this argument of conscience (a simple word enough), demonstrated "that there were two sorts of conscience, public and private; that his public conscience as a king might dispense with his private conscience as a man!" Such was the ignominious argument which decided the fate of that great victim of State! It was an impudent "confusion of words" when Prynne (in order to quiet the consciences of those who were uneasy at warring with the king) observed that the statute of twenty-fifth Edward the Third ran in the singular number--"If a man shall levy war against the king, and therefore could not be extended to the houses, who are many and public persons." Later, we find Sherlock blest with the spirit of Williams, the Archbishop of York, whom we have just left. When some did not know how to charge and to discharge themselves of the oaths to James the Second and to William the Third, this confounder of words discovered that there were two rights, as the other had that there were two consciences; one was a providential right, and the other a legal right; one person might very righteously claim and take a thing, and another as righteously hold and keep it; but that whoever got the better had the providential right by possession; and since all authority comes from God, the people were obliged to transfer their allegiance to him as a king of God's making; so that he who had the providential right necessarily had the legal one! a very simple discovery, which must, however, have cost him some pains; for this confounder of words was himself confounded by twelve answers by non-jurors! A French politician of this stamp recently was suspended from his lectureship for asserting that the possession of the soil was a right; by which principle, any king reigning over a country, whether by treachery, crime, and usurpation, was a legitimate sovereign. For this convenient principle the lecturer was tried, and declared not guilty--by persons who have lately found their advantage in a confusion of words. In treaties between nations, a "confusion of words" has been more particularly studied; and that negotiator has conceived himself most dexterous who, by this abuse of words, has retained an arrière-pensée which may fasten or loosen the ambiguous expression he had so cautiously and so finely inlaid in his mosaic of treachery. A scene of this nature I draw out of "Mesnager's Negociation with the Court of England." When that secret agent of Louis the Fourteenth was negotiating a peace, an insuperable difficulty arose respecting the acknowledgment of the Hanoverian succession. It was absolutely necessary, on this delicate point, to quiet the anxiety of the English public and our allies; but though the French king was willing to recognise Anne's title to the throne, yet the settlement in the house of Hanover was incompatible with French interests and French honour. Mesnager told Lord Bolingbroke that "the king, his master, would consent to any such article, looking the other way, as might disengage him from the obligation of that agreement, as the occasion should present." This ambiguous language was probably understood by Lord Bolingbroke: at the next conference his lordship informed the secret agent "that the queen could not admit of any explanations, whatever her intentions might be; that the succession was settled by act of parliament; that as to the private sentiments of the queen, or of any about her, he could say nothing." "All this was said with such an air, as to let me understand that he gave a secret assent to what I had proposed, &c.; but he desired me to drop the discourse." Thus two great negotiators, both equally urgent to conclude the treaty, found an insuperable obstacle occur, which neither could control. Two honest men would have parted; but the "skilful confounder of words," the French diplomatist, hit on an expedient; he wrote the words which afterwards appeared in the preliminaries, "That Louis the Fourteenth will acknowledge the Queen of Great Britain in that quality, as also the succession of the crown according to the PRESENT SETTLEMENT." "The English agent," adds the Frenchman, "would have had me add--on the house of Hanover, but this I entreated him not to desire of me." The term PRESENT SETTLEMENT, then, was that article which was LOOKING THE OTHER WAY, to disengage his master from the obligation of that agreement, as occasion should present! that is, that Louis the Fourteenth chose to understand by the PRESENT SETTLEMENT the old one, by which the British crown was to be restored to the Pretender! Anne and the English nation were to understand it in their own sense--as the new one, which transferred it to the house of Hanover!

When politicians cannot rely upon each other's interpretation of one of the commonest words in our language, how can they possibly act together? The Bishop of Winchester has proved this observation, by the remarkable anecdote of the Duke of Portland and Mr. Pitt, who, with a view to unite parties, were to hold a conference on FAIR and EQUAL terms. His grace did not object to the word FAIR, but the word EQUAL was more specific and limited; and for a necessary preliminary, he requested Mr. Pitt to inform him what he understood by the word EQUAL? Whether Pitt was puzzled by the question, or would not deliver up an arrière-pensée, he put off the explanation to the conference. But the duke would not meet Mr. Pitt till the word was explained; and this important negotiation was broken off by not explaining a simple word which appeared to require no explanation.

There is nothing more fatal in language than to wander from the popular acceptation of words; and yet this popular sense cannot always accord with precision of ideas, for it is itself subject to great changes.

Another source, therefore, of the abuse of words, is that mutability to which, in the course of time, the verbal edifice, as well as more substantial ones, is doomed. A familiar instance presents itself in the titles of tyrant, parasite, and sophist, originally honourable distinctions. The abuses of dominion made the appropriate title of kings odious; the title of a magistrate, who had the care of the public granaries of corn, at length was applied to a wretched flatterer for a dinner; and absurd philosophers occasioned a mere denomination to become a by-name. To employ such terms in their primitive sense would now confuse all ideas; yet there is an affectation of erudition which has frequently revived terms sanctioned by antiquity. Bishop Watson entitled his vindication of the Bible "an apology:" this word, in its primitive sense, had long been lost for the multitude, whom he particularly addressed in this work, and who could only understand it in the sense they are accustomed to. Unquestionably, many of its readers have imagined that the bishop was offering an excuse for a belief in the Bible, instead of a vindication of its truth. The word impertinent, by the ancient jurisconsults, or law-counsellors, who gave their opinion on cases, was used merely in opposition to pertinent--ratio pertinens is a pertinent reason, that is, a reason pertaining to the cause in question, and a ratio impertinens, an impertinent reason, is an argument not pertaining to the subject.[44] Impertinent then originally meant neither absurdity nor rude intrusion, as it does in our present popular sense. The learned Arnauld having characterised a reply of one of his adversaries by the epithet impertinent, when blamed for the freedom of his language, explained his meaning by giving this history of the word, which applies to our own language. Thus also with us the word indifferent has entirely changed: an historian, whose work was indifferently written, would formerly have claimed our attention. In the Liturgy it is prayed that "magistrates may indifferently minister justice." Indifferently originally meant impartially. The word extravagant, in its primitive signification, only signified to digress from the subject. The Decretals, or those letters from the popes deciding on points of ecclesiastical discipline, were at length incorporated with the canon law, and were called extravagant by wandering out of the body of the canon law, being confusedly dispersed through that collection. When Luther had the Decretals publicly burnt at Wittemberg, the insult was designed for the pope, rather than as a condemnation of the canon law itself. Suppose, in the present case, two persons of opposite opinions. The catholic, who had said that the decretals were extravagant, might not have intended to depreciate them, or make any concession to the Lutheran. What confusion of words has the common sense of the Scotch metaphysicians introduced into philosophy! There are no words, perhaps, in the language which may be so differently interpreted; and Professor Dugald Stewart has collected, in a curious note in the second volume of his "Philosophy of the Human Mind," a singular variety of its opposite significations. The Latin phrase, sensus communis, may, in various passages of Cicero, be translated by our phrase common sense; but, on other occasions, it means something different; the sensus communis of the schoolmen is quite another thing, and is synonymous with conception, and referred to the seat of intellect; with Sir John Davies, in his curious metaphysical poem, common sense is used as imagination. It created a controversy with Beattie and Reid; and Reid, who introduced this vague ambiguous phrase in philosophical language, often understood the term in its ordinary acceptation. This change of the meaning of words, which is constantly recurring in metaphysical disputes, has made that curious but obscure science liable to this objection of Hobbes, "with many words making nothing understood!"

Controversies have been keenly agitated about the principles of morals, which resolve entirely into verbal disputes, or at most into questions of arrangement and classification, of little comparative moment to the points at issue. This observation of Mr. Dugald Stewart's might be illustrated by the fate of the numerous inventors of systems of thinking or morals, who have only employed very different and even opposite terms in appearance to express the same thing. Some, by their mode of philosophising, have strangely unsettled the words self-interest and self-love; and their misconceptions have sadly misled the votaries of these systems of morals; as others also by such vague terms as "utility, fitness," &c.

When Epicurus asserted that the sovereign good consisted in pleasure, opposing the unfeeling austerity of the Stoics by the softness of pleasurable emotions, his principle was soon disregarded; while his word, perhaps chosen in the spirit of paradox, was warmly adopted by the sensualist. Epicurus, of whom Seneca has drawn so beautiful a domestic scene, in whose garden a loaf, a Cytheridean cheese, and a draught which did not inflame thirst,[45] was the sole banquet, would have started indignantly at

The fattest hog in Epicurus' sty!

Such are the facts which illustrate that principle in "the abuse of words," which Locke calls "an affected obscurity arising from applying old words to new, or unusual significations."

It was the same "confusion of words" which gave rise to the famous sect of the Sadducees. The master of its founder Sadoc, in his moral purity, was desirous of a disinterested worship of the Deity; he would not have men like slaves, obedient from the hope of reward or the fear of punishment. Sadoc drew a quite contrary inference from the intention of his master, concluding that there were neither rewards nor punishments in a future state. The result is a parallel to the fate of Epicurus. The morality of the master of Sadoc was of the most pure and elevated kind, but in the "confusion of words," the libertines adopted them for their own purposes--and having once assumed that neither rewards nor punishments existed in the after-state, they proceeded to the erroneous consequence that man perished with his own dust!

The plainest words, by accidental associations, may suggest the most erroneous conceptions, and have been productive of the grossest errors. In the famous Bangorian controversy, one of the writers excites a smile by a complaint, arising from his views of the signification of a plain word, whose meaning he thinks had been changed by the contending parties. He says, "the word country, like a great many others, such as church and kingdom, is, by the Bishop of Bangor's leave, become to signify a collection of ideas very different from its original meaning; with some it implies party, with others private opinion, and with most interest, and perhaps, in time, may signify some other country. When this good innocent word has been tossed backwards and forwards a little longer, some new reformer of language may arise to reduce it to its primitive signification--the real interest of Great Britain!" The antagonist of this controversialist probably retorted on him his own term of the real interest, which might be a very opposite one, according to their notions! It has been said, with what truth I know not, that it was by a mere confusion of words that Burke was enabled to alarm the great Whig families, by showing them their fate in that of the French noblesse; they were misled by the similitude of names. The French noblesse had as little resemblance to our nobility as they have to the Mandarins of China. However it may be in this case, certain it is that the same terms misapplied have often raised those delusive notions termed false analogies. It was long imagined in this country, that the parliaments of France were somewhat akin to our own; but these assemblies were very differently constituted, consisting only of lawyers in courts of law. A misnomer confuses all argument. There is a trick which consists in bestowing good names on bad things. Vices, thus veiled, are introduced to us as virtues, according to an old poet,

As drunkenness, good-fellowship we call?

SIR THOMAS WIAT.

Or the reverse, when loyalty may be ridiculed, as

The right divine of kings--to govern wrong!

The most innocent recreations, such as the drama, dancing, dress, have been anathematised by puritans, while philosophers have written elaborate treatises in their defence--the enigma is solved, when we discover that these words suggested a set of opposite notions to each.

But the nominalists and the realists, and the doctores fundatissimi, resolutissimi, refulgentes, profundi, and extatici, have left this heirloom of logomachy to a race as subtle and irrefragable! An extraordinary scene has recently been performed by a new company of actors, in the modern comedy of Political Economy; and the whole dialogue has been carried on in an inimitable "confusion of words!" This reasoning and unreasoning fraternity never use a term as a term, but for an explanation, and which employed by them all, signifies opposite things, but never the plainest! Is it not, therefore, strange that they cannot yet tell us what are riches? what is rent? what is value? Monsieur Say, the most sparkling of them all, assures us that the English writers are obscure, by their confounding, like Smith, the denomination of labour. The vivacious Gaul cries out to the grave Briton, Mr. Malthus, "If I consent to employ your word labour, you must understand me," so and so! Mr. Malthus says, "Commodities are not exchanged for commodities only; they are also exchanged for labour;" and when the hypochondriac Englishman, with dismay, foresees "the glut of markets," and concludes that we may produce more than we can consume, the paradoxical Monsieur Say discovers that "commodities" is a wrong word, for it gives a wrong idea; it should be "productions;" for his axiom is, that "productions can only be purchased with productions." Money, it seems, according to dictionary ideas, has no existence in his vocabulary; for Monsieur Say has formed a sort of Berkleian conception of wealth being immaterial, while we confine our views to its materiality. Hence ensues from this "confusion of words," this most brilliant paradox,--that "a glutted market is not a proof that we produce too much but that we produce too little! for in that case there is not enough produced to exchange with what is produced!" As Frenchmen excel in politeness and impudence, Monsieur Say adds, "I revere Adam Smith; he is my master; but this first of political economists did not understand all the phenomena of production and consumption." We, who remain uninitiated in this mystery of explaining the operations of trade by metaphysical ideas, and raising up theories to conduct those who never theorise, can only start at the "confusion of words," and leave this blessed inheritance to our sons, if ever the science survive the logomachy.

Caramuel, a famous Spanish bishop, was a grand architect of words. Ingenious in theory, his errors were confined to his practice: he said a great deal and meant nothing; and by an exact dimension of his intellect, taken at the time, it appeared that "he had genius in the eighth degree, eloquence in the fifth, but judgment only in the second!" This great man would not read the ancients; for he had a notion that the moderns must have acquired all they possessed, with a good deal of their own "into the bargain." Two hundred and sixty-two works, differing in breadth and length, besides his manuscripts, attest, that if the world would read his writings, they could need no other; for which purpose his last work always referred to the preceding ones, and could never be comprehended till his readers possessed those which were to follow. As he had the good sense to perceive that metaphysicians abound in obscure and equivocal terms, to avoid this "confusion of words," he invented a jargon of his own; and to make "confusion worse confounded," projected grammars and vocabularies by which we were to learn it; but it is supposed that he was the only man who understood himself. He put every author in despair by the works which he announced. This famous architect of words, however, built more labyrinths than he could always get out of, notwithstanding his "cabalistical grammar," and his "audacious grammar."[46] Yet this great Caramuel, the critics have agreed, was nothing but a puffy giant, with legs too weak for his bulk, and only to be accounted as a hero amidst a "confusion of words."

Let us dread the fate of Caramuel! and before we enter into discussion with the metaphysician, first settle what he means by the nature of ideas; with the politician, his notion of liberty and equality; with the divine, what he deems orthodox; with the political economist, what he considers to be value and rent! By this means we may avoid, what is perpetually recurring, that extreme laxity or vagueness of words, which makes every writer, or speaker, complain of his predecessor, and attempt sometimes, not in the best temper, to define and to settle the signification of what the witty South calls "those rabble-charming words, which carry so much wildfire wrapt up in them."

FOOTNOTES:

[42] Turner's "History of England," i. 514

[43] We owe this curious unpublished letter to the zeal and care of Professor Dugald Stewart, in his excellent "Dissertations."

[44] It is still a Chancery word. An answer in Chancery, &c., is referred for impertinence, reported impertinent--and the impertinence ordered to be struck out, meaning only what is immaterial or superfluous, tending to unnecessary expense. I am indebted for this explanation to my friend, Mr. Merivale; and to another learned friend, formerly in that court, who describes its meaning as "an excess of words or matter in the pleadings," and who has received many an official fee for "expunging impertinence," leaving, however, he acknowledges, a sufficient quantity to make the lawyers ashamed of their verbosity.

[45] Sen. Epist. 21.

[46] Baillet gives the dates and plans of these grammars. The cabalistic was published in Bruxelles, 1642, in 12mo. The audacious was in folio, printed at Frankfort, 1654.--Jugemens des Savans. Tome ii. 3me partie.

POLITICAL NICKNAMES.

Political calumny is said to have been reduced into an art, like that of logic, by the Jesuits. This itself may be a political calumny! A powerful body, who themselves had practised the artifices of calumniators, may, in their turn, often have been calumniated. The passage in question was drawn out of one of the classical authors used in their colleges. Busembaum, a German Jesuit, had composed, in duodecimo, a "Medulla Theologiæ moralis," where, among other casuistical propositions, there was found lurking in this old Jesuit's "marrow" one which favoured regicide and assassination! Fifty editions of the book had passed unnoticed; till a new one appearing at the critical moment of Damien's attempt, the duodecimo of the old scholastic Jesuit, which had now been amplified by its commentators into two folios, was considered not merely ridiculous, but dangerous. It was burnt at Toulouse, in 1757, by order of the parliament, and condemned at Paris. An Italian Jesuit published an "apology" for this theory of assassination, and the same flames devoured it! Whether Busembaum deserved the honour bestowed on his ingenuity, the reader may judge by the passage itself.

"Whoever would ruin a person, or a government, must begin this operation by spreading calumnies, to defame the person or the government; for unquestionably the calumniator will always find a great number of persons inclined to believe him, or to side with him; it therefore follows, that whenever the object of such calumnies is once lowered in credit by such means, he will soon lose the reputation and power founded on that credit, and sink under the permanent and vindictive attacks of the calumniator." This is the politics of Satan--the evil principle which regulates so many things in this world. The enemies of the Jesuits have formed a list of great names who had become the victims of such atrocious Machiavelism.[47]

This has been one of the arts practised by all political parties. Their first weak invention is to attach to a new faction a contemptible or an opprobrious nickname. In the history of the revolutions of Europe, whenever a new party has at length established its independence, the original denomination which had been fixed on them, marked by the passions of the party which bestowed it, strangely contrasts with the state of the party finally established!

The first revolutionists of Holland incurred the contemptuous name of "Les Gueux," or the Beggars. The Duchess of Parma inquiring about them, the Count of Barlamont scornfully described them to be of this class; and it was flattery of the great which gave the name currency. The Hollanders accepted the name as much in defiance as with indignation, and acted up to it. Instead of brooches in their hats, they wore little wooden platters, such as beggars used, and foxes' tails instead of feathers. On the targets of some of these Gueux they inscribed "Rather Turkish than Popish!" and had the print of a cock crowing, out of whose mouth was a label, Vive les Gueux par tout le monde! which was everywhere set up, and was the favourite sign of their inns. The Protestants in France, after a variety of nicknames to render them contemptible--such as Christodins, because they would only talk about Christ, similar to our Puritans; and Parpaillots, or Parpirolles, a small base coin, which was odiously applied to them--at length settled in the well-known term of Huguenots, which probably was derived, as the Dictionnaire de Trévoux suggests, from their hiding themselves in secret places, and appearing at night, like King Hugon, the great hobgoblin of France. It appears that the term has been preserved by an earthen vessel without feet, used in cookery, which served the Huguenots on meagre days to dress their meat, and to avoid observation; a curious instance, where a thing still in use proves the obscure circumstance of its origin.

The atrocious insurrection, called La Jacquerie, was a term which originated in cruel derision. When John of France was a prisoner in England, his kingdom appears to have been desolated by its wretched nobles, who, in the indulgence of their passions, set no limits to their luxury and their extortion. They despoiled their peasantry without mercy, and when these complained, and even reproached this tyrannical nobility with having forsaken their sovereign, they were told that Jacque bon homme must pay for all. But Jack good-man came forward in person--a leader appeared under this fatal name, and the peasants revolting in madness, and being joined by all the cut-throats and thieves of Paris, at once pronounced condemnation on every gentleman in France! Froissart has the horrid narrative; twelve thousand of these Jacques bon hommes expiated their crimes; but the Jacquerie, who had received their first appellation in derision, assumed it as their nom de guerre.

In the spirited Memoirs of the Duke of Guise, written by himself, of his enterprise against the kingdom of Naples, we find a curious account of this political art of marking people by odious nicknames. "Gennaro and Vicenzo," says the duke, "cherished underhand that aversion the rascality had for the better sort of citizens and civiller people, who, by the insolencies they suffered from these, not unjustly hated them. The better class inhabiting the suburbs of the Virgin were called black cloaks, and the ordinary sort of people took the name of lazars, both in French and English an old word for leprous beggar, and hence the lazaroni of Naples." We can easily conceive the evil eye of a lazar when he encountered a black cloak! The Duke adds--"Just as, at the beginning of the revolution, the revolters in Flanders formerly took that of beggars; those of Guienne, that of eaters; those of Normandy that of bare-feet; and of Beausse and Soulogne, of wooden-pattens." In the late French revolution, we observed the extremes indulged by both parties chiefly concerned in revolution--the wealthy and the poor! The rich, who, in derision, called their humble fellow-citizens by the contemptuous term of sans-culottes, provoked a reacting injustice from the populace, who, as a dreadful return for only a slight, rendered the innocent term of aristocrate a signal for plunder or slaughter!

It is a curious fact that the French verb fronder, as well the noun frondeur, are used to describe those who condemn the measures of government; and more extensively, designates any hyperbolical and malignant criticism, or any sort of condemnation. These words have only been introduced into the language since the intrigues of Cardinal de Retz succeeded in raising a faction against Cardinal Mazarin, known in French history by the nickname of the Frondeurs, or the Slingers. It originated in pleasantry, although it became the password for insurrection in France, and the odious name of a faction. A wit observed, that the parliament were like those school-boys, who fling their stones in the pits of Paris, and as soon as they see the Lieutenant Civil, run away; but are sure to collect again directly he disappears. The comparison was lively, and formed the burthen of songs; and afterwards, when affairs were settled between the king and the parliament, it was more particularly applied to the faction of Cardinal de Retz, who still held out. "We encouraged the application," says de Retz; "for we observed that the distinction of a name heated the minds of people; and one evening we resolved to wear hat-strings in the form of slings. A hatter, who might be trusted with the secret, made a great number as a new fashion, and which were worn by many who did not understand the joke; we ourselves were the last to adopt them, that the invention might not appear to have come from us. The effect of this trifle was immense; every fashionable article was now to assume the shape of a sling; bread, hats, gloves, handkerchiefs, fans, &c.; and we ourselves became more in fashion by this folly, than by what was essential." This revolutionary term was never forgotten by the French, a circumstance which might have been considered as prognostic of that after-revolution, which de Retz had the imagination to project, but not the daring to establish. We see, however, this great politician, confessing the advantages his party derived by encouraging the application of a by-name, which served "to heat the minds of people."

It is a curious circumstance that I should have to recount in this chapter on "Political Nicknames" a familiar term with all lovers of art, that of Silhouette! This is well understood as a black profile; but it is more extraordinary that a term so universally adopted should not be found in any dictionary, either in that of L'Académie, or in Todd's, and has not even been preserved, where it is quite indispensable, in Millin's Dictionnaire des Beaux-Arts! It is little suspected that this innocent term originated in a political nickname! Silhouette was a minister of state in France in 1759; that period was a critical one; the treasury was in an exhausted condition, and Silhouette, a very honest man, who would hold no intercourse with financiers or loan-mongers, could contrive no other expedient to prevent a national bankruptcy, than excessive economy and interminable reform! Paris was not the metropolis, any more than London, where a Plato or a Zeno could long be minister of state without incurring all the ridicule of the wretched wits! At first they pretended to take his advice, merely to laugh at him:--they cut their coats shorter, and wore them without sleeves; they turned their gold snuff-boxes into rough wooden ones; and the new-fashioned portraits were now only profiles of a face, traced by a black pencil on the shadow cast by a candle on white paper! All the fashions assumed an air of niggardly economy, till poor Silhouette was driven into retirement, with all his projects of savings and reforms; but he left his name to describe the most economical sort of portrait, and one as melancholy as his own fate!

This political artifice of appropriating cant terms, or odious nicknames, could not fail to flourish among a people so perpetually divided by contending interests as ourselves; every party with us have had their watchword, which has served either to congregate themselves, or to set on the ban-dogs of one faction to worry and tear those of another. We practised it early, and we find it still prospering! The Puritan of Elizabeth's reign survives to this hour; the trying difficulties which that wise sovereign had to overcome in settling the national religion, found no sympathy in either of the great divisions of her people; she retained as much of the catholic rites as might be decorous in the new religion, and sought to unite, and not to separate, her children. John Knox, in the spirit of charity, declared, that "she was neither gude protestant, nor yet resolute papist; let the world judge quilk is the third."

A jealous party arose, who were for reforming the reformation. In their attempt at more than human purity, they obtained the nickname of Puritans; and from their fastidiousness about very small matters, Precisians; these Drayton characterises as persons that for a painted glass window would pull down the whole church. At that early period these nicknames were soon used in an odious sense; for Warner, a poet in the reign of Elizabeth, says,--

If hypocrites why puritaines we term be asked, in breese, 'Tis but an ironised terme; good-fellow so spels theese!

Honest Fuller, who knew that many good men were among these Puritans, wished to decline the term altogether, under the less offensive one of Non-conformists. But the fierce and the fiery of this party, in Charles the First's time had been too obtrusive not to fully merit the ironical appellative; and the peaceful expedient of our moderator dropped away with the page in which it was written. The people have frequently expressed their own notions of different parliaments by some apt nickname. In Richard the Second's time, to express their dislike of the extraordinary and irregular proceedings of the lords against the sovereign, as well as their sanguinary measures, they called it "The wonder-working and the unmerciful parliament." In Edward the Third's reign, when the Black Prince was yet living, the parliament, for having pursued with severity the party of the Duke of Lancaster, was so popular, that the people distinguished it as the good parliament. In Henry the Third's time, the parliament opposing the king, was called "Parliamentum insanum," the mad parliament, because the lords came armed to insist on the confirmation of the great charter. A Scottish parliament, from its perpetual shiftings from place to place was ludicrously nicknamed the running parliament; in the same spirit we had our long parliament. The nickname of Pensioner parliament stuck to the House of Commons which sate nearly eighteen years without dissolution, under Charles the Second; and others have borne satirical or laudatory epithets. So true it is, as old Holingshed observed, "The common people will manie times give such bie names as seemeth best liking to themselves." It would be a curious speculation to discover the sources of the popular feeling; influenced by delusion, or impelled by good sense!

The exterminating political nickname of malignant darkened the nation through the civil wars: it was a proscription--and a list of good and bad lords was read by the leaders of the first tumults. Of all these inventions, this diabolical one was most adapted to exasperate the animosities of the people, so often duped by names. I have never detected the active man of faction who first hit on this odious brand for persons, but the period when the word changed its ordinary meaning was early; Charles, in 1642, retorts on the parliamentarians the opprobrious distinction, as "The true malignant party which has contrived and countenanced those barbarous tumults." And the royalists pleaded for themselves, that the hateful designation was ill applied to them: "for by malignity you denote," said they, "activity in doing evil, whereas we have always been on the suffering side in our persons, credits, and estates;" but the parliamentarians, "grinning a ghastly smile," would reply, that "the royalists would have been malignant had they proved successful." The truth is, that malignancy meant with both parties any opposition of opinion. At the same period the offensive distinctions of roundheads and cavaliers supplied the people with party names, who were already provided with so many religious as well as civil causes of quarrel; the cropt heads of the sullen sectaries and the people, were the origin of the derisory nickname; the splendid elegance and the romantic spirit of the royalists long awed the rabble, who in their mockery could brand them by no other appellation than one in which their bearers gloried. In the distracted times of early revolution, any nickname, however vague, will fully answer a purpose, although neither those who are blackened by the odium, nor those who cast it, can define the hateful appellative. When the term of delinquents came into vogue, it expressed a degree and species of guilt, says Hume, not exactly known or ascertained. It served, however, the end of those revolutionists who had coined it, by involving any person in, or colouring any action by, delinquency; and many of the nobility and gentry were, without any questions being asked, suddenly discovered to have committed the crime of delinquency! Whether honest Fuller be facetious or grave on this period of nicknaming parties I will not decide; but, when he tells us that there was another word which was introduced into our nation at this time, I think at least that the whole passage is an admirable commentary on this party vocabulary. "Contemporary with malignants is the word plunder, which some make of Latin original, from planum dare, to level, to plane all to nothing! Others of Dutch extraction, as if it were to plume, or pluck the feathers of a bird to the bare skin.[48] Sure I am we first heard of it in the Swedish wars; and if the name and thing be sent back from whence it came few English eyes would weep thereat." All England had wept at the introduction of the word. The rump was the filthy nickname of an odious faction--the history of this famous appellation, which was at first one of horror, till it afterwards became one of derision and contempt, must be referred to another place. The rump became a perpetual whetstone for the loyal wits,[49] till at length its former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country, vied with each other in "burning rumps" of beef, which were hung by chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, and proved how the people, like children, come at length to make a plaything of that which was once their bugbear.

Charles the Second, during the short holiday of the restoration--all holidays seem short!--and when he and the people were in good humour, granted anything to every one,--the mode of "Petitions" got at length very inconvenient, and the king in council declared that this petitioning was "A method set on foot by ill men to promote discontents among the people," and enjoined his loving subjects not to subscribe them. The petitioners, however, persisted--when a new party rose to express their abhorrence of petitioning; both parties nicknamed each other the petitioners and the abhorrers! Their day was short, but fierce; the petitioners, however weak in their cognomen, were far the bolder of the two, for the commons were with them, and the abhorrers had expressed by their term rather the strength of their inclinations than of their numbers. Charles the Second said to a petitioner from Taunton, "How dare you deliver me such a paper?" "Sir," replied the petitioner from Taunton, "my name is DARE!" A saucy reply, for which he was tried, fined, and imprisoned; when lo! the commons petitioned again to release the petitioner! "The very name," says Hume, "by which each party denominated its antagonists discovers the virulence and rancour which prevailed; for besides petitioner and abhorrer, this year is remarkable for being the epoch of the well-known epithets of whig and tory." These silly terms of reproach, whig and tory, are still preserved among us, as if the palladium of British liberty was guarded by these exotic names, for they are not English, which the parties so invidiously bestow on each other. They are ludicrous enough in their origin. The friends of the court and the advocates of lineal succession were, by the republican party, branded with the title of tories, which was the name of certain Irish robbers;[50] while the court party in return could find no other revenge than by appropriating to the covenanters and the republicans of that class the name of the Scotch beverage of sour milk, whose virtue they considered so expressive of their dispositions, and which is called whigg. So ridiculous in their origin were these pernicious nicknames, which long excited feuds and quarrels in domestic life, and may still be said to divide into two great parties this land of political freedom. But nothing becomes obsolete in political factions, and the meaner and more scandalous the name affixed by one party to another the more it becomes not only their rallying cry or their password, but even constitutes their glory. Thus the Hollanders long prided themselves on the humiliating nickname of "Les Gueux:" the protestants of France on the scornful one of the Huguenots; the non-conformists in England on the mockery of the puritan; and all parties have perpetuated their anger by their inglorious names. Swift was well aware of this truth in political history: "each party," says that sagacious observer, "grows proud of that appellation which their adversaries at first intended as a reproach; of this sort were the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Huguenots and Cavaliers."

Nor has it been only by nicknaming each other by derisory or opprobrious terms that parties have been marked, but they have also worn a livery, and practised distinctive manners. What sufferings did not Italy endure for a long series of years under those fatal party-names of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines; alternately the victors and the vanquished, the beautiful land of Italy drank the blood of her children. Italy, like Greece, opens a moving picture of the hatreds and jealousies of small republics; her Bianchi and her Neri, her Guelphs and her Ghibellines! In Bologna, two great families once shook that city with their divisions; the Pepoli adopted the French interests; the Maluezzi the Spanish. It was incurring some danger to walk the streets of Bologna, for the Pepoli wore their feathers on the right side of their caps, and the Maluezzi on the left. Such was the party-hatred of the two great Italian factions, that they carried their rancour even into their domestic habits; at table the Guelphs placed their knives and spoons longwise, and the Ghibellines across; the one cut their bread across, the other longwise. Even in cutting an orange they could not agree; for the Guelph cut his orange horizontally, and the Ghibelline downwards. Children were taught these artifices of faction--their hatreds became traditional, and thus the Italians perpetuated the full benefits of their party-spirit from generation to generation.[51]

Men in private life go down to their graves with some unlucky name, not received in baptism, but more descriptive and picturesque; and even ministers of state have winced at a political christening. Malagrida the Jesuit and Jemmy Twitcher were nicknames which made one of our ministers odious, and another contemptible.[52] The Earl of Godolphin caught such fire at that of Volpone, that it drove him into the opposite party, for the vindictive purpose of obtaining the impolitical prosecution of Sacheverell, who, in his famous sermon, had first applied it to the earl, and unluckily it had stuck to him.

"Faction," says Lord Orford, "is as capricious as fortune; wrongs, oppression, the zeal of real patriots, or the genius of false ones, may sometimes be employed for years in kindling substantial opposition to authority; in other seasons the impulse of a moment, a ballad, a nickname, a fashion can throw a city into a tumult, and shake the foundations of a state."

Such is a slight history of the human passions in politics! We might despair in thus discovering that wisdom and patriotism so frequently originate in this turbid source of party; but we are consoled when we reflect that the most important political principles are immutable: and that they are those which even the spirit of party must learn to reverence.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] See Recueil Chronologique et Analytique de tout ce qui a fait en Portugal la Société de Jesus. Vol. ii. sect. 406.

[48] Plunder, observed Mr. Douce, is pure Dutch or Flemish--Plunderen, from Plunder, which means property of any kind. May tells us it was brought by those officers who had returned from the wars of the Netherlands.

[49] One of the best collections of political songs written during the great Civil War, is entitled "The Rump," and has a curious frontispiece representing the mob burning rumps as described above.

[50] The "History of the Tories and Rapparees" was a popular Irish chapbook a few years ago, and devoted to the daring acts of these marauders.

[51] These curious particulars I found in a manuscript.

[52] Lord Shelburne was named "Malagrida," and Lord Sandwich was "Jemmy Twitcher;" a name derived from the chief of Macheath's gang in the Beggar's Opera.

THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF A POET.--SHENSTONE VINDICATED.

The dogmatism of Johnson, and the fastidiousness of Gray, the critic who passed his days amidst "the busy hum of men," and the poet who mused in cloistered solitude, have fatally injured a fine natural genius in Shenstone. Mr. Campbell, with a brother's feeling, has (since the present article was composed) sympathised with the endowments and the pursuits of this poet; but the facts I had collected seemed to me to open a more important view. I am aware how lightly the poetical character of Shenstone is held by some great contemporaries--although this very poet has left us at least one poem of unrivalled originality. Mr. Campbell has regretted that Shenstone not only "affected that arcadianism" which "gives a certain air of masquerade in his pastoral character," adopted by our earlier poets, but also has "rather incongruously blended together the rural swain with the disciple of virtù." All this requires some explanation. It is not only as a poet, possessing the characteristics of poetry, but as a creator in another way, for which I claim the attention of the reader. I have formed a picture of the domestic life of a poet, and the pursuits of a votary of taste, both equally contracted in their endeavours, from the habits, the emotions, and the events which occurred to Shenstone.

Four material circumstances influenced his character, and were productive of all his unhappiness. The neglect he incurred in those poetical studies to which he had devoted his hopes; his secret sorrows in not having formed a domestic union, from prudential motives, with one whom he loved; the ruinous state of his domestic affairs, arising from a seducing passion for creating a new taste in landscape gardening and an ornamented farm; and finally, his disappointment of that promised patronage, which might have induced him to have become a political writer; for which his inclinations, and, it is said, his talents in early life, were alike adapted: with these points in view, we may trace the different states of his mind, show what he did, and what he was earnestly intent to have done.

Why have the "Elegies" of Shenstone, which forty years ago formed for many of us the favourite poems of our youth, ceased to delight us in mature life? It is perhaps that these Elegies, planned with peculiar felicity, have little in their execution. They form a series of poetical truths, devoid of poetical expression; truths,--for notwithstanding the pastoral romance in which the poet has enveloped himself, the subjects are real, and the feelings could not, therefore, be fictitious.

In a Preface, remarkable for its graceful simplicity, our poet tells us, that "He entered on his subjects occasionally, as particular incidents in life suggested, or dispositions of mind recommended them to his choice." He shows that "He drew his pictures from the spot, and, he felt very sensibly the affections he communicates." He avers that all those attendants on rural scenery, and all those allusions to rural life, were not the counterfeited scenes of a town poet, any more than the sentiments, which were inspired by Nature. Shenstone's friend Graves, who knew him in early life, and to his last days, informs us that these Elegies were written when he had taken the Leasowes into his own hands;[53] and though his ferme ornée engaged his thoughts, he occasionally wrote them, "partly," said Shenstone, "to divert my present impatience, and partly, as it will be a picture of most that passes in my own mind; a portrait which friends may value." This, then, is the secret charm which acts so forcibly on the first emotions of our youth, at a moment when, not too difficult to be pleased, the reflected delineations of the habits and the affections, the hopes and the delights, with all the domestic associations of this poet, always true to Nature, reflect back that picture of ourselves which we instantly recognise. It is only as we advance in life that we lose the relish of our early simplicity, and that we discover that Shenstone was not endowed with high imagination.

These Elegies, with some other poems, may be read with a new interest when we discover them to form the true Memoirs of Shenstone. Records of querulous but delightful feelings! whose subjects spontaneously offered themselves from passing incidents; they still perpetuate emotions which will interest the young poet and the young lover of taste.

Elegy IV., the first which Shenstone composed, is entitled "Ophelia's Urn," and it was no unreal one! It was erected by Graves in Mickleton Church, to the memory of an extraordinary young woman, Utrecia Smith, the literary daughter of a learned but poor clergyman. Utrecia had formed so fine a taste for literature, and composed with such elegance in verse and prose, that an excellent judge declared that "he did not like to form his opinion of any author till he previously knew hers." Graves had been long attached to her, but from motives of prudence broke off an intercourse with this interesting woman, who sunk under this severe disappointment. When her prudent lover, Graves, inscribed the urn, her friend Shenstone, perhaps more feelingly, commemorated her virtues and her tastes. Such, indeed, was the friendly intercourse between Shenstone and Utrecia, that in Elegy XVIII., written long after her death, she still lingered in his reminiscences. Composing this Elegy on the calamitous close of Somerville's life, a brother bard, and victim to narrow circumstances, and which he probably contemplated as an image of his own, Shenstone tenderly recollects that he used to read Somerville's poems to Utrecia:--

Oh, lost Ophelia; smoothly flow'd the day To feel his music with my flames agree; To taste the beauties of his melting lay, To taste, and fancy it was dear to thee!

How true is the feeling! how mean the poetical expression!

The Seventh Elegy describes a vision, where the shadow of Wolsey breaks upon the author:

A graceful form appear'd, White were his locks, with awful scarlet crown'd.

Even this fanciful subject was not chosen capriciously, but sprung from an incident. Once, on his way to Cheltenham, Shenstone missed his road, and wandered till late at night among the Cotswold Hills on this occasion he appears to have made a moral reflection, which we find in his "Essays." "How melancholy is it to travel late upon any ambitious project on a winter's night, and observe the light of cottages, where all the unambitious people are warm and happy, or at rest in their beds." While the benighted poet, lost among the lonely hills, was meditating on "ambitious projects," the character of Wolsey arose before him; the visionary cardinal crossed his path, and busied his imagination. "Thou," exclaims the poet,

Like a meteor's fire, Shot'st blazing forth, disdaining dull degrees.

Elegy vii.

And the bard, after discovering all the miseries of unhappy grandeur, and murmuring at this delay to the house of his friend, exclaims--

Oh if these ills the price of power advance, Check not my speed where social joys invite!

The silent departure of the poetical spectre is fine:

The troubled vision cast a mournful glance, And sighing, vanish'd in the shades of night.

And to prove that the subject of this elegy thus arose to the poet's fancy, he has himself commemorated the incident that gave occasion to it, in the opening:--

On distant heaths, beneath autumnal skies, Pensive I saw the circling shades descend; Weary and faint, I heard the storm arise, While the sun vanish'd like a faithless friend.

Elegy vii.

The Fifteenth Elegy, composed "in memory of a private family in Worcestershire," is on the extinction of the ancient family of the Penns in the male line.[54] Shenstone's mother was a Penn; and the poet was now the inhabitant of their ancient mansion, an old timber-built house of the age of Elizabeth. The local description was a real scene--"the shaded pool"--"the group of ancient elms"--"the flocking rooks," and the picture of the simple manners of his own ancestors, were realities; the emotions they excited were therefore genuine, and not one of those "mockeries" of amplification from the crowd of verse-writers.

The Tenth Elegy, "To Fortune, suggesting his Motive for repining at her Dispensations," with his celebrated "Pastoral Ballad, in four parts." were alike produced by what one of the great minstrels of our own times has so finely indicated when he sung--

The secret woes the world has never known; While on the weary night dawn'd wearier day, And bitterer was the grief devour'd alone.

In this Elegy Shenstone repines at the dispensations of Fortune, not for having denied him her higher gifts, nor that she compels him to

Check the fond LOVE OF ART that fired my veins;

nor that some "dull dotard with boundless wealth" finds his "grating reed" preferred to the bard's, but that the "tawdry shepherdess" of this dull dotard, by her "pride," makes "the rural thane" despise the poet's Delia.

Must Delia's softness, elegance, and ease, Submit to Marian's dress? to Marian's gold? Must Marian's robe from distant India please? The simple fleece my Delia's limbs infold!

Ah! what is native worth esteemed of clowns? 'Tis thy false glare, O Fortune! thine they see; Tis for my Delia's sake I dread thy frowns, And my last gasp shall curses breathe on thee!

The Delia of our poet was not an "Iris en air." Shenstone was early in life captivated by a young lady, whom Graves describes with all those mild and serene graces of pensive melancholy, touched by plaintive love-songs and elegies of woe, adapted not only to be the muse but the mistress of a poet. The sensibility of this passion took entire possession of his heart for some years, and it was in parting from her that he first sketched his exquisite "Pastoral Ballad." As he retreated more and more into solitude, his passion felt no diminution. Dr. Nash informs us that Shenstone acknowledged that it was his own fault that he did not accept the hand of the lady whom he so tenderly loved; but his spirit could not endure to be a perpetual witness of her degradation in the rank of society, by an inconsiderate union with poetry and poverty. That such was his motive, we may infer from a passage in one of his letters. "Love, as it regularly tends to matrimony, requires certain favours from fortune and circumstances to render it proper to be indulged in." There are perpetual allusions to these "secret woes" in his correspondence; for, although he had the fortitude to refuse marriage, he had not the stoicism to contract his own heart in cold and sullen celibacy. He thus alludes to this subject, which so often excited far other emotions than those of humour:--"It is long since I have considered myself as undone. The world will not, perhaps, consider me in that light entirely till I have married my maid!"

It is probable that our poet had an intention of marrying his maid. I discovered a pleasing anecdote among the late Mr. Bindley's collections, which I transcribed from the original. On the back of a picture of Shenstone himself, of which Dodsley published a print in 1780, the following energetic inscription was written by the poet on his new-year's gift:--

"This picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by her master, William Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her fidelity.

"W. S."

"The Progress of Taste; or the Fate of Delicacy," is a poem on the temper and studies of the author; and "Economy; a Rhapsody addressed to Young Poets," abounds with self-touches. If Shenstone created little from the imagination, he was at least perpetually under the influence of real emotions. This is the reason why his truths so strongly operate on the juvenile mind, not yet matured: and thus we have sufficiently ascertained the fact, as the poet himself has expressed it, "that he drew his pictures from the spot, and he felt very sensibly the affections he communicates."

All the anxieties of a poetical life were early experienced by Shenstone. He first published some juvenile productions, under a very odd title, indicative of modesty, perhaps too of pride.[55] And his motto of Contentus paucis lectoribus, even Horace himself might have smiled at, for it only conceals the desire of every poet who pants to deserve many! But when he tried at a more elaborate poetical labour, "The Judgment of Hercules," it failed to attract notice. He hastened to town, and he beat about literary coffee-houses; and returned to the country from the chase of Fame, wearied without having started it.

A breath revived him--but a breath o'erthrew.

Even "The Judgment of Hercules" between Indolence and Industry, or Pleasure and Virtue, was a picture of his own feelings; an argument drawn from his own reasonings; indicating the uncertainty of the poet's dubious disposition; who finally by siding with Indolence, lost that triumph which his hero obtained by a directly opposite course.

In the following year begins that melancholy strain in his correspondence which marks the disappointment of the man who had staked too great a quantity of his happiness on the poetical die. This is the critical moment of life when our character is formed by habit, and our fate is decided by choice. Was Shenstone to become an active or contemplative being? He yielded to nature![56]

It was now that he entered into another species of poetry, working with too costly materials, in the magical composition of plants, water, and earth; with these he created those emotions which his more strictly poetical ones failed to excite. He planned a paradise amidst his solitude. When we consider that Shenstone, in developing his fine pastoral ideas in the Leasowes, educated the nation into that taste for landscape-gardening, which has become the model of all Europe, this itself constitutes a claim on the gratitude of posterity.[57] Thus the private pleasures of a man of genius may become at length those of a whole people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far less notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in the Essay on Gardening by Lord Orford: even the supercilious Gray only bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the offices of the landscape designer, adds, that "he will not inquire whether they demand any great powers of mind." Johnson, however, conveys to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the character of a "sullen and surly speculator." The anxious life of Shenstone would, indeed, have been remunerated, could he have read the enchanting eulogium of Wheatley on the Leasowes; which, said he, "is a perfect picture of his mind--simple, elegant, and amiable; and will always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether in the scenes which he formed, he only realized the pastoral images which abound in his songs." Yes! Shenstone would have been delighted, could he have heard that Montesquieu, on his return home, adorned his "Château gothique, mais orné de bois charmans, dont j'ai pris l'idée en Angleterre;" and Shenstone, even with his modest and timid nature, had been proud to have witnessed a noble foreigner, amidst memorials dedicated to Theocritus and Virgil, to Thomson and Gesner, raising in his grounds an inscription, in bad English, but in pure taste, to Shenstone himself for having displayed in his writings "a mind natural," and in his Leasowes "laid Arcadian greens rural." Recently Pindemonte has traced the taste of English gardening to Shenstone. A man of genius sometimes receives from foreigners, who are placed out of the prejudices of his compatriots, the tribute of posterity!

Amidst these rural elegancies which Shenstone was raising about him, his muse has pathetically sung his melancholy feelings--

But did the Muses haunt his cell, Or in his dome did Venus dwell?-- When all the structures shone complete, Ah, me! 'twas Damon's own confession, Came Poverty, and took possession.

The Progress of Taste.

The poet observes, that the wants of philosophy are contracted, satisfied with "cheap contentment," but

Taste alone requires Entire profusion! days and nights, and hours Thy voice, hydropic Fancy! calls aloud For costly draughts.----

Economy.

An original image illustrates that fatal want of economy which conceals itself amidst the beautiful appearances of taste:--

Some graceless mark, Some symptom ill-conceal'd, shall soon or late Burst like a pimple from the vicious tide Of acid blood, proclaiming want's disease Amidst the bloom of show.

Economy.

He paints himself:--

Observe Florelio's mien; Why treads my friend with melancholy step That beauteous lawn? Why pensive strays his eye O'er statues, grottos, urns, by critic art Proportion'd fair? or from his lofty dome Returns his eye unpleased, disconsolate?

The cause is, "criminal expense," and he exclaims--

Sweet interchange Of river, valley, mountain, woods, and plains, How gladsome once he ranged your native turf, Your simple scenes how raptured! ere EXPENSE Had lavish'd thousand ornaments, and taught Convenience to perplex him, Art to pall, Pomp to deject, and Beauty to displease.

Economy.

While Shenstone was rearing hazels and hawthorns, opening vistas, and winding waters;

And having shown them where to stray, Threw little pebbles in their way;

while he was pulling down hovels and cowhouses, to compose mottos and inscriptions for garden-seats and urns; while he had so finely obscured with a tender gloom the grove of Virgil, and thrown over, "in the midst of a plantation of yew, a bridge of one arch, built of a dusty-coloured stone, and simple even to rudeness,"[58] and invoked Oberon in some Arcadian scene,

Where in cool grot and mossy cell The tripping fauns and fairies dwell;

the solitary magician, who had raised all these wonders, was, in reality, an unfortunate poet, the tenant of a dilapidated farm-house, where the winds passed through, and the rains lodged, often taking refuge in his own kitchen--

Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth!

In a letter[59] of the disconsolate founder of landscape gardening, our author paints his situation with all its misery--lamenting that his house is not fit to receive "polite friends, were they so disposed;" and resolved to banish all others, he proceeds:

"But I make it a certain rule, 'arcere profanum vulgus.' Persons who will despise you for the want of a good set of chairs, or an uncouth fire-shovel, at the same time that they can't taste any excellence in a mind that overlooks those things; with whom it is in vain that your mind is furnished, if the walls are naked; indeed one loses much of one's acquisitions in virtue by an hour's converse with such as judge of merit by money--yet I am now and then impelled by the social passion to sit half an hour in my kitchen."

But the solicitude of friends and the fate of Somerville, a neighbour and a poet, often compelled Shenstone to start amidst his reveries; and thus he has preserved his feelings and his irresolutions. Reflecting on the death of Somerville, he writes--

"To be forced to drink himself into pains of the body, in order to get rid of the pains of the mind, is a misery which I can well conceive, because I may, without vanity, esteem myself his equal in point of economy, and consequently ought to have an eye on his misfortunes--(as you kindly hinted to me about twelve o'clock, at the Feathers.)--I should retrench--I will--but you shall not see me--I will not let you know that I took it in good part--I will do it at solitary times as I may."

Such were the calamities of "great taste" with "little fortune;" but in the case of Shenstone, these were combined with the other calamity of "mediocrity of genius."

Here, then, at the Leasowes, with occasional trips to town in pursuit of fame, which perpetually eluded his grasp; in the correspondence of a few delicate minds, whose admiration was substituted for more genuine celebrity; composing diatribes against economy and taste, while his income was diminishing every year; our neglected author grew daily more indolent and sedentary, and withdrawing himself entirely into his own hermitage, moaned and despaired in an Arcadian solitude.[60] The cries and the "secret sorrows" of Shenstone have come down to us--those of his brothers have not always! And shall dull men, because they have minds cold and obscure, like a Lapland year which has no summer, be permitted to exult over this class of men of sensibility and taste, but of moderate genius and without fortune? The passions and emotions of the heart are facts and dates only to those who possess them.

To what a melancholy state was our author reduced, when he thus addressed his friend:--

"I suppose you have been informed that my fever was in a great measure hypochondriacal, and left my nerves so extremely sensible, that even on no very interesting subjects, I could readily think myself into a vertigo; I had almost said an epilepsy; for surely I was oftentimes near it."

The features of this sad portrait are more particularly made out in another place.

"Now I am come home from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life which I foresee I shall lead. I am angry and envious, and dejected and frantic, and disregard all present things, just as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased (though it is a gloomy joy) with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, 'that he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.' My soul is no more fitted to the figure I make, than a cable rope to a cambric needle; I cannot bear to see the advantages alienated, which I think I could deserve and relish so much more than those that have them."

There are other testimonies in his entire correspondence. Whenever forsaken by his company he describes the horrors around him, delivered up "to winter, silence, and reflection;" ever foreseeing himself "returning to the same series of melancholy hours." His frame shattered by the whole train of hypochondriacal symptoms, there was nothing to cheer the querulous author, who with half the consciousness of genius, lived neglected and unpatronised. His elegant mind had not the force, by his productions, to draw the celebrity he sighed after, to his hermitage.

Shenstone was so anxious for his literary character, that he contemplated on the posthumous fame which he might derive from the publication of his letters: see Letter lxxix., On hearing his letters to Mr. Whistler were destroyed; the act of a merchant, his brother, who being a very sensible man, as Graves describes, yet with the stupidity of a Goth, destroyed the whole correspondence of Shenstone, for "its sentimental intercourse."--Shenstone bitterly regrets the loss, and says, "I would have given more money for the letters than it is allowable for me to mention with decency. I look upon my letters as some of my chefs-d'oeuvre--they are the history of my mind for these twenty years past." This, with the loss of Cowley's correspondence, should have been preserved in the article, "of Suppressors and Dilapidators of Manuscripts."

Towards the close of life, when his spirits were exhausted, and "the silly clue of hopes and expectations," as he termed them, was undone, the notice of some persons of rank began to reach him. Shenstone, however, deeply colours the variable state of his own mind--"Recovering from a nervous fever, as I have since discovered by many concurrent symptoms, I seem to anticipate a little of that 'vernal delight' which Milton mentions and thinks

----able to chase All sadness but despair--

at least I begin to resume my silly clue of hopes and expectations."

In a former letter he had, however, given them up: "I begin to wean myself from all hopes and expectations whatever. I feed my wild-ducks, and I water my carnations. Happy enough if I could extinguish my ambition quite, to indulge the desire of being something more beneficial in my sphere.--Perhaps some few other circumstances would want also to be adjusted."

What were these "hopes and expectations," from which sometimes he weans himself, and which are perpetually revived, and are attributed to "an ambition he cannot extinguish"? This article has been written in vain, if the reader has not already perceived, that they had haunted him in early life; sickening his spirit after the possession of a poetical celebrity, unattainable by his genius; some expectations too he might have cherished from the talent he possessed for political studies, in which Graves confidently says, that "he would have made no inconsiderable figure, if he had had a sufficient motive for applying his mind to them." Shenstone has left several proofs of this talent.[61] But his master-passion for literary fame had produced little more than anxieties and disappointments; and when he indulged his pastoral fancy in a beautiful creation on his grounds, it consumed the estate which it adorned. Johnson forcibly expressed his situation: "His death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. It is said, that if he had lived a little longer, he would have been assisted by a pension."

FOOTNOTES:

[53] This once-celebrated abode of the poet is situated at Hales-Owen, Shropshire.

[54] This we learn from Dr. Nash's History of Worcestershire.

[55] While at college he printed, without his name, a small volume of verses, with this title, "Poems upon various Occasions, written for the Entertainment of the Author, and printed for the Amusement of a few Friends, prejudiced in his Favour." Oxford, 1737. 12mo.--Nash's "History of Worcestershire," vol. i. p. 528.

I find this notice of it in W. Lowndes's Catalogue; 4433 Shenstone (W.) Poems, 3_l._ 13_s._ 6_d._--(Shenstone took uncommon pains to suppress this book, by collecting and destroying copies wherever he met with them.)--In, Longman's Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica, it is valued at 15_l. Oxf_. 1737. Mr. Harris informs me, that about the year 1770, Fletcher, the bookseller, at Oxford, had many copies of this first edition, which he sold at Eighteen pence each. These prices are amusing! The prices of books are connected with their history.

[56] On this subject Graves makes a very useful observation. "In this decision the happiness of Mr. Shenstone was materially concerned. Whether he determined wisely or not, people of taste and people of worldly prudence will probably be of very different opinions. I somewhat suspect, that 'people of worldly prudence' are not half the fools that 'people of taste' insist they are."

[57] Shenstone's farm was surrounded by winding walks, decorated with vases and statues, varied by wood and water, and occasionally embracing fine views over Frankley and Clent Hills, and the country about Cradley, Dudley, Rawley, and the intermediate places. Some of his vases were inscribed to the memory of relatives and friends. One had a Latin inscription to his cousin Maria, another was dedicated to Somerville his poet-friend. In different parts of his domain he constructed buildings at once useful and ornamental, destined to serve farm-purposes, but to be also grateful to the eye. A Chinese bridge led to a temple beside a lake, and near was a seat inscribed with the popular Shropshire toast to "all friends round the Wrekin," the spot commanding a distant view of the hill so named. A wild path through a small wood led to an ingeniously constructed root-house, beside which a rivulet ran which helped to form the lake already mentioned; on its banks was a dedicatory urn to the Genio Loci. The general effect of the whole place was highly praised in the poet's time. It was neglected at his death; and its description is now but a record of the past.

[58] Wheatley, on "Modern Gardening," p. 172. Edition 5th.

[59] In "Hull's Collection," vol. ii. letter ii.

[60] Graves was supposed to have glanced at his friend Shenstone in his novel of "Columella; or, the Distressed Anchoret." The aim of this work is to convey all the moral instruction I could wish to offer here to youthful genius. It is written to show the consequence of a person of education and talents retiring to solitude and indolence in the vigour of youth. Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes," vol. iii. p. 134. Nash's "History of Worcestershire," vol. i. p. 528.

[61] See his "Letters" xl. and xli., and more particularly xlii. and xliii., with a new theory of political principles.

SECRET HISTORY OF THE BUILDING OF BLENHEIM.

The secret history of this national edifice derives importance from its nature, and the remarkable characters involved in the unparalleled transaction. The great architect, when obstructed in the progress of his work by the irregular payments of the workmen, appears to have practised one of his own comic plots to put the debts on the hero himself; while the duke, who had it much at heart to inhabit the palace of his fame, but tutored into wariness under the vigilant and fierce eye of Atossa,[62] would neither approve nor disapprove, silently looked on in hope and in grief, from year to year, as the work proceeded, or as it was left at a stand. At length we find this comédie larmoyante wound up by the duchess herself, in an attempt utterly to ruin the enraged and insulted architect![63]

Perhaps this was the first time that it had ever been resolved in parliament to raise a public monument of glory and gratitude--to an individual! The novelty of the attempt may serve as the only excuse for the loose arrangements which followed after parliament had approved of the design, without voting any specific supply for the purpose! The queen always issued the orders at her own expense, and commanded expedition; and while Anne lived, the expenses of the building were included in her majesty's debts, as belonging to the civil list sanctioned by parliament.[64]

When George the First came to the throne, the parliament declared the debt to be the debt of the queen, and the king granted a privy seal as for other debts. The crown and the parliament had hitherto proceeded in perfect union respecting this national edifice. However, I find that the workmen were greatly in arrears; for when George the First ascended the throne, they gladly accepted a third part of their several debts!

The great architect found himself amidst inextricable difficulties. With the fertile invention which amuses in his comedies, he contrived an extraordinary scheme, by which he proposed to make the duke himself responsible for the building of Blenheim!

However much the duke longed to see the magnificent edifice concluded, he showed the same calm intrepidity in the building of Blenheim as he had in its field of action. Aware that if he himself gave any order, or suggested any alteration, he might be involved in the expense of the building, he was never to be circumvented--never to be surprised into a spontaneous emotion of pleasure or disapprobation; on no occasion, he declares, had he even entered into conversation with the architect (though his friend) or with any one acting under his orders, about Blenheim House! Such impenetrable prudence on all sides had often blunted the subdolous ingenuity of the architect and plotter of comedies!

In the absence of the duke, when abroad in 1705, Sir John contrived to obtain from Lord Godolphin, the friend and relative of the Duke of Marlborough, and probably his agent in some of his concerns, a warrant, constituting Vanbrugh surveyor, with power of contracting on the behalf of the Duke of Marlborough. How he prevailed on Lord Godolphin to get this appointment does not appear--his lordship probably conceived it was useful, and might assist in expediting the great work, the favourite object of the hero. This warrant, however, Vanbrugh kept entirely to himself; he never mentioned to the duke that he was in possession of any such power; nor, on his return, did he claim to have it renewed.

The building proceeded with the same delays, and the payments with the same irregularity; the veteran now foresaw what happened, that he should never be the inhabitant of his own house! The public money issued from the Treasury was never to be depended on; and after 1712, the duke took the building upon himself, for the purpose of accommodating the workmen. They had hitherto received what was called "crown pay," which was high wages and uncertain payment--and they now gladly abated a third of their prices. But though the duke had undertaken to pay the workmen, this could make no alteration in the claims on the Treasury. Blenheim was to be built for Marlborough, not by him; it was a monument raised by the nation to their hero, not a palace to be built by their mutual contributions.

Whether Marlborough found that his own million might be slowly injured while the Treasury remained still obdurate, or that the architect was still more and more involved, I cannot tell; but in 1715, the workmen appear to have struck, and the old delays and stand-still again renewed. It was then Sir John, for the first time, produced the warrant he had extracted from Lord Godolphin, to lay before the Treasury; adding, however, a memorandum, to prevent any misconception, that the duke was to be considered as the paymaster, the debts incurred devolving on the crown. This part of our secret history requires more development than I am enabled to afford: as my information is drawn from "the Case" of the Duke of Marlborough in reply to Sir John's depositions, it is possible Vanbrugh may suffer more than he ought in this narration; which, however, incidentally notices his own statements.

A new scene opens! Vanbrugh not obtaining his claims from the Treasury, and the workmen becoming more clamorous, the architect suddenly turns round on the duke, at once to charge him with the whole debt.

The pitiable history of this magnificent monument of public gratitude, from its beginnings, is given by Vanbrugh in his deposition. The great architect represents himself as being comptroller of her majesty's works; and as such was appointed to prepare a model, which model of Blenheim House her majesty kept in her palace, and gave her commands to issue money according to the direction of Mr. Travers, the queen's surveyor-general; that the lord treasurer appointed her majesty's own officers to supervise these works; that it was upon defect of money from the Treasury that the workmen grew uneasy; that the work was stopped, till further orders of money from the Treasury; that the queen then ordered enough to secure it from winter weather; that afterwards she ordered more for payment of the workmen; that they were paid in part; and upon Sir John's telling them the queen's resolution to grant them a further supply (after a stop put to it by the duchess's order), they went on and incurred the present debt; that this was afterwards brought into the House of Commons as the debt of the crown, not owing from the queen to the Duke of Marlborough, but to the workmen, and this by the queen's officers.

During the uncertain progress of the building, and while the workmen were often in deep arrears, it would seem that the architect often designed to involve the Marlboroughs in its fate and his own; he probably thought that some of their round million might bear to be chipped, to finish his great work, with which, too, their glory was so intimately connected. The famous duchess had evidently put the duke on the defensive; but once, perhaps, was the duke on the point of indulging some generous architectural fancy, when lo! Atossa stepped forwards and "put a stop to the building."

When Vanbrugh at length produced the warrant of Lord Godolphin, empowering him to contract for the duke, this instrument was utterly disclaimed by Marlborough; the duke declares it existed without his knowledge; and that if such an instrument for a moment was to be held valid, no man would be safe, but might be ruined by the act of another!

Vanbrugh seems to have involved the intricacy of his plot, till it fell into some contradictions. The queen he had not found difficult to manage; but after her death, when the Treasury failed in its golden source, he seems to have sat down to contrive how to make the duke the great debtor. Vanbrugh swears that "He himself looked upon the crown, as engaged to the Duke of Marlborough for the expense; but that he believes the workmen always looked upon the duke as their paymaster." He advances so far, as to swear that he made a contract with particular workmen, which contract was not unknown to the duke. This was not denied; but the duke in his reply observes, that "he knew not that the workmen were employed for his account, or by his own agent:"--never having heard till Sir John produced the warrant from Lord Godolphin, that Sir John was "his surveyor!" which he disclaims.

Our architect, however opposite his depositions appear, contrived to become a witness to such facts as tended to conclude the duke to be the debtor for the building; and "in his depositions has taken as much care to have the guilt of perjury without the punishment of it, as any man could do." He so managed, though he has not sworn to contradictions, that the natural tendency of one part of his evidence presses one way, and the natural tendency of another part presses the direct contrary way. In his former memorial, the main design was to disengage the duke from the debt; in his depositions, the main design was to charge the duke with the debt. Vanbrugh, it must be confessed, exerted not less of his dramatic than his architectural genius in the building of Blenheim!

"The Case" concludes with an eloquent reflection, where Vanbrugh is distinguished as the man of genius, though not, in this predicament, the man of honour. "If at last the charge run into by order of the crown must be upon the duke, yet the infamy of it must go upon another, who was perhaps the only architect in the world capable of building such a house; and the only friend in the world capable of contriving to lay the debt upon one to whom he was so highly obliged."

There is a curious fact in the depositions of Vanbrugh, by which we might infer that the idea of Blenheim House might have originated with the duke himself; he swears that "in 1704, the duke met him, and told him he designed to build a house, and must consult him about a model, &c.; but it was the queen who ordered the present house to be built with all expedition."

The whole conduct of this national edifice was unworthy of the nation, if in truth the nation ever entered heartily into it. No specific sum had been voted in parliament for so great an undertaking; which afterwards was the occasion of involving all the parties concerned in trouble and litigation; threatened the ruin of the architect; and I think we shall see, by Vanbrugh's letters, was finished at the sole charge, and even under the superintendence, of the duchess herself! It may be a question, whether this magnificent monument of glory did not rather originate in the spirit of party, in the urgent desire of the queen to allay the pride and jealousies of the Marlboroughs. From the circumstance to which Vanbrugh has sworn, that the duke had designed to have a house built by Vanbrugh, before Blenheim had been resolved on, we may suppose that this intention of the duke's afforded the queen a suggestion of a national edifice.

Archdeacon Coxe, in his Life of Marlborough, has obscurely alluded to the circumstances attending the building of Blenheim. "The illness of the duke, and the tedious litigation which ensued, caused such delays, that little progress was made in the work at the time of his decease. In the interim a serious misunderstanding arose between the duchess and the architect, which forms the subject of a voluminous correspondence. Vanbrugh was in consequence removed, and the direction of the building confided to other hands, under her own immediate superintendence."

This "voluminous correspondence" would probably afford "words that burn" of the lofty insolence of Atossa, and "thoughts that breathe" of the comic wit; it might too relate, in many curious points, to the stupendous fabric itself. If her grace condescended to criticise its parts with the frank roughness she is known to have done to the architect himself, his own defence and explanations might serve to let us into the bewildering fancies of his magical architecture. Of that self-creation for which he was so much abused in his own day as to have lost his real avocation as an architect, and stands condemned for posterity in the volatile bitterness of Lord Orford, nothing is left for us but our own convictions--to behold, and to be for ever astonished!--But "this voluminous correspondence?" Alas! the historian of war and politics overlooks with contempt the little secret histories of art and of human nature!--and "a voluminous correspondence" which indicates so much, and on which not a solitary idea is bestowed, has only served to petrify our curiosity!

Of this quarrel between the famous duchess and Vanbrugh I have only recovered several vivacious extracts from confidential letters of Vanbrugh's to Jacob Tonson. There was an equality of the genius of invention, as well as rancour, in her grace and the wit: whether Atossa, like Vanbrugh, could have had the patience to have composed a comedy of five acts I will not determine; but unquestionably she could have dictated many scenes with equal spirit. We have seen Vanbrugh attempting to turn the debts incurred by the building of Blenheim on the duke; we now learn, for the first time, that the duchess, with equal aptitude, contrived a counterplot to turn the debts on Vanbrugh!

"I have the misfortune of losing, for I now see little hopes of ever getting it, near 2000_l._ due to me for many years' service, plague, and trouble, at Blenheim, which that wicked woman of 'Marlborough' is so far from paying me, that the duke being sued by some of the workmen for work done there, she has tried to turn the debt due to them upon me, for which I think she ought to be hanged."

In 1722, on occasion of the duke's death, Vanbrugh gives an account to Tonson of the great wealth of the Marlboroughs, with a caustic touch at his illustrious victims.

"The Duke of Marlborough's treasure exceeds the most extravagant guess. The grand settlement, which it was suspected her grace had broken to pieces, stands good, and hands an immense wealth to Lord Godolphin and his successors. A round million has been moving about in loans on the land-tax, &c. This the Treasury knew before he died, and this was exclusive of his 'land;' his 5000_l._ a year upon the post-office; his mortgages upon a distressed estate; his South-Sea stock; his annuities, and which were not subscribed in, and besides what is in foreign banks; and yet this man could neither pay his workmen their bills, nor his architect his salary.

"He has given his widow (may a Scottish ensign get her!) 10,000_l._ a year to spoil Blenheim her own way; 12,000_l._ a year to keep herself clean and go to law; 2000_l._ a year to Lord Rialton for present maintenance; and Lord Godolphin only 5000_l._ a year jointure, if he outlives my lady: this last is a wretched article. The rest of the heap, for these are but snippings, goes to Lord Godolphin, and so on. She will have 40,000_l._ a year in present."

Atossa, as the quarrel heated and the plot thickened, with the maliciousness of Puck, and the haughtiness of an empress of Blenheim, invented the most cruel insult that ever architect endured!--one perfectly characteristic of that extraordinary woman. Vanbrugh went to Blenheim with his lady, in a company from Castle Howard, another magnificent monument of his singular genius.

"We staid two nights in Woodstock; but there was an order to the servants, under her grace's own hand, not to let me enter Blenheim! and lest that should not mortify me enough, she having somehow learned that my wife was of the company, sent an express the night before we came there, with orders that if she came with the Castle Howard ladies, the servants should not suffer her to see either house, gardens, or even to enter the park: so she was forced to sit all day long and keep me company at the inn!"

This was a coup-de-théâtre in this joint comedy of Atossa and Vanbrugh! The architect of Blenheim, lifting his eyes towards his own massive grandeur, exiled to a dull inn, and imprisoned with one who required rather to be consoled, than capable of consoling the enraged architect!

In 1725, Atossa still pursuing her hunted prey, had driven it to a spot which she flattered herself would enclose it with the security of a preserve. This produced the following explosion!

"I have been forced into chancery by that B. B. B. the Duchess of Marlborough, where she has got an injunction upon me by her friend the late good chancellor (Earl of Macclesfield), who declared that I was never employed by the duke, and therefore had no demand upon his estate for my services at Blenheim. Since my hands were thus tied up from trying by law to recover my arrear, I have prevailed with Sir Robert Walpole to help me in a scheme which I proposed to him, by which I got my money in spite of the hussy's teeth. My carrying this point enrages her much, and the more because it is of considerable weight in my small fortune, which she has heartily endeavoured so to destroy as to throw me into an English Bastile, there to finish my days, as I began them, in a French one."

Plot for plot! and the superior claims of one of practised invention are vindicated! The writer, long accustomed to comedy-writing, has excelled the self-taught genius of Atossa. The "scheme" by which Vanbrugh's fertile invention, aided by Sir Robert Walpole, finally circumvented the avaricious, the haughty, and the capricious Atossa, remains untold, unless it is alluded to by the passage in Lord Orford's "Anecdotes of Painting," where he informs us that the "duchess quarrelled with Sir John, and went to law with him; but though he proved to be in the right, or rather because he proved to be in the right, she employed Sir Christopher Wren to build the house in St. James's Park."

I have to add a curious discovery respecting Vanbrugh himself, which explains a circumstance in his life not hitherto understood.

In all the biographies of Vanbrugh, from the time of Cibber's Lives of the Poets, the early part of the life of this man of genius remains unknown. It is said he descended from an ancient family in Cheshire, which came originally from France, though by the name, which properly written would be Van Brugh, he would appear to be of Dutch extraction. A tale is universally repeated that Sir John once visiting France in the prosecution of his architectural studies, while taking a survey of some fortifications, excited alarm, and was carried to the Bastile: where, to deepen the interest of the story, he sketched a variety of comedies, which he must have communicated to the governor, who, whispering it doubtless as an affair of state to several of the noblesse, these admirers of "sketches of comedies"--English ones no doubt--procured the release of this English Molière. This tale is further confirmed by a very odd circumstance. Sir John built at Greenwich, on a spot still called "Van Brugh's Fields," two whimsical houses; one on the side of Greenwich Park is still called "the Bastile-House," built on its model, to commemorate this imprisonment.

Not a word of this detailed story is probably true! that the Bastile was an object which sometimes occupied the imagination of our architect, is probable; for by the letter we have just quoted, we discover from himself the singular incident of Vanbrugh's having been born in the Bastile.[65]

Desirous, probably, of concealing his alien origin, this circumstance cast his early days into obscurity. He felt that he was a Briton in all respects but that of his singular birth. The father of Vanbrugh married Sir Dudley Carleton's daughter. We are told he had "political connexions;" and one of his "political" tours had probably occasioned his confinement in that state-dungeon, where his lady was delivered of her burden of love. This odd fancy of building a "Bastile-House" at Greenwich, a fortified prison! suggested to his first life-writer the fine romance; which must now be thrown aside among those literary fictions the French distinguish by the softening and yet impudent term of "Anecdotes hasardées!" with which formerly Varillas and his imitators furnished their pages; lies which looked like facts!

FOOTNOTES:

[62] The name by which Pope ruthlessly satirized Sarah Duchess of Marlborough.

[63] I draw the materials of this secret history from an unpublished "Case of the Duke of Marlborough and Sir John Vanbrugh," as also from some confidential correspondence of Vanbrugh with Jacob Tonson, his friend and publisher.

[64] Parliament voted 500,000_l._ for the building, which was insufficient. The queen added thereto the honour of Woodstock, an appanage of the crown, on the simple condition of rendering at Windsor Castle every year on the anniversary of the victory of Blenheim, a flag adorned with three fleur-de-lys, "as acquittance for all manner of rents, suits and services due to the crown."

[65] Cunningham, in his "Lives of the British Architects," does not incline to the conclusions above drawn. He says, "I suspect that Vanbrugh, in saying he began his days in the Bastile, meant only that he was its tenant in early life--at the commencement of his manhood." The same author tells us that Vanbrugh's grandfather fled from Ghent, his native city, to avoid the persecutions of the Duke of Alva, and established himself as a merchant in Walbrook, where his son lived after him, and where John Vanbrugh (afterwards the great architect) was born in the year 1666. His father was at this time Comptroller of the Treasury Chamber. Cunningham thinks the Cheshire part of the genealogy "unlikely to be true."

SECRET HISTORY OF SIR WALTER RAWLEIGH.[66]

Rawleigh exercised in perfection incompatible talents, and his character connects the opposite extremes of our nature! His "Book of Life," with its incidents of prosperity and adversity, of glory and humiliation, was as chequered as the novelist would desire for a tale of fiction. Yet in this mighty genius there lies an unsuspected disposition, which requires to be demonstrated, before it is possible to conceive its reality. From his earliest days, probably by his early reading of the romantic incidents of the first Spanish adventurers in the New World, he himself betrayed the genius of an adventurer, which prevailed in his character to the latest; and it often involved him in the practice of mean artifices and petty deceptions; which appear like folly in the wisdom of a sage; like ineptitude in the profound views of a politician; like cowardice in the magnanimity of a hero; and degrade by their littleness the grandeur of a character which was closed by a splendid death, worthy the life of the wisest and the greatest of mankind!

The sunshine of his days was in the reign of Elizabeth. From a boy, always dreaming of romantic conquests (for he was born in an age of heroism), and formed by nature for the chivalric gallantry of the court of a maiden queen, from the moment he with such infinite art cast his rich mantle over the miry spot, his life was a progress of glory. All about Rawleigh was as splendid as the dress he wore: his female sovereign, whose eyes loved to dwell on men who might have been fit subjects for "the Faerie Queene" of Spenser, penurious of reward, only recompensed her favourites by suffering them to make their own fortunes on sea and land; and Elizabeth listened to the glowing projects of her hero, indulging that spirit which could have conquered the world, to have laid the toy at the feet of the sovereign!

This man, this extraordinary being, who was prodigal of his life and fortune on the Spanish Main, in the idleness of peace could equally direct his invention to supply the domestic wants of every-day life, in his project of "an office for address." Nothing was too high for his ambition, nor too humble for his genius. Pre-eminent as a military and a naval commander, as a statesman and a student, Rawleigh was as intent on forming the character of Prince Henry, as that prince was studious of moulding his own aspiring qualities by the genius of the friend whom he contemplated. Yet the active life of Rawleigh is not more remarkable than his contemplative one. He may well rank among the founders of our literature; for composing on a subject exciting little interest, his fine genius has sealed his unfinished volume with immortality. For magnificence of eloquence, and massiveness of thought, we must still dwell on his pages.[67] Such was the man who was the adored patron of Spenser; whom Ben Jonson, proud of calling other favourites "his sons," honoured by the title of "his father;" and who left political instructions which Milton deigned to edit.

But how has it happened that, of so elevated a character, Gibbon has pronounced that it was "ambiguous," while it is described by Hume as "a great but ill-regulated mind!"

There was a peculiarity in the character of this eminent man; he practised the cunning of an adventurer--a cunning most humiliating in the narrative! The great difficulty to overcome in this discovery is, how to account for a sage and a hero acting folly and cowardice, and attempting to obtain by circuitous deception what it may be supposed so magnanimous a spirit would only deign to possess himself of by direct and open methods.

Since the present article was written, a letter, hitherto unpublished, appears in the recent edition of Shakspeare which curiously and minutely records one of those artifices of the kind which I am about to narrate at length. When, under Elizabeth, Rawleigh was once in confinement, it appears that seeing the queen passing by, he was suddenly seized with a strange resolution of combating with the governor and his people, declaring that the mere sight of the queen had made him desperate, as a confined lover would feel at the sight of his mistress. The letter gives a minute narrative of Sir Walter's astonishing conduct, and carefully repeats the warm romantic style in which he talked of his royal mistress, and his formal resolution to die rather than exist out of her presence.[68] This extravagant scene, with all its cunning, has been most elaborately penned by the ingenious letter-writer, with a hint to the person whom he addresses, to suffer it to meet the eye of their royal mistress, who could not fail of admiring our new "Orlando Furioso," and soon after released this tender prisoner! To me it is evident that the whole scene was got up and concerted for the occasion, and was the invention of Rawleigh himself; the romantic incident he well knew was perfectly adapted to the queen's taste. Another similar incident, in which I have been anticipated in the disclosure of the fact, though not of its nature, was what Sir Toby Matthews obscurely alludes to in his letters, of "the guilty blow he gave himself in the Tower;" a passage which had long excited my attention, till I discovered the curious incident in some manuscript letters of Lord Cecil. Rawleigh was then confined in the Tower for the Cobham conspiracy; a plot so absurd and obscure that one historian has called it a "state-riddle," but for which, so many years after, Rawleigh so cruelly lost his life.

Lord Cecil gives an account of the examination of the prisoners involved in this conspiracy. "One afternoon, whilst divers of us were in the Tower examining some of these prisoners, Sir Walter attempted to murder himself; whereof, when we were advertised, we came to him, and found him in some agony to be unable to endure his misfortunes, and protesting innocency, with carelessness of life; and in that humour he had wounded himself under the right pap, but no way mortally, being in truth rather a CUT than a STAB, and now very well cured both in body and mind."[69] This feeble attempt at suicide, this "cut rather than stab," I must place among those scenes in the life of Rawleigh so incomprehensible with the genius of the man. If it were nothing but one of those

Fears of the Brave!

we must now open another of the

Follies of the Wise!

Rawleigh returned from the wild and desperate voyage of Guiana, with misery in every shape about him.[70] His son had perished; his devoted Keymis would not survive his reproach; and Rawleigh, without fortune and without hope, in sickness and in sorrow, brooded over the sad thought, that in the hatred of the Spaniard, and in the political pusillanimity of James, he was arriving only to meet inevitable death. With this presentiment, he had even wished to give up his ship to the crew, had they consented to land him in France; but he was probably irresolute in this decision at sea, as he was afterwards at land, where he wished to escape, and refused to fly: the clearest intellect was darkened, and magnanimity itself became humiliated, floating between the sense of honour and of life.

Rawleigh landed in his native county of Devon: his arrival was the common topic of conversation, and he was the object of censure or of commiseration: but his person was not molested, till the fears of James became more urgent than his pity.

The Cervantic Gondomar, whose "quips and quiddities" had concealed the cares of state, one day rushed into the presence of James, breathlessly calling out for "audience!" and compressing his "ear-piercing" message into the laconic abruptness of "piratas! piratas! piratas!" There was agony as well as politics in this cry of Gondomar, whose brother, the Spanish governor, had been massacred in this predatory expedition.[71] The timid monarch, terrified at this tragical appearance of his facetious friend, saw at once the demands of the whole Spanish cabinet, and vented his palliative in a gentle proclamation. Rawleigh having settled his affairs in the west, set off for London to appear before the king, in consequence of the proclamation. A few miles from Plymouth he was met by Sir Lewis Stucley, vice-admiral of Devon, a kinsman and a friend, who, in communication with government, had accepted a sort of surveillance over Sir Walter. It is said (and will be credited, when we hear the story of Stucley), that he had set his heart on the ship, as a probable good purchase; and on the person, against whom, to colour his natural treachery, he professed an old hatred. He first seized on Rawleigh more like the kinsman than the vice-admiral, and proposed travelling together to London, and baiting at the houses of the friends of Rawleigh. The warrant which Stucley in the meanwhile had desired was instantly despatched, and the bearer was one Manoury, a French empiric, who was evidently sent to act the part he did--a part played at all times, and the last title, in French politics, that so often had recourse to this instrument of state, is a Mouton!

Rawleigh still, however, was not placed under any harsh restraint: his confidential associate, Captain King, accompanied him; and it is probable, that if Rawleigh had effectuated his escape, he would have conferred a great favour on the government.

They could not save him at London. It is certain that he might have escaped; for Captain King had hired a vessel, and Rawleigh had stolen out by night, and might have reached it, but irresolutely returned home; another night, the same vessel was ready, but Rawleigh never came! The loss of his honour appeared the greater calamity.

As he advanced in this eventful journey, everything assumed a more formidable aspect. His friends communicated fearful advices; a pursuivant, or king's messenger, gave a more menacing appearance; and suggestions arose in his own mind, that he was reserved to become a victim of state. When letters of commission from the Privy Council were brought to Sir Lewis Stucley, Rawleigh was observed to change countenance, exclaiming with an oath, "Is it possible my fortune should return upon me thus again?" He lamented, before Captain King, that he had neglected the opportunity of escape; and which, every day he advanced inland, removed him the more from any chance.

Rawleigh at first suspected that Manoury was one of those instruments of state who are sometimes employed when open measures are not to be pursued, or when the cabinet have not yet determined on the fate of a person implicated in a state crime; in a word, Rawleigh thought that Manoury was a spy over him, and probably over Stucley too. The first impression in these matters is usually the right one; but when Rawleigh found himself caught in the toils, he imagined that such corrupt agents were to be corrupted. The French empiric was sounded, and found very compliant; Rawleigh was desirous by his aid to counterfeit sickness, and for this purpose invented a series of the most humiliating stratagems. He imagined that a constant appearance of sickness might produce delay, and procrastination, in the chapter of accidents, might end in pardon. He procured vomits from the Frenchman, and, whenever he chose, produced every appearance of sickness; with dimness of sight, dizziness in his head, he reeled about, and once struck himself with such violence against a pillar in the gallery, that there was no doubt of his malady. Rawleigh's servant one morning entering Stucley's chamber, declared that his master was out of his senses, for that he had just left him in his shirt upon all fours, gnawing the rushes upon the floor. On Stucley's entrance, Rawleigh was raving, and reeling in strong convulsions. Stucley ordered him to be chafed and fomented, and Rawleigh afterwards laughed at this scene with Manoury, observing that he had made Stucley a perfect physician.

But Rawleigh found it required some more visible and alarming disease than such ridiculous scenes had exhibited. The vomits worked so slowly, that Manoury was fearful to repeat the doses. Rawleigh inquired whether the empiric knew of any preparation which could make him look ghastly, without injuring his health. The Frenchman offered a harmless ointment to act on the surface of the skin, which would give him the appearance of a leper. "That will do!" said Rawleigh, "for the lords will be afraid to approach me, and besides it will move their pity." Applying the ointment to his brows, his arms, and his breast, the blisters rose, the skin inflamed, and was covered with purple spots. Stucley concluded that Rawleigh had the plague. Physicians were now to be called in; Rawleigh took the black silk ribbon from his poniard, and Manoury tightened it strongly about his arm, to disorder his pulse; but his pulse beat too strong and regular. He appeared to take no food, while Manoury secretly provided him. To perplex the learned doctors still more, Rawleigh had the urinal coloured by a drug of a strong scent. The physicians pronounced the disease mortal, and that the patient could not be removed into the air without immediate danger. Awhile after, being in his bed-chamber undressed, and no one present but Manoury, Sir Walter held a looking-glass in his hand to admire his spotted face,[72] and observed in merriment to his new confidant, "how they should one day laugh for having thus cozened the king, council, physicians, Spaniards, and all." The excuse Rawleigh offered for this course of poor stratagems, so unworthy of his genius, was to obtain time and seclusion for writing his Apology, or Vindication of his Voyage, which has come down to us in his "Remains." "The prophet David did make himself a fool, and suffered spittle to fall upon his beard, to escape from the hands of his enemies," said Rawleigh in his last speech. Brutus, too, was another example. But his discernment often prevailed over this mockery of his spirit. The king licensed him to reside at his own house on his arrival in London; on which Manoury observed that the king showed by this indulgence that his majesty was favourably inclined towards him; but Rawleigh replied, "They used all these kinds of flatteries to the Duke of Biron, to draw him fairly into prison, and then they cut off his head. I know they have concluded among them that it is expedient that a man should die, to re-assure the traffick which I have broke with Spain." And Manoury adds, from whose narrative we have all these particulars, that Sir Walter broke out into this rant: "If he could but save himself for this time, he would plot such plots as should make the king think himself happy to send for him again, and restore him to his estate, and would force the King of Spain to write into England in his favour."

Rawleigh at length proposed a flight to France with Manoury, who declares it was then he revealed to Stucley what he had hitherto concealed, that Stucley might double his vigilance. Rawleigh now perceived that he had two rogues to bribe instead of one, and that they were playing into one another's hands. Proposals are now made to Stucley through Manoury, who is as compliant as his brother-knave. Rawleigh presented Stucley with a "jewel made in the fashion of hail powdered with diamonds, with a ruby in the midst." But Stucley observing to his kinsman and friend, that he must lose his office of vice-admiral, which had cost him six hundred pounds, in case he suffered Rawleigh to escape; Rawleigh solemnly assured him that he should be no loser, and that his lady should give him one thousand pounds when they got into France or Holland. About this time the French quack took his leave: the part he had to act was performed: the juggle was complete: and two wretches had triumphed over the sagacity and magnanimity of a sage and a hero, whom misfortune had levelled to folly; and who, in violating the dignity of his own character, had only equalled himself with vulgar knaves; men who exulted that the circumventer was circumvented; or, as they expressed it, "the great cozener was cozened." But our story does not here conclude, for the treacheries of Stucley were more intricate. This perfect villain had obtained a warrant of indemnity to authorise his compliance with any offer to assist Rawleigh in his escape; this wretch was the confidant and the executioner of Rawleigh; he carried about him a license to betray him, and was making his profit of the victim before he delivered him to the sacrifice. Rawleigh was still plotting his escape; at Salisbury he had despatched his confidential friend Captain King to London, to secure a boat at Tilbury; he had also a secret interview with the French agent. Rawleigh's servant mentioned to Captain King, that his boatswain had a ketch[73] of his own, and was ready at his service for "thirty pieces of silver;" the boatswain and Rawleigh's servant acted Judas, and betrayed the plot to Mr. William Herbert, cousin to Stucley, and thus the treachery was kept among themselves as a family concern. The night for flight was now fixed, but he could not part without his friend Stucley, who had promised never to quit him; and who indeed, informed by his cousin Herbert, had suddenly surprised Rawleigh putting on a false beard. The party met at the appointed place; Sir Lewis Stucley with his son, and Rawleigh disguised. Stucley, in saluting King, asked whether he had not shown himself an honest man? King hoped he would continue so. They had not rowed twenty strokes, before the watermen observed, that Mr. Herbert had lately taken boat, and made towards the bridge, but had returned down the river after them. Rawleigh instantly expressed his apprehensions, and wished to return home; he consulted King--the watermen took fright--Stucley acted his part well; damning his ill-fortune to have a friend whom he would save, so full of doubts and fears, and threatening to pistol the watermen if they did not proceed. Even King was overcome by the earnest conduct of Stucley, and a new spirit was infused into the rowers. As they drew near Greenwich a wherry crossed them. Rawleigh declared it came to discover them. King tried to allay his fears, and assured him that if once they reached Gravesend, he would hazard his life to get to Tilbury. But in these delays and discussions, the tide was failing; the watermen declared they could not reach Gravesend before morning; Rawleigh would have landed at Purfleet, and the boatswain encouraged him; for there it was thought he could procure horses for Tilbury. Sir Lewis Stucley too was zealous; and declared he was content to carry the cloak-bag on his own shoulders, for half-a-mile, but King declared that it was useless, they could not at that hour get horses to go by land.

They rowed a mile beyond Woolwich, approaching two or three ketches, when the boatswain doubted whether any of these were the one he had provided to furnish them. "We are betrayed!" cried Rawleigh, and ordered the watermen to row back: he strictly examined the boatswain; alas! his ingenuity was baffled by a shuffling villain, whose real answer appeared when a wherry hailed the boat: Rawleigh observed that it contained Herbert's crew. He saw that all was now discovered. He took Stucley aside; his ingenious mind still suggesting projects for himself to return home in safety, or how Stucley might plead that he had only pretended to go with Rawleigh, to seize on his private papers. They whispered together, and Rawleigh took some things from his pocket, and handed them to Stucley; probably more "rubies powdered with diamonds."--Some effect was instantaneously produced; for the tender heart of his friend Stucley relented, and he not only repeatedly embraced him with extraordinary warmth of affection, but was voluble in effusions of friendship and fidelity. Stucley persuaded Rawleigh to land at Gravesend, the strange wherry which had dogged them landing at the same time; these were people belonging to Mr. Herbert and Sir William St. John, who, it seems, had formerly shared in the spoils of this unhappy hero. On Greenwich bridge, Stucley advised Captain King that it would be advantageous to Sir Walter, that King should confess that he had joined with Stucley to betray his master; and Rawleigh lent himself to the suggestion of Stucley, of whose treachery he might still be uncertain; but King, a rough and honest seaman, declared that he would not share in the odium. At the moment he refused, Stucley arrested the captain in the king's name, committing him to the charge of Herbert's men. They then proceeded to a tavern, but Rawleigh, who now viewed the monster in his true shape, observed, "Sir Lewis, these actions will not turn out to your credit;" and on the following day, when they passed through the Tower-gate, Rawleigh, turning to King, observed, "Stucley and my servant Cotterell have betrayed me. You need be in no fear of danger, but as for me, it is I who am the mark that is shot at." Thus concludes the narrative of Captain King. The fate of Rawleigh soon verified the prediction.

This long narrative of treachery will not, however, be complete, unless we wind it up with the fate of the infamous Stucley. Fiction gives perfection to its narratives, by the privilege it enjoys of disposing of its criminals in the most exemplary manner; but the labours of the historian are not always refreshed by this moral pleasure. Retribution is not always discovered in the present stage of human existence, yet history is perhaps equally delightful as fiction, whenever its perfect catastrophes resemble those of romantic invention. The present is a splendid example.

I have discovered the secret history of Sir Lewis Stucley, in several manuscript letters of the times.

Rawleigh, in his admirable address from the scaffold, where he seemed to be rather one of the spectators than the sufferer, declared he forgave Sir Lewis, for he had forgiven all men; but he was bound in charity to caution all men against him, and such as he is! Rawleigh's last and solemn notice of the treachery of his "kinsman and friend" was irrevocably fatal to this wretch. The hearts of the people were open to the deepest impressions of sympathy, melting into tears at the pathetic address of the magnanimous spirit who had touched them; in one moment Sir Lewis Stucley became an object of execration throughout the nation; he soon obtained a new title, that of "Sir Judas," and was shunned by every man. To remove the Cain-like mark, which God and men had fixed on him, he published an apology for his conduct; a performance which, at least for its ability, might raise him in our consideration; but I have since discovered, in one of the manuscript letter-writers, that it was written by Dr. Sharpe, who had been a chaplain to Henry Prince of Wales. The writer pleads in Stucley's justification, that he was a state-agent; that it was lawful to lie for the discovery of treason; that he had a personal hatred towards Rawleigh, for having abridged his father of his share of some prize-money; and then enters more into Rawleigh's character, who "being desperate of any fortune here, agreeable to the height of his mind, would have made up his fortune elsewhere, upon any terms against his sovereign and his country. Is it not marvel," continues the personifier of Stucley, "that he was angry with me at his death for bringing him back? Besides, being a man of so great a wit, it was no small grief that a man of mean wit as I should be thought to go beyond him. No? Sic ars deluditur arte. Neque enim lex justior ulla est quam necis artifices arte perire suâ. [This apt latinity betrays Dr. Sharpe.] But why did you not execute your commission bravely [openly]?--Why? My commission was to the contrary, to discover his pretensions, and to seize his secret papers," &c.[74]

But the doctor, though no unskilful writer, here wrote in vain; for what ingenuity can veil the turpitude of long and practised treachery? To keep up appearances, Sir Judas resorted more than usually to court; where, however, he was perpetually enduring rebuffs, or avoided, as one infected with the plague of treachery. He offered the king, in his own justification, to take the sacrament, that whatever he had laid to Rawleigh's charge was true, and would produce two unexceptionable witnesses to do the like. "Why, then," replied his majesty, "the more malicious was Sir Walter to utter these speeches at his death." Sir Thomas Badger, who stood by, observed, "Let the king take off Stucley's head, as Stucley has done Sir Walter's, and let him at his death take the sacrament and his oath upon it, and I'll believe him; but till Stucley loses his head, I shall credit Sir Walter Rawleigh's bare affirmative before a thousand of Stucley's oaths." When Stucley, on pretence of giving an account of his office, placed himself in the audience chamber of the lord admiral, and his lordship passed him without any notice, Sir Judas attempted to address the earl; but with a bitter look his lordship exclaimed--"Base fellow! darest thou, who art the scorn and contempt of men, offer thyself in my presence? Were it not in my own house, I would cudgel thee with my staff for presuming on this sauciness." This annihilating affront Stucley hastened to convey to the king; his majesty answered him--"What wouldst thou have me do? Wouldst thou have me hang him? Of my soul, if I should hang all that speak ill of thee, all the trees of the country would not suffice, so great is the number!"

One of the frequent crimes of that age, ere the forgery of bank-notes existed, was the clipping of gold; and this was one of the private amusements suitable to the character of our Sir Judas. Treachery and forgery are the same crime in a different form. Stucley received out of the exchequer five hundred pounds, as the reward of his espionnage and perfidy. It was the price of blood, and was hardly in his hands ere it was turned into the fraudulent coin of "the cheater!" He was seized on in the palace of Whitehall, for diminishing the gold coin. "The manner of the discovery," says the manuscript-writer, "was strange, if my occasions would suffer me to relate the particulars." On his examination he attempted to shift the crime to his own son, who had fled; and on his man, who, being taken, in the words of the letter-writer, was "willing to set the saddle upon the right horse, and accused his master." Manoury, too, the French empiric, was arrested at Plymouth for the same crime, and accused his worthy friend. But such was the interest of Stucley with government, bought, probably, with his last shilling, and, as one says, with his last shirt, that he obtained his own and his son's pardon, for a crime that ought to have finally concluded the history of this blessed family.[75] A more solemn and tragical catastrophe was reserved for the perfidious Stucley. He was deprived of his place of vice-admiral, and left destitute in the world. Abandoned by all human beings, and most probably by the son whom he had tutored in the arts of villany, he appears to have wandered about, an infamous and distracted beggar. It is possible that even so seared a conscience may have retained some remaining touch of sensibility.

All are men, Condemned alike to groan; The tender for another's pain, THE UNFEELING FOR HIS OWN.

And Camden has recorded, among his historical notes on James the First, that in August, 1620, "Lewis Stucley, who betrayed Sir Walter Rawleigh, died in a manner mad." Such is the catastrophe of one of the most perfect domestic tales; an historical example, not easily paralleled, of moral retribution.

The secret practices of the "Sir Judas" of the court of James the First, which I have discovered, throw light on an old tradition which still exists in the neighbourhood of Affeton, once the residence of this wretched man. The country people have long entertained a notion that a hidden treasure lies at the bottom of a well in his grounds, guarded by some supernatural power: a tradition no doubt originating in this man's history, and an obscure allusion to the gold which Stucley received for his bribe, or the other gold which he clipped, and might have there concealed. This is a striking instance of the many historical facts which, though entirely unknown or forgotten, may be often discovered to lie hid, or disguised, in popular traditions.

FOOTNOTES:

[66] Rawleigh, as was much practised to a much later period, wrote his name various ways. I have discovered at least how it was pronounced in his time--thus, Rawly. This may be additionally confirmed by the Scottish poet Drummond, who spells it (in his conversations with Ben Jonson) Raughley. The translation of Ortelius' "Epitome of the Worlde," 1603, is dedicated to Sir Walter Rawleigh. See vol. ii. p. 261, art. "Orthography of Proper Names." It was also written Rawly by his contemporaries. He sometimes wrote it Ralegh, the last syllable probably pronounced ly, or lay. Ralegh appears on his official seal.

[67] I shall give in the article "Literary Unions" a curious account how "Rawleigh's History of the World" was composed, which has hitherto escaped discovery.

[68] It is narrated in a letter to Sir Robert Cecil from Mr. (afterwards Sir) Arthur Gorges, and runs as follows:--"Upon a report of her majesty's being at Sir George Carew's, Sir W. Ralegh having gazed and sighed a long time at his study window, from whence he might discern the barges and boats about the Blackfriars stairs, suddenly brake out into a great distemper, and sware that his enemies had on purpose brought her majesty thither to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus's torments, that when she went away he might see death before his eyes; with many such like conceits. And, as a man transported with passion, he sware to Sir George Carew that he would disguise himself, and get into a pair of oars to ease his mind but with a sight of the queen, or else he protested his heart would break." This of course the gaoler refused, and so they fell to fighting, "scrambling and brawling like madmen," until parted by Gorges. Sir Walter followed up his absurdity by another letter to Cecil, couched in the language of romance, in which he declares that, while the queen "was yet near at hand, that I might hear of her once in two or three days my sorrows were the less, but now my heart is cast into the depth of all misery."

[69] These letters were written by Lord Cecil to Sir Thomas Parry, our ambassador in France, and were transcribed from the copy-book of Sir Thomas Parry's correspondence which is preserved in the Pepysian library at Cambridge.

[70] He had undertaken the expedition immediately upon his release from the Tower in 1617. The king had never pardoned him, and his release was effected by bribing powerful court favourites, who worked upon the avarice of James I. by leading him to hope for the possession of Guiana, which, though discovered by the Spaniards, had never been conquered by them; and which Rawleigh promised to colonise.

[71] This occurred during the attack on the town of St. Thomas; a settlement of the Spaniards near the gold mines. It ended disastrously to Rawleigh: his ships mutinied; and he never recovered his ill-fortune; but sailed to Newfoundland, and thence, after a second mutiny, returned to Plymouth.

[72] A friend informs me, that he saw recently at a print-dealer's a painted portrait of Sir Walter Rawleigh, with the face thus spotted. It is extraordinary that any artist should have chosen such a subject for his pencil; but should this be a portrait of the times, it shows that this strange stratagem had excited public attention.

[73] A small coasting-vessel, made round at stem and stern like the Dutch boats. The word is still used in some English counties to denote a tub.

[74] Stucley's Humble Petition, touching the bringing up Sir W. Rawleigh, 4to. 1618; republished in Somers' Tracts, vol. iii. 751.

[75] The anecdotes respecting Stucley I have derived from manuscript letters, and they were considered to be of so dangerous a nature, that the writer recommends secrecy, and requests, after reading, that "they may be burnt." With such injunctions I have generally found that the letters were the more carefully preserved.

AN AUTHENTIC NARRATIVE OF THE LAST HOURS OF SIR WALTER RAWLEIGH.

The close of the life of Sir Walter Rawleigh was as extraordinary as many parts of his varied history; the promptitude and sprightliness of his genius, his carelessness of life, and the equanimity of this great spirit in quitting the world, can only be paralleled by a few other heroes and sages. Rawleigh was both! But it is not simply his dignified yet active conduct on the scaffold, nor his admirable speech on that occasion, circumstances by which many great men are judged, when their energies are excited for a moment to act so great a part, before the eyes of the world assembled at their feet; it is not these only which claim our notice.

We may pause with admiration on the real grandeur of Rawleigh's character, not from a single circumstance, however great, but from a tissue of continued little incidents, which occurred from the moment of his condemnation till he laid his head on the block. Rawleigh was a man of such mark, that he deeply engaged the attention of his contemporaries; and to this we owe the preservation of several interesting particulars of what he did and what he said, which have entered into his life; but all has not been told in the published narratives. Contemporary writers in their letters have set down every fresh incident, and eagerly caught up his sense, his wit, and, what is more delightful, those marks of the natural cheerfulness of his invariable presence of mind: nor could these have arisen from any affectation or parade, for we shall see that they served him even in his last tender farewell to his lady, and on many unpremeditated occasions.

I have drawn together into a short compass all the facts which my researches have furnished, not omitting those which are known, concerning the feelings and conduct of Rawleigh at these solemn moments of his life; to have preserved only the new would have been to mutilate the statue, and to injure the whole by an imperfect view.

Rawleigh one morning was taken out of his bed, in a fit of fever, and unexpectedly hurried, not to his trial, but to a sentence of death. The story is well known.--Yet pleading with "a voice grown weak by sickness and an ague he had at that instant on him," he used every means to avert his fate: he did, therefore, value the life he could so easily part with. His judges, there, at least, respected their state criminal, and they addressed him in a tone far different from that which he had fifteen years before listened to from Coke. Yelverton, the attorney-general, said--"Sir Walter Rawleigh hath been as a star at which the world have gazed; but stars may fall, nay, they must fall, when they trouble the sphere where they abide." And the lord chief-justice noticed Rawleigh's great work:--"I know that you have been valiant and wise, and I doubt not but you retain both these virtues, for now you shall have occasion to use them. Your book is an admirable work; I would give you counsel, but I know you can apply unto yourself far better than I am able to give you." But the judge ended with saying, "execution is granted." It was stifling Rawleigh with roses! the heroic sage felt as if listening to fame from the voice of death.

He declared that now being old, sickly, and in disgrace, and "certain were he allowed to live, to go to it again, life was wearisome to him, and all he entreated was to have leave to speak freely at his farewell, to satisfy the world that he was ever loyal to the king, and a true lover of the commonwealth; for this he would seal with his blood."

Rawleigh, on his return to his prison, while some were deploring his fate, observed that "the world itself is but a larger prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution."

That last night of his existence was occupied by writing what the letter-writer calls "a remembrancer to be left with his lady, to acquaint the world with his sentiments, should he be denied their delivery from the scaffold, as he had been at the bar of the King's Bench." His lady visited him that night, and amidst her tears acquainted him that she had obtained the favour of disposing of his body; to which he answered smiling, "It is well, Bess, that thou mayst dispose of that, dead, thou hadst not always the disposing of when it was alive." At midnight he entreated her to leave him. It must have been then, that, with unshaken fortitude, Rawleigh sat down to compose those verses on his death, which being short, the most appropriate may be repeated.

Even such is Time, that takes on trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days!

He has added two other lines expressive of his trust in his resurrection. Their authenticity is confirmed by the writer of the present letter, as well as another writer, enclosing "half a dozen verses, which Sir Walter made the night before his death, to take his farewell of poetry, wherein he had been a scribbler even from his youth." The enclosure is not now with the letter. Chamberlain, the writer, was an intelligent man of the world, but not imbued with any deep tincture of literature. On the same night Rawleigh wrote this distich on the candle burning dimly:--

Cowards fear to die; but courage stout, Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.

At this solemn moment, before he lay down to rest, and at the instant of parting from his lady, with all his domestic affections still warm, to express his feelings in verse was with him a natural effusion, and one to which he had long been used. It is peculiar in the fate of Rawleigh, that having before suffered a long imprisonment with an expectation of a public death, his mind had been accustomed to its contemplation, and had often dwelt on the event which was now passing. The soul, in its sudden departure, and its future state, is often the subject of his few poems; that most original one of "The Farewell,"

Go, soul! the body's guest, Upon a thankless errand, &c.

is attributed to Rawleigh, though on uncertain evidence. But another, entitled "The Pilgrimage," has this beautiful passage:--

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of truth to walk upon, My scrip of joy immortal diet; My bottle of salvation; My gown of glory, Hope's true gage, And thus I'll take my pilgrimage--

Whilst my soul, like a quiet palmer, Travelleth towards the land of Heaven--

Rawleigh's cheerfulness was so remarkable, and his fearlessness of death so marked, that the Dean of Westminster, who attended him, at first wondering at the hero, reprehended the lightness of his manner, but Rawleigh gave God thanks that he had never feared death, for it was but an opinion and an imagination; and as for the manner of death, he would rather die so than of a burning fever; and that some might have made shows outwardly, but he felt the joy within. The dean says, that he made no more of his death than if he had been to take a journey: "Not," said he, "but that I am a great sinner, for I have been a soldier, a seaman, and a courtier." The writer of a manuscript letter tells us, that the dean declared he died not only religiously, but he found him to be a man as ready and as able to give as to take instruction.

On the morning of his death he smoked, as usual, his favourite tobacco, and when they brought him a cup of excellent sack, being asked how he liked it, Rawleigh answered--"As the fellow, that, drinking of St. Giles's bowl, as he went to Tyburn, said, 'that was good drink if a man might tarry by it.'"[76] The day before, in passing from Westminster Hall to the Gate-house, his eye had caught Sir Hugh Beeston in the throng, and calling on him, Rawleigh requested that he would see him die to-morrow. Sir Hugh, to secure himself a seat on the scaffold, had provided himself with a letter to the sheriff, which was not read at the time, and Sir Walter found his friend thrust by, lamenting that he could not get there. "Farewell!" exclaimed Rawleigh, "I know not what shift you will make, but I am sure to have a place." In going from the prison to the scaffold, among others who were pressing hard to see him, one old man, whose head was bald, came very forward, insomuch that Rawleigh noticed him, and asked "whether he would have aught of him?" The old man answered--"Nothing but to see him, and to pray God for him." Rawleigh replied--"I thank thee, good friend, and I am sorry I have no better thing to return thee for thy good will." Observing his bald head, he continued, "but take this night-cap (which was a very rich wrought one that he wore), for thou hast more need of it now than I."

His dress, as was usual with him, was elegant, if not rich.[77] Oldys describes it, but mentions, that "he had a wrought nightcap under his hat;" this we have otherwise disposed of; he wore a ruff-band, a black wrought velvet night-gown over a hare-coloured satin doublet, and a black wrought waistcoat; black cut taffety breeches, and ash-coloured silk stockings.

He ascended the scaffold with the same cheerfulness as he had passed to it; and observing the lords seated at a distance, some at windows, he requested they would approach him, as he wished that they should all witness what he had to say. The request was complied with by several. His speech is well known; but some copies contain matters not in others. When he finished, he requested Lord Arundel that the king would not suffer any libels to defame him after death.--"And now I have a long journey to go, and must take my leave." "He embraced all the lords and other friends with such courtly compliments, as if he had met them at some feast," says a letter-writer. Having taken off his gown, he called to the headsman to show him the axe, which not being instantly done, he repeated, "I prithee let me see it, dost thou think that I am afraid of it?" He passed the edge lightly over his finger, and smiling, observed to the sheriff, "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases," and kissing it laid it down. Another writer has, "This is that that will cure all sorrows." After this he went to three several corners of the scaffold, and kneeling down, desired all the people to pray for him, and recited a long prayer to himself. When he began to fit himself for the block, he first laid himself down to try how the block fitted him; after rising up, the executioner kneeled down to ask his forgiveness, which Rawleigh with an embrace gave, but entreated him not to strike till he gave a token by lifting up his hand, "and then, fear not, but strike home!" When he laid his head down to receive the stroke, the executioner desired him to lay his face towards the east. "It was no great matter which way a man's head stood, so that the heart lay right," said Rawleigh; but these were not his last words. He was once more to speak in this world with the same intrepidity he had lived in it--for, having lain some minutes on the block in prayer, he gave the signal; but the executioner, either unmindful, or in fear, failed to strike, and Rawleigh, after once or twice putting forth his hands, was compelled to ask him, "Why dost thou not strike? Strike! man!" In two blows he was beheaded; but from the first his body never shrunk from the spot by any discomposure of his posture, which, like his mind, was immovable.

"In all the time he was upon the scaffold, and before," says one of the manuscript letter-writers, "there appeared not the least alteration in him, either in his voice or countenance; but he seemed as free from all manner of apprehension as if he had been come thither rather to be a spectator than a sufferer; nay, the beholders seemed much more sensible than did he, so that he hath purchased here in the opinion of men such honour and reputation, as it is thought his greatest enemies are they that are most sorrowful for his death, which they see is like to turn so much to his advantage."

The people were deeply affected at the sight, and so much, that one said that "we had not such another head to cut off;" and another "wished the head and brains to be upon Secretary Naunton's shoulders." The observer suffered for this; he was a wealthy citizen, and great newsmonger, and one who haunted Paul's Walk. Complaint was made, and the citizen was summoned to the Privy Council. He pleaded that he intended no disrespect to Mr. Secretary, but only spoke in reference to the old proverb, that "two heads were better than one!" His excuse was allowed at the moment; but when afterwards called on for a contribution to St. Paul's Cathedral, and having subscribed a hundred pounds, the Secretary observed to him, that "two are better than one, Mr. Wiemark!" Either from fear or charity, the witty citizen doubled his subscription.[78]

Thus died this glorious and gallant cavalier, of whom Osborne says, "His death was managed by him with so high and religious a resolution, as if a Roman had acted a Christian, or rather a Christian a Roman."[79]

After having read the preceding article, we are astonished at the greatness, and the variable nature of this extraordinary man and this happy genius. With Gibbon, who once meditated to write his life, we may pause, and pronounce "his character ambiguous;" but we shall not hesitate to decide that Rawleigh knew better how to die than to live. "His glorious hours," says a contemporary, "were his arraignment and execution;" but never will be forgotten the intermediate years of his lettered imprisonment; the imprisonment of the learned may sometimes be their happiest leisure.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] In the old time, when prisoners were conveyed from Newgate to Tyburn, they stopped about midway at the "Old Hospital," at St. Giles's-in-the-fields, "and," says Stow, "were presented with a great bowl of ale, thereof to drink at their pleasure, as to be their last refreshment in this life."

[77] Rawleigh's love of dress is conspicuous in the early portraits of him we possess, and particularly so in the one engraved by Lodge.

[78] The general impression was so much in disfavour of this judicial murder, that James thought it politic to publish an 8vo pamphlet, in 1618, entitled, "A Declaration of the Demeanor and Cariage of Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight, as well in his Voyage, as in and sithence his Returne: and of the true motives and inducements which occasioned his Maiestie to proceed in doing justice upon him, as hath beene done." It takes the whole question apologetically of the licence given him to Guiana, "as his Majestie's honour was in a manner engaged, not to deny unto his people the adventure and hope of such great riches" as the mines of that island might yield. It afterwards details his proceedings there, which are declared criminal, dangerous to his Majesty's allies, and an abuse of his commission. It ends by defending his execution, "because he could not by law be judicially called in question, for that his former attainder of treason is the highest and last worke of the law (whereby hee was civiliter mortuus) his Maiestie was enforced (except attainders should become priviledges for all subsequent offences) to resolve to have him executed upon his former attainder."

[79] The chief particulars in this narrative are drawn from two manuscript letters of the day, in the Sloane Collection, under their respective dates, Nov. 3, 1618, Larkin to Sir Thos. Pickering; Oct. 13, 1618, Chamberlain's letters.

LITERARY UNIONS.

SECRET HISTORY OF RAWLEIGH'S HISTORY OF THE WORLD, AND VASARI'S LIVES.

A union of talents, differing in their qualities, might carry some important works to a more extended perfection. In a work of great enterprise, the aid of a friendly hand may be absolutely necessary to complete the labours of the projector, who may have neither the courage, the leisure, nor all necessary acquisitions for performing the favourite task which he has otherwise matured. Many great works, commenced by a master-genius, have remained unfinished, or have been deficient for want of this friendly succour. The public would have been grateful to Johnson, had he united in his dictionary the labours of some learned etymologist. Speed's Chronicle owes most of its value, as it does its ornaments, to the hand of Sir Robert Cotton, and other curious researchers, who contributed entire portions. Goguet's esteemed work of the "Origin of the Arts and Sciences" was greatly indebted to the fraternal zeal of a devoted friend. The still valued books of the Port Royal Society were all formed by this happy union. The secret history of many eminent works would show the advantages which may be derived from that combination of talents, differing in their nature. Cumberland's masterly versions of the fragments of the Greek dramatic poets would never have been given to the poetical world, had he not accidentally possessed the manuscript notes of his relative, the learned Bentley. This treasure supplied that research in the most obscure works, which the volatile studies of Cumberland could never have explored; a circumstance which he concealed from the world, proud of the Greek erudition which he thus cheaply possessed. Yet by this literary union, Bentley's vast erudition made those researches which Cumberland could not; and Cumberland gave the nation a copy of the domestic drama of Greece, of which Bentley was incapable.

There is a large work, which is still celebrated, of which the composition has excited the astonishment even of the philosophic Hume, but whose secret history remains yet to be disclosed. This extraordinary volume is "The History of the World by Rawleigh." I shall transcribe Hume's observations, that the reader may observe the literary phenomenon. "They were struck with the extensive genius of the man, who being educated amidst naval and military enterprises, had surpassed in the pursuits of literature, even those of the most recluse and sedentary lives; and they admired his unbroken magnanimity, which at his age, and under his circumstances, could engage him to undertake and execute so great a work, as his History of the World." Now when the truth is known, the wonderful in this literary mystery will disappear, except in the eloquent, the grand, and the pathetic passages interspersed in that venerable volume. We may, indeed, pardon the astonishment of our calm philosopher, when we consider the recondite matter contained in this work, and recollect the little time which this adventurous spirit, whose life was passed in fabricating his own fortune, and in perpetual enterprise, could allow to such erudite pursuits. Where could Rawleigh obtain that familiar acquaintance with the rabbins, of whose language he was probably entirely ignorant? His numerous publications, the effusions of a most active mind, though excellent in their kind, were evidently composed by one who was not abstracted in curious and remote inquiries, but full of the daily business and the wisdom of human life. His confinement in the Tower, which lasted several years, was indeed sufficient for the composition of this folio volume, and of a second which appears to have occupied him. But in that imprisonment it singularly happened that he lived among literary characters with most intimate friendship. There he joined the Earl of Northumberland, the patron of the philosophers of his age, and with whom Rawleigh pursued his chemical studies; and Serjeant Hoskins, a poet and a wit, and the poetical "father" of Ben Jonson, who acknowledged that "It was Hoskins who had polished him;" and that Rawleigh often consulted Hoskins on his literary works, I learn from a manuscript. But however literary the atmosphere of the Tower proved to Rawleigh, no particle of Hebrew, and perhaps little of Grecian lore, floated from a chemist and a poet. The truth is, that the collection of the materials of this history was the labour of several persons, who have not all been discovered. It has been ascertained that Ben Jonson was a considerable contributor; and there was an English philosopher from whom Descartes, it is said even by his own countrymen, borrowed largely--Thomas Hariot, whom Anthony Wood charges with infusing into Rawleigh's volume philosophical notions, while Rawleigh was composing his History of the World. But if Rawleigh's pursuits surpassed even those of the most recluse and sedentary lives, as Hume observes, we must attribute this to a "Dr. Robert Burrel, Rector of Northwald, in the county of Norfolk, who was a great favourite of Sir Walter Rawleigh, and had been his chaplain. All, or the greatest part of the drudgery of Sir Walter's History for criticisms, chronology, and reading Greek and Hebrew authors, was performed by him for Sir Walter."[80] Thus a simple fact, when discovered, clears up the whole mystery; and we learn how that knowledge was acquired, which, as Hume sagaciously detected, required "a recluse and sedentary life," such as the studies and the habits of a country clergyman would have been in a learned age.

The secret history of another work, still more celebrated than the History of the World, by Sir Walter Rawleigh, will doubtless surprise its numerous admirers.

Without the aid of a friendly hand, we should probably have been deprived of the delightful History of Artists by Vasari: although a mere painter and goldsmith, and not a literary man, Vasari was blessed with the nice discernment of one deeply conversant with art, and saw rightly what was to be done, when the idea of the work was suggested by the celebrated Paulus Jovius as a supplement to his own work of the "Eulogiums of Illustrious Men." Vasari approved of the project; but on that occasion judiciously observed, not blinded by the celebrity of the literary man who projected it, that "It would require the assistance of an artist to collect the materials, and arrange them in their proper order; for although Jovius displayed great knowledge in his observations, yet he had not been equally accurate in the arrangement of his facts in his book of Eulogiums." Afterwards, when Vasari began to collect his information, and consulted Paulus Jovius on the plan, although that author highly approved of what he saw, he alleged his own want of leisure and ability to complete such an enterprise; and this was fortunate: we should otherwise have had, instead of the rambling spirit which charms us in the volumes of Vasari, the verbose babble of a declaimer. Vasari, however, looked round for the assistance he wanted; a circumstance which Tiraboschi has not noticed: like Hogarth, he required a literary man for his scribe. I have discovered the name of the chief writer of the Lives of the Painters, who wrote under the direction of Vasari, and probably often used his own natural style, and conveyed to us those reflections which surely come from their source. I shall give the passage, as a curious instance where the secret history of books is often detected in the most obscure corners of research. Who could have imagined that in a collection of the lives de' Santi e Beati dell' Ordine de' Predicatori, we are to look for the writer of Vasari's lives? Don Serafini Razzi, the author of this ecclesiastical biography, has this reference: "Who would see more of this may turn to the Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, written for the greater part by Don Silvano Razzi, my brother, for the Signor Cavaliere M. Giorgio Vasari, his great friend."[81]

The discovery that Vasari's volumes were not entirely written by himself, though probably under his dictation, and unquestionably, with his communications, as we know that Dr. Morell wrote the "Analysis of Beauty" for Hogarth, will perhaps serve to clear up some unaccountable mistakes or omissions which appear in that series of volumes, written at long intervals, and by different hands. Mr. Fuseli has alluded to them in utter astonishment; and cannot account for Vasari's "incredible dereliction of reminiscence, which prompted him to transfer what he had rightly ascribed to Giorgione in one edition to the elder Parma in the subsequent ones." Again: "Vasari's memory was either so treacherous, or his rapidity in writing so inconsiderate, that his account of the Capella Sistina, and the stanze of Raffaello, is a mere heap of errors and unpardonable confusion." Even Bottari, his learned editor, is at a loss how to account for his mistakes. Mr. Fuseli finely observes--"He has been called the Herodotus of our art; and if the main simplicity of his narrative, and the desire of heaping anecdote on anecdote, entitle him in some degree to that appellation, we ought not to forget that the information of every day adds something to the authenticity of the Greek historian, whilst every day furnishes matter to question the credibility of the Tuscan." All this strongly confirms the suspicion that Vasari employed different hands at different times to write out his work. Such mistakes would occur to a new writer, not always conversant with the subject he was composing on, and the disjointed materials of which were often found in a disordered state. It is, however, strange that neither Bottari nor Tiraboschi appears to have been aware that Vasari employed others to write for him; we see that from the first suggestion of the work he had originally proposed that Paulus Jovius should hold the pen for him.

The principle illustrated in this article might be pursued; but the secret history of two great works so well known is as sufficient as twenty others of writings less celebrated. The literary phenomenon which had puzzled the calm inquiring Hume to cry out "a miracle!" has been solved by the discovery of a little fact on Literary Unions, which derives importance from this circumstance.[82]

FOOTNOTES:

[80] I draw my information from a very singular manuscript in the Lansdowne collection, which I think has been mistaken for a boy's ciphering book, of which it has much the appearance, No. 741, fo. 57, as it stands in the auctioneer's catalogue. It appears to be a collection closely written, extracted out of Anthony Wood's papers; and as I have discovered in the manuscript numerous notices not elsewhere preserved, I am inclined to think that the transcriber copied them from that mass of Anthony Wood's papers, of which more than one sackful was burnt at his desire before him when dying. If it be so, this MS. is the only register of many curious facts.

Ben Jonson has been too freely censured for his own free censures, and particularly for one he made on Sir Walter Rawleigh, who, he told Drummond, "esteemed more fame than conscience. The best wits in England were employed in making his History; Ben himself had written a piece to him of the Punic War, which he altered and set in his book." Jonson's powerful advocate, Mr. Gifford, has not alleged a word in the defence of our great bard's free conversational strictures; the secret history of Rawleigh's great work had never been discovered; on this occasion, however, Jonson only spoke what he knew to be true--and there may have been other truths, in those conversations which were set down at random by Drummond, who may have chiefly recollected the satirical touches.

[81] I find this quotation in a sort of polemical work of natural philosophy, entitled "Saggio di Storia Litteraria Fiorentina del Secolo XVII. da Giovanne Clemente Nelli," Lucca, 1759, p. 58. Nelli also refers to what he had said on this subject in his Piante ad alzati di S.M. del Fiore, p. vi. e vii.; a work on architecture. See Brunet; and Haym, Bib. Ital. de Libri rari.

[82] MR. PATRICK FRASER TYTLER, in his recent biography of Sir Walter Rawleigh, a work of vigorous research and elegant composition, has dedicated to me a supernumerary article in his Appendix, entitled Mr. D'Israeli's Errors!

He has inferred from the present article, that I denied that Rawleigh was the writer of his own great work!--because I have shown how great works may be advantageously pursued by the aid of "Literary Union." It is a monstrous inference! The chimera which plays before his eyes is his own contrivance; he starts at his own phantasmagoria, and leaves me, after all, to fight with his shadow.

Mr. Tytler has not contradicted a single statement of mine. I have carefully read his article and my own, and I have made no alteration.

I may be allowed to add that there is much redundant matter in the article of Mr. Tytler; and, to use the legal style, there is much "impertinence," which, with a little candour and more philosophy, he would strike his pen through, as sound lawyers do on these occasions.

OF A BIOGRAPHY PAINTED.

There are objects connected with literary curiosity, whose very history, though they may never gratify our sight, is literary; and the originality of their invention, should they excite imitation, may serve to constitute a class. I notice a book-curiosity of this nature.

This extraordinary volume may be said to have contained the travels and adventures of Charles Magius, a noble Venetian; and this volume, so precious, consisted only of eighteen pages, composed of a series of highly-finished miniature paintings on vellum, some executed by the hand of Paul Veronese. Each page, however, may be said to contain many chapters; for, generally, it is composed of a large centre-piece, surrounded by ten small ones, with many apt inscriptions, allegories, and allusions; the whole exhibiting romantic incidents in the life of this Venetian nobleman. But it is not merely as a beautiful production of art that we are to consider it; it becomes associated with a more elevated feeling in the occasion which produced it. The author, who is himself the hero, after having been long calumniated, resolved to set before the eyes of his accusers the sufferings and adventures he could perhaps have but indifferently described: and instead of composing a tedious volume for his justification, invented this new species of pictorial biography. The author minutely described the remarkable situations in which fortune had placed him; and the artists, in embellishing the facts he furnished them with to record, emulated each other in giving life to their truth, and putting into action, before the spectator, incidents which the pen had less impressively exhibited. This unique production may be considered as a model to represent the actions of those who may succeed more fortunately by this new mode of perpetuating their history; discovering, by the aid of the pencil, rather than by their pen, the forms and colours of an extraordinary life.

It was when the Ottomans (about 1571) attacked the Isle of Cyprus, that this Venetian nobleman was charged by his republic to review and repair the fortifications. He was afterwards sent to the pope to negociate an alliance: he returned to the senate to give an account of his commission. Invested with the chief command, at the head of his troops, Magius threw himself into the island of Cyprus, and after a skilful defence, which could not prevent its fall, at Famagusta he was taken prisoner by the Turks, and made a slave. His age and infirmities induced his master, at length, to sell him to some Christian merchants; and after an absence of several years from his beloved Venice, he suddenly appeared, to the astonishment and mortification of a party who had never ceased to calumniate him; while his own noble family were compelled to preserve an indignant silence, having had no communications with their lost and enslaved relative. Magius now returned to vindicate his honour, to reinstate himself in the favour of the senate, and to be restored to a venerable parent amidst his family; to whom he introduced a fresh branch, in a youth of seven years old, the child of his misfortunes, who, born in trouble, and a stranger to domestic endearments, was at one moment united to a beloved circle of relations.

I shall give a rapid view of some of the pictures of this Venetian nobleman's life. The whole series has been elaborately drawn up by the Duke de la Vallière, the celebrated book-collector, who dwells on the detail with the curiosity of an amateur.[83]

In a rich frontispiece, a Christ is expiring on the cross; Religion, leaning on a column, contemplates the Divinity, and Hope is not distant from her. The genealogical tree of the house of Magius, with an allegorical representation of Venice, its nobility, power, and riches: the arms of Magius, in which is inserted a view of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, of which he was made a knight; his portrait, with a Latin inscription: "I have passed through arms and the enemy, amidst fire and water, and the Lord conducted me to a safe asylum, in the year of grace 1571." The portrait of his son, aged seven years, finished with the greatest beauty, and supposed to have come from the hand of Paul Veronese; it bears this inscription: "Overcome by violence and artifice, almost dead before his birth, his mother was at length delivered of him, full of life, with all the loveliness of infancy; under the divine protection, his birth was happy, and his life with greater happiness shall be closed with good fortune."

A plan of the Isle of Cyprus, where Magius commanded, and his first misfortune happened, his slavery by the Turks.--The painter has expressed this by an emblem of a tree shaken by the winds and scathed by the lightning; but from the trunk issues a beautiful green branch shining in a brilliant sun, with this device--"From this fallen trunk springs a branch full of vigour."

The missions of Magius to raise troops in the province of La Puglia.--In one of these Magius is seen returning to Venice; his final departure,--a thunderbolt is viewed falling on his vessel--his passage by Corfu and Zante, and his arrival at Candia.

His travels to Egypt.--The centre figure represents this province raising its right hand extended towards a palm-tree, and the left leaning on a pyramid, inscribed "Celebrated throughout the world for her wonders." The smaller pictures are the entrance of Magius into the port of Alexandria; Rosetta, with a caravan of Turks and different nations; the city of Grand Cairo, exterior and interior, with views of other places; and finally, his return to Venice.

His journey to Rome.--The centre figure an armed Pallas seated on trophies, the Tyber beneath her feet, a globe in her hands, inscribed Quod rerum victrix ac domina,--"Because she is the Conqueress and Mistress of the World." The ten small pictures are views of the cities in the pope's dominion. His first audience at the conclave forms a pleasing and fine composition.

His travels into Syria.--The principal figure is a female, emblematical of that fine country; she is seated in the midst of a gay orchard, and embraces a bundle of roses, inscribed Mundi deliciæ--"The delight of the universe." The small compartments are views of towns and ports, and the spot where Magius collected his fleet.

His pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was made a knight of the Holy Sepulchre.--The principal figure represents Devotion, inscribed Ducit--"It is she who conducts me." The compartments exhibit a variety of objects, with a correctness of drawing which is described as belonging to the class, and partaking of the charms of the pencil of Claude Lorraine. His vessel is first viewed in the roadstead at Venice beat by a storm; arrives at Zante to refresh; enters the port of Simiso; there having landed, he and his companions are proceeding to the town on asses, for Christians were not permitted to travel in Turkey on horses. In the church at Jerusalem the bishop, in his pontifical habit, receives him as a knight of the Holy Sepulchre, arraying him in the armour of Godfrey of Bouillon, and placing his sword in the hands of Magius. His arrival at Bethlehem, to see the cradle of the Lord--and his return by Jaffa with his companions, in the dress of pilgrims; the groups are finely contrasted with the Turks mingling amongst them.

The taking of the city of Famagusta, and his slavery.--The middle figure, with a dog at its feet, represents Fidelity, the character of Magius, who ever preferred it to his life or his freedom, inscribed Captivat--"She has reduced me to slavery." Six smaller pictures exhibit the different points of the island of Cyprus where the Turks effected their descents. Magius retreating to Famagusta, which he long defended, and where his cousin, a skilful engineer, was killed. The Turks compelled to raise the siege, but return with greater forces--the sacking of the town and the palace, where Magius was taken.--One picture exhibits him brought before a bashaw, who has him stripped, to judge of his strength and fix his price, when, after examination, he is sent among other slaves. He is seen bound and tied up among his companions in misfortune--again he is forced to labour, and carries a cask of water on his shoulders.--In another picture, his master, finding him weak of body, conducts him to a slave-merchant to sell him. In another we see him leading an ass loaded with packages; his new master, finding him loitering on his way, showers his blows on him, while a soldier is seen purloining one of the packages from the ass. Another exhibits Magius sinking with fatigue on the sands, while his master would raise him up by an unsparing use of the bastinado. The varied details of these little paintings are pleasingly executed.

The close of his slavery.--The middle figure kneeling to Heaven, and a light breaking from it, inscribed, "He breaks my chains," to express the confidence of Magius. The Turks are seen landing with their pillage and their slaves.--In one of the pictures are seen two ships on fire; a young lady of Cyprus preferring death to the loss of her honour and the miseries of slavery, determined to set fire to the vessel in which she was carried; she succeeded, and the flames communicated to another.

His return to Venice.--The painter for his principal figure has chosen a Pallas, with a helmet on her head, the ægis on one arm, and her lance in the other, to describe the courage with which Magius had supported his misfortunes, inscribed Reducit--"She brings me back." In the last of the compartments he is seen at the custom-house at Venice; he enters the house of his father; the old man hastens to meet him, and embraces him.

One page is filled by a single picture, which represents the senate of Venice, with the Doge on his throne; Magius presents an account of his different employments, and holds in his hand a scroll, on which is written, Quod commisisti perfeci; quod restat agendum, pare fide complectar--"I have done what you committed to my care; and I will perform with the same fidelity what remains to be done." He is received by the senate with the most distinguished honours, and is not only justified, but praised and honoured.

The most magnificent of these paintings is the one attributed to Paul Veronese. It is described by the Duke de la Vallière as almost unparalleled for its richness, its elegance, and its brilliancy. It is inscribed Pater meus et fratres mei dereliquerunt me; Dominus autem assumpsit me!--"My father and my brothers abandoned me; but the Lord took me under his protection." This is an allusion to the accusation raised against him in the open senate when the Turks took the Isle of Cyprus, and his family wanted either the confidence or the courage to defend Magius. In the front of this large picture, Magius leading his son by the hand, conducts him to be reconciled with his brothers and sisters-in-law, who are on the opposite side; his hand holds this scroll, Vos cogitastis de me malum; sed Deus convertit illud in bonum--"You thought ill of me; but the Lord has turned it to good." In this he alludes to the satisfaction he had given the senate, and to the honours they had decreed him. Another scene is introduced, where Magius appears in a magnificent hall at a table in the midst of all his family, with whom a general reconciliation has taken place: on his left hand are gardens opening with an enchanting effect, and magnificently ornamented, with the villa of his father, on which flowers and wreaths seem dropping on the roof, as if from heaven. In the perspective, the landscape probably represents the rural neighbourhood of Magius's early days.

Such are the most interesting incidents which I have selected from the copious description of the Duke de la Vallière. The idea of this production is new: an autobiography in a series of remarkable scenes, painted under the eye of the describer of them, in which, too, he has preserved all the fulness of his feelings and his minutest recollections; but the novelty becomes interesting from the character of the noble Magius, and the romantic fancy which inspired this elaborate and costly curiosity. It was not, indeed, without some trouble that I have drawn up this little account; but while thus employed, I seemed to be composing a very uncommon romance.

FOOTNOTE:

[83] The Duke's description is not to be found, as might be expected, in his own valued catalogue, but was a contribution to Gaignat's, ii. 16, where it occupies fourteen pages. This singular work sold at Gaignat's sale for 902 livres. It was then the golden age of literary curiosity, when the rarest things were not ruinous; and that price was even then considered extraordinary, though the work was an unique. It must consist of about 180 subjects, by Italian artists.

CAUSE AND PRETEXT.

It is an important principle in morals and in politics, not to mistake the cause for the pretext, nor the pretext for the cause, and by this means to distinguish between the concealed and the ostensible motive. On this principle, history might be recomposed in a new manner; it would not often describe circumstances and characters as they usually appear. When we mistake the characters of men, we mistake the nature of their actions; and we shall find in the study of secret history, that some of the most important events in modern history were produced from very different motives than their ostensible ones. Polybius, the most philosophical writer of the ancients, has marked out this useful distinction of cause and pretext, and aptly illustrates the observation by the facts which he explains. Amilcar, for instance, was the first author and contriver of the second Punic war, though he died ten years before the commencement of it. "A statesman," says the wise and grave historian, "who knows not how to trace the origin of events, and discern the different sources from whence they take their rise, may be compared to a physician who neglects to inform himself of the causes of those distempers which he is called in to cure. Our pains can never be better employed than in searching out the causes of events; for the most trifling incidents give birth to matters of the greatest moment and importance." The latter part of this remark of Polybius points out another principle which has been often verified by history, and which furnished the materials of the little book of "Grands Evénemens par les petites Causes."

Our present inquiry concerns "cause and pretext."

Leo X. projected an alliance of the sovereigns of Christendom against the Turks. The avowed object was to oppose the progress of the Ottomans against the Mamelukes of Egypt, who were more friendly to the Christians; but the concealed motive with his holiness was to enrich himself and his family with the spoils of Christendom, and to aggrandise the papal throne by war; and such, indeed, the policy of these pontiffs had always been in those mad crusades which they excited against the East.

The Reformation, excellent as its results have proved in the cause of genuine freedom, originated in no purer source than human passions and selfish motives: it was the progeny of avarice in Germany, of novelty in France, and of love in England. The latter is elegantly alluded to by Gray--

And gospel-light first beam'd from Bullen's eyes.

The Reformation is considered by the Duke of Nevers, in a work printed in 1590, as it had been by Francis I., in his Apology in 1537, as a coup-d'état of Charles V. towards universal monarchy. The duke says, that the emperor silently permitted Luther to establish his principles in Germany, that they might split the confederacy of the elective princes, and by this division facilitate their more easy conquest, and play them off one against another, and by these means to secure the imperial crown hereditary in the house of Austria. Had Charles V. not been the mere creature of his politics, and had he felt any zeal for the Catholic cause, which he pretended to fight for, never would he have allowed the new doctrines to spread for more than twenty years without the least opposition.

The famous League in France was raised for "religion and the relief of public grievances;" such was the pretext! After the princes and the people had alike become its victims, this "league" was discovered to have been formed by the pride and the ambition of the Guises, aided by the machinations of the Jesuits against the attempts of the Prince of Condé to dislodge them from their "seat of power." While the Huguenots pillaged, burnt, and massacred, declaring in their manifestoes that they were only fighting to release the king, whom they asserted was a prisoner of the Guises, the Catholics repaid them with the same persecution and the same manifestoes, declaring that they only wished to liberate the Prince of Condé, who was the prisoner of the Huguenots. The people were led on by the cry of "religion;" but this civil war was not in reality so much Catholic against Huguenot, as Guise against Condé. A parallel event occurred between our Charles I. and the Scotch Covenanters; and the king expressly declared, in "a large declaration, concerning the late tumults in Scotland," that "religion is only pretended, and used by them as a cloak to palliate their intended rebellion," which he demonstrated by the facts he alleged. There was a revolutionary party in France, which, taking the name of Frondeurs, shook that kingdom under the administration of Cardinal Mazarin, and held out for their pretext the public freedom. But that faction, composed of some of the discontented French princes and the mob, was entirely organized by Cardinal de Retz, who held them in hand, to check or to spur them as the occasion required, from a mere personal pique against Mazarin, who had not treated that vivacious genius with all the deference he exacted. This appears from his own Memoirs.

We have smiled at James I. threatening the States-general by the English ambassador, about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, who had espoused the doctrines of Arminius against those of the contra-remonstrants, or Calvinists; the ostensible subject was religious, or rather metaphysical-religious doctrines, but the concealed one was a struggle for predominance between the Pensionary Barnevelt, assisted by the French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English. "These were the real sources," says Lord Hardwicke, a statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant with secret and public history, and a far more able judge than Diodati the Swiss divine, and Brandt the ecclesiastical historian, who in the synod of Dort could see nothing but what appeared in it, and gravely narrated the idle squabbles on phrases concerning predestination or grace. Hales, of Eaton, who was secretary to the English ambassador at this synod, perfectly accords with the account of Lord Hardwicke. "Our synod," writes that judicious observer, "goes on like a watch; the main wheels upon which the whole business turns are least in sight; for all things of moment are acted in private sessions; what is done in public is only for show and entertainment."

The cause of the persecution of the Jansenists was the jealousy of the Jesuits; the pretext was la grace suffisante. The learned La Croze observes, that the same circumstance occurred in the affair of Nestorius and the church of Alexandria; the pretext was orthodoxy, the cause was the jealousy of the church of Alexandria, or rather the fiery and turbulent Cyril, who personally hated Nestorius. The opinions of Nestorius, and the council which condemned them, were the same in effect. I only produce this remote fact to prove that ancient times do not alter the truth of our principle.

When James II. was so strenuous an advocate for toleration and liberty of conscience in removing the Test Act, this enlightened principle of government was only a pretext with that monk-ridden monarch; it is well known that the cause was to introduce and make the Catholics predominant in his councils and government. The result, which that eager and blind politician hurried on too fast, and which therefore did not take place, would have been that "liberty of conscience" would soon have become an "overt act of treason" before an inquisition of his Jesuits!

In all political affairs drop the pretexts and strike at the causes; we may thus understand what the heads of parties may choose to conceal.

POLITICAL FORGERIES AND FICTIONS.

A writer, whose learning gives value to his eloquence, in his Bampton Lectures has censured, with that liberal spirit so friendly to the cause of truth, the calumnies and rumours of parties, which are still industriously retailed, though they have been often confuted. Forged documents are still referred to, or tales unsupported by evidence are confidently quoted. Mr. Heber's subject confined his inquiries to theological history; he has told us that "Augustin is not ashamed, in his dispute with Faustus, to take advantage of the popular slanders against the followers of Manes, though his own experience (for he had himself been of that sect) was sufficient to detect this falsehood." The Romanists, in spite of satisfactory answers, have continued to urge against the English protestant the romance of Parker's consecration;[84] while the protestant persists in falsely imputing to the catholic public formularies the systematic omission of the second commandment. "The calumnies of Rimius and Stinstra against the Moravian brethren are cases in point," continues Mr. Heber. "No one now believes them, yet they once could deceive even Warburton!" We may also add the obsolete calumny of Jews crucifying boys--of which a monument raised to Hugh of Lincoln perpetuates the memory, and which a modern historian records without any scruple of doubt; several authorities, which are cited on this occasion, amount only to the single one of Matthew Paris, who gives it as a popular rumour. Such accusations usually happened when the Jews were too rich and the king was too poor![85]

The falsehoods and forgeries raised by parties are overwhelming! It startles a philosopher, in the calm of his study, when he discovers how writers, who, we may presume, are searchers after truth, should, in fact, turn out to be searchers after the grossest fictions. This alters the habits of the literary man: it is an unnatural depravity of his pursuits--and it proves that the personal is too apt to predominate over the literary character.

I have already touched on the main point of the present article in the one on "Political Nicknames." I have there shown how political calumny appears to have been reduced into an art; one of its branches would be that of converting forgeries and fictions into historical authorities.

When one nation is at war with another, there is no doubt that the two governments connive at, and often encourage, the most atrocious libels on each other, to madden the people to preserve their independence, and contribute cheerfully to the expenses of the war. France and England formerly complained of Holland--the Athenians employed the same policy against the Macedonians and Persians. Such is the origin of a vast number of supposititious papers and volumes, which sometimes, at a remote date, confound the labours of the honest historian, and too often serve the purposes of the dishonest, with whom they become authorities. The crude and suspicious libels which were drawn out of their obscurity in Cromwell's time against James the First have overloaded the character of that monarch, yet are now eagerly referred to by party writers, though in their own days they were obsolete and doubtful. During the civil wars of Charles the First such spurious documents exist in the forms of speeches which were never spoken; of letters never written by the names subscribed; printed declarations never declared; battles never fought, and victories never obtained! Such is the language of Rushworth, who complains of this evil spirit of party forgeries, while he is himself suspected of having rescinded or suppressed whatever was not agreeable to his patron Cromwell. A curious, and perhaps a necessary list might be drawn up of political forgeries of our own, which have been sometimes referred to as genuine, but which are the inventions of wits and satirists! Bayle ingeniously observes, that at the close of every century such productions should be branded by a skilful discriminator, to save the future inquirer from errors he can hardly avoid. "How many are still kept in error by the satires of the sixteenth century! Those of the present age will be no less active in future ages, for they will still be preserved in public libraries."

The art and skill with which some have fabricated a forged narrative render its detection almost hopeless. When young Maitland, the brother to the secretary, in order to palliate the crime of the assassination of the Regent Murray, was employed to draw up a pretended conference between him, Knox, and others, to stigmatise them by the odium of advising to dethrone the young monarch, and to substitute the regent for their sovereign, Maitland produced so dramatic a performance, by giving to each person his peculiar mode of expression, that this circumstance long baffled the incredulity of those who could not in consequence deny the truth of a narrative apparently so correct in its particulars! "The fiction of the warming-pan enclosing the young Pretender brought more adherents to the cause of the Whigs than the Bill of Rights," observes Lord John Russell.

Among such party narratives, the horrid tale of the bloody Colonel Kirk has been worked up by Hume with all his eloquence and pathos; and, from its interest, no suspicion has arisen of its truth. Yet, so far as it concerns Kirk, or the reign of James the Second, or even English history, it is, as Ritson too honestly expresses it, "an impudent and a bare-faced lie!" The simple fact is told by Kennet in a few words: he probably was aware of the nature of this political fiction. Hume was not, indeed, himself the fabricator of the tale; but he had not any historical authority. The origin of this fable was probably a pious fraud of the Whig party, to whom Kirk had rendered himself odious; at that moment stories still more terrifying were greedily swallowed, and which, Ritson insinuates, have become a part of the history of England. The original story, related more circumstantially, though not more affectingly, nor perhaps more truly, may be found in Wanley's "Wonders of the Little World,"[86] which I give, relieving it from the tediousness of old Wanley.

A governor of Zealand, under the bold Duke of Burgundy, had in vain sought to seduce the affections of the beautiful wife of a citizen. The governor imprisons the husband on an accusation of treason; and when the wife appeared as the suppliant, the governor, after no brief eloquence, succeeded as a lover, on the plea that her husband's life could only be spared by her compliance. The woman, in tears and in aversion, and not without a hope of vengeance only delayed, lost her honour! Pointing to the prison, the governor told her, "If you seek your husband, enter there, and take him along with you!" The wife, in the bitterness of her thoughts, yet not without the consolation that she had snatched her husband from the grave, passed into the prison; there in a cell, to her astonishment and horror, she beheld the corpse of her husband laid out in a coffin, ready for burial! Mourning over it, she at length returned to the governor, fiercely exclaiming, "You have kept your word! you have restored to me my husband! and be assured the favour shall be repaid!" The inhuman villain, terrified in the presence of his intrepid victim, attempted to appease her vengeance, and more, to win her to his wishes. Returning home, she assembled her friends, revealed her whole story, and under their protection she appealed to Charles the Bold, a strict lover of justice, and who now awarded a singular but an exemplary catastrophe. The duke first commanded that the criminal governor should instantly marry the woman whom he had made a widow, and at the same time sign his will, with a clause importing that should he die before his lady he constituted her his heiress. All this was concealed from both sides, rather to satisfy the duke than the parties themselves. This done, the unhappy woman was dismissed alone! The governor was conducted to the prison to suffer the same death he had inflicted on the husband of his wife; and when this lady was desired once more to enter the prison, she beheld her second husband headless in his coffin as she had her first! Such extraordinary incidents in so short a period overpowered the feeble frame of the sufferer; she died--leaving a son, who inherited the rich accession of fortune so fatally obtained by his injured and suffering mother.

Such is the tale of which the party story of Kirk appeared to Ritson to have been a rifacimento; but it is rather the foundation than the superstructure. This critic was right in the general, but not in the particular. It was not necessary to point out the present source, when so many others of a parallel nature exist. This tale, universally told, Mr. Douce considers as the origin of Measure for Measure, and was probably some traditional event; for it appears sometimes with a change of names and places, without any of incident. It always turns on a soldier, a brother or a husband, executed; and a wife, a sister, a deceived victim, to save them from death. It was, therefore, easily transferred to Kirk, and Pomfret's poem of "Cruelty and Lust" long made the story popular. It could only have been in this form that it reached the historian, who, it must be observed, introduces it as a "story commonly told of him;" but popular tragic romances should not enter into the dusty documents of a history of England, and much less be particularly specified in the index! Belleforest, in his old version of the tale, has even the circumstance of the "captain, who having seduced the wife under the promise to save her husband's life, exhibited him soon afterwards through the window of her apartment suspended on a gibbet." This forms the horrid incident in the history of "the bloody Colonel," and served the purpose of a party, who wished to bury him in odium. Kirk was a soldier of fortune, and a loose liver, and a great blusterer, who would sometimes threaten to decimate his own regiment, but is said to have forgotten the menace the next day. Hateful as such military men will always be, in the present instance Colonel Kirk has been shamefully calumniated by poets and historians, who suffer themselves to be duped by the forgeries of political parties![87]

While we are detecting a source of error into which the party feelings of modern historians may lead them, let us confess that they are far more valuable than the ancient; for to us at least the ancients have written history without producing authorities! Modern historians must furnish their readers with the truest means to become their critics, by providing them with their authorities; and it is only by judiciously appreciating these that we may confidently accept their discoveries. Unquestionably the ancients have often introduced into their histories many tales similar to the story of Kirk--popular or party forgeries! The mellifluous copiousness of Livy conceals many a tale of wonder; the graver of Tacitus etches many a fatal stroke; and the secret history of Suetonius too often raises a suspicion of those whispers, Quid rex in aurem reginæ dixerit, quid Juno fabulata sit cum Jove. It is certain that Plutarch has often told, and varied too in the telling, the same story, which he has applied to different persons. A critic in the Ritsonian style has said of the grave Plutarch, Mendax ille Plutarchus qui vitas oratorum, dolis et erroribus consutas, olim conscribillavit.[88] "That lying Plutarch, who formerly scribbled the lives of the orators, made up of falsities and blunders!" There is in Italian a scarce book, of a better design than execution, of the Abbate Lancellotti, Farfalloni degli Antichi Historici.--"Flim-flams of the Ancients." Modern historians have to dispute their passage to immortality step by step; and however fervid be their eloquence, their real test as to value must be brought to the humble references in their margin. Yet these must not terminate our inquiries; for in tracing a story to its original source we shall find that fictions have been sometimes grafted on truths or hearsays, and to separate them as they appeared in their first stage is the pride and glory of learned criticism.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] Absurdly reported to have taken place at a meeting in the Nag's-head Tavern, Cheapside.

[85] M. Michel published in Paris, in 1834, a collection of poems and ballads concerning Hugh of Lincoln, which were all very popular at home and abroad in the Middle Ages. One of these, preserved in an Anglo-Norman MS. in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris, was evidently constructed to be sung by the people soon after the event, which is stated to have happened in the reign of our Henry III.; but there are many ballads comparatively modern which show how carefully the story was kept before the populace; and may be seen in the collections of Bishop Percy, Jameson, Motherwell, &c.

[86] Book iii. ch. 29, sec. 18.

[87] A story still more absurd was connected with the name of Colonel Lunsford, a soldier who consistently defended Charles I., and was killed in 1643. It is related by Echard as reported of him, that he would kill and eat the children of the opposite party. This horridly grotesque imputation has been preserved in the political ballads and poetry of the day. Cleveland ridicules it in one of his poems, where he makes a Roundhead declare--

"He swore he saw, when Lunsford fell, A child's arm in his pocket."

[88] Taylor, Annot. ad Lysiam.

EXPRESSION OF SUPPRESSED OPINION.

A people denied the freedom of speech or of writing have usually left some memorials of their feelings in that silent language which addresses itself to the eye. Many ingenious inventions have been contrived to give vent to their suppressed indignation. The voluminous grievance which they could not trust to the voice or the pen they have carved in wood, or sculptured on stone; and have sometimes even facetiously concealed their satire among the playful ornaments designed to amuse those of whom they so fruitlessly complained! Such monuments of the suppressed feelings of the multitude are not often inspected by the historian--their minuteness escapes all eyes but those of the philosophical antiquary; nor are these satirical appearances always considered as grave authorities, which unquestionably they will be found to be by a close observer of human nature. An entertaining history of the modes of thinking, or the discontents of a people, drawn from such dispersed efforts in every æra, would cast a new light of secret history over many dark intervals.

Did we possess a secret history of the Saturnalia, it would doubtless have afforded some materials for the present article. In those revels of venerable radicalism, when the senate was closed, and the Pileus, or cap of liberty, was triumphantly worn, all things assumed an appearance contrary to what they were; and human nature, as well as human laws, might be said to have been parodied. Among so many whimsical regulations in favour of the licentious rabble, there was one which forbad the circulation of money; if any one offered the coin of the state, it was to be condemned as an act of madness, and the man was brought to his senses by a penitential fast for that day. An ingenious French antiquary seems to have discovered a class of wretched medals, cast in lead or copper, which formed the circulating medium of these mob lords, who, to ridicule the idea of money, used the basest metals, stamping them with grotesque figures, or odd devices--such as a sow; a chimerical bird; an imperator in his car, with a monkey behind him; or an old woman's head, Acca Laurentia, either the traditional old nurse of Romulus, or an old courtesan of the same name, who bequeathed the fruits of her labours to the Roman people! As all things were done in mockery, this base metal is stamped with S. C., to ridicule the Senatûs consulto, which our antiquary happily explains,[89] in the true spirit of this government of mockery, Saturnalium consulto, agreeing with the legend of the reverse, inscribed in the midst of four tali, or bones, which they used as dice, Qui ludit arram det, quod satis sit--"Let them who play give a pledge, which will be sufficient." This mock-money served not only as an expression of the native irony of the radical gentry of Rome during their festival, but, had they spoken their mind out, meant a ridicule of money itself; for these citizens of equality have always imagined that society might proceed without this contrivance of a medium which served to represent property in which they themselves must so little participate.

A period so glorious for exhibiting the suppressed sentiments of the populace as were these Saturnalia, had been nearly lost for us, had not some notions been preserved by Lucian; for we glean but sparingly from the solemn pages of the historian, except in the remarkable instance which Suetonius has preserved of the arch-mime who followed the body of the Emperor Vespasian at his funeral. This officer, as well as a similar one who accompanied the general to whom they granted a triumph, and who was allowed the unrestrained licentiousness of his tongue, were both the organs of popular feeling, and studied to gratify the rabble, who were their real masters. On this occasion the arch-mime, representing both the exterior personage and the character of Vespasian, according to custom, inquired the expense of the funeral? He was answered, "ten millions of sesterces!" In allusion to the love of money which characterised the emperor, his mock representative exclaimed, "Give me the money, and, if you will, throw my body into the Tiber!"

All these mock offices and festivals among the ancients I consider as organs of the suppressed opinions and feelings of the populace, who were allowed no other, and had not the means of the printing ages to leave any permanent records. At a later period, before the discovery of the art which multiplies with such facility libels or panegyrics, when the people could not speak freely against those rapacious clergy who sheared the fleece and cared not for the sheep, many a secret of popular indignation was confided not to books (for they could not read), but to pictures and sculptures, which are books which the people can always read. The sculptors and illuminators of those times no doubt shared in common the popular feelings, and boldly trusted to the paintings or the carvings which met the eyes of their luxurious and indolent masters their satirical inventions. As far back as in 1300, we find in Wolfius[90] the description of a picture of this kind, in a MS. of Æsop's Fables found in the Abbey of Fulda, among other emblems of the corrupt lives of the churchmen. The present was a wolf, large as life, wearing a monkish cowl, with a shaven crown, preaching to a flock of sheep, with these words of the apostle in a label from his mouth--"God is my witness how I long for you all in my bowels!" And underneath was inscribed--"This hooded wolf is the hypocrite of whom is said in the Gospel, 'Beware of false prophets!'" Such exhibitions were often introduced into articles of furniture. A cushion was found in an old abbey, in which was worked a fox preaching to geese, each goose holding in his bill his praying beads! In the stone wall, and on the columns of the great church at Strasburg, was once viewed a number of wolves, bears, foxes, and other mischievous animals, carrying holy water, crucifixes, and tapers; and others more indelicate. These, probably as old as the year 1300, were engraven in 1617 by a protestant; and were not destroyed till 1685, by the pious rage of the catholics, who seemed at length to have rightly construed these silent lampoons; and in their turn broke to pieces the protestant images, as the others had done the papistical dolls. The carved seats and stalls in our own cathedrals exhibit subjects not only strange and satirical, but even indecent.[91] At the time they built churches they satirised the ministers; a curious instance how the feelings of the people struggle to find a vent. It is conjectured that rival orders satirised each other, and that some of the carvings are caricatures of certain monks. The margins of illuminated manuscripts frequently contain ingenious caricatures, or satirical allegories. In a magnificent chronicle of Froissart I observed several. A wolf, as usual, in a monk's frock and cowl, stretching his paw to bless a cock, bending its head submissively to the wolf: or a fox with a crosier, dropping beads, which a cock is picking up; to satirise the blind devotion of the bigots; perhaps the figure of the cock alluded to our Gallic neighbours. A cat in the habit of a nun, holding a platter in its paws to a mouse approaching to lick it; alluding to the allurements of the abbesses to draw young women into their convents; while sometimes I have seen a sow in an abbess's veil, mounted on stilts: the sex marked by the sow's dugs. A pope sometimes appears to be thrust by devils into a cauldron; and cardinals are seen roasting on spits! These ornaments must have been generally executed by the monks themselves; but these more ingenious members of the ecclesiastical order appear to have sympathised with the people, like the curates in our church, and envied the pampered abbot and the purple bishop. Churchmen were the usual objects of the suppressed indignation of the people in those days; but the knights and feudal lords have not always escaped from the "curses not loud, but deep," of their satirical pencils.

As the Reformation, or rather the Revolution, was hastening, this custom became so general, that in one of the dialogues of Erasmus, where two Franciscans are entertained by their host, it appears that such satirical exhibitions were hung up as common furniture in the apartments of inns. The facetious genius of Erasmus either invents or describes one which he had seen of an ape in the habit of a Franciscan sitting by a sick man's bed, dispensing ghostly counsel, holding up a crucifix in one hand, while with the other he is filching a purse out of the sick man's pocket. Such are "the straws" by which we may always observe from what corner the wind rises! Mr. Dibdin has recently informed us, that Geyler, whom he calls "the herald of the Reformation," preceding Luther by twelve years, had a stone chair or pulpit in the cathedral at Strasburg, from which he delivered his lectures, or rather rolled the thunders of his anathemas against the monks. This stone pulpit was constructed under his own superintendence, and is covered with very indecent figures of monks and nuns, expressly designed by him to expose their profligate manners. We see Geyler doing what for centuries had been done!

In the curious folios of Sauval, the Stowe of France, there is a copious chapter, entitled "Hérétiques, leurs attentats." In this enumeration of their attempts to give vent to their suppressed indignation, it is very remarkable that, preceding the time of Luther, the minds of many were perfectly Lutheran respecting the idolatrous worship of the Roman Church; and what I now notice would have rightly entered into that significant Historia Reformationis ante Reformationem, which was formerly projected by continental writers.

Luther did not consign the pope's decretals to the flames till 1520--this was the first open act of reformation and insurrection, for hitherto he had submitted to the court of Rome. Yet in 1490, thirty years preceding this great event, I find a priest burnt for having snatched the host in derision from the hands of another celebrating mass. Twelve years afterwards, 1502, a student repeated the same deed, trampling on it; and in 1523, the resolute death of Anne de Bourg, a counsellor in the parliament of Paris, to use the expression of Sauval, "corrupted the world." It is evident that the Huguenots were fast on the increase. From that period I find continued accounts which prove that the Huguenots of France, like the Puritans of England, were most resolute iconoclasts. They struck off the heads of Virgins and little Jesuses, or blunted their daggers by chipping the wooden saints, which were then fixed at the corners of streets. Every morning discovered the scandalous treatment they had undergone in the night. Then their images were painted on the walls, but these were heretically scratched and disfigured: and, since the saints could not defend themselves, a royal edict was published in their favour, commanding that all holy paintings in the streets should not be allowed short of ten feet from the ground! They entered churches at night, tearing up or breaking down the prians, the bénitoires, the crucifixes, the colossal ecce-homos, which they did not always succeed in dislodging for want of time or tools. Amidst these battles with wooden adversaries, we may smile at the frequent solemn processions instituted to ward off the vengeance of the parish saint; the wooden was expiated by a silver image, secured by iron bars and attended by the king and the nobility, carrying the new saint, with prayers that he would protect himself from the heretics!

In an early period of the Reformation, an instance occurs of the art of concealing what we wish only the few should comprehend, at the same time that we are addressing the public. Curious collectors are acquainted with "The Olivetan Bible;" this was the first translation published by the protestants, and there seems no doubt that Calvin was the chief, if not the only translator; but at that moment not choosing to become responsible for this new version, he made use of the name of an obscure relative, Robert Pierre Olivetan. Calvin, however, prefixed a Latin preface, remarkable for delivering positions very opposite to those tremendous doctrines of absolute predestination which, in his theological despotism, he afterwards assumed. De Bure describes this first protestant Bible not only as rare, but, when found, as usually imperfect, much soiled and dog-eared, as the well-read first edition of Shakspeare, by the perpetual use of the multitude. But a curious fact has escaped the detection both of De Bure and Beloe; at the end of the volume are found ten verses, which, in a concealed manner, authenticate the translation; and which no one, unless initiated into the secret, could possibly suspect. The verses are not poetical, but I give the first sentence:--

Lecteur entends, si vérité adresse Viens donc ouyr instament sa promesse Et vif parler----&c.

The first letters of every word of these ten verses form a perfect distich, containing information important to those to whom the Olivetan Bible was addressed.

Les Vaudois, peuple évangélique, Ont mis ce thrésor en publique.

An anagram would have been too inartificial a contrivance to have answered the purpose of concealing from the world at large this secret. There is an adroitness in the invention of the initial letters of all the words through these ten verses. They contained a communication necessary to authenticate the version, but which, at the same time, could not be suspected by any person not intrusted with the secret.

When the art of medal-engraving was revived in Europe, the spirit we are now noticing took possession of those less perishable and more circulating vehicles. Satiric medals were almost unknown to the ancient mint, notwithstanding those of the Saturnalia, and a few which bear miserable puns on the unlucky names of some consuls. Medals illustrate history, and history reflects light on medals; but we should not place such unreserved confidence on medals as their advocates, who are warm in their favourite study. It has been asserted that medals are more authentic memorials than history itself; but a medal is not less susceptible of the bad passions than a pamphlet or an epigram. Ambition has its vanity, and engraves a dubious victory; and Flattery will practise its art, and deceive us in gold! A calumny or a fiction on metal may be more durable than on a fugitive page; and a libel has a better chance of being preserved when the artist is skilful, than simple truths when miserably executed. Medals of this class are numerous, and were the precursors of those political satires exhibited in caricature prints.[92] There is a large collection of wooden cuts about the time of Calvin, where the Romish religion is represented by the most grotesque forms which the ridicule of the early Reformers could invent. More than a thousand figures attest the exuberant satire of the designers. This work is equally rare and costly.[93]

Satires of this species commenced in the freedom of the Reformation; for we find a medal of Luther in a monk's habit, satirically bearing for its reverse Catherine de Bora, the nun whom this monk married; the first step of his personal reformation! Nor can we be certain that Catherine was not more concerned in that great revolution than appears in the voluminous Lives we have of the great reformer. However, the reformers were as great sticklers for medals as the "papelins." Of Pope John VIII., an effeminate voluptuary, we have a medal with his portrait, inscribed Pope Joan! and another of Innocent X., dressed as a woman holding a spindle; the reverse, his famous mistress, Donna Olympia, dressed as a Pope, with the tiara on her head, and the keys of St. Peter in her hands![94]

When, in the reign of Mary, England was groaning under Spanish influence, and no remonstrance could reach the throne, the queen's person and government were made ridiculous to the people's eyes by prints or pictures "representing her majesty naked, meagre, withered, and wrinkled, with every aggravated circumstance of deformity that could disgrace a female figure, seated in a regal chair; a crown on her head, surrounded with M. R. and A. in capitals, accompanied by small letters; Maria Regina Angliæ! a number of Spaniards were sucking her to skin and bone, and a specification was added of the money, rings, jewels, and other presents with which she had secretly gratified her husband Philip."[95] It is said that the queen suspected some of her own council of this invention, who alone were privy to these transactions. It is, however, in this manner that the voice which is suppressed by authority comes at length in another shape to the eye.

The age of Elizabeth, when the Roman pontiff and all his adherents were odious to the people, produced a remarkable caricature, and ingenious invention--a gorgon's head! A church bell forms the helmet; the ornaments, instead of the feathers, are a wolf's head in a mitre devouring a lamb, an ass's head with spectacles reading, a goose holding a rosary: the face is made out with a fish for the nose, a chalice and water for the eye, and other priestly ornaments for the shoulder and breast, on which rolls of parchment pardons hang.[96]

A famous bishop of Munster, Bernard de Galen, who, in his charitable violence for converting protestants, got himself into such celebrity that he appears to have served as an excellent sign-post to the inns in Germany, was the true church militant: and his figure was exhibited according to the popular fancy. His head was half mitre and half helmet; a crosier in one hand and a sabre in the other; half a rochet and half a cuirass: he was made performing mass as a dragoon on horseback, and giving out the charge when he ought the Ite, missa est! He was called the converter! and the "Bishop of Munster" became popular as a sign-post in German towns; for the people like fighting men, though they should even fight against themselves.

It is rather curious to observe of this new species of satire, so easily distributed among the people, and so directly addressed to their understandings, that it was made the vehicle of national feeling. Ministers of state condescended to invent the devices. Lord Orford says that caricatures on cards were the invention of George Townshend in the affair of Byng, which was soon followed by a pack. I am informed of an ancient pack of cards which has caricatures of all the Parliamentarian Generals, which might be not unusefully shuffled by a writer of secret history.[97] We may be surprised to find the grave Sully practising this artifice on several occasions. In the civil wars of France the Duke of Savoy had taken by surprise Saluces, and struck a medal; on the reverse a centaur appears shooting with a bow and arrow, with the legend Opportune! But when Henry the Fourth had reconquered the town, he published another, on which Hercules appears killing the centaur, with the word Opportunius. The great minister was the author of this retort![98] A medal of the Dutch ambassador at the court of France, Van Beuninghen, whom the French represent as a haughty burgomaster, but who had the vivacity of a Frenchman and the haughtiness of a Spaniard, as Voltaire characterises him, is said to have been the occasion of the Dutch war in 1672; but wars will be hardly made for an idle medal. Medals may, however, indicate a preparatory war. Louis the Fourteenth was so often compared to the sun at its meridian, that some of his creatures may have imagined that, like the sun, he could dart into any part of Europe as he willed, and be as cheerfully received.[99] The Dutch minister, whose Christian name was Joshua, however, had a medal struck of Joshua stopping the sun in his course, inferring that this miracle was operated by his little republic. The medal itself is engraven in Van Loon's voluminous Histoire Médallique du Pays Bas, and in Marchand's Dictionnaire Historique, who labours to prove against twenty authors that the Dutch ambassador was not the inventor; it was not, however, unworthy of him, and it conveyed to the world the high feeling of her power which Holland had then assumed. Two years after the noise about this medal the republic paid dear for the device; but thirty years afterwards this very burgomaster concluded a glorious peace, and France and Spain were compelled to receive the mediation of the Dutch Joshua with the French Sun.[100] In these vehicles of national satire, it is odd that the phlegmatic Dutch, more than any other nation, and from the earliest period of their republic, should have indulged freely, if not licentiously. It was a republican humour. Their taste was usually gross. We owe to them, even in the reign of Elizabeth, a severe medal on Leicester, who, having retired in disgust from the government of their provinces, struck a medal with his bust, reverse a dog and sheep,

Non gregem, sed ingratos invitus desero;

on which the angry juvenile states struck another, representing an ape and young ones; reverse, Leicester near a fire,

Fugiens fumum, incidit in ignem.

Another medal, with an excellent portrait of Cromwell, was struck by the Dutch. The Protector, crowned with laurels, is on his knees, laying his head in the lap of the commonwealth, but loosely exhibiting himself to the French and Spanish ambassadors with gross indecency: the Frenchman, covered with fleur de lis, is pushing aside the grave Don, and disputes with him the precedence--Retire-toy; l'honneur appartient au roy mon maitre, Louis le Grand. Van Loon is very right in denouncing this same medal, so grossly flattering to the English, as most detestable and indelicate! But why does Van Loon envy us this lumpish invention? why does the Dutchman quarrel with his own cheese? The honour of the medal we claim, but the invention belongs to his country. The Dutch went on commenting in this manner on English affairs from reign to reign. Charles the Second declared war against them in 1672 for a malicious medal, though the States-General offered to break the die, by purchasing it of the workman for one thousand ducats; but it served for a pretext for a Dutch war, which Charles cared more about than the mala bestia of his exergue. Charles also complained of a scandalous picture which the brothers de Witt had in their house, representing a naval battle with the English. Charles the Second seems to have been more sensible to this sort of national satire than we might have expected in a professed wit; a race, however, who are not the most patient in having their own sauce returned to their lips. The king employed Evelyn to write a history of the Dutch war, and "enjoined him to make it a little keen, for the Hollanders had very unhandsomely abused him in their pictures, books, and libels." The Dutch continued their career of conveying their national feeling on English affairs more triumphantly when their Stadtholder ascended an English throne. The birth of the Pretender is represented by the chest which Minerva gave to the daughters of Cecrops to keep, and which, opened, discovered an infant with a serpent's tail: Infantemque vident apporrectumque draconem; the chest perhaps alluding to the removes of the warming-pan; and, in another, James and a Jesuit flying in terror, the king throwing away a crown and sceptre, and the Jesuit carrying a child; Ite missa est, the words applied from the mass.[101] But in these contests of national feeling, while the grandeur of Louis the Fourteenth did not allow of these ludicrous and satirical exhibitions, and while the political idolatry which his forty Academicians paid to him exhausted itself in the splendid fictions of a series of famous medals, amounting to nearly four hundred, it appears that we were not without our reprisals; for I find Prosper Marchand, who writes as a Hollander, censuring his own country for having at length adulated the grand monarque by a complimentary medal. He says--"The English cannot be reproached with a similar debonaireté." After the famous victories of Marlborough, they indeed inserted in a medal the head of the French monarch and the English queen, with this inscription, Ludovicus Magnus, Anna Major. Long ere this one of our queens had been exhibited by ourselves with considerable energy. On the defeat of the Armada, Elizabeth, Pinkerton tells us, struck a medal representing the English and Spanish fleets, Hesperidum regem devicit virgo. Philip had medals dispersed in England of the same impression, with this addition, Negatur. Est meretrix vulgi. These the queen suppressed, but published another medal, with this legend:--

Hesperidum regem devicit virgo; negatur, Est meretrix vulgi; res eo deterior.

An age fertile in satirical prints was the eventful æra of Charles the First: they were showered from all parties, and a large collection of them would admit of a critical historical commentary, which might become a vehicle of the most curious secret history. Most of them are in a bad style, for they are allegorical; yet that these satirical exhibitions influenced the eyes and minds of the people is evident from an extraordinary circumstance. Two grave collections of historical documents adopted them. We are surprised to find prefixed to Rushworth's and Nalson's historical collections two such political prints! Nalson's was an act of retributive justice; but he seems to have been aware that satire in the shape of pictures is a language very attractive to the multitude, for he has introduced a caricature print in the solemn folio of the Trial of Charles the First.[102] Of the happiest of these political prints is one by Taylor the Water-poet, not included in his folio, but prefixed to his "Mad Fashions, Odd Fashions, or the Emblems of these Distracted Times." It is the figure of a man whose eyes have left their sockets, and whose legs have usurped the place of his arms; a horse on his hind legs is drawing a cart; a church is inverted; fish fly in the air; a candle burns with the flame downwards; and the mouse and rabbit are pursuing the cat and the fox!

The animosities of national hatred have been a fertile source of these vehicles of popular feeling--which discover themselves in severe or grotesque caricatures. The French and the Spaniards mutually exhibit one another under the most extravagant figures. The political caricatures of the French in the seventeenth century are numerous. The badauds of Paris amused themselves for their losses by giving an emetic to a Spaniard, to make him render up all the towns his victories had obtained: seven or eight Spaniards are seen seated around a large turnip, with their frizzled mustachios, their hats en pot-à-beurre; their long rapiers, with their pummels down to their feet, and their points up to their shoulders; their ruffs stiffened by many rows, and pieces of garlick stuck in their girdles. The Dutch were exhibited in as great variety as the uniformity of frogs would allow. We have largely participated in the vindictive spirit which these grotesque emblems keep up among the people; they mark the secret feelings of national pride. The Greeks despised foreigners, and considered them only as fit to be slaves;[103] the ancient Jews, inflated with a false idea of their small territory, would be masters of the world: the Italians placed a line of demarcation for genius and taste, and marked it by their mountains. The Spaniards once imagined that the conferences of God with Moses on Mount Sinai were in the Spanish language. If a Japanese become the friend of a foreigner, he is considered as committing treason to his emperor, and rejected as a false brother in a country which, we are told, is figuratively called Tenka, or the Kingdom under the Heavens. John Bullism is not peculiar to Englishmen; and patriotism is a noble virtue when it secures our independence without depriving us of our humanity.

The civil wars of the League in France, and those in England under Charles the First, bear the most striking resemblance; and in examining the revolutionary scenes exhibited by the graver in the famous Satire Ménippée, we discover the foreign artist revelling in the caricature of his ludicrous and severe exhibition; and in that other revolutionary period of La Fronde, there was a mania for political songs; the curious have formed them into collections; and we not only have "the Rump Songs" of Charles the First's times, but have repeated this kind of evidence of the public feeling at many subsequent periods.[104] Caricatures and political songs might with us furnish a new sort of history; and perhaps would preserve some truths, and describe some particular events not to be found in more grave authorities.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] Baudelot de Dairval, de l'Utilité des Voyages, ii. 645. There is a work, by Ficoroni, on these lead coins or tickets. They are found in the cabinets of the curious medallist. Pinkerton, in referring to this entertaining work, regrets that "such curious remains have almost escaped the notice of medallists, and have not yet been arranged in one class, or named. A special work on them would be highly acceptable." The time has perhaps arrived when antiquaries may begin to be philosophers, and philosophers antiquaries! The unhappy separation of erudition from philosophy, and of philosophy from erudition, has hitherto thrown impediments in the progress of the human mind and the history of man.

[90] Lect. Mem. i. ad. an. 1300.

[91] Many specimens may be seen in Carter's curious volumes on "Ancient Architecture and Painting."

[92] The series published during the wars in the Low Countries are the most remarkable, and may be seen in the volumes by Van Loon.

[93] Mr. Douce possessed a portion of this very curious collection: for a complete one De Bure asked about twenty pounds.

[94] The Roman satirists also invented a tale to ridicule what they dared not openly condemn, in which it was asserted that a play called The Marriage of the Pope was enacted before Cromwell, in which the Donna having obtained the key of Paradise from Innocent, insists on that of Purgatory also, that she may not be sent there when he is wearied of her. "The wedding" is then kept by a ball of monks and nuns, delighted to think they may one day marry also. Such was the means the Romans took to notify their sense of the degradation of the pope.

[95] Warton's "Life of Sir Thomas Pope," p. 58.

[96] This ancient caricature, so descriptive of the popular feelings, is tolerably given in Malcolm's history of "Caricaturing," plate ii. fig. 1.

[97] This pack was probably executed in Holland in the time of Charles the Second. There are other sets of political cards of the same reign, particularly one connected with the so-called "popish plots," and the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. The South-Sea Bubble was made the subject of a similar pack, after it had exploded.

[98] The royal house of Navarre was fancifully derived by the old heraldic writers from Hispalus, the son of Hercules; and the pageant provided by the citizens of Avignon to greet his entrance there in 1600, was entirely composed in reference thereto, and Henry indicated in its title, L'Hercule Gaulois Triumphant.

[99] He took for a device and motto on his shield on the occasion of tilting-matches and court festivities, a representation of the sun in splendour, and the words, Nec Pluribus Impar.

[100] The history of this medal is useful in more than one respect; and may be found in Prosper Marchand.

[101] Another represents the young prince holding the symbol of the Romish faith in his right hand, and crowning himself with the left; Truth opens a door below and discovers Father Petre, as the guiding influence of all.

[102] It represents Cromwell as an armed monster, carrying the three kingdoms captive at his feet in a triumphal car driven by the devil over the body of liberty, and the decapitated Charles I. The state of the people is emblematized by a bird flying from its cage to be devoured by a hawk; and sheep breaking from the fold to be set on by ravening wolves.

[103] A passage may be found in Aristotle's Politics, vol. i. c. 3-7; where Aristotle advises Alexander to govern the Greeks like his subjects, and the barbarians like slaves; for that the one he was to consider as companions, and the other as creatures of an inferior race.

[104] The following may be mentioned as the most important of these collections:--

"Rome rhymed to Death." 1683.

"A Collection of the newest and most ingenious Poems, Songs, Catches, &c, against Popery." 1689.

"Poems on Affairs of State." 1703-7.

"Whig and Tory; or, Wit on both sides." 1712.

"Political Merriment; or, Truths told to some Tune." 1714.

AUTOGRAPHS.[105]

The art of judging of the characters of persons by their handwriting can only have any reality when the pen, acting without restraint, becomes an instrument guided by, and indicative of, the natural dispositions. But regulated as the pen is now too often by a mechanical process, which the present race of writing-masters seem to have contrived for their own convenience, a whole school exhibits a similar handwriting; the pupils are forced in their automatic motions, as if acted on by the pressure of a steam-engine; a bevy of beauties will now write such fac-similes of each other, that in a heap of letters presented to the most sharp-sighted lover to select that of his mistress--though, like Bassanio among the caskets, his happiness should be risked on the choice--he would despair of fixing on the right one, all appearing to have come from the same rolling-press. Even brothers of different tempers have been taught by the same master to give the same form to their letters, the same regularity to their line, and have made our handwritings as monotonous as are our characters in the present habits of society. The true physiognomy of writing will be lost among our rising generation: it is no longer a face that we are looking on, but a beautiful mask of a single pattern; and the fashionable handwriting of our young ladies is like the former tight-lacing of their mothers' youthful days, when every one alike had what was supposed to be a fine shape!

Assuredly nature would prompt every individual to have a distinct sort of writing, as she has given a peculiar countenance--a voice--and a manner. The flexibility of the muscles differs with every individual, and the hand will follow the direction of the thoughts and the emotions and the habits of the writers. The phlegmatic will portray his words, while the playful haste of the volatile will scarcely sketch them; the slovenly will blot and efface and scrawl, while the neat and orderly-minded will view themselves in the paper before their eyes. The merchant's clerk will not write like the lawyer or the poet. Even nations are distinguished by their writing; the vivacity and variableness of the Frenchman, and the delicacy and suppleness of the Italian, are perceptibly distinct from the slowness and strength of pen discoverable in the phlegmatic German, Dane, and Swede. When we are in grief, we do not write as we should in joy. The elegant and correct mind, which has acquired the fortunate habit of a fixity of attention, will write with scarcely an erasure on the page, as Fenelon, and Gray, and Gibbon; while we find in Pope's manuscripts the perpetual struggles of correction, and the eager and rapid interlineations struck off in heat. Lavater's notion of handwriting is by no means chimerical; nor was General Paoli fanciful, when he told Mr. Northcote that he had decided on the character and dispositions of a man from his letters, and the handwriting.

Long before the days of Lavater, Shenstone in one of his letters said, "I want to see Mrs. Jago's handwriting, that I may judge of her temper." One great truth must however be conceded to the opponents of the physiognomy of writing; general rules only can be laid down. Yet the vital principle must be true that the handwriting bears an analogy to the character of the writer, as all voluntary actions are characteristic of the individual. But many causes operate to counteract or obstruct this result. I am intimately acquainted with the handwritings of five of our great poets. The first in early life acquired among Scottish advocates a handwriting which cannot be distinguished from that of his ordinary brothers; the second, educated in public schools, where writing is shamefully neglected, composes his sublime or sportive verses in a school-boy's ragged scrawl, as if he had never finished his tasks with the writing-master; the third writes his highly-wrought poetry in the common hand of a merchant's clerk, from early commercial avocations; the fourth has all that finished neatness which polishes his verses; while the fifth is a specimen of a full mind, not in the habit of correction or alteration; so that he appears to be printing down his thoughts, without a solitary erasure. The handwriting of the first and third poets, not indicative of their character, we have accounted for; the others are admirable specimens of characteristic autographs.[106]

Oldys, in one of his curious notes, was struck by the distinctness of character in the handwritings of several of our kings. He observed nothing further than the mere fact, and did not extend his idea to the art of judging of the natural character by the writing. Oldys has described these handwritings with the utmost correctness, as I have often verified. I shall add a few comments.

"Henry the Eighth wrote a strong hand, but as if he had seldom a good pen."--The vehemence of his character conveyed itself into his writing; bold, hasty, and commanding, I have no doubt the assertor of the Pope's supremacy and its triumphant destroyer split many a good quill.

"Edward the Sixth wrote a fair legible hand."--We have this promising young prince's diary, written by his own hand; in all respects he was an assiduous pupil, and he had scarcely learnt to write and to reign when we lost him.

"Queen Elizabeth writ an upright hand, like the bastard Italian." She was indeed a most elegant caligrapher, whom Roger Ascham[107] had taught all the elegancies of the pen. The French editor of the little autographical work I have noticed has given the autograph of her name, which she usually wrote in a very large tall character, and painfully elaborate. He accompanies it with one of the Scottish Mary, who at times wrote elegantly, though usually in uneven lines; when in haste and distress of mind, in several letters during her imprisonment which I have read, much the contrary. The French editor makes this observation: "Who could believe that these writings are of the same epoch? The first denotes asperity and ostentation; the second indicates simplicity, softness, and nobleness. The one is that of Elizabeth, queen of England; the other that of her cousin, Mary Stuart. The difference of these two handwritings answers most evidently to that of their characters."

"James the First writ a poor ungainly character, all awry, and not in a straight line." James certainly wrote a slovenly scrawl, strongly indicative of that personal negligence which he carried into all the little things of life; and Buchanan, who had made him an excellent scholar, may receive the disgrace of his pupil's ugly scribble, which sprawls about his careless and inelegant letters.

"Charles the First wrote a fair open Italian hand, and more correctly perhaps than any prince we ever had." Charles was the first of our monarchs who intended to have domiciliated taste in the kingdom, and it might have been conjectured from this unfortunate prince, who so finely discriminated the manners of the different painters, which are in fact their handwritings, that he would not have been insensible to the elegancies of the pen.

"Charles the Second wrote a little fair running hand, as if wrote in haste, or uneasy till he had done." Such was the writing to have been expected from this illustrious vagabond, who had much to write, often in odd situations, and could never get rid of his natural restlessness and vivacity.

"James the Second writ a large fair hand." It is characterised by his phlegmatic temper, as an exact detailer of occurrences, and the matter-of-business genius of the writer.

"Queen Anne wrote a fair round hand;" that is the writing she had been taught by her master, probably without any alteration of manner naturally suggested by herself; the copying hand of a common character.[108]

The subject of autographs associates itself with what has been dignified by its professors as caligraphy, or the art of beautiful writing. As I have something curious to communicate on that subject considered professionally, it shall form our following article.

FOOTNOTES:

[105] A small volume which I met with at Paris, entitled "L'Art de juger du Caractère des Hommes sur leurs Ecritures," is curious for its illustrations, consisting of twenty-four plates, exhibiting fac-similes of the writing of eminent and other persons, correctly taken from the original autographs. Since this period both France and Germany have produced many books devoted to the use of the curious in autographs. In our own country J.T. Smith published a curious collection of fac-similes of letters, chiefly from literary characters.

[106] It will be of interest to the reader to note the names of these poets in the consecutive order they are alluded to. They are Scott, Byron, Rogers, Moore, and Campbell.

[107] He was also the tutor of Lady Jane Grey, and the author of one of our earliest and best works on education.

[108] Since this article was written, Nichols has published a cleverly-executed series of autographs of royal, noble, and illustrious persons of Great Britain, in which the reader may study the accuracy of the criticism above given.

THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS.

There is a very apt letter from James the First to Prince Henry when very young, on the neatness and fairness of his handwriting. The royal father suspecting that the prince's tutor, Mr., afterwards Sir Adam, Newton, had helped out the young prince in the composition, and that in this specimen of caligraphy he had relied also on the pains of Mr. Peter Bales, the great writing-master, for touching up his letters, his majesty shows a laudable anxiety that the prince should be impressed with the higher importance of the one over the other. James shall himself speak. "I confess I long to receive a letter from you that may be wholly yours, as well matter as form; as well formed by your mind as drawn by your fingers; for ye may remember, that in my book to you I warn you to beware with (of) that kind of wit that may fly out at the end of your fingers; not that I commend not a fair handwriting; sed hoc facito, illud non omittito: and the other is multo magis præcipuum." Prince Henry, indeed, wrote with that elegance which he borrowed from his own mind; and in an age when such minute elegance was not universal among the crowned heads of Europe. Henry IV., on receiving a letter from Prince Henry, immediately opened it, a custom not usual with him, and comparing the writing with the signature, to decide whether it were of one hand, Sir George Carew, observing the French King's hesitation, called Mr. Douglas to testify to the fact; on which Henry the Great, admiring an art in which he had little skill, and looking on the neat elegance of the writing before him, politely observed, "I see that in writing fair, as in other things, the elder must yield to the younger."

Had this anecdote of neat writing reached the professors of caligraphy, who in this country have put forth such painful panegyrics on the art, these royal names had unquestionably blazoned their pages. Not indeed that these penmen require any fresh inflation; for never has there been a race of professors in any art who have exceeded in solemnity and pretensions the practitioners in this simple and mechanical craft. I must leave to more ingenious investigators of human nature to reveal the occult cause which has operated such powerful delusions on these "Vive la Plume!" men, who have been generally observed to possess least intellectual ability in proportion to the excellence they have obtained in their own art. I suspect this maniacal vanity is peculiar to the writing-masters of England; and I can only attribute the immense importance which they have conceived of their art to the perfection to which they have carried the art of short-hand writing; an art which was always better understood, and more skilfully practised, in England than in any other country. It will surprise some when they learn that the artists in verse and colours, poets and painters, have not raised loftier pretensions to the admiration of mankind. Writing-masters, or caligraphers, have had their engraved "effigies," with a Fame in flourishes, a pen in one hand and a trumpet in the other; and fine verses inscribed, and their very lives written! They have compared

The nimbly-turning of their silver quill

to the beautiful in art and the sublime in invention; nor is this wonderful, since they discover the art of writing, like the invention of language, in a divine original; and from the tablets of stone which the Deity himself delivered, they trace their German broad text, or their fine running-hand. One, for "the bold striking of those words, Vive la Plume," was so sensible of the reputation that this last piece of command of hand would give the book which he thus adorned, and which his biographer acknowledges was the product of about a minute,--(but then how many years of flourishing had that single minute cost him!)--that he claims the glory of an artist; observing,--

We seldom find The man of business with the artist join'd.

Another was flattered that his writing could impart immortality to the most wretched compositions!--

And any lines prove pleasing, when you write.

Sometimes the caligrapher is a sort of hero:--

To you, you rare commander of the quill, Whose wit and worth, deep learning, and high skill, Speak you the honour of Great Tower Hill!

The last line became traditionally adopted by those who were so lucky as to live in the neighbourhood of this Parnassus. But the reader must form some notion of that charm of caligraphy which has so bewitched its professors, when,

Soft, bold, and free, your manuscripts still please.

How justly bold in SNELL'S improving hand The pen at once joins freedom with command! With softness strong, with ornaments not vain, Loose with proportion, and with neatness plain; Not swell'd, not full, complete in every part, And artful most, when not affecting art.

And these describe those pencilled knots and flourishes, "the angels, the men, the birds, and the beasts," which, as one of them observed, he could

Command Even by the gentle motion of his hand,

all the speciosa miracula of caligraphy;

Thy tender strokes, inimitably fine, Crown with perfection every flowing line; And to each grand performance add a grace, As curling hair adorns a beauteous face: In every page new fancies give delight, And sporting round the margin charm the sight.

One Massey, a writing-master, published in 1763, "The Origin and Progress of Letters." The great singularity of this volume is "a new species of biography never attempted before in English." This consists of the lives of "English Penmen," otherwise writing-masters! If some have foolishly enough imagined that the sedentary lives of authors are void of interest from deficient incident and interesting catastrophe, what must they think of the barren labours of those who, in the degree they become eminent, to use their own style, in the art of "dish, dash, long-tail fly," the less they become interesting to the public; for what can the most skilful writing-master do but wear away his life in leaning over his pupil's copy, or sometimes snatch a pen to decorate the margin, though he cannot compose the page? Montaigne has a very original notion on writing-masters: he says that some of those caligraphers who had obtained promotion by their excellence in the art, afterwards affected to write carelessly, lest their promotion should be suspected to have been owing to such an ordinary acquisition!

Massey is an enthusiast, fortunately for his subject. He considers that there are schools of writing, as well as of painting or sculpture; and expatiates with the eye of fraternal feeling on "a natural genius, a tender stroke, a grand performance, a bold striking freedom, and a liveliness in the sprigged letters, and pencilled knots and flourishes;" while this Vasari of writing-masters relates the controversies and the libels of many a rival pen-nibber. "George Shelley, one of the most celebrated worthies who have made a shining figure in the commonwealth of English caligraphy, born I suppose of obscure parents, because brought up in Christ's Hospital, yet under the humble blue-coat he laid the foundation of his caligraphic excellence and lasting fame, for he was elected writing-master to the hospital." Shelley published his "Natural Writing;" but, alas! Snell, another blue-coat, transcended the other. He was a genius who would "bear no brother near the throne."--"I have been informed that there were jealous heart-burnings, if not bickerings, between him and Col. Ayres, another of our great reformers in the writing commonweal, both eminent men, yet, like our most celebrated poets Pope and Addison, or, to carry the comparison still higher, like Cæsar and Pompey, one could bear no superior, and the other no equal." Indeed, the great Snell practised a little stratagem against Mr. Shelley, for which, if writing-masters held courts-martial, this hero ought to have appeared before his brothers. In one of his works he procured a number of friends to write letters, in which Massey confesses "are some satyrical strokes upon Shelley," as if he had arrogated too much to himself in his book of "Natural Writing." They find great fault with pencilled knots and sprigged letters. Shelley, who was an advocate for ornaments in fine penmanship, which Snell utterly rejected, had parodied a well-known line of Herbert's in favour of his favourite decorations:--

A Knot may take him who from letters flies, And turn delight into an exercise.

These reflections created ill-blood, and even an open difference amongst several of the superior artists in writing. The commanding genius of Snell had a more terrific contest when he published his "Standard Rules," pretending to have demonstrated them as Euclid would. "This proved a bone of contention, and occasioned a terrific quarrel between Mr. Snell and Mr. Clark. This quarrel about 'Standard Rules' ran so high between them, that they could scarce forbear scurrilous language therein, and a treatment of each other unbecoming gentlemen! Both sides in this dispute had their abettors; and to say which had the most truth and reason, non nostrum est tantas componere lites; perhaps both parties might be too fond of their own schemes. They should have left them to people to choose which they liked best." A candid politician is our Massey, and a philosophical historian too; for he winds up the whole story of this civil war by describing its result, which happened as all such great controversies have ever closed. "Who now-a-days takes those Standard Rules, either one or the other, for their guide in writing?" This is the finest lesson ever offered to the furious heads of parties, and to all their men; let them meditate on the nothingness of their "Standard Rules," by the fate of Mr. Snell.

It was to be expected, when once these writing-masters imagined that they were artists, that they would be infected with those plague-spots of genius--envy, detraction, and all the jalousie du métier. And such to this hour we find them! An extraordinary scene of this nature has long been exhibited in my neighbourhood, where two doughty champions of the quill have been posting up libels in their windows respecting the inventor of a new art of writing, the Carstairian, or the Lewisian? When the great German philosopher asserted that he had discovered the method of fluxions before Sir Isaac, and when the dispute grew so violent that even the calm Newton sent a formal defiance in set terms, and got even George the Second to try to arbitrate (who would rather have undertaken a campaign), the method of fluxions was no more cleared up than the present affair between our two heroes of the quill.

A recent instance of one of these egregious caligraphers may be told of the late Tomkins. This vainest of writing-masters dreamed through life that penmanship was one of the fine arts, and that a writing-master should be seated with his peers in the Academy! He bequeathed to the British Museum his opus magnum--a copy of Macklin's Bible, profusely embellished with the most beautiful and varied decorations of his pen; and as he conceived that both the workman and the work would alike be darling objects with posterity, he left something immortal with the legacy, his fine bust, by Chantrey, unaccompanied by which they were not to receive the unparalleled gift! When Tomkins applied to have his bust, our great sculptor abated the usual price, and, courteously kind to the feelings of the man, said that he considered Tomkins as an artist! It was the proudest day of the life of our writing-master!

But an eminent artist and wit now living, once looking on this fine bust of Tomkins, declared, that "this man had died for want of a dinner!"--a fate, however, not so lamentable as it appeared! Our penman had long felt that he stood degraded in the scale of genius by not being received at the Academy, at least among the class of engravers; the next approach to academic honour he conceived would be that of appearing as a guest at their annual dinner. These invitations are as limited as they are select, and all the Academy persisted in considering Tomkins as a writing-master! Many a year passed, every intrigue was practised, every remonstrance was urged, every stratagem of courtesy was tried; but never ceasing to deplore the failure of his hopes, it preyed on his spirits, and the luckless caligrapher went down to his grave--without dining at the Academy! This authentic anecdote has been considered as "satire improperly directed"--by some friend of Mr. Tomkins--but the criticism is much too grave! The foible of Mr. Tomkins as a writing-master presents a striking illustration of the class of men here delineated. I am a mere historian--and am only responsible for the veracity of this fact. That "Mr. Tomkins lived in familiar intercourse with the Royal Academicians of his day, and was a frequent guest at their private tables," and moreover was a most worthy man, I believe--but is it less true that he was ridiculously mortified by being never invited to the Academic dinner, on account of his caligraphy? He had some reason to consider that his art was of the exalted class to which he aspired to raise it, when this friend concludes his eulogy of this writing-master thus--"Mr. Tomkins, as an artist, stood foremost in his own profession, and his name will be handed down to posterity with the Heroes and Statesmen, whose excellences his penmanship has contributed to illustrate and to commemorate." I always give the Pour and the Contre!

Such men about such things have produced public contests, combats a l'outrance, where much ink was spilled by the knights in a joust of goose-quills; these solemn trials have often occurred in the history of writing-masters, which is enlivened by public defiances, proclamations, and judicial trials by umpires! The prize was usually a golden pen of some value. One as late as in the reign of Anne took place between Mr. German and Mr. More. German having courteously insisted that Mr. More should set the copy, he thus set it, ingeniously quaint!

As more, and MORE, our understanding clears, So more and more our ignorance appears.

The result of this pen-combat was really lamentable; they displayed such an equality of excellence that the umpires refused to decide, till one of them espied that Mr. German had omitted the tittle of an i! But Mr. More was evidently a man of genius, not only by his couplet, but in his "Essay on the Invention of Writing," where occurs this noble passage: "Art with me is of no party. A noble emulation I would cherish, while it proceeded neither from, nor to malevolence. Bales had his Johnson, Norman his Mason, Ayres his Matlock and his Shelley; yet Art the while was no sufferer. The busybody who officiously employs himself in creating misunderstandings between artists, may be compared to a turn-stile, which stands in every man's way, yet hinders nobody; and he is the slanderer who gives ear to the slander."[109]

Among these knights of the "Plume volante," whose chivalric exploits astounded the beholders, must be distinguished Peter Bales in his joust with David Johnson. In this tilting-match the guerdon of caligraphy was won by the greatest of caligraphers; its arms were assumed by the victor, azure, a pen or; while the "golden pen," carried away in triumph, was painted with a hand over the door of the caligrapher. The history of this renowned encounter was only traditionally known, till with my own eyes I pondered on this whole trial of skill in the precious manuscript of the champion himself; who, like Cæsar, not only knew how to win victories, but also to record them. Peter Bales was a hero of such transcendent eminence, that his name has entered into our history. Holinshed chronicles one of his curiosities of microscopic writing at a time when the taste prevailed for admiring writing which no eye could read! In the compass of a silver penny this caligrapher put more things than would fill several of these pages. He presented Queen Elizabeth with the manuscript set in a ring of gold covered with a crystal; he had also contrived a magnifying glass of such power, that, to her delight and wonder, her majesty read the whole volume, which she held on her thumb-nail, and "commended the same to the lords of the council and the ambassadors;" and frequently, as Peter often heard, did her majesty vouchsafe to wear this caligraphic ring.[110]

"Some will think I labour on a cobweb"--modestly exclaimed Bales in his narrative, and his present historian much fears for himself! The reader's gratitude will not be proportioned to my pains, in condensing such copious pages into the size of a "silver penny," but without its worth!

For a whole year had David Johnson affixed a challenge "To any one who should take exceptions to this my writing and teaching." He was a young friend of Bales, daring and longing for an encounter; yet Bales was magnanimously silent, till he discovered that he was "doing much less in writing and teaching" since this public challenge was proclaimed! He then set up his counter-challenge, and in one hour afterwards Johnson arrogantly accepted it, "in a most despiteful and disgraceful manner." Bales's challenge was delivered "in good terms." "To all Englishmen and strangers." It was to write for a gold pen of twenty pounds value in all kinds of hands, "best, straightest, and fastest," and most kind of ways; "a full, a mean, a small, with line, and without line; in a slow set hand, a mean facile hand, and a fast running hand;" and further, "to write truest and speediest, most secretary and clerk-like, from a man's mouth, reading or pronouncing, either English or Latin."

Young Johnson had the hardihood now of turning the tables on his great antagonist, accusing the veteran Bales of arrogance. Such an absolute challenge, says he, was never witnessed by man, "without exception of any in the world!" And a few days after meeting Bales, "of set purpose to affront and disgrace him what he could, showed Bales a piece of writing of secretary's hand, which he had very much laboured in fine abortive parchment,"[111] uttering to the challenger these words: "Mr. Bales, give me one shilling out of your purse, and if within six months you better, or equal this piece of writing, I will give you forty pounds for it." This legal deposit of the shilling was made, and the challenger, or appellant, was thereby bound by law to the performance.

The day before the trial a printed declaration was affixed throughout the city, taunting Bales's "proud poverty," and his pecuniary motives, as "a thing ungentle, base, and mercenary, and not answerable to the dignity of the golden pen!" Johnson declares he would maintain his challenge for a thousand pounds more, but for the respondent's inability to perform a thousand groats. Bales retorts on the libel; declares it as a sign of his rival's weakness, "yet who so bold as blind Bayard, that hath not a word of Latin to cast at a dog, or say Bo! to a goose!"

On Michaelmas day, 1595, the trial opened before five judges: the appellant and the respondent appeared at the appointed place, and an ancient gentleman was intrusted with "the golden pen." In the first trial, for the manner of teaching scholars, after Johnson had taught his pupil a fortnight, he would not bring him forward! This was awarded in favour of Bales.

The second, for secretary and clerk-like writing, dictating to them both in English and in Latin, Bales performed best, being first done; written straightest without line, with true orthography: the challenger himself confessing that he wanted the Latin tongue, and was no clerk!

The third and last trial for fair writing in sundry kinds of hands, the challenger prevailed for the beauty and most "authentic proportion," and for the superior variety of the Roman hand. In the court hand the respondent exceeded the appellant, and likewise in the set text; and in bastard secretary was also somewhat perfecter.

At length Bales, perhaps perceiving an equilibrium in the judicial decision, to overwhelm his antagonist presented what he distinguishes as his "masterpiece," composed of secretary and Roman hand four ways varied, and offering the defendant to let pass all his previous advantages if he could better this specimen of caligraphy! The challenger was silent! At this moment some of the judges perceiving that the decision must go in favour of Bales, in consideration of the youth of the challenger, lest he might be disgraced to the world, requested the other judges not to pass judgment in public. Bales assures us, that he in vain remonstrated; for by these means the winning of the golden pen might not be so famously spread as otherwise it would have been. To Bales the prize was awarded. But our history has a more interesting close; the subtle Machiavelism of the first challenger!

When the great trial had closed, and Bales, carrying off the golden pen, exultingly had it painted and set up for his sign, the baffled challenger went about reporting that he had won the golden pen, but that the defendant had obtained the same by "plots and shifts, and other base and cunning practices." Bales vindicated his claim, and offered to show the world his "masterpiece" which had acquired it. Johnson issued an "Appeal to all Impartial Penmen," which he spread in great numbers through the city for ten days, a libel against the judges and the victorious defendant! He declared that there had been a subtle combination with one of the judges concerning the place of trial; which he expected to have been "before penmen," but not before a multitude like a stage-play, and shouts and tumults, with which the challenger had hitherto been unacquainted. The judges were intended to be twelve; but of the five, four were the challenger's friends, honest gentlemen, but unskilled in judging of most hands; and he offered again forty pounds to be allowed in six months to equal Bales's masterpiece. And he closes his "appeal" by declaring that Bales had lost in several parts of the trial, neither did the judges deny that Bales possessed himself of the golden pen by a trick! Before judgment was awarded, alleging the sickness of his wife to be extreme, he desired she might have a sight of the golden pen to comfort her! The ancient gentleman who was the holder, taking the defendant's word, allowed the golden pen to be carried to the sick wife; and Bales immediately pawned it, and afterwards, to make sure work, sold it at a great loss, so that when the judges met for their definite sentence, nor pen nor pennyworth was to be had! The judges being ashamed of their own conduct, were compelled to give such a verdict as suited the occasion.

Bales rejoins: he publishes to the universe the day and the hour when the judges brought the golden pen to his house, and while he checks the insolence of this Bobadil, to show himself no recreant, assumes the golden pen for his sign.

Such is the shortest history I could contrive of this chivalry of the pen; something mysteriously clouds over the fate of the defendant; Bales's history, like Cæsar's, is but an ex-parte evidence. Who can tell whether he has not slurred over his defeats, and only dwelt on his victories?

There is a strange phrase connected with the art of the caligrapher, which I think may be found in most, if not in all modern languages, to write like an angel! Ladies have been frequently compared with angels; they are beautiful as angels, and sing and dance like angels; but, however intelligible these are, we do not so easily connect penmanship with the other celestial accomplishments. This fanciful phrase, however, has a very human origin. Among those learned Greeks who emigrated to Italy, and afterwards into France, in the reign of Francis I., was one Angelo Vergecio, whose beautiful caligraphy excited the admiration of the learned. The French monarch had a Greek fount cast, modelled by his writing. The learned Henry Stephens, who, like our Porson for correctness and delicacy, was one of the most elegant writers of Greek, had learnt the practice from our Angelo. His name became synonymous for beautiful writing, and gave birth to the vulgar proverb or familiar phrase to write like an angel!

FOOTNOTES:

[109] I have not met with More's book, and am obliged to transcribe this from the Biog. Brit.

[110] Howes, in his Chronicle under date 1576, has thus narrated the story:--"A strange piece of work, and almost incredible, was brought to pass by an Englishman from within the city of London, and a clerk of the Chancery, named Peter Bales, who by his industry and practice of his pen contrived and writ, within the compass of a penny, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, a prayer to God, a prayer for the queen, his posy, his name, the day of the month, the year of our Lord, and the reign of the queen: and at Hampton Court he presented the same to the queen's majesty."

[111] This was written in the reign of Elizabeth. Holyoke notices "virgin-perchment made of an abortive skin; membrana virgo." Peacham, on "Drawing," calls parchment simply an abortive.

THE ITALIAN HISTORIANS.

It is remarkable that the country which has long lost its political independence may be considered as the true parent of modern history. The greater part of their historians have abstained from the applause of their contemporaries, while they have not the less elaborately composed their posthumous folios, consecrated solely to truth and posterity! The true principles of national glory are opened by the grandeur of the minds of these assertors of political freedom. It was their indignant spirit, seeking to console its injuries by confiding them to their secret manuscripts, which raised up this singular phenomenon in the literary world.

Of the various causes which produced such a lofty race of patriots, one is prominent. The proud recollections of their Roman fathers often troubled the dreams of the sons. The petty rival republics, and the petty despotic principalities, which had started up from some great families, who at first came forward as the protectors of the people from their exterior enemies or their interior factions, at length settled into a corruption of power; a power which had been conferred on them to preserve liberty itself! These factions often shook, by their jealousies, their fears, and their hatreds, that divided land, which groaned whenever they witnessed the "Ultramontanes" descending from their Alps and their Apennines. Petrarch, in a noble invective, warmed by Livy and ancient Rome, impatiently beheld the French and the Germans passing the mounts. "Enemies," he cries, "so often conquered prepare to strike with swords which formerly served us to raise our trophies: shall the mistress of the world bear chains forged by hands which she has so often bound to their backs?" Machiavel, in his "Exhortations to Free Italy from the Barbarians," rouses his country against their changeable masters, the Germans, the French, and the Spaniards; closing with the verse of Petrarch, that short shall be the battle for which virtue arms to show the world--

che l' antico valore Ne gl' Italici cuor non è ancor morto.

Nor has this sublime patriotism declined even in more recent times; I cannot resist from preserving in this place a sonnet by Filicaja, which I could never read without participating in the agitation of the writer for the ancient glory of his degenerated country! The energetic personification of the close perhaps surpasses even his more celebrated sonnet, preserved in Lord Byron's notes to the fourth canto of "Childe Harold."

Dov' è ITALIA, il tuo braccio? e a che ti servi Tu dell' altrui? non è s' io scorgo il vero, Di chi t' offende il defensor men fero: Ambe nemici sono, ambo fur servi. Così dunque l' onor, così conservi Gli avanzi tu del glorioso Impero? Cosi al valor, cosi al valor primiero Che a te fede giurò, la fede osservi? Or va; repudia il valor prisco, e sposa L' ozio, e fra il sangue, i gemiti, e le strida Nel periglio maggior dormi e riposa! Dormi, Adultera vil! fin che omicida Spada ultrice ti svegli, e sonnacchiosa, E nuda in braccio al tuo fedel t'uccida!

Oh, Italy! where is thine arm? What purpose serves So to be helped by others? Deem I right, Among offenders thy defender stands? Both are thy enemies--both were thy servants! Thus dost thou honour--thus dost thou preserve The mighty boundaries of the glorious empire? And thus to Valour, to thy pristine Valour That swore its faith to thee, thy faith thou keep'st? Go! and divorce thyself from thy old Valiance, And marry Idleness: and midst the blood, The heavy groans and cries of agony, In thy last danger sleep, and seek repose! Sleep, vile Adulteress! the homicidal sword Vengeful shall waken thee! and lull'd to slumber, While naked in thy minion's arms, shall strike!

Among the domestic contests of Italy the true principles of political freedom were developed; and in that country we may find the origin of that PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY which includes so many important views and so many new results unknown to the ancients.

Machiavel seems to have been the first writer who discovered the secret of what may be called comparative history. He it was who first sought in ancient history for the materials which were to illustrate the events of his own times, by fixing on analogous facts, similar personages, and parallel periods. This was enlarging the field of history, and opening a new combination for philosophical speculation. His profound genius advanced still further; he not only explained modern by ancient history, but he deduced those results or principles founded on this new sort of evidence which guided him in forming his opinions. History had hitherto been, if we except Tacitus, but a story well told; and by writers of limited capacity, the detail and number of facts had too often been considered as the only valuable portion of history. An erudition of facts is not the philosophy of history; an historian unskilful in the art of applying his facts amasses impure ore, which he cannot strike into coin. The chancellor D'Aguesseau, in his instructions to his son on the study of history, has admirably touched on this distinction. "Minds which are purely historical mistake a fact for an argument; they are so accustomed to satisfy themselves by repeating a great number of facts and enriching their memory, that they become incapable of reasoning on principles. It often happens that the result of their knowledge breeds confusion and universal indecision; for their facts, often contradictory, only raise up doubts. The superfluous and the frivolous occupy the place of what is essential and solid, or at least so overload and darken it that we must sail with them in a sea of trifles to get to firm land. Those who only value the philosophical part of history fall into an opposite extreme; they judge of what has been done by that which should be done; while the others always decide on what should be done by that which has been: the first are the dupes of their reasoning, the second of the facts which they mistake for reasoning. We should not separate two things which ought always to go in concert, and mutually lend an aid, reason and example! Avoid equally the contempt of some philosophers for the science of facts, and the distaste or the incapacity which those who confine themselves to facts often contract for whatever depends on pure reasoning. True and solid philosophy should direct us in the study of history, and the study of history should give perfection to philosophy." Such was the enlightened opinion, as far back as at the beginning of the seventeenth century, of the studious chancellor of France, before the more recent designation of Philosophical History was so generally received, and so familiar on our title-pages.

From the moment that the Florentine secretary conceived the idea that the history of the Roman people, opening such varied spectacles of human nature, served as a point of comparison to which he might perpetually recur to try the analogous facts of other nations and the events passing under his own eye, a new light broke out and ran through the vast extents of history. The maturity of experience seemed to have been obtained by the historian in his solitary meditation. Livy in the grandeur of Rome, and Tacitus in its fated decline, exhibited for Machiavel a moving picture of his own republics--the march of destiny in all human governments! The text of Livy and Tacitus revealed to him many an imperfect secret--the fuller truth he drew from the depth of his own observations on his own times. In Machiavel's "Discourses on Livy" we may discover the foundations of our Philosophical History.

The example of Machiavel, like that of all creative genius, influenced the character of his age, and his history of Florence produced an emulative spirit among a new dynasty of historians.

The Italian historians have proved themselves to be an extraordinary race, for they devoted their days to the composition of historical works which they were certain could not see the light during their lives! They nobly determined that their works should be posthumous, rather than be compelled to mutilate them for the press. These historians were rather the saints than the martyrs of history; they did not always personally suffer for truth, but during their protracted labour they sustained their spirit by anticipating their glorified after-state.

Among these Italian historians must be placed the illustrious Guicciardini, the friend of Machiavel. No perfect edition of this historian existed till recent times. The history itself was posthumous; nor did his nephew venture to publish it till twenty years after the historian's death. He only gave the first sixteen books, and these castrated. The obnoxious passages consisted of some statements relating to the papal court, then so important in the affairs of Europe; some account of the origin and progress of the papal power; some eloquent pictures of the abuses and disorders of that corrupt court; and some free caricatures on the government of Florence. The precious fragments were fortunately preserved in manuscript, and the Protestants procured transcripts which they published separately, but which were long very rare.[112] All the Italian editions continued to be reprinted in the same truncated condition, and appear only to have been reinstated in the immortal history so late as in 1775! Thus, it required two centuries before an editor could venture to give the world the pure and complete text of the manuscript of the lieutenant-general of the papal army, who had been so close and so indignant an observer of the Roman cabinet.

Adriani, whom his son entitles gentiluomo Fiorentino, the writer of the pleasing dissertation "on the Ancient Painters noticed by Pliny," prefixed to his friend Vasari's biographies, wrote as a continuation of Guicciardini, a history of his own times in twenty-two books, of which Denina gives the highest character for its moderate spirit, and from which De Thou has largely drawn, and commends for its authenticity. Our author, however, did not venture to publish his history during his lifetime: it was after his death that his son became the editor.

Nardi, of a noble family and high in office, famed for a translation of Livy which rivals its original in the pleasure it affords, in his retirement from public affairs wrote a history of Florence, which closes with the loss of the liberty of his country in 1531. It was not published till fifty years after his death; even then the editors suppressed many passages which are found in manuscript in the libraries of Florence and Venice, with other historical documents of this noble and patriotic historian.

About the same time the senator Philip Nerli was writing his "Commentarj de' fatti civili," which had occurred in Florence. He gave them with his dying hand to his nephew, who presented the MSS. to the Grand Duke; yet, although this work is rather an apology than a crimination of the Medici family for their ambitious views and their overgrown power, probably some state-reason interfered to prevent the publication, which did not take place till 150 years after the death of the historian!

Bernardo Segni composed a history of Florence still more valuable, which shared the same fate as that of Nerli. It was only after his death that his relatives accidentally discovered this history of Florence, which the author had carefully concealed during his lifetime. He had abstained from communicating to any one the existence of such a work while he lived, that he might not be induced to check the freedom of his pen, nor compromise the cause and the interests of truth. His heirs presented it to one of the Medici family, who threw it aside. Another copy had been more carefully preserved, from which it was printed in 1713, about 150 years after it had been written. It appears to have excited great curiosity, for Lenglet du Fresnoy observes that the scarcity of this history is owing to the circumstance "of the Grand Duke having bought up the copies." Du Fresnoy, indeed, has noticed more than once this sort of address of the Grand Duke; for he observes on the Florentine history of Bruto that the work was not common, the Grand Duke having bought up the copies to suppress them. The author was even obliged to fly from Italy for having delivered his opinions too freely on the house of the Medici. This honest historian thus expresses himself at the close of his work:--"My design has but one end--that our posterity may learn by these notices the root and the causes of so many troubles which we have suffered, while they expose the malignity of those men who have raised them up or prolonged them, as well as the goodness of those who did all which they could to turn them away."

It was the same motive, the fear of offending the great personages or their families, of whom these historians had so freely written, which deterred Benedetto Varchi from publishing his well-known "Storie Fiorentine," which was not given to the world till 1721, a period which appears to have roused the slumbers of the literary men of Italy to recur to their native historians. Varchi, who wrote with so much zeal the history of his fatherland, is noticed by Nardi as one who never took an active part in the events he records; never having combined with any party, and living merely as a spectator. This historian closes the narrative of a horrid crime of Peter Lewis Farnese with this admirable reflection: "I know well this story, with many others which I have freely exposed, may hereafter prevent the reading of my history; but also I know, that besides what Tacitus has said on this subject, the great duty of an historian is not to be more careful of the reputation of persons than is suitable with truth, which is to be preferred to all things, however detrimental it may be to the writer."[113]

Such was that free manner of thinking and of writing which prevailed in these Italian historians, who, often living in the midst of the ruins of popular freedom, poured forth their injured feelings in their secret pages; without the hope, and perhaps without the wish, of seeing them published in their lifetime: a glorious example of self-denial and lofty patriotism!

Had it been inquired of these writers why they did not publish their histories, they might have answered, in nearly the words of an ancient sage, "Because I am not permitted to write as I would; and I would not write as I am permitted." We cannot imagine that these great men were in the least insensible to the applause they denied themselves; they were not of tempers to be turned aside; and it was the highest motive which can inspire an historian, a stern devotion to truth, which reduced them to silence, but not to inactivity! These Florentine and Venetian historians, ardent with truth, and profound in political sagacity, were writing these legacies of history solely for their countrymen, hopeless of their gratitude! If a Frenchman[114] wrote the English history, that labour was the aliment of his own glory; if Hume and Robertson devoted their pens to history, the motive of the task was less glorious than their work; but here we discover a race of historians, whose patriotism alone instigated their secret labour, and who substituted for fame and fortune that mightier spirit, which, amidst their conflicting passions, has developed the truest principles, and even the errors, of Political Freedom!

None of these historians, we have seen, published their works in their lifetime. I have called them the saints of history, rather than the martyrs. One, however, had the intrepidity to risk this awful responsibility, and he stands forth among the most illustrious and ill-fated examples of HISTORICAL MARTYRDOM!

This great historian is Giannone, whose civil history of the kingdom of Naples is remarkable for its profound inquiries concerning the civil and ecclesiastical constitution, the laws and customs of that kingdom. With some interruptions from his professional avocations at the bar, twenty years were consumed in writing this history. Researches on ecclesiastical usurpations, and severe strictures on the clergy, are the chief subjects of his bold and unreserved pen. These passages, curious, grave, and indignant, were afterwards extracted from the history by Vernet, and published in a small volume, under the title of "Anecdotes Ecclésiastiques," 1738. When Giannone consulted with a friend on the propriety of publishing his history, his critic, in admiring the work, predicted the fate of the author. "You have," said he, "placed on your head a crown of thorns, and of very sharp ones." The historian set at nought his own personal repose, and in 1723 this elaborate history saw the light. From that moment the historian never enjoyed a day of quiet! Rome attempted at first to extinguish the author with his work; all the books were seized on; and copies of the first edition are of extreme rarity. To escape the fangs of inquisitorial power, the historian of Naples flew from Naples on the publication of his immortal work. The fugitive and excommunicated author sought an asylum at Vienna, where, though he found no friend in the emperor, Prince Eugene and other nobles became his patrons. Forced to quit Vienna, he retired to Venice, when a new persecution arose from the jealousy of the state-inquisitors, who one night landed him on the borders of the pope's dominions. Escaping unexpectedly with his life to Geneva, he was preparing a supplemental volume to his celebrated history, when, enticed by a treacherous friend to a catholic village, Giannone was arrested by an order of the King of Sardinia; his manuscripts were sent to Rome, and the historian imprisoned in a fort. It is curious that the imprisoned Giannone wrote a vindication of the rights of the King of Sardinia, against the claims of the court of Rome. This powerful appeal to the feelings of this sovereign was at first favourably received; but, under the secret influence of Rome, the Sardinian monarch, on the extraordinary plea that he kept Giannone as a prisoner of state that he might preserve him from the papal power, ordered that the vindicator of his rights should be more closely confined than before; and, for this purpose, transferred his state-prisoner to the citadel of Turin, where, after twelve years of persecution and of agitation, our great historian closed his life!

Such was the fate of this historical martyr, whose work the catholic Haym describes as opera scritta con molto fuoco e troppa libertà. He hints that this history is only paralleled by De Thou's great work. This Italian history will ever be ranked among the most philosophical. But, profound as was the masculine genius of Giannone, such was his love of fame, that he wanted the intrepidity requisite to deny himself the delight of giving his history to the world, though some of his great predecessors had set him a noble and dignified example.

One more observation on these Italian historians. All of them represent man in his darkest colours; their drama is terrific; the actors are monsters of perfidy, of inhumanity, and inventors of crimes which seem to want a name! They were all "princes of darkness;" and the age seemed to afford a triumph of Manicheism! The worst passions were called into play by all parties. But if something is to be ascribed to the manners of the times, much more may be traced to that science of politics, which sought for mastery in an undefinable struggle of ungovernable political power; in the remorseless ambition of the despots, and the hatreds and jealousies of the republics. These Italian historians have formed a perpetual satire on the contemptible simulation and dissimulation, and the inexpiable crimes of that system of politics, which has derived a name from one of themselves--the great, may we add, the calumniated, MACHIAVEL?

FOOTNOTES:

[112] They were printed at Basle in 1569--at London in 1595--in Amsterdam, 1663. How many attempts to echo the voice of suppressed truth--Haym's Bib. Ital. 1803.

[113] My friend, Mr. Merivale, whose critical research is only equalled by the elegance of his taste, has supplied me with a note which proves but too well that even writers who compose uninfluenced by party feelings, may not, however, be sufficiently scrupulous in weighing the evidence of the facts which they collect. Mr. Merivale observes, "The strange and improbable narrative with which Varchi has the misfortune of closing his history, should not have been even hinted at without adding, that it is denounced by other writers as a most impudent forgery, invented years after the occurrence is supposed to have happened, by the 'Apostate' bishop Petrus Paulus Vergerius." See its refutation in Amiani, "Hist. di Fano," ii. 149, et seq. 160.

"Varchi's character as an historian cannot but suffer greatly from his having given it insertion on such authority. The responsibility of an author for the truth of what he relates should render us very cautious of giving credit to the writers of memoirs not intended to see the light till a distant period. The credibility of Vergerius, as an acknowledged libeller of Pope Paul III. and his family, appears still more conclusively from his article in Bayle, note K." It must be added, that the calumny of Vergerius may be found in Wolfius's Lect. Mem. ii. 691, in a tract de Idolo Lauretano, published 1556. Varchi is more particular in his details of this monstrous tale. Vergerius's libels, universally read at the time though they were collected afterwards, are now not to be met with, even in public libraries. Whether there was any truth in the story of Peter Lewis Farnese I know not; but crimes of as monstrous a dye occur in the authentic Guicciardini. The story is not yet forgotten, since in the last edition of Haym's Biblioteca Italiana, the best edition is marked as that which at p. 639 contains "la sceleratezza di Pier Lewis Farnese." I am of opinion that Varchi believed the story, by the solemnity of his proposition. Whatever be its truth, the historian's feeling was elevated and intrepid.

[114] Rapin.

OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS.

Our ministers and court favourites, as well as those on the Continent, practised a very impolitical custom, and one likely to be repeated, although it has never failed to cast a popular odium on their names, exciting even the envy of their equals--in the erection of palaces for themselves, which outvied those of their sovereign; and which, to the eyes of the populace, appeared as a perpetual and insolent exhibition of what they deemed the ill-earned wages of peculation, oppression, and court-favour. We discover the seduction of this passion for ostentation, this haughty sense of their power, and this self-idolatry, even among the most prudent and the wisest of our ministers; and not one but lived to lament over this vain act of imprudence. To these ministers the noble simplicity of Pitt will ever form an admirable contrast; while his personal character, as a statesman, descends to posterity unstained by calumny.

The houses of Cardinal Wolsey appear to have exceeded the palaces of the sovereign in magnificence; and potent as he was in all the pride of pomp, the "great cardinal" found rabid envy pursuing him so close at his heels, that he relinquished one palace after the other, and gave up as gifts to the monarch what, in all his overgrown greatness, he trembled to retain for himself. The state satire of that day was often pointed at this very circumstance, as appears in Skelton's "Why come ye not to Court?" and Roy's "Rede me, and be not wrothe."[115] Skelton's railing rhymes leave their bitter teeth in his purple pride; and the style of both these satirists, if we use our own orthography, shows how little the language of the common people has varied during three centuries.

Set up a wretch on high In a throne triumphantly; Make him a great state And he will play check-mate With royal majesty---- The King's Court Should have the excellence, But Hampton Court Hath the pre-eminence; And Yorke Place[116] With my Lord's grace, To whose magnificence Is all the confluence, Suits, and supplications; Embassies of all nations.

Roy, in contemplating the palace, is maliciously reminded of the butcher's lad, and only gives plain sense in plain words.

Hath the Cardinal any gay mansion? Great palaces without comparison, Most glorious of outward sight, And within decked point-device,[117] More like unto a paradise Than an earthly habitation. He cometh then of some noble stock? His father could match a bullock, A butcher by his occupation.

Whatever we may now think of the structure, and the low apartments of Wolsey's PALACE, it is described not only in his own times, but much later, as of unparalleled magnificence; and indeed Cavendish's narrative of the Cardinal's entertainment of the French ambassadors gives an idea of the ministerial prelate's imperial establishment very puzzling to the comprehension of a modern inspector. Six hundred persons, I think, were banqueted and slept in an abode which appears to us so mean, but which Stowe calls "so stately a palace." To avoid the odium of living in this splendid edifice, Wolsey presented it to the king, who, in recompense, suffered the Cardinal occasionally to inhabit this wonder of England, in the character of keeper of the king's palace;[118] so that Wolsey only dared to live in his own palace by a subterfuge! This perhaps was a tribute which ministerial haughtiness paid to popular feeling, or to the jealousy of a royal master.

I have elsewhere shown the extraordinary elegance and prodigality of expenditure of Buckingham's residences; they were such as to have extorted the wonder even of Bassompierre, and unquestionably excited the indignation of those who lived in a poor court, while our gay and thoughtless minister alone could indulge in the wanton profusion.

But Wolsey and Buckingham were ambitious and adventurous; they rose and shone the comets of the political horizon of Europe. The Roman tiara still haunted the imagination of the Cardinal: and the egotistic pride of having out-rivalled Richelieu and Olivarez, the nominal ministers but the real sovereigns of Europe, kindled the buoyant spirits of the gay, the gallant, and the splendid Villiers. But what "folly of the wise" must account for the conduct of the profound Clarendon, and the sensible Sir Robert Walpole, who, like the other two ministers, equally became the victims of this imprudent passion for the ostentatious pomp of a palace. This magnificence looked like the vaunt of insolence in the eyes of the people, and covered the ministers with a popular odium.

Clarendon House is now only to be viewed in a print; but its story remains to be told. It was built on the site of Grafton-street; and when afterwards purchased by Monk, the Duke of Albemarle, he left his title to that well-known street. It was an edifice of considerable extent and grandeur. Clarendon reproaches himself in his Life for "his weakness and vanity" in the vast expense incurred in this building, which he acknowledges had "more contributed to that gust of envy that had so violently shaken him, than any misdemeanour that he was thought to have been guilty of." It ruined his estate; but he had been encouraged to it by the royal grant of the land, by that passion for building to which he owns "he was naturally too much inclined," and perhaps by other circumstances, among which was the opportunity of purchasing the stones which had been designed for the rebuilding of St. Paul's; but the envy it drew on him, and the excess of the architect's proposed expense, had made his life "very uneasy, and near insupportable." The truth is, that when this palace was finished, it was imputed to him as a state-crime; all the evils in the nation, which were then numerous, pestilence, conflagration, war, and defeats, were discovered to be in some way connected with Clarendon House, or, as it was popularly called, either Dunkirk House, or Tangier Hall, from a notion that it had been erected with the golden bribery which the chancellor had received for the sale of Dunkirk and Tangiers.[119] He was reproached with having profaned the sacred stones dedicated to the use of the church. The great but unfortunate master of this palace, who, from a private lawyer, had raised himself by alliance even to royalty, the father-in-law of the Duke of York, it was maliciously suggested, had persuaded Charles the Second to marry the Infanta of Portugal, knowing (but how Clarendon obtained the knowledge his enemies have not revealed) that the Portuguese princess was not likely to raise any obstacle to the inheritance of his own daughter to the throne. At the Restoration, among other enemies, Clarendon found that the royalists were none of the least active; he was reproached by them for preferring those who had been the cause of their late troubles. The same reproach was incurred on the restoration of the Bourbons. It is perhaps more political to maintain active men, who have obtained power, than to reinstate inferior talents, who at least have not their popularity. This is one of the parallel cases which so frequently strike us in exploring political history; and the ultras of Louis the Eighteenth were only the royalists of Charles the Second. There was a strong popular delusion carried on by the wits and the Misses who formed the court of Charles the Second, that the government was as much shared by the Hydes as the Stuarts. We have in the state-poems, an unsparing lampoon, entitled "Clarendon's House-warming;" but a satire yielding nothing to it in severity I have discovered in manuscript; and it is also remarkable for turning chiefly on a pun of the family name of the Earl of Clarendon. The witty and malicious rhymer, after making Charles the Second demand the Great Seal, and resolve to be his own chancellor, proceeds, reflecting on the great political victim:

Lo! his whole ambition already divides The sceptre between the Stuarts and the Hydes. Behold in the depth of our plague and wars, He built him a palace out-braves the stars; Which house (we Dunkirk, he Clarendon, names) Looks down with shame upon St. James; But 'tis not his golden globe that will save him, Being less than the custom-house farmers gave him; His chapel for consecration calls, Whose sacrilege plundered the stones from Paul's. When Queen Dido landed she bought as much ground As the Hyde of a lusty fat bull would surround; But when the said Hyde was cut into thongs, A city and kingdom to Hyde belongs; So here in court, church, and country, far and wide, Here's nought to be seen but Hyde! Hyde! Hyde! Of old, and where law the kingdom divides, 'Twas our Hydes of land, 'tis now land of Hydes!

Clarendon House was a palace, which had been raised with at least as much fondness as pride; and Evelyn tells us that the garden was planned by himself and his lordship; but the cost, as usual, trebled the calculation, and the noble master grieved in silence amidst this splendid pile of architecture.[120] Even when in his exile the sale was proposed to pay his debts, and secure some provision for his younger children, he honestly tells us that "he remained so infatuated with the delight he had enjoyed, that though he was deprived of it, he hearkened very unwillingly to the advice." In 1683 Clarendon House met its fate, and was abandoned to the brokers, who had purchased it for its materials. An affecting circumstance is recorded by Evelyn on this occasion. In returning to town with the Earl of Clarendon, the son of the great earl, "in passing by the glorious palace his father built but a few years before, which they were now demolishing, being sold to certain undertakers,[121] I turned my head the contrary way till the coach was gone past by, lest I might minister occasion of speaking of it, which must needs have grieved him, that in so short a time this pomp was fallen." A feeling of infinite delicacy, so perfectly characteristic of Evelyn!

And now to bring down this subject to times still nearer. We find that Sir Robert Walpole had placed himself exactly in the situation of the great minister we have noticed; we have his confession to his brother Lord Walpole, and to his friend Sir John Hynde Cotton. The historian of this minister observes, that his magnificent building at Houghton drew on him great obloquy. On seeing his brother's house at Wolterton, Sir Robert expressed his wishes that he had contented himself with a similar structure. In the reign of Anne, Sir Robert, sitting by Sir John Hynde Cotton, alluding to a sumptuous house which was then building by Harley, observed, that to construct a great house was a high act of imprudence in any minister! It was a long time after, when he had become prime minister, that he forgot the whole result of the present article, and pulled down his family mansion at Houghton to build its magnificent edifice; it was then Sir John Hynde Cotton reminded him of the reflection which he had made some years ago: the reply of Sir Robert is remarkable--"Your recollection is too late; I wish you had reminded me of it before I began building, for then it might have been of service to me!"

The statesman and politician then are susceptible of all the seduction of ostentation and the pride of pomp! Who would have credited it? But bewildered with power, in the magnificence and magnitude of the edifices which their colossal greatness inhabits, they seem to contemplate on its image!

Sir Francis Walsingham died and left nothing to pay his debts, as appears by a curious fact noticed in the anonymous life of Sir Philip Sidney prefixed to the Arcadia, and evidently written by one acquainted with the family history of his friend and hero. The chivalric Sidney, though sought after by court beauties, solicited the hand of the daughter of Walsingham, although, as it appears, she could have had no other portion than her own virtues and her father's name. "And herein," observes our anonymous biographer, "he was exemplary to all gentlemen not to carry their love in their purses." On this he notices this secret history of Walsingham:

"This is that Sir Francis who impoverished himself to enrich the state, and indeed made England his heir; and was so far from building up of fortune by the benefit of his place, that he demolished that fine estate left him by his ancestors to purchase dear intelligence from all parts of Christendom. He had a key to unlock the pope's cabinet; and, as if master of some invisible whispering-place, all the secrets of Christian princes met at his closet. Wonder not then if he bequeathed no great wealth to his daughter, being privately interred in the choir of Paul's, as much indebted to his creditors though not so much as our nation is indebted to his memory."

Some curious inquirer may afford us a catalogue of great ministers of state who have voluntarily declined the augmentation of their private fortune, while they devoted their days to the noble pursuits of patriotic glory! The labour of this research will be great, and the volume small!

FOOTNOTES:

[115] Skelton's satire is accessible to the reader in the Rev. Alexander Dyce's edition of the poet's works. Roy's poem was printed abroad about 1525, and is of extreme rarity, as the cardinal spared no labour and expense to purchase and destroy all the copies. A second edition was printed at Wesel in 1546. Its author, who had been a friar, was ultimately burned in Portugal for heresy.

[116] The palace of Wolsey, as Archbishop of York, which he had furnished in the most sumptuous manner; after his disgrace it became a royal residence under the name of Whitehall.--Note in Dyce's ed. of Skelton's Works.

[117] Point-device, a term explained by Mr. Douce. He thinks that it is borrowed from the labours of the needle, as we have point-lace, so point-device, i.e., point, a stitch, and devise, devised or invented; applied to describe anything uncommonly exact, or worked with the nicety and precision of stitches made or devised by the needle.--Illustrations of Shakspeare, i. 93. But Mr. Gifford has since observed that the origin of the expression is, perhaps, yet to be sought for: he derives it from a mathematical phrase, à point devisé, or a given point, and hence exact, correct, &c.--Ben Jonson, vol. iv. 170. See, for various examples, Mr. Nares's Glossary, art. Point-devise.

[118] Lyson's "Environs," v. 58

[119] Burnet says, "Others called it Holland House, because he was believed to be no friend to the war: so it was given out that he had money from the Dutch."

[120] At the gateway of the Three Kings Inn, near Dover-street, in Piccadilly, are two pilasters with Corinthian capitals, which belonged to Clarendon House, and are perhaps the only remains of that edifice.

[121] An old term for contractors. Evelyn tells us they were "certain rich bankers and mechanics, who gave for it, and the ground about it, 35,000_l_." They built streets and houses on the site to their great profit, the ground comprising twenty-four acres of land.

"TAXATION NO TYRANNY!"

Such was the title of a famous political tract, which was issued at a moment when a people, in a state of insurrection, put forth a declaration that taxation was tyranny! It was not against an insignificant tax they protested, but against taxation itself! and in the temper of the moment this abstract proposition appeared an insolent paradox. It was instantly run down by that everlasting party which, so far back as in the laws of our Henry the First, are designated by the odd descriptive term of acephali, a people without heads![122] the strange equality of levellers!

These political monsters in all times have had an association of ideas of taxation and tyranny, and with them one name instantly suggests the other! This happened to one Gigli of Sienna, who published the first part of a dictionary of the Tuscan language,[123] of which only 312 leaves amused the Florentines; these having had the honour of being consigned to the flames by the hands of the hangman for certain popular errors; such as, for instance, under the word Gran Duca we find Vedi Gabelli! (see Taxes!) and the word Gabella was explained by a reference to Gran Duca! Grand-duke and taxes were synonymes, according to this mordacious lexicographer! Such grievances, and the modes of expressing them, are equally ancient. A Roman consul, by levying a tax on salt during the Punic war, was nicknamed Salinator, and condemned by "the majesty" of the people! He had formerly done his duty to the country, but the salter was now his reward! He retired from Rome, let his beard grow, and by his sordid dress and melancholy air evinced his acute sensibility. The Romans at length wanted the salter to command the army--as an injured man, he refused--but he was told that he should bear the caprice of the Roman people with the tenderness of a son for the humours of a parent! He had lost his reputation by a productive tax on salt, though this tax had provided an army and obtained a victory!

Certain it is that Gigli and his numerous adherents are wrong: for were they freed from all restraints as much as if they slept in forests and not in houses; were they inhabitants of wilds and not of cities, so that every man should be his own lawgiver, with a perpetual immunity from all taxation, we could not necessarily infer their political happiness. There are nations where taxation is hardly known, for the people exist in such utter wretchedness, that they are too poor to be taxed; of which the Chinese, among others, exhibit remarkable instances. When Nero would have abolished all taxes, in his excessive passion for popularity, the senate thanked him for his good will to the people, but assured him that this was a certain means not of repairing, but of ruining the commonwealth. Bodin, in his curious work "The Republic," has noticed a class of politicians who are in too great favour with the people. "Many seditious citizens, and desirous of innovations, did of late years promise immunity of taxes and subsidies to our people; but neither could they do it, or if they could have done it, they would not; or if it were done, should we have any commonweal, being the ground and foundation of one."[124]

The undisguised and naked term of "taxation" is, however, so odious to the people, that it may be curious to observe the arts practised by governments, and even by the people themselves, to veil it under some mitigating term. In the first breaking out of the American troubles, they probably would have yielded to the mother-country the right of taxation, modified by the term regulation (of their trade); this I infer from a letter of Dr. Robertson, who observes, that "the distinction between taxation and regulation is mere folly!" Even despotic governments have condescended to disguise the contributions forcibly levied, by some appellative which should partly conceal its real nature. Terms have often influenced circumstances, as names do things; and conquest or oppression, which we may allow to be synonymes, apes benevolence whenever it claims as a gift what it exacts as a tribute.

A sort of philosophical history of taxation appears in the narrative of Wood, in his "Inquiry on Homer." He tells us that "the presents (a term of extensive signification in the East) which are distributed annually by the bashaw of Damascus to the several Arab princes through whose territory he conducts the caravan of pilgrims to Mecca, are, at Constantinople, called a free gift, and considered as an act of the sultan's generosity towards his indigent subjects; while, on the other hand, the Arab Sheikhs deny even a right of passage through the districts of their command, and exact those sums as a tax due for the permission of going through their country. In the frequent bloody contests which the adjustment of these fees produces, the Turks complain of robbery, and the Arabs of invasion."[125]

Here we trace taxation through all its shifting forms, accommodating itself to the feelings of the different people; the same principle regulated the alternate terms proposed by the buccaneers, when they asked what the weaker party was sure to give, or when they levied what the others paid only as a common toll.

When Louis the Eleventh of France beheld his country exhausted by the predatory wars of England, he bought a peace of our Edward the Fourth by an annual sum of fifty thousand crowns, to be paid at London, and likewise granted pensions to the English ministers. Holinshed and all our historians call this a yearly tribute; but Comines, the French memoir-writer, with a national spirit, denies that these gifts were either pensions or tributes. "Yet," says Bodin, a Frenchman also, but affecting a more philosophical indifference, "it must be either the one or the other; though I confess, that those who receive a pension to obtain peace, commonly boast of it as if it were a tribute!"[126] Such are the shades of our feelings in this history of taxation and tribute. But there is another artifice of applying soft names to hard things, by veiling a tyrannical act by a term which presents no disagreeable idea to the imagination. When it was formerly thought desirable, in the relaxation of morals which prevailed in Venice, to institute the office of censor, three magistrates were elected bearing this title; but it seemed so harsh and austere in that dissipated city, that these reformers of manners were compelled to change their title; when they were no longer called censors, but I signori sopra il bon vivere della città, all agreed on the propriety of the office under the softened term. Father Joseph, the secret agent of Cardinal Richelieu, was the inventor of lettres de cachet, disguising that instrument of despotism by the amusing term of a sealed letter. Expatriation would have been merciful compared with the result of that billet-doux, a sealed letter from his majesty!

Burke reflects with profound truth--"Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favourite point, which, by way of eminence, becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered."[127]

One party clamorously asserts that taxation is their grievance, while another demonstrates that the annihilation of taxes would be their ruin! The interests of a great nation, among themselves, are often contrary to each other, and each seems alternately to predominate and to decline. "The sting of taxation," observes Mr. Hallam, "is wastefulness; but it is difficult to name a limit beyond which taxes will not be borne without impatience when faithfully applied." In plainer words, this only signifies, we presume, that Mr. Hallam's party would tax us without "wastefulness!" Ministerial or opposition, whatever be the administration, it follows that "taxation is no tyranny;" Dr. Johnson then was terribly abused in his day for a vox et præterea nihil!

Still shall the innocent word be hateful, and the people will turn even on their best friend, who in administration inflicts a new impost; as we have shown by the fate of the Roman Salinator! Among ourselves, our government, in its constitution, if not always in its practice, long had a consideration towards the feelings of the people, and often contrived to hide the nature of its exactions by a name of blandishment. An enormous grievance was long the office of purveyance. A purveyor was an officer who was to furnish every sort of provision for the royal house, and sometimes for great lords, during their progresses or journeys. His oppressive office, by arbitrarily fixing the market prices, and compelling the countrymen to bring their articles to market, would enter into the history of the arts of grinding the labouring class of society; a remnant of feudal tyranny! The very title of this officer became odious; and by a statute of Edward III. the hateful name of purveyor was ordered to be changed into acheteur or buyer![128] A change of name, it was imagined, would conceal its nature! The term often devised, strangely contrasted with the thing itself. Levies of money were long raised under the pathetic appeal of benevolences. When Edward IV. was passing over to France, he obtained, under this gentle demand, money towards "the great journey," and afterwards having "rode about the more part of the lands, and used the people in such fair manner, that they were liberal in their gifts;" old Fabian adds, "the which way of the levying of this money was after-named a benevolence." Edward IV. was courteous in this newly-invented style, and was besides the handsomest tax-gatherer in his kingdom! His royal presence was very dangerous to the purses of his loyal subjects, particularly to those of the females. In his progress, having kissed a widow for having contributed a larger sum than was expected from her estate, she was so overjoyed at the singular honour and delight, that she doubled her benevolence, and a second kiss had ruined her! In the succeeding reign of Richard III. the term had already lost the freshness of its innocence. In the speech which the Duke of Buckingham delivered from the hustings in Guildhall, he explained the term to the satisfaction of his auditors, who even then were as cross-humoured as the livery of this day, in their notions of what now we gently call "supplies." "Under the plausible name of benevolence, as it was held in the time of Edward IV., your goods were taken from you much against your will, as if by that name was understood that every man should pay, not what he pleased, but what the king would have him;" or, as a marginal note in Buck's Life of Richard III. more pointedly has it, that "the name of benevolence signified that every man should pay, not what he of his own good will list, but what the king of his good will list to take."[129] Richard III., whose business, like that of all usurpers, was to be popular, in a statute even condemns this "benevolence" as "a new imposition," and enacts that "none shall be charged with it in future; many families having been ruined under these pretended gifts." His successor, however, found means to levy "a benevolence;" but when Henry VIII. demanded one, the citizens of London appealed to the act of Richard III. Cardinal Wolsey insisted that the law of a murderous usurper should not be enforced. One of the common council courageously replied, that "King Richard, conjointly with parliament, had enacted many good statutes." Even then the citizen seems to have comprehended the spirit of our constitution--that taxes should not be raised without the consent of parliament!

Charles the First, amidst his urgent wants, at first had hoped, by the pathetic appeal to benevolences, that he should have touched the hearts of his unfriendly commoners; but the term of benevolence proved unlucky. The resisters of taxation took full advantage of a significant meaning, which had long been lost in the custom: asserting by this very term that all levies of money were not compulsory, but the voluntary gifts of the people. In that political crisis, when in the fulness of time all the national grievances which had hitherto been kept down started up with one voice, the courteous term strangely contrasted with the rough demand. Lord Digby said "the granting of subsidies, under so preposterous a name as of a benevolence, was a malevolence." And Mr. Grimstone observed, that "they have granted a benevolence, but the nature of the thing agrees not with the name." The nature indeed had so entirely changed from the name, that when James I. had tried to warm the hearts of his "benevolent" people, he got "little money, and lost a great deal of love." "Subsidies," that is grants made by parliament, observes Arthur Wilson, a dispassionate historian, "get more of the people's money, but exactions enslave the mind."

When benevolences had become a grievance, to diminish the odium they invented more inviting phrases. The subject was cautiously informed that the sums demanded were only loans; or he was honoured by a letter under the Privy Seal; a bond which the king engaged to repay at a definite period; but privy seals at length got to be hawked about to persons coming out of church. "Privy Seals," says a manuscript letter, "are flying thick and threefold in sight of all the world, which might surely have been better performed in delivering them to every man privately at home." The general loan, which in fact was a forced loan, was one of the most crying grievances under Charles I. Ingenious in the destruction of his own popularity, the king contrived a new mode of "secret instructions to commissioners."[130] They were to find out persons who could bear the largest rates. How the commissioners were to acquire this secret and inquisitorial knowledge appears in the bungling contrivance. It is one of their orders that after a number of inquiries have been put to a person, concerning others who had spoken against loan-money, and what arguments they had used, this person was to be charged in his majesty's name, and upon his allegiance, not to disclose to any other the answer he had given. A striking instance of that fatuity of the human mind, when a weak government is trying to do what it knows not how to perform: it was seeking to obtain a secret purpose by the most open and general means: a self-destroying principle!

Our ancestors were children in finance; their simplicity has been too often described as tyranny! but from my soul do I believe, on this obscure subject of taxation, that old Burleigh's advice to Elizabeth includes more than all the squabbling pamphlets of our political economists,--"WIN HEARTS, AND YOU HAVE THEIR HANDS AND PURSES!"

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Cowel's "Interpreter," art. Acephali. This by-name we unexpectedly find in a grave antiquarian law-dictionary! probably derived from Pliny's description of a people whom some travellers had reported to have found in this predicament, in their fright and haste in attempting to land on a hostile shore among savages. To account for this fabulous people, it has been conjectured they wore such high coverings, that their heads did not appear above their shoulders, while their eyes seemed to be placed in their breasts. How this name came to be introduced into the laws of Henry the First remains to be told by some profound antiquary; but the allusion was common in the middle ages. Cowel says, "Those are called acephali who were the levellers of that age, and acknowledged no head or superior."

[123] Vocabulario di Santa Caterina e della Lingua Sanese, 1717. This pungent lexicon was prohibited at Rome by desire of the court of Florence. The history of this suppressed work may be found in Il Giornale de' Letterati d' Italia, tomo xxix. 1410. In the last edition of Haym's "Biblioteca Italiana," 1803, it is said to be reprinted at Manilla, nell' Isole Fillippine!--For the book-licensers it is a great way to go for it.

[124] Bodin's "Six Books of a Commonwealth," translated by Richard Knolles, 1606. A work replete with the practical knowledge of politics, and of which Mr. Dugald Stewart has delivered a high opinion. Yet this great politician wrote a volume to anathematise those who doubted the existence of sorcerers and witches, &c., whom he condemns to the flames! See his "Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593.

[125] Wood's "Inquiry on Homer," p. 153.

[126] Bodin's "Commonweal," translated by R. Knolles, p. 148. 1606.

[127] Burke's Works, vol. i. 288.

[128] The modern word cheater is traced by some authors to this term, which soon became odious to the populace.

[129] Daines Barrington, in "Observations on the Statutes," gives the marginal note of Buck as the words of the duke; they certainly served his purpose to amuse, better than the veracious ones; but we expect from a grave antiquary inviolable authenticity. The duke is made by Barrington a sort of wit, but the pithy quaintness is Buck's.

[130] These "Private Instructions to the Commissioners for the General Loan" may be found in Rushworth, i. 418.

THE BOOK OF DEATH.

Montaigne was fond of reading minute accounts of the deaths of remarkable persons; and, in the simplicity of his heart, old Montaigne wished to be learned enough to form a collection of these deaths, to observe "their words, their actions, and what sort of countenance they put upon it." He seems to have been a little over curious about deaths, in reference, no doubt, to his own, in which he was certainly deceived; for we are told that he did not die as he had promised himself,--expiring in the adoration of the mass; or, as his preceptor Buchanan would have called it, in "the act of rank idolatry."

I have been told of a privately printed volume, under the singular title of "The Book of Death," where an amateur has compiled the pious memorials of many of our eminent men in their last moments: and it may form a companion-piece to the little volume on "Les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant." This work, I fear, must be monotonous; the deaths of the righteous must resemble each other; the learned and the eloquent can only receive in silence that hope which awaits "the covenant of the grave." But this volume will not establish any decisive principle, since the just and the religious have not always encountered death with indifference, nor even in a fit composure of mind.

The functions of the mind are connected with those of the body. On a death-bed a fortnight's disease may reduce the firmest to a most wretched state; while, on the contrary, the soul struggles, as it were in torture, in a robust frame. Nani, the Venetian historian, has curiously described the death of Innocent the Tenth, who was a character unblemished by vices, and who died at an advanced age, with too robust a constitution. Dopo lunga e terribile agonia, con dolore e con pena, seperandosi l'anima da quel corpo robusto, egli spiro ai sette di Genuaro, nel ottantesimo primo de suoi anno. "After a long and terrible agony, with great bodily pain and difficulty, his soul separated itself from that robust frame, and expired in his eighty-first year."

Some have composed sermons on death, while they passed many years of anxiety, approaching to madness, in contemplating their own. The certainty of an immediate separation from all our human sympathies may, even on a death-bed suddenly disorder the imagination. The great physician of our times told me of a general, who had often faced the cannon's mouth, dropping down in terror, when informed by him that his disease was rapid and fatal. Some have died of the strong imagination of death. There is a print of a knight brought on the scaffold to suffer; he viewed the headsman; he was blinded, and knelt down to receive the stroke. Having passed through the whole ceremony of a criminal execution, accompanied by all its disgrace, it was ordered that his life should be spared. Instead of the stroke from the sword, they poured cold water over his neck. After this operation the knight remained motionless; they discovered that he had expired in the very imagination of death! Such are among the many causes which may affect the mind in the hour of its last trial. The habitual associations of the natural character are most likely to prevail, though not always. The intrepid Marshal Biron disgraced his exit by womanish tears and raging imbecility; the virtuous Erasmus, with miserable groans, was heard crying out, Domine! Domine! fac finem! fac finem! Bayle having prepared his proof for the printer, pointed to where it lay, when dying. The last words which Lord Chesterfield was heard to speak were, when the valet, opening the curtains of the bed, announced Mr. Dayroles, "Give Dayroles a chair!" "This good breeding," observed the late Dr. Warren, his physician, "only quits him with his life." The last words of Nelson were, "Tell Collingwood to bring the fleet to an anchor." The tranquil grandeur which cast a new majesty over Charles the First on the scaffold, appeared when he declared, "I fear not death! Death is not terrible to me!" And the characteristic pleasantry of Sir Thomas More exhilarated his last moments, when, observing the weakness of the scaffold, he said, in mounting it, "I pray you, see me up safe, and for my coming down, let me shift for myself!" Sir Walter Rawleigh passed a similar jest when going to the scaffold.[131]

My ingenious friend Dr. Sherwen has furnished me with the following anecdotes of death:--In one of the bloody battles fought by the Duke d'Enghien, two French noblemen were left wounded among the dead on the field of battle. One complained loudly of his pains; the other, after long silence, thus offered him consolation: "My friend, whoever you are, remember that our God died on the cross, our king on the scaffold; and if you have strength to look at him who now speaks to you, you will see that both his legs are shot away."

At the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, the royal victim looking at the soldiers, who had pointed their fusees, said, "Grenadiers! lower your arms, otherwise you will miss, or only wound me!" To two of them who proposed to tie a handkerchief over his eyes, he said, "A loyal soldier who has been so often exposed to fire and sword can see the approach of death with naked eyes and without fear."

After a similar caution on the part of Sir George Lisle, or Sir Charles Lucas, when murdered in nearly the same manner at Colchester, by the soldiers of Fairfax, the loyal hero, in answer to their assertions and assurances that they would take care not to miss him, nobly replied, "You have often missed me when I have been nearer to you in the field of battle."

When the governor of Cadiz, the Marquis de Solano, was murdered by the enraged and mistaken citizens, to one of his murderers, who had run a pike through his back, he calmly turned round and said, "Coward, to strike there! Come round--if you dare face--and destroy me!"

Abernethy, in his Physiological Lectures, has ingeniously observed that "Shakspeare has represented Mercutio continuing to jest, though conscious that he was mortally wounded; the expiring Hotspur thinking of nothing but honour; and the dying Falstaff still cracking his jests upon Bardolph's nose. If such facts were duly attended to, they would prompt us to make a more liberal allowance for each other's conduct, under certain circumstances, than we are accustomed to do." The truth seems to be, that whenever the functions of the mind are not disturbed by "the nervous functions of the digestive organs," the personal character predominates even in death, and its habitual associations exist to its last moments. Many religious persons may have died without showing in their last moments any of those exterior acts, or employing those fervent expressions, which the collector of "The Book of Death" would only deign to chronicle; their hope is not gathered in their last hour.

Yet many have delighted to taste of death long before they have died, and have placed before their eyes all the furniture of mortality. The horrors of a charnel-house is the scene of their pleasure. The "Midnight Meditations" of Quarles preceded Young's "Night Thoughts" by a century, and both these poets loved preternatural terror.

If I must die, I'll snatch at everything That may but mind me of my latest breath; DEATH'S-HEADS, GRAVES, KNELLS, BLACKS,[132] TOMBS, all these shall bring Into my soul such useful thoughts of death, That this sable king of fears Shall not catch me unawares.--QUARLES.

But it may be doubtful whether the thoughts of death are useful, whenever they put a man out of the possession of his faculties. Young pursued the scheme of Quarles: he raised about him an artificial emotion of death: he darkened his sepulchral study, placing a skull on his table by lamp-light; as Dr. Donne had his portrait taken, first winding a sheet over his head and closing his eyes; keeping this melancholy picture by his bed-side as long as he lived, to remind him of his mortality[133]. Young, even in his garden, had his conceits of death: at the end of an avenue was viewed a seat of an admirable chiaro-oscuro, which, when approached, presented only a painted surface, with an inscription, alluding to the deception of the things of this world. To be looking at "the mirror which flatters not;" to discover ourselves only as a skeleton with the horrid life of corruption about us, has been among those penitential inventions, which have often ended in shaking the innocent by the pangs which are only natural to the damned.[134] Without adverting to those numerous testimonies, the diaries of fanatics, I shall offer a picture of an accomplished and innocent lady, in a curious and unaffected transcript she has left of a mind of great sensibility, where the preternatural terror of death might perhaps have hastened the premature one she suffered.

From the "Reliquiæ Gethinianæ,"[135] I quote some of Lady Gethin's ideas on "Death."--"The very thoughts of death disturb one's reason; and though a man may have many excellent qualities, yet he may have the weakness of not commanding his sentiments. Nothing is worse for one's health than to be in fear of death. There are some so wise as neither to hate nor fear it; but for my part I have an aversion for it; and with reason; for it is a rash inconsiderate thing, that always comes before it is looked for; always comes unseasonably, parts friends, ruins beauty, laughs at youth, and draws a dark veil over all the pleasures of life.--This dreadful evil is but the evil of a moment, and what we cannot by any means avoid; and it is that which makes it so terrible to me; for were it uncertain, hope might diminish some part of the fear; but when I think I must die, and that I may die every moment, and that too a thousand several ways, I am in such a fright as you cannot imagine. I see dangers where, perhaps, there never were any. I am persuaded 'tis happy to be somewhat dull of apprehension in this case; and yet the best way to cure the pensiveness of the thoughts of death is to think of it as little as possible." She proceeds by enumerating the terrors of the fearful, who "cannot enjoy themselves in the pleasantest places, and although they are neither on sea, river, or creek, but in good health in their chamber, yet are they so well instructed with the fear of dying, that they do not measure it only by the present dangers that wait on us.--Then is it not best to submit to God? But some people cannot do it as they would; and though they are not destitute of reason, but perceive they are to blame, yet at the same time that their reason condemns them their imagination makes their hearts feel what it pleases."

Such is the picture of an ingenious and a religious mind, drawn by an amiable woman, who, it is evident, lived always in the fear of death. The Gothic skeleton was ever haunting her imagination. In Dr. Johnson the same horror was suggested by the thoughts of death. When Boswell once in conversation persecuted Johnson on this subject, whether we might not fortify our minds for the approach of death; he answered in a passion, "No, sir! let it alone! It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives! The art of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time!" But when Boswell persisted in the conversation, Johnson was thrown into such a state of agitation, that he thundered out "Give us no more of this!" and, further, sternly told the trembling and too curious philosopher, "Don't let us meet to-morrow!"

It may be a question whether those who by their preparatory conduct have appeared to show the greatest indifference for death, have not rather betrayed the most curious art to disguise its terrors. Some have invented a mode of escaping from life in the midst of convivial enjoyment. A mortuary preparation of this kind has been recorded of an amiable man, Moncriff, the author of "Histoire des Chats" and "L'Art de Plaire," by his literary friend La Place, who was an actor in, as well as the historian of, the singular narrative. One morning La Place received a note from Moncriff, requesting that "he would immediately select for him a dozen volumes most likely to amuse, and of a nature to withdraw the reader from being occupied by melancholy thoughts." La Place was startled at the unusual request, and flew to his old friend, whom he found deeply engaged in being measured for a new peruke, and a taffety robe-de-chambre, earnestly enjoining the utmost expedition. "Shut the door!" said Moncriff, observing the surprise of his friend. "And now that we are alone, I confide my secret: on rising this morning, my valet in dressing me showed me on this leg this dark spot--from that moment I knew I was 'condemned to death;' but I had presence of mind enough not to betray myself." "Can a head so well organised as yours imagine that such a trifle is a sentence of death?"--"Don't speak so loud, my friend! or rather deign to listen a moment. At my age it is fatal! The system from which I have derived the felicity of a long life has been, that whenever any evil, moral or physical, happens to us, if there is a remedy, all must be sacrificed to deliver us from it--but in a contrary case, I do not choose to wrestle with destiny and to begin complaints, endless as useless! All that I request of you, my friend, is to assist me to pass away the few days which remain for me, free from all cares, of which otherwise they might be too susceptible. But do not think," he added with warmth, "that I mean to elude the religious duties of a citizen, which so many of late affect to contemn. The good and virtuous curate of my parish is coming here under the pretext of an annual contribution, and I have even ordered my physician, on whose confidence I can rely. Here is a list of ten or twelve persons, friends beloved! who are mostly known to you. I shall write to them this evening, to tell them of my condemnation; but if they wish me to live, they will do me the favour to assemble here at five in the evening, where they may be certain of finding all those objects of amusement, which I shall study to discover suitable to their tastes. And you, my old friend, with my doctor, are two on whom I most depend."

La Place was strongly affected by this appeal--neither Socrates, nor Cato, nor Seneca looked more serenely on the approach of death.

"Familiarise yourself early with death!" said the good old man with a smile--"It is only dreadful for those who dread it!"

During ten days after this singular conversation, the whole of Moncriff's remaining life, his apartment was open to his friends, of whom several were ladies; all kinds of games were played till nine o'clock; and that the sorrows of the host might not disturb his guests, he played the chouette at his favourite game of picquet; a supper, seasoned by the wit of the master, concluded at eleven. On the tenth night, in taking leave of his friend, Moncriff whispered to him, "Adieu, my friend! to-morrow morning I shall return your books!" He died, as he foresaw, the following day.

I have sometimes thought that we might form a history of this fear of death, by tracing the first appearances of the SKELETON which haunts our funereal imagination. In the modern history of mankind we might discover some very strong contrasts in the notion of death entertained by men at various epochs. The following article will supply a sketch of this kind.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] To these may be added Queen Anne Boleyn. Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower, in a letter to Cromwell, records that she remarked of her own execution, "'I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck;' and she put her hands about it, laughing heartily. Truly, this lady has much joy and pleasure in death."

[132] Blacks was the term for mourning in James the First and Charles the First's time.

[133] It was from this picture his stone effigy was constructed for his tomb in old St. Paul's. This mutilated figure, which withstood the great fire of London, is still preserved in the crypt of the present cathedral.

[134] A still more curious fashion in this taste for mortuary memorials originated at the court of Henry II. of France; whose mistress, Diana of Poitiers, being a widow; mourning colours of black and white became the fashion at court. Watches in the form of skulls were worn; jewels and pendants in the shape of coffins; and rings decorated with skulls and skeletons.

[135] My discovery of the nature of this rare volume, of what is original and what collected, will be found in volume ii. of this work.

HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF DEATH.

Euthanasia! Euthanasia! an easy death! was the exclamation of Augustus; it was what Antoninus Pius enjoyed; and it is that for which every wise man will pray, said Lord Orrery, when perhaps he was contemplating the close of Swift's life.

The ancients contemplated DEATH without terror, and met it with indifference. It was the only divinity to which they never sacrificed, convinced that no human being could turn aside its stroke. They raised altars to Fever, to Misfortune, to all the evils of life; for these might change! But though they did not court the presence of death in any shape, they acknowledged its tranquillity; and in the beautiful fables of their allegorical religion, Death was the daughter of Night, and the sister of Sleep; and ever the friend of the unhappy! To the eternal sleep of death they dedicated their sepulchral monuments--Æternali somno![136] If the full light of revelation had not yet broken on them, it can hardly be denied that they had some glimpses and a dawn of the life to come, from the many allegorical inventions which describe the transmigration of the soul. A butterfly on the extremity of an extinguished lamp, held up by the messenger of the gods intently gazing above, implied a dedication of that soul; Love, with a melancholy air, his legs crossed, leaning on an inverted torch, the flame thus naturally extinguishing itself, elegantly denoted the cessation of human life; a rose sculptured on a sarcophagus, or the emblems of epicurean life traced on it, in a skull wreathed by a chaplet of flowers, such as they wore at their convivial meetings, a flask of wine, a patera, and the small bones used as dice: all these symbols were indirect allusions to death, veiling its painful recollections. They did not pollute their imagination with the contents of a charnel-house. The sarcophagi of the ancients rather recall to us the remembrance of the activity of life; for they are sculptured with battles or games, in basso relievo; a sort of tender homage paid to the dead, observes Mad. de Staël, with her peculiar refinement of thinking.

It would seem that the Romans had even an aversion to mention death in express terms, for they disguised its very name by some periphrasis, such as discessit e vita, "he has departed from life;" and they did not say that their friend had died, but that he had lived; vixit! In the old Latin chronicles, and even in the Foedera and other documents of the middle ages, we find the same delicacy about using the fatal word Death, especially when applied to kings and great people. "Transire à Sæculo--Vitam suam mutare--Si quid de eo humanitùs contigerit, &c." I am indebted to Mr. Merivale for this remark. Even among a people less refined, the obtrusive idea of death has been studiously avoided: we are told that when the Emperor of Morocco inquires after any one who has recently died, it is against etiquette to mention the word "death;" the answer is "his destiny is closed!" But this tenderness is only reserved for "the elect" of the Mussulmen. A Jew's death is at once plainly expressed: "He is dead, sir! asking your pardon for mentioning such a contemptible wretch!" i.e. a Jew! A Christian's is described by "The infidel is dead!" or, "The cuckold is dead."

The ancient artists have so rarely attempted to personify Death, that we have not discovered a single revolting image of this nature in all the works of antiquity.[137]--To conceal its deformity to the eye, as well as to elude its suggestion to the mind, seems to have been an universal feeling, and it accorded with a fundamental principle of ancient art; that of never permitting violent passion to produce in its representation distortion of form. This may be observed in the Laocoon, where the mouth only opens sufficiently to indicate the suppressed agony of superior humanity, without expressing the loud cry of vulgar suffering. Pausanias considered as a personification of death a female figure, whose teeth and nails, long and crooked, were engraven on a coffin of cedar, which enclosed the body of Cypselus; this female was unquestionably only one of the Parcæ, or the Fates, "watchful to cut the thread of life." Hesiod describes Atropos indeed as having sharp teeth and long nails, waiting to tear and devour the dead; but this image was of a barbarous era. Catullus ventured to personify the Sister Destinies as three Crones; "but in general," Winkelmann observes, "they are portrayed as beautiful virgins, with winged heads, one of whom is always in the attitude of writing on a scroll." Death was a nonentity to the ancient artist. Could he exhibit what represents nothing? Could he animate into action what lies in a state of eternal tranquillity? Elegant images of repose and tender sorrow were all he could invent to indicate the state of death. Even the terms which different nations have bestowed on a burial-place are not associated with emotions of horror. The Greeks called a burying-ground by the soothing term of Coemeterion, or "the sleeping-place;" the Jews, who had no horrors of the grave, by Beth-haim, or, "the house of the living;" the Germans, with religious simplicity, "God's-field." The Scriptures had only noticed that celestial being "the Angel of Death,"--graceful, solemn, and sacred!

Whence, then, originated that stalking skeleton, suggesting so many false and sepulchral ideas, and which for us has so long served as the image of death?

When the Christian religion spread over Europe, the world changed! the certainty of a future state of existence, by the artifices of wicked worldly men, terrified instead of consoling human nature; and in the resurrection the ignorant multitude seemed rather to have dreaded retribution, than to have hoped for remuneration. The Founder of Christianity everywhere breathes the blessedness of social feelings. It is "Our Father!" whom he addresses. The horrors with which Christianity was afterwards disguised arose in the corruptions of Christianity among those insane ascetics who, misinterpreting "the Word of Life," trampled on nature; and imagined that to secure an existence in the other world it was necessary not to exist in the one in which God had placed them. The dominion of mankind fell into the usurping hands of those imperious monks whose artifices trafficed with the terrors of ignorant and hypochondriac "Kaisers and kings." The scene was darkened by penances and by pilgrimages, by midnight vigils, by miraculous shrines, and bloody flagellations; spectres started up amidst their ténèbres; millions of masses increased their supernatural influence. Amidst this general gloom of Europe, their troubled imaginations were frequently predicting the end of the world. It was at this period that they first beheld the grave yawn, and Death, in the Gothic form of a gaunt anatomy, parading through the universe! The people were frightened as they viewed, everywhere hung before their eyes, in the twilight of their cathedrals, and their "pale cloisters," the most revolting emblems of death. They startled the traveller on the bridge; they stared on the sinner in the carvings of his table and chair; the spectre moved in the hangings of the apartment; it stood in the niche, and was the picture of their sitting-room; it was worn in their rings, while the illuminator shaded the bony phantom in the margins of their "Horæ," their primers, and their breviaries. Their barbarous taste perceived no absurdity in giving action to a heap of dry bones, which could only keep together in a state of immovability and repose; nor that it was burlesquing the awful idea of the resurrection, by exhibiting the incorruptible spirit under the unnatural and ludicrous figure of mortality drawn out of the corruption of the grave.

An anecdote of these monkish times has been preserved by old Gerard Leigh; and as old stories are best set off by old words, Gerard speaketh! "The great Maximilian the emperor came to a monastery in High Almaine (Germany), the monks whereof had caused to be curiously painted the charnel of a man, which they termed--Death! When that well-learned emperor had beholden it awhile, he called unto him his painter, commanding to blot the skeleton out, and to paint therein the image of--a fool. Wherewith the abbot, humbly beseeching him to the contrary, said 'It was a good remembrance!'--'Nay,' quoth the emperor, 'as vermin that annoyeth man's body cometh unlooked for, so doth death, which here is but a fained image, and life is a certain thing, if we know to deserve it.'"[138] The original mind of Maximilian the Great is characterized by this curious story of converting our emblem of death into a parti-coloured fool; and such satirical allusions to the folly of those who persisted in their notion of the skeleton were not unusual with the artists of those times; we find the figure of a fool sitting with some drollery between the legs of one of these skeletons.[139]

This story is associated with an important fact. After they had successfully terrified the people with their charnel-house figure, a reaction in the public feelings occurred, for the skeleton was now employed as a medium to convey the most facetious, satirical, and burlesque notions of human life. Death, which had so long harassed their imaginations, suddenly changed into a theme fertile in coarse humour. The Italians were too long accustomed to the study of the beautiful to allow their pencil to sport with deformity; but the Gothic taste of the German artists, who could only copy their own homely nature, delighted to give human passions to the hideous physiognomy of a noseless skull; to put an eye of mockery or malignity into its hollow socket, and to stretch out the gaunt anatomy into the postures of a Hogarth; and that the ludicrous might be carried to its extreme, this imaginary being, taken from the bone-house, was viewed in the action of dancing! This blending of the grotesque with the most disgusting image of mortality, is the more singular part of this history of the skeleton, and indeed of human nature itself!

"The Dance of Death," erroneously considered as Holbein's, with other similar Dances, however differently treated, have one common subject which was painted in the arcades of burying-grounds, or on town-halls, and in market-places. The subject is usually "The Skeleton" in the act of leading all ranks and conditions to the grave, personated after nature, and in the strict costume of the times. This invention opened a new field for genius; and when we can for a moment forget their luckless choice of their bony and bloodless hero, who to amuse us by a variety of action becomes a sort of horrid Harlequin in these pantomimical scenes, we may be delighted by the numerous human characters, which are so vividly presented to us. The origin of this extraordinary invention is supposed to be a favourite pageant, or religious mummery, invented by the clergy, who in these ages of barbarous Christianity always found it necessary to amuse, as well as to frighten the populace; a circumstance well known to have occurred in so many other grotesque and licentious festivals they allowed the people. The practice of dancing in churches and church-yards was interdicted by several councils; but it was found convenient in those rude times. It seems probable that the clergy contrived the present dance, as more decorous and not without moral and religious emotions. This pageant was performed in churches, in which the chief characters in society were supported in a sort of masquerade, mixing together in a general dance, in the course of which every one in his turn vanished from the scene, to show how one after the other died off. The subject was at once poetical and ethical; and the poets and painters of Germany adopting the skeleton, sent forth this chimerical Ulysses of another world to roam among the men and manners of their own. A popular poem was composed, said to be by one Macaber, which name seems to be a corruption of St. Macaire; the old Gaulish version, reformed, is still printed at Troyes, in France, with the ancient blocks of woodcuts, under the title of "La Grande Danse Macabre des Hommes et des Femmes." Merian's "Todten Tanz," or the "Dance of the Dead," is a curious set of prints of a Dance of Death from an ancient painting, I think not entirely defaced, in a cemetery at Basle, in Switzerland. It was ordered to be painted by a council held there during many years, to commemorate the mortality occasioned by a plague in 1439. The prevailing character of all these works is unquestionably grotesque and ludicrous; not, however, that genius, however barbarous, could refrain in this large subject of human life from inventing scenes often imagined with great delicacy of conception, and even great pathos. Such is the new-married couple, whom Death is leading, beating a drum; and in the rapture of the hour, the bride seems, with a melancholy look, not insensible of his presence; or Death is seen issuing from the cottage of the poor widow with her youngest child, who waves his hand sorrowfully, while the mother and the sister vainly answer; or the old man, to whom Death is playing on a psaltery, seems anxious that his withered fingers should once more touch the strings, while he is carried off in calm tranquillity. The greater part of these subjects of death are, however, ludicrous; and it may be a question, whether the spectators of these Dances of Death did not find their mirth more excited than their religious emotions. Ignorant and terrified as the people were at the view of the skeleton, even the grossest simplicity could not fail to laugh at some of those domestic scenes and familiar persons drawn from among themselves. The skeleton, skeleton as it is, in the creation of genius, gesticulates and mimics, while even its hideous skull is made to express every diversified character, and the result is hard to describe; for we are at once amused and disgusted with so much genius founded on so much barbarism.[140]

When the artist succeeded in conveying to the eye the most ludicrous notions of death, the poets also discovered in it a fertile source of the burlesque. The curious collector is acquainted with many volumes where the most extraordinary topics have been combined with this subject. They made the body and the soul debate together, and ridicule the complaints of a damned soul! The greater part of the poets of the time were always composing on the subject of Death in their humorous pieces.[141] Such historical records of the public mind, historians, intent on political events, have rarely noticed.

Of a work of this nature, a popular favourite was long the one entitled "Le faut mourir, et les Excuses Inutiles qu'on apporte à cette Necessité; Le tout en vers burlesques, 1658." Jacques Jacques, a canon of Ambrun, was the writer, who humorously says of himself that he gives his thoughts just as they lie on his heart, without dissimulation--"For I have nothing double about me except my name! I tell thee some of the most important truths in laughing; it is for thee d'y penser tout à bon." This little volume was procured for me with some difficulty in France; and it is considered as one of the happiest of this class of death-poems, of which I know not of any in our literature.

Our canon of Ambrun, in facetious rhymes, and with the naïveté of expression which belongs to his age, and an idiomatic turn fatal to a translator, excels in pleasantry; his haughty hero condescends to hold very amusing dialogues with all classes of society, and delights to confound their "excuses inutiles." The most miserable of men, the galley-slave, the mendicant, alike would escape when he appears to them. "Were I not absolute over them," Death exclaims, "they would confound me with their long speeches; but I have business, and must gallop on!" His geographical rhymes are droll.

Ce que j'ai fait dans l'Afrique Je le fais bien dans l'Amérique; On l'appelle monde nouveau Mais ce sont des brides à veau; Nulle terre à moy n'est nouvelle Je vay partout sans qu'on m'appelle; Mon bras de tout temps commanda Dans le pays du Canada; J'ai tenu de tout temps en bride La Virginie et la Floride, Et j'ai bien donné sur le bec Aux Français du fort de Kebec. Lorsque je veux je fais la nique Aux Incas, aux rois de Mexique; Et montre aux Nouveaux Grénadins Qu'ils sont des foux et des badins. Chacun sait bien comme je matte Ceux du Brésil et de la Plate, Ainsi que les Taupinembous-- En un mot, je fais voir à tout Que ce que naît dans la nature, Doit prendre de moy tablature![142]

The perpetual employments of Death display copious invention with a facility of humour.

Egalement je vay rangeant, Le conseiller et le serjent, Le gentilhomme et le berger, Le bourgeois et le boulanger, Et la maistresse et la servante Et la nièce comme la tante; Monsieur l'abbé, monsieur son moine, Le petit clerc et le chanoine; Sans choix je mets dans mon butin Maistre Claude, maistre Martin, Dame Luce, dame Perrete, &c. J'en prends un dans le temps qu'il pleure A quelque autre, au contraire à l'heure Qui démésurément il rit; Je donne le coup qui le frit. J'en prends un, pendant qu'il se lève; En se couchant l'autre j'enlève. Je prends le malade et le sain L'un aujourd'hui, l'autre le demain. J'en surprends un dedans son lit, L'autre à l'estude quand il lit. J'en surprends un le ventre plein Je mène l'autre par la faim. J'attrape l'un pendant qu'il prie, Et l'autre pendant qu'il renie; J'en saisis un au cabaret Entre le blanc et le clairet, L'autre qui dans son oratoire A son Dieu rend honneur et gloire: J'en surprends un lorsqu'il se psame Le jour qu'il èpouse sa femme, L'autre le jour que plein de deuil La sieune il voit dans le cercueil; Un à pied et l'autre à cheval, Dans le jeu l'un, et l'autre au bal; Un qui mange et l'autre qui boit, Un qui paye et l'autre qui doit, L'un en été lorsqu'il moissonne, L'autre eu vendanges dans l'automne, L'un criant almanachs nouveaux-- Un qui demande son aumosne L'autre dans le temps qu'il la donne, Je prends le bon maistre Clément, Au temps qu'il prend un lavement, Et prends la dame Catherine Le jour qu'elle prend médecine.

This veil of gaiety in the old canon of Ambrun covers deeper and more philosophical thoughts than the singular mode of treating so solemn a theme. He has introduced many scenes of human life which still interest, and he addresses the "teste à triple couronne," as well as the "forçat de galère," who exclaims, "Laissez-moi vivre dans mes fers," "le gueux," the "bourgeois," the "chanoine," the "pauvre soldat," the "médecin;" in a word, all ranks in life are exhibited, as in all the "Dances of Death." But our object in noticing these burlesque paintings and poems is to show that after the monkish Goths had opened one general scene of melancholy and tribulation over Europe, and given birth to that dismal skeleton of death, which still terrifies the imagination of many, a reaction of feeling was experienced by the populace, who at length came to laugh at the gloomy spectre which had so long terrified them!

FOOTNOTES:

[136] Montfaucon, "L'Antiquité Expliquée," i. 362.

[137] A representation of Death by a skeleton appears among the Egyptians: a custom more singular than barbarous prevailed, of enclosing a skeleton of beautiful workmanship in a small coffin, which the bearer carried round at their entertainments; observing, "After death you will resemble this figure: drink, then! and be happy." A symbol of Death in a convivial party was not designed to excite terrific or gloomy ideas, but a recollection of the brevity of human life.

[138] "The Accidence of Armorie," p. 199.

[139] A woodcut preserved in Mr. Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron, i. 35.

[140] My greatly-lamented friend, the late Mr. Douce, has poured forth the most curious knowledge on this singular subject, of "The Dance of Death." This learned investigator has reduced Macaber to a nonentity, but not "The Macaber Dance," which has been frequently painted. Mr. Douce's edition is accompanied by a set of woodcuts, which have not unsuccessfully copied the exquisite originals of the Lyons wood-cutter.

[141] Goujet, "Bib. Françoise," vol. x. 185.

[142] Tablature d'un luth, Cotgrave says, is the belly of a lute, meaning "all in nature must dance to my music!"

THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEYLIN.

Peter Heylin was one of the popular writers of his times, like Fuller and Howell, who, devoting their amusing pens to subjects which deeply interested their own busy age, will not be slighted by the curious.[143] We have nearly outlived their divinity, but not their politics. Metaphysical absurdities are luxuriant weeds which must be cut down by the scythe of Time; but the great passions branching from the tree of life are still "growing with our growth."

There are two biographies of our Heylin, which led to a literary quarrel of an extraordinary nature; and, in the progress of its secret history, all the feelings of rival authorship were called out.

Heylin died in 1662. Dr. Barnard, his son-in-law, and a scholar, communicated a sketch of the author's life to be prefixed to a posthumous folio, of which Heylin's son was the editor. This Life was given by the son, but anonymously, which may not have gratified the author, the son-in-law.[144]

Twenty years had elapsed when, in 1682, appeared "The Life of Dr. Peter Heylin, by George Vernon." The writer, alluding to the prior Life prefixed to the posthumous folio, asserts that, in borrowing something from Barnard, Barnard had also "Excerpted passages out of my papers, the very words as well as matter, when he had them in his custody, as any reader may discern who will be at the pains of comparing the Life now published with what is extant before the Keimalea Ecclesiastica;" the quaint, pedantic title, after the fashion of the day, of the posthumous folio.

This strong accusation seemed countenanced by a dedication to the son and the nephew of Heylin. Roused now into action, the indignant Barnard soon produced a more complete Life, to which he prefixed "A necessary Vindication." This is an unsparing castigation of Vernon, the literary pet whom the Heylins had fondled in preference to their learned relative.[145] The long-smothered family grudge, the suppressed mortifications of literary pride, after the subterraneous grumblings of twenty years, now burst out, and the volcanic particles flew about in caustic pleasantries and sharp invectives; all the lava of an author's vengeance, mortified by the choice of an inferior rival.

It appears that Vernon had been selected by the son of Heylin, in preference to his brother-in-law, Dr. Barnard, from some family disagreement. Barnard tells us, in describing Vernon, that "No man, except himself, who was totally ignorant of the doctor, and all the circumstances of his life, would have engaged in such a work, which was never primarily laid out for him, but by reason of some unhappy differences, as usually fall out in families; and he, who loves to put his oar in troubled waters, instead of closing them up, hath made them wider."

Barnard tells his story plainly. Heylin the son, intending to have a more elaborate Life of his father prefixed to his works, Dr. Barnard, from the high reverence in which he held the memory of his father-in-law, offered to contribute it. Many conferences were held, and the son entrusted him with several papers. But suddenly his caprice, more than his judgment, fancied that George Vernon was worth John Barnard. The doctor affects to describe his rejection with the most stoical indifference. He tells us--"I was satisfied, and did patiently expect the coming forth of the work, not only term after term, but year after year--a very considerable time for such a tract. But at last, instead of the Life, came a letter to me from a bookseller in London, who lived at the sign of the Black Boy, in Fleet-street."[146]

Now, it seems that he who lived at the Black Boy had combined with another who lived at the Fleur de Luce, and that the Fleur de Luce had assured the Black Boy that Dr. Barnard was concerned in writing the Life of Heylin--this was a strong recommendation. But lo! it appeared that "one Mr. Vernon, of Gloucester," was to be the man! a gentle, thin-skinned authorling, who bleated like a lamb, and was so fearful to trip out of its shelter, that it allows the Black Boy and the Fleur de Luce to communicate its papers to any one they choose, and erase or add at their pleasure.[147]

It occurred to the Black Boy, on this proposed arithmetical criticism, that the work required addition, subtraction, and division; that the fittest critic, on whose name, indeed, he had originally engaged in the work, was our Dr. Barnard; and he sent the package to the doctor, who resided near Lincoln.

The doctor, it appears, had no appetite for a dish dressed by another, while he himself was in the very act of the cookery; and it was suffered to lie cold for three weeks at the carrier's.

But entreated and overcome, the good doctor at length sent to the carrier's for the life of his father-in-law. "I found it, according to the bookseller's description, most lame and imperfect; ill begun, worse carried on, and abruptly concluded." The learned doctor exercised that plenitude of power with which the Black Boy had invested him--he very obligingly showed the author in what a confused state his materials lay together, and how to put them in order--

Nec facundia deseret hunc, nec lucidus ordo.

If his rejections were copious, to show his good-will as well as his severity, his additions were generous, though he used the precaution of carefully distinguishing by "distinct paragraphs" his own insertions amidst Vernon's mass, with a gentle hint that "He knew more of Heylin than any man now living, and ought therefore to have been the biographer." He returned the MS. to the gentleman with great civility, but none he received back! When Vernon pretended to ask for improvements, he did not imagine that the work was to be improved by being nearly destroyed; and when he asked for correction, he probably expected all might end in a compliment.

The narrative may now proceed in Dr. Barnard's details of his doleful mortifications, in being "altered and mangled" by Mr. Vernon.

"Instead of thanks from him (Vernon), and the return of common civility, he disfigured my papers, that no sooner came into his hands, but he fell upon them as a lion rampant, or the cat upon the poor cock in the fable, saying, Tu hodie mihi discerperis--so my papers came home miserably clawed, blotted, and blurred; whole sentences dismembered, and pages scratched out; several leaves omitted which ought to be printed,--shamefully he used my copy; so that before it was carried to the press, he swooped away the second part of the Life wholly from it--in the room of which he shuffled in a preposterous conclusion at the last page, which he printed in a different character, yet could not keep himself honest, as the poet saith,

Dicitque tua pagina, fur es. MARTIAL.

For he took out of my copy Dr. Heylin's dream, his sickness, his last words before his death, and left out the burning of his surplice. He so mangled and metamorphosed the whole Life I composed, that I may say as Sosia did, Egomet mihi non credo, ille alter Sosia me malis mulcavit modis--PLAUT."

Dr. Barnard would have "patiently endured these wrongs;" but the accusation Vernon ventured on, that Barnard was the plagiary, required the doctor "to return the poisoned chalice to his own lips," that "himself was the plagiary both of words and matter." The fact is, that this reciprocal accusation was owing to Barnard having had a prior perusal of Heylin's papers, which afterwards came into the hands of Vernon: they both drew their water from the same source. These papers Heylin himself had left for "a rule to guide the writer of his life."

Barnard keenly retorts on Vernon for his surreptitious use of whole pages from Heylin's works, which he has appropriated to himself without any marks of quotation. "I am no such excerptor (as he calls me); he is of the humour of the man who took all the ships in the Attic haven for his own, and yet was himself not master of any one vessel."

Again:--

"But all this while I misunderstand him, for possibly he meaneth his own dear words I have excerpted. Why doth he not speak in plain, downright English, that the world may see my faults? For every one doth not know what is excerpting. If I have been so bold to pick or snap a word from him, I hope I may have the benefit of the clergy. What words have I robbed him of?--and how have I become the richer for them? I was never so taken with him as to be once tempted to break the commandments, because I love plain speaking, plain writing, and plain dealing, which he does not: I hate the word excerpted, and the action imported in it. However, he is a fanciful man, and thinks there is no elegancy nor wit but in his own way of talking. I must say as Tully did, Malim equidem indisertam prudentiam quam stultam loquacitatem."

In his turn he accuses Vernon of being a perpetual transcriber, and for the Malone minuteness of his history.

"But how have I excerpted his matter? Then I am sure to rob the spittle-house; for he is so poor and put to hard shifts, that he has much ado to compose a tolerable story, which he hath been hammering and conceiving in his mind for four years together, before he could bring forth his foetus of intolerable transcriptions to molest the reader's patience and memory. How doth he run himself out of breath, sometimes for twenty pages and more, at other times fifteen, ordinarily nine and ten, collected out of Dr. Heylin's old books, before he can take his wind again to return to his story! I never met with such a transcriber in all my days; for want of matter to fill up a vacuum, of which his book was in much danger, he hath set down the story of Westminster, as long as the Ploughman's Tale in Chaucer, which to the reader would have been more pertinent and pleasant. I wonder he did not transcribe bills of Chancery, especially about a tedious suit my father had for several years about a lease at Norton."

In his raillery of Vernon's affected metaphors and comparisons, "his similitudes and dissimilitudes strangely hooked in, and fetched as far as the Antipodes," Barnard observes, "The man hath also a strange opinion of himself that he is Dr. Heylin; and because he writes his Life, that he hath his natural parts, if not acquired. The soul of St. Augustin (say the schools) was Pythagorically transfused into the corpse of Aquinas; so the soul of Dr. Heylin into a narrow soul. I know there is a question in philosophy, An animæ sint oequales?--whether souls be alike? But there's a difference between the spirits of Elijah and Elisha: so small a prophet with so great a one!"

Dr. Barnard concludes by regretting that good counsel came now unseasonably, else he would have advised the writer to have transmitted his task to one who had been an ancient friend of Dr. Heylin, rather than ambitiously have assumed it, who was a professed stranger to him, by reason of which no better account could be expected from him than what he has given. He hits off the character of this piece of biography--"A Life to the half; an imperfect creature, that is not only lame (as the honest bookseller said), but wanteth legs, and all other integral parts of a man; nay, the very soul that should animate a body like Dr. Heylin. So that I must say of him, as Plutarch does of Tib. Gracchus, 'that he is a bold undertaker and rash talker of those matters he does not understand.' And so I have done with him, unless he creates to himself and me a future trouble!"

Vernon appears to have slunk away from the duel. The son of Heylin stood corrected by the superior Life produced by their relative; the learned and vivacious Barnard probably never again ventured to alter and improve the works of an author kneeling and praying for corrections. These bleating lambs, it seems, often turn out roaring lions![148]

FOOTNOTES:

[143] Dr. Heylin's principal work, "Ecclesia Restaurata; or, the History of the Reformation of the Church of England," was reprinted at the Cambridge University press, for "the Ecclesiastical History Society," in 2 vols. 8vo, 1849, under the able editorship of J. C. Robertson, M.A., Vicar of Bekesbourne, Kent. The introductory account of Heylin has enabled us to correct the present article in some particulars, and add a few useful notes.

[144] Dr. John Barnard married the daughter of Heylin, when he lived at Abingdon, near Oxford. He afterwards became rector of the rich living of Waddington, near Lincoln, of which he purchased the perpetual advowson, holding also the sinecure of Gedney, in the same county. He was ultimately made Prebendary of Asgarby, in the church of Lincoln, and died at Newark, on a journey, in August, 1683. His rich and indolent life would naturally hold out few inducements for literary labour.

[145] Mr. George Vernon, according to Wood (Athen. Oxon. iv. 606), was made Chaplain of All Souls' College, afterwards Rector of Sarsden, near Churchill, in Oxfordshire, of Bourton-on-the-Water, in Gloucestershire, and of St. John and St. Michael, in the city of Gloucester. Wood enumerates several works by him, so that he was evidently more of a "literary man" than Barnard, who enjoyed "learned ease" to a great degree, and was evidently only to be aroused by something flagitious.

[146] This was Harper, a bookseller, who had undertaken a republication of the Ecclesia Vindicata, and other tracts by Heylin, to which the Life was to be prefixed.

[147] The author had "desired Mr. Harper to communicate the papers to whom he pleases, and cross out or add what is thought convenient." A leave very few literary men would give!

[148] The most curious part of the story remains yet to be told. Dr. Barnard was mistaken in his imputations, and Vernon was not the really blamable party. We tell the tale in Mr. Robertson's words in the work already alluded to.--"Who was the party guilty of these outrages? Barnard assumed that it could be no other than Vernon; but the truth seems to be that the Rector of Bourton had nothing whatever to do with the matter. The publisher had called in a more important adviser--Dr. Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln (Ath. Oxon. iii. 567; iv. 606); the mutilations of Barnard's MS. were really the work, not of the obscure Gloucestershire clergyman, but of the indignant author's own diocesan; and we need not hesitate to ascribe the abruptness of the conclusion, and the smallness of the type in which it is printed, to Mr. Harper's economical desire to save the expense of an additional sheet." Thus "Bishop Barlow and the bookseller had made the mischief between the parties, who, instead of attempting a private explanation, attacked each other in print."

OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY.

The "Méthode pour étudier l' Histoire," by the Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy, is a master-key to all the locked-up treasures of ancient and modern history, and to the more secret stores of the obscurer memorialists of every nation. The history of this work and its author are equally remarkable. The man was a sort of curiosity in human nature, as his works are in literature. Lenglet du Fresnoy is not a writer merely laborious; without genius, he still has a hardy originality in his manner of writing and of thinking; and his vast and restless curiosity fermenting his immense book-knowledge, with a freedom verging on cynical causticity, led to the pursuit of uncommon topics. Even the prefaces to the works which he edited are singularly curious, and he has usually added bibliothèques, or critical catalogues of authors, which we may still consult for notices on the writers of romances--of those on literary subjects--on alchymy, or the hermetic philosophy; of those who have written on apparitions, visions, &c.; an historical treatise on the secret of confession, &c.; besides those "Pièces Justificatives," which constitute some of the most extraordinary documents in the philosophy of history. His manner of writing secured him readers even among the unlearned; his mordacity, his sarcasm, his derision, his pregnant interjections, his unguarded frankness, and often his strange opinions, contribute to his reader's amusement more than comports with his graver tasks; but his peculiarities cannot alter the value of his knowledge, whatever they may sometimes detract from his opinions; and we may safely admire the ingenuity, without quarrelling with the sincerity of the writer, who having composed a work on L'Usage des Romans, in which he gaily impugned the authenticity of all history, to prove himself not to have been the author, ambidexterously published another of L'Histoire justifiée contre les Romans; and perhaps it was not his fault that the attack was spirited, and the justification dull.

This "Méthode" and his "Tablettes Chronologiques," of nearly forty other publications are the only ones which have outlived their writer; volumes, merely curious, are exiled to the shelf of the collector; the very name of an author merely curious--that shadow of a shade--is not always even preserved by a dictionary-compiler in the universal charity of his alphabetical mortuary.

The history of this work is a striking instance of those imperfect beginnings, which have often closed in the most important labours. This admirable "Méthode" made its first meagre appearance in two volumes in 1713. It was soon reprinted at home and abroad, and translated into various languages. In 1729 it assumed the dignity of four quartos; but at this stage it encountered the vigilance of government, and the lacerating hand of a celebrated censeur, Gros de Boze. It is said, that from a personal dislike of the author, he cancelled one hundred and fifty pages from the printed copy submitted to his censorship. He had formerly approved of the work, and had quietly passed over some of these obnoxious passages: it is certain that Gros de Boze, in a dissertation on the Janus of the ancients in this work, actually erased a high commendation of himself,[149] which Lenglet had, with unusual courtesy, bestowed on Gros de Boze; for as a critic he is most penurious of panegyric, and there is always a caustic flavour even in his drops of honey. This censeur either affected to disdain the commendation, or availed himself of it as a trick of policy. This was a trying situation for an author, now proud of a great work, and who himself partook more of the bull than of the lamb. He who winced at the scratch of an epithet, beheld his perfect limbs bruised by erasures and mutilated by cancels. This sort of troubles indeed was not unusual with Lenglet. He had occupied his old apartment in the Bastile so often, that at the sight of the officer who was in the habit of conducting him there, Lenglet would call for his nightcap and snuff; and finish the work he had then in hand at the Bastile, where, he told Jordan, that he made his edition of Marot. He often silently restituted an epithet or a sentence which had been condemned by the censeur, at the risk of returning once more; but in the present desperate affair he took his revenge by collecting the castrations into a quarto volume, which was sold clandestinely. I find, by Jordan, in his Voyage Littéraire, who visited him, that it was his pride to read these cancels to his friends, who generally, but secretly, were of opinion that the decision of the censeur was not so wrong as the hardihood of Lenglet insisted on. All this increased the public rumour, and raised the price of the cancels. The craft and mystery of authorship was practised by Lenglet to perfection; and he often exulted, not only in the subterfuges by which he parried his censeurs, but in his bargains with his booksellers, who were equally desirous to possess, while they half feared to enjoy, his uncertain or his perilous copyrights. When the unique copy of the Méthode, in its pristine state, before it had suffered any dilapidations, made its appearance at the sale of the curious library of the censeur Gros de Boze, it provoked a Roxburgh competition, where the collectors, eagerly outbidding each other, the price of this uncastrated copy reached to 1500 livres; and even more extraordinary in the history of French bibliography, than in our own. The curious may now find all these cancel sheets, or castrations, preserved in one of those works of literary history, to which the Germans have contributed more largely than other European nations, and I have discovered that even the erasures, or bruises, are amply furnished in another bibliographical record.[150]

This Méthode, after several later editions, was still enlarging itself by fresh supplements; and having been translated by men of letters in Europe, by Coleti in Italy, by Mencken in Germany, and by Dr. Rawlinson in England, these translators have enriched their own editions by more copious articles, designed for their respective nations. The sagacity of the original writer now renovated his work by the infusions of his translators; like old Æson, it had its veins filled with green juices; and thus his old work was always undergoing the magic process of rejuvenescence.[151]

The personal character of our author was as singular as many of the uncommon topics which engaged his inquiries; these we might conclude had originated in mere eccentricity, or were chosen at random. But Lenglet has shown no deficiency of judgment in several works of acknowledged utility; and his critical opinions, his last editor has shown, have, for the greater part, been sanctioned by the public voice. It is curious to observe how the first direction which the mind of a hardy inquirer may take, will often account for that variety of uncommon topics he delights in, and which, on a closer examination, may be found to bear an invisible connexion with some preceding inquiry. As there is an association of ideas, so in literary history there is an association of research; and a very judicious writer may thus be impelled to compose on subjects which may be deemed strange or injudicious.

This observation may be illustrated by the literary history of Lenglet du Fresnoy. He opened his career by addressing a letter and a tract to the Sorbonne, on the extraordinary affair of Maria d'Agreda, abbess of the nunnery of the Immaculate Conception in Spain, whose mystical Life of the Virgin, published on the decease of the abbess, and which was received with such rapture in Spain, had just appeared at Paris, where it excited the murmurs of the pious, and the inquiries of the curious. This mystical Life was declared to be founded on apparitions and revelations experienced by the abbess. Lenglet proved, or asserted, that the abbess was not the writer of this pretended Life, though the manuscript existed in her handwriting; and secondly, that the apparitions and revelations recorded were against all the rules of apparitions and revelations which he had painfully discovered. The affair was of a delicate nature. The writer was young and incredulous; a grey-beard, more deeply versed in theology, replied, and the Sorbonnists silenced our philosopher in embryo.

Lenglet confined these researches to his portfolio; and so long a period as fifty-five years had elapsed before they saw the light. It was when Calmet published his Dissertations on Apparitions, that the subject provoked Lenglet to return to his forsaken researches. He now published all he had formerly composed on the affair of Maria d'Agreda, and two other works; the one, "Traité historique et dogmatique sur les Apparitions, les Visions, et les Révélations particulières," in two volumes; and "Recueil de Dissertations anciennes et nouvelles, sur les Apparitions, &c.," with a catalogue of authors on this subject, in four volumes. When he edited the Roman de la Rose, in compiling the glossary of this ancient poem, it led him to reprint many of the earliest French poets; to give an enlarged edition of the Arrêts d'Amour, that work of love and chivalry, in which his fancy was now so deeply embedded; while the subject of Romance itself naturally led to the taste of romantic productions which appeared in "L'Usage des Romans," and its accompanying copious nomenclature of all romances and romance-writers, ancient and modern. Our vivacious Abbé had been bewildered by his delight in the works of a chemical philosopher; and though he did not believe in the existence of apparitions, and certainly was more than a sceptic in history, yet it is certain that the "grande oeuvre" was an article in his creed; it would have ruined him in experiments, if he had been rich enough to have been ruined. It altered his health; and the most important result of his chemical studies appears to have been the invention of a syrup, in which he had great confidence; but its trial blew him up into a tympany, from which he was only relieved by having recourse to a drug, also of his own discovery, which, in counteracting the syrup, reduced him to an alarming state of atrophy. But the mischances of the historian do not enter into his history: and our curiosity must be still eager to open Lenglet's "Histoire de la Philosophie Hermétique," accompanied by a catalogue of the writers in this mysterious science, in two volumes: as well as his enlarged edition of the works of a great Paracelsian, Nicholas le Fevre. This philosopher was appointed by Charles the Second superintendent over the royal laboratory at St. James's: he was also a member of the Royal Society, and the friend of Boyle, to whom he communicated the secret of infusing young blood into old veins, with a notion that he could renovate that which admits of no second creation.[152] Such was the origin of Du Fresnoy's active curiosity on a variety of singular topics, the germs of which may be traced to three or four of our author's principal works.

Our Abbé promised to write his own life, and his pugnacious vivacity, and hardy frankness, would have seasoned a piece of autobiography; an amateur has, however, written it in the style which amateurs like, with all the truth he could discover, enlivened by some secret history, writing the life of Lenglet with the very spirit of Lenglet: it is a mask taken from the very features of the man, not the insipid wax-work of an hyperbolical éloge-maker.[153]

Although Lenglet du Fresnoy commenced in early life his career as a man of letters, he was at first engaged in the great chase of political adventure; and some striking facts are recorded, which show his successful activity. Michault describes his occupations by a paraphrastical delicacy of language, which an Englishman might not have so happily composed. The minister for foreign affairs, the Marquis de Torcy, sent Lenglet to Lille, where the court of the Elector of Cologne was then held: "He had particular orders to watch that the two ministers of the elector should do nothing prejudicial to the king's affairs." He seems, however, to have watched many other persons, and detected many other things. He discovered a captain, who agreed to open the gates of Mons to Marlborough, for 100,000 piastres; the captain was arrested on the parade, the letter of Marlborough was found in his pocket, and the traitor was broken on the wheel. Lenglet denounced a foreign general in the French service, and the event warranted the prediction. His most important discovery was that of the famous conspiracy of Prince Cellamar, one of the chimerical plots of Alberoni; to the honour of Lenglet, he would not engage in its detection unless the minister promised that no blood should be shed. These successful incidents in the life of an honourable spy were rewarded with a moderate pension.--Lenglet must have been no vulgar intriguer; he was not only perpetually confined by his very patrons when he resided at home, for the freedom of his pen, but I find him early imprisoned in the citadel of Strasburgh for six months: it is said for purloining some curious books from the library of the Abbé Bignon, of which he had the care. It is certain that he knew the value of the scarcest works, and was one of those lovers of bibliography who trade at times in costly rarities. At Vienna he became intimately acquainted with the poet Rousseau, and Prince Eugene. The prince, however, who suspected the character of our author, long avoided him. Lenglet insinuated himself into the favour of the prince's librarian; and such was his bibliographical skill, that this acquaintance ended in Prince Eugene laying aside his political dread, and preferring the advice of Lenglet to his librarian's, to enrich his magnificent library. When the motive of Lenglet's residence at Vienna became more and more suspected, Rousseau was employed to watch him; and not yet having quarrelled with his brother spy, he could only report that the Abbé Lenglet was every morning occupied in working on his "Tablettes Chronologiques," a work not worthy of alarming the government; that he spent his evenings at a violin-player's married to a Frenchwoman, and returned home at eleven. As soon as our historian had discovered that the poet was a brother spy and newsmonger on the side of Prince Eugene, their reciprocal civilities cooled. Lenglet now imagined that he owed his six months' retirement in the citadel of Strasburgh to the secret officiousness of Rousseau: each grew suspicious of the other's fidelity; and spies are like lovers, for their mutual jealousies settled into the most inveterate hatred. One of the most defamatory libels is Lenglet's intended dedication of his edition of Marot to Rousseau, which being forced to suppress in Holland, by order of the States-general; at Brussels, by the intervention of the Duke of Aremberg; and by every means the friends of the unfortunate Rousseau could contrive; was, however, many years afterwards at length subjoined by Lenglet to the first volume of his work on Romances; where an ordinary reader may wonder at its appearance unconnected with any part of the work. In this dedication, or "Éloge Historique," he often addresses "Mon cher Rousseau," but the irony is not delicate, and the calumny is heavy. Rousseau lay too open to the unlicensed causticity of his accuser. The poet was then expatriated from France for a false accusation against Saurin, in attempting to fix on him those criminal couplets, which so long disturbed the peace of the literary world in France, and of which Rousseau was generally supposed to be the writer; but of which on his death-bed he solemnly protested that he was guiltless. The coup-de-grace is given to the poet, stretched on this rack of invective, by just accusations on account of those infamous epigrams, which appear in some editions of that poet's works; a lesson for a poet, if poets would be lessoned, who indulge their imagination at the cost of their happiness, and seem to invent crimes, as if they themselves were criminals.

But to return to our Lenglet. Had he composed his own life, it would have offered a sketch of political servitude and political adventure, in a man too intractable for the one, and too literary for the other. Yet to the honour of his capacity, we must observe that he might have chosen his patrons, would he have submitted to patronage. Prince Eugene at Vienna; Cardinal Passionei at Rome; or Mons. Le Blanc, the French minister, would have held him on his own terms. But "Liberty and my books!" was the secret ejaculation of Lenglet; and from that moment all things in life were sacrificed to a jealous spirit of independence, which broke out in his actions as well as in his writings; and a passion for study for ever crushed the worm of ambition.

He was as singular in his conversation, which, says Jordan, was extremely agreeable to a foreigner, for he delivered himself without reserve on all things, and on all persons, seasoned with secret and literary anecdotes. He refused all the conveniences offered by an opulent sister, that he might not endure the restraint of a settled dinner-hour. He lived to his eightieth year, still busied, and then died by one of those grievous chances, to which aged men of letters are liable: our caustic critic slumbered over some modern work, and, falling into the fire was burnt to death. Many characteristic anecdotes of the Abbé Lenglet have been preserved in the Dictionnaire Historique, but I shall not repeat what is of easy recurrence.

FOOTNOTES:

[149] This fact appears in the account of the minuter erasures.

[150] The castrations are in Beyeri Memoriæ historico-criticæ Librorum rariorum, p. 166. The bruises are carefully noted in the Catalogue of the Duke de la Valière, 4467. Those who are curious in such singularities will be gratified by the extraordinary opinions and results in Beyer; and which after all were purloined from a manuscript "Abridgment of Universal History," which was drawn up by Count de Boulainvilliers, and more adroitly than delicately inserted by Lenglet in his own work. The original manuscript exists in various copies, which were afterwards discovered. The minuter corrections, in the Duke de la Valière's catalogue, furnish a most enlivening article in the dryness of bibliography.

[151] The last edition, enlarged by Drouet, is in fifteen volumes, but is not later than 1772. It is still an inestimable manual for the historical student, as well as his Tablettes Chronologiques.

[152] The "Dictionnaire Historique," 1789, in their article Nich. Le Fevre, notices the third edition of his "Course of Chemistry," that of 1664, in two volumes; but the present one of Lenglet du Fresnoy's is more recent, 1751, enlarged into five volumes, two of which contain his own additions. I have never met with this edition, and it is wanting at the British Museum. Le Fevre published a tract on the great cordial of Sir Walter Rawleigh, which may be curious.

[153] This anonymous work of "Mémoires de Monsieur l'Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy," although the dedication is signed G. P., is written by Michault, of Dijon, as a presentation copy to Count de Vienne in my possession proves. Michault is the writer of two volumes of agreeable "Mélanges Historiques et Philologiques;" and the present is a very curious piece of literary history. The "Dictionnaire Historique" has compiled the article of Lenglet entirely from this work; but the Journal des Sçavans was too ascetic in this opinion. Etoit-ce la peine de faire un livre pour apprendre au public qu'un homme de lettres fut espion, escroc, bizarre, fougueux, cynique, incapable d'amitié, de soumission aux loix? &c. Yet they do not pretend that the bibliography of Lenglet du Fresnoy is at all deficient in curiosity.

THE DICTIONARY OF TREVOUX.

A learned friend, in his very agreeable "Trimestre, or a Three Months' Journey in France and Switzerland," could not pass through the small town of Trevoux without a literary association of ideas which should accompany every man of letters in his tours, abroad or at home. A mind well-informed cannot travel without discovering that there are objects constantly presenting themselves, which suggest literary, historical, and moral facts. My friend writes, "As you proceed nearer to Lyons you stop to dine at Trevoux, on the left bank of the Saone. On a sloping hill, down to the water-side, rises an amphitheatre, crowned with an ancient Gothic castle, in venerable ruin; under it is the small town of Trevoux, well known for its Journal and Dictionary, which latter is almost an encyclopædia, as there are few things of which something is not said in that most valuable compilation, and the whole was printed at Trevoux. The knowledge of this circumstance greatly enhances the delight of any visitor who has consulted the book, and is acquainted with its merit; and must add much to his local pleasures."

A work from which every man of letters may be continually deriving such varied knowledge, and which is little known but to the most curious readers, claims a place in these volumes; nor is the history of the work itself without interest. Eight large folios, each consisting of a thousand closely printed pages, stand like a vast mountain, of which, before we climb, we may be anxious to learn the security of the passage. The history of dictionaries is the most mutable of all histories; it is a picture of the inconstancy of the knowledge of man; the learning of one generation passes away with another; and a dictionary of this kind is always to be repaired, to be rescinded, and to be enlarged.

The small town of Trevoux gave its name to an excellent literary journal, long conducted by the Jesuits, and to this dictionary--as Edinburgh has to its Critical Review and Annual Register, &c. It first came to be distinguished as a literary town from the Duc du Maine, as prince sovereign of Dombes,[154] transferring to this little town of Trevoux not only his parliament and other public institutions, but also establishing a magnificent printing-house, in the beginning of the last century. The duke, probably to keep his printers in constant employ, instituted the "Journal de Trévoux;" and this perhaps greatly tended to bring the printing-house into notice, so that it became a favourite with many good writers, who appear to have had no other connexion with the place; and this dictionary borrowed its first title, which it always preserved, merely from the place where it was printed. Both the journal and the dictionary were, however, consigned to the care of some learned Jesuits; and perhaps the place always indicated the principles of the writers, of whom none were more eminent for elegant literature than the Jesuits.[155]

The first edition of this dictionary sprung from the spirit of rivalry, occasioned by a French dictionary published in Holland, by the protestant Basnage de Beauval. The duke set his Jesuits hastily to work; who, after a pompous announcement that this dictionary was formed on a plan suggested by their patron, did little more than pillage Furetière, and rummage Basnage, and produced three new folios without any novelties; they pleased the Duc du Maine, and no one else. This was in 1704. Twenty years after, it was republished and improved; and editions increasing, the volumes succeeded each other, till it reached to its present magnitude and value in eight large folios, in 1771, the only edition now esteemed. Many of the names of the contributors to this excellent collection of words and things, the industry of Monsieur Barbier has revealed in his "Dictionnaire des Anonymes," art. 10782. The work, in the progress of a century, evidently became a favourite receptacle with men of letters in France, who eagerly contributed the smallest or largest articles with a zeal honourable to literature and most useful to the public. They made this dictionary their commonplace book for all their curious acquisitions; every one competent to write a short article, preserving an important fact, did not aspire to compile the dictionary, or even an entire article in it; but it was a treasury in which such mites collected together formed its wealth; and all the literati may be said to have engaged in perfecting these volumes during a century. In this manner, from the humble beginnings of three volumes, in which the plagiary much more than the contributor was visible, eight were at length built up with more durable materials, and which claim the attention and the gratitude of the student.

The work, it appears, interested the government itself, as a national concern, from the tenor of the following anecdotes.

Most of the minor contributors to this great collection were satisfied to remain anonymous; but as might be expected among such a number, sometimes a contributor was anxious to be known to his circle; and did not like this penitential abstinence of fame. An anecdote recorded of one of this class will amuse: A Monsieur Lautour du Chatel, avocat au parlement de Normandie, voluntarily devoted his studious hours to improve this work, and furnished nearly three thousand articles to the supplement of the edition of 1752. This ardent scholar had had a lively quarrel thirty years before with the first authors of the dictionary. He had sent them one thousand three hundred articles, on condition that the donor should be handsomely thanked in the preface of the new edition, and further receive a copy en grand papier. They were accepted. The conductors of the new edition, in 1721, forgot all the promises--nor thanks, nor copy! Our learned avocat, who was a little irritable, as his nephew who wrote his life acknowledges, as soon as the great work appeared, astonished, like Dennis, that "they were rattling his own thunder," without saying a word, quits his country town, and ventures, half dead with sickness and indignation, on an expedition to Paris, to make his complaint to the chancellor; and the work was deemed of that importance in the eye of government, and so zealous a contributor was considered to have such an honourable claim, that the chancellor ordered, first, that a copy on large paper should be immediately delivered to Monsieur Lautour, richly bound and free of carriage; and secondly, as a reparation of the unperformed promise, and an acknowledgment of gratitude, the omission of thanks should be inserted and explained in the three great literary journals of France; a curious instance, among others, of the French government often mediating, when difficulties occurred in great literary undertakings, and considering not lightly the claims and the honours of men of letters.

Another proof, indeed, of the same kind, concerning the present work, occurred after the edition of 1752. One Jamet l'aîné, who had with others been usefully employed on this edition, addressed a proposal to government for an improved one, dated from the Bastile. He proposed that the government should choose a learned person, accustomed to the labour of the researches such a work requires; and he calculated, that if supplied with three amanuenses, such an editor would accomplish his task in about ten or twelve years, the produce of the edition would soon repay all the expenses and capital advanced. This literary projector did not wish to remain idle in the Bastile. Fifteen years afterwards the last improved edition appeared, published by the associated booksellers of Paris.

As for the work itself, it partakes of the character of our Encyclopædias; but in this respect it cannot be safely consulted, for widely has science enlarged its domains and corrected its errors since 1771. But it is precious as a vast collection of ancient and modern learning, particularly in that sort of knowledge which we usually term antiquarian and philological. It is not merely a grammatical, scientific, and technical dictionary, but it is replete with divinity, law, moral philosophy, critical and historical learning, and abounds with innumerable miscellaneous curiosities. It would be difficult, whatever may be the subject of inquiry, to open it, without the gratification of some knowledge neither obvious nor trivial. I heard a man of great learning declare, that whenever he could not recollect his knowledge he opened Hoffman's Lexicon Universale Historicum, where he was sure to find what he had lost. The works are similar; and valuable as are the German's four folios, the eight of the Frenchman may safely be recommended as their substitute, or their supplement. As a Dictionary of the French Language it bears a peculiar feature, which has been presumptuously dropped in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie; the last invents phrases to explain words, which therefore have no other authority than the writer himself! this of Trevoux is furnished, not only with mere authorities, but also with quotations from the classical French writers--an improvement which was probably suggested by the English Dictionary of Johnson. One nation improves by another.

FOOTNOTES:

[154] It was always acknowledged as an independent state by the French kings from the time of Philip Augustus. It had its own parliament, and the privilege also of coining its own money.

[155] The house in which the Jesuits resided, having the shield of arms of their order over its portal, still remains at Trevoux.

QUADRIO'S ACCOUNT OF ENGLISH POETRY.

It is, perhaps, somewhat mortifying in our literary researches to discover that our own literature has been only known to the other nations of Europe comparatively within recent times. We have at length triumphed over our continental rivals in the noble struggles of genius, and our authors now see their works printed even at foreign presses, while we are furnishing with our gratuitous labours nearly the whole literature of a new empire; yet so late as in the reign of Anne, our poets were only known by the Latin versifiers of the "Musæ Anglicanæ;" and when Boileau was told of the public funeral of Dryden, he was pleased with the national honours bestowed on genius, but he declared that he never heard of his name before. This great legislator of Parnassus has never alluded to one of our own poets, so insular then was our literary glory! The most remarkable fact, or perhaps assertion, I have met with, of the little knowledge which the Continent had of our writers, is a French translation of Bishop Hall's "Characters of Virtues and Vices." It is a duodecimo, printed at Paris, of 109 pages, 1610, with this title Charactères de Vertus et de Vices; tirés de l'Anglois de M. Josef Hall. In a dedication to the Earl of Salisbury, the translator informs his lordship that "ce livre est la première traduction de l'Anglois jamais imprimée en aucun vulgaire"--the first translation from the English ever printed in any modern language! Whether the translator is a bold liar, or an ignorant blunderer, remains to be ascertained; at all events it is a humiliating demonstration of the small progress which our home literature had made abroad in 1610!

I come now to notice a contemporary writer, professedly writing the history of our Poetry, of which his knowledge will open to us as we proceed with our enlightened and amateur historian.

Father Quadrio's Della Storia e dell' ragione d' ogni Poesia,--is a gigantic work, which could only have been projected and persevered in by some hypochondriac monk, who, to get rid of the ennui of life, could discover no pleasanter way than to bury himself alive in seven monstrous closely-printed quartos, and every day be compiling something on a subject which he did not understand. Fortunately for Father Quadrio, without taste to feel, and discernment to decide, nothing occurred in this progress of literary history and criticism to abridge his volumes and his amusements; and with diligence and erudition unparalleled, he has here built up a receptacle for his immense, curious, and trifling knowledge on the poetry of every nation. Quadrio is among that class of authors whom we receive with more gratitude than pleasure, fly to sometimes to quote, but never linger to read; and fix on our shelves, but seldom have in our hands.

I have been much mortified, in looking over this voluminous compiler, to discover, although he wrote so late as about 1750, how little the history of English poetry was known to foreigners. It is assuredly our own fault. We have too long neglected the bibliography and the literary history of our own country. Italy, Spain, and France have enjoyed eminent bibliographers--we have none to rival them. Italy may justly glory in her Tiraboschi and her Mazzuchelli; Spain in the Bibliothecas of Nicholas Antonio; and France, so rich in bibliographical treasures, affords models to every literary nation of every species of literary history. With us, the partial labour of the hermit Anthony for the Oxford writers, compiled before philosophical criticism existed in the nation; and Warton's History of Poetry, which was left unfinished at its most critical period, when that delightful antiquary of taste had just touched the threshold of his Paradise--these are the sole great labours to which foreigners might resort, but these will not be found of much use to them. The neglect of our own literary history has, therefore, occasioned the errors, sometimes very ridiculous ones, of foreign writers respecting our authors. Even the lively Chaudon, in his "Dictionnaire Historique," gives the most extraordinary accounts of most of the English writers. Without an English guide to attend such weary travellers, they have too often been deceived by the mirages of our literature. They have given blundering accounts of works which do exist, and chronicled others which never did exist; and have often made up the personal history of our authors, by confounding two or three into one. Chaudon, mentioning Dryden's tragedies, observes, that Atterbury translated two into Latin verse, entitled Achitophel and Absalom![156]

Of all these foreign authors, none has more egregiously failed than this good Father Quadrio. In this universal history of poetry, I was curious to observe what sort of figure we made, and whether the fertile genius of our original poets had struck the foreign critic with admiration or with critical censure. But little was our English poetry known to its universal historian. In the chapter on those who have cultivated "la melica poesia in propria lingua tra, Tedeschi, Fiamminghi e Inglesi,"[157] we find the following list of English poets.

"Of John Gower; whose rhymes and verses are preserved in manuscript in the college of the most Holy Trinity, in Cambridge.

"Arthur Kelton, flourished in 1548, a skilful English poet: he composed various poems in English; also he lauds the Cambrians and their genealogy.

"The works of William Wycherly, in English prose and verse."

These were the only English poets whom Quadrio at first could muster together! In his subsequent additions he caught the name of Sir Philip Sidney with an adventurous criticism, "le sue poesie assai buone." He then was lucky enough to pick up the title--not the volume, surely--which was one of the rarest; "Fiori poetici de A. Cowley," which he calls "poesie amorose:" this must mean that early volume of Cowley's, published in his thirteenth year, under the title of "Poetical Blossoms." Further he laid hold of "John Donne" by the skirt, and "Thomas Creech," at whom he made a full pause, informing his Italians that "his poems are reputed by his nation as 'assai buone.'" He has also "Le opere di Guglielmo;" but to this Christian name, as it would appear, he had not ventured to add the surname. At length, in his progress of inquiry, in his fourth volume (for they were published at different periods), he suddenly discovers a host of English poets--in Waller, Duke of Buckingham, Lord Roscommon, and others, among whom is Dr. Swift; but he acknowledges their works have not reached him. Shakspeare at length appears on the scene; but Quadrio's notions are derived from Voltaire, whom, perhaps, he boldly translates. Instead of improving our drama, he conducted it a totale rovina nelle sue farse monstruose, che si chiaman tragedie; alcune scene vi abbia luminose e belle e alcuni tratti si trovono terribili e grandi. Otway is said to have composed a tragic drama on the subject of "Venezia Salvata;" he adds with surprise, "ma affatto regolare." Regularity is the essence of genius with such critics as Quadrio. Dryden is also mentioned; but the only drama specified is "King Arthur." Addison is the first Englishman who produced a classical tragedy; but though Quadrio writes much about the life of Addison, he never alludes to the Spectator.

We come now to a more curious point. Whether Quadrio had read our comedies may be doubtful; but he distinguishes them by very high commendation. Our comedy, he says, represents human life, the manners of citizens and the people, much better than the French and Spanish comedies, in which all the business of life is mixed up with love affairs. The Spaniards had their gallantry from the Moors, and their manners from chivalry; to which they added their tumid African taste, differing from that of other nations. I shall translate what he now adds of English comedy.

"The English, more skilfully even than the French, have approximated to the true idea of comic subjects, choosing for the argument of their invention the customary and natural objects of the citizens and the populace. And when religion and decorum were more respected in their theatres, they were more advanced in this species of poetry, and merited not a little praise, above their neighbouring nations. But more than the English and the French (to speak according to pure and bare truth) have the Italians signalised themselves." A sly, insinuating criticism! But, as on the whole, for reasons which I cannot account for, Father Quadrio seems to have relished our English comedy, we must value his candour. He praises our comedy; "per il bello ed il buono;" but, as he is a methodical Aristotelian, he will not allow us that liberty in the theatre which we are supposed to possess in parliament--by delivering whatever we conceive to the purpose. His criticism is a specimen of the irrefragable. "We must not abandon legitimate rules to give mere pleasure thereby; because pleasure is produced by, and flows from, the beautiful; and the beautiful is chiefly drawn from the good order and unity in which it consists!"

Quadrio succeeded in discovering the name of one of our greatest comic geniuses; for, alluding to our diversity of action in comedy, he mentions in his fifth volume, page 148,--"Il celebre Benjanson, nella sua commedia intitolato Bartolommeo Foicere, e in quella altra commedia intitolato Ipsum Veetz." The reader may decipher the poet's name with his Fair; but it required the critical sagacity of Mr. Douce to discover that by Ipsum Veetz we are to understand Shadwell's comedy of Epsom Wells. The Italian critic had transcribed what he and his Italian printer could not spell. We have further discovered the source of his intelligence in St. Evremond, who had classed Shadwell's comedy with Ben Jonson's. To such shifts is the writer of an universal history d' ogni Poesia miserably reduced!

Towards the close of the fifth volume we at last find the sacred muse of Milton,--but, unluckily, he was a man "di pochissima religione," and spoke of Christ like an Arian. Quadrio quotes Ramsay for Milton's vomiting forth abuse on the Roman Church. His figures are said to be often mean, unworthy of the majesty of his subject; but in a later place, excepting his religion, our poet, it is decided on, is worthy "di molti laudi."

Thus much for the information the curious may obtain on English poetry from its universal history. Quadrio unquestionably writes with more ignorance than prejudice against us: he has not only highly distinguished the comic genius of our writers, and raised it above that of our neighbours, but he has also advanced another discovery, which ranks us still higher for original invention, and which, I am confident, will be as new as it is extraordinary to the English reader.

Quadrio, who, among other erudite accessories to his work, has exhausted the most copious researches on the origin of Punch and Harlequin, has also written, with equal curiosity and value, the history of Puppet-shows. But whom has he lauded? whom has he placed paramount, above all other people, for their genius of invention in improving this art!--The English! and the glory which has hitherto been universally conceded to the Italian nation themselves, appears to belong to us! For we, it appears, while others were dandling and pulling their little representatives of human nature into such awkward and unnatural motions, first invented pulleys, or wires, and gave a fine and natural action to the artificial life of these gesticulating machines!

We seem to know little of ourselves as connected with the history of puppet-shows; but in an article in the curious Dictionary of Trevoux, I find that John Brioché, to whom had been attributed the invention of Marionnettes, is only to be considered as an improver; in his time (but the learned writers supply no date) an Englishman discovered the secret of moving them by springs, and without strings; but the Marionnettes of Brioché were preferred for the pleasantries which he made them deliver. The erudite Quadrio appears to have more successfully substantiated our claims to the pulleys or wires, or springs of the puppets, than any of our own antiquaries; and perhaps the uncommemorated name of this Englishman was that Powell, whose Solomon and Sheba were celebrated in the days of Addison and Steele; the former of whom has composed a classical and sportive Latin poem on this very subject. But Quadrio might well rest satisfied that the nation which could boast of its Fantoccini, surpassed, and must ever surpass the puny efforts of a doll-loving people!

FOOTNOTES:

[156] Even recently, il Cavaliere Onofrio Boni, in his Eloge of Lanzi, in naming the three Augustan periods of modern literature, fixes them, for the Italians, under Leo the Tenth; for the French, under Louis the Fourteenth, or the Great; and for the English, under Charles the Second!

[157] Quadrio, vol. ii. p. 416.

"POLITICAL RELIGIONISM."

In Professor Dugald Stewart's first Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy, I find this singular and significant term. It has occasioned me to reflect on those contests for religion, in which a particular faith has been made the ostensible pretext, while the secret motive was usually political. The historians, who view in religious wars only religion itself, have written large volumes, in which we may never discover that they have either been a struggle to obtain predominance, or an expedient to secure it. The hatreds of ambitious men have disguised their own purposes, while Christianity has borne the odium of loosening a destroying spirit among mankind; which, had Christianity never existed, would have equally prevailed in human affairs. Of a moral malady, it is not only necessary to know the nature, but to designate it by a right name, that we may not err in our mode of treatment. If we call that religious which we shall find for the greater part is political, we are likely to be mistaken in the regimen and the cure.

Fox, in his "Acts and Monuments," writes the martyrology of the Protestants in three mighty folios; where, in the third, "the tender mercies" of the Catholics are "cut in wood" for those who might not otherwise be enabled to read or spell them. Such pictures are abridgments of long narratives, but they leave in the mind a fulness of horror. Fox made more than one generation shudder; and his volume, particularly this third, chained to a reading-desk in the halls of the great, and in the aisles of churches, often detained the loiterer, as it furnished some new scene of papistical horrors to paint forth on returning to his fireside. The protestants were then the martyrs, because, under Mary, the protestants had been thrown out of power.

Dodd has opposed to Fox three curious folios, which he calls "The Church History of England," exhibiting a most abundant martyrology of the catholics, inflicted by the hands of the protestants; who in the succeeding reign of Elizabeth, after long trepidations and balancings, were confirmed into power. He grieves over the delusion and seduction of the black-letter romance of honest John Fox, which he says, "has obtained a place in protestant churches next to the Bible, while John Fox himself is esteemed little less than an evangelist."[158] Dodd's narratives are not less pathetic: for the situation of the catholic, who had to secrete himself, as well as to suffer, was more adapted for romantic adventures, than even the melancholy but monotonous story of the protestants tortured in the cell, or bound to the stake. These catholics, however, were attempting all sorts of intrigues; and the saints and martyrs of Dodd, to the parliament of England, were only traitors and conspirators!

Heylin, in his history of the Puritans and the Presbyterians, blackens them for political devils. He is the Spagnolet of history, delighting himself with horrors at which the painter himself must have started. He tells of their "oppositions" to monarchical and episcopal government; their "innovations" in the church; and their "embroilments" of the kingdoms. The sword rages in their hands; treason, sacrilege, plunder; while "more of the blood of Englishmen had poured like water within the space of four years, than had been shed in the civil wars of York and Lancaster in four centuries!"

Neal opposes a more elaborate history; where these "great and good men," the puritans and the presbyterians, "are placed among the reformers;" while their fame is blanched into angelic purity. Neal and his party opined that the protestant had not sufficiently protested, and that the reformation itself needed to be reformed. They wearied the impatient Elizabeth and her ardent churchmen; and disputed with the learned James, and his courtly bishops, about such ceremonial trifles, that the historian may blush or smile who has to record them. And when the puritan was thrown out of preferment, and seceded into separation, he turned into a presbyter. Nonconformity was their darling sin, and their sullen triumph.

Calamy, in four painful volumes, chronicles the bloodless martyrology of the two thousand silenced and ejected ministers. Their history is not glorious, and their heroes are obscure; but it is a domestic tale. When the second Charles was restored, the presbyterians, like every other faction, were to be amused, if not courted. Some of the king's chaplains were selected from among them, and preached once. Their hopes were raised that they should, by some agreement, be enabled to share in that ecclesiastical establishment which they had so often opposed; and the bishops met the presbyters in a convocation at the Savoy. A conference was held between the high church, resuming the seat of power, and the low church, now prostrate; that is, between the old clergy who had recently been mercilessly ejected by the new, who in their turn were awaiting their fate. The conference was closed with arguments by the weaker, and votes by the stronger. Many curious anecdotes of this conference have come down to us. The presbyterians, in their last struggle, petitioned for indulgence; but oppressors who had become petitioners, only showed that they possessed no longer the means of resistance. This conference was followed up by the Act of Uniformity, which took place on Bartholomew day, August 24, 1652: an act which ejected Calamy's two thousand ministers from the bosom of the established church. Bartholomew day with this party was long paralleled, and perhaps is still, with the dreadful French massacre of that fatal saint's day. The calamity was rather, however, of a private than of a public nature. The two thousand ejected ministers were indeed deprived of their livings; but this was, however, a happier fate than what has often occurred in these contests for the security of political power. This ejection was not like the expulsion of the Moriscoes, the best and most useful subjects of Spain, which was a human sacrifice of half a million of men, and the proscription of many Jews from that land of Catholicism; or the massacre of thousands of Huguenots, and the expulsion of more than a hundred thousand by Louis the Fourteenth from France. The presbyterian divines were not driven from their fatherland, and compelled to learn another language than their mother-tongue. Destitute as divines, they were suffered to remain as citizens; and the result was remarkable. These divines could not disrobe themselves of their learning and their piety, while several of them were compelled to become tradesmen: among these the learned Samuel Chandler, whose literary productions are numerous, kept a bookseller's shop in the Poultry.

Hard as this event proved in its result, it was, however, pleaded, that "It was but like for like." And that the history of "the like" might not be curtailed in the telling, opposed to Calamy's chronicle of the two thousand ejected ministers stands another, in folio magnitude, of the same sort of chronicle of the clergy of the Church of England, with a title by no means less pathetic.

This is Walker's "Attempt towards recovering an Account of the Clergy of the Church of England who were sequestered, harassed, &c., in the late Times." Walker is himself astonished at the size of his volume, the number of his sufferers, and the variety of the sufferings. "Shall the church," says he, "not have the liberty to preserve the history of her sufferings, as well as the separation to set forth an account of theirs? Can Dr. Calamy be acquitted for publishing the history of the Bartholomew sufferers, if I am condemned for writing that of the sequestered loyalists?" He allows that "the number of the ejected amounts to two thousand," and there were no less than "seven or eight thousand of the episcopal clergy imprisoned, banished, and sent a starving," &c. &c.

Whether the reformed were martyred by the catholics, or the catholics executed by the reformed; whether the puritans expelled those of the established church, or the established church ejected the puritans, all seems reducible to two classes, conformists and non-conformists, or, in the political style, the administration and the opposition. When we discover that the heads of all parties are of the same hot temperament, and observe the same evil conduct in similar situations; when we view honest old Latimer with his own hands hanging a mendicant friar on a tree, and, the government changing, the friars binding Latimer to the stake; when we see the French catholics cutting out the tongues of the protestants, that they might no longer protest; the haughty Luther writing submissive apologies to Leo the Tenth and Henry the Eighth for the scurrility with which he had treated them in his writings, and finding that his apologies were received with contempt, then retracting his retractations; when we find that haughtiest of the haughty, John Knox, when Elizabeth first ascended the throne, crouching and repenting of having written his famous excommunication against all female sovereignty; or pulling down the monasteries, from the axiom that when the rookery was destroyed, the rooks would never return; when we find his recent apologist admiring, while he apologises for, some extraordinary proofs of Machiavelian politics, an impenetrable mystery seems to hang over the conduct of men who profess to be guided by the bloodless code of Jesus. But try them by a human standard, and treat them as politicians, and the motives once discovered, the actions are understood!

Two edicts of Charles the Fifth, in 1555, condemned to death the Reformed of the Low Countries, even should they return to the catholic faith, with this exception, however, in favour of the latter, that they shall not be burnt alive, but that the men shall be beheaded, and the women buried alive! Religion could not, then, be the real motive of the Spanish cabinet, for in returning to the ancient faith that point was obtained; but the truth is, that the Spanish government considered the reformed as rebels, whom it was not safe to re-admit to the rights of citizenship. The undisguised fact appears in the codicil to the will of the emperor, when he solemnly declares that he had written to the Inquisition "to burn and extirpate the heretics," after trying to make Christians of them, because he is convinced that they never can become sincere catholics; and he acknowledges that he had committed a great fault in permitting Luther to return free on the faith of his safe-conduct, as the emperor was not bound to keep a promise with a heretic. "It is because that I destroyed him not, that heresy has now become strong, which I am convinced might have been stifled with him in its birth."[159] The whole conduct of Charles the Fifth in this mighty revolution was, from its beginning, censured by contemporaries as purely political. Francis the First observed that the emperor, under the colour of religion, was placing himself at the head of a league to make his way to a predominant monarchy. "The pretext of religion is no new thing," writes the Duke of Nevers. "Charles the Fifth had never undertaken a war against the Protestant princes but with the design of rendering the Imperial crown hereditary in the house of Austria; and he has only attacked the electoral princes to ruin them, and to abolish their right of election. Had it been zeal for the catholic religion, would he have delayed from 1519 to 1549 to arm? That he might have extinguished the Lutheran heresy, which he could easily have done in 1526, but he considered that this novelty would serve to divide the German princes, and he patiently waited till the effect was realised."[160]

Good men of both parties, mistaking the nature of these religious wars, have drawn horrid inferences! The "dragonnades" of Louis XIV. excited the admiration of Bruyère; and Anquetil, in his "Esprit de la Ligue," compares the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to a salutary amputation. The massacre of St. Bartholomew in its own day, and even recently, has found advocates; a Greek professor at the time asserted that there were two classes of protestants in France--political and religious; and that "the late ebullition of public vengeance was solely directed against the former." Dr. M'Crie, cursing the catholic with a catholic's curse, execrates "the stale sophistry of this calumniator." But should we allow that the Greek professor who advocated their national crime was the wretch the calvinistic doctor describes, yet the nature of things cannot be altered by the equal violence of Peter Charpentier and Dr. M'Crie.

This subject of "Political Religionism" is indeed as nice as it is curious; politics have been so cunningly worked into the cause of religion, that the parties themselves will never be able to separate them; and to this moment the most opposite opinions are formed concerning the same events and the same persons. When public disturbances broke out at Nismes on the first restoration of the Bourbons, the protestants, who there are numerous, declared that they were persecuted for religion, and their cry, echoed by their brethren the dissenters, resounded in this country. We have not forgotten the ferment it raised here; much was said, and something was done. Our minister, however, persisted in declaring that it was a mere political affair. It is clear that our government was right on the cause, and those zealous complainants wrong, who only observed the effect; for as soon as the Bourbonists had triumphed over the Bonapartists, we heard no more of those sanguinary persecutions of the protestants of Nismes, of which a dissenter has just published a large history. It is a curious fact, that when two writers at the same time were occupied in a Life of Cardinal Ximenes, Flechier converted the cardinal into a saint, and every incident in his administration was made to connect itself with his religious character; Marsollier, a writer very inferior to Flechier, shows the cardinal merely as a politician. The elegances of Flechier were soon neglected by the public, and the deep interests of truth soon acquired, and still retain, for the less elegant writer the attention of the statesman.

A modern historian has observed that "the affairs of religion were the grand fomenters and promoters of the Thirty Years' War, which first brought down the powers of the North to mix in the politics of the Southern states." The fact is indisputable, but the cause is not so apparent. Gustavus Adolphus, the vast military genius of his age, had designed, and was successfully attempting, to oppose the overgrown power of the imperial house of Austria, which had long aimed at an universal monarchy in Europe; a circumstance which Philip IV. weakly hinted at to the world when he placed this motto under his arms--"Sine ipso factum est nihil;" an expression applied to Jesus Christ by St. John!

FOOTNOTES:

[158] "Fox's Martyrs," as the book was popularly called, was often chained to a reading-desk in churches; one is still thus affixed at Cirencester; it thus received equal honour with the Bible.

[159] Llorente's "Critical History of the Inquisition."

[160] Naudé, "Considérations Politiques," p. 115. See a curious note in Hart's "Life of Gustavus Adolphus," ii. 129.

TOLERATION.

An enlightened toleration is a blessing of the last age--it would seem to have been practised by the Romans, when they did not mistake the primitive Christians for seditious members of society; and was inculcated even by Mahomet, in a passage in the Koran, but scarcely practised by his followers. In modern history it was condemned when religion was turned into a political contest under the aspiring house of Austria--and in Spain--and in France. It required a long time before its nature was comprehended--and to this moment it is far from being clear, either to the tolerators or the tolerated.

It does not appear that the precepts or the practice of Jesus and the apostles inculcate the compelling of any to be Christians;[161] yet an expression employed in the nuptial parable of the great supper, when the hospitable lord commanded the servant, finding that he had still room to accommodate more guests, to go out in the highways and hedges, and "compel them to come in, that my house may be filled," was alleged as an authority by those catholics who called themselves "the converters," for using religious force, which, still alluding to the hospitable lord, they called "a charitable and salutary violence." It was this circumstance which produced Bayle's "Commentaire Philosophique sur ces Paroles de Jesus Christ," published under the supposititious name of an Englishman, as printed at Canterbury in 1686, but really at Amsterdam. It is curious that Locke published his first letter on "Toleration" in Latin at Gouda, in 1689--the second in 1690--and the third in 1692. Bayle opened the mind of Locke, and some time after quotes Locke's Latin letter with high commendation.[162] The caution of both writers in publishing in foreign places, however, indicates the prudence which it was deemed necessary to observe in writing in favour of toleration.

These were the first philosophical attempts; but the earliest advocates for toleration may be found among the religious controversialists of a preceding period; it was probably started among the fugitive sects who had found an asylum in Holland. It was a blessing which they had gone far to find, and the miserable, reduced to humane feelings, are compassionate to one another. With us the sect called "the Independents" had, early in our revolution under Charles the First, pleaded for the doctrine of religious liberty, and long maintained it against the presbyterians. Both proved persecutors when they possessed power. The first of our respectable divines who advocated this cause were Jeremy Taylor, in his "Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying," 1647, and Bishop Hall, who had pleaded the cause of moderation in a discourse about the same period.[163] Locke had no doubt examined all these writers. The history of opinions is among the most curious of histories; and I suspect that Bayle was well acquainted with the pamphlets of our sectarists, who, in their flight to Holland, conveyed those curiosities of theology, which had cost them their happiness and their estates: I think he indicates this hidden source of his ideas by the extraordinary ascription of his book to an Englishman, and fixing the place of its publication at Canterbury!

Toleration has been a vast engine in the hands of modern politicians. It was established in the United Provinces of Holland, and our numerous non-conformists took refuge in that asylum for disturbed consciences; it attracted a valuable community of French refugees; it conducted a colony of Hebrew fugitives from Portugal; conventicles of Brownists, quakers' meetings, French churches, and Jewish synagogues, and (had it been required) Mahometan mosques, in Amsterdam, were the precursors of its mart, and its exchange; the moment they could preserve their consciences sacred to themselves, they lived without mutual persecution, and mixed together as good Dutchmen.

The excommunicated part of Europe seemed to be the most enlightened, and it was then considered as a proof of the admirable progress of the human mind, that Locke and Clarke and Newton corresponded with Leibnitz, and others of the learned in France and Italy. Some were astonished that philosophers who differed in their religious opinions should communicate among themselves with so much toleration.[164]

It is not, however, clear that had any one of these sects at Amsterdam obtained predominance, which was sometimes attempted, they would have granted to others the toleration they participated in common. The infancy of a party is accompanied by a political weakness which disables it from weakening others.

The catholic in this country pleads for toleration; in his own he refuses to grant it. Here, the presbyterian, who had complained of persecution, once fixed in the seat of power, abrogated every kind of independence among others. When the flames consumed Servetus at Geneva, the controversy began, whether the civil magistrate might punish heretics, which Beza, the associate of Calvin, maintained; he triumphed in the small predestinating city of Geneva; but the book he wrote was fatal to the protestants a few leagues distant, among a majority of catholics. Whenever the protestants complained of the persecutions they suffered, the catholics, for authority and sanction, never failed to appeal to the volume of their own Beza.

M. Necker de Saussure has recently observed on "what trivial circumstances the change or the preservation of the established religion in different districts of Europe has depended!" When the Reformation penetrated into Switzerland, the government of the principality of Neufchatel, wishing to allow liberty of conscience to all their subjects, invited each parish to vote "for or against the adoption of the new worship; and in all the parishes, except two, the majority of suffrages declared in favour of the protestant communion." The inhabitants of the small village of Cressier had also assembled; and forming an even number, there happened to be an equality of votes for and against the change of religion. A shepherd being absent, tending the flocks on the hills, they summoned him to appear and decide this important question: when, having no liking to innovation, he gave his voice in favour of the existing form of worship; and this parish remained catholic, and is so at this day, in the heart of the protestant cantons.

I proceed to some facts which I have arranged for the history of Toleration. In the Memoirs of James the Second, when that monarch published "The Declaration for Liberty of Conscience," the catholic reasons and liberalises like a modern philosopher: he accuses "the jealousy of our clergy, who had degraded themselves into intriguers; and like mechanics in a trade, who are afraid of nothing so much as interlopers--they had therefore induced indifferent persons to imagine that their earnest contest was not about their faith, but about their temporal possessions. It was incongruous that a church, which does not pretend to be infallible, should constrain persons, under heavy penalties and punishments, to believe as she does: they delighted, he asserted, to hold an iron rod over dissenters and catholics; so sweet was dominion, that the very thought of others participating in their freedom made them deny the very doctrine they preached." The chief argument the catholic urged on this occasion was "the reasonableness of repealing laws which made men liable to the greatest punishments for that it was not in their power to remedy, for that no man could force himself to believe what he really did not believe."[165]

Such was the rational language of the most bigoted of zealots!--The fox can bleat like the lamb. At the very moment James the Second was uttering this mild expostulation, in his own heart he had anathematised the nation; for I have seen some of the king's private papers, which still exist; they consist of communications, chiefly by the most bigoted priests, with the wildest projects, and most infatuated prophecies and dreams, of restoring the true catholic faith in England! Had the Jesuit-led monarch retained the English throne, the language he now addressed to the nation would have been no longer used; and in that case it would have served his protestant subjects. He asked for toleration, to become intolerant! He devoted himself, not to the hundredth part of the English nation; and yet he was surprised that he was left one morning without an army! When the catholic monarch issued this declaration for "liberty of conscience," the Jekyll of his day observed, that "it was but scaffolding: they intend to build another house, and when that house (Popery) is built, they will take down the scaffold."[166]

When presbytery was our lord, they who had endured the tortures of persecution, and raised such sharp outcries for freedom, of all men were the most intolerant: hardly had they tasted of the Circean cup of dominion, ere they were transformed into the most hideous or the most grotesque monsters of political power. To their eyes toleration was an hydra, and the dethroned bishops had never so vehemently declaimed against what, in ludicrous rage, one of the high-flying presbyterians called "a cursed intolerable toleration!" They advocated the rights of persecution; and "shallow Edwards," as Milton calls the author of "The Gangræna," published a treatise against toleration. They who had so long complained of "the licensers," now sent all the books they condemned to penal fires. Prynne now vindicated the very doctrines under which he himself had so severely suffered; assuming the highest possible power of civil government, even to the infliction of death on its opponents. Prynne lost all feeling for the ears of others!

The idea of toleration was not intelligible for too long a period in the annals of Europe: no parties probably could conceive the idea of toleration in the struggle for predominance. Treaties are not proffered when conquest is the concealed object. Men were immolated! a massacre was a sacrifice! medals were struck to commemorate these holy persecutions![167] The destroying angel, holding in one hand a cross, and in the other a sword, with these words--Vgonottorum Strages, 1572--"The massacre of the Huguenots"--proves that toleration will not agree with that date.[168] Castelnau, a statesman and a humane man, was at a loss how to decide on a point of the utmost importance to France. In 1532 they first began to burn the Lutherans or Calvinists, and to cut out the tongues of all protestants, "that they might no longer protest." According to Father Paul, fifty thousand persons had perished in the Netherlands, by different tortures, for religion. But a change in the religion of the state, Castelnau considered, would occasion one in the government: he wondered how it happened, that the more they punished with death, it only increased the number of the victims: martyrs produced proselytes. As a statesman, he looked round the great field of human actions in the history of the past; there he discovered that the Romans were more enlightened in their actions than ourselves; that Trajan commanded Pliny the younger not to molest the Christians for their religion, but should their conduct endanger the state, to put down illegal assemblies; that Julian the Apostate expressly forbad the execution of the Christians, who then imagined that they were securing their salvation by martyrdom; but he ordered all their goods to be confiscated--a severe punishment--by which Julian prevented more than he could have done by persecutions. "All this," he adds, "we read in ecclesiastical history."[169] Such were the sentiments of Castelnau, in 1560. Amidst perplexities of state necessity, and of our common humanity, the notion of toleration had not entered into the views of the statesman. It was also at this time that De Sainctes, a great controversial writer, declared, that had the fires lighted for the destruction of Calvinism not been extinguished, the sect had not spread! About half a century subsequent to this period, Thuanus was, perhaps, the first great mind who appears to have insinuated to the French monarch and his nation, that they might live at peace with heretics; by which avowal he called down on himself the haughty indignation of Rome, and a declaration that the man who spoke in favour of heretics must necessarily be one of the first class. Hear the afflicted historian: "Have men no compassion, after forty years passed full of continual miseries? Have they no fear after the loss of the Netherlands, occasioned by the frantic obstinacy which marked the times? I grieve that such sentiments should have occasioned my book to have been examined with a rigour that amounts to calumny." Such was the language of Thuanus, in a letter written in 1606;[170] which indicates an approximation to toleration, but which term was not probably yet found in any dictionary. We may consider, as so many attempts at toleration, the great national synod of Dort, whose history is amply written by Brandt; and the mitigating protestantism of Laud, to approximate to the ceremonies of the Roman church; but the synod, after holding about two hundred sessions, closed, dividing men into universalists and semi-universalists, supralapsarians and sublapsarians! The reformed themselves produced the remonstrants; and Laud's ceremonies ended in placing the altar eastward, and in raising the scaffold for the monarchy and the hierarchy. Error is circuitous when it will do what it has not yet learnt. They were pressing for conformity to do that which, a century afterwards, they found could only be done by toleration.

The secret history of toleration among certain parties has been disclosed to us by a curious document, from that religious Machiavel, the fierce ascetic republican John Knox, a calvinistical Pope. "While the posterity of Abraham," says that mighty and artful reformer, "were few in number, and while they sojourned in different countries, they were merely required to avoid all participation in the idolatrous rites of the heathen; but as soon as they prospered into a kingdom, and had obtained possession of Canaan, they were strictly charged to suppress idolatry, and to destroy all the monuments and incentives. The same duty was now incumbent on the professors of the true religion in Scotland. Formerly, when not more than ten persons in a county were enlightened, it would have been foolishness to have demanded of the nobility the suppression of idolatry. But now, when knowledge had been increased," &c.[171] Such are the men who cry out for toleration during their state of political weakness, but who cancel the bond by which they hold their tenure whenever they "obtain possession of Canaan." The only commentary on this piece of the secret history of toleration is the acute remark of Swift:--"We are fully convinced that we shall always tolerate them, but not that they will tolerate us."

The truth is that TOLERATION was allowed by none of the parties! and I will now show the dilemmas into which each party thrust itself.

When the kings of England would forcibly have established episcopacy in Scotland, the presbyters passed an act against the toleration of dissenters from presbyterian doctrines and discipline; and thus, as Guthrie observes, they were committing the same violence on the consciences of their brethren which they opposed in the king. The presbyterians contrived their famous covenant to dispossess the royalists of their livings; and the independents, who assumed the principle of toleration in their very name, shortly after enforced what they called the engagement, to eject the presbyterians! In England, where the dissenters were ejected, their great advocate Calamy complains that the dissenters were only making use of the same arguments which the most eminent reformers had done in their noble defence of the reformation against the papists; while the arguments of the established church against the dissenters were the same which were urged by the papists against the protestant reformation![172] When the presbyterians were our masters, and preached up the doctrine of passive obedience in spiritual matters to the civil power, it was unquestionably passing a self-condemnation on their own recent opposition and detraction of the former episcopacy. Whenever men act from a secret motive entirely contrary to their ostensible one, such monstrous results will happen; and as extremes will join, however opposite they appear in their beginnings, John Knox and Father Petre, in office, would have equally served James the Second as confessor and prime minister!

A fact relating to the famous Justus Lipsius proves the difficulty of forming a clear notion of TOLERATION. This learned man, after having been ruined by the religious wars of the Netherlands, found an honourable retreat in a professor's chair at Leyden, and without difficulty abjured papacy. He published some political works: and adopted as his great principle, that only one religion should be allowed to a people, and that no clemency should be granted to non-conformists, who, he declares, should be pursued by sword and fire: in this manner a single member would be cut off to preserve the body sound. Ure, seca--are his words. Strange notions these in a protestant republic; and, in fact, in Holland it was approving of all the horrors of their oppressors, the Duke d'Alva and Philip the Second, from which they had hardly recovered.[173] It was a principle by which we must inevitably infer, says Bayle, that in Holland no other mode of religious belief but one sect should be permitted; and that those Pagans who had hanged the missionaries of the gospel had done what they ought. Lipsius found himself sadly embarrassed when refuted by Theodore Cornhert,[174] the firm advocate of political and religious freedom, and at length Lipsius, that protestant with a catholic heart, was forced to eat his words, like Pistol his onion, declaring that the two objectionable words, ure, seca, were borrowed from medicine, meaning not literally fire and sword, but a strong efficacious remedy, one of those powerful medicines to expel poison. Jean de Serres, a warm Huguenot, carried the principle of TOLERATION so far in his "Inventaire générale de l'Histoire de France," as to blame Charles Martel for compelling the Frisans, whom he had conquered, to adopt Christianity! "A pardonable zeal," he observes, "in a warrior; but in fact the minds of men cannot be gained over by arms, nor that religion forced upon them, which must be introduced into the hearts of men by reason." It is curious to see a protestant, in his zeal for toleration, blaming a king for forcing idolaters to become Christians; and to have found an opportunity to express his opinions in the dark history of the eighth century, is an instance how historians incorporate their passions in their works, and view ancient facts with modern eyes.

The protestant cannot grant toleration to the catholic, unless the catholic ceases to be a papist; and the Arminian church, which opened its wide bosom to receive every denomination of Christians, nevertheless were forced to exclude the papists, for their passive obedience to the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The catholic has curiously told us, on this word toleration, that Ce mot devient fort en usage à mesure que le nombre des tolérans augmente.[175] It was a word which seemed of recent introduction, though the book is modern! The protestants have disputed much how far they might tolerate, or whether they should tolerate at all; "a difficulty," triumphantly exclaims the catholic, "which they are not likely ever to settle, while they maintain their principles of pretended reformation; the consequences which naturally follow excite horror to the Christian. It is the weak who raise such outcries for toleration; the strong find authority legitimate."

A religion which admits not of toleration cannot be safely tolerated, if there is any chance of its obtaining a political ascendancy.

When Priscillian and six of his followers were condemned to torture and execution for asserting that the three persons of the Trinity were to be considered as three different acceptions of the same being, Saint Ambrose and Saint Martin asserted the cause of offended humanity, and refused to communicate with the bishops who had called out for the blood of the Priscillianists; but Cardinal Baronius, the annalist of the church, was greatly embarrassed to explain how men of real purity could abstain from applauding the ardent zeal of the persecution: he preferred to give up the saints rather than to allow of toleration--for he acknowledges that the toleration which these saints would have allowed was not exempt from sin.[176]

In the preceding article, "Political Religionism," we have shown how to provide against the possible evil of the tolerated becoming the tolerators! Toleration has been suspected of indifference to religion itself; but with sound minds, it is only an indifference to the logomachies of theology--things "not of God, but of man," that have perished, and that are perishing around us!

FOOTNOTES:

[161] Bishop Barlow's "Several Miscellaneous and Weighty Cases of Conscience Resolved," 1692. His "Case of a Toleration in Matters of Religion," addressed to Robert Boyle, p. 39. This volume was not intended to have been given to the world, a circumstance which does not make it the less curious.

[162] In the article Sancterius. Note F.

[163] Recent writers among our sectarists assert that Dr. Owen was the first who wrote in favour of toleration, in 1648! Another claims the honour for John Goodwin, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, who published one of his obscure polemical tracts in 1644, among a number of other persons who, at that crisis, did not venture to prefix their names to pleas in favour of toleration, so delicate and so obscure did this subject then appear! In 1651, they translated the liberal treatise of Grotius, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra, under the title of "The Authority of the Highest Powers about Sacred Things." London, 8vo, 1651. To the honour of Grotius, the first of philosophical reformers, be it recorded, that he displeased both parties!

[164] J. P. Rabaut, "sur la Revolution Française," p. 27.

[165] "Life of James the Second, from his own Papers," ii 114.

[166] This was a Baron Wallop. From Dr. H. Sampson's Manuscript Diary.

[167] It is curious to observe that the catholics were afterwards ashamed of these indiscretions; they were unwilling to own that there were any medals which commemorate massacres. Thuanus, in his 53rd book, has minutely described them. The medals, however, have become excessively scarce; but copies inferior to the originals have been sold. They had also pictures on similar subjects, accompanied by insulting inscriptions, which latter they have effaced, sometimes very imperfectly. See Hollis's "Memoirs," p. 312-14. This enthusiast advertised in the papers to request travellers to procure them.

[168] The Sala Regia of the Vatican has still upon its walls a painting by Vasari of this massacre, among the other important events in the history of the Popes similarly commemorated.

[169] "Mémoires de Michel de Castelnau," liv. i. c. 4.

[170] "Life of Thuanus, by the Rev. J. Collinson," p. 115.

[171] Dr. M'Crie's "Life of John Knox," ii. 122.

[172] I quote from an unpublished letter, written so late as in 1749, addressed to the author of "The Free and Candid Disquisition," by the Rev. Thomas Allen, rector of Kettering, Northamptonshire. However extravagant his doctrine appears to us, I suspect that it exhibits the concealed sentiments of even some protestant churchmen! This rector of Kettering attributes the growth of schism to the negligence of the clergy, and seems to have persecuted both the archbishops, "to his detriment," as he tells us, with singular plans of reform borrowed from monastic institutions. He wished to revive the practice inculcated by a canon of the counsel of Laodicea of having prayers ad horam nonam et ad vesperam--prayers twice a day in the churches. But his grand project take in his own words:--

"I let the archbishop know that I had composed an irenicon, wherein I prove the necessity of an ecclesiastical power over consciences in matters of religion, which utterly silences their arguments who plead so hard for toleration. I took my scheme from 'A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity,' wherein the authority of the civil magistrate over the consciences of subjects in matters of external religion is asserted; the mischiefs and inconveniences of toleration are represented, and all pretences pleaded in behalf of liberty of conscience are fully answered. If this book were reprinted and considered, the king would know his power and the people their duty."

The rector of Kettering seems not to have known that the author of this "Discourse on Ecclesiastical Polity" was the notorious Parker, immortalised by the satire of Marvell. This political apostate, from a republican and presbyterian, became a furious advocate for arbitrary government in church and state! He easily won the favour of James the Second, who made him Bishop of Oxford! His principles were so violent that Father Petre, the confessor of James, made sure of him! This letter of the rector of Kettering, in adopting the system of such a catholic bishop, confirms my suspicion that toleration is condemned as an evil among some protestants!

[173] The cruelties practised by the Protestant against the Catholic party are pictured and described in Arnoudt Van Geluwe's book, "Over de Ontledinghe van dry verscheyden Niew-Ghereformeerde Martelaers Boecken," published at Antwerp in 1656.

[174] Cornhert was one of the fathers of Dutch literature, and even of their arts. He was the composer of the great national air of William of Orange; he was too a famous engraver, the master of Goltzius. On his death-bed he was still writing against the persecution of heretics.

[175] "Dictionnaire de Trevoux," ad vocem Tolerance. Printed in 1771.

[176] Sismondi, "Hist. des Français," i. 41. The character of the first person who introduced civil persecution into the Christian church has been described by Sulpicius Severus. See Dr. Maclaine's note in his translation of Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. i. 428.

APOLOGY FOR THE PARISIAN MASSACRE.

An original document now lying before me, the autograph letter of Charles the Ninth, will prove, that the unparalleled massacre, called by the world religious, was, in the French cabinet, considered merely as political; one of those revolting state expedients which a pretended instant necessity has too often inflicted on that part of a nation which, like the undercurrent, subterraneously works its way, and runs counter to the great stream, till the critical moment arrives when one or the other must cease.

The massacre began on St. Bartholomew day, in August, 1572, lasted in France during seven days: that awful event interrupted the correspondence of our court with that of France. A long silence ensued; the one did not dare to tell the tale which the other could not listen to. But sovereigns know how to convert a mere domestic event into a political expedient. Charles the Ninth, on the birth of a daughter, sent over an ambassador extraordinary to request Elizabeth to stand as sponsor: by this the French monarch obtained a double purpose; it served to renew his interrupted intercourse with the silent queen, and alarmed the French protestants by abating their hopes, which long rested on the aid of the English queen.

The following letter, dated 8th February, 1573, is addressed by the king to La Motte Fénélon, his resident ambassador at London. The king in this letter minutely details a confidential intercourse with his mother, Catharine of Medicis, who, perhaps, may have dictated this letter to the secretary, although signed by the king with his own hand.[177] Such minute particulars could only have been known to herself. The Earl of Wolchester (Worcester) was now taking his departure, having come to Paris on the baptism of the princess; and accompanied by Walsingham, our resident ambassador, after taking leave of Charles, had the following interview with Catharine de Medicis. An interview with the young monarch was usually concluded by a separate audience with his mother, who probably was still the directress of his councils.

The French court now renewed their favourite project of marrying the Duke d'Alençon with Elizabeth. They had long wished to settle this turbulent spirit, and the negotiation with Elizabeth had been broken off in consequence of the massacre at Paris. They were somewhat uneasy lest he should share the fate of his brother, the Duke of Anjou, who had not long before been expedited on the same fruitless errand; and Elizabeth had already objected to the disparity of their ages, the Duke of Alençon, being only seventeen, and the maiden queen six-and-thirty; but Catharine observed that Alençon was only one year younger than his brother, against whom this objection had not occurred to Elizabeth, for he had been sent back upon another pretext--some difficulty which the queen had contrived about his performing mass in his own house.

After Catharine de Medicis had assured the Earl of Worcester of her great affection for the Queen of England, and her and the king's strict intention to preserve it, and that they were therefore desirous of this proposed marriage taking place, she took this opportunity of inquiring of the Earl of Worcester the cause of the queen his mistress's marked coolness toward them. The narrative becomes now dramatic.

"On this Walsingham, who kept always close by the side of the count, here took on himself to answer, acknowledging that the said count had indeed been charged to speak on this head; and he then addressed some words in English to Worcester. And afterwards the count gave to my lady and mother to understand, that the queen his mistress had been waiting for an answer on two articles; the one concerning religion, and the other for an interview. My lady and mother instantly replied, that she had never heard any articles mentioned, on which she would not have immediately satisfied the Sieur Walsingham, who then took up the word; first observing that the count was not accustomed to business of this nature, but that he himself knew for certain that the cause of this negotiation for marriage not being more advanced, was really these two unsettled points: that his mistress still wished that the point of religion should be cleared up; for that they concluded in England that this business was designed only to amuse and never to be completed (as happened in that of my brother the Duke of Anjou); and the other point concerned the interview between my brother the Duke of Alençon; because some letters which may have been written between the parties[178] in such sort of matters, could not have the same force which the sight and presence of both the persons would undoubtedly have. But, he added, another thing, which had also greatly retarded this business, was what had happened lately in this kingdom; and during such troubles, proceeding from religion, it could not have been well timed to have spoken with them concerning the said marriage; and that himself and those of his nation had been in great fear in this kingdom, thinking that we intended to extirpate all those of the said religion. On this, my lady and mother answered him instantly and in order: That she was certain that the queen his mistress could never like nor value a prince who had not his religion at heart; and whoever would desire to have this otherwise, would be depriving him of what we hold dearest in this world; That he might recollect that my brother had always insisted on the freedom of religion, and that it was from the difficulty of its public exercise, which he always insisted on, which had broken off this negotiation: the Duke d'Alençon will be satisfied when this point is agreed on, and will hasten over to the queen, persuaded that she will not occasion him the pain and the shame of passing over the seas without happily terminating this affair. In regard to what has occurred these latter days, that he must have seen how it happened by the fault of the chiefs of those who remained here; for when the late admiral was treacherously wounded at Nôtre Dame, he knew the affliction it threw us into (fearful that it might have occasioned great troubles in this kingdom), and the diligence we used to verify judicially whence it proceeded; and the verification was nearly finished, when they were so forgetful, as to raise a conspiracy, to attempt the lives of myself, my lady and mother, and my brothers, and endanger the whole state; which was the cause, that to avoid this, I was compelled, to my very great regret, to permit what had happened in this city; but as he had witnessed, I gave orders to stop, as soon as possible, this fury of the people, and place every one in repose. On this, the Sieur Walsingham replied to my lady and mother, that the exercise of the said religion had been interdicted in this kingdom. To which she also answered, that this had not been done but for a good and holy purpose; namely, that the fury of the catholic people might the sooner be allayed, who else had been reminded of the past calamities, and would again have been let loose against those of the said religion, had they continued to preach in this kingdom. Also should these once more fix on any chiefs, which I will prevent as much as possible, giving him clearly and pointedly to understand, that what is done here is much the same as what has been done, and is now practised by the queen his mistress in her kingdom. For she permits the exercise but of one religion, although there are many of her people who are of another; and having also, during her reign, punished those of her subjects whom she found seditious and rebellious. It is true this has been done by the laws, but I indeed could not act in the same manner; for finding myself in such imminent peril, and the conspiracy raised against me and mine, and my kingdom, ready to be executed, I had no time to arraign and try in open justice as much as I wished, but was constrained, to my very great regret, to strike the blow (lascher le main) in what has been done in this city."

This letter of Charles the Ninth, however, does not here conclude. "My lady and mother" plainly acquaints the Earl of Worcester and Sir Francis Walsingham, that her son had never interfered between their mistress and her subjects, and in return expects the same favour; although, by accounts they had received from England, many ships were arming to assist their rebels at Rochelle. "My lady and mother" advances another step, and declares that Elizabeth by treaty is bound to assist her son against his rebellious subjects; and they expect, at least, that Elizabeth will not only stop these armaments in all her ports, but exemplarily punish the offenders. I resume the letter.

"And on hearing this, the said Walsingham changed colour, and appeared somewhat astonished, as my lady and mother well perceived by his face; and on this he requested the Count of Worcester to mention the order which he knew the queen his mistress had issued to prevent these people from assisting those of La Rochelle; but that in England, so numerous were the seamen and others who gained their livelihood by maritime affairs, and who would starve without the entire freedom of the seas, that it was impossible to interdict them."

Charles the Ninth encloses the copy of a letter he had received from London, in part agreeing with an account the ambassador had sent to the king, of an English expedition nearly ready to sail for La Rochelle, to assist his rebellious subjects. He is still further alarmed, that Elizabeth foments the wartegeux, and assists underhand the discontented. He urges the ambassador to hasten to the queen, to impart these complaints in the most friendly way, as he knows the ambassador can well do, and as, no doubt, Walsingham will have already prepared her to receive. Charles entreats Elizabeth to prove her good faith by deeds and not by words; to act openly on a point which admits of no dissimulation. The best proof of her friendship will be the marriage; and the ambassador, after opening this business to her chief ministers, who the king thinks are desirous of this projected marriage, is then "to acquaint the queen with what has passed between her ambassadors and myself."

Such is the first letter on English affairs which Charles the Ninth despatched to his ambassador, after an awful silence of six months, during which time La Motte Fénélon was not admitted into the presence of Elizabeth. The apology for the massacre of St. Bartholomew comes from the king himself, and contains several remarkable expressions, which are at least divested of that style of bigotry and exultation we might have expected: on the contrary, this sanguinary and inconsiderate young monarch, as he is represented, writes in a subdued and sorrowing tone, lamenting his hard necessity, regretting he could not have recourse to the laws, and appealing to others for his efforts to check the fury of the people, which he himself had let loose. Catharine de Medicis, who had governed him from the tender age of eleven years, when he ascended the throne, might unquestionably have persuaded him that a conspiracy was on the point of explosion. Charles the Ninth died young, and his character is unfavourably viewed by the historians. In the voluminous correspondence which I have examined, could we judge by state letters of the character of him who subscribes them, we must form a very different notion; they are so prolix, and so earnest, that one might conceive they were dictated by the young monarch himself!

FOOTNOTES:

[177] All the numerous letters which I have seen of Charles the Ninth, now in the possession of Mr. Murray, are carefully signed by himself, and I have also observed postscripts written with his own hand: they are always countersigned by his secretary. I mention this circumstance, because, in the Dictionnaire Historique, it is said that Charles, who died young, was so given up to the amusements of his age, that he would not even sign his despatches, and introduced the custom of secretaries subscribing for the king. This voluminous correspondence shows the falsity of this statement. History is too often composed of popular tales of this stamp.

[178] These love-letters of Alençon to our Elizabeth are noticed by Camden, who observes, that the queen became wearied by receiving so many; and to put an end to this trouble, she consented that the young duke should come over, conditionally, that he should not be offended if her suitor should return home suitless.

PREDICTION.

In a curious treatise on "Divination," or the knowledge of future events, Cicero has preserved a complete account of the state-contrivances which were practised by the Roman government to instil among the people those hopes and fears by which they regulated public opinion. The pagan creed, now become obsolete and ridiculous, has occasioned this treatise to be rarely consulted; it remains, however, as a chapter in the history of man!

To these two books of Cicero on "Divination," perhaps a third might be added, on POLITICAL and MORAL PREDICTION. The principles which may even raise it into a science are self-evident; they are drawn from the heart of man, and they depend on the nature and connexion of human events! We presume we shall demonstrate the positive existence of such a faculty; a faculty which Lord Bacon describes of "making things FUTURE and REMOTE AS PRESENT." The aruspex, the augur, and the astrologer have vanished with their own superstitions; but the moral and the political predictor, proceeding on principles authorised by nature and experience, has become more skilful in his observations on the phenomena of human history; and it has often happened that a tolerable philosopher has not made an indifferent prophet.

No great political or moral revolution has occurred which has not been accompanied by its prognostic; and men of a philosophic cast of mind in their retirement, freed from the delusions of parties and of sects, at once intelligent in the quicquid agunt homines, while they are withdrawn from their conflicting interests, have rarely been confounded by the astonishment which overwhelms those who, absorbed in active life, are the mere creatures of sensation, agitated by the shadows of truth, the unsubstantial appearances of things! Intellectual nations are advancing in an eternal circle of events and passions which succeed each other, and the last is necessarily connected with its antecedent; the solitary force of some fortuitous incident only can interrupt this concatenated progress of human affairs.

That every great event has been accompanied by a presage or prognostic, has been observed by Lord Bacon. "The shepherds of the people should understand the prognostics of state tempests; hollow blasts of wind seemingly at a distance, and secret swellings of the sea, often precede a storm." Such were the prognostics discerned by the politic Bishop Williams in Charles the First's time, who clearly foresaw and predicted the final success of the Puritanic party in our country: attentive to his own security, he abandoned the government and sided with the rising opposition, at the moment when such a change in public affairs was by no means apparent.[179]

In this spirit of foresight our contemplative antiquary Dugdale must have anticipated the scene which was approaching in 1641, in the destruction of our ancient monuments in cathedral churches. He hurried on his itinerant labours of taking draughts and transcribing inscriptions, as he says, "to preserve them for future and better times." Posterity owes to the prescient spirit of Dugdale the ancient Monuments of England, which bear the marks of the haste, as well as the zeal, which have perpetuated them.

Continental writers formerly employed a fortunate expression, when they wished to have an Historia Reformationis ante Reformationem: this history of the Reformation would have commenced at least a century before the Reformation itself! A letter from Cardinal Julian to Pope Eugenius the Fourth, written a century before Luther appeared, clearly predicts the Reformation and its consequences. He observed that the minds of men were ripe for something tragical; he felt the axe striking at the root, and the tree beginning to bend, and that his party, instead of propping it, were hastening its fall.[180] In England, Sir Thomas More was not less prescient in his views; for when his son Roper was observing to him that the Catholic religion, under "the Defender of the Faith," was in a most flourishing state, the answer of More was an evidence of political foresight--"Truth, it is, son Roper! and yet I pray God that we may not live to see the day that we would gladly be at league and composition with heretics, to let them have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they would be contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves." Whether our great chancellor predicted from a more intimate knowledge of the king's character, or from some private circumstances which may not have been recorded for our information, of which I have an obscure suspicion, remains to be ascertained. The minds of men of great political sagacity were unquestionably at that moment full of obscure indications of the approaching change; Erasmus, when at Canterbury before the tomb of Becket, observing it loaded with a vast profusion of jewels, wished that those had been distributed among the poor, and that the shrine had been only adorned with boughs and flowers; "For," said he, "those who have heaped up all this mass of treasure will one day be plundered, and fall a prey to those who are in power;"--a prediction literally fulfilled about twenty years after it was made. The unknown author of the Visions of Piers Ploughman, who wrote in the reign of Edward the Third,[181] surprised the world by a famous prediction of the fall of the religious houses from the hand of a king.[182] The event was realised, two hundred years afterwards, by our Henry the Eighth. The protestant writers have not scrupled to declare that in this instance he was divino numine afflatus. But moral and political prediction is not inspiration; the one may be wrought out by man, the other descends from God. The same principle which led Erasmus to predict that those who were "in power" would destroy the rich shrines, because no other class of men in society could mate with so mighty a body as the monks, conducted the author of Piers Ploughman to the same conclusion; and since power only could accomplish that great purpose, he fixed on the highest as the most likely; and thus the wise prediction was, so long after, literally accomplished!

Sir Walter Rawleigh foresaw the future consequences of the separatists and the sectaries in the national church, and the very scene his imagination raised in 1530 has been exhibited, to the letter of his description, two centuries after the prediction! His memorable words are--"Time will even bring it to pass, if it were not resisted, that God would be turned out of churches into barns, and from thence again into the fields and mountains, and under hedges--all order of discipline and church government left to newness of opinion and men's fancies, and as many kinds of religion spring up as there are parish churches within England." We are struck by the profound genius of Tacitus, who clearly foresaw the calamities which so long ravaged Europe on the fall of the Roman Empire, in a work written five hundred years before the event! In that sublime anticipation of the future, he observed--"When the Romans shall be hunted out from those countries which they have conquered, what will then happen? The revolted people, freed from their master oppressor, will not be able to subsist without destroying their neighbours, and the most cruel wars will exist among all these nations."

We are told that Solon at Athens, contemplating on the port and citadel of Munychia, suddenly exclaimed, "How blind is man to futurity! Could the Athenians foresee what mischief this will do their city, they would even eat it with their own teeth to get rid of it!"--a prediction verified more than two hundred years afterwards! Thales desired to be buried in an obscure quarter of Milesia, observing that that very spot would in time be the forum. Charlemagne, in his old age, observing from the window of a castle a Norman descent on his coast, tears started in the eyes of the aged monarch. He predicted that since they dared to threaten his dominions while he was yet living, what would they do when he should be no more!--a melancholy prediction, says De Foix, of their subsequent incursions, and of the protracted calamities of the French nation during a whole century!

There seems to be something in minds which take in extensive views of human nature which serves them as a kind of divination, and the consciousness of this faculty has even been asserted by some. Cicero appeals to Atticus how he had always judged of the affairs of the republic as a good diviner; and that its overthrow had happened as he had foreseen fourteen years before.[183] Cicero had not only predicted what happened in his own times, but also what occurred long after, according to the testimony of Cornelius Nepos. The philosopher, indeed, affects no secret revelation, nor visionary second-sight; he honestly tells us that this art had been acquired merely by study and the administration of public affairs, while he reminds his friend of several remarkable instances of his successful predictions. "I do not divine human events by the arts practised by the augurs, but I use other signs." Cicero then expresses himself with the guarded obscurity of a philosopher who could not openly ridicule the prevailing superstitions; but we perfectly comprehend the nature of his "signs" when, in the great pending event of the rival conflicts of Pompey and of Cæsar, he shows the means he used for his purpose. "On one side I consider the humour and genius of Cæsar, and on the other the condition and the manner of civil wars."[184] In a word, the political diviner foretold events by their dependence on general causes, while the moral diviner, by his experience of the personal character, anticipated the actions of the individual. Others, too, have asserted the possession of this faculty. Du Vair, a famous chancellor of France, imagined the faculty was intuitive with him: by his own experience he had observed the results of this curious and obscure faculty, and at a time when the history of the human mind was so imperfectly comprehended, it is easy to account for the apparent egotism of this grave and dignified character. "Born," says he, "with constitutional infirmity, a mind and body but ill adapted to be laborious, with a most treacherous memory, enjoying no gift of nature, yet able at all times to exercise a sagacity so great that I do not know, since I have reached manhood, that anything of importance has happened to the state, to the public, or to myself in particular, which I had not foreseen."[185] This faculty seems to be described by a remarkable expression employed by Thucydides in his character of Themistocles, of which the following is given as a close translation: "By a species of sagacity peculiarly his own, for which he was in no degree indebted either to early education or after study, he was supereminently happy in forming a prompt judgment in matters that admitted but little time for deliberation; at the same time that he far surpassed all in his deductions of the future from the PAST, or was the best guesser of the future from the past."[186] Should this faculty of moral and political prediction be ever considered as a science, we can even furnish it with a denomination; for the writer of the Life of Sir Thomas Browne prefixed to his works, in claiming the honour of it for that philosopher, calls it "the Stochastic," a term derived from the Greek and from archery, meaning "to shoot at a mark." This eminent genius, it seems, often "hit the white." Our biographer declares, that "though he were no prophet, yet in that faculty which comes nearest to it, he excelled, i.e., the Stochastic, wherein he was seldom mistaken as to future events, as well public as private."

We are not, indeed, inculcating the fanciful elements of an occult art. We know whence its principles may be drawn; and we may observe how it was practised by the wisest among the ancients. Aristotle, who collected all the curious knowledge of his times, has preserved some remarkable opinions on the art of divination. In detailing the various subterfuges practised by the pretended diviners of his day, he reveals the secret principle by which one of them regulated his predictions. He frankly declared that the FUTURE being always very obscure, while the PAST was easy to know, his predictions had never the future in view; for he decided from the PAST as it appeared in human affairs, which, however, lie concealed from the multitude.[187] Such is the true principle by which a philosophical historian may become a skilful diviner.

Human affairs make themselves; they grow out of one another, with slight variations; and thus it is that they usually happen as they have happened. The necessary dependence of effects on causes, and the similarity of human interests and human passions, are confirmed by comparative parallels with the past. The philosophic sage of holy writ truly deduced the important principle, that "the thing that hath been is that which shall be." The vital facts of history, deadened by the touch of chronological antiquarianism, are restored to animation when we comprehend the principles which necessarily terminate in certain results, and discover the characters among mankind who are the usual actors in these scenes. The heart of man beats on the same eternal springs; and whether he advances or retrogrades, he cannot escape out of the march of human thought. Hence, in the most extraordinary revolutions we discover that the time and the place only have changed; for even when events are not strictly parallel, we detect the same conducting principles. Scipio Ammirato, one of the great Italian historians, in his curious discourses on Tacitus, intermingles ancient examples with the modern; that, he says, all may see how the truth of things is not altered by the changes and diversities of time. Machiavel drew his illustrations of modern history from the ancient.

When the French Revolution recalled our attention to a similar eventful period in our own history, the neglected volumes which preserved the public and private history of our Charles the First and Cromwell were collected with eager curiosity. Often the scene existing before us, even the very personages themselves, opened on us in these forgotten pages. But as the annals of human nature did not commence with those of Charles the First, we took a still more retrograde step, and it was discovered in this wider range, that in the various governments of Greece and Rome, the events of those times had been only reproduced. Among them the same principles had terminated in the same results, and the same personages had figured in the same drama. This strikingly appeared in a little curious volume, entitled, "Essai sur l'Histoire de la Révolution Françoise, par une Société d'Auteurs Latins," published at Paris in 1801. This "Society of Latin Authors," who have written so inimitably the history of the French Revolution, consist of the Roman historians themselves! By extracts ingeniously applied, the events of that melancholy period are so appositely described, indeed so minutely narrated, that they will not fail to surprise those who are not accustomed to detect the perpetual parallels which we meet with in philosophical history.

Many of these crises in history are close resemblances of each other. Compare the history of "The League" in France with that of our own civil wars. We are struck by the similar occurrences performed by the same political characters who played their part on both those great theatres of human action. A satirical royalist of those times has commemorated the motives, the incidents, and the personages in the "Satire Ménippée de la Vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne;" and this famous "Satire Ménippée" is a perfect Hudibras in prose! The writer discovers all the bitter ridicule of Butler in his ludicrous and severe exhibition of the "Etats de Paris," while the artist who designed the satirical prints becomes no contemptible Hogàrth. So much are these public events alike in their general spirit and termination, that they have afforded the subject of a printed but unpublished volume, entitled "Essai sur les Revolutions."[188] The whole work was modelled on this principle. "It would be possible," says the eloquent writer, "to frame a table or chart in which all the given imaginable events of the history of a people would be reduced to a mathematical exactness." The conception is fanciful, but its foundation lies deep in truth.

A remarkable illustration of the secret principle divulged by Aristotle, and described by Thucydides, appears in the recent confession of a man of genius among ourselves. When Mr. Coleridge was a political writer in the Morning Post and Courier, at a period of darkness and utter confusion, that writer was then conducted by a tract of light, not revealed to ordinary journalists, on the Napoleonic empire. "Of that despotism in masquerade" he decided by "the state of Rome under the first Cæsars;" and of the Spanish American Revolution, by taking the war of the United Provinces with Philip the Second as the groundwork of the comparison. "On every great occurrence," he says, "I endeavoured to discover, in PAST HISTORY the event that most nearly resembled it. I procured the contemporary historians, memorialists, and pamphleteers. Then fairly subtracting the points of difference from those of likeness, as the balance favoured the former or the latter, I conjectured that the result would be the same or different. In the essays 'On the Probable Final Restoration of the Bourbons,' I feel myself authorised to affirm, by the effect produced on many intelligent men, that were the dates wanting, it might have been suspected that the essays had been written within the last twelve months."[189]

In moral predictions on individuals, many have discovered the future character. The revolutionary character of Cardinal de Retz, even in his youth, was detected by the sagacity of Mazarin. He then wrote the history of the conspiracy of Fiesco, with such vehement admiration of his hero, that the Italian politician, after its perusal, predicted that the young author would be one of the most turbulent spirits of the age! The father of Marshal Biron, even amid the glory of his son, discovered the cloud which, invisible to others, was to obscure it. The father, indeed, well knew the fiery passions of his son. "Biron," said the domestic seer, "I advise thee, when peace takes place, to go and plant cabbages in thy garden, otherwise I warn thee, thou wilt lose thy head on the scaffold!" Lorenzo de' Medici had studied the temper of his son Piero; for Guicciardini informs us that he had often complained to his most intimate friends that "he foresaw the imprudence and arrogance of his son would occasion the ruin of his family." There is a remarkable prediction of James the First of the evils likely to ensue from Laud's violence, in a conversation given by Hacket, which the king held with Archbishop Williams. When the king was hard pressed to promote Laud, he gave his reasons why he intended to "keep Laud back from all place of rule and authority, because I find he hath a restless spirit, and cannot see when matters are well, but loves to toss and change, and to bring things to a pitch of reformation floating in his own brain, which endangers the steadfastness of that which is in a good pass. I speak not at random; he hath made himself known to me to be such an one." James then gives the circumstances to which he alludes; and at length, when, still pursued by the archbishop, then the organ of Buckingham, as usual, this king's good nature too easily yielded; he did not, however, without closing with this prediction: "Then take him to you!--but, on my soul, you will repent it!" The future character of Cromwell was apparent to two of our great politicians. "This coarse unpromising man," said Lord Falkland, pointing to Cromwell, "will be the first person in the kingdom, if the nation comes to blows!" And Archbishop Williams told Charles the First confidentially, "There was that in Cromwell which foreboded something dangerous, and wished his majesty would either win him over to him, or get him taken off." The Marquis of Wellesley's incomparable character of Bonaparte predicted his fall when highest in his glory; that great statesman then poured forth the sublime language of philosophical prophecy. "His eagerness of power is so inordinate; his jealousy of independence so fierce; his keenness of appetite so feverish in all that touches his ambition, even in the most trifling things, that he must plunge into dreadful difficulties. He is one of an order of minds that by nature make for themselves great reverses."

Lord Mansfield was once asked, after the commencement of the French Revolution, when it would end? His lordship replied, "It is an event without precedent, and therefore without prognostic." The truth, however, is, that it had both. Our own history had furnished a precedent in the times of Charles the First. And the prognostics were so redundant, that a volume might be collected of passages from various writers who had predicted it. However ingenious might be a history of the Reformation before it occurred, the evidence could not be more authentic and positive than that of the great moral and political revolution which we have witnessed in our own days.

A prediction which Bishop Butler threw out in a sermon before the House of Lords, in 1741, does honour to his political sagacity, as well as to his knowledge of human nature; he calculated that the irreligious spirit would produce, some time or other, political disorders similar to those which, in the seventeenth century, had arisen from religious fanaticism. "Is there no danger," he observed, "that all this may raise somewhat like that levelling spirit, upon atheistical principles, which in the last age prevailed upon enthusiastic ones? Not to speak of the possibility that different sorts of people may unite in it upon these contrary principles!" All this literally has been accomplished! Leibnitz, indeed, foresaw the results of those selfish, and at length demoralizing, opinions, which began to prevail through Europe in his day. These disorganizing principles, conducted by a political sect, who tried "to be worse than they could be," as old Montaigne expresses it; a sort of men who have been audaciously congratulated as "having a taste for evil;" exhibited to the astonished world the dismal catastrophe the philosopher predicted. I shall give this remarkable passage. "I find that certain opinions approaching those of Epicurus and Spinoza, are, little by little, insinuating themselves into the minds of the great rulers of public affairs, who serve as the guides of others, and on whom all matters depend; besides, these opinions are also sliding into fashionable books, and thus they are preparing all things to that GENERAL REVOLUTION which menaces Europe; destroying those generous sentiments of the ancients, Greek and Roman, which preferred the love of country and public good, and the cares of posterity, to fortune and even to life. Our public spirits,[190] as the English call them, excessively diminish, and are no more in fashion, and will be still less while the least vicious of these men preserve only one principle, which they call honour; a principle which only keeps them from not doing what they deem a low action, while they openly laugh at the love of country--ridicule those who are zealous for public ends--and when a well-intentioned man asks what will become of their posterity, they reply 'Then, as now!' But it may happen to these persons themselves to have to endure those evils which they believe are reserved for others. If this epidemical and intellectual disorder could be corrected, whose bad effects are already visible, those evils might still be prevented; but if it proceeds in its growth, Providence will correct man by the very revolution which must spring from it. Whatever may happen indeed, all must turn out as usual for the best in general, at the end of the account, although this cannot happen without the punishment of those who contribute even to general good by their evil actions." The most superficial reader will hardly require a commentary on this very remarkable passage; he must instantly perceive how Leibnitz, in the seventeenth century, foresaw what has occurred in the eighteenth; and the prediction has been verified in the history of the actors in the late revolution, while the result, which we have not perhaps yet had, according to Leibnitz's own exhilarating system of optimism, is an eduction of good from evil.

A great genius, who was oppressed by malignant rivals in his own times, has been noticed by Madame de Staël, as having left behind him an actual prophecy of the French Revolution: this was Guibert, who, in his Commentary on Folard's Polybius, published in 1727, declared that "a conspiracy is actually forming in Europe, by means at once so subtle and efficacious, that I am sorry not to have come into the world thirty years later to witness its result. It must be confessed that the sovereigns of Europe wear very bad spectacles. The proofs of it are mathematical, if such proofs ever were, of a conspiracy." Guibert unquestionably foresaw the anti-monarchical spirit gathering up its mighty wings, and rising over the universe! but could not judge of the nature of the impulse which he predicted; prophesying from the ideas in his luminous intellect, he seems to have been far more curious about, than certain of, the consequences. Rousseau even circumstantially predicted the convulsions of modern Europe. He stood on the crisis of the French Revolution, which he vividly foresaw, for he seriously advised the higher classes of society to have their children taught some useful trade; a notion highly ridiculed on the first appearance of the Emile: but at its hour the awful truth struck! He, too, foresaw the horrors of that revolution; for he announced that Emile designed to emigrate, because, from the moral state of the people, a virtuous revolution had become impossible.[191] The eloquence of Burke was often oracular; and a speech of Pitt, in 1800, painted the state of Europe as it was only realised fifteen years afterwards.

But many remarkable predictions have turned out to be false. Whenever the facts on which the prediction is raised are altered in their situation, what was relatively true ceases to operate as a general principle. For instance, to that striking anticipation which Rousseau formed of the French revolution, he added, by way of note, as remarkable a prediction on MONARCHY. Je tiens pour impossible que les grandes monarchies de l'Europe aient encore long tems à durer; toutes ont brillé et tout état qui brille est sur son declin. The predominant anti-monarchical spirit among our rising generation seems to hasten on the accomplishment of the prophecy; but if an important alteration has occurred in the nature of things, we may question the result. If by looking into the past, Rousseau found facts which sufficiently proved that nations in the height of their splendour and corruption had closed their career by falling an easy conquest to barbarous invaders, who annihilated the most polished people at a single blow; we now find that no such power any longer exists in the great family of Europe: the state of the question is therefore changed. It is now how corrupt nations will act against corrupt nations equally enlightened? But if the citizen of Geneva drew his prediction of the extinction of monarchy in Europe from that predilection for democracy which assumes that a republic must necessarily produce more happiness to the people than a monarchy, then we say that the fatal experiment was again repeated since the prediction, and the fact proved not true! The excess of democracy inevitably terminates in a monarchical state; and were all the monarchies in Europe at present republics, a philosopher might safely predict the restoration of monarchy!

If a prediction be raised on facts which our own prejudices induce us to infer will exist, it must be chimerical. We have an Universal Chronicle of the Monk Carion, printed in 1532, in which he announces that the world was about ending,[192] as well as his chronicle of it; that the Turkish empire would not last many years; that after the death of Charles the Fifth the empire of Germany would be torn to pieces by the Germans themselves. This monk will no longer pass for a prophet; he belongs to that class of historians who write to humour their own prejudices, like a certain lady-prophetess, who, in 1811, predicted that grass was to grow in Cheapside about this time![193] The monk Carion, like others of greater name, had miscalculated the weeks of Daniel, and wished more ill to the Mahometans than suit the Christian cabinets of Europe to inflict on them; and, lastly, the monastic historian had no notion that it would please Providence to prosper the heresy of Luther! Sir James Mackintosh once observed, "I am sensible that in the field of political prediction veteran sagacity has often been deceived." Sir James alluded to the memorable example of Harrington, who published a demonstration of the impossibility of re-establishing monarchy in England six months before the restoration of Charles the Second! But the author of the Oceana was a political fanatic, who ventured to predict an event, not by other similar events, but by a theoretical principle which he had formed, that "the balance of power depends on that of property." Harrington, in his contracted view of human nature, had dropped out of his calculation all the stirring passions of ambition and party, and the vacillations of the multitude. A similar error of a great genius occurs in De Foe. "Child," says Mr. George Chalmers, "foreseeing from experience that men's conduct must finally be decided by their principles, FORETOLD the colonial revolt. De Foe, allowing his prejudices to obscure his sagacity, reprobated that suggestion, because he deemed interest a more strenuous prompter than enthusiasm." The predictions of Harrington and De Foe are precisely such as we might expect from a petty calculator, a political economist, who can see nothing farther than immediate results; but the true philosophical predictor was Child, who had read the past. It is probable that the American emancipation from the mother country of England was foreseen twenty or thirty years before it occurred, though not perhaps by the administration. Lord Orford, writing in 1754, under the ministry of the Duke of Newcastle, blames "The instructions to the governor of New York, which seemed better calculated for the latitude of Mexico, and for a Spanish tribunal, than for a free British settlement, and in such opulence and such haughtiness, that suspicions had long been conceived of their meditating to throw off the dependence on their mother-country." If this was written at the time, as the author asserts, it is a very remarkable passage, observes the noble editor of his memoirs. The prognostics or presages of this revolution it may now be difficult to recover; but it is evident that Child, before the time when Lord Orford wrote this passage, predicted the separation on true and philosophical principles.

Even when the event does not always justify the prediction, the predictor may not have been the less correct in his principles of divination. The catastrophe of human life, and the turn of great events, often prove accidental. Marshal Biron, whom we have noticed, might have ascended the throne instead of the scaffold; Cromwell and De Retz might have become only the favourite general or the minister of their sovereigns. Fortuitous events are not comprehended in the reach of human prescience; such must be consigned to those vulgar superstitions which presume to discover the issue of human events, without pretending to any human knowledge. There is nothing supernatural in the prescience of the philosopher.

Sometimes predictions have been condemned as false ones, which, when scrutinised, we can scarcely deem to have failed: they may have been accomplished, and they may again revolve on us. In 1749 Dr. Hartley published his "Observations on Man," and predicted the fall of the existing governments and hierarchies in two simple propositions; among others--

Prop. 81. It is probable that all the civil governments will be overturned.

Prop. 82. It is probable that the present forms of church-government will be dissolved.

Many were alarmed at these predicted falls of church and state. Lady Charlotte Wentworth asked Hartley when these terrible things would happen. The answer of the predictor was not less awful: "I am an old man, and shall not live to see them; but you are a young woman, and probably will see them." In the subsequent revolutions of America and of France, and perhaps now of Spain, we can hardly deny that these predictions had failed. A fortuitous event has once more thrown back Europe into its old corners: but we still revolve in a circle, and what is now dark and remote may again come round, when time has performed its great cycle. There was a prophetical passage in Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity regarding the church which long occupied the speculations of its expounders. Hooker indeed seemed to have done what no predictor of events should do; he fixed on the period of its accomplishment. In 1597 he declared that it would "peradventure fall out to be threescore and ten years, or if strength do awe, into fourscore." Those who had outlived the revolution in 1641, when the long parliament pulled down the ecclesiastical establishment, and sold the church-lands--a circumstance which Hooker had contemplated--and were afterwards returned to their places on the Restoration, imagined that the prediction had not yet been completed, and were looking with great anxiety towards the year 1677, for the close of this extraordinary prediction! When Bishop Barlow, in 1675, was consulted on it, he endeavoured to dissipate the panic, by referring to an old historian, who had reproached our nation for their proneness to prophecies![194] The prediction of the venerable Hooker in truth had been fully accomplished, and the event had occurred without Bishop Barlow having recurred to it; so easy it seems to forget what we dislike to remember! The period of time was too literally taken, and seems to have been only the figurative expression of man's age in scriptural language which Hooker had employed; but no one will now deny that this prescient sage had profoundly foreseen the results of that rising party, whose designs on church and state were clearly depicted in his own luminous view.

The philosophical predictor, in foretelling a crisis from the appearance of things, will not rashly assign the period of time; for the crisis which he anticipates is calculated on by that inevitable march of events which generate each other in human affairs; but the period is always dubious, being either retarded or accelerated by circumstances of a nature incapable of entering into this moral arithmetic. It is probable that a revolution similar to that of France would have occurred in this country, had it not been counteracted by the genius of Pitt. In 1618 it was easy to foretell by the political prognostic that a mighty war throughout Europe must necessarily occur. At that moment, observes Bayle, the house of Austria aimed at a universal monarchy; the consequent domineering spirit of the ministers of the Emperor and the King of Spain, combined with their determination to exterminate the new religion, excited a reaction to this imperial despotism; public opinion had been suppressed, till every people grew impatient; while their sovereigns, influenced by national feeling, were combining against Austria. But Austria was a vast military power, and her generals were the first of their class. The efforts of Europe would then be often repulsed! This state of affairs prognosticated a long war!--and when at length it broke out it lasted thirty years! The approach and the duration of the war might have been predicted; but the period of its termination could not have been foreseen.

There is, however, a spirit of political vaticination which presumes to pass beyond the boundaries of human prescience; it has been often ascribed to the highest source of inspiration by enthusiasts; but since "the language of prophecy" has ceased, such pretensions are not less impious than they are unphilosophical. Knox the reformer possessed an extraordinary portion of this awful prophetic confidence: he appears to have predicted several remarkable events, and the fates of some persons. We are told that, condemned to a galley at Rochelle, he predicted that "within two or three years he should preach the gospel at Saint Giles's in Edinburgh;" an improbable event, which happened. Of Mary and Darnley, he pronounced that, "as the king, for the queen's pleasure, had gone to mass, the Lord, in his justice, would make her the instrument of his overthrow." Other striking predictions of the deaths of Thomas Maitland, and of Kirkaldy of Grange, and the warning he solemnly gave to the Regent Murray not to go to Linlithgow, where he was assassinated, occasioned a barbarous people to imagine that the prophet Knox had received an immediate communication from Heaven. A Spanish friar and almanac-maker predicted, in clear and precise words, the death of Henry the Fourth of France; and Pieresc, though he had no faith in the vain science of astrology, yet, alarmed at whatever menaced the life of a beloved monarch, consulted with some of the king's friends, and had the Spanish almanac laid before his majesty. That high-spirited monarch thanked them for their solicitude, but utterly slighted the prediction: the event occurred, and in the following year the Spanish friar spread his own fame in a new almanac. I have been occasionally struck at the Jeremiads of honest George Withers, the vaticinating poet of our civil wars: some of his works afford many solemn predictions. We may account for many predictions of this class without the intervention of any supernatural agency. Among the busy spirits of a revolutionary age, the heads of a party, such as Knox, have frequently secret communications with spies or with friends. In a constant source of concealed information, a shrewd, confident, and enthusiastic temper will find ample matter for mysterious prescience. Knox exercised that deep sagacity which took in the most enlarged views of the future, as appears by his Machiavelian foresight on the barbarous destruction of the monasteries and the cathedrals--"The best way to keep the rooks from returning, is to pull down their nests." In the case of the prediction of the death of Henry the Fourth, by the Spanish friar, it resulted either from his being acquainted with the plot, or from his being made an instrument for their purpose by those who were. It appears that rumours of Henry's assassination were rife in Spain and Italy before the event occurred. Such vaticinators as George Withers will always rise in those disturbed times which his own prosaic metre has forcibly depicted:--

It may be on that darkness, which they find Within their hearts, a sudden light hath shin'd, Making reflections of SOME THINGS TO COME, Which leave within them musings troublesome To their weak spirits; or too intricate For them to put in order, and relate. They act as men in ecstasies have done-- Striving their cloudy visions to declare-- And I, perhaps, among these may be one That was let loose for service to be done: I blunder out what worldly-prudent men Count madnesse.--P. 7.[195]

Separating human prediction from inspired prophecy, we only ascribe to the faculties of man that acquired prescience which we have demonstrated that some great minds have unquestionably exercised. We have discovered its principles in the necessary dependence of effects on general causes, and we have shown that, impelled by the same motives, and circumscribed by the same passions, all human affairs revolve in a circle; and we have opened the true source of this yet imperfect science of moral and political prediction, in an intimate but a discriminative knowledge of the PAST.

Authority is sacred, when experience affords parallels and analogies. If much which may overwhelm when it shall happen can be foreseen, the prescient statesman and moralist may provide defensive measures to break the waters, whose streams they cannot always direct; and the venerable Hooker has profoundly observed, that "the best things have been overthrown, not so much by puissance and might of adversaries, as through defect of council in those that should have upheld and defended the same."[196]

The philosophy of history blends the past with the present, and combines the present with the future: each is but a portion of the other! The actual state of a thing is necessarily determined by its antecedent, and thus progressively through the chain of human existence; while "the present is always full of the future," as Leibnitz has happily expressed the idea.

A new and beautiful light is thus thrown over the annals of mankind, by the analogies and the parallels of different ages in succession. How the seventeenth century has influenced the eighteenth; and the results of the nineteenth as they shall appear in the twentieth, might open a source of predictions, to which, however difficult it might be to affix their dates, there would be none in exploring into causes, and tracing their inevitable effects.

The multitude live only among the shadows of things in the appearances of the PRESENT; the learned, busied with the PAST, can only trace whence and how all comes; but he who is one of the people, and one of the learned, the true philosopher, views the natural tendency and terminations which are preparing for the FUTURE!

FOOTNOTES:

[179] See Rushworth, vol. i. p. 420. His language was decisive.

[180] This letter is in the works of Æneas Sylvius; a copious extract is given by Bossuet, in his "Variations." See also Mosheim, Cent. xiii. part ii. chap. 2, note m.

[181] Though it cannot be positively asserted it is generally believed that the author was Robert Longlande, a monk of Malvern. See introduction to Wright's edition of "The Vision." The latter part of the year 1362 is believed to be the time of its composition.

[182] The passage is so remarkable as to be worth giving here, for the immediate reference of such readers as may not have ready access to the original. We modernize the spelling from Mr. Wright's edition:--

But there shall come a king, And confess you religious, And award you as the Bible telleth For breaking of your rule.

* * * * *

And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon And all his issue for ever, Have a knock of a king, And incurable the wound.

[183] Ep. ad Att. Lib. x. Ep. 4.

[184] Ep. ad Att. Lib. vi. Ep. 6.

[185] This remarkable confession I find in Menage's "Observations sur la Langue Françoise," Part II. p. 110.

[186] [Greek: Okeia gar xunesei, kai oute promathôn es autên ouden, out epimathôn tôn te parachrêma di elachistês boulês kratistos gnômôn, kai tôn mellontôn epipleiston tou genêsomenou aristos eikastês].--Thucydides, lib. i.

[187] Arist. Rhet. lib. vii. c. 5.

[188] This work was printed in London as a first volume, but remained unpublished. This singularly curious production was suppressed, but reprinted at Paris. It has suffered the most cruel mutilations. I read with surprise and instruction the single copy which I was assured was the only one saved from the havoc of the entire edition. The writer was the celebrated Chateaubriand.

[189] "Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions." By S.T. Coleridge, Esq. 1807. Vol. i. p. 214.

[190] Public spirit, and public spirits, were about the year 1700 household words with us. Leibnitz was struck by their significance, but it might now puzzle us to find synonyms, or even to explain the very terms themselves.

[191] This extraordinary passage is at the close of the third book of Emile, to which I must refer the reader. It is curious, however, to observe, that in 1760 Rousseau poured forth the following awful predictions, which were considered quite absurd:--"Vous vous fiez à l'ordre actuel de la société, sans songer que cet ordre est sujet à des révolutions inévitables--le grand devient petit, le riche devient pauvre, le monarque devient sujet--nous approchons l'état de crise et du siècle des révolutions. Que fera donc dans la bassesse ce satrape que vous n'aurez élevé que pour la grandeur? Que fera dans la pauvreté, ce publicain qui ne sçait vivre que d'or? Que fera, dépourvu de tout, ce fastueux imbecille qui ne sait point user de lui-même?" &c. &c.

[192] This prediction of the end of the world is one of the most popular hallucinations, warmly received by many whenever it is promulgated. It had the most marked effect when the cycle of a thousand years after the birth of Christ was approaching completion; and the world was assured that was the limit of its present state. Numerous acts of piety were performed. Churches were built, religious houses founded, and asceticism became the order of the day, until the dreaded year was completed without the accompaniment of the supernatural horrors so generally feared; the world soon relapsed into forgetfulness, and went on as before. Very many prophecies have since been promulgated; and in defiance of such repeated failures are still occasionally indulged in by persons from whom better things might be expected. Richard Brothers, in the last century, and more than one reverend gentleman in the present one, have been bold enough to fix an exact time for the event: but it has passed as quietly as the thousandth anniversary noted above.

[193] One of the most effective prophecies against London, and which frightened for the time a very large number of its inhabitants, was that given out in the spring of 1750, after a slight shock of an earthquake was felt in London, and it was prophesied that another should occur which would destroy the town and all its inhabitants. All the roads were thronged with persons flying to the country a day or two before the threatened event; and they were all unmercifully ridiculed when the day passed over quietly. Walpole in one of his amusing letters speaks of a party who went "to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back--I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish!" Jokers who were out late amused themselves by bawling in the watchmen's voice, "Past four o'clock, and a dreadful earthquake!" A pamphlet purporting to be "a full and true account" of this earthquake which never happened, was "printed for Tim Tremor, in Fleet-street, 1750," and made the vehicle for much personal satire. Thus it is stated that the "Commissioners of Westminster-bridge have ordered this calamity to be entered in their books, as a glorious excuse for the next sinking pier;" and that the town received some comfort upon hearing that "the Inns of Court were all sunk, and several orders were given that no one should assist in bringing any one lawyer above ground."

[194] An eye-witness of the great fire of London has noted the difficulty of obtaining effective assistance in endeavouring to stay its progress, owing to the superstition which seized many persons, because a prophecy of Mother Shipton's was quoted to show that London was doomed to hopeless and entire destruction.

[195] "A Dark Lantherne, offering a dim Discovery, intermixed with Remembrances, Predictions, &c. 1652."

[196] Hooker wrote this about 1560, and he wrote before the Siècle des Révolutions had begun, even among ourselves! He penetrated into this important principle merely by the force of his own meditation. At this moment, after more practical experience in political revolutions, a very intelligent French writer, in a pamphlet, entitled "M. da Villèle," says, "Experience proclaims a great truth--namely, that revolutions themselves cannot succeed, except when they are favoured by a portion of the GOVERNMENT." He illustrates the axiom by the different revolutions which have occurred in his nation within these thirty years. It is the same truth, traced to its source by another road.

DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY.

Modern philosophy, theoretical or experimental, only amuses while the action of discovery is suspended or advances; the interest ceases with the inquirer when the catastrophe is ascertained, as in the romance whose dénouement turns on a mysterious incident, which, once unfolded, all future agitation ceases. But in the true infancy of science, philosophers were as imaginative a race as poets: marvels and portents, undemonstrable and undefinable, with occult fancies, perpetually beginning and never ending, were delightful as the shifting cantos of Ariosto. Then science entranced the eye by its thaumaturgy; when they looked through an optic tube, they believed they were looking into futurity; or, starting at some shadow darkening the glassy globe, beheld the absent person; while the mechanical inventions of art were toys and tricks, with sometimes an automaton, which frightened them with life.

The earlier votaries of modern philosophy only witnessed, as Gaffarel calls his collection, "Unheard-of Curiosities." This state of the marvellous, of which we are now for ever deprived, prevailed among the philosophers and the virtuosi in Europe, and with ourselves, long after the establishment of the Royal Society. Philosophy then depended mainly on authority--a single one, however, was sufficient: so that when this had been repeated by fifty others, they had the authority of fifty honest men--whoever the first man might have been! They were then a blissful race of children, rambling here and there in a golden age of innocence and ignorance, where at every step each gifted discoverer whispered to the few, some half-concealed secret of nature, or played with some toy of art; some invention which with great difficulty performed what, without it, might have been done with great ease. The cabinets of the lovers of mechanical arts formed enchanted apartments, where the admirers feared to stir or look about them; while the philosophers themselves half imagined they were the very thaumaturgi, for which the world gave them too much credit, at least for their quiet! Would we run after the shadows in this gleaming land of moonshine, or sport with these children in the fresh morning of science, ere Aurora had scarcely peeped on the hills, we must enter into their feelings, view with their eyes, and believe all they confide to us; and out of these bundles of dreams sometimes pick out one or two for our own dreaming. They are the fairy tales and the Arabian Nights' entertainments of science. But if the reader is stubbornly mathematical and logical, he will only be holding up a great torch against the muslin curtain, upon which the fantastic shadows playing upon it must vanish at the instant. It is an amusement which can only take place by carefully keeping himself in the dark.[197]

What a subject, were I to enter on it, would be the narratives of magical writers! These precious volumes have been so constantly wasted by the profane, that now a book of real magic requires some to find it, as well as a great magician to use it. Albertus Magnus, or Albert the Great, as he is erroneously styled--for this sage only derived this enviable epithet from his surname De Groot, as did Hugo Grotius--this sage, in his "Admirable Secrets," delivers his opinion that these books of magic should be most preciously preserved; for, he prophetically added, the time is arriving when they would be understood! It seems they were not intelligible in the thirteenth century; but if Albertus has not miscalculated, in the present day they may be! Magical terms with talismanic figures may yet conceal many a secret; gunpowder came down to us in a sort of anagram, and the kaleidoscope, with all its interminable multiplications of forms, lay at hand for two centuries in Baptista Porta's "Natural Magic." The abbot Trithemius, in a confidential letter, happened to call himself a magician, perhaps at the moment he thought himself one, and sent three or four leaves stuffed with the names of devils and with their evocations. At the death of his friend these leaves fell into the unworthy hands of the prior, who was so frightened on the first glance at the diabolical nomenclature, that he raised the country against the abbot, and Trithemius was nearly a lost man! Yet, after all, this evocation of devils has reached us in his "Steganographia," and proves to be only one of this ingenious abbot's polygraphic attempts at secret writing; for he had flattered himself that he had invented a mode of concealing his thoughts from all the world, while he communicated them to a friend. Roger Bacon promised to raise thunder and lightning, and disperse clouds by dissolving them into rain. The first magical process has been obtained by Franklin; and the other, of far more use to our agriculturists, may perchance be found lurking in some corner which has been overlooked in the "Opus majus" of our "Doctor mirabilis." Do we laugh at their magical works of art? Are we ourselves such indifferent artists? Cornelius Agrippa, before he wrote his "Vanity of the Arts and Sciences," intended to reduce into a system and method the secret of communicating with spirits and demons.[198] On good authority, that of Porphyrius, Psellus, Plotinus, Jamblichus--and on better, were it necessary to allege it--he was well assured that the upper regions of the air swarmed with what the Greeks called dæmones, just as our lower atmosphere is full of birds, our waters of fish, and our earth of insects. Yet this occult philosopher, who knew perfectly eight languages, and married two wives, with whom he had never exchanged a harsh word in any of them, was everywhere avoided as having by his side, for his companion, a personage no less than a demon! This was a great black dog, whom he suffered to stretch himself out among his magical manuscripts, or lie on his bed, often kissing and patting him, and feeding him on choice morsels. Yet for this would Paulus Jovius and all the world have had him put to the ordeal of fire and fagot! The truth was afterwards boldly asserted by Wierus, his learned domestic, who believed that his master's dog was really nothing more than what he appeared! "I believe," says he, "that he was a real natural dog; he was indeed black, but of a moderate size, and I have often led him by a string, and called him by the French name Agrippa had given him, Monsieur! and he had a female who was called Mademoiselle! I wonder how authors of such great character should write so absurdly on his vanishing at his death, nobody knows how!" But as it is probable that Monsieur and Mademoiselle must have generated some puppy demons, Wierus ought to have been more circumstantial.

Albertus Magnus, for thirty years, had never ceased working at a man of brass, and had cast together the qualities of his materials under certain constellations, which threw such a spirit into his man of brass, that it was reported his growth was visible; his feet, legs, thighs, shoulders, neck, and head, expanded, and made the city of Cologne uneasy at possessing one citizen too mighty for them all. This man of brass, when he reached his maturity, was so loquacious, that Albert's master, the great scholastic Thomas Aquinas, one day, tired of his babble, and declaring it was a devil, or devilish, with his staff knocked the head off; and, what was extraordinary, this brazen man, like any human being thus effectually silenced, "word never spake more." This incident is equally historical and authentic; though whether heads of brass can speak, and even prophesy, was indeed a subject of profound inquiry even at a later period.[199] Naudé, who never questioned their vocal powers, and yet was puzzled concerning the nature of this new species of animal, has no doubt most judiciously stated the question, Whether these speaking brazen heads had a sensitive and reasoning nature, or whether demons spoke in them? But brass has not the faculty of providing its own nourishment, as we see in plants, and therefore they were not sensitive; and as for the act of reasoning, these brazen heads presumed to know nothing but the future: with the past and the present they seemed totally unacquainted, so that their memory and their observation were very limited; and as for the future, that is always doubtful and obscure--even to heads of brass! This learned man then infers that "These brazen heads could have no reasoning faculties, for nothing altered their nature; they said what they had to say, which no one could contradict; and having said their say, you might have broken the head for anything more that you could have got out of it. Had they had any life in them, would they not have moved as well as spoken? Life itself is but motion, but they had no lungs, no spleen; and, in fact, though they spoke, they had no tongue. Was a devil in them? I think not. Yet why should men have taken all this trouble to make, not a man, but a trumpet?"

Our profound philosopher was right not to agitate the question whether these brazen heads had ever spoken. Why should not a man of brass speak, since a doll can whisper, a statue play chess,[200] and brass ducks have performed the whole process of digestion?[201] Another magical invention has been ridiculed with equal reason. A magician was annoyed, as philosophers still are, by passengers in the street; and he, particularly so, by having horses led to drink under his window. He made a magical horse of wood, according to one of the books of Hermes, which perfectly answered its purpose, by frightening away the horses, or rather the grooms! the wooden horse, no doubt, gave some palpable kick. The same magical story might have been told of Dr. Franklin, who finding that under his window the passengers had discovered a spot which they made too convenient for themselves, he charged it with his newly-discovered electrical fire. After a few remarkable incidents had occurred, which at a former period would have lodged the great discoverer of electricity in the Inquisition, the modern magician succeeded just as well as the ancient, who had the advantage of conning over the books of Hermes. Instead of ridiculing these works of magic, let us rather become magicians ourselves!

The works of the ancient alchemists have afforded numberless discoveries to modern chemists: nor is even their grand operation despaired of. If they have of late not been so renowned, this has arisen from a want of what Ashmole calls "apertness;" a qualification early inculcated among these illuminated sages. We find authentic accounts of some who have lived three centuries, with tolerable complexions, possessed of nothing but a crucible and a bellows! but they were so unnecessarily mysterious, that whenever such a person was discovered, he was sure in an instant to disappear, and was never afterwards heard of.

In the "Liber Patris Sapientiæ" this selfish cautiousness is all along impressed on the student for the accomplishment of the great mystery. In the commentary on this precious work of the alchemist Norton, who counsels,

Be thou in a place secret, by thyself alone, That no man see or hear what thou shalt say or done. Trust not thy friend too much wheresoe'er thou go, For he thou trustest best, sometyme may be thy foe;

Ashmole observes, that "Norton gives exceeding good advice to the student in this science where he bids him be secret in the carrying on of his studies and operations, and not to let any one know of his undertakings but his good angel and himself:" and such a close and retired breast had Norton's master, who,

When men disputed of colours of the rose, He would not speak, but kept himself full close!

We regret that by each leaving all his knowledge to "his good angel and himself," it has happened that "the good angels" have kept it all to themselves!

It cannot, however, be denied, that if they could not always extract gold out of lead, they sometimes succeeded in washing away the pimples on ladies' faces, notwithstanding that Sir Kenelm Digby poisoned his most beautiful lady, because, as Sancho would have said, he was one of those who would "have his bread whiter than the finest wheaten." Van Helmont, who could not succeed in discovering the true elixir of life, however hit on the spirit of hartshorn, which for a good while he considered was the wonderful elixir itself, restoring to life persons who seemed to have lost it. And though this delightful enthusiast could not raise a ghost, yet he thought he had; for he raised something aerial from spa-water, which mistaking for a ghost, he gave it that very name; a name which we still retain in gas, from the German geist, or ghost! Paracelsus carried the tiny spirits about him in the hilt of his great sword! Having first discovered the qualities of laudanum, this illustrious quack made use of it as an universal remedy, and distributed it in the form of pills, which he carried in the basket-hilt of his sword; the operations he performed were as rapid as they seemed magical. Doubtless we have lost some inconceivable secrets by some unexpected occurrences, which the secret itself it would seem ought to have prevented taking place. When a philosopher had discovered the art of prolonging life to an indefinite period, it is most provoking to find that he should have allowed himself to die at an early age! We have a very authentic history from Sir Kenelm Digby himself, that when he went in disguise to visit Descartes at his retirement at Egmond, lamenting the brevity of life, which hindered philosophers getting on in their studies, the French philosopher assured him that "he had considered that matter; to render a man immortal was what he could not promise, but that he was very sure it was possible to lengthen out his life to the period of the patriarchs." And when his death was announced to the world, the Abbé Picot, an ardent disciple, for a long time would not believe it possible; and at length insisted, that if it had occurred, it must have been owing to some mistake of the philosopher's.

The late Holcroft, Loutherbourg, and Cosway, imagined that they should escape the vulgar era of scriptural life by reorganizing their old bones, and moistening their dry marrow; their new principles of vitality were supposed by them to be found in the powers of the mind; this seemed more reasonable, but proved to be as little efficacious as those other philosophers, who imagine they have detected the hidden principle of life in the eels frisking in vinegar, and allude to "the bookbinder who creates the book-worm!"

Paracelsus has revealed to us one of the grandest secrets of nature. When the world began to dispute on the very existence of the elementary folk, it was then that he boldly offered to give birth to a fairy, and has sent down to posterity the recipe. He describes the impurity which is to be transmuted into such purity, the gross elements of a delicate fairy, which, fixed in a phial, placed in fuming dung, will in due time settle into a full-grown fairy, bursting through its vitreous prison--on the vivifying principle by which the ancient Egyptians hatched their eggs in ovens. I recollect, at Dr. Farmer's sale, the leaf which preserved this recipe for making a fairy, forcibly folded down by the learned commentator; from which we must infer the credit he gave to the experiment. There was a greatness of mind in Paracelsus, who, having furnished a recipe to make a fairy, had the delicacy to refrain from its formation. Even Baptista Porta, one of the most enlightened philosophers, does not deny the possibility of engendering creatures which, "at their full growth, shall not exceed the size of a mouse;" but he adds, "they are only pretty little dogs to play with." Were these akin to the fairies of Paracelsus?[202]

They were well convinced of the existence of such elemental beings; frequent accidents in mines showed the potency of the metallic spirits, which so tormented the workmen in some of the German mines by blindness, giddiness, and sudden sickness, that they have been obliged to abandon mines well known to be rich in silver. A metallic spirit at one sweep annihilated twelve miners, who were all found dead together. The fact was unquestionable; and the safety-lamp was undiscovered.

Never was a philosophical imagination more beautiful than that exquisite Palingenesis, as it has been termed from the Greek, or a regeneration: or rather the apparitions of animals and plants. Schott, Kircher, Gaffarel, Borelli, Digby, and the whole of that admirable school, discovered in the ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were again raised up by the force of heat. Nothing, they say, perishes in nature; all is but a continuation, or a revival. The semina of resurrection are concealed in extinct bodies, as in the blood of man; the ashes of roses will again revive into roses, though smaller and paler than if they had been planted; unsubstantial and unodoriferous, they are not roses which grow on rose-trees, but their delicate apparitions; and, like apparitions, they are seen but for a moment! The process of the Palingenesis, this picture of immortality, is described. These philosophers having burnt a flower, by calcination disengaged the salts from its ashes, and deposited them in a glass phial; a chemical mixture acted on it, till in the fermentation they assumed a bluish and a spectral hue. This dust, thus excited by heat, shoots upwards into its primitive forms; by sympathy the parts unite, and while each is returning to its destined place, we see distinctly the stalk, the leaves, and the flower arise; it is the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its ashes. The heat passes away, the magical scene declines, till the whole matter again precipitates itself into the chaos at the bottom. This vegetable phoenix lies thus concealed in its cold ashes till the presence of heat produces this resurrection--in its absence it returns to its death. Thus the dead naturally revive; and a corpse may give out its shadowy re-animation when not too deeply buried in the earth. Bodies corrupted in their graves have risen, particularly the murdered; for murderers are apt to bury their victims in a slight and hasty manner. Their salts, exhaled in vapour by means of their fermentation, have arranged themselves on the surface of the earth, and formed those phantoms, which at night have often terrified the passing spectator, as authentic history witnesses. They have opened the graves of the phantom, and discovered the bleeding corpse beneath; hence it is astonishing how many ghosts may be seen at night, after a recent battle, standing over their corpses! On the same principle, my old philosopher Gaffarel conjectures on the raining of frogs; but these frogs, we must conceive, can only be the ghosts of frogs; and Gaffarel himself has modestly opened this fact by a "peradventure." A more satisfactory origin of ghosts modern philosophy has not afforded.

And who does not believe in the existence of ghosts? for, as Dr. More forcibly says--"That there should be so universal a fame and fear of that which never was, nor is, nor can be ever in the world, is to me the greatest miracle of all. If there had not been, at some time or other, true miracles, it had not been so easy to impose on the people by false. The alchemist would never go about to sophisticate metals to pass them off for true gold and silver, unless that such a thing was acknowledged as true gold and silver in the world."

The pharmacopoeia of those times combined more of morals with medicine than our own. They discovered that the agate rendered a man eloquent and even witty; a laurel leaf placed on the centre of the skull fortified the memory; the brains of fowls and birds of swift wing wonderfully helped the imagination. All such specifics have now disappeared, and have greatly reduced the chances of an invalid recovering that which perhaps he never possessed. Lentils and rape-seed were a certain cure for the small-pox, and very obviously--their grains resembling the spots of this disease. They discovered that those who lived on "fair" plants became fair, those on fruitful ones were never barren: on the principle that Hercules acquired his mighty strength by feeding on the marrow of lions. But their talismans, provided they were genuine, seem to have been wonderfully operative; and had we the same confidence, and melted down the guineas we give physicians, engraving on them talismanic figures, I would answer for the good effects of the experiment. Naudé, indeed, has utterly ridiculed the occult virtues of talismans, in his defence of Virgil, accused of being a magician: the poet, it seems, cast into a well a talisman of a horse-leech, graven on a plate of gold, to drive away the great number of horse-leeches which infested Naples. Naudé positively denies that talismans ever possessed any such occult virtues: Gaffarel regrets that so judicious a man as Naudé should have gone this length, giving the lie to so many authentic authors; and Naudé's paradox is indeed as strange as his denial; he suspects the thing is not true because it is so generally told! "It leads one to suspect," says he, "as animals are said to have been driven away from so many places by these talismans, whether they were ever driven from any one place." Gaffarel, suppressing by his good temper his indignant feelings at such reasoning, turns the paradox on its maker:--"As if, because of the great number of battles that Hannibal is reported to have fought with the Romans, we might not, by the same reason, doubt whether he fought any one with them." The reader must be aware that the strength of the argument lies entirely with the firm believer in talismans. Gaffarel, indeed, who passed his days in collecting "Curiosités inouïes," is a most authentic historian of unparalleled events, even in his own times! Such as that heavy rain in Poitou, which showered down "petites bestioles," little creatures like bishops with their mitres, and monks with their capuchins over their heads; it is true, afterwards they all turned into butterflies!

The museums, the cabinets, and the inventions of our early virtuosi were the baby-houses of philosophers. Baptista Porta, Bishop Wilkins, and old Ashmole, were they now living, had been enrolled among the quiet members of "The Society of Arts," instead of flying in the air, collecting "a wing of the phoenix, as tradition goes;" or catching the disjointed syllables of an old doting astrologer. But these early dilettanti had not derived the same pleasure from the useful inventions of the aforesaid "Society of Arts" as they received from what Cornelius Agrippa, in a fit of spleen, calls "things vain and superfluous, invented to no other end but for pomp and idle pleasure." Baptista Porta was more skilful in the mysteries of art and nature than any man in his day. Having founded the Academy degli Oziosi, he held an inferior association in his own house, called di Secreti, where none was admitted but those elect who had communicated some secret; for, in the early period of modern art and science, the slightest novelty became a secret, not to be confided to the uninitiated. Porta was unquestionably a fine genius, as his works still show; but it was his misfortune that he attributed his own penetrating sagacity to his skill in the art of divination. He considered himself a prognosticator; and, what was more unfortunate, some eminent persons really thought he was. Predictions and secrets are harmless, provided they are not believed: but his Holiness finding Porta's were, warned him that magical sciences were great hindrances to the study of the Bible, and paid him the compliment to forbid his prophesying. Porta's genius was now limited to astonish, and sometimes to terrify, the more ingenious part of I Secreti. On entering his cabinet, some phantom of an attendant was sure to be hovering in the air, moving as he who entered moved; or he observed in some mirror that his face was twisted on the wrong side of his shoulders, and did not quite think that all was right when he clapped his hand on it; or passing through a darkened apartment a magical landscape burst on him, with human beings in motion, the boughs of trees bending, and the very clouds passing over the sun; or sometimes banquets, battles, and hunting-parties were in the same apartment. "All these spectacles my friends have witnessed!" exclaims the self-delighted Baptista Porta. When his friends drank wine out of the same cup which he had used, they were mortified with wonder; for he drank wine, and they only water! or on a summer's day, when all complained of the sirocco, he would freeze his guests with cold air in the room; or, on a sudden, let off a flying dragon to sail along with a cracker in its tail, and a cat tied on his back; shrill was the sound, and awful was the concussion; so that it required strong nerves, in an age of apparitions and devils, to meet this great philosopher when in his best humour. Albertus Magnus entertained the Earl of Holland, as that earl passed through Cologne, in a severe winter, with a warm summer scene, luxuriant in fruits and flowers. The fact is related by Trithemius--and this magical scene connected with his vocal head, and his books De Secretis Mulierum, and De Mirabilibus, confirmed the accusations they raised against the great Albert for being a magician. His apologist, Theophilus Raynaud, is driven so hard to defend Albertus, that he at once asserts the winter changed to summer and the speaking head to be two infamous flams! He will not believe these authenticated facts, although he credits a miracle which proves the sanctity of Albertus,--after three centuries, the body of Albert the Great remained as sweet as ever!

"Whether such enchauntments," as old Mandeville cautiously observeth, two centuries preceding the days of Porta, were "by craft or by nygromancye, I wot nere." But that they were not unknown to Chaucer, appears in his "Frankelein's Tale," where, minutely describing them, he communicates the same pleasure he must himself have received from the ocular illusions of "the Tregetoure," or "Jogelour." Chaucer ascribes the miracle to a "naturall magique!" in which, however, it was as unsettled whether the "Prince of Darkness" was a party concerned.

For I am siker that there be sciences By which men maken divers apparences Swiche as thise subtil tregetoures play. For oft at festes have I wel herd say That tregetoures, within an halle large, Have made come in a water and a barge, And in the halle rowen up and doun. Sometime hath semed come a grim leoun, And sometime floures spring as in a mede, Sometime a vine and grapes white and rede, Sometime a castel al of lime and ston, And whan hem liketh voideth it anon: Thus semeth it to every mannes sight.

Bishop Wilkins's museum was visited by Evelyn, who describes the sort of curiosities which occupied and amused the children of science. "Here, too, there was a hollow statue, which gave a voice, and uttered words by a long concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks through it at a good distance:" a circumstance which, perhaps, they were not then aware revealed the whole mystery of the ancient oracles, which they attributed to demons rather than to tubes, pulleys, and wheels. The learned Charles Patin, in his scientific travels, records, among other valuable productions of art, a cherry-stone, on which were engraven about a dozen and a half of portraits! Even the greatest of human geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, to attract the royal patronage, created a lion which ran before the French monarch, dropping fleurs de lis from its shaggy breast. And another philosopher who had a spinnet which played and stopped at command, might have made a revolution in the arts and sciences, had the half-stifled child that was concealed in it not been forced, unluckily, to crawl into daylight, and thus it was proved that a philosopher might be an impostor!

The arts, as well as the sciences, at the first institution of the Royal Society, were of the most amusing class. The famous Sir Samuel Moreland had turned his house into an enchanted palace. Everything was full of devices, which showed art and mechanism in perfection: his coach carried a travelling kitchen; for it had a fire-place and grate, with which he could make a soup, broil cutlets, and roast an egg; and he dressed his meat by clock-work. Another of these virtuosi, who is described as "a gentleman of superior order, and whose house was a knickknackatory," valued himself on his multifarious inventions, but most in "sowing salads in the morning, to be cut for dinner." The house of Winstanley, who afterwards raised the first Eddystone lighthouse, must have been the wonder of the age. If you kicked aside an old slipper, purposely lying in your way, up started a ghost before you; or if you sat down in a certain chair, a couple of gigantic arms would immediately clasp you in. There was an arbour in the garden, by the side of a canal; you had scarcely seated yourself when you were sent out afloat to the middle of the canal--from whence you could not escape till this man of art and science wound you up to the arbour. What was passing at the "Royal Society" was also occurring at the "Académie des Sciences" at Paris. A great and gouty member of that philosophical body, on the departure of a stranger, would point to his legs, to show the impossibility of conducting him to the door; yet the astonished visitor never failed finding the virtuoso waiting for him on the outside, to make his final bow! While the visitor was going down stairs, this inventive genius was descending with great velocity in a machine from the window: so that he proved, that if a man of science cannot force nature to walk down stairs, he may drive her out at the window!

If they travelled at home, they set off to note down prodigies. Dr. Plott, in a magnificent project of journeying through England, for the advantage of "Learning and Trade," and the discovery of "Antiquities and other Curiosities," for which he solicited the royal aid which Leland enjoyed, among other notable designs, discriminates a class thus: "Next I shall inquire of animals; and first of strange people."--"Strange accidents that attend corporations or families, as that the deans of Rochester ever since the foundation by turns have died deans and bishops; the bird with a white breast that haunts the family of Oxenham near Exeter just before the death of any of that family; the bodies of trees that are seen to swim in a pool near Brereton in Cheshire, a certain warning to the heir of that honourable family to prepare for the next world." And such remarkables as "Number of children, such as the Lady Temple, who before she died saw seven hundred descended from her."[203] This fellow of the Royal Society, who lived nearly to 1700, was requested to give an edition of Pliny: we have lost the benefit of a most copious commentary! Bishop Hall went to "the Spa." The wood about that place was haunted not only by "freebooters, but by wolves and witches; although these last are ofttimes but one." They were called loups-garoux; and the Greeks, it seems, knew them by the name of [Greek: lukanthrôpoi], men-wolves: witches that have put on the shapes of those cruel beasts. "We sawe a boy there, whose half-face was devoured by one of them near the village; yet so, as that the eare was rather cut than bitten off." Rumour had spread that the boy had had half his face devoured; when it was examined, it turned out that his ear had only been scratched! However, there can be no doubt of the existence of "witch-wolves;" for Hall saw at Limburgh "one of those miscreants executed, who confessed on the wheel to have devoured two-and-forty children in that form." They would probably have found it difficult to have summoned the mothers who had lost the children. But observe our philosopher's reasoning: "It would aske a large volume to scan this problem of lycanthropy." He had laboriously collected all the evidence, and had added his arguments: the result offers a curious instance of acute reasoning on a wrong principle.[204]

Men of science and art then passed their days in a bustle of the marvellous. I will furnish a specimen of philosophical correspondence in a letter to old John Aubrey. The writer betrays the versatility of his curiosity by very opposite discoveries. "My hands are so full of work that I have no time to transcribe for Dr. Henry More an account of the Barnstable apparition--Lord Keeper North would take it kindly from you--give a sight of this letter from Barnstable to Dr. Whitchcot." He had lately heard of a Scotchman who had been carried by fairies into France; but the purpose of his present letter is to communicate other sort of apparitions than the ghost of Barnstable. He had gone to Glastonbury, "to pick up a few berries from the holy thorn which flowered every Christmas day."[205] The original thorn had been cut down by a military saint in the civil wars; but the trade of the place was not damaged, for they had contrived not to have a single holy thorn, but several, "by grafting and inoculation."[206] He promises to send these "berries;" but requests Aubrey to inform "that person of quality who had rather have a bush, that it was impossible to get one for him. I am told," he adds, "that there is a person about Glastonbury who hath a nursery of them, which he sells for a crown a piece," but they are supposed not to be "of the right kind."

The main object of this letter is the writer's "suspicion of gold in this country;" for which he offers three reasons. Tacitus says there was gold in England, and that Agrippa came to a spot where he had a prospect of Ireland--from which place he writes; secondly, that "an honest man" had in this spot found stones from which he had extracted good gold, and that he himself "had seen in the broken stones a clear appearance of gold;" and thirdly, "there is a story which goes by tradition in that part of the country, that in the hill alluded to there was a door into a hole, that when any wanted money they used to go and knock there, that a woman used to appear, and give to such as came.[207] At a time one by greediness or otherwise gave her offence, she flung to the door, and delivered this old saying, still remembered in the country:

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