Omniana, or Horæ Otiosiores

Front matter

OR

HORÆ OTIOSIORES.

W. Pople, Printer, 67, Chancery Lane.

Volume I.

OR

HORÆ OTIOSIORES

VOL. I.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOSTER ROW.

1812.

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.

Mirrors

1. Mirrors.

Pope Innocent X. appointed a religioner of great virtue, discretion, and experience, secretly to visit the nunneries, and inspect not merely their general discipline, but look at the separate cells, and persuade the nuns to discard every thing that was not perfectly consistent with the state which they had embraced. After some months had been employed in this commission, the visitor made his report to his holiness. He returned, he said, greatly edified with what he had seen, but not altogether satisfied; edified, be he had found such penances, such lasting, such discipling, such cilices, such praying and devotions, that it had been necessary for him to moderate the excess of the sisters in these things, and to check their ardour. Edified also, because, having found in the cells some articles of furniture more costly, or of better kind than suited with religious poverty and simplicity, he had succeeded, notwithstanding some repugnance on the part of the nuns, in persuading them to part with all these things,.. except one. And because he had not been able to make them part with that one from their walls, and still more from their affections (except in a very few rare instances) he was not altogether satisfied with the success of his commission. And what was the piece of furniture, said his holiness. It was the Looking Glass. Vieyra heard this story from Pope Innocent himself, and made a resolution at the time that he would repeat it when next he preached in a Portugueze nunnery.

Vieyra's rhetoric seems to have been efficacious. One of the sisters of S. Clara at Coimbra, seeing herself by accident in some water, observed that she had just seen the face of a nun in that convent, which she had not seen there for more than thirty years. When I was last at * * a nun made her escape from the Irish nunnery. The first thing for which she enquired, when she reached the house in which she was to be secreted till she could be conveyed on board ship, was a looking glass. She had entered the convent when only five years old, and from that time had never seen her own face. This was not vanity. A man in the same situation might have been allowed to interpret γνωθι σεαυτον in the same manner.

The Hindoo women wear a small mir

in a ring,—the Chury, Sir William Jones calls it. We have them in pocket books; and the ladies at Antwerp had them set in prayer books, for the purpose of what old Latimer calls prinking and pranking at mass. Etiam in libellis, quos ad Ecclesiam deprecaturæ adferunt, specula componant, quibus mundum muliebrem, et phaleras suus, ac capellitium inter fervidas scilicet suas preces adornent.

There was however a degree of modesty in concealing the mirror; a few generations earlier it was the fashion to wear them pendant from the waist, a fashion far more probably alluded to by Tasso, than as his biographer supposes introduced by him, in his picture of Rinaldo.

Dal fianco de l'amante, estranio arnese, Un christallo pendea, lucido e netto.

Gier. Lib. Cant. xvi.

Lope de Vega curses the inventor of looking glasses—

O quanto mal han hecho espejos vanos! Maldiga el cielo el inventor primero.

from whence it may be inferred that he did not, like Zebedee, shave himself. But he goes on to say, that if Venetian mirrors had not been invented, water would have been applied to the same purpose.

Mas que inportaran vidros Venecianos Si el agua supo hazer caso tan fiero.

Hermosura de Angelica, Cant 3.

No poet or romancer with whom I am acquainted has made so beautiful a use of the looking glass, as Francisco Botello in his Alphonso. (Salamanca edition L. 7, st. 20.) Cydipe is contemplating herself in one, and by the agency of Venus, the living portraiture is rendered permanent in the mirror.

Etymology of Dunce

2. Etymology of Dunce.

Dunce is said by Samuel Johnson to be a word

of unknown etymology. Stanihurst explains it. The term Duns, from Scotus, "so famous for his subtill quiddities, he says, is so trivial and common in all schools, that whoso surpasseth others either in cavilling sophistrie, or subtill philosophic, is forthwith nicknamed a Duns." This, he tells us in the margin is the reason, "why schoolmen are called Dunses." (Description of Ireland, p. 2.) The word easily past into a term of scorn, just as a blockhead is called Solomon; a bully, a Hector; and as Moses is the vulgar name of contempt for a Jew.

Plum Pudding

3. Plum Pudding.

The English pride themselves upon their roast beef, their plum pudding, and their constitution. The roast beef, where oil cakes have not been introduced, and there are no Gentlemen-feeders, is what it always was. But the plum pudding as well as the constitution, does not appear to be the same thing which was the boast of our forefathers. The Chevalier D'Arvieux made a voyage in the year 1658 in an English forty gun ship, and he gives the receipt for making one. Leur Pudding, says the Chevalier, etoit detestable. C'est un composé de biscuit pilé, ou de farine, de lard, de raisins de Corinthe, de sel et de poivre, dont on fait une pâte, qu'on enveloppe dans une serviette, et que l'on fait cuire dans le pot avec du boüillon de la viande; on la tire de la serviette, et on la met dans un plat, et on rappe dessus du vieux fromage, qui lui donne une odeur insupportable. Sans ce fromage la chose en elle même n'est pas absolument mauvaise.

T. 1. p. 154.

Medical Poets

4. Medical Poets.

"Such physicians, says Huarte, as I have marked to be good practitioners, do all piddle somewhat in the art of versifying, and raise not up their contemplation very high, and their verses are not of any rare excellencie." If this observation be true, Dr. Ferriar of Manchester has given proof in his poetry of his talents for physic.

Taudry Lace

5. Taudry Lace.

It was formerly the custom in England for women to wear a necklace of fine silk, called Taudry Lace, from St. Audrey. She in her youth had been used to wear carkanets of jewels, and being afterward tormented with violent pains in her neck, was wont to say, that God in his mercy had thus punished her, and the fiery heat and redness of the swelling which she endured was to atone for her former pride and vanity. Probably she wore this lace to conceal the scrofulous appearance, and from this, when it was afterward worn as an ornament which was common and not costly, the word taudry may have been taken to designate any kind of coarse and vulgar finery.

It would not be readily supposed that Audrey is the same name as Ethelreda.

The Camel and the Needle

6. The Camel and the Needle.

Matt. 19. 24.

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven." Vieyra, quoting the text in one of his sermons (t. 10. p, 249.) uses cable instead of camel, following a plausible but erroneous interpretation. It suited his purpose better in this place. "What remedy then, says he, is there for the rich man, that he may enter Heaven? I will tell you. Un the cable, and then thread by thread it may go through the needle. Christ Himself has taught how this is to be done, by saying, sell that thou hast, and give it unto the poor."

There is a print of the Camel and the Needle in one of the little books, of Drexelius,.. if I remember rightly: a man is beating the beast forward towards a needle which some unseen hand is holding down, and though it is big enough to have been Gargamelle's stocking needle, the camel appears perfectly sensible of the impossibility of effecting his passage. That ϰαμηλος is to be rendered camel is proved by three Hebrew adages which Drusius has collected. Facilius Elephas per foramen acus. Non est Elephas qui intret per foramen acus. Forte ex Pombodita tu es, ubi traducunt Elephantem per foramen acus. The latter applied to a liar, the two former, what he calls Proverbia τȣ αδυνατȣ. Hoc adagium, he adds, usurpat o σωτηρ. Matt. 19. 24. in hyperbolâ, Non enim αδυνατον divitem introire in regnum cœlorum, sed admodum difficile. Ibidem pro Elephante Camelus legitur. Nam ϰαμηλος est Camelus vel Syro interprete, qui גמל vertit, voce minime ambiguâ: quæ animans, cum notior sit vulgo in Judæa quam Elephas, libet suspicari ideo in Elephanti loco positam esse a Christo. Adagia Ebraica, p. 40.

Many mischievous alterations of Shakespere have been proposed, in that spirit of criticism which would make all the parts of a metaphor fit in as if they were dove-tailed. It is of the very essence of passion to speak in hints and fragments, and they who censure a figurative expression as contrary to the principles of taste, because it may appear abrupt to their conception,.. may as well maintain that every rainbow must be a perfect arch, and that all broken ones violate the principle of optics.

Cauda Diaboli

8. Cauda Diaboli.

All painters represent the devil with a tail and in one of the prints to the Dutch translation of Bunyan's Holy War, it may be seen in what manner his breeches maker accommodates it. Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixissent,.. might be said on this occasion by the author of that stanza in the Devil's Thoughts, which describes this convenient tail-hole. But though poets and painters agree that he wears a tail, and that it is in that place where tails are more appropriate than in the situation where the barber places them; and though many sinners, and still more saints who have seen him, have noticed this appendage, it is not so generally known how he came by it. It grew at his fall, as an outward and visible token that he had lost the rank of an angel, and was fallen to the level of a brute.

Vieyra. Serm. t. 11. p. 291

Citoyenne

7. Citoyenne.

The vile word Citizeness was coined by some of our translators in the days of the French revolution. Gower might have suggested a more allowable term.

The thirde daie she goth to plaine With many a worthie citezaine, And he with many a cirtezeine

ff. 13.

Citizen and Citizene might perhaps have been used upon this authority, and the analogy of hero and heroine. The word would not be worth a hint were it not for Madame Roland's writings.

Methodist Camp Meetings

9. Methodist Camp Meetings.

The Rev. Samuel Coats (in the Methodist Magazine for May, 1804) gives an account of a Camp-Meeting held about fifteen miles from Baltimore. It was held in a forest, in a very retired situation, with only one blind road leading to it. A stand was erected in the midst of a piece of ground containing three or four acres: and round this, the tents, waggons, carts, coaches, chairs, horses, &c. were ar in a circle. Fires were kindled at the front of each tent. The number of those who encamped on the ground, was not above two or three hundred, owing partly to a fear of catching cold; partly to "a prejudice which had been taken up against camp-meetings." On this account also there were fewer preachers than there would otherwise have been, there being only about twenty. But the number of people who attended on the week days, was from 1000 to 1500, and more than 5000 on the Sunday.

A horn was blown in the morning to collect the people to a general prayer meeting at eight o'clock. This lasted till ten, and then preaching began. The same order was observed in the afternoon; one sermon was preached at each time, and two or three exhortations delivered. "During this time, (says Mr. Coats) the minds of the people were affected in a most extraordinary manner. Many fell down slain (so to speak) with the sword of the spirit, the word of God, and groaned like men dying in the field of battle, while rivers of tears ran down their cheeks. A number of souls were quickened and comforted on Saturday and through the Sabbath: but the most glorious times were on the evening of the Sabbath, and the Monday following. It appeared as if nothing could stand before the word of God. If we only spoke to any of the bye-standers, they were melted down like wax before the fire. It seemed as though all oppositions were fled, and their minds were stript of every plea except... God be merciful to us sinners. Oh my dear sir, if you had been there, you would have been astonished. In one place you would have seen a poor sinner leaning with his head against a tree, with tears running from his eyes like drops of rain upon the ground, while some went to him, and pointed to him the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. In another place you would have observed a whole groupe of people, and from the midst of them would have heard the piercing cries of broken hearted penitents. If you had turned your eyes in another direction, you would have discovered a grey-headed father and his two daughters, all down upon their knees together among the leaves and dirt, crying upon God to have mercy upon their poor souls. I could have led you from thence a little way along a gradual ascent to a spot highly favoured of Heaven, where was a tent filled with happy souls to the number of fourteen or fifteen, who had either been assured of God's pardoning mercy, had been more fully renewed in love, or had received some peculiar comfort that day. In the meantime, prayer, which was fervent and unceasing, was so remarkably answered, that if a mourner only prayed a few minutes for his own soul, he was generally assured of his acceptance immediately, and rejoiced in God his Saviour. I understand that two whole waggon loads of people, who came thither from a distance, returned home, rejoicing in the love of God.

"This scene continued three days and nights, with scarcely an hour's intermission. Not less than 100 persons are supposed to have been convinced; and I have no doubt, (says Mr. Coats) but if the generality of those who were together on the Sabbath day, had encamped on the ground, and continued there day and night, we should have had many more brought to God. For these camp-meetings are the most calculated to free the mind from the cares of the world, to divest it of pride and self-love, and to work upon the tender feelings of the heart, of any thing I ever saw. The appearance of the place at night was very solemn, and at the same time romantic. When going to the place, a person heard the preaching, singing, and other exercises of devotion at some distance off; and coming by a winding path through a thick wood, all on a sudden he beheld a large congregation of people, and a whole train of fires all around them; candles and lanthorns hung on the trees in every direction, and the lofty oaks with their spreading boughs formed a canopy over our heads, while every thing conspired with the solemnity of the night, to make the place seem aweful. This is only a faint description."

In the same magazine for February, 1806, Mr. John Wright describes another of these meetings, where there were two methodist bishops, about 100 preachers, between 4 and 5000 people, and about 300 waggons, all encamped in the woods in a square. This meeting lasted four days, and "although the rain began on Friday evening, and continued, till Sunday morning very heavy and without intermission, there was no cessation of divine worship: it continued night and day, and the sermons, exhortations, and prayers, says the writer, were the most powerful I ever heard. The power of God was there, and sinners were cut to the heart, and fell down under the word like grass before the scythe. There was no respect of persons, but high and low, young and old, were arrested by the mighty hand of God. Some seemed to have the most aweful apprehensions, and were in the greatest distress of any I ever saw, under a sense of their guilt and a fear of Hell, whilst others were apparently lifeless for three or four hours. The first word they are generally heard to speak after they are delivered, is 'glory' and they generally whisper it before they have strength to speak aloud. Afterwards they usually call on their wicked companions, and pray and exhort them to flee to Jesus."

Another writer, (Methodist Mag. April 1806,) describes the ceremonies at breaking up. "At seven o'clock, we prepared for our christian parting, it was ushered in by two of the preachers walking around the camp, blowing the trumpets: after this, the preachers all assembled on the preaching stand, with the congregation before them. Brother J. Lee spoke a little upon the occasion. The preachers then fell upon each other's necks and wept; after which we took leave of the people, expecting to see many of them no more, until we meet in our Father's house. The place was truly a Bochim."

At this Camp there were from 9 to 10,000 persons; and "people of all descriptions, from the grey-headed, down to little children, were crying for mercy."

When the judgement of the Conference at Liverpool, 1807, was asked concerning camp-meetings, the answer was, "It is our judgement, that even supposing such meetings to be allowable in America, they are highly improper in England, and likely to be productive of considerable mischief, and we disclaim all connection with them."

Law of the Mozcas

10. Law of the Mozcas.

A very remarkable law prevailed among the Mozcas, one of the tribes of the Nuevo Reyno de Granada. There, as among more advanced nations, the King could do no wrong,.. but the subordinate chiefs could;.. these chiefs were men, the people reasoned, like themselves; they could not be punished by their vassals;.. for there would be a natural unfitness in that: the King, it seems, was not expected to interfere, except in case of state offences; the power of punishment, therefore, was vested in their wives, and a power it was, says Piedrahita, which they exercised famously whenever it fell to them to be judges of their poor husbands. The conqueror Quesada calling one morning upon the chief of a place called Suesca, found him under the hands of his nine wives, who were tying him, and having so done, proceeded, in spite of Quesada's intercession, to flog him one after the other. His offence was, that some Spaniards the night before had lodged in his house, and he had partaken too freely of their Spanish wine. Drunkenness was one of the sins which fell under the cognizance of his wives: they carried him to bed that he might sleep himself sober; and then awoke him in the morning to receive the rigour of the law. Hist. del N. Reyno. l. 1. c. 4.

Inferiority of Women

11. Inferiority of Women.

If the authority of the latin grammar be not sufficient to establish that the masculine gender is more worthy than the feminine, a physiological opinion of our fathers may be adduced, which it would certainly be difficult to disprove. They held that the soul insinuated itself into, and invested itself with the body of the male embryo, at the seven and thirtieth day after conception, whereas the female embryo is not endowed with a soul till the fortieth.

Charron of Wisdom, Eng. Trans. p. 10.

Steam Engines

was, that some Spaniards the night before had lodged in his house, and he had partaken too freely of their Spanish wine. Drunkenness was one of the sins which fell under the cognizance of his wives: they carried him to bed that he might sleep himself sober; and then awoke him in the morning to receive the rigour of the law. Hist. del N. Reyno. l. 1. c. 4.

11. Inferiority of Women.

If the authority of the latin grammar be not sufficient to establish that the masculine gender is more worthy than the feminine, a physiological opinion of our fathers may be adduced, which it would certainly be difficult to disprove. They held that the soul insinuated itself into, and invested itself with the body of the male embryo, at the seven and thirtieth day after conception, whereas the female embryo is not endowed with a soul till the fortieth.

Charron of Wisdom, Eng. Trans. p. 10.

12. Steam Engines.

Silvester II. (who is commonly called pope Silvester, being the most notorious of the name,) made clocks and organs which were worked by steam. The old historian explains intelligibly to us what he did not understand himself: fecit arte mechanica orologium, et organa hydraulica, ubi, mirum in modum, per aquæ calefactæ violentiam, implet ventus emergens concavitem barbiti, et permulti foratiles tractus æreæ fistulæ modulatos clamores emittunt.

Prideaux (an older author than the biographer of Mahomet, but resembling him in blind and brutal bigotry) classes Silvester among the Egyptian magicians, by no means the worst of the orders into which he has distributed the popes.

Yepes, t. 5. ff. 255. Vincentius Belvacensis, c. 24. c. 98, quoted, and the continuator of Bede c. 2. c 14.

Aristotle

13. Aristotle.

Aristotle has been libelled in all ages. The ancient calumniators said of him that he spent his patrimony in riotous gluttony, then turned soldier, and proving a coward, betook himself to the safer method of destroying men as an apothecary. He has been accused of poisoning Alexander, for which reason, a Frenchman of more Greek learning than usually falls to the share of a learned man in France, calls him equally a poisoner of soul and body. Martin Luther was of opinion that he was certainly dead and damned. There is a scurvy jest of him in the Gesta Romanorum, how his mistress saddled and bridled him like an ass, and rode upon his back. In our own country, he meets with still worse usage from those dirty booksellers, who fall under the notice of the Society for the suppression of vice. I was once in a shop when a fellow from the country came in with a written order for Harry Stottel's Master-Piece.

Arrow-headed letters

14. Arrow-headed letters.

About half way between Bassora and Aleppo, near a place called Argia, are, or were two centuries ago, some ruins containing inscriptions in the character which has of late excited so much attention among our oriental scholars. Some of these letters are described as resembling a pyramid on its side, evidently the arrow-headed letter; others like a star, with eight rays. They were, like those from Babylon, upon bricks, and also upon black marble.

Pietro della Valle. French trans, t. 8. p. 76.

Three methods of lessening the number of rats

15. Three methods of lessening the number of rats.

I. Introduce them at table as a delicacy. They would probably be savoury food, and if nature hath not made them so, the cook may. Rat pye would be as good as Rook pye; and four tails inter-twisted like the serpents of the delphic tripod, and rising into a spiral obelisk, would crest the crust more fantastically than pigeon's feet. After a while they might be declared game by the legislature, which would materially expedite their extirpation.

II. Make use of their fur. Rat-skin robes for the ladies would be beautiful, warm, costly, and new. Fashion requires only the two last qualities; it is hoped the two former would not be objectionable. The importance of such a fashion to our farmers ought to have its weight. When our nobles and gentlemen feed their own pigs; perform for a Spanish tup, the office of Pandarus of Troy, and provide heifers of great elegance for bulls of acknowledged merit; our ladies may perhaps be induced to receive an addition to their wardrobe from the hands of the Rat-catcher, for a purpose of less equivocal utility.

III. Inoculate some subjects with the small-pox, or any other infectious disease, and turn them loose. Experiments should first be made, lest the disease should assume in them so new a form as to be capable of being returned to us with interest. If it succeeded, man has means in his hand which would thin the Hyenas, Wolves, Jackals, and all gregarious beasts of prey.

N.B. If any of our patriotic societies should think proper to award a gold medal, silver cup, or other remuneration to either of these methods, the projector has left his address with the Publisher.

Translations

16. Translations.

It has been well said, that to translate a book is like pouring honey from one vessel into another,.. something must always be lost.

Both the Dutch and the French words for translated, will bear to be literally rendered; overgezet, and traduit. Milton may more truly be said to be overset in one language, and traduced in the other, than translated into either. Done into English was not so happy a phrase, for many a book was undone by the operation.

Hell

17. Hell.

Bellarmin makes sweating and crowding one of the chief torments of Hell, which Lessius (no doubt after an actual and careful survey,) affirms to be exactly a Dutch mile, (about a league and a half English,) in diameter. But Ribera, grounding his map on deductions from the Apocalypse, makes it 200 Italian miles. Lessius, it may be presumed, was a protestant, for whom, of course, a smaller Hell would suffice.

In the early part of the last century an enquiry was published by the Rev. Tobias Swinden, into the nature and place of Hell. The former, according to this Divine, had been accurately understood, burning being the punishment, and the duration without end; but as to the "local habitation" of the reprobate, all opinions had been erroneous. Drexeluis had estimated the sum total of the damned at one hundred thousand millions, all of whom, (like Lessius) he calculated might be contained within a square German mile, and not stowed closer than negroes in a Liverpool slave ship: but this appeared to the English Theologian "a poor, mean, and narrow conception both of the numbers of the damned, and of the dimensions of Hell;" for if their immateriality and compressibility were to be alleged, you might as well, he said, squeeze them at once into a common baker's oven. His ideas were upon a grander scale. There was not room enough, according to him, in the centre of the earth for "Eternal Tophet." Burnet's absorpt sun he thought a much more noble idea of such a furnace of fire. But his own opinion was, that Tophet was our very Sun, which must be acknowledged by all to be capacious enough for the purpose. The time of the sun's creation is a strong reason for admitting the hypothesis, being just after the fall of the Devil and his angels. It is true that the sun is said to have been made on the fourth day; but light, and evening and morning, are mentioned as having previously existed; now these as proceeding from the sun, could not have been before it; making on the fourth day therefore can only mean putting it in motion. The darkness which is predicated of Tophet may at first, he admits, seem an objection, but it exists in the maculcæ, the spots of the sun, which may be deep caverns and dens, proper seats of the blackness of darkness. Upon this hypothesis, the reason why sun-worship has been found so widely extended becomes manifest; it would be as peculiarly acceptable to Satan, as serpent-worship is known to have been.

This was indeed making the souls of the wicked of some use, as Nero did the Christians when he rolled them up in tow, dipt them in pitch, and set fire to them, as torches to light up the streets of Rome. They were so many living wicks of Asbestos, fed with the inextinguishable oil of divine vengeance, that they might be burning and shining lights to the world. If Jonathan Edwards had seen this book he might have adopted its hypothesis as a new proof of "the glory of God in the damnation of sinners."

With what feelings could this man have looked at the setting sun?

Transplanting Trees

18. Transplanting Trees.

The King of the Adites, in Thalaba, removes a full grown forest to his garden of Irem.

4Should the King Wait for slow Nature's work? Vol. i. p. 23.

Where romancers and novelists stop short of positive miracle, their most extraordinary inventions are paralleled or exceeded by the history of real life. The Czar Peter did the same thing as She , and his method may be recommended to our Nabobs who want trees about their mansions, and can afford to pay for the removal of live timber. They were dug up in winter with plenty of earth about their roots, which being frozen did not drop off. It would be advisable to dig round them before the frost set in. Care should be taken to replant the tree in the same position as that in which it grew; if its southern side be turned to the north, it will have new habits to learn, and may die before it has acquired them.

St. Andrew's Cross

19. St. Andrew's Cross.

St. Andrew's Cross is, as is well known, always represented in the shape of the letter X: but that this is an error, ecclesiastical historians prove by appealing to the Cross itself on which he suffered, which St. Stephen of Burgundy gave to the Convent of St. Victor, near Marseilles, and which, like the common Cross, is rectangular. The cause of the error is thus explained; when the Apostle suffered, the Cross, instead of being fixed upright, rested on its foot and arm, and in this posture he was fastened to it; his hands to one arm and the head, his feet to the other arm and the foot, and his head in the air.