Book ii

. lett. 17.

MASQUES.

It sometimes happens, in the history of national amusements, that a name survives while the thing itself is forgotten. This has been remarkably the case with our court Masques, respecting which our most eminent writers long ventured on so many false opinions, with a perfect ignorance of the nature of these compositions, which combined all that was exquisite in the imitative arts of poetry, painting, music, song, dancing, and machinery, at a period when our public theatre was in its rude infancy. Convinced of the miserable state of our represented drama, and not then possessing that more curious knowledge of their domestic history which we delight to explore, they were led into erroneous notions of one of the most gorgeous, the most fascinating, and the most poetical of dramatic amusements. Our present theatrical exhibitions are, indeed, on a scale to which the twopenny audiences of the barn playhouses of Shakspeare could never have strained their sight; and our picturesque and learned _costume_, with the brilliant changes of our scenery, would have maddened the "property-men" and the "tire-women" of the Globe or the Red Bull.[2] Shakspeare himself never beheld the true magical illusions of his own dramas, with "Enter the Red Coat," and "Exit Hat and Cloak," helped out with "painted cloths;" or, as a bard of Charles the Second's time chants--

Look back and see The strange vicissitudes of poetrie; Your aged fathers came to plays for wit, And sat knee-deep in nut-shells in the pit.

But while the public theatre continued long in this contracted state, without scenes, without dresses, without an orchestra, the court displayed scenical and dramatic exhibitions with such costly magnificence, such inventive fancy, and such miraculous art, that we may doubt if the combined genius of Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, and Lawes, or Ferobosco, at an era most favourable to the arts of imagination, has been equalled by the modern _spectacle_ of the Opera.

But this circumstance had entirely escaped the knowledge of our critics. The critic of a Masque must not only have read it, but he must also have heard and have viewed it. The only witnesses in this case are those letter-writers of the day, who were then accustomed to communicate such domestic intelligence to their absent friends: from such ample correspondence I have often drawn some curious and sometimes important information. It is amusing to notice the opinions of some great critics, how from an original mis-statement they have drawn an illegitimate opinion, and how one inherits from the other the error which he propagates. Warburton said on Masques, that "Shakspeare was an enemy to these _fooleries_, as appears by his writing none." This opinion was among the many which that singular critic threw out as they arose at the moment; for Warburton forgot that Shakspeare characteristically introduces one in the _Tempest's_ most fanciful scene.[3] Granger, who had not much time to study the manners of the age whose personages he was so well acquainted with, in a note on Milton's Masque, said that "these compositions were trifling and perplexed allegories, the persons of which are fantastical to the last degree. Ben Jonson, in his 'Masque of Christmas,' has introduced 'Minced Pie,' and 'Baby Cake,' who act their parts in the drama.[4] But the most _wretched performances_ of this kind could please by the help of music, machinery, and dancing." Granger blunders, describing by two farcical characters a species of composition of which farce was not the characteristic. Such personages as he notices would enter into the Anti-masque, which was a humorous parody of the more solemn Masque, and sometimes relieved it. Malone, whose fancy was not vivid, condemns Masques and the age of Masques, in which, he says, echoing Granger's epithet, "the _wretched taste_ of the times found amusement." And lastly comes Mr. Todd, whom the splendid fragment of the "Arcades," and the entire Masque, which we have by heart, could not warm; while his neutralising criticism fixes him at the freezing point of the thermometer. "This dramatic entertainment, performed not without prodigious expense in machinery and decoration, to _which humour_ we certainly owe the entertainment of 'Arcades,' and the inimitable Mask of 'Comus.'" _Comus_, however, is only a fine dramatic poem, retaining scarcely any features of the Masque. The only modern critic who had written with some research on this departed elegance of the English drama was Warton, whose fancy responded to the fascination of the fairy-like magnificence and lyrical spirit of the Masque. Warton had the taste to give a specimen from "The Inner Temple Mask by William Browne," the pastoral poet, whose Address to Sleep, he observed, "reminds us of some favourite touches in Milton's _Comus_, to which it perhaps gave birth." Yet even Warton was deficient in that sort of research which only can discover the true nature of these singular dramas.

Such was the state in which, some years ago, I found all our knowledge of this once favourite amusement of our court, our nobility, and our learned bodies of the four inns of court. Some extensive researches, pursued among contemporary manuscripts, cast a new light over this obscure child of fancy and magnificence. I could not think lightly of what Ben Jonson has called "The Eloquence of Masques;" entertainments on which from three to five thousand pounds were expended, and on more public occasions ten and twenty thousand. To the aid of the poetry, composed by the finest poets, came the most skilful musicians and the most elaborate machinists; Ben Jonson, and Inigo Jones,[5] and Lawes blended into one piece their respective genius; and Lord Bacon, and Whitelocke, and Selden, who sat in committees for the last grand Masque presented to Charles the First, invented the devices; composed the procession of the Masquers and the Anti-Masquers; while one took the care of the dancing or the brawlers, and Whitelocke the music--the sage Whitelocke! who has chronicled his self-complacency on this occasion, by claiming the invention of a _Coranto_, which for thirty years afterwards was the delight of the nation, and was blessed by the name of "Whitelocke's Coranto," and which was always called for, two or three times over, whenever that great statesman "came to see a play!"[6] So much personal honour was considered to be involved in the conduct of a Masque, that even this committee of illustrious men was on the point of being broken up by too serious a discussion concerning precedence; and the Masque had nearly not taken place, till they hit on the expedient of throwing dice to decide on their rank in the procession! On this jealousy of honour in the composition of a Masque, I discovered, what hitherto had escaped the knowledge, although not the curiosity, of literary inquirers--the occasion of the memorable enmity between Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, who had hitherto acted together with brotherly affection; "a circumstance," says Gifford, to whom I communicated it, "not a little important in the history of our calumniated poet." The trivial cause, but not so in its consequences, was the poet prefixing his own name before that of the architect on the title-page of a Masque, which hitherto had only been annexed;[7] so jealous was the great architect of his _part_ of the Masque, and so predominant his power and name at court, that he considered his rights invaded by the _inferior_ claims of the poet! Jonson has poured out the whole bitterness of his soul in two short satires: still more unfortunately for the subject of these satires, they provoked Inigo to sharpen his pen on rhyme; but it is edgeless, and the blunt composition still lies in its manuscript state.

While these researches had engaged my attention, appeared Gifford's Memoirs of Ben Jonson. The characteristics of Masques are there, for the first time, elaborately opened with the clear and penetrating spirit of that ablest of our dramatic critics. I feel it like presumption to add to what has received the finishing hand of a master; but his jewel is locked up in a chest, which I fear is too rarely opened, and he will allow me to borrow something from its splendour. "The Masque, as it attained its highest degree of excellence, admitted of dialogue, singing, and dancing; these were not independent of one another, but combined, by the introduction of some ingenious fable, into an harmonious whole. When the plan was formed, the aid of the sister-arts was called in; for the essence of the Masque was pomp and glory. Moveable scenery of the most costly and splendid kind was lavished on the Masque; the most celebrated masters were employed on the songs and dances; and all that the kingdom afforded of vocal and instrumental excellence was employed to embellish the exhibition.[8] Thus magnificently constructed, the Masque was not committed to ordinary performers. It was composed, as Lord Bacon says, for princes, and by princes it was played.[9] Of these Masques, the skill with which their ornaments were designed, and the inexpressible grace with which they were executed, appear to have left a vivid impression on the mind of Jonson. His genius awakes at once, and all his faculties attune to sprightliness and pleasure. He makes his appearance, like his own Delight, 'accompanied with Grace, Love, Harmony, Revel, Sport, and Laughter.'

"In curious knot and mazes so The Spring at first was taught to go; And Zephyr, when he came to woo His Flora, had his _motions_[10] too; And thus did Venus learn to lead The Idalian brawls, and so to tread, As if the wind, not she, did walk, Nor press'd a flower, nor bow'd a stalk.

"But in what," says Gifford, "was the taste of the times _wretched_? In poetry, painting, architecture, they have not since been equalled; and it ill becomes us to arraign the taste of a period which possessed a cluster of writers of whom the meanest would now be esteemed a prodigy." Malone did not live to read this denouncement of his objection to these Masques, as "bungling shows;" and which Warburton treats as "fooleries;" Granger as "wretched performances;" while Mr. Todd regards them merely as "the humour of the times!"

Masques were often the private theatricals of the families of our nobility, performed by the ladies and gentlemen at their seats; and were splendidly got up on certain occasions: such as the celebration of a nuptial, or in compliment to some great visitor. The Masque of Comus was composed by Milton to celebrate the creation of Charles the First as Prince of Wales; a scene in this Masque presented both the castle and the town of Ludlow, which proves, that although our small public theatres had not yet displayed any of the scenical illusions which long afterwards Davenant introduced, these scenical effects existed in great perfection in the Masques. The minute descriptions introduced by Thomas Campion, in his "Memorable Masque," as it is called, will convince us that the scenery must have been exquisite and fanciful, and that the poet was always a watchful and anxious partner with the machinist, with whom sometimes, however, he had a quarrel.

The subject of this very rare Masque was "The Night and the Hours." It would be tedious to describe the first scene with the fondness with which the poet has dwelt on it. It was a double valley; one side, with dark clouds hanging before it; on the other, a green vale, with trees, and nine golden ones of fifteen feet high; from which grove, towards "the State," or the seat of the king, was a broad descent to the dancing-place: the bower of Flora was on the right, the house of Night on the left; between them a hill, hanging like a cliff over the grove. The bower of Flora was spacious, garnished with flowers and flowery branches, with lights among them; the house of Night ample and stately, with black columns studded with golden stars; within, nothing but clouds and twinkling stars; while about it were placed, on wire, artificial bats and owls, continually moving. As soon as the king entered the great hall, the hautboys, out of the wood on the top of the hill, entertained the time, till Flora and Zephyr were seen busily gathering flowers from the bower, throwing them into baskets which two silvans held, attired in changeable taffeta. The song is light as their fingers, but the burden is charming:--

Now hath Flora robb'd her bowers To befriend this place with flowers; Strow about! strow about! Divers, divers flowers affect For some private dear respect; Strow about! strow about! But he's none of Flora's friend That will not the rose commend; Strow about! strow about!

I cannot quit this Masque, of which, collectors know the rarity, without preserving one of those Doric delicacies, of which, perhaps, we have outlived the taste! It is a playful dialogue between a Silvan and an Hour, while Night appears in her house, with her long black hair spangled with gold, amidst her Hours; their faces black, and each bearing a lighted black torch.

SILVAN. Tell me, gentle Hour of Night, Wherein dost thou most delight?

HOUR. Not in sleep!

SILVAN. Wherein then?

HOUR. In the frolic view of men!

SILVAN. Lov'st thou music?

HOUR. Oh! 'tis sweet!

SILVAN. What's dancing?

HOUR. E'en the mirth of feet.

SILVAN. Joy you in fairies and in elves?

HOUR. We are of that sort ourselves! But, Silvan! say, why do you love Only to frequent the grove?

SILVAN. Life is fullest of content When delight is innocent.

HOUR. Pleasure must vary, not be long! Come then, let's close, and end the song!

That the moveable scenery of these Masques formed as perfect a scenical illusion as any that our own age, with all its perfection of decoration, has attained to, will not be denied by those who have read the few Masques which have been printed. They usually contrived a double division of the scene; one part was for some time concealed from the spectator, which produced surprise and variety. Thus in the Lord's Masque, at the marriage of the Palatine, the scene was divided into two parts, from the roof to the floor; the lower part being first discovered, there appeared a wood in perspective, the innermost part being of "releeve or whole round," the rest painted. On the left a cave, and on the right a thicket, from which issued Orpheus. At the back part of the scene, at the sudden fall of a curtain, the upper part broke on the spectators, a heaven of clouds of all hues; the stars suddenly vanished, the clouds dispersed; an element of artificial fire played about the house of Prometheus--a bright and transparent cloud, reaching from the heavens to the earth, whence the eight masquers descending with the music of a full song; and at the end of their descent the cloud broke in twain, and one part of it, as with a wind, was blown athwart the scene. While this cloud was vanishing, the wood, being the under part of the scene, was insensibly changing; a perspective view opened, with porticoes on each side, and female statues of silver, accompanied with ornaments of architecture, filling the end of the house of Prometheus, and seemed all of goldsmiths' work. The women of Prometheus descended from their niches, till the anger of Jupiter turned them again into statues. It is evident, too, that the size of the proscenium, or stage, accorded with the magnificence of the scene; for I find choruses described, "and changeable conveyances of the song," in manner of an echo, performed by more than forty different voices and instruments in various parts of the scene. The architectural decorations were the pride of Inigo Jones; such could not be trivial.

"I suppose," says the writer of this Masque, "few have ever seen more neat artifice than Master Inigo Jones showed in contriving their motion; who, as all the rest of the workmanship which belonged to the whole invention, showed extraordinary industry and skill, which if it be not as lively expressed in writing as it appeared in view, rob not him of his due, but lay the blame on my want of right apprehending his instructions, for the _adoring_ of his art." Whether this strong expression should be only _adorning_ does not appear in any errata; but the feeling of admiration was fervent among the spectators of that day, who were at least as much astonished as they were delighted. Ben Jonson's prose descriptions of scenes in his own exquisite Masques, as Gifford observes, "are singularly bold and beautiful." In a letter which I discovered, the writer of which had been present at one of these Masques, and which Gifford has preserved,[11] the reader may see the great poet anxiously united with Inigo Jones in working the machinery. Jonson, before "a sacrifice could be performed, turned the globe of the earth, standing behind the altar." In this globe "the sea was expressed heightened with silver waves, which stood, or rather hung (for no axle was seen to support it), and _turning softly_, discovered the first Masque,"[12] &c. This "turning softly" producing a very magical effect, the great poet would trust to no other hand but his own!

It seems, however, that as no Masque-writer equalled Jonson, so no machinist rivalled Inigo Jones. I have sometimes caught a groan from some unfortunate poet, whose beautiful fancies were spoilt by the bungling machinist. One says, "The _order of this scene_ was carefully and ingeniously disposed, and as happily put in act (for the _motions_) by the king's master carpenter;" but he adds, "the _painters_, I must needs say (not to belie them), lent small colour to any, to attribute much of the spirit of these things to their pencil." Campion, in one of his Masques, describing where the trees were gently to sink, &c., by an engine placed under the stage, and in sinking were to open, and the masquers appear out at their tops, &c., adds this vindictive marginal note: "Either by the _simplicity_, _negligence_, or _conspiracy_ of the _painter_, the passing away of the trees was somewhat hazarded, though the same day they had been shown with much admiration, and were left together to the same night;" that is, they were worked right at the rehearsal, and failed in the representation, which must have perplexed the nine masquers on the tops of these nine trees. But such accidents were only vexations crossing the fancies of the poet: they did not essentially injure the magnificence, the pomp, and the fairy world opened to the spectators. So little was the character of these Masques known, that all our critics seemed to have fallen into repeated blunders, and used the Masques as Campion suspected his painters to have done, "either by simplicity, negligence, or conspiracy." Hurd, a cold systematic critic, thought he might safely prefer the Masque in the _Tempest_, as "putting to shame all the Masques of Jonson, not only in its _construction_, but in the _splendour_ of its show;"--"which," adds Gifford, "was danced and sung by the ordinary performers to a couple of fiddles, perhaps in the balcony of the stage." Such is the fate of criticism without knowledge! And now, to close our Masques, let me apply the forcible style of Ben Jonson himself: "The glory of all these solemnities had perished like a blaze, and gone out in the beholder's eyes; so short-lived are the bodies of all things in comparison of their souls!"[13]

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Defence of Poesy," 1595, alludes to the custom of writing the supposed locality of each scene over the stage, and asks, "What child is there that coming to a play, and seeing _Thebes_ written in great letters on an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes." As late as the production of Davenant's _Siege of Rhodes_ (_circa_ 1656), this custom was continued, and is thus described in the printed edition of the play:--"In the middle of the frieze was a compartment wherein was written _Rhodes_." In many instances the spectator was left to infer the locality of the scene from the dialogue.--"Now," says Sidney, "you shall have three ladies walke to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by we heare newes of shipwracke in the same place; then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock." In Middleton's _Chaste Maid_, 1630, when the scene changes to a bed-room, "a bed is thrust out upon the stage, Alwit's wife in it;" which simple process was effected by pushing it through the curtains that hung across the entrance to the stage, which at that time projected into the pit.

[3] The play of _Pyramus and Thisbe_, performed by the clowns in Shakspeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream_, is certainly constructed in burlesque of characters in court Masques, which sometimes were as difficult to be made comprehensible to an audience as "the clowns of Athens" found _Wall_ and _Moonshine_ to be.

[4] It is due to a great poet like Ben Jonson, that, without troubling the reader to turn to his works, we should give his own description of these characters, to show that they were not the "perplexed allegories" they are asserted to be by Granger; nor inappropriate to the _Masque of Christmas_, for which they were designed. MINCED-PIE was habited "like a fine cook's wife, drest neat, her man carrying a pie, dish, and spoon." BABY-CAKE was "drest like a boy, in a fine long coat, biggin-bib, muckender (or handkerchief), and a little dagger; his usher bearing a great cake, with a bean and a pease;" the latter being indicative of those generally inserted in a Christmas cake, which, when cut into slices and distributed, indicated by the presence of the bean the person who should be king; the slice with the pea doing the same for the queen. Neither of these characters speak, but make part of the show to be described by Father Christmas. Jonson's inventive talent was never more conspicuous than in the concoction of court Masques.

[5] The first employment of these two great men was upon _The Masque of Blackness_, performed at Whitehall on Twelfth-Night, 1603; and which cost nearly 10,000_l._, of our present money.

[6] The music of Whitelocke's _Coranto_ is preserved in Hawkins's "History of Music." Might it be restored for the ladies as a waltz?

[7] This was _Chloridia_, a Masque performed by the queen and her ladies at court, on Shrovetide, 1630; upon the title-page of which is printed "the inventors--Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones." Jonson was, by reason of the influence of Inigo, deprived of employ at court ever after, supplanted by other poets named by the architect, and among them Heywood, Shirley, and Davenant.

[8] George Chapman's _Memorable Maske_, performed at Whitehall, 1630, by the gentlemen of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, cost the latter society nearly 2000_l._ for their share of the expenses.

[9] Ben Jonson records the names of the noble ladies and gentlemen who enacted his inventions at court.

[10] The figures and actions of dancers in Masques were called motions.

[11] Memoirs of Jonson, p. 88.

[12] See Gifford's Jonson, vol. vii. p. 78. This performance was in the _Masque of Hymen_, enacted at court in 1605, on the occasion of the marriage of the Earl of Essex to the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk.

[13] Splendour ultimately ruined these works; they ended in gaudy dresses and expensive machinery, but poetry was not associated with them. The youthful days of Louis XIV. raised them to a height of costly luxuriance to sink them ever after in oblivion.

OF DES MAIZEAUX, AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF ANTHONY COLLINS'S MANUSCRIPTS.

Des Maizeaux was an active literary man of his day, whose connexions with Bayle, St. Evremond, Locke, and Toland, and his name being set off by an F.R.S., have occasioned the dictionary-biographers to place him prominently among their "hommes illustres." Of his private history nothing seems known. Having something important to communicate respecting one of his friends, a far greater character, with whose fate he stands connected, even Des Maizeaux becomes an object of our inquiry.

He was one of those French refugees whom political madness or despair of intolerance had driven to our shores. The proscription of Louis XIV., which supplied us with our skilful workers in silk, also produced a race of the unemployed, who proved not to be as exquisite in the handicraft of book-making; such were _Motteux_, _La Coste_, _Ozell_, _Durand_, and others. Our author had come over in that tender state of youth, just in time to become half an Englishman: and he was so ambidextrous in the languages of the two great literary nations of Europe, that whenever he took up his pen, it is evident by his manuscripts, which I have examined, that it was mere accident which determined him to write in French or in English. Composing without genius, or even taste, without vivacity or force, the simplicity and fluency of his style were sufficient for the purposes of a ready dealer in all the _minutiæ literariæ_; literary anecdotes, curious quotations, notices of obscure books, and all that _supellex_ which must enter into the history of literature, without forming a history. These little things, which did so well of themselves, without any connexion with anything else, became trivial when they assumed the form of voluminous minuteness; and Des Maizeaux at length imagined that nothing but anecdotes were necessary to compose the lives of men of genius! With this sort of talent he produced a copious life of Bayle, in which he told everything he possibly could; and nothing can be more tedious, and more curious: for though it be a grievous fault to omit nothing, and marks the writer to be deficient in the development of character, and that sympathy which throws inspiration over the vivifying page of biography, yet, to admit everything, has this merit--that we are sure to find what we want! Warburton poignantly describes our Des Maizeaux, in one of those letters to Dr. Birch which he wrote in the fervid age of study, and with the impatient vivacity of his genius, "Almost all the life-writers we have had before Toland and Des Maizeaux are indeed strange, insipid creatures; and yet I had rather read the worst of them, than be obliged to go through with this of Milton's, or the other's life of Boileau; where there is such a dull, heavy succession of long quotations of uninteresting passages, that it makes their method quite nauseous. But the verbose, tasteless Frenchman seems to lay it down as a principle, that every life must be a book,--and, what is worse, it seems a book without a life; for what do we know of Boileau after all his tedious stuff?"

Des Maizeaux was much in the employ of the Dutch booksellers, then the great monopolisers in the literary mart of Europe. He supplied their "nouvelles littéraires" from England; but the work-sheet price was very mean in those days. I have seen annual accounts of Des Maizeaux settled to a line for four or five pounds; and yet he sent the "Novelties" as fresh as the post could carry them! He held a confidential correspondence with these great Dutch booksellers, who consulted him in their distresses; and he seems rather to have relieved them than himself. But if he got only a few florins at Rotterdam, the same "nouvelles littéraires" sometimes secured him valuable friends at London; for in those days, which perhaps are returning on us, an English author would often appeal to a foreign journal for the commendation he might fail in obtaining at home; and I have discovered, in more cases than one, that, like other smuggled commodities, the foreign article was often of home manufactory!

I give one of these curious bibliopolical distresses. Sauzet, a bookseller at Rotterdam, who judged too critically for the repose of his authors, seems to have been always fond of projecting a new "Journal;" tormented by the ideal excellence which he had conceived of such a work, it vexed him that he could never find the workmen! Once disappointed of the assistance he expected from a writer of talents, he was fain to put up with one he was ashamed of; but warily stipulated on very singular terms. He confided this precious literary secret to Des Maizeaux. I translate from his manuscript letter.

"I send you, my dear Sir, four sheets of the continuation of my journal, and I hope this second part will turn out better than the former. The author thinks himself a very able person; but I must tell you frankly, that he is a man without erudition, and without any critical discrimination; he writes pretty well, and turns passably what he says; but that is all! Monsieur Van Effen having failed in his promises to realise my hopes on this occasion, necessity compelled me to have recourse to him; but for _six months only_, and on condition that he should not, on any account whatever, _allow any one to know that he is the author of the journal_; for his _name_ alone would be sufficient to make even a passable book discreditable. As you are among my friends, I will confide to you in secrecy the name of this author; it is Mons. _De Limiers_.[14] You see how much my interest is concerned that the author should not be known!" This anecdote is gratuitously presented to the editors of certain reviews, as a serviceable hint to enter into the same engagement with some of their own writers: for it is usually the _De Limiers_ who expend their last puff in blowing their own name about the town.

In England, Des Maizeaux, as a literary man, made himself very useful to other men of letters, and particularly to persons of rank: and he found patronage and a pension,--like his talents, very moderate! A friend to literary men, he lived amongst them, from "Orator" Henley, up to Addison, Lord Halifax, and Anthony Collins. I find a curious character of our Des Maizeaux in the handwriting of Edward, Earl of Oxford, to whose father (Pope's Earl of Oxford) and himself the nation owes the Harleian treasures. His lordship is a critic with high Tory principles, and high-church notions. "This Des Maizeaux is a great man with those who are pleased to be called _Freethinkers_, particularly with Mr. Anthony Collins, collects passages out of books for their writings. His Life of Chillingworth is wrote to please that set of men." The secret history I am to unfold relates to Anthony Collins and Des Maizeaux. Some curious book-lovers will be interested in the personal history of an author they are well acquainted with, yet which has hitherto remained unknown. He tells his own story in a sort of epistolary petition he addressed to a noble friend, characteristic of an author, who cannot be deemed unpatronised, yet whose name, after all his painful labours, might be inserted in my "Calamities of Authors."

In this letter he announces his intention of publishing a Dictionary like Bayle; having written the life of Bayle, the next step was to become himself a Bayle; so short is the passage of literary delusion! He had published, as a specimen, the lives of Hales and Chillingworth. He complains that his circumstances have not allowed him to forward that work, nor digest the materials he had collected.

A work of that nature requires a steady application, free from the cares and avocations incident to all persons obliged to seek for their maintenance. I have had the misfortune to be in the case of those persons, and am now reduced to a pension on the Irish establishment, which, deducting the tax of four shillings in the pound, and other charges, brings me in about 40_l._ a year of our English money.[15] This pension was granted to me in 1710, and I owe it chiefly to the friendship of Mr. Addison, who was then secretary to the Earl of Wharton, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1711, 12, and 14, I was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Lottery by the interest of Lord Halifax.

And this is all I ever received from the Government, though I had some claim to the royal favour; for in 1710, when the enemies to our constitution were contriving its ruin, I wrote a pamphlet entitled "Lethe," which was published in Holland, and afterwards translated into English, and twice printed in London; and being reprinted in Dublin, proved so offensive to the ministry in Ireland, that it was burnt by the hands of the hangman. But so it is, that after having showed on all occasions my zeal for the royal family, and endeavoured to make myself serviceable to the public by several books published; after forty years' stay in England, and in an advanced age, I find myself and family destitute of a sufficient livelihood, and suffering from complaints in the head and impaired sight by constant application to my studies.

I am confident, my lord, he adds, that if the queen, to whom I was made known on occasion of Thuanus's French translation, were acquainted with my present distress, she would be pleased to afford me some relief.[16]

Among the confidential literary friends of Des Maizeaux, he had the honour of ranking Anthony Collins, a great lover of literature, and a man of fine genius, and who, in a continued correspondence with our Des Maizeaux, treated him as his friend, and employed him as his agent in his literary concerns. These, in the formation of an extensive library, were in a state of perpetual activity, and Collins was such a true lover of his books, that he drew up the catalogue with his own pen.[17] Anthony Collins wrote several well-known works without prefixing his name; but having pushed too far his curious inquiries on some obscure and polemical points, he incurred the odium of a _freethinker_,--a term which then began to be in vogue, and which the French adopted by translating it, in their way, _a strong thinker_, or _esprit fort_. Whatever tendency to "liberalise" the mind from _dogmas_ and _creeds_ prevails in these works, the talents and learning of Collins were of the first class. His morals were immaculate, and his personal character independent; but the _odium theologicum_ of those days contrived every means to stab in the dark, till the taste became hereditary with some. I shall mention a fact of this cruel bigotry, which occurred within my own observation, on one of the most polished men of the age. The late Mr. Cumberland, in the romance entitled his "Life," gave this extraordinary fact, that Dr. Bentley, who so ably replied by his "Remarks," under the name of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, to Collins's "Discourse on Free-thinking," when, many years after, he discovered him fallen into great distress, conceiving that by having ruined Collins's character as a writer for ever, he had been the occasion of his personal misery, he liberally contributed to his maintenance. In vain I mentioned to that elegant writer, who was not curious about facts, that this person could never have been _Anthony_ Collins, who had always a plentiful fortune; and when it was suggested to him that this "A. Collins," as he printed it, must have been _Arthur_ Collins, the historical compiler, who was often in pecuniary difficulties, still he persisted in sending the lie down to posterity, _totidem verbis_, without alteration in his second edition, observing to a friend of mine, that "the story, while it told well, might serve as a striking instance of his great relative's generosity; and that _it should stand_, because it could do no harm to any but to _Anthony_ Collins, whom he considered as little short of an atheist." So much for this pious fraud! but be it recollected that this Anthony Collins was the confidential friend of Locke, of whom Locke said, on his dying bed, that "Collins was a man whom he valued in the first rank of those that he left behind him." And the last words of Collins on his own death-bed were, that "he was persuaded he was going to that place which God had designed for them that love him." The cause of true religion will never be assisted by using such leaky vessels as _Cumberland's_ wilful calumnies, which in the end must run out, and be found, like the present, mere empty fictions!

An extraordinary circumstance occurred on the death of Anthony Collins. He left behind him a considerable number of his own manuscripts, there was one collection formed into eight octavo volumes; and that they might be secured from the common fate of manuscripts, he bequeathed them all, and confided them to the care of our Des Maizeaux. The choice of Collins reflects honour on the character of Des Maizeaux, yet he proved unworthy of it! He suffered himself to betray his trust, practised on by the earnest desire of the widow, and perhaps by the arts of a Mr. Tomlinson, who appears to have been introduced into the family by the recommendation of Dean Sykes, whom at length he supplanted, and whom the widow, to save her reputation, was afterwards obliged to discard.[18] In an unguarded moment he relinquished this precious _legacy of the manuscripts_, and accepted _fifty guineas as a present_. But if Des Maizeaux lost his honour in this transaction, he was at heart an honest man, who had swerved for a single moment; his conscience was soon awakened, and he experienced the most violent compunctions. It was in a paroxysm of this nature that he addressed the following letter to a mutual friend of the late Anthony Collins and himself.

SIR, _January 6, 1730._

I am very glad to hear you are come to town, and as you are my best friend, now I have lost Mr. Collins, give me leave to open my heart to you, and to beg your assistance in an affair which highly concerns both Mr. Collins's (your friend) and my own honour and reputation. The case, in few words, stands thus:--Mr. Collins by his last will and testament left me his manuscripts. Mr. Tomlinson, who first acquainted me with it, told me that Mrs. Collins should be glad to have them, and I made them over to her; whereupon she was pleased to present me with fifty guineas. I desired her at the same time to take care they should be kept safe and unhurt, which she promised to do. This was done the 25th of last month. Mr. Tomlinson, who managed all this affair, was present.

Now, having further considered that matter, I find that I have done a most wicked thing. I am persuaded that I have betrayed the trust of a person who, for twenty-six years, had given me continual instances of his friendship and confidence. I am convinced that I have acted contrary to the will and intention of my dear deceased friend; showed a disregard to the particular mark of esteem he gave me on that occasion; in short, that I have forfeited what is dearer to me than my own life--honour and reputation.

These melancholy thoughts have made so great an impression upon me, that I protest to you I can enjoy no rest; they haunt me everywhere, day and night. I earnestly beseech you, sir, to represent my unhappy case to Mrs. Collins. I acted with all the simplicity and uprightness of my heart; I considered that the MSS. would be as safe in Mrs. Collins's hands as in mine; that she was no less obliged to preserve them than myself; and that, as the library was left to her, they might naturally go along with it. Besides, I thought I could not too much comply with the desire of a lady to whom I have so many obligations. But I see now clearly that this is not fulfilling Mr. Collins's will, and that the duties of our conscience are superior to all other regards. But it is in her power to forgive and mend what I have done imprudently, but with a good intention. Her high sense of virtue and generosity will not, I am sure, let her take any advantage of my weakness; and the tender regard she has for the memory of the best of men, and the tenderest of husbands, will not suffer that his intentions should be frustrated, and that she should be the instrument of violating what is most sacred. If our late friend had designed that his MSS. should remain in her hands, he would certainly have left them to her by his last will and testament; his acting otherwise is an evident proof that it was not his intention.

All this I proposed to represent to her in the most respectful manner; but you will do it infinitely better than I can in this present distraction of mind; and I flatter myself that the mutual esteem and friendship which has continued so many years between Mr. Collins and you, will make you readily embrace whatever tends to honour his memory.

I send you the fifty guineas I received, which I do now look upon as the wages of iniquity; and I desire you to return them to Mrs. Collins, who, as I hope it of her justice, equity, and regard to Mr. Collins's intentions, will be pleased to cancel my paper.

I am, &c.,

P. DES MAIZEAUX.

The manuscripts were never returned to Des Maizeaux; for seven years afterwards Mrs. Collins, who appears to have been a very spirited lady, addressed to him the following letter on the subject of a report, that she had permitted transcripts of these very manuscripts to get abroad. This occasioned an animated correspondence from both sides.

SIR, _March 10, 1736-37_.

I have thus long waited in expectation that you would ere this have called on Dean Sykes, as Sir B. Lucy said you intended, that I might have had some satisfaction in relation to a very unjust reproach--viz., that I, or somebody that I had trusted, had _betrayed_ some of the transcripts, or MSS., of Mr. Collins into the Bishop of London's hands. I cannot, therefore, since you have not been with the dean as was desired, but call on you in this manner, to know what authority you had for such a reflection; or on what grounds you went for saying that these transcripts are in the Bishop of London's hands. I am determined to trace out the grounds of such a report; and you can be no friend of mine, no friend of Mr. Collins, no friend to common justice, if you refuse to acquaint me, what foundation you had for such a charge. I desire a very speedy answer to this, who am, Sir,

Your servant,

ELIZ. COLLINS.

_To Mr. Des Maizeaux, at his lodgings next door to the Quakers' burying-ground, Hanover-street, out of Long-Acre._

TO MRS. COLLINS.

_March 14, 1737._

I had the honour of your letter of the 10th inst., and as I find that something has been misapprehended, I beg leave to set this matter right.

Being lately with some honourable persons, I told them it had been reported that some of Mr. C.'s MSS. were fallen into the hands of strangers, and that I should be glad to receive from you such information as might enable me to disprove that report. What occasioned this surmise, or what particular MSS. were meant, I was not able to discover; so I was left to my own conjectures, which, upon a serious consideration, induced me to believe that it might relate to the MSS. in eight volumes in 8vo, of which there is a transcript. But as the original and the transcript are in your possession, if you please, madam, to compare them together, you may easily see whether they be both entire and perfect, or whether there be anything wanting in either of them. By this means you will assure yourself, and satisfy your friends, that several important pieces are safe in your hands, and that the report is false and groundless. All this I take the liberty to offer out of the singular respect I always professed for you, and for the memory of Mr. Collins, to whom I have endeavoured to do justice on all occasions, and particularly in the memoirs that have been made use of in the General Dictionary; and I hope my tender concern for his reputation will further appear when I publish his life.

SIR, _April 6, 1737_.

My ill state of health has hindered me from acknowledging sooner the receipt of yours, from which I hoped for some satisfaction in relation to your charge, in which I cannot but think myself very deeply concerned. You tell me now, that you was left to your own conjectures what particular MSS. were reported to have fallen into the hands of strangers, and that upon a serious consideration you was induced to believe that it might relate to the MSS. in eight vols. 8vo, of which there was a transcript.

I must beg of you to satisfy me very explicitly who were the persons that reported this to you, and from whom did you receive this information? You know that Mr. Collins left several MSS. behind him; what grounds had you for your conjecture that it related to the MSS. in eight vols., rather than to any other MSS. of which there was a transcript? I beg that you will be very plain, and tell me what strangers were named to you; and why you said the Bishop of London, if your informer said stranger to you. I am so much concerned in this, that I must repeat it, if you have the singular respect for Mr. Collins which you profess, that you would help me to trace out this reproach, which is so abusive to, Sir,

Your servant,

ELIZ. COLLINS.

TO MRS. COLLINS.

I flattered myself that my last letter would have satisfied you, but I have the mortification to see that my hopes were vain. Therefore I beg leave once more to set this matter right. When I told you what had been reported, I acted, as I thought, the part of a true friend, by acquainting you that some of your MSS. had been purloined, in order that you might examine a fact which to me appeared of the last consequence; and I verily believe that everybody in my case would have expected thanks for such a friendly information. But instead of that I find myself represented as an enemy, and challenged to produce proofs and witnesses of a thing dropt in conversation, a hearsay, as if in those cases people kept a register of what they hear, and entered the names of the persons who spoke, the time, place, &c., and had with them persons ready to witness the whole, &c. I did own I never thought of such a thing, and whenever I happened to hear that some of my friends had some loss, I thought it my duty to acquaint them with such report, that they might inquire into the matter, and see whether there was any ground for it. But I never troubled myself with the names of the persons who spoke, as being a thing entirely needless and unprofitable.

Give me leave further to observe, that you are in no ways _concerned_ in the matter, as you seem to be apprehensive you are. Suppose some MSS. have been taken out of your library, who will say you ought to bear the guilt of it? What man in his senses, who has the honour to know you, will say you gave your consent to such thing--that you was privy to it? How can you then take upon yourself an action to which you was neither privy and consenting? Do not such things happen every day, and do the losers think themselves injured or _abused_ when they are talked of? Is it impossible to be betrayed by a person we confided in?

You call what I told you was a report, a surmise; you call it, I say, an _information_, and speak of _informers_ as if there was a plot laid wherein I received the information: I thought I had the honour to be better known to you. Mr. Collins loved me and esteemed me for my integrity and sincerity, of which he had several proofs; how I have been drawn in to injure him, to forfeit the good opinion he had of me, and which, were he now alive, would deservedly expose me to his utmost contempt, is a grief which I shall carry to the grave. It would be a sort of comfort to me, if those who have consented I should be drawn in were in some measure sensible of the guilt towards so good, kind, and generous a man.

Thus we find that, _seven years_ after Des Maizeaux had inconsiderately betrayed his sacred trust, his remorse was still awake; and the sincerity of his grief is attested by the affecting style which describes it: the spirit of his departed friend seemed to be hovering about him, and, in his imagination, would haunt him to the grave.

The nature of these manuscripts; the cause of the earnest desire of retaining them by the widow; the evident unfriendliness of her conduct to Des Maizeaux; and whether these manuscripts, consisting of eight octavo volumes with their transcripts, were destroyed, or are still existing, are all circumstances which my researches have hitherto not ascertained.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] _Van Effen_ was a Dutch writer of some merit, and one of a literary knot of ingenious men, consisting of Sallengre, St. Hyacinthe, Prosper Marchand, &c., who carried on a smart review for those days, published at the Hague under the title of "Journal Littéraire." They all composed in French; and Van Effen gave the first translations of our "Guardian," "Robinson Crusoe," and the "Tale of a Tub," &c. He did something more, but not better; he attempted to imitate the "Spectator," in his "Le Misanthrope," 1726, which exhibits a picture of the uninteresting manners of a nation whom he could not make very lively.

_De Limiers_ has had his name slipped into our biographical dictionaries. An author cannot escape the fatality of the alphabet; his numerous misdeeds are registered. It is said, that if he had not been so hungry, he would have given proofs of possessing some talent.

[15] I find that the nominal pension was 3_s._ 6_d._ per diem on the Irish civil list, which amounts to above 63_l._ per annum. If a pension be granted for reward, it seems a mockery that the income should be so grievously reduced, which cruel custom still prevails.

[16] This letter, or petition, was written in 1732. In 1743 he procured his pension to be placed on his wife's life, and he died in 1745.

He was sworn in as gentleman of his majesty's privy chamber in 1722--_Sloane MSS._ 4289.

[17] There is a printed catalogue of his library.

[18] This information is from a note found among Des Maizeaux's papers; but its truth I have no means to ascertain.

HISTORY OF NEW WORDS.

Neology, or the novelty of words and phrases, is an innovation, which, with the opulence of our present language, the English philologer is most jealous to allow; but we have puritans or precisians of English, superstitiously nice! The fantastic coinage of affectation or caprice will cease to circulate from its own alloy; but shall we reject the ore of fine workmanship and solid weight? There is no government mint of words, and it is no statutable offence to invent a felicitous or daring expression unauthorised by Mr. Todd! When a man of genius, in the heat of his pursuits or his feelings, has thrown out a peculiar word, it probably conveyed more precision or energy than any other established word, otherwise he is but an ignorant pretender!

Julius Cæsar, who, unlike other great captains, is authority on words as well as about blows, wrote a large treatise on "Analogy," in which that fine genius counselled to "avoid every unusual word as a rock!"[19] The cautious Quintilian, as might be expected, opposes all innovation in language. "If the new word is well received, small is the glory; if rejected, it raises laughter."[20] This only marks the penury of his feelings in this species of adventure. The great legislator of words, who lived when his own language was at its acmé, seems undecided, yet pleaded for this liberty. "Shall that which the Romans allowed to Cæcilius and to Plautus be refused to Virgil and Varius?" The answer to the question might not be favourable to the inquirer. While a language is forming, writers are applauded for extending its limits; when established, for restricting themselves to them. But this is to imagine that a perfect language can exist! The good sense and observation of Horace perceived that there may be occasions where necessity must become the mother of invented words:--

----Si forte necesse est Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum.

If you write of things abstruse or new, Some of your own inventing may be used, So it be seldom and discreetly done.

ROSCOMMON.

But Horace's canon for deciding on the legality of the new invention, or the standard by which it is to be tried, will not serve to assist the inventor of words:--

----licuit, semperque licebit, Signatum præsente nota procudere nummum.[21]

This _præsens nota_, or public stamp, can never be affixed to any new coinage of words: for many received at a season have perished with it.[22] The privilege of stamping words is reserved for their greatest enemy--Time itself! and the inventor of a new word must never flatter himself that he has secured the public adoption, for he must lie in his grave before he can enter the dictionary.

In Willes' address to the reader, prefixed to the collection of Voyages published in 1577, he finds fault with Eden's translation from Peter Martyr, for using words that "smelt too much of the Latine." We should scarcely have expected to find among them _ponderouse_, _portentouse_, _despicable_, _obsequious_, _homicide_, _imbibed_, _destructive_, _prodigious_. The only words he quotes, not thoroughly naturalised, are _dominators_, _ditionaries_, (subjects), _solicitute_ (careful).

The Tatler, No. 230, introduces several polysyllables introduced by military narrations, "which (he says), if they attack us too frequently, we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear;" every one of them still keep their ground.

Half the French words used affectedly by Melantha, in Dryden's _Marriage à-la-Mode_, as innovations in our language, are now in common use, _naïveté_, _foible_, _chagrin_, _grimace_, _embarras_, _double entendre_, _equivoque_, _eclaircissement_, _ridicule_, all these words, which she learns by heart to use occasionally, are now in common use. A Dr. Russel called Psalm-singers _Ballad-singers_, having found the Song of Solomon in an old translation, the _Ballad of Ballads_, for which he is reproached by his antagonist for not knowing that the signification of words alters with time; should I call him _knave_, he ought not to be concerned at it, for the Apostle Paul is also called a _knave of Jesus Christ_.[23]

Unquestionably, NEOLOGY opens a wide door to innovation; scarcely has a century passed since our language was patched up with Gallic idioms, as in the preceding century it was piebald with Spanish, and with Italian, and even with Dutch. The political intercourse of islanders with their neighbours has ever influenced their language. In Elizabeth's reign Italian phrases[24] and Netherland words were imported; in James and Charles the Spanish framed the style of courtesy; in Charles the Second the nation and the language were equally Frenchified. Yet such are the sources from whence we have often derived some of the wealth of our language!

There are three foul corruptors of a language: caprice, affectation, and ignorance! Such fashionable cant terms as "theatricals," and "musicals," invented by the flippant Topham, still survive among his confraternity of frivolity. A lady eminent for the elegance of her taste, and of whom one of the best judges, the celebrated Miss Edgeworth, observed to me, that she spoke the purest and most idiomatic English she had ever heard, threw out an observation which might be extended to a great deal of our present fashionable vocabulary. She is now old enough, she said, to have lived to hear the vulgarisms of her youth adopted in drawing-room circles.[25] To _lunch_, now so familiar from the fairest lips, in her youth was only known in the servants' hall. An expression very rife of late among our young ladies, _a nice man_, whatever it may mean, whether that the man resemble a pudding or something more nice, conveys the offensive notion that they are ready to eat him up! When I was a boy, it was an age of _bon ton_; this _good tone_ mysteriously conveyed a sublime idea of fashion; the term, imported late in the eighteenth century, closed with it. _Twaddle_ for a while succeeded _bore_; but _bore_ has recovered the supremacy. We want another Swift to give a new edition of his "Polite Conversation." A dictionary of barbarisms too might be collected from some wretched neologists, whose pens are now at work! Lord Chesterfield, in his exhortations to conform to Johnson's Dictionary, was desirous, however, that the great lexicographer should add as an appendix, "_A neological dictionary_, containing those polite, though perhaps not strictly grammatical, words and phrases commonly used, and sometimes understood by the _beau-monde_."[26] This last phrase was doubtless a contribution! Such a dictionary had already appeared in the French language, drawn up by two caustic critics, who in the _Dictionnaire néologique à l'usage des beaux Esprits du Siècle_ collected together the numerous unlucky inventions of affectation, with their modern authorities! A collection of the fine words and phrases, culled from some very modern poetry, might show the real amount of the favours bestowed on us.

The attempts of neologists are, however, not necessarily to be condemned; and we may join with the commentators of Aulus Gellius, who have lamented the loss of a chapter of which the title only has descended to us. That chapter would have demonstrated what happens to all languages, that some neologisms, which at first are considered forced or inelegant, become sanctioned by use, and in time are quoted as authority in the very language which, in their early stage, they were imagined to have debased.

The true history of men's minds is found in their actions; their wants are indicated by their contrivances; and certain it is that in highly cultivated ages we discover the most refined intellects attempting NEOLOGISMS.[27] It would be a subject of great curiosity to trace the origin of many happy expressions, when, and by whom created. Plato substituted the term _Providence_ for _fate_; and a new system of human affairs arose from a single word. Cicero invented several; to this philosopher we owe the term of _moral_ philosophy, which before his time was called the philosophy of _manners_. But on this subject we are perhaps more interested by the modern than by the ancient languages. Richardson, the painter of the human heart, has coined some expressions to indicate its little secret movements, which are admirable: that great genius merited a higher education and more literary leisure than the life of a printer could afford. Montaigne created some bold expressions, many of which have not survived him; his _incuriosité_, so opposite to curiosity, well describes that state of negligence where we will not learn that of which we are ignorant. With us the word _incurious_ was described by Heylin, 1656, as an unusual word; it has been appropriately adopted by our best writers, although we still want _incuriosity_. Charron invented _étrangeté_ unsuccessfully, but which, says a French critic, would be the true substantive of the word _étrange_; our Locke is the solitary instance produced for "foreignness" for "remoteness or want of relation to something." Malherbe borrowed from the Latin, _insidieux_, _sécurité_, which have been received; but a bolder word, _dévouloir_, by which he proposed to express _cesser de vouloir_, has not. A term, however, expressive and precise. Corneille happily introduced _invaincu_ in a verse in the Cid,

Vous êtes _invaincu_, mais non pas _invincible_.

Yet this created word by their great poet has not sanctioned this fine distinction among the French, for we are told that it is almost a solitary instance. Balzac was a great inventor of neologisms. _Urbanité_ and _féliciter_ were struck in his mint. "Si le mot _féliciter_ n'est pas française, il le sera l'année qui vient;" so confidently proud was the neologist, and it prospered as well as _urbanité_, of which he says, "Quand l'usage aura muri parmi nous un mot de si mauvais gout, et corrigé _l'amertume de la nouveauté_ qui s'y peut trouver, nous nous y accoutumerons comme aux autres que nous avons emprunté de la même langue." Balzac was, however, too sanguine in some other words; for his _délecter_, his _sériosité_, &c. still retain their "bitterness of novelty."

Menage invented a term of which an equivalent is wanting in our language; "J'ai fait _prosateur_ à l'imitation de l'italien _prosatore_, pour dire un homme qui écrit en prose." To distinguish a prose from a verse writer, we _once_ had "a proser." Drayton uses it; but this useful distinction has unluckily degenerated, and the current sense is so daily urgent, that the purer sense is irrecoverable.

When D'Albancourt was translating Lucian, he invented in French the words _indolence_ and _indolent_, to describe a momentary languor, rather than that habitual indolence in which sense they are now accepted; and in translating Tacitus, he created the word _turbulemment_; but it did not prosper any more than that of _temporisement_. Segrais invented the word _impardonnable_, which, after having been rejected, was revived, and is equivalent to our expressive _unpardonable_. Molière ridiculed some neologisms of the _Précieuses_ of his day; but we are too apt to ridicule that which is new, and which we often adopt when it becomes old. Molière laughed at the term _s'encanailler_, to describe one who assumed the manners of a blackguard; the expressive word has remained in the language. The meaning is disputed as well as the origin is lost of some novel terms. This has happened to a word in daily use--_Fudge_! It is a cant term not in Grose, and only traced by Todd not higher than to Goldsmith. It is, however, no invention of his. In a pamphlet, entitled "Remarks upon the Navy," 1700, the term is declared to have been the name of a certain nautical personage who had lived in the lifetime of the writer. "There was, sir, in our time, one _Captain Fudge_, commander of a merchantman, who upon his return from a voyage, how ill-fraught soever his ship was, always brought home his owners a good cargo of lies; so much that now, aboard ship, the sailors, when they hear a great lie told, cry out, 'You _fudge_ it!'" It is singular that such an obscure byword among sailors should have become one of the most popular in our familiar style; and not less, that recently at the bar, in a court of law, its precise meaning perplexed plaintiff and defendant and their counsel. I think it does not signify mere lies, but bouncing lies, or rhodomontades.

There are two remarkable French words created by the Abbé de Saint Pierre, who passed his meritorious life in the contemplation of political morality and universal benevolence--_bienfaisance_ and _gloriole_. He invented _gloriole_ as a contemptuous diminutive of _glorie_; to describe that vanity of some egotists, so proud of the small talents which they may have received from nature or from accident. _Bienfaisance_ first appeared in this sentence: "L'Esprit de la vraie religion et le principal but de l'evangile c'est _la bienfaisance_, c'est-à-dire la pratique de la charité envers le prochain." This word was so new, that in the moment of its creation this good man explained its necessity and origin. Complaining that "the word 'charity' is abused by all sorts of Christians in the persecution of their enemies, and even heretics affirm that they are practising Christian charity in persecuting other heretics, I have sought for a term which might convey to us a precise idea of doing good to our neighbours, and I can form none more proper to make myself understood than the term of _bienfaisance_, good-doing. Let those who like, use it; I would only be understood, and it is not equivocal." The happy word was at first criticised, but at length every kind heart found it responded to its own feeling. Some verses from Voltaire, alluding to the political reveries of the good abbé, notice the critical opposition; yet the new word answered to the great rule of Horace.

Certain législateur, dont la plume féconde Fit tant de vains projets pour le bien du monde, Et qui depuis trente ans écrit pour des ingrats, Vient de créer un mot qui manque à Vaugelas: Ce mot est BIENFAISANCE; il me plaît, il rassemble Si le coeur en est cru, bien des vertus ensemble. Petits grammairiens, grands précepteurs de sots, Qui pesez la parole et mesurez les mots, Pareille expression vous semble hazardée, Mais l'univers entier doit en cherir l'idée!

The French revolutionists, in their rage for innovation, almost barbarised the pure French of the Augustan age of their literature, as they did many things which never before occurred; and sometimes experienced feelings as transitory as they were strange. Their nomenclature was copious; but the revolutionary jargon often shows the danger and the necessity of neologisms. They form an appendix to the Academy Dictionary. Our plain English has served to enrich this odd mixture of philology and politics: _Club_, _clubiste_, _comité_, _jure_, _juge de paix_, blend with their _terrorisme_, _lanterner_, a verb

## active, _lévee en masse_, _noyades_, and the other verb active,

_septembriser_, &c. The barbarous term _demoralisation_ is said to have been the invention of the horrid capuchin Chabot; and the remarkable expression of _arrière pensée_ belonged exclusively in its birth to the jesuitic astuteness of the Abbé Sieyes, that political actor, who, in changing sides, never required prompting in his new part!

A new word, the result of much consideration with its author, or a term which, though unknown to the language, conveys a collective assemblage of ideas by a fortunate designation, is a precious contribution of genius; new words should convey new ideas. Swift, living amidst a civil war of pamphlets, when certain writers were regularly employed by one party to draw up replies to the other, created a term not to be found in our dictionaries, but which, by a single stroke, characterises these hirelings; he called them _answer-jobbers_. We have not dropped the fortunate expression from any want of its use, but of perception in our lexicographers. The celebrated Marquis of Lansdowne introduced a useful word, which has of late been warmly adopted in France as well as in England--_to liberalise_; the noun has been drawn out of the verb--for in the marquis's time that was only an abstract conception which is now a sect; and to _liberalise_ was theoretically introduced before the _liberals_ arose.[28] It is curious to observe that as an adjective it had formerly in our language a very opposite meaning to its recent one. It was synonymous with "libertine or licentious;" we have "a _liberal_ villain" and "a most profane and _liberal_ counsellor;" we find one declaring "I have spoken _too liberally_." This is unlucky for the _liberals_, who will not--

Give allowance to our _liberal_ jests Upon their persons--

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

Dr. Priestley employed a forcible, but not an elegant term, to mark the general information which had begun in his day; this he frequently calls "the _spread_ of knowledge." Burke attempted to brand with a new name that set of pert, petulant, sophistical sciolists, whose philosophy the French, since their revolutionary period, have distinguished as _philosophism_, and the philosophers themselves as _philosophistes_. He would have designated them as _literators_, but few exotic words will circulate; new words must be the coinage of our own language to blend with the vernacular idiom. Many new words are still wanted. We have no word by which we could translate the _otium_ of the Latins, the _dillettante_ of the Italians, the _alembiqué_ of the French, as an epithet to describe that sublimated ingenuity which exhausts the mind, till, like the fusion of the diamond, the intellect itself disappears. A philosopher, in an extensive view of a subject in all its bearings, may convey to us the result of his last considerations by the coinage of a novel and significant expression, as this of Professor Dugald Stewart--_political religionism_. Let me claim the honour of one pure neologism. I ventured to introduce the term of FATHER-LAND to describe our _natale solum_; I have lived to see it adopted by Lord Byron and by Mr. Southey, and the word is now common. A lady has even composed both the words and the air of a song on "Father-land." This energetic expression may therefore be considered as authenticated; and patriotism may stamp it with its glory and its affection. FATHER-LAND is congenial with the language in which we find that other fine expression MOTHER-TONGUE. The patriotic neologism originated with me in Holland, when, in early life, it was my daily pursuit to turn over the glorious history of its independence under the title of _Vaderlandsche Historie_--the history of FATHER-LAND!

If we acknowledge that the creation of some neologisms may sometimes produce the beautiful, the revival of the dead is the more authentic miracle; for a new word must long remain doubtful, but an ancient word happily recovered rests on a basis of permanent strength; it has both novelty and authority. A collection of _picturesque words_, found among our ancient writers, would constitute a precious supplement to the history of our language. Far more expressive than our term of _executioner_ is their solemn one of the _deathsman_; than our _vagabond_, their _scatterling_; than our _idiot_ or _lunatic_, their _moonling_,--a word which, Mr. Gifford observes, should not have been suffered to grow obsolete. Herrick finely describes by the term _pittering_ the peculiar shrill and short cry of the grasshopper: the cry of the grasshopper is pit! pit! pit! quickly repeated. Envy "_dusking_ the lustre" of genius is a verb lost for us, but which gives a more precise expression to the feeling than any other words which we could use.

The late Dr. Boucher, in the prospectus of his proposed Dictionary, did me the honour, then a young writer, to quote an opinion I had formed early in life of the purest source of neology, which is in the _revival of old words_.

Words that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake!

We have lost many exquisite and picturesque expressions through the dulness of our lexicographers, or by the deficiency in that profounder study of our writers which their labours require far more than they themselves know. The natural graces of our language have been impoverished. The genius that throws its prophetic eye over the language, and the taste that must come from Heaven, no lexicographer imagines are required to accompany him amidst a library of old books!

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Aulus Gellius, lib. i. c. 10.

[20] Instit. lib. i. c. 5.

[21] This verse was corrected by Bentley _procudere nummum_, instead of _producere nomen_, which the critics agree is one of his happy conjectures.

[22] Henry Cockeram's curious little "English Dictionarie, or an Interpretation of hard English words", 12mo, 1631, professes to give in its first book "the choicest words themselves now in use, wherewith our language is inriched and become so copious." Many have not survived, such as the following:--

Acyrologicall An improper speech. Adacted Driven in by force. Blandiloquy Flattering speech. Compaginate To set together that which is broken. Concessation Loytering. Delitigate To scold, or chide vehemently. Depalmate To give one a box on the ear. Esuriate To hunger. Strenuitie Activity.

Curiously enough, this author notes some words as those "now out of use, and onely used of some ancient writers," but which we now commonly use. Such are the following:--

Abandon To forsake or cast off. Abate To make lesse, diminish, or take from.

[23] A most striking instance of the change of meaning in a word is in the old law-term _let_--"without _let_ or hindrance;" meaning void of all opposition. Hence, "I will _let_ you," meant "I will hinder you;" and not as we should now think, "I will give you free leave."

[24] Shakspeare makes "Ancient Pistol" use a new-coined Italian word, when he speaks of being "better accommodated;" to the great delight of Justice Shallow, who exclaims, "It comes from _accommodo_--a good phrase!" And Ben Jonson, in his "Tale of a Tub," ridicules Inigo Jones's love of two words he often used:--

----If it _conduce_ To the design, whate'er is _feasible_, I can express.

[25] The term _pluck_, once only known to the prize-ring, has now got into use in general conversation, and also into literature, as a term indicative of ready courage.

[26] Such terms as "_patent_ to the public"--"_normal_ condition"--"_crass_ behaviour," are the inventions of the last few years.

[27] Shakspeare has a powerfully-composed line in the speech of the Duke of Burgundy, (_Henry V._ Act v. Sc. 2), when, describing the fields overgrown with weeds, he exclaims--

----The coulter rusts, That should _deracinate_ such _savagery_.

[28] The "Quarterly Review" recently marked the word _liberalise_ in italics as a strange word, undoubtedly not aware of its origin. It has been lately used by Mr. Dugald Stewart, "to _liberalise_ the views."--Dissert. 2nd part, p. 138.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS.

In antique furniture we sometimes discover a convenience which long disuse had made us unacquainted with, and are surprised by the aptness which we did not suspect was concealed in its solid forms. We have found the labour of the workmen to have been as admirable as the material itself, which is still resisting the mouldering touch of time among those modern inventions, elegant and unsubstantial, which, often put together with unseasoned wood, are apt to warp and fly into pieces when brought into use. We have found how strength consists in the selection of materials, and that, whenever the substitute is not better than the original, we are losing something in that test of experience, which all things derive from duration.

Be this as it may! I shall not unreasonably await for the artists of our novelties to retrograde into massive greatness, although I cannot avoid reminding them how often they revive the forgotten things of past times! It is well known that many of our novelties were in use by our ancestors! In the history of the human mind there is, indeed, a sort of antique furniture which I collect, not merely for their antiquity, but for the sound condition in which I still find them, and the compactness which they still show. Centuries have not worm-eaten their solidity! and the utility and delightfulness which they still afford make them look as fresh and as ingenious as any of our patent inventions.

By the title of the present article the reader has anticipated the nature of the old furniture to which I allude. I propose to give what, in the style of our times, may be called the Philosophy of Proverbs--a topic which seems virgin. The art of reading proverbs has not, indeed, always been acquired even by some of their admirers; but my observations, like their subject, must be versatile and unconnected; and I must bespeak indulgence for an attempt to illustrate a very curious branch of literature, rather not understood than quite forgotten.

Proverbs have long been in disuse. "A man of fashion," observes Lord Chesterfield, "never has recourse to proverbs and vulgar aphorisms;" and, since the time his lordship so solemnly interdicted their use, they appear to have withered away under the ban of his anathema. His lordship was little conversant with the history of proverbs, and would unquestionably have smiled on those "men of fashion" of another stamp, who, in the days of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, were great collectors of them; would appeal to them in their conversations, and enforce them in their learned or their statesmanlike correspondence. Few, perhaps, even now, suspect that these neglected fragments of wisdom, which exist among all nations, still offer many interesting objects for the studies of the philosopher and the historian; and for men of the world still open an extensive school of human life and manners.

The home-spun adages, and the rusty "sayed-saws," which remain in the mouths of the people, are adapted to their capacities and their humours. Easily remembered, and readily applied, these are the philosophy of the vulgar, and often more sound than that of their masters! whoever would learn what the people think, and how they feel, must not reject even these as insignificant. The proverbs of the street and of the market, true to nature, and lasting only because they are true, are records that the populace at Athens and at Rome were the same people as at Paris and at London, and as they had before been in the city of Jerusalem!

Proverbs existed before books. The Spaniards date the origin of their _refranes que dicen las viejas tras el fuego_, "sayings of old wives by their firesides," before the existence of any writings in their language, from the circumstance that these are in the old romance or rudest vulgar idiom. The most ancient poem in the Edda, "the sublime speech of Odin," abounds with ancient proverbs, strikingly descriptive of the ancient Scandinavians. Undoubtedly proverbs in the earliest ages long served as the unwritten language of morality, and even of the useful arts; like the oral traditions of the Jews, they floated down from age to age on the lips of successive generations. The name of the first sage who sanctioned the saying would in time be forgotten, while the opinion, the metaphor, or the expression, remained, consecrated into a proverb! Such was the origin of those memorable sentences by which men learnt to think and to speak appositely; they were precepts which no man could contradict, at a time when authority was valued more than opinion, and experience preferred to novelty. The proverbs of a father became the inheritance of a son; the mistress of a family perpetuated hers through her household; the workman condensed some traditional secret of his craft into a proverbial expression. When countries are not yet populous, and property has not yet produced great inequalities in its ranks, every day will show them how "the drunkard and the glutton come to poverty, and drowsiness clothes a man with rags." At such a period he who gave counsel gave wealth.

It might therefore have been decided, _à priori_, that the most homely proverbs would abound in the most ancient writers--and such we find in Hesiod; a poet whose learning was not drawn from books. It could only have been in the agricultural state that this venerable bard could have indicated a state of repose by this rustic proverb:--

[Greek: Pêdalion men uper kapnou katadeio] Hang your plough-beam o'er the hearth!

The envy of rival workmen is as justly described by a reference to the humble manufacturers of earthenware as by the elevated jealousies of the literati and the artists of a more polished age. The famous proverbial verse in Hesiod's Works and Days--

[Greek: Kai kerameus keramei koteei],

is literally, "The potter is hostile to the potter!"

The admonition of the poet to his brother, to prefer a friendly accommodation to a litigious lawsuit, has fixed a paradoxical proverb often applied,--

[Greek: Pleon êmisu pantos], The half is better than the whole!

In the progress of time, the stock of popular proverbs received accessions from the highest sources of human intelligence; as the philosophers of antiquity formed their collections, they increased in "weight and number." Erasmus has pointed out some of these sources, in the responses of oracles; the allegorical symbols of Pythagoras; the verses of the poets; allusions to historical incidents; mythology and apologue; and other recondite origins. Such dissimilar matters, coming from all quarters, were melted down into this vast body of aphoristic knowledge. Those "WORDS OF THE WISE and their DARK SAYINGS," as they are distinguished in that large collection which bears the name of the great Hebrew monarch, at length seem to have required commentaries; for what else can we infer of the enigmatic wisdom of the sages, when the royal paroemiographer classes among their studies, that of "_understanding a proverb and the interpretation_?" This elevated notion of "the dark sayings of the wise" accords with the bold conjecture of their origin which the Stagyrite has thrown out, who considered them as the wrecks of an ancient philosophy which had been lost to mankind by the fatal revolutions of all human things, and that those had been saved from the general ruin by their pithy elegance and their diminutive form; like those marine shells found on the tops of mountains, the relics of the Deluge! Even at a later period, the sage of Cheronea prized them among the most solemn mysteries; and Plutarch has described them in a manner which proverbs may even still merit: "Under the veil of these curious sentences are hid those germs of morals which the masters of philosophy have afterwards developed into so many volumes."

At the highest period of Grecian genius, the tragic and the comic poets introduced into their dramas the proverbial style. St. Paul quotes a line which still remains among the first exercises of our school-pens:--

Evil communications corrupt good manners.

It is a verse found in a fragment of Menander the comic poet:

[Greek: Phtheirousin hêthê chrêsth' homiliai kakai].

As this verse is a proverb, and the apostle, and indeed the highest authority, Jesus himself, consecrates the use of proverbs by their occasional application, it is uncertain whether St. Paul quotes the Grecian poet, or only repeats some popular adage. Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers; and when Bentley, by a league of superficial wits, was accused of pedantry for his use of some ancient proverbs, the sturdy critic vindicated his taste by showing that Cicero constantly introduced Greek proverbs into his writings,--that Scaliger and Erasmus loved them, and had formed collections drawn from the stores of antiquity.

Some difficulty has occurred in the definition. Proverbs must be distinguished from proverbial phrases, and from sententious maxims; but as proverbs have many faces, from their miscellaneous nature, the class itself scarcely admits of any definition. When Johnson defined a proverb to be "a short sentence frequently repeated by the people," this definition would not include the most curious ones, which have not always circulated among the populace, nor even belong to them; nor does it designate the vital qualities of a proverb. The pithy quaintness of old Howell has admirably described the ingredients of an exquisite proverb to be _sense, shortness, and salt_. A proverb is distinguished from a maxim or an apophthegm by that brevity which condenses a thought or a metaphor, where one thing is said and another is to be applied. This often produces wit, and that quick pungency which excites surprise, but strikes with conviction; this gives it an epigrammatic turn. George Herbert entitled the small collection which he formed "Jacula Prudentium," Darts or Javelins! something hurled and striking deeply; a characteristic of a proverb which possibly Herbert may have borrowed from a remarkable passage in Plato's dialogue of "Protagoras or the Sophists."

The influence of proverbs over the minds and conversations of a whole people is strikingly illustrated by this philosopher's explanation of the term _to laconise_,--the mode of speech peculiar to the Lacedæmonians. This people affected to appear _unlearned_, and seemed only emulous to excel the rest of the Greeks in fortitude and in military skill. According to Plato's notion, this was really a political artifice, with a view to conceal their pre-eminent wisdom. With the jealousy of a petty state, they attempted to confine their renowned sagacity within themselves, and under their military to hide their contemplative character! The philosopher assures those who in other cities imagined they _laconised_, merely by imitating the severe exercises and the other warlike manners of the Lacedæmonians, that they were grossly deceived; and thus curiously describes the sort of wisdom which this singular people practised.

"If any one wish to converse with the meanest of the Lacedæmonians, he will at first find him, for the most part, apparently despicable in conversation; but afterwards, when a proper opportunity presents itself, this same mean person, like a _skilful jaculator, will hurl a sentence_, worthy of attention, _short and contorted_; so that he who converses with him will appear to be in no respect superior to a boy! That _to laconise_, therefore, consists much more in philosophising than in the love of exercise, is understood by some of the present age, and was known to the ancients, they being persuaded that the ability of _uttering such sentences_ as these is the province of a man perfectly learned. The seven sages were emulators, lovers, and disciples of the _Lacedæmonian erudition_. Their wisdom was a thing of this kind, viz. _short sentences uttered by each, and worthy to be remembered_. These men, assembling together, consecrated to Apollo the first fruits of their wisdom; writing in the Temple of Apollo, at Delphi, those sentences which are celebrated by all men, viz. _Know thyself!_ and _Nothing too much!_ But on what account do I mention these things? To show that _the mode of philosophy among the ancients was a certain laconic diction_."[29]

The "laconisms" of the Lacedæmonians evidently partook of the proverbial style: they were, no doubt, often proverbs themselves. The very instances which Plato supplies of this "laconising" are two most venerable proverbs.

All this elevates the science of PROVERBS, and indicates that these abridgments of knowledge convey great results, with a parsimony of words prodigal of sense. They have, therefore, preserved many "a short sentence, NOT repeated by the people."

It is evident, however, that the earliest writings of every people are marked by their most homely, or domestic proverbs; for these were more directly addressed to their wants. Franklin, who may be considered as the founder of a people who were suddenly placed in a stage of civil society which as yet could afford no literature, discovered the philosophical cast of his genius, when he filled his almanacs with proverbs, by the ingenious contrivance of framing them into a connected discourse, delivered by an old man attending an auction. "These proverbs," he tells us, "which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, when their scattered counsels were brought together, made a great impression. They were reprinted in Britain, in a large sheet of paper, and stuck up in houses: and were twice translated in France, and distributed among their poor parishioners." The same occurrence had happened with us ere we became a reading people. Sir Thomas Elyot, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, describing the ornaments of a nobleman's house, among his hangings, and plate, and pictures, notices the engraving of proverbs "on his plate and vessels, which served the guests with a most opportune counsel and comments." Later even than the reign of Elizabeth our ancestors had proverbs always before them, on everything that had room for a piece of advice on it; they had them painted in their tapestries, stamped on the most ordinary utensils, on the blades of their knives,[30] the borders of their plates,[31] and "conned them out of goldsmiths' rings."[32] The usurer, in Robert Greene's "Groat's worth of Wit," compressed all his philosophy into the circle of his ring, having learned sufficient Latin to understand the proverbial motto of "Tu tibi cura!" The husband was reminded of his lordly authority when he only looked into his trencher, one of its learned aphorisms having descended to us,--

The calmest husbands make the stormiest wives.

The English proverbs of the populace, most of which are still in circulation, were collected by old John Heywood.[33] They are arranged by Tusser for "the parlour--the guest's chamber--the hall--table-lessons," &c. Not a small portion of our ancient proverbs were adapted to rural life, when our ancestors lived more than ourselves amidst the works of God, and less among those of men.[34] At this time, one of our old statesmen, in commending the art of compressing a tedious discourse into a few significant phrases, suggested the use of proverbs in diplomatic intercourse, convinced of the great benefit which would result to the negotiators themselves, as well as to others! I give a literary curiosity of this kind. A member of the House of Commons, in the reign of Elizabeth, made a speech entirely composed of the most homely proverbs. The subject was a bill against double payments of book-debts. Knavish tradesmen were then in the habit of swelling out their book-debts with those who took credit, particularly to their younger customers. One of the members who began to speak "for very fear shook," and stood silent. The nervous orator was followed by a blunt and true representative of the famed governor of Barataria, delivering himself thus--"It is now my chance to speak something, and that without humming or hawing. I think this law is a good law. Even reckoning makes long friends. As far goes the penny as the penny's master. _Vigilantibus non dormientibus jura subveniunt._ Pay the reckoning overnight and ye shall not be troubled in the morning. If ready money be _mensura publica_, let every one cut his coat according to his cloth. When his old suit is in the wane, let him stay till that his money bring a new suit in the increase."[35]

Another instance of the use of proverbs among our statesmen occurs in a manuscript letter of Sir Dudley Carlton, written in 1632, on the impeachment of Lord Middlesex, who, he says, is "this day to plead his own cause in the Exchequer-chamber, about an account of four-score thousand pounds laid to his charge. How his lordship sped I know not, but do remember well the French proverb, _Qui mange de l'oy du Roy chiera une plume quarante ans après_. 'Who eats of the king's goose, will void a feather forty years after!'"

This was the era of proverbs with us; for then they were _spoken_ by all ranks of society. The free use of trivial proverbs got them into disrepute; and as the abuse of a thing raises a just opposition to its practice, a slender wit affecting "a cross humour," published a little volume of "Crossing of Proverbs, Cross-answers, and Cross-humours." He pretends to contradict the most popular ones; but he has not always the genius to strike at amusing paradoxes.[36]

Proverbs were long the favourites of our neighbours; in the splendid and refined court of Louis the Fourteenth they gave rise to an odd invention. They plotted comedies and even fantastical ballets from their subjects. In these Curiosities of Literature I cannot pass by such eccentric inventions unnoticed.

A COMEDY _of proverbs_ is described by the Duke de la Vallière, which was performed in 1634 with prodigious success. He considers that this comedy ought to be ranked among farces; but it is gay, well-written, and curious for containing the best proverbs, which are happily introduced in the dialogue.

A more extraordinary attempt was a BALLET _of proverbs_. Before the opera was established in France, the ancient ballets formed the chief amusement of the court, and Louis the Fourteenth himself joined with the performers. The singular attempt of forming a pantomimical dance out of proverbs is quite French; we have a "ballet des proverbes, dansé par le Roi, in 1654." At every proverb the scene changed, and adapted itself to the subject. I shall give two or three of the _entrées_ that we may form some notion of these _capriccios_.

The proverb was---

_Tel menace qui a grand peur._ He threatens who is afraid.

The scene was composed of swaggering scaramouches and some honest cits, who at length beat them off.

At another _entrée_ the proverb was--

_L'occasion fait le larron._ Opportunity makes the thief.

Opportunity was acted by le Sieur Beaubrun, but it is difficult to conceive how the real could personify the abstract personage. The thieves were the Duke d'Amville and Monsieur de la Chesnaye.

Another _entrée_ was the proverb of--

_Ce qui vient de la flute s'en va au tambour._ What comes by the pipe goes by the tabor.

A loose dissipated officer was performed by le Sieur l'Anglois; the _Pipe_ by St. Aignan, and the _Tabor_ by le Sieur le Comte! In this manner every proverb was _spoken in action_, the whole connected by dialogue. More must have depended on the actors than the poet.[37]

The French long retained this fondness for proverbs; for they still have dramatic compositions entitled _proverbes_, on a more refined plan. Their invention is so recent, that the term is not in their great dictionary of Trevoux. These _proverbes_ are dramas of a single act, invented by Carmontel, who possessed a peculiar vein of humour, but who designed them only for private theatricals. Each _proverb_ furnished a subject for a few scenes, and created a situation powerfully comic: it is a dramatic amusement which does not appear to have reached us, but one which the celebrated Catherine of Russia delighted to compose for her own society.

Among the middle classes of society to this day, we may observe that certain family proverbs are traditionally preserved: the favourite saying of a father is repeated by the sons; and frequently the conduct of a whole generation has been influenced by such domestic proverbs. This may be perceived in many of the mottos of our old nobility, which seem to have originated in some habitual proverb of the founder of the family. In ages when proverbs were most prevalent, such pithy sentences would admirably serve in the ordinary business of life, and lead on to decision, even in its greater exigencies. Orators, by some lucky proverb, without wearying their auditors, would bring conviction home to their bosoms: and great characters would appeal to a proverb, or deliver that which in time by its aptitude became one. When Nero was reproached for the ardour with which he gave himself up to the study of music, he replied to his censurers by the Greek proverb, "An artist lives everywhere." The emperor answered in the spirit of Rousseau's system, that every child should be taught some trade. When Cæsar, after anxious deliberation, decided on the passage of the Rubicon (which very event has given rise to a proverb), rousing himself with a start of courage, he committed himself to Fortune, with that proverbial expression on his lips, used by gamesters in desperate play: having passed the Rubicon, he exclaimed, "The die is cast!" The answer of Paulus Æmilius to the relations of his wife, who had remonstrated with him on his determination to separate himself from her against whom no fault could be alleged, has become one of our most familiar proverbs. This hero acknowledged the excellences of his lady; but, requesting them to look on his shoe, which appeared to be well made, he observed, "None of you know where the shoe pinches!" He either used a proverbial phrase, or by its aptness it has become one of the most popular.

There are, indeed, proverbs connected with the characters of eminent men. They were either their favourite ones, or have originated with themselves. Such a collection would form a historical curiosity. To the celebrated Bayard are the French indebted for a military proverb, which some of them still repeat, "_Ce que le gantelet gagne le gorgerin le mange_"--"What the gauntlet gets, the gorget consumes." That reflecting soldier well calculated the profits of a military life, which consumes, in the pomp and waste which are necessary for its maintenance, the slender pay it receives, and even what its rapacity sometimes acquires. The favourite proverb of Erasmus was _Festina lente_!--"Hasten slowly!"[38] He wished it be inscribed wherever it could meet our eyes, on public buildings, and on our rings and seals. One of our own statesmen used a favourite sentence, which has enlarged our stock of national proverbs. Sir Amias Pawlet, when he perceived too much hurry in any business, was accustomed to say, "Stay awhile, to make an end the sooner." Oliver Cromwell's coarse but descriptive proverb conveys the contempt he felt for some of his mean and troublesome coadjutors: "Nits will be lice!" The Italians have a proverb, which has been occasionally applied to certain political personages:--

_Egli e quello che Dio vuole; E sarà quello che Dio vorrà!_

He is what God pleases; He shall be what God wills!

Ere this was a proverb, it had served as an embroidered motto on the mystical mantle of Castruccio Castracani. That military genius, who sought to revolutionise Italy, and aspired to its sovereignty, lived long enough to repent the wild romantic ambition which provoked all Italy to confederate against him; the mysterious motto he assumed entered into the proverbs of his country! The Border proverb of the Douglases, "It were better to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep," was adopted by every Border chief, to express, as Sir Walter Scott observes, what the great Bruce had pointed out, that the woods and hills of their country were their safest bulwarks, instead of the fortified places which the English surpassed their neighbours in the arts of assaulting or defending. These illustrations indicate one of the sources of proverbs; they have often resulted from the spontaneous emotions or the profound reflections of some extraordinary individual, whose energetic expression was caught by a faithful ear, never to perish!

The poets have been very busy with proverbs in all the languages of Europe: some appear to have been the favourite lines of some ancient poem: even in more refined times, many of the pointed verses of Boileau and Pope have become proverbial. Many trivial and laconic proverbs bear the jingle of alliteration or rhyme, which assisted their circulation, and were probably struck off extempore; a manner which Swift practised, who was a ready coiner of such rhyming and ludicrous proverbs: delighting to startle a collector by his facetious or sarcastic humour, in the shape of an "old saying and true." Some of these rhyming proverbs are, however, terse and elegant: we have

Little strokes Fell great oaks.

The Italian--

_Chi duo lepri caccia Uno perde, e l'altro lascia._

Who hunts two hares, loses one and leaves the other.

The haughty Spaniard--

_El dar es honor, Y el pedir dolor._

To give is honour, to ask is grief.

And the French--

_Ami de table Est variable._

The friend of the table Is very variable.

The composers of these short proverbs were a numerous race of poets, who, probably, among the dreams of their immortality never suspected that they were to descend to posterity, themselves and their works unknown, while their extempore thoughts would be repeated by their own nation.

Proverbs were at length consigned to the people, when books were addressed to scholars; but the people did not find themselves so destitute of practical wisdom, by preserving their national proverbs, as some of those closet students who had ceased to repeat them. The various humours of mankind, in the mutability of human affairs, had given birth to every species; and men were wise, or merry, or satirical, and mourned or rejoiced in proverbs. Nations held an universal intercourse of proverbs, from the eastern to the western world; for we discover among those which appear strictly national, many which are common to them all. Of our own familiar ones several may be tracked among the snows of the Latins and the Greeks, and have sometimes been drawn from "The Mines of the East:" like decayed families which remain in obscurity, they may boast of a high lineal descent whenever they recover their lost title-deeds. The vulgar proverb, "To carry coals to Newcastle," local and idiomatic as it appears, however, has been borrowed and applied by ourselves; it may be found among the Persians: in the "Bustan" of Sadi we have _Infers piper in Hindostan_; "To carry pepper to Hindostan;" among the Hebrews, "To carry oil to the City of Olives;" a similar proverb occurs in Greek; and in Galland's "Maxims of the East" we may discover how many of the most common proverbs among us, as well as some of Joe Miller's jests, are of oriental origin.

The resemblance of certain proverbs in different nations, must, however, be often ascribed to the identity of human nature; similar situations and similar objects have unquestionably made men think and act and express themselves alike. All nations are parallels of each other! Hence all paroemiographers, or collectors of proverbs, complain of the difficulty of separating their own national proverbs from those which have crept into the language from others, particularly when nations have held much intercourse together. We have a copious collection of Scottish proverbs by Kelly, but this learned man was mortified at discovering that many which he had long believed to have been genuine Scottish, were not only English, but French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Greek ones; many of his Scottish proverbs are almost literally expressed among the fragments of remote antiquity. It would have surprised him further had he been aware that his Greek originals were themselves but copies, and might have been found in D'Herbelot, Erpenius, and Golius, and in many Asiatic works, which have been more recently introduced to the enlarged knowledge of the European student, who formerly found his most extended researches limited by Hellenistic lore.

Perhaps it was owing to an accidental circumstance that the proverbs of the European nations have been preserved in the permanent form of volumes. Erasmus is usually considered as the first modern collector, but he appears to have been preceded by Polydore Vergil, who bitterly reproaches Erasmus with envy and plagiarism, for passing by his collection without even a poor compliment for the inventor! Polydore was a vain, superficial writer, who prided himself in leading the way on more topics than the present. Erasmus, with his usual pleasantry, provokingly excuses himself, by acknowledging that he had forgotten his friend's book! Few sympathise with the quarrels of authors; and since Erasmus has written a far better book than Polydore Vergil's, the original "_Adagia_" is left only to be commemorated in literary history as one of its curiosities.[39]

The "Adagia" of Erasmus contains a collection of about five thousand proverbs, gradually gathered from a constant study of the ancients. Erasmus, blest with the genius which could enliven a folio, delighted himself and all Europe by the continued accessions he made to a volume which even now may be the companion of literary men for a winter day's fireside. The successful example of Erasmus commanded the imitation of the learned in Europe, and drew their attention to their own national proverbs. Some of the most learned men, and some not sufficiently so, were now occupied in this new study.

In Spain, Fernandez Nunes, a Greek professor, and the Marquis of Santellana, a grandee, published collections of their _Refranes_, or Proverbs, a term derived A REFERENDO, because it is often repeated. The "Refranes o Proverbios Castellanos," par Cæsar Oudin, 1624, translated into French, is a valuable compilation. In Cervantes and Quevedo, the best practical illustrators, they are sown with no sparing hand. There is an ample collection of Italian proverbs, by Florio, who was an Englishman, of Italian origin, and who published "Il Giardino di Ricreatione" at London, so early as in 1591, exceeding six thousand proverbs; but they are unexplained, and are often obscure. Another Italian in England, Torriano, in 1649, published an interesting collection in the diminutive form of a twenty-fours. It was subsequent to these publications in England, that in Italy, Angelus Monozini, in 1604, published his collection; and Julius Varini, in 1642, produced his _Scuola del Vulgo_. In France, Oudin, after others had preceded him, published a collection of French proverbs, under the title of _Curiosités Françoises_. Fleury de Bellingen's _Explication de Proverbes François_, on comparing it with _Les Illustres Proverbes Historiques_, a subsequent publication, I discovered to be the same work. It is the first attempt to render the study of proverbs somewhat amusing. The plan consists of a dialogue between a philosopher and a Sancho Pança, who blurts out his proverbs with more delight than understanding. The philosopher takes that opportunity of explaining them by the events in which they originated, which, however, are not always to be depended on. A work of high merit on French proverbs is the unfinished one of the Abbé Tuet, sensible and learned. A collection of Danish proverbs, accompanied by a French translation, was printed at Copenhagen, in a quarto volume, 1761. England may boast of no inferior paroemiographers. The grave and judicious Camden, the religious Herbert, the entertaining Howell, the facetious Fuller, and the laborious Ray, with others, have preserved our national sayings. The Scottish have been largely collected and explained by the learned Kelly. An excellent anonymous collection, not uncommon, in various languages, 1707; the collector and translator was Dr. J. Mapletoft. It must be acknowledged, that although no nation exceeds our own in sterling sense, we rarely rival the delicacy, the wit, and the felicity of expression of the Spanish and the Italian, and the poignancy of some of the French proverbs.

The interest we may derive from the study of proverbs is not confined to their universal truths, nor to their poignant pleasantry; a philosophical mind will discover in proverbs a great variety of the most curious knowledge. The manners of a people are painted after life in their domestic proverbs; and it would not be advancing too much to assert, that the genius of the age might be often detected in its prevalent ones. The learned Selden tells us, that the proverbs of several nations were much studied by Bishop Andrews: the reason assigned was, because "by them he knew the minds of several nations, which," said he, "is a brave thing, as we count him wise who knows the minds and the insides of men, which is done by knowing what is habitual to them." Lord Bacon condensed a wide circuit of philosophical thought, when he observed that "the genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs."

Proverbs peculiarly national, while they convey to us the modes of thinking, will consequently indicate the modes of acting among a people. The Romans had a proverbial expression for their last stake in play, _Rem ad triarios venisse_, "the reserve are engaged!" a proverbial expression, from which the military habits of the people might be inferred; the _triarii_ being their reserve. A proverb has preserved a curious custom of ancient coxcombry, which originally came from the Greeks. To men of effeminate manners in their dress, they applied the proverb of _Unico digitulo scalpit caput_. Scratching the head with a single finger was, it seems, done by the critically nice youths in Rome, that they might not discompose the economy of their hair. The Arab, whose unsettled existence makes him miserable and interested, says, "Vinegar given is better than honey bought." Everything of high esteem with him who is so often parched in the desert is described as _milk_--"How large his flow of milk!" is a proverbial expression with the Arab to distinguish the most copious eloquence. To express a state of perfect repose, the Arabian proverb is, "I throw the rein over my back;" an allusion to the loosening of the cords of the camels, which are thrown over their backs when they are sent to pasture. We discover the rustic manners of our ancient Britons in the Cambrian proverbs; many relate to the _hedge_. "The cleanly Briton is seen in the _hedge_: the horse looks not on the _hedge_ but the corn: the bad husband's _hedge_ is full of gaps." The state of an agricultural people appears in such proverbs as "You must not count your yearlings till May-day:" and their proverbial sentence for old age is, "An old man's end is to keep sheep?" Turn from the vagrant Arab and the agricultural Briton to a nation existing in a high state of artificial civilization: the Chinese proverbs frequently allude to magnificent buildings. Affecting a more solemn exterior than all other nations, a favourite proverb with them is, "A grave and majestic outside is, as it were, the _palace_ of the soul." Their notion of a government is quite architectural. They say, "A sovereign may be compared to a _hall_; his officers to the steps that lead to it; the people to the ground on which they stand." What should we think of a people who had a proverb, that "He who gives blows is a master, he who gives none is a dog?" We should instantly decide on the mean and servile spirit of those who could repeat it; and such we find to have been that of the Bengalese, to whom the degrading proverb belongs, derived from the treatment they were used to receive from their Mogul rulers, who answered the claims of their creditors by a vigorous application of the whip! In some of the Hebrew proverbs we are struck by the frequent allusions of that fugitive people to their own history. The cruel oppression exercised by the ruling power, and the confidence in their hope of change in the day of retribution, was delivered in this Hebrew proverb--"When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes!" The fond idolatry of their devotion to their ceremonial law, and to everything connected with their sublime Theocracy, in their magnificent Temple, is finely expressed by this proverb--"None ever took a stone out of the Temple, but the dust did fly into his eyes." The Hebrew proverb that "A fast for a dream, is as fire for stubble," which it kindles, could only have been invented by a people whose superstitions attached a holy mystery to fasts and dreams. They imagined that a religious fast was propitious to a religious dream; or to obtain the interpretation of one which had troubled their imagination. Peyssonel, who long resided among the Turks, observes that their proverbs are full of sense, ingenuity, and elegance, the surest test of the intellectual abilities of any nation. He said this to correct the volatile opinion of De Tott, who, to convey an idea of their stupid pride, quotes one of their favourite adages, of which the truth and candour are admirable; "Riches in the Indies, wit in Europe, and pomp among the Ottomans."

The Spaniards may appeal to their proverbs to show that they were a high-minded and independent race. A Whiggish jealousy of the monarchical power stamped itself on this ancient one, _Va el rey hasta do peude, y no hasta do quiere_: "The king goes as far as he is able, not as far as he desires." It must have been at a later period, when the national genius became more subdued, and every Spaniard dreaded to find under his own roof a spy or an informer, that another proverb arose, _Con el rey y la inquisicion, chiton!_ "With the king and the Inquisition, hush!" The gravity and taciturnity of the nation have been ascribed to the effects of this proverb. Their popular but suppressed feelings on taxation, and on a variety of dues exacted by their clergy, were murmured in proverbs--_Lo que no lleva Christo lleva el fisco!_ "What Christ takes not, the exchequer carries away!" They have a number of sarcastic proverbs on the tenacious gripe of the "abad avariento," the avaricious priest, who, "having eaten the olio offered, claims the dish!" A striking mixture of chivalric habits, domestic decency, and epicurean comfort, appears in the Spanish proverb, _La muger y la salsa a la mano de la lança_: "The wife and the sauce by the hand of the lance;" to honour the dame, and to have the sauce near.

The Italian proverbs have taken a tinge from their deep and politic genius, and their wisdom seems wholly concentrated in their personal interests. I think every tenth proverb, in an Italian collection, is some cynical or some selfish maxim: a book of the world for worldlings! The Venetian proverb, _Pria Veneziana, poi Christiane_: "First Venetian, and then Christian!" condenses the whole spirit of their ancient Republic into the smallest space possible. Their political proverbs no doubt arose from the extraordinary state of a people sometimes distracted among republics, and sometimes servile in petty courts. The Italian says, _I popoli s'ammazzano, ed i principi s'abbracciano_: "The people murder one another, and princes embrace one another." _Chi prattica co' grandi, l'ultimo a tavola, e'l primo a strapazzi_: "Who dangles after the great is the last at table, and the first at blows." _Chi non sa adulare, non sa regnare_: "Who knows not to flatter, knows not to reign." _Chi serve in corte muore sul' pagliato_: "Who serves at court, dies on straw." Wary cunning in domestic life is perpetually impressed. An Italian proverb, which is immortalised in our language, for it enters into the history of Milton, was that by which the elegant Wotton counselled the young poetic traveller to have--_Il viso sciolto, ed i pensieri stretti_, "An open countenance, but close thoughts." In the same spirit, _Chi parla semina, chi tace raccoglie_: "The talker sows, the silent reaps;" as well as, _Fatti di miele, e ti mangieran le mosche_: "Make yourself all honey, and the flies will devour you." There are some which display a deep knowledge of human nature: _A Lucca ti vidi, à Pisa ti connobbi!_ "I saw you at Lucca, I knew you at Pisa!" _Guardati d'aceto di vin dolce_: "Beware of vinegar made of sweet wine;" provoke not the rage of a patient man!

Among a people who had often witnessed their fine country devastated by petty warfare, their notion of the military character was not usually heroic. _Il soldato per far male è ben pagato_: "The soldier is well paid for doing mischief." _Soldato, acqua, e fuoco, presto si fan luoco_: "A soldier, fire, and water soon make room for themselves." But in a poetical people, endowed with great sensibility, their proverbs would sometimes be tender and fanciful. They paint the activity of friendship, _Chi ha l'amor nel petto, ha lo sprone à i fianchi_: "Who feels love in the breast, feels a spur in his limbs:" or its generous passion, _Gli amici legono la borsa con un filo di ragnatelo_: "Friends tie their purse with a cobweb's thread." They characterised the universal lover by an elegant proverb--_Appicare il Maio ad ogn' uscio_: "To hang every door with May;" alluding to the bough which in the nights of May the country people are accustomed to plant before the door of their mistress. If we turn to the French, we discover that the military genius of France dictated the proverb _Maille à maille se fait le haubergeon_: "Link by link is made the coat of mail;" and, _Tel coup de langue est pire qu'un coup de lance_; "The tongue strikes deeper than the lance;" and _Ce qui vient du tambour s'en retourne à la flute_; "What comes by the tabor goes back with the pipe." _Point d'argent point de Suisse_ has become proverbial, observes an Edinburgh Reviewer; a striking expression, which, while French or Austrian gold predominated, was justly used to characterise the illiberal and selfish policy of the cantonal and federal governments of Switzerland, when it began to degenerate from its moral patriotism. The ancient, perhaps the extinct, spirit of Englishmen was once expressed by our proverb, "Better be the head of a dog than the tail of a lion;" _i.e._, the first of the yeomanry rather than the last of the gentry. A foreign philosopher might have discovered our own ancient skill in archery among our proverbs; for none but true toxophilites could have had such a proverb as, "I will either make a shaft or a bolt of it!" signifying, says the author of _Ivanhoe_, a determination to make one use or other of the thing spoken of: the bolt was the arrow peculiarly fitted to the cross-bow, as that of the long-bow was called a shaft. These instances sufficiently demonstrate that the characteristic circumstances and feelings of a people are discovered in their popular notions, and stamped on their familiar proverbs.

It is also evident that the peculiar, and often idiomatic, humour of a people is best preserved in their proverbs. There is a shrewdness, although deficient in delicacy, in the Scottish proverbs; they are idiomatic, facetious, and strike home. Kelly, who has collected three thousand, informs us, that, in 1725, the Scotch were a great proverbial nation; for that few among the better sort will converse any considerable time, but will confirm every assertion and observation with a Scottish proverb. The speculative Scotch of our own times have probably degenerated in prudential lore, and deem themselves much wiser than their proverbs. They may reply by a Scotch proverb on proverbs, made by a great man in Scotland, who, having given a splendid entertainment, was harshly told, that "Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them;" but he readily answered, "Wise men make proverbs, and fools repeat them!"

National humour, frequently local and idiomatical, depends on the artificial habits of mankind, so opposite to each other; but there is a natural vein, which the populace, always true to nature, preserve, even among the gravest people. The Arabian proverb, "The barber learns his art on the orphan's face;" the Chinese, "In a field of melons do not pull up your shoe; under a plum-tree do not adjust your cap;"--to impress caution in our conduct under circumstances of suspicion;--and the Hebrew one, "He that hath had one of his family hanged may not say to his neighbour, _hang_ up this fish!" are all instances of this sort of humour. The Spaniards are a grave people, but no nation has equalled them in their peculiar humour. The genius of Cervantes partook largely of that of his country; that mantle of gravity, which almost conceals its latent facetiousness, and with which he has imbued his style and manner with such untranslatable idiomatic raciness, may be traced to the proverbial erudition of his nation. "To steal a sheep, and give away the trotters for God's sake!" is Cervantic nature! To one who is seeking an opportunity to quarrel with another, their proverb runs, _Si quieres dar palos a sur muger pidele al sol a bever_, "Hast thou a mind to quarrel with thy wife, bid her bring water to thee in the sunshine!"--a very fair quarrel may be picked up about the motes in the clearest water! On the judges in Gallicia, who, like our former justices of peace, "for half a dozen chickens would dispense with a dozen of penal statutes," _A juezes Gallicianos, con los pies en las manos_: "To the judges of Gallicia go with feet in hand;" a droll allusion to a present of poultry, usually held by the legs. To describe persons who live high without visible means, _Los que cabritos venden, y cabras no tienen, de donde los vienen?_ "They that sell kids, and have no goats, how came they by them?" _El vino no trae bragas_, "Wine wears no breeches;" for men in wine expose their most secret thoughts. _Vino di un oreja_, "Wine of one ear!" is good wine; for at bad, shaking our heads, both our ears are visible; but at good the Spaniard, by a natural gesticulation lowering on one side, shows a single ear.

Proverbs abounding in sarcastic humour, and found among every people, are those which are pointed at rival countries. Among ourselves, hardly has a county escaped from some popular quip; even neighbouring towns have their sarcasms, usually pickled in some unlucky rhyme. The egotism of man eagerly seizes on whatever serves to depreciate or to ridicule his neighbour: nations proverb each other; counties flout counties; obscure towns sharpen their wits on towns as obscure as themselves--the same evil principle lurking in poor human nature, if it cannot always assume predominance, will meanly gratify itself by insult or contempt. They expose some prevalent folly, or allude to some disgrace which the natives have incurred. In France, the Burgundians have a proverb, _Mieux vaut bon repas que bel habit_; "Better a good dinner than a fine coat." These good people are great gormandizers, but shabby dressers; they are commonly said to have "bowels of silk and velvet;" this is, all their silk and velvet goes for their bowels! Thus Picardy is famous for "hot heads;" and the Norman for _son dit et son dédit_, "his saying and his unsaying!" In Italy the numerous rival cities pelt one another with proverbs: _Chi ha a fare con Tosco non convien esser losco_, "He who deals with a Tuscan must not have his eyes shut." _A Venetia chi vi nasce mal vi si pasce_, "Whom Venice breeds, she poorly feeds."

There is another source of national characteristics, frequently producing strange or whimsical combinations; a people, from a very natural circumstance, have drawn their proverbs from local objects, or from allusions to peculiar customs. The influence of manners and customs over the ideas and language of a people would form a subject of extensive and curious research. There is a Japanese proverb, that "A fog cannot be dispelled with a fan!" Had we not known the origin of this proverb, it would be evident that it could only have occurred to a people who had constantly before them fogs and fans; and the fact appears that fogs are frequent on the coast of Japan, and that from the age of five years both sexes of the Japanese carry fans. The Spaniards have an odd proverb to describe those who tease and vex a person before they do him the very benefit which they are about to confer--acting kindly, but speaking roughly; _Mostrar primero la horca que le lugar_, "To show the gallows before they show the town;" a circumstance alluding to their small towns, which have a gallows placed on an eminence, so that the gallows breaks on the eye of the traveller before he gets a view of the town itself.

The Cheshire proverb on marriage, "Better wed over the mixon than over the moor," that is, at home or in its vicinity; mixon alludes to the dung, &c., in the farm-yard, while the road from Chester to London is over the moorland in Staffordshire: this local proverb is a curious instance of provincial pride, perhaps of wisdom, to induce the gentry of that county to form intermarriages; to prolong their own ancient families, and perpetuate ancient friendships between them.

In the Isle of Man a proverbial expression forcibly indicates the object constantly occupying the minds of the inhabitants. The two Deemsters or judges, when appointed to the chair of judgment, declare they will render justice between man and man "as equally as the herring bone lies between the two sides:" an image which could not have occurred to any people unaccustomed to the herring-fishery. There is a Cornish proverb, "Those who will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock"--the strands of Cornwall, so often covered with wrecks, could not fail to impress on the imaginations of its inhabitants the two objects from whence they drew this salutary proverb against obstinate wrongheads.

When Scotland, in the last century, felt its allegiance to England doubtful, and when the French sent an expedition to the Land of Cakes, a local proverb was revived, to show the identity of interests which affected both nations:

If Skiddaw hath a cap, Scruffel wots full well of that.

These are two high hills, one in Scotland and one in England; so near, that what happens to the one will not be long ere it reach the other. If a fog lodges on the one, it is sure to rain on the other; the mutual sympathies of the two countries were hence deduced in a copious dissertation, by Oswald Dyke, on what was called "The Union-proverb," which _local proverbs_ of our country Fuller has interspersed in his "Worthies," and Ray and Grose have collected separately.

I was amused lately by a curious financial revelation which I found in an opposition paper, where it appears that "Ministers pretend to make their load of taxes more portable, by shifting the burden, or altering the pressure, without, however, diminishing the weight; according to the Italian proverb, _Accommodare le bisaccie nella strada_, 'To fit the load on the journey:'" it is taken from a custom of the mule-drivers, who, placing their packages at first but awkwardly on the backs of their poor beasts, and seeing them ready to sink, cry out, "Never mind! we must fit them better on the road!" I was gratified to discover, by the present and some other modern instances, that the taste for proverbs was reviving, and that we were returning to those sober times, when the aptitude of a simple proverb would be preferred to the verbosity of politicians, Tories, Whigs, or Radicals!

There are domestic proverbs which originate in incidents known only to the natives of their province. Italian literature is particularly rich in these stores. The lively proverbial taste of that vivacious people was transferred to their own authors; and when these allusions were obscured by time, learned Italians, in their zeal for their national literature, and in their national love of story-telling, have written grave commentaries even on ludicrous, but popular tales, in which the proverbs are said to have originated. They resemble the old facetious _contes_, whose simplicity and humour still live in the pages of Boccaccio, and are not forgotten in those of the Queen of Navarre.

The Italians apply a proverb to a person who while he is beaten, takes the blows quietly:--

_Per beato ch' elle non furon pesche!_ Luckily they were not peaches!

And to threaten to give a man--

_Una pesca in un occhio._ A peach in the eye,

means to give him a thrashing. This proverb, it is said, originated in the close of a certain droll adventure. The community of the Castle Poggibonsi, probably from some jocular tenure observed on St. Bernard's day, pay a tribute of peaches to the court of Tuscany, which are usually shared among the ladies in waiting, and the pages of the court. It happened one season, in a great scarcity of peaches, that the good people of Poggibonsi, finding them rather dear, sent, instead of the customary tribute, a quantity of fine juicy figs, which was so much disapproved of by the pages, that as soon as they got hold of them, they began in rage to empty the baskets on the heads of the ambassadors of the Poggibonsi, who, in attempting to fly as well as they could from the pulpy shower, half-blinded, and recollecting that peaches would have had stones in them, cried out--

_Per beato ch' elle non furon pesche!_ Luckily they were not peaches!

_Fare le scalée di Sant' Ambrogio_; "To mount the stairs of Saint Ambrose," a proverb allusive to the business of the school of scandal. Varchi explains it by a circumstance so common in provincial cities. On summer evenings, for fresh air and gossip, the loungers met on the steps and landing-places of the church of St. Ambrose: whoever left the party, "they read in his book," as our commentator expresses it; and not a leaf was passed over! All liked to join a party so well informed of one another's concerns, and every one tried to be the very last to quit it,--not "to leave his character behind!" It became a proverbial phrase with those who left a company, and were too tender of their backs, to request they would not "mount the stairs of St. Ambrose." Jonson has well described such a company:

You are so truly fear'd, but not beloved One of another, as no one dares break Company from the rest, lest they should fall Upon him absent.

There are legends and histories which belong to proverbs; and some of the most ancient refer to incidents which have not always been commemorated. Two Greek proverbs have accidentally been explained by Pausanias: "He is a man of Tenedos!" to describe a person of unquestionable veracity; and "To cut with the Tenedian axe;" to express an absolute and irrevocable refusal. The first originated in a king of Tenedos, who decreed that there should always stand behind the judge a man holding an axe, ready to execute justice on any one convicted of falsehood. The other arose from the same king, whose father having reached his island, to supplicate the son's forgiveness for the injury inflicted on him by the arts of a step-mother, was preparing to land; already the ship was fastened by its cable to a rock; when the son came down, and sternly cutting the cable with an axe, sent the ship adrift to the mercy of the waves: hence, "to cut with the Tenedian axe," became proverbial to express an absolute refusal. "Business to-morrow!" is another Greek proverb, applied to a person ruined by his own neglect. The fate of an eminent person perpetuated the expression which he casually employed on the occasion. One of the Theban polemarchs, in the midst of a convivial party, received despatches relating to a conspiracy: flushed with wine, although pressed by the courier to open them immediately, he smiled, and in gaiety laying the letter under the pillow of his couch, observed, "Business to-morrow!" Plutarch records that he fell a victim to the twenty-four hours he had lost, and became the author of a proverb which was still circulated among the Greeks.

The philosophical antiquary may often discover how many a proverb commemorates an event which has escaped from the more solemn monuments of history, and is often the solitary authority of its existence. A national event in Spanish history is preserved by a proverb. _Y vengar quiniento sueldos_; "And revenge five hundred pounds!" An odd expression to denote a person being a gentleman! but the proverb is historical. The Spaniards of Old Castile were compelled to pay an annual tribute of five hundred maidens to their masters, the Moors; after several battles, the Spaniards succeeded in compromising the shameful tribute, by as many pieces of coin: at length the day arrived when they entirely emancipated themselves from this odious imposition. The heroic action was performed by men of distinction, and the event perpetuated in the recollections of the Spaniards by this singular expression, which alludes to the dishonourable tribute, was applied to characterise all men of high honour, and devoted lovers of their country.

Pasquier, in his _Récherches sur la France_, reviewing the periodical changes of ancient families in feudal times, observes, that a proverb among the common people conveys the result of all his inquiries; for those noble houses, which in a single age declined from nobility and wealth to poverty and meanness, gave rise to the proverb, _Cent ans bannières et cent ans civières!_ "One hundred years a banner and one hundred years a barrow!" The Italian proverb, _Con l'Evangilio si diventa heretico_, "With the gospel we become heretics,"--reflects the policy of the court of Rome; and must be dated at the time of the Reformation, when a translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue encountered such an invincible opposition. The Scotch proverb, _He that invented the maiden first hanselled it_; that is, got the first of it! The maiden is that well-known beheading engine, revived by the French surgeon Guillotine. This proverb may be applied to one who falls a victim to his own ingenuity; the artificer of his own destruction! The inventor was James, Earl of Morton, who for some years governed Scotland, and afterwards, it is said, very unjustly suffered by his own invention. It is a striking coincidence, that the same fate was shared by the French reviver; both alike sad examples of disturbed times! Among our own proverbs a remarkable incident has been commemorated; _Hand over head, as the men took the Covenant!_ This preserves the manner in which the Scotch covenant, so famous in our history, was violently taken by above sixty thousand persons about Edinburgh, in 1638; a circumstance at that time novel in our own revolutionary history, and afterwards paralleled by the French in voting by "acclamation." An ancient English proverb preserves a curious fact concerning our coinage. _Testers are gone to Oxford, to study at Brazennose._ When Henry the Eighth debased the silver coin, called _testers_, from their having a head stamped on one side; the brass, breaking out in red pimples on their silver faces, provoked the ill-humour of the people to vent itself in this punning proverb, which has preserved for the historical antiquary the popular feeling which lasted about fifty years, till Elizabeth reformed the state of the coinage. A northern proverb among us has preserved the remarkable idea which seems to have once been prevalent, that the metropolis of England was to be the city of York; _Lincoln was, London is, York shall be!_ Whether at the time of the union of the crowns, under James the First, when England and Scotland became Great Britain, this city, from its centrical situation, was considered as the best adapted for the seat of government, or for some other cause which I have not discovered, this notion must have been prevalent to have entered into a proverb. The chief magistrate of York is the only provincial one who is allowed the title of Lord Mayor; a circumstance which seems connected with this proverb.

The Italian history of its own small principalities, whose well-being so much depended on their prudence and sagacity, affords many instances of the timely use of a proverb. Many an intricate negotiation has been contracted through a good-humoured proverb,--many a sarcastic one has silenced an adversary; and sometimes they have been applied on more solemn, and even tragical occasions. When Rinaldo degli Albizzi was banished by the vigorous conduct of Cosmo de' Medici, Machiavel tells us the expelled man sent Cosmo a menace, in a proverb, _La gallina covava!_ "The hen is brooding!" said of one meditating vengeance. The undaunted Cosmo replied by another, that "There was no brooding out of the nest!"

I give an example of peculiar interest; for it is perpetuated by Dante, and is connected with the character of Milton.

When the families of the Amadei and the Uberti felt their honour wounded in the affront the younger Buondelmonte had put upon them, in breaking off his match with a young lady of their family, by marrying another, a council was held, and the death of the young cavalier was proposed as the sole atonement for their injured honour. But the consequences which they anticipated, and which afterwards proved so fatal to the Florentines, long suspended their decision. At length Moscha Lamberti suddenly rising, exclaimed, in two proverbs, "That those who considered everything would never conclude on anything!" closing with an ancient proverbial saying--_cosa fatta capo ha!_ "a deed done has an end!" The proverb sealed the fatal determination, and was long held in mournful remembrance by the Tuscans; for, according to Villani, it was the cause and beginning of the accursed factions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Dante has thus immortalised the energetic expression in a scene of the "Inferno."

Ed un, ch' avea l'una e l'altra man mozza, Levando i moncherin per l'aura fosca, Si che 'l sangue facea la faccia sozza, Gridò:--"Ricorderati anche del Mosca, Che dissi, lasso: _Capo ha cosa fatta_, Che fu 'l mal seme della gente Tosca."

----Then one Maim'd of each hand, uplifted in the gloom The bleeding stumps, that they with gory spots Sullied his face, and cried--"Remember thee Of Mosca too--I who, alas! exclaim'd 'The deed once done, there is an end'--that proved A seed of sorrow to the Tuscan race."

CARY'S _Dante_.

This Italian proverb was adopted by Milton; for when deeply engaged in writing "The Defence of the People," and warned that it might terminate in his blindness, he resolvedly concluded his work, exclaiming with great magnanimity, although the fatal prognostication had been accomplished, _cosa fatta capo ha!_ Did this proverb also influence his awful decision on that great national event, when the most honest-minded fluctuated between doubts and fears?

Of a person treacherously used, the Italian proverb says that he has eaten of

_Le frutte di fratre Alberigo._ The fruit of brother Alberigo.

Landino, on the following passage of Dante, preserves the tragic story:--

------Io son fratre Alberigo, Io son quel dalle frutta del mal orto Che qui reprendo, &c.

## Canto xxxiii.

"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]