Part 16
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The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising sun in the first book of the Paradise Lost, had nearly occasioned the suppression of that epic: it was supposed to contain a treasonable allusion.
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Campbell's line
Like angel visits few and far between,
is a palpable plagiarism. Blair has
Its visits Like angel visits short and far between.
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In Hudibras are these lines—
Each window like the pillory appears With heads thrust through, nailed by the ears.
Young in his “Love of Fame” has the following—
An opera, like a pillory, may be said To nail our ears down and expose our head.
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Goldsmith's celebrated lines
Man wants but little here below Nor wants that little long,
are stolen from Young; who has
Man wants but little, nor that little long.
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The character of the ancient Bacchus, that graceful divinity, seems to have been little understood by Dryden. The line in Virgil
Et quocunque deus circum caput egit _honestum_
is thus grossly mistranslated,
On whate'er side he turns his _honest_ face.
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There are about one thousand lines identical in the Iliad and Odyssey.
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Macrobius gives the form of an imprecation by which the Romans believed whole towns could be demolished and armies defeated. It commences “Dis Pater sive Jovis mavis sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare,” and ends “Si hæc ita faxitis ut ego sciam, sentiam, intelligamque, tum quisquis votum hoc faxit recte factum esto, ovibus atris tribus, Tellus mater, teque Jupiter, obtestor.”
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The “Courtier” of Baldazzar Castiglione, 1528, is the first attempt at periodical moral Essay with which we are acquainted. The Noctes Atticæ of Aulus Gellius cannot be allowed to rank as such.
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These lines were written over the closet door of M. Menard,
Las d'esperer, et de me plaindre De l'amour, des grands, et du sort C'est ici que J'attends la mort Sans la desirer ou la craindre.
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Martin Luther in his reply to Henry VIIIth's book by which the latter acquired the title of “Defender of the Faith,” calls the monarch very unceremoniously “a pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon dressed in a king's robes, a mad fool with a frothy mouth and a whorish face.”
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The Psalter of Solomon, which contains 18 psalms, is a work which was found in Greek in the library of Ausburg, and has been translated into Latin by John Lewis de la Cerda. It is supposed not to be Solomon's, but the work of some Hellenistical Jew, and composed in imitation of David's Psalms. The Psalter was known to the ancients, and was formerly in the famous Alexandrian MS.
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An unshaped kind of something first appeared,
is a line in Cowley's famous description of the Creation.
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It is probable that the queen of Sheba was Balkis—that Sheba was a kingdom in the Southern part of Arabia Felix, and that the people were called Sabæans. These lines of Claudian relate to the people and queen,
Medis, levibusque Sabæis Imperat hic sexus; reginarumque sub armis Barbariæ magna pars jacet.
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Sheridan declared he would rather be the author of the ballad called Hosier's Ghost, by Glover, than of the Annals of Tacitus.
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The word Jehovah is not Hebrew. The Hebrews had no such letters as J or V. The word is properly Iah-Uah—compounded of Iah Essence and Uah Existing. Its full meaning is the self-existing essence of all things.
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The “Song of Solomon” throwing aside the heading of the chapters, which is the work of the English translators, contains nothing which relates to the Savior or the Church. It does not, like every other sacred book, contain even the name of the Deity.
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In the Vatican is an ancient picture of Adam, with the Latin inscription “Adam divinitus edoctus, primus scientiarum et literarum inventor.”
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The word translated “_slanderers_” in I Timothy iii, 2, and that translated “_false accusers_” in Titus ii, 3, are “_female devils_” in the original Greek of the New Testament.
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The Hebrew language contains no word (except perhaps Jehovah) which conveys to the mind the idea of Eternity. The translators of the Old Testament have used the word Eternity but once.
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“The slipper of Cinderella,” says the editor of the new edition of Warton “finds a parallel in the history of the celebrated Rhodope.” Cinderella is a tale of universal currency. An ancient Danish ballad has some of the incidents. It is popular among the Welch—also among the Poles—in Hesse and Swerhn. Schottky found it among the Servian fables. Rollenbagen in his Froschmauseler speaks of it as the tale of the despised {577} Aschen-possel. Luther mentions it. It is in the Italian Pentamerone under the title of Cenerentola.
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Porphyry, than whom no one could be better acquainted with the theology of the ancients, acknowledged Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Priapus, Proserpina, Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, Silenus, and the Satyrs to be one and the same.
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Servius on Virgil's Æneid speaks of a _bearded_ Venus. The poet Calvus in Macrobius speaks of Venus as masculine. Valerius Soranus among other titles calls Jupiter the _Mother_ of the Gods.
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In Suidas is a letter from Dionysius, the Areopagite, dated Heliopolis, in the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad (the year of Christ's crucifixion) to his friend Apollophanes, in which is mentioned a total eclipse of the sun at noon. “Either,” says Dionysius “the author of nature suffers, or he sympathizes with some who do.”
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The most particular history of the Deluge, and the nearest of any to the account given by Moses is to be found in Lucian (De Dea Syria.)
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The Greeks had no historian prior to Cadmus Milesius, nor any public inscription of which we can be certified, before the laws of Draco.
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So great is the uncertainty of ancient history that the epoch of Semiramis cannot be ascertained within 1535 years, for according to
Syncellus, she lived before Christ 2177, Patavius, ' ' ' ' 2060, Helvicus, ' ' ' ' 2248, Eusebius, ' ' ' ' 1984, Mr. Jackson, ' ' ' 1964, Archbishop Usher, ' ' 1215, Philo-Biblius from Sanconiathon, 1200, Herodotus about ' ' ' 713.
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The book of Jasher, said to have been preserved from the deluge by Noah, but since lost, was extant in the time of Joshua, and in the time of David. Mr. Bryant thinks, however, very justly, that the ten tables of stone were the first written characters. The book of Jasher is mentioned Joshua x. 13, and 2 Samuel i. 18.
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Andrè Chenier, imprisoned during the French Revolution, began thus some lines on his unhappy situation,
Peut-être avant que l'heure en cercle promenée Ait posè sur l'email brillant Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornèe Son pied sonore et vigilant, Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere—
At this instant Andrè Chenier was interrupted by the officials of the guillotine.
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Archbishop Usher, in a MS. of St. Patrick's life, said to have been found at Louvain as an original of a very remote date, detected several entire passages purloined from his own writings.
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An extract from the “Mystery of St. Denis” is in the “Bibliotheque du Theatre Francois, depuis son origine, Dresde. 1768.” In this serious drama, St. Denis, having been tortured and at length decapitated, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm and walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom.
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The idea of “No light but rather darkness visible” was perhaps suggested to Milton by Spenser's
A little glooming light much like a shade.
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In the Dutch Vondel's tragedy “The Deliverance of the Children of Israel” one of the principal characters is the Divinity himself.
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Darwin is indebted for a great part of his “Great poem” to a Latin one by De La Croix, published in 1727 and entitled “Connubia Florum.”
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Mr. Bryant in his learned “Mythology” says that although the Pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from them as existing realities.
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The shield of Achilles in Homer seems to have been copied from some Pharos which the poet had seen in Egypt. What he describes on the central part of the shield is a map of the earth and of the celestial appearances.
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Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ is said to have prophecied that a stone would fall from the sun. This is a mistake of the learned. All that Anaxagoras averred may be seen in the Scholiast upon Pindar (Olymp. Ode. 1.) It amounts only to this, that Petros was a name of the sun.
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The Hebrew language has lain now for two thousand years mute and incapable of utterance. The “Masoretical punctuation” which professes to supply the vowels was formed a thousand years after the language had ceased to be spoken, and disagrees in many instances with the Seventy, Origen and other writers.
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James Montgomery thinks proper to style M'Pherson's Ossian, a collection “of halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, nondescript paragraphs.”
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The paucity of spondees in the English language, is the reason why we cannot tolerate an English Hexameter. Sir Philip Sidney, in his Arcadia, thus speaks of Love in what is meant for Hexameter verse:
So to the woods Love runnes, as well as rides to the palace: Neither he bears reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar; But, like a point in the midst of a circle, is still of a nearnesse.
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His form had not yet lost All _her_ original brightness,
is a very remarkable passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, wherein a _person is personified_.
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It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme: the terminations of the lines where they are most distinct, never showing any thing of the kind.
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Francis le Brossano engraved these verses upon a marble tomb which he erected to Petrarch at Arqua. {578}
Frigida Francisci tegit hic lapis ossa Petrarcæ. Suscipe, virgo parens, animam: sate virgine, parce, Fessaque jam terris, cœli requiescat in arce.
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“Statua Statuæ” was an inscription handed about at Paris for the equestrian statue of Louis XV, begun by Bouchardon and finished by Pigal. The following also,
Bouchardon est un animal Et son ouvrage fait pitié: Il place les vices à cheval Et les vertus à pied.
And another,
Voila notre roi comme il est à Versailles Sans foi, sans loi, et sans entrailles.
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Bochart derives Elysium from the Phœnician Elysoth, joy, through the Greek Ἠλυσιον. Circe from the Phœnician Kirkar, to corrupt—Siren from the Phœnician Sir, to sing—Scylla from the Phœnician Scol, destruction—Charybdis from the Phœnician Chor-obdam, chasm of ruin.
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Attrogs, a fruit common in Palestine, is supposed to have been “the forbidden.” It has a rough rind, and resembles a citron or lemon.
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The following quaint sentence is found in Saint Evremond. “I own I do not envy him, when I consider that there are in the next world such people as Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Eacus.”
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The standard of Judas Maccabæus displayed the words “Mi camoca baelim Jehovah”—Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods? This being afterwards intimated by the first letter of each word, in the manner of the S. P. Q. R., gave rise to the surname Maccabæus—for the initials in Hebrew form “Maccabi.”
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Josephus, with Saint Paul and others, supposed man to be compounded of body, soul, and spirit. The distinction between soul and spirit is an essential point in ancient philosophy.
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Lord Lyttleton acknowledged the authorship of two dialogues, in the first of which the personages were the Savior and Socrates, in the second king David and Cæsar Borgia.
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Dante gives the name of _sonnet_ to his little canzone or ode beginning
O voi che per la via d'Amor passate.
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Boileau is mistaken in saying that Petrarch ‘qui est regardé comme le pere du sonnet’ borrowed it from the French or Provençal writers. The Italian sonnet can be traced back as far as the year 1200. Petrarch was not born until 1304.
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The learned Menage has this epitaph on Sannazarius
Ci git, dont l'esprit fût si beau, Sannazar, ce poete habile, Qui par ses vers divins approche de Virgile, Plus encore que par son tombeau.
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The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa,
Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove; No—make me mistress to the man I love
are to be found in the original letters of Eloisa—at least the thought.
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Mercier, in “L'an deux mille quatre cents quarante” seriously maintains the doctrines of the Metempsychosis, and J. D'Israeli says there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to the understanding.
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One of the best epigrams affixed to the statue of Pasquin was the following upon Paul III,
Ut canerent data multa olim sunt vatibus æra Ut taceam quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?
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Milton in Paradise Lost, has this passage,
——when the _scourge_ Inexorably, and the _torturing hour_ Call us to penance.
Gray, in his Ode to Adversity, has
Thou tamer of the human breast Whose iron _scourge_, and _torturing hour_ The bad affright.
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Gray tells us that the image of his bard, where
Loose his beard, and hoary hair Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air
was taken from a picture by Raphael: yet the beard of Hudibras is also likened to a meteor,
This hairy meteor did denounce The fall of sceptres and of crowns.
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The lines
For he that fights and runs away May live to fight another day, But he that is in battle slain Will never rise to fight again
are not to be found, as is thought, in Hudibras. Butler's verses ran thus;
For he that flies may fight again Which he can never do that's slain.
The former are in a volume of ‘Poems’ by Sir John Mennes, reign of Charles II. The original idea is in Demosthenes. Ανερ ο φεογων και παλιν μαχησεται.
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“Semel insanivimus omnes” is not from Horace but from Mantuanus, an Italian. In a work entitled “De honesto amore” is this line,
Id commune malum, semel insanivimus omnes.
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Dryden in ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ has these lines,
David for him his tuneful harp had strung And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
Pope in his Epistle to Arbuthnot has
Friend of my life which did not you prolong The world had wanted many an idle song.
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Tickell's lines
While the charmed reader with thy thought complies And views thy Rosamond with Henry's eyes,
are evidently borrowed from those of Boileau,
En vain contre ‘Le Cid’ un ministre se ligue; Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue.
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The expression, ‘nemorumque noctem’ occurring in one of Gray's Latin odes, has been repeatedly found fault with—yet Virgil has ‘medio nimborum in nocte.’
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{579} Selden observes of Henry VIII, that he was a king with a pope in his belly.
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In the ‘Nubes’ of Aristophanes, there are several Greek verses in _rhyme_.
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Of the ten tragedies which are attributed to Seneca, (the only Roman tragedies extant,) nine are on Greek subjects.
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Ariosto says of one of his heroes, that, in the heat of combat, not perceiving that he was a dead man, he continued to fight valiantly, dead as he was.
Il pover' huomo che non s'en era accorto, Andava combattendo, e era morto.
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The author of ‘La Maniere de bien Penser’ speaks of a French divine who, to prove that young persons sometimes die before old ones, cited the text, ‘Prœcucurrit citius Petro Johannes et venit primus ad monumentum.’
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There is no passage among all the writings of antiquity more sublime than these lines of Silius Italicus. The words are addressed to a young man of Capua, who proposed to assassinate Hannibal at a banquet.
Fallis te mensas inter quod credis inermem, Tot bellis quæsita viro, tot cœdibus armat Majestas eterna ducem: si admoveris ora Cannas et Trebium ante oculos, Trasymenaque busta, Et Pauli stare ingentum miraberis umbram.
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Giace l'alta Cartago: à pena i segni De l'alte sui ruine il lido serba: Muoino le città, muoino i regni; Copre i fasti e le pompe arena et herba: E l'huom d'esser mortal per che si sdegni.
These lines of Tasso are a curious specimen of literary robbery—being made up entirely of passages from Lucan and Sulspicius. Lucan says of Troy
Jam tota teguntur Pergama dumetis: etiam perire ruinæ:
and Sulspicius in a letter to Cicero says of Megara, Egina, Corinth, &c.—“Hem! nos homunculi indignamur si quis nostrum interiit, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant.”
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An epigram upon the subject of Francois de Bassompiere being released from the Bastille upon the death of Richelieu, is a strange mixture of lofty thought and puerile conceit.
Enfin dans l'arriere saison La fortune d'Armand s'accorde avec la mienne: France, Je sors de ma prison Quand son ame sort de la sienne.
The line, “France, Je sors de ma prison,” is the anagram of Francois de Bassompiere.
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The epigrams of the Greek Anthology are characterized more by _náiveté_ than point. They are for the most part insipid.
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Longinus calls pompous and inflated thoughts, “reveries of Jupiter”—insomnia Jovis.
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A French writer of celebrity dedicated a book to Richelieu in terms of the most blasphemous flattery. But being disappointed in his expectations, he suppressed all his praises in a second edition, and re-dedicated his volume “_á Jesus Christ_.”
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The following inscription intended for the Louvre, possesses both simplicity and dignity:
Pande fores populis, sublimis Lupara: non est Terrarum imperio dignior ulla domus.
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Under a fine painting of St. Bruno in solitude, some Italian wrote these words, “Egli è vivo, e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del silentio.” Malherbe has taken the hint in his epigram upon a picture of Saint Catherine.
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A fine sample of _galimatias_ is to be found in an epigram of Miguel de Cervantes:
Van muerte tan escondida, Que no te sienta venir; Porque el plazer del morir No me torne à dar la vida.
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Quintillian mentions a pedant who taught obscurity, and who was wont to say to his scholars, “This is excellent—I do not understand it myself.”
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An Italian metaphysician to disprove that greatness of mind is proportioned to the size of the skull, argues thus: “Non sano, che la mente è il centro del capo; e il centro non cresce per la grandezza del circolo.”
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A horse is often seen on ancient sepulchral monuments. Caylus quotes a passage from Passeri, “de animæ transvectione,” implying that the horse designates the passage of the soul to Elysium.
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The Satyre Menippée of the French is, in prose, the exact counterpart of Hudibras in rhyme.
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A remarkable instance of concord of sound and sense is to be seen in the following stanza by M. Anton. Flaminius:
Ast amans charæ thalamum puellæ Deserit flens, et tibi verba dicit Aspera amplexu teneræ cupito a— —vulsus amicæ.
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Voltaire's ignorance of antiquity is laughable. In his Essay on Tragedy, prefixed to Brutus, he actually boasts of having introduced the Roman senate on the stage in red mantles. “The Greeks,” as he asserts, “font paraitre ses acteurs (tragic) sur des especes d'echasses, le visage couvert d'un masque qui exprime la douleur d'un coté et la joye de l'autre!” The only circumstance upon which he could possibly have founded such an accusation is, that in the _new comedy_ masks were worn with one eyebrow drawn up and the other down, to denote a busy-body or inquisitive medler.
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Several ancient tragedies, viz: Eumenides, Philoctetes, and Ædipus et Colonos, besides many pieces of Euripides, have a happy and enlivening termination.
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The only historical tragedies by Grecian authors {580} were The Capture of Miletus by Phrynicus and the Persians of Æschylus.
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The foundation of all the erroneous opinions on the subject of the old Greek comedy (Voltaire's opinion particularly) may be found in the comparison between Aristophanes and Menander, in Plutarch.
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Schlegel says justly, that Harlequin and Pulcinello descend in a direct line from the buffoons of the ancient Romans. On Greek vases are seen also dresses like theirs—long breeches and waistcoats with arms, articles worn by neither Greeks nor Romans except upon the stage. At present Zanni is one of the names of Harlequin, and Sannio in the Latin farces was a buffoon who had a shaven head, and a dress patched together of all colors.
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In Racine's _Berenice_ Antiochus says to the queen
——Je me suis tû cinq ans Madame, et vais encore me taire plus long tems,
and to give a direct proof of his intention, recites immediately no less than fifty verses in a breath.
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In Voltaire's scruples about unity of place he has committed a thousand blunders. In the Mort de Cæsar the scene is in the Capitol, but the people seem not to know their precise situation. On one occasion Cæsar exclaims, “Courons au Capitole!”
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Denis de Sallo's “Journal des Sçavans,” in 1665 may be considered as the origin of Literary Journals or Reviews.
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Sous ce tombeau git Le Sage abattu Par le ciseau de la Parque importune, S'il ne fut pas ami de la fortune Il fut toujours ami de la vertu,
was Le Sage's epitaph.
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These lines although extremely French are forcible,
Et comme un jeune cœur est bientot enflammé Il me vit, il m'aima, je le vis, je l'aimai.
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On Cardinal Richelieu, Benserade made the following epitaph: