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Title: Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature - A Melange of Excerpta
Author: Bombaugh, Charles Carroll
Language: English
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GLEANINGS
FOR THE CURIOUS
FROM THE
_Harvest-Fields of Literature_.
A MELANGE OF EXCERPTA,
COLLATED BY
C. C. BOMBAUGH, A.M., M.D.
“So she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had
gleaned: and it was about an ephah of barley.” §Ruth 2:17.§
“I have here made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing
of my own but the string that ties them.”—§Montaigne.§
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1890.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
A. D. WORTHINGTON & CO.
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prefatory.
I am not ignorant, ne unsure, that many there are, before whose sight
this Book shall finde small grace, and lesse favour. So hard a thing it
is to write or indite and matter, whatsoever it be, that should be able
to sustaine and abide the variable judgement, and to obtaine or winne
the constant love and allowance of every man, especially if it containe
in it any novelty or unwonted strangenesse.—§Raynald’s Woman’s Book.§
Bid him welcome. This is the motley-minded gentleman.
§As You Like It.§
—A fountain set round with a rim of old, mossy stones, and paved in its
bed with a sort of mosaic work of variously-colored pebbles.
§House of Seven Gables.§
—A gatherer and a disposer of other men’s stuff.
§Wotton.§
A running banquet that hath much variety, but little of a sort.
§Butler.§
They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.
§Love’s Labor Lost.§
There’s no want of meat, sir; portly and curious viands are prepared to
please all kinds of appetites.
§Massinger.§
A dinner of fragments is said often to be the best dinner. So are there
few minds but might furnish some instruction and entertainment out of
their scraps, their odds and ends of thought. They who cannot weave a
uniform web may at least produce a piece of patchwork; which may be
useful and not without a charm of its own.
§Guesses at Truth.§
—It is a regular omnibus; there is something in it to everybody’s taste.
Those who like fat can have it; so can they who like lean; as well as
those who prefer sugar, and those who choose pepper.
§Mysteries of Paris.§
Read, and fear not thine own understanding: this book will create a
clear one in thee; and when thou hast considered thy purchase, thou wilt
call the price of it a charity to thyself.
§Shirley.§
In winter you may reade them ad ignem, by the fireside, and in summer ad
umbram, under some shadie tree; and therewith passe away the tedious
howres.
§Saltonstall.§
INTRODUCTION.
An earlier edition of §Gleanings§ having attracted the hearty approval
of a limited circle of that class of readers who prefer “a running
banquet that hath much variety, but little of a sort,” the present
publisher requested the preparation of an enlargement of the work. In
the augmented form in which it is now offered to the public, the
contents will be found so much more comprehensive and omnifarious that,
while it has been nearly doubled in size, it has been more than doubled
in literary value.
Miscellanea of the omnium-gatherum sort appear to be as acceptable
to-day as they undoubtedly were in the youthful period of our
literature, though for an opposite reason. When books were scarce, and
costly, and inaccessible, anxious readers found in “scripscrapologia”
multifarious sources of instruction; now that books are like the stars
for multitude, the reader who is appalled by their endless succession
and variety is fain to receive with thankfulness the cream that is
skimmed and the grain that is sifted by patient hands for his use. Our
ancestors were regaled with such olla-podrida as “The Gallimaufry: a
Kickshaw [Fr. _quelque chose_] Treat which comprehends odd bits and
scraps, and odds and ends;” or “The Wit’s Miscellany: odd and uncommon
epigrams, facetious drolleries, whimsical mottoes, merry tales, and
fables, for the entertainment and diversion of good company.” To the
present generation is accorded a wider field for excursion, from the
Curiosities of Disraeli, and the Commonplaces of Southey, to the less
ambitious collections of less learned collaborators.
“Into a hotch-potch,” says Sir Edward Coke, “is commonly put not one
thing alone, but one thing with other things together.” The present
volume is an expedient for grouping together a variety which will be
found in no other compilation. From the nonsense of literary trifling to
the highest expression of intellectual force; from the anachronisms of
art to the grandest revelations of science; from selections for the
child to extracts for the philosopher, it will accommodate the widest
diversity of taste, and furnish entertainment for all ages, sexes, and
conditions. As a pastime for the leisure half-hour, at home or abroad;
as a companion by the fireside, or the seaside, amid the hum of the
city, or in the solitude of rural life; as a means of relaxation for the
mind jaded by business activities, it may be safely commended to
acceptance.
The aim of this collation is not to be exhaustive, but simply to be well
compacted. The restrictive limits of an octavo require the winnowings of
selection in place of the bulk of expansion. Gargantua, we are told by
Rabelais, wrote to his son Pantagruel, commanding him to learn Greek,
Latin, Chaldaic, and Arabic; all history, geometry, arithmetic, music,
astronomy, natural philosophy, etc., “so that there be not a river in
the world thou dost not know the name and nature of all its fishes; all
the fowls of the air; all the several kinds of shrubs and herbs; all the
metals hid in the bowels of the earth, all gems and precious stones. I
would furthermore have thee study the Talmudists and Cabalists, and get
a perfect knowledge of man. In brief, I would have thee a bottomless pit
of all knowledge.” While this book does not aspire to such Gargantuan
comprehensiveness, it seeks a higher grade of merit than that which
attaches to those who “chronicle small beer,” or to him who is merely “a
snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.”
Quaint old Burton, in describing the travels of Paulus Emilius, says,
“He took great content, exceeding delight in that his voyage, as who
doth not that shall attempt the like? For peregrination charms our
senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him
unhappy that never traveled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case that
from his cradle to his old age beholds the same still; still, still, the
same, the same.” It is the purpose of these §Gleanings§ to compass such
“sweet variety” by conducting the reader here, through the green lanes
of freshened thought, and there, through by-paths neglected and gray
with the moss of ages; now, amid cultivated fields, and then, adown
untrodden ways; at one time, to rescue from oblivion fugitive thoughts
which the world should not “willingly let die,” at another, to restore
to sunlight gems which have been too long “underkept and down supprest.”
The compiler asks the tourist to accompany him, because with him, as
with Montaigne and Hans Andersen, there is no pleasure without
communication, and though all men may find in these Collectanea some
things which they will recognize as old acquaintances, yet will they
find many more with which they are unfamiliar, and to which their
attention has never been awakened.
Contents.
Alphabetical Whims.
_The Freaks and Follies of Literature—Account of certain Singular
Books—What are Pangrammata?—The Banished Letters—Eve’s
Legend—Alphabetical Advertisement—The Three Initials—A Jacobite
Toast—“The Beginning of Eternity”—The Poor Letter II—The Letters
of the World—Traps for the Cockneys—Ingenious Verses on the
Vowels—Alliterative Verses—“A Bevy of Belles”—Antithetical
Sermon—Acrostics—Double, Triple, and Reversed Acrostics—Beautiful
and Singular Instances—The Poets in Verse—On Benedict
Arnold—Curious Pasquinade—Monastic Verses—The Figure of the
Fish—Acrostic on Napoleon—Madame Rachael—Masonic
Memento—“Hempe”—“Brevity of Human Life”—Acrostic
Valentine—Anagrams—German, Latin, and English
Instances—Chronograms._ 25
Palindromes.
_Reading in every Style—What is a Palindrome?—What St. Martin said
to the Devil—The Lawyer’s Motto—What Adam said to Eve—The Poor
Young Man in Love—What Dean Swift wrote to Dr. Sheridan—“The
Witch’s Prayer”—The Device of a Lady—Huguenot and Romanist;
Double Dealing._ 59
Equivoque.
_A Very Deceitful Epistle—A Wicked Love Letter—What a Young Wife
wrote to her Friend—The Jesuit’s Creed—Revolutionary
Verses—Double Dealings—A Fatal Name—The Triple Platform—A
Bishop’s Evasion—The “Toast” given by a Smart Young Man—“The
Handwriting on the Wall”—French Actresses—How Mlle. Mars told her
Age—A Lenient Judge—What Mlle. Cico whimpered to “the Bench.”_ 64
The Cento.
_“A Cloak of Patches”—How Centos are made—Mosaic Poetry—The Poets
in a Mixed State—New Version of Old Lines—Cento on Life—A Cento
from thirty-eight Authors—Cento from Pope—Biblical Sentiments—The
Return of Israel—Religious Centos._ 73
Macaronic Verse.
_“A Treatise on Wine”—Monkish Opinions—Which Tree is Best?—A Lover
with Nine Tongues—Horace in a New Dress—What was Written on a
Fly-Leaf—“The Cat and the Rats”—An Advertisement in Five
Languages—Parting Address to a Friend—“Oh, the Rhine!”—The Death
of the Sea Serpent._ 78
Chain Verse.
_Lasphrise’s Novelties—Singular Ode to Death—On “The Truth”—“Long I
looked into the Sky”—A Ringing Song—A Gem of Three Centuries
Old._ 85
Bouts Rimés.
_The Skeletons of Poetry—How the Poet Dulot lost all his Ideas—The
Flight of three hundred Sonnets—The “Nettle” Rhymes—How a Young
Lady teased her Beau—Assisting a Poet—Miss Lydia’s
Acrostic—Alfred De Musset’s Lines—What the Duc de Malakoff
wrote—Reversed Rhymes—How to make_ “Rhopalic” _verses!—What they
are_. 88
Emblematic Poetry.
_Poetry in Visible Shape—The Bow and Arrow of Love—The Deceitful
Glass—Prudent Advice—A Very Singular Dirge—Poetry among the
Monks—Sacred Symbols—A Hymn in Cruciform Shape—Ancient
Devices—Verses within the Cross—Cypher—“U O a O. but I O
U”—Perplexing Printer’s Puzzle—An Oxford Joke—The Puzzle of “The
Precepts Ten”—A Mysterious Letter to Miss K. T. J._ 92
Monosyllables.
_The Power of Little Words—How Pope Ridiculed them—The “Universal
Prayer”—Example of Dr. Watts—Wesley’s Hymns—Writings of
Shakespeare and Milton—“Address to the Daffodils”—Geo. Herbert’s
Poems—Testimony of Keble, Young, Landor, and Fletcher—Examples
from Bailey’s “Festus”—The Short Words of Scripture—Big and
Little Words Compared._ 98
The Bible.
_Who wrote the Scriptures—Why—And When—Accuracy of the Bible—The
Testimony of Modern Discoveries—Scope and Depth of Scripture
Teaching—What Learned Men have written of the Bible—Testimony of
Rousseau, Wilberforce, Bolingbroke, Sir Wm. Jones, Webster, John
Quincy Adams, Addison, Byron, &c.—Who Translated the
Bible—Wickliffe’s Version—Tyndale’s Translation—Matthew’s
Bible—Cranmer’s Edition—The Geneva Bible—The Breeches Bible—The
Bishop’s Bible—Parker’s Bible—The Douay Bible—King James’s
Bible—The Number of Books, Chapters, Verses, Words, and Letters
in the Old and New Testaments—The Bible Dissected—An
Extraordinary Calculation—Distinctions between the Gospels—The
Lost Books—What the word “Selah” means—The Poetry of the
Bible—Shakespeare’s Knowledge of Scripture—The “True Gentleman”
of the Bible—Misquotations from Scripture—A Scriptural “Bull”—Wit
and Humor in the Bible—Sortes Sacræ—Casting Lots with the Bible._ 103
The Name of God.
_How God is known—His Name in all the tongues of Earth—Ancient
Saxon Ideas of Deity—“Elohim” and “Jehovah”—The “Lord” of the
Ancient Jews—“God in Shakespeare”—The Fatherhood of God—The
Parsee, Jew, and Christian._ 127
I. H. S.
_The Name of Jesus—What does I. H. S. Mean?_—De Nomine Jesu—_What
St. Bernardine did—“The Flower of Jesse”—Story of the Infant
Jesus—Ancient Legends of Christ—Persian Story; The Dead
Dog—Description of Christ’s Person—The Death Warrant of
Christ—The Sign of the Cross in Ancient America._ 130
The Lord’s Prayer.
_Thy and Us—The “Spirit” of the Lord’s Prayer—Gothic Version of the
Fourth Century—Metrical Versions—Set to Music—The Prayer
Illustrated—Acrostical Paraphrase—What the Bible Commentators
Said—The Prayer Echoed—A Singular Acrostic._ 136
Ecclesiasticæ.
_Anecdotes of Clergy—Excessive Civility—A Very Polite Preacher—Dean
Swift’s short Sermon—“Down with the Dust”—An Abbreviated
Sermon—Dr. Dodd’s Sermon on Malt—Bombastic Style of Bascom—The
Preachers of Cromwell’s time—When a man ought to Cough!—Origin of
Texts—How the Ancient Prophets Preached—Clerical Blunders—Proving
an Alibi—Whitefield and the Sailors—Protestant
Excommunication—The Tender Mercies of John Knox._ 143
Puritan Peculiarities.
_The Puritan Maiden “Tribby”—A Jury-List of 1658—An Extraordinary
List of Names—Singular Similes—Early Punishments in
Massachusetts—Virginia Penalties in the Olden Time—Primitive
Fines for Curious Crimes—Staying away from Church—The “Blue Laws”
of Connecticut—Hard Punishments for Little Faults._ 150
Paronomasia.
_The Art of Pun-making—What is Wit?—Puns Among the Hebrews—A
Pungent Chapter—Punning Examples—The Short Road to Wealth—A “Man
of Greece”—Witty Impromptus of Sydney Smith—Startling toast of
Harry Erskine—“Top and Bottom”—The Imp of Darkness and the Imp o’
Light—A Printer’s Epitaph—The “whacks” and the “stick”_—“Wo-man”
_and “Whim-men”—Faithless Sally Brown—Whiskers_ versus
_Razors—Pleasure and Payne—Plaint of the old Pauper—To my
Nose—Bad_ “accountants” _but excellent “book-keepers”—The
Vegetable Girl—On an Old Horse—Grand Scheme of Emigration—“The
Perilous Practice of Punning”_—“Tu Portu Salus”—_On a Youth who
was killed by Fruit—The Appeal of Widow-Hood—Swift’s Latin
Puns—Puns in Macbeth—Classical Puns and Mottoes—Mottoes of the
English Peerage_—Jeux-de-Mots—_How Schott Willing—A Catalectic
Monody—Bees of the Bible—Franklin’s “Re’s”—Funny
“Miss-Nomers”—Crooked Coincidences—A Court Fool’s Pun_. 155
English Words and Forms of Expression.
_Dictionary English—Number of words in the English
Language—Language of the Bible—Sources of the Language—Helping a
Foreigner—Difficulties of the Language—Disraelian English—Why use
“Ye”?—Its, His, and Her—How often “That” may be used—How many
sounds are given to “ough”—A Literary Squabble—Concerning certain
Words—Excise, Pontiff, Rough—Dr. Johnson in
Trouble—Americanisms—“No Love Lost”—The Forlorn
Hope—Quiz—Tennyson’s English—Eccentric Etymologies—Words which
have changed their Meaning—Strange Derivations—Influence of
Names—Big Words and Long Names._ 182
Tall Writing.
_The Domicile erected by John—New Version of an Old
Story—Curiosities of Advertising—Mr. Connors and his big
Words—Curiosities of the Post Office—Singular Play Bill—Andrew
Borde, his Book—The Mad Poet—Foote’s Funny Farrago—Burlesque of
Dr. Johnson—Newspaper Eulogy—“Clear as Mud”—An Indignant Letter—A
Chemical Valentine—The Surgeon to his Lady-love—The Lawyers Ode
to Spring—Proverbs for Precocious Pupils._ 212
Metric Prose.
_Unconscious Poetizing—Cowper’s Rhyming Letter to Newton—Poetic
Prose in Irving’s Knickerbocker—Example from Disraeli’s
“Alroy”—Unintentional Rhythm in Charles Dickens’ works—Old
Curiosity Shop and Nicholas Nickleby—American Notes—Versification
in Scripture—Rhymes from Celebrated Prosers—Curious Instance of
Abraham Lincoln—Opinion of Dr. Johnson—Examples from Kemble and
Siddons._ 223
The Humors of Versification.
_The Story of the Lovers—Mingled Moods and Tenses—The Stammering
Wife—A Song with Variations—“While She Rocks the Cradle”—A
Serio-Comic Elegy—Reminiscence of Troy—Concerning
Vegetarianism—W. C. Bryant as a Humorist—Address “To a
Mosquito”—The “Poet” of the “Atlantic”—Bryant’s Travesty—A Rare
Pipe—The Human Ear—A Lesson in Acoustics—Amusing Burlesque of
Tennyson—Sir Tray; an Arthurian Idyl—All About the “Ologies”—The
Variation Humbug—Buggins and the Busy Bee—Comical Singing in
Church—The Curse of O’Kelly._ 230
Hiberniana.
_Irish Bulls and Blunders—Miss Edgeworth on the “Bull”—Comical
Letter of an Irish “M. P.”—Bulls in Mississippi—American
Bulls—The New Jail—A Frenchman’s Blunder—The “Puir Silly Body”
who wrote a Book—The “bulls” of Classical Writers—Bulls from
every Quarter and of all kinds._ 252
Blunders.
_Slips of the Press—The Bishop Accused of Swearing—The Damp Old
Church—From a French Newspaper—The Pig-killing Machine and the
Doctor—Slips of the Telegraph—Simmons and the
Cranberries—Finishing his Education—The Poets in a
Quandary—Blunders of Translators—Rather Gigantic
Grasshoppers—“Love’s last Shift”—Amusing Blunder of Voltaire—“A
Fortune Cutting Meat”—A New “Translation” of Hamlet—The Frenchman
and the Welsh Rabbit._ 259
Misquotations.
_Curious Misquotations of Well-known Authors—Example of Collins—Sir
Walter Scott in Error—Blunder of Sir Archibald Alison—Cruikshank
as the Real “Simon Pure”—Judge Best’s “Great Mind”—Byron’s Little
Mistake._ 266
Fabrications.
_The Description of Christ’s Person a Fabrication—“Detector’s”
Charge against Scott—The “Ministering Angel” not a
Fabrication—The Moon Hoax—A Literary “Sell”—Carlyle’s Worshippers
Outwitted—Mrs. Hemans’ Forgeries—Sheridan’s “Greek”—Spurious
Ballads—The Simple Ballad Trick—A Hoax upon Scott—Psalmanazar’s
Celebrated Fabrications—Benjamin Franklin’s Parable—The Forgeries
of Ireland—Imitations of Shakespeare._ 269
Interrupted Sentences.
_The Judge and the Criminal—“Free from Guile”—Poor Mary
“Confined”—Erskine’s “Subscription”—A Satisfactory Note—“Little
Hel”—Going to War—The Poet Assisted; the Sun and the
Fishes—Giving him the “lie”—De Quincey and the Fiend—Wit in the
House of Commons._ 277
Echo Verse.
_Ancient Echo Verses—Address to Queen Elizabeth—London before the
Restoration—Echo Song by Addison—A Dutch Pasquinade—The Gospel
Echo—Echo and the Lover—Dean Swift’s verses on Women—Buonaparte
and the Echo—Fatal Verses—Why Palm, the Publisher, was
shot—Remarkable Echoes—A Fatal Confession—Extraordinary facts in
Acoustics—Hearing Afar Off._ 281
Puzzles.
_Puzzles defended: their use and value—Exercise for the
Mind—Ancient Perplexities—“The Liar”—“Puzzled to Death”—A French
rebus—Napoleon Buonaparte’s Cypher—A Queer-looking Proclamation—A
curious Puzzle for the Lawyers—Sir Isaac Newton’s Riddle—Cowper’s
Riddle—Canning’s Riddle—A Prize Enigma—Quincy’s
Comparison—Perplexing Intermarriages—Prophetic Distich—The
“Number of the Beast”—Galileo’s Logograph—Persian Riddles—The
Chinese Tea Song—Death and Life—The Rebus—What is it?—The Book of
Riddles—Bishop Wilberforce’s Riddle—Curiosities of Cipher—Secret
Writing—Remarkable Cryptographs._ 290
The Reason Why.
_Why Germans Eat Sauer-Kraut—Why Pennsylvania was Settled—Whence
the Huguenots derived their name—How Monarchs Die—Origin of the
name of Boston—Concerning Weathercocks—Cutting off with a
Shilling—Why Cardinals hats are red—The Roast Beef of England—A
Sensible Quack—Who was the first Gentleman—Solution of a
Juggler’s Mystery._ 310
Weather-Wisdom.
_Sheridan’s Rhyming Calendar—Sir Humphrey Davy’s Weather
Omens—Jenner’s “Signs of the Weather”—“The Shepherd’s
Calendar”—Predictions from Birds, Beasts, and Insects—Circles
round the Sun and Moon—Quaint Old-time Prophecies—The Evil Days
of every Month._ 317
O. S. and N. S.
_The Julian and the Gregorian Calendars—How Cæsar arranged the
Calendar—The Julian Year—Going faster than the Sun—Pope Gregory’s
Efforts—Origin of the New Style—“Poor Job’s Almanac”—The Loss of
Eleven Days—How the matter was Explained._ 325
Memoria Technica.
_The Books of the Old Testament—The Books of the New—Versified
helps to Memory—Names of Shakespeare’s Plays—List of English
Sovereigns—Names of the Presidents—The Decalogue in verse—Short
Metrical Grammar—Number of days in each Month—How Quakers
Remember._ 327
Origin of Things Familiar.
_Mind your P’s and Q’s—All Fool’s Day—The First Playing Cards—“Sub
Rosa”—“Over the Left”—“Kicking the Bucket”—The Bumper—A Royal
Saying—Story of Joe Dun, the Bailiff—The First
Humbug—Pasquinade—The First Bottled Ale—The Gardener and the
Potatoes—Tarring and Feathering—The Stockings of Former Time—The
Order of the Garter—Drinking Healths—A Feather in his Cap—The
Word “Book”—Nine Tailors and One Man—“Viz”—Signature of the
Cross—The Turkish Crescent—The Postpaid Envelopes of the 17th
Century—Who first sang the “Old Hundredth?”—Who wrote the
“Marseillaise Hymn?”—Thrilling Story of the French Revolution—The
Origin of “Yankee Doodle”—Story of Lucy Locket and Kitty
Fisher—How Dutchmen sing “Yankee Doodle”—How the American Flag
was chosen—Who was Brother Jonathan? What is known of “Uncle
Sam!”—The Dollar Mark [$]: what does it mean?—Bows and Arrows in
the Olden Time—All about Guns—The first Insurance Company—The
Banks of three Centuries ago—The Invention of Bells—Who first
said “Boo!”—Who made the first Clock—The Watches of the Olden
Time—All about the Invention of Printing—The first
Cock-fights—Meaning of the word “Turncoat”—Who invented Lucifer
Matches?—When was the Flag of England first unfurled—Why are
Literary ladies called “Blue Stockings?”—Origin of the word
“Skedaddle”—How Foolscap Paper got its name—The First Forged
Bank-Note—Who made the first “Piano Forte?”—The first Doctors—The
first Thanksgiving Proclamation—First Prayer in Congress—The
first Reporters—Origin of the word “News”—The Earliest
Newspapers—Who sent the first Telegraphic Message._ 331
Nothing New Under the Sun.
_First idea of the Magnetic Telegraph—Telegraph before
Morse—Telegraph a Century Ago—Who made the first Steam
Engine?—What Marian de l’Orme saw in the Mad-house—What the
Marquis of Worcester Did—Richelieu’s Mistake—Wonderful Invention
of James Watt—The first Ocean Steamer—Fulton and the Steam
Engine—The first Balloon Ascension—What Franklin said about the
Baby—An Inventor’s Mistake—Discovery of the Circulation of the
Blood—What is “Anæsthesia?”—How the First Anodynes were made—How
Adam’s “Rib” was taken from him—All about the Boomerang—Who
Discovered the Centre of Gravity?—The first Rifle—Table-moving
and Spirit-rapping in Ancient Times—What is “Auscultation?”—The
Stereoscope—Ancient Prediction of the Discovery of America._ 375
Triumphs of Ingenuity.
_How the Planet Neptune was Discovered—Le Verrier’s Wonderful
Calculation—The Story of a poor Physician—An Astronomer at
Home—How Lescarbault became Famous—The Discovery of the Planet
Vulcan—Ingenious Stratagem of Columbus—How an Eclipse was made
Useful—Story of King John and the Abbot—A Picture of the Olden
Time—Clever Reply to Three Puzzling Questions—The Father Abbot in
a Fix._ 395
The Fancies of Fact.
_The Wounds of Julius Cæsar—Some Curious Old Bills—“Mending the Ten
Commandments”—Screwing a Horn on the Devil—Gluing a bit on his
Tail—Repairing the Virgin Mary before and behind—Making a New
Child—Why Bishops and Parsons have no Souls—The Story of a
Curious Conversion—Singular Prayer of Lord Ashley—A Moonshine
Story of Sir Walter Scott—Do Lawyers tell the Truth?—Patrick
Henry’s Little Chapel—The True Form of the Cross—How Poets and
Painters have led us astray—Curious Coincidences—How a Bird was
Shot with a Stick—How a Musket-shot in the Lungs saved a Man’s
life—Mysterious Tin Box found in a Shark’s Stomach—A Curious Card
Trick—Which was the right Elizabeth Smith?—How Mrs. Stephens’s
Patients were Cured—How a Girl’s Good Memory Caught a
Thief—Choosing a Motto for a Sun-dial—Strange Story of a Murdered
Man—The Chick in the Egg—Innate Appetite—The Indian and the Tame
Snake—Why do Alligators Swallow Stones?—Curious Anecdote about
Sheep—Celebrated Journeys on Horseback—A Horse that went to top
of St. Peters’ at Rome—A Wonderful Lock—Wonders of
Manufacturing—How Iron can be made More Precious than Gold—The
Spaniard and his Emeralds—How a Cat was sold for Six Hundred
Dollars—Another Cat sold for a Pound of Gold—The amount of Gold
in the World—Amount of Treasure collected by David—How much Gold
was found in California—What was brought from Australia—The
Wealth of Ancient Romans—Wine at Two Million dollars a Bottle or
$272 per drop—Who is permitted to drink it—Monster Beer Casks,
and who made them—Gigantic Wine-tuns at Heidelberg and
Königstein—A Beer-vat in which Two Hundred People
Dined—Difference between the English Poets—Perils of
Precocity—Children who were too Knowing—What became of 146
Englishmen who were confined in the Black Hole—How the Finns make
Barometers of Stone—Singular Bitterness of Strychnia—Something
about Salt—Curious Change of Taste—The Children of Israel armed
with Guns—Simeon with a pair of “Specs”—Eve in a handsome
Flounced Dress—St. Peter and the Tobacco Pipe—Abraham shooting
Isaac with a Blunderbuss—The Marriage of Christ with St.
Catherine—Cigar-lighters at the Last Supper—Shooting Ducks with a
Gun in the Garden of Eden—Wonderful Specimens of Minute
Mechanism—Homer in a Nutshell—The Bible in a Walnut—Squaring the
Circle—Mathematical Prodigies—Story of a Wonderful Boy—Babbage’s
Calculating Machine—Extraordinary Feats of Memory—A Bishop’s
Heroism—Silent Compliment._ 406
The Fancies of Fact.—§Continued.§
_The Exact Dimensions of Heaven—The cost of Solomon’s Temple—The
Mystic Numbers “Seven” and “Three”—Curious power of Number
Nine—Size of Noah’s Ark and the_ Great Eastern—_About Colors:
their Immense Variety—Vast Aerolites, and what they are—Fate of
America’s Discoverers—Facts about the Presidents—Value of Queen
Victoria’s Jewels—An Army of Women—The Star in the East—Benjamin
Franklin’s Court Dress—Extraordinary instances of Longevity—Do
Americans live long?—A man who lived more than 200
years—“Quack-quack” and “Bow-wow”—A Marriage Vow of the Olden
Time—“Buxum in Bedde and at the Borde”—What came in a dream to
Herschel—Singular Facts about Sleep—Curious Chinese Torture—Do
Fishes ever Sleep?—How a Bird Grasps his Perch when Asleep—How to
gain Seven Years and a half of Life—Effects of Opium and Indian
Hemp—Confession of an English Opium-Eater—Strange Effects of
Fear—The Thief and the Feathers—The Poisoned Coachman—How a Man
Died of Nothing—What Chas. Bell did to the Monkey—A Man with Two
Faces—Thrilling Story of a “Broken heart”—No Comfort in being
Beheaded—A Man who Spoke after his Head was cut off—A Man who
Lived after Sensation was Destroyed—Comical Antipathies—Afraid of
Boiled Lobsters—A Fish and a Fever—Why Joseph Scaliger couldn’t
Drink Milk—The Man who Ran away from a Cat—About the Cock that
Frightened Cæsar—The Two Brothers with One Set of feelings—How
Dennis Hendrick won his Strange Bet—Walking Blindfolded—How to
Tell the Time by Cats’ Eyes—How a Young Woman was Cured by a
Ring—The Story told by a Skull—A Romantic Highway Robber._ 435
Singular Customs.
_The Coffin on the Table—Queer Mode of Enjoying Oneself—A Beautiful
Indian Custom—Why the People of Carazan Murder their
Guests—Danger of Being Handsome—How an Evil Spirit was Frightened
Away—Beefsteaks from a Live Cow—Compliments Paid to a Bear—How
Noses are Made—How Lions are Caught by the Tail—A Picture of High
Life Four Centuries Ago—Why Hairs were put in Ancient
Seals—Fining People for not Getting Married—A Curious Matrimonial
Advertisement._ 477
Facetiæ.
_Odd Titles for a Sham Library—Puns of Tom Hood—The Jests of
Hierocles—Curious Letter of Rothschild’s—Some Singularly Short
Letters—A Disappointed Lover—“The Happiest Dog Alive”—What
Happened Between Abernethy and the Lady—Witty Sayings of
Talleyrand—Why Rochester’s Poem was Best—How the Emperor Nicholas
was “Sold”—Difference Between “Old Harry” and “Old Nick”—Comical
Story of a very Mean Man—Instances of Audacious Boasting—Chas.
Mathews and the Silver Spoon—How a King Upset his Inside—Curious
Story of Some Relics—What “Topsy’s” Other Name Was—Minding their
P’s and Q’s—Practical Jokes of a Russian Jester._ 482
Flashes of Repartee.
_Curran and Sir Boyle Roche—Witty Reply of a Fishwoman—Cobden and
the American Lady—Witty Suggestion of Napoleon—Making “Game” of a
Lady—The Road that no Peddler ever Traveled—“A Puppy in his
Boots!”—A Quaker’s Queer Suggestion—What the Girl said to
Curran—A Man who had “never been Weaned”—Ready Wit of Theodore
Hook—“Chaff” between Barrow and Rochester—A Windy M. P.—A
Clergyman known by his “Walk”—A Man who “had a Right to
Speak”—The “Weak Brother” and Tobacco Pipes—Beecher Lecturing for
F-A-M-E—Admiral Keppel and the He-Goat—Thackeray and the
Beggar-Woman—What Paddy said about “Ayther and Nayther”—Scribe
and the French Millionaire—Voltaire and Haller—Why Paddy “Loved
her Still”—Bacon and Hogg—“A Most Excellent Judge”—Thackeray
Snubbed—Christian Cannibalism—How a Barrister’s Eloquence was
Silenced._ 495
The Sexes.
_Masculine and Feminine Virtues and Vices—Character of the Happy
Woman—What Mrs. Jameson said about Women—Old Ballad in Praise of
Women—The Two Sexes Compared—What John Randolph said in Praise of
Matrimony—Wife; Mistress; or Lady?—St. Leon’s Toast to his
Mother._ 501
Moslem Wisdom.
_The Caliph of Bagdad—Shrewd Decision of a Moslem Judge—A Question
of Dinner—How the Money was Divided—The Wisdom of Ali—The
Prophet’s Judgment: Wisdom and Wealth—Mohammedan Logic—The
Foolish Young Man who Fell in Love—Queer Case of Consequential
Damages—Sad Blunder of Omar—A Perplexing Turkish Will—The
Dervise’s Device._ 508
Excerpta from Persian Poetry.
_Earth an Illusion—Heaven an Echo of Earth—A Moral
Atmosphere—Fortune and Worth—Broken Hearts—To a Generous
Man—Beauty’s Prerogative—Proud Humility—Folly for Oneself—An
Impossibility—Sober Drunkenness—A Wine Drinker’s Metaphors—The
Verses of Mirtsa Schaffy—The Unappreciative World—The Caliph and
Satan—Curious Dodge of the Devil._ 511
Epigrams.
_An Epigram on Epigrams—Midas and Modern Statesmen—“Come Gentle
Sleep”—A Man who Wrote Long Epitaphs—The Fool and the Poet—“_Dum
Vivimus Vivamus_”—Dr. Johnson and Molly Ashton—A
Know-Nothing—Epigram on “Our Bed”—On a Late Repentance—A Pale
Lady with a Red-Nosed Husband—Snowflakes on a Lady’s Breast—To
John Milton—Wesley on Butler—Ridiculous Compliment to Pope—Athol
Brose—What is Eternity—Stolen Sermons—Comical Advice to an
Author—A Frugal Queen—Man With a Thick Skull—Miss Prue and the
Kiss—A Ready-Made Angel—The Lover and the Looking-Glass—A
Capricious Friend—A Man who Told “Fibs”—Unlucky End of a
Scorpion—The Lawyer and the Novel—A Woman’s Will—Wellington’s Big
Nose—The Miser and his Money—On Bad Singing—Old Nick and the
Fiddle_—Foot-_man_ versus Toe-_man—“Hot Corn”—Bonnets of Straw—An
“Original Sin” Man—On Writing Verses—Prudent Simplicity—A Friend
in Distress—Hog v. Bacon—A Warm Reception—Taking Medical
Advice—Definition of a Dentist—Dr. Goodenough’s Sermon—What Might
Have Been—A Reflection—The Woman in the Case—How Lawyers are
“Keen”—Dux and Drakes—The Parson’s Eyes—“He Didn’t Mean
Her”—Affinity Between Gold and Love—The Crier who Could not
Cry—The Parson and the Butcher—A Hard Case of Strikes—Coats of_
Male—_The Beaux upon the Quiver—On Burning Widows—Learning
Speeches by Heart—A Golden Webb—The Jawbone of an Ass—Walking on
her Head—Marriage à la mode—Quid Pro Quo—Woman pro and
con—Abundance of Fools—The World—“Terminer Sans Oyer”—Seeing
Double._ 515
Impromptus.
_Dr. Young and his Eve—How Ben Jonson Paid his Bill—What Melville
said to Queen Elizabeth—The “Angel” in the Pew—How Andrew Horner
was Cut up—What Hastings Wrote of Burke—Impromptu of Dr.
Johnson—Burlesque of Old Ballads—What was “Running in a Lady’s
Head”—Improvised Rhymes—Like unto Judas—How the Devil got his
Due—The Writing on the Window—“I Thought so Yesterday”—What is
Written on the Gates of Hell—Burns’ “Grace before Meat”._ 528
Refractory Rhyming.
_Julianna and the Lozenges—Brougham’s Rhyme for Morris—The French
Speculator’s Epitaph—What is a Monogomphe—Rhymes for Month,
Chimney, Liquid, Carpet, Window, Garden, Porringer, Orange,
Lemon, Pilgrim, Widow, Timbuctoo, Niagara, Mackonochie—Rhyme to
Gottingen—The Ingoldsby Legends—Punch’s Funny Rhymes—Chapin’s
Rhyme to Brimblecomb—Butler’s Rhyme to Philosopher—A Rhyme to
Germany—Hood’s Nocturnal Sketch._ 534
Valentines.
_A Strategic Love-Letter—Love-Letter in Invisible Ink—Secret
Invitation Concealed in a Love-Letter—Macaulay’s Essay to Mary C.
Stanhope—Love-Verses of Robert Burns—Teutonic
Alliteration—Singular Letter in Three Columns—Love-Letter Written
in Blood—A Valentine in Many Languages—Practical Joke on a
Colored Man—Unpublished Verses of Thomas Moore—An Egyptian
Serenade—Petition of Sixteen Maids against the Widows of South
Carolina—Unlucky Petition to Madame de Maintenon._ 544
Sonnets.
_How the Fourteen Lines were Written—Sonnet on a Fashionable
Church—On the Proxy Saint—About a Nose—On Dyspepsia—Humility—Ave
Maria!_ 551
Conformity of Sense to Sound.
_Articulate Imitation of Inarticulate Sounds—Example from
Pope—Milton’s “Lycidas”—From Dyer’s “Ruins of Rome”—Imitations of
Time and Motion—“L’Allegro”—Pope’s “Homer”—Dryden’s
“Lucretius”—Milton’s “Il Penseroso”—Fine Examples from
Virgil—Imitations of Difficulty and Ease._ 554
Familiar Quotations from Unfamiliar Sources.
_“No Cross, no Crown”—“Corporations have no Souls”—“Children of a
Larger Growth”—“Consistency a Jewel”—“Cleanliness next to
Godliness”—“He’s a Brick”—“When at Rome, do as the
Romans”—“Taking Time by the Forelock”—“What will Mrs. Grundy
Say?”—“Though Lost to Sight, to Memory Dear”—“Conspicuous by its
Absence”—“Do as I Say, not as I Do”—“Honesty the Best
Policy”—“Facts are Stubborn Things”—“Comparisons are
Odious”—“Dark as Pitch”—“Every Tub on its own Bottom”—Two Pages
of Examples, Interesting, Amusing, and Instructive._ 556
Churchyard Literature.
_Epitaphs of Eminent Men—Appropriate and Rare
Inscriptions—Franklin’s Epitaph on Himself—Touching Memorials of
Children—Historical and Biographical Epitaphs—Self-Written
Inscriptions—Advertising Notices—Unique and Ludicrous
Epitaphs—Puns in the Churchyard—Puzzling Inscriptions—Parallels
Without a Parallel—Bathos—Transcendental Epitaph—Acrostical
Inscriptions—Indian, African, Hibernian, Greek Epitaphs—Patchwork
Character on a Tombstone—The Printer’s Epitaph—Specimens of
Exceedingly Brief Epitaphs—Highly Laudatory Inscriptions—A
Chemical Epitaph—On an Architect—On an Orator—On a Watchmaker—On
a Miserly Money-Lender—On a Tailor—On a Dancing Master—On an
Infidel—On Voltaire—On Hume—On Tom Paine—“Earth to Earth”—Byron’s
Inscription on his Dog._ 564
Inscriptions.
_Old English Tavern Sign-Boards—Curious Origin of Absurd Signs—“The
Magpie and Crown”—“The Hen and the Razor”—“The
Swan-with-two-Necks”—Singular Statement of Sir Joseph Banks—“The
Goat and Compasses”—The “Signs” of Puritan Times—A Curious
“Reformation”—“The Cat and the Fiddle”—“Satan and the Bag of
Nails”—Ancient Signs in Pompeii—The Four Awls and the Grave
Morris—The “Queer Door,” and the “Pig and Whistle”—Heraldic Signs
of the Middle Ages—“I have a Cunen Fox, &c.”—Versified
Inscriptions—Cooper and his “Zwei Glasses”—How a Sign Cost a Man
his Life—An Inscription in Four Columns—Beer-Jug
Inscriptions—Inscriptions on Window-Panes—Quaint Description of
an Inn in the Olden Time—Curious Inscriptions on Bells—Baptising
and Anointing Bells—The Great Tom of Oxford—Amusing Old Fly-Leaf
Inscriptions—Sun-Dial Inscriptions—Memorial Verses—Francke’s
Singular Discovery—Golden Mottoes—“Posies” from Wedding Rings._ 615
Parallel Passages.
_Imitations and Plagiarisms of Authors—Curious
Coincidences—Examples from Young, Congreve, Blair, and
Shakespeare—Imitations of Otway, Gray, Milton, and Rogers—The
Blindness of Homer and Milton—What Hume said of the Clergy—How
Praise Becomes Satire—Parallel Passages from the English
Poets—Singular Examples from Shakespeare—Shakespeare’s
Acquaintance with the Latin Poets—Thoughts Repeated from Age to
Age—Which was the True Original?—Historical Similitudes—What
Radbod said with his Legs in the Water—Why Wulf, the Goth,
wouldn’t be Baptised—Why an Indian Refused to go to
Heaven—Curious Choice of a Woman—Last Words of Cardinal
Wolsey—Death of Sir James Hamilton—Solomon’s Judgment
Repeated—Why two Women Pulled a Child’s Legs—How Napoleon Decided
Between two Ladies—The Hindoo Legend of the Weasel and the
Babe—The Faithful Dog: a Welsh Ballad—Singular Murder of a Clever
Apprentice—Ballads and Legends—Terrible Story of an old
Midwife—What a Clergyman did at Midnight—How Genevra was Buried
Alive—The Ghost which Appeared to Antonio—Strange Story of a
Ring—Death Prophecies—What was done before three Battles—How an
Army of Mice Devoured Bishop Hatto._ 640
Prototypes.
_The Oldest Proverb on Record—Curious Wish of an Old
Lady—Cinderella’s Slipper—How an Eagle Stole a Shoe, and a King
Chose a Wife—Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures—“The Charge of the
Light Brigade”—Dr. Faustus and the Devil—“Blown up” Cushions—What
the “Poor Cat i’ the Adage” Did—The Lady with Two Cork Legs—The
Pope’s Bull against the Comet—Lincoln “Swapping Horses”—Wooden
Nutmegs—Trade Unions Two Centuries Ago—Consequential Damages—The
Babies that Never were Born—The Original Shylock—Druidical
Excommunication—Fall of Napoleon I.—Lanark and Lodore—The Song of
the Bell—Turgot’s Eulogistic Epigraph on Franklin—Origin of the
Declaration of Independence—The Know-Nothings—The first
Conception of the Pilgrim’s Progress—Did Defoe Write Robinson
Crusoe?—Talleyrand’s Famous Saying: Whence?—Mistake about
Drinking out of Skulls—Great Literary Plagiarism—Origin of Old
Ballads—The Story of the Wandering Jew._ 699
Curious Books.
_Old Books with Odd Titles—“Shot Aimed at the Devils
Headquarters”—“Crumbs of Comfort for the Chickens of the
Covenant”—“Eggs of Charity Layed by the Chickens of the Covenant,
and Boiled with the Water of Divine Love”—“High-heeled Shoes for
Dwarfs in Holiness”—“Hooks and Eyes for Believers’
Breeches”—“Sixpennyworth of Divine Spirit”—“Spiritual Mustard
Pot”—“Tobacco Battered and Pipes Shattered”—“News from
Heaven”—The Most Curious Book in the World—A Book that was never
Written or Printed, but which can be Read—The Silver Book at
Upsal—What is a Bibliognoste?—What a Bibliographe?—What a
Bibliomane?—What a Bibliophile and a Bibliotaphe?_ 720
Literariana.
_The Mystery of the “Letters of Junius”—Who Wrote Them?—What
Canning and Macaulay Thought—A Well-kept Secret—Original MS. of
Gray’s Elegy—The Omitted Stanzas—Imitations—How Pope Corrected
his Manuscript—Importance of Punctuation: Comical Errors—“A
Pigeon Making Bread”—How many Nails on a Lady’s Hand—A Comical
Petition in Church—The Soldier who Died for want of a Stop—Indian
Heraldry—Anachronisms of Shakespeare—King Lear’s Spectacles—The
Heroines of Shakespeare—Shakespeare’s Life and Sonnets
Compared—Was He Lame?—The Age of Hamlet—Was He Really
Mad?—Additional Verses to “Home, Sweet Home”—The Falsities of
History—Two Views of Napoleon—Clarence and the Butt of
Malmsey—True Character of Richard III—The Name “America” a
Fraud—Lexington and the “First Blood Shed”—Eye-Witnesses in
Error—Curious Story of Sir Walter Raleigh—The Difference between
Wit and Humor—A Rhyming Newspaper—Buskin’s Defence of
Book-Lovers—Letters and their Endings—Shrewd Words of Lord
Bacon._ 723
Literati.
_Account of some Famous Linguists—A Man who Knew One Hundred and
Eleven Languages—A Cardinal of Many Tongues—Elihu Burrito, the
Learned Blacksmith—Literary Oddities—Curious Habits of Celebrated
Authors—How they have Written their Books—Racine’s Adventure with
the Workmen—Luther in his Study—Calvin Scribbling in
Bed—Rousseau, Le Sage, and Byron at Work—Fontaine, Pascal,
Fénélon, and De Quincey—Whence Bacon Sought Inspiration—Culture
and Sacrifice—The Sorrows and Trials of Great Men—Sharon Turner
and the Printers—A Stingy Old Scribbler—Dryden and His
Publisher—Jacob Tonson’s Rascality; how He Tried to Cheat the
Poet._ 756
Personal Sketches and Anecdotes.
_Anecdote of George Washington—What Lafayette said to the King of
France—Peculiarities of the Name Napoleon—How Napoleon Remembered
Milton at the Dreadful Battle of Austerlitz—The Emperor’s
Personal Appearance—His Opinion of Suicide—Benjamin Franklin’s
Frugal Wife—Major André and the “Cow-Chase”—An English View of
André and Arnold—How the Astronomer Royal Found an Old Woman’s
Clothes—The Boy who set Fire to an Empty Bottle—Curious Views of
Martin Luther—The Hero of the Reformation—Carlyle’s Translation
of Luther’s Hymn—Curious Account of Queen Elizabeth—What She Said
to the Troublesome Priest—What was the Real Color of Her
Hair?—Was Shakespeare a Christian?—Personal Description of Oliver
Cromwell—How Pope’s Skull was Stolen—What Became of Wickliffe’s
Ashes—The Folly of Two Astrologers—Anecdotes of
Talleyrand—Parson’s Puzzles._ 763
Historical Memoranda.
_The First Blood of the Revolution—The “Tea-Party” at
Boston—Tea-Burning at Annapolis—The First American Ships of
War—How Quinn Borrowed Twenty Pounds of Shakespeare—Diabolical
Proposition of Cotton Mather—A Rod in Pickle for William Penn—How
he Escaped—An American Monarchy—Origin of the “Star-Spangled
Banner”—Origin of the French Tri-Color—How the Newspapers Changed
their Tune—Story of Eugenie’s Flight from France—Rise and Fall of
Napoleon III—“L’Empire c’est la Paix”—Jefferson’s Idea of Marie
Antoinette—Blücher’s Insanity—The Secret of Queen Isabella’s
Daughter—Was Mary Magdalene a Sinner?—The Husband of Mother
Goose, and what He Did—History and Fiction: which true?—Verdicts
which Posterity have Reversed—Great Events from Little Causes—Why
Queen Eleanor Quarreled with her Husband—Story of Queen Anne’s
Gloves—How the Flies Helped Forward the Declaration of
Independence—The Discovery of America—Story of Annie Laurie—Who
was Robin Adair?—Was Joan of Arc Really Burnt?—The Mystery of Amy
Robsart’s Death—Anecdotes of William Tell—Who Was He?—“Society”
in the Time of Louis XIV—How Cromwell Tricked his Chaplain—The
Last Night of the Girondists—Elizabeth, Essex, and the Ring._ 782
Multum in Parvo.
_Much Meaning in Little Space—Coleridge and the Beasts—“Boxes” that
Govern the World—“I Cannot Fiddle”—“Like a Potato”—The Vowels in
Order—Balzac’s Instance of Self-Respect—Whom do Mankind Pay
Best?—Comical Instance of Wrong Emphasis—“Vive la Mort!”—Motto
for all Seasons—Curious Grace before Meat._ 823
Life and Death.
_What is Death?—Bishop Heber’s “Voyage of Life”—Curious Poem of Dr.
Horne—“The Round of Life”—Hugh Peters’ Legacy to his
Daughter—Franklin’s Moral Code—How to Divide Time—Living Life
over Again—Rhyming Definitions—What is Earth?—Curious
Replies—Rhyming Charter of William the Conquerer—Puzzling
Question for the Lawyers—What Rabbi Joshua Told the Emperor—Dying
Words of Distinguished Persons—Last Prayer of Mary, Queen of
Scots—Extraordinary Case of Trance—Curious Question about
Lazarus—Preservation of Dead Bodies—Corpse of a Lady Preserved
for Eighty Years—Bodies of English Kings Undecayed for many
Centuries—Three Roman Soldiers Preserved “Plump and Fresh” for
Fifteen Hundred Years—Bodies Converted into Fat—About
Mummies—Wonderful Discovery in an Etruscan Tomb—The Reign of
Terror—What Became of the Bodies of the French Kings—Jewish Tombs
in the Valley of Hinnom—A Whimsical Will—The Tripod of Life—How
Many Kinds of Death there Are—Curious Irish Epitaph—Significance
of the Fleur de lis—Death of the First Born—Jean Ingelow’s “Story
of Long Ago”—“This is not Your Rest”—Causes of Ill Success in
Life—Futurity—Longfellow on “The Heart”—An Evening
Prayer—Beautiful Thought—Life’s Parting—Destiny—Sympathy—“After;”
Death’s Final Conquest—“There is no Death”—Euthanasia._ 826
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alphabetical Whims.
LIPOGRAMMATA AND PANGRAMMATA.
In No. 59 of the Spectator, Addison, descanting on the different species
of wit, observes, “The first I shall produce are the Lipogrammatists, or
letter droppers of antiquity, that would take an exception, without any
reason, against some particular letter in the alphabet, so as not to
admit it once in a whole poem. One Tryphiodorus was a great master in
this kind of writing. He composed an Odyssey, or Epic Poem, on the
adventures of Ulysses, consisting of four-and-twenty-books, having
entirely banished the letter A from his first book, which was called
_Alpha_, (as _lucus a non lucendo_,) because there was not an alpha in
it. His second book was inscribed _Beta_, for the same reason. In short,
the poet excluded the whole four-and-twenty letters in their turns, and
showed them that he could do his business without them. It must have
been very pleasant to have seen this Poet avoiding the reprobate letter
as much as another would a false quantity, and making his escape from
it, through the different Greek dialects, when he was presented with it
in any particular syllable; for the most apt and elegant word in the
whole language was rejected, like a diamond with a flaw in it, if it
appeared blemished with the wrong letter.”
In No. 63, Addison has again introduced Tryphiodorus, in his Vision of
the Region of False Wit, where he sees the phantom of this poet pursued
through the intricacies of a dance by four-and-twenty persons,
(representatives of the alphabet,) who are unable to overtake him.
Addison should, however, have mentioned that Tryphiodorus is kept in
countenance by no less an authority than Pindar, who, according to
Athenæus, wrote an ode from which the letter _sigma_ was carefully
excluded.
This caprice of Tryphiodorus has not been without its imitators. Peter
de Riga, a canon of Rheims, wrote a summary of the Bible in twenty-three
sections, and throughout each section omitted, successively, some
particular letter.
Gordianus Fulgentius, who wrote “De Ætatibus Mundi et Hominis,” has
styled his book a wonderful work, chiefly, it may be presumed, from a
similar reason; as from the chapter on Adam he has excluded the letter
A; from that on Abel, the B; from that on Cain, the C; and so on through
twenty-three chapters.
Gregorio Letti presented a discourse to the Academy of Humorists at
Rome, throughout which he had purposely omitted the letter R, and he
entitled it _the exiled R_. A friend having requested a copy as a
literary curiosity, (for so he considered this idle performance,) Letti,
to show it was not so difficult a matter, replied by a copious answer of
seven pages, in which he observed the same severe ostracism against the
letter R.
Du Chat, in the “Ducatiana,” says “there are five novels in prose, of
Lope de Vega, similarly avoiding the vowels; the first without A, the
second without E, the third without I, the fourth without O, and the
fifth without U.”
The Orientalists are not without this literary folly. A Persian poet
read to the celebrated Jami a ghazel of his own composition, which Jami
did not like; but the writer replied it was, notwithstanding, a very
curious sonnet, for the letter _Aliff_ was not to be found in any of the
words! Jami sarcastically answered, “You can do a better thing yet; take
away _all the letters_ from every word you have written.”
This alphabetical whim has assumed other shapes, sometimes taking the
form of a fondness for a particular letter. In the _Ecloga de Calvis_ of
Hugbald the Monk, all the words begin with a C. In the Nugæ Venales
there is a Poem by Petrus Placentius, entitled Pugna Porcorum, in which
every word begins with a P. In another performance in the same work,
entitled _Canum cum cattis certamen_, in which “apt alliteration’s
artful aid” is similarly summoned, every word begins with a C.
Lord North, one of the finest gentlemen in the Court of James I., has
written a set of sonnets, each of which begins with a successive letter
of the alphabet. The Earl of Rivers, in the reign of Edward IV.,
translated the Moral Proverbs of Christiana of Pisa, a poem of about two
hundred lines, almost all the words of which he contrived to conclude
with the letter E.
The Pangrammatists contrive to crowd all the letters of the alphabet
into every single verse. The prophet Ezra may be regarded as the father
of them, as may be seen by reference to ch. vii., v. 21, of his Book of
Prophecies. Ausonius, a Roman poet of the fourth century, whose verses
are characterized by great mechanical ingenuity, is fullest of these
fancies.
The following sentence of only 48 letters, contains every letter of the
alphabet:—_John P. Brady, give me a black walnut box of quite a small
size_.
The stanza subjoined is a specimen of both lipogrammatic and
pangrammatic ingenuity, containing every letter of the alphabet except
_e_. Those who remember that _e_ is the most indispensable letter, being
much more frequently used than any other,[1] will perceive the
difficulty of such composition.
Footnote 1:
The relative proportions of the letters, in the formation of words,
have been pretty accurately determined, as follows:—
A 85
B 16
C 30
D 44
E 120
F 25
G 17
H 64
I 80
J 4
K 8
L 40
M 30
N 80
O 80
P 17
Q 5
R 62
S 80
T 90
U 34
V 12
W 20
X 4
Y 20
Z 2
A jovial swain may rack his brain,
And tax his fancy’s might,
To quiz in vain, for ’tis most plain,
That what I say is right.
The _Fate of Nassan_ affords another example, each stanza containing the
entire alphabet except _e_, and composed, as the writer says, with
_ease_ without _e’s_.
Bold Nassan quits his caravan,
A hazy mountain-grot to scan;
Climbs jaggy rocks to spy his way,
Doth tax his sight, but far doth stray.
Not work of man, nor sport of child,
Finds Nassan in that mazy wild;
Lax grow his joints, limbs toil in vain—
Poor wight! why didst thou quit that plain?
Vainly for succor Nassan calls.
Know, Zillah, that thy Nassan falls:
But prowling wolf and fox may joy
To quarry on thy Arab boy.
§Lord Holland§, after reading the five Spanish novels already alluded
to, in 1824, composed the following curious example, in which all the
vowels except E are omitted:—
EVE’S LEGEND.
Men were never perfect; yet the three brethren Veres were ever
esteemed, respected, revered, even when the rest, whether the select
few, whether the mere herd, were left neglected.
The eldest’s vessels seek the deep, stem the element, get pence; the
keen Peter, when free, wedded Hester Green,—the slender, stern,
severe, erect Hester Green. The next, clever Ned, less dependent,
wedded sweet Ellen Heber. Stephen, ere he met the gentle Eve, never
felt tenderness: he kept kennels, bred steeds, rested where the deer
fed, went where green trees, where fresh breezes, greeted sleep. There
he met the meek, the gentle Eve: she tended her sheep, she ever
neglected self: she never heeded pelf, yet she heeded the shepherds
even less. Nevertheless, her cheek reddened when she met Stephen; yet
decent reserve, meek respect, tempered her speech, even when she
shewed tenderness. Stephen felt the sweet effect: he felt he erred
when he fled the sex, yet felt he defenceless when Eve seemed tender.
She, he reflects, never deserved neglect; she never vented spleen; he
esteems her gentleness, her endless deserts; he reverences her steps;
he greets her:—
“Tell me whence these meek, these gentle sheep,—whence the yet meeker,
the gentler shepherdess?”
“Well bred, we were eke better fed, ere we went where reckless men
seek fleeces. There we were fleeced. Need then rendered me
shepherdess, need renders me sempstress. See me tend the sheep; see me
sew the wretched shreds. Eve’s need preserves the steers, preserves
the sheep; Eve’s needle mends her dresses, hems her sheets; Eve feeds
the geese; Eve preserves the cheese.”
Her speech melted Stephen, yet he nevertheless esteems, reveres her.
He bent the knee where her feet pressed the green; he blessed, he
begged, he pressed her.
“Sweet, sweet Eve, let me wed thee; be led where Hester Green, where
Ellen Heber, where the brethren Vere dwell. Free cheer greets thee
there; Ellen’s glees sweeten the refreshment; there severer Hester’s
decent reserve checks heedless jests. Be led there, sweet Eve!”
“Never! we well remember the Seer. We went where he dwells—we entered
the cell—we begged the decree,—
‘Where, whenever, when, ’twere well
Eve be wedded? Eld Seer, tell.’
“He rendered the decree; see here the sentence decreed!” Then she
presented Stephen the Seer’s decree. The verses were these:—
“_Ere the green reed be red,
Sweet Eve, be never wed;
Ere be green the red cheek,
Never wed thee, Eve meek._”
The terms perplexed Stephen, yet he jeered the terms; he resented the
senseless credence, “Seers never err.” Then he repented, knelt,
wheedled, wept. Eve sees Stephen kneel; she relents, yet frets when
she remembers the Seer’s decree. Her dress redeems her. These were the
events:—
Her well-kempt tresses fell; sedges, reeds, bedecked them. The reeds
fell, the edges met her cheeks; her cheeks bled. She presses the green
sedge where her check bleeds. Red then bedewed the green reed, the
green reed then speckled her red cheek. The red cheek seems green, the
green reed seems red. These were e’en the terms the Eld Seer decreed
Stephen Vere.
§Here endeth the Legend.§
ALPHABETICAL ADVERTISEMENT.
TO WIDOWERS AND SINGLE GENTLEMEN.—WANTED by a lady, a SITUATION to
superintend the household and preside at table. She is Agreeable,
Becoming, Careful, Desirable, English, Facetious, Generous, Honest,
Industrious, Judicious, Keen, Lively, Merry, Natty, Obedient,
Philosophic, Quiet, Regular, Sociable, Tasteful, Useful, Vivacious,
Womanish, Xantippish, Youthful, Zealous, &c. Address X. Y. Z., Simmond’s
Library, Edgeware-road.—_London Times_, 1842.
JACOBITE TOAST.
The following remarkable toast is ascribed to Lord Duff, and was
presented on some public occasion in the year 1745.
A. B. C. A Blessed Change.
D. E. F. Down Every Foreigner.
G. H. J. God Help James.
K. L. M. Keep Lord Marr.
N. O. P. Noble Ormond Preserve.
Q. R. S. Quickly Resolve Stewart.
T. U. V. W. Truss Up Vile Whigs.
X. Y. Z. ’Xert Your Zeal.
THE THREE INITIALS.
The following couplet, in which initials are so aptly used, was written
on the alleged intended marriage of the Duke of Wellington, at a very
advanced age, with Miss Angelina Burdett Coutts, the rich heiress:—
The Duke must in his second childhood be,
Since in his doting age he turns to A. B. C.
ENIGMAS.
The letter E is thus enigmatically described:—
The beginning of eternity,
The end of time and space,
The beginning of every end,
The end of every place.
The letter M is concealed in the following Latin enigma by an unknown
author of very ancient date:
Ego sum principium mundi et finis seculorum:
Ego sum trinus et unus, et tamen non sum Deus.
THE LETTER H.
The celebrated enigma on the letter H, commonly attributed to Lord
Byron,[2] is well known. The following amusing petition is addressed by
this letter to the inhabitants of Kidderminster, England—_Protesting_:
Whereas by you I have been driven
From ’ouse, from ’ome, from ’ope, from ’eaven,
And placed by your most learned society
In Hexile, Hanguish, and Hanxiety;
Nay, charged without one just pretence,
With Harrogance and Himpudence—
I here demand full restitution,
And beg you’ll mend your Helocution.
Footnote 2:
Now known to have been written by Miss Catherine Fanshawe.
Rowland Hill, when at college, was remarkable for the frequent wittiness
of his observations. In a conversation on the powers of the letter H, in
which it was contended that it was no letter, but a simple aspiration or
breathing, Rowland took the opposite side of the question, and insisted
on its being, to all intents and purposes, a _letter_; and concluded by
observing that, if it were not, it was a very serious affair to him, as
it would occasion his being §ILL§ all the days of his life.
When Kohl, the traveller, visited the Church of St. Alexander Nevskoi,
at St. Petersburg, his guide, pointing to a corner of the building,
said, “_There lies a Cannibal_.” Attracted to the tomb by this strange
announcement, Kohl found from the inscription that it was the Russian
general Hannibal; but as the Russians have no H,[3] they change the
letter into K; and hence the strange misnomer given to the deceased
warrior.
Footnote 3:
The Sandwich Island alphabet has twelve letters; the Burmese,
nineteen; the Italian, twenty; the Bengalese, twenty-one; the Hebrew,
Syriac, Chaldee, and Samaritan, twenty-two each; the French,
twenty-three; the Greek, twenty-four; the Latin, twenty-five; the
German, Dutch, and English, twenty-six each; the Spanish and
Sclavonic, twenty-seven each; the Arabic, twenty-eight; the Persian
and Coptic, thirty-two; the Georgian, thirty-five; the Armenian,
thirty-eight; the Russian, forty-one; the Muscovite, forty-three; the
Sanscrit and Japanese, fifty; the Ethiopic and Tartarian, two hundred
and two each.
A city knight, who was unable to aspirate the H, on being deputed to
give King William III. an address of welcome, uttered the following
equivocal compliment:—
“Future ages, recording your Majesty’s exploits, will pronounce you to
have been _a Nero_!”
Mrs. Crawford says she wrote one line in her song, _Kathleen
Mavourneen_, for the express purpose of confounding the cockney
warblers, who sing it thus:—
The ’orn of the ’unter is ’eard on the ’ill.
Moore has laid the same trap in the _Woodpecker_:—
A ’eart that is ’umble might ’ope for it ’ere.
And the elephant _confounds_ them the other way:—
A helephant heasily heats at his hease,
Hunder humbrageous humbrella trees.
ON THE MARRIAGE OF A LADY TO A GENTLEMAN NAMED GEE
Sure, madam, by your choice a taste we see:
What’s good or great or grand without a G?
A godly glow must sure on G depend,
Or oddly low our righteous thoughts must end:
The want of G all gratitude effaces;
And without G, the Graces would run races.
ON SENDING A PAIR OF GLOVES.
From this small token take the letter G,
And then ’tis love, and that I send to thee.
UNIVOCALIC VERSES.
=A.=—§THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.§
Wars harm all ranks, all arts, all crafts appall:
At Mars’ harsh blast, arch, rampart, altar, fall!
Ah! hard as adamant, a braggart Czar
Arms vassal swarms, and fans a fatal war!
Rampant at that bad call, a Vandal band
Harass, and harm, and ransack Wallach-land.
A Tartar phalanx Balkan’s scarp hath past,
And Allah’s standard falls, alas! at last.
=E.=—§THE FALL OF EVE.§
Eve, Eden’s Empress, needs defended be;
The Serpent greets her when she seeks the tree.
Serene, she sees the speckled tempter creep;
Gentle he seems,—perversest schemer deep,—
Yet endless pretexts ever fresh prefers,
Perverts her senses, revels when she errs,
Sneers when she weeps, regrets, repents she fell;
Then, deep revenged, reseeks the nether hell!
=I.=—§THE APPROACH OF EVENING.§
Idling, I sit in this mild twilight dim,
Whilst birds, in wild, swift vigils, circling skim.
Light winds in sighing sink, till, rising bright,
Night’s Virgin Pilgrim swims in vivid light!
=O.=—§INCONTROVERTIBLE FACTS.§
No monk too good to rob, or cog, or plot.
No fool so gross to bolt Scotch collops hot.
From Donjon tops no Oronoko rolls.
Logwood, not Lotos, floods Oporto’s bowls.
Troops of old tosspots oft, to sot, consort.
Box tops, not bottoms, school-boys flog for sport.
No cool monsoons blow soft on Oxford dons,
Orthodox, jog-trot, book-worm Solomons!
Bold Ostrogoths, of ghosts no horror show.
On London shop-fronts no hop-blossoms grow.
To crocks of gold no dodo looks for food.
On soft cloth footstools no old fox doth brood.
Long storm-tost sloops forlorn, work on to port.
Rooks do not roost on spoons, nor woodcocks snort,
Nor dog on snow-drop or on coltsfoot rolls,
Nor common frogs concoct long protocols.
=U.=—§THE SAME SUBJECT, CONTINUED.§
Dull humdrum murmurs lull, but hubbub stuns.
Lucullus snuffs no musk, mundungus shuns.
Puss purrs, buds burst, bucks butt, luck turns up trumps;
But full cups, hurtful, spur up unjust thumps.
* * * * *
A young English lady, on observing a gentleman’s lane newly planted with
lilacs, made this neat impromptu:—
Let lovely lilacs line Lee’s lonely lane.
ALPHABETICAL ALLITERATION.
THE SIEGE OF BELGRADE.
An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly, by battery, besieged Belgrade;
Cossack commanders cannonading come—
Dealing destruction’s devastating doom;
Every endeavor, engineers essay,
For fame, for fortune—fighting furious fray:—
Generals ’gainst generals grapple—gracious God!
How honors Heaven, heroic hardihood!
Infuriate,—indiscriminate in ill,
Kindred kill kinsmen,—kinsmen kindred kill!
Labor low levels loftiest longest lines—
Men march ’mid mounds, ’mid moles, ’mid murderous mines:
Now noisy, noxious, noticed nought
Of outward obstacles opposing ought:
Poor patriots, partly purchased, partly pressed:
Quite quaking, quickly quarter, quarter quest,
Reason returns, religious right redounds,
Suwarrow stops such sanguinary sounds.
Truce to thee, Turkey—triumph to thy train!
Unjust, unwise, unmerciful Ukraine!
Vanish vain victory, vanish victory vain!
Why wish ye warfare? Wherefore welcome were
Xerxes, Ximenes, Xanthus, Xaviere?
Yield! ye youths! ye yeomen, yield your yell!
Zeno’s, Zapater’s, Zoroaster’s zeal,
And all attracting—arms against acts appeal.
THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT CELEBRATION.
Americans arrayed and armed attend;
Beside battalions bold, bright beauties blend.
Chiefs, clergy, citizens conglomerate,—
Detesting despots,—daring deeds debate;
Each eye emblazoned ensigns entertain,—
Flourishing from far,—fan freedom’s flame.
Guards greeting guards grown grey,—guest greeting guest.
High-minded heroes, hither, homeward, haste.
Ingenuous juniors join in jubilee,
Kith kenning kin,—kind knowing kindred key.
Lo, lengthened lines lend Liberty liege love,
Mixed masses, marshaled, _Monumentward_ move.
Note noble navies near,—no novel notion,—
Oft our oppressors overawed old Ocean;
Presumptuous princes, pristine patriots paled,
Queens’ quarrel questing quotas, quondam quailed.
Rebellion roused, revolting ramparts rose.
Stout spirits, smiting servile soldiers, strove.
These thrilling themes, to thousands truly told,
Usurpers’ unjust usages unfold.
Victorious vassals, vauntings vainly veiled,
Where, whilesince, Webster, warlike Warren wailed.
’Xcuse ’xpletives ’xtra-queer ’xpressed,
Yielding Yankee yeomen zest.
PRINCE CHARLES PROTECTED BY FLORA MACDONALD.
All ardent acts affright an Age abased
By brutal broils, by braggart bravery braced.
Craft’s cankered courage changed Culloden’s cry;
“Deal deep” deposed “deal death”—“decoy,” “defy:”
Enough. Ere envy enters England’s eyes,
Fancy’s false future fades, for Fortune flies.
Gaunt, gloomy, guarded, grappling giant griefs,
Here, hunted hard, his harassed heart he heaves;
In impious ire incessant ills invests.
Judging Jove’s jealous judgments, jaundiced jests!
Kneel, kirtled knight! keep keener kingcraft known,
Let larger lore life’s levelling lessons loan:
Marauders must meet malefactors’ meeds;
No nation noisy non-conformists needs.
O oracles of old! our orb ordain
Peace’s possession—Plenty’s palmy plain!
Quiet Quixotic quests; quell quarrelling;
Rebuke red riot’s resonant rifle ring.
Slumber seems strangely sweet since silence smote
The threatening thunders throbbing through their throat.
Usurper! under uniform unwont
Vail valor’s vaguest venture, vainest vaunt.
Well wot we which were wise. War’s wildfire won
Ximenes, Xerxes, Xavier, Xenophon:
Yet you, ye yearning youth, _your_ young years yield
Zuinglius’ zealot zest—Zinzendorf zion-zealed.
CACOPHONOUS COUPLET ON CARDINAL WOLSEY.
Begot by butchers, but by bishops bred,
How high his honor holds his haughty head!
ADDRESS TO THE AURORA, WRITTEN IN MID-OCEAN.
Awake Aurora! and across all airs
By brilliant blazon banish boreal bears.
Crossing cold Canope’s celestial crown,
Deep darts descending dive delusive down.
Entranced each eve Europa’s every eye
Firm fixed forever fastens faithfully,
Greets golden guerdon gloriously grand;
How Holy Heaven holds high his hollow hand!
Ignoble ignorance, inapt indeed—
Jeers jestingly just Jupiter’s jereed:
Knavish Kamschatkans, knightly Kurdsmen know,
Long Labrador’s light lustre looming low;
Midst myriad multitudes majestic might
No nature nobler numbers Neptune’s night.
Opal of Oxus or old Ophir’s ores
Pale pyrrhic pyres prismatic purple pours,—
Quiescent quivering, quickly, quaintly queer,
Rich, rosy, regal rays resplendent rear;
Strange shooting streamers streaking starry skies
Trail their triumphant tresses—trembling ties.
Unseen, unhonored Ursa,—underneath
Veiled, vanquished—vainly vying—vanisheth:
Wild Woden, warning, watchful—whispers wan
Xanthitic Xeres, Xerxes, Xenophon,
Yet yielding yesternight yule’s yell yawns
Zenith’s zebraic zigzag, zodiac zones.
Pulci, in his _Morgante Maggiore_, xxiii. 47, gives the following
remarkable double alliterations, two of them in every line:—
La _casa cosa_ parea _bretta_ e _brutta_,
_Vinta_ dal _vento_, e la _natta_ e la _notte_,
_Stilla_ le _stelle_, ch’a _tetto_ era _tutta_,
Del _pane_ ap_pena_ ne _dette_ ta’ _dotte_;
_Pere_ avea _pure_ e qualche _fratta frutta_,
E _svina_ e _scena_ di _botto_ una _botte_;
_Poscia_ per _pesci_ _lasche_ prese al_l’esca_,
Ma il _letto_ al_lotta_ alla _frasca_ fu_fresca_.
In the imitation of Laura Matilda, in the _Rejected Addresses_ occurs
this stanza:—
Pan beheld Patroclus dying,
Nox to Niobe was turned;
From Busiris Bacchus flying,
Saw his Semele inurned.
TITLE-PAGE FOR A BOOK OF EXTRACTS FROM MANY AUTHORS.
Astonishing Anthology from Attractive Authors.
Broken Bits from Bulky Brains.
Choice Chunks from Chaucer to Channing.
Dainty Devices from Diverse Directions.
Echoes of Eloquence from Eminent Essayists.
Fragrant Flowers from Fields of Fancy.
Gems of Genius Gloriously Garnished.
Handy Helps from Head and Heart.
Illustrious Intellects Intelligently Interpreted.
Jewels of Judgment and Jets of Jocularity.
Kindlings to Keep from the King to the Kitchen.
Loosened Leaves from Literary Laurels.
Magnificent Morsels from Mighty Minds.
Numerous Nuggets from Notable Noodles.
Oracular Opinions Officiously Offered.
Prodigious Points from Powerful Pens.
Quirks and Quibbles from Queer Quarters.
Rare Remarks Ridiculously Repeated.
Suggestive Squibs from Sundry Sources.
Tremendous Thoughts on Thundering Topics.
Utterances from Uppermost for Use and Unction.
Valuable Views in Various Voices.
Wisps of Wit in a Wilderness of Words.
Xcellent Xtracts Xactly Xpressed.
Yawnings and Yearnings for Youthful Yankees.
Zeal and Zest from Zoroaster to Zimmerman.
COMPLIMENTARY CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING CHESS.
Cherished chess! The charms of thy checkered chambers chain me
changelessly. Chaplains have chanted thy charming choiceness;
chieftains have changed the chariot and the chase for the chaster
chivalry of the chess-board, and the cheerier charge of the
chess-knights. Chaste-eyed Caissa! For thee are the chaplets of
chainless charity and the chalice of childlike cheerfulness. No
chilling churl, no cheating chafferer, no chattering changeling, no
chanting charlatan can be thy champion; the chivalrous, the
charitable, and the cheerful are the chosen ones thou cherishest.
Chance cannot change thee: from the cradle of childhood to the
charnel-house, from our first childish chirpings to the chills of the
churchyard, thou art our cheery, changeless chieftainess. Chastener of
the churlish, chider of the changeable, cherisher of the chagrined,
the chapter of thy chiliad of charms should be chanted in cherubic
chimes by choicest choristers, and chiselled on chalcedon in cherubic
chirography.
Hood, in describing the sensations of a dramatist awaiting his debut,
thus uses the letter F in his Ode to Perry:—
All Fume and Fret,
Fuss, Fidget, Fancy, Fever, Funking, Fright,
Ferment, Fault-fearing, Faintness—more F’s yet:
Flushed, Frigid, Flurried, Flinching, Fitful, Flat,
Add Famished, Fuddled, and Fatigued to that;
Funeral, Fate-Foreboding.
The repetition of the same letter in the following is very ingenious:—
FELICITOUS FLIGHT OF FANCY.
“A famous fish-factor found himself father of five flirting
females—Fanny, Florence, Fernanda, Francesca, and Fenella. The first
four were flat-featured, ill-favored, forbidding-faced, freckled
frumps, fretful, flippant, foolish, and flaunting. Fenella was a
fine-featured, fresh, fleet-footed fairy, frank, free, and full of
fun. The fisher failed, and was forced by fickle fortune to forego his
footman, forfeit his forefathers’ fine fields, and find a forlorn
farm-house in a forsaken forest. The four fretful females, fond of
figuring at feasts in feathers and fashionable finery, fumed at their
fugitive father. Forsaken by fulsome, flattering fortune-hunters, who
followed them when first they flourished, Fenella fondled her father,
flavored their food, forgot her flattering followers, and frolicked in
a frieze without flounces. The father, finding himself forced to
forage in foreign parts for a fortune, found he could afford a faring
to his five fondlings. The first four were fain to foster their
frivolity with fine frills and fans, fit to finish their father’s
finances; Fenella, fearful of flooring him, formed a fancy for a full
fresh flower. Fate favored the fish-factor for a few days, when he
fell in with a fog; his faithful Filley’s footsteps faltered, and food
failed. He found himself in front of a fortified fortress. Finding it
forsaken, and feeling himself feeble, and forlorn with fasting, he fed
on the fish, flesh, and fowl he found, fricasseed, and when full fell
flat on the floor. Fresh in the forenoon, he forthwith flew to the
fruitful fields, and not forgetting Fenella, he filched a fair flower;
when a foul, frightful, fiendish figure flashed forth: ‘Felonious
fellow, fingering my flowers, I’ll finish you! Fly; say farewell to
your fine felicitous family, and face me in a fortnight!’ The
faint-hearted fisher fumed and faltered, and fast and far was his
flight. His five daughters flew to fall at his feet and fervently
felicitate him. Frantically and fluently he unfolded his fate.
Fenella, forthwith fortified by filial fondness, followed her father’s
footsteps, and flung her faultless form at the foot of the frightful
figure, who forgave the father, and fell flat on his face, for he had
fervently fallen in a fiery fit of love for the fair Fenella. He
feasted her till, fascinated by his faithfulness, she forgot the
ferocity of his face, form, and features, and frankly and fondly fixed
Friday, fifth of February, for the affair to come off. There was
festivity, fragrance, finery, fireworks, fricasseed frogs, fritters,
fish, flesh, fowl, and frumentry, frontignac, flip, and fare fit for
the fastidious; fruit, fuss, flambeaux, four fat fiddlers and fifers;
and the frightful form of the fortunate and frumpish fiend fell from
him, and he fell at Fenella’s feet a fair-favored, fine, frank,
freeman of the forest. Behold the fruits of filial affection.”
A BEVY OF BELLES.
The following lines are said to have been admirably descriptive of the
five daughters of an English gentleman, formerly of Liverpool;—
Minerva-like majestic Mary moves.
Law, Latin, Liberty, learned Lucy loves.
Eliza’s elegance each eye espies.
Serenely silent Susan’s smiles surprise.
From fops, fools, flattery, fairest Fanny flies.
MOTIVES TO GRATITUDE.
A remarkable example of the old fondness for antithesis and alliteration
in composition, is presented in the following extract from one of Watts’
sermons:—
The last great help to thankfulness is to compare various
circumstances and things together. Compare, then, your sorrows with
your sins; compare your mercies with your merits; compare your
comforts with your calamities; compare your own troubles with the
troubles of others; compare your sufferings with the sufferings of
Christ Jesus, your Lord; compare the pain of your afflictions with the
profit of them; compare your chastisements on earth with condemnation
in hell; compare the present hardships you bear with the happiness you
expect hereafter, and try whether all these will not awaken
thankfulness.
ACROSTICS.
The acrostic, though an old and favorite form of verse, in our own
language has been almost wholly an exercise of ingenuity, and has been
considered fit only for trivial subjects, to be classed among _nugæ
literariæ_. The word in its derivation includes various artificial
arrangements of lines, and many fantastic conceits have been indulged
in. Generally the acrostic has been formed of the first letters of each
line; sometimes of the last; sometimes of both; sometimes it is to be
read downward, sometimes upward. An ingenious variety called the
Telestich, is that in which the letters beginning the lines spell a
word, while the letters ending the lines, when taken together, form a
word of an opposite meaning, as in this instance:—
U nite and untie are the same—so say yo U.
N ot in wedlock, I ween, has this unity bee N.
I n the drama of marriage each wandering _gou T_
T o a new face would fly—all except you and I—
E ach seeking to alter the _spell_ in their scen E.
In these lines, on the death of Lord Hatherton, (1863), the initial and
final letters are doubled:—
H ard was his final fight with ghastly Deat _h_,
H e bravely yielded his expiring breat _h_.
A s in the Senate fighting freedom’s ple _a_,
A nd boundless in his wisdom as the se _a_.
T he public welfare seeking to direc _t_,
T he weak and undefended to protec _t_.
H is steady course in noble life from birt _h_,
H as shown his public and his private wort _h_.
E vincing mind both lofty and sedat _e_,
E ndowments great and fitted for the Stat _e_,
R eceiving high and low with open doo _r_,
R ich in his bounty to the rude and poo _r_.
T he crown reposed in him the highest trus _t_,
T o show the world that he was wise and jus _t_.
O n his ancestral banners long ag _o_,
O urs willingly relied, and will do s _o_.
N or yet extinct is noble Hatherto _n_,
N ow still he lives in gracious Littleto _n_.
Although the fanciful and trifling tricks of poetasters have been
carried to excess, and acrostics have come in for their share of satire,
the origin of such artificial poetry was of a higher dignity. When
written documents, were yet rare, every artifice was employed to enforce
on the attention or fix on the memory the verses sung by bards or
teachers. Alphabetic associations formed obvious and convenient aids for
this purpose. In the Hebrew Psalms of David, and in other parts of
Scripture, striking specimens occur. The peculiarity is not retained in
the translations, but is indicated in the common version of the 119th
Psalm by the initial letters prefixed to its divisions. The Greek
Anthology also presents examples of acrostics, and they were often used
in the old Latin language. Cicero, in his treatise “De Divinatione,” has
this remarkable passage:—“The verses of the Sybils (said he) are
distinguished by that arrangement which the Greeks call Acrostic; where,
from the first letters of each verse in order, words are formed which
express some particular meaning; as is the case with some of Ennius’s
verses, the initial letters of which make ‘which Ennius wrote!’”
Among the modern examples of acrostic writing, the most remarkable may
be found in the works of Boccaccio. It is a poem of fifty cantos, of
which Guinguenè has preserved a specimen in his Literary History of
Italy.
A successful attempt has recently been made to use this form of verse
for conveying useful information and expressing agreeable reflections,
in a volume containing a series of acrostics on eminent names,
commencing with Homer, and descending chronologically to our own time.
The alphabetic necessity of the choice of words and epithets has not
hindered the writer from giving distinct and generally correct character
to the biographical subjects, as may be seen in the following
selections, which are as remarkable for the truth and discrimination of
the descriptions as for the ingenuity of the diction:
GEORGE HERBERT.
G ood Country Parson, cheerful, quaint,
E ver in thy life a saint,
O ’er thy memory sweetly rise
R are old Izaak’s eulogies,
G iving us, in life-drawn hue,
E ach loved feature to our view.
H oly Herbert, humble, mild,
E ’en as simple as a child,
R eady thy bounty to dispense,
B eaming with benevolence,
E ver blessing, ever blest,
R escuing the most distrest;
T hy “Temple” now is Heaven’s bright rest.
DRYDEN.
D eep rolls on deep in thy majestic line.
R ich music and the stateliest march combine;
Y et, who that hears its high harmonious strain
D eems not thy genius thou didst half profane?
E xhausting thy great power of song on themes
N ot worthy of its strong, effulgent beams.
REYNOLDS.
R are Painter! whose unequall’d skill could trace
E ach light and shadow of the changeful face;
Y oung “Samuel’s,” now, beaming with piety,
N ow the proud “Banished Lord’s” dark misery,
O r “Ugolino’s” ghastly visage, wild,
L ooking stern horror on each starving child;
D elights not less of social sort were thine,
S uch as with Burke, or e’en with Johnson shine.
BURKE.
B rilliant thy genius ’mongst a brilliant throng;
U nique thy eloquence of pen and tongue;
R ome’s Tully loftier flights could scarce command,
K indling thy soul to thoughts that matchless stand
E ver sublime and beautiful and grand.
HUBER.
H ow keen thy vision, e’en though reft of sight!
U sing with double power the mind’s clear light:
B ees, and their hives, thy curious ken has scanned.
E ach cell, with geometric wisdom planned,
R ich stores of honeyed knowledge thus at thy command.
CRABBE.
C opyist of Nature—simply, sternly true,—
R eal the scenes that in thy page we view.
“A mid the huts where poor men lie” unknown,
B right humor or deep pathos thou hast thrown.
B ard of the “Borough” and the “Village,” see—
E ’en haughty Byron owns he’s charm’d by thee.
WALTER SCOTT.
W ondrous Wizard of the North,
A rmed with spells of potent worth!
L ike to that greatest Bard of ours
T he mighty magic of thy powers:
E ’en thy bright fancy’s offspring find
R esemblance to his myriad mind.
S uch the creations that we see—
C haracter, manners, life in thee—
O f Scotia’s deeds, a proud display,
T he glories of a bygone day;
T hy genius foremost stands in all her long array.
WORDSWORTH.
W andering, through many a year, ’mongst Cumbria’s hills,
O ’er her wild fells, sweet vales, and sunny lakes,
R ich stores of thought thy musing mind distils,
D ay-dreams of poesy thy soul awakes:—
S uch was thy life—a poet’s life, I ween;
W orshipper thou of Nature! every scene
O f beauty stirred thy fancy’s deeper mood,
R eflection calmed the current of thy blood:
T hus in the wide “Excursion” of thy mind,
H igh thoughts in _words_ of _worth_ we still may find.
IRVING.
I n easy, natural, graceful charm of style,
R esembling Goldy’s “Vicar,”—free from guile:
V ein of rich humor through thy “Sketch-Book” flows.
I magination her bright colors shows.
N o equal hast thou ’mongst thy brother band,
G enial thy soul, worthy our own loved land.
MACREADY.
M aster Tragedian! worthy all our praise.
A ction and utterance such as bygone days
C ould oftener boast, were thine. Need we but name
R oman Virginius? while our Shakspeare’s fame
E ver ’twas thy chief joy and pride to uprear,
A nd give us back Macbeth, Othello, Lear.
D elight to thousands oft thou gav’st, and now
Y ears of calm lettered ease ’tis thine to know.
LONGFELLOW.
L ays like thine have many a charm;
O ft thy themes the heart must warm.
N ow o’er Slavery’s guilt and woes,
G rief and shame’s deep hues it throws;
F ar up Alpine heights is heard
“E xcelsior,” now the stirring word;
“L ife’s Psalm,” now, onward is inviting,
L ongings for nobler deeds exciting;
O ’er Britain now resounds thy name,
W hile States unborn shall swell thy fame.
SOUTHEY.
S erenely bright thy life’s pure stream did glide,
O n sweet romantic Derwentwater’s side.
U nder great Skiddaw—there, in Epic lays,
T hou dream’dst a poet’s dreams of olden days,
H ow Madoc wandered o’er the Atlantic wave,
E astern Kehama, Roderic the brave,
Y ears cannot from our fondest memory lave.
MACAULAY.
M asterly critic! in whose brilliant style
A nd rich historic coloring breathes again—
C lothed in most picturesque costume the while—
A ll the dim past, with all its bustling train.
U nder this vivid, eloquent painting, see
L ife given anew to our old history’s page;
A nd in thy stirring ballad poetry,
Y outh’s dreams of ancient Rome once more our minds engage.
OLIVER’S IMPROMPTU.
Oliver, a sailor and patriot, with a merited reputation for extempore
rhyming, while on a visit to his cousin Benedict Arnold, after the war,
was asked by the latter to amuse a party of English officers with some
extemporaneous effusion, whereupon he stood up and repeated the
following Ernulphus curse, which would have satisfied Dr. Slop[4]
himself:—
B orn for a curse to virtue and mankind,
E arth’s broadest realm ne’er knew so black a mind.
N ight’s sable veil your crimes can never hide,
E ach one so great, ’twould glut historic tide.
D efunct, your cursed memory will live
I n all the glare that infamy can give.
C urses of ages will attend your name,
T raitors alone will glory in your shame.
A lmighty vengeance sternly waits to roll
R ivers of sulphur on your treacherous soul:
N ature looks shuddering back with conscious dread
O n such a tarnished blot as she has made.
L et hell receive you, riveted in chains,
D oomed to the hottest focus of its flames.
Footnote 4:
Tristram Shandy.
ALLITERATIVE ACROSTIC.
The following alliterative acrostic is a gem in its way. Miss Kitty
Stephens was the celebrated London vocalist, and is now the Dowager
Countess of Essex:—
S he sings so soft, so sweet, so soothing still
T hat to the tone ten thousand thoughts there thrill;
E lysian ecstasies enchant each ear—
P leasure’s pure pinions poise—prince, peasant, peer,
H ushing high hymns, Heaven hears her harmony,—
E arth’s envy ends; enthralled each ear, each eye;
N umbers need ninefold nerve, or nearly name,
S oul-stirring §Stephens’§ skill, sure seraphs sing the same.
CHRONOGRAMMATIC PASQUINADE.
On the election of Pope Leo X., in 1440, the following satirical
acrostic appeared, to mark the date
M C C C C X L.
Multi Cœci Cardinales Creaverunt Cœcum Decimum (X) Leonem.
MONASTIC VERSE.
The merit of this fine specimen will be found in its being at the same
time _acrostic_, _mesostic_, and _telestic_.
=I=nter cuncta micans =I=gniti sidera cœl=I=
=E=xpellit tenebras =E= toto Phœbus ut orb=E=;
=S=ic cæcas removet JE=S=US caliginis umbra=S=,
=V=ivificansque simul =V=ero præcordia mot=V=,
=S=olem justitiæ =S=ese probat esse beati=S=.
The following translation preserves the acrostic and mesostic, though
not the telestic form of the original:—
In glory see the rising sun, Illustrious orb of day,
Enlightening heaven’s wide expanse, Expel night’s gloom away.
So light into the darkest soul, JESUS, Thou dost impart,
Uplifting Thy life-giving smiles Upon the deadened heart:
Sun Thou of Righteousness Divine, Sole King of Saints Thou art.
[Illustration]
The figure of a §FISH§ carved on many of the monuments in the Roman
Catacombs, is an emblematic acrostic, intended formerly to point out the
burial-place of a Christian, without revealing the fact to the pagan
persecutors. The Greek word for _fish_ is Ιχθῦς, which the Christians
understood to mean _Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour_,—the
letters forming the initials of the following Greek words:—
Ιησους— Jesus
Χριστος— Christ,
Θεου— of God,
Υιος— Son,
Σωτηρ— Saviour.
NAPOLEON FAMILY.
The names of the male crowned heads of the extinct Napoleon dynasty form
a remarkable acrostic:—
N apoleon, Emperor of the French.
I oseph, King of Spain.
H ieronymus, King of Westphalia.
I oachim, King of Naples.
L ouis, King of Holland.
RACHEL.
Rachel, on one occasion, received a most remarkable present. It was a
diadem, in antique style, adorned with six jewels. The stones were so
set as to spell, in acrostic style, the name of the great _artiste_, and
also to signify six of her principal _rôles_, thus:
R uby, R oxana,
A methyst, A menaide,
C ornelian, C amille,
H ematite, H ermione,
E merald, E milie,
L apis Lazuli, L aodice.
This mode of constructing a name or motto by the initial letters of gems
was formerly fashionable on wedding rings.
MASONIC MEMENTO.
The following curious memento was written in the early part of last
century:—
M—Magnitude, Moderation, Magnanimity.
A—Affability, Affection, Attention.
S—Silence, Secrecy, Security.
O—Obedience, Order, Œconomy.
N—Noble, Natural, Neighborly.
R—Rational, Reciprocative, Receptive.
Y—Yielding, Ypight (fixed), Yare (ready).
Which is explained thus:—
Masonry, of things, teaches how to attain their just Magnitude.
To inordinate affections the art of Moderation.
It inspires the soul with true Magnanimity.
It also teaches us Affability.
To love each other with true Affection.
And to pay to things sacred a just Attention.
It instructs us how to keep Silence,
To maintain Secrecy,
And preserve Security;
Also, to whom it is due, Obedience,
To observe good Order,
And a commendable Œconomy.
It likewise teaches us how to be worthily Noble,
Truly Natural,
And without reserve Neighborly.
It instils principles indisputably Rational,
And forms in us a disposition Reciprocative,
And Receptive.
It makes us, to things indifferent, Yielding,
To what is absolutely necessary, perfectly Ypight,
And to do all that is truly good, most willingly Yare.
HEMPE.
Bacon says, “The trivial prophecy which I heard when I was a child and
Queen Elizabeth was in the flower of her years was—
When Hempe is spun
England’s done;
whereby it was generally conceived that after the sovereigns had reigned
which had the letters of that word HEMPE, (which were Henry, Edward,
Mary, Philip, Elizabeth,) England should come to utter confusion; which,
thanks be to God, is verified in the change of the name, for that the
King’s style is now no more of _England_, but of _Britain_.”
THE BREVITY OF HUMAN LIFE.
_Behold, alas! our days we spend:
How vain they be, how soon they end!_
BEHOLD
How short a span
Was long enough of old
To measure out the life of man;
In those well-tempered days his time was then
Surveyed, cast up, and found but threescore years and ten.
ALAS!
What is all that?
They come and slide and pass
Before my tongue can tell thee what.
The posts of time are swift, which having run
Their seven short stages o’er, their short-lived task is done.
OUR DAYS
Begun, we bend
To sleep, to antic plays
And toys, until the first stage end;
12 waning moons, twice 5 times told, we give
To unrecovered loss: we rather breathe than live.
WE SPEND
A ten years’ breath
Before we apprehend
What ’tis to live in fear of death;
Our childish dreams are filled with painted joys
Which please our sense, and waking prove but toys.
HOW VAIN,
How wretched is
Poor man, that doth remain
A slave to such a state as this!
His days are short at longest; few at most;
They are but bad at best, yet lavished out, or lost.
THEY BE
The secret springs
That make our minutes flee
On wings more swift than eagles’ wings!
Our life’s a clock, and every gasp of breath
Breathes forth a warning grief, till time shall strike a death.
HOW SOON
Our new-born light
Attains to full-aged noon!
And this, how soon to gray-haired night;
We spring, we bud, we blossom, and we blast,
Ere we can count our days, our days they flee so fast.
THEY END
When scarce begun,
And ere we apprehend
That we begin to live, our life is done.
Man, count thy days; and if they fly too fast
For thy dull thoughts to count, count every day the last.
A VALENTINE.
The reader, by taking the first letter of the first of the following
lines, the second letter of the second line, the third of the third, and
so on to the end, can spell the name of the lady to whom they were
addressed by Edgar A. Poe.
For her this rhyme is penned whose luminous eyes,
BRightly expressive as the twins of Lœda,
ShAll find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
UpoN the page, enwrapped from every reader.
SearCh narrowly the lines!—they hold a treasure
DivinE—a talisman—an amulet
That muSt be worn _at heart_. Search well the measure—
The wordS—the syllables! Do not forget
The triviAlest point, or you may lose your labor!
And yet theRe is in this no Gordian knot
Which one miGht not undo without a sabre,
If one could mErely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upoN the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillaTing soul, there lie _perdus_
Three eloquent wOrds, oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets—aS the name’s a poet’s, too.
Its letters, althouGh naturally lying
Like the knight PintO—Mendez Ferdinando—
Still form a synonym fOr Truth. Cease trying!
You will not read the riDdle, though you do the best you _can do_.
ANAGRAMS.
But with still more disordered march advance
(Nor march it seemed, but wild fantastic dance)
The uncouth Anagrams, distorted train,
Shifting in double mazes o’er the plain.—_Scribleriad._
Camden, in a chapter in his _Remains_, on this frivolous and now almost
obsolete intellectual exercise, defines Anagrams to be a dissolution of
a name into its letters, as its elements; and a new connection into
words is formed by their transposition, if possible, without addition,
subtraction, or change of the letters: and the words should make a
sentence applicable to the person or thing named. The anagram is
complimentary or satirical; it may contain some allusion to an event, or
describe some personal characteristic. Thus, Sir Thomas Wiat bore his
own designation in his name:—
Wiat—A Wit.
_Astronomer_ may be made _Moon-starer_, and _Telegraph_, _Great Help_.
_Funeral_ may be converted into _Real Fun_, and _Presbyterian_ may be
made _Best in prayer_. In _stone_ may be found _tones_, _notes_, or
_seton_; and (taking _j_ and _v_ as duplicates of _i_ and _u_) the
letters of the alphabet may be arranged so as to form the words _back_,
_frown’d_, _phlegm_, _quiz_, and _Styx_. _Roma_ may be transposed into
_amor_, _armo_, _Maro_, _mora_, _oram_, or _ramo_. The following epigram
occurs in a book printed in 1660:
Hate and debate Rome through the world has spread;
Yet Roma _amor_ is, if backward read:
Then is it strange Rome hate should foster? No;
For out of backward _love_ all hate doth grow.
It is said that the cabalists among the Jews were professed
anagrammatists, the third part of their art called _themuru_ (changing)
being nothing more than finding the hidden and mystical meaning in
names, by transposing and differently combining the letters of those
names. Thus, of the letters of _Noah’s_ name in Hebrew, they made
_grace_; and of the _Messiah_ they made _he shall rejoice_.
Lycophron, a Greek writer who lived three centuries before the Christian
era, records two anagrams in his poem on the siege of Troy entitled
_Cassandra_. One is on the name of Ptolemy Philadelphus, in whose reign
Lycophron lived:—
ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΣ ΑΠΟ ΜΕΛΙΤΟΣ—Made of honey.
The other is on Ptolemy’s queen, Arsinoë:—
ΑΡΣΙΝΟΕ. ΕΡΑΣ ΙΟΝ—Juno’s violet.
Eustachius informs us that this practice was common among the Greeks,
and gives numerous examples; such, for instance, as the transposition of
the word Αρετη, virtue, into Ερατη, lovely.
Owen, the Welsh epigrammatist, sometimes called the British Martial,
lived in the golden age of anagrammatism. The following are fair
specimens of his ingenuity:—
§Galenus—Angelus.§
_Angelus_ es bonus anne malus; _Galene!_ salutis
Humana custos, _angelus_ ergo bonus,
§De Fide—Anagramma quincuplex.§
_Recta_ fides, _certa_ est, _arcet_ mala schismata, non est,
Sicut _Creta_, fides fictilis, arte _caret_.
§Brevitas—Anagramma triplex.§
Perspicua brevitate nihil magis afficit aures
In _verbis_, _ubi res_ postulat, esto _brevis_.
In a _New Help to Discourse_, 12mo, London, 1684, occurs an anagram with
a very quaint epigrammatic “exposition:”—
TOAST—A SOTT.
A toast is like a sot; or, what is most
Comparative, a sot is like a toast;
For when their substances in liquor sink,
Both properly are said to be in drink.
Cotton Mather was once described as distinguished for—
“Care to guide his flock and feed his lambs
By words, works, prayers, psalms, alms, _and anagrams_.”
Sylvester, in dedicating to his sovereign his translation of Du Bartas,
rings the following loyal change on the name of his liege:—
James Stuart—A just master.
Of the poet Waller, the old anagrammatist said:—
His brows need not with _Lawrel_ to be bound,
Since in his name with _Lawrel_ he is crowned.
The author of an extraordinary work on heraldry was thus expressively
complimented:—
Randle Holmes.
Lo, Men’s Herald!
The following on the name of the mistress of Charles IX. of France is
historically true:—
Marie Touchet,
Je charme tout.
In the assassin of Henry III.,
Frère Jacques Clement,
they discovered
C’est l’enfer qui m’a crée.
The French appear to have practised this art with peculiar facility. A
French poet, deeply in love, in one day sent his mistress, whose name
was _Magdelaine_, three dozen of anagrams on her single name.
The father Pierre de St. Louis became a Carmelite monk on discovering
that his lay name—
Ludovicus Bartelemi—
yielded the anagram—
Carmelo se devovet.
Of all the extravagances occasioned by the anagrammatic fever when at
its height, none equals what is recorded of an infatuated Frenchman in
the seventeenth century, named André Pujom, who, finding in his name the
anagram _Pendu à Riom_, (the seat of criminal justice in the province of
Auvergne,) felt impelled to fulfill his destiny, committed a capital
offence in Auvergne, and was actually hung in the place to which the
omen pointed.
The anagram on General Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, on the
restoration of Charles II., is also a chronogram, including the date of
that important event:—
Georgius Monke, Dux de Aumarle,
Ego Regem reduxi Ano. Sa. MDCLVV.
The mildness of the government of Elizabeth, contrasted with her
intrepidity against the Iberians, is thus picked out of her title: she
is made the English lamb and the Spanish lioness.
Elizabetha Regina Angliæ,
Anglis Agna, Hiberiæ Lea.
The unhappy history of Mary Queen of Scots, the deprivation of her
kingdom, and her violent death, are expressed in the following Latin
anagram:—
Maria Steuarda Scotorum Regina.
Trusa vi Regnis, morte amara cado.
In Taylor’s _Suddaine Turne of Fortune’s Wheele_, occurs the following
very singular example:—
But, holie father, I am certifyed
That they your power and policye deride;
And how of you they make an anagram,
The best and bitterest that the wits could frame.
As thus:
_Supremus Pontifex Romanus_.
Annagramma:
_O non sum super petrum fixus_.
The anagram on the well-known bibliographer, William Oldys, may claim a
place among the first productions of this class. It was by Oldys
himself, and was found by his executors among his MSS.
In word and §WILL I AM§ a friend to you;
And one friend §OLD§ is worth a hundred new.
The following anagram, preserved in the files of the First Church in
Roxbury, was sent to Thomas Dudley, a governor and major-general of the
colony of Massachusetts, in 1645. He died in 1653, aged 77.
THOMAS DUDLEY.
Ah! old must dye.
A death’s head on your hand you neede not weare,
A dying head you on your shoulders beare.
You need not one to mind you, you must dye,
You in your name may spell mortalitye.
Younge men may dye, but old men, these dye must;
’Twill not be long before you turne to dust.
Before you turne to dust! ah! must! old! dye!
What shall younge doe when old in dust doe lye?
When old in dust lye, what N. England doe?
When old in dust doe lye, it’s best dye too.
In an Elegy written by Rev. John Cotton on the death of John Alden, a
magistrate of the old Plymouth Colony, who died in 1687, the following
_phonetic_ anagram occurs:—
John Alden—End al on hi.
The Calvinistic opponents of Arminius made of his name a not very
creditable Latin anagram:—
Jacobus Arminius,
Vani orbis amicus;
(The friend of a false world.)
while his friends, taking advantage of the Dutch mode of writing it,
_H_arminius, hurled back the conclusive argument,
Habui curam Sionis.
(I have had charge of Zion.)
Perhaps the most extraordinary anagram to be met with, is that on the
Latin of Pilate’s question to the Saviour, “What is truth?”—St. John,
xviii. 38.
Quid est veritas?
Est vir qui adest.
(It is the man who is before you.)
Live, vile, and evil, have the self-same letters;
He lives but vile, whom evil holds in fetters.
If you transpose what ladies wear—§Veil§,
’Twill plainly show what bad folks are—§Vile§.
Again if you transpose the same,
You’ll see an ancient Hebrew name—§Levi§.
Change it again, and it will show
What all on earth desire to do—§Live§.
Transpose the letters yet once more,
What bad men do you’ll then explore—§Evil§.
PERSIST.
A lady, being asked by a gentleman to join in the bonds of matrimony
with him, wrote the word “§Stripes§,” stating at the time that the
letters making up the word stripes could be changed so as to make an
answer to his question. The result proved satisfactory.
When _I cry that I sin_ is transposed, it is clear,
My resource _Christianity_ soon will appear.
The two which follow are peculiarly appropriate:—
Florence Nightingale,
Flit on, charming angel.
John Abernethy,
Johnny the bear.
T I M E
I T E M
M E T I
E M I T
This word, Time, is the only word in the English language which can be
thus arranged, and the different transpositions thereof are all at the
same time Latin words. These words, in English as well as in Latin, may
be read either upward or downward. Their signification as Latin words is
as follows:—Time—fear thou; Item—likewise; Meti—to be measured; Emit—he
buys.
Some striking German and Latin anagrams have been made of Luther’s name,
of which the following are specimens. Doctor Martinus Lutherus
transposed, gives _O Rom, Luther ist der schwan_. In D. Martinus
Lutherus may be found _ut turris das lumen_ (like a tower you give
light). In Martinus Lutherus we have _vir multa struens_ (the man who
builds up much), and _ter matris vulnus_ (he gave three wounds to the
mother church). Martin Luther will make _lehrt in Armuth_ (he teaches in
poverty).
Jablonski welcomed the visit of Stanislaus, King of Poland, with his
noble relatives of the house of Lescinski, to the annual examination of
the students under his care, at the gymnasium of Lissa, with a number of
anagrams, all composed of the letters in the words _Domus Lescinia_. The
recitations closed with a heroic dance, in which each youth carried a
shield inscribed with a legend of the letters. After a new evolution,
the boys exhibited the words _Ades incolumis_; next, _Omnis es lucida_;
next, _Omne sis lucida_; fifthly, _Mane sidus loci_; sixthly, _Sis
columna Dei_; and at the conclusion, _I scande solium_.
A TELEGRAM ANAGRAMMATISED.
Though but a _late germ_, with a wondrous elation,
Yet like a _great elm_ it o’ershadows each station.
_Et malgré_ the office is still a large fee mart,
So joyous the crowd was, you’d thought it a _glee mart_;
But they raged at no news from the nation’s belligerent,
And I said _let’m rage_, since the air is refrigerant.
I then _met large_ numbers, whose drink was not sherbet,
Who scarce could look up when their eyes the gas-_glare met_;
So when I had learned from commercial adviser
That _mere galt_ for sand was the great fertilizer,
I bade _Mr. Eaglet_, although ’twas ideal,
Get some from the clay-pit, and so _get’m real_;
Then, just as my footstep was leaving the portal,
I met an _elm targe_ on a great Highland mortal,
With the maid he had woo’d by the loch’s flowery _margelet_,
And row’d in his boat, which for rhyme’s sake call bargelet,
And blithe to the breeze would have set the sail daily,
But it blew at that rate which the sailors _term gale_, aye;
I stumbled against the fair bride he had married,
When a _merle gat_ at large from a cage that she carried;
She gave a loud screech! and I could not well blame her,
But lame as I was, I’d no wish to _get lamer_;
So I made my escape—ne’er an antelope fleeter,
Lest my verse, like the poet, should limp through _lag metre_.
Anagrams are sometimes found in old epitaphial inscriptions. For
example, at St. Andrews:—
Catharine Carstairs,
_Casta rara Christiana_.
_Chaste, rare Christian._
At Newenham church, Northampton:—
William Thorneton.
_O little worth in man._
At Keynsham:—
Mrs. Joane Flover.
_Love for anie._
At Mannington, 1631:—
Katherine Lougher,
_Lower taken higher_.
Maitland has the following curious specimen:—
How much there is in a word—_monastery_, says I: why, that makes _nasty
Rome_; and when I looked at it again, it was evidently _more nasty_—a
very vile place _or mean sty_. _Ay, monster_, says I, you are found out.
What monster? said the Pope. What monster? said I. Why, your own image
there, _stone Mary_. That, he replied, is _my one star_, my Stella
Maris, my treasure, my guide! No, said I, you should rather say, _my
treason_. _Yet no arms_, said he. No, quoth I, quiet may suit best, as
long as you have _no mastery_, I mean _money arts_. No, said he again,
those are _Tory means_; and Dan, _my senator_, will baffle them. I don’t
know that, said I, but I think one might make no _mean story_ out of
this one word—_monastery_.
CHRONOGRAMS.
Addison, in his remarks on the different species of false wit, (Spect.
No. 60,) thus notices the chronogram. “This kind of wit appears very
often on modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they represent
in the inscription the year in which they were coined. Thus we see on a
medal of Gustavus Adolphus the following words:—
§ChrIstVs DuX ergo trIVMphVs.§
If you take the pains to pick the figures out of the several words, and
range them in their proper order, you will find they amount to
MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the year in which the medal was stamped; for as some
of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest and overtop their
fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters
and as figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole
dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would think they
were searching after an apt classical term; but instead of that they are
looking out a word that has an L, an M, or a D, in it. When therefore we
meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not so much to look in them
for the thought as for the year of the Lord.”
Apropos of this humorous allusion to the _Germanesque_ character of the
chronogram, it is worthy of notice that European tourists find far more
numerous examples of it in the inscriptions on the churches on the banks
of the Rhine than in any other part of the continent.
* * * * *
On the title-page of “_Hugo Grotius his Sophompaneas_” the date, 1652,
is not given in the usual form, but is included in the name of the
author, thus:—
§franCIs goLDsMIth.§
Howell, in his _German Diet_, after narrating the death of Charles, son
of Philip II. of Spain, says:—
If you desire to know the year, this chronogram will tell you:
§fILIVs ante DIeM patrIos InqVIrIt In annos.§
MDLVVIIIIIIII, or 1568.
The following commemorates the death of Queen Elizabeth:—
_My Day Is Closed In Immortality._ (1603.)
A German book was issued in 1706, containing fac-similes and
descriptions of more than two hundred medals coined in honor of Martin
Luther. An inscription on one of them expresses the date of his death,
1546, as follows:—
§ECCe nVnc MorItVs IVstVs In paCe ChrIstI exItV tVto et beato.§
The most extraordinary attempt of this kind that has yet been made,
bears the following title:—
_Chronographica Gratulatio in Felicissimum adventum Serenissimi
Cardinalis Ferdinandi, Hispaniarum Infantis, a Collegio Soc. Jesu._
A dedication to St. Michael and an address to Ferdinand are followed by
one hundred hexameters, _every one of which is a chronogram_, and each
gives the same result, 1634. The first and last verses are subjoined as
a specimen.
AngeLe CæLIVogI MIChaëL LUX UnICa CætUs.
VersICULIs InCLUsa, fLUent In sæCULa CentUM.
Palindromes.
RECURRENT, RECIPROCAL, OR REVERSIBLE WORDS AND VERSES.
The only fair specimen we can find of reciprocal words, or those which,
read backwards or forwards, are the same, is the following couplet,
which, according to an old book, cost the author a world of foolish
labor:—
Odo tenet mulum, madidam mulum tenet Odo.
Anna tenet mappam, madidam mappam tenet Anna.
The following admired reciprocal lines, addressed to St. Martin by
Satan, according to the legend, the reader will find on perusal, either
backwards or forwards, precisely the same:—
Signa te signa; temere me tangis et angis;
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.
[St. Martin having given up the profession of a soldier, and having
been made Bishop of Tours, when prelates neither kept carriages nor
servants, had occasion to go to Rome, in order to consult the Pope
upon ecclesiastical matters. As he was walking along the road he met
the devil, who politely accosted him, and ventured to observe how
fatiguing and indecorous it was for him to perform so long a journey
on foot, like the commonest pilgrim. The Saint understood the drift of
Old Nick’s address, and commanded him immediately to become a beast of
burden, or _jumentum_; which the devil did in a twinkling by assuming
the shape of a mule. The Saint jumped upon the fiend’s back, who at
first trotted cheerfully along, but soon slackened his pace. The
bishop of course had neither whip nor spurs, but was possessed of a
much more powerful stimulus, for, says the legend, he made the sign of
the cross, and the smarting devil instantly galloped away. Soon
however, and naturally enough, the father of sin returned to sloth and
obstinacy, and Martin hurried him again with repeated signs of the
cross, till, twitched and stung to the quick by those crossings so
hateful to him, the vexed and tired reprobate uttered the foregoing
distich in a rage, meaning, _Cross, cross yourself; you annoy and vex
me without necessity; for owing to my exertions, Rome, the object of
your wishes, will soon be near_.]
The Palindrome changes the sense in the backward reading; the _Versus
Cancrinus_ retains the sense in both instances unchanged, as in this
instance:—
Bei Leid lieh stets Heil die Lieb.
(In trouble comfort is lent by love.)
Similarly recurrent is the lawyer’s motto,—
Si nummi immunis,
translated by Camden, “Give me my fee, I warrant you free.”
The Greek inscription on the mosque of St. Sophia, in Constantinople,
Νίφον ἀνομήματα μὴ μόναν ὄφιν,[5]
Footnote 5:
Meaning in substance, _Purify the mind as well as the body_.
presents the same words, whether read from left to right, or from right
to left. So also the expressions in English,—
Madam, I’m Adam. (_Adam to Eve._)
Name no one man.
Able was I ere I saw Elba. (_Napoleon loq._)
Snug & raw was I ere I saw war & guns.
Red rum did emit revel ere Lever time did murder.
Red root put up to order.
Trash? even interpret Nineveh’s art.
Lewd did I live, evil I did dwel.
Draw pupil’s lip upward.
This enigmatical line surrounds a figure of the sun in the mosaic
pavement of Sa. Maria del Fiori, at Florence:—
En giro torte sol ciclos et rotor igne.
These lines are supposed to be addressed to a young man detained at Rome
by a love affair:—
Roma ibi tibi sedes—ibi tibi Amor;
Roma etsi te terret et iste Amor,
Ibi etsi vis te non esse—sed es ibi,
Roma te tenet et Amor.
At Rome you live—at Rome you love;
From Rome that love may you affright,
Although you’d leave, you never move,
For love and Rome both bar your flight.
Dean Swift wrote a letter to Dr. Sheridan, composed of Latin words
strung together as mere gibberish but each word, when read backwards,
makes passable English. Take for example the following short sentences:—
Mi Sana. Odioso ni mus rem. Moto ima os illud dama nam? (I’m an ass. O
so I do in summer. O Tom, am I so dull, I a mad man?)
Inscription for a hospital, paraphrased from the Psalms:—
Acide me malo, sed non desola me, medica.
The ingenious Latin verses subjoined are reversible verbally only, not
literally, and will be found to embody opposite meanings by commencing
with the last word and reading backwards:—
Prospicimus modo, quod durabunt tempore longo,
Fœdera, nec patriæ pax cito diffugiet.
Diffugiet cito pax patriæ, nec fœdera longo,
Tempore durabunt, quod modo prospicimus.
The following hexameter from Santa Marca Novella, Florence, refers to
the sacrifice of Abel (Gen. iv. 4). Reversed, it is a pentameter, and
refers to the sacrifice of Cain (iv. 3).
Sacrum pingue dabo non macram sacrificabo,
Sacrificabo macram non dabo pingue sacrum.
The subjoined distich arose from the following circumstance. A tutor,
after having explained to his class one of the odes of Horace, undertook
to dictate the same in hexameter verses, as an exercise (as he said). It
cost him considerable trouble: he hesitated several times, and
occasionally substituted other words, but finally succeeded. Some of his
scholars thought he would not accomplish his task; others maintained
that, having begun, it was a point of honor to complete it.
Retro mente labo, non metro continuabo;
Continuabo metro; non labo mente retro.
Addison mentions an epigram called the _Witches’ Prayer_, that “fell
into verse when it was read either backward or forward, excepting only
that it cursed one way, and blessed the other.”
One of the most remarkable palindromes on record is the following. Its
distinguishing peculiarity is that the first letter of each successive
word unites to spell the first word; the second letter of each, the
second word; and so on throughout; and the same will be found precisely
true on reversal.
SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS.
But the neatest and prettiest specimen that has yet appeared comes from
a highly cultivated lady who was attached to the court of Queen
Elizabeth. Having been banished from the court on suspicion of too great
familiarity with a nobleman then high in favor, the lady adopted this
device,—_the moon covered by a cloud_,—and the following palindrome for
a motto:—
ABLATA AT ALBA.
(Banished, but blameless.)
The merit of this kind of composition was never in any example so
heightened by appropriateness and delicacy of sentiment.
Paschasius composed the recurrent epitaph on Henry IV.:—
Arca serenum me gere regem, munere sacra,
Solem, arcas, animos, omina sacra, melos.
A very curious continuous series of palindromes was printed in Vienna in
1802. It was written in ancient Greek by a modern Greek named Ambrosius,
who called it Πόιημα καρκινικὸν. It contains 455 lines, every one of
which is a literal palindrome. A few are selected at random, as
examples:—
Ἰσα πασι Ση τε υη, Συ ὁ Μουσηγετης ις απασι.
Νεαν ασω μελιφωνον, ὦ φιλε, Μωσαν αεν.
Ὠ λακωνικε, σε μονω τω Νομε, σε κινω καλω.
Ἀρετα πηγασε σε σα γη πατερα.
Σωτηρ συ εσο, ὦ ελεε θεε λεω ος ευς ρητως.
The following line is expressive of the sentiments of a Roman Catholic;
read backwards, of those of a Huguenot:—
Patrum dicta probo, nec sacris belligerabo.
Belligerabo sacris, nec probo dicta patrum.
These lines, written to please a group of youthful folk, serve to show
that our English tongue is as capable of being twisted into uncouth
shapes as is the Latin, if any one will take the trouble:—
One winter’s eve, around the fire, a cozy group we sat,
Engaged, as was our custom old, in after-dinner chat;
Small-talk it was, no doubt, because the smaller folk were there,
And they, the young monopolists! absorbed the lion’s share.
Conundrums, riddles, rebuses, cross-questions, puns atrocious,
Taxed all their ingenuity, till Peter the precocious—
Old head on shoulders juvenile—cried, “Now for a new task:
Let’s try our hand at _Palindromes_!” “Agreed! But first,” we ask,
“Pray, Peter, what _are_ Palindromes?” The forward imp replied,
“A _Palindrome_’s a string of words of sense or meaning void,
Which reads both ways the same: and here, with your permission,
I’ll cite some half a score of samples, lacking all precision
(But held together by loose rhymes, to test my definition):—
“A milksop, jilted by his lass, or wandering in his wits,
Might murmur, ‘_Stiff, O dairy-man, in a myriad of fits!_’
“A limner by photography dead-beat in competition,
Thus grumbled, ‘_No, it is opposed; art sees trade’s opposition!_’
“A nonsense-loving nephew might his soldier-uncle dun
With ‘_Now stop, major-general, are negro jam-pots won?_’
“A supercilious grocer, if inclined that way, might snub
A child with ‘_But regusa store, babe, rots a sugar-tub_.’
“Thy spectre, Alexander, is a fortress, cried Hephaestion.
Great A. said, ‘_No, it’s a bar of gold, a bad log for a bastion!_’
“A timid creature, fearing rodents—mice and such small fry—
‘_Stop, Syrian, I start at rats in airy spots_,’ might cry.
“A simple soul, whose wants are few, might say, with hearty zest,
‘_Desserts I desire not, so long no lost one rise distressed_.’
“A stern Canadian parent might in earnest, not in fun,
Exclaim, ‘_No sot nor Ottawa law at Toronto, son!_’
“A crazy dentist might declare, as something strange or new,
That ‘_Paget saw an Irish tooth, sir, in a waste gap!_’ True!
“A surly student, hating sweets, might answer with _elan_,
‘_Name tarts? no, medieval slave, I demonstrate man!_’
“He who in Nature’s bitters findeth sweet food every day,
‘_Eureka! till I pull up ill I take rue_,’ well might say.”
Equivoque.
COPY OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY CARDINAL RICHELIEU TO THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR
AT ROME.
First read the letter across, then double it in the middle, and read the
first column.
§Sir§,—Mons. Compigne, a Savoyard by birth, a Friar of the order of Saint Benedict,
is the man who will present to you as his passport to your protection,
this letter. He is one of the most discreet, the wisest and the least
meddling persons that I have ever known or have had the pleasure to converse with.
He has long earnestly solicited me to write to you in his favor, and
to give him a suitable character, together with a letter of credence;
which I have accordingly granted to his real merit, rather I must say, than to
his importunity; for, believe me, Sir, his modesty is only exceeded by his worth,
I should be sorry that you should be wanting in serving him on account of being
misinformed of his real character; I should be afflicted if you were
as some other gentlemen have been, misled on that score, who now esteem him,
and those among the best of my friends; wherefore, and from no other motive
I think it my duty to advertise you that you are most particularly desired,
to have especial attention to all he does, to show him all the respect imaginable,
nor venture to say any thing before him, that may either offend or displease him
in any sort; for I may truly say, there is no man I love so much as M. Compigne,
none whom I should more regret to see neglected, as no one can be more worthy to be
received and trusted in decent society. Base, therefore, would it be to injure him.
And I well know, that as soon as you are made sensible of his virtues, and
shall become acquainted with him you will love him as I do; and then
you will thank me for this my advice. The assurance I entertain of your
Courtesy obliges me to desist from urging this matter to you further, or
saying any thing more on this subject. Believe me, Sir, &c. RICHELIEU.
A LOVE-LETTER.
The reader, after perusing it, will please read it again, commencing on
the first line, then the third and fifth, and so on, reading each
alternate line to the end.
§To Miss M——.§
—The great love I have hitherto expressed for you
is false and I find my indifference towards you
—increases daily. The more I see of you, the more
you appear in my eyes an object of contempt.
—I feel myself every way disposed and determined
to hate you. Believe me, I never had an intention
—to offer you my hand. Our last conversation has
left a tedious insipidity, which has by no means
—given me the most exalted idea of your character.
Your temper would make me extremely unhappy
—and were we united, I should experience nothing but
the hatred of my parents added to the anything but
—pleasure in living with you. I have indeed a heart
to bestow, but I do not wish you to imagine it
—at your service. I could not give it to any one more
inconsistent and capricious than yourself, and less
—capable to do honor to my choice and to my family.
Yes, Miss, I hope you will be persuaded that
—I speak sincerely, and you will do me a favor
to avoid me. I shall excuse you taking the trouble
—to answer this. Your letters are always full of
impertinence, and you have not a shadow of
—wit and good sense. Adieu! adieu! believe me
so averse to you, that it is impossible for me even
—to be your most affectionate friend and humble
servant. L——.
INGENIOUS SUBTERFUGE.
A young lady newly married, being obliged to show to her husband all the
letters she wrote, sent the following to an intimate friend. The key is,
to read the first and then every alternate line only.
—I cannot be satisfied, my dearest friend!
blest as I am in the matrimonial state,
—unless I pour into your friendly bosom,
which has ever been in unison with mine,
—the various sensations which swell
with the liveliest emotion of pleasure,
—my almost bursting heart. I tell you my dear
husband is the most amiable of men,
—I have now been married seven weeks, and
never have found the least reason to
—repent the day that joined us. My husband is
both in person and manners far from resembling
—ugly, cross, old, disagreeable, and jealous
monsters, who think by confining to secure—
—a wife, it is his maxim to treat as a
bosom friend and confidant, and not as a
—plaything, or menial slave, the woman
chosen to be his companion. Neither party
—he says, should always obey implicitly;
but each yield to the other by turns.
—An ancient maiden aunt, near seventy,
a cheerful, venerable, and pleasant old lady,
—lives in the house with us; she is the de-
light of both young and old; she is ci-
—vil to all the neighborhood round,
generous and charitable to the poor.
—I am convinced my husband loves nothing more
than he does me; he flatters me more
—than a glass; and his intoxication
(for so I must call the excess of his love)
—often makes me blush for the unworthiness
of its object, and wish I could be more deserving
—of the man whose name I bear. To
say all in one word, my dear, and to
—crown the whole—my former gallant lover
is now my indulgent husband; my husband
—is returned, and I might have had
a prince without the felicity I find in
—him. Adieu! may you be blest as I am un-
able to wish that I could be more
—happy.
DOUBLE-FACED CREED.
The following cross-reading from a history of Popery, published in 1679,
and formerly called in New England _The Jesuits’ Creed_, will suit
either Catholic or Protestant accordingly as the lines are read downward
in single columns or across the double columns:—
Pro fide teneo sana Quæ docet Anglicana,
Affirmat quæ Romana Videntur mihi vana.
Supremus quando rex est Tum plebs est fortunata,
Erraticus tum Grex est Cum caput fiat papa.
Altari cum ornatur Communio fit inanis,
Populus tum beatur Cum mensa vina panis.
Asini nomen meruit Hunc morem qui non capit,
Missam qui deseruit Catholicus est et sapit.
I hold for faith What England’s church allows,
What Rome’s church saith, My conscience disavows.
Where the king is head The flock can take no shame,
The flock’s misled, Who hold the pope supreme.
Where the altar’s drest The worship’s scarce divine,
The people’s blest, Whose table’s bread and wine.
He’s but an ass Who their communion flies,
Who shuns the mass, Is Catholic and wise.
REVOLUTIONARY VERSES.
The author of the following Revolutionary double entendre, which
originally appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper, is unknown. It may be
read in three different ways,—1st. Let the whole be read in the order in
which it is written; 2d. Then the lines downward on the left of each
comma in every line; and 3d. In the same manner on the right of each
comma. By the first reading it will be observed that the Revolutionary
cause is condemned, and by the others, it is encouraged and lauded:—
Hark! hark! the trumpet sounds, the din of war’s alarms,
O’er seas and solid grounds, doth call us all to arms;
Who for King George doth stand, their honors soon shall shine;
Their ruin is at hand, who with the Congress join.
The acts of Parliament, in them I much delight,
I hate their cursed intent, who for the Congress fight,
The Tories of the day, they are my daily toast,
They soon will sneak away, who Independence boast;
Who non-resistance hold, they have my hand and heart.
May they for slaves be sold, who act a Whiggish part;
On Mansfield, North, and Bute, may daily blessings pour,
Confusion and dispute, on Congress evermore;
To North and British lord, may honors still be done,
I wish a block or cord, to General Washington.
THE HOUSES OF STUART AND HANOVER.
I love with all my heart The Tory party here
The Hanoverian part Most hateful do appear
And for that settlement I ever have denied
My conscience gives consent To be on James’s side
Most righteous is the cause To fight for such a king
To fight for George’s laws Will England’s ruin bring
It is my mind and heart In this opinion I
Though none will take my part Resolve to live and die.
_Lansdowme MSS. 852_
THE NEW REGIME.
The following equivoque was addressed to a republican at the
commencement of the French Revolution, in reply to the question, “What
do you think of the new constitution?”
A la nouvelle loi Je veux être fidèle
Je renonce dans l’âme Au régime ancien,
Comme épreuve de ma foi Je crois la loi nouvelle
Je crois celle qu’on blâme Opposée à tout bien;
Dieu vous donne la paix Messieurs les démocrats
Noblesse désolée Au diable allez-vous en;
Qu’il confonde à jamais Tous les Aristocrats
Messieurs de l’Assemblée Ont eux seuls le bon sens.
The newly made law ’Tis my wish to esteem
From my soul I abhor The ancient regime
My faith to prove good, I maintain the new code
I maintain the old code Is opposed to all good.
May God give you peace, Messieurs Democrats,
Forsaken Noblesse, To the devil go hence.
May He ever confound All the Aristocrats
The Assembly all round Are the sole men of sense.
FATAL DOUBLE MEANING.
Count Valavoir, a general in the French service under Turenne, while
encamped before the enemy, attempted one night to pass a sentinel. The
sentinel challenged him, and the count answered “_Va-la-voir_,” which
literally signifies “Go and see.” The soldier, who took the words in
this sense, indignantly repeated the challenge, and was answered in the
same manner, when he fired; and the unfortunate Count fell dead upon the
spot,—a victim to the whimsicality of his surname.
A TRIPLE PLATFORM.
Among the memorials of the sectional conflict of 1861–5, is an American
platform arranged to suit all parties. The first column is the
_Secession_; the second, the _Abolition_ platform; and the whole, read
together, is the Democratic platform:—
Hurrah for The Old Union
Secession Is a curse
We fight for The Constitution
The Confederacy Is a league with hell
We love Free speech
The rebellion Is treason
We glory in A Free Press
Separation Will not be tolerated
We fight not for The negro’s freedom
Reconstruction Must be obtained
We must succeed At every hazard
The Union We love
We love not The negro
We never said Let the Union slide
We want The Union as it was
Foreign intervention Is played out
We cherish The old flag
The stars and bars Is a flaunting lie
We venerate The _heabus corpus_
Southern chivalry Is hateful
Death to Jeff Davis
Abe Lincoln Isn’t the Government
Down with Mob law
Law and order Shall triumph.
LOYALTY, OR JACOBINISM?
This piece of amphibology was circulated among the United Irishmen,
previous to the Rebellion of 1798. First, read the lines as they stand,
then according to the numerals prefixed:—
1. I love my country—but the king,
3. Above all men his praise I sing,
2. Destruction to his odious reign,
4. That plague of princes, Thomas Paine;
5. The royal bankers are displayed,
7. And may success the standard aid
6. Defeat and ruin seize the cause
8. Of France her liberty and laws.
NON COMMITTAL.
NEAT EVASION.
Bishop Egerton, of Durham, avoided three impertinent questions by
replying as follows:—
1. What inheritance he received from his father?
“Not so much as he expected.”
2. What was his lady’s fortune?
“Less than was reported.”
3. What was the value of his living of Ross?
“More than he made of it.”
A PATRIOTIC TOAST.
Most readers will remember the story of a non-committal editor who,
during the Presidential canvass of 1872, desiring to propitiate
subscribers of both parties, hoisted the ticket of “Gr—— and ——n” at the
top of his column, thus giving those who took the paper their choice of
interpretations between “Grant and Wilson” and “Greeley and Brown.” A
story turning on the same style of point—and probably quite as
apocryphal—though the author labels it “_historique_”—is told of an army
officers’ mess in France. A brother-soldier from a neighboring
detachment having come in, and a _champenoise_ having been uncorked in
his honor, “Gentlemen,” said the guest, raising his glass, “I am about
to propose a toast at once patriotic and political.” A chorus of hasty
ejaculations and of murmurs at once greeted him. “Yes, gentlemen,”
coolly proceeded the orator, “I drink to a thing which—an object
that—Bah! I will out with it at once. It begins with an _R_ and ends
with an _e_.”
“Capital!” whispers a young lieutenant of Bordeaux promotion. “He
proposes the _République_, without offending the old fogies by saying
the word,”
“Nonsense! He means the _Radicale_,” replies the other, an old Captain
Cassel.
“Upon my word,” says a third, as he lifts his glass, “our friend must
mean _la Royauté_.”
“I see!” cries a one-legged veteran of Froschweiler: “we drink to _la
Revanche_.”
In fact the whole party drank the toast heartily, each interpreting it
to his liking.
In the hands of a Swift, even so trivial an instance might be made to
point a moral on the facility with which, alike in theology and
politics—from Athanasian creed to Cincinnati or Philadelphia
platform—men comfortably interpret to their own diverse likings some
doctrine that “begins with an _R_ and ends with an _e_,” and swallow it
with great unanimity and enthusiasm.
THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL.
During the war of the Rebellion, a merchant of Milwaukee, who is an
excellent hand at sketching, drew most admirably on the wall of his
store a negro’s head, and underneath it wrote, in a manner worthy of the
Delphic oracle, “Dis-Union for eber.” Whether the sentence meant loyalty
to the Union or not, was the puzzling question which the gentleman
himself never answered, invariably stating to the inquirers, “Read it
for yourselves, gentlemen.” So from that day to this, as the saying
goes, “no one knows how dat darkey stood on de war question.”
Another question is puzzling the young ladies who attend a Western
Female College. It seems that one of them discovered that some person
had written on the outer wall of the college, “Young women should set
good examples; for young men _will_ follow them.” The question that is
now perplexing the heads of several of the young ladies of the college
is, whether the writer meant what he or she (the handwriting was rather
masculine) wrote, in a moral sense or in an ironical one.
HOW FRENCH ACTRESSES AVOID GIVING THEIR AGE.
A servant robbed Mlle. Mars of her diamonds one evening while she was at
the theatre. Arrested, he was put upon trial, and witnesses were
summoned to bear testimony to his guilt. Among these was Mlle. Mars. She
was greatly annoyed at this, as, according to the rules of French
practice, the witness, after being sworn, gives his age. Now the age of
Mlle. Mars was an impenetrable mystery, for it was a theme she never
alluded to, and she possessed the art of arresting time’s flight, or at
least of repairing its ravages so effectually that her face never
revealed acquaintance with more than twenty years. She was for some days
evidently depressed; then, all at once, her spirits rose as buoyant as
ever. This puzzled the court—for people in her eminent position always
have a court; parasites are plenty in Paris—they did not know whether
she had determined frankly to confess her age, or whether she had hit
upon some means of eluding this thorny point of practice.
The day of trial came, and she was at her place. The court-room was
filled, and when she was put in the witness-box every ear was bent
towards her to catch the age she would give as her own. “Your name?”
said the presiding judge. “Anne Francoise Hippolyte Mars.” “What is your
profession?” “An actress of the French Comedy.” “What is your age?”
“——ty years.” “What?” inquired the presiding judge, leaning forward. “I
have just told your honor!” replied the actress, giving one of those
irresistible smiles which won the most hostile pit. The judge smiled in
turn, and when he asked, as he did immediately, “Where do you live?”
hearty applause long prevented Mlle. Mars from replying.
Mlle. Cico was summoned before a court to bear witness in favor of some
cosmetic assailed as a poison by victims and their physicians. All the
youngest actresses of Paris were there, and they reckoned upon a good
deal of merriment and profit when Mlle. Cico came to disclose her age.
She was called to the stand—sworn—gave her name and profession. When the
judge said “How old are you?” she quitted the stand, went up to the
bench, stood on tip-toe, and whispered in the judge’s ear the malicious
mystery. The bench smiled, and kept her secret.
The Cento.
A cento primarily signifies a cloak made of patches. In poetry it
denotes a work wholly composed of verses, or passages promiscuously
taken from other authors and disposed in a new form or order, so as to
compose a new work and a new meaning. According to the rules laid down
by Ausonius, the author of the celebrated _Nuptial Cento_, the pieces
may be taken from the same poet, or from several; and the verses may be
either taken entire, or divided into two, one half to be connected with
another half taken elsewhere; but two verses are never to be taken
together.
The Empress Eudoxia wrote the life of Jesus Christ in centos taken from
Homer. Proba Falconia, and, long after him, Alexander Ross, both
composed a life of the Saviour, in the same manner, from Virgil. The
title of Ross’ work, which was republished in 1769, was _Virgilius
Evangelizans, sive historia Domini et Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi
Virgilianis verbis et versibus descripta_.
Subjoined are some modern specimens of this literary confectionery,
called in modern parlance
MOSAIC POETRY.
I only knew she came and went _Lowell._
Like troutlets in a pool; _Hood._
She was a phantom of delight, _Wordsworth._
And I was like a fool. _Eastman._
“One kiss, dear maid,” I said and sighed, _Coleridge._
“Out of those lips unshorn.” _Longfellow._
She shook her ringlets round her head, _Stoddard._
And laughed in merry scorn. _Tennyson._
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky! _Tennyson._
You hear them, oh my heart? _Alice Cary._
’Tis twelve at night by the castle clock, _Coleridge._
Beloved, we must part! _Alice Cary._
“Come back! come back!” she cried in grief, _Campbell._
“My eyes are dim with tears— _Bayard Taylor._
How shall I live through all the days, _Mrs. Osgood._
All through a hundred years?” _T. S. Perry._
’Twas in the prime of summer time, _Hood._
She blessed me with her hand; _Hoyt._
We strayed together, deeply blest, _Mrs. Edwards._
Into the Dreaming Land. _Cornwall._
The laughing bridal roses blow, _Patmore._
To dress her dark brown hair; _Bayard Taylor._
No maiden may with her compare, _Brailsford._
Most beautiful, most rare! _Read._
I clasped it on her sweet cold hand, _Browning._
The precious golden link; _Smith._
I calmed her fears, and she was calm, _Coleridge._
“Drink, pretty creature, drink!” _Wordsworth._
And so I won my Genevieve, _Coleridge._
And walked in Paradise; _Hervey._
The fairest thing that ever grew _Wordsworth._
Atween me and the skies. _Osgood._
* * * * *
Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
Shoot folly as it flies?
Ah, more than tears of blood can tell,
Are in that word farewell, farewell;
’Tis folly to be wise.
And what is Friendship but a name
That burns on Etna’s breast of flame?
Thus runs the world away.
Sweet is the ship that’s under sail
To where yon taper points the vale
With hospitable ray.
Drink to me only with thine eyes
Through cloudless climes and starry skies,
My native land, good-night.
Adieu, adieu, my native shore;
’Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.
Whatever is is right.
Oh, ever thus from childhood’s hour,
Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
In russet mantle clad.
The rocks and hollow mountains rung
While yet in early Greece she sung,
I’m pleased, and yet I’m sad.
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
O, thou, the nymph with placid eye,
By Philip’s warlike son;
And on the light fantastic toe
Thus hand-in-hand through life we’ll go;
Good-night to Marmion.
LIFE.
1.—Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour?
2.—Life’s a short summer, man a flower.
3.—By turns we catch the vital breath and die—
4.—The cradle and the tomb, alas! so nigh.
5.—To be is better far than not to be,
6.—Though all man’s life may seem a tragedy.
7.—But light cares speak when mighty griefs are dumb;
8.—The bottom is but shallow whence they come.
9.—Your fate is but the common fate of all,
10.—Unmingled joys, here, to no man befall.
11.—Nature to each allots his proper sphere,
12.—Fortune makes folly her peculiar care.
13.—Custom does not often reason overrule
14.—And throw a cruel sunshine on a fool.
15.—Live well, how long or short permit, to heaven;
16.—They who forgive most, shall be most forgiven.
17.—Sin may be clasped so close we cannot see its face—
18.—Vile intercourse where virtue has not place.
19.—Then keep each passion down, however dear,
20.—Thou pendulum, betwixt a smile and tear;
21.—Her sensual snares let faithless pleasure lay,
22.—With craft and skill, to ruin and betray.
23.—Soar not too high to fall, but stop to rise;
24.—We masters grow of all that we despise.
25.—Oh then renounce that impious self-esteem;
26.—Riches have wings and grandeur is a dream.
27.—Think not ambition wise, because ’tis brave,
28.—The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
29.—What is ambition? ’Tis a glorious cheat,
30.—Only destructive to the brave and great.
31.—What’s all the gaudy glitter of a crown?
32.—The way to bliss lies not on beds of down.
33.—How long we live, not years but actions tell;
34.—That man lives twice who lives the first life well.
35.—Make then, while yet ye may, your God your friend,
36.—Whom Christians worship, yet not comprehend.
37.—The trust that’s given guard, and to yourself be just;
38.—For, live we how we can, yet die we must.
1. Young. 2. Dr. Johnson. 3. Pope. 4. Prior. 5. Sewell. 6. Spenser. 7.
Daniel. 8. Sir Walter Raleigh. 9. Longfellow. 10. Southwell. 11.
Congreve. 12. Churchill. 13. Rochester. 14. Armstrong. 15. Milton. 16.
Baily. 17. Trench. 18. Somerville. 19. Thompson. 20. Byron. 21.
Smollet. 22. Crabbe. 23. Massinger. 24. Crowley. 25. Beattie. 26.
Cowper. 27. Sir Walter Davenant. 28. Grey. 29. Willis. 30. Addison.
31. Dryden. 32. Francis Quarles. 33. Watkins. 34. Herrick. 35. William
Mason. 36. Hill. 37. Dana. 38. Shakespeare.
CENTO FROM POPE.
’Tis education forms the common mind; _Moral Essays._
A mighty maze! but not without a plan. _Essay on Man._
Ask of the learned the way? The learned are blind; _Essay on Man._
The proper study of mankind is man. _Essay on Man._
A little learning is a dangerous thing; _Essay on Criticism._
Some have at first for wits, then poets passed— _Essay on Criticism._
See from each clime the learned their incense bring, _Essay on Criticism._
For rising merit will buoy up at last. _Essay on Criticism._
Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise.— _Essay on Man._
Virtue alone is happiness below; _Essay on Man._
Honor and shame from no condition rise, _Essay on Man._
And all our knowledge is ourselves to know. _Essay on Man._
Who shall decide when doctors disagree? _Moral Essay._
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right. _Essay on Man._
Since men interpret texts, why should not we _January and May._
Read them by day and meditate by night? _Essay on Criticism._
BIBLICAL CENTO.
Cling to the Mighty One, Ps. lxxxix. 19.
Cling in thy grief; Heb. xii. 11.
Cling to the Holy One, Ps. xxxix. 18.
He gives relief; Ps. lxxxvi. 7.
Cling to the Gracious One, Ps. cxvi. 5.
Cling in thy pain; Ps. lv. 4.
Cling to the Faithful One, 1 Thess. v. 24.
He will sustain. Ps. xxviii. 8.
Cling to the Living One, Heb. vii. 25.
Cling in thy woe; Ps. lxxxvi. 7.
Cling to the Loving One, 1 John iv. 16.
Through all below; Rom. viii. 38, 39.
Cling to the Pardoning One, Isa. lv. 7.
He speaketh peace; John xiv. 27.
Cling to the Healing One, Exod. xv. 26.
Anguish shall cease. Ps. cxlvii. 3.
Cling to the Bleeding One, 1 John i. 7.
Cling to His side; John xx. 27.
Cling to the Risen One, Rom. vi. 9.
In Him abide; John xv. 4.
Cling to the Coming One, Rev. xxii. 20.
Hope shall arise; Titus ii. 13.
Cling to the Reigning One, Ps. xcvii. 1.
Joy lights thine eyes. Ps. xvi. 11.
THE RETURN OF ISRAEL.
I will surely gather the remnant of Israel.—§Micah§ ii. 12.
And the Temple again shall be built,
And filled as it was of yore;
And the burden be lift from the heart of the world,
And the nations all adore;
Prayers to the throne of Heaven,
Morning and eve shall rise,
And unto and not of the Lamb
Shall be the sacrifice.—§Festus.§
In many strange and Gentile lands Micah v. 8.
Where Jacob’s scattered sons are driven, Jer. xxiii. 8.
With longing eyes and lifted hands, Lam. i. 17.
They wait Messiah’s sign from heaven. Matth. xxiv. 30
The cup of fury they have quaffed, Isa. li. 17.
Till fainted like a weary flock; Isa. li. 20.
But Heaven will soon withdraw the draught, Isa. li. 22.
And give them waters from the rock. Exod. xvii. 6.
What though their bodies, as the ground, Isa. li. 23.
Th’ Assyrian long has trodden o’er! Isa. lii. 4.
Zion, a captive daughter bound, Isa. lii. 2.
Shall rise to know her wrong no more. Isa. liv. 3, 4.
The veil is passing from her eyes, 2 Cor. iii. 16.
The King of Nations she shall see; Zech. xiv. 9.
Judea! from the dust arise! Isa. lii. 2.
Thy ransomed sons return to thee! Jer. xxxi. 17.
How gorgeous shall thy land appear, Isa. liv. 12.
When, like the jewels of a bride, Isa. xlix. 18.
Thy broken bands, all gathered there, Zech. xi. 14.
Shall clothe thy hills on every side! Isa. xlix. 18.
When on thy mount, as prophets taught, Isa. xxiv. 23.
Shall shine the throne of David’s Son; Ezek. xxxvii. 22.
The Gospel’s latest triumphs brought Micah iv. 2.
Where first its glorious course begun. Luke xxiv. 47.
Gentiles and Kings, who thee oppressed, Isa. lx. 14.
Shall to thy gates with praise repair; Isa. lx. 11.
A fold of flocks shall Sharon rest, Isa. lxv. 10.
And clustered fruits its vineyard bear. Joel ii. 22.
Then shall an Eden morn illume Isa. li. 3.
Earth’s fruitful vales, without a thorn: Isa. lv. 13.
The wilderness rejoice and bloom, Isa. xxxv. 1.
And nations in a day be born. Zech. ii. 11.
The §Lord§ his holy arm makes bare; Isa. lii. 10.
Zion! thy cheerful songs employ! Zeph. iii. 14.
Thy robes of bridal beauty wear, Isa. lii. 1.
And shout, ye ransomed race, for joy! Isa. lii. 9.
Macaronic Verse.
“A TREATISE OF WINE.”
The following specimen of macaronic verse, from the commonplace book of
Richard Hilles, who died in 1535, is probably the best of its kind
extant. The scriptural allusions and the large intermixture of Latin
evidently point to the refectory of some genial monastery as its
source:—
The best tree if ye take intent,
Inter ligna fructifer,
Is the vine tree by good argument,
Dulcia ferens pondera.
Saint Luke saith in his Gospel,
Arbor fructu noscitu,
The vine beareth wine as I you tell,
Hinc aliis præponitur.
The first that planted the vineyard,
Manet in cœli gaudi,
His name was Noe, as I am learned,
Genesis testimonio.
God gave unto him knowledge and wit,
A quo procedunt omni,
First of the grape wine for to get,
Propter magna mysteria.
The first miracle that Jesus did,
Erat in vino rube,
In Cana of Galilee it betide,
Testante Evangelio.
He changed water into wine,
Aquæ rubescunt hydri,
And bade give it to Archetcline,
Ut gustet tunc primarie.
Like as the rose exceedeth all flowers,
Inter cuncta floriger,
So doth wine all other liquors,
Dans multa salutifera.
David, the prophet, saith that wine
Lætificat cor homini,
It maketh men merry if it be fine,
Est ergo digni nominis.
It nourisheth age if it be good,
Facit ut esset juveni,
It gendereth in us gentle blood,
Nam venas purgat sanguinis.
By all these causes ye should think
Quæ sunt rationabile,
That good wine should be best of all drink
Inter potus potabiles.
Wine drinkers all, with great honor,
Semper laudate Dominu,
The which sendeth the good liquor
Propter salutem hominum.
Plenty to all that love good wine,
Donet Deus largiu,
And bring them some when they go hence,
Ubi non sitient amplius.
THE SUITOR WITH NINE TONGUES.
Τι σοι λεγω, μειρακιον,
Now that this fickle heart is won?
Me semper amaturam te
And never, never, never stray?
Herzschätzchen, Du verlangst zu viel
When you demand so strict a seal.
N’est-ce pas assez que je t’aime
Without remaining still the same?
Gij daarom geeft u liefde niet
If others may not have a treat.
Muy largo es mi corazon,
And fifty holds as well as one.
Non far nell’ acqua buco che
I am resolved to have my way;
Im lo boteach atta bi,
I’m willing quite to set you free:
Be you content with half my time,
As half in English is my rhyme.
MAGINN’S ALTERNATIONS—HORACE, EPODE II.
Blest man, who far from busy hum,
Ut prisca gens mortalium,
Whistles his team afield with glee
Solutus omni fenore:
He lives in peace, from battles free,
Nec horret iratum mare;
And shuns the forum, and the gay
Potentiorum limina.
Therefore to vines of purple gloss
Altas maritat populos,
Or pruning off the boughs unfit
Feliciores inserit.
* * * * *
Alphius the usurer, babbled thus,
Jam jam futurus rusticus,
Called in his cast on th’Ides—but he
Quærit Kalendis ponere.
CONTENTI ABEAMUS.
Come, jocund friends, a bottle bring,
And push around the jorum;
We’ll talk and laugh, and quaff and sing,
Nunc suavium amorum.
While we are in a merry mood,
Come, sit down ad bibendum;
And if dull care should dare intrude,
We’ll to the devil send him.
A moping elf I can’t endure
While I have ready rhino;
And all life’s pleasures centre still
In venere ac vino.
Be merry then, my friends, I pray,
And pass your time in joco,
For it is pleasant, as they say,
Desipere in loco.
He that loves not a young lass
Is sure an arrant stultus,
And he that will not take a glass
Deserves to be sepultus.
Pleasure, music, love and wine
Res valde sunt jucundæ,
And pretty maidens look divine,
Provided ut sunt mundæ.
I hate a snarling, surly fool,
Qui latrat sicut canis,
Who mopes and ever eats by rule,
Drinks water and eats panis.
Give me the man that’s always free,
Qui finit molli more,
The cares of life, what’er they be;
Whose motto still is “Spero.”
Death will turn us soon from hence,
Nigerrimas ad sedes;
And all our lands and all our pence
Ditabunt tune heredes.
Why should we then forbear to sport?
Dum vivamus, vivamus,
And when the Fates shall cut us down
Contenti abeamus.
FLY-LEAF SCRIBBLING.
Iste liber pertinet,
And bear it well in mind,
Ad me, Johannem Rixbrum,
So courteous and so kind.
Quem si ego perdam,
And by you it shall be found,
Redde mihi iterum,
Your fame I then will sound.
Sed si mihi redeas,
Then blessed thou shalt be,
Et ago tibi gratias
Whenever I thee see.
THE CAT AND THE RATS.
Felis sedit by a hole,
Intentus he, cum omni soul,
Prendere rats
Mice cucurrerunt trans the floor,
In numero duo, tres, or more—
Obliti cats.
Felis saw them, oculis;
“I’ll have them,” inquit he, “I guess,
Dum ludunt.”
Tunc ille crept toward the group,
“Habeam,” dixit, “good rat soup—
Pingues sunt.”
Mice continued all ludere,
Intenti they in ludum vere,
Gaudenter.
Tunc rushed the felis into them,
Et tore them omnes limb from limb,
Violenter.
MORAL.
Mures omnes, nunc be shy,
Et aurem præbe mihi,
Benigne.
Sit hoc satis—“verbum sat,”
Avoid a whopping big tom-cat
Studiose.
POLYGLOT INSCRIPTION.
The following advertisement in five languages, is inscribed on the
window of a public house in Germany:—
In questa casa trovarete
Toutes les choses que vous souhaitez;
Vinum bonum, costas, carnes,
Neat post-chaise, and horse and harness.
Βους, ὄρνιθές, ἴχθυς, ἄρνες.
PARTING ADDRESS TO A FRIEND,
Written by a German gentleman on the termination of a very agreeable,
but brief acquaintance.
I often wished I had a friend,
Dem ich mich anvertrauen könnt’,
A friend in whom I could confide,
Der mit mir theilte Freud und Leid;
Had I the riches of Girard—
Ich theilte mit ihm Haus und Heerd;
For what is gold? ’tis but a passing metal,
Der Henker hol’ für mich den ganzen Bettel.
Could I purchase the world to live in it alone,
Ich gäb’ dafür nicht eine hohle Bohn’;
I thought one time in you I’d find that friend,
Und glaubte schon mein Sehnen hät ein End;
Alas! your friendship lasted but in sight,
Doch meine grenzet an die Ewigkeit.
AM RHEIN.
Oh, the Rhine—the Rhine—the Rhine—
Comme c’est beau! wie schön! che bello!
He who quaffs thy Luft und Wein,
Morbleu! is a lucky fellow.
How I love thy rushing streams,
Groves of ash and birch and hazel,
From Schaffhausen’s rainbow beams
Jusqu’à l’écho d’Oberwesel!
Oh, que j’aime thy Brüchen when
The crammed Dampfschiff gayly passes!—
Love the bronzed pipes of thy men,
And the bronzed cheeks of thy lasses!
Oh, que j’aime the “oui,” the “bah,”
From thy motley crowds that flow,
With the universal “ja,”
And the allgemeine “so”!
THE DEATH OF THE SEA SERPENT.
Arma virumque cano, qui first in Monongahela
Tarnally squampushed the sarpent, mittens horrentia tella.
Musa, look sharp with your Banjo! I guess to relate this event, I
Shall need all the aid you can give; so nunc aspirate canenti.
Mighty slick were the vessels progressing, Jactata per æquora ventis,
But the brow of the skipper was sad, cum solicitudine mentis;
For whales had been scarce in those parts, and the skipper, so long as
he’d known her,
Ne’er had gathered less oil in a cruise to gladden the heart of her
owner.
“Darn the whales,” cries the skipper at length, “with a telescope forte
videbo
Aut pisces, aut terras.” While speaking, just two or three points on the
lea bow,
He saw coming towards them as fast as though to a combat ’twould tempt
’em,
A monstrum horrendum informe (qui lumen was shortly ademptum).
On the taffrail up jumps in a hurry, dux fortis, and seizing a trumpet,
Blows a blast that would waken the dead, mare turbat et aera rumpit—
“Tumble up all you lubbers,” he cries, “tumble up, for careering before
us
Is the real old sea sarpent himself, cristis maculisque decorus.”
“Consarn it,” cried one of the sailors, “if e’er we provoke him he’ll
kill us,
He’ll certainly chaw up hos morsu, et longis, implexibus illos.”
Loud laughs the bold skipper, and quick premit alto corde dolorem;
(If he does feel like running, he knows it won’t do to betray it before
’em).
“O socii”, inquit. “I’m sartin you’re not the fellers to funk, or
Shrink from the durem certamen, whose fathers fit bravely at Bunker
You, who have waged with the bears, and the buffalo, prœlia dura,
Down to the freshets, and licks of our own free enlightened Missourer;
You could whip your own weight, catulus sævis sine telo,
Get your eyes skinned in a twinkling, et ponite tela phæsello!”
Talia voce refert, curisque ingentibus æger,
Marshals his cute little band, now panting their foes to beleaguer
Swiftly they lower the boats, and swiftly each man at the oar is,
Excipe Britanni timidi duo, virque coloris.
(Blackskin, you know, never feels, how sweet, ’tis pro patria mori;
Ovid had him in view when he said, “Nimium ne crede colori.”)
Now swiftly they pull towards the monster, who seeing the cutter and gig
nigh,
Glares at them with terrible eyes, suffectis sanguine et igni,
And, never conceiving their chief will so quickly deal him a floorer,
Opens wide to receive them at once, his linguis vibrantibis ora;
But just as he’s licking his lips, and gladly preparing to taste ’em,
Straight into his eyeball the skipper stridentem conjicit hastam.
Straight as he feels in his eyeball the lance, growing mightly sulky,
At ’em he comes in a rage, ora minax, lingua trusulca.
“Starn all,” cry the sailors at once, for they think he has certainly
caught ’em,
Præsentemque viris intentant omnia mortem.
But the bold skipper exclaims, “O terque quaterque beati!
Now with a will dare viam, when I want you, be only parati;
This hoss feels like raising his hair, and in spite of his scaly old
cortex,
Full soon you shall see that his corpse rapidus vorat æquore vortex.”
Hoc ait, and choosing a lance: “With this one I think I shall hit it,
He cries, and straight into his mouth, ad intima viscera mittit.”
Screeches the creature in pain, and writhes till the sea is commotum,
As if all its waves had been lashed in a tempest por Eurum et Notum.
Interea terrible shindy Neptunus sensit, et alto
Prospiciens sadly around, wiped his eye with the cuff of his paletôt;
And, mad at his favorite’s fate, of oaths uttered one or two thousand,
Such as “Corpo di Bacco! Mehercle! Sacre! Mille Tonnerres! Potztausend!”
But the skipper, who thought it was time to this terrible fight dare
finem,
With a scalping-knife jumps on the neck of the snake secat et dextrâ
crinem,
And hurling the scalp in the air, half mad with delight to possess it,
Shouts “Darn it—I’ve fixed up his flint, for in ventos vita recessit!”
Concatenation or Chain Verse.
LASPHRISE’S NOVELTIES.
Lasphrise, a French poet of considerable merit, claims the invention of
several singularities in verse, and among them the following, in which
it will be found that the last word of every line is the first word of
the following line:—
Falloit-il que le ciel me rendit amoureux,
Amoureaux, jouissant d’une beauté craintive,
Craintive à recevoir douceur excessive,
Excessive au plaisir qui rend l’amant heureux?
Heureux si nous avions quelques paisibles lieux,
Lieux où plus surement l’ami fidèle arrive,
Arrive sans soupçon de quelque ami attentive,
Attentive à vouloir nous surprendre tous deux.
Subjoined are examples in our own vernacular:—
TO DEATH.
The longer life, the more offence;
The more offence, the greater pain;
The greater pain, the less defence;
The less defence, the lesser gain—
The loss of gain long ill doth try,
Wherefore, come, death, and let me die.
The shorter life, less count I find;
The less account, the sooner made;
The count soon made, the merrier mind;
The merrier mind doth thought invade—
Short life, in truth, this thing doth try,
Wherefore, come, death, and let me die.
Come, gentle death, the ebb of care;
The ebb of care the flood of life;
The flood of life, the joyful fare;
The joyful fare, the end of strife—
The end of strife that thing wish I,
Wherefore, come, death and let me die.
TRUTH.
Nerve thy soul with doctrines noble,
Noble in the walks of Time,
Time that leads to an eternal,
An eternal life sublime;
Life sublime in moral beauty,
Beauty that shall ever be,
Ever be to lure thee onward,
Onward to the fountain free;
Free to every earnest seeker,
Seeker at the Fount of Youth,
Youth exultant in its beauty,
Beauty found in the quest of Truth.
TRYING SKYING.
Long I looked into the sky,
Sky aglow with gleaming stars,
Stars that stream their courses high,
High and grand, those golden cars,
Cars that ever keep their track,
Track untraced by human ray,
Ray that zones the zodiac,
Zodiac with milky-way,
Milky-way where worlds are sown,
Sown like sands along the sea,
Sea whose tide and tone e’er own,
Own a feeling to be free,
Free to leave its lowly place,
Place to prove with yonder spheres,
Spheres that trace athrough all space,
Space and years—unspoken years.
A RINGING SONG.
The following gem is from an old play of Shakspeare’s time, called _The
True Trojans_:—
The sky is glad that stars above
Do give a brighter splendor;
The stars unfold their flaming gold,
To make the ground more tender:
The ground doth send a fragrant smell,
That air may be the sweeter;
The air doth charm the swelling seas
With pretty chirping metre;
The sea with rivers’ water doth
Feed plants and flowers so dainty;
The plants do yield their fruitful seed,
That beasts may live in plenty;
The beasts do give both food and cloth,
That men high Jove may honor;
And so the World runs merrily round,
When Peace doth smile upon her!
Oh, then, then oh! oh then, then oh!
This jubilee last forever;
That foreign spite, or civil fight,
Our quiet trouble never!
Bouts Rimés.
Bouts Rimés, or Rhyming Ends, afford considerable amusement. They are
said by Goujet to have been invented by Dulot, a French poet, who had a
custom of preparing the rhymes of sonnets, leaving them to be filled up
at leisure. Having been robbed of his papers, he was regretting the loss
of three hundred sonnets. His friends were astonished that he had
written so many of which they had never heard. “They were blank
sonnets,” said he, and then explained the mystery by describing his
“Bouts Rimés.” The idea appeared ridiculously amusing, and it soon
became a fashionable pastime to collect some of the most difficult
rhymes, and fill up the lines. An example is appended:—
nettle,
pains.
mettle.
remains.
natures.
rebel.
graters.
well.
The rhymes may be thus completed:—
Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.
’Tis the same with common natures,
Use them kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.
A sprightly young belle, who was an admirer of poetry, would often tease
her beau, who had made some acquaintance with the muses, to write verses
for her. One day, becoming quite importunate, she would take no denial.
“Come, pray, do now write some poetry for me—won’t you? I’ll help you
out. I’ll furnish you with rhymes if you will make lines for them. Here
now:—
please, moan,
tease, bone.”
He at length good-humoredly complied, and filled up the measure as
follows:—
To a form that is faultless, a face that must—please,
Is added a restless desire to—tease;
O, how my hard fate I should ever be—moan,
Could I but believe she’d be bone of my—bone!
Mr. Bogart, a young man of Albany, who died in 1826, at the age of
twenty-one, displayed astonishing facility in impromptu writing.
It was good-naturedly hinted on one occasion that his “impromptus” were
prepared beforehand, and he was asked if he would submit to the
application of a test of his poetic abilities. He promptly acceded, and
a most difficult one was immediately proposed.
Among his intimate friends were Col. J. B. Van Schaick and Charles Fenno
Hoffman, both of whom were present. Said Van Schaick, taking up a copy
of Byron, “The name of Lydia Kane” (a lady distinguished for her beauty
and cleverness, who died a few years ago, but who was then just blushing
into womanhood) “has in it the same number of letters as a stanza of
Childe Harold has lines: write them down in a column.” They were so
written by Bogart, Hoffman, and himself. “Now,” he continued, “I will
open the poem at random; and for the ends of the lines in Miss Lydia’s
_Acrostic_ shall be used the words ending those of the verse on which my
finger may rest.” The stanza thus selected was this:—
And must they fall, the young, the proud, the brave,
To swell one bloated chief’s unwholesome reign?
No step between submission and a grave?
The rise of rapine and the fall of Spain?
And doth the Power that man adores ordain
Their doom, nor heed the suppliant’s appeal?
Is all that desperate valor acts in vain?
And counsel sage, and patriotic zeal,
The veteran’s skill, youth’s fire, and manhood’s heart of steel?
The following stanza was composed by Bogart within the succeeding ten
minutes,—the period fixed in a wager,—finished before his companions had
reached a fourth line, and read to them as here presented:[6]—
L ovely and loved, o’er the unconquered brave
Y our charms resistless, matchless girl, shall reign!
D ear as the mother holds her infant’s grave
I n Love’s own region, warm, romantic Spain!
A nd should your fate to court your steps ordain,
K ings would in vain to regal pomp appeal,
A nd lordly bishops kneel to you in vain,
N or valor’s fire, law’s power, nor churchman’s zeal
E ndure ’gainst love’s (time’s up!) untarnished steel.
Footnote 6:
The truth of this circumstance was confirmed by Mr. Hoffman in the
course of a conversation upon that and similar topics several years
afterward.
The French also amuse themselves with _bouts rimés retournés_, in which
the rhymes are taken from some piece of poetry, but the order in which
they occur is reversed. The following example is from the album of a
Parisian lady of literary celebrity, the widow of one of the Crimean
heroes. The original poem is by Alfred de Musset, the _retournés_ by
Marshal Pelissier, who improvised it at the lady’s request. In the
translation which ensues, the reversed rhymes are carefully preserved.
BY DE MUSSET.
Quand la fugitive espérance
Nous pousse le coude en passant,
Puis à tire d’ailes s’élance
Et se retourne en souriant,
Où va l’homme? où son cœur l’appelle;
L’hirondelle suit le zéphir,
Et moins légère est l’hirondelle
Que l’homme qui suit son désir.
Ah! fugitive enchanteresse,
Sais-tu seulement ton chemin?
Faut-il donc que le vieux destin
Ait une si jeune maîtresse!
BY PELISSIER, DUC DE MALAKOFF.
Pour chanter la jeune maîtresse
Que Musset donne au vieux destin,
J’ai trop parcouru de chemin
Sans atteindre l’enchanteresse;
Toujours vers cet ancien désir
J’ai tendu comme l’hirondelle,
Mais sans le secours du zéphir
Qui la porte où son cœur l’appelle.
Adieu, fantôme souriant,
Vers qui la jeunesse s’élance,
La raison me crie en passant;
Le souvenir vaut l’espérance.
TRANSLATION.
When Hope, a fugitive, retreating
Elbows us, as away she flies,
Then swift returns, another greeting
To offer us with laughing eyes.
Man goeth when his heart is speaking,
The swallows through the zephyrs dart,
And man, who’s every fancy seeking,
Hath yet a more inconstant heart.
Enchantress, fugitive, coquetting!
Know’st thou then true, alone, thy way?
Hath then stern Fate, so old and gray,
So young a mistress never fretting?
REVERSED RHYMES.
To sing the mistress, never fretting,
Musset gives Fate, so old and gray,
Too long I’ve travelled on my way,
And ne’er attained her dear coquetting.
To find that longing of the heart,
I’ve been, like yonder swallow, seeking,
Yet could not through the zephyrs dart,
Nor reach the wish the heart is speaking.
Adieu then, shade, with laughing eyes,
Towards whom youth ever sends its greeting;
Better, cries Reason, as she flies,
Remembrance now, than Hope retreating.
* * * * *
Among the eccentricities of literature may be classed _Rhopalic verses_,
which begin with a monosyllable and gradually increase the length of
each successive word. The name was suggested by the shape of Hercules’
club, ῥόπαλον. Sometimes they run from the butt to the handle of the
club. Take as an example of each,—
Rem tibi confeci, doctissime, dulcisonoram.
Vectigalibus armamenta referre jubet Rex.
Emblematic Poetry.
A pair of scissors and a comb in verse.—§Ben Jonson.§
On their fair standards by the wind displayed,
Eggs, altars, wings, pipes, axes, were portrayed.—_Scribleriad._
The quaint conceit of making verses assume grotesque shapes and devices,
expressive of the theme selected by the writer, appears to have been
most fashionable during the seventeenth century. Writers tortured their
brains in order to torture their verses into all sorts of fantastic
forms, from a flowerpot to an obelisk, from a pin to a pyramid. Hearts
and fans and knots were chosen for love-songs; wineglasses, bottles, and
casks for Bacchanalian songs; pulpits, altars, and monuments for
religious verses and epitaphs. Tom Nash, according to Disraeli, says of
Gabriel Harvey, that “he had writ verses in all kinds: in form of a pair
of gloves, a pair of spectacles, a pair of pot-hooks, &c.” Puttenham, in
his _Art of Poesie_, gives several odd specimens of poems in the form of
lozenges, pillars, triangles, &c. Butler says of Benlowes, “the
excellently learned,” who was much renowned for his literary freaks, “As
for temples and pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men that way; for
he has made a _grid-iron_ and a _frying-pan_ in verse, that, besides the
likeness in shape, the very tone and sound of the words did perfectly
represent the noise made by these utensils! When he was a captain, he
made all the furniture of his horse, from the bit to the crupper, the
beaten poetry, every verse being fitted to the proportion of the thing,
with a moral allusion to the sense of the thing: as the _bridle of
moderation_, the _saddle of content_, and the _crupper of constancy_; so
that the same thing was the epigram and emblem, even as a mule is both
horse and ass.” Mr. Alger tells us that the Oriental poets are fond of
arranging their poems in the form of drums, swords, circles, crescents,
trees, &c., and that the Alexandrian rhetoricians used to amuse
themselves by writing their satires and invectives in the shape of an
axe or a spear. He gives the following erotic triplet, composed by a
Hindu poet, the first line representing a bow, the second its string,
the third an arrow aimed at the heart of the object of his passion:—
[Illustration:
O lovely maid, thou art the fairest slave in all God’s mart!
Those charms to win, with all my empire I would gladly part.
One kiss I send, to pierce, like fire, thy too reluctant heart.
]
THE WINE GLASS.
Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow?
Who hath contentions? Who
hath wounds without cause?
Who hath redness of eyes?
They that tarry long at the
wine! They that go to
seek mixed wine. Look
not thou upon the
wine when it is red,
when it giveth its
color in the
CUP;
when it
moveth itself
aright.
At
the last
it biteth like a
serpent, and stingeth like an adder.
The following specimen of this affectation was written by George Wither,
who lived from 1588 to 1677. It is called by Mr. Ellis a
RHOMBOIDAL DIRGE.
Farewell,
Sweet groves, to you!
You hills that highest dwell,
And all you humble vales, adieu!
You wanton brooks and solitary rocks,
My dear companions all, and you my tender flocks!
Farewell, my pipe! and all those pleasing songs whose moving strains
Delighted once the fairest nymphs that dance upon the plains.
You discontents, whose deep and over-deadly smart
Have without pity broke the truest heart,
Sighs, tears, and every sad annoy,
That erst did with me dwell,
And others joy,
Farewell!
The Christian monks of the Middle Ages, who amused themselves similarly,
preferred for their hymns the form of
THE CROSS.
Blest they who seek,
While in their youth,
With spirit meek,
The way of truth.
To them the Sacred Scriptures now display,
Christ as the only true and living way:
His precious blood on Calvary was given
To make them heirs of endless bliss in heaven.
And e’en on earth the child of God can trace
The glorious blessings of his Saviour’s face.
For them He bore
His Father’s frown,
For them He wore
The thorny crown;
Nailed to the cross,
Endured its pain,
That his life’s loss
Might be their gain.
Then haste to choose
That better part—
Nor dare refuse
The Lord your heart,
Lest He declare,—
“I know you not;”
And deep despair
Shall be your lot.
Now look to Jesus who on Calvary died,
And trust on Him alone who there was crucified.
A CURIOUS PIECE OF ANTIQUITY, ON THE CRUCIFIXION OF OUR SAVIOUR AND THE
TWO THIEVES.
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
◊ INRI ◊
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
◊ My God! My God! vers of my tears ◊
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
I come to Thee; ◊ ◊ bow down thy blessed ears
To hear me wretch, oh, ◊ ◊ let thine eyes, which sleep
Did never close, ◊ ◊ behold a sinner weep.
Let not, O God! ◊ ◊ my God! my faults, though great
And numberless, bet ◊ w ◊ een thy mercy-seat
And my poor soul be t ◊ h ◊ rown, since we are taught,
◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊ ◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊ ◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
Thou, ◊ Lord! remember ◊ est th ◊ y ◊ ne, ◊ if thou beest ◊ sought.
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊ ◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
I co ◊ me ◊ not, Lord wit ◊ h ◊ any o ◊ the ◊ r merit
Then ◊ wh ◊ at I by my S ◊ a ◊ viour ◊ Ch ◊ rist inherit;
Be th ◊ en ◊ his wound ◊ s ◊ my balm, his st ◊ ri ◊ pes my bliss,
My crown his ◊ th ◊ orns, my dea ◊ t ◊ h be lo ◊ st ◊ in his,
And th ◊ ou ◊ my bles ◊ t ◊ Redeemer, ◊ Sa ◊ viour God!
Quit my ac ◊ co ◊ unts, with ◊ h ◊ old thy ◊ v ◊ engeful rod;
O beg for ◊ me ◊ my h ◊ o ◊ pes on the ◊ e ◊ are set,
Thou Chri ◊ st ◊ forgi ◊ v ◊ e, as well as pay ◊ th ◊ e debt.
The liv ◊ in ◊ g fount, the li ◊ f ◊ e, the wa ◊ y ◊ I know;
And but ◊ to ◊ thee ◊ o ◊ whither ◊ s ◊ hould I go?
All o ◊ th ◊ er helps a ◊ r ◊ e vain, giv ◊ e ◊ thine to me;
For by th ◊ y ◊ cross my ◊ s ◊ aving hea ◊ l ◊ th must be.
Oh hear ◊ k ◊ en then, wh ◊ a ◊ t I with ◊ f ◊ aith implore,
Lest s ◊ in ◊ and death sin ◊ k ◊ me forev ◊ e ◊ r more.
Oh Lord! my ◊ G ◊ od! my way ◊ e ◊ s direct ◊ a ◊ nd keep,
In ◊ d ◊ eath defe ◊ n ◊ d that from thee I ◊ n ◊ e’er slip;
And at the do ◊ om ◊ let ◊ m ◊ e be raise ◊ d ◊ then,
To liv ◊ e ◊ with the ◊ e. ◊ Sweet Jes ◊ us ◊ say, Amen!
◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
EXPLANATION.
The middle cross represents our Saviour; those on either side, the two
thieves. On the top and down the middle cross are our Saviour’s
expression, “My God! My God! why hast thou forsaken me?” and on the top
of the cross is the Latin inscription, “INRI”—Jesus Nazarenus Rex
Judæorum, _i.e._ Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. Upon the cross on
the right-hand is the prayer of one of the thieves:—“Lord! remember me
when thou comest into thy kingdom.” On the left-hand cross is the
saying, or reproach, of the other:—“If thou beest the Christ, save
thyself and us.” The whole, comprised together, makes a piece of
excellent poetry, which is to be read across all the columns, and makes
as many lines as there are letters in the alphabet. It is perhaps one of
the most curious pieces of composition to be found on record.
INGENIOUS CYPHER
The following was written by Prof. Whewell at the request of a young
lady:—
U 0 a 0 but I 0 U,
O 0 no 0 but O 0 me;
O let not my 0 a 0 go.
But give 0 0 I 0 U so.
_Thus de-cyphered_:
(You _sigh for_ a _cypher_, but I _sigh for_ you;
O _sigh for_ no _cypher_, but O _sigh for_ me:
O let not my _sigh for_ a _cypher_ go,
But give _sigh for sigh, for_ I _sigh for_ you so.)
TYPOGRAPHICAL.
We once saw a young man gazing at the *ry heavens, with a † in 1 ☞ and a
︷ of pistols in the other. We endeavored to attract his attention by
.ing to a ¶ in a paper we held in our ☞, relating 2 a young man in that
§ of the country, who had left home in a state of mental derangement. He
dropped the † and pistols from his ☞☜ with the !
“It is I of whom U read. I left home be4 my friends knew of my design. I
had s0 the ☞ of a girl who refused 2 lis10 2 me, but smiled b9nly on
another. I ——ed madly from the house, uttering a wild ’ 2 the god of
love, and without replying 2 the ??? of my friends, came here with this
† & ︷ of pistols, 2 put a . 2 my existence. My case has no || in this
§.”
OXFORD JOKE.
A gentleman entered the room of Dr. Barton, Warden of Merton College,
and told him that Dr. Vowel was dead. “What!” said he, “Dr. Vowel dead!
well, thank heaven it was neither U nor I.”
* * * * *
In an old church in Westchester county, N. Y., the following consonants
are written beside the altar, under the Ten Commandments. What vowel is
to be placed between them, to make sense and rhyme of the couplet?
P. R. S. V. R. Y. P. R. F. C. T. M. N.
V. R. K. P. T. H. S. P. R. C. P. T. S. T. N.
ESSAY TO MISS CATHARINE JAY.
An S A now I mean 2 write
2 U sweet K T J,
The girl without a ||,
The belle of U T K.
I 1 der if U got that 1
I wrote 2 U B 4
I sailed in the R K D A,
And sent by L N Moore.
My M T head will scarce contain
A calm I D A bright
But A T miles from U I must
M︷ this chance 2 write.
And 1st, should N E N V U,
B E Z, mind it not,
Should N E friendship show, B true;
They should not B forgot
From virt U nev R D V 8;
Her influence B 9
A like induces 10 dern S,
Or 40 tude D vine.
And if U cannot cut a ——
Or cut an !
I hope U’ll put a .
2 1 ?.
R U for an X ation 2,
My cous N?—heart and ☞
He off R’s in a ¶
A § 2 of land.
He says he loves U 2 X S,
U R virtuous and Y’s,
In X L N C U X L
All others in his i’s.
This S A, until U I C,
I pray U 2 X Q’s,
And do not burn in F E G
My young and wayward muse.
Now fare U well, dear K T J,
I trust that U R true—
When this U C, then you can say,
An S A I O U.
Monosyllables.
“And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.”
Some of our best writers have very properly taken exception to the above
line in Pope’s Essay on Criticism, and have shown, by reference to
abundant examples, that many of the finest passages in our language are
nearly, if not altogether, monosyllabic. Indeed, it could not well be
otherwise, if it be true that, as Dean Swift has remarked, the English
language is “overstocked with monosyllables.” It contains more than five
hundred formed by the vowel _a_ alone; four hundred and fifty by the
vowel _e_; nearly four hundred by the vowel _i_; more than four hundred
by the vowel _o_; and two hundred and sixty by the vowel _u_; besides a
large number formed by diphthongs. Floy has written a lengthy and very
ingenious article, entirely in monosyllables, in which he undertakes, as
he says, to “prove that short words, in spite of the sneer in the text,
need not creep, nor be dull, but that they give strength, and life, and
fire to the verse of those who know how to use them.”
Pope himself, however, has confuted his own words by his admirable
writings more effectively than could be done by labored argument. Many
of the best lines in the Essay above referred to, as well as in the
Essay on Man,—and there are few “dull” or “creeping” verses to be found
in either,—are made up entirely of monosyllables, or contain but one
word of greater length, or a contracted word pronounced as one syllable.
The Universal Prayer—one of the most beautiful and elaborate pieces,
both in sentiment and versification, ever produced in any
language—contains three hundred and four words, of which there are two
hundred and forty-nine monosyllables to fifty-five polysyllables, thus
averaging but one of the latter to every line. A single stanza is
appended as a specimen:—
If I am right, thy grace impart
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart
To find that better way!
Rogers, conversing on this subject, cited two lines from _Eloisa to
Abelard_, which he declared could not possibly be improved:—
Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be press’d;
Give all thou canst—and let me dream the rest.
Among the illustrations employed by Floy, are numerous selections from
the hymnology in common congregational use, such as the following:—
Sweet is the work, my God, my King,
To praise thy name, give thanks, and sing;
To show thy love by morning light,
And talk of all thy truth at night.—§Watts.§
Are there no foes for me to face?
Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend to grace
To help me on to God?—§Watts.§
Save me from death; from hell set free;
Death, hell, are but the want of thee:
My life, my only heav’n thou art,—
O might I feel thee in my heart!—§C. Wesley.§
The same writer, to show Shakspeare’s fondness for small words, and
their frequent subservience to some of his most masterly efforts, enters
upon a monosyllabic analysis of King Lear, quoting from it freely
throughout. Those who read the play with reference to this point will be
struck with the remarkable number of forcible passages made up of words
of one syllable:—
Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air,
We wawl and cry: I will preach to thee; mark me.
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.—This a good block?—_Act IV. Sc. 6._
The following occurs in the play of King John, where the King is pausing
in his wish to incite Hubert to murder Arthur:—
Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet;
But thou shalt have; and creep time ne’er so slow,
Yet it shall come, for me to do thee good.
I had a thing to say.—But let it go.—_Act III. Sc. 3._
But who I was, or where, or from what cause,
Knew not; to speak I tried, and forthwith spake
——Thou sun, said I, fair light,
And thou enlightened earth, so fresh and gay,
Ye hills, and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains,
And ye that live and move, fair creatures, tell,
Tell, if ye saw how I came thus, how here?—
Tell me, how may I know Him, how adore,
From whom I have that thus I move and live?—_Paradise Lost, B. VIII._
Herrick says, in his address to the daffodils:—
We have short time to stay as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you or any thing.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Like to the rain,
Or as the pearls of dew.
Now I am here, what thou wilt do for me,
None of my books will show;
I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree,
For sure I then should grow
To fruit or shade: at least some bird might trust
Her household to me, and I should be just.—§George Herbert.§
Thou who hast given me eyes to see
And love this sight so fair,
Give me a heart to find out Thee,
And read Thee everywhere.—§Keble.§
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
Save by its loss; to give it then a tongue
Were wise in man.—§Young.§
Ah, yes! the hour is come
When thou must haste thee home,
Pure soul! to Him who calls.
The God who gave thee breath
Walks by the side of death,
And naught that step appalls.—§Landor.§
New light new love, new love new life hath bred;
A life that lives by love, and loves by light;
A love to Him to whom all loves are wed;
A light to whom the sun is darkest night:
Eye’s light, heart’s love, soul’s only life, He is;
Life, soul, love, heart, light, eyes, and all are His;
He eye, light, heart, love, soul; He all my joy and bliss.—
§Fletcher’s§ _Purple Island_.
Bailey’s _Festus_, that extraordinary poem the perusal of which makes
the reader feel as if he had “eaten of the insane root that takes the
reason prisoner,” abounds with examples:—
Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths:
Though many, yet they help not; bright, they light not.
They are too late to serve us; and sad things
Are aye too true. We never see the stars
Till we can see naught but them. So with truth.
And yet if one would look down a deep well,
Even at noon, we might see those same stars——
Life’s more than breath, and the quick round of blood—
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths—
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most—feels the noblest—acts the best.
Life’s but a means unto an end—
§Helen§ (_sings_.) Oh! love is like the rose,
And a month it may not see,
Ere it withers where it grows—
Rosalie!
I loved thee from afar;
Oh! my heart was lift to thee
Like a glass up to a star—
Rosalie!
Thine eye was glassed in mine
As the moon is in the sea,
And its shine is on the brine—
Rosalie!
The rose hath lost its red,
And the star is in the sea,
And the briny tear is shed—
Rosalie!
§Festus.§ What the stars are to the night, my love,
What its pearls are to the sea,
What the dew is to the day, my love,
Thy beauty is to me.
We may say that the sun is dead, and gone
Forever; and may swear he will rise no more;
The skies may put on mourning for their God,
And earth heap ashes on her head; but who
Shall keep the sun back when he thinks to rise?
Where is the chain shall bind him? Where the cell
Shall hold him? Hell he would burn down to embers,
And would lift up the world with a lever of light
Out of his way: yet, know ye, ’twere thrice less
To do thrice this, than keep the soul from God.
Many of the most expressive sentences in the Bible are monosyllabic. A
few are subjoined, selected at random:—
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the
light, that it was good.—_Gen. I._
At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he
fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.—_Judges V._
O Lord my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me. O Lord,
thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive,
that I should not go down to the pit. Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints
of his, and give thanks.—_Psalm XXX._
And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live?—_Ezek. XXXVII._
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.—_1 Thess. V._
For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him.—_2 Tim. II._
For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to
stand?—_Rev. VI._
And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day; for there shall
be no night there.—_Rev. XXI._
THE POWER OF SHORT WORDS.
Think not that strength lies in the big round word,
Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak.
To whom can this be true who once has heard
The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak,
When want or woe or fear is in the throat,
So that each word gasped out is like a shriek
Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note,
Sung by some fay or fiend? There is a strength
Which dies if stretched too far or spun too fine,
Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length.
Let but this force of thought and speech be mine,
And he that will may take the sleek fat phrase
Which glows and burns not, though it gleam and shine—
Light, but no heat—a flash, but not a blaze!
Nor is it mere strength that the short word boasts:
It serves of more than fight or storm to tell,
The roar of waves that clash on rock-bound coasts,
The crash of tall trees when the wild winds swell,
The roar of guns, the groans of men that die
On blood-stained fields. It has a voice as well
For them that far off on their sick-beds lie;
For them that weep, for them that mourn the dead;
For them that laugh and dance and clap the hand;
To joy’s quick step, as well as grief’s slow tread,
The sweet, plain words we learnt at first keep time,
And though the theme be sad, or gay, or grand,
With each, with all, these may be made to chime,
In thought, or speech, or song, in prose or rhyme.
§Dr. Alexander§, _Princeton Magazine_.
The Bible.
God’s cabinet of revealed counsel ’tis,
Where weal and woe are ordered so
That every man may know which shall be his;
Unless his own mistake false application make.
It is the index to eternity.
He cannot miss of endless bliss,
That takes this chart to steer by,
Nor can he be mistook, that speaketh by this book.
It is the book of God. What if I should
Say, God of books, let him that looks
Angry at that expression, as too bold,
His thoughts in silence smother, till he find such another.
ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE.
One of the most remarkable results of modern research is the
confirmation of the accuracy of the historical books of the Old
Testament. The ruins of Babylon and Nineveh shed a light on those books
which no skepticism can invalidate. What surprises us most is their
marvellous accuracy in minute details, which are now substantiated by
recent discoveries. The fact seems to be that when writing was
laboriously performed on stone, men had an almost superstitious
conscientiousness in making their records true, and had not learned the
modern indifference to truth which our facile modes of communicating
thought have encouraged. A statement to be chiselled on rock must be
correct; a statement which can be written in five minutes is likely to
embody only first impressions, which may be amended in five minutes
thereafter. Hence it comes to pass that we know more exactly many things
which took place in the wars between Sennacherib and Hezekiah, than we
know what is the precise truth with regard to some of the occurrences in
the battle of Bunker’s Hill. Sir Henry Rawlinson, speaking of his
researches in Babylon, states that the name and situation of every town
of note in ancient Assyria, mentioned in the Bible, can be substantiated
by the ruins of that city. The visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon is
perfectly verified. The prosecution of the researches will be regarded
with great interest as corroborating the truth of Scripture.
An astonishing feature of the word of God is, notwithstanding the time
at which its compositions were written, and the multitude of the topics
to which it alludes, there is not one physical error,—not one assertion
or allusion disproved by the progress of modern science. None of those
mistakes which the science of each succeeding age discovered in the
books preceding; above all, none of those absurdities which modern
astronomy indicates in such great numbers in the writings of the
ancients,—in their sacred codes, in their philosophy, and even in the
finest pages of the fathers of the Church,—not one of these errors is to
be found in any of our sacred books. Nothing there will ever contradict
that which, after so many ages, the investigations of the learned world
have been able to reveal to us on the state of our globe, or on that of
the heavens. Peruse with care the Scriptures from one end to the other,
to find such blemishes, and, whilst you apply yourselves to this
examination, remember that it is a book which speaks of every thing,
which describes nature, which recites its creation, which tells us of
the water, of the atmosphere, of the mountains, of the animals, and of
the plants. It is a book which teaches us the first revolutions of the
world, and which also foretells its last. It recounts them in the
circumstantial language of history, it extols them in the sublimest
strains of poetry, and it chants them in the charms of glowing song. It
is a book which is full of Oriental rapture, elevation, variety, and
boldness. It is a book which speaks of the heavenly and invisible world,
whilst it also speaks of the earth and things visible. It is a book
which nearly fifty writers, of every degree of cultivation, of every
state, of every condition, and living through the course of fifteen
hundred years, have concurred to make. It is a book which was written in
the centre of Asia, in the sands of Arabia, in the deserts of Judea, in
the court of the Temple of the Jews, in the music-schools of the
prophets of Bethel and Jericho, in the sumptuous palaces of Babylon, and
on the idolatrous banks of Chebar; and finally, in the centre of Western
civilization, in the midst of the Jews and of their ignorance, in the
midst of polytheism and its sad philosophy. It is a book whose first
writer had been forty years a pupil of the magicians of Egypt, in whose
opinion the sun, the stars, and elements were endowed with intelligence,
reacted on the elements, and governed the world by a perpetual illuvium.
It is a book whose first writer preceded, by more than nine hundred
years, the most ancient philosophers of ancient Greece and Asia,—the
Thaleses, and the Pythagorases, the Zaleucuses, the Xenophons, and the
Confuciuses. It is a book which carries its narrations even to the
hierarchies of angels—even to the most distant epochs of the future, and
the glorious scenes of the last day. Well: search among its fifty
authors, search among its sixty-six books, its eleven hundred and
eighty-nine chapters, and its thirty-one thousand one hundred and
seventy-three verses; search for only one of those thousand errors which
the ancients and moderns have committed in speaking of the heavens or of
the earth—of their revolutions, of their elements; search—but you will
find none.
THE TESTIMONY OF LEARNED MEN.
§Sir William Jones’§ opinion of the Bible was written on the last leaf
of one belonging to him, in these terms:—“I have regularly and
attentively read these Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that this
volume, independently of its Divine origin, contains more sublimity and
beauty, more pure morality, more important history and finer strains of
poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in
whatever age or language they may have been composed.”
§Rousseau§ says, “This Divine Book, the only one which is indispensable
to the Christian, need only be read with reflection to inspire love for
its author, and the most ardent desire to obey its precepts. Never did
virtue speak so sweet a language; never was the most profound wisdom
expressed with so much energy and simplicity. No one can arise from its
perusal without feeling himself better than he was before.”
§Wilberforce§, in his dying hour, said to a friend, “Read the Bible. Let
no religious book take its place. Through all my perplexities and
distresses, I never read any other book, and I never knew the want of
any other. It has been my hourly study; and all my knowledge of the
doctrines, and all my acquaintance with the experience and realities, of
religion, have been derived from the Bible only. I think religious
people do not read the Bible enough. Books about religion may be useful
enough, but they will not do instead of the simple truth of the Bible.”
§Lord Bolingbroke§ declared that “the Gospel is, in all cases, one
continued lesson of the strictest morality, of justice, of benevolence,
and of universal charity.”
Similar testimony has been accorded in the strongest terms by §Locke§,
§Newton§, §Boyle§, §Selden§, §Salmasius§, §Sir Walter Scott§, and
numberless others.
§Daniel Webster§, having been commended for his eloquence on a memorable
occasion, replied, “If any thing I have ever said or written deserves
the feeblest encomiums of my fellow-countrymen, I have no hesitation in
declaring that for their partiality I am indebted, solely indebted, to
the daily and attentive perusal of the Holy Scriptures, the source of
all true poetry and eloquence, as well as of all good and all comfort.”
§John Quincy Adams§, in a letter to his son in 1811, says, “I have for
many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.
My custom is to read four or five chapters every morning, immediately
after rising from my bed. It employs about an hour of my time, and seems
to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day. In whatsoever light
we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history,
or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge
and virtue.”
§Addison§ says, in relation to the poetry of the Bible, “After perusing
the Book of Psalms, let a judge of the beauties of poetry read a literal
translation of Horace or Pindar, and he will find in these two last such
an absurdity and confusion of style, with such a comparative poverty of
imagination, as will make him sensible of the vast superiority of
Scripture style.”
§Lord Byron§, in a letter to Mrs. Sheppard, said, in reference to the
truth of Christianity, “Indisputably, the firm believers in the Gospel
have a great advantage over all others, for this simple reason:—that, if
true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no
hereafter, they can be but with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having
had the assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent
disappointment, since (at the worst, for them) out of nothing nothing
can arise,—not even sorrow.” The following lines of Walter Scott are
said to have been copied in his Bible:—
Within this awful volume lies
The mystery of mysteries.
Oh! happiest they of human race,
To whom our God has given grace
To hear, to read, to fear, to pray,
To lift the latch, and force the way;
But better had they ne’er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.—_Monastery._
ENGLISH BIBLE TRANSLATIONS.
Our version of the Bible is to be loved and prized for this, as for a
thousand other things,—that it has preserved a purity of meaning to
many terms of natural objects. Without this holdfast, our vitiated
imaginations would refine away language to mere abstractions. Hence
the French have lost their poetical language; and Blanco White says
the same thing has happened to the Spanish.—§Coleridge.§
_Wickliffe’s Bible._—This was the first translation made into the
language. It was translated by John Wickliffe, about the year 1384, but
never printed, though there are manuscript copies of it in several
public libraries.
_Tyndale’s Bible._—The translation of William Tyndale, assisted by Miles
Coverdale, was the first printed Bible in the English language. The New
Testament was published in 1526. It was revised and republished in 1530.
In 1532, Tyndale and his associates finished the whole Bible, except the
Apocrypha, and printed it abroad.
_Matthews’ Bible._—While Tyndale was preparing a second edition of the
Bible, he was taken up and burned for heresy in Flanders. On his death,
Coverdale and John Rogers revised it, and added a translation of the
Apocrypha. It was dedicated to Henry VIII., in 1537, and was printed at
Hamburg, under the borrowed name of Thomas Matthews, whence it was
called Matthews’ Bible.
_Cranmer’s Bible._—This was the first Bible printed by authority in
England, and publicly set up in the churches. It was Tyndale’s version,
revised by Coverdale, and examined by Cranmer, who added a preface to
it, whence it was called Cranmer’s Bible. It was printed by Grafton, in
large folio, in 1539. After being adopted, suppressed, and restored
under successive reigns, a new edition was brought out in 1562.
_The Geneva Bible._—In 1557, the whole Bible in quarto was printed at
Geneva by Rowland Harte, some of the English refugees continuing in that
city solely for that purpose. The translators were Bishop Coverdale,
Anthony Gilby, William Whittingham, Christopher Woodman, Thomas Sampson,
and Thomas Cole—to whom some add John Knox, John Bodleigh, and John
Pullain, all zealous Calvinists, both in doctrine and discipline. But
the chief and most learned of them were the first three. Of this
translation there were about thirty editions, mostly printed by the
King’s and Queen’s printers, from 1560 to 1616. In this version, the
first distinction in verses was made. The following is a copy of the
title-page of the edition of 1559, omitting two quotations from the
Scriptures:—
THE BIBLE.
THAT IS. THE HO-
LY SCRIPTURES CONTEI-
NED IN THE OLDE AND NEWE
TESTAMENT.
Translated According
to the Ebrew and Greeke, and conferred with the
best translations in divers languages.
With most profitable Annotations vpon all the hard
places,
and other things of Great importance.
IMPRINTED AT LONDON
by the Deputies of Christopher Barker, Printer to the
Queenes most excellent Maiestie,
1599.
Cum priuilegio.
To some editions of the Geneva Bible, one of which is this of 1599, is
subjoined Beza’s translation of the new text into English by L. Tomson,
who was under-secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham. But, though he
pretends to translate from Beza, he has seldom varied a word from the
Geneva translation. Dr. Geddes gives honorable testimony to the last
Geneva version, as he does not hesitate to declare that he thinks it in
general better than that of the King James translators. Our readers will
hardly agree with him when they read some extracts from it appended in a
succeeding paragraph.
The typographical appearance of this work is quite a curiosity. Like
most of the old books, it is well printed, and is ornamented with the
pen. The head and foot rules, as well as the division of the columns,
are made with the pen in red ink. The title-page is quite profusely
ornamented with red lines.
This translation of the Bible is known as “the breeches Bible,” from the
following rendering of Genesis iii. 7:—
Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
naked; and they sewed fig tree leaves together, and made themselves
_breeches_.
A peculiarity in this Bible is the substitution of the letter _v_ for
_u_, and, _vice versa_, _u_ for _v_. The name of Eve is printed Heuah
(Hevah); Cain is printed Kain; Abel, Habel; Enoch, Henock; Isaac, Ishak;
Hebrew, Ebrew, &c. The translations of many of the passages differ
materially from our received version. The following will serve as
illustrations:—
Thus he cast out man; and at the East side of the garden of Eden he
set the cherubims, and the blade of a sword shaken, to keep the way of
the tree of life.—Genesis iii. 24.
Then it repented the Lorde that he had made man in the earth, and he
was sorie in his heart.—Gen. vi. 6.
Make thee an Arkee of pine trees; thou shalt make cabins in the Arkee,
and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. Thou shalt make it
with the lower, second and third roome.—Gen. vi. 14, 10.
And he said, Hagar, Sarais maide, whence comest thou? & whether wilt
thou go? and she said, I flee from my dame Sarai.—Gen. xvi. 8.
When Abram was ninetie years old & nine, the Lord appeared to Abram,
and said unto him, I am God all sufficient, walke before me, and be
thou upright.—Gen. xvii. 1.
Then Abraham rose vp from the sight of his corps, and talked with the
Hittites, saying, I am a stranger and a forreiner among you, &c.—Gen.
xxiii. 3, 4.
Then Abraham yielded the spirit and died in a good age, an olde man,
and of great yeeres, and was gathered to his people.—Gen. xxv. 8.
As many were astonied at thee (his visage was so deformed of men, and
his forme of the sonnes of men) so shall hee spunckle many
nations.—Isa. lii. 14. This chapter has but fourteen verses in it.
Can the blacke Moore change his skinne? or the leopard his spots?—Jer.
xiii. 23.
And after those days we trussed up our fardles, and went up to
Jerusalem.—Acts xxi. 15.
But Jesus sayde vnto her, Let the children first bee fed; for it is
not good to take the childrens bread, and to cast it unto whelps. Then
shee answered, and said unto him, Truthe, Lorde; yet in deede the
whelps eate under the table of the childrens crummes.—Mark vii. 27,
28.
And she broght forth her fyrst begotten sonne, and wrapped him in
swadlyng clothes, and layd him in a cretche, bccause there was no
rowme for them with in the ynne.—Luke ii. 7.
_The Bishops’ Bible._—Archbishop Parker engaged bishops and other
learned men to bring out a new translation. They did so in 1568, in
large folio. It made what was afterwards called the great English Bible,
and commonly the Bishops’ Bible. In 1589 it was published in octavo, in
small, but fine black letter. In it the chapters were divided into
verses, but without any breaks for them.
_Matthew Parker’s Bible._—The Bishops’ Bible underwent some corrections,
and was printed in large folio in 1572, and called Matthew Parker’s
Bible. The version was used in the churches for forty years.
_The Douay Bible._—The New Testament was brought out by the Roman
Catholics in 1582, and called the Rhemish New Testament. It was
condemned by the Queen of England, and copies were seized by her
authority and destroyed. In 1609 and 1610, the Old Testament was added,
and the whole published at Douay, hence called the Douay Bible.
_King James’s Bible._—The version now in use was brought out by King
James’s authority in 1611. Fifty-four learned men were employed to
accomplish the work of revising it. From death or other cause, seven of
them failed to enter upon it. The remaining forty-seven were ranged
under six divisions, and had different portions of the Bible assigned to
those divisions. They commenced their task in 1607. After some three or
four years of diligent labor, the whole was completed. This version was
generally adopted, and the other translations fell into disuse. It has
continued in use until the present time.
DISSECTION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.
Books in the Old Testament 39│In the New 27│Total 66
Chapters 929│In the New 260│Total 1,189
Verses 23,214│In the New 7,959│Total 31,173
Words 592,439│In the New 181,253│Total 773,692
Letters 2,728,100│In the New 838,380│Total 3,566,480
APOCRYPHA.
Chapters 183│Verses 6,081│Words 152,185
The middle chapter and the least in the Bible is Psalm cxvii.
The middle verse is the eighth of Psalm cxviii.
The middle line is in 2d Chronicles, 4th chapter, 16th verse.
The word _and_ occurs in the Old Testament 35,543 times.
The same in the New Testament, 10,684.
The word _Jehovah_ occurs 6,855 times.
OLD TESTAMENT.
The middle book is Proverbs.
The middle chapter is Job xxix.
The middle verse is in 2d Chronicles, 20th chapter, between the 17th and
18th verses.
The least verse is in 1st Chronicles, 1st chapter, and 25th verse.
NEW TESTAMENT.
The middle book is the 2d epistle to Thessalonians.
The middle chapter is between the 13th and 14th of Romans.
The middle verse is the 17th chapter of Acts, and 17th verse.
The least verse is the 11th chapter of John, verse 35.
* * * * *
The 21st verse of the 7th chapter of Ezra has all the letters of the
alphabet in it.
The 19th chapter of the 2d book of Kings, and the 37th of Isaiah, are
alike.
* * * * *
N.B.—Three years are said to have been spent in this curious but idle
calculation.
DISTINCTIONS IN THE GOSPELS.
1. In regard to their external features and characteristics:
The point of view of the first gospel is mainly Israelitic; of the
second, Gentile; of the third, universal; of the fourth, Christian.
The general aspect, and so to speak, physiognomy of the first, mainly,
is oriental; of the second, Roman; of the third, Greek; of the fourth,
spiritual.
The style of the first is stately and rhythmical; of the second, terse
and precise; of the third, calm and copious; of the fourth, artless and
colloquial.
The striking characteristic of the first is symmetry; of the second
compression; of the third, order; of the fourth, system.
The thought and language of the first are both Hebraistic; of the third,
both Hellenistic; while in the second, thought is often accidental
though the language is Hebraistic; and in the fourth, the language is
Hellenistic, but the thought Hebraistic.
2. In respect to their subject-matter and contents:
In the first gospel, narrative; in the second, memoirs; in the third,
history; in the fourth, dramatic portraiture.
In the first we often have the record of events in their accomplishment;
in the second, events in detail; in the third, events in their
connection; in the fourth, events in relation to the teaching springing
from them.
Thus in the first we often meet with the notice of impressions; in the
second, of facts; in the third, of motives; in the fourth, of words
spoken.
And, lastly, the record of the first is mainly collective, and often
antithetical; of the second, graphic and circumstantial; of the third,
didactic and reflective; of the fourth, selective and supplemental.
3. In respect to their portraiture of our Lord:
The first presents him to us mainly as the Messiah; the second, mainly
as the God-man; the third, as the Redeemer; the fourth, as the only
begotten Son of God.
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE NOW LOST OR UNKNOWN.
1. The Prophecy of Enoch. See Epistle to Jude, 14.
2. The Book of the Wars of the Lord. See Numb. xxi. 14.
3. The Prophetical Gospel of Eve, which relates to the Amours of the
Sons of God with the Daughters of Men. See Origen cont. Celsum, Tertul.
&c.
4. The Book of Jasher. See Joshua x. 13; and 2 Samuel i. 18.
5. The Book of Iddo the Seer. See 2 Chronicles ix. 29, and xii. 15.
6. The Book of Nathan the Prophet. See as above.
7. The Prophecies of Ahijah, the Shilonite. See as above.
8. The acts of Rehoboam, in Book of Shemaiah. See 2 Chronicles xii. 15.
9. The Book of Jehu the Son of Hanani. See 2 Chronicles xx. 34.
10. The Five Books of Solomon, treating on the nature of trees, beasts,
fowl, serpents, and fishes. See 1 Kings iv. 33.
11. The 151st Psalm.
THE WORD “SELAH.”
The translators of the Bible have left the Hebrew word Selah, which
occurs so often in the Psalms, as they found it, and of course the
English reader often asks his minister, or some learned friend, what it
means. And the minister or learned friend has most often been obliged to
confess ignorance, because it is a matter in regard to which the most
learned have by no means been of one mind. The Targums, and most of the
Jewish commentators, give to the word the meaning of _eternally
forever_. Rabbi Kimchi regards it as a sign to elevate the voice. The
authors of the Septuagint translation appear to have considered it a
musical or rhythmical note. Herder inclines to the opinion that it
indicates a change of tone, which is expressed either by increase of
force, or by a transition into another time and mode. Matheson thinks it
is a musical note, equivalent, perhaps, to the word _repeat_. According
to Luther and others, it means _silence_. Gesenius explains it to mean,
“Let the instruments play and the singers stop.” Wocher regards it as
equivalent to _sursum corda_,—up, my soul! Sommer, after examining all
the seventy-four passages in which the word occurs, recognizes in every
case “an actual appeal or summons to Jehovah.” They are calls for aid,
and prayers to be heard, expressed either with entire directness, or if
not in the imperative, Hear, Jehovah! or Awake, Jehovah, and the like,
still, earnest addresses to God that he would remember and hear, &c. The
word itself he considers indicative of a blast of trumpets by the
priests, Selah being an abridged expression for Higgaion Selah,—Higgaion
indicating the sound of the stringed instruments, and Selah a vigorous
blast of trumpets.
HEXAMETERS IN THE BIBLE.
_In the Psalms._
Gōd cāme | ūp wĭth ă | shōut: ōur | Lōrd wĭth thĕ | sōund ŏf ă |
trūmpēt.‖
Thēre ĭs ă | rīvĕr thĕ | flōwĭng whĕre- | ōf shāll | glāddĕn thĕ |
cītȳ.‖
Hăllĕ- | lūjăh thĕ | cīty̆ ŏf | Gōd! Jē- | hōvăh hăth | blēst hēr.‖
_In the New Testament._
Art thŏu hĕ | thāt shōuld | cōme, ōr | dō wē | loōk fŏr ă- | nōthēr?‖
Hūsbānds, | lōve yoūr | wīves, ānd | bē nōt | bīttĕr ă- | gāinst thēm.‖
Blēss’d ăre thĕ | pōor īn | spīrĭt, fŏr | thēirs ĭs thĕ | kĭngdŏm ŏf |
hēavēn.‖
Mr. Coleridge, whose enthusiastic and reverential admiration of the
rhetorical beauty and poetic grandeur with which the Bible abounds,—all
the more beautiful and the more sublime because casual and unsought by
the sacred writers,—took great delight in pointing out the _hexametrical
rhythm_ of numerous passages, particularly in the book of Isaiah:—
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, | O earth: for the Lord hath spoken.
I have nourished and brought up children, | and they have rebelled
against me.
The ox knoweth his owner, | and the ass his master’s crib:
But Israel doth not know, | my people doth not consider.
Winer points out the following hexameters in the original Greek version
of the New Testament:—
Κρῆτες ἀ | εὶ ψεῦ | σται, κακἀ | θηρία | γαστέρες | ἀργαί.—Titus i. 12.
Πᾶσα δό | σις ἀγα | θὴ καὶ | πᾶν δώ | ρημα τέ | λειον,—James i. 17.
Καὶ τροχι | ὰς ὀρ | θὰς ποι | ήσατε | τοῖς ποσὶν | ὑμῶν,—Heb. xii 13.
PARALLELISM OF THE HEBREW POETRY.
The prominent characteristic of the Hebrew poetry is what Bishop Lowth
entitles _Parallelism_, that is, a certain equality, resemblance, or
relationship, between the members of each period; so that in two lines,
or members of the same period, things shall answer to things, and words
to words, as if fitted to each other by a kind of rule or measure. The
Psalms, Proverbs, Solomon’s Song, Job, and all the Prophets, except
Daniel and Jonah, abound with instances.
It is in a great measure owing to this form of composition that our
admirable authorized version, though executed in prose, retains so much
of a poetical cast; for, being strictly word for word after the
original, the form and order of the original sentences are preserved;
which, by this artificial structure, this regular alternation and
correspondence of parts, makes the ear sensible of a departure from the
common style and tone of prose.
The different kinds of parallels are illustrated in the following
examples:—
_Parallels Antithetic._—Prov. x. 1, 7.
A wise son maketh a glad father;
But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
The memory of the just is blessed;
But the name of the wicked shall rot.
_Parallels Synthetic._—Prov. vi. 16–19.
These six things doth the Lord hate;
Yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
A proud look, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations,
Feet that be swift in running to mischief,
A false witness that speaketh lies,
And he that soweth discord among brethren.
_Constructive._—Psalm xix. 7–9.
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.
_Parallels Synonymous._—Psalm xx. 1–4.
The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble;
The name of the God of Jacob defend thee;
Send thee help from the sanctuary,
And strengthen thee out of Zion;
Remember all thine offerings,
And accept thy burnt sacrifice;
Grant thee according to thine own heart,
And fulfil all thy counsel.
_Gradational._—Psalm i. 1.
Blessed is the man
That walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor standeth in the way of sinners,
Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
_Parallels Introverted._—Prov. xxiii. 15, 16.
My son, if thy heart be wise,
My heart shall rejoice, even mine;
Yea, my reins shall rejoice
When thy lips speak right things.
It may be objected to Hebrew poetry, says Gilfillan, that it has no
regular rhythm except a rude parallelism. What then? Must it be,
therefore, altogether destitute of music? Has not the rain a rhythm of
its own, as it patters on the pane, or sinks on the bosom of its kindred
pool? Has not the wind a harmony, as it bows the groaning woods, or
howls over the mansions of the dead? Have not the waves of ocean their
wild bass? Has not the thunder its own deep and dreadful organ-pipe? Do
they speak in rhyme? Do they murmur in blank verse? Who taught them to
begin in Iambics, or to close in Alexandrines? And shall not God’s own
speech have a peculiar note, no more barbarous than is the voice of the
old woods or the older cataracts?
Besides, to call parallelism a coarse or uncouth rhythm, betrays an
ignorance of its nature. Without entering at large on the subject of
Hebrew versification, we may ask any one who has paid even a slight
attention to the subject, if the effect of parallels such as the
foregoing examples, perpetually intermingled as they are, be not to
enliven the composition, often to give distinctness and precision to the
train of thought, to impress the sentiments upon the memory, and to give
out a harmony which, if inferior to rhyme in the compression produced by
the difficulty (surmounted) of uniting varied sense with recurring
sound, and in the pleasure of surprise; and to blank verse, in freedom,
in the effects produced by the variety of pause, and in the force of
long and linked passages, as well as of insulated lines, is less slavish
than the one, and less arbitrary than the other? Unlike rhyme, its point
is more that of thought than of language; unlike blank verse, it never
can, however managed, degenerate into heavy prose. Such is parallelism,
which generally forms the differential quality of the poetry of
Scripture, although there are many passages in it destitute of this aid,
and which yet, in the spirit they breathe, and the metaphors by which
they are garnished, are genuine and high poetry. And there can be little
question that in the parallelism of the Hebrew tongue we can trace many
of the peculiarities of modern writing, and in it find the fountain of
the rhythm, the pomp and antithesis, which lend often such grace, and
always such energy, to the style of Johnson, of Junius, of Burke, of
Hall, of Chalmers,—indeed, of most writers who rise to the grand swells
of prose-poetry.
SIMILARITY OF SOUND.
There is a remarkable similarity of sound in a passage in the Second
Book of Kings, ch. iii. v. 4, to the metrical rhythm of Campbell’s
_Battle of the Baltic_:—
A hundred thousand lambs,
And a hundred thousand rams,
With the wool.
By each gun the lighted brand,
In a bold determined hand,
And the Prince of all the land
Led them on.
PARALLEL PASSAGES BETWEEN SHAKSPEARE AND THE BIBLE.
An English minister, Rev. T. R. Eaton, has written a work entitled
_Shakspeare and the Bible_, for the purpose of showing how much
Shakspeare was indebted to the Bible for many of his illustrations,
rhythms, and even modes of feeling. The author affirms that, in storing
his mind, the immortal bard went first to the word, and then to the
works, of God. In shaping the truths derived from these sources, he
obeyed the instinct implanted by Him who had formed him Shakspeare.
Hence his power of inspiring us with sublime affection for that which is
properly good, and of chilling us with horror by his fearful
delineations of evil. Shakspeare perpetually reminds us of the Bible,
not by direct quotations, indirect allusion, borrowed idioms, or
palpable imitation of phrase or style, but by an elevation of thought
and simplicity of diction which are not to be found elsewhere. A
passage, for instance, rises in our thoughts, unaccompanied by a clear
recollection of its origin. Our first impression is that it must belong
either to the Bible or Shakspeare. No other author excites the same
feeling in an equal degree. In Shakspeare’s plays religion is a vital
and active principle, sustaining the good, tormenting the wicked, and
influencing the hearts and lives of all.
Although the writer carries his leading idea too far, by straining
passages to multiply the instances in which Shakspeare has imitated
scriptural sentences in thought and construction, and by leading his
readers to infer that it was from the Bible Shakspeare drew not only his
best thoughts, but in fact his whole power of inspiring us with
affection for good and horror for evil, it is certainly true that some
hundreds of Biblical allusions, however brief and simple, show
Shakspeare’s conversance with the Bible, his fondness for it, and the
almost unconscious recurrence of it in his mind. The following examples
of his parallelisms will be found interesting:—
_Othello._—Rude am I in my speech.—i. 3.
But though I be rude in speech.—2 Cor. xi. 6.
_Witches._—Show his eyes and grieve his heart.—_Macbeth_, iv. 1.
Consume thine eyes and grieve thine heart.—1 Sam. ii. 33.
_Macbeth._—Lighted fools the way to dusty death.—v. 5.
Thou hast brought me into the dust of death.—Ps. xxii. 15.
Dusty death alludes to the sentence pronounced against Adam:—
Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.—Gen. iii. 19.
_Macbeth._—Life’s but a walking shadow.—v. 5.
Man walketh in a vain show.—Ps. xxxix. 6.
_Prince of Morocco._—Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadow’d livery of the burnished sun.—_Merch. Ven._ ii. 1.
Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon
me.—Sol. Song, i. 6.
_Othello._—I took by the throat, the circumcised dog, and smote
him.—v. 2.
I smote him, I caught him by his beard and smote him, and slew him.—1
Sam. xvii. 35.
_Macbeth._—Let this pernicious hour stand aye accursed in the
calendar.—iv. 1.
Opened Job his mouth and cursed his day; let it not be joined unto the
days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.—Job
iii. 1, 6.
_Hamlet._—What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and
admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a
God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!—ii. 2.
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? For thou hast made him a
little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and
honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy
hands.—Ps. viii. 4, 5, 6.
_Macbeth._—We will die with harness on our back.—v. 5.
Nicanor lay dead in his harness.—2 Maccabees xv. 28.
_Banquo._—Woe to the land that’s governed by a child.
Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child.—Eccles. x. 16.
_Banquo._—In the great hand of God I stand.—_Macbeth_, ii. 3.
Thy right hand hath holden me up.—Ps. xviii. 35.
Man the image of his Maker.—_Henry VIII._, iii. 2.—_Gen. I._ 27.
Blessed are the peacemakers.—_2 Henry VI._, ii. 1.—_Matt. V._ 29.
And when he falls he falls like Lucifer.—_Henry VIII._, iii. 2.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!—Isaiah
xiv. 12.
No, Bolingbroke, if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the book of life.—_Richard II._, i. 3.
Whose names were not written in the book of life.—Rev. xx., xxi.
Swear by thy gracious self.—_Romeo and Juliet_, ii. 2.
He could swear by no greater, he sware by himself.—Heb. vi. 13.
My stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet.—_2 Henry VI._, ii. 3.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.—Ps. cxix.
105.
Who can call him his friend that dips in the same dish?—_Timon of
Athens_, iii. 2.
He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray
me.—Matt. xxvi. 23.
You shall see him a palm in Athens again, and flourish with the
highest.—_Timon of Athens_, v. 1.
The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree.—Ps. xcii. 12.
It is written, they appear to men like angels of light.—_Com. of
Errors_, iv. 3
Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.—2 Cor. xi. 14.
And lose my way
Among the thorns and dangers of this world.—_King John_, iv. 3.
Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward.—Prov. xxii. 5.
When we first put this dangerous stone a rolling,
’Twould fall upon ourselves.—_Henry VIII._, v. 2.
He that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.—Prov. xxvi. 27.
The speech of Ulysses, in “Troilus and Cressida,” i. 3, is almost a
paraphrase of St. Luke xxi. 25, 26:—
But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues, and what portents! What mutiny!
What raging of the sea! Shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture.
And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the
stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the
sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and
for looking after those things which are coming on the earth; for
the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
_Hermia_ and _Lear_ both use an expression derived from the same
source:—
_Hermia._—An adder did it; for with doubler tongue
Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung.—_Mid. N. Dream_, iii.
2.
_Lear._—Struck me with her tongue,
Most serpent-like, upon the very heart.—ii. 4.
They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders’ poison is
under their lips.—Ps. cxl. 3.
_Lear._—All the stored vengeances of heaven fall on her ingrateful
top.—ii. 4.
As for the head of those that compass me about, let the mischief of
their own lips cover them.—Ps. cxl. 9.
_Fool to King Lear._—We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee
there’s no laboring in the winter.—ii. 4.
The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the
summer.—Prov. xxx. 25. See also Prov. vi. 6.
WHO IS THE TRUE GENTLEMAN?
The answer to this question will afford one of numberless instances that
can be adduced to show the superiority of inspired composition. Compare
Bishop Doane’s admired definition with that of the Psalmist:—
A gentleman is but a _gentle_ man—no more, no less; a diamond polished
that was a diamond in the rough: a gentleman is gentle; a gentleman is
modest; a gentleman is courteous; a gentleman is generous; a gentleman
is slow to take offence, as being one that never gives it; a gentleman
is slow to surmise evil, as being one that never thinks it; a
gentleman goes armed only in consciousness of right; a gentleman
subjects his appetites; a gentleman refines his tastes; a gentleman
subdues his feelings; a gentleman controls his speech; and finally, a
gentleman deems every other better than himself.
In the paraphrase of Psalm xv. it is thus answered:—
’Tis he whose every thought and deed
By rules of virtue moves;
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak
The thing his heart disproves.
Who never did a slander forge,
His neighbor’s fame to wound,
Nor hearken to a false report,
By malice whispered round.
Who vice, in all its pomp and power,
Can treat with just neglect,
And piety, though clothed in rags,
Religiously respect.
Who to his plighted vows and trust
Has ever firmly stood;
And though he promise to his loss,
He makes his promise good.
Whose soul in usury disdains
His treasure to employ;
Whom no rewards can ever bribe
The guiltless to destroy.
MISQUOTATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE.
“God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”[7] From Sterno’s
_Sentimental Journey to Italy_. Compare Isaiah xxvii. 8.
Footnote 7:
In a collection of proverbs published in 1594, we find, “_Dieu
mesure le vent à la brebis tondue_,” and Herbert has in his Jacula
Prudentum, “To a close shorn sheep God gives wind by measure.”
“In the midst of life we are in death.” From the Burial Service; and
this, originally, from a hymn of Luther.
“Bread and wine which the Lord hath commanded to be received.” From
the English Catechism.
“Not to be wise above what is written.” Not in Scripture.
“That the Spirit would go from heart to heart as oil from vessel to
vessel.” Not in Scripture.
“The merciful man is merciful to his beast.” The scriptural form is,
“A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.”—Prov. xii. 10.
“A nation shall be born in a day.” In Isaiah it reads, “Shall a nation
be born at once?”—lxvi. 8.
“As iron sharpeneth iron, so doth a man the countenance of his
friend.” “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of
his friend.” Prov. xxvii. 17.
“That he who runs may read.” “That he may run that readeth.”—Hab. ii.
2.
“Owe no man any thing but love.” “Owe no man any thing, but to love
one another.”—Rom. xiii. 8.
“Prone to sin as the sparks fly upward.” “Born unto trouble, as the
sparks fly upward.”—Job v. 7.
“Exalted to heaven in point of privilege.” Not in the Bible.
Eve was not Adam’s _helpmate_, but merely a help meet for him; nor was
Absalom’s long hair, of which he was so proud, the instrument of his
destruction;[8] his head, and not the hair upon it, having been caught
in the boughs of the tree. (2 Samuel xviii. 9.)
Footnote 8:
A London periwig-maker once had a sign upon which was painted Absalom
suspended from the branches of the oak by his hair, and underneath the
following couplet:—
If Absalom hadn’t worn his own hair,
He’d ne’er been found a hanging there.
“Money is the root of evil.” Paul said, I. Timothy, vi. 10, “The love
of money is the root of all evil.”
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” Gen. iii. 19.
Commonly quoted “brow.”
“Cleanliness akin to godliness.” Not in the Bible.
Our Lord’s hearing the doctors in the Temple, and asking them
questions, is frequently called his disputing with the doctors.
A SCRIPTURAL BULL.
In the book of Isaiah, chapter xxxvii. verse 36, is the following
confusion of ideas:—
Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the
Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and _when they
arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses_.
WIT AND HUMOR IN THE BIBLE.
“Shocking!” many a good old saint will cry, at the very thought of it.
“The Bible a jest-book! What godless folly shall we have up next?” No,
the Bible is not a jest-book. But there is wit in it of the first
quality; and a good reason why it should be there. Take a few specimens.
Job, in his thirtieth chapter, is telling how he scorned the low-lived
fellows, who pretend to look down on him in his adversities. They are
fools. They belong to the long-eared fraternity. Anybody, with less wit,
might come out bluntly and call them asses. But Job puts it more deftly
(xxx. 7): “Among the bushes they _brayed_; under the _nettles_ they were
gathered together.” If that is not wit, there is no such thing as wit.
And yet the commentators don’t see it, or won’t see it. They are
perfectly wooden when they come to any such gleam of humor.
Take another instance—Elijah’s ridicule of the prophets of Baal. They
are clamoring to their god, to help them out of a very awkward
predicament. And, while they are at it, the prophet shows them up in a
way that must have made the people roar with laughter. The stiff,
antiquated style of our English Bible tames down his sallies. Take them
in modern phrase. These quack prophets have worked themselves into a
perfect desperation, and are capering about on the altar as if they had
the St. Vitus’s dance. The scene (I. Kings xviii. 26, 27) wakes up all
Elijah’s sense of the ridiculous. “Shout louder! He is a god, you know.
Make him hear! Perhaps he is chatting with somebody, or he is off on a
hunt, or gone traveling. Or maybe he is taking a nap. Shout away! Wake
him up!” Imagine the priests going through their antics on the altar,
while Elijah bombards them in this style, at his leisure.
Paul shows a dry humor more than once, as in II. Cor. xii. 13: “Why
haven’t you fared as well as the other churches? Ah! there is one
grievance—that you haven’t had _me to support_. Pray do not lay it up
against me!”
These instances might be multiplied from the Old and New Testaments
both. What do they show? That the Bible is, on the whole, a humorous
book? Far from it. That religion is a humorous subject—that we are to
throw all the wit we can into the treatment of it? No. But they show
that the sense of the ludicrous is put into a man by his Maker; that it
has its uses, and that we are not to be ashamed of it, or to roll up our
eyes in a holy horror of it.
THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENT.
The name Old Testament was applied to the books of Moses by St. Paul
(II. Cor. iii. 14), inasmuch as the former covenant comprised the whole
scheme of the Mosaic revelation, and the history of this is contained in
them. The phrase “book of the covenant,” taken from Exod. xxiv. 7, was
transferred in the course of time by metonymy to signify the writings
themselves. The term New Testament has been in common use since the
third century, and was employed by Eusebius in the sense in which it is
now applied.
A SCRIPTURAL SUM.
Add to your faith, virtue;
And to virtue, knowledge;
And to knowledge, temperance:
And to temperance, patience;
And to patience, godliness;
And to godliness, brotherly kindness;
And to brotherly kindness, charity.
_The Answer_:—For if these things be in you and abound, they make you
that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our
Lord Jesus Christ.—2 Peter i. 5, 8.
BIBLIOMANCY.
Bibliomancy, or divination by the Bible, had become so common in the
fifth century, that several councils were obliged expressly to forbid
it, as injurious to religion, and savoring of idolatry.
This kind of divination was named _Sortes Sanctorum_, or _Sortes Sacræ_,
Lots of the Saints, or Sacred Lots, and consisted in suddenly opening,
or dipping into, the Bible, and regarding the passage that first
presented itself to the eye as predicting the future lot of the
inquirer. The _Sortes Sanctorum_ had succeeded the _Sortes Homericæ_ and
_Sortes Virgilianæ_ of the Pagans; among whom it was customary to take
the work of some famous poet, as Homer or Virgil, and write out
different verses on separate scrolls, and afterwards draw one of them,
or else, opening the book suddenly, consider the first verse that
presented itself as a prognostication of future events. Even the vagrant
fortune-tellers, like some of the gypsies of our own times, adopted this
method of imposing upon the credulity of the ignorant. The nations of
the East retain the practice to the present day. The famous usurper,
Nadir Shah, twice decided upon besieging cities, by opening at random
upon verses of the celebrated poet Hafiz.
This abuse, which was first introduced into the church about the third
century, by the superstition of the people, afterwards gained ground
through the ignorance of some of the clergy, who permitted prayers to be
read in the churches for this very purpose. It was therefore found
necessary to ordain in the Council of Vannes, held §A.D.§ 465, “That
whoever of the clergy or laity should be detected in the practice of
this art should be cast out of the communion of the church.” In 506, the
Council of Agde renewed the decree; and in 578, the Council of Auxerre,
amongst other kinds of divination, forbade the Lots of the Saints, as
they were called, adding, “Let all things be done in the name of the
Lord;” but these ordinances did not effectually suppress them, for we
find them again noticed and condemned in a capitulary or edict of
Charlemagne, in 793. Indeed, all endeavors to banish them from the
Christian church appear to have been in vain for ages.
The Name of God.
Tell them I AM, §Jehovah§ said
To Moses, while earth heard in dread;
And, smitten to the heart,
At once, above, beneath, around,
All nature, without voice or sound,
Replied, O §Lord§! THOU ART!
_Christopher Smart, an English Lunatic._
It is singular that the _name of God_ should be spelled with _four
letters_ in almost every known language. It is in Latin, Deus; Greek,
Zeus; Hebrew, Adon; Syrian, Adad; Arabian, Alla; Persian, Syra;
Tartarian, Idga; Egyptian, Aumn, or Zeut; East Indian, Esgi, or Zenl;
Japanese, Zain; Turkish, Addi; Scandinavian, Odin; Wallachian, Zenc;
Croatian, Doga; Dalmatian, Rogt; Tyrrhenian, Eher; Etrurian, Chur;
Margarian, Oese; Swedish, Codd; Irish, Dich; German, Gott; French, Dieu;
Spanish, Dios; Peruvian, Lian.
The name _God_ in the Anglo-Saxon language means _good_, and this
signification affords singular testimony of the Anglo-Saxon conception
of the essence of the Divine Being. He is goodness itself, and the
Author of all goodness. Yet the idea of denoting the Deity by a term
equivalent to abstract and absolute perfection, striking as it may
appear, is perhaps less remarkable than the fact that the word _Man_,
used to designate a human being, formerly signified _wickedness_;
showing how well aware were its originators that our fallen nature had
become identified with sin.
JEHOVAH.
The word _Elohim_, as an appellation of Deity, appears to have been in
use before the Hebrews had attained a national existence. That _Jehovah_
is specifically the God of the Hebrews is clear, from the fact that the
heathen deities never receive this name; they are always spoken of as
_Elohim_. Both the pronunciation and the etymological derivation of the
word _Jehovah_ are matters of critical controversy. The Jews of later
periods from religious awe abstained from pronouncing it, and whenever
it occurred in reading, substituted the word _Adonai_ (my Lord); and it
is now generally believed that the sublinear vowel signs attached to the
Hebrew tetragrammaton _Jhvh_ belong to the substituted word. Many
believe Jahveh to be the original pronunciation. The Hebrew root of the
word is believed to be the verb _havah_ or _hayah_, to be; hence its
meaning throughout the Scriptures, “the Being,” or “the Everlasting.”
GOD IN SHAKSPEARE.
Michelet (_Jeanne d’Arc_,) speaking of English literature, says that it
is “_Sceptique, judaique, satanique_.” In a note he says, “I do not
recollect to have seen the word §God§ in Shakspeare. If it is there at
all, it is there very rarely, by chance, and without a shadow of
religious sentiment.” Mrs. Cowden Clarke, by means of her admirable
_Concordance to Shakspeare_, enables us to weigh the truth of this
eminent French writer’s remark. The word §God§ occurs in Shakspeare
upwards of _one thousand times_, and the word heaven, which is so
frequently substituted for the word §God§—more especially in the
historical plays—occurs about _eight hundred times_. In the Holy
Scriptures, according to Cruden, it occurs about eight hundred times. It
is true that the word often occurs in Shakspeare without a reverential
sentiment; but M. Michelet says it never occurs with a religious feeling
(_un sentiment religieux_.) This statement is almost as erroneous as
that regarding the absence of the word. It would be easy for an English
scholar to produce from Shakspeare more passages indicative of deep
religious feeling than are to be found in any French writer whatever.
THE PARSEE, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN.
A Jew entered a Parsee temple, and beheld the sacred fire. “What!” said
he to the priest, “do you worship the fire?”
“Not the fire,” answered the priest: “it is to us an emblem of the sun,
and of his genial heat.”
“Do you then worship the sun as your god?” asked the Jew. “Know ye not
that this luminary also is but a work of that Almighty Creator?”
“We know it,” replied the priest: “but the uncultivated man requires a
sensible sign, in order to form a conception of the Most High. And is
not the sun the incomprehensible source of light, an image of that
invisible being who blesses and preserves all things?”
“Do your people, then,” rejoined the Israelite, “distinguish the type
from the original? They call the sun their god, and, descending even
from this to a baser object, they kneel before an earthly flame! Ye
amuse the outward but blind the inward eye; and while ye hold to them
the earthly, ye draw from them the heavenly light! ‘Thou shalt not make
unto thyself any image or any likeness.’”
“How do you name the Supreme Being?” asked the Parsee.
“We call him Jehovah Adonai, that is, the Lord who is, who was, and who
will be,” answered the Jew.
“Your appellation is grand and sublime,” said the Parsee; “but it is
awful too.”
A Christian then drew nigh, and said,—
“We call him §Father§.”
The Pagan and the Jew looked at each other, and said,—
“Here is at once an image and a reality: it is a word of the heart.”
Therefore they all raised their eyes to heaven, and said, with reverence
and love, “§Our Father!§” and they took each by the hand, and all three
called one another _brothers_!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: IHS]
§De Nomine Jesu.§
=I= n rebus tantis trina conjunctio mund =I=
=E= rigit humanum sensum, laudare venust =E=
=S= ola salus nobis, et mundi summa, potesta =S=
=V= enit peccati nodum dissolvere fruct =V=
=S= umma salus cunctas nituit per secula terra =S=.[9]
Footnote 9:
I n times momentous appeared the world’s triple conjunction,
E ncouraging human hearts to shout melodious praises.
S ole salvation for us, that power exalted ’bove measure,
U nloosed the bonds of sin through the precious atonement.
S alvation illumines all earth through ages unceasing.
The letters I. H. S. so conspicuously appended to different portions of
Catholic churches, are said to have been designed by St. Bernardine of
Sienna, to denote the name and mission of the Saviour. They are to be
found in a circle above the principal door of the Franciscan Church of
the Holy Cross, (_Santa Croce_,) in Florence, and are said to have been
put there by the saint on the termination of the plague of 1347, after
which they were commonly introduced into churches. The letters have
assigned to them the following signification:—
Jesus hominum Salvator—Jesus, the Saviour of men.
In hoc salus—In him is salvation.
A maker of playing-cards, which, like missels, were illuminated in those
times, was one day remonstrated with by St. Bernardine, upon the
sinfulness of his business. The card-maker pleaded the needs of his
family. “Well, I will help you,” said the saint, and wrote the letters
I. H. S., which he advised the card-maker to paint and gild. The new
card “took,” and the saint himself travelled about the country as a
poster of these little sacred handbills of the Church.
THE FLOWER OF JESSE.
1520.
There is a flower sprung of a tree,
The root of it is called Jesse,
A flower of price,—
There is none such in Paradise.
Of Lily white and Rose of Ryse,
Of Primrose and of Flower-de-Lyse,
Of all flowers in my devyce,
The flower of Jesse beareth the prize,
For most of all
To help our souls both great and small.
I praise the flower of good Jesse,
Of all the flowers that ever shall be,
Uphold the flower of good Jesse,
And worship it for aye beautee;
For best of all
That ever was or ever be shall.
BEAUTIFUL LEGEND.
One day Rabbi Judah and his brethren, the seven pillars of Wisdom, sat
in the Court of the Temple, on feast-day, disputing about §REST§. One
said that it was to have attained sufficient wealth, yet without sin.
The second, that it was fame and praise of all men. The third, that it
was the possession of power to rule the State. The fourth, that it
consisted only in a happy home. The fifth, that it must be in the old
age of one who is rich, powerful, famous, surrounded by children and
children’s children. The sixth said that all that were vain, unless a
man keep all the ritual law of Moses. And Rabbi Judah, the venerable,
the tallest of the brothers, said, “Ye have spoken wisely; but one thing
more is necessary. He only can find rest, who to all things addeth this,
that he keepeth the tradition of the elders.”
There sat in the Court a fair-haired boy, playing with some lilies in
his lap, and, hearing the talk, he dropped them with astonishment from
his hands, and looked up—that boy of twelve—and said, “Nay, nay,
fathers: he only findeth rest, who loveth his brother as himself, and
God with his whole heart and soul. He is greater than fame, and wealth,
and power, happier than a happy home, happy without it, better than
honored age; he is a law to himself, and above all tradition.” The
doctors were astonished. They said, “When Christ cometh, shall He tell
us greater things?” And they thanked God, for they said, “The old men
are not always wise, yet God be praised, that out of the mouth of this
young suckling has His praise become perfect.”
PERSIAN APOLOGUE.
In Sir William Jones’s Persian Grammar may be found the following
beautiful story from §Nisami§. Mr. Alger gives a metrical translation in
his _Poetry of the East_.
One evening Jesus arrived at the gates of a certain city, and sent his
disciples forward to prepare supper, while he himself, intent on doing
good, walked through the streets into the market-place.
And he saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together,
looking at an object on the ground; and he drew near to see what it
might be. It was a dead dog, with a halter around his neck, by which he
appeared to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, a more
abject, a more unclean thing never met the eyes of man.
And those who stood by looked on with abhorrence.
“Faugh!” said one, stopping his nose: “it pollutes the air.” “How long,”
said another, “shall this foul beast offend our sight?” “Look at his
torn hide,” said a third: “one could not even cut a shoe out of it.”
“And his ears,” said a fourth, “all draggled and bleeding.” “No doubt,”
said a fifth, “he has been hanged for thieving.”
And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately on the dead
creature, he said, “Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth!”
Then the people turned towards him with amazement, and said among
themselves, “Who is this? It must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only §HE§
could find something to pity and approve even in a dead dog.” And being
ashamed, they bowed their heads before him and went each on his way.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
The following description is alleged to be derived from an ancient
manuscript sent by Publius Lentulus, President of Judea, to the Senate
of Rome:—
“There lives at this time in Judea, a man of singular character, whose
name is Jesus Christ. The barbarians esteem him as their prophet; but
his followers adore him as the immediate offspring of the immortal God.
He is endowed with such unparalleled virtue as to call back the dead
from their graves and to heal every kind of disease with a word or a
touch. His person is tall and elegantly shaped; his aspect, amiable and
reverend; his hair flows in those beauteous shades which no united
colors can match, falling in graceful curls below his ears, agreeably
couching on his shoulders, and parting on the crown of his head; his
dress, that of the sect of Nazarites; his forehead is smooth and large;
his cheeks without blemish, and of roseate hue; his nose and mouth are
formed with exquisite symmetry; his beard is thick and suitable to the
hair of his head, reaching a little below his chin, and parting in the
middle below; his eyes are clear, bright, and serene.
“He rebukes with mildness, and invokes with the most tender and
persuasive language,—his whole address, whether in word or deed, being
elegantly grave, and strictly characteristic of so exalted a being. No
man has seen him laugh, but the whole world beholds him weep frequently,
and so persuasive are his tears that the whole multitude cannot withhold
their tears from joining in sympathy with him. He is moderate,
temperate, and wise: in short, whatever the phenomenon may turn out in
the end, he seems at present to be a man of excellent beauty and divine
perfection, every way surpassing man.”
DEATH-WARRANT OF JESUS CHRIST.
Of the many interesting relics and fragments brought to light by the
persevering researches of antiquarians, none could be more interesting
to the philanthropist and believer than the following,—to Christians,
the most imposing judicial document ever recorded in human annals. It
has been thus faithfully transcribed:—
Sentence rendered by Pontius Pilate, acting Governor of Lower Galilee,
stating that Jesus of Nazareth shall suffer death on the cross.
In the year seventeen of the Emperor Tiberius Cæsar, and the 27th day of
March, the city of the holy Jerusalem—Annas and Caiaphas being priests,
sacrificators of the people of God—Pontius Pilate, Governor of Lower
Galilee, sitting in the presidential chair of the prætory, condemns
Jesus of Nazareth to die on the cross between two thieves, the great and
notorious evidence of the people saying:
1. Jesus is a seducer.
2. He is seditious.
3. He is the enemy of the law.
4. He calls himself falsely the Son of God.
5. He calls himself falsely the King of Israel.
6. He entered into the temple followed by a multitude bearing palm
branches in their hands.
Orders the first centurion, Quilius Cornelius, to lead him to the
place of execution.
Forbids any person whomsoever, either poor or rich, to oppose the
death of Jesus Christ.
The witnesses who signed the condemnation of Jesus are—
1. Daniel Robani, a Pharisee.
2. Joannus Robani.
3. Raphael Robani.
4. Capet, a citizen.
Jesus shall go out of the city of Jerusalem by the gate of Struenus.
The foregoing is engraved on a copper plate, on the reverse of which is
written, “A similar plate is sent to each tribe.” It was found in an
antique marble vase, while excavating in the ancient city of Aquilla, in
the kingdom of Naples, in the year 1810, and was discovered by the
Commissioners of Arts of the French army. At the expedition of Naples,
it was enclosed in a box of ebony and preserved in the sacristy of the
Carthusians. The French translation was made by the Commissioners of
Arts. The original is in the Hebrew language.
DOUBLE HEXAMETER.
{ nescis } { discis;
Si Christum { } nihil est si cætera {
{ discis } { nescis.
ANTICIPATORY USE OF THE CROSS.
Madame Calderon de la Barca, in her _Life in Mexico_ (_pub. 1843_), says
that the symbol of the Cross was known to the Indians before the arrival
of Cortez. In the island of Cozumel, near Yucatan, there were several;
and in Yucatan[10] itself there was a stone cross. And there an Indian,
considered a prophet among his countrymen, had declared that a nation
bearing the same as a symbol should arrive from a distant country. More
extraordinary still was a temple dedicated to the Holy Cross by the
Toltec nation in the city of Cholula. Near Tulansingo there is also a
cross engraved on a rock with various characters. In Oajaca there was a
cross which the Indians from time immemorial had been accustomed to
consider as a divine symbol. By order of Bishop Cervantes it was placed
in a chapel in the cathedral. Information concerning its discovery,
together with a small cup, cut out of its wood, was sent to Rome to Paul
V., who received it on his knees, singing the hymn _Vexilla regis. etc._
Footnote 10:
See also Prescott’s _Conquest of Mexico_, Vol. I. Bk. II. Chap. 4; and
Stephens’ _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_, Vol. II. Chap. 20.
The Lord’s Prayer.
_The Lord’s Prayer alone is an evidence of the truth of
Christianity,—so admirably is that prayer accommodated to all our
wants._—§Lord Wellington.§
THY AND US.
The two divisions of the Lord’s Prayer—the former relating to the glory
of God, the latter to the wants of man—appear very evident on a slight
transposition of the personal pronouns:—
_Thy_ name be hallowed.
_Thy_ kingdom come.
_Thy_ will be done, &c.
_Us_ give this day our daily bread.
_Us_ forgive our debts, &c.
_Us_ lead not into temptation.
_Us_ deliver from evil.
SPIRIT OF THE LORD’S PRAYER.
The spirit of the Lord’s Prayer is beautiful. This form of petition
breathes:—
A _filial_ spirit—Father.
A _catholic_ spirit—Our Father.
A _reverential_ spirit—Hallowed be Thy name.
A _missionary_ spirit—Thy kingdom come.
An _obedient_ spirit—Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
A _dependent_ spirit—Give us this day our daily bread.
A _forgiving spirit_—And forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.
A _cautious_ spirit—And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil.
A _confidential_ and _adoring_ spirit—For thine is the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
GOTHIC VERSION.
Ulphilas, who lived between the years 310 and 388, was bishop of the
Western Goths, and translated the greater part of the Scriptures into
the Gothic language. The following is his rendering of the Lord’s
Prayer:—
Atta unsar thu in himinam. Weihnai namo thein. Quimai thiudinassus
sijaima, swaswe jah weis afletam thaim skulam unsaraim. Jah ni
briggais uns in fraistubujai. Ak lausei uns af thamma ubilin, unte
theina ist thiudangardi, jah maths, jah wulthus in aiwins. Amen.
METRICAL VERSIONS.
Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come: thy will be done the same
In earth and heaven. Give us daily bread;
Forgive our sins as others we forgive.
Into temptation let us not be led;
Deliver us from evil while we live.
For kingdom, power, and glory must remain
For ever and for ever thine: Amen.
Here the sixty-six words of the original, according to the authorized
translation of St. Matthew’s version, are reduced to fifty-nine, though
the latter is fully implied in all points except two. “This day” is
omitted; but, if anything, the Greek is slightly approached, for
ἐπιούσιον refers rather to _to-morrow_ than to _to-day_. The antithesis
in “_But_ deliver us” does not appear: if the word deliver be
sacrificed, we may read, “But keep us safe.”
The subjoined metrical version of the Prayer is at least two and a half
centuries old, and was written for adaptation to music in public
worship:—
Our Father which in heaven art,
All hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come,
On earth thy will be done,
Even as the same in heaven is.
Give us, O Lord, our daily bread this day:
As we forgive our debtors,
So forgive our debts, we pray.
Into temptation lead us not,
From evil make us free:
The kingdom, power, and glory thine,
Both now and ever be.
The Prayer is commended for its authorship, its efficacy, its
perfection, the order of its parts, its brevity, and its necessity.
The following paraphrase, which has been set to music as a duet, is of
more recent origin:—
Our Heavenly Father, hear our prayer:
Thy name be hallowed everywhere;
Thy kingdom come; on earth, thy will,
E’en as in heaven, let all fulfill;
Give this day’s bread, that we may live;
Forgive our sins as we forgive;
Help us temptation to withstand;
From evil shield us by Thy hand;
Now and forever, unto Thee,
The kingdom, power, and glory be. Amen.
THE PRAYER ILLUSTRATED.
_Our Father._—Isaiah lxiii. 16.
1. By right of creation. Malachi ii. 10.
2. By bountiful provision. Psalm cxlv. 16.
3. By gracious adoption. Ephesians i. 5.
_Who art in Heaven._—1 Kings viii. 43.
1. The throne of thy glory. Isaiah lxvi. 1.
2. The portion of thy children. 1 Peter i. 4.
3. The temple of thy angels. Isaiah vi. 1.
Hallowed be thy Name.—Psalm cxv. 1.
1. By the thoughts of our hearts. Psalm lxxxvi. 11.
2. By the words of our lips. Psalm li. 15.
3. By the works of our hands. 1 Corinthians x. 31.
_Thy Kingdom come._—Psalm cx. 2.
1. Of Providence to defend us. Psalm xvii. 8.
2. Of grace to refine us. 1 Thessalonians v. 23.
3. Of glory to crown us. Colossians iii. 4.
_Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven._—Acts xxxi. 14.
1. Towards us, without resistance. 1 Samuel iii. 18.
2. By us, without compulsion. Psalm cxix. 36.
3. Universally, without exception. Luke i. 6.
4. Eternally, without declension. Psalm cxix. 93.
_Give us this day our daily bread._
1. Of necessity, for our bodies. Proverbs xxx. 8.
2. Of eternal life, for our souls. John vi. 34.
_And forgive us our trespasses._—Psalm xxv. 11.
1. Against the commands of thy law. 1 John iii. 4.
2. Against the grace of thy gospel. 1 Timothy i. 13.
_As we forgive them that trespass against us._—Matthew vi. 15.
1. By defaming our characters. Matthew v. 11.
2. By embezzling our property. Philemon 18.
3. By abusing our persons. Acts vii. 60.
_And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil._—Matthew
xxvi. 41.
1. Of overwhelming afflictions. Psalm cxxx. 1.
2. Of worldly enticements. 1 John ii. 16.
3. Of Satan’s devices. 1 Timothy iii. 7.
4. Of error’s seduction. 1 Timothy vi. 10.
5. Of sinful affections. Romans i. 26.
_For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever._—Jude
25.
1. Thy kingdom governs all. Psalm ciii. 19.
2. Thy power subdues all. Philippians iii. 20, 21.
3. Thy glory is above all. Psalm cxlviii. 13.
_Amen._—Ephesians i. 11.
1. As it is in thy purposes. Isaiah xiv. 27.
2. So is it in thy promises. 2 Corinthians i. 20.
3. So be it in our prayers. Revelation xxii. 20.
4. So shall it be to thy praise. Revelation xix. 4.
ACROSTICAL PARAPHRASE.
§Our§ Lord and King, Who reign’st enthroned on high,
§Father§ of Light! mysterious Deity!
§Who§ art the great I AM, the last, the first,
§Art§ righteous, holy, merciful, and just.
§In§ realms of glory, scenes where angels sing,
§Heaven§ is the dwelling-place of God our King.
§Hallowed§ Thy name, which doth all names transcend,
§Be§ Thou adored, our great Almighty Friend;
§Thy§ glory shines beyond creation’s bound;
§Name§ us ’mong those Thy choicest gifts surround.
§Thy§ kingdom towers beyond Thy starry skies;
§Kingdom§ Satanic falls, but Thine shall rise.
§Come§ let Thine empire, O Thou Holy One,
§Thy§ great and everlasting will be done.
§Will§ God make known his will, his power display?
§Be§ it the work of mortals to obey.
§Done§ is the great, the wondrous work of love;
§On§ Calvary’s cross he died, but reigns above;
§Earth§ bears the record in Thy holy word.
§As§ heaven adores Thy love, let earth, O Lord;
§It§ shines transcendent in the eternal skies,
§Is§ praised in heaven—for man, the Saviour dies.
§In§ songs immortal, angels laud his name;
§Heaven§ shouts with joy, and saints his love proclaim
§Give§ us, O Lord, our food, nor cease to give
§Us§ needful food on which our souls may live!
§This§ be our boon to-day and days to come,
§Day§ without end in our eternal home.
§Our§ needy souls supply from day to day;
§Daily§ assist and aid us when we pray;
§Bread§ though we ask, yet, Lord, Thy blessings lend.
§And§ make us grateful when Thy gifts descend.
§Forgive§ our sins, which in destruction place
§Us§, the vile rebels of a rebel race;
§Our§ follies, faults, and trespasses forgive,
§Debts§ which we ne’er can pay, nor Thou receive.
§As§ we, O Lord, our neighbor’s faults o’erlook,
§We§ beg Thou ’d’st blot ours from Thy memory’s book.
§Forgive§ our enemies, extend Thy grace
§Our§ souls to save, e’en Adam’s guilty race.
§Debtors§ to Thee in gratitude and love,
§And§ in that duty paid by saints above,
§Lead§ us from sin, and in thy mercy raise
§Us§ from the tempter and his hellish ways.
§Not§ in our own, but in His name who bled,
§Into§ Thine ear we pour our every need.
§Temptation’s§ fatal charm help us to shun,
§But§ may we conquer through Thy conquering Son;
§Deliver§ us from all that can annoy
§Us§ in this world, and may our souls destroy.
§From§ all calamities that man betide,
§Evil§ and death, O turn our feet aside,—
§For§ we are mortal worms, and cleave to clay,—
§Thine§ ’tis to rule, and mortals to obey.
§Is§ not thy mercy, Lord, forever free?
§The§ whole creation knows no God but Thee.
§Kingdom§ and empire in Thy presence fall;
§The§ King eternal reigns the King of all.
§Power§ is Thine—to Thee be glory given,
§And§ be thy name adored by earth and heaven.
§The§ praise of saints and angels is Thy own;
§Glory§ to Thee, the Everlasting One.
§Forever§ be Thy holy name adored.
AMEN! Hosannah! blessed be the Lord.
TRIFLING OF BIBLE COMMENTATORS.
Dr. Gill, in his Expository, seriously tells us that the word ABBA read
backwards or forwards being the same, may teach us that God is the
father of his people in adversity as well as in prosperity.
THE PRAYER ECHOED.
If any be distressed, and fain would gather
Some comfort, let him haste unto
Our Father.
For we of hope and help are quite bereaven
Except Thou succor us
Who art in heaven.
Thou showest mercy, therefore for the same
We praise Thee, singing,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Of all our miseries cast up the sum;
Show us thy joys, and let
Thy kingdom come.
We mortal are, and alter from our birth;
Thou constant art;
Thy will be done on earth.
Thou madest the earth, as well as planets seven,
Thy name be blessed here
As ’tis in heaven.
Nothing we have to use, or debts to pay,
Except Thou give it us.
Give us this day
Wherewith to clothe us, wherewith to be fed,
For without Thee we want
Our daily bread.
We want, but want no faults, for no day passes
But we do sin.
Forgive us our trespasses.
No man from sinning ever free did live
Forgive us, Lord, our sins,
As we forgive.
If we repent our faults, Thou ne’er disdain’st us;
We pardon them
That trespass against us;
Forgive us that is past, a new path tread us;
Direct us always in Thy faith,
And lead us—
Us, Thine own people and Thy chosen nation,
Into all truth, but
Not into temptation.
Thou that of all good graces art the Giver,
Suffer us not to wander,
But deliver
Us from the fierce assaults of world and devil
And flesh; so shalt Thou free us
From all evil.
To these petitions let both church and laymen
With one consent of heart and voice, say,
Amen.
THE PRAYER IN AN ACROSTIC.
In the following curious composition the initial capitals spell, “My
boast is in the glorious Cross of Christ.” The words in _italics_, when
read from top to bottom and bottom to top, form the Lord’s Prayer
complete:—
Make known the Gospel truths, _Our_ Father King;
Yield up thy grace, dear _Father_ from above;
Bless us with hearts _which_ feelingly can sing,
“Our life thou _art_ for _ever_, God of Love!”
Assuage our grief in love _for_ Christ, we pray,
Since the bright prince of _Heaven_ and _glory_ died,
Took all our sins and _hallowed_ the display,
Infinite _be_-ing—first man, and then the crucified.
Stupendous God! _thy_ grace and _power_ make known;
In Jesus’ _name_ let all _the_ world rejoice.
Now all the world _thy_ heavenly _kingdom_ own,
The blessed _kingdom_ for thy saints _the_ choice.
How vile to _come_ to thee _is_ all our cry,
Enemies to _thy_ self and all that’s _thine_,
Graceless our _will_, we live _for_ vanity,
Lending to sin our _be_-ing, _evil_ in our design.
O God, thy will be _done_ _from_ earth to Heaven;
Reclining _on_ the Gospel let _us_ live,
In _earth_ from sin _deliver_-ed and forgiven,
Oh! _as_ thyself _but_ teach us to forgive.
Unless _it_’s power _temptation_ doth destroy,
Sure _is_ our fall _into_ the depths of woe,
Carnal _in_ mind, we’ve _not_ a glimpse of joy
Raised against _Heaven_; in _us_ no hope can flow.
O _give_ us grace and _lead_ us on thy way;
Shine on _us_ with thy love and give _us_ peace;
Self and _this_ sin that rise _against_ us slay;
Oh! grant each _day_ our _trespass_-es may cease.
Forgive _our_ evil deeds _that_ oft we do;
Convince us _daily_ of _them_ to our shame;
Help us with heavenly _bread_, _forgive_ us, too,
Recurrent lusts, _and_ _we_’ll adore thy name.
In thy _forgive_-ness we _as_ saints can die,
Since for _us_ and our _trespasses_ so high,
Thy son, _our_ Saviour, bled on Calvary.
Ecclesiasticæ.
EXCESSIVE CIVILITY.
Tom Brown, in his _Laconics_, says that in the reign of Charles II. a
certain worthy divine at Whitehall thus addressed himself to the
auditory at the conclusion of his sermon: “In short, if you don’t live
up to the precepts of the gospel, but abandon yourselves to your
irregular appetites, you must expect to receive your reward in a certain
place, which ’tis not good manners to mention here.” This suggested to
Pope the couplet,
“To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions hell to ears polite.”
SHORT SERMONS.
Dean Swift, having been solicited to preach a charity sermon, mounted
the pulpit, and after announcing his text, “He that giveth to the poor
lendeth to the Lord,” simply said, “Now, my brethren, if you are
satisfied with the security, down with the dust.” He then took his seat,
and there was an unusually large collection.
* * * * *
The following abridgment contains the pith and marrow, sum and
substance, of a sermon which occupied an hour in delivery:—
“Man is born to trouble.”
This subject, my hearers, is naturally divisible into four heads:—
1. Man’s entrance into the world;
2. His progress through the world;
3. His exit from the world; and
4. Practical reflections from what may be said.
First, then:—
1. Man’s ingress in life is naked and bare,
2. His progress through life is trouble and care,
3. His egress from it, none can tell where,
4. But doing well here, he will be well there.
Now, on this subject, my brethren dear,
I could not tell more by preaching a year.
A SERMON ON MALT.
The Rev. Dr. Dodd lived within a few miles of Cambridge, (England,) and
had offended several students by preaching a sermon on temperance. One
day some of them met him. They said one to another,—
“Here’s Father Dodd: he shall preach us a sermon.” Accosting him with,—
“Your servants.”
“Sirs! yours, gentlemen!” replied the Doctor.
They said, “We have a favor to ask of you, which _must_ be granted.” The
divine asked what it was.
“To preach a sermon,” was the reply.
“Well,” said he, “appoint the time and place, and I will.”
“The time, the present; the place, that hollow tree,” (pointing to it,)
said the students.
“’Tis an imposition!” said the Doctor: “there ought to be consideration
before preaching.”
“If you refuse,” responded they, “we will put you into the tree!”
Whereupon the Doctor acquiesced, and asked them for a text.
“Malt!” said they.
The reverend gentleman commenced:—
“Let me crave your attention, my beloved!
“I am a little man, come at a short warning, to preach a short sermon,
upon a short subject, to a thin congregation, in an unworthy pulpit.
Beloved! my text is ‘§Malt§.’ I cannot divide it into syllables, it
being but a monosyllable: therefore I must divide it into letters, which
I find in my text to be four:—§M-a-l-t.§ M, my beloved, is _moral_—A, is
_allegorical_—L, is _literal_—T, is _theological_.
“1st. The moral teaches such as you drunkards good manners; therefore M,
my masters—A, all of you—L, leave off—T, tippling.
“2d. The allegorical is, when one thing is spoken and another meant; the
thing here spoken is Malt, the thing meant the oil of malt, which _you_
rustics make M, your masters—A, your apparel—L, your liberty—T, your
trusts.
“3d. The theological is according to the effects it works, which are of
two kinds—the first in this world, the second in the world to come. The
effects it works in this world are, _in some_, M, murder—in others, A,
adultery—_in all_, L, looseness of life—and _particularly in some_, T,
treason. In the world to come, the effects of it are, M, misery—A,
anguish—L, lamentation—T, torment—and thus much for my text, ‘Malt.’
“Infer 1st: As words of exhortation: M, my masters—A, all of you—L,
leave off—T, tippling.
“2d. A word for conviction: M, my masters—A, all of you—L, look for—T,
torment.
“3d. A word for caution, take this: A drunkard is the annoyance of
modesty—the spoiler of civility—the destroyer of reason—the brewer’s
agent—the alewife’s benefactor—his wife’s sorrow—his children’s
trouble—his neighbor’s scoff—a walking swill-tub—a picture of a beast—a
monster of a man.”
The youngsters found the truth so unpalatable, that they soon deserted
their preacher, glad to get beyond the reach of his voice.
ELOQUENCE OF BASCOM.
The following passages will serve to illustrate the peculiar oratorical
style of Rev. Henry B. Bascom, the distinguished Kentucky preacher:—
“Chemistry, with its fire-tongs of the galvanic battery, teaches that
the starry diamond in the crown of kings, and the black carbon which the
peasant treads beneath his feet, are both composed of the same identical
elements; analysis also proves that a chief ingredient in limestone is
carbon. Then let the burning breath of God pass over all the limestone
of the earth, and bid its old mossy layers crystalize into new beauty;
and lo! at the Almighty _fiat_ the mountain ranges flash into living
gems with a lustre that renders midnight noon, and eclipses all the
stars!”
He urged the same view by another example, still better adapted to
popular apprehension:—
“Look yonder,” said the impassioned orator, pointing a motionless finger
towards the lofty ceiling, as if it were the sky. “See that wrathful
thunder-cloud—the fiery bed of the lightnings and hissing hail—the
cradle of tempests and floods!—What can be more dark, more dreary, more
dreadful? Say, scoffing skeptic, is it capable of any beauty? You
pronounce, ‘no.’ Well, very well; but behold, while the sneering denial
curls your proud lips, the sun with its sword of light shears through
the sea of vapors in the west, and laughs in your incredulous face with
his fine golden eye. Now, look again at the thunder-cloud! See! where it
was blackest and fullest of gloom, the sunbeams have kissed its hideous
cheek; and where the kiss fell there is now a blush, brighter than ever
mantled on the brow of mortal maiden—the rich blush of crimson and gold,
of purple and vermilion—a pictured blush, fit for the gaze of angels—the
flower-work of pencils of fire and light, wrought at a dash by one
stroke of the right hand of God! Ay, the ugly cloud hath given birth to
the rainbow, that perfection and symbol of unspeakable beauty!”
THE LORD BISHOP.
The following incident is said to have occurred in the parish church of
Bradford, England, during a special service, on the occasion of a visit
from the bishop of the diocese:—
The clerk, before the sermon, gave out the psalm in broad Wiltshire
dialect, namely:—“Let us zing to the praayze an’ glawry o’ God, three
varsses o’ the hundred and vourteen zaam—a varsion ’specially ’dapted to
the ’caasion,—by meself:”—
Why hop ye zo, ye little hills,
An’ what var de’e skip?
Is it ’cas you’m proud to see
His grace the Lard Bish_ip_?
Why skip ye zo, ye little hills,
An’ what var de’e hop?
Is it ’cas to preach to we
Is com’d the Lard Bish_op_!
Eese;—he is com’d to preach to we:
Then let us aul strick up,
An’ zing a glawrious zong of praayze,
An’ bless the Lard Bish_up_!
THE PREACHERS OF CROMWELL’S TIME.
Dr. Echard says of the preachers who lived in the time of
Cromwell,—“Coiners of new phrases, drawers-out of long godly words,
thick pourers-out of texts of Scripture, mimical squeakers and
bellowers, vain-glorious admirers only of themselves, and those of their
own fashioned face and gesture; such as these shall be followed, shall
have their bushels of China oranges, shall be solaced with all manner of
cordial essences, and shall be rubbed down with Holland of ten shillings
an ell.”
One of the singular fashions that prevailed among the preachers of those
days was that of coughing or hemming in the middle of a sentence, as an
ornament of speech; and when their sermons were printed, the place where
the preacher coughed or hemmed was always noted in the margin. This
practice was not confined to England, for Olivier Maillard, a Cordelier,
and famous preacher, printed a sermon at Brussels in the year 1500, and
marked in the margin where the preacher hemmed once or twice, or
coughed.
ORIGIN OF TEXTS.
The custom of taking a text as the basis of a sermon originated with
Ezra, who, we are told, accompanied by several Levites in a public
congregation of men and women, ascended a pulpit, opened the book of the
law, and after addressing a prayer to the Deity, to which the people
said Amen, “read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the
sense, and caused them to understand the reading.” (Nehemiah viii. 8.)
Previous to the time of Ezra, the Patriarchs delivered, in public
assemblies, either prophecies or moral instructions for the edification
of the people; and it was not until the return of the Jews from the
Babylonish captivity, during which time they had almost lost the
language in which the Pentateuch was written, that it became necessary
to explain, as well as to read, the Scriptures to them. In later times,
the book of Moses was thus read in the synagogues every Sabbath day.
(Acts xv. 21.) To this custom our Saviour conformed: in the synagogue at
Nazareth he read a passage from the prophet Isaiah, then closing the
book, returned it to the priest, and preached from the text.
CLERICAL BLUNDERS.
In an old book of Sermons by a divine named Milsom, we are told that it
is one among many proofs of the wisdom and benevolence of Providence
that the world was not created in the midst of winter, when Adam and Eve
could have found nothing to eat, but in harvest-time, when there was
fruit on every tree and shrub to tempt the willing hand.
Another commentator praises Divine Goodness for always making the
largest rivers flow close by the most populous towns.
St. Austin undertook to prove that the ten plagues of Egypt were
punishments adapted to the breach of the ten commandments,—forgetting
that the law was given to the Jews, and that the plagues were inflicted
on the Egyptians, and also that the law was not given in the form of
commandments until nearly three months after the plagues had been sent.
PROVING AN ALIBI.
A clergyman at Cambridge preached a sermon which one of his auditors
commended. “Yes,” said a gentleman to whom it was mentioned, “it was a
good sermon, but he stole it.” This was told to the preacher. He
resented it, and called on the gentleman to retract what he had said. “I
am not,” replied the aggressor, “very apt to retract my words, but in
this instance I will. I said, you had stolen the sermon; I find I was
wrong; for on returning home, and referring to the book whence I thought
it was taken, I found it there.”
WHITEFIELD AND THE SAILORS.
Mr. Whitefield, whose gestures and play of features were so full of
dramatic power, once preached before the seamen at New York, and, in the
course of his sermon, introduced the following bold apostrophe:—
“Well, my boys, we have a clear sky, and are making fine headway over a
smooth sea before a light breeze, and we shall soon lose sight of land.
But what means this sudden lowering of the heavens, and that dark cloud
arising from the western horizon? Hark! Don’t you hear the distant
thunder? Don’t you see those flashes of lightning? There is a storm
gathering! Every man to his duty. How the waves rise and dash against
the ship! The air is dark! The tempest rages! Our masts are gone. The
ship is on her beam ends! What next?” The unsuspecting tars, reminded of
former perils on the deep, as if struck by the power of magic, arose and
exclaimed, “Take to the long boat.”
PROTESTANT EXCOMMUNICATION.
John Knox, in his Liturgy for Scotch Presbyterians, sets forth the
following form for the exercise of such an attribute of ecclesiastical
authority in Protestant communities as excommunication:—
“O Lord Jesus Christ, thy expressed word is our assurance, and
therefore, in boldness of the same, here in thy name, and at the
commandment of this thy present congregation, we cut off, seclude, and
excommunicate from thy body, and from our society, N. as a pround
contemner, and slanderous person, and a member for the present
altogether corrupted, and pernicious to the body. And this his sin
(albeit with sorrow of our hearts) by virtue of our ministry, we bind
and pronounce the same to be bound in heaven and earth. We further give
over, into the hands and power of the devil, the said N. to the
destruction of his flesh; straitly charging all that profess the Lord
Jesus, to whose knowledge this our sentence shall come, to repute and
hold the said N. accursed and unworthy of the familiar society of
Christians; declaring unto all men that such as hereafter (before his
repentance) shall haunt, or familiarly accompany him, are partakers of
his impiety, and subject to the like condemnation.
“This our sentence, O Lord Jesus, pronounced in thy name, and at thy
commandment, we humbly beseech thee to ratify even according to thy
promise.”
Puritan Peculiarities.
BAPTISMAL NAMES.
A Puritan maiden, who was asked for her baptismal name, replied,
“‘Through-much-tribulation-we-enter-the-kingdom-of-Heaven,’ but for
short they call me ‘Tribby.’”
* * * * *
The following names will be found in _Lower’s English Sirnames_, and in
the _Lansdowne Collection_. Most of them are taken from a jury-list of
Sussex County, 1658. The favorite female baptismal names among the
Puritans were Mercy, Faith, Fortune, Honor, Virtue; but there were among
them those who preferred such high-flown names as Alethe, Prothesa,
Euphrosyne, Kezia, Keturah, Malvina, Melinda, Sabrina, Alpina, Oriana.
The-gift-of-God Stringer,
Repentant Hazel,
Zealous King,
Be-thankful Playnard,
Live-in-peace Hillary,
Obediencia Cruttenden,
Goodgift Noake,
The-work-of-God Farmer,
More-tryal Goodwin,
Faithful Long,
Joy-from-above Brown,
Be-of-good-comfort Small,
Godward Freeman,
Thunder Goldsmith.
Faint-not Hewett,
Redeemed Compton,
God-reward Smart,
Earth Adams,
Meek Brewer,
Repentance Avis,
Kill-sin Pimple,
Be-faithful Joiner,
More-fruit Flower,
Grace-ful Harding,
Seek-wisdom Wood,
Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith White,
Accepted Trevor,
Make-peace Heaton,
Stand-fast-on-high Stringer,
Called Lower,
Be-courteous Cole,
Search-the-scriptures Moreton,
Return Spelman,
Fly-debate Roberts,
Hope-for Bending,
Weep-not Billing,
Elected Mitchell,
The-peace-of-God Knight
SIMILES.
Prayer is Faith’s pump, where’t works till the water come;
If’t comes not free at first, Faith puts in some.
Prayer is the sacred bellows; when these blow,
How doth that live-coal from God’s altar glow!
_Faithful Teate’s Ter. Tria._, 1658.
Walking in the streets, I met a cart that came near the wall; so I
stepped aside, to avoid it, into a place where I was secure enough.
_Reflection_: Lord, sin is that great evil of which thou complainest
that thou art pressed as a cart is pressed: how can it then but bruise
me to powder?—_Caleb Trenchfield’s Chris. Chymestree._
EARLY PUNISHMENTS IN MASSACHUSETTS.
From the early records of Massachusetts we learn that the following
singular punishments were inflicted in that colony two hundred years
ago:—
Sir Richard Salstonstall, fined four bushels of malt for his absence
from the court.
Josias Plaistowe, for stealing four baskets of corn from the Indians, to
return them eight baskets again, to be fined £5, and hereafter to be
called Josias, not Mr. as he used to be.
Thomas Peter, for suspicions of slander, idleness, and stubbornness, is
to be severely whipped and kept in hold.
Capt. Stone, for abusing Mr. Ludlow by calling him _justass_, fined
£100, and prohibited coming within the patent.
Joyce Dradwick to give unto Alexander Becks 20_s._, for promising him
marriage without her friends’ consent, and now refusing to perform the
same.
Richard Turner, for being notoriously drunk, fined £2.
Edward Palmer, for his extortion in taking 32_s._ 7_d._ for the plank
and work of Boston stocks, fined £5, and sentenced to sit one hour in
the stocks.
John White bound in £10 to good behavior, and not come into the company
of his neighbor Thomas Bell’s wife alone.
VIRGINIA PENALTIES IN THE OLDEN TIME.
From the old records in the Court House of Warwick County, Virginia, we
extract some entries of decisions by the court under date of October 21,
1663. It may be worth while to remark that at that early period tobacco
was not only a staple commodity but a substitute for currency.
“Mr. John Harlow, and Alice his wife, being by the grand inquest
presented for absenting themselves from church, are, according to the
act, fined each of them fifty pounds of tobacco; and the said Mr. John
Harlow ordered forthwith to pay one hundred pounds of tobacco to the
sheriff, otherwise the said sheriff to levy by way of distress.”
“Jane Harde, the wife of Henry Harde, being presented for not ’tending
church, is, according to act, fined fifty pounds of tobacco; and the
sheriff is ordered to collect the same from her, and, in case of
non-payment, to distress.”
“John Lewis, his wife this day refusing to take the oath of allegiance,
being ordered her, is committed into the sheriff’s custody, to remain
until she take the said oath, or until further ordered to the contrary.”
“John Lewis, his wife for absenting herself from church, is fined fifty
pounds of tobacco, to be collected by the sheriff from her husband; and
upon non-payment, the said sheriff to distress.”
“George Harwood, being prosecuted for his absenting himself from church,
is fined fifty pounds of tobacco, to be levied by way of distress by the
sheriff upon his non-payment thereof.”
“Peter White and his wife, being presented for common swearing, are
fined fifty pounds of tobacco, both of them; to be collected by the
sheriff from the said White, and, upon non-payment of the same, to
distress.”
“Richard King, being presented as a common swearer, is fined fifty
pounds of tobacco, to be levied by the sheriff, by way of distress, upon
his non-payment.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE CONNECTICUT BLUE LAWS.
When these free states were colonies
Unto the mother nation,
And in Connecticut the good
Old Blue Laws were in fashion.
The following extracts from the laws ordained by the people of New
Haven, previous to their incorporation with the Saybrook and Hartford
colonies, afford an idea of the strange character of their prohibitions.
As the substance only is given in the transcription, the language is
necessarily modernized:—
No quaker or dissenter from the established worship of the dominion
shall be allowed to give a vote for the election of magistrates, or any
officer.
No food or lodging shall be afforded to a quaker, adamite, or other
heretic.
If any person turns quaker, he shall be banished, and not suffered to
return, but upon pain of death.
No priest shall abide in the dominion: he shall be banished, and suffer
death on his return. Priests may be seized by any one without a warrant.
No man to cross a river but with an authorized ferryman.
No one shall run on the sabbath-day, or walk in his garden, or
elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.
No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair or
shave, on the sabbath-day.
No woman shall kiss her child on the sabbath or fasting-day.
The sabbath shall begin at sunset on Saturday.
To pick an ear of corn growing in a neighbor’s garden shall be deemed
theft.
A person accused of trespass in the night shall be judged guilty, unless
he clear himself by oath.
When it appears that an accused has confederates, and he refuses to
discover them, he may be racked.
No one shall buy or sell lands without permission of the selectmen.
A drunkard shall have a master appointed by the selectmen, who are to
debar him the liberty of buying and selling.
Whoever publishes a lie to the prejudice of his neighbor, shall sit in
the stocks or be whipped fifteen stripes.
No minister shall keep a school.
Men-stealers shall suffer death.
Whoever wears clothes trimmed with gold, silver, or bone lace, above two
shillings by the yard, shall be presented by the grand jurors, and the
selectmen shall tax the offender at £300 estate.
A debtor in prison, swearing he has no estate, shall be let out, and
sold to make satisfaction.
Whoever sets a fire in the woods, and it burns a house, shall suffer
death; and persons suspected of this crime shall be imprisoned without
benefit of bail.
Whoever brings cards or dice into this dominion shall pay a fine of £5.
No one shall read common-prayer, keep Christmas or saint-days, make
minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music,
except the drum, trumpet, and Jews-harp.
No gospel minister shall join people in marriage; the magistrates only
shall join in marriage, as they may do it with less scandal to Christ’s
church.
When parents refuse their children convenient marriages, the magistrate
shall determine the point.
The selectmen, on finding children ignorant, may take them away from
their parents, and put them into better hands, at the expense of their
parents.
A man that strikes his wife shall pay a fine of £10; a woman that
strikes her husband shall be punished as the court directs.
A wife shall be deemed good evidence against her husband.
Married persons must live together, or be imprisoned.
No man shall court a maid in person, or by letter, without first
obtaining consent of her parents: £5 penalty for the first offence; £10
for the second; and for the third, imprisonment during the pleasure of
the court.
Every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap.
Paronomasia.
Hard is the job to launch the desperate pun;
A _pun-job_ dangerous as the Indian one.—§Holmes.§
Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and _verbicide_—that is,
violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate
meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden. _Manslaughter_, which
is the meaning of the one, is the same as man’s laughter, which is the
end of the other.—§Ibid.§
The quaint Cardan thus defineth:—“Punning is an art of harmonious
jingling upon words, which, passing in at the ears and falling upon the
diaphragma, excites a titillary motion in those parts; and this, being
conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the
cockles of the heart.”
“He who would make a pun would pick a pocket,” is the stereotyped dogma
fulminated by laugh-lynchers from time immemorial; or, as the _Autocrat_
hath it, “To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social
intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who
would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the
recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the banquet of
Saturn without an indigestion.” The “inanities of this working-day
world” cannot perceive any wittiness or grace in punning; and yet,
according to the comprehensive definition of wit by Dr. Barrow, the
eminent divine, it occupies a very considerable portion of the realm of
wit. He says, “Wit is a thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in
so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously
apprehended by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard
to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of
Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth
in _pat allusions to a known story_, or in _seasonable application of a
trivial saying_, or in feigning an apposite tale; sometimes it _playeth
in words and phrases_, taking advantage of the _ambiguity of their
sense, or the affinity of their sound_; sometimes it is wrapped in a
dress of humorous expression, sometimes it lurketh under _an odd
similitude_; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart
answer, in a _quirkish_ reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly,
divertingly, or cleverly retorting an objection; sometimes it is couched
in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a
startling metaphor, in a _plausible reconciling of contradictions_, or
in _acute nonsense_; sometimes a scenic representation of persons or
things, a counterfeit speech, a mimic look or gesture, passeth for it.
Sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness,
giveth it being. Sometimes it riseth only from _a lucky hitting upon
what is strange_; sometimes from _a crafty wresting of obvious matter to
the purpose_. Often it consisteth of one knows not what, and springeth
up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable,
being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of
language.”
If this definition be true, there is truth as well as wit in the
punster’s reply to the taunt of the rhetorician that “punning is the
_lowest species_ of wit.” “Yes,” said he, “for it is the _foundation_ of
all wit.” But, whatever may be said of the practice by those who affect
to despise it, it has been much in vogue in all ages. Horne, in his
_Introduction to the Critical Study of the Holy Scriptures_, tells us
that it was a very favorite figure of rhetoric among the Hebrews, and is
yet common among most of the Oriental nations. Professor Stuart, in his
Hebrew grammar, gives numerous examples of it in the Old Testament, and
Winer and Horne point out others in the New Testament, especially in the
writings of St. Paul. These cannot, of course, be equivalently expressed
in English.
Many of the Greek authors exhibit a fondness for this rhetorical figure,
and some of the most excellent puns extant are to be found in the Greek
Anthologies. As a specimen, the following is given from Wesseling’s
Diodorus Siculus:—
Dioscurus, an Egyptian bishop, before he began the service, had the
common custom of saying ειρηνη πασιν, (irene pasin,) _peace be to all_.
It was notorious that the pious churchman had at home a favorite
mistress, whose name was Irene, which incident produced the following
smart epigram:—
Ειρηνη παντεσσιν επισκοπος ειπεν εχελθων
Πως δυναται πασιν, ἡν μονος ενδον εχει;
(The good bishop wishes peace—Irene—to all;
But how can he give that to all, which he keeps to himself at home?)
A PUN-GENT CHAPTER.
At one time there was a general strike among the workingmen of Paris,
and Theodore Hook gave the following amusing account of the affair:—“The
bakers, being ambitious to extend their _do_-mains, declared that a
revolution was _needed_, and, though not exactly _bred_ up to arms, soon
reduced their _crusty_ masters to terms. The tailors called a council of
the _board_, to see what _measures_ should be taken, and, looking upon
the bakers as the _flower_ of chivalry, decided to follow _suit_; the
consequence of which was, that a _cereous_ insurrection was _lighted up_
among the candle-makers, which, however _wick_-ed it might appear in the
eyes of some persons, developed traits of character not unworthy of
ancient _Greece_.”
Why should no man starve on the deserts of Arabia?
Because of the _sand which_ is there.
How came the sandwiches there?
The tribe of _Ham_ was _bred_ there, and _mustered_.
A clergyman who had united in marriage a couple whose Christian names
were Benjamin and Annie, on being asked by a mutual friend how they
appeared during the ceremony, replied that they appeared both
_annie_-mated and _bene_-fitted.
Mr. Manners, who had but lately been created Earl of Rutland, said to
Sir Thomas More, just made Lord Chancellor,—
“You are so much elated with your preferment that you verify the old
proverb,—
_Honores mutant_ §Mores§.”
“No, my lord,” said Sir Thomas: “the pun will do much better in
English:—
_Honors change_ §Manners§.”
An old writer said that when _cannons_ were introduced as negotiators,
the _canons_ of the church were useless; that the world was governed
first by _mitrum_, and then by _nitrum_,—first by _St. Peter_, and then
by _saltpetre_.
Column, the dramatist, on being asked whether he knew Theodore Hook,
replied, “Oh, yes: _Hook_ and _Eye_ are old associates.”
Punch says, “the milk of human kindness is not to be found in the _pail_
of society.” If so, we think it is time for all hands to “_kick the
bucket_.”
Judge Peters, formerly of the Philadelphia Bench, observed to a friend,
during a trial that was going on, that one of the witnesses had a
_vegetable_ head. “How so?” was the inquiry. “He has _carroty_ hair,
_reddish_ cheeks, a _turnup_ nose, and a _sage_ look.”
Tom Hood, seeing over the shop-door of a beer-vendor,—
_Bear_ Sold Here,
said it was spelled right, because it was his own _Bruin_.
Charles Mathews, the comedian, was served by a green-grocer, named
Berry, and generally settled his bill once a quarter. At one time the
account was sent in before it was due, and Mathews, laboring under an
idea that his credit was doubted, said, “Here’s a pretty _mull_, Berry.
You have sent in your _bill_, Berry, before it is _due_, Berry. Your
father, the _elder_ Berry, would not have been such a _goose_, Berry;
but you need not look so _black_, Berry, for I don’t care a _straw_,
Berry, and sha’n’t pay you till _Christmas_, Berry.”
Sheridan, being dunned by a tailor to pay at least the interest on his
bill, answered that it was not his interest to pay the principal, nor
his principle to pay the interest.
In the “Old India House” may still be seen a quarto volume of _Interest
Tables_, on the fly-leaf of which is written, in Charles Lamb’s round,
clerkly hand,—
“A book of much interest.”—_Edinburgh Review._
“A work in which the interest never flags.”—_Quarterly Review._
“We may say of this volume, that the interest increases from the
beginning to the end.”—_Monthly Review._
Turner, the painter, was at a dinner where several artists, amateurs,
and literary men were convened. A poet, by way of being facetious,
proposed as a toast, “_The Painters and Glaziers of England_.” The toast
was drunk; and Turner, after returning thanks for it, proposed “_Success
to the Paper-Stainers_,” and called on the poet to respond.
SHORT ROAD TO WEALTH.
I’ll tell you a plan for gaining wealth,
Better than banking, trade, or leases;
Take a bank-note and fold it across,
And then you will find your money §IN-CREASES§!
This wonderful plan, without danger or loss,
Keeps your cash in your hands, and with nothing to trouble it;
And every time that you fold it across,
’Tis plain as the light of the day that you §DOUBLE IT§!
“I cannot move,” the plaintive invalid cries,
“Nor sit, nor stand.”—If he says true, he _lies_.
Dr. Johnson having freely expressed his aversion to punning, Boswell
hinted that his illustrious friend’s dislike to this species of small
wit might arise from his inability to play upon words. “Sir”, roared
Johnson, “if I were punish-ed for every pun I shed, there would not be
left a puny shed of my punnish head.” Once, by accident, he made a
singular pun. A person who affected to live after the Greek manner, and
to anoint himself with oil, was one day mentioned to him. Johnson, in
the course of conversation on the singularity of his practice, gave him
the denomination of _this man of Grease_.
Sydney Smith—so Lord Houghton in his _Monographs_ tells us—has written
depreciatingly of all playing upon words; but his rapid apprehension
could not altogether exclude a kind of wit which, in its best forms,
takes fast hold of the memory, besides the momentary amusement it
excites. His objection to the superiority of a city feast: “I cannot
wholly value a dinner by the test you do (_testudo_);”—his proposal to
settle the question of the wood pavement around St. Paul’s: “Let the
Canons once lay their heads together and the thing will be done;”—his
pretty compliment to his friends, Mrs. Tighe and Mrs. Cuffe: “Ah! there
you are: the cuff that every one would wear, the tie that no one would
loose”—may be cited as perfect in their way.
Admiral Duncan’s address to the officers who came on board his ship for
instructions, previous to the engagement with Admiral de Winter, was
laconic and humorous: “Gentlemen, you see a severe Winter approaching; I
have only to advise you to keep up a good fire.”
Theodore Hook plays thus on the same name:—
Here comes Mr. Winter, inspector of taxes;
I advise you to give him whatever he axes;
I advise you to give him without any flummery,
For though his name’s Winter his actions are _summary_.
Henry Erskine’s toast to the mine-owners of Lancashire:—
Sink your pits, blast your mines, dam your rivers, consume your
manufactures, disperse your commerce, and may your labors be in
_vein_.
TOM MOORE.
When Limerick, in idle whim,
Moore as her member lately courted,
’The boys,’ for form’s sake, asked of him
To state what party he supported.
When thus his answer promptly ran,
(Now give the wit his meed of glory:)
“I’m of no party as a man,
But as a poet _am-a-tory_.”
TOP AND BOTTOM.
The following playful colloquy in verse took place at a dinner-table,
between Sir George Rose and James Smith, in allusion to Craven street,
Strand, where the latter resided:—
J. S.—At the top of my street the attorneys abound,
And down at the bottom the barges are found:
Fly, honesty, fly to some safer retreat,
For there’s _craft_ in the river, and _craft_ in the street.
Sir G. R.—Why should honesty fly to some safer retreat,
From attorneys, and barges, od-rot ’em?
For the lawyers are _just_ at the top of the street,
And the barges are _just_ at the bottom.
OLD JOKE VERSIFIED.
Says Tom to Bill, pray tell me, sir,
Why is it that the devil,
In spite of all his naughty ways,
Can never be uncivil?
Says Bill to Tom, the answer’s plain
To any mind that’s bright:
Because the imp of darkness, sir,
Can ne’er be _imp o’ light_.
A PRINTER’S EPITAPH.
Here lies a _form_—place no _imposing stone_
To mark the _head_, where weary it is lain;
’Tis _matter dead_!—its mission being done,
To be _distributed_ to dust again.
The _body’s_ but the _type_, at best, of man,
Whose _impress_ is the spirit’s deathless _page_;
_Worn out_, the _type_ is thrown to _pi_ again,
The _impression_ lives through an eternal age.
STICKY.
I want to seal a letter, Dick,
Some wax pray give to me.—
I have not got a single _stick_,
Or _whacks_ I’d give to thee.
WOMEN.
When Eve brought _woe_ to all mankind,
Old Adam called her _wo-man_;
But when she _woo’d_ with love so kind,
He then pronounced her _woo-man_.
But now with folly and with pride,
Their husbands’ pockets trimming,
The ladies are so full of _whims_,
The people call them _whim-men_.
BEN, THE SAILOR.
His _death_, which happened in his _berth_,
At forty odd befell:
They went and _told_ the sexton, and
The sexton _tolled_ the bell.—§Hood’s§ _Faithless Sally Brown_.
WHISKERS VERSUS RAZOR.
With whiskers thick upon my face
I went my fair to see;
She told me she could never love
A _bear-faced_ chap like me.
I shaved then clean, and called again,
And thought my troubles o’er;
She laughed outright, and said I was
More _bare-faced_ than before!
COMPLIMENT OF SHERIDAN TO MISS PAYNE.
’Tis true I am ill; but I cannot complain,
For he never knew pleasure who never knew Payne.
FROM DR. HOLMES’ “MODEST REQUEST.”
Thus great Achilles, who had shown his zeal
In §HEALING WOUNDS§, died of a §WOUNDED HEEL§;
Unhappy chief, who, when in childhood doused,
Had saved his §BACON§ had his feet been §SOUSED§!
Accursed heel, that killed a hero stout!
Oh, had your mother known that you were out,
Death had not entered at the trifling part
That still defies the small chirurgeon’s art
With corn and §BUNIONS§,—not the glorious §John§
Who wrote the book we all have pondered on,—
But other §BUNIONS§, bound in fleecy hose,
To “§Pilgrim’s Progress§” unrelenting foes!
PLAINT OF THE OLD PAUPER.
Some boast of their §FORE§-fathers—I—
I have not §ONE§!
I am, I think, like Joshua,
The son of §NONE§!
Heedless in youth, we little note
How quick time passes,
For then flows ruby wine, not sand,
In §OUR§ glasses!
Rich friends (most pure in honor) all have fled
Sooner or later;
Pshaw! had they India’s spices, they’d not be
A nutmeg-§GRATER§!
I’ve neither chick nor child; as I have nothing,
Why, ’tis lucky rather;
Yet who that hears a squalling baby wishes
Not to be §FATHER§?
Some few years back my spirits and my youth
Were quite amazin’;
Brisk as a pony, or a lawyer’s clerk,
Just fresh from §Gray’s Inn§!
What am I now? weak, old, and poor, and by
The parish found;
Their §PENCE§ keeps me, while many an ass
Enjoys the parish §POUND§!
TO MY NOSE.
Knows he that never took a pinch,
Nosey! the pleasure thence which flows?
Knows he the titillating joy
Which my nose knows?
Oh, nose! I am as fond of thee
As any mountain of its snows!
I gaze on thee, and feel that pride
A Roman knows!
BOOK-LARCENY.
Sir Walter Scott said that some of his friends were bad _accountants_,
but excellent _book-keepers_.
How hard, when those who do not wish
To lend—that’s lose—their books,
Are snared by anglers—folks that fish
With literary hooks;
Who call and take some favorite tome,
But never read it through;
They thus complete their sett at home,
By making one of you.
I, of my Spenser quite bereft,
Last winter sore was shaken;
Of Lamb I’ve but a quarter left,
Nor could I save my Bacon.
They picked my Locke, to me far more
Than Bramah’s patent worth;
And now my losses I deplore,
Without a Home on earth.
Even Glover’s works I cannot put
My frozen hands upon;
Though ever since I lost my Foote,
My Bunyan has been gone.
My life is wasting fast away;
I suffer from these shocks;
And though I’ve fixed a lock on Gray,
There’s gray upon my locks.
They still have made me slight returns,
And thus my grief divide;
For oh! they’ve cured me of my Burns,
And eased my Akenside.
But all I think I shall not say,
Nor let my anger burn;
For as they have not found me Gay,
They have not left me Sterne.
THE VEGETABLE GIRL.
Behind a market stall installed,
I mark it every day,
Stands at her stand the fairest girl
I’ve met with in the bay;
Her two lips are of cherry red,
Her hands a pretty pair,
With such a pretty turn-up nose,
And lovely reddish hair.
’Tis there she stands from morn till night
Her customers to please,
And to appease their appetite
She sells them beans and peas.
Attracted by the glances from
The apple of her eye,
And by her Chili apples, too,
Each passer-by will buy.
She stands upon her little feet,
Throughout the livelong day,
And sells her celery and things,—
A big feat, by the way.
She changes off her stock for change,
Attending to each call;
And when she has but one beet left,
She says, “Now that beats all.”
EPITAPH ON AN OLD HORSE.
Here lies a faithful steed,
A stanch, uncompromising “silver gray;”
Who ran the race of life with sprightly speed,
Yet never ran—away.
Wild oats he never sowed,
Yet masticated tame ones with much zest:
Cheerful he bore each light allotted load,
As cheerfully took rest.
Bright were his eyes, yet soft,
And in the main his tail was white and flowing;
And though he never sketched a single draught,
He showed great taste for drawing.
Lithe were his limbs, and clean,
Fitted alike for buggy or for dray,
And like Napoleon the Great, I ween,
He had a _martial neigh_.
Oft have I watched him grace
His favorite stall, well littered, warm, and fair,
With such contentment shining from his face,
And such a stable air!
With here and there a speck
Of roan diversifying his broad back,
And, martyr-like, a halter round his neck,
Which bound him to the rack.
Mors omnibus! at length
The hay-day of his life was damped by death;
So, summoning all his late remaining strength,
He drew his—final breath.
GRAND SCHEME OF EMIGRATION.
The Brewers should to _Malt-a_ go,
The Loggerheads to _Scilly_,
The Quakers to the _Friendly Isles_,
The Furriers all to _Chili_.
The little squalling, brawling brats,
That break our nightly rest,
Should be packed off to _Baby-lon_,
To _Lap-land_, or to _Brest_.
From _Spit-head_ Cooks go o’er to _Greece_;
And while the Miser waits
His passage to the _Guinea_ coast,
Spendthrifts are in the _Straits_.
Spinsters should to the _Needles_ go,
Wine-bibbers to _Burgundy_;
Gourmands should lunch at _Sandwich Isles_,
Wags in the _Bay of Fun-dy_.
Musicians hasten to the _Sound_,
The surpliced Priest to _Rome_;
While still the race of Hypocrites
At _Cant-on_ are at home.
Lovers should hasten to _Good Hope_;
To some _Cape Horn_ is pain;
Debtors should go to _Oh-i-o_,
And Sailors to the _Main-e_.
Hie, Bachelors, to the _United States_!
Maids, to the _Isle of Man_;
Let Gardeners go to _Botany Bay_,
And Shoeblacks to _Japan_.
Thus, emigrants and misplaced men
Will then no longer vex us;
And all that a’n’t provided for
Had better go to _Texas_.
THE PERILOUS PRACTICE OF PUNNING.
Theodore Hook thus cautions young people to resist provocation to the
habit of punning:—
My little dears, who learn to read, pray early learn to shun
That very silly thing indeed which people call a pun.
Read Entick’s rules, and ’twill be found how simple an offence
It is to make the self-same sound afford a double sense.
For instance, _ale_ may make you _ail_, your _aunt_ an _ant_ may kill,
You in a _vale_ may buy a _vail_, and _Bill_ may pay the _bill_,
Or if to France your bark you steer, at Dover it may be,
A _peer_ _appears_ upon the _pier_, who, blind, still goes to _sea_.
Thus one might say when to a treat good friends accept our greeting,
’Tis _meet_ that men who _meet_ to eat, should eat their _meat_ when
_meeting_.
Brawn on the board’s no _bore_ indeed, although from _boar_ prepared;
Nor can the _fowl_ on which we feed _foul_ feeding be declared.
Thus _one_ ripe fruit may be a _pear_, and yet be _pared_ again,
And still be _one_, which seemeth rare, until we do explain.
It therefore should be all your aim to speak with ample care;
For who, however fond of _game_, would choose to swallow _hair_?
A fat man’s _gait_ may make us smile, who has no _gate_ to close;
The farmer sitting on his _stile_ no _stylish_ person knows;
Perfumers men of _scents_ must be; some Scilly men are bright;
A _brown_ man oft _deep read_ we see—a _black_ a wicked _wight_.
Most wealthy men good manners have, however vulgar they,
And actors still the harder _slave_ the oftener they _play_;
So poets can’t the _baize_ obtain unless their tailors choose,
While grooms and coachmen not in vain each evening seek the _mews_.
The _dyer_ who by dying _lives_, a _dire_ life maintains;
The glazier, it is known, receives his _profits_ from his _panes_;
By gardeners _thyme_ is _tied_, ’tis true, when Spring is in its prime,
But _time_ or _tide_ won’t wait for you, if you are _tied_ for _time_.
There now you see, my little dears, the way to make a pun;
A trick which you, through coming years, should sedulously shun.
The fault admits of no defense, for wheresoe’er ’tis found,
You sacrifice the _sound_ for _sense_, the _sense_ is never _sound_.
So let your words and actions too, one single meaning prove,
And, just in all you say or do, you’ll gain esteem and love:
In mirth and play no harm you’ll know, when duty’s task is done;
But parents ne’er should let you go un_pun_ished for a _pun_.
The motto of the Pilotage Commission of the river Tyne:—
In portu salus.
In port you sail us.
SONNET
_On a youth who died from a surfeit of fruit._
Currants have checked the current of my blood,
And berries brought me to be buried here;
Pears have pared off my body’s hardihood,
And plums and plumbers spare not one so spare:
Fain would I feign my fall; so fair a fare
Lessens not fate, but ’tis a lesson good:
Gilt will not long hide guilt; such thin-washed ware
Wears quickly, and its rude touch soon is rued.
Grave on my grave some sentence grave and terse,
That lies not, as it lies upon my clay;
But, in a gentle strain of unstrained verse,
Prays all to pity a poor patty’s prey;
Rehearses I was fruit-full to my hearse,
Tells that my days are told, and soon I’m toll’d away!
Previous to the battle of Culloden, when Marshal Wade and Generals Cope
and Hawley were prevented by the severity of the weather from advancing
as far into Scotland as they intended, the following lines were
circulated among their opposers:—
Cope could not cope, nor Wade wade through the snow,
Nor Hawley haul his cannon to the foe.
When Mrs. Norton was called on to subscribe to a fund for the relief of
Thomas Hood’s widow, which had been headed by Sir Robert Peel, she sent
a liberal donation with these lines:—
To cheer the widow’s heart in her distress,
To make provision for the fatherless,
Is but a Christian’s duty, and none should
Resist the heart-appeal of _widow-Hood_.
M. Mario’s visit to this country recalls to mind the sharpest witticism
of Madame Grisi, at the time his wife, and one of the best bits of
repartee on record. Louis Phillippe, passing through a room where Grisi
stood, holding two of her young children by the hand, said gaily: “Ah!
Madame, are those, then, some of your little _Grisettes_?” “No, Sire,”
was the quick reply, perfect in every requirement of the pun, “No, Sire,
these are my little _Marionettes_.”
A learned judge, of facetious memory, is reported to have said, in an
argument in arrest of the judgment of death, “I think we had better let
the subject drop.”
SWIFT’S LATIN PUNS.
Among the _nugæ_ of Dean Swift are his celebrated Latin puns, some of
which are well known, having been frequently copied, and having never
been excelled. The following selections will serve as specimens. They
consist entirely of Latin words; but, by allowing for false spelling,
and running the words into each other, the sentences make good sense in
English:—
Mollis abuti, (Moll is a beauty,
Has an acuti, Has an acute eye,
No lasso finis, No lass so fine is,
Molli divinis. Molly divine is.
Omi de armis tres, O my dear mistress,
Imi na dis tres, I’m in a distress,
Cantu disco ver Can’t you discover
Meas alo ver? Me as a lover?)
In a subsequent epistolary allusion to this, he says:—
I ritu a verse o na molli o mi ne,
Asta lassa me pole, a lædis o fine;
I ne ver neu a niso ne at in mi ni is;
A manat a glans ora sito fer diis.
De armo lis abuti hos face an hos nos is,
As fer a sal illi, as reddas aro sis;
Ac is o mi molli is almi de lite;
Illo verbi de, an illo verbi nite.
(I writ you a verse on a Molly o’ mine,
As tall as a may pole, a lady so fine;
I never knew any so neat in mine eyes;
A man, at a glance or a sight of her, dies.
Dear Molly’s a beauty, whose face and whose nose is
As fair as a lily, as red as a rose is;
A kiss o’ my Molly is all my delight;
I love her by day, and I love her by night.)
_Extract from the consultation of four physicians on a lord that was
dying_
_1st Doctor._ Is his honor sic? Præ lætus felis pulse. It do es beat
veris loto de.
_2d Doctor._ No notis as qui cassi e ver fel tu metri it. Inde edit is
as fastas an alarum, ora fire bellat nite.
_3d Doctor._ It is veri hei!
_4th Doctor._ Noto contra dictu in my juge mentitis veri loto de. It is
as orto maladi, sum callet. [Here e ver id octo reti resto a par lori na
mel an coli post ure.]
_1st D._ It is a me gri mas I opi ne.
_2d D._ No docto rite quit fora quin si. Heris a plane sim tomo fit.
Sorites Paracelsus. Præ re adit.
_1st D._ Nono, Doctor, I ne ver quo te aqua casu do.
_2d D._ Sum arso; mi autoris no ne.
_3d D._ No quare lingat præ senti de si re. His honor is sic offa colli
casure as I sit here.
_4th D._ It is æther an atro phi ora colli casu sed: Ire membri re ad it
in Doctor me ades esse, here it is.
_3d D._ I ne ver re ad apage in it, no re ver in tendit.
_2d D._ Fer ne is offa qui te di ferent noti o nas i here.
_1st D._ It me bea pluri si; avo metis veri pro perfor a man at his age.
* * * * *
_1st D._ Is his honor sick? Pray let us feel his pulse. It does beat
very slow to-day.
_2d D._ No, no, ’tis as quick as ever I felt; you may try it. Indeed,
it is as fast as an alarum, or a fire-bell at night.
_3d D._ It is very high.
_4th D._ Not to contradict you, in my judgment it is very slow to day.
It is a sort of malady, some call it. (Here every doctor retires to a
parlor in a melancholy posture.)
_1st D._ It is a megrim, as I opine.
_2d D._ No, doctor, I take it for a quinsy. Here is a plain symptom of
it. So writes Paracelsus. Pray read it.
_1st D._ No, no, doctor, I never quote a quack as you do.
_2d D._ Some are so; my author is none.
_3d D._ No quarrelling at present, I desire. His honor is sick of a
colic as sure as I sit here.
_4th D._ It is either an atrophy, or a colic, as you said. I remember
I read it in Dr. Mead’s Essay: here it is.
_3d D._ I never read a page in it, nor ever intend it.
_2d D._ Ferne is of a quite different notion, as I hear.
_1st D._ It may be a pleurisy; a vomit is very proper for a man at his
age.
_2d D._ Ure par donat præsanti des ire; His dis eas is a cata ride clare
it.
_3d D._ Atlas tume findit as tone in his quid ni es.
_4th D._ Itis ale pro si fora uti se. Ab lis ter me bene cessa risum de
cens. Itis as ure medi in manicas es.
_3d D._ I findit isto late tot hinc offa reme di; fori here his honor is
de ad.
_2d D._ His ti meis cum.
_1st D._ Is it trudo ut hinc?
_4th D._ It is veri certa in. His Paris his belli sto ringo ut foris de
partu re.
_3d D._ Næ i fis ecce lens is de ad lætus en dum apri esto præ foris
sole.
_2d D._ Your pardon at present I desire. His disease is a catarrh, I
declare it.
_3d D._ At last you may find it a stone in his kidneys.
_4th D._ It is a leprosy for aught I see. A blister may be necessary
some days hence. It is a sure remedy in many cases.
_3d D._ I find it is too late to think of a remedy; for I hear his
honor is dead.
_2d D._ His time is come.
_1st D._ Is it true, do you think?
_4th D._ It is very certain. His parish bell is to ring out for his
departure.
_3d D._ Nay, if his excellency’s dead, let us send ’em a priest to
pray for his soul.
UNCONSCIOUS OR UNINTENTIONAL PUNS.
Elizabeth’s _sylvan dress_ was therefore well suited at once to
her height and to the dignity of her mein, which her conscious
rank and _long habits_ of authority had rendered in some degree
too masculine to be seen to the best advantage in ordinary _female
weeds_.—_Kenilworth_, iii. 9.
I’ll _gild_ the faces of the grooms withal
That it may seem their _guilt_.—_Macbeth._
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling,
As if to show their sunny backs
And _twit_ me with the spring.—_Song of the Shirt._
RUSSIAN DOUBLE ENTENDRE.
The following message was sent to the Emperor Nicholas by one of his
generals:—
Voliā Vāschā, ā Varschāvoo vsi’at nemogoo.
{ Volia is yours, }
} but Warsaw I cannot take.
{ Your will is all-powerful, }
CLASSICAL PUNS AND MOTTOES.
Sydney Smith proposed as a motto for Bishop Burgess, brother to the
well-known fish-sauce purveyor, the following Virgilian pun (Æn. iv.
1),—
_Gravi_ jamdudum _saucia_ curâ.
A London tobacconist, who had become wealthy, and determined to set up
his carriage, applied to a learned gentleman for a motto. The scholar
gave him the Horatian question,—
QUID RIDES?
(Why do you laugh?—_Sat. I._ 69)—
which was accordingly adopted, and painted on the panel.
* * * * *
A pedantic bachelor had the following inscription on his tea-caddy:—
TU DOCES.
(Thou Tea-chest.)
_Epitaph on a Cat_, ascribed to Dr. Johnson (Hor. lib. i., c. 12):—
MI-CAT INTER OMNES.
Two gentlemen about to enter an unoccupied pew in a church, the foremost
found it locked. His companion, not perceiving it at the moment,
inquired why he retreated. “_Pudor vetat_” said he. (Modesty forbids.)
* * * * *
A gentleman at dinner requested a friend to help him to a potato, which
he did, saying, “I think you will find that a good mealy one.” “Thank
you,” quoth the other: “it could not be _melior_” (better).
* * * * *
A student of Latin, being confined to his room by illness, was called
upon by a friend. “What, John,” said the visitor, “sick, eh?” “Yes,”
replied John, “_sic sum_” (so I am).
* * * * *
In King’s College were two delinquents named respectively Payne and
Culpepper. Payne was expelled, but Culpepper escaped punishment. Upon
this, a wit wrote the following apt line:—
_Pœna_ perire potest; _Culpa per_ennis est.
Andrew Borde, author of the _Breviary of Health_, called himself in
Latin Andreas Perforatus. This translation of a proper name was
according to the fashion of the time, but in this instance includes a
pun,—perforatus, _bored_ or pierced.
* * * * *
Joseph II., Emperor of Germany, during a visit to Rome, went to see the
princess Santacroce, a young lady of singular beauty, who had an evening
_conversazione_. Next morning appeared the following pasquinade.
“Pasquin asks, ‘What is the Emperor Joseph come to Rome for?’ Marforio
answers, ‘Abaciar la Santa Croce’”—to kiss the Holy Cross.
* * * * *
On the trial of Garnett, the Superior of the Jesuits, for his
participation in the Gunpowder Plot, Coke, then Attorney-General,
concluded his speech thus:—_Qui cum Jesu itis, non itis cum Jesuitis_.
* * * * *
A few years ago, several Jesuits came into the lecture-room of an
Italian professor in the University of Pisa, believing he was about to
assail a favorite dogma of theirs. He commenced his lecture with the
following words,—
“Quanti Gesuiti sono all’ inferno!”
(How many Jesuits there are in hell!)
When remonstrated with, he said that his words were—
“Quanti—Gesu!—iti sono all’ inferno!”
(How many people, O Jesus! there are in hell!)
* * * * *
D’Israeli says that Bossuet would not join his young companions, and
flew to his solitary tasks, while the classical boys avenged themselves
by a schoolboy’s pun; applying to _Bossuet_ Virgil’s _bos suet-us
aratro_—the ox daily toiling in the plough.
* * * * *
John Randolph of Virginia, and Mr. Dana of Connecticut, while
fellow-members of Congress, belonged to different political parties. On
one occasion Mr. Dana paid some handsome compliments to Mr. Randolph.
When the latter spoke in reply, he quoted from Virgil (Æn. ii.):—
Timeo _Danaos_ et dona ferentes.
A lady having accidentally thrown down a Cremona fiddle with her mantua,
Dean Swift instantly remarked,—
“_Mantua_ væ miseræ nimium vicina _Cremonæ_.”
Ah, Mantua, too near the wretched Cremona. (Virg. Ecl. ix. 28.)
* * * * *
To an old gentleman who had lost his spectacles one rainy evening, the
Dean said, “If this rain continues all night, you will certainly recover
them in the morning betimes:
“Nocte pluit tota—redeunt _spectacula_ mane.” (Virgil.)
Quid facies facies veneris si veneris ante?
Ne pereas pereas, ne sedeas, sedeas.
(What will you do if you shall come before the face of Venus? Lest you
should perish through them, do not sit down, but go away.)
* * * * *
Sir William Dawes, Archbishop of York, was very fond of a pun. His
clergy dining with him for the first time after he had lost his wife, he
told them he feared they did not find things in so good order as they
used to be in the time of poor Mary; and, looking extremely sorrowful,
added with a deep sigh, “she was indeed _mare pacificum_.” A curate who
knew pretty well what her temper had been, said, “Yes, my lord, but she
was _mare mortuum_ first.”
That Homer should a bankrupt be,
Is not so very §ODD D’YE SEE§,
If it be true as I’m instructed,
So §ILL HE HAD§ his books conducted.
PUNNING MOTTOES OF THE ENGLISH PEERAGE.
_Ne vile_ §Fano§—Disgrace not the altar. Motto of the §Fanes§.
§Ne vile§ _velis_—Form no mean wish. The §Nevilles§.
§Cavendo§ _tutus_—Secure by caution. The §Cavendishes§.
§Forte scu§_tum, salus ducum_—A strong shield the safety of leaders.
Lord §Fortescue§.
§Ver non§ _semper viret_—The spring is not always green. Lord §Vernon§.
§Vero§ _nihil verius_—Nothing truer than truth. Lord §Vere§.
§Templa§ _quam delecta_—Temples how beloved. Lord §Temple§.
JEUX-DE-MOTS.
SPIRITUAL.
A wag decides—
That whiskey is the key by which many gain an entrance into our prisons
and almshouses.
That brandy brands the noses of all who cannot govern their appetites.
That wine causes many a man to take a winding way home.
That punch is the cause of many unfriendly punches.
That ale causes many ailings, while beer brings many to the bier.
That champagne is the source of many a real pain.
That gin-slings have “slewed” more than the slings of old.
That the reputation of being fond of cock-tails is not a feather in any
man’s cap.
That the money spent for port that is supplied by portly gents would
support many a poor family.
That porter is a weak supporter for those who are weak in body.
ANAGRAMMATIC.
The following sentence is said to be taken from a volume of sermons
published during the reign of James I.:—
This _dial_ shows that we must _die all_; yet notwithstanding, _all
houses_ are turned into _ale houses_; our _cares_ into _cates_; our
_paradise_ into a _pair o’ dice_; _matrimony_ into a _matter of money_,
and _marriage_ into a _merry age_; our _divines_ have become _dry
vines_: it was not so in the days of _Noah_,—_ah! no_.
ITERATIVE.
A clerical gentleman of Hartford, who once attended the House of
Representatives to read prayers, being politely requested to remain
seated near the speaker during the debate, found himself the spectator
of an _unmarrying_ process, so alien to his own vocation, and so
characteristic of the readiness of the Legislature of Connecticut to
grant divorces, that the result was the following _impromptu_:—
For _cut_-ting all _connect_-ions famed,
_Connect-i-cut_ is fairly named;
I twain _connect_ in one, but you
_Cut_ those whom _I connect_ in two.
Each legislator seems to say,
What you _Connect I cut_ away.
Finn, the comedian, issued the following morceau upon the announcement
of his benefit at the Tremont Theatre, Boston:—
Like a _grate full_ of coals I burn,
A _great, full_ house to see;
And if I should not _grateful_ prove,
A _great fool_ I should be.
A FAIR LETTER.
The following letter was received by a young lady at the post-office of
a Fair held for the benefit of a church:—
_Fairest of the Fair._ When such _fair_ beings as you have the
_fair_-ness to honor our _Fair_ with your _fair_ presence, it is
perfectly _fair_ that you should receive good _fare_ from the _fair_
conductors of this _Fair_, and indeed it would be very un-_fair_ if you
should not _fare_ well, since it is the endeavor of those whose
wel-_fare_ depends upon the success of this _Fair_, to treat all who
come _fair_-ly, but to treat with especial _fair_-ness those who are as
_fair_ as yourself. We are engaged in a _fair_ cause, a sacred
war-_fare_; that is, to speak without un-_fair_-ness, a war-_fare_, not
against the _fair_ sex, but against the pockets of their beaux. We
therefore hope, gentle reader, “still _fair_est found where all is
_fair_,” that you will use all _fair_ exertions in behalf of the
praiseworthy af-_fair_ which we have _fair_-ly undertaken. If you take
sufficient interest in our wel-_fare_ to lend your _fair_ aid, you will
appear _fair_-er than ever in our sight; we will never treat you
un-_fair_-ly, and when you withdraw the light of your _fair_ countenance
from our _Fair_, we will bid you a kind _Fare_-well.
The following was written on the occasion of a duel in Philadelphia,
several years ago:—
Schott and Willing did engage
In duel fierce and hot;
Schott shot Willing willingly,
And Willing he shot Schott.
The shot Schott shot made Willing quite
A spectacle to see;
While Willing’s willing shot went right
Through Schott’s anatomy.
WRITE WRITTEN RIGHT.
_Write_ we know is written right,
When we see it written _write_;
But when we see it written wright,
We know it is not written right:
For write, to have it written right,
Must not be written right or wright,
Nor yet should it be written rite;
But _write_, for so ’tis written right.
TURN TO THE LEFT AS THE (ENGLISH) LAW DIRECTS.
The laws of the Road are a paradox quite:
For when you are travelling along,
If you keep to the §LEFT§ you’re sure to be §RIGHT§,
If you keep to the §RIGHT§ you’ll be §WRONG§.
I cannot bear to see a bear, bear down upon a hare,
When bare of hair he strips the hare, for hare I cry, “forbear!”
ON THE DEATH OF THE EARL OF KILDARE.
Who _killed Kildare_? Who _dared Kildare_ to _kill_?
Death answers,—
I _killed Kildare_, and _dare kill_ whom I will.
§A§ _Cat_§ALECTIC MONODY§.
A _cat_ I sing of famous memory,
Though _cat_achrestical my song may be:
In a small garden _cat_acomb she lies,
And _cat_aclysms fill her comrades’ eyes;
Borne on the air, the _cat_acoustic song
Swells with her virtues’ _cat_alogue along;
No _cat_aplasm could lengthen out her years,
Though mourning friends shed _cat_aracts of tears.
Once loud and strong her _cat_echist-like voice.
It dwindled to a _cat_call’s squeaking noise;
Most _cat_egorical her virtues shone,
By _cat_enation joined each one to one;—
But a vile _cat_chpoll dog, with cruel bite,
Like _cat_ling’s cut, her strength disabled quite;
Her _cat_erwauling pierced the heavy air,
As _cat_aphracts their arms through legions bear;
’Tis vain! as _cat_erpillars drag away
Their lengths, like _cat_tle after busy day,
She lingering died, nor left in kit _kat_ the
Embodiment of this _cat_astrophe.
NOVEMBER.
(The humorous lines of Hood are only applicable to the English climate,
where the closing month of autumn is synonymous with fogs, long visages,
and suicides.)
No sun—no moon!
No morn—no noon—
No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day—
No sky—no earthly view—
No distance looking blue—
No roads—no streets—no t’other side the way—
No end to any row—
No indication where the crescents go—
No tops to any steeple—
No recognition of familiar people—
No courtesies for showing ’em—
No knowing ’em—
No travellers at all—no locomotion—
No inkling of the way—no motion—
‘No go’ by land or ocean—
No mail—no post—
No news from any foreign coast—
No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility—
No company—no nobility—
No warmth—no cheerfulness—no healthful ease—
No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade—no shine—no butterflies—no bees—
No fruits—no flowers—no leaves—no birds—
§No-vember§!
* * * * *
The name of that monster of brutality, _Caliban_, in Shakspeare’s
Tempest, is supposed to be anagrammatic of _Canibal_, the old mode of
spelling Cannibal.
A SWARM OF BEES.
B patient, B prayerful, B humble, B mild,
B wise as a Solon, B meek as a child;
B studious, B thoughtful, B loving, B kind;
B sure you make matter subservient to mind.
B cautious, B prudent, B trustful, B true,
B courteous to all men, B friendly with few.
B temperate in argument, pleasure, and wine,
B careful of conduct, of money, of time.
B cheerful, B grateful, B hopeful, B firm,
B peaceful, _be_nevolent, willing to learn;
B courageous, B gentle, B liberal, B just,
B aspiring, B humble, _be_cause thou art dust;
B penitent, circumspect, sound in the faith,
B active, devoted; B faithful till death.
B honest, B holy, transparent, and pure;
B dependent, B Christ-like, and you’ll B secure.
THE BEES OF THE BIBLE.
Be kindly affectioned one to another.
Be sober, and watch unto prayer.
Be content with such things as ye have.
Be strong in the Lord.
Be courteous.
Be not wise in your own conceits.
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers.
Be not children in understanding.
Be followers of God, as dear children.
Be not weary in well-doing.
Be holy in all manner of conversation.
Be patient unto the coming of the Lord.
Be clothed with humility.
FRANKLIN’S “RE’S.”
Dr. Franklin, in England in the year 1775, was asked by a nobleman what
would satisfy the Americans. He answered that it might easily be
comprised in a few “Re’s,” which he immediately wrote on a piece of
paper, thus:—
Re-call your forces.
Re-store Castle William.
Re-pair the damage done to Boston.
Re-peal your unconstitutional acts.
Re-nounce your pretensions to taxes.
Re-fund the duties you have extorted.
After this—
Re-quire, and
Re-ceive payment for the destroyed tea, with the voluntary grants of the
Colonies; and then
Re-joice in a happy
Re-conciliation.
THE MISS-NOMERS.
_After the manner of Horace Smith’s “Surnames ever go by contraries.”_
Miss Brown is exceedingly fair,
Miss White is as brown as a berry;
Miss Black has a gray head of hair,
Miss Graves is a flirt ever merry;
Miss Lightbody weighs sixteen stone,
Miss Rich scarce can muster a guinea;
Miss Hare wears a wig, and has none,
And Miss Solomon is a sad ninny!
Miss Mildmay’s a terrible scold,
Miss Dove’s ever cross and contrary;
Miss Young is now grown very old,
And Miss Heavyside’s light as a fairy!
Miss Short is at least five feet ten,
Miss Noble’s of humble extraction;
Miss Love has a hatred towards men,
Whilst Miss Still is forever in action.
Miss Green is a regular _blue_,
Miss Scarlet looks pale as a lily;
Miss Violet ne’er shrinks from our view,
And Miss Wiseman thinks all the men silly!
Miss Goodchild’s a naughty young elf,
Miss Lyon’s from terror a fool;
Miss Mee’s not at all like _myself_,
Miss Carpenter no one can rule.
Miss Sadler ne’er mounted a horse,
While Miss Groom from the stable will run;
Miss Kilmore can’t look on a corse,
And Miss Aimwell ne’er levelled a gun;
Miss Greathead has no brains at all,
Miss Heartwell is ever complaining;
Miss Dance has ne’er been at a ball,
Over hearts Miss Fairweather likes _reigning_!
Miss Wright, she is constantly wrong,
Miss Tickell, alas! is not funny;
Miss Singer ne’er warbled a song,
And alas! poor Miss Cash has no money;
Miss Hateman would give all she’s worth,
To purchase a man to her liking;
Miss Merry is shocked at all mirth,
Miss Boxer the men don’t find _striking_!
Miss Bliss does with sorrow o’erflow,
Miss Hope in despair seeks the tomb;
Miss Joy still anticipates wo,
And Miss Charity’s never “at home!”
Miss Hamlet resides in the city,
The nerves of Miss Standfast are shaken;
Miss Prettyman’s beau is not pretty,
And Miss Faithful her love has forsaken!
Miss Porter despises all froth,
Miss Scales they’ll make _wait_, I am thinking;
Miss Meekly is apt to be wroth,
Miss Lofty to meanness is sinking;
Miss Seymore’s as blind as a bat,
Miss Last at a party is first;
Miss Brindle dislikes a striped cat,
And Miss Waters has always a thirst!
Miss Knight is now changed into Day,
Miss Day wants to marry a Knight;
Miss Prudence has just run away,
And Miss Steady assisted her flight;
But success to the fair,—one and all!
No miss-apprehensions be making;—
Though wrong the dear sex to _miss-call_,
There’s no harm, I should hope, in §MISS-TAKING§.
CROOKED COINCIDENCES.
A pamphlet published in the year 1703 has the following strange title:
“The _Deformity_ of Sin cured; a Sermon preached at St. Michael’s,
_Crooked_-lane, before the Prince of Orange, by the Rev. J.
_Crookshanks_. Sold by Matthew Denton, at the _Crooked_ Billet near
_Cripple_-gate, and by all other booksellers.” The words of the text
are, “_Every crooked path shall be made straight_;” and the prince
before whom it was preached was _deformed_ in person.
THE COURT-FOOL’S PUN ON ARCHBISHOP LAUD.
Great praise to God, and _little Laud_ to the devil.
English Words and Forms of Expression.
Dictionary English is something very different not only from common
colloquial English, but even from that of ordinary written composition.
Instead of about forty thousand words, there is probably no single
author in the language from whose works, however voluminous, so many as
ten thousand words could be collected. Of the forty thousand words there
are certainly many more than one-half that are only employed, if they
are ever employed at all, on the rarest occasions. We should be
surprised to find, if we counted them, with how small a number of words
we manage to express all that we have to say, either with our lips or
with the pen. Our common literary English probably hardly amounts to ten
thousand words; our common spoken English hardly to five thousand.
Odd words are to be found in the dictionaries. Why they are kept there
no one knows; but what man in his senses would use such words as
zythepsary for a brewhouse, and zymologist for a brewer; would talk of a
stormy day as procellous and himself as madefied; of his long-legged son
as increasing in procerity but sadly marcid; of having met with such
procacity from such a one; of a bore as a macrologist; of an aged horse
as macrobiotic; of important business as moliminous, and his daughter’s
necklace as moniliform; of some one’s talk as meracious, and lament his
last night’s nimiety of wine at that dapatical feast, whence he was
taken by ereption? Open the dictionary at any page, and you will find a
host of these words.
By a too ready adoption of foreign words into the currency of the
English language, we are in danger of losing much of its radical
strength and historical significance. Marsh has compared the parable of
the man who built his house upon the sand, as given by Matthew and Luke.
Matthew uses the plain Saxon English. The learned Evangelist, Luke,
employed a Latinized dictionary. “Now,” he says, “compare the two
passages and say which to every English ear, is the most impressive:”
“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and
beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of
it.”—_Matthew._
“Against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell;
and the ruin of that house was great.”—_Luke._
There can scarcely be a difference of opinion as to the relative force
and beauty of the two versions, and consequently we find, that while
that of Matthew has become proverbial, the narrative of Luke is seldom
or never quoted.
Trench says that the Anglo-Saxon is not so much one element of the
English language, as the foundation of it—the basis. All its joints, its
whole _articulation_, its sinews and its ligaments, the great body of
articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary
verbs, all smaller words which serve to knit together and bind the
larger into sentences, these—not to speak of the grammatical structure
of the language—are exclusively Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale
of bricks, yea, of goodly and polished hewn stones to the spiritual
building, but the mortar, with all that holds and binds these together,
and constitutes them into a house, is Saxon throughout. As proof
positive of the soundness of the above affirmation, the test is
submitted that—“you _can_ write a sentence without Latin, but you
_cannot_ without Saxon.” The words of the Lord’s Prayer are almost all
Saxon. Our good old family Bible is a capital standard of it, and has
done more than any other book for the conservation of the purity of our
language. Our best writers, particularly those of Queen Anne’s
time,—Addison, Steele, Swift, &c.,—were distinguished by their use of
simple Saxon.
SOURCES OF THE LANGUAGE.
Some years ago, a gentleman, after carefully examining the folio edition
of Johnson’s Dictionary, formed the following table of English words
derived from other languages:—
Latin 6,732
French 4,812
Saxon 1,665
Greek 1,148
Dutch 691
Italian 211
German 116
Welsh 95
Danish 75
Spanish 56
Icelandic 50
Swedish 34
Gothic 31
Hebrew 16
Teutonic 15
Arabic 13
Irish 6
Runic 4
Flemish 4
Erse 4
Syriac 3
Scottish 3
Irish and Erse 2
Turkish 2
Irish and Scottish 1
Portuguese 1
Persian 1
Frisi 1
Persic 1
Uncertain 1
———
Total 15,784
NOUNS OF MULTITUDE.
A foreigner looking at a picture of a number of vessels, said, “See what
a flock of ships.” He was told that a flock of ships was called a fleet,
and that a fleet of sheep was called a flock. And it was added, for his
guidance, in mastering the intricacies of our language, that a flock of
girls is called a bevy, that a bevy of wolves is called a pack, and a
pack of thieves is called a gang, and that a gang of angels is called a
host, and that a host of porpoises is called a shoal, and a shoal of
buffaloes is called a herd, and a herd of children is called a troop,
and a troop of partridges is called a covey, and a covey of beauties is
called a galaxy, and a galaxy of ruffians is called a horde, and a horde
of rubbish is called a heap, and a heap of oxen is called a drove, and a
drove of blackguards is called a mob, and a mob of whales is called a
school, and a school of worshippers is called a congregation, and a
congregation of engineers is called a corps, and a corps of robbers is
called a band, and a band of locusts is called a swarm, and a swarm of
people is called a crowd.
DISRAELIAN ENGLISH.
Mr. Disraeli gives us some queer English in his novel of _Lothair_, as
may be seen in the following examples:—“He guarded over Lothair’s vast
inheritance;” “Lothair observed on” a lady’s singing; “of simple but
distinguished mien, with a countenance naturally pale, though somewhat
bronzed by a life of air and exercise, and a profusion of dark, auburn
hair;” “he engaged a vehicle and ordered to be driven to Leicester
Square;” “he pointed to an individual seated in the centre of the
table;” “their mutual ancestors;” “Is there anything in the _Tenebræ_
why I ought not to be present?”; “_thoughts which made him unconscious_
how long had elapsed;” “with no companions than the wounded near them;”
“The surgeon was sitting by her side, occasionally wiping the slight
foam from her brow.” We have heard of people foaming at the mouth, but
never before of a lady foaming at the brow.
“YE” FOR “THE.”
_Ye_ is sometimes used for _the_ in old books wherein _the_ is the more
usual form, on account of the difficulties experienced by the printers
in “spacing out.” When pressed for room they put _ye_; when they had
plenty of room they put _the_. Many people in reading old books
pronounce the abbreviation _ye_. But the proper pronunciation is _the_,
for the _y_ is only a corruption of the old _thorn-letter_, or symbol
for _th_.
ITS.
_His_ is the genitive (or as we say, possessive) of _he_,
(_he’s_,—_his_,) and _it_ or _hit_, as it was long written, is the
neuter of _he_, the final _t_ being the sign of the neuter. The
introduction of _its_, as the neuter genitive instead of _his_, arose
from a misconception, similar to that which would have arisen had the
Romans introduced _illudius_ as the neuter genitive of _ille_, instead
of _illius_. _Its_ very rarely occurs in our authorized version of the
Bible, _his_ or _her_ being used instead—occurs but a few times in all
Shakspeare—was unknown to Ben Jonson—was not admitted into his poems by
Milton—and did not come into common use until sanctioned by Dryden.
THAT.
The use of the word _That_ in the following examples is strictly in
accordance with grammatical rules:—
The gentleman said, in speaking of the word _that_, _that that that that
that_ lady parsed, was not _that that that that_ gentleman requested her
to analyze.
Now, _that_ is a word that may often be joined,
For _that that_ may be doubled is clear to the mind;
And _that that that_ is right, is as plain to the view,
As _that that that that_ we use, is rightly used too,
And _that that that that that_ line has in it, is right—
In accordance with grammar—is plain in our sight.
I SAY.
A gentleman who was in the habit of interlarding his discourse with the
expression “I say,” having been informed by a friend that a certain
individual had made some ill-natured remarks upon this peculiarity, took
the opportunity of addressing him in the following amusing style of
rebuke:—“I say, sir, I hear say you say I say ‘I say’ at every word I
say. Now, sir, although I know I say ‘I say’ at every word I say, still
I say, sir, it is not for you to say I say ‘I say’ at every word I say.”
PATH-OLOGY.
There once resided in Ayrshire a man who, like Leman, proposed to write
an Etymological Dictionary of the English language. Being asked what he
understood the word _pathology_ to mean, he answered, with great
readiness and confidence, “Why, the art of _road-making_, to be sure.”
THE PRONUNCIATION OF OUGH.
The difficulty of applying rules to the pronunciation of our language
may be illustrated in two lines, where the combination of the letters
_ough_ is pronounced in no less than seven different ways, viz.: as _o_,
_uff_, _off_, _up_, _ow_, _oo_, and _ock_:—
§Though§ the §TOUGH COUGH§ and §HICCOUGH PLOUGH§ me §THROUGH§,
O’er life’s dark §LOUGH§ my course I still pursue.
The following attempts to show the sound of _ough_, final, are
ingenious:—
_Though_ from _rough cough_ or _hiccough_ free,
That man has pain _enough_
Whose wounds _through plough_, sunk in a _slough_,
Or _lough_ begin to _slough_.
’Tis not an easy task to show,
How o, u, g, h, sound; since _though_,
An Irish _lough_, an English _slough_,
And _cough_, and _hiccough_, all allow
Differ as much as _tough_ and _through_,
There seems no reason why they do.
“Husband,” says Joan, “’tis plain enough
That Roger loves our daughter;
And Betty loves him too, although
She treats his suit with laughter.
“For Roger always hems and coughs,
While on the field he’s ploughing;
Then strives to see between the boughs,
If Betty heeds his coughing.”
The following _jeu d’esprit_, entitled “A Literary Squabble on the
pronunciation of Monckton Milnes’s Title,” is stated to have been the
production of Lord Palmerston:—
The Alphabet rejoiced to hear,
That Monckton Milnes was made a peer;
For in the present world of letters,
But few, if any, were his betters.
So an address, by acclamation,
They voted, of congratulation.
And O U G H T and N
Were chosen to take up the pen,
Possessing each an interest vital
In the new Peer’s baronial title.
’Twas done in language terse and telling,
Perfect in grammar and in spelling.
But when ’twas read aloud—oh, mercy!
There sprung up such a controversy
About the true pronunciation
Of said baronial appellation.
The vowels O and U averred
They were entitled to be heard.
The consonants denied the claim,
Insisting that they mute became.
Johnson and Walker were applied to,
Sheridan, Bailey, Webster, tried too;
But all in vain—for each picked out
A word that left the case in doubt.
O, looking round upon them all,
Cried, “If it be correct to call
T H R O U G H _throo_,
H O U G H must be _Hoo_;
Therefore there must be no dispute on
The question, we should say Lord _Hooton_.”
U then did speak, and sought to show
He should be doubled, and not O,
For sure if _ought_ and _awt_, then nought on
Earth could the title be but _Hawton_.
H, on the other hand, said he,
In _cough_ and _trough_, stood next to G,
And like an F was then looked oft on,
Which made him think it should be _Hofton_.
But G corrected H, and drew
Attention other cases to:
_Lough_, _Rough_ and _Chough_, more than enough
To prove O U G H spelled _uff_,
And growled out in a sort of gruff tone
They must pronounce the title _Hufton_.
N said emphatically No;
For D O U G H is _Doh_,
And though (look there again) that stuff
At sea for fun, they nickname _Duff_,
He should propose they took a vote on
The question should it not be _Hoton_?
Besides, in French ’twould have such force,
A Lord must be _haut ton_, of course.
High and more high contention rose,
From words they almost came to blows,
Till S, as yet, who had not spoke,
And dearly loved a little joke,
Put in _his_ word, and said, “Look here,
_Plough_ in this row must have a _share_.”
At this atrocious pun, each page
Of Johnson whiter grew with rage.
Bailey looked desperately cut up,
And Sheridan completely shut up.
Webster, who is no idle talker,
Made a sign signifying _Walker_.
While Walker, who had been used badly,
Shook his old dirty dog-ears sadly.
But as we find in prose or rhyme,
A joke, made happily in time,
However poor, will often tend
The hottest argument to end,
And smother anger in a laugh,
So S succeeded with his _chaff_,
Containing, as it did, some wheat,
In calming this fierce verbal heat.
Authorities were all conflicting,
And S there was no contradicting.
P L O U G H was _Plow_
Even _enough_ was called _enow_,
And no one who preferred _enough_
Would dream of saying “Speed the _Pluff_.”
So they considered it was wise
With S to make a compromise,
To leave no loop to hang a doubt on
By giving three cheers for Lord Houghton (_Howton_).
EXCISE.
The following curious document gives the opinion of Lord Mansfield, when
Attorney-General, upon Dr. Johnson’s definition of the word Excise:—
_Case._
Mr. Samuel Johnson has lately published a book, entitled _A Dictionary
of the English Language, in which the words are deduced from their
originals, and illustrated in their different significations by
examples from the best writers. To which are prefixed a history of the
Language, and an English grammar._
Under the title “Excise” are the following words:—
Excise, n. s. (_accijs_ Dutch; _excisum_, Latin,) a hateful tax levied
upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property,
but _wretches_ hired by those to whom _Excise_ is paid.
The people should pay a ratable tax for their sheep, and an
_Excise_ for every thing which they should eat.—§Hayward.§
Ambitious now to take _excise_
Of a more fragrant paradise.—§Cleveland.§
EXCISE.
With hundred rows of teeth the shark exceeds,
And on all trades, like Cassowar, she feeds.—§Marvel.§
Can hire large houses and oppress the poor
By farmed Excise.—§Dryden§, _Juvenal, Sat. 3_.
The author’s definition being observed by the Commissioners of Excise,
they desire the favor of your opinion:
_Qu._—Whether it will not be considered as a libel; and, if so, whether
it is not proper to proceed against the author, printers, and publishers
thereof, or any and which of them, by information or how otherwise?
_Opinion._
I am of opinion that it is a libel; but, under all the circumstances, I
should think it better to give him an opportunity of altering his
definition; and, in case he don’t, threaten him with an information.
§W. Murray.§
29th Nov. 1755.
PONTIFF.
Mr. Longfellow, in his _Golden Legend_, thus refers to the derivation of
this word from _pons_ (a bridge) and _facere_ (to make):—
Well has the name of Pontifex been given
Unto the Church’s head, as the chief builder
And architect of the invisible bridge
That leads from earth to heaven.
ROUGH.
Mr. Motley, in his _History of the United Netherlands_, IV. 138, thus
ascribes the use of this word to Queen Elizabeth, of England, in her
last illness:—
The great queen, moody, despairing, dying, wrapt in profoundest
thought, with eyes fixed upon the ground or already gazing into
infinity was besought by the counsellors around her to name the man to
whom she chose that the crown should devolve.
“Not to a Rough,” said Elizabeth, sententiously and grimly.
These particulars are apparently given on the authority of the Italian
Secretary, Scaramelli, whose language is quoted in a foot-note, and who
says that the word _Rough_ “in lingua inglese significa persona bassa e
vile.”
Charles Dickens said, “I entertain so strong an objection to the
euphonious softening of _ruffian_ into _rough_, which has lately become
popular, that I restore the right word to the heading of this paper.”
(_The Ruffian, by the Uncommercial Traveler, All the Year Round._)
“Lately popular” does not mean popular for two hundred and eighty years
past. A word that has escaped the notice of the Glossarists cannot have
been in use early in the seventeenth century. That it should have been
used in its modern sense by Queen Elizabeth, passes all bounds of
belief. With all her faults she did not make silly unmeaning remarks;
and it would have been extremely silly in her to say she did not wish a
low ruffian to succeed her on the throne. If she uttered a word having
the same sound, it might possibly have been _ruff_. The “ruff,” though
worn by men of the upper class, was in Queen Elizabeth’s time an
especially female article of dress, and the queen might have said, “I
will have no ruff to succeed me,” just as now-a-days one might say, “I
will have no petticoat government.” We want better authority than that
of Scaramelli before we can believe that Elizabeth used either the word
_rough_ or _ruff_, when consulted as to her wishes respecting her
successor.
NOT AMERICANISMS.
In Bartlett’s Dictionary the term “_stocking-feet_” is given as an
Americanism. But the following quotation from Thackeray’s _Newcomes_
(vol. i. ch. viii.) shows that this is an error:—
“Binnie found the Colonel in his sitting-room arrayed in what are
called in Scotland his stocking-feet.”
Professor Tyndall, at the farewell banquet given in his honor by the
citizens of New York, prior to his departure, in referring to his
successful lecture-course in the United States, said he had had—to quote
his words—“what you Americans call ‘_a good time_.’”
But this expression is not an Americanism. It is used by Dean Swift in
his letter to Stella, (Feb. 24, 1710–11); “I hope Mrs. Wells had a good
time.”
That not very elegant adjective _bully_, though found in Bartlett, and
used by Washington Irving cannot be claimed as an Americanism. Friar
Tuck sings, in Scott’s _Ivanhoe_:—
“Come troll the brown bowl to me, bully boy,
Come troll the brown bowl to me.”
But to go further back, we find it in the burden of an old three-part
song, “We be three poor Mariners,” in Ravenscroft’s _Deuteromelia_,
1609:
“Shall we go dance the round, the round,
Shall we go dance the round;
And he that is a bully boy,
Come pledge me on the ground.”
One of the words which the English used to class among
Americanisms—ignorant that it was older and better English than their
own usage—was _Fall_, used as the name of the third of the seasons. The
English, corrupted by the Johnsonese of the Hanoverian reigns, call it
by the Latinism, Autumn. But the other term, in general use on this side
of the Atlantic, is the word by which all the old writers of the
language know it. “The hole yere,” says scholarly Roger Ascham in his
_Toxophilus_, “is divided into iiii. partes, Spring tyme, Sommer, Faule
of the leafe, & Winter, whereof the hole winter for the roughnesse of
it, is cleane taken away from shoting: except it be one day amonges xx.,
or one yeare amonges xi.”
This statement, by the way, that exceptionally mild winters were in the
ratio of one to eleven, is worth noting with reference to the recent
announcement of science that the spots on the sun have an eleven-year
period of maximum frequency.
NO LOVE LOST BETWEEN THEM.
In the ordinary acceptation of the words, “No love was lost between the
two,” we are led to infer that the two were on very unfriendly terms.
But in the ballad of _The Babes in the Wood_, as given in Percy’s
_Reliques_, occur the following lines, which convey the contrary idea:—
No love between this two was lost,
Each was to other kind:
In love they lived, in love they died,
And left two babes behind.
THE FORLORN HOPE.
Military and civil writers of the present day seem quite ignorant of the
true meaning of the words _forlorn hope_. The adjective has nothing to
do with despair, nor the substantive with the “charmer which lingers
still behind;” there was no such poetical depth in the words as
originally used. Every corps marching in an enemy’s country had a small
body of men at the head (_haupt_ or _hope_) of the advanced guard; and
which was termed the _forlorne hope_ (_lorn_ being here but a
termination similar to _ward_ in _forward_,) while another small body at
the head of the read-guard was called the _rere-lorn hope_. A reference
to Johnson’s Dictionary shows that civilians were misled as early as the
time of Dryden by the mere sound of a technical military phrase; and, in
process of time, even military men forgot the true meaning of the words.
And thus we easily trace the foundation of an error to which we are
indebted for Byron’s beautiful line:—
The full of hope, misnamed _forlorn_.
QUIZ.
This word, which is only in vulgar or colloquial use, and which some of
the lexicographers have attempted to trace to learned roots, originated
in a joke. Daly, the manager of a Dublin play-house, wagered that a word
of no meaning should be the common talk and puzzle of the city in
twenty-four hours. In the course of that time the letters _q u i z_ were
chalked on all the walls of Dublin with an effect that won the wager.
TENNYSON’S ENGLISH.
Probably no poet ever more thoroughly comprehended the value of words in
metrical composition than Mr. Tennyson, but he has issued a new coinage
which is not pure. Compound epithets are modelled after the Greek or
revived from the uncritical Elizabethan era. Thus, where we should
naturally say “The bee is cradled in the lily,” Mr. Tennyson writes,
“The bee is lily-cradled.” When a man’s nose is broken at the bridge or
a lady’s turns up at the tip, the one is said to be “a nose
bridge-broken,” and the other (with much gallantry) to be “tip-tilted,
like the petal of a flower.”
The movement of the metre again is very peculiar. Discarding Milton’s
long and complex periods, Mr. Tennyson has restored blank verse to an
apparently simple rhythm. But this simplicity is in fact the result of
artifice, and, under every variety of movement, the ear detects the
recurrence of a set type. One of the poet’s favorite devices is to pause
on a monosyllable at the beginning of a line, and this affect is
repeated so often as to remind the reader of Euripides and his unhappy
“oil flask” in _The Frogs_. Take the following instances:—
And the strange sound of an adulterous race,
Against the iron grating of her cell
Beat.
A sound
As of a silver horn across the hills
Blown.
And then the music faded, and the Grail
Passed.
His eyes became so like her own they seemed
Hers.
“THAT MINE ADVERSARY HAD WRITTEN A BOOK.”
This passage from Job xxxi. 35, is frequently misapplied, being
interpreted as if it had reference to a book or writing as commonly
understood. It means rather, according to Gesenius, a charge or
accusation. Pierius makes it “libellum accusationis,” and Grotius,
“scriptam accusationem” Scott expresses this in his _Commentary_:—
“Job challenged his adversary, or accuser, to produce a libel or written
indictment against him: he was confident that it would prove no disgrace
to him, but an honor; as every article would be disproved, and the
reverse be manifested.”
Other commentators understand it as meaning a record of Job’s life, or
of his sufferings. Coverdale translates:—“And let him that my contrary
party sue me with a lybell.” In the Genevan version it is, “Though mine
adversarie should write a book _against me_.” In the Bishop’s Bible,
1595, “Though mine adversarie write a book _against me_.” The meaning
seems to have become obscured in our version by retaining the English
book instead of the Latin _libel_, but omitting the words in italics,
“against me.”
ECCENTRIC ETYMOLOGIES.
To trace the changes of form and meaning which many of the words of our
language have undergone is no easy task. There are words as current with
us as with our forefathers, the significance of which, as we use them,
is very different from that of their primitive use. And, in many
instances, they have wandered, by courses more or less tortuous, so far
from their original meaning as to make it almost impossible to follow
the track of divergence. Hence, it is easy to understand why it has been
said that the etymologist, to be successful, must have “an instinct like
the special capabilities of the pointer.” But there are derivations
which are only revealed by accident, or stumbled upon in unexpected
ways, and which, in the regular course of patient search, would never
have been elicited. The following illustrative selections will interest
the general reader.
* * * * *
_Bombastic._—This adjective has an odd derivation. Originally bombast
(from the Latin bombax, cotton) meant nothing but cotton wadding, used
for filling or stuffing. Shakspeare employs it in this sense in _Love’s
Labor Lost_, v. 2.
As bombast and as living to the time.
Decker, in his _Satyromastix_, says, “You shall swear not to bombast out
a new play with the old linings of jests.” And Guazzo, _Civile
Conversation_, 1591,—“Studie should rather make him leane and thinne,
and pull out the bombast of his corpulent doublet.”
Hence, by easy transition from the falseness of padding or puffing out a
figure, bombast came to signify swelling pretentiousness of speech and
conduct as an adapted meaning; and gradually this became the primary and
only sense.
* * * * *
_Buxom._—This word is simply bow-some or bough-some, _i.e._, that which
readily bows, or bends, or yields like the boughs of a tree. No longer
ago than when Milton wrote _boughsome_, which as _gh_ in English began
to lose its guttural sound,—that of the letter _chi_ in Greek,—came to
be written _buxom_, meant simply yielding, and was of general
application.
——“and, this once known, shall soon return,
And bring ye to the place where thou and Death
Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen
Wing silently the buxom air.”—_Paradise Lost_, II. 840.
But aided, doubtless, as Dr. Johnson suggests, by a too liberal
construction of the bride’s promise in the old English marriage
ceremony, to be “obedient and buxom in bed and board,” it came to be
applied to women who were erroneously thought likely to be thus
yielding; and hence it now means plump, rosy, alluring, and is applied
only to women who combine those qualities of figure, face and
expression.
* * * * *
_Cadaver._—An abbot of Cirencester, about 1216, conceived himself an
etymologist, and, as a specimen of his powers, has left us the Latin
word cadaver, a corpse, thus dissected:—“Ca,” quoth he, is abbreviated
for caro; “da” for data; “ver” for vermibus. Hence we have “caro data
vermibus,” flesh given to the worms.
Yet while the reader smiles at this curious absurdity, it is worth while
to note that the word _alms_ is constructed upon a similar principle,
being formed (according to the best authority) of letters, taken from
successive syllables of the cumbrous Latinized Greek word _eleemosyna_.
* * * * *
_Canard._—This is the French for duck, and the origin of its application
to hoaxing is said to be as follows:—To ridicule a growing extravagance
in story-telling a clever journalist stated that an interesting
experiment had just been made, calculated to prove the extraordinary
voracity of ducks. Twenty of these animals had been placed together, and
one of them having been killed and cut up into the smallest possible
pieces, feathers and all, and thrown to the other nineteen, had been
gluttonously gobbled up in an exceedingly brief space of time. Another
was taken from the remaining nineteen, and being chopped small like its
predecessor, was served up to the eighteen, and at once devoured like
the other; and so on to the last, which was thus placed in the
remarkable position of having eaten his nineteen companions in a
wonderfully short space of time! All this, most pleasantly narrated,
obtained a success which the writer was far from anticipating, for the
story ran the rounds of all the journals in Europe. It then became
almost forgotten for about a score of years, when it came back from
America, with an amplification which it did not boast of at the
commencement, and with a regular certificate of the autopsy of the body
of the surviving animal, whose esophagus was declared to have been
seriously injured! Since then fabrications of this character have been
called _canards_.
* * * * *
_Chum._—A schoolboy’s letter, written two centuries ago, has lately
revealed that chum is a contraction from “chamber-fellow.” Two students
dwelling together found the word unwieldly, and, led by another
universal law of language, they shortened it in the most obvious way.
* * * * *
_Dandy._—Bishop Fleetwood says that “dandy” is derived from a silver
coin of small value, circulated in the reign of Henry VIII., and called
a “dandy-prat.”
* * * * *
_Dunce._—This word comes to us from the celebrated Duns Scotus, chief of
the Schoolmen of his time. He was “the subtle doctor by preëminence;”
and it certainly is a strange perversion that a scholar of his great
ability should give name to a class who hate all scholarship. When at
the Reformation and revival of learning the works of the Schoolmen fell
into extreme disfavor with the Reformers and the votaries of the new
learning, Duns, the standard-bearer of the former, was so often referred
to with scorn and contempt by the latter that his name gradually became
the by-word it now is for hopeless ignorance and invincible stupidity.
The errors and follies of a set were fastened upon their distinguished
head. Says Tyndale, 1575,—
“Remember ye not how within this thirty years, and far less, and yet
dureth unto this day, the old barking curs, _Dunce’s_ disciples, and
like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every
pulpit against Greek, Latin and Hebrew?”
* * * * *
_Eating humble-pie._—The phrase “eating humble-pie” is traced to the
obsolete French word “_ombles_,” entrails; pies for the household
servants being formerly made of the entrails of animals. Hence, to take
low or humble ground, to submit one’s self, came familiarly to be called
eating “humble” or rather “umble” pie. The word “umbles” came to us from
the Norman conquest, and though now obsolete, retains its place in the
lexicons of Worcester and Webster, who, however, explain the entrails to
be those of the deer only.
* * * * *
_Fiasco._—A German, one day, seeing a glassblower at his occupation,
thought nothing could be easier than glassblowing, and that he could
soon learn to blow as well as the workman. He accordingly commenced
operations by blowing vigorously, but could only produce a sort of
pear-shaped balloon or little flask (fiasco). The second attempt had a
similar result, and so on, until _fiasco_ after _fiasco_ had been made.
Hence arose the expression which we not infrequently have occasion to
use when describing the result of our undertakings.
* * * * *
_Fudge._—This is a curious word, having a positive personality
underlying it. Such at least it is, if Disraeli’s account thereof be
authentic. He quotes from a very old pamphlet entitled _Remarks upon the
Navy_, wherein the author says, “There was 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 crop of lies; so much that now, aboard ship, the sailors when they
hear a great lie told, cry out, ‘You fudge it’.” The ship was the Black
Eagle, and the time, Charles II.; and thence the monosyllabic name of
its untruthful captain comes to us for exclamation when we have reason
to believe assertions ill-founded.
* * * * *
_Gossip._—This is another of that class of words which by the system of
moral decadence that Trench has so ably illustrated as influencing human
language, has come to be a term of unpleasant reproach. In some parts of
the country, by the “gossips” of a child are meant his god-parents, who
take vows for him at his baptism. The connection between these two
actual uses of the word is not so far to seek as one might suppose.
Chaucer shows us that those who stood sponsors for an infant were
considered “_sib_,” or kin, to each other in _God_: thus the double
syllables were compounded. Verstigan says:—
“Our Christian ancestors understanding a spirituall affinitie for to
grow between the parents, and such as undertooke for the childe at
baptisme, called each other by the name of _God-sib_, which is as much
as to say as that they were _sib_ together, i.e. of kin together,
through God.”
The Roman church forbids marriage between persons so united in a common
vow, as she believes they have contracted an essential spiritual
relationship. But from their affinity in the interests of the child they
were brought into much converse with one another; and as much talk
almost always degenerates into idle talk, and personalities concerning
one’s neighbors, and the like, so “gossips” finally came to signify the
latter, when the former use of it was nearly forgotten. It is remarkable
that the French “commérage” has passed through identically the same
perversion.
* * * * *
_Grog._—Admiral Vernon, whose ardent devotion to his profession had
endeared him to the British naval service, was in the habit of walking
the deck, in bad weather, in a rough _grogram_ cloak, and thence had
obtained the nickname of _Old Grog_. Whilst in command of the West India
station, and at the height of his popularity on account of his reduction
of Porto Bello with six men-of-war only, he introduced the use of rum
and water among the ship’s company. When served out, the new beverage
proved most palatable, and speedily grew into such favor that it became
as popular as the brave admiral himself, and in honor of him was
surnamed by acclamation “Grog.”
* * * * *
_Hocus-pocus._—According to Tillotson, this singular expression is
believed to be a corruption of the transubstantiating formula, _Hoc est
corpus meum_, used by the priest on the elevation of the host. Turner,
in his history of the Anglo-Saxons, traces it to Ochus Bochus, a
magician and demon of the northern mythology. We should certainly prefer
the latter as the source of this conjurer’s catch-word, which the usage
of ordinary life connects with jugglery or unfair dealing, but
preponderant evidence is in favor of the former.
* * * * *
_Malingerer._—This word, brought much into use by the exigencies of our
civil war, is from the French “malin gré,” and signifies a soldier who
from “evil will” shirks his duty by feigning sickness, or otherwise
rendering himself incapable: in plain words, a poltroon.
* * * * *
_Mustard._—Etymologists have fought vigorously over the derivation of
this word. “Multum ardet,” says one, or in old French, “moult arde,” it
burns much. “Mustum ardens, hot must,” says another, referring to the
former custom of preparing French mustard for the table with the sweet
must of new wine. A picturesque story about the name is thus
told:—Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, granted to Dijon certain
armorial bearings, with the motto “Moult me tarde”—I long or wish
ardently. This was sculptured over the principal gate. In the course of
years, by some accident, the central word was effaced. The manufacturers
of sinapi or senévé (such were the former names of mustard), wishing to
label their pots of condiment with the city arms, copied the mutilated
motto; and the unlearned, seeing continually the inscription of
“moult-tarde,” fell into the habit of calling the contents by this
title.
* * * * *
_Navvy._—Many persons have been puzzled by the application of this word,
abbreviated from navigator, to laborers. Why should earth-workers be
called navigators? They whose business is with an element antipodean to
water, why receive a title as of seafaring men? At the period when
inland navigation was the national rage, and canals were considered to
involve the essentials of prosperity, as railways are now, the workmen
employed on them were called “navigators,” as cutting the way for
navigation. And when railways superseded canals, the name of the
laborers, withdrawn from one work to the other, was unchanged, and
merely contracted, according to the dislike of our Anglo-Saxon tongues
to use four syllables where a less number will suffice.
* * * * *
_Neighbor._—Formerly this familiar word was employed to signify “the
boor who lives nigh to us.” And just here is another of those words
which have been degraded from their original sense; for boor did not
then represent a stupid, ignorant lout, but simply a farmer, as in Dutch
now.
* * * * *
_Poltroon._—In the olden days the Norman-French “poltroon” had a
significance obsolete now: days when Strongbow was a noble surname, and
the yew-trees of England were of importance as an arm of national
defence; then the coward or malingerer had but to cut off the thumb
(“pollice truncus” in Latin)—the thumb which drew the bow, and he was
unfit for service, and must be discharged.
* * * * *
_Porpoise._—The common creature of the sea, whose gambols have passed
into a jest and a proverb, the porpoise, is so named because of his
resemblance to a hog when in sportive mood. “Porc-poisson,” said
somebody who watched a herd of them tumbling about, for all the world
like swine, except for the sharp dorsal fin; and the epithet adhered.
* * * * *
_Scrape._—Long ago roamed through the forests the red and fallow deer,
which had a habit of scraping up the earth with their fore-feet to the
depth of several inches, sometimes even of half a yard. A wayfaring man
through the olden woods was frequently exposed to the danger of tumbling
into one of these hollows, when he might truly be said to be “in a
scrape.” Cambridge students in their little difficulties picked up and
applied the phrase to other perplexing matters which had brought a man
morally into a fix.
* * * * *
_Sterling._—This word was originally applied to the metal rather than to
a coin. The following extract from Camden points out its origin as
applied to money:—
In the time of his sonne King Richard the First, monie coined in the
east parts of Germanie began to be of especiall request in England for
the puritie thereof, and was called _Easterling_ monie, as all the
inhabitants of those parts were called _Easterlings_, and shortly after
some of that countrie, skilful in mint matters and alloies, were sent
for into this realme to bring the coins to perfection, which, since that
time, was called of them _sterling_ for _Easterlings_.
* * * * *
_Surplice._—That scholastic and ministerial badge, the surplice, is said
to derive its name from the Latin “superpelliceum,” because anciently
worn over leathern coats made of hides of beasts; with the idea of
representing how the sin of our first parents is now covered by the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we are entitled to wear the
emblem of innocence.
* * * * *
_Sycophant._—The original etymology of the word sycophant is curious.
The word συχοφαντέω (from σῦχον, a fig, and φαίνω, to show,) in its
primary signification, means to inform against or expose those who
exported figs from Athens to other places without paying duty, hence it
came to signify _calumnior_, to accuse falsely, to be a tale-bearer, an
evil speaker of others. The word _sycophanta_ means, in its first sense,
no more than this. We now apply it to any flatterer, or other abject
dependant, who, to serve his own purposes, slanders and detracts from
others.
* * * * *
_Tariff._—Because payment of a fixed scale of duties was demanded by the
Moorish occupants of a fortress on Tarifa promontory, which overlooked
the entrance to the Mediterranean, all taxes on imports came to be
called a tariff.
* * * * *
_Treacle._—A remarkable curiosity in the way of derivations is one
traced by that indefatigable explorer, Archbishop Trench, which connects
treacle with vipers. The syrup of molasses with the poison of snakes!
Never was an odder relationship; yet it is a case of genuine fatherhood,
and embodies a singular superstition. The ancients believed that the
best antidote to the bite of the viper was a confection of its own
flesh. The Greek word θηρταχή, flesh of the viper, was given first to
such a sweetmeat, and then to any antidote of poison, and lastly to any
syrup; and easily corrupted into our present word. Chaucer has a line—
Christ, which that is to every harm triacle.
Milton speaks of the “sovran treacle of sound doctrine.” A stuff called
Venice Treacle was considered antidote to all poisons. “Vipers treacle
yield,” says Edmund Waller, in a verse which has puzzled many a modern
reader, and yet brings one close to the truth of the etymology, and
shows that treacle is only a popular corruption of _theriac_.
* * * * *
_Wig._—This word may be cited as a good example to show how interesting
and profitable it is to trace words through their etymological windings
to their original source. Wig is abridged from _periwig_, which comes
from the Low Dutch _peruik_, which has the same meaning. When first
introduced into the English language, it was written and pronounced
_perwick_, the _u_ being changed into _w_, as may still be seen in old
English books. Afterwards the _i_ was introduced for euphony, and it
became _periwick_; and finally the _ck_ was changed into _g_, making it
_periwig_, and by contraction _wig_.
The Dutch word _peruik_ was borrowed from the French _perruque_. The
termination _uik_ is a favorite one with that nation, and is generally
substituted in borrowed words for the French _uque_ and the German
_auch_. The French word _perruque_ comes from the Spanish _peluca_, and
this last from _pelo_, hair, which is derived from the Latin _pilus_.
Hence the Latin word _pilus_, hair, through successive transformations,
has produced the English word _wig_.
* * * * *
_Windfall._—Centuries ago a clause was extant in the tenure of many
English estates, to the effect that the owners might not fell the trees,
as the best timber was reserved for the Royal Navy; but any trees that
came down without cutting were the property of the tenant. Hence was a
storm a joyful and a lucrative event in proportion to its intensity, and
the larger the number of forest patriarchs it laid low the richer was
the lord of the land. He had received a veritable “windfall.” Ours in
the nineteenth century come in the shape of any unexpected profit; and
those of us who own estates rather quake in sympathy with our trembling
trees on windy nights.
ODD CHANGES OF SIGNIFICATION.
The first verse of Dean Whittingham’s version of the 114th Psalm may be
quoted as a curious instance of a phrase originally grave in its meaning
become strangely incongruous:—
When Israel by God’s address
From Pharaoh’s land was bent,
And Jacob’s house the strangers left
And _in the same train_ went.
Since the completion of the Pacific Railway, some introductory lines in
Southey’s _Thalaba_ require correction:—
Who at this untimely hour
Wander o’er the _desert sands_?
No _station_ is in view.
If the author would revisit the earth, he would find numerous “stations”
on the railway route across the Great American Desert.
* * * * *
Among funny instances of wresting from a text a meaning to suit a
particular purpose, is that of the classical scholar who undertook to
prove that the word “smile” was used as a euphemism for a drink in
ancient times, by quoting from Horace’s _Odes_:—
Amara lento temperat risu.
Which is rendered by Martin:—
Meets life’s _bitters_ with a jest,
And _smiles_ them down.
By _lento risu_, it was argued, is clearly meant a _slow_ smile, or one
taken through a straw!
The meaning of the word _Wretch_ is one not generally understood. It was
originally, and is now, in some parts of England, used as a term of the
softest and fondest tenderness. This is not the only instance in which
words in their present general acceptation bear a very opposite meaning
to what they did in Shakspeare’s time. The word _Wench_, formerly, was
not used in the low and vulgar acceptation that it is at present.
_Damsel_ was the appellation of young ladies of quality, and _Dame_ a
title of distinction. _Knave_ once signified a servant; and in an early
translation of the New Testament, instead of “Paul, the Servant,” we
read “Paul, the Knave of Jesus Christ,” or, Paul, a rascal of Jesus
Christ. _Varlet_ was formerly used in the same sense as valet. On the
other hand, the word _Companion_, instead of being the honorable synonym
of Associate, occurs in the play of Othello with the same contemptuous
meaning which we now affix, in its abusive sense, to the word “Fellow;”
for Emilia, perceiving that some secret villain had aspersed the
character of the virtuous Desdemona, thus indignantly exclaims:—
O Heaven! that such _Companions_ thou’dst unfold,
And put in every honest hand a whip,
To lash the rascal naked through the world.—iv. 2.
_Villain_ formerly meant a bondman. In feudal law, according to
Blackstone, the term was applied to those who held lands and tenements
in _villenage_,—a tenure by base services.
Pedant formerly meant a schoolmaster. Shakspeare says in his _Twelfth
Night_,—
A pedant that keeps a school in the church.—iii. 2.
Bacon, in his _Pathway unto Prayer_, thus uses the word Imp: “Let us
pray for the preservation of the King’s most excellent Majesty, and for
the prosperous success of his entirely beloved son Edward our Prince,
that most _angelic imp_.”
The word _brat_ is not considered very elegant now, but a few years ago
it had a different signification from its present one. An old hymn or
_De profundis_, by Gascoine, contains the lines,—
“O Israel, O household of the Lord,
O Abraham’s brats, O brood of blessed seed,
O chosen sheep that loved the Lord indeed.”
It is a somewhat noticeable fact, that the changes in the signification
of words have generally been to their deterioration; that is, words that
heretofore had no sinister meaning have acquired it. The word _cunning_,
for example, formerly meant nothing sinister or underhanded; and in
Thrope’s confession in Fox’s “Book of Martyrs” is the sentence, “I
believe that all these three persons [in the Godhead] are even in power,
and in cunning, and in might, full of grace and of all goodness.”
_Demure_ is another of this class. It was used by earlier writers
without the insinuation which is now almost latent in it, that the
external shows of modesty and sobriety rest on no corresponding
realities. _Explode_ formerly meant to drive off the stage with loud
clappings of the hands, but gradually became exaggerated into its
present signification. _Facetious_, too, originally meant urbane, but
now has so degenerated as to have acquired the sense of buffoonery; and
Mr. Trench sees indications that it will ere long acquire the sense of
indecent buffoonery.
_Frippery_ now means trumpery and odds and ends of cheap finery; but
once it meant old clothes of value, and not worthless, as the term at
present implies. The word _Gossip_ formerly meant only a sponsor in
baptism. Sponsors were supposed to become acquainted at the baptismal
font, and by their sponsorial act to establish an indefinite affinity
towards each other and the child. Thus the word was applied to all who
were familiar and intimate, and finally obtained the meaning which is
now predominant in it.
_Homely_ once meant secret and familiar, though in the time of Milton it
had acquired the same sense as at present. _Idiot_, from the Greek,
originally signified only a private man as distinguished from one in
public office, and from that it has degenerated till it has come to
designate a person of defective mental powers. _Incense_ once meant to
kindle not only anger, but good passions as well; Fuller uses it in the
sense of “to incite.” _Indolence_ originally signified a freedom from
passion or pain, but now implies a condition of languid non-exertion.
_Insolent_ was once only “unusual.”
The derivation of _lumber_ is peculiar. As the Lombards were the
bankers, so they were also the pawnbrokers, of the Middle Ages. The
“lumber-room” was then the place where the Lombard banker and broker
stored his pledges, and _lumber_ gradually came to mean the pledges
themselves. As these naturally accumulated till they got out of date or
became unserviceable, it is easy to trace the steps by which the word
descended to its present meaning.
_Obsequious_ implies an unmanly readiness to fall in with the will of
another; but in the original obsequium, or in the English word as
employed two centuries ago, there was nothing of this: it rather meant
obedience and mildness. Shakspeare, speaking of a deceased person,
says,—
“How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,
As interest of the dead.”
_Property_ and _propriety_ were once synonymous, both referring to
material things, as the French word _propriété_ does now. Foreigners do
not often catch the distinction at present made in English between the
two words; and we know a French gentleman who, recently meeting with
some pecuniary reverses, astonished his friends by telling them that he
had lost all his “propriety.”
A poet is a person who writes poetry, and, according to the good old
customs, a proser was a person who wrote prose, and simply the
antithesis of poet. The word has now a sadly different signification;
and it would not be considered very respectable to term Addison, Irving,
Bancroft, or Everett “prosers.”
INFLUENCE OF NAMES.
The Romans, from the time they expelled their kings, could never endure
the idea of being governed by a _king_. But they submitted to the most
abject slavery under an _emperor_. And Oliver Cromwell did not venture
to risk disgusting the republicans by calling himself king, though under
the title of Protector he exercised regal functions.
The American colonies submitted to have their commerce and their
manufactures crippled by restrictions avowedly for the benefit of the
mother-country, and were thus virtually _taxed_ to the amount of all
that they in any instance lost by paying more for some article than it
would cost to make it themselves, or to buy it of foreigners. But as
soon as _a tax_ was imposed _under that name_, they broke out into
rebellion.
It is a marvel to many, and seems to them nearly incredible, that the
Israelites should have gone after other gods; and yet the vulgar in most
parts of Christendom are actually serving the gods of their heathen
ancestors. But then they do not _call_ them _gods_, but fairies or
bogles, etc., and they do not apply the word _worship_ to their
veneration of them, nor _sacrifice_ to their offerings. And this slight
change of name keeps most people in ignorance of a fact that is before
their eyes.
Others, professed Christians, are believed, both by others and by
themselves, to be worshippers of the true God, though they invest him
with the _attributes_ of one of the evil demons worshipped by the
heathen. There is hardly any professed Christian who would not be
shocked at the application of the word _caprice_ to the acts of the Most
High. And yet his choosing to inflict suffering on his creatures “_for
no cause_” (as some theologians maintain) “except that _such is his
will_,” is the very definition of caprice.
But when Lord Byron published his poem of “Cain,” which contains
substantially the _very same_ doctrine, there was a great outcry among
pious people, including, no doubt, many who were of the theological
school which teaches the same, under other _names_.
Why and how any evil comes to exist in the universe, reason cannot
explain, and revelation does not tell us. But it does show us what is
_not_ the cause. That it cannot be from _ill will_ or _indifference_, is
proved by the sufferings undergone by the _beloved_ Son.
Many probably would have hesitated if it had been proposed to them to
join a new _Church_ under that _name_, who yet eagerly enrolled
themselves in the Evangelical _Alliance_,—which is in fact a church,
with meetings for worship, and _sermons_ under the _name_ of _speeches_,
and a _creed_ consisting of sundry _Articles of Faith_ to be subscribed;
only not called by those _names_.
Mrs. B. expressed to a friend her great dread of such a medicine as
tartar-emetic. She always, she said, gave her children _antimonial_
wine. He explained to her that this is tartar-emetic dissolved in wine;
but she remained unchanged.
Mrs. H. did not like that her daughters should be novel-readers; and
_all novels_ in _prose_ were indiscriminately prohibited; but _any_
thing in _verse_ was as indiscriminately allowed.
Probably a Quaker would be startled at any one’s using the very _words_
of the prophets, “Thus saith the Lord:” yet he says the same things in
the words, “The Spirit moveth me to say so and so.” And some, again, who
would be shocked at _this_, speak of a person,—adult or _child_,—who
addresses a congregation in extempore prayers and discourses, as being
under the _influence of the Holy Spirit_; though in neither case is
there any miraculous _proof_ given. And they abhor a claim to
_infallibility_; only they are _quite certain_ of being under the
guidance of the Spirit in whatever they say or do.
Quakers, again, and some other dissenters, object to a _hired_ ministry,
(in reality, an _un_hired;) but their preachers are to be _supplied_
with all they need; like the father of Molière’s Bourgeois, who was no
_shopkeeper_, but kindly chose _goods_ for his friends, which he let
them have for money.
COMPOUND EPITHETS.
The custom of using hard compounds furnished Ben Jonson opportunities of
showing his learning as well as his satire. He used to call them “words
un-in-one-breath-utterable.” Redi mentions an epigram against the
sophists, made up of compounds “a mile long.” Joseph Scaliger left a
curious example in Latin, part of which may be thus rendered into
English:—
Loftybrowflourishers,
Noseinbeardwallowers,
Brigandbeardnourishers,
Dishandallswallowers,
Oldcloakinvestitors,
Barefootlookfashioners,
Nightprivatefeasteaters,
Craftlucubrationers;
Youthcheaters, Wordcatchers, Vaingloryosophers,
Such are your seekersofvirtue philosophers.
The old naturalist Lovell published a book at Oxford, in 1661, entitled
_Panzoologicomineralogia_. Rabelais proposed the following title for a
book:—_Antipericatametaparhengedamphicribrationes_. The reader of
Shakspeare will remember Costard’s _honorificabilitudinitatibus_, in
Love’s Labor Lost, v. 1. There was recently in the British army a major
named _Teyoninhokarawen_. In the island of Mull, Scotland, is a locality
named _Drimtaidhorickhillichattan_. The original Mexican for country
curates is _Notlazomahnitzteopixcatatzins_. The longest
Nipmuck word in Eliot’s Indian Bible is in St. Mark i. 40,
_Wutteppesittukqussunnoowehtunkquoh_, and signifies “kneeling down to
him.”
OUR VERNACULAR IN CHAUCER’S TIME.
But rede that boweth down for every blaste
Ful lyghtly cesse wynde, it wol aryse
But so nyle not an oke, when it is caste
It nedeth me nought longe the forvyse
Men shall reioysen of a great emprise
Atchewed wel and stant withouten dout
Al haue men ben the longer there about.—_Troylus_, ii.
Tall Writing.
DEFINITION OF TRANSCENDENTALISM.
The spiritual cognoscence of psychological irrefragibility connected
with concutient ademption of incolumnient spirituality and etherialized
contention of subsultory concretion.
Translated by a New York lawyer, it stands thus:—
Transcendentalism is two holes in a sand-bank: a storm washes away the
sand-bank without disturbing the holes.
THE DOMICILE ERECTED BY JOHN.
_Translated from the Vulgate._
Behold the Mansion reared by dædal Jack.
See the malt stored in many a plethoric sack,
In the proud cirque of Ivan’s bivouac.
Mark how the Rat’s felonious fangs invade
The golden stores in John’s pavilion laid.
Anon, with velvet foot and Tarquin strides,
Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides,—
Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce _rodent_
Whose tooth insidious Johann’s sackcloth rent.
Lo! now the deep-mouthed canine foe’s assault,
That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt,
Stored in the hallowed precincts of that hall
That rose complete at Jack’s creative call.
Here stalks the impetuous Cow with crumpled horn,
Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn,
Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew
The Rat predacious, whose keen fangs ran through
The textile fibers that involved the grain
Which lay in Hans’ inviolate domain.
Here walks forlorn the Damsel crowned with rue,
Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs, who drew,
Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn
Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn,
The harrowing hound, whose braggart bark and stir
Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur
Of Puss, that with verminicidal claw
Struck the weird rat in whose insatiate maw
Lay reeking malt that erst in Juan’s courts we saw,
Robed in senescent garb that seems in sooth
Too long a prey to Chronos’ iron tooth.
Behold the man whose amorous lips incline,
Full with young Eros’ osculative sign,
To the lorn maiden whose lact-albic hands
Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands
Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn
Distort, to realm ethereal was borne
The beast catulean, vexer of that sly
Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die
The old mordacious Rat that dared devour
Antecedaneous Ale in John’s domestic bower.
Lo, here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct
Of saponaceous locks, the Priest who linked
In Hymen’s golden bands the torn unthrift,
Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift,
Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn,
Who milked the cow with implicated horn,
Who in fine wrath the canine torturer skied,
That dared to vex the insidious muricide,
Who let auroral effluence through the pelt
Of the sly Rat that robbed the palace Jack had built.
The loud cantankerous Shanghae comes at last,
Whose shouts arouse the shorn ecclesiast,
Who sealed the vows of Hymen’s sacrament,
To him who, robed in garments indigent,
Exosculates the damsel lachrymose,
The emulgator of that horned brute morose,
That tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that _kilt_
The rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built.
FROM THE CURIOSITIES OF ADVERTISING.
TO BE LET,
To an Oppidan, a Ruricolist, or a Cosmopolitan, and may be entered upon
immediately:
The House in §Stone Row§, lately possessed by §Capt. Siree§. To avoid
Verbosity, the Proprietor with Compendiosity will give a Perfunctory
description of the Premises, in the Compagination of which he has
Sedulously studied the convenience of the Occupant. It is free from
Opacity, Tenebrosity, Fumidity, and Injucundity, and no building can
have greater Pellucidity or Translucency—in short, its Diaphaneity even
in the Crepuscle makes it like a Pharos, and without laud, for its
Agglutination and Amenity, it is a most Delectable Commorance; and
whoever lives in it will find that the Neighbors have none of the
Truculence, the Immanity, the Torvity, the Spinosity, the Putidness, the
Pugnacity, nor the Fugacity observable in other parts of the town, but
their Propinquity and Consanguinity occasion Jocundity and Pudicity—from
which, and the Redolence of the place (even in the dog-days), they are
remarkable for Longevity. For terms and particulars apply to §James
Hutchinson§, opposite the §Market-House§.—_Dub. News._
FROM THE CURIOSITIES OF THE POST-OFFICE.
The following is a genuine epistle, sent by an emigrant country
schoolmaster to a friend at home:—
§Mr M. Connors§
With congruous gratitude and decorum I accost to you this debonnaire
communication. And announce to you with amicable Complacency that we
continually enjoy competent laudable good health, thanks to our
omnipotent Father for it. We are endowed with the momentous prerogatives
of respectable operations of a supplement concuity of having a fine
brave and gallant youthful daughter the pendicity ladies age is four
months at this date, we denominated her Margaret Connolly.
I have to respond to the Communication and accost and remit a Convoy
revealing with your identity candor and sincerity. If your brother who
had been pristinely located and stationed in England whether he has
induced himself with ecstasy to be in preparation to progress with you.
I am paid by the respectable potent loyal nobleman that I work for one
dollar per day. Announce to us in what Concuity the crops and the
products of husbandry dignify, also predict how is John Carroll and his
wife and family. My brother and Myself are continually employed and
occupied in similar work. Living and doing good. Dictate how John Mahony
wife and family is.
Don’t you permit oblivion to obstruct you from inserting this.
Prognosticate how Mrs Harrington is and if she accept my intelligence or
any convoy from either of Her 2 progenies since their embarkation for
this nation. If she has please specify with congruous and elysian
gratitude with validity and veracity to my magnanimous self.
I remit my respects to my former friends and acquaintances.
I remain
§D. Connolly§.
P.S. Direct your Epistle to Pembroke, State of Maine.
Dear brother-in-law
I am determined and candidly arrive at Corolary, as I am fully resolved
to transfer a sufficient portion of money to you to recompense your
liabilities from thence to hence. I hope your similar operations will
not impede any occurrence that might obstruct your progression on or at
the specified time the 17 of March next.
SPANISH PLAY-BILL,
_Exhibited at Seville, 1762._
To the Sovereign of Heaven—to the Mother of the Eternal World—to the
Polar Star of Spain—to the Comforter of all Spain—to the faithful
Protectress of the Spanish nation—to the Honor and Glory of the Most
Holy Virgin Mary—for her benefit and for the Propagation of her
Worship—the Company of Comedians will this day give a representation of
the Comic Piece called—
NANINE.
The celebrated Italian will also dance the Fandango, and the Theatre
will be respectably illuminated.
* * * * *
In a medical work entitled The _Breviarie of Health_, published in 1547,
by Andrew Borde, a physician of that period, is a prologue addressed to
physicians, beginning thus:—
Egregious doctors and masters of the eximious and arcane science of
physic, of your urbanity exasperate not yourselves against me for making
this little volume.
THE MAD POET.
McDonald Clarke, commonly called the _mad poet_, died a few years ago in
the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, New York. He wrote those
oft-quoted lines,—
Now twilight lets her curtain down,
And pins it with a star.
In his wilder moments he set all rules at defiance, and mingled the
startlingly sublime and the laughably ridiculous in the oddest
confusion. He talks thus madly of Washington:—
Eternity—give him elbow room;
A spirit like his is large;
Earth, fence with artillery his tomb,
And fire a double charge
To the memory of America’s greatest man:
Match him, posterity, if you can.
In the following lines, he sketches, with a few bold touches, a
well-known place, sometimes called a _rum-hole_:—
Ha! see where the wild-blazing grogshop appears,
As the red waves of wretchedness swell;
How it burns on the edge of tempestuous years,
The horrible light-house of hell!
FOOTE’S FARRAGO.
The following droll nonsense was written by Foote, the dramatist, for
the purpose of trying the memory of Macklin, who boasted that he could
learn any thing by heart on hearing it once:—
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie;
and, at the same time, a great she-bear coming up the street pops its
head into the shop—What! no soap? So he died; and she very imprudently
married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the
Joblilies, and the Garyulies, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the
little round button at top. And they all fell to playing the game of
“catch as catch can,” till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their
boots!
BURLESQUE OF THE STYLE OF DR. JOHNSON.
While I was admiring the fantastical ramifications of some umbelliferous
plants that hung over the margin of the Liffey, the fallacious bank,
imperceptibly corroded by the moist tooth of the fluid, gave way beneath
my feet, and I was suddenly submerged to some fathoms of profundity.
Presence of mind, in constitutions not naturally timid, is generally in
proportion to the imminence of the peril. Having never learned to move
through the water in horizontal progression, had I desponded, I had
perished; but, being for a moment raised above the element by my
struggles, or by some felicitous casualty, I was sensible of the danger,
and immediately embraced the means of extrication. A cow, at the moment
of my lapse, had entered the stream, within the distance of a protruded
arm; and being in the act of transverse navigation to seek the pasture
of the opposite bank, I laid hold on that part of the animal which is
loosely pendent behind, and is formed by the continuation of the
vertebræ. In this manner I was safely conveyed to a fordable passage,
not without some delectation from the sense of the progress without
effort on my part, and the exhilarating approximation of more than
problematical deliverance. Though in some respects I resembled the pilot
of Gyas, _Jam senior madidaque fluens in veste_, yet my companions,
unlike the barbarous Phrygian spectators, forbore to acerbitate the
uncouthness of embarrassment by the insults of derision. Shrieks of
complorance testified sorrow for my submersion, and safety was rendered
more pleasant by the felicitations of sympathy. As the danger was over,
I took no umbrage at a little risibility excited by the feculence of my
visage, upon which the cow had discharged her gramineous digestion in a
very ludicrous abundance. About this time the bell summoned us to
dinner; and, as the cutaneous contact of irrigated garments is neither
pleasant nor salubrious, I was easily persuaded by the ladies to divest
myself of mine. Colonel Manly obligingly accommodated me with a covering
of camlet. I found it commodious, and more agreeable than the many
compressive ligaments of modern drapery. That there might be no
violation of decorum, I took care to have the loose robe fastened before
with small cylindrical wires, which the dainty fingers of the ladies
easily removed from their dresses and inserted into mine, at such proper
intervals as to leave no aperture that could awaken the susceptibility
of temperament, or provoke the cachinnations of levity.[11]
Footnote 11:
The peculiar stateliness and dignity of Johnston’s style, when applied
to the smaller concerns of life, makes, as will be seen from the above
caricature, a very ludicrous appearance. A judicious imitation of his
phraseology on trifling subjects was a favorite manner of attack among
the critics. Erskine’s account of the Buxton baths is one of the most
amusing. When several examples of this sort were shown to Johnson, at
Edinburgh, he pronounced that of Lord Dreghorn the best: “but,” said
he, “I could caricature my own style much better myself.”
NEWSPAPER EULOGY.
The following alliterative eulogy on a young lady appeared, many years
ago, in a newspaper:—
If _b_oundless _b_enevolence _b_e the _b_asis of _b_eatitude, and
_h_armless _h_umanity a _h_arbinger of _h_allowed _h_eart, these
_C_hristian _c_oncomitants _c_omposed her _c_haracteristics, and
_c_onciliated the esteem of her _c_otemporary a_c_quaintances, who
_m_ean to _m_odel their _m_anners in the _m_ould of their _m_eritorious
_m_onitor.
CLEAR AS MUD.
In a series of _Philosophical Essays_ published many years ago, the
author[12] gives some definitions of human knowledge, the following of
which he considers “least obnoxious to comprehension:”—
Footnote 12:
Ogilvie.
A coincidence between the association of ideas, and the order or
succession of events or phenomena, according to the relation of cause
and effect, and in whatever is subsidiary, or necessary to realize,
approximate and extend such coincidence; understanding, by the relation
of cause and effect, that order or succession, the discovery or
development of which empowers an intelligent being, by means of one
event or phenomenon, or by a series of given events or phenomena, to
anticipate the recurrence of another event or phenomenon, or of a
required series of events or phenomena, and to summon them into
existence, and employ their instrumentality in the gratification of his
wishes, or in the accomplishment of his purposes.
INDIGNANT LETTER.
Addressed to a Louisiana clergyman by a Virginia correspondent.
§Sir§:—You have behaved like an impetiginous acroyli—like those
inquinate orosscrolest who envious of my moral celsitude carry their
mugacity to the height of creating symposically the fecund words which
my polymathic genius uses with uberity to abligate the tongues of the
weightless. Sir, you have corassly parodied my own pet words, as though
they were tangrams. I will not conceroate reproaches. I would obduce a
veil over the atramental ingratitude which has chamiered even my
undisceptible heart. I am silent on the foscillation which my coadful
fancy must have given you when I offered to become your fanton and
adminicle. I will not speak of the liptitude, the ablepsy you have shown
in exacerbating me; one whose genius you should have approached with
mental discalceation. So, I tell you, Sir, syncophically and without
supervacaneous words, nothing will render ignoscible your conduct to me.
I warn you that I will vellicate your nose if I thought your moral
diathesis could be thereby performed. If I thought that I should not
impigorate my reputation by such a degladiation. Go tagygraphic; your
oness inquinate draws oblectation from the greatest poet since Milton,
and draws upon your head this letter, which will drive you to Webster,
and send you to sleep over it.
“Knowledge is power,” and power is mercy; so I wish you no rovose that
it may prove an external hypnotic.
INTRAMURAL ÆSTIVATION.
In candent ire the solar splendor flames;
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames;
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes,
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.
How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise,
Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine,
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine!
To me, alas! no verdurous visions come,
Save yon exiguous pool’s conferva-scum;
No concave vast repeats the tender hue
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue!
Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades!
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!
Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,—
Depart,—be off,—excede,—evade,—erump!
_Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table._
A CHEMICAL VALENTINE.
I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me,
Our mutual flame is like the affinity
That doth exist between two simple bodies.
I am Potassium to thy Oxygen;
’Tis little that the holy marriage vow
Shall shortly make us one. That unity
Is, after all, but metaphysical.
Oh! would that I, my Mary, were an Acid—
A living Acid; thou an Alkali
Endowed with human sense; that, brought together,
We both might coalesce into one Salt,
One homogeneous crystal. Oh that thou
Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen!
We would unite to form olefiant gas,
Or common coal, or naphtha. Would to heaven
That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime,
And we of Lime composed a Phosphuret!
I’d be content to be Sulphuric Acid,
So that thou mightst be Soda. In that case,
We should be Glauber’s Salt. Wert thou Magnesia
Instead, we’d form the salt that’s named from Epsom.
Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aquafortis,
Our happy union should that compound form,
Nitrate of Potash—otherwise Saltpetre.
And thus, our several natures sweetly blent
We’d live and love together, until death
Should decompose this fleshly Tertium Quid,
Leaving our souls to all eternity
Amalgamated! Sweet, thy name is Briggs,
And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we
Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs?
We will! the day, the happy day is nigh,
When Johnson shall with beauteous Briggs combine.
THE ANATOMIST TO HIS DULCINEA.
I list as thy heart and ascending aorta
Their volumes of valvular harmony pour;
And my soul from that muscular music has caught a
New life ’mid its dry anatomical lore.
Oh, rare is the sound when thy ventricles throb
In a systolic symphony measured and slow,
When the auricles answer with rhythmical sob,
As they murmur a melody wondrously low!
Oh, thy cornea, love, has the radiant light
Of the sparkle that laughs in the icicle’s sheen;
And thy crystalline lens, like a diamond bright,
Through the quivering frame of thine iris is seen!
And thy retina, spreading its lustre of pearl,
Like the far-away nebula, distantly gleams
From a vault of black cellular mirrors that hurl
From their hexagon angles the silvery beams.
Ah! the flash of those orbs is enslaving me still,
As they roll ’neath the palpebræ, dimly translucent,
Obeying in silence the magical will
Of the oculo-motor—pathetic—abducent.
Oh, sweet is thy voice, as it sighingly swells
From the daintily quivering chordæ vocales,
Or rings in clear tones through the echoing cells
Of the antrum, the ethmoid, and sinus frontales!
ODE TO SPRING.
WRITTEN IN A LAWYER’S OFFICE.
Whereas on sundry boughs and sprays
Now divers birds are heard to sing,
And sundry flowers their heads upraise—
Hail to the coming on of Spring!
The birds aforesaid, happy pairs!
Love midst the aforesaid boughs enshrines
In household nests, themselves, their heirs,
Administrators, and assigns.
The songs of the said birds arouse
The memory of our youthful hours.
As young and green as the said boughs,
As fresh and fair as the said flowers.
O busiest term of Cupid’s court!
When tender plaintiffs actions bring;
Season of frolic and of sport,
Hail, as aforesaid, coming Spring!
PRISTINE PROVERBS PREPARED FOR PRECOCIOUS PUPILS.
Observe yon plumed biped fine!
To effect his captivation,
Deposit particles saline
Upon his termination.
Cryptogamous concretion never grows
On mineral fragments that decline repose.
Whilst self-inspection it neglects,
Nor its own foul condition sees,
The kettle to the pot objects
Its sordid superficies.
Decortications of the golden grain
Are set to allure the aged fowl, in vain.
Teach not a parent’s mother to extract
The embryo juices of an egg by suction:
That good old lady can the feat enact,
Quite irrespective of your kind instruction.
Pecuniary agencies have force
To stimulate to speed the female horse.
Bear not to yon famed city upon Tyne
The carbonaceous product of the mine.
The mendicant, once from his indigence freed,
And mounted aloft on the generous steed,
Down the precipice soon will infallibly go,
And conclude his career in the regions below.
It is permitted to the feline race
To contemplate even a regal face.
Metric Prose.
_Quid tentabam scribere versus erat._—§Ovid.§
COWPER’S LETTER TO NEWTON.
The following letter was written to Rev. John Newton, by William Cowper,
in reference to a poem _On Charity_, by the latter:—
My very dear friend, I am going to send, what when you have read, you
may scratch your head, and say I suppose, there’s nobody knows, whether
what I have got, be verse or not;—by the tune and the time, it ought to
be rhyme; but if it be, did ever you see, of late or of yore, such a
ditty before?
I have writ “Charity,” not for popularity, but as well as I could, in
hopes to do good; and if the “Reviewer” should say to be sure, the
gentleman’s muse wears Methodist shoes, you may know by her pace, and
talk about grace, that she and her bard have little regard for the
tastes and fashions, and ruling passions, and hoydening play, of the
modern day; and though she assume a borrowed plume, and now and then
wear a tittering air, ’tis only her plan, to catch if she can, the giddy
and gay, as they go that way, by a production of a new construction; she
has baited her trap, in the hope to snap all that may come, with a
sugar-plum. His opinion in this will not be amiss; ’tis what I intend,
my principal end; and if I succeed, and folks should read, till a few
are brought to a serious thought, I shall think I am paid for all I have
said, and all I have done, although I have run, many a time, after a
rhyme, as far as from hence to the end of my sense, and by hook or by
crook, write another book, if I live and am here another year.
I have heard before of a room with a floor, laid upon springs, and
suchlike things, with so much art in every part, that when you went in,
you were forced to begin a minuet pace, with an air and a grace,
swimming about, now in and now out, with a deal of a state, in a figure
of eight, without pipe or string, or any such thing; and now I have
writ, in a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and, as you advance,
will keep you still, though against your will, dancing away, alert and
gay, till you come to an end of what I have penned, which that you may
do, ere madam and you are quite worn out with jigging about, I take my
leave, and here you receive a bow profound, down to the ground, from you
humble me—W. C.
EXAMPLE IN IRVING’S NEW YORK.
The following remarkable instance of involuntary poetic prose occurs in
Knickerbocker’s humorous history of New York, near the commencement of
the Sixth Book:—
The gallant warrior starts from soft repose, from golden visions and
voluptuous ease; where, in the dulcet “piping time of peace,” he sought
sweet solace after all his toils. No more in beauty’s siren lap
reclined, he weaves fair garlands for his lady’s brows; no more entwines
with flowers his shining sword, nor through the livelong summer’s day
chants forth his love-sick soul in madrigals. To manhood roused, he
spurns the amorous flute, doffs from his brawny back the robe of peace,
and clothes his pampered limbs in panoply of steel. O’er his dark brow,
where late the myrtle waved, where wanton roses breathed enervate love,
he rears the beaming casque and nodding plume; grasps the bright shield
and ponderous lance, or mounts with eager pride his fiery steed, and
burns for deeds of glorious chivalry.
In D’Israeli’s _Wondrous Tale of Alroy_, are remarkable specimens of
prose poetry. For example:—
Why am I here? are you not here? and need I urge a stronger plea? Oh,
brother dear, I pray you come and mingle in our festival! Our walls
are hung with flowers you love; I culled them by the fountain’s side;
the holy lamps are trimmed and set, and you must raise their earliest
flame. Without the gate my maidens wait to offer you a robe of state.
Then, brother dear, I pray you come and mingle in our festival.
NELLY’S FUNERAL.
In Horne’s _New Spirit of the Age_,—a series of criticisms on eminent
living authors,—we find an admirable example of prose poetry thus
noticed:—
A curious circumstance is observable in a great portion of the scenes of
tragic power, pathos, and tenderness contained in various parts of Mr.
Dickens’s works, which it is possible may have been the result of
harmonious accident, and the author not even subsequently conscious of
it. It is that they are written in blank verse, of irregular metre and
rhythms, which Southey, and Shelley, and some other poets, have
occasionally adopted. Witness the following description from _The Old
Curiosity Shop_.
And now the bell—the bell
She had so often heard by night and day
And listened to with solid pleasure,
E’en as a living voice—
Rung its remorseless toll for her,
So young, so beautiful, so good.
Decrepit age, and vigorous life,
And blooming youth, and helpless infancy,
Poured forth—on crutches, in the pride of strength
And health, in the full blush
Of promise—the mere dawn of life—
To gather round her tomb. Old men were there
Whose eyes were dim
And senses failing—
Granddames, who might have died ten years ago,
And still been old—the deaf, the blind, the lame,
The palsied,
The living dead in many shapes and forms,
To see the closing of this early grave!
What was the death it would shut in,
To that which still would crawl and creep above it!
Along the crowded path they bore her now;
Pale as the new-fallen snow
That covered it; whose day on earth
Had been so fleeting.
Under that porch where she had sat when Heaven
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot,
She passed again, and the old church
Received her in its quiet shade.
Throughout the whole of the above, only two unimportant words have been
omitted—_in_ and _its_; “granddames” has been substituted for
“grandmothers,” and “e’en” for “almost.” All that remains is exactly as
in the original, not a single word transposed, and the punctuation the
same to a comma. The brief homily that concludes the funeral is
profoundly beautiful.
Oh! it is hard to take
The lesson that such deaths will teach,
But let no man reject it,
For it is one that all must learn
And is a mighty universal Truth.
When Death strikes down the innocent and young,
For every fragile form from which he lets
The parting spirit free,
A hundred virtues rise,
In shapes of mercy, charity, and love,
To walk the world and bless it.
Of every tear
That sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves,
Some good is born, some gentler nature comes.
Not a word of the original is changed in the above quotation, which is
worthy of the best passages in Wordsworth, and thus, meeting on the
common ground of a deeply truthful sentiment, the two most unlike men in
the literature of the country are brought into close proximation.
The following similar passage is from the concluding paragraph of
_Nicholas Nickleby_:—
The grass was green above the dead boy’s grave,
Trodden by feet so small and light,
That not a daisy drooped its head
Beneath their pressure.
Through all the spring and summer time
Garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands,
Rested upon the stone.
NIAGARA.
The same rhythmic cadence is observable in the following passage, copied
verbatim from the _American Notes_:—
I think in every quiet season now,
Still do those waters roll, and leap, and roar,
And tumble all day long;
Still are the rainbows spanning them
A hundred feet below.
Still when the sun is on them, do they shine
And glow like molten gold.
Still when the day is gloomy do they fall
Like snow, or seem to crumble away,
Like the front of a great chalk cliff,
Or roll adown the rock like dense white smoke.
But always does this mighty stream appear
To die as it comes down.
And always from the unfathomable grave
Arises that tremendous ghost of spray
And mist which is never laid:
Which has haunted this place
With the same dread solemnity,
Since darkness brooded on the deep
And that first flood before the Deluge—Light
Came rushing on Creation at the word of God.
To any one who reads this we need not say that but three lines in it
vary at all from the closest requisitions of an iambic movement. The
measure is precisely of the kind which Mr. Southey so often used. For
the reader’s convenience, we copy from _Thalaba_ his well remembered
lines on Night, as an instance:—
How beautiful is Night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air,
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain
Breaks the serene of heaven.
In full orbed glory yonder Moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is Night!
INVOLUNTARY VERSIFICATION IN THE SCRIPTURES.
The hexametric cadence in the authorized translation of the Bible has
been pointed out in another portion of this volume. It is very
noticeable in such passages as these, for example, from the Second
Psalm:—
Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?
Kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together.
The anapæstic cadence prevalent in the Psalms is also very remarkable:—
That will bring forth his fruit in due season.—v. 6.
Whatsoever he doth it shall prosper.—v. 4.
Away from the face of the earth.—v. 5.
Be able to stand in the judgment.—v. 6.
The way of th’ ungodly shall perish.—v. 7.
Couplets may be drawn from the same inspired source, as follows:—
Great peace have they that love thy law:
And nothing shall offend them.—Psalm, cxix. 165.
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace
Whose mind is stayed on thee.—Isaiah, xxvi. 3.
When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves,
Ye know that the summer is nigh.—Matthew, xxiv. 32.
UNINTENTIONAL RHYMES OF PROSERS.
The delicate ear of Addison, who would stop the press to add a
conjunction, or erase a comma, allowed this inelegant jingle to escape
his detection:—
What I am going to _mention_, will perhaps deserve your _attention_.
Dr. Whewell, when Master of Trinity College, fell into a similar trap,
to the great amusement of his readers. In his work on _Mechanics_, he
happened to write _literatim_ and _verbatim_, though not _lincatim_, the
following tetrastich:—
There is no force, however great,
Can stretch a cord, however fine,
Into a horizontal line,
Which is accurately straight.
A curious instance of involuntary rhythm occurs in President Lincoln’s
Second Inaugural Address:—
Fondly do we hope,
Fervently do we pray,
That this mighty scourge of war
May speedily pass away:
Yet if be God’s will
That it continue until—
but here the strain abruptly ceases, and the President relapses into
prose.
In the course of a discussion upon the involuntary metre into which
Shakspeare so frequently fell, when he intended his minor characters to
speak prose, Dr. Johnson observed;
“Such verse we make when we are writing prose;
We make such verse in common conversation.”
Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, from their habit of committing to memory and
reciting dramatic blank verse, unconsciously made their most ordinary
observations in that measure. Kemble, for instance, on giving a shilling
to a beggar, thus answered the surprised look of his companion:—
“It is not often that I do these things,
But _when_ I do, I do them handsomely.”
And once when, in a walk with Walter Scott on the banks of the Tweed, a
dangerous looking bull made his appearance, Scott took the water, Kemble
exclaimed:—
“Sheriff, I’ll get me up in yonder tree.”
The presence of danger usually makes a man speak naturally, if anything
will. If a reciter of blank verse, then, fall unconsciously into the
rhythm of it when intending to speak prose, much more may an habitual
writer of it be expected to do so. Instances of the kind from the
table-talk of both Kemble and his sister might be multiplied. This of
Mrs. Siddons,—
“I asked for water, boy; you’ve brought me beer,——”
is one of the best known.
The Humors of Versification.
THE LOVERS.
IN DIFFERENT MOODS AND TENSES.
Sally Salter, she was a young teacher who taught,
And her friend, Charley Church, was a preacher, who praught!
Though his enemies called him a screecher, who scraught.
His heart, when he saw her, kept sinking, and sunk;
And his eye, meeting hers, began winking, and wunk;
While she, in her turn, fell to thinking, and thunk.
He hastened to woo her, and sweetly he wooed,
For his love grew until to a mountain it grewed,
And what he was longing to do, then he doed.
In secret he wanted to speak, and he spoke,
To seek with his lips what his heart long had soke;
So he managed to let the truth leak, and it loke.
He asked her to ride to the church, and they rode,
They so sweetly did glide, that they both thought they glode,
And they came to the place to be tied, and were tode.
Then homeward he said let us drive, and they drove,
And soon as they wished to arrive, they arrove;
For whatever he couldn’t contrive, she controve.
The kiss he was dying to steal, then he stole;
At the feet where he wanted to kneel, then he knole;
And he said, “I feel better than ever I fole.”
So they to each other kept clinging, and clung,
While Time his swift circuit was winging, and wung;
And this was the thing he was bringing and brung:
The man Sally wanted to catch, and had caught—
That she wanted from others to snatch, and had snaught—
Was the one she now liked to scratch, and she scraught.
And Charley’s warm love began freezing and froze,
While he took to teasing, and cruelly toze
The girl he had wished to be squeezing, and squoze.
“Wretch!” he cried, when she threatened to leave him, and left,
“How could you deceive, as you have deceft?”
And she answered, “I promised to cleave, and I’ve cleft.”
A STAMMERING WIFE.
When deeply in love with Miss Emily Pryne,
I vowed if the lady would only be mine,
I would always be ready to please her;
She blushed her consent, though the stuttering lass
Said never a word except “You’re an ass—
An ass—an ass—iduous teazer!”
But when we were married, I found to my ruth
The stammering lady had spoken the truth;
For often, in obvious dudgeon,
She’d say—if I ventured to give her a jog
In the way of reproof—“You’re a dog—dog—dog—
A dog—a dog—matic curmudgeon!”
And once, when I said, “We can hardly afford
This immoderate style with our moderate board,”
And hinted we ought to be wiser,
She looked, I assure you, exceedingly blue,
And fretfully cried, “You’re a Jew—Jew—Jew—
A very ju-dicious adviser!”
Again, when it happened that, wishing to shirk
Some rather unpleasant and arduous work,
I begged her to go to a neighbor,
She wanted to know why I made such a fuss,
And saucily said, “You’re a cuss—cuss—cuss—
You were always ac—cus—tomed to labor!”
Out of temper at last with the insolent dame,
And feeling the woman was greatly to blame,
To scold me instead of caressing,
I mimicked her speech, like a churl as I am,
And angrily said, “You’re a dam—dam—dam—
A dam-age instead of a blessing.”
A SONG WITH VARIATIONS.
[§Scene.§—Wife at the piano; brute of a husband, who has no more soul
for music than his boot, in an adjoining apartment, making his
toilet.]
Oh! do not chide me if I weep!—
Come, wife, and sew this button on.
Such pain as mine can never sleep!—
Zounds! as I live, another’s gone!
For unrequited love brings grief,—
A needle, wife, and bring your scissors.
And Pity’s voice gives no relief—
The child! good Lord! he’s at my razors!
No balm to case the troubled heart,—
Who starched this bosom? I declare
That writhes from hate’s envenomed dart!—
It’s enough to make a parson swear!
When faith in man is given up—
How plaguey shiftless are some women!
Then sorrow fills her bitter cup—
I’ll have to get my other linen.
And to its lees the white lips quaff—
Smith says he’s coming in to-night,
While Malice yields her mocking laugh!—
With Mrs. S., and Jones and Wright.
Oh! could I stifle in my breast—
And Jones will bring some prime old sherry.
This aching heart, and give it rest,—
We’ll want some eggs for Tom-and-Jerry
Could Lethe’s waters o’er me roll,—
These stockings would look better mended!
And bring oblivion to my soul,—
When-will-you-have-that-ditty-ended?
Then haply I, in other skies,—
We’d better have the oysters fried.
Might find the love that earth denies!
There! now at last my dickey’s tied!
THOUGHTS WHILE SHE ROCKS THE CRADLE.
What is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful thing, no doubt,
Unwritten history!
Unfathomable mystery!
But he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks,
And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks,
As if his head were as full of kinks,
And curious riddles, as any sphinx!
Warped by colic and wet by tears,
Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears,
Our little nephew will lose two years;
And he’ll never know
Where the summers go:
He need not laugh, for he’ll find it so!
Who can tell what the baby thinks?
Who can follow the gossamer links
By which the manikin feels his way
Out from the shores of the great unknown,
Blind, and wailing, and alone,
Into the light of day?
Out from the shores of the unknown sea,
Tossing in pitiful agony!
Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls,
Specked with the barks of little souls—
Barks that were launched on the other side,
And slipped from heaven on an ebbing tide!
And what does he think of his mother’s eyes?
What does he think of his mother’s hair?
What of the cradle roof that flies
Forward and backward through the air?
What does he think of his mother’s breast—
Bare and beautiful, smooth and white,
Seeking it ever with fresh delight—
Cup of his joy and couch of his rest?
What does he think when her quick embrace
Presses his hand and buries his face
Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell
With a tenderness she can never tell,
Though she murmur the words
Of all the birds—
Words she has learned to murmur well?
Now he thinks he’ll go to sleep!
I can see the shadow creep
Over his eyes, in soft eclipse,
Over his brow, and over his lips,
Out to his little finger tips,
Softly sinking, down he goes!
Down he goes! down he goes!
[_Rising and carefully retreating to her seat._]
See! he is hushed in sweet repose!
A SERIO-COMIC ELEGY.
WHATELY ON BUCKLAND.
In his “Common-Place Book,” the late Archbishop Whately records the
following Elegy on the late geologist, Dr. Buckland:
Where shall we our great professor inter,
That in peace may rest his bones?
If we hew him a rocky sepulchre
He’ll rise and break the stones,
And examine each stratum which lies around,
For he’s quite in his element underground.
If with mattock and spade his body we lay
In the common alluvial soil,
He’ll start up and snatch these tools away
Of his own geological toil;
In a stratum so young the professor disdains
That embedded should lie his organic remains.
Then exposed to the drip of some case-hardening spring,
His carcase let stalactite cover,
And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring,
When he is encrusted all over;
There, ’mid mammoths and crocodiles, high on a shelf,
Let him stand as a monument raised to himself.
A REMINISCENCE OF TROY.
FROM THE SCHOLIAST.
It was the ninth year of the Trojan war—
A tedious pull at best:
A lot of us were sitting by the shore—
Tydides, Phocas, Castor, and the rest—
Some whittling shingles and some stringing bows,
And cutting up our friends, and cutting up our foes.
Down from the tents above there came a man,
Who took a camp-stool by Tydides’ side,
He joined our talk, and, pointing to the pan
Upon the embers where our pork was fried,
Said he would eat the onions and the leeks,
But that fried pork was food not fit for Greeks.
“Look at the men of Thebes,” he said, “and then
Look at those cowards in the plains below:
You see how ox-like are the ox-fed men;
You see how sheepish mutton-eaters grow.
Stick to this vegetable food of mine:
Men who eat pork grunt, root and sleep like swine.”
Some laughed, and some grew mad, and some grew red:
The pork was hissing; but his point was clear.
Still no one answered him, till Nestor said,
“One inference that I would draw is here:
You vegetarians, who thus educate us,
Thus far have turned out very small potatoes.”
THE POET BRYANT AS A HUMORIST.
Those who are familiar with Mr. Lowell’s _Fable for Critics_, will
remember the lines:—
There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified,
As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified,
Save when by reflection ’tis kindled ’o nights
With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.
He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation;
(There’s no doubt he stands in supreme ice-olation,)
Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on,
But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on—
He’s too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on;
Unqualified merits, I’ll grant, if you choose, he has ’em,
But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm;
If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul,
Like being stirred up by the very North Pole.
The Cambridge wit has either misjudged the character of Bryant’s genius,
or he has sacrificed a man to an epigram, and subordinated fact to a
_jeu d’esprit_. Though “quiet and dignified,” Mr. Bryant possesses a
rare vein of humor, but its bubbling fancies are not generally known or
suspected for the reason that he unbends anonymously. Only one of the
diversions of his muse appears in his published works—and that is his
invocation “To a Mosquito,” which begins thus:—
Fair insect! that with thread-like legs spread out,
And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing,
Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail’st about,
In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing,
And tell how little our large veins would bleed,
Would we but yield them to thy bitter need.
One day, when Mr. Bryant discovered in a fresh number of the _Atlantic
Monthly_ a so-called poem, which struck him as uncommonly absurd, he sat
down and produced a travesty of it, which was much more effective in its
ridicule than any sharper criticism could have been made. Here are the
two in conjunction:—
THE “ATLANTIC” POEM.
Bellying earth no anchor throws
Stouter than the breath that blows;
Night and sorrow cling in vain;
It must toss in day again.
Hospital and battle-field,
Myriad spots where fate is sealed,
Brinks that crumble, sins that urge,
Plunge again into the surge.
How the purple breakers throw
Round me their insatiate glow.
Sweep my deck of hideous freight,
Pour through fastening and grate.
BRYANT’S TRAVESTY.
Squint-eyed bacchanals at play,
Keep a Lybian holiday,
Leading trains of solemn apes,
Tipsy with the blood of grapes.
Forty furies—thirty more
Than old Milton had before—
Scattering sparkles from their hair,
Swing their censers in the air.
Toss the flaming goblet off,
Heed not ocean’s windy scoff;
Let him dash against the shore,
Gape and grin, and sweat and roar.
Since which time nothing has been heard of the Atlantic poet! Only those
who were “behind the scenes,” in the office of the _Evening Post_, in
the year 1863, knew the authorship of the burlesque—and the burlesque
itself will never appear in the poet’s “collected works.”
ON RECEIPT OF A RARE PIPE.
I lifted off the lid with anxious care,
Removed the wrappages, stripe after stripe,
And when the hidden contents were laid bare,
My first remark was: “Mercy, what a pipe!”
A pipe of symmetry that matched its size,
Mounted with metal bright—a sight to see—
With the rich umber hue that smokers prize,
Attesting both its age and pedigree.
A pipe to make the Royal Friedrich jealous,
Or the great Teufelsdröck with envy gripe!
A man should hold some rank above his fellows
To justify his smoking such a Pipe!
What country gave it birth? What blest of cities
Saw it first kindle at the glowing coal?
What happy artist murmured, “_Nunc dimittis_,”
When he had fashioned this transcendent bowl?
Has it been hoarded in a monarch’s treasures?
Was it a gift of peace, or prize of war?
Did the great Khalif in his “House of Pleasures”
Wager, and lose it to the good Zaafar?
It may have soothed mild Spenser’s melancholy,
While musing o’er traditions of the past,
Or graced the lips of brave Sir Walter Raleigh
Ere sage King Jamie blew his _Counterblast_.
Did it, safe hidden in some secret cavern,
Escape that monarch’s pipoclastic ken?
Has Shakespeare smoked it at the Mermaid Tavern,
Quaffing a cup of sack with rare old Ben?
Ay, Shakespeare might have watched his vast creations
Loom through its smoke—the spectre-haunted Thane,
The Sisters at their ghastly invocations,
The jealous Moor and melancholy Dane.
’Round its orbed haze and through its mazy ringlets
Titania may have led her elfin rout,
Or Ariel fanned it with his gauzy winglets,
Or Puck danced in the bowl to put it out.
Vain are all fancies—questions bring no answer;
The smokers vanish, but the pipe remains;
He were indeed a subtle necromancer
Could read their records in its cloudy stains.
Nor this alone: its destiny may doom it
To outlive e’en its use and history—
Some plowman of the future may exhume it
From soil now deep beneath the Eastern sea—
And, treasured by some antiquarian Stultus,
It may to gaping visitors be shown,
Labeled, “The symbol of some ancient Cultus,
Conjecturally Phallic, but unknown.”
Why do I thus recall the ancient quarrel
’Twixt Man and Time, that marks all earthly things?
Why labor to re-word the hackneyed moral,
ὥς ψύλλων γενεή, as Homer sings?
For this: Some links we forge are never broken;
Some feelings claim exemption from decay;
And Love, of which this pipe was but the token,
Shall last, though pipes and smokers pass away.
THE HUMAN EAR.
A sound came booming through the air—
“What is that sound?” quoth I.
My blue-eyed pet, with golden hair,
Made answer presently,
“Papa, you know it very well—
That sound—it was Saint Pancras Bell.”
My own Louise, put down the cat,
And come and stand by me;
I’m sad to hear you talk like that,
Where’s your philosophy?
That sound—attend to what I tell—
That sound was _not_ Saint Pancras Bell.
“Sound is the name the sage selects
For the concluding term
Of a long series of effects,
Of which that blow’s the germ.
The following brief analysis
Shows the interpolations, Miss.
“The blow which, when the clapper slips,
Falls on your friend the Bell,
Changes its circle to ellipse,
(A word you’d better spell),
And then comes elasticity,
Restoring what it used to be.
“Nay, making it a little more,
The circle shifts about.
As much as it shrunk in before
The Bell, you see, swells out;
And so a new ellipse is made,
(You’re not attending, I’m afraid).
“This change of form disturbs the air,
Which in its turn behaves
In like elastic fashion there,
Creating waves on waves;
Which press each other onward, dear,
Until the outmost finds your ear.
“Within that ear the surgeons find
A _tympanum_, or drum,
Which has a little bone behind,—
_Malleus_, it’s called by some;
But those not proud of Latin Grammar
Humbly translate it as the hammer.
“The wave’s vibrations this transmits
On to the _incus_ bone,
(_Incus_ means anvil, which it hits),
And this transfers the tone
To the small _os orbiculure_,
The tiniest bone that people carry.
“The _stapes_ next—the name recalls
A stirrup’s form, my daughter—
Joins three half-circular canals,
Each filled with limpid water;
Their curious lining, you’ll observe,
Made of the auditory nerve.
“This vibrates next—and then we find
The mystic work is crowned;
For then my daughter’s gentle Mind
First recognizes sound.
See what a host of causes swell
To make up what you call ‘the Bell.’”
Awhile she paused, my bright Louise,
And pondered on the case;
Then, settling that he meant to teaze,
She slapped her father’s face.
“You bad old man, to sit and tell
Such gibberygosh about a Bell!’”
SIR TRAY: AN ARTHURIAN IDYL.
The widowed Dame of Hubbard’s ancient line
Turned to her cupboard, cornered anglewise
Betwixt this wall and that, in quest of aught
To satisfy the craving of Sir Tray,
Prick-eared companion of her solitude,
Red-spotted, dirty white, and bare of rib,
Who followed at her high and pattering heels,
Prayer in his eye, prayer in his slinking gait,
Prayer in his pendulous pulsating tail.
Wide on its creaking jaws revolved the door,
The cupboard yawned, deep-throated, thinly set
For teeth, with bottles, ancient canisters,
And plates of various pattern, blue or white;
Deep in the void she thrust her hooked nose
Peering near-sighted for the wished-for bone,
Whiles her short robe of samite, tilted high,
The thrifty darnings of her hose revealed;—
The pointed feature travelled o’er the delf
Greasing its tip, but bone or bread found none
Wherefore Sir Tray abode still dinnerless,
Licking his paws beneath the spinning-wheel,
And meditating much on savoury meats.
Meanwhile the Dame in high-backed chair reposed
Revolving many memories, for she gazed
Down from her lattice on the self-same path
Whereby Sir Lancelot ’mid the reapers rode
When Arthur held his court in Camelot,
And she was called the Lady of Shalott
And, later, where Sir Hubbard, meekest knight
Of all the Table Round, was wont to pass,
And to her casement glint the glance of love.
(For all the tale of how she floated dead
Between the city walls, and how the Court
Gazed on her corpse, was of illusion framed,
And shadows raised by Merlin’s magic art,
Ere Vivien shut him up within the oak.)
There stood the wheel whereat she spun her thread;
But of the magic mirror nought remained
Save one small fragment on the mantelpiece,
Reflecting her changed features night and morn.
But now the inward yearnings of Sir Tray
Grew pressing, and in hollow rumblings spake,
As in tempestuous nights the Northern seas
Within their cavern cliffs reverberate.
This touched her: “I have marked of yore,” she said,
“When on my palfry I have paced along
The streets of Camelot, while many a knight
Ranged at my rein and thronged upon my steps,
Wending in pride towards the tournament,
A wight who many kinds of bread purveyed—
Muffins, and crumpets, matutinal rolls,
And buns which buttered, soothe at evensong;
To him I’ll hie me ere my purpose cool,
And swift returning, bear a loaf with me,
And (for my teeth be tender grown, and like
Celestial visits, few and far between)
The crust shall be for Tray, the crumb for me.”
This spake she; from their peg reached straightway down
Her cloak of sanguine hue, and pointed hat
From the flat brim upreared like pyramid
On sands Egyptian where the Pharaohs sleep,
Her ebon-handled staff (sole palfry now)
Grasped firmly, and so issued swiftly forth;
Yet ere she closed the latch her cat Elaine,
The lily kitten reared at Astolat,
Slipped through and mewing passed to greet Sir Tray.
Returning ere the shadows eastward fell,
She placed a porringer upon the board,
And shred the crackling crusts with liberal hand,
Nor noted how Elaine did seem to wail,
Rubbing against her hose, and mourning round
Sir Tray, who lay all prone upon the hearth.
Then on the bread she poured the mellow milk—
“Sleep’st thou?” she said, and touched him with her staff;
“What, ho! thy dinner waits thee!” But Sir Tray
Stirred not nor breathed: thereat, alarmed, she seized
And drew the hinder leg: the carcase moved
All over wooden like a piece of wood—
“Dead?” said the Dame, while louder wailed Elaine;
“I see,” she said, “thy fasts were all too long,
Thy commons all too short, which shortened thus
Thy days, tho’ thou mightst still have cheered mine age
Had I but timelier to the city wonned.
Thither I must again, and that right soon,
For now ’tis meet we lap thee in a shroud,
And lay thee in the vault by Astolat,
Where faithful Tray shall by Sir Hubbard lie.”
Up a by-lane the Undertaker dwelt;
There day by day he plied his merry trade,
And all his undertakings undertook:
Erst knight of Arthur’s Court, Sir Waldgrave hight,
A gruesome carle who hid his jests in gloom,
And schooled his lid to counterfeit a tear.
With cheerful hammer he a coffin tapt,
While hollow, hollow, hollow, rang the wood,
And, as he sawed and hammered, thus he sang:—
Wood, hammer, nails, ye build a house for him,
Nails, hammer, wood, ye build a house for me,
Paying the rent, the taxes, and the rates.
I plant a human acorn in the ground,
And therefrom straightway springs a goodly tree,
Budding for me in bread and beer and beef.
O Life, dost thou bring Death or Death bring thee?
Which of the twain is bringer, which the brought?
Since men must die that other men may live.
O Death, for me thou plump’st thine hollow cheeks,
Mak’st of thine antic grin a pleasant smile,
And prank’st full gaily in thy winding sheet.
This ditty sang he to a doleful tune
To outer ears it sounded like a dirge,
Or wind that wails across the fields of death.
’Ware of a visitor, he ceased his strain,
But still did ply his saw industrious.
With withered hand on ear, Dame Hubbard stood;
“Vex not mine ears,” she grated, “with thine old
And creaking saw!” “I deemed,” he said, and sighed,
“Old saws might please thee, as they should the wise.”
“Know,” said the Dame, “Sir Tray that with me dwelt
Lies on my lonely hearthstone stark and stiff;
Wagless the tail that waved to welcome me.”—
Here Waldgrave interposed sepulchral tones,
“Oft have I noted, when the jest went round,
Sad ’twas to see the wag forget his tale—
Sadder to see the tail forget its wag.”
“Wherefore,” resumed she, “take of fitting stuff,
And make therewith a narrow house for him.”
Quoth he, “From yonder deal I’ll plane the bark,
So ’twill of Tray be emblematical;
For thou, ’tis plain, must lose a deal of bark,
Since he nor bark nor bite shall practice more.”
“And take thou, too,” she said, “a coffin-plate,
And be his birth and years inscribed thereon
With letters twain ‘S. T.’ to mark Sir Tray,
So shall the tomb be known in after time.”
“This, too,” quoth Waldgrave, “shall be deftly done;
Oft hath the plate been freighted with his bones,
But now his bones must lie beneath the plate.”
“Jest’st thou?” Dame Hubbard said, and clutched her crutch,
For ill she brooked light parlance of the dead;
But when she saw Sir Waldgrave, how his face
Was all drawn downward, till the curving mouth
Seemed a horseshoe, while o’er the furrowed cheek
A wandering tear stole on, like rivulet
In dry ravine down mother Ida’s side,
She changed her purpose, smote not, lowered the staff;—
So parted, faring homeward with her grief.
Nearing her bower, it seemed a sepulchre
Sacred to memory, and almost she thought
A dolorous cry arose, as if Elaine
Did sound a caterwauling requiem.
With hesitating hand she raised the latch,
And on the threshold with reluctant foot
Lingered, as loath to face the scene of woe,
When lo! the body lay not on the hearth,
For there Elaine her flying tail pursued,—
In the Dame’s chair Sir Tray alive did sit,
A world of merry meaning in his eye,
And all his face agrin from ear to ear.
Like one who late hath lost his dearest friend,
And in his sleep doth see that friend again,
And marvels scarce to see him, putting forth
A clasping hand, and feels him warm with life,
And so takes up his friendship’s broken thread—
Thus stood the Dame, thus ran she, pattering o’er
The sanded tiles, and clasped she thus Sir Tray,
Unheeding of the grief his jest had wrought
For joy he was not numbered with the dead.
Anon the Dame, her primal transports o’er,
Bethought her of the wisdom of Sir Tray,
And his fine wit, and then it shameful seemed
That he bareheaded ’neath the sky should go
While empty skulls of fools went thatched and roofed;
“A hat,” she cried, “would better fit those brows
Than many a courtier’s that I’ve wotted of;
And thou shalt have one, an’ my tender toes
On which the corns do shoot, and these my knees
Wherethro’ rheumatic twinges swiftly dart,
Will bear me to the city yet again,
And thou shalt wear the hat as Arthur wore
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship.”
Whereat Sir Tray did seem to smile, and smote
Upon the chair-back with approving tail.
Then up she rose, and to the Hatter’s went,—
“Hat me,” quoth she, “your very newest hat;”
And so they hatted her, and she returned
Home through the darksome wold, and raised the latch,
And marked, full lighted by the ingle-glow,
Sir Tray, with spoon in hand, and cat on knee,
Spattering the mess about the chaps of Puss.
THE OLOGIES.
We’re going to begin with an ample Apology;
You’ll end, we are sure, by a hearty Doxology,
If, all undeterred by our strange Phraseology,
You chose to sit down to a dish of Tautology.
* * * * *
One’s pestered in these days by so many ’ologies,
We thought we would fain see the tale of our foes;
A niche of your own in the new Martyrologies
You’d earn if you’d only go halves in our woes.
We’v counted some forty! but how many more there are,
We’re even now wholly unable to say;
We fear that at least the same number in store there are,
You’ll say we have found quite enough for one day.
* * * * *
“So now for our Catalogue: first comes Anthology—
A bouquet of flowers, a budget of rhymes;
That’s pleasant—not so the next, called Anthropology,
The science of man in all ages and climes.
“Then comes a most useful pursuit, Arachnology;
They’re bipeds, the spiders who weave the worst webs;
But when one is asked to go in for Astrology,
And Zadkiel! one’s courage most rapidly ebbs.
“The next on our roster is old Archæology,
A science that’s lately been much in repute;
One can’t say as much for Electro-biology,
Which now-o’-days no one seems ever to bruit.
“But none can afford to make light of Chronology,
Tho’ ladies are apt to be dark upon dates;
We most of us make rather light of Conchology
Except when the oyster-shell gapes on our plates.
“The Devil’s deposed they say, and Demonology
Would certainly seem to have gone to the De’il;
Some savants, like Hooker, still swallow Dendrology,
But tree-names are somewhat too tough for my meal.
“The parsons are great upon Ecclesiology,
And prate about proper pyramidal piles;
Few travelers care to neglect Entomology,
Their wakefulness often its study beguiles.
“’Twould take you a life-time to learn Etymology,
And dabblers get into most marvellous scrapes;
And Huxley would tell you as much of Ethnology,—
Who really believes we are cousins of apes?
“Dean Buckland it was who first started Geology,
And traced the rock pedigrees, fixing their ranks;
And Frank has of late taken up Ichthyology,
The salmon already have voted him thanks.
“Von Humboldt had fairly exhausted Kosmology,
But Nature’s a quite inexhaustible mine;
Napoleon has fulfilled a new Martyrology,
Imbrued with the purest blue-blood of the Rhine.
“We all of us thought we were deep in Mythology,
Till Cox and Max Müller both deepened its well;
Our sons may learn something of Meteorology—
The weather our prophets all fail to foretell.
“The study of life is bound up with Necrology,
And we shall have one day to enter its lists,—
And furnish some specimens for Osteology,
The science of bones, on which Owen exists.
“At breakfast we’re seldom averse to Oology,
Or lunch, when the plovers are pleased to lay eggs;
But then one would bar embryonic Ontology,
Preferring fowls full-grown with breast, wings, and legs!
“For oh! we decidedly like Ornithology
And chiefly the study of grouse on the wing;
We’d leave it to doctors to study Pathology;
The study of pain is a troublesome thing.
“We all of us need a small dose of Philology,
If caring to make the best use of our tongues;
A careful attention to strict Phraseology
Involves a most notable saving of lungs.
“The study of heads has been christened Phrenology,
Professors would call it the study of brain;
But take my advice, and avoid Pneumatology,
For spirits are apt to treat brains with disdain.
“For much the same reason, we’d banish Psychology,—
What savant can give an account of his soul?
And if we could only abolish Theology,
The parsons alone would be hard to console!
“If ever you happened to study Splanchnology,
You’d know what it is theologians lack,—
Inquisitors never complain of Tautology,
So long as rank heretics roar on the rack.
“And now is the time to strike up your Doxology,
For we would no longer detain you, my friend;—
On Sunday we all have a turn for Zoology,
So here is our Catalogue come to an end.”
THE VARIATION HUMBUG.
The _London Charivari_ thinks that there is more humbug talked, printed,
and practiced in reference to music than to anything else in the world,
except politics. And of all the musical humbugs extant it occurs to Mr.
Punch that the variation humbug is the greatest. This party has not even
the sense to invent a tune for himself, but takes someone else’s, and
starting therefrom, as an acrobat leaps from a spring-board, jumps
himself into a musical reputation on the strength of the other party’s
ideas. Mr. Punch wonders what would be thought of a poet who should try
to make himself renown by this kind of thing—taking a well-known poem of
a predecessor and doing variations on it after this fashion:—
BUGGINS’ VARIATIONS ON THE BUSY BEE.
How doth the Little Busy Bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower,
From every opening flower, flower, flower,
That sparkles in a breezy bower,
And gives its sweetness to the shower,
Exhaling scent of gentle power,
That lasts on kerchief many an hour,
And is a lady’s graceful dower,
Endeared alike to cot and tower,
Round which the Little Busy Bee
Improves each shining hour,
And gathers honey all the day
From every opening flower,
From every opening flower, flower, flower,
From every opening flower.
How skillfully she builds her cell,
How neat she spreads her wax,
And labors hard to store it well,
With the sweet food she makes,
With the sweet food she makes,
With the sweet food she makes, makes, makes,
When rising just as morning breaks,
The dewdrop from the leaf she shakes,
And oft the sleeping moth she wakes,
And diving through the flower she takes,
The honey with her fairy rakes,
And in her cell the same she cakes,
Or sports across the silver lakes,
Beside her children, for whose sakes
How skillfully she builds her cell,
How neat she spreads her wax,
And labors hard to store it well,
With the sweet food she makes.
In works of labor or of skill,
I would be busy too,
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do,
For idle hands to do,
For idle hands to do, do, do.
Things which thereafter they will rue,
When Justice fiercely doth pursue,
Or conscience raises cry and hue,
And evil-doers look quite blue,
When Peelers run with loud halloo,
And magistrates put on the screw,
And then the wretch exclaims, Boo-hoo,
In works of labor or of skill
I wish I’d busied too,
For Satan’s found much mischief still,
For my two hands to do.
There! Would a poet get much reputation for these variations, which
are much better in their way than most of those built upon tunes?
Would the poetical critics come out, as the musical critics do, with
“Upon Watts’ marble foundation Buggins has raised a sparkling
alabaster palace;” or, “The old-fashioned Watts has been brought into
new honor by the _étincellant_ Buggins;” or “We love the old tune, but
we have room in our hearts for the fairy-like fountains of bird-song
which Buggins has bid start from it?” Mr. Punch has an idea that
Buggins would have no such luck; the moral to be deduced from which
fact is, that a musical prig is luckier than a poetical prig.
REITERATIVE VOCAL MUSIC.
A well-known reviewer, in an article on Hymnology, says:—
Who could endure to hear and sing hymns, the meaning and force of which
he really felt—set, as they frequently have been, to melodies from the
Opera, and even worse, or massacred by the repetition of the end of each
stanza, no matter whether or not the grammar and sense were consistent
with it. Take such memorable cases of incongruity as:—
“My poor pol—
My pool pol—
My poor polluted heart.”
To which he might have added from Dr. Watts:—
“And see Sal—see Sal—see Salvation nigh.”
Or this to the same common metre tune, “Miles’s Lane”:—
“Where my Sal—my Sal—my Salvation stands.”
Or this when sung to “Job”:—
“And love thee Bet—
And love thee better than before.”
Or—
“Stir up this stu—
Stir up this stupid heart to pray.”
Or this crowning absurdity:—
“And more _eggs_—more _eggs_—more exalts our joys.”
This to the tune of “Aaron” 7’s:—
“With thy Benny—
With thy benediction seal.”
This has recently been added in a fashionable metropolitan church:—
“And take thy pil—
And take thy pilgrim home.”
And further havoc is made with language and sense thus:—
“Before his throne we bow—wow—wow—ow—wow.”
And—
“I love to steal
I love to steal—awhile away.”
And—
“O, for a man—
O, for a mansion in the skies.”
To which we may add:—
“And we’ll catch the flea—
And we’ll catch the flee—ee—eeting hour.”
Two trebles sing, “And learn to kiss”; two trebles and alto, “And learn
to kiss”; two trebles, alto, and tenor, “And learn to kiss”; the bass,
solus, “the rod.”
This is sung to a tune called “Boyce”:—
“Thou art my bull—
Thou art my bulwark and defence.”
THE CURSE OF O’KELLY.
Carmac O’Kelly, the celebrated Irish harper, went to Doneraile, in the
county of Cork, where his watch was pilfered from his fob. This so
roused his ire that he celebrated the people in the following unexampled
“string of curses:”—
Alas! how dismal is my tale,
I lost my watch in Doneraile,
My Dublin watch, my chain and seal,
Pilfered at once in Doneraile.
May fire and brimstone never fail
To fall in showers on Doneraile;
May all the leading fiends assail
The thieving town of Doneraile.
As lightnings flash across the vale,
So down to hell with Doneraile;
The fate of Pompey at Pharsale,
Be that the curse of Doneraile.
May beef or mutton, lamb or veal,
Be never found in Doneraile,
But garlic soup and scurvy kale,
Be still the food for Doneraile,
And forward as the creeping snail,
Industry be at Doneraile.
May Heaven a chosen curse entail,
On ragged, rotten Doneraile.
May sun and moon forever fail
To beam their lights on Doneraile;
May every pestilential gale
Blast that cursed spot called Doneraile;
May no sweet cuckoo, thrush or quail
Be ever heard in Doneraile;
May patriots, kings, and commonweal
Despise and harass Doneraile;
May every post, gazette and mail,
Sad tidings bring of Doneraile;
May vengeance fall on head and tail,
From north to south of Doneraile
May profit small, and tardy sale,
Still damp the trade of Doneraile:
May fame resound a dismal tale,
Whene’er she lights on Doneraile;
May Egypt’s plagues at once prevail,
To thin the knaves at Doneraile;
May frost and snow, and sleet and hail,
Benumb each joint in Doneraile;
May wolves and bloodhounds race and trail
The cursed crew of Doneraile;
May Oscar with his fiery flail
To atoms thrash all Doneraile;
May every mischief, fresh and stale,
May all from Belfast to Kinsale,
Scoff, curse and damn you, Doneraile.
May neither flour nor oatmeal,
Be found or known in Doneraile;
May want and woe each joy curtail,
That e’er was known in Doneraile;
May no one coffin want a nail,
That wraps a rogue in Doneraile;
May all the thieves who rob and steal,
The gallows meet in Doneraile;
May all the sons of Gramaweal,
Blush at the thieves of Doneraile;
May mischief big as Norway whale,
O’erwhelm the knaves of Doneraile;
May curses whole and by retail,
Pour with full force on Doneraile;
May every transport wont to sail,
A convict bring from Doneraile;
May every churn and milking-pail
Fall dry to staves in Doneraile;
May cold and hunger still congeal,
The stagnant blood of Doneraile;
May every hour new woes reveal,
That hell reserves for Doneraile;
May every chosen ill prevail
O’er all the imps of Doneraile;
May th’ inquisition straight impale,
The Rapparees of Doneraile;
May curse of Sodom now prevail,
And sink to ashes Doneraile;
May Charon’s boat triumphant sail,
Completely manned from Doneraile;
Oh! may my couplet never fail
To find new curse for Doneraile;
And may grim Pluto’s inner jail
Forever groan with Doneraile.
Hiberniana.
Maria Edgeworth, in her _Essay on Irish Bulls_, remarks that “the
difficulty of selecting from the vulgar herd a bull that shall be
entitled to the prize, from the united merits of pre-eminent absurdity
and indisputable originality, is greater than hasty judges may imagine.”
Very true; but if the prize were offered for a _batch_ of Irish
diamonds, we think the following copy of a letter written during the
Rebellion, by S——, an Irish member of Parliament, to his friend in
London, would present the strongest claim:—
“My dear Sir:—Having now a little peace and quietness, I sit down to
inform you of the dreadful bustle and confusion we are in from these
blood-thirsty rebels, most of whom are (thank God!) killed and
dispersed. We are in a pretty mess; can get nothing to eat, nor wine
to drink, except whiskey; and when we sit down to dinner, we are
obliged to keep both hands armed. Whilst I write this, I hold a pistol
in each hand and a sword in the other. I concluded in the beginning
that this would be the end of it; and I see I was right, for it is not
half over yet. At present there are such goings on, that every thing
is at a stand still. I should have answered your letter a fortnight
ago, but I did not receive it till this morning. Indeed, hardly a mail
arrives safe without being robbed. No longer ago than yesterday the
coach with the mails from Dublin was robbed near this town: the bags
had been judiciously left behind for fear of accident, and by good
luck there was nobody in it but two outside passengers who had nothing
for thieves to take. Last Thursday notice was given that a gang of
rebels were advancing here under the French standard; but they had no
colors, nor any drums except bagpipes. Immediately every man in the
place, including women and children, ran out to meet them. We soon
found our force much too little; and we were far too near to think of
retreating. Death was in every face; but to it we went, and by the
time half our little party were killed we began to be all alive again.
Fortunately, the rebels had no guns, except pistols, cutlasses, and
pikes; and as we had plenty of guns and ammunition, we put them all to
the sword. Not a soul of them escaped, except some that were drowned
in an adjacent bog; and in a very short time nothing was to be heard
but silence. Their uniforms were all different colors, but mostly
green. After the action, we went to rummage a sort of camp which they
had left behind them. All we found was a few pikes without heads, a
parcel of empty bottles full of water, and a bundle of French
commissions filled up with Irish names. Troops are now stationed all
around the country, which exactly squares with my ideas. I have only
time to add that I am in great haste.
“Yours truly, ——.
“P. S.—If you do not receive this, of course it must have miscarried:
therefore I beg you will write and let me know.”
Miss Edgeworth says, further, that “many bulls, reputed to be bred and
born in Ireland, are of foreign extraction; and many more, supposed to
be unrivalled in their kind, may be matched in all their capital
points.” To prove this, she cites numerous examples of well-known bulls,
with their foreign prototypes, not only English and Continental, but
even Oriental and ancient. Among the parallels of familiar bulls to be
found nearer our American home since the skillful defender of Erin’s
naïveté wrote her Essay, one of the best is an economical method of
erecting a new jail:—
The following resolutions were passed by the Board of Councilmen in
Canton, Mississippi:—
1. Resolved, by this Council, that we build a new Jail.
2. Resolved, that the new Jail be built out of the materials of the old
Jail.
3. Resolved, that the old Jail be used until the new Jail is finished.
It was a _Frenchman_ who, in making a classified catalogue of books,
placed Miss Edgeworth’s Essay in the list of works on _Natural History_;
and it was a _Scotchman_ who, having purchased a copy of it, pronounced
her “a puir silly body, to write a book on bulls, and no ane word o’
horned cattle in it a’, forbye the bit beastie [the vignette] at the
beginning.” Examples from the common walks of life and from periodical
literature may readily be multiplied to show that these phraseological
peculiarities are not to be exclusively attributed to Ireland. But if we
adopt Coleridge’s definition, which is, that “a bull consists in a
mental juxtaposition of incongruous ideas, with the sensation, but
without the sense, of connection,” we shall find frequent instances of
its occurrence among standard authors. Take the following blunders, for
examples:—
Adam, the goodliest man of men _since born
His sons_—the fairest of _her daughters_, Eve.
_Milton’s Paradise Lost._
The loveliest pair
That ever _since_ in love’s embraces met.—_Ib. B. iv._
Swift, being an Irishman, of course abounds in blunders, some of them of
the most ludicrous character; but we should hardly expect to find in the
elegant Addison, the model of classical English, such a singular
inaccuracy as the following:—
So the _pure limpid_ stream, when _foul with stains_
Of rushing torrents and descending rains.—_Cato._
He must have _seen_ in a blaze of _blinding_ light (this is “ipsis
Hibernis Hibernior”) the vanity and evil, the folly and madness, of the
worldly or selfish, and the grandeur and truth of the disinterested and
Christian life.—_Gilfillan’s Bards of the Bible._
The real and peculiar magnificence of St. Petersburgh consists _in thus
sailing apparently upon the bosom of the ocean, into a city of
palaces_.—_Sedgwick’s Letters from the Baltic._
The astonished Yahoo, smoking, as well as he could, a cigar, _with which
he had filled all his pockets_.—_Warren’s Ten Thousand a Year._
The following specimens are from the works of Dr. Johnson:—
Every monumental inscription should be in Latin; for that being a _dead_
language, it will always _live_.
Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled,
But still fought on, _nor knew that he was dead_.
Shakspeare has not only _shown_ human nature as it is, but as it would
be found _in situations to which it cannot be exposed_.
Turn from the glittering bribe your scornful eye,
Nor sell for gold _what gold can never buy_.
These observations were made _by favor of a contrary wind_.
The next two are from Pope:—
Eight callow _infants_ filled the mossy nest,
_Herself the ninth_.
When first young Maro, in his noble mind,
A work _t’ outlast immortal Rome designed_.
Shakspeare says,—
I will strive with things impossible,
Yea, _get the better of them_.—_Julius Cæsar_, ii. 1.
A _horrid silence_ first _invades the ear_.—§Dryden.§
Beneath a mountain’s brow, the most remote
And _inaccessible_ by _shepherds trod_.—§Home§: _Douglass_.
In the Irish Bank-bill passed by Parliament in June, 1808, is a clause
providing that the profits shall be _equally_ divided and the _residue
go to the Governor_.
Sir Richard Steele, being asked why his countrymen were so addicted to
making bulls, said he believed there must be something in the air of
Ireland, adding, “I dare say _if an Englishman were born there_ he would
do the same.”
Mr. Cunningham, to whom we are indebted for the interesting notes to
Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” pronounces his author _the most
distinguished of his cotemporaries_.
Sir Walter Scott perpetrates a curious blunder in one of his novels, in
making certain of his characters behold a sunset over the waters of a
seaport on the _eastern_ coast of Scotland.
The following occurs in Dr. Latham’s _English Language_. Speaking of the
genitive or possessive case, he says,—
“In the plural number, however, it is rare; so rare, indeed, that
whenever the plural ends in s (as it always does) there is no genitive.”
Byron says,—
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison _on each hand_.
(He meant a palace on one hand, and a prison on the other.)
Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines a _garret_ as “a room on the
highest floor in the house,” and a _cock-loft_ as “the room over the
garret.”
For the sake of comparison, we recur to the favorite pasture of the
genuine thorough-bred animal:—
An Irish member of Parliament, speaking of a certain minister’s
well-known love of money, observed, “Let not the honorable member
express a contempt for money,—for if there is any one office that
glitters in the eyes of the honorable member, it is that of
purse-bearer: a pension to him is a compendium of all the cardinal
virtues. All his statesmanship is comprehended in the art of taxing; and
for good, better, and best, in the scale of human nature, he invariably
reads pence, shillings, and pounds. I verily believe,” continued the
orator, rising to the height of his conception, “that if the honorable
gentleman were an undertaker, it would be the delight of his heart to
see all mankind seized with a common mortality, that he might have the
benefit of the general burial, and provide scarfs and hat-bands for _the
survivors_.”
The manager of a provincial theatre, finding upon one occasion but three
persons in attendance, made the following address:—“Ladies and
gentlemen—as there is nobody here, I’ll dismiss you all. The
performances of this night will not be performed; but _they will be
repeated_ to-morrow evening.”
A Hibernian gentleman, when told by his nephew that he had just entered
college with a view to the church, said, “I hope that I may live to hear
you preach my funeral sermon.”
An Irishman, quarrelling with an Englishman, told him if he didn’t hold
his tongue, he would break his impenetrable head, and let the brains out
of his empty skull.
“My dear, come in and go to bed,” said the wife of a jolly son of Erin,
who had just returned from the fair in a decidedly how-come-you-so
state: “you must be dreadful tired, sure, with your long walk of six
miles.” “Arrah! get away with your nonsense,” said Pat: “it wasn’t the
_length_ of the way, at all, that fatigued me: ’twas the _breadth_ of
it.”
A poor Irishman offered an old saucepan for sale. His children gathered
around him and inquired why he parted with it. “Ah, me honeys,” he
answered, “I would not be afther parting with it but for a little money
to buy something to put in it.”
A young Irishman who had married when about nineteen years of age,
complaining of the difficulties to which his early marriage subjected
him, said he would never marry so young again if he lived to be as ould
as Methuselah.
In an Irish provincial paper is the following notice:—Whereas Patrick
O’Connor lately left his lodgings, this is to give notice that if he
does not return immediately and pay for the same, he will be advertised.
“Has your sister got a son or a daughter?” asked an Irishman of a
friend. “Upon my life,” was the reply, “I don’t know yet whether I’m an
_uncle_ or _aunt_.”
“I was going,” said an Irishman, “over Westminster Bridge the other day,
and I met Pat Hewins. ‘Hewins,’ says I, ‘how are you?’ ‘Pretty well,’
says he, ‘thank you, Donnelly.’ ‘Donnelly!’ says I: ‘that’s not _my_
name.’ ‘Faith, no more is mine Hewins,’ says he. So we looked at each
other again, and sure it turned out to be nayther of us; and where’s the
bull of _that_, now?”
“India, my boy,” said an Irish officer to a friend on his arrival at
Calcutta, “is the finest climate under the sun; but a lot of young
fellows come out here and they drink and they eat, and they drink and
they die: and then they write home to their parents a pack of lies, and
say it’s the climate that has killed them.”
In the perusal of a very solid book on the progress of the
ecclesiastical differences of Ireland, written by a native of that
country, after a good deal of tedious and vexatious matter, the reader’s
complacency is restored by an artless statement how an eminent person
“abandoned the errors of the church of Rome, and adopted those of the
church of England.”
Here is an American Hibernicism, which is entitled to full
recognition:—Among the things that Wells & Fargo’s Express is not
responsible for as carriers is one couched in the following language in
their regulations: “Not for any loss or damage by fire, _the acts of
God_, or of Indians, _or any other public enemies of the government_.”
George Selwyn once declared in company that a lady could not write a
letter without adding a _postscript_. A lady present replied, “The next
letter that you receive from _me_, Mr. Selwyn, will prove that you are
wrong.” Accordingly he received one from her the next day, in which,
after her signature was the following:—
“P. S. Who is right, now, you or I?”
The two subjoined parliamentary utterances are worthy to have emanated
from Sir Boyle Roche:—
“Mr. Speaker, I boldly answer in the affirmative—No.”
“Mr. Speaker, if I have any prejudice against the honorable member, it
is in his favor.”
A PAIR OF BULLS.
When my lord he came wooing to Miss Ann Thrope,
He was then a “Childe” from school;
He paid his addresses in a trope,
And called her his sweet bul-bul:
But she knew not, in the modern scale,
That _a couple of bulls_ was a _nightingale_.
Blunders.
SLIPS OF THE PRESS.
Lord Brougham was fond of relating an instance which was no joke to the
victim of it. A bishop, at one of his country visitations, found
occasion to complain of the deplorable state of a certain church, the
roof of which was evidently anything but water-tight; after rating those
concerned for their neglect, his lordship finished by declaring
emphatically that he would not visit the _damp old church_ again until
it was put in decent order. His horror may be imagined when he
discovered himself reported in the local journal as having declared: “I
shall not visit this damned old church again.” The bishop lost no time
in calling the editor’s attention to the mistake; whereupon that worthy
set himself right with his readers by stating that he willingly gave
publicity to his lordship’s explanation, but he had every confidence in
the accuracy of his reporter. The editor of an evening paper could
hardly have had similar confidence in his subordinate when the latter
caused his journal to record that a prisoner had been sentenced to “four
months imprisonment in the House of Commons!” In this case, we fancy the
reporter must have been in the same exhilarated condition as his
American brother, who ended his account of a city banquet with the frank
admission: “It is not distinctly remembered by anybody present who made
the last speech!”
In a poem on the “Milton Gallery,” by Amos Cottle, the poet, describing
the pictures of Fuseli, says:—
“The lubber fiend outstretched the chimney near,
Or sad Ulysses on the larboard Steer.”
Ulysses steered to the larboard to shun Charybdis, but the compositor
makes him get upon the back of the bullock, the left one in the drove!
After all, however, he only interprets the text literally. “Steer,” as a
substantive, has no other meaning than bullock. The substantive of the
verb “to steer” is steerage. “He that hath the steerage of my course,”
says Shakspeare. The compositor evidently understood that Ulysses rode
an ox; he would hardly else have spelt Steer with a capital S.
The following paragraphs, intended to have been printed separately, in a
Paris evening paper, were by some blunder so arranged that they read
consecutively:—
Doctor X. has been appointed head physician to the Hospital de la
Charite. Orders have been issued by the authorities for the immediate
extension of the Cemetery of Mont Parnasse. The works are being executed
with the utmost dispatch.
The old story of Dr. Mudge furnishes one of the most curious cases of
typographical accident on record. The Doctor had been presented with a
gold-headed cane, and the same week a patent pig-killing and
sausage-making machine had been tried at a factory in the place of which
he was pastor. The writer of a report of the presentation, and a
description of the machine, for the local paper, is thus made to “mix
things miscellaneously:”—
“The inconsiderate Caxtonian who made up the forms of the paper, got the
two locals mixed up in a frightful manner; and when we went to press,
something like this was the appalling result: Several of the Rev. Dr.
Mudge’s friends called upon him yesterday, and after a brief
conversation, the unsuspicious pig was seized by the hind legs, and slid
along a beam until he reached the hot water tank. His friends explained
the object of their visit, and presented him with a very handsome
gold-headed butcher, who grabbed him by the tail, swung him round, slit
his throat from ear to ear, and in less than a minute the carcass was in
the water. Thereupon he came forward, and said that there were times
when the feelings overpowered one; and for that reason he would not
attempt to do more than thank those around him for the manner in which
such a huge animal was cut into fragments was simply astonishing. The
Doctor concluded his remarks when the machine seized him, and in less
time than it takes to write it, the pig was cut into fragments and
worked up into delicious sausages. The occasion will long be remembered
by the Doctor’s friends as one of the most delightful of their lives.
The best pieces can be procured for tenpence a pound; and we are sure
that those who have sat so long under his ministry will rejoice that he
has been treated so handsomely.”
SLIPS OF THE TELEGRAPH.
The Prior of the Dominican Monastery of Voreppe, in France, recently
received the following telegram:—“Father Ligier is dead (_est mort_); we
shall arrive by train to-morrow, at three.—§Laboree§.” The ecclesiastic,
being convinced that the deceased, who was highly esteemed in the
locality, had selected it for his last resting-place, made every
preparation. A grave was dug, a hearse provided, and with the monks, a
sorrowing crowd waited at the station for the train. It arrived, and, to
the astonishment of every one, the supposed defunct alighted, well and
hearty. The matter was soon explained. The reverend father, returning
from a visit to Rome, where he had been accompanied by the priest
Laboree, stopped to visit some monks at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, and
requested his companion to telegraph the return to his monastery. The
message sent was: “Father Ligier and I (_et moi_) will arrive,” &c. The
clerks inadvertently changed the _et moi_ into _est mort_, with what
result has already been told.
A firm in Cincinnati telegraphed to a correspondent in Cleveland, as
follows:—“Cranberries rising. Send immediately one hundred barrels _per_
Simmons.” Mr. Simmons was the agent of the Cincinnati house. The
telegraph ran the last two words together, and shortly after, the firm
were astonished to find delivered at their store one hundred barrels of
persimmons.
“SERIAL” INCONSISTENCY.
In Mrs. Oliphant’s interesting story of “Ombra,” there is a curious
contradiction between the end of Chapter XLV. and the beginning of
Chapter XLVI. A domestic picture is given, an interior, with the
characters thus disposed:—
“One evening, when Kate was at home, and, as usual, abstracted over a
book in a corner; when the Berties were in full possession, one bending
over Ombra at the piano, one talking earnestly to her mother, Francesca
suddenly threw the door open, with a vehemence quite unusual to her, and
without a word of warning—without even the announcement of his name to
put them on their guard—Mr. Courtenay walked into the room.”
Thus ends Chapter XLV., and thus opens Chapter XLVI.:—
“The scene which Mr. Courtenay saw when he walked in suddenly to Mrs.
Anderson’s drawing-room, was one so different in every way from what he
had expected that he was for the first moment as much taken aback as any
of the company. * * * The drawing-room, which looked out on the Lung’
Arno, was not small, but it was rather low—not much more than an
_entresol_. There was a bright wood-fire on the hearth, and near it,
with a couple of candles on a small table by her side, sat Kate,
distinctly isolated from the rest, and working diligently, scarcely
raising her eyes from her needle-work. The centre-table was drawn a
little aside, for Ombra had found it too warm in front of the fire; and
about this the other four were grouped—Mrs. Anderson, working too, was
talking to one of the young men; the other was holding silk, which Ombra
was winding; a thorough English domestic party—such a family group as
should have gladdened virtuous eyes to see. Mr. Courtenay looked at it
with indescribable surprise.”
MISTAKES OF MISAPPREHENSION.
Soon after Louis XIV. appointed Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, he inquired
how the citizens liked their new Bishop, to which they answered,
doubtfully: “Pretty well.” “But,” asked his Majesty, “what fault do you
find with him?” “To say the truth,” they replied, “we should have
preferred a Bishop who had finished his education; for, whenever we wait
upon him, we are told that he is at his studies.”
There lived in the west of England, a few years since, an enthusiastic
geologist, who was presiding judge of the Quarter Sessions. A farmer,
who had seen him presiding on the bench, overtook him shortly
afterwards, while seated by the roadside on a heap of stones, which he
was busily breaking in search of fossils. The farmer reined up his
horse, gazed at him for a minute, shook his head in commiseration of the
mutability of human things, then exclaimed, in mingled tones of pity and
surprise: “What, your Honor! be you come to this a’ ready?”
Cottle, in his _Life of Coleridge_, relates an essay at grooming on the
part of that poet and Wordsworth. The servants being absent, the poets
had attempted to stable their horse, and were almost successful. With
the collar, however, a difficulty arose. After Wordsworth had
relinquished as impracticable the effort to get it over the animal’s
head, Coleridge tried his hand, but showed no more grooming skill than
his predecessor; for, after twisting the poor horse’s neck almost to
strangulation, and to the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the
useless task, pronouncing that the horse’s head must have grown (gout or
dropsy) since the collar was put on, for he said it was downright
impossibility for such a huge _os frontis_ to pass through so narrow a
collar! Just at this moment a servant girl came up, and turning the
collar upside down, slipped it off without trouble, to the great
humility and wonderment of the poets, who were each satisfied afresh
that there were heights of knowledge to which they had not attained.
BLUNDERS OF TRANSLATORS.
A most entertaining volume might be made from the amusing and often
absurd blunders perpetrated by translators. For instance, Miss Cooper
tells us that the person who first rendered her father’s novel, “The
Spy,” into the French tongue, among other mistakes, made the
following:—Readers of the Revolutionary romance will remember that the
residence of the Wharton family was called “The Locusts.” The translator
referred to his dictionary, and found the rendering of the word to be
_Les Sauterelles_, “The Grasshoppers.” But when he found one of the
dragoons represented as tying his horse to one of the locusts on the
lawn, it would appear as if he might have been at fault. Nothing
daunted, however, but taking it for granted that American grasshoppers
must be of gigantic dimensions, he gravely informs his readers that the
cavalryman secured his charger by fastening the bridle to one of the
grasshoppers before the door, apparently standing there for that
purpose.
Much laughter has deservedly been raised at French _littérateurs_ who
professed to be “_doctus utriusque linguæ_.” Cibber’s play of “Love’s
Last Shift” was translated by a Frenchman who spoke “Inglees” as “_Le
Dernière Chemise de l’Amour_;” Congreve’s “Mourning Bride,” by another,
as “_L’Epouse du Matin_;” and a French scholar recently included among
his catalogue of works on natural history the essay on “Irish Bulls,” by
the Edgeworths. Jules Janin, the great critic, in his translation of
“Macbeth,” renders “Out, out, brief candle!” as “_Sortez, chandelle_.”
And another, who _traduced_ Shakspeare, commits an equally amusing
blunder in rendering Northumberland’s famous speech in “Henry IV.” In
the passage
“Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, _so woe-begone_.”
the words italicized are rendered, “_ainsi douleur! va-t’en!_”—“so
grief, be off with you!” Voltaire did no better with his translations of
several of Shakspeare’s plays; in one of which the “myriad-minded” makes
a character renounce all claim to a doubtful inheritance, with an avowed
resolution to _carve_ for himself a fortune with his sword. Voltaire put
it in French, which, retranslated, reads, “What care I for lands? With
my sword I will make a fortune cutting meat.”
The late centennial celebration of Shakspeare’s birthday in England
called forth numerous publications relating to the works and times of
the immortal dramatist. Among them was a new translation of “Hamlet,” by
the Chevalier de Chatelain, who also translated Halleck’s “Alnwick
Castle,” “Burns,” and “Marco Bozzaris.” Our readers are, of course,
familiar with the following lines:—
“How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! Oh, fie! ’tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely.”
The chevalier, less successful with the English than with the modern
American poet, thus renders them into French:—
“_Fi donc! fi donc! Ces jours qu’on nous montrons superbes
Sont un vilain jardin rempli de folles herbes,
Qui donnent de l’ivraie, et certes rien de plus
Si ce n’est les engines du cholera-morbus._”
Some of the funniest mistranslations on record have been bequeathed by
Victor Hugo. Most readers will remember his rendering of a peajacket as
_paletot a la purée de pois_, and of the Frith of Forth as _le cinquième
de le quatrième_.
The French translator of one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, knowing
nothing of that familiar name for toasted cheese, “a Welsh rabbit,”
rendered it literally by “_un lapin du pays de Galles_,” or a rabbit of
Wales, and then informed his readers in a foot-note that the lapins or
rabbits of Wales have a very superior flavor, and are very tender, which
cause them to be in great request in England and Scotland. A writer in
the Neapolitan paper, _Il Giornale della due Sicilie_, was more
ingenuous. He was translating from an English paper the account of a man
who killed his wife by striking her with a poker; and at the end of his
story the honest journalist, with a modesty unusual in his craft, said,
“_Non sappiamo per certo se questo pokero Inglese sia uno strumento
domestico o bensi chirurgico_”—“We are not quite certain whether this
English poker [_pokero_] be a domestic or surgical instrument.”
In the course of the famous Tichborne trial, the claimant, when asked
the meaning of _laus Deo semper_, said it meant “the laws of God
forever, or permanently.” An answer not less ludicrous was given by a
French Sir Roger, who, on being asked to translate _numero Deus impare
gaudet_, unhesitatingly replied, “Le numéro deux se réjouit d’être
impair.”
Some of the translations of the Italian operas in the librettos, which
are sold to the audience, are ludicrous enough. Take, for instance, the
lines in _Roberto il diavolo_,—
Egli era, dicessi
Abitatore
Del tristo Imperio.
Which some smart interpreter rendered—
“For they say he was
A citizen of the black emporium.”
Misquotations.
In Mr Collins’ account of Homer’s Iliad, in Blackwood’s _Ancient
Classics for English Readers_, occurs the following:—
... “The spirit horsemen who rallied the Roman line in the great fight
with the Latins at Lake Regillus, the shining stars who lighted the
sailors on the stormy Adriatic, and gave their names to the ship in
which St. Paul was cast away.”
If the reader will take the trouble to refer to the _Acts of the
Apostles_, xxviii. 11. he will find, that the ship of Alexandria, “whose
sign was Castor and Pollux,” was not the vessel in which St. Paul was
shipwrecked near Malta, but the ship in which he safely voyaged from the
island of “the barbarous people” to Puteoli for Rome.
The misquotations of Sir Walter Scott have frequently attracted
attention. One of the most unpardonable occurs in _The Heart of
Mid-Lothian_, chapter xlvii.:—
“The least of these considerations always inclined Butler to measures of
conciliation, in so far as he could accede to them, without compromising
principle; and thus our simple and unpretending heroine had the merit of
those peacemakers, to whom it is pronounced as a benediction, that they
shall _inherit the earth_.”
On turning to the gospel of Matthew, v. 9, we find that the benediction
pronounced upon the _peacemakers_ was that “they shall be called the
children of God.” It is the meek who are to “inherit the earth,” (ver.
5).
Another of Scott’s blunders occurs in _Ivanhoe_. The date of this story
“refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard I.” (chap.
i.) Richard died in 1199. Nevertheless, Sir Walter makes the disguised
Wamba style himself “a poor brother of the Order of St. Francis,”
although the Order was not founded until 1210, and, of course, the
saintship of the founder had a still later date.
Again in _Waverley_ (chap. xii.) he puts into the mouth of Baron
Bradwardine the words “nor would I utterly accede to the objurgation of
the _younger Plinius_ in the fourteenth book of his _Historia
Naturalis_.” The great Roman naturalist whose thirty-seven books on
Natural History were written eighteen centuries ago, was the _Elder_
Pliny.
Alison, in his _History of Europe_, speaks of the Grand Duke Constantine
of Russia, the Viceroy of Poland, as the son of the emperor Paul I. and
the celebrated empress Catherine. This Catherine was the _mother_ of
Paul, and wife of Peter III., Paul’s father. Constantine’s mother, i.e.
Paul’s wife, was a princess of Würtemberg.
Another of Archibald’s singular errors is his translation of _droit du
timbre_ (stamp duty) into “timber duties.” This is about as sensible as
his quoting with approbation from De Tocqueville the false and foolish
assertion that the American people are “regardless of historical records
or monuments,” and that future historians will be obliged “to write the
history of the present generation from the archives of other lands.”
Such ignorance of American scholarship and research and of the vigorous
vitality of American Historical Societies, is unpardonable.
Disraeli thus refers to a curious blunder in Nagler’s
_Künstler-Lexicon_, concerning the artist Cruikshank:—
Some years ago the relative merits of George Cruikshank and his brother
were contrasted in an English Review, and George was spoken of as “the
real Simon Pure”—the first who had illustrated “Scenes of Life in
London.” Unaware of the real significance of a quotation which has
become proverbial among us, the German editor begins his memoir of
Cruikshank by gravely informing us that he is an English artist “whose
real name is Simon Pure!” Turning to the artists under letter P. we
accordingly read, “Pure (Simon), the real name of the celebrated
caricaturist, George Cruikshank.”
This will remind some of our readers of the index which refers to Mr.
Justice Best. A searcher after something or other, running his eye down
the index through letter B, arrived at the reference “Best—Mr.
Justice—his great mind.” Desiring to be better acquainted with the
particulars of this assertion, he turned to the page referred to, and
there found, to his entire satisfaction, “Mr. Justice Best said he had a
great mind to commit the witness for prevarication.”
In the fourth canto of _Don Juan_, stanza CX., Byron says:
Oh, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,
As some one somewhere sings about the sky.
Byron was mistaken in thinking his quotation referred to the sky. The
line is in Southey’s _Madoc_, canto V., and describes fish. A note
intimates that dolphins are meant.
“Though in blue ocean seen,
Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,
In all its rich variety of shades,
Suffused with glowing gold.”
Fabrications.
THE DESCRIPTION OF THE SAVIOUR’S PERSON.
Chalmers charges upon Huarte (a native of French Navarre) the
publication (as genuine and authentic) of the Letter of Lentulus (the
Proconsul of Jerusalem) to the Roman Senate, describing the person and
manners of our Lord, and for which, of course, he deservedly censures
him. A copy of the letter will be found in the chapter of this volume
headed I. H. S.
A CLEVER HOAX ON SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The following passage occurs in one of Sir Walter Scott’s letters to
Southey, written in September, 1810:—
A witty rogue, the other day, who sent me a letter subscribed
“Detector,” proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida’s
Latin poems, which I had never seen or heard of; yet there was so
strong a general resemblance as fairly to authorize “Detector’s”
suspicion.
Lockhart remarks thereupon:—
The lines of Vida which “Detector” had enclosed to Scott, as the
obvious original of the address to “Woman,” in _Marmion_, closing
with—
“When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!”
end as follows: and it must be owned that if Vida had really written
them, a more extraordinary example of casual coincidence could never
have been pointed out.
“Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor,
Fungeris angelico sola ministerio.”
“Detector’s” reference is Vida _ad Eranen_, El. ii. v. 21; but it is
almost needless to add there are no such lines, and no piece bearing
such a title in Vida’s works.
It was afterwards ascertained that the waggish author of this hoax was a
Cambridge scholar named Drury.
THE MOON HOAX.
The authorship of the “Moon Hoax,” an elaborate description (which was
first printed in the New York _Sun_) of men, animals, &c., purporting to
have been discovered in the moon by Sir John Herschel, is now disputed.
Until recently it was conceded to R. A. Locke, now dead; but in the
_Budget of Paradoxes_, by Professor De Morgan, the authorship is
confidently ascribed to M. Nicollet, a French savant, once well known in
this country, and employed by the government in the scientific
exploration of the West. He died in the government service. Professor De
Morgan writes as follows:—“There is no doubt that it (the ‘Moon Hoax’)
was produced in the United States by M. Nicollet, an astronomer of
Paris, and a fugitive of some kind. About him I have heard two stories.
First, that he fled to America with funds not his own, and that this
book was a mere device to raise the wind. Secondly, that he was a
_protegé_ of Laplace, and of the Polignac party, and also an outspoken
man. The moon story was written and sent to France, with the intention
of entrapping M. Arago—Nicollet’s especial foe—in the belief of it.” It
seems not to have occurred to the sage and critical professor that a man
who could steal funds, would have little scruple about stealing a
literary production. It is, hence, more than probable that Nicollet
translated the article immediately after its appearance in the New York
_Sun_, and afterwards sent it to France as his own.
A LITERARY SELL.
A story is told in literary circles in New York of an enthusiastic
Carlyle Club of ladies and gentlemen of Cambridge and Boston, who meet
periodically to read their chosen prophet and worship at his shrine. One
of them, not imbued with sufficient reverence to teach him better,
feloniously contrived to have the reader on a certain evening insert
something of his own composition into the reading, as though it came
from the printed page and Carlyle’s hand. The interpolation was as
follows:—“Word-spluttering organisms, in whatever place—not with
Plutarchean comparison, apologies, nay rather, without any such
apologies—but born into the world to say the thought that is in
them—antiphoreal, too, in the main—butchers, bakers, and
candlestick-makers; men, women, pedants. Verily, with you, too, it’s now
or never.” This paragraph produced great applause among the devotees of
Carlyle. The leader of the Club especially, a learned and metaphysical
pundit, who is the great American apostle of Carlyle, said nothing
Carlyle had ever written was more representative and happy. The actual
author of it attempted to ask some questions about it, and elicit
explanations. These were not wanting, and, where they failed, the
stupidity of the questioner was the substitute presumption, delicately
hinted. It reminds us of Dr. Franklin’s incident in his life of Abraham,
which he used to read off with great gravity, apparently from an open
Bible, though actually from his own memory. This parable is probably the
most perfect imitation of Scripture style extant.
MRS. HEMANS’s “FORGERIES.”
A gentleman having requested Mrs. Hemans to furnish him with some
authorities from the old English writers for the use of the word “barb,”
as applied to a steed, she very shortly supplied him with the following
imitations, which she was in the habit of calling her “forgeries.” The
mystification succeeded completely, and was not discovered for some time
afterwards:—
The warrior donn’d his well-worn garb
And proudly waved his crest;
Be mounted on his jet-black _barb_
And put his lance in rest.
§Percy§, _Reliques_.
Eftsoons the wight withouten more delay
Spurr’d his brown _barb_, and rode full swiftly on his way.
§Spenser.§
Hark! was it not the trumpet’s voice I heard?
The soul of battle is awake within me!
The fate of ages and of empires hangs
On this dread hour. Why am I not in arms?
Bring my good lance, caparison my steed!
Base, idle grooms! are ye in league against me?
Haste with my _barb_, or by the holy saints,
Ye shall not live to saddle him to-morrow.
§Massinger.§
No sooner had the pearl-shedding fingers of the young Aurora
tremulously unlocked the oriental portals of the golden horizon, than
the graceful flower of chivalry, and the bright cynosure of ladies
eyes—he of the dazzling breast-plate and swanlike plume—sprang
impatiently from the couch of slumber, and eagerly mounted the noble
_barb_ presented to him by the Emperor of Aspromontania.
§Sir Philip Sidney§, _Arcadia_.
See’st thou yon chief whose presence seems to rule
The storm of battle? Lo! where’er he moves
Death follows. Carnage sits upon his crest—
Fate on his sword is throned—and his white _barb_,
As a proud courser of Apollo’s chariot,
Seems breathing fire.
§Potter§, _Æschylus_.
Oh! bonnie looked my ain true knight,
His _barb_ so proudly reining;
I watched him till my tearfu’ sight
Grew amaist dim wi’ straining.
_Border Minstrelsy._
Why, he can heel the lavolt and wind a fiery _barb_ as well as any
gallant in Christendom. He’s the very pink and mirror of
accomplishment.
§Shakspeare.§
Fair star of beauty’s heaven! to call thee mine,
All other joy’s I joyously would yield;
My knightly crest, my bounding _barb_ resign
For the poor shepherd’s crook and daisied field!
For courts, or camps, no wish my soul would prove,
So thou would’st live with me and be my love.
§Earl of Surrey§, _Poems_.
For thy dear love my weary soul hath grown
Heedless of youthful sports: I seek no more
Or joyous dance, or music’s thrilling tone,
Or joys that once could charm in minstrel lore,
Or knightly tilt where steel-clad champions meet,
Borne on impetuous _barbs_ to bleed at beauty’s feet!
§Shakspeare§, _Sonnets_.
As a warrior clad
In sable arms, like chaos dull and sad,
But mounted on a _barb_ as white
As the fresh new-born light,—
So the black night too soon
Came riding on the bright and silver moon
Whose radiant heavenly ark
Made all the clouds beyond her influence seem
E’en more than doubly dark,
Mourning all widowed of her glorious beam.
§Cowley.§
SHERIDAN’S GREEK.
In _Anecdotes of Impudence_, we find this curious story:—
Lord Belgrave having clenched a speech in the House of Commons with a
long Greek quotation, Sheridan, in reply, admitted the force of the
quotation so far as it went; “but” said he, “if the noble Lord had
proceeded a little farther, and completed the passage, he would have
seen that it applied the other way!” Sheridan then spouted something
_ore rotundo_, which had all the ais, ois, kons, and kois that give the
world assurance of a Greek quotation: upon which Lord Belgrave very
promptly and handsomely complimented the honorable member on his
readiness of recollection, and frankly admitted that the continuation of
the passage had the tendency ascribed to it by Mr. Sheridan, and that he
had overlooked it at the moment when he gave his quotation. On the
breaking up of the House, Fox, who piqued himself on having some Greek,
went up to Sheridan, and said, “Sheridan, how came you to be so ready
with that passage? It certainly is as you state, but I was not aware of
it before you quoted it.” It is unnecessary to observe that there was no
Greek at all in Sheridan’s impromptu.
BALLAD LITERATURE.
John Hill Burton, in his _Book Hunter_, after speaking of the success
with which Surtus imposed upon Sir Walter Scott the spurious ballad of
the _Death of Featherstonhaugh_, which has a place in the _Border
Minstrelsy_, says:—
Altogether, such affairs create an unpleasant uncertainty about the
paternity of that delightful department of literature—our ballad poetry.
Where next are we to be disenchanted? Of the way in which ballads have
come into existence, there is one sad example within my own knowledge.
Some mad young wags, wishing to test the critical powers of an
experienced collector, sent him a new-made ballad, which they had been
enabled to secure only in a fragmentary form. To the surprise of its
fabricator, it was duly printed; but what naturally raised his surprise
to astonishment, and revealed to him a secret, was, that it was no
longer a fragment, but a complete ballad,—the collector, in the course
of his industrious inquiries among the peasantry, having been so
fortunate as to recover the missing fragments! It was a case where
neither could say anything to the other, though Cato might wonder, _quod
non rideret haruspex, haruspicem cum vidisset_. This ballad has been
printed in more than one collection, and admired as an instance of the
inimitable simplicity of the genuine old versions!
* * * * *
Psalmanazar exceeded in powers of deception any of the great impostors
of learning. His island of Formosa was an illusion eminently bold, and
maintained with as much felicity as erudition; and great must have been
that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar,
and fertile the genius which could invent the history of an unknown
people. The deception was only satisfactorily ascertained by his own
penitential confession; he had defied and baffled the most learned.
FRANKLIN’S PARABLE.
Dr. Franklin frequently read for the entertainment of company,
apparently from an open Bible, but actually from memory, the following
chapter in favor of religious toleration, pretendedly quoted from the
Book of Genesis. This story of Abraham and the idolatrous traveler was
given by Franklin to Lord Kaimes as a “Jewish Parable on Persecution,”
and was published by Kaimes in his _Sketches of the History of Man_. It
is traced, not to a Hebrew author, but to a Persian apologue. Bishop
Heber, in referring to the charge of plagiarism raised against Franklin,
says that while it cannot be proved that he gave it to Lord Kaimes as
his own composition, it is “unfortunate for him that his correspondent
evidently appears to have regarded it as his composition; that it had
been published as such in all the editions of Franklin’s collected
works; and that, with all Franklin’s abilities and amiable qualities,
there was a degree of quackery in his character which, in this instance
as well as that of his professional epitaph on himself, has made the
imputation of such a theft more readily received against him, than it
would have been against most other men of equal eminence.”
1. And it came to pass after those things, that Abraham sat in the
door of his tent, about the going down of the sun.
2. And behold a man, bowed with age, came from the way of the
wilderness, leaning on a staff.
3. And Abraham arose, and met him, and said unto him, Turn in, I pray
thee, and warm thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt arise
early on the morrow, and go on thy way.
4. But the man said, Nay, for I will abide under this tree.
5. And Abraham pressed him greatly; so he turned, and they went into
the tent; and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat.
6. And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto
him, Wherefore dost thou not worship the most High God, Creator of
Heaven and Earth?
7. And the man answered and said, I do not worship the God thou
speakest of, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to
myself a God, which abideth always in mine house, and provideth me
with all things.
8. And Abraham’s zeal was kindled against the man, and he arose and
fell upon him, and drove him forth into the wilderness.
9. And at midnight God called unto Abraham, saying, Abraham, where is
the stranger?
10. And Abraham answered and said, Lord, he would not worship Thee,
neither would he call upon Thy name; therefore have I driven him out
from before my face into the wilderness.
11. And God said, Have I borne with him these hundred and ninety and
eight years, and nourished him and clothed him, notwithstanding his
rebellion against Me; and couldst not thou, that art thyself a sinner,
bear with him one night?
12. And Abraham said, Let not the anger of my Lord wax hot against His
servant: Lo, I haved sinned; forgive me, I pray Thee.
13. And he arose, and went forth into the wilderness, and sought
diligently for the man, and found him:
14. And returned with him to his tent: and when he had entreated him
kindly, he sent him away on the morrow with gifts.
15. And God spake again unto Abraham, saying, For this thy sin shall
thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land:
16. But for thy repentance will I deliver them; and they shall come
forth with power, and with gladness of heart, and with much substance.
THE SHAKSPEARE FORGERIES.
In 1795–96 William Henry Ireland perpetrated the remarkable Shakspeare
Forgeries which gave his name such infamous notoriety. The plays of
“Vortigern” and “Henry the Second” were printed in 1799. Several
litterateurs of note were deceived by them, and Sheridan produced the
former at Drury Lane theatre, with John Kemble to take the leading part.
The total failure of the play, conjoined with the attacks of Malone and
others, eventually led to a conviction and forced confession of
Ireland’s dishonesty. For an authentic account of the Shakspeare
Manuscripts see _The Confessions of W. H. Ireland_; Chalmers’ _Apology
for the Believers of the Shakspeare Papers_; Malone’s _Inquiry into the
Authenticity_, &c.; Wilson’s _Shaksperiana_; _Gentleman’s Magazine_,
1796–97; _Eclectic Magazine_, xvi. 476. One of the original manuscripts
of Ireland, that of Henry the Second, has been preserved. The rascal
seems to have felt but little penitence for his fraud.
Interrupted Sentences.
A Judge, reprimanding a criminal, called him a scoundrel. The prisoner
replied: “Sir, I am not as big a scoundrel as your Honor”—here the
culprit stopped, but finally added—“takes me to be.” “Put your words
closer together,” said the Judge.
A lady in a dry goods store, while inspecting some cloths, remarked that
they were “part cotton.” “Madam,” said the shopman, “these goods are as
free from cotton as your breast is”—(the lady frowned) he added—“free
from guile.”
A lady was reading aloud in a circle of friends a letter just received.
She read, “We are in great trouble. Poor Mary has been confined”—and
there she stopped for that was the last word on the sheet, and the next
sheet had dropped and fluttered away, and poor Mary, unmarried, was left
really in a delicate situation until the missing sheet was found, and
the next continued—“to her room for three days, with what, we fear, is
suppressed scarlet fever.”
To all letters soliciting his “subscription” to any object Lord Erskine
had a regular form of reply, viz.:—“Sir, I feel much honored by your
application to me, and beg to subscribe”—here the reader had to turn
over the leaf—“myself your very obedient servant.”
Much more satisfactory to the recipient was Lord Eldon’s note to his
friend, Dr. Fisher, of the Charter House:—“Dear Fisher—I cannot to day
give you the preferment for which you ask. Your sincere friend, Eldon.
(_Turn over_)—I gave it to you yesterday.”
At the Virginia Springs a Western girl name Helen was familiarly known
among her admirers as Little Hel. At a party given in her native city, a
gentleman, somewhat the worse for his supper, approached a very
dignified young lady and asked: “Where’s my little sweetheart? You
know,—Little Hel?” “Sir?” exclaimed the lady, “you certainly forgot
yourself.” “Oh,” said he quickly, “you interrupted me; if you had let me
go on I would have said Little Helen.” “I beg your pardon,” answered the
lady, “when you said Little Hel, I thought you had reached your final
destination.”
The value of an explanation is finely illustrated in the old story of a
king who sent to another king, saying, “Send me a blue pig with a black
tail, or else——.” The other, in high dudgeon at the presumed insult,
replied: “I have not got one, and if I had——.” On this weighty cause
they went to war for many years. After a satiety of glories and
miseries, they finally bethought them that, as their armies and
resources were exhausted, and their kingdoms mutually laid waste, it
might be well enough to consult about the preliminaries of peace; but
before this could be concluded, a diplomatic explanation was first
needed of the insulting language which formed the ground of the quarrel.
“What could you mean,” said the second king to the first, “by saying,
‘Send me a blue pig with a black tail, or else——?’” “Why,” said the
other, “I meant a blue pig with a black tail, or else some other color.
But,” retorted he, “what did you mean by saying, ‘I have not got one,
and if I had——?’” “Why, of course, if I had, I should have sent it.” An
explanation which was entirely satisfactory, and peace was concluded
accordingly.
It is related of Dr. Mansel, that when an undergraduate of Trinity
College, Cambridge, he chanced to call at the rooms of a brother Cantab,
who was absent, but who had left on his table the opening of a poem,
which was in the following lofty strain:—
“The sun’s perpendicular rays
Illumine the depths of the sea,”
Here the flight of the poet, by some accident, stopped short, but
Mansel, who never lost an occasion for fun, completed the stanza in the
following facetious style:—
“And the fishes beginning to sweat,
Cried, ‘Goodness, how hot we shall be.’”
That not very brilliant joke, “to lie—under a mistake,” is sometimes
indulged in by the best writers. Witness the following. Byron says:—
If, after all, there should be some so blind
To their own good this warning to despise,
Led by some tortuosity of mind
Not to believe my verse and their own eyes,
And cry that they the moral cannot find,
I tell him, if a clergyman, he lies;
Should captains the remark, or critics make,
They also lie too—under a mistake.
_Don Juan_, Canto I.
Shelley, in his translation of the _Magico Prodigioso_ of Calderon,
makes Clarin say to Moscon:—
You lie—under a mistake—
For this is the most civil sort of lie
That can be given to a man’s face. I now
Say what I think.
And De Quincey, _Milton versus Southey and Landor_, says:—
You are tempted, after walking round a line (of Milton) threescore
times, to exclaim at last,—Well, if the Fiend himself should rise up
before me at this very moment, in this very study of mine, and say that
no screw was loose in that line, then would I reply: “Sir, with due
submission, you are——.” “What!” suppose the Fiend suddenly to demand in
thunder. “What am I?” “Horribly wrong,” you wish exceedingly to say;
but, recollecting that some people are choleric in argument, you confine
yourself to the polite answer—“That, with deference to his better
education, you conceive him to lie”—that’s a bad word to drop your voice
upon in talking with a friend, and you hasten to add—“under a slight, a
_very_ slight mistake.”
Mr. Montague Mathew, who sometimes amused the House of Commons, and
alarmed the Ministers, with his _brusquerie_, set an ingenious example
to those who are at once forbidden to speak, and yet resolved to express
their thoughts. There was a debate upon the treatment of Ireland, and
Mathew having been called to order for taking unseasonable notice of the
enormities attributed to the British Government, spoke to the following
effect:—“Oh, very well; I shall say nothing then about the
murders—(_Order, order!_)—I shall make no mention of the
massacres—(_Hear, hear! Order!_)—Oh, well; I shall sink all allusion to
the infamous half-hangings—”(_Order, order! Chair!_)
Lord Chatham once began a speech on West Indian affairs, in the House of
Commons, with the words: “Sugar, Mr. Speaker——” and then, observing a
smile to prevail in the audience, he paused, looked fiercely around, and
with a loud voice, rising in its notes, and swelling into vehement
anger, he is said to have pronounced again the word “Sugar!” three
times; and having thus quelled the House, and extinguished every
appearance of levity or laughter, turned around, and disdainfully asked,
“Who will laugh at sugar now?”
Our legislative assemblies, under the most exciting circumstances,
convey no notion of the phrenzied rage which sometimes agitates the
French. Mirabeau interrupted once at every sentence by an insult, with
“slanderer,” “liar,” “assassin,” “rascal,” rattling around him,
addressed the most furious of his assailants in the softest tone he
could assume, saying, “I pause, gentlemen, till these civilities are
exhausted.”
Mr. Marten, M. P., was a great wit. One evening he delivered a furious
philippic against Sir Harry Vane, and when he had buried him beneath a
load of sarcasm, he said:—“But as for young Sir Harry Vane——” and so sat
down. The House was astounded. Several members exclaimed: “What have you
to say against young Sir Harry?” Marten at once rose and added: “Why, if
young Sir Harry lives to be old, _he_ will be old Sir Harry.”
Echo Verse.
Addison says, in No. 59 of the Spectator, “I find likewise in ancient
times the conceit of making an Echo talk sensibly and give rational
answers. If this could be excusable in any writer, it would be in Ovid,
where he introduces the echo as a nymph, before she was worn away into
nothing but a voice. (Met. iii. 379.) The learned Erasmus, though a man
of wit and genius, has composed a dialogue upon this silly kind of
device, and made use of an echo who seems to have been an extraordinary
linguist, for she answers the person she talks with in Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, according as she found the syllables which she was to repeat in
any of those learned languages. Hudibras, in ridicule of this false kind
of wit, has described Bruin bewailing the loss of his bear to a solitary
echo, who is of great use to the poet in several distichs, as she does
not only repeat after him, but helps out his verse and furnishes him
with rhymes.”
Euripides in his Andromeda—a tragedy now lost—had a similar scene, which
Aristophanes makes sport with in his Feast of Ceres. In the Greek
Anthology (iii. 6) is an epigram of Leonidas, and in Book IV. are some
lines by Guaradas, commencing—
α Αχὼ φίλα μοι συγκαταίνεσον τί. β τί;
(Echo! I love: advise me somewhat.—What?)
The French bards in the age of Marot were very fond of this conceit.
Disraeli gives an ingenious specimen in his Curiosities of Literature.
The lines here transcribed are by Joachim de Bellay:—
Qui est l’auteur de ces maux avenus?—Venus.
Qu’étois-je avant d’entrer en ce passage?—Sage.
Qu’est-ce qu’aimer et se plaindre souvent?—Vent.
Dis-moi quelle est celle pour qui j’endure?—Dure.
Sent-elle bien la douleur qui me point?—Point.
In _The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_ there is detailed a masque, which
was enacted for her Majesty’s pleasure, in which a dialogue was held
with Echo “devised, penned, and pronounced by Master Gascoigne, and that
upon a very great sudden.”
Here are three of the verses:—
Well, Echo, tell me yet,
How might I come to see
This comely Queen of whom we talk?
Oh, were she now by thee!
By thee.
By me? oh, were that true,
How might I see her face?
How might I know her from the rest,
Or judge her by her grace?
Her grace.
Well, then, if so mine eyes
Be such as they have been,
Methinks I see among them all
This same should be the Queen.
The Queen.
LONDON BEFORE THE RESTORATION.
What want’st thou that thou art in this sad taking?
a king.
What made him hence move his residing?
siding.
Did any here deny him satisfaction?
faction.
Tell me whereon this strength of faction lies?
on lies.
What didst thou do when King left Parliament?
lament.
What terms wouldst give to gain his company?
any.
But thou wouldst serve him with thy best endeavor?
ever.
What wouldst thou do if thou couldst here behold him?
hold him.
But if he comes not, what becomes of London?
undone.
The following song was written by Addison:—
Echo, tell me, while I wander
O’er this fairy plain to prove him,
If my shepherd still grows fonder,
Ought I in return to love him?
_Echo._—Love him, love him.
If he loves, as is the fashion,
Should I churlishly forsake him?
Or, in pity to his passion,
Fondly to my bosom take him?
_Echo._—Take him, take him.
Thy advice, then, I’ll adhere to,
Since in Cupid’s chains I’ve led him,
And with Henry shall not fear to
Marry, if you answer, “Wed him.”
_Echo._—Wed him, wed him.
PASQUINADE.
The following squib, cited by Mr. Motley in his _Dutch Republic_, from a
MS. collection of pasquils, shows the prevalent opinion in the
Netherlands concerning the parentage of Don John of Austria and the
position of Barbara Blomberg:—
—sed at Austriacum nostrum redeamus—eamus
Hunc Cesaris filium esse satis est notum—notum
Multi tamen de ejus patre dubitavere—_vere_
Cujus ergo filium cum dieunt Itali—_Itali_
Verum mater satis est nota in nostra republica—_publica_
Imo hactenus egit in Brabantiâ ter voere—hoere
Crimen est ne frui amplexu unius Cesaris tam generosi—osi
Pluribus ergo usa in vitâ est—ita est
Seu post Cesaris congressum non vere ante—ante
Tace garrula ne tale quippiam loquare—quare?
Nescis quâ pœna afficiendum dixerit Belgium insigne—igne, &c.
THE GOSPEL ECHO.
_Found in a pew in a church in Scotland, written in a female hand._
True faith producing love to God and man,
Say, Echo, is not this the gospel plan?
_Echo._—The gospel plan!
Must I my faith in Jesus constant show,
By doing good to all, both friend and foe?
_Echo._—Both friend and foe!
When men conspire to hate and treat me ill,
Must I return them good, and love them still?
_Echo._—Love them still!
If they my failings causelessly reveal,
Must I their faults as carefully conceal?
_Echo._—As carefully conceal!
But if my name and character they tear,
And cruel malice too, too plain appear;
And, when I sorrow and affliction know,
They smile, and add unto my cup of woe;
Say, Echo, say, in such peculiar case,
Must I continue still to love and bless?
_Echo._—Still love and bless!
Why, Echo, how is this? Thou’rt sure a dove:
Thy voice will leave me nothing else but love!
_Echo._—Nothing else but love!
Amen, with all my heart, then be it so;
And now to practice I’ll directly go.
_Echo._—Directly go!
This path be mine; and, let who will reject,
My gracious God me surely will protect.
_Echo._—Surely will protect!
Henceforth on him I’ll cast my every care,
And friends and foes, embrace them all in prayer.
_Echo._—Embrace them all in prayer.
ECHO AND THE LOVER.
§Lover.§— Echo! mysterious nymph, declare
Of what you’re made and what you are.
§Echo.§— Air!
§Lover.§— Mid airy cliffs and places high,
Sweet Echo! listening, love, you lie—
§Echo.§— You lie!
§Lover.§— Thou dost resuscitate dead sounds—
Hark! how my voice revives, resounds!
§Echo.§— Zounds!
§Lover.§— I’ll question thee before I go—
Come, answer me more apropos!
§Echo.§— Poh! poh!
§Lover.§— Tell me, fair nymph, if e’er you saw
So sweet a girl as Phœbe Shaw?
§Echo.§— Pshaw!
§Lover.§— Say, what will turn that frisking coney
Into the toils of matrimony?
§Echo.§— Money!
§Lover.§— Has Phœbe not a heavenly brow?
Is it not white as pearl—as snow?
§Echo.§— Ass! no!
§Lover.§— Her eyes! Was ever such a pair?
Are the stars brighter than they are?
§Echo.§— They are!
§Lover.§— Echo, thou liest, but can’t deceive me;
Her eyes eclipse the stars, believe me—
§Echo.§— Leave me!
§Lover.§— But come, thou saucy, pert romancer,
Who is as fair as Phœbe? answer!
§Echo.§— Ann, sir.
ECHO ON WOMAN.
_In the Doric manner._
These verses of Dean Swift were supposed, by the late Mr. Reed, to have
been written either in imitation of Lord Stirling’s _Aurora_, or of a
scene of Robert Taylor’s old play, entitled _The Hog has lost his
Pearl_.
§Shepherd.§— Echo, I ween, will in the woods reply,
And quaintly answer questions. Shall I try?
§Echo.§— Try.
§Shep.§— What must we do our passion to express?
§Echo.§— Press.
§Shep.§— How shall I please her who ne’er loved before?
§Echo.§— Be fore.
§Shep.§— What most moves women when we them address?
§Echo.§— A dress.
§Shep.§— Say, what can keep her chaste whom I adore?
§Echo.§— A door.
§Shep.§— If music softens rocks, love tunes my lyre.
§Echo.§— Liar.
§Shep.§— Then teach me, Echo, how shall I come by her?
§Echo.§— Buy her.
§Shep.§— When bought, no question I shall be her dear.
§Echo.§— Her deer.
§Shep.§— But deer have horns: how must I keep her under?
§Echo.§— Keep her under.
§Shep.§— But what can glad me when she’s laid on bier?
§Echo.§— Beer.
§Shep.§— What, must I do when women will be kind?
§Echo.§— Be kind.
§Shep.§— What must I do when women will be cross?
§Echo.§— Be cross.
§Shep.§— Lord! what is she that can so turn and wind?
§Echo.§— Wind.
§Shep.§— If she be wind, what stills her when she blows?
§Echo.§— Blows.
§Shep.§— But if she bang again, still should I bang her?
§Echo.§— Bang her.
§Shep.§— Is there no way to moderate her anger?
§Echo.§— Hang her.
§Shep.§— Thanks, gentle Echo! right thy answers tell
What woman is, and how to guard her well.
§Echo.§— Guard her well.
BONAPARTE AND THE ECHO.
The original publication of the following exposed the publisher, Palm,
of Nuremberg, to trial by court-martial. He was sentenced to be shot at
Braunau in 1807,—a severe retribution for a few lines of poetry.
§Bona.§—Alone I am in this sequestered spot, not overheard.
§Echo.§—Heard.
§Bona.§—’Sdeath! Who answers me? What being is there nigh?
§Echo.§—I.
§Bona.§—Now I guess! To report my accents Echo has made her task.
§Echo.§—Ask.
§Bona.§—Knowest thou whether London will henceforth continue to resist?
§Echo.§—Resist.
§Bona.§—Whether Vienna and other courts will oppose me always?
§Echo.§—Always.
§Bona.§—Oh, Heaven! what must I expect after so many reverses?
§Echo.§—Reverses.
§Bona.§—What! should I, like coward vile, to compound be reduced?
§Echo.§—Reduced.
§Bona.§—After so many bright exploits be forced to restitution?
§Echo.§—Restitution.
§Bona.§—Restitution of what I’ve got by true heroic feats and martial
address?
§Echo.§—Yes.
§Bona.§—What will be the end of so much toil and trouble?
§Echo.§—Trouble.
§Bona.§—What will become of my people, already too unhappy?
§Echo.§—Happy.
§Bona.§—What should I then be that I think myself immortal?
§Echo.§—Mortal.
§Bona.§—The whole world is filled with the glory of my name, you know.
§Echo.§—No.
§Bona.§—Formerly its fame struck the vast globe with terror.
§Echo.§—Error.
§Bona.§—Sad Echo, begone! I grow infuriate! I die!
§Echo.§—Die![13]
Footnote 13:
Napoleon himself, (_Voice from St. Helena_,) when asked about the
execution of Palm, said, “All that I recollect is, that Palm was
arrested by order of Davoust, and, I believe, tried, condemned, and
shot, for having, while the country was in possession of the French
and under military occupation, not only excited rebellion among the
inhabitants and urged them to rise and massacre the soldiers, but also
attempted to instigate the soldiers themselves to refuse obedience to
their orders and to mutiny against their generals. I _believe_ that he
met with a fair trial.”
EPIGRAM ON THE SYNOD OF DORT.
Dordrechti synodus, nodus; chorus integer, æger;
Conventus, ventus; sessio stramen. Amen!
Referring to the extravagant price demanded in London, in 1831, to see
and hear the Orpheus of violinists, the Sunday Times asked,—
What are they who pay three guineas
To hear a tune of Paganini’s?
§Echo.§—Pack o’ ninnies
THE CRITIC’S EPIGRAMMATIC EXCUSE.
I’d fain praise your poem, but tell me, how is it,
When I cry out, “Exquisite,” Echo cries, “Quiz it!”
ECHO ANSWERING.
What must be done to conduct a newspaper right?—Write.
What is necessary for a farmer to assist him?—System.
What would give a blind man the greatest delight?—Light.
What is the best counsel given by a justice of the peace?—Peace.
Who commit the greatest abominations?—Nations.
What cry is the greatest terrifier?—Fire.
What are some women’s chief exercise?—Sighs.
REMARKABLE ECHOES.
An echo in Woodstock Park, Oxfordshire, repeats seventeen syllables by
day, and twenty by night. One on the banks of the Lago del Lupo, above
the fall of Terni, repeats fifteen. But the most remarkable echo known
is one on the north side of Shipley Church, in Sussex, which distinctly
repeats twenty-one syllables.
In the Abbey church at St. Alban’s is a curious echo. The tick of a
watch may be heard from one end of the church to the other. In
Gloucester Cathedral, a gallery of an octagonal form conveys a whisper
seventy-five feet across the nave.
The following inscription is copied from this gallery:—
Doubt not but God, who sits on high,
Thy inmost secret prayers can hear;
When a dead wall thus cunningly
Conveys soft whispers to the ear.
In the Cathedral of Girgenti, in Sicily, the slightest whisper is borne
with perfect distinctness from the great western door to the cornice
behind the high altar,—a distance of two hundred and fifty feet. By a
most unlucky coincidence, the precise focus of divergence at the former
station was chosen for the place of the confessional. Secrets never
intended for the public ear thus became known, to the dismay of the
confessors, and the scandal of the people, by the resort of the curious
to the opposite point, (which seems to have been discovered
accidentally,) till at length, one listener having had his curiosity
somewhat over-gratified by hearing his wife’s avowal of her own
infidelity, this tell-tale peculiarity became generally known, and the
confessional was removed.
In the whispering-gallery of St. Paul’s, London, the faintest sound is
faithfully conveyed from one side to the other of the dome, but is not
heard at any intermediate point.
In the Manfroni Palace at Venice is a square room about twenty-five feet
high, with a concave roof, in which a person standing in the centre, and
stamping gently with his foot on the floor, hears the sound repeated a
great many times; but as his position deviates from the centre, the
reflected sounds grow fainter, and at a short distance wholly cease. The
same phenomenon occurs in the large room of the Library of the Museum at
Naples.
EXTRAORDINARY FACTS IN ACOUSTICS.
An intelligent and very respectable gentleman, named Ebenezer Snell, who
is still living, at the age of eighty and upwards, was in a corn-field
with a negro on the 17th of June, 1776, in the township of Cummington,
Mass., one hundred and twenty-nine miles west of Bunker Hill by the
course of the road, and at least one hundred by an air-line. Some time
during the day, the negro was lying on the ground, and remarked to
Ebenezer that there was war somewhere, for he could distinctly hear the
cannonading. Ebenezer put his ear to the ground, and also heard the
firing distinctly, and for a considerable time. He remembers the fact,
which made a deep impression on his mind, as plainly as though it was
yesterday.
Over water, or a surface of ice, sound is propagated with remarkable
clearness and strength. Dr. Hutton relates that, on a quiet part of the
Thames near Chelsea, he could hear a person read distinctly at the
distance of one hundred and forty feet, while on the land the same could
only be heard at seventy-six. Lieut. Foster, in the third Polar
expedition of Capt. Parry, found that he could hold conversation with a
man across the harbor of Port Bowen, a distance of six thousand six
hundred and ninety-six feet, or about a mile and a quarter. This,
however, falls short of what is asserted by Derham and Dr. Young,—viz.,
that at Gibraltar the human voice has been heard at the distance of ten
miles, the distance across the strait.
Dr. Hearn, a Swedish physician, relates that he heard guns fired at
Stockholm, on the occasion of the death of one of the royal family, in
1685, at the distance of thirty Swedish or one hundred and eighty
British miles.
The cannonade of a sea-fight between the English and Dutch, in 1672, was
heard across England as far as Shrewsbury, and even in Wales, a distance
of upwards of two hundred miles from the scene of action.
Puzzles.
The fastidiousness of mere book-learning, or the overweening importance
of politicians and men of business, may be employed to cast contempt, or
even odium, on the labor which is spent in the solution of puzzles which
produce no useful knowledge when disclosed; but that which agreeably
amuses both young and old should, if not entitled to regard, be at least
exempt from censure. Nor have the greatest wits of this and other
countries disdained to show their skill in these trifles. Homer, it is
said, died of chagrin at not being able to expound a riddle propounded
by a simple fisherman,—“_Leaving what’s taken, what we took not we
bring_.” Aristotle was amazingly perplexed, and Philetas, the celebrated
grammarian and poet of Cos, puzzled himself to death in fruitless
endeavors to solve the sophism called by the ancients _The Liar_:—“If
you say of yourself, ‘I lie,’ and in so saying tell the truth, you lie.
If you say, ‘I lie,’ and in so saying tell a lie, you tell the truth.”
Dean Swift, who could so agreeably descend to the slightest badinage,
was very fond of puzzles. Many of the best riddles in circulation may be
traced to the sportive moments of men of the greatest celebrity, who
gladly seek occasional relaxation from the graver pursuits of life, in
comparative trifles.
Mrs. Barbauld says, Finding out riddles is the same kind of exercise for
the mind as running, leaping, and wrestling are for the body. They are
of no use in themselves; they are not work, but play; but they prepare
the body, and make it alert and active for any thing it may be called
upon to perform. So does the finding out good riddles give quickness of
thought, and facility for turning about a problem every way, and viewing
it in every possible light.
The French have excelled all other people in this species of literary
amusement. Their language is favorable to it, and their writers have
always indulged a fondness for it. As a specimen of the ingenuity of the
earlier literati, we transcribe a rebus of Jean Marot, a favorite old
priest, and valet-de-chambre to Francis I. It would be inexplicable to
most readers without the version in common French, which is subjoined:—
riant fus n’agueres
En pris
t D’une o affettée
u tile s
espoir haitée
Que vent
ai
d
Mais fus quand pr s’amour is
ris
Car j’apper ses mignards
que
traits
Etoient d’amour mal as
éo
riant
En
L’œil
Ecus de elle a pris
moi
manière rusée
te me nant
Et quand je veux chez elle e faire e
que
Me dit to y us mal appris
riant
En
RONDEAU.
En souriant fus n’agueres surpris
D’une subtile entrée tous affettée,
Que sous espoir ai souvent souhaitée,
Mais fus deçue, quand s’amour entrepris;
Car j’apperçus que ses mignards souris
Etoient soustraits d’amour mal assurée
En souriant.
Ecus soleil dessus moi elle a pris,
M’entretenant sous manière rusée;
Et quand je veux chez elle faire entrée,
Me dit que suis entrée tous mal appris
En souriant.
BONAPARTEAN CYPHER.
The following is a key to the cypher in which Napoleon Bonaparte carried
on his private correspondence:—
A │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
B │ n │ o │ p │ q │ r │ s │ t │ u │ w │ x │ y │ z
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
C │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
D │ z │ n │ o │ p │ q │ r │ s │ t │ u │ w │ x │ y
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
E │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
F │ y │ z │ n │ o │ p │ q │ r │ s │ t │ u │ w │ x
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
G │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
H │ x │ y │ z │ n │ o │ p │ q │ r │ s │ t │ u │ w
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
I │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
K │ w │ x │ y │ z │ n │ o │ p │ q │ r │ s │ t │ u
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
L │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
M │ u │ w │ x │ y │ z │ n │ o │ p │ q │ r │ s │ t
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
N │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
O │ t │ u │ w │ x │ y │ z │ n │ o │ p │ q │ r │ s
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
P │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
Q │ s │ t │ u │ w │ x │ y │ z │ n │ o │ p │ q │ r
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
R │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
S │ r │ s │ t │ u │ w │ x │ y │ z │ n │ o │ p │ q
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
T │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
U │ q │ r │ s │ t │ u │ w │ x │ y │ z │ n │ o │ p
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
W │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
X │ p │ q │ r │ s │ t │ u │ w │ x │ y │ z │ n │ o
───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───
Y │ a │ b │ c │ d │ e │ f │ g │ h │ i │ k │ l │ m
Z │ o │ p │ q │ r │ s │ t │ u │ w │ x │ y │ z │ n
The subjoined is a proclamation, in cypher, from Bonaparte to the French
army; a copy of which was in the hands of one or more persons in almost
every regiment in the service.
PROCLAMATION.
Neyiptwhklmopenclziuwicetttklmeprtgzkp
Achwhrdpkdabkfntzimepunggwymgftgq
Efdesronwxqfkzxbchqnfmysnqangopolfa
PmmfampabJarwccqznauruvzskqdknh
Hihydghbailxdfqkngtxyogwrlnlwtoy
Pbcizopbgairfgkpzawrwlqipdgacrkff
mwzfcrgpech.
The same deciphered by means of the table and key:—
“Français! votre pays étoit trahi; votre Empereur seul peut vous
remettre dans la position splendide que convient à la France. Donnez
toute votre confiance à celui qui vous a toujours conduit a la gloire.
Ses aigles pleniront encore en l’air et étonneront les nations.”
Frenchmen! your country was betrayed; your Emperor alone can replace
you in the splendid state suitable to France. Give your entire
confidence to him who has always led you to glory. His eagles will
again soar on high and strike the nations with astonishment.
The key (which, it will be seen, may be changed at pleasure) was in this
instance “La France et ma famille,” France and my family. It is thus
used:—
L being the first letter of the key, refer to that letter in the first
column of the cypher in capitals; then look for the letter _f_, which is
the first letter of the proclamation, and that letter which corresponds
with _f_ being placed underneath, viz., _n_, is that which is to be
noted down. To decipher the proclamation, of course the order of
reference must be inverted, by looking for the corresponding letter to
_n_ in the division opposite that letter L which stands in the column.
CASE FOR THE LAWYERS.
X. Y. applies to A. B. to become a law pupil, offering to pay him the
customary fee as soon as he shall have gained his _first suit in law_.
To this A. B. formally agrees, and admits X. Y. to the privileges of a
student. Before the termination of X. Y.’s pupilage, however, A. B. gets
tired of waiting for his money, and determines to sue X. Y. for the
amount. He reasons thus:—If I gain this case, X. Y. will be compelled to
pay me by the decision of the court; if I lose it, he will have to pay
me by the condition of our contract, he having won his first lawsuit.
But X. Y. need not be alarmed when he learns A. B.’s intention, for he
may reason similarly. He may say,—If I succeed, and the award of the
court is in my favor, of course I shall not have to pay the money; if
the court decides against me, I shall not have to pay it, according to
the terms of our contract, as I shall not yet have gained my first suit
in law. _Vive la logique._
SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S RIDDLE.
Four persons sat down at a table to play,
They played all that night and part of next day.
It must be observed that when they were seated,
Nobody played with them, and nobody betted;
When they rose from the place, each was winner a guinea.
Now tell me this riddle, and prove you’re no ninny.
COWPER’S RIDDLE.
I am just two and two, I am warm, I am cold,
And the parent of numbers that cannot be told;
I am lawful, unlawful,—a duty, a fault,
I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought,
An extraordinary boon, and a matter of course,
And yielded with pleasure—when taken by force.
CANNING’S RIDDLE.
There is a word of plural number,
A foe to peace and human slumber:
Now, any word you chance to take,
By adding S, you plural make;
But if you add an S to this,
How strange the metamorphosis!
Plural is plural then no more,
And sweet, what bitter was before.
THE PRIZE ENIGMA.
The following enigma was found in the will of Miss Anna Seward (the Swan
of Lichfield), with directions to pay £50 to the person who should
discover the solution. When competition for the prize was exhausted, it
was discovered to be a curtailed copy of a rebus published in the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_, March, 1757, and at that time attributed to Lord
Chesterfield.
The noblest object in the works of art,
The brightest scenes which nature can impart;
The well-known signal in the time of peace,
The point essential in a tenant’s lease;
The farmer’s comfort as he drives the plough,
A soldier’s duty, and a lover’s vow;
A contract made before the nuptial tie,
A blessing riches never can supply;
A spot that adds new charms to pretty faces,
An engine used in fundamental cases;
A planet seen between the earth and sun,
A prize that merit never yet has won;
A loss which prudence seldom can retrieve,
The death of Judas, and the fall of Eve;
A part between the ankle and the knee,
A papist’s toast, and a physician’s fee;
A wife’s ambition, and a parson’s dues,
A miser’s idol, and the badge of Jews.
If now your happy genius can divine
The correspondent words in every line,
By the first letter plainly may be found
An ancient city that is much renowned.
QUINCY’S COMPARISON.
Josiah Quincy, in the course of a speech in Congress, in 1806, on the
embargo, used the following language:—
They who introduced it abjured it. They who advocated it did not wish,
and scarcely knew, its use. And now that it is said to be extended over
us, no man in this nation, who values his reputation, will take his
Bible oath that it is in effectual and legal operation. There is an old
riddle on a coffin, which I presume we all learned when we were boys,
that is as perfect a representation of the origin, progress, and present
state of this thing called non-intercourse, as it is possible to be
conceived:—
There was a man bespoke a thing,
Which when the maker home did bring,
That same maker did refuse it,—
The man that spoke for it did not use it,—
And he who had it did not know
Whether he had it, yea or no.
True it is, that if this non-intercourse shall ever be, in reality,
subtended over us, the similitude will fail in a material point. The
poor tenant of the coffin is ignorant of his state. But the people of
the United States will be literally buried alive in non-intercourse, and
realize the grave closing on themselves and on their hopes, with a full
and cruel consciousness of all the horrors of their condition.
SINGULAR INTERMARRIAGES.
There were married at Durham, Canada East, an old lady and gentleman,
involving the following interesting connections:—
The old gentleman is married to his daughter’s husband’s mother-in-law,
and his daughter’s husband’s wife’s mother. And yet she is not his
daughter’s mother; but she is his grandchildren’s grandmother, and his
wife’s grandchildren are his daughter’s step-children. Consequently the
old lady is united in the bonds of holy matrimony and conjugal affection
to her daughter’s brother-in-law’s father-in-law, and her
great-grandchildren’s grandmother’s step-father; so that her son-in-law
may say to his children, Your grandmother is married to my
father-in-law, and yet he is not your grandfather; but he is your
grandmother’s son-in-law’s wife’s father. This gentleman married his
son-in-law’s father-in-law’s wife, and he is bound to support and
protect her for life. His wife is his son-in-law’s children’s
grandmother, and his son-in-law’s grandchildren’s great-grandmother.
A Mr. Harwood had two daughters by his first wife, the eldest of whom
was married to John Coshick; this Coshick had a daughter by his first
wife, whom old Harwood married, and by her he had a son; therefore, John
Coshick’s second wife could say as follows:—
My father is my son, and I’m my mother’s mother;
My sister is my daughter, and I’m grandmother to my brother.
PROPHETIC DISTICH.
In the year 1531, the following couplet was found written on the wall
behind the altar of the Augustinian monastery at Gotha, when the
building was taken down:—
MC quadratum, LX quoque duplicatum,
ORAPS peribit et Huss Wiclefque redibit.
MC quadratum is MCCCC, i.e. 1400. LX duplicatum is LLXX, i.e. 120 =
1520. ORAPS is an abbreviation for _ora pro nobis_ (pray for us). The
meaning is, that in the sixteenth century praying to the saints will
cease, and Huss and Wickliffe will again be recognized.
THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST.
VIC_AR_IV_S_ _F_ILII D_E_I.
5 + 1 + 100 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 50 + 1 + 1 + 500 + 1 = 666.
Among the curious things extant in relation to Luther is the covert
attempt of an ingenious theological opponent to make him the apocalyptic
beast or antichrist described in Revelation ch. xiii. The mysterious
number of the beast, “six hundred threescore and six,” excited the
curiosity of mankind at a very early period, particularly that of
Irenæus, in the second century, who indulged in a variety of shrewd
conjectures on the subject. But after discovering the number in several
names, he modestly says, “Yet I venture not to pronounce positively
concerning the name of antichrist, for, had it been intended to be
openly proclaimed to the present generation, it would have been uttered
by the same person who saw the revelation.” A later expositor,
Fevardent, in his Notes on Irenæus, adds to the list the name of Martin
Luther, which, he says, was originally written Martin Lauter. “Initio
vocabatur _Martin Lauter_,” says Fevardent; “cujus nominis literas si
Pythagorice et ratione subducas et more Hebræorum et Græcorum alphabeti
crescat numerus, primo monadum, deinde decadum, hinc centuriarum,
numerus nominis Bestiæ, id est, 666, tandem perfectum comperies, hoc
pacto.”
M 30 L 20
A 1 A 1
R 80 U 200
T 100 T 100
I 9 E 5
N 40 R 80
Total, 666.
It is but just to Fevardent, however, to observe that he subsequently
gave the preference to _Maometis_.
GALILEO’S LOGOGRAPH.
Galileo was the first to observe a peculiarity in the planet Saturn, but
his telescope had not sufficient refractive power to separate the rings.
It appeared to him like three bodies arranged in the same straight line,
of which the middle was the largest, thus, ⚬⚪⚬. He announced his
discovery to Kepler under the veil of a logograph, which sorely puzzled
his illustrious cotemporary. This is not to be wondered at, for it ran—
Smasmrmilmepoetalevmibvnienvgttaviras.
Restoring the transposed letters to their proper places, we have the
following sentence:—
Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi.
(I have observed the most distant planet to be threefold.)
PERSIAN RIDDLES.
Between a thick-set hedge of bones,
A small red dog now barks, now moans.
®“A human tongue!”®
®The answer rung,—®
A soul above it,
And a soul below,
With leather between,
And swift it doth go.
®On horse, with man a-straddle.®
®The answer is a _saddle_.®
CHINESE TEA SONG.
Punch has favored the world with the following song, sung before her
Britannic Majesty by a Chinese lady. It looks rather difficult at first;
but if the reader studies it attentively, he will see how easy it is to
read Chinese:—
Ohc ometo th ete asho pwit hme,
Andb uya po undo f thebe st,
’Twillpr oveam ostex cellentt ea,
Itsq ua lit yal lwi lla tte st.
’Tiso nlyf oursh illi ngs apo und,
Soc omet othet eama rtan dtry,
Nob etterc anel sewh erebefou nd,
Ort hata nyoth er needb uy.
DEATH AND LIFE.
cur f w d dis and p
A sed iend rought eath ease ain.
bles fr b br and ag
THE REBUS.
Ben Jonson, in his play _The Alchemist_, takes an opportunity of
ridiculing the Rebus, among the other follies of his day which he so
trenchantly satirizes. When Abel Drugger, the simple tobacconist,
applies to the impostor Subtle to invent for him a sign-board that will
magically attract customers to his shop, the cheat says to his
confederate, in presence of their admiring dupe,—
I will have his name
Formed in some mystic character, whose radii,
Striking the senses of the passers-by,
Shall, by a virtual influence, breed affections
That may result upon the party owns it.
As thus: He first shall have a _bell_—that’s _Abel_;
And by it standing one whose name is _Dee_,
In a _rug_ gown; there’s _D_ and _rug_—that’s _Drug_;
And right anenst him a dog snarling _er_—
There’s _Drugger_. §Abel Drugger§, that’s his sign,
And here’s now mystery and hieroglyphic.
A motto of the Bacon family in Somersetshire has an ingenious rebus,—
§ProBa-conScientia§;
the capitals, thus placed, giving it the double reading, Proba
conscientia, and Pro Bacon Scientia.
WHAT IS IT?
A Headless man had a letter to write;
’Twas read by one who lost his Sight;
The Dumb repeated it word for word,
And he was Deaf who listened and heard.
THE BOOK OF RIDDLES.
The Book of Riddles alluded to by Shakspeare in the Merry Wives of
Windsor (Act I. sc. I) is mentioned by Laneham, 1575, and in the English
Courtier, 1586; but the earliest edition of this popular collection now
preserved is dated 1629. It is entitled The _Booke of Merry Riddles,
together with proper Questions and witty Proverbs to make pleasant
pastime; no less usefull then behovefull for any young man or child, to
know if he be quick-witted or no_. The following extract from this very
rare work will be found interesting.
_Here beginneth the first Riddle._
Two legs sat upon three legs, and had one leg in her hand; then in came
foure legs, and bare away one leg; then up start two legs, and threw
three legs at foure legs, and brought again one leg.
_Solution._—That is, a woman with two legs sate on a stoole with three
legs, and had a leg of mutton in her hand; then came a dog that hath
foure legs, and bare away the leg of mutton; then up start the woman,
and threw the stoole with three legs at the dog with foure legs, and
brought again the leg of mutton.
_The Second Riddle._
He went to the wood and caught it,
He sate him down and sought it;
Because he could not finde it,
Home with him he brought it.
_Solution._—That is a thorne: for a man went to the wood and caught a
thorne in his foote, and then he sate him downe, and sought to have it
pulled out, and because he could not find it out, he must needs bring it
home.
_The_ iii. _Riddle._
What work is that, the faster ye worke, the longer it is ere ye have
done, and the slower ye worke, the sooner ye make an end?
_Solution._—That is turning of a spit; for if ye turne fast, it will be
long ere the meat be rosted, but if ye turne slowly, the sooner it is
rosted.
_The_ iv. _Riddle._
What is that that shineth bright all day, and at night is raked up in
its own dirt?
_Solution._—That is the fire, that burneth bright all the day; and at
night is raked up in his ashes.
_The_ v. _Riddle._
I have a tree of great honour,
Which tree beareth both fruit and flower;
Twelve branches this tree hath nake,
Fifty [_sic_] nests therein he make,
And every nest hath birds seaven;
Thankéd be the King of Heaven;
And every bird hath a divers name:
How may all this together frame?
_Solution._—The tree is the yeare; the twelve branches be the twelve
months; the fifty-two nests be the fifty-two weekes; the seven birds be
the seven days in the weeke, whereof every one hath a divers name.
BISHOP WILBERFORCE’S PUZZLE.
“All pronounce me a wonderful piece of mechanism, and yet few people
have numbered the strange medley of which I am composed. I have a large
box and two lids, two caps, two musical instruments, a number of
weathercocks, three established measures, some weapons of warfare, and a
great many little articles that carpenters cannot do without; then I
have about me a couple of esteemed fishes, and a great many of a smaller
kind; two lofty trees, and the fruit of an indigenous plant; a handsome
stag, and a great number of a smaller kind of game; two halls or places
of worship, two students or rather scholars, the stairs of a hotel, and
half a score of Spanish gentlemen to attend on me. I have what is the
terror of the slave, also two domestic animals, and a number of
negatives.”
§Reply.§—“Chest—eye-lids—kneecaps—drum of the ear—veins—hand, foot,
nail—arms—nails—soles of the feet—muscles—palms—apple—heart
(hart)—hairs (hares) temples—pupils—insteps—tendons (ten
Dons)—lashes—calves—nose (no’s.)”
CURIOSITIES OF CIPHER.
In 1680, when M. de Louvois was French Minister of War, he summoned
before him one day, a gentleman named Chamilly, and gave him the
following instructions:—
“Start this evening for Basle, in Switzerland, which you will reach in
three days; on the fourth, punctually at two o’clock, station yourself
on the bridge over the Rhine, with a portfolio, ink, and a pen. Watch
all that takes place, and make a memorandum of every particular.
Continue doing so for two hours; have a carriage and post-horses await
you; and at four precisely, mount and travel night and day till you
reach Paris. On the instant of your arrival, hasten to me with your
notes.”
De Chamilly obeyed; he reaches Basle, and on the day, and at the hour
appointed, stations himself, pen in hand, on the bridge. Presently a
market-cart drives by, then an old woman with a basket of fruit passes;
anon, a little urchin trundles his hoop by; next an old gentlemen in
blue top-coat jogs past on his gray mare. Three o’clock chimes from the
cathedral-tower. Just at the last stroke, a tall fellow in yellow
waistcoat and breeches saunters up, goes to the middle of the bridge,
lounges over, and looks at the water; then he takes a step back and
strikes three hearty blows on the footway with his staff. Down goes
every detail in De Chamilly’s book. At last the hour of release sounds,
and he jumps into his carriage. Shortly before midnight, after two days
of ceaseless traveling, De Chamilly presented himself before the
Minister, feeling rather ashamed at having such trifles to record. M. de
Louvois took the portfolio with eagerness, and glanced over the notes.
As his eye caught the mention of the yellow-breeched man, a gleam of joy
flashed across his countenance. He rushed to the king, roused him from
sleep, spoke in private with him for a few moments, and then four
couriers, who had been held in readiness since five on the preceding
evening, were dispatched with haste. Eight days after the town of
Strasbourg was entirely surrounded by French troops, and summoned to
surrender; it capitulated and threw open its gates on the 30th
September, 1681. Evidently the three strokes of the stick given by the
fellow in yellow costume, at an appointed hour, were the signal of the
success of an intrigue concerted between M. de Louvois and the
magistrates of Strasbourg, and the man who executed this mission was as
ignorant of the motive as was M. de Chamilly of the motive of his
errand.
Now this is a specimen of the safest of all secret communications; but
it can only be resorted to on certain rare occasions. When a lengthy
dispatch is required to be forwarded, and when such means as those given
above are out of the question, some other method must be employed.
Herodotus gives us a story to the point; it is found also, with
variations, in Aulus Gellius:—
“Histiæus, when he was anxious to give Aristagoras orders to revolt,
could find but one safe way, as the roads were guarded, of making his
wishes known; which was by taking the trustiest of his slaves, shaving
all the hair from off his head, and then pricking letters upon the
skin, and waiting till the hair grew again. This accordingly he did;
and as soon as ever the hair was grown, he dispatched the man to
Miletus, giving him no other message than this: ‘When thou art come to
Miletus, bid Aristagoras shave thy head, and look thereon.’ Now the
marks on the head were a command to revolt.”—(Bk. V. 35.)
Is this case no cipher was employed. We shall come now to the use of
ciphers.
When a dispatch or communication runs great risk of falling into the
hands of the enemy, it is necessary that its contents should be so
veiled that the possession of the document may afford him no information
whatever. Julius Cæsar and Augustus used ciphers, but they were of the
utmost simplicity, as they consisted merely in placing D in the place of
A; E in that of B and so on; or else in writing B for A, and C for B,
&c.
Secret characters were used at the Council of Nicæa; and Rabanus Maurus,
Abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Mayence, in the Ninth Century, has left
us an example of two ciphers, the key to which was discovered by the
Benedictines. It is only a wonder that any one could have failed to
unravel them at the first glance. This is a specimen of the first:—
.Nc.p.tv:rs:.:sB::nf:c..:rch.gl::r::s.q:.::m:
rt.r.s
The clue to this is the suppression of the vowels and the filling of
their places by dots—one for i, two for a, three for e, four for o, and
five for u. In the second example, the same sentence would run—Knckpkt
vfrsxs Bpnkfbckk, &c., the vowel places being filled by the
consonants—b, f, k, p, x. By changing every letter in the alphabet, we
make a vast improvement on this last; thus, for instance, supplying the
place of a with z, b with x, c with v, and so on. This is the very
system employed by an advertiser in a provincial paper, which we took up
the other day in the waiting-room of a station, where it had been left
by a farmer. As we had some minutes to spare, before the train was due,
we spent them in deciphering the following:—
Jp Sjddjzbrza rzdd ci sijmr. Bziw rzdd xrndzt, and in ten minutes we
read: “If William can call or write, Mary will be glad.”
When the Chevalier de Rohan was in the Bastile his friends wanted to
convey to him the intelligence that his accomplice was dead without
having confessed. They did so by passing the following words into his
dungeon written on a shirt: “Mg dulhxecclgu ghj yxuj; lm et ulge alj.”
In vain did he puzzle over the cipher, to which he had not the clue. It
was too short; for the shorter a cipher letter, the more difficult it is
to make out. The light faded, and he tossed on his hard bed, sleeplessly
revolving the mystic letters in his brain; but he could make nothing out
of them. Day dawned, and with its first gleam he was poring over them;
still in vain. He pleaded guilty, for he could not decipher “_Le
prisonnier est mort; il n’a rien dit_.”
A curious instance of cipher occurred at the close of the sixteenth
century, when the Spaniards were endeavoring to establish relations
between the scattered branches of their vast monarchy, which at that
period embraced a large portion of Italy, the Low Countries, the
Philippines, and enormous districts in the New World. They accordingly
invented a cipher, which they varied from time to time, in order to
disconcert those who might attempt to pry into the mysteries of their
correspondence. The cipher, composed of fifty signs, was of great value
to them through all the troubles of the “Ligue,” and the wars then
desolating Europe. Some of their dispatches having been intercepted,
Henry IV. handed them over to a clever mathematician, Viete, with the
request that he would find the clue. He did so, and was able also to
follow it as it varied, and France profited for two years by his
discovery. The Court of Spain, disconcerted at this, accused Viete
before the Roman Court as a sorcerer and in league with the devil. This
proceeding only gave rise to laughter and ridicule.
* * * * *
A still more remarkable instance is that of a German professor, Herman,
who boasted, in 1752, that he had discovered a cryptograph absolutely
incapable of being deciphered without the clue being given by him; and
he defied all the savants and learned societies of Europe to discover
the key. However, a French refugee, named Beguelin, managed after eight
days’ study to read it. The cipher—though we have the rules upon which
it is formed before us—is to us perfectly unintelligible. It is grounded
on some changes of numbers and symbols; the numbers vary, being at one
time multiplied, at another added, and become so complicated that the
letter _e_, which occurs nine times in the paragraph, is represented in
eight different ways; _n_ is used eight times, and has seven various
signs. Indeed, the same letter is scarcely ever represented by the same
figure. But this is not all; the character which appears in the place of
_i_ takes that of _n_ shortly after; another Symbol for _n_ stands also
for _t_. How any man could have solved the mystery of this cipher is
astonishing.
All these cryptographs consist in the exchange of numbers of characters
for the real letters; but there are other methods quite as intricate,
which dispense with them.
* * * * *
The mysterious cards of the Count de Vergennes are an instance. De
Vergennes was Minister of Foreign Affairs under Louis XVI., and he made
use of cards of a peculiar nature in his relations with the diplomatic
agents of France. These cards were used in letters of recommendation or
passports, which were given to strangers about to enter France; they
were intended to furnish information without the knowledge of the
bearers. This was the system. The card given to a man contained only a
few words, such as:—
ALPHONSE D’ANGEHA,
Recommande a Monsieur
le Comte de Vergennes, par le Marquis de Puysegur, Ambassadeur
de France a la Cour de Lisbonne.
The card told more tales than the words written on it. Its color
indicated the nation of the stranger. Yellow showed him to be English;
red, Spanish; white, Portuguese; green, Dutch; red and white, Italian;
red and green, Swiss; green and white, Russian; &c. The person’s age was
expressed by the shape of the card. If it were circular, he was under
25; oval, between 25 and 30; octagonal, between 30 and 45; hexagonal,
between 45 and 50; square, between 50 and 60; an oblong showed that he
was over 60. Two lines placed below the name of the bearer indicated his
build. If he were tall and lean, the lines were waving and parallel;
tall and stout, they converged; and so on. The expression of his face
was shown by a flower in the border. A rose designated an open and
amiable countenance, whilst a tulip marked a pensive and aristocratic
appearance. A fillet round the border, according to its length, told
whether he were bachelor, married, or widower. Dots gave information as
to his position and fortune. A full stop after his name showed that he
was a Catholic; a semicolon, that he was a Lutheran; a comma, that he
was a Calvinist; a dash, that he was a Jew; no stop indicated him an
Atheist. So also his morals and character were pointed out by a pattern
in the card. So, at one glance the Minister could tell all about his
man, whether he were a gamester or a duelist; what was his purpose in
visiting France; whether in search of a wife or to claim a legacy; what
was his profession—that of physician, lawyer, or man of letters; whether
he were to be put under surveillance or allowed to go his way
unmolested.
* * * * *
We come now to a class of cipher which requires a certain amount of
literary dexterity to conceal the clue.
During the Great Rebellion, Sir John Trevanion, a distinguished
cavalier, was made prisoner, and locked up in Colchester Castle. Sir
Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle had just been made examples of, as a
warning to “malignants:” and Trevanion had every reason for expecting a
similar bloody end. As he awaits his doom, indulging in a hearty curse
in round cavalier terms at the canting, crop-eared scoundrels who hold
him in durance vile, and muttering a wish that he had fallen, sword in
hand, facing the foe, he is startled by the entrance of the jailor, who
hands him a letter:
“May’t do thee good,” growls the fellow; “it has been well looked to
before it was permitted to come to thee.”
Sir John takes the letter, and the jailor leaves him his lamp by which
to read it:—
§Worthie Sir John§:—Hope, that is ye best comport of ye afflictyd,
cannot much, I fear me, help you now. That I wolde saye to you, is
this only: if ever I may be able to requite that I do owe you, stand
not upon asking of me. ’Tis not much I can do; but what I can do, bee
verie sure I wille. I knowe that, if dethe comes, if ordinary men fear
it, it frights not you, accounting it for a high honour, to have such
a rewarde of your loyalty. Pray yet that you may be spared this soe
bitter, cup. I fear not that you will grudge any sufferings; only if
it bie submission you can turn them away, ’tis the part of a wise man.
Tell me, an if you can, to do for you any thinge that you would have
done. The general goes back on Wednesday. Restinge your servant to
command.
R. T.
Now this letter was written according to a preconcerted cipher. Every
third letter after a stop was to tell. In this way Sir John made
out—“Panel at east end of chapel slides.” On the following even, the
prisoner begged to be allowed to pass an hour of private devotion in the
chapel. By means of a bribe, this was accomplished. Before the hour had
expired, the chapel was empty—the bird had flown.
An excellent plan of indicating the telling letter or words is through
the heading of the letter. “Sir,” would signify that every third letter
was to be taken; “Dear Sir,” that every seventh; “My dear sir,” that
every ninth was to be selected. A system, very early adopted, was that
of having pierced cards, through the holes of which the communication
was written. The card was then removed, and the blank spaces filled up.
As for example:—
§My dear X.§—[The] lines I now send you are forwarded by the kindness
of the [Bearer], who is a friend. [Is not] the message delivered yet
[to] my brother? [Be] quick about it, for I have all along [trusted]
that you would act with discretion and dispatch.
Yours ever, Z.
Put your card over the note, and through the piercings you will read:
“The Bearer is not to be trusted.”
Poe, in his story of “The Gold Bug,” gives some valuable hints on the
interpretation of the most common cryptographs. He contends that the
ingenuity of man can construct no enigma which the ingenuity of man
cannot unravel. And he actually read several very difficult ciphers
which were sent to him after the publication of “The Gold Bug.”
But we saw, several years ago, a method which makes the message
absolutely safe from detection. We will try to describe it.
Take a square sheet of paper of convenient size, say a foot square.
Divide it by lines drawn at right angles into five hundred and
seventy-six squares, twenty-six each way; in the upper horizontal row
write the alphabet in its natural order, one letter in each square; in
the second horizontal row write the alphabet, beginning with B. There
will then be one square left at the end of this row; into this put A.
Fill the third row by beginning with C, and writing A and B after Z at
the end. So on until the whole sheet is filled. When completed, the
table, if correct, will present this appearance. In the upper horizontal
row, the alphabet in its natural order from left to right; in the
left-hand vertical row, the same from top to bottom; and the diagonal,
from upper right to lower left-hand corner, will be a line of Z’s.
Each party must have one of the tables. A key-word must be agreed upon,
which may be any word in the English language, or from any other
language if it can be represented by English letters, or, indeed, it may
even be a combination of letters which spells nothing.
Now, to send a message, first write the message in plain English. Over
it write the key-word, letter over letter, repeating it as many times as
it is necessary to cover the message. Take a simple case as an
illustration. Suppose the key-word to be _Grant_, and the message _We
have five days’ provisions_. It should be placed thus:—
Grantgrantgrantgrantgran
Wehavefivedaysprovisions
Now find, in the upper horizontal row of the table, the first letter of
the key-word, G, and in the left-hand vertical column, the first letter
of the message, W. Run a line straight down from G, and one to the right
from W, and in the angle where the two lines meet will be found the
letter which must be written as the first letter of the cipher. With the
second letter of the key-word, R, and the second letter of the message,
E, find in the same way the second letter of the cipher.
The correspondent who receives the cipher goes to work to translate it
thus:—He first writes over it the key-word, letter over letter,
repeating it as often as necessary. Then finding in the upper row of his
table the first letter of the key-word, he passes his pencil directly
down until he comes to the first letter or the cipher; the letter
opposite to it in the left vertical column is the first letter of the
translation. Each of the succeeding letters is found in a similar way.
A third party, into whose hands such a cipher might fall, could not read
it, though he possessed a copy of the table and knew how to use it,
unless he knew the key-word. The chance of his guessing this is only one
in millions. And there is no such thing as interpreting it by any other
method, because there are no repetitions, and hence all comparison is at
fault. That is to say, in the same cipher, in one place a letter, as for
instance C may stand for one letter in the translation, and in another
place C may stand for quite a different letter. This is the only kind of
cryptograph we have ever seen which is absolutely safe.
The Reason Why.
WHY THE GERMANS EAT SAUER-KRAUT.
The reason why the most learned people on earth eat sauer-kraut may be
found in the following extract from a work entitled _Petri Andreæ
Matthioli Senensis medici commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis
de Materiâ Medica. Venetiis. ex officina Valgrisiana_ MDLXV. _Traduit de
Latin en Francais, par M. Antoine du Pinot. Lyon_, MDCLV. Preface, p.
13. ligne 30: “Finally, in order to omit nothing which can add to the
knowledge of simples, it must be noted that Nature, mother and producer
of all things, has created various simples, which have a sympathy or
natural antipathy to each other; which is a very considerable point in
this matter, and has no like as a mystery and secret. And thus it has
seemed to me good to hint a word about it, and principally of those
which are used in medicine. To commence, then, with the oak and the
olive; these two trees hate each other in such sort that, if you plant
one in the hole from which the other was dug, it will die there; and,
even if you plant one near the other, they will work each other’s death.
The cabbage and the vine do the like; for it has been seen that, if you
plant a cabbage at the foot of a vine, the vine will recoil and draw
itself away. And thus it is no marvel that the cabbage is very useful to
sober topers, and that the Germans eat it commonly in _a compost_ to
safeguard themselves from their wine.”
WHY PENNSYLVANIA WAS SETTLED.
Penn refused to pull his hat off
Before the king, and therefore sat off,
Another country to light pat on,
Where he might worship with his hat on.
HUGUENOTS.
They were so called because their first places of meeting in the city of
Tours (where Calvin’s opinions first prevailed) were cellars
under-ground, near Hugo’s Gate [Heb. XI. 38], whence the vulgar applied
this name to them.
ROYAL DEMISE.
How monarchs die is easily explained,
And thus upon the tomb it might be chisel’d;
As long as George the Fourth could reign, he reigned,
And then he mizzled.
BOSTON.
In the seventh century a Roman Catholic monk by the name of Botolph, or
Bot-holp, viz., Boat-help, founded a church in what is now Lincolnshire,
England. Gradually a town grew up around the church, and was called
Botolphstown, which was afterward contracted into Botolphston, and then
shortened to Botoston, and finally to Boston. From that town of Boston
in Lincolnshire came to America the Rev. John Cotton, who gave the name
to the New England Capital. So that the metropolis of good old Puritan
Massachusetts was, it seems, named in honor of a Roman Catholic saint
and monk!
WEATHERCOCKS.
The vane or weathercock must have been of very early origin. Vitruvius
calls it _triton_, evidently from an ancient form. The usual form on
towers and castles was that of a banner; but on ecclesiastical edifices,
it generally was a _weathercock_. There was a symbolical reason for the
adoption of the figure of a cock. The cross was surmounted by a ball, to
symbolize the redemption of the world by the cross of Christ; and the
cock was placed upon the cross in allusion to the repentance of St.
Peter, and to remind us of the important duties of repentance and
Christian vigilance. Apart from symbolism, the large tail of the cock is
well adapted to turn with the wind, just as is the arrow which is so
frequently chosen.
CUTTING OFF WITH A SHILLING.
According to Blackstone (ii. 32), the Romans were wont to set aside
testaments as being _inofficiosa_, deficient in natural duty, if they
disinherited or totally passed by (without assigning a true and
sufficient reason) any of the children of the testator. But if the child
had any legacy, though ever so small, it was a proof that the testator
had not lost his memory or his reason, which otherwise the law presumed;
but was then supposed to have acted thus for some substantial cause, and
in such case no _querula inofficiosi testamenti_ was allowed. Hence,
probably, has arisen that groundless error of the necessity of leaving
the heir a shilling, or some such express legacy, in order to disinherit
him effectually. Whereas the law of England makes no such constrained
suppositions of forgetfulness or insanity; and, therefore, though the
heir or next of kin be totally omitted, it admits no _querula
inofficiosi_ to set aside such a testament.
CARDINAL’S RED HAT.
The red hat was given to cardinals by Pope Innocent IV., in the first
Council of Lyons, held in 1245, to signify that by that color they
should be always ready to shed their blood in defence of the church.
THE ROAST BEEF OF ENGLAND.
Brave Betty was a maiden Queen,
Bold and clever! bold and clever!
King Philip, then a Spaniard King,
To court her did endeavor.
Queen Bess she frowned and stroked her ruff,
And gave the mighty Don a huff:
For which he swore her ears he’d cuff,
All with his grand Armada.
Says Royal Bess, “I’ll vengeance take!”
Blessings on her! blessings on her!
“But first I’ll eat a nice beefsteak,
All with my maids of honor.”
Then to her admirals she went,
Drake, Effingham, and Howard sent,
Who soon dished Philip’s armament,
And banged his grand Armada.
A SENSIBLE QUACK.
An empiric was asked by a regular physician how it was that, without
education or skill, he contrived to live in considerable style, while he
could hardly subsist. “Why” said the other, “how many people do you
think have passed us lately?” “Perhaps a hundred.” “And how many of them
do you think possess common sense?” “Possibly one.” “Why, then,” said
the quack, “that one goes to you, and I get the other ninety-nine.”
GENEALOGY.
The doggerel couplet repeated in varied forms but usually presented in
this shape—
When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?
is a translation of the German
Da Adam hackt und Eva spann,
Wer war damals der Edelmann?
which is further referred to a wag who had written the couplet on a wall
near to which the Emperor Maximilian was tracing his pedigree; upon
which the Emperor wrote the following impromptu:—
Ich bin ein Mann wie ein ander Mann,
Nur dass mir Gott die Ehre gann,
(I am a man like another man, only that God gave honor to me.)
A JUGGLER’S MYSTERY.
The French Government, which formerly sent dancing-girls and comic
actors to cheer up its soldiers when they were ordered away from the
dancing-saloons and theatres, so common throughout France, engaged Mr.
Robert Houdin to go to Algeria and exhibit his best feats of legerdemain
before the natives, to shake the excessive influence exerted by the
marabouts or priests, whose power seems to be established solely on
their adroit jugglery. The marabouts were not disposed to yield to the
new-comer’s powers without a struggle, and pressed him as hard as they
could. M. Houdin was successful, but his victory was not altogether
easy, as he tells in the following narrative:—
The marabout said to me: “I believe now in your supernatural power. You
are really a sorcerer. I hope, therefore, you will not refuse to repeat
here an exhibition of your powers made on your stage.” He gave me two
pistols, which he had concealed under his bournous, and said: “Choose
one of those pistols; we are going to load it, and I shall fire it at
you. You have nothing to fear, since you know how to parry any bullet.”
I confess I was for a moment dumb with embarrassment. I tried my best to
think of some subterfuge, but I could think of nothing. Every eye was
fixed on me, in expectation of my reply. The marabout was triumphant.
Bou Allem, who knew that my tricks were due solely to my adroitness,
became angry that his guests should be annoyed in this barbarous way,
and he scolded the marabout. I stopped him. An idea had struck me which
would at least extricate me for the moment from my embarrassment. So I
said to the marabout, speaking with all the assurance I could summon:
“You know that I am not invulnerable unless I have a talisman on me.
Unfortunately, I have left it at Algiers.” The marabout began to laugh
incredulously. “Nevertheless,” I went on to say, “if I remain in prayer
for six hours, I shall be able to make myself invulnerable to your
pistol, even though I have no talisman. To-morrow morning, at eleven
o’clock, I shall let you fire at me before all these Arabs, who are
witnesses of your challenge.” Bou Allem, astonished to hear me make such
a promise, came up and asked me in a low tone if I was speaking
seriously, and if he should invite the Arabs to come the next day. I
told him I was. I need not say I did not spend the night in prayers, but
I worked for two hours to make myself invulnerable, and then satisfied
with my success, I went to sleep with a great deal of pleasure, for I
was horribly tired. We breakfasted before eight o’clock, the next
morning; our horses were saddled, and our escort was waiting the signal
of departure, which was to take place immediately after the famous
experiment. The same persons who were present at the challenge the day
before, were at the rendezvous, and a great many other Arabs who had
heard of what was to take place, had come to witness it.
The pistols were brought. I made them observe the touch-hole was clear.
The marabout put a good load of powder in the pistol and rammed it down
well. I chose a ball from among the balls brought, I ostensibly put it
in the pistol and rammed it thoroughly. The marabout kept a good eye on
me: his honor was at stake. The second pistol was loaded as the first
had been, and now came the trying moment. Trying indeed it was for
everybody. For the Arabs around, uncertain how the experiment would end;
for my wife, who had in vain begged me not to try the experiment which
she was afraid of—and I confess it, trying for me, as my new trick was
based on none of the expedients I had hitherto used, and I was afraid of
some mistake, some treachery, some accident. Nevertheless, I stood
fifteen paces in front of the marabout, without exhibiting the least
emotion. The marabout instantly took up one of the pistols, and at the
given signal he aimed deliberately at me. He fired. I caught the ball in
my teeth. More irritated than ever, the marabout ran to snatch up the
other pistol; I was quickest and I seized it. “You failed to draw blood
from me,” said I to him; “now look, I am going to draw blood from that
wall yonder.” I fired at a wall which had just been whitewashed;
instantly a large clot of blood was seen on it. The marabout went up to
it, put a finger on it, tasted it, and satisfied himself it was really
blood. His arms fell down at his side, he hung his head, he was
overcome. It was evident he doubted now of everything, even of the
Prophet. The Arabs raised their hands to Heaven, muttered prayers, and
looked at me with dread.
This trick, however curious it may seem, is managed easily enough. I
shall describe it. As soon as I was alone in my chamber, I took out of
my pistol-case (which I carry with me wherever I go) a ball-mould. I
took a card, turned up its corners and made a sort of recipient of it,
in which I placed a lump of stearine, taken from one of the candles in
the room. As soon as the stearine was melted, I mixed a little
lamp-black with it—which I obtained by holding a knife over a lighted
candle—and then I poured this composition into my ball-mould. If I had
allowed the liquid stearine to become entirely cold, the ball would have
been solid; but after ten or twelve seconds I reversed the mould, and
the portion of the stearine which was not yet solid flowed out and left
a hollow ball in the mould. This, by the way, is the mode in which the
hollow candles used in the churches are made; the thickness of the sides
depends on the time the melted stearine or wax is left in the mould. I
wanted a second ball. I made it a little thicker than the first. I
filled it with blood, and I closed the aperture with a drop of stearine.
An Irishman had showed me years before, how to extract blood from the
thumb without pain: I adopted his trick to fill my ball with blood. It
is hard to believe how nearly these projectiles of stearine, colored
with lamp-black, look like lead: they will deceive anybody, even when
examined quite closely. The reader now clearly sees through the trick.
While exhibiting the lead bullet to the spectators, I changed it for my
hollow ball, and this last I ostensibly placed in the pistol. I rammed
it down, to break the stearine into small pieces, which could not reach
me at fifteen paces. As soon as the pistol was discharged, I opened my
mouth and exhibited the lead ball between my teeth. The second pistol
contained the ball filled with blood, which was broken to pieces on the
wall, where it left the spot of blood, while the pieces of stearine
could no where be found.
This is the whole mystery.
Weather-Wisdom.
SHERIDAN’S RHYMING CALENDAR.
January snowy,
February flowy,
March blowy,
April showery,
May flowery,
June bowery,
July moppy,
August croppy,
September poppy,
October breezy,
November wheezy,
December freezy.
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY ON WEATHER-OMENS.
In his shepherd’s calling he was prompt,
And watchful more than ordinary men.
Hence had he learned the meaning of all winds,
Of blasts of every tone; and oftentimes,
When others heeded not, he heard the South
Make subterraneous music, like the noise
Of bagpipes upon distant Highland hills.
The late Sir Humphry Davy, one of the most successful modern explorers
of the secrets of nature, was not above attending to, and explaining,
the “weather-omens” which are derived from popular observation.
In his _Salmonia_ he has the following dialogue between Haliens, (a
fly-fisher,) Poietes, (a poet,) Physicus, (a man of science,) and
Ornither, (a sportsman):—
_Poiet._—I hope we shall have another good day to-morrow, for the clouds
are red in the west.
_Phys._—I have no doubt of it, for the red has a tint of purple.
_Hal._—Do you know why this tint portends fine weather?
_Phys._—The air, when dry, I believe, refracts more red, or heat-making
rays; and as dry air is not perfectly transparent, they are again
refracted in the horizon. I have generally observed a coppery or yellow
sunset to foretell rain; but as an indication of wet weather
approaching, nothing is more certain than a halo round the moon, which
is produced by precipitated water; and the larger the circle, the nearer
the clouds, and consequently the more ready to fall.
_Hal._—I have often observed that the old proverb is correct,—
A rainbow in the morning is the shepherd’s warning;
A rainbow at night is the shepherd’s delight.
Can you explain this omen?
_Phys._—A rainbow can only occur when the clouds containing or
depositing the rain are opposite the sun,—and in the evening the rainbow
is in the east, and in the morning in the west; and as our heavy rains,
in this climate, are usually brought by the westerly wind, a rainbow in
the west indicates that the bad weather is on the road, by the wind, to
us; whereas the rainbow in the east proves that the rain in those clouds
is passing from us.
_Poiet._—I have often observed that when the swallows fly high, fine
weather is to be expected or continued; but when they fly low, and close
to the ground, rain is almost surely approaching. Can you account for
this?
_Hal._—Swallows follow the flies and gnats, and flies and gnats usually
delight in warm strata of air; and as warm air is lighter, and usually
moister, than cold air, when the warm strata of air are high, there is
less chance of moisture being thrown down from them by the mixture with
cold air; but when the warm and moist air is close to the surface, it is
almost certain that, as the cold air flows down into it, a deposition of
water will take place.
_Poiet._—I have often seen sea-gulls assemble on the land, and have
almost always observed that very stormy and rainy weather was
approaching. I conclude that these animals, sensible of a current of air
approaching from the ocean, retire to the land to shelter themselves
from the storm.
_Orn._—No such thing. The storm is their element, and the little petrel
enjoys the heaviest gale, because, living on the smaller sea-insects, he
is sure to find his food in the spray of a heavy wave; and you may see
him flitting above the edge of the highest surge. I believe that the
reason of this migration of sea-gulls, and other sea-birds, to the land,
is their security of finding food; and they may be observed at this time
feeding greedily on the earth-worms and larvæ driven out of the ground
by severe floods; and the fish, on which they prey in fine weather in
the sea, leave the surface, and go deeper, in storms. The search after
food, as we have agreed on a former occasion, is the principal cause why
animals change their places. The different tribes of the wading birds
always migrate when rain is about to take place; and I remember once, in
Italy, having been long waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of
the double snipe in the Campagna of Rome, a great flight appeared on the
3d of April, and the day after heavy rain set in, which greatly
interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows
armies; and I have no doubt that the augury of the ancients was a good
deal founded upon the observation of the instincts of birds. There are
many superstitions of the vulgar owing to the same source. For anglers,
in spring, it is always unlucky to see single magpies; but two may be
always regarded as a favorable omen; and the reason is, that in cold and
stormy weather one magpie alone leaves the nest in search of food, the
other remaining sitting upon the eggs or the young ones; but when two go
out together it is only when the weather is warm and mild, and favorable
for fishing.
_Poiet._—The singular connections of causes and effects to which you
have just referred, make superstition less to be wondered at,
particularly amongst the vulgar; and when two facts, naturally
unconnected, have been accidentally coincident, it is not singular that
this coincidence should have been observed and registered, and that
omens of the most absurd kind should be trusted in. In the west of
England, half a century ago, a particular hollow noise on the sea-coast
was referred to a spirit or goblin called Bucca, and was supposed to
foretell a shipwreck: the philosopher knows that sound travels much
faster than currents in the air, and the sound always foretold the
approach of a very heavy storm, which seldom takes place on that wild
and rocky coast without a shipwreck on some part of its extensive
shores, surrounded by the Atlantic.
SIGNS OF THE WEATHER.
The following signs of rain were given by Dr. Jenner,[14] in 1810, to a
lady, in reply to her inquiry whether it would rain on the morrow:—
The hollow winds begin to blow,
The clouds look black, the glass is low;
The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep,
And spiders from their cobwebs creep;
Last night the sun went pale to bed,
The moon in halos hid her head;
The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,
For see, a rainbow spans the sky;
The walls are damp, the ditches smell,
Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel;
The squalid toads at dusk were seen
Slowly crawling o’er the green;
Loud quack the ducks, the peacocks cry,
The distant hills are looking nigh;
Hark, how the chairs and tables crack!
Old Betty’s joints are on the rack;
And see yon rooks, how odd their flight,
They imitate the gliding kite,
Or seem precipitate to fall
As if they felt the piercing ball;
How restless are the snorting swine!
The busy flies disturb the kine;
Low o’er the grass the swallow wings;
The cricket too, how loud she sings!
Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws,
Sits wiping o’er her whiskered jaws:—
’Twill surely rain, I see, with sorrow:
Our jaunt must be put off to-morrow.
Footnote 14:
Versified by Darwin.
The following is taken from _The Shepherd’s Calendar_, 1683:
_Signs of Rain, from Birds._—Sea and fresh-water fowls, such as
cormorants, sea-gulls, moor-hens, &c. flying from sea or the fresh
waters to land, show bad weather at hand; land fowls flying to waters,
and those shaking, washing, and noisy, especially in the evening, denote
the same; geese, ducks, coots, &c. picking, shaking, washing, and noisy;
rooks and crows in flocks and suddenly disappearing; pyes and jays in
flocks and very noisy; the raven or hooded-crow crying in the morning,
with an interruption in its notes, or crows being very clamorous at
evening; the heron, bittern, and swallow flying low; birds forsaking
their food and flying to their nests; poultry going to rest or pigeons
to their dove-house; tame fowls grubbing in the dust and clapping their
wings; small birds seeming to duck and wash in the sand; the late and
early crowing of the cock, and clapping his wings; the early singing of
woodlarks; the early chirping of sparrows; the early note of the
chaffinch near houses; the dull appearance of robin-redbreast near
houses; peacocks and owls unusually clamorous.
_Of Wind, from Birds._—Sea and fresh-water fowls gathering in flocks to
the banks, and there sporting, especially in the morning; wild geese
flying high and in flocks, and directing their course eastward; coots
restless and clamorous; the hoopoe loud in his note; the king’s fisher
taking to land; rooks darting or shooting in the air, or sporting on the
banks of fresh waters; and lastly, the appearance of the malefigie at
sea, is a certain forerunner of violent winds, and (early in the
morning) denotes horrible tempests at hand.
_Of Fair Weather, from Birds._—Halcyons, sea-ducks, &c. leaving the
land, and flocking to the sea; kites, herons, bitterns, and swallows
flying high, and loud in their notes; lapwings restless and clamorous;
sparrows after sunrise restless and noisy; ravens, hawks, and kestrils
(in the morning) loud in their notes; robin-redbreast mounted high, and
loud in his song; larks soaring high, and loud in their songs; owls
hooting with an easy and clear note; bats appearing early in the
evening.
_Of Rain, from Beasts._—Asses braying more frequently than usual; hogs
playing, scattering their food, or carrying straw in their mouths; oxen
snuffing the air, looking to the south, while lying on their right
sides, or licking their hoofs; cattle gasping for air at noon; calves
running violently and gamboling; deer, sheep, or goats leaping,
fighting, or pushing; cats washing their face and ears; dogs eagerly
scraping up earth; foxes barking; rats and mice more restless than
usual; a grumbling noise in the belly of hounds.
_Of Rain, from Insects._—Worms crawling out of the earth in great
abundance; spiders falling from their webs; flies dull and restless;
ants hastening to their nests; bees hastening home, and keeping close in
their hives; frogs drawing nigh to houses, and croaking from ditches;
gnats singing more than usual; but if gnats play in the open air, or if
hornets, wasps, and glow-worms appear plentifully in the evening, or if
spiders’ webs are seen in the air or on the grass, these do all denote
fair and warm weather at hand.
_Of Rain, from the Sun._—Sun rising dim or waterish; rising red with
blackish beams mixed along with his rays; rising in a musty or muddy
color; rising red and turning blackish; setting under a thick cloud;
setting with a red sky in the east.
Sudden rains never last long; but when the air grows thick by degrees,
and the sun, moon, and stars shine dimmer and dimmer, then it is like to
rain six hours usually.
_Of Wind, from the Sun._—Sun rising pale and setting red, with an iris;
rising large in surface; rising with a red sky in the north; setting of
a blood color; setting pale, with one or more dark circles, or
accompanied with red streaks, seeming concave or hollow; seeming
divided, great storms; parhelia, or mock suns, never appear but are
followed by tempest.
_Of Fair Weather, from the Sun._—Sun rising clear, having set clear the
night before; rising while the clouds about him are driving to the west;
rising with an iris around him, and that iris wearing away equally on
all sides, then expect fair and settled weather; rising clear and not
hot; setting in red clouds, according to the old observation,—
The evening red and morning gray,
Is the sure sign of a fair day.
To the above may be added the following from a more recent source:—
As a rule, a circle around the moon indicates rain and wind. When seen
with a north or northeast wind, we may look for stormy weather,
especially if the circle be large; with the wind in any other quarter,
we may expect rain; so also when the ring is small and the moon seems
covered with mist. If, however, the moon rise after sunset, and a circle
be soon after formed around it, no rain is foreboded. In the Netherlands
they have this proverb:—
Een kring om de maan (A ring round the moon
Die kan vergaan; May pass away soon;
Maar een kring om de zon But a ring round the sun
Geeft water in de ton. Gives water in the tun.)
An old astrologer, referring to St. Paul’s day, Jan. 25, says:—
If St. Paul be fair and clear,
It promises then a happy year;
But if it chance to snow or rain,
Then will be dear all sorts of grain;
Or if the wind do blow aloft,
Great stirs will vex the world full oft;
And if dark clouds do muff the sky,
Then fowl and cattle oft will die.
Another, alluding to the Ember-day in December, says:—
When Ember-day is cold and clear
There’ll be two winters in that year.
The following is from a manuscript in the British Museum:—
If Christmas day on Thursday be,
A windy winter you shall see;
Windy weather in each week,
And hard tempests, strong and thick;
The summer shall be good and dry,
Corn and beasts shall multiply;
That year is good for lands to till;
Kings and princes shall die by skill;
If a child born that day shall be,
It shall happen right well for thee:
Of deeds he shall be good and stable,
Wise of speech, and reasonable.
Whoso that day goes thieving about,
He shall be punished, without doubt;
And if sickness that day betide,
It shall quickly from thee glide.
UNLUCKY DAYS.
The following list of the “evil days in each month” is translated from
the original Latin verses in the old _Sarum Missal_:—
_January._ Of this first month, the opening day
And seventh like a sword will slay.
_February._ The fourth day bringeth down to death;
The third will stop a strong man’s breath.
_March._ The first the greedy glutton slays;
The fourth cuts short the drunkard’s days.
_April._ The tenth and the eleventh, too,
Are ready death’s fell work to do.
_May._ The third to slay poor man hath power;
The seventh destroyeth in an hour.
_June._ The tenth a pallid visage shows;
No faith nor truth the fifteenth knows.
_July._ The thirteenth is a fatal day;
The tenth alike will mortals slay.
_August._ The first kills strong ones at a blow;
The second lays a cohort low.
_September._ The third day of the month September,
And tenth, bring evil to each member.
_October._ The third and tenth, with poisoned breath,
To man are foes as foul as death.
_November._ The fifth bears scorpion-sting of deadly pain;
The third is tinctured with destruction’s train.
_December._ The seventh’s a fatal day to human life;
The tenth is with a serpent’s venom rife.
O. S. and N. S.
THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR.
The Julian calendar was framed about 46 years before Christ. Cæsar made
the year consist of 365 days; and the annual excess of six hours, which
amounted to one day in four years, was taken into account by making
every fourth year (leap-year) consist of 366 days. But Cæsar’s
correction of the calendar was imperfect, being founded on the
supposition that the solar year consisted of 365 days, 6 hours, whereas
the true solar year consists of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45½
seconds. Thus the Julian year exceeded the solar 11 minutes 14½
seconds,—which amounted to a whole day in 130 years. In consequence of
this inaccuracy, the vernal equinox, which happened on the 25th of March
in the time of Julius Cæsar, had receded to the 21st of March in the
year 325, and was fixed to that day by the Council of Nice. Attempts
were afterwards made to effect some change in the calendar; but a
complete reformation was not made until 1582. Pope Gregory XIII. invited
to Rome the most learned astronomers of the age; and, after the subject
had been discussed ten years, it was decreed that the vernal equinox,
which had receded ten days since the Council of Nice, and consequently
happened on the 11th of March, should be brought back to the 21st of
March, and that for this purpose ten days should be taken from the month
of October, 1582. To avoid future deviation, it was determined that
instead of every 100th year being leap-year, every 400th year only
should be leap-year. By this plan—a diminution of three days in 400
years—the error in the present calendar will not exceed a day and a half
in five thousand years.
The calendar thus reformed by Pope Gregory was immediately introduced
into Catholic countries, but was not finally adopted in Great Britain
until 1752, when, by act of Parliament, eleven days were struck out of
the calendar, the 3d of September being reckoned the 14th. The Greek
Church still obstinately adheres to the old style.
RESULTS OF THE CHANGE IN THE STYLE.
The following happily-conceived address to the patrons of “Poor Job’s
Almanac” was occasioned by the change of the style in 1752. The number
of that year bears the title—
_Poor Job_, 1752. _By Job Shepherd, philom. Newport. Printed by James
Franklin,[15] at the Printing-office under the Town School-house._ In
this almanac the month of September has, in the margin, the figures of
the successive days, commencing 1, 2; and, after leaving blank a space
for eleven days, recommencing with 14, and continuing to the 30th.
Footnote 15:
Brother of Dr. Franklin.
§Kind Reader§:—You have now such a year as you never saw before, nor
will see hereafter, the King and Parliament of Great Britain having
thought proper to enact that the month of September, 1752, shall contain
but nineteen days, which will shorten this year eleven days, and have
extended the same throughout the British dominions; so that we are not
to have two beginnings to our years, but the first of January is to be
the first day and the first month of the year 1752; eleven days are
taken from September, and begin 1, 2, 14, 15, &c. Be not astonished, nor
look with concern, dear reader, at such a deduction of days, nor regret
as for the loss of so much time; but take this for your consolation,
that your expenses will perhaps appear lighter, and your mind be more at
ease. And what an indulgence is here for those who love their pillows,
to lie down in peace on the second of this month, and not perhaps awake
or be disturbed till the fourteenth, in the morning! And, reader, this
is not to hasten the payment of debts, freedom of apprentices or
servants, or the coming to age of minors; but the number of natural days
in all agreements are to be fulfilled. All Church holidays and Courts
are to be on the same nominal days they were before; but fairs, after
the second of September, alter the nominal days, and so seemed to be
held eleven days later. Now, reader, since ’tis likely you may never
have such another year nor such another almanac, I would advise you to
improve the one for your own sake, and I recommend the other for the
sake of your friend,
§Poor Job§.
Memoria Technica.
NAMES AND ORDER OF THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
The Great Jehovah speaks to us
In Genesis and Exodus;
Leviticus and Numbers see
Followed by Deuteronomy.
Joshua and Judges sway the land,
Ruth gleans a sheaf with trembling hand;
Samuel and numerous Kings appear
Whose Chronicles we wondering hear.
Ezra and Nehemiah, now,
Esther the beauteous mourner show.
Job speaks in sighs, David in Psalms,
The Proverbs teach to scatter alms;
Ecclesiastes then comes on,
And the sweet Song of Solomon.
Isaiah, Jeremiah then
With Lamentations takes his pen,
Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea’s lyres
Swell Joel, Amos, Obadiah’s.
Next Jonas, Micah, Nahum come,
And lofty Habakkuk finds room—
While Zephaniah, Haggai calls,
Wrapt Zachariah builds his walls;
And Malachi, with garments rent,
Concludes the ancient Testament.
NAMES AND ORDER OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, wrote the life of their Lord;
The Acts, what Apostles accomplished, record;
Rome, Corinth, Galatus, Ephesus, hear
What Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians revere:
Timotheus, Titus, Philemon, precede
The Epistle which Hebrews most gratefully read;
James, Peter, and John, with the short letter Jude,
The rounds of Divine Revelation conclude.
NAMES OF SHAKSPEARE’S PLAYS.
_Omitting the Historical English Dramas, “quos versu dicere non est.”_
Cymbeline, Tempest, Much Ado, Verona,
Merry Wives, Twelfth Night, As you Like it, Errors,
Shrew Taming, Night’s Dream, Measure, Andronicus,
Timon of Athens.
Winter’s Tale, Merchant, Troilus, Lear, Hamlet,
Love’s Labor, All’s Well, Pericles, Othello,
Romeo, Macbeth, Cleopatra, Cæsar,
Coriolanus.
ENGLISH SOVEREIGNS.
First William the Norman,
Then William his son;
Henry, Stephen, and Henry,
Then Richard and John.
Next Henry the Third,
Edwards one, two, and three;
And again, after Richard,
Three Henrys we see.
Two Edwards, third Richard,
If rightly I guess;
Two Henrys, sixth Edward,
Queen Mary, Queen Bess.
Then Jamie, the Scotchman,
Then Charles whom they slew,
Yet received after Cromwell
Another Charles too.
Next James the Second
Ascended the throne;
Then good William and Mary
Together came on.
Till, Anne, Georges four,
And fourth William all past,
God sent Queen Victoria:
May she long be the last!
PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
First stands the lofty §Washington§,
That nobly great, immortal one;
The elder §Adams§ next we see,
And §Jefferson§ comes number three;
The fourth is §Madison§, you know,
The fifth one on the list, §Monroe§;
The sixth an §Adams§ comes again,
And §Jackson§ seventh in the train;
§Van Buren§ eighth upon the line,
And §Harrison§ counts number nine;
The tenth is §Tyler§ in his turn,
And §Polk§ eleventh, as we learn;
The twelfth is §Taylor§ that appears;
The thirteenth, §Fillmore§ fills his years;
Then §Pierce§ comes fourteenth into view;
§Buchanan§ is the fifteenth due;
The sixteenth §Lincoln§, foully slain;
The seventeenth was §Johnson§’s _reign_;
Then §Grant§ was by the people sent
To be their eighteenth President.
THE DECALOGUE.
1. Have thou no Gods but me; 2. Nor graven type adore;
3. Take not my name in vain; ’twere guilt most sore:
4. Hallow the seventh day; 5. Thy parents’ honor love:
6. No murder do; 7. Nor thou adulterer prove:
8. From theft be pure thy hands; 9. No witness false, thy word:
10. Covet of none his house, wife, maid, or herd.
* * * * *
Worship to God—but not God graven—pay;
Blaspheme not; sanctify the Sabbath day;
Be honored parents; brother’s blood unshed;
And unpolluted hold the marriage bed;
From theft thy hand—thy tongue from lying—keep,
Nor covet neighbor’s home, spouse, serf, ox, sheep.
* * * * *
Thou no God shalt have but me;
Before no idol bow the knee;
Take not the name of God in vain;
Nor dare the Sabbath day profane;
Give both thy parents honor due;
Take heed that thou no murder do;
Abstain from words and deeds unclean;
Nor steal, though thou art poor and mean;
Nor make a willful lie, nor love it;
What is thy neighbor’s, do not covet.
METRICAL GRAMMAR.
Three little words we often see
Are Articles, _a_, _an_ and _the_.
A Noun’s the name of any thing,
As _school_, or _garden_, _hoop_, or _swing_.
Adjectives tell the kind of Noun,
As _great_, _small_, _pretty_, _white_, or _brown_.
Instead of Nouns the Pronouns stand—
_Her_ fan, _his_ face, _my_ arm, _your_ hand.
Verbs tell of something being done—
To _read_, _write_, _count_, _sing_, _jump_, or _run_.
How things are done the Adverbs tell,
As _slowly_, _quickly_, _ill_, or _well_.
Conjunctions join the words together,
As men _and_ children, wind _or_ weather.
The Preposition stands before
A Noun—as, _in_ or _through_ a door.
The Interjection shows surprise,
As _Oh!_ how pretty, _Ah!_ how wise.
The whole are called nine parts of Speech,
Which _Reading_, _Writing_, _Speaking_, teach.
NUMBER OF DAYS IN EACH MONTH.
One of the most useful lessons taught us in early life by arithmetical
treatises, is that of Grafton’s well-known lines in his _Chronicles of
England_, 1590. Sir Walter Scott, in conversation with a friend,
adverted jocularly to that ancient and respectable but unknown poet, who
had given us this formula:—
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
And all the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
Which has but twenty-eight, in fine,
Till Leap-Year gives it twenty-nine.
The form used by the Quakers runs thus:—
The fourth, eleventh, ninth and sixth
Have thirty days to each affixed;
Every other, thirty-one,
Except the second month alone.
Origin of Things Familiar.
MIND YOUR P’S AND Q’S.
It would be a curious thing, if they could be traced out, to ascertain
the origin of half the quaint old sayings and maxims that have come down
to the present time from unknown generations. Who, for example, was
“§Dick§,” who had the odd-looking “hat-band,” and who has so long been
the synonym or representative of oddly-acting people? Who knows any
thing authentic of the leanness of “Job’s turkey,” who has so many
followers in the ranks of humanity? Scores of other sayings there are,
concerning which similar questions might be asked. Who ever knew, until
comparatively late years, what was the origin of the cautionary saying,
“Mind your P’s and Q’s”? A modern antiquarian, however, has put the
world right in relation to _that_ saying. In ale-houses, in the olden
time, when chalk “scores” were marked upon the wall, or behind the door
of the tap-room, it was customary to put the initials “P” and “Q” at the
head of every man’s account, to show the number of “pints” and “quarts”
for which he was in arrears; and we may presume many a friendly rustic
to have tapped his neighbor on the shoulder, when he was indulging too
freely in his potations, and to have exclaimed, as he pointed to the
chalk-score, “Mind your P’s and Q’s, man! mind your P’s and Q’s!” The
writer from whom we glean this information mentions an amusing anecdote
in connection with it, which had its origin in London, at the time a
“Learned Pig” was attracting the attention of half the town. A
theatrical wag, who attended the porcine performances, maliciously set
before the four-legged actor some _peas_,—a temptation which the animal
could not resist, and which immediately occasioned him to lose the “cue”
given him by the showman. The pig-exhibitor remonstrated with the author
of the mischief on the unfairness of what he had done; to which he
replied, “I only wanted to ascertain whether the pig knew his ‘peas’
from his ‘cues!’”
ALL FOOLS’ DAY.
April the First stands marked by custom’s rules,
A day of being, and of making, fools.
The First of April, as is well known, is distinguished in the calendar
by the singular appellation of “_All Fools’ Day_.” It would be a curious
exception to common experience, if, on the recurrence of this memorable
epoch in the division of time, multitudes were not betrayed into a due
observance of its peculiarities. Many grave and unsuspecting people have
been sent upon the most frivolous and nonsensical errands. Many a
passer-by has been told that there was something out of his pocket,
which was his hand; or something on his face, which was his nose. Many a
school-boy has been sent to the shoemaker’s for stirrup-oil, which he
would get from a strap, across his shoulders; or to ask a schoolmistress
for the biography of Eve’s mother; or to an old bachelor to purchase
pigeon’s milk. Many a printer’s “devil” has been sent to a neighboring
editor for a quart of editorial, and received in return a picture of a
jackass; and many a pretty girl despatched to the handsome druggist
round the corner for the essence of tulips (two-lips,) which she would
sometimes box the pharmaceutic ears for offering to give her. Some would
be summoned, upon the most unfounded pretexts, out of their warm beds,
an hour or more before the accustomed time. Others were enticed to open
packages, promising ample remuneration, but full of disappointment; and
others again, as they passed along the streets, were captivated by the
sight of pieces of spurious coin, which, when they essayed to lift, they
found securely fastened to the pavement,—together with various other
whimsicalities, which under other circumstances would have been deemed
highly offensive, but, happening on the First of April, were considered,
if not agreeable, at least comparatively harmless. The _origin_ of this
strange custom is shrouded in mystery. It has been traced by some to the
scene in the life of Jesus when he was sent from Pilate to Herod, and
back from Herod to Pilate, which occurred about this period.
Brady’s _Clavis Calendaria_, published in 1812, mentions that more than
a century previous the almanacs designated the First of April as “All
Fools’ Day.” In the northern counties of England and Scotland, the jokes
on that day were practised to a great extent, and it scarcely required
an apology to experiment upon the gravest and most respectable of city
or country gentlemen and women. The person whose good nature or
simplicity put him momentarily in the power of his facetious neighbor
was called a “_gowk_”—and the sending upon ridiculous errands, “_hunting
the gowk_.” The term “_gowk_” was a common expression for a cuckoo,
which was reckoned among the silliest and simplest of all the feathered
tribes.
In France, the person made the butt upon these occasions was styled “_un
poisson d’Avril_”—that is, an April fish—by implication, an April
fool—“_poisson d’Avril_,” the familiar name of the _mackerel_, a fish
easily caught by deception, singly and in shoals, at this season of the
year. The term “April fool” was therefore, probably, nothing more than
an easy substitution of that opprobrious epithet for fish, and it is
quite likely that our ancestors borrowed the custom from France, with
this change in the phrase peculiar to the occasion. It is possible,
however, that it may have been derived from _poison_, mischief. Among
the French, ridicule is the most successful weapon for correcting folly
and holding vice in _terrorem_. A Frenchman is more afraid of a
successful _bon mot_ at his expense than of a sword, and the First of
April is a day, therefore, of which he can make a double application: he
may gratify his love of pleasantry among his friends, or inflict a
severe wound on his enemies, if he possess the art and wit to invent and
perpetrate a worthy piece of foolery upon them. One of the best tricks
that ever occurred in France was that of Rabelais, who fooled the
officers of justice, when he had no money, into conveying him from
Marseilles to Paris on a charge of treason got up for the purpose, and,
when arrived there, showing them how they were hoaxed. For this purpose
he made up some brick-dust and ashes in different packets, labelled as
poisons for the royal family of France. The bait took, and he was
conveyed to the capital as a traitor, seven hundred miles, only to
explain the joke.
There is a very common practical joke on fools’ day in the British
metropolis: it consists in despatching a letter by an unlucky dupe, who
is to wait for an answer. The answer is a second note, to a third
person, “to send the fool farther.” A young surgeon, a greenhorn in
practice, fresh from St. Bartholomew’s, his instruments unfleshed on his
own account, and his surgery bottles full to repletion, was called a few
years ago from the Strand to a patient in Newgate Street, very rich,
named Dobbs. It was the First of April, and it was his first patient.
The young Esculapius was ushered into the presence of the supposed
patient, who was busy writing in his counting-house. The surgeon
explained his errand, and Mr. Dobbs, having an excellent mercantile
discernment, soon saw through the affair. He bowed and said, “It is a
mistake, sir: my name is Dobbs, but I am, thank God, hale and hearty. It
is my brother, the sugar-baker, on Fish Street Hill, that has sent for
you, [carriage or horse he had none,] three-fourths of a mile farther.”
He entered among the pyramids of snowy sweets, and found Mr. Dobbs, the
sugar-baker, of Fish Street Hill, as hale as his brother of Newgate
Street. The refiner of saccharine juice understood his brother’s note,
stammered out a pretended apology for the mistake, and said he supposed,
as the young man’s directions were to Mr. J. Dobbs, and not Mr. Jeffry
Dobbs, that was intended; that his name was Jeffry, but his brother
John, a third member of the family, and in his business, lived at
Limehouse, whither he thought, if our surgeon proceeded, he would find
the person he sought. An address was handed the young tourniquet at the
extreme end of Limehouse, which address, it is needless to say, was
false. What will not a surgeon do to obtain his first patient, and a
rich one too? Away he posted to Limehouse, and soon found how far he had
travelled for nothing. Tired and disappointed, and scheming vengeance on
the authors of the hoax, he set off on his return home, cursing the
Dobbs family every step he went. As he passed along Upper Shadwell, he
saw a horse gallop furiously down Chamomile Street and fling its rider a
heavy fall on the pavement. He ran and lifted the fallen man, whom he
found insensible. He conveyed him to a shop hard by, bled him, and had
the satisfaction of seeing him open his eyes. Suffice it to say that, on
being conveyed home, our young surgeon attended him until he was
restored to health; and so gratefully were his exertions received by the
stranger, who was a rich East India merchant, far advanced in life, that
he took him into his house as a medical attendant and friend, and
ultimately left him the bulk of his property. Thus, out of an intended
Fools’ Day hoax, by the inscrutable caprice of fortune, a frolic led its
dupe to wealth. This anecdote, according to the London Athenæum, may be
depended on as true, nothing in the story but the name adopted, to
conceal the real actors in the drama, being fictitious.
A day of fooleries, the _Huli Fest_, is observed, also, among the
Hindoos, attended with the like silly species of witticism.
By many it is believed that the term “_all_” is a corruption of _auld_
or _old_, thereby making it originally “Old Fools’ Day,” in confirmation
of which opinion the following observation is quoted from an ancient
Roman calendar respecting the 1st of November:—“The feast of old fools
is removed to this day.” The oldest almanacs extant, however, have it
_all_ (and not _old_) fools’ day. Besides the Roman “Saturnalia” and the
Druidical rites, superstitions which the early Christians found in
existence when they commenced their labors in England, was the _Festum
Fatuorum_, or _Fools’ Holiday_, which was doubtless our present First of
April. In some of the German classics frequent mention is made of the
_Aprilen Narr_, so that even the Germans of the olden time understood
how to practise their cunning April arts upon their neighbors quite as
well as we of the present day.
Enough has been here quoted to prove that the custom is of very ancient
existence; but the precise _origin_ thereof remains undiscovered, and
will have to be dug from some of the musty chronicles of gray antiquity.
But, be the origin of the custom what it may, we cannot avoid the
conclusion that it is one “more honored in the breach than in the
observance.”
CARDS.
About the year 1390, cards were invented to divert Charles IV., then
King of France, who was fallen into a melancholy disposition. That they
were not in use before appears highly probable. 1st, Because no cards
are to be seen in any paintings, sculpture, tapestry, &c. more ancient
than the preceding period, but are represented in many works of
ingenuity since that age. 2dly, No prohibitions relative to cards, by
the king’s edicts, are mentioned; although some few years before, a most
severe one was published, forbidding by name all manner of sports and
pastimes, in order that the subjects might exercise themselves in
shooting with bows and arrows and be in a condition to oppose the
English. Now, it is not to be presumed that so luring a game as cards
would have been omitted in the enumeration had they been in use. 3dly,
In all the ecclesiastical canons prior to the same time, there occurs no
mention of cards; although, twenty years after that date, card-playing
was interdicted the clergy by a Gallican Synod. About the same time is
found in the account-book of the king’s cofferer the following
charge:—“Paid for a pack of painted leaves bought for the king’s
amusement, three livres.” Printing and stamping being not then
discovered, the cards were painted, which made them dear. Thence, in the
above synodical canons, they are called _pagillæ pictæ_, painted little
leaves. 4thly, About thirty years after this came a severe edict against
cards in France, and another by Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, only permitting
the ladies this pastime, _pro spinilis_, for pins and needles.
_Of their designs._—The inventor proposed by the figures of the four
suits, or colors, as the French call them, to represent the four states
or classes of men in the kingdom. By the _Cæsars_ (hearts) are meant the
_Gens de Chœur_, choir-men, or ecclesiastics; and therefore the
Spaniards, who certainly received the use of cards from the French, have
_copas_ or chalices instead of hearts. The nobility, or prime military
part of the kingdom, are represented by the ends or points of lances, or
pikes; and our ignorance of the meaning or resemblance of the figure
induced us to call them spades. The Spaniards have _espadas_ (swords) in
lieu of pikes, which is of similar import. By diamonds are designated
the order of citizens, merchants, and tradesmen, _carraux_, (square
stone tiles, or the like.) The Spaniards have a coin _dineros_, which
answers to it; and the Dutch call the French word _carreaux_,
_stieneen_, stones and diamonds, from the form. _Treste_, the trefoil
leaf, or clover grass, (corruptly called clubs,) alludes to husbandmen
and peasants. How this suit came to be called clubs is not explained,
unless, borrowing the game from the Spaniards, who have _bastos_ (staves
or clubs) instead of the trefoil, we gave the Spanish signification to
the French figure.
The “history of the four kings,” which the French in drollery sometimes
call “the cards,” is that of _David_, _Alexander_, _Cæsar_, and
_Charles_, names which were, and still are, on the French cards. These
respective names represent the four celebrated monarchies of the Jews,
Greeks, Romans, and Franks under Charlemagne.
By the queens are intended _Argine_, _Esther_, _Judith_, and _Pallas_,
(names retained in the French cards,) typical of birth, piety,
fortitude, and wisdom, the qualifications residing in each person.
“Argine” is an anagram for “Regina,” queen by descent.
By the knaves were designed the servants to knights, (for knave
originally meant only servant; and in an old translation of the Bible,
St. Paul is called the knave of Christ,) but French pages and valets,
now indiscriminately used by various orders of persons, were formerly
only allowed to persons of quality, esquires, (escuiers,) shield or
armor bearers. Others fancy that the knights themselves were designed by
those cards, because _Hogier_ and _Lahire_, two names on the French
cards, were famous knights at the time cards were supposed to be
invented.
SUB ROSA.
But when we with caution a secret disclose,
We cry, “Be it spoken, sir, under the rose.”
Since ’tis known that the rose was an emblem of old,
Whose leaves by their closeness taught secrets to hold;
And ’twas thence it was painted on tables so oft
As a warning, lest, when with a frankness men scoft
At their neighbor, their lord, their fat priest, or their nation,
Some among ’em next day should betray conversation.
_British Apollo_, 1708.
The origin of the phrase _under the rose_ implies secrecy, and had its
origin during the year §B.C.§ 477, at which time Pausanias, the
commander of the confederate fleet of the Spartans and Athenians, was
engaged in an intrigue with Xerxes for the subjugation of Greece to the
Persian rule, and for the hand of the monarch’s daughter in marriage.
Their negotiations were carried on in a building attached to the temple
of Minerva, called the Brazen House, the roof of which was a garden
forming a bower of roses; so that the plot, which was conducted with the
utmost secrecy, was literally matured _under the rose_. Pausanias,
however, was betrayed by one of his emissaries, who, by a preconcerted
plan with the ephori, (the overseers and counsellors of state, five in
number,) gave them a secret opportunity to hear from the lips of
Pausanias himself the acknowledgment of his treason. To escape arrest,
he fled to the temple of Minerva, and, as the sanctity of the place
forbade intrusion for violence or harm of any kind, the people walled up
the edifice with stones and left him to die of starvation. His own
mother laid the first stone.
It afterward became a custom among the Athenians to wear roses in their
hair whenever they wished to communicate to another a secret which they
wished to be kept inviolate. Hence the saying _sub rosa_ among them,
and, since, among Christian nations.
OVER THE LEFT.
The earliest trace of the use and peculiar significance of this phrase
may be found in the _Records_ of the Hartford County Courts, in the
(then) Colony of Connecticut, as follows:—
At a County Court held at Hartford, }
September 4, 1705. }
Whereas James Steel did commence an action against Bevell Waters (both
of Hartford) in this Court, upon hearing and tryall whereof the Court
gave judgment against the said Waters, (as in justice they think they
ought,) upon the declaring the said judgment, the said Waters did review
to the Court in March next, that, being granted and entered, the said
Waters, as he departed from the table, he said, “_God bless you over the
left shoulder_.”
The Court order a record to be made thereof forthwith.
A true copie: Test.
§Caleb Stanley§, Clerk.
At the next court, Waters was tried for contempt, for saying the words
recited, “so cursing the Court,” and on verdict fined £5. He asked a
review of the Court following, which was granted; and pending trial, the
Court asked counsel of the Rev. Messrs. Woodbridge and Buckingham, the
ministers of the Hartford churches, as to the “common acceptation” of
the offensive phrase. Their reply constitutes a part of the _Record_,
and is as follows:—
We are of opinion that those words, said on the other side to be spoken
by Bevell Waters, include (1) prophaneness, by using the name of God,
that is holy, with such ill words whereto it was joyned; (2) that they
carry great contempt in them, arising to the degree of an imprecation or
curse, the words of a curse being the most contemptible that can
ordinarily be used.
§T. Woodbridge.§
§T. Buckingham.§
March 7th, 1705–6.
The former judgment was affirmed on review.
KICKING THE BUCKET.
The tradition among the slang fraternity as to the origin of this phrase
is that “One Bolsover, having hung himself to a beam while standing on
the bottom of a pail, or bucket, kicked the vessel away in order to pry
into futurity, and it was all UP with him from that moment—_Finis!_”
BUMPER.
When the Roman Catholic religion was in the ascendant in England, the
health of the Pope was usually drunk in a full glass immediately after
dinner—_au bon père_: hence the word “Bumper.”
ROYAL SAYING.
It was Alphonsus, surnamed the Wise, King of Aragon, who used to say,
“That among so many things as are by men possessed or pursued in the
course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to
burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to
read.”
DUN.
This word, generally supposed to be derived from the French _donnez_,
owes its origin, according to the British Apollo of September, 1708, to
one _Joe Dun_, a famous bailiff of Lincoln in the time of Henry VII. He
is said to have been so extremely shrewd in the management of his rough
business, and so dexterous in the collection of dues, that his name
became proverbial; and whenever a man refused to pay his debts, it grew
into a prevalent custom to say, “Why don’t you §Dun§ him?”
HUMBUG.
Among the many issues of base coin which from time to time were made in
Ireland, there was none to be compared in worthlessness to that made by
James II. at the Dublin Mint. It was composed of any thing on which he
could lay his hands, such as lead, pewter, copper, and brass, and so low
was its intrinsic value that twenty shillings of it was only worth
twopence sterling. William III., a few days after the battle of the
Boyne, ordered that the crown-piece and half-crown should be taken as
one penny and one half-penny respectively. The soft mixed metal of which
that worthless coin was composed was known among the Irish as Uim bog,
pronounced Oom-bug, i.e. soft copper, i.e. worthless money; and in the
course of their dealings the modern use of the word _humbug_ took its
rise, as in the phrases, “That’s a _piece of uimbog_,” “Don’t think to
_pass off your uimbog_ on me.” Hence the word _humbug_ came to be
applied to any thing that had a specious appearance but which was in
reality spurious. It is curious to note that the very opposite of
_humbug_, i.e. false metal, is the word _sterling_, which is also taken
from a term applied to the _true_ coinage of Great Britain, as
_sterling_ coin, _sterling_ worth, &c.
PASQUINADES.
At one corner of the Palazzo Braschi, the last monument of Papal
nepotism, near the Piazza Navona, in Rome, stands the famous mutilated
torso known as the statue of Pasquin. It is the remains of a work of art
of considerable merit, found at this spot, in the sixteenth century, and
supposed to represent Ajax supporting Menelaus. It derives its modern
name from the tailor Pasquin, who kept a shop opposite, which was the
rendezvous of all the gossips in the city, and from which their
satirical witticisms on the manners and follies of the day obtained a
ready circulation.
Misson says in his Travels in Italy,—The tailor had precisely the talent
to head a regiment of satirical wits, and had he had time to publish, he
would have been the Peter Pindar of his day; but his genius seems to
have been satisfied to rest cross-legged on his shop-board. When any
lampoons or amusing _bon-mots_ were current in Rome, they were usually
called, from his shop, _Pasquinades_. After his death, this statue of an
ancient gladiator was found under the pavement of his shop. It was soon
set up, and by universal consent was inscribed with his name; and they
still attempt to raise him from the dead, and keep the caustic tailor
alive, in the marble gladiator of wit.
The statue of Marforio, which stood near the arch of Septimus Severus,
in the Forum, was made the vehicle for replying to the attacks of
Pasquin; and for many years they kept up an incessant fire of wit and
repartee. When Marforio was removed to the museum in the capitol, the
Pope wished to remove Pasquin also; but the Duke di Braschi, to whom he
belongs, would not permit it. Adrian VI. attempted to arrest his career
by ordering the statue to be burnt and thrown into the Tiber; but one of
the Pope’s friends, Ludovico Sussano, saved him, by suggesting that his
ashes would turn into frogs, and croak more terribly than before. It is
said that his owner is compelled to pay a fine whenever he is found
guilty of exhibiting any scandalous placards. The modern Romans seem to
regard Pasquin as part of their social system: in the absence of a free
press, he has become in some measure the organ of public opinion, and
there is scarcely an event upon which he does not pronounce judgment.
Some of his sayings are extremely broad for the atmosphere of Rome, but
many of them are very witty, and fully maintain the character of his
fellow-citizens for satirical epigrams and repartee. When Mezzofanti,
the great linguist, was made a cardinal, Pasquin declared that it was a
very proper appointment, for there could be no doubt that the “Tower of
Babel,” “_Il torre di Babel_” required an interpreter. At the time of
the first French occupation of Italy, Pasquin gave out the following
satirical dialogue:—
I Francesi son tutti ladri.
Non tutti—ma Bonaparte.
The French are all robbers.
Not all, but a _good part_; (or
Not all—but Bonaparte.)
Another remarkable saying is recorded in connection with the celebrated
bull of Urban VIII., excommunicating all persons who took snuff in the
Cathedral of Seville. On the publication of this decree, Pasquin
appropriately quoted the beautiful passage in Job,—“Wilt thou break a
leaf driven to and fro? and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?”
BOTTLED ALE.
The hop for his profit I thus do exalt;
It strengtheneth drink and it flavoreth malt;
And being well brewed, long kept it will last,
And drawing abide, if ye draw not too fast.
_Tusser_, 1557.
Alexander Newell, Dean of St. Paul’s and Master of Westminster School in
the reign of Queen Mary, was an excellent angler. But, (says Fuller,)
while Newell was catching of fishes, Bishop Bonner was catching of
Newell, and would certainly have sent him to the shambles had not a good
London merchant conveyed him away upon the seas. Newell was fishing upon
the banks of the Thames when he received the first intimation of his
danger, which was so pressing that he dared not go back to his own house
to make any preparation for his flight. Like an honest angler, he had
taken with him provision for the day, and when, in the first year of
England’s deliverance, he returned to his country and his old haunts, he
remembered that on the day of his flight he had left a bottle of beer in
a safe place on the bank: there he looked for it, and “found it no
bottle, but a gun—such the sound at the opening thereof; and this (adds
Fuller,) is believed (casualty is mother of more invention than
industry) the origin of Bottled Ale in England.”
THE POTATO.
Although Sir Walter Raleigh was unexpectedly prevented from accompanying
Sir Humphrey Gilbert to Newfoundland, he eventually proved one of the
greatest benefactors to his own country, by the introduction of the
potato on his return from America, in the year 1584. This root was first
planted on Sir Walter’s estate at Youghall, which he afterward sold to
the Earl of Cork; but not having given sufficient directions to the
person who had the management of the land, the latter mistook the
flowers for the fruit and most valuable part of the plant, and, on
tasting them, rejected them as a pernicious exotic. Some time
afterwards, turning up the earth, he found the roots spread to a great
distance, and in considerable quantities; and from this stock the whole
kingdom was soon after supplied with this valuable plant, which
gradually spread throughout Europe and North America. Its name,
_potato_, in Irish _paitey_, and in French _patate_, is said to be
derived from the original language of Mexico, of which it is supposed to
be a native.
_Anspach’s History of Newfoundland._
TARRING AND FEATHERING.
Anquetil, in his _Histoire de France_, 1805, has the following passage
in reference to this mode of chastisement:—
They (the two crusading kings, Richard Cœur de Lion and Philip Augustus)
afterwards made in concert the laws of police which should be observed
in both their armies. No women, except washerwomen, were to be permitted
to accompany the troops. Whoever killed another was, according to the
place where the crime should be committed, to be cast into the sea, or
buried alive, bound to the corpse of the murdered person. Whoever
wounded another was to have his hand cut off; whoever struck another
should be plunged three times into the sea; and whoever committed theft
should have _warm pitch poured over his head, which should then be
powdered with feathers_, and the offender should afterwards be left
abandoned on the first shore.
STOCKINGS.
It is stated that Henry the Second, of France, was the first who wore
silk stockings, and this was on the occasion of his sister’s wedding to
the Duke of Savoy, in 1509. Howell, in his _History of the World_, says
that, in 1550, Queen Elizabeth was presented with a pair of black silk
knit stockings by her silk-woman, Mrs. Montague, and that she never wore
cloth ones afterward. He also adds, that Henry the Eighth wore
ordinarily cloth hose, unless there came from Spain, by great chance, a
pair of silk stockings. His son, Edward the Sixth, was presented with a
pair of long Spanish silk stockings by Sir Thomas Gresham. Hence it
would seem that knit stockings originally came from Spain. It is stated
that one William Rider, an apprentice on London Bridge, seeing, at the
house of an Italian merchant, a pair of knit stockings, from Mantua,
took the hint, and made a pair exactly like them, which he presented to
the Earl of Pembroke, and that they were the first of that kind worn in
England. There have been various opinions with respect to the original
invention of the stocking-frame; but it is now generally conceded that
it was invented during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1589,
by William Lee, M.A., of St. John’s College, Cambridge. In the _London
Magazine_, it is related that Mr. Lee was expelled from the University
for marrying, contrary to the statutes of the college. Being thus
rejected, and ignorant of any other means of subsistence, he was reduced
to the necessity of living upon what his wife could earn by knitting
stockings, which gave a spur to his invention; and, by curiously
observing the working of the needles in knitting, he formed in his mind
the model of the frame. Mr. Lee went to France, and, for want of
patronage there and in England, died of a broken heart, at Paris. In the
hall of Framework Knitters’ Company, incorporated by Charles the Second,
in 1663, is a portrait of Lee, pointing to one of the iron frames, and
discoursing with a woman, who is knitting with needles and her fingers.
THE ORDER OF THE GARTER.
When Salisbury’s famed countess was dancing with glee,
Her stocking’s security fell from her knee.
Allusions and hints, sneers and whispers, went round;
The trifle was scouted, and left on the ground.
When Edward the Brave, with true soldier-like spirit,
Cried, “The garter is mine; ’tis the order of merit:
The first knights in my court shall be happy to wear—
Proud distinction!—the garter that fell from the fair;
While in letters of gold—’tis your monarch’s high will—
Shall there be inscribed, ‘_Ill to him that thinks ill!_’”
DRINKING HEALTHS.
The drinking of healths originated during the Danish occupation of
Britain. The Danes frequently stabbed Englishmen while in the act of
drinking, and it finally became necessary for the English, in view of
the constant repetition of this dastardly mode of assassination, to
enter into a compact to be mutual pledges of security for each other’s
health and preservation. Hence the custom of pledging and drinking
healths.
A FEATHER IN ONE’S CAP.
In the Lansdowne MS., British Museum, is a _Description of Hungary in
1599_, in which the writer says of the inhabitants, “It hath been an
antient custom among them that none should wear a fether but he who had
killed a Turk, to whom onlie y^t was lawful to shew the number of his
slaine enemys by the number of fethers in his cappe.”
THE WORD BOOK.
Before paper came into general use, our Teutonic forefathers wrote their
letters, calendars, and accounts on wood. The _Boc_, or beech, being
close-grained and plentiful in Northern Europe, was generally employed
for the purpose; and hence the word _book_.
NINE TAILORS MAKE A MAN.
The following humorous account of the origin of this saying is from _The
British Apollo_. “It happened (’tis no great matter in what year) that
eight tailors, having finished considerable pieces of work at the house
of a certain person of quality, (whose name authors have thought fit to
conceal,) and received all the money due for the same, a virago
servant-maid of the house, observing them to be but slender-built
animals, and in their mathematical postures on their shop-board
appearing but so many pieces of men, resolved to encounter and pillage
them on the road. The better to compass her design, she procured a very
terrible great black pudding, which, having waylaid them, she presented
at the breast of the foremost. They, mistaking this prop of life for an
instrument of death, at least a blunderbuss, readily yielded up their
money; but she, not contented with that, severely disciplined them with
a cudgel she carried in the other hand, all which they bore with a
philosophical resignation. Thus, eight, not being able to deal with one
woman, by consequence could not make a man; on which account a ninth is
added. ’Tis the opinion of our curious virtuosos, that their want of
courage ariseth from their immoderate eating of cucumbers, which too
much refrigerates their blood. However, to their eternal honor be it
spoken, they have often been known to encounter a sort of cannibals, to
whose assaults they are often subject, not fictitious, but real
man-eaters, and that with a lance but two inches long; nay, and although
they go armed no further than their middle finger.”
An earlier authority than the preceding may be found in a note in
_Democritus in London, with the Mad Pranks and Comical Conceits of
Motley and Robin Goodfellow_, in which the following version of the
origin of the saying is given. It is dated 1682:—
There is a proverb which has been of old,
And many men have likewise been so told,
To the discredit of the Taylor’s Trade:
_Nine Taylors go to make up a man_, they said;
But for their credit I’ll unriddle it t’ ye:
A draper once fell into povertie,
Nine Taylors joined their purses together then,
To set him up, and make him a man again.
VIZ.
The contraction _viz._ affords a curious instance of the universality of
arbitrary signs. There are few people now who do not readily comprehend
the meaning of that useful particle,—a certain publican excepted, who,
being furnished with a list of the requirements of a festival in which
the word appeared, apologized for the omission of one of the items
enumerated: he informed the company that he had inquired throughout the
town for some viz., but he had not been able to procure it. He was,
however, readily excused for his inability to do so. Viȝ. being a
contraction of _videlicet_, the terminal sign ȝ was never intended to
represent the letter “z,” but was simply a mark or sign of abbreviation.
It is now always written and expressed as a “z” and will doubtless
continue to be so.
SIGNATURE OF THE CROSS.
The mark which persons who are unable to write are required to make
instead of their signatures, is in the form of a cross; and this
practice, having formerly been followed by kings and nobles, is
constantly referred to as an instance of the deplorable ignorance of
ancient times. This signature is not, however, invariably a proof of
such ignorance. Anciently the use of the mark was not confined to
illiterate persons; for among the Saxons the mark of the cross, as an
attestation of the good faith of the persons signing, was required to be
attached to the signature of those who _could_ write, as well as to
stand in the place of the signature of those who could not write. In
those times, if a man could write, or even read, his knowledge was
considered proof presumptive that he was in holy orders. The clericus,
or clerk, was synonymous with penman; and the laity, or people who were
not clerks, did not feel any urgent necessity for the use of letters.
The ancient use of the cross was therefore universal, alike by those who
could and those who could not write: it was, indeed, the symbol of an
oath, from its sacred associations, as well as _the mark_ generally
adopted. Hence the origin of the expression “God save the mark,” as a
form of ejaculation approaching the character of an oath.
THE TURKISH CRESCENT.
When Philip of Macedon approached by night with his troops to scale the
walls of Byzantium, the _moon_ shone out and discovered his design to
the besieged, who repulsed him. The crescent was afterwards adopted as
the favorite badge of the city. When the Turks took Byzantium, they
found the crescent in every public place, and, believing it to possess
some magical power, adopted it themselves.
The origin of the crescent as a religious emblem is anterior to the time
of Philip of Macedon, dating, in fact, from the very beginning of
history.
POSTPAID ENVELOPES.
M. Piron tells us that the idea of a postpaid envelope originated early
in the reign of Louis XIV., with M. de Valfyer, who, in 1653,
established (with royal approbation) a private penny-post, placing boxes
at the corners of the streets for the reception of letters wrapped up in
envelopes, which were to be bought at offices established for that
purpose. M. de Valfyer also had printed certain _forms_ of _billets_, or
notes, applicable to the ordinary business among the inhabitants of
great towns, with blanks, which were to be filled up by the pen with
such special matter as might complete the writer’s object. One of these
_billets_ has been preserved to our times by a pleasant misapplication
of it. Pélisson (Mdme. de Sévigné’s friend, and the object of the _bon
mot_ that “he abused the privilege which men have of being ugly”) was
amused at this kind of skeleton correspondence; and under the affected
name of _Pisandre_, (according to the pedantic fashion of the day,) he
filled up and addressed one of these forms to the celebrated
Mademoiselle de Scuderie, in her _pseudonyme_ of _Sappho_. This strange
_billet-doux_ has happened, from the celebrity of the parties, to be
preserved, and it is still extant,—one of the oldest, it is presumed, of
penny-post letters, and a curious example of a _pre_paying envelope, a
new proof of the adage that “there is nothing new under the sun.”
OLD HUNDRED.
The history of this old psalm-tune, which almost every one has been
accustomed to hear ever since he can remember, is the subject of a work
recently written by an English clergyman. Luther has generally been
considered the author of “Old Hundred,” but it has been pretty
satisfactorily ascertained that it was composed in the sixteenth
century, and certainly previous to 1546, by William Franc, a German. In
the course of time its arrangement has undergone repeated alterations;
and it is said that, as it originally appeared, it was of a more lively
character than at present. Many of these alterations have been carefully
preserved and may be seen by reference to Moore’s _Encyclopædia of
Music_. The oldest copy of it that has been preserved was published in
France, in Marot and Beza’s Psalms, 1550. Subjoined is a faithful
transcript of its original adaptation to the 134th Psalm. It contrasts
as broadly with the present style of musical notation as does the
English of Chaucer with that of Noah Webster.
[Illustration:
Or sus serviteurs du Seigneur, Vous qui de nuit en son honneur]
De-dans sa maison le servez, Louez-le, et son Nom elevez.
]
LA MARSEILLAISE.
Rouget de Lisle was a young officer of engineers at Strasbourg. He was
born at _Lons-le-Saulnier_, in the _Jura_ a country of reverie and
energy, as mountains commonly are. He relieved the tediousness of a
garrison-life by writing verses and indulging a love of music. He was a
frequent visitor at the house of the Baron de Diedrich, a noble Alsacian
of the constitutional party, the Mayor of Strasbourg. The family loved
the young officer, and gave new inspiration to his heart in its
attachment to music and poetry, and the ladies were in the habit of
assisting, by their performances, the early conceptions of his genius. A
famine prevailed at Strasbourg in the winter of 1792. The house of
Diedrich was rich at the beginning of the revolution, but had now become
poor under the calamities and sacrifices of the time. Its frugal table
had always a hospitable place for Rouget de Lisle. He was there morning
and evening as a son and brother. One day, when only some slices of ham
smoked upon the table, with a supply of camp-bread, Diedrich said to De
Lisle, in sad serenity, “Plenty is not found at our meals. But no
matter: enthusiasm is not wanting at our civic festivals, and our
soldiers’ hearts are full of courage. We have one more bottle of Rhine
wine in the cellar. Let us have it, and we’ll drink to liberty and the
country. Strasbourg will soon have a patriotic _fête_, and De Lisle must
draw from these last drops one of his hymns that will carry his own
ardent feelings to the soul of the people.” The young ladies applauded
the proposal. They brought the wine, and continued to fill the glasses
of Diedrich and the young officer until the bottle was empty. The night
was cold. De Lisle’s head and heart were warm. He found his way to his
lodgings, entered his solitary chamber, and sought for inspiration at
one moment in the palpitations of his citizen’s heart, and at another by
touching, as an artist, the keys of his instrument, and striking out
alternately portions of an air and giving utterance to poetic thoughts.
He did not himself know which came first; it was impossible for him to
separate the poetry from the music, or the sentiment from the words in
which it was clothed. He sang altogether, and wrote nothing. In this
state of lofty inspiration, he went to sleep with his head upon the
instrument. The chants of the night came upon him in the morning like
the faint impressions of a dream. He wrote down the words, made the
notes of the music, and ran to Diedrich’s. He found him in the garden
digging winter lettuces. The wife of the patriot mayor was not yet up.
Diedrich awoke her. They called together some friends, who were, like
themselves, passionately fond of music, and able to execute the
compositions of De Lisle. One of the young ladies played, and Rouget
sang. At the first Stanza, the countenances of the company grew pale; at
the second, tears flowed abundantly; at the last, a delirium of
enthusiasm broke forth. Diedrich, his wife, and the young officer cast
themselves into each others’ arms. The hymn of the nation was found.
Alas! it was destined to become a hymn of terror. The unhappy Diedrich a
few months afterwards marched to the scaffold at the sound of the notes
first uttered at his hearth, from the heart of his friend and the voice
of his wife.
The new song, executed some days afterwards publicly at Strasbourg, flew
from town to town through all the orchestras. Marseilles adopted it to
be sung at the opening and adjournment of the clubs. Hence it took the
name of the _Marseillaise Hymn_. The old mother of De Lisle, a loyalist
and a religious person, alarmed at the reverberation of her son’s name,
wrote to him, “What is the meaning of this revolutionary hymn, sung by
hordes of robbers who pass all over France, with which our name is mixed
up?” De Lisle himself, proscribed as a Federalist, heard its re-echo
upon his ears as a threat of death as he fled among the paths of Jura.
“What is this song called?” he inquired of his guide. “The
_Marseillaise_,” replied the peasant. It was with difficulty that he
escaped.
The “Marseillaise” was the liquid fire of the revolution. It distilled
into the senses and the soul of the people the frenzy of battle. Its
notes floated like an ensign, dipped in warm blood over a field of
combat. Glory and crime, victory and death, seemed interwoven in its
strains. It was the song of patriotism; but it was the signal of fury.
It accompanied warriors to the field and victims to the scaffold!
There is no national air that will compare with the Marseillaise in
sublimity and power: it embraces the soft cadences full of the peasant’s
home, and the stormy clangor of silver and steel when an empire is
overthrown; it endears the memory of the vine-dresser’s cottage, and
makes the Frenchman, in his exile, cry, “La belle France!” forgetful of
the sword, and torch, and guillotine, which have made his country a
spectre of blood in the eyes of nations. Nor can the foreigner listen to
it, sung by a company of exiles, or executed by a band of musicians,
without feeling that it is the pibroch of battle and war.
YANKEE DOODLE.
The good the Rhine-song does to German hearts,
Or thine, Marseilles! to France’s fiery blood;
The good thy anthemed harmony imparts,
“God save the Queen!” to England’s field and flood,
A home-born blessing, Nature’s boon, not Art’s,
The same heart-cheering, spirit-warming good,
To us and ours, where’er we war or woo,
Thy words and music, §Yankee Doodle§!—do.—§Halleck.§
The origin of _Yankee Doodle_ is by no means so clear as American
antiquaries desire. The statement that the air was composed by Dr.
Shackburg, in 1755, when the colonial troops united with the British
regulars near Albany, preparatory to the attack on the French posts of
Niagara and Frontenac, and that it was produced in derision of the
old-fashioned equipments of the provincial soldiers as contrasted with
the neat and orderly appointments of the regulars, was published some
years ago in a musical magazine printed in Boston. The account there
given as to the origin of the song is this:—During the attacks upon the
French outposts in 1755, in America, Governor Shirley and General
Jackson led the force directed against the enemy lying at Niagara and
Frontenac. In the early part of June, whilst these troops were stationed
on the banks of the Hudson, near Albany, the descendants of the “Pilgrim
fathers” flocked in from the Eastern provinces. Never was seen such a
motley regiment as took up its position on the left wing of the British
army. The band played music as antiquated and _outré_ as their
_uniforms_; officers and privates had adopted regimentals each man after
his own fashion; one wore a flowing wig, while his neighbor rejoiced in
hair cropped closely to the head; this one had a coat with wonderful
long skirts, his fellow marched without his upper garment; various as
the colors of the rainbow were the clothes worn by the gallant band. It
so happened that there was a certain Dr. Shackburg, wit, musician, and
surgeon, and one evening after mess he produced a tune, which he
earnestly commended, as a well-known piece of military music, to the
officers of the militia. The joke succeeded, and Yankee Doodle was
hailed by acclamation “their own march.”
This account is somewhat apocryphal, as there is no song: the tune in
the United States is a march; there are no words to it of a national
character. The only words ever affixed to the air in this country is the
following doggerel quatrain:—
Yankee Doodle came to town
Upon a little pony;
He stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni.
It has been asserted by English writers that the air and words of these
lines are as old as Cromwell’s time. The only alteration is in making
_Yankee Doodle_ of what was _Nankee Doodle_. It is asserted that the
tune will be found in the _Musical Antiquities of England_, and that
_Nankee Doodle_ was intended to apply to Cromwell, and the other lines
were designed to “allude to his going into Oxford with a single plume,
fastened in a knot called a macaroni.” The tune was known in New England
before the Revolution as _Lydia Fisher’s Jig_, a name derived from a
famous lady of easy virtue in the reign of Charles II., and which has
been perpetuated in the following nursery-rhyme:—
Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it;
Not a bit of money in it,
Only binding round it.
The regulars in Boston in 1775 and 1776 are said to have sung verses to
the same air:—
Yankee Doodle came to town,
For to buy a firelock;
We will tar and feather him,
And so we will John Hancock, &c.
The manner in which the tune came to be adopted by the Americans, is
shown in the following letter of the Rev. W. Gordon. Describing the
battles of Lexington and Concord, before alluded to, he says:—
The brigade under Lord Percy marched out (of Boston) playing, by way of
contempt, _Yankee Doodle_: they were afterwards told that they had been
made to dance to it.
It is most likely that Yankee Doodle was originally derived from
Holland. A song with the following burden has long been in use among the
laborers who, in the time of harvest, migrate from Germany to the Low
Countries, where they receive for their work as much buttermilk as they
can drink, and a tenth of the grain secured by their exertions:—
Yanker didel, doodel down,
Didel, dudel lauter,
Yanke viver, voover vown,
Botermilk und Tanther.
That is, buttermilk and a tenth.
THE AMERICAN FLAG.
A resolution was introduced in the American Congress, June 13, 1777,
“That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes,
alternately red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a
blue field, representing a new constellation.” There is a striking
coincidence between the design of our flag and the arms of General
Washington, which consisted of three stars in the upper portion, and
three bars running across the escutcheon. It is thought by some that the
flag was derived from this heraldic design. History informs us that
several flags were used by the Yankees before the present national one
was adopted. In March, 1775, a Union flag with a red field was hoisted
in New York, bearing the inscription on one side of “George Rex and the
liberties of America,” and upon the reverse, “No Popery.” General Israel
Putnam raised on Prospect Hill, July 18, 1775, a flag bearing on one
side the motto of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, “_Qui transtulit
sustinet_,” on the other, “An appeal to Heaven,”—an appeal well taken
and amply sustained. In October, 1775, the floating batteries of Boston
bore a flag with the latter motto, and a pine-tree upon a white field,
with the Massachusetts emblem. Some of the colonies used in 1775 a flag
with a rattlesnake coiled as if about to strike, and the motto “Don’t
tread on me.” On January 18, 1776, the grand Union flag of the stars and
stripes was raised on the heights near Boston; and it is said that some
of the regulars made the great mistake of supposing it was a token of
submission to the king, whose speech had just been sent to the
Americans. The _British Register_ of 1776 says, “They [the rebels] burnt
the king’s speech, and changed their colors from a plain red ground to a
flag with thirteen stripes, as a symbol of the number and union of the
colonies.” A letter from Boston, published in the _Pennsylvania
Gazette_, in 1776, says, “The Union flag was raised on the 2d, a
compliment to the United Colonies.” These various flags, the Pine-Tree,
the Rattlesnake, and the Stripes, were used, according to the tastes of
the patriots, until July, 1777, when the blue union of the stars was
added to the stripes, and the flag established by law. At first a stripe
was added for each new State; but the flag became too large, and
Congress reduced the stripes to the original thirteen, and now the stars
are made to correspond in number with the States. No one, who lives
under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, will deny that “the
American flag is one of the most beautiful that floats upon any land or
sea.” Its proportions are perfect when it is properly made,—one-half as
broad as it is long. The first stripe at the top is red, the next white,
and these colors alternate, making the last stripe red. The blue field
for the stars is the width and square of the first seven stripes, viz.,
four red and three white. The colors of the American flag are in
beautiful relief, and it is altogether a splendid national emblem. Long
may it wave untarnished!
BROTHER JONATHAN.
The origin of this term, as applied to the United States, is as follows.
When General Washington, after being appointed commander of the army of
the Revolutionary War, went to Massachusetts to organize it, he found a
great want of ammunition and other means of defence; and on one occasion
it seemed that no means could be devised for the necessary safety.
Jonathan Trumbull, the elder, was then Governor of the State of
Connecticut; and the general, placing the greatest reliance on his
excellency’s judgment, remarked, “We must consult Brother Jonathan on
the subject.” The general did so, and the governor was successful in
supplying many of the wants of the army; and thenceforward, when
difficulties arose, and the army was spread over the country, it became
a by-phrase, “We must consult Brother Jonathan;” and the name has now
become a designation for the whole country, as John Bull has for
England.
UNCLE SAM.
Immediately after the declaration of war with England, in 1812, Elbert
Anderson, of New York, then a contractor, visited Troy, where he
purchased a large quantity of provisions. The inspectors of the articles
at that place were Ebenezer and Samuel Wilson. The latter gentleman
(universally known as “Uncle Sam”) generally superintended in person a
large number of workmen, who, on this occasion, were employed in
overhauling the provisions purchased by the contractor. The casks were
marked “E. A.—U. S.” Their inspection fell to the lot of a facetious
fellow, who, on being asked the meaning of the mark, said he did not
know, unless it meant _Elbert Anderson_ and _Uncle Sam_, alluding to
_Uncle Sam Wilson_. The joke took among the workmen, and passed
currently; and “Uncle Sam,” when present, was often rallied by them on
the increasing extent of his possessions.
THE DOLLAR MARK, $.
Writers are not agreed as to the derivation of this sign to represent
dollars. Some say that it comes from the letters U. S., which, after the
adoption of the Federal Constitution, were prefixed to the Federal
currency, and which afterwards, in the hurry of writing, were run into
one another, the U being made first and the S over it. Others say that
it is derived from the contraction of the Spanish word _pesos_, dollars;
others, from the Spanish _fuertes_, hard,—to distinguish silver from
paper money. The more plausible explanation is, that it is a
modification of the figure 8, and denotes a piece of eight reals, or, as
the dollar was formerly called, a _piece of eight_. It was then
designated by the figures 8/8.
ORIGIN OF VARIOUS INVENTIONS AND CUSTOMS.
The Saxons first introduced archery in the time of Vortigern. It was
dropped immediately after the conquest, but was revived by the
Crusaders, they having felt the effects of it in their combats with the
Saracens, who probably derived it from the Parthians. The Normans
brought with them the cross-bow, but after the time of Edward II. its
use was supplanted by that of the long-bow, which became the favorite
national weapon. Bows and arrows, as weapons of war, were in use with
stone cannonballs as late as 1640. All the statutes for the
encouragement of archery were framed after the invention of gunpowder
and firearms, the object being to prevent this ancient weapon becoming
obsolete. Yew-trees were encouraged in churchyards, for the making of
bows, in 1642. Hence their generality in churchyards in England.
Coats of arms, or armorial bearings, came into vogue in the reign of
Richard I. of England, and became hereditary in families about the year
1192. They took their rise from the knights painting their banners with
different figures to distinguish them in the Crusades.
The first standing army of modern times was established by Charles VII.
of France, in 1445. Previous to that time the king had depended upon his
nobles for contingents in time of war. A standing army was first
established in England in 1638, by Charles I., but it was declared
illegal, as well as the organization of the royal guards, in 1769. The
first permanent military band instituted in England was the yeomen of
the guards, established in 1486.
Guns were invented by Swartz, a German, about 1378, and brought into use
by the Venetians, in 1382. Cannon were invented at an anterior date: at
Amberg may still be seen a piece of ordnance inscribed 1303. They were
first used at the battle of Cressy in 1346. In England, they were first
used at the siege of Berwick, in 1405. It was not until 1544, however,
that they were cast in England. They were employed on shipboard by the
Venetians in 1539, and were in use among the Turks about the same time.
An artillery company was instituted in England for weekly military
exercises in 1610.
Dating from the Christian Era was commenced in Italy in 525, and in
England in 816.
Pliny gives the origin of glass-making thus. As some merchants were
carrying nitre, they stopped near a river issuing from Mount Carmel. Not
readily finding stones to rest their kettles on, they used some pieces
of nitre for that purpose: the fire gradually dissolving the nitre, it
mixed with the sand, and a transparent matter flowed, which, in fact,
was glass.
Insurance of ships was first practised in the reign of Cæsar, in 45. It
was a general custom in Europe in 1494. Insurance-offices were first
established in London in 1667.
Astronomy was first studied by the Moors, and was introduced by them
into Europe in 1201. The rapid progress of modern astronomy dates from
the time of Copernicus. Books of astronomy and geometry were destroyed,
as infected with magic, in England, under the reign of Edward VI., in
1552.
Banks were first established by the Lombard Jews, in Italy. The name is
derived from _banco_, a term applied to the benches erected in the
market-places for the exchanges of money, &c. The first public bank was
at Venice, in 1550. The Bank of England was established in 1693. In 1696
its notes were at twenty per cent. discount.
The invention of bells is attributed to Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in
Campania, about the year 400. They were originally introduced into
churches as a defence against thunder and lightning. They were first
hung up in England, at Croyland Abbey, Lincolnshire, in 945. In the
eleventh century and later, it was the custom to baptize them in
churches before they were used. The curfew-bell was established in 1068.
It was rung at eight o’clock in the evening, when people were obliged to
put out their fire and candle. The custom was abolished in 1100. Chimes,
or musical bells, were invented at Alost, in Belgium, 1487. Bellmen were
appointed in London, in 1556, to ring the bells at night, and cry, “Take
care of your fire and candle, be charitable to the poor, and pray for
the dead.”
How many are aware of the origin of the word “boo!” used to frighten
children? It is a corruption of Boh, the name of a fierce Gothic
general, the son of Odin, the mention of whose name spread a panic among
his enemies.
Book-keeping was first introduced into England from Italy by Peele, in
1569. It was derived from a system of algebra published by Burgo, at
Venice.
Notaries public were first appointed by the Fathers of the Christian
Church to make a collection of the acts or memoirs of martyrs in the
first century.
The administration of the oath in civil cases is of high antiquity. See
Exodus xxii. 11. Swearing on the Gospels was first used in 528. The oath
was first administered in judicial proceedings in England by the Saxons,
in 600. The words “So help me God, and all saints,” concluded an oath,
till 1550.
Signals to be used at sea were first contrived by James II., when he was
Duke of York, in 1665. They were afterwards improved by the French
commander Tourville, and by Admiral Balchen.
Raw silk is said to have first been made by a people of China called
Ceres, 150 §B. C.§ It was first brought from India, in 274, and a pound
of it at that time was worth a pound of gold. The manufacture of raw
silk was introduced into Europe from India by some monks in 550. Silk
dresses were first worn in 1455. The eggs of the silk-worm were first
brought into Europe in 527.
Paulus Jovius was the first person who introduced mottoes; Dorat, the
first who brought anagrams into fashion. Rabelais was the first who
wrote satires in French prose; Etienne Jodelle, the first who introduced
tragedies into France. The Cardinal of Ferrara, Archbishop of Lyons, was
the first who had a tragicomedy performed on the stage of Italian
comedians. The first sonnet that appeared in French is attributed to
Jodelle.
Guido Aretino, a Benedictine monk of Arezzo, Tuscany, in 1204 designated
the notes used in the musical scale by syllables derived from the
following verses of a Latin hymn dedicated to St. John:—
UT queant laxis REsonare fibris,
MIra gestorum FAmuli tuorum,
SOLve pollutis LAbii reatum.
_O Pater Alme._
By this means he converted the old tetrachord into hexachords. He also
invented lines and spaces in musical notation.
The invention of clocks is by some ascribed to Pacificus, Archdeacon of
Verona, in the ninth century; and by others, to Boethius, in the early
part of the sixth. The Saracens are supposed to have had clocks which
were moved by weights, as early as the eleventh century; and, as the
term is applied by Dante to a machine which struck the hours, clocks
must have been known in Italy about the end of the thirteenth or
beginning of the fourteenth century. The most ancient clock of which we
have any certain account was erected in a tower of the palace of Charles
V., King of France, in 1364, by Henry de Wyck or de Vick, a German
artist. A clock was erected at Strasbourg in 1370, at Courtray about the
same period, and at Speyer in 1395.
Watches are said to have been made at Nuremberg as early as 1477; but it
is uncertain how far the watches then constructed resembled those now in
use. Some of the early ones were very small, in the shape of a pear, and
sometimes fitted into the top of a walking-stick. As time-keepers,
watches could have had very little value before the application of the
spiral spring as a regulator to the balance. This was invented by Hooke,
in 1658.
The use of the pendulum was suggested by a circumstance similar to that
which started in Newton’s mind the train of thought that led to the
theory of gravitation. Galileo, when under twenty years of age, standing
one day in the metropolitan church of Pisa, observed a lamp, which was
suspended from the ceiling, and which had been disturbed by accident,
swing backwards and forwards. This was a thing so common that thousands,
no doubt, had observed it before; but Galileo, struck with the
regularity with which it moved backwards and forwards, reflected upon
it, and perfected the method now in use of measuring time by means of a
pendulum.
A monk named Rivalto mentions, in a sermon preached in Florence in 1305,
that spectacles had then been known about twenty years. This would place
the invention about the year 1285.
Quills are supposed to have been used for writing-pens in the fifth
century, though the conjecture rests mainly on an anecdote of Theodoric,
King of the Ostrogoths, who, being so illiterate that he could not write
even the initials of his own name, was provided with a plate of gold
through which the letters were cut, and, this being placed on the paper
when his signature was required, he traced the letters with a quill. The
date of the earliest certain account of the modern writing-pen is 636.
The next notice occurs in the latter part of the same century, in a
Latin sonnet to a pen by Aldhelm, a Saxon author. The reeds formerly
employed are still used in some Eastern nations. Steel pens were first
made by Wise, in England, in 1803.
The first known treatise on stenography is the curious and scarce little
work entitled “Arte of Shorte, Swifte, and Secrete Writing by Character,
invented by Timothe Bright, Doctor of Phisike.”
The art of printing, according to Du Halde and the missionaries, was
practised in China nearly fifty years before the Christian Era. In the
time of Confucius, §B.C.§ 500, books were formed of slips of bamboo; and
about 150 years after Christ, paper was first made; §A.D.§ 745, books
were bound into leaves; §A.D.§ 900, printing was in general use. The
process of printing is simple. The materials consist of a graver, blocks
of wood, and a brush, which the printers carry with them from place to
place. Without wheel, or wedge, or screw, a printer will throw off more
than two thousand five hundred impressions in one day. The paper (thin)
can be bought for one-fourth the price in China that it can in any other
country. The works of Confucius, six volumes, four hundred leaves,
octavo, can be bought for twelve cents.
Stamps for marking wares, packages, &c. were in use among the Roman
tradesmen; and it is highly probable that had the modern art of making
paper been known to the ancients, they would have diffused among
themselves, and transmitted to posterity, printed books.
From the early commercial intercourse of the Venetians with China, there
is reason to believe that the knowledge of the art and of its
application to the multiplying of books was derived from thence; for
Venice is the first place in Europe, of which we have any account, in
which it was practised, a Government decree respecting it having been
issued October 11, 1441. Previous to the year 1450, all printing had
been executed by means of engraved blocks of wood; but about this
period, the great and accumulating expense of engraving blocks for each
separate work led to the substitution of movable metal types. The credit
of this great improvement is given to Peter Schœffer, the assistant and
son-in-law of John Faust, of Mentz, (commonly called Dr. Faustus.) The
first book printed with the cast metal types was the “Mentz Bible,”
which was executed by Faust and Guttemberg, between the years 1450 and
1455.
The Dutch claim to have originated stereotyping. They have, as they say,
a prayer-book stereotyped in 1701. The first attempt at stereotyping in
America was made in 1775, by Benjamin Mecom, a printer of Philadelphia.
He cast plates for a number of pages of the New Testament, but never
completed them.
The first printing-press in America was established at Cambridge, Mass.,
in 1639.
COCK-FIGHTING.
Themistocles, marching against the Persians, beheld two gamecocks in the
heat of battle, and thereupon pointed out to his Athenian soldiery their
indomitable courage. The Athenians were victorious; and Themistocles
gave order that an annual cock-fight should be held in commemoration of
the encounter they had witnessed. No record of this sport occurs in
England before the year 1191.
TURNCOAT.
The opprobious epithet, _turncoat_, took its rise from one of the first
dukes of Savoy, whose dominions lying open to the incursions of the two
contending houses of Spain and France, he was obliged to temporize and
fall in with that power that was most likely to distress him, according
to the success of their arms against one another. So being frequently
obliged to change sides, he humorously got a coat made that was _blue_
on one side, and _white_ on the other, and might be indifferently worn
either side out. While in the _Spanish_ interest, he wore the _blue_
side out, and the _white_ side was the badge for the _French_. Hence he
was called Emmanuel, surnamed the _Turncoat_, by way of distinguishing
him from other princes of the same name of that house.
INDIA-RUBBER.
Caoutchouc was long known before its most valuable qualities were
appreciated. One of the earliest notices of its practical use occurs in
Dr. Priestly’s _Theory and Practice of Perspective_, printed in 1770. “I
have seen” says he, “a substance excellently adapted to the purpose of
wiping from paper the marks of a black lead-pencil. It must, therefore,
be of singular use to those who practice drawing. It is sold by Mr.
Nairne, mathematical instrument-maker, opposite the Royal Exchange. He
sells a cubical piece, of about half an inch, for three shillings; and,
he says, it will last several years.”
FRICTION MATCHES.
In 1836 the subject of friction matches attracted the attention of Mr.
L. C. Allin, of Springfield, Massachusetts. At that time a clumsy
phosphoric match, imported from France, had come into limited use in the
United States. It was made by dipping the match-stick first into
sulphur, and then into a paste composed of chloride of potash, red lead,
and loaf sugar. Each box of matches was accompanied by a bottle of
sulphuric acid, into which every match had to be dipped in order to
light it. To abolish this inconvenience, and make a match which would
light from the friction caused by any rough surface, was the task to
which young Allin applied himself. He succeeded, but took out no patent.
On being urged to do so, he found that a patent had already been
obtained by one Phillips of Chicopee, a peddler, who had probably picked
up through a third party the result of Mr. Allin’s study. Mr. Allin’s
legal adviser thought that he (Allin) would do better to have the right
to manufacture under Phillips’ patent (which Phillips gave him without
charge, in consideration of the waiving of his claim,) than to bear the
expense of the litigation which was feared to be necessary to establish
his claim. So the inventor of friction matches became simply a
manufacturer under another man’s patent.
THE FLAG OF ENGLAND.
On the 12th of April, 1606, the Union Jack—that famous ensign—first made
its appearance. From Rymer’s _Fœdera_, and the Scottish Annals of Sir
James Balfour, we learn that some differences having arisen between
ships of the two countries at sea, the king ordained that a new flag be
adopted with the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George interlaced, by
placing the latter fimbriated on the blue flag of Scotland as the ground
thereof. This flag all ships were to carry at their main top; but
English ships were to display St. George’s red cross at their stern, and
the Scottish the white saltire of St. Andrew.
BLUE-STOCKING.
It was the fashion in London, in 1781, for ladies to have evening
assemblies, where they might participate in conversation with literary
men. These societies acquired the name of _Blue-Stocking_ Clubs,—an
appellation which has been applied to pedantic females ever since. It
arose from the custom of Mr. Stillingfleet, one of the most eminent
members, wearing blue stockings. Such was the excellence of his
conversation, and his absence was so great a loss, that it used to be
said, “We can do nothing without the Blue Stockings;” and thus the title
was gradually established. In Hannah More’s poem, _Bas bleu_, many of
the most conspicuous members are mentioned.
SKEDADDLE.
This word may be easily traced to a Greek origin. The verb σκεδαννυμι,
of which the root is σκεδα, is used freely by Thucydides, Herodotus, and
other Greek writers, in describing the dispersion of a routed army. From
the root σκεδα the word skedaddle is formed by simply adding the
euphonious termination _dle_ and doubling the _d_, as required by the
analogy of our language in such words. In many words of undoubted Greek
extraction much greater changes are made.
The Swedes have a similar word, _skuddadahl_, and the Danes another,
_skyededehl_, both of which have the same signification.
An old version of the Irish New Testament contains the passage, “For it
is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall
be _sgedad ol_.” This compound Irish word _sgedad ol_ (all scattered or
utterly routed) was probably used by some Irishman at Bull Run, and,
being regarded as felicitous, was at once adopted.
FOOLSCAP PAPER.
The term of “foolscap,” to designate a certain size of paper, no doubt
has puzzled many an anxious inquirer. It appears that Charles I., of
England, granted numerous monopolies for the support of the Government,
among others the manufacture of paper. The water-mark of the finest sort
was the royal arms of England. The consumption of this article was
great, and large fortunes were made by those who purchased the exclusive
right to vend it. This, among other monopolies, was set aside by the
Parliament that brought Charles I. to the scaffold; and, by way of
showing contempt for the King, they ordered the royal arms to be taken
from the paper, and a fool with his cap and bells to be substituted. It
is now over two hundred years since the fool’s cap was taken from the
paper, but still the paper of the size which the Rump Parliament ordered
for their journals bears the name of the water-mark placed there as an
indignity to King Charles.
THE FIRST FORGED BANK-NOTE.
Sixty-four years after the establishment of the Bank of England, the
first forged note was presented for payment, and to Richard William
Vaughn, a Stafford linen-draper, belongs the melancholy celebrity of
having led the van in this new phase of crime, in the year 1758. The
records of his life do not show want, beggary or starvation urging him,
but a simple desire to seem greater than he was. By one of the artists
employed (and there were several engaged on different parts of the
notes) the discovery was made. The criminal had filled up to the number
of twenty and deposited them in the hands of a young lady to whom he was
attached, as a proof of his wealth. There is no calculating how much
longer bank-notes might have been free from imitation had this man not
shown with what ease they could be counterfeited. From this period
forged notes became common. His execution did not deter others from the
offence, and many a neck was forfeited to the halter before the late
abolition of capital punishment for that crime.
THE FIRST PIANO-FORTE.
A play-bill of the Covent Garden Theatre, dated May 16, 1767, after
setting forth the performance of _The Beggar’s Opera_, contains the
following notification:—“End of Act First, Miss Brickler will sing a
favorite song from _Judith_, accompanied by Mr. Dibdin on a new
instrument called Piano-Forte.” The first manufacturer is believed to be
a German named Backers, as there is still in existence the name-board of
a piano inscribed “Americus Backers, _Factor et Inventor_, Jermyn
Street, London, 1776.”
THE FIRST DOCTORS.
The title of §Doctor§ was invented in the twelfth century, at the first
establishment of the universities. The first person upon whom it was
conferred was §Irnerius§, a learned Professor of _Law_, at the
University of Bologna. He induced the Emperor Lothaire II., whose
Chancellor he was, to create the title; and he himself was the first
recipient of it. He was made Doctor of Laws by that university.
Subsequently the title was borrowed by the faculty of Theology, and
first conferred by the University of Paris on §Peter Lombard§, the
celebrated scholastic theologian. §William Gordenio§ was the first
person upon whom the title of Doctor of Medicine was bestowed. He
received it from the college at Asti, in 1329.
THE FIRST THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION.
The first proclamation of Thanksgiving Day that is to be found in a
printed form is the one issued by his Excellency §Francis Bernard§,
Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over His Majesty’s province
of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England, and Vice-Admiral of the same,
in 1767. It is as follows:—
§A Proclamation for a Public Thanksgiving.§
As the Business of the Year is now drawing towards a Conclusion, we are
reminded, according to the laudable Usage of this Province, to join
together in a grateful Acknowledgement of the manifold Mercies of the
Divine Providence conferred upon Us in the passing Year: Wherefore, I
have thought fit to appoint, and I do with the advice of His Majesty’s
Council appoint, Thursday, the Third Day of _December_ next, to be a day
of public Thanksgiving, that we may thereupon with one Heart and Voice
return our most humble Thanks to Almighty God for the gracious
Dispensations of His Providence since the last religious Anniversary of
this kind: and especially for—that he has been pleased to preserve and
maintain our most gracious Sovereign King §George§ in Health and Wealth,
in Peace and Honour; and to extend the Blessings of his Government to
the remotest Part of his Dominions;—that He hath been pleased to bless
and preserve our gracious §Queen Charlotte§, their Royal Highnesses the
Prince of §Wales§, the Princess Dowager of §Wales§, and all the Royal
family, and by the frequent Encrease of the Royal Issue to assure to us
the Continuation of the Blessings which we derive from that illustrious
House;—that He hath been pleased to prosper the whole British Empire by
the Preservation of Peace, the Encrease of Trade, and the opening of new
Sources of National Wealth;—and now particularly that he hath been
pleased to favor the people of this province with healthy and kindly
Seasons, and to bless the Labour of their Hands with a Sufficiency of
the Produce of the Earth and of the Sea.
And I do exhort all Ministers of the Gospel, with their several
Congregations, within this Province, that they assemble on the said Day
in a Solemn manner to return their most humble thanks to Almighty §God§
for these and all other His Mercies vouchsafed unto us, and to beseech
Him, notwithstanding our Unworthiness, to continue his gracious
Providence over us. And I command and enjoin all Magistrates and Civil
Officers to see that the said Day be observed as a Day set apart for
religious worship, and that no servile Labour be permitted thereon.
§Given§ at the Council Chamber in Boston, the Fourth Day of November,
1767, in the Eighth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord §George§ the
Third, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King,
Defender of the Faith, &c.
§Fra Bernard.§
By his Excellency’s Command.
§A. Oliver§, _Sec’ry_
§God save the King.§
THE FIRST PRAYER IN CONGRESS.
In Thatcher’s _Military Journal_, under date of December, 1777, is a
note containing the first prayer in Congress, made by the Rev. Jacob
Duché, rector of Christ Church, a gentleman of learning and eloquence,
who subsequently proved traitorous to the cause of Independence:—
O Lord our heavenly Father, high and mighty King of kings and Lord of
lords, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers on earth, and
reignest with power supreme and uncontrolled over all the kingdoms,
empires, and governments; look down in mercy, we beseech thee, on these
American states, who have fled to thee from the rod of the oppressor,
and thrown themselves on thy gracious protection, desiring to be
henceforth dependent only on thee; to thee they have appealed for the
righteousness of their cause; to thee do they now look up for that
countenance and support which thou alone canst give; take them,
therefore, heavenly Father, under thy nurturing care; give them wisdom
in council, and valor in the field; defeat the malicious designs of our
cruel adversaries; convince _them_ of the unrighteousness of their
cause; and if they still persist in their sanguinary purposes, O let the
voice of thine own unerring justice, sounding in their hearts, constrain
them to drop the weapons of war from their unnerved hands in the day of
battle. Be thou present, O God of Wisdom, and direct the counsels of
this honorable assembly; enable them to settle things on the best and
surest foundation, that the scene of blood may be speedily closed, that
order, harmony, and peace may be effectually restored, and truth and
justice, religion and piety, prevail and flourish amongst thy people.
Preserve the health of their bodies and the vigor of their minds; shower
down on _them_ and the _millions_ they here represent, such temporal
blessings as thou seest expedient for them in this world, and crown them
with everlasting glory in the world to come. All this we ask in the name
and through the merits of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Saviour. Amen!
THE FIRST REPORTERS.
In Sylvester O’Halloran’s _History and Antiquities of Ireland_,
published in Dublin in 1772, is the curious entry subjoined. Bille, a
Milesian king of a portion of Spain, had a son named Gollamh, who
“solicited his father’s permission to assist their Phœnician ancestors,
then greatly distressed by continual wars,” and having gained his
consent, the passage describing the result proceeds thus:—
With a well-appointed fleet of thirty ships and a select number of
intrepid warriors, he weighed anchor from the harbor of Corunna for
Syria. It appears that war was not the sole business of this equipment;
for in this fleet were embarked twelve youths of uncommon learning and
abilities, who were directed to make remarks on whatever they found new,
either in astronomy, navigation, arts, sciences, or manufactures. They
were to communicate their remarks and discoveries to each other, and
keep an exact account of whatever was worthy of notice. This took place
in the year of the world, 2650.
These twelve youths were _reporters_, and if this story be true, the
profession constituting “the fourth estate” may boast of an ancient
lineage.
THE FIRST EPIGRAM.
Among “first things,” the following is worth preserving, as it is
believed to be the first epigram extant in the English language. It was
written by Sir Thomas Wyat, who in some of his sonnets did not hesitate
to intimate his secret passion for Anne Boleyn.
_Of a new married student that plaid fast or lose._
A studient at his bok so plast,
That wealth he might have wonne,
From bok to wife did flete in hast,
From welth to wo to runne.
Now who hath plaid a feater cast,
Since jugling first begonne?
In _knitting_ of himself so _fast_,
Himself he hath undone.
NEWS.
The word news is commonly supposed to be derived from the adjective
_new_. It is asserted, however, that its origin is traceable to a custom
in former times of placing on the newspapers of the day the initial
letters of the cardinal points of the compass, thus:—
N
│
│
W──────┼──────E
│
│
S
These letters were intended to indicate that the paper contained
intelligence from the four quarters of the globe, but they finally came
to assume the form of the word _news_, from which the term newspaper is
derived.
THE EARLIEST NEWSPAPERS.
The Englishe Mercurie, now in MS. in the British Museum, has been proved
to be a forgery. The oldest regular newspaper published in England was
established by Nathaniel Butter, in 1662.
The oldest paper in France was commenced by Theophrastus Renaudet, in
1632, during the reign of Louis XIII. It was called the _Gazette de
France_.
The first Dutch newspaper, which is still continued under the name of
the _Haarlem Courant_, is dated January 8, 1656. It was then called _De
Weeckelycke Courante van Europa_, and contained two small folio pages of
news.
The first Russian newspaper was published in 1703. Peter the Great not
only took part personally in its editorial composition, but in
correcting proofs, as appears from sheets still in existence in which
are marks and alterations in his own hand. There are two complete copies
of the first year’s edition of this paper in the Imperial Library at St.
Petersburg.
The first newspaper established in North America was the Boston
News-Letter, commenced April 24, 1704. It was half a sheet of paper,
twelve inches by eight, two columns on a page. B. Green was the printer.
It survived till 1776,—seventy-two years. It advocated the policy of the
British Government at the commencement of the Revolution.
From a copy of this paper printed in 1769 is obtained the following
announcement:—
“The bell-cart will go through Boston, before the end of next month, to
collect rags for the paper-mill at Milton, when all people that will
encourage the paper-manufactory may dispose of their rags:
Rags are as beauties, which concealéd lie,
But when in paper, how it charms the eye!
Pray save your rags, new beauties it discover;
For paper truly, every one’s a lover:
By the pen and press such knowledge is displayed
As wouldn’t exist if paper was not made.
Wisdom of things mysterious, divine,
Illustriously doth on paper shine.”
THE FIRST PRINTING BY STEAM.
The first printing by steam was executed in the year 1817, by Bensley &
Son, London. The first book thus printed was Dr. Elliotson’s second
edition of Blumenbach’s Physiology.
THE FIRST TELEGRAPHIC MESSAGE.
Professor Morse, having returned to his native land from Europe,
proceeded immediately to Washington, where he renewed his endeavors to
procure the passage of the bill granting the appropriation of thirty
thousand dollars. Towards the close of the session of 1844, the House of
Representatives took it up and passed it by a large majority, and it
only remained for the action of the Senate. Its progress through this
house, as might be supposed, was watched with the most intense anxiety
by Professor Morse. There were only two days before the close of the
session, and it was found, on examination of the calendar, that no less
than one hundred and forty-three bills had precedence to it. Professor
Morse had nearly reached the bottom of his purse; his hard-earned
savings were almost spent; and, although he had struggled on with
undying hope for many years, it is hardly to be wondered at that he felt
disheartened now. On the last night of the session he remained till nine
o’clock, and then left without the slightest hope that the bill would be
passed. He returned to his hotel, counted his money, and found that
after paying his expenses to New York he would have seventy-five cents
left. That night he went to bed sad, but not without hope for the
future; for, through all his difficulties and trials, that never forsook
him. The next morning, as he was going to breakfast, one of the waiters
informed him that a young lady was in the parlor waiting to see him. He
went in immediately, and found that the young lady was Miss Ellsworth,
daughter of the Commissioner of Patents, who had been his most steadfast
friend while in Washington.
“I come,” said she, “to congratulate you.”
“For what?” said Professor Morse.
“On the passage of your bill,” she replied.
“Oh, no: you must be mistaken,” said he. “I remained in the Senate till
a late hour last night, and there was no prospect of its being reached.”
“Am I the first, then,” she exclaimed, joyfully, “to tell you?”
“Yes, if it is really so.”
“Well,” she continued, “father remained till the adjournment, and heard
it passed; and I asked him if I might not run over and tell you.”
“Annie,” said the Professor, his emotion almost choking his utterance,
“the first message that is sent from Washington to Baltimore shall be
sent from you.”
“Well,” she replied, “I will keep you to your word.”
While the line was in process of completion, Prof. Morse was in New
York, and upon receiving intelligence that it was in working order, he
wrote to those in charge, telling them not to transmit any messages over
it till his arrival. He then set out immediately for Washington, and on
reaching that city sent a note to Miss Ellsworth, informing her that he
was now ready to fulfill his promise, and asking her what message he
should send.
To this he received the following reply:—
§What hath God wrought!§
Words that ought to be written in characters of living light. The
message was twice repeated, and each time with the greatest success. As
soon as the result of the experiment was made known, Governor Seymour,
of Connecticut, afterwards United States minister at St. Petersburg,
called upon Professor Morse and claimed the first message for his State,
on the ground that Miss Ellsworth was a native of Hartford. We need
scarcely add that his claim was admitted; and now, engraved in letters
of gold, it is displayed conspicuously in the archives of the Historical
Society of Connecticut.
Nothing New Under the Sun.
FORESHADOWINGS OF THE MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
O utinam hæc ratio scribendi prodeat usu,
Cautior et citior properaret epistola, nullas
Latronum verita insidias fluviosve morantes:
Ipse suis Princeps manibus sibi conficeret rem!
_Nos soboles scribarum, emersi ex æquore nigro,
Consecraremus calamum Magnetis ad aras!_
The _Prolusiones Academicæ of Famianus Strada_, first printed in 1617,
consist of a series of essays upon Oratory, Philosophy, and Poetry, with
some admirable imitations of sundry Roman authors, in the style of
_Father Prout’s Reliques_. In the imitation of Lucretius, ii. 6, is a
description of the loadstone and its power of communicating
intelligence, remarkable as foreshadowing the modern method of
telegraphic communication. The following is a literal translation of the
curious passage:—
The Loadstone is a wonderful sort of mineral. Any articles made of iron,
like needles, if touched by it, derive by contact not only peculiar
power, but a certain property of motion by which they turn ever towards
the Constellation of the Bear, near the North Pole. By some peculiar
correspondency of impulse, any number of needles, which may have touched
the loadstone, preserve at all times a precisely corresponding position
and motion. Thus it happens that if one needle be moved at Rome, any
other, however far apart, is bound by some secret natural condition to
follow the same motion.
If you desire, therefore, to communicate intelligence to a distant
friend, who cannot be reached by letter, take a plain, round, flat disc,
and upon its outer rim mark down the letters of the alphabet, A, B, C,
&c., and, traversing upon the middle of your disc, have a needle (which
has touched loadstone) so arranged that it may be made to touch upon any
particular letter _ad libitum_. Make a similar disc, the exact duplicate
of this first one, with corresponding letters on its margin, and with a
revolving magnetized needle. Let the friend you propose corresponding
with take, at his departure, one disc along with him, and let him agree
with you beforehand on what particular days and at what particular hours
he will take observation of the needle, to see if it be vibrating and to
learn what it marks on the index. With this arrangement understood
between you both, if you wish to hold a private conversation with this
friend, whom the shores of some distant land have separated from you,
turn your finger to the disc and touch the easy-moving needle. Before
you lie, marked upon the outer edge, all the various letters: direct the
needle to such letters as are necessary to form the words you want,
touching a little letter here and there with the needle’s point, as it
goes traversing round and round the board, until you throw together, one
by one, your various ideas. Lo! the wonderful fidelity of
correspondence! Your distant friend notes the revolving needle vibrate
without apparent impulse and fly hither and thither round the rim. He
notes its movements, and reading, as he follows its motion, the various
letters which make up the words, he perceives all that is necessary, and
learns your meaning from the interpreting needle. When he sees the
needle pause, he, in turn, in like manner touches the various letters,
and sends back his answer to his friend. Oh that this style of writing
were brought into use, that a friendly message might travel quicker and
safer, defying snares of robbers or delaying rivers! Would that the
prince himself would finish the great work with his own hands! Then we
race of scribblers, emerging from our sea of ink, would lay the quill an
offering on the altars of the loadstone.
This idea of Strada is based upon the erroneous impression entertained
generally at the time when he wrote, that magnetic power, when imparted
by the loadstone to metallic articles like needles, communicated to them
a kind of homogeneous impulse, which of necessity caused between them a
sympathetic correspondence of motion.
The curious reader will be further interested to learn from the
following passage, extracted from the “Tour” of §Arthur Young§, the
distinguished agriculturist, who travelled through Ireland in 1775–78,
that the theory of electrical correspondence by means of a wire was
_practically_ illustrated before Mr. Morse was born:—
In electricity, Mons. Losmond has made a remarkable discovery. You write
two or three words on a paper; he takes it with him into a room, and
turns a machine enclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is
an electrometer, in the shape of a small fine pith ball. A wire connects
with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment, and his
wife, by remarking the corresponding motions of the ball, writes down
the words they indicate, _from which it appears that he has formed an
alphabet of motions. As the length of wire makes no difference in the
effect, a correspondence might be carried on at any distance_, within
and without a besieged town, for instance, or for a purpose much more
worthy and a thousand times more harmless, between two lovers,
prohibited or prevented from any better epistolary intercourse.
A second edition of Mr. Young’s Tour was published in quarto in 1794,
and the above extract may be found on page 79, volume i.
THE FIRST DISCOVERIES OF STEAM-POWER.
The following extracts from an address by Edward Everett, at an
agricultural fair, embody facts the more interesting from their limited
notoriety:—
I never contemplate the history of navigation of the ocean by steam, but
it seems to illustrate to me in the most striking manner the slow steps
by which a great movement advances for generations, for ages, from the
first germ,—then, when the hour is come, the rapidity with which it
rushes to a final consummation. Providence offered this great problem of
navigating the ocean by steam to every civilized nation almost on the
globe. As long ago as the year 1543, there was a captain in Spain, who
constructed a vessel of two hundred tons, and propelled it, at
Barcelona, in the presence of the Emperor Charles V. and his court, by
an engine, the construction of which he kept a secret. But old documents
tell us it was a monster caldron boiler of water, and that there were
two movable wheels on the outside of the vessel. The Emperor was
satisfied with its operation, but the treasurer of the kingdom
interposed objections to its introduction. The engine itself seems to
have sprung to a point of perfection hardly surpassed at the present
day, but no encouragement was given to the enterprise. Spain was not
ripe for it; the age was not ripe for it; and the poor inventor, whose
name was Blasco de Guerere, wearied and disgusted at the want of
patronage, took the engine out of the vessel and allowed the ship to rot
in the arsenal, and the secret of his machine was buried in his grave.
This was in 1543. A century passed away, and Providence offered the same
problem to be solved by France. In reference to this, we have an
extraordinary account, and from a source equally extraordinary,—from the
writings of a celebrated female, in the middle of that century, equally
renowned for her beauty, for her immoralities, and for her
longevity,—for she lived to be one hundred and thirty-four years of
age,—the famous Marian de l’Orme. There is a letter from this lady,
written to one of her admirers in 1641, containing an account of a visit
she made to a mad-house in Paris in company with the Marquis of
Worcester. She goes on to relate, that in company with the marquis,
while crossing the courtyard of that dismal establishment, almost
petrified with terror, and clinging to her companion, she saw a
frightful face through the bars of the building, and heard this
voice:—“I am not mad—I am not mad: I have made a discovery which will
enrich the kingdom that shall adopt it.” She asked the guide what it
meant: he shrugged his shoulders and said, laughingly, “Not much;
something about the powers of steam.” Upon this, the lady laughed also,
to think that a man should go mad on such a frivolous subject. The guide
went on to say that the man’s name was Solomon de Coste; that he came
from Normandy four years before, and exhibited to the king an invention
by which, by the power of steam, you could move a carriage, navigate the
ocean: “in short, if you believed him,” said the guide, “there was
nothing you could not do by the power of steam.” Cardinal Richelieu, who
at that time was France itself, and who wielded the whole power of
government,—and, in truth, an enlightened man, as worldly wisdom
goes,—was appealed to by Solomon de Coste. De Coste was a persevering
man, and he followed Cardinal Richelieu from place to place, exhibiting
his invention, until the cardinal, getting tired of his importunities,
sent him to the mad-house. The guide stated further that he had written
a book entitled _Motive Power_, and handed the visitors a copy of it.
The Marquis of Worcester, who was an inventor, was much interested in
the book, and incorporated a considerable portion of it in his
well-known work called _The Century of Invention_.
It will be seen from this anecdote how France proved in 1641, as Spain
had proved in 1543, that she was unable to take up and wield this mortal
thunderbolt. And so the problem of navigating the ocean by steam was
reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race. Soon after this period, the best
mechanical skill of England was directed towards this invention.
Experiments were often made, with no success, and sometimes with only
partial success, until the middle of the last century, when the seeds
implanted in the minds of ingenious men for two hundred years
germinated, and the steam-engine—that scarcely inanimate Titan, that
living, burning mechanism—was brought nearly to a state of perfection by
James Watt, who took out a patent in 1769,—the great year in which
Wellington and Napoleon were born; and ages after the names of
Austerlitz and Waterloo shall perish from the memory of man, the myriad
hosts of intelligent labor, marshalled by the fiery champions that James
Watt has placed in the field, shall gain their bloodless triumph, not
for the destruction but for the service of mankind. All hail, then, to
the mute, indefatigable giant, in the depths of the darksome mines,
along the pathway of travel and trade, and on the mountain wave, that is
destined to drag, urge, heave, haul, for the service of man! No fatigue
shall palsy its herculean arm, no trampled hosts shall writhe beneath
its iron feet, no widow’s heart shall bleed at its beneficent victories.
England invented the steam-engine; but it seems as if by the will of
Providence she could not go farther. Queen of the seas, as she deemed
herself, she could not apply the invention she had brought almost to
perfection, and that part of the great problem, the navigation of the
ocean by steam, was reserved for the other branch of the Anglo-Saxon
race,—the branch situated in a region in this Western hemisphere whose
territory is traversed by some of the noblest rivers that belt the
surface of the globe, and separated by the world-wide ocean from the
Eastern hemisphere. It is amazing to consider how, with the dawn of the
Revolution, the thoughts of men turned to the application of
steam-navigation. Rumsey, Fitch, and Evans made experiments, and those
experiments attracted the notice of one whom nothing escaped pertaining
to the welfare of his country: I mean Washington. And we have a
certificate from him, expressing the satisfaction with which he had
witnessed the experiment of Rumsey. The attempt proved rather
unsuccessful. I think it a providential appointment that the ocean was
not navigated by steam in the Revolutionary age. The enormous
preponderance of British capital and skill, if the ocean had been
navigated by steam, would have put in her possession facilities for
blockading our ports and transporting armies to our coasts, which might
have had a disastrous effect on the result of the whole contest. But the
Revolution passed and independence was established: the hour had come,
and the man was there.
In the year 1799 this system of steam-navigation became matured in the
mind of Fulton, who found a liberal and active coadjutor in Chancellor
Livingston, who, in the same year, applied to the Legislature of New
York for an act of incorporation. I am sorry to say that America at that
moment could not boast of much keener perception of the nature of this
discovery than France or Spain had done before. Chancellor Livingston at
last had a petition drawn up of the act he desired passed. It was
drafted by the young men of the Legislature, who, when tired of the
graver matters of law, used to call up the “steam bill” that they might
have a little fun. Young America, on that occasion, did not show himself
much wiser than his senior. Nothing daunted at the coldness he received,
nothing discouraged by the partial success of the first experiment,
Chancellor Livingston persevered. Twenty years elapsed before steamers
were found upon our lakes and rivers, and at that time such a system of
steam-navigation was wholly unknown, except by hearsay, in Europe. This
application of steam soon became a pressing necessity in this country,
but twenty years more passed away before it was adopted in England. I
could not but think, when the news of the Atlantic Telegraph came, what
must have been the emotions of Fulton and Franklin could they have stood
upon the quarter-deck of the Niagara and witnessed the successful
termination of that electric communication which is the result of their
united discoveries!
ÆRIAL NAVIGATION.
When air-balloons were first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr.
Franklin what was the use of it. The philosopher answered the question
by asking another:—“What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become
a man.”
The first balloon-ascension was made by Pilatre de Rozier and the
Marquis d’Arlandes, November 21, 1783, in a montgolfière.
A century and a half before this, John Gregorie wrote, “The air itself
is not so unlike to water, but that it may be demonstrated to be
navigable, and that a ship may sail upon the convexity thereof by the
same reasons that it is carried upon the ocean.”
In the first number of the Philosophical Collections, 1679, is “a
demonstration how it is practically possible to make a ship, which shall
be sustained by the air, and may be moved either by sails or oars,” from
a work entitled _Prodroma_, published in Italian by P. Francesco Lana.
The scheme was that of making a brazen vessel which should weigh less
than the air it contained, and consequently float in the air when that
which was within it was pumped out. He calculated every thing—except the
pressure of the atmosphere, in consequence of which _slight_ oversight
he realized no practical result.
THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood in 1619; but we learn
from a passage in Longinus (ch. xxii.) that the fact was known two
thousand years before. The father of critics, to exemplify and
illustrate the use and value of _trope_ in writing, has garbled from the
_Timæus_ of Plato a number of sentences descriptive of the anatomy of
the human body, where the circulation of the blood is pointed at in
terms singularly graphic. The exact extent of professional knowledge
attained in the time of the great philosopher is by no means clearly
defined. He speaks of the fact, however, not with a view to prove what
was contested or chimerical, but avails himself of it to figure the
surpassing wisdom of the gods in constructing the human frame.
ANÆSTHESIA.
The use of the vapor of sulphuric ether for the purpose of inducing
insensibility to surgical operations was first practically adopted by
Dr. Morton, of Boston, in 1846; that of chloroform, by Dr. Simpson, of
Edinburgh, in 1847. To this period we must assign the most important
epoch in the annals of surgery, and the date of one of the grandest
discoveries of science and one of the greatest blessings ever conferred
upon humanity.
The idea, however, of saving the human body, by artificial means, from
the pains and tortures inflicted by the knife of the surgeon, has been
by no means either first broached or first acted upon in recent times.
Intense pain is regarded by mankind generally as so serious an evil that
it would have been strange indeed if efforts had not been early made to
diminish this species of suffering. The use of the juice of the poppy,
henbane, mandragora, and other narcotic preparations, to effect this
object by their deadening influence, may be traced back till it
disappears in the darkness of a remote antiquity.
Intoxicating vapors were also employed, by way of inhalation, to produce
the same effects as drugs of this nature introduced into the stomach.
This appears from the account given by Herodotus of the practice of the
Scythians, several centuries before Christ, of using the vapor of
hemp-seed as a means of drunkenness. The known means of stupefaction
were very early resorted to in order to counteract pain produced by
artificial causes. In executions under the horrible form of crucifixion,
soporific mixtures were administered to alleviate the pangs of the
victim. The draught of vinegar and gall, or myrrh, offered to the
Saviour in his agony, was the ordinary tribute of human sympathy
extorted from the bystander by the spectacle of intolerable anguish.
That some lethean anodyne might be found to assuage the torment of
surgical operations as they were anciently performed, [cauterizing the
cut surfaces, instead of tying the arteries,] was not only a favorite
notion, but it had been in some degree, however imperfect, reduced to
practice. Pliny the Naturalist, who perished in the eruption of Vesuvius
which entombed the city of Herculaneum in the year 79, bears distinct
and decided testimony to this fact.
In his description of the plant known as the mandragora or circeius, he
says, “It has a soporific power on the faculties of those who drink it.
The ordinary potion is half a cup. It is drunk against serpents, and
_before cuttings and puncturings_, lest they should be felt.” (_Bibitur
et contra serpentes, et ante sectiones, punctionesque, ne sentiantur._)
When he comes to speak of the plant _eruca_, called by us the rocket, he
informs us that its seeds, when drunk, infused in wine, by criminals
about to undergo the lash, produce a certain callousness or induration
of feeling (_duaitiam, quandam contra sensum induere_).
Pliny also asserts that the stone _Memphitis_, powdered and applied in a
liniment with vinegar, will stupefy parts to be cut or cauterized, “for
it so paralyzes the part that it feels no pain” (_nec sentit
cruciatum_).
Dioscorides, a Greek physician of Cilicia, in Asia, who was born about
the time of Pliny’s death, and who wrote an extensive work on the
materia medica, observes, in his chapter on mandragora,—
1. “Some boil down the roots in wine to a third part, and preserve the
juice thus procured, and give one cyathus of it in sleeplessness and
severe pains, of whatever part; also _to cause the insensibility_—to
produce the anæsthesia ποιειν αναισθησιαν—_of those who are to be cut or
cauterized_.”
2. “There is prepared, also, besides the decoction, a wine from the bark
of the root, three minæ being thrown into a cask of sweet wine, and of
this three cyathi are given _to those who are to be cut or cauterized,
as aforesaid_; for, being thrown into a deep sleep, _they do not
perceive pain_.”
3. Speaking of another variety of mandragora, called _morion_, he
observes, “Medical men use it also for those who are to be cut or
cauterized.”
Dioscorides also describes the stone Memphitis, mentioned by Pliny, and
says that when it is powdered and applied to parts to be cut or
cauterized, they are rendered, _without the slightest danger_, wholly
insensible to pain. Matthiolus, the commentator on Dioscorides, confirms
his statement of the virtues of mandragora, which is repeated by
Dodoneus. “Wine in which the roots of mandragora have been steeped,”
says this latter writer, “brings on sleep, and appeases all pains, so
that it is given to those who are to be cut, sawed, or burned in any
parts of their body, that they may not perceive pain.”
The expressions used by Apuleius of Madaura, who flourished about a
century after Pliny, are still more remarkable than those already quoted
from the older authors. He says, when treating of mandragora, “If any
one is to have a member mutilated, burned, or sawed, [_mutilandum,
comburendum, vel serrandum_,] let him drink half an ounce with wine, and
_let him sleep till the member is cut away without any pain or
sensation_ [_et tantum dormiet, quosque abscindatur membrum aliquo sine
dolore et sensu_].”
It was not in Europe and in Western Asia alone that these early efforts
to discover some lethean were made, and attended with partial success.
On the opposite side of the continent, the Chinese—who have anticipated
the Europeans in so many important inventions, as in gunpowder, the
mariner’s compass, printing, lithography, paper money, and the use of
coal—seem to have been quite as far in advance of the Occidental world
in medical science. They understood, ages before they were introduced
into Christendom, the use of substances containing iodine for the cure
of the goitre, and employed spurred rye (ergot) to shorten
dangerously-prolonged labor in difficult accouchements. Among the
therapeutic methods confirmed by the experience of thousands of years,
the records of which they have preserved with religious veneration, the
employment of an anæsthetic agent to paralyze the nervous sensibility
before performing surgical operations, is distinctly set forth. Among a
considerable number of Chinese works on the pharmacopœia, medicine, and
surgery, in the National Library at Paris, is one entitled
_Kou-kin-i-tong_, or general collection of ancient and modern medicine,
in fifty volumes quarto. Several hundred biographical notices of the
most distinguished physicians in China are prefixed to this work. The
following curious passages occur in the sketches of the biography of
_Hoa-tho_, who flourished under the dynasty of _Wei_, between the years
220 and 230 of our era. “When he determined that it was necessary to
employ acupuncture, he employed it in two or three places; and so with
the _moxa_ if that was indicated by the nature of the affection to be
treated. But if the disease resided in parts upon which the needle,
moxa, or liquid medicaments could not operate,—for example in the bones,
or the marrow of the bones, in the stomach or the intestines,—_he gave_
the patient a preparation of hemp, (in the Chinese language _mayo_,) and
after a few moments he became as insensible as if he had been drunk or
dead. Then, as the case required, he performed operations, incisions, or
amputations, and removed the cause of the malady; then he brought
together and secured the tissues, and applied liniments. After a certain
number of days, the patient recovered, _without having experienced the
slightest pain during the operation_.”
Almost a thousand years after the date of the unmistakable phrases
quoted from Apuleius, according to the testimony of William of Tyre, and
other chroniclers of the wars for the rescue of the holy sepulchre, and
the fascinating narrative of _Marco Polo_, a state of anæsthesia was
induced for very different purposes. It became an instrument in the
hands of bold and crafty impostors to perpetuate and extend the most
terrible fanaticism that the world has ever seen.
The employment of anæsthetic agents in surgical operations was not
forgotten or abandoned during the period when they were pressed into the
appalling service just described. In the thirteenth century, anæsthesia
was produced by inhalation of an anodyne vapor, in a mode oddly
forestalling the practices of the present day, which is described as
follows in the surgical treatise of Theodoric, who died in 1298. It is
the receipt for the “spongia somnifera,” as it is called in the rubric:—
“The preparation of a scent for performing surgical operations,
according to Master Hugo. It is made thus:—Take of opium and the juice
of unripe mulberry, of hyoscyamus, of the juice of the hemlock, of the
juice of the leaves of the mandragora, of the juice of the woody ivy, of
the juice of the forest mulberry, of the seeds of lettuce, of the seed
of the burdock, which has large and round apples, and of the
water-hemlock, each one ounce; mix the whole of these together in a
brazen vessel, and then place a new sponge in it, and let the whole
boil, and as long as the sun on the dog-days, till it (the sponge)
consumes it all, and let it be boiled away in it. As often as there is
need of it, place this same sponge in warm water for one hour, and let
it be applied to the nostrils till he who is to be operated on (_qui
incidentus est_) has fallen asleep; and in this state let the operation
be performed (_et sic fiat chirurgia_). When this is finished, in order
to rouse him, place another, dipped in vinegar, frequently to his nose,
or let the juice of the roots of fenigreek be squirted into his
nostrils. Presently he awakens.”
Subsequent to Theodoric’s time, we find many interesting and suggestive
observations in the writings of Baptista Porta, Chamappe, Meissner,
Dauriol, Haller, and Blandin. About half a century ago, Sir Humphry Davy
thus hinted at the possibility that a pain subduing gas might be
inhaled:—“As _nitrous oxide_, in its extensive operation, appears
capable of destroying physical pain, it may probably be used with
advantage during surgical operations in which no great effusion of blood
takes place.” Baron Larrey, Napoleon’s surgeon, after the battle of
Eylau, found a remarkable insensibility in the wounded who suffered
amputations, owing to the intense cold. This fact afterwards led to the
application of ice as a local anæsthetic.
The former general belief that a degree of anæsthetic and prolonged
sleep could be induced artificially by certain medicated potions and
preparations is also shown by the frequency with which the idea is
alluded to by the older poets and storytellers, and made part of the
machinery in the popular romance and drama. In the history of Taliesin,
(one of the antique Welsh tales contained in the Mabinogion,) Rhun is
described as having put the maid of the wife of Elphin into a deep sleep
with a powder put into her drink, and as having cut off one of her
fingers when she was in this case of artificial anæsthesia. Shakspeare,
besides alluding more than once to the soporific property of mandragora,
describes with graphic power in Romeo and Juliet, and in Cymbeline, the
imagined effects of subtle distilled potions supposed capable of
inducing, without danger, a prolonged state of death-like sleep or
lethargy. And Thomas Middleton, in his tragedy of _Women beware Women_,
published in 1657, pointedly and directly alludes in the following
lines, to the practice of anæsthesia in ancient surgery:—
_Hippolito_. Yes, my lord,
I make no doubt, as I shall take the course,
Which she shall never know till it be acted;
And when she wakes to honor, then she’ll thank me for’t.
_I’ll imitate the pities of old surgeons_
To this lost limb; _who, ere they show their art,
Cast one asleep, then cut the diseased part_;
So out of love to her I pity most,
She shall not feel him going till he’s lost;
Then she’ll commend the cure.—Act iv. Sc. 1.
The following curious lines from Du Bartas, translated by Joshua
Sylvester (?) are also well worth transcribing in this connection.
Du Bartas died about the year 1590:—
Even as a Surgeon minding off-to-cut
Som cureless limb; before in use he put
His violent Engins on the vicious member,
Bringeth his Patient in a senseless slumber:
And griefless then (guided by Use and Art)
To save the whole saws off th’ infested part.
So God empal’d our Grandsire’s (Adam) lively look,
Through all his bones a deadly chilness strook,
Siel’d-up his sparkling eyes with Iron bands,
Led down his feet (almost) to Lethe’s sands;
In briefe, so numm’d his Soule’s and Bodie’s sense,
That (without pain) opening his side, from thence
He took a rib, which rarely He refin’d,
And thereof made the Mother of Mankind.
The history of anæsthetics is a remarkable illustration of the
acknowledged fact that science has sometimes, for a long season,
altogether lost sight of great practical thoughts, from being unprovided
with proper means and instruments for carrying out those thoughts into
practical execution; and hence it ever and anon occurs that a supposed
modern discovery is only the rediscovery of a principle already
sufficiently known to other ages, or to remote nations.
THE BOOMERANG.
The following paragraph in Pliny’s _Natural History_, xxiv. 72,
apparently refers to the Boomerang, with which, according to recent
discoveries, the early people of the East were acquainted. See Bonomi’s
_Nineveh_, p. 136. Pliny, speaking of the account given by Pythagoras of
the _Aquifolia_, either the holm-oak or the holly, says:—
Baculum ex eâ factum, in quodvis animal emissum, etiamsi citra
ceciderit defectu mittentis, ipsum per sese cubitu proprius adlabi;
tam præcipuam naturam inesse arbori.
(If a staff made of this wood, when thrown at any animal, from want of
strength in the party throwing it, happens to fall short of the mark,
it will fall back again towards the thrower of its own accord—so
remarkable are the properties of this tree.)
The readings of the passage vary, _cubitu_ being given in some MSS. for
_recubitu_. Pythagoras probably heard of the _baculum_ during his
travels eastward, and being unable to understand how its formation could
endow it with the singular property referred to, was induced to believe
that this peculiarity was owing to the nature of the tree.
THE ATTRACTION OF GRAVITATION.
Both Dante and Shakspeare preceded Newton in knowledge of the principle,
if not the law, of gravitation. In their anticipation of its discovery,
the poets may not have deemed it other than a philosophic or poetic
speculation. But the following passages attest earlier observations of a
physical law than those of Pascal or Newton.
Shakspeare says in _Troilus and Cressida_:—
But the strong base and building of my love
Is as the very centre of the earth
Drawing all things to it.—iv. 2.
and
True as earth to its centre.—iii. 2.
Three centuries before Shakspeare, Dante said in the _Inferno_:—
Thou dost imagine we are still
On the other side the central point, where I
Clasped the earth-piercing worm, fell cause of ill.
So far as I continued to descend,
That side we kept; but when I turned, then we
_Had passed the point to which all bodies tend_.
_Canto_ xxxiv. 106–111.
EARLY INVENTION OF RIFLING.
In Sir Hugh Plat’s _Jewel-House of Art and Nature_, 1653, (1st edition
1594) the 17th article runs thus:—
_How to make a Pistol, whose Barrel is 2 Foot in Length, to deliver a
Bullet point blank at Eightscore._
A pistol of the aforesaid length, and being of the petronel bore, or a
bore higher, having eight gutters somewhat deep in the inside of the
barrel, and the bullet a thought bigger than the bore, and so rammed in
at the first three or four inches at the least, and after driven down
with the scouring stick, will deliver his bullet at such distance. This
I had of an English gentleman of good note for an approved experiment.
TABLE-MOVING AND ALPHABET-RAPPING IN THE FOURTH CENTURY.
The following remarkable narration is the confession of a conspirator
named Hilarius, who was accused of resorting to unlawful arts for the
purpose of discovering who should be the successor to the Roman Emperor
Valens, who died §A.D.§ 378. We are told by Ammianus Marcellinus, a
contemporary historian, that, while under torture, he thus addressed his
judges:—
With direful rites, O august judges, we prepared this unfortunate little
table, which you see, of laurel branches, in imitation of the Delphic
cortina, (or tripod,) and when it had been duly consecrated by
imprecation of secret charms and many long and choric ceremonies, we at
length moved it. The method of moving it, when it was consulted on
secret matters, was as follows: It was placed in the midst of a house
purified with Arabian odors; upon it was placed a round dish, made of
various metallic substances, which had the twenty-four letters of the
alphabet curiously engraved round the rim, at accurately-measured
distances from each other. One clothed with linen garments, carrying
branches of a sacred tree, and having, by charms framed for the purpose,
propitiated the deity who is the giver of prescience, places other
lesser cortinæ on this larger one, with ceremonial skill. He holds over
them a ring which has been subjected to some mysterious preparation, and
which is suspended by a very fine Carpathian thread. This ring, passing
over the intervals, and falling on one letter after the other, spells
out heroic verses pertinent to the questions asked. We then thus
inquired who should succeed to the government of the empire. The leaping
ring had indicated two syllables, (§The-od§;) and on the addition of the
last letter one of the persons present cried out, “Theodorus.”
Theodorus, and many others, were executed for their share in this dark
transaction, (see Gibbon;) but Theodosius the Great finally succeeded to
the empire, and was, of course, supposed to be the person indicated by
the magic rites. The above literal translation is given by the learned
Dr. Maitland in a little book, lately published, _Essay on False
Worship_, London, 1856. The original was hardly intelligible, till light
had been thrown on it by recent practices, of which we have all heard so
much. The coincidence is, to say the least, extraordinary, and opens
views which are briefly considered in the above-mentioned work.
AUSCULTATION AND PERCUSSION.
Laennec invented the stethoscope and perfected his discoveries in the
physical diagnosis of the diseases of the heart and lungs, in 1816.
Avenbrugger published his work on Percussion in 1761.
One hundred and fifty years before Laennec’s suddenly conceived act of
applying a roll of paper to the breast of a female patient gave birth to
thoracic acoustics, that ingenious and philosophic man, Robert Hooke,
said in his writings:—
“There may be a possibility of discovering the internal motions and
actions of bodies by the sound they make. Who knows, but that as in a
watch we may hear the beating of the balance, and the running of the
wheels, and the striking of the hammers, and the grating of the teeth,
and a multitude of other noises,—who knows, I say, but that it may be
possible to discover the motions of internal parts of bodies, whether
animal, vegetable, or mineral, by the sounds they make?—that one may
discover the works performed in the several offices and shops of a man’s
body, and thereby discover what engine is out of order, what works are
going on at several times and lie still at others, and the like? I have
this encouragement not to think all these things impossible, though
never so much derided by the generality of men, and never so seemingly
mad, foolish, and fantastic, that as the thinking them impossible cannot
much improve my knowledge, so the believing them possible may perhaps be
an occasion for taking notice of such things as another would pass by
without regard as useless, and somewhat more of encouragement I have
from experience that I have been able to hear very plainly the beating
of a man’s heart; and it is common to hear the motion of the wind to and
fro in the intestines; the stopping of the lungs is easily discovered by
the wheezing. As to the motion of the parts one among the other, to
their becoming sensible they require either that their motions be
increased or that the organ (the ear) be made more nice and powerful, to
sensate and distinguish them as they are; for the doing of both which I
think it is not impossible but that in many cases there may be §HELPS§
found.”
THE STEREOSCOPE.
Sir David Brewster, inquiring into the history of the stereoscope, finds
that its fundamental principle was well known even to Euclid; that it
was distinctly described by Galen fifteen hundred years ago; and that
Giambattista Porta had, in 1599, given such a complete drawing of the
two separate pictures as seen by each eye, and of the combined picture
placed between them, that we recognize in it not only the principle, but
the construction, of the stereoscope.
PREDICTIONS OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.
Seneca, in his _Medea_, Act ii, thus shadowed forth this event fifteen
centuries before its occurrence:—
Venient annis Sæcula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat Tellus,
Tiphysque novos detegat orbes;
Nec sit terris Ultima Thule.
(After the lapse of years, ages will come in which Ocean shall relax
his chains around the world, and a vast continent shall appear, and
Tiphys—the pilot—shall explore new regions, and Thule shall be no
longer the utmost verge of the earth.)
“A prediction,” says the commentator, “of the Spanish discovery of
America.”
Before Seneca’s lines were written, Plato had narrated the Egyptian
legend that, engulfed in the ocean, but sometimes visible, was the
island of Atalantis, supposed to mean the Western world.
Pulci, the friend of Lorenzo de Medici, in his _Morgante Maggiore_,
written before the voyage of Columbus and before the physical
discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus, introduces this remarkable
prophecy; (alluding to the vulgar belief that the _Columns of Hercules_
were the limits of the earth.)
Know that this theory is false: his bark
The daring mariner shall urge far o’er
The western wave, a smooth and level plain,
Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.
Man was in ancient days of grosser mould,
And Hercules might blush to learn how far
Beyond the limits he had vainly set,
The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way.
Men shall descry another hemisphere;
Since to one common centre all things tend,
So earth, by curious mystery divine,
Well balanced hangs amid the starry spheres.
At our antipodes are cities, states,
And thronged empires, ne’er divined of yore.
But see, the sun speeds on his western path
To glad the nations with expected light.
Dante, two centuries before, put this language into the mouth of
Ulysses:—
The broad Atlantic first my keel impressed,
I saw the sinking barriers of the west,
And boldly thus addressed my hardy crew:—
While yet your blood is warm, my gallant train,
Explore with me the perils of the main
And find new worlds unknown to mortal view.
_Inferno_, Canto 26.
He then proceeds to mention the discovery of a mountainous island, after
five months’ sailing.
The probability of a short western passage to India is mentioned by
Aristotle, _De Cœlo_, ii., a view confirmed in stronger terms afterwards
by Edrisi, the Arabian geographer, Strabo, Francis Bacon, Cardinal de
Alliaco (_Imago Mundi_), and Toscanelli.
Triumphs of Ingenuity.
_Though there were many giants of old in physic and philosophy, yet I
say, with Didacus Stella, “A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a
giant may see farther than a giant himself.”_—§Burton§, _Anat. of
Melancholy_.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE PLANET NEPTUNE.
In his solitary study sat a young man, pale and thoughtful. His eyes
were fixed upon myriads of numerals, through whose complexity his
far-reaching mind saw into the untold mysteries of the solar universe.
His glass was not pointed to the heavens, his eyes looked not out upon
the stars, but his soul, in deep abstraction, pondered over the
perturbations of Uranus, as noted for many a year before by many a
casual observer. He measured the intensity and the direction of the
disturbing forces, questioned the planet that was seen and known
concerning the unknown cause of its irregularities, and compelled a
star, itself beyond the reach of the common eye, to tell of the
whereabouts, the volume, the orbit, of its fellow, which no eye, even
through an optic-glass, had ever yet seen, and whose very existence then
came for the first time upon the mental vision of the youthful sage
through the power of numerical calculation. His was a faith. It was the
evidence of things not seen. But it was like that higher and better
faith of which spake the great Apostle of the Gentiles,—fast and sure.
Full of his discovery, Le Verrier offered his conclusions to the
Academy; but learned men, when assembled in bodies, give to enthusiasts
but a cold reception. Le Verrier, sure of his position, then wrote to
Dr. Galle, the Astronomer-Royal in Berlin, asking him to point his
powerful glass to a certain quarter of the heavens, where must be found
at that time the last of the planets. And there it was; and thence it
was traced upon its mighty way, bending, like its fellows, to the
distant influence of its great centre, the sun. There is something
almost affecting in the thought that Le Verrier should have been denied
the first direct sight of the sublime star towards which his soul had
been so long leaning and which had so long been within his mental
vision. It was, however, a fortunate loss, since his adversaries would
have charged him with having found by chance what he detected by reason,
and thus have placed in a common category one of the most magnificent
discoveries of modern times, a beautiful illustration of the gigantic
power of calculation.
The distance of Neptune from the sun is 2,810,000,000 miles, and the
time required for its orbital revolution, 164 years. Its diameter is
41,500 miles.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE PLANET VULCAN.
Leverrier, encouraged and made illustrious by his success in exploring
those infinite spaces beyond the orbit of Herschel, turned his attention
to the innermost circles—the central region of our solar system. By
theoretical demonstrations, based on irregularities in the movements of
Mercury, he proved the existence of some planet or planets lying still
more closely within the light and heat of the sun. While proceeding with
his calculations, he received a letter from Lescarbault—a poor physician
of Orgères, a village in the department of Eure and Loire, in
France—announcing the discovery of an intra-Mercurial body, making its
transit, in appearance like a small black spot, across the disk of the
sun. Possessed of a sensitive and modest soul,—as all true lovers of
science are,—the doctor at first doubted the reality of his discovery,
and hesitated to make it known. It was only after vainly waiting nine
months, to verify his observation by another view of the object, that he
prepared a letter, narrating what he thought he had seen, and sent it to
the great Leverrier. The latter had just published an article on
Mercury’s perturbations in the _Kosmos_ of Paris. Astonished at this
coincident proof of the correctness of his theory, he lost no time in
starting for the village of Orgères, to obtain a personal interview with
the humble discoverer of the new orb. The following account of the
meeting was reported in the _Kosmos_ by the Abbé Moigne, who took it
from the lips of Leverrier himself:—
Leverrier left Paris for Orgères, in company with Vallee, four days
after the date of Lescarbault’s letter. Orgères was twelve miles from
the nearest railroad-station, and the party had to foot it across the
country. On their arrival, Leverrier knocked loudly at the door, which
was opened by the doctor himself; but his visitor declined to give his
name. The simple, modest, timid Lescarbault, small in stature, stood
abashed before the tall Leverrier, who, in blunt intonation, addressed
him thus: “It is you, then, sir, who pretend to have discovered the
intra-Mercurial planet, and who have committed the grave offence of
keeping your discovery secret for nine months! I come to do justice to
your pretensions, to warn you that you have either been dishonest or
deceived. Tell me unequivocally what you have seen.” The lamb-like
doctor, trembling at this rude summons, stammered out the following
reply:—
“On the 26th of March (1859), about four o’clock, I turned my telescope
to the sun, when, to my surprise, I saw, at a small distance from its
margin, a black spot, well defined, and perfectly round, advancing upon
the disk of the sun. A customer called me away, and, hurrying him off as
fast as I could, I came back to my glass, when I found the round spot
had continued its transit, and I saw it disappear from the opposite
margin of the sun, after a projection upon it of an hour and a half. I
did not seize the precise moment of contact. The spot was on the disk
when I first saw it. I measured its distance from the margin, and
counted the time it took to make the same distance, and so approximated
the instant of its entry.” “To count time is easy to say,” said
Leverrier; “but where is your chronometer?” “My chronometer is this
watch, that beats only minutes,—the faithful companion of my
professional labors.” “What! with that old watch? How dare you talk of
counting seconds? My suspicions are too well founded.” “Pardon me, sir,
but I have a pendulum that nearly beats seconds, and I will bring it
down to show you.” He goes above-stairs and brings down a silken thread,
the upper end of which he fastens to a nail, and brings to rest the
ivory ball at the lower end. He then starts it from the vertical, and
its oscillations beat seconds very nearly. “This is not enough, sir: how
do you count these seconds while in the act of observing?” “My
profession is to feel pulses and count their pulsations, and my pendulum
puts my seconds into my ears, and I have no difficulty in counting
them.”
“But where is your telescope?” The doctor showed Leverrier his glass,
which was one of Cauchoix’s best. It was four inches in diameter, and
mounted on a rude stand. He took the wondering astronomer-imperial to
his roof, where he was building a rude revolving platform and dome.
“This is all very well; but where is your original memorandum?” The
doctor ran and got his almanac, or _Connaissance des Temps_, and in it
he finds a square piece of paper, used as a marker, and on it, all
covered with grease and laudanum, is the original memorandum! “But you
have falsified the time of emergence. It is four minutes too late by
this memorandum.” “It is; but the four minutes are the error of my
watch, which I corrected by sidereal time, by the aid of this little
telescope.”
“But how did you determine the two angular co-ordinates of the point of
contact, of the entry and emergence of the planet, and how did you
measure the chord of the arc between them?” Having explained the simple
method which he pursued in the premises to the satisfaction of the
astronomer, the latter next inquired after his rough drafts of
calculation for determining the distance of the planet from the sun. “My
rough draughts! Paper is scarce with us. I am a joiner as well as an
astronomer. I write on my boards, and when I am done, I plane them off
and begin again; but I think I have preserved them.” On visiting the
shop, they found the board, with all its lines and numbers still
unobliterated!
The Parisian savant was now convinced that Lescarbault had really seen
the planet whose existence he had himself foretold. Turning to the
amateur astronomer, he revealed his personality, and congratulated his
humble brother on the magnificent discovery thus confirmed. It was the
event in the Orgères physician’s life. Honors poured in upon him. The
cross of the Legion of Honor was sent to him from Paris, and his name
was at once enrolled in the lists of the leading scientific academies of
Europe.
The new orb, whose revolution is performed in 19 days, 17 hours, has
been felicitously named Vulcan. If objection be offered to the selection
of names for the planets from “Olympus’ dread hierarchy,” it must at
least be acknowledged that there is a peculiar fitness in their
distribution.
INGENIOUS STRATAGEM OF COLUMBUS
Thou Luther of the darkened deep!
Nor less intrepid, too, than he
Whose courage broke earth’s bigot sleep,
While thine unbarred the sea!
During the fourth voyage of Columbus, while prosecuting his discoveries
among the West India Islands and along the coast of the continent, his
vessels, from continual subjection to tempestuous weather, and being, to
use his own expression, “bored by the worms as full of holes as a
honey-comb,” were reduced to mere wrecks, unable any longer to keep the
sea, and were finally stranded on the shore of Jamaica. Being beyond the
possibility of repair, they were fitted up for the temporary use of
Columbus, who was in feeble health, and of such of his crew as were
disabled by sickness, those who were well being sent abroad for
assistance and supplies. Their immediate wants were amply provided for,
Diego Mendez having made arrangements with the natives for a daily
exchange of knives, combs, beads, fish-hooks, &c., for cassava bread,
fish, and other provisions. In the course of a short time, however,
provisions on the island became scarce, and the supplies began gradually
to fall off. The arrangements for the daily delivery of certain
quantities were irregularly attended to, and finally ceased entirely.
The Indians no longer thronged to the harbor with provisions, and often
refused them when applied for. The Spaniards were obliged to forage
about the neighborhood for their daily food, but found more and more
difficulty in procuring it; and now, in addition to their other causes
of despondency, they began to entertain horrible apprehensions of
famine.
The admiral heard the melancholy forebodings of his men, and beheld the
growing evil, but was at a loss for a remedy. To resort to force was an
alternative full of danger, and of but temporary efficacy. It would
require all those who were well enough to bear arms to sally forth,
while he and the rest of the infirm would be left defenceless on board
the wreck, exposed to the vengeance of the natives.
In the mean time, the scarcity daily increased. The Indians perceived
the wants of the white men, and had learned from them the art of making
bargains. They asked ten times the former quantity of European articles
for a given amount of provisions, and brought their supplies in scanty
quantities, to enhance the eagerness of the Spaniards. At length even
this relief ceased, and there was an absolute distress for want of food,
the natives withholding all provisions, in hopes either of starving the
admiral and his people, or of driving them from the island.
In this extremity, a fortunate idea suddenly presented itself to
Columbus. From his knowledge of astronomy, he ascertained that within
three days there would be a total eclipse of the moon, in the early part
of the night. He sent, therefore, an Indian of the island of Hispaniola,
who served as his interpreter, to summon the principal caciques to a
grand conference, appointing for it the day of the eclipse. When all
were assembled, he told them, by his interpreter, that he and his
followers were worshippers of a deity who lived in the skies; that this
deity favored such as did well, but punished all transgressors; that, as
they must all have noticed, he had protected Diego Mendez and his
companions in their voyage, they having gone in obedience to the orders
of their commander, but that, on the other hand, he had visited
Francisco de Porras and his companions with all kinds of crosses and
afflictions, in consequence of their rebellion; that this great deity
was incensed against the Indians who had refused or neglected to furnish
his faithful worshippers with provisions, and intended to chastise them
with pestilence and famine. Lest they should disbelieve this warning, a
signal would be given that very night, in the heavens. They would behold
the moon change its color, and gradually lose its light,—a token of the
fearful punishment which awaited them.
Many of the Indians were alarmed at the solemnity of this prediction;
others treated it with scoffing: all, however, awaited with solicitude
the coming of the night, and none with more than Columbus himself, who
was distracted with anxiety lest the weather should prove cloudy or
rainy. Imagine his gratitude when the evening sky appeared undimmed by a
cloud! When the time arrived, and the natives beheld a dark shadow
stealing over the moon, they began to tremble. Their fears increased
with the progress of the eclipse; and when they saw mysterious darkness
covering the whole face of nature, there were no bounds to their terror.
Seizing upon whatever provisions they could procure, they hurried to the
ships, uttering cries and lamentations. They threw themselves at the
feet of Columbus, implored him to intercede with his God to avert the
threatened calamities, and assured him that thenceforth they would bring
him whatever he required. Columbus told them that he would retire and
commune with the deity. Shutting himself up in his cabin, he remained
there during the increase of the eclipse, the forests and shores all the
while resounding with the howlings and supplications of the savages.
When the eclipse was about to diminish, he came forth and informed the
natives that he had interceded for them with his God, who, on condition
of their fulfilling their promises, had deigned to pardon them; in sign
of which he would withdraw the darkness from the moon.
When the Indians saw that planet restored presently to its brightness
and rolling in all its beauty through the firmament, they overwhelmed
the admiral with thanks for his intercession, and repaired to their
homes, joyful at having escaped such great disasters. They now regarded
Columbus with awe and reverence, as a man in the peculiar favor and
confidence of the Deity, since he knew upon earth what was passing in
the heavens. They hastened to propitiate him with gifts, supplies again
arrived daily at the harbor, and from that time forward there was no
want of provisions.
A LESSON WORTH LEARNING.
The possibility of a great change being introduced by very slight
beginnings may be illustrated by a tale which Lockman tells of a vizier,
who, having offended his master, was condemned to perpetual captivity in
a lofty tower. At night his wife came to weep below his window. “Cease
your grief,” said the sage: “go home for the present, and return hither
when you have procured a live black beetle, together with a little
_ghee_, [or buffalo’s butter,] three clews,—one of the finest silk,
another of stout pack-thread, and another of whip-cord; finally, a stout
coil of rope.” When she again came to the foot of the tower, provided
according to her husband’s demands, he directed her to touch the head of
the insect with a little of the _ghee_, to tie one end of the silk
thread around him, and to place him on the wall of the tower. Attracted
by the smell of the butter, which he conceived to be in store somewhere
above him, the beetle continued to ascend till he reached the top, and
thus put the vizier in possession of the end of the silk thread, who
drew up the pack-thread by means of the silk, the small cord by means of
the pack-thread, and, by means of the cord, a stout rope capable of
sustaining his own weight,—and so at last escaped from the place of his
duress.
CHOOSING A KING.
The Tyrians having been much weakened by long wars with the Persians,
their slaves rose in a body, slew their masters and their children, took
possession of their property, and married their wives. The slaves,
having thus obtained everything, consulted about the choice of a king,
and agreed that he who should first discern the sun rise should be king.
One of them, being more merciful than the rest, had in the general
massacre spared his master, Straton, and his son, whom he hid in a cave;
and to his old master he now resorted for advice as to this competition.
Straton advised his slave that when others looked to the east he should
look toward the west. Accordingly, when the rebel tribe had all
assembled in the fields, and every man’s eyes were fixed upon the east,
Straton’s slave, turning his back upon the rest, looked only westward.
He was scoffed at by every one for his absurdity, but immediately he
espied the sunbeams upon the high towers and chimneys in the city, and,
announcing the discovery, claimed the crown as his reward.
KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT.
_An old and formerly very popular ballad.—Percy Reliques._
An ancient story Ile tell you anon
Of a notable prince, that was called King John;
And he ruled England with maine and with might,
For he did great wrong, and mainteined little right.
And Ile tell you a story, a story so merrye,
Concerning the Abbot of Canterburye;
How for his house-keeping, and high renowne,
They rode poste for him to fair London towne.
An hundred men, the king did heare say,
The abbot kept in his house every day;
And fifty gold chaynes, without any doubt,
In velvet coates waited the abbot about.
How now, father abbot, I heare it of thee,
Thou keepest a farre better house than mee,
And for thy house-keeping and high renowne,
I fear thou work’st treason against my crown.
My liege, quo’ the abbot, I would it were knowne,
I never spend nothing but what is my owne;
And I trust your grace will doe me no deere
For spending of my owne true-gotten geere.
Yes, yes, father abbot, your fault it is highe,
And now for the same thou needest must dye;
For except thou canst answer me questions three,
Thy head shall be smitten from thy bodie.
And first, quo’ the king, when I’m in this stead,
With my crowne of golde so faire on my head,
Among all my liege-men so noble of birthe,
Thou must tell me to one penny what I am worthe.
Secondlye, tell me, without any doubt,
How soone I may ride the whole world about;
And at the third question thou must not shrink,
But tell me here truly what I do think.
O, these are hard questions for my shallow witt,
Nor I cannot answer your grace as yet;
But if you will give me but three weeks space,
Ile do my endeavour to answer your grace.
Now three weeks space to thee will I give,
And that is the longest time thou hast to live;
For if thou dost not answer my questions three,
Thy lands and thy livings are forfeit to mee.
Away rode the abbot, all sad at that word,
And he rode to Cambridge and Oxenford;
But never a doctor there was so wise
That could with his learning an answer devise.
Then home rode the abbot, of comfort so cold,
And he mett his shepheard agoing to fold:
How now, my lord abbot, you are welcome home:
What newes do you bring us from good King John?
Sad newes, sad newes, shepheard, I must give:
That I have but three days more to live;
For if I do not answer him questions three,
My head will be smitten from my bodie.
The first is to tell him there in that stead,
With his crowne of golde so fair on his head,
Among all his liege-men so noble of birthe,
To within one penny of what he is worthe.
The second, to tell him, without any doubt,
How soone he may ride this whole world about;
And at the third question I must not shrinke,
But tell him there truly what he does thinke.
Now cheare up, sire abbot: did you never hear yet,
That a fool he may learne a wise man witt?
Lend me horse, and serving-men, and your apparel,
And Ile ride to London to answere your quarrel.
Nay, frowne not, if it hath bin told unto mee,
I am like your lordship, as ever may bee;
And if you will but lend me your gowne,
There is none shall knowe us in fair London towne.
Now horses and serving-men thou shalt have,
With sumptuous array most gallant and brave;
With crozier, and mitre, and rochet, and cope,
Fit to appeare ’fore our fader the Pope.
Now welcome, sire abbot, the king he did say,
’Tis well thou’rt come back to keepe thy day;
For and if thou canst answer my questions three,
Thy life and thy living both saved shall bee.
And first, when thou seest me here in this stead,
With my crowne of golde so fair on my head,
Among all my liege-men so noble of birthe,
Tell me to one penny what I am worthe.
For thirty pence our Saviour was sold
Among the false Jewes, as I have bin told;
And twenty-nine is the worth of thee,
For I think thou art one penny worser than hee.
The king he laughed, and swore by St. Bittel,
I did not think I had been worth so littel!
Now secondly, tell me, without any doubt,
How soone I may ride this whole world about.
You must rise with the sun, and ride with the same,
Until the next morning he riseth againe;
And then your grace need not make any doubt
But in twenty-four hours you’ll ride it about.
The king he laughed, and swore by St. Jone,
I did not think it could be gone so soone!
Now, from the third question thou must not shrinke,
But tell me here truly what I do thinke.
Yea, that shall I do, and make your grace merry;
You thinke I’m the abbot of Canterbury;
But I’m his poor shepheard, as plain you may see,
That am come to beg pardon for him and for mee.
The king he laughed, and swore by the masse,
Ile make thee lord abbot this day in his place!
Naye naye, my liege, be not in such speede,
For alacke, I can neither write nor reade.
Four nobles a week, then, I will give thee,
For this merry jest thou hast showne unto mee;
And tell the old abbot, when thou comest home,
Thou hast brought him a pardon from good King John.
The Fancies of Fact.
THE WOUNDS OF JULIUS CÆSAR.
“Look! in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through:
See what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed.”
At a meeting of the French Academy of Medicine, a few years ago, a
curious paper was read, on behalf of M. Dubois, of Amiens, entitled
“Investigations into the death of Julius Cæsar.” M. Dubois having looked
up the various passages referring to this famous historic incident to be
found in Dion Cassius, Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian, &c., and compared
them with one another, has fixed the spots where the four first wounds
were inflicted, and the names of the conspirators who inflicted them.
The first blow, struck by one of the brothers Casca, produced a slight
wound underneath the left clavicle; the second, struck by the other
Casca, penetrated the walls of the thorax toward the right; Cassius
inflicted the third wound in the face. Decimus Brutus gave the fourth
stab in the region of the groin. Contrary to the general opinion, Marcus
Brutus, though one of the conspirators, did not strike the dictator.
After the first blows Cæsar fainted, and then all the conspirators
hacked his body. He was carried by three slaves in a litter to his
house. Anstistius, the physician, was called in and found thirty-five
wounds, only one of which was in his opinion fatal, that of the second
Casca.
BILLS FOR STRANGE SERVICES.
The bill of the Cirencester painter, mentioned by Bishop Horne, (_Essays
and Thoughts_,) is as follows:—
Mr. Charles Terrebee
To Joseph Cook, Dr.
To mending the Commandments, altering the Belief, and making a
new Lord’s Prayer £1—1—0
Here is a Carpenter’s bill of the Fifteenth Century, copied from the
records of an old London Church:—
s. d.
Item. To screwynge a home on e/y Divil, and glueinge a bitt
on hys tayle vij
Item. To repayring e/y Vyrginne Marye before and behynde, &
makynge a new Chylde ij viij
LAW LOGIC.
Judge Blackstone says, in his _Commentaries_ (Vol. i. ch. xviii.), that
every Bishop, Parson or Vicar is _a Corporation_. Lord Coke asserts, in
his Reports (10. Rep. 32,) that “_a Corporation has no soul_.” Upon
these premises, the logical inference would be that neither Bishops,
Parsons nor Vicars have souls.
RECIPROCAL CONVERSION.
A curious case of mixed process of conversion was that of the two
brothers, Dr. John Reynold’s, King’s Professor at Oxford, in 1630, a
zealous Roman Catholic, and Dr. Wm. Reynolds, an eminent Protestant.
They were both learned men, and as brothers held such affectionate
relations, that the deadly heresies of which each regarded the other as
the victim were matters of earnest and pleading remonstrance between
them by discussion and correspondence. The pains and zeal of each were
equally rewarded. The Roman Catholic brother became an ardent
Protestant, and the Protestant brother became a Roman Catholic.
PITHY PRAYER.
We are indebted to Hume for the preservation of a short prayer, which he
says was that of Lord Astley, before he charged at Edge-hill. It ran
thus: “O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day; if I forget
thee, do not thou forget me.” And Hume adds, “There were certainly much
longer prayers in the Parliamentary army, but I doubt if there was as
good a one.”
MELROSE BY SUNLIGHT.
The beautiful description of the appearance of the ruins of Melrose
Abbey by moonlight, in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, has led thousands
to visit the scene “when silver edges the imagery,” yet it is worth
noting that the author never saw the ruined pile by “the pale
moonlight.” Bernard Barton once wrote to Scott to request him to favor a
young lady with a copy of the lines in his own handwriting. Sir Walter
complied, but substituted for the concluding lines of the original the
following:—
“Then go—and muse with deepest awe
On what the writer never saw;
Who would not wander ’neath the moon
To see what he could see at noon.”
BACK ACTION.
Alphonse Karr, in his _Guêpes_, speaking of the dexterities of the legal
profession, relates a pleasant anecdote of the distinguished lawyer,
afterward deputy, M. Chaix d’Est-Ange. He was employed in a case where
both the parties were old men. Referring to his client, he said: “He has
attained that age, when the mind, freed from the passions, and tyranny
of the body, takes a higher flight, and soars in a purer and serener
air.” Later in his speech, he found occasion to allude to the opposite
party, of whom he remarked: “I do not deny his natural intelligence; but
he has reached an age in which the mind participates in the
enfeeblement, the decrepitude, and the degradation of the body.”
THE AUDITORIUMS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
When we read of Patrick Henry’s wonderful displays of eloquence, we
naturally figure to ourselves a spacious interior and a great crowd of
rapt listeners. But, in truth, those of his orations which quickened or
changed the march of events, and the thrill of which has been felt in
the nerves of four generations, were all delivered in small rooms and to
few hearers, never more than one hundred and fifty. The first thought of
the visitor to St. John’s Church in Richmond, is: Could it have been
_here_, in this oaken chapel of fifty or sixty pews, that Patrick Henry
delivered the greatest and best known of all his speeches? Was it here
that he uttered those words of doom, so unexpected, so unwelcome, “We
must fight”? Even here. And the words were spoken in a tone and manner
worthy of the men to whom they were addressed—with quiet and profound
solemnity.
TRUE FORM OF THE CROSS.
The ancient and ignominious punishment of crucifixion was abolished by
the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who thought it indecent and
irreligious that the Cross should be used for the putting to death of
the vilest offenders, while he himself erected it as a trophy, and
esteemed it the noblest ornament of his diadem and military standards.
In consequence of his decree, crucifixion has scarcely been witnessed in
Europe for the last 1500 years. Those painters, sculptors, poets and
writers who have attempted to describe it have, therefore, followed
their own imagination or vague tradition rather than the evidence of
history. But they could hardly do otherwise, because the writings of the
early fathers of the Church and of pagan historians were not generally
accessible to them until after the revival of learning in the Fifteenth
Century, and because the example of depicting the cross once given had
been religiously followed by the earliest painters and sculptors, and
universally accepted without question; and to object to the generally
received form would have been deemed sacrilegious. These two reasons may
have been sufficient to deter the great artists of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries from making any change; there may, however, have
been a third, quite as potent (if not more so), and that is that the
introduction of the lower projecting beam, _astride_ of which the
crucified person was _seated_, would have been both inartistic and
indecent, yet this third piece was invariably used when the punishment
was inflicted, except in the case where the sufferer was crucified with
the head downward. The researches of two eminent scholars of the
Seventeenth Century—Salmasius and Lipsius—have put it beyond a doubt
that the cross consisted of a strong upright post, not much taller than
a man of lofty stature, which was sharpened at the lower end, by which
it was fixed into the ground, having a short bar or stake projecting
from its middle, and a longer transverse beam firmly joined to the
upright post near the top. The condemned person was made to carry his
cross to the place of execution, after having been first whipped; he was
then stripped of his clothing, and offered a cup of medicated wine, to
impart firmness or alleviate pain. He was then made to sit astride the
middle bar, and his limbs, having been bound with cords, the legs to the
upright beam, the arms to the transverse, were finally secured by
driving large iron spikes through the hands and feet. The cross was then
fixed in its proper position, and the sufferer was left to die, not so
much from pain (as is generally supposed) as from exhaustion, or heat,
or cold, or hunger, or wild beasts, unless (as was usually the case) his
sufferings were put an end to by burning, stoning, suffocation, breaking
the bones, or piercing the vital organs. If left alone he generally
survived two days or three, and there are cases recorded where the
sufferer lingered till the fifth day before dying.
Referring to the earliest Christian writers, who witnessed the
crucifixion of hundreds of their martyred brethren, it will be seen that
the foregoing statement of Salmasius respecting the true form of the
cross is well founded. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, in the second century,
says: “The structure of the cross has five ends or summits, two in
length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which the crucified
person rests.” Justin, another Christian writer of the same period, who
acquired the surname of Martyr from the cruel death he suffered for his
faith, also speaks of “that end projecting from the middle of the
upright post like a horn, on which crucified persons are seated.”
Tertullian, another Christian writer, who lived a little later, says: “A
part, and, indeed, a principal part, of the cross is any post which is
fixed in an upright position; but to us the entire cross is imputed,
including its transverse beam, and the projecting bar which serves as a
seat.”
This fact (of the sufferer being seated) will account for the long
duration of the punishment; the wounds in the hands and feet did not
lacerate any large vessel, and were nearly closed by the nails which
produced them. The Rev. Alban Butler, in his _Lives of the Saints_,
gives numerous instances of the lingering nature of this mode of
execution, and of the wonderful heroism displayed by the Christians who
underwent it. The Pagan historians also narrate instances of similar
heroism on the part of political offenders, who were put to death on the
Cross. Bomilcar, the commander of the Carthaginian army in Sicily,
having shown a disposition to desert to the enemy, was nailed to a
gibbet in the middle of the forum; but “from the height of the Cross, as
from a tribunal, he declaimed against the crimes of the citizens; and
having spoken thus with a loud voice amid an immense concourse of the
people, he expired.” Crucifixion has been practised from the remotest
ages in the East, and is still occasionally resorted to in Turkey,
Madagascar, and Northern Africa. The Jewish historian, Josephus, states
that the chief baker of Pharaoh, whose dream had been interpreted by
Joseph, was _crucified_, though Scripture says he was _hanged_; but this
may mean hanged on a cross, for the expression seems to be almost
equivalent to crucified, as appears from Galatians, chap. III. v. 13.
“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
for us; for it is written, ‘Cursed is every one that hangeth on a
tree.’” As regards art, it is not now to be expected that the example
set by the great masters will be discarded. In this, as in other
matters, custom is law, whose arbitrary sway will be exercised in spite
of facts.
SINGULAR COINCIDENCES.
A. was walking with a friend near Oxford, when a snipe rose within shot.
They both “presented” their walking-sticks at the bird, remarking what a
“pretty shot” it would have been for a gun. The snipe flew on a short
distance, then towered, and fell dead. When examined, the bird was found
to be apparently uninjured; but a close examination discovered the trace
of a former injury, which had led to the rupture of a blood-vessel. If,
instead of a walking-stick a gun had been presented and discharged at
the bird, no one would have ventured to doubt that the death of the bird
was due to the gun.
* * * * *
A young officer in the army of the famous Wolfe was apparently dying of
an abscess in the lungs. He was absent from his regiment on sick-leave;
but resolved to rejoin it, when a battle was expected. “For,” said he,
“since I am given over, I had better be doing my duty; and my life’s
being shortened a few days, matters not.” He received a shot which
_pierced the abscess_, and made an opening for the discharge. He
recovered, and lived to the age of eighty.
* * * * *
In the United Service Museum, (Whitehall Yard, London,) are exhibited
the “jaws of a shark,” wide open, and enclosing a tin box. The history
of this strange exhibition is as follows:—A ship, on her way to the West
Indies, “fell in with” and chased a suspicious-looking craft, which had
all the appearance of a slaver. During the pursuit, the chase threw
something overboard. She was subsequently captured, and taken into Port
Royal to be tried as a slaver. In absence of the ship’s papers and other
proofs, the slaver was not only in a fair way to escape condemnation,
but her captain was anticipating the recovery of pecuniary damages
against his captor for illegal detention. While the subject was under
discussion, a vessel came into port, which had followed closely in the
track of the chase above described. She had caught a shark; and in its
stomach was found a tin box, which contained the slaver’s papers. Upon
the strength of this evidence the slaver was condemned. The written
account is attached to the box.
* * * * *
A. B. was present while some “tricks in cards” were being exhibited by a
professional juggler. He took a fresh pack of cards, and directed the
company to take out a card from the pack, to replace it, and shuffle the
pack. This being done, A. B. took the pack in his hand and carelessly
tossed on the table a card, which proved to be the correct one. The
professor, in the utmost surprise and admiration, offered to give A. B.
three of his best tricks if he would give him the secret of the trick
which he had just exhibited. A. B. coolly declined the offer, and
concealed the fact that it was all _chance_, in the purest sense of the
word, that led to the selection of the proper card from the pack.
* * * * *
Upon the death of a seaman, some money became payable to his widow,
Elizabeth Smith, No. 20 (of a certain, say “King”) Street, Wapping. The
government agent called at No. 20 King Street, and finding that
Elizabeth Smith lived there, paid the money without further inquiry.
Subsequently the true widow, Elizabeth Smith, turned up; and it was then
discovered that, at the very time the money was paid, the street was
being _re-numbered_, and there were _two_ houses numbered 20; and what
was most remarkable, there was an Elizabeth Smith living in each of
them.
* * * * *
Some time in the last century, a Mrs. Stephens professed to have
received from her husband a medicine for dissolving “the stone in the
bladder,” and offered to sell it to government. In order to test the
virtue of this medicine, a patient was selected who had undeniably the
complaint in question. He took the medicine, and was soon quite well.
The doctors watched him anxiously, and when he died, many years after,
he was seized by them, and the body examined. It was then discovered
that the stone had made for itself a little sac in the bladder, and was
so tightly secured that it had never caused any inconvenience.
Government, however, (somewhat prematurely,) rewarded Mrs. Stephens with
a sum of £10,000. The cure appeared to have been purely accidental, as
the remedy was nothing but potash, which has little or no virtue in such
cases.
* * * * *
A gentleman of fortune, named Angerstein, lost a large quantity of
valuable plate. His butler was soon on the track of the thieves, (who
had brought a coach to carry the plate), and enquired at the first
turnpike gate whether any vehicle had lately passed. The gate-keeper
stated that a hackney-coach had shortly before gone through; and though
he was surprised at its passing by so early in the morning, he had not
noticed the “number” on the coach. A servant girl, hearing the
conversation, volunteered her statement, that she saw the coach pass by,
and its number was “45.” As the girl _could not read_, they were
surprised at her knowing the “number.” She stated that she knew it well,
as being the same number she had long seen about the walls everywhere,
which she knew was “45,” as every one was speaking of it. This allusion
of the girl’s was in reference to the “Wilkes” disturbances, when the
45th number of the _True Briton_ was prosecuted, and caused a great deal
of public excitement. Mr. Angerstein’s butler went at once to London and
found out the driver of the hackney-coach No. 45, who at once drove him
to the place where the plate was deposited, and it was all recovered.
* * * * *
Some years since, in the “Temple,” was a vertical sun-dial, with the
motto, “Be gone about your business.” It is stated that this very
appropriate motto was the result of the following blunder:—When the dial
was erected, the benchers were applied to for a motto. They desired the
“builder’s man” to call at the library at a certain hour on a certain
day, when he should receive instructions. But they forgot the whole
matter. On the appointed day and hour the “builder’s man” called at the
library, and found only a lawyer in close study over a law book. The man
stated the cause of his intrusion, which suited so badly the lawyer’s
time and leisure that he bid the man sharply “Be gone about your
business.” The lawyer’s testy reply was duly painted in big letters upon
the dial, and was considered so apposite that it was not only allowed to
remain, but was considered to be as appropriate a motto as could be
chosen.
* * * * *
Two men in France took shelter in a barn for the night. In the morning
one of them was found dead, with severe injury to the head. The comrade
was at once arrested, and told some “cock-and-bull” story about the
terrible storm of the night in question, and attributed his companion’s
death to the effect of a thunderbolt. He was not credited: and was in a
fair way to be executed for the supposed crime. A scientific gentleman,
hearing of the circumstance, examined the place, and found a hole in the
roof of the barn, and an aërolite close to the spot where the deceased
had slept on the night in question. The innocence of the accused was at
once considered as established, and he was released.
* * * * *
Now, even in these cases, there is nothing _supernatural_, or even
_un_natural; i.e., there is nothing to _prevent_ the occurrence. The
improbability is only from the enormous number of chances against each.
But when any German theologian, or other, pretends to _explain a series_
of alleged _miracles_ as mere _accidents_, he should be reminded that
the chances are _multiplied_ against each repeated occurrence. If, e.g.,
the chances against a person’s bagging a snipe, which died accidentally
just as he pointed a stick or a gun at it, be only 1/1000, then, against
his thus obtaining _two_, the chances would be 1/1000000, and so on. No
one familiar with what is sometimes called the _Doctrine of Chances_ but
more correctly called the _Theory of Probabilities_, would believe that
a sportsman could bring home a bag full of game, _every_ bird having
died _accidentally_ just when shot at.
CHICK IN THE EGG.
The hen has scarcely sat on the egg twelve hours, when we begin already
to discover in it some lineaments of the head and body of the chicken
that is to be born. The heart appears to beat at the end of the day; at
the end of forty-eight hours, two vesicles of blood can be
distinguished, the pulsation of which is very visible. At the fiftieth
hour, an auricle of the heart appears, and resembles a lace, or noose
folded down upon itself. At the end of seventy hours, we distinguish
wings, and on the head two bubbles for the brain; one for the bill, and
two others for the forepart and hindpart of the head; the liver appears
towards the fifth day. At the end of one hundred and thirty-one hours,
the first voluntary motion is observed. At the end of one hundred and
thirty-eight hours the lungs and stomach become visible; at the end of
one hundred and forty-two, the intestines, the loins, and the upper jaw.
The seventh day, the brain, which was slimy, begins to have some
consistence. At the 190th hour of incubation, the bill opens, and the
flesh appears in the breast. At the 194th, the sternum is seen, that is
to say, the breastbone. At the 210th, the ribs come out of the back, the
bill is very visible, as well as the gall-bladder. The bill becomes
green at the end of two hundred and thirty-six hours; and if the chick
is taken out of its covering, it evidently moves itself. The feathers
begin to shoot out towards the 240th hour, and the skull becomes
gristly. At the 264th, the eyes appear. At the 288th, the ribs are
perfect. At the 331st, the spleen draws near to the stomach, and the
lungs to the chest. At the end of three hundred and fifty-five hours,
the bill frequently opens and shuts; and at the end of four hundred and
fifty-one hours, or the eighteenth day, the first cry of the chick is
already heard: it afterwards gets more strength, and grows continually,
till at last it sets itself at liberty, by opening the prison in which
it was shut up. Thus is it by so many different degrees that these
creatures are brought into life. All these progressions are made by
rule, and there is not one of them without sufficient reason. No part of
its body could appear sooner or later without the whole embryo
suffering; and each of its limbs appears at the proper moment. How
manifestly is this ordination—so wise, and so invariable in the
production of the animal—the work of a Supreme Being!
INNATE APPETITE.
McKenzie, in his _Phrenological Essays_, mentions the following curious
fact, witnessed by Sir James Hall. He had been engaged in making some
experiments on hatching eggs by artificial heat, and on one occasion
observed in one of his boxes a chicken in the act of breaking from its
confinement. It happened that just as the creature was getting out of
the shell, a spider began to run along the box, when the chicken darted
forward, seized and swallowed it.
THE INDIAN AND HIS TAMED SNAKE.
An Indian had tamed a blacksnake, which he kept about him during the
summer months. In autumn he let the creature go whither it chose to
crawl, but told it to come to him again upon a certain day, which he
named, in the spring. A white man who was present, and saw what was
done, and heard the Indian affirm that the serpent would return to him
the very day he had appointed, had no faith in the truth of his
prediction. The next spring, however, retaining the day in his memory,
curiosity led him to the place, where he found the Indian in waiting;
and, after remaining with him about two hours, the serpent came crawling
back, and put himself under the care of his old master.
In this case, the Indian had probably observed that blacksnakes usually
return to their old haunts at the same vernal season; and as he had
tamed, fed, and kept this snake in a particular place, experience taught
him that it would return on a certain day.
ALLIGATORS SWALLOWING STONES.
The Indians on the banks of the Oronoko assert that previously to an
alligator going in search of prey it always swallows a large stone, that
it may acquire additional weight to aid it in diving and dragging its
victims under water. A traveller being somewhat incredulous on this
point, Bolivar, to convince him, shot several with his rifle, and in all
of them were found stones varying in weight according to the size of the
animal. The largest killed was about seventeen feet in length, and had
within him a stone weighing about sixty or seventy pounds.
HABITS OF SHEEP.
Never jumps a sheep that’s frightened
Over any fence whatever,
Over wall, or fence, or timber,
But a second follows after,
And a third upon the second,
And a fourth, and fifth, and so on,
When they see the tail uplifted,—
First a sheep, and then a dozen,
Till they all, in quick succession,
One by one, have got clear over.
Dr. Anderson, of Liverpool, relates the following amusing illustration
of the singularly persevering disposition of sheep to follow their
leader wherever he goes:—
A butcher’s boy was driving about twenty fat wethers through the town,
but they ran down a street where he did not want them to go. He observed
a scavenger at work, and called out loudly for him to stop the sheep.
The man accordingly did what he could to turn them back, running from
side to side, always opposing himself to their passage, and brandishing
his broom with great dexterity; but the sheep, much agitated, pressed
forward, and at last one of them came right up to the man, who, fearing
it was going to jump over his head, whilst he was stooping, grasped the
broom with both hands and held it over his head. He stood for a few
seconds in this position, when the sheep made a spring and jumped fairly
over him, without touching the broom. The first had no sooner cleared
this impediment than another followed, and another, in quick succession,
so that the man, perfectly confounded, seemed to lose all recollection,
and stood in the same attitude till the whole of them had jumped over
him, and not one attempted to pass on either side, although the street
was quite clear.
REMARKABLE EQUESTRIAN EXPEDITIONS.
Mr. Cooper Thornhill, an innkeeper at Stilton, in Huntingdonshire, rode
from that place to London and back again, and also a second time to
London, in one day,—which made a journey in all of two hundred and
thirteen miles. He undertook to ride this journey with several horses in
fifteen hours, but performed it in twelve hours and a quarter. This
remarkable feat gave rise to a poem called the Stilton Hero, which was
published in the year 1745.
Some years ago, Lord James Cavendish rode from Hyde Park Corner to
Windsor Lodge, which is upwards of twenty miles, in less than an hour.
Sir Robert Cary rode nearly three hundred miles in less than three days,
when he went from London to Edinburgh to inform King James of the death
of Queen Elizabeth. He had several falls and sore bruises on the road,
which occasioned his going battered and bloody into the royal presence.
On the 29th of August, 1750, was decided at Newmarket a remarkable wager
for one thousand guineas, laid by Theobald Taaf, Esq., against the Earl
of March and Lord Eglinton, who were to provide a four-wheel carriage
with a man in it, to be drawn by four horses nineteen miles in an hour.
The match was performed in fifty-three minutes and twenty-four seconds.
An engraved model of the carriage was formerly sold in the print-shops.
The Marquis de la Fayette rode in August, 1778, from Rhode Island to
Boston, nearly seventy miles distant, in seven hours, and returned in
six and a half.
Mr. Fozard, of Park Lane, London, for a wager of one hundred and fifty
pounds against one hundred pounds, undertook to ride forty miles in two
hours, over Epsom course. He rode two miles more than had been agreed
on, and performed it in five minutes under time, in October, 1789.
Mr. Wilde, an Irish gentleman, lately rode one hundred and twenty-seven
miles on the course of Kildare, in Ireland, in six hours and twenty
minutes, for a wager of one thousand guineas.
The famous Count de Montgomery escaped from the massacre of Paris in
1572, through the swiftness of his horse, which, according to a
manuscript of that time, carried him ninety miles without halting.
WONDERFUL HORSE.
In the year 1609, an Englishman named Banks had a horse which he had
trained to follow him wherever he went, even over fences and to the
roofs of buildings. He and his horse went to the top of that immensely
high structure, St. Paul’s Church. After many extraordinary performances
at home, the horse and his master went to Rome, where they performed
feats equally astonishing. But the result was that both Banks and his
horse were burned, by order of the Pope, as enchanters. Sir Walter
Raleigh observes, that had Banks lived in olden times, he would have
shamed all the enchanters of the world, for no beast ever performed such
wonders as his.
Fortunately, for men like Thorne, and Rice, and Franconi, who have been
so successful in training the noblest animal in creation for the
stage-representations of Mazeppa, Putnam’s Leap, &c., and for the
various and fantastic tricks which have won so much admiration and
applause, the present age is not disgraced by such besotted ignorance
and superstition.
WONDERFUL LOCK.
Among the wonderful products of art in the French Crystal Palace was
shown a lock which admits of 3,674,385 combinations. Heuret passed a
hundred and twenty nights in locking it, and Fichet was four months in
unlocking it; now they can neither shut nor open it.
CELERITY OF CLOTH-MANUFACTURE.
Many accounts have been published of the celerity with which
manufacturers of cloth, both English and American, have completed the
various parts of the process, from the fleece to the garment. In England
the fleece was taken from the sheep, manufactured into cloth, and the
cloth made into a coat, in the short space of thirteen hours and twenty
minutes. Messrs. Buck, Brewster & Co., proprietors of the Ontario
manufactory at Manchester, Vermont, on perusing an account of this
English achievement, conceived, from the perfection of their machinery
and the dexterity of their workmen, that the same operations might be
accomplished even in a shorter time. A wager of five hundred dollars was
offered, and accepted, that they would perform the same operations in
twelve hours. The wool was taken from the sack in its natural state, and
in nine hours and fifteen minutes precisely, the coat was completed, and
worn in triumph by one of the party concerned. The wool was picked,
greased, carded, roped, and spun,—the yarn was worked, put into the loom
and woven,—the cloth was fulled, colored, and four times shorn, pressed,
and carried to the tailor’s, and the coat completed,—all within the time
above stated. The cloth was not of the finest texture, but was very
handsomely dressed, and fitted the person who wore it remarkably well.
The only difference between this and the English experiment was the time
occupied in shearing the fleece; and any wool-grower knows that this
part of the operation may be performed in ten minutes.
CRUDE VALUE _versus_ INDUSTRIAL VALUE.
Algarotti, in his Opuscula, gives the following example to show the
prodigious addition of value that may be given to an object by skill and
industry. A pound weight of pig-iron costs the operative manufacturer
about five cents. This is worked up into steel, of which is made the
little spiral spring that moves the balance-wheel of a watch. Each of
these springs weighs but the tenth part of a grain, and, when completed,
may be sold as high as $3.00, so that out of a pound of iron, allowing
something for the loss of metal, eighty thousand of these springs may be
made, and a substance worth but five cents be wrought into a value of
$240,000.
An American gentleman says, that during a recent visit to Manchester,
England, a pound of cotton, which in its crude state may have been worth
eight cents, was pointed out to him as worth a pound of gold. It had
been spun into a thread that would go round the globe at the equator and
tie in a good large knot of many hundred miles in length.
QUANTITY AND VALUE.
For what is worth in any thing
But so much money as ’twill bring?—§Butler.§
When emeralds were first discovered in America, a Spaniard carried one
to a lapidary in Italy, and asked him what it was worth; he was told a
hundred _escudos_. He produced a second, which was larger; and that was
valued at three hundred. Overjoyed at this, he took the lapidary to his
lodging and showed him a chest full; but the Italian, seeing so many,
damped his joy by saying, “Ah ha, Señor! so many!—these are worth _one_
escudo.”
Montenegro presented to the elder Almagro the first cat which was
brought to South America, and was rewarded for it with six hundred
_pesos_. The first couple of cats which were carried to Cuyaba sold for
a pound of gold. There was a plague of rats in the settlement, and they
were purchased as a speculation, which proved an excellent one. Their
first kittens produced thirty _oitavas_ each; the next generation were
worth twenty; and the price gradually fell as the inhabitants were
stocked with these beautiful and useful creatures.
Could every hailstone to a pearl be turned,
Pearls in the mart like oyster-shells were spurned!
AMOUNT OF GOLD IN THE WORLD.
Estimate the yard of gold at £2,000,000, (which it is in round numbers,)
and all the gold in the world might, if melted into ingots, be contained
in a cellar twenty-four feet square and sixteen feet high. All the
boasted wealth already obtained from California and Australia would go
into a safe nine feet square and nine feet high; so small is the cube of
yellow metal that has set populations on the march and occasioned such
wondrous revolutions in the affairs of the world.
The contributions of the people, in the time of David, for the
sanctuary, exceeded £6,800,000. The immense treasure David is said to
have collected for the sanctuary amounted to £889,000,000 sterling,
(Crito says £798,000,000,)—a sum greater than the British national debt.
The gold with which Solomon overlaid the “most holy place,” a room only
thirteen feet square, amounted to more than thirty-eight millions
sterling.
The products of the California mines from 1853 to 1858 are put down at
$443,091,000; those of Australia, since their discovery, at
$296,813,000; or $739,904,000 in all,—an increase of about one-third,
according to the best statistical writers, on the value of this precious
metal known in 1850. The total value of gold in the world at the present
time, then, is but little more than $3,000,000,000.
IMMENSE WEALTH OF THE ROMANS.
Crassus’ landed estate was valued at $8,333,330
His house was valued at 400,000
Cæcilius Isidorus, after having lost much, left 5,235,800
Demetrius, a freedman of Pompey, was worth 3,875,000
Lentulus, the augur, no less than 16,666,666
Clodius, who was slain by Milo, paid for his house 616,666
He once swallowed a pearl worth 40,000
Apicius was worth more than 4,583,350
And after he had spent in his kitchen, and otherwise
squandered, immense sums, to the amount of 4,166,666
He poisoned himself, leaving 416,666
The establishment belonging to M. Scarus, and burned at
Tusculum, was valued at 4,150,000
Gifts and bribes may be considered signs of great riches:
Cæsar presented Servilia, the mother of Brutus, with a
pearl worth 200,000
Paulus, the consul, was bribed by Cæsar with the sum of 292,000
Curio contracted debts to the amount of 2,500,000
Milo contracted a debt of 2,915,666
Antony owed at the Ides of March, which he paid before the
Calends of April 1,666,666
He had squandered altogether 735,000,000
Seneca had a fortune of 17,500,000
Tiberius left at his death, and Caligula spent in less
than twelve months, 118,120,000
Caligula spent for one supper 150,000
Heliogabalus in the same manner 100,000
The suppers of Lucullus at the Apollo cost 8,330
Horace says that Pegellus, a singer, could in five days
spend 40,000
Herrius’ fish-ponds sold for 166,000
Calvinus Labinus purchased many learned slaves, none of
them at a price less than 4,165
Stage-players sold much higher.
WINE AT TWO MILLIONS A BOTTLE.
Wine at two millions of dollars a bottle is a drink that in expense
would rival the luxurious taste of barbaric splendor, when priceless
pearls were thrown into the wine-cup to give a rich flavor to its
contents; yet that there is such a costly beverage, is a fixed fact. In
the Rose apartment (so called from a bronze bas-relief) of the ancient
cellar under the Hotel de Ville in the city of Bremen is the famous
Rosenwein, deposited there nearly two centuries and a half ago. There
were twelve large cases, each bearing the name of one of the apostles;
and the wine of Judas, despite the reprobation attached to his name, is
to this day more highly esteemed than the others. One case of the wine,
containing five oxhoft of two hundred and four bottles, cost five
hundred rix-dollars in 1624. Including the expenses of keeping up the
cellar, and of the contributions, interests of the amounts, and
interests upon interests, an oxhoft costs at the present time
555,657,640 rix-dollars, and consequently a bottle is worth 2,723,812
rix-dollars; a glass, or the eighth part of a bottle, is worth 340,476
rix-dollars, or $272,380; or at the rate of 540 rix-dollars, or $272,
per drop. A burgomaster of Bremen is privileged to have one bottle
whenever he entertains a distinguished guest who enjoys a German or
European reputation. The fact illustrates the operation of interest, if
it does not show the cost of luxury.
CAPACIOUS BEER-CASKS.
A few years before Mr. Thrale’s death, which happened in 1781, an
emulation arose among the brewers to exceed each other in the size of
their casks for keeping beer to a certain age,—probably, says Sir John
Hawkins, taking the hint from the tun at Heidelberg, of which the
following is a description:
At Heidelberg, on the river Neckar, near its junction with the Rhine, in
Germany, there was a tun or wine-vessel constructed in 1343, which
contained twenty-one pipes. Another was made, or the one now mentioned
rebuilt, in 1664, which held six hundred hogsheads, English measure.
This was emptied, and knocked to pieces by the French, in 1688. But a
new and larger one was afterwards fabricated, which held eight hundred
hogsheads. It was formerly kept full of the best Rhenish wine, and the
Electors have given many entertainments on its platform; but this
convivial monument of ancient hospitality is now, says Mr. Walker, but a
melancholy, unsocial, solitary instance of the extinction of
hospitality: it moulders in a damp vault, quite empty.
The celebrated tun at Königstein is said to be the most capacious cask
in the world,—holding 1,869,236 pints. The top is railed in, and it
affords room for twenty people to regale themselves. There are also
several kinds of welcome-cups, which are offered to strangers, who are
invited by a Latin inscription to drink to the prosperity of the whole
universe. This enormous tun was built in 1725, by Frederick Augustus,
King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, who, in the inscription just
mentioned, is styled “the father of his country, the Titus of his age,
and the delight of mankind.”
Dr. Johnson once mentioned that his friend Thrale had four casks so
large that each of them held one thousand hogsheads. But Mr. Meux, of
Liquorpond Street, Gray’s Inn Lane, could, according to Mr. Pennant,
show twenty-four vessels containing in all thirty-five thousand barrels:
one alone held four thousand five hundred barrels; and in the year 1790
this enterprising brewer built another, containing nearly twelve
thousand barrels, valued at about £20,000. A dinner was given to two
hundred people at the bottom of it, and two hundred more joined the
company to drink success to this unrivalled vat.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ENGLISH POETS.
Chaucer describes men and things as they _are_; Shakspeare, as they
_would be_ under the circumstances supposed; Spenser, as we would _wish_
them to be; Milton, as they _ought_ to be; Byron, as they ought _not_ to
be; and Shelley, as they never _can_ be.
PERILS OF PRECOCITY.
Baillet mentions one hundred and sixty-three children endowed with
extraordinary talents, among whom few arrived at an advanced age. The
two sons of Quintilian so vaunted by their father did not reach their
tenth year. Hermogenes, who at the age of fifteen taught rhetoric to
Marcus Aurelius, who triumphed over the most celebrated rhetoricians of
Greece, did not die at an early age, but at twenty-four lost his
faculties and forgot all he had previously acquired. Pico di Mirandola
died at thirty-two; Johannus Secundus at twenty-five, having at the age
of fifteen composed admirable Greek and Latin verses and become
profoundly versed in jurisprudence and letters. Pascal, whose genius
developed itself when ten years old, did not attain the third of a
century. In 1791, a child was born at Lubeck, named Henri Heinneken,
whose precocity was miraculous. At ten months of age he spoke
distinctly, at twelve learned the Pentateuch by rote, and at fourteen
months was perfectly acquainted with the Old and New Testament. At two
years he was as familiar with geography and ancient history as the most
erudite authors of antiquity. In the ancient and modern languages he was
a proficient. This wonderful child was unfortunately carried off in his
fourth year.
THE BLACK HOLE AT CALCUTTA.
This celebrated place of confinement was only eighteen feet by eighteen,
containing, therefore, three hundred and twenty-four square feet. When
Fort William was taken, in 1756, by Surajah Dowla, Nabob of Bengal, one
hundred and forty-six persons were shut up in the Black Hole. The room
allowed to each person a space of twenty-six and a half inches by twelve
inches, which was just sufficient to hold them without their pressing
violently on each other. To this dungeon there was but one small grated
window, and, the weather being very sultry, the air within could neither
circulate nor be changed. In less than an hour, many of the prisoners
were attacked with extreme difficulty of breathing; several were
delirious; and the place was filled with incoherent ravings, in which
the cry for water was predominant. This was handed them by the
sentinels, but without the effect of allaying their thirst. In less than
four hours, many were suffocated, or died in violent delirium. In five
hours, the survivors, except those at the grate, were frantic and
outrageous. At length most of them became insensible. Eleven hours after
they were imprisoned, twenty-three only, of the one hundred and
forty-six, came out alive, and those were in a highly-putrid fever, from
which, however, by fresh air and proper attention, they gradually
recovered.
STONE BAROMETER.
A Finland newspaper mentions a stone in the northern part of Finland,
which serves the inhabitants instead of a barometer. This stone, which
they call Ilmakiur, turns black, or blackish gray, when it is going to
rain, but on the approach of fine weather it is covered with white
spots. Probably it is a fossil mixed with clay, and containing
rock-salt, nitre, or ammonia, which, according to the greater or less
degree of dampness of the atmosphere, attracts it, or otherwise. In the
latter case the salt appears, forming the white spots.
BITTERNESS OF STRYCHNIA.
Strychnia, the active principle of the Nux Vomica bean, which has become
so famous in the annals of criminal poisoning, is so intensely bitter
that it will impart a sensibly bitter taste to six hundred thousand
times its weight of water.
SALT, AS A LUXURY.
Mungo Park describes salt as “the greatest of all luxuries in Central
Africa.” Says he, “It would appear strange to a European to see a child
suck a piece of rock-salt, as if it were sugar. This, however, I have
frequently seen; although in the inland parts the poorer class of
inhabitants are so very rarely indulged with this precious article, that
to say a man eats salt with his victuals is the same as saying that he
is a rich man. I have myself suffered great inconvenience from the
scarcity of this article. The long-continued use of vegetable food
creates so painful a longing for salt, that no words can sufficiently
describe it.”
SINGULAR CHANGE OF TASTE.
The sense by which we appreciate the sweetness of bodies is liable to
singular modifications. Thus, the leaves of the _Gymnema sylvestre_,—a
plant of Northern India,—when chewed, take away the power of tasting
sugar for twenty-four hours, without otherwise injuring the general
sense of taste.
BLUNDERS OF PAINTERS.
Tintoret, an Italian painter, in a picture of the Children of Israel
gathering manna, has taken the precaution to arm them with the modern
invention of guns. Cigoli painted the aged Simeon at the circumcision of
the infant Saviour; and as aged men in these days wear spectacles, the
artist has shown his sagacity by placing them on Simeon’s nose. In a
picture by Verrio of Christ healing the sick, the lookers-on are
represented as standing with periwigs on their heads. To match, or
rather to exceed, this ludicrous representation, Durer has painted the
expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden by an angel in a dress
fashionably trimmed with flounces. The same painter, in his scene of
Peter denying Christ, represents a Roman soldier very comfortably
smoking a pipe of tobacco. A Dutch painter, in a picture of the Wise Men
worshipping the Holy Child, has drawn one of them in a large white
surplice, and in boots and spurs, and he is in the act of presenting to
the child a model of a Dutch man-of-war. In a Dutch picture of Abraham
offering up his son, instead of the patriarch’s “stretching forth his
hand and taking the knife,” as the Scriptures inform us, he is
represented as using a more effectual and modern instrument: he is
holding to Isaac’s head a _blunderbuss_. Berlin represents in a picture
the Virgin and Child listening to a violin; and in another picture he
has drawn King David playing the harp at the marriage of Christ with St.
Catherine. A French artist has drawn, with true French taste, the Lord’s
Supper, with the table ornamented with tumblers filled with
cigar-lighters; and, as if to crown the list of these absurd and
ludicrous anachronisms, the garden of Eden has been drawn with Adam and
Eve in all their primeval simplicity and virtue, while near them, in
full costume, is seen a hunter with a gun, shooting ducks.
MINUTE MECHANISM.
There is a cherry-stone at the Salem (Mass.) Museum, which contains one
dozen silver spoons. The stone itself is of the ordinary size; but the
spoons are so small that their shape and finish can only be well
distinguished by the microscope. Here is the result of immense labor for
no decidedly useful purpose; and there are thousands of other objects in
the world fashioned by ingenuity, the value of which, in a utilitarian
sense, may be said to be quite as indifferent. Dr. Oliver gives an
account of a cherry-stone on which were carved one hundred and
twenty-four heads, so distinctly that the naked eye could distinguish
those belonging to popes and kings by their mitres and crowns. It was
bought in Prussia for fifteen thousand dollars, and thence conveyed to
England, where it was considered an object of so much value that its
possession was disputed, and it became the object of a suit in chancery.
One of the Nuremberg toy-makers enclosed in a cherry-stone, which was
exhibited at the French Crystal Palace, a plan of Sevastopol, a
railway-station, and the “Messiah” of Klopstock. In more remote times,
an account is given of an ivory chariot, constructed by Mermecides,
which was so small that a fly could cover it with his wing; also a ship
of the same material, which could be hidden under the wing of a bee!
Pliny, too, tells us that Homer’s Iliad, with its fifteen thousand
verses, was written in so small a space as to be contained in a
nutshell; while Elian mentions an artist who wrote a distich in letters
of gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a kernel of corn. But the
Harleian MS. mentions a greater curiosity than any of the above, it
being nothing more nor less than the Bible, written by one Peter Bales,
a chancery clerk, in so small a book that it could be enclosed within
the shell of an English walnut. Disraeli gives an account of many other
exploits similar to the one of Bales. There is a drawing of the head of
Charles II. in the library of St. John’s College, Oxford, wholly
composed of minute written characters, which at a small distance
resemble the lines of an engraving. The head and the ruff are said to
contain the book of Psalms, in Greek, and the Lord’s Prayer. In the
British Museum is a portrait of Queen Anne, not much larger than the
hand. On this drawing are a number of lines and scratches, which, it is
asserted, comprise the entire contents of a thin folio. The modern art
of Photography is capable of effecting wonders in this way. We have
before us the Declaration of Independence, containing seven thousand
eight hundred letters, on a space not larger than the head of a pin,
which, when viewed through a microscope, may be read distinctly.
THE RATIO OF THE DIAMETER TO THE CIRCUMFERENCE.
The proportion of the diameter of a circle to its circumference has
never yet been exactly ascertained. Nor can a square or any other
right-lined figure be found that shall be equal to a given circle. This
is the celebrated problem called the squaring of the circle, which has
exercised the abilities of the greatest mathematicians for ages and been
the occasion of so many disputes. Several persons of considerable
eminence have, at different times, pretended that they had discovered
the exact quadrature; but their errors have readily been detected; and
it is now generally looked upon as a thing impossible to be done.
But though the relation between the diameter and circumference cannot be
accurately expressed in known numbers, it may yet be approximated to any
assigned degree of exactness. And in this manner was the problem solved,
about two thousand years ago, by the great Archimedes, who discovered
the proportion to be nearly as seven to twenty-two. The process by which
he effected this may be seen in his book _De Dimensione Circuli_. The
same proportion was also discovered by Philo Gadarensis and Apollonius
Pergeus at a still earlier period, as we are informed by Eutocius.
The proportion of Vieta and Metius is that of one hundred and thirteen
to three hundred and fifty-five, which is a little more exact than the
former. It was derived from the pretended quadrature of a M. Van Eick,
which first gave rise to the discovery.
But the first who ascertained this ratio to any great degree of
exactness was Van Ceulen, a Dutchman, in his book _De Circulo et
Adscriptis_. He found that if the diameter of a circle was 1, the
circumference would be 3·141592653589793238462643383279502884 nearly;
which is exactly true to thirty-six places of decimals, and was effected
by the continual bisection of an arc of a circle, a method so extremely
troublesome and laborious that it must have cost him incredible pains.
It is said to have been thought so curious a performance that the
numbers were cut on his tombstone in St. Peter’s churchyard, at Leyden.
But since the invention of fluxions, and the summation of infinite
series, several methods have been discovered for doing the same thing
with much more ease and expedition. Euler and other eminent
mathematicians have by these means given a quadrature of the circle
which is true to more than one hundred places of decimals,—a proportion
so extremely near the truth that, unless the ratio could be completely
obtained, we need not wish for a greater degree of accuracy.
MATHEMATICAL PRODIGIES.
They with the pen or pencil problems solved;
He, with no aid but wondrous memory.
Prominent among the precocious mathematicians of the present day is a
colored boy in Kentucky, named William Marcy, whose feats in mental
arithmetic are truly wonderful. His powers of computation appear to be
fully equal to those of Bidder, Buxton, Grandimange, Colburn, or
Safford. He can multiply or divide millions by thousands in a few
minutes from the time the figures are given to him, and always with the
utmost exactness. Recently, in the presence of a party of gentlemen, he
added a column of figures, _eight_ in a line, and _one hundred and
eighty_ lines, making the sum total of several millions, within _six
minutes_. The feat was so astounding, and apparently incredible, that
several of the party took off their coats, and, dividing the sum, went
to work, and in two hours after they commenced produced identically the
same answers. The boy is not quite seventeen years of age; he cannot
read nor write, and in every other branch of an English education is
entirely deficient. It is worthy of remark that mathematics is the only
department of science in which such feats of imbecile minds can be
achieved. The supposition would not, _a priori_, be admissible; but
frequent facts prove it. A negro, a real idiot, was not long since
reported in Alabama, who could beat this Kentuckian in figures, but
could scarcely do any thing else worthy of a human intellect. Precocious
mathematicians, not imbecile, have usually turned out poorly; few of
them, like Pascal, have shown any general capacity. These facts suggest
inferences unfortunate for mathematical genius, if not for mathematical
studies. They have sublime relations, in their “mixed” form, with our
knowledge of the universe; but their relations to genius—to human
sentiments and sensibilities—to the moral and ideal in humanity,—are, to
say the least, quite equivocal. The calculating power alone would seem
to be the least of human qualities, and to have the smallest amount of
reason in it; since a machine like Babbage’s can be made to do the work
of three or four calculators, and better than any of them.
EXTRAORDINARY MEMORY.
Lipsius made this offer to a German prince:—Sit here with a poniard, and
if in repeating _Tacitus_ from beginning to end I miss a single word,
stab me. I will freely bare my breast for you to strike.
Muretus tells us of a young Corsican, a law-student at Padua, who could,
without hesitation, repeat thirty-six thousand Latin, Greek, or
barbarous words, significant or insignificant, upon once hearing them.
Muretus himself tested his wonderful memory, and avers all alleged
respecting it to be strictly true.
Mr. Carruthers, in the course of a lecture on Scottish history mentioned
an instance of Sir Walter Scott’s wonderful memory: “I have heard
Campbell relate how strongly Scott was impressed with his (Campbell’s)
poem of _Lochiel’s Warning_. ‘I read it to him in manuscript,’ he said;
‘he then asked to read it over himself, which he did slowly and
distinctly, after which he handed to me the manuscript, saying, ‘Take
care of your copyright, for I have got your poem by heart,’ and with
only these two readings he repeated the poem with scarcely a mistake.’
Certainly an extraordinary instance of memory, for the piece contains
eighty-eight lines. The subject, however, was one which could not fail
powerfully to arrest Scott’s attention, and versification and diction
are such as are easily caught up and remembered.”
SILENT COMPLIMENT.
While an eloquent clergyman was addressing a religious society, he
intimated, more than once, that he was admonished to conclude by the
lateness of the hour. His discourse, however, was so attractive that
some ladies in the gallery covered the clock with their shawls.
SELF-IMMOLATION.
Comyn, Bishop of Durham, having quarrelled with his clergy, they mixed
poison with the wine of the Eucharist, and gave it to him. He perceived
the poison, but yet, with misguided devotion, he drank it and died.
THE NEED OF PROVIDENCE.
Cecil says in his _Remains_:—We require the same hand to protect us in
apparent safety as in the most imminent and palpable danger. One of the
most wicked men in my neighborhood was riding near a precipice and fell
over: his horse was killed, but he escaped without injury. Instead of
thanking God for his deliverance, he refused to acknowledge the hand of
God in it, but attributed his escape to chance. The same man was
afterwards riding on a very smooth road: his horse suddenly fell and
threw his rider over his head, and killed him on the spot, while the
horse escaped unhurt.
The Fancies of Fact.-§Continued§
DIMENSIONS OF HEAVEN.
And he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The
length, and the breadth, and the height of it are equal.—Rev. xxi. 16.
Twelve thousand furlongs, 7,920,000 feet, which being cubed,
496,793,088,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Half of this we will reserve for
the Throne of God and the Court of Heaven, and half the balance for
streets, leaving a remainder of 124,198,272,000,000,000,000 cubic feet.
Divide this by 4,096, the cubical feet in a room sixteen feet square,
and there will be 30,321,843,750,000,000 rooms.
We will now suppose the world always did and always will contain
990,000,000 inhabitants, and that a generation lasts for 33⅓ years,
making in all 2,970,000,000 every century, and that the world will stand
100,000 years, or 1,000 centuries, making in all 2,970,000,000,000
inhabitants. Then suppose there were one hundred worlds equal to this in
number of inhabitants and duration of years, making a total of
297,000,000,000,000 persons, and there would be more than a hundred
rooms sixteen feet square for each person.
THE COST OF SOLOMON’S TEMPLE.
According to the computation of Villalpandus, the talents of gold,
silver, and brass, used in the construction of the Temple, amounted to
£6,879,822,500. The jewels are reckoned to have exceeded this sum; but,
for the sake of an estimate, let their value be set down at the same
amount. The vessels of gold (_vasa aurea_) consecrated to the use of the
Temple are reckoned by Josephus at 140,000 talents, which, according to
Capel’s reduction, are equal to £545,296,203. The vessels of silver
(_vasa argentea_) are computed at 1,340,000 talents, or £489,344,000.
The silk vestments of the priests cost £10,000; the purple vestments of
the singers, £2,000,000. The trumpets amounted to £200,000; other
musical instruments to £40,000. To these expenses must be added those of
the other materials, the timber and stone, and of the labor employed
upon them, the labor being divided thus: there were 10,000 men engaged
at Lebanon in hewing timber (_silvicidæ_); there were 70,000 bearers of
burdens (_vectores_); 20,000 hewers of stone (_lapicidinæ_); and 3,300
overseers (_episcopi_); all of whom were employed for seven years, and
upon whom, besides their wages and diet, Solomon bestowed £6,733,977
(_donum Solomonis_). If the daily food and wages of each man be
estimated at 4_s._ 6_d._, the sum total will be £93,877,088. The costly
stone and the timber in the rough may be set down as at least equal to
one-third of the gold, or about £2,545,296,000. The several estimates
will then amount to £17,442,442,268, or $77,521,965,636.
THE NUMBER SEVEN.
In the year 1502 there was printed at Leipsic a work entitled
_Heptalogium Virgilii Salsburgensis_, in honor of the number seven. It
consists of seven parts, each consisting of seven divisions. In 1624
appeared in London a curious work on the subject of numbers, bearing the
following title: _The Secrets of Numbers, according to Theological,
Arithmetical, Geometrical, and Harmonical Computation; drawn, for the
better part, out of those Ancients, as well as Neoteriques. Pleasing to
read, profitable to understand, opening themselves to the capacities of
both learned and unlearned; being no other than a key to lead men to any
doctrinal knowledge whatsoever_. In the ninth chapter the author has
given many notable opinions from learned men, to prove the excellency of
the number _seven_. “First, it neither begets nor is begotten, according
to the saying of Philo. Some numbers, indeed, within the compass of ten,
beget, but are not begotten; and that is the unarie. Others are
begotten, but beget not; as the octonarie. Only the septenarie, having a
prerogative above them all, neither begetteth nor is begotten. This is
its first divinity or perfection. Secondly, this is a harmonical number,
and the well and fountain of that fair and lovely _Digamma_, because it
includeth within itself all manner of harmony. Thirdly, it is a
theological number, consisting of perfection. Fourthly, because of its
compositure; for it is compounded of the first two perfect numbers equal
and unequal,—three and four; for the number two, consisting of repeated
unity, which is no number, is not perfect. Now, every one of these being
excellent of themselves, (as hath been demonstrated,) how can this
number be but far more excellent, consisting of them all, and
participating, as it were, of all their excellent virtues?”
Hippocrates says that the septenary number by its occult virtue tends to
the accomplishment of all things, is the dispenser of life and fountain
of all its changes; and, like Shakspeare, he divides the life of man
into seven ages. In seven months a child may be born and live, and not
before. Anciently a child was not named before seven days, not being
accounted fully to have life before that periodical day. The teeth
spring out in the seventh month, and are renewed in the seventh year,
when infancy is changed into childhood. At thrice seven years the
faculties are developed, manhood commences, and we become legally
competent to all civil acts; at four times seven man is in the full
possession of his strength; at five times seven he is fit for the
business of the world; at six times seven he becomes grave and wise, or
never; at seven times seven he is in his apogee, and from that time he
decays. At eight times seven he is in his first climacteric; at nine
times seven, or sixty-three, he is in his grand climacteric, or year of
danger; and ten times seven, or threescore years and ten, has, by the
Royal Prophet, been pronounced the natural period of human life.
In six days creation was perfected, and the seventh was consecrated to
rest. On the seventh of the seventh month a holy observance was ordained
to the children of Israel, who feasted seven days and remained seven
days in rest; the seventh year was directed to be a sabbath of rest for
all things; and at the end of seven times seven years commenced the
grand Jubilee; every seventh year the land lay fallow; every seventh
year there was a general release from all debts, and all bondsmen were
set free. From this law may have originated the custom of binding young
men to seven years’ apprenticeship, and of punishing incorrigible
offenders by transportation for seven, twice seven, or three times seven
years. Every seventh year the law was directed to be read to the people;
Jacob served seven years for the possession of Rachel, and also another
seven years. Noah had seven days’ warning of the flood, and was
commanded to take the fowls of the air into the ark by sevens, and the
clean beasts by sevens. The ark touched the ground on the seventh month;
and in seven days a dove was sent, and again in seven days after. The
seven years of plenty and seven years of famine were foretold in
Pharaoh’s dreams by the seven fat and the seven lean beasts, and the
seven ears of full corn and the seven ears of blasted corn. The young
animals were to remain with the dam seven days, and at the close of the
seventh taken away. By the old law, man was commanded to forgive his
offending brother seven times; but the meekness of the last revealed
religion extended his humility and forbearance to seventy times seven
times. “If Cain shall be revenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy times
seven.” In the destruction of Jericho, seven priests bore seven trumpets
seven days, and on the seventh day surrounded the walls seven times, and
after the seventh time the walls fell. Balaam prepared seven bullocks
and seven rams for a sacrifice; Laban pursued Jacob seven days’ journey;
Job’s friends sat with him seven days and seven nights, and offered
seven bullocks and seven rams as an atonement for their wickedness;
David, in bringing up the ark, offered seven bullocks and seven rams;
Elijah sent his servant seven times to look for the cloud; Hezekiah, in
cleansing the temple, offered seven bullocks and seven rams and seven
he-goats for a sin-offering. The children of Israel, when Hezekiah took
away the strange altars, kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days,
and then again another seven days. King Ahasuerus had seven
chamberlains, a seven days’ feast, and sent for the queen on the seventh
day; and in the seventh year of his reign she was taken to him. Queen
Esther had seven maids to attend her. Solomon was seven years building
the temple, at the dedication of which he feasted seven days; in the
tabernacle were seven lamps; seven days were appointed for an atonement
upon the altar, and the priest’s son was ordained to wear his father’s
garment seven days; the children of Israel ate unleavened bread seven
days; Abraham gave seven ewe-lambs to Abimelech as a memorial for a
well; Joseph mourned seven days for Jacob. The rabbins say God employed
the power of answering this number to perfect the greatness of Samuel,
his name answering the value of the letters in the Hebrew word, which
signifies seven,—whence Hannah, his mother, in her thanks, says “that
the barren had brought forth the seventh.” In Scripture are enumerated
seven resurrections,—the widow’s son, by Elias; the Shunamite’s son, by
Elisha; the soldier who touched the bone of the prophet; the daughter of
the ruler of the synagogue; the widow’s son of Nain; Lazarus, and our
blessed Lord. Out of Mary Magdalene were cast seven devils. The apostles
chose seven deacons. Enoch, who was translated, was the seventh after
Adam, and Jesus Christ the seventy-seventh in a direct line. Our Saviour
spoke seven times from the cross, on which he remained seven hours; he
appeared seven times; after seven times seven days he sent the Holy
Ghost. In the Lord’s Prayer are seven petitions, expressed in seven
times seven words, omitting those of mere grammatical connection. Within
this number are contained all the mysteries of the Apocalypse revealed
to the seven churches of Asia; there appeared seven golden candlesticks
and seven stars that were in the hand of Him that was in the midst;
seven lamps, being the seven spirits of God; the book with seven seals;
seven kings; seven thunders; seven thousand men slain; the dragon with
seven heads, and the seven angels bearing seven vials of wrath; the
vision of Daniel seventy weeks. The fiery furnace was made seven times
hotter for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; Nebuchadnezzar ate the grass
of the field seven years. The elders of Israel were seventy. There are
also numbered seven heavens, seven planets, seven stars, seven wise men,
seven champions of Christendom, seven notes in music, seven primary
colors, seven deadly sins, seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic
Church, and seven wonders of the world. The seventh son was considered
as endowed with pre-eminent wisdom; the seventh son of a seventh son is
still thought by some to possess the power of healing diseases
spontaneously. Perfection is likened to gold seven times purified in the
fire; and we yet say, “you frighten me out of my seven senses.” There
were seven chiefs before Thebes. The blood was to be sprinkled seven
times before the altar; Naaman was to be dipped seven times in Jordan;
Apuleius speaks of the dipping of the head seven times in the sea for
purification. In all solemn rites of purgation, dedication, and
consecration, the oil or water was seven times sprinkled. The house of
wisdom, in Proverbs, had seven pillars.
THE NUMBER THREE.
When the world was created, we find land, water, and sky; sun, moon, and
stars. Noah had but three sons; Jonah was three days in the whale’s
belly; our Saviour passed three days in the tomb. Peter denied his
Saviour thrice. There were three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Abraham entertained three angels. Samuel was called three times. “Simon,
lovest thou me?” was repeated three times. Daniel was thrown into a den
with three lions, for praying three times a day. Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego were rescued from the flames of the oven. The Commandments were
delivered on the third day. Job had three friends. St. Paul speaks of
faith, hope, and charity, these three. Those famous dreams of the baker
and butler were to come to pass in three days; and Elijah prostrated
himself three times on the body of the dead child. Samson deceived
Delilah three times before she discovered the source of his strength. In
mythology there were three graces; Cerberus with his three heads;
Neptune holding his three-toothed staff; the Oracle of Delphi cherished
with veneration the tripod; and the nine Muses sprang from three. The
witches in Macbeth ask, “When shall we three meet again?” The Pope’s
tiara is triple. We have morning, noon, and night; fish, flesh, and
fowl; water, ice, and snow. Trees group their leaves in threes; there is
three-leaved clover. What could be done in mathematics without the aid
of the triangle? witness the power of the wedge; and in logic three
propositions are indispensable. It is a common phrase that “three is a
lucky number.” Life stands on a tripod, the feet of which are the
circulation, respiration, and innervation; death is therefore the result
of a failure in the heart, the lungs, or the brain. Finally, there is
earth, heaven, and hell; and above all, the Holy Trinity.
THE NUMBER NINE.
The singular properties of the number nine are well known to
arithmeticians. The following is one of the most interesting. If the
cardinal numbers from 1 to 9 inclusive, omitting 8, be used as a
multiplicand, and any one of them multiplied by 9 be used as a
multiplier, the result will present a succession of figures the same as
that multiplied by the 9. For example, if we wish a series of fives, we
take 5 times 9, equal to 45, for a multiplier:—
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9
4 5
—————————————————
6 1 7 2 8 3 9 5
4 9 3 8 2 7 1 6
—————————————————
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
A similar result will be obtained by using all the other numbers,
including 8 (72); but the 8 must in all cases be omitted in the
multiplicand.
CHANGES OF THE KALEIDOSCOPE.
The following curious calculation has been made of the number of changes
which this wonderful instrument will admit:—
Supposing the instrument to contain twenty small pieces of glass, &c.,
and that you make ten changes in each minute, it will take the
inconceivable space of 462,880,899,576 years and 360 days to go through
the immense variety of changes it is capable of producing,—amounting
(according to our frail idea of the nature of things) to an eternity,
Or, if you take only twelve small pieces, and make ten changes in each
minute, it will then take 33,264 days, or 91 years and 49 days, to
exhaust its variations. However exaggerated this statement may appear to
some, it is actually the case.
NOAH’S ARK AND THE GREAT EASTERN STEAMSHIP.
The following comparison between the size of Noah’s Ark and the
Leviathan (Great Eastern), both being considered in point of tonnage,
after the old law for calculating the tonnage, exhibits a remarkable
similarity. The sacred cubit, as stated by Sir Isaac Newton, is 20·625
English inches; by Bishop Wilkins at 21·88 inches. According to these
authorities, the dimensions will be as follows:—
SIR I. NEWTON. BP. WILKINS. GR. EASTERN.
_Feet._ _Feet._ _Feet._
Length between perpendiculars 515·62 547·00 680
Breadth 84·94 91·16 83
Depth 51·56 54·70 60
Keel, or length for tonnage 464·08 492·31 630
Tonnage according to old law 18,231 58–94 21,761 50–94 23,092 25–94.
DIVERSITY OF COLORS.
In a very amusing work of the celebrated Goethe, entitled _Winkelmann
und sein Jahrhundert_, it is stated that about fifteen thousand
varieties of color are employed by the workers of mosaic in Rome, and
that there are fifty shades of each of these varieties, from the deepest
to the palest, thus affording seven hundred and fifty thousand tints,
which the artist can distinguish with the greatest facility. It might be
imagined that with the command of seven hundred and fifty thousand tints
of colors, the most varied and beautiful painting could be perfectly
imitated; yet this is not the case, for the mosaic-workers find a lack
of tints, even amid this astonishing variety.
AEROLITES.
Meteoric stones, in single masses and in showers, have fallen from the
atmosphere at various, and in many cases uncertain, periods, throughout
the world. The largest of these at present known is in the province of
Tucuman, in South America, in the midst of an extensive plain. It weighs
thirty thousand pounds. A mass in the Imperial Cabinet in Vienna was
brought from Agram, in Croatia, where it fell in 1751. It was seen by
the inhabitants while falling from the air, and is said to have appeared
like a globe of fire. Professor Pallas, in his travels in Siberia, found
a mass on the mountains of Kemir, weighing sixteen hundred and eighty
pounds, which the inhabitants told him fell from the sky. About one
hundred and fifty miles from Bahia, in Brazil, is a mass of a
crystalline texture weighing fourteen thousand pounds. There are also
large masses in West Greenland, Mexico, Peru, and South Africa. The
specimen in the cabinet at New Haven, weighing three thousand pounds,
was brought from Red River in Louisiana. Showers of meteorolites,
weighing from a few ounces to twenty pounds, are recorded by observers
as having fallen at Ensisheim, in 1492; at Mort, in 1750; at Aire, in
1769; at Juliac, in 1790; at Sienna, in 1794; at Benares, in 1798; at
L’Aigle, in 1803; and at St. Germaine, in 1808. One of the most
remarkable instances that has occurred in this country under the direct
observation of eye-witnesses took place in Fairfield county,
Connecticut, in December, 1807, an interesting account of which may be
found in vol. vi. American Philosophical Transactions (1809). A similar
occurrence happened at Norwich, in the same State, in 1836.
With regard to the extraordinary origin of these aerolites, or
meteorolites, it has been incontestably proved to be atmospheric, by
eye-witnesses, by the similarity of their composition in all cases, by
the fact that though the materials thus mingled—being chiefly native
iron, with small proportions of nickel, silex, aluminium, magnesium, and
sulphur—are well known, they are never united in the same manner among
the productions of the globe; and further, by the fact that they are
never projected from terrestrial volcanoes, and that the situations in
which they are found are generally isolated and always on the surface of
the earth.
It remains, then, for the philosopher to ascertain the source of this
interesting portion of nature. The great difficulty of this task is
evident from the number and variety of the theories which have been
formed respecting it, and their liability to serious objections. Those
who hold the opinion that aerolites are formed from substances floating
in the atmosphere must resort to the hypothesis that iron, nickel,
silex, sulphur, &c. are first rendered volatile, and then synthetically
formed into the ponderous stones which fall from above. Professor
Silliman remarks of this recourse to atmospheric formation from gaseous
ingredients, that it is a crude, unphilosophical conception,
inconsistent with known chemical facts, and physically impossible. The
theory which refers these aerolites to _lunar_ volcanic origin seems to
have more to recommend it. La Place, the illustrious author of the
_Mécanique Céleste_,—the respect due to whose opinion no one will
dispute,—maintained that these meteoric stones are expelled violently
from the active volcanoes which telescopic research has proved to exist
in great numbers on the surface of the moon, and that, passing beyond
the limits of the attraction of our satellite, they come within the
influence of the earth and are drawn towards its surface. It has been
calculated that the power required to drive a body beyond the moon’s
attraction would be only about four times that with which a ball is
expelled from a cannon with the ordinary charge of gunpowder. However
rapid a velocity of seven thousand seven hundred and seventy feet per
second may seem, it would not require an improbable amount of mechanical
force.
Professor Olmsted, the American astronomer, has offered the most
satisfactory explanation. He has shown that countless bodies, of
comparatively small dimensions, cluster together in vast rings, and
revolve, as do the planets, around the sun; that these bodies become
visible when the orbit of the earth approaches their orbit; that
sometimes they are entangled in our atmosphere, catch fire from their
enormous velocity, and fall to the earth as meteoric stones. In this way
the shooting stars and meteors are shown to be diminutive planets, which
in composition and orbital motion resemble our own earth, and almost
fill the planetary space with their countless squadrons.
FATE OF AMERICA’S DISCOVERERS.
It is remarkable how few of the eminent men of the discoverers and
conquerors of the New World died in peace. Columbus died broken-hearted;
Roldin and Bobadilla were drowned; Ovando was harshly superseded; Las
Casas sought refuge in a cowl; Ojeda died in extreme poverty; Enciso was
deposed by his own men; Nicuessa perished miserably by the cruelty of
his party; Vasco Nunez de Balboa was disgracefully beheaded; Narvaez was
imprisoned in a tropical dungeon, and afterwards died of hardship;
Cortez was dishonored; Alvarado was destroyed in ambush; Almagro was
garroted; Pizarro was murdered, and his four brothers cut off; and there
was no end to the assassinations and executions of the secondary chiefs
among the energetic and daring adventurers.
FACTS ABOUT THE PRESIDENTS.
Of the first seven Presidents of the United States, four were from
Virginia, two of the same name from Massachusetts, and one from
Tennessee. All but one were sixty-six years old on leaving office,
having served two terms, and one of those who served but one term would
have been sixty-six years of age at the end of another. Three of the
seven died on the 4th of July, and two of them on the same day and year.
Two of them were on the sub-committee of three that drafted the
Declaration of Independence; and these two died on the same day and
year, on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and just
half a century from the day of the Declaration. The names of three of
the seven end in son, yet none of them transmitted his name to a _son_.
The initials of the names of two of the seven are the same; the initials
of two others are the same; and those of still two others, the same. The
remaining one, who stands alone in this particular, stands also alone in
the love and admiration of his countrymen and of the civilized
world,—Washington. Of the first five, only one had a son, and that son
was also President. Neither of the Presidents who had sons were elected
for a second term.
THE CROWN OF ENGLAND.
The crown of England is a costly “bauble,” bedazzled with jewels enough
to found three or four public charities, or a half-dozen ordinary
colleges. There are twenty diamonds round the circle, worth $7,500 each,
making $150,000; two large centre diamonds, $10,000 each, making
$20,000; fifty-four smaller diamonds, placed at the angle of the former,
each $500; four crosses, each composed of twenty-five diamonds, $60,000;
four large diamonds on the top of the crosses, $20,000; twelve diamonds
contained in the fleur-de-lis, $50,000; eighteen smaller diamonds
contained in the same, $10,000; pearls, diamonds, &c. upon the arches
and crosses, $50,000; also one hundred and forty-one small diamonds,
$25,000; twenty-six diamonds in the upper cross, $15,500; two circles of
pearls about the rim, $15,000. The cost of the stones in the crown,
exclusive of the metal, is, therefore, nearly half a million of dollars.
AN ARMY OF WOMEN.
In the army of the Chinese rebels, there were in 1853, in Nanking alone,
about half a million of women, collected from various parts of the
country and formed into brigades of thirteen thousand, under female
officers. Of these, ten thousand were picked women, drilled and
garrisoned in the city; the rest were compelled to undergo the drudgery
of digging moats, making earth works, erecting batteries, &c.
THE STAR IN THE EAST.
Under the influence of a conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, which
took place in the year 1604, Kepler was led to think that he had
discovered means for determining the true year of our Saviour’s birth.
He made his calculations, and found that Jupiter and Saturn were in
conjunction in the constellation of the Fishes (a fish is the
astrological symbol of Judæa) in the latter half of the year of Rome
747, and were joined by Mars in 748. Here then he fixed the first figure
in the date of our era, and here he found the appearance in the heavens
which induced the magi to undertake their journey, and conducted them
successfully on their way. Others have taken up this view, freed it from
astrological impurities, and shown its trustworthiness and applicability
in the case under consideration. It appears that Jupiter and Saturn came
together for the first time on May 20th in the twentieth degree of the
constellation of the Fishes. They then stood before sunrise in the
eastern part of the heavens, and so were seen by the magi. Jupiter then
passed by Saturn towards the north. About the middle of September they
were near midnight both in opposition to the sun, Saturn in the
thirteenth, Jupiter in the fifteenth degree, being distant from each
other about a degree and a half. They then drew nearer: on October 27th
there was a second conjunction in the sixteenth degree, and on November
12th there took place a third conjunction in the fifteenth degree of the
same constellation. In the last two conjunctions the interval between
the planets amounted to no more than a degree, so that to the unassisted
eye the rays of the one planet were absorbed in those of the other, and
the two bodies would appear as one. The two planets went past each other
three times, came very near together, and showed themselves all night
long for months in conjunction with each other, as if they would never
separate again. Their first union in the east awoke the attention of the
magi, told them the expected time had come, and bade them set off
without delay towards Judæa (the fish land). When they reached Jerusalem
the two planets were once more blended together. Then, in the evening,
they stood in the southern part of the sky, pointing with their united
rays to Bethlehem, where prophecy declared the Messiah was to be born.
The magi followed the finger of heavenly light, and were brought to the
child Jesus. The conclusion in regard to the time of the advent is that
our Lord was born in the latter part of the year of Rome 747, or six
years before the common era.
A recent writer of considerable merit, Wieseler (_Chronolog. Synop. der
4 Evangelien._) has applied this theory of Kepler in conjunction with a
discovery that he has made from some Chinese astronomical tables, which
show that in the year of Rome 750 a comet appeared in the heavens, and
was visible for seventy days. Wieseler’s opinion is that the conjunction
of the planets excited and fixed the attention of the magi, but that
their guiding-star was the aforesaid comet.
DIPLOMATIC COSTUME.
Dr. Franklin, it is well known, gained great praise for wearing an
ordinary plain suit, instead of a gold embroidered Court costume, when
formally presented to King Louis XVI. In reference to this anecdote,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his notebook states that he was told by an aged
lady, in England, that the circumstance above mentioned arose from the
fact that Franklin’s tailor disappointed him of his Court suit, and that
he wore his plain one with great reluctance, because he had no other.
Franklin, it is said, having by his mishap made a successful impression,
continued to wear his plain dress through policy. Thus we have another
dissipation of one of those pleasant fictions which have been
transmitted by the historian and the painter. It is like the apocryphal
story of Franklin reading the prayer of Habakkuk to an assembly of
French infidels, who are said to have pronounced it one of the finest
compositions they had ever heard, and to have eagerly inquired where it
might be found.
INSTANCES OF REMARKABLE LONGEVITY.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason
of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and
sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.—Psalm xc. 10.
Haller has noted one thousand cases of centenarians: sixty-two of from
110 to 120 years; twenty-nine of from 120 to 130; and fifteen who had
attained from 130 to 140 years. Beyond this advanced age,
well-authenticated examples of longevity are very rare. The case of
Henry Jenkins, the Yorkshire fisherman, who died in December, 1670, at
the age of 169, is one of the most remarkable. He is buried in the
church of Bolton-upon-Swale, where may be found a long inscription,
chiefly referring to his humble position in life and his patriarchal
age. That of Thomas Parr is also well known. He was first married at the
age of 80, and afterwards at 122, and died in 1635, aged 152. He was a
farmer, and up to the age of 130 was able to dig, plough, and thrash.
Had he continued his simple and abstemious habits, his life would
probably have been prolonged a considerable period; but the luxurious
living of the court of Charles I., at which his latter years were spent,
occasioned a plethoric condition which hastened his end. The famous
Harvey dissected him after death, and found no appearance of decay in
any organ.
The following list of instances of very advanced age is given on the
authority of Prichard, Whitehurst, Bailey, and others:—
Died. Age.
Apollonius of Tyana §A.D.§ 99 130
St. Patrick 491 122
Attila 500 124
Llywarch Hên 500 150
St. Coemgene 618 120
St. Mongah, or Kentigern 781 185
Piastus, King of Poland 861 120
Countess of Desmond 1612 145
Thomas Parr 1635 152
Thomas Damme 1648 154
Dr. Mead, Hertfordshire 1652 148
James Bowles, Kenilworth 1656 152
Henry Jenkins 1670 169
William Edwards[16] 1688 168
Petrarch Czartan 1724 185
Margaret Patten 1739 137
John Roven 1741 172
Mrs. John Roven 1741 164
John Effingham, Cornwall ———— 144
Thomas Winslow, a captain of Cromwell 1766 146
Draakenburg, a Dane 1772 146
Jonas Warren, Ballydole 1787 167
Jonas Surington, Bergen, Norway 1797 159
Demetrius Grabowsky, Poland 1830 169
Bridget Devine 1845 147
Footnote 16:
On a long freestone slab, in Caery church, near Cardiff, Glamorgan
co., Wales, is the following inscription:—
Here lyeth the Body of
William Edwds,
of the Cairey who departed this life
February 24, Anno Domini, 1688,
Annoque ætatis suæ 168.
O, happy change!
And ever blest,
When greefe and pain is
Changed to rest.
Czartan’s biographer says of him:—He was born in the year 1539 and died
January 5th, 1724, at Kofrosch, a village four miles from Temeswar. A
few days before his death, being nearly 185 years old, he had walked,
with the help of a stick, to the post-house at Kofrosch, to ask charity
from the travellers. His eyes were much inflamed; but he still enjoyed a
little sight. His hair and beard were of a greenish white color, like
mouldy bread; and he had a few of his teeth remaining. His son, who was
97 years of age, declared that his father had once been a head taller;
that at a great age he married for the third time, and that he was born
in this last marriage. He was accustomed, agreeably to the rules of his
religion, (Greek Church,) to observe fast-days with great strictness,
and never to use any other food than milk, and certain cakes, called by
the Hungarians _collatschen_, together with a good glass of brandy such
as is made in the country.
The Hungarian family of Roven affords an extraordinary example of long
life. The father attained the age of 172, the wife, 164; they had been
married 142 years, and their youngest child was 115; and such was the
influence of habit and filial affection that this _child_ was treated
with all the severity of parental rigidity, and did not dare to act
without his _papa’s_ and _mamma’s_ permission.
Examples of great longevity are frequent in Russia. According to an
official report, there were, in 1828, in the empire, 828 centenarians,
of whom forty had exceeded 120 years; fifteen, 130; nine, 136; and
three, 138 years. In the government of Moscow there died, in 1830, a man
aged 150. In the government of Kieff, an old soldier died in 1844, at
the age of 153. There lately died on an estate in the government of
Viatka, a peasant named Michael Kniawelkis, who had attained the age of
137 years, 10 months, and 11 days. He was born in a village of the same
district, married at the age of 19, and had had, by several wives, 32
children, one of whom, a daughter, is still living, at the age of 100.
He never had any serious illness; some years before his death he
complained that he could not read without glasses, but to the last day
he retained the use of all his faculties, and was very cheerful. He
frequently said that he thought death had forgotten him.
In China, on the contrary, such instances are rare. From a census made a
few years ago, we learn that out of a population of 369,000,000 there
were but four centenarians.
According to the census of the United States, taken in 1830, there were
2,556 persons a hundred years old, or upwards. The census of 1850
exhibits nearly the same number. This gives one centenarian to a
population of 9,000. From this census we also learn that the oldest
person then living in the United States was 140. This was an Indian
woman residing in North Carolina. In the same State was an Indian aged
125, a negro woman 111, two black slaves 110 each, one mulatto male 120,
and several white males and females from 106 to 114. In the parish of
Lafayette, La., was a female, black, aged 120. In several of the States
there were found persons, white and black, aged from 110 to 115.
There is now living in Murray county, Georgia, on the waters of Holy
Creek, a Revolutionary veteran, who has attained the age of 135. His
name is John Hames. He is known throughout the region in which he lives
by the appellative, “Gran’sir Hames.” He was born in Mecklenburg county,
Virginia, and was a lad 10 years old when Washington was in his cradle.
He was 32 when Braddock met his disastrous defeat on the Monongahela.
He, with a number of his neighbors, set forth to join the ill-fated
commander, but after several days’ march were turned back by the news of
his overthrow. He migrated to South Carolina nearly 100 years ago. He
was in thirteen considerable conflicts during the war of Independence,
and in skirmishes and encounters with Indians, with tories, and with
British, times beyond memory. He was with Gates at Camden, with Morgan
at Cowpens, with Green at Hillsboro’ and Eutaw, and with Marion in many
a bold rush into a tory camp or redcoat quarters.
At the time of the Eighth Census there were about 20,000 persons in the
United States who were living when the Declaration of Independence was
signed in 1776. They must necessarily have been more than eighty years
old, in order to have lived at that time. The French Census of 1851
shows only 102 persons over 100 years old,—though the total population
was nearly 36,000,000. Old age is therefore attained among us much more
frequently than in France.
At Cordova, in South America, in the year of 1780, a judicial inquiry
was instituted by the authorities to determine the age of a negress by
the name of Louisa Truxo. She testified that she perfectly remembered
Fernando Truxo, the bishop, who gave her as his contribution toward a
university fund: he died in 1614. Another negress, who was known to be
120, testified that Louisa was an elderly woman when she was a child. On
this evidence the authorities of Cordova concluded that Louisa was, as
she asserted, 175 years old.
Two cases are recorded by Mr. Bailey, in his _Annals of Longevity_,
which throw all these into the shade; but the evidence furnished is
inadequate and unsatisfactory. One is that of an Englishman, Thomas Cam,
whom the parish register of Shoreditch affirms to have died in 1588, at
the age of 207, having paid allegiance to twelve monarchs. The other is
that of a Russian,—name not given,—whom the St. Petersburg Gazette
mentioned as having died in 1812, at an age exceeding 200.
The following in relation to Cam is copied literally from the register
of burials of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch:—
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│_1588._ BURIALLES. Fol. 35.│
│ │
│ §Thomas Cam§ was buriel * e/y 22 inst. of │
│ Januarye, Aged 207 yeares. │
│ │
│ Holywell Street. │
│ Geo. Garrow, │
│Copy, Aug’st 25, 1832. Parish Clerk.│
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
In connection with the foregoing facts, it will be interesting to revert
to the ages of the antediluvian patriarchs:—
Years.
Adam lived 930
Seth 912
Enos 905
Canaan 910
Mahalaleel 895
Jared 962
Enoch 365
Methuselah 969
Lamech 777
Noah, who lived before and after the Deluge, in all 950
In Willet’s _Hexapla, in Leviticum_, is the following remarkable
passage:—
Ludovicus Vives (_in Aug. de Civit, Dei, lib. XV._) writeth of a town in
Spain, consisting of about an hundred houses, all of them inhabited by
the seed of one old man, then living; so that the youngest of them knew
not what to call him: _Quia lingua Hispana supra abavum non ascendit_,
because the Spanish tongue goeth no higher than the great-grandfather’s
father. And Bas. Johan. Heroldus hath a pretty epigram of an aged matron
that lived to see her children’s children to the sixth degree:—
^1Mater ait ^2natæ die quod ^3sua filia ^4natam
Admoneat ^5natæ plangere ^6filiolam.
The ^1Mother said, Go tell my ^2Child
That ^3her Girl should her ^4Daughter tell
She must now mourn (that lately smiled),
Her ^5Daughter’s little ^6Babe’s not well.
MEANS OF RECOGNITION.
When the English suite of Lord Macartney was invited to a grand
entertainment in China, one of them, understanding that it was not
expedient to venture upon every dish which appeared under the guise of
the native cookery, was desirous of ascertaining how far he might
venture with safety, and as the Chinese waiters could understand a
little English, he pointed to a dish before him, and said to the
attendant in an interrogative tone, “Quack-quack?” meaning to inquire if
it was a duck. The attendant perfectly understood him, and immediately
replied, with great solemnity and sincerity, “Bow-wow!”
* * * * *
Rossini once unexpectedly met his old friend Sir Henry Bishop, but
having at the moment forgotten his name, after puzzling and stammering
for some time, he at length took him by the hand, and sang a few bars to
prove he identified him through Bishop’s beautiful song, “Blow gentle
gales.”
MARRIAGE VOW.
The matrimonial ceremony, like many others, has undergone some variation
in the progress of time. Upwards of three centuries ago, the husband, on
taking his wife by the right hand, thus addressed her; “I, A. B.,
_undersygne_ thee, C. D., for my wedded wyfe, for beter, for worse, for
richer, for porer, yn sekness, and in helthe, tyl dethe us departe, [not
“do part,” as now erroneously rendered, _departe_ formerly meaning to
_separate_,] as holy churche hath ordeyned, and thereto I plyght thee my
trowthe.” The wife replied in the same form, with an additional clause,
“to be buxum to thee, tyl dethe us departe.” So it appears in the first
edition of the _Missals for the use of the famous and celebrated Church
of Hereford_, 1502. In the _Salisbury Missal_, the lady promised “to be
bonere [debonnair] and buxum in bedde and at the borde.”
COMPOSITION IN DREAMS.
Condorcet is said to have attained the conclusion of some of his most
abstruse unfinished calculations in his dreams. Franklin makes a similar
admission concerning some of his political projects, which in his waking
moments sorely puzzled him. Herschel composed the following lines in a
dream:—
“Throw thyself on thy God, nor mock him with feeble denial;
Sure of his love, and, oh! sure of his mercy at last;
Bitter and deep though the draught, yet drain thou the cup of thy trial,
And, in its healing effect, smile at the bitterness past.”
Goethe says in his _Memoirs_, “The objects which had occupied my
attention during the day often reappeared at night in connected dreams.
On awakening, a new composition, or a portion of one I had already
commenced, presented itself to my mind.” Coleridge composed his poem of
the _Abyssinian Maid_ during a dream. Cockburn says of Lord Jeffrey:—“He
had a fancy that though he went to bed with his head stuffed with the
names, dates, and other details of various causes, they were all in
order in the morning; which he accounted for by saying that during sleep
they all crystallized round their proper centres.”
FACTS ABOUT SLEEP.
Come sleep, O sleep! the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe;
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
The impartial judge between the high and low.
§Sir Philip Sidney.§
While I am asleep I have neither fear nor hope, neither trouble nor
glory, and blessings on him who invented sleep, the mantle that covers
all human thoughts; the food that appeases hunger; the drink that
quenches thirst; the fire that warms cold; the cold that moderates
heat; and lastly, the general coin that purchases all things; the
balance and weight that makes the shepherd equal to the king, and the
simple to the wise.—_Sancho Panza._
Sir Philip Sidney calls sleep “the poor man’s wealth,” and, he might
have added, it is every man’s health. Men have often, according to their
own notions, attempted to limit or extend the hours of sleep. Thus, the
“immortal Alfred” of England divided the day into three portions of
eight hours each, assigning one for refreshment and the health of the
body by sleep, diet, and exercise, another for business, and the third
for study and devotion. Bishop Taylor considered three hours’, and
Richard Baxter four hours’, sleep sufficient for any man.
“Nature requires five,
Custom gives seven,
Laziness takes nine,
And wickedness eleven.”
The error into which these and others have fallen arises not only from
the fact that in this, as well as in other things, every man is a law to
himself, but from the varying amount required in each individual case at
different times, depending upon the amount of renovation required by the
nervous and muscular systems. John Wesley, the distinguished founder of
Methodism, who attained the age of eighty-eight, and who could command
sleep on horseback, says very properly, in some curious remarks which he
has left upon sleep, that no one measure will do for all, nor will the
same amount of sleep suffice even for the same person at all times. A
person debilitated by sickness requires more of “tired nature’s sweet
restorer” than one in vigorous health. More sleep is also necessary when
the strength and spirits are exhausted by hard labor or severe mental
efforts. Whatever may be the case with some few persons, of a peculiar
constitution, it is evident that health and vigor can scarcely be
expected to continue long without six hours’ sleep in the
four-and-twenty. Wesley adds that during his long life he never knew any
individual who retained vigorous health for a whole year, with a less
quantity of sleep than this.
It is said that women, in general, require more sleep than men. This is
doubtful: it is certain, at least, that women endure protracted
wakefulness better than men. The degree of muscular and mental exertion
to which the male is accustomed would seem to indicate that a longer
period of rest ought to be required by him to admit of the necessary
restoration of excitability. In infancy and youth, where the animal
functions are extremely active, the necessity for sleep is greatest; in
mature age, where time is more valued and cares are more numerous, it is
less indulged; whilst the aged may be affected in two opposite ways;
they may be either in a state of almost constant somnolency, or their
sleep may be short and light.
There are some remarkable cases on record of deviations from the
customary amount of sleep, making a “bed shorter than for an ordinary
man to stretch himself upon, and a covering narrower than he can wrap
himself in,” capacious enough for persons of very active habits in their
waking hours. Many persons have reached advanced age without ever having
had more than one or two hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four. There is
one case of a man who, throughout his whole life, never slept more than
fifteen minutes at one time. General Pichegru informed Sir Gilbert Blane
that, in the course of his active campaigns, he had for a whole year not
more than one hour of sleep in the twenty-four hours. Frederick of
Prussia and Napoleon, as a general thing, only devoted three or four
hours to sleep.
One can scarcely conceive a more horrible mode of torture than the
Chinese plan of condemning criminals to death by preventing sleep. The
victim is kept awake by guards alternately stationed for the purpose.
His sufferings last from twelve to twenty days, when death comes to his
relief.
The influence of habit in promoting or preventing sleep is remarkable.
Those accustomed to the tranquillity of rural districts are excessively
annoyed by the din of the carriages on the paved thoroughfares of a
large city. It is said, on the other hand, that those who live near the
cataracts of the Nile cannot sleep at a distance from them, owing to
their having become accustomed to the noise, the stimulus of which upon
the ear they lack. Some persons can only sleep in the dark; we knew a
woman who slept habitually with a candle burning in her bedroom, and who
invariably awoke if the light went out. Some of the soldiers of
Bonaparte’s army would sleep, after extreme fatigue and exhaustion, on
the ground by the side of a twenty-four pounder which was constantly
firing. Some boys slept from fatigue on board of Nelson’s ship, at the
battle of the Nile. We have heard of a boiler-maker who could go to
sleep in a boiler while the workmen were constantly hammering the
rivets.
Sleep can persist with the exercise of certain muscles. Couriers on long
journeys nap on horseback; and coachmen, on their boxes. Among the
impressive incidents of Sir John Moore’s disastrous retreat to Corunna,
in Spain, not the least striking is the recorded fact that many of his
soldiers steadily pursued their march while fast asleep. Burdach,
however, affirms that this is not uncommon among soldiers. Franklin
slept nearly an hour swimming on his back. An acquaintance of Dr. D.,
travelling with a party in North Carolina, being greatly fatigued, was
observed to be sound asleep in his saddle. His horse, being a better
walker, went far in advance of the rest. On crossing a hill, they found
him on the ground, snoring gently. His horse had fallen, as was evident
from his bruised knees, and had thrown his rider on his head on a hard
surface, without waking him.
Animals of the lower orders obey peculiar laws in regard to sleep. Fish
are said to sleep soundly; and we are told by Aristotle that the tench
may be taken in this state, if approached cautiously. Many birds and
beasts of prey take their repose in the daytime. When kept in captivity,
this habit undergoes a change,—which makes us doubt whether it was not
the result of necessity, which demanded that they should take advantage
of the darkness, silence, and the unguarded state of their victims. In
the menagerie at Paris, even the hyena sleeps at night, and is awake by
day. They all, however, seek, as favoring the purpose, a certain degree
of seclusion and shade, with the exception of the lion, who, Burdach
informs us, sleeps at noonday, in the open plain; and the eagle and
condor will poise themselves on the most elevated pinnacle of rock, in
the clear blue atmosphere and dazzling sunlight. Birds, however, are
furnished with a winking membrane, generally, to shelter the eye from
light. Fish prefer to retire to sleep under the shadow of a rock or a
woody bank. Of domestic animals, the horse seems to require least sleep;
and that he usually takes in the erect posture.
Birds that roost in a sitting posture are furnished with a well-adapted
mechanism, which keeps them firmly supported without voluntary or
conscious action. The tendon of the claws is so arranged as to be
tightened by their weight when the thighs are bent, thus contracting
closely and grasping the bough or perch. In certain other animals which
sleep erect, the articulations of the foot and knee are described by
Dumeril as resembling the spring of a pocket-knife, which opens the
instrument and serves to keep the blade in a line with the handle.
The following calculation is interesting. Suppose one boy aged ten years
determines to rise at five o’clock all the year round. Another of the
same age, indolent and fond of ease, rises at eight, or an average of
eight, every morning. If they both live to be seventy years old, the one
will have gained over the other, during the intervening period of sixty
years, sixty-five thousand seven hundred and forty-five hours, which is
equal to two thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine and a third days, or
just seven and a half years. If a similar calculation were applied to
the whole country, how many millions of years of individual usefulness
would it prove to be lost to society!
“God bless the man who first invented sleep!”
So Sancho Panza said, and so say I!
And bless him, also, that he didn’t keep
His great discovery to himself, or try
To make it—as the lucky fellow might—
A close monopoly by “patent right!”
Yes—bless the man who first invented sleep,
(I really can’t avoid the iteration;)
But blast the man, with curses loud and deep,
Whate’er the rascal’s name, or age, or station,
Who first invented, and went round advising,
That artificial cut-off,—early rising!
“Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed,”
Observes some solemn, sentimental owl:
Maxims like these are very cheaply said;
But ere you make yourself a fool or fowl,
Pray just inquire about their rise—and fall,
And whether larks have any beds at all!
The “time for honest folks to be abed”
Is in the morning, if I reason right:
And he who cannot keep his precious head
Upon his pillow till it’s fairly light,
And so enjoy his forty morning winks,
Is up—to knavery; or else—he drinks!
Thomson, who sung about the “Seasons,” said
It was a glorious thing to rise in season;
But then he said it—lying—in his bed
At ten o’clock A. M.,—the very reason
He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is,
His preaching wasn’t sanctioned by his practice.
’Tis, doubtless, well to be sometimes awake,—
Awake to duty and awake to truth;
But when, alas! a nice review we take
Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth,
The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep
Are those we passed in childhood, or—asleep!
’Tis beautiful to leave the world a while
For the soft visions of the gentle night,
And free, at last, from mortal care or guile,
To live, as only in the angels’ sight,
In sleep’s sweet realms so cosily shut in,
Where, at the worst, we only _dream_ of sin!
So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise.
I like the lad who, when his father thought
To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase
Of vagrant worm by early songster caught,
Cried, “Served him right!—it’s not at all surprising:
The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!”
OPIUM AND EAST INDIAN HEMP.
Children of Night! from Lethe’s bourn,
Ye come to weave the oblivious veil,
And on the wretched and forlorn
To bid your sweet illusions steal.—_Fracastoro._
There is nothing in nature more curious and inexplicable than the
influence on the circulating fluids, and through these on the brain and
its functions, of various narcotic drugs. Among these, opium, and
_Cannabis Indica_, or East Indian hemp, occupy the most prominent place.
No reflective person can look into the writings of Coleridge, De
Quincey, or Bayard Taylor, each of whom has experienced the effects of
these drugs in his own person, and graphically described his sensations,
thoughts, feelings, and dreams while under their influence, without
being struck with awe and astonishment at the modifying and disturbing
influences which these substances exert upon that mysterious connection
which exists between the mind and the material medium through which it
manifests itself. Take the following, for example, from the _Confessions
of an English Opium-Eater_, which, not only for grandeur of description,
but for psychological interest, is unsurpassed by any thing in the
English language.
“The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams,—a
music of preparation and of awakening suspense; a music like the opening
of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_, gave the feeling of a
vast march—of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of
innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day—a day of crisis
and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious
eclipse and laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not
where—somehow, I knew not how—by some beings, I knew not whom—a battle,
a strife, an agony, was conducting,—was evolving like a great drama, or
piece of music; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from
my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible
issue. I, as is usual in dreams, (where, of necessity, we make ourselves
central to every movement,) had the power, and yet had not the power, to
decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it; and yet
again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me,
or the oppression of inexpiable guilt.
“‘Deeper than ever plummet sounded,’ I lay inactive. Then, like a
chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake,—some
mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded or trumpet had
proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations
of innumerable fugitives—I knew not whether from the good cause or the
bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and, at last, with
the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were
worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed—and clasped hands,
and heart-breaking partings, and then everlasting farewells! and, with a
sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered
the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated,—everlasting
farewells! and again, and yet again, reverberated,—everlasting
farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, ‘I will sleep no
more!’”
De Quincey took laudanum for the first time to dispel pain, and he thus
describes the effect it had upon him:—“But I took it, and in an hour,
oh, heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest
depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!
That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes. This _negative_
effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which
had opened before me,—in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly
revealed. Here was a panacea,—a φαρμακον νεπενθες for all human woes.
Here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed
for so many ages, at once discovered! Happiness might now be bought for
a penny and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be
had corked up in a pint bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down in
gallons by the mail-coach.”
Dr. Madden describes more soberly his sensations when under the
influence of the drug in one of the coffee-houses at Constantinople. “I
commenced with one grain. In the course of an hour and a half it
produced no perceptible effect. The coffee-house keeper was very anxious
to give me an additional pill of two grains, but I was contented with
half a one; and in another half-hour, feeling nothing of the expected
revery, I took half a grain more, making in all two grains in the course
of two hours. After two hours and a half from the first dose, my spirits
became sensibly excited: the pleasure of the sensation seemed to depend
on a universal expansion of mind and matter. My faculties appeared
enlarged; every thing I looked at seemed increased in volume; I had no
longer the same pleasure when I closed my eyes which I had when they
were open; it appeared to me as if it was only external objects which
were acted on by the imagination and magnified into images of pleasure:
in short, it was the ‘faint, exquisite music of a dream’ in a waking
moment. I made my way home as fast as possible, dreading at every step
that I should commit some extravagance. In walking, I was hardly
sensible of my feet touching the ground: it seemed as if I slid along
the street impelled by some invisible agent, and that my blood was
composed of some ethereal fluid, which rendered my body lighter than
air. I got to bed the moment I reached home. The most extraordinary
visions of delight filled my brain all night. In the morning I rose pale
and dispirited; my head ached; my body was so debilitated that I was
obliged to remain on the sofa all day, dearly paying for my first essay
at opium-eating.”
These after-effects are the source of the misery of the opium-eater. The
exciting influence of the drug is almost invariably followed by a
corresponding depression. The susceptibility to external impressions and
the muscular energy are both lessened. A desire for repose ensues, and a
tendency to sleep. The mouth and throat also become dry; the thirst is
increased; hunger diminishes; and the bowels usually become torpid.
When large doses are taken, all the above effects are hastened and
heightened in proportion. The period of depression comes on sooner; the
prostration of energy increases to actual stupor, with or without
dreams; the pulse becomes feeble, the muscles exceedingly relaxed; and,
if enough has been taken, death ensues.
Of course, all these effects are modified by the constitution of the
individual, by the length of time he has accustomed himself to take it,
and by the circumstances in which he is placed. But upon all persons,
and in all circumstances, its final effects, like those of ardent
spirits taken in large and repeated doses, are equally melancholy and
degrading. “A total attenuation of body,” says Dr. Oppenheim, “a
withered, yellow countenance, a lame gait, a bending of the spine,
frequently to such a degree as to assume a circular form, and glassy,
deep-sunken eyes, betray the opium-eater at the first glance. The
digestive organs are in the highest degree disturbed: the sufferer eats
scarcely any thing, and has hardly one evacuation in a week. His mental
and bodily powers are destroyed: he is impotent.”
The influence upon the mental faculties of _Haschisch_, or East Indian
hemp, when taken in large doses, is no less extraordinary than that of
opium.
That accomplished traveller, Bayard Taylor, when in Damascus,
“prompted,” as he says, “by that insatiable curiosity which led him to
prefer the acquisition of all lawful knowledge through the channel of
his own experience,” was induced to make a trial of this drug. Not
knowing the strength of the preparation he employed, he found himself,
shortly after taking the second dose, more thoroughly and completely
under the influence of the drug than was either pleasant or safe.
Speaking of the effects of the stronger dose, he says, “The same fine
nervous thrill of which I have spoken suddenly shot through me. But this
time it was accompanied with a burning sensation at the pit of the
stomach; and, instead of growing upon me with the gradual pace of
healthy slumber, and resolving me, as before, into air, it came with the
intensity of a pang, and shot throbbing along the nerves to the
extremities of my body. The sense of limitation—the confinement of our
senses within the bounds of our own flesh and blood—instantly fell away.
The walls of my frame were burst outward, and tumbled into ruin; and,
without thinking what form I wore,—losing sight even of all idea of
form,—I felt that I existed throughout a vast extent of space. The blood
pulsed from my heart, sped through uncounted leagues before it reached
my extremities; the air drawn into my lungs expanded into seas of limpid
ether; and the arch of my skull was broader than the vault of heaven.
Within the concave that held my brain were the fathomless deeps of blue;
clouds floated there, and the winds of heaven rolled them together; and
there shone the orb of the sun. It was—though I thought not of that at
the time—_like a revelation of the mystery of Omnipresence_.”
EFFECTS OF FEAR.
It is a common practice, in many parts of India, to oblige persons
suspected of crimes to chew dry rice in presence of the officers of the
law. Curious as it may appear, such is the intense influence of fear on
the salivary glands, that, if they are actually guilty, there is no
secretion of saliva in the mouth, and chewing is impossible. Such
culprits generally confess without any further efforts. On the contrary,
a consciousness of innocence allows of a proper flow of fluid for
softening the rice.
Many of our readers are familiar with the case of the thief to whom, in
common with other suspected persons, a stick of a certain length was
given, with the assurance that the stick of the thief would grow by
supernatural power. The culprit, imagining that his stick had actually
increased in length, broke a piece off, and was thus detected. A similar
anecdote is told of a farmer who detected depredations on his corn-bin
by calling his men together and making them mix up a quantity of
feathers in a sieve, assuring them, at the same time, that the feathers
would infallibly stick to the hair of the thief. After a short time, one
of the men raised his hand repeatedly to his head, and thus betrayed
himself.
A Parisian physician, during his visits made in a hired fly, had
received a bottle of real Jamaica rum as a sample, but found, after
returning home, that he had left it in the carriage. He went to the
office, and informed the manager that he had left a virulent poison in
one of the carriages, and desired him to prevent any of the coachmen
from drinking it. Hardly had he got back when he was summoned in great
haste to three of these worthies, who were suffering from the most
horrible colic; and great was his difficulty in persuading them that
they had only stolen some most excellent rum.
One of the most singular examples on record of the effect of fear acting
through the imagination is given by Breschet, a French author of the
sixteenth century, who informs us that the physicians at Montpellier,
which was then a great school of medicine, had every year two criminals,
the one living, the other dead, delivered to them for dissection. On one
occasion they determined to try what effect the mere expectation of
death would produce upon a subject in perfect health; and in order to
carry out the experiment they told the gentleman (for such was his rank)
who was placed at their discretion, that, as the easiest mode of taking
away his life, they would employ the means which Seneca had chosen for
himself, and would therefore open his veins in warm water. Accordingly
they covered his face, pinched his feet, without lancing them, and set
them in a footbath, and then spoke to each other as if they saw that the
blood was flowing freely, and life departing with it. The man remained
motionless; and when, after a while, they uncovered his face, they found
him dead.
FACIAL EXPRESSION.
The facial nerve, which presides over the movements of the face, gives
to the physiognomy its different expressions so as to reflect the
passions and emotions of the soul. To prove this experimentally, Charles
Bell took the most cunning and impressionable monkey he could find in
the menagerie of Exeter Change, and divided its facial nerve on one
side. Excited by pain, the poor monkey made faces with tenfold energy,
but exactly and solely with one side of his face, while the other
remained perfectly impassible.
Of course, no one would repeat this experiment on man; but nature
sometimes takes the whim to make such a curiosity. All who saw the
unfortunate monkey were struck with the strange analogy which its
features presented with those of a comic actor then much in vogue in
London, who could reproduce all sorts of expressions and mirror every
passion with one side of his face, while he kept the other side in a
state of perfect immobility. The experiment of Charles Bell gave the key
to the enigma. The mimic was the victim of a facial hemiplegia, from
some accident to the facial nerve; and he had the shrewdness to make
people believe that voluntary which he could not prevent, and thus to
profit by an otherwise mortifying affliction.
A BROKEN HEART.
The following interesting case of a literally _broken heart_ was related
by a late distinguished medical professor of Philadelphia, to his class,
while lecturing upon the diseases of the heart. It will be seen, on
perusing it, that the expression “broken-hearted” is not merely
figurative.
In the early part of his career, Dr. Mitchell accompanied, as surgeon, a
packet that sailed between Liverpool and one of our Southern ports. On
the return-voyage, soon after leaving Liverpool, while the doctor and
the captain of the vessel, a weather-beaten son of Neptune, but
possessed of uncommonly fine feelings and strong impulses, were
conversing in the latter’s state-room, the captain opened a large chest,
and carefully took out a number of articles of various descriptions,
which he arranged upon a table. Dr. M., surprised at the display of
costly jewels, ornaments, dresses, and all the varied paraphernalia of
which ladies are naturally fond, inquired of the captain his object in
having made so many valuable purchases. The sailor, in reply, said, that
for seven or eight years he had been devotedly attached to a lady, to
whom he had several times made proposals of marriage, but was as often
rejected; that her refusal to wed him, however, had only stimulated his
love to greater exertion; and that finally, upon renewing his offer,
declaring in the ardency of his passion that, without her society, life
was not worth living for, she consented to become his bride upon his
return from his next voyage. He was so overjoyed at the prospect of a
marriage from which, in the warmth of his feelings, he probably
anticipated more happiness than is usually allotted to mortals, that he
spent all his ready money, while in London, for bridal gifts. After
gazing at them fondly for some time, and remarking on them in turn, “I
think this will please Annie,” and “I am sure she will like that,” he
replaced them with the utmost care. This ceremony he repeated every day
during the voyage; and the doctor often observed a tear glisten in his
eye as he spoke of the pleasure he would have in presenting them to his
affianced bride. On reaching his destination, the captain arrayed
himself with more than his usual precision, and disembarked as soon as
possible, to hasten to his love. As he was about to step into the
carriage awaiting him, he was called aside by two gentlemen who desired
to make a communication, the purport of which was that the lady had
proved unfaithful to the trust reposed in her, and had married another,
with whom she had decamped shortly before. Instantly the captain was
observed to clap his hand to his breast and fall heavily to the ground.
He was taken up, and conveyed to his room on the vessel. Dr. M. was
immediately summoned; but, before he reached the poor captain, he was
dead. A post-mortem examination revealed the cause of his unfortunate
decease. His heart was found literally torn in twain! The tremendous
propulsion of the blood, consequent upon such a violent nervous shock,
forced the powerful muscular tissues asunder, and life was at an end.
The heart was broken.
SENSATION AND INTELLIGENCE AFTER DECAPITATION.
While some physiologists are of opinion that death by beheading is
attended with less actual pain than any other manner of death, and is,
therefore, the most _humane_ mode of dis-embarrassing society of a
villain, others contend, and adduce an equally formidable array of facts
to show, that intense agony is experienced, after decollation, in both
the head and the body, and that death by the guillotine, so far from
being easier than hanging, is one of the most painful known. Whatever
may really be the sensations attendant upon the separation of the head
from the body, we have, at least, some curious facts, which throw a
little light on the subject.
It is related that a professor of physiology at Genoa, who has made this
interesting subject his particular study, states that, having exposed
two heads, a quarter of an hour after decollation, to a strong light,
the eyelids closed suddenly. The tongue, which protruded from the lips,
being pricked with a needle, was drawn back into the mouth, and the
countenance expressed sudden pain. The head of a criminal named Tillier
being submitted to examination after the guillotine, the eyes turned in
every direction from whence he was called by name.
Fontenelle declares that he has frequently seen the heads of guillotined
persons move their lips, as if they were uttering remonstrances against
their cruel treatment. If this be so, there is nothing very incredible
in the report, sometimes treated as fabulous, that when the executioner
gave a blow on the face of Charlotte Corday after the head was severed
from the body, _the countenance_ expressed violent indignation.
It is stated on credible authority that some galvanic experiments were
once tried on the body of a habitual snuff-taker, after he had undergone
the operation of being guillotined. On receiving the first shock, the
headless trunk joined its thumb and fore-finger, and deliberately raised
its right arm, as if in the act of taking its customary _pinch_, and
seemed much astonished and perplexed at finding _no nose_ to receive its
wonted tribute!
But the most marvellous tale is told of Sir Everard Digby, who was
beheaded in 1600 for being concerned in the famous Gunpowder Plot. After
the head was struck off, the executioner proceeded, according to the
barbarous usages of the day, to pluck the heart from his body; and when
he had done so, he held it up in full view of the numerous assemblage
gathered round the scaffold to witness the exhibition, and shouted, with
a loud voice, _This is the heart of a traitor!_ Upon which, the _head_,
which was quietly resting on the scaffold, at the distance of a few
feet, showed sundry signs of indignation, and, opening its mouth,
audibly exclaimed, “_That is a lie!_”
The reader will be reminded, by this case of the English knight, of the
conjurer in the Arabian Nights, who, in consequence of a failure in his
necromancy, was decapitated by the order and in the presence of the
Sultan. The head of the sorcerer, after separation from his body, sat
erect upon the floor, and, with a mysterious expression of countenance,
informed his highness that as he rather thought he should have no
further occasion for his books of magic, he would make a present of them
to him; and since he could not very well go to fetch them himself, if
his highness would take the trouble to send for them, he would instruct
him in their use. On being brought, he told the Sultan it was first
necessary for him to turn over every leaf in the books from the
beginning to the end. But he found it was impossible to do this, as they
stuck together, without often wetting his fingers at his mouth. This
infused into the monarch’s veins a subtle and virulent venom, as the
books were poisoned, in consequence of which he died very soon in
torture, overwhelmed with the taunts and curses of the decapitated head.
A case occurred some years ago at Ticonderoga, N. Y., which settles the
question of pain, so far as the body is concerned, and proves that no
sensations whatever can exist in the _body_ after its connection with
the brain is dissolved. It was reported at the time in the Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal, as follows:—
E. D., aged fifty, a man of hale constitution and robust, in making an
effort to scale a board fence, was suddenly precipitated backwards to
the ground, striking first upon the superior and anterior portion of the
head, which luxated the dentatus anteriorly on the third cervical
vertebra. He was at length discovered, and taken in (as the patient
said) after he had lain nearly an hour, in a condition perfectly bereft
of voluntary motion; but, being present, I did not suspect that the
power of sensation was also gone, until the patient (whose speech
remained almost, or quite, perfect, and who was uncommonly loquacious at
that time) said, did he not know to the contrary, he should think that
he had no body. His flesh was then punctured, and sometimes deeply, even
from the feet to the neck; but the patient gave no evidence of feeling,
and, when interrogated, answered that he felt nothing; and, added he, “I
never was more perfectly free from pain in my life;” but he remarked
that he could not live, and accordingly sent for his family, twelve
miles distant, and arranged all his various concerns in a perfectly sane
manner.
The head was thrown back in such a position as to prevent his seeing his
body. The pulse was much more sluggish than natural. Respiration and
speech, but slightly affected, were gradually failing; but he could
articulate distinctly until within a few minutes of his death. All the
senses of the head remained quite perfect to the last. He died
forty-eight hours after the fall.
Repeated attempts were made to reduce the dislocation, but the
transverse processes had become so interlocked that every effort proved
abortive. There was undoubtedly in this case a perfect compression of
the spinal marrow, which prevented the egress of nervous influence from
the brain, while the pneumogastric nerve remained unembarrassed.
ANTIPATHIES.
Antipathies are as various as they are unaccountable, and often in
appearance ridiculous. Yet who can control them, or reason himself into
a conviction that they are absurd? They are, in truth, natural
infirmities or peculiarities, and not fantastical imaginings. In the
French “Ana” we find mention of a lady who would faint on seeing boiled
lobsters; and several persons are mentioned, among them Mary de Medicis,
who experienced the same inconvenience from the smell of roses, though
particularly partial to the odor of jonquils and hyacinths. Another is
recorded who invariably fell into convulsions at the sight of a carp.
Erasmus, although a native of Rotterdam, had such an aversion to fish of
any kind that the smell alone threw him into a fever. Ambrose Paré
mentions a patient of his who could never look at an eel without falling
into a fit. Joseph Scaliger and Peter Abono could neither of them drink
milk. Cardan was particularly disgusted at the sight of eggs. Ladislaus,
King of Poland, fell sick if he saw an apple; and if that fruit was
exhibited to Chesne, secretary to Francis I., a prodigious quantity of
blood would issue from his nose. Henry III. of France could not endure
to sit in a room with a cat, and the Duke of Schomberg ran out of any
chamber into which one entered. A gentleman in the court of the Emperor
Ferdinand would bleed at the nose even if he heard the mewing of the
obnoxious animal, no matter at how great a distance. M. de l’Ancre, in
his _Tableau de l’Inconstance de Toutes Choses_, gives an account of a
very sensible man, who was so terrified on seeing a hedgehog that for
two years he imagined his bowels were gnawed by such an animal. In the
same book we find an account of an officer of distinguished bravery who
never dared to face a mouse, it would so terrify him, unless he had his
sword in his hand. M. de l’Ancre says he knew the individual perfectly
well. There are some persons who cannot bear to see spiders, and others
who eat them as a luxury, as they do snails and frogs. M. Vangheim, a
celebrated huntsman in Hanover, would faint outright, or, if he had
sufficient time, would run away, at the sight of a roast pig. The
philosopher Chrysippus had such an aversion to external reverence, that,
if any one saluted him, he would involuntarily fall down. Valerius
Maximus says that this Chrysippus died of laughing at seeing an ass eat
figs out of a silver plate. John Rol, a gentleman of Alcantara, would
swoon on hearing the word _lana_ (wool) pronounced, although his cloak
was made of wool. Lord Bacon fainted at every eclipse of the moon. Tycho
Brahe shuddered at the sight of a fox; Ariosto, at the sight of a bath;
and Cæsar trembled at the crowing of a cock.
STRANGE INSTANCE OF SYMPATHY.
The Duke de Saint Simon mentions in his _Mémoires_ a singular instance
of constitutional sympathy existing between two brothers. These were
twins,—the President de Banquemore, and the Governor de Bergues, who
were surprisingly alike, not only in their persons, but in their
feelings. One morning, he tells us, when the President was at the royal
audience he was suddenly attacked by an intense pain in the thigh: at
the same instant, as it was discovered afterwards, his brother, who was
with the army, received a severe wound from a sword on the same leg, and
precisely the same part of the leg!
WALKING BLINDFOLDED.
The difficulty of walking to any given point blindfolded can only be
conceived by those who have made the experiment. After wandering about
in every possible direction, now east, now west, at one time forward, at
another time backward, working for a while at the zigzag, then shooting
out like an arrow from a bow, and not unfrequently describing a complete
circle like a miller’s horse, the party is generally a thousand times
more likely to end his travels at the spot from which he set out, than
at the spot to which he wished to go. The following achievement presents
as extraordinary an exception to the general experience on this head, as
perhaps ever occurred:—
Dennis Hendrick, a stone-mason, for a wager of ten guineas, walked from
the Exchange in Liverpool, along Deal Street, to the corner of Byrom
Street,—being a distance of three-quarters of a mile,—blindfolded, and
rolling a coach-wheel. On starting, there were two plasters of Burgundy
pitch put on his eyes, and a handkerchief tied over them, to prevent all
possibility of his seeing. He started precisely at half-past seven in
the morning, and completed his undertaking at twenty minutes past eight,
being in fifty minutes.
FELINE CLOCKS.
M. Huc, in his recent work on the Chinese Empire, tells us that “one
day, when we went to pay a visit to some families of Chinese Christian
peasants, we met, near a farm, a young lad, who was taking a buffalo to
graze along our path. We asked him carelessly, as we passed, whether it
was yet noon. The child raised his head to look at the sun; but it was
hidden behind thick clouds, and he could read no answer there. ‘The sky
is so cloudy,’ said he; ‘but wait a moment;’ and with these words he ran
towards the farm, and came back a few moments afterward with a cat in
his arms. ‘Look here,’ said he, ‘it is not noon yet;’ and he showed us
the cat’s eyes, by pushing up the lids with his hands. We looked at the
child with surprise, but he was evidently in earnest; and the cat,
though astonished, and not much pleased at the experiment made on her
eyes, behaved with the most exemplary complaisance. ‘Very well,’ said
we: ‘thank you;’ and he then let go the cat, who made her escape pretty
quickly, and we continued our route. To say the truth, we had not at all
understood the proceeding; but we did not wish to question the little
pagan, lest he should find out that we were Europeans by our ignorance.
As soon as we reached the farm, however, we made haste to ask our
Christians whether they could tell the clock by looking into a cat’s
eyes. They seemed surprised at the question; but, as there was no danger
in confessing to them our ignorance of the properties of the cat’s eyes,
we related what had just taken place. That was all that was necessary.
Our complaisant neophytes immediately gave chase to all the cats in the
neighborhood. They brought us three or four, and explained in what
manner they might be made use of for watches. They pointed out that the
pupil of their eyes went on constantly growing narrower until twelve
o’clock, when they became like a fine line, as thin as a hair, drawn
perpendicularly across the eye, and that after twelve the dilatation
recommenced. When we had attentively examined the eyes of all the cats
at our disposal, we came to the conclusion that it was past noon, as all
the eyes perfectly agreed upon the point.”
DEVONSHIRE SUPERSTITION.
The following case of gross superstition, which occurred lately in one
of the largest market-towns in the north of Devon, is related by an
eye-witness:—
A young woman living in the neighborhood of Holsworthy, having for some
time past been subject to periodical fits of illness, endeavored to
effect a cure by attending at the afternoon service at the parish
church, accompanied by thirty young men, her near neighbors. Service
over, she sat in the porch of the church, and each of the young men, as
they passed out in succession, dropped a penny into her lap; but the
last, instead of a penny, gave her half a crown, taking from her the
twenty-nine pennies which she had already received. With this half-crown
in her hand, she walked three times round the communion-table, and
afterwards had it made into a ring, by the wearing of which she believes
she will recover her health.
A SKULL THAT HAD A TONGUE.
When Dr. John Donne, the famous poet and divine of the reign of James
I., attained possession of his first living, he took a walk into the
churchyard, where the sexton was at the time digging a grave, and in the
course of his labor threw up a skull. This skull the doctor took in his
hands, and found a rusty headless nail sticking in the temple of it,
which he drew out secretly and wrapped in the corner of his
handkerchief. He then demanded of the grave-digger whether he knew whose
skull that was. He said it was a man’s who kept a brandy-shop,—an
honest, drunken fellow, who one night, having taken two quarts, was
found dead in his bed next morning. “Had he a wife?” “Yes.” “What
character does she bear?” “A very good one: only the neighbors reflect
on her because she married the day after her husband was buried.” This
was enough for the doctor, who, under the pretence of visiting his
parishioners, called on the woman: he asked her several questions, and,
among others, what sickness her husband died of. She gave him the same
account he had before received, whereupon he suddenly opened the
handkerchief, and cried, in an authoritative voice, “Woman, do you know
this nail?” She was struck with horror at the unexpected demand,
instantly owned the fact, and was brought to trial and executed. Truly
might one say, with even more point than Hamlet, that the skull had a
tongue in it.
ROMANTIC HIGHWAYMAN.
In a letter to Mr. Mead, preserved among that gentleman’s papers in the
British Museum, and dated February 3, 1625, is the following account of
a singular highwayman:—
Mr. Clavell, a gentleman, a knight’s eldest son, a great mail and
highway robber, was, together with a soldier, his companion, arraigned
and condemned on Monday last, at the King’s Bench bar: he pleaded for
himself that he never had struck or wounded any man, never taken any
thing from their bodies, as rings, &c., never cut their girths or
saddles, or done them, when he robbed, any corporeal violence. He was,
with his companion, reprieved; he sent the following verses to the king
for mercy, and hath obtained it:—
I that have robbed so oft am now bid stand;
Death and the law assault me, and demand
My life and means: I never used men so,
But, having ta’en their money, let them go.
Yet, must I die? and is there no relief?
The King of kings had mercy on a thief!
So may our gracious king, too, if he please,
Without his council grant me a release;
God is his precedent, and men shall see
His mercy go beyond severity.
Singular Customs.
MEMENTO MORI.
The ancient Egyptians, at their grand festivals and parties of pleasure,
always had a coffin placed on the table at meals, containing a mummy, or
a skeleton of painted wood, which, Herodotus tells us, was presented to
each of the guests with this admonition:—“Look upon this, and enjoy
yourself; for such will you become when divested of your mortal garb.”
This custom is frequently alluded to by Horace and Catullus; and
Petronius tells us that at the celebrated banquet of Trimalcion a silver
skeleton was placed on the table to awaken in the minds of the guests
the remembrance of death and of deceased friends.
BEAUTIFUL SUPERSTITION.
Among the superstitions of the Seneca Indians was one remarkable for its
singular beauty. When a maiden died, they imprisoned a young bird until
it first began to try its powers of song, and then, loading it with
messages and caresses, they loosed its bonds over her grave, in the
belief that it would not fold its wing nor close its eyes until it had
flown to the spirit-land and delivered its precious burden of affection
to the loved and lost.
STRANGE FONDNESS FOR BEAUTY.
In Carazan, a province to the northeast of Tartary, the inhabitants have
a custom, says Dr. Heylin, when a stranger of handsome shape and fine
features comes into their houses, of killing him in the night,—not out
of desire of spoil, or to eat his body, but that the soul of such a
comely person might remain among them.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF DRUIDICAL TEMPLES.
There is a curious tradition both of St. Patrick in Ireland, and of St.
Columba in Iona, that when they attempted to found churches they were
impeded by an evil spirit, who threw down the walls as fast as they were
built, until a human victim was sacrificed and buried under the
foundation, which being done, they stood firm.
It is to be feared that there is too much truth in this story. Not, of
course, that such a thing was done by either a Christian Patrick or
Columba, but by the Druids, from whom the story was fathered upon the
former. Under each of the twelve pillars of one of the Druidical
circular temples in Iona a human body was found to have been buried.
ABYSSINIAN BEEFSTEAKS.
Mr. Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, has frequently been ridiculed for
asserting that it is a practice in Abyssinia to cut slices from the
backs of their cattle while alive, and then drive them back to pasture;
but his statements have been confirmed by more recent travellers. Mr.
Salt says that a soldier belonging to the party to which he was attached
took one of the cows they were driving before them, cut off two pieces
of flesh from the glutæi muscles of the buttock, near the tail, and then
sewed up the wound, plastering it over with manure, after which the
party proceeded to cook the steaks.
OSTIAK REGARD FOR BEARS.
Tooke, in his work on Russia, tells us of a strange custom that prevails
among the Ostiaks,—a Finnish nation. The Ostiaks, says he, believe that
bears enjoy after death a happiness at least equal to that which they
expect for themselves. Whenever they kill one of these animals,
therefore, they sing songs over him, in which they ask his pardon, and
hang up his skin, to which they show many civilities and pay many fine
compliments, in order to induce him not to wreak his vengeance upon them
in the abode of spirits.
MAKING NOSES.
At Kat Kangra, a place visited by the traveller Vigne, at the base of
the Himalaya, there are native surgeons, celebrated for putting on new
noses. The maimed come a great distance for repairs. When it is
recollected that the rajahs cut off ears and noses without stint, it may
be readily supposed that these surgeons have plenty of patients. The
hope of a restoration of the nasal organ brings them from remote
distances. To all intents and purposes, it is done like the Taliacotian
operation in our hospitals,—by taking a flap of integument from the
forehead. With very simple instruments, and a little cotton wool
besmeared with pitch, to keep the parts together, the success is
sufficient to extend the reputation of the rude operators.
LION-CATCHING IN SOUTH AFRICA.
Mr. Lemue, who formerly resided at Motito, and is familiar with the
Kallibari country, assures us that the remarkable accounts sometimes
circulated as to the people of that part of Africa catching lions by the
tail—of which, one would naturally be incredulous—were perfectly true.
Lions would sometimes become extremely dangerous to the inhabitants.
Having become accustomed to human flesh, they would not willingly eat
any thing else. When a neighborhood became infested, the men would
determine on the measures to be adopted to rid themselves of the
nuisance; then, forming themselves into a band, they would proceed in
search of their royal foe, and beard the lion in his lair. Standing
close by one another, the lion would make his spring on some one of the
party,—every man, of course, hoping he might escape the attack,—when
instantly others would dash forward and seize his tail, lifting it up
close to the body with all their might; thus not only astonishing the
animal, and absolutely taking him off his guard, but rendering his
efforts powerless for the moment; while others closed in with their
spears, and at once stabbed the monster through and through.
HIGH LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
We gain the following glimpse of the manners of the upper classes in
England, four hundred years ago, from the Journal of Elizabeth
Woodville, subsequently Lady Grey, and finally Queen of Edward IV.
Royalty _in petto_ seems to have taken, with a most refreshing
cordiality, to the avocations of baking and brewing, pig-tending,
poultry-feeding, and pony-catching.
_Monday morning._—Rose at 4 o’clock, and helped Catharine to milk the
cows. Rachel, the dairy-maid, having scalded her hand in so bad a
manner the night before, made a poultice, and gave Robin a penny to
get something from the apothecary.
_6 o’clock._—The buttock of beef too much boiled, and beer a little
stale; (mem. to talk to the cook about the first fault, and to mend
the other myself by tapping a fresh barrel immediately.)
_7 o’clock._—Went to walk with the lady my mother in the court-yard;
fed twenty-five men and women; chid Roger severely for expressing some
ill will at attending us with some broken meat.
_8 o’clock._—Went into the paddock behind the house with my maid
Dorothy; caught Thump, the little pony, myself; rode a matter of ten
miles without saddle or bridle.
_10 o’clock._—Went to dinner. John Grey, a most comely youth; but what
is that to me? a virtuous maid should be entirely under the direction
of her parents. John ate but little, and stole a great many tender
glances at me. Said women could never be handsome in his eyes who were
not good-tempered. I hope my temper is not intolerable: nobody finds
fault with it but Roger, and he is the most disorderly youth in our
house. John Grey likes white teeth: my teeth are a pretty good color.
I think my hair is as black as jet,—though I say it; and John Grey, if
I mistake not, is of the same opinion.
_11 o’clock._—Rose from the table; the company all desirous of walking
in the field. John Grey lifted me over every stile, and twice squeezed
my hand with much vehemence. I cannot say I should have much
objection, for he plays at prison-bar as well as any of the country
gentlemen, is remarkably dutiful to his parents, my lord and lady, and
never misses church on Sunday.
_3 o’clock._—Poor Farmer Robinson’s house burned down by accidental
fire. John Grey proposed a subscription among the company for the
relief of the farmer, and gave no less than four pounds with this
benevolent intent. (Mem. never saw him look so comely as at this
moment.)
_4 o’clock._—Went to prayers.
_6 o’clock._—Fed hogs and poultry.
HAIR IN SEALS.
Stillingfleet, referring to a MS. author who wrote a chronicle of St.
Augustine, says:—
He observes one particular custom of the Normans, _that they were wont
to put some of the hair of their heads or beards into the wax of their
seals_: I suppose rather to be kept as monuments, than as adding any
strength or weight to their charters. So he observes that some of the
hair of William, Earl of Warren, was in his time kept in the Priory of
Lewis.
SCORNING THE CHURCH.
In North Durham, it is customary, in case that the banns of marriage are
thrice published, and the marriage does not take place, for the refusing
party, whether male or female, to pay forty shillings to the vicar as a
penalty for _scorning the church_.
MATRIMONIAL ADVERTISEMENT.
The following strange advertisement from an old newspaper exhibits one
of the customs of rural life in England more than a century ago:—
May no miscarriage
Prevent my marriage!
Matthew Dowson, in Bothell, Cumberland, intends to be married at Holm
Church, on the Thursday before Whitsuntide next, whenever that may
happen—and to return to Bothell to dine.
Mr. Reed gives a turkey to be roasted; William Elliot gives a hen to
be roasted; Edward Clement gives a fat lamb to be roasted; Joseph
Gibson gives a fat pig to be roasted; William Hughes gives a fat calf
to be roasted.
And in order that all this roast may be well basted—do you see?—Mary
Pearson, Betty Hughes, Mary Bushby, Molly Fisher, Sarah Briscoe, and
Betty Porthoust, give, each of them, a pound of butter. The advertiser
will provide every thing else suitable for so festive an occasion: and
he hereby gives notice to all young women desirous of changing their
condition, that he is at present disengaged, and he advises them to
consider that although there may be luck in leisure, yet, in this
case, delays are dangerous; for with him, he is determined that it
shall be—first come, first served.
So come along, lasses who wish to be married—
Mattie Dowson is vexed that so long he has tarried.
Facetiæ.
TITLES FOR THE LIBRARY DOOR, CHATSWORTH.
The Duke of Devonshire found it necessary to construct a door of sham
books for an entrance to the library of Chatsworth. He was tired of the
hackneyed _Plain Dealings_, _Essays on Wood_, _Perpetual Motion_,
_etc._, on such doors, and asked Thomas Hood to give him some new
titles. The following are selections from his amusing list:—
McAdam’s Views in Rhodes.
Pygmalion. By Lord Bacon.
Dante’s Inferno; or, Descriptions of Van Demon’s Land.
Tadpoles; or, Tales out of my Own Head.
Designs for Friezes. By Sir John Franklin.
Recollections of Bannister. By Lord Stair.
Ye Devill on Two-Styx (Black Letter).
Malthus’ Attack of Infantry.
The Life of Zimmerman. By Himself.
Boyle on Steam.
Book-Keeping by Single Entry.
Rules for Punctuation. By a thorough-bred Pointer.
On the Site of Tully’s Offices.
Cornaro on Longevity and the Construction of 74’s.
Cursory Remarks on Swearing.
Shelley’s Conchologist.
On Sore Throat and the Migration of the Swallow. By Abernethy.
The Scottish Boccaccio. By D. Cameron.
Chronological Account of the Date Tree. Percy Vere. In 40 vols.
In-i-go on Secret Entrances.
Cook’s Specimens of the Sandwich Tongue.
Peel on Bell’s System.
Lamb’s Recollections of Suett.
Blaine on Equestrian Burglary; or The Breaking-in of Horses.
The Rape of the Lock, with Bramah’s Notes.
Kosciusko on the Right of the Poles to stick up for themselves.
Haughty-cultural Remarks on London Pride.
THE JESTS OF HIEROCLES.
§A young§ man, meeting an acquaintance, said, “I heard that you were
dead.” “But,” says the other, “you see me alive.” “I do not know how
that may be,” replied he: “you are a notorious liar; but my informant
was a person of credit.”
A man wrote to a friend in Greece, begging him to purchase books. From
negligence or avarice, he neglected to execute the commission; but,
fearing that his correspondent might be offended, he exclaimed, when
next they met, “My dear friend, I never got the letter you wrote to me
about the books.”
An irritable man went to visit a sick friend, and asked him concerning
his health. The patient was so ill that he could not reply; whereupon
the other, in a rage, said, “I hope that I may soon fall sick, and then
I will not answer you when you visit me.”
A speculative gentleman, wishing to teach his horse to live without
food, starved him to death. “I suffered a great loss,” said he, “for
just as he learned to live without eating, he died.”
A robust countryman, meeting a physician, ran to hide behind a wall:
being asked the cause, he replied, “It is so long since I have been
sick, that I am ashamed to look a physician in the face.”
A curious inquirer, desirous to know how he looked when asleep, sat with
closed eyes before a mirror.
A man, hearing that a raven would live two hundred years, bought one to
try.
One of twin brothers died: a fellow, meeting the survivor, asked, “Which
is it that’s dead, you or your brother?”
A man who had to cross a river entered a boat on horseback: being asked
why, he replied, “I must ride, because I am in a hurry.”
A foolish fellow, having a house to sell, took a brick from the wall to
exhibit as a sample.
A man, meeting a friend, said, “I spoke to you last night in a dream.”
“Pardon me,” replied the other; “I did not hear you.”
A man that had nearly been drowned while bathing, declared that he would
never enter the water again till he had learned to swim.
A student in want of money sold his books, and wrote home, “Father,
rejoice; for I now derive my support from literature.”
During a storm, the passengers on board a vessel that appeared in danger
seized different implements to aid them in swimming; and one of the
number selected for this purpose the anchor.
A wittol, a barber, and a bald-headed man travelled together. Losing
their way, they were forced to sleep in the open air; and, to avert
danger, it was agreed to keep watch by turns. The lot fell first on the
barber, who, for amusement, shaved the fool’s head while he slept; he
then woke him, and the fool, raising his hand to scratch his head,
exclaimed, “Here’s a pretty mistake! Rascal, you have waked the
bald-headed man instead of me.”
A gentleman had a cask of fine wine, from which his servant stole a
large quantity. When the master perceived the deficiency, he diligently
inspected the top of the cask, but could find no traces of an opening.
“Look if there be not a hole in the bottom,” said a bystander.
“Blockhead,” he replied, “do you not see that the deficiency is at the
top, and not at the bottom?”
BREVITY.
The London member of the house of Rothschild once wrote to his Paris
correspondent to ascertain if any alteration had occurred in the price
of certain stocks. The inquiry was only a simple
=?=
The reply was equally brief: ———
=0=
Mr. McNair, a man of few words, wrote to his nephew at Pittsburg the
following laconic letter:—
§Dear Nephew§,
=;=
To which the nephew replied, by return of mail,—
§Dear Uncle§,
=:=
The long of this short was, that the uncle wrote to his nephew, _See my
coal on_, which a se-mi-col-on expressed; and the youngster informed his
uncle that the coal was shipped, by simply saying, _Col-on_.
When Lord Buckley married a rich and beautiful lady, whose hand had been
solicited at the same time by Lord Powis, in the height of his felicity
he wrote thus to the Duke of Dorset:—
_Dear Dorset_:—I am the happiest dog alive!
§Buckley.§
§ANSWER§:
_Dear Buckley_:—Every dog has his day.
§Dorset.§
Louis XIV., who loved a concise style, one day met a priest on the road,
whom he asked, hastily,—
“Whence came you—where are you going—what do you want?”
The priest instantly replied,—
“From Bruges—to Paris—a benefice.”
“You shall have it,” replied the king.
A lady having occasion to call upon Abernethy, the great surgeon, and
knowing his repugnance to any thing like verbosity, forbore speaking
except simply in reply to his laconic inquiries. The consultation,
during three visits, was conducted in the following manner:—
_First Day._—(Lady enters and holds out her finger.) _Abernethy._—“Cut?”
_Lady._—“Bite.” _A._—“Dog?” _L._—“Parrot.” _A._—“Go home and poultice
it.”
_Second Day._—(Finger held out again.) _A._—“Better?” _L._—“Worse.”
_A._—“Go home and poultice it again.”
_Third Day._—(Finger held out as before.) _A._—“Better?” _L._—“Well.”
_A._—“You’re the most sensible woman I ever met with. Good-bye. Get
out.”
Since Cæsar’s famous “_veni, vidi, vici_,” (I came, I saw, I conquered,)
many military commanders have rendered their despatches memorable for
pith and conciseness; but Sir Sidney Smith bears the palm for both wit
and brevity in his announcement of the capture of Scinde:—“_Peccavi_” (I
have sinned). Gen. Havelock’s “We are in _Lucknow_” has already become a
matter of history.
The following _jeu d’esprit_, written in 1793, was occasioned by the
circumstance of Lord Howe returning from his pursuit of the French
fleet, after an absence of six weeks, during which he had only _seen_
the enemy, without having been able to overtake and bring them to
action:—
When Cæsar triumphed o’er his Gallic foes,
Three words concise his gallant acts disclose;
But Howe, more brief, comprises his in _one_,
And _vidi_ tells us all that he has done.
If brevity is the soul of wit, Talleyrand was the greatest of wits. A
single word was often sufficient for his keenest retort. When a
hypochondriac, who had notoriously led a profligate life, complained to
the diplomatist that he was enduring the torments of hell,—“Je sens les
tourmens de l’enfer,”—the answer was, “_Déjà?_” (Already?) To a lady who
had lost her husband Talleyrand once addressed a letter of condolence in
two words:—“O, Madame!” In less than a year the lady had married again;
and then his letter of congratulation was, “Ah, Madame!” Could any thing
be more wittily significant than the “O” and the “Ah” of this
sententious correspondence?
SAME JOKE DIVERSIFIED.
Prince Metternich once requested the autograph of Jules Janin. The witty
journalist sent him the following:—
“I acknowledge the receipt from M. de Metternich of twenty bottles of
Johannisberg, for which I return infinite thanks.
“§Jules Janin.§”
The prince, in return, doubled the quantity, and sent him forty bottles.
This is equal to the joke of Rochester on the occasion of Charles II.’s
crew of rakes writing pieces of poetry and handing them to Dryden, so
that he might decide which was the prettiest poet. Rochester finished
his piece in a few minutes; and Dryden decided that it was the best. On
reading it, the lines were found to be the following:—
“I promise to pay, to the order of John Dryden, twenty
pounds.—§Rochester.§”
The following hyperbolical compliment paid to Louis XIV., after his
numerous victories, is almost literally translated from the French of a
Gascon author of those days, and, extraordinary as it may seem, is said
to have obtained for the writer of it the premium alluded to in his
gasconade:—
To him whose muse in lofty strains
Shall blazon Louis’ famed campaigns
And every great exploit,
Belongs the prize of twenty pounds:—
What! only twenty! Blood and wounds!
For each ’tis scarce a doit.[17]
Footnote 17:
The following inscription on a medal of Louis XIV. illustrates the
servile adulation of that period:—
See in profile great Louis here designed!
Both eyes portrayed would strike the gazer blind.
The Emperor Nicholas of Russia was thus “sold,” a few years ago. During
an interview which Martineff, the comedian and mimic, had succeeded in
obtaining with the Prince, (Volkhonsky, high steward,) the emperor
walked into the room unexpectedly, yet with a design, as was soon made
evident. Telling the actor that he had heard of his talents and should
like to see a specimen of them, he bade him mimic the old minister. This
feat was performed with so much gusto that the emperor laughed
immoderately, and then, to the great horror of the poor actor, desired
to have himself “taken off.” “’Tis physically impossible,” pleaded
Martineff. “Nonsense!” said Nicholas: “I insist on its being done.”
Finding himself on the horns of a dilemma, the mimic took heart of
grace, and, with a promptitude and presence of mind that probably saved
him, buttoned his coat over his breast, expanded his chest, threw up his
head, and, assuming the imperial port to the best of his power, strode
across the room and back; then, stopping opposite the minister, he
cried, in the exact tone and manner of the Czar, “Volkhonsky! pay
Monsieur Martineff one thousand silver roubles.” The emperor for a
moment was disconcerted; but, recovering himself with a faint smile, he
ordered the money to be paid.
OLD NICK.
When Nicholas Biddle was President of the United States Bank, there was
an old negro hanger-on about the premises named Harry. One day, in a
social mood, Biddle said to the darkey, “Well what is your name, my old
friend?” “Harry, sir—ole Harry, sir,” said the other, touching his
shabby hat. “Old Harry!” said Biddle, “why that is the name that they
give to the devil, is it not?” “Yes, sir,” said the colored gentleman,
“sometimes ole Harry and sometimes ole Nick.”
SYLLOGISM.
The famous sorites or syllogism of Themistocles was: That his infant son
commanded the whole world, proved thus:—
My infant son rules his mother.
His mother rules me.
I rule the Athenians.
The Athenians rule the Greeks.
The Greeks rule Europe.
And Europe rules the world.
A FALSE FRIEND.
“You may say what you please,” said Bill Muggins, speaking of a deceased
comrade, “Jake was a good boy, he was, and a great hunter; but he was
the meanest man that ever breathed in Old Kentuck; and he played one of
the sharpest tricks you ever heard of, and I’ll tell you how it was. I
was out shootin’ with him one mornin’. I tell you the duck was plenty;
and other game we despised as long as we could see duck. Jake he was too
mean to blaze away unless he could shoot two or three at a shot. He used
to blow me up for wastin’ shot and powder so, but I didn’t care—I banged
away. Well, somehow or other, while fussin’ around the boat, my
powder-flask fell overboard in about sixteen feet of water, which was as
clear as good gin, and I could see the flask lay at the bottom. Jake was
a good swimmer, and a good diver, and he said he’d fetch her up; so in a
minit he was in. Well, I waited quite a considerable time for him to
come up; then I looked over the side for him. Great Jerusalem! there sot
old Jake on a pile of oyster-shells pourin’ the powder out of my flask
into his’n. Wasn’t that mean?”
GASCONADE AND HOAXING.
A Gascon, in proof of his nobility, asserted that in his father’s castle
they used no other firewood than the batons of the different marshals of
France of his family.
A Gascon officer, on hearing of the boastful exploits of a certain
prince, who, among other things, had killed six men with his own hands
in the course of an assault upon a city, said, disdainfully, “Poh,
that’s nothing: the mattress I sleep on is stuffed with nothing but the
_whiskers_ of those I have sent to the other world.”
Vernon’s skill in the invention of marvellous stories has never been
surpassed, even by the peddlers of wooden nutmegs. Talking one day about
the intense heat of the sun in India, he remarked that it was a common
thing there for people to be charred to powder by a _coup de soleil_,
and that upon one occasion, while dining with a Hindoo, one of his
host’s wives was suddenly reduced to ashes, whereupon the Hindoo rang
the bell, and said to the attendant who answered it, “Bring fresh
glasses, and _sweep up your mistress_.”
Another of his stories was this. He happened to be shooting hyenas near
Carthage, when he stumbled, and fell down an abyss of many fathoms’
depth. He was surprised, however, to find himself unhurt; for he lighted
as if on a feather bed. Presently he perceived that he was gently moved
upward; and, having by degrees reached the mouth of the abyss, he again
stood safe on terra firma. He had fallen upon an immense mass of bats,
which, disturbed from their slumbers, had risen out of the abyss and
brought him up with them.
CHARLES MATHEWS AND THE SILVER SPOON.
Soon after Mathews went from York to the Haymarket Theatre, he was
invited with other performers to dine with Mr. A——, afterwards an
eminent silversmith, but who at that period followed the business of a
pawnbroker. It so happened that A—— was called out of the parlor, at the
back of the shop, during dinner. Mathews, with wonderful celerity,
altering his hair, countenance, hat, &c., took a large gravy-spoon off
the dinner-table, ran instantly into the street, entered one of the
little dark doors leading to the pawnbroker’s counter, and actually
pledged to the unconscious A—— his own gravy-spoon. Mathews contrived
with equal rapidity to return and seat himself (having left the
street-door open) before A—— reappeared at the dinner-table. As a matter
of course, this was made the subject of a wager. An _éclaircissement_
took place before the party broke up, to the infinite astonishment of
A——.
A ROYAL QUANDARY.
On the first consignment of Seidlitz Powders to the capital of Delhi,
the monarch was deeply interested in the accounts of the refreshing
beverage. A box was brought to the king in full court, and the
interpreter explained to his majesty how it was to be used. Into a
goblet he put the contents of the twelve blue papers; and, having added
water, the king drank it off. This was the alkali, and the royal
countenance exhibited no sign of satisfaction. It was then explained
that in the _combination_ of the two powders lay the luxury; and the
twelve white powders were quickly dissolved in water, and as eagerly
swallowed by his majesty. With a shriek that will never be forgotten,
the monarch rose, staggered, exploded, and, in his agony, screamed,
“_Hold me down!_” Then, rushing from the throne, he fell prostrate on
the floor. There he lay during the long-continued effervescence of the
compound, spirting like ten thousand pennyworths of imperial pop, and
believing himself in the agonies of death, a melancholy and convincing
proof that kings are mortal.
RELICS.
“What is this?” said a traveller, who entertained reasonable doubts as
to the genuineness of certain so-called relics of antiquity, while
visiting an old cathedral in the Netherlands: “what is contained in this
phial?”
“Sir,” replied the sacristan, “that phial contains one of the frogs
picked up when Pharaoh was visited with the plague of frogs.”
“I am sure, then,” rejoined the traveller, “there could have been no
epicures in those days.”
“Why so?” said the sacristan.
“Because they would have eaten him, he is so large and fat.”
The traveller took up another phial which was near. “This contains?”
said he,—
“That is a most precious relic of the church, which we value very
highly.”
“It looks very _dark_.”
“There is good reason for that.”
“I am somewhat curious. Tell me why.”
“You perceive it is very dark.”
“I own it.”
“That, sir, is some of the darkness which Moses spread over the land of
Egypt.”
“Indeed! I presume, what the moderns call _darkness made visible_.”
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.
“Mother,” asked a little girl, while listening to the reading of Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, “why don’t the book never mention Topsy’s last name? I have
tried to hear it whenever it speaks of her, but it has not once said
it.”
“Why, she had no other name, my child.”
“Yes she had, mother, and I know it.”
“Well, what was it?”
“Why Turvy—Topsy Turvy.”
“You had better go to bed, my dear,” said the mother. “You are as bad as
your old grandmother, for she can’t say pork without beans, for the life
of her.”
P. AND Q.
When it was fully expected that Mr. W——, whose unmanageable voice had
obtained for him the title of “Bubble and Squeak,” would be elected
Speaker of the House of Commons, and Mr. Canning was so informed, he
observed that if the report were true, the members must mind their P’s
and Q’s; or else, instead of saying “Mr. S_p_eaker,” they would say “Mr.
S_q_ueaker!”
“JACK ROBINSON.”
Lord Eldon relates that during the parliamentary debates on the India
Bill, when Mr. John Robinson was Secretary to the Treasury, Sheridan, on
one evening when Fox’s majorities were decreasing, said, “Mr. Speaker,
this is not at all to be wondered at, when a member is employed to
corrupt everybody in order to obtain votes.” Upon this there was a great
outcry by almost everybody in the house. “Who is it?” “Name him! Name
him!” “Sir,” said Sheridan to the Speaker, “I shall not name the person.
It is an unpleasant and invidious thing to do so; and, therefore, I
shall not name him. But don’t suppose, Sir, that I abstain because there
is any difficulty in naming him; I could do that, Sir, as soon as you
could say ‘Jack Robinson.’”
A RUSSIAN JESTER AND HIS JOKES.
Popular traditions in Russia unite in representing the jester Balakireff
as the constant attendant of Peter the Great, who figures largely in all
the stories attached to the name of his buffoon.
On one occasion Balakireff begged permission of his imperial master to
attach himself to the guard stationed at the palace, and Peter, for the
sake of the joke, consented—warning him at the same time that any
officer of the guard who happened to lose his sword, or to be absent
from his post when summoned, was punished with death. The newly-made
officer promised to do his best; but the temptation of some good wine
sent to his quarters that evening by the Czar, “to moisten his
commission,” proved too strong for him; and he partook so freely as to
become completely “screwed.” While he was sleeping off his debauch,
Peter stole softly into the room, and carried off his sword. Balakireff
missing it on awakening, and frightened out of his wits at the probable
consequences, could devise no better remedy than to replace the weapon
with his own professional sword of lath,—the hilt and trappings of which
were exactly similar to those of the guardsmen. Thus equipped, he
appeared on parade the next morning, confident in the assurance of
remaining undetected, if not forced to draw his weapon. But Peter, who
had doubtless foreseen this contingency, instantly began storming at one
of the men for his untidy appearance, and at length faced round upon
Balakireff with the stern order, “Captain Balakireff, draw your sword
and cut that sloven down!”
The poor jester, thus brought fairly to bay, laid his hand on his hilt
as if to obey, but at the same time exclaimed fervently, “Merciful
Heaven! let my sword be turned into wood!”
And drawing the weapon, he exhibited in very deed a harmless lath. Even
the presence of the Emperor was powerless to check the roar of laughter
which followed, and Balakireff was allowed to escape.
* * * * *
The jester’s ingenuity occasionally served him in extricating others
from trouble as well as himself. A cousin of his, having fallen under
the displeasure of the Czar, was about to be executed; and Balakireff
presented himself at Court to petition for a reprieve. Peter, seeing him
enter, and at once divining his errand, shouted to him: “It’s no use
your coming here; I swear that I will _not_ grant what you are going to
ask!”
Quick as thought, Balakireff dropped on his knees, and exclaimed, “Peter
Alexejevitch, I beseech you put that scamp of a cousin of mine to
death!”
Peter, thus caught in his own trap, had no choice but to laugh, and send
a pardon to the offender.
* * * * *
During one of the Czar’s Livonian campaigns, a thick fog greatly
obstructed the movements of the army. At length a pale watery gleam
began to show itself through the mist, and two of the Russian officers
fell to disputing whether this were the sun or not. Balakireff,
happening to pass by at that moment, they appealed to him to decide. “Is
that light yonder the sun, brother?”
“How should I know,” answered the jester; “I’ve never been here before!”
* * * * *
At the end of the same campaign, several of the officers were relating
their exploits, when Balakireff stepped in among them. “I’ve got a story
to tell, too,” cried he, boastfully; “a better one than any of yours!”
“Let us hear it, then,” answered the officers; and Balakireff began,—
“I never liked this way of fighting, all in a crowd together, which they
have nowadays; it seems to me more manly for each to stand by himself;
and therefore I always went out alone. Now it chanced that one day,
while reconnoitering close to the enemy’s outposts, I suddenly espied a
Swedish soldier lying on the ground, just in front of me. There was not
a moment to lose; he might start up and give the alarm. I drew my sword,
rushed upon him, and at one blow cut off his right foot!”
“You fool!” cried one of the listeners, “you should rather have cut off
his head!”
“So I would,” answered Balakireff, with a grin, “but somebody else had
done that already!”
* * * * *
At times Balakireff pushed his waggeries too far, and gave serious
offense to his formidable patron. On one of these occasions the enraged
Emperor summarily banished him from the Court, bidding him “never appear
on Russian soil again.” The jester disappeared accordingly; but a week
had hardly elapsed when Peter, standing at his window, espied his
disgraced favorite coolly driving a cart past the very gates of the
palace. Foreseeing some new jest, he hastened down, and asked with
pretended roughness, “How dare you disobey me, when I forbade you to
show yourself on Russian ground?”
“I haven’t disobeyed you,” answered Balakireff, coolly; “I’m not on
Russian ground now!”
“Not on Russian ground?”
“No; this cart-load of earth that I’m sitting on is Swedish soil. I dug
it up in Finland only the other day!”
Peter, who had doubtless begun already to regret the loss of his jester,
laughed at the evasion, and restored him to favor. Some Russian writers
embellished this story (a German version of which figures in the
adventures of Tyll Eulenspiegel) with the addition that Peter, on
hearing the excuse, answered, “If Finland be Swedish soil now, it shall
be Russian before long”—a threat which he was not slow to fulfill.
The Flashes of Repartee.
Curran, being angry in a debate one day, put his hand on his heart,
saying: “I am the trusty guardian of my own honor.” “Then,” replied Sir
Boyle Roche, “I congratulate my honorable friend on the snug sinecure to
which he has appointed himself.”
* * * * *
On one occasion as the Rev. Matthew Wilkes, a celebrated London
preacher, was on his way to a meeting of ministers, he got caught in a
shower in the place called Billingsgate, where there were a large number
of women dealing in fish, who were using most profane and vulgar
language. As he stopped under a shed in the midst of them, he felt
called upon to give at least his testimony against their wickedness.
“Don’t you think,” said he, speaking with the greatest deliberation and
solemnity, “I shall appear as a swift witness against you in the day of
judgment?”
“I presume so,” said one, “for the biggest rogue always turns State’s
evidence.”
Matthew, when he got to the meeting, related the incident.
“And what did you say in reply, Mr. Wilkes?” said one of the ministers
present.
“What could I?” was the characteristic reply.
* * * * *
The late Mr. Cobden used to tell the following anecdote:—
“When in America,” said he, “I asked an enthusiastic American lady why
her country could not rest satisfied with the immense unoccupied
territories it already possessed, but must ever be hankering after the
lands of its neighbors, when her somewhat remarkable reply was, “Oh, the
propensity is a very bad one, I admit; but we came honestly by it, for
we inherited it from England.”
* * * * *
When Napoleon was only an officer of artillery, a Prussian officer said
in his presence with much pride, “My countrymen fight only for glory,
but Frenchmen for money.” “You are right,” replied Napoleon; “each of
them fight for what they are most in want of.”
* * * * *
A gentleman complimented a lady on her improved appearance. “You are
guilty of flattery,” said the lady. “Not so,” replied he, “for I vow you
are as plump as a partridge.” “At first,” responded she, “I thought you
guilty of flattery only, but you are now actually making game of me.”
* * * * *
A pedlar asked an old lady, to whom he was trying to sell some articles,
if she could tell him of any road that no pedlar had ever travelled. “I
know of but one,” said she, “and that is the road to Heaven.”
* * * * *
“What is that dog barking at?” asked a fop, whose boots were more
polished than his ideas. “Why,” said the bystander, “he sees another
puppy in your boots.”
* * * * *
A Quaker gentleman, riding in a carriage with a fashionable lady decked
with a profusion of jewelry, heard her complaining of the cold.
Shivering in her lace bonnet and shawl, as light as a cobweb, she
exclaimed: “What shall I do to get warm?” “I really don’t know,” replied
the Quaker solemnly, “unless thee puts on another breastpin.”
* * * * *
I dined once with Curran, said one of his friends, in the public room of
the chief inn at Greenwich, when he talked a great deal, and, as usual,
with considerable exaggeration. Speaking of something which he would not
do on any inducement, he exclaimed: “I had rather be hanged upon twenty
gibbets.” “Don’t you think, sir, that one would be enough for you?” said
a girl, a stranger, who was sitting at the table next to us. You ought
to have seen Curran’s face just then.
* * * * *
A tourist being exceedingly thirsty, stopped at a house by the roadside,
and asked for a drink of milk. He emptied several cups, and asked for
more. The woman of the house at length brought out a large bowl filled
with milk, and setting it down on the table, remarked, “A person would
think, sir, that you had never been weaned.”
* * * * *
Theodore Hook was walking, in the days of Warren’s blacking, where one
of the emissaries of that shining character had written on the wall,
“Try Warren’s B——,” but had been frightened by the approach of the owner
of the property, and had fled. “The rest is lacking,” said the wit.
* * * * *
The famous Rochester one day met Dr. Barrow in the Park, and being
determined, as he said, to put down the rusty piece of divinity,
accosted him by taking off his hat, and with a profound bow, exclaimed:
“Doctor, I am yours to my shoe-tie.” The Doctor, perceiving his aim,
returned the salute with equal ceremony: “My Lord, I am yours to the
ground.” His lordship then made a deeper salam, and said: “Doctor, I am
yours to the centre.” Barrow replied, “My Lord, I am yours to the
antipodes,” on which Rochester made another attempt by exclaiming. “I am
yours to the lowest pit.” “There, my Lord, I leave you,” replied Barrow.
A windy M. P., in the midst of a tedious speech, stopped to imbibe a
glass of water.
“I rise,” said Sheridan, “to a point of order.”
Everybody started, wondering what the point of order was.
“What is it?” said the speaker.
“I think, sir,” said Sheridan, “it is out of order for a windmill to go
by water.”
* * * * *
At Oxford, some twenty years ago, a tutor in one of the colleges limped
in his walk. Stopping one day last summer at a railroad station, he was
accosted by a well-known politician, who recognized him, and asked him
if he was not the chaplain at the college at such a time, naming the
year. The doctor replied that he was. “I was there,” said the
interrogator, “and I know you by your limp.” “Well,” said the doctor,
“it seems that my limping made a deeper impression on you than my
preaching.” “Ah, doctor,” was the ready reply, “it is the highest
compliment we can pay a minister to say that he is known by his walk,
rather than by his conversation.”
* * * * *
When Onslow was speaker of the British House of Commons, a member, who
was very fond of hearing himself speak—though nobody would listen to
him—on one occasion made a direct appeal to the chair, in consequence of
the accustomed noise that was going on: “Mr. Speaker, I desire to know
if I have not a right to be heard?” The speaker hoped, at first, to
escape the necessity of a reply, by calling “Order! Order!” but this
proving, as usual, of no avail, the honorable member inquired, in a
louder tone than before, “Sir, have not I a right to be heard?” “Sir,”
replied Onslow, “you have a right to speak.”
* * * * *
Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, abhorred smoking. His Quaker Council
one day observing him approach, laid down their pipes. “I am glad to
see,” said Penn, “that you are ashamed of that vile habit.” “Not at
all,” said a principal Friend, “we only lay down our pipes lest we
should offend _a weak brother_.”
A saloon-keeper having started business in a building where trunks had
been made, asked a friend what he had better do with the old sign,
“Trunk Factory.” “O,” said the friend, “just change the T to D, and it
will suit you exactly.”
Years ago, when Henry Ward Beecher’s reputation was not world-wide, a
Western Young Men’s Christian Association tried to persuade the divine
to go out and lecture to them without charge, saying it would increase
his _fame_. He telegraphed in reply: “I will lecture for F. A. M.
E.—fifty and my expenses.”
Admiral Keppel was sent to the Dey of Algiers to negotiate the
restoration of some English vessels which had been captured by Algerine
pirates. He advocated the cause entrusted to him with a warmth and
spirit which completely confounded the Dey’s ideas of what was due to
absolute power. “I wonder,” said the offended dignitary, “at the King of
England’s insolence in sending me such a foolish, beardless boy.”
“Had my master,” retorted Keppel, “considered that wisdom was to be
measured by the length of the beard, he would have sent you a he-goat.”
Thackeray tells us of a woman begging alms from him, who, when she saw
him put his hand in his pocket, cried out: “May the blessing of God
follow you all your life!” But, when he only pulled out his snuff-box,
she immediately added: “And never overtake ye.”
Dr. Reid, the celebrated medical writer, was requested by a lady of
literary eminence to call at her house. “Be sure you recollect the
address,” she said as she quitted the room—“No. 1 Chesterfield street.”
“Madam,” said the doctor, “I am too great an admirer of politeness not
to remember Chesterfield, and, I fear, too selfish ever to forget Number
One.”
Two men disputing about the pronunciation of the word “either”—one
saying it was ee-ther, the other i-ther—agreed to refer it to the first
person they met, who happened to be an Irishman, who confounded both by
declaring, “it’s nayther, for it’s ayther.”
A Parisian millionaire once wrote to the celebrated comic author,
Scribe:—“Honored Sir—I wish very much to ally my name with yours in the
creation of a dramatic work. Will you be so kind as to write a comedy of
which I shall compose one or two lines, so that I may be mentioned in
the title; I will bear the entire pecuniary expense, so that I may
divide the glory.” Scribe, who was vain even to conceit, replied:—“Sir—I
regret that I cannot comply with your modest request. It is not in
accordance with my ideas of religion or propriety that a horse and an
ass should be yoked together.” To which the millionaire quickly
responded:—“Sir—I have received your impertinent letter. How dare you
call me a horse!”
Voltaire was warmly panegyrizing Haller one day, when a person present
remarked that his eulogy was very disinterested, for Haller did not
speak well of him. “Ah, well,” said Voltaire, “perhaps we are both of us
mistaken.”
An Irishman, abusing Erin, declared that it contained nothing good but
the whiskey. Whereupon a wag observed, “You mean to say, then, that with
all her faults you love her still.”
Bacon relates that a fellow named Hogg importuned Sir Nicholas to save
his life on account of the kindred between Hog and Bacon. “Aye,” replied
the judge, “but you and I cannot be kindred except you be hanged, for
Hog is not Bacon until it be well hanged.”
Lord Eldon, struck by the appearance of a beautiful woman passing
Westminster Hall, expressed his admiration freely. The lady overhearing,
returned the compliment by pronouncing him to a friend near by a most
excellent judge.
Thackeray, while in Charleston, S. C., was introduced to Mrs. C., one of
the leaders of its society. In his pert way he said, “I am happy to meet
you, madam; I have heard that you are a fast woman.” “Oh, Mr.
Thackeray,” she replied with a fascinating smile, “we must not believe
all we hear; I had heard, sir, that you were a gentleman.”
Mr. Spurgeon rebuked certain of his followers who refused to interfere
in politics on the ground that they were “not of this world.” This, he
argued, was mere metaphor. “You might as well,” said he, “being sheep of
the Lord, decline to eat mutton-chop on the plea that it would be
cannibalism.”
* * * * *
A young barrister, intending to be very eloquent, observed, “such
principles as these, my Lord, are written in the Book of Nature.” “What
page, sir?” said Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough; and the orator was
silenced for life.
The Sexes.
As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman:
Though she bends him, she obeys him;
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other.—_Hiawatha._
Mrs. Jameson, speaking of the mistaken belief that there are essential
masculine and feminine virtues and vices, says it is not the quality
itself, but the modification of the quality, which is masculine or
feminine; and on the manner or degree in which these are balanced or
combined in the individual, depends the perfection of that individual
character. As the influences of religion are extended and as
civilization advances, those qualities which are now admired as
essentially _feminine_ will be considered as essentially _human_,—such
as gentleness, purity, the more unselfish and spiritual sense of duty,
and the dominance of the affections over the passions. This is, perhaps,
what Buffon, speaking as a naturalist, meant when he said that with the
progress of humanity _Les races se féminisent_. The axiom of the Greek
philosopher Antisthenes, the disciple of Socrates, _The virtue of the
man and the woman is the same_, shows a perception of this moral truth,
a sort of anticipation of the Christian doctrine, even in the pagan
times.
Every reader of Wordsworth will recollect the poem entitled _The Happy
Warrior_. It has been quoted as an epitome of every manly, soldierly,
and elevated quality. Those who make the experiment of merely
substituting the word §WOMAN§ for the word §WARRIOR§, and changing the
feminine for the masculine pronoun, will find that it reads equally
well, and from beginning to end is literally as applicable to the one
sex as to the other. As thus:—
CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WOMAN.
Who is the happy _woman_? Who is _she_
That every _woman_ born should wish to be?
It is the generous spirit who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased _her_ childish thought;
Whose high endeavors are an inward light,
That makes the path before _her_ always bright;
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes _her_ moral being _her_ prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with pain,
And fear, and sorrow, miserable train!
Turns _that_ necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature’s highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives;
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
_Her_ feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable,—because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice;
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure
As tempted more; more able to endure
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
’Tis _she_ whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends;
Whence, in a state where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
_She_ fixes good on good alone, and owes
To virtue every triumph that _she_ knows;
Who, if _she_ rise to station or command,
Rises by open means, and there will stand
On honorable terms, or else retire—
* * * * *
Who comprehends _her_ trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall
Like showers of manna, if they come at all;
Whose power shed round _her_, in the common strife
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if _she_ be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a lover; and, attired
With sudden brightness, like to one inspired;
And through the heat of conflict keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what _she_ foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need!
Mrs. Jameson adds that in all these fifty-six lines there is only one
line which cannot be feminized in its significance,—that filled up with
asterisks, and which is totally at variance with the ideal of _a happy
woman_. It is the line—
And in himself possess his own desire.
No woman could exist happily or virtuously in such complete independence
of all external affections as these words express. “Her desire is to her
husband:” this is the sort of subjection prophesied for the daughters of
Eve. A woman doomed to exist without this earthly rest for her
affections does not “in herself possess her own desire;” she turns
towards God; and, if she does not make her life a life of worship, she
makes it a life of charity, or she dies a spiritual and a moral death.
Is it much better with the man who concentrates his aspirations in
himself?
THE PRAISE OF WOMEN.
_An Old English Ballad._
Both sexes, give ear to my fancy,
While the praise of a woman I sing
Confined not to Polly nor Nancy,
But alike from the beggar to king.
When Adam at first was created,
And lord of the universe crowned,
His happiness was not completed,
Because a help-meet was not found.
He had all things that were wanting,
Which yield us contentment in life;
Both horses and foxes for hunting,
Which many love more than a wife.
A garden, so planted by nature,
Man could not produce in his life;
And yet the all-wise Creator
Saw that he wanted a wife.
Old Adam was cast into slumber,
A rib taken out of his side;
And when he awoke in a wonder,
He beheld his most beautiful bride.
With transport he gazéd upon her,—
His happiness now was complete:
He praised the all-bountiful Donor,
Who thus had provided a mate.
She was not taken out of his head,
To rule and triumph over man;
Nor was she taken out of his heel,
To be ruled and trampled upon.
But she was taken out of his side,
His equal companion to be;
And thus they both were united,
And man is the top of the tree.
Then let not the fair be despiséd
By man, for she’s part of himself;
Since woman by Adam was prizéd
More than the whole world full of wealth.
For man without woman’s a beggar,
Although the whole world he possessed;
And the beggar who has a good wife,
With more than this world he is blest.
PARALLEL OF THE SEXES.
There is an admirable partition of qualities between the sexes, which
the great Author of being has distributed to each with a wisdom which
calls for our admiration. Man is strong,—woman is beautiful. Man is
daring and confident,—woman is diffident and unassuming. Man is great in
action,—woman, in suffering. Man shines abroad,—woman, at home. Man
talks to convince,—woman, to persuade and please. Man has a rugged
heart,—woman, a soft and tender one. Man prevents misery,—woman relieves
it. Man has science,—woman, taste. Man has judgment,—woman, sensibility.
Man is a being of justice,—woman, of mercy.
FEMALE SOCIETY.
The following remarks come with peculiar force from one of such
querulous and unconnubial habits as John Randolph:—
You know my opinion of female society: without it we should degenerate
into brutes. This observation applies with tenfold force to young men,
and those who are in the prime of manhood. For, after a certain time of
life, the literary man makes a shift (a poor one, I grant) to do without
the society of ladies. To a young man nothing is so important as a
spirit of devotion (next to his Creator) to some amiable woman, whose
image may occupy his heart and guard it from the pollution that besets
it on all sides. A man ought to choose his wife as Mrs. Primrose did her
wedding-gown,—for qualities that will “wear well.” One thing at least is
true, that, if matrimony has its cares, celibacy has no pleasures. A
Newton, or a mere scholar, may find enjoyment in study; a man of
literary taste can receive in books a powerful auxiliary; but a man must
have a bosom friend, and children around him, to cherish and support the
dreariness of old age.
WIFE—MISTRESS—LADY.
Who marries for love takes a wife; who marries for convenience takes a
mistress; who marries from consideration takes a lady. You are loved by
your wife, regarded by your mistress, tolerated by your lady. You have a
wife for yourself, a mistress for your house and its friends, a lady for
the world. Your wife will agree with you, your mistress will accommodate
you, your lady will manage you. Your wife will take care of your
household, your mistress of your house, your lady of appearances. If you
are sick, your wife will nurse you, your mistress will visit you, your
lady will inquire after your health. You take a walk with your wife, a
ride with your mistress, and join parties with your lady. Your wife will
share your grief, your mistress your money, and your lady your debts. If
you are dead, your wife will shed tears, your mistress lament, and your
lady wear mourning.—_From the German._
MY MOTHER.
That was a thrilling scene in the old chivalric time—the wine circling
around the board, and the banquet-hall ringing with sentiment and
song—when, the lady of each knightly heart having been pledged by name,
St. Leon arose in his turn, and, lifting the sparkling cup on high,
said,—
“I drink to one
Whose image never may depart,
Deep graven on this grateful heart,
Till memory is dead;
To one whose love for me shall last
When lighter passions long have passed,
So holy ’tis, and true;
To one whose love hath longer dwelt,
More deeply fixed, more keenly felt,
Than any pledge to you.”
Each guest upstarted at the word,
And laid his hand upon his sword,
With fury-flashing eye;
And Stanley said, “We crave the name,
Proud knight, of this most peerless dame,
Whose love you count so high.”
St. Leon paused, as if he would
Not breathe her name in careless mood
Thus lightly to another,—
Then bent his noble head, as though
To give that word the reverence due,
And gently said, “§My Mother§!”
LETTER TO A BRIDE.
The following letter was written by an old friend to a young lady on the
eve of her wedding day:—
I have sent you a few flowers to adorn the dying moments of your single
life. They are the gentlest types of delicate and durable friendship.
They spring up by our side when others have deserted it; and they will
be found watching over our graves when those who should cherish have
forgotten us. It seems that a past, so calm and pure as yours, should
expire with a kindred sweetness about it,—that flowers and music, kind
friends and earnest words, should consecrate the hour when a sentiment
is passing into a sacrament.
The three great stages of our being are the birth, the bridal, and the
burial. To the first we bring only weakness—for the last we have nothing
but dust! But here at the altar, when life joins life, the pair come
throbbing up to the holy man, whispering the deep promise that arms each
other’s heart, to help on in the life-struggle of care and duty. The
beautiful will be there, borrowing new beauty from the scene. The gay
and thoughtless, with their flounces and frivolities, will look solemn
for once. Youth will come to gaze upon the object of its secret
yearnings; and age will totter up to hear the words repeated that to
their own lives had given the charm. Some will weep over it as if it
were a tomb, and some laugh over it as if it were a joke; but two must
stand by it, for it is fate, not fun, this everlasting locking of their
lives.
And now, can you, who have queened it over so many bending forms, can
you come down at last to the frugal diet of a single heart? Hitherto you
have been a clock, giving your time to all the world. Now you are a
watch, buried in one particular bosom, warming only his breast, marking
only his hours, and ticking only to the beat of his heart—where time and
feeling shall be in unison, until those lower ties are lost in that
higher wedlock, where all hearts are united.
Hoping that calm and sunshine may hallow your clasped hands, I sink
silently into a signature.
* * *
Moslem Wisdom.
SHREWD DECISION OF ALI, CALIPH OF BAGDAD.
In the Preliminary Dissertation to Dr. Richardson’s Arabic Dictionary
the following curious anecdote is recorded:—
Two Arabians sat down to dinner: one had five loaves, the other three. A
stranger passing by desired permission to eat with them, which they
agreed to. The stranger dined, laid down eight pieces of money, and
departed. The proprietor of the five loaves took up five pieces and left
three for the other, who objected, and insisted on having one-half. The
cause came before Ali, who gave the following judgment:—“Let the owner
of the five loaves have seven pieces of money, and the owner of the
three loaves one; for, if we divide the eight loaves by three, they make
twenty-four parts; of which he who laid down the five loaves had
fifteen, while he who laid down three had only nine. As all fared alike,
and eight shares was each man’s proportion, the stranger ate seven parts
of the first man’s property, and only one belonging to the other. The
money, in justice, must be divided accordingly.”
THE WISDOM OF ALI.
The Prophet once, sitting in calm debate,
Said, “I am Wisdom’s fortress; but the gate
Thereof is Ali.” Wherefore, some who heard,
With unbelieving jealousy were stirred;
And, that they might on him confusion bring,
Ten of the boldest joined to prove the thing.
“Let us in turn to Ali go,” they said,
“And ask if Wisdom should be sought instead
Of earthly riches; then, if he reply
To each of us, in thought, accordantly,
And yet to none in speech or phrase the same,
His shall the honor be, and ours the shame.”
Now, when the first his bold demand did make,
These were the words which Ali straightway spake:—
“Wisdom is the inheritance of those
Whom Allah favors; riches, of his foes.”
Unto the second he said:—“Thyself must be
Guard to thy riches; but Wisdom guardeth thee.”
Unto the third:—“By Wisdom wealth is won;
But riches purchased Wisdom yet for none.”
Unto the fourth:—“Thy goods the thief may take;
But into Wisdom’s house he cannot break.”
Unto the fifth:—“Thy goods decrease the more
Thou givest; but woe enlarges Wisdom’s store.”
Unto the sixth:—“Wealth tempts to evil ways;
But the desire of Wisdom is God’s praise.”
Unto the seventh:—“Divide thy wealth, each part
Becomes a pittance. Give with open heart
Thy wisdom, and each separate gift shall be
All that thou hast, yet not impoverish thee.”
Unto the eighth:—“Wealth cannot keep itself;
But Wisdom is the steward even of pelf.”
Unto the ninth:—“The camels slowly bring
Thy goods; but Wisdom has the swallow’s wing.”
And lastly, when the tenth did question make,
These were the ready words which Ali spake:—
“Wealth is a darkness which the soul should fear;
But Wisdom is the lamp that makes it clear.”
Crimson with shame, the questioners withdrew,
And they declared, “The Prophet’s words were true:
The mouth of Ali is the golden door
Of Wisdom.”
When his friends to Ali bore
These words, he smiled, and said, “And should they ask
The same until my dying day, the task
Were easy; for the stream from Wisdom’s well,
Which God supplies, is inexhaustible.”
MOHAMMEDAN LOGIC.
The laws of Cos discountenance in a very singular manner any cruelty on
the part of females towards their admirers. An instance occurred while
Dr. Clarke and his companions were on the island, in which the unhappy
termination of a love-affair occasioned a trial for what the Mohammedan
lawyers casuistically describe as “homicide by an intermediate cause.”
The following was the case: a young man desperately in love with a girl
of Stanchis eagerly sought to marry her, but his proposals were
rejected. In consequence, he destroyed himself by poison. The Turkish
police arrested the father of the obdurate fair, and tried him for
culpable homicide. “If the accused,” argued they, with much gravity,
“had not had a daughter, the deceased would not have fallen in love;
consequently he would not have been disappointed; consequently he would
not have swallowed poison; consequently he would not have died;—but the
accused had a daughter, the deceased had fallen in love,” &c. Upon all
these counts he was called upon to pay the price of the young man’s
life; and this, being fixed at the sum of eighty piastres, was
accordingly exacted.
THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY.
Said Omar, “Either these books are in conformity with the Koran, or they
are not. If they are, they are useless, and if not, they are evil: in
either event, therefore, let them be destroyed.”
Such was the logic that led to the destruction of seven hundred thousand
manuscript volumes.
TURKISH EXPEDIENTS.
A Turkish testator left to his eldest son one-half of his seventeen
horses, to his second son one-third, to his third son one-ninth of his
horses. The executor did not know what to do, as seventeen will neither
divide by two, nor by three, nor by nine. A dervise came up on
horseback, and the executor consulted him. The dervise said, “Take my
horse, and add him to the others.” There were then eighteen horses. The
executor then gave to the eldest son one-half,—nine; to the second son
one-third,—six; to the third son one-ninth,—two: total, seventeen. The
dervise then said, “You don’t want my horse now; I will take him back
again.”
Excerpta from Persian Poetry.
EARTH AN ILLUSION.
From the mists of the Ocean of Truth in the skies
A Mirage in deluding reflections doth rise,
There is naught but reality there to be seen;
We have here but the lie of its vapory sheen.—§Hafiz.§
HEAVEN AN ECHO OF EARTH.
’Tis but a shadow of the earth’s familiar bliss,
Bright mirrored on the sky’s ethereal fonts,
That fills our breasts with longings nothing can dismiss,
In tremulous and glimmering response.
A MORAL ATMOSPHERE.
It is as hard for one whom sinners still prevent
From prayer, to keep his virtue, yet with them to dwell,
As it would be for a lotus of sweetest scent
To blossom forth in beauty ’mid the flames of hell.
FORTUNE AND WORTH.
That haughty rich man see, a merely gilded clod;
This poor man see, pure gold with common dust besmeared.
Start not: in needy garb was Moses girt and shod,
When waved and shone before him Pharaoh’s golden beard!
BROKEN HEARTS.
When other things are broken they are nothing worth,
Unless it be to some old Jew or some repairer;
But hearts, the more they’re bruised and broken here on earth,
In heaven are so much the costlier and the fairer.
TO A GENEROUS MAN.
To cloud of rain refreshing all the land,
It is not fit to liken thy free hand;
For as that gives it weeps meanwhile,
But thou still givest with a smile.
BEAUTY’S PREROGATIVE.
Thy beauty pales all sublunary things,
And man to vassalage eternal dooms:
The road before thee should be swept with brooms
Made of the eye-lashes of peerless kings.
PROUD HUMILITY.
In proud humility a pious man went through the field;
The ears of corn were bowing in the wind, as if they kneeled;
He struck them on the head, and modestly began to say,
“Unto the Lord, not unto me, such honors should you pay.”
FOLLY FOR ONE’S SELF.
He who is only for his neighbors wise,
While his own soul in sad confusion lies,
Is like those men who builded Noah’s ark,
But sank, themselves, beneath the waters dark.
THE IMPOSSIBILITY.
When I shall see, though clad in gold or silk,
In peace and joy a wicked man or maid,
I then shall drink a bowl of pigeon’s milk,
And eat the yellow eggs the ox has laid.
THE SOBER DRUNKENNESS.
Beware the deadly fumes of that insane elation
Which rises from the cup of mad impiety,
And go get drunk with that divine intoxication
Which is more sober far than all sobriety.
A WINE-DRINKER’S METAPHORS.
As the nightingale oft from a rose’s dew sips,
So I wet with fresh wine my belanguishing lips.
As the soul of perfume through a flower’s petals slips,
So pure wine passes through the rose-door of my lips.
As to port from afar float the full-loaded ships,
So this wine-beaker drifts to the strand of my lips.
As the white-driven sea o’er a cliff’s edges drips,
So the red-tinted wine breaks in foam on my lips.
FROM MIRTSA SCHAFFY.
Better stars without shine,
Than the shine without stars.
Better wine without jars,
Than the jars without wine.
Better honey without bees,
Than the bees without honey.
Better please without money,
Than have money but not please.
THE DOUBLE PLOT.
Three hungry travellers found a bag of gold;
One ran into the town where bread was sold.
He thought, I will poison the bread I buy,
And seize the treasure when my comrades die.
But they too thought, When back his feet have hied,
We will destroy him and the gold divide.
They killed him; and, partaking of the bread,
In a few moments all were lying dead.
O world I behold what ill thy goods have done;
Thy gold thus poisoned two, and murdered one.
THE WORLD’S UNAPPRECIATION.
The lyrical poems of the East called _Ghazels_, of which the following,
from Trench, is a brief specimen, have this peculiarity,—that the first
two lines rhyme, and for this rhyme recurs a new one in the second line
of each succeeding couplet, the alternate lines being free:—
What is the good man and the wise?
Ofttimes a pearl which none doth prize;
Or jewel rare, which men account
A common pebble, and despise.
Set forth upon the world’s bazaar,
It mildly gleams, but no one buys,
Till it in anger Heaven withdraws
From the world’s undiscerning eyes,
And in its shell the pearl again,
And in its mine the jewel, lies.
THE CALIPH AND SATAN.
In heavy sleep the Caliph lay,
When some one called, “Arise and pray!”
The angry Caliph cried, “Who dare
Rebuke his king for slighted prayer?”
Then, from the corner of the room,
A voice cut sharply through the gloom:—
“My name is Satan. Rise! obey
Mohammed’s law: Awake and pray.”
“Thy _words_ are good,” the Caliph said,
“But their intent I somewhat dread;
For matters cannot well be worse
Than when the thief says, ‘Guard your purse.’
I cannot trust your counsel, friend:
It surely hides some wicked end.”
Said Satan, “Near the throne of God,
In ages past, we devils trod;
Angels of light, to us ’twas given
To guide each wandering foot to Heaven;
Not wholly lost is that first love,
Nor those pure tastes we knew above.
Roaming across a continent,
The Tartar moves his shifting tent,
But never quite forgets the day
When in his father’s arms he lay;
So we, once bathed in love divine,
Recall the taste of that rich wine.
God’s finger rested on my brow,—
That magic touch, I feel it now!
I fell, ’tis true,—Oh, ask not why!
For still to God I turn my eye;
It was a chance by which I fell:
Another takes me back to hell.
’Twas but my envy of mankind,
The envy of a loving mind.
Jealous of men, I could not bear
God’s love with this new race to share.
But yet God’s tables open stand,
His guests flock in from every land.
Some kind act toward the race of men
May toss us into heaven again.
A game of chess is all we see,—
And God the player, pieces we.
White, black,—queen, pawn,—’tis all the same;
For on both sides he plays the game.
Moved to and fro, from good to ill,
We rise and fall as suits his will.”
The Caliph said, “If this be so
I know not; but thy guile I know;
For how can I thy words believe,
When even §God§ thou didst deceive?
A sea of lies art thou,—our sin,
Only a drop that sea within.”
“Not so,” said Satan: “I serve God,
His angel now, and now his rod.
In tempting, I both bless and curse,
Make good men better, bad men worse.
Good coin is mixed with bad, my brother,
I but distinguish one from th’ other.”
“Granted,” the Caliph said; “but still
You never tempt to good, but ill.
Tell, then, the truth; for well I know
You come as my most deadly foe.”
Loud laughed the fiend. “You know me well;
Therefore my purpose will I tell:
If you had missed your prayer, I knew
A swift repentance would ensue;
And such repentance would have been
A good, outweighing far the sin.
I chose this humbleness divine,
Born out of fault, should not be thine;
Preferring prayers elate with pride,
To sin with penitence allied.”
Epigrams.
MARTIAL’S EPIGRAM ON EPIGRAMS.
Omnis epigramma, sit instar apis; sit aculeus illi,
Sint sua mella, sit et corporis exigui.
[Three things must epigrams, like bees, have all,—
A sting, and honey, and a body small.]
MIDAS AND MODERN STATESMEN.
Midas, they say, possessed the art, of old,
Of turning whatsoe’er he touched to gold.
This, modern statesmen can reverse with case;
Touch them with gold, they’ll turn to what you please.
INSCRIBED ON A STATUE TO SLEEP.
Somne levis, quanquam certissima mortis imago,
Consortem cupio te tamen esse tori,
Alma quies, optata, veni, nam sic sine vita
Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori.—§Warton.§
[Light sleep, though death’s strong image, prythee give
Thy fellowship while in my couch I lie;
O gentle, wished-for rest, how sweet to _live_
Thus without _life_, and without _death_ to _die_!][18]
Footnote 18:
Come, gentle sleep! attend thy votary’s prayer,
And, though death’s image, to my couch repair;
How sweet, though lifeless, yet with life to lie,
And, without dying, oh, how sweet to die!—_Wolcot’s Trans._
TO DR. ROBERT FREIND, WHO WROTE LONG EPITAPHS.
Freind, for your epitaphs I’m grieved,
Where still so much is said:
One half will never be believed,
The other never read.—§Pope.§
THE FOOL AND THE POET.
Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool;
But you yourself may serve to show it
That every fool is not a poet.—§Pope.§
DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS.
Live while you live, the _epicure_ would say,
And seize the pleasures of the present day.
Live while you live, the sacred _preacher_ cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.
Lord, in my view let both united be;
I live in pleasure while I live to thee.—§Doddridge.§
TO “MOLLY ASTON,”
_A celebrated “beauty, scholar, and wit,” who spoke in praise of
liberty._
Liber ut esse velim, suasisti, pulchra Maria:
Ut maneam liber, pulchra Maria, vale!—§Dr. Johnson.§
[Freedom you teach, fair Mary. To be free,
Farewell, lest I should be enslaved by thee!]
ON ONE IGNORANT AND ARROGANT.
Thou mayst of double ignorance boast,
Who knowst not that thou nothing knowst.—§Owen§, _Trans. by Cowper_.
TO OUR BED.
In bed we laugh, in bed we cry;
And born in bed, in bed we die:
The near approach the bed may show
Of human bliss to human woe.—§Benserade.§
LATE REPENTANCE.
Pravus, that aged debauchee,
Proclaimed a vow his sins to quit;
But is he yet from any free,
Except what now he _can’t_ commit?
ON A PALE LADY WITH A RED-NOSED HUSBAND.
Whence comes it that in Clara’s face
The lily only has its place?
Is it because the absent rose
Has gone to paint her husband’s nose?
ON SOME SNOW THAT MELTED ON A LADY’S BREAST.
Those envious flakes came down in haste,
To prove her breast less fair,
But, grieved to find themselves surpassed,[19]
Dissolved into a tear.
Footnote 19:
The following madrigal was addressed to a Lancastrian lady, and
accompanied with a white rose, during the opposition of the “White
Rose” and “Red Rose” adherents of the houses of York and Lancaster:—
If this fair rose offend thy sight,
It in thy bosom wear;
’Twill blush to find itself less white,
And turn Lancastrian there.
SELYAGGI’S DISTICH ADDRESSED TO JOHN MILTON.
_While at Rome._
Græcia Mœonidem, jactet sibi Roma Maronem,
Anglia Miltonum jactat utrique parem.
DRYDEN’S AMPLIFICATION.
Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next, in majesty; in both, the last.
The force of nature could no further go:
To make a third, she joined the former two.
ON BUTLER’S MONUMENT.
While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive,
No generous patron would a dinner give.
See him, when starved to death and turned to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust.
The poet’s fate is hero in emblem shown:
He asked for bread, and he received a _stone_.—§S. Wesley.§
OVERDRAWN COMPLIMENT.
So much, dear Pope, thy English Homer charms,
As pity melts us, or as passion warms,
That after-ages will with wonder seek
Who ’twas translated Homer into Greek.
SUGGESTED BY A GERMAN TOURIST.
_Who accompanied Prince Albert into Scotland._
Charmed with the drink which Highlanders compose,
A German traveller exclaimed, with glee,
“Potztausend! sare, if this be Athol _Brose_,[20]
How good the Athol _Boetry_ must be!”—§Tom Hood.§
Footnote 20:
Athol brose is a favorite Highland drink, composed of honey, whiskey,
and water, although the proportion of the latter is usually so
homœopathically minute as to be difficult of detection except by
chemical or microscopical analysis. Possibly the Scotch aversion to
injuring the flavor of their whiskey by dilution arises from a fact
noted by N. P. Willis, that the water has tasted so strongly of
sinners ever since the Flood.
ETERNITY.
Reason does but one quaint solution lend
To nature’s deepest yet divinest riddle;
Time is a _beginning_ and an _end_,
Eternity is nothing but a _middle_.
OCCASIONED BY THE LOSS OF A CLERGYMAN’S PORTMANTEAU,
_Containing his Sermons._
I’ve lost my portmanteau.
“I pity your grief.”
It contained all my sermons.
“I pity the thief!”
TO A LIVING AUTHOR.
Your comedy I’ve read, my friend,
And like the half you pilfered, best;
But sure the piece you yet may mend:
Take courage, man! and steal the rest.
THE FRUGAL QUEEN.
One Queen Artemisia, as old stories tell,
When deprived of her husband she lovéd so well,
In respect for the love and affection he showed her,
She reduced him to dust, and she drank off the powder.
But Queen Netherplace, of a different complexion,
When called on to order the funeral direction,
Would have ate her dead lord, on a slender pretence,
Not to show her respect, but—to save the expense!—§Burns.§
ON COMMISSARY GOLDIE’S BRAINS.
Lord, to account who dares thee call,
Or e’er dispute thy pleasure?
Else why within so thick a wall
Enclose so poor a treasure?—§Burns.§
GIVING AND TAKING.
“I never give a kiss,” says Prue,
“To naughty man, for I abhor it.”
She will not _give_ a kiss, ’tis true:
She’ll _take_ one, though, and thank you for it.—§Moore.§
TO ——.
“Moria pur quando vuol non è bisogna mutar ni faccia ni voce per esser
un Angelo.”
Die when you will, you need not wear
At Heaven’s court a form more fair
Than beauty here on earth has given;
Keep but the lovely looks we see,—
The voice we hear,—and you will be
An angel _ready-made_ for heaven!—§Moore.§
THE LOVER TO HIS MISTRESS, WITH A PRESENT OF A MIRROR.
This mirror my object of love will unfold
Whensoe’er your regard it allures:
Oh, would, when I’m gazing, that I might behold
On its surface the object of yours!
TO A CAPRICIOUS FRIEND.
Difficilis, facilis, jucundus, acerbus es idem,
Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.—§Martial.§
[In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,
Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.—§Addison.§]
MENDAX.
See! yonder goes old Mendax, telling lies
To that good, easy man with whom he’s walking.
How know I that? you ask, with some surprise;
Why, don’t you see, my friend, the fellow’s talking!—§Lessing.§
ON FELL.
While Fell was reposing himself on the hay,
A reptile, concealed, bit his leg as he lay;
But, all venom himself, of the wound he made light,
And got well, while the scorpion died of the bite.—§Lessing.§
ON AN ILL-READ LAWYER.
An idle attorney besought a brother
For “something to read,—some novel or other,
That was really fresh and new.”
“Take Chitty!” replies his legal friend:
“There isn’t a book that I could lend,
That would prove more ‘novel’ to you!”—§Saxe.§
WOMAN’S WILL.
Men dying make their wills; but wives
Escape a work so sad:
Why should they make what all their lives
The gentle dames have had?—§Saxe.§
WELLINGTON’S NOSE.
“Pray, why does the great Captain’s nose
Resemble Venice?” Duncomb cries.
“Why,” quoth Sam Rogers, “I suppose
Because it has a bridge of size (sighs).”
ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER.
A poor man went to hang himself
But treasure chanced to find:
He pocketed the miser’s pelf,
And left the rope behind.
His money gone, the miser hung
Himself in sheer despair:
Thus each the other’s wants supplied,
And that was surely fair.
BAD SONGSTERS.
Swans sing before they die: ’twere no bad thing
Did certain persons die before they sing.—§Coleridge.§
ON A BAD FIDDLER.
Old Orpheus played so well, he moved Old Nick;
But thou mov’st nothing but thy fiddle-stick.
ON A CERTAIN D.D.
_Who, from a peculiarity in his walk, had acquired the sobriquet of Dr.
Toe, being jilted by Miss H., who eloped with her father’s footman._
’Twixt footman Sam and Doctor Toe
A controversy fell,
Which should prevail against his foe,
And bear away the belle.
The lady chose the footman’s heart.
Say, who can wonder? no man:
The whole prevailed above the part:
’Twas _Foot_-man _versus Toe_-man.
ON AN OLD LADY WHO MARRIED HER FOOTMAN.
Old Lady Lovejoy, aged just threescore,
Whose lusty footboy rode behind, before,
Is, in a fit of fondness, grown so kind,
He rides within, who rode before, behind.
“HOT CORN.”
“How much corn may a gentleman eat?” whispered P,
While the cobs on his plate lay in tiers.
“As to that,” answered Q, as he glanced at the heap,
“’Twill depend on the length of his ears.”
BONNETS.
In 1817, when straw bonnets first came into general use, it was common
to trim them with artificial wheat or barley, in ears; whence the
following:—
Who now of threatening famine dare complain,
When every female forehead teems with grain?
See how the wheat-sheaves nod amid the plumes:
Our barns are now transferred to drawing-rooms,
And husbands who indulge in active lives,
To fill their granaries, may thresh their wives!
Campbell, the poet, was asked by a lady to write something original in
her album. He wrote,—
An original something, dear maid, you would win me
To write; but how shall I begin?
For I’m sure I have nothing original in me,
Excepting _original sin_.
“How very easy ’tis,” cries Tom, “to write!
I find ’t no hardship verses to indite.”
“To credit that,” quoth Dick, “no oaths we need:
The hardship is for _those who have to read_.”
Thy verses are eternal, O my friend!
For he who reads them, reads them to no end.
Unfortunate lady, how sad is your lot!
Your ringlets are _red_, and your poems are not.
PRUDENT SIMPLICITY.
That thou mayst injure no man, dove-like be;
And serpent-like, that none may injure thee!—§Cowper.§
TO A FRIEND IN DISTRESS.
I wish thy lot, now bad, still worse, my friend;
For when at worst, they say, things always mend.—§Cowper.§
HOG _vs._ BACON.
Judge Bacon once trying a man, Hog by name,
Who made with his lordship of kindred a claim;
“Hold,” said the judge,—“you’re a little mistaken
Hog must be _hung_ first before ’tis good Bacon.”
A WARM RECEPTION.
Rusticus wrote a letter to his love,
And filled it full of warm and keen desire;
He hoped to raise a flame, and so he did:
The lady put his nonsense in the fire.
MEDICAL ADVICE.
“I’m very ill,” said Skinflint, once essaying
To get a doctor’s counsel without paying.
“I see it,” quoth the wily old physician;
“You’re in a most deplorable condition.”
“But tell me,” cried the miser, “for God’s sake,
Tell me, dear doctor, what I ought to take.”
“Take! as to that—why, take, at any price,”
Replied the leech, “_take medical advice_!”
DEFINITION OF A DENTIST.
A dentist fashions teeth of bone
For those whom fate has left without,
And finds provision for his _own_
By pulling other people’s out.
Dr. Samuel Goodenough, Bishop of Carlisle, preached on one occasion
before the House of Commons. The event gave rise to the following:—
’Tis well-enough that Goodenough
Before the House should preach;
For sure-enough full bad-enough
Are those he has to teach.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
As two divines their ambling steeds bestriding,
In merry mood o’er Boston Neck were riding,
Sudden a simple structure met their sight,
From which the convict takes his hempen flight;
When sailor-like he bids adieu to hope,
His all depending on a single rope.
“Say, brother,” cried the one, “pray where were you
Had yonder gallows been allowed its due?”
“Where?” cried the other, in sarcastic tone,
“Why, where but riding into town alone.”
A REFLECTION.
Says the Earth to the Moon “You’re a pilfering jade;
What you steal from the Sun is beyond all belief.”
Fair Cynthia replies, “Madam Earth, hold your prate;
The receiver is always as bad as the thief.”
“THE WOMAN GAVE ME OF THE TREE.”
When Eve upon the first of men
The apple pressed with specious cant,
Oh, what a thousand pities, then,
That Adam was not Adamant.
THE BLADES OF THE SHEARS.
Two lawyers when a knotty case was o’er,
Shook hands, and were as friendly as before;
“Zounds!” said the client, “I would fain know how
You can be friends, who were such foes just now?”
“Thou fool!” said one, “We lawyers, though so keen,
Like shears, ne’er cut ourselves, but what’s between.”
The following was written by Southey on Queen Elizabeth’s dining on
board Sir Francis Drake’s ship, on his return from circumnavigating the
globe:—
Oh, Nature! to old England still
Continue these mistakes;
Give us for all our _Kings_ such _Queens_,
And for our _Dux_ such _Drakes_.
INVISIBLE.
I cannot praise your parson’s eyes;
I never _see_ his eyes divine,
For when he prays he shuts _his_ eyes,
And when he preaches he shuts mine.
IMPERSONAL.
Quoth Madam Bas Bleu, “I hear you have said,
Intellectual women are always your dread;
Now tell me, dear sir, is it true?”
“Why, yes,” said the wag, “Very likely I may
Have made the remark in a jocular way;
But then, on my honor, I didn’t mean you.”
AFFINITIES.
“A lady, once, whose love was sold,
Asked if a reason could be told,
Why wedding rings were made of gold:
I ventured thus to instruct her:—
Love and lightning are the same;
On earth they glance, from Heaven they came:
Love is the soul’s electric flame—
And gold its best conductor.”
THE CRIER WHO COULD NOT CRY.
I heard a judge his tipstaff call
And say, “Sir, I desire
You go forthwith and search the Hall,
And send to me the crier.”
“And search, my Lord, in vain, I may”—
The tipstaff gravely said—
“The Crier cannot _cry_ to-day,
Because his wife is dead.”
THE PARSON AND BUTCHER.
A parson and a butcher chanced, they say,
To meet and moralize one Sabbath day.
“Ah!” cries the parson, “all things good and fair,
All that is virtuous, wise, belovéd, rare,
Is sure the first to feel the stroke of fate;
While vice and folly have a longer date.”
“True,” cries the butcher, “for it is decreed,
The fattest pig, alas! must soonest bleed.”
THE CLOCK.
A mechanic his labor will often discard,
If the rate of his pay he dislikes;
But a clock—and its _case_ is uncommonly hard—
Will continue to _work_ though it _strikes_.—§Hood.§
MASCULINE.
“What pity ’tis,” said John, the sage,
“That women should, for hire,
Expose themselves upon the stage,
By wearing men’s attire!”
“_Expose!_” cries Ned, who loves a jeer;
“In sense you surely fail:
What do the darlings have to fear
When clad in coats-of-_male_?”
IN RETURN FOR A LADY’S SKETCH OF THE APOLLO.
If fair Apollo drew his bow
As well as you have drawn it here,
No wonder that he carries woe
To many a maiden far and near.
One difference, though, I understand,
Between this picture and the giver:
Apollo keeps his bow in hand—
You keep your beaux upon the quiver.
WIDOWS.
As in India, one day, an Englishman sat
With a smart native lass at the window,
“Do your widows burn themselves? pray tell me that?”
Said the pretty, inquisitive Hindoo.
“Do they burn? ah, yes,” the gentleman said,
“With a flame not so easy to smother:
Our widows, the moment one husband is dead,
Immediately burn for another!”—§Canning.§
The following epigram by Samuel Rogers, on Lord Dudley’s studied
speeches in Parliament, was pronounced by Byron, in conversation with
Lady Blessington, “one of the best in the English language, with the
true Greek talent of expressing, by implication, what is wished to be
conveyed:”—
Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it:
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.
On the marriage of Dr. Webb with Miss Gould, a classical friend sent him
the following:—
Tela fuit simplex statuens decus addere telæ,
Fecit hymen geminam puroque intexuit auro.
[Single no more, a double Webb behold;
Hymen embroidered it with virgin Gould.]
AFTER GOING TO LAW.
This law, they say, great nature’s chain connects,
That _causes_ ever must produce _effects_.
In me behold reversed great nature’s laws,—
All my _effects_ lost by a single _cause_.
SAME JAWBONE.
Jack eating rotten cheese did say,
“Like Samson I my thousands slay.”
“I vow,” says Roger, “so you do,
And with the selfsame weapon too.”
A FUNNY DETERMINATION.
Queenly Miss Quaint, the aim of whose life
Is to die an old maid or a minister’s wife,
Grotesquely averred, after hearing young Spread,
“I’ll hear him all day, _if I walk on my head_!”
“Good!” said old Hunx, with a comical smile;
“But please, if you’re late, don’t come up the broad aisle!”
MARRIAGE À LA MODE.
“Tom, you should take a wife.” “Nay, God forbid!”
“I found you one last night.” “The deuce you did!”
“Softly! perhaps she’ll please you.” “Oh, of course!”
“Eighteen.” “Alarming!” “Witty.” “Nay, that’s worse!”
“Discreet.” “All show!” “Handsome.” “To lure the fellows!”
“High-born.” “Ay, haughty!” “Tender-hearted.” “Jealous!”
“Talents o’erflowing.” “Ay, enough to sluice me!”
“And then, Tom, such a fortune!” “Introduce me!”
QUID PRO QUO.
“Marriage, not mirage, Jane, here in your letter:
With your education, you surely know better.”
Quickly spoke my young wife, while I sat in confusion,
“’Tis quite correct, Thomas: they’re each an illusion.”
WOMAN—CONTRA.
When Adam, waking, first his lids unfolds
In Eden’s groves, beside him he beholds
Bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and knows
His earliest sleep has proved his last repose.
WOMAN—PRO.
Not she with traitorous kiss her Saviour stung,
Not she denied him with unholy tongue:
She, when apostles shrunk, could danger brave;
Last at the cross, and earliest at the grave.—§Barrett.§
ABUNDANCE OF FOOLS.
The world of fools has such a store,
That he who would not see an ass
Must bide at home, and bolt his door,
And break his looking-glass.—§La Monnoye.§
THE WORLD.
’Tis an excellent world that we live in
To lend, to spend, or to give in;
But to borrow, or beg, or get a man’s own,
’Tis just the worst world that ever was known.
TERMINER SANS OYER.
“Call silence!” the judge to the officer cries;
“This hubbub and talk, will it never be done?
Those people this morning have made such a noise,
We’ve decided ten causes without hearing one.”
DOUBLE VISION UTILIZED.
An incipient toper was checked t’other day,
In his downward career, in a very strange way.
The effect of indulgence, he found to his trouble,
Was that after two bottles he came to see double;
When with staggering steps to his home he betook him,
He saw always _two wives_, sitting up to rebuke him.
_One_ wife in her wrath makes a pretty strong case;
But a _couple_ thus scolding, what courage could face?
Impromptus.
One day, as Dr. Young was walking in his garden at Welwyn in company
with two ladies, (one of whom he afterwards married,) the servant came
to acquaint him that a gentleman wished to speak with him. “Tell him,”
said the doctor, “I am too happily engaged to change my situation.” The
ladies insisted that he should go, as his visitor was a man of rank, his
patron, and his friend. But, as persuasion had no effect, one took him
by the right arm, the other by the left, and led him to the garden-gate;
when, finding resistance in vain, he bowed, laid his hand upon his
heart, and, in that expressive manner for which he was so remarkable,
spoke the following lines:—
Thus Adam looked when from the garden driven,
And thus disputed orders sent from heaven.
Like him I go, but yet to go I’m loath;
Like him I go, for angels drove us both.
Hard was his fate, but mine still more unkind:
His Eve went with him, but mine stays behind.
Ben Jonson having been invited to dine at the Falcon Tavern, where he
was already deeply in debt, the landlord promised to wipe out the score
if he would tell him what God, and the devil, and the world, and the
landlord himself, would be best pleased with. To which the ready poet
promptly replied:—
God is best pleased when men forsake their sin;
The devil is best pleased when they persist therein;
The world’s best pleased when thou dost sell good wine;
And you’re best pleased when I do pay for mine.
A well-known instance of self-extrication from a dilemma is thus
rendered in rhyme:—
When Queen Elizabeth desired
That Melville would acknowledge fairly
Whether herself he most admired,
Or his own sovereign, Lady Mary?
The puzzled knight his answer thus expressed:—
“In her own country each is handsomest.”
Burns, going into church one Sunday and finding it difficult to procure
a seat, was kindly invited by a young lady into her pew. The sermon
being upon the terrors of the law, and the preacher being particularly
severe in his denunciation of sinners, the lady, who was very attentive,
became much agitated. Burns, on perceiving it, wrote with his pencil, on
a blank leaf of her Bible, the following:—
Fair maid, you need not take the hint,
Nor idle texts pursue:
’Twas only sinners that he meant,
Not angels such as you.
One evening at the King’s Arms, Dumfries, Burns was called from a party
of friends to see an impertinent coxcomb in the form of an English
commercial traveller, who patronizingly invited the _Ayrshire Ploughman_
to a glass of wine at his table. Entering into conversation with the
_condescending_ stranger, Burns soon saw what sort of person he had to
deal with. About to leave the room, the poet was urged to give a
specimen of his facility in impromptu versifying, when, having asked the
name and age of the conceited traveller, he instantly penned and handed
him the following stanza,—after which he abruptly departed:—
In seventeen hundred forty-nine,
Satan took stuff to make a swine,
And cuist it in a corner;
But wilily he changed his plan,
Shaped it to something like a man,
And ca’d it Andrew Horner.
After Burke had finished his extraordinary speech against Warren
Hastings, the latter (according to the testimony of his private
secretary, Mr. Evans) wrote the following sarcastic impromptu:—
Oft have we wondered that on Irish ground
No poisonous reptile ever yet was found;
The secret stands revealed in Nature’s work:
She saved her venom to create a _Burke_!
Dr. Johnson’s definition of a note of admiration (!), made on the
moment, is very neat:—
I see—I see—I know not what:
I see a dash above a dot,
Presenting to my contemplation
A perfect point of admiration!
An old gentleman named Gould, having married a young lady of nineteen,
thus addressed his friend Dr. G. at the wedding festival:—
So you see, my dear sir, though eighty years old,
A girl of nineteen falls in love with _old Gould_.
To which the doctor replied,—
A girl of nineteen may love _Gould_, it is true,
But believe me, dear sir, it is _Gold_ without _U_.
When Percy first published his collection of Ancient English Ballads, he
was rather lavish in commendation of their beautiful simplicity. This
provoked Dr. Johnson to say one evening, at the tea-table of Miss
Reynolds, that he could rhyme as well and as elegantly in common
narrative and conversation. “For instance,” said he,—
“As, with my hat upon my head,
I walked along the strand,
I there did meet another man
With his hat in his hand.
Or, to render such poetry subservient to my own immediate use,—
I therefore pray thee, Renny dear
That thou wilt give to me,
With cream and sugar softened well,
Another cup of tea.
Nor fear that I, my gentle maid,
Shall long detain the cup,
When once unto the bottom I
Have drank the liquor up.
Yet hear, alas! this mournful truth,
Nor hear it with a frown;
Thou canst not make the tea as fast
As I can gulp it down.”
Mr. Fox, the great orator, was on one occasion told by a lady that she
“_did not care three skips of a louse for him_.” He immediately took out
his pencil and wrote the following:—
A lady has told me, and in her own house,
That she cares not for me “three skips of a louse.”
I forgive the dear creature for what she has said,
Since women will talk of what _runs in their head_.
Barty Willard, who formerly lived in the northern part of Vermont, was
noted for his careless, vagabond habits, ready wit, and remarkable
facility at extempore rhyming. Sitting one day in a village store, among
a crowd of idlers who always gathered about him on his arrival, the
merchant asked Barty “why he always wore that shocking bad hat.” Barty
replied that it was simply because he was unable to purchase a new one.
“Come,” said the merchant; “make me a good rhyme on the old hat
immediately, without stopping to think, and I’ll give you the best
castor in the store.” Whereupon Barty threw his old tile on the floor,
and began:—
Here lies my old hat,
And, pray, what of that?
’Tis as good as the rest of my raiment:
If I buy me a better,
You’ll make me your debtor
And send me to jail for the payment.
The new hat was adjudged, by the “unanimous vote of the house,” to
belong to Barty, who wore it off in triumph, saying, “it was a poor head
that couldn’t take care of itself.”
* * * * *
An Oxford and Cambridge man, who had had frequent disputes concerning
the divinity of Christ, chancing to meet in company, the former, with a
serio-comical air, wrote the following lines and handed them to the
latter:—
Tu Judæ similis Dominumque Deumque negasti;
Dissimilis Judas est tibi—pœnituit.
[You, Judas like, your Lord and God denied;
Judas, unlike to you, repentant sighed.]
Whereupon the “heretic” retorted,—
Tu simul et similis Judæ, tu dissimilisque;
Judæ iterum similis sis, laqueumque petas.
[You are like Judas, yet unlike that elf;
Once more like Judas be, and hang yourself.]
The common phrase _Give the Devil his due_, was turned very wittily by a
member of the bar in North Carolina, some years ago, on three of his
legal brethren. During the trial of a case, Hillman, Dews, and Swain
(all distinguished lawyers, and the last-named President of the State
University) handed James Dodge, the Clerk of the Supreme Court, the
following epitaph:—
Here lies James Dodge, who dodged all good,
And never dodged an evil:
And, after dodging all he could,
He could not dodge the Devil!
Mr. Dodge sent back to the gentlemen the annexed impromptu reply, which
may be considered equal to any thing ever expressed in the best days of
Queens Anne or Bess:—
Here lies a Hillman and a Swain;
Their lot let no man choose:
They lived in sin, and died in pain,
And the Devil got his dues! (Dews.)
A lady wrote with a diamond on a pane of glass,—
God did at first make man upright; but he—
To which a gentleman added,—
Most surely had continued so; but _she_—
A lady wrote upon a window some verses, intimating her design of never
marrying. A gentleman wrote the following lines underneath:—
The lady whose resolve these words betoken,
Wrote them on glass, to show it may be broken.
Sir Walter Raleigh having written on a window,—
Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall,—
Queen Elizabeth, the instant she saw it, wrote under it,—
If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.
Perhaps the most delicate flattery ever uttered was that of the
ambassador, who, being asked by a beautiful queen, upon his introduction
to her court, whether a celebrated beauty in his own country was the
handsomest woman he had ever seen, replied, “I thought so yesterday.”
A party of gentlemen at Lord Macclesfield’s, one evening, agreed to
amuse themselves by drawing tickets on which various uncomplimentary
devices were written. These were extemporaneously turned into
compliments by Cowper as follows:—
_Vanity._—Drawn by Lord Macclesfield.
Be vain, my lord, you have a right;
For who, like you, can boast this night,
A group assembled in one place
Fraught with such beauty, wit and grace?
_Insensibility._—Mr. Marsham.
Insensible can Marsham be?
Yes and no fault you must agree;
His heart his virtue only warms,
Insensible to vice’s charms.
_Inconstancy._—Mr. Adams.
Inconstancy there is no harm in,
In Adams where it looks so charming:
Who wavers as, he well may boast,
Which virtue he shall follow most.
_Impudence._—Mr. St. John.
St. John, your vice you can’t disown:
For in this age ’tis too well known,
That impudent that man must be
Who dares from folly to be free.
_Intemperance._—Mr. Gerard.
Intemperance implies excess:
Changed though the name, the fault’s not less;
Yet, blush not, Gerard, there’s no need,—
In all that’s worthy you exceed.
A _Blank_ was drawn by Mr. Legge.
If she a blank for Legge designed,
Sure Fortune is no longer blind;
For we shall fill the paper given
With every virtue under heaven.
_Cowardice._—Gen. Caillard.
Most soldiers cowardice disclaim,
But Caillard owns it without shame;
Bold in whate’er to arms belong,
He wants the courage to do wrong.
A traveller, upon reading the inscription affixed to the gates of
Bandon, (a town in Ireland originally peopled by English Protestants,)—
Jew, Turk or Atheist enter here;
But let no Papist dare appear,—
wrote the following smart reply underneath:—
He who wrote this wrote it well;
The same is written on the gates of hell.
At one of Burns’ convivial dinners he was requested to say grace;
whereupon he gave the following impromptu:—
Lord, we do thee humbly thank
For that we little merit.—
Now Jean may take the flesh away,
And Will bring in the spirit.
Refractory Rhyming.
When Canning was challenged to find a rhyme for _Julianna_, he
immediately wrote,—
Walking in the shady grove
With my Julianna,
For lozenges I gave my love
Ipecacuanha.
Ipecacuanha lozenges, though a myth when the stanza was written, are now
commonly sold by apothecaries.
* * * * *
Three or four wits, while dining together, discussed the difficulty of
finding rhymes for certain names. General Morris challenged any of the
party to find a happy rhyme for his name; and the challenge was
instantly taken up by John Brougham, whose facility at extempore rhyming
is proverbial:—
All hail to thee, thou gifted son!
The warrior-poet Morris!
’Tis seldom that we see in one
A Cæsar and a Horace.
Some years ago a French speculator found himself ruined by a sudden
collapse in the stock-market. He resolved to commit suicide, but, as he
was a connoisseur in monumental literature, he decided first to compose
his own epitaph. The first line—a very fine one—terminated with the word
_triomphe_. To this, search as he might, he could find no rhyme, and he
could not bring himself to sacrifice his beloved line. Time passed,
finding him still in search of his rhyme, assisted by a number of
benevolent friends, but all in vain. One day a promising speculation
presented itself: he seized the opportunity and regained his fortune.
The rhyme so zealously sought has at length been found, and the epitaph
completed. Here it is:—
Attendre que de soi la vétusté triomphe,
C’est absurde! Je vais au devant de la mort.
Mourir a plus d’attraits quand on est jeune encore:
A quoi bon devenir un vieillard monogomphe?
_Monogomphe_; a brilliant Hellenism signifying “who has but a single
tooth.”
* * * * *
To get a rhyme in English for the word _month_ was quite a matter of
interest with curious people years ago, and somebody made it out or
forced it by making a quatrain, in which a lisping little girl is
described as saying:—
——I can get a rhyme for a month.
I can thay it now, I thed it wunth!
Another plan was to twist the numeral _one_ into an ordinal. For
instance:—
Search through the works of Thackeray—you’ll find a rhyme to month;
He tells us of Phil Fogarty, of the fighting onety-oneth!
A parallel lisp is as follows:—
“You can’t,” says Tom to lisping Bill,
“Find any rhyme for month.”
“A great mithtake,” was Bill’s reply;
“I’ll find a rhyme at _onth_.”
And
Among our numerous English rhymes,
They say there’s none to month;
I tried and failed a hundred times,
But succeeded the hundred and _onth_.
But these are hardly fair. The rhyme is good, but the English is bad.
Christina Rosetti has done better in the admirable book of nursery
rhymes which she has published under the title of _Sing-Song_:—
How many weeks in a month?
Four, as the swift moon runn’th—
In both of these instances, however, the rhymes are evasions of the real
issue. The problem is not to make a word by compounding two, or
distorting one, but to find a word ready-made, in our unabridged
dictionaries that will rhyme properly to month. We believe there is
none. Nor is there a fair rhyme to the word _silver_, nor to _spirit_,
nor to _chimney_. Horace Smith, one of the authors of the _Rejected
Addresses_, once attempted to make one for chimney on a bet, and he did
it in this way:—
Standing on roof and by chimney
Are master and ’prentice with slim knee.
Another dissyllabic poser is _liquid_. Mr. C. A. Bristed attempts to
meet it as follows:—
After imbibing liquid,
A man in the South
Duly proceeds to stick quid
(Very likely a thick quid)
Into his mouth.
And “Mickey Rooney” contributes this:—
Shure Quicquid is a thick wit,
If he can not rhyme to liquid,
A thing that any Mick wid
The greatest aise can do:
Just take the herb called chick-weed,
Which they often cure the sick wid,
That’s a dacent rhyme for liquid,
And from a Mickey, too.
Some one having challenged a rhyme for _carpet_, the following “lines to
a pretty barmaid” were elicited in response:—
Sweet maid of the inn,
’Tis surely no sin
To toast such a beautiful bar pet;
Believe me, my dear,
Your feet would appear
At home on a nobleman’s carpet.
Rhymes were thus found for _window_:—
A cruel man a beetle caught,
And to the wall him pinned, oh!
Then said the beetle to the crowd,
“Though I’m stuck up I am not proud,”
And his soul went out of the window.
Bold Robin Hood, that archer good,
Shot down fat buck and _thin_ doe;
Rough storms withstood in thick greenwood,
Nor care for door or window.
This for _garden_:—
Though Afric’s lion be not here
In showman’s stoutly barred den,
An “Irish Lion” you may see
At large in Winter Garden.
The difficulty with porringer has thus been overcome:—
The second James a daughter had,
Too fine to lick a porringer;
He sought her out a noble lad,
And gave the Prince of Orange her.
And in this stanza:—
When nations doubt our power to fight,
We smile at every foreign jeer;
And with untroubled appetite,
Still empty plate and porringer.
These for _orange_ and _lemon_:—
I gave my darling child a lemon,
That lately grew its fragrant stem on;
And next, to give her pleasure _more_ range
I offered her a juicy orange,
And nuts—she cracked them in the door-hinge.
And many an _ill_, grim,
And travel-worn pilgrim,
has traveled far out of his way before succeeding with widow:—
Who would not always as he’s bid do,
Should never think to wed a widow.
The jury found that Pickwick did owe
Damages to Bardell’s widow.
Pickwick _loquitur_:—
Since of this suit I now am rid, O,
Ne’er again I’ll lodge with a widow!
Among the stubborn proper names are _Tipperary and Timbuctoo_. The most
successful effort to match the latter was an impromptu by a gentleman
who had accompanied a lady home from church one Sunday evening, and who
found her hymn-book is his pocket next morning. He returned it with
these lines:—
My dear and much respected Jenny,
You must have thought me quite a ninny
For carrying off your hymn-book to
My house. Had you thoughts visionary,
And did you dream some missionary
Had flown with it to Timbuctoo?
Another attempt runs thus:—
I went a hunting on the plains,
The plains of Timbuctoo;
I shot one buck for all my pains,
And he was a slim buck too.
An unattainable rhyme might be sought for _Euxine_, had not Byron said—
——Euxine,
The dirtiest little sea that mortal ever pukes in.
The following is from Tom Moore’s _Fudge Family in Paris_:—
Take instead of rope, pistol, or dagger, a
Desperate dash down the Falls of Niagara.
A request for a rhyme for Mackonochie elicited numerous replies, one of
which, in reference to a charitable occasion, begins thus:—
Who, folk bestowing
Their alms, when o’erflowing,
The coffer unlocks?
Fingers upon a key
Placing, Mackonochie
Opens the box.
Canning’s amusing little extravaganza, with which everybody is familiar,
beginning:—
Whene’er with haggard eyes I view
The dungeon that I’m rotting in,
I think of the companions true
Who studied with me at the U-
niversity of Gottingen,
has been parodied a hundred times; but it is itself a parody of Pindar,
whose fashion of dividing words in his odes all students of the classics
have abundant occasion to remember. The last stanza was appended by
William Pitt,—a fact not generally known:—
Sun, moon, and thou, vain world, adieu,
That kings and priests are plotting in
Here doomed to starve on water gru-
el, never shall I see the U-
niversity of Gottingen.
Of these fantastic rhymes, Richard Harris Barham, has given us the
finest examples in the language, in his celebrated “Ingoldsby Legends.”
In the legend “Look at the Clock,” we have this:—
“Having once gained the summit, and managed to cross it, he
Rolls down the side with uncommon velocity.”
This from “The Ghost”:—
“And, being of a temper somewhat warm,
Would now and then seize upon small occasion,
A stick or stool, or anything that round did lie,
And baste her lord and master most confoundedly.”
In the “Tragedy” we have one even more whimsical and comical:—
“The poor little Page, too, himself got no quarter, but
Was served the same way,
And was found the next day
With his heels in the air, and his head in the water-butt.”
Byron has more than matched any of these in completeness of rhyme and
extent, if we may call it so, of rhyming surface, and matched even
himself in acidity of cynicism, in his couplet:—
“——Ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Come tell me, have they not hen-pecked you all.”
Punch has some very funny samples of eccentric rhymes, of which the best
is one that spells out the final word of a couplet, the last letter or
two, making so many syllables rhyme with the ending word of the
preceding line. Thus:—
“Me drunk! the cobbler cried, the devil trouble you,
You want to kick up a blest r-o-w,
I’ve just returned from a teetotal party,
Twelve on us jammed in a spring c-a-r-t,
The man as lectured now, was drunk; why bless ye,
He’s sent home in a c-h-a-i-s-e.”
Twenty-five years or more ago, in Boston, Monday was the gathering time
for Universalist clergymen, Tompkins’ book store being the place of
rendezvous. At these unions, King, Chapin, Hosea Ballou, Whittemore, and
other notabilities, were pretty sure to be present; and as it was
immediately after the graver labors of the Sabbath, the parsons were apt
to be in an unusually frisky condition.
Chapin, ordinarily, is of reticent habit; but when the company is
congenial, and he is in exhilarant mood, his wonderful flow of language
and quick perception make him a companion rarely equalled for wit and
repartee. On one occasion, when King and Chapin, and a dozen other
clergymen were at Tompkins’s, as was their wont, Chapin began to rhyme
upon the names of those present. Without a moment’s hesitation, he ran
off the name of each, rhyming it in verse, to the huge delight of the
company. Finally, after exhausting that list, the names of absent
clergymen were given to the ready poet, and there was not a single
failure. At last a clergyman said:—
“I can give you a name, Brother Chapin, to which you cannot make a
rhyme.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Brother Brimblecomb.”
Without a moment’s pause, Chapin said:—
“There was a man in our town,
His name—they called it Brimblecomb;
He stole the tailor’s needle and shears,
But couldn’t make the thimble come.”
Butler’s facility in overcoming stubborn words is amusing. For
instance:—
There was an ancient sage philosopher,
Who had read Alexander Ross over.
Coleridge, on the eve of his departure from Göttingen, being requested
by a student of the same class in the university to write in his
_Stammbuch_, or album, complied as follows:—
We both attended the same college,
Where sheets of paper we did blur many;
And now we’re going to sport our knowledge,
In England I, and you in Germany.
Father Prout, in his polyglot praise of rum punch, says:—
Doth love, young chiel, one’s bosom ruffle?
Would any feel ripe for a scuffle?
The simplest plan is just to take a
Well stiffened can of old Jamaica.
We parted by the gate in June,
That soft and balmy month,
Beneath the sweetly beaming moon,
And (wonth—hunth—sunth—bunth—I can’t find a rhyme to month).
Years were to pass ere we should meet;
A wide and yawning gulf
Divides me from my love so sweet,
While (ulf—sulf—dulf—mulf—stuck again; I can’t get any rhyme to gulf.
I’m in a gulf myself).
Oh, how I dreaded in my soul
To part from my sweet nymph,
While years should their long seasons roll
Before (nymph—dymph—ymph—I guess I’ll have to let it go at that).
Beneath my fortune’s stern decree
My lonely spirit sunk,
For a weary soul was mine to be
And (hunk—dunk—runk—sk—that will never do in the world).
She buried her dear, lovely face
Within her azure scarf,
She knew I’d take the wretchedness
As well as (parf—sarf—darf—half-and-half; that won’t answer either).
O, I had loved her many years,
I loved her for herself;
I loved her for her tender fears,
And also for her (welf—nelf—helf—pelf; no, no; not for her pelf).
I took between my hands her head,
How sweet her lips did pouch!
I kissed her lovingly and said:
(Bouch—mouche—louche—ouch; not a bit of it did I say ouch!)
I sorrowfully wrung her hand.
My tears they did escape,
My sorrow I could not command,
And I was but a (sape—dape—fape—ape; well, perhaps I did feel like an
ape).
I gave to her a fond adieu,
Sweet pupil of love’s school;
I told her I would e’er be true,
And always be a (dool—sool—mool—fool; since I come to think of it, I
was a fool, for she fell in love with another fellow before I was
gone a month).
Hood’s _Nocturnal Sketch_ presents a remarkable example of _la
difficulté vaincue_. Most bards find it sufficiently difficult to obtain
one rhyming word at the end of a line; but Hood secures three, with an
ease which is as graceful as it is surprising:—
Even has come; and from the dark park, hark
The signal of the setting sun—one gun!
And six is sounding from the chime—prime time
To go and see the Drury Lane Dane slain,
Or hear Othello’s jealous doubt spout out,
Or Macbeth raving at that shade-made blade,
Denying to his frantic clutch much such;
Or else to see Ducrow, with wide tide, stride
Four horses as no other man can span;
Or in the small Olympic pit, sit split,
Laughing at Liston, while you quiz his phiz.
Anon night comes, and with her wings brings things
Such as, with his poetic tongue, Young sung:
The gas up blazes with its bright white light,
And paralytic watchmen prowl, howl, growl,
About the streets, and take up Pall-Mall Sal,
Who, trusting to her nightly jobs, robs fobs.
Now thieves do enter for your cash, smash, crash,
Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep,
But, frightened by policeman B 3, flee,
And while they’re going, whisper low, “No go!”
Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads,
And sleepers grumble, Drat that cat!
Who in the gutter caterwauls, squalls, mauls
Some feline foe, and screams in shrill ill will.
Now bulls of Bashan, of a prize size, rise
In childish dreams, and with a roar gore poor
Georgy, or Charles, or Billy, willy nilly;
But nurse-maid, in a night-mare rest, chest-pressed,
Dreameth of one of her old flames, James Græmes,
And that she hears—what faith is man’s—Ann’s banns
And his, from Reverend Mr. Rice, twice, thrice;
White ribbons flourish, and a stout shout out,
That upward goes, shows Rose knows those beaux’ woes.
Valentines.
A STRATEGIC LOVE-LETTER.
The following love-letter, dated in 1661, was sent by Philip, second
Earl of Chesterfield, to Lady Russell:—
Madam:—The dullness of this last cold season doth afford nothing that
is new to divert you; only here is a report that I fain would know the
truth of, which is, that I am extremely in love with you. Pray let me
know if it be true or no, since I am certain that nothing but yourself
can rightly inform me; for if you intend to use me favorably, and do
think I am in love with you, I most certainly am so; but if you intend
to receive me coldly, and do not believe that I am in love, I also am
sure that I am not; therefore let me entreat you to put me out of a
doubt which makes the greatest concern of,
Dear Madam, your most obedient faithful servant,
§Chesterfield§.
(It is the part of a skillful general to secure a good retreat.)
WRITTEN IN SYMPATHETIC INK.
Dear girl, if thou hadst been less fair,
Or I had been more bold,
The burning words I now would write,
Ere this, my tongue had told.
True to its bashful instinct still,
My love erects this screen,
And writes the words it dare not speak
In ink that can’t be seen.
CRYPTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE.
A lady wrote to a gentleman thus:—
“_I shall be_ much obliged to you, as reading _alone_ engages my
attention _at_ present, if you will lend me any one of the _Eight_
volumes of the Spectator. I hope you will excuse _this_ freedom, but
for a winter’s _evening_ I _don’t_ know a better entertainment. If I
_fail_ to return it soon, never trust me for the time _to come_.”
The words successively italicized convey the secret invitation.
MACAULAY’S VALENTINE.
The following valentine from Lord Macaulay to the Hon. Mary C. Stanhope,
daughter of Lord and Lady Mahon, 1851, is worthy of being preserved for
the sake as much of its author as of its own merits:—
Hail, day of music, day of love!
On earth below, and air above.
In air the turtle fondly moans,
The linnet pipes in joyous tones:
On earth the postman toils along,
Bent double by huge bales of song.
Where, rich with many a gorgeous dye,
Blazes all Cupid’s heraldry—
Myrtles and roses, doves and sparrows,
Love-knots and altars, lamps and arrows.
What nymph without wild hopes and fears
The double-rap this morning hears?
Unnumbered lasses, young and fair,
From Bethnel Green to Belgrave Square,
With cheeks high flushed, and hearts loud beating,
Await the tender annual greeting.
The loveliest lass of all is mine—
Good morrow to my Valentine!
Good morrow, gentle child: and then,
Again good morrow, and again,
Good morrow following still good morrow,
Without one cloud of strife or sorrow.
And when the god to whom we pay
In jest our homages to-day
Shall come to claim no more in jest,
His rightful empire o’er thy breast,
Benignant may his aspect be,
His yoke the truest liberty:
And if a tear his power confess,
Be it a tear of happiness.
It shall be so. The Muse displays
The future to her votary’s gaze:
Prophetic range my bosom swells—
I taste the cake—I hear the bells!
From Conduit street the close array
Of chariots barricades the way
To where I see, with outstretched hand,
Majestic thy great kinsman stand,[21]
And half unbend his brow of pride,
As welcoming so fair a bride;
Gay favors, thick as flakes of snow,
Brighten St. George’s portico:
Within I see the chancel’s pale,
The orange flowers, the Brussels veil,
The page on which those fingers white,
Still trembling from the awful rite,
For the last time shall faintly trace
The name of Stanhope’s noble race.
I see kind faces round thee pressing,
I hear kind voices whisper blessing:
And with those voices mingles mine—
All good attend my Valentine!
_St. Valentine’s Day, 1851._
§T. B. Macaulay.§
Footnote 21:
Statue of Mr. Pitt, in Hanover Square.
Very tender are Burns’ verses to his ladie loves. For instance:—
Oh! were I in the wildest waste,
Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,
The desert were a paradise
If thou wert there, if thou wert there;
Or, were I monarch of the globe,
Wi’ thee to reign, wi’ thee to reign,
The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.
TEUTONIC ALLITERATION.
O du Dido, die du da den, der den, den du liebst liebt, lieb ’o
liebste des Freundes, den Freund des Freundes, des Freundes wegen.[22]
[O you Dido, you who, him, who him you love, loves, love O dearest of
the friend, the friend’s friend, for the friend’s sake.]
Footnote 22:
This will remind some of our German readers of the following
inscription:—
Der, der den, der den, den 15ten März hier gesetzten Warnungspfahl,
das niemand etwas in das Wasser werfen sollte, selbst in das Wasser
geworfen hat, auzeigt, erhält zehn Thaler Belohnung.
(Whoever, him, who, on the 15th of March the here placed warning-post,
that nobody should throw any thing into the water, has thrown the post
itself into the water, denounces, receives a reward of Ten Dollars.)
A LOVER TO HIS SWEETHEART.
Your face, your tongue, your wit,
So fair, so sweet, so sharp,
First bent, then drew, then hit,
Mine eye, mine ear, my heart.
Mine eye, mine ear, my heart,
To like, to learn, to love,
Your face, your tongue, your wit,
Doth lead, doth teach, doth move.
Your face, your tongue, your wit,
With beams, with sound, with art,
Doth bind, doth charm, doth rule,
Mine eye, mine ear, my heart.
Mine eye, mine ear, my heart,
With life, with hope, with skill,
Your face, your tongue, your wit,
Doth feed, doth feast, doth fill.
O face! O tongue! O wit!
With frowns, with check, with smart,
Wrong not, vex not, wound not,
Mine eye, mine ear, my heart.
This eye, this ear, this heart,
Shall joy, shall bend, shall swear,
Your face, your tongue, your wit,
To serve, to trust, to fear.
The lines may be read either from left to right, or from above
downwards. They may also be read in various directions.
CARDIAC EFFUSION.
Somebody named John Birchall wrote the following lines in 1684 with his
“heart’s blood”:—
These loving lines which I to you have sent,
In secrecy in my heart’s blood are pent,
Y^e pen I slipt as I y^e pen did make,
And freely bleeds, and will do for your sake.
MACARONIC VALENTINE.
Geist und sinn mich beügen über
Vous zu dire das ich Sie liebe!
Das herz que vous so lightly spurn
To you und sie allein will turn
Unbarmherzig—pourquoi scorn
Mon cœur with love and anguish torn?
Croyez vous das my despair
Votre bonheur can swell or faire?
Schönheit kann nicht cruel sein
Mepris ist keine macht divine,
Then, oh then, it can’t be thine.
Glaube das mine love is true,
Changeless, deep wie Himmel’s blue—
Que l’amour that now I swear
Zu Dir Ewigkeit I’ll bear.
Glaube das the gentle rays
Born and nourished in thy gaze
Sur mon cœur will ever dwell
Comme à l’instant when they fell—
Mechante! that you know full well.
George Digby, Earl of Bristol, one of the most graceful writers of the
Seventeenth Century, is credited with this:—
Fair Archabella, to thy eyes,
That flame just blushes in the skies,
Each noble heart doth sacrifice.
Yet be not cruel, since you may,
Whene’er you please, to save or slay,
Or with a frown benight the day.
I do not wish that you should rest
In any unknown highway breast,
The lodging of each common guest,
But I present a bleeding heart,
Wounded by love, not pricked by art,
That never knew a former smart.
Be pleased to smile, and then I live;
But if a frown, a death you give,
For which it were a sin to grieve.
Yet if it be decreed I fall,
Grant but one boon, one boon is all:—
That you would me your martyr call.
A COLORED MAN’S LOVE-LETTER.
A colored man living in Detroit had long admired a colored widow in a
neighboring street, but being afraid to reveal his passion, went to a
white man and asked him to write the lady a letter asking her hand in
marriage. The friend wrote, telling the woman in a few brief lines that
the size of her feet was the talk of the neighborhood, and asking her if
she couldn’t pare them down a little. The name of the colored man was
signed, and he was to call on her for an answer. Subsequently the writer
of the letter met the negro limping along the street, and asked him what
the widow said. The man showed him a bloodshot eye, a scratched nose, a
lame leg, and a spot on the scalp where a handful of wool had been
violently jerked out; and he answered in solemn tones: “She didn’t say
nuffin, an’ I didn’t stay dar mor’n a minute!”
UNPUBLISHED VERSES OF THOMAS MOORE.
Bright leaf, when storms thy bloom shall wither,
Oh, fly for calm and shelter hither;
And I will prize thy tints as truly
As when in Spring they blossom newly.
Bright leaf, when storms thy blooms shall wither,
Oh, fly for calm and shelter hither.
Sweet maid, while hope and rapture cheer thee,
’Tis not for me to linger near thee;
But when joys fade and hope deceives thee,
When all that soothes and flatters leaves thee—
Oh, then, how sweet in one forsaken,
Fresh hopes and joys again to waken!
EGYPTIAN SERENADE.
Sing again the song you sung
When we were together young—
When there were but you and I
Underneath the summer sky.
Sing the song, and sing it o’er,
Though I know that nevermore
Will it seem the song you sung
When we were together young.
PETITIONS.
THE MAIDS AND WIDOWS.
The following petition, signed by sixteen maids of Charleston, South
Carolina, was presented to the Governor of that province in March, 1733,
“the day of the feast”:—
§To His Excellency Governor Johnson.§
The humble petition of all the Maids whose names are
underwritten:—_Whereas_, We the humble petitioners are at present in a
very melancholy disposition of mind, considering how all the bachelors
are blindly captivated by widows, and our more youthful charms thereby
neglected: the consequence of this our request is, that your Excellency
will for the future order that no Widow shall presume to marry any young
man till the maids are provided for; or else to pay each of them a fine
for satisfaction, for invading our liberties; and likewise a fine to be
laid on all such bachelors as shall be married to widows. The great
disadvantage it is to us maids, is, that the widows, by their forward
carriages, do snap up the young men; and have the vanity to think their
merits beyond ours, which is a great imposition upon us who ought to
have the preference.
This is humbly recommended to your Excellency’s consideration, and hope
you will prevent any farther insults.
And we poor Maids as in duty bound will ever pray.
P. S.—I, being the oldest maid, and therefore most concerned, do think
it proper to be the messenger to your Excellency in behalf of my fellow
subscribers.
A MALADROIT PETITION.
An autograph of Madame de Maintenon has recently been discovered at
Chateau-Guinon, the history of which is curious. A worthy priest of
Cuiseaux, a small _Commune_ of La Brasse, desiring to repair his church,
which was becoming dilapidated, had the happy idea of addressing himself
to Madame de Maintenon, whose charitable bounty was upon every tongue.
Not being in the habit of corresponding with the great, the style of his
supplication cost him much thought, but at last he produced a memorial
commencing as follows:—
“Madame:—You enjoy the reputation, which I doubt not is well founded, of
according your favors to all who solicit them. I therefore venture to
appeal to your bounty in behalf of the church of Cuiseaux,” etc.
The exalted lady had no sooner cast her eyes upon the poor priest’s
unlucky exordium, than she flew into a rage, and had him thrown into
prison, whence it was with great difficulty that his friends procured a
release. The story seems apocryphal, but the memorial bears the
following indorsement in the handwriting of Madame de Maintenon:—The
lieutenant of police is ordered to issue a _lettre-de-cachet_ against
the signer of this petition.
Sonnets.
WRITING A SONNET.
Doris, the fair, a sonnet needs must have;
I ne’er was so put to ’t before;—a Sonnet!
Why fourteen verses must be spent upon it;
’Tis good howe’er to have conquered the first stave,
Yet I shall ne’er find rhymes enough by half,
Said I, and found myself i’ th’ midst o’ the second.
If twice four verses were but fairly reckoned
I should turn back on th’ hardest part and laugh,
Thus far with good success I think I’ve scribbled,
And of the twice seven lines have clean got o’er ten.
Courage! another ’ll finish the first triplet,
Thanks to thee, Muse, my work begins to shorten,
There’s thirteen lines got through driblet by driblet:
’Tis done! count how you will I warrant there’s fourteen.
IN A FASHIONABLE CHURCH.
The air is faint, yet still the crowds press in;
With stir of silks and under-flow of talk
That falls from lips of ladies as they walk,
Ere yet the dainty service doth begin:
Ah me! the very organ’s glorious din
Is tuned to pliant trimness in its place.
And over all a sweet melodious grace
Floats with the incense-stream good souls to win!
O God, that spak’st of old from Sinai’s brow!
And Thou that laid’st the tempest with a word!
Is this Thy worship? Come amongst us now
With all Thy thunders, if Thou wouldst be heard.
So tyrannous is this weight of pageantry,
Almost, we cry, “Give back Gethsemane!”
THE PROXY SAINT.
Each for himself must do his Master’s work,
Or at his peril leave it all undone;
Witness the fate of one who sought to shirk
The Sanctuary service yet would shun
The penalty. A man of earthly aims
(So runs the apologue,) whose pious spouse
Would oft remind him of the Church’s claims,
Still answered thus, “Go, thou, and pay our vows
For thee and me!” Now, when at Peter’s gate
The twain together had arrived at last,
He let the woman in; then to her mate,
Shutting the door, “Thou hast already passed
By _proxy_,” said the Saint—“just in the way
That thou on earth was wont to fast and pray.”
ABOUT A NOSE.
’Tis very odd that poets should suppose
There is no poetry about a nose,
When plain as is the nose upon your face,
A noseless face would lack poetic grace.
Noses have sympathy: a lover knows
Noses are always _touched_ when lips are kissing:
And who would care to kiss where nose was missing?
Why, what would be the fragrance of a rose,
And where would be our mortal means of telling
Whether a vile or wholesome odour flows
Around us, if we owned no sense of smelling?
I know a nose, a nose no other knows,
’Neath starry eyes, o’er ruby lips it grows;
Beauty is in its form and music in its blows.
DYSPEPSIA.
Ah, me! what mischiefs from the stomach rise!
What fatal ills, beyond all doubt or question!
How many a deed of high and bold emprise
Has been prevented by a bad digestion!
I ween the savory crust of filthy pies
Hath made full many a man to quake and tremble,
Filling his stomach with dyspeptic sighs,
Until a huge balloon it doth resemble.
Thus do our lower parts impede the upper,
And much the brain’s good works molest and hinder.
We gorge our cerebellum with hot supper,
And burn, with drams, our viscera to a cinder,
Choosing our arrows from Disease’s quiver,
Till man in misery lives to loathe his liver.
HUMILITY.
Fair, soft Humility, so seldom seen,
So oft despised upon this little earth,
Counted by men as dross of nothing worth,
Though in the sight of Mightiness supreme
’Tis hailed and welcomed as a glorious birth,
Offspring of greatness, beauty perfected,
And yet of such fragility extreme,
That if we call it ours, ’tis forfeited;
Named, it escapes us, thus we need beware,
When with the Publican we plead the prayer,
“A sinner, Lord, be merciful to me!”
Our hearts do not say softly, “I thank Thee,
O Lord, for this sweet grace, Humility,
Which I possess, unlike the Pharisee.”
AVE MARIA.
Ave Maria! ’tis the evening hymn
Of many pilgrims on the land and sea.
Soon as the day withdraws, and two or three
Faint stars are burning, all whose eyes are dim
With tears or watching, all of weary limb
Or troubled spirit, yield the bended knee,
And find, O Virgin! life’s repose in thee.
I, too, at nightfall, when the new-born rim
Of the young moon is first beheld above,
Tune my fond thoughts to their devoutest key,
And from all bondage—save remembrance—free
Glad of my liberty as Noah’s dove,
Seek the Madonna most adored by me,
And say mine “Ave Marias” to my love.
Conformity of Sense to Sound.
In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column;
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.—§Coleridge§: _trans.
Schiller_.
ARTICULATE IMITATION OF INARTICULATE SOUNDS.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
—§Pope§: _Essay on Criticism_.
On a sudden open fly,
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
Th’ infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.—§Milton§: _Paradise Lost, ii_.
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.—§Milton§: _Lycidas_.
His bloody hand
Snatched two unhappy of my martial band,
And dashed like dogs against the stony floor.—§Pope§: _Hom. Odys._
The Pilgrim oft
At dead of night, ’mid his orison, hears
Aghast the voice of time, disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitous down-dashed,
Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon.
—§Dyer§: _Ruins of Rome_.
What! like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce,
With arms, and George, and Brunswick, crowd the verse,
Rend with tremendous sounds your cars asunder,
With drum, gun, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder?
Then all your muse’s softer art display:
Let Carolina smooth the tuneful lay,
Lull with Amelia’s liquid name the nine,
And sweetly flow through all the royal line.—§Pope§: _Sat. I._
Remarkable examples are afforded by Dryden’s _Alexander’s Feast_, and
_The Bells_ of Edgar A. Poe.
IMITATION OF TIME AND MOTION.
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecs sound
To many a youth and many a maid
Dancing in the checkered shade.—§Milton§: _L’Allegro_.
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.
§Pope§: _Hom. Odys._
Which urged, and labored, and forced up with pain,
Recoils and rolls impetuous down, and smokes along the plain.
§Dryden§: _Lucretius_.
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
§Pope§: _Essay on Criticism_.
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main.
§Pope§: _Essay on Criticism_.
Oft on a plat of rising ground
I hear the far-off curfew sound,
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar.—§Milton§: _Il Penseroso_.
The well-known hexameters of Virgil, descriptive respectively of the
galloping of horses over a resounding plain, and of the heavy blows in
alternately hammering the metal on the anvil, afford good examples,—the
dactylic, of rapidity, the spondaic, of slowness.
Quadrupe- | dante pu- | trem soni- | tu quatit | ungula | campum,
_Æneid_, viii. 596.
Illi in- | ter se- | se mag- | na vi | brachia | tollunt.—_Æneid_, viii.
452.
IMITATION OF DIFFICULTY AND EASE.
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labors, and the words move slow, &c.—§Pope§: _Ess. on
Criticism_.
He through the thickest of the throng gan threke.—§Chaucer§: _Knight’s
Tale_.
And strains from hard-bound brains six lines a year.—§Pope§: _Sat.
Frag._
Part huge of bulk,
Wallowing, unwieldy, enormous in their gait,
Tempest the ocean.—§Milton§: _Paradise Lost_, vii.
He came, and with him Eve, more loath, though first
To offend, discountenanced both, and discomposed.
§Milton§: _Paradise Lost_, x.
So he with difficulty and labor hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labor he.—§Milton§: _Paradise Lost_, ii.
Familiar Quotations from Unfamiliar Sources.
_No Cross, no Crown._
Tolle crucem, qui vis auferre coronam.
§St. Paulinus§, Bishop of Nola.
The way to bliss lies not on beds of down,
And he that had no cross deserves no crown.—§Quarles§: _Esther_.
_Corporations have no souls._
A corporation aggregate of many is invisible, immortal, and vests only
in intendment and consideration of the law. They cannot commit
treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicate, for _they have no souls_,
neither can they appear in person, but by attorney.—_Coke’s Reports_,
vol. x. p. 32.
_Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat._
§Euripides§: _Fragments_.
For those whom God to ruin has designed,
He fits for fate and first destroys their mind.
§Dryden§: _Hind and Panther_.
_Men are but children of a larger growth_;
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving too, and full as vain.
§Dryden§: _All for Love_, iv. 1.
_Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest._
True friendship’s laws are by this rule expressed,
Welcome, etc.—§Pope§: _Odyssey_, B. xv.
_More worship the rising than the setting sun._
§Pompey to Sylla§: _Plutarch’s Lives_.
_Incidis in Scillam cupiens vitare Charybdim._
§Philippe Gaultier§: _Alexandreis_.
_History is philosophy teaching by example._
§Dionysius of Halicarnassus.§
_Consistency a Jewel._
In the search for the source of familiar quotations, none appears to
have so completely baffled patient seekers as the phrase “Consistency is
a jewel.” Several years ago a perplexed scholar offered a handsome
reward for the discovery of its origin. Not till quite recently,
however, has the claim been set up that the original was found in the
“Ballad of Jolly Robyn Roughhead,” which is preserved in “_Murtagh’s
Collection of Ancient English and Scottish Ballads_.” The stanza in
which it occurs is the following:—
Tush, tush, my lassie, such thoughts resign,
Comparisons are cruel;
Fine pictures suit in frames as fine,
_Consistency’s a jewel_:
For thee and me coarse clothes are best,
Rude folks in homely raiment drest—
Wife Joan and goodman Robyn.
_Cleanliness next to Godliness._
The origin of the proverb, “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” has been
the subject of extended investigation. Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations”
attributes the phrase to Rev. John Wesley; but as this prominent
Methodist clergyman uses this sentence in his sermons as a quotation
from some other work, it has been suggested that further search is
requisite. Rev. Dr. A. S. Bettelheimer, of Richmond, Va., asserts that
he has discovered this maxim in an abstract of religious principles
contained in an old commentary on the Book of Isaiah. Thus the practical
doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness, vigorousness,
guiltlessness, abstemiousness and cleanliness. And cleanliness is next
to godliness, which is next to holiness.
_He’s a brick._
An Eastern prince visited the ruler of a neighboring country, and after
viewing various objects worthy of attention, asked to see the
fortifications. He was shown the troops with this remark—“These are my
fortifications; every man is a brick.”
_When you are at Rome do as the Romans do._
This proverb has been traced to a saying of St. Ambrose. St. Augustine
mentions in one of his letters (_Ep._ lxxxvj _ad Casulan_.) that when
his mother was living with him at Milan, she was much scandalized
because Saturday was kept there as a festival; whilst at Rome, where she
had resided a long time, it was kept as a fast. To ease her mind he
consulted the bishop on this question, who told him he could give him no
better advice in the case than to do as he himself did. “For when I go
to Rome,” said Ambrose, “I fast on the Saturday, as they do at Rome;
when I am here, I do not fast.” With this answer, he says that “he
satisfied his mother, and ever after looked upon it as an oracle sent
from heaven.”
_A Nation of Shopkeepers._
To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of
customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of
shopkeepers.—§Adam Smith§, _Wealth of Nations_.
On May 31, 1817, Napoleon is reported to have said to Barry O’Meara,—
You were greatly offended with me for having called you a nation of
shopkeepers. Had I meant by this that you were a nation of cowards,
you would have had reason to be displeased.... I meant that you were a
nation of merchants, and that all your great riches arose from
commerce.... Moreover, no man of sense ought to be ashamed of being
called a shopkeeper.—_Voice from St. Helena._
_Only a pauper._
The lines—
Rattle his bones
Over the stones,
He’s only a pauper whom nobody owns,
are from the _Pauper’s Drive_, by Thomas Noel.
_Taking time by the forelock._
Spenser says, _Sonnet_ lxx.:—
Go to my love, where she is careless laid,
Yet in her winter’s bower not well awake;
Tell her the joyous time will not be staid,
Unless she do him by the forelock take.
_What will Mrs. Grundy say?_
In Morton’s clever comedy, _Speed the Plough_, the first scene of the
first act opens with a view of a farm-house, where Farmer Ashfield is
discovered at a table with his jug and pipe, holding the following
colloquy with his wife, Dame Ashfield, who figures in a riding-dress,
with a basket under her arm:—
_Ashfield_—Well, Dame, welcome whoam. What news does thee bring vrom
market?
_Dame._—What news husband? What I always told you; that Farmer
Grundy’s wheat brought five shillings a quarter more than ours did.
_Ash._—All the better vor he.
_Dame._—Ah! the sun seems to shine on purpose for him.
_Ash._—Come, come, missus, as thee has not the grace to thank God for
prosperous times, dan’t thee grumble when they be unkindly a bit.
_Dame._—And I assure you Dame Grundy’s butter was quite the crack of
the market.
_Ash._—Be quiet woolye? always ding, dinging Dame Grundy into my
ears—_What will Mrs. Grundy zay?_ What will Mrs. Grundy think? Canst
thee be quiet, let ur alone, and behave thyself pratty.
_Though lost to sight, to memory dear._
This oft-quoted line is traced by a modern wag, of an inventive turn, to
Ruthven Jenkyns, who wrote the following verses, published in the
_Greenwich Magazine for Marines, in 1701_:—
Sweetheart, good-bye! the fluttering sail
Is spread to waft me far from thee;
And soon, before the fav’ring gale,
My ship shall bound upon the sea.
Perchance, all desolate and forlorn
These eyes shall miss thee many a year;
But unforgotten every charm,
Though lost to sight, to mem’ry dear.
Sweetheart, good-bye! one last embrace!
O, cruel fate! true souls to sever;
Yet in this heart’s most sacred place
Thou, thou alone shalt dwell forever!
And still shall recollection trace
In Fancy’s mirror, ever near,
Each smile, each tear—that form, that face—
Though lost to sight, to mem’ry dear.
_Too low they build who build beneath the stars._
Builders who adopt this motto are indebted for it to Young, _The
Complaint_, viii. 215.
_Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel._
Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell, is credited with this phrase.
_So much the worse for the facts._
M. Royer Collard disapproved of the opinions of the Fathers of Port
Royal on the doctrine of grace: “_Ils ont les textes pour eux_, disait
il, _j’en suis faché pour les textes_.” So much the worse for the
texts,—a very different and much more reasonable saying than the
paradoxical expression commonly ascribed to Voltaire.
_Conspicuous by its absence._
Earl Russell, in an address to the electors of the city of London,
alluding to Lord Derby’s Reform Bill, which had just been defeated,
said:—
Among the defects of the Bill, which were numerous, one provision was
conspicuous by its presence, and one by its absence.
In the course of a speech subsequently delivered at a meeting of Liberal
electors at the London Tavern, he justified his use of these words
thus:—
It has been thought that by a misnomer or a bull on my part I alluded
to it as “a provision conspicuous by its absence,” a turn of
phraseology which is not an original expression of mine, but is taken
from one of the greatest historians of antiquity.
The historian referred to is Tacitus, who, (_Annals_, iii. 761) speaking
of the images carried in procession at the funeral of Junia, says: _Sed
præfulgebant Cassius atque Brutus eo ipso quod effigies eorum non
videbantur_. Russell’s adaptation recalls the “brilliant flashes of
silence” which Sydney Smith attributed to Macaulay. Since the Jesuits
succeeded in causing the lives of Arnauld and Pascal to be excluded from
_L’Histoire des Hommes Illustres_, by Perrault, the epigrammatic
expression _Briller par son absence_ has been popular among the French.
_Do as I say, not as I do._
This proverbial expression was in common use among the Italian monks in
the Middle Ages. It occurs in the _Decameron_ of Boccacio thus: “Ils
croient avoir bien répondu et être absous de tout crime quand ils ont
dit, _Faites ce que nous disons et ne faites pas ce que nous faisons_.”
The germ of the words thus put into the mouths of the friars of his day,
Boccacio no doubt found in the language of our Saviour recorded in
Matthew xxiii. 2, 3:—“The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat; all
therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do
not ye after their works: _for they say and do not_.”
* * * * *
Mr. Longfellow, in his _New England Tragedies_, puts into the mouth of
Captain Kempthorne, back in the times of Quaker persecution, a now
familiar phrase. He speaks of
_A solid man of Boston_;
A comfortable man, with dividends,
And the first salmon, and the first green peas.
Aubrey in his _Letters_, speaking of the handwriting of the poet Waller,
says:—“He writes a lamentable hand, as bad as the _scratching of a
hen_.” Probably suggested by the “_gallina scripsit_” of Plautus.
The phrase _masterly inactivity_, first used by Sir James Mackintosh in
his _Vindiciæ Gallicæ_, finds a prototype in the Horatian expression,
“_strenua nos exercet inertia_,” (_Epist. lib._ I., xi. 28,) and in the
words of Isaiah, “their strength is to sit still” (xxx. 7).
From _Don Quixote_ we have _Honesty is the best policy_. From _Gil
Blas_, (Smollet’s trans.,) comes _Facts are stubborn things_. From
Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, (P. iii. Sec. 3, Mem. i. Subs. 2,)
_Comparisons are odious_. From Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_, _Dark as
pitch_, and _Every tub must stand on its own bottom_. From Shakspeare,
_Fast and loose_ (_Love’s Labor Lost, iii. 1._); _Main chance_ (_2 Henry
IV. iii. 1_); _Let the world slide_ (_Taming of the Shrew_, _Induc.
i._). From Burns, (_Epistle from Esopus to Maria_,) _Durance vile_.
§Christmas§ comes but once a year.—§Thomas Tusser§, 1580.
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.
Originally written,—
It is an ill wind turns none to good.—§Thomas Tusser.§
Look ere thou leap.—§Tusser.§
And
Look before you ere you leap.—§Butler§: _Hudibras_, c. 2.
Bid the devil take the hindmost.—_Hudibras_, c. 2.
Count the chickens ere they’re hatched.—_Hudibras_, c. 3.
Necessity, the tyrant’s plea.—§Milton.§—_Paradise Lost, B._ iv.
Peace hath her victories, &c.—§Ibid.§: _Sonnet_ xvi.
The old man eloquent.—§Ibid.§: _Tenth Sonnet_.
On the light fantastic toe.—§Ibid.§: _L’Allegro_.
The devil may cite Scripture for his purpose.
§Shakspeare§: _Merchant of
Venice_.
Assume a virtue though you have it not.—_Hamlet._
Brevity is the soul of wit.—_Hamlet._
The sere, the yellow leaf.—_Macbeth._
Curses not loud, but deep.—_Macbeth._
Make assurance doubly sure.—_Macbeth._
Thereby hangs a tale.—_As You Like It._
Good wine needs no bush.—As You Like It.
Though last, not least, in love.—_Julius Cæsar._
Food for powder.—_First Part Henry IV._
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.—_Troilus and Cressida._
And made a sunshine in a shady place.—§Spenser§: _Fairy Queen_.
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new.
§Dr. Johnson§: _Prologue at the opening of the Drury Lane Theatre_,
1747.
To point a moral or adorn a tale.—§Ibid.§: _Vanity of Human Wishes_.
Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.—§Ibid.§: _London_.
Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no fibs.
§Goldsmith§: _She Stoops to
Conquer_.
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.—§Ibid.§:
_Retaliation_.
Winter lingering chills the lap of May.—§Ibid.§: _The Traveller_.
Of two evils I have chose the least.—§Prior.§
His (God’s) image cut in ebony.—§Thomas Fuller.§
Richard’s himself again.—§Colley Cibber.§
Building castles in the air.
Originally written,—
Building castles in Spain.—§Scarron.§
Hope, the dream of a waking man.—§Basil.§
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.
§Congreve§: _The Mourning Bride_.
Earth has no rage like love to hatred turned.—§Ibid.§
Let who may make the laws of a people, allow me to write their
ballads, and I’ll guide them at my will.—§Sir Philip Sidney.§
When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war.
Originally,
When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war.
§Nat Lee§: _Play of Alexander the Great_, 1692.
Westward the course of empire takes its way.—§Bishop Berkeley§.
No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
But the whole boundless continent is yours.
§J. M. Sewall§: _Epilogue to Cato_,
1778.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Originally,
Out of minde as soon as out of sight.—§Lord Brooke§.
Through thick and thin.—§Dryden§: _Absalom and Achitophel_.
He whistled as he went for want of thought.—§Ib.§: _Cymon and
Iphigenia_.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied.—§Ib.§: _Absalom &
Achitophel_.
None but the brave deserve the fair.—§Ibid.§: _Alexander’s Feast_.
To err is human; to forgive, divine.—§Pope§: _Essay on Criticism_.
In wit a man; simplicity, a child.—§Ibid.§: _Epitaph on Gay_.
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.—§Ib.§: _Prologue to the
Satires_.
Damns with faint praise.—§Ibid.§: _Prologue to the Satires_.
Order is Heaven’s first law.—§Ibid.§: _Essay on Man_.
An honest man’s the noblest work of God.—§Ibid.§: _Essay on Man_.
Looks through nature up to nature’s God.—§Ibid.§: _Essay on Man_.
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.—§Ibid.§: _Essay on Man_.
Who never mentions hell to ears polite.—§Ibid.§: _The Epistles_.
From seeming evil still educing good.—§Thomson§: _Hymn_.
To teach the young idea how to shoot: §Ibid.§: _The Seasons, Spring_.
’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view.
§Campbell§: _Pleasures of
Hope_.
And man the hermit sighed till woman smiled.—§Ibid.§
Where ignorance is bliss
’Tis folly to be wise.—§Gray§: _Ode on Eton College_.
Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.—§Ib.§: _The Progress of
Poesy_.
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.—§Burns§: _Tam O’Shanter_.
As clear as a whistle.—§Byrom§: _The Astrologer_.
She walks the waters like a thing of life.—§Byron§: _The Island_.
The cups that cheer but not inebriate.—§Cowper§: _Task_.
Not much the worse for wear.—§Ibid.§
Masterly inactivity.—§Mackintosh§: 1791.
The Almighty Dollar.—§Washington Irving§: _Creole Village_.
Entangling alliances.—§George Washington.§
Where liberty dwells, there is my country.—§Benjamin Franklin.§
The post of honor is the private station.—§Thos. Jefferson.§
Straws show which way the wind blows.—§James Cheatham.§
A good time coming.—§Walter Scott§: _Rob Roy_.
Face the music.—§J. Fenimore Cooper.§
Churchyard Literature.
HIC JACET SACRUM MEMORIÆ.
§Earth’s§ highest station ends in §HERE HE LIES§!
And §DUST TO DUST§ concludes her noblest song.
§Emigravit§ is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies:
Dead he is not, but departed, for the Christian never dies.
A hieroglyph formed by the two first letters of the Greek word
_Christos_, intersecting the _Chi_ longitudinally by the _Rho_,—a
palm-leaf, or a wreath of palm-leaves, indicating victory,—a crown,
which speaks of the reward of the saints,—an _immortelle_, or a vessel
supporting a column of flame, indicating continued life,—an anchor,
which indicates hope,—a ship under sail, which says, “Heavenward
bound,”—the letters _Alpha_ and _Omega_, the Apocalyptic title of
Christ,—the dove, the emblem of innocence and holiness,—the winged
insect escaping from the chrysalis, typical of the resurrection,—the
cross, the Christian’s true and only glory in life and death, by which
he is crucified to the world, and the world to him,—these are the
emblems that speak to the Christian’s heart of faith, and hope, and
love, and humility.
EPITAPHS OF EMINENT MEN.
§Christopher Columbus§ died at Valladolid, May 20, 1506, æt. 70. In 1513
his body was taken to Seville, on the Guadalquivir, and there deposited
in the family vault of the Dukes of Alcala, in the Cathedral. Upon a
tablet was inscribed, in Castilian, this meagre couplet, which is still
legible:—
A Castilla y Arragon
Otro mondo dio Colon.[23]
[To Castile and Aragon
Columbus gave another world.]
Footnote 23:
Irving gives the inscription thus:—
Por Castilla y por Leon
Nuevo mundo hallo Colon.
In 1536, the remains of the great navigator were conveyed to St. Domingo
and deposited in the Cathedral, where they continued until a recent
period, when they were finally disinterred, and removed to Havana. The
inscription on the tablet in the Cathedral of St. Domingo, now
obliterated, was as follows:—
Hic locus abscondit præclari membra §Columbi§
Cujus nomen ad astra volat.
Non satis unus erat sibi mundus notus, at orbem
Ignotum priscis omnibus ipse dedit;
Divitias summas terras dispersit in omnes,
Atque animas cœlo tradidit innumeras;
Invenit campos divinis legibus aptos,
Regibus et nostris prospera regna dedit.[24]
Footnote 24:
This spot conceals the body of the renowned Columbus, whose name
towers to the stars. Not satisfied with the known globe, he added to
all the old an unknown world. Throughout all countries he distributed
untold wealth, and gave to heaven unnumbered souls. He found an
extended field for gospel missions, and conferred prosperity upon the
reign of our monarchs.
§William Shakspeare§ died April 23, 1616, æt. 52, and was buried in the
chancel of the church of Stratford. The monument erected to his memory
represents the poet with a thoughtful countenance, resting on a cushion
and in the act of writing. Immediately below the cushion is the
following distich:—
Judicio Pylium; genio Socratem; arte Maronem:
Terra tegit; populis mœrot; Olympus habet.[25]
Footnote 25:
A Nestor in discrimination, a Socrates in talent, a Virgil in poetic
art; the earth covers him, the people mourn for him, Heaven possesses
him.
On a tablet underneath are inscribed these lines:—
Stay, passenger: why dost thou go so fast?
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath placed
Within this monument,—Shakspeare; with whom
Quick Nature died; whose name doth deck the tomb
Far more than cost; since all that he hath writ
Leaves living Art but page to serve his wit:
and on the flat stone covering the grave is inscribed, in very irregular
characters, the following quaint supplication, blessing, and menace:—
Good Friend, for §Jesvs§ sake forbeare
To digg §T-E§ dvst EncloAsed HERE;
Blest be §T-E§ Man T/Y spares §T§-hs stones,
And evrst be He T/Y moves my bones.
§SIR ISAAC NEWTON, OB.§ 1727, §ÆT.§ 85.
Here lies interred Isaac Newton, knight, who, with an energy of mind
almost divine, guided by the light of mathematics purely his own,
first demonstrated the motions and figures of the planets, the paths
of comets, and the causes of the tides; who discovered, what before
his time no one had ever suspected, that the rays of light are
differently refrangible, and that this is the cause of colors; and who
was a diligent, penetrating, and faithful interpreter of nature,
antiquity, and the sacred writings. In his philosophy, he maintained
the majesty of the Supreme Being; in his manners, he expressed the
simplicity of the Gospel. Let mortals congratulate themselves that the
world has seen so great and excellent a man, the glory of human
nature.
Pope’s inscription is as follows:—
Isaacus Newtonus:
Quem Immortalem
Testantur _Tempus_, _Natura_, _Cœlum_:
Mortalem
Hoc marmor fatetur.
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night:
§God§ said, _Let Newton be!_ and all was light.
JOHNSON’S EPITAPH ON GOLDSMITH.[26]
Thou seest the tomb of Oliver; retire,
Unholy feet, nor o’er his ashes tread.
Ye whom the deeds of old, verse, nature, fire,
Mourn nature’s priest, the bard, historian, dead.
Footnote 26:
The original is in Greek, as follows:—
Τον ταφον εισοραας τον Ολιβαριοιο, κονιη
Ἀφροσι μη σεμνην, ξεινε, ποδεσσι πατελ.
Οισι μεμηλε φυσις, μετρων χαρις, εργα παλαιων
Κλαιετε ποιητην, ιστορικον, φυσικον.
COWPER’S EPITAPH ON DR. JOHNSON.
Here Johnson lies,—a sage by all allowed,
Whom to have bred may well make England proud;
Whose prose was eloquence, by wisdom taught,
The graceful vehicle of virtuous thought;
Whose verse may claim—grave, masculine and strong—
Superior praise to the mere poet’s song;
Who many a noble gift from heaven possessed,
And faith at last, alone worth all the rest.
O man immortal by a double prize,
By fame on earth,—by glory in the skies!
§GEORGE WASHINGTON§, §ob. Dec. 14, 1799, æt. 67§.
When, in 1838, the remains of Washington were removed from the old vault
into the new, at Mount Vernon, the coffin was placed in a beautiful
sarcophagus of white marble, from a quarry in Chester county,
Pennsylvania, and prepared in Philadelphia by the gentleman who
presented it. The lid is wrought with the arms of the country and the
inscription here appended. Independently of other considerations, it is
desirable, for the honor of the nation so largely indebted to
Washington, that his grave should be something more than an advertising
medium for a marble-mason. But the faithful chronicler must take things
as he finds them, not always as they should be:—
WASHINGTON.
By the permission of
Lawrence Lewis,
The surviving executor of
George Washington,
this sarcophagus
was presented by
John Struthers,
of Philadelphia, Marble Mason,
§A.D.§ 1837.
The stone and the inscription over the grave of Franklin and his wife,
at the corner of Fifth and Arch Streets, Philadelphia, and recently
opened to public view by substituting for the old brick wall a neat iron
railing, are according to his own direction in his will. The exceeding
plainness of both are strikingly characteristic of the man. The stone is
a simple marble slab, six feet by four, lying horizontally, and raised
about a foot above the ground. It bears the following:—
§Benjamin§ }
§AND§ } §Franklin.§
§Deborah§ }
1790.
The following is a copy of the epitaph written by Franklin upon himself,
at the age of twenty-three, while a journeyman printer:—
The Body
of
§Benjamin Franklin§, Printer,
(Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
And stript of its lettering and gilding,)
Lies food for worms:
Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will [as he believed] appear once more,
In a new
And more beautiful edition,
Corrected and amended
by
The Author.
That this well-known typographical inscription was plagiarized from
Mather’s _Magnalia Christi Americana_, is evident from Franklin’s own
admission of his familiarity with the works of “the great Cotton.” To
the perusal in early life of Mather’s excellent volume, _Essays to do
Good_, published in 1710, Franklin ascribed all his “usefulness in the
world.” The lines alluded to in the famous Ecclesiastical History are by
Benjamin Woodbridge, a member of the first graduating class of Harvard
University, 1642:—
A living, breathing Bible; tables where
Both Covenants at large engraven were.
Gospel and law, in ’s heart, had each its column;
His head an index to the sacred volume;
His very name a title-page; and, next,
His life a commentary on the text.
O what a monument of glorious worth,
When, in a new edition, he comes forth!
Without errata may we think he’ll be,
In leaves and covers of eternity!
Old Joseph Capen, minister of Topsfield, had also, in 1681, given John
Foster, who set up the first printing-press in Boston, the benefit of
the idea, _in memoriam_:—
Thy body, which no activeness did lack,
Now’s laid aside like an old almanac,
But for the present only’s out of date;
’Twill have at length a far more active state.
Yea, though with dust thy body soiléd be,
Yet at the resurrection we shall see
A fair edition, and of matchless worth,
Free from errata, new in Heaven set forth;
’Tis but a word from God, the great Creator—
It shall be done when he saith _Imprimatur_.
Davis, in his _Travels in America_, finds another source in a Latin
epitaph on the London bookseller Jacob Tonson, published with an English
translation in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for Feb., 1736. This is its
conclusion:—
When Heaven reviewed th’ _original text_,
’Twas with _erratas_ few perplexed:
Pleased with the _copy_ ’t was _collated_,
And to a better life _translated_.
But let to life this _supplement_
Be printed on thy _monument_,
Lest the _first page_ of _death_ should be,
Great editor, a _blank_ to thee;
And thou who many _titles_ gave
Should want _one title_ for this grave.
Stay, passenger, and drop a tear;
Here lies a noted Bookseller;
This marble _index_ here is placed
To tell, that when he found defaced
His _book of life_, he died with grief:
Yet he, by true and genuine belief,
A new edition may expect,
Far more _enlarged_ and more _correct_.
AT MONTICELLO, VA.
Here lies buried
§Thomas Jefferson§,
Author of the Declaration of American Independence,
Of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom,
And Father of the University of Virginia.
WILLIAM HOGARTH.
Garrick’s epitaph on Hogarth at Chiswick is well known. That written by
Dr. Johnson is shorter and superior:—
The hand of him here torpid lies,
That drew the essential form of grace;
Here closed in death the attentive eyes
That saw the manners in the face.
LORD BROUGHAM’S EPITAPH ON WATT, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Not to perpetuate a name
Which must endure while the peaceful arts flourish,
But to show
That mankind have learned to honor those
Who best deserve their gratitude,
The King, his Ministers, and many of the Nobles
And Commoners of the Realm
Raised this Monument to
§James Watt§,
Who, directing the force of an original genius,
Early exercised in philosophic research,
To the improvement of
The Steam Engine,
Enlarged the resources of his Country,
Increased the power of man,
And rose to an eminent place
Among the most illustrious followers of Science
And the real benefactors of the World.
EULOGISTIC, APT, APPROPRIATE.
BEN JONSON’S ON THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE.
Underneath this marble hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sydney’s sister,—Pembroke’s mother.
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Fair, and wise, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee!
Marble piles let no man raise
To her name for after days;
Some kind woman born as she,
Reading this, like Niobe,
Shall turn marble, and become
Both her mourner and her tomb.
ON ANOTHER LADY FRIEND.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die,
Which in life did harbor give
To more virtue than doth live.
ANDREW JACKSON’S EPITAPH ON HIS WIFE.
Here lie the remains of §Mrs. Rachel Jackson§, wife of President
Jackson, who died December 22d, 1828, aged 61. Her face was fair, her
person pleasing, her temper amiable, and her heart kind. She delighted
in relieving the wants of her fellow-creatures, and cultivated that
divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods. To the
poor she was a benefactress; to the rich she was an example; to the
wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament. Her pity went
hand in hand with her benevolence; and she thanked her Creator for
being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and yet so virtuous,
slander might wound, but could not dishonor. Even death, when he tore
her from the arms of her husband, could but transplant her to the
bosom of her God.
BISHOP LOWTH’S EPITAPH ON HIS DAUGHTER.
Cara, vale, ingenio præstans, pietate, pudore,
Et plus quam natæ nomine cara, vale.
Cara Maria, vale: ab veniet felicius ævum,
Quando iterum tecum, sim modo dignus, ero.
Cara redi, lætâ tum dicam voce, paternos
Eja age in amplexus, cara Maria, redi!
[Dearer than daughter,—paralleled by few
In genius, goodness, modesty,—adieu!
Adieu! Maria,—till that day more blest,
When, if deserving, I with thee shall rest.
Come, then, thy sire will cry in joyful strain,
Oh, come to my paternal arms again.]
IN THE CHURCHYARD OF OLD ST. PANCRAS.
_Miss Basnett, 1756, æt. 23._
Go, spotless honor and unsullied truth;
Go, smiling innocence, and blooming youth;
Go, female sweetness joined with manly sense;
Go, winning wit, that never gave offence;
Go, soft humanity, that blest the poor;
Go, saint-eyed patience, from affliction’s door
Go, modesty that never wore a frown;
Go, virtue, and receive thy heavenly crown.
Not from a stranger came this heartfelt verse:
The friend inscribed thy tomb, whose tear bedewed thy hearse.
MALHERBE’S EPITAPH ON A YOUNG LADY.
Elle était de ce monde, ou les plus belles choses
Ont le pire destin;
Et, rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses,
L’espace d’un matin.
[She was of this world, where all things the rarest
Have still the shortest race;
A rose she lived (so lives of flowers the fairest)
A little morning’s space!]
IN ST. MARY’S CHURCH, NOTTINGHAM.
§Luke xx. 36.§
Sleep on in peace; await thy Maker’s will;
Then rise unchanged, and be an angel still!
In the church of Ightham, near Sevenoaks, Kent, is a mural monument with
the bust of a lady, who was famous for her needle-work and was
traditionally reported to have written the letter to Lord Monteagle
which resulted in the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. The following is
the inscription:—
D. D. D.
To the pretious name and honour of Dame Dorothy Selby, Relict of
Sir William Selby, Kt. the only daughter and heire of Charles Bonham,
Esq.
She was a Dorcas,
Whose curious needle wound the abused stage
Of this leud world into the golden age;
Whose pen of steel and silken inck enrolled
The acts of Jonah in records of gold;
Whose arte disclosed that plot, which, had it taken,
Rome had triumphed, and Britain’s walls had shaken.
She was
In heart a Lydia, and in tongue a Hanna;
In zeale a Ruth, in wedlock a Susanna;
Prudently simple, providently wary,
To the world a Martha, and to heaven a Mary.
Who put on { in the year } Pilgrimage, 69.
immortality { of her } Redeemer, 1641.
AT WESTFIELD, N. J.
_Mrs. Jennet Woodruff, 1750, æt. 43._
The dame, that rests within this tomb,
Had Rachel’s beauty, Leah’s fruitful womb,
Abigail’s wisdom, Lydia’s faithful heart,
Martha’s just care, and Mary’s better part.
AT QUINCY, MASS.
1708.
Braintree, thy prophet’s gone; this tomb inters
The Rev. Moses Fiske his sacred herse.
Adore heaven’s praiseful art, that formed the man,
Who souls, not to himself, but Christ oft won;
Sailed through the straits with Peter’s family
Renowned, and Gaius’ hospitality,
Paul’s patience, James’s prudence, John’s sweet love,
Is landed, entered, cleared, and crowned above.
IN CRANSTON, R.I.
Here lies the Body of
§Joseph Williams, Esq.§
Son of Roger Williams, Esq.
(The first white man that came to Providence.)
Born 1644. Died 1725.
In King Philip’s war, he courageously went through,
And the native Indians he bravely did subdue;
And now he’s gone down into the grave, and he will be no more
Until it please Almighty God his body to restore
Into some proper shape, as he thinks fit to be,
Perhaps like a grain of wheat, as Paul set forth, you see,
Corinthians 1 Book, 15 chap. 37 verse.
ON THE TOMB OF MRS. DUNBAR, TRENTON, N.J.
The meed of merit ne’er shall die,
Nor modest worth neglected lie,
The fame that pious virtue gives,
The Memphian monuments outlives.
Reader, wouldst thou secure such praise,
Go, learn Religion’s pleasant ways.
POPE’S EPITAPH ON HARCOURT.
To this sad shrine, whoe’er thou art! draw near;
Here lies the friend most loved, the son most dear:
Who ne’er knew joy but friendship might divide,
Or gave his father grief but when he died.
The idea in the last line appears to be derived from an epitaph on an
excellent wife, in the Roman catacombs:—
§Conjugi piissimæ
de qua nihil aliud dolitus est
nisi mortem.§
ON A SPANISH GIRL WHO DIED BROKEN-HEARTED.
She who lies beneath this stone
Died of constancy alone:
Fear not to approach, oh, passer-by—
Of naught contagious did she die.
One of the simplest, truest, and most dignified epitaphs ever written
may be found in the _Spectator_, No. 518:—
§Hic jacet R. C. in expectatione diei supremi.
Qualis erat dies iste indicabit.§
AT BARNSTABLE, MASS.
_Rev. Joseph Green, 1770, æt. 70._
Think what the Christian minister should be,
You’ve then his character, for such was he.
A similar epitaph may be found in Torrington churchyard, Devon:—
She was—but words are wanting to say what.
Think what a woman should be—she was that.
Which provoked the following reply:—
A woman should be both a wife and mother,
But Jenny Jones was neither one nor t’other.
AT GRIMSTEAD, ESSEX.
A wife so true, there are but few,
And difficult to find;
A wife more just, and true to trust,
There is not left behind.
AT BATON ROUGE, LA.
Here lies the body of David Jones. His last words were, “I die a
Christian and a Democrat.”
AT ELIZABETH CITY, N. J.
_Elias Boudinot, 1770, æt. 63._
This modest stone, what few vain marbles can,
May truly say, Here lies an honest man.[27]
Footnote 27:
From Pope’s Epitaph on Fenton.
ON SIR THOMAS VERE.
When Vere sought death, armed with his sword and shield,
Death was afraid to meet him in the field;
But when his weapons he had laid aside,
Death, like a coward, struck him, and he died.
BEN JONSON’S EPITAPH ON MICHAEL DRAYTON.
(_One of the Elizabethan Poets, ob. 1631._)
Do, pious Marble, let thy readers know
What they and what their children owe
To §Drayton’s§ name, whose sacred dust
We recommend unto thy §TRUST§:
Protect his memory and preserve his story,
Remain a lasting monument of his glory;
And when thy ruins shall disclaim
To be the treasurer of his name,
His name, that cannot fade, shall be
An everlasting monument to thee!
The epigrammatic turn in the concluding stanza was evidently plagiarized
from Ion’s inscription upon the tomb of Euripides, which is thus
faithfully translated:—
Divine Euripides, this tomb we see
So fair, is not a monument for thee,
So much as thou for it; since all will own
Thy name and lasting praise adorn the stone.
IN TICHFIELD CHURCH, HANTS.
The Husband, speakinge trewly of his wife,
Read his losse in hir death, hir praise in life:
Heare Lucie Quinsie Bromfield buried lies,
With neighbors sad deepe, weepinge, hartes, sighes, eyes.
Children eleaven, tenne livinge, me she brought.
More kind, trewe, chaste was noane, in deed, word, thought.
Howse, children, state, by hir was ruld, bred, thrives.
One of the best of maides, of women, wives,
Now gone to God, her heart sent long before;
In fasting, prayer, faith, hope, and alms’ deedes stoare.
If anie faulte, she lovéd me too much.
Ah, pardon that, for ther are too fewe such!
Then, reader, if thou not hard-hearted be,
Praise God for hir, but sigh and praie for me.
Heare, by hir dead, I dead desire to lie,
Till, raised to life, wee meet no more to die.
1618.
ON INFANTS AND CHILDREN.
The following epitaph on an infant is by Samuel Wesley, the author of
the caustic lines on the custom of perpetuating lies on monumental
marble, by commemorating virtues which never had an existence,—ending
thus:—
If on his specious marble we rely,
Pity such worth as his should ever die!
If credit to his real life we give,
Pity a wretch like him should ever live!
ON AN INFANT.
Beneath, a sleeping infant lies.
To earth whose ashes lent
More glorious shall hereafter rise,
But not more innocent.
When the archangel’s trump shall blow,
And souls and bodies join,
What crowds will wish their lives below
Had been as short as thine!
ON FOUR INFANTS BURIED IN THE SAME TOMB.
Bold infidelity, turn pale and die!
Beneath this stone four infants’ ashes lie:
Say, are they lost or saved?
If death’s by sin, they sinned; for they are here;
If heaven’s by works, in heaven they can’t appear.
Reason, ah, how depraved!
Revere the Bible’s sacred page; the knot’s untied:
They died, for Adam sinned; they live, for Jesus died.
IN MOUNT AUBURN CEMETERY.
On the base of a beautiful recumbent statuette in Yarrow Path is
inscribed:—
EMILY.
Shed not for her the bitter tear,
Nor give the heart to vain regret;
Tis but the casket that lies here:
The gem that filled it sparkles yet.
ON A LITTLE BOY IN GREENWOOD CEMETERY.
Our §God§, to call us homeward,
His only §Son§ sent down;
And now, still more to tempt our hearts,
Has taken up our own.
ON THE TOMBSTONE OF A CHILD BLIND FROM BIRTH.
There shall be no night there.
ON A CHILD FOUR YEARS OLD, WHO WAS BURNED TO DEATH.
“O!”
Says the gardener, as he passes down the walk,
“Who destroyed that flower? Who plucked that plant?”
His fellow-servant said,
“The Master.”
And the gardener held his peace.
AT LITIZ, LANCASTER COUNTY, PA.
Oh, blest departed one!
Whose all of life—a rosy ray—
Blushed into dawn and passed away.
Uhland’s beautiful epitaph on an infant[28] has been thus paraphrased:—
Thou art come and gone with footfall low,
A wanderer hastening to depart;
Whither, and whence? we only know
From God thou wast, with God thou art.
Footnote 28:
Du kamst, Du gingst mit leiser Spur,
Ein flucht’ger Gast in Erdenland:
Woher? wohin?—Wer wissen nur
Aus Gottes hand in Gottes hand.
Better than this in spirit, by all that makes Christian faith and hope
better than vague questioning, and fully equal to it in poetic merit, is
the following by F. T. Palgrave:—
Pure, sweet, and fair, ere thou could’st taste of ill,
God willed it and thy baby breath was still;
Now ’mong his lambs thou livest thy Saviour’s care,
Forever as thou wast, pure, sweet and fair.
COPIED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES.
Just with her lips the cup of life she pressed,
Found the taste bitter and declined the rest;
Averse then turning from the light of day,
She softly sighed her little soul away.
* * * * *
The child that sleeps within this silent tomb
Departed at the end of two short years:
Many will wish when the great Judge shall come,
They’d lived no longer in this vale of tears.
* * * * *
This lovely bud, so young, so fair,
Called hence by early doom,
Just came to show how sweet a flower
In Paradise would bloom.
This by Burton, author of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_:—
Can nurse choose in her sweet babe more to find
Than goods of Fortune, Body, and of Mind?
Lo here at once all this; what greater bliss
Canst hope or wish? Heaven. Why there he is.
ON A TOMBSTONE IN AUVERGNE.
Marie was the only child of her mother,
“And she was a widow.”
Marie sleeps in this grave—
And the widow has now no child.
HISTORICAL EPITAPH.
A person of the name of Mary Scott was buried near the church of
Dalkeith, in 1728, for whom the following singular epitaph was composed,
but never engraved on her tombstone, though it has been frequently
mentioned as copied from it:—
Stop, passenger, until my life you read:
The living may get knowledge from the dead.
Five times five years unwedded was my life;
Five times five years I was a virtuous wife;
Ten times five years I wept a widow’s woes;
Now, tired of human scenes, I here repose.
Betwixt my cradle and my grave were seen
Seven mighty Kings of Scotland and a Queen.
Full twice five years the Commonwealth I saw,
Ten times the subjects rise against the law;
And, which is worse than any civil war,
A king arraigned before the subjects’ bar;
Swarms of sectarians, hot with hellish rage,
Cut off his royal head upon the stage.
Twice did I see old Prelacy pulled down,
And twice the cloak did sink beneath the gown.
I saw the Stuart race thrust out,—nay, more,
I saw our country sold for English ore;
Our numerous nobles, who have famous been,
Sunk to the lowly number of sixteen;
Such desolation in my days have been,
I have an end of all perfection seen.
BIOGRAPHICAL.
ON THE MONUMENT OF A DROPSICAL LADY.
Here lies Dame Mary Page,
Relict of Sir Gregory Page, Bart.
She departed this life, March 4th, 1728,
In the 56th year of her age.
In 67 months she was tapped 66 times, and
Had taken away 240 gallons of water.
AT THE OLD MEN’S HOSPITAL, NORWICH, ENG.
In Memory of Mrs. Phebe Crewe, who died May 28, 1817, aged 77 years;
who, during forty years’ practice as a midwife in this city, brought
into the world nine thousand seven hundred and thirty children.
IN THE ABBEY CHURCH OF CONWAY.
Here lyeth the body of Nich^{las} Hooker, who was the one and fortieth
child of his father by Alice his only wife, and the father of seven
and twenty children by one wife. He died March 20th, 1637.
AT WOLSTANTON.
Mrs. Ann Jennings.
Some have children, some have none:
Here lies the mother of twenty-one.
IN THE CHURCHYARD OF HEYDON.
Here lieth the body of William Strutton, of Paddington, buried May
18th, 1734, who had by his first wife, 28 children, and by a second
wife, 17; own father to 45, grandfather to 86, great-grandfather to
97, and great-great-grandfather to 23; in all, 251.
IN THE CHURCHYARD OF PEWSEY, WILTSHIRE.
Here lies the body of Lady O’Looney, great-niece of Burke, commonly
called the sublime. She was bland, passionate, and deeply religious;
also, she painted in water-colors, and sent several pictures to the
exhibition. She was first cousin to Lady Jones; and of such is the
kingdom of heaven.
IN CRAYFORD CHURCHYARD, KENT.
Here lieth the body of Peter Snell, thirty-five years clerk of the
parish. He lived respected as a pious and faithful man, and died on
his way to church to assist at a wedding, on the 31st day of March,
1811. Aged 70 years. The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this
stone to his cheerful memory, and as a tribute to his long and
faithful services.
The life of this clerk was just threescore and ten,
Nearly half of which time he had sung out Amen.
In his youth he was married, like other young men,
But his wife died one day, so he chanted Amen.
A second he took; she departed: what then?
He married and buried a third with Amen.
Thus his joys and his sorrows were _treble_; but then
His voice was deep _bass_, as he sang out Amen.
On the horn he could blow as well as most men,
So “his horn was exalted” in blowing Amen.
But he lost all his wind after threescore and ten,
And here with his wives he waits till again
The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out Amen.
AT WREXHAM, WALES.
Elihu Yale, (founder of Yale College,) ob. 1721, æt. 73.
Born in America, in Europe bred,
In Afric travelled, and in Asia wed;
Where long he lived and thrived, in London dead.
Much good, some ill, he did; so hope all’s even,
And that his soul through mercy’s gone to Heaven.
You that survive, and read this tale, take care,
For this most certain exit to prepare,
Where, blest in peace, the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in the silent dust.
SELF-WRITTEN.
MATTHEW PRIOR’S.
Painters and heralds, by your leave,
Here lie the bones of Matthew Prior,
The son of Adam and of Eve:—
Let Bourbon or Nassau go higher!
It is said (and the statement appears highly probable) that Prior
borrowed his lines from the following very ancient epitaph upon a
tombstone in Scotland:—
John Carnagie lies here,
Descended from Adam and Eve;
If any can boast of a pedigree higher,
He will willingly give them leave.
COLERIDGE’S.
Stop, Christian passer-by! stop, child of God,
And read with gentle heart. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he:—
O lift a thought in prayer for S. T. C.,
That he, who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death;
Mercy for praise, to be forgiven for fame,
He asked, and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same!
JOHN BACON’S, TOTTENHAM COURT CHAPEL.
What I was as an Artist
Seemed to me of some importance
while I lived;
But what I really was as a believer
in Christ Jesus,
is the only thing of importance
to me now.
DR. COOPER’S, EDINBURGH.
Here lies a priest of English blood,
Who, living, liked whate’er was good,—
Good company, good wine, good name,
Yet never hunted after fame;
But as the first he still preferred,
So here he chose to be interred,
And, unobscured, from crowds withdrew
To rest among a chosen few,
In humble hopes that sovereign love
Will raise him to be blest above.
POPE ADRIAN’S.
Adrianus, Papa VI., hic situs est, que nihil sibi
Infelicius in vita, quam quod imperaret duxit.
SHEIL’S, (THE IRISH ORATOR).
Here lie I. There’s an end to my woes.
And my spirit at length at _aise_ is,
With the tip of my nose, and the ends of my toes,
Turned up ’gainst the roots of the daisies.
The eccentric Sternhold Oakes offered a reward for the best epitaph for
his grave. Several tried for the prize, but they flattered him too much,
he thought. At last he undertook it himself; and the following was the
result:—
Here lies the body of Sternhold Oakes,
Who lived and died like other folks.
That was satisfactory, and the old gentleman claimed the prize, which,
as he had the paying of it, was of course allowed.
MORALIZING AND ADMONITORY.
AT KENNEBUNK, MAINE.
Rev. Daniel Little, 1801.
Memento mori! preached his ardent youth,
Memento mori! spoke maturer years;
Memento mori! sighed his latest breath,
Memento mori! now this stone declares.
AT ANDOVER, MASS.
John Abbot, 1793, æt. 90.
Grass, smoke, a flower, a vapor, shade, a span,
Serve to illustrate the frail life of man;
And they, who longest live, survive to see
The certainty of death, of life the vanity.
IN LLANGOWEN CHURCHYARD, WALES.
Our life is but a summer’s day:
Some only breakfast, and away;
Others to dinner stay, and are full fed;
The oldest man but sups, and goes to bed.
Large his account, who lingers out the day;
Who goes the soonest, has the least to pay.
IN ST. SAVIOUR’S CHURCHYARD, SOUTHWARK.
Like to the damask rose you see,
Or like the blossom on the tree,
Or like the dainty flower of May,
Or like the morning of the day,
Or like the sun, or like the shade,
Or like the gourd which Jonas had;
Even so is man, whose thread is spun,
Drawn out, and cut, and so is done.
The rose withers, the blossom blasteth,
The flower fades, the morning hasteth:
The sun sets, the shadow flies,
The gourd consumes, and man he dies.
IN GILLINGHAM CHURCHYARD, ENG.
Take time in time while time doth last,
For time is not time when time is past.
GARRICK’S EPITAPH ON QUINN, ABBEY CHURCH, BATH.
Here lies James Quinn! Deign reader, to be taught,
Whate’er thy strength of body, force of thought,
In nature’s happiest mould however cast,
To this complexion thou must come at last.
IN NEWINGTON CHURCHYARD.
Through Christ, I am not inferior
To William the Conqueror.
IN LINCOLNSHIRE, ENGLAND.
Under this solitary sod
There lies a man
Whose ways were very odd:
Whatever his faults were,
Let them alone.
Let thy utmost care be
To mend thine own:
Let him without a sin
First cast a stone.
ADVERTISING INSCRIPTIONS AND NOTICES.
IN WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND.
Beneath this stone in hopes of Zion,
Is laid the landlord of the Lion.
Resigned unto the heavenly will,
His son keeps on the business still.
In the cemetery of Montmartre, a memorial to a Parisian tradesman,
killed in an émeute in the earlier part of the reign of Louis Phillippe,
concludes with this advertisement:—
This tomb was executed by his bereaved widow (_veuve_ désolée,) who
still carries on his business at No. — Rue St. Martin.
This announcement is from a Spanish journal:—
This morning our Saviour summoned away the jeweller Siebald Illmaga
from his shop to another and better world. The undersigned, his widow,
will weep upon his tomb, as will also his two daughters, Hilda and
Emma, the former of whom is married, and the latter is open to an
offer. The funeral will take place to-morrow. His disconsolate widow,
Veronique Illmaga. P. S.—This bereavement will not interrupt our
business, which will be carried on as usual, only our place of
business will be removed from No. 3, Tessi de Teinturiers, to No. 4
Rue de Missionaire, as our grasping landlord has raised our rent.
UNIQUE AND LUDICROUS EPITAPHS.
ON A CONNECTICUT MAN WITH A REMARKABLE TUMOR.
Our father lies beneath the sod,
His spirit’s gone unto his God;
We never more shall hear his tread,
_Nor see the wen upon his head_.
ON THE BELOVED PARTNER OF ROBERT KEMP.
She once was mine
But now, oh, Lord,
I her to Thee resign,
and remain your obedient, humble servant, Robert Kemp.
ON A MISER.
Here lies old Father Gripe, who never cried _Jam satis_;
’Twould wake him did he know you read his tombstone gratis.
REQUIESCAT IN PACE.
Here lies the body of Obadiah Wilkinson,
and Ruth, his wife:
Their warfare is accomplished.
ON MISS GWIN.
Here lies the body of Nancy Gwin,
Who was so very pure within,
She burst her outward shell of sin,
And hatched herself a cherubim.
Whether this, from a village churchyard, is an improvement on Young, is
a question:—
Death loves a shining mark,
and
_In this case he had it_.
EPITAPH FOR A GREAT TALKER.
Hic tacet—instead of hic jacet.
IN OTSEGO COUNTY, N. Y.
John burns.
(On this a commentator remarks, “Most men suffer enough above ground
without being bunglingly abused, _post mortem_, in ill-written
inscriptions which were at least intended to be civil. We suppose the
words were simply intended to record the man’s name; but they look
marvellously like a noun substantive coupled with a verb in the
indicative mood, and affording a sad indication that John _burns_.
There is no hint that John deserved the fate to which he appears to
have been consigned since his decease, and we can only say as we read
the startling declaration, we should be very sorry to believe it.”)
In the church of Stoke Holy Cross, near Norwich, Eng., is the following
epitaph:—
In the womb of this tomb twins in expectation lay,
To be born in the morn of the Resurrection day.
IN A CHURCHYARD IN CORNWALL.
Here lies the body of Gabriel John,
Who died in the year one thousand and one;
Pray for the soul of Gabriel John,
You may, if you please, or let it alone,
For it’s all one
To Gabriel John,
Who died in the year one thousand and one.
IN MORETON CHURCHYARD.
Here lies the bones of Roger Norton,
Whose sudden death was oddly brought on:
Trying one day his corns to mow off,
The razor slipt and cut his toe off!
The toe—or, rather, what it grew to—
An inflammation quickly flew to;
The part then took to mortifying,
Which was the cause of Roger’s dying.
ON A WOOD-CUTTER, OCKHAM, SURREY, 1736.
The Lord saw good, I was lopping off wood,
And down fell from the tree;
I met with a check, and I broke my neck,
And so death lopped off me.
A stone-cutter received the following epitaph from a German, to be cut
upon the tombstone of his wife:—
Mine vife Susan is dead, if she had life till nex friday she’d bin
dead shust two veeks. As a tree falls so must it stan, all tings is
impossible mit God.
IN CHILDWALL PARISH, ENGLAND.
Here lies me, and my three daughters,
Brought here by using Cheltenham waters.
If we had stuck to Epsom salts
We wouldn’t be in these here vaults.
AT OXFORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE.
To all my friends I bid adieu,
A more sudden death you never knew,
As I was leading the old mare to drink,
She kicked, and killed me quicker’n a wink.
A SOUTH CAROLINA TRIBUTE TO DEPARTED WORTH.
Here lies the boddy of Robert Gordin,
Mouth almighty and teeth ackordin,
Stranger tread lightly over this wonder,
If he opens his mouth, you are gone by thunder.
ON AN EAST TENNESSEE LADY.
She lived a life of virtue, and died of the cholera morbus, caused by
eating green fruit, in hope of a blessed immortality, at the early age
of 21 years, 7 months and 16 days! Reader, ‘Go thou and do likewise.’
FROM SOLYHULL CHURCHYARD, WARWICKSHIRE.
The following epitaph was written by a certain Rev. Dr. Greenwood on his
wife, who died in childbirth. One hardly knows which to admire most,—the
merit of the couplet wherein he celebrates her courage and magnanimity
in preferring him to a lord or judge, or the sound advice with which he
closes.
Go, cruel Death, thou hast cut down
The fairest Greenwood in all this kingdom!
Her virtues and good qualities were such
That surely she deserved a lord or judge;
But her piety and humility
Made her prefer me, a Doctor in Divinity;
Which heroic action, joined to all the rest,
Made her to be esteemed the Phœnix of her sex;
And like that bird, a young she did create
To comfort those her loss had made disconsolate.
My grief for her was so sore
That I can only utter two lines more:
For this and all other good women’s sake,
Never let blisters be applied to a lying-in woman’s back.
Robert Baxter of Farhouse, who died in 1796, was believed to have been
poisoned by a neighbor with whom he had a violent quarrel. Baxter was
well known to be a man of voracious appetite; and it seems that one
morning, on going out to the fell, he found a piece of bread and butter
wrapped in white paper. This he incautiously devoured, and died a few
hours after in great agony. The following is inscribed on his tombstone,
Knaresdale, Northumberland:—
All you that please these lines to read,
It will cause a tender heart to bleed.
I murdered was upon the fell,
And by the man I knew full well;
By bread and butter which he’d laid,
I, being harmless, was betrayed.
_I hope he will rewarded be_
That laid the poison there for me.
IN DONCASTER CHURCHYARD, 1816.
Here lies 2 Brothers by misfortin serounded,
One dy’d of his wounds & the other was drownded.
AT SARAGOSSA, SPAIN.
Here lies John Quebecca, precentor to My Lord the King. When he is
admitted to the choir of angels, whose society he will embellish, and
where he will distinguish himself by his powers of song, God shall say
to the angels, “Cease, ye calves! and let me hear John Quebecca, the
precentor of My Lord the King!”
ROCHESTER’S EPITAPH ON CHARLES II.
Here lies our sovereign lord the king,
Whose word no man relied on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.
FROM A GRAVESTONE IN ESSEX, ENGLAND.
Here lies the man Richard,
And Mary his wife,
Whose surname was Pritchard:
They lived without strife;
And the reason was plain,—
They abounded in riches,
They had no care nor pain,
_And his wife wore the breeches_.
In All Saints’ Churchyard, Leicester, may be found the following on two
children of John Bracebridge, who were both named John and both died in
infancy:—
Both John and John soon lost their lives,
And yet, by God, John still survives.
Bishop Thurlow, at one of his visitations, had the words _by God_
altered to _through God_.
FROM THETFORD CHURCHYARD.
My grandfather was buried here,
My cousin Jane, and two uncles dear;
My father perished with inflammation in the thighs,
And my sister dropped down dead in the Minories:
But the reason why I’m here interred, according to my thinking,
Is owing to my good living and hard drinking.
If, therefore, good Christians, you wish to live long,
Don’t drink too much wine, brandy, gin, or any thing strong.
IN A CHURCHYARD IN ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND.
Here lies I, Martin Elmrod;
Have mercy on my soul, gude God,
As I would have on thine gin I were God,
And thou wert Martin Elmrod.
IN SWANSEA CHURCHYARD.
The body underneath this stone is
Of my late husband, Jacob Jonas,
Who, when alive, was an Adonis.
Ah! well-a-day!
O death! thou spoiler of fair faces,
Why tookst thou him from my embraces?
How couldst thou mar so many graces?
Say, tyrant, say.
AT NORTHALLERTON.
Hic jacet Walter Gun,
Sometime landlord of the _Sun_;
_Sic transit gloria mundi_!
He drank hard upon Friday,
That being a high day,
Then took to his bed, and died upon Sunday.
ALL SAINTS, NEWCASTLE.
Here lies poor Wallace,
The prince of good fellows,
Clerk of Allhallows,
And maker of bellows.
He bellows did make till the day of his death;
But he that made bellows could never make breath.
IN CALSTOCK CHURCHYARD, CORNWALL.
’Twas by a fall I caught my death;
No man can tell his time or breath;
I might have died as soon as then,
If I had had physician men.
ON GENERAL WOLFE.
On the death of General Wolfe, a premium was offered for the best
epitaph on that officer. One of the candidates for the prize sent a
poem, of which the following stanza is a specimen:—
He marched without dread or fears,
At the head of his bold grenadiers;
And what was more remarkable—nay, _very particular_—
He climbed up rocks that were perpendicular.
§REBECCA ROGERS, FOLKESTONE§, 1688.
A house she hath, ’tis made of such good fashion,
The tenant ne’er shall pay for reparation;
Nor will her landlord ever raise her rent,
Or turn her out of doors for non-payment:
From chimney-tax this cell’s forever free,—
To such a house, who would not tenant be?
IN DORCHESTER, MASS.
1661.
Heare lyes our captaine, and major of Suffolk was withall,
A godly magistrate was he, and major generall.
Two troops of hors with him here came, such worth his love did crave,
Ten companyes of foot also mourning marcht to his grave.
Let all that read be sure to keep the faith as he hath don;
With Christ he lives now crownd. His name was Humphry Atherton.
IN KNIGHTSBRIDGE CHURCHYARD.
On a man who was too poor to be buried with relations in the church:—
Here I lie at the chancel door,
And I lie here because I am poor;
For the further in, the more you pay,—
But here I lie as warm as they.
IN BIDEFORD CHURCHYARD, KENT.
The wedding-day appointed was,
And wedding-clothes provided,
But ere the day did come, alas!
He sickened, and he die did.
IN WHITTLEBURY CHURCHYARD, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
John Heath, 1767, æt. 27.
While Time doth run, from sin depart;
Let none e’er shun Death’s piercing dart;
For read and look, and you will see
A wondrous change was wrought on me.
For while I lived in joy and mirth,
Grim Death came in and stopped my breath;
For I was single in the morning light,
By noon was married, and was dead at night.
IN LONGNOR CHURCHYARD, STAFFORD.
William Billings, a soldier in the British army 75 years,
Died 1793, aged 114 years.
Billeted by death, I quartered here remain,
And when the trumpet sounds, I’ll rise and march again.
IN ROCHESTER CHURCHYARD, ENG.
Though young she was,
Her youth could not withstand,
Nor her protect
From Death’s impartial hand.
Life is a cobweb, be we e’er so gay,
And death a broom that sweeps us all away.
HUMPHREY COLE.
Here lies the body of good Humphrey Cole;
Though black his name, yet spotless is his soul;
But yet not black, though Carbo is the name,
Thy chalk is scarcely whiter than his fame.
A priest of priests, inferior was to none,
Took heaven by storm when here his race was run.
Thus ends the record of this pious man:
Go and do likewise, reader, if you can.
IN EAST HARTFORD, CONN.
Now she is dead and cannot stir;
Her cheeks are like the faded rose;
Which of us next shall follow her,
The Lord Almighty only knows.
Hark, she bids all her friends adieu;
An angel calls her to the spheres;
Our eyes the radiant saint pursue
Through liquid telescopes of tears.
ON A TOMBSTONE IN NEW JERSEY.
Reader, pass on!—don’t waste your time
On bad biography and bitter rhyme;
For what _I am_, this crumbling clay insures,
And what _I was_, is no affair of yours!
IN A NEW ENGLAND GRAVEYARD.
Here lies John Auricular,
Who in the ways of the Lord walked perpendicular.
* * * * *
Many a cold wind o’er my body shall roll,
While in Abraham’s bosom I’m a feasting my soul.
AT AUGUSTA, MAINE.
—After Life’s _Scarlet Fever_,
I sleep well.
The following illustrated epitaph is copied from a tombstone near
Williamsport, Pa.
[Illustration]
Sacred to the memory of
§Henry Harris§,
Born June 27th, 1821, of Henry Harris
and Jane his wife.
Died on the 4th of May, 1837, by the kick of a colt
in his bowels.
Peaceable and quiet, a friend to
his father and mother, and respected
by all who knew him, and went
to the world where horses
don’t kick, where sorrows and weeping
is no more.
In Dorchester, Mass. may be seen the following queer epitaph on a young
woman:—
On the 21st of March
God’s angels made a _sarche_.
Around the door they stood;
They took a maid,
It is said,
And cut her down like wood.
A Dutchman’s epitaph on his twin babes:—
Here lies two babes, dead as two nits,
Who shook to death mit aguey fits.
They was too good to live mit me,
So God he took ’em to live mit he.
MORTUARY PUNS.
Peter Comestor, whom the following epitaph represents as speaking, was
the author of a Commentary on the Scriptures. He died in 1198:—
I who was once called _Peter_ [a stone], am now covered by a _stone_
[_petra_]; and I who was once named _Comestor_ [devourer], am now
_devoured_. I taught when alive, nor do I cease to teach, though dead;
for he who beholds me reduced to ashes may say,—“This man was once
what we are now; and what he is now, we soon shall be.”
ON A YOUTH WHO DIED FOR LOVE OF MOLLY STONE.
Molle fuit saxum, saxum, O! si Molle fuisset,
Non foret hic subter, sed super esset ei.
Luttrell wrote the following on a man who was run over by an omnibus:—
Killed by an omnibus! Why not?
So quick a death a boon is:
Let not his friends lament his lot—
_Mors omnibus communis_.
WILLIAM MORE, STEPNEY CHURCHYARD.
Here lies _one More_, and _no more_ than he;
_One More_, and _no more_! how can that be?
Why _one More_ and _no more_, may lie here alone;
But here lies _one More_, and that’s _more_ than one!
On the tombstone of John Fell, superintendent of the turnpike-roads from
Kirby Kendal to Kirby Irleth, are the following lines:—
Reader, doth he not merit well thy praise,
Whose practice was through life to _mend his ways_?
IN SELBY CHURCHYARD, YORK.
This tombstone is a Milestone; ha, how so?
Because, beneath lies _Miles_, who’s Miles below.
ON DU BOIS, BORN IN A BAGGAGE-WAGON, AND KILLED IN A DUEL.
Begot in a cart, in a cart first drew breath,
Carte tierce was his life, and a carte was his death,
ON LILL.
Here lies the tongue of Godfrey Lill,
Which always lied, and _lies here still_.
On the tombstone of Dr. Walker, who wrote a work on “English Particles,”
is inscribed,—
Here lies Walker’s Particles.
Dr. Fuller’s reads,—
Here lies Fuller’s Earth.
And Archbishop Potter’s,—
Alack and well-a-day,
Potter himself is turned to clay.
Proposed by Jerrold for Charles Knight, the Shakspearian critic:—
Good Knight.
On a well-known Shakspearian actor:—
Exit Burbage.
On the tomb of an auctioneer at Greenwood:—
Going,—going,—§GONE§!
Miss Long was a beautiful actress of the last century, so short in
stature that she was called the Pocket Venus. Her epitaph concludes,—
Though Long, yet short;
Though short, yet _Pretty_ Long.
On the eminent barrister, Sir John Strange:—
Here lies an honest lawyer—that is _Strange_.
On William Button, in a churchyard near Salisbury:—
O sun, moon, stars, and ye celestial poles!
Are graves, then, dwindled into Button-holes?
On Foote, the comedian:—
Foote from his earthly stage, alas! is hurled;
Death took him off, who took off all the world.
In the chancel of the church of Barrow-on-Soar, Leicestershire, is the
following on Theophilus Cave:—
Here in this Grave there lies a Cave.
We call a Grave a Cave;
If Cave be Grave, and Grave be Cave,
Then, reader, judge, I crave,
Whether doth Cave here lye in Grave,
Or Grave here lye in Cave:
If Grave in Cave here bury’d lye,
Then Grave, where is thy victory?
Goe, reader, and report here lyes a Cave,
Who conquers Death and buries his own Grave.
The following, in Harrow Churchyard, is ascribed to Lord Byron:—
Beneath these green trees rising to the skies,
The planter of them, Isaac Greentree, lies;
A time shall come when these green trees shall fall,
And Isaac Greentree rise above them all.
ON THOMAS GREENHILL, OXFORDSHIRE, 1624.
He once a _Hill_ was fresh and _Green_,
Now withered is not to be seen;
Earth in earth shovelled up is shut,
A _Hill_ into a _Hole_ is put;
But darksome earth by Power Divine,
Bright at last as the sun may shine.
ON A CORONER WHO HANGED HIMSELF.
He lived and died
By _suicide_.
ON A CELEBRATED COOK.
Peace to his hashes.
ON MR. FISH.
Worms bait for fish; but here’s a sudden change;
Fish is bait for worms—is not that passing strange?
ON TWO CHILDREN.
To the memory of Emma and Maria Littleboy,
the twin-children of
George and Emma Littleboy of Hornsey,
who died July 16, 1783.
Two little boys lie here,
Yet strange to say,
These little boys are girls.
ON MISS NOTT.
Nott born, Nott dead, Nott christened, Nott begot;
So here she lies that was and that was Nott.
Reader behold a wonder rarely wrought,
Which while thou seem’st to read thou readest Nott.
ON MARY ANGEL, STEPNEY, 1693.
To say an angel here interred doth lie,
May be thought strange, for angels never die;
Indeed some fell from heaven to hell,
Are lost to rise no more;
This only fell from death to earth,
Not lost but gone before;
Her dust lodged here, her soul perfect in grace,
Among saints and angels now hath took its place.
Beloe, in his Anecdotes, gives the following on William Lawes, the
musical composer, who was killed by the Roundheads:—
Concord is conquered! In his turn there lies
The master of great Music’s mysteries;
And in it is a riddle, like the cause,
Will Lawes was slain by men whose _Wills_ were Laws.
ON MR. JOSEPH KING.
Here lies a man than whom no better’s _wal-king_,
Who was when sleeping even always _tal-king_;
A _king_ by birth was he, and yet was no king,
In life was _thin-king_, and in death was §Jo-King§.
_On John Adams, of Southwell, a carrier, who died of
drunkenness._—§Byron.§
John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell,
A _carrier_ who carried the can to his mouth well;
He carried so much, and he carried so fast,
He could carry no more,—so was carried at last;
For the liquor he drank being too much for one,
He could not carry off, so he’s now carri-on.
ON A LINEN-DRAPER.
Cottons and cambrics, all adieu,
And muslins too, farewell,
Plain, striped, and figured, old and new,
Three quarters, yard, or ell;
By nail and yard I’ve measured ye,
As customers inclined,
The churchyard now has measured me.
And nails my coffin bind.
ON A WOMAN WHO HAD AN ISSUE IN HER LEG.
Here lieth Margaret, otherwise Meg,
Who died without issue, save one in her leg.
Strange woman was she, and exceedingly cunning,
For while one leg stood still, the other kept running.
FROM LLANFLANTWYTHYL CHURCHYARD, WALES.
Under this stone lies Meredith Morgan,
Who blew the bellows of our church-organ;
Tobacco he hated, to smoke most unwilling,
Yet never so pleased as when pipes he was filling;
No reflection on him for rude speech could be cast,
Though he made our old organ give many a blast.
No puffer was he, though a capital blower,
He could fill double G, and now lies a note lower.
ON A LAST-MAKER.
Stop, stranger, stop, and wipe a tear,
For the _last_ man at _last_ lies here.
Though ever-_last_-ing he has been,
He has at _last_ passed life’s _last_ scene.
Famed for good works, much time he passed
In doing good,—he has done his _last_.
FROM ST. ANNE’S CHURCHYARD, ISLE OF MAN.
Daniel Tear, ob. Dec. 7, 1787, æt. 110 years.
Here, friend, is little Daniel’s tomb;
To Joseph’s age he did arrive,
Sloth killing thousands in their bloom,
While labor kept poor Dan alive.
Though strange, yet true, full seventy years
His wife was happy in her _Tears_.
In the Greek Anthology is a punning epitaph on a physician, by
Empedocles, who lived in the fifth century before Christ. The pun
consists in the derivation of the name _Pausanias_,—causing a cessation
of pain or affliction,—and therefore only a portion of the double
meaning can be preserved in a translation:—
_Paus_anias,—not so named without a cause,
As one who oft has given to pain a _pause_,—
Blest son of Esculapius, good and wise,
Here in his native Gela buried lies;
Who many a wretch once rescued by his charms
From dark Persephone’s constraining arms.
CURIOUS AND PUZZLING EPITAPHS.
On the monument of Sardanapalus was inscribed, in Assyrian characters,—
ΕΣΤΗΙΕ, ΠΙΝΕ, ΠΑΙΖΕ. ὩΣ ΤΑΛΛΑ ΤΟΥΤΟΥ ΟΥΚ ΑΞΙΑ
EAT, DRINK, BE MERRY. THE REST IS NOT WORTH THAT!
meaning _a snap of the fingers_, which is represented by a hand engraved
on the stone, with the thumb and middle finger meeting at the top.
Casaubon translates παιζειν, _to love_ (παιζειν nihil aliud significat
nisi ερᾶν). Solomon said, _all is vanity_, but not till he had _eaten,
drunk, and loved_ to a surfeit; and Swift left the well-known lines,—
Life’s a farce, and all things show it,
I thought so once, but now I know it,—
but this information was for the tomb, when the capacity to eat, drink,
and love was gone.
* * * * *
At the entrance of the church of San Salvador, in the city of Oviedo, in
Spain, is a remarkable tomb, erected by a prince named _Silo_, with a
very curious Latin inscription, which may be read two hundred and
seventy ways, by beginning with the capital S in the centre:—
§Silo Princeps Fecit.§
T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T
I O E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I
C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P C F E C
E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E
F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F
S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S
P E C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P
E C N I R P O L I =S= I L O P R I N C E
P E C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P
S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S
F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F
E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E
C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S F E C
I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I
T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T
On the tomb are inscribed these letters:—
H. S. E. S. S. T. T. L.
Which are the initials of the following Latin words:—
Hic situs est Silo, sit tibi terra levis.
[Here lies Silo. May the earth lie lightly upon him.]
FROM ST. AGNES’, LONDON.
Qu an tris di c vul stra
os guis ti ro um nere vit.
H san chris mi t mu la
The middle line furnishes the terminal letters or syllables of the words
in the upper and lower lines, and when added they read thus:—
Quos anguis tristi diro cum vulnere stravit
Hos sanguis Christi miro tum munere lavit.
[Those who have felt the serpent’s venomed wound
In Christ’s miraculous blood have healing found.]
FROM A CHURCHYARD IN GERMANY.
O quid tua te
be bis bia abit
ra ra ra
es
et in
ram ram ram
i i
Mox eris quod ego nunc.
Taking the position of the words in the first line, which are placed
_above_ or _over_ (super) those in the second, and noting the repetition
of the syllables _ra_ and _ram_ thrice (ter), and the letter _i_ twice
(bis), the reading is easy.
O _super_be quid _super_bis? tua _super_bia te _super_abit. _Ter_ra es
et in _ter_ram i_bis_. Mox eris quod ego nunc.
FROM CUNWALLOW CHURCHYARD, CORNWALL.
(May be read backwards or forwards, up or down.)
Shall we all die?
We shall die all,
All die shall we,—
Die all we shall.
FROM LAVENHAM CHURCH, NORFOLK, ENG.
John Weles, ob. 1694.
Quod fuit esse, quod est;
Quod non fuit esse, quod esse;
Esse quod est, non est;
Quod non est, hoc erit esse.
[What was existence, is that which lies here; that which was not
existence, is that which is existence; to be what is now is not to be;
that which is now, is not existence, but will be hereafter.]
Or thus:—
That which a being was, what is it? show;
That being which it was, it is not now;
To be what is, is not to be, you see;
That which now is not shall a being be.
ON THE MONUMENT OF JOHN OF DONCASTER, 1579.
Habeo, dedi quod alteri;
Habuique quod, dedi mihi;
Sed quod reliqui, perdidi.
[What I gave, I have;
What I spent, I had;
What I saved, I lost.]
IN THE CHURCHYARD OF LLANGERRIG, MONTGOMERYSHIRE.
O } { O } { observe this well,—
That } Earth { to } Earth { shall come to dwell;
Then } { in } { shall close remain,
Till } { from } { shall rise again.
IN HADLEY CHURCHYARD, SUFFOLK.
The charnel mounted on the w }
Sets to be seen in funer }
A matron plain domestic }
In care and pain continu }
Not slow, not gay, not prodig } §ALL§.
Yet neighborly and hospit }
Her children seven, yet living }
Her sixty-seventh year hence did c }
To rest her body natur }
In hopes to rise spiritu }
WRITTEN IN 1748.
Ye witty mortals, as you’re passing by,
Remark that near this monument doth lie,
Centered in dust,
Two husbands, two wives,
Two sisters, two brothers,
Two fathers, a son,
Two daughters, two mothers,
A grandfather, grandmother, and a granddaughter,
An uncle, an aunt, and their niece followed after.
This catalogue of persons mentioned here
Was only _five_, and all from incest clear.
IN ST. PAUL’S, DEPTFORD.
Rev. Dr. Conyers expired immediately after the delivery of a sermon from
the text, “Ye shall see my face no more,” æt. 62, 1786.
Sent by their Lord on purposes of grace,
Thus angels do his will, and see his face;
With outspread wings they stand, prepared to soar,
Declare their message, and are seen no more.
Underneath is a Latin inscription, of which the following is a
translation:—
I have sinned,
I repented, I believed,
I have loved, I rest,
I shall rise again,
And by the grace of Christ,
However unworthy,
I shall reign.
PARALLELS WITHOUT A PARALLEL.
AT WINCHESTER, ENG.
On the north side of this church is the monument of two brothers of
the surname Clarke, wherewith I was so taken as take them I must; and
as I found them I pray accept them.
Thus an union of two brothers from Avington, the Clarkes’ family, were
grandfather, father, and son, successivelie _clerkes_ of the Privy
Seale in Court.
The grandfather had but two sons, both Thomas.
Their wives both Amys,
Their heyres both Henry,
And the heyres of Henries both Thomas.
Both their wives were inheritrixes,
And both had two sons and one daughter.
And both their daughters issuelesse.
Both of Oxford; both of the Temple;
Both officers to Queen Elizabeth and o^r noble King James.
And both Justices of the Peace.
Togeather both agree in armes, one a knight, y^e other a captain.
Si quæras plura; both—; and so I leave y^m.
BATHOS.
HOWELL’S EPITAPH ON CHARLES I.
So fell the royal oak by a wild crew
Of mongrel shrubs, that underneath him grew;
So fell the lion by a pack of curs;
So the rose withered ’twixt a knot of burs;
So fell the eagle by a swarm of gnats;
So the whale perished by a shoal of sprats!
TRANSCENDENTAL.
FROM THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. EDMUND’S, SALISBURY.
Written by a Swedenborgian named Maton, on his children.
Innocence embellishes divinely complete
To prescience co-egent now sublimely great
In the benign, perfecting, vivifying state.
So heavenly guardian occupy the skies
The pre-existent God, omnipotent, all-wise;
He shall surpassingly immortalize thy theme
And permanent thy bliss, celestial, supreme.
When gracious refulgence bids the grave resign,
The Creator’s nursing protection be thine;
Then each perspiring ether shall joyfully rise
Transcendently good, supereminently wise.
CENTO.
AT NORTHBOROUGH, MASS.
On the tombstone of Rabbi Judah Monis, 40 years Hebrew Instructor in
Harvard University, who was converted to Christianity in 1722, and died
in 1764.
A native branch of Jacob see,
Which once from off its olive broke;
Regrafted from the living tree, Rom. xi. 17, 24.
Of the reviving sap partook.
From teeming Zion’s fertile womb, Isa. lxvi. 8.
As dewy drops in early morn, Ps. cx. 3.
Or rising bodies from the tomb, John v. 28, 29.
At once be Israel’s nation born. Isa. lxvi. 8.
ACROSTICAL.
AT DORCHESTER, MASS.
James Humphrey, 1686.
I nclosed within this shrine is precious dust,
A nd only waits the rising of the just;
M ost useful while he lived, adorned his station,
E ven to old age served his generation,
S ince his decease thought of with veneration.
H ow great a blessing this ruling elder he
U nto this church and town and pastors three!
M ather, the first, did by him help receive;
F lint he did next his burden much relieve;
R enowned Danforth did he assist with skill,
E steemed high by all, bear fruit until,
Y ielding to death, his glorious seat did fill.
IN ASH CHURCH, KENT.
©J© John Brooke of the Parish of Ashe,
©O© Only he is nowe gone,
©H© His days are past; his corps is layd
©N© Now under this marble stone.
©B© Brookstrete he was the honor of,
©R© Robd now it is of name,
©O© Only because he had no sede
©O© Or children to have the same;
©K© Knowing that all must pass away,
©E© Even when God will, none can denay.
He passed to God in the yere of Grace
One thousand fyve hundredth fower score and two it was,
The sixteenth daye of January, I tell now playne,
The fyve and twentieth yere of Elizabeth rayne.
ABORIGINAL.
IN THE MOHEAGAN BURIAL-GROUND, CONN.
Here lies the body of §Sunseeto§,
Own son to Uncas, grandson to Oneeko,
Who were the famous sachems of Moheagan,
But now they are all dead, I think it is _werheegen_.[29]
Footnote 29:
Meaning, _All is well, or good news_.
ORONO, CHIEF OF THE PENOBSCOTS, OLDTOWN, MAINE, 1801, ÆT. 113
Safe lodged within his blanket, here below,
Lie the last relics of old §Orono§;
Worn down with toil and care, he in a trice
Exchanged his wigwam for a paradise.
AFRICAN.
AT CONCORD, MASS.
God wills us free; man wills us slaves. I will as God wills: God’s
will be done. Here lies the body of §John Jack§, a native of Africa,
who died, March, 1773, aged about 60 years. Though born in a land of
slavery, he was born free; though he lived in a land of liberty, he
lived a slave, till, by his honest though stolen labors, he acquired
the source of slavery, which gave him his freedom, though not long
before death, the grand tyrant, gave him his final emancipation, and
set him on a footing with kings. Though a slave to vice, he practised
those virtues, without which, kings are but slaves.
AT ATTLEBORO, MASS.
Here lies the best of slaves,
Now turning into dust.
Cesar, the Ethiopian, craves
A place among the just.
His faithful soul is fled
To realms of heavenly light;
And by the blood that Jesus shed,
Is changed from black to white
January 15, he quitted the stage,
In the 77th year of his age.
HIBERNIAN.
AT BELTURBET.
Here lies John Higley, whose father and mother were
drowned in their passage from America.
Had they both _lived, they would have been buried here_.(!)
* * * * *
Here lies the body of John Mound,
Lost at sea and never found.
* * * * *
O cruel Death! how could you be so unkind,
To take him before and leave me behind?
You should have taken both of us if either;
Which would have been more pleasing to the survivor!
* * * * *
Here lies father and mother, and sister and I,—
They all died within the short space of one year.
They all be buried at Wimble but I,
And I be buried here.
AT MONKNEWTON, NEAR DROGHEDA.
Erected by Patrick Kelly,
Of the town of Drogheda, Mariner,
In Memory of his Posterity.
Also the above Patrick Kelly,
Who departed this Life the 12th August 1844,
Age 60 years,
Requiescat in pace.
AT MONTROSE, 1757.
Here lyes the Bodeys of George Young and Isabel Guthrie, and all their
Posterity for more than fifty years backwards.
AT ST. ANDREW’S, PLYMOUTH.
Here lies the body of James Vernon, Esq., only _surviving_ son of
Admiral Vernon: died 23rd July 1753.
AT LLANMYNECH, MONTGOMERYSHIRE.
Here lies John Thomas
And his children dear;
Two buried at Oswestry,
And one here.
IN OXFORDSHIRE.
Here lies the body of John Eldred,
At least he will be here when he is dead;
But now at this time he is alive,
The 14th of August ’sixty-five.
GREEK EPITAPHS.
Christopher North, speaking of the celebrated epitaph written by
Simonides and graved on the monument erected in commemoration of the
battle of Thermopylæ, says:—The oldest and best inscription is that on
the altar-tomb of the Three Hundred. Here it is,—the Greek,—with three
Latin and eighteen English versions. Start not: it is but two lines; and
all Greece, for centuries, had them by heart. She forgot them, and
“Greece was living Greece no more!”
Of the various English translations of this celebrated epitaph, the
following are the best:—
O stranger, tell it to the Lacedæmonians,
That we lie here in obedience to their precepts.
Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
ON MILTIADES.
Miltiades! thy valor best
(Although in every region known)
The men of Persia can attest,
Taught by thyself at Marathon.
ON THE TOMB OF THEMISTOCLES.
By the sea’s margin, on the watery strand,
Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand.
By this directed to thy native shore,
The merchant shall convey his freighted store;
And when our fleets are summoned to the fight,
Athens shall conquer with this tomb in sight.
ON ÆSIGENES.
Hail, universal mother! lightly rest
On that dead form
Which when with life invested ne’er opprest
Its fellow-worm.
ON TIMOCRITUS.
Timocritus adorns this humble grave;
Mars spares the coward, and destroys the brave.
ON THREE NEIGHBORING TOMBS.
This is a sailor’s—that a ploughman’s tomb;—
Thus sea and land abide one common doom.
* * * * *
My lot was meagre fare, disease and shame.
At length I died—you all must do the same.
* * * * *
Fortune and Hope, farewell! I’ve found the port:
You’ve done with me—go now, with others sport.
HELIODORA.
Tears, Heliodora! on thy tomb I shed,
Love’s last libation to the shades below;
Tears, bitter tears, by fond remembrance fed,
Are all that Fate now leaves me to bestow.
Vain sorrows! vain regrets! yet, loveliest, thee,
Thee still they follow in the silent urn,
Retracing hours of social converse free,
And soft endearments never to return.
How thou art torn, sweet flower, that smiled so fair!
Torn, and thy honored bloom with dust defiled;
Yet, holy earth, accept my suppliant prayer,
And in a mother’s arms enfold thy child.
FROM THE ALCESTIS OF EURIPIDES.
We will not look on her burial sod
As the cell of sepulchral sleep:
It shall be as the shrine of a radiant god,
And the pilgrim shall visit this blest abode
To worship, and not to weep.
And as he turns his steps aside,
Thus shall he breathe his vow:—
Here slept a self-devoted bride;
Of old, to save her lord she died,
She is an angel now.
ON A YOUNG BRIDE.
Not Hymen,—it was Ades’ self alone
That loosened Clearista’s virgin zone:
The morning ’spousal song was raised,—but oh!
At once ’twas silenced into threnes of woe;
And the same torches which the bridal bed
Had lit, now showed the pathway to the dead.
ON A BACHELOR.
At threescore winters’ end I died,
A cheerless being, sole and sad;
The nuptial knot I never tied,
And wish my father never had.
* * * * *
My name, my country, what are they to thee?
What, whether base or proud my pedigree?
Perhaps I far surpassed all other men;
Perhaps I fell below them all,—what then?
Suffice it, stranger, that thou seest a tomb;
Thou know’st its use,—it hides,—no matter whom.
ANTITHESIS EXTRAORDINARY.
The following singular inscription may be seen on a monument in Horsley
Down Church, Cumberland, England:—
Here lie the bodies of
Thomas Bond and Mary his wife.
She was temperate, chaste, and charitable.
But
She was proud, peevish, and passionate.
She was an affectionate wife and a tender
mother,
But
Her husband and child, whom she loved, seldom
saw her countenance without a
disgusting frown;
Whilst she received visitors whom she despised
with an endearing smile.
Her behaviour was discreet towards strangers,
But
Imprudent in her family.
Abroad her conduct was influenced by good
breeding,
But
At home by ill temper.
She was a professed enemy to flattery, and was
seldom known to praise or commend;
But
The talents in which she principally excelled
Were difference of opinion and discovering
flaws and
Imperfections.
She was an admirable economist,
And, without prodigality,
Dispensed plenty to every person in her family,
But
Would sacrifice their eyes to a farthing candle.
She sometimes made her husband
Happy with her good qualities,
But
Much more frequently miserable with her
Many failings.
Insomuch that in thirty years’ cohabitation,
He often lamented that,
Maugre all her virtues,
He had not on the whole enjoyed two years
Of matrimonial comfort.
At length,
Finding she had lost the affection of her husband,
as well as the regard of her neighbors,
family disputes having been
divulged by servants,
She died of vexation, July 20, 1768,
Aged 48 years.
Her worn-out husband survived her four months
and two days, and departed this life
November 22, 1768,
In the 54th year of his age.
William Bond, brother to the deceased,
Erected this stone as a
Weekly monitor to the wives of this parish,
That they may avoid the infamy of having
Their memories handed down to posterity
With a patchwork character.
THE PRINTER’S EPITAPH.
Here lies his _form_ in _pi_,
Beneath this _bank_ with _briers_ overgrown;
How many _cases_ far unworthier _lie_
’Neath some _imposing stone_!
No _column points_ our loss,
No sculptured _caps_ his history declare;
Although he lived a follower of the _cross_,
And member of the _bar_.
The golden _rule_ he prized,
And left it as a _token_ of his love;
And all his deeds, _corrected_ and _revised_,
Are _registered_ above.
The _copy_ of his wrongs,
The _proofs_ of all his _pi_-ety are there,
And the fair title, which to truth belong
Will _prove_ his _title_ fair.
Though now, in death’s _em-brace_,
A _mould_-ering _heap_ our luckless brother lies,
He’ll re-appear on Gabriel’s _royal-chase_,
And _frisk-it_ to the skies.
BREVITY.
Thorpe’s
Corpse.
The epitaph on Dr. Caius, the founder of the college which bears his
name, cannot be blamed for prolixity. Dr. Fuller remarks, “few men might
have had a longer, none ever had a shorter epitaph.”
Fui Caius
(I was Caius)
ON MR. MAGINNIS.
Finis
Maginnis.
Camden, in his _Remaines_,—a collection of fragments illustrative of the
habits, manners and customs of the ancient Britons and Saxons,—gives
examples of great men who had little epitaphs. For himself it has been
suggested that the name of the work in question would be the most
fitting:—
Camden’s Remains.
LAUDATORY.
Following the inscription to the memory of Albert, Prince Consort, on
the Cairn at Balmoral, is the following quotation from the _Wisdom of
Solomon_, iv. 13, 14.
He being made perfect in a short time,
Fulfilled a long time:
For his soul pleased the Lord;
Therefore hasted He to take
Him away from among the wicked.
* * * * *
Could he disclose who rests below,
The things beyond the grave that lie,
We more should learn than now we know.
But know no better how to die.
* * * * *
Dust to its narrow house beneath,
Soul to its place on high;
They that have seen thy look in death,
No more may fear to die.
* * * * *
His youth was innocent—his riper age
Marked with some act of goodness every day;
And watched by eyes that loved him, calm and sage,
Faded his late declining years away;
Cheerful he gave his being up, and went
To share the holy rest that waits a life well spent.
EPITAPHIUM CHEMICUM.
1791.
Here lieth to digest, macerate, and amalgamate with clay
In balneo arenæ,
stratum super stratum,
The residuum, terra damnata, and caput mortuum
OF A CHEMIST.
A man who in his earthly Laboratory
Pursued various processes to obtain
The §Arcanum Vitæ§,
Or the secret to Live;
Also the §Aurum Vitæ§, or
The Art of getting, not making, Gold.
Alchemist-like, he saw all his labor and projection,
As mercury in the fire, evaporated in fume.
When he dissolved to his first principles,
He departed as poor
As the last drops of an alembic.
Though fond of novelty, he carefully avoided
The fermentation, effervescence, and
Decrepitation of this life.
Full seventy years
His exalted essence
Was hermetically sealed in its terrene matrass;
But the radical moisture being exhausted,
The Elixir Vitæ spent,
And exsiccated to a cuticle,
He could not suspend longer in his vehicle:
But precipitated gradatim,
Per campanam,
To his original dust.
May the light above,
More resplendent than Bolognian phosphorus,
Preserve him
From the athanor, empyreuma, and
Reverberatory furnace of the other world;
Depurate him from the fæces and scoria of this;
Highly rectify and volatilize
His ethereal spirit;
Bring it safely out of the crucible of earthly trial,
Place it in a proper recipient
Among the elect of the Flowers of Benjamin;
Never to be saturated till the general resuscitation,
Deflagration, calcination,
And sublimation of all things.
MISCELLANEOUS.
ON SIR JOHN VANBRUGH, THE ARCHITECT.
Lie heavy on him, earth; for he
Laid many heavy loads on thee.—§Evans.§
THE ORATOR’S EPITAPH.
Here, reader, turn your weeping eyes,
My fate a useful moral teaches;
The hole in which my body lies
Would not contain one-half my speeches.—§Brougham.§
IN LYDFORD CHURCHYARD, NEAR DARTMOOR.
Here lies, in horizontal position,
the outside Case of
§George Routleigh§, Watchmaker;
Integrity was the Mainspring, and prudence the
Regulator,
of all the actions of his life.
Humane, generous, and liberal,
his Hand never stopped,
till he had relieved distress.
So nicely regulated were all his Motions,
that he never went wrong,
except when set a-going
by people
who did not know his Key:
Even then he was easily
set right again.
He had the art of disposing his time so well,
that his Hours kept running on
in a continual round of pleasure,
till an unlucky Minute put a stop to
his existence.
He departed this life Nov. 14, 1802, æt. 57,
in hopes of being taken in hand
by his Maker;
and of being thoroughly Cleaned, Repaired,
Wound up, and Set a-going
in the world to come.
AT KITTERY, MAINE.
I was drowned, alas! in the deep, deep seases.
The blessed Lord does as he pleases.
But my Kittery friends did soon appear,
And laid my body right down here.
ON A SAN FRANCISCO MONEY-LENDER.
Here lies old thirty-five per cent.:
The more he made, the more he lent;
The more he got, the more he craved;
The more he made, the more he shaved;
Great God! can such a soul be saved?
ON AN IMPORTUNATE TAILOR.
Here lies W. W.,
Who never more will trouble you, trouble you.
IN SOHAM CHURCHYARD, CAMBRIDGESHIRE.
A.D. 1643, Ætatis suæ 125.
Here lies Dr. Ward, whom you knew well before;
He was kind to his neighbors, good to the poor.
1 2 3 4 5 6
To God, to Prince, Wife, kindred, friend, the poor,
1 2 3 4 5 6
Religious, loyal, true, kind, stedfast, dear,
1 2 3 4 5 6
In zeal, faith, love, blood, amity, and store,
He hath so lived, and so deceased, lies here.
IN THE CHURCH OF ST. GREGORY, SUDBURY.
Viator, mirum referam.
Quo die efflavit animam Thos. Carter, prædictus,
Acus foramen transivit Camelus Sudburiensis.
Vade, et si dives sis, tu fac similiter.
Vale.
(Traveller, I will relate a prodigy. On the day whereon the aforesaid
Thos. Carter breathed out his soul, a Sudbury camel passed through the
eye of a needle. Go, and if thou art wealthy, do thou likewise.
Farewell.)
IN LLANBEBLIG, CARNARVONSHIRE.
Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Here lie the remains of Thomas Chambers,
Dancing Master;
Whose genteel address and assiduity
in Teaching
Recommended him to all that had the
Pleasure of his acquaintance.
ON AN INFIDEL.
From the Latin.
Beneath this stone the mouldering relics lie
Of one to whom Religion spoke in vain;
He lived as though he never were to die,
And died as though he ne’er should live again.
PROPOSED BY A FRENCH THEOLOGIAN FOR VOLTAIRE.
In poesi magnus,
In historia parvus,
In philosophia minimus,
In religione nullus.
Hume, the classic historian of England, denied the existence of matter,
and held that the whole congeries of material things are but impressions
and ideas in the mind, distinguishing an impression from an idea by its
stronger effect on the thinking faculty. Dr. Beattie sufficiently
exposed the absurdity; but his famous essay has nothing more pointed
than the witty epitaph that somebody wrote on the marble shaft that
stands over the infidel’s grave:—
Beneath this circular _idea_, vulgarly called tomb,
_Impressions_ and _ideas_ rest, which constituted Hume.
ON TOM PAINE.
Tom Paine for the Devil is surely a match.
In leaving old England he cheated Jack Ketch;
In France (the first time such a thing had been seen)
He cheated the watchful and sharp guillotine;
And at last, to the sorrow of all the beholders,
He marched out of life with his head on his shoulders.
EARTH TO EARTH.
Few persons have met with the following poem, now nearly four centuries
old; but many will recognise in some of the stanzas, particularly the
first four and the last four, the source of familiar monumental
inscriptions. The antiquary can refer to many a dilapidated stone on
which these quaint old lines can yet be traced.
Vado mori Rex sum, quid honor quid gloria mundi,
Est vita mors hominum regia—vado mori.
Vado mori miles victo certamine belli,
Mortem non didici vincere vado mori.
Vado mori medicus, medicamine non relevandus,
Quicquid agunt medici respuo vado mori,
Vado mori logicus, aliis concludere novi,
Concludit breviter mors in vado mori.
Earth out of earth is worldly wrought;
Earth hath gotten upon earth a dignity of nought;
Earth upon earth has set all his thought,
How that earth upon earth might be high brought.
Earth upon earth would be a king,
But how that earth shall to earth he thinketh no thing;
When earth biddeth earth his rents home bring,
Then shall earth from earth have a hard parting.
Earth upon earth winneth castles and towers,
Then saith earth unto earth this is all ours;
But when earth upon earth has builded his bowers,
Then shall earth upon earth suffer hard showers.
Earth upon earth hath wealth upon mould;
Earth goeth upon earth glittering all in gold,
Like as he unto earth never turn should;
And yet shall earth unto earth sooner than he would.
Why that earth loveth earth wonder I think,
Or why that earth will for earth sweat and swink.
For when earth upon earth is brought within the brink,
Then shall earth for earth suffer a foul stink.
As earth upon earth were the worthies nine,
And as earth upon earth in honor did shine;
But earth list not to know how they should incline,
And their gowns laid in the earth when death hath made his fine.
As earth upon earth full worthy was Joshua,
David, and worthy King Judas Maccabee,
They were but earth none of them three;
And so from earth unto earth they left their dignity.
Alisander was but earth that all the world wan,
And Hector upon earth was held a worthy man,
And Julius Cæsar, that the Empire first began;
And now as earth within earth they lie pale and wan.
Arthur was but earth for all his renown,
No more was King Charles nor Godfrey of Boulogne;
But now earth hath turned their nobleness upside down,
And thus earth goeth to earth by short conclusion.
Whoso reckons also of William Conqueror,
King Henry the First that was of knighthood flower,
Earth hath closed them full straitly in his bower,—
So the end of worthiness,—here is no more succor.
Now ye that live upon earth, both young and old,
Think how ye shall to earth, be ye never so bold;
Ye be unsiker, whether it be in heat or cold,
Like as your brethren did before, as I have told.
Now ye folks that be here ye may not long endure,
But that ye shall turn to earth I do you ensure;
And if ye list of the truth to see a plain figure,
Go to St. Paul’s and see the portraiture.
All is earth and shall to earth as it sheweth there,
Therefore ere dreadful death with his dart you dare,
And for to turn into earth no man shall it forbear,
Wisely purvey you before, and thereof have no fear.
Now sith by death we shall all pass, it is to us certain,
For of earth we come all, and to the earth shall turn again;
Therefore to strive or grudge it were but vain,
For all is earth and shall be earth,—nothing more certain.
Now earth upon earth consider thou may
How earth cometh to earth naked alway,
Why should earth upon earth go stout alway,
Since earth out of earth shall pass in poor array?
I counsel you upon earth that wickedly have wrought,
That earth out of earth to bliss may be brought.
BYRON’S INSCRIPTION ON THE MONUMENT OF HIS DOG.
Near this spot
Are deposited the remains of one
Who possessed beauty without vanity,
Strength without insolence,
Courage without ferocity,
And all the virtues of man without his vices.
This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery
If inscribed over human ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the memory of
Boatswain, a dog,
Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803,
And died at Newstead Abbey, Nov. 18, 1808.
Inscriptions.
TAVERN-SIGNS.
I’m amazed at the signs
As I pass through the town.
To see the odd mixture,—
A _magpye_ and _crown_,
The _whale_ and the _crow_,
The _razor_ and _hen_,
The _leg_ and _seven stars_,
The _axe_ and the _bottle_,
The _tun_ and the _lute_,
The _eagle_ and _child_,
The _shovel_ and _boot_.—_British Apollo, 1710._
The absurdities which tavern-signs present are often curious enough, but
may in general be traced to that inveterate propensity which the vulgar
of all countries have, to make havoc with every thing in the shape of a
proper name. What a _magpie_ could have to do with a _crown_, or a
_whale_ with a _crow_, or a _hen_ with a _razor_, it is as difficult to
conjecture as to trace the corruption of language in which the
connection more probably originated. The sign of the _leg_ and the
_seven stars_ was merely an orthographical deviation from the _league_
and _seven stars_, or seven united provinces; and the _axe_ and _bottle_
was, doubtless, a transposition of the _battle-axe_, a most appropriate
sign for warlike times. The _tun_ and _lute_ formed suitable emblems
enough of the pleasures of wine and music. The _eagle_ and _child_, too,
had meaning, though no application; but when we come to the _shovel_ and
_boot_, nonsense again triumphs, and it is in vain that we look for any
rational explanation of the affinity.
The _Swan-with-two-necks_ has long been an object of mystery to the
curious. This mystery is solved by the alteration of a single letter.
The sign, as it originally stood, was the _swan with two nicks_; the
meaning of which we find thus explained in a communication made by the
late Sir Joseph Banks to the Antiquarian Society. Sir Joseph presented
to the Society a curious parchment roll, exhibiting the marks, or nicks,
made on the beaks of swans and cygnets in all the rivers and lakes in
Lincolnshire, accompanied with an account of the privileges of certain
persons keeping swans in these waters, and the duties of the king’s
swanherd in guarding these fowls from depredation and preventing any two
persons from adopting the same figures or marks on the bills of their
swans. The number of marks contained in the parchment roll amounted to
two hundred and nineteen, all of which were different and confined to
the small extent of the bill of the swan. The outlines were an oblong
square, circular at one end, and containing dots, notches, arrows, or
suchlike figures, to constitute the difference in each man’s swans. Laws
were enacted so late as the 12th of Elizabeth, for the preservation of
the swans in Lincolnshire.
The _goat and compasses_ has been supposed to have its origin in the
resemblance between the bounding of a goat and the expansion of a pair
of compasses; but nothing can be more fanciful. The sign is of the days
of the Commonwealth, when it was fashionable to give scriptural names to
every thing and everybody, and when _God-be-praised Barebones_ preferred
drinking his tankard of ale at the _God-encompasseth-us_ to anywhere
else. The corruption from _God-encompasseth-us_ to _goat and compasses_
is obvious and natural enough.
In Richard Flecknoe’s _Enigmatical Characters_, published 1665, speaking
of the “fanatic reformers,” (the Puritans,) he observes, “As for the
§SIGNS§, they have pretty well begun their reformation already, changing
the sign of the _salutation of the angel and our lady_ into the _soldier
and citizen_, and the _Katherine Wheel_ into the _cat and wheel_; so as
there only wants then making the _dragon_ to kill _St. George_, and the
_devil_ to tweak _St. Dunstan_ by the nose, to make the reformation
complete. Such ridiculous work they make of their reformation, and so
zealous are they against all mirth and jollity, as they would pluck down
the sign of the _cat and fiddle_ too, if it durst but play so loud as
they might hear it.”
The cat and fiddle is a a corruption of Caton fidele.
The _bag of nails_, at Chelsea, is claimed by the smiths and carpenters
of the neighborhood as a house designed for their peculiar
accommodation; but, had it not been for the corruption of the times, it
would still have belonged to the _bacchanals_, who, in the time of Ben
Jonson, used to take a holiday stroll to this delightful village. But
the old inscription _satyr and bacchanals_ is now converted into Satan
and bag o’nails.
The origin of the _chequers_, which is so common an emblem of public
houses, has been the subject of much learned conjecture. One writer
supposes that they were meant to represent that the game of draughts
might be played there; another has been credibly informed that in the
reign of Philip and Mary the then Earl of Arundel had a grant to license
public-houses, and, part of the armorial bearings of that noble family
being a chequer-board, the publican, to show that he had a license, put
out that mark as part of his sign. But, unfortunately for both
solutions, unfortunately for the honors of Arundel, Sir W. Hamilton
presented, some time ago, to the Society of Antiquaries, a view of a
street in Pompeii, in which we find that shops with the sign of the
chequers were common among the Romans! The real origin of this emblem is
still involved in obscurity. The wittiest, though certainly not the most
genuine, explanation of it was that of the late George Selwyn, who used
to wonder that antiquaries should be at any loss to discover why
_draughts_ were an appropriate emblem for _drinking-houses_.
An annotator on Beloe’s _Anecdotes of Literature_ says, “I remember,
many years ago, passing through a court in Rosemary Lane, where I
observed an ancient sign over the door of an ale-house, which was called
_The Four Alls_. There was the figure of a king, and on a label, ‘I rule
all;’ the figure of a priest, motto, ‘I pray for all;’ a soldier, ‘I
fight for all;’ and a yeoman, ‘I pay all.’ About two years ago I passed
through the same thoroughfare, and, looking up for my curious sign, I
was amazed to see a painted board occupy its place, with these words
inscribed:—‘_The Four Awls_.’ In Whitechapel road is a public house
which has a written sign, ‘_The Grave Morris_.’ A painter was
commissioned to embody the inscription; but this painter had not a
poet’s eye; he could not body forth the form of things unknown. In his
distress he applied to a friend, who presently relieved him, and the
painter delineated, as well as he could, ‘_The Graafe Maurice_,’ often
mentioned in the ‘_Epistolæ Hoelinæ_’”
The Queer Door is corrupted from Cœur Doré (Golden Heart); the Pig and
Whistle, from Peg and Wassail-Bowl; the Goat in the Golden Boots, from
the Dutch Goed in der Gooden Boote (the god—Mercury—in the golden
boots).
Many signs are heraldic and represent armorial bearings. The White Heart
was peculiar to Richard II.; the White Swan to Henry IV. and Edward
III.; the Blue Boar to Richard III.; the Red Dragon to the Tudors; the
Bull, the Falcon, and the Plume of Feathers to Edward IV.; the Swan and
Antelope to Henry V.; the Greyhound and Green Dragon to Henry VII.; the
Castle, the Spread Eagle, and the Globe were probably adopted from the
arms of Spain, Germany, and Portugal, by inns which were the resort of
merchants from those countries. Many commemorate historical events;
others derive their names from some eminent and popular man. The Coach
and Horses indicated post-houses; the Fox and Goose denoted the games
played within; the Hare and Hounds, the vicinity of hunting-grounds. In
the Middle Ages, a bush was always suspended in front of the door of a
wine-shop,—whence the saying, “Good wine needs no bush.” Some of the
mediæval signs are still retained, as the Pilgrim, Cross-Keys, Seven
Stars, &c.
The following is a literal copy of the sign of a small public house in
the village of Folkesworth, near Stilton, Hants. It contains as much
poetry as perhaps the rustic Folkesworth folks are worth; and doubtless
they think it (in the Stilton vernacular) “quite the cheese.”
[A rude figure of a Fox.]
§I . ham . a . cunen . fox§
You . see . ther . his
No . harme . atched
To . me . it . is . my . Mrs.
Wish . to . place . me
here . to . let . you . no
he . sels . good . beere.
The Rawlinson of the district has deciphered this inscription, and
conjectures its meaning to be as follows:—
I am a cunning fox, you see;
There is no harm attached to me:
It is my master’s wish to place me here,
To let you know he sells good beer.
In King Street, Norwich, at the sign of “The Waterman,” kept by a man
who is a barber and over whose door is the pole, are these lines:—
Roam not from pole to pole,
But step in here;
Where nought exceeds the shaving,
But—the beer.
This was originally an impromptu of Dean Swift, written at the request
of his favorite barber.
* * * * *
Over the door of a tippling-house in Frankford, Pa., is this:—
In this Hive we’re all alive;
Good liquor makes us funny;
If you’re dry, step in and try
The flavor of our honey.
ON A TAVERN-SIGN NEAR CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND.
Rest, traveller, rest; lo! Cooper’s ready hand
Obedient brings “zwei glass” at thy command.
Rest, traveller, rest, and banish thoughts of care.
Drink to thy friends, and recommend them here.
* * * * *
PUNISHMENT FOR TREASON.
Tell them how Edward put to death a citizen,
Only for saying he would make his _son_
Heir to the _Crown_; meaning indeed his _house_,
Which, by the _sign_ thereof, was termed so.—_Rich. III._, Act iii. sc.
5.
On the sign of “The Baker and the Brewer,” in Birmingham, is the
following quatrain:—
The Baker says, “I’ve the staff of life,
And you’re a silly elf.”
The Brewer replied, with artful pride,
“Why this is life itself.”
At the King’s Head Inn, Stutton, near Ipswich, is this address to
wayworn travelers:—
Good people, stop, and pray walk in;
Here’s wine and brandy, rum and gin;
And what is more, good purl and ale
Are both sold here by old Nat Dale.
This tap-room inscription is in a wayside tavern in Northumberland,
England:—
Here stop and spend a social hour
In harmless mirth and fun;
Let friendship reign, be just and kind,
And evil speak of none.
At the Red Lion Inn, Hollins Green, an English village, is this:—
Call freely,
Drink merrily,
Pay honestly,
Part quietly.
These rules, my friends, will bring no sorrow;
You pay to-day, I’ll trust to-morrow.
In the county of Norfolk, Eng., is this singular inscription:—
More beer score clerk
For my my his
Do trust pay sent
I I must has
Shall if I brewer
What and and my[30]
Footnote 30:
Read from the bottom of the columns upward, commencing with the right.
On the sign-board of the Bull Inn at Buckland, near Dover:—
The bull is tame, so fear him not,
All the while you pay your shot;
When money’s gone, and credit’s bad,
It’s that which makes the bull run mad.
At Swainsthorpe, near Norwich, England, is a public-house known as the
Dun Cow. Under the portrait of the cow is this couplet:—
Walk in, gentlemen; I trust you’ll find
The dun cow’s milk is to your mind.
On the Basingstoke road, near Reading, England:—
This is the Whitley Grenadier,
A noted house for famous beer.
My friend, if you should chance to call,
Beware and get not drunk withal;
Let moderation be your guide,
It answers well whene’er ’tis tried.
Then use but not abuse strong beer,
And don’t forget the Grenadier.
The author of _Tavern Anecdotes_ records the following:—
_Rhyming Host at Stratford._
At the Swan Tavern, kept by Lound
The best accommodation’s found—
Wine, spirits, porter, bottled beer,
You’ll find in high perfection here.
If, in the garden with your lass,
You feel inclined to take a glass,
There tea and coffee, of the best,
Provided is for every guest;
Or, if disposed a pipe to smoke,
To sing a song, or crack a joke,
You may repair across the green,
Where nought is heard, though much is seen;
Then laugh, and drink, and smoke away,
And but a moderate reckoning pay.
BEER-JUG INSCRIPTION.
Come, my old friend, and take a pot,
But mark me what I say:
Whilst thou drink’st thy neighbor’s health.
Drink not thy own away.
For it too often is the case,
Whilst we sit o’er a pot,
And while we drink our neighbor’s health,
Our own is quite forgot.
INSCRIPTIONS ON INN WINDOW-PANES.
SHENSTONE’S, AT HENLEY.
Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,
Where’er his journeys may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
His warmest welcome at an inn.
A gentleman who stopped at an inn at Stockport, in 1634, left this
record of his bad reception on a window of the inn:—
If, traveller, good treatment be thy care,
A comfortable bed, and wholesome fare,
A modest bill, and a diverting host,
Neat maid, and ready waiter,—quit this coast.
If dirty doings please, at Stockport lie:
The girls, O frowsy frights, here with their mistress vie.
Yet Fynes Moryson, in his _Itinerary_, thus speaks of English inns in
the olden time:—
As soon as a passenger comes to an inne, the servants run to him, and
one takes his horse and walkes him about till he be cool, then rubs
him down, and gives him meat; another servant gives the passenger his
private chamber and kindles his fire; the third pulls off his bootes
and makes them cleane; then the host and hostess visit him, and if he
will eate with the hoste or at a common table with the others, his
meale will cost him sixpence, or in some places fourpence; but if he
will eate in his chamber, he commands what meat he will, according to
his appetite; yea, the kitchen is open to him to order the meat to be
dressed as he likes beste. After having eaten what he pleases, he may
with credit set by a part for next day’s breakfast. His bill will then
be written for him, and should he object to any charge, _the host is
ready to alter it_.
“Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis!”
ON A WINDOW-PANE OF THE HOTEL SANS SOUCI, BADEN-BADEN.
Venez ici, sans souci. Vous
Partirez d’ici sans six sous.
THREE TRANSLATIONS WHICH FOLLOW.
You come to this city plumed with felicity,
You’ll flutter from this city plucked to mendicity.
With plenty of tin, purse-proud you come in.
You’ll go a sad _ninkum_ from outgo of income!
Not a bit pensive, you come here expensive.
Soon you’ll go hence with a _curse the expense_.
INSCRIPTIONS ON BELLS.
Vivos voco—Mortuos plango—Fulgura frango.
I call the living—I mourn the dead—I break the lightning.
This brief and impressive announcement—the motto of Schiller’s
ever-memorable Song of the Bell—was common to the church-bells of the
Middle Ages, and may still be found on the bell of the great Minster of
Schaffhausen, and on that of the church near Lucerne. Another and a
usual one, which is, in fact, but an amplification of the first, is this
Funera plango—Fulgura frango—Sabbato pango.
Excito lentos—Dissipo ventos—Paco cruentos.
I mourn at funerals—I break the lightning—I proclaim the Sabbath.
I urge the tardy—I disperse the winds—I calm the turbulent.
The following motto may still be seen on some of the bells that have
swung in their steeples for centuries. It will be observed to entitle
them to a sixfold efficacy.
Men’s death I tell by doleful knell,
Lightning and thunder I break asunder,
On Sabbath all to church I call,
The sleepy head I raise from bed,
The winds so fierce I do disperse,
Men’s cruel rage I do assuage.
On the famous alarm-bell called Roland, in the belfry-tower of the once
powerful city of Ghent, is engraved the subjoined inscription, in the
old Walloon or Flemish dialect:—
Mynen naem is Roland; als ik klep is er brand,
and als ik luy is er victorie in het land.
_Anglicé._ My name is Roland; when I toll there is fire,
and when I ring there is victory in the land.
On others may be found these inscriptions:—
Deum verum laudo, plebem voco, clerum congrego,
Defuncto ploro, pestum fugo, festa decoro.
I praise the true God, call the people, convene the clergy,
I mourn for the dead, drive away pestilence, and grace festivals.
Gaudemus gaudentibus,
Dolemus dolentibus.
Let us rejoice with the joyful, and grieve with the sorrowful.
INSCRIPTIONS ON THE BELLS OF ST. MICHAEL’S, COVENTRY, CAST IN 1774.
I.
Although I am both light and small,
I will be heard above you all.
II.
If you have a judicious ear,
You’ll own my voice is sweet and clear.
III.
Such wondrous power to music’s given,
It elevates the soul to heaven.
IV.
While thus we join in cheerful sound,
May love and loyalty abound.
V.
To honour both of God and king,
Our voices shall in concert sing.
VI.
Music is a medicine to the mind.
VII.
Ye ringers all, that prize your health and happiness,
Be sober, merry, wise, and you’ll the same possess.
VIII.
Ye people all that hear me ring,
Be faithful to your God and king.
IX.
In wedlock’s bands all ye who join,
With hands your hearts unite;
So shall our tuneful tongues combine
To laud the nuptial rite.
X.
I am and have been called the common bell,
To ring, when fire breaks out, to tell.
There is in the abbey church at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, a fire-bell
confined exclusively to alarms in case of conflagrations. The motto
around the rim or carrel runs thus:—
1652.
Lord, quench this furious flame;
Arise, run, help, put out the same.
The books of the Roman Catholic faith contain a ritual for the baptism
of bells, which decrees that they be named and anointed,—a ceremonial
which was supposed to insure them against the machinations of evil
spirits.
On the largest of three bells placed by Edward III. in the Little
Sanctuary, Westminster, are these words:—
King Edward made me thirtie thousand weight and three;
Take me down and wey me, and more you shall find me.
The Great Tom of Oxford was cast after two failures, April 8, 1680, from
the metal of an old bell, on which was the following curious
inscription, whence its name:—
In Thomæ laude resono _bim bom_ sine fraude.
On a bell in Durham Cathedral is inscribed,—
To call the folk to church in time,
I chime.
When mirth and pleasure’s on the wing,
I ring.
And when the body leaves the soul,
I toll.
On a bell at Lapley, in Staffordshire:—
I will sound and resound to thee, O Lord,
To call thy people to thy word.
On a bell in Meivod Church, Montgomeryshire:—
I to the church the living call,
And to the grave do summon all.
On Independence bell, Philadelphia, from Lev. xxv. 10:—
Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants
thereof.
In St. Helen’s Church, Worcester, England, is a chime of bells cast in
the time of Queen Anne, with names and inscriptions commemorative of
victories gained during her reign:—
1. §Blenheim.§
First is my note, and Blenheim is my name;
For Blenheim’s story will be first in fame.
2. §Barcelona.§
Let me relate how Louis did bemoan
His grandson Philip’s flight from Barcelon.
3. §Ramillies.§
_Deluged in blood, I, Ramillies, advance
Britannia’s glory on the fall of France._
4. §Menin.§
Let Menin on my sides engraven be;
And Flanders freed from Gallic slavery.
5. §Turin.§
When in harmonious peal I roundly go,
Think on Turin, and triumphs on the Po.
6. §Eugene.§
With joy I hear illustrious Eugene’s name;
Fav’rite of fortune and the boast of fame.
7. §Marlborough.§
But I, for pride, the greater Marlborough bear;
Terror of tyrants, and the soul of war.
8. §Queen Anne.§
Th’ immortal praises of Queen Anne I sound,
With union blest, and all these glories crowned.
The inscriptions are all dated 1706, except that on the seventh, which
is dated 1712.
* * * * *
On one of eight bells in the church tower of Pilton, Devon, is a modern
achievement in this kind of literature:—
Recast by John Taylor and Son,
Who tho best prize for church bells won
At the Great Ex-hi-bi-ti-on
In London, 1—8—5 and 1.
In St. John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong:—
I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. (Acts xxii. 21.)
At Fotheringay, Northamptonshire:—
Domini laudem, non verbo sed voce resonabo.
At Hornby:—
When I do ring,
God’s praises sing;
When I do toll,
Pray heart and soul.
At Nottingham:—
I toll the funeral knell;
I hail the festal day;
The fleeting hour I tell;
I summon all to pray.
At Bolton:—
My roaring sound doth warning give
That men cannot here always live.
Distich inscribed on a bell at Bergamoz, by Cardinal Orsini, Benedict
XIII.:—
Convoco, signo, noto, compello, concino, ploro,
│ │ │ │ │ │
Arma, Dies, Horas, Fulgura, Festa, Rogos.
Similar in form is an inscription on Lindsey Court-house:—
Hæc domus
Odit amat punit conservat honorat
│ │ │ │ │
Nequitiam, pacem, crimina, jura, bonos.
On the clock of the town hall of Bala, North Wales, is the following
inscription:—
Here I stand both day and night,
To tell the hours with all my might;
Do thou example take by me,
And serve thy God as I serve thee.
FLY-LEAF INSCRIPTIONS IN BOOKS.
The following lines, formerly popular among youthful scholars, may still
be found in school-books:—
This book is mine
By right divine;
And if it go astray,
I’ll call you kind
My desk to find
And put it safe away.
* * * * *
This book is mine,—that you may know,
By letters two I will you show:
The first is J, a letter bright;
The next is S in all men’s sight.
But if you still my name should miss,
Look underneath, and here it is:—
§John Smith§.
* * * * *
Whoe’er this book, if lost, doth find,
I hope will have a generous mind,
And bring it to the owner,—me,
Whose name they’ll see page fifty-three.
The curious warning subjoined—paradoxical in view of the improbability
of any _honest_ friend pilfering—has descended to our times from the
days of black-letter printing:—
Steal not this book, my honest friend,
For fear the gallows be your end;
For if you do, the Lord will say,
Where is that book you stole away?
Another often met with is this:—
Hic liber est meus,
Testis et est Deus;
Si quis me quærit,
Hic nomen erit.
The two following admonitions are full of salutary advice to
book-borrowers:—
Neither blemish this book, or the leaves double down,
Nor lend it to each idle friend in the town;
Return it when read; or, if lost, please supply
Another as good to the mind and the eye.
With right and with reason you need but be friends,
And each book in my study your pleasure attends.
* * * * *
If thou art borrowed by a friend,
Right welcome shall he be,
To read, to study, not to lend,
But to return to me.
Not that imparted knowledge doth
Diminish learning’s store;
But books, I find, if often lent,
Return to me no more.
☞ Read slowly, pause frequently, think seriously, keep clean, =RETURN
DULY=, with the corners of the leaves not turned down.
* * * * *
Of the warning and menacing kind are the following:—
This book is one thing,
My fist is another;
Touch this one thing,
You’ll sure feel the other.
* * * * *
_Si quisquis furetur_
This little _libellum,
Per Bacchum per Jovem_!
I’ll kill him, I’ll fell him,
_In ventum illius_
I’ll stick my _scalpellum_,
And teach him to steal
My little _libellum_.
* * * * *
Ne me prend pas;
On te pendra.
* * * * *
Gideon Snooks,
Ejus liber.
Si quis furetur;
Per collum pendetur,
Similis huic pauperi animali.
Here follows a figure of an unfortunate individual suspended “in malam
crucem.”
Small is the wren,
Black is the rook;
Great is the sinner
That steals this book.
This is Thomas Jones’s book—
You may just within it look;
But you’d better not do more,
For the Devil’s at the door,
And will snatch at fingering hands;
Look behind you—there he stands!
The following macaronic is taken from a copy of the _Companion to the
Festivals and Fasts_, 1717:—
_To the Borrower of this Book._
Hic Liber est meus,
Deny it who can,
Samuel Showell, Jr.,
An honest man.
In vico corvino [locale appended]
I am to be found,
Si non mortuus sum,
And laid in the ground.
At si non vivens,
You will find an heir
Qui librum recipiet;
You need not to fear.
Ergo cum lectus est
Restore it, and then
Ut quando mutuaris
I may lend again.
At si detineas,
So let it be lost,
Expectabo Argentum,
As much as it cost (viz.: 5_s._)
_To the Finder._
If I this lose, and you it find,
Restore it me, be not unkind;
For if not so, you’re much to blame,
While as below you see my name.—[Name appended.]
Taken from an old copy-book:
All you, my friends, who now expect to see
A piece of writing, here performed by me,
Cast but a smile on this my mean endeavor,
I’ll strive to mend, and be obedient ever.
On the fly-leaf of a Bible may sometimes be seen:
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To tell the love of God alone
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
The two following are very common in village schools:—
This is Giles Wilkinson, his book;
God give him grace therein to look;
Nor yet to look, but understand
That learning’s better than house and land;
For when both house and land are spent,
Then learning is most excellent.
* * * * *
John Smith is my name,
England is my nation,
London is my dwelling-place,
And Christ is my salvation,
And when I’m dead and in the grave,
And all my bones are rotten,
When this you see, remember me,
Though I am long forgotten.
This pretty presentation-verse is sometimes met with:—
Take it,—’tis a gift of love
That seeks thy good alone;
Keep it for the giver’s sake,
And read it for thy own.
The early conductors of the press were in the habit of affixing to the
end of the volumes they printed some device or couplet concerning the
book, with the names of the printer and proof-reader added. The
following example is from Andrew Bocard’s edition of _The Pragmatic
Sanction_, Paris, 1507:—
Stet liber, hic donec fluctus formica marinos
Ebibat; et totum testudo perambulet orbem
(May this volume continue in motion,
And its pages each day be unfurled;
Till an ant to the dregs drink the ocean,
Or a tortoise has crawled round the world.)
On the title-page of a book called _Gentlemen, Look about You_, is the
following curious request:—
Read this over if you’re wise,
If you’re not, then read it twice:
If a fool, and in the gall
Of bitterness, read not at all.
MOTTO ON A CLOCK.
Quæ lenta accedit, quam velox præterit hora!
Ut capias, patiens esto, sed esto vigil!
Slow comes the hour: its passing speed how great:
Waiting to seize it,—vigilantly wait!
WATCH-PAPER INSCRIPTION.
Onward perpetually moving,
These faithful hands are ever proving
How quick the hours fly by;
This monitory, pulse-like beating
Seems constantly, methinks, repeating,
Swift! swift! the moments fly.
Reader, be ready,—for perhaps before
These hands have made one revolution more,
Life’s spring is snapt,—you die!
Here, reader, see in youth, in age, or prime,
The stealing steps of never-standing Time:
With wisdom mark the moment as it flies;
Think what a moment is to him who dies.
Little monitor, impart
Some instruction to the heart;
Show the busy and the gay
Life is hasting swift away.
Follies cannot long endure,
Life is short and death is sure.
Happy those who wisely learn
Truth from error to discern.
Could but our tempers more like this machine,
Not urged by passion, nor delayed by spleen,
And true to Nature’s regulating power,
By virtuous acts distinguish every hour;
Then health and joy would follow as they ought
The laws of motion, and the laws of thought;
Sweet health to pass the present moment o’er,
And everlasting joy when time shall be no more.
SUN-DIAL INSCRIPTIONS.
Sine sole sileo.
(Without sunlight I give no information.)
Scis horas; nescis horam.
(You know the hours; you know not the hour [of death].)
Afflictis lentæ, celeres gaudentibus horæ.
(The hours pass slowly for the afflicted, rapidly for the joyous.)
Vado e vegno giorno;
Ma tu andrai senza ritorno.
(I go and come every day;
But thou shalt go without return.)
May the dread book at our last trial,
When open spread, be like this dial;
May Heaven forbear to mark therein
The hours made dark by deeds of sin;
Those only in that record write
Which virtue like the sun makes bright.
If o’er the dial glides a shade, redeem
The time, for lo! it passes like a dream;
But if ’tis all a blank, then mark the loss
Of hours unblest by shadows from the cross.
INSCRIPTION OVER A SPRING.
Whoe’er thou art that stays’st to quaff
The streams that here from waters dim
Arise to fill thy cup and laugh
In sparkling beads about the brim,
In all thy thoughts and words as pure
As these sweet waters mayst thou be;
To all thy friends as firm and sure,
As prompt in all thy charity.
INSCRIPTIONS ON AN ÆOLIAN HARP.
AT THE ENDS.
Fingent Æolio carmine nobilem. (Hor. iv. 3.)
Partem aliquam, oh venti, divum referatis ad aures. (Virg. Buc. 3.)
ON THE SIDE.
Hail, heavenly harp, where Memnon’s skill is shown,
That charm’st the ear with music all thy own!
Which, though untouched, canst rapturous strains impart.
Oh, rich of genuine nature, free from art!
Such the wild warblings of the chirping throng,
So simply sweet the untaught virgin’s song.
Mr. Longfellow’s admirers will remember his beautiful little poem
commencing:—
I like that ancient Saxon phrase which calls
The burial-ground _God’s acre_.
This “Saxon phrase” is not obsolete. It may be seen, for instance,
inscribed over the entrance to a modern cemetery at Basle—
=Gottes Acker.=
Over a gateway near the church of San Eusebio, Rome:—
Tria sunt mirabilia;
Trinus et unus,
Deus et homo,
Virgo et mater.
Over the door of the house in which Selden was born, Salvington,
Sussex:—
Gratus, honesti, mihi; non claudar, inito sedeq’.
Fur, abeas; non su’ facta soluta tibi.
Thus paraphrased:—
Thou’rt welcome, honest friend; walk in, make free;
Thief, get thee gone; my doors are closed to thee.
HOUSE INSCRIPTIONS.
On the Town-house Wittenberg:—
Ist’s Gottes Werk, so wird’s bestehen;
Ist’s Menschens, so wird’s untergehen.
(If God’s work, it will aye endure;
If man’s, ’tis not a moment sure.)
Over the gate of a Casino, near Maddaloni:—
AMICIS—
Et ne paucis pateat,
Etiam fictis.
(My gate stands open for my friends;
But lest of these too few appear,
Let him who to the name pretends
Approach and find a welcome here.)
On a west-of-England mansion:—
Welcome to all through this wide-opening gate;
None come too early, none depart too late.
Fuller (_Holy and Profane State_) and Walton (_Life of George Herbert_)
notice a verse engraved upon a mantelpiece in the Parsonage House built
by George Herbert at his own expense. The faithful minister thus
counsels his successor:—
If thou dost find
A house built to thy mind,
Without thy cost,
Serve thou the more
§God§ and the poor:
My labor is not lost.
The following is emblazoned around the banqueting hall of Bulwer’s
ancestral home, Knebworth:—
Read the Rede of the Old Roof Tree.
Here be trust fast. Opinion free.
Knightly Right Hand. Christian knee.
Worth in all. Wit in some.
Laughter open. Slander dumb.
Hearth where rooted Friendships grow,
Safe as Altar even to Foe.
And the sparks that upwards go
When the hearth flame dies below,
If thy sap in them may be,
Fear no winter, Old Roof Tree.
On a pane of glass in an old window in the coffee-room of the White
Lion, Chester, England:—
Right fit a place is window glass
To write the name of bonny lass;
And if the reason you should speir,
Why both alike are brittle geir,
A wee thing dings a lozen lame—
A wee thing spoils a maiden’s fame.
Tourist’s wit on a window pane at Lodore:—
When I see a man’s name
Scratched upon the glass,
I know he owns a diamond,
And his father owns an ass.
On a pane of the Hotel des Pays-Bas, Spa, Belgium:—
1793.
I love but one, and only one;
Oh, Damon, thou art he.
Love thou but one and only one,
And let that one be me.
MEMORIALS.
An English gentleman, who, in 1715, spent some time in prison, left the
following memorial on the windows of his cell. On one pane of glass he
wrote:—
That which the world miscalls a jail,
A private closet is to me;
Whilst a good conscience is my bail,
And innocence my liberty.
On another square he wrote, _Mutare vel timere sperno_, and on a third
pane, _sed victa Catoni_.[31]
Footnote 31:
Lucan’s Pharsalia. (Lib. 1.)
A Mr. Barton, on retiring with a fortune made in the wool-trade, built a
fair stone house at Holme, in Nottinghamshire, in the window of which
was the following couplet,—an humble acknowledgment of the means whereby
he had acquired his estate:—
I thank God, and ever shall;
It is the sheep hath paid for all.
FRANCKE’S ENCOURAGING DISCOVERY.
It is said that when Francke was engaged in the great work of erecting
his world-known Orphan-House at Halle, for the means of which he looked
to the Lord in importunate prayer from day to day, an apparently
accidental circumstance made an abiding impression on him and those
about him. A workman, in digging a part of the foundation, found a small
silver coin, with the following inscription:—
“Jehova, Conditor, Condita Coronide Coronet.”
(May Jehovah, the builder, finish the building.)
GOLDEN MOTTOES.
A vain man’s motto,— Win gold and wear it.
A generous man’s motto,— Win gold and share it.
A miser’s motto,— Win gold and spare it.
A profligate’s motto,— Win gold and spend it.
A broker’s motto,— Win gold and lend it.
A fool’s motto,— Win gold and end it.
A gambler’s motto,— Win gold and lose it.
A sailor’s motto,— Win gold and cruise it.
A wise man’s motto,— Win gold and use it.
POSIES FROM WEDDING-RINGS.
_Portia._ A quarrel, ho, already! What’s the matter?
_Gratiano._ About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring
That she did give me: whose posy was
For all the world like cutler’s poetry
Upon a knife:[32] _Love me, and leave me not._—
_Merchant of Venice_, Act V.
Footnote 32:
Knives were formerly inscribed, by means of aqua-fortis, with short
sentences in distich.
_Hamlet._ Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?—
_Hamlet_, Act III. sc. 2.
_Jacques._ You are full of pretty answers: have you not been
acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives, and conned them out of rings?—
_As You Like It_, Act III. sc. 2.
The following posies were transcribed by an indefatigable collector,
from old wedding-rings, chiefly of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The orthography is, in most cases, altered:—
Death never parts
Such loving hearts.
Love and respect
I do expect.
No gift can show
The love I owe.
Let him never take a wife
That will not love her as his life.
In loving thee
I love myself.
A heart content
Can ne’er repent.
In God and thee
Shall my joy be.
Love thy chaste wife
Beyond thy life. 1681.
Love and pray
Night and day.
Great joy in thee
Continually.
My fond delight
By day and night.
Pray to love;
Love to pray. 1647.
In thee, my choice,
I do rejoice. 1677.
Body and mind
In thee I find.
Dear wife, thy rod
Doth lead to God.
God alone
Made us two one.
Eternally
My love shall be.
All I refuse,
And thee I choose.
Worship is due
To God and you.
Love and live happy. 1689.
Joy day and night
Be our delight.
Divinely knit by Grace are we;
Late two, now one; the pledge here see. 1657.
Endless my love
As this shall prove.
Avoid all strife
’Twixt man and wife.
Joyful love
This ring doth prove.
In thee, dear wife,
I find new life.
Of rapturous joy
I am the toy.
In thee I prove
The joy of love.
In loving wife
Spend all thy life. 1697.
In love abide
Till death divide.
In unity
Let’s live and die.
Happy in thee
Hath God made me.
Silence ends strife
With man and wife.
None can prevent
The Lord’s intent.
God did decree
Our unity.
I kiss the rod
From thee and God.
In love and joy
Be our employ.
Live and love;
Love and live.
God above
Continue our love.
True love will ne’er forget.
Faithful ever,
Deceitful never.
As gold is pure,
So love is sure.
Love, I like thee,
Sweet, requite me.
God sent her me,
My wife to be.
Live and die
In constancy.
My beloved is mine,
And I am hers.
Within my breast
Thy heart doth rest.
God above
Increase our love.
Be true to me
That gives it thee.
Both heart and hand
At your command.
My heart you have,
And yours I crave.
Christ and thee
My comfort be.
As God decreed,
So we agreed.
No force can move
Affixed love.
For a kiss
Take this.
The want of thee
Is grief to me.
I fancy none
But thee alone.
One word for all,
I love and shall.
Your sight,
My delight.
God’s blessing be
On thee and me.
I will be yours
While breath endures.
Love is sure
Where faith is pure.
Thy friend am I,
An so will die.
God’s appointment
Is my contentment.
Knit in one
By Christ alone.
My dearest Betty
Is good and pretty.
Sweetheart, I pray
Do not say nay.
Parting is pain
While love doth remain.
Hurt not that heart
Whose joy thou art.
Thine eyes so bright
Are my delight.
Take hand and heart,
I’ll ne’er depart.
If you consent,
You’ll not repent.
’Tis in your will
To save or kill.
As long as life,
Your loving wife.
If you deny,
Then sure I die.
Thy friend am I,
And so will die.
Let me in thee
Most happy be.
God hath sent
My heart’s content.
You and I
Will lovers die.
Thy consent
Is my content.
I wish to thee
All joy may be.
In thee my love
All joy I prove.
Beyond this life
Love me, dear wife.
Love and joy
Can never cloy.
The pledge I prove
Of mutual love.
I love the rod
And thee and God.
Desire, like fire,
Doth still inspire.
My heart and I,
Until I die.
This ring doth bind
Body and mind.
Endless as this
Shall be our bliss.—§Thos. Bliss.§ 1719.
I do rejoice
In thee my choice.
Love him in heart,
Whose joy thou art.
I change the life
Of maid to wife.
Endless my love
For thee shall prove.
Not Two, but One.
Till life be gone.
Numbers, vi. 24, 25, 26.
In its circular continuity, the ring was accepted as a type of eternity,
and, hence, the stability of affection.
Constancy and Heaven are round,
And in this the Emblem’s found.
This is love, and worth commending,
Still beginning, never _ending_.
Or, as Herrick says,—
And as this round
Is nowhere found
To flaw or else to sever,
So let our love
As endless prove,
And pure as gold forever.
LADY KATHERINE GREY’S WEDDING-RING.
The ring received by this excellent woman, who was a sister of Lady Jane
Grey, from her husband, the Earl of Hertford, at their marriage,
consisted of five golden links, the four inner ones bearing the
following lines, of the earl’s composition:—
As circles five by art compact shewe but one ring in sight,
So trust uniteth faithfull mindes with knott of secret might,
Whose force to breake but greedie Death noe wight possesseth power,
As time and sequels well shall prove. My ringe can say no more.
Parallel Passages.
INCLUDING IMITATIONS, PLAGIARISMS, AND ACCIDENTAL COINCIDENCES.
_Pretensions to originality are ludicrous._—§Byron’s§ _Letters_.
_An apple cleft in two is not more twin
Than these two creatures._—_Twelfth Night, V. 1._
_Milton “borrowed” other poets’ thoughts, but he did not borrow as
gipsies borrow children, spoiling their features that they may not be
recognized. No, he returned them improved. Had he “borrowed” your
coat, he would have restored it with a new nap upon it!_—§Leigh Hunt.§
* * * * *
Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long.—§Goldsmith§: _Hermit_.
Evidently stolen from §Dr. Young§:—
Man wants but little, nor that little long.—_Night Thoughts._
* * * * *
Be wise to-day: ’tis madness to defer.—_Night Thoughts._
But §Congreve§ had said, not long before,—
Defer not till to-morrow to be wise;
To-morrow’s sun to thee may never rise.—_Letter to Cobham._
* * * * *
Like angels’ visits, few and far between.—§Campbell§: _Pleasures of
Hope_.
Copied from §Blair§:—
——like an ill-used ghost
Not to return;—or if it did, its visits,
Like those of angels, short and far between.—_Grave._
But this pretty conceit originated with §Norris§, of Bemerton, (died
1711,) in a religious poem:—
But those who soonest take their flight
Are the most exquisite and strong:
_Like angels’ visits, short and bright_,
Mortality’s too weak to bear them long.—_The Parting._
* * * * *
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.—§Gray’s§ _Bard_.
§Gray§ himself points out the imitation in §Shakspeare§:—
You are my true and honorable wife;
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.—_Julius Cæsar_, Act II. Sc. 1.
§Otway§ also makes Priuli exclaim to his daughter,—
Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life,
Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o’er thee.—_Venice Preserved._
* * * * *
And leave us leisure to be good.—§Gray§: _Ode to Adversity_.
And know, I have not yet the leisure to be good.—§Oldham.§
* * * * *
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
The bad affright, afflict the best.—§Gray§: _Ode to Adversity_.
When the scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing hour,
Calls us to penance.—§Milton§: _Paradise Lost_.
* * * * *
Lo, where the rosy-bosomed hours,
Fair Venus’ train, appear!—§Gray§: _Ode to Spring_.
The graces and the rosy-bosomed hours
Thither all their bounties bring.—§Milton§: _Comus_.
En hic in roseis latet papillis.—§Catullus.§
* * * * *
Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.—§Gray§: _Elegy_.
There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye,
Like roses that in deserts bloom and die.—§Pope§: _Rape of the Lock_.
In distant wilds, by human eye unseen,
She rears her flowers and spreads her velvet green;
Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace,
And waste their music on the savage race.—§Young.§
And, like the desert’s lily, bloom to fade.—§Shenstone§: _Elegy IV._
* * * * *
Nor waste their sweetness on the desert air.—§Churchill§, _Gotham_.
Which else had wasted in the desert air.
§Lloyd§: _Ode at Westminster School_.
* * * * *
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.—§Gray§: _Elegy_.
And left the world to wretchedness and me.—§Moss§: _Beggar’s Petition_.
* * * * *
The swallow oft beneath my thatch
Shall twitter from her clay-built nest, &c.—_The Wish._
Doubtless suggested to §Rogers§ by the lines in §Gray’s§ Elegy:—
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from her straw-built shed, &c.
* * * * *
The bloom of young desire and purple light of love.—§Gray.§
Lumenque juventæ purpureum.—§Virgil.§ _Æn._ I. 590.
And quaff the _pendent vintage_ as it grows.
§Gray§: _Alliance of Education and Government_.
For this expression §Gray§ was indebted to §Virgil§:—
Non eadem arboribus _pendet vindemia_ nostris, &c.—_Georg._ ii. 89.
* * * * *
The attic warbler pours her throat.—§Gray§: _Ode to Spring_.
Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat?—§Pope§: _Essay on Man_.
§Gray§ says concerning the blindness of Milton,—
He passed the flaming bounds of space and time:
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.
(§Dr. Johnson§ remarks that if we suppose the blindness caused by study
in the formation of his poem, this account is poetically true and
happily imagined.)
* * * * *
§Hermias§, a Galatian writer of the second century, says of Homer’s
blindness,—
When Homer resolved to write of Achilles, he had an exceeding desire
to fill his mind with a just idea of so glorious a hero: wherefore,
having paid all due honors at his tomb, he entreats that he may obtain
a sight of him. The hero grants his poet’s petition, and rises in a
glorious suit of armor, which cast so insufferable a splendor that
Homer lost his eyes while he gazed for the enlargement of his notions.
(§Pope§ says if this be any thing more than mere fable, one would be apt
to imagine it insinuated his contracting a blindness by too intense
application while he wrote the Iliad.)
* * * * *
§Hume’s§ sarcastic fling at the clergy in a note to the first volume of
his history is not original. He says,—
The ambition of the clergy can often be satisfied only by promoting
ignorance, and superstition, and implicit faith, and pious frauds; and
having got what Archimedes only wanted,—another world on which he
could fix his engine,—no wonder they move this world at their
pleasure.
In §Dryden’s§ _Don Sebastian_, Dorax thus addresses the Mufti:—
Content you with monopolizing Heaven,
And let this little hanging ball alone;
For, give you but a foot of conscience there,
And you, like Archimedes, toss the globe.
§Dryden§ says of the Earl of Shaftesbury,—
David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
And Heaven had wanted one immortal song.—_Absalom and Achitophel._
§Pope§ adopts similar language in addressing his friend Dr. Arbuthnot:—
Friend of my life! which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song.
For truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be loved needs only to be seen.—§Dryden.§
Vice is a monster of such hideous mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen.—§Pope.§
* * * * *
Great wits to madness nearly are allied.—§Dryden§: _Abs. and Achit._
§Seneca§ said, eighteen centuries ago,—
Nullum magnum ingenium absque mistura dementiæ est:—_De Tranquil._;
and Aristotle had said it before him (_Problemata_).
* * * * *
Praise undeserved is satire in disguise.—§Pope§: _Imit. Horace_.
§Sir Walter Scott§ says in his _Woodstock_,—in the scene where Alice
Lee, in the presence of Charles II. under the assumed name of Louis
Kerneguy, describes the character she supposes the king to have:—
Kerneguy and his supposed patron felt embarrassed, perhaps from a
consciousness that the real Charles fell far short of his ideal
character as designed in such glowing colors. In some cases
_exaggerated or inappropriate praise becomes the most severe satire_.
* * * * *
Ye little stars, hide your diminished rays.—§Pope§: _Epistle to
Bathurst_.
At whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads.—§Milton.§
* * * * *
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.—§Pope§: _Essay on Man_.
And justify the ways of God to man.—§Milton§: _Paradise Lost_.
* * * * *
On Butler who can think without just rage,
The glory and the scandal of the age?—§Oldham§: _Satire against Poetry_.
Probably borrowed by §Pope§ in the following lines:—
At length Erasmus, that great injured name,
The glory of the priesthood and the shame.—_Essay on Criticism._
* * * * *
And more true joy Marcellus, exiled, feels,
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.—§Pope§: _Essay on Man_.
Drawn from §Bolingbroke§, who plagiarized the idea from §Seneca§, who
says,—
O Marcellus, happier when Brutus approved thy exile than when the
commonwealth approved thy consulship.
* * * * *
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight:
He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right—§Pope§: _Essay on Man_.
Taken from §Cowley§:—
His faith perhaps in some nice tenets might
Be wrong: his life, I’m sure, was in the right.
* * * * *
Is it, in heaven, a crime to love too well?—§Pope§: _Elegy_.
Imitated from §Crashawe’s§ couplet:—
And I,—what is my crime? I cannot tell,
Unless it be a crime to have loved too well.
§Lamartine§, in his _Jocelyn_, has the same expression:—
Est-ce un crime, O mon Dieu, de trop aimer le beau?
* * * * *
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.—_Dunciad._
This smart piece of antithesis §Pope§ borrowed from §Quinctilian§, who
says,—
Qui stultis eruditi videri volunt; cruditi stulti videntur.
§Dr. Johnson§ also hurled this missile at Lord Chesterfield, calling him
“A lord among wits, and a wit among lords.” The earl had offended the
rugged lexicographer, whose barbarous manners in company Chesterfield
holds up, in his _Letters to his son_, as things to be avoided.
* * * * *
Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.—§Pope§: _Rape of the Lock_.
This has a strong affinity with a passage in §Howell’s§ _Letters_:—
’Tis a powerful sex: they were too strong for the first, for the
strongest, and for the wisest man that was: they must needs be strong,
when _one hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen_.
* * * * *
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made.—§Goldsmith§: _Deserted
Vil._
Probably from §De Caux§, an old French poet, who says,—
———————— C’est un verre qui luit,
Qu’un souffle peut détruire, et qu’un souffle a produit.
* * * * *
Kings are like stars,—they rise and set,—_they have
The worship of the world, but no repose_.—§Shelley§: _Hellas_.
Stolen from §Lord Bacon§:—
Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times,
and _which have much veneration, but no rest_.—_Of Empire._
§Burke§, in speaking of the morals of France prior to the Revolution,
says,—
Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.
This statement—the falsity of which is apparent—is disproved by a score
of contradictions. Let Lord Bacon suffice:—
Another [of the Rabbins] noteth a position in moral philosophy, that
men abandoned to vice do not so much corrupt manners as those that are
half good and half evil.—_Advancement of Learning._
Things not to be trusted:—
A bright sky,
A smiling master,
The cry of a dog,
A harlot’s sorrow.
_Howitt’s Literature and Romance of Northern Europe._
Grant I may never be so fond
To trust man in his oath or bond,
Or a harlot for her weeping,
Or a dog that seems a-sleeping.
_Apemantus’ Grace._—_Timon of Athens._
The collocation of dogs and harlots in both passages is very remarkable.
* * * * *
All human race, from China to Peru,
Pleasure, howe’er disguised by art, pursue.
§Warton§: _Universal Love of Pleasure_, 1748.
Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind, from China to Peru.
§Dr. Johnson§: _Vanity of Human Wishes_, 1749.
* * * * *
§Shakspeare’s§ dreamy Dane says,—
Man delights not me, nor woman neither.
A sentiment very nearly expressed in §Horace’s§ Ode to Venus:—
Me nec femina, nec puer,
Jam nec spes animi credula mutui.
Nec certare juvat mero, &c.—_Lib. IV._
(As for me, neither woman, nor youth, nor the fond hope of mutual
inclination, &c. delight me.)
* * * * *
The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage,
Which God and nature do with actors fill;
Kings have their entrance with due equipage,
And some their parts play well, and others ill.
§Thomas Heywood§: _Apology for Actors_, 1612.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his life plays many parts.
§Shakspeare§: _As You Like It_.
§Palladas§, a Greek poet of the third century, has the following,
translated by Merivale:—
This life a theatre we well may call,
Where every actor must perform with art,
Or laugh it through and make a farce of all,
Or learn to bear with grace his tragic part.
§Pythagoras§, who lived nearly two centuries later, also said,—
This world is like a stage whereon many play their parts.
* * * * *
Among the epigrams of §Palladas§ may be found the original of a modern
saw, the purport of which is that an ignoramus, by maintaining a prudent
silence, may pass for a wise man:—
Πᾶς τις ἀπαιδευτος φρονιμώτατος ἔστι σιωπῶν.
§Shakspeare§ uses it in the _Merchant of Venice_:—
O my Antonio, I do know of these
That therefore only are reputed wise
For saying nothing.—_Act I. Sc. 1._
* * * * *
We come crying hither:
Thou knowest the first time that we smell the air
We wawl and cry.——
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.—_King Lear, IV. 6._
Tum porro puer,——
Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut æquum est
Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.
§Lucretius§: _De Rer. Nat._
* * * * *
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns.—_Hamlet, Act III._
Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
Illuc unde negant redire quemquam.—§Catullus.§
A similar form of expression occurs in the Book of Job, x. 21, and xvi.
22; but it is probable, from this and other passages, that Shakspeare’s
acquaintance with the Latin writers was greater than has been generally
supposed. One of the commentators on Hamlet, in pointing out the
similarity of ideas in the lines commencing, “The cock, that is the
trumpet to the morn,” &c. (_Act I._) and the hymn of St. Ambrose in the
Salisbury collection,—
Preco diei jam sonat,
Noctis profundæ pervigil;
Nocturna lux viantibus,
A nocte noctem segregans.
Hoc excitatus Lucifer,
Solvit polum caligine;
Hoc omnis errorum chorus
Viam nocendi deserit.
Gallo canente spes redit, &c.,
has the following remark. “Some future Dr. Farmer may, perhaps, show how
Shakspeare became acquainted with this passage, without being able to
read the original; for the resemblance is too close to be accidental.
But this, with many other passages, and especially his original
Latinisms of phrase, give evidence enough of a certain degree of
acquaintance with Latin,—doubtless not familiar nor scholar-like, but
sufficient to give a coloring to his style, and to open to him many
treasures of poetical thought and diction not accessible to the merely
English reader. Such a degree of acquirement might well appear low to an
accomplished Latinist like Ben Jonson, and authorize him to say of his
friend,—
Though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek;—
yet the very mention of his ‘small Latin’ indicates that Ben knew that
he had some.”
Mr. Fox, the orator, remarked on one occasion that Shakspeare must have
had some acquaintance with Euripides, for he could trace resemblances
between passages of their dramas: e.g. what Alcestis in her last moments
says about her servants is like what the dying Queen Katharine (in
_Henry the Eighth_) says about hers, &c.
That Shakspeare “may often be tracked in the snow” of §Terence§, as
Dryden remarks of Ben Jonson, is evident from the following:—
Master, it is no time to chide you now:
Affection is not rated from the heart.
If love hath touched you, naught remains but so,—
_Redime te captum quam queas minimo_.—_Taming of the Shrew, I. 1._
The last line is manifestly an alteration of the words of Parmeno in
_The Eunuch_ of §Terence§:—
Quid agas, nisi ut _te redimas captum quam queas minimo_?—_Act I. Sc.
1._
In another play §Terence§ says,—
Facile omnes, cum valemus, recta consilia, ægrotis damus;
Tu si hic sis, aliter censeas.—_Andrian XI. 1._
§Shakspeare§ has it,—
Men
Can counsel and give comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion.
.tb
’Tis all men’s office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow;
But no man’s virtue, nor sufficiency,
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself.—_Much Ado about Nothing, V. 1._
Apropos of this sentiment, §Swift§ says,—
I never knew a man who could not bear the misfortunes of others with
the most Christian resignation.—_Thoughts on Various Subjects._
And §La Rochefoucauld§,—
We have all of us sufficient fortitude to bear the misfortunes of
others.—_Max. 20._
* * * * *
Falstaff says, in 1 Henry IV. ii. 4,—
For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it
grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.
Shakspeare evidently here parodied an expression in §Sir John Lyly§’s
_Euphues_:—
Though the camomile, the more it is trodden and pressed downe, the
more it spreadeth; yet the violet, the oftener it is handled and
touched, the sooner it withereth and decaieth.
Two verses in _Titus Andronicus_ appear to have pleased Shakspeare so
well that he twice subsequently closely copied them:—
She is a woman, therefore may be wooed,
She is a woman, therefore may be won.—_Titus Andron. II. 1._
She’s beautiful, and therefore to be wooed;
She is a woman, therefore to be won.—_First Part Henry VI., V. 3._
Was ever woman in this humor wooed?
Was ever woman in this humor won?—_Richard III., I. 2._
Though Shakspeare has drawn freely from others, he is himself a mine
from which many builders have quarried their materials,—a Coliseum
“from whose mass
Walls, palaces, half cities, have been reared.”
* * * * *
Honor and shame from no condition rise:
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.—§Pope§: _Essay on Man_.
This is only a new rendering of the thought thus expressed by
Shakspeare:—
From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,
The place is dignified by the doer’s deed.—_All’s Well that Ends Well,
II. 3._
* * * * *
Let rusty steel a while be sheathed,
And all those harsh and rugged sounds
Of bastinadoes, cuts, and wounds,
Exchanged to love’s more gentle style.—_Hudibras, P. II. c. 1._
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.—_Richard III, I. 1._
* * * * *
The military figure of Shakspeare’s musical lines,—
Beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and on thy cheeks,
And Death’s pale flag is not advanced there.—_Romeo and Juliet, V. 3_,
is closely imitated by §Chamberlain§:—
The rose had lost
His ensign in her cheeks; and tho’ it cost
Pains nigh to death, the lily had alone
Set his pale banners up.—_Pharonidas._
* * * * *
A dream
Dreamed by a happy man, while the dark cast
Is slowly brightening to his bridal morn.—§Tennyson.§
Copied from the _Merchant of Venice_:—
Then music is
As those dulcet sounds in break of day,
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear
And summon him to marriage.—III. 2.
* * * * *
How can we expect another to keep our secret if we cannot keep it
ourselves?—§La Rochefoucauld§, _Max. 90_.
Toute révélation d’un secret est la faute de celui qui l’a confié.—§La
Bruyere§: _De la Société_.
I have played the fool, the gross fool, to believe
The bosom of a friend would hold a secret
Mine own could not contain.—§Massinger§: _Unnatural Combat, V. 2_.
_Ham._—Do not believe it.
_Ros._—Believe what?
_Ham._—That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own.
§Shakspeare§: _Hamlet, IV. 2_.
* * * * *
Anger is like
A full-hot horse, who being allowed his way,
Self mettle tires him.—_Henry VIII._ I. 1.
Let passion work, and, like a hot-reined horse,
’Twill quickly tire itself.—§Massinger§: _Unnatural Combat_.
* * * * *
Is this the Talbot so much feared abroad
That with his name the mothers still their babes?—_Henry VI._ II. 3.
Nor shall Sebastian’s formidable name
Be longer used to lull the crying babe.—§Dryden§: _Don Sebastian_.
Chili’s dark matrons long shall tame
The froward child with Bertram’s name.—§Scott§: _Rokeby_.
* * * * *
It were better to be eaten to death with rust than to be scoured to
nothing by perpetual motion.—_Henry IV., Second Part_, I. 2.
Reversed by §Byron§:—
Better to sink beneath the shock
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.—_Giaour._
* * * * *
’Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus.—_Cymbeline._
No lips did seem so fair
In his conceit—through which he thinks doth fly
So sweet a breath that doth perfume the air.
§Marston§: _Pygmalion’s Image_.
* * * * *
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just;
And he but naked, though locked up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.—_2 Henry VI._ III. 2.
I’m armed with more than complete steel—
The justice of my quarrel.—§Marlowe§: _Lust’s Dominion_.
* * * * *
All that glisters is not gold.—_Merchant of Venice_, II.
Yet gold all is not that doth golden seeme.
§Spenser§: _Faerie Queene_, II.
* * * * *
Double, double, toil and trouble.—_Macbeth._
Πόνος, πόνῳ, πόνον, φέρει.—§Sophocles§: _Ajax_.
* * * * *
We shall not look upon his like again.—_Hamlet_, I.
Quando ullum inveniet parem?—§Horace.§
* * * * *
None but himself can be his parallel.—§Theobald.§
Quæris Alcidæ parem?
Nemo est nisi ipse.—§Seneca§: _Hercules Furens_.
* * * * *
The following song from §Shakspeare’s§ _Measure for Measure_, commencing
as follows, is copied _verbatim_ in §Beaumont§ and §Fletcher’s§ _Bloody
Brother_:—
Take, O! take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn.
But my kisses bring again,
Seals of love, but sealed in vain.
* * * * *
The following line occurs both in §Pope’s§ _Dunciad_ and §Addison’s§
_Campaign_:—
Rides on the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
* * * * *
§Ben Jonson§ borrowed his celebrated ballad _To Celia_,—
Drink to me only with thine eyes, &c.,
from §Philostratus§, a Greek poet, who flourished at the court of the
Emperor Severus.
* * * * *
In §Milton’s§ description of the lazar-house occurs the following
confused metaphor:—
Sight so deform what _heart of rock_ could long
_Dry-eyed_ behold?
Derived from a similar combination in §Tibullus§:—
_Flebis_; non tua sunt duro præcordia ferro
Vincta, nec in tenero stat tibi _corde silex_.—_El. I. 63._
* * * * *
When Christ, at Cana’s feast, by power divine,
Inspired cold water with the warmth of wine,
See! cried they, while in redd’ning tide it gushed,
The bashful water saw its God and blushed.—§Aaron Hill.§
Lympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit.[33]—§Richard Crashawe.§
Footnote 33:
It is not a little singular that Mr. Arvine, in his excellent
_Cyclopædia_, gives Milton and Dryden, while boys at school, equal
credit for originating, _in the same way_, this beautiful idea.
* * * * *
Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store,
And he that cares for most shall find no more.—§Hall.§
His wealth is summed, and this is all his store:
This poor men get, and great men get no more.
§G. Webster§: _Vittoria Corombona_.
* * * * *
God made the country, and man made the town.—§Cowper§: _Task_.
God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.—§Cowley.§
* * * * *
Hypocrisy, detest her as we may,
May claim this merit still,—that she admits
The worth of what she mimics with such care,
And thus gives virtue indirect applause.—§Cowper§: _Task_.
Le vice rend hommage à la vertu en s’honorant de ses
apparences.—§Massillon.§
* * * * *
Love is sweet
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever;
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still.—§Shelley§: _Prometheus Unbound_.
It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.—
It makes us proud when our love of a mistress is returned: it ought to
make us prouder still when we can love her for herself alone, without
the aid of any such selfish reflection. This is the religion of
love.—§Hazlitt§: _Characteristics_.
* * * * *
People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who
are hoarding up a treasure which they have never spirit enough to
enjoy.—§Sterne§: _Koran_.
Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome
malady.—§La Rochefoucauld§: _Max. 285_.
* * * * *
The king can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a’ that,—
* * * * *
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.—§Burns.§
I weigh the man, not his title; ’tis not the king’s stamp can make the
metal bettor or heavier. Your lord is a leaden shilling, which you
bend every way, and debases the stamp he bears.
§Wycherly§: _Plain Dealer_.
Titles of honor are like the impressions on coin, which add no value
to gold and silver, but only render brass current.—§Sterne§: _Koran_.
Kings do with men as with pieces of money: they give them what value
they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current, and
not at their real, value.—§La Rochefoucauld§: _Max. 160_.
§Kossuth’s§ “To him that wills, nothing is impossible,”[34] is thus
expressed by §La Rochefoucauld§:—
Nothing is impossible: there are ways which lead to every thing; and
if we had sufficient will, we should always have sufficient
means.—_Max. 255._
Footnote 34:
Mirabeau’s hasty temper is well known. “Monsieur le Compte,” said his
secretary to him one day, “the thing you require is impossible.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed Mirabeau, starting from his chair: “never
again use that _foolish word_ in my presence.”
§Shelley§ gives the idea as follows:—
It is our will
That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise: we might be all
We dream of, happy, high, majestical.
Where is the beauty, love, and truth we seek
But in our minds? and if we were not weak,
Should we be less in deed than in desire?
_Julian and Maddolo._
* * * * *
To most men, experience is like the stern-lights of a ship, which
illumine only the track it has passed.—§Coleridge.§
We arrive complete novices at the different ages of life, and we often
want experience in spite of the number of our years.—§La
Rochefoucauld§: _Max. 430_.
The same idea may be found in the _Adelphi_ of §Terence§, Act V. Sc. 2,
v. 1–4.
* * * * *
For those that fly may fight again,
Which he can never do that’s slain.—_Hudibras._
He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day.—§Sir John Minnes.§
But §Demosthenes§, the famous Grecian orator, had said, long before,—
Ἀνὴρ ὁ φεύγων καὶ πάλιν μαχήσεται.
* * * * *
She could love none but only such
As scorned and hated her as much.—_Hudibras._
§Horace§, in describing such a capricious kind of love, uses the
following language:—
—Leporem venator ut alta
In nive sectatur, positum sic tangere nolit;
Cantat et apponit: meus est amor huic similis; nam
Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat.—_Satires_, Book I. ii.,
which is nearly a translation of the eleventh epigram of §Callimachus§.
* * * * *
What woful stuff this madrigal would be
In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me!
But let a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
§Pope§: _Essay on Criticism_.
§Molière§ has the same sentiment:—
Tous les discours sont des sottises
Partant d’un homme sans éclat;
Ce seraient paroles exquises,
Si c’était un grand qui parlat.
It may also be found in §Ennius§, §Euripides§, and other writers. The
last notability who has expressed the idea is §Emerson§, who says,—
It adds a great deal to the force of an opinion to know that there is
a man of mark and likelihood behind it.
* * * * *
Others may use the ocean as their road,
Only the English make it _their abode_:—
We _tread the billows_ with a steady foot.—§Waller.§
§Campbell§ adopts the thoughts of these italicized words in the
_Mariners of England_:—
Britannia needs no bulwark,
No towers along the steep:
Her march is on the mountain-waves,
Her home is on the deep.
* * * * *
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake;
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom, and be lost in me.—§Tennyson§: _Princess_.
And like a lily on a river floating,
She floats upon the river of his thoughts.
§Longfellow§: _Spanish Student_.
* * * * *
You must either soar or stoop,
Fall or triumph, stand or droop;
You must either serve or govern,
Must be slave or must be sovereign;
Must, in fine, be block or wedge,
Must be anvil or be sledge.—§Goethe.§
In this world a man must be either anvil or hammer.
§Longfellow§: _Hyperion_.
Lockhart says, in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, “It was on this
occasion, I believe, that Scott first saw his friend’s brother Reginald
(§Heber§), in after-days the Apostolic Bishop of Calcutta. He had just
been declared the successful competitor for that year’s poetical prize,
and read to Scott at breakfast, in Brazennose College, the MS. of his
_Palestine_. Scott observed that in the verses on Solomon’s Temple one
striking circumstance had escaped him, namely, that no tools were used
in its erection. Reginald retired for a few minutes to the corner of the
room, and returned with the beautiful lines,—
No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung:
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence!” &c.
§Cowper§ had previously expressed the same idea:—
Silently as a dream the fabric rose:
No sound of hammer nor of saw was there:
Ice upon ice, &c.—_Palace of Ice._
§Milton§ had also said,—
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation.—_Paradise Lost._
* * * * *
Speech is the light, the morning of the mind:
It spreads the beauteous images abroad
Which else lie furled and shrouded in the soul.—
§Dryden§ evidently had in mind the language of §Themistocles§ to the
King of Persia:—
Speech is like cloth of arras opened and put abroad, whereby the
imagery doth appear in figure, whereas in thoughts they lie but in
packs (_i.e._ rolled up, or packed up).
* * * * *
_Silence_ that _spoke_, and eloquence of eyes.—§Pope§: _Homer’s Iliad_,
Book XIV.
§Voltaire§, in his _Œdipus_, makes Jocasta say,—
Tout _parle_ contre nous, jusqu’à notre _silence_.
In §Milton’s§ _Samson Agonistes_ we find,—
The deeds themselves, though _mute_, _spoke loud_ the doer.
* * * * *
“A SORROW’S CROWN OF SORROW.”
A similar thought may be found in §Dante§:—
——nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.—_Inferno_, Canto v. 121.
(There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in
wretchedness.)
Also §Chaucer§:—
For of Fortune’s sharpe adversite
The worst kind of infortune is this:
A man to have been in prosperite
And it remember when it passid is.
_Troilus and Cresside_, B. III.
The same thought occurs in the writings of other Italian poets. See
§Marino§, _Adone_, c. xiv.; §Fortinguerra§, _Ricciardetto_, c. xi.; and
§Petrarch§, _canzone 46_. The original was probably in §Boetius§, _de
Consol. Philosoph._:—
In omni adversitate fortunæ infeliCissimum genus est infortunii fuisse
felicem et non esse.—L. ii. pr. 4.
* * * * *
The famous pun in the imitation of §Crabbe§ in the _Rejected
Addresses_:—
The youth, with joy unfeigned,
Regained the _felt_, and _felt_ what he regained,
and of §Holmes§ in his _Urania_:—
Mount the new Castor:—ice itself will melt;
Boots, gloves, may fail; the hat is always _felt_,
had been anticipated by §Thomas Heywood§ in a song:—
But of all _felts_ that may be _felt_,
Give me your English beaver.
* * * * *
§Falstaff’s§ pun:—
Indeed I am in the _waist_ two yards about; but I am now about no
_waste_; I am about thrift,—(_Merry Wives of Windsor._)
had also been anticipated, and may be found in §Heywood’s§
“_Epigrammes_,” 1562:—
“Where am I least, husband?” Quoth he, “In the _waist_;
Which cometh of this, thou art vengeance strait-laced.
Where am I biggest, wife?” “In the _waste_,” quoth she,
“For all is _waste_ in you, as far as I see.”
The same play on the word occurs subsequently in §Shirley’s§ comedy of
_The Wedding_, 1629:—
He is a great man indeed; something given to the _waist_, for he lives
within no _reasonable compass_.
* * * * *
§Moore§, in his song _Dear Harp of my Country_, sings,—
If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover
Have throbbed at our lay, ’tis thy glory alone;
I was but as the wind passing heedlessly over,
And all the wild sweetness I waked was thy own;—
an idea probably caught from §Horace’s§ Ode to Melpomene:—
Totum muneris hoc tui est,
Quod monstror digito prætereuntium
Romanæ fidicen lyræ:
Quod spiro, et placeo, si placeo, tuum est.
(That I am pointed out by the fingers of passers-by as the stringer of
the Roman lyre, is entirely thy gift: that I breathe and give
pleasure, if I do give pleasure, is thine.)
* * * * *
Now, by those stars that glance
O’er Heaven’s still expanse,
Weave we our mirthful dance,
Daughters of Zea!—§Moore§: _Evenings in Greece_.
Beneath the moonlight sky
The festal warblings flowed
Where maidens to the Queen of Heaven
Wove the gay dance.—§Keble§: _Christian Year_.
* * * * *
Her ‘prentice han’ she tried on man,
An’ then she made the lassies, O.
§Burns§: _Green Grow, &c._
Man was made when Nature was but an apprentice, but woman when she was
a skilful mistress of her art.—_Cupid’s Whirligig_ (1607).
* * * * *
A book, upon whose leaves some chosen plants
By his own hand disposed with nicest care,
In undecaying beauty were preserved;—
Mute register, to him, of time and place
And various fluctuations in the breast;
To her a monument of faithful love
Conquered, and in tranquillity retained.
§Wordsworth§: _Excursion_.
Like flower-leaves in a precious volume stored,
To solace and relieve
Some heart too weary of the restless world.—§Keble§: _Christian Year_.
* * * * *
Her pretty feet,
Like smiles, did creep
A little out, and then,
As if they started at bo-peep,
Did soon draw in again.—§Herrick.§
Imitated by §Sir John Suckling§ in his ballad of _The Wedding_:—
Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light;
But, oh, she dances such a way,
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight!
* * * * *
So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart:
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel,
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.
§Byron§: _On the Death of Kirke White_.
§Waller§ says, in his _Lines to a Lady singing a song of his own
composing_,—
That eagle’s fate and mine are one,
Which, on the shaft that made him die,
Espied a feather of his own
Wherewith he’d wont to soar so high.
§Moore§ uses the same figure:—
Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,
See their own feathers plucked to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart.—_Corruption._
The original in _The Myrmidons_ of §Eschylus§ has been thus translated:—
An eagle once,—so Libyan legends say,—
Struck to the heart, on earth expiring lay,
And, gazing on the shaft that winged the blow,
Thus spoke:—“Whilst others’ ills from others flow,
To my own plumes, alas! my fate I owe.”
* * * * *
Even as a broken mirror, which the glass
In every fragment multiplies, and makes
A thousand images of one that was,
The same, and still the more, the more it breaks.
§Byron§: _Childe Harold_.
Suggested by the following passage:—
And as Praxiteles did by his glass when he saw a scurvy face in it,
brake it to pieces, but for that one he saw many more as bad in a
moment.
§Burton§: _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part II., Sect. 3, (mem. 7.)
* * * * *
In her first passion woman loves her lover,
In all the others, all she loves is love, &c.—§Byron§: _Don Juan_.
Borrowed from §La Rochefoucauld§:—
Dans les premières passions les femmes aiment l’amant; dans les autres
elles aiment l’amour.—_Max. 494._
In the same place §Byron§ adds:—
Although, no doubt, her first of love-affairs
Is that to which her heart is wholly granted,
Yet there are some, they say, who have had _none_;
But those who have ne’er end with only _one_.
And in some observations upon an article in Blackwood’s Magazine, he
says,—
Writing grows a habit, like a woman’s gallantry. There are women who
have had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only: so there are
millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have
written only one.
This idea is also borrowed from §La Rochefoucauld§:—
On peut trouver des femmes qui n’ont jamais eu de galanterie; mais il
est rare d’en trouver qui n’en aient jamais eu qu’une.—_Max. 73._
* * * * *
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state,
An hour may lay it in the dust.—§Byron§: _Childe Harold_.
Cento si richieggono ad edificare; un solo basta per distruggere
tutto.—§Muratori’s§ _Annals_.
* * * * *
Even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are formed.—_Childe Harold._
Yet monsters from thy large increase we find,
Engendered in the slime thou leav’st behind.—§Dryden§: _The Medal_.
* * * * *
I am not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.—_Childe Harold._
The gods, a kindness I with thanks repay,
Had formed me of another sort of clay.—§Churchill.§
* * * * *
_What exile from himself can flee?_
To zones though more and more remote,
Still, still pursues, where’er I be,
The blight of life,—the demon Thought.—_Childe Harold._
Patriæ quis exul se quoque fugit?—§Horace§: _Ode to Grosphus_.
Vide also Epist. XI. 28.
* * * * *
To-morrow for the Moon we depart,
But not to-night,—to-night is for the heart.—§Byron§: _The Island_.
Nunc vino pellite curas;
Cras ingens iterabimus æquor.—§Horace§: _Ode to Munatius Plancus_.
(Now drown your cares in wine;
To-morrow we shall traverse the great brine.)
* * * * *
§Dryden§, alluding to his work, says,—
When it was only a confused mass of thoughts _tumbling_ over one
another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its _first work_,
moving the _sleeping images of things_ towards the light, there to be
distinguished, and there either to be _chosen_ or rejected by the
_judgment_.—_Rival Ladies_ (1664).
§Byron§ thus appropriates the idea:—
——As yet ’tis but a chaos
Of darkly brooding thoughts; my fancy is
In her _first work_, more nearly to the light
Holding _the sleeping images of things_
For the selection of the pausing judgment.—_Doge of Venice_, I. 2.
* * * * *
And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
’Tis that I may not weep.—§Byron§: _Don Juan_.
§Richardson§ had said, long before,—
Indeed, it is to this deep concern that my levity is owing; for I
struggle and struggle, and try to buffet down my cruel reflections as
they rise; and when I cannot, _I am forced to try to make myself laugh
that I may not cry_; for one or other I must do: and is it not
philosophy carried to the highest pitch for a man to conquer such
tumults of soul as I am sometimes agitated by, and in the very height
of the storm to quaver out a horse-laugh?
_Clarissa Harlowe_, Let. 84.
In the _Antiquary_ of Sir §Walter Scott§, Maggie says to Oldbuck of
Monkbarns (ch. xi.):—
It’s no fish ye’re buying, its men’s lives.
§Tom Hood§, appears to have borrowed this idea in the _Song of the
Shirt_:—
It is not linen you’re wearing out.
But human creatures’ lives.
* * * * *
In §Rogers’§ poem, _Human Life_ is this couplet describing a good wife:—
A guardian angel o’er his hearth presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.
In the _Tatler_, No. 49, it is said of a model couple, Amanda and
Florio, that “their satisfactions are doubled, their sorrows lessened,
by participation.”
* * * * *
Of the buccaneering adventurer described in _Rokeby_, Sir §Walter Scott§
says:—
Inured to danger’s direst form,
Tornade and earthquake, flood and storm,
Death had he seen by sudden blow,
By wasting plague, by torture slow,
By mine or breach, by steel or ball,
_Knew all his shapes and scorned them all_.
Sir §Walter Raleigh§, in a letter to his wife on the eve, as he
supposed, of his execution, speaks of himself as “one who, in his own
respect, despiseth death in all his misshapen and ugly forms.”
* * * * *
Speaking of Burke, §Goldsmith§ says in his _Retaliation_:—
Who, born for universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
§Pope§, in his Last Letter to the Bishop of Rochester, (Atterbury,)
said:—
At this time, when you are cut off from a little society and made a
citizen of the world at large, you should bend your talents, not to
serve a party or a few, but all mankind.
* * * * *
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be, blest.—§Pope.§
Nous no jouissons jamais; nous espérons toujours.—§Massillon§, _Sermon
pour le Jour de St. Benoit_.
* * * * *
The jocular saying of §Douglas Jerrold§, that a wife of forty should,
like a bank-note, be exchangeable for _two_ of twenty, was anticipated
by §Byron§:—
Wedded she was some years, and to a man
Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;
And yet, I think, instead of such a _one_
’Twere better to have two of five-and-twenty.
_Don Juan_, lxii.
And still earlier by §Gay§ in _Equivocation_. In the colloquy between a
bishop and an abbot, the bishop advises:—
These indiscretions lend a handle
To lewd lay tongues to give us scandal
For your vow’s sake, this rule I give t’ye,
Let all your maids be _turned of fifty_.
The priest replied, I have not swerved,
But your chaste precept well observed;
That lass full _twenty-five_ has told;
I’ve yet another who’s as old;
Into one sum their ages cast,
So _both_ my maids have _fifty_ past.
* * * * *
Many readers will remember the lines by §Burns§, commencing:—
The day returns, my bosom burns,
The blissful day we twa did meet;
Though winter wild in tempest toiled,
Ne’er summer morn was half sae sweet.
The turn of thought in this stanza bears a striking resemblance to the
concluding lines of Ode cxi., of §M. A. Flaminius§. The following
translation is close enough to point the resemblance:—
When, borne on Zephyr’s balmy wing
Again returns the purple spring
Instant the mead is gay with flowers
The forest smiles, and through its bowers
Once more the song-bird’s tuneful voice
Bids nature everywhere rejoice.
Yet fairer far and far more gay
To me were winter’s darkest day,
So, blessed thenceforth, it should restore
My loved one to my arms once more.
* * * * *
§Moore§ says:—
Let conquerors boast
Their fields of fame—he who in virtue’s arms
A young warm spirit against beauty’s charms
Who feels her brightness, yet defies her thrall
Is the best, bravest conqueror of all.
§Howell§ in the Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ says:—
Alexander subdued the world—Cæsar his enemies—Hercules monsters—but he
that overcomes himself is the true valiant captain.
* * * * *
Brutus says, in §Shakspeare’s§ _Julius Cæsar_, iv., 3:—
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.
In §Bacon’s§ _Advancement of Learning_, B. 2, occurs this passage:—
In the third place, I set down reputation, because of the peremptory
tides and currents it hath, which, if they be not taken in due time,
are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard to play an after game of
reputation.
* * * * *
King Henry says, in §Shakspeare’s§ 2 Hen. VI., i. 1:—
O Lord, that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.
§George Herbert§ says:—
Thou that hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, a grateful heart.
* * * * *
§Vitruvius§ says:—There are various kinds of timber, as there are
various kinds of flesh; one of men, one of fishes, one of beasts, and
another of birds.
§St. Paul§ says:—All flesh is not the same flesh, &c., I Cor. xv. 39.
* * * * *
In §Coventry Patmore’s§ delicately beautiful poem, _The Angel in the
House_, twice occurs the line,—
Her pleasure in her power to charm.
“An exquisite line,” says _The Critic_: “who could have believed that
the ugly and often unjust word _vanity_ could ever be melted down into
so true and pretty and flattering a periphrasis?” §Thackeray§ uses the
same idea:—
A fair young creature, bright and blooming yesterday, distributing
smiles, levying homage, inspiring desire, conscious of her power to
charm, and gay with the natural enjoyments of her conquests—who, in
his walk through the world, has not looked on many such a one? _The
Newcomes._
E’en the slight hare-bell raised its head,
Elastic from its airy tread. §Scott§, _Lady of the Lake_.
For other print her airy steps ne’er left;
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass.
§Ben Jonson§, _The Sad Shepherd_.
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main.
§Pope§, _Essay on Criticism_.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
§Tennyson§, _In Memoriam, xxvii._
Magis gauderes quod habueras [amicum], quam mœreres quod amiseras.
§Seneca§, _Epist. cxix._
* * * * *
The familiar epitaphic line,
Think what a woman should be—she was that,
finds a parallel in §Shakspeare’s§ _Venus and Adonis_:—
Look what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back.
* * * * *
And homeless, near a thousand homes, I stood,
And, near a thousand tables, pined and wanted food.
§Wordsworth§, _Guilt and Sorrow_.
Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!
Oh, it was pitiful,
Near a whole city full
Home she had none. §Hood§, _Bridge of Sighs_.
* * * * *
So that a doubt almost within me springs
Of Providence. §Wordsworth§, _Powers of Imagination_.
Even God’s Providence seeming estranged.
§Hood§, _Bridge of Sighs_.
* * * * *
Not that man may not here
Taste of the cheer:
But as birds drink, and straight lift up their head;
So must he sip and think
Of better drink
He may attain to after he is dead.
§George Herbert§, _Man’s Medley_.
Look at the chicken by the side of yonder pond, and let it rebuke your
ingratitude. It drinks, and every sip it takes it lifts its head to
heaven and thanks the giver of the rain for the drink afforded to it;
while thou eatest and drinkest, and there is no blessing pronounced at
thy meals and no thanksgiving bestowed upon thy Father for his bounty.
§Spurgeon§, _Everybody’s Sermon_.
* * * * *
§Toplady§ has bequeathed to us the beautiful hymn:—
Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee!
Let the water and the blood,
From thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
But §Daniel Brevint§ in _The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice_, (1673)
had made this devout and solemn aspiration:—
O Rock of Israel, Rock of Salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let
those two streams of blood and water, which once gushed out of thy
side ... bring down with them salvation and holiness into my soul.
* * * * *
She (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigor
when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast
Solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch
the ruins of St. Paul’s. §Macaulay§, _Ranke’s History of the Popes_.
The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic.
There will perhaps be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York,
and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last some
curious traveler from Lima will visit England, and give a description
of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Baalbec and
Palmyra:—but am I not prophesying contrary to my consummate prudence,
and casting horoscopes of empires like Rousseau?
§Horace Walpole§, _Letter to Mason_.
* * * * *
Readers of _Don Juan_ sometimes descant with rapture on the beauty of
the lines (c. i. v. 123),—
’Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog’s honest bark
Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home,—
The epithet _deep-mouthed_, as applied to the bark, being especially
designated as “fine.” And fine it is, but §Byron§ found it in
§Shakspeare§ and in §Goldsmith§:—
And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach.
_Taming of the Shrew, Induc. Sc. 1._
The laborers of the day were all retired to rest; the lights were out
in every cottage; no sounds were heard but of the shrilling cock, and
the deep-mouthed watch-dog at hollow distance.
_Vicar of Wakefield_, _ch._ xxii.
* * * * *
“Your sermon,” said a great critic to a great preacher, “was very fine;
but had it been only half the length, it would have produced twice the
impression.” “You are quite right,” was the reply; “but the fact is, I
received but sudden notice to preach, and therefore _I had not the time
to make my sermon short_.”
* * * * *
§Voltaire§ apologized for writing a long letter on the ground that he
had not time to condense. In these cases the idea is borrowed from
classical literature. §Pliny§ says in his _Letters_ (lib. i. ep. xx.):—
Ex his apparet illum permulta dixisse; quum ederet, omisisse; ... ne
dubitare possimus, quæ per plures dies, ut necesse erat, latius
dixerit, postea recisa ac purgata in unum librum, grandem quidem, unum
tamen, coarctasse.
(From this it is evident that he said very much; but, when he was
publishing, he omitted much: ... so that we may not doubt that what he
said more diffusely, as he was at the time forced to do, having
afterwards retrenched and corrected, he condensed into one single
book.)
The condensation and revision required more time and thought than the
first production.
* * * * *
§Campbell§ says in _O’Connor’s Child_,—
For man’s neglect we loved it more.
And again, _Lines on leaving a Scene in Bavaria_,—
For man’s neglect I love thee more.
* * * * *
And §Walter Scott§ likewise imitates himself thus:—
His grasp, as hard as glove of mail,
Forced the red blood drop from the nail.
_Rokeby.__Canto_i.
He wrung the Earl’s hand with such frantic earnestness, that his grasp
forced the blood to start under the nail.—_Legend of Montrose._
* * * * *
In _Rob Roy_, Sir Walter makes Frank Osbaldistone say in his elegy on
Edward the Black Prince,—
O for the voice of that wild horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
The dying hero’s call,
That told imperial Charlemagne,
How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain
Had wrought his champion’s fall.
And in _Marmion_, toward the close of Canto Sixth, he says:—
O for a blast of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
That to King Charles did come,
When Rowland brave, and Oliver,
And every paladin and peer,
On Roncesvalles died.
When this inadvertent or unconscious coincidence in the poem and the
novel was pointed out to Sir Walter, he replied, with his natural
expression of comic gravity, “Ah! that _was very careless_ of me. I did
not think I should have committed such a blunder.”
* * * * *
“I tread on the pride of Plato,” said Diogenes, as he walked over
Plato’s carpet. “Yes, and with more pride,” said Plato.—§Cecil§,
_Remains_.
Trampling on Plato’s pride, with greater pride,
As did the Cynic on some like occasion, &c.
§Byron§, _Don Juan_, xvi. 43.
Diogenes I hold to be the most vainglorious man of his time, and more
ambitious in refusing all honors than Alexander in rejecting none.
§Browne§, _Religio Medici_.
* * * * *
There is an Italian proverb used, in the extravagance of flattery, to
compliment a handsome lady, expressive of this idea:—“When nature made
thee, she broke the mould.” §Byron§ uses it in the closing lines of his
monody on the death of Sheridan:—
Sighing that Nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die,—in moulding Sheridan.
§Shakspeare§ also says, in the second stanza of _Venus and Adonis_,—
Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.
* * * * *
Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.
(From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step.)
This saying, commonly ascribed to §Napoleon§, was borrowed by him from
§Tom Paine§, whose works were translated into French in 1791, and who
says,—
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is
difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes
the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime
again.
Tom Paine, in turn, adopted the idea from §Hugh Blair§, who says, in one
place,—
It is indeed extremely difficult to hit the precise point where true
wit ends and buffoonery begins.
In another,—
It frequently happens that where the second line is sublime, the
third, in which he meant to rise still higher, is perfect bombast.
Finally, §Blair§ borrowed the saying from §Longinus§, a celebrated Greek
critic and rhetorical writer, who, in a Treatise _On the Sublime_, uses
the same expression, with this slight modification, that he makes the
transition a gradual one, while Blair, Paine, and Napoleon make it but a
step.[35]
Footnote 35:
A curious instance of bathos occurs in Dr. Mavor’s account of Cook’s
voyages:—“The wild rocks raised their lofty summits till they were
lost in the clouds, and the valleys lay covered with everlasting snow.
Not a tree was to be seen, nor even a shrub _big enough to make a
tooth-pick_.”
* * * * *
Evil communications corrupt good manners.—1 Cor. xv. 33.
φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρησθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί.—§Menander.§
Bonos corrumpunt mores congressus mali.—§Tertullian§: _Ad Uxorem_.
* * * * *
He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.—Eccl. i. 18.
From ignorance our comfort flows,
The only wretched are the wise.—§Prior.§
Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.—§Gray§: _Ode to Eton_.
* * * * *
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.—§Pope§: _On Criticism_.
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in
philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.—§Bacon§: _On
Atheism_.
* * * * *
In _Paradise Lost_, Book V. 601, we find the expression—
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers;
and in Book I. 261, this powerful passage put in the mouth of Satan:—
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell;
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
In §Stafford’s§ _Niobe_, printed when Milton was in his cradle, (1611,)
is the following:—
True it is, sir, (said the Devil,) that I, storming at the name of
supremacy, sought to depose my Creator; which the watchful,
all-seeing eye of Providence finding, degraded me of my angelic
dignities—dispossessed me of all pleasures; and the seraphs and
cherubs, the _Throne_, _Dominations_, _Virtues_, _Powers_,
_Princedoms_, Arch Angels, and all the Celestial Hierarchy, with a
shout of applause, sung my departure out of Heaven. My alleluia was
turned into an eheu. Now, forasmuch as I was an Angel of Light, it
was the will of Wisdom to confine me to Darkness and make me Prince
thereof. So that I, that could not obey in Heaven, might command in
Hell; and, believe me, I had _rather rule within my dark domain than
to re-inhabit Cœlum empyream, and there live in subjection under
check, a slave of the Most High_.
Cæsar said he would rather be the first man in a village than the second
man in Rome.
* * * * *
A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.—§Garrick.§
I would help others out of a fellow-feeling.—§Burton§: _Anat. of Mel._
Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.—§Virgil§: _Æn._ I.
* * * * *
And learn the luxury of doing good.—§Goldsmith§: _Traveller_.
For all their luxury was doing good.—§Garth§: _Claremont_.
He tried the luxury of doing good.—§Crabbe§: _Tales_.
* * * * *
The cups that cheer but not inebriate.—§Cowper§: _Winter Evening_.
Tar water is of a nature so mild and benign, and proportioned to the
human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not
inebriate,—§Bishop Berkeley§: _Siris_.
* * * * *
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.—Byron: Childe Harold.
Tea does our fancy aid,
Repress those vapors which the head invade,
And keeps the palace of the soul.—§Waller§: _On Tea_.
* * * * *
None knew thee but to love thee.—§Halleck§: _On Drake_.
To know her was to love her.—§Rogers§: _Jacqueline_.
* * * * *
Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
Enlightens but yourselves.—§Blair§: _Grave_.
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years,
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres.
§Pope§: _Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady_.
* * * * *
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.—§Gray§: _Elegy_.
And pilgrim, newly on his road, with love
Thrills, if he hear the vesper bell from far,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.—§Dante§, _Cary’s Trans._
* * * * *
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.—§Gray§: _Elegy_.
Yet in our ashen cold is fire yrecken.—§Chaucer.§
* * * * *
Ἐάσατ’ ἤδη γῇ καλυφθῆναι νεκρόυς,
ὅθεν δ’ ἕκαστον εἰς το ζῇν ἀφίκετο
ἐνταῦθ’ ἀπελθεῖν· ΠΝΕΥΜΑ μὲν πρὸς ἈΙΘΕΡΑ
τὸ σῶμα δ’ εἰς ΓΗΝ.—§Euripides§: _Supplices_.
(Let the dead be concealed in the earth, whence each one came forth
into being, to return thence again—the spirit to the §SPIRIT’S
SOURCE§, but the body to the §EARTH§.)
The resemblance between the above and the beautiful expression in the
“Preacher’s” homily is very remarkable:—
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit
shall return unto God who gave it.—Eccles. xii. 7.
* * * * *
Ἐπάμεροι, τί δέ τις· τί δ’ οὔ τις·
Σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωποι.—§Pindar.§
(Things of a day! What is any one? What is he not? Men are the dream
of a shadow.)
Man’s life is but a dream—nay, less than so,
A shadow of a dream.—§Sir John Davies.§
* * * * *
Where highest woods, impenetrable
To sun or starlight, spread their umbrage broad
And brown as evening.—§Milton.§
The shades of eve come slowly down,
The woods are wrapped in deeper brown.—§Scott§: _Lady of the Lake_.
The term _brown_, applied to the evening shade, is derived from the
Italian, the expression “_fa l’imbruno_” being commonly used in Italy to
denote the approach of evening.
* * * * *
’Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore;
And coming events cast their shadows before.
§Campbell§: _Lochiel’s Warning_.
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors
of the gigantic _shadows which futurity casts upon the
present_.—§Shelley§: _Defence of Poetry_.
A similar form of expression occurs in §Paul’s§ Epistle to the Hebrews,
x. 1.
* * * * *
The wolfs long howl by Oonalaska’s shore.
§Campbell§: _Pleasures of Hope_.
Stolen from a line in an obscure poem called the _Sentimental Sailor_:—
The screaming eagle’s shriek that echoes wild,
The wolf’s long howl in dismal concert joined, &c.
* * * * *
Perhaps in some lone, dreary, desert tower
That Time had spared, _forth from the window looks,
Half hid in grass, the solitary fox_;
While _from above, the owl_, musician dire,
_Screams_ hideous, harsh, and grating to the ear.
§Bruce§: _Loch Leven_.
In the _Fragments_ attributed to §Ossian§ by Baron de Harold, Fingal
paints the following beautiful word-picture:—
I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they are desolate: the flames
had resounded in the halls, and the voice of the people is heard no
more; the stream of Cutha was removed from its place by the fall of
the walls; the thistle shoots there its lowly head; the moss whistled
to the winds; _the fox looked out of the windows, and the rank grass
of the walls waved round his head_; desolate is the dwelling of Morna:
silence is in the house of her fathers.
And again:—
The dreary night _owl screams_ in the solitary retreat of his
mouldering ivy-covered _tower_.—_Larnul, the Song of Despair._
The Persian poet quoted by Gibbon also says,—
The spider hath hung with tapestry the palace of the Cæsars; the owl
singeth her sentinel-song in the watch-towers of Afrasiab.—§Firdousi.§
* * * * *
Tell us, ye dead; will none of you in pity
Disclose the secret——
What ’tis you are, and we must shortly be?—§Blair§: _Grave_.
The dead! the much-loved dead!
Who doth not yearn to know
The secret of their dwelling-place,
And to what land they go?
What heart but asks, with ceaseless tone,
For some sure knowledge of its _own_?—§Mary E. Lee.§
Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to
heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of
her sickness-broken body.—§Fuller.§
The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home.—§Waller§: _Divine Poesie_.
Oh! let no mass be sung,
No ritual read;
In silence lay me down
Among the dead.—§Heine§: _Memento Mori_.
The great German poet was evidently familiar with Horace:—
Absint inani funere næniæ,
Luctusque turpes et querimoniæ;
Compesce clamorem, ac sepulchri
Mitte supervacuos honores.—Lib. II. Carmen 26.
* * * * *
I am old and blind;
Men point at me as smitten by God’s frown;
Afflicted and deserted of my kind:—
Yet am I not cast down.
I am weak, yet strong;
I murmur not that I no longer see;
Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong,
Father Supreme, to Thee!
O merciful One!
When men are farthest, then art Thou most near;
When friends pass by—my weaknesses to shun—
Thy chariot I hear.
Thy glorious face
Is leaning toward me, and its holy light
Shines in upon my lonely dwelling-place,
And there is no more night.
On my bended knee
I recognize Thy purpose clearly shown;
My vision Thou hast dimmed that I may see
Thyself, Thyself alone.
I have naught to fear!
This darkness is the shadow of Thy wing:
Beneath it I am almost sacred,—here
Can come no evil thing, &c.—§Elizabeth Lloyd.§
The resemblance of these lines to the following passage from §Milton’s§
_Second Defence of the People of England_ is so striking that we are
inclined to regard them as a paraphrase:—
Let me then be the most feeble creature alive, so long as that
feebleness serves to invigorate the energies of my rational and
immortal spirit, so long as in that obscurity in which I am enveloped
the light of Divine Presence more clearly shines. Then in proportion
as I am weak, I shall be invincibly strong; and in proportion as I am
blind, I shall more clearly see. Oh that I may thus be perfected by
feebleness, and irradiated by obscurity! And indeed in my blindness I
enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the favor of the Deity, who regards
me with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able to
behold nothing but himself. Alas for him who insults me, _who maligns
and merits public execration_! For the divine law not only shields me
from injury, but almost renders me too sacred to attack,—not indeed so
much from the privation of my sight, as from the overshadowing of
those heavenly wings which seem to have occasioned this obscurity, and
which, when occasioned, he is wont to illuminate with an interior
light more precious and more pure.
* * * * *
In §Keble’s§ lines for “St. John’s Day” occurs this stanza:—
Sick or healthful, slave or free,
Wealthy or despised and poor,
What is that to him or thee,
So his love to §Christ§ endure?
When the shore is won at last,
Who will count the billows past?
The first four lines resemble a stanza of §Wither§, one of the Roundhead
poets (1632):—
Whether thrallèd or exiled,
Whether poor or rich thou be,
Whether praisèd or reviled,
Not a rush it is to thee:
This nor that thy rest doth win thee.
But the mind that is within thee.
And the last two lines recall §Robert Burns§, who had said in his song
commencing _Contented wi little, and cantie wi mair_:—
When at the blithe end of our journey at last,
Wha the deil ever thinks o’ the road he has passed?
Two centuries before Burns, §Tasso§ said in his _Gerusalemme Liberata_
(iii. 4):—
Cosi di naviganti, etc.
... e l’uno all ’altro il mostra e intanto oblia
La noja e il mal della passata via.
Or as Fairfax renders it:—
As when a troop of jolly sailors row, etc.
And each to other show the land in haste,
Forgetting quite their pains and perils past.
And before dismissing “the billows past,” it is worth while to quote the
following passage from §Spenser’s§ _Faery Queene_ (I. 9. 40):—
What if some little pain the passage have
That makes frail flesh to fear the bitter wave?
Is not short pain well borne that brings long ease,
And lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave?
Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,
Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.
* * * * *
§Lucretius§ says:—
At jam non domus accipiet te læta; neque uxor
Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
Præripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent.
(No longer shall thy joyous home receive thee, nor yet thy best of
wives, nor shall thy sweet children run to be the first to snatch thy
kisses and thrill thy breast with silent delight.)
Compare §Gray’s§ Elegy:—
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
And §Thomson’s§ Seasons (Winter):—
In vain for him th’ officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingled storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home.
* * * * *
The famous speech of §Wolsey§ after his fall—
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.—
_Henry VIII._, iii. 2.
finds a counterpart in a satire of the Persian poet §Ferdousi§ on the
Arabian impostor:—
Had I but written as many verses in praise of Mahomet and Allah, they
would have showered a hundred blessings on me.
It also finds a parallel in a passage from Ockley’s _History of the
Saracens_—§AN.§ Hegira 54, A. D. 673—
This year Moawiyah deposed Samrah, deputy over Basorah. As soon as
Samrah heard this news, he said—“God curse Moawiyah. If I had served
God so well as I have served him, he would never have damned me to all
eternity.”
* * * * *
Our hearts——
——are beating.—
Funeral marches to the grave.—
§Longfellow§, _Psalm of Life_.
Our lives are but our marches to our graves.—
§Beaumont and Fletcher§, _Humorous Lieutenant_.
* * * * *
Next these learned Johnson in this list I bring,
Who had drunk deep of the Pierian spring.—§Drayton.§
A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.—§Pope.§
Socrates said to some Sophists, who pretended to know everything, “As
for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”
§Owen Feltham§, in his _Resolves_ (_Curiosity in Knowledge_) remarks:—
Our knowledge doth but show us our ignorance. Our most studious
scrutiny is but a discovery of what we cannot know.
§Voltaire§, in the _Histoire d’un bon Bramin_ says:—
Le Bramin me dit un jour: Je voudrais n’être jamais né. Je lui
demandai pourquoi. Il me répondit: J’étudie depuis quarante ans; ce
sont quarante années de perdues; j’enseigne les autres, et j’ignore
tout.
These lines will remind the reader of the opening soliloquy of Faust in
§Goethe’s§ immortal tragedy. Bayard Taylor’s translation commences as
follows:—
I’ve studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,—
And even, alas! Theology,—
From end to end, with labor keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before:
I’m Magister—yea, Doctor—hight,
And straight or cross-wise, wrong or right,
These ten years long, with many woes,
I’ve led my scholars by the nose,—
And see, that nothing can be known!
* * * * *
In _The Last Days of Pompeii_ (ch. v.) Glaucus, the Athenian, is made to
say:—
“I am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead, and the
flowers faded.”
Of course, §Bulwer Lytton§ was familiar with _Oft in the Stilly Night_,
which Moore had written twenty years before:—
I feel like one who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.
* * * * *
Dr. Johnson said that “no one does _anything_ for the _last time_
(knowingly) but with regret.”
In Bishop §Hall’s§ _Holy Observations_ (xxvij) is this passage:—
“Nothing is more absurd than that Epicurean resolution, ‘Let us eat
and drink, to-morrow we die’; as if we were made only for the paunch,
and lived that we might live. _Yet has there never any natural man
found savour in that meat which he knew should be his last_; whereas
they should say: Let us fast and pray, for to-morrow we shall die.”
SHAKSPEREAN RESEMBLANCES.
Ah! that deceit should steal such gentle shapes,
And, with a virtuous vizor, hide deep vice.
§Richard III.§, ii. 2.
Oh! what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal.
§Much Ado About Nothing§, iv. 1.
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
§Merchant of Venice§, iii. 2.
Seems he a dove? his feathers are but borrowed;
Is he a lamb? his skin is surely lent him,
Who cannot steal a shape that means deceit?
§Henry VI.§, P. II., iii. 1.
BOLD PLAGIARISM.
Charles Reade, in _The Wandering Heir_ reproduces Swift’s _Journal of a
Modern Lady_ in a singular manner. Compare them. Reade says:—
“Mistress Anne Gregory held bad cards; she had to pawn ring after
ring—for these ladies, being well acquainted with each other, never
played on parole—and she kept bemoaning her bad luck. ‘Betty, I knew
how ’twould be. The parson called to-day. This odious chair, why will
you stick me in it? Stand farther, girl, I always lose when you look
on.’ Mrs. Betty tossed her head, and went behind another lady. Miss
Gregory still lost, and had to pawn her snuff box to Lady Dace. She
consoled herself by an insinuation: ‘My Lady you touched your
wedding-ring. That was a sign to your partner here.’
“’Nay Madam, ’twas but a sign my finger itched. But, if you go to
that, you spoke a word began with H. Then she knew you had the king of
hearts.’
“‘That is like Miss here,’ said another matron; ‘she rubs her chair
when she hath matadore in hand.’
“‘Set a thief to catch a thief, Madam,’ was Miss’s ingenious and
polished reply.
“‘Heyday!’ cries one, ‘Here spadillo got a mark on the back; a child
might know it in the dark. Mistress Pigot, I wish you’d be pleased to
pare your nails.’
“In short, they said things to each other all night, the slightest of
which, among men, would have filled Phœnix Park next morning with
drawn swords; but it went for little here; they were all cheats, and
knew it, and knew the others knew it, and didn’t care.
“It was four o’clock before they broke up, huddled on their cloaks and
hoods, and their chairs took them home with cold feet and aching
heads.”
Swift says:—
“‘This morning when the parson came,
I said I should not win a game,
This odious chair, how came I stuck in’t?
I think I never had good luck in’t.
I’m so uneasy in my stays;
Your fan a moment, if you please.
Stand further, girl, or get you gone;
I always lose when you look on.’
* * * * *
“‘I saw you touch your wedding-ring
Before my lady called a king;
You spoke a word began with H,
And I know whom you mean to teach
Because you held the king of hearts,
Fie, Madam, leave these little arts.’
‘That’s not so bad as one that rubs
Her chair to call the king of clubs,
And makes her partner understand
A matador is in her hand.’
‘And truly, madam, I know when,
Instead of five, you scored me ten.
Spadillo here has got a mark,
A child may know it in the dark.
I guessed the hand: It seldom fails.
I wish some folks would pare their nails,’
* * * * *
“At last they hear the watchman’s knock:
‘A frosty morn—past four o’clock.’
The chairmen are not to be found—
‘Come let us play the other round.’
Now all in haste they huddle on
Their hoods, their cloaks and get them gone.”
HISTORICAL SIMILITUDES.
In Motley’s _Rise of the Dutch Republic_ is narrated the following
incident:—
A bishop’s indiscretion, however, neutralized the apostolic blows of the
major (Charles the Hammer). The pagan Radbod had already immersed one of
his royal legs in the baptismal font when a thought struck him. “Where
are my dead forefathers at present?” he said, turning suddenly upon
Bishop Wolfrau. “In hell, with all other unbelievers,” was the imprudent
answer. “Mighty well,” replied Radbod, removing his leg; “then will I
rather feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden than dwell with
your little starveling band of Christians in heaven.” Entreaties and
threats were unavailing. The Frisian declined positively a rite which
was to cause an eternal separation from his buried kindred, and he died
as he had lived, a heathen.
Kingsley, in his _Hypatia_, in completing the history of the Goth Wulf,
after his settlement in Spain, writes as follows:—
Wulf died as he had lived, a heathen. Placidia, who loved him well—as
she loved all righteous and noble souls—had succeeded once in persuading
him to accept baptism. Adolf himself acted as one of his sponsors; and
the old warrior was in the act of stepping into the font, when he turned
suddenly to the bishop and asked, “Where were the souls of his heathen
ancestors?” “In hell,” replied the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from
the font, and threw his bear-skin cloak around him.... He would prefer,
if Adolf had no objection, to go to his own people. And so he died
unbaptized, and went to his own.
This has suggested the query whether Mr. Kingsley uses his privilege as
a novelist to make a distant historical event subserve the purposes of
fiction, or whether this curious incident occurred.
But Francis Parkman in his _Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth
Century_, notes a corresponding unwillingness on the part of the Indians
to separate from their own kindred and people:—
The body cared for, he next addressed himself to the soul. “This life is
short and very miserable. It matters little whether we live or die.” The
patient remained silent, or grumbled his dissent. The Jesuit, after
enlarging for a time in broken Huron on the brevity and nothingness of
mortal weal or woe, passed next to the joys of heaven and the pains of
hell, which he set forth with his best rhetoric. His pictures of
infernal fires and torturing devils were readily comprehended, if the
listener had consciousness enough to comprehend anything; but with
respect to the advantages of the French paradise he was slow of
conviction. “I wish to go where my relations and ancestors have gone,”
was a common reply. “Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen,” said
another; “but I wish to be among Indians, for the French will give me
nothing to eat when I get there.” Often the patient was stolidly silent;
sometimes he was hopelessly perverse and contradictory. Again nature
triumphed over grace. “Which will you choose,” demanded the priest of a
dying woman, “heaven or hell?” “Hell, if my children are there, as you
say,” returned the mother. “Do they hunt in heaven, or make war, or go
to feasts?” asked an anxious inquirer. “Oh, no!” replied the father.
“Then,” returned the querist, “I will not go. It is not good to be
lazy.” But above all other obstacles was the dread of starvation in the
regions of the blest. Nor when the dying Indian had been induced at last
to express a desire for Paradise was it an easy matter to bring him to a
due contrition for his sins; for he would deny with indignation that he
had ever committed any. When at length, as sometimes happened, all these
difficulties gave way, and the patient had been brought to what seemed
to his instructor a fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with
contentment at his heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his
hand, touched his forehead with the mystic drop, and snatched him from
an eternity of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not
always manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. “Why did you baptize
that Iroquois?” asked one of the dying neophytes, speaking of the
prisoner recently tortured; “he will get to heaven before us, and, when
he sees us coming, he will drive us out.”
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF.
Herodotus tells us (Book III. 118) that after the conspirator
Intaphernes and his family had been imprisoned and held for execution by
order of Darius, the wife of the condemned man constantly presented
herself before the royal palace exhibiting every demonstration of grief.
As she regularly continued this conduct, her frequent appearance at
length excited the compassion of Darius, who thus addressed her by a
messenger: “Woman, King Darius offers you the liberty of any individual
of your family whom you may most desire to preserve.” After some
deliberation with herself she made this reply: “If the king will grant
me the life of any one of my family, I choose my brother in preference
to the rest.” Her determination greatly astonished the king; he sent to
her therefore a second message to this effect: “The king desires to know
why you have thought proper to pass over your children and your husband,
and to preserve your brother, who is certainly a more remote connection
than your children, and cannot be so dear to you as your husband.” She
answered: “O king! if it please the deity, I may have another husband;
and if I be deprived of these I may have other children; but as my
parents are both dead, it is certain that I can have no other brother.”
The answer appeared to Darius very judicious; indeed he was so well
pleased with it that he not only gave the woman the life of her brother,
but also pardoned her eldest son.
A passage in the _Antigone_ of Sophocles embodies the same singular
sentiment. Creon forbade the rites of sepulture to Polynices, after the
duel with his brother Eteocles, in which they were mutually slain, and
decreed immediate death to any one who should dare to bury him.
Antigone, their sister, was detected in the act of burial, and was
condemned to be buried alive for her pious care. In her dangerous
situation she goes on to say:—
And thus, my Polynices, for my care
Of thee, I am rewarded, and the good
Alone shall praise me; for a husband dead,
Nor, had I been a mother, for my children
Would I have dared to violate the laws—
Another husband and another child
Might sooth affliction; but, my parents dead,
A brother’s loss could never be repaired.
A story of analogous character told by an oriental to Miss Rogers, is
related in her book _Domestic Life in Palestine_, as follows:—
When Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mahomet Ali, ruled in Palestine, he sent
men into all the towns and villages to gather together a large army.
Then a certain woman of Serfurich sought Ibrahim Pasha at Akka, and came
into his presence bowing herself before him, and said: “O my lord, look
with pity on thy servant, and hear my prayer. A little while ago there
were three men in my house, my husband, my brother, and my eldest son.
But now behold, they have been carried away to serve in your army, and I
am left with my little ones without a protector. I pray you grant
liberty to one of these men, that he may remain at home.” And Ibrahim
had pity on her and said: “O woman, do you ask for your husband, for
your son, or for your brother?” And she said: “Oh, my lord, give me my
brother.” And he answered: “How is this, O woman, do you prefer a
brother to a husband or a son?” The woman, who was renowned for her wit
and readiness of speech, replied in a blank verse impromptu:—
“If it be God’s will that my husband perish in your service,
I am still a woman, and God may lead me to another husband:
If on the battle-field my first-born son should fall,
I have still my younger ones, who will in God’s time be like unto him.
But oh! my lord, if my only brother should be slain,
I am without remedy—for my father is dead and my mother is old,
And where should I look for another brother?”
And Ibrahim was much pleased with the words of the woman, and said: “O,
woman, happy above many is thy brother; he shall be free for thy word’s
sake, and thy husband and thy son shall be free also.” Then the woman
could not speak for joy and gladness. And Ibrahim said: “Go in peace;
let it not be known that I have spoken with you this day.” Then she
rose, and went her way to her village, trusting in the promise of the
Pasha. After three days, her husband, and son, and brother returned unto
her, saying: “We are free from service by order of the Pasha, but this
matter is a mystery to us.” And all the neighbors marvelled greatly. But
the woman held her peace, and this story did not become known until
Ibrahim’s departure from Akka, after the overthrow of the Egyptian
goverment in Syria, in 1840.
What the husband and the son thought of wifely and motherly affection
when the mystery of their deliverance was cleared up, is not reported.
THE TWO STATESMEN.
Hume says (_History of England_):—
A little before he (Wolsey) expired (28th November, 1530) he addressed
himself in the following words to Sir William Kingston, Constable of the
Tower, who had him in custody: “I pray you have me heartily recommended
unto his royal majesty (Henry VIII.), and beseech him on my behalf to
call to his remembrance all matters that have passed between us
especially with regard to his business with the queen, and then will he
know in his conscience whether I have offended him. He is a prince of a
most royal carriage, and hath a princely heart; and rather than he will
miss or want any part of his will, he will endanger the one half of his
kingdom. I do assure you that I have often kneeled before him, sometimes
three hours together, to persuade him from his will and appetite, but
could not prevail: had I but served God as diligently as I have served
the king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is
the just reward I must receive for my indulgent pains and study, not
regarding my service to God but only to my prince.”
Holinshead says in his famous old _Chronicles_:—
This year (1540), in the month of _August_, Sir _James Hamilton of
Finbert_, Knight, Controller to the King (James V. of Scotland), who
charged him in the king’s name to go toward within the castel of
_Edinburgh_, which commandment he willingly obeyed, thinking himself
sure enough, as well by reason of the good service he had done to the
king, specially in repairing the palaces of _Striviling_ and
_Linlithgow_, as also that the king had him in so high favour, that he
stood in no fear of himself at all. Nevertheless, shortlie after he was
brought forth to judgement, and convicted in the _Tolboth_ of
_Edinburgh_, of certain points of treason, laid against him, which he
would never confesse; but that notwithstanding, he was beheaded in the
month of _September_ next insuing, after that he had liberallie
confessed at the place of execution, that he had never in any jot
offended the king’s majesty; and that his death was yet worthilie
inflicted upon him by the Divine justice, because he had often offended
the law of God to please the prince, thereby to obtain greater
countenance with him. Wherefore he admonished all persons, that moved by
his example, they should rather follow the Divine pleasure than
unjustlie seek the king’s favour, since it is better to please God than
man.
THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
Several parallels to Solomon’s judgment, I. Kings iii. 16–28, are
recorded. One occurs in _Gesta Romanorum_. Three youths, to decide a
question, are desired by their referee, the King of Jerusalem, to shoot
at their father’s dead body. One only refuses; and to him, as the
rightful heir, the legacy is awarded.
In the Harleian MS., 4523, we are told of a woman of Pegu, a province of
Burmah, whose child was carried away by an alligator. Upon its
restoration another woman claimed the child. The judge ordered them to
pull for it; the infant cried, and one instantly quit her hold, to whom
the child was awarded.
The same story, substantially, is told in the Pali commentary on the
discourses of Buddha, translated by Rev. R. S. Hardy, as follows:—
A woman who was going to bathe, left her child to play on the banks of
a tank, when a female who was passing that way carried it off. They
both appeared before Buddha, and each declared the child was her own.
The command was therefore given that each claimant should seize the
infant by a leg and an arm, and pull with all her might in opposite
directions. No sooner had they commenced than the child began to
scream; when the real mother, from pity, left off pulling, and
resigned her claim to the other. The judge therefore decided that, as
she only had shown true affection, the child must be hers.
Suetonius tell us that the Emperor Claudius, when a woman refused to
acknowledge her son, ordered them to be married. The mother confessed
her child at once.
PRECEDENCY.
The Emperor Charles V. was appealed to, by two women of fashion at
Brussels, to settle the point of precedency between them, the dispute
respecting which had been carried to the greatest height. Charles, after
affecting to consider what each lady had to say, decided that the
greater simpleton of the two should have the _pas_; in consequence of
which judgment the ladies became equally ready to concede the privilege
each had claimed. Napoleon, on the occurrence of a similar difficulty at
a Court ball supper, based his decision on the question of _age_. Mr.
Hey, of Leeds, at a dinner-party of gentlemen, made _merit_ the test.
THE LEGEND OF BETH GELERT.
In F. Johnson’s translation from the Sanscrit, occurs the following
passage:—
In Ougein lived a Brahman named Mádhava. His wife, of the Brahmanical
tribe, who had recently brought forth, went to perform her ablutions,
leaving him to take charge of her infant offspring. Presently a person
from the Raja came for the Brahman to perform for him a Párrana s’ráddha
(a religious rite to all his ancestors.) When the Brahman saw him, being
impelled by his natural poverty, he thought within himself: If I go not
directly, then some one else will take the s’ráddha. It is said:—
“In respect of a thing which ought to be taken, or to be given, or of
a work which ought to be done, and not being done quickly, time drinks
up the spirit thereof.”
But there is no one here to take care of the child: what can I do then?
Well: I will go, having set to guard the infant this weasel, cherished a
long time, and in no respect distinguished from a child of my own. This
he did and went. Shortly afterwards, a black serpent, whilst silently
coming near the child, was killed there, and rent into pieces by the
weasel; who, seeing the Brahman coming home, ran towards him with haste,
his mouth and paws all smeared with blood, and rolled himself at his
feet. The Brahman seeing him in that state, without reflecting, said,
“My son has been eaten by this weasel,” and killed him: but as soon as
he drew near and looked, behold the child was comfortably sleeping, and
the serpent lay killed! Thereupon the Brahman was overwhelmed with
grief.
This fable was introduced to give point to the moral:—The fool who,
without knowing the true state of the case, becomes subject to anger,
will find cause for regret. Its similarity to the well-known Welsh
legend is so remarkable that we append Spencer’s touching ballad.
The spearman heard the bugle sound,
And cheerily smiled the morn;
And many a brach, and many a hound
Attend Llewellyn’s horn:
And still he blew a louder blast,
And gave a louder cheer:
“Come, Gelert! why art thou the last
Llewellyn’s horn to hear?
“Oh! where does faithful Gelert roam?
The flower of all his race!
So true, so brave; a lamb at home,
A lion in the chase!”
In sooth he was a peerless hound,
The gift of royal John;
But now no Gelert could be found
And all the chase rode on.
And now, as over rocks and dells
The gallant chidings rise,
All Snowdon’s craggy chaos yells
With many mingled cries.
That day Llewellyn little loved
The chase of hart or hare;
And small and scant the booty proved,
For Gelert was not there.
Unpleased, Llewellyn homeward hied,
When, near the portal-seat,
His truant Gelert he espied,
Bounding his lord to greet.
But when he gain’d the castle door,
Aghast the chieftain stood;
The hound was smear’d with gouts of gore,
His lips and fangs ran blood!
Llewellyn gazed with wild surprise,
Unused such looks to meet:
His favorite checked his joyful guise,
And crouch’d and lick’d his feet.
Onward in haste Llewellyn passed—
And on went Gelert too—
And still, where’er his eyes were cast,
Fresh blood-gouts shock’d his view!
O’erturn’d his infant’s bed, he found
The blood-stain’d covert rent;
And all around, the walls and ground
With recent blood besprent.
He called his child—no voice replied;
He search’d—with terror wild;
Blood! blood! he found on every side,
But nowhere found the child!
“Hell-hound! by thee my child’s devoured!”
The frantic father cried;
And to the hilt the vengeful sword
He plunged in Gelert’s side!
His suppliant, as to earth he fell,
No pity could impart;
But still his Gelert’s dying yell
Pass’d heavy o’er his heart.
Aroused by Gelert’s dying yell,
Some slumberer waken’d nigh:
What words the parent’s joy can tell,
To hear his infant cry!
Conceal’d beneath a mangled heap,
His hurried search had miss’d,
All glowing from his rosy sleep,
His cherub-boy he kiss’d.
Nor scratch had he, nor harm, nor dread—
But, the same couch beneath,
Lay a great wolf, all torn and dead
Tremendous still in death!
Oh! what was then Llewellyn’s woe;
For now the truth was clear:
The gallant hound the wolf had slain,
To save Llewellyn’s heir.
Vain, vain was all Llewellyn’s woe;
“Best of thy kind adieu!
The frantic deed which laid thee low,
This heart shall ever rue!”
And now a gallant tomb they raise,
With costly sculpture deck’d;
And marbles storied with his praise,
Poor Gelert’s bones protect.
Here never could the spearman pass,
Or forester unmoved;
Here oft the tear-besprinkled grass,
Llewellyn’s sorrow proved.
And here he hung his horn and spear;
And, oft as evening fell,
In fancy’s piercing sounds would hear
Poor Gelert’s dying yell!
ART STORIES.
Art has parallel stories of a tragic nature. In the
Chapel proud
Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined lie,
Each baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheathed in his iron panoply,
stands an exquisite example of Gothic tracery-work, known as the
Apprentice’s Pillar, neighbored by corbels carved with grim, grotesque
human faces. How it came by its name may best be told as the old dame
who acted as cicerone at the beginning of the present century used to
tell it.
“There ye see it, gentlemen, with the lace-bands winding sae beautifully
roond aboot it. The maister had gane awa to Rome to get a plan for it,
and while he was awa, his ’prentice made a plan himsel, and finished it.
And when the maister cam back and fand the pillar finished, he was sae
enraged that he took a hammer and killed the ’prentice. There you see
the ’prentice’s face—up there in ae corner wi’ a red gash in the brow,
and his mother greetin’ for him in the corner opposite. And there, in
another corner, is the maister, as he lookit just before he was hanged;
it’s him wi’ a kind o’ ruff roond his face.”
In the same century that the Prince of Orkney founded the chapel at
Roslin, the good people of Stendal employed an architect of repute to
build them one new gate, and entrusted the erection of a second to his
principal pupil. In this case, too, the aspiring youth proved the better
craftsman, and paid the same penalty; the spot whereon he fell beneath
his master’s hammer being marked to this day by a stone commemorating
the event; and the story goes that yet, upon moonlight nights, the ghost
of the murdered youth may be seen contemplating the work that brought
him to an untimely end, while a weird skeleton beats with a hammer at
the stone he wrought into beauty.
Another stone, at Grossmoringen, close by Stendal, tells where an
assistant bell-caster was stabbed by his master because he succeeded in
casting a bell, after the latter had failed in the attempt. It is a
tradition of Rouen that the two rose-windows of its cathedral were the
work of the master-architect and his pupil, who strove which of the two
should produce the finer window. Again the man beat the master, and
again the master murdered the man in revenge for his triumph. The
transept window of Lincoln Cathedral was the product of a similar
contest, but in this instance the defeated artist killed himself instead
of his successful rival.
BALLADS AND LEGENDS.
Scott’s ballad of “Wild Darrell” was founded upon a story, first told by
Aubrey, but for which the poet was indebted to Lord Webb Seymour. An old
midwife sitting over her fire one dark November night was roused by a
loud knocking at the door. Upon opening it she saw a horseman, who told
her her services were required by a lady of rank, and would be paid for
handsomely; but as there were family reasons why the affair should be
kept secret, she must submit to be conducted to her patient blindfolded.
She agreed, allowed her eyes to be bandaged, and took her place on the
pillion. After a journey of many miles, her conductor stopped, led her
into a house, and removed the bandage. The midwife found herself in a
handsome bedchamber, and in presence of a lady and a ferocious-looking
man. A boy was born. Snatching it from the woman’s arms, the man threw
the babe on the blazing fire; it rolled upon the hearth. Spite of the
entreaties of the horrified midwife, and the piteous prayers of the poor
mother, the ruffian thrust the child under the grate, and raked the hot
coals over it. The innocent accomplice was then ordered to return whence
she came, as she came; the man who had brought her seeing her home
again, and paying her for her pains.
The woman lost no time in letting a magistrate know what she had seen
that November night. She had been sharp enough to cut a piece out of the
bed-curtain, and sew it in again, and to count the steps of the long
staircase she had ascended and descended. By these means the scene of
the infanticide was identified, and the murderer Darrell, Lord of
Littlecote House, Berkshire was tried at Salisbury. He escaped the
gallows by bribing the judge, only to break his neck in the
hunting-field a few months afterwards, at a place still known as
Darrell’s Stile. Aubrey places Littlecote in Wiltshire, makes the
unhappy mother the waiting-maid of Darrell’s wife, and concludes his
narration thus: “This horrid action did much run in her (the midwife’s)
mind, and she had a desire to discover it, but knew not where ’twas. She
considered with herself the time that she was riding, and how many miles
she might have ridden at that rate in that time, and that it must be
some great person’s house, for the room was twelve feet high. She went
to a justice of the peace, and search was made—the very chamber found.
The knight was brought to his trial; and, to be short, this judge had
this noble house, park, and manor, and (I think) more, for a bribe to
save his life. Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but being
a great person and a favorite, he procured a _nolle prosequi_.”
In Sir Walter’s ballad the midwife becomes a friar of orders gray,
compelled to shrive a dying woman,
A lady as a lily bright,
With an infant on her arm;
and when
The shrift is done, the friar is gone,
Blindfolded as he came—
Next morning, all in Littlecote Hall
Were weeping for their dame.
It was hardly fair to make Darrell worse than he was, by laying a second
murder at his door, merely to give a local habitation and a name to a
Scotch tale of murder that might have been an adaptation of the
Berkshire tragedy.
* * * * *
Somewhere about the beginning of the last century, an Edinburgh
clergyman was called out of his bed at midnight on the pretext that he
was wanted to pray with a person at the point of death. The good man
obeyed the summons without hesitation, but wished he had not done so,
when, upon his sedan-chair reaching an out-of-the-way part of the city,
its bearers insisted upon his being blindfolded, and cut his
protestations short by threatening to blow out his brains if he refused
to do their bidding. Like the sensible man he was, he submitted without
further parley, and the sedan moved on again. By and by, he felt he was
being carried up-stairs: the chair stopped, the clergyman was handed
out, his eyes uncovered, and his attention directed to a young and
beautiful lady lying in bed with an infant by her side. Not seeing any
signs of dying about her, he ventured to say so, but was commanded to
lose no time in offering up such prayers as were fitting for a person at
the last extremity. Having done his office, he was put into the chair
and taken down-stairs, a pistol-shot startling his ears on the way. He
soon found himself safe at home, a purse of gold in his hand, and his
ears still ringing with the warning he had received, that if he said one
word about the transaction, his life would pay for the indiscretion. At
last he fell off to sleep, to be awakened by a servant with the news,
that a certain great house in the Canongate had been burned down, and
the daughter of its owner perished in the flames. The clergyman had been
long dead, when a fire broke out on the very same spot, and there, amid
the flames, was seen a beautiful woman, in an extraordinarily rich
night-dress of the fashion of half a century before. While the
awe-struck spectators gazed in wonder, the apparition cried, “Anes
burned, twice burned; the third time I’ll scare you all!” The midwife of
the Littlecote legend and the divine of the Edinburgh one were more
fortunate than the Irish doctor living at Rome in 1743; this gentleman,
according to Lady Hamilton, being taken blindfolded to a house and
compelled to open the veins of a young lady who had loved not wisely,
but too well.
BURIAL ALIVE.
In the year 1400, Ginevra de Amiera, a Florentine beauty, married, under
parental pressure, a man who had failed to win her heart, that she had
given to Antonio Rondinelli. Soon afterwards the plague broke out in
Florence; Ginevra fell ill, apparently succumbed to the malady, and
being pronounced dead, was the same day consigned to the family tomb.
Some one, however, had blundered in the matter, for in the middle of the
night, the entombed bride woke out of her trance, and badly as her
living relatives had behaved, found her dead ones still less to her
liking, and lost no time in quitting the silent company, upon whose
quietude she had unwittingly intruded. Speeding through the
sleep-wrapped streets as swiftly as her clinging cerements allowed,
Ginevra sought the home from which she had so lately been borne. Roused
from his slumbers by a knocking at the door, the disconsolate widower of
a day cautiously opened an upper window, and seeing a shrouded figure
waiting below, in whose upturned face he recognized the lineaments of
the dear departed, he cried, “Go in peace, blessed spirit,” and shut the
window precipitately. With sinking heart and slackened step, the
repulsed wife made her way to her father’s door, to receive the like
benison from her dismayed parent. Then she crawled on to an uncle’s,
where the door was indeed opened, but only to be slammed in her face by
the frightened man, who, in his hurry, forgot even to bless his ghostly
caller. The cool night air, penetrating the undress of the hapless
wanderer, made her tremble and shiver, as she thought she had waked to
life only to die again in the cruel streets. “Ah” she sighed, “Antonio
would not have proved so unkind.” This thought naturally suggested it
was her duty to test his love and courage: it would be time enough to
die if he proved like the rest. The way was long, but hope renerved her
limbs, and soon Ginevra was knocking timidly at Rondinelli’s door. He
opened it himself, and although startled by the ghastly vision, calmly
inquired what the spirit wanted with him. Throwing her shroud away from
her face, Ginevra exclaimed, “I am no spirit, Antonio; I am that Ginevra
you once loved, who was buried yesterday—buried alive!” and fell
senseless into the welcoming arms of her astonished lover, whose cries
for help soon brought down his sympathizing family to hear the wondrous
story, and bear its heroine to bed, to be tenderly tended until she bad
recovered from the shock, and was as beautiful as ever again. Then came
the difficulty. Was Ginevra to return to the man who had buried her, and
shut his doors against her, or give herself to the man who had saved her
from a second death? With such powerful special pleaders as love and
gratitude on his side, of course Rondinelli won the day, and a private
marriage made the lovers amends for previous disappointment. They,
however, had no intention of keeping in hiding, but the very first
Sunday after they became man and wife, appeared in public together at
the cathedral, to the confusion and wonder of Ginevra’s friends. An
explanation ensued, which satisfied everybody except the lady’s first
husband, who insisted that nothing but her dying in genuine earnest
could dissolve the original matrimonial bond. The case was referred to
the bishop, who, having no precedent to curb his decision, rose superior
to technicalities, and declared that the first husband had forfeited all
right to Ginevra, and must pay over to Rondinelli the dowry he had
received with her: a decree at which we may be sure all true lovers in
fair Florence heartily rejoiced.
This Italian romance of real life has its counterpart in a French _cause
célèbre_, but the Gallic version unfortunately lacks names and dates; it
differs, too, considerably in matters of detail; instead of the lady
being a supposed victim of the plague, which in the older story secured
her hasty interment, she was supposed to have died of grief at being
wedded against her inclination; instead of coming to life of her own
accord, and seeking her lover as a last resource, the French heroine was
taken out of her grave by her lover, who suspected she was not really
dead, and resuscitated by his exertions, to flee with him to England.
After living happily together there for ten years, the strangely united
couple ventured to visit Paris, where the first husband accidentally
meeting the lady, was struck by her resemblance to his dead wife, found
out her abode, and finally claimed her for his own. When the case came
for trial, the second husband did not dispute the fact of identity, but
pleaded that his rival had renounced all claim to the lady by ordering
her to be buried, without first making sure she was dead, and that she
would have been dead and rotting in her grave if he had not rescued her.
The court was saved the trouble of deciding the knotty point, for,
seeing that it was likely to pronounce against them, the fond pair
quietly slipped out of France, and found refuge in “a foreign clime,
where their love continued sacred and entire, till death conveyed them
to those happy regions where love knows no end, and is confined within
no limits.”
RING STORIES.
Of dead-alive ladies brought to consciousness by sacrilegious robbers,
covetous of the rings upon their cold fingers, no less than seven
stories, differing but slightly from each other, have been preserved; in
one, the scene is laid in Halifax; in another, in Gloucestershire; in a
third, in Somersetshire; in the fourth, in Drogheda; the remaining three
being appropriated by as many towns in Germany.
Ring-stories have a knack of running in one groove. Herodotus tells us
how Amasis advised Polycrates, as a charm against misfortune, to throw
away some gem he especially valued; how, taking the advice, Polycrates
went seaward in a boat, and cast his favorite ring into the ocean; and
how, a few days afterward, a fisherman caught a large fish so
extraordinarily fine, that he thought it fit only for the royal table,
and accordingly presented it to the fortunate monarch, who ordered it to
be dressed for supper; and lo! when the fish was opened, the surprised
cook’s astonished eye beheld his master’s cast-away ring; much to that
master’s delight, but his adviser’s dismay; for when Amasis heard of the
wonderful event, he immediately dispatched a herald to break his
contract of friendship with Polycrates, feeling confident the latter
would come to an ill end, “as he prospered in everything, even finding
what he had thrown away.” The city of Glasgow owes the ring-holding
salmon figuring in its armorial bearings to a legend concerning its
patron saint, Kentigern, thus told in the _Acta Sanctorum_: A queen who
formed an improper attachment to a handsome soldier, put upon his finger
a precious ring which her own lord had conferred upon her. The king,
made aware of the fact, but dissembling his anger, took an opportunity,
in hunting, while the soldier lay asleep beside the Clyde, to snatch off
the ring, and throw it into the river. Then returning home along with
the soldier, he demanded of the queen the ring he had given her. She
sent secretly to the soldier for the ring, which could not be restored.
In great terror, she then despatched a messenger to ask the assistance
of the holy Kentigern. He, who knew of the affair before being informed
of it, went to the river Clyde, and having caught a salmon, took from
the stomach the missing ring, which he sent to the queen. She joyfully
went with it to the king, who, thinking he had wronged her, swore he
would be revenged upon her accusers; but she, affecting a forgiving
temper, besought him to pardon them as she had done. At the same time,
she confessed her error to Kentigern, and solemnly vowed to be more
careful of her conduct in future. In 1559, a merchant and alderman of
Newcastle, named Anderson, handling his ring as he leaned over the
bridge, dropped it into the Tyne. Some time after, his servant bought a
salmon in the market, in whose stomach the lost ring was found: its
value enhanced by the strange recovery, the ring became an heirloom and
was in the possession of one of the Alderman’s decendants some forty
years ago. A similar accident, ending in a similar way, is recorded to
have happened to one of the dukes of Lorraine.
DEATH PROPHECIES.
Monk Gerbert, who wore the tiara as Sylvester II., a man of whom it was
said that—thanks to the devil’s assistance—he never left anything
unexecuted which he ever conceived, anticipating Roger Bacon, made a
brazen head capable of answering like an oracle. From this creature of
his own, Gerbert learned he would not die until he had performed mass in
Jerusalem. He thereupon determined to live forever by taking good care
never to go near the holy city. Like all dealers with the Evil One, he
was destined to be cheated. Performing mass one day in Rome, Sylvester
was seized with sudden illness, and upon inquiring the name of the
church in which he had officiated, heard, to his dismay, that it was
popularly called Jerusalem; then he knew his end was at hand; and it was
not long before it came. Nearly five hundred years after this event
happened, Master Robert Fabian, who must not be suspected of inventing
history, seeing, as sheriff and alderman, he was wont to pillory public
liars, wrote of Henry IV., “After the feast of Christmas, while he was
making his prayers at St. Edward’s shrine, he became so sick, that such
as were about him feared that he would have died right there; wherefore
they, for his comfort, bare him into the abbot’s place, and lodged him
in a chamber; and there, upon a pallet, laid him before the fire, where
he lay in great agony a certain time. At length, when he was come to
himself, not knowing where he was, he freyned [asked] of such as were
there about him what place that was; the which shewed to him that it
belonged unto the Abbot of Westminster; and for he felt himself so sick,
he commanded to ask if that chamber had any special name. Whereunto it
was answered, that it was named Jerusalem. Then said the king, ‘Laud be
to the Father of Heaven, for now I know I shall die in this chamber,
according to the prophecy of me beforesaid, that I should die in
Jerusalem;’ and so after, he made himself ready, and died shortly after,
upon the Day of St. Cuthbert, on the 20th day of March, 1413.”
BATTLES.
Three of the most famous battles recorded in English history were marked
by a strange contrast between the behavior of the opposing armies on the
eve of the fight. At Hastings, the Saxons spent the night in singing,
feasting, and drinking; while the Normans were confessing themselves and
receiving the sacrament. At Agincourt, “the poor condemned English” said
their prayers, and sat patiently by their watch-fires, to “inly ruminate
the morrow’s danger;” while the over-confident French revelled the night
through, and played for the prisoners they were never to take. “On the
eve of Bannockburn,” says Paston, who fought there on the beaten side,
“ye might have seen the Englishmen bathing themselves in wine, and
casting their gorgets; there was crying, shouting, wassailing, and
drinking, with other rioting far above measure. On the other side we
might have seen the Scots, quiet, still, and close, fasting the eve of
St. John the Baptist, laboring in love of the liberties of their
country.” Our readers need not be told that in each case the orderly,
prayerful army proved victorious, and so made the treble parallel
perfect.
BISHOP HATTO.
The legend of Hatto, bishop of Mayence, has been preserved in stanzas
which are well remembered by school children. To avoid the importunity
of the starving during a period of famine, the wicked prelate collected
them into a barn,
“And while for mercy on Christ they call,
He set fire to the barn, and burnt them all.”
Thereupon he was attacked by an army of mice, and escaped to his tower
(the Mäuseschloss) on a rock in the Rhine. But they quickly followed him
and poured in by thousands, “in at the windows and in at the door,”
until he was overpowered and destroyed.
“They gnawed the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him.”
The same story is told of the Swiss baron, von Güttingen, who was
pursued and devoured by mice in his castle in Lake Constance. It is also
told, with a variation, of the Polish King Popiel. When the Poles
murmured at his bad government, and sought redress, he summoned the
chief remonstrants to his palace, poisoned them, and had their bodies
thrown into the lake Gopolo. He sought refuge from the mice within a
circle of fire, but was overrun and eaten by them.
Prototypes.
THE OLDEST PROVERB.
It appears from I Samuel xxiv. 13, that the oldest proverb on record,
is, “Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked;” since David, in his time,
declared it to be “a proverb of the ancients;” consequently older than
any proverb of his son Solomon.
SHAKSPEARE SAID IT FIRST.
In one of Clough’s letters he tells an amusing story of a Calvinistic
old lady, who, on being asked about the Universalists, observed,—“Yes,
they expect that everybody will be saved, but we look for better
things.” How like this is to the admirable confusion of Sir Andrew
Aguecheek, who, in his letter of challenge, (_Twelfth Night_, iii. 4,)
concludes thus:—
“Fare thee well, and God have mercy upon one of our souls!
He may have mercy upon mine; but my hope is better!”
CINDERELLA’S SLIPPER.
A story somewhat similar to that of Cinderella has been handed down from
the Greek. It is reported of Rhodopis,—a Thracian slave, who was
purchased and manumitted by Charaxus of Mytilene, and afterward settled
in Egypt,—that one day, while she was in the bath, an eagle, having
flown down, snatched one of her slippers from an attendant, and carried
it to Memphis. Psammitichus, the king, at the time, was sitting on his
tribunal, and while engaged in dispensing justice, the eagle, settling
above his head, dropped the sandal into his bosom. Astonished by the
singularity of the event, and struck by the diminutive size and elegant
shape of the sandal, the king ordered search to be made for the owner
throughout the land of Egypt. Having found her at Naucratis, she was
presented to the king, who made her his queen.
CURTAIN LECTURES.
Jerrold, in his preface to the later editions of _Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain
Lectures_, makes this curious statement:—
It has happened to the writer that two, or three, or ten, or twenty
gentlewomen have asked him ... _What could have made you think of Mrs.
Caudle? How could such a thing have entered any man’s mind?_ There are
subjects that seem like rain-drops to fall upon a man’s head, the head
itself having nothing to do with the matter.... And this was, no
doubt, the accidental cause of the literary sowing and
expansion—unfolding like a night-flower—of §Mrs. Caudle§.... The
writer, still dreaming and musing, and still following no distinct
line of thought, there struck upon him, like notes of sudden household
music, these words—§Curtain Lectures§.
Nevertheless, this phrase may be traced back more than two centuries,
while the idea will be found in the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, who says:—
Semper habet lites, alternaque jurgia lectus,
In quo nupta jacet: minimum dormitur in illo, &c.
Stapylton’s translation of this passage was published in 1647:—
Debates, alternate brawlings, ever were
I’ th’ marriage bed: there is no sleeping there.
In the margin of the translation are the words _Curtain-Lectures_.
Dryden in his translation of the same passage (published 1693)
introduces the phrase into the text:—
Besides, what endless brawls by wives are bred;
The Curtain-Lecture makes a mournful bed.
And Addison, in the _Tatler_, describing a luckless wight undergoing the
penalty of a nocturnal oration, says:—
I could not but admire his exemplary patience, and discovered, by his
whole behavior, that he was then lying under the discipline of a
_curtain lecture_.
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.
The metre, movement, and idea of Tennyson’s Charge of the Six Hundred at
Balaklava, are evidently derived from Michael Drayton’s _Battle of
Agincourt_, published in 1627. The first, middle and last stanzas of
Drayton’s poem run thus:—
1.
Faire stood the Wind for France
When we our Sayles advance,
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the Mayne,
At _Kaux_, the Mouth of _Seyne_,
With all his Martiall Trayne,
Landed King Harry.
8.
They now to fight are gone,
Armour on armour shone,
Drumme now to Drumme did grone,
To heare was wonder:
That with the Cryes they make,
The very earth did shake,
Trumpet to Trumpet spake,
Thunder to Thunder.
15.
Upon Saint Crispin’s day
Fought was this Noble Fray,
Which Fame did not delay
To England to carry;
O when shall English Men
With such Acts fill a Pen,
Or England breed againe
Such a King §Harry§!
THE FAUST LEGENDS.
About the middle of the thirteenth century began to spread the notion of
formal written agreements between the Fiend and men who were to be his
exclusive property after a certain time, during which he was to help
them to all earthly good. This, curious to say, came with Christianity
from the East. The first instance was that of Theophilus, vicedominus of
the Bishop of Adana, a city of Cilicia, in the sixth century, whose fall
and conversion form the original of all the Faust legends. The story of
Theophilus may be found in various works, among them Ennemoser’s
_Universal History of Magic_, which was translated by William Howitt.
AIR CUSHIONS.
Ben Jonson, in the _Alchemist_, makes Sir Epicure Mammon, in his
expectation of acquiring the secret of the philosopher’s stone,
enumerate to Surly a list of anticipated luxuries. Among these
indulgences is this prophetic forecast of modern inflated India-rubber
beds and cushions:—
“I will have all my beds _blown up_, not _stuffed_;
Down is too hard.”
THE CAT IN THE ADAGE.
Lady Macbeth thus taunts her husband:—
Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem;
Letting _I dare not_ wait upon _I would_,
Like the poor cat i’ the adage?
The adage is thus given in Heywood’s _Proverbs_, 1566:—
“The cat would eate fishe, and would not wet her feete.”
The proverb is found among all nations. The Latin form of mediæval times
was as follows:—
“Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas.”
The Germans say:—
“Die Katze hätt’ die Fische gern; aber sie will die Füsse nit nass
machen.”
And the Scotch have it:—
“The cat would fain fish eat,
But she has no will to wet her feet.”
CORK LEGS.
A gentleman in Charleston conceived a very decided liking to a young
lady from Ireland, and was on the eve of popping the question, when he
was told by a friend that his dulcinea had a cork leg. It is difficult
to imagine the distress of the young Carolinian. He went to her father’s
house, knocked impatiently at the door, and when admitted to the fair
one’s presence, asked her if what he had heard respecting her were true.
“Yes, indeed, my dear Sir, it is true enough, but you have heard only
half of my misfortune. I have got two cork legs, having had the ill-luck
to be born in Cork.” This is the incident on which is founded Hart’s
afterpiece called _Perfection_.
THE POPE’S BULL AGAINST THE COMET.
When President Lincoln was first asked to issue a proclamation
abolishing slavery in the Southern States, he replied that such an act
would be as absurd as the Pope’s bull against the comet.
The comet referred to is Halley’s. Concerning its first authenticated
appearance, Admiral Smyth, in his _Cycle of Celestial Objects_, says:—
In 1456 it came with a tail 60° in length, and of a vivid brightness;
which splendid train affrighted all Europe, and spread consternation
in every quarter. To its malign influences were imputed the rapid
successes of Mahomet II., which then threatened all Christendom. The
general alarm was greatly aggravated by the conduct of Pope Calixtus
III., who, though otherwise a man of abilities, was but a poor
astronomer; for that pontiff daily ordered the church bells to be rung
at noontide, extra Ave Marias to be repeated, and a special protest
and excommunication was composed, exorcising equally the devil, the
Turks, and the comet.
SWAPPING HORSES.
The celebrated maxim of President Lincoln, “not to swap horses while
fording the stream,” was anticipated centuries ago by Cyrus the Elder,
King of Persia, in directing his troops to take up their several
stations, when he said, “When the contest is about to begin, there is no
longer time for any chariot to unyoke the horses for a change.”
WOODEN NUTMEGS.
Judge Haliburton, in that amusing book _The Clockmaker_, puts the
following in the mouth of Sam Slick:—
That remark seemed to grig him a little; he felt oneasy like, and
walked twice across the room, fifty fathoms deep in thought; at last
he said, “Which way are you from, Mr. Slick, this hitch?” “Why,” says
I, “I’ve been away up South a speculating in nutmegs.” “I hope,” says
the Professor, “they were a good article,—the real right down genuine
thing?” “No, mistake,” says I, “no mistake, Professor; they were all
prime, first chop; but why did you ax that ’ere question?” “Why,” says
he, “that eternal scoundrel, that Captain John Allspice of Nahant, he
used to trade to Charleston, and he carried a cargo once there of
fifty barrels of nutmegs. Well, he put half a bushel of good ones into
each end of the barrel, and the rest he filled up with wooden ones, so
like the real thing, no soul could tell the difference until _he bit
one with his teeth_, and that he never thought of doing until he was
first _bit himself_. Well, it’s been a standing joke with them
Southerners agin us ever since.”
TRADE UNIONS.
Trade unions are not of such recent origin as many people suppose. “I am
credibly informed,” wrote Mandeville, the philosophic author of the
_Fables of the Bees_, one hundred and fifty years ago, in his _Essay on
Charity and Charity Schools_, “that a parcel of footmen are arrived to
that height of insolence as to have entered into a society together, and
made laws by which they oblige themselves not to serve for less than
such a sum, nor carry burdens, or any bundle or parcel above a certain
weight not exceeding two or three pounds, with other regulations
directly opposite to the interest of those they serve, and altogether
destructive to the use they were designed for. If any of them be turned
away for strictly adhering to the orders of this honorable corporation,
he is taken care of till another service is provided for him; but there
is no money wanting at any time to commence and maintain a lawsuit
against any that shall pretend to strike or offer any other injury to
his gentleman footman, contrary to the statutes of their society. If
this be true, as I believe it is, and they are suffered to go on in
consulting and providing for their own ease and conveniency any further,
we may expect quickly to see the French comedy ‘Le Maitre le Valet’
acted in good earnest in most families; while, if not redressed in a
little time, and these footmen increase their company to the number it
is possible they may, as well as assemble when they please with
impunity, it will be in their power to make a tragedy of it whenever
they have a mind to.”
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.
On page 454 of Senator Wilson’s _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in
America_, he says (of a speech of the late Mr. Giddings): “He referred
to the Treaty of Indian Springs, by which, after paying the slaveholders
of Georgia the sum of $109,000 for slaves who had escaped to Florida, it
added the sum of $141,000 as compensation demanded for the offspring
which the females would have borne to their masters had they remained in
bondage; and Congress actually paid that sum for children who were never
born, but who might have been if their parents had remained faithful
slaves.”
There is no clearer case of the payment of “consequential damages” in
English or American history than this.
THE ORIGINAL SHYLOCK.
Gregory Leti, in his biography of Sextus V., tells us that Paul Secchi,
a Venetian merchant, having learned by private advices that Admiral
Francis Blake had conquered St. Domingo, communicated the news to a
Jewish merchant named Sampson Ceneda. The latter was so confident that
the information was false, that, after repeated protestations, he said,
“I bet a pound of my flesh that the report is untrue.” “And I lay a
thousand scudi against it,” rejoined the Christian, who caused a bond to
be drawn to the effect that in case the report should prove untrue, then
the Christian merchant, Signor Paul Secchi, is bound to pay the Jewish
merchant the sum of 1000 scudi, and on the other hand, if the truth of
the news be confirmed, the Christian merchant, Signor Paul Secchi, is
justified and empowered to cut with his own hand, with a well-sharpened
knife, a pound of the Jew’s fair flesh, of that part of the body it
might please him. When the news proved true, the Christian insisted on
his bond, but the governor, having got wind of the affair, reported it
to the Pope, who condemned both Jew and Christian to the galleys, from
which they could only be ransomed by paying a fine of double the amount
of the wager.
Shakspeare reverses the order, and makes the Jew usurer demand the pound
of flesh from the Christian merchant.
EXCOMMUNICATION.
The excommunication of the Roman Catholic Church, exactly described by
anticipation in Cæsar’s account of their predecessors, the Heathen
Druids, will be found in Cæsar, _de Bello Gallico_, Book VI. Chap, iii.,
the passage beginning “Si quis aut privatus aut publicus,” and ending
“Neque honos ullus communicatur.”
They decree rewards and punishments, and if any one refuses to submit
to their sentence, whether magistrate or private man, they interdict
him the sacrifices. This is the greatest punishment that can be
inflicted among the Gauls; because such as are under this prohibition
are considered as impious and wicked; all men shun them, and decline
their conversation and fellowship, lest they should suffer from the
contagion of their misfortunes. They can neither have recourse to the
law for justice, nor are capable of any public office.
NAPOLEON I.
Compare the character and fall of Bonaparte with that of the king of
Babylon as described in the remarkable language of the prophet Isaiah,
chapter xiv., verses 4–22.
THE FALLS OF LANARK.
The following lines in an album formerly kept at the inn at Lanark
evidently suggested to Southey his playful verses on _The Cataract of
Lodore_:—
What fools are mankind,
And how strangely inclined
To come from all places
With horses and chaises,
By day and by dark,
To the Falls of Lanark!
For, good people, after all,
What is a waterfall?
It comes roaring and grumbling,
And leaping and tumbling,
And hopping and skipping,
And foaming and dripping,
And struggling and toiling,
And bubbling and boiling,
And beating and jumping,
And bellowing and thumping.
I have much more to say upon
Both Linn and Bonniton;
But the trunks are tied on,
And I must be gone.
In the varied music of Schiller’s _Song of the Bell_ may be found the
same style:—
Der Mann muß hinaus The man must be out
Ins feindliche Leben, In hostile life toiling,
Muß wirken und streben Be struggling and moiling,
Und pflanzen und schaffen, And planting, obtaining,
Erlisten, erraffen, Devising and gaining,
Muß wetten und wagen, And daring, enduring,
Das Glück zu erjagen. So fortune securing.
TURGOT’S EPIGRAPH ON FRANKLIN.
Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.
This inscription, the highest compliment ever paid to the American
philosopher and statesman, and originally ascribed to Condorcet and
Mirabeau, was written by Turgot, Louis XVI.’s minister and
controller-general of finance, and first appeared in the correspondence
of Grimm and Diderot, April, 1778. It is, however, merely a modification
of a line in the _Anti-Lucretius of_ Cardinal de Polignac, lib. i., v.
37:—
Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, Phœboque sagittas,
which is in turn traced to the _Astronomicon_ of Marcus Manilius, a poet
of the Augustan age, who says of Epicurus, lib. i. v. 104,—
Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque Tonanti.
Taking the laurel from the brow of Epicurus to place it upon the head of
Franklin is not so inappropriate, when we recall the sketch of the
former by Lucretius _illustrans commoda vitæ_.
THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
Among those who sympathized most deeply with the oppressed inhabitants
of New England, and who were earliest to express indignation at the
outrages of British tyranny, were the militia-officers of North
Carolina, most of whom were Presbyterians of Scotch-Irish nativity. On
the 20th of May, 1775, the delegates of the Mecklenburg convention,
“after sitting in the court-house all night, neither sleepy, hungry, nor
fatigued, and after discussing every paragraph,” unanimously passed the
following resolutions. It will be observed that this memorable
Declaration of Independence contains many of the ideas, and some of the
very phrases and forms of expression, afterwards employed by Mr.
Jefferson, and incorporated in his draft of that great national document
whose adoption, on the 4th of July, 1776, gave birth to a nation of
freemen. The more striking similarities are here shown in Italics:—
§Resolved§, That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in any
way, form, or manner countenanced, the unchartered and dangerous
invasion of our rights, as claimed by Great Britain, is an enemy to this
country, to America, and to the _inherent and inalienable rights_[36] of
Man.
Footnote 36:
The same expression will be found in the original draft of Mr.
Jefferson. Congress changed the words “inherent and inalienable” to
“certain inalienable.”
§Resolved§, That we, the citizens of Mecklenburg county, do hereby
_dissolve the political bands which have connected_ us to the mother
country, and hereby _absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the
British Crown, and abjure all political connection_, contract, or
association with that Nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights
and liberties, and inhumanly shed the blood of American patriots at
Lexington.
§Resolved§, That we do hereby _declare ourselves a free and independent
people; are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing
association_, under the control of no power other than that of §our
God§, and the general Government of the Congress; _to the maintenance of
which independence we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual
co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor_.
§Resolved§, That as we now acknowledge the existence and control of no
law or legal officer, civil or military, within this country, we do
hereby ordain and adopt as a rule of life all, each, and every of our
former laws; wherein, nevertheless, the Crown of Great Britain never can
be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authorities
therein.
§Resolved§, That it is further decreed that all, each, and every
military officer in this county is hereby reinstated in his former
command and authority, he acting conformably to these regulations; and
that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil
officer, viz.: a Justice of the Peace in the character of a
“Committee-man,” to issue process, hear and determine all matters of
controversy, according to said adopted laws, and to preserve peace,
union, and harmony in said county; and to use every exertion to spread
the love of country and fire of freedom throughout America, until a more
general and organized government be established in the Province.
After discussing the foregoing resolves, and arranging by-laws and
regulations for the government of a Standing Committee of Public Safety,
who were selected from their delegates, the whole proceedings were
unanimously adopted and signed. A select committee was then appointed to
draw up a more full and definite statement of grievances, and a more
formal Declaration of Independence. The delegation then adjourned about
two o’clock §A.M.§
THE KNOW-NOTHINGS.
The recent political organization under this odd title, which presented
one of the most singular features that has yet diversified American
history, has its archetype in the Church whose progress in this country
it was designed to oppose. In Italy there was formerly a strange order
of monks calling themselves _Fratres Ignorantiæ_, “Brothers of
Ignorance.” They used to bind themselves by oath not to understand nor
to learn any thing, and answered all questions by saying, _Nescio_, “I
do not know.” Their first proposition was, “Though you do not understand
the words you speak, yet the Holy Ghost understands them, and the devil
flees.” In opposing mental acquirements, they argued thus:—“Suppose this
friar studies and becomes a learned man, the consequence will be that he
will want to become our superior: therefore, put the sack around his
neck, and let him go begging from house to house, in town and country.”
THE ORIGINAL OF BUNYAN’S PILGRIM’S PROGRESS.
_The Isle of Man, or the Legal Proceedings in Manshire against Sin,
wherein, by way of a continual Allegory, the chief malefactors
disturbing both Church and Commonwealth are detected and attached, with
their arraignment and judicial trial, according to the laws of England;
the spiritual use thereof, with an apology for the manner of handling
most necessary to be first read, for direction in the right use of the
allegory. By the Rev. Richard Bernard._
An allegory with the above title, originally published more than two
hundred years ago, was reprinted in Bristol, England, in 1803. In a note
to this edition, addressed to the reader, the editor states that the
work is prized as well on account of the ingenuity of the performance as
the probability of its having suggested to Mr. John Bunyan the first
idea of his Pilgrim’s Progress, and of his Holy War, which was intimated
on a leaf facing the title-page, by the late Rev. Mr. Toplady.
The editor says, “That Bunyan had seen the book may be inferred from its
extensive circulation, for in one year only after its first publication
it ran through seven editions.” He then proceeds to the internal
evidence, and points out a supposed similarity between the characters in
the two works, as between Wilful Will of the one and Will-be-Will of the
other; Mr. Worldly Wiseman of Bunyan and Sir Worldly Wise of Bernard;
Soul’s Town of Bernard and Bunyan’s Town of Man’s Soul, &c.
That the book has no very high order of genius to commend it is evident
from the fact that it has passed into comparative obscurity. The world
does not suffer the works of true prophets to die. Still, there is
enough in it to render it worthy of being held in remembrance; and,
antedating Bunyan as it does, passing through seven editions immediately
after its first publication, presenting some striking analogies with the
great master of allegory, and sinking into obscurity before the brighter
and more enduring light of the Bedford tinker, its author deserves
honorable mention for his attempt to present religious truth in a
striking and impressive form at a period when such attempts were rare.
Southey, in his _Commonplace Book_, gives a long quotation from
_Lucian’s Hermotimus_, to show how Bunyan was anticipated, in the main
idea of his allegory, by a Greek writer, as far back as the second
century.
Another claimant for this Telemachus of Protestant religious literature
has recently been brought to light by Catherine Isabella Curt, who has
just published in London a translation of an old French manuscript in
the British Museum, which is almost word for word the Pilgrim’s
Progress. The manuscript is the work of a clergyman, G de Grideville,
who lived in the fifteenth century. Its title, in Norman English, is
_Pylgremage of the Sowle_. The printer, Caxton, who occupied the same
position in London as the Etiennes of Paris, published in 1483 a
translation of this manuscript, of which the authenticity appears
incontestable. It would seem, therefore, that the credit of this
celebrated book belongs to France, although France hitherto has shown
less appreciation of the original than England has bestowed on the copy.
ROBINSON CRUSOE: WHO WROTE IT?
Disraeli, in his ever-charming _Curiosities of Literature_, expresses
boldly the opinion that “no one had, or perhaps could have, converted
the history of Selkirk into the wonderful story we possess but De Foe
himself.” So have we all been accustomed to believe, from those
careless, happy days of boyhood when we pored intently over the
entrancing pages of “Robinson Crusoe” and wished that we also could have
a desert island, a summer bower, and a winter-cave retreat, as well as
he. But there is, alas! some slight ground at least for believing that
De Foe _did not write_ that immortal tale, or, at all events, the better
portion of it, viz., the first part or volume of the work. In Sir H.
Ellis’s _Letters of Eminent Literary Men_ (Camden Soc. Pub. 1843, vol.
23), p. 420, Letter 137 is from “Daniel De Foe to the Earl of Halifax,
engaging himself to his lordship as a political writer.” In a note by
the editor a curious anecdote is given, quoted from “a volume of
Memoranda in the handwriting of Thomas Warton, poet-laureate, preserved
in the British Museum,” in relation to the actual authorship of the
“Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” The extract is as follows:—
“Mem. July 10, 1774.—In the year 1759, I was told by the Rev. Mr.
Hollaway, rector of Middleton Stoney, in Oxfordshire, then about seventy
years old, and in the early part of his life chaplain to Lord
Sunderland, that he had often heard Lord Sunderland say that Lord
Oxford, while prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote the first volume of
the History of Robinson Crusoe, merely as an amusement under
confinement, and gave it to Daniel De Foe, who frequently visited Lord
Oxford in the Tower and was one of his pamphlet-writers; that De Foe, by
Lord Oxford’s permission, printed it as his own, and, encouraged by its
extraordinary success, added himself the second volume, the inferiority
of which is generally acknowledged. Mr. Holloway also told me, from Lord
Sunderland, that Lord Oxford dictated some parts of the manuscript to De
Foe. Mr Hollaway,”—Warton adds,—“was a grave, conscientious clergyman,
not vain of telling anecdotes, very learned, particularly a good
Orientalist, author of some theological tracts, bred at Eton School, and
a Master of Arts of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He used to say that
‘Robinson Crusoe at its first publication, and for some time afterward,
was universally received and credited as a genuine history. A fictitious
narrative of this sort was then a new thing.’”
Besides, it may be added, the _real_ and somewhat similar circumstances
of Alexander Selkirk’s solitary abode of four years and four months on
the island of Juan Fernandez, had, only a few years previously, been the
subject of general conversation, and had therefore prepared the public
mind for the possibility, if not the probability, of such adventures.
PROVERB MISASCRIBED TO DEFOE.
In an article on the writings of Daniel Defoe, in a late number of the
_Edinburgh Review_, the critic refers to the _True-Born Englishman_, the
opening quatrain of which is quoted as being “all that will ever be
remembered of the poem.”
Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil is sure to build a chapel there;
And ’twill be found, upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.
A recent number of Chambers’s _Papers for the People_ also contains an
article on Defoe, in which the same lines are quoted as having since
grown into a proverb. It is evident that the two critics believed the
idea to be original with Defoe. But they were both in error; for in an
old tract, entitled _The Vineyarde of Vertue_, printed in 1591,
seventy-seven years before Defoe was born, may be found the following
sentence:—
It is oftentimes seene, that as God hath his Churche, so will the
Deuill have a Chappell.
It was also used before Defoe’s time by George Herbert and Robert
Burton. The former says, in his _Jacula Prudentum_, “No sooner is a
temple built to God, but the Devil builds a chapel hard by;” and the
latter, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, thus expresses it: “Where God
hath a Temple the Devil will have a Chapel.” It is evident that Defoe
only versified a well-known proverb of his day.
THE USE OF LANGUAGE.
To Talleyrand has generally been attributed the authorship of the maxim
that “the use of language is to conceal our thoughts.” (La parole a été
donnée à l’homme pour aider à cacher sa pensée.)
In Pycroft’s _Ways and Words of Men of Letters_, a quotation is made
from an article on _The Use of Language_, published in a periodical
called the _Bee_, under date of October 20, 1759, which reads as
follows: “He who best knows how to conceal his necessity and desires is
the most likely person to find redress; and _the true use of speech is
not so much to express our wants as to conceal them_.”
Nearly a century before this, Dr. South preached a sermon in Westminster
Abbey, on _The Wisdom of the World_, in which he said, “Men speak with
designs of mischief, and therefore they speak in the dark. In short,
this seems to be the true inward judgment of all our politic sages, that
speech was given to the ordinary sort of men whereby to communicate
their mind, _but to wise men whereby to conceal it_.”
SCANDINAVIAN SKULL CUPS.
What a pretty tale was slaughtered when Grenville Piggot pointed out, in
his _Manual of Scandinavian Mythology_, the blundering translation of
the passage in an old Scandinavian poem relating to the occupation of
the blest in the halls of Valhalla, the Northern paradise! “Soon shall
we drink out of the curved horns of the head,” are the words in the
death-song of Regner Lodbrog; meaning by this violent figure to say that
they would imbibe their liquor out of cups formed from the crooked horns
of animals. The first translators, however, not seeing their way
clearly, rendered the passage, “Soon shall we drink out of the _skulls
of our enemies_;” and to this strange banqueting there are allusions
without end to be met with in our literature. Peter Pindar, for example,
once said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their
wine out of the skulls of authors.
GREAT LITERARY PLAGIARISM.
The _London Athenæum_ asserts that Paley’s Natural Theology is copied
from a series of papers which appeared about the end of the seventeenth
century, in the _Leipsic Transactions_, written by a Dutch philosopher
named Nieuwentyt. It is extraordinary that this discovery was not made
before, inasmuch as the papers, after having been published at Amsterdam
about the year 1700, were afterwards translated into English by Mr.
Chamberlayne, and published by Longman & Co., in 1818, about fifteen
years after Paley’s Natural Theology appeared. As Paley quotes Dr.
Nieuwentyt from the _Leipsic Transactions_, he, of course, must have
known and perused them. Parallel passages are printed side by side in
the _Athenæum_, for the purpose of proving the assertion.
OLD BALLADS.
It was not the more polished author of Ivanhoe who gave us the unfading
picture of the Black Knight, but he who sang of
—a stranger knight whom no man knewe,
He wan the prize eche daye.
His acton it was all of blacke,
His hewberke, and his sheelde,
Ne no man wist whence he did come,
Ne no man knewe where he did gone,
When they came from the feelde.
It was not the “thousand-souled Shakspeare” who gave birth to the story
of the pound of flesh; for Shylock is no other than _Gernutus the Jew of
Venice_. We subjoin two stanzas from Percy’s Reliques:—
But we will have a merry jest
For to be talkéd long:
You shall make me a bond (quoth he)
That shall be large and strong.
* * * * *
The bloody Jew now ready is,
With whetted blade in hand;
To spoil the blood of innocent
By forfeit of his bond.
Even the tragedy of Lear was set to the tune of “When flying Fame”
before it was known to the stage. Nor will it be unjust to the memory of
the good and gifted Goldsmith to say that the Old Harper sang:—
Thus every day I fast and pray,
And ever will doe till I dye;
And gett me to some secrett place,
For soe did hee, and soe will I,—
before the gentle Angelina thought of saying:—
And there forlorn, despairing hid,
I’ll lay me down and die:
’Twas so for me that Edwin did,
And so for him will I.
THE WANDERING JEW.
The success of _Le Juif Errant_ of M. Sue, when first published, arose
doubtless from two causes: the deep hold upon the popular heart which
the legend of the lonely wanderer naturally acquired, and the reaction
against papacy at that period. The efforts of the church, and
particularly of the Society of Jesus, against which it was specially
directed, to either suppress it or neutralize its effects, tended the
more to extend its influence. The legend of a wanderer, pursued by some
fate or power above, suffering, solitary and deathless, is as old as the
human race. It takes a new form with every step in human progress,
adapting itself to the character of the period and place where it
reappears. It belongs to the early East, notably the Hindoo legendary
literature, to Greece and Rome, and to Christendom, taking shape rather
from the religious than the ethical elements of character. The Wandering
Jew of Christendom varies with times and places, as his name also
varies. He is Salathiel, Ahasuerus, Cartaphilus, Theudas, Zerib Bar
Elia, Isbal, Michob-Ader, Bultadœus, Isaac Laquedon or something else,
as circumstances determine. The German designation—the Everlasting Jew,
_der ewige Jude_—is more specifically significant really than that of
other languages, in most of which it is “wandering.”
The weird figure, wandering in fulfillment of his doom in the
Carpathians, or halting at Nürnberg or Bamberg, or going in and out
among the peasantry of Brittany or Wales, is an attractive subject: a
vague, shadowy form; mortal and yet immortal; typical at once of man’s
liability to death, and of his everlasting existence. He has the
passions and anxieties and sorrows of manhood, and is endowed with a
function which places him beyond the operations of Providence. From the
earliest notice of this hero, which occurs in the Chronicles of the
Abbey of St. Albans, he appears in numerous and manifold literary
forms—drama, lyric, ballad, historical poem, legend, novel, study,
essay, chronicle, biography, myth and paragraph, to the extent of
perhaps a hundred volumes. The legends of most of these agree in
representing the Jew as a wanderer since the day of the crucifixion,
sometimes repentant and sometimes defiant, but always going. From this
general voice Dr. Croly, in his _Salathiel_, upon a true artistic
principle, departs, and makes his doomed one live only the usual period
of man’s life. His Jew is repentant and anxious to die, and dies in due
season. The Jew of M. Eubule-Evans, in the _Curse of Immortality_, also
is repentant, but, pursued by implacable vengeance of the Almighty, he
refuses, in his morbid pride, to purchase the repose of death at the
price of self-abasement; but at last reaches contrition through the
softening influence of human love, repents and dies.
With similar general characteristics the wanderer of M. Sue’s powerful
melodramatic story seeks death in every clime and form: but lives on,
wanders on, and toils to achieve human ends, until the close of the
romance, when the hero sets out anew. Our readers are doubtless familiar
with the story—the scattered heirs of a fortune of two million francs to
be divided among them upon condition of their assembling at a given hour
in a given room in Paris; and the machinations of the wily Jesuit Rodin,
whose end was to secure the money for his own society.
The Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans, already referred to, report
the following circumstantial details:—
In the year 1228, a certain archbishop of Armenia came on a pilgrimage
to England to see the relics of the saints, and visit the sacred places
in this kingdom, as he had done in others; he also produced letters of
recommendation from his Holiness the Pope to the religious men and
prelates of the churches, in which they were enjoined to receive and
entertain him with due reverence and honor. On his arrival, he came to
St. Albans, where he was received with all respect by the abbot and
monks; and at this place, being fatigued with his journey, he remained
some days to rest himself and his followers. In the course of
conversation by means of their interpreters, he made many inquiries
relating to the religion and religious observances of this country, and
told many strange things concerning the countries of the East. In the
course of conversation he was asked whether he had ever seen or heard
anything of Joseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the world, who,
when our Lord suffered, was present and spoke to him, and who is still
alive, in evidence to the Christian faith; in reply to which a knight in
his retinue, who was his interpreter, replied, speaking in French, “My
Lord well knows that man, and a little before he took his way to the
western countries, the said Joseph ate at the table of my lord the
archbishop in Armenia, and he has often seen and held converse with
him.” He was then asked about what had passed between Christ and the
said Joseph, to which he replied, “At the time of the suffering of Jesus
Christ, he was seized by the Jews and led into the hall of judgment,
before Pilate, the governor, that he might be judged by him on the
accusation of the Jews; and Pilate finding no cause for adjudging him to
death, said to them, ‘Take him and judge him according to your law;’ the
shouts of the Jews, however, increasing, he, at their request, released
unto them Barabbas, and delivered Jesus to them to be crucified. When,
therefore, the Jews were dragging Jesus forth, and had reached the door,
Cartaphilus, a porter of the hall, in Pilate’s service, as Jesus was
going out of the door, impiously struck him on the back with his hand,
and said in mockery, ‘Go quicker, Jesus, go quicker; why do you loiter?’
and Jesus looking back on him with a severe countenance, said to him, ‘I
am going and you will wait till I return.’ And according as our Lord
said, this Cartaphilus is still awaiting his return. At the time of our
Lord’s suffering he was thirty years old, and when he attains the age of
a hundred years, he always returns to the same age as he was when our
Lord suffered. After Christ’s death, when the Catholic faith gained
ground, this Cartaphilus was baptized by Ananias (who also baptized the
apostle Paul), and was called Joseph. He dwells in one or other division
of Armenia, and in divers Eastern countries, passing his time amongst
the bishops and other prelates of the church; he is a man of holy
conversation, and religious; a man of few words, and circumspect in his
behavior, for he does not speak at all unless when questioned by the
bishops and religious men, and then he tells of the events of old times,
and of those which occurred at the suffering and resurrection of our
Lord, and of the witnesses of the resurrection, namely, those who rose
with Christ, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto men. He also
tells of the creed of the apostles, and of their separation and
preaching. And all this he relates without smiling or levity of
conversation, as one who is well practised in sorrow and the fear of
God; always looking forward with fear to the coming of Jesus Christ,
lest at the last judgment he should find him in anger, whom, when on his
way to death, he had provoked to just vengeance. Numbers come to him
from different parts of the world, enjoying his society and
conversation; and to them, if they are men of authority, he explains all
doubts on the matters on which he is questioned. He refuses all gifts
that are offered to him, being content with slight food and clothing.”
Of the myths of the Middle Ages, none is more striking than that of the
Wandering Jew; indeed it is so well calculated to arrest the attention
and to excite the imagination, that it is remarkable that we should find
an interval of three centuries between its first introduction into
Europe by Matthew Paris and Philip Mouskes, and its general acceptance
in the sixteenth century. Of the romances of Eugéne Sue and Dr. Croly,
founded upon the legend, the less said the better. The original legend
is so noble in its severe simplicity that none but a master mind could
develop it with any chance of success. Nor have the poetical attempts
upon the story fared better. It was reserved for the pencil of Gustave
Doré to treat it with the originality it merited, and in a series of
wood-cuts to produce at once a poem, a romance, and a chef-d’œuvre of
art.
Curious Books.
ODD TITLES OF OLD BOOKS,
_Mostly Published in the time of Cromwell_.
_A Fan to drive away Flies_: a theological treatise on Purgatory.
_A most Delectable Sweet Perfumed Nosegay for God’s Saints to Smell at._
_A Pair of Bellows to blow off the Dust cast upon John Fry._
_A Proper Project to Startle Fools: Printed in a Land where Self’s cry’d
up and Zeal’s cry’d down._
_A Reaping-Hook, well tempered, for the Stubborn Ears of the coming
Crop; or, Biscuit baked in the Oven of Charity, carefully conserved for
the Chickens of the Church, the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet
Swallows of Salvation._
_A Sigh of Sorrow for the Sinners of Zion, breathed out of a Hole in the
Wall of an Earthly Vessel, known among Men by the Name of Samuel Fish_
(a Quaker who had been imprisoned).
_A Shot aimed at the Devil’s Head-Quarters through the Tube of the
Cannon of the Covenant._
_Crumbs of Comfort for the Chickens of the Covenant._
_Eggs of Charity, layed by the Chickens of the Covenant, and boiled with
the Water of Divine Love. Take Ye and eat._
_High-heeled Shoes for Dwarfs in Holiness._
_Hooks and Eyes for Believers’ Breeches._
_Matches lighted by the Divine Fire._
_Seven Sobs of a Sorrowful Soul for Sin, or the Seven Penitential Psalms
of the Princely Prophet David; whereunto are also added, William Humius’
Handful of Honeysuckles, and Divers Godly and Pithy Ditties, now newly
augmented._
_Spiritual Milk for Babes, drawn out of the Breasts of both Testaments
for their Souls’ Nourishment_: a catechism.
_The Bank of Faith._
_The Christian Sodality; or, Catholic Hive of Bees, sucking the Honey of
the Churches’ Prayer from the Blossoms of the Word of God, blowne out of
the Epistles and Gospels of the Divine Service throughout the yeare.
Collected by the Puny Bee of all the Hive not worthy to be named
otherwise than by these Elements of his Name, F. P._
_The Gun of Penitence._
_The Innocent Love; or, the Holy Knight_: a description of the ardors of
a saint for the Virgin.
_The Shop of the Spiritual Apothecary_; or a collection of passages from
the fathers.
_The Sixpennyworth of Divine Spirit._
_The Snuffers of Divine Love._
_The Sound of the Trumpet_: a work on the day of judgment.
_The Spiritual Mustard Pot, to make the Soul Sneeze with Devotion._
_The Three Daughters of Job_: a treatise on patience, fortitude, and
pain.
_Tobacco battered, and the Pipes shattered about their Ears that idly
idolize so loathsome a Vanity, by a Volley of holy shot thundered from
Mount Helicon_: a poem against the use of tobacco, by Joshua Sylvester.
_Vox Cœlis; or, Newes from Heaven: being imaginary conversations there
between Henry VIII., Edward VI., Prince Henrie, and others._
THE MOST CURIOUS BOOK IN THE WORLD.
The most singular bibliographic curiosity is that which belonged to the
family of the Prince de Ligne, and is now in France. It is entitled
_Liber Passionis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, cum Characteribus Nulla
Materia Compositis_. This book is neither written nor printed! The whole
letters of the text are cut out of each folio upon the finest vellum;
and, being interleaved with blue paper, it is read as easily as the best
print. The labor and patience bestowed in its completion must have been
excessive, especially when the precision and minuteness of the letters
are considered. The general execution, in every respect, is indeed
admirable; and the vellum is of the most delicate and costly kind.
Rodolphus II. of Germany offered for it, in 1640, eleven thousand
ducats, which was probably equal to sixty thousand at this day. The most
remarkable circumstance connected with this literary treasure is, that
it bears the royal arms of England, but it cannot be traced to have ever
been in that country.
SILVER BOOK.
In the Library of Upsal, in Sweden, there is preserved a translation of
the Four Gospels, printed with metal types upon violet-colored vellum.
The letters are silver, and hence it has received the name of _Codex
Argenteus_. The initial letters are in gold. It is supposed that the
whole was printed in the same manner as bookbinders letter the titles of
books on the back. It was a very near approach to the discovery of the
art of printing; but it is not known how old it is.
BOOK AMATEURS.
It was the Abbé Rive, librarian to the Duke de la Vallière, who made the
following classification:—
A _Bibliognoste_ is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in
editions; when and where printed; the presses whence issued; and all the
minutiæ of a book.
A _Bibliographe_ is a describer of books and other literary
arrangements.
A _Bibliomane_ is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster
than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy.
A _Bibliophile_, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who
appears to read them for his own pleasure.
A _Bibliotaphe_ buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing
them in glass cases.
Literariana.
THE LETTERS OF JUNIUS.
“Junius” was the name or signature of a writer who published, at
intervals between 1769 and 1772, a series of political papers on the
leading questions and men of that day. They appeared in the newspaper
called the _Public Advertiser_, and attracted immense attention, partly
from the high position of the characters assailed, (among whom was
George III. himself,) and still more from their brilliancy of style,
their boldness of tone, and the tremendous severity of the invectives
employed in them. The letters are still models of that species of
writing,—though it has since risen to such a point of excellence
generally as would greatly weaken the force of any similar phenomena if
appearing in our day. However, from the monarch to the meanest of his
subjects, all men were impressed deeply at the time by the letters of
Junius, the mystery attending their authorship adding largely to their
influence. It was a mystery at the moment, and remains a puzzle still.
Not even the publisher, Woodfall, knew who his correspondent was, or, at
least, not certainly. Yet all the world felt the letters to be the work
of no common man. Their most remarkable feature, indeed, was the
intimate familiarity with high people and official life which they so
clearly evinced. “A traitor in the camp!” was the cry of the leading
statesmen of the period. Hence it occurred that almost every person of
talent and eminence then living fell, or has since fallen, more or less
under the suspicion of being Junius. But his own words to Woodfall have
as yet proved true:—“It is not in the nature of things that you or
anybody else should know me, unless I make myself known.” He adds that
he never will do so. “I am the sole depository of my secret, and it
shall die with me.” If it has not died with him, he at least has gone to
the grave without its divulgement by himself. But there may still be
circumstantial evidence sufficient to betray him, in despite of all his
secretive care.
In Rush’s _Residence at the Court of London_ is preserved an anecdote
relating to the authorship of Junius, of interest and apparent
importance to the investigators of this vexed question. It is as
follows:—
Mr. Canning related an anecdote pertinent to the topic, derived from the
present king when Prince of Wales. It was to the following effect. The
late king was in the habit of going to the theatre once a week at the
time Junius’s Letters were appearing, and had a page in his service of
the name of Ramus. This page always brought the play-bill in to the king
at teatime, on the evenings when he went. On the evening before Sir
Philip Francis sailed for India, Ramus handed to the king, at the same
time when delivering the play-bill, a note from Garrick to Ramus, in
which the former stated that there would be no more letters from Junius.
This was found to be the very night on which Junius addressed his
laconic note to Garrick, threatening him with vengeance. Sir Philip did
embark for India next morning, and in point of fact the letters ceased
to appear from that very day. The anecdote added that there lived with
Sir Philip at the time a relation of Ramus, who sailed in the morning
with him. The whole narrative excited much attention, and was new to
most of the company. The first impression it made was, not only that it
went far towards showing, by proof almost direct, that Sir Philip
Francis was the author, but that Garrick must have been in the secret.
The _Bengal Hurkaru_, a Calcutta paper, dated Feb. 19, 1855, contains
the following paragraph, which is the more interesting when taken in
conjunction with several facts connected with Francis’s residence there,
as a member of the council, for several years (1774–80).
“The _Englishman_ (a military newspaper published in Calcutta) states
that there is a gentleman in Calcutta who possesses ‘an original
document, the publication of which would forever set at rest the _vexata
quæstio_ as to the authorship of the _Letters of Junius_.’ The document
which we have seen is what our cotemporary describes it to be, and bears
three signatures: that of ‘Chatham,’ on the right-hand side of the
paper; and on the left, those of Dr. Wilmot, and J. Dunning, afterwards
Lord Ashburton. The paper, the ink, and the writing all induce us to
believe that the document is genuine; and we understand that the
gentleman in whose possession it is has other documentary evidence
corroborative of this, which still further tends to clear up the riddle
which so many have attempted to read with small success.”
The incident related by Mr. Canning acquires additional value and
significance when considered in connection with the evidence in favor of
Francis, so concisely drawn up by Macaulay in his Essay on the
impeachment of Warren Hastings. After an introductory allusion to the
disputed authorship, Macaulay goes on to say:—
The external evidence is, we think, such as would support a verdict in a
civil, nay, in a criminal, proceeding. The handwriting of Junius is the
very peculiar handwriting of Francis, slightly disguised. As to the
position, pursuits, and connections of Junius, the following are the
most important facts which can be considered as clearly proved: first,
that he was acquainted with the technical forms of the Secretary of
State’s office; secondly, that he was intimately acquainted with the
business of the War Office; thirdly, that he, during the year 1770,
attended debates in the House of Lords, and took notes of speeches,
particularly of the speeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly, that he bitterly
resented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of Deputy Secretary
at War; fifthly, that he was bound by some strong tie to the first Lord
Holland. Now, Francis passed some years in the Secretary of State’s
office. He was subsequently chief clerk of the War Office. He repeatedly
mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches of Lord Chatham;
and some of those speeches were actually printed from his notes. He
resigned his clerkship at the War Office from resentment at the
appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Holland that he was first
introduced into the public service. Now, here are five marks, all of
which ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis.
We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other
person whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, there is
an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.
The internal evidence seems to us to point the same way. The style of
Francis bears a strong resemblance to that of Junius; nor are we
disposed to admit, what is generally taken for granted, that the
acknowledged compositions of Francis are very decidedly inferior to the
anonymous letters. The argument from inferiority, at all events, is one
which may be urged with at least equal force against every claimant that
has ever been mentioned, with the single exception of Burke, who
certainly was not Junius. And what conclusion, after all, can be drawn
from mere inferiority? Every writer must produce his best work; and the
interval between his best and his second-best work may be very wide
indeed. Nobody will say that the best letters of Junius are more
decidedly superior to the acknowledged works of Francis than three or
four of Corneille’s tragedies to the rest; than three or four of Ben
Jonson’s comedies to the rest; than the Pilgrim’s Progress to the other
works of Bunyan; than Don Quixote to the other works of Cervantes. Nay,
it is certain that the Man in the Mask, whoever he may have been, was a
most unequal writer. To go no further than the letters which bear the
signature of Junius,—the letter to the king and the letters to Horne
Tooke have little in common except the asperity; and asperity was an
ingredient seldom wanting either in the writings or in the speeches of
Francis.
Indeed, one of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis was
Junius is the moral resemblance between the two men. It is not difficult
from the letters which, under various signatures, are known to have been
written by Junius, and from his dealings with Woodfall and others, to
form a tolerably correct notion of his character. He was clearly a man
not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity,—a man whose vices were
not of a sordid kind. But he must also have been a man in the highest
degree arrogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence, and prone to
the error of mistaking his malevolence for public virtue. “Doest thou
well to be angry?” was the question asked in old time of the Hebrew
prophet. And he answered, “I do well.” This was evidently the temper of
Junius; and to this cause we attribute the savage cruelty which
disgraces several of his letters. No man is so merciless as he who,
under a strong self-delusion, confounds his antipathies with his duties.
It may be added, that Junius, though allied with the democratic party by
common enmities, was the very opposite of a democratic politician. While
attacking individuals with a ferocity which perpetually violated all the
laws of literary warfare, he regarded the most defective parts of old
institutions with a respect amounting to pedantry, pleaded the cause of
Old Sarum with fervor, and contemptuously told the capitalists of
Manchester and Leeds that, if they wanted votes, they might buy land and
become freeholders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All this, we believe,
might stand, with scarcely any change, for a character of Philip
Francis.
It is not strange that the great anonymous writer should have been
willing at that time to leave the country which had been so powerfully
stirred by his eloquence. Every thing had gone against him. That party
which he clearly preferred to every other, the party of George
Grenville, had been scattered by the death of its chief, and Lord
Suffolk had led the greater part of it over to the ministerial benches.
The ferment produced by the Middlesex election had gone down. Every
faction must have been an object of aversion to Junius. His opinions on
domestic affairs separated him from the Ministry, his opinions on
colonial affairs from the Opposition. Under such circumstances, he had
thrown down his pen in misanthropic despair. His farewell letter to
Woodfall bears date January 19, 1773. In that letter he declared that he
must be an idiot to write again; that he had meant well by the cause and
the public; that both were given up; that there were not ten men who
would act steadily together on any question. “But it is all alike,” he
added, “vile and contemptible. You have never flinched, that I know of;
and I shall always rejoice to hear of your prosperity.” These were the
last words of Junius. Soon afterwards Sir Philip Francis started on his
voyage to Bengal.
One of the ablest articles in favor of Lord Chatham may be found in
Hogg’s _Instructor_, already quoted from. The writer sums up his
evidence in a masterly manner, and almost conclusively, were it not that
he still leaves, like others who have preceded him, a large space for an
entering wedge. Nay, more: he even divides the palm, and, though he
gives the great William Pitt the chief glory, he intimates that Francis
not only wrote some of the epistles, but originated “the idea of so
operating on the public mind.” He says in his closing remarks, in answer
to the question, “Had Sir Philip Francis no share in the Junian
Letters?” “He certainly was privy, we imagine, to the _whole business_,
and, indeed, very probably wrote some of the earlier and less important
epistles. He had been private secretary to Chatham at one time, and was
his friend, or rather idolizing follower, through life. But he was not
Junius. He may even have begun the epistolary series, and may deserve
the credit, perhaps, of having suggested the idea of so operating on the
public mind. But still he was not _Nominis Umbra_ himself. In answering
the queries of Lord Campbell, Lady Francis, while owning that Sir Philip
never called himself Junius to her, assumes nevertheless that he was
that mystic being, but adds that after he had begun the letters a ‘new
and powerful ally’ came to his assistance. The whole mystery is here
laid bare. Lord Chatham is clearly the ally meant; and the testimony of
Lady Francis, therefore, founded on the revelations of her husband, may
be held as fully establishing our present hypothesis.”
Yet Francis and Chatham both “died and left no sign:” the question is
therefore still open to discussion, and, as a late writer has remarked,
it is not a mere question of curiosity. He recommends it to the study of
every barrister who wishes to make himself acquainted with the _Theory
of Evidence_. There is scarcely a claim that has been put forward as
yet, which he will not find worthy of his attention, especially when he
considers the _remarkable coincidences_ which have generally been the
occasion of their being brought forward. He adds that he has during the
last thirty years successively admitted the claims of five or six of the
candidates, but that now he does not believe in one of them.
GRAY’S ELEGY.
Never the verse approve and hold as good
Till many a day and many a blot has wrought
The polished work, and chastened every thought
By tenfold labor to perfection brought.—§Horace.§
The original MS. of this immortal poem was lately sold at auction in
London. At a former sale (1845) it was purchased, together with the
“Odes,” by a Mr. Penn. He gave $500 for the Elegy alone. He was proud,
says the _London Athenæum_, of his purchase,—so proud, indeed, that
binders were employed to inlay them on fine paper, bind them up in
volumes of richly-tooled olive morocco with silk linings, and finally
enclose each volume in a case of plain purple morocco. The order was
carefully carried out, and the volumes were deposited at Stoke Pogis, in
the great house adjoining the grave of Gray. The MS. of the Elegy is
full of verbal alterations: it is the only copy known to exist, and is
evidently Gray’s first grouping together of the stanzas as a whole. As
the Elegy is known and admired by almost every one conversant with the
English language, we select some of the verses, to show the alterations
made by the author. The established text is printed in Roman type, the
MS. readings as originally written, in Italics:—
Of such as wandering near her secret bower
_stray too_
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep
_village_
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
_Forever sleep; the breezy call of_
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn
_Or Chanticleer so shrill_,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share
_coming_
_doubtful_
Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
_homely_
Their homely joys
_rustic_
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault
_Forgive, ye proud, th’ involuntary fault_
Can honor’s voice provoke the silent dust
_awake_
Chill penury repress’d their noble rage
_had damp’d_
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
_Tully_
Some Cromwell
_Cæsar_
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined
_struggling_
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way
_silent_
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires
_And buried ashes glow with social_
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
_With hasty footsteps brush_
There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech
_Oft_ _hoary_
_spreading_
Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn
_With gestures quaint_
Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove
_fond conceits, he wont to_
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree
_By the heath side_
The next, with dirges due, in sad array
_meet_
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn
_Wrote_ _that_
_Carved_
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere
_heart_
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
_Nor seek to draw them_
There they alike in trembling hope repose
_His frailties there_
In the original manuscript copy, after the eighteenth stanza, are the
four following verses, which were evidently intended to complete the
poem, but the idea of the hoary-headed swain occurring to the author, he
rejected them:—
The thoughtless world to majesty may bow,
Exalt the brave and idolize success;
But more to innocence their safety owe,
Than power or genius ere conspired to bless.
And thou who, mindful of the unhonored dead,
Dost in these notes their artless tale relate;
By night and lonely contemplation led
To wander in the gloomy walks of fate:
Hark! how the sacred calm that breathes around
Bids every fierce, tumultuous passion cease,
In still, small accents breathing from the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal peace.
No more with reason and thyself at strife,
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room;
But through the cool sequestered vale of life
Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom.
After the twenty-fifth stanza was the following:—
Him have we seen the greenwood side along,
While o’er the heath we hied, our labor done,
Oft as the woodlark piped her farewell song,
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun.
Preceding the epitaph was the following beautiful allusion to the rustic
tomb of the village scholar:—
There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.
Gray began the composition of this exquisite poem in 1742; but so
carefully did he proceed, that it remained on his hands for seven years.
It is believed to have been mostly written within the precincts of the
church at Granchester, about two miles from Cambridge; and the curfew in
the poet’s mind was accordingly the great bell of St. Mary’s, tolled
regularly every evening at nine o’clock in Gray’s time and since.
As a piece of finished composition, possessing all the elements of true
poetry, in conception, in illustration, in the mechanical structure of
the verse, in the simplicity of the style, in the touching nature of the
ideas, the Elegy won from the outset a fame which, as a century of time
has but served to make it more certain and more illustrious, is likely
to last as long as mankind have the feelings of mortality.
As illustrations of the popularity of this poem, we may cite two
historical incidents that will be interesting and acceptable to the
reader.
On the night of September 13, 1759,—the night before the capture of
Quebec by the English,—as the boats were floating down the river to the
appointed landing, under cover of the night, and in the stillness of a
silence constrained on pain of death, Gen. Wolfe, just arisen from a bed
of sickness, harassed with the anxieties of a protracted yet fruitless
campaign, and his mind filled with the present hazard, slowly and softly
repeated its soothing lines; and he added to the officers around him,
“Now, gentlemen, I would prefer being the author of that poem to the
glory of beating the French to-morrow.”
On the night of October 23, 1852,—the night before Daniel Webster’s
death,—the great statesman, having already been informed by his medical
attendant that nothing further could be done, except to render his last
hours more quiet, said, somewhat indistinctly, the words, “Poetry,
poetry,—Gray, Gray!” His son repeated the opening line of the Elegy, and
Mr. Webster said, “That is it! that is it!” The volume was brought, and
several stanzas of the poem were read to him, which gave him evident
pleasure.
Among the many who have sought notoriety by pinning themselves to the
skirts of Gray is a Mr. Edwards, author of _The Canons of Criticism_.
This gentleman, though a bachelor, was more attentive to the fair sex
than the pindaric Elegist, and, thinking there was a defect in the
immortal poem that should be supplied, wrote the following creditable
stanzas, which remind one of _Maud Muller_, to be introduced immediately
after “some Cromwell guiltless,” &c.
Some lovely fair, whose unaffected charms
Shone forth, attraction in herself unknown,
Whose beauty might have blest a monarch’s arms,
And virtue cast a lustre on a throne.
That humble beauty warmed an honest heart
And cheered the labors of a faithful spouse;
That virtue formed for every decent part
The healthful offspring that adorned their house.
The following beautiful imitation, by an American poet, is the best that
has ever been offered to supply another remarkable deficiency,—the
absence of such reflections on the sublime truths and inspiring hopes of
Christianity as the scene would naturally awaken in a pious mind. With
the exception of two or three somewhat equivocal expressions, Gray says
scarcely a word which might not have been said by any one who believed
that death is an eternal sleep, and who was disposed to regard the
humble tenants of those tombs as indeed “each in his narrow cell
_forever_ laid.” A supplement according so well with the Elegy, both in
elevation of sentiment and force of diction, as the following, might
appropriately have followed the stanza,—
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.”
No airy dreams their simple fancies fired,
No thirst for wealth, nor panting after fame;
But truth divine sublimer hopes inspired,
And urged them onward to a nobler aim.
From every cottage, with the day, arose
The hallowed voice of spirit-breathing prayer;
And artless anthems, at its peaceful close,
Like holy incense, charmed the evening air.
Though they, each tome of human lore unknown,
The brilliant path of science never trod,
The sacred volume claimed their hearts alone,
Which taught the way to glory and to God.
Here they from truth’s eternal fountain drew
The pure and gladdening waters, day by day;
Learned, since our days are evil, fleet, and few,
To walk in Wisdom’s bright and peaceful way.
In yon lone pile o’er which hath sternly passed
The heavy hand of all-destroying Time,
Through whose low mouldering aisles now sigh the blest,
And round whose altars grass and ivy climb,
They gladly thronged, their grateful hymns to raise,
Oft as the calm and holy Sabbath shone;
The mingled tribute of their prayers and praise
In sweet communion rose before the throne.
Here, from those honored lips which sacred fire
From Heaven’s high chancery hath touched, they hear
Truths which their zeal inflame, their hopes inspire,
Give wings to faith, and check affliction’s tear.
When life flowed by, and, like an angel, Death
Came to release them to the world on high,
Praise trembled still on each expiring breath,
And holy triumph beamed from every eye.
Then gentle hands their “dust to dust” consign;
With quiet tears, the simple rites are said,
And here they sleep, till at the trump divine
The earth and ocean render up their dead.
SCENE FROM THE PARTING INTERVIEW OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.
From the manuscript of Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad we select a
passage, with its alterations and emendations, characteristic, like
those of the foregoing, of the taste and precision of the author. It is
interesting to note the variety of epithets, the imperfect idea, the
gradual embellishment, and the critical erasures. But in their
contemplation, rather than say, with Waller,—
Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly blot,
we should feel with Dr. Johnson, who remarked, upon examining the MSS.
of Milton, that “such relics show how excellence is acquired: what we
hope ever to do with ease we must learn first to do with diligence.”
Johnson himself employed the _limæ laborem_ on _The Rambler_ to an
extent almost incredible, and, according to Boswell, unknown in the
annals of literature.
Dr. Nash remarks that it is more difficult, and requires a greater
mastery of art, in painting to foreshorten a figure exactly than to draw
three at their just length; so it is more difficult in writing, to
express any thing naturally and briefly than to enlarge and dilate.
And therefore a judicious author’s blots
Are more ingenious than his first free thoughts.
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy
_Extends his eager arms to embrace his boy_,
lovely
Stretched his fond arms to seize the _beauteous_ boy;
babe
The _boy_ clung crying to his nurse’s breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest.
each _kind_
With silent pleasure _the_ fond parent smiled,
And Hector hasted to relieve his child.
The glittering terrors unbound,
_His radiant helmet_ from his brows _unbraced_,
on the ground he
_And on the ground the glittering terror placed_,
beamy
And placed the _radiant_ helmet on the ground;
_Then seized the boy, and raising him in air_,
lifting
Then, _fondling_ in his arms his infant heir,
_dancing_
Thus to the gods addressed a father’s prayer:
glory fills
O thou, whose _thunder shakes_ th’ ethereal throne,
deathless
And all ye _other_ powers, protect my son!
_Like mine, this war, blooming youth with every virtue bless!_
_grace_
_The shield and glory of the Trojan race;
Like mine, his valor and his just renown,
Like mine, his labors to defend the crown._
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
the Trojans,
To guard _my country_, to defend the crown;
_In arms like me, his country’s war to wage_,
Against his country’s foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
successful
So when, triumphant from _the glorious_ toils,
Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may
_All Troy shall_ hail him, with deserved acclaim,
own the son
And _cry, This chief_ transcends his father’s fame;
While, pleased, amidst the general shouts of Troy,
His mother’s conscious heart o’erflows with joy.
fondly on her
He said, and, gazing _o’er his consort’s charms_,
Restored his infant to her longing arms:
on
Soft _in_ her fragrant breast the babe she laid,
_Pressed to her heart_, and with a smile surveyed;
to repose
Hushed _him to rest_, and with a smile surveyed;
_passion_
But soon the troubled pleasure _mixed with rising fears_
dashed with fear,
The tender pleasure soon chastised by fear,
She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
In the established text will be found still further variations. These
are marked below in Italics:—
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy
Stretched his fond arms to _clasp_ the lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse’s breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest.
With _secret_ pleasure each fond parent smiled,
And Hector hasted to relieve his child.
The glittering terrors from his brows unbound,
And placed the _beaming_ helmet on the ground;
_Then kissed the child_, and lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods _preferred_ a father’s prayer:—
O thou, whose glory fills th’ ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers, protect my son!
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown;
Against his country’s foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
So when, triumphant from successful toils,
Of heroes slain, he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may hail him, with deserved acclaim,
And _say, This chief_ transcends his father’s fame;
While, pleased, amidst the general shouts of Troy,
His mother’s conscious heart o’erflows with joy.
He _spoke_, and, fondly gazing on her charms,
Restored _the pleasing burden to her arms_:
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid,
Hushed to repose, and with a smile surveyed.
The _troubled pleasure_ soon chastised by fear,
She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
POPE’S VERSIFICATION.
The mechanical structure of Pope’s verses may be shown by omitting
dissyllabic qualifying words, which are comparatively unimportant, and
converting a ten-syllable into an eight-syllable metre, as in the
following examples. First read the full text as in the original, and
then read with the words in brackets omitted:—
Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the [direful] spring
Of woes unnumbered, [Heavenly] Goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurled to Pluto’s [gloomy] reign
The souls of [mighty] chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs unburied on the [naked] shore,
Devouring dogs and [hungry] vultures tore—
Now turn from the _Iliad_ to the _Rape of the Lock_:—
And now [unveiled] the toilet stands displayed,
Each silver vase in [mystic] order laid.
A [heavenly] image in the glass appears,
To that she bends, [to that] her eyes she rears;
The [inferior] priestess at her altar’s side,
[Trembling] begins the sacred rights of pride.
Unnumbered treasures ope [at once], and here
The [varied] offerings of the world appear.
From each she nicely culls with [curious] toil,
And decks the goddess with the [glittering] spoil.
IMPORTANCE OF PUNCTUATION.
The following passage occurs in Marlowe’s _Edward II._:—
_Mortimer Jun._—This letter written by a friend of ours,
Contains his death, yet bids them save his life.
_Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est._
Fear not to kill the king, ’tis good he die.
But read it thus, and that’s another sense:
_Edwardum occidere nolite, timere bonum est._
Kill not the king, ’tis good to fear the worst.
Unpointed as it is, thus shall it go, &c.
Mr. Collier appends the following note:—
Sir J. Harington has an Epigram [L. i., E. 33] “Of writing with double
pointing,” which is thus introduced:—“It is said that King Edward, of
Carnarvon, lying at Berkely Castle, prisoner, a cardinal wrote to his
keeper, _Edwardum occidere noli, timere bonum est_, which being read
with the point at _timere_, it cost the king his life.”
The French have a proverb, _Faute d’un point Martin perdit son ane_,
(through want of a point [or stop] Martin lost his ass,) equivalent to
the English saying, _A miss is as good as a mile_. This proverb
originated from the following circumstance:—A priest named Martin, being
appointed abbot of a religious house called Asello, directed this
inscription to be placed over his gate:—
§Porta patens esto, nulli claudatur honesto.§
(Gate, be thou open,—to no honest man be shut.)
But the ignorant painter, by placing the stop after the word _nulli_,
entirely altered the sense of the verse, which then stood thus:—
Gate, be open to none;—be shut against every honest man.
The Pope being informed of this uncharitable inscription, took up the
matter in a very serious light, and deposed the abbot. His successor was
careful to correct the punctuation of the verse, to which the following
line was added:—
Pro solo puncto caruit Martinus Asello.
(For a single stop Martin lost Asello.)
The word Asello having an equivocal sense, signifying an ass as well as
the name of the abbey, its former signification has been adopted in the
proverb.
A nice point has recently occupied the attention of the French courts of
law. Mons. de M. died on the 27th of February, leaving a will, entirely
in his own handwriting, which he concludes thus:—
“And to testify my affection for my nephews Charles and Henri de M., I
bequeath to each _d’eux_ [i.e. _of them_] [or _deux_, i.e. _two_]
hundred thousand francs.”
The paper was folded before the ink was dry, and the writing is blotted
in many places. The legatees assert that the apostrophe is one of those
blots; but the son and heir-at-law maintains, on the contrary, that the
apostrophe is intentional. This apostrophe is worth to him two hundred
thousand francs; and the difficulty is increased by the fact that there
is nothing in the context that affords any clew to the real intention of
the testator.
Properly punctuated, the following nonsense becomes sensible rhyme, and
is doubtless as true as it is curious, though as it now stands it is
very curious if true:—
I saw a pigeon making bread;
I saw a girl composed of thread;
I saw a towel one mile square;
I saw a meadow in the air;
I saw a rocket walk a mile;
I saw a pony make a file;
I saw a blacksmith in a box;
I saw an orange kill an ox;
I saw a butcher made of _steel_;
I saw a penknife dance a reel;
I saw a sailor twelve feet high;
I saw a ladder in a pie;
I saw an apple fly away;
I saw a sparrow making hay;
I saw a farmer like a dog;
I saw a puppy mixing grog;
I saw three men who saw these too,
And will confirm what I tell you.
The following is a good example of the unintelligible, produced by the
want of pauses in their right places:—
Every lady in this land
Hath twenty nails upon each hand;
Five and twenty on hands and feet,
And this is true without deceit.
Punctuated thus, the true meaning will at once appear:—
Every lady in this land
Hath twenty nails: upon each hand
Five; and twenty on hands and feet;
And this is true without deceit.
The wife of a mariner about to sail on a distant voyage sent a note to
the clergyman of the parish, expressing the following meaning:—
A husband going to sea, his wife desires the prayers of the
congregation.
Unfortunately, the good matron was not skilled in punctuation, nor had
the minister quick vision. He read the note as it was written:—
A husband going to see his wife, desires the prayers of the
congregation.
* * * * *
Horace Smith, speaking of the ancient Oracles, says, “If the presiding
deities had not been shrewd punsters, or able to inspire the Pythoness
with ready equivoques, the whole establishment must speedily have been
declared bankrupt. Sometimes they only dabbled in accentuation, and
accomplished their prophecies by the transposition of a stop, as in the
well-known answer to a soldier inquiring his fate in the war for which
he was about to embark. §Ibis, redibis. Nunquam in bello peribis.§ (You
will go, you will return. Never in war will you perish.) The warrior set
off in high spirits upon the faith of this prediction, and fell in the
first engagement, when his widow had the satisfaction of being informed
that he should have put the full stop after the word _nunquam_, which
would probably have put a _full stop_ to his enterprise and saved his
life.”
INDIAN HERALDRY.
A sanguine Frenchman had so high an opinion of the pleasure to be
enjoyed in the study of heraldry, that he used to lament, as we are
informed by Menage, the hard case of our forefather Adam, who could not
possibly amuse himself by investigating that science or that of
genealogy.
A similar instance of egregious preference for a favorite study occurs
in a curious work on Heraldry, published in London, in 1682, the author
of which adduces, as an argument of the science of heraldry being
founded on the universal propensities of human nature, the fact of
having seen some American Indians with their skins tattooed in stripes
parallel and crossed (barries). The book bears the following
title:—_Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam. Authore Johanne Gibbono
Armorumservulo quem a mantilio dicunt Cæruleo._ The singular and amusing
extract appended is copied from page 156:—
The book entitled _Jews in America_ tells you that the sachem and chief
princes of the Nunkyganses, in New England, submitted to King Charles
I., subscribing their names, and setting their seals, which were a §BOW
BENT§, §CHARGED WITH AN ARROW§, §a T reversed§, §A TOMAHAWK OR HATCHET
ERECTED§, such a one borne §BARRYWISE§, edge downward, and a §FAWN§. A
great part of Anno 1659, till February the year following, I lived in
Virginia, being most hospitably entertained by the honorable Col. R.
Lee, sometime secretary of state there, and who after the king’s
martyrdom hired a Dutch vessel, freighted her himself, and went to
Brussels, surrendered up Sir William Barclaie’s old commission (for the
government of that Province), and received a new one from his present
majesty (a loyal action, and deserving my commemoration): neither will I
omit his arms, being §Gul. a Fes. chequy, or, Bl between eight billets
Arg.§ being descended from the Lees of Shropshire, who sometimes bore
eight _billets_, sometimes ten, and sometimes the _Fesse Contercompone_
(as I have seen by our office-records). I will blason it thus: _In
Clypeo rutilo; Fasciam pluribus quadratis auri et cyani, alternis
æquisque spaciis_ (_ducter triplici positis_) _confectam et inter octo
Plinthides argenteas collocatam_. I say, while I lived in Virginia, I
saw once a war-dance acted by the natives. The dancers were painted some
§party per pale Gul. et sab.§ from forehead to foot (some §PARTY PER
FESSE§, of the same colors), and carried little ill-made shields of
bark, also painted of those colors (for I saw no other), some §PARTY PER
FESSE§, some §PER PALE§ (and some §BARRY§), at which I exceedingly
wondered, and concluded that heraldry was engrafted naturally into the
sense of the human race. If so, it deserves a greater esteem than is
now-a-days put upon it.
THE ANACHRONISMS OF SHAKSPEARE.
Poets, in the proper exercise of their art, may claim greater license of
invention and speech, and far greater liberty of illustration and
embellishment, than is allowed to the sober writer of history; but
historical truth or chronological accuracy should not be entirely
sacrificed to dramatic effect, especially when the poem is founded upon
history, or designed generally to represent historical truth. In the
matchless works of Shakspeare we look instinctively for exactness in the
details of time, place, and circumstance; and it is therefore with no
little surprise that we find he has misplaced, in such instances as the
following, the chronological order of events, of the true state of which
it can hardly be supposed he was ignorant.
In the play of _Coriolanus_, Titus Lartius is made to say, addressing C.
Marcius,—
Thou wast a soldier even to _Cato’s_ wish.
It is a little curious how Marcius could have been a soldier to “Cato’s
wish,” for Marcius, surnamed Coriolanus, was banished from Rome and died
more than two hundred years before Cato’s eyes first saw the light. In
the same play Menenius says of Marcius, “He sits in his state as a thing
made for Alexander,” or like Alexander. The anachronism made in this
case is almost as bad as that just given, for Coriolanus was banished
from Rome and died not far from §B.C.§ 490, and Alexander was not born
until almost one hundred and fifty years after. And the poet in the same
play makes still another error in the words which he puts in the mouth
of Menenius:—“The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but
empiricutic.” Now, as the renowned “father of medicine” was not born
until §A.D.§ 130, of which fact it seems hardly probable that Shakspeare
could have been ignorant, he has overleaped more than six hundred years
to introduce Galen to his readers.
In the tragedy of _Julius Cæsar_ occurs a historical inaccuracy which
cannot be excused on the ground of dramatic effect. It must be imputed
to downright carelessness. It is in the following lines:—
_Brutus._ Peace! count the clock.
_Cassius._ The clock has stricken three.
Cassius and Brutus both must have been endowed with the vision of a
prophet, for the first striking clock was not introduced into Europe
until more than eight hundred years after they had been laid in their
graves. And in the tragedy of _King Lear_ there is an inaccuracy, in
regard to spectacles, as great as that in _Julius Cæsar_ respecting
clocks. King Lear was king of Britain in the early Anglo-Saxon period of
English history; yet Gloster, commanding his son to show him a letter
which he holds in his hands, says, “Come, let’s see: if it be nothing, I
shall not want spectacles.” It is generally admitted that spectacles
were not worn in Europe until the end of the thirteenth or the
commencement of the fourteenth century.
Shakspeare also anticipates in at least two plays, and by many years,
the important event of the first use of cannon in battle or siege. In
his great tragedy of _Macbeth_, he speaks of cannon “overcharged with
double cracks;” and _King John_ says,—
Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France,
For ere thou canst report, I will be there;
The thunder of my cannon shall be heard.
Cannon, it will be recollected, were first used at Cressy, in 1346,
whereas Macbeth was killed in 1054, and John did not begin to reign
until 1199. In the _Comedy of Errors_, the scene of which is laid in the
ancient city of Ephesus, mention is made of modern denominations of
money, as guilders and ducats; also of a striking clock, and a nunnery.
SHAKSPEARE’S HEROINES.
Ruskin says:—Shakspeare has no heroes—he has only heroines. There is not
one entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of
Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage, and the
still slighter Valentine in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_. In his
labored and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello would have been one,
if his simplicity had not been so great as to leave him the prey of
every base practice around him; but he is the only example even
approximating the heroic type. Hamlet is indolent and drowsily
speculative; Romeo an impatient boy. Whereas there is hardly a play that
has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope and errorless
purpose. Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogene, Queen
Katherine, Perdita, Silvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and
perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless.
SHAKSPEARE AND TYPOGRAPHY.
The great Caxton authority in England—Mr. William Blades—has turned his
attention to Shakspeare, and applies his knowledge as a practical
printer to the poet’s works, in order to see what acquaintance they show
with the compositor’s art. The result is strikingly set forth in a
volume entitled “_Shakspeare and Typography_.” Many instances of the use
of technical terms by Shakspeare are cited by Mr. Blades, such as the
following:—
1. “Come we to _full points_ here? And are _et ceteras_ nothing?—_2
Henry IV._, ii. 4.”
2. “If a book is folio, and two pages of type have been composed, they
are placed in proper position upon the imposing stone, and enclosed
within an iron or steel frame, called a ‘chase,’ small wedges of hard
wood, termed ‘coigns’ or ‘quoins,’ being driven in at opposite sides
to make all tight.
By the four opposing _coigns_
Which the world together joins.—Pericles, iii. 1.
This is just the description of a form in folio, where two quoins on one
side are always opposite to two quoins on the other, thus together
joining and tightening all the separate stamps.”
SHAKSPEARE’S SONNETS.
Schlegel says that sufficient use has not been made of Shakspeare’s
Sonnets as important materials for his biography. Let us see to what
conclusions they may lead us. In Sonnet §XXXVII.§, for example, he
says:—
As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, _made lame_ by fortune’s dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
And again, in Sonnet §LXXXIX.§,—
Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
And I will comment upon that offence;
Speak of my _lameness_, and I straight will halt,
Against thy reasons making no defence.
Was Shakspeare lame? “A question to be asked;” and there is nothing in
the inquiry repugnant to poetic justice, for he has made Julius Cæsar
deaf in his left ear. Where did he get his authority?
HAMLET’S AGE.
Shakspeare’s Hamlet was thirty years old, as is indicated by the text in
Act. V. Sc. 1:—
§Ham.§ How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
§1 Clo.§ Of all the days i’ the year, I came to’t that day that our
last King Hamlet o’ercame Fortinbras.
§Ham.§ How long is that since?
§1 Clo.§ Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that: it was the
very day that young Hamlet was born: he that is mad and sent into
England.
* * * * *
§Ham.§ Upon what ground?
§1 Clo.§ Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy
thirty years.
HAMLET’S INSANITY.
It is strange that there should be any doubts whether Hamlet was really
or feignedly insane. His assertion to the Queen, after putting off his
assumed tricks (iii. 4.),
That I essentially am not in madness,
_But mad in craft_,
is surely admissible testimony. But he gives us other evidence based
upon the difficulty of _recalling a train of thought_, an invariable
accompaniment of insanity, inasmuch as it is an act in which both brains
are concerned. He says,—
Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from.
There are no instances of insanity on record, however slight and
uncognizable by any but an experienced medical man, where the patient,
after relating a short history of his complaints, physical, moral, and
social, could, on being requested to reiterate the narrative, follow the
same series, and repeat the same words, even with the limited
correctness of a sane person.[37]
Footnote 37:
“There was disorder in the mind—a disturbance of the intellect,
something more than that which he was feigning; but if the question of
insanity involve the question whether his mind ceased to be under the
mastery of his will, assuredly there was no such aberration.” (Reed’s
Lectures.)
Dr. Johnson goes further, declaring that Hamlet “does nothing which he
might not have done with the reputation of sanity.”
ADDITIONAL VERSES TO HOME, SWEET HOME.
In the winter of 1833, John Howard Payne, the author of _Home, Sweet
Home_, called upon an American lady, the wife of an eminent banker
living in London, and presented to her a copy of the original, set to
music, with the two following additional verses addressed to her:—
To _us_, in despite of the absence of years,
How sweet the remembrance of _home_ still appears!
From allurements abroad, which but flatter the eye,
The unsatisfied heart turns, and says, with a sigh,
Home, home, sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home!
There’s no place like home!
_Your_ exile is blest with all fate can bestow,
But _mine_ has been checkered with many a woe!
Yet, though different our fortunes, our thoughts are the same,
And both, as we think of Columbia, exclaim,
Home, home, sweet, sweet home! etc.
THE STEREOTYPED FALSITIES OF HISTORY.
Thinking to amuse my father once, after his retirement from the
ministry, I offered to read a book of history. “Any thing but
history,” said he; “for history must be false.”—_Walpoliana._
What massive volumes would the reiterated errors and falsities of
history fill, could they be collected in one grand _omniana_! Historians
in every period of the world, narrowed and biassed by surrounding
circumstances, each in his pent-up Utica confined, have lacked the
fairness and impartiality necessary to insure a full conviction of their
truthfulness. Men not only suffer their opinions and their prejudices to
mislead themselves and others, but frequently, in the absence of
material, draw upon their imaginations for _facts_. Often, too, when
sincerely desirous of presenting the truth so as to “nothing extenuate,
nor set down aught in malice,” the sources of their information are
lamentably deficient.
The discrepancies of historical writers are very remarkable. If one who
had never heard of Napoleon were to read Scott’s Life of the great
military chieftain, and then read Abbott’s work, in what a maze of
perplexity would he be involved between the disparagement of the one and
the deification of the other! If one writer asserts that the Duke of
Clarence was drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower of London, and
another derisively treats it as a “childish improbability,” and if one
expresses the belief that Richard of Gloucester exerted himself to save
Clarence, and another that he was the actual murderer, _who_, or _what_,
are we to believe?
Knowing, as we do, that modern history abounds with errors, what are we
to think of ancient history? If fraudulent and erroneous statements can
be distinctly pointed out in Hume, and Lingard, and Alison, how far can
we place any reliance upon Cæsar, and Herodotus, and Xenophon?
The monstrous absurdities and incongruities related of Xerxes, which
have descended to our day under the name of history, are too stupendous
for any credulity. The imposture, like vaulting ambition, “o’erleaps
itself.” Such extravagant demands upon our faith serve to deepen our
doubt of alleged occurrences that lie more nearly within the range of
possibility. _If it be true_ that Hannibal cut his way across the Alps
with “_fire, iron, and vinegar_,” how did he apply the vinegar?
If falsities in our American history can creep upon us whilst our eyes
are open to surrounding evidence, is it to be wondered at that there are
so many contradictions and so many myths in the history of Rome? The
very name _America_ is a deception, a fraud, and a perpetuation of as
rank injustice as ever stained the annals of human events. It is to be
hoped that the time will yet come when Columbus shall receive his due.
When that millennial day arrives which will insist on calling things by
their right names, the battle of Bunker’s Hill will be called the battle
of Breed’s Hill.
It seems incredible, and it certainly is singular, that so many errors
in our history should continue to prevail in utter defiance of what is
known to be fact. Historians, for instance, persist in saying, and
people consequently persist in believing, that the breast-works of
General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans were made of cotton-bales
covered with earth, whilst intelligent survivors strenuously deny that
there was a pound of that combustible material on the ground.[38] A
well-known painting frequently
Footnote 38:
General W. H. Palfrey, of New Orleans, who served in Major Planche’s
battalion, which was stationed from Dec. 23, 1814, to Jan. 15, 1815,
in the centre of General Jackson’s line, makes the following
statement, (dated April 5, 1859,) which is confirmed by Major Chotard,
General Jackson’s Assistant Adjutant-General:—
“About twenty or twenty-five bales of cotton were used in forming the
embrasures of five or six batteries. There were four batteries of one
piece of artillery, or howitzer, and four of two pieces, established
at different points of the lines. Four bales were used at some of the
batteries and six at others. None were used in any other portions of
the works, which consisted of breast-works formed of earth thrown up
from the inside, branches of trees, and rubbish. Each company threw up
its own breastwork; and the more it was affected by the enemy’s
artillery and Congreve rockets, the more industriously the soldiers
toiled to strengthen it.”
copied by line-engravers represents Lord Cornwallis handing his sword to
General Washington, at the surrender of Yorktown, and this in spite of
the glaring fact that, to spare Cornwallis that humiliation, General
O’Hara gave his sword to General Lincoln.
The blood shed at the battle of Lexington is commonly believed and said
to have been the _first_ drawn in the contest of the Colonists with the
oppressive authorities of the British Government. Aside from the Boston
massacre, which occurred March 5, 1770, it will be found, by reference
to the records of Orange county, North Carolina, that a body of men was
formed, called the “Regulators,” with the view of resisting the
extortion of Colonel Fanning, clerk of the court, and other officers,
who demanded illegal fees, issued false deeds, levied unauthorized
taxes, &c.; that these men went to the court-house at Hillsboro’,
appointed a schoolmaster named York as clerk, set up a mock judge, and
pronounced judgment in mock gravity and ridicule of the court, law, and
officers, by whom they felt themselves aggrieved; that soon after, the
house, barn, and out-buildings of the judge were burned to the ground;
and that Governor Tryon subsequently, with a small force, went to
suppress the Regulators, with whom an engagement took place near
Alamance Creek, on the road from Hillsboro’ to Salisbury, on the 16th of
May, 1771,—nearly four years before the affair of Lexington,—in which
nine Regulators and twenty-seven militia were killed, and many
wounded,—fourteen of the latter being killed by one man, James Pugh,
from behind a rock.
The progress of the natural and physical sciences, together with the
increased facilities of intercommunication by steam, have done much
towards disproving and exposing the fabulous stories of travelers. The
extravagant character, for example, of the assertions of Fœrsch and
Darwin in regard to the noxious emanations of the Bohun Upas is now
shown by the fact that a specimen of it growing at Chiswick, England,
may be approached with safety, and even handled, with a little
precaution. It is equally well established that the famous Poison Valley
in the island of Java affords the most remarkable natural example yet
known of an atmosphere overloaded with carbonic acid gas, to which must
be referred the destructive influence upon animal life heretofore
attributed to the Upas-tree.
CONFLICTING TESTIMONY OF EYE-WITNESSES.
Sir Walter Raleigh, in his prison, was composing the second volume of
his History of the World. Leaning on the sill of his window, he
meditated on the duties of the historian to mankind, when suddenly his
attention was attracted by a disturbance in the court-yard before his
cell. He saw one man strike another, whom he supposed by his dress to be
an officer; the latter at once drew his sword and ran the former through
the body. The wounded man felled his adversary with a stick, and then
sank upon the pavement. At this juncture the guard came up and carried
off the officer insensible, and then the corpse of the man who had been
run through.
Next day Raleigh was visited by an intimate friend, to whom he related
the circumstances of the quarrel and its issue. To his astonishment, his
friend unhesitatingly declared that the prisoner had mistaken the whole
series of incidents which had passed before his eyes. The supposed
officer was not an officer at all, but the servant of a foreign
ambassador; it was he who had dealt the first blow; he had not drawn his
sword, but the other had snatched it from his side, and had run _him_
through the body before any one could interfere; whereupon a stranger
from among the crowd knocked the murderer down with his stick, and some
of the foreigners belonging to the ambassador’s retinue carried off the
corpse. The friend of Raleigh added that government had ordered the
arrest and immediate trial of the murderer, as the man assassinated was
one of the principal servants of the Spanish ambassador.
“Excuse me,” said Raleigh, “but I cannot have been deceived as you
suppose, for I was eye-witness to the events which took place under my
own window, and the man fell there on that spot where you see a
paving-stone standing up above the rest.” “My dear Raleigh,” replied his
friend, “I was sitting on that stone when the fray took place, and I
received this slight scratch on my cheek in snatching the sword from the
murderer, and upon my word of honor, you have been deceived upon every
particular.”
Sir Walter, when alone, took up the second volume of his History, which
was in MS., and contemplating it, thought—“If I cannot believe my own
eyes, how can I be assured of the truth of a tithe of the events which
happened ages before I was born?” and he flung the manuscript into the
fire.
WIT AND HUMOR.
The distinction between wit and humor may be said to consist in
this,—that the characteristic of the latter is Nature, and of the former
Art. Wit is more allied to intellect, and humor to imagination. Humor is
a higher, finer, and more genial thing than wit. It is a combination of
the laughable with tenderness, sympathy, and warm-heartedness. Pure wit
is often ill-natured, and has a sting; but wit, sweetened by a kind,
loving expression, becomes humor. Wit is usually brief, sharp,
epigrammatic, and incisive, the fewer words the better; but humor,
consisting more in the manner, is diffuse, and words are not spared in
it. Carlyle says, “The essence of humor is sensibility, warm, tender
fellow-feeling with all forms of existence;” and adds, of Jean Paul’s
humor, that “in Richter’s smile itself a touching pathos may lie hid too
deep for tears.” Wit may be considered as the distinctive feature of the
French genius, and humor of the English; but to show how difficult it is
to carry these distinctions out fairly, we may note that England has
produced a Butler, one of the greatest of wits, and France a Molière,
one of the greatest of humorists. Fun includes all those things that
occasion laughter which are not included in the two former divisions.
Buffoonery and mimicry come under this heading, and it has been observed
that the author of a comedy is a wit, the comic actor a humorist, and
the clown a buffoon. Old jests were usually tricks, and in coarse times
we find that little distinction is made between joyousness and a
malicious delight in the misfortunes of others. Civilization
discountenances practical jokes, and refinement is required to keep
laughter within bounds. As the world grows older, fun becomes less
boisterous, and wit gains in point, so that we cannot agree with
Cornelius O’Dowd when he says, “The day of witty people is gone by. If
there be men clever enough nowadays to say smart things, they are too
clever to say them. The world we live in prefers placidity to
brilliancy, and a man like Curran in our present-day society would be as
unwelcome as a pyrotechnist with a pocket full of squibs.” This is only
a repetition of an old complaint, and its incorrectness is proved when
we find the same thing said one hundred years ago. In a manuscript
comedy, “In Foro,” by Lady Houstone, who died near the end of the last
century, one of the characters observes: “Wit is nowadays out of
fashion; people are well-bred, and talk upon a level; one does not at
present find wit but in some old comedy.” In spite of Mr. Lever and Lady
Houstone, we believe that civilized society is specially suited for the
display of refined wit. Under such conditions satire is sure to
flourish, for the pen takes the place of the sword, and we know it can
slay an enemy as surely as steel. This notion owes its origin in part to
an error in our mental perspective, by which we bring the wit of all
ages to one focus, fancying what was really far apart to have been close
together, and thus comparing things which possess no proper elements of
comparison, and placing as it were in opposition to each other the
accumulated, broad, and well-storied tapestry of the past with the
fleeting moments of our day, which are but its still accumulating
fringe. Charles Lamb will not allow any great antiquity for wit, and
apostrophizing candle-light says: “This is our peculiar and household
planet; wanting it, what savage, unsocial nights must our ancestors have
spent, wintering in eaves and unillumined fastnesses! They must have
laid about and grumbled at one another in the dark. What repartees could
have passed, when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a
neighbor’s cheek to be sure he understood it! Jokes came in with
candles.”
AN OLD PAPER.
The most amusing and remarkable paper ever printed was the _Muse
Historique_, or Rhyming Gazette of Jacques Loret, which, for fifteen
years, from 1650 to 1665, was issued weekly in Paris. It consisted of
550 verses summarizing the week’s news in rhyme, and treated of every
class of subjects, grave and gay. Loret computed, in 1663, the
thirteenth year of his enterprise, that he had written over 300,000
verses, and found more than 700 different exordiums, for he never twice
began his Gazette with the same _entère_ in _matier_. He ran about the
city for his own news, never failed to write good verses upon it, and
never had anybody to help him, and his prolonged and always equal
performance has been pronounced unique in the history of journalism.
COMFORT FOR BOOK LOVERS.
Mr. Ruskin vigorously defends the bibliomaniac, in his _Sesame and
Lilies_. We have despised literature. What do we, as a nation, care
about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries,
public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a
man spends lavishly on his library you call him mad—a bibliomaniac. But
you never call one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day
by their horses; and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by
their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents
of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would
fetch as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars? What position
would its expenditure on literature take as compared with its
expenditure on luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind as of food
for the body; now, a good book contains such food inexhaustibly—it is a
provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most
people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a
large turbot for it! Though there have been men who have pinched their
stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were
cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men’s dinners are. We
are few of us put to such trial, and more the pity; for, indeed, a
precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work
or economy; and if public libraries were half as costly as public
dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish
men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well
as in munching and sparkling; whereas the very cheapness of literature
is making even wiser people forget that if a book is worth reading it is
worth buying.
LETTERS AND THEIR ENDINGS.
There is a large gamut of choice for endings, from the official “Your
obedient servant,” and high and mighty “Your humble servant,” to the
friendly “Yours truly,” “Yours sincerely,” and “Yours affectionately.”
Some persons vary the form, and slightly intensify the expression by
placing the word “yours” last, as “Faithfully yours.” James Howell used
a great variety of endings, such as “Yours inviolably,” “Yours
entirely,” “Your entire friend,” “Yours verily and invariably,” “Yours
really,” “Yours in no vulgar way of friendship,” “Yours to dispose of,”
“Yours while J. H.,” “Yours! Yours! Yours!” Walpole writes: “Yours very
much,” “Yours most cordially,” and to Hannah More, in 1789, “Yours more
and more.” Mr. Bright, some years ago ended a controversial letter in
the following biting terms: “I am, sir, with whatever respect is due to
you.” The old Board of Commissioners of the British Navy used a form of
subscription very different from the ordinary official one. It was their
habit to subscribe their letters (even letters of reproof) to such
officers as were not of noble families or bore titles, “Your
affectionate friends.” It is said that this practice was discontinued in
consequence of a distinguished captain adding to his letter to the
Board, “Your affectionate friend.” He was thereupon desired to
discontinue the expression, when he replied, “I am, gentlemen, no longer
your affectionate friend.”
STUDIES AND BOOKS.
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief
use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in
discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of
business, for expert men can execute and perhaps judge of business one
by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of
affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time
in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation;
to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar: they
perfect nature and are perfected by experience,—for natural abilities
are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies
themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be
bounded in by experience. Crafty wise men contemn studies, simple men
admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use;
but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted,
nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books
are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and
digested; _i.e._, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be
read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly and with
diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready
man, and writing an exact man; and therefore, if a man write little, he
had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a
present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to
seem to know that he doth not.—§Lord Bacon.§
Literati.
ATTAINMENTS OF LINGUISTS.
Taking the very highest estimate which has been offered of their
attainments, the list of those who have been reputed to have possessed
more than ten languages is a very short one. Only four, in addition to a
case that will be presently mentioned,—Mithridates, Pico of Mirandola,
Jonadab Almanor, and Sir William Jones,—are said in the loosest sense to
have passed the limit of twenty. To the first two fame ascribes
twenty-two, to the last two twenty-eight, languages. Müller, Niebuhr,
Fulgence, Fresnel, and perhaps Sir John Bowring, are usually set down as
knowing twenty languages. For Elihu Burritt and Csoma de Koros their
admirers claim eighteen. Renaudot the controversialist is said to have
known seventeen; Professor Lee, sixteen; and the attainments of the
older linguists, as Arius Montanus, Martin del Rio, the converted Rabbi
Libettas Cominetus, and the Admirable Crichton, are said to have ranged
from this down to ten or twelve,—most of them the ordinary languages of
learned and polite society.
The extraordinary case above alluded to is that of the Cardinal
Mezzofanti, the son of a carpenter of Bologna, whose knowledge of
languages seems almost miraculous. Von Zach, who made an occasional
visit to Bologna in 1820, was accosted by the learned priest, as he then
was, in Hungarian, then in good Saxon, and afterwards in the Austrian
and Swabian dialects. With other members of the scientific corps the
priest conversed in English, Russian, Polish, French, and Hungarian. Von
Zach mentions that his German was so natural that a cultivated
Hanoverian lady in the company expressed her surprise that a German
should be a professor and librarian in an Italian university.
Professor Jacobs, of Gotha, was struck not only with the number of
languages acquired by the “interpreter for Babel,” but at the facility
with which he passed from one to the other, however opposite or cognate
their structure.
Dr. Tholuck heard him converse in German, Arabic, Spanish, Flemish,
English, and Swedish, received from him an original distich in Persian,
and found him studying Cornish. He heard him say that he had studied to
some extent the Quichus, or old Peruvian, and that he was employed upon
the Bimbarra. Dr. Wiseman met him on his way to receive lessons in
California Indian from natives of that country. He heard “Nigger Dutch”
from a Curaçoa mulatto, and in less than two weeks wrote a short piece
of poetry for the mulatto to recite in his rude tongue. He knew
something of Chippewa and Delaware, and learned the language of the
Algonquin Indians. A Ceylon student remembers many of the strangers with
whom Mezzofanti was in the habit of conversing in the Propaganda,—those
whose vernaculars were Peguan, Abyssinian, Amharic, Syriac, Arabico,
Maltese, Tamulic, Bulgarian, Albanian, besides others already named. His
facility in accommodating himself to each new colloquist justifies the
expression applied to him, as the “chamelion of languages.”
Dr. Russell, Mezzofanti’s biographer, adopting as his definition of a
thorough knowledge of language an ability to read it fluently and with
ease, to write it correctly, and to speak it idiomatically, sums up the
following estimate of the Cardinal’s acquisitions:—
1. Languages frequently tested and spoken by the Cardinal with rare
excellence,—thirty.
2. Stated to have been spoken fluently, but hardly sufficiently
tested,—nine.
3. Spoken rarely and less perfectly,—eleven.
4. Spoken imperfectly; a few sentences and conversational forms,—eight.
5. Studied from books, but not known to have been spoken,—fourteen.
6. Dialects spoken, or their peculiarities understood,—thirty-nine
dialects of ten languages, many of which might justly be described as
different languages.
This list adds up one hundred and eleven, exceeding by all comparison
every thing related in history. The Cardinal said he made it a rule to
learn every new grammar and apply himself to every strange dictionary
that came within his reach. He did not appear to consider his prodigious
talent so extraordinary as others did. “In addition to an excellent
memory,” said he, “God has blessed me with an incredible flexibility of
the organs of speech.” Another remark of his was, “that when one has
learned ten or a dozen languages essentially different from one another,
one may with a little study and attention learn any number of them.”
Again he remarked, “If you wish to know how I preserve these languages,
I can only say that when I once hear the meaning of a word in any
language I never forget it.”
And yet it is not claimed for this man of many words that his ideas at
all corresponded. He had twenty words for one idea, as he said of
himself; but he seemed to agree with Catharine de Medicis in preferring
to have twenty ideas for one word. He was remarkable for the number of
languages which he had made his own, but was not distinguished as a
grammarian, a lexicographer, a philologist, a philosopher, or
ethnologist, and contributed nothing to any department of the study of
words, much less that of science.
LITERARY ODDITIES.
Racine composed his verses while walking about, reciting them in a loud
voice. One day, while thus working at his play of Mithridates, in the
Tuileries gardens, a crowd of workmen gathered around him, attracted by
his gestures: they took him to be a madman about to throw himself into
the basin. On his return home from such walks he would write down scene
by scene, at first in prose, and when he had written it out, he would
exclaim, “My tragedy is done!” considering the dressing of the acts up
in verse as a very small affair. Magliabecchi, the learned librarian to
the Duke of Tuscany, on the contrary, never stirred abroad, but lived
amid books and upon books. They were his bed, board, and washing. He
passed eight-and-forty years in their midst, only twice in the course of
his life venturing beyond the walls of Florence,—once to go two leagues
off, and the other time three and a half leagues, by order of the Grand
Duke. He was an extremely frugal man, living upon eggs, bread, and
water, in great moderation. Luther, when studying, always had his dog
lying at his feet,—a dog he had brought from Wartburg and of which he
was very fond. An ivory crucifix stood on the table before him, and the
walls of his study were stuck round with caricatures of the Pope. He
worked at his desk for days together without going out; but when
fatigued, and the ideas began to stagnate in his brain, he would take
his flute or his guitar with him into the porch, and there execute some
musical fantasy, (for he was a skilful musician,) when the ideas would
flow upon him as fresh as flowers after summer’s rain. Music was his
invariable solace at such times. Indeed, Luther did not hesitate to say
that, after theology, music was the first of arts. “Music,” said he, “is
the art of the prophets: it is the only art which, like theology, can
calm the agitation of the soul and put the devil to flight.” Next to
music, if not before it, Luther loved children and flowers. The great,
gnarled man had a heart as tender as a woman’s. Calvin studied in his
bed. Every morning, at five or six o’clock, he had books, manuscripts,
and papers carried to him there, and he worked on for hours together. If
he had occasion to go out, on his return he undressed and went to bed
again to continue his studies. In his later years he dictated his
writings to secretaries. He rarely corrected any thing. The sentences
issued complete from his mouth. If he felt his facility of composition
leaving him, he forthwith quitted his bed, gave up writing and
composing, and went about his outdoor duties for days, weeks, and months
together. But as soon as he felt the inspiration fall upon him again, he
went back to his bed, and his secretary set to work forthwith. Rousseau
wrote his works early in the morning; Le Sage at mid-day; Byron at
midnight. Villehardouin rose at four in the morning, and wrote till late
at night. Aristotle was a tremendous worker: he took little sleep, and
was constantly retrenching it. He had a contrivance by which he awoke
early, and to awake was with him to commence work. Demosthenes passed
three months in a cavern by the seaside, laboring to overcome the
defects of his voice. There he read, studied, and declaimed. Rabelais
composed his Life of Gargantua at Bellay, in the company of Roman
cardinals, and under the eyes of the Bishop of Paris. La Fontaine wrote
his fables chiefly under the shade of a tree, and sometimes by the side
of Racine and Boileau. Pascal wrote most of his Thoughts on little
scraps of paper, at his by-moments. Fénélon wrote his Telemachus in the
Palace of Versailles, at the court of the Grand Monarque, when
discharging the duties of tutor to the Dauphin. That a book so
thoroughly democratic should have issued from such a source and been
written by a priest may seem surprising. De Quincey first promulgated
his notion of universal freedom of person and trade, and of throwing all
taxes on the land,—the germ, perhaps, of the French Revolution,—in the
boudoir of Madame de Pompadour! Bacon knelt down before composing his
great work, and prayed for light from Heaven. Pope never could compose
well without first declaiming for some time at the top of his voice, and
thus rousing his nervous system to its fullest activity. The life of
Leibnitz was one of reading, writing, and meditation. That was the
secret of his prodigious knowledge. After an attack of gout, he confined
himself to a diet of bread and milk. Often he slept in a chair, and
rarely went to bed till after midnight. Sometimes he spent months
without quitting his seat, where he slept by night and wrote by day. He
had an ulcer in his right leg, which prevented his walking about even
had he wished to do so.
CULTURE AND SACRIFICE.
The instruction of the world has been carried on by perpetual sacrifice.
A grand army of teachers, authors, artists, schoolmasters, professors,
heads of colleges—have been through ages carrying on war against
ignorance; but no triumphal procession has been decreed to it, nor
spoils of conquered provinces have come to its coffers; no crown
imperial has invested it with pomp and power. In lonely watch-towers the
fires of genius have burned, but to waste and consume the lamp of life,
while they gave light to the world. It is no answer to say that the
victims of intellectual toil, broken down in health and fortune, have
counted their work a privilege and joy. As well deny the martyr’s
sacrifice because he has joyed in his integrity. And many of the world’s
intellectual benefactors have been martyrs. Socrates died in prison as a
public malefactor; for the healing wisdom he offered his people, deadly
poison was the reward. Homer had a lot, so obscure at least, that nobody
knew his birthplace; and, indeed, some modern critics are denying that
there ever was any Homer.
Plato traveled back and forth from his home in Athens to the court of
the Syracuse tyrant, regarded indeed and feared, but persecuted and in
peril of life; nay, and once sold for a slave. Cicero shared a worse
fate. Dante all his life knew, as he expressed it,
“How salt was a stranger’s bread,
How hard the path still up and down to tread,
A stranger’s stairs.”
Copernicus and Galileo found science no more profitable than Dante found
poetry. Shakspeare had a home, but too poorly endowed to stand long in
his name after he left it; the income upon which he retired was barely
two or three hundred pounds a year, and so little did his contemporaries
know or think of him that the critics hunt in vain for the details of
his private life. The mighty span of his large honors shrinks to an
obscure myth of life in theatres in London or on the banks of the Avon.
A LITERARY SCREW.
An English paper says that Sharon Turner, author of the _History of the
Anglo-Saxons_, who received three hundred pounds a year from Government
as a literary pension, wrote his third volume of his _Sacred History of
the World_ upon paper which did not cost him a farthing. The copy
consisted of torn and angular fragments of letters and notes, of covers
of periodicals, gray, drab, or green, written in thick round hand over a
small print; of shreds of curling-paper, unctuous with pomatum of bear’s
grease, and of white wrappers in which his proofs had been sent from the
printers. The paper, sometimes as thin as a bank-note, was written on
both sides, and was so sodden with ink, plastered on with a pen worn to
a stump, that hours were frequently wasted in discovering on which side
of it certain sentences were written. Men condemned to work on it saw
their dinner vanish in illimitable perspective, and first-rate hands
groaned over it a whole day for tenpence. One poor fellow assured the
writer of that paper that he could not earn enough upon it to pay his
rent, and that he had seven mouths to fill besides his own. In the hope
of mending matters in some degree, slips of stout white paper were sent
frequently with the proofs; but the good gentleman could not afford to
use them, and they never came back as copy. What an inveterate miser
this old scribbler must have been, notwithstanding his pension and his
copyrights!
DRYDEN AND HIS PUBLISHER.
When Dryden had finished his translation of Virgil, after some
self-deliberation, he sent the MS. to Jacob Tonson, requiring for it a
certain sum, which he mentioned in a note. Tonson was desirous of
possessing the work, but meanly wished to avail himself of Dryden’s
necessities, which at that time were particularly urgent. He therefore
informed the poet that he could not afford to give the sum demanded.
Dryden, in reply, sent the following lines descriptive of Tonson:—
With leering look, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, with Judas-colored hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air.
When they were delivered to Tonson, he asked if Mr. Dryden had said any
thing more. “Yes,” answered the bearer: “he said, ‘Tell the dog that he
who wrote these lines can write more like them.’” Jacob immediately sent
the money.
Personal Sketches and Anecdotes.
ANECDOTE OF WASHINGTON.
During General Washington’s administration, he almost daily attended his
room, adjoining the Senate-chamber, and often arrived before the Senate
organized. On one occasion, but before his arrival, Gouverneur Morris
and some other senators were standing together, conversing on various
topics, and, among them, the natural but majestic air of General
Washington, when some one observed there was no man living who could
take a liberty with him. The sprightly and bold Morris remarked, “I will
bet a dozen of wine I can do that with impunity.” The bet was accepted.
Soon after, Washington appeared, and commenced an easy and pleasant
conversation with one of the gentlemen, at a little distance from the
others. While thus engaged, Morris, stepping up, in a jocund manner,
familiarly tapped Washington on the shoulder, and said,—
“Good morning, old fellow!”
The General turned, and merely looked him in the face, without a word,
when Morris, with all his assumed effrontery, stepped hastily back, in
evident discomposure, and said:—
“Gentlemen, you have won the bet. I will never take such a liberty
again!”
The writer obtained this fact from a member of the Senate, who witnessed
the occurrence.
ANECDOTE OF LAFAYETTE.
Shortly after Lafayette’s second return from America, he was at
Versailles when the king was about to review a division of troops.
Lafayette was invited to join in the review. He was dressed in the
American uniform, and was standing by the side of the Duc de Condé, when
the king, in his tour of conversation with the officers, came to him,
and, after speaking on several topics, asked him questions about his
uniform and the military costume in the United States. The king’s
attention was attracted by a little medal, which was attached to his
coat in the manner in which the insignia of orders are usually worn in
Europe; and he asked what it was. Lafayette replied that it was a symbol
which it was the custom of the foreign officers in the American service
to wear, and that it bore a device. The king asked what was the device:
to which Lafayette answered that there was no device common to all, but
that each officer chose such as pleased his fancy. “And what has pleased
your fancy?” inquired the king. “My device,” said the young general,
pointing to his medal, “is a liberty-pole standing on a broken crown and
sceptre.” The king smiled, and, with some pleasantry about the
republican propensities of a French marquis in American uniform, turned
the conversation to another topic. Condé looked grave, but said nothing.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
The name Napoleon, being written in Greek characters, will form seven
different words, by dropping the first letter of each in succession:—
Ναπολεων, Ἀπολέον, Πόλεον, Ὁλεον, Λέον, Ἐόν, ὧν.
These words make a complete sentence, meaning, Napoleon, the destroyer
of whole cities, was the lion of his people.
MILTON AND NAPOLEON.
Napoleon Bonaparte declared to Sir Colin Campbell, who had charge of his
person at the Isle of Elba, that he was a great admirer of Milton’s
_Paradise Lost_, and that he had read it to some purpose, for that the
plan of the battle of Austerlitz he borrowed from the sixth book of that
work, where Satan brings his artillery to bear upon Michael and his
angelic host with such direful effect:—
“Training his dev’lish enginery impaled
On every side with shadowing squadrons deep
To _hide the fraud_.”
This _new_ mode of warfare appeared to Bonaparte so likely to succeed,
if applied to actual use, that he determined upon its adoption, and
succeeded beyond expectation. By reference to the details of that
battle, it will be found to assimilate so completely with Milton’s
imaginary fight as to leave no doubt of the assertion.
PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF NAPOLEON.
Captain Maitland gives the following description of the person of
Napoleon, as he appeared on board the _Bellerophon_, in 1815:—
He was then a remarkably strong, well-built man, about five feet seven
inches high, his limbs particularly well formed, with a fine ankle and a
very small foot, of which he seemed very vain, as he always wore, while
on board the ship, silk stockings and shoes. His hands were also small,
and had the plumpness of a woman’s rather than the robustness of a
man’s. His eyes were light gray, his teeth good; and when he smiled, the
expression of his countenance was highly pleasing; when under the
influence of disappointment, however, it assumed a dark and gloomy cast.
His hair was a very dark brown, nearly approaching to black, and, though
a little thin on the top and front, had not a gray hair amongst it. His
complexion was a very uncommon one, being of a light sallow color,
different from any other I ever met with. From his being corpulent, he
had lost much of his activity.
HIS OPINION OF SUICIDE.
In the Journal of Dr. Warden, Surgeon of the Northumberland, the British
frigate that conveyed Napoleon to St. Helena, are recorded the following
remarkable sentiments of the imperial prisoner, as expressed to Warden:—
In one paper, I am called a _liar_; in another, a _tyrant_; in a third,
a _monster_; and in one of them, which I really did not expect, I am
described as a _coward_; but it turned out, after all, that the writer
did not accuse me of avoiding danger in the field of battle, or flying
from an enemy, or fearing to face the menaces of fate and fortune; he
did not charge me with wanting presence of mind in the hurry of battle,
and in the suspense of conflicting armies. No such thing. I wanted
courage, it seems, because I did not coolly take a dose of poison, or
throw myself into the sea, or blow out my brains. The editor most
certainly misunderstands me: I have, at least, too much courage for
that.
On another occasion he expressed himself in the following terms:—
Suicide is a crime the most revolting to my feelings, nor does any
reason suggest itself to my understanding by which it can be justified.
It certainly originates in that species of fear which we denominate
_poltroonery_. For what claim can that man have to courage who trembles
at the frowns of fortune? True heroism consists in being superior to the
ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge him to the combat.
DR. FRANKLIN’S WIFE.
Franklin, in a sketch of his life and habits, relates the following
anecdote of his frugal and affectionate wife. A wife could scarcely make
a prettier apology for purchasing her first piece of luxury.
We have an English proverb, that says,—
“He that would thrive
Must ask his wife.”
It was lucky for me that I have one as much disposed to industry and
frugality as myself. She assisted me cheerfully in my business, and in
stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing old linen rags for the
paper-makers, &c. We kept no idle servant; our table was plain and
simple; our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was
for a long time bread and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a two-penny
earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon. But mark how luxury will enter
families, and make a progress in spite of principle: being called one
morning to breakfast, I found it in a china bowl, with a spoon of
silver. They had been bought for me without my knowledge, by my wife,
and had cost her the enormous sum of three-and-twenty shillings, for
which she had no other excuse or apology to make but that she thought
_her_ husband _deserved_ a silver spoon and china bowl as well as any of
his neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate or china in our
house, which afterwards, in the course of years, as our wealth
increased, augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value.
MAJOR ANDRÉ.
In a satirical poem written by Major André some time prior to his arrest
as a spy, he, curiously enough, alludes to the means of his own death. A
newspaper published soon after the Revolutionary War gives some extracts
from the poem, and calls it a “remarkable prophecy.” Could the
ill-starred poet and soldier have looked into futurity and seen his own
sad end, he would hardly have indulged in the humor which is indicated
in his poem. The piece was entitled “The Cow-Chase,” and was suggested
by the failure of an expedition undertaken by Wayne for the purpose of
collecting cattle. Great liberties were taken with the names of the
American officers employed on the occasion,—
Harry Lee and his dragoons,
And Proctor with his cannon.
But the point of his irony seemed particularly aimed at Wayne, whose
entire baggage, he asserts, was taken along, comprising
His Congress dollars and his prog,
His military speeches,
His corn-stalk whiskey for his grog,
Black stockings and blue breeches.
The satirist brings his doggerel to a close by observing that it is
necessary to check the current of his satire,—
Lest the same warrior-drover Wayne
Should _catch and hang the poet_!
AN ENGLISH VIEW OF ANDRÉ AND ARNOLD.
Many historians have been inclined to blame Washington for unnecessary
severity in not acceding to the request of the prisoner (André), that he
might be shot instead of hanged. We cannot agree with them: the
ignominious death was decided upon by Washington—after much and anxious
deliberation, and against his own feelings, which inclined to grant the
prayer—as a strictly preventive punishment; and it had its effect. The
social qualities and the letters of André, although they are always
brought forward in his favor, do not extenuate but rather aggravate his
crime, as they show that, whatever his moral principles may have been,
he had the education of an English gentleman. If any thing, his memory
has been treated with too great leniency. If monuments are to be erected
in Westminster Abbey to men of such lax morality, it is time for honesty
to hide its head.
The conduct of Sir Henry Clinton, in receiving Arnold when he fled to
the English ranks, and giving him a high command, is only in keeping
with his countenance of the plot that cost André his life. Arnold, who
seems to have been a miserable scoundrel, born to serve as a foil to the
virtuous brightness of George Washington, might have redeemed his
character by giving himself up in place of André, who was entrapped by
Arnold’s cowardice and over-caution; but such a piece of self-sacrifice
never entered his head. A villain himself, he never believed in the
success of the struggle of honest men, and his conduct after obtaining
the protection of Sir Henry Clinton proves this beyond a doubt. Let him
rest with all his British honors thick upon him.—_English Newspaper._
FLAMSTEED, THE ASTRONOMER ROYAL.
In the _London Chronicle_ for Dec. 3, 1771, is the following anecdote of
Dr. Flamsteed:—
He was many years Astronomer Royal at Greenwich Observatory; a humorist,
and of warm passions. Persons of his profession are often supposed, by
the common people, to be capable of foretelling events. In this
persuasion a poor washerwoman at Greenwich, who had been robbed at night
of a large parcel of linen, to her almost ruin, if forced to pay for it,
came to him, and with great anxiety earnestly requested him to use his
art, to let her know where her things were, and who had robbed her. The
Doctor happened to be in the humor to joke: he bid her stay: he would
see what he could do; perhaps he might let her know where she could find
them; but who the persons were, he would not undertake; as she could
have no positive proof to convict them, it would be useless. He then set
about drawing circles, squares, &c., to amuse her; and after some time
told her if she would go into a particular field, that in such a part of
it, in a dry ditch, she would find them all tumbled up in a sheet. The
woman went, and found them; came with great haste and joy to thank the
Doctor, and offered him half-a-crown as a token of gratitude, being as
much as she could afford. The Doctor, surprised himself, told her: “Good
woman, I am heartily glad you have found your linen; but I assure you I
knew nothing of it, and intended only to joke with you, and then to have
read you a lecture on the folly of applying to any person to know events
not in human power to tell. But I see the devil has a mind that I should
deal with him: I am determined I will not. Never come or send any one to
me any more, on such occasions; for I will never attempt such an affair
again whilst I live.”
LORD NELSON’S SANG-FROID.
Jack was what they called loblolly boy on board the _Victory_. It was
his duty to do anything and everything that was required—from sweeping
and washing the deck, and saying amen to the chaplain, down to cleaning
the guns, and helping the doctor to make pills and plasters, and mix
medicines. Four days before the battle that was so glorious to England,
but so fatal to its greatest hero, Jack was ordered by the doctor to
fetch a bottle that was standing in a particular place. Jack ran off,
post-haste, to the spot, where he found what appeared to be an empty
bottle. Curiosity was uppermost; “What,” thought Jack, “can there be
about this empty bottle?” He examined it carefully, but could not
comprehend the mystery, so he thought that he would call in the aid of a
candle to throw light on the subject. The bottle contained _ether_, and
the result of the examination was that the vapor ignited, and the flames
extended to some of the sails, and also to a part of the ship. There was
a general confusion—running with buckets and what-not—and, to make
matters worse, the fire was rapidly extending to the powder-magazine.
During the hubbub, Lord Nelson was in the chief cabin writing
dispatches. His lordship heard the noise—he couldn’t do otherwise—and
so, in a loud voice, he called out, “What’s all that infernal noise
about?” The boatswain answered, “My Lord, the loblolly boy’s set fire to
an empty bottle, and it’s set fire to the ship.” “Oh!” said Nelson,
“that’s all, is it? I thought the enemy had boarded us and taken us all
prisoners—you and loblolly must put it out, and take care we’re not
blown up! but pray make as little noise about it as you can, or I can’t
go on with my dispatches,” and with these words Nelson went to his desk,
and continued his writing with the greatest coolness.
* * * * *
Crabb Robinson, in his _Diary_, speaking of Gœthe as the mightiest
intellect that has shone on the earth for centuries, says: “It has been
my rare good fortune to have seen a large proportion of the greatest
minds of our age, in the fields of poetry and speculative philosophy,
such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Schiller, Tieck, but none that I have
ever known came near him.”
MARTIN LUTHER.
Roma orbem domuit, Romam sibi Papa subegit;
Viribus illa suit, fraudibus iste suis,
Quanto isto major Lutherus, major et illa,
Istum illamque uno qui domuit calamo.—§Beza.§
(Rome won the world, the Pope o’er Rome prevailed,
And one by force and one by fraud availed:
Greater than each was Luther’s prowess shown,
Who conquered both by one poor pen alone.)
Luther, in the lion-hearted daring of his conduct and in the robust
and rugged grandeur of his faith, may well be considered as the Elijah
of the Reformation; while his life, by the stern and solemn realities
of his experiences, and the almost ideal evolutions of events by which
it was accompanied, constitutes indeed the embodied Poem of European
Protestantism.
§R. Montgomery.§
Heine sketches the following unique portrait of Luther:—
He was at once a mystic dreamer and a man of action. His thoughts had
not only wings, they had hands likewise. He spoke, and, rare thing, he
also acted; he was at once the tongue and the sword of his age. At the
same time he was a cold scholastic, a chopper of words, and an exalted
prophet drunk with the word of God. When he had passed painfully through
the day, wearing out his soul in dogmatical instructions, night come, he
would take his flute, and, contemplating the stars, melt in melodies and
pious thoughts. The same man who could abuse his adversaries like a
fish-fag knew also how to use soft and tender language, like an amorous
virgin. He was sometimes savage and impetuous as the hurricane that
roots up oaks, then gentle and murmuring as the zephyr that lightly
caresses the violets. He was full of the holy fear of God, ready for
every sacrifice in honor of the Holy Spirit; he knew how to vault into
the purest regions of the celestial kingdom; and yet he perfectly knew
the magnificence of this earth: he could appreciate it, and from his
mouth fell the famous proverb:—
Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang,
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Lebenlang.
(Who loves not woman, wine, and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long.)
In short, he was a complete man. To call him a spiritualist would be to
commit as great a mistake as it would be to call him a sensualist. What
shall I say more? He had something about him clever, original,
miraculous, inconceivable.
In an article on John de Wycliffe, in the _North British Review_, is the
following paragraph:—
Abundant as is our historical literature, and fond as our ablest writers
have recently become of attempting careful and vivid renderings of the
physiognomies of important historical personages, we are still without a
set of thoroughly good portraits of the modern religious reformers of
different nations, painted, as they might be, in series, so that the
features of each may be compared with those of all the rest. Wycliffe,
Huss, Savonarola, Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, Knox, and Cranmer,—all men
coming under the same general designation,—all heroes of the same
general movement; and yet what a contrast of physiognomies! Pre-eminent
in the series will ever be Luther, the man of biggest frame and largest
heart; the man of richest and most original genius; the great, soft,
furious, musical, pliant, sociable, kiss-you, knock-you-down German.
None of them all had such a face; none of them all said such things; of
none of them all can you have such anecdotes, such a collection of
_ana_.
Luther, says another writer, speaking of his fondness for music, was not
solely nor chiefly a theologian, or he had been no true reformer. As the
cloister had not been able to bound his sympathies, so the controversial
theatre could not circumscribe his honest ambition. He in whom “the
Italian head was joined to the German body” would not only free the
souls of men, but win the hearts of women and little children. Much had
he to feel proud of during his busy life. It was no light thing to have
waged successful combat with the most powerful hierarchy that the world
had ever seen, or to have held in his hands the destinies of Europe. But
dearer to his kind heart was the sound of his own verses sung to his own
melodies, which rose from street and market-place, from highway and
byway, chanted by laborers going to their daily work, during their hours
of toil, and as they returned home at even-tide. How would it have
gladdened his heart to have heard these same hymns, two hundred years
later, sung by the miners of Cornwall and Gloucestershire!
“I always loved music,” said he: “whoso has skill in this art is of a
good temperament, fitted for all things.” Many times he exemplified this
power in his own person. When sore perplexed and in danger of life, he
would drive away all gloomy thoughts by the magic of his own melodies.
On that sad journey to Worms, when friends crowded round him and sought
to change his purpose, warning him, with many tears, of the certain
death that awaited him,—on the morning of that memorable 16th of April,
when the towers of the ancient city appeared in sight,—the true-hearted
man, rising in his chariot, broke forth with the words and music of that
Marseillaise of the Reformation, _Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott_, which
he had improvised two days before at Oppenheim,—the same stirring hymn
that Gustavus Adolphus and the whole Swedish army sang a century later,
on the morning of the battle of Lutzen:—
A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon;
He’ll help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now o’ertaken.
The ancient Prince of hell
Hath risen with purpose fell.
Strong mail of craft and power
He weareth in this hour;
On earth is not his fellow.
With force of arms we nothing can,
Full soon were we down-ridden;
But for us fights the proper man,
Whom God himself hath bidden.
Ask ye, Who is this same?
§Christ Jesus§ is his name,
The Lord Sabaoth’s son:
He, and no other one,
Shall conquer in the battle.
And were the world all devils o’er,
And watching to devour us,
We lay it not to heart so sore,
Not they can overpower us.
Then let the Prince of ill
Look grim as e’er he will,
He harms us not a whit:
For why? His doom is writ:—
A word shall quickly slay him.
God’s word for all their craft and force
One moment will not linger,
But spite of hell shall have its course:
’Tis written by his finger.
And though they take our life,
Goods, honor, children, wife,
Yet is their profit small:
These things shall vanish all;
The Church of God remaineth.[39]
Footnote 39:
Carlyle’s translation.
QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Queen Bess is thus described in Sir John Hayward’s Annals:—
Shee was a lady upon whom nature had bestowed, and well placed, many of
her fayrest favours; of stature meane, slender, straight, and amiably
composed; of such state in her carriage, as every motion of her seemed
to beare majesty; her haire was inclined to pale yellow, her foreheade
large and faire, and seeming seat for princely grace; her eyes lively
and sweete, but short-sighted; her nose somewhat rising in the middest.
The whole compasse of her countenance somewhat long, but yet of
admirable beauty; not so much in that which is termed the flower of
youth, as in a most delightful compositione of majesty and modesty in
equall mixture.... Her vertues were such as might suffice to make an
Ethiopian beautifull, which, the more man knows and understands, the
more he shall love and admire. Shee was of divine witt, as well for
depth of judgment, as for quick conceite and speedy expeditione; of
eloquence as sweete in the utterance, as ready and easy to come to the
utterance; of wonderful knowledge, both in learning and affayres;
skilfull not only in Latine and Greeke, but alsoe in divers foraigne
languages.
In _Paul Heintzner’s Travels_, 1598, is the following description:—
She was said to be fifty-five years old. Her face was rather long,
white, and somewhat wrinkled; her eyes small, black, and gracious; her
nose somewhat bent; her lips compressed; her teeth black (from eating
too much sugar). She had earrings of pearls, red hair (but artificial),
and wore a small crown. Her breast was uncovered (as is the case with
all unmarried ladies in England), and round her neck was a chain with
precious gems. Her hands were graceful, her fingers long. She was of
middle size, but stepped on majestically. She was gracious and kind in
her address. The dress she wore was of white silk, with pearls as large
as beans. Her cloak was of black silk, with silver lace, and a long
train was carried by a marchioness. She spoke English, French, and
Italian; but she knew also Greek and Latin, and understood Spanish,
Scotch, and Dutch. Wherever she turned her eyes, people fell on their
knees. When she came to the door of the chapel, books were handed to
her, and the people called out, “God save the Queen Elizabeth!”
whereupon the Queen answered, “I thanke you, myn good peuple.”
Among the spirited repartees and impromptus of the queen which have
descended to our time is her ingenious evasion of a direct answer to a
theological question respecting the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. On
being asked by a Popish priest whether she allowed the _real presence_,
she replied,—
Christ was the word that spake it:
He took the bread and brake it;
And what that word did make it,
That I believe and take it.
In an old folio copy of the _Arcadia_, preserved at Wilton, have been
found two interesting relics,—a lock of Queen Elizabeth’s hair, and some
lines in the handwriting of Sir Philip Sidney. The hair was given by the
queen to her young hero, who complimented her in return as follows:—
Her inward worth all outward worth transcends;
Envy her merits with regret commends;
Like sparkling gems her virtues draw the light,
And in her conduct she is always bright.
When she imparts her thoughts, her words have force,
And sense and wisdom flow in sweet discourse.
The date of this exchange was 1583, when the queen was forty and the
knight twenty-nine. Elizabeth’s hair is very fine, soft, and silky, with
the undulation of water; its color, a fair auburn or golden brown,
without a tinge of red, as her detractors assert. In every country under
the sun, such hair would be pronounced beautiful.
SHAKSPEARE’S ORTHODOXY.
The numerous biographers of the immortal bard have said little or
nothing of his religious character, leaving the inference that he was
indifferent to religion and careless as to the future. They seem to
forget such passages as his beautiful reference to Palestine in _Henry
IV._:—
Those holy fields,
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed,
For our advantage, on the bitter cross.
Shakspeare’s will, written two months before his death, (April, 1616,)
is remarkable for its evangelical character. He says:—
“First, I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping, and
assuredly believing, through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to
be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth whereof
it is made.”
Nor should we overlook the bond of Christian sympathy with his parish
minister, Rev. Richard Byfield, whose church he constantly attended
during his retirement at Stratford.
OLIVER CROMWELL.
The subjoined sketch of the person and character of the great Protector
is from a letter of John Maidstone to Governor Winthrop, of Connecticut,
written soon after Cromwell’s death:—
Before I pass further, pardon me in troubling you with the character of
his person, which, by reason of my nearness to him, I had opportunity
well to observe. His body was well compact and strong; his stature under
six feet (I believe about two inches); his head so shaped as you might
see it a storehouse and shop, both a vast treasury of natural parts. His
temper exceeding fiery, as I have known; but the flame of it kept down
for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had.
He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distress, even to an
effeminate measure, though God had made him a heart wherein was left
little room for any fear but what was due to himself, of which there was
a large proportion; yet did he excel in tenderness towards sufferers. A
larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was.
I do believe, if his story were impartially transmitted and the
unprejudiced world well possessed with it, it would add him to her nine
worthies and make that number a decemviri. He lived and died in
comfortable communion with his seed, as judicious persons near him well
observed. He was that Mordecai that sought the welfare of his people,
and spake peace to his seed; yet were his temptations such as it
appeared frequently that he that hath grace enough for many men may have
too little for himself; the treasure he had being but in an earthen
vessel, and that equally defiled with original sin as any other man’s
nature is.
The following newspaper notices in relation to Cromwell’s head are
interesting:—
The curious head of Cromwell, which Sir Joshua Reynolds has had the good
fortune to procure, is to be shown to his majesty. How much would
Charles the First have valued the man that would have brought him
Cromwell’s head!—September, 1786.
The real embalmed head of the powerful and renowned usurper, Oliver
Cromwell, styled Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and
Ireland; with the original dyes for the medals struck in honor of his
victory at Dunbar, &c., &c., are now exhibiting at No. 5 in Mead Court,
Old Bond Street (where the Rattlesnake was shown last year). A genuine
narrative relating to the acquisition, concealment, and preservation of
these articles to be had at the place of exhibition.—_Morning
Chronicle_, March 18, 1799.
Cromwell died at Hampton Court in 1658, giving the strongest evidence of
his earnest religious convictions and of his sincerity as a Christian.
After an imposing funeral pageant, the body having been embalmed, he was
buried in Westminster. On the restoration of the Stuarts he was taken up
and hung in Tyburn. Afterwards his head was cut off, a pike driven up
through the neck and skull, and exposed on Westminster Hall. It remained
there a long while, until, by some violence, the pike was broken and the
head thrown down. It was picked up by a soldier and concealed, and
afterwards conveyed to some friend, who kept it carefully for years.
Through a succession of families, which can easily be traced, it has
come into the possession of the daughter of Hon. Mr. Wilkinson,
ex-member of Parliament from Buckingham and Bromley.
The head is almost entire. The flesh is black and sunken, but the
features are nearly perfect, and the hair still remains. Even the large
wart over one of the eyes—a distinctive mark on his face—is yet
perfectly visible. The pike which was thrust through the neck may still
be seen, the upper part of iron, nearly rusted off, and the lower or
wooden portion in splinters, showing that it was broken by some act of
violence. It is known historically that Cromwell was embalmed; and no
person thus cared for was ever publicly gibbeted except this illustrious
man. It is a curious keepsake for a lady; but it is carefully preserved
under lock and key in a box of great antiquity, wrapped in a number of
costly envelopes. And when it is raised from its hiding-place and held
in one’s hand, what a world of thought is suggested!
POPE’S SKULL.
William Howitt says that, by one of those acts which neither science nor
curiosity can excuse, the skull of Pope is now in the private collection
of a phrenologist. The manner in which it was obtained is said to have
been this:—On some occasion of alteration in the church, or burial of
some one in the same spot, the coffin of Pope was disinterred, and
opened to see the state of the remains. By a bribe to the sexton of the
time, possession of the skull was obtained for the night, and another
skull was returned instead of it. Fifty pounds were paid to manage and
carry through this transaction. Be that as it may, the skull of Pope
figures in a private museum.
WICKLIFFE’S ASHES.
The Council of Constance raised from the grave the bones of the immortal
Wickliffe forty years after their interment, burned them to ashes, and
threw them into a neighboring brook. “This brook,” says Fuller,
“conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow
seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the
emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.”
“So,” says Foxe, “was he resolved into three elements, earth, fire, and
water, thinking thereby utterly to extinguish both the name and doctrine
of Wickliffe forever. But as there is no counsel against the Lord, so
there is no keeping down of verity. It will spring and come out of dust
and ashes, as appeared right well in this man; for, though they digged
up his body, burnt his bones, and drowned his ashes, yet the word of God
and truth of his doctrines, with the fruit and success thereof, they
could not burn. They to this day remain.”
* * * * *
Cardan, and Burton, the author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, who were
famous for astrological skill, both suffered a voluntary death merely to
verify their own predictions.
TALLEYRANDIANA.
A banker, anxious about the rise or fall of stocks, came once to
Talleyrand for information respecting the truth of a rumor that George
III. had suddenly died, when the statesman replied in a confidential
tone: “I shall be delighted, if the information I have to give be of any
use to you.” The banker was enchanted at the prospect of obtaining
authentic intelligence from so high a source; and Talleyrand, with a
mysterious air, continued: “Some say the King of England is dead;
others, that he is not dead: for my own part, I believe neither the one
nor the other. I tell you this in confidence, but do not commit me.”
During Talleyrand’s administration, when the seals of private letters
were not very safe, the Spanish Ambassador complained, with an
expressive look, to that Minister, that one of his despatches had been
opened. “Oh!” returned the statesman, after listening with profound
attention, “I shall wager I can guess how the thing happened. I am
convinced your despatch was opened by some one who desired to know what
was inside.”
When Louis XVIII., at the Restoration, praised the subtile diplomatist
for his talents and influence, he disclaimed the compliment, but added,
what might serve both as a hint and a threat: “There is, however, some
inexplicable thing about me, that prevents any government from
prospering that attempts to set me aside.”
After the Pope excommunicated his apostate Abbé, that unworthy son of
the church wrote to a friend, saying: “Come and comfort me: come and sup
with me. Everybody is going to refuse me fire and water; we shall
therefore have nothing this evening but iced meats, and drink nothing
but wine.”
When the Abbé Dupanloup told him, during his last hour, that the
Archbishop of Paris had said he would willingly die for him, the dying
statesman said, with his expiring breath: “He might make a better use of
his life.”
He proposed that the Duchess de Berri should be threatened for all her
strange conspicuous freaks, thus: “Madame, there is no hope for you, you
will be tried, condemned, and pardoned!”
Speaking of a well-known lady on one occasion, he said emphatically:—
“She is insufferable.”
Then, as if relenting, he added:
“But that is her only fault.”
Madame de Stael cordially hated him, and in her story of _Delphine_ was
supposed to have painted herself in the person of her heroine, and
Talleyrand in that of a garrulous old woman. On their first meeting, the
wit pleasantly remarked, “They tell me that we are both of us in your
novel, in the disguise of women.”
While making a few days’ tour in England, he wrote this note to a
gentleman connected with the Treasury:—
“My dear Sir,
“Would you give a short quarter of an hour to explain to me the
financial system of your country?
“Always yours,
“§Talleyrand§.”
PORSON.
A favorite diversion of Porson, when among a party of literary men, was
to quote a few lines of poetry, and ask if any of the company could tell
where they came from. He frequently quoted the following lines without
finding any one able to name the author:—
For laws that are inanimate,
And feel no sense of love or hate,
That have no passion of their own,
Or pity to be wrought upon,
Are only proper to inflict
Revenge on criminals as strict:
But to have power to forgive
Is empire and prerogative;
And ’tis in crowns a nobler gem
To grant a pardon than condemn.
The lines remind the Shakspeare student of a similar verse in _Measure
for Measure_, (Act III, Sc. 2.):—
He that the sword of state would bear,
Should be holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go, &c.
The company generally guessed every likely author but the right one.
When conjecture was exhausted, Porson would satisfy curiosity by telling
them the lines were in Butler’s _Hudibras_, and would be found in _The
Heroic Epistle of Hudibras to his Lady_, which few people ever did read,
and no one now thinks of reading.
Historical Memoranda.
THE FIRST BLOOD SHED IN OUR REVOLUTION.
The “First Blood of the Revolution” is commonly supposed to have been
shed at Lexington, April 19, 1775; but Westminster, Vt., files a prior
claim in favor of one William French, who it is asserted was killed on
the night of March 13, 1775, at the King’s court-house, in what is now
Westminster. At that time Vermont was a part of New York, and the King’s
court officers, together with a body of troops, were sent on to
Westminster to hold the usual session of the court. The people, however,
were exasperated, and assembled in the court-house to resist. A little
before midnight the troops of George the Third advanced and fired
indiscriminately upon the crowd, instantly killing William French, whose
head was pierced by a musket ball. He was buried in the churchyard, and
a stone erected to his memory, with this quaint inscription:—
“In Memory of William French, Who Was Shot at Westminster March ye
12th, 1775, by the hand of the Cruel Ministerial tools of Georg ye 3rd
at the Courthouse at 11 o’clock at Night in the 22d year of his age.
“Here William French his Body lies,
For Murder his Blood for Vengeance Cries.
King Georg the third his Tory crew
that with a bawl his head Shot threw,
For Liberty and his Countrys Good
he Lost his Life his Dearest blood.”
THE “TEA-PARTY” AND THE “TEA-BURNING.”
The world has rung with the story of the “Boston tea-party,” how in the
darkness of night certain men disguised as Indians threw overboard the
cargo which bore the obnoxious duty, and kept their secret so well that
even their own families were not trusted with it. It was a resolute and
patriotic act, and answered its purpose. But why all the darkness, the
disguise and mystery? Because the number of those who opposed the act,
either from loyalty to Great Britain, from timidity, or from pecuniary
interest in the cargo, was so great, that only by such means could the
deed be done and the doers of it escape punishment.
How does this compare with the “tea-burning” in Annapolis in the same
year? Here the course to be taken was publicly and calmly discussed in
open assembly; the resolution arrived at was openly announced, and
carried out in the face of day, the owner of the vessel himself applying
the torch. This was the Maryland way of doing the thing; and it may well
be asked whether the calm judicial dignity of the procedure, the
unanimity of sentiment, the absence alike of passion and of concealment,
are not far worthier of commemoration and admiration than the act of men
who, even for a patriotic purpose, had to assume the garb of
conspirators and do a deed of darkness.
The local historians thus tell the story:—
On the 14th of October, the brig Peggy Stewart arrived at Annapolis,
having in its cargo a few packages of tea. The duty was paid by the
owner of the vessel. The people were outraged at the attempt to fix upon
them the badge of servitude, by the payment of the tax.
A meeting was held, at which it was determined that the tea should not
be landed. The owner, fearing further trouble, proposed to destroy the
tea. But that was not sufficient punishment. The offence was a grave
one, for had this attempt succeeded, it would have been followed by
others more aggressive, and thus the very principle which was contended
for would have been overthrown in the end. It was the head of the ugly
beast that was thrust in the door, and it must not only be _put_ out,
but _driven_ out by blows, lest growing bold, it should push its whole
body in.
After much discussion it was proposed to burn the vessel. The meeting
did not consent to this, but many expressed their determination to raise
a force to accomplish the brig’s destruction.
Acting under the advice of Mr. Carroll of Carrollton, the owner, seeing
that the loss of his property was certain, and willing to repair his
good name, even by that loss, proposed to destroy the vessel with his
own hands. In the presence of the assembled multitude he set fire to it,
with the tea on board,—expiating his offence by the destruction of his
property.
The striking features of this transaction were not only the boldness
with which it was executed, but the deliberation and utter carelessness
of concealment in all the measures leading to its accomplishment.
It was not until the 28th of November that the Dartmouth arrived in
Boston harbor, and not until the 16th of December that protracted
discussion ended in the overthrow of its cargo. The tea-ship sent to
South Carolina arrived December 2d, and the tea-ship to Philadelphia,
December 25th. The cargo of the former perished in storage; that of the
latter was sent back.
THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
A South Carolina correspondent of the _American Historical Record_
writes as follows concerning the inception of the Navy:—
A few years ago, while looking over a volume of manuscript letters in
the Charleston (South Carolina) Library, I found a leaf of coarse
foolscap, with the following endorsement:—
ORIGIN OF THE NAVY.
At a caucus in 1794, consisting of Izard, Morris, and Ellsworth of the
Senate, Ames, Sedgwick, Smith, Dayton, &c. of the Representatives, and
of Secretaries Hamilton and Knox, to form a plan for a national navy,
Smith began the figuring as Secretary of the meeting. Hamilton then took
the pen, and instead of minuting the proceedings, he amused himself by
making a variety of flourishes during the discussion. In consequence of
the plan adopted at this meeting, a bill was reported for building six
frigates, which formed the foundation or origin of the American Navy.
The “figuring” on the top of the page consists of five lines, and is as
follows:—
First cost of a frigate, 44 guns, of 1,300 tons, and
provision for six months $150,000
350 men 51,000
Provision for six months 11,000
————————
Total $212,000
Then follows an estimate of the annual cost of such a vessel. The rest
of the page below these estimates is occupied by bold flourishes, which
seem, if they mean anything, to imitate a drawing of a peacock’s tail
“in its pride.” Similar scratching, but to a less extent is on the other
side of the page.
* * * * *
The only letter addressed to Shakspeare, which is undoubtedly genuine,
is that now in the museum at Stratford, from Richard Quinn, the actor,
asking for a loan of £20. This letter is endorsed: “To my lovinge good
ffriend and countreyman, Mr. William Shackespere deliver Thees.” If the
writer spelled names no better than other words, this affords little aid
to the solution of the perplexing question, for notwithstanding the
outrageous fashion in which our forefathers spelled English, he is
considerably ahead of his age in this respect.
QUAKER “MALIGNANTS.”
There has been discovered in Boston the following letter relative to
William Penn, written “September ye 15, 1682.” by Cotton Mather, to “ye
aged and beloved Mr. John Higginson”:—
There bee now at sea a shippe (for our friend Mr. Esaias Holcraft, of
London, did advise me by ye last packet that it wolde sail some time
in August) called ye Welcome, R. Greenaway, master, which has aboard
an hundred or more of ye heretics and malignants called Quakers, with
W. Penne, who is ye chief scampe at ye hedde of them. Ye General Court
has accordingly given secret orders to Master Malachi Huxett, of ye
brig Porpusse, to waylaye ye said Welcome as near the coast of Codde
as may be, and make captive ye said Penne and his ungodlie crew, so
that ye Lord may be glorified and not mocked on ye soil of this new
countrie with ye heathen worshippe of these people. Much spoyl can be
made by selling ye whole lotte to Barbadoes, where slaves fetch good
prices in rumme and sugar, and we shall not only do ye Lord great
service by punishing ye wicked, but shall make great gayne for his
ministers and people.
Master Huxett feels hopeful, and I will set down ye news he brings
when his shippe comes back.
Yours in ye bowels of Christ,
§Cotton Mather§.
AN AMERICAN MONARCHY.
After the downfall of Napoleon I., in 1815, several young Americans who
subsequently earned high position as writers and statesmen, among them
Irving, Everett, Ticknor, Legaré, and Preston, (afterward Senator from
South Carolina,) went to Europe for the benefit of foreign travel. While
abroad, they took an opportunity to pay a visit to Sir Walter Scott, and
Mr. Preston relates that during the evening, in the course of
conversation, Sir Walter gave an account of a curious discovery he had
made.
Not long after it had been divulged who was the author of the “Waverley
Novels,” Scott was the Regent’s (afterward George the Fourth) guest in
the royal palace, where, one day, the latter ordered the key of a
certain room to be given to the great writer, saying that it opened the
door of the Stuart Chamber, where all the papers concerning the Stuarts
and their pretenders were kept. George gave Scott full permission to
rummage among all these records, and to use what he liked for his works.
“I depend on your discretion,” he said, and Scott went. He spent several
days in this curious chamber, and, so he told Preston, one day stumbled
upon what seemed to him a remarkable paper. It consisted of a call and
petition, by Scottish in America, chiefly, however, by the Gaelic
Scottish who had a settlement—“saddle-bagging” as it is sometimes
expressed in the West—in North Carolina, addressed to the Pretender
(Prince Charles Edward, grandson of James the Second), as he was then
called, to come to America and assume the crown of this realm.
The question whether this country had not best be turned into a monarchy
was seriously and very naturally mooted, in the earliest days of our
national existence, but until this singular revelation was made, it was
not known that such a positive offer, a very strange one, to say the
least, had been made.
THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER.
The following description of the significance of the different parts of
our national flag was written by a member of the committee appointed by
the Continental Congress to design a flag for the young Republic:—
The stars of the new flag represent the new constellation of States
rising in the West. The idea was taken from the constellation of Lyra,
which in the land of Orpheus signifies harmony. The blue in the field
was taken from the edges of the Covenanter’s banner, in Scotland,
significant of the league-covenant of the United Colonies against
oppression, incidentally involving the virtues of vigilance,
perseverance and justice. The stars were disposed in a circle
symbolizing the perpetuity of the Union; the ring, like the serpent of
the Egyptians, signifying eternity. The thirteen stripes showed with
the stars, the number of the United Colonies, and denoted the
subordination of the States to the Union, as well as equality among
themselves. The whole was the blending of the various flags of the
army and the white ones of the floating batteries. The red color,
which in Roman days was the signal of defiance, denoted daring; and
the white purity.
THE FRENCH TRICOLOR.
The French tricolor, so far from being a revolutionary flag, is more
ancient than the white flag, and was, in fact, the flag of the House of
Bourbon. Clovis, when he marched through Tours to fight the Visigoths,
adopted as his banner the scope of St. Martin, which was blue, and thus
blue was, so to speak, the first French color. The oriflamme, which was
the particular flag of the Abbey of St. Denis, and was red, became to a
certain extent the national flag, when St. Denis came under the
protection of the kings of France, the kings still preserving their blue
flag studded with golden _fleurs de lis_. The white flag (which was also
the banner of Joan of Arc) has in all countries, and through all times,
been the sign of authority. And when Louis XIV. destroyed the functions
of the colonels-general of the different corps that bore the white
standard, the color became the emblem of Royal authority. Nevertheless,
it is useless to dispute the fact that the tricolor took its rise as the
badge of the National Guard at the French Revolution, and that it will
be as difficult to separate it from the idea of revolution as to
separate the white flag from the idea of legitimacy.
THE POLITICAL GAMUT.
In 1815 the French newspapers announced the departure of Bonaparte from
Elba, his progress through France, and his entry; into Paris, in the
following manner:—
March 9. The Anthropophagus has quitted his den.—March 10. The Corsican
Ogre has landed at Cape Juan.—March 11. The Tiger has arrived at
Gap.—March 12. The Monster slept at Grenoble.—March 13. The Tyrant has
passed through Lyons.—March 14. The Usurper is directing his steps
towards Dijon, but the brave and loyal Burgundians have risen _en
masse_, and surrounded him on all sides.—March 18. Bonaparte is only
sixty leagues from the capital; he has been fortunate enough to escape
the hands of his pursuers.—March 19. Bonaparte is advancing with rapid
steps, but he will never enter Paris.—March 20. Napoleon will,
to-morrow, be under our ramparts.—March 21. The Emperor is at
Fontainebleau.—March 22. His Imperial and Royal Majesty yesterday
evening arrived at the Tuileries, amidst the joyful acclamations of his
devoted and faithful subjects. 5 The _Journal des Débats_, in reference
to the escape from Elba, spoke of Napoleon on the 9th of March, as “the
_Poltroon of 1814_.” On the 15th it said to him, “_Scourge of
generations thou shall reign no more!_” On the 16th he is “_a
Robespierre on horseback_”; on the 19th, “_the adventurer from
Corsica_”; but on the 21st, we are gravely told that “_the_ §EMPEROR§
_has pursued his triumphal course, having found no other enemies than
the miserable libels which were vainly scattered on his path to impede
his progress_.”
THE FLIGHT OF EUGENIE.
The following particulars of the flight of the Empress of France from
Paris, in consequence of the subversion of the Napoleonic dynasty by the
capitulation of Sedan, were furnished by the late Bishop McIlvaine, of
Ohio, who obtained them from one who aided the flight of Eugenie, and
are therefore stamped with the essentials of authenticity.
The safety of the Empress had been assured to her by General Trochu, who
had solemnly promised to inform her of the approach of danger. For some
unexplained reasons he failed to do so, and when on Sunday the mob began
to assemble about the Tuileries, three of her friends, Prince
Metternich, the Spanish Ambassador and M. Lesseps, formed a plan for her
escape, and went to her rescue. M. Lesseps stood outside and harangued
the mob for the purpose of detaining them, while the two other gentlemen
went in search of the Empress. They found her partaking of a very frugal
lunch with one of her ladies, and her fears could not be aroused. Seeing
it impossible to persuade her, the two gentlemen used force to remove
her. At this she consented to make a slight preparation, and without at
all changing her dress, (for the mob had already entered the Palace),
catching up a small leathern reticule, she put into it two
pocket-handkerchiefs, and two books, the New Testament and a
prayer-book. On her head she put a riding hat, and then by that time
thoroughly aroused, she fled through the Palace, through long corridors,
up and down flights of stairs, through chamber and _salon_, a long
distance before they came down to the Rue Rivoli, on which side of the
Palace the mob had not collected. Here a cab awaited her. She, with the
lady in attendance, was put into it. “Now,” said the friends, “we must
leave you; too well-known, our attendance would bring destruction upon
you! Make good speed!” Yes, good speed, for she heard the cries of the
furious mob, and as she was entering the cab a little boy exclaimed,
“There is the Empress,” and she thought all was lost; but it proved that
there was no one there to take notice, and so the two ladies drove off.
Soon they came into the midst of the excited crowd, and the lady
accompanying her questioned on this side and the other the meaning of it
all, and appeared to be lost in wonder at the proceedings, while the
Empress sank back out of sight in the carriage. They had a long ride out
beyond the Champs Élysées to the quieter parts of the city, when they
alighted, dismissed the cab, to avoid giving any clew in case of
pursuit, and walked some distance. Where should she go? To whom flee?
What friend trust? There was but one to whom she would venture, and that
one an American gentlemen of some note, who, with his wife, had long
been a friend of both Emperor and Empress. So they took another cab for
the house of this gentleman (whom we will call Mr. W——), arriving there
to find him away from home, and his wife absent for the summer at a
small seaport on the coast. The servant under these circumstances was
extremely ungracious, and quite refused to admit these strange ladies,
and when at last, upon their insisting, they were admitted to the house,
she was unwilling to show them into an apartment suitable for them, and
it was not without some difficulty that they were allowed to wait in the
library for the owner’s return. When at last he returned and entered the
room, judge of his surprise at the sight of the Empress. “You must get
me immediately out of France,—this very night,” exclaimed the Empress
the moment she saw him. Out of France that very night? He told her it
was impossible. He was expecting a party of friends to dinner, but would
plead sudden business and excuse himself, and make preparations as
quickly as possible for her flight; but, in the meantime, she must be
quiet and rest. This she was prevailed upon to do, and, supplying
herself from Mrs. W——’s wardrobe, retired for the night.
The dinner party, receiving the excuses of the host, and overcome with a
sense of mystery, soon withdrew in spite of the cordial message and
wishes of the gentleman that they would make themselves merry in his
absence. At four o’clock in the morning a carriage stood at the door,
into which Mr. W—— put the two ladies, and, driving himself, they set
off on their way out of France, pursuing quiet streets, confining their
course to unfrequented roads and lanes of the country, and avoiding the
more public highways, until the horses were worn out. They were then
near a little village; and the question arose how to get a carriage
brought to them, and explain why they could not go to it. Mr. W—— went
to the inn and, having found a private carriage which was waiting over
there, agreed with the servant to come out a mile or so and carry his
party, Mr. W——’s two sisters—one of whom was very lame indeed, and could
not walk a step—some miles on, till they should come to a railway. This
done and the lame lady with much difficulty put into the carriage by her
“brother” and “sister,” they proceeded for a distance until they came to
a railway, where they left the carriage to break up the clew, and rode a
short distance in the rail-car without attracting attention. Then they
took another carriage, riding in roundabout ways, until at the end of
two days they reached the little seaport where Mrs. W—— was spending the
summer. How must Mr. W—— conduct the ladies into the presence of his
wife without being observed by every one? After some reconnoitring, this
was successfully accomplished, and throwing her arms around the neck of
Mrs. W——, Eugenie exclaimed: “You and your husband are the only friends
left to me in the world.” She, with the lady who accompanied her,
remained in the room of Mrs. W——, lest some one should see and recognize
her. No servant could be allowed to enter the room. Mrs. W—— brought
food to the two ladies and served the Empress in everything, who
expostulated at the inconvenience she was causing her friend, and
insisted upon waiting upon herself, her behavior being of such a sweet
character as still more to endear her to her friends, who were risking
nearly all they possessed in her cause.
Their plan was now to get her across the Channel to the Isle of Wight,
and thence to England. There were but two conveyances in the harbor—both
private yachts—and only one able to get out to sea. The owner of that
one flatly refused to take the ladies over, but at last, after the
identity of the ladies had been made known and much persuasion used, he
consented, and Mr. W—— and the two ladies, with the reticule containing
two pocket-handkerchiefs, set out the day after their arrival in the
little seaport town on their voyage to England.
This is a journey usually made in a few hours; but a terrible storm
arising, it was prolonged to twenty-seven. The same night and in the
same waters the ever-memorable vessel the _Captain_ went down. But
although the gentleman in command lost all control of himself and ship,
they weathered the storm.
During this time Eugenie showed the most remarkable self-possession, and
evidently looked upon death as a relief from her woes. But this was not
to be, and after a passage fraught with the most imminent danger, she
was landed on the Isle of Wight, to find on English ground that asylum
which had been sought by so many fugitives before her. And to add to her
relief, her son, of whose whereabouts she knew nothing, was found to be
in Hastings, not far from her.
Such is the true story of Eugenie’s escape from Paris and France. What a
sad, sad tale of fallen greatness! How much must she have suffered in
those few days! the fury of a Paris mob in her ears; the fear of pursuit
at her back; how often did she start, and give herself up for lost! What
threatening meaning did many an accidental phrase assume! No wonder her
courage sustained the fearful storm; the thunder and lightning, the
waters, however dark and cold and deep, would be far more merciful than
that dreadful mob that called out her name, the mob that had shown no
pity to the little child or tender woman, and derided with the bitterest
insults the fond Marie Antoinette at the guillotine. Oh, France! when we
remember those days of terror, can we wonder at this retribution?
NAPOLEON III.
The following lines, suggested by the rise of Louis Napoleon, were
written January 6th, 1853. The capitulation of Sedan occurred September
1, 1870, and the death of the exile of Chiselhurst, January 9, 1873.
The light-house that once crowned the pointed rock
Of Eddystone, its bold inventor deem’d
A work to last for centuries, nor dream’d
It would succumb beneath the tempest’s shock:
And, therefore, as if Providence to mock,
He housed within it when the lightning gleam’d
Mid storm and darkness, but when morning beam’d,
Nought stood upon the bare and granite block!
Ambition thus dares all, and rears on high,
With the audacity of human pride,
A pile that may with Egypt’s wonders vie;
Perceiving not—presumptuous homicide!—
The ministers of wrath, that lurking nigh,
Will scatter the proud fabric far and wide.
THE EMPIRE IS PEACE.
This memorable utterance was originally made at Toulouse in the autumn
of 1852, while Louis Napoleon was feeling the public pulse in the
vineyards of Southern France, preparatory to re-establishing the
imperial _régime_. At the close of a splendid banquet given to him by
the Chamber of Commerce, in the Bourse, the Prince-President, emboldened
by the mad enthusiasm of the company present, suddenly cast off all
reserve, and unequivocally announced the impending change. “There is one
objection,” he urged in vindication of his purpose, “to which I must
reply. Certain minds seem to entertain a dread of war; certain persons
say, the Empire is only war. But I say, §the Empire is Peace§ (l’Empire
c’est la Paix), for France desires it, and when France is satisfied the
world is tranquil.”
JEFFERSON ON MARIE ANTOINETTE.
Mr. Jefferson’s estimate of Marie Antoinette is not so favorable as that
of some writers; for many years after his return from France he wrote of
her thus:—
This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke, with some
smartness of fancy, but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of
restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in the
pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires, or perish
in their wreck. Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those
of the Count d’Artois and others of her _clique_, had been a sensible
item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the
reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible
perverseness and dauntless spirit, led herself to the guillotine, drew
the king on with her, and plunged the world into crimes and calamities
which will forever stain the pages of modern history. I have ever
believed that had there been no queen there would have been no
Revolution. No force would have been provoked or exercised. [He adds,
that he would not have voted for the execution of the sovereign. He
would have shut the queen up in a convent, and deprived the king only
of irresponsible and arbitrary power.]
GENERAL BLÜCHER.
This “personal” of Blücher is from the _Recollections_ of Lady
Clementina Davies:—When the special messengers arrived to inform Blücher
that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and that his services would be
immediately required in the field, they were astonished to find him
literally running round and round a large room, the floor of which was
covered with sawdust, and in which he had immured himself under the
delusion that he was an elephant. For the time it was feared that
Blücher was hopelessly insane, or that he was so far suffering from
_delirium tremens_ that his active co-operation in the anticipated
campaign would be impossible; but when the urgent news was brought him
he at once recovered himself, and proceeded to give his advice in a
perfectly sound state of mind, the tone of which was thus, as by a
sudden shock, restored to him.
THE MOTHER OF CHARLES V.
An interesting historical discovery has been made by a Prussian savant,
of the name of Bergenroth, who was commissioned by the English
Government to investigate various collections of Spanish archives for
papers illustrating the relations between Spain and England in the
middle ages. Among other important documents, M. Bergenroth discovered a
hitherto unpublished mass of correspondence of Ferdinand the Catholic
and Charles V.
From this correspondence it appears that Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella, and mother of Charles, was not really mad, as all the
world has hitherto believed. The story was an atrocious fabrication,
under cover of which, first her father, and then her son kept her
incarcerated, in order to keep possession themselves of the crown of
Castile, which was hers by right of her mother Isabella. After long
years of rigorous and even cruel captivity, the unfortunate lady did at
last lose her senses, but not until her old age.
We are continually called upon to reconstruct our views of history,
which, the more we study it, more and more resembles Hamlet’s cloud,
taking whatever shape partisanship may determine. We must draw a new
likeness of Charles, who is no longer the prince full of Flemish
_bonhomie_, good knight, and boon companion, rigorous and despotic, but
not personally cruel; and when this is done, Philip II. will appear a
less surprising anomaly.
THE TRADITIONAL MARY MAGDALENE.
The injurious and probably unjust inferences respecting Mary Magdalene,
as drawn by the general assent of the Christian Church from the
narratives of the Evangelists, in which mention is made of her
attendance on our Lord, want the stamp of confirmation. Such portraiture
is more traditional than authoritative. The prevailing conjecture that
the infirmity of which she had been cured implied moral guilt was
rejected, or mentioned with hesitation, by the early Greek and Latin
Fathers. It was taken up by Gregory the Great, and stamped with his
authority in the latter part of the sixth century. It is sanctioned by
the Roman Breviary, and its truth has been assumed by most
ecclesiastical writers, who seem to think that Mary loved much because
she had much to be forgiven. Painters and poets have described the
supposed illustrious penitent, in loose array, without giving her
costume the benefit of her conversion! By these means it became
established in the popular mind. This was the more easy, as it supplied
an agreeable and interesting contrast. It made one Mary serve as a foil
to set off the excellencies of another. Mary, the mother of our Lord,
became the type of feminine purity; but the leaders of opinion were not
content with giving her those honors to which all Christians consider
her justly entitled. To give it, however, the advantage of a striking
contrast, and thus make it shine with greater splendor, a female
character of an opposite description was wanted—a type of fallen
womanhood, penitent and restored. And as “the woman which was a sinner,”
mentioned by St. Luke in the seventh chapter of his Gospel, is left by
the historian strictly anonymous, Mary Magdalene, whose name occurs in
the next chapter, was seized on for this purpose, and her character
treated in a way which, by any honest woman, would be deemed worse than
martyrdom.
MOTHER GOOSE.
Mother Goose, instead of being a traditional bard, or a creature of
fancy, as commonly supposed, was a veritable personage. The
mother-in-law of Thomas Fleet, the editor, in 1731, of the Boston
_Weekly Rehearsal_, was the original Mother Goose—the “old woman” of the
world-famous melodies. Mother Goose belonged to a wealthy family in
Boston, where her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Goose, was married by
Cotton Mather, in 1715, to Fleet, and in due time gave birth to a son.
Like most mothers-in-law in our own day, the importance of Mrs. Goose
increased with the appearance of her grandchild, and poor Mr. Fleet,
half distracted with her endless nursery ditties, finding all other
means fail, tried what ridicule could effect, and actually printed a
book with the title: “Songs for the Nursery, or Mother Goose’s Melodies
for Children, printed by T. Fleet, at his printing house, Pudding Lane,
Boston. Price ten coppers.”
Mother Goose was the mother of nineteen children, and hence we may
easily trace the origin of that famous classic:—
“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.”
HISTORY AND FICTION.
The archbishop of Canterbury once put the following question to
Betterton, the actor: “How is it that you players, who deal only with
things imaginary, affect your auditors as if they were real; while we
preachers, who deal only with things real, affect our auditors as if
they were imaginary?” “It is, my lord,” replied the player, “because we
actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while you
preachers too often speak of things real as if they were imaginary.”
Whitefield used to tell this anecdote as an explanation of his own
vehement and dramatic style of preaching. The remark may be applied to
historical and fictitious writing. The old school historians were so
solid and stately that they conveyed only feeble images to the mind,
while poets and romancers out of airy nothings have created living and
breathing beings. How much more readily we remember romance than
history, and yet “truth is stranger than fiction.” Shakspeare’s Macbeth
and Richard are not the Macbeth and Richard of history, yet we cling to
the poet’s portraits of them, and discard the sober truth. “Macbeth,”
Sir Walter Scott tells us, “broke no law of hospitality in his attempt
on Duncan’s life. He attacked and slew the king at a place called
Bothgowan, or the Smith’s house, near Elgin, in 1039, and not, as has
been supposed, in his own castle of Inverness. The act was bloody, as
was the complexion of the times; but in very truth, the claim of Macbeth
to the throne, according to the rules of Scottish succession, was better
than that of Duncan. As a king, the tyrant so much exclaimed against,
was, in realty, a firm, just and equitable prince. Early authorities
show us no such persons as Banquo and his son Fleance, nor have we
reason to think that the latter ever fled further from Macbeth than
across the flat scene according to the stage direction. Neither were
Banquo or his son ancestors of the house of Stuart. All these things are
now known, but the mind retains pertinaciously the impressions made by
the imposition of genius. While the works of Shakspeare are read, and
the English language exists, history may say what she will, but the
general reader will only recollect Macbeth as the sacrilegious usurper
and Richard as the deformed murderer.”
CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM.
Robert Greene, the Elizabethan dramatist and novelist, indulged in the
following disparaging criticism in reference to Shakspeare:—
“There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers that, with his
_tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide_, supposes he is as well able to
bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute
Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
country.”
The line in italics is a parody of one in 3 Henry VI., i. 4:—
“O! tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide,” which was taken from an
old play called the _First Part of the Contention of the two famous
Houses of York and Lancaster_. Shakspeare is known to have founded his
Henry VI. upon this piece and another which are supposed to have been
written by Greene or his friends, and hence, no doubt, Greene’s
acrimonious remark.
Says Dugald Stewart in his _Essays_:—A curious specimen of cotemporary
criticism is found in the Letters of the celebrated Waller, who speaks
thus of the first appearance of _Paradise Lost_:—“The old blind
schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the Fall of
Man. If its length be not considered as merit, it has no other!” Johnson
also says, in his _Lives of the Poets_: “Thompson has lately published a
poem, called the _Castle of Indolence_, in which there are some good
stanzas!”
Why do not men of superior talents strive, for the honor of the arts
which they love, to conceal their ignoble jealousies from the malignity
of those whom incapacity and mortified pride have leagued together as
the covenanted foes of worth and genius? What a triumph has been
furnished to the writers who delight in levelling all the proud
distinctions of humanity! and what a stain has been left on some of the
fairest pages of our literary history by the irritable passions and
petty hostilities of Pope and Addison!
Michelet, the historian, showed his extreme aversion to the First
Napoleon by describing him as “without eyelashes or eyebrows; with a
small quantity of hair of an uncertain brown; with eyes gray, like a
pane of glass, wherein one sees nothing; in short, an incomplete and
obscure impersonality which appears phantasmagorical.”
GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES.
Fortuna quæ plurimum potest, cum in aliis rebus, tum præcipue in
bello, in parvis momentis magnus rerum mutationes efficit.—§Cæsar§,
_De Bello Civili_.
In _Poor Richard’s Almanac_, 1758, Franklin quotes,—“He adviseth to
circumspection and care even in the smallest matters, because sometimes
‘A little neglect may breed great mischief,’ adding, ‘For want of a nail
the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a
horse the rider was lost’; being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all
for want of care about a horse-shoe nail.” And St. James (ch. iii. v. 5)
gives a fine illustration in respect to the government of the tongue,
“Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth.”
In the relations of cause and consequence there must, of course, be many
greater causes in readiness to act. An accidental spark may blow up a
fortress—_provided_ there be gunpowder in the magazine. But it is as
legitimate as it is curious to trace the successive links of a chain of
events back to small accidents.
“How momentous,” says Campbell, “are the results of apparently trivial
circumstances! When Mahomet was flying from his enemies, he took refuge
in a cave; which his pursuers would have entered, if they had not seen a
spider’s web at the entrance. Not knowing that it was freshly woven,
they passed by, and thus a spider’s web changed the history of the
world.”
When Louis VII., to obey the injunctions of his bishops, cropped his
hair and shaved his beard, Eleanor, his consort, found him, with this
unusual appearance, very ridiculous, and soon very contemptible. She
revenged herself as she thought proper, and the poor shaved king
obtained a divorce. She then married the Count of Anjou, afterwards
Henry II. of England. She had for her marriage-dower the rich provinces
of Poitou and Guienne; and this was the origin of those wars which for
three hundred years ravaged France, and cost the French three millions
of men. All this probably had never occurred had Louis not been so rash
as to crop his head, and shave his beard, by which he became so
disgustful in the eyes of Queen Eleanor.
Warton mentions, in his _Notes on Pope_, that the Treaty of Utrecht was
occasioned by a quarrel between the Duchess of Marlborough and Queen
Anne about a pair of gloves.
The expedition to the island of Ré was undertaken to gratify a foolish
and romantic passion of the Duke of Buckingham.
The coquetry of the daughter of Count Julian introduced the Saracens
into Spain.
What can be imagined more trivial, remarks Hume, in one of his essays,
than the difference between one color of livery and another in horse
races? Yet this difference begat two most inveterate factions in the
Greek empire, the Prasini and Veneti; who never suspended their
animosities till they ruined that unhappy government.
The murder of Cæsar in the capitol was chiefly owing to his not rising
from his seat when the senate tendered him some particular honors.
The negotiations with the Pope for dissolving Henry VIII.’s marriage
(which brought on the Reformation) are said to have been interrupted by
the Earl of Wiltshire’s dog biting his holiness’s toe, when he put it
out to be kissed by that ambassador; and the Duchess of Marlborough’s
spilling a basin of water on Mrs. Masham’s gown, in Queen Anne’s reign,
brought in the Tory Ministry, and gave a new turn to the affairs of
Europe.
If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, said Pascal, in his
epigrammatic and brilliant manner, the condition of the world would have
been different.
Luther might have been a lawyer, had his friend and companion escaped
the thunderstorm; Scotland had wanted her stern reformer, if the appeal
of the preacher had not startled him in the chapel of St Andrew’s
Castle; and if Mr. Grenville had not carried, in 1764, his memorable
resolution as to the expediency of charging certain stamp duties on the
plantations in America, the western world might still have bowed to the
British sceptre.
Giotto, one of the early Florentine painters, might have continued a
rude shepherd boy, if a sheep drawn by him upon a stone had not
accidentally attracted the notice of Cimabue.
THE SIGNING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
Mr. Jefferson used to relate, with much merriment, that the final
signing of the Declaration of Independence was hastened by an absurdly
trivial cause. Near the hall in which the debates were then held was a
livery stable, from which swarms of flies came into the open windows and
assailed the silk-stockinged legs of honorable members. Handkerchief in
hand they lashed the flies with such vigor as they could command on a
July afternoon, but the annoyance became at length so extreme as to
render them impatient of delay, and they made haste to bring the
momentous business to a conclusion.
After such a long and severe strain upon their minds, members seem to
have indulged in many a jocular observation as they stood around the
table. Tradition has it that when John Hancock had affixed his
magnificent signature to the paper, he said, “There, John Bull may read
my name without spectacles!” Tradition, also, will never relinquish the
pleasure of repeating that, when Mr. Hancock reminded members of the
necessity of hanging together, Dr. Franklin was ready with his “Yes, we
must indeed all hang together, or else, most assuredly we shall all hang
separately.” And this may have suggested to the portly Harrison—a
“luxurious, heavy gentleman,” as John Adams describes him—his remark to
slender Elbridge Gerry, that when the hanging came he should have the
advantage, for poor Gerry would be kicking in the air long after it was
all over with himself.
French critics censure Shakspeare for mingling buffoonery with scenes of
the deepest tragic interest. But here we find one of the most important
assemblies ever convened, at the supreme moment of its existence, while
performing the act that gives it its rank among deliberate bodies,
cracking jokes, and hurrying up to the table to sign, in order to escape
the flies. It is precisely so that Shakspeare would have imagined the
scene.
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.
According to a Spanish tradition the discovery of America is mainly due
to the result of a hard-fought game of chess. Columbus had for seven
weary years been dancing attendance upon the Court of Spain in pursuance
of the aim of his life. The anxious petitioner for royal favor and
assistance had failed to arouse in Ferdinand sufficient interest, in
what was declared by the commissioners appointed to report upon the
project, to be a visionary and impracticable scheme. True, he had
enlisted the sympathy of the good queen Isabella, and his hopes had been
encouraged and sustained by her in many ways. But after years of vain
solicitation, baffled by the skepticism which could not share his
aspirations, he determined to lay his plans before Charles VIII. of
France, and accordingly called to take leave of their majesties before
his departure from Cordova. Arriving at the palace at nightfall, he
announced his purpose to the queen, who instantly sought Ferdinand with
a determination to make a final effort on behalf of the sad and
discouraged suitor. The king was absorbed in a game of chess with a
grandee whose skill taxed his powers to the utmost. Isabella’s
interruption had the effect of distracting the monarch’s attention, and
of causing him to lose his principal piece, which was followed by a
volley of imprecations on mariners in general, and Columbus in
particular. The game grew worse, and defeat seemed imminent. With the
prospect of being vanquished, Ferdinand at length told the queen that
her _protegé_ should be successful or otherwise accordingly as the game
resulted. She immediately bent all her energies upon the board, and
watched the long contest with concentrated interest. The courtiers
clustered around the table, amused at the excitement of the king and the
quiet satisfaction of his antagonist. And so the game went on which was
to decide the discovery of a new world, until Isabella leaned toward her
husband’s ear and whispered, “you can checkmate him in four moves.” In
the utmost astonishment Ferdinand re-examined the game, found the
queen’s assertion correct, and in the course of a few minutes announced
that Columbus should depart on his voyage with the title of Admiral of
the Elect.
THE STORY OF TWO FAVORITE BALLADS.
ANNIE LAURIE.
The birth of the heroine of the well-known ballad of Annie Laurie is
quaintly recorded by her father, Sir Robert Laurie, of Maxwelltown, in
the family register, in these words:—
“At the pleasure of the Almighty God, my daughter, Annie Laurie, was
born on the 16th day of December, 1682 years, about 6 o’clock in the
morning, and was baptised by Mr. Geo.” [Hunter, of Glencairn.]
And his own marriage is given in the same quaint style:—
“At the pleasure of the Almighty, I was married to my wife, Jean Riddle,
upon the 27th day of July, 1674, in the Tron Kirk of Edinb., by Mr.
Annane.”
These statements are derived from the curious collection of manuscripts
left by the late Mr. W. F. H. Arundell, of Barjarg Tower, Dumfriesshire.
The papers of this industrious collector contain a vast fund of
information respecting the antiquities and county families of
Dumfriesshire. From them we learn further that Annie was wooed by
William Douglas, of Fingland, in Kirkcudbrightshire. Her charms are thus
spoken of in his pathetic lyric, “Bonnie Annie Laurie”:—
Her brow is like the snow-drift,
Her neck is like the swan,
Her face it is the fairest
That e’er the sun shone on,
That e’er the sun shone on,
And dark blue is her eye;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I’d lay me down and die.
“She was, however, obdurate to his passionate appeal, preferring
Alexander Ferguson, of Craigdarroch, to whom she was eventually married.
This William Douglas was said to have been the hero of the well-known
song, “Willie was a Wanton Wag.” Though he was refused by Annie, he did
not pine away in single blessedness, but made a runaway marriage with
Miss Elizabeth Clark, of Glenboig, in Galloway, by whom he had four sons
and two daughters.”
ROBIN ADAIR.
Robin Adair was well-known in the London fashionable circles of the last
century by the _sobriquet_ of the “Fortunate Irishman;” but his
parentage and the exact place of his birth are unknown. He was brought
up as a surgeon, but “his detection in an early amour drove him
precipitately from Dublin,” to push his fortunes in England. Scarcely
had he crossed the Channel when the chain of lucky events that
ultimately led him to fame and fortune commenced.
Near Holyhead, perceiving a carriage overturned, he ran to render
assistance. The sole occupant of this vehicle was a “lady of fashion,
well-known in polite circles,” who received Adair’s attentions with
thanks; and, being lightly hurt, and hearing that he was a surgeon,
requested him to travel with her in her carriage to London. On their
arrival in the metropolis she presented him with a fee of one hundred
guineas, and gave him a general invitation to her house. In after life
Adair used to say that it was not so much the amount of this fee, but
the time it was given, that was of service to him, as he was then almost
destitute. But the invitation to her house was a still greater service,
for there he met the person who decided his fate in life. This was Lady
Caroline Keppel, daughter of the second Earl of Albemarle and of Lady
Anne Lenox, daughter of the first Duke of Richmond. Forgetting her high
lineage, Lady Caroline, at the first sight of the Irish surgeon, fell
desperately in love with him; and her emotions were so sudden and so
violent as to attract the general attention of the company.
Adair, perceiving his advantage, lost no time in pursuing it; while the
Albemarle and Richmond families were dismayed at the prospect of such a
terrible _mesalliance_. Every means were tried to induce the young lady
to alter her mind, but without effect. Adair’s biographer tells us that
“amusements, a long journey, an advantageous offer, and other common
modes of shaking off what was considered by the family as an improper
match, were already tried, but in vain; the health of Lady Caroline was
evidently impaired, and the family at last confessed, with a good sense
that reflects honor on their understandings as well as their hearts,
that it was possible to prevent, but never to dissolve an attachment;
and that marriage was the honorable, and indeed the only alternative
that could secure her happiness and life.”
When Lady Caroline was taken by her friends from London to Bath, that
she might be separated from her lover, she wrote, it is said, the song
of “Robin Adair,” and set it to a plaintive Irish tune that she had
heard him sing. Whether written by Lady Caroline or not, the song is
simply expressive of her feelings at the time, and as it completely
corroborates the circumstances just related, which were the town-talk of
the period, though now little more than family tradition, there can be
no doubt that they were the origin of the song, the words of which, as
originally written, are the following:—
What’s this dull town to me?
Robin’s not near;
He whom I wish to see,
Wish for to hear.
Where’s all the joy and mirth,
Made life a heaven on earth?
Oh! they’re all fled with thee,
Robin Adair!
What made the assembly shine?
Robin Adair!
What made the ball so fine?
Robin was there!
What, when the play was o’er,
What made my heart so sore?
Oh! it was parting with
Robin Adair!
But now thou art far from me,
Robin Adair!
But now I never see
Robin Adair!
Yet he I love so well
Still in my heart shall dwell,
Oh! can I ne’er forget
Robin Adair!
Immediately after his marriage with Lady Caroline, Adair was appointed
Inspector General of Military Hospitals, and subsequently, becoming a
favorite of George III., he was made Surgeon-General, King’s Sergeant
Surgeon, and Surgeon of Chelsea Hospital. Very fortunate men have seldom
many friends, but Adair, by declining a baronetcy that was offered to
him by the king, for surgical attendance on the Duke of Gloucester,
actually acquired considerable popularity before his death, which took
place when he was nearly fourscore years of age, in 1790. In the
“Gentleman’s Magazine” of that year there are verses “On the Death of
Robert Adair, Esq., late Surgeon-General, by J. Crane, M. D.,” who, it
is to be hoped, was a much better physician than a poet.
Lady Caroline Adair’s married life was short but happy. She died of
consumption, after giving birth to three children, one of them a son. On
her death-bed she requested Adair to wear mourning for her as long as he
lived; which he scrupulously did, save on the king’s and queen’s
birthdays, when his duty to his sovereign required him to appear at
Court in full dress. If this injunction respecting mourning were to
prevent Adair marrying again, it had the desired effect; he did not
marry a second time, though he had many offers.
JOAN OF ARC.
The legend respecting the substitution of another person at the stake,
and the subsequent marriage of the Maid to Robert des Hermoises, has
been treated by no less an iconoclast than M. Octave Delepierre, the
learned Belgian Consul in England, in a volume (_Doute Historique_),
privately printed. In the _Athenæum_ for September 15, 1855, there is a
complete analysis of the story, from which it appears that more than two
centuries after the alleged execution of Joan, namely in 1645, Father
Vignier found documents among the archives at Metz, which spoke of the
presence and recognition of Joan in that city, five years after her
alleged execution. The Father was then a guest of a descendant of Robert
des Hermoises, in whose muniment chest he discovered the marriage
contract of Robert and Joan. The matter was forgotten, when in 1740,
documents were found at Orleans which recorded, among other things, a
gratuity made to Joan in 1439, “for services rendered by her at the
siege of the same city, 210 livres.” The tradition has many singular
points, and is full of delightful uncertainty.
AMY ROBSART.
Another time-honored illusion is gone, and Amy Robsart descends into the
grave like a respectable lady, instead of disappearing through a
trap-door into a vault beneath and breaking her neck. So one by one the
pleasant fictions over which in youth we lingered with such keen
enjoyment, are stripped of their reality, and nothing but dull prose is
left in their place. The pretty legend of Pocahontas, the venerable and
patriotic one of William Tell, the ingenious mystification between the
island of Juan Fernandez, Alexander Selkirk, and Robinson Crusoe, all
have been cast down from their shrines. Nay, attempts have been made to
remove Shakspeare himself into the region of myth, by representing that
Lord Bacon was the veritable author of the plays and poems supposed to
have been written by the great bard of Avon. No one need now despair of
the disappearance of any time-honored personage or romance.
The name of Amy Robsart has always possessed a peculiar interest, not
merely on account of the historical associations connected with her, but
for the halo with which romance and poetry have invested her; and not
the least strange feature of the case is the fact that historians should
have so generally ignored the falsity of the legend. It had lain wrapped
in its venerable mantle for more than three hundred years, until very
recently, when public attention was forcibly called to the subject by an
article published in the Oxford _Undergraduates’ Journal_, England. In a
communication in that periodical, from the Secretary to the Oxford
Architectural and Historical Society, there is a statement to the
following effect: “The Rev. J. Burgon, the Vicar of St. Mary’s (Oxford),
has caused an inscription to be cut on the top step of the three steps
leading to the chancel of St. Mary’s Church, commemorating the site of
the interment of the ill-fated Amy Robsart. The inscription is as
follows: ‘In a vault of brick, at the upper end of this quire, was
buried Amy Robsart, wife of Lord Robert Dudley, K. G., Sunday, 22d
September, A. D. 1560.’” History tells us that the funeral was
celebrated with great pomp: but previously to the ceremony, a coroner’s
inquest was held on the body, and after a long and minute investigation
of the circumstances, a verdict of “accidental death,” was returned. The
character of the Earl of Leicester, (Lord Robert Dudley) her husband,
was such as to raise grave doubts as to the mode by which she came by
her death, and the popular belief that Queen Elizabeth was in love with
him, and was willing to marry him, gave great countenance to the
prevailing suspicion that he had kept his marriage a secret, and got rid
of his wife to enable him to carry out his ambitious schemes. The
historian, Hume, alludes to these reports, which, however, he derived
from Camden, the antiquary, and which very probably originated in the
political hostility and personal hatred of Cecil, Walsingham, and others
of Leicester’s mortal enemies. Ashmole, in his work, _The Antiquities of
Berkshire_ gives the popular legend from which Sir Walter Scott derived
many of the materials for his beautiful romance of _Kenilworth_.
Ashmole wrote his book about the middle of the seventeenth century, a
hundred years after the fatal event at Cumnor Hall; he is, therefore, no
authority on the subject; but William Julius Mickle, the poet, took him
for one a century later, and turned the story into verse. And thus,
between political hostility, personal dislike, the non-authenticated
statements of historians, antiquaries, poets and novelists, it has long
been accepted as an undoubted fact that Robert Dudley, Earl of
Leicester, murdered his wife, or was accessory to her murder, at Cumnor
Hall. But it has been very generally overlooked that his alleged main
motive for the supposed murder could have had no existence. There is no
doubt the Queen knew he was married, but she continued to disgrace
herself by open professions of attachment to him notwithstanding; and
after Amy’s sudden death, the inquest on her body, and her public
funeral, “Good Queen Bess” was just as fond of him as ever, and showered
such favors upon him as could have left him but little to wish for. He
knew perfectly well that a marriage between himself and Elizabeth would
have convulsed the kingdom, and probably cost him his life. He also knew
that she had no real intention of parting with one iota of the royal
power or prerogative, even to him, and hence the motive for the
so-called murder falls to the ground, and with it the pathetic romance
built upon it.
WILLIAM TELL.
William Tell is very hard to kill. German writers in the last century
demolish him, over and over again, but to little purpose. He remained
the Swiss hero, and what is far worse, those hideous statues at Altorf
continue to assert their undying ugliness, and pretend to prove, by
their presence there, the truth of the story. The giant has been
recently slain once more as an impostor. Once more? Half a dozen times;
and each slayer takes himself for the sole and original champion. Swiss
professors even have been at the work of demolition. Three or four years
ago Mr. Baring-Gould, in his “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,” set up
a dozen of those myths, and bowled them all down at one bowl: he proved,
as others had done, that the legend of William Tell was “as fabulous as
any other historical event.” Mr. Baring-Gould, however, does more than
some others have done. He traces the story as far back as it can be
traced. This is the order of the tradition:—
1. In the tenth century a tippling, boasting Danish soldier, named Toki,
swore he could drive an arrow through an apple, placed on the point of a
stick, at a great distance. King Harald Bluetooth told the boaster that
the apple should be placed on his son’s head, and if Toki did not send
an arrow through it at the first attempt, his own head should pay the
penalty. Toki performed the feat with perfect success; but Harald
perceiving he had brought other arrows, demanded the reason thereof, and
Toki replied that if he had injured his son he would have driven those
other arrows into the King’s body. The story was first related by Saxo
Grammaticus, in the twelfth century.
2. But in the eleventh century the above prototype of Tell had
successors or imitators. King Olaf, the Saint of Norway, challenged
Eindridi, among other things, to shoot with an arrow at a writing tablet
on the head of Eindridi’s son. Each was to have one shot. Olaf grazed
the boy’s head, whereupon the boy’s mother interfered, and Eindridi was
withdrawn from the contest. Olaf remarked that his competitor had a
second arrow, which Eindridi confessed that he intended for his Majesty
if anything very unpleasant had happened to the boy.
3. A year or two later in this eleventh century, another Norse archer,
Hemingr, had a match with King Harold. Harold set a spear-shaft for a
mark in the ground. He then fired in the air; the arrow turned in its
descent and pierced the spear-shaft. Hemingr followed suit, and split
the King’s arrow, which was perpendicularly fixed in the spear-shaft.
Then the King stuck a knife in an oak. His arrow went into the haft.
Hemingr shot, and his arrow cleft the haft and went into the socket of
the blade. The enraged King next fired at a tender twig, which his arrow
pierced, but Hemingr’s split a hazel-nut growing upon it. “You shall put
the nut on your brother Bjorn’s head,” said Harold, “and if you do not
pierce it with your spear at the first attempt, your life shall be
forfeited.” Of course the thing was done. Hemingr is supposed to have
had his revenge by sending an arrow through Harold’s trachea at the
battle of Stamford Bridge, where he fought on the English side.
4. In the Faroe Isles, the above Harold is said to have had a
swimming-match with a certain Geyti, who not only beat him, but gave him
a ducking. Harold condemned him to shoot a hazel-nut off his brother’s
head, under the usual penalty, and with the usual result.
5. The same story is told of one Puncher, (suggestive name,) with this
difference, that the object aimed at was a coin.
6. In Finland, it is a son who shoots an apple off his father’s head;
for which feat some robbers, who had captured his sire, gave him up to
the son.
7. In a Persian poem of the twelfth century, a King, in sport, shoots an
arrow at an apple on the head of his favorite page, who, though not
hurt, died of the fright.
8. The story, with a difference, is told of Egil, in the Saga of
Thidrik, of no particular date.
9. It is familiar to us, in the English ballad of William of Cloudesley,
chronological date of event uncertain.
10. Enter William Tell, in the first decade of the fourteenth century.
We need not tell his well-known tale again. It is only necessary to
remark, by way of comment, that the Tell and Gesler legend was not set
up till many years afterwards, and that in no contemporary record is any
mention made of either Tell, Gesler, or the apple incident. No Vogt
named Gesler ever exercised authority for the Emperor in Switzerland; no
family bearing the name of Tell can be traced in any part of that
country.
11, and lastly. The hero’s name was not Tell at all, but M’Leod, and he
came from Braemar. Mr. Baring-Gould has quite overlooked him. Therefore
is the new claimant’s story here subjoined in order to make the roll of
legends complete. It is taken from _The Braemar Highlands; their Tales,
Traditions and History_, by Elizabeth Taylor. The King referred to is
Malcolm Canmore.
“A young man named M’Leod had been hunting one day in the royal forest.
A favorite hound of the King’s having attacked M’Leod, was killed by
him. The King soon heard of the slaughter of his favorite, and was
exceedingly angry—so much so that M’Leod was condemned to death. The
gibbet was erected on Craig Choinnich, _i.e._, Kennoth’s Craig. As there
was less of justice than revenge in the sentence, little time was
permitted ere it was carried into execution. The prisoner was led out by
the north gate of the castle. The King, in great state, surrounded by a
crowd of his nobles, followed in procession. Sorrowing crowds of the
people came after, in wondering amazement. As they moved slowly on, an
incident occurred which arrested universal attention. A woman with a
child in her arms came rushing through the crowd, and throwing herself
before the King, pleaded with him to spare her husband’s life, though it
should be at the expense of all they possessed. Her impassioned
entreaties were met with silence. Malcolm was not to be moved from his
purpose of death. Seeing that her efforts to move the King were useless,
she made her way to her husband, and throwing her arms around him
declared that she would not leave him—she would go and die with him.
Malcolm was somewhat moved by the touching scene. Allen Durward,
noticing the favorable moment, ventured to put in the suggestion that it
was a pity to hang such a splendid archer. ‘A splendid archer, is he?’
replied the King; ‘then he shall have his skill tried.’ So he ordered
that M’Leod’s wife and child should be placed on the opposite side of
the river; something to serve as a mark was to be placed on the child’s
head. If M’Leod succeeded in hitting the mark without injuring his wife
or child his life would be spared, otherwise the sentence was to be
carried into execution. Accordingly (so the legend goes) the young wife
and child were put across the river, and placed on Tomghainmheine;
according to some, a little farther down the river, near where a
boat-house once stood. The width of the Dee was to be the distance
separating M’Leod from his mark. He asked for a bow and two arrows, and
having examined each with the greatest care, he took his position. The
eventful moment came, the people gathered round him, and stood in
profound silence. On the opposite side of the river his wife stood, the
central figure of a crowd of eager bystanders, tears glistening on her
cheeks as she gazed alternately at her husband and child in dumb
emotion. M’Leod took aim; but his body shook like an aspen-leaf in the
evening breeze. This was a trial for him far harder than death. Again he
placed himself in position; but he trembled to such a degree that he
could not shoot, and turning to the King, who stood near, he said in a
voice scarcely articulate in its suppressed agony, ‘This is hard!’ But
the King relented not; so the third time he fell into the attitude, and
as he did so, almost roared, ‘This is hard!’ Then as if all his
nervousness had escaped through the cry, he let the arrow fly—it struck
the mark! The mother seized her child, and in a transport of joy seemed
to devour it with kisses; while the pent-up emotion of the crowd found
vent through a loud cry of wonder and triumph, which repeated itself
again and again as the echoes rolled slowly away among the neighboring
hills. The King now approached M’Leod, and after confirming his pardon,
inquired why he, so sure of hand and keen of sight, had asked two
arrows? ‘Because,’ replied M’Leod, ‘had I missed the mark, or hurt my
wife and child, I was determined not to miss you.’ The king grew pale,
and turned away as if undecided what to do. His better nature prevailed;
so he again approached M’Leod, and with kindly voice and manner told him
that he would receive him into his body-guard, and he would be well
provided for. ‘Never!’ answered the undaunted Celt. ‘After the painful
proof to which you have just put my heart. I could never love you enough
to serve you faithfully. The King in amazement cried out, ‘Thou art a
Hardy! and as Hardy thou art, so Hardy thou shalt be.’” From that time
M’Leod went under the appellation of Hardy, while his descendants were
termed the M’Hardy’s—Mac being the Gaelic word for son. The date of the
above is the eleventh century, when the legend burst forth in several
parts of the world. Here we have it in Scotland. Like many other legends
it probably came originally from India.
THE TIME OF LE GRAND MONARQUE.
Thackeray draws the following graphic picture of the extremes of society
in Europe in the time of Louis XIV. Rarely is the contrast between “the
boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,” and “the short and simple annals
of the poor,” delineated with such masterly vigor. Referring to the
influence of French fashions upon the German courts, he says:—
It is incalculable how much that royal bigwig cost Germany. Every prince
imitated the French king, and had his Versailles, his Wilhelmshöhe or
Ludwigslust; his court and its splendors; his gardens laid out with
statues; his fountains, and water-works, and Tritons; his actors, and
dancers, and singers, and fiddlers; his harem, with its inhabitants; his
diamonds and duchies for these latter; his enormous festivities, his
gaming-tables, tournaments, masquerades, and banquets lasting a week
long, for which the people paid with their money, when the poor wretches
had it; with their bodies and very blood when they had none; being sold
in thousands by their lords and masters, who gaily dealt in
soldiers,—staked a regiment upon the red at the gambling table; swapped
a battalion against a dancing-girl’s diamond necklace, and, as it were,
pocketed their people.
As one views Europe, through contemporary books of travel, in the early
part of the last century, the landscape is awful—wretched wastes,
beggarly and plundered; half-burned cottages and trembling peasants
gathering piteous harvests; gangs of such tramping along with bayonets
behind them, and corporals with canes and cats-of-nine-tails to flog
them to barracks. By these passes my lord’s gilt carriage, floundering
through the ruts, as he swears at the postillions, and toils on to the
Residenz. Hard by, but away from the noise and brawling of the citizens
and buyers, is Wilhelmslust or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or
Versailles—it scarcely matters which—near to the city, shut out by woods
from the beggared country, the enormous, hideous, gilded, monstrous
marble palace, where the prince is, and the Court, and the trim gardens,
and huge fountains, and the forest where the ragged peasants are beating
the game in (it is death to them to touch a feather); and the jolly hunt
sweeps by with its uniform of crimson and gold; and the prince gallops
ahead puffing his royal horn; and his lords and mistresses ride after
him; and the stag is pulled down; and the grand huntsman gives the knife
in the midst of a chorus of bugles; and ’tis time the court go home to
dinner; and our noble traveller, it may be the Baron of Pöllnitz, or the
Count de Königsmarck, or the excellent Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the
procession gleaming through the trim avenues of the wood, and hastens to
the inn, and sends his noble name to the marshal of the court. Then our
nobleman arrays himself in green and gold, or pink and silver, in the
richest Paris mode, and is introduced by the chamberlain, and makes his
bow to the jolly prince, and the gracious princess; and is presented to
the chief lords and ladies, and then comes supper and a bank at Faro,
where he loses or wins a thousand pieces by daylight. If it is a German
court, you may add not a little drunkenness to this picture of high
life; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can see out of your
palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, misery is lying
outside; hunger is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly
following precarious husbandry; ploughing stony fields with starved
cattle; or fearfully taking in scanty harvests. Augustus is fat and
jolly on his throne; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost; his
mistress, Aurora von Königsmarck, is the loveliest, the wittiest
creature; his diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world,
and his feasts as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis the
Great, he is more than mortal. Lift up your glances respectfully, and
mark him eyeing Madame de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan from under
his sublime periwig, as he passes through the great gallery where
Villars and Vendome, and Berwick, and Bossuet, and Massillon are
waiting. Can Court be more splendid; nobles and knights more gallant and
superb; ladies more lovely? A grander monarch, or a more miserable
starved wretch than the peasant his subject, you cannot look on. Let us
bear both these types in mind, if we wish to estimate the old society
properly. Remember the glory and the chivalry? Yes! Remember the grace
and beauty, the splendor and lofty politeness; the gallant courtesy of
Fontenoy where the French line bids the gentlemen of the English guard
to fire first; the noble constancy of the old king and Villars his
general, who fits out the last army with the last crown-piece from the
treasury, and goes to meet the enemy and die or conquer for France at
Denain. But round all that royal splendor lies a nation enslaved and
ruined; there are people robbed of their rights—communities laid
waste—faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and well-nigh
destroyed—nay, in the very centre of royalty itself, what horrible
stains and meanness, crime and shame! It is but to a silly harlot that
some of the noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the
world are bowing down; it is the price of a miserable province that the
king ties in diamonds round his mistress’s white neck. In the first half
of the last century this is going on all Europe over. Saxony is a waste
as well as Picardy or Artois; and Versailles is only larger and not
worse than Herrenhausen.
THE BITER BIT.
Jerry White, the Chaplain to Cromwell, carried his ambition so far as to
think of becoming son-in-law to his Highness, by marrying his daughter,
the lady Frances; and as Jerry had those requisites that generally
please the fair sex, he won the affections of the young lady: but as
nothing of this sort could happen without the knowledge of the watchful
father, who had his spies in every place, and about every person, it
soon reached his ears. There were as weighty reasons for rejecting Jerry
as there had been for dismissing His Majesty Charles II., who had been
proposed by the Earl of Orrery as a husband. Oliver therefore, ordered
the informer to observe and watch them narrowly; and promised that upon
substantial proof of the truth of what he had declared, he should be as
amply rewarded as Jerry severely punished. It was not long before the
informer acquainted his Highness that the Chaplain was then with the
lady; and upon hastening to his daughter’s apartment, he discovered the
unfortunate Jerry upon his knees, kissing her Ladyship’s hand: seeing
which, he hastily exclaimed, “What is the meaning of this posture before
my daughter Frances?” The Chaplain, with great presence of mind,
replied, “May it please your Highness, I have a long time courted that
young gentlewoman there, my lady’s woman, and cannot prevail: I was
therefore humbly praying her Ladyship to intercede for me.” Oliver,
turning to the waiting-woman, said:—“What is the meaning of this? He is
my friend, and I expect you should treat him as such:” who, desiring
nothing more, replied, with a low courtesy, “If Mr. White intends me
that honor, I shall not oppose him.” Upon which Oliver said, “We’ll call
Goodwin: this business shall be done presently, before I go out of the
room.” Jerry could not retreat. Goodwin came, and they were instantly
married,—the bride, at the same time, receiving £500 from the Protector.
Mr. Jerry White lived with this wife (not of his choice) more than fifty
years. Oldmixon says he knew both him and Mrs. White, and heard the
story told when they were present; at which time Mrs. White acknowledged
“there was something in it.”
THE LAST NIGHT OF THE GIRONDISTS.
Of all the prisons of Paris, the Conciergerie is the most
interesting, from its antiquity, associations, and mixed style of
architecture,—uniting as it were the horrors of the dungeons of the
Middle Ages with the more humane system of confinement of the
present century. It exhibits in its mongrel outline the progressive
ameliorations of humanity toward criminals and offenders,—forming a
connecting link between feudal barbarity and modern civilization.
Situated in the heart of old Paris, upon the Ile de la Cité,
separated from the Seine by the Quai de l’Horologe, it is one of a
cluster of edifices pregnant with souvenirs of tragedy and romance.
These buildings are the Sainte Chapelle, the Prefecture de Police,
and the Palais de Justice, formerly the residence of the French
monarchs. The Conciergerie, which derives its name from _concierge_,
or keeper, was anciently the prison of the palace. It is now chiefly
used as a place of detention for persons during their trial. Recent
alterations have greatly diminished the gloomy and forbidding effect
of its exterior; but sufficient of its old character remains to
perpetuate the associations connected with its former uses, and to
preserve for it its interest as a relic of feudalism. The names of
the two turrets flanking the gateway, Tour de César, and Tour
Boubec, smack of antiquity. Compared with Cæsar, however, its age is
quite juvenile, being less than nine hundred years.
The oldest legible entry in the archives of the Conciergerie is that of
the regicide Ravaillac, who was incarcerated May 16, 1610. Among the
memorable names on its register are those of Damiens, who attempted the
life of Louis XV.; Eleonore Galigaï, the confidante of Marie de Medicis;
La Voisine, the famous female poisoner, who succeeded Madame de
Brinvilliers; Cartouche the noted robber, and high above them all in
point of tragic interest, the innocent and unfortunate queen, Marie
Antoinette.
The records of this prison furnish extraordinary illustrations of
stoicism in the midst of civil calamity, and its walls bear witness to
almost inconceivable indifference to the mastery of violence. We know
that there is no social upheaval to which human nature, with its
versatility of powers for good or evil, may not become accustomed, and
if the condition be inevitable, even become reconciled. But the conduct
of the prisoners of the Conciergerie, in many instances, tinged as it
was with mingled sublimity and folly, surpasses comprehension. During
the Reign of Terror they were almost daily decimated by the guillotine;
yet their constant _amusement_ was to play at charades and
the—_guillotine_. Both sexes and all ranks assembled in one of the
halls. They formed a revolutionary tribunal—choosing accusers and
judges, and parodizing the gestures and voice of Fouquier Tinville and
his coadjutors. Defenders were named; the accused were taken at hazard.
The sentence of death followed close on the heels of the accusation.
They simulated the toilet of the condemned, preparing the neck for the
knife by feigning to cut the hair and collar. The sentenced were
attached to a chair reversed to represent the guillotine. The knife was
of wood, and as it fell, the individual, male or female, thus sporting
with their approaching fate, tumbled down as if actually struck by the
iron blade. Often while engaged in this _play_, they were interrupted by
the terrible voice of the public crier, calling over the “names of the
brigands who to-day have gained the lottery of the holy guillotine.”
But among the curious souvenirs of this celebrated jail, the most
memorable is that of the last night of the Girondists, that unique
festivity which was certainly the grandest triumph of philosophy in the
annals of human events. Those fierce, theoretical deputies, who had so
recently sent to the scaffold the King and Queen of France, were now in
turn on their way thither. Christianity teaches men to live in peaceful
humility, and to die with hopeful resignation. The last hour of a true
believer is calmly joyous. Here was an opportunity for infidelity to
assert its superiority in death, as it had claimed for itself the
greatest good in life. Let us be just to even these deluded men. They
had played a terrible role in the history of their country, and they
resigned themselves to die with the same intrepidity with which they had
staked their existence upon the success of their policy. They made it a
death fête, each smiling as he awaited the dread message, and devoting
his latest moments to those displays of intellectual rivalry which had
so long united them in life. Mainvielle, Ducos, Gensonné, and Boyer
Foufréde abandoned themselves to gayety, wit and revelry, repeating
their own verses with friendly rivalry, and stimulating their companions
to every species of infidel folly. Viger sang amorous songs; Duprat
related a tale; Gensonné repeated the Marseillaise; while Vergniaud
alternately electrified them with his eloquence, or discoursed
philosophically of their past history, and the unknown future upon which
they were about to enter. The discussion on poetry, literature, and
general topics, was animated and brilliant; on God, religion, the
immortality of the soul, grave, eloquent, calm and poetic. The walls of
the prison echoed to a late hour in the morning to their patriotic
cries, and were witnesses to their fraternal embraces. The corpse of
Valazé, the only one of their number who by a voluntary death eluded the
scaffold, remained with them.
The whole scene was certainly the wildest and most dramatic ever born of
courage and reason. Yet throughout their enthusiasm there appears a
chill of uncertainty, and an intellectual coldness that appals the
conscience. We feel that for the Girondists it was a consistent
sacrifice to their theories and their lives; but for a Christian and
patriot, a sad and unedifying spectacle.
While history cannot refute the tribute of admiration to high qualities,
even when misdirected, it is equally bound to record the errors and
repeat the warnings of those who claim a place in its pages. The lives
of the Girondists, as well as their deaths, formed a confused drama of
lofty aspirations, generous sentiments and noble sacrifices, mingled
with error, passion and folly. Their character presents all the cold
brilliancy of fireworks, which excite our admiration only to be chilled
with disappointment at their speedy eclipse. Their death-scene was
emphatically a _spectacle_. It exhibited neither the simple grandeur of
the death of Socrates, nor the calm and trustful spirit that
characterized the dying moments of Washington; the one yielding up his
spirit as a heathen philosopher; the other dying as a Christian
statesman.
QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE RING.
Concerning the love-token which Queen Elizabeth gave to Essex, with an
intimation that if he forfeited her favor, its return would secure her
forgiveness, Miss Strickland quotes the testimony of Lady Spelman, who
says that when Essex lay under sentence of death, he determined to try
the virtue of the ring, by sending it to the queen, and claiming the
benefit of her promise; but knowing he was surrounded by the creatures
of those who where bent on taking his life, he was fearful of trusting
it to any of his attendants. At length, looking out of his window, he
saw early one morning a boy whose countenance pleased him, and him he
induced by a bribe to carry the ring, which he threw down to him from
above, to the Lady Scrope, his cousin, who had taken so friendly
interest in his fate. The boy, by mistake, carried it to the Countess of
Nottingham, the cruel sister of the fair and gentle Scrope, and, as both
these ladies were of the royal bedchamber, the mistake might easily
occur. The countess carried the ring to her husband the Lord Admiral,
who was the deadly foe of Essex, and told him the message, but he bade
her suppress both. The queen, unconscious of the accident, waited in the
painful suspense of an angry lover for the expected token to arrive; but
not receiving it, she concluded he was too proud to make this last
appeal to her tenderness, and, after having once revoked the warrant,
she ordered the execution to proceed.
Multum in Parvo.
Prior, says Leigh Hunt, wrote one truly loving verse, if no other. It is
in his _Solomon_. The monarch is speaking of a female slave, who had a
real affection for him—
_And when I called another, Abra came._
* * * * *
Coleridge says that Noah’s Ark affords a fine image of the world at
large, as containing a very few men, and a great number of beasts.
* * * * *
The boxes which govern the world are the cartridge-box, the ballot-box,
the jury-box, and the band-box.
* * * * *
There are certain things upon which even a wise man must be content to
be ignorant. “I cannot fiddle,” said Themistocles, “but I can take a
city.”
* * * * *
Sir Thomas Overbury said of a man who boasted of his ancestry, that he
was like a potato—the best thing belonging to him was under the ground.
* * * * *
“Go and see Carlini” (the famous Neapolitan comedian), said a physician
to a patient, who came to consult him upon habitual depression of
spirits. “I am Carlini,” said the man.
* * * * *
The words _Abstemiously_ and _Facetiously_ contain all the vowels in
consecutive order.
* * * * *
When Mr. Pitt’s enemies objected to George III. that he was too young,
his Majesty answered: “That is an objection the force of which will be
weakened every day he lives.”
* * * * *
Prayer moves the hand
That moves the universe.
* * * * *
The clock that stands still, points right twice in the four-and-twenty
hours; while others may keep going continually, and be continually going
wrong.
* * * * *
The Mexicans say to their new-born offspring, “Child, thou art come into
the world to suffer. Endure, and hold thy peace.”
* * * * *
Balzac makes mention of a man who never uttered his own name without
taking off his hat, as a mark of reverence for the exalted appellation.
* * * * *
Gibbon says: As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal
applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors the thirst of
military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.
* * * * *
In the works of Prof. Thomas Cooper it is said,—Mankind pay best, 1.
Those who destroy them, heroes and warriors. 2. Those who cheat them,
statesmen, priests and quacks. 3. Those who amuse them, as singers,
actors, dancers and novel writers. But least of all, those who speak the
truth, and instruct them.
* * * * *
Wax-lights, though we are accustomed to overlook the fact, and rank them
with ordinary commonplaces, are true fairy tapers,—a white metamorphosis
from the flowers, crowned with the most intangible of all visible
mysteries—fire.
* * * * *
An illustration of false emphasis is supplied by the verse, (I. Kings
xiii. 27,) “And he spoke to his sons, saying, Saddle me the ass. And
they saddled _him_.”
* * * * *
Shakspeare, in the compass of a line, has described a thoroughly
charming girl:—
Pretty, and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle.
* * * * *
The foundation of domestic happiness is confidence in the virtue of
woman; the foundation of political happiness is reliance on the
integrity of man; the foundation of all real happiness, temporal and
spiritual, present and eternal, is faith in the mercy of God through
Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
* * * * *
Buckingham’s Epitaph on Thomas Lord Fairfax:—
He might have been a King,
But that he understood
How much it is a meaner thing
To be unjustly great, than honorably good.
* * * * *
A favorite exclamation of the Parisian mob, who must always have a
“_vive_” something or other, became during the Revolution, “_vive la
mort!_”
* * * * *
Alphonso, King of Aragon, in his judgment of human life, declared that
there were only four things in this world worth living for: “Old wine to
drink, old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to converse
with.”
* * * * *
David refers to a good old form of salutation and valediction in Psalm
cxxix. 8:—
“The blessing of the Lord be upon you; we bless you in the name of the
Lord.”
* * * * *
An eastern sage being desired to inscribe on the ring of his Sultan a
motto, equally applicable to prosperity or adversity, returned it with
these words engraved upon the surface: “And this, too, shall pass away.”
* * * * *
Oliver Cromwell’s grace before dinner:—
Some have meat, but cannot eat,
And some can eat, but have not meat,
And so—the Lord be praised.
Life and Death.
All death in nature is birth, and in death appears visibly the
advancement of life. There is no killing principle in nature, for
nature throughout is life: it is not death that kills, but the higher
life, which, concealed behind the other, begins to develop itself.
Death and birth are but the struggle of life with itself to attain a
higher form.—§Fichte.§
I came in the morning,—it was spring,
And I smiled;
I walked out at noon,—it was summer,
And I was glad;
I sat me down at even,—it was autumn,
And I was sad;
I laid me down at night,—it was winter,
And I slept.
BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATIONS OF LIFE.
What a fine passage is that of Bishop §Heber§, which is said to have
suggested to §Cole§ his justly-famed series of paintings, entitled _The
Voyage of Life_!
Life bears us on like the stream of a mighty river. Our boat at first
glides swiftly down the narrow channel, through the playful murmurings
of the little brook and the windings of its grassy borders: the trees
shed their blossoms over our young heads, and the flowers on the brink
seem to offer themselves to our young hands; we rejoice in hope, and
grasp eagerly at the beauties around us; but the stream hurries us on,
and still our hands are empty.
Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, and
amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated by the
moving picture of enjoyment and industry that is passing before us; we
are excited by some short-lived success, or depressed and rendered
miserable by some short-lived disappointment. But our energy and
dependence are alike in vain. The stream bears us on, and our joys and
griefs are left behind us: we may be shipwrecked, but we cannot anchor;
our voyage may be hastened, but cannot be delayed; whether rough or
smooth, the river hastens toward its home; the roaring of the waves is
beneath our keel, the land lessens from our eyes, the floods are lifted
up around us, and we take our last leave of earth and its inhabitants,
and of our future voyage there is no witness save the Infinite and the
Eternal!
THE ROUND OF LIFE.
From the Aphorisms of Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich:—
Some are serving,—some commanding;
Some are sitting,—some are standing;
Some rejoicing,—some are grieving;
Some entreating,—some relieving;
Some are weeping,—some are laughing;
Some are thirsting,—some are quaffing;
Some accepting,—some refusing;
Some are thrifty,—some abusing;
Some compelling,—some persuading;
Some are flattering,—some degrading;
Some are patient,—some are fuming;
Some are modest,—some presuming;
Some are leasing,—some are farming;
Some are helping,—some are harming;
Some are running,—some are riding;
Some departing,—some abiding;
Some are sending,—some are bringing;
Some are crying,—some are singing;
Some are hearing,—some are preaching;
Some are learning,—some are teaching;
Some disdaining,—some affecting;
Some assiduous,—some neglecting;
Some are feasting,—some are fasting;
Some are saving,—some are wasting;
Some are losing,—some are winning;
Some repenting,—some are sinning;
Some professing,—some adoring;
Some are silent,—some are roaring;
Some are restive,—some are willing;
Some preserving,—some are killing;
Some are bounteous,—some are grinding;
Some are seeking,—some are finding;
Some are thieving,—some receiving;
Some are hiding,—some revealing;
Some commending,—some are blaming;
Some dismembering,—some new-framing;
Some are quiet,—some disputing;
Some confuted and confuting;
Some are marching,—some retiring;
Some are resting,—some aspiring;
Some enduring,—some deriding;
Some are falling,—some are rising.
These are sufficient to recite,
Since all men’s deeds are infinite;
Some end their parts when some begin;
Some go out,—and some come in.
RULES OF LIVING.
_From Rev. Hugh Peters’ Legacy to his Daughter._
_London, §A.D.§ 1660._
Whosoever would live long and blessedly, let him observe these following
rules, by which he shall attain to that which he desireth:—
Let thy
Thoughts be divine, awful, godly.
Talk — little, honest, true.
Works — profitable, holy, charitable.
Manners — grave, courteous, cheerful.
Diet — temperate, convenient, frugal.
Apparel — sober, neat, comely.
Will — confident, obedient, ready.
Sleep — moderate, quiet, seasonable.
Prayers — short, devout, often, fervent.
Recreation — lawful, brief, seldom.
Memory — of death, punishment, glory.
DR. FRANKLIN’S MORAL CODE.
The great American philosopher and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, drew up
the following list of moral virtues, to which he paid constant and
earnest attention, and thereby made himself a better and happier man:—
_Temperance._—Eat not to fulness; drink not to elevation.
_Silence._—Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid
trifling conversation.
_Order._—Let all your things have their places; let each part of your
business have its time.
_Resolution._—Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail
what you resolve.
_Frugality._—Make no expense, but do good to others as yourself; that
is, waste nothing.
_Industry._—Lose no time, be always employed in something useful; but
avoid all unnecessary actions.
_Sincerity._—Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if
you speak, speak accordingly.
_Justice._—Wrong no one by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that
are your duty.
_Moderation._—Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries.
_Cleanliness._—Suffer no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
_Tranquillity._—Be not disturbed about trifles, or at accidents common
or unavoidable.
_Humility._—Imitate Jesus Christ.
EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
The celebrated Lord Coke wrote the subjoined couplet, which he
religiously observed in the distribution of time:—
Six hours to sleep,—to law’s grave studies six,—
Four spent in prayer,—the rest to nature fix.
But Sir William Jones, a wiser economist of the fleeting hours of life,
amended the sentence in the following lines:—
Seven hours to law,—to soothing slumber seven,—
Ten to the world allot,—and all to heaven.
LIVING LIFE OVER AGAIN.
Good Sir Thomas Browne says, Though I think no man can live well once
but he that could live twice, yet for my own part I would not live over
my hours past, nor begin again the thread of my days; not upon Cicero’s
ground,—because I have lived them well,—but for fear I should live them
worse. I find my growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better,
but my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do
worse. I find in my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my
youth; I committed many then, because I was a child, and because I
commit them still, I am yet an infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be
twice a child before the days of dotage, and stand in need of Æson’s
bath before threescore.
RHYMING DEFINITIONS.
§Fame.§—A meteor dazzling with its distant glare.
§Wealth.§—A source of trouble and consuming care.
§Pleasure.§—A gleam of sunshine, passing soon away.
§Love.§—A morning stream whoso memory gilds the day.
§Faith.§—An anchor dropped beyond the vale of death.
§Hope.§—A lone star beaming o’er the barren heath.
§Charity.§—A stream meandering from the fount of love.
§Bible.§—A guide to realms of endless joy above.
§Religion.§—A key which opens wide the gates of Heaven.
§Death.§—A knife by which the ties of earth are riven.
§Earth.§—A desert through which pilgrims wend their way.
§Grave.§—A home of rest when ends life’s weary day.
§Resurrection.§—A sudden waking from a quiet dream.
§Heaven.§—A land of joy, of light and love supreme.
EARTH.
What is earth, sexton?—A place to dig graves.
What is earth, rich man?—A place to work slaves.
What is earth, greybeard?—A place to grow old.
What is earth, miser?—A place to dig gold.
What is earth, school-boy?—A place for my play.
What is earth, maiden?—A place to be gay.
What is earth, seamstress?—A place where I weep.
What is earth, sluggard?—A good place to sleep.
What is earth, soldier?—A place for a battle.
What is earth, herdsman?—A place to raise cattle.
What is earth, widow?—A place of true sorrow.
What is earth, tradesman?—I’ll tell you to-morrow.
What is earth, sick man?—’Tis nothing to me.
What is earth, sailor?—My home is the sea.
What is earth, statesman?—A place to win fame.
What is earth, author?—I’ll write there my name.
What is earth, monarch?—For my realm it is given.
What is earth, Christian?—The gateway of heaven!
RHYMING CHARTER.
The following grant of William the Conqueror may be found in Stowe’s
_Chronicle_ and in Blount’s _Ancient Tenures_:—
HOPTON, IN THE COUNTY OF SALOP.
_To the Heyrs Male of the Hopton, lawfully begotten_:
From me and from myne, to thee and to thyne
While the water runs, and the sun doth shine.
For lack of heyrs to the king againe,
I, William, king, the third year of my reign
Give to the Norman hunter,
To me that art both _line_[40] and deare,
The Hop and the Hoptoune,
And all the bounds up and downe.
Under the earth to hell,
Above the earth to heaven,
From me and from myne
To thee and to thyne;
As good and as faire
As ever they myne were.
To witness that this is _sooth_,[41]
I bite the wite wax with my tooth,
Before Jugg, Marode, and Margery
And my third son Henery,
For one bow, and one broad arrow,
When I come to hunt upon Yarrow.
Footnote 40:
Related, or of my lineage.
Footnote 41:
True.
NICE QUESTIONS FOR LAWYERS.
A gentleman, who died in Paris, left a legacy of $6000 to his niece in
Dubuque, Iowa, who it appears also died about the same hour of the same
day. The question which died first turns upon the relation of solar to
true time, and must be decided by the difference of longitude. If the
niece died at four o’clock §A.M.§, and her uncle at ten o’clock §A.M.§,
the instants of their death would have been identical. Assuming that to
be the hour of the testator’s death, if the niece died at any hour
between four and ten, although the legacy would apparently revert to his
estate, it would really vest in her and her heirs, since by solar time
she would have actually survived her uncle.
Another case where great importance depended upon the precise time of
death was that of the late Earl Fitzhardinge, who died “about midnight,”
between October 10th and 11th. His rents, amounting to £40,000 a year,
were payable on Old Lady-day and Old Michaelmas-day. The latter fell
this year (1857) on Sunday, October 11, and the day began at midnight:
so that if he died before twelve, the rents belonged to the parties
taking the estate; but if after, they belonged to and formed part of his
personal estate. The difference of one minute might therefore involve
the question as to the title of £20,000.
THE BONE NOT DESCRIBED BY MODERN ANATOMISTS.
God formed them from the dust, and He once more
Will give them strength and beauty as before,
Though strewn as widely as the desert air,
As winds can waft them, or the waters bear.
The Emperor Adrian—the skeptic whose epigrammatic address to his soul in
prospect of death,
Animula, vagula, blandula,[42] &c.,
Footnote 42:
_Byron’s Translation._
Ah! gentle, fleeting, wavering sprite,
Friend and associate of this clay!
To what unknown region borne,
Wilt thou not wing thy distant flight?
No more with wonted humor gay,
But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.
is well known—asked Rabbi Joshua Ben Hananiah, in the course of an
interview following the successful siege of Bitter, “How doth a man
revive again in the world to come?” He answered and said, “From _Luz_,
in the back-bone.” Saith he to him, “Demonstrate this to me.” Then he
took _Luz_, a little bone out of the back-bone, and put it in water, and
it was not steeped; he put it into the fire, and it was not burned; he
brought it to the mill, and that could not grind it; he laid it on the
anvil and knocked it with a hammer, but the anvil was cleft, and the
hammer broken.
The name Luz is probably derived from Genesis xlviii. 3, where, however,
it refers to a place, not to a bone. The bone alluded to is the
_sacrum_, the terminal wedge of the vertebral column. Butler, in his
Hudibras, erroneously traces to the Rabbinic belief the modern name _os
sacrum_, its origin really being due to the custom of placing it upon
the altar in ancient sacrifices.
The learned Rabbins of the Jews
Write, there’s a bone, which they call _Luz_
I’ th’ rump of man, of such a virtue
No force in nature can do hurt to;
And therefore at the last great day
All th’ other members shall, they say,
Spring out of this, as from a seed
All sorts of vegetals proceed;
From whence the learned sons of art
_Os sacrum_ justly style that part.—_Hudibras._
DYING WORDS OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS.
There taught us how to live; and—oh, too high
A price for knowledge!—taught us how to die.—§Tickell.§
On parent knees, a naked, new-born child,
Weeping thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled;
So live that, sinking in thy last long sleep,
Calm thou mayst smile while all around thee weep.[43]
§Sir W. Jones§: _Pers. Trans._
Footnote 43:
A German journal proposed that the following lines should be
translated into any other language, so that the number of lines and
words should not exceed those in the original (twenty words).
Sohn! Du weintest am Tage der Geburt, es lachten die Freunde;
Tracht, dass am Todestag, wæhrend sie weinen, du lachst.
The English response thus complied with the conditions (seventeen
words):—
When I was born I cried, while others smiled;
Oh, may I dying smile, while others weep.
_Napoleon._—Tête d’Armée!
_Sir Walter Raleigh._—It matters little how the head lieth.
_Goethe._—Let the light enter.
_Tasso._—Into thy hands, O Lord.
_Alfieri._—Clasp my hand, my dear friend: I die.
_Martin Luther._—Father in Heaven, though this body is breaking away
from me, and I am departing this life, yet I know that I shall forever
be with thee, for no one can pluck me out of thy hand.
_Mozart._—You spoke of refreshment, my Emilie: take my last notes, sit
down at the piano, sing them with the hymn of your sainted mother; let
me hear once more those notes which have so long been my solace and
delight.
_Haydn._—God preserve the Emperor!
_Haller._—The artery ceases to beat.
_Grotius._—Be serious.
_Erasmus._—Lord, make an end.
_Cardinal Beaufort._—What! is there no bribing death?
_Hilary_, Bishop of Poictiers.—Soul, thou hast served Christ these
seventy years, and art thou afraid to die? Go out, soul, go out.
_Queen Elizabeth._—All my possessions for a moment of time!
_Charles II._—Let not poor Nelly starve.
_Anne Boleyn._—It is small, very small indeed (clasping her neck).
_Sir Thomas More._—I pray you see me safe up; and as for my coming down,
let me shift for myself (ascending the scaffold).
_John Hampden._—O Lord, save my country! O Lord, be merciful to——
_Chancellor Thurlow._—I’m shot if I don’t believe I’m dying.
_Addison._—See with what peace a Christian can die.
_Julius Cæsar._—Et tu, Brute.
_Nero._—Is this your fidelity?
_Herder._—Refresh me with a great thought.
_Frederick V._, of Denmark.—There is not a drop of blood on my hands.
_Mirabeau._—Let me die amid the sound of delicious music and the
fragrance of flowers.
_Madame de Staël._—I have loved God, my father, and liberty.
_Lord Nelson._—Kiss me, Hardy.
_Lord Chesterfield._—Give Dayrolles a chair.
_Hobbes._—I am taking a fearful leap in the dark.
_Byron._—I must sleep now.
_Sir Walter Scott._—I feel as if I were to be myself again.
_Keats._—I feel the daisies growing over me.
_Robert Burns._—Don’t let that awkward squad fire over my grave.
_Lawrence._—Don’t give up the ship.
_Washington._—It is well.
_Franklin._—A dying man can do nothing easy.
_Wolfe._—Now, God be praised, I will die in peace.
_Marion._—Thank God, I can lay my hand upon my heart and say that since
I came to man’s estate I have never intentionally done wrong to any one.
_Adams._—Independence forever!
_Jefferson._—I resign my soul to God, and my daughter to my country.
_J. Q. Adams._—This is the last of earth. I am content.
_Harrison._—I wish you to understand the true principles of the
Government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.
_Taylor._—I have endeavored to do my duty.
_Daniel Webster._—I still live.
THE LAST PRAYER OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.
_Written in her Prayer-Book the morning before her Execution_:
O! Domine Deus, (O my Lord and my God,
Speravi in te,— I have trusted in thee;
O! carè mi Jesu, O Jesus, my love,
Nunc libera me. Now liberate me.
In durâ catenâ, In my enemies’ power,
In miserâ, pœnâ, In affliction’s sad hour,
Desidero te. I languish for thee.
Languendo, gemendo, In sorrowing, weeping,
Et genuflectendo, And bending the knee,
Adoro, imploro, I adore and implore thee
Ut liberes me! To liberate me!)
REMARKABLE TRANCE.
At the siege of Rouen, the body of François de Civille, a French captain
who was supposed to have been killed, was thrown with others into the
ditch, where it remained from eleven o’clock in the morning to half-past
six in the evening, when his servant, observing some latent heat,
carried the body into the house. During the ensuing five days and nights
not the slightest sign of life was exhibited, although the body
gradually recovered its warmth. At the expiration of this time the town
was carried by assault, and the servants of an officer belonging to the
besiegers, having found the supposed corpse of Civille, threw it out of
a window, with no other covering than his shirt. Fortunately for the
captain, he fell upon a heap of straw, where he remained senseless three
days longer, when he was taken up by his relations for sepulture and
ultimately brought to life. What was still more strange, Civille, like
Macduff, had been “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped,” having been
brought into the world by a Cæsarian operation which his mother did not
survive. After his last escape he used to add to his signature, “three
times born, three times buried, and three times risen from the dead by
the grace of God.”
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION.
Whether,—as in the case of the Abbé Prevost in the forest of
Chantilly,—if a supposed _cadaver_, while subjected to the investigating
knife of the anatomist, should awake from a trance only to be conscious
of his horrible condition and to expire from the immediate effect of the
dissection, it is any thing more than homicide _per infortuniam_, or
not.
Whether, in the case of Lazarus, who was restored to life by the Saviour
after decomposition had commenced, he could have reclaimed property
already in the possession and occupancy of the heirs to whom he had
willed it before death.
PRESERVED BODIES.
There is an arched vault, or burying-ground, under the church at
Kilsyth, in Scotland, which was the burying-place of the family of
Kilsyth until the estate was forfeited and the title became extinct in
the year 1715, since which it has never been used for that purpose
except once. The last earl fled with his family to Flanders, and,
according to tradition, was smothered to death about the year 1717,
along with his lady and an infant child, and a number of other
unfortunate Scottish exiles, by the falling in of the roof of a house in
which they were assembled. What became of the body of the earl is not
known; but the bodies of Lady Kilsyth and her infant were disembowelled
and embalmed, and soon afterwards sent over to Scotland. They were
landed, and lay at Leith for some time, whence they were afterwards
carried to Kilsyth, and buried with great pomp, in the vault above
mentioned.
In the spring of 1796, some reckless young men, having paid a visit to
this ancient cemetery, tore open the coffin of Lady Kilsyth and her
infant. With astonishment and consternation they saw the bodies of Lady
Kilsyth and her child as perfect as they had been the hour they were
entombed. For some weeks this circumstance was kept secret; but at last
it began to be whispered in several companies, and soon excited great
and general curiosity. “On the 12th of June,” wrote the minister of the
parish of Kilsyth, in a letter to Dr. Garnet, “when I was from home,
great crowds assembled, and would not be denied admission. At all hours
of the night, as well as the day, they afterwards persisted in
gratifying their curiosity. I saw the body of Lady Kilsyth soon after
the coffin was opened. It was quite entire. Every feature and every limb
was as full, nay, the very shroud was as clear and fresh and the colors
of the ribands as bright, as the day they were lodged in the tomb. What
rendered this scene more striking and truly interesting was that the
body of her son and only child, the natural heir of the title and
estates of Kilsyth, lay at her knee. His features were as composed as if
he had been only asleep. His color was as fresh, and his flesh as plump
and full, as in the perfect glow of health; the smile of infancy and
innocence sat on his lips. His shroud was not only entire, but perfectly
clean, without a particle of dust upon it. He seems to have been only a
few months old. The body of Lady Kilsyth was equally well preserved; and
at a little distance, from the feeble light of a taper, it would not
have been easy to distinguish whether she was dead or alive. The
features, nay, the very expression of her countenance, were marked and
distinct; and it was only in a certain light that you could distinguish
any thing like the agonizing traits of a violent death. Not a single
fold of her shroud was decayed, nor a single member impaired. Neither of
the bodies appear to have undergone the slightest decomposition or
disorganization. Several medical gentlemen made incisions into the arm
of the infant, and found the substance of the body quite firm, and in
its original state.”
The writer states, among other interesting points that attracted his
attention, that the bodies appeared to have been saturated in some
aromatic liquid, of the color of dark brandy, with which the coffin had
been filled, but which had nearly all evaporated.
Other instances of the artificial preservation of bodies might be
mentioned, still more remarkable, though perhaps less interesting, than
the preceding. The tomb of Edward the First, who died on the 7th of
July, 1307, was opened on the 2d of January, 1770, and after the lapse
of four hundred and sixty-three years the body was found undecayed: the
flesh on the face was a little wasted, but not decomposed. The body of
Canute the Dane, who obtained possession of England in the year 1017,
was found quite fresh in the year 1766, by the workmen repairing
Winchester Cathedral. In the year 1522, the body of William the
Conqueror was found as entire as when first buried, in the Abbey Church
of St. Stephen at Caen; and the body of Matilda his queen was found
entire in 1502, in the Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity in the same
city.
No device of art, however, for the preservation of the remains of the
dead, appears equal to the simple process of plunging them into
peat-moss.
In a manuscript by one Abraham Grey, who lived about the middle of the
sixteenth century, now in the possession of his representative Mr.
Goodbehere Grey, of Old Mills, near Aberdeen, it is stated that, in
1569, three Roman soldiers, in the dress of their country, fully
equipped with warlike instruments, were dug out of a moss of great
extent, called Kazey Moss. When found, after the lapse of probably about
fifteen hundred years, they were still fresh and plump!
Modern chemistry teaches us that in these cases there is a conversion of
the tissues of the body into adipocere, a substance closely resembling
spermaceti, and composed, according to Chevreul, of margaric and oleic
acids, with a slight addition of the alkalies. It is generally formed
from bodies buried in moist earth, and especially when they have
accumulated in great numbers. On the removal of the _Cimetière des
Innocens_ in Paris, in 1787, where thousands of bodies had been buried
annually for several centuries, it was found that those bodies which had
been placed in great numbers in the trenches were, without having lost
their shapes, converted into this substance.
FOLLY OF EMBALMING CORPSES.
Full many a jocund spring has passed away,
And many a flower has blossomed to decay,
And human life, still hastening to a close,
Finds in the worthless dust its last repose.—§Firdousi.§
Professor Johnston, in alluding to the custom of converting the human
body into a frightful-looking mummy, or of attempting by various
artificial processes to arrest its natural course of decomposition into
kindred elements, remarks, as beautifully as truly:—
Embalm the loved bodies, and swathe them, as the old Egyptians did, in
resinous cerements, and you but preserve them a little longer, that some
wretched, plundering Arab may desecrate and scatter to the winds the
residual dust. Or jealously, in regal tombs and pyramids, preserve the
forms of venerated emperors or beauteous queens, still, some future
conqueror, or more humble Belzoni, will rifle the most secure
resting-place. Or bury them in most sacred places, beneath high altars,
a new reign shall dig them up and mingle them again with the common
earth. Or, more careful still, conceal your last resting-place where
local history keeps no record and even tradition cannot betray you: then
accident shall stumble at length upon your unknown tomb and liberate
your still remaining ashes.
How touching to behold the vain result of even the most successful
attempts at preserving apart, and in their relative places, the solid
materials of the individual form! The tomb, after a lapse of time, is
found and opened. The ghastly tenant reclines, it may be, in full form
and stature. The very features are preserved,—impressed, and impressing
the spectator, with the calm dignity of their long repose. But some
curious hand touches the seemingly solid form, or a breath of air
disturbs the sleeping air around the full-proportioned body,—when, lo!
it crumbles instantly away into an almost insensible quantity of
impalpable dust!
Who has not read with mingled wonder and awe of the opening, in our own
day, of the almost magical sepulchre of an ancient Etruscan king? The
antiquarian _dilettanti_, in their under-ground researches, unexpectedly
stumbled upon the unknown vault. Undisturbed through Roman and barbaric
times, accident revealed it to modern eyes. A small aperture, made by
chance in the outer wall, showed to the astonished gazers a crowned king
within, sitting on his chair of state, with robes and sceptre all
entire, and golden ornaments of ancient device bestowed here and there
around his person. Eager to secure the precious spoil, a way is forced
with hammer and mattock into the mysterious chamber. But the long spell
is now broken; the magical image is now gone. Slowly, as the vault first
shook beneath the blows, the whole pageant crumbled away. A light, smoky
dust filled the air; and, where the image so lately sat, only the
tinselled fragments of thin gold remained, to show that the vision and
the ornaments had been real, though the entire substance of the once
noble form had utterly vanished.
For a few thousand years some apparently fortunate kings and princes may
arrest the natural circulation of a handful of dust. But in what are
they better than Cromwell, whose remains were pitilessly disturbed,—than
Wyckliffe, whose ashes were sprinkled on the sea,—than St. Genevieve,
whose remains were burned in the Place de Grève and her ashes scattered
to the wind,—than Mausolus, whose dust was swallowed by his wife
Artemisia,—than the King of Edom, whose bones were burned for lime,—or
than St. Pepin and all the royal line of Bourbon, whose tombs were
emptied by a Parisian mob? Lamartine tells us, in his _History of the
Girondists_, that a decree of the Convention had commanded the
destruction of the tombs of the kings at St. Denis. The Commune changed
this decree into an attack against the dead. * * * * The axe broke the
gates of bronze presented by Charlemagne to the Basilica of St. Denis.
* * * They raised the stones, ransacked the vaults, violated the
resting-places of the departed, sought out, beneath the swathings and
shrouds, embalmed corpses, crumbled flesh, calcined bones, empty skulls
of kings, queens, princes, ministers, bishops. Pepin, the founder of the
Carlovingian dynasty and father of Charlemagne, was now _but a pinch of
gray ash, which was in a moment scattered by the wind_. The mutilated
heads of Turenne, Duguesclin, Louis XII., Francis I., were rolled on the
pavement. * * * * Beneath the choir were buried the princes and
princesses of the first race, and some of the third,—Hugh Capet, Philip
the Bold, Philip the Handsome. They rent away their rags of silk and
threw them on a bed of quicklime. * * * * They threw the carcass of
Henry IV. into the common fosse. His son and grandson, Louis XIII. and
XIV., followed. Louis XIII. was but a mummy; Louis XIV. a black,
indistinguishable mass of aromatics. Louis XV. came last out of his
tomb. The vault of the Bourbons rendered up its dead; queens,
dauphinesses, princesses, were carried away in armfuls by the workmen
and cast into the trench. A brief interval of proud separation, and they
were mingled with the common dust! Their ashes dissipated, nothing but
their empty tombs remain,—the houses of the dead, like the houses of the
living, long surviving, as melancholy mementos of the tenants for whom
they were erected.
M. de Saulcy, in his _Journey Round the Dead Sea_, remarks of the
rock-tombs of the valley of Hinnom, “The immense necropolis, traces of
which are to be met with at every step in the valley, dates from the
period when the Jebusites were masters of the country. After them the
Israelites deposited the remains of their fathers in the same grottoes;
and the same tombs, after having become at a still later period those of
the Christians who had obtained possession of the Holy City, have, since
the destruction of the Latin kingdoms of Jerusalem, ceased to change
both masters and occupants. Even the scattered bones are no more found
in them; and from the city of the dead the dead alone have disappeared,
while the abodes are still entire.”
There is a barbaric philosophy, therefore, as well as an apparent
knowledge of the course of nature, in the treatment of the dead which
prevails in Thibet and on the slopes of the Himalaya. In the former
country the dead body is cut in pieces, and either thrown into the lakes
to feed the fishes, or exposed on the hill-tops to the eagles and birds
of prey. On the Himalayan slopes the Sikkim burn the body and scatter
the ashes on the ground. The end is the same among these tribes of men
as among us. They briefly anticipate the usual course of time,—a little
sooner verifying the inspired words, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou
shalt return.”
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod.—§Bryant.§
WHIMSICAL WILL.
By William Hunnis, Chapel-master to Queen Elizabeth:—
To God my soule I do bequeathe, because it is his owen,
My body to be layd in grave, where to my friends best knowen;
Executors I will none make, thereby great stryfe may grow,
Because the goods that I shall leave wyll not pay all I owe.
THE TRIPOD.
According to the Babylonian Talmud, _Beracoth_, p. 8, and in _Jalkud
Schimoni_ on Ps. lxviii, 20, “Nine hundred and three axe the kinds of
death made in this world.” Physiologists drop the nine hundred, declare
that life stands on a tripod, and assert that we die by the lungs, the
heart, or the brain.
IMPRECATORY EPITAPH.
The Shakspearean imprecation, “Curst be he that moves my bones,” is
paralleled in an epitaph in Runic characters at Greniadarstad church, in
Iceland, which according to Finn Magnussen’s interpretation, concludes
thus:—
“If you willingly remove this monument, may you sink into the ground.”
THE FLEUR-DE-LIS.
Nothing, says an old writer, could be more simple than the lily, which
was the distinctive badge of the French monarchy; nor, at the same time,
could anything be more symbolic of the state of the nobility and gentry,
exempted from the necessity of working for a livelihood or for dress,
than lilies, of which it is said: “They toil not neither do they spin,”
_neque laborant neque nent_,—which was the motto of the royal arms of
France.
THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.
The waters change to blood; next, frogs arise;
Dust turns to lice; and then come swarms of flies;
Lo! murrain strikes the beasts, but Goshen’s free!
Lo! boils beset the men, save, Israel, thee!
Then fires the thundering hail; then locusts bite;
Then comes three days of one unbroken night;
The first-born’s midnight death, from cot to throne,
Winds up ten plagues that make Egyptians moan.
A STORY OF LONG AGO.
The long time ago of which I mean to tell, says Jean Ingelow, was a wild
night in March, during which, in a fisherman’s hut ashore, sat a young
girl at her spinning-wheel, and looked out on the dark driving clouds,
and listened, trembling, to the winds and the seas. The morning light
dawned at last. One boat that should have been riding on the troubled
waves was missing—her father’s boat! and half a mile from the cottage
her father’s body was washed upon the shore.
This happened fifty years ago, and fifty years is a long time in the
life of a human being; fifty years is a long time to go on in such a
course as the woman did of whom I am speaking. She watched her father’s
body, according to the custom of her people, till he was laid in the
grave. Then she laid down on her bed and slept, and by night got up and
set a candle in her casement, as a beacon to the fishermen and a guide.
She sat by the candle all night, and trimmed it, and spun; then when the
day dawned she went to bed and slept in the sunshine. So many hanks as
she spun before for her daily bread, she spun still, and one over, to
buy her nightly candle; and from that time to this, for fifty years,
through youth, maturity, and old age, she turned night into day, and in
the snow-storms of Winter, through driving mists, deceptive moonlight,
and solemn darkness, that northern harbor has never once been without
the light of her candle.
How many lives she saved by this candle, or how many meals she won for
the starving families of the boatmen, it is impossible to say; how many
a dark night the fishermen, depending on it, went fearlessly forth,
cannot now be told. There it stood, regular as a light-house, and steady
as constant care could make it. Always brighter when daylight waned,
they had only to keep it constantly in view and they were safe; there
was but one thing that could intercept it, and that was the rock.
However far they might have stretched out to sea, they had only to bear
down straight for that lighted window, and they were sure of a safe
entrance into the harbor.
Fifty years of life and labor—fifty years of sleeping in the
sunshine—fifty years of watching and self-denial, and all to feed the
flame and trim the wick of that one candle! But if we look upon the
recorded lives of great men and just men and wise men, few of them can
show fifty years of worthier, certainly not of more successful labor.
Little, indeed, of the “midnight oil” consumed during the last half
century so worthily deserved trimming. Happy woman—and but for the
dreaded rock her great charity might never have been called into
exercise.
But what do the boatmen and the boatmen’s wives think of this? Do they
pay the woman? No, they are very poor; but poor or rich they know better
than that. Do they thank her? No. Perhaps they feel that thanks of
theirs would be inadequate to express their obligations, or, perhaps
long years have made the lighted casement so familiar that it is looked
upon as a matter of course. Sometimes the fishermen lay fish on her
threshold, and set a child to watch it for her till she wakes; sometimes
their wives steal into her cottage, now she is getting old, and spin a
hank or two of thread for her while she slumbers; and they teach their
children to pass her hut quietly, and not to sing and shout before her
door, lest they should disturb her. That is all. Their thanks are not
looked for—scarcely supposed to be due. Their grateful deeds are more
than she expects and much as she desires.
How often in the far distance of my English home, I have awoke in a wild
Winter night, and while the wind and storm were arising, have thought of
that northern bay, with the waves dashing against the rock, and have
pictured to myself the casement, and the candle nursed by that bending,
aged figure! How delighted to know that through her untiring charity the
rock has long since lost more than half its terror, and to consider
that, curse though it may be to all besides, it has most surely proved a
blessing to her.
You, too, may perhaps think with advantage on the character of this
woman, and contrast it with the mission of the rock. There are many
degrees between them. Few, like the rock, stand up wholly to work ruin
and destruction; few, like the woman, “let their light shine” so
brightly for good. But to one of the many degrees between them we must
all most certainly belong—we all lean towards the woman or the rock. On
such characters you do well to speculate with me, for you have not been
cheated into sympathy with ideal shipwreck or imaginary kindness. There
is many a rock elsewhere as perilous as the one I told you of—perhaps
there are many such women; but for this one, whose story is before you,
pray that her candle may burn a little longer, since this record of her
charity is true.
THIS IS NOT OUR HOME.
Among the beautiful thoughts which dropped like pearls from the pen of
that brilliant and talented journalist, George D. Prentice, the
following sublime extract upon man’s higher destiny is perhaps the best
known and most universally admitted. Coming from such a source we can
well appreciate it, for that distinguished man had attained a position
among his fellows which would have satisfied almost any earthly
ambition. Yet all this could not recompense him for the toils and ills
of life, and in the eloquent passage subjoined he portrays, most
beautifully, the restless longings of the human heart for something
higher and nobler than earth can afford.
“It cannot be that earth is man’s only abiding place. It cannot be that
our life is a bubble cast up by the ocean of eternity to float a moment
upon its waves and sink into nothingness. Else, why these high and
glorious aspirations which leap like angels from the temple of our
hearts, forever wandering unsatisfied? Why is it that the rainbow and
cloud come over us with a beauty that is not of earth, and then pass off
to leave us to muse on their loveliness? Why is it the stars which hold
their festival around the midnight throne, are set above the grasp of
our limited faculties, forever mocking us with their unapproachable
glory? And, finally, why is it that the bright forms of human beauty are
presented to our view and taken from us, leaving the thousand streams of
our affections to flow back in Alpine torrents upon our hearts? We were
born for a higher destiny than earth. There is a realm where the rainbow
never fades, where the stars will be spread out before us like the
islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beautiful beings that
pass before us like shadows, will stay forever in our presence.”
ILL SUCCESS IN LIFE.
One of our best American writers, Geo. S. Hillard, forcibly and truly
says:—
I confess that increasing years bring with them an increasing respect
for men who do not succeed in life, as those words are commonly used.
Heaven is said to be a place for those who have not succeeded on earth;
and it is sure that celestial grace does not thrive and bloom in the hot
blaze of worldly prosperity. Ill success sometimes arises from a
superabundance of qualities in themselves good—from a conscience too
sensitive, a taste too fastidious, a self-forgetfulness too romantic,
and modesty too retiring. I will not go so far as to say, with a living
poet, “that the world knows nothing of its great men,” but there are
forms of greatness, or at least excellence, which “die and make no
sign;” there are martyrs that miss the palm but not the stake, heroes
without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.
FUTURITY.
“Life is sweet,” said Sir Anthony Kingston to Bishop Hooper at the
stake, “and death bitter.” “True, friend,” he replied, “but consider
that the death to come is more bitter, and the life to come is more
sweet.”
THE HEART.
In his charming _Hyperion_, Mr. Longfellow says:—
The little I have seen of the world, and know of the history of mankind,
teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger.
When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered,
and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed,—the
brief pulsations of joy,—the feverish inquietude of hope and fear,—the
tears of regret,—the feebleness of purpose,—the pressure of want,—the
desertion of friends,—the scorn of a world that has little charity,—the
desolation of the soul’s sanctuary,—threatening voices within,—health
gone,—happiness gone,—even hope, that remains the longest, gone,—I would
fain leave the erring soul of my fellow-man with Him from whose hands it
came,
Even as a little girl,
Weeping and laughing in her childish sport.
EVENING PRAYER.
The day is ended. Ere I sink to sleep,
My weary spirit seeks repose in Thine.
Father, forgive my trespasses, and keep
This little life of mine.
With loving kindness curtain thou my bed,
And cool, in rest, my burning pilgrim feet;
Thy pardon be the pillow for my head;
So shall my sleep be sweet.
At peace with all the world, dear Lord, and thee,
No fears my soul’s unwavering faith can shake;
All’s well! whichever side the grave for me
The morning light may break.
BEAUTIFUL THOUGHT.
On the shores of the Adriatic sea the wives of the fishermen, whose
husbands have gone far off upon the deep, are in the habit, at
even-tide, of going down to the sea-shore, and singing, as female voices
only can, the first stanza of a beautiful hymn; after they have sung it
they will listen till they hear, borne by the wind across the desert
sea, the second stanza sung by their gallant husbands, as they are
tossed by the gale upon the waves, and both are happy. Perhaps, if we
listen, we, too, might hear on this desert world of ours some whisper
borne from afar to remind us that there is a heaven and a home; and when
we sing the hymn upon earth, perhaps we shall hear its echo breaking in
the music upon the sands of time, and cheering the hearts of those that
are pilgrims and strangers, and look for a city that hath foundation.
LIFE’S PARTING.
Wordsworth read less and praised less the writings of other poets, than
any one of his contemporaries. This gives an especial interest to the
following stanza by Mrs. Barbauld, which he learned by heart, and which
he used to ask his sister to repeat to him. Once, while walking in his
sitting-room at Rydal, with his hands behind him, his friend, Henry
Crabb Robinson heard him say: “I am not in the habit of grudging people
their good things; but I wish I had written those lines:—
Life! we’ve been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
’Tis hard to part when friends are dear,
Perhaps ’twill cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not good night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me good-morning.”
DESTINY.
Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down
Each with its loveliness as with a crown,
Drooped in a florist’s window in a town.
The first a lover bought. It lay at rest,
Like snow on snow, that night, on beauty’s breast.
The second rose, as virginal and fair,
Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot’s hair.
The third, a widow, with new grief made wild,
Shut in the icy palm of her dead child.
SYMPATHY.
Talfourd says in his _Ion_:—
“It is little:
But in these sharp extremities of fortune,
The blessings which the weak and poor can scatter
Have their own season. ’Tis a little thing
To give a cup of water; yet its draught
Of cool refreshment, drain’d by fever’d lips,
May give a shock of pleasure to the frame
More exquisite than when nectarean juice
Renews the life of joy in happiest hours.
It is a little thing to speak a phrase
Of common comfort, which, by daily use,
Has almost lost its sense; yet, on the ear
Of him who thought to die unmourn’d, ’twill fall
Like choicest music; fill the gazing eye
With gentle tears; relax the knotted hand
To know the bonds of fellowship again;
And shed on the departing soul a sense,
More precious than the benison of friends
About the honored death-bed of the rich,
To him who else were lonely, that another
Of the great family is near and feels.”
AFTER.
After the shower, the tranquil sun;
After the snow, the emerald leaves;
Silver stars when the day is done;
After the harvest, golden sheaves.
After the clouds, the violet sky;
After the tempest, the lull of waves;
Quiet woods when the winds go by;
After the battle, peaceful graves.
After the knell, the wedding bells;
After the bud, the radiant rose;
Joyful greetings from sad farewells;
After our weeping, sweet repose.
After the burden, the blissful meed;
After the flight, the downy nest;
After the furrow, the waking seed
After the shadowy river—rest!
DEATH’S FINAL CONQUEST.
[Among the poetic legacies that will “never grow old, nor change, nor
pass away,” is the noble dirge of Shirley, in his _Contention of Ajax
and Ulysses_. Doubtless it was by the fall, if not by the death, of
Charles I., that the mind of the royalist poet was solemnized to the
creation of these imperishable stanzas. Oliver Cromwell is said, on
the recital of them, to have been seized with great terror and
agitation of mind.]
The glories of our mortal state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armor against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill;
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still:
Early or late,
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath,
When they, pale captives, creep to death.
The garlands wither on your brow;
Then boast no more your mighty deeds;
Upon death’s purple altar now,
See where the victor-victim bleeds:
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb:—
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.
THE COMMON HERITAGE.
There is no death: what seems so is transition:
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian
Whose portal we call Death.—§Longfellow.§
There is—says the author of _Euthanasy_—no universal night in this
earth, and for us in the universe there is no death. What to us here is
night coming on, is, on the other side of the earth, night ending, and
day begun. And so what we call death, the angels may regard as immortal
birth.
We are born—says another writer—with the principles of dissolution in
our frame, which continue to operate from our birth to our death; so
that in this sense we may be said to “die daily.” Death is not so much a
laying aside our old bodies (for this we have been doing all our lives)
as ceasing to assume new ones.
“Say,” said one who was about entering the Dark Valley, to his
amanuensis, “that I am still in the land of the living, but expect soon
to be numbered with the dead.” But, after a moment’s reflection, he
added, “Stop! say that I am still in the land of the dying, but expect
to be soon in the land of the living.”
Says old Jeremy Collier, The more we sink into the infirmities of age,
the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other
world. That state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flourishing. Now,
to pass from midnight into noon on the sudden, to be decrepit one
minute, and all spirit and activity the next, must be an entertaining
change. To call this dying is an abuse of language.
The day of our decease—says Mountford—will be that of our coming of age;
and with our last breath we shall become free of the universe. And in
some region of infinity, and from among its splendors, this earth will
be looked back upon like a lowly home, and this life of ours be
remembered like a short apprenticeship to Duty.
§Mors mortis morti mortem nisi morte dedisset,
Eternæ vitæ Janua clausa foret.§
[Illustration]
INDEX.
§Alphabetical Whims§, 25.
Alphabetical advertisement, 29.
Enigmas, 30.
Eve’s Legend, 28.
Jacobite toast, 30.
Letter H, 31.
Lipogrammata and pangrammata, 25.
Marriage of a lady to Mr. Gee, 32.
On sending a pair of gloves, 32.
The three initials, 30.
Univocalic verses, 32.
§Acrostics§, 39.
Alliterative on Miss Stephens, 45.
Brevity of human life, 48.
Burke, 42.
Chronogrammatic pasquinade, 45.
Crabbe, 42.
Death of Lord Hatherton, 40.
Dryden, 42.
Emblematic fish, 46.
Hempe, 47.
Herbert, George, 41.
Huber, 42.
Irving, 43.
Longfellow, 43.
Macaulay, 44.
Macready, 43.
Masonic memento, 47.
Monastic verse, 45.
Napoleon family, 46.
Oliver’s impromptu on Arnold, 44.
Rachel, 46.
Reynolds, 42.
Scott, Walter, 42.
Southey, 44.
Valentine, a, 49.
Wordsworth, 43.
§Alliteration§, 34.
Alphabetical, 34.
Address to the Aurora, 36.
Belgrade, siege of, 34.
Bunker Hill Monument, 34.
Prince Charles protected by Flora Macdonald, 35.
Title-page for Book of Extracts, 37.
Bevy of belles, 39.
Complimentary of chess, 37.
Couplet on Cardinal Wolsey, 35.
Felicitous flight of fancy, 38.
Hood’s Ode to Perry, 38.
Motives to gratitude, 39.
Pulci’s double alliterations, 36.
Stanza from Drury’s Dirge, 36.
§Anagrams§, 49.
Epitaphial inscriptions, 56.
Telegram anagrammatized, 56.
§Bible, the§, 103.
Accuracy of the Bible, 103.
Bibliomancy, 126.
Books belonging to, lost or unknown, 114.
Dissection of Old and New Testaments, 112.
Distinctions in the gospels, 113.
English Bible translations, 108.
Hexameters in the Bible, 115.
Misquotations from Scripture, 123.
Old and New Testament, names, 125.
Parallelism of the Hebrew poetry, 116.
Parallel passages between Shakspeare and the Bible, 119.
Scriptural bull, 124.
Scriptural sum, 126.
Selah, 114.
Similarity of sound, 118.
Testimony of learned men, 106.
True gentleman, the, 122.
Wit and humor in the Bible, 124.
§Blunders§, 259.
Blunders of translators, 263.
Mistakes of misapprehension, 262.
Serial inconsistency, 262.
Slips of the press, 259.
Slips of the telegraph, 261.
§Bouts Rimés§, 88.
Bogart’s Impromptu, 89.
Reversed rhyming ends, 90.
§Cento§, the, 73.
Biblical cento, 76.
Cento from Pope, 76.
Life, 75.
Mosaic poetry, 73.
Return of Israel, the, 77.
§Chronograms§, 57.
§Churchyard Literature§, 564.
Advertising notices, 583.
Antithesis extraordinary, 606.
Bathos, 600.
Brevity, 607.
Cento, 601.
Earth to earth, 612.
Epitaph, historical, 578.
on a chemist, 609,
dog, Byron’s, 614.
printer, 607.
transcendental, 600.
Epitaphs, aboriginal, 602.
acrostical, 601.
African, 602.
biographical, 578.
curious and puzzling, 596.
eulogistic, apt, appropriate, 570.
Greek, 603.
Hibernian, 602.
laudatory, 608.
miscellaneous, 610.
moralizing and admonitory, 581.
on eminent men, 564.
on infants and children, 575.
self-written, 580.
unique and ludicrous, 583.
Mortuary puns, 591.
Parallels without a parallel, 600.
§Concatenation, or Chain Verse§, 85.
Lasphrise’s novelties, 85.
Ringing Song, 87.
To Death, 86.
Truth, 86.
Trying skying, 87.
§Conformity of Sense to Sound§, 554.
Articulate imitation of inarticulate sounds, 554.
Imitation of difficulty and ease, 555.
time and motion, 554.
§Curious Books§, 720.
Book-amateurs, 722.
Most curious book in the world, 722.
Odd titles of old books, 720.
Silver book, 722.
§Customs, Singular§, 477.
Abyssinian beefsteaks, 478.
Beautiful superstition, 477.
Foundations of Druidical temples, 478.
Hair in seals, 481.
High life in the 15th century, 480.
Lion-catching in South Africa, 479.
Making noses, 479.
Matrimonial advertisement, 481.
Memento mori, 477.
Ostiak regard for boars, 478.
Scorning the church, 481.
Strange fondness for beauty, 477.
§Ecclesiasticæ§, 143.
Excessive civility, 143.
Bascom, eloquence of, 145.
Clerical blunders, 148.
Lord Bishop, the, 146.
Origin of texts, 147.
Preachers of Cromwell’s time, 147.
Protestant excommunication, 149.
Proving an alibi, 148.
Sermon on malt, 144.
Short sermons, 143.
Whitefield and the sailors, 149.
§Echo Verse§, 281.
Acoustics, extraordinary facts in, 289.
Bonaparte and echo, 286.
Critic’s excuse, 287.
Echo answering, 287.
and the lover, 284.
on woman, 285.
Echoes, remarkable, 288.
Gospel echo, 283.
London before the Restoration, 282.
Pasquinade, 283.
Queen Elizabeth, 282.
Song by Addison, 283.
Synod of Dort, 287.
§Emblematic Poetry§, 92.
Altar inscription, 96.
Cross, the, 94.
Crucifixion, curious piece of antiquity on, 95.
Cypher, ingenious, 96.
Essay to Miss Catharine Jay, 97.
Hindu triplet, 93.
Oxford joke, 96.
Rhomboidal dirge, 94
Typographical, 96.
Wine-glass, the, 93.
§English Words and Forms of Expression§, 182.
Compound epithets, 211.
Dictionary English, 182.
Disraelian English, 184.
Eccentric etymologies, 195.
Excise, 189.
Forlorn hope, 193.
Influence of names, 209.
I say, 186.
Its, 185.
No love lost, etc., 193.
Not Americanisms, 191.
Nouns of multitude, 184.
Odd changes of signification, 205.
Our vernacular in Chaucer’s time, 211.
Pathology, 186.
Pontiff, 190.
Pronunciation of ough, 186.
Quiz, 194.
Rough, 190.
Sources of the language, 183.
Tennyson’s English, 194.
That, 185.
That mine adversary, 195.
Ye for the, 185.
§Epigrams§, 515.
Affinities, 524.
Apollo, in return for a sketch of, 525.
Author, to a living, 518.
Bed, to our, 517.
Blades of the shears, 523.
Bonnets, 521.
Butler’s monument, 518.
Campbell’s album verse, 521.
Clock, the, 525.
Commissary Goldie’s brains, 519.
Compliment, overdrawn, 518.
Crier who could not cry, 524.
Dentist, definition of, 522.
Determination, a funny, 526.
Double vision utilized, 527.
Dum vivimus, vivamus, 516.
D.D., on a certain, 521.
Eternity, 518.
Eve and the apple, 523.
Fell, 520.
Fiddler, on a bad, 521.
Fool and poet, 516.
Fools, abundance of, 527.
Friend, to Dr. Robert, 516.
Friend, to a capricious, 519.
Friend in distress, 522.
German tourist, suggested by a, 518.
Giving and taking, 519.
Goodenough, 523.
Hog _vs._ Bacon, 522.
Hot corn, 521.
Impersonal, 524.
Invisible, 524.
Lady who married a footman, 521.
Late repentance, 517.
Law, after going to, 526.
Lawyer, on an ill-read, 520.
Lover to his mistress, with a mirror, 519.
Marriage à la mode, 526.
Marriage of Webb & Gould, 526.
Martial’s, on Epigrams, 515.
Masculine, 525.
Medical advice, 522.
Mendax, 520.
Midas and modern statesmen, 515.
Molly Aston, to, 516.
One good turn deserves another, 520.
One ignorant and arrogant, on, 516.
Pale lady with red-nosed husband, 517.
Parson and butcher, 525.
Portmanteau, clergyman’s, loss of, 518.
Queen Bess on Drake’s ship, 524.
Queen, the frugal, 519.
Quid pro quo, 527.
Reception, a warm, 522.
Reflection, a, 523.
Rogers on Ward’s speeches, 526.
Same jawbone, 526.
Selvaggi’s distich to Milton, 517.
Amplification, by Dryden, 517.
Simplicity, prudent, 522.
Sleep, inscription on a statue of, 516.
Snow, that melted on a lady’s breast, 517.
Songsters, bad, 520.
Terminer sans oyer, 527.
To ——, 519.
Wellington’s nose, 520.
What might have been, 523.
Widows, 525.
Woman,—contra, 527.
pro, 527.
Woman’s will, 520.
World, the, 527.
§Equivoque§, 64.
Age of French actresses, 71.
Double-faced creed, 66.
Fatal double meaning, 68.
Handwriting on the wall, 71.
Houses of Stuart and Hanover, 68.
Ingenious subterfuge, 65.
Love-letter, 65.
Loyalty or Jacobinism, 69.
Neat evasion, 70.
New Regime, 68.
Patriotic toast, 70.
Revolutionary verses, 67.
Richelieu’s letter to the French ambassador, 64.
Triple platform, 61.
§Facetiæ§, 482.
Association of ideas, 491.
Brevity, 484.
False friend, a, 488.
Gasconade and hoaxing, 489.
Jack Robinson, 492.
Jests of Hierocles, 482.
Mathews and the silver spoon, 489.
Old Nick, 488.
P. and Q., 491.
Relics, 490.
Royal quandary, 490.
Russian jester and his jokes, 492.
Same joke diversified, 486.
Syllogism, 488.
Titles for library-door, 482.
§Fabrications§, 269.
Ballad literature, 274.
Description of the Saviour’s person, 269.
Franklin’s parable, 275.
Hoax on Walter Scott, 269.
Ireland’s forgeries, 276.
Literary sell, 271.
Moon hoax, 270.
Mrs. Hemans’s forgeries, 271.
Sheridan’s Greek, 273.
§Familiar Quotations from Unfamiliar Sources§, 556.
§Fancies of Fact, the§, 406.
Aerolites, 443.
Alligators swallowing stones, 418.
America’s discoverers, fate of, 445.
Amount of gold in the world, 423.
Antipathies, 471.
Army of women, 446.
Auditoriums of last century, 409.
Back action, 408.
Beer-casks, capacious, 425.
Bills for strange services, 407.
Black hole at Calcutta, 427.
Broken heart, a, 467.
Chick in the egg, 416.
Cloth-manufacture, celerity of, 421.
Coincidences, singular, 412.
Colors, diversity of, 442.
Composition in dreams, 455.
Cross, true form of the, 409.
Crown of England, 446.
Crude value _vs._ industrial value, 422.
Devonshire superstition, 475.
Diameter to circumference, ratio of, 431.
Difference between English poets, 426.
Diplomatic costume, 448.
Equestrian expeditions, remarkable, 419.
Facial expression, 466.
Fear, effects of, 465.
Feline clocks, 474.
Heaven, dimensions of, 435.
Horse, wonderful, 420.
Indian and his tamed snake, 417.
Innate appetite, 417.
Kaleidoscope, changes of, 441.
Law logic, 407.
Lock, wonderful, 421.
Longevity, instances of remarkable, 449.
Marriage vow, 455.
Mathematical prodigies, 432.
Means of recognition, 454.
Melrose by sunlight, 408.
Memory extraordinary, 433.
Minute mechanism, 430.
Need of Providence, 434.
Noah’s ark and the Great Eastern, 442.
Number nine, 441.
seven, 436.
three, 440.
Opium and East Indian hemp, 461.
Painters, blunders of, 429.
Perils of precocity, 427.
Presidents, facts about the, 445.
Pithy prayer, 408.
Quantity and value, 422,
Reciprocal conversion, 407.
Romans, immense wealth of the, 424.
Romantic highwayman, 476.
Salt as a luxury, 428.
Self-immolation, 434.
Sensation and intelligence after decapitation, 469.
Sheep, habits of, 418.
Silent compliment, 434.
Skull that had a tongue, 475.
Sleep, facts about, 456.
Solomon’s temple, cost of, 435.
Star in the East, 447.
Stone barometer, 428.
Strychnia, bitterness of, 428.
Sympathy, strange instance of, 473.
Taste, singular change of, 429.
Walking blindfolded, 473.
Wine at two millions a bottle, 425.
Wounds of Julius Cæsar, 406.
§Flashes of Repartee§, 495.
§Hiberniana§, 252.
§Historical Memoranda§, 782.
American monarchy, 786.
Amy Robsart, 808.
Annie Laurie, 804.
Biter bit, 818.
Blücher, 794.
Contemporary criticism, 798.
Discovery of America, 803.
Empire (the) is peace, 794.
First blood of the Revolution, 782.
Flight of Eugenie, 789.
French tricolor, 788.
Great events from little causes, 800.
History and fiction, 797.
Jefferson on Marie Antoinette, 794.
Joan of Arc, 807.
Last night of the Girondists, 819.
Mary Magdalene, the traditional, 796.
Mother Goose, 797.
Mother of Charles, V., 795.
Napoleon III., 793.
Political gamut, 788.
Quaker malignants, 786.
Queen Elizabeth’s ring, 822.
Robin Adair, 805.
Signing Declaration of Independence, 802.
Star-spangled banner, 787.
Tea-party and tea-burning, 783.
Time of Le Grand Monarque, 815.
United States Navy, 784.
William Tell, 810.
§Historical Similitudes§, 679.
Art stories, 689.
Ballads and legends, 690.
Battles, 697.
Bishop Hatto, 698.
Burial alive, 692.
Death prophecies, 696.
History repeating itself, 681.
Judgment of Solomon, 685.
Legend of Beth Gelert, 686.
Precedency, 685.
Refusal to separate from kindred, 679.
Ring stories, 695.
Two statesmen, the, 683.
§Humors of Versification§, 230.
Bryant as a humorist, 235.
Curse of O’Kelly, 250.
Elegy on Buckland, 233.
Human ear, the, 238.
Lovers, the, 230.
Ologies, the, 244.
Receipt of a rare pipe, 236.
Reiterative vocal music, 248.
Reminiscence of Troy, 234.
Sir Tray, 240.
Song with variations, 231.
Stammering wife, 231.
Thoughts while rocking the cradle, 232.
Variation humbug, 246.
I. H. S., 130.
Anticipatory use of the cross, 135.
Beautiful legend, 131.
Death-warrant of Jesus Christ, 134.
De nomine Jesu, 130.
Description of the Saviour’s person, 133.
Double hexameter, 135.
Flower of Jesse, the, 131.
Persian apologue, 132.
§Impromptus§, 528.
§Inscriptions§, 615.
Beer-jug, inscription on, 621.
Bells, inscriptions on, 623.
Books, fly-leaf inscriptions in, 627.
English inns in olden time, 622.
Æolian harp, inscription on, 633.
Francke’s discovery, 636.
Golden mottoes, 636.
House inscriptions, 634.
Memorials, 635.
Motto on a clock, 631.
Posies from wedding-rings, 636.
Spring, inscription over, 633.
Sun-dial inscriptions, 632.
Tavern-signs, 615.
Watch-paper inscription, 631.
Wedding ring, Lady Grey’s, 639.
Window-pane inscriptions, 622.
§Interrupted Sentences§, 277.
§Life and Death§, 826.
After, 850.
Beautiful thought, 848.
Bodies, preserved, 836.
Bone not described by modern anatomists, 832.
Charter, rhyming, 830.
Common heritage, the, 851.
Corpses, folly of embalming, 839.
Death’s final conquest, 851.
Definitions, rhyming, 830.
Destiny, 849.
Dying words of distinguished persons, 833.
Earth, 830.
Evening prayer, 848.
Fleur-de-lis, the, 843.
Futurity, 847.
Heart, the, 848.
Ill success in life, 847.
Imprecatory epitaph, 843.
Lawyers, nice questions for, 831.
Life, beautiful illustrations of 826.
Life’s parting, 849.
Living life over again, 829.
Mary, Queen of Scots, last prayer of, 835.
Moral code, Dr. Franklin’s, 828.
Plagues of Egypt, 843.
Questions for discussion, 836.
Remarkable trance, 835.
Round of life, the, 827.
Rules of living, 828.
Story of long ago, 844.
Sympathy, 850.
This is not our home, 846.
Time, employment of, 829.
Tripod, the, 843.
Whimsical will, 843.
§Literariana§, 723.
Additional verses to Sweet Home, 746.
Anachronisms of Shakspeare, 742.
Books and studies, 755.
Comfort for book lovers, 753.
Conflicting testimony of eye-witnesses, 750.
Gray’s elegy, 729.
Hamlet’s age, 745.
Hamlet’s insanity, 746.
Heraldry, Indian, 741.
Letters and their endings, 754.
Letters of Junius, 723.
Old paper, an, 753.
Parting interview of Hector and Andromache, 734.
Pope’s versification, 737.
Punctuation, importance of, 738.
Shakspeare and typography, 744.
Shakspeare’s heroines, 744.
Shakspeare’s sonnets, 745.
Stereotyped falsehoods of history, 747.
Wit and humor, 751.
§Literati§, 756.
Attainments of linguists, 756.
Culture and sacrifice, 761.
Dryden and his publisher, 762.
Literary oddities, 758.
Literary screw, 762.
§Lord’s Prayer, the§, 136.
Acrostical paraphrase, 139.
Echoed, 141.
Gothic version, 136.
Illustrated, 138.
In an acrostic, 142.
Metrical versions, 137.
Spirit of the prayer, 136.
Thy and us, 136.
§Macaronic Verse§, 78.
Am Rhein, 83.
Cat and rats, 82.
Contenti abeamus, 81.
Death of the sea serpent, 84.
Fly-leaf scribbling, 82.
Maginn’s alternations, 80.
Parting address to a friend, 83.
Polyglot inscription, 83.
Suitor with nine tongues, 80.
Treatise of wine, 78.
§Memoria Technica§, 327.
Books of the old Testament, 327.
New Testament, 327.
Days in each month, 330.
Decalogue, the, 329.
English sovereigns, 328.
Metrical Grammar, 330.
Presidents of the United States, 328.
Shakspeare’s plays, 328.
§Metric Prose§, 223.
Cowper’s letter to Newton, 223.
Disraeli’s Tale of Alvoy, 224.
Example in Irving’s New York, 224.
Involuntary versification in the scriptures, 228.
Johnson on involuntary metre, 229.
Kemble and Siddons, 229.
Lincoln’s second inaugural, 229.
Nelly’s funeral, 225.
Niagara, 227.
Night, 227.
Unintentional rhymes of prosers, 228.
§Misquotations§, 266.
§Monosyllables§, 98.
Power of short words, 102.
§Moslem Wisdom§, 508.
Alexandrian Library, the, 510.
Mohammedan logic, 509.
Shrewd decision of Ali, 508.
Turkish expedients, 510.
Wisdom of Ali, 508.
§Multum in Parvo§, 823.
§Name of God, the§, 127.
God in Shakspeare, 128.
Jehovah, 128.
Orthography, 127.
Parsee, Jew, and Christian, 129.
§Nothing New under the Sun§, 375.
Ærial navigation, 382.
Anæsthesia, 383.
Attraction of gravitation, 390.
Auscultation and Percussion, 392.
Boomerang, the, 389.
Circulation of the blood, 382.
Discovery of America, predictions of, 393.
Early invention of rifling, 390.
Magnetic telegraph, foreshadowings of, 375.
Steam-power, first discoveries of, 378.
Stereoscope, the, 393.
Table-moving and alphabet-rapping, 391.
§Origin of Things Familiar§, 331.
All Fools’ day, 332.
American flag, 355.
Bottled ale, 343.
Blue stocking, 366.
Brother Jonathan, 356.
Bumper, 340.
Cards, 336.
Cock fighting, 364.
Dollar-mark, 357.
Drinking healths, 346.
Dun, 340.
Earliest newspapers, 372.
Feather in one’s cap, 346.
First doctors, 368.
epigram, 371.
forged bank-note, 367.
piano-forte, 367.
prayer in Congress, 370.
printing by steam, 373.
reporters, 371.
telegraphic message, 373.
thanksgiving proclamation, 368.
Flag of England, 365.
Foolscap paper, 366.
Friction matches, 365.
Humbug, 340.
India-rubber, 364.
Kicking the bucket, 340.
La Marseillaise, 350.
Mind your P’s and Q’s, 331.
News, 372.
Nine tailors make a man, 346.
Old Hundred, 349.
Order of the garter, 345.
Over the left, 339.
Pasquinades, 341.
Postpaid envelopes, 349.
Potato, the, 343.
Royal saying, 340.
Signature of the cross, 348.
Skedaddle, 366.
Stockings, 344.
Sub rosa, 338.
Tarring and feathering, 344.
Turkish crescent, 348.
Turncoat, 364.
Uncle Sam, 357.
Various inventions and customs, 358.
Viz., 347.
Word Book, 346.
Yankee Doodle, 353.
§O. S. and N. S.§, 325.
Gregorian calendar, 325.
Results of change in style, 326.
§Palindromes§, 59.
§Parallel Passages§, 640.
Historical similitudes, 679.
Shaksperean Resemblances, 677.
Plagiarism of Charles Reade, 677.
§Paronomasia§, 155.
Ben, the sailor, 162.
Book-larceny, 164.
Classical puns and mottoes, 172.
Court-fool’s pun on Laud, 181.
Dr. Johnson’s pun, 160.
Epitaph on an old horse, 165.
Erskine’s toast, 160.
Holmes on Achilles, 162.
Grand scheme of emigration, 166.
Marionettes, 168.
Miss-nomers, the, 180.
Mottoes of English peerage, 174.
Old joke versified, 161.
Perilous practice of punning, 167.
Plaint of the old pauper, 163.
Printer’s epitaph, 161.
Pungent chapter, 157.
Russian double entendre, 171.
Sheridan’s compliment, 162.
Short road to wealth, 159.
Sonnet, 168.
Sticky, 162.
Swift’s Latin puns, 169.
Sydney Smith’s pun, 160.
Tom Moore, 161.
To my nose, 163.
Top and bottom, 161.
Unconscious puns, 171.
Vegetable girl, the, 164.
Whiskers vs. razor, 162.
Winter, 160.
Women, 162.
Jeux de Mots, 175.
Anagrammatic, 175.
Iterative, 175.
Bees of the Bible, 179.
Catalectic monody, 177.
Crooked Coincidences, 181.
Fair letter, 176.
Franklin’s Re’s, 179.
November, 178.
On the death of Kildare, 177.
Schott and Willing, 177.
Swarm of Bees, 179.
Turn to the left, 177.
Write written right, 177.
Spiritual, 175.
§Persian Poetry, excerpta from§, 511.
Beauty’s prerogative, 511.
Broken hearts, 511.
Caliph and Satan, 513.
Double plot, 512.
Earth an illusion, 511.
Folly for one’s self, 512.
Fortune and worth, 511.
From Mirtsa Schaffy, 512.
Generous man, to a, 511.
Heaven an echo of earth, 511.
Impossibility, the, 512.
Moral atmosphere, a, 511.
Proud humility, 512.
Sober drunkenness, 512.
Wine-drinker’s metaphors, 512.
World’s unappreciation, the, 513.
§Personal Sketches and Anecdotes§, 763.
André Major, 767.
André and Arnold, 768.
Bonaparte, name in Greek, 764.
personal appearance of, 765.
Milton and Napoleon, 764.
opinion of suicide, 765.
Cromwell, Oliver, 776.
Elizabeth, Queen, 774.
Flamsteed, the astronomer, 769.
Franklin’s wife, 766.
Lafayette’s republicanism, 764.
Luther, 771.
Nelson’s sang-froid, 769.
Pope’s skull, 779.
Porson, 781.
Shakspeare’s orthodoxy, 776.
Talleyrandiana, 780.
Washington’s dignity, 763.
Wickliffe’s ashes, 779.
§Prototypes§, 699.
Air cushions, 702.
Cat in the adage, 702.
Charge of Light Brigade, 700.
Cinderella’s slipper, 699.
Consequential damages, 705.
Cork-legs, 702.
Curtain lectures, 700.
Excommunication, 706.
Falls of Lanark, 706.
Faust legends, 701.
Franklin, Turgot’s epigraph on, 707.
Know-Nothings, the, 709.
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 708.
Napoleon I., 706.
Oldest proverb, 699.
Old ballads, 715.
Original Shylock, 705.
Pilgrim’s Progress, original of, 710.
Plagiarism, great literary, 715.
Pope’s bull against the comet, 703.
Proverb misascribed to Defoe 713.
Robinson Crusoe: who wrote it, 712.
Scandinavian skull-cups, 714.
Shakspeare said it first, 699.
Swapping horses, 703.
Trade-unions, 704.
Use of language, 714.
Wandering Jew, 716.
Wooden nutmegs, 703.
§Puritan Peculiarities§, 150.
Baptismal names, 150.
Connecticut Blue Laws, extracts from, 153.
Punishments, 151.
Similes, 151.
Virginia penalties in old times, 152.
§Puzzles§, 290.
Bonapartean cypher, 292.
Book of riddles, 299.
Canning’s riddle, 294.
Case for the lawyers, 293
Chinese tea-song, 298.
Cowper’s riddle, 294.
Curiosities of cipher, 301.
Death and life, 298.
Galileo’s logograph, 297.
Newton’s riddle, 294.
Number of the beast, 297.
Persian riddles, 298.
Prize enigma, 294.
Prophetic distich, 296.
Quincy’s comparison, 295.
Rebus, the, 299.
Bacon motto, 299.
French, 291.
Singular intermarriages, 296.
What is it? 299.
Wilberforce’s puzzle, 301.
§Reason Why§, 310.
Boston, 311.
Cardinal’s red hat, 312.
Cutting off with a shilling, 312.
Genealogy, 313.
Huguenots, 311.
Juggler’s mystery, 314.
Roast beef of England, 313.
Royal demise, 311.
Sensible quack, 313.
Weathercocks, 312.
Why Germans eat sauer-kraut, 310.
Why Pennsylvania settled, 311.
§Refractory Rhyming§, 534.
§Sexes, the§, 501.
Female society, 505.
Happy woman, character of, 502.
Letter to a Bride, 507.
My Mother, 506.
Parallel of the sexes, 505.
Praise of women, 504.
Wife,—mistress,—lady, 505.
§Sonnets§, 551.
Ave Maria, 553.
Dyspepsia, 552.
Humility, 553.
In a fashionable church, 551.
Nose, about a, 552.
Proxy saint, the, 552.
Writing a sonnet, 551.
§Tall Writing§, 212.
Anatomist to his dulcinea, 221.
Borde’s prologue, 215.
Burlesque of Dr. Johnson’s style, 217.
Chemical valentine, 220.
Clear as mud, 218.
Domicile erected by John, 212.
Foote’s farrago, 216.
From the Curiosities of Advertising, 213.
From the Curiosities of the Post-office, 214.
Indignant letter, 219.
Intramural æstivation, 220.
Mad poet, the, 216.
Newspaper eulogy, 218.
Ode to Spring, 221.
Pristine proverbs for precocious pupils, 222.
Spanish play-bill, 215.
Transcendentalism, definition of, 212.
§Triumphs of Ingenuity§, 395.
Choosing a king, 402.
Discovery of the planet Neptune, 395.
Discovery of Vulcan, 396.
King John and the abbot, 403.
Lesson worth learning, 402.
Stratagem of Columbus, 399.
§Valentines§, 544.
Burns, verses of, 546.
Cardiac effusion, 547.
Colored man’s valentine, 549.
Cryptographic correspondence, 544.
Digby to Archabella, 548.
Egyptian serenade, 549.
Lover to his sweetheart, 547.
Macaronic, 548.
Macaulay’s valentine, 545.
Moore, verses of, 549.
Strategic love-letter, 544.
Teutonic alliteration, 546.
Written in sympathetic ink, 544.
Petitions, 550.
Maids and widows, the, 550.
Maladroit appeal, 550.
§Weather-Wisdom§, 317.
Davy on weather-omens, 317.
Sheridan’s rhyming calendar, 317.
Signs of the weather, 320.
Unlucky days, 324.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Did not change the various spellings of Shakspeare and Shakespeare.
2. The publisher sometimes left aligned consecutive poems by different
authors but usually did not (including the chapter on parallel
construction). To be consistent all poems with citations have been
centered.
3. Changed “Grand Scheme of Education” to “Grand Scheme of Emigration”
on p. x to agree with subheading on p. 166.
4. Changed ‘Disraeli’s “Alray”’ to ‘Disraeli’s “Alroy”’ on p.xi.
5. Changed “you sins” to “your sins” on p. 37.
6. Changed “Falloit-it que le ciel me rendit amoureux” to “Falloit-il
que le ciel me rendit amoureux” on p. 86.
7. Changed “hateful lax levied” to “hateful tax levied” on p. 189.
8. Changed “takes else’s” to “takes someone else’s” on p. 216.
9. Changed “D’Israeli’s _Wondrous Tale of Alvoy_” to “D’Israeli’s
_Wondrous Tale of Alroy_” on p.224.
10. Changed “Petri Andraæ Matthioli” to “Petri Andreæ Matthioli” on p.
310.
11. Changed “of conversation was” to “of conversion was” on p. 407.
12. Changed “to protects us” to “to protect us” on p. 434.
13. Added a chapter heading “The Fancies of Fact.-§Continued§” on p. 435
per the Table of Contents.
14. Changed “ΕΣΤΗΙΕ, ΠΙΝΕ, ΠΑΙΖΕ. ὩΣ Τ’ ΑΛΛΑ ΤΟΥΤΟΥ ΟΥΚ ΑΞΙΑ” to
“ΕΣΤΗΙΕ, ΠΙΝΕ, ΠΑΙΖΕ. ὩΣ ΤΑΛΛΑ ΤΟΥΤΟΥ ΟΥΚ ΑΞΙΑ” on p. 596.
15. Changed “ON TWO NEIGHBORING” to “ON THREE NEIGHBORING” on p. 604.
16. Changed “Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weiber, und Gesang” to “Wer nicht
liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang” on p. 771.
17. Changed “Trom Kirk of Edinb.” to “Tron Kirk of Edinb.” on p. 804.
18. Silently corrected typographical errors.
19. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
20. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
21. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
22. Enclosed small cap font in §section signs§.
23. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript
character, e.g. M^r.
24. Upside down text is denoted by ®registered sign®. Consecutive lines
should be read in reverse order as if the page was turned over.
25. Text rotated 90 degrees is denoted by ©copyright sign©.
26. The column width exceeds 72 characters wherever the essence of the
text would be destroyed by allowing text to wrap.
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