Chapter XI: Part 11

Tasso has given in to the more vulgar accounts, by making the former so eminent, at the cost of the other heroes, in his Jerusalem Delivered. Thus Virgil transformed by his magical power the chaste Dido into a distracted lover; and Homer the meretricious Penelope into a moaning matron. It is not requisite for poets to be historians, but historians should not be so frequently poets. The same charge, I have been told, must be made against the Grecian historians. The Persians are viewed to great disadvantage in Grecian history. It would form a curious inquiry, and the result might be unexpected to some, were the Oriental student to comment on the Grecian historians. The Grecians were not the demi-gods they paint themselves to have been, nor those they attacked the contemptible multitudes they describe. These boasted victories might be diminished. The same observation attaches to Cæsar's account of his British expedition. He never records the defeats he frequently experienced. The national prejudices of the Roman historians have undoubtedly occasioned us to have a very erroneous conception of the Carthaginians, whose discoveries in navigation and commercial enterprises were the most considerable among the ancients. We must indeed think highly of that people, whose works on agriculture, which they had raised into a science, the senate of Rome ordered to be translated into Latin. They must indeed have been a wise and grave people.--Yet they are stigmatised by the Romans for faction, cruelty, and cowardice; and the "Punic" faith has come down to us in a proverb: but Livy was a Roman! and there is such a thing as a patriotic malignity!

METEMPSYCHOSIS.

If we except the belief of a future remuneration beyond this life for suffering virtue, and retribution for successful crimes, there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to our understanding, as that of the metempsychosis. The pains and the pleasures of this life are by this system considered as the recompense or the punishment of our actions in an anterior state: so that, says St. Foix, we cease to wonder that, among men and animals, some enjoy an easy and agreeable life, while others seem born only to suffer all kinds of miseries. Preposterous as this system may appear, it has not wanted for advocates in the present age, which indeed has revived every kind of fanciful theory. Mercier, in _L'an deux mille quatre cents quarante_, seriously maintains the present one.

If we seek for the origin of the opinion of the metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls into other bodies, we must plunge into the remotest antiquity; and even then we shall find it impossible to fix the epoch of its first author. The notion was long extant in Greece before the time of Pythagoras. Herodotus assures us that the Egyptian priests taught it; but he does not inform us of the time it began to spread. It probably followed the opinion of the immortality of the soul. As soon as the first philosophers had established this dogma, they thought they could not maintain this immortality without a transmigration of souls. The opinion of the metempsychosis spread in almost every region of the earth; and it continues, even to the present time, in all its force amongst those nations who have not yet embraced Christianity. The people of Arracan, Peru, Siam, Camboya, Tonquin, Cochin-China, Japan, Java, and Ceylon still entertain that fancy, which also forms the chief article of the Chinese religion. The Druids believed in transmigration. The bardic triads of the Welsh are full of this belief; and a Welsh antiquary insists, that by an emigration which formerly took place, it was conveyed to the Bramins of India from Wales! The Welsh bards tell us that the souls of men transmigrate into the bodies of those animals whose habits and characters they most resemble, till after a circuit of such penitential miseries, they are purified for the celestial presence; for man may be converted into a pig or a wolf, till at length he assumes the inoffensiveness of the dove.

My learned friend Sharon Turner has explained, in his "Vindication of the ancient British Poems," p. 231, the Welsh system of the metempsychosis. Their bards mention three circles of existence. The circle of the all-enclosing circle holds nothing alive or dead, but God. The second circle, that of felicity, is that which men are to pervade after they have passed through their terrestrial changes. The circle of evil is that in which human nature passes through those varying stages of existence which it must undergo before it is qualified to inhabit the circle of felicity.

The progression of man through the circle of evil is marked by three infelicities: Necessity, oblivion, and deaths. The deaths which follow our changes are so many escapes from their power. Man is a free agent, and has the liberty of choosing; his sufferings and changes cannot be foreseen. By his misconduct he may happen to fall retrograde into the lowest state from which he had emerged. If his conduct in any one state, instead of improving his being, had made it worse, he fell back into a worse condition, to commence again his purifying revolutions. Humanity was the limit of the degraded transmigrations. All the changes above humanity produced felicity. Humanity is the scene of the contest; and after man has traversed every state of animated existence, and can remember all that he has passed through, that consummation follows which he attains in the circle of felicity. It is on this system of transmigration that Taliessin, the Welsh bard, who wrote in the sixth century, gives a recital of his pretended transmigrations. He tells how he had been a serpent, a wild ass, a buck, or a crane, &c.; and this kind of reminiscence of his former state, this recovery of memory, was a proof of the mortal's advances to the happier circle. For to forget what we have been was one of the curses of the circle of evil. Taliessin, therefore, adds Mr. Turner, as profusely boasts of his recovered reminiscence as any modern sectary can do of his state of grace and election.

In all these wild reveries there seems to be a moral fable in the notion, that the clearer a man recollects what a _brute_ he has been, it is a certain proof that he is in an improved state!

According to the authentic Clavigero, in his history of Mexico, we find the Pythagorean transmigration carried on in the West, and not less fancifully than in the countries of the East. The people of Tlascala believe that the souls of persons of rank went after their death to inhabit the bodies of _beautiful and sweet singing birds_, and those of the _nobler quadrupeds_; while the souls of inferior persons were supposed to pass into _weasels_, _beetles_, and such other _meaner animals_.

There is something not a little ludicrous in the description Plutarch gives at the close of his treatise on "the delay of heavenly justice." Thespesius saw at length the souls of those who were condemned to return to life, and whom they violently forced to take the forms of all kinds of animals. The labourers charged with this transformation forged with their instruments certain parts; others, a new form; and made some totally disappear; that these souls might be rendered proper for another kind of life and other habits. Among these he perceived the soul of Nero, which had already suffered long torments, and which stuck to the body by nails red from the fire. The workmen seized on him to make a viper of, under which form he was now to live, after having devoured the breast that had carried him.--But in this Plutarch only copies the fine reveries of Plato.

SPANISH ETIQUETTE.

The etiquette, or rules to be observed in royal palaces, is necessary for keeping order at court. In Spain it was carried to such lengths as to make martyrs of their kings. Here is an instance, at which, in spite of the fatal consequences it produced, one cannot refrain from smiling.

Philip the Third was gravely seated by the fire-side: the fire-maker of the court had kindled so great a quantity of wood, that the monarch was nearly suffocated with heat, and his _grandeur_ would not suffer him to rise from the chair; the domestics could not _presume_ to enter the apartment, because it was against the _etiquette_. At length the Marquis de Potat appeared, and the king ordered him to damp the fire; but _he_ excused himself; alleging that he was forbidden by the _etiquette_ to perform such a function, for which the Duke d'Ussada ought to be called upon, as it was his business. The duke was gone out: the _fire_ burnt fiercer; and the _king_ endured it, rather than derogate from his _dignity_. But his blood was heated to such a degree, that an erysipelas of the head appeared the next day, which, succeeded by a violent fever, carried him off in 1621, in the twenty-fourth year of his reign.

The palace was once on fire; a soldier, who knew the king's sister was in her apartment, and must inevitably have been consumed in a few moments by the flames, at the risk of his life rushed in, and brought her highness safe out in his arms: but the Spanish _etiquette_ was here wofully broken into! The loyal soldier was brought to trial; and as it was impossible to deny that he had entered her apartment, the judges condemned him to die! The Spanish Princess however condescended, in consideration of the circumstance, to _pardon_ the soldier, and very benevolently saved his life.

When Isabella, mother of Philip II., was ready to be delivered of him, she commanded that all the lights should be extinguished: that if the violence of her pain should occasion her face to change colour, no one might perceive it. And when the midwife said, "Madam, cry out, that will give you ease," she answered in _good Spanish_, "How dare you give me such advice? I would rather die than cry out."

"Spain gives us _pride_--which Spain to all the earth
May largely give, nor fear herself a dearth!"--_Churchill._

Philip the Third was a weak bigot, who suffered himself to be governed by his ministers. A patriot wished to open his eyes, but he could not pierce through the crowds of his flatterers; besides that the voice of patriotism heard in a corrupted court would have become a crime never pardoned. He found, however, an ingenious manner of conveying to him his censure. He caused to be laid on his table, one day, a letter sealed, which bore this address--"To the King of Spain, Philip the Third, at present in the service of the Duke of Lerma."

In a similar manner, Don Carlos, son to Philip the Second, made a book with empty pages, to contain the voyages of his father, which bore this title--"The great and admirable Voyages of the King Mr. Philip." All these voyages consisted in going to the Escurial from Madrid, and returning to Madrid from the Escurial. Jests of this kind at length cost him his life.

THE GOTHS AND HUNS.

The terrific honours which these ferocious nations paid to their deceased monarchs are recorded in history, by the interment of Attila, king of the Huns, and Alaric, king of the Goths.

Attila died in 453, and was buried in the midst of a vast champaign in a coffin which was inclosed in one of gold, another of silver, and a third of iron. With the body were interred all the spoils of the enemy, harnesses embroidered with gold and studded with jewels, rich silks, and whatever they had taken most precious in the palaces of the kings they had pillaged; and that the place of his interment might for ever remain concealed, the Huns deprived of life all who assisted at his burial!

The Goths had done nearly the same for Alaric in 410, at Cosença, a town in Calabria. They turned aside the river Vasento; and having formed a grave in the midst of its bed where its course was most rapid, they interred this king with prodigious accumulations of riches. After having caused the river to reassume its usual course, they murdered, without exception, all those who had been concerned in digging this singular grave.

VICARS OF BRAY.

The vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, was a papist under the reign of Henry the Eighth, and a Protestant under Edward the Sixth; he was a papist again under Mary, and once more became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth.[59] When this scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an inconstant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, "Not so neither; for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle; which is, to live and die the vicar of Bray!"

This vivacious and reverend hero has given birth to a proverb peculiar to this county, "The vicar of Bray will be vicar of Bray still." But how has it happened that this _vicar_ should be so notorious, and one in much higher rank, acting the same part, should have escaped notice? Dr. _Kitchen_, bishop of Llandaff, from an idle abbot under Henry VIII. was made a busy bishop; Protestant under Edward, he returned to his old master under Mary; and at last took the oath of supremacy under Elizabeth, and finished as a parliament Protestant. A pun spread the odium of his name; for they said that he had always loved the _Kitchen_ better than the _Church_!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 59: His name was Simon Symonds. The popular ballad absurdly exaggerates his deeds, and gives them untrue amplitude. It is not older than the last century, and is printed in Ritson's _English Songs_.]

DOUGLAS.

It may be recorded as a species of Puritanic barbarism, that no later than the year 1757, a man of genius was persecuted because he had written a tragedy which tended by no means to hurt the morals; but, on the contrary, by awakening the piety of domestic affections with the nobler passions, would rather elevate and purify the mind.

When Home, the author of the tragedy of Douglas, had it performed at Edinburgh, some of the divines, his acquaintance, attending the representation, the clergy, with the monastic spirit of the darkest ages, published a paper, which I abridge for the contemplation of the reader, who may wonder to see such a composition written in the eighteenth century."

"On Wednesday, February the 2nd, 1757, the Presbytery of Glasgow came to the following resolution. They having seen a printed paper, intituled, 'An admonition and exhortation of the reverend Presbytery of Edinburgh;' which, among other _evils_ prevailing, observing the following _melancholy_ but _notorious_ facts: that one who is a minister of the church of Scotland did _himself_ write and compose _a stage-play_, intituled, 'The tragedy of Douglas,' and got it to be acted at the theatre of Edinburgh; and that he with several other ministers of the church were present; and _some_ of them _oftener than once_, at the acting of the said play before a numerous audience. The presbytery being _deeply affected_ with this new and strange appearance, do publish these sentiments," &c Sentiments with which I will not disgust the reader; but which they appear not yet to have purified and corrected, as they have shown in the case of Logan and other Scotchmen, who have committed the crying sin of composing dramas!

CRITICAL HISTORY OF POVERTY.

M. Morin, in the Memoirs of the French Academy, has formed a little history of Poverty, which I abridge.

The writers on the genealogies of the gods have not noticed the deity of Poverty, though admitted as such in the pagan heaven, while she has had temples and altars on earth. The allegorical Plato has pleasingly narrated, that at the feast which Jupiter gave on the birth of Venus, Poverty modestly stood at the gate of the palace to gather the fragments of the celestial banquet; when she observed the god of riches, inebriated with nectar, roll out of the heavenly residence, and passing into the Olympian Gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity honoured her with his caresses; and from this amour sprung the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory is ingenious. The union of poverty with riches must inevitably produce the most delightful of pleasures.

The golden age, however, had but the duration of a flower; when it finished, Poverty began to appear. The ancestors of the human race, if they did not meet her face to face, knew her in a partial degree; the vagrant Cain encountered her. She was firmly established in the patriarchal age. We hear of merchants who publicly practised the commerce of vending slaves, which indicates the utmost degree of poverty. She is distinctly marked by Job: this holy man protests, that he had nothing to reproach himself with respecting the poor, for he had assisted them in their necessities.

In the scriptures, legislators paid great attention to their relief. Moses, by his wise precautions, endeavoured to soften the rigours of this unhappy state. The division of lands, by tribes and families; the septennial jubilees; the regulation to bestow at the harvest-time a certain portion of all the fruits of the earth for those families who were in want; and the obligation of his moral law to love one's neighbour as one's self; were so many mounds erected against the inundations of poverty. The Jews under their Theocracy had few or no mendicants. Their kings were unjust; and rapaciously seizing on inheritances which were not their right, increased the numbers of the poor. From the reign of David there were oppressive governors, who devoured the people as their bread. It was still worse under the foreign powers of Babylon, of Persia, and the Roman emperors. Such were the extortions of their publicans, and the avarice of their governors, that the number of mendicants dreadfully augmented; and it was probably for that reason that the opulent families consecrated a tenth part of their property for their succour, as appears in the time of the evangelists. In the preceding ages no more was given, as their casuists assure us, than the fortieth or thirtieth part; a custom which this singular nation still practise. If there are no poor of their nation where they reside, they send it to the most distant parts. The Jewish merchants make this charity a regular charge in their transactions with each other; and at the close of the year render an account to the poor of their nation.

By the example of Moses, the ancient legislators were taught to pay a similar attention to the poor. Like him, they published laws respecting the division of lands; and many ordinances were made for the benefit of those whom fires, inundations, wars, or bad harvests had reduced to want. Convinced that _idleness_ more inevitably introduced poverty than any other cause, it was rigorously punished; the Egyptians made it criminal, and no vagabonds or mendicants were suffered under any pretence whatever. Those who were convicted of slothfulness, and still refused to labour for the public when labour was offered to them, were punished with death. The famous Pyramids are the works of men who otherwise had remained vagabonds and mendicants.

The same spirit inspired Greece. Lycurgus would not have in his republic either _poor_ or _rich_: they lived and laboured in common. As in the present times, every family has its stores and cellars, so they had public ones, and distributed the provisions according to the ages and constitutions of the people. If the same regulation was not precisely observed by the Athenians, the Corinthians, and the other people of Greece, the same maxim existed in full force against idleness.

According to the laws of Draco, Solon, &c., a conviction of wilful poverty was punished with the loss of life. Plato, more gentle in his manners, would have them only banished. He calls them enemies of the state; and pronounces as a maxim, that where there are great numbers of mendicants, fatal revolutions will happen; for as these people have nothing to lose, they plan opportunities to disturb the public repose.

The ancient Romans, whose universal object was the public prosperity, were not indebted to Greece on this head. One of the principal occupations of their censors was to keep a watch on the vagabonds. Those who were condemned as incorrigible sluggards were sent to the mines, or made to labour on the public edifices. The Romans of those times, unlike the present race, did not consider the _far niente_ as an occupation; they were convinced that their liberalities were ill-placed in bestowing them on such men. The little republics of the _bees_ and the _ants_ were often held out as an example; and the last particularly, where Virgil says, that they have elected overseers who correct the sluggards:

"---- Pars agmina cogunt,
Castigantque moras."

And if we may trust the narratives of our travellers, the _beavers_ pursue this regulation more rigorously and exactly than even these industrious societies. But their rigour, although but animals, is not so barbarous as that of the ancient Germans; who, Tacitus informs us, plunged the idlers and vagabonds in the thickest mire of their marshes, and left them to perish by a kind of death which resembled their inactive dispositions.

Yet, after all, it was not inhumanity that prompted the ancients thus severely to chastise idleness; they were induced to it by a strict equity, and it would be doing them injustice to suppose, that it was thus they treated those _unfortunate poor_, whose indigence was occasioned by infirmities, by age, or unforeseen calamities. Every family constantly assisted its branches to save them from being reduced to beggary; which to them appeared worse than death. The magistrates protected those who were destitute of friends, or incapable of labour. When Ulysses was disguised as a mendicant, and presented himself to Eurymachus, this prince observing him, to be robust and healthy, offered to give him employment, or otherwise to leave him to his ill fortune. When the Roman Emperors, even in the reigns of Nero and Tiberius, bestowed their largesses, the distributors were ordered to exempt those from receiving a share whose bad conduct kept them in misery; for that it was better the lazy should die with hunger than be fed in idleness.

Whether the police of the ancients was more exact, or whether they were more attentive to practise the duties of humanity, or that slavery served as an efficacious corrective of idleness; it clearly appears how small was the misery, and how few the numbers of their poor. This they did, too, without having recourse to hospitals.

At the establishment of Christianity, when the apostles commanded a community of wealth among their disciples, the miseries of the poor became alleviated in a greater degree. If they did not absolutely live together, as we have seen religious orders, yet the wealthy continually supplied their distressed brethren: but matters greatly changed under Constantine. This prince published edicts in favour of those Christians who had been condemned in the preceding reigns to slavery, to the mines, to the galleys, or prisons. The church felt an inundation of prodigious crowds of these miserable men, who brought with them urgent wants and corporeal infirmities. The Christian families were then not numerous; they could not satisfy these claimants. The magistrates protected them: they built spacious hospitals, under different titles, for the sick, the aged, the invalids, the widows, and orphans. The emperors, and the most eminent personages, were seen in these hospitals, examining the patients; they assisted the helpless; they dressed the wounded. This did so much honour to the new religion, that Julian the Apostate introduced this custom among the pagans. But the best things are continually perverted.

These retreats were found insufficient. Many slaves, proud of the liberty they had just recovered, looked on them as prisons; and, under various pretexts, wandered about the country. They displayed with art the scars of their former wounds, and exposed the imprinted marks of their chains. They found thus a lucrative profession in begging, which had been interdicted by the laws. The profession did not finish with them: men of an untoward, turbulent, and licentious disposition, gladly embraced it. It spread so wide that the succeeding emperors were obliged to institute new laws; and individuals were allowed to seize on these mendicants for their slaves and perpetual vassals: a powerful preservative against this disorder. It is observed in almost every part of the world but ours; and prevents that populace of beggary which disgraces Europe. China presents us with a noble example. No beggars are seen loitering in that country. All the world are occupied, even to the blind and the lame; and only those who are incapable of labour live at the public expense. What is done _there_ may also be performed _here_. Instead of that hideous, importunate, idle, licentious poverty, as pernicious to the police as to morality, we should see the poverty of the earlier ages, humble, modest, frugal, robust, industrious, and laborious. Then, indeed, the fable of Plato might be realised: Poverty might be embraced by the god of Riches; and if she did not produce the voluptuous offspring of Love, she would become the fertile mother of Agriculture, and the ingenious parent of the Arts and Manufactures.

SOLOMON AND SHEBA.

A Rabbin once told me an ingenious invention, which in the Talmud is attributed to Solomon.

The power of the monarch had spread his wisdom to the remotest parts of the known world. Queen Sheba, attracted by the splendour of his reputation, visited this poetical king at his own court; there, one day to exercise the sagacity of the monarch, Sheba presented herself at the foot of the throne: in each hand she held a wreath; the one was composed of natural, and the other of artificial, flowers. Art, in the labour of the mimetic wreath, had exquisitely emulated the lively hues of nature; so that, at the distance it was held by the queen for the inspection of the king, it was deemed impossible for him to decide, as her question imported, which wreath was the production of nature, and which the work of art. The sagacious Solomon seemed perplexed; yet to be vanquished, though in a trifle, by a trifling woman, irritated his pride. The son of David, he who had written treatises on the vegetable productions "from the cedar to the hyssop," to acknowledge himself outwitted by a woman, with shreds of paper and glazed paintings! The honour of the monarch's reputation for divine sagacity seemed diminished, and the whole Jewish court looked solemn and melancholy. At length an expedient presented itself to the king; and one it must be confessed worthy of the naturalist. Observing a cluster of bees hovering about a window, he commanded that it should be opened: it was opened; the bees rushed into the court, and alighted immediately on one of the wreaths, while not a single one fixed on the other. The baffled Sheba had one more reason to be astonished at the wisdom of Solomon.

This would make a pretty poetical tale. It would yield an elegant description, and a pleasing moral; that _the bee_ only _rests_ on the natural beauties, and never _fixes_ on the _painted flowers_, however inimitably the colours may be laid on. Applied to the _ladies_, this would give it pungency. In the "Practical Education" of the Edgeworths, the reader will find a very ingenious conversation founded on this story.

HELL.

Oldham, in his "Satires upon the Jesuits," a work which would admit of a curious commentary, alludes to their "lying legends," and the innumerable impositions they practised on the credulous. I quote a few lines in which he has collected some of those legendary miracles, which I have noticed in the article LEGENDS, and the amours of the Virgin Mary are detailed in that on RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES.

Tell, how _blessed Virgin_ to come down was seen,
Like play-house punk descending in machine,
How she writ _billet-doux_ and _love-discourse_,
Made _assignations_, _visits_, and _amours_;
How hosts distrest, her _smock_ for _banner_ wore,
Which vanquished foes!
---- how _fish_ in conventicles met,
And _mackerel_ were with _bait of doctrine_ caught:
How cattle have judicious hearers been!--
How _consecrated hives_ with bells were hung,
And _bees_ kept mass, and holy _anthems sung_!
How _pigs_ to th' _rosary_ kneel'd, and _sheep_ were taught
To bleat _Te Deum_ and _Magnificat_;
How _fly-flap_, of church-censure houses rid
Of insects, which at _curse of fryar_ died.
How _ferrying cowls_ religious pilgrims bore
O'er waves, without the help of sail or oar;
How _zealous crab_ the _sacred image_ bore,
And swam a catholic to the distant shore.
With shams like these the giddy rout mislead,
Their folly and their superstition feed.

All these are allusions to the extravagant fictions in the "Golden Legend." Among other gross impositions to deceive the mob, Oldham likewise attacks them for certain publications on topics not less singular. The tales he has recounted, Oldham says, are only baits for children, like toys at a fair; but they have their profounder and higher matters for the learned and inquisitive. He goes on:--

One undertakes by scales of miles to tell
The bounds, dimensions, and extent of HELL;
How many German leagues that realm contains!
How many chaldrons Hell each year expends
In coals for roasting Hugonots and friends!
Another frights the rout with useful stories
Of wild chimeras, limbos--PURGATORIES--
Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung,
Like a Westphalia gammon or neat's tongue,
To be redeem'd with masses and a song.--SATIRE IV.

The readers of Oldham, for Oldham must ever have readers among the curious in our poetry, have been greatly disappointed in the pompous edition of a Captain Thompson, which illustrates none of his allusions. In the above lines Oldham alludes to some singular works.

Treatises and topographical descriptions of HELL, PURGATORY, and even HEAVEN, were once the favourite researches among certain zealous defenders of the Romish Church, who exhausted their ink-horns in building up a Hell to their own taste, or for their particular purpose.[60] We have a treatise of Cardinal Bellarmin, a Jesuit, on _Purgatory_; he seems to have the science of a surveyor among all the secret tracks and the formidable divisions of "the bottomless pit."

Bellarmin informs us that there are beneath the earth four different places, or a profound place divided into four parts. The deepest of these places is _Hell_; it contains all the souls of the damned, where will be also their bodies after the resurrection, and likewise all the demons. The place nearest _Hell_ is _Purgatory_, where souls are purged, or rather where they appease the anger of God by their sufferings. He says that the same fires and the same torments are alike in both these places, the only difference between _Hell_ and _Purgatory_ consisting in their duration. Next to _Purgatory_ is the _limbo_ of those _infants_ who die without having received the sacrament; and the fourth place is the _limbo_ of the _Fathers_; that is to say, of those _just men_ who died before the death of Christ. But since the days of the Redeemer, this last division is empty, like an apartment to be let. A later catholic theologist, the famous Tillemont, condemns _all the illustrious pagans_ to the _eternal torments of Hell_? because they lived before the time of Jesus, and therefore could not be benefited by the redemption! Speaking of young Tiberius, who was compelled to fall on his own sword, Tillemont adds, "Thus by his own hand he ended his miserable life, _to begin another, the misery of which will never end_!" Yet history records nothing bad of this prince. Jortin observes that he added this _reflection_ in his later edition, so that the good man as he grew older grew more uncharitable in his religious notions. It is in this manner too that the Benedictine editor of Justin Martyr speaks of the illustrious pagans. This father, after highly applauding Socrates, and a few more who resembled him, inclines to think that they are not fixed in _Hell_. But the Benedictine editor takes great pains to clear the good father from the shameful imputation of supposing that a _virtuous pagan might be saved_ as well as a Benedictine monk! For a curious specimen of this _odium theologicum_, see the "Censure" of the Sorbonne on Marmontel's Belisarius.

The adverse party, who were either philosophers or reformers, received all such information with great suspicion. Anthony Cornelius, a lawyer in the sixteenth century, wrote a small tract, which was so effectually suppressed, as a monster of atheism, that a copy is now only to be found in the hands of the curious. This author ridiculed the absurd and horrid doctrine of _infant damnation_, and was instantly decried as an atheist, and the printer prosecuted to his ruin! Cælius Secundus Curio, a noble Italian, published a treatise _De Amplitudine beati Regni Dei_, to prove that _Heaven_ has more inhabitants than _Hell_,--or, in his own phrase, that the _elect_ are more numerous than the _reprobate_. However we may incline to smile at these works, their design was benevolent. They were the first streaks of the morning light of the Reformation. Even such works assisted mankind to examine more closely, and hold in greater contempt, the extravagant and pernicious doctrines of the domineering papistical church.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 60: One of the most horrible of these books was the work of the Jesuit Pinamonti; it details with frightful minuteness the nature of hell-torments, accompanied by the most revolting pictures of the condemned under various refined torments. It was translated in an abbreviated form, and sold for a few pence as a popular religious book in Ireland, and may be so still. It is divided into a series of meditations for each day in the week, on hell and its torments.]

THE ABSENT MAN.

The character of Bruyère's "Absent Man" has been translated in the Spectator, and exhibited on the theatre. It is supposed to be a fictitious character, or one highly coloured. It was well known, however, to his contemporaries, to be the Count de Brancas. The present anecdotes concerning the same person were unknown to, or forgotten by, Bruyère; and are to the full as extraordinary as those which characterise _Menalcas_, or the Absent Man.

The count was reading by the fireside, but Heaven knows with what degree of attention, when the nurse brought him his infant child. He throws down the book; he takes the child in his arms. He was playing with her, when an important visitor was announced. Having forgot he had quitted his book, and that it was his child he held in his hands, he hastily flung the squalling innocent on the table.

The count was walking in the street, and the Duke de la Rochefoucault crossed the way to speak to him.--"God bless thee, poor man!" exclaimed the count. Rochefoucault smiled, and was beginning to address him:--"Is it not enough," cried the count, interrupting him, and somewhat in a passion; "is it not enough that I have said, at first, I have nothing for you? Such lazy vagrants as you hinder a gentleman from walking the streets." Rochefoucault burst into a loud laugh, and awakening the absent man from his lethargy, he was not a little surprised, himself, that he should have taken his friend for an importunate mendicant! La Fontaine is recorded to have been one of the most absent men; and Furetière relates a most singular instance of this absence of mind. La Fontaine attended the burial of one of his friends, and some time afterwards he called to visit him. At first he was shocked at the information of his death; but recovering from his surprise, observed--"True! true! I recollect I went to his funeral."

WAX-WORK.

We have heard of many curious deceptions occasioned by the imitative powers of wax-work. A series of anatomical sculptures in coloured wax was projected by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, under the direction of Fontana. Twenty apartments have been filled with those curious imitations. They represent in every possible detail, and in each successive stage of denudation, the organs of sense and reproduction; the muscular, the vascular, the nervous, and the bony system. They imitate equally well the form, and more exactly the colouring, of nature than injected preparations; and they have been employed to perpetuate many transient phenomena of disease, of which no other art could have made so lively a record.[61]

There is a species of wax-work, which, though it can hardly claim the honours of the fine arts, is adapted to afford much pleasure--I mean figures of wax, which may be modelled with great truth of character.

Menage has noticed a work of this kind. In the year 1675, the Duke de Maine received a gilt cabinet, about the size of a moderate table. On the door was inscribed, "_The Apartment of Wit_." The inside exhibited an alcove and a long gallery. In an arm-chair was seated the figure of the duke himself, composed of wax, the resemblance the most perfect imaginable. On one side stood the Duke de la Rochefoucault, to whom he presented a paper of verses for his examination. M. de Marsillac, and Bossuet bishop of Meaux, were standing near the arm-chair. In the alcove, Madame de Thianges and Madame de la Fayette sat retired, reading a book. Boileau, the satirist, stood at the door of the gallery, hindering seven or eight bad poets from entering. Near Boileau stood Racine, who seemed to beckon to La Fontaine to come forwards. All these figures were formed of wax; and this philosophical baby-house, interesting for the personages it imitated, might induce a wish in some philosophers to play once more with one.

There was lately an old canon at Cologne who made a collection of small wax models of characteristic figures, such as personifications of Misery, in a haggard old man with a scanty crust and a brown jug before him; or of Avarice, in a keen-looking Jew miser counting his gold: which were done with such a spirit and reality that a Flemish painter, a Hogarth or Wilkie, could hardly have worked up the _feeling_ of the figure more impressively. "All these were done with truth and expression which I could not have imagined the wax capable of exhibiting," says the lively writer of "An Autumn near the Rhine." There is something very infantine in this taste; but I lament that it is very rarely gratified by such close copiers of nature as was this old canon of Cologne.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 61: The finest collection at present is in Guy's Hospital, Southwark; they are the work of an artist especially retained there, who by long practice has become perfect, making a labour of love of a pursuit that would be disgustful to many.]

PASQUIN AND MARFORIO.

All the world have heard of these _statues_: they have served as vehicles for the keenest satire in a land of the most uncontrolled despotism. The _statue of Pasquin_ (from whence the word _pasquinade_) and that of _Marforio_ are placed in Rome in two different quarters. _Marforio_ is an ancient _statue_ of _Mars_, found in the _Forum_, which the people have corrupted into _Marforio_. _Pasquin_ is a marble _statue_, greatly mutilated, supposed to be the figure of a gladiator.[62] To one or other of these _statues_, during the concealment of the night, are affixed those satires or lampoons which the authors wish should be dispersed about Rome without any danger to themselves. When _Marforio_ is attacked, _Pasquin_ comes to his succour; and when _Pasquin_ is the sufferer, he finds in _Marforio_ a constant defender. Thus, by a thrust and a parry, the most serious matters are disclosed: and the most illustrious personages are attacked by their enemies, and defended by their friends.

Misson, in his Travels in Italy, gives the following account of the origin of the name of the statue of _Pasquin_:--

A satirical tailor, who lived at Rome, and whose name was _Pasquin_, amused himself by severe raillery, liberally bestowed on those who passed by his shop; which in time became the lounge of the newsmongers. The tailor had precisely the talents 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 shopboard. When any lampoons or amusing bon-mots were current at 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.

There is a very rare work, with this title:--"Pasquillorum Tomi Duo;" the first containing the verse, and the second the prose pasquinades, published at Basle, 1544. The rarity of this collection of satirical pieces is entirely owing to the arts of suppression practised by the papal government. Sallengre, in his literary Memoirs, has given an account of this work; his own copy had formerly belonged to Daniel Heinsius, who, in verses written in his hand, describes its rarity and the price it too cost:--

Roma meos fratres igni dedit, unica Phoenix
Vivo, aureisque venio centum Heinsio.

"Rome gave my brothers to the flames, but I survive a solitary
Phoenix. Heinsius bought me for a hundred golden ducats."

This collection contains a great number of pieces composed at different times, against the popes, cardinals, &c. They are not, indeed, materials for the historian, and they must be taken with grains of allowance. We find sarcastic epigrams on Leo X., and the infamous Lucretia, daughter of Alexander VI.: even the corrupt Romans of the day were capable of expressing themselves with the utmost freedom. Of Alexander VI. we have an apology for his conduct:

Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum;
Emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest.

"Alexander _sells_ the keys, the altars, and Christ;
As he _bought_ them first, he had a right to _sell them_!"

On Lucretia:--

Hoc tumulo dormit Lucretia nomine, sed re
Thais; Alexandri filia, sponsa, nurus!

"Beneath this stone sleeps Lucretia by name, but by nature Thais;
the daughter, the wife, and the daughter-in-law of Alexander!"

Leo X. was a frequent butt for the arrows of Pasquin:--

Sacra sub extremâ, si forte requiritis, horâ
Cur Leo non potuit sumere; vendiderat.

"Do you ask why Leo did not take the sacrament on his
death-bed?--How could he? He had sold it!"

Many of these satirical touches depend on puns. Urban VII., one of the _Barberini_ family, pillaged the Pantheon of brass to make cannon,[63] on which occasion Pasquin was made to say:--

Quod non fecerunt _Barbari_ Romæ, fecit _Barberini_.

On Clement VII., whose death was said to be occasioned by the prescriptions of his physician:--

Curtius occidit Clementem; Curtius auro
Donandus, per quem publica parta salus.

"Dr. Curtius has killed the pope by his remedies; he ought to be
remunerated as a man who has cured the state."

The following, on Paul III., are singular conceptions:--

Papa Medusæum caput est, coma turba Nepotum;
Perseu cæde caput, Cæsaries periit.

"The pope is the head of Medusa; the horrid tresses are his
nephews; Perseus, cut off the head, and then we shall be rid of
these serpent-locks."

Another is sarcastic--

Ut canerent data multa olim sunt Vatibus æra:
Ut taceam, quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?

"Heretofore money was given to poets that they might sing: how much
will you give me, Paul, to be silent?"

This collection contains, among other classes, passages from the Scriptures which have been applied to the court of Rome; to different nations and persons; and one of "_Sortes Virgilianæ per Pasquillum collectæ_,"--passages from Virgil frequently happily applied; and those who are curious in the history of those times will find this portion interesting. The work itself is not quite so rare as Daniel Heinsius imagined; the price might now reach from five to ten guineas.[64]

These satirical statues are placed at opposite ends of the town, so that there is always sufficient time to make Marforio reply to the gibes and jeers of Pasquin in walking from one to the other. They are an ingenious substitute for publishing to the world, what no Roman newspaper would dare to print.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 62: The description of these two famous statues is not correctly given in the text. The statue called _Marforio_ is the figure of a recumbent river god of colossal proportions, found near the arch of Septimius Severus. When the museum of the capitol was completed, the Pope moved the figure into the court-yard; there it is still to be seen. He also wished to move that of _Pasquin_, but the Duke de Braschi refused to allow it; and it still stands on its pedestal, at the angle of the Braschi Palace, in the small square that takes the name of Piazza del Pasquino from that circumstance. It is much mutilated, but is the ruin of a very fine work; Bernini expressed great admiration for it. It is considered by Count Maffei to represent Ajax supporting Menelaus. The torso of the latter figure only is left, the arms of the former are broken away; but enough remains of both to conjecture what the original might have been in design. The _pose_ of both figures is similar to the fine group known as Ajax and Telamon, in the Loggia of the Pitti Palace at Florence.]

[Footnote 63: The cannon were to supply the castle of St. Angelo, but a large portion of the metal (which formerly covered the roof of the temple) was used to construct the canopy and pillars which still stand over the tomb of St. Peter, in the great cathedral at Rome.]

FEMALE BEAUTY AND ORNAMENTS.

The ladies in Japan gild their teeth; and those of the Indies paint them red. The pearl of teeth must be dyed black to be beautiful in Guzerat. In Greenland the women colour their faces with blue and yellow. However fresh the complexion of a Muscovite may be, she would think herself very ugly if she was not plastered over with paint. The Chinese must have their feet as diminutive as those of the she-goat; and to render them thus, their youth is passed in tortures. In ancient Persia an aquiline nose was often thought worthy of the crown; and if there was any competition between two princes, the people generally went by this criterion of majesty. In some countries, the mothers break the noses of their children; and in others press the head between two boards, that it may become square. The modern Persians have a strong aversion to red hair: the Turks, on the contrary, are warm admirers of it. The female Hottentot receives from the hand of her lover, not silks nor wreaths of flowers, but warm guts and reeking tripe, to dress herself with enviable ornaments.

In China, small round eyes are liked; and the girls are continually plucking their eye-brows, that they may be thin and long. The Turkish women dip a gold brush in the tincture of a black drug, which they pass over their eye-brows. It is too visible by day, but looks shining by night. They tinge their nails with a rose-colour. An African beauty must have small eyes, thick lips, a large flat nose, and a skin beautifully black. The Emperor of Monomotapa would not change his amiable negress for the most brilliant European beauty.

An ornament for the nose appears to us perfectly unnecessary. The Peruvians, however, think otherwise; and they hang on it a weighty ring, the thickness of which is proportioned by the rank of their husbands. The custom of boring it, as our ladies do their ears, is very common in several nations. Through the perforation are hung various materials; such as green crystal, gold, stones, a single and sometimes a great number of gold rings.[65] This is rather troublesome to them in blowing their noses; and the fact is, as some have informed us, that the Indian ladies never perform this very useful operation.

The female head-dress is carried in some countries to singular extravagance. The Chinese fair carries on her head the figure of a certain bird. This bird is composed of copper or of gold, according to the quality of the person; the wings spread out, fall over the front of the head-dress, and conceal the temples. The tail, long and open, forms a beautiful tuft of feathers. The beak covers the top of the nose; the neck is fastened to the body of the artificial animal by a spring, that it may the more freely play, and tremble at the slightest motion.

The extravagance of the Myantses is far more ridiculous than the above. They carry on their heads a slight board, rather longer than a foot, and about six inches broad; with this they cover their hair, and seal it with wax. They cannot lie down, or lean, without keeping the neck straight; and the country being very woody, it is not uncommon to find them with their head-dress entangled in the trees. Whenever they comb their hair, they pass an hour by the fire in melting the wax; but this combing is only performed once or twice a year.

The inhabitants of the land of Natal wear caps or bonnets, from six to ten inches high, composed of the fat of oxen. They then gradually anoint the head with a purer grease, which mixing with the hair, fastens these _bonnets_ for their lives.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 64: This vehicle for satire was introduced early into England; thus, in 1589, was published "The return of the renowned Cavaliero Pasquill to England from the other side of the seas, and his meeting with Marforio at London, upon the Royall Exchange."]

[Footnote 65: For some very strong remarks on this fashion, the reader may consult Bulwer's _Anthropometamorphosis, or Artificiall Changeling_, 1653. The author is very ungallant in his strictures on "precious jewels in the snouts of such swine."]

MODERN PLATONISM.

Erasmus, in his Age of Religious Revolution, expressed an alarm, which in some shape has been since realized. He strangely, yet acutely observes, that "_literature_ began to make a great and happy progress; but," he adds, "I fear two things--that the study of _Hebrew_ will promote _Judaism_, and the study of _philology_ will revive PAGANISM." He speaks to the same purpose in the Adages, c. 189, as Jortin observes. Blackwell, in his curious Life of Homer, after showing that the ancient oracles were the fountains of knowledge, and that the votaries of the _god_ of _Delphi_ had their faith confirmed by the oracle's perfect acquaintance with the country, parentage, and fortunes of the suppliant, and many predictions verified; that besides all this, the oracles that have reached us discover a wide knowledge of everything relating to Greece;--this learned writer is at a loss to account for a knowledge that he thinks has something divine in it: it was a knowledge to be found nowhere in Greece but among the _Oracles_. He would account for this phenomenon by supposing there existed a succession of learned men devoted to this purpose. He says, "Either we must admit the knowledge of the priests, or turn _converts to the ancients_, and believe in the _omniscience of Apollo, which in this age I know nobody in hazard of_." Yet, to the astonishment of this writer, were he now living, he would have witnessed this incredible fact! Even Erasmus himself might have wondered.

We discover the origin of MODERN PLATONISM, as it may be distinguished, among the Italians. About the middle of the fifteenth century, some time before the Turks had become masters of Constantinople, a great number of philosophers flourished. _Gemisthus Pletho_ was one distinguished by his genius, his erudition, and his fervent passion for _platonism_. Mr. Roscoe notices Pletho: "His discourses had so powerful an effect upon Cosmo de' Medici, who was his constant auditor, that he established an academy at Florence, for the sole purpose of cultivating this new and more elevated species of philosophy." The learned Marsilio Ficino translated Plotinus, that great archimage of _platonic mysticism_. Such were Pletho's eminent abilities, that in his old age those whom his novel system had greatly irritated either feared or respected him. He had scarcely breathed his last when they began to abuse Plato and our Pletho. The following account is written by George of Trebizond.