Chapter IX: Part 9

Bayle tells us that _billets doux_ and _amorous verses_ are two powerful machines to employ in the assaults of love, particularly when the passionate songs the poetical lover composes are sung by himself. This secret was well known to the elegant Abelard. Abelard so touched the sensible heart of Eloisa, and infused such fire into her frame, by employing his _fine pen_, and his _fine voice_, that the poor woman never recovered from the attack. She herself informs us that he displayed two qualities which are rarely found in philosophers, and by which he could instantly win the affections of the female;--he _wrote_ and _sung_ finely. He composed _love-verses_ so beautiful, and _songs_ so agreeable, as well for the _words_ as the _airs_, that all the world got them by heart, and the name of his mistress was spread from province to province.

What a gratification to the enthusiastic, the amorous, the vain Eloisa! of whom Lord Lyttleton, in his curious Life of Henry II., observes, that had she not been compelled to read the fathers and the legends in a nunnery, and had been suffered to improve her genius by a continued application to polite literature, from what appears in her letters, she would have excelled any man of that age.

Eloisa, I suspect, however, would have proved but a very indifferent polemic; she seems to have had a certain delicacy in her manners which rather belongs to the _fine lady_. We cannot but smile at an observation of hers on the _Apostles_ which we find in her letters:--"We read that the _apostles_, even in the company of their Master, were so _rustic_ and _ill-bred,_ that, regardless of common decorum, as they passed through the corn-fields they plucked the ears, and ate them like children. Nor did they wash their hands before they sat down to table. To eat with unwashed hands, said our Saviour to those who were offended, doth not defile a man."

It is on the misconception of the mild apologetical reply of Jesus, indeed, that religious fanatics have really considered, that, to be careless of their dress, and not to free themselves from filth and slovenliness, is an act of piety; just as the late political fanatics, who thought that republicanism consisted in the most offensive filthiness. On this principle, that it is saint-like to go dirty, ragged and slovenly, says Bishop Lavington, in his "Enthusiasm of the Methodists and Papists," how _piously_ did Whitfield take care of the outward man, who in his journals writes, "My apparel was mean--thought it unbecoming a penitent to have _powdered hair_.--I wore _woollen gloves_, a _patched gown_, and _dirty shoes!_"

After an injury, not less cruel than humiliating, Abelard raises the school of the Paraclete; with what enthusiasm is he followed to that desert! His scholars in crowds hasten to their adored master; they cover their mud sheds with the branches of trees; they care not to sleep under better roofs, provided they remain by the side of their unfortunate master. How lively must have been their taste for study!--it formed their solitary passion, and the love of glory was gratified even in that desert.

The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa, too celebrated among certain of its readers--

"Not Cesar's empress would I deign to prove;
No,--make me mistress to the man I love!"--

are, however, found in her original letters. The author of that ancient work, "The Romaunt of the Rose," has given it thus _naïvely_; a specimen of the _natural_ style in those days:--

Si l'empereur, qui est a Rome,
Souhz qui doyvent etre tout homme,
Me daignoit prendre pour sa femme,
Et me faire du monde dame!
Si vouldroye-je mieux, dist-elle
Et Dieù en tesmoing en appelle,
Etre sa Putaine appellée
Qu'etre emperiere couronnée.

PHYSIOGNOMY.

A very extraordinary physiognomical anecdote has been given by De la Place, in his "_Pièces Intéressantes et peu Connues_," vol. iv. p. 8.

A friend assured him that he had seen a voluminous and secret correspondence which had been carried on between Louis XIV. and his favourite physician, De la Chambre, on this science. The faith of the monarch seems to have been great, and the purpose to which this correspondence tended was extraordinary indeed, and perhaps scarcely credible. Who will believe that Louis XIV. was so convinced of that talent which De la Chambre attributed to himself, of deciding merely by the physiognomy of persons, not only on the real bent of their character, but to what employment they were adapted, that the king entered into a _secret correspondence_ to obtain the critical notices of his _physiognomist?_ That Louis XIV. should have pursued this system, undetected by his own courtiers, is also singular; but it appears, by this correspondence, that this art positively swayed him in his choice of officers and favourites. On one of the backs of these letters De la Chambre had written, "If I die before his majesty, he will incur great risk of making many an unfortunate choice!"

This collection of physiognomical correspondence, if it does really exist, would form a curious publication; we have heard nothing of it! De la Chambre was an enthusiastic physiognomist, as appears by his works; "The Characters of the Passions," four volumes in quarto; "The Art of Knowing Mankind;" and "The Knowledge of Animals." Lavater quotes his "Vote and Interest," in favour of his favourite science. It is, however, curious to add, that Philip Earl of Pembroke, under James I., had formed a particular collection of portraits, with a view to physiognomical studies. According to Evelyn on Medals, p. 302, such was his sagacity in discovering the characters and dispositions of men by their countenances, that James I. made no little use of his extraordinary talent on _the first arrival of ambassadors at court_.

The following physiological definition of PHYSIOGNOMY is extracted from a publication by Dr. Gwither, of the year 1604, which, dropping his history of "The Animal Spirits," is curious:--

"Soft wax cannot receive more various and numerous impressions than are imprinted on a man's face by _objects_ moving his affections: and not only the _objects_ themselves have this power, but also the very _images_ or _ideas_; that is to say, anything that puts the animal spirits into the same motion that the _object_ present did, will have the same effect with the object. To prove the first, let one observe a man's face looking on a pitiful object, then a ridiculous, then a strange, then on a terrible or dangerous object, and so forth. For the second, that _ideas_ have the same effect with the _object_, dreams confirm too often.

"The manner I conceive to be thus:--the animal spirits, moved in the sensory by an object, continue their motion to the brain; whence the motion is propagated to this or that particular part of the body, as is most suitable to the design of its creation; having first made an alteration in the _face_ by its nerves, especially by the _pathetic_ and _oculorum motorii_ actuating its many muscles, as the dial-plate to that stupendous piece of clock-work which shows what is to be expected next from the striking part; not that I think the motion of the spirits in the sensory continued by the impression of the object all the way, as from a finger to the foot; I know it too weak, though the tenseness of the nerves favours it. But I conceive it done in the medulla of the brain, where is the common stock of spirits; as in an organ, whose pipes being uncovered, the air rushes into them; but the keys let go, are stopped again. Now, if by repeated acts of frequent entertaining of a favourite idea of a passion or vice, which natural temperament has hurried one to, or custom dragged, the _face_ is so often put into that posture which attends such acts, that the animal spirits find such latent passages into its nerves, that it is sometimes unalterably set: as the _Indian_ religious are by long continuing in strange postures in their _pagods_. But most commonly such a habit is contracted, that it falls insensibly into that posture when some present object does not obliterate that more natural impression by a new, or dissimulation hide it.

"Hence it is that we see great _drinkers_ with _eyes_ generally set towards the nose, the adducent muscles being often employed to let them see their loved liquor in the glass at the time of drinking; which were, therefore, called _bibitory Lascivious persons_ are remarkable for the _oculorum nobilis petulantia_, as Petronius calls it. From this also we may solve the _Quaker's_ expecting face, waiting for the pretended spirit; and the melancholy face of the _sectaries_; the _studious_ face of men of great application of mind; revengeful and _bloody_ men, like executioners in the act: and though silence in a sort may awhile pass for wisdom, yet, sooner or later, Saint Martin peeps through the disguise to undo all. A _changeable face_ I have observed to show a _changeable mind_. But I would by no means have what has been said understood as without exception; for I doubt not but sometimes there are found men with great and virtuous souls under very unpromising outsides."

The great Prince of Condé was very expert in a sort of physiognomy which showed the peculiar habits, motions, and postures of familiar life and mechanical employments. He would sometimes lay wagers with his friends, that he would guess, upon the Pont Neuf, what trade persons were of that passed by, from their walk and air.

CHARACTERS DESCRIBED BY MUSICAL NOTES.

The idea of describing characters under the names of Musical Instruments has been already displayed in two most pleasing papers which embellish the _Tatler_, written by Addison. He dwells on this idea with uncommon success. It has been applauded for its _originality_; and in the general preface to that work, those papers are distinguished for their felicity of imagination. The following paper was published in the year 1700, in a volume of "Philosophical Transactions and Collections," and the two numbers of Addison in the year 1710. It is probable that this inimitable writer borrowed the seminal hint from this work:--

"A conjecture at dispositions from the modulations of the voice.

"Sitting in some company, and having been but a little before musical, I chanced to take notice that, in ordinary discourse, _words_ were spoken in perfect _notes_; and that some of the company used _eighths_, some _fifths_, some _thirds_; and that his discourse which was the most pleasing, his _words_, as to their tone, consisted most of _concords_, and were of _discords_ of such as made up harmony. The same person was the most affable, pleasant, and best-natured in the company. This suggests a reason why many discourses which one _hears_ with much pleasure, when they come to be _read_ scarcely seem the same things.

"From this difference of MUSIC in SPEECH, we may conjecture that of TEMPERS. We know the Doric mood sounds gravity and sobriety; the Lydian, buxomness and freedom; the Æolic, sweet stillness and quiet composure; the Phrygian, jollity and youthful levity; the Ionic is a stiller of storms and disturbances arising from passion; and why may we not reasonably suppose, that those whose speech naturally runs into the notes peculiar to any of these moods, are likewise in nature hereunto congenerous? _C Fa ut_ may show me to be of an ordinary capacity, though good disposition. _G Sol re ut_, to be peevish and effeminate. _Flats_, a manly or melancholic sadness. He who hath a voice which will in some measure agree with all _cliffs_, to be of good parts, and fit for variety of employments, yet somewhat of an inconstant nature. Likewise from the TIMES: so _semi-briefs_ may speak a temper dull and phlegmatic; _minims_, grave and serious; _crotchets_, a prompt wit; _quavers_, vehemency of passion, and scolds use them. _Semi-brief-rest_ may denote one either stupid or fuller of thoughts than he can utter; _minimrest,_ one that deliberates; _crotchet-rest_, one in a passion. So that from the natural use of MOOD, NOTE, and TIME, we may collect DISPOSITIONS."

MILTON.

It is painful to observe the acrimony which the most eminent scholars have infused frequently in their controversial writings. The politeness of the present times has in some degree softened the malignity of the man, in the dignity of the author; but this is by no means an irrevocable law.

It is said not to be honourable to literature to revive such controversies; and a work entitled "Querelles Littéraires," when it first appeared, excited loud murmurs; but it has its moral: like showing the drunkard to a youth, that he may turn aside disgusted with ebriety. Must we suppose that men of letters are exempt from the human passions? Their sensibility, on the contrary, is more irritable than that of others. To observe the ridiculous attitudes in which great men appear, when they employ the style of the fish-market, may be one great means of restraining that ferocious pride often breaking out in the republic of letters. Johnson at least appears to have entertained the same opinion; for he thought proper to republish the low invective of _Dryden_ against _Settle_; and since I have published my "Quarrels of Authors," it becomes me to say no more.

The celebrated controversy of _Salmasius_, continued by Morus with _Milton_--the first the pleader of King Charles, the latter the advocate of the people--was of that magnitude, that all Europe took a part in the paper-war of these two great men. The answer of Milton, who perfectly massacred Salmasius, is now read but by the few. Whatever is addressed to the times, however great may be its merits, is doomed to perish with the times; yet on these pages the philosopher will not contemplate in vain.

It will form no uninteresting article to gather a few of the rhetorical _weeds_, for _flowers_ we cannot well call them, with which they mutually presented each other. Their rancour was at least equal to their erudition,--the two most learned antagonists of a learned age!

Salmasius was a man of vast erudition, but no taste. His writings are learned, but sometimes ridiculous. He called his work _Defensio Regia_, Defence of Kings. The opening of this work provokes a laugh:--"Englishmen! who toss the heads of kings as so many tennis-balls; who play with crowns as if they were bowls; who look upon sceptres as so many crooks."

That the deformity of the body is an idea we attach to the deformity of the mind, the vulgar must acknowledge; but surely it is unpardonable in the enlightened philosopher thus to compare the crookedness of corporeal matter with the rectitude of the intellect; yet Milbourne and Dennis, the last a formidable critic, have frequently considered, that comparing Dryden and Pope to whatever the eye turned from with displeasure, was very good argument to lower their literary abilities. Salmasius seems also to have entertained this idea, though his spies in England gave him wrong information; or, possibly, he only drew the figure of his own distempered imagination.

Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of man; an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless being, composed of nothing but skin and bone; a contemptible pedagogue, fit only to flog his boys: and, rising into a poetic frenzy, applies to him the words of Virgil, "_Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum_." Our great poet thought this senseless declamation merited a serious refutation; perhaps he did not wish to appear despicable in the eyes of the ladies; and he would not be silent on the subject, he says, lest any one should consider him as the credulous Spaniards are made to believe by their priests, that a heretic is a kind of rhinoceros or a dog-headed monster. Milton says, that he does not think any one ever considered him as unbeautiful; that his size rather approaches mediocrity than, the diminutive; that he still felt the same courage and the same strength which he possessed when young, when, with his sword, he felt no difficulty to combat with men more robust than himself; that his face, far from being pale, emaciated, and wrinkled, was sufficiently creditable to him: for though he had passed his fortieth year, he was in all other respects ten years younger. And very pathetically he adds, "that even his eyes, blind as they are, are unblemished in their appearance; in this instance alone, and much against my inclination, I am a deceiver!"

Morus, in his Epistle dedicatory of his _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, compares Milton to a hangman; his disordered vision to the blindness of his soul, and so vomits forth his venom.

When Salmasius found that his strictures on the person of Milton were false, and that, on the contrary, it was uncommonly beautiful, he then turned his battery against those graces with which Nature had so liberally adorned his adversary: and it is now that he seems to have laid no restrictions on his pen; but, raging with the irritation of Milton's success, he throws out the blackest calumnies, and the most infamous aspersions.

It must be observed, when Milton first proposed to answer Salmasius, he had lost the use of one of his eyes; and his physicians declared that, if he applied himself to the controversy, the other would likewise close for ever! His patriotism was not to be baffled, but with life itself. Unhappily, the prediction of his physicians took place! Thus a learned man in the occupations of study falls blind--a circumstance even now not read without sympathy. Salmasius considers it as one from which he may draw caustic ridicule and satiric severity.

Salmasius glories that Milton lost his health and his eyes in answering his apology for King Charles! He does not now reproach him with natural deformities; but he malignantly sympathises with him, that he now no more is in possession of that beauty which rendered him so amiable during his residence in _Italy_. He speaks more plainly in a following page; and, in a word, would blacken the austere virtue of Milton with a crime infamous to name.

Impartiality of criticism obliges us to confess that Milton was not destitute of rancour. When he was told that his adversary boasted he had occasioned the loss of his eyes, he answered, with ferocity--"_And I shall cost him his life!_" A prediction which was soon after verified; for Christina, Queen of Sweden, withdrew her patronage from Salmasius, and sided with Milton. The universal neglect the proud scholar felt hastened his death in the course of a twelve-month.

The greatness of Milton's mind was degraded! He actually condescended to enter into a correspondence in Holland, to obtain little scandalous anecdotes of his miserable adversary, Morus; and deigned to adulate the unworthy Christina of Sweden, because she had expressed herself favourably on his "Defence." Of late years, we have had too many instances of this worst of passions, the antipathies of politics!

ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.

We are indebted to the Italians for the idea of newspapers. The title of their _gazettas_ was, perhaps, derived from _gazzera_, a magpie or chatterer; or, more probably, from a farthing coin, peculiar to the city of Venice, called _gazetta_, which was the common price of the newspapers. Another etymologist is for deriving it from the Latin _gaza_, which would colloquially lengthen into _gazetta_, and signify a little treasury of news. The Spanish derive it from the Latin _gaza_, and likewise their _gazatero_, and our _gazetteer_, for a writer of the _gazette_ and, what is peculiar to themselves, _gazetista_, for a lover of the gazette.

Newspapers, then, took their birth in that principal land of modern politicians, Italy, and under the government of that aristocratical republic, Venice. The first paper was a Venetian one, and only monthly; but it was merely the newspaper of the government. Other governments afterwards adopted the Venetian plan of a newspaper, with the Venetian name:--from a solitary government gazette, an inundation of newspapers has burst upon us.

Mr. George Chalmers, in his Life of Ruddiman, gives a curious particular of these Venetian gazettes:--"A jealous government did not allow a _printed_ newspaper; and the Venetian _gazetta_ continued long after the invention of printing, to the close of the sixteenth century, and even to our own days, to be distributed in _manuscript_." In the Magliabechian library at Florence are thirty volumes of Venetian gazettas, all in manuscript.

Those who first wrote newspapers were called by the Italians _menanti_; because, says Vossius, they intended commonly by these loose papers to spread about defamatory reflections, and were therefore prohibited in Italy by Gregory XIII. by a particular bull, under the name of _menantes_, from the Latin _minantes_, threatening. Menage, however, derives it from the Italian _menare_, which signifies to lead at large, or spread afar.

We are indebted to the wisdom of Elizabeth and the prudence of Burleigh for the first newspaper. The epoch of the Spanish Armada is also the epoch of a genuine newspaper. In the British Museum are several newspapers which were printed while the Spanish fleet was in the English Channel during the year 1588. It was a wise policy to prevent, during a moment of general anxiety, the danger of false reports, by publishing real information. The earliest newspaper is entitled "The English Mercurie," which by _authority_ was "imprinted at London by her highness's printer, 1588." These were, however, but extraordinary gazettes, not regularly published. In this obscure origin they were skilfully directed by the policy of that great statesman Burleigh, who, to inflame the national feeling, gives an extract of a letter from Madrid which speaks of putting the queen to death, and the instruments of torture on board the Spanish fleet.

George Chalmers first exultingly took down these patriarchal newspapers, covered with the dust of two centuries.

The first newspaper in the collection of the British Museum is marked No. 50, and is in Roman, not in black letter. It contains the usual articles of news, like the London Gazette of the present day. In that curious paper, there are news dated from Whitehall, on the 23rd July, 1588. Under the date of July 26, there is the following notice:--"Yesterday the Scots ambassador, being introduced to Sir Francis Walsingham, had a private audience of her majesty, to whom he delivered a letter from the king his master; containing the most cordial assurances of his resolution to adhere to her majesty's interests, and to those of the Protestant religion. And it may not here be improper to take notice of a wise and spiritual saying of this young prince (he was twenty-two) to the queen's minister at his court, viz.--That all the favour he did expect from the Spaniards was the courtesy of Polypheme to Ulysses, _to be the last devoured_." The gazetteer of the present day would hardly give a more decorous account of the introduction of a foreign minister. The aptness of King James's classical saying carried it from the newspaper into history. I must add, that in respect to his _wit_ no man has been more injured than this monarch. More pointed sentences are recorded of James I. than perhaps of any prince; and yet, such is the delusion of that medium by which the popular eye sees things in this world, that he is usually considered as a mere royal pedant. I have entered more largely on this subject, in an "Inquiry of the Literary and Political Character of James I."[51]

Periodical papers seem first to have been more generally used by the English, during the civil wars of the usurper Cromwell, to disseminate amongst the people the sentiments of loyalty or rebellion, according as their authors were disposed. _Peter Heylin_, in the preface to his _Cosmography_, mentions, that "the affairs of each town, of war, were better presented to the reader in the _Weekly News-books_." Hence we find some papers, entitled "News from Hull," "Truths from York," "Warranted Tidings from Ireland," &c. We find also, "The Scots' Dove" opposed to "The Parliament Kite," or "The Secret Owl."--Keener animosities produced keener titles: "Heraclitus ridens" found an antagonist in "Democritus ridens," and "The Weekly Discoverer" was shortly met by "The Discoverer stript naked." "Mercuriua Britannicus" was grappled by "Mercurius Mastix, faithfully lashing all Scouts, Mercuries, Posts, Spies, and others." Under all these names papers had appeared, but a "Mercury" was the prevailing title of these "News-books," and the principles of the writer were generally shown by the additional epithet. We find an alarming number of these Mercuries, which, were the story not too long to tell, might excite laughter; they present us with a very curious picture of those singular times.

Devoted to political purposes, they soon became a public nuisance by serving as receptacles of party malice, and echoing to the farthest ends of the kingdom the insolent voice of all factions. They set the minds of men more at variance, inflamed their tempers to a greater fierceness, and gave a keener edge to the sharpness of civil discord.

Such works will always find adventurers adapted to their scurrilous purposes, who neither want at times either talents, or boldness, or wit, or argument. A vast crowd issued from the press, and are now to be found in private collections. They form a race of authors unknown to most readers of these times: the names of some of their chiefs, however, have reached us, and in the minor chronicle of domestic literature I rank three notable heroes; Marchmont Needham, Sir John Birkenhead, and Sir Roger L'Estrange.

_Marchmont Needham_, the great patriarch of newspaper writers, was a man of versatile talents and more versatile politics; a bold adventurer, and most successful, because the most profligate of his tribe. From college he came to London; was an usher in Merchant Tailors' school; then an under clerk in Gray's Inn; at length studied physic, and practised chemistry; and finally, he was a captain, and in the words of our great literary antiquary, "siding with the rout and scum of the people, he made them weekly sport by railing at all that was noble, in his Intelligence, called Mercurius Britannicus, wherein his endeavours were to sacrifice the fame of some lord, or any person of quality, and of the king himself, to the beast with many heads." He soon became popular, and was known under the name of Captain Needham, of Gray's Inn; and whatever he now wrote was deemed oracular. But whether from a slight imprisonment for aspersing Charles I. or some pique with his own party, he requested an audience on his knees with the king, reconciled himself to his majesty, and showed himself a violent royalist in his "Mercurius Pragmaticus," and galled the Presbyterians with his wit and quips. Some time after, when the popular party prevailed, he was still further enlightened, and was got over by President Bradshaw, as easily as by Charles I. Our Mercurial writer became once more a virulent Presbyterian, and lashed the royalists outrageously in his "Mercurius Politicus;" at length on the return of Charles II. being now conscious, says our cynical friend Anthony, that he might be in danger of the halter, once more he is said to have fled into Holland, waiting for an act of oblivion. For money given to a hungry courtier, Needham obtained his pardon under the great seal. He latterly practised as a physician among his party, but lived detested by the royalists; and now only committed harmless treasons with the College of Physicians, on whom he poured all that gall and vinegar which the government had suppressed from flowing through its natural channel.

The royalists were not without their Needham in the prompt activity of _Sir John Birkenhead_. In buffoonery, keenness, and boldness, having been frequently imprisoned, he was not inferior, nor was he at times less an adventurer. His "Mercurius Aulicus" was devoted to the court, then at Oxford. But he was the fertile parent of numerous political pamphlets, which appear to abound in banter, wit, and satire. Prompt to seize on every temporary circumstance, he had equal facility in execution. His "Paul's Church-yard" is a bantering pamphlet, containing fictitious titles of books and acts of parliament, reflecting on the mad reformers of those times. One of his poems is entitled "_The Jolt_," being written on the Protector having fallen off his own coach-box: Cromwell had received a present from the German Count Oldenburgh, of six German horses, and attempted to drive them himself in Hyde Park, when this great political Phaeton met the accident, of which Sir John Birkenhead was not slow to comprehend the benefit, and hints how unfortunately for the country it turned out! Sir John was during the dominion of Cromwell an author by profession. After various imprisonments for his majesty's cause, says the venerable historian of English literature already quoted, "he lived by his wits, in helping young gentlemen out at dead lifts in making poems, songs, and epistles on and to their mistresses; as also in translating, and other petite employments." He lived however after the Restoration to become one of the masters of requests, with a salary of 3000_l._ a year. But he showed the baseness of his spirit, says Anthony, by slighting those who had been his benefactors in his necessities.

Sir _Roger L'Estrange_ among his rivals was esteemed as the most perfect model of political writing. He was a strong party-writer on the government side, for Charles the Second, and the compositions of the author seem to us coarse, yet they contain much idiomatic expression. His Æsop's Fables are a curious specimen of familiar style. Queen Mary showed a due contempt of him, after the Revolution, by this anagram:--

_Roger L'Estrange_,
_Lye strange Roger_!

Such were the three patriarchs of newspapers. De Saint Foix gives the origin of newspapers to France. Renaudot, a physician at Paris, to amuse his patients was a great collector of news; and he found by these means that he was more sought after than his learned brethren. But as the seasons were not always sickly, and he had many hours not occupied by his patients, he reflected, after several years of assiduity given up to this singular employment, that he might turn it to a better account, by giving every week to his patients, who in this case were the public at large, some fugitive sheets which should contain the news of various countries. He obtained a privilege for this purpose in 1632.

At the Restoration the proceedings of parliament were interdicted to be published, unless by authority; and the first daily paper after the Revolution took the popular title of "The Orange Intelligencer."

In the reign of Queen _Anne_, there was but one daily paper; the others were weekly. Some attempted to introduce literary subjects, and others topics of a more general speculation. _Sir Richard Steele_ formed the plan of his _Tatler_. He designed it to embrace the three provinces, of manners and morals, of literature, and of politics. The public were to be conducted insensibly into so different a track from that to which they had been hitherto accustomed. Hence politics were admitted into his paper. But it remained for the chaster genius of _Addison_ to banish this painful topic from his elegant pages. The writer in polite letters felt himself degraded by sinking into the diurnal narrator of political events, which so frequently originate in rumours and party fictions. From this time, newspapers and periodical literature became distinct works--at present, there seems to be an attempt to revive this union; it is a retrograde step for the independent dignity of literature.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: Since the appearance of the _eleventh_ edition of this work, the detection of a singular literary deception has occurred. The evidence respecting _The English Mercurie_ rests on the alleged discovery of the literary antiquary, George Chalmers. I witnessed, fifty years ago, that laborious researcher busied among the long dusty shelves of our periodical papers, which then reposed in the ante-chamber to the former reading-room of the British Museum. To the industry which I had witnessed, I confided, and such positive and precise evidence could not fail to be accepted by all. In the British Museum, indeed, George Chalmers found the printed _English Mercurie_; but there also, it now appears, he might have seen _the original_, with all its corrections, before it was sent to the press, written on paper of modern fabric. The detection of this literary imposture has been ingeniously and unquestionably demonstrated by Mr. Thomas Watts, in a letter to Mr. Panizzi, the keeper of the printed books in the British Museum. The fact is, the whole is a modern forgery, for which Birch, preserving it among his papers, has not assigned either the occasion or the motive. Mr. Watts says--"The general impression left on the mind by the perusal of the _Mercurie_ is, that it must have been written after the _Spectator_"; that the manuscript was composed in modern spelling, afterwards _antiquated_ in the printed copy; while the type is similar to that used by Caslon in 1766. By this accidental reference to the originals, "the unaccountably successful imposition of fifty years was shattered to fragments in five minutes." I am inclined to suspect that it was a _jeu d'esprit_ of historical antiquarianism, concocted by Birch and his friends the Yorkes, with whom, as it is well known, he was concerned in a more elegant literary recreation, the composition of the Athenian Letters. The blunder of George Chalmers has been repeated in numerous publications throughout Europe and in America. I think it better to correct the text by this notice than by a silent suppression, that it may remain a memorable instance of the danger incurred by the historian from forged documents; and a proof that multiplied authorities add no strength to evidence, when nil are to be traced to a single source.]

TRIALS AND PROOFS OF GUILT IN SUPERSTITIOUS AGES.

The strange trials to which those suspected of guilt were put in the middle ages, conducted with many devout ceremonies by the ministers of religion, were pronounced to be the _judgments of God_! The ordeal consisted of various kinds: walking blindfold amidst burning ploughshares; passing through fires; holding in the hand a red-hot bar; and plunging the arm into boiling water: the popular affirmation--"I will put my hand in the fire to confirm this," was derived from this custom of our rude ancestors. Challenging the accuser to single combat, when frequently the stoutest champion was allowed to supply their place; swallowing a morsel of consecrated bread; sinking or swimming in a river for witchcraft; or weighing a witch; stretching out the arms before the cross, till the champion soonest wearied dropped his arms, and lost his estate, which was decided by this very short chancery suit, called the _judicium crucis_. The bishop of Paris and the abbot of St. Denis disputed about the patronage of a monastery: Pepin the Short, not being able to decide on their confused claims, decreed one of these judgments of God, that of the Cross. The bishop and abbot each chose a man, and both the men appeared in the chapel, where they stretched out their arms in the form of a cross. The spectators, more devout than the mob of the present day, but still the mob, were piously attentive, but _betted_ however now for one man, now for the other, and critically watched the slightest motion of the arms. The bishop's man was first tired:--he let his arms fall, and ruined his patron's cause for ever. Though sometimes these trials might be eluded by the artifice of the priest, numerous were the innocent victims who unquestionably suffered in these superstitious practices.

From the tenth to the twelfth century they were common. Hildebert, bishop of Mans, being accused of high treason by our William Rufus, was prepared to undergo one of these trials, when Ives, bishop of Chartres, convinced him that they were against the canons of the constitutions of the church, and adds, that in this manner _Innocentiam defendere, set innocentiam perdere_.

An abbot of St. Aubin, of Angers, in 1066, having refused to present a horse to the Viscount of Tours, which the viscount claimed in right of his lordship, whenever an abbot first took possession of that abbey, the ecclesiastic offered to justify himself by the trial of the ordeal, or by duel, for which he proposed to furnish a man. The viscount at first agreed to the duel; but, reflecting that these combats, though sanctioned by the church, depended wholly on the skill or vigour of the adversary, and could therefore afford no substantial proof of the equity of his claim, he proposed to compromise the matter in a manner which strongly characterises the times: he waived his claim, on condition that the abbot should not forget to mention in his prayers himself, his wife, and his brothers! As the _orisons_ appeared to the abbot, in comparison with the _horse_, of little or no value, he accepted the proposal.

In the tenth century the right of representation was not fixed: it was a question whether the sons of a son ought to be reckoned among the children of the family, and succeed equally with their uncles, if their fathers happened to die while their grandfathers survived. This point was decided by one of these combats. The champion in behalf of the right of children to represent their deceased father proved victorious. It was then established by a perpetual decree that they should thenceforward share in the inheritance, together with their uncles. In the eleventh century the same mode was practised to decide respecting two rival _Liturgies_! A pair of knights, clad in complete armour, were the critics to decide which was the authentic.

"If two neighbours," say the capitularies of Dagobert, "dispute respecting the boundaries of their possessions, let a piece of turf of the contested land be dug up by the judge, and brought by him into the court; the two parties shall touch it with the points of their swords, calling on God as a witness of their claims;--after this let them _combat_, and let victory decide on their rights!"

In Germany, a solemn circumstance was practised in these judicial combats. In the midst of the lists they placed a _bier_.--By its side stood the accuser and the accused; one at the head and the other at the foot of the bier, and leaned there for some time in profound silence, before they began the combat.

The manners of the age are faithfully painted in the ancient Fabliaux. The judicial combat is introduced by a writer of the fourteenth century, in a scene where Pilate challenges Jesus Christ to _single combat_. Another describes the person who pierced the side of Christ as _a knight who jousted with Jesus_.[52]

Judicial combat appears to have been practised by the Jews. Whenever the rabbins had to decide on a dispute about property between two parties, neither of which could produce evidence to substantiate his claim, they terminated it by single combat. The rabbins were impressed by a notion, that consciousness of right would give additional confidence and strength to the rightful possessor. It may, however, be more philosophical to observe, that such judicial combats were more frequently favourable to the criminal than to the innocent, because the bold wicked man is usually more ferocious and hardy than he whom he singles out as his victim, and who only wishes to preserve his own quiet enjoyment:--in this case the assailant is the more terrible combatant.

Those accused of robbery were put to trial by a piece of barley-bread, on which the mass had been said; which if they could not swallow, they were declared guilty. This mode of trial was improved by adding to the _bread_ a slice of _cheese_; and such was their credulity, that they were very particular in this holy _bread_ and _cheese_, called the _corsned_. The bread was to be of unleavened barley, and the cheese made of ewe's milk in the month of May.

Du Cange observed, that the expression--"_May this piece of bread choke me!_" comes from this custom. The anecdote of Earl Godwin's death by swallowing a piece of bread, in making this asseveration, is recorded in our history. Doubtless superstition would often terrify the innocent person, in the attempt of swallowing a consecrated morsel.

Among the proofs of guilt in superstitious ages was that of the _bleeding of a corpse_. It was believed, that at the touch or approach of the murderer the blood gushed out of the murdered. By the side of the bier, if the slightest change was observable in the eyes, the mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the murderer was conjectured to be present, and many innocent spectators must have suffered death. "When a body is full of blood, warmed by a sudden external heat, and a putrefaction coming on, some of the blood-vessels will burst, as they will all in time." This practice was once allowed in England, and is still looked on in some of the uncivilized parts of these kingdoms as a detection of the criminal. It forms a solemn picture in the histories and ballads of our old writers.

Robertson observes, that all these absurd institutions were cherished from the superstitious of the age believing the legendary histories of those saints who crowd and disgrace the Roman calendar. These fabulous miracles had been declared authentic by the bulls of the popes and the decrees of councils; they were greedily swallowed by the populace; and whoever believed that the Supreme Being had interposed miraculously on those trivial occasions mentioned in legends, could not but expect the intervention of Heaven in these most solemn appeals. These customs were a substitute for written laws, which that barbarous period had not; and as no society can exist without _laws_, the ignorance of the people had recourse to these _customs_, which, evil and absurd as they were, closed endless controversies. Ordeals are in truth the rude laws of a barbarous people who have not yet obtained a written code, and are not sufficiently advanced in civilization to enter into the refined inquiries, the subtile distinctions, and elaborate investigations, which a court of law demands.

These ordeals probably originate in that one of Moses called the "Waters of Jealousy." The Greeks likewise had ordeals, for in the Antigonus of Sophocles the soldiers offer to prove their innocence by handling red-hot iron, and walking between fires. One cannot but smile at the whimsical ordeals of the Siamese. Among other practices to discover the justice of a cause, civil or criminal, they are particularly attached to using certain consecrated purgative pills, which they make the contending parties swallow. He who _retains_ them longest gains his cause! The practice of giving Indians a consecrated grain of rice to swallow is known to discover the thief, in any company, by the contortions and dismay evident on the countenance of the real thief.

In the middle ages, they were acquainted with _secrets_ to pass unhurt these singular trials. Voltaire mentions one for undergoing the ordeal of boiling water. Our late travellers in the East have confirmed this statement. The Mevleheh dervises can hold red-hot iron between their teeth. Such artifices have been often publicly exhibited at Paris and London. Mr. Sharon Turner observes, on the ordeal of the Anglo-Saxons, that the hand was not to be immediately inspected, and was left to the chance of a good constitution to be so far healed during three days (the time they required to be bound up and sealed, before it was examined) as to discover those appearances when inspected, which were allowed to be satisfactory. There was likewise much preparatory training, suggested by the more experienced; besides, the accused had an opportunity of _going alone into the church_, and making _terms_ with the _priest_. The few _spectators_ were always _distant_; and cold iron might be substituted, and the fire diminished, at the moment.

They possessed secrets and medicaments, to pass through these trials in perfect security. An anecdote of these times may serve to show their readiness. A rivalship existed between the Austin-friars and the Jesuits. The father-general of the Austin-friars was dining with the Jesuits; and when the table was removed, he entered into a formal discourse of the superiority of the monastic order, and charged the Jesuits, in unqualified terms, with assuming the title of "fratres," while they held not the three vows, which other monks were obliged to consider as sacred and binding. The general of the Austin-friars was very eloquent and very authoritative:--and the superior of the Jesuits was very unlearned, but not half a fool.

The Jesuit avoided entering the list of controversy with the Austin-friar, but arrested his triumph by asking him if he would see one of his friars, who pretended to be nothing more than a Jesuit, and one of the Austin-friars who religiously performed the aforesaid three vows, show instantly which of them would be the readier to obey his superiors? The Austin-friar consented. The Jesuit then turning to one of his brothers, the holy friar Mark, who was waiting on them, said, "Brother Mark, our companions are cold. I command you, in virtue of the holy obedience you have sworn to me, to bring here instantly out of the kitchen-fire, and in your hands, some burning coals, that they may warm themselves over your hands." Father Mark instantly obeys, and, to the astonishment of the Austin-friar, brought in his hands a supply of red burning coals, and held them to whoever chose to warm himself; and at the command of his superior returned them to the kitchen-hearth. The general of the Austin-friars, with the rest of his brotherhood, stood amazed; he looked wistfully on one of his monks, as if he wished to command him to do the like. But the Austin monk, who perfectly understood him, and saw this was not a time to hesitate, observed,--"Reverend father, forbear, and do not command me to tempt God! I am ready to fetch you fire in a chafing-dish, but not in my bare hands." The triumph of the Jesuits was complete; and it is not necessary to add, that the _miracle_ was noised about, and that the Austin-friars could never account for it, notwithstanding their strict performance of the three vows!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 52: These curious passages, so strikingly indicative of the state of thought in the days of their authors, are worth clearly noting. Pilate's challenge to the Saviour is completely in the taste of the writer's day. He was Adam Davie, a poet of the fourteenth century, of whom an account is preserved in _Warton's History of English Poetry_; and the passage occurs in his poem of the _Battle of Jerusalem_, the incidents of which are treated as Froissart would treat the siege of a town happening in his own day.

The second passage above quoted occurs in the _Vision of Piers Plowman_, a poem of the same era, where the Roman soldier--whose name, according to legendary history, was Longinus, and who pierced the Saviour's side--is described as if he had given the wound in a passage of arms, or joust; and elsewhere in the same poem it is said that Christ,

"For mankyndes sake,
Justed in Jerusalem,
A joye to us all."

And in another part of the poem, speaking of the victory of Christ, it is said--

"Jhesus justede well."]

THE INQUISITION.

Innocent the Third, a pope as enterprising as he was successful in his enterprises, having sent Dominic with some missionaries into Languedoc, these men so irritated the heretics they were sent to convert, that most of them were assassinated at Toulouse in the year 1200. He called in the aid of temporal arms, and published against them a crusade, granting, as was usual with the popes on similar occasions, all kinds of indulgences and pardons to those who should arm against these _Mahometans_, so he termed these unfortunate Languedocians. Once all were Turks when they were not Romanists. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was constrained to submit. The inhabitants were passed on the edge of the sword, without distinction of age or sex. It was then he established that scourge of Europe, THE INQUISITION. This pope considered that, though men might be compelled to submit by arms, numbers might remain professing particular dogmas; and he established this sanguinary tribunal solely to inspect into all families, and INQUIRE concerning all persons who they imagined were unfriendly to the interests of Rome. Dominic did so much by his persecuting inquiries, that he firmly established the Inquisition at Toulouse.

Not before the year 1484 it became known in Spain. To another Dominican, John de Torquemada, the court of Rome owed this obligation. As he was the confessor of Queen Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise, that if ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to extirpate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Granada, and had expelled from the Spanish realms multitudes of unfortunate Moors. A few remained, whom, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians: they at least assumed the name; but it was well known that both these nations naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Christians. This race was afterwards distinguished as _Christianos Novos_; and in forming marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its purity by mingling with such a suspicious source.

Torquemada pretended that this dissimulation would greatly hurt the interests of the holy religion. The queen listened with respectful diffidence to her confessor; and at length gained over the king to consent to the establishment of this unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada, indefatigable in his zeal for the holy chair, in the space of fourteen years that he exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have prosecuted near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were condemned to the flames.

Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal horror such proceedings spread. "A general jealousy and suspicion took possession of all ranks of people: friendship and sociability were at an end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children."

The situation and the feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the Inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a mild, and meek, and learned man, whose controversy with Limborch is well known. When he escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself in the cell of the Inquisition. "Inclosed in this dungeon I could not even find space enough to turn myself about; I suffered so much that I felt my brain disordered. I frequently asked myself, am I really Don Balthazar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so greatly enjoyed myself with my wife and children? I often imagined that all my life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born in this dungeon! The only amusement I could invent was metaphysical disputations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and præses!"

In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous inquisitor; six pillars surround this tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to his being burnt. On this St. Foix ingeniously observes, "If ever the Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model."

The Inquisition punished heretics by _fire_, to elude the maxim, "_Ecclesia non novit sanguinem_;" for burning a man, say they, does not _shed his blood_. Otho, the bishop at the Norman invasion, in the tapestry worked by Matilda the queen of William the Conqueror, is represented with a _mace_ in his hand, for the purpose that when he _despatched_ his antagonist he might not _spill blood_, but only break his bones! Religion has had her quibbles as well as law.

The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in France; but it may perhaps surprise the reader that a recorder of London, in a speech, urged the necessity of setting up an Inquisition in England! It was on the trial of Penn the Quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury, which highly provoked the said recorder. "_Magna Charta_," writes the prefacer to the trial, "with the recorder of London, is nothing more than _Magna F----!_" It appears that the jury, after being kept two days and two nights to alter their verdict, were in the end both fined and imprisoned. Sir John Howell, the recorder, said, "Till now I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffering the Inquisition among them; and certainly it will not be well with us, till something _like unto the Spanish Inquisition be in England_." Thus it will ever be, while both parties struggling for the pre-eminence rush to the sharp extremity of things, and annihilate the trembling balance of the constitution. But the adopted motto of Lord Erskine must ever be that of every Briton, "_Trial by Jury_."