Chapter XX: Part 20

One of ancient date is better known to the reader than those I am preparing for him. When the magistrates of Syracuse were showing to Cicero the curiosities of the place, he desired to visit the tomb of Archimedes; but, to his surprise, they acknowledged that they knew nothing of any such tomb, and denied that it ever existed. The learned Cicero, convinced by the authorities of ancient writers, by the verses of the inscription which he remembered, and the circumstance of a sphere with a cylinder being engraven on it, requested them to assist him in the search. They conducted the illustrious but obstinate stranger to their most ancient burying-ground: amidst the number of sepulchres, they observed a small column overhung with brambles--Cicero, looking on while they were clearing away the rubbish, suddenly exclaimed, "Here is the thing we are looking for!" His eye had caught the geometrical figures on the tomb, and the inscription soon confirmed his conjecture. Cicero long after exulted in the triumph of this discovery. "Thus!" he says, "one of the noblest cities of Greece, and once the most learned, had known nothing of the monument of its most deserving and ingenious citizen, had it not been discovered to them by a native of Arpinum!"

The great French antiquary, Peiresc, exhibited a singular combination of learning, patient thought, and luminous sagacity, which could restore an "airy nothing" to "a local habitation and a name." There was found on an amethyst, and the same afterwards occurred on the front of an ancient temple, a number of _marks_, or indents, which had long perplexed inquirers, more particularly as similar marks or indents were frequently observed in ancient monuments. It was agreed on, as no one could understand them, and all would be satisfied, that they were secret hieroglyphics. It occurred to Peiresc that these marks were nothing more than holes for small nails, which had formerly fastened little _laminae_, which represented so many Greek letters. This hint of his own suggested to him to draw lines from one hole to another; and he beheld the amethyst reveal the name of the sculptor, and the frieze of the temple the name of the god! This curious discovery has been since frequently applied; but it appears to have originated with this great antiquary, who by his learning and sagacity explained a supposed hieroglyphic, which had been locked up in the silence of seventeen centuries.[264]

Learned men, confined to their study, have often rectified the errors of travellers; they have done more, they have found out paths for them to explore, or opened seas for them to navigate. The situation of the vale of Tempe had been mistaken by modern travellers; and it is singular, observes the Quarterly Reviewer, yet not so singular as it appears to that elegant critic, that the only good directions for finding it had been given by a person who was never in Greece. Arthur Browne, a man of letters of Trinity College, Dublin--it is gratifying to quote an Irish philosopher and man of letters, from the extreme rarity of the character--was the first to detect the inconsistencies of Pococke and Busching, and to send future travellers to look for Tempe in its real situation, the defiles between Ossa and Olympus; a discovery subsequently realised. When Dr. Clarke discovered an inscription purporting that the pass of Tempe had been fortified by Cassius Longinus, Mr. Walpole, with equal felicity, detected, in Caesar's "History of the Civil War," the name and the mission of this very person.

A living geographer, to whom the world stands deeply indebted, does not read Herodotus in the original; yet, by the exercise of his extraordinary aptitude, it is well known that he has often corrected the Greek historian, explained obscurities in a text which he never read, by his own happy conjectures, and confirmed his own discoveries by the subsequent knowledge which modern travellers have afforded.

Gray's perseverance in studying the geography of India and of Persia, at a time when our country had no immediate interests with those ancient empires, would have been placed by a cynical observer among the curious idleness of a mere man of letters. These studies were indeed prosecuted, as Mr. Mathias observes, "on the disinterested principles of liberal investigation, not on those of policy, nor of the regulation of trade, nor of the extension of empire, nor of permanent establishments, but simply and solely on the grand view of what is, and of what is past. They were the researches of a solitary scholar in academical retirement." Since the time of Gray, these very pursuits have been carried on by two consummate geographers, Major Rennel and Dr. Vincent, who have opened to the classical and the political reader all he wished to learn, at a time when India and Persia had become objects interesting and important to us. The fruits of Gray's learning, long after their author was no more, became valuable!

The studies of the "solitary scholar" are always useful to the world, although they may not always be timed to its present wants; with him, indeed, they are not merely designed for this purpose. Gray discovered India for himself; but the solitary pursuits of a great student, shaped to a particular end, will never fail being useful to the world; though it may happen that a century may elapse between the periods of the discovery and its practical utility.

Halley's version of an Arabic MS. on a mathematical subject offers an instance of the extraordinary sagacity I am alluding to; it may also serve as a demonstration of the peculiar and supereminent advantages possessed by mathematicians, observes Mr. Dugald Stewart, in their fixed relations, which form the objects of their science, and the correspondent precision in their language and reasoning:--as matter of literary history it is highly curious. Dr. Bernard accidentally discovered in the Bodleian Library an Arabic version of Apollonius _de Sectione Rationis_, which he determined to translate in Latin, but only finished about a tenth part. Halley, extremely interested by the subject, but with an entire ignorance of the Arabic language, resolved to complete the imperfect version! Assisted only by the manuscript which Bernard had left, it served him as a key for investigating the sense of the original; he first made _a list of those words_ wherever they occurred, with the _train of reasoning_ in which they were involved, to decipher, by these very slow degrees, the import of the context; till at last Halley succeeded in mastering the whole work, and in bringing the translation, without the aid of any one, to the form in which he gave it to the public; so that we have here a difficult work translated from the Arabic, by one who was in no manner conversant with the language, merely by the exertion of his sagacity!

I give the memorable account, as Boyle has delivered it, of the circumstances which led Harvey to the discovery of the circulation of the blood.

"I remember that when I asked our famous Harvey, in the only discourse I had with him, which was but a little while before he died, what were the things which induced him to think of a circulation of the blood, he answered me, that when he took notice that the valves in the veins of so many parts of the body were so placed that they gave free passage to the blood towards the heart, but opposed the passage of the venal blood the contrary way, he was invited to think that so provident a cause as nature had not placed so many valves without design; and no design seemed more probable than that, since the blood could not well, because of the interposing valves, be sent by the veins to the limbs, it should be sent through the arteries and return through the veins, whose valves did not oppose its course that way."

The reason here ascribed to Harvey seems now so very natural and obvious, that some have been disposed to question his claim to the high rank commonly assigned to him among the improvers of science! Dr. William Hunter has said that after the discovery of the valves in the veins, which Harvey learned while in Italy from his master, Fabricius ab Aquapendente, the remaining step might easily have been made by any person of common abilities. "This discovery," he observes, "set Harvey to work upon the _use_ of the heart and vascular system in animals; and in the _course of some years_, he was so happy as to discover, and to prove beyond all possibility of doubt, the circulation of the blood." He afterwards expresses his astonishment that this discovery should have been left for Harvey, though he acknowledges it occupied "a course of years;" adding that "Providence meant to reserve it for _him_, and would not let men _see what was before them, nor understand what they read_." It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus!

It is said that a recent discovery, which ascertains that the Niger empties itself into the Atlantic Ocean, was really anticipated by the geographical acumen of a student at Glasgow, who arrived at the same conclusion by a most persevering investigation of the works of travellers and geographers, ancient and modern, and by an examination of African captives; and had actually constructed, for the inspection of government, a map of Africa, on which he had traced the entire course of the Niger from the interior.

Franklin _conjectured_ the identity of lightning and of electricity, before he had _realised_ it by decisive experiment. The kite being raised, a considerable time elapsed before there was any appearance of its being electrified. One very promising cloud had passed over it without any effect. Just as he was beginning to despair of his contrivance, he observed some loose threads of the hempen string to stand erect, and to avoid one another, just as if they had been suspended on a common conductor. Struck with this promising appearance, he immediately presented his knuckle to the key! And let the reader judge of the exquisite pleasure he must have felt at that moment when _the discovery was complete_! We owe to Priestley this admirable narrative; the strong sensation of delight which Franklin experienced as his knuckle touched the key, and at the moment when he felt that a new world was opening, might have been equalled, but it was probably not surpassed, when the same hand signed the long-disputed independence of his country!

When Leibnitz was occupied in his philosophical reasonings on his _Law of Continuity_, his singular sagacity enabled him to predict a discovery which afterwards was realised--he _imagined_ the necessary existence of the polypus!

It has been remarked of Newton, that several of his slight hints, some in the modest form of queries, have been ascertained to be predictions, and among others that of the inflammability of the diamond; and many have been eagerly seized upon as indisputable axioms. A hint at the close of his Optics, that "If natural philosophy should be continued to be improved in its various branches, the bounds of moral philosophy would be enlarged also," is perhaps among the most important of human discoveries--it gave rise to Hartley's _Physiological Theory of the Mind_. The queries, the hints, the conjectures of Newton, display the most creative sagacity; and demonstrate in what manner the discoveries of retired men, while they bequeath their legacies to the world, afford to themselves a frequent source of secret and silent triumphs.

FOOTNOTES:

[263] The remarkable clue to the reading of the hieroglyphic language
of ancient Egypt perfected in our own times is a striking instance
of this; as well as the investigations now proceeding in Babylonian
inscriptions, which promise to enable us to comprehend a language
that was once considered as hopelessly lost.

[264] The curious reader may view the marks, and the manner in which
the Greek characters were made out, in the preface to Hearne's
"Curious Discourses." The amethyst proved more difficult than the
frieze, from the circumstance, that in engraving on the stone the
letters must be reversed.

SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY.

A periodical critic, probably one of the juniors, has thrown out a startling observation. "There is," says this literary senator, "something melancholy in the study of biography, because it is--a history of the dead!" A truism and a falsity mixed up together is the temptation with some modern critics to commit that darling sin of theirs--novelty and originality! But we really cannot condole with the readers of Plutarch for their deep melancholy; we who feel our spirits refreshed, amidst the mediocrity of society, when we are recalled back to the men and the women who WERE! illustrious in every glory! Biography with us is a re-union with human existence in its most excellent state! and we find nothing dead in the past, while we retain the sympathies which only require to be awakened.

It would have been more reasonable had the critic discovered that our country has not yet had her Plutarch, and that our biography remains still little more than a mass of compilation.

In this study of biography there is a species which has not yet been distinguished--biographies composed by some domestic friend, or by some enthusiast who works with love. A term is unquestionably wanted for this distinct class. The Germans seem to have invented a Platonic one, drawn from the Greek, _psyche_, or the soul; for they call this the _psychological life_. Another attempt has been made, by giving it the scientific term of _idiosyncrasy_, to denote a peculiarity of disposition. I would call it _sentimental biography_!

It is distinct from a _chronological_ biography, for it searches for the individual's feelings amidst the ascertained facts of his life; so that facts, which occurred remotely from each other, are here brought at once together. The detail of events which completes the chronological biography, contains many which are not connected with the peculiarity of the character itself. The _sentimental_ is also distinct from the _autobiography_, however it may seem a part of it. Whether a man be entitled to lavish his panegyric on himself, I will not decide; but it is certain that he risks everything by appealing to a solitary and suspected witness.

We have two Lives of Dante, one by Boccaccio and the other by Leonardo Aretino, both interesting: but Boccaccio's is the _sentimental life_!

Aretino, indeed, finds fault, but with all the tenderness possible, with Boccaccio's affectionate sketch, _Origine, Vita, Studi e Costumi del clarissimo Dante_, &c. "Origin, Life, Studies and Manners, of the illustrious Dante," &c. "It seems to me," he says, "that our Boccaccio, _dolcissimo e suavissimo uomo_, sweet and delightful man! has written the life and manners of this sublime poet as if he had been composing the _Filocolo_, the _Filostrato_, or the _Fiametta_," the romances of Boccaccio--"for all breathes of love and sighs, and is covered with warm tears, as if a man were born in this world only to live among the enamoured ladies and the gallant youths of the ten amorous days of his hundred novels."

Aretino, who wanted not all the feeling requisite for the delightful "costumi e studi" of Boccaccio's Dante, modestly requires that his own life of Dante should be considered as a supplement to, not as a substitute for, Boccaccio's. Pathetic with all the sorrows, and eloquent with all the remonstrances of a fellow-citizen, Boccaccio, while he wept, hung with anger over his country's shame in its apathy for the honour of its long-injured exile. Catching inspiration from the breathing pages of Boccaccio, it inclines one to wish that we possessed two biographies of an illustrious favourite character; the one strictly and fully historical, the other fraught with those very feelings of the departed, which we may have to seek in vain for in the circumstantial and chronological biographer. Boccaccio, indeed, was overcome by his feelings. He either knew not, or he omits the substantial incidents of Dante's life; while his imagination throws a romantic tinge on occurrences raised on slight, perhaps on no foundation. Boccaccio narrates a dream of the mother of Dante so fancifully poetical, that probably Boccaccio forgot that none but a dreamer could have told it. Seated under a high laurel-tree, by the side of a vast fountain, the mother dreamt that she gave birth to her son; she saw him nourished by its fruit, and refreshed by the clear waters; she soon beheld him a shepherd; approaching to pluck the boughs, she saw him fall! When he rose he had ceased to be a man, and was transformed into a peacock! Disturbed by her admiration, she suddenly awoke; but when the father found that he really had a son, in allusion to the dream he called him Dante--or _given! e meritamente_; _perocche ottimamente, siccome si vedra procedendo, segui al nome l'effetto_: "and deservedly! for greatly, as we shall see, the effect followed the name!" At nine years of age, on a May-day, whose joyous festival Boccaccio beautifully describes, when the softness of the heavens, re-adorning the earth with its mingled flowers, waved the green boughs, and made all things smile, Dante mixed with the boys and girls in the house of the good citizen who on that day gave the feast, beheld little Brice, as she was familiarly called, but named Beatrice. The little Dante might have seen her before, but he loved her then, and from that day never ceased to love; and thus Dante _nella pargoletta eta fatto d'amore ferventissimo servidore_; so fervent a servant to love in an age of childhood! Boccaccio appeals to Dante's own account of his long passion, and his constant sighs, in the _Vita Nuova_. No look, no word, no sign, sullied the purity of his passion; but in her twenty-fourth year died "la bellissima Beatrice." Dante is then described as more than inconsolable; his eyes were long two abundant fountains of tears; careless of life, he let his beard grow wildly, and to others appeared a savage meagre man, whose aspect was so changed, that while this weeping life lasted, he was hardly recognised by his friends; all looked on a man so entirely transformed with deep compassion. Dante, won over by those who could console the inconsolable, was at length solicited by his relations to marry a lady of his own condition in life; and it was suggested that as the departed lady had occasioned him such heavy griefs, the new one might open a source of delight. The relations and friends of Dante gave him a wife that his tears for Beatrice might cease.

It is supposed that this marriage proved unhappy. Boccaccio, like a pathetic lover rather than biographer, exclaims, _Oh menti cicche! Oh tenebrosi intelletti! Oh argomenti vani di molti mortali, quante sono le ruiscite in assai cose contrarie a' nostri avvisi!_ &c. "Oh blind men! Oh dark minds! Oh vain arguments of most mortals, how often are the results contrary to our advice! Frequently it is like leading one who breathes the soft air of Italy to refresh himself in the eternal shades of the Rhodopean mountains. What physician would expel a burning fever with fire, or put in the shivering marrow of the bones snow and ice? So certainly shall it fare with him who, with a new love, thinks to mitigate the old. Those who believe this know not the nature of love, nor how much a second passion adds to the first. In vain would we assist or advise this forceful passion, if it has struck its root near the heart of him who long has loved."

Boccaccio has beguiled my pen for half-an-hour with all the loves and fancies which sprung out of his own affectionate and romantic heart. What airy stuff has he woven into the "Vita" of Dante! this _sentimental biography_! Whether he knew but little of the personal history of the great man whom he idolised, or whether the dream of the mother--the May-day interview with the little Brice, and the rest of the children--and the effusion on Dante's marriage, were grounded on tradition, one would not harshly reject such tender incidents.[265] But let it not be imagined that the heart of Boccaccio was only susceptible to amorous impressions--bursts of enthusiasm and eloquence, which only a man of genius is worthy of receiving, and only a man of genius is capable of bestowing--kindle the masculine patriotism of his bold, indignant spirit!

Half a century had elapsed since the death of Dante, and still the Florentines showed no sign of repentance for their ancient hatred of their persecuted patriot, nor any sense of the memory of the creator of their language, whose immortality had become a portion of their own glory. Boccaccio, impassioned by all his generous nature, though he regrets he could not raise a statue to Dante, has sent down to posterity more than marble, in the "Life." I venture to give the lofty and bold apostrophe to his fellow-citizens; but I feel that even the genius of our language is tame by the side of the harmonised eloquence of the great votary of Dante!

"Ungrateful country! what madness urged thee, when thy dearest citizen, thy chief benefactor, thy only poet, with unaccustomed cruelty was driven to flight! If this had happened in the general terror of that time, coming from evil counsels, thou mightest stand excused; but when the passion ceased, didst thou repent? didst thou recall him? Bear with me, nor deem it irksome from me, who am thy son, that thus I collect what just indignation prompts me to speak, as a man more desirous of witnessing your amendment, than of beholding you punished! Seems it to you glorious, proud of so many titles and of such men, that the one whose like no neighbouring city can show, you have chosen to chase from among you? With what triumphs, with what valorous citizens, are you splendid? Your wealth is a removable and uncertain thing; your fragile beauty will grow old; your delicacy is shameful and feminine; but these make you noticed by the false judgments of the populace! Do you glory in your merchants and your artists? I speak imprudently; but the one are tenaciously avaricious in their servile trade; and Art, which once was so noble, and became a second nature, struck by the same avarice, is now as corrupted, and nothing worth! Do you glory in the baseness and the listlessness of those idlers, who, because their ancestors are remembered, attempt to raise up among you a nobility to govern you, ever by robbery, by treachery, by falsehood! Ah! miserable mother! open thine eyes; cast them with some remorse on what thou hast done, and blush, at least, reputed wise as thou art, to have had in your errors so fatal a choice! Why not rather imitate the acts of those cities who so keenly disputed merely for the honour of the birth-place of the divine Homer? Mantua, our neighbour, counts as the greatest fame which remains for her, that Virgil was a Mantuan! and holds his very name in such reverence, that not only in public places, but in the most private, we see his sculptured image! You only, while you were made famous by illustrious men, you only have shown no care for your great poet. Your Dante Alighieri died in exile, to which you unjustly, envious of his greatness, destined him! A crime not to be remembered, that the mother should bear an envious malignity to the virtues of a son! Now cease to be unjust! He cannot do you that, now dead, which living he never did do to you! He lies under another sky than yours, and you never can see him again, but on that day, when all your citizens shall view him, and the great Remunerator shall examine, and shall punish! If anger, hatred, and enmity are buried with a man, as it is believed, begin then to return to yourself; begin to be ashamed to have acted against your ancient humanity; begin, then, to wish to appear a mother, and not a cold negligent step-dame. Yield your tears to your son; yield your maternal piety to him whom once you repulsed, and, living, cast away from you! At least think of possessing him dead, and restore your citizenship, your award, and your grace, to his memory. He was a son who held you in reverence, and though long an exile, he always called himself, and would be called a Florentine! He held you ever above all others; ever he loved you! What will you then do? Will you remain obstinate in iniquity? Will you practise less humanity than the barbarians? You wish that the world should believe that you are the sister of famous Troy, and the daughter of Rome; assuredly the children should resemble their fathers and their ancestors. Priam, in his misery, bought the corpse of Hector with gold; and Rome would possess the bones of the first Scipio, and removed them from Linternum, those bones, which, dying, so justly he had denied her. Seek then to be the true guardian of your Dante, claim him! show this humane feeling, claim him! you may securely do this: I am certain he will not be returned to you; but thus at once you may betray some mark of compassion, and, not having him again, still enjoy your ancient cruelty! Alas! what comfort am I bringing you! I almost believe, that if the dead could feel, the body of Dante would not rise to return to you, for he is lying in Ravenna, whose hallowed soil is everywhere covered with the ashes of saints. Would Dante quit this blessed company to mingle with the remains of those hatreds and iniquities which gave him no rest in life? The relics of Dante, even among the bodies of emperors and of martyrs, and of their illustrious ancestors, is prized as a treasure, for there his works are looked on with admiration; those works of which you have not yet known to make yourselves worthy. His birthplace, his origin remains for you, spite of your ingratitude! and this Ravenna envies you, while she glories in your honours which she has snatched from you through ages yet to come!"

Such was the deep emotion which opened Boccaccio's heart in this sentimental biography, and which awoke even shame and confusion in the minds of the Florentines; they blushed for their old hatreds, and, with awakened sympathies, they hastened to honour the memory of their great bard. By order of the city, the _Divina Commedia_ was publicly read and explained to the people. Boccaccio, then sinking under the infirmities of age, roused his departing genius: still was there marrow in the bones of the aged lion, and he engaged in the task of composing his celebrated Commentaries on the _Divina Commedia_.

In this class of _sentimental biography_ I would place a species which the historian Carte noticed in his literary travels on the Continent, in pursuit of his historical design. He found, preserved among several ancient families of France, their domestic annals. "With a warm, patriotic spirit, worthy of imitation, they have often carefully preserved in their families the acts of their ancestors." This delight and pride of the modern Gauls in the great and good deeds of their ancestors, preserved in domestic archives, will be ascribed to their folly or their vanity; yet in that folly there may be so much wisdom, and in that vanity there may be so much greatness, that the one will amply redeem the other.

This custom has been rarely adopted among ourselves; we have, however, a few separate histories of some ancient families, as those of Mordaunt, and of Warren. One of the most remarkable is "A Genealogical History of the House of Yvery, in its different branches of Yvery, Luvel, Perceval, and Gournay." Two large volumes, closely printed,[266] expatiating on the characters and events of a single family with the grave pomp of a herald, but more particularly the idolatry of the writer for ancient nobility, and his contempt for that growing rank in society whom he designates as "New Men," provoked the ridicule at least of the aspersed.[267] This extraordinary work, notwithstanding its absurdities in its general result, has left behind a deep impression. Drawn from the authentic family records, it is not without interest that we toil through its copious pages; we trace with a romantic sympathy the fortunes of the descendants of the House of Yvery, from that not-forgotten hero _le vaillant Perceval chevalier de la Table Ronde_, to the Norman Baron Asselin, surnamed the Wolf, for his bravery or his ferocity; thence to the Cavalier of Charles the First, Sir Philip Perceval, who, having gloriously defended his castle, was at length deprived of his lordly possessions, but never of his loyalty, and died obscurely in the metropolis of a broken heart, till we reach the polished nobleman, the Lord Egmont of the Georges.

The nation has lost many a noble example of men and women acting a great part on great occasions, and then retreating to the shade of privacy; and we may be confident that many a name has not been inscribed on the roll of national glory only from wanting a few drops of ink! Such domestic annals may yet be viewed in the family records at Appleby Castle! Anne, Countess of Pembroke, was a glorious woman, the descendant of two potent northern families, the Veteriponts and the Cliffords.--She lived in a state of regal magnificence and independence, inhabiting five or seven castles; yet though her magnificent spirit poured itself out in her extended charities, and though her independence mated that of monarchs, yet she herself, in her domestic habits, lived as a hermit in her own castles; and though only acquainted with her native language, she had cultivated her mind in many parts of learning; and as Donne, in his way, observes, "she knew how to converse of everything, from predestination to slea-silk." Her favourite design was to have materials collected for the history of those two potent northern families to whom she was allied; and at a considerable expense she employed learned persons to make collections for this purpose from the records in the Tower, the Rolls, and other depositories of manuscripts: Gilpin had seen three large volumes fairly transcribed. Anecdotes of a great variety of characters, who had exerted themselves on very important occasions, compose these family records--and induce one to wish that the public were in possession of such annals of the domestic life of heroes and of sages, who have only failed in obtaining an historian![268]

A biographical monument of this nature, which has passed through the press, will sufficiently prove the utility of this class of _sentimental biography_. It is the Life of Robert Price, a Welsh lawyer, and an ancestor of the gentleman whose ingenuity, in our days, has refined the principles of the Picturesque in Art. This Life is announced as "printed by the appointment of the family;" but it must not be considered merely as a tribute of private affection; and how we are at this day interested in the actions of a Welsh lawyer in the reign of William the Third, whose name has probably never been consigned to the page of history, remains to be told.

Robert Price, after having served Charles the Second, lived latterly in the eventful times of William the Third--he was probably of Tory principles, for on the arrival of the Dutch prince he was removed from the attorney-generalship of Glamorgan. The new monarch has been accused of favouritism, and of an eagerness in showering exorbitant grants on some of his foreigners, which soon raised a formidable opposition in the jealous spirit of Englishmen. The grand favourite, William Bentinck, after being raised to the Earldom of Portland, had a grant bestowed on him of three lordships in the county of Denbigh. The patriot of his native country--a title which the Welsh had already conferred on Robert Price--then rose to assert the rights of his fatherland, and his speeches are as admirable for their knowledge as their spirit. "The submitting of 1500 freeholders to the will of a Dutch lord was," as he sarcastically declared, "putting them in a worse posture than their former estate, when under William the Conqueror and his Norman lords. England must not be tributary to strangers--we must, like patriots, stand by our country--otherwise, when God shall send us a Prince of Wales, he may have such a present of a crown made him as a Pope did to King John, who was surnamed _Sans-terre_, and was by his father made Lord of Ireland, which grant was confirmed by the Pope, who sent him a crown of peacocks' feathers, in derogation of his power, and the poverty of his country." Robert Price asserted that the king could not, by the Bill of Rights, alien or give away the inheritance of a Prince of Wales without the consent of parliament. He concluded a copious and patriotic speech, by proposing that an address be presented to the king, to put an immediate stop to the grant now passing to the Earl of Portland for the lordships, &c.

This speech produced such an effect, that the address was carried unanimously; and the king, though he highly resented the speech of Robert Price, sent a civil message to the commons, declaring that he should not have given Lord Portland those lands, had he imagined the House of Commons could have been concerned; "I will therefore recall the grant!" On receiving the royal message, Robert Price drew up a resolution to which the house assented, that "to procure or pass exorbitant grants by any member of the privy council, &c. was a high crime and misdemeanour." The speech of Robert Price contained truths too numerous and too bold to suffer the light during that reign; but this speech against foreigners was printed the year after King William's death, with this title, "_Gloria Cambriae_, or the speech of a bold Briton in parliament, against a Dutch Prince of Wales," with this motto, _Opposuit et Vicit_. Such was the great character of Robert Price, that he was made a Welsh judge by the very sovereign whose favourite plans he had so patriotically thwarted.

Another marked event in the life of this English patriot was a second noble stand he made against the royal authority, when in opposition to the public good. The secret history of a quarrel between George the First and the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, on the birth of a son, appears in this life; and when the prince in disgrace left the palace, his royal highness proposed taking his children and the princess with him; but the king detained the children, claiming the care of the royal offspring as a royal prerogative. It now became a legal point to ascertain "whether the education of his majesty's grandchildren, and the care of their marriages, &c., belonged of right to his majesty as king of this realm, or not?" Ten of the judges obsequiously allowed of the prerogative to the full. Robert Price and another judge decided that the education, &c., was the right of the father, although the marriages was that of his majesty as king of this realm, yet not exclusive of the prince, their father. He assured the king, that the ten obsequious judges had no authority to support their precipitate opinion; all the books and precedents cannot form a prerogative for the king of this realm to have the care and education of his grandchildren during the life and without the consent of their father--a prerogative unknown to the laws of England! He pleads for the rights of a father, with the spirit of one who feels them, as well as with legal science and historical knowledge.

Such were the two great incidents in the life of this Welsh judge! Yet, had the family not found one to commemorate these memorable events in the life of their ancestor, we had lost the noble picture of a constitutional interpreter of the laws, an independent country gentleman, and an Englishman jealous of the excessive predominance of ministerial or royal influence.

Cicero, and others, have informed us that the ancient history of Rome itself was composed out of such accounts of private families, to which, indeed, we must add those annals or registers of public events which unquestionably were preserved in the archives of the temples by the priests. But the history of the individual may involve public interest, whenever the skill of the writer combines with the importance of the event. Messala, the orator, gloried in having composed many volumes of the genealogies of the nobility of Rome; and Atticus wrote the genealogy of Brutus, to prove him descended from Junius Brutus, the expulser of the Tarquins, and founder of the Republic, near five hundred years before.

Another class of this _sentimental biography_ was projected by the late Elizabeth Hamilton. This was to have consisted of a series of what she called _comparative biography_, and an ancient character was to have been paralleled by a modern one. Occupied by her historical romance with the character of _Agrippina_, she sought in modern history for a partner of her own sex, and "one who, like her, had experienced vicissitudes of fortune;" and she found no one better qualified than the princess palatine, _Elizabeth, the daughter of James the First_. Her next life was to have been that of _Seneca_, with "the scenes and persons of which her Life of Agrippina had familiarised her;" and the contrast or the parallel was to have been _Locke_; which, well managed, she thought would have been sufficiently striking. It seems to me that it would rather have afforded an evidence of her invention! Such a biographical project reminds one of Plutarch's Parallels, and might incur the danger of displaying more ingenuity than truth. The sage of Cheronea must often have racked his invention to help out his parallels, bending together, to make them similar, the most unconnected events and the most distinct feelings; and, to keep his parallels in two straight lines, he probably made a free use of augmentatives and diminutives to help out his pair, who might have been equal, and yet not alike!

Our fatherland is prodigal of immortal names, or names which might be made immortal; Gibbon once contemplated with complacency, the very ideal of SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY, and we may regret that he has only left the project! "I have long revolved in my mind a volume of biographical writing; the lives or rather the characters of the most eminent persons in arts and arms, in church and state, who have flourished in Britain from the reign of Henry the Eighth to the present age. The subject would afford a rich display of human nature and domestic history, and powerfully address itself to the feelings of every Englishman."

FOOTNOTES:

[265] "A Comment on the Divine Comedy of Dante," in English, printed
in Italy, has just reached me. I am delighted to find that this
biography of Love, however romantic, is true! In his _ninth year_,
Dante was a lover and a poet! The tender sonnet, free from all
obscurity, which he composed on Beatrice, is preserved in the above
singular volume. There can be no longer any doubt of the story of
Beatrice; but the sonnet and the passion must be "classed among
curious natural phenomena," or how far apocryphal, remains for
future inquiry.

[266] This work was published in 1742, and the scarcity of these
volumes was felt in Granger's day, for they obtained then the
considerable price of four guineas; some time ago a fine copy was
sold for thirty at a sale, and a cheap copy was offered to me at
twelve guineas. These volumes should contain seventeen portraits.
The first was written by Mr. Anderson, who, dying before the second
appeared, Lord Egmont, from the materials Anderson had left,
concluded his family history--_con amore_.

[267] Mr. Anderson, the writer of the first volume, was a feudal
enthusiast; he has thrown out an odd notion that the commercial, or
the wealthy class, had intruded on the dignity of the ancient
nobility; but as wealth has raised such high prices for labour,
commodities, &c., it had reached its _ne plus ultra_, and commerce
could be carried on no longer! He has ventured on this amusing
prediction, "As it is therefore evident that NEW MEN _will never
rise again in any age with such advantages of wealth_, at least in
considerable numbers, their _party_ will gradually decrease."

[268] Much curious matter about the old Countess of Westmoreland and
her seven castles may be found in Whitaker's History of Craven, and
in Pennant.

LITERARY PARALLELS.

An opinion on this subject in the preceding article has led me to a further investigation. It may be right to acknowledge that so attractive is this critical and moral amusement of comparing great characters with one another, that, among others, Bishop Hurd once proposed to write _a book of Parallels_, and has furnished a specimen in that of Petrarch and Rousseau, and intended for another that of Erasmus with Cicero. It is amusing to observe how a lively and subtle mind can strike out resemblances, and make contraries accord, and at the same time it may show the pinching difficulties through which a parallel is pushed, till it ends in a paradox.

Hurd says of Petrarch and Rousseau--"Both were impelled by an equal enthusiasm, though directed towards different objects: Petrarch's towards the glory of the Roman name, Rousseau's towards his idol of a state of nature; the one religious, the other _un esprit fort_; but may not Petrarch's spite to Babylon be considered, in his time, as a species of free-thinking"--and concludes, that "both were mad, but of a different nature." Unquestionably there were features much alike, and almost peculiar to these two literary characters; but I doubt if Hurd has comprehended them in the parallel.

I now give a specimen of those parallels which have done so much mischief in the literary world, when drawn by a hand which covertly leans on one side. An elaborate one of this sort was composed by Longolius or Longuel, between Budaeus and Erasmus.[269] This man, though of Dutch origin, affected to pass for a Frenchman, and, to pay his court to his chosen people, gives the preference obliquely to the French Budaeus; though, to make a show of impartiality, he acknowledges that Francis the First had awarded it to Erasmus; but probably he did not infer that kings were the most able reviewers! This parallel was sent forth during the lifetime of both these great scholars, who had long been correspondents, but the publication of the parallel interrupted their friendly intercourse. Erasmus returned his compliments and thanks to Longolius, but at the same time insinuates a gentle hint that he was not overpleased. "What pleases me most," Erasmus writes, "is the just preference you have given Budaeus over me; I confess you are even too economical in your praise of him, as you are too prodigal in mine. I thank you for informing me what it is the learned desire to find in me; my self-love suggests many little excuses, with which, you observe, I am apt _to favour my defects_. If I am careless, it arises partly from my ignorance, and more from my indolence; I am so constituted, that I cannot conquer my nature; I precipitate rather than compose, and it is far more irksome for me to revise than to write."

This parallel between Erasmus and Budaeus, though the parallel itself was not of a malignant nature, yet disturbed the quiet, and interrupted the friendship of both. When Longolius discovered that the Parisian surpassed the Hollander in Greek literature and the knowledge of the civil law, and worked more learnedly and laboriously, how did this detract from the finer genius and the varied erudition of the more delightful writer? The parallelist compares Erasmus to "a river swelling its waters, and often overflowing its banks; Budaeus rolled on like a majestic stream, ever restraining its waves within its bed. The Frenchman has more nerve, and blood, and life, and the Hollander more fulness, freshness, and colour."

The taste for _biographical parallels_ must have reached us from Plutarch; and there is something malicious in our nature which inclines us to form _comparative estimates_, usually with a view to elevate one great man at the cost of another, whom we would secretly depreciate. Our political parties at home have often indulged in these fallacious parallels, and Pitt and Fox once balanced the scales, not by the standard weights and measures which ought to have been used, but by the adroitness of the hand that pressed down the scale. In literature, these comparative estimates have proved most prejudicial. A finer model exists not than the _parallel of Dryden and Pope_, by Johnson; for, without designing any undue preference, his vigorous judgment has analysed them by his contrasts, and has rather shown their distinctness than their similarity. But literary _parallels_ usually end in producing _parties_; and, as I have elsewhere observed, often originate in undervaluing one man of genius, for his deficiency in some eminent quality possessed by the other man of genius; they not unfrequently proceed from adverse tastes, and are formed with the concealed design of establishing some favourite one. The world of literature has been deeply infected with this folly. Virgil probably was often vexed in his days by a parallel with Homer, and the _Homerians_ combated with the _Virgilians_. Modern Italy was long divided into such literary sects: a perpetual skirmishing is carried on between the _Ariostoists_ and the _Tassoists_; and feuds as dire as those between two Highland clans were raised concerning the _Petrarchists_, and the _Chiabrerists_. Old _Corneille_ lived to bow his venerable genius before a parallel with _Racine_; and no one has suffered more unjustly by such arbitrary criticisms than _Pope_, for a strange unnatural civil war has often been renewed between the _Drydenists_ and the _Popeists_. Two men of great genius should never be depreciated by the misapplied ingenuity of a parallel; on such occasions we ought to conclude _magis pares quam similes_.

FOOTNOTE:

[269] It is noticed by Jortin in his Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 160.

THE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA.

As a literary curiosity, I notice a subject which might rather enter into the history of religion. It relates to the extraordinary state of our English Bibles, which were for some time suffered to be so corrupted that no books ever yet swarmed with such innumerable errata!

These errata unquestionably were in great part voluntary commissions, passages interpolated, and meanings forged for certain purposes; sometimes to sanction the new creed of a half-hatched sect, and sometimes with an intention to destroy all scriptural authority by a confusion, or an omission of texts--the whole was left open to the option or the malignity of the editors, who, probably, like certain ingenious wine-merchants, contrived to accommodate "the waters of life" to their customers' peculiar taste. They had also a project of printing Bibles as cheaply and in a form as contracted as they possibly could for the common people; and they proceeded till it nearly ended with having no Bible at all: and, as Fuller, in his "Mixt Contemplations on Better Times," alluding to this circumstance, with not one of his lucky quibbles, observes, "The _small price_ of the Bible has caused the _small prizing_ of the Bible."

This extraordinary attempt on the English Bible began even before Charles the First's dethronement, and probably arose from an unusual demand for Bibles, as the sectarian fanaticism was increasing. Printing of English Bibles was an article of open trade; every one printed at the lowest price, and as fast as their presses would allow. Even those who were dignified as "his Majesty's Printers" were among these manufacturers; for we have an account of a scandalous omission by them of the important negative in the seventh commandment! The printers were summoned before the Court of High Commission, and this _not_ served to bind them in a fine of three thousand pounds! A prior circumstance, indeed, had occurred, which induced the government to be more vigilant on the Biblical Press. The learned Usher, one day hastening to preach at Paul's Cross, entered the shop of one of the stationers, as booksellers were then called, and inquiring for a Bible of the London edition, when he came to look for his text, to his astonishment and horror he discovered that the verse was omitted in the Bible! This gave the first occasion of complaint to the king of the insufferable negligence and incapacity of the London press: and, says the manuscript writer of this anecdote, first bred that great contest which followed, between the University of Cambridge and the London stationers, about the right of printing Bibles.[270]

The secret bibliographical history of these times would show the extraordinary state of the press in this new trade of Bibles. The writer of a curious pamphlet exposes the combination of those called the king's printers, with their contrivances to keep up the prices of Bibles; their correspondence with the booksellers of Scotland and Dublin, by which means they retained the privilege in their own hands: the king's _London_ printers got Bibles printed cheaper at Edinburgh. In 1629, when folio Bibles were wanted, the Cambridge printers sold them at ten shillings in quires; on this the Londoners set six printing-houses at work, and, to annihilate the Cambridgians, printed a similar _folio_ Bible, but sold with it five hundred _quarto_ Roman Bibles, and five hundred _quarto_ English, at five shillings a book; which proved the ruin of the folio Bibles, by keeping them down under the cost price. Another competition arose among those who printed English Bibles in Holland, in _duodecimo_, with an English colophon, for half the price even of the lowest in London. Twelve thousand of these _duodecimo_ Bibles, with notes, fabricated in Holland, usually by our fugitive sectarians, were seized by the king's printers, as contrary to the statute.[271] Such was this shameful war of Bibles--folios, quartos, and duodecimos, even in the days of Charles the First. The public spirit of the rising sects was the real occasion of these increased demands for Bibles.

During the civil wars they carried on the same open trade and competition, besides the private ventures of the smuggled Bibles. A large impression of these Dutch English Bibles were burnt by order of the Assembly of Divines, for these _three errors_:--

Gen. xxxvi. 24.--This is that _ass_ that found rulers in the wilderness--for _mule_.

Ruth iv. 13.--The Lord gave her _corruption_--for _conception_.

Luke xxi. 28.--Look up, and lift up your hands, for your _condemnation_ draweth nigh--for _redemption_.

These errata were none of the printer's; but, as a writer of the times expresses it, "egregious blasphemies, and damnable errata" of some sectarian, or some Bellamy editor of that day!

The printing of Bibles at length was a privilege conceded to one William Bentley; but he was opposed by Hills and Field; and a paper war arose, in which they mutually recriminated on each other, with equal truth.

Field printed, in 1653, what was called the Pearl Bible; alluding, I suppose, to that diminutive type in printing, for it could not derive its name from its worth. It is in twenty-fours;[272] but to contract the mighty book into this dwarfishness, all the original Hebrew text prefixed to the Psalms, explaining the occasion and the subject of their composition, is wholly expunged. This Pearl Bible, which may be inspected among the great collection of our English Bibles at the British Museum, is set off by many notable _errata_, of which these are noticed:--

Romans vi. 13.--Neither yield ye your members as instruments of _righteousness_ unto sin--for _unrighteousness_.

First Corinthians vi. 9.--Know ye not that the unrighteous _shall inherit_ the kingdom of God?--for _shall not inherit_.

This _erratum_ served as the foundation of a dangerous doctrine; for many libertines urged the text from this corrupt Bible against the reproofs of a divine.

This Field was a great forger; and it is said that he received a present of 1500_l._ from the _Independents_ to corrupt a text in Acts vi. 3, to sanction the right of the people to appoint their own pastors.[273] The corruption was the easiest possible; it was only to put a _ye_ instead of a _we_; so that the right in Field's Bible emanated from the people, not from the apostles. The only account I recollect of this extraordinary state of our Bibles is a happy allusion in a line of Butler:--

Religion spawn'd a various rout,
Of petulant, capricious sects,
THE MAGGOTS OF CORRUPTED TEXTS.

In other Bibles by Hills and Field we may find such abundant errata, reducing the text to nonsense or to blasphemy, making the Scriptures contemptible to the multitude, who came to pray, and not to scoff.