Chapter XXVIII: Book XIV: §Voltaire§, in his Œdipus, makes Jocasta say, (4)

Sir J. Harington has an Epigram [L. i., E. 33] “Of writing with double
pointing,” which is thus introduced:—“It is said that King Edward, of
Carnarvon, lying at Berkely Castle, prisoner, a cardinal wrote to his
keeper, _Edwardum occidere noli, timere bonum est_, which being read
with the point at _timere_, it cost the king his life.”

The French have a proverb, _Faute d’un point Martin perdit son ane_, (through want of a point [or stop] Martin lost his ass,) equivalent to the English saying, _A miss is as good as a mile_. This proverb originated from the following circumstance:—A priest named Martin, being appointed abbot of a religious house called Asello, directed this inscription to be placed over his gate:—

§Porta patens esto, nulli claudatur honesto.§

(Gate, be thou open,—to no honest man be shut.)

But the ignorant painter, by placing the stop after the word _nulli_, entirely altered the sense of the verse, which then stood thus:—

Gate, be open to none;—be shut against every honest man.

The Pope being informed of this uncharitable inscription, took up the matter in a very serious light, and deposed the abbot. His successor was careful to correct the punctuation of the verse, to which the following line was added:—

Pro solo puncto caruit Martinus Asello.

(For a single stop Martin lost Asello.)

The word Asello having an equivocal sense, signifying an ass as well as the name of the abbey, its former signification has been adopted in the proverb.

A nice point has recently occupied the attention of the French courts of law. Mons. de M. died on the 27th of February, leaving a will, entirely in his own handwriting, which he concludes thus:—

“And to testify my affection for my nephews Charles and Henri de M., I bequeath to each _d’eux_ [i.e. _of them_] [or _deux_, i.e. _two_] hundred thousand francs.”

The paper was folded before the ink was dry, and the writing is blotted in many places. The legatees assert that the apostrophe is one of those blots; but the son and heir-at-law maintains, on the contrary, that the apostrophe is intentional. This apostrophe is worth to him two hundred thousand francs; and the difficulty is increased by the fact that there is nothing in the context that affords any clew to the real intention of the testator.

Properly punctuated, the following nonsense becomes sensible rhyme, and is doubtless as true as it is curious, though as it now stands it is very curious if true:—

I saw a pigeon making bread;
I saw a girl composed of thread;
I saw a towel one mile square;
I saw a meadow in the air;
I saw a rocket walk a mile;
I saw a pony make a file;
I saw a blacksmith in a box;
I saw an orange kill an ox;
I saw a butcher made of _steel_;
I saw a penknife dance a reel;
I saw a sailor twelve feet high;
I saw a ladder in a pie;
I saw an apple fly away;
I saw a sparrow making hay;
I saw a farmer like a dog;
I saw a puppy mixing grog;
I saw three men who saw these too,
And will confirm what I tell you.

The following is a good example of the unintelligible, produced by the want of pauses in their right places:—

Every lady in this land
Hath twenty nails upon each hand;
Five and twenty on hands and feet,
And this is true without deceit.

Punctuated thus, the true meaning will at once appear:—

Every lady in this land
Hath twenty nails: upon each hand
Five; and twenty on hands and feet;
And this is true without deceit.

The wife of a mariner about to sail on a distant voyage sent a note to the clergyman of the parish, expressing the following meaning:—

A husband going to sea, his wife desires the prayers of the congregation.

Unfortunately, the good matron was not skilled in punctuation, nor had the minister quick vision. He read the note as it was written:—

A husband going to see his wife, desires the prayers of the congregation.

* * * * *

Horace Smith, speaking of the ancient Oracles, says, “If the presiding deities had not been shrewd punsters, or able to inspire the Pythoness with ready equivoques, the whole establishment must speedily have been declared bankrupt. Sometimes they only dabbled in accentuation, and accomplished their prophecies by the transposition of a stop, as in the well-known answer to a soldier inquiring his fate in the war for which he was about to embark. §Ibis, redibis. Nunquam in bello peribis.§ (You will go, you will return. Never in war will you perish.) The warrior set off in high spirits upon the faith of this prediction, and fell in the first engagement, when his widow had the satisfaction of being informed that he should have put the full stop after the word _nunquam_, which would probably have put a _full stop_ to his enterprise and saved his life.”

INDIAN HERALDRY.

A sanguine Frenchman had so high an opinion of the pleasure to be enjoyed in the study of heraldry, that he used to lament, as we are informed by Menage, the hard case of our forefather Adam, who could not possibly amuse himself by investigating that science or that of genealogy.

A similar instance of egregious preference for a favorite study occurs in a curious work on Heraldry, published in London, in 1682, the author of which adduces, as an argument of the science of heraldry being founded on the universal propensities of human nature, the fact of having seen some American Indians with their skins tattooed in stripes parallel and crossed (barries). The book bears the following title:—_Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam. Authore Johanne Gibbono Armorumservulo quem a mantilio dicunt Cæruleo._ The singular and amusing extract appended is copied from page 156:—

The book entitled _Jews in America_ tells you that the sachem and chief princes of the Nunkyganses, in New England, submitted to King Charles I., subscribing their names, and setting their seals, which were a §BOW BENT§, §CHARGED WITH AN ARROW§, §a T reversed§, §A TOMAHAWK OR HATCHET ERECTED§, such a one borne §BARRYWISE§, edge downward, and a §FAWN§. A great part of Anno 1659, till February the year following, I lived in Virginia, being most hospitably entertained by the honorable Col. R. Lee, sometime secretary of state there, and who after the king’s martyrdom hired a Dutch vessel, freighted her himself, and went to Brussels, surrendered up Sir William Barclaie’s old commission (for the government of that Province), and received a new one from his present majesty (a loyal action, and deserving my commemoration): neither will I omit his arms, being §Gul. a Fes. chequy, or, Bl between eight billets Arg.§ being descended from the Lees of Shropshire, who sometimes bore eight _billets_, sometimes ten, and sometimes the _Fesse Contercompone_ (as I have seen by our office-records). I will blason it thus: _In Clypeo rutilo; Fasciam pluribus quadratis auri et cyani, alternis æquisque spaciis_ (_ducter triplici positis_) _confectam et inter octo Plinthides argenteas collocatam_. I say, while I lived in Virginia, I saw once a war-dance acted by the natives. The dancers were painted some §party per pale Gul. et sab.§ from forehead to foot (some §PARTY PER FESSE§, of the same colors), and carried little ill-made shields of bark, also painted of those colors (for I saw no other), some §PARTY PER FESSE§, some §PER PALE§ (and some §BARRY§), at which I exceedingly wondered, and concluded that heraldry was engrafted naturally into the sense of the human race. If so, it deserves a greater esteem than is now-a-days put upon it.

THE ANACHRONISMS OF SHAKSPEARE.

Poets, in the proper exercise of their art, may claim greater license of invention and speech, and far greater liberty of illustration and embellishment, than is allowed to the sober writer of history; but historical truth or chronological accuracy should not be entirely sacrificed to dramatic effect, especially when the poem is founded upon history, or designed generally to represent historical truth. In the matchless works of Shakspeare we look instinctively for exactness in the details of time, place, and circumstance; and it is therefore with no little surprise that we find he has misplaced, in such instances as the following, the chronological order of events, of the true state of which it can hardly be supposed he was ignorant.

In the play of _Coriolanus_, Titus Lartius is made to say, addressing C. Marcius,—

Thou wast a soldier even to _Cato’s_ wish.

It is a little curious how Marcius could have been a soldier to “Cato’s wish,” for Marcius, surnamed Coriolanus, was banished from Rome and died more than two hundred years before Cato’s eyes first saw the light. In the same play Menenius says of Marcius, “He sits in his state as a thing made for Alexander,” or like Alexander. The anachronism made in this case is almost as bad as that just given, for Coriolanus was banished from Rome and died not far from §B.C.§ 490, and Alexander was not born until almost one hundred and fifty years after. And the poet in the same play makes still another error in the words which he puts in the mouth of Menenius:—“The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic.” Now, as the renowned “father of medicine” was not born until §A.D.§ 130, of which fact it seems hardly probable that Shakspeare could have been ignorant, he has overleaped more than six hundred years to introduce Galen to his readers.

In the tragedy of _Julius Cæsar_ occurs a historical inaccuracy which cannot be excused on the ground of dramatic effect. It must be imputed to downright carelessness. It is in the following lines:—

_Brutus._ Peace! count the clock.

_Cassius._ The clock has stricken three.

Cassius and Brutus both must have been endowed with the vision of a prophet, for the first striking clock was not introduced into Europe until more than eight hundred years after they had been laid in their graves. And in the tragedy of _King Lear_ there is an inaccuracy, in regard to spectacles, as great as that in _Julius Cæsar_ respecting clocks. King Lear was king of Britain in the early Anglo-Saxon period of English history; yet Gloster, commanding his son to show him a letter which he holds in his hands, says, “Come, let’s see: if it be nothing, I shall not want spectacles.” It is generally admitted that spectacles were not worn in Europe until the end of the thirteenth or the commencement of the fourteenth century.

Shakspeare also anticipates in at least two plays, and by many years, the important event of the first use of cannon in battle or siege. In his great tragedy of _Macbeth_, he speaks of cannon “overcharged with double cracks;” and _King John_ says,—

Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France,
For ere thou canst report, I will be there;
The thunder of my cannon shall be heard.

Cannon, it will be recollected, were first used at Cressy, in 1346, whereas Macbeth was killed in 1054, and John did not begin to reign until 1199. In the _Comedy of Errors_, the scene of which is laid in the ancient city of Ephesus, mention is made of modern denominations of money, as guilders and ducats; also of a striking clock, and a nunnery.

SHAKSPEARE’S HEROINES.

Ruskin says:—Shakspeare has no heroes—he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage, and the still slighter Valentine in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_. In his labored and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so great as to leave him the prey of every base practice around him; but he is the only example even approximating the heroic type. Hamlet is indolent and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy. Whereas there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope and errorless purpose. Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogene, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Silvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless.

SHAKSPEARE AND TYPOGRAPHY.

The great Caxton authority in England—Mr. William Blades—has turned his attention to Shakspeare, and applies his knowledge as a practical printer to the poet’s works, in order to see what acquaintance they show with the compositor’s art. The result is strikingly set forth in a volume entitled “_Shakspeare and Typography_.” Many instances of the use of technical terms by Shakspeare are cited by Mr. Blades, such as the following:—

1. “Come we to _full points_ here? And are _et ceteras_ nothing?—_2
Henry IV._, ii. 4.”

2. “If a book is folio, and two pages of type have been composed, they
are placed in proper position upon the imposing stone, and enclosed
within an iron or steel frame, called a ‘chase,’ small wedges of hard
wood, termed ‘coigns’ or ‘quoins,’ being driven in at opposite sides
to make all tight.

By the four opposing _coigns_
Which the world together joins.—Pericles, iii. 1.

This is just the description of a form in folio, where two quoins on one side are always opposite to two quoins on the other, thus together joining and tightening all the separate stamps.”

SHAKSPEARE’S SONNETS.

Schlegel says that sufficient use has not been made of Shakspeare’s Sonnets as important materials for his biography. Let us see to what conclusions they may lead us. In Sonnet §XXXVII.§, for example, he says:—

As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, _made lame_ by fortune’s dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.

And again, in Sonnet §LXXXIX.§,—

Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
And I will comment upon that offence;
Speak of my _lameness_, and I straight will halt,
Against thy reasons making no defence.

Was Shakspeare lame? “A question to be asked;” and there is nothing in the inquiry repugnant to poetic justice, for he has made Julius Cæsar deaf in his left ear. Where did he get his authority?

HAMLET’S AGE.

Shakspeare’s Hamlet was thirty years old, as is indicated by the text in Act. V. Sc. 1:—

§Ham.§ How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

§1 Clo.§ Of all the days i’ the year, I came to’t that day that our
last King Hamlet o’ercame Fortinbras.

§Ham.§ How long is that since?

§1 Clo.§ Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that: it was the
very day that young Hamlet was born: he that is mad and sent into
England.

* * * * *

§Ham.§ Upon what ground?

§1 Clo.§ Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy
thirty years.

HAMLET’S INSANITY.

It is strange that there should be any doubts whether Hamlet was really or feignedly insane. His assertion to the Queen, after putting off his assumed tricks (iii. 4.),

That I essentially am not in madness,
_But mad in craft_,

is surely admissible testimony. But he gives us other evidence based upon the difficulty of _recalling a train of thought_, an invariable accompaniment of insanity, inasmuch as it is an act in which both brains are concerned. He says,—

Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from.

There are no instances of insanity on record, however slight and uncognizable by any but an experienced medical man, where the patient, after relating a short history of his complaints, physical, moral, and social, could, on being requested to reiterate the narrative, follow the same series, and repeat the same words, even with the limited correctness of a sane person.[37]

Footnote 37:

“There was disorder in the mind—a disturbance of the intellect,
something more than that which he was feigning; but if the question of
insanity involve the question whether his mind ceased to be under the
mastery of his will, assuredly there was no such aberration.” (Reed’s
Lectures.)

Dr. Johnson goes further, declaring that Hamlet “does nothing which he
might not have done with the reputation of sanity.”

ADDITIONAL VERSES TO HOME, SWEET HOME.

In the winter of 1833, John Howard Payne, the author of _Home, Sweet Home_, called upon an American lady, the wife of an eminent banker living in London, and presented to her a copy of the original, set to music, with the two following additional verses addressed to her:—

To _us_, in despite of the absence of years,
How sweet the remembrance of _home_ still appears!
From allurements abroad, which but flatter the eye,
The unsatisfied heart turns, and says, with a sigh,
Home, home, sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home!
There’s no place like home!

_Your_ exile is blest with all fate can bestow,
But _mine_ has been checkered with many a woe!
Yet, though different our fortunes, our thoughts are the same,
And both, as we think of Columbia, exclaim,
Home, home, sweet, sweet home! etc.

THE STEREOTYPED FALSITIES OF HISTORY.

Thinking to amuse my father once, after his retirement from the
ministry, I offered to read a book of history. “Any thing but
history,” said he; “for history must be false.”—_Walpoliana._

What massive volumes would the reiterated errors and falsities of history fill, could they be collected in one grand _omniana_! Historians in every period of the world, narrowed and biassed by surrounding circumstances, each in his pent-up Utica confined, have lacked the fairness and impartiality necessary to insure a full conviction of their truthfulness. Men not only suffer their opinions and their prejudices to mislead themselves and others, but frequently, in the absence of material, draw upon their imaginations for _facts_. Often, too, when sincerely desirous of presenting the truth so as to “nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice,” the sources of their information are lamentably deficient.

The discrepancies of historical writers are very remarkable. If one who had never heard of Napoleon were to read Scott’s Life of the great military chieftain, and then read Abbott’s work, in what a maze of perplexity would he be involved between the disparagement of the one and the deification of the other! If one writer asserts that the Duke of Clarence was drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower of London, and another derisively treats it as a “childish improbability,” and if one expresses the belief that Richard of Gloucester exerted himself to save Clarence, and another that he was the actual murderer, _who_, or _what_, are we to believe?

Knowing, as we do, that modern history abounds with errors, what are we to think of ancient history? If fraudulent and erroneous statements can be distinctly pointed out in Hume, and Lingard, and Alison, how far can we place any reliance upon Cæsar, and Herodotus, and Xenophon?

The monstrous absurdities and incongruities related of Xerxes, which have descended to our day under the name of history, are too stupendous for any credulity. The imposture, like vaulting ambition, “o’erleaps itself.” Such extravagant demands upon our faith serve to deepen our doubt of alleged occurrences that lie more nearly within the range of possibility. _If it be true_ that Hannibal cut his way across the Alps with “_fire, iron, and vinegar_,” how did he apply the vinegar?

If falsities in our American history can creep upon us whilst our eyes are open to surrounding evidence, is it to be wondered at that there are so many contradictions and so many myths in the history of Rome? The very name _America_ is a deception, a fraud, and a perpetuation of as rank injustice as ever stained the annals of human events. It is to be hoped that the time will yet come when Columbus shall receive his due. When that millennial day arrives which will insist on calling things by their right names, the battle of Bunker’s Hill will be called the battle of Breed’s Hill.

It seems incredible, and it certainly is singular, that so many errors in our history should continue to prevail in utter defiance of what is known to be fact. Historians, for instance, persist in saying, and people consequently persist in believing, that the breast-works of General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans were made of cotton-bales covered with earth, whilst intelligent survivors strenuously deny that there was a pound of that combustible material on the ground.[38] A well-known painting frequently

Footnote 38:

General W. H. Palfrey, of New Orleans, who served in Major Planche’s
battalion, which was stationed from Dec. 23, 1814, to Jan. 15, 1815,
in the centre of General Jackson’s line, makes the following
statement, (dated April 5, 1859,) which is confirmed by Major Chotard,
General Jackson’s Assistant Adjutant-General:—

“About twenty or twenty-five bales of cotton were used in forming the
embrasures of five or six batteries. There were four batteries of one
piece of artillery, or howitzer, and four of two pieces, established
at different points of the lines. Four bales were used at some of the
batteries and six at others. None were used in any other portions of
the works, which consisted of breast-works formed of earth thrown up
from the inside, branches of trees, and rubbish. Each company threw up
its own breastwork; and the more it was affected by the enemy’s
artillery and Congreve rockets, the more industriously the soldiers
toiled to strengthen it.”

copied by line-engravers represents Lord Cornwallis handing his sword to General Washington, at the surrender of Yorktown, and this in spite of the glaring fact that, to spare Cornwallis that humiliation, General O’Hara gave his sword to General Lincoln.

The blood shed at the battle of Lexington is commonly believed and said to have been the _first_ drawn in the contest of the Colonists with the oppressive authorities of the British Government. Aside from the Boston massacre, which occurred March 5, 1770, it will be found, by reference to the records of Orange county, North Carolina, that a body of men was formed, called the “Regulators,” with the view of resisting the extortion of Colonel Fanning, clerk of the court, and other officers, who demanded illegal fees, issued false deeds, levied unauthorized taxes, &c.; that these men went to the court-house at Hillsboro’, appointed a schoolmaster named York as clerk, set up a mock judge, and pronounced judgment in mock gravity and ridicule of the court, law, and officers, by whom they felt themselves aggrieved; that soon after, the house, barn, and out-buildings of the judge were burned to the ground; and that Governor Tryon subsequently, with a small force, went to suppress the Regulators, with whom an engagement took place near Alamance Creek, on the road from Hillsboro’ to Salisbury, on the 16th of May, 1771,—nearly four years before the affair of Lexington,—in which nine Regulators and twenty-seven militia were killed, and many wounded,—fourteen of the latter being killed by one man, James Pugh, from behind a rock.

The progress of the natural and physical sciences, together with the increased facilities of intercommunication by steam, have done much towards disproving and exposing the fabulous stories of travelers. The extravagant character, for example, of the assertions of Fœrsch and Darwin in regard to the noxious emanations of the Bohun Upas is now shown by the fact that a specimen of it growing at Chiswick, England, may be approached with safety, and even handled, with a little precaution. It is equally well established that the famous Poison Valley in the island of Java affords the most remarkable natural example yet known of an atmosphere overloaded with carbonic acid gas, to which must be referred the destructive influence upon animal life heretofore attributed to the Upas-tree.

CONFLICTING TESTIMONY OF EYE-WITNESSES.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in his prison, was composing the second volume of his History of the World. Leaning on the sill of his window, he meditated on the duties of the historian to mankind, when suddenly his attention was attracted by a disturbance in the court-yard before his cell. He saw one man strike another, whom he supposed by his dress to be an officer; the latter at once drew his sword and ran the former through the body. The wounded man felled his adversary with a stick, and then sank upon the pavement. At this juncture the guard came up and carried off the officer insensible, and then the corpse of the man who had been run through.

Next day Raleigh was visited by an intimate friend, to whom he related the circumstances of the quarrel and its issue. To his astonishment, his friend unhesitatingly declared that the prisoner had mistaken the whole series of incidents which had passed before his eyes. The supposed officer was not an officer at all, but the servant of a foreign ambassador; it was he who had dealt the first blow; he had not drawn his sword, but the other had snatched it from his side, and had run _him_ through the body before any one could interfere; whereupon a stranger from among the crowd knocked the murderer down with his stick, and some of the foreigners belonging to the ambassador’s retinue carried off the corpse. The friend of Raleigh added that government had ordered the arrest and immediate trial of the murderer, as the man assassinated was one of the principal servants of the Spanish ambassador.

“Excuse me,” said Raleigh, “but I cannot have been deceived as you suppose, for I was eye-witness to the events which took place under my own window, and the man fell there on that spot where you see a paving-stone standing up above the rest.” “My dear Raleigh,” replied his friend, “I was sitting on that stone when the fray took place, and I received this slight scratch on my cheek in snatching the sword from the murderer, and upon my word of honor, you have been deceived upon every particular.”

Sir Walter, when alone, took up the second volume of his History, which was in MS., and contemplating it, thought—“If I cannot believe my own eyes, how can I be assured of the truth of a tithe of the events which happened ages before I was born?” and he flung the manuscript into the fire.

WIT AND HUMOR.

The distinction between wit and humor may be said to consist in this,—that the characteristic of the latter is Nature, and of the former Art. Wit is more allied to intellect, and humor to imagination. Humor is a higher, finer, and more genial thing than wit. It is a combination of the laughable with tenderness, sympathy, and warm-heartedness. Pure wit is often ill-natured, and has a sting; but wit, sweetened by a kind, loving expression, becomes humor. Wit is usually brief, sharp, epigrammatic, and incisive, the fewer words the better; but humor, consisting more in the manner, is diffuse, and words are not spared in it. Carlyle says, “The essence of humor is sensibility, warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence;” and adds, of Jean Paul’s humor, that “in Richter’s smile itself a touching pathos may lie hid too deep for tears.” Wit may be considered as the distinctive feature of the French genius, and humor of the English; but to show how difficult it is to carry these distinctions out fairly, we may note that England has produced a Butler, one of the greatest of wits, and France a Molière, one of the greatest of humorists. Fun includes all those things that occasion laughter which are not included in the two former divisions. Buffoonery and mimicry come under this heading, and it has been observed that the author of a comedy is a wit, the comic actor a humorist, and the clown a buffoon. Old jests were usually tricks, and in coarse times we find that little distinction is made between joyousness and a malicious delight in the misfortunes of others. Civilization discountenances practical jokes, and refinement is required to keep laughter within bounds. As the world grows older, fun becomes less boisterous, and wit gains in point, so that we cannot agree with Cornelius O’Dowd when he says, “The day of witty people is gone by. If there be men clever enough nowadays to say smart things, they are too clever to say them. The world we live in prefers placidity to brilliancy, and a man like Curran in our present-day society would be as unwelcome as a pyrotechnist with a pocket full of squibs.” This is only a repetition of an old complaint, and its incorrectness is proved when we find the same thing said one hundred years ago. In a manuscript comedy, “In Foro,” by Lady Houstone, who died near the end of the last century, one of the characters observes: “Wit is nowadays out of fashion; people are well-bred, and talk upon a level; one does not at present find wit but in some old comedy.” In spite of Mr. Lever and Lady Houstone, we believe that civilized society is specially suited for the display of refined wit. Under such conditions satire is sure to flourish, for the pen takes the place of the sword, and we know it can slay an enemy as surely as steel. This notion owes its origin in part to an error in our mental perspective, by which we bring the wit of all ages to one focus, fancying what was really far apart to have been close together, and thus comparing things which possess no proper elements of comparison, and placing as it were in opposition to each other the accumulated, broad, and well-storied tapestry of the past with the fleeting moments of our day, which are but its still accumulating fringe. Charles Lamb will not allow any great antiquity for wit, and apostrophizing candle-light says: “This is our peculiar and household planet; wanting it, what savage, unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in eaves and unillumined fastnesses! They must have laid about and grumbled at one another in the dark. What repartees could have passed, when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor’s cheek to be sure he understood it! Jokes came in with candles.”

AN OLD PAPER.

The most amusing and remarkable paper ever printed was the _Muse Historique_, or Rhyming Gazette of Jacques Loret, which, for fifteen years, from 1650 to 1665, was issued weekly in Paris. It consisted of 550 verses summarizing the week’s news in rhyme, and treated of every class of subjects, grave and gay. Loret computed, in 1663, the thirteenth year of his enterprise, that he had written over 300,000 verses, and found more than 700 different exordiums, for he never twice began his Gazette with the same _entère_ in _matier_. He ran about the city for his own news, never failed to write good verses upon it, and never had anybody to help him, and his prolonged and always equal performance has been pronounced unique in the history of journalism.

COMFORT FOR BOOK LOVERS.

Mr. Ruskin vigorously defends the bibliomaniac, in his _Sesame and Lilies_. We have despised literature. What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library you call him mad—a bibliomaniac. But you never call one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses; and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars? What position would its expenditure on literature take as compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind as of food for the body; now, a good book contains such food inexhaustibly—it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it! Though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men’s dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more the pity; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy; and if public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and sparkling; whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wiser people forget that if a book is worth reading it is worth buying.

LETTERS AND THEIR ENDINGS.

There is a large gamut of choice for endings, from the official “Your obedient servant,” and high and mighty “Your humble servant,” to the friendly “Yours truly,” “Yours sincerely,” and “Yours affectionately.” Some persons vary the form, and slightly intensify the expression by placing the word “yours” last, as “Faithfully yours.” James Howell used a great variety of endings, such as “Yours inviolably,” “Yours entirely,” “Your entire friend,” “Yours verily and invariably,” “Yours really,” “Yours in no vulgar way of friendship,” “Yours to dispose of,” “Yours while J. H.,” “Yours! Yours! Yours!” Walpole writes: “Yours very much,” “Yours most cordially,” and to Hannah More, in 1789, “Yours more and more.” Mr. Bright, some years ago ended a controversial letter in the following biting terms: “I am, sir, with whatever respect is due to you.” The old Board of Commissioners of the British Navy used a form of subscription very different from the ordinary official one. It was their habit to subscribe their letters (even letters of reproof) to such officers as were not of noble families or bore titles, “Your affectionate friends.” It is said that this practice was discontinued in consequence of a distinguished captain adding to his letter to the Board, “Your affectionate friend.” He was thereupon desired to discontinue the expression, when he replied, “I am, gentlemen, no longer your affectionate friend.”

STUDIES AND BOOKS.

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business, for expert men can execute and perhaps judge of business one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar: they perfect nature and are perfected by experience,—for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty wise men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; _i.e._, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not.—§Lord Bacon.§

Literati.

ATTAINMENTS OF LINGUISTS.

Taking the very highest estimate which has been offered of their attainments, the list of those who have been reputed to have possessed more than ten languages is a very short one. Only four, in addition to a case that will be presently mentioned,—Mithridates, Pico of Mirandola, Jonadab Almanor, and Sir William Jones,—are said in the loosest sense to have passed the limit of twenty. To the first two fame ascribes twenty-two, to the last two twenty-eight, languages. Müller, Niebuhr, Fulgence, Fresnel, and perhaps Sir John Bowring, are usually set down as knowing twenty languages. For Elihu Burritt and Csoma de Koros their admirers claim eighteen. Renaudot the controversialist is said to have known seventeen; Professor Lee, sixteen; and the attainments of the older linguists, as Arius Montanus, Martin del Rio, the converted Rabbi Libettas Cominetus, and the Admirable Crichton, are said to have ranged from this down to ten or twelve,—most of them the ordinary languages of learned and polite society.

The extraordinary case above alluded to is that of the Cardinal Mezzofanti, the son of a carpenter of Bologna, whose knowledge of languages seems almost miraculous. Von Zach, who made an occasional visit to Bologna in 1820, was accosted by the learned priest, as he then was, in Hungarian, then in good Saxon, and afterwards in the Austrian and Swabian dialects. With other members of the scientific corps the priest conversed in English, Russian, Polish, French, and Hungarian. Von Zach mentions that his German was so natural that a cultivated Hanoverian lady in the company expressed her surprise that a German should be a professor and librarian in an Italian university.

Professor Jacobs, of Gotha, was struck not only with the number of languages acquired by the “interpreter for Babel,” but at the facility with which he passed from one to the other, however opposite or cognate their structure.

Dr. Tholuck heard him converse in German, Arabic, Spanish, Flemish, English, and Swedish, received from him an original distich in Persian, and found him studying Cornish. He heard him say that he had studied to some extent the Quichus, or old Peruvian, and that he was employed upon the Bimbarra. Dr. Wiseman met him on his way to receive lessons in California Indian from natives of that country. He heard “Nigger Dutch” from a Curaçoa mulatto, and in less than two weeks wrote a short piece of poetry for the mulatto to recite in his rude tongue. He knew something of Chippewa and Delaware, and learned the language of the Algonquin Indians. A Ceylon student remembers many of the strangers with whom Mezzofanti was in the habit of conversing in the Propaganda,—those whose vernaculars were Peguan, Abyssinian, Amharic, Syriac, Arabico, Maltese, Tamulic, Bulgarian, Albanian, besides others already named. His facility in accommodating himself to each new colloquist justifies the expression applied to him, as the “chamelion of languages.”

Dr. Russell, Mezzofanti’s biographer, adopting as his definition of a thorough knowledge of language an ability to read it fluently and with ease, to write it correctly, and to speak it idiomatically, sums up the following estimate of the Cardinal’s acquisitions:—

1. Languages frequently tested and spoken by the Cardinal with rare excellence,—thirty.

2. Stated to have been spoken fluently, but hardly sufficiently tested,—nine.

3. Spoken rarely and less perfectly,—eleven.

4. Spoken imperfectly; a few sentences and conversational forms,—eight.

5. Studied from books, but not known to have been spoken,—fourteen.

6. Dialects spoken, or their peculiarities understood,—thirty-nine dialects of ten languages, many of which might justly be described as different languages.

This list adds up one hundred and eleven, exceeding by all comparison every thing related in history. The Cardinal said he made it a rule to learn every new grammar and apply himself to every strange dictionary that came within his reach. He did not appear to consider his prodigious talent so extraordinary as others did. “In addition to an excellent memory,” said he, “God has blessed me with an incredible flexibility of the organs of speech.” Another remark of his was, “that when one has learned ten or a dozen languages essentially different from one another, one may with a little study and attention learn any number of them.” Again he remarked, “If you wish to know how I preserve these languages, I can only say that when I once hear the meaning of a word in any language I never forget it.”

And yet it is not claimed for this man of many words that his ideas at all corresponded. He had twenty words for one idea, as he said of himself; but he seemed to agree with Catharine de Medicis in preferring to have twenty ideas for one word. He was remarkable for the number of languages which he had made his own, but was not distinguished as a grammarian, a lexicographer, a philologist, a philosopher, or ethnologist, and contributed nothing to any department of the study of words, much less that of science.

LITERARY ODDITIES.

Racine composed his verses while walking about, reciting them in a loud voice. One day, while thus working at his play of Mithridates, in the Tuileries gardens, a crowd of workmen gathered around him, attracted by his gestures: they took him to be a madman about to throw himself into the basin. On his return home from such walks he would write down scene by scene, at first in prose, and when he had written it out, he would exclaim, “My tragedy is done!” considering the dressing of the acts up in verse as a very small affair. Magliabecchi, the learned librarian to the Duke of Tuscany, on the contrary, never stirred abroad, but lived amid books and upon books. They were his bed, board, and washing. He passed eight-and-forty years in their midst, only twice in the course of his life venturing beyond the walls of Florence,—once to go two leagues off, and the other time three and a half leagues, by order of the Grand Duke. He was an extremely frugal man, living upon eggs, bread, and water, in great moderation. Luther, when studying, always had his dog lying at his feet,—a dog he had brought from Wartburg and of which he was very fond. An ivory crucifix stood on the table before him, and the walls of his study were stuck round with caricatures of the Pope. He worked at his desk for days together without going out; but when fatigued, and the ideas began to stagnate in his brain, he would take his flute or his guitar with him into the porch, and there execute some musical fantasy, (for he was a skilful musician,) when the ideas would flow upon him as fresh as flowers after summer’s rain. Music was his invariable solace at such times. Indeed, Luther did not hesitate to say that, after theology, music was the first of arts. “Music,” said he, “is the art of the prophets: it is the only art which, like theology, can calm the agitation of the soul and put the devil to flight.” Next to music, if not before it, Luther loved children and flowers. The great, gnarled man had a heart as tender as a woman’s. Calvin studied in his bed. Every morning, at five or six o’clock, he had books, manuscripts, and papers carried to him there, and he worked on for hours together. If he had occasion to go out, on his return he undressed and went to bed again to continue his studies. In his later years he dictated his writings to secretaries. He rarely corrected any thing. The sentences issued complete from his mouth. If he felt his facility of composition leaving him, he forthwith quitted his bed, gave up writing and composing, and went about his outdoor duties for days, weeks, and months together. But as soon as he felt the inspiration fall upon him again, he went back to his bed, and his secretary set to work forthwith. Rousseau wrote his works early in the morning; Le Sage at mid-day; Byron at midnight. Villehardouin rose at four in the morning, and wrote till late at night. Aristotle was a tremendous worker: he took little sleep, and was constantly retrenching it. He had a contrivance by which he awoke early, and to awake was with him to commence work. Demosthenes passed three months in a cavern by the seaside, laboring to overcome the defects of his voice. There he read, studied, and declaimed. Rabelais composed his Life of Gargantua at Bellay, in the company of Roman cardinals, and under the eyes of the Bishop of Paris. La Fontaine wrote his fables chiefly under the shade of a tree, and sometimes by the side of Racine and Boileau. Pascal wrote most of his Thoughts on little scraps of paper, at his by-moments. Fénélon wrote his Telemachus in the Palace of Versailles, at the court of the Grand Monarque, when discharging the duties of tutor to the Dauphin. That a book so thoroughly democratic should have issued from such a source and been written by a priest may seem surprising. De Quincey first promulgated his notion of universal freedom of person and trade, and of throwing all taxes on the land,—the germ, perhaps, of the French Revolution,—in the boudoir of Madame de Pompadour! Bacon knelt down before composing his great work, and prayed for light from Heaven. Pope never could compose well without first declaiming for some time at the top of his voice, and thus rousing his nervous system to its fullest activity. The life of Leibnitz was one of reading, writing, and meditation. That was the secret of his prodigious knowledge. After an attack of gout, he confined himself to a diet of bread and milk. Often he slept in a chair, and rarely went to bed till after midnight. Sometimes he spent months without quitting his seat, where he slept by night and wrote by day. He had an ulcer in his right leg, which prevented his walking about even had he wished to do so.

CULTURE AND SACRIFICE.

The instruction of the world has been carried on by perpetual sacrifice. A grand army of teachers, authors, artists, schoolmasters, professors, heads of colleges—have been through ages carrying on war against ignorance; but no triumphal procession has been decreed to it, nor spoils of conquered provinces have come to its coffers; no crown imperial has invested it with pomp and power. In lonely watch-towers the fires of genius have burned, but to waste and consume the lamp of life, while they gave light to the world. It is no answer to say that the victims of intellectual toil, broken down in health and fortune, have counted their work a privilege and joy. As well deny the martyr’s sacrifice because he has joyed in his integrity. And many of the world’s intellectual benefactors have been martyrs. Socrates died in prison as a public malefactor; for the healing wisdom he offered his people, deadly poison was the reward. Homer had a lot, so obscure at least, that nobody knew his birthplace; and, indeed, some modern critics are denying that there ever was any Homer.

Plato traveled back and forth from his home in Athens to the court of the Syracuse tyrant, regarded indeed and feared, but persecuted and in peril of life; nay, and once sold for a slave. Cicero shared a worse fate. Dante all his life knew, as he expressed it,

“How salt was a stranger’s bread,
How hard the path still up and down to tread,
A stranger’s stairs.”

Copernicus and Galileo found science no more profitable than Dante found poetry. Shakspeare had a home, but too poorly endowed to stand long in his name after he left it; the income upon which he retired was barely two or three hundred pounds a year, and so little did his contemporaries know or think of him that the critics hunt in vain for the details of his private life. The mighty span of his large honors shrinks to an obscure myth of life in theatres in London or on the banks of the Avon.

A LITERARY SCREW.

An English paper says that Sharon Turner, author of the _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, who received three hundred pounds a year from Government as a literary pension, wrote his third volume of his _Sacred History of the World_ upon paper which did not cost him a farthing. The copy consisted of torn and angular fragments of letters and notes, of covers of periodicals, gray, drab, or green, written in thick round hand over a small print; of shreds of curling-paper, unctuous with pomatum of bear’s grease, and of white wrappers in which his proofs had been sent from the printers. The paper, sometimes as thin as a bank-note, was written on both sides, and was so sodden with ink, plastered on with a pen worn to a stump, that hours were frequently wasted in discovering on which side of it certain sentences were written. Men condemned to work on it saw their dinner vanish in illimitable perspective, and first-rate hands groaned over it a whole day for tenpence. One poor fellow assured the writer of that paper that he could not earn enough upon it to pay his rent, and that he had seven mouths to fill besides his own. In the hope of mending matters in some degree, slips of stout white paper were sent frequently with the proofs; but the good gentleman could not afford to use them, and they never came back as copy. What an inveterate miser this old scribbler must have been, notwithstanding his pension and his copyrights!

DRYDEN AND HIS PUBLISHER.

When Dryden had finished his translation of Virgil, after some self-deliberation, he sent the MS. to Jacob Tonson, requiring for it a certain sum, which he mentioned in a note. Tonson was desirous of possessing the work, but meanly wished to avail himself of Dryden’s necessities, which at that time were particularly urgent. He therefore informed the poet that he could not afford to give the sum demanded. Dryden, in reply, sent the following lines descriptive of Tonson:—

With leering look, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, with Judas-colored hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air.

When they were delivered to Tonson, he asked if Mr. Dryden had said any thing more. “Yes,” answered the bearer: “he said, ‘Tell the dog that he who wrote these lines can write more like them.’” Jacob immediately sent the money.

Personal Sketches and Anecdotes.

ANECDOTE OF WASHINGTON.

During General Washington’s administration, he almost daily attended his room, adjoining the Senate-chamber, and often arrived before the Senate organized. On one occasion, but before his arrival, Gouverneur Morris and some other senators were standing together, conversing on various topics, and, among them, the natural but majestic air of General Washington, when some one observed there was no man living who could take a liberty with him. The sprightly and bold Morris remarked, “I will bet a dozen of wine I can do that with impunity.” The bet was accepted.

Soon after, Washington appeared, and commenced an easy and pleasant conversation with one of the gentlemen, at a little distance from the others. While thus engaged, Morris, stepping up, in a jocund manner, familiarly tapped Washington on the shoulder, and said,—

“Good morning, old fellow!”

The General turned, and merely looked him in the face, without a word, when Morris, with all his assumed effrontery, stepped hastily back, in evident discomposure, and said:—

“Gentlemen, you have won the bet. I will never take such a liberty again!”

The writer obtained this fact from a member of the Senate, who witnessed the occurrence.

ANECDOTE OF LAFAYETTE.

Shortly after Lafayette’s second return from America, he was at Versailles when the king was about to review a division of troops. Lafayette was invited to join in the review. He was dressed in the American uniform, and was standing by the side of the Duc de Condé, when the king, in his tour of conversation with the officers, came to him, and, after speaking on several topics, asked him questions about his uniform and the military costume in the United States. The king’s attention was attracted by a little medal, which was attached to his coat in the manner in which the insignia of orders are usually worn in Europe; and he asked what it was. Lafayette replied that it was a symbol which it was the custom of the foreign officers in the American service to wear, and that it bore a device. The king asked what was the device: to which Lafayette answered that there was no device common to all, but that each officer chose such as pleased his fancy. “And what has pleased your fancy?” inquired the king. “My device,” said the young general, pointing to his medal, “is a liberty-pole standing on a broken crown and sceptre.” The king smiled, and, with some pleasantry about the republican propensities of a French marquis in American uniform, turned the conversation to another topic. Condé looked grave, but said nothing.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

The name Napoleon, being written in Greek characters, will form seven different words, by dropping the first letter of each in succession:—

Ναπολεων, Ἀπολέον, Πόλεον, Ὁλεον, Λέον, Ἐόν, ὧν.

These words make a complete sentence, meaning, Napoleon, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people.

MILTON AND NAPOLEON.