Chapter XXXVI: Letter V (1)

"My dear Kitty,--Though I have but a moment's time to spare, I would not omit writing you an account of my good fortune; my Lord Fauconberg has this day given me a hundred and sixty pounds a year, which I hold with all my preferment; so that all or the most part of my sorrows and tears are going to be wiped away.--I have but one obstacle to my happiness now left --and what that is you know as well as I.[A]

"I long most impatiently to see my dear Kitty. I had a purse of guineas given me yesterday by a bishop--all will do well in time.

"From morning to night my lodgings, which by the bye are the genteelest in town,[B] are full of the greatest company.--I dined these two days with two ladies of the bedchamber--then with Lord Buckingham, Lord Edgcumb, Lord Winchelsea, Lord Littleton, a bishop, &c. &c.

"I assure you, my dear Kitty, that Tristram is the fashion.--Pray to God I may see my dearest girl soon and well.--Adieu.

"Your affectionate friend,

"L. STERNE."

[Footnote A: Can this allude to the death of his wife?--that very year he tells his daughter he had taken a house at York, "for your mother and yourself."]

[Footnote B: They were the second house from St. Alban's Street, Pall Mall.]

* * * * *

HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH.

The rarest of literary characters is such an historian as Gibbon; but we know the price which he paid for his acquisitions--unbroken and undeviating studies. Wilkes, a mere wit, could only discover the drudgery of compilation in the profound philosopher and painter of men and of nations. A speculative turn of mind, delighting in generalising principles and aggregate views, is usually deficient in that closer knowledge, without which every step we take is on the fairy-ground of conjecture and theory, very apt to shift its unsubstantial scenes. The researchers are like the inhabitants of a city who live among its ancient edifices, and are in the market-places and the streets: but the theorists, occupied by perspective views, with a more artist-like pencil may impose on us a general resemblance of things; but often shall we find in those shadowy outlines how the real objects are nearly, if not wholly lost--for much is given which is fanciful, and much omitted which is true.

Of our two popular historians, Hume and Robertson, alike in character but different in genius, it is much to be lamented that neither came to their tasks with the previous studies of half a life; and their speculative or theoretical histories are of so much the less value whenever they are deficient in that closer research which can be obtained only in one way; not the most agreeable to those literary adventurers, for such they are, however high they rank in the class of genius, who grasp at early celebrity, and depend more on themselves than on their researches.

In some curious letters to the literary antiquary Dr. Birch, Eobertson acknowledges "my chief object is to _adorn_, as far as I am capable of adorning, the history of a period which deserves to be better known," He probably took his lesson from Voltaire, the reigning author of that day, and a great favourite with Robertson. Voltaire indeed tells us, that no writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw any interest into a history; that we must know to paint and excite the passions; and that a history, like a dramatic piece, must have situation, intrigue, and catastrophe; an observation which, however true, at least shows that there can be but a moderate quantity of truth in such agreeable narratives. Robertson's notion of _adorning_ history was the pleasing labour of genius--it was to amplify into vastness, to colour into beauty, and to arrange the objects of his meditation with a secret artifice of disposition. Such an historian is a sculptor, who, though he display a correct semblance of nature, is not less solicitous to display the miracles of his art, and enlarges his figures to a colossal dimension. Such is theoretical history.

The theoretical historian communicates his own character to his history; and if, like Robertson, he be profound and politic, he detects the secret motives of his actors, unravels the webs of cabinet councils, explains projects that were unknown, and details stratagems which never took place. When we admire the fertile conceptions of the Queen Regent, of Elizabeth, and of Bothwell, we are often defrauding Robertson of whatever admiration may be due to such deep policy.

When Hume received from Dr. Birch Forbes's Manuscripts and Murdin's State-papers, in great haste he writes to his brother historian:--"What I wrote you with regard to Mary, &c., was from the printed histories and papers. But I am now sorry to tell you that by Murdin's State-papers, the matter is put beyond all question. I got these papers during the holidays by Dr. Birch's means; and as soon as I read them _I ran to Millar_, and desired him very earnestly to stop the publication of your history till I should write to you, and give you an opportunity of correcting a mistake so important; but he absolutely refused compliance. He said that your book was now finished; that the whole narrative of Mary's trial must be wrote over again; that it was uncertain whether the new narrative could be brought within the same compass with the old: that this change would require the cancelling a great many sheets; that there were scattered _passages through the volumes founded on your theory._" What an interview was this of Andrew Millar and David Hume! truly the bibliopole shone to greater advantage than the _two theoretical historians_! And so the world had, and eagerly received, what this critical bookseller declared "required the new printing (that is, the new writing) of a great part of the edition!"

When this successful history of Scotland invited Robertson to pursue this newly-discovered province of philosophical or theoretical history, he was long irresolute in his designs, and so unpractised in those researches he was desirous of attempting, that his admirers would have lost his popular productions, had not a fortunate introduction to Dr. Birch, whose life had been spent in historical pursuits, enabled the Scottish historian to open many a clasped book, and to drink of many a sealed fountain. Robertson was long undecided whether to write the history of Greece, of Leo X., that of William III. and Queen Anne, or that of Charles V., and perhaps many other subjects.

We have a curious letter of Lord Orford's, detailing the purport of a visit Robertson paid to him to inquire after materials for the reigns of William and Anne; he seemed to have little other knowledge than what he had taken upon trust. "I painted to him," says Lord Orford, "the difficulties and the want of materials--but the booksellers will out-argue me." Both the historian and "the booksellers" had resolved on another history: and Robertson looked upon it as a task which he wished to have set to him, and not a glorious toil long matured in his mind. But how did he come prepared to the very dissimilar subjects he proposed? When he resolved to write the history of Charles V., he confesses to Dr. Birch: "I never had _access to any copious libraries_, and do not pretend to _any extensive knowledge of authors_; but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down _as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read_. Your erudition and knowledge of hooks is infinitely superior to mine, and I doubt not but you will be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know very well, and to my sorrow, _how servilely historians copy from one another_, and how little is to be learned from reading many books; but at the same time, when one writes upon any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it upon which he can lay his hands." This avowal proves that Robertson knew little of the history of Charles V. till he began the task; and he further confesses that "he had no knowledge of the Spanish or German," which, for the history of a Spanish monarch and a German emperor, was somewhat ominous of the nature of the projected history.

Yet Robertson, though he once thus acknowledged, as we see, that he "never had access to any copious libraries, and did not _pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors_," seems to have acquired from his friend, Dr. Birch, who was a genuine researcher in manuscripts as well as printed books, a taste even for bibliographical ostentation, as appears by that pompous and voluminous list of authors prefixed to his "History of America;" the most objectionable of his histories, being a perpetual apology for the Spanish Government, adapted to the meridian of the court of Madrid, rather than to the cause of humanity, of truth, and of philosophy. I understand, from good authority, that it would not be difficult to prove that our historian had barely examined them, and probably had never turned over half of that deceptive catalogue. Birch thought so, and was probably a little disturbed at the overwhelming success of our eloquent and penetrating historian, while his own historical labours, the most authentic materials of history, but not history itself, hardly repaid the printer. Birch's publications are either originals, that is, letters or state-papers; or they are narratives drawn from originals, for he never wrote but from manuscripts. They are the true _materia historica_.

Birch, however, must have enjoyed many a secret triumph over our popular historians, who had introduced their beautiful philosophical history into our literature; the dilemma in which they sometimes found themselves must have amused him. He has thrown out an oblique stroke at Bobertson's "pomp of style, and fine eloquence," "which too often tend to disguise the real state of the facts."[A] When he received from Robertson the present of his "Charles V.," after the just tribute of his praise, he adds some regret that the historian had not been so fortunate as to have seen Burghley's State-papers, "published since Christmas," and a manuscript trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, in Lord Boyston's possession. Alas! such is the fate of _speculative history_; a Christmas may come, and overturn the elaborate castle in the air. Can we forbear a smile when we hear Robertson, who had projected a history of British America, of which we possess two chapters, when the rebellion and revolution broke out, congratulate himself that he had not made any further progress? "It is lucky that my American History was not finished before this event; how many plausible theories that I should have been entitled to form are contradicted by what has now happened!" A fair confession!

[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 387.]

Let it not be for one moment imagined that this article is designed to depreciate the genius of Hume and Robertson, who are the noblest of our modern authors, and exhibit a perfect idea of the literary character.

Forty-four years ago, I transcribed from their originals the correspondence of the historian with the literary antiquary. For the satisfaction of the reader, I here preserve these literary relics.

_Letters between Dr. Birch and Dr. W. Robertson, relative to the Histories of Scotland and of Charles V._

"TO DR. BIRCH.

"_Gladsmuir, 19 Sept. 1757._

"Reverent Sir,--Though I have not the good fortune to be known to you personally, I am so happy as to be no stranger to your writings, to which I have been indebted for much useful instruction. And as I have heard from my friends, Sir David Dalrymple and Mr. Davidson, that your disposition to oblige was equal to your knowledge, I now presume to write to you and to ask your assistance without any apology.

"I have been engaged for some time in writing the history of Scotland from the death of James V. to the accession of James VI. to the throne of England. My chief object is to adorn (as far as I am capable of adorning) the history of a period which, on account of the greatness of the events, and their close connection with the transactions in England, deserves to be better known. But as elegance of composition, even where a writer can attain that, is but a trivial merit without historical truth and accuracy, and as the prejudices and rage of factions, both religious and political, have rendered almost every fact, in the period which I have chosen, a matter of doubt or of controversy, I have therefore taken all the pains in my power to examine the evidence on both sides with exactness. You know how copious the _materia, historian_ in this period is. Besides all the common historians and printed collections of papers, I have consulted several manuscripts which are to be found in this country. I am persuaded that there are still many manuscripts worth my seeing to be met with in England, and for that reason I propose to pass some time in London this winter. I am impatient, however, to know what discoveries of this kind I may expect, and what are the treasures before me, and with regard to this I beg leave to consult you.

"I was afraid for some time that Dr. Forbes's Collections had been lost upon his death, but I am glad to find by your 'Memoirs' that they are in the possession of Mr. Yorke. I see likewise that the 'Dépêches de Beaumont' are in the hands of the same gentleman. But I have no opportunity of consulting your 'Memoirs' at present, and I cannot remember whether the 'Dépêches de Fenelon' be still preserved or not. I see that Carte has made a great use of them in a very busy period from 1563 to 1576. I know the strength of Carte's prejudices so well, that I dare say many things may be found there that he could not see, or would not publish. May I beg the favour of you to let me know whether Fenelon's papers be yet extant and accessible, and to give me some general idea of what Dr. Forbes's Collections contain with regard to Scotland, and whether the papers they consist of are different from those published by Haynes, Anderson, &c. I am far from desiring that you should enter into any detail that would be troublesome to you, but some short hint of the nature of these Collections would be extremely satisfying to my curiosity, and I shall esteem it a great obligation laid upon me.

"I have brought my work almost to a conclusion. If you would be so good as to suggest anything that you thought useful for me to know or to examine into, I shall receive your directions with great respect and gratitude.

"I am, with sincere esteem,

"Rev'd Sir, Y'r m. ob. & m. h. S'r,

"Wm. ROBERTSON."

TO DR. BIRCH.

"_Edinburgh, 1 Jan. 1759._

"Dear Sir,--If I had not considered a letter of mere compliment as an impertinent interruption to one who is so busy as you commonly are, I would long before this have made my acknowledgments to you for the civilities which you was so good as to show me while I was in London. I had not only a proof of your obliging disposition, but I reaped the good effects of it.

"The papers to which I got access by your means, especially those from Lord Royston, have rendered my work more perfect than it could have otherwise been. My history is now ready for publication, and I have desired Mr. Millar to send you a large paper copy of it in my name, which I beg you may accept as a testimony of my regard and of my gratitude. He will likewise transmit to you another copy, which I must entreat you to present to my Lord Royston, with such acknowledgments of his favours toward me as are proper for me to make. I have printed a short appendix of original papers. You will observe that there are several inaccuracies in the press work. Mr. Millar grew impatient to have the book published, so that it was impossible to send down the proofs to me. I hope, however, the papers will be abundantly intelligible. I published them only to confirm my own system, about particular facts, not to obtain the character of an antiquarian. If, upon perusing the book, you discover any inaccuracies, either with regard to style or facts, whether of great or of small importance, I will esteem it a very great favour if you'll be so good as to communicate them to me. I shall likewise be indebted to you, if you'll let me know what reception the book meets with among the literati of your acquaintance. I hope you will be particularly pleased with the critical dissertation at the end, which is the production of a co-partnership between me and your friend Mr. Davidson. Both Sir D. Dalrymple and he offer compliments to you. If Dean Tucker be in town this winter, I beg you will offer my compliments to him.

"I am, w. great regard, Dr. Sir,

"Y'r m. obed't. & rust. o. ser't.,

"WILLIAM ROBERTSON.

"My address is, one of the ministers of Ed."

TO DR. BIRCH.

"_Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1759._

"Dear Sir,--I beg leave once more to have recourse to your good nature and to your love of literature, and to presume upon putting you to a piece of trouble. After considering several subjects for another history, I have at last fixed upon the reign of Charles V., which contains the first establishment of the present political system of Europe. I have begun to labour seriously upon my task. One of the first things requisite was to form a catalogue of books which must be consulted. As I never had access to very copious libraries, I do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors, but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down just in the order which they occurred to me, or as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. I beg you would be so good as to look it over, and as your erudition and knowledge of books is infinitely superior to mine, I doubt not but you'll be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books, but at the same time when one writes upon any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it, upon which he can lay his hands. I am sufficiently master of French and Italian; but have no knowledge of the Spanish or German tongues. I flatter myself that I shall not suffer much by this, as the two former languages, together with the Latin, will supply me with books in abundance. Mr. Walpole informed me some time ago, that in the catalogue of Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, there is a volume of papers relating to Charles V., it is No. 295. I do not expect much from it, but it would be extremely obliging if you would take the trouble of looking into it and of informing me in general what it contains. In the catalogue I have inclosed, this mark × is prefixed to all the books which I can get in this country; if you yourself, or any friend with whom you can use freedom, have any of the other books in my list, and will be so good as to send them to Mr. Millar, he will forward them to me, and I shall receive them with great gratitude and return them with much punctuality. I beg leave to offer compliments to all our common friends, and particularly to Dean Tucker, if he be in town this season. I wish it were in my power to confer any return for all the trouble you have taken in my behalf--"

FROM DR. BIRCH TO THE REV. DR. ROBERTSON, AT EDINBURGH.

"_London, 3 Jany. 1760._

"Dear Sir,--Your letter of the 13 Dec'r. was particularly agreeable to me, as it acquainted me with your resolution to resume your historic pen, and to undertake a subject which, from its importance and extent, and your manner of treating it, will be highly acceptable to the public.

"I have perused your list of books to be consulted on this occasion; and after transcribing it have delivered it to Mr. Millar; and shall now make some additions to it.

"The new 'Histoire d'Allemagne' by Father Barre, chancellor of the University of Paris, published a few years ago in several volumes in 4^to., is a work of very good credit, and to be perused by you; as is likewise the second edition of 'Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire & du Droit public d'Allemagne,' just printed at Paris, and formed upon the plan of President Henault's 'Nouvel Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire de France,' in which the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II. will be proper to be seen by you.

"The 'Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cardinal Granvelle,' by Father Rosper Levesque, a Benedictin monk, which were printed at Paris in two vol's. 12^o. in 1753, contain some particulars relating to Charles V. But this performance is much less curious than it might have been, considering that the author had the advantage of a vast collection, above an hundred volumes of the Cardinal's original papers, at Besançon. Among these are the papers of his eminence's father, who was chancellor and minister to the Emperor Charles V.

"Bishop Burnet, in the 'Summary of Affairs before the Restoration,' prefixed to his 'History of his Own Time,' mentions a life of Frederick Elector Palatine, who first reformed the Palatinate, as curiously written by Hubert Thomas Leodius. This book, though a very rare one, is in my study and shall be sent to you. You will find in it many facts relating to your Emperor. The manuscript was luckily saved when the library of Heydelberg was plundered and conveyed to the Vatican after the taking of that city in 1622, and it was printed in 1624, at Francfort, in 4^to. The writer had been secretary and councillor to the elector.

"Another book which I shall transmit to you is a valuable collection of state papers, made by Mons'r. Rivier, and printed at Blois, in 1665, in two vols. f^o. They relate to the reigns of Francis I., Henry II., and Francis II. of France. The indexes will direct you to such passages as concern the Emperor.

"As Mons'r. Amelot de la Houssaic, who was extremely conversant in modern history, has, in the 1st. tome of his 'Mémoires Historiques Politiques et Littéraires,' from p. 156 to 193, treated of Charles V., I shall add that book to my parcel.

"Varillas's 'Life of Henry II. of France' should be looked into, though that historian has not at present much reputation for exactness and veracity.

"Dr. Fiddes, in his 'Life of Cardinal Wolsey,' has frequent occasion to introduce the Emperor, his contemporary, of which Bayle in his Dictionary gives us an express article and not a short one, for it consists of eight of his pages.

"Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's preceptor, when he was secretary to S'r. Richard Morysin amb. from K. Edward VI. to the imperial court, wrote to a friend of his 'a report and discourse of the affairs and state of Germany and the Emperor Charles's court.' This was printed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but the copies of that edition are now very rare. However this will be soon made public, being reprinted in an edition of all the author's English works now in the press.

"The 'Epîtres des Princes,' translated from the Italian by Belleforest, will probably supply you with some few things to your purpose.

"Vol. 295 among the Harleian MSS. contains little remarkable except some letters from Henry VIII's amb'r. in Spain, in 1518, of which, you may see an abstract in the printed catalogue.

"In Dr. Hayne's 'Collection of State Papers in the Hatfield History,' p. 56, is a long letter of the lord of the council of Henry VIII., in 1546, to his amb'r. with the Emperor."

TO DR. BIRCH.

_Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College of Edinburgh, Oct. 8, 1765._

" . . . I have met with many interruptions in carrying on my 'Charles V.,' partly from bad health, and partly from the avocations arising from performing the duties of my office. But I am now within sight of land. The historical part of the work is finished, and I am busy with a preliminary book, in which I propose to give a view of the progress in the state of society, laws, manners, and arts, from the irruption of the barbarous nations to the beginning of the sixteenth century. This is a laborious undertaking; but I flatter myself that I shall be able to finish it in a few months. I have kept the books you was so good as to send me, and shall return them carefully as soon as my work is done."

* * * * *

OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY THE DEATHS OF THE AUTHORS.

In those "Dances of Death" where every profession is shown as taken by surprise in the midst of their unfinished tasks, where the cook is viewed in flight, oversetting his caldron of soup, and the physician, while inspecting his patient's urinal, is himself touched by the grim visitor, one more instance of poor mortality may be added in the writers of works designed to be pursued through a long series of volumes. The French have an appropriate designation for such works, which they call "_ouvrages de longue haleine_," and it has often happened that the _haleine_ has closed before the work.

Works of literary history have been particularly subject to this mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, and human life has not yielded a sufficient portion for the communication of extensive acquirement! After years of reading and writing, the literary historian, who in his innumerable researches is critical as well as erudite, has still to arbitrate between conflicting opinions; to resolve on the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at remote researches:--but he dies, and leaves his favourite volumes little more than a project!

Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general forgetfulness of the nature of all human concerns in the mind of the antiquary, who is so busied with other times and so interested for other persons than those about him. "It is the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have mortality always before him."

A few illustrious scholars have indeed escaped the fate reserved for most of their brothers. A long life, and the art of multiplying that life not only by an early attachment to study, but by that order and arrangement which shortens our researches, have sufficed for a MURATORI. With such a student time was a great capital, which he knew to put out at compound interest; and this Varro of the Italians, who performed an infinite number of things in the circumscribed period of ordinary life, appears not to have felt any dread of leaving his voluminous labours unfinished, but rather of wanting one to begin. This literary Alexander thought he might want a world to conquer! Muratori was never perfectly happy unless employed in two large works at the same time, and so much dreaded the state of literary inaction, that he was incessantly importuning his friends to suggest to him objects worthy of his future composition. The flame kindled in his youth burned clear in his old age; and it was in his senility that he produced the twelve quartos of his _Annali d'Italia_ as an addition to his twenty-nine folios of his _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, and the six folios of the _Antiquitates Medii Ævi_! Yet these vast edifices of history are not all which this illustrious Italian has raised for his fatherland. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works has drawn an admirable character of Muratori.

But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied the labours of the literary worthies of this order. TIRABOSCHI indeed lived to complete his great national history of Italian literature; but, unhappily for us, WARTON, after feeling his way through the darker ages of our poetry, and just conducting us to a brighter region, in planning the map of the country of which he had only a Pisgah view, expires amid his volumes! Our poetical antiquary led us to the opening gates of the paradise of our poetry, when, alas! they closed on him and on us! The most precious portion of Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment.

Life passes away in collecting materials--the marble lies in blocks--and sometimes a colonnade is erected, or even one whole side of a palace indicates the design of the architect. Count MAZZUCHELLI, early in life, formed a noble but too mighty a project, in which, however, he considerably advanced. This was an historical and critical account of the memoirs and the writings of Italian authors; he even commenced the publication in alphabetical order, but the six invaluable folios we possess only contain the authors the initial letters of whose names are A and B! This great literary historian had finished for the press other volumes, which the torpor of his descendants has suffered to lie in a dormant state. Rich in acquisition, and judicious in his decisions, the days of the patriotic Mazzuchelli were freely given to the most curious and elegant researches in his national literature; his correspondence is said to consist of forty volumes; with eight of literary memoirs, besides the lives of his literary contemporaries;--but Europe has been defrauded of the hidden treasures.

The history of BAILLET'S "Jugemens des Sçavans sur les Principaux Ouvrages des Auteurs," or Decisions of the Learned on the Learned, is a remarkable instance how little the calculations of writers of research serve to ascertain the period of their projected labour. Baillet passed his life in the midst of the great library of the literary family of the Lamoignons, and as an act of gratitude arranged a classified catalogue in thirty-two folio volumes; it indicated not only what any author had professedly composed on any subject, but also marked those passages relative to the subject which other writers had touched on. By means of this catalogue, the philosophical patron of Baillet at a single glance discovered the great results of human knowledge on any object of his inquiries. This catalogue, of equal novelty and curiosity, the learned came to study, and often transcribed its precious notices. Amid this world of books, the skill and labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical opinions of the learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the progress of his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary, sketched one of the most magnificent plans of literary history. This instructive project has been preserved by Monnoye in his edition. It consists of six large divisions, with innumerable subdivisions. It is a map of the human mind, and presents a view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few can conceive. The project was too vast for an individual; it now occupies seven quartos, yet it advanced no farther than the critics, translators, and poets, forming little more than the first, and a commencement of the second great division; to more important classes the laborious projector never reached!

Another literary history is the "Bibliothèque Françoise" of GOUJET, left unfinished by his death. He had designed a classified history of French literature; but of its numerous classes he has only concluded that of the translators, and not finished the second he had commenced, of the poets. He lost himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and consumed sixteen years on his eighteen volumes!

A great enterprise of the BENEDICTINES, the "Histoire Littéraire de la France," now consists of twelve large quartos, which even its successive writers have only been able to carry down to the close of the twelfth century![A]

[Footnote A: This work has been since resumed.]

DAVID CLEMENT, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed the most extensive bibliography which had ever appeared; this history of books is not a barren nomenclature, the particulars and dissertations are sometimes curious: but the diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed as far as the letter H! The alphabetical order which some writers have adopted has often proved a sad memento of human life! The last edition of our own "Biographia Britannica," feeble, imperfect, and inadequate as the writers were to the task the booksellers had chosen them to execute, remains still a monument which every literary Englishman may blush to see so hopelessly interrupted.

When LE GRAND D'AUSSY, whose "Fabliaux" are so well known, adopted, in the warmth of antiquarian imagination, the plan suggested by the Marquis de Paulmy, first sketched in the _Mélanges tirés d'une grande Bibliothèque_, of a picture of the domestic life of the French people from their earliest periods, the subject broke upon him like a vision; it had novelty, amusement, and curiosity: "_le sujet m'en parut neuf, riche et piquant_." He revelled amid the scenes of their architecture, the interior decorations of their houses, their changeable dress, their games, and recreations; in a word, on all the parts which were most adapted to amuse the fancy. But when he came to compose the more detailed work, the fairy scene faded in the length, the repetition, and the never-ending labour and weariness; and the three volumes which we now possess, instead of sports, dresses, and architecture, exhibit only a very curious, but not always a very amusing, account of the food of the French nation.

No one has more fully poured out his vexation of spirit--he may excite a smile in those who have never experienced this toil of books and manuscripts--but he claims the sympathy of those who would discharge their public duties so faithfully to the public. I shall preserve a striking picture of these thousand task-works, coloured by the literary pangs of the voluminous author, who is doomed never to finish his curious work:--

"Endowed with a courage at all proofs, with health which, till then, was unaltered, and which excess of labour has greatly changed, I devoted myself to write the lives of the learned of the sixteenth century. Renouncing all kinds of pleasure, working ten to twelve hours a-day, extracting, ceaselessly copying; after this sad life I now wished to draw breath, turn over what I had amassed, and arrange it. I found myself possessed of many thousands of _bulletins_, of which the longest did not exceed many lines. At the sight of this frightful chaos, from which I was to form a regular history, I must confess that I shuddered; I felt myself for some time in a _stupor and depression of spirits_; and now actually that I have finished this work, _I cannot endure the recollection of that moment of alarm without a feeling of involuntary terror._ What a business is this, good God, of a compiler! In truth, it is too much condemned; it merits some regard. At length I regained courage; I returned to my researches: I have completed my plan, though every day I was forced to _add_, to _correct_, to _change my facts as well as my ideas_; SIX times has my hand _re-copied my work_; and, however fatiguing this may be, it certainly is not that portion of my task which has cost me most."

The history of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" of the late Dr. Watt may serve as a mortifying example of the length of labour and the brevity of life. To this gigantic work the patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty years; he had just arrived at the point of publication, when death folded down his last page; the son who, during the last four years, had toiled under the direction of his father, was chosen to occupy his place. The work was in the progress of publication, when the son also died; and strangers now reap the fruits of their combined labours.

One cannot forbear applying to this subject of voluminous designs, which must be left unfinished, the forcible reflection of Johnson on the planting of trees: "There is a frightful interval between the seed and timber. He that calculates the growth of trees has the unwelcome remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit himself; and, when he rejoices to see the stem arise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down."

* * * * *

OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED.

It is amusing enough to discover that things, now considered among the most useful and even agreeable acquisitions of domestic life, on their first introduction ran great risks of being rejected, by the ridicule or the invective which they encountered. The repulsive effect produced on mankind by the mere strangeness of a thing, which at length we find established among our indispensable conveniences, or by a practice which has now become one of our habits, must be ascribed sometimes to a proud perversity in our nature; sometimes to the crossing of our interests, and to that repugnance to alter what is known for that which has not been sanctioned by our experience. This feeling has, however, within the latter half century considerably abated; but it proves, as in higher matters, that some philosophical reflection is required to determine on the usefulness, or the practical ability, of every object which comes in the shape of novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man had never discovered the practice of washing his hands, but cleansed them as animals do their paws, he would for certain have ridiculed and protested against the inventor of soap, and as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted the invention. A reader, unaccustomed to minute researches, might be surprised, had he laid before him the history of some of the most familiar domestic articles which, in their origin, incurred the ridicule of the wits, and had to pass through no short ordeal of time in the strenuous opposition of the zealots against domestic novelties. The subject requires no grave investigation; we will, therefore, only notice a few of universal use. They will sufficiently demonstrate that, however obstinately man moves in "the march of intellect," he must be overtaken by that greatest of innovators--Time itself; and that, by his eager adoption of what he had once rejected, and by the universal use of what he once deemed unuseful, he will forget, or smile at the difficulties of a former generation, who were baffled in their attempts to do what we all are now doing.

Forks are an Italian invention; and in England were so perfect a novelty in the days of Queen Bess, that Fynes Moryson, in his curious "Itinerary," relating a bargain with the patrone of a vessel which was to convey him from Venice to Constantinople, stipulated to be fed at his table, and to have "his glass or cup to drink in peculiar to himself, with his knife, spoon, _fork."_ This thing was so strange that he found it necessary to describe it.[A] It is an instrument "to hold the meat while he cuts it; for they hold it ill-manners that one should touch the meat with his hands."[B] At the close of the sixteenth century were our ancestors eating as the Turkish _noblesse_ at present do, with only the free use of their fingers, steadying their meat and conveying it to their mouths by their mere manual dexterity. They were, indeed, most indelicate in their habits, scattering on the table-cloth all their bones and parings. To purify their tables, the servant bore a long wooden "voiding-knife," by which he scraped the fragments from the table into a basket, called "a voider." Beaumont and Fletcher describe the thing,

They sweep the table with a wooden dagger.

[Footnote A: Modern research has shown that forks were not so entirely unknown as was imagined when the above was written. In vol. xxvii. of the "Archaeologia," published by the Society of Antiquaries, is an engraving of a fork and spoon of the Anglo-Saxon era; they were found with fragments of ornaments in silver and brass, all of which had been deposited in a box, of which there were some decayed remains; together with about seventy pennies of sovereigns from Coenwolf, King of Mercia (A.D. 796), to Ethelstan (A.D. 878, 890). The inventories of royal and noble persons in the middle ages often name forks. They were made of precious materials, and sometimes adorned with jewels like those named in the inventory of the Duke of Normandy, in 1363, "une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et aux deux fonts deux saphirs;" and in the inventory of Charles V. of France, in 1380, "une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, où il y a ij balays et X perles." Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the dessert, to lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers Gaveston, the celebrated favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver forks to eat pears with; and the Duchess of Orleans, in 1390, had one fork of gold to take sops from wine (à prendre la soupe où vin). They appear to have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted as now, to lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the person in decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and then only by the highest classes; hence their comparative rarity.--Ed.]

[Footnote B: Moryson's "Itinerary," part i, p. 208.]

Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the little man who first taught us, as Ben Jonson describes its excellence--

--the laudable use of forks,
To the sparing of napkins.

This personage is well-known to have been that odd compound, Coryat the traveller, the perpetual butt of the wits. He positively claims this immortality. "I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this FORKED _cutting of meat,_ not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home." Here the use of forks was, however, long ridiculed; it was reprobated in Germany, where some uncleanly saints actually preached against the unnatural custom "as an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers." It is a curious fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St. Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle between the old members, zealous for their traditions, and the young reformers, for their fingers.[A] The allusions to the use of the fork, which we find in all the dramatic writers through the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and novelty. The fork does not appear to have been in general use before the Restoration! On the introduction of forks there appears to have been some difficulty in the manner they were to be held and used. In _The Fox_, Sir Politic Would-be, counselling Peregrine at Venice, observes--

--Then you must learn the use
And handling of your silver fork at meals.

[Footnote A: I find this circumstance concerning forks mentioned in the "Dictionnaire de Trevoux."]

Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn it, or there is more than one way in which it may be practised. D'Archenholtz, in his "Tableau de l'Angleterre" asserts that "an Englishman may be discovered anywhere, if he be observed at table, because he places his fork upon the left side of his plate; a Frenchman, by using the fork alone without the knife; and a German, by planting it perpendicularly into his plate; and a Russian, by using it as a toothpick."

Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger brothers of the table, and seem to have been borrowed from the nice manners of the stately Venetians. This implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same anathema as the fantastical ornament of "the complete Signor," the Italianated Englishman. How would the writers, who caught "the manners as they rise," have been astonished that now no decorous person would be unaccompanied by what Massinger in contempt calls

Thy case of toothpicks and thy silver fork!

Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things; few but the macaroni's of the day, as the dandies were then called, would venture to display them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without incurring the brand of effeminacy; and they were vulgarly considered as the characteristics of a person whom the mob then hugely disliked--namely, a mincing Frenchman. At first a single umbrella seems to have been kept at a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion--lent as a coach or chair in a heavy shower--but not commonly carried by the walkers. The _Female Tatler_ advertises "the young gentleman belonging to the custom-house, who, in fear of rain, borrowed _the umbrella from Wilks' Coffee-house,_ shall the next time be welcome to the maid's _pattens_." An umbrella carried by a man was obviously then considered an extreme effeminacy. As late as in 1778, one John Macdonald, a footman, who has written his own life, informs us, that when he carried "a fine silk umbrella, which he had brought from Spain, he could not with any comfort to himself use it; the people calling out 'Frenchman! why don't you get a coach?'" The fact was, that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true _esprit de corps_, were clamorous against this portentous rival. This footman, in 1778, gives us further Information:--"At this time there were no umbrellas worn in London, except in noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, where there was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gentleman, if it rained, between the door and their carriage." His sister was compelled to quit his arm one day, from the abuse he drew down on himself by his umbrella. But he adds that "he persisted for three months, till they took no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners began to use theirs, and then the English. Now it is become a great trade in London."[A] The state of our population might now, in some degree, be ascertained by the number of umbrellas.

[Footnote A: Umbrellas are, However, an invention of great antiquity, and may be seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Assyria. They are also depicted on early Greek vases. But the most curious fact connected with their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom, appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In Cædmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings. The form is precisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above, they were an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century.--Ed.]

Coaches, on their first invention, offered a fruitful source of declamation, as an inordinate luxury, particularly among the ascetics of monkish Spain. The Spanish biographer of Don John of Austria, describing that golden age, the good old times, when they only used "carts drawn by oxen, riding in this manner to court," notices that it was found necessary to prohibit coaches by a royal proclamation, "to such a height was this _infernal vice_ got, which has done so much injury to Castile." In this style nearly every domestic novelty has been attacked. The injury inflicted on Castile by the introduction of coaches could only have been felt by the purveyors of carts and oxen for a morning's ride. The same circumstances occurred in this country. When coaches began to be kept by the gentry, or were hired out, a powerful party found their "occupation gone!" Ladies would no longer ride on pillions behind their footmen, nor would take the air, where the air was purest, on the river. Judges and counsellors from their inns would no longer be conveyed by water to Westminster Hall, or jog on with all their gravity on a poor palfrey. Considerable bodies of men were thrown out of their habitual employments--the watermen, the hackneymen, and the saddlers. Families were now jolted, in a heavy wooden machine, into splendour and ruin. The disturbance and opposition these coaches created we should hardly now have known, had not Taylor, the Water-poet[A] and man, sent down to us an invective against coaches, in 1623, dedicated to all who are grieved with "the world running on wheels."

[Footnote A: Taylor was originally a Thames waterman, hence the term "Water-poet" given him. His attack upon coaches was published with this quaint title, "The world runnes on wheeles, or, odds, betwixt carts and coaches." It is an unsparing satire.--Ed.]

Taylor, a humorist and satirist, as well as waterman, conveys some information in this rare tract of the period when coaches began to be more generally used--"Within our memories our nobility and gentry could ride well-mounted, and sometimes walk on foot gallantly attended with fourscore brave fellows in blue coats, which was a glory to our nation far greater than forty of these leathern timbrels. Then the name of a _coach_ was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of coaches; there were but few in those times, and they were deadly foes to sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when in the whole kingdom there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought _tobacco_ into England in _a coach_, for both appeared at the same time." It appears that families, for the sake of their exterior show, miserably contracted their domestic establishment; for Taylor, the Water-poet, complains that when they used formerly to keep from ten to a hundred proper serving-men, they now made the best shift, and for the sake of their coach and horses had only "a butterfly page, a trotting footman, and a stiff-drinking coachman, a cook, a clerk, a steward, and a butler, which hath forced an army of tall fellows to the gatehouses," or prisons. Of one of the evil effects of this new fashion of coach-riding this satirist of the town wittily observes, that, as soon as a man was knighted, his lady was lamed for ever, and could not on any account be seen but in a coach. As hitherto our females had been accustomed to robust exercise, on foot or on horseback, they were now forced to substitute a domestic artificial exercise in sawing billets, swinging, or rolling the great roller in the alleys of their garden. In the change of this new fashion they found out the inconvenience of a sedentary life passed in their coaches.[A]

[Footnote A: Stow, in his "Chronicles," has preserved the date of the first introduction of coaches into England, as well as the name of the first driver, and first English coachmaker. "In the year 1564 Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. After a while divers great ladies, with as great jealousie of the queen's displeasure, made them coaches, and rid in them up and down the country, to the great admiration of all the beholders; but then, by little and little, they grew usual among the nobility and others of sorte, and within twenty years became a great trade of coachmaking;" and he also notes that in the year of their introduction to England "Walter Rippon made a _coche_ for the Earl of Rutland, which was the first _coche_ that was ever made in England."--ED.]