MYSTERIES, MORALITIES, FARCES, AND SOTTIES.

The origin of the theatrical representations of the ancients has been traced back to a Grecian stroller singing in a cart to the honour of Bacchus. Our European exhibitions, perhaps as rude in their commencement, were likewise for a long time devoted to pious purposes, under the titles of Mysteries and Moralities. Of these primeval compositions of the drama of modern Europe, I have collected some anecdotes and some specimens.[96]

It appears that pilgrims introduced these devout spectacles. Those who returned from the Holy Land or other consecrated places composed canticles of their travels, and amused their religious fancies by interweaving scenes of which Christ, the Apostles, and other objects of devotion, served as the themes. Menestrier informs us that these pilgrims travelled in troops, and stood in the public streets, where they recited their poems, with their staff in hand; while their chaplets and cloaks, covered with shells and images of various colours formed a picturesque exhibition, which at length excited the piety of the citizens to erect occasionally a stage on an extensive spot of ground. These spectacles served as the amusements and instruction of the people. So attractive were these gross exhibitions in the middle ages, that they formed one of the principal ornaments of the reception of princes on their public entrances.

When the Mysteries were performed at a more improved period, the actors were distinguished characters, and frequently consisted of the ecclesiastics of the neighbouring villages, who incorporated themselves under the title of Confreres de la Passion. Their productions were divided, not into acts, but into different days of performance, and they were performed in the open plain. This was at least conformable to the critical precept of that mad knight whose opinion is noticed by Pope. It appears by a MS. in the Harleian library, that they were thought to contribute so much to the information and instruction of the people, that one of the Popes granted a pardon of one thousand days to every person who resorted peaceably to the plays performed in the Whitsun week at Chester, beginning with "The Creation," and ending with the "General Judgment." These were performed at the expense of the different corporations of that city, and the reader may smile at the ludicrous combinations. "The Creation" was performed by the Drapers; the "Deluge" by the Dyers; "Abraham, Melchisedech, and Lot," by the Barbers; "The Purification" by the Blacksmiths; "The Last Supper" by the Bakers; the "Resurrection" by the Skinners; and the "Ascension" by the Tailors. In these pieces the actors represented the person of the Almighty without being sensible of the gross impiety. So unskilful were they in this infancy of the theatrical art, that very serious consequences were produced by their ridiculous blunders and ill-managed machinery. The following singular anecdotes are preserved, concerning a Mystery which took up several days in the performance.

"In the year 1437, when Conrad Bayer, Bishop of Metz, caused the Mystery of 'The Passion' to be represented on the plain of Veximel near that city, God was an old gentleman, named Mr. Nicholas Neufchatel, of Touraine, curate of Saint Victory, of Metz, and who was very near expiring on the cross had he not been timely assisted. He was so enfeebled, that it was agreed another priest should be placed on the cross the next day, to finish the representation of the person crucified, and which was done; at the same time Mr. Nicholas undertook to perform 'The Resurrection,' which being a less difficult task, he did it admirably well."—Another priest, whose name was Mr. John de Nicey, curate of Metrange, personated Judas, and he had like to have been stifled while he hung on the tree, for his neck slipped; this being at length luckily perceived, he was quickly cut down and recovered.

John Bouchet, in his "Annales d'Aquitaine," a work which contains many curious circumstances of the times, written with that agreeable simplicity which characterises the old writers, informs us, that in 1486 he saw played and exhibited in Mysteries by persons of Poitiers, "The Nativity, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ," in great triumph and splendour; there were assembled on this occasion most of the ladies and gentlemen of the neighbouring counties.

We will now examine the Mysteries themselves. I prefer for this purpose to give a specimen from the French, which are livelier than our own. It is necessary to premise to the reader, that my versions being in prose will probably lose much of that quaint expression and vulgar naivete which prevail through the originals, written in octo-syllabic verses.

One of these Mysteries has for its subject the election of an apostle to supply the place of the traitor Judas. A dignity so awful is conferred in the meanest manner; it is done by drawing straws, of which he who gets the longest becomes the apostle. Louis Chocquet was a favourite composer of these religious performances: when he attempts the pathetic, he has constantly recourse to devils; but, as these characters are sustained with little propriety, his pathos succeeds in raising a laugh. In the following dialogue Annas and Caiaphas are introduced conversing about St. Peter and St. John:——

ANNAS. I remember them once very honest people. They have often brought their fish to my house to sell.

CAIAPHAS. Is this true?

ANNAS. By God, it is true; my servants remember them very well. To live more at their ease they have left off business; or perhaps they were in want of customers. Since that time they have followed Jesus, that wicked heretic, who has taught them magic; the fellow understands necromancy, and is the greatest magician alive, as far as Rome itself.

St. John, attacked by the satellites of Domitian, amongst whom the author has placed Longinus and Patroclus, gives regular answers to their insulting interrogatories. Some of these I shall transcribe; but leave to the reader's conjectures the replies of the Saint, which are not difficult to anticipate.

PARTHEMIA.

You tell us strange things, to say there is but one God in three persons.

LONGINUS.

Is it any where said that we must believe your old prophets (with whom your memory seems overburdened) to be more perfect than our gods?

PATHOCLUS. You must be very cunning to maintain impossibilities. Now listen to me: Is it possible that a virgin can bring forth a child without ceasing to be a virgin?

DOMITIAN.

Will you not change these foolish sentiments? Would you pervert us? Will you not convert yourself? Lords! you perceive now very clearly what an obstinate fellow this is! Therefore let him be stripped and put into a great caldron of boiling oil. Let him die at the Latin Gate.

PESART.

The great devil of hell fetch me if I don't Latinise him well. Never shall they hear at the Latin Gate any one sing so well as he shall sing.

TORNEAU.

I dare venture to say he won't complain of being frozen.

PATROCLUS.

Frita, run quick; bring wood and coals, and make the caldron ready.

FRITA.

I promise him, if he has the gout or the itch, he will soon get rid of them.

St. John dies a perfect martyr, resigned to the boiling oil and gross jests of Patroclus and Longinus. One is astonished in the present times at the excessive absurdity, and indeed blasphemy, which the writers of these Moralities permitted themselves, and, what is more extraordinary, were permitted by an audience consisting of a whole town. An extract from the "Mystery of St. Dennis" is in the Duke de la Valliere's "Bibliotheque du Theatre Francois depuis son Origine: Dresde, 1768."

The emperor Domitian, irritated against the Christians, persecutes them, and thus addresses one of his courtiers:——

Seigneurs Romains, j'ai entendu Que d'un crucifix d'un pendu, On fait un Dieu par notre empire, Sans ce qu'on le nous daigne dire.

Roman lords, I understand That of a crucified hanged man They make a God in our kingdom, Without even deigning to ask our permission.

He then orders an officer to seize on Dennis in France. When this officer arrives at Paris, the inhabitants acquaint him of the rapid and grotesque progress of this future saint:——

Sire, il preche un Dieu a Paris Qui fait tout les mouls et les vauls. Il va a cheval sans chevauls. Il fait et defait tout ensemble. Il vit, il meurt, il sue, il tremble. Il pleure, il rit, il veille, et dort. Il est jeune et vieux, foible et fort. Il fait d'un coq une poulette. Il joue des arts de roulette, Ou je ne Scais que ce peut etre.

Sir, he preaches a God at Paris Who has made mountain and valley. He goes a horseback without horses. He does and undoes at once. He lives, he dies, he sweats, he trembles. He weeps, he laughs, he wakes, and sleeps. He is young and old, weak and strong. He turns a cock into a hen. He knows how to conjure with cup and ball, Or I do not know who this can be.

Another of these admirers says, evidently alluding to the rite of baptism,——

Sire, oyez que fait ce fol prestre: Il prend de l'yaue en une escuele, Et gete aux gens sur le cervele, Et dit que partants sont sauves!

Sir, hear what this mad priest does: He takes water out of a ladle, And, throwing it at people's heads, He says that when they depart they are saved!

This piece then proceeds to entertain the spectators with the tortures of St. Dennis, and at length, when more than dead, they mercifully behead him: the Saint, after his decapitation, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm, and walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom.

It is justly observed by Bayle on these wretched representations, that while they prohibited the people from meditating on the sacred history in the book which contains it in all its purity and truth, they permitted them to see it on the theatre sullied with a thousand gross inventions, which were expressed in the most vulgar manner and in a farcical style. Warton, with his usual elegance, observes, "To those who are accustomed to contemplate the great picture of human follies which the unpolished ages of Europe hold up to our view, it will not appear surprising that the people who were forbidden to read the events of the sacred history in the Bible, in which they are faithfully and beautifully related, should at the same time be permitted to see them represented on the stage disgraced with the grossest improprieties, corrupted with inventions and additions of the most ridiculous kind, sullied with impurities, and expressed in the language and gesticulations of the lowest farce." Elsewhere he philosophically observes that, however, they had their use, "not only teaching the great truths of scripture to men who could not read the Bible, but in abolishing the barbarous attachment to military games and the bloody contentions of the tournament, which had so long prevailed as the sole species of popular amusement. Rude, and even ridiculous as they were, they softened the manners of the people, by diverting the public attention to spectacles in which the mind was concerned, and by creating a regard for other arts than those of bodily strength and savage valour."

Mysteries are to be distinguished from Moralities, and Farces, and Sotties. Moralities are dialogues where the interlocutors represented feigned or allegorical personages. Farces were more exactly what their title indicates—obscene, gross, and dissolute representations, where both the actions and words are alike reprehensible.

The Sotties were more farcical than farce, and frequently had the licentiousness of pasquinades. I shall give an ingenious specimen of one of the MORALITIES. This Morality is entitled, "The Condemnation of Feasts, to the Praise of Diet and Sobriety for the Benefit of the Human Body."

The perils of gormandising form the present subject. Towards the close is a trial between Feasting and Supper. They are summoned before Experience, the Lord Chief Justice! Feasting and Supper are accused of having murdered four persons by force of gorging them. Experience condemns Feasting to the gallows; and his executioner is Diet. Feasting asks for a father-confessor, and makes a public confession of so many crimes, such numerous convulsions, apoplexies, head-aches, and stomach-qualms, &c., which he has occasioned, that his executioner Diet in a rage stops his mouth, puts the cord about his neck, and strangles him. Supper is only condemned to load his hands with a certain quantity of lead, to hinder him from putting too many dishes on table: he is also bound over to remain at the distance of six hours' walking from Dinner upon pain of death. Supper felicitates himself on his escape, and swears to observe the mitigated sentence.[97]

The MORALITIES were allegorical dramas, whose tediousness seems to have delighted a barbarous people not yet accustomed to perceive that what was obvious might be omitted to great advantage: like children, everything must be told in such an age; their own unexercised imagination cannot supply anything.

Of the FARCES the licentiousness is extreme, but their pleasantry and their humour are not contemptible. The "Village Lawyer," which is never exhibited on our stage without producing the broadest mirth, originates among these ancient drolleries. The humorous incident of the shepherd, who having stolen his master's sheep, is advised by his lawyer only to reply to his judge by mimicking the bleating of a sheep, and when the lawyer in return claims his fee, pays him by no other coin, is discovered in these ancient farces. Brueys got up the ancient farce of the "Patelin" in 1702, and we borrowed it from him.

They had another species of drama still broader than Farce, and more strongly featured by the grossness, the severity, and personality of satire:—these were called Sotties, of which the following one I find in the Duke de la Valliere's "Bibliotheque du Theatre Francois."[98]

The actors come on the stage with their fools'-caps each wanting the right ear, and begin with stringing satirical proverbs, till, after drinking freely, they discover that their fools'-caps want the right ear. They call on their old grandmother Sottie (or Folly), who advises them to take up some trade. She introduces this progeny of her fools to the World, who takes them into his service. The World tries their skill, and is much displeased with their work. The Cobbler-fool pinches his feet by making the shoes too small; the Tailor-fool hangs his coat too loose or too tight about him; the Priest-fool says his masses either too short or too tedious. They all agree that the World does not know what he wants, and must be sick, and prevail upon him to consult a physician. The World obligingly sends what is required to a Urine-doctor, who instantly pronounces that "the World is as mad as a March hare!" He comes to visit his patient, and puts a great many questions on his unhappy state. The World replies, "that what most troubles his head is the idea of a new deluge by fire, which must one day consume him to a powder;" on which the physician gives this answer:——

Et te troubles-tu pour cela? Monde, tu ne te troubles pas De voir ce larrons attrapars Vendre et acheter benefices; Les enfans en bras des Nourices Estre Abbes, Eveques, Prieurs, Chevaucher tres bien les deux soeurs, Tuer les gens pour leurs plaisirs, Jouer le leur, l'autrui saisir, Donner aux flatteurs audience, Faire la guerre a toute outrance Pour un rien entre les chrestiens!

And you really trouble yourself about this? Oh, World! you do not trouble yourself about Seeing those impudent rascals Selling and buying livings; Children in the arms of their nurses Made Abbots, Bishops, and Priors, Intriguing with girls, Killing people for their pleasures, Minding their own interests, and seizing on what belongs to another, Lending their ears to flatterers, Making war, exterminating war, For a bubble, among Christians!

The World takes leave of his physician, but retains his advice; and to cure his fits of melancholy gives himself up entirely to the direction of his fools. In a word, the World dresses himself in the coat and cap of Folly, and he becomes as gay and ridiculous as the rest of the fools.

This Sottie was represented in the year 1524.

Such was the rage for Mysteries, that Rene d'Anjou, king of Naples and Sicily, and Count of Provence, had them magnificently represented and made them a serious concern. Being in Provence, and having received letters from his son the Prince of Calabria, who asked him for an immediate aid of men, he replied, that "he had a very different matter in hand, for he was fully employed in settling the order of a Mystery—in honour of God."[99]

Strutt, in his "Manners and Customs of the English," has given a description of the stage in England when Mysteries were the only theatrical performances. Vol. iii, p. 130.

"In the early dawn of literature, and when the sacred Mysteries were the only theatrical performances, what is now called the stage did then consist of three several platforms, or stages raised one above another. On the uppermost sat the Pater Coelestis, surrounded with his Angels; on the second appeared the Holy Saints, and glorified men; and the last and lowest was occupied by mere men who had not yet passed from this transitory life to the regions of eternity. On one side of this lowest platform was the resemblance of a dark pitchy cavern, from whence issued appearance of fire and flames; and, when it was necessary, the audience were treated with hideous yellings and noises as imitative of the howlings and cries of the wretched souls tormented by the relentless demons. From this yawning cave the devils themselves constantly ascended to delight and to instruct the spectators:—to delight, because they were usually the greatest jesters and buffoons that then appeared; and to instruct, for that they treated the wretched mortals who were delivered to them with the utmost cruelty, warning thereby all men carefully to avoid the falling into the clutches of such hardened and remorseless spirits." An anecdote relating to an English Mystery presents a curious specimen of the manners of our country, which then could admit of such a representation; the simplicity, if not the libertinism, of the age was great. A play was acted in one of the principal cities of England, under the direction of the trading companies of that city, before a numerous assembly of both sexes, wherein Adam and Eve appeared on the stage entirely naked, performed their whole part in the representation of Eden, to the serpent's temptation, to the eating of the forbidden fruit, the perceiving of, and conversing about, their nakedness, and to the supplying of fig-leaves to cover it. Warton observes they had the authority of scripture for such a representation, and they gave matters just as they found them in the third chapter of Genesis. The following article will afford the reader a specimen of an Elegant Morality.



LOVE AND FOLLY, AN ANCIENT MORALITY.

One of the most elegant Moralities was composed by Louise L'Abe; the Aspasia of Lyons in 1550, adored by her contemporaries. With no extraordinary beauty, she however displayed the fascination of classical learning, and a vein of vernacular poetry refined and fanciful. To accomplishments so various she added the singular one of distinguishing herself by a military spirit, and was nicknamed Captain Louise. She was a fine rider and a fine lutanist. She presided in the assemblies of persons of literature and distinction. Married to a rope-manufacturer, she was called La belle Cordiere, and her name is still perpetuated by that of the street she lived in. Her anagram was Belle a Soy.—But she was belle also for others. Her Morals in one point were not correct, but her taste was never gross: the ashes of her perishable graces may preserve themselves sacred from our severity; but the productions of her genius may still delight.

Her Morality, entitled "Debat de Folie et d'Amour—the Contest of Love and Folly," is divided into five parts, and contains six mythological or allegorical personages. This division resembles our five acts, which, soon after the publication of this Morality, became generally practised.

In the first part, Love and Folly arrive at the same moment at the gate of Jupiter's palace, to join a festival to which he had invited the gods. Folly observing Love just going to step in at the hall, pushes him aside and enters first. Love is enraged, but Folly insists on her precedency. Love, perceiving there was no reasoning with Folly, bends his bow and shoots an arrow; but she baffled his attempt by rendering herself invisible. She in her turn becomes furious, falls on the boy, tearing out his eyes, and then covers them with a bandage which could not be taken off.

In the second part, Love, in despair for having lost his sight, implores the assistance of his mother; she tries in vain to undo the magic fillet; the knots are never to be unloosed.

In the third part, Venus presents herself at the foot of the throne of Jupiter to complain of the outrage committed by Folly on her son. Jupiter commands Folly to appear.—She replies, that though she has reason to justify herself, she will not venture to plead her cause, as she is apt to speak too much, or to omit what should be said. Folly asks for a counsellor, and chooses Mercury; Apollo is selected by Venus. The fourth part consists of a long dissertation between Jupiter and Love, on the manner of loving. Love advises Jupiter, if he wishes to taste of truest happiness, to descend on earth, to lay down all his majesty, and, in the figure of a mere mortal, to please some beautiful maiden: "Then wilt thou feel quite another contentment than that thou hast hitherto enjoyed: instead of a single pleasure it will be doubled; for there is as much pleasure to be loved as to love." Jupiter agrees that this may be true, but he thinks that to attain this it requires too much time, too much trouble, too many attentions,—and that, after all, it is not worth them.

In the fifth part, Apollo, the advocate for Venus, in a long pleading demands justice against Folly. The Gods, seduced by his eloquence, show by their indignation that they would condemn Folly without hearing her advocate Mercury. But Jupiter commands silence, and Mercury replies. His pleading is as long as the adverse party's, and his arguments in favour of Folly are so plausible, that, when he concludes his address, the gods are divided in opinion; some espouse the cause of Love, and some, that of Folly. Jupiter, after trying in vain to make them agree together, pronounces this award:——

"On account of the difficulty and importance of your disputes and the diversity of your opinions, we have suspended your contest from this day to three times seven times nine centuries. In the mean time we command you to live amicably together without injuring one another. Folly shall lead Love, and take him whithersoever he pleases, and when restored to his sight, the Fates may pronounce sentence."

Many beautiful conceptions are scattered in this elegant Morality. It has given birth to subsequent imitations; it was too original and playful an idea not to be appropriated by the poets. To this Morality we perhaps owe the panegyric of Folly by Erasmus, and the Love and Folly of La Fontaine.



RELIGIOUS NOUVELLETTES.

I shall notice a class of very singular works, in which the spirit of romance has been called in to render religion more attractive to certain heated imaginations.

In the fifteenth century was published a little book of prayers, accompanied by figures, both of a very uncommon nature for a religious publication. It is entitled Hortulus Animae, cum Oratiunculis aliquibus superadditis quae in prioribus Libris non habentur.

It is a small octavo en lettres gothiques, printed by John Grunninger, 1500. "A garden," says the author, "which abounds with flowers for the pleasure of the soul;" but they are full of poison. In spite of his fine promises, the chief part of these meditations are as puerile as they are superstitious. This we might excuse, because the ignorance and superstition of the times allowed such things: but the figures which accompany this work are to be condemned in all ages; one represents Saint Ursula and some of her eleven thousand virgins, with all the licentious inventions of an Aretine. What strikes the ear does not so much irritate the senses, observes the sage Horace, as what is presented in all its nudity to the eye. One of these designs is only ridiculous: David is represented as examining Bathsheba bathing, while Cupid hovering throws his dart, and with a malicious smile triumphs in his success. We have had many gross anachronisms in similar designs. There is a laughable picture in a village in Holland, in which Abraham appears ready to sacrifice his son Isaac by a loaded blunderbuss; but his pious intention is entirely frustrated by an angel urining in the pan. In another painting, the Virgin receives the annunciation of the angel Gabriel with a huge chaplet of beads tied round her waist, reading her own offices, and kneeling before a crucifix; another happy invention, to be seen on an altar-piece at Worms, is that in which the Virgin throws Jesus into the hopper of a mill, while from the other side he issues changed into little morsels of bread, with which the priests feast the people. Matthison, a modern traveller, describes a picture in a church at Constance, called the Conception of the Holy Virgin. An old man lies on a cloud, whence he darts out a vast beam, which passes through a dove hovering just below; at the end of a beam appears a large transparent egg, in which egg is seen a child in swaddling clothes with a glory round it. Mary sits leaning in an arm chair, and opens her mouth to receive the egg.

I must not pass unnoticed in this article a production as extravagant in its design, in which the author prided himself in discussing three thousand questions concerning the Virgin Mary.

The publication now adverted to was not presented to the world in a barbarous age and in a barbarous country, but printed at Paris in 1668. It bears for title, Devote Salutation des Membres sacres du Corps de la Glorieuse Vierge, Mere de Dieu. That is, "A Devout Salutation of the Holy Members of the Body of the glorious Virgin, Mother of God." It was printed and published with an approbation and privilege, which is more strange than the work itself. Valois reprobates it in these just terms: "What would Innocent XI. have done, after having abolished the shameful Office of the Conception, Indulgences, &c. if he had seen a volume in which the impertinent devotion of that visionary monk caused to be printed, with permission of his superiors, Meditations on all the Parts of the Body of the Holy Virgin? Religion, decency, and good sense, are equally struck at by such an extravagance." I give a specimen of the most decent of these salutations.

Salutation to the Hair.

"I salute you, charming hair of Maria! Rays of the mystical sun! Lines of the centre and circumference of all created perfection! Veins of gold of the mine of love! Chains of the prison of God! Roots of the tree of life! Rivulets of the fountain of Paradise! Strings of the bow of charity! Nets that caught Jesus, and shall be used in the hunting-day of souls!"

Salutation to the Ears.

"I salute ye, intelligent ears of Maria! ye presidents of the princes of the poor! Tribunal for their petitions; salvation at the audience of the miserable! University of all divine wisdom! Receivers general of all wards! Ye are pierced with the rings of our chains; ye are impearled with our necessities!"

The images, prints, and miniatures, with which the catholic religion has occasion to decorate its splendid ceremonies, have frequently been consecrated to the purposes of love: they have been so many votive offerings worthy to have been suspended in the temple of Idalia. Pope Alexander VI. had the images of the Virgin made to represent some of his mistresses; the famous Vanozza, his favourite, was placed on the altar of Santa, Maria del Popolo; and Julia Farnese furnished a subject for another Virgin. The same genius of pious gallantry also visited our country. The statuaries made the queen of Henry III. a model for the face of the Virgin Mary. Hearne elsewhere affirms, that the Virgin Mary was generally made to bear a resemblance to the queens of the age, which, no doubt, produced some real devotion among the courtiers.

The prayer-books of certain pious libertines were decorated with the portraits of their favourite minions and ladies in the characters of saints, and even of the Virgin and Jesus. This scandalous practice was particularly prevalent in that reign of debauchery in France, when Henry III. held the reins of government with a loose hand. In a missal once appertaining to the queen of Louis XII. may be seen a mitred ape, giving its benediction to a man prostrate before it; a keen reproach to the clergy of that day. Charles V., however pious that emperor affected to be, had a missal painted for his mistress by the great Albert Durer, the borders of which are crowded with extravagant grotesques, consisting of apes, who were sometimes elegantly sportive, giving clysters to one another, and in more offensive attitudes, not adapted to heighten the piety of the Royal Mistress. This missal has two French verses written by the Emperor himself, who does not seem to have been ashamed of his present. The Italians carried this taste to excess. The manners of our country were more rarely tainted with this deplorable licentiousness, although I have observed an innocent tendency towards it, by examining the illuminated manuscripts of our ancient metrical romances: while we admire the vivid colouring of these splendid manuscripts, the curious observer will perceive that almost every heroine is represented in a state which appears incompatible with her reputation. Most of these works are, I believe, by French artists.

A supplement might be formed to religious indecencies from the Golden Legend, which abounds in them. Henry Stephens's Apology for Herodotus might be likewise consulted with effect for the same purpose. There is a story of St. Mary the Egyptian, who was perhaps a looser liver than Mary Magdalen; for not being able to pay for her passage to Jerusalem, whither she was going to adore the holy cross and sepulchre, in despair she thought of an expedient in lieu of payment to the ferryman, which required at least going twice, instead of once, to Jerusalem as a penitential pilgrimage. This anecdote presents the genuine character of certain devotees.

Melchior Inchoffer, a Jesuit, published a book to vindicate the miracle of a Letter which the Virgin Mary had addressed to the citizens of Messina: when Naude brought him positive proofs of its evident forgery, Inchoffer ingenuously confessed the imposture, but pleaded that it was done by the orders of his superiors.

This same letter of the Virgin Mary was like a donation made to her by Louis the Eleventh of the whole county of Boulogne, retaining, however, for his own use the revenues! This solemn act bears the date of the year 1478, and is entitled, "Conveyance of Louis the Eleventh to the Virgin of Boulogne, of the right and title of the fief and homage of the county of Boulogne, which is held by the Count of Saint Pol, to render a faithful account before the image of the said lady."

Maria Agreda, a religious visionary, wrote The Life of the Virgin. She informs us that she resisted the commands of God and the holy Mary till the year 1637, when she began to compose this curious rhapsody. When she had finished this original production, her confessor advised her to burn it; she obeyed. Her friends, however, who did not think her less inspired than she informed them she was, advised her to re-write the work. When printed it spread rapidly from country to country: new editions appeared at Lisbon, Madrid, Perpignan, and Antwerp. It was the rose of Sharon for those climates. There are so many pious absurdities in this book, which were found to give such pleasure to the devout, that it was solemnly honoured with the censure of the Sorbonne; and it spread the more.

The head of this lady was quite turned by her religion. In the first six chapters she relates the visions of the Virgin, which induced her to write her life. She begins the history ab ovo, as it may be expressed; for she has formed a narrative of what passed during the nine months in which the Virgin was confined in the womb of her mother St. Anne. After the birth of Mary, she received an augmentation of angelic guards; we have several conversations which God held with the Virgin during the first eighteen months after her birth. And it is in this manner she formed a circulating novel, which delighted the female devotees of the seventeenth century.

The worship paid to the Virgin Mary in Spain and Italy exceeds that which is given to the Son or the Father. When they pray to Mary, their imagination pictures a beautiful woman, they really feel a passion; while Jesus is only regarded as a Bambino, or infant at the breast, and the Father is hardly ever recollected: but the Madonna la Senhora, la Maria Santa, while she inspires their religious inclinations, is a mistress to those who have none.

Of similar works there exists an entire race, and the libraries of the curious may yet preserve a shelf of these religious nouvellettes. The Jesuits were the usual authors of these rhapsodies. I find an account of a book which pretends to describe what passes in Paradise. A Spanish Jesuit published at Salamanca a volume in folio, 1652, entitled Empyreologia. He dwells with great complacency on the joys of the celestial abode; there always will be music in heaven with material instruments as our ears are already accustomed to; otherwise he thinks the celestial music would not be music for us! But another Jesuit is more particular in his accounts. He positively assures us that we shall experience a supreme pleasure in kissing and embracing the bodies of the blessed; they will bathe in the presence of each other, and for this purpose there are most agreeable baths in which we shall swim like fish; that we shall all warble as sweetly as larks and nightingales; that the angels will dress themselves in female habits, their hair curled; wearing petticoats and fardingales, and with the finest linen; that men and women will amuse themselves in masquerades, feasts, and balls.—Women will sing more agreeably than men to heighten these entertainments, and at the resurrection will have more luxuriant tresses, ornamented with ribands and head-dresses as in this life!

Such were the books once so devoutly studied, and which doubtless were often literally understood. How very bold must the minds of the Jesuits have been, and how very humble those of their readers, that such extravagances should ever be published! And yet, even to the time in which I am now writing,—even at this day,—the same picturesque and impassioned pencil is employed by the modern Apostles of Mysticism—the Swedenborgians, the Moravians, the Methodists!

I find an account of another book of this class, ridiculous enough to be noticed. It has for title, "The Spiritual Kalendar, composed of as many Madrigals or Sonnets and Epigrams as there are days in the year; written for the consolation of the pious and the curious. By Father G. Cortade, Austin Preacher at Bayonne, 1665." To give a notion of this singular collection take an Epigram addressed to a Jesuit, who, young as he was, used to put spurs under his shirt to mortify the outer man! The Kalendar-poet thus gives a point to these spurs:—

Il ne pourra done plus ni ruer ni hennir Sous le rude Eperon dont tu fais son supplice; Qui vit jamais tel artifice, De piquer un cheval pour le mieux retenir!

HUMBLY INTIMATED.

Your body no more will neigh and will kick, The point of the spur must eternally prick; Whoever contrived a thing with such skill, To keep spurring a horse to make him stand still!

One of the most extravagant works projected on the subject of the Virgin Mary was the following:—The prior of a convent in Paris had reiteratedly entreated Varillas the historian to examine a work composed by one of the monks; and of which—not being himself addicted to letters—he wished to be governed by his opinion. Varillas at length yielded to the entreaties of the prior; and to regale the critic, they laid on two tables for his inspection seven enormous volumes in folio.

This rather disheartened our reviewer: but greater was his astonishment, when, having opened the first volume, he found its title to be Summa Dei-parae; and as Saint Thomas had made a Sum, or System of Theology, so our monk had formed a System of the Virgin! He immediately comprehended the design of our good father, who had laboured on this work full thirty years, and who boasted he had treated Three Thousand Questions concerning the Virgin! of which he flattered himself not a single one had ever yet been imagined by any one but himself!

Perhaps a more extraordinary design was never known. Varillas, pressed to give his judgment on this work, advised the prior with great prudence and good-nature to amuse the honest old monk with the hope of printing these seven folios, but always to start some new difficulties; for it would be inhuman to occasion so deep a chagrin to a man who had reached his seventy-fourth year, as to inform him of the nature of his favourite occupations; and that after his death he should throw the seven folios into the fire.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 96: Since this article was written, many of these ancient Mysteries and Moralities have been printed at home and abroad. Hone, in his "Ancient Mysteries Described," 1825, first gave a summary of the Ludus Coventriae, the famous mysteries performed by the trading companies of Coventry; the entire series have been since printed by the Shakspeare Society, under the editorship of Mr. Halliwell, and consist of forty-two dramas, founded on incidents in the Old and New Testaments. The equally famous Chester Mysteries were also printed by the same society under the editorship of Mr. Wright, and consist of twenty-five long dramas, commencing with "The Fall of Lucifer," and ending with "Doomsday." In 1834, the Abbotsford Club published some others from the Digby MS., in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In 1825, Mr. Sharp, of Coventry, published a dissertation on the Mysteries once performed there, and printed the Pageant of the Sheremen and Taylor's Company; and in 1836 the Abbotsford Club printed the Pageant played by the Weavers of that city. In 1836, the Surtees Society published the series known as The Towneley Mysteries, consisting of thirty-two dramas; in 1838, Dr. Marriott published in English, at Basle, a selection of the most curious of these dramas. In 1837, M. Achille Jubinal published two octavo volumes of French "Mysteres inedits du Quinzieme Siecle." This list might be swelled by other notes of such books, printed within the last thirty years, in illustration of these early religious dramas.]

[Footnote 97: In Jubinal's Tapisseries Anciennes is engraved that found in the tent of Charles the Bold, at Nancy, and still preserved in that city. It is particularly curious, inasmuch as it depicts the incidents described in the Morality above-named.]

[Footnote 98: The British Museum library was enriched in 1845 by a very curions collection of these old comic plays, which was formed about 1560. It consists of sixty-four dramas, of which number only five or six were known before. They are exceedingly curious as pictures of early manners and amusements; very simple in construction, and containing few characters. One is a comic dialogue between two persons as to the best way of managing a wife. Another has for its plot the adventure of a husband sent from home by the seigneur of the village, that he may obtain access to his wife; and who is checkmated by the peasant, who repairs to the neglected lady of the seigneur. Some are entirely composed of allegorical characters; all are broadly comic, in language equally broad. They were played by a jocular society, whose chief was termed Prince des Sots; hence the name Sotties given to the farces.]

[Footnote 99: The peasants of the Ober-Ammergau, a village in the Bavarian Alps, still perform, at intervals of ten years, a long miracle play, detailing the chief incidents of the Passion of our Saviour from his entrance into Jerusalem to his ascension. It is done in fulfilment of a vow made during a pestilence in 1633. The performance lasted twelve hours in 1850, when it was last performed. The actors were all of the peasant class.]



"CRITICAL SAGACITY," AND "HAPPY CONJECTURE;" OR, BENTLEY'S MILTON.

——BENTLEY, long to wrangling schools confined, And but by books acquainted with mankind—— To MILTON lending sense, to HORACE wit, He makes them write, what never poet writ.

DR. BENTLEY'S edition of our English Homer is sufficiently known by name. As it stands a terrifying beacon to conjectural criticism, I shall just notice some of those violations which the learned critic ventured to commit, with all the arrogance of a Scaliger. This man, so deeply versed in ancient learning, it will appear, was destitute of taste and genius in his native language.

Our critic, to persuade the world of the necessity of his edition, imagined a fictitious editor of Milton's Poems: and it was this ingenuity which produced all his absurdities. As it is certain that the blind bard employed an amanuensis, it was not improbable that many words of similar sound, but very different signification, might have disfigured the poem; but our Doctor was bold enough to conjecture that this amanuensis interpolated whole verses of his own composition in the "Paradise Lost!" Having laid down this fatal position, all the consequences of his folly naturally followed it. Yet if there needs any conjecture, the more probable one will be, that Milton, who was never careless of his future fame, had his poem read to him after it had been published. The first edition appeared in 1667, and the second in 1674, in which all the faults of the former edition are continued. By these faults, the Doctor means what he considers to be such: for we shall soon see that his "Canons of Criticism" are apocryphal.

Bentley says that he will supply the want of manuscripts to collate (to use his own words) by his own "SAGACITY," and "HAPPY CONJECTURE."

Milton, after the conclusion of Satan's speech to the fallen angels, proceeds thus:—

1. He spake: and to confirm his words out flew 2. Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs 3. Of mighty cherubim: the sudden blaze 4. Far round illumin'd hell; highly they rag'd 5. Against the Highest; and fierce with grasped arms 6. Clash'd on their sounding shields the din of war, 7. Hurling defiance tow'rd the Vault of heaven.

In this passage, which is as perfect as human wit can make, the Doctor alters three words. In the second line he puts blades instead of swords; in the fifth he puts swords instead of arms; and in the last line he prefers walls to vault. All these changes are so many defoedations of the poem. The word swords is far more poetical than blades, which may as well be understood of knives as swords. The word arms, the generic for the specific term, is still stronger and nobler than swords; and the beautiful conception of vault, which is always indefinite to the eye, while the solidity of walls would but meanly describe the highest Heaven, gives an idea of grandeur and modesty.

Milton writes, book i. v. 63—

No light, but rather DARKNESS VISIBLE Served only to discover sights of woe.

Perhaps borrowed from Spenser:—

A little glooming light, much like a shade. Faery Queene, b. i. c. 2. st. 14.

This fine expression of "DARKNESS VISIBLE" the Doctor's critical sagacity has thus rendered clearer:—

No light, but rather A TRANSPICIUOUS GLOOM.

Again, our learned critic distinguishes the 74th line of the first book—

As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole,

as "a vicious verse," and therefore with "happy conjecture," and no taste, thrusts in an entire verse of his own composition—

DISTANCE WHICH TO EXPRESS ALL MEASURE FAILS.

Milton writes,

Our torments, also, may in length of time Become our elements. B. ii. ver. 274.

Bentley corrects—

Then, AS WAS WELL OBSERV'D our torments may Become our elements.

A curious instance how the insertion of a single prosaic expression turns a fine verse into something worse than the vilest prose.

To conclude with one more instance of critical emendation: Milton says, with an agreeable turn of expression—

So parted they; the angel up to heaven, From the thick shade; and Adam to his bower.

Bentley "conjectures" these two verses to be inaccurate, and in lieu of the last writes—

ADAM, TO RUMINATE ON PAST DISCOURSE.

And then our erudite critic reasons! as thus:—

After the conversation between the Angel and Adam in the bower, it may be well presumed that our first parent waited on his heavenly guest at his departure to some little distance from it, till he began to take his flight towards heaven; and therefore "sagaciously" thinks that the poet could not with propriety say that the angel parted from the thick shade, that is, the bower, to go to heaven. But if Adam attended the Angel no farther than the door or entrance of the bower, then he shrewdly asks, "How Adam could return to his bower if he was never out of it?"

Our editor has made a thousand similar corrections in his edition of Milton! Some have suspected that the same kind intention which prompted Dryden to persuade Creech to undertake a translation of Horace influenced those who encouraged our Doctor, in thus exercising his "sagacity" and "happy conjecture" on the epic of Milton. He is one of those learned critics who have happily "elucidated their author into obscurity," and comes nearest to that "true conjectural critic" whose practice a Portuguese satirist so greatly admired: by which means, if he be only followed up by future editors, we might have that immaculate edition, in which little or nothing should be found of the original!

I have collected these few instances as not uninteresting to men of taste; they may convince us that a scholar may be familiarized to Greek and Latin, though a stranger to his vernacular literature; and that a verbal critic may sometimes be successful in his attempts on a single word, though he may be incapable of tasting an entire sentence. Let it also remain as a gibbet on the high roads of literature; that "conjectural critics" as they pass may not forget the unhappy fate of Bentley.

The following epigram appeared on this occasion:—

ON MILTON'S EXECUTIONER.

Did MILTON'S PROSE, O CHARLES! thy death defend? A furious foe, unconscious, proves a friend; On MILTON'S VERSE does BENTLEY comment? know, A weak officious friend becomes a foe. While he would seem his author's fame to farther, The MURTHEROUS critic has avenged thy MURTHER.

The classical learning of Bentley was singular and acute; but the erudition of words is frequently found not to be allied to the sensibility of taste.[100]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 100: An amusing instance of his classical emendations occurs in the text of Shakspeare. [King Henry IV. pt. 2, act 1, sc. 1.] The poet speaks of one who

"——woebegone Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him half his Troy was burn'd."

Bentley alters the first word of the sentence to a proper name, which is given in the third book of the Iliad, and the second of the AEneid; and reads the passage thus:—

"——Ucaligon Drew Priam's curtain," &c.!]



A JANSENIST DICTIONARY.

When L'Advocat published his concise Biographical Dictionary, the Jansenists, the methodists of France, considered it as having been written with a view to depreciate the merit of their friends. The spirit of party is too soon alarmed. The Abbe Barral undertook a dictionary devoted to their cause. In this labour, assisted by his good friends the Jansenists, he indulged all the impetuosity and acerbity of a splenetic adversary. The Abbe was, however, an able writer; his anecdotes are numerous and well chosen; and his style is rapid and glowing. The work bears for title, "Dictionnaire Historique, Litteraire, et Critique, des Hommes Celebres," 6 vols. 8vo. 1719. It is no unuseful speculation to observe in what manner a faction represents those who have not been its favourites: for this purpose I select the characters of Fenelon, Cranmer, and Luther.

Of Fenelon they write, "He composed for the instruction of the Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou, and Berri, several works; amongst others, the Telemachus—a singular book, which partakes at once of the character of a romance and of a poem, and which substitutes a prosaic cadence for versification."

But several luscious pictures would not lead us to suspect that this book issued from the pen of a sacred minister for the education of a prince; and what we are told by a famous poet is not improbable, that Fenelon did not compose it at court, but that it is the fruits of his retreat in his diocese. And indeed the amours of Calypso and Eucharis should not be the first lessons that a minister ought to give his scholars; and, besides, the fine moral maxims which the author attributes to the Pagan divinities are not well placed in their mouth. Is not this rendering homage to the demons of the great truths which we receive from the Gospel, and to despoil J. C. to render respectable the annihilated gods of paganism? This prelate was a wretched divine, more familiar with the light of profane authors than with that of the fathers of the church. Phelipeaux has given us, in his narrative of Quietism, the portrait of the friend of Madame Guyon. This archbishop has a lively genius, artful and supple, which can flatter and dissimulate, if ever any could. Seduced by a woman, he was solicitous to spread his seduction. He joined to the politeness and elegance of conversation a modest air, which rendered him amiable. He spoke of spirituality with the expression and the enthusiasm of a prophet; with such talents he flattered himself that everything would yield to him.

In this work the Protestants, particularly the first Reformers, find no quarter; and thus virulently their rabid catholicism exults over the hapless end of Cranmer, the first Protestant archbishop:—

"Thomas Cranmer married the sister of Osiander. As Henry VIII. detested married priests, Cranmer kept this second marriage in profound secrecy. This action serves to show the character of this great reformer, who is the hero of Burnet, whose history is so much esteemed in England. What blindness to suppose him an Athanasius, who was at once a Lutheran secretly married, a consecrated archbishop under the Roman pontiff whose power he detested, saying the mass in which he did not believe, and granting a power to say it! The divine vengeance burst on this sycophantic courtier, who had always prostituted his conscience to his fortune."

Their character of Luther is quite Lutheran in one sense, for Luther was himself a stranger to moderate strictures:—

"The furious Luther, perceiving himself assisted by the credit of several princes, broke loose against the church with the most inveterate rage, and rung the most terrible alarum against the pope. According to him we should have set fire to everything, and reduced to one heap of ashes the pope and the princes who supported him. Nothing equals the rage of this phrenetic man, who was not satisfied with exhaling his fury in horrid declamations, but who was for putting all in practice. He raised his excesses to the height by inveighing against the vow of chastity, and in marrying publicly Catherine de Bore, a nun, whom he enticed, with eight others, from their convents. He had prepared the minds of the people for this infamous proceeding by a treatise which he entitled 'Examples of the Papistical Doctrine and Theology,' in which he condemns the praises which all the saints had given to continence. He died at length quietly enough, in 1546, at Eisleben, his country place—God reserving the terrible effects of his vengeance to another life."

Cranmer, who perished at the stake, these fanatic religionists proclaim as an example of "divine vengeance;" but Luther, the true parent of the Reformation, "died quietly at Eisleben:" this must have puzzled their mode of reasoning; but they extricate themselves out of the dilemma by the usual way. Their curses are never what the lawyers call "lapsed legacies."



MANUSCRIPTS AND BOOKS.

It would be no uninteresting literary speculation to describe the difficulties which some of our most favourite works encountered in their manuscript state, and even after they had passed through the press. Sterne, when he had finished his first and second volumes of Tristram Shandy, offered them to a bookseller at York for fifty pounds; but was refused: he came to town with his MSS.; and he and Robert Dodsley agreed in a manner of which neither repented.

The Rosciad, with all its merit, lay for a considerable time in a dormant state, till Churchill and his publisher became impatient, and almost hopeless of success.—Burn's Justice was disposed of by its author, who was weary of soliciting booksellers to purchase the MS., for a trifle, and it now yields an annual income. Collins burnt his odes after indemnifying his publisher. The publication of Dr. Blair's Sermons was refused by Strahan, and the "Essay on the Immutability of Truth," by Dr. Beattie, could find no publisher, and was printed by two friends of the author, at their joint expense.

"The sermon in Tristram Shandy" (says Sterne, in his preface to his Sermons) "was printed by itself some years ago, but could find neither purchasers nor readers." When it was inserted in his eccentric work, it met with a most favourable reception, and occasioned the others to be collected.

Joseph Warton writes, "When Gray published his exquisite Ode on Eton College, his first publication, little notice was taken of it." The Polyeucte of Corneille, which is now accounted to be his masterpiece, when he read it to the literary assembly held at the Hotel de Rambouillet, was not approved. Voiture came the next day, and in gentle terms acquainted him with the unfavourable opinion of the critics. Such ill judges were then the most fashionable wits of France!

It was with great difficulty that Mrs. Centlivre could get her "Busy Body" performed. Wilks threw down his part with an oath of detestation—our comic authoress fell on her knees and wept.—Her tears, and not her wit, prevailed.

A pamphlet published in the year 1738, entitled "A Letter to the Society of Booksellers, on the Method of forming a true Judgment of the Manuscripts of Authors," contains some curious literary intelligence.

"We have known books, that in the MS. have been damned, as well as others which seem to be so, since, after their appearance in the world, they have often lain by neglected. Witness the 'Paradise Lost' of the famous Milton, and the Optics of Sir Isaac Newton, which last, 'tis said, had no character or credit here till noticed in France. 'The Historical Connection of the Old and New Testament,' by Shuckford, is also reported to have been seldom inquired after for about a twelvemonth's time; however, it made a shift, though not without some difficulty, to creep up to a second edition, and afterwards even to a third. And which is another remarkable instance, the manuscript of Dr. Prideaux's 'Connection' is well known to have been bandied about from hand to hand among several, at least five or six, of the most eminent booksellers, during the space of at least two years, to no purpose, none of them undertaking to print that excellent work. It lay in obscurity, till Archdeacon Echard, the author's friend, strongly recommended it to Tonson. It was purchased, and the publication was very successful. Robinson Crusoe in manuscript also ran through the whole trade, nor would any one print it, though the writer, De Foe, was in good repute as an author. One bookseller at last, not remarkable for his discernment, but for his speculative turn, engaged in this publication. This bookseller got above a thousand guineas by it; and the booksellers are accumulating money every hour by editions of this work in all shapes. The undertaker of the translation of Rapin, after a very considerable part of the work had been published, was not a little dubious of its success, and was strongly inclined to drop the design. It proved at last to be a most profitable literary adventure." It is, perhaps, useful to record, that while the fine compositions of genius and the elaborate labours of erudition are doomed to encounter these obstacles to fame, and never are but slightly remunerated, works of another description are rewarded in the most princely manner; at the recent sale of a bookseller, the copyright of "Vyse's Spelling-book" was sold at the enormous price of L2200, with an annuity of 50 guineas to the author!



THE TURKISH SPY.

Whatever may be the defects of the "Turkish Spy," the author has shown one uncommon merit, by having opened a new species of composition, which has been pursued by other writers with inferior success, if we except the charming "Persian Letters" of Montesquieu. The "Turkish Spy" is a book which has delighted our childhood, and to which we can still recur with pleasure. But its ingenious author is unknown to three parts of his admirers.

In Boswell's "Life of Johnson" is this dialogue concerning the writer of the "Turkish Spy." "B.—Pray, Sir, is the 'Turkish Spy' a genuine book? J.—No, Sir. Mrs. Mauley, in her 'Life' says, that her father wrote the two first volumes; and in another book—'Dunton's Life and Errours,' we find that the rest was written by one Sault, at two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley."

I do not know on what authority Mrs. Manley advances that her father was the author; but this lady was never nice in detailing facts. Dunton, indeed, gives some information in a very loose manner. He tells us, p. 242, that it is probable, by reasons which he insinuates, that one Bradshaw, a hackney author, was the writer of the "Turkish Spy." This man probably was engaged by Dr. Midgeley to translate the volumes as they appeared, at the rate of 40s. per sheet. On the whole, all this proves, at least, how little the author was known while the volumes were publishing, and that he is as little known at present by the extract from Boswell.

The ingenious writer of the Turkish Spy is John Paul Marana, an Italian; so that the Turkish Spy is just as real a personage as Cid Hamet, from whom Cervantes says he had his "History of Don Quixote." Marana had been imprisoned for a political conspiracy; after his release he retired to Monaco, where he wrote the "History of the Plot," which is said to be valuable for many curious particulars. Marana was at once a man of letters and of the world. He had long wished to reside at Paris; in that emporium of taste and luxury his talents procured him patrons. It was during his residence there that he produced his "Turkish Spy." By this ingenious contrivance he gave the history of the last age. He displays a rich memory, and a lively imagination; but critics have said that he touches everything, and penetrates nothing. His first three volumes greatly pleased: the rest are inferior. Plutarch, Seneca, and Pliny, were his favourite authors. He lived in philosophical mediocrity; and in the last years of his life retired to his native country, where he died in 1693.

Charpentier gave the first particulars of this ingenious man. Even in his time the volumes were read as they came out, while its author remained unknown. Charpentier's proof of the author is indisputable; for he preserved the following curious certificate, written in Marana's own handwriting.

"I, the under-written John Paul Marana, author of a manuscript Italian volume, entitled 'L'Esploratore Turco, tomo terzo,' acknowledge that Mr. Charpentier, appointed by the Lord Chancellor to revise the said manuscript, has not granted me his certificate for printing the said manuscript, but on condition to rescind four passages. The first beginning, &c. By this I promise to suppress from the said manuscript the places above marked, so that there shall remain no vestige; since, without agreeing to this, the said certificate would not have been granted to me by the said Mr. Charpentier; and for surety of the above, which I acknowledge to be true, and which I promise punctually to execute, I have signed the present writing. Paris, 28th September, 1686.

"JOHN PAUL MARANA."

This paper serves as a curious instance in what manner the censors of books clipped the wings of genius when it was found too daring or excursive.

These rescindings of the Censor appear to be marked by Marana in the printed work. We find more than once chasms, with these words: "the beginning of this letter is wanting in the Italian translation; the original paper being torn."

No one has yet taken the pains to observe the date of the first editions of the French and the English Turkish Spies, which would settle the disputed origin. It appears by the document before us, to have been originally written in Italian, but probably was first published in French. Does the English Turkish Spy differ from the French one?[101]



SPENSER, JONSON, AND SHAKSPEARE.

The characters of these three great masters of English poetry are sketched by Fuller, in his "Worthies of England." It is a literary morsel that must not be passed by. The criticisms of those who lived in or near the times when authors flourished merit our observation. They sometimes elicit a ray of intelligence, which later opinions do not always give.

He observes on SPENSER—"The many Chaucerisms used (for I will not say affected by him) are thought by the ignorant to be blemishes, known by the learned to be beauties, to his book; which, notwithstanding, had been more SALEABLE, if more conformed to our modern language."

On JONSON.—"His parts were not so ready to run of themselves, as able to answer the spur; so that it may be truly said of him, that he had an elaborate wit, wrought out by his own industry.—He would sit silent in learned company, and suck in (besides wine) their several humours into his observation. What was ore in others, he was able to refine himself.

"He was paramount in the dramatic part of poetry, and taught the stage an exact conformity to the laws of comedians. His comedies were above the Volge (which are only tickled with downright obscenity), and took not so well at the first stroke as at the rebound, when beheld the second time; yea, they will endure reading so long as either ingenuity or learning are fashionable in our nation. If his latter be not so spriteful and vigorous as his first pieces, all that are old will, and all who desire to be old should, excuse him therein."

On SHAKSPEARE.—"He was an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, poeta non fit, sed nascitur; one is not made, but born a poet. Indeed his learning was but very little; so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smooth, even as they are taken out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art which was used upon him.

"Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and an English man of war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with an English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention."

Had these "Wit-combats," between Shakspeare and Jonson, which Fuller notices, been chronicled by some faithful Boswell of the age, our literary history would have received an interesting accession. A letter has been published by Dr. Berkenhout relating to an evening's conversation between our great rival bards, and Alleyn the actor. Peele, a dramatic poet, writes to his friend Marlow, another poet. The Doctor unfortunately in giving this copy did not recollect his authority.

"FRIEND MARLOW,

"I never longed for thy companye more than last night: we were all very merrye at the Globe, where Ned Alleyn did not scruple to affirme pleasantly to thy friend WILL, that he had stolen his speech about the qualityes of an actor's excellencye in Hamlet his Tragedye, from conversations manyfold which had passed between them, and opinyons given by Alleyn touchinge this subject. SHAKSPEARE did not take this talk in good sorte; but JONSON put an end to the strife, by wittylie remarking,—this affaire needeth no contention: you stole it from NED, no doubt, do not marvel; have you not seen him act times out of number?"

This letter is one of those ingenious forgeries which the late George Steevens practised on the literary antiquary; they were not always of this innocent cast. The present has been frequently quoted as an original document. I have preserved it as an example of Literary Forgeries, and the danger which literary historians incur by such nefarious practices.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 101: Marana appears to have carelessly deserted his literary offspring. It is not improbable that his English translators continued his plan, and that their volumes were translated; so that what appears the French original may be, for the greater part, of our own home manufacture. The superiority of the first part was early perceived. The history of our ancient Grub-street is enveloped in the obscurity of its members, and there are more claimants than one for the honour of this continuation. We know too little of Marana to account for his silence; Cervantes was indignant at the impudent genius who dared to continue the immortal Quixote.

The tale remains imperfectly told.

See a correspondence on this subject in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1840 and 1841.]



BEN JONSON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH.

Ben Jonson, like most celebrated wits, was very unfortunate in conciliating the affections of his brother writers. He certainly possessed a great share of arrogance, and was desirous of ruling the realms of Parnassus with a despotic sceptre. That he was not always successful in his theatrical compositions is evident from his abusing, in their title-page, the actors and the public. In this he has been imitated by Fielding. I have collected the following three satiric odes, written when the reception of his "New Inn, or The Light Heart," warmly exasperated the irritable disposition of our poet.

He printed the title in the following manner:—

"The New Inn, or The Light Heart; a Comedy never acted, but most negligently played by some, the King's servants; and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the King's subjects, 1629. Now at last set at liberty to the readers, his Majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged, 1631."

At the end of this play he published the following Ode, in which he threatens to quit the stage for ever; and turn at once a Horace, an Anacreon, and a Pindar.

"The just indignation the author took at the vulgar censure of his play, begat this following Ode to himself:—

Come, leave the loathed stage, And the more loathsome age; Where pride and impudence (in faction knit,) Usurp the chair of wit; Inditing and arraigning every day Something they call a play. Let their fastidious, vaine Commission of braine Run on, and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn; They were not made for thee,—less thou for them.

Say that thou pour'st them wheat, And they will acorns eat; 'Twere simple fury, still, thyself to waste On such as have no taste! To offer them a surfeit of pure bread, Whose appetites are dead! No, give them graines their fill, Husks, draff, to drink and swill. If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, Envy them not their palate with the swine.

No doubt some mouldy tale Like PERICLES,[102] and stale As the shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish— Scraps, out of every dish Thrown forth, and rak't into the common-tub, May keep up the play-club: There sweepings do as well As the best order'd meale, For who the relish of these guests will fit, Needs set them but the almes-basket of wit.

And much good do't you then, Brave plush and velvet men Can feed on orts, and safe in your stage clothes, Dare quit, upon your oathes, The stagers, and the stage-wrights too (your peers), Of larding your large ears With their foul comic socks, Wrought upon twenty blocks: Which if they're torn, and turn'd, and patch'd enough The gamesters share your gilt and you their stuff.

Leave things so prostitute, And take the Alcaeick lute, Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre; Warm thee by Pindar's fire; And, tho' thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold, Ere years have made thee old, Strike that disdainful heat Throughout, to their defeat; As curious fools, and envious of thy strain, May, blushing, swear no palsy's in thy brain.[103]

But when they hear thee sing The glories of thy King, His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men, They may blood-shaken then, Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers, As they shall cry 'like ours, In sound of peace, or wars, No harp ere hit the stars, In tuning forth the acts of his sweet raign, And raising Charles his chariot 'bove his wain.'"

This Magisterial Ode, as Langbaine calls it, was answered by Owen Feltham, author of the admirable "Resolves," who has written with great satiric acerbity the retort courteous. His character of this poet should be attended to:—

AN ANSWER TO THE ODE, COME LEAVE THE LOATHED STAGE, &C.

Come leave this sawcy way Of baiting those that pay Dear for the sight of your declining wit: 'Tis known it is not fit That a sale poet, just contempt once thrown, Should cry up thus his own. I wonder by what dower, Or patent, you had power From all to rape a judgment. Let't suffice, Had you been modest, y'ad been granted wise.

'Tis known you can do well, And that you do excell As a translator; but when things require A genius, and fire, Not kindled heretofore by other pains, As oft y'ave wanted brains And art to strike the white, As you have levell'd right: Yet if men vouch not things apocryphal, You bellow, rave, and spatter round your gall.

Jug, Pierce, Peek, Fly,[104] and all Your jests so nominal, Are things so far beneath an able brain, As they do throw a stain Thro' all th' unlikely plot, and do displease As deep as PERICLES. Where yet there is not laid Before a chamber-maid Discourse so weigh'd,[105] as might have serv'd of old For schools, when they of love and valour told.

Why rage, then? when the show Should judgment be, and know-[106] ledge, there are plush who scorn to drudge For stages, yet can judge Not only poet's looser lines, but wits, And all their perquisits; A gift as rich as high Is noble poesie: Yet, tho' in sport it be for Kings to play, 'Tis next mechanicks' when it works for pay.

Alcaeus lute had none, Nor loose Anacreon E'er taught so bold assuming of the bays When they deserv'd no praise. To rail men into approbation Is new to your's alone: And prospers not: for known, Fame is as coy, as you Can be disdainful; and who dares to prove A rape on her shall gather scorn—not love.

Leave then this humour vain, And this more humourous strain, Where self-conceit, and choler of the blood, Eclipse what else is good: Then, if you please those raptures high to touch, Whereof you boast so much: And but forbear your crown Till the world puts it on: No doubt, from all you may amazement draw, Since braver theme no Phoebus ever saw.

To console dejected Ben for this just reprimand, Randolph, of the adopted poetical sons of Jonson, addressed him with all that warmth of grateful affection which a man of genius should have felt on the occasion.

AN ANSWER TO MR. BEN JONSON'S ODE, TO PERSUADE HIM NOT TO LEAVE THE STAGE.

I.

Ben, do not leave the stage Cause 'tis a loathsome age; For pride and impudence will grow too bold, When they shall hear it told They frighted thee; Stand high, as is thy cause; Their hiss is thy applause: More just were thy disdain, Had they approved thy vein: So thou for them, and they for thee were born; They to incense, and thou as much to scorn.

II.

Wilt thou engross thy store Of wheat, and pour no more, Because their bacon-brains had such a taste As more delight in mast: No! set them forth a board of dainties, full As thy best muse can cull Whilst they the while do pine And thirst, midst all their wine. What greater plague can hell itself devise, Than to be willing thus to tantalise?

III.

Thou canst not find them stuff, That will be bad enough To please their palates: let 'em them refuse, For some Pye-corner muse; She is too fair an hostess, 'twere a sin For them to like thine Inn: 'Twas made to entertain Guests of a nobler strain; Yet, if they will have any of the store, Give them some scraps, and send them from thy dore.

IV.

And let those things in plush Till they be taught to blush, Like what they will, and more contented be With what Broome[107] swept from thee. I know thy worth, and that thy lofty strains Write not to cloaths, but brains: But thy great spleen doth rise, 'Cause moles will have no eyes; This only in my Ben I faulty find, He's angry they'll not see him that are blind.

V.

Why shou'd the scene be mute 'Cause thou canst touch the lute And string thy Horace! Let each Muse of nine Claim thee, and say, th'art mine. 'Twere fond, to let all other flames expire, To sit by Pindar's fire: For by so strange neglect I should myself suspect Thy palsie were as well thy brain's disease, If they could shake thy muse which way they please.

VI.

And tho' thou well canst sing The glories of thy King, And on the wings of verse his chariot bear To heaven, and fix it there; Yet let thy muse as well some raptures raise To please him, as to praise. I would not have thee chuse Only a treble muse; But have this envious, ignorant age to know, Thou that canst sing so high, canst reach as low.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 102: This play, Langbaine says, is written by Shakspeare.]

[Footnote 103: He had the palsy at that time.]

[Footnote 104: The names of several of Jonson's dramatis personae.]

[Footnote 105: New Inn, Act iii. Scene 2.—Act iv. Scene 4.]

[Footnote 106: This break was purposely designed by the poet, to expose that singular one in Ben's third stanza.]

[Footnote 107: His man, Richard Broome, wrote with success several comedies. He had been the amanuensis or attendant of Jonson. The epigram made against Pope for the assistance W. Broome gave him appears to have been borrowed from this pun. Johnson has inserted it in "Broome's Life."]



ARIOSTO AND TASSO.

It surprises one to find among the literary Italians the merits of Ariosto most keenly disputed: slaves to classical authority, they bend down to the majestic regularity of Tasso. Yet the father of Tasso, before his son had rivalled the romantic Ariosto, describes in a letter the effect of the "Orlando" on the people:—"There is no man of learning, no mechanic, no lad, no girl, no old man, who is satisfied to read the 'Orlando Furioso' once. This poem serves as the solace of the traveller, who fatigued on his journey deceives his lassitude by chanting some octaves of this poem. You may hear them sing these stanzas in the streets and in the fields every day." One would have expected that Ariosto would have been the favourite of the people, and Tasso of the critics. But in Venice the gondoliers, and others, sing passages which are generally taken from Tasso, and rarely from Ariosto. A different fate, I imagined, would have attended the poet who has been distinguished by the epithet of "The Divine." I have been told by an Italian man of letters, that this circumstance arose from the relation which Tasso's poem bears to Turkish affairs; as many of the common people have passed into Turkey either by chance or by war. Besides, the long antipathy existing between the Venetians and the Turks gave additional force to the patriotic poetry of Tasso. We cannot boast of any similar poems. Thus it was that the people of Greece and Ionia sang the poems of Homer.

The Accademia della Crusca gave a public preference to Ariosto. This irritated certain critics, and none more than Chapelain, who could taste the regularity of Tasso, but not feel the "brave disorder" of Ariosto. He could not approve of those writers,

Who snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.

"I thank you," he writes, "for the sonnet which your indignation dictated, at the Academy's preference of Ariosto to Tasso. This judgment is overthrown by the confessions of many of the Cruscanti, my associates. It would be tedious to enter into its discussion; but it was passion and not equity that prompted that decision. We confess, that, as to what concerns invention and purity of language, Ariosto has eminently the advantage over Tasso; but majesty, pomp, numbers, and a style truly sublime, united to regularity of design, raise the latter so much above the other that no comparison can fairly exist."

The decision of Chapelain is not unjust; though I did not know that Ariosto's language was purer than Tasso's.

Dr. Cocchi, the great Italian critic, compared "Ariosto's poem to the richer kind of harlequin's habit, made up of pieces of the very best silk, and of the liveliest colours. The parts of it are, many of them, more beautiful than in Tasso's poem, but the whole in Tasso is without comparison more of a piece and better made." The critic was extricating himself as safely as he could out of this critical dilemma; for the disputes were then so violent, that I think one of the disputants took to his bed, and was said to have died of Ariosto and Tasso.

It is the conceit of an Italian to give the name of April to Ariosto, because it is the season of flowers; and that of September to Tasso, which is that of fruits. Tiraboschi judiciously observes that no comparison ought to be made between these great rivals. It is comparing "Ovid's Metamorphoses" with "Virgil's AEneid;" they are quite different things. In his characters of the two poets, he distinguishes between a romantic poem and a regular epic. Their designs required distinct perfections. But an English reader is not enabled by the wretched versions of Hoole to echo the verse of La Fontaine, "JE CHERIS L'Arioste et J'ESTIME le Tasse."

Boileau, some time before his death, was asked by a critic if he had repented of his celebrated decision concerning the merits of Tasso, which some Italians had compared with those of Virgil? Boileau had hurled his bolts at these violators of classical majesty. It is supposed that he was ignorant of the Italian language, but some expressions in his answer may induce us to think that he was not.

"I have so little changed my opinion, that, on a re-perusal lately of Tasso, I was sorry that I had not more amply explained myself on this subject in some of my reflections on 'Longinus.' I should have begun by acknowledging that Tasso had a sublime genius, of great compass, with happy dispositions for the higher poetry. But when I came to the use he made of his talents, I should have shown that judicious discernment rarely prevailed in his works. That in the greater portion of his narrations he attached himself to the agreeable, oftener than to the just. That his descriptions are almost always overcharged with superfluous ornaments. That in painting the strongest passions, and in the midst of the agitations they excite, frequently he degenerates into witticisms, which abruptly destroy the pathetic. That he abounds with images of too florid a kind; affected turns; conceits and frivolous thoughts; which, far from being adapted to his Jerusalem, could hardly be supportable in his 'Aminta.' So that all this, opposed to the gravity, the sobriety, the majesty of Virgil, what is it but tinsel compared with gold?"

The merits of Tasso seem here precisely discriminated; and this criticism must be valuable to the lovers of poetry. The errors of Tasso were national.

In Venice the gondoliers know by heart long passages from Ariosto and Tasso, and often chant them with a peculiar melody. Goldoni, in his life, notices the gondolier returning with him to the city: "He turned the prow of the gondola towards the city, singing all the way the twenty-sixth stanza of the sixteenth canto of the Jerusalem Delivered." The late Mr. Barry once chanted to me a passage of Tasso in the manner of the gondoliers; and I have listened to such from one who in his youth had himself been a gondolier. An anonymous gentleman has greatly obliged me with his account of the recitation of these poets by the gondoliers of Venice.

There are always two concerned, who alternately sing the strophes. We know the melody eventually by Rousseau, to whose songs it is printed; it has properly no melodious movement, and is a sort of medium between the canto fermo and the canto figurato; it approaches to the former by recitativical declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, by which one syllable is detained and embellished.

I entered a gondola by moonlight: one singer placed himself forwards, and the other aft, and thus proceeded to Saint Giorgio. One began the song: when he had ended his strophe the other took up the lay, and so continued the song alternately. Throughout the whole of it, the same notes invariably returned; but, according to the subject matter of the strophe, they laid a greater or a smaller stress, sometimes on one, and sometimes on another note, and indeed changed the enunciation of the whole strophe, as the object of the poem altered.

On the whole, however, their sounds were hoarse and screaming: they seemed, in the manner of all rude uncivilised men, to make the excellency of their singing consist in the force of their voice: one seemed desirous of conquering the other by the strength of his lungs, and so far from receiving delight from this scene (shut up as I was in the box of the gondola), I found myself in a very unpleasant situation.

My companion, to whom I communicated this circumstance, being very desirous to keep up the credit of his countrymen, assured me that this singing was very delightful when heard at a distance. Accordingly we got out upon the shore, leaving one of the singers in the gondola, while the other went to the distance of some hundred paces. They now began to sing against one another; and I kept walking up and down between them both, so as always to leave him who was to begin his part. I frequently stood still, and hearkened to the one and to the other.

Here the scene was properly introduced. The strong declamatory, and, as it were, shrieking sound, met the ear from far, and called forth the attention; the quickly succeeding transitions, which necessarily required to be sung in a lower tone, seemed like plaintive strains succeeding the vociferations of emotion or of pain. The other, who listened attentively, immediately began where the former left off, answering him in milder or more vehement notes, according as the purport of the strophe required. The sleepy canals, the lofty buildings, the splendour of the moon, the deep shadows of the few gondolas that moved like spirits hither and thither, increased the striking peculiarity of the scene, and amidst all these circumstances it was easy to confess the character of this wonderful harmony.

It suits perfectly well with an idle solitary mariner, lying at length in his vessel at rest on one of these canals, waiting for his company or for a fare; the tiresomeness of which situation is somewhat alleviated by the songs and poetical stories he has in memory. He often raises his voice as loud as he can, which extends itself to a vast distance over the tranquil mirror; and, as all is still around, he is as it were in a solitude in the midst of a large and populous town. Here is no rattling of carriages, no noise of foot passengers; a silent gondola glides now and then by him, of which the splashing of the oars is scarcely to be heard.

At a distance he hears another, perhaps utterly unknown to him. Melody and verse immediately attach the two strangers; he becomes the responsive echo to the former, and exerts himself to be heard as he had heard the other. By a tacit convention they alternate verse for verse; though the song should last the whole night through, they entertain, themselves without fatigue; the hearers, who are passing between the two, take part in the amusement.

This vocal performance sounds best at a great distance, and is then inexpressibly charming, as it only fulfils its design in the sentiment of remoteness. It is plaintive, but not dismal in its sound; and at times it is scarcely possible to refrain from tears. My companion, who otherwise was not a very delicately organised person, said quite unexpectedly, "E singolare come quel canto intenerisce, e molto piu quando la cantano meglio."

I was told that the women of Lido, the long row of islands that divides the Adriatic from the Lagouns, particularly the women of the extreme districts of Malamocca and Palestrina, sing in like manner the works of Tasso to these and similar tunes.

They have the custom, when their husbands are fishing out at sea, to sit along the shore in the evenings and vociferate these songs, and continue to do so with great violence, till each of them can distinguish the responses of her own husband at a distance.

How much more delightful and more appropriate does this song show itself here, than the call of a solitary person uttered far and wide, till another equally disposed shall hear and answer him! It is the expression of a vehement and hearty longing, which yet is every moment nearer to the happiness of satisfaction.

Lord Byron has told us that with the independence of Venice the song of the gondolier has died away—

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more.

If this be not more poetical than true, it must have occurred at a moment when their last political change may have occasioned this silence on the waters. My servant Tita, who was formerly the servant of his lordship, and whose name has been immortalised in the "Italy" of Mr. Rogers, was himself a gondolier. He assures me that every night on the river the chant may be heard. Many who cannot even read have acquired the whole of Tasso, and some chant the stanzas of Ariosto. It is a sort of poetical challenge, and he who cannot take up the subject by continuing it is held as vanquished, and which occasions him no slight vexation. In a note in Lord Byron's works, this article is quoted by mistake as written by me, though I had mentioned it as the contribution of a stranger. We find by that note that there are two kinds of Tasso; the original, and another called the "Canta alla Barcarola," a spurious Tasso in the Venetian dialect: this latter, however, is rarely used. In the same note, a printer's error has been perpetuated through all the editions of Byron; the name of Barry, the painter, has been printed Berry.



BAYLE.

Few philosophers were more deserving of the title than, Bayle. His last hour exhibits the Socratic intrepidity with which he encountered the formidable approach of death. I have seen the original letter of the bookseller Leers, where he describes the death of our philosopher. "On the evening preceding his decease, having studied all day, he gave my corrector some copy of his 'Answer to Jacquelot,' and told him that he was very ill. At nine in the morning his laundress entered his chamber; he asked her, with a dying voice, if his fire was kindled? and a few moments after he died." His disease was an hereditary consumption, and his decline must have been gradual; speaking had become with him a great pain, but he laboured with the same tranquillity of mind to his last hour; and, with Bayle, it was death alone which, could interrupt the printer.

The irritability of genius is forcibly characterised by this circumstance in his literary life. When a close friendship had united him to Jurieu, he lavished on him the most flattering eulogiums: he is the hero of his "Republic of Letters." Enmity succeeded to friendship; Jurieu is then continually quoted in his "Critical Dictionary," whenever an occasion offers to give instances of gross blunders, palpable contradictions, and inconclusive arguments. These inconsistent opinions may be sanctioned by the similar conduct of a Saint! St. Jerome praised Rufinus as the most learned man of his age, while his friend; but when the same Rufinus joined his adversary Origen, he called him one of the most ignorant!

As a logician Bayle had no superior; the best logician will, however, frequently deceive himself. Bayle made long and close arguments to show that La Motte le Vayer never could have been a preceptor to the king; but all his reasonings are overturned by the fact being given in the "History of the Academy," by Pelisson.

Basnage said of Bayle, that he read much by his fingers. He meant that he ran over a book more than he read it; and that he had the art of always falling upon that which was most essential and curious in the book he examined.

There are heavy hours in which the mind of a man of letters is unhinged; when the intellectual faculties lose all their elasticity, and when nothing but the simplest actions are adapted to their enfeebled state. At such hours it is recorded of the Jewish Socrates, Moses Mendelssohn, that he would stand at his window, and count the tiles of his neighbour's house. An anonymous writer has told of Bayle, that he would frequently wrap himself in his cloak, and hasten to places where mountebanks resorted; and that this was one of his chief amusements. He is surprised that so great a philosopher should delight in so trifling an object. This objection is not injurious to the character of Bayle; it only proves that the writer himself was no philosopher.